The Jessamy Bride

by Frank Frankfort Moore

When Goldsmith reached his chambers in Brick Court, he found awaiting him a letter from Colman, the lessee of Covent Garden Theatre, to let him know that Woodward and Mrs. Abington had resigned their parts in his comedy which had been in rehearsal for a week, and that he, Colman, felt they were right in doing so, as the failure of the piece was so inevitable. He hoped that Dr. Goldsmith would be discreet enough to sanction its withdrawal while its withdrawal was still possible.

He read this letter—one of several which he had received from Colman during the week prophesying disaster—without impatience, and threw it aside without a further thought. He had no thought for anything save the expression that had been on the face of Mary Horneck as she had spoken his lines—

“When lovely woman stoops to folly,

And finds too late....”

“Too late——” She had not got beyond those words. Her voice had broken, as he had often believed that his beloved Olivia's voice had broken, when trying to sing her song in which a woman's despair is enshrined for all ages. Her voice had broken, though not with the stress of tears. It would not have been so full of despair if tears had been in her eyes. Where there are tears there is hope. But her voice....

What was he to believe? What was he to think regarding that sweet girl who had, since the first day he had known her, treated him as no other human being had ever treated him? The whole family of the Hornecks had shown themselves to be his best friends. They insisted on his placing himself on the most familiar footing in regard to their house, and when Little Comedy married she maintained the pleasant intimacy with him which had begun at Sir Joshua Reynolds's dinner-table. The days that he spent at the Bunburys' house at Barton were among the pleasantest of his life.

But, fond though he was of Mrs. Bun-bury, her sister Mary, his “Jessamy Bride,” drew him to her by a deeper and warmer affection. He had felt from the first hour of meeting her that she understood his nature—that in her he had at last found some one who could give him the sympathy which he sought. More than once she had proved to him that she recognised the greatness of his nature—his simplicity, his generosity, the tenderness of his heart for all things that suffered, his trustfulness, that caused him to be so frequently imposed upon, his intolerance of hypocrisy and false sentiment, though false sentiment was the note of the most successful productions of the day. Above all, he felt that she recognised his true attitude in relation to English literature. If he was compelled to work in uncongenial channels in order to earn his daily bread, he himself never forgot what he owed to English literature. How nobly he discharged this debt his “Traveller,” “The Vicar of Wakefield,” “The Deserted Village,” and “The Good Natured Man” testified at intervals. He felt that he was the truest poet, the sincerest dramatist, of the period, and he never allowed the work which he was compelled to do for the booksellers to turn him aside from his high aims.

It was because Mary Horneck proved to him daily that she understood what his aims were he regarded her as different from all the rest of the world. She did not talk to him of sympathising with him, but she understood him and sympathised with him.

As he lay back in his chair now asking himself what he should think of her, he recalled every day that he had passed in her company, from the time of their first meeting at Reynolds's house until he had accompanied her and her mother and sister on the tour through France. He remembered how, the previous year, she had stirred his heart on returning from a long visit to her native Devonshire by a clasp of the hand and a look of gratitude, as she spoke the name of the book which he had sent to her with a letter. “The Vicar of Wakefield” was the book, and she had said—

“You can never, never know what it has been to me—what it has done for me.” Her eyes had at that time been full of tears of gratitude—of affection, and the sound of her voice and the sight of her liquid eyes had overcome him. He knew there was a bond between them that would not be easily severed.