Read Ebook: Gray youth: The story of a very modern courtship and a very modern marriage by Onions Oliver

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Ebook has 1360 lines and 97462 words, and 28 pages

"Yes," he said dejectedly; "I thought that would be the next. You're rising, Amory. You'll remember us poor grovellers sometimes, though, won't you?" Amory's tone of reproach almost passed reproach; it was as if she had received a twinge of pain.

"I don't think I've deserved that of you, Cosimo," she could not forbear saying.

But Cosimo persisted sadly.

"I beg your pardon, dear, but it is so. You might remember a little longer than most others, because you're finer and truer than they are, but time and distance do make a difference, and it's no good saying they don't. I know."

Amory wondered whether Cosimo knew the difference time and distance made because of Pattie Wynn-Jenkins, but she only shook her head on its white hyacinth-stalk of a neck.

"I don't forget my friends, Cosimo," she said quietly.

Gently Amory tried to show him how ungrateful he was.

She went on, but Cosimo refused to see it. It was as if her "Barrage" would be carried in triumph through the streets of Rome as Cimabue's "Madonna" was carried through those of Florence, while he would be tapping the barometer each morning, and then taking a walk with no other company than that of his dog, and returning to his solitary lunch, and going to sleep in the afternoon, and wishing to goodness he'd never seen his beastly estate. And so strongly did he now feel how little he had to offer Amory that he did not offer it, but sighed instead, and said that he supposed he'd be driven to marry some wench from the nearest dairy in order not to die of sheer weariness within six months. Amory mused.

"About that, Cosimo," she said slowly at last. "You know what I've always wanted for you. I've always wanted you to marry some nice girl I could make a friend of. At one time I thought Dorothy might have done, but I see now that I was wrong. But you'd be better not marrying at all than marrying somebody who wouldn't enter into your ideas. Can't you live for duty alone, Cosimo, as I can?"

"You've more to sustain you," he replied dully.

His eyes had rested on the grey huddle on the bench twenty yards away. The huddle had moved, and a dim face had appeared. It was the face of Mrs. 'Ill's daughter, Jellies, and Amory had seen it too. It seemed to brighten her. She gave a gay little laugh.

Cosimo sat in the falling dusk, thrilled. What a daring and constructive brain!... And still some fools said women had no capacity for affairs! What would they have said could they have heard Amory as she was now--not argumentative, urging nothing, pleading nothing, with nothing to gain, quite detached and disinterested, merely anxious that, as she saw her own work before her, so others should see theirs? He rather thought they would have been silenced!...

Between his dream of a Model Village, of which he was proud, and something else for which he felt a little apologetic, Cosimo did not quite know where he was; but he knew that he wanted Amory. A soft "Ow!" came from the huddle on the other bench; it rather put Cosimo off for a moment or two; but all was silent again, and he took heart. He altered his position, and ran his arm along the back of the bench.

"Eh?" said Amory. Apparently he had startled her. She had been quite lost in abstraction.

"Do you think that's the choice--for me?"

"The choice?... Oh, I see! You mean what I was saying. Well, Cosimo, what do you think yourself?"

Cosimo spoke spiritlessly.

"I don't know. Sometimes it doesn't seem worth while my thinking when you're here. I want you to tell me."

"I don't think," Amory answered slowly, "that in cases like this one person has really the right to settle things for another. As you know, I hate the word Conscience; I prefer the expression Personal Will; but that's what it seems to me to be."

But evidently Amory didn't understand him. She replied, with quick eagerness--

"Gladly--oh, so gladly! You know you have only to ask, Cosimo, now or at any time."

Cosimo tried again.

For one fleeting instant it did strike Cosimo that if he had not taken down Amory's hair for her and called her "dear" in the past he might have had more resources at his disposal now--at any rate in the sense that Amory would have apprehended him more quickly; and yet that, too, had its little furtive compensation. His hand could remain where it was....

But suddenly she too gave, not a common "Ow!" but a quite sudden start into perception. She moved a little, but the hand on her shoulder did not. With quiet firmness she put her own hand upon it, but her slight effort to draw it away met with resistance. She had seen. She made as if to rise.

"Isn't it getting late?" she said, looking away over the river.

"Let's be going, Cosimo," said Amory. "I really don't know what you mean by the other day."

Somehow his hold of her suddenly loosened, and Amory was on her feet. From the bench twenty yards away two faces watched them through the gloom. Amory looked sorrowfully at Cosimo. She was not angry. She did not pretend that she did not understand.

"Cosimo," she said, and her voice was low, "I don't see how you can expect things to be the same after this."

Cosimo sat helplessly, as if still to sit might be construed as an invitation for her also to resume her place.

"Oh, undo them!" Cosimo cried ardently, catching, as he sat, at her hands.

But Amory drew the hands away and glanced towards Alf and Jellies. Her low voice thrilled, as it were, with the first tones of a tragic scene.

"Oh, I do love you!" Cosimo groaned, hearing these words of doom. "I do love you, Amory!"

"Then I bid you love your duty more," Amory replied, with sweet mournfulness, placing her finger-tips ever so lightly for one moment on his shoulder, as it were an accolade. "Go, my Shropshire Lad, and do it. And I will try to do mine. Let that unite us, and let nothing gross and of the earth"--from the next bench came a resounding smack of two mouths placed together--"let nothing of the earth come near. So you will be my Cosimo, and I your Amory. Isn't that the higher and the better way?"

"Oh, but, Amory, it's so hard! You know you've often said yourself that the physical relation has its proper place! How--how would the world go on without it?"

"Amory! Amory!"

Cosimo sat still.

"Must that be all, Amory?"

"Ah no! You mean I kissed the Antin?us. But I daren't kiss you, my Shropshire Lad; I might fail utterly. And it would be no good your trying to kiss me; you'd hold my corporeal part for a moment, but think of all you'd lose! Would it be worth while, Cosimo?" She smiled, benign as a star, down on him. "Would it?"

How could he say Yes? How, on the other hand, could he say No? He was between the highest she had ever taught him, and that common, blissful lethargy of the huddle on the neighbouring seat. Thus two Principles run through that multicoloured pattern of the world's web. It is a Law. Cosimo saw that it was a Law. He also saw that it was a hard one.

Suddenly he did the most sensible thing he could have done. He rose.

"Well, I'll walk along with you as far as your place," he said wearily. "I suppose I may do that?"

"Yes," said Amory. She would not have had the heart to refuse him so little. They walked in silence, and stopped before the greengrocer's entry.

"Mayn't I come up?" Cosimo asked.

"No."

"Oh, Amory! You can't mean never again?"

"Never again, I think, Cosimo. I'm going up to think, and to gather my things together. I shall leave to-morrow or the day after."

An "Oh!" broke from Cosimo's lips. So might a prisoner failingly exclaim who, having known that he must die at sunrise, should be ordered forth from his cell before the stars had begun to pale.

"Good night--and good-bye," said Amory, smiling bravely as she held out her little hand.

"Oh!... Not like this! Amory, I can't bear it!"

"It must be borne. I see now that this had to come. I don't say you may not see me just once more."

Even at that Cosimo caught eagerly. "When? To-morrow?"

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