The Laurel Bush | Page 6

and Mr. Roy had taken this stroll across the Links and round by the sands to the mouth of the Eden, leaving behind them a long and sinuous track of many footsteps, little and large, but now there were only two lines--"foot-prints on the sands of Time," as he jestingly called them, turning round and pointing to the marks of the dainty feet that walked so steadily and straightly beside his own.
"They seem made to go together, those two tracks," said he.
Why did he say it? Was he the kind of man to talk thus without meaning it? If so, alas! she was not exactly the woman to be thus talked to. Nothing fell on her lightly. Perhaps it was her misfortune, perhaps even her fault, but so it was.
Robert Roy did not "make love;" not at all. Possibly he never could have done it in the ordinary way. Sweet things, polite things were very difficult to him either to do or to say. Even the tenderness that was in him came out as if by accident; but, oh! how infinitely tender he could be! Enough to make any one who loved him die easily, quietly, if only just holding his hand.
There is an incident in Dickens's touching Tale of two Cities, where a young man going innocent to the guillotine, and riding on the death-cart with a young girl whom he had never before seen, is able to sustain and comfort her, even to the last awful moment, by the look of his face and the clasp of his hand. That man, I have often thought, must have been something not unlike Robert Roy.
Such men are rare, but they do exist; and it was Fortune's lot, or she believed it was, to have found one. That was enough. She went along the shining sands in a dream of perfect content, perfect happiness, thinking--and was it strange or wrong that she should so think?--that if it were God's will she should thus walk through life, the thorniest path would seem smooth, the hardest road easy. She had no fear of life, if lived beside him; or of death--love is stronger than death; at least this sort of love, of which only strong natures are capable, and out of which are made, not the lyrics, perhaps, but the epics, the psalms, or the tragedies of our mortal existence.
I have explained thus much about these two friends--lovers that may be, or might have been--because they never would have done it themselves. Neither was given to much speaking. Indeed, I fear their conversation this day, if recorded, would have been of the most feeble kind--brief, fragmentary, mere comments on the things about them, or abstract remarks not particularly clever or brilliant. They were neither of them what you would call brilliant people; yet they were happy, and the hours flew by like a few minutes, until they found themselves back again beside the laurel bush at the gate, when Mr. Roy suddenly said:
"Do not go in yet. I mean, need you go in? It is scarcely past sunset; the boys will not be home for an hour yet; they don't want you, and I--I want you so. In your English sense," he added, with a laugh, referring to one of their many arguments, scholastic or otherwise, wherein she had insisted that to want meant Anglice, to wish or to crave, whereas in Scotland it was always used like the French manquer, to miss or to need.
"Shall we begin that fight over again?" asked she, smiling; for every thing, even fighting, seemed pleasant today.
"No, I have no wish to fight; I want to consult you seriously on a purely personal matter, if you would not mind taking that trouble."
Fortune looked sorry. That was one of the bad things in him (the best man alive have their bad things), the pride which apes humility, the self-distrust which often wounds another so keenly. Her answer was given with a grave and simple sincerity that ought to have been reproach enough.
"Mr. Roy, I would not mind any amount of trouble if I could be of use to you; you know that."
"Forgive me! Yes, I do know it. I believe in you and your goodness to the very bottom of my heart."
She tried to say "Thank you," but her lips refused to utter a word. It was so difficult to go on talking like ordinary friends, when she knew, and he must know she knew, that one more word would make them--not friends at all--something infinitely better, closer, dearer; but that word was his to speak, not hers. There are women who will "help a man on"--propose to him, marry him indeed--while he is under the pleasing delusion that he does it all himself; but Fortune Williams was