The Choir Invisible
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ask her to become my wife, and I am here to beg your consent first."
For some time she did not answer. The slip of an elm grew beside the picket
fence, and she stood passing her fingers over the topmost leaves, with her
head lowered so that he could not see her face. At length she said in a
voice he could hardly hear:
"I have feared for a long time that this would come; but I have never been
able to get ready for it, and I am not ready now."
Neither spoke for some time longer; only his expression changed, and he
looked over at her with a compassionate, amused gravity, as though he meant
to be very patient with her opposition. On her part, she was thinking--Is it
possible that the first use he will make of his new liberty is to forge the
chain of a new slavery? Is this some weak spot now to be fully revealed in
his character? Is this the drain in the bottom of the lake that will in the
end bring its high, clear level down to mud and stagnant shallows and a
swarm of stinging insects? At last she spoke, but with difficulty:"I have
known for a year that you were interested in Amy. You could not have been
here so much without our seeing that. But let me ask you one question: Have
you ever thought that I wished you to marry her?"
"I have always beheld in you an unmasked enemy," he replied, smiling.
"Then I can go on," she said. "But I feel as though never in my life have I
done a thing that is as near being familiar and unwomanly. Nevertheless, for
your sake--for hers--for ours--it is my plain, hard duty to ask you whether
you are sure--even if you should have her consent--that my niece is the
woman you ought to marry." And she lifted to him her clear, calm eyes,
prematurely old in the experience of life.
"I am sure," he answered with the readiness of one who has foreseen the
question.
The negro boy approached with a bucket of cold crystal water, and he drank a
big gourd full of it gratefully.
"You can go and kindle the fire in the kitchen," she said to the negro. "It
is nearly time to be getting supper. I will be in by and by."
"You have been with her so much!" she continued to Gray after another
interval of embarrassment. "And you know, or you ought to know, her
disposition, her tastes, her ways and views of life. Is she the companion
you need now? will always need?"
"I have been much with her," he replied, taking up her words with humorous
gravity. "But I have never studied her as I have studied law. I have never
cross-examined her for a witness, or prosecuted her as an attorney, or
pronounced sentence on her is a judge. I am her advocate--and I am ready to
defend her now--even to you!"
"John!--""I love her--that is all there is of it!"
"Suppose you wait a little longer."
"I have waited too long already from necessity." It was on his lips to add:
"I have gone too far with her; it is too late to retreat;" but he checked
himself.
"If I should feel, then, that I must withhold my consent?"
He grew serious, and after the silence of a few moments, he said with great
respect:"I should be sorry; but--" and then he forbore.
"If Major Falconer should withhold his?"
He shook his head, and set his lips, turning his face away through courtesy.
"It would make no difference! Nothing would make any difference!" and then
another silence followed.
"I suppose all this would be considered the proof that you loved her," she
began at length, despairingly, "but even love is not enough to begin with;
much less is it enough to live by."
"You don't appreciate her! You don't do her justice!" he cried rudely. "But
perhaps no woman can ever understand why a man loves any other woman!"
"I am not thinking of why you love my niece," she replied, with a curl of
pride in her nostril and a flash of anger in her eyes. "I am thinking of why
you will cease to love her, and why you will both be unhappy if you marry
her. It is not my duty to analyze your affections; it is my duty to take
care of her welfare.""My dear friend," he cried, his face aglow with
impatient enthusiasm --"my dear friend" and he suddenly lifted her hand to
his lips, "I have but one anxiety in the whole matter: will you cease to be
my friend if I act in opposition to your wishes?"
"Should I cease to be your friend because you had made a mistake? It is not
to me you are unkind," she answered, quickly withdrawing her hand. Spots of
the palest rose appeared on her cheeks, and she bent over and picked up the
rake, and began to work.
"I must be going," he said awkwardly; "it is getting late."
"Yes," she said; "it is getting late."
Still he lingered, swinging his hat in his hand, ill at case, with his face
set hard away.
"Is that all you have to say to me?" he asked at&
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