“Had not!” interrupted Helen, “I always heard——”
“He did not think so, my dear; no matter what others thought, at least so I felt at that time. My identity is so much changed that I can look back upon this now, and tell it all to you calmly.
“It was at a rehearsal of ancient music; I went there accidentally one morning without my mother, with a certain old duchess and her daughters; the dowager full of some Indian screen which she was going to buy; the daughters, intent, one of them, on a quarrel between two of the singers; the other upon loves and hates of her own. I was the only one of the party who had any real taste for music. I was then particularly fond of it.
“Well, my dear, I must come to the point,” her voice changing as she spoke.—“After such a lapse of time, during which my mind, my whole self has so changed, I could not have believed before I began to speak on this subject, that these reminiscences could have so moved me; but it is merely this sudden wakening of ideas long dormant, for years not called up, never put into words.
“I was sitting, wrapt in a silent ecstasy of pleasure, leaning back behind the whispering party, when I saw him come in, and, thinking only of his sharing my delight, I made an effort to catch his attention, but he did not see me—his eye was fixed on another; I followed that eye, and saw that most beautiful creature on which it fixed; I saw him seat himself beside her—one look was enough—it was conviction. A pang went through me; I grew cold, but made no sound nor motion; I gasped for breath, I believe, but I did not faint. None cared for me; I was unnoticed—saved from the abasement of pity. I struggled to retain my self-command, and was enabled to complete the purpose on which I then—even then, resolved. That resolve gave me force.
“In any great emotion we can speak better to those who do not care for us than to those who feel for us. More calmly than I now speak to you, I turned to the person who then sat beside me, to the dowager whose heart was in the Indian screen, and begged that I might not longer detain her, as I wished that she would carry me home—she readily complied: I had presence of mind enough to move when we could do so without attracting attention. It was well that woman talked as she did all the way home; she never saw, never suspected, the agony of her to whom she spoke. I ran up to my own room, bolted the door, and threw myself into a chair; that is the last thing I remember, till I found myself lying on the floor, wakening from a state of insensibility. I know not what time had elapsed; so as soon as I could I rang for my maid; she had knocked at my door, and, supposing I slept, had not disturbed me—my mother, I found, had not yet returned.
“I dressed for dinner: HE was to dine with us. It was my custom to see him for a few minutes before the rest of the company arrived. No time ever appeared to me so dreadfully long as the interval between my being dressed that day and his arrival.
“I heard him coming up stairs: my heart beat so violently that I feared I should not be able to speak with dignity and composure, but the motive was sufficient.
“What I said I know not; I am certain only that it was without one word of reproach. What I had at one glance foreboded was true—he acknowledged it. I released him from all engagement to me. I saw he was evidently relieved by the determined tone of my refusal—at what expense to my heart he was set free, he saw not—never knew—never suspected. But after that first involuntary expression of the pleasure of relief, I saw in his countenance surprise, a sort of mortified astonishment at my self-possession. I own my woman’s pride enjoyed this; it was something better than pride—the sense of the preservation of my dignity. I felt that in this shipwreck of my happiness I made no cowardly exposure of my feelings, but he did not understand me. Our minds, as I now found, moved in different orbits. We could not comprehend each other. Instead of feeling, as the instinct of generosity would have taught him to feel, that I was sacrificing my happiness to his, he told me that he now believed I had never loved him. My eyes were opened—I saw him at once as he really was. The ungenerous look upon self-devotion as madness, folly, or art: he could not think me a fool, he did not think me mad, artful I believe he did suspect me to be; he concluded that I made the discovery of his inconstancy an excuse for my own; he thought me, perhaps, worse than capricious, interested—for, our engagement being unknown, a lover of higher rank had, in the interval, presented himself. My perception of this base suspicion was useful to me at the moment, as it roused my spirit, and I went through the better, and without relapse of tenderness, with that which I had undertaken. One condition only I made; I insisted that this explanation should rest between us two; that, in fact, and in manner, the breaking off the match should be left entirely to me. And to this part of the business I now look back with satisfaction, and I have honest pride in telling you, who will feel the same for me, that I practised in the whole conduct of the affair no deceit of any kind, not one falsehood was told. The world knew nothing; there my mother had been prudent. She was the only person to whom I was bound to explain—to speak, I mean, for I did not feel myself bound to explain. Perfect confidence only can command perfect confidence in whatever relation of life. I told her all that she had a right to know. I announced to her that the intended marriage could never be—that I objected to it; that both our minds were changed; that we were both satisfied in having released each other from our mutual engagement. I had, as I foresaw, to endure my mother’s anger, her entreaties, her endless surprise, her bitter disappointment; but she exhausted all these, and her mind turned sooner than I had expected to that hope of higher establishment which amused her during the rest of the season in London. Two months of it were still to be passed—to me the two most painful months of my existence. The daily, nightly, effort of appearing in public, while I was thus wretched, in the full gala of life in the midst of the young, the gay, the happy—broken-hearted as I felt—it was an effort beyond my strength. That summer was, I remember, intolerably hot. Whenever my mother observed that I looked pale, and that my spirits were not so good as formerly, I exerted myself more and more; accepted every invitation because I dared not refuse; I danced at this ball, and the next, and the next; urged on, I finished to the dregs the dissipation of the season.
“My mother certainly made me do dreadfully too much. But I blame others, as we usually do when we are ourselves the most to blame—I had attempted that which could not be done. By suppressing all outward sign of suffering, allowing no vent for sorrow in words or tears—by actual force of compression—I thought at once to extinguish my feelings. Little did I know of the human heart when I thought this! The weak are wise in yielding to the first shock. They cannot be struck to the earth who sink prostrate; sorrow has little power where there is no resistance.—‘The flesh will follow where the pincers tear.’ Mine was a presumptuous—it had nearly been a fatal struggle. That London season at last over, we got into the country; I expected rest, but found none. The pressing necessity for exertion over, the stimulus ceasing, I sunk—sunk into a state of apathy. Time enough had elapsed between the breaking off of my marriage and the appearance of this illness, to prevent any ideas on my mother’s part of cause and effect, ideas indeed which were never much looked for, or well joined in her mind. The world knew nothing of the matter. My illness went under the convenient head ‘nervous.’ I heard all the opinions pronounced on my case, and knew they were all mistaken, but I swallowed whatever they pleased. No physician, I repeated to myself, can ‘minister to a mind diseased.’