Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale Part 8

"Yes, love, do," said her mother, "that's a good girl. Let me see how cheerful and sprightly you'll be; and think, dear, of the happy days that are before you and Charles yet, when you'll live in love and affection, surrounded and cherished by both your families."

"Yes, yes," said she, "I often think of that--I'll try mamma--I'll try."

Saying which, she took Charles's arm, and the young persons all went out together.

Jane's place, that evening, was by Osborne's side, as it had been with something like a faint clinging of terror during the whole day. She spoke little, and might be said rather to respond to all he uttered, than to sustain a part in the dialogue. Her distress was a.s.suredly deep, but they knew not then, nor by any means suspected how fearful was its character in the remote and hidden depths of her soul. She sat with Osborne's right hand between hers, and scarcely for a moment ever took her sparkling eyes off his countenance. Many times was she observed to mutter to herself, and her lips frequently moved as if she had been speaking, but no words were uttered, nor any sense of her distress expressed. Once, only, in the course of the evening, were they startled into a hush of terror and dismay, by a single short laugh, uttered so loud and wildly, that a pause followed it, and, as if with one consentaneous movement, they all a.s.sembled about her. Their appearance, however, seemed to bring her to herself, for with her left hand she wafted them away, saying, "Leave us--leave us--this is a day of sorrow to us--the day will end, but when, when, alas, will the sorrow? Papa, some of us will need your prayers now--the sunshine of Jane's life is over--I am the Fawn of Springvale no more--my time with the holy and affectionate flock of whom I was and am an unworthy one, will be short--I may be with you a day, as it were, the next is come and Jane is gone for ever."

"Father," said Osborne, "I shall not go;" and as he spoke he pressed her to his bosom--"I will never leave her."

The boy's tears fell rapidly upon her pale cheeks, and on feeling them she looked up and smiled.

The sobbings of the family were loud, and bitter were the tears which the tender position of the young and beautiful pair wrung from the eyes that looked upon them. "Your health, my boy," said his father, "my beautiful and only boy, render it necessary that you should go. It is but for a time, Jane dear, my daughter, my boy's beloved, it is only for a time--let him leave you for a little, and he will return confirmed in health and knowledge, and worthy my dear, dear girl, to be yours for ever."

"My daughter," said Mr. Sinclair, "was once good and obedient, and she will now do whatever is her own papa's wish."

"Name it, papa, name it," said she, still smiling.

"Suffer Charles to go, my darling--and do not--oh! do not take his departure so much to heart."

"Charles, you must go," said she. "It is the wish of your own father and of mine--but above all, it is the wish of your own--you cannot, you must not gainsay him. What we can prosper which is founded on disobedience or deceit? You know the words you once loved so well to repeat--I will repeat them now--you must, you will not surely refuse the request of _your own Jane Sinclair_."

The boy seemed for some time irresolute but at length he clasped her in his arms, and, again, said, in a vehement burst of tenderness:

"No, father, my heart is resolved, I will never leave her. It will kill me, it will lay me in an early grave, and you will have no son to look upon."

"But you will see the heroic example that Jane will set you," said Mr.

Sinclair, "she will shame you into firmness, for she will now take leave of you at once; and see then if you love her as you say you do, whether you will not respect her so far as to follow her example. Jane, bid Charles farewell."

This was, perhaps, pressing her strength too far; at all events, the injunction came so unexpectedly, that a pause followed it, and they waited with painful expectation to see what she would do. For upwards of a minute she sat silent, and her lips moved as if she were communing with herself. At length she rose up, and stooping down kissed her lover's cheek, then, taking his hand as before between hers, she said in a voice astonishingly calm.

"Charles, farewell--remember that I am your Jane Sinclair. Alas!" she added, "I am weak and feeble--help me out of the room." Both her parents a.s.sisted her to leave it, but, on reaching the door, she drew back involuntarily, on hearing Osborne's struggles to detain her.

"Papa," she said, with a look inexpressibly wobegone and suppliant--"Mamma!" "Sweet child, what is it?" said both. "Let me take one last look of him--it will be the last--but not--I--I trust, the last act of my duty to you both."

She turned round and gazed upon him for some time--her features, as she looked, dilated into an expression of delight.

"Is he not," said she, in a low placid whisper, while her smiling eye still rested upon him--"is he not beautiful? Oh! yes, he is beautiful--he is beautiful."

"He is, darling--he is," said both--"come away now--be only a good firm girl and all will soon be well."

"Very, very beautiful," said she, in a low contented voice, as without any further wish to remain, she accompanied her parents to another room.

Such was their leaving-taking--thus did they separate. Did they ever meet!

PART III.

In the history of the affections we know that circ.u.mstances sometimes occur, where duty and inclination maintain a conflict so nicely balanced so as to render it judicious not to exact a fulfillment of the former, lest by deranging the structure of our moral feelings, we render the mind either insensible to their existence, or incapable of regulating them. This observation applies only to those subordinate positions of life which involve no great principle of conduct, and violate no cardinal point of human duty. We ought neither to do evil nor suffer evil to be done, where our authority can prevent it, in order that good may follow. But in matters where our own will creates the offence, it is in some peculiar cases not only prudent but necessary to avoid straining a mind naturally delicate, beyond the powers which we know it to possess. We think, for instance, that it was wrong in Mr. Sinclair, at a moment when the act of separating from Osborne might have touched, the feelings of his daughter into that softness which lightens and relieves the heart, abruptly to suppress emotions so natural, by exacting a proof of obedience too severe and oppressive to the heart of one who loved as Jane did. She knew it was her duty to obey him the moment he expressed his wish; but he was bound by no duty to demand such an unnecessary proof of her obedience. The immediate consequences, however, made him sufficiently sensible of his error, and taught him that a knowledge of the human heart is the most difficult task which a parent has to learn.

Jane, conducted by her parents, having reached another apartment, sat down--her father taking a chair on one side, and her mother on the other.

"My darling," said Mr. Sinclair, "I will never forget this proof of your obedience to me, on so trying an occasion. I knew I might rely upon my daughter."

Jane made no reply to this, but sat apparently wrapped up in an ecstacy of calm and unbroken delight. The smile of happiness with which she contemplated Osborne, on taking her last look of him, was still upon her face, and contrasted so strongly with the agony which they knew she must have felt, that her parents, each from an apprehension of alarming the other, feared openly to allude to it, although they felt their hearts sink in dismay and terror.

"Jane, why do you not speak to your papa and me?" said her mother; "speak to us, love, speak to us--if it was only one word."

She appeared not to hear this, nor to be at all affected by her mother's voice or words. After the latter spoke she smiled again, and immediately putting up her long white fingers through the ringlets that shaded her cheek, she pulled them down as one would pressing them with slight convulsive energy as they pa.s.sed through, her fingers.

"Henry, dear, what--what is the matter with her?" inquired her mother, whose face became pale with alarm. "Oh! what is wrong with my child!--she does not know us!--Gracious heaven, whats is this!"

"Jane, my love, wont you speak to your papa?" said Mr. Sinclair. "Speak to me, my darling,--it is I,--it is your own papa that asks you?"

She looked up, and seemed for a moment struggling to recover a consciousness of her situation; but it pa.s.sed away, and the scarcely perceptible meaning which began almost to become visible in her eye, was again succeeded by that smile which they both so much dreaded to see.

The old man shook his head, and looked with a brow darkened by sorrow, first upon his daughter, and afterwards upon his wife. "My heart's delight," he exclaimed, "I fear I have demanded more from your obedience than you could perform without danger to yourself. I wish I had allowed her grief to flow, and not required such an abrupt and unseasonable proof of her duty. It was too severe an injunction to a creature so mild and affectionate,--and would to G.o.d that I had not sought it!"

"Would to heaven that you had not, my dear Henry. Let us try, however, and move her heart,--if tears could come she would be relieved."

"Bring Agnes in," said her father, "bring in Agnes, she may succeed better with her than we can,--and if Charles be not already gone, there is no use in distressing him by at all alluding to her situation. She is only overpowered, I trust, and will soon recover." The mother, on her way to bring Agnes to her sister, met the rest of the family returning to the house after having taken leave of Osborne. The two girls were weeping, for they looked upon him as already a brother; whilst William, in a good-humored tone, bantered them for the want of firmness.

"I think, mother," said he, "they are all in love with him, if they would admit it. Why here's Maria and Agnes, and I dare say they're making as great a rout about him as Jane herself! But bless me! what's the, matter, mother, that you look so pale and full of alarm?"

"It's Jane--it's Jane," said Agnes. "Mother, there's something wrong!"

and as she spoke she stopped, with uplifted hands, apparently fastened to the earth.

"My poor child!" exclaimed her mother,--"for heaven's sake come in, Agnes. Oh, heaven grant that it may soon pa.s.s away. Agnes, dear girl, you know her best--come in quick; her papa wants you to try what you can do with her."

In a moment this loving family, with pale faces and beating hearts, stood in a circle about their affectionate and beautiful sister.

Jane sat with her pa.s.sive hand tenderly pressed between her father's,--smiling; but whether in unconscious happiness or unconscious misery, who alas! can say?

"You see she knows none of us," said her mother. "Neither her papa nor me. Speak to her each of you, in turn. Perhaps you may be more successful. Agnes,--"

"She will know me," replied Agnes; "I am certain she will know me;"--and the delightful girl spoke with an energy that was baaed upon the confidence of that love which subsisted between them. 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, a.s.sumed 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.

"If she could but shed tears," said her mother, wringing her hands.

"She will," returned Agnes, "she will. Jane," she exclaimed, "Jane, don't you know your own Agnes?--your own Agnes, Jane?"

The family waited in silence for half a minute, but their beloved one smiled on, and gave not the slightest token of recognizing either Agnes's person or her voice. Sometimes her lips moved, and she appeared to be repeating certain words to herself, but in a voice so low and indistinct that no one could catch them.

Agnes's enthusiasm abandoned her on seeing that that voice to which her own dearest sister ever sweetly and lovingly responded, fell upon her ear as an idle and unmeaning sound. Her face became deadly pale, and her lip quivered, as she again addressed the unconscious girl. Once more she took her hand in hers, and placing herself before her, put her fingers to her cheek in order to arrest her attention.

"Jane, look upon me; look upon me;--that's a sweet child,--look upon me.

Sure I am Agnes--your own Agnes, who will break her heart if my sweet sister doesn't speak to her."