Benita, An African Romance | Page 9

time in which
to deliver it, "it is an odd thing, an incomprehensible thing, but true,
true--I fell in love with you the first time I saw your face. You
remember, you stood there leaning over the bulwark when I came on
board at Southampton, and as I walked up the gangway, I looked and
my eyes met yours. Then I stopped, and that stout old lady who got off
at Madeira bumped into me, and asked me to be good enough to make
up my mind if I were going backward or forward. Do you remember?"
"Yes," she answered in a low voice.
"Which things are an allegory," he continued. "I felt it so at the time.
Yes, I had half a mind to answer 'Backward' and give up my berth in
this ship. Then I looked at you again, and something inside of me said
'Forward.' So I came up the rest of the gangway and took off my hat to
you, a salutation I had no right to make, but which, I recall, you
acknowledged."
He paused, then continued: "As it began, so it has gone on. It is always
like that, is it not? The beginning is everything, the end must follow.
And now it has come out, as I was fully determined that it should not
do half an hour ago, when suddenly you developed eyes in the back of
your head, and--oh! dearest, I love you. No, please be quiet; I have not
done. I have told you what I am, and really there isn't much more to say
about me, for I have no particular vices except the worst of them all,
idleness, and not the slightest trace of any virtue that I can discover.
But I have a certain knowledge of the world acquired in a long course
of shooting parties, and as a man of the world I will venture to give you
a bit of advice. It is possible that to you my life and death affair is a
mere matter of board-ship amusement. Yet it is possible also that you
might take another view of the matter. In that case, as a friend and a
man of the world, I entreat you--don't. Have nothing to do with me.
Send me about my business; you will never regret it."
"Are you making fun, or is all this meant, Mr. Seymour?" asked Benita,
still speaking beneath her breath, and looking straight before her.
"Meant? Of course it is meant. How can you ask?"
"Because I have always understood that on such occasions people wish
to make the best of themselves."
"Quite so, but I never do what I ought, a fact for which I am grateful
now come to think of it, since otherwise I should not be here to-night. I

wish to make the worst of myself, the very worst, for whatever I am not,
at least I am honest. Now having told you that I am, or was half an hour
ago, an idler, a good-for-nothing, prospectless failure, I ask you--if you
care to hear any more?"
She half rose, and, glancing at him for the first time, saw his face
contract itself and turn pale in the moonlight. It may be that the sight of
it affected her, even to the extent of removing some adverse impression
left by the bitter mocking of his self-blame. At any rate, Benita seemed
to change her mind, and sat down again, saying:
"Go on, if you wish."
He bowed slightly, and said:
"I thank you. I have told you what I /was/ half an hour ago; now,
hoping that you will believe me, I will tell you what I /am/. I am a truly
repentant man, one upon whom a new light has risen. I am not very old,
and I think that underneath it all I have some ability. Opportunity may
still come my way; if it does not, for your sake I will make the
opportunity. I do not believe that you can ever find anyone who would
love you better or care for you more tenderly. I desire to live for you in
the future, more completely even than in the past I have lived for
myself. I do not wish to influence you by personal appeals, but in fact I
stand at the parting of the ways. If you will give yourself to me I feel as
though I might still become a husband of whom you could be proud--if
not, I write 'Finis' upon the tombstone of the possibilities of Robert
Seymour. I adore you. You are the one woman with whom I desire to
pass my days; it is you who have always been lacking to my life. I ask
you to be brave, to take