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AYALA’S ANGEL
the use of independence if he could not allow himself to have
the girl whom he really loved? Had any human being so perfectly lovely as Ayala ever flashed before his eyes before? Was
there ever a sweeter voice heard from a woman’s mouth? And
then all her little ways and motions, — her very tricks, — how
full of charm they were! When she would open her eyes and
nod her head, and pout with her lips, he would declare to himself that he could no longer live without her. And then every
word that fell from her lips seemed to have something in it of
pretty humour. In fact the Colonel was in love, and had now
resolved that he would give way to his love in spite of his aunt,
the Marchesa, and in spite of his own philosophy.
He felt by no means sure of success, but yet he thought that
he might succeed. From the moment in which, as the reader
may remember, he had accosted her at the ball, and desired
her to dance with him in obedience to his aunt’s behests, it
had been understood by everyone around him that Ayala
had liked him. They had become fast friends. Ayala allowed
him to do many little things which, by some feminine instinct of her own, would have been put altogether beyond
the reach of Captain Batsby. The Colonel knew all this, and
knew at the same time that he should not trust to it only. But
still he could not but trust to it in some degree. Lady Albury
had told him that Ayala would be a happy girl if he were in
earnest, and he himself was well aware of Ayala’s dependent
position, and of the discomforts of Kingsbury Crescent. Ayala
had spoken quite openly to him of Kingsbury Crescent as to
a confidential friend. But on all that he did not lean much as
being in his favour. He could understand that such a girl as
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE
Ayala would not accept a husband merely with the object of
avoiding domestic poverty. Little qualms of doubt came upon
him as he remembered the nature of the girl, so that he confessed to himself that Lady Albury knew nothing about it. But,
nevertheless, he hoped. His red hair and his ugly face had
never yet stood against him among the women with whom he
had lived. He had been taught by popularity to think himself
a popular man; — and then Ayala had shown so many signs of
her friendship!
There was shooting on Saturday, and he went out with
the shooters, saying nothing to any one of an intended early
return; but at three o’clock he was back at the house. Then
he found that Ayala was out in the carriage, and he waited. He sat in the library pretending to read, till he heard
the sounds of the carriage-wheels, and then he met the ladies in the hall. “Are they all home from shooting?” asked
Lady Albury. The Colonel explained that no one was home
but himself. He had missed three cock-pheasants running, and
had then come away in disgust. “I am the most ignominious
creature in existence,” he said, laughing; “one day I tumble
into a ditch three feet wide — “
“It was ten yards at least,” said Nina, jealous as to the glory of her jump.
“And to-day I cannot hit a bird. I shall take to writing
a book and leave the severer pursuit of sport to more enterprising persons.” Then suddenly turning round he said to
Ayala, “Are you good-natured enough to come and take a walk
with me in the shrubbery?”
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AYALA’S ANGEL
Ayala, taken somewhat by surprise at the request, looked up
into Lady Albury’s face. “Go with him, my dear, if you are not
tired,” said Lady Albury. “He deserves consolation after all his
good deeds to you.” Ayala still doubted. Though she was on
terms of pleasant friendship with the man, yet she felt almost
awestruck at this sudden request that she should walk alone
with him. But not to do so, especially after Lady Albury’s injunction, would have been peculiar. She certainly was not
tired, and had such a walk come naturally it would have been
an additional pleasure to her; but now, though she went she
hesitated, and showed her hesitation.
“Are you afraid to come with me?” he said, as soon as they
were out on the gravel together.
“Afraid! Oh, dear no, I should not be afraid to go anywhere with you, I think; only it seemed odd that you did not
ask Nina too.”
“Shall I tell you why?”
“Why was it?”
“Because I have something to say to you which I do not
want Nina to hear just at this moment. And then I thought
that we were such friends that you would not mind coming
with me.”
“Of course we are,” said Ayala.
“I don’t know why it should be so, but I seem to have known
you years instead of days.”
“Perhaps that is because you knew papa.”
“More likely because I have learnt to know your papa’s
daughter.”
“Do you mean Lucy?”
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE
“I mean Ayala.”
“That is saying the same thing twice over. You know me
because you know me.”
“Just that. How long do you suppose I have known that
Mrs. Gregory, who sat opposite to us yesterday?”
“How can I tell?”
“Just fifteen years. I was going to Harrow when she came
as a young girl to stay with my mother. Her people and my
people had known each other for the last fifty years. Since that
I have seen her constantly, and of course we are very intimate.”
“I suppose so.”
“I know as much about her after all that as if we had lived in
two different hemispheres and couldn’t speak a word of each
other’s language. There isn’t a thought or a feeling in common
between us. I ask after her husband and her children, and then
tell her it’s going to rain. She says something about the old
General’s health, and then there is an end of everything between us. When next we meet we do it all over again.”
“How very uninteresting!” said Ayala.
“Very uninteresting. It is because there are so many Mrs.
Gregorys about that I like to go down to Drumcaller and
live by myself. Perhaps you’re a Mrs. Gregory to somebody.”
“Why should I be a Mrs. Gregory? I don’t think I am at all
like Mrs. Gregory.”
“Not to me, Ayala.” Now she heard the “Ayala,” and felt
something of what it meant. There had been moments at
which she had almost disliked to hear him call her Miss Dormer; but now, — now she wished that he had not called her
Ayala. She strove to assume a serious expression of face, but
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AYALA’S ANGEL
having done so she could not dare to turn it up towards him.
The glance of her little anger, if there was any, fell only upon
the ground. “It is because you are to me a creature so essentially different from Mrs. Gregory that I seem to know you so well.
I never want to go to Drumcaller if you are near me; — or, if
I think of Drumcaller, it is that I might be there with you.”
“I am sure the place is very pretty, but I don’t suppose
I shall ever see it.”
“Do you know about your sister and Mr. Hamel?”
“Yes,” said Ayala, surprised. “She has told me all about it.
How do you know?”
“He was staying at Drumcaller, — he and I together with
no one else, — when he went over to ask her. I never saw a man
so happy as when he came back from Glenbogie. He had got
all that he wanted in the world.”
“I do so love him because he loves her.”
“And I love her, — because she loves you.”
“It is not the same, you know,” said Ayala, trying to think
it all out.
“May I not love her?”
“He is to be my brother. That’s why I love him. She can’t be
your sister.” The poor girl, though she had tried to think it all
out, had not thought very far.
“Can she not?” he said.
“Of course not. Lucy is to marry Mr. Hamel.”
“And whom am I to marry?” Then she saw it all. “Ayala, — Ayala, — who is to be my wife?”
“I do not know,” she said, — speaking with a gruff voice, but
still in a whisper, with a manner altogether different, — think-
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE
ing how well it would be that she should be taken at once back
into the house.
“Do you not know whom I would fain have as my wife?”
Then he felt that it behoved him to speak out plainly. He was
already sure that she would not at once tell him that it should
be as he would have it, — that she would not instantly throw
herself into his arms. But he must speak plainly to her, and
then fight his cause as best he might. “Ayala, I have asked you to
come out with me that I might ask you to be my wife. It is that
that I did not wish Nina to hear at once. If you will put out
your hand and say that it shall be so, Nina and all the world
shall know it. I shall be as proud then as Hamel, and as happy, — happier, I think. It seems to me that no one can love as
I do now, Ayala; it has grown upon me from hour to hour as
I have seen you. When I first took you away to that dance it was
so already. Do you remember that night at the theatre, — when
I had come away from everything and striven so hard that
I might be near to you before you went back to your home?
Ayala, I loved you then so dearly; — but not as I love you now.
When I saw you riding away from me yesterday, when I could
not get over the brook, I told myself that unless I might catch
you at last, and have you all to myself, I could never again be
happy. Do you remember when you stooped down and kissed
that man’s baby at the farm-house? Oh, Ayala, I thought then
that if you would not be my wife, — if you would not be my
wife, — I should never have wife, never should have baby, never should have home of my own.” She walked on by his side,
listening, but she had not a word to say to him. It had been
easy enough to her to reject and to rebuke and to scorn Tom
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AYALA’S ANGEL
Tringle, when he had persisted in his suit; but she knew not
with what words to reject this man who stood so high in her
estimation, who was in many respects so perfect, whom she so
thoroughly liked, — but whom, nevertheless, she must reject.
He was not the Angel of Light, — could never be the Angel of
Light. There was nothing there of the azure wings upon which
should soar the all but celestial being to whom she could condescend to give herself and her love. He was pleasant, good,
friendly, kind-hearted, — all that a friend or a brother should
be; but he was not the Angel of Light. She was sure of that.
She told herself that she was quite sure of it, as she walked
beside him in silence along the path. “You know what I mean,
Ayala, when I tell you that I love you,” he continued. But still
she made no answer. “I have seen at last the one human being
with whom I feel that I can be happy to spend my life, and,
having seen her, I ask her to be my wife. The hope has been
dwelling with me and growing since I first met you. Shall it be
a vain hope? Ayala, may I still hope?”
“No,” she said, abruptly.
“Is that all?”
“It is all that I can say.”
“Is that one ‘no’ to be the end of everything between us?”
“I don’t know what else I ought to say to you, Colonel
Stubbs.”
“Do you mean that you can never love me?”
“Never,” she said.
“That is a hard word, — and hardly friendly. Is there to be
no more than one hard word between you and me? Though
I did not venture to think that you could tell me that you
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE
loved me, I looked for something kinder, something gentler
than that.”
“From such a sharp and waspish word as ‘no,’
To pluck the sting!”
Ayala did not know the lines I have quoted, but the idea
conveyed in them was present clearly to her mind. She would
fain have told him, had she known how to do so, that her heart
was very gentle towards him, was very kind, gentle and kind as
a sister’s; — but that she could not love him, so as to become
his wife. “You are not he, — not he, not that Angel of Light,
which must come to me, radiant with poetry, beautiful to
the eye, full of all excellences of art, lifted above the earth by
the qualities of his mind, — such a one as must come to me
if it be that I am ever to confess that I love. You are not he,
and I cannot love you. But you shall be the next to him in my
estimation, and you are already so dear to me that I would be
tender to you, would be gentle, — if only I knew how.” It was
all there, clear enough in her mind, but she had not the words.
“I don’t know what it is that I ought to say,” she exclaimed
through her sobs.
“The truth, at any rate,” he answered, sternly, “but not
the truth, half and half, after the fashion of some young ladies.
Do not think that you should palter with the truth either because it may not be palatable to me, or seem decorous to yourself. To my happiness this matter is all important, and you are
something to my happiness, if only because I have risked it on
your love. Tell me; — why cannot you love me?”
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AYALA’S ANGEL
The altered tone of his voice, which now had in it something of severity, seemed to give her more power.
“It is because — “ Then she paused.
“Because why? Out with it, whatever it is. If it be something
that a man may remedy I will remedy it. Do not fear to hurt
me. Is it because I am ugly? That I cannot remedy.” She did not
dare to tell him that it was so, but she looked up at him, not
dissenting by any motion of her head. “Then God help me, for
ugly I must remain.”
“It is not that only.”
“Is it because my name is Stubbs — Jonathan Stubbs?” Now
she did assent, nodding her head at him. He had bade her tell
him the truth, and she was so anxious to do as he bade her!
“If it be so, Ayala, I must tell you that you are wrong, — wrong
and foolish; that you are carried away by a feeling of romance,
which is a false romance. Far be it from me to say that I could
make you happy, but I am sure that your happiness cannot be
made and cannot be marred by such accidents as that. Do you
think that my means are not sufficient?”
“No; — no,” she cried; “I know nothing of your
means. If I could love you I would not condescend to
ask, — even to hear.”
“There is no other man, I think?”
“There is no other man.”
“But your imagination has depicted to you something
grander than I am,” — then she assented quickly, turning
round and nodding her head to him, — “some one who shall
better respond to that spirit of poetry which is within you?”
Again she nodded her head approvingly, as though to assure
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE
him that now he knew the whole truth. “Then, Ayala, I must
strive to soar till I can approach your dreams. But, if you dare to
desire things which are really grand, do not allow yourself to
be mean at the same time. Do not let the sound of a name move
you, or I shall not believe in your aspirations. Now shall I take
you back to the house?”
Back to the house they went, and there was not another
word spoken between them. By those last words of his she
had felt herself to be rebuked. If it were possible that he
could ask her again whether that sound, Jonathan Stubbs,
had anything to do with it, she would let him know now, by
some signal, that she no longer found a barrier in the name.
But there were other barriers, — barriers which he himself
had not pretended to call vain. As to his ugliness, that he had
confessed he could not remedy; calling on God to pity him
because he was so. And as for that something grander which
he had described, and for which her soul sighed, he had simply said that he would seek for it. She was sure that he would
not find it. It was not to such as he that the something grander, — which was to be the peculiar attribute of the Angel of
Light, — could be accorded. But he had owned that the something grander might exist.
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