Part 40 (1/2)
”Anna!--dearest Anna!”--I covered the rosy fingers with kisses.
”Let us be tranquil, Jack, and if possible, endeavor to be reasonable, too.”
”If I thought this could really cost one habitually discreet as you an effort, Anna?”
”One habitually discreet as I, is as likely to feel strongly on meeting an old friend, as another.”
”I think it would make me perfectly happy, could I see thee weep.”
As if waiting only for this hint, Anna burst into a flood of tears.
I was frightened, for her sobs became hysterical and convulsed. Those precious sentiments which had been so long imprisoned in her gentle bosom, obtained the mastery, and I was well paid for my selfishness, by experiencing an alarm little less violent than her own outpouring of feeling.
Touching the incidents, emotions, and language of the next half hour, it is not my intention to be very communicative. Anna was ingenuous, unreserved, and, if I might judge by the rosy blushes that suffused her sweet face, and the manner in which she extricated herself from my protecting arms, I believe I must add, she deemed herself indiscreet in that she had been so unreserved and ingenuous.
”We can now converse more calmly, Jack,” the dear creature resumed, after she had erased the signs of emotion from her cheeks--”more calmly, if not more sensibly.”
”The wisdom of Solomon is not half so precious as the words I have just heard--and as for the music of spheres--”
”It is a melody that angels only enjoy.”
”And art not thou an angel?”
”No, Jack, only a poor, confiding girl; one instinct with the affections and weaknesses of her s.e.x, and one whom it must be your part to sustain and direct. If we begin by calling each other by these superhuman epithets, we may awake from the delusion sooner than if we commence with believing ourselves to be no other than what we really are. I love you for your kind, excellent, and generous heart, Jack; and as for these poetical beings, they are rather proverbial, I believe, for having no hearts at all.”
As Anna mildly checked my exaggeration of language--after ten years of marriage I am unwilling to admit there was any exaggeration of idea--she placed her little velvet hand in mine again, smiling away all the severity of the reproof.
”Of one thing, I think you may rest perfectly a.s.sured, dear girl,” I resumed, after a moment's reflection. ”All my old opinions concerning expansion and contraction are radically changed. I have carried out the principle of the social-stake system in the extreme, and cannot say that I have been at all satisfied with its success. At this moment I am the proprietor of vested interests which are scattered over half the world.
So far from finding that I love my kind any more for all these social stakes, I am compelled to see that the wish to protect one, is constantly driving me into acts of injustice against all the others.
There is something wrong, depend on it, Anna, in the old dogmas of political economists!”
”I know little of these things, Sir John, but to one ignorant as myself, it would appear that the most certain security for the righteous exercise of power is to be found in just principles.”
”If available, beyond a question. They who contend that the debased and ignorant are unfit to express their opinions concerning the public weal, are obliged to own that they can only be restrained by force. Now, as knowledge is power, their first precaution is to keep them ignorant; and then they quote this very ignorance, with all its debasing consequences, as an argument against their partic.i.p.ating in authority with themselves.
I believe there can be no safe medium between a frank admission of the whole principle--”
”You should remember, dear Goldencalf, that this is a subject on which I know but little. It ought to be sufficient for us that we find things as they are; if change is actually necessary, we should endeavor to effect it with prudence and a proper regard to justice.”
Anna, while kindly leading me back from my speculations, looked both anxious and pained.
”True--true”--I hurriedly rejoined, for a world would not tempt me to prolong her suffering for a moment. ”I am foolish and forgetful, to be talking thus at such a moment; but I have endured too much to be altogether unmindful of ancient theories. I thought it might be grateful to you, at least, to know, Anna, that I have ceased to look for happiness in my affections for all, and am only so much the better disposed to turn in search of it to one.”
”To love our neighbor as ourself, is the latest and highest of the divine commands,” the dear girl answered, looking a thousand times more lovely than ever, for my conclusion was very far from being displeasing to her. ”I do not know that this object is to be attained by centring in our persons as many of the goods of life as possible; but I do think, Jack, that the heart which loves one truly, will be so much the better disposed to entertain kind feelings towards all others.”
I kissed the hand she had given me, and we now began to talk a little more like people of the world, concerning our movements. The interview lasted an hour longer, when the heaven. ”You never yet were so unkind to one who was offensive; much less could you willingly have plotted this cruelty to one you regard!”
Anna could no longer control herself, but her cheeks were wetted with the usual signs of feeling in her s.e.x. Then smiling in the midst of this little outbreaking of womanly sensibility, her countenance became playful and radiant.
”That letter ought not to be altogether proscribed, neither, Jack. Had it not been written, you would never have visited Leaphigh, nor Leaplow, nor have seen any of those wonderful spectacles which are here recorded.”