Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (422 page)

The parson’s Marjory was a lass about nineteen, when Will would be about thirty; well enough looking, and much better educated than any other girl in that part of the country, as became her parentage.  She held her head very high, and had already refused several offers of marriage with a grand air, which had got her hard names among the neighbours.  For all that she was a good girl, and one that would have made any man well contented.

Will had never seen much of her; for although the church and parsonage were only two miles from his own door, he was never known to go there but on Sundays.  It chanced, however, that the parsonage fell into disrepair, and had to be dismantled; and the parson and his daughter took lodgings for a month or so, on very much reduced terms, at Will’s inn.  Now, what with the inn, and the mill, and the old miller’s savings, our friend was a man of substance; and besides that, he had a name for good temper and shrewdness, which make a capital portion in marriage; and so it was currently gossiped, among their ill-wishers, that the parson and his daughter had not chosen their temporary lodging with their eyes shut.  Will was about the last man in the world to be cajoled or frightened into marriage.  You had only to look into his eyes, limpid and still like pools of water, and yet with a sort of clear light that seemed to come from within, and you would understand at once that here was one who knew his own mind, and would stand to it immovably.  Marjory herself was no weakling by her looks, with strong, steady eyes and a resolute and quiet bearing.  It might be a question whether she was not Will’s match in stedfastness, after all, or which of them would rule the roast in marriage.  But Marjory had never given it a thought, and accompanied her father with the most unshaken innocence and unconcern.

The season was still so early that Will’s customers were few and far between; but the lilacs were already flowering, and the weather was so mild that the party took dinner under the trellice, with the noise of the river in their ears and the woods ringing about them with the songs of birds.  Will soon began to take a particular pleasure in these dinners.  The parson was rather a dull companion, with a habit of dozing at table; but nothing rude or cruel ever fell from his lips.  And as for the parson’s daughter, she suited her surroundings with the best grace imaginable; and whatever she said seemed so pat and pretty that Will conceived a great idea of her talents.  He could see her face, as she leaned forward, against a background of rising pinewoods; her eyes shone peaceably; the light lay around her hair like a kerchief; something that was hardly a smile rippled her pale cheeks, and Will could not contain himself from gazing on her in an agreeable dismay.  She looked, even in her quietest moments, so complete in herself, and so quick with life down to her finger tips and the very skirts of her dress, that the remainder of created things became no more than a blot by comparison; and if Will glanced away from her to her surroundings, the trees looked inanimate and senseless, the clouds hung in heaven like dead things, and even the mountain tops were disenchanted.  The whole valley could not compare in looks with this one girl.

Will was always observant in the society of his fellow-creatures; but his observation became almost painfully eager in the case of Marjory.  He listened to all she uttered, and read her eyes, at the same time, for the unspoken commentary.  Many kind, simple, and sincere speeches found an echo in his heart.  He became conscious of a soul beautifully poised upon itself, nothing doubting, nothing desiring, clothed in peace.  It was not possible to separate her thoughts from her appearance.  The turn of her wrist, the still sound of her voice, the light in her eyes, the lines of her body, fell in tune with her grave and gentle words, like the accompaniment that sustains and harmonises the voice of the singer.  Her influence was one thing, not to be divided or discussed, only to be felt with gratitude and joy.  To Will, her presence recalled something of his childhood, and the thought of her took its place in his mind beside that of dawn, of running water, and of the earliest violets and lilacs.  It is the property of things seen for the first time, or for the first time after long, like the flowers in spring, to reawaken in us the sharp edge of sense and that impression of mystic strangeness which otherwise passes out of life with the coming of years; but the sight of a loved face is what renews a man’s character from the fountain upwards.

One day after dinner Will took a stroll among the firs; a grave beatitude possessed him from top to toe, and he kept smiling to himself and the landscape as he went.  The river ran between the stepping-stones with a pretty wimple; a bird sang loudly in the wood; the hill-tops looked immeasurably high, and as he glanced at them from time to time seemed to contemplate his movements with a beneficent but awful curiosity.  His way took him to the eminence which overlooked the plain; and there he sat down upon a stone, and fell into deep and pleasant thought.  The plain lay abroad with its cities and silver river; everything was asleep, except a great eddy of birds which kept rising and falling and going round and round in the blue air.  He repeated Marjory’s name aloud, and the sound of it gratified his ear.  He shut his eyes, and her image sprang up before him, quietly luminous and attended with good thoughts.  The river might run for ever; the birds fly higher and higher till they touched the stars.  He saw it was empty bustle after all; for here, without stirring a feet, waiting patiently in his own narrow valley, he also had attained the better sunlight.

The next day Will made a sort of declaration across the dinner-table, while the parson was filling his pipe.

‘Miss Marjory,’ he said, ‘I never knew any one I liked so well as you.  I am mostly a cold, unkindly sort of man; not from want of heart, but out of strangeness in my way of thinking; and people seem far away from me.  ‘Tis as if there were a circle round me, which kept every one out but you; I can hear the others talking and laughing; but you come quite close.  Maybe, this is disagreeable to you?’ he asked.

Marjory made no answer.

‘Speak up, girl,’ said the parson.

‘Nay, now,’ returned Will, ‘I wouldn’t press her, parson.  I feel tongue-tied myself, who am not used to it; and she’s a woman, and little more than a child, when all is said.  But for my part, as far as I can understand what people mean by it, I fancy I must be what they call in love.  I do not wish to be held as committing myself; for I may be wrong; but that is how I believe things are with me.  And if Miss Marjory should feel any otherwise on her part, mayhap she would be so kind as shake her head.’

Marjory was silent, and gave no sign that she had heard.

‘How is that, parson?’ asked Will.

‘The girl must speak,’ replied the parson, laying down his pipe.  ‘Here’s our neighbour who says he loves you, Madge.  Do you love him, ay or no?’

‘I think I do,’ said Marjory, faintly.

‘Well then, that’s all that could be wished!’ cried Will, heartily.  And he took her hand across the table, and held it a moment in both of his with great satisfaction.

‘You must marry,’ observed the parson, replacing his pipe in his mouth.

‘Is that the right thing to do, think you?’ demanded Will.

‘It is indispensable,’ said the parson.

‘Very well,’ replied the wooer.

Two or three days passed away with great delight to Will, although a bystander might scarce have found it out.  He continued to take his meals opposite Marjory, and to talk with her and gaze upon her in her father’s presence; but he made no attempt to see her alone, nor in any other way changed his conduct towards her from what it had been since the beginning.  Perhaps the girl was a little disappointed, and perhaps not unjustly; and yet if it had been enough to be always in the thoughts of another person, and so pervade and alter his whole life, she might have been thoroughly contented.  For she was never out of Will’s mind for an instant.  He sat over the stream, and watched the dust of the eddy, and the poised fish, and straining weeds; he wandered out alone into the purple even, with all the blackbirds piping round him in the wood; he rose early in the morning, and saw the sky turn from grey to gold, and the light leap upon the hill-tops; and all the while he kept wondering if he had never seen such things before, or how it was that they should look so different now.  The sound of his own mill-wheel, or of the wind among the trees, confounded and charmed his heart.  The most enchanting thoughts presented themselves unbidden in his mind.  He was so happy that he could not sleep at night, and so restless, that he could hardly sit still out of her company.  And yet it seemed as if he avoided her rather than sought her out.

One day, as he was coming home from a ramble, Will found Marjory in the garden picking flowers, and as he came up with her, slackened his pace and continued walking by her side.

‘You like flowers?’ he said.

‘Indeed I love them dearly,’ she replied.  ‘Do you?’

‘Why, no,’ said he, ‘not so much.  They are a very small affair, when all is done.  I can fancy people caring for them greatly, but not doing as you are just now.’

‘How?’ she asked, pausing and looking up at him.

‘Plucking them,’ said he.  ‘They are a deal better off where they are, and look a deal prettier, if you go to that.’

‘I wish to have them for my own,’ she answered, ‘to carry them near my heart, and keep them in my room.  They tempt me when they grow here; they seem to say, “Come and do something with us;” but once I have cut them and put them by, the charm is laid, and I can look at them with quite an easy heart.’

‘You wish to possess them,’ replied Will, ‘in order to think no more about them.  It’s a bit like killing the goose with the golden eggs.  It’s a bit like what I wished to do when I was a boy.  Because I had a fancy for looking out over the plain, I wished to go down there — where I couldn’t look out over it any longer.  Was not that fine reasoning?  Dear, dear, if they only thought of it, all the world would do like me; and you would let your flowers alone, just as I stay up here in the mountains.’  Suddenly he broke off sharp.  ‘By the Lord!’ he cried.  And when she asked him what was wrong, he turned the question off and walked away into the house with rather a humorous expression of face.

He was silent at table; and after the night hid fallen and the stars had come out overhead, he walked up and down for hours in the courtyard and garden with an uneven pace.  There was still a light in the window of Marjory’s room: one little oblong patch of orange in a world of dark blue hills and silver starlight.  Will’s mind ran a great deal on the window; but his thoughts were not very lover-like.  ‘There she is in her room,’ he thought, ‘and there are the stars overhead: — a blessing upon both!’  Both were good influences in his life; both soothed and braced him in his profound contentment with the world.  And what more should he desire with either?  The fat young man and his councils were so present to his mind, that he threw back his head, and, putting his hands before his mouth, shouted aloud to the populous heavens.  Whether from the position of his head or the sudden strain of the exertion, he seemed to see a momentary shock among the stars, and a diffusion of frosty light pass from one to another along the sky.  At the same instant, a corner of the blind was lifted and lowered again at once.  He laughed a loud ho-ho!  ‘One and another!’ thought Will.  ‘The stars tremble, and the blind goes up.  Why, before Heaven, what a great magician I must be!  Now if I were only a fool, should not I be in a pretty way?’  And he went off to bed, chuckling to himself: ‘If I were only a fool!’

The next morning, pretty early, he saw her once more in the garden, and sought her out.

‘I have been thinking about getting married,’ he began abruptly; ‘and after having turned it all over, I have made up my mind it’s not worthwhile.’

She turned upon him for a single moment; but his radiant, kindly appearance would, under the circumstances, have disconcerted an angel, and she looked down again upon the ground in silence.  He could see her tremble.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he went on, a little taken aback.  ‘You ought not.  I have turned it all over, and upon my soul there’s nothing in it.  We should never be one whit nearer than we are just now, and, if I am a wise man, nothing like so happy.’

‘It is unnecessary to go round about with me,’ she said.  ‘I very well remember that you refused to commit yourself; and now that I see you were mistaken, and in reality have never cared for me, I can only feel sad that I have been so far misled.’

‘I ask your pardon,’ said Will stoutly; ‘you do not understand my meaning.  As to whether I have ever loved you or not, I must leave that to others.  But for one thing, my feeling is not changed; and for another, you may make it your boast that you have made my whole life and character something different from what they were.  I mean what I say; no less.  I do not think getting married is worth while.  I would rather you went on living with your father, so that I could walk over and see you once, or maybe twice a week, as people go to church, and then we should both be all the happier between whiles.  That’s my notion.  But I’ll marry you if you will,’ he added.

‘Do you know that you are insulting me?’ she broke out.

‘Not I, Marjory,’ said he; ‘if there is anything in a clear conscience, not I.  I offer all my heart’s best affection; you can take it or want it, though I suspect it’s beyond either your power or mine to change what has once been done, and set me fancy-free.  I’ll marry you, if you like; but I tell you again and again, it’s not worth while, and we had best stay friends.  Though I am a quiet man I have noticed a heap of things in my life.  Trust in me, and take things as I propose; or, if you don’t like that, say the word, and I’ll marry you out of hand.’

There was a considerable pause, and Will, who began to feel uneasy, began to grow angry in consequence.

‘It seems you are too proud to say your mind,’ he said.  ‘Believe me that’s a pity.  A clean shrift makes simple living.  Can a man be more downright or honourable, to a woman than I have been?  I have said my say, and given you your choice.  Do you want me to marry you? or will you take my friendship, as I think best? or have you had enough of me for good?  Speak out for the dear God’s sake!  You know your father told you a girl should speak her mind in these affairs.’