It was indeed only when they were well beyond York that the question of their relationship might have been resolved, for the gentleman leaned forward and asked, very earnestly, if she was quite comfortable and not tired. And by then there were no other passengers, for the most part had changed trains, or reached their destination at York, and none was proceeding beyond Malton and Pickering, so that the two were alone in the carriage. She looked directly at him then, and said no, she was not in the least tired; she considered for a moment and added precisely that she was not in a state of mind that allowed of tiredness, she believed. Whereupon they did smile at each other, and he leaned forward and possessed himself of one of the little gloved hands, which lay still and then clasped his. There were matters, he said, that they had an urgent need to discuss before they arrived, things which they had had no time or peace to make clear in the haste and turmoil of setting off, things to which there was a degree of awkwardness attached, which he hoped, with resolution, they could overcome.
He had been planning this speech since they left King's Cross. He had been quite unable to imagine how he would say it, or how she would respond.
She said she was listening attentively. The little hand in his curled and crisped. He gripped it.
"We are travelling together," he said. "We decided-you decided-to come. What I do not know is whether you would wish-whether you would choose-to lodge and manage yourself separately from me after this point-or whether-or whether- you would wish to travel as my wife. It is a large step-It is attended with all sorts of inconvenience, hazard and-embarrassment. I have rooms reserved in Scarborough where a wife could well-find space. Or I could reserve other rooms-under some false name. Or you may not wish to take this step at all-you may wish to be lodged separately and respectably elsewhere. Forgive this baldness. I am truly trying to discover your wishes. We left in so exalted a state-I wish decisions could arise naturally-but you see how it is."
"I want to be with you," she said. "I took a vast step. If it is taken, it is taken. I am quite happy to be called your wife, wherever you choose, for this time. That is what I had understood I-we-had decided."
She spoke quickly and clearly; but the gloved hands, in their warm kid, turned and turned in his. He said, still in the quiet, dispassionate tone they had so far employed: "You take my breath away. This is generosity-"
"This is necessity."
"But you are not sad, you are not in doubt, you are not-"
"That doesn't come into it. This is necessity. You know that." She turned her face away and looked out, through a stream of fine cinders, at the slow fields. "I am afraid, of course. But that seems to be of no real importance. None of the old considerations-none of the old cares-seem to be of any importance. They are not tissue paper, but seem so."
"You must not regret this, my dear."
"And you must not speak nonsense. Of course I shall regret. So will you, will you not? But that, too, is of no importance at this time."
They were silent, for a time. Then he said, choosing his words carefully, "If you are to come with me as my wife-I hope you will accept this ring. It is a family ring-it belonged to my mother. It is a plain gold band, engraved with daisies."
"I too have brought a ring. It belonged to a great-aunt, Sophie de Kercoz. It has a green stone-look-jade-a simple stone, with an engraved S."
"You would prefer not to accept my ring?"
"I did not say that. I was giving proof of foresight and resolution. I shall be happy to wear your ring."
He peeled off the little white glove, and pushed his ring over her fine one with its green stone, so that the two lay together. It fitted, though loosely. He would have liked to say something-with this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship-but these good and true words were doubly treacherous to two women. Their unspoken presence hung in the air. He seized the little hand and carried it to his lips. Then he sat back and turned the glove reflectively in his hands, pushing its soft leather pockets back into shape, one by one, smoothing their fine creases.
All the way from London, he had been violently confused by her real presence in the opposite inaccessible corner. For months he had been possessed by the imagination of her. She had been distant and closed away, a princess in a tower, and his imagination's work had been all to make her present, all of her, to his mind and senses, the quickness of her and the mystery, the whiteness of her, which was part of her extreme magnetism, and the green look of those piercing or occluded eyes. Her presence had been unimaginable, or more strictly, only to be imagined. Yet here she was, and he was engaged in observing the ways in which she resembled, or differed from, the woman he dreamed, or reached for in sleep, or would fight for.
As a young man he had been much struck by the story of Words-worth and his solitary Highland girl; the poet had heard the enchanted singing, taken in exactly as much as he had needed for his own immortal verse, and had refused to hear more. He himself, he had discovered, was different. He was a poet greedy for information, for facts, for details. Nothing was too trivial to interest him; nothing was inconsiderable; he would, if he could, have mapped every ripple on a mudflat and its evidence of the invisible workings of wind and tide. So now his love for this woman, known intimately and not at all, was voracious for information. He learned her. He studied the pale loops of hair on her temples. Their sleek silver-gold seemed to him to have in it a tinge, a hint of greenness, not the copper-green of decay, but a pale sap-green of vegetable life, streaked into the hair like the silvery bark of young trees, or green shadows in green tresses of young hay. And her eyes were green, glass-green, malachite green, the cloudy green of seawater perturbed and carrying a weight of sand. The lashes over them silver, but thick enough to be visibly present. The face not kind. There was no kindness in the face. It was cut clean but not fine-strong-boned rather, so that temples and slanting cheeks were pronounced and solid-shadowed, the shadows bluish, which in imagination he always touched with green too, but it was not so.
If he loved the face, which was not kind, it was because it was clear and quick and sharp.
He saw, or thought he saw, how those qualities had been disguised or overlaid by more conventional casts of expression-an assumed modesty, an expedient patience, a disdain masking itself as calm. At her worst-oh, he saw her clearly, despite her possession of him-at her worst she would look down and sideways and smile demurely, and this smile would come near a mechanical simper, for it was an untruth, it was a convention, it was her brief constricted acknowledgement of the world's expectations. He had seen immediately, it seemed to him, what in essence she was, sitting at Crabb Robinson's breakfast table, listening to men disputing, thinking herself an unobserved observer. Most men, he judged, if they had seen the harshness and fierceness and absolutism, yes, absolutism, of that visage, would have stood back from her. She would have been destined to be loved only by timid weaklings, who would have secretly hoped she would punish or command them, or by simpletons, who supposed her chill look of delicate withdrawal to indicate a kind of female purity, which all desired, in those days, at least ostensibly. But he had known immediately that she was for him, she was to do with him, as she really was or could be, or in freedom might have been.