The Judgment of Eve | Page 5

it--but she felt something remarkably like indifference. She wondered whether she had seemed indifferent to him (the thought gave her a pang that she had not experienced when John Hurst laid his heart out to be trampled on). She wondered whether she were indifferent, really. How could you tell when you really loved a man? She had looked for great joy and glory and uplifting. And they hadn't come. It was as if she had held her heart in her hand and looked at it, and, because she felt no fluttering, had argued that love had never touched it; for she did not yet know that love's deepest dwelling-place is in the quiet heart. Aggie had never loved before, and she thought that she was in the sanctuary on Saturday, when she was only standing on the threshold, waiting for her hour.
It came, all of a sudden, on the Sunday.
Aggie's memory retained every detail of that blessed day--a day of spring sunshine, warm with the breath of wall-flowers and violets. Arthur, walking in the garden with her, was so mixed up with those delicious scents that Aggie could never smell them afterwards without thinking of him. A day that was not only all wall-flowers and violets, but all Arthur. For Arthur called first thing before breakfast to bring her the Browning, and first thing after breakfast to go with her to church, and first thing after dinner to take her for a walk.
They went into the low-lying Queningford fields beside the river. They took the Browning with them; Arthur carried it under his arm. In his loose, gray overcoat and soft hat he looked like a poet himself, or a Socialist, or Something. He always looked like Something. As for Aggie, she had never looked prettier than she looked that day. He had never known before how big and blue her eyes were, nor that her fawn-colored hair had soft webs of gold all over it. She, in her clean new clothes, was like a young Spring herself, all blue and white and green, dawn-rose and radiant gold. The heart of the young man was quick with love of her.
They found a sheltered place for Aggie to sit in, while Arthur lay at her feet and read aloud to her. He read "Abt Vogler," "Prospice," selections from "The Death in the Desert" (the day being Sunday); and then, with a pause and a shy turning of the leaves, and a great break in his voice, "Oh, Lyric Love, Half Angel and Half Bird," through to the end.
Their hearts beat very fast in the silence afterwards.
He turned to the fly-leaf where he had inscribed her name.
"I should like to have written something more. May I?"
"Oh yes. Please write anything you like."
And now the awful question for young Arthur was: Whatever should he write? "With warmest regards" was too warm; "kind regards" were too cold; "good wishes" sounded like Christmas or a birthday; "remembrances" implied that things were at an end instead of a beginning. All these shades, the warmth, the reticence, the inspired audacity, might be indicated under the veil of verse. If he dared--
"I wish," said Aggie, "you'd write me something of your own." (She knew he did it.)
What more could he want than that she should divine him thus?
For twenty minutes (he thought they were only seconds), young Arthur lay flat on his stomach and brooded over the Browning. Aggie sat quiet as a mouse, lest the rustle of her gown should break the divine enchantment. At last it came.
"Dear, since you loved this book, it is your own--" That was how it began. Long afterwards Arthur would turn pale when he thought of how it went on; for it was wonderful how bad it was, especially the lines that had to rhyme.
He did not know it when he gave her back the book.
She read it over and over again, seeing how bad it was, and not caring. For her the beginning, middle, and end of that delicate lyric were in the one word "Dear."
"Do you mind?" He had risen and was standing over her as she read.
"Mind?"
"What I've called you?"
She looked up suddenly. His face met hers, and before she knew it Aggie's initiation came.
"Ah," said Arthur, rising solemn from the consecration of the primal kiss, and drawing himself up like a man for the first time aware of his full stature, "that makes that seem pretty poor stuff, doesn't it?"
Young Arthur had just looked upon Love himself, and for that moment his vision was purged of vanity.
"Not Browning?" asked Aggie, a little anxiously.
"No--Not Browning. Me. Browning could write poetry. I can't. I know that now."
And she knew it, too; but that made no difference. It was not for his poetry she loved him.
"And so," said her mother,