Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/52

46 occupied at the time—the Parliamentary session having got on into June—committed the imprudence of making this suggestion in a letter. Had he been down at Willowby Hall, walking with Lady Sylvia in the still twilight, with the stars beginning to tell in the sky, and the mist beginning to gather along the margin of the lake, he might have had another answer; but now she wrote to him that in her opinion so serious a step as marriage was not to be adventured upon in a hurry, and she added, too, with some pardonable pride, that it was not quite seemly on his part to point out how they could make their honeymoon trip coincide with the general autumn holiday. Was their marriage to appear to be a merely, trivial or accidental thing, waiting for its accomplishment until Parliament should be pro-rogued?

He got the letter very late one night, when he was sorely fatigued, harassed, and discontented with himself. He had lost his temper in the House that evening; he had been called to order by Mr. Speaker; as he walked home he was reviling himself for having been betrayed into a rage. When he saw the letter lying on the table, he brightened up somewhat. Here, at least, would be consolation—a tender message—perhaps some gentle intimation given that the greatest wish of his heart might soon be realized. Well, he opened the letter and read it. The disappointment he experienced doubtless exaggerated what he took to be the coldness of its terms. He paid no attention to the real and honest expressions of affection in it; he looked only at her refusal, and saw temper where there was only a natural and sensitive pride.

Then the devil took possession of him, and prompted him to write in reply there and then. Of course he would not show temper, being a man. All the same, he felt called on to point out, politely but firmly, that marriage was after all only one among the many facts of life; and that it was not rendered any the more sublime and mysterious by making it the occasion for a number of microscopic martyrdoms and petty sacrifices. He saw no reason why the opportunity offered by the close of the session should not be made use of; as for the opinion of other people on the seemliness of the arrangement, she would have to be prepared for the discovery that neither on that point nor on any other was he likely to shape his conduct to meet the views of a mass of strangers. And so forth. It was a perfectly sensible letter. The line of argument was clear. How could she fail to see her error?

But to the poor fluttering heart down there in the country these words came with a strange chill; and it seemed to her that her lover had suddenly withdrawn from her to a great distance, leaving the world around her dark enough. Her first impulse was to utter a piteous cry to him. She sate down and wrote, with trembling fingers, these words:—

Probably, too, had she sent off this letter at once, he would have been struck by her simple and generous self-abnegation; and he would have instantly refused to demand from her any sacrifice of feeling whatever. But then the devil was abroad. He generally is about when two sweethearts try to arrange some misunderstanding by the perilous process of correspondence. Lady Sylvia began to recollect that, after all, something was due her womanly pride. Would it not seem unmaidenly thus to surrender at discretion on so all-important a point as the fixing of the wedding-day? She would not have it said that they were waiting for Parliament to rise before they got married. In any case, she thought the time was far too short. Moreover, was this the tone in which a man should ask a woman to fix the day of her marriage?

So she answered the letter in another vein. If marriage, she said, was only one of the ordinary facts of life, she at least did not regard it in that light at all. She cared for tittle-tattle as little as he; but she did not like the appearance of having her wedding-trip arranged as if it were an excursion to Scotland for grouse-shooting. And so forth. Her letter, too, was clever—very clever, indeed, and sharp. Her face was a little flushed as she sealed it, and bade the servant take it to the post- office the first thing in the morning. But apparently that brilliant piece of composition did not afford her much satisfaction afterwards; for she passed the night, not in healthful sleep, but in alternate fits of crying and bitter thinking, until it seemed to her that this new relationship into which she had entered with such glad anticipations was bringing her only sorrow after sorrow, grief after grief. For she had experienced no more serious troubles than these.

When Hugh Balfour received this letter,