“I think,” said Sissy, “you have already guessed whom I left just now?”
“I have been in the greatest concern and uneasiness during the last four-and-twenty hours (which have appeared as many years),” he returned, “on a lady’s account. The hopes I have been encouraged to form that you came from that lady, do not deceive me, I trust.”
“I left her within an hour.”
“At – ?”
“At her father’s.”
Mr. Harthouse’s face lengthened in spite of his coolness, and his perplexity increased. “Then I certainly,” he thought, “do not see where we are going.”
“She hurried there last night. She arrived there in great agitation, and was insensible all through the night. I live at her father’s, and was with her. You may be sure, sir, you will never see her again as long as you live.”
Mr. Harthouse drew a long breath; and, if ever man found himself in the position of not knowing what to say, made the discovery beyond all question that he was so circumstanced. The child-like ingenuousness with which his visitor spoke, her modest fearlessness, her truthfulness which put all artifice aside, her entire forgetfulness of herself in her earnest quiet holding to the object with which she had come; all this, together with her reliance on his easily given promise – which in itself shamed him – presented something in which he was so inexperienced, and against which he knew any of his usual weapons would fall so powerless; that not a word could he rally to his relief.
At last he said:
“So startling an announcement, so confidently made, and by such lips, is really disconcerting in the last degree. May I be permitted to inquire, if you are charged to convey that information to me in those hopeless words, by the lady of whom we speak.”
“I have no charge from her.”
“The drowning man catches at the straw. With no disrespect for your judgment, and with no doubt of your sincerity, excuse my saying that I cling to the belief that there is yet hope that I am not condemned to perpetual exile from that lady’s presence.”
“There is not the least hope. The first object of my coming here, sir, is to assure you that you must believe that there is no more hope of your ever speaking with her again, than there would be if she had died when she came home last night.”
“Must believe? But if I can’t – or if I should, by infirmity of nature, be obstinate – and won’t – ”
“It is still true. There is no hope.”
James Harthouse looked at her with an incredulous smile upon his lips; but her mind looked over and beyond him, and the smile was quite thrown away.
He bit his lip, and took a little time for consideration.
“Well! If it should unhappily appear,” he said, “after due pains and duty on my part, that I am brought to a position so desolate as this banishment, I shall not become the lady’s persecutor. But you said you had no commission from her?”
“I have only the commission of my love for her, and her love for me. I have no other trust, than that I have been with her since she came home, and that she has given me her confidence. I have no further trust, than that I know something of her character and her marriage. O Mr. Harthouse, I think you had that trust too!”
He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been – in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they had not been whistled away – by the fervour of this approach.
“I am not a moral sort of fellow,” he said, “and I never make any pretensions to the character of a moral sort of fellow. I am as immoral as need be. At the same time, in bringing any distress upon the lady who is the subject of the present conversation, or in unfortunately compromising her in any way, or in committing myself by any expression of sentiments towards her, not perfectly reconcilable with – in fact with – the domestic hearth; or in taking any advantage of her father’s being a machine, or of her brother’s being a whelp, or of her husband’s being a bear; I beg to be allowed to assure you that I have had no particularly evil intentions, but have glided on from one step to another with a smoothness so perfectly diabolical, that I had not the slightest idea the catalogue was half so long until I began to turn it over. Whereas I find,” said Mr. James Harthouse, in conclusion, “that it is really in several volumes.”