‘Another song,’ he pleaded. And he came close to where she sat, that he might lead her to the instrument.
With a half shrug she rose, placed her hand lightly in his arm, walked the three necessary steps, and sat down at the keyboard.
‘Perhaps, Mr Marden, you would prefer something of a newer fashion this time?’
He did not hear her; or, hearing, did not understand. For he was suddenly in the throes of a gigantic struggle. He had forgotten his request that she should sing. He was unaware that she had asked him a question and awaited the answer. Everything was vanished from his mind except the task that tormented it and the remote vision that was the goal of its striving. He stood stiff and straight, and almost angry, with his gaze fixed on the wall opposite him.
And he said, like a boy repeating a lesson: ‘Madam, I have Dr Humphrey’s permission to ask your hand in marriage.’
It seemed that an age passed, an age of silence and terror and expectation, before he could bring himself to glance at her. And then it was too late to read her answer, unless anything of significance could be read in her drooping posture, hands in lap, eyes downcast: just such a posture as had startled him earlier in the day by its beauty and bravery. Despite his fever, his liquefying knees, his parched mouth, he contrived to speak again, addressing her bowed head.
‘I hope . . . may I hope . . .’ But this was sheer arrogance: how dared he hope anything! ‘Miss Humphrey, this silence is torture. Your father, I say, consents to my . . . my asking . . . in short . . .’ But his ‘in short’ proved very long indeed; for without a sign from her he could not go on.
At last she looked up, with a whimsical half-wry smile. ‘Well, Mr Marden? My father . . . ?’
‘Consents,’ said Marden eagerly. ‘I have . . . I have his permission to address you. If I may speak . . .’
‘Indeed, sir,’ she cried, with a little laugh, ‘I am waiting for you to speak. You have my father’s permission, you say. And now you have mine. I am all attention.’
‘Ah, you are laughing at me.’ But, despite that or because of it, he was more at ease. ‘But I’m resolved to tell you that I love you, that I am your devoted slave, and that I shall count myself the happiest man in the world if you will be my wife. . . . Oh Celia, I’m no hand at making speeches——’
‘On the contrary, Mr Marden, you make them very prettily. I find you are full of unsuspected talent.’
He looked at her ruefully, ready to believe himself disdained. There was mockery in her smile, but there was friendliness too. Amused she might be, and he did not grudge her that: but she was not displeased. Thinking that her air of mischief was perhaps designed to wean him without unkindness from his hopes of her, ‘I doubt it is impossible,’ he surmised, ‘that you should care for me.’
‘Is it?’ said she, still smiling.
Impetuously, with sudden hope, he put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Do you mean, can you mean . . . ?’
‘Nay, sir, but I perfectly agree with you. It is impossible that I should care.’ He withdrew his hand hastily. A flush mounted his cheek. But before he could find words she went on: ‘And even did I disagree, it would not become me to contradict you, would it, Mr Marden? . . . Oh Jack, what a precious booby you are!’ He was at her side again, with his hands upon her. She leaned back, laughing up at him.
There was tenderness already kindled in her teasing eyes, and with the first kiss it became a clear light, and the laughter vanished from them, leaving only the sweet pain of love to reinforce the mute language of her lips. In the touch of those lips, in the light of those eyes, he found wonder and assuaging and the rapture of homecoming. The darkness was cast out of him; his exile from some long-lost and long-forgotten paradise was at an end; he had lost his small lonely self, had found release and fulfilment, in this largeness of love; his spirit and hers mingled with their mingling breath. And now, with the light of confessed love shining in her face, she was a new Celia: a surprised, happy, trustful child, born into a new world. They gazed at each other, and every tick of the clock added another coin to the heaped treasure. Each face, in the other’s sight, was a country at once new and familiar: every small discovery was greeted, in their hearts, with a cry of startled recognition: It’s you, you! Their pulses beat to that music. The wonder was less that they had found each other than that they had ever been made twain at all, so close now, it seemed, was their communion.
‘You have another name, haven’t you?’ he said.
She nodded. ‘Celia Ann.’
‘Celia is cool, and Ann is kind, and both are lovely . . .’
‘And both of us are yours,’ she assured him, ‘if . . .’
‘If!’ he exclaimed, in mock reproach. ‘I’ll have no ifs.’
‘If you are sure you love me,’ she said slipping away from him, ‘and if,’ she added, and with no smile to cloak the warning, ‘if I am myself sure of it.’
‘My dearest,’ he protested solemnly, ‘I am your faithful lover till death, and beyond. You cannot doubt me.’
‘I cannot doubt,’ said she coolly, seating herself at some little distance from him, ‘that you are in a mood now to be faithful. And indeed I heartily wish you may prove so, Mr Marden.’
Mr Marden! Was he become Mr Marden again! He stared in alarm. ‘Celia! My dear!’
A smile reassured him, but she would not let him approach her. She had resumed possession of herself, and the unexpectedness of her demeanour delighted as well as disconcerted him. ‘How cruel you are,’ he said fondly. His enthralment was complete.
CHAPTER 9
BROTHER RAPHE WRITES A LETTER AND TALKS WITH HIS DOVES
Time passed quickly at Fedrum, but Jack Marden and Celia, living in their new world, the world of each other, took small account of its passing. Sooner or later, as he knew, Marden must go back to his Fee, resume supervision of the estate and make arrangements for his wedding, which Celia, without committing herself to a precise date, had promised should not be delayed unduly. He was aware of possessing, in Raphe Gandy, a steward on whose riper wisdom he could depend more securely than on his own, so that a day or two more or less of absence made no great matter. Meanwhile, at Maiden Holt, Brother Raphe was far from dull. Despite his newly assumed duties, which he performed as punctually as might be, he still found occasion for the busy idleness, the fruitful meditation, that was his life’s habit. In this he was aided, against his will and far more than he suspected, by the contriving of Mrs Dewdney the housekeeper, who, being deeply shocked at the sight of His Reverence with sacking tied round his middle and secular mop and pail in his hand, did everything in her power, which was considerable, to frustrate his industrious intentions. So on the fifth day of his stewardship he was able to devote a large part of the morning to the composition of a letter:
My dear Sir: Having been granted leave of absence from the kitchen, and a thought too willingly for my Self-esteem, for it puts me in mind that Mrs Dewdney does not greatly love to have me there at her heels, I now have the pleasure to send you my loving Duty, together with such odds and ends of gossip as I hope may amuse you. There have been doings a-plenty in the Fee, much wantonness having come to light, and in the sequel a pretty uproar, so that indeed there are like to be heads broken unless you soon return to restore order and peace among us. But this is no way to tell a tale, so I must acquaint you first with the cause of it all, which is that a fellow that squats upon the Common, Noke his name, hath got Erasmus Bailey the innkeeper’s daughter with child. It seems the young woman contriv’d to carry her secret a full five months, and would so have persisted till the very day of her delivery, I dare wager, had not a sudden jealousy prickt her on to this untimely disclosure: I say untimely, not as condoning her sin, but rather to present the opinion which she in her stubborn fear must have held of the matter, forgetting, poor child, that from our Saviour and Judge there can be no concealment, and that to escape the world’s censure is scarce worth the contriving. She is, as to appearance, a quiet and comely wench, and you would have said a modest one, but I fear it must make her guilt the deeper that she hath gotten some semblance of education and refinement from her father’s teaching, who, as you may know, is not unletter’d, though his manners accord, as they should, with his humble station. Well, to make no more words of it, it seems that this Letitia Bailey, or Tisha as they call her hereabouts, surpris’d her paramour in the arms of Mykelborne the wheelwright’s daughter, and liked the sight so ill that she must needs blurt out the whole story and publish her own dishonour to the world, or, what is the same thing, to her mother: the which worthy woman rounds upon Bailey, declaring “that if he is half a man, which she begs leave to doubt, he will take a horsewhip to the villain and see that he makes an honest woman of their daughter.” I was not, you must understand, privy to this dialogue, but I can pretty well vouch for madam’s style of conversation, having had, in these last days, a sufficient taste of it.