The End of a Coil

Dolly looked again at her father. Eyes closed, breathing indicative of gentle slumber. She looked again over at the sunlit park. It was delicious over there, among its sunny and shadowy glades. Perhaps Mr. Shubrick had walked on, tempted by the beauty, and was now at a distance; perhaps he had not been tempted, and was still near, up there among the trees, wanting to see her.

Dolly turned away from the window and with a quick step went downstairs. She met nobody. Her straw flat was on the hall table; she took it up and went out; through the garden, down to the bridge, over the bridge, with a step not swift but steady. Mr. Shubrick had a right to his answer, and she was simply doing what was his due, and there might be no time to lose. She went a little more slowly when she found herself in the park; and she trembled a little as her eye searched the grassy openings. She was not quite so confident here. But she went on.

She had not gone very far before she saw him; under the same oak where they had sat together; lying on his elbow on the turf and reading. Dolly started, but then advanced slowly, after that one minute's check and pause. He was reading; he did not see her, and he did not hear her light footstep coming up the bank; until her figure threw a shadow which reached him. Then he looked up and sprang up; and perhaps divining it, met Dolly's hesitation, for, taking her hands he placed her on the bank beside his open book; which book, Dolly saw, was his Bible. But her shyness had all come back. The impression made by the thought of a person, when you do not see him, is something quite different from the living and breathing flesh and blood personality. Mr. Shubrick, on the other hand, was in a widely different mood; which Dolly knew, I suppose, though she could not see.

"This is unlooked-for happiness," said he, throwing himself down on the bank beside her. "What have you done with Mr. Copley?"

"Nothing. He did not want me. He asked me what I had done with Mr. Shubrick? I think you have spoiled him." Dolly spoke without looking at her companion, be it understood, and her breath came a little short.

"And what are you going to do with Mr. Shubrick?" her companion said, not in the tone of a doubtful man, lying there on the bank and watching her.

But Dolly found no words. She could not say anything, well though she recognised Mr. Shubrick's right to have his answer. Her eyes were absolutely cast down; the colour on her cheek varied a little, yet not with the overwhelming flushes of the other day. Dolly was struggling with the sense of duty, the necessity for action, and yet she could not act. She had come to the scene of action, indeed, and there her bravery failed her; and she sat with those delicate lights coming and going on her cheek, and the brown eyes hidden behind the sweep of the lowered eyelashes; most like a shy child. Mr. Shubrick could have smiled, but he kept back the smile.

"You know," he said in calm, matter-of-fact tones, that met Dolly's sense of business, "my action must wait upon your decision. If you do not let me stay, I must go, and that at once. What do you want me to do?"

"I do not want you to go," Dolly breathed softly.

Silently Mr. Shubrick held out his hand. As silently, though frankly, Dolly put hers into it. Still she did not look at him. And he recognised what sort of a creature he was dealing with, and had sense and delicacy and tact and manliness enough not to startle her by any demonstration whatever. He only held the little hand, still and fast, for a space, during which neither of them said anything; then, however, he bent his head over the hand and kissed it.

"My fingers are not accustomed to such treatment," said Dolly, half laughing, and trying hard to strike into an ordinary tone of conversation, though she left him the hand. "I do not think they ever were kissed before."

"They have got to learn!" said her companion.

Dolly was silent again. It was with a great joy at her heart that she felt her hand so clasped and held, and knew that Mr. Shubrick had got his answer and the thing was done; but she did not show it, unless to a nice observer. And a nice observer was by her side. Yet he kept silence too for a while. It was one of those full, blessed silences that are the very reverse of a blank or a void; when the heart's big treasure is too much to be immediately unpacked, and words when they come are quite likely enough not to touch it and to go to something comparatively indifferent. However, words did not just that on the present occasion.

"Dolly, I am in a sort of amazement at my own happiness," Mr. Shubrick said.

Dolly could have answered, so was she! but she did not. She only dimpled a little, and flushed.

"I have been waiting for you all these years," he went on; "and now I have got you!"

Dolly's dimples came out a little more. "I thought you did not wait," she remarked.

Mr. Shubrick laughed. "My heart waited," he said. "I made a boy's mistake; and I might have paid a man's penalty for it. But I had always known that you and no other would be my wife, if I could find you. That is, if I could persuade you; and somehow I never allowed myself to doubt of that. I did not take such a chance into consideration."

"But I was such a little child," said Dolly.

"Ay," said he; "that was it. You were such a little child."

"But you must have been a very extraordinary midshipman, it seems to me."

"By the same rule you must have been a very extraordinary little girl."

They both laughed at that.

"I suppose we were both extraordinary," said Dolly; "but, really, Mr. Shubrick, you know very little about me!"

His answer to that was to kiss again the hand he held.

"What do you know of me?"

"I think I know a great deal about you," said Dolly softly.

"You have a great deal to learn. Wouldn't you like to begin by hearing how Miss Thayer and I came to an understanding?"

"Oh, yes, yes! if you please," said Dolly, extremely glad to get upon a more abstract subject of conversation.

"I owe that to myself, perhaps," Mr. Shubrick went on; "and I certainly owe it to you. I told you how I got into my engagement with her. It was a boyish fancy; but all the same, I was bound by it; and I should have been legally bound before now, only that Christina always put off that whenever I proposed it. I found too that the putting it off did not make me miserable. Dolly, the case is going to be different this time!"

"You mean," said Dolly doubtfully, "it is going to make you miserable?"

"No! I mean, you are not going to put me off."

"Oh, but!" – said Dolly flushing, and stopped.

"I have settled that point in my own mind," he said, smiling; "it is as well you should know it at once. – So time went by, until I went to spend that Christmas Day in Rome. After that day I knew nearly all that I know now. Of course it followed, that I could not accept the invitation to Sorrento, when you were expected to be there. I could not venture to see you again while I was bound in honour to another woman. I stayed on board ship, those hot summer days, when all the officers that could went ashore. I stayed and worked at my problem – what I was to do."

He paused and Dolly said nothing. She was listening intently, and entirely forgetting that the sunlight was coming very slant and would soon be gone, and that home and supper were waiting for her managing hand. Dolly's eyes were fixed upon another hand, which held hers, and her ears were strained to catch every word. She rarely dared glance at Mr. Shubrick's face.

"I wonder what counsel you would have given me?" he went on, – "if I could have asked it of you as an indifferent person, – which you were."

"I don't know," said Dolly. "I know what people think" —

"Yes, I knew what people think, too; and it a little embarrassed my considerations. However, Dolly, I made up my mind at last to this; – that to marry Christina would be acting a lie; that I could not do that; and that if I could, a lie to be acted all my life long would be too heavy for me. Negatively, I made up my mind. Positively, I did not know exactly how I should work it. But I must see Christina. And as soon as affairs on board ship permitted, I got a furlough of a few days and went to Sorrento. I got there one lovely afternoon, about three weeks after you had gone. Sea and sky and the world generally were flooded with light and colour, so as I have never seen them anywhere else, it seems to me. You know how it is."

"Yes, I know Sorrento," said Dolly. But just then, an English bank under English oaks seemed as good to the girl as ever an Italian paradise. That, naturally, she did not show. "I know Sorrento," she said quietly.

"And you know the Thayers' villa. I found Christina and Mr. St. Leger sitting on the green near the house, under an orange tree – symbolical; and the air was sweet with a thousand other things. I felt it with a kind of oppression, for the mental prospect was by no means so delicious."

"No," said Dolly. "And sometimes that feeling of contrast makes one very keen to see all the lovely things outside of one."

"Do you know that?" said Mr. Shubrick.

"Yes. I know it"

"One can only know it by experience. What experience can you have had, my Dolly, to let you feel it?"

Dolly turned her eyes on him without speaking. She was thinking of Venice at midnight under the moon, and a sail, and a wine-shop. Tell him? No, indeed, never!

"You are not ready to let me know?" said he, smiling. "How long first must it be?"

"It isn't anything you need know," said Dolly, looking away. But with that the question flashed upon her, would he not have to know? had he not a right? "Please go on," she said hurriedly.

"I can go on now easier than I could then," he said with a half laugh. "I sat down with them, and purposely brought the conversation upon the theme of my trouble. It came quite naturally, apropos of a case of a broken engagement which was much talked of just then; and I started my question. Suppose one or the other of the parties had discovered that the engagement was a mistake? They gave it dead against me; all of them; Mrs. Thayer had come out by that time. They were unanimous in deciding that pledges made must be kept, at all hazards."

"I think that is the general view," said Dolly.

"It is not yours?"

"I never thought much about it. But I think people ought always and everywhere to be true. – That is nothing to kiss my hand for," Dolly added with the pretty flush which was coming and going so often this afternoon.

"You will let me judge of that."

"I didn't think you were that sort of person."

"What sort of person?"

"One of those that kiss hands."

"Shall I choose something else to kiss, next time?"

But Dolly looked so frightened that Mr. Shubrick, laughing, went back to his story.

"We were at Sorrento," he said. "You can suppose my state of mind. I thought at least I would take disapprobation piecemeal, and I asked Christina to go out on the bay with me. You have been on the bay of Sorrento about sun-setting?"

"Oh yes, many a time."

"I did not enjoy it at first. I hope you did. I think Christina did. It was the fairest evening imaginable; and my oar, every stroke I made, broke and shivered purple and golden waters. It was sailing over the rarest possible mosaic in which the pattern was constantly shifting. I studied it, while I was studying how to begin what I had to do. Then, after a while, when we were well out from shore, I lay on my oars, and asked Miss Thayer whether she were sure that her judgment was according to her words, in the matter we had been discussing at the house? She asked what I meant. I put it to her then, whether she would choose to marry a man who liked another woman better than he did herself?

"Christina's eyes opened a little, and she said 'Not if she knew it.'

"'Then you gave a wrong verdict up there,' I said.

"'But that was about what the man should do,' she replied. 'If he has made a promise, he must fulfil it. Or the woman, if it is the woman.'

"'Would not that be doing a wrong to the other party?'

"'How a wrong?' said Christina. 'It would be keeping a promise. Every honourable person does that.'

"'What if it be a promise which the other side no longer wishes to have kept?'

"'You cannot tell that,' said Christina. 'You cannot know. Probably the other side does wish it kept.'

"I reminded her that she had just declared she, in the circumstances, would not wish it; but she said, somewhat illogically, 'that it made no difference.'

"I suggested an application of the golden rule."

"Yes," said Dolly; "I think that rule settles it. I should think no woman would let a man marry her who, she knew, liked somebody else better."

"And no man in his senses – no good man," said Sandie, "would have a woman for his wife whose heart belonged to another man; or, leaving third parties out of the question, whose heart did not belong to him. I said something of this to Christina. She answered me with the consequences of scandal, disgrace, gossip, which she said attend the breaking off of an engagement. In short, she threw over all my arguments. I had to come to the point. I asked her if she would like to marry me, if she knew that I liked somebody else better?

"She opened her eyes at me. 'Do you, Sandie?' she said. And I told her yes.

"'Who?' she asked as quick as a flash. And I knew then that her heart was safe," Mr. Shubrick added with a smile. "I told her frankly, that ever since Christmas Day, I had known that if I ever married anybody it would be the lady I then saw with her.

"'Dolly!' she cried. 'But you don't know her, Sandie.'"

Mr. Shubrick and Dolly both stopped to laugh.

"I am sure that was true. And I should think unanswerable," said Dolly.

"It was not true. Do you think it is true now?"

"Well, you know me a little better, but I should think, not much."

"Shows how little you can tell about it. By the same reasoning, I suppose you do not know me much?"

"No," said Dolly. "Yes, I do! I know you a great deal, in some things. If I didn't" – she flushed up.

"We both know enough to begin with; is that it? Do you remember, that evening, Christmas Eve, how you sat by the corner of the fireplace and kept quiet, while Miss Thayer talked?"

"Yes." Dolly remembered it very well.

"You wore a black dress, and no ornaments, and the firelight shone on a cameo ring on your hand, and on your face, and the curls of your hair, and every now and then caught this," said Mr. Shubrick, touching Dolly's chain. "Christina talked, and I studied you."

"One evening," said Dolly.

"One evening; but I was reading what was not written in an evening. However, I left Christina's objection unanswered – though I do not allow that it is unanswerable; and waited. She needed a little while to come to her breath."

"Poor Christina!" said Dolly.

"Not at all; it was poor Sandie, if anybody. I do not think Christina suffered, more than a little natural and very excusable mortification. She never loved me. I had guessed as much before, and I was relieved now to find that I had been certainly right. But she needed a little while to get her breath, nevertheless. She asked me if I was serious? then, why I did not tell her sooner? I replied that I had had a great fight to fight before I could make up my mind to tell her at all.

"And then, as I judge, she had something of a fight to go through. She turned her face away from me, and sat silent. I did not interrupt her; and we floated so a good while on the coloured sea. I do not believe she knew what the colours were; but I did, I confess. I had got a weight off my mind. The bay of Sorrento was very lovely to me that evening. After a good while, Christina turned to me again, and I could see that she was all taut and right now. She began with a compliment to me."

"What was it?" Dolly asked.

"Said I was a brave fellow, I believe."

"I am sure I think that was true."

"Do you? It is harder to be false than true, Dolly."

"All the same, it takes bravery sometimes to be true."

"So Christina seemed to think. I believe I said nothing; and she went on, and added she thought I had done right, and she was much obliged to me."

"That was like Christina," said Dolly.

"'But you are bold,' she said again, 'to tell me!'

"I assured her I had not been bold at all, but very cowardly.

"'What do you expect people will say?'

"I told her I had been concerned only and solely with the question of how she herself would take my disclosure; what she would say, and how she would feel.

"She was silent again.

"'But, Sandie,' she began after a minute or two which were not yet pleasant minutes to either of us, – 'I think it was very risky. It's all right, or it will be all right, I believe, soon, – but suppose I had been devotedly in love with you? Suppose it had broken my heart? It hasn't– but suppose it had?'"

"Yes," said Dolly. "You could not know."

"I think I knew," said Mr. Shubrick. "But at any rate, Dolly, I should have done just the same. 'Fais que dois, advienne que pourra,' is a grand old motto, and always safe. I could not marry one woman while I loved another. The question of breaking hearts does not come in. I had no right to marry Christina, even to save her life, if that had been in danger. But happily it was not in danger. She did shed a few tears, but they were not the tears of a broken heart. I told her something like what I have been saying to you.

"'But Dolly!' she said. 'You do not know her, you do not even know her.' That thought seemed to weigh on her mind."

"What could you say to it?" said Dolly.

"I said nothing," Mr. Shubrick answered, smiling. "Then Christina went on to remark that Miss Copley did not know me; and that possibly I had been brave for nothing. I still made no answer; and she declared she saw it in my face, that I was determined it should not be for nothing. She wished me success, she added; but 'Dolly had her own way of looking at things.'"

Dolly could not help laughing.

"So that is my story," Mr. Shubrick concluded.

"And, oh, look at the light, look at the light!" said Dolly, jumping up. "Where will mother think I and supper are!"

"She thinks probably that you are in Mr. Copley's room."

"No, she knows I am not; for she is sure to be there herself."

"Then I will go straight to them, while you bring up arrears with supper."

"And Christina will marry Mr. St. Leger!" said Dolly, while she flushed high at this suggestion. "Yet I am not surprised."

"Is it a good match?"

"The world would say so."

"I am not," said Sandie, "according to the same judgment. I am not rich, Dolly. By and by I will tell you all I have. But it is enough for us to live upon comfortably."

Nobody had ever seen Dolly so shy and blushing and timid as she was now, walking down the bank by Mr. Shubrick's side. It was a bit of the same lovely manifestation which he had been enjoying for a day or two with a little alloy. It was without alloy that he enjoyed it now.