‘I shall never again have such an opportunity, dear Amy,’ he said; ‘not at least for a long time, so I had better do all I can now.’ There was much sadness in his tone.
‘What do you mean by that? this is the second time I have heard you say it,’ she replied anxiously; ‘you surely cannot be going to leave us again; the regiment has only been here two months, and—tell me, I beseech you, Herbert,’ she continued as he looked up from the drawing, and distress was very visible upon his countenance; ‘tell me what you have to say. Why do you look so sad?’
‘Because, dear Amy, I have news which will pain you—that is, I think it will—for we have ever been so linked together: you have guessed the truth—I am indeed to leave—and that so soon that my own brain is confused by the sudden orders we have received.’
She turned as pale as death, and her lips quivered; all the misery and danger she had ever heard of foreign service rushed at once overwhelmingly into her thoughts. She tried to speak, but could not.
‘It must be told sooner or later,’ he thought, laying down the sketch and drawing towards her; he continued, though with much difficulty in preserving his composure—
‘The regiment is ordered upon service, Amy, and after many thoughts I find I have no alternative but to accompany it. We march for Dover in a few days; the transports, we hear, will meet us there; and after we have embarked, the convoy fleet for India will join us at Portsmouth or Plymouth.’
‘For India!’ were the only words the poor girl could utter, as she sunk helpless and fainting upon the seat.
CHAPTER X.
‘Amy, dear Amy!’ cried the young man, agonised by her bitter sobs, which ceased not, though he had raised her up, and supporting her hardly-sensible form strove to console her, but in vain. ‘Amy, speak to me! one word, only one word, and you will be better: call me by my name—anything—only do not look so utterly wretched, nor sob so bitterly. God knows I have enough to bear in leaving you so suddenly, but this misery is worst of all. Dear Amy, look up! say that you will try to conquer this, and I shall have the less to reproach myself with for having told you of so much.’ But she spoke not; she could not utter one word for the choking sensation in her throat. She passed her hand over it often, tried in vain to swallow, and gasped in the attempt.
‘Good God, you are ill!’ exclaimed Herbert hurriedly; ‘what can be done? what can I get? My own Amy!—dearest, dearest!—do not look so.’ But his entreaties were of no avail against her overpowering grief; she had struggled with the hysterical feeling till she could no longer oppose it, and yielded to its influence.
Distracted, Herbert knew not what to do. Aid there was none nearer than the house, and he could not leave her—he dared not. He raised her gently, and bore her like a child to the river’s brink. He unloosed her bonnet, and sprinkled water on her face; it revived her; and after some time and difficulty he succeeded in making her drink a little from his closed hands.
She recovered gradually, but lay sobbing still bitterly upon the grass, weakened and exhausted by the violence of her emotions. Herbert continued to hang over her in the greatest anxiety, and to implore her to speak in the tenderest epithets. He had not discovered how dear she was to him till he had heard his fate; and he had tried to argue himself out of the belief, but without avail. His high sense of honour then came to his aid, and he thought that it would be wrong to declare such feelings to her when he might never return; and fervently as he loved her, he could have spared her the bitterness of that lingering hope which is so akin to despair.
But in those moments he had forgotten all; thoughts of the past and for the future, all centred in intense affection for the helpless being before him, whose artless mind had not attempted any disguise of her devoted love for her companion of so many years.
At last she recovered sufficiently to raise herself up; and this, the first sign of consciousness she had given, was rapture to Herbert. He bent down to her, and attempted to lift her to her feet. She was passive in his hands, even as a weak child; and partly supporting, partly carrying her, he led her to the hermitage. There he seated her on the rustic bench, and kneeling down beside her, while one arm was passed round her—for she could not have sat alone without support—he poured forth with the impetuosity and tenderness of his disposition his vows of love, and his entreaties for some token that he had not angered her by his abruptness.
‘But one word, my Amy! but one word, dearest!—one word, that in those far distant lands I may feed on it in my heart, while your beautiful face is present to my imagination. Dearest, we have loved each other with more than children’s love from infancy; we have never expressed it, but now the trial has come, and you will not be the one to deny yours at such a time. O Amy, speak to me one word to assure me that I may call you mine for ever!’
Much more he said, and more passionately, but her hand was not withdrawn from his, nor did she remove herself from him. A tear at last forced its way from her closed eyelids, for she dared not to open them. Soon others followed; they fell hot and fast upon his hand for a little while; and at length, as she strove to speak, but could not, she was no longer able to control her emotion, and she fell upon his neck and wept aloud.
The young man strained her to his heart, and as he wiped the fast-falling tears from her eyes, he poured such consolation as he could find words to utter into her perturbed heart. She did not question his love—she had no doubt of that; but there was one all-engrossing thought—his absence—beneath which even her light and joyous spirit quailed; and while it caused her to shiver in very apprehension of perils which her thoughts could not define, she clung the closer to him, and strove to shut out the evils with which her mental visions were overcast.
The trying test of coming absence, of dangers to be braved, hardships to be endured, had at once broken down all barriers of formality, and opened to them the state of each other’s affections in that perfect confidence, that pure reliance—the gentle growth of years, it is true—but which had at once expanded without a check, and would endure for ever.
Who can tell the exquisite pleasure of such a first embrace? Pure love, such as theirs, had little of the dross of passion in it. The knowledge that years must elapse ere they could meet again, the silent dread that it might never be, put a thought of possession far from them; and in the perfect purity and ecstasy of feeling of those moments—in the indulgence of thoughts, new, yet so inexpressibly sweet to them—it is no wonder in that sequestered and lovely spot, that hours should have passed, and time should have been unheeded; nor was it until the lengthened shadows warned them of the decline of the day, that they could speak of parting, or of the object of their visit.
The sketch had lain on the ground unheeded. Amy took it up. ‘It will be to me the silent witness of what has this day happened,’ she said, ‘and the dearest treasure I possess, Herbert, when you are gone from me. Now one little favour I beg, that you will sketch in ourselves—me, as I lay fainting on the bank yonder, and you as you bent over me; for I think it was there and then I first heard you say you loved me, Herbert. To me it will be a comfort and a solace till you return, and then we will come here together, and you shall see that not a shrub or flower has been altered. Four years you said, dearest! they will soon pass, and I confess I have hope beyond what I thought I should ever have possessed. Four years! methinks in anticipation they are already gone, and we sit here—you a bronzed soldier with a thousand tales for me to hear, and I will sit at your feet and listen, your unchanged and unchangeable Amy.’
Herbert regarded her with intense admiration, for her sadness had passed away; and though tears trembled in her bright eyes with every word she spoke, there was a joyous tone in her voice and in her expression; and his spirit caught that hope from hers which, under other circumstances, would have been denied him.
‘Willingly,