William Carleton

“ On the contrary, I cannot understand how it is that my love for you has plunged me into deceit. Nay more, Charles,” she exclaimed, rising up, and placing her hand on her heart, “I am wrong here—why is it, will you tell me, that our attachment has crossed and disturbed my devotions to God. I cannot worship God as I would, and as I used to do. What if His grace be withdrawn from me? Could you love me then? Could you love a cast-a-way? Charles, you love truth too well to cherish affection for a being, a reprobate perhaps, and full of treachery and falsehood. ”

“ Jane replied by a smile and looked inexpressibly tender.
“I am, I am!” he exclaimed with rapture; “and now the world—life—nothing—nothing can add to the fulness of my happiness. And your note, my beloved—the conclusion of it—your own Jane Sinclair! But you must be more my own yet—legally and forever mine! Mine! Shall I be able to bear it!—shall I? Jane?” said he, his enthusiastic temperament kindling as he spoke—“Oh what, my dearest, my own dearest, if this should not last, will it not consume me? Will it not destroy me? this overwhelming excess of rapture!” ”

“ But it is probable that if I remained silent upon a history at once so true, and so full of sorrow; no other person equally intimate with its incidents will ever give them to the world. I cannot presume to detail unhappy Jane’s, calamity with the pathos due to a woe so singularly deep and delicate, or to describe that faithful attachment which gave her once laughing and ruby lips the white smile of a maniac’s misery. This I cannot do; for who, alas, could ever hope to invest a dispensation so dark as her’s with that rich tone of poetic beauty which threw its wild graces about her madness? ”

“ I believe I am—Agnes?”
“Well, dear girl!”
“I am afraid of my papa.”
“Why, Jane, should you be afraid of papa. Sure you know how he loves you—dotes upon you?”
“Because I practised deceit upon him. I dissembled to him. I sinned, sinned deeply;—blackly, blackly. I shudder to think of it;” and she shuddered while speaking.
“Well, but Jane dear,” said her mother, soothingly, “can you not weep for your fault. Tears of repentance can wipe out any crime. Weep, my child, weep, and it will relieve your heart.” ”

“ Believe me—and I know this will relieve my papa’s heart—and all your hearts—will it not yours, my mamma?—it is this—your Jane, your own Jane is not afraid to die. Her hopes are fixed on the Rock of Ages—the Rock of her salvation. I know, indeed, that my brief existence has been marked at its close with care and sorrow; but these cares and sorrows have brought me the sooner to that place where all tears shall be wiped from my eyes. Let my fate, too, be a warning to young creatures like myself, never to suffer their affection for any object to overmaster their sense and their reason. ”

“ More beautiful! more beautiful! why, and what is love if it is borne away merely by beauty? I loved him not for his beauty alone. I loved him because he—he—because he loved me—but at first I did love him for his beauty; well, he has found another more beautiful; and his own Jane Sinclair, his Fawn of Springvale, as he used to call me, is forgotten. But mark me—let none dare to blame him—he only fulfilled his destined part—the thing was foredoomed, and I knew that by my suppression of the truth to my papa, the seal of reprobation was set to my soul. ”

“ What consoler like death? what peace so calm as that of the grave? Let the storm of life howl ever so loudly, go but six inches beneath the clay of the church-yard and how still is all there!”
“Indeed, Jane, you distress yourself without cause; never trust me again if Charles will not soon come home, and you and he be happy. Why, my dear Jane, I thought you had more fortitude than to sink under a calamity that has not yet reached you. Surely it will be time enough when you find that Charles is false to take it so much to heart as you do.” ”

“ Alas! they are steeped in sorrow, and melt away in the plaintive cadences of despair, until they mingle with silence. Surely, surely, they come from one whose heart has been brought low by the ruined hopes of an unrequited passion. Yes, fair girl, thou at least dost so interpret them; but why this sympathy in one so young? Why is thy bright eye dewy with tears for the imaginary sorrows of another? And again—but ha!—why that flash of delight and terror?—that sudden suffusion of red over thy face and neck—and even now, that paleness like death! ”

“ Her heart bounded, her pulse beat high, and a sudden sensation of hysterical delight rushed to her throat with a transport that would have been painful, did she not pass out of a state of such panting ecstacy and become dissolved in tears. She wept, but how far did she believe the cause of her emotion to be removed from sorrow? She wept, yet alas! alas! never did tears of such delight flow from a source that drew a young heart onward to greater darkness and desolation. Weep on, fair girl, in thy happiness; for the day will come when thou will not be able to find one tear in thy misery! ”

“ The evening on which Jane and Charles Osborne met for the first time, unaccompanied by their friends, was one of those to which the power of neither pen nor pencil can do justice. The sun was slowly sinking among a pile of those soft crimson clouds, behind which fancy is so apt to picture to itself the regions of calm delight that are inhabited by the happy spirits of the blest; the sycamore and hawthorn were yet musical with the hum of bees, busy in securing their evening burthen for the hive. Myriads of winged insects were sporting in the sunbeams ”

“ And why is it that affection, as exhibited in general life, is so rarely seen unstained by the tint of some darker passion? Love on, fair girl—love on in thy purity and innocence! The beauty that thou seest in nature, and the music it sends forth, exist only in thy own heart, and the light which plays around thee like a glory, is only the reflection of that image whose lustre has taken away the shadows from thy spirit! ”

“ The natural arbors of woodbine, the fairy dells, and the wild flowers that peeped in unknown sweetness about the hedges, the fairy fingers, the blue-bells, the cow-slips, with many others of her fragrant and graceful favorites, all, all, charmed her, alas, no more. Nor at home, where every voice was tenderness, and every word affection, did there exist in her stricken heart that buoyant sense of enjoyment which had made her youth like the music of a brook, where every thing that broke the smoothness of its current only turned it into melody. ”

“ This morbid tone of mind will pass away when you grow into better health and strength.”
“Is not this hour calm?” said he, flashing his dark eyes full upon her, “see how beautiful the sun sinks in the west;—alas! so I should wish to die—as calm, and the moral lustre of my life as radiant.”
“And so you shall,” said Jane, in a voice full of that delightful spirit of consolation which, proceeding from such lips, breathes the most affecting power of sympathy, “so you shall, but like him, not until after the close of a long and well-spent life.” ”

“ My heart,” she proceeded, rising up and speaking with vehemence—“my heart calls for him—shouts aloud in its agony—shouts aloud—shouts aloud for him. He is, he is sick; the malady of his family is upon him; he is ill—he is dying; it must be so; ay, and it shall be so; I can bear that, I can bear him to die, but never to become faithless to a heart like mine. But I am foolish,” she added, after a pause, occasioned by exhaustion; “Oh, my dear William, why, by idle talk, thus tamper with your poor affectionate sister’s happiness? I know you meant no harm, but oh, William, William, do it no more.” ”

“ Jane made no reply to her father’s words. She sat musing, and once or twice put up her hand to her sidelocks, but immediately withdrew it, and again fell into a reverie. Sometimes her face brightened into the fatal smile, and again became overshadowed with a gloom that seemed to proceed from a feeling of natural grief. Indeed the play of meaning and insanity, as they chased each other over a countenance so beautiful, was an awful sight, even to an indifferent beholder, much less to those who then stood about her. ”

“ In the country, therefore, in spring meadows, among summer groves, and beneath autumnal skies, most certainly does the passion of love sink deepest into the human heart, and pass into the greatest extremes of happiness or pain. Here is where it may be seen, cheek to cheek, now in all the shivering ecstacies of intense rapture, or again moping carelessly along, with pale brow and flashing eye, sometimes writhing in the agony of undying attachment, or chanting its mad lay of hope and love in a spirit of fearful happiness more affecting than either misery or despair. ”

“ Maria and her brother both burst into tears; but Agnes’s affection rose above the mood of ordinary grief. The confidence that her beloved sister’s tenderness for her would enable her to touch a chord in a heart so utterly her own as Jane’s was, assumed upon this occasion the character of a wild but mournful enthusiasm, that was much more expressive of her attachment than could be the loudest and most vehement sorrow. ”

“ We know that the eye when it looks steadily upon a cloudless sun, is incapable for some time afterwards of seeing any other object distinctly; and that in whatever direction it turns that bright image floats incessantly before it—nor will be removed even although the eye itself is closed against its radiance. So was it with Jane. Asleep or awake, in society or in solitude, the vision with which her soul held communion never for a moment withdrew from before her, until at length her very heart became sick, and her fancy entranced, by the excess of her youthful and unrestrained attachment. ”

“ The tall youth who had just left them seemed, in fact, an incarnation of the beautiful itself—a visionary creation, in which was embodied the ideal spirit of youth, intellect, and grace. His face shone with that rosy light of life’s prime which only glows on the human countenance during the brief period that intervenes between the years of the thoughtless boy and those of the confirmed man: and whilst his white brow beamed with intellect, it was easy to perceive that the fire of deep feeling and high-wrought enthusiasm broke out in timid flashes from his dark eye. ”

“ Each at the moment breathed the low, anxious, and tender timidity of love, in it purest character. The souls of both vibrated to each other, and felt depressed with that sweetest emotion which derives all its power from the consciousness that its participation is mutual. Osborne spoke low, and his voice trembled; the girl was silent, but her bosom panted, and her frame shook from head to foot. At length, Osborne spoke.
“I sometimes sit here alone, and amuse myself with my flute; but of late—of late—I can hear no music that is not melancholy.” ”

“ Charles pressed her to his heart, and strove to speak, but could not—she felt his tears raining fast upon her face.
At length he said, pressing his beautiful once more to his beating bosom—“the moment, the moment that I cease to love you, may it, O God, be my last.”
She rose, and quietly wiping her eyes, said—“I will go—we will meet no more—no more in secret.”
“Oh, Jane,” said her lover, “how shall I make myself worthy of you; but why,” he added, “should our love be a secret? Surely it will be sanctioned by our friends. ”

“ Agnes felt so utterly overcome, that she stooped, and throwing her arms around her neck wept aloud, with her cheek laid to Jane’s.
Again the warmth of the tears upon the afflicted one’s face seemed to soothe or awaken her. She looked up, and with a troubled face exclaimed:—
“I hope I am not!—Agnes, you are good, and never practised deceit,—am I? am I?”
“Are you what, love? are you what, Jane, darling?”
“Am I a cast-away? I thought I was. ”

“ There was where the mysterious spirit that raises the soul above the impulses of animal life, mingled with her being—and poured upon her affection the elemental purity of that original love which in the beginning preceded human guilt.
It is, indeed, far from the contamination of society—in the stillness of solitude when the sentiment of love comes abroad before its passion, that the heart can be said to realize the object of its devotion, and to forget that its indulgence can ever be associated with error. This is, truly, the angelic love of youth and innocence ”

“ Seldom, indeed, was a family tried like this family; and never was the endurance of domestic love, and its triumph over the chilling habit of affliction, more signally manifested than in the undying tenderness of their hearts and hands, in all that was necessary to her comfort, or demanded by the childish caprices of her malady.
On going upstairs, she kissed them all as usual, but they then discovered, for the first time, in all its bitterness, what a dark and melancholy enjoyment it is to kiss the lips of a maniac, who has loved us, and whom we still must love. ”

“ It was indeed a beautiful thing to see this fair and guiltless penitent leaning against her indulgent father’s bosom, in which her blushing face was hid, and disclosing the history of an attachment as pure and innocent as ever warmed the heart of youth and beauty. Oh no wonder, thou sweetest and most artless of human beings, that when the heavy blight of reason came upon thee, and thou disappearedst from his eyes, that the old man’s spirit became desolate and his heart broken, and that he said after thy dissolution to every word of comfort uttered to him—“It is vain, it is vain—I cannot stay. ”

“ But believe me, Agnes, I could love Charles Osborne even if he were not handsome. I could love him for his mind, his principles, and especially for his faithful and constant heart.”
“And for all these he would deserve your love; but you remember what you told me once: it seems he has not yet seen a girl that he thinks more handsome than you are. Did you not mention to me that he said when he did, he would cease to write to you and cease to love you? You see he is constant.” ”

“ Oh! how deeply beloved was our heroine by her family, when her moods of mind and state of spirits fixed the tone of their domestic enjoyments and almost influenced the happiness of their lives. O gentle and pure spirit, what heart cannot love thee, when those who knew thee best gathered their affections so lovingly around thee, the star of their hearth—the idol of their inner shrine—the beautiful, the meek, the affectionate, and even then, in consequence of thy transcendant charms, the far-famed Fawn of Springvale! ”