'Ungraciously, of course,' I added; 'but never mind, so long as Josey is here. Not a word to Jessie, mother.'
I enjoined secrecy also on Josey West, who was really glad of the opportunity of making my mother's personal acquaintance.
'I shall throw my arms round her neck,' said Josey, and kiss her the moment I see her. And as for you,' she added, with a fair disregard of sequence in her speech, 'you are a wise young man. Now what made you think of me at all?'
'Because I knew it would please Jessie,' I answered honestly, 'and because I want to make Jessie's birthday the happiest day in her life and mine.'
She pinched my cheek merrily, as though she understood my meaning.
I had fully resolved that on that day I would ask Jessie to be my wife. Tortured almost beyond endurance by the doubts and difficulties which surrounded me, I had in some way gathered courage to look my position steadily in the face, and the moment I did so, the way seemed clear before me. I became strengthened immediately, and the fair promise which hope held forth appeared realised in anticipation. I set aside all obstacles for future consideration, and mentally leaped out of the entanglement of feeling which had brought so much discomfort into our lives. 'It is for me to speak,' I thought, 'and to speak plainly and manfully.' I painted the future in the fairest colours. My prospects of success were growing brighter and brighter; my sketches for the Christmas story which had been intrusted to me to illustrate were approved of by the author and the publisher, and I felt I only wanted opportunity to rise far above the sphere of life which, in the natural course of things, I could have expected to occupy. 'Jessie's love for the stage,' I thought, 'and her wish to become an actress, only arise from her thoughtfulness of her future, and from her state of dependence on uncle Bryan. Well, I can clear away all doubt; I can offer her a good home; and I can release her from uncle Bryan, and, if she wishes, can pay him what she thinks she owes him.' I resolutely closed the eyes of my mind on my mother's declaration, that wherever our home was, uncle Bryan must share it. I knew too well that it would be impossible for Jessie and me to be happy together, with him as a member of our household. All these things could be considered and settled by and by, when Jessie had promised to be my wife. I reproached myself that I had not spoken plainly to her before now; I had, as it were, driven her by my faint-heartedness to do what she might not have done, if she had had a protector whom she loved and who loved her. All this and other reasoning of the same nature I carried out exactly in the way which best suited my hopes, and at length I lay in my cloud-built castles at peace with myself; for it was not to be doubted that my dearest wishes would now be surely realised. I had an instinctive consciousness that Josey West was thoroughly acquainted with the position of affairs between Jessie and me, and knowing her to be my friend, I was convinced that she would have warned me if she had had any doubt of Jessie's affection for me.
So that it was all clear sailing. What would come, would come, but the bliss which I should presently taste of, knowing Jessie to be mine and mine only--the bliss which I was enjoying already in anticipation--was all sufficient. Outside our own two personalities there was nothing else to be considered. Nothing else? No one else? No; for this one greatest of all joys secured, all difficulties which once seemed to threaten to mar its fulfilment must melt away, as surely as snow melts before the sun. I pleased myself with this commonplace metaphor, and utterly overlooked the common sense of things (common sense, indeed, in this case being the very slave of sentiment)--utterly overlooked the possibility that the current of others' feelings, of others' likes and dislikes, of others' ideas of right and wrong, could run in a different direction from that down which I was sailing with my hopes realised. It is thus, I suppose, sometimes with other selfish natures than mine.
I was up and out early in the morning. I could not sleep the night before, and wishing to give Jessie a bouquet of fresh flowers, I had determined to walk to Covent-garden to buy them. I had a bouquet made of the sweetest and loveliest flowers, and I took it to our house by the back way, and hid it in my workroom. How many times I looked at it, and how in every delicate leaf I found a sentiment which formed a connecting link between me and Jessie, it is unnecessary here to describe. In the afternoon I had to go to the jeweller's for the watch for Jessie, the inscription on which could not be completed before; and when I held it in my hand and read the words, 'From Chris to Jessie, on her eighteenth birthday. With undying love,' I saw Jessie's beautiful eyes looking into mine, and I uttered an exclamation of delight which must have satisfied the jeweller that his work was approved of. Then there was the ivory brooch shaped in the form of a true lover's knot. Perhaps Jessie would allow me to fasten it in the bosom of her dress, as she had allowed me to take the ribbon from her neck, which was now round mine, with the locket she had given me on my birthday. No one but I had yet seen or knew of these offerings of love. It was to be a day of delightful surprises.
I was at home with my flowers before breakfast.
'What made you go out so early this morning, Chris?' Jessie inquired over breakfast.