When with her, I thought not of myself. I had scarcely a separate or independent existence, since my senses were occupied by her, and my mind was full of those ideas which her discourse communicated. To meditate on her looks and words, and to pursue the means suggested by my own thoughts, or by her, conducive, in any way, to her good, was all my business.

"What a fate," said I, at the conclusion of one of our interviews, "has been yours! But, thank Heaven, the storm has disappeared before the age of sensibility has gone past, and without drying up every source of happiness. You are still young; all your powers unimpaired; rich in the compa.s.sion and esteem of the world; wholly independent of the claims and caprices of others; amply supplied with that means of usefulness, called money; wise in that experience which only adversity can give.

Past evils and sufferings, if incurred and endured without guilt, if called to view without remorse, make up the materials of present joy.

They cheer our most dreary hours with the widespread accents of 'well done,' and they heighten our pleasures into somewhat of celestial brilliancy, by furnishing a deep, a ruefully-deep, contrast.

"From this moment, I will cease to weep for you. I will call you the happiest of women. I will share with you your happiness by witnessing it; but that shall not content me. I must some way contribute to it.

Tell me how I shall serve you. What can I do to make you happier? Poor am I in every thing but zeal, but still I may do something. What--pray tell me, what can I do?"

She looked at me with sweet and solemn significance. What it was exactly I could not divine, yet I was strangely affected by it. It was but a glance, instantly withdrawn. She made me no answer.

"You must not be silent; you _must_ tell me what I can do for you.

Hitherto I have done nothing. All the service is on your side. Your conversation has been my study, a delightful study, but the profit has only been mine. Tell me how I can be grateful: my voice and manner, I believe, seldom belie my feelings." At this time, I had almost done what a second thought made me suspect to be unauthorized. Yet I cannot tell why. My heart had nothing in it but reverence and admiration. Was she not the subst.i.tute of my lost mamma? Would I not have clasped that beloved shade? Yet the two beings were not just the same, or I should not, as now, have checked myself, and only pressed her hand to my lips.

"Tell me," repeated I, "what can I do to serve you? I read to you a little now, and you are pleased with my reading. I copy for you when you want the time. I guide the reins for you when you choose to ride. Humble offices, indeed, though, perhaps, all that a raw youth like me can do for you; but I can be still more a.s.siduous. I can read several hours in the day, instead of one. I can write ten times as much as now.

"Are you not my lost mamma come back again? And yet, not _exactly_ her, I think. Something different; something better, I believe, if that be possible. At any rate, methinks I would be wholly yours. I shall be impatient and uneasy till every act, every thought, every minute, someway does you good.

"How!" said I, (her eye, still averted, seemed to hold back the tear with difficulty, and she made a motion as if to rise,) "have I grieved you? Have I been importunate? Forgive me if I have offended you."

Her eyes now overflowed without restraint. She articulated, with difficulty, "Tears are too prompt with me of late; but they did not upbraid you. Pain has often caused them to flow, but now it--is--_pleasure_."

"What a heart must yours be!" I resumed. "When susceptible of such pleasures, what pangs must formerly have rent it!--But you are not displeased, you say, with my importunate zeal. You will accept me as your own in every thing. Direct me; prescribe to me. There must be _something_ in which I can be of still more use to you; some way in which I can be wholly yours----"

"_Wholly mine!_" she repeated, in a smothered voice, and rising. "Leave me, Arthur. It is too late for you to be here. It was wrong to stay so late."

"I have been wrong; but how too late? I entered but this moment. It is twilight still; is it not?"

"No: it is almost twelve. You have been here a long four hours; short ones I would rather say,--but indeed you must go."

"What made me so thoughtless of the time? But I will go, yet not till you forgive me." I approached her with a confidence and for a purpose at which, upon reflection, I am not a little surprised; but the being called Mervyn is not the same in her company and in that of another.

What is the difference, and whence comes it? Her words and looks engross me. My mind wants room for any other object. But why inquire whence the difference? The superiority of her merits and attractions to all those whom I knew would surely account for my fervour. Indifference, if I felt it, would be the only just occasion of wonder.

The hour was, indeed, too late, and I hastened home. Stevens was waiting my return with some anxiety. I apologized for my delay, and recounted to him what had just pa.s.sed. He listened with more than usual interest.

When I had finished,--

"Mervyn," said he, "you seem not be aware of your present situation.

From what you now tell me, and from what you have formerly told me, one thing seems very plain to me."

"Pr'ythee, what is it?"

"Eliza Hadwin:--do you wish--could you bear--to see her the wife of another?"

"Five years hence I will answer you. Then my answer may be, 'No; I wish her only to be mine.' Till then, I wish her only to be my pupil, my ward, my sister."

"But these are remote considerations; they are bars to marriage, but not to love. Would it not molest and disquiet you to observe in her a pa.s.sion for another?"

"It would, but only on her own account; not on mine. At a suitable age it is very likely I may love her, because it is likely, if she holds on in her present career, she will then be worthy; but at present, though I would die to insure her happiness, I have no wish to insure it by marriage with her."

"Is there no other whom you love?"

"No. There is one worthier than all others; one whom I wish the woman who shall be my wife to resemble in all things."

"And who is this model?"

"You know I can only mean Achsa Fielding."

"If you love her likeness, why not love herself?"

I felt my heart leap.--"What a thought is that! Love her I _do_ as I love my G.o.d; as I love virtue. To love her in another sense would brand me for a lunatic."

"To love her as a woman, then, appears to you an act of folly."

"In me it would be worse than folly. 'Twould be frenzy."

"And why?"

"Why? Really, my friend, you astonish me. Nay, you startle me--for a question like that implies a doubt in you whether I have not actually harboured the thought."

"No," said he, smiling, "presumptuous though you be, you have not, to-be-sure, reached so high a pitch. But still, though I think you innocent of so heinous an offence, there is no harm in asking why you might not love her, and even seek her for a wife."

Achsa Fielding _my wife_! Good Heaven!--The very sound threw my soul into unconquerable tumults. "Take care, my friend," continued I, in beseeching accents, "you may do me more injury than you conceive, by even starting such a thought."

"True," said he, "as long as such obstacles exist to your success; so many incurable objections: for instance, she is six years older than you."

"That is an advantage. Her age is what it ought to be."

"But she has been a wife and mother already."

"That is likewise an advantage. She has wisdom, because she has experience. Her sensibilities are stronger, because they have been exercised and chastened. Her first marriage was unfortunate. The purer is the felicity she will taste in a second! If her second choice be propitious, the greater her tenderness and grat.i.tude."

"But she is a foreigner; independent of control, and rich."

"All which are blessings to herself, and to him for whom her hand is reserved; especially if, like me, he is indigent."

"But then she is unsightly as a _night-hag_, tawny as a Moor, the eye of a gipsy, low in stature, contemptibly diminutive, scarcely bulk enough to cast a shadow as she walks, less luxuriance than a charred log, fewer elasticities than a sheet pebble."

"Hush! hush! blasphemer!"--(and I put my hand before his mouth)--"have I not told you that in mind, person, and condition, she is the type after which my enamoured fancy has modelled my wife?"

"Oh ho! Then the objection does not lie with you. It lies with her, it seems. She can find nothing in you to esteem! And, pray, for what faults do you think she would reject you?"

"I cannot tell. That she can ever balance for a moment, on such a question, is incredible. _Me! me!_ That Achsa Fielding should think of me!"

"Incredible, indeed! You, who are loathsome in your person, an idiot in your understanding, a villain in your morals! deformed! withered! vain, stupid, and malignant. That such a one should choose _you_ for an idol!"

"Pray, my friend," said I, anxiously, "jest not. What mean you by a hint of this kind?"

"I will not jest, then, but will soberly inquire, what faults are they which make this lady's choice of you so incredible? You are younger than she, though no one, who merely observed your manners and heard you talk, would take you to be under thirty. You are poor: are these impediments?"

"I should think not. I have heard her reason with admirable eloquence against the vain distinctions of property and nation and rank. They were once of moment in her eyes; but the sufferings, humiliations, and reflections of years have cured her of the folly. Her nation has suffered too much by the inhuman antipathies of religious and political faction; she, herself, has felt so often the contumelies of the rich, the high-born, and the bigoted, that----"