| | |
|
| 1 | The year came round to Christmas-time, and I had been at home above
|
| 2 | two months. I had seen Agnes frequently. However loud the general
|
| 3 | voice might be in giving me encouragement, and however fervent the
|
| 4 | emotions and endeavours to which it roused me, I heard her lightest
|
| 5 | word of praise as I heard nothing else.
|
| 6 | At least once a week, and sometimes oftener, I rode over there, and
|
| 7 | passed the evening. I usually rode back at night; for the old
|
| 8 | unhappy sense was always hovering about me now - most sorrowfully
|
| 9 | when I left her - and I was glad to be up and out, rather than
|
| 10 | wandering over the past in weary wakefulness or miserable dreams.
|
| 11 | I wore away the longest part of many wild sad nights, in those
|
| 12 | rides; reviving, as I went, the thoughts that had occupied me in my
|
| 13 | long absence.
|
| 14 | Or, if I were to say rather that I listened to the echoes of those
|
| 15 | thoughts, I should better express the truth. They spoke to me from
|
| 16 | afar off. I had put them at a distance, and accepted my inevitable
|
| 17 | place. When I read to Agnes what I wrote; when I saw her listening
|
| 18 | face; moved her to smiles or tears; and heard her cordial voice so
|
| 19 | earnest on the shadowy events of that imaginative world in which I
|
| 20 | lived; I thought what a fate mine might have been - but only
|
| 21 | thought so, as I had thought after I was married to Dora, what I
|
| 22 | could have wished my wife to be.
|
| 23 | My duty to Agnes, who loved me with a love, which, if I disquieted,
|
| 24 | I wronged most selfishly and poorly, and could never restore; my
|
| 25 | matured assurance that I, who had worked out my own destiny, and
|
| 26 | won what I had impetuously set my heart on, had no right to murmur,
|
| 27 | and must bear; comprised what I felt and what I had learned. But
|
| 28 | I loved her: and now it even became some consolation to me, vaguely
|
| 29 | to conceive a distant day when I might blamelessly avow it; when
|
| 30 | all this should be over; when I could say 'Agnes, so it was when I
|
| 31 | came home; and now I am old, and I never have loved since!'
|
| 32 | She did not once show me any change in herself. What she always
|
| 33 | had been to me, she still was; wholly unaltered.
|
| 34 | Between my aunt and me there had been something, in this connexion,
|
| 35 | since the night of my return, which I cannot call a restraint, or
|
| 36 | an avoidance of the subject, so much as an implied understanding
|
| 37 | that we thought of it together, but did not shape our thoughts into
|
| 38 | words. When, according to our old custom, we sat before the fire
|
| 39 | at night, we often fell into this train; as naturally, and as
|
| 40 | consciously to each other, as if we had unreservedly said so. But
|
| 41 | we preserved an unbroken silence. I believed that she had read, or
|
| 42 | partly read, my thoughts that night; and that she fully
|
| 43 | comprehended why I gave mine no more distinct expression.
|
| 44 | This Christmas-time being come, and Agnes having reposed no new
|
| 45 | confidence in me, a doubt that had several times arisen in my mind
|
| 46 | - whether she could have that perception of the true state of my
|
| 47 | breast, which restrained her with the apprehension of giving me
|
| 48 | pain - began to oppress me heavily. If that were so, my sacrifice
|
| 49 | was nothing; my plainest obligation to her unfulfilled; and every
|
| 50 | poor action I had shrunk from, I was hourly doing. I resolved to
|
| 51 | set this right beyond all doubt; - if such a barrier were between
|
| 52 | us, to break it down at once with a determined hand.
|
| 53 | It was - what lasting reason have I to remember it! - a cold,
|
| 54 | harsh, winter day. There had been snow, some hours before; and it
|
| 55 | lay, not deep, but hard-frozen on the ground. Out at sea, beyond
|
| 56 | my window, the wind blew ruggedly from the north. I had been
|
| 57 | thinking of it, sweeping over those mountain wastes of snow in
|
| 58 | Switzerland, then inaccessible to any human foot; and had been
|
| 59 | speculating which was the lonelier, those solitary regions, or a
|
| 60 | deserted ocean.
|
| 61 | 'Riding today, Trot?' said my aunt, putting her head in at the
|
| 62 | door.
|
| 63 | 'Yes,' said I, 'I am going over to Canterbury. It's a good day for
|
| 64 | a ride.'
|
| 65 | 'I hope your horse may think so too,' said my aunt; 'but at present
|
| 66 | he is holding down his head and his ears, standing before the door
|
| 67 | there, as if he thought his stable preferable.'
|
| 68 | My aunt, I may observe, allowed my horse on the forbidden ground,
|
| 69 | but had not at all relented towards the donkeys.
|
| 70 | 'He will be fresh enough, presently!' said I.
|
| 71 | 'The ride will do his master good, at all events,' observed my
|
| 72 | aunt, glancing at the papers on my table. 'Ah, child, you pass a
|
| 73 | good many hours here! I never thought, when I used to read books,
|
| 74 | what work it was to write them.'
|
| 75 | 'It's work enough to read them, sometimes,' I returned. 'As to the
|
| 76 | writing, it has its own charms, aunt.'
|
| 77 | 'Ah! I see!' said my aunt. 'Ambition, love of approbation,
|
| 78 | sympathy, and much more, I suppose? Well: go along with you!'
|
| 79 | 'Do you know anything more,' said I, standing composedly before her
|
| 80 | - she had patted me on the shoulder, and sat down in my chair - 'of
|
| 81 | that attachment of Agnes?'
|
| 82 | She looked up in my face a little while, before replying:
|
| 83 | 'I think I do, Trot.'
|
| 84 | 'Are you confirmed in your impression?' I inquired.
|
| 85 | 'I think I am, Trot.'
|
| 86 | She looked so steadfastly at me: with a kind of doubt, or pity, or
|
| 87 | suspense in her affection: that I summoned the stronger
|
| 88 | determination to show her a perfectly cheerful face.
|
| 89 | 'And what is more, Trot -' said my aunt.
|
| 90 | 'Yes!'
|
| 91 | 'I think Agnes is going to be married.'
|
| 92 | 'God bless her!' said I, cheerfully.
|
| 93 | 'God bless her!' said my aunt, 'and her husband too!'
|
| 94 | I echoed it, parted from my aunt, and went lightly downstairs,
|
| 95 | mounted, and rode away. There was greater reason than before to do
|
| 96 | what I had resolved to do.
|
| 97 | How well I recollect the wintry ride! The frozen particles of ice,
|
| 98 | brushed from the blades of grass by the wind, and borne across my
|
| 99 | face; the hard clatter of the horse's hoofs, beating a tune upon
|
| 100 | the ground; the stiff-tilled soil; the snowdrift, lightly eddying
|
| 101 | in the chalk-pit as the breeze ruffled it; the smoking team with
|
| 102 | the waggon of old hay, stopping to breathe on the hill-top, and
|
| 103 | shaking their bells musically; the whitened slopes and sweeps of
|
| 104 | Down-land lying against the dark sky, as if they were drawn on a
|
| 105 | huge slate!
|
| 106 | I found Agnes alone. The little girls had gone to their own homes
|
| 107 | now, and she was alone by the fire, reading. She put down her book
|
| 108 | on seeing me come in; and having welcomed me as usual, took her
|
| 109 | work-basket and sat in one of the old-fashioned windows.
|
| 110 | I sat beside her on the window-seat, and we talked of what I was
|
| 111 | doing, and when it would be done, and of the progress I had made
|
| 112 | since my last visit. Agnes was very cheerful; and laughingly
|
| 113 | predicted that I should soon become too famous to be talked to, on
|
| 114 | such subjects.
|
| 115 | 'So I make the most of the present time, you see,' said Agnes, 'and
|
| 116 | talk to you while I may.'
|
| 117 | As I looked at her beautiful face, observant of her work, she
|
| 118 | raised her mild clear eyes, and saw that I was looking at her.
|
| 119 | 'You are thoughtful today, Trotwood!'
|
| 120 | 'Agnes, shall I tell you what about? I came to tell you.'
|
| 121 | She put aside her work, as she was used to do when we were
|
| 122 | seriously discussing anything; and gave me her whole attention.
|
| 123 | 'My dear Agnes, do you doubt my being true to you?'
|
| 124 | 'No!' she answered, with a look of astonishment.
|
| 125 | 'Do you doubt my being what I always have been to you?'
|
| 126 | 'No!' she answered, as before.
|
| 127 | 'Do you remember that I tried to tell you, when I came home, what
|
| 128 | a debt of gratitude I owed you, dearest Agnes, and how fervently I
|
| 129 | felt towards you?'
|
| 130 | 'I remember it,' she said, gently, 'very well.'
|
| 131 | 'You have a secret,' said I. 'Let me share it, Agnes.'
|
| 132 | She cast down her eyes, and trembled.
|
| 133 | 'I could hardly fail to know, even if I had not heard - but from
|
| 134 | other lips than yours, Agnes, which seems strange - that there is
|
| 135 | someone upon whom you have bestowed the treasure of your love. Do
|
| 136 | not shut me out of what concerns your happiness so nearly! If you
|
| 137 | can trust me, as you say you can, and as I know you may, let me be
|
| 138 | your friend, your brother, in this matter, of all others!'
|
| 139 | With an appealing, almost a reproachful, glance, she rose from the
|
| 140 | window; and hurrying across the room as if without knowing where,
|
| 141 | put her hands before her face, and burst into such tears as smote
|
| 142 | me to the heart.
|
| 143 | And yet they awakened something in me, bringing promise to my
|
| 144 | heart. Without my knowing why, these tears allied themselves with
|
| 145 | the quietly sad smile which was so fixed in my remembrance, and
|
| 146 | shook me more with hope than fear or sorrow.
|
| 147 | 'Agnes! Sister! Dearest! What have I done?'
|
| 148 | 'Let me go away, Trotwood. I am not well. I am not myself. I
|
| 149 | will speak to you by and by - another time. I will write to you.
|
| 150 | Don't speak to me now. Don't! don't!'
|
| 151 | I sought to recollect what she had said, when I had spoken to her
|
| 152 | on that former night, of her affection needing no return. It
|
| 153 | seemed a very world that I must search through in a moment.
|
| 154 | 'Agnes, I cannot bear to see you so, and think that I have been the
|
| 155 | cause. My dearest girl, dearer to me than anything in life, if you
|
| 156 | are unhappy, let me share your unhappiness. If you are in need of
|
| 157 | help or counsel, let me try to give it to you. If you have indeed
|
| 158 | a burden on your heart, let me try to lighten it. For whom do I
|
| 159 | live now, Agnes, if it is not for you!'
|
| 160 | 'Oh, spare me! I am not myself! Another time!' was all I could
|
| 161 | distinguish.
|
| 162 | Was it a selfish error that was leading me away? Or, having once
|
| 163 | a clue to hope, was there something opening to me that I had not
|
| 164 | dared to think of?
|
| 165 | 'I must say more. I cannot let you leave me so! For Heaven's sake,
|
| 166 | Agnes, let us not mistake each other after all these years, and all
|
| 167 | that has come and gone with them! I must speak plainly. If you
|
| 168 | have any lingering thought that I could envy the happiness you will
|
| 169 | confer; that I could not resign you to a dearer protector, of your
|
| 170 | own choosing; that I could not, from my removed place, be a
|
| 171 | contented witness of your joy; dismiss it, for I don't deserve it!
|
| 172 | I have not suffered quite in vain. You have not taught me quite in
|
| 173 | vain. There is no alloy of self in what I feel for you.'
|
| 174 | She was quiet now. In a little time, she turned her pale face
|
| 175 | towards me, and said in a low voice, broken here and there, but
|
| 176 | very clear:
|
| 177 | 'I owe it to your pure friendship for me, Trotwood - which, indeed,
|
| 178 | I do not doubt - to tell you, you are mistaken. I can do no more.
|
| 179 | If I have sometimes, in the course of years, wanted help and
|
| 180 | counsel, they have come to me. If I have sometimes been unhappy,
|
| 181 | the feeling has passed away. If I have ever had a burden on my
|
| 182 | heart, it has been lightened for me. If I have any secret, it is
|
| 183 | - no new one; and is - not what you suppose. I cannot reveal it,
|
| 184 | or divide it. It has long been mine, and must remain mine.'
|
| 185 | 'Agnes! Stay! A moment!'
|
| 186 | She was going away, but I detained her. I clasped my arm about her
|
| 187 | waist. 'In the course of years!' 'It is not a new one!' New
|
| 188 | thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the
|
| 189 | colours of my life were changing.
|
| 190 | 'Dearest Agnes! Whom I so respect and honour - whom I so devotedly
|
| 191 | love! When I came here today, I thought that nothing could have
|
| 192 | wrested this confession from me. I thought I could have kept it in
|
| 193 | my bosom all our lives, till we were old. But, Agnes, if I have
|
| 194 | indeed any new-born hope that I may ever call you something more
|
| 195 | than Sister, widely different from Sister! -'
|
| 196 | Her tears fell fast; but they were not like those she had lately
|
| 197 | shed, and I saw my hope brighten in them.
|
| 198 | 'Agnes! Ever my guide, and best support! If you had been more
|
| 199 | mindful of yourself, and less of me, when we grew up here together,
|
| 200 | I think my heedless fancy never would have wandered from you. But
|
| 201 | you were so much better than I, so necessary to me in every boyish
|
| 202 | hope and disappointment, that to have you to confide in, and rely
|
| 203 | upon in everything, became a second nature, supplanting for the
|
| 204 | time the first and greater one of loving you as I do!'
|
| 205 | Still weeping, but not sadly - joyfully! And clasped in my arms as
|
| 206 | she had never been, as I had thought she never was to be!
|
| 207 | 'When I loved Dora - fondly, Agnes, as you know -'
|
| 208 | 'Yes!' she cried, earnestly. 'I am glad to know it!'
|
| 209 | 'When I loved her - even then, my love would have been incomplete,
|
| 210 | without your sympathy. I had it, and it was perfected. And when
|
| 211 | I lost her, Agnes, what should I have been without you, still!'
|
| 212 | Closer in my arms, nearer to my heart, her trembling hand upon my
|
| 213 | shoulder, her sweet eyes shining through her tears, on mine!
|
| 214 | 'I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you.
|
| 215 | I returned home, loving you!'
|
| 216 | And now, I tried to tell her of the struggle I had had, and the
|
| 217 | conclusion I had come to. I tried to lay my mind before her,
|
| 218 | truly, and entirely. I tried to show her how I had hoped I had
|
| 219 | come into the better knowledge of myself and of her; how I had
|
| 220 | resigned myself to what that better knowledge brought; and how I
|
| 221 | had come there, even that day, in my fidelity to this. If she did
|
| 222 | so love me (I said) that she could take me for her husband, she
|
| 223 | could do so, on no deserving of mine, except upon the truth of my
|
| 224 | love for her, and the trouble in which it had ripened to be what it
|
| 225 | was; and hence it was that I revealed it. And O, Agnes, even out
|
| 226 | of thy true eyes, in that same time, the spirit of my child-wife
|
| 227 | looked upon me, saying it was well; and winning me, through thee,
|
| 228 | to tenderest recollections of the Blossom that had withered in its
|
| 229 | bloom!
|
| 230 | 'I am so blest, Trotwood - my heart is so overcharged - but there
|
| 231 | is one thing I must say.'
|
| 232 | 'Dearest, what?'
|
| 233 | She laid her gentle hands upon my shoulders, and looked calmly in
|
| 234 | my face.
|
| 235 | 'Do you know, yet, what it is?'
|
| 236 | 'I am afraid to speculate on what it is. Tell me, my dear.'
|
| 237 | 'I have loved you all my life!'
|
| 238 | O, we were happy, we were happy! Our tears were not for the trials
|
| 239 | (hers so much the greater) through which we had come to be thus,
|
| 240 | but for the rapture of being thus, never to be divided more!
|
| 241 | We walked, that winter evening, in the fields together; and the
|
| 242 | blessed calm within us seemed to be partaken by the frosty air.
|
| 243 | The early stars began to shine while we were lingering on, and
|
| 244 | looking up to them, we thanked our GOD for having guided us to this
|
| 245 | tranquillity.
|
| 246 | We stood together in the same old-fashioned window at night, when
|
| 247 | the moon was shining; Agnes with her quiet eyes raised up to it; I
|
| 248 | following her glance. Long miles of road then opened out before my
|
| 249 | mind; and, toiling on, I saw a ragged way-worn boy, forsaken and
|
| 250 | neglected, who should come to call even the heart now beating
|
| 251 | against mine, his own.
|
| 252 | It was nearly dinner-time next day when we appeared before my aunt.
|
| 253 | She was up in my study, Peggotty said: which it was her pride to
|
| 254 | keep in readiness and order for me. We found her, in her
|
| 255 | spectacles, sitting by the fire.
|
| 256 | 'Goodness me!' said my aunt, peering through the dusk, 'who's this
|
| 257 | you're bringing home?'
|
| 258 | 'Agnes,' said I.
|
| 259 | As we had arranged to say nothing at first, my aunt was not a
|
| 260 | little discomfited. She darted a hopeful glance at me, when I said
|
| 261 | 'Agnes'; but seeing that I looked as usual, she took off her
|
| 262 | spectacles in despair, and rubbed her nose with them.
|
| 263 | She greeted Agnes heartily, nevertheless; and we were soon in the
|
| 264 | lighted parlour downstairs, at dinner. My aunt put on her
|
| 265 | spectacles twice or thrice, to take another look at me, but as
|
| 266 | often took them off again, disappointed, and rubbed her nose with
|
| 267 | them. Much to the discomfiture of Mr. Dick, who knew this to be a
|
| 268 | bad symptom.
|
| 269 | 'By the by, aunt,' said I, after dinner; 'I have been speaking to
|
| 270 | Agnes about what you told me.'
|
| 271 | 'Then, Trot,' said my aunt, turning scarlet, 'you did wrong, and
|
| 272 | broke your promise.'
|
| 273 | 'You are not angry, aunt, I trust? I am sure you won't be, when
|
| 274 | you learn that Agnes is not unhappy in any attachment.'
|
| 275 | 'Stuff and nonsense!' said my aunt.
|
| 276 | As my aunt appeared to be annoyed, I thought the best way was to
|
| 277 | cut her annoyance short. I took Agnes in my arm to the back of her
|
| 278 | chair, and we both leaned over her. My aunt, with one clap of her
|
| 279 | hands, and one look through her spectacles, immediately went into
|
| 280 | hysterics, for the first and only time in all my knowledge of her.
|
| 281 | The hysterics called up Peggotty. The moment my aunt was restored,
|
| 282 | she flew at Peggotty, and calling her a silly old creature, hugged
|
| 283 | her with all her might. After that, she hugged Mr. Dick (who was
|
| 284 | highly honoured, but a good deal surprised); and after that, told
|
| 285 | them why. Then, we were all happy together.
|
| 286 | I could not discover whether my aunt, in her last short
|
| 287 | conversation with me, had fallen on a pious fraud, or had really
|
| 288 | mistaken the state of my mind. It was quite enough, she said, that
|
| 289 | she had told me Agnes was going to be married; and that I now knew
|
| 290 | better than anyone how true it was.
|
| 291 | We were married within a fortnight. Traddles and Sophy, and Doctor
|
| 292 | and Mrs. Strong, were the only guests at our quiet wedding. We
|
| 293 | left them full of joy; and drove away together. Clasped in my
|
| 294 | embrace, I held the source of every worthy aspiration I had ever
|
| 295 | had; the centre of myself, the circle of my life, my own, my wife;
|
| 296 | my love of whom was founded on a rock!
|
| 297 | 'Dearest husband!' said Agnes. 'Now that I may call you by that
|
| 298 | name, I have one thing more to tell you.'
|
| 299 | 'Let me hear it, love.'
|
| 300 | 'It grows out of the night when Dora died. She sent you for me.'
|
| 301 | 'She did.'
|
| 302 | 'She told me that she left me something. Can you think what it
|
| 303 | was?'
|
| 304 | I believed I could. I drew the wife who had so long loved me,
|
| 305 | closer to my side.
|
| 306 | 'She told me that she made a last request to me, and left me a last
|
| 307 | charge.'
|
| 308 | 'And it was -'
|
| 309 | 'That only I would occupy this vacant place.'
|
| 310 | And Agnes laid her head upon my breast, and wept; and I wept with
|
| 311 | her, though we were so happy.
|
