The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë (top fiction books of all time .txt) 📖

to keep. I had said an unjust and cruel thing; but I must needs follow it up with something worse.

‘But, Helen!’ I began in a soft, low tone, not daring to raise my eyes to her face, ‘that man is not your husband: in the sight of heaven he has forfeited all claim to—‘ She seized my arm with a grasp of startling energy.

‘Gilbert, don’t!’ she cried, in a tone that would have pierced a heart of adamant. ‘For God’s sake, don’t you attempt these arguments! No fiend could torture me like this!’

‘I won’t, I won’t!’ said I, gently laying my hand on hers; almost as much alarmed at her vehemence as ashamed of my own misconduct.

‘Instead of acting like a true friend,’ continued she, breaking from me, and throwing herself into the old arm-chair, ‘and helping me with all your might—or rather taking your own part in the struggle of right against passion—you leave all the burden to me;—and not satisfied with that, you do your utmost to fight against me—when you know that!—‘ she paused, and hid her face in her handkerchief.

‘Forgive me, Helen!’ pleaded I. ‘I will never utter another word on the subject. But may we not still meet as friends?’

‘It will not do,’ she replied, mournfully shaking her head; and then she raised her eyes to mine, with a mildly reproachful look that seemed to say, ‘You must know that as well as I.’

‘Then what must we do?’ cried I, passionately. But immediately I added in a quieter tone—‘I’ll do whatever you desire; only don’t say that this meeting is to be our last.’

‘And why not? Don’t you know that every time we meet the thoughts of the final parting will become more painful? Don’t you feel that every interview makes us dearer to each other than the last?’

The utterance of this last question was hurried and low, and the downcast eyes and burning blush too plainly showed that she, at least, had felt it. It was scarcely prudent to make such an admission, or to add—as she presently did—‘I have power to bid you go, now: another time it might be different,’—but I was not base enough to attempt to take advantage of her candour.

‘But we may write,’ I timidly suggested. ‘You will not deny me that consolation?’

‘We can hear of each other through my brother.’

‘Your brother!’ A pang of remorse and shame shot through me. She had not heard of the injury he had sustained at my hands; and I had not the courage to tell her. ‘Your brother will not help us,’ I said: ‘he would have all communion between us to be entirely at an end.’

‘And he would be right, I suppose. As a friend of both, he would wish us both well; and every friend would tell us it was our interest, as well as our duty, to forget each other, though we might not see it ourselves. But don’t be afraid, Gilbert,’ she added, smiling sadly at my manifest discomposure; ‘there is little chance of my forgetting you. But I did not mean that Frederick should be the means of transmitting messages between us—only that each might know, through him, of the other’s welfare;—and more than this ought not to be: for you are young, Gilbert, and you ought to marry—and will some time, though you may think it impossible now: and though I hardly can say I wish you to forget me, I know it is right that you should, both for your own happiness, and that of your future wife;—and therefore I must and will wish it,’ she added resolutely.

‘And you are young too, Helen,’ I boldly replied; ‘and when that profligate scoundrel has run through his career, you will give your hand to me—I’ll wait till then.’

But she would not leave me this support. Independently of the moral evil of basing our hopes upon the death of another, who, if unfit for this world, was at least no less so for the next, and whose amelioration would thus become our bane and his greatest transgression our greatest benefit,—she maintained it to be madness: many men of Mr. Huntingdon’s habits had lived to a ripe though miserable old age. ‘And if I,’ said she, ‘am young in years, I am old in sorrow; but even if trouble should fail to kill me before vice destroys him, think, if he reached but fifty years or so, would you wait twenty or fifteen—in vague uncertainty and suspense—through all the prime of youth and manhood—and marry at last a woman faded and worn as I shall be—without ever having seen me from this day to that?—You would not,’ she continued, interrupting my earnest protestations of unfailing constancy,—‘or if you would, you should not. Trust me, Gilbert; in this matter I know better than you. You think me cold and stony-hearted, and you may, but—’

‘I don’t, Helen.’

‘Well, never mind: you might if you would: but I have not spent my solitude in utter idleness, and I am not speaking now from the impulse of the moment, as you do. I have thought of all these matters again and again; I have argued these questions with myself, and pondered well our past, and present, and future career; and, believe me, I have come to the right conclusion at last. Trust my words rather than your own feelings now, and in a few years you will see that I was right—though at present I hardly can see it myself,’ she murmured with a sigh as she rested her head on her hand. ‘And don’t argue against me any more: all you can say has been already said by my own heart and refuted by my reason. It was hard enough to combat those suggestions as they were whispered within me; in your mouth they are ten times worse, and if you knew how much they pain me you would cease at once, I know. If you knew my present feelings, you would even try to relieve them at the expense of your own.’

‘I will go—in a minute, if that can relieve you—and NEVER return!’ said I, with bitter emphasis. ‘But, if we may never meet, and never hope to meet again, is it a crime to exchange our thoughts by letter? May not kindred spirits meet, and mingle in communion, whatever be the fate and circumstances of their earthly tenements?’

‘They may, they may!’ cried she, with a momentary burst of glad enthusiasm. ‘I thought of that too, Gilbert, but I feared to mention it, because I feared you would not understand my views upon the subject. I fear it even now—I fear any kind friend would tell us we are both deluding ourselves with the idea of keeping up a spiritual intercourse without hope or prospect of anything further—without fostering vain regrets and hurtful aspirations, and feeding thoughts that should be sternly and pitilessly left to perish of inanition.’

‘Never mind our kind friends: if they can part our bodies, it is enough; in God’s name, let them not sunder our souls!’ cried I, in terror lest she should deem it her duty to deny us this last remaining consolation.

‘But no letters can pass between us here,’ said she, ‘without giving fresh food for scandal; and when I departed, I had intended that my new abode should be unknown to you as to the rest of the world; not that I should doubt your word if you promised not to visit me, but I thought you would be more tranquil in your own mind if you knew you could not do it, and likely to find less difficulty in abstracting yourself from me if you could not picture my situation to your mind. But listen,’ said she, smilingly putting up her finger to check my impatient reply: ‘in six months you shall hear from Frederick precisely where I am; and if you still retain your wish to write to me, and think you can maintain a correspondence all thought, all spirit—such as disembodied souls or unimpassioned friends, at least, might hold,—write, and I will answer you.’

‘Six months!’

‘Yes, to give your present ardour time to cool, and try the truth and constancy of your soul’s love for mine. And now, enough has been said between us. Why can’t we part at once?’ exclaimed she, almost wildly, after a moment’s pause, as she suddenly rose from her chair, with her hands resolutely clasped together. I thought it was my duty to go without delay; and I approached and half extended my hand as if to take leave—she grasped it in silence. But this thought of final separation was too intolerable: it seemed to squeeze the blood out of my heart; and my feet were glued to the floor.

‘And must we never meet again?’ I murmured, in the anguish of my soul.

‘We shall meet in heaven. Let us think of that,’ said she in a tone of desperate calmness; but her eyes glittered wildly, and her face was deadly pale.

‘But not as we are now,’ I could not help replying. ‘It gives me little consolation to think I shall next behold you as a disembodied spirit, or an altered being, with a frame perfect and glorious, but not like this!—and a heart, perhaps, entirely estranged from me.’

‘No, Gilbert, there is perfect love in heaven!’

‘So perfect, I suppose, that it soars above distinctions, and you will have no closer sympathy with me than with any one of the ten thousand thousand angels and the innumerable multitude of happy spirits round us.’

‘Whatever I am, you will be the same, and, therefore, cannot possibly regret it; and whatever that change may be we know it must be for the better.’

‘But if I am to be so changed that I shall cease to adore you with my whole heart and soul, and love you beyond every other creature, I shall not be myself; and though, if ever I win heaven at all, I must, I know, be infinitely better and happier than I am now, my earthly nature cannot rejoice in the anticipation of such beatitude, from which itself and its chief joy must be excluded.’

‘Is your love all earthly, then?’

‘No, but I am supposing we shall have no more intimate communion with each other than with the rest.’

‘If so, it will be because we love them more, and not each other less. Increase of love brings increase of happiness, when it is mutual, and pure as that will be.’

‘But can you, Helen, contemplate with delight this prospect of losing me in a sea of glory?’

‘I own I cannot; but we know not that it will be so;—and I do know that to regret the exchange of earthly pleasures for the joys of heaven, is as if the grovelling caterpillar should lament that it must one day quit the nibbled leaf to soar aloft and flutter through the air, roving at will from flower to flower, sipping sweet honey from their cups, or basking in their sunny petals. If these little creatures knew how great a change awaited them, no doubt they would regret it; but would not all such sorrow be misplaced? And if that illustration will not move you, here is another:—We are children now; we feel as children, and we understand as children; and when we are told that men and