"She's so gentle and yet so brave," said Jill.
"Brave!" he echoed it, but it had not the force of all he felt. "Great Heavens! Think of her there now, alone. Everything but us gone out of her life; a sudden rent in the clouds--just a flash, and but for us, in that moment she's made destitute. And then, with a smile in her eyes, to give up what little she has. And I, to have to accept it. Lord! what a fool I've been. I remember that day when Mrs. Morrell's sandy cat came slouching into the room and I'd just received the letter saying she would write no more of you. I took that confounded cat into my confidence--'The little old lady wants a love story,' I said. And the cat seemed to wink as though it had no objection to hearing one, too.
Then I began. Lord! what a child I am. Not the faintest idea of the future! No conception of consequence! Just a blind idea of doing things as they come, without the smallest consideration of results! I never foresaw that it was going to lead to this. What a child! My heavens! What a child! He was a child! She's a child! I'm a child, too! We're a family of children, not fit for one of the responsibilities of life."
"Do you think you're any the worse for that?" she asked softly.
"I don't know," he shrugged his shoulders. "Upon my soul, it seems now the greatest crime a man can commit. In a world of grown-up men and women who can pay their rents and taxes, meet their bills and save their money, to be a child is a monstrous, a heinous crime."
"Only to those who don't understand," she answered.
"Well--and who does?"
"I do."
"You do? Yes, I know that--but how can you help? You've done more than a thousand women would have done. You helped me to make his passing a happy one; you can't do more than that. You're even going to stay on a few days longer to help this fool of a child still more. That proves you understand. I know you understand--God bless you."
He shrank into himself despairingly. His whole body seemed to contract in the pain of self-condemnation, and he pressed his hands violently over his eyes. Suddenly, he felt her move. He took his hands away and found her kneeling at his feet, that white face of ivory turned up to his, her eyes dimmed with tears.
"Do you call it understanding if I leave you now--little child?" she whispered, and her voice was like the sound in a long-dreamt dream which, on the morning, he had forgotten and striven to remember ever since.
Slowly, he took away his hands. Now he recalled the voice. The whole dream came back. It was summer--summer in England. They were in a field where cattle grazed under the warm shadows of high elm trees.
Cowslips grew there, standing up through the grass with their thin, white, velvet stems; here and there an orchid with spotted leaves, a group of scabii bending their feathered heads in the heat of the day.
Jill sat sewing little garments, and he lay idle, stretched upon his back, gazing up into the endless blue where the white clouds sailed like little ships, making for distant harbours. And as she sewed, she talked of things more wonderful than God had made the day; of things that women, in the most sacred moments of their life, sometimes reveal to men.
This was the dream he had forgotten. In his sleep, he had known that it was a dream; had known that he must remember it all his life; yet in the morning, but faintly recollected he had dreamt at all. Now, those two words of hers--little child--and the summer day, the browsing cattle, the white flutter of the tiny garments, the scent of the fields and the sound of her voice had all returned in one swift rush of memory.
"What do you mean?" he asked slowly--"if you leave me now, what do you mean? What do you mean by--little child?"
Both hands, she put out; both hands to clasp on his. The tears ceased gathering in her eyes. Before God and in great moments, the eyes forget their tears; there is no trembling of the lips; the voice is clear and true.
"Don't you remember what he said?" she asked. "'Make your lives out of love, as I have made mine. Make your children out of love as I have made mine.' Did you think I could hear that from him without knowing what you yourself have said just now, that there is no such thing as Duty?"
John stared at her. He dared not interpose. He dared not even answer the question she had asked, for fear his voice should break the linking of her thoughts.
"Can you hear him saying--'Make your lives out of duty, as I have made mine. Make your children out of duty as I have made mine?' Can you imagine him saying that? Can you feel how it would have grated on your ears? Yet that's just what I'm going to do; but I didn't realise it till then."
"What is it you're going to say?" he asked below his breath. "What is it you're leading to? All this is leading to something. What is it?"
"That I'm not going to leave you, little child. That if, after all, there is such a thing as Duty, he has shown me what it is."
The gondola bumped against the steps. The voice of the gondolier called out that their destination was reached. John rose quickly to his feet.
"Go back," he said. "Go back to the hotel."
Away they started again and as he plied his oar, the gondolier gazed up at the stars, and hummed a muffled tune.
For a few moments, John remained standing. She was not going to leave him. She was never going to leave him. That was the big thought, triumphant in his mind. But a thousand little thoughts, like grains of dust in a great sunbeam, danced and whirled about it. He thought of those rooms of his in Fetter Lane; of his own improvidence, of the disreputable appearance of Mrs. Morrell on Saturday mornings when she cleaned the stairs of the house, and conversed, in language none too refined, with Miss Morrell. He thought of the impudence of Mrs. Brown, when she appeared in curling papers and made remarks about her neighbours with a choice of words that can only be said to go with that particular adornment of the hair.
But these were only cavilling considerations, which made the big thought real. He could change his address. Now, indeed, he could go down to Harefield. He could work twice as hard; he could make twice as much money. All these things, ambition will easily overcome in the face of so big a thought as this. She was never going to leave him.
He took her hands as he sat down.
"Do you think you realise everything?" he said; for the first instinct of the grateful recipient is to return the gift. He does not mean to give it back; but neither does he quite know how to take it.
She nodded her head.
"All my circumstances? How poor I am?"
"Everything."
"And still----?"
"And still," she replied. "Nothing but your asking could change me."
He sat gazing at her, just holding her hands. Only in real stories do people at such a moment fall into each other's arms. When the matter is really nonsense, then people act differently--perhaps they are more reserved--possibly the wonder of it all is greater then.
John sat silently beside her and tried to understand. It was so unexpected. He had scarcely even wished that it might be so.
"When did you think this?" he asked presently.
"Just--before he died."
"When he blessed us?"
"Yes."
"Why haven't you said so before?"
"I couldn't. I haven't been able to speak. I've suddenly seen things real----"
"In the midst of all this nonsense----"
"Yes--and it's taken my breath away. All in a few hours, I've seen death and love, and I don't know what the change is in me, but I'm different. I've grown up. I understand. You say I have understood before; but I've understood nothing. I should never have come here last year, if I had understood. I should never have continued meeting you in Kensington Gardens, if I had understood. Women don't understand as a rule; no girl understands. She would never play with love, if she did.
I know, suddenly, that I belong to you; that I have no right to marry anyone else. In these last few hours, I've felt that a force outside me determines the giving of my life, and it has frightened me. I couldn't say anything. When you said you were a child, then I suddenly found my tongue. I wasn't afraid any more. I knew you were a child, my child--my little child--not my master. There's no mastery in it; you're just my child."
Suddenly she closed her arms round him; she buried her head on his shoulder.
"I can't explain any more!" she whispered--"It's something I can't explain--I haven't any words for it."
And, as he held her to him, John thought of the dream he had dreamt, of the field and the cattle, and the white fluttering of the tiny garments, and the clouds sailing in the sky, and again came to him the note in her voice as she told him the most wonderful thing in the whole world.
Then, leaning out from the hood, he called out to the gondolier:
"Just take us out on the Lagoon before we go back."
And they swung round again to his oar.