“Mr. Oaklands, are you ill? Shall I ring for a glass of water?” Then, finding he was unable to answer her, completely overcome, she continued, “Oh! what is all this? what have I said? what have I done? Harry, speak to me; tell me, are you angry with me?” and laying her hand gently on his shoulder, she gazed up in his face with a look of the most piteous entreaty.
Her light touch seemed to recall him to himself, and uncovering his face, he made a strong effort to regain composure, which, after a moment or two, appeared attended with success; and taking her hand between his own, he said, with a faint smile:—
“I have frightened you—have I not? The last time I shed tears was at my mother's funeral, and I had never thought to weep again; but what pain of body and anguish of mind were powerless to accomplish, joy has effected in an instant. This must all seem very strange to you, dear Fanny; even I myself am surprised at the depth and vehemence of my own feelings; but if you knew the agony of mind I have undergone since the night of that hateful charade—Fanny, did it never occur to you that I loved you with a love different to that of a brother?”
As she made no reply, merely turning away her head, while a blush, faint as the earliest glance of young-eyed Morning, mantled on her cheek, he continued, “Yes, Fanny, I have known and loved you from childhood, and your affection has become, unconsciously as it were, one of the strongest ties that render life dear to me; still I frankly confess, that till the idea of your loving another occurred to me, I was blind to the nature of my own affection. To be with you, to see and talk to you daily, to cultivate your talents, to lead you to admire the beauties that 1 admire, to take interest in the pursuits which interested me, was happiness enough—I wished for nothing more. Then came that business of the duel, and the affectionate kindness with which you forestalled my every wish; the delicate tenderness and ready tact which enabled you to be more than a daughter—a guardian angel—to my father, in the days of his heavy sorrow—sorrow which my ungoverned passions had brought upon his grey head—all these things endeared you to me still more. Next followed a period of estrangement and separation, during which, as I now see, an undefined craving for your society preyed upon my spirits, and, as I verily believe, retarded my recovery. Hence, the moment I felt the slightest symptoms of returning health, my determination to revisit Heathfield. When we again met, I fancied you were ill and out of spirits.”
“It was no fancy,” murmured Fanny in a low voice, as though thinking aloud.
“Indeed!” questioned Harry; “and will you not tell me the cause?”
“Presently; I did not mean to speak—to interrupt you.”
“My sole wish and occupation,” he continued, “was to endeavour to interest and amuse you, and to restore your cheerfulness, which I believed the anxiety and fatigue occasioned by my illness to have banished; and I nattered myself I was in some degree succeeding, when Lawless's arrival and his openly professed admiration of you seemed to change the whole current of my thoughts—nay, my very nature itself. I became sullen and morose; and the feeling of dislike with which I beheld Lawless's attentions to you gradually strengthened to a deep and settled hatred; it was only by exercising the most unceasing watchfulness and self-control that I refrained from quarrelling with him; but so engrossed was I by the painful interest I felt in all that was passing around me, that I never gave myself time to analyse my feelings; and it was not until the night of the charade that I became fully aware of their true character; it was not till then I learned that happiness could not exist for me unless you shared it. Conceive my wretchedness when, at the very moment in which this conviction first dawned upon me, I saw from Lawless's manner that in his attentions to you he was evidently in earnest, and that, as far as I could judge, you were disposed to receive those attentions favourably. My mind was instantly made up; I only waited till events should prove whether my suspicions were correct, and in case of their turning out so, feeling utterly unfit to endure the sight of Lawless's happiness, determined immediately to start for the Continent. Prank, who taxing me with my wretched looks, elicited from me an avowal of the truth, told me Lawless was about to make you an offer; Coleman (probably in jest, but it chimed in too well with my own fears for me to dream of doubting him) that it had been accepted. The rest you know. And now, Fanny,” he continued, his voice again trembling from the excess of his anxiety, “if you feel that you can never bring yourself to look upon me in any other light than as a brother, I will adhere to my determination of leaving England, and trust to time to reconcile me to my fate; but if, by waiting months, nay years, I may hope one day to call you my own, gladly will I do so—gladly will I submit to any conditions you may impose. My happiness is in your hands. Tell me, dear Fanny, must I go abroad to-morrow?”
And what do you suppose she told him, reader? That he must go? Miss Martineau would have highly approved of her doing so; so would the late Poor-law Commissioners, and so would many a modern Draco, who, with the life-blood that should have gone to warm his own stony heart, scribbles a code to crush the kindly affections and genial home-sympathies of his fellow-men. But Fanny was no female philosopher; she was only a pure, true-hearted, trustful, loving woman; and so she gave him to understand that he need not set out on his travels, thereby losing a fine opportunity of “regenerating society,” and vindicating the dignity of her sex. And this was not all she told him either; for, having by his generous frankness won her confidence, he succeeded in gaining from her the secret of her heart—a secret which, an hour before, she would have braved death in its most horrible form rather than reveal. And then her happy lover learned how her affection for him, springing up in the pleasant days of childhood, had grown with her growth, and strengthened with her strength; until it became a deep and all-absorbing passion—the great reality of her spirit-life; for love such as hers, outstripping the bounds of time, links itself even with our hopes beyond the grave;—how, when he lay stretched upon the bed of suffering, oscillating between life and death, the bitter anguish that the thought of separation occasioned her, enlightened her as to the true nature of her feelings; how, as his recovery progressed, to watch over him, and minister to his comfort, was happiness beyond expression to her;—how, when he left the cottage, everything seemed changed and dark, and a gulf appeared to have interposed between them, which she deemed impassable;—how, in the struggle to conceal, and, if possible, conquer her attachment, she studiously avoided all intercourse with him, and how the struggle ended in the loss of health and spirits;—how, during his absence, she felt it a duty still to bear up against these feelings of despair, and to endure her sad lot with patient resignation, and succeeded in some degree, till his return once again rendered all her efforts fruitless;—and how she then avoided him more studiously than before, although she saw, and sorrowed over the evident pain her altered manner caused him;—how, always fearing lest he should question her as to her changed behaviour, and by word or sign she should betray the deep interest she felt in him, she had gladly availed herself of Lawless's attentions as a means of avoiding Harry's kind attempts to amuse and occupy her—attempts which, at the very moment she was wounding him by rejecting them, only rendered him yet dearer to her;—and how she had gone on, thinking only of Harry and herself, until Lawless's offer had brought her unhappiness to a climax, by adding self-reproach to her other sources of unhappiness. All this, and much more, did she relate; for if her coral lips did not frame every syllable, her tell-tale blushes filled up the gaps most eloquently.
And Harry Oaklands?—Well, he did nothing desperate; but after his first transports had subsided into a more deep and tranquil joy, he sat, with her little white hand clasped in his own, and looked into her loving eyes, and for one bright half-hour two of the wanderers in this vale of tears were perfectly and entirely happy.