Amy was half terrified to see him standing in his graceful beauty before her in that solitary place. In a moment her soul was disquieted within her, and she felt that it indeed was love. She wished that she might sink into that verdant mound, from which she vainly strove to rise, as the impassioned youth lay down on the turf at her side, and, telling her to fear nothing, called her by a thousand tender and endearing names. Never till he had seen Amy had he felt one tremor of love; but now his heart was kindled, and in that utter solitude, where all was so quiet and so peaceful, there seemed to him a preternatural charm over all her character. He burst out into passionate vows and prayers, and called God to witness, that if she would love him, he would forget all distinction of rank, and marry his beautiful Amy, and she should live yet in his own hall. The words were uttered, and there was silence. Their echo sounded for a moment strange to his own ears; but he fixed his soul upon her countenance, and repeated them over and over again with wilder emphasis, and more impassioned utterance. Amy was confounded with fear and perplexity; but when she saw him kneeling before her, the meek, innocent, humble girl could not endure the sight, and said, “Sir, behold in me one willing to be your servant. Yes, willing is poor Amy Gordon to kiss your feet. I am a poor man’s daughter. Oh, sir! you surely came not hither for evil? No—no, evil dwells not in such a shape. Away then—away then, my noble master; for if Walter Harden were to see you!—if my old father knew this, his heart would break!”
Once more they parted. Amy returned home in the evening at the usual hour; but there was no peace now for her soul. Such intense and passionate love had been vowed to her—such winning and delightful expressions whispered into her heart by one so far above her in all things, but who felt no degradation in equalling her to him in the warmth and depth of his affection, that she sometimes strove to think it all but one of her wild dreams awakened by some verse or incident in some old ballad. But she had felt his kisses on her cheek; his thrilling voice was in her soul; and she was oppressed with a passion, pure, it is true, and most innocently humble, but a passion that seemed to be like life itself, never to be overcome, and that could cease only when the heart he had deluded—for what else than delusion could it be?—ceased to beat. Thus agitated, she had directed her way homewards with hurried and heedless steps. She minded not the miry pits—the quivering marshes—and the wet rushy moors. Instead of crossing the little sinuous moorland streams at their narrow places, where her light feet used to bound across them, she waded through them in her feverish anxiety, and sometimes, after hurrying along the braes, she sat suddenly down, breathless, weak, and exhausted, and retraced in weeping bewilderment all the scene of fear, joy, endearments, caresses, and wild persuasions, from which she had torn herself away, and escaped. On reaching home, she went to her bed trembling, and shivering, and drowned in tears; and could scarcely dare, much as she needed comfort, even to say her prayers. Amy was in a high fever; during the night she became delirious; and her old father sat by her bedside till morning, fearing that he was going to lose his child.
There was grief over the great strath and all its glens when the rumour spread over them that Amy Gordon was dying. Her wonderful beauty had but given a tenderer and brighter character to the love which her unsullied innocence and simple goodness had universally inspired; and it was felt, even among the sobbings of a natural affection, that if the Lily of Liddisdale should die, something would be taken away of which they were all proud, and from whose lustre there was a diffusion over their own lives. Many a gentle hand touched the closed door of her cottage, and many a low voice inquired how God was dealing with her; but where now was Walter Harden when his Lily was like to fade? He was at her bed’s foot, as her father was at its head. Was she not his sister, although she would not be his bride? And when he beheld her glazed eyes wandering unconsciously in delirium, and felt her blood throbbing so rapidly in her beautiful transparent veins, he prayed to God that Amy might recover, even although her heart were never to be his, even although it were to fly to the bosom of him whose name she constantly kept repeating in her wandering fantasies. For Amy, although she sometimes kindly whispered the name of Walter Harden, and asked why her brother came not to see her on her deathbed, yet far oftener spake beseechingly and passionately as if to that other youth, and implored him to break not the heart of a poor simple shepherdess who was willing to kiss his feet.
Neither the father of poor Amy nor Walter Harden had known before that she had ever seen young George Elliot—but they soon understood, from the innocent distraction of her speech, that the noble boy had left pure the Lily he loved, and Walter said that it belonged not to that line ever to enjure the helpless. Many a pang it gave him, no doubt, to think that his Amy’s heart, which all his life-long tenderness could not win, had yielded itself up in tumultuous joy to one—two—three meetings of an hour, or perhaps only a few minutes, with one removed so high and so far from her humble life and all its concerns. These were cold, sickening pangs of humiliation and jealousy, that might, in a less generous nature, have crushed all love. But it was not so with him; and cheerfully would Walter Harden have taken the burning fever into his own veins, so that it could have been removed from hers—cheerfully would he have laid down his own manly head on that pillow, so that Amy could have lifted up her long raven tresses, now often miserably dishevelled in her raving, and, braiding them once more, walk out well and happy into the sunshine of the beautiful day, rendered more beautiful still by her presence. Hard would it have been to have resigned her bosom to any human touch; but hideous seemed it beyond all thought to resign it to the touch of death. Let heaven but avert that doom, and his affectionate soul felt that it could be satisfied.
Out of a long deep trance-like sleep Amy at last awoke, and her eyes fell upon the face of Walter Harden. She regarded long and earnestly its pitying and solemn expression, then pressed her hand to her forehead and wept. “Is my father dead and buried—and did he die of grief and shame for his Amy? Oh! that needed not have been, for I am innocent. Neither, Walter, have I broken, nor will I ever break, my promise unto thee. I remember it well—by the Bible—and yon setting sun. But I am weak and faint. Oh! tell me, Walter! all that has happened! Have I been ill—for hours—or for days—or weeks—or months? For that I know not,—so wild and so strange, so sad and so sorrowful, so miserable and so wretched, have been my many thousand dreams!”
There was no concealment and no disguise. Amy was kindly and tenderly told by her father and her brother all that she had uttered, as far as they understood it, during her illness. Nor had the innocent creature anything more to tell. Her soul was after the fever calm, quiet, and happy. The form, voice, and shape of that beautiful youth were to her little more now than the words and the sights of a dream. Sickness and decay had brought her spirit back to all the humble and tranquil thoughts and feelings of her lowly life. In the woods, and among the hills, that bright and noble being had for a time touched her senses, her heart, her soul, and her imagination. All was new, strange, stirring, overwhelming, irresistible, and paradise to her spirit. But it was gone; and might it stay away for ever: so she prayed, as her kind brother lifted up her head with his gentle hand, and laid it down as gently on the pillow he had smoothed. “Walter! I will be your wife! for thee my affection is calm and deep,—but that other—oh! that was only a passing dream!” Walter leaned over her, and kissed her pale lips. “Yes! Walter,” she continued, “I once promised to marry none other, but now I promise to marry thee; if indeed God will forgive me for such words, lying as I am, perhaps, on my deathbed. I utter them to make you happy. If I live, life will be dear to me only for thy sake; if I die, walk thou along with my father at the coffin’s head, and lay thine Amy in the mould. I am the Lily of Liddisdale,—you know that was once the vain creature’s name!—and white, pale, and withered enough indeed is, I trow, the poor Lily now!”
Walter Harden heard her affectionate words with a deep delight, but he determined in his soul not to bind Amy down to these promises, sacred and fervent as they were, if, on her complete recovery, he discovered that they originated in gratitude, and not in love. From pure and disinterested devotion of spirit did he watch the progress of her recovery, nor did he ever allude to young Elliot but in terms of respect and admiration. Amy had expressed her surprise that he had never come to inquire how she was during her illness, and added with a sigh, “Love at first sight cannot be thought to last long. Yet surely he would have wept to hear that I was dead.” Walter then told her that he had been hurried away to France the very day after she had seen him, to attend the deathbed of his father, and had not yet returned to Scotland; but that the ladies of the Priory had sent a messenger to know how she was every day, and that to their kindness were owing many of the conveniences she had enjoyed. Poor Amy was glad to hear that she had no reason to think the noble boy would have neglected her in her illness; and she could not but look with pride upon her lover, who was not afraid to vindicate the character of one who, she had confessed, had been but too dear to her only a few weeks ago. This generosity and manly confidence on the part of her cousin quite won and subdued her heart, and Walter Harden never approached her now without awakening in her bosom something of that delightful agitation and troubled joy which her simple heart had first suffered in the presence of her young, noble lover. Amy was in love with Walter almost as much as he was with her, and the names of brother and sister, pleasant as they had ever been, were now laid aside.
Amy Gordon rose from her sickbed, and even as the flower whose name she bore, did she again lift up her drooping head beneath the dews and the sunshine. Again did she go to the hillside, and sit and sing beside her flock. But Walter Harden was oftener with her than before, and ere the harvest moon should hang her mild, clear, unhaloed orb over the late reapers on the upland grain-fields, had Amy promised that she would become his wife. She saw him now in his own natural light—the best, the most intelligent, the most industrious, and the handsomest shepherd over all the hills; and when it was known that there was to be a marriage between Walter Harden and Amy Gordon, none felt surprised, although some, sighing, said it was seldom, indeed, that fortune so allowed those to wed whom nature had united.
The Lily of Liddisdale was now bright and beautiful as ever, and was returning homewards by herself from the far-off hills during one rich golden sunset, when, in a dark hollow, she heard the sound of horses’ feet, and in an instant young George Elliot was at her side. Amy’s dream was over—and she looked on the beautiful youth with an unquaking heart. “I have been far away, Amy,—across the seas. My father—you may have heard of it—was ill, and I attended his bed. I loved him, Amy—I loved my father—but he is dead!” and here the noble youth’s tears fell fast. “Nothing now but the world’s laugh prevents me making you my wife—yes, my wife, sweetest Lily; and what care I for the world? for thou art both earth and heaven to me.
The impetuous, ardent, and impassioned boy scarcely looked in Amy’s face; he remembered her confusion, her fears, her sighs, her tears, his half-permitted kisses, his faintly repelled embraces, and all his suffered endearments of brow, lip, and cheek, in that solitary dell; so with a powerful arm he lifted her upon another steed, which, till now, she had scarcely observed; other horsemen seemed to the frightened, and speechless, and motionless maiden to be near; and away they went over the smooth turf like the wind, till her eyes were blind with the rapid flight, and her head dizzy. She heard kind words whispering in her ear; but Amy, since that fever, had never been so strong as before, and her high-blooded palfrey was now carrying her fleetly away over hill and hollow in a swoon.