The Life and Legacy of Harriette Wilson. Harriette Wilson
and understand each other perfectly. If I do not affect to disbelieve you, you will not say I am vain; and when I tell you that we cannot meet immediately, owing to a very severe domestic calamity, you will not say I am cold. In the meantime will you write to me? The little watch I have got for you, I am not quite satisfied with. I have seen one in better taste, and flatter. But my poor father is dying and counts the minutes of my absence, or I could have found one to please you. However, you will keep this for my sake. I will leave it myself at your house this evening. I can scarcely describe to you how exhausted I am; for I have passed the whole of the three last nights by the bedside of my sick father, without rest. I know he will have your prayers. At midnight, let us pray for him, together. He has been suffering more than five months. Adieu, dear Harriette."
Lord Ponsonby's solitary rides with his dog, his paleness, and that melancholy expression of countenance, which at once interested me so deeply, were now accounted for. During three weeks more we corresponded daily. His father continued to exist, and that was all. I learned from his lordship's letters that, on the night we saw him for a few moments at the opera, his father was pronounced out of danger, and country-air was recommended to him, which, having produced no favourable change, nothing now could save him. My happiness, while that correspondence went on, was the purest, the most exalted, and the least allied to sensuality, of any I ever experienced in my life. Ponsonby, I conceived, was now mine, by right mine, by that firm courage which made me feel ready to endure any imaginable evil for his sake. I was morally certain that nothing in existence could love Lord Ponsonby, or could feel the might and majesty of his peculiarly intellectual beauty as I did.
"My beloved," so he wrote to me at last, "my spirits and health fail me; they are worn out and exhausted, with this close confinement. My poor father no longer suffers, or is scarcely sensible. My brother George will take my place by his bedside. Let us meet this evening, and you will console me. I shall go to you at nine."
Lord Ponsonby was then coming to me at last! I began to fear the expression of his eyes, so penetrating, so very bright. I began to think myself under the influence of a dream, and that he was not coming; then I feared sudden death would deprive me of him. I heard the knock, and his footsteps on the stairs; and then that most godlike head uncovered, that countenance, so pale, so still, and so expressive, the mouth of such perfect loveliness; the fine clear, transparent, dark skin. I looked earnestly in his face, I watched for that characteristic blush which made me fancy his body thought, to be certain of my own happiness! and then my overflowing heart was relieved by a flood of tears.
"My dear, dear, little Harriette," said Ponsonby, drawing me towards him, and passing his arm softly round my waist, "let us be happy now we are met." My smile must have been expressive of the most heartfelt felicity; yet our happiness was of that tranquil nature which is nearer allied to melancholy than to mirth. We conversed together all night, with my head resting on his shoulder. An age could not have made us better acquainted! Ponsonby's health and spirits were evidently quite exhausted by anxiety and want of rest. Neither of us desired anything, while thus engaged in conversation. Yes, perhaps, I did, as my eyes were fixed, for hours, on his beautiful and magnificent countenance, feel my own lips almost tremble, as I thought they would be pressed to his, and Ponsonby seemed to understand and feel my wishes, for he said, in answer to nothing but the expression of my eyes—
"No, not to night! I could not bear your kiss to night. We will dream about it till to-morrow."
Ponsonby assured me, in the course of our tête-à-tête, that the first time he had seen me, was one day when I lived at Somers-town two years before. For three or four days after that, he could think of nothing else. He met me with Argyle again, and wished to forget me; but, added he, "I, being the shyest poor wretch in the world, have ever held anything like notoriety in the greatest dread. I abhor it! therefore, when you came out at the opera, and I heard all the fine young men talking about you, it was not so difficult to forget you; and yet, though you did not see me, I was always looking at you, and trying to hear some one talk about you. When we met latterly in the Park, there was something so natural and unaffected, and wild, about your manner, that I began to forget your notoriety."
Ponsonby then told me all about the poor old woman to whom I had given half a crown in the Park; but what he said on that head was far too flattering for me to repeat. It was past five in the morning when we separated.
"You are so ill and fatigued," said I, "dear Ponsonby, that I will not let you come to me to-morrow night."
"Oh, but I must!" answered Ponsonby.
"Indeed you must rest."
"Impossible!" he replied.
We made no professions of love to each other—not one; for we were as certain, as of our existence, that we were mutually adored; and yet we passed the night together, and parted, without a kiss, to meet early the following evening.
CHAPTER VI
At nine o'clock on the following evening, Ponsonby entered the room, an altered man. He was one of the very few persons I have met with in my life, who, from the natural extreme reserve and shyness of their disposition, absolutely required to be a very little tipsy before they can give their brilliant imaginations fair play. Ponsonby had slept, drunk a little more claret, and, what lately had been unusual to him owing to his father's lingering illness, had put on an evening dress. He appeared now so much more beautiful than I had ever imagined any mortal mixture of earth's clay, that I began to lose my confidence in myself and tremble. There was too a look of success about him, for indeed the humblest man on earth must have borrowed courage from the reflection of Ponsonby's looking-glass on that evening: and there he sat for half an hour, laughing and showing his brilliant teeth, while he related to me many witty things which had been said by his uncle, whom he had just left—the George Ponsonby, now no more, who spoke so well on the Opposition side.
"Can one endure this any longer," thought I. I was getting into a fever. "Perhaps he does not love me!"
"You are so proud of being dressed to-night!" I remarked with some drollery, and I thought he never would have ceased laughing at me.
It was very tiresome.
"The fact is," said Ponsonby, in his sweet voice, the beauteous tones of which nobody ever did or will dispute, "the fact is, I really am proud of it; for I have not worn shoes before for these last three months; but," added he, "do you know what I am most proud of in the world, and which, poor as I am, upon my honour, I would not exchange, at this moment, for a hundred thousand pounds?"
"No!—-"
"I will tell you—my place in your heart and your arms this evening." He put his arms round my waist, and my lips were nearly touching his. Ponsonby's cheek was now tinged with the glowing blush of passion; yet he turned from my kiss like a spoiled child.
"No!" said Ponsonby, shaking his head, "I have a thousand things to tell you."
"I cannot listen to one of them," said I, faintly, and our lips met in one long, long delicious kiss! so sweet, so ardent! that it seemed to draw the life's warm current from my youthful heart to reanimate his with all its wildest passion.
And then!—yes, and then, as Sterne, says—and then we parted.
The next day, at past three o'clock, Fanny found me in bed.
"How abominably idle!" said Fanny.
I answered that I was not well.
"You do not look very bad," Fanny replied; "on the contrary, I have not seen you look so well, nor your eyes so bright, for some time."
"Well," said I, "if you really think me out of danger, I will get up."
"Come!" answered Fanny, "shall I ring for your maid? I want you to take me to Julia's."
While I was dressing, Fanny informed me that she had given up her own house to go and live with Julia.
"I rather prefer living alone,"