The Jessamy Bride

by Frank Frankfort Moore

She came toward him, and then he knew that he had had his reward, for her cheeks that had been white were now glowing with the roses of June, and her eyes that had been dim were sparkling with gladness.

“Ah,” she cried, putting out both her hands to him. “Ah, I knew that I was right in telling you my secret, and in asking you to help me. I knew that you would not fail me in my hour of need, and you shall be dear to me for evermore for having helped me. There is no one in the world like you, dear Oliver Goldsmith. I have always felt that—so good, so true, so full of tenderness and that sweet simplicity which has made the greatest and best people in the world love you, as I love you, dear, dear friend! O, you are a friend to be trusted—a friend who would be ready to die for his friend. Gratitude—you do not want gratitude. It is well that you do not want gratitude, for what could gratitude say to you for what you have done? You have saved me from death—from worse than death—and I know that the thought that you have done so will be your greatest reward. I will always be near you, that you may see me and feel that I live only because you stretched out your kind hand and drew me out of the deep waters—the waters that had well-nigh closed over my head.”

He sat before her, looking up to the sweet face that looked down upon him. His eyes were full of tears. The world had dealt hardly with him; but he felt that his life had not been wholly barren of gladness, since he had lived to see—even through the dimness of tears—so sweet a face looking into his own with eyes full of the light of—was it the gratitude of a girl? Was it the love of a woman?

He could not speak. He could not even return the pressure of the small hands that clasped his own with all the gracious pressure of the tendrils of a climbing flower.

“Have you nothing to say to me—no word to give me at this moment?” she asked in a whisper, and her head was bent closer to his, and her fingers seemed to him to tighten somewhat around his own.

“What word?” said he. “Ah, my child, what word should come from such a man as I to such a woman as you? No, I have no word. Such complete happiness as is mine at this moment does not seek to find expression in words. You have given me such happiness as I never hoped for in my life. You have understood me—you alone, and that to such as I means happiness.”

She dropped his hands so suddenly as almost to suggest that she had flung them away from her. She took an impatient step or two in the direction of the window.

“You talk of my understanding you,” she said in a voice that had a sob in it. “Yes, but have you no thought of understanding me? Is it only a man's nature that is worth trying to understand? Is a woman's not worthy of a thought?”

He started up and seemed about to stretch his arms out to her, but with a sudden drawing in of his breath he put his hands behind his back and locked the fingers of both together.

Thus he stood looking at her while she had her face averted, not knowing the struggle that was going on between the two powers that are ever in the throes of conflict within the heart of a man who loves a woman well enough to have no thought of himself—no thought except for her happiness.