Saint's Progress. John Galsworthy

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      She dropped the little cross, and took hold of his hand, pressing it against her heart. But still her voice was calm:

      “No; much better, Daddy; you think I don't know my own feelings, but I do.”

      The man in Pierson softened; the priest hardened.

      “Nollie, true marriage is the union of souls; and for that, time is wanted. Time to know that you feel and think the same, and love the same things.”

      “Yes, I know; but we do.”

      “You can't tell that, my dear; no one could in three weeks.”

      “But these aren't ordinary times, are they? People have to do things in a hurry. Oh, Daddy! Be an angel! Mother would have understood, and let me, I know!”

      Pierson drew away his hand; the words hurt, from reminder of his loss, from reminder of the poor substitute he was.

      “Look, Nollie!” he said. “After all these years since she left us, I'm as lonely as ever, because we were really one. If you marry this young man without knowing more of your own hearts than you can in such a little time, you may regret it dreadfully; you may find it turn out, after all, nothing but a little empty passion; or again, if anything happens to him before you've had any real married life together, you'll have a much greater grief and sense of loss to put up with than if you simply stay engaged till after the war. Besides, my child, you're much too young.”

      She sat so still that he looked at her in alarm. “But I must!”

      He bit his lips, and said sharply: “You can't, Nollie!”

      She got up, and before he could stop her, was gone. With the closing of the door, his anger evaporated, and distress took its place. Poor child! What to do with this wayward chicken just out of the egg, and wanting to be full-fledged at once? The thought that she would be lying miserable, crying, perhaps, beset him so that he went out into the passage and tapped on her door. Getting no answer, he went in. It was dark but for a streak of moonlight, and in that he saw her, lying on her bed, face down; and stealing up laid his hand on her head. She did not move; and, stroking her hair, he said gently:

      “Nollie dear, I didn't mean to be harsh. If I were your mother, I should know how to make you see, but I'm only an old bumble-daddy.”

      She rolled over, scrambling into a cross-legged posture on the bed. He could see her eyes shining. But she did not speak; she seemed to know that in silence was her strength.

      He said with a sort of despair:

      “You must let me talk it over with your aunt. She has a lot of good sense.”

      “Yes.”

      He bent over and kissed her hot forehead.

      “Good night, my dear; don't cry. Promise me!”

      She nodded, and lifted her face; he felt her hot soft lips on his forehead, and went away a little comforted.

      But Noel sat on her bed, hugging her knees, listening to the night, to the emptiness and silence; each minute so much lost of the little, little time left, that she might have been with him.

III

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      Pierson woke after a troubled and dreamful night, in which he had thought himself wandering in heaven like a lost soul.

      After regaining his room last night nothing had struck him more forcibly than the needlessness of his words: “Don't cry, Nollie!” for he had realised with uneasiness that she had not been near crying. No; there was in her some emotion very different from the tearful. He kept seeing her cross-legged figure on the bed in that dim light; tense, enigmatic, almost Chinese; kept feeling the feverish touch of her lips. A good girlish burst of tears would have done her good, and been a guarantee. He had the uncomfortable conviction that his refusal had passed her by, as if unspoken. And, since he could not go and make music at that time of night, he had ended on his knees, in a long search for guidance, which was not vouchsafed him.

      The culprits were demure at breakfast; no one could have told that for the last hour they had been sitting with their arms round each other, watching the river flow by, talking but little, through lips too busy. Pierson pursued his sister-in-law to the room where she did her flowers every morning. He watched her for a minute dividing ramblers from pansies, cornflowers from sweet peas, before he said:

      “I'm very troubled, Thirza. Nollie came to me last night. Imagine! They want to get married—those two!”

      Accepting life as it came, Thirza showed no dismay, but her cheeks grew a little pinker, and her eyes a little rounder. She took up a sprig of mignonette, and said placidly:

      “Oh, my dear!”

      “Think of it, Thirza—that child! Why, it's only a year or two since she used to sit on my knee and tickle my face with her hair.”

      Thirza went on arranging her flowers.

      “Noel is older than you think, Edward; she is more than her age. And real married life wouldn't begin for them till after—if it ever began.”

      Pierson experienced a sort of shock. His sister-in-law's words seemed criminally light-hearted.

      “But—but—” he stammered; “the union, Thirza! Who can tell what will happen before they come together again!”

      She looked at his quivering face, and said gently:

      “I know, Edward; but if you refuse, I should be afraid, in these days, of what Noel might do. I told you there's a streak of desperation in her.”

      “Noel will obey me.”

      “I wonder! There are so many of these war marriages now.”

      Pierson turned away.

      “I think they're dreadful. What do they mean—Just a momentary gratification of passion. They might just as well not be.”

      “They mean pensions, as a rule,” said Thirza calmly.

      “Thirza, that is cynical; besides, it doesn't affect this case. I can't bear to think of my little Nollie giving herself for a moment which may come to nothing, or may turn out the beginning of an unhappy marriage. Who is this boy—what is he? I know nothing of him. How can I give her to him—it's impossible! If they had been engaged some time and I knew something of him—yes, perhaps; even at her age. But this hasty passionateness—it isn't right, it isn't decent. I don't understand, I really don't—how a child like that can want it. The fact is, she doesn't know what she's asking, poor little Nollie. She can't know the nature of marriage, and she can't realise its sacredness. If only her mother were here! Talk to her, Thirza; you can say things that I can't!”

      Thirza looked after the retreating figure. In spite of his cloth, perhaps a little because of it, he seemed to her like a child who had come to show her his sore finger. And, having finished the СКАЧАТЬ