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Would you have robbed me- for no one s enrichmentonly for the
greater desolation of this world- of the immaterial part of my life,
the spring and summer of my belief, my refuge from what is
sordid and bad in the real things around me, my school in which I
should have learned to be more humble and more trusting with
them, and to hope in my little sphere to make them better?  O no,
no. No, Louisa.  Yet, father, if I had been stone blind; if I had
groped my way by my sense of touch, and had been free, while I
knew the shapes and surfaces of things, to exercise my fancy
somewhat, in regard to them; I should have been a million times
wiser, happier, more loving, more contented, more innocent and
human in all good respects, than I am with the eyes I have. Now,
hear what I have come to say. He moved, to support her with his
arm. She rising as he did so, they stood close together: she, with a
hand upon his shoulder, looking fixedly in his face.
 With a hunger and thirst upon me, father, which have never been
for a moment appeased; with an ardent impulse towards some
region where rules, and figures, and definitions were not quite
absolute; I have grown up, battling every inch of my way.  I never
knew you were unhappy, my child.  Father, I always knew it. In
this strife I have almost repulsed and crushed my better angel into
a demon. What I have learned has left me doubting, misbelieving,
despising, regretting, what I have not learned; and my dismal
resource has been to think that life would soon go by, and that
nothing in it could be worth the pain and trouble of a contest.
 And you so young, Louisa! he said with pity.
 And I so young. In this condition, father- for I show you now,
without fear or favour, the ordinary deadened state of my mind as
I know it- you proposed my husband to me. I took him. I never
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made a pretence to him or you that I loved him. I knew, and,
father, you knew, and he knew, that I never did. I was not wholly
indifferent, for I had a hope of being pleasant and useful to Tom. I
made that wild escape into something visionary, and have slowly
found out how wild it was. But Tom had been the subject of all the
little tenderness of my life; perhaps he became so because I knew
so well how to pity him. It matters little now, except as it may
dispose you to think more leniently of his errors. As her father
held her in his arms, she put her other hand upon his other
shoulder, and still looking fixedly in his face, went on.
 When I was irrevocably married, there rose up into rebellion
against the tie, the old strife, made fiercer by all those causes of
disparity which arise out of our two individual natures, and which
no general laws shall ever rule or state for me, father, until they
shall be able to direct the anatomist where to strike his knife into
the secrets of my soul.  Louisa! he said, and said imploringly; for
he well remembered what had passed between them in their
former interview.
 I do not reproach you, father, I make no complaint. I am here with
another object.  What can I do, child? Ask me what you will.  I am
coming to it. Father, chance then threw into my way a new
acquaintance; a man such as I had had no experience of; used to the
world; light, polished, easy; making no pretences; avowing the low
estimate of everything, that I was half afraid to form in secret;
conveying to me almost immediately, though I don t know how or
by what degrees, that he understood me, and read my thoughts. I
could not find that he was worse than I. There seemed to be a near
affinity between us. I only wondered it should be worth his while,
who cared for nothing else, to care so much for me.  For you,
Louisa! Her father might instinctively have loosened his hold, but
that he felt her strength departing from her, and saw a wild
dilating fire in the eyes steadfastly regarding him.
 I say nothing of his plea for claiming my confidence. It matters
very little how he gained it. Father, he did gain it. What you know
of the story of my marriage, he soon knew, just as well. Her [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]