Home as Found - James Fenimore Cooper (ebook reader wifi txt) 📗

which I have no legal title, and virtually without relatives,

aspire to one like you!"

 

The windings of the path had brought them near a window of the house,

whence a stream of strong light gleamed upon the sweet countenance of

Eve, as raising her eyes to those of her companion, with a face

bathed in tears, and flushed with natural feeling and modesty, the

struggle between which even heightened her loveliness, she smiled an

encouragement that it was impossible to misconstrue.

 

"Can I believe my senses! Will _you_--_do_ you--_can_ you listen to

the suit of one like me?" the young man exclaimed, as he hurried his

companion past the window, lest some interruption might destroy his

hopes.

 

"Is there any sufficient reason why I should not, Powis?"

 

"Nothing but my unfortunate situation in respect to my family, my

comparative poverty, and my general unworthiness."

 

"Your unfortunate situation in respect to your relatives would, if

any thing, be a new and dearer tie with us; your comparative poverty

is merely comparative, and can be of no account, where there is

sufficient already; and as for your general unworthiness, I fear it

will find more than an offset, in that of the girl you have so rashly

chosen from the rest of the world."

 

"Eve--dearest Eve--" said Paul, seizing both her hands, and stopping

her at the entrance of some shrubbery, that densely shaded the path,

and where the little light that fell from the stars enabled him still

to trace her features--"you will not leave me in doubt on a subject

of this nature--am I really so blessed?"

 

"If accepting the faith and affection of a heart that is wholly

yours, Powis, can mate you happy, your sorrows will be at an end--"

 

"But your father?" said the young man, almost breathless in his

eagerness to know all.

 

"Is here to confirm what his daughter has just declared," said Mr.

Effingham, coming out of the shrubbery beyond them, and laying a hand

kindly on Paul's shoulder. "To find that you so well understand each

other, Powis, removes from my mind one of the greatest anxieties I

have ever experienced. My cousin John, as he was bound to do, has

made me acquainted with all you have, told him of your past life, and

there remains nothing further to be revealed. We have known you for

years, and receive you into our family with as free a welcome as we

could receive any precious boon from Providence."

 

"Mr. Effingham!--dear sir," said Paul, almost gasping between

surprise and rapture--"this is indeed beyond all my hopes--and this

generous frankness too, in your lovely daughter--"

 

Paul's hands had been transferred to those of the father, he knew not

how; but releasing them hurriedly, he now turned in quest of Eve

again, and found she had fled. In the short interval between the

address of her father and the words of Paul, she had found means to

disappear, leaving the gentlemen together. The young man would have

followed, but the cooler head of Mr. Effingham perceiving that the

occasion was favourable to a private conversation with his accepted

son-in-law, and quite as unfavourable to one, or at least to a very

rational one, between the lovers, he quietly took the young man's

arm, and led him towards a more private walk. There half an hour of

confidential discourse calmed the feelings of both, and rendered Paul

Powis one of the happiest of human beings.

 

Chapter XXIV.

 

"You shall do marvellous wisely, good Reynaldo, Before you visit

him, to make inquiry Of his behaviour."

 

HAMLET

 

Ann Sidley was engaged among the dresses of Eve, as she loved to be,

although Annette held her taste in too low estimation ever to permit

her to apply a needle, or even to fit a robe to the beautiful form

that was to wear it, when our heroine glided into the room and sunk

upon a sofa. Eve was too much absorbed with her own feelings to

observe the presence of her quiet unobtrusive old nurse, and too much

accustomed to her care and sympathy to heed it, had it been seen. For

a moment she remained, her face still suffused with blushes, her

hands lying before her folded, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, and

then the pent emotions found an outlet in a flood of tears.

 

Poor Ann could not have felt more shocked, had she heard of any

unexpected calamity, than she was at this sudden outbreaking of

feeling in her child. She went to her, and bent over her with the

solicitude of a mother, as she inquired into the causes of her

apparent sorrow.

 

"Tell me, Miss Eve, and it will relieve your mind," said the faithful

woman; "your dear mother had such feelings sometimes, and I never

dared to question her about them; but you are my own child, and

nothing can grieve you without grieving me."

 

The eyes of Eve were brilliant, her face continued to be suffused,

and the smile which she gave through her tears was so bright, as to

leave her poor attendant in deep perplexity as to the cause of a gush

of feeling that was very unusual in one of the other's regulated

mind.

 

"It is not grief, dear Nanny,"--Eve at length murmured--"any thing

but that! I am not unhappy. Oh! no; as far from unhappiness as

possible."

 

"God be praised it is so, ma'am! I was afraid that this affair of the

English gentleman and Miss Grace might not prove agreeable to you,

for he has not behaved as handsomely as he might, in that

transaction."

 

"And why not, my poor Nanny?--I have neither claim, nor the wish to

possess a claim, on Sir George Templemore. His selection of my cousin

has given me sincere satisfaction, rather than pain; were he a

countryman of our own, I should say unalloyed satisfaction, for I

firmly believe he will strive to make her happy."

 

Nanny now looked at her young mistress, then at the floor; at her

young mistress again, and afterwards at a rocket that was sailing

athwart the sky. Her eyes, however, returned to those of Eve, and

encouraged by the bright beam of happiness that was glowing in the

countenance she so much loved, she ventured to say--

 

"If Mr. Powis were a more presuming gentleman than he is, ma'am--"

 

"You mean a less modest, Nanny," said Eve, perceiving that her nurse

paused.

 

"Yes, ma'am--one that thought more of himself, and less of other

people, is what I wish to say."

 

"And were this the case?"

 

"I might think _he_ would find the heart to say what I know he

feels."

 

"And did he find the heart to say what you know he feels, what does

Ann Sidley think should be my answer?"

 

"Oh, ma'am, I know it would be just as it ought to be. I cannot

repeat what ladies say on such occasions, but I know that it is what

makes the hearts of the gentlemen leap for joy."

 

There are occasions in which woman can hardly dispense with the

sympathy of woman. Eve loved her father most tenderly, had more than

the usual confidence in him, for she had never known a mother; but

had the present conversation been with him, notwithstanding all her

reliance on his affection, her nature would have shrunk from pouring

out her feelings as freely as she might have done with her other

parent, had not death deprived her of such a blessing. Between our

heroine and Ann Sidley, on the other hand, there existed a confidence

of a nature so peculiar, as to require a word of explanation before

we exhibit its effects. In all that related to physical wants, Ann

had been a mother, or even more than a mother to Eve, and this alone

had induced great personal dependence in the one, and a sort of

supervisory care in the other, that had brought her to fancy she was

responsible for the bodily health and well-doing of her charge. But

this was not all. Nanny had been the repository of Eve's childish

griefs, the confidant of her girlish secrets; and though the years of

the latter soon caused her to be placed under the management of those

who were better qualified to store her mind, this communication never

ceased; the high-toned and educated young woman reverting with

unabated affection, and a reliance that nothing could shake, to the

long-tried tenderness of the being who had watched over her infancy.

The effect of such an intimacy was often amusing; the one party

bringing to the conferences, a mind filled with the knowledge suited

to her sex and station, habits that had been formed in the best

circles of christendom, and tastes that had been acquired in schools

of high reputation; and the other, little more than her single-

hearted love, a fidelity that ennobled her nature, and a simplicity

that betokened perfect purity of thought Nor was this extraordinary

confidence without its advantages to Eve; for, thrown so early among

the artificial and calculating, it served to keep her own

ingenuousness of character active, and prevented that cold, selfish,

and unattractive sophistication, that mere women of fashion are apt

to fall into, from their isolated and factitious mode of existence.

When Eve, therefore, put the questions to her nurse, that have

already been mentioned, it was more with a real wish to know how the

latter would view a choice on which her own mind was so fully made

up, than any silly trifling on a subject that engrossed so much of

her best affections.

 

"But you have not told me, dear Nanny," she continued, "what _you_

would have that answer be. Ought I, for instance, ever to quit my

beloved father?"

 

"What necessity would there be for that, ma'am? Mr. Powis has no home

of his own; and, for that matter, scarcely any country----"

 

"How can you know this, Nanny?" demanded Eve, with the jealous

sensitiveness of a young love.

 

"Why, Miss Eve, his man says this much, and he has lived with him

long enough to know it, if he had a home. Now, I seldom sleep without

looking back at the day, and often have my thoughts turned to Sir

George Temple more and Mr. Powis; and when I have remembered that the

first had a house and a home, and that the last had neither, it has

always seemed to me that _he_ ought to be the one."

 

"And then, in all this matter, you have thought of convenience, and

what might be agreeable to others, rather than of me."

 

"Miss Eve!"

 

"Nay, dearest Nanny, forgive me; I know your last thought, in every

thing, is for yourself. But surely, the mere circumstance that he had

no home ought not to be a sufficient reason for selecting any man,

for a husband. With most women it would be an objection."

 

"I pretend to know very little of these feelings, Miss Eve. I have

been wooed, I acknowledge; and once I do think I might have been

tempted to marry, had it not been for a particular circumstance."

 

"You! You marry, Ann Sidley!" exclaimed Eve, to whom the bare idea

seemed as odd and unnatural, as that her own father should forget her

mother, and take a second wife. "This is altogether new, and I should

be glad to know what the lucky circumstance was, which prevented

what, to me, might have proved so great a calamity."

 

"Why, ma'am, I said to myself, what does a woman do, who marries? She

vows to quit all else to go with her husband, and to love him before

father and mother, and all other living beings on earth--is it not

so, Miss Eve?"

 

"I believe it is so, indeed, Nanny--nay, I am quite certain it is

so," Eve answered, the colour deepening on her cheek, as she gave

this opinion to her old nurse, with the inward consciousness that she

had just experienced some of the happiest moments of her life,

through the admission of a passion that thus overshadowed all the

natural affections. "It is, truly? as you say."

 

"Well, ma'am, I investigated my feelings, I believe they call it, and

after a proper trial, I found that I loved you so much better than

any one else, that I could not, in conscience, make the vows."

 

"Dearest Nanny! my kind, good, faithful old nurse! let me hold you in

my arms: and, I, selfish, thoughtless, heartless girl, would forget

the circumstance that would be most likely to keep us together, for

the remainder of our lives! Hist! there is a tap at the door It is

Mrs. Bloomfield; I know her light step. Admit her, my kind Ann, and

leave us together."

 

The bright searching eye of Mrs. Bloomfield was riveted on her young

friend, as she advanced into the room; and her smile, usually so gay

and sometimes ironical, was now thoughtful and kind.

 

"Well, Miss Effingham," she cried, in a manner that her looks

contradicted, "am I to condole with you," or to congratulate?--For a

more sudden, or miraculous change did I never