The Magic of Two Hearts

Episode 4

“Until half an hour ago? Then why——” and Agnes stopped.

“Have I changed my very modest scheme of life? Miss Agnes, as you are so good as to be sufficiently interested, I will tell you. It is because a temptation which hitherto I have been able to resist, has, during the last thirty minutes, become too strong for me. "You know everything has its breaking strain.” He puffed nervously at his cigarette, threw it into the sea, paused, then went on: “Miss Agnes, I have dared to fall in love with you. No; hear me out. When I have done, it will be quite time enough to give me the answer that I expect. Meanwhile, for the first time in my life, it allows me the luxury of being in earnest. To me, it is a new sensation, and therefore very priceless. May I go on?”

Agnes had no answer. He rose with a certain deliberateness which characterized all his movements—for Anthony Holmes never seemed to be in a hurry—and stood in front of her so that the moonlight shone upon her face, while his own remained in shadow.

“Beyond that little cash of which I have spoken, and incidentally its owner, I have nothing whatsoever to offer you. I am an indigent and worthless person. Even in my prosperous days, when I could look forward to a large estate, although it was often suggested to me, I never considered myself justified in asking any lady to share the prospective estate. I think now that the real reason was that I never cared sufficiently for any lady, since otherwise my selfishness would probably have overcome my scruples, as it does tonight. Agnes, for I will call you so, if for the first and last time, I—I—love you.

“Listen now,” he went on, dropping his measured manner, and speaking hurriedly, like a man with an earnest message and little time in which to deliver it. It is an odd thing, an incomprehensible thing, but true, true—I fell in love with you the first time I saw your face. You remember, you stood there leaning over the bulwark when I came on board at Southampton, and as I walked up the hallway, I looked and my eyes met yours. Then I stopped, and that stout old lady who got off at Madeira bumped into me, and asked me to be good enough to make up my mind if I were going backward or forward. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” she answered in a low voice.

“Which things are an allegory,” he continued. “I felt it so at the time. Yes, I had half a mind to answer ‘Backward’ and give up my berth on this ship. Then I looked at you again, and something inside of me said ‘Forward.’ So I went up the rest of the hallway and took off my hat to you, a salutation I had no right to make, but which, I recall, you acknowledged.

He paused, then continued: “As it began, so it has gone on. It is always like that, is it not? The beginning is everything, the end must follow. And now it has come out, as I was fully determined that it should not be done half an hour ago, when suddenly you developed eyes in the back of your head, and—oh! Dearest, I love you. No, please be quiet; I have not done it. I have told you what I am, and really there isn’t much more to say about me, for I have no particular vices except the worst of them all, idleness, and not the slightest trace of any virtue that I can discover. But I have a certain knowledge of the world acquired in a long course of shooting parties, and as a gallant person, I will venture to give you a bit of advice. It is possible that to you my life and death affair is a mere matter of board-ship amusement. Yet it is also possible that you might take another view of the matter. In that case, as a friend and a gallant person, I entreat you— don’t. It has nothing to do with me. Send me about my business; you will never regret it.”

“Are you having joking, or do you mean all these, Mr. Holmes?” asked Benita, still speaking beneath her breath, and looking straight before her.

“Meant? Of course, it is meant. How can you ask?”

“Because I have always understood that, on such occasions, people wish to make the best of themselves.”

“Quite so, but I never did what I thought, a fact for which I am grateful now come to think of it, since otherwise I should not be here tonight. I wish to make the worst of myself, the very worst, for whatever I am not, at least I am honest. "Now having told you that I am, or was half an hour ago, an idler, a good-for-nothing, and a failure, I ask you—if you care to hear anymore?”

She half rose, and, glancing at him for the first time, saw his face contract itself and turn pale in the moonlight. It may be that the sight of it affected her, even to the extent of removing some adverse impression left by the bitter mocking of his self-blame. At any rate, Agnes seemed to change her mind, and sat down again, saying:

“Go on, if you wish.”

He bowed slightly, and said:

“I thank you. I have told you what I was half an hour ago; now, hoping that you will believe me, I will tell you what I am. I am a truly repentant man, one upon whom a new light has risen. I am not very old, and I think that underneath it all I have some ability. Opportunity may still come my way; if it does not, for your sake, I will take the opportunity. I do not believe that you can ever find anyone who would love you better or care for you more tenderly. I desire to live for you in the future, more completely even than in the past. I have lived for myself. I do not wish to influence you with personal appeals, but in fact I stand at the parting of the ways. If you give yourself to me, I feel as though I might still become a husband of whom you could be proud—if not, I write ‘Finis’ upon the tombstone of the possibilities of Anthony Holmes. I adore you. You are the one woman with whom I desire to spend my days; it is you who have always been lacking in my life. I ask you to be brave, to take the risk of marrying me, although I can see nothing but poverty ahead of us, for I am an adventurer.”

“Don’t speak like that,” she said quickly. We are all adventurers in this world, and I am no more than you. We just have to consider ourselves, not what we have or have not.”

“So be it, Miss Agnes. Then I have nothing more to say; now it is for you to answer.”

Just then, the sound of the piano and the fiddle in the saloon ceased. One of the waltzes was over, and some of the dancers came on deck to flirt or to cool themselves. One pair, engaged very obviously in the former occupation, stationed themselves so near to Holmes and Agnes that further conversation between them was impossible, and they proceeded to interchange the remarks common to such occasions.

For a good ten minutes they stood thus, carrying on a mock quarrel as to a dance in which one of them was supposed to have been defrauded, until Anthony Holmes, generally a very philosophical person, could have slain those innocent lovers. He felt, he knew not why, that his chances were slipping away from him; that sensation of something bad about to happen, of which Agnes had spoken, spread from her to him. The suspense grew exasperating, terrible even, nor could it be ended. To ask her to come elsewhere was, under the circumstances, not feasible, especially as he would also have been obliged to request the other pair to make way for them, and all this time, with a sinking of the heart, he felt that probably Agnes was beating down any tenderness which she might feel towards him; that when her long-delayed answer did come the chances were it would be “No.”