Part 33 (1/2)
”Till Mr. Anderson--” she resumed, ”is--well!--is brave enough to--trust a woman! and--oh! good Heavens!”--she dashed the tears from her eyes, half laughing, as her self-control broke down--”clever enough to save her from proposing to him in this abominable way!”
She sprang to her feet impatiently. Anderson would have caught her in his arms; but with a flas.h.i.+ng look, she put him aside. A wail broke from Mrs. Gaddesden:
”Lisa--you won't leave us!”
”Never, darling--unless you send me!--or come with me! And now, don't you think, Philip dearest, you might let us all go to bed? You are really not worse, you know; and Mother and I are going to carry you off south--very, very soon.”
She bent to him and kissed his brow. Philip's face gradually changed beneath her look, from the tension and gloom with which he had begun the scene to a kind of boyish relief--a touch of pleasure--of mischief even.
His high, majestical pretensions vanished away; a light and volatile mind thought no more of them; and he turned eagerly to another idea.
”Elizabeth, do you know that you have proposed to Anderson?”
”If I have, it was your fault.”
”He hasn't said Yes?”
Elizabeth was silent. Anderson came forward--but Philip stopped him with a gesture.
”He can't say Yes--till I give him back his promise,” said the boy, triumphantly. ”Well, George, I do give it you back--on one condition--that you put off going for a week, and that you come back as soon as you can. By Jove, I think you owe me that!”
Anderson's difficult smile answered him.
”And now you've got rid of your beastly Conference, you can come in, and talk business with me to-morrow--next day--every day!” Philip resumed, ”can't he, Elizabeth? If you're going to be my brother, I'll jolly well get you to tackle the lawyers instead of me--boring old idiots! I say--I'm going to take it easy now!”
He settled himself in his chair with a long breath, and his eyelids fell. He was speaking, as they all knew, of the making of his will. Mrs.
Gaddesden stooped piteously and kissed him. Elizabeth's face quivered.
She put her arm round her mother and led her away. Anderson went to summon Philip's servant.
A little later Anderson again descended the dark staircase, leaving Philip in high spirits and apparently much better.
In the doorway of the drawing-room, stood a white form. Then the man's pa.s.sion, so long d.y.k.ed and barriered, had its way. He sprang towards her. She retreated, catching her breath; and in the shadows of the empty room she sank into his arms. In the crucible of that embrace all things melted and changed. His hesitations and doubts, all that hampered his free will and purpose, whether it were the sorrows and humiliations of the past--or the compunctions and demurs of the present--dropped away from him, as unworthy not of himself, but of Elizabeth. She had made him master of herself, and her fate; and he boldly and loyally took up the part. He had refused to become the mere appanage of her life, because he was already pledged to that great idea he called his country. She loved him the more for it; and now he had only to abound in the same sense, in order to hold and keep the nature which had answered so finely to his own. He had so borne himself as to wipe out all the social and external inequalities between them. What she had given him, she had had to sue him to take. But now that he had taken it, she knew herself a weak woman on his breast, and she realised with a happy tremor that he would make her no more apologies for his love, or for his story. Rather, he stood upon that dignity she herself had given him--her lover, and the captain of her life!
EPILOGUE
About nine months later than the events told in the last chapter, the August sun, as it descended upon a lake in that middle region of the northern Rockies which is known as yet only to the Indian trapper, and--on certain tracks--to a handful of white explorers, shone on a boat containing two persons--Anderson and Elizabeth. It was but twenty-four hours since they had reached the lake, in the course of a long camping expedition involving the company of two guides, a couple of half-breed _voyageurs_, and a string of sixteen horses. No white foot had ever before trodden the slender beaches of the lake; its beauty of forest and water, of peak and crag, of sun and shadow, the terror of its storms, the loveliness of its summer--only some stray Indian hunter, once or twice in a century perhaps, throughout all the aeons of human history, had ever beheld them.
But now, here were Anderson and Elizabeth!--first invaders of an inviolate nature, pioneers of a long future line of travellers and wors.h.i.+ppers.
They had spent the day of summer suns.h.i.+ne in canoeing on the broad waters, exploring the green bays, and venturing a long way up a beautiful winding arm which seemed to lose itself in the bosom of superb forest-skirted mountains, whence glaciers descended, and cataracts leapt sheer into the glistening water. Now they were floating slowly towards the little promontory where their two guides had raised a couple of white tents, and the smoke of a fire was rising into the evening air.
Sunset was on the jagged and snow-clad heights that shut in the lake to the eastward. The rose of the sky had been caught by the water and interwoven with its own l.u.s.trous browns and cool blues; while fathom-deep beneath the s.h.i.+ning web of colour gleamed the reflected snows and the forest slopes sliding downwards to infinity. A few bird-notes were in the air--the scream of an eagle, the note of a whip-poor-will, and far away across the lake a dense flight of wild duck rose above a reedy river-mouth, black against a pale band of sky.
They were close now to the sh.o.r.e, and to a spot where lightning and storm had ravaged the pines and left a few open s.p.a.ces for the sun to work. Elizabeth, in delight, pointed to the beds of wild strawberries crimsoning the slopes, intermingled with stretches of bilberry, and streaks of blue and purple asters. But a wilder life was there. Far away the antlers of a swimming moose could be seen above the quiet lake.
Anderson, sweeping the side with his field gla.s.s, pointed to the ripped tree-trunks, which showed where the brown bear or the grizzly had been, and to the tracks of lynx or fox on the firm yellow sand. And as they rounded the point of a little cove they came upon a group of deer that had come down to drink.
The gentle creatures were not alarmed at their approach; they raised their heads in the red light, seeing man perhaps for the first time, but they did not fly. Anderson stayed the boat--and he and Elizabeth watched them with enchantment--their slender bodies and proud necks, the bright sand at their feet, the brown water in front, the forest behind.