What was my confusion to discover that instead of Charles O’Malley, I had written the name of Lucy Dashwood. I could bear no more. The laughing and raillery of my friends came upon my wounded and irritated feelings like the most poignant sarcasm. I seized my cap and rushed from the room. Desirous of escaping from all that knew me, anxious to bury my agitated and distracted thoughts in solitude and quiet, I opened the first door before me, and seeing it an empty and unoccupied room, throw myself upon a sofa, and buried my head within my hands. Oh, how often had the phantom of happiness passed within my reach, but still glided from my grasp! How often had I beheld the goal I aimed at, as it were before me, and the next moment all the bleak reality of my evil fortune was lowering around me!
“Oh, Lucy, Lucy!” I exclaimed aloud, “but for you and a few words carelessly spoken, I had never trod that path of ambition whose end has been the wreck of all my happiness. But for you, I had never loved so fondly; I had never filled my mind with one image which, excluding every other thought, leaves no pleasure but in it alone. Yes, Lucy, but for you I should have gone tranquilly down the stream of life with naught of grief or care, save such as are inseparable from the passing chances of mortality; loved, perhaps, and cared for by some one who would have deemed it no disgrace to have linked her fortune to my own. But for you, and I had never been—”
“A soldier, you would say,” whispered a soft voice, as a light hand gently touched my shoulder. “I had come,” continued she, “to thank you for a gift no gratitude can repay,—my father’s life; but truly, I did not think to hear the words you have spoken; nor having heard them, can I feel their justice. No, Mr. O’Malley, deeply grateful as I am to you for the service you once rendered myself, bound as I am by every tie of thankfulness, by the greater one to my father, yet do I feel that in the impulse I had given to your life, if so be that to me you owe it, I have done more to repay my debt to you, than by all the friendship, all the esteem I owe you; if, indeed, by my means, you became a soldier, if my few and random words raised within your breast that fire of ambition which has been your beacon-light to honor and to glory, then am I indeed proud.”
“Alas, alas, Lucy!—Miss Dashwood, I would say,—forgive me, if I know not the very words I utter. How has my career fulfilled the promise that gave it birth? For you, and you only, to gain your affection, to win your heart, I became a soldier; hardship, danger, even death itself were courted by me, supported by the one thought that you had cared for or had pitied me; and now, and now—”
“And now,” said she, while her eyes beamed upon me with a very flood of tenderness, “is it nothing that in my woman’s heart I have glowed with pride at triumphs I could read of, but dared not share in? Is it nothing that you have lent to my hours of solitude and of musing the fervor of that career, the maddening enthusiasm of that glorious path my sex denied me? I have followed you in my thoughts across the burning plains of the Peninsula, through the long hours of the march in the dreary nights, even to the battle-field. I have thought of you; I have dreamed of you; I have prayed for you.”
“Alas, Lucy, but not loved me!”
The very words, as I spoke them, sank with a despairing cadence upon my heart. Her hand, which had fallen upon mine, trembled violently; I pressed my lips upon it, but she moved it not. I dared to look up; her head was turned away, but her heaving bosom betrayed her emotion.
“No, no, Lucy,” cried I, passionately, “I will not deceive myself; I ask for more than you can give me. Farewell!”
Now, and for the last time, I pressed her hand once more to my lips; my hot tears fell fast upon it. I turned to go, and threw one last look upon her. Our eyes met; I cannot say what it was, but in a moment the whole current of my thoughts was changed; her look was bent upon me beaming with softness and affection, her hand gently pressed my own, and her lips murmured my name.
The door burst open at this moment, and Sir George Dashwood appeared. Lucy turned one fleeting look upon her father, and fell fainting into my arms.