"I must say more. I cannot let you leave me so! For Heaven"s sake, Agnes, let us not mistake each other after all these years, and all that has come and gone with them! I must speak plainly. If you have any lingering thought that I could envy the happiness you will confer; that I could not resign you to a dearer protector, of your own choosing; that I could not, from my removed place, be a contented witness of your joy; dismiss it, for I don"t deserve it! I have not suffered quite in vain.
You have not taught me quite in vain. There is no alloy of self in what I feel for you."
She was quiet now. In a little time, she turned her pale face towards me, and said in a low voice, broken here and there, but very clear:
"I owe it to your pure friendship for me, Trotwood--which, indeed, I do not doubt--to tell you, you are mistaken. I can do no more. If I have sometimes, in the course of years, wanted help and counsel, they have come to me. If I have sometimes been unhappy, the feeling has pa.s.sed away. If I have ever had a burden on my heart, it has been lightened for me. If I have any secret, it is--no new one; and is--not what you suppose. I cannot reveal it, or divide it. It has long been mine, and must remain mine."
"Agnes! Stay! A moment!"
She was going away, but I detained her. I clasped my arm about her waist. "In the course of years!" "It is not a new one!" New thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were changing.
"Dearest Agnes! Whom I so respect and honour--whom I so devotedly love!
When I came here today, I thought that nothing could have wrested this confession from me. I thought I could have kept it in my bosom all our lives, till we were old. But, Agnes, if I have indeed any new-born hope that I may ever call you something more than Sister, widely different from Sister!--"
Her tears fell fast; but they were not like those she had lately shed, and I saw my hope brighten in them.
"Agnes! Ever my guide, and best support! If you had been more mindful of yourself, and less of me, when we grew up here together, I think my heedless fancy never would have wandered from you. But you were so much better than I, so necessary to me in every boyish hope and disappointment, that to have you to confide in, and rely upon in everything, became a second nature, supplanting for the time the first and greater one of loving you as I do!"
Still weeping, but not sadly--joyfully! And clasped in my arms as she had never been, as I had thought she never was to be!
"When I loved Dora--fondly, Agnes, as you know--"
"Yes!" she cried, earnestly. "I am glad to know it!"
"When I loved her--even then, my love would have been incomplete, without your sympathy. I had it, and it was perfected. And when I lost her, Agnes, what should I have been without you, still!"
Closer in my arms, nearer to my heart, her trembling hand upon my shoulder, her sweet eyes shining through her tears, on mine!
"I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I returned home, loving you!"
And now, I tried to tell her of the struggle I had had, and the conclusion I had come to. I tried to lay my mind before her, truly, and entirely. I tried to show her how I had hoped I had come into the better knowledge of myself and of her; how I had resigned myself to what that better knowledge brought; and how I had come there, even that day, in my fidelity to this. If she did so love me (I said) that she could take me for her husband, she could do so, on no deserving of mine, except upon the truth of my love for her, and the trouble in which it had ripened to be what it was; and hence it was that I revealed it. And O, Agnes, even out of thy true eyes, in that same time, the spirit of my child-wife looked upon me, saying it was well; and winning me, through thee, to tenderest recollections of the Blossom that had withered in its bloom!
"I am so blest, Trotwood--my heart is so overcharged--but there is one thing I must say."
"Dearest, what?"
She laid her gentle hands upon my shoulders, and looked calmly in my face.
"Do you know, yet, what it is?"
"I am afraid to speculate on what it is. Tell me, my dear."
"I have loved you all my life!"
O, we were happy, we were happy! Our tears were not for the trials (hers so much the greater) through which we had come to be thus, but for the rapture of being thus, never to be divided more!
We walked, that winter evening, in the fields together; and the blessed calm within us seemed to be partaken by the frosty air. The early stars began to shine while we were lingering on, and looking up to them, we thanked our G.o.d for having guided us to this tranquillity.
We stood together in the same old-fashioned window at night, when the moon was shining; Agnes with her quiet eyes raised up to it; I following her glance. Long miles of road then opened out before my mind; and, toiling on, I saw a ragged way-worn boy, forsaken and neglected, who should come to call even the heart now beating against mine, his own.
It was nearly dinner-time next day when we appeared before my aunt. She was up in my study, Peggotty said: which it was her pride to keep in readiness and order for me. We found her, in her spectacles, sitting by the fire.
"Goodness me!" said my aunt, peering through the dusk, "who"s this you"re bringing home?"
"Agnes," said I.
As we had arranged to say nothing at first, my aunt was not a little discomfited. She darted a hopeful glance at me, when I said "Agnes"; but seeing that I looked as usual, she took off her spectacles in despair, and rubbed her nose with them.
She greeted Agnes heartily, nevertheless; and we were soon in the lighted parlour downstairs, at dinner. My aunt put on her spectacles twice or thrice, to take another look at me, but as often took them off again, disappointed, and rubbed her nose with them. Much to the discomfiture of Mr. d.i.c.k, who knew this to be a bad symptom.
"By the by, aunt," said I, after dinner; "I have been speaking to Agnes about what you told me."
"Then, Trot," said my aunt, turning scarlet, "you did wrong, and broke your promise."
"You are not angry, aunt, I trust? I am sure you won"t be, when you learn that Agnes is not unhappy in any attachment."
"Stuff and nonsense!" said my aunt.
As my aunt appeared to be annoyed, I thought the best way was to cut her annoyance short. I took Agnes in my arm to the back of her chair, and we both leaned over her. My aunt, with one clap of her hands, and one look through her spectacles, immediately went into hysterics, for the first and only time in all my knowledge of her.
The hysterics called up Peggotty. The moment my aunt was restored, she flew at Peggotty, and calling her a silly old creature, hugged her with all her might. After that, she hugged Mr. d.i.c.k (who was highly honoured, but a good deal surprised); and after that, told them why. Then, we were all happy together.
I could not discover whether my aunt, in her last short conversation with me, had fallen on a pious fraud, or had really mistaken the state of my mind. It was quite enough, she said, that she had told me Agnes was going to be married; and that I now knew better than anyone how true it was.
We were married within a fortnight. Traddles and Sophy, and Doctor and Mrs. Strong, were the only guests at our quiet wedding. We left them full of joy; and drove away together. Clasped in my embrace, I held the source of every worthy aspiration I had ever had; the centre of myself, the circle of my life, my own, my wife; my love of whom was founded on a rock!
"Dearest husband!" said Agnes. "Now that I may call you by that name, I have one thing more to tell you."
"Let me hear it, love."
"It grows out of the night when Dora died. She sent you for me."
"She did."
"She told me that she left me something. Can you think what it was?"
I believed I could. I drew the wife who had so long loved me, closer to my side.
"She told me that she made a last request to me, and left me a last charge."
"And it was--"
"That only I would occupy this vacant place."
And Agnes laid her head upon my breast, and wept; and I wept with her, though we were so happy.