Here Leonard's interest grew intense. Were there touches by which conjecture grew certainty; and he recognized, through the lapse of years, the boy lover in his own generous benefactor?
Fragments of dialogue now began to reveal the suit of an ardent impassioned nature, and the simple wonder and strange alarm of a listener who pitied but could not sympathize. Some great worldly distinction of rank between the two became visible--that distinction seemed to arm the virtue and steel the affections of the lowlier born. Then a few sentences, half blotted out with tears, told of wounded and humbled feelings--some one invested with authority, as if the suitor's parent, had interfered, questioned, reproached, counseled. And it was now evident that the suit was not one that dishonored;--it wooed to flight, but still to marriage.
And now these sentences grew briefer still, as with the decision of a strong resolve. And to these there followed a passage so exquisite, that Leonard wept unconsciously as he read. It was the description of a visit spent at home previous to some sorrowful departure. There rose up the glimpse of a proud and vain, but a tender wistful mother--of a father's fonder but less thoughtful love. And then came a quiet soothing scene between the girl and her first village lover, ending thus--"So she put M's hand into her sister's, and said: 'You loved me through the fancy, love her with the heart,' and left them comprehending each other, and betrothed."
Leonard sighed. He understood now how Mark Fairfield saw in the homely features of his unlettered wife the reflection of the sister's soul and face.
A few words told the final parting--words that were a picture. The long friendless highway, stretching on--on--toward the remorseless city. And the doors of home opening on the desolate thoroughfare--and the old pollard tree beside the threshold, with the ravens wheeling round it and calling to their young. He too had watched that threshold from the same desolate thoroughfare. He too had heard the cry of the ravens. Then came some pages covered with snatches of melancholy verse, or some reflections of dreamy gloom.
The writer was in London, in the house of some highborn patroness--that friendless shadow of a friend which the jargon of society calls "companion." And she was looking on the bright storm of the world as through prison bars. Poor bird, afar from the greenwood, she had need of song--it was her last link with freedom and nature. The patroness seems to share in her apprehensions of the boy suitor, whose wild rash prayers the fugitive had resisted: but to fear lest the suitor should be degraded, not the one whom he pursues--fears an alliance ill-suited to a highborn heir. And this kind of fear stings the writer's pride, and she grows harsh in her judgment of him who thus causes but pain where he proffers love. Then there is a reference to some applicant for her hand, who is pressed upon her choice. And she is told that it is her duty so to choose, and thus deliver a noble family from a dread that endures so long as her hand is free. And of this fear, and of this applicant, there breaks out a petulant yet pathetic scorn. After this, the narrative, to judge by the dates, pauses for days and weeks, as if the writer had grown weary and listless--suddenly to reopen in a new strain, eloquent with hopes, and with fears never known before. The first person was abruptly assumed--it was the living "I" that now breathed and moved along the lines. How was this? The woman was no more a shadow and a secret unknown to herself. She had assumed the intense and vivid sense of individual being. And love spoke loud in the awakened human heart.