Bulldog and Butterfly | Page 7

and Lane looked and talked rather too much like a stage lover to her mind. In the unreal life behind the footlights lovers talked with just such a fluency, just such a tender fiery emphasis. In real life John Thistlewood came doggedly a-wooing with a shoulder propped against a doorpost, and had hard work to find a word for himself. If only that one absent element of faith could be imported into the business, Lane Protheroe's fashion of courting was certain to be infinitely more delightful than John Thistlewood's, but then the absent element was almost everything. And for poor Bertha the worst part of it seemed that she loved the man she doubted, and could not love the man in whose affection she held the profoundest faith. That the rough, clumsy, and persistent courtier loved her was one of the indisputable facts of life to her. She knew it just as surely as she knew that she was alive. She knew it, and the knowledge hurt her, for she could fancy nothing less hopeful than Thistle-wood's wooing, and she was without a spark of mere vanity.
'I think it is because you say so much that I don't feel quite able to believe it all,' she said. 'You feel it when you talk about it, but it seems to me as if you had to talk before you get to feel it.'
His brows bent down over gloomy eyes again, and he folded his arms as he looked at her. Once more poor Bertha thought of the stage lover she had seen, and a long-drawn sigh escaped her.
'I can't think it's all quite real,' she said, almost desperately.
'You think I say too much?' he retorted. 'It seems to me as if I said too little. It seems to me as if there weren't any words to speak such thoughts and feelings.'
'Is that because you don't value the words? 'she .' asked him. 'Don't you think that if you felt what the words do mean that they'd seem enough for you?'
'I know I'm a good-for-nothing beggar,' he answered, with a sudden air of weary self-loathing and disdain. 'I know. I've got a way of taking everything in deadly earnest for an hour or two. But,' with a sudden swerve into the track of self-justification, 'if that makes you think I'm fickle and weak-willed, you're all wrong, darling. There are some fellows--I know plenty--who go through life like a lot of oysters. They don't feel anything--they don't care about anything, or anybody. But, bless your heart, my dear, they never get doubted.'
Bertha took this for a satiric dig at the absent Thistlewood, and spoke up for him, needlessly, as it happened.
'Still waters run deep, Mr. Protheroe.'
'Some of 'em do,' responded Mr. Protheroe, with profoundest gloom, which lightened suddenly into a smile as bright as sunshine. 'But some of 'em don't run at all. And some of 'em are as shallow as any puddle you'll find along the road, only they're so bemuddled you can't see to the bottom of 'em. You can plumb 'em with your little finger, though, if you don't mind soiling it.'
Now this innocent generalisation seemed gratuitously offensive to the absent Thistlewood, and chilled Bertha greatly.
'That may be very true of some people,' she responded; 'but it isn't true of all the quiet people in the world.. And I don't think, Mr. Protheroe, that the people who make the greatest parade of their feelings are the people who really have the most to speak of.'
'Why, that's true, too, of some people,' returned Protheroe; 'but there are all sorts in the world, dear. Some say a lot and feel a lot Some feel a lot and say nothing. Some say nothing and feel nothing. It may be a fault with me--I don't know--but when I start to say a thing I want to say all of it. But surely a feeling isn't less real because you don't seem able to express it whatever words you choose.'
'Where the feeling's sacred the words are sacred,' Bertha objected.
'Tell me what it is you fear about me,' he besought her, leaning across the table, and searching her face with his eyes. 'You don't believe I should have a wandering mind if you said yes, and we should once be married?'
She had laid the book upon the table, and now betook herself to fingering the leaves again.
'I've no right to pick faults in you, or give you lessons, Mr. Protheroe.'
'Oh yes, you have,' he answered. 'All the right in the world. If you'll take in hand to show me my faults, I'll take in hand to cure 'em so far as a man may.'
'I don't think you're fickle,' said the girl hesitatingly; 'but I do think you're shallow, Mr. Protheroe.'
'Not a bit of it, dear,' he