“No, no, of course it did not!” said the Major soothingly, dropping on one knee in precisely the spot vacated by Mr Ryde, and taking the widow’s hand in a comforting clasp. “You are not to be blamed! Your conduct has been irreproachable! Don’t—! I can’t bear to see you so unhappy, my—Lady Spenborough!”
“I beg your pardon—it is very silly!” Fanny choked, making heroic efforts to compose herself, and succeeding only in uttering a stifled sob. “I didn’t know how to stop him, and he kept on kissing my hands, and saying such things, and frightening me so! Indeed, I am very sorry to be so foolish! I am s-so very in-much obliged to you for s-sending him away! I can’t think w-what I should have done if you had not c-come in, for he—oh. Major Kirkby, he actually put his arm round me! I am so much ashamed, but indeed I never gave him the least encouragement!”
At this point, the Major, going one better than Mr Ryde, put both his own arms round the drooping figure, cradling it protectively, and saying involuntarily: “Fanny, Fanny! There, my darling, there, then! Don’t cry! I’ll see to it the young cub doesn’t come near you again! There’s nothing now to be frightened of!”
Quite how it happened, neither knew. The outraged widow, finding an inviting shoulder so close, sank instinctively against it, and the next instant was locked in a far more alarming embrace than she had been subjected to by the unlucky Mr Ryde. The impropriety of it did not seem to strike her. Her heart leaped in her bosom; she clung tightly to the Major; and put up her face to receive his kiss.
For a long moment they stayed thus, then, as though realization dawned simultaneously on each of them, Fanny made a convulsive movement to free herself, and the Major’s arms dropped from about her, and he sprang up, exclaiming: “Fanny! Oh, my God, my God, what have I done?”
They stared at one another, pale as death, horror in their faces. “I—I beg your pardon!” the Major stammered. “I didn’t mean—Oh, my darling, what are we to do?”
The colour came rushing back to her cheeks; so tender a glow shone in her eyes that it was all he could do not to take her back into his arms. But she said in a constricted voice:
“You were only trying to comfort me. I know you did not mean—”
“Fanny, Fanny, don’t say it! We could not help ourselves!” he interrupted, striding over to the window, as though he dared not trust himself to look at her. “The fool that I have been!”
Such bitter anguish throbbed in his voice that she winced, and bowed her head to hide a fresh spring of tears. A long silence fell. Fanny surreptitiously wiped her eyes, and said faintly: “It was my fault. You must forget—how silly I was. I don’t regard it. I know you cannot have meant it.”
“I think I must have loved you from the moment I saw you.”
“Oh, no, no! Hector, think what you are saying! You love Serena! All these years you have loved her!”
“I have loved a dream. A sickly, sentimental dream which only a moonstruck fool could have created! The vision I cherished—it was not of Serena! She was never like it!”
“No, not like your dream, but better by far!” she said quickly,
“Yes, better by far! She is a grand creature! I admire her, I honour her, I think her the most beautiful woman I ever beheld—but I do not love her!”
She pressed a hand to her temple. “How can this be? Oh, no it is not possible! It could not be!”
“Do you believe me to be mad?” he asked, coming away from the window. “How can I make you understand?” He sat down opposite to her, and dropped his head into his hands. “It wasn’t madness, but folly! When I knew her first—oh, I was head over ears in love with her! as ridiculous an object, I suppose, as that wretched boy I found with you just now! Separated from her, joining my regiment, as I did in the Peninsula, seeing no women other than camp-followers and Spanish peasants for months, there was nothing to banish Serena’s image from my memory. It was not enough to remember her: insensibly I laid coat upon coat of new and more dazzling paint upon my image! Her face I could not alter; her self I did! Perhaps I never knew it!” He looked up, a painful smile twisting his lips. “Were you ever given laudanum for an aching tooth, Fanny? Enough to make you believe your dreams were real? That was what Serena’s image was to me. Then—I met her again.” He paused, and sank his head in his hands again, and groaned. “Her face, more lovely even than I remembered it! her smiling eyelids, the music in her voice, her witchery, the very grace of her every movement—all, all as I had remembered them! I was in love again, but still in that insane dream! The woman beneath what blinded my eyes was a stranger to me. My image I had endowed with my own thoughts, my own tastes: Serena and I have scarcely a thought in common, and our tastes—” He broke off, with a mirthless laugh. “Well, you must know how widely divergent they are!”
“I know that you have sometimes been surprised—even disappointed, but you have been happy! Surely you have been happy?” Fanny said imploringly.
“I have been happy because of you,” he replied. Today I know that. I did not before. I was like a man dazzled by strong sunlight, and when my eyes grew accustomed, and I saw a landscape less perfect than I had imagined it, I shut them. I didn’t think it possible that my feeling for Serena could change. That you were the woman I loved I never knew until I had you in my arms, and realized that to let you go would be to tear the heart out of my chest.”
She rose quickly, and knelt beside him, putting her arms round him. “And mine! Oh, Hector, Hector, and mine! Oh, how wicked I have been! For I knew how much I loved you!”
They clung together, her head on his shoulder, his hand holding it there. Her tears fell silently; when she spoke again her voice had a resolute calm. “It cannot be, my dearest.”
“No. I know it. Well for you to be saved from such a contemptible clodpole as I have proved myself to be!” he said bitterly.
She drew his hand from her cheek, and held it. “You must not talk so. Or speak to me of what might have been. We must neither of us think of that ever again. Hector, we could not—!”
“You need not tell me so. In me, it would be infamous!”
“You will learn to be happy with Serena—indeed, you will, dearest! Just now it seems as though—but we shall grow accustomed, both of us! Where there is no question of dislike, one does, you see. I—I know that. Serena must never so much as suspect this!”
“No,” he said hopelessly.
She could not forbear to put her hand up, lightly stroking his waving fair hair. “There is so much in Serena that is true, not a part of your image! Her courage, and her kindness, and her generosity—oh, a thousand things!” She tried to smile. “You will forget you were ever so foolish as to love me, even a little. Serena is cleverer than I am, and so much more beautiful!”
He took her face between his hands, and looked deep into her eyes. “Cleverer, and more beautiful, but so much less dear!” he said, in an aching voice. He let her go. “Don’t be afraid! I have been a fool, but I hope I am a man of honour.”
“I know, oh, I know! You have been a little shocked to find that Serena is not quite what you thought her, but you will recover, and you will wonder at yourself for not having perceived at once how much more worth loving she is than that stupid image you made! And she loves you, Hector!”
He was silent for a moment, staring at his clenched hands, but presently he raised his eyes to Fanny’s again, in a searching, questioning look. “Does she?” he asked.
She was amazed. “But, Hector—! Oh, how can you doubt it, when she has even said she will relinquish her fortune only to please you?”