Anne Bronte - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

'Can you forgive me?'

It might be deemed a breach of trust, I thought, to convey that lily hand to my lips, so I only gently pressed it between my own, and smilingly replied, -

'I hardly can. You should have told me this before. It shows a want of confidence - '

'Oh, no,' cried she, eagerly interrupting me; 'it was not that! It was no want of confidence in you; but if I had told you anything of my history, I must have told you all, in order to excuse my conduct; and I might well shrink from such a disclosure, till necessity obliged me to make it. But you forgive me? - I have done very, very wrong, I know; but, as usual, I have reaped the bitter fruits of my own error, - and must reap them to the end.'

Bitter, indeed, was the tone of anguish, repressed by resolute firmness, in which this was spoken. Now, I raised her hand to my lips, and fervently kissed it again and again; for tears prevented any other reply. She suffered these wild caresses without resistance or resentment; then, suddenly turning from me, she paced twice or thrice through the room. I knew by the contraction of her brow, the tight compression of her lips, and wringing of her hands, that meantime a violent conflict between reason and passion was silently passing within. At length she paused before the empty fire-place, and turning to me, said calmly - if that might be called calmness which was so evidently the result of a violent effort -

'Now, Gilbert, you must leave me - not this moment, but soon - and you must never come again.'

'Never again, Helen? just when I love you more than ever.'

'For that very reason, if it be so, we should not meet again. I thought this interview was necessary - at least, I persuaded myself it was so - that we might severally ask and receive each other's pardon for the past; but there can be no excuse for another. I shall leave this place, as soon as I have means to seek another asylum; but our intercourse must end here.'

'End here!' echoed I; and approaching the high, carved chimney- piece, I leant my hand against its heavy mouldings, and dropped my forehead upon it in silent, sullen despondency.

'You must not come again,' continued she. There was a slight tremor in her voice, but I thought her whole manner was provokingly composed, considering the dreadful sentence she pronounced. 'You must know why I tell you so,' she resumed; 'and you must see that it is better to part at once: - if it be hard to say adieu for ever, you ought to help me.' She paused. I did not answer. 'Will you promise not to come? - if you won't, and if you do come here again, you will drive me away before I know where to find another place of refuge - or how to seek it.'

'Helen,' said I, turning impatiently towards her, 'I cannot discuss the matter of eternal separation calmly and dispassionately as you can do. It is no question of mere expedience with me; it is a question of life and death!'

She was silent. Her pale lips quivered, and her fingers trembled with agitation, as she nervously entwined them in the hair-chain to which was appended her small gold watch - the only thing of value she had permitted herself 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 I - ' 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.'