Then Fanny lifted her eyes, and they met mine; and then involuntarily and hastily she moved a few steps towards me, and I clasped my right hand to my heart, as if to still its beating, and remained still. Lord Castleton had watched us both. I felt that watch upon us, though I had till then shunned his looks; now, as I turned my eyes from Fanny’s, that look came full upon me,—soft, compassionate, benignant. Suddenly, and with an unutterable expression of nobleness, the marquis turned to Lady Ellinor and said: “Pardon me for telling you an old story. A friend of mine—a man of my own years—had the temerity to hope that he might one day or other win the affections of a lady young enough to be his daughter, and whom circumstances and his own heart led him to prefer from all her sex. My friend had many rivals; and you will not wonder, for you have seen the lady. Among them was a young gentleman who for months had been an inmate of the same house (hush, Lady Ellinor! you will hear me out; the interest of my story is to come), who respected the sanctity of the house he had entered, and had left it when he felt he loved, for he was poor, and the lady rich. Some time after, this gentleman saved the lady from a great danger, and was then on the eve of leaving England (hush! again, hush!). My friend was present when these two young persons met, before the probable absence of many years, and so was the mother of the lady to whose hand he still hoped one day to aspire. He saw that his young rival wished to say, ‘Farewell!’ and without a witness; that farewell was all that his honor and his reason could suffer him to say. My friend saw that the lady felt the natural gratitude for a great service, and the natural pity for a generous and unfortunate affection; for so, Lady Ellinor, he only interpreted the sob that reached his ear! What think you my friend did? Your high mind at once conjectures. He said to himself: ‘If I am ever to be blest with the heart which, in spite of disparity of years, I yet hope to win, let me show how entire is the trust that I place in its integrity and innocence; let the romance of first youth be closed, the farewell of pure hearts be spoken, unembittered by the idle jealousies of one mean suspicion.’ With that thought, which you, Lady Ellinor, will never stoop to blame, he placed his hand on that of the noble mother, drew her gently towards the door, and calmly confident of the result, left these two young natures to the unwitnessed impulse of maiden honor and manly duty.”
All this was said and done with a grace and earnestness that thrilled the listeners; word and action suited to each with so inimitable a harmony that the spell was not broken till the voice ceased and the door closed.
That mournful bliss for which I had so pined was vouchsafed: I was alone with her to whom, indeed, honor and reason forbade me to say more than the last farewell.
It was some time before we recovered, before we felt that we were alone.
O ye moments that I can now recall with so little sadness in the mellow and sweet remembrance, rest ever holy and undisclosed in the solemn recesses of the heart! Yes, whatever confession of weakness was interchanged, we were not unworthy of the trust that permitted the mournful consolation of the parting. No trite love-tale, with vows not to be fulfilled, and hopes that the future must belie, mocked the realities of the life that lay before us. Yet on the confines of the dream we saw the day rising cold upon the world; and if—children as we well-nigh were—we shrank somewhat from the light, we did not blaspheme the sun and cry, “There is darkness in the dawn!”
All that we attempted was to comfort and strengthen each other for that which must be; not seeking to conceal the grief we felt, but promising, with simple faith, to struggle against the grief. If vow were pledged between us,—that was the vow: each for the other’s sake would strive to enjoy the blessings Heaven left us still. Well may I say that we were children! I know not, in the broken words that passed between us, in the sorrowful hearts which those words revealed, I know not if there were that which they who own in human passion but the storm and the whirlwind would call the love of maturer years,—the love that gives fire to the song, and tragedy to the stage; but I know that there was neither a word nor a thought which made the sorrow of the children a rebellion to the Heavenly Father.
And again the door unclosed, and Fanny walked with a firm step to her mother’s side, and pausing there, extended her hand to me and said, as I bent over it, “Heaven Will be with you!”
A word from Lady Ellinor, a frank smile from him, the rival, one last, last glance from the soft eyes of Fanny, and then Solitude rushed upon me,—rushed as something visible, palpable, overpowering. I felt it in the glare of the sunbeam, I heard it in the breath of the air; like a ghost it rose there,—where she had filled the space with her presence but a moment before! A something seemed gone from the universe forever; a change like that of death passed through my being; and when I woke, to feel that my being lived again, I knew that it was my youth and its poet-land that were no more, and that I had passed, with an unconscious step, which never could retrace its way, into the hard world of laborious man!