CHAPTER 18.

 

            IN THE afternoon Maynard returned to the hacienda to superintend the packing of the silver for its conveyance to the coast, and Noel busied himself in his preparations for his journey. Margaret sat with her children amid her varied tasks, but was absorbed in her reveries, and her hands remained idle. On Noel’s going into the room she said, with an attempt at firmness in her voice, –

 

            ‘You will let me help you, if I can be of any use.’

 

            ‘Thanks,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘I shall take but little with me, and will commit the rest of my belongings to your special charge until my return. I suppose a fortnight or three weeks will bring me back.’

 

            ‘If you do not change your mind when you reach the sea.’

 

            ‘Ah, Margaret! Does change seem so easy to you?’

 

            ‘Men are so different from us. At least, so I have read.’

 

            ‘Was that the moral of Aslauga’s Knight? Do you know that though I can understand a formal college don giving a woman such a story to read with the idea of converting her into loving him, I gave James credit for more penetration. Why, its whole moral is in favour of spiritual ecstasy, as against a human love.’

 

            ‘So I thought, until – until we met; and then it seemed to shift its meaning; and suggested to me how very poor a comfort the visionary Aslauga must have been to Frode, compared to that which Hildegard was to Edwald.’

 

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            ‘And such, no doubt, was part of the moral you were intended to draw from it; but the time had not yet come.’

 

            ‘Edmund!’ she exclaimed, as if struck by a sudden thought, ‘are you quite sure that you will not despise me after you are gone away, for not having concealed my feeling from you. You will not blame me for what I could not help, and you know it was no fault of mine that I loved you. But I need not – perhaps ought not – to have allowed you to know it. I was so taken by surprise. All was so new to me. – I had no time to think; – and I was so ignorant.’

 

            ‘Your own heart answers the question best, I am quite sure,’ he returned; ‘for it knows that your love is my most precious possession; nay, it is far more than a possession. It is part of my identity. I cannot conceive of myself as existing without it. No, it is no change of feeling that can come by this separation; but we shall be enabled thereby to become in some degree as bystanders to ourselves, and to consider what duties are imposed upon us by our relation to each other. I think, too, of the pleasure of meeting again!’

 

            ‘Ah!’ she said, with a shudder, ‘it would indeed be different if you were going away for ever. But as it is, you have the best of it. For you there is an active life, with new scenes to occupy and interest you; while I remain here where everything will serve to remind me of you and of your absence, and to endure my life as I best may.’

 

            ‘This is one of the things that I want to think about when absent from you,’ said Edmund. ‘How best to reconcile the rights and duties imposed upon us by our love, with the affection we both have for James. You would not, any more than I, do aught to pain him. For you love him, though not as he wishes to be loved.’

 

            ‘Oh yes, that I do. But he sometimes makes it very hard. Until you came I longed for death. And even now I sometimes think, that to die is the best thing I can do. You both would learn to love again – after a while; but I should have the happiness of having been loved the best.’

 

            At this moment the children, who all this time had been playing on the floor, were summoned to their evening meal; and after a pause, during which they looked out on the wide landscape, for they were standing before the window, Noel said to Margaret, –

 

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            ‘Do you think we shall be able to say Good-bye, to-morrow? Had we not better do it now?’

 

            ‘What do you mean, and need it be said at all?’ she asked, looking wonderingly at him.

 

            ‘I mean that I hope you will give me something that I covet very much to keep by me for evermore as a token of our love. Margaret, you have never given me a kiss.’

 

            Her face turned paler than ever, as she replied, falteringly, –

 

            ‘You have never asked me, and I have thought it so good of you.’

 

            ‘But now that I am going away, you will let me have one to remember you by. Who knows what accident may come to separate us for ever? Now that I think of it, I was very stupid to prevent James from being carried off the other night.’

 

            ‘The other night! it was this morning. But I do not wonder at your mistake. It seems already an age ago to me. Had anything really serious happened to him, I should never have forgiven myself, for I was the cause of his being unhappy and going out into the forest.’

 

            ‘Your disposition makes you reproach yourself for what is not your fault,’ answered Noel. ‘However, I must not regret my blunder in rescuing him if it has saved you from a painful thought.’ And catching her suddenly in his arms he kissed her again and again on her brow, her eyes, her lips, until, wrenching herself from him, she sank exhausted by emotion on the sofa that was beside them; and then he knelt before her, clasping her waist, and murmuring, –

 

            ‘Margaret, Margaret, it is harder than ever to go away now.’

 

‘But more necessary than ever,’ she replied in a low voice. ‘I wish, Edmund, you had not done it. I did not know myself before.’

 

            ‘You don’t grudge it me?’

 

            ‘No, no, no! But it was wrong. Besides, it makes the future harder to bear than ever.’

 

            ‘Oh, my darling. I shall be ever grateful. Your lips will seem to be touching mine until I come back, and be a perpetual happiness to me.’

 

            Margaret shook her head sadly, and bade him get up and

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go and finish his packing, as she wished to recover herself before any one should come in. And the self-mastery which enabled him to obey her and to leave her, she reckoned as an excellency in him. 

 

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