“I am sure on’t. I thankee, sir, most kind! I think theer is something I could wish said or wrote.”
“What is it?”
We walked a little farther in silence, and then he spoke.
“’Tan’t that I forgive her. ’Tan’t that so much. ’Tis more as I beg of her to forgive me, for having pressed my affections upon her. Odd
times, I think that if I hadn’t had her promise fur to marry me, sir, she was that trustful of me, in a friendly way, that she’d have told me what was struggling in her mind, and would have counselled with me, and I might have saved her.”
I pressed his hand. “Is that all?”
“Theer’s yet a something else,” he returned, “if I can say it, Mas’r Davy.”
We walked on, farther than we had walked yet, before he spoke again. He was not crying when he made the pauses I shall express by lines. He was merely collecting himself to speak very plainly.
“I loved her—and I love the mem’ry of her—too deep—to be able to lead her to believe of my own self as I’m a happy man. I could only be happy—by forgetting of her—and I’m afeerd I couldn’t hardly bear as she should be told I done that. But if you, being so full of learning, Mas’r Davy, could think of anything to say as might bring her to believe I wasn’t greatly hurt: still loving of her, and mourning for her: anything as might bring her to believe as I was not tired of my life, and yet was hoping fur to see her without blame, wheer the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest—anything as would ease her sorrowful mind, and yet not make her think as I could ever marry, or as ’twas possible that any one could ever be to me what she was—I should ask of you to say that—with my prayers for her—that was so dear.”
I pressed his manly hand again, and told him I would charge myself to do this as well as I could.