第77章 CHAPTER VIII(4)
"Yes. You wish to serve me, and to have nothing in return!--you shall have what you wish." She held out her fingers for Doss to lick. "Do you see this dog? He licks my hand because I love him; and I allow him to. Where I do not love I do not allow it. I believe you love me; I too could love so, that to lie under the foot of the thing I loved would be more heaven than to lie in the breast of another. Come! let us go. Carry the dog," she added; "he will not bite you if I put him in your arms. So--do not let his foot hang down."
They descended the kopje. At the bottom, he whispered:
"Would you not take my arm? the path is very rough."
She rested her fingers lightly on it.
"I may yet change my mind about marrying you before the time comes. It is very likely. Mark you!" she said, turning round on him; "I remember your words: You will give everything, and expect nothing. The knowledge that you are serving me is to be your reward; and you will have that. You will serve me, and greatly. The reasons I have for marrying you I need not inform you of now; you will probably discover some of them before long."
"I only want to be of some use to you," he said.
It seemed to Gregory that there were pulses in the soles of his feet, and the ground shimmered as on a summer's day. They walked round the foot of the kopje and past the Kaffer huts. An old Kaffer maid knelt at the door of one grinding mealies. That she should see him walking so made his heart beat so fast, that the hand on his arm felt its pulsation. It seemed that she must envy him.
Just then Em looked out again at the back window and saw them coming. She cried bitterly all the while she sorted the skins.
But that night when Lyndall had blown her candle out, and half turned round to sleep, the door of Em's bedroom opened.
"I want to say good night to you, Lyndall," she said, coming to the bedside and kneeling down.
"I thought you were asleep," Lyndall replied.
"Yes, I have been asleep; but I had such a vivid dream," she said, holding the other's hands, "and that woke me. I never had so vivid a dream before.
"It seemed I was a little girl again, and I came somewhere into a large room. On a bed in the corner there was something lying dressed in white, and its little eyes were shut, and its little face was like wax. I thought it was a doll, and I ran forward to take it; but some one held up her finger and said: 'Hush! it is a little dead baby.' And I said: 'Oh, I must go and call Lyndall, that she may look at it also.'
"And they put their faces close down to my ear and whispered: 'It is Lyndall's baby.'
"And I said: 'She cannot be grown up yet; she is only a little girl!
Where is she?' And I went to look for you, but I could not find you.
"And when I came to some people who were dressed in black, I asked them where you were, and they looked down at their black clothes, and shook their heads, and said nothing; and I could not find you anywhere. And then I awoke.
"Lyndall," she said, putting her face down upon the hands she held, "it made me think about that time when we were little girls and used to play together, when I loved you better than anything else in the world. It isn't any one's fault that they love you; they can't help it. And it isn't your fault; you don't make them love you. I know it."
"Thank you, dear," Lyndall said. "It is nice to be loved, but it would be better to be good."
Then they wished good night, and Em went back to her room. Long after Lyndall lay in the dark thinking, thinking, thinking; and as she turned round wearily to sleep she muttered:
"There are some wiser in their sleeping than in their waking."