We read little of such lives in books. No doubt the beauty and sacredness that inhabit them make writers loth to invade their holy peace.
CHAPTER XV.
[HOW WILLIAM GODDARD CHANGED HIS NAME.]
This gentle woman, who had long since left youth behind her, was experiencing for the first time the influence of romantic love. She was in her forty-seventh year, a widow who had been a faithful and devoted wife, and yet her heart was the heart of a girl. The age of passion was passed. The fact that up to the time of her marriage she had had no sweetheart, had never once found her heart dwelling on any young man of her acquaintance, may prove that she was never capable of the passion of love. There was at present no passion in her soul. But the overpowering and self-annihilating sentiment of love filled her now, and for the first time in her life she felt that she lived.
With her, as in all true love worthy of the name, she wished to get nothing; the desire, the insatiable desire, to give was paramount, with no rival feeling near its throne. There was no coquetry of concealment in her words or manner. When this man asked her to be his wife she took him tenderly by the hand and placed before him all the reasons why she was not worthy of him.
She was, she told him, older than he by many years. She was a widow. She had suffered long ill-health, was not now quite recovered, and had been cautioned by the doctors that her extraordinary respite from helplessness might be ended any moment. She could never hope to be an active woman again. She could not go about with him as his wife should. He was a young man. A man of five-and-thirty was young enough to marry a girl thirty years younger than she was. He had told her he had found a wonderful plant in South America, a plant which would yield a fibre of inestimable value, a fibre that one day might be expected to supersede cotton and wool. He had told her that as soon as he had secured his patent and got up a company he should be one of the richest men in England, in the world. Why should he, whose star was rising, link himself to her, whose star was sinking fast, who could not hope to live very long, and who must not expect that even the short span allowed to her would be unbroken by a return of infirmity and helplessness? If he wanted money to carry out his great scheme, if he wanted not to share the harvest of his discovery with strangers, she was not without means, and every penny she could command was most heartily and humbly at his service.
He listened to her without any show of impatience, without a single interruption. When she had done he went on as though she had said nothing.
"I have everything on earth I want but one, and that one is more important to my happiness than all the rest put together. I want you for my wife. Will you marry me, Nellie?"
She smiled, and gazed at him out of eyes that told him he was unspeakably dear to her. "If you will have me you may," she said, and smiled again. Her husband had never in all their joint lives called her anything but Ellen. It touched her tender and confiding heart to be, as it were, drawn by that dear and familiar form of her name into the heart and nature of this man.
"I must and will," he said, and kissed her.