All trouble and difficulty, as to the conduct they should pursue, were removed in consequence of Osborne"s intention to ask his father to sanction their attachment, and until the consequence of that step should be known, nothing further on their part could be attempted. On this point, however, they were not permitted to remain long in suspense, for ere two o"clock that day, Mr. Osborne had, in the name of his son, proposed for the hand of our fair girl, which proposal we need scarcely say was instantly and joyfully accepted. It is true, their immediate union was not contemplated. Both were much too youthful and inexperienced to undertake the serious duties of married life, but it was arranged that Osborne, whose health, besides, was not sufficiently firm, should travel, see the world, and strengthen his const.i.tution by the genial air of a warmer and more salubrious climate.
Alas! why is it that the sorrows of love are far sweeter than its joys?
We do not mean to say that our young hero and heroine, if we may presume so to call them, were insensible to this lapse of serene delight which now opened upon them. No--the happiness they enjoyed was indeed such as few taste in such a world as this is. Their attachment was now sanctioned by all their mutual friends, and its progress was unimpeded by an scruple arising from clandestine intercourse, or a breach of duty.
But, with secrecy, pa.s.sed away those trembling s.n.a.t.c.hes of unimaginable transport which no state of permitted love has ever yet known. The stolen glance, the pa.s.sing whisper, the guarded pressure of the soft white hand timidly returned, and the fearful rapture of the hurried kiss--alas! alas!--and alas! for the memory of Eloiza!
Time pa.s.sed, and the preparations necessary for Osborne"s journey were in fact nearly completed. One day, about a fortnight before his departure, he and Jane were sitting in a little ozier summer-house in Mr. Sinclair"s garden, engaged in a conversation more tender than usual, for each felt their love deeper and their hearts sink as the hour of separation approached them. Jane"s features exhibited such a singular union of placid confidence and melancholy, as gave something Madonna-like and divine to her beauty. Osborne sat, and for a long time gazed upon her with a silent intensity of rapture for which he could find no words. At length he exclaimed in a reverie--
"I will swear it--I may swear it."
"Swear what, Charles?"
"That the moment I see a girl more beautiful, I will cease to write to you--I will cease to love you."
The blood instantly forsook her cheeks, and she gazed at him with wonder and dismay.
"What, dear Charles, do you mean?"
"Oh, my pride and my treasure!" he exclaimed, wildly clasping her to his bosom--"there is none so fair--none on earth or in heaven itself so beautiful--that, my own ever dearest, is my meaning."
The confidence of her timid and loving heart was instantly restored--and she said smiling, yet with a tear struggling through her eyelid, "I believe I am I think I am beautiful. I know they call me the Fawn of Springvale, because I am gentle."
"The angels are not so gentle, nor so pure, nor so innocent as you are, my un-wedded wife."
"I am glad I am," she replied; "and I am glad, too, that I am beautiful--but it is all on your account, and for your sake, dear Charles."
The fascination--the power of such innocence, and purity, and love, utterly overcame him, and he wept in transport upon her bosom.
The approach of her sisters, however, and the liveliness of Agnes, soon changed the character of their dialogue. For an hour they ran and chased each other, and played about, after which Charles took his leave of them for the evening. Jane, as usual, being the last he parted from, whispered to him,as he went--
"Charles, promise me, that in future you won"t repeat--the--the words you used in, the summer-house."
"What words, love?" "You remember--about--about--what you said you might _swear_--and that, in that case, you would cease to love me."
"Why dearest, should I promise you this?" "Because," she said, in a low, sweet whisper, "they disturb me when I think of them--a slight thing makes my heart sink."
"You are a foolish, sweet girl--but I promise you, I shall never again use them."
She bestowed on him a look and smile that were more than a sufficient compensation for this; and after again bidding him farewell, she tripped lightly into the house.
From this onward, until the day of their separation, the spirits of our young lovers were more and more overcast, and the mirthful intercourse of confident love altogether gone. Their communion was now marked by despondency and by tears, for the most part shed during their confidential interviews with each other. In company they were silent and dejected, and ever as their eyes met in long and loving glances, they could scarcely repress their grief. Sometimes, indeed, Jane on being spoken to, after a considerable silence, would attempt in vain to reply, her quivering voice and tearful eyes affording unequivocal proof of the subject which engaged her heart. Their friends, of course, endeavored to console and sustain them on both sides; and frequently succeeded in soothing them into a childlike resignation to the necessity that occasioned the dreary period of absence that lay before them. These intervals of patience, however, did not last long; the spirits of our young lovers were, indeed, disquieted within them, and the heart of each drooped under the severest of all its calamities--the pain of loss for that object which is dearest to its affections.
It was arranged that, on the day previous to Charles" departure, Osborne"s family should dine at Mr. Sinclair"s; for they knew that the affliction caused by their separation would render it necessary that Jane, on that occasion, should be under her own roof, and near the attention and aid of her friends. Mr. Osborne almost regretted the resolution to which he had come of sending his son to travel, for he feared that the effect of absence from the fair girl to whom he was so deeply attached, might possibly countervail the benefits arising from a more favorable climate; but as he had already engaged the services of an able and experienced tutor, who on two or three previous occasions had been over the Continent, he expected, reasonably enough, that novelty, his tutor"s good sense, and the natural elasticity of youth would soon efface a sorrow in general so transient, and in due time restore him to his usual spirits. He consequently adhered to his resolution--the day of departure was fixed, and arrangements made for the lovers to separate, as we have already intimated.
Jane Sinclair, from the period when Osborne"s attachment and hers was known and sanctioned by their friends, never slept a night from her beloved sister Agnes; nor had any other person living, not even Osborne himself, such an opportunity as Agnes had of registering in the record of a sisterly heart so faithful a transcript of her love.
On the night previous to their leave taking, Agnes was astonished at the coldness of her limbs, and begged her to allow additional covering to be put on the bed.
"No, dear Agnes, no; only grant me one favor--do not speak to me--leave my heart to its own sorrows--to its own misery--to its own despair; for, Agnes, I feel a presentiment that I shall never see him again."
She pressed her lips against Agnes" cheek when she had concluded, and Agnes almost started, for that lip hitherto so glowing and warm, felt hard and cold as marble.
Osborne, who for some time past had spent almost every day at Mr.
Sinclair"s, arrived the next morning ere the family had concluded breakfast. Jane immediately left the table, for she had tasted nothing but a cup of tea, and placing herself beside him on the sofa, looked up mournfully into his face for more than a minute; she then caught his hand, and placing it between hers, gazed upon him again, and smiled. The boy saw at once that the smile was a smile of misery, and that the agony of separation was likely to be too much for her to bear. The contrast at that moment between them both was remarkable. She pale, cold, and almost abstracted from the perception of her immediate grief; he glowing in the deep carmine of youth and apparent health--his eye as well as hers sparkling with a light which the mere beauty of early life never gives.
Alas, poor things! little did they, or those to whom they were so very dear, imagine that, as they then gazed upon each other, each bore in lineaments so beautiful the symptoms of the respective maladies that were to lay them low.
"I wish, Jane, you would try and get up your spirits, love, and see and be entertaining to poor Charles, as this is the last day he is to be with you."
She looked quickly at her mother, "The I last, mamma?"
"I mean for a while, dear, until after his I return from the Continent."
She seemed relieved by this. "Oh no, not the last, Charles," she said--"Yet I know not how it is--I know not; but sometimes, indeed, I think it is--and if it were, if it were--"
A paleness more deadly spread over her face; and with a gaze of mute and undying-devotion she clasped her hands, and repeated--"if it should be the last--the last!"
"I did not think you were so foolish or so weak a girl, Jane," said William, "as to be so cast down, merely because Charles is taking a skip to the Continent to get a mouthful of fresh air, and back again. Why, I know them that go to the Continent four times a year to transact business a young fellow, by the way, that has been paying his addresses to a lady for the last six or seven years. I wish you saw them part, as I did--merely a hearty shake of the hand--"good by, Molly, take care of yourself till I see you again;" and "farewell, Simon, don"t forget the shawl;" and the whole thing"s over, and no more about it."
There was evidently something in these words that jarred upon a spirit of such natural tenderness as Jane"s. While William was repeating them, her features expressed a feeling as if of much inward pain; and when he had concluded, she rose up, and seizing both his hands, said, in a tone of meek and earnest supplication:
"Oh! William dear, do not, do not--it is not consolation--it is distress."
"Dear Jane," said the good-natured brother, at once feeling his error, "pardon me, I was wrong; there is no resemblance in the cases--I only wanted to raise your spirits."
"True, William, true; I ought to thank you, and I do thank you."
Whilst this little incident took place, Mr. Sinclair came over and sat beside Charles.
"You see, my dear Charles," said he, "what a heavy task your separation from that poor girl is likely to prove. Let me beg that you will be as firm as possible, and sustain her by a cheerful play of spirits, if you can command them. Do violence to your! own heart for this day for her sake."
"I will be firm, sir," said Osborne, "if I can: but if I fail--if I--look at her," he proceeded, in a choking voice, "look at her, and then ask yourself why I--I should be firm?"
Whilst he spoke, Jane came over, and seating herself between her father and him, said:
"Papa, you will stay with me and Charles this day, and support us.
You know, papa, that I am but a weak, weak girl; but when I do a wrong thing, I feel very penitent--I cannot rest."
"You never did wrong, darling," said Osborne, pressing his lips to her cheek, "you never did wrong."
"Papa says I did not do much wrong; yet at one time I did not think so myself; but there is a thing presses upon me still. Papa," she added, turning abruptly to him, "are there not such things in this life as judgments from heaven?"
"Yes, my dear, upon the wicked who, by deep crimes, provoke the justice of the Almighty; but the ways of G.o.d are so mysterious, and the innocent so often suffer whilst the guilty escape, that we never almost hazard an opinion upon individual cases." "But there are cast-aways?" "Yes, darling; but here is Charles anxious to take you out to walk. With such a prospect of happiness and affection before you both, you ought surely to be in the best of spirits."
"Well, I can see why you evade my question," she replied; but she added abruptly, "bless us, papa, bless us." She knelt down, and pulled Charles gently upon his knees also, and joining both hands together, bent her head as if to receive the benediction.
Oh, mournful and heart-breaking was her loveliness, as she knelt down before the streaming eyes of her family--a Magdeline in beauty, without her guilt.
The old man, deeply moved by the distress of the interesting pair then bent before him, uttered a short prayer suitable to the occasion, after which he blessed them both, and again recommended them to the care of heaven, in terms of touching and beautiful simplicity. His daughter seemed relieved by this, for, after rising, she went to her mother and said:
"We are going to walk, mamma. I must endeavor to keep my spirits up this day, for poor Charles" sake."