She stopped again, and gave him an earnest supplicating look.
'Well, Lizzie, well!' said he, in an easy way though ill at ease with himself 'don't be unhappy, don't be reproachful.'
'I cannot help being unhappy, but I do not mean to be reproachful.
Mr Wrayburn, I implore you to go away from this neighbourhood, to-morrow morning.'
'Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie!' he remonstrated. 'As well be reproachful as wholly unreasonable. I can't go away.'
'Why not?'
'Faith!' said Eugene in his airily candid manner. 'Because you won't let me. Mind! I don't mean to be reproachful either. I don't complain that you design to keep me here. But you do it, you do it.'
'Will you walk beside me, and not touch me;' for, his arm was coming about her again; 'while I speak to you very seriously, Mr Wrayburn?'
'I will do anything within the limits of possibility, for you, Lizzie,' he answered with pleasant gaiety as he folded his arms. 'See here!
Napoleon Buonaparte at St Helena.'
'When you spoke to me as I came from the Mill the night before last,' said Lizzie, fixing her eyes upon him with the look of supplication which troubled his better nature, 'you told me that you were much surprised to see me, and that you were on a solitary fishing excursion. Was it true?'
'It was not,' replied Eugene composedly, 'in the least true. I came here, because I had information that I should find you here.'
'Can you imagine why I left London, Mr Wrayburn?'
'I am afraid, Lizzie,' he openly answered, 'that you left London to get rid of me. It is not flattering to my self-love, but I am afraid you did.'
'I did.'
'How could you be so cruel?'
'O Mr Wrayburn,' she answered, suddenly breaking into tears, 'is the cruelty on my side! O Mr Wrayburn, Mr Wrayburn, is there no cruelty in your being here to-night!'
'In the name of all that's good--and that is not conjuring you in my own name, for Heaven knows I am not good'--said Eugene, 'don't be distressed!'
'What else can I be, when I know the distance and the difference between us? What else can I be, when to tell me why you came here, is to put me to shame!' said Lizzie, covering her face.
He looked at her with a real sentiment of remorseful tenderness and pity. It was not strong enough to impell him to sacrifice himself and spare her, but it was a strong emotion.
'Lizzie! I never thought before, that there was a woman in the world who could affect me so much by saying so little. But don't be hard in your construction of me. You don't know what my state of mind towards you is. You don't know how you haunt me and bewilder me. You don't know how the cursed carelessness that is over-officious in helping me at every other turning of my life, WON'T help me here. You have struck it dead, I think, and Isometimes almost wish you had struck me dead along with it.'
She had not been prepared for such passionate expressions, and they awakened some natural sparks of feminine pride and joy in her breast. To consider, wrong as he was, that he could care so much for her, and that she had the power to move him so!
'It grieves you to see me distressed, Mr Wrayburn; it grieves me to see you distressed. I don't reproach you. Indeed I don't reproach you. You have not felt this as I feel it, being so different from me, and beginning from another point of view. You have not thought.
But I entreat you to think now, think now!'
'What am I to think of?' asked Eugene, bitterly.
'Think of me.'
'Tell me how NOT to think of you, Lizzie, and you'll change me altogether.'
'I don't mean in that way. Think of me, as belonging to another station, and quite cut off from you in honour. Remember that Ihave no protector near me, unless I have one in your noble heart.
Respect my good name. If you feel towards me, in one particular, as you might if I was a lady, give me the full claims of a lady upon your generous behaviour. I am removed from you and your family by being a working girl. How true a gentleman to be as considerate of me as if I was removed by being a Queen!'
He would have been base indeed to have stood untouched by her appeal. His face expressed contrition and indecision as he asked:
'Have I injured you so much, Lizzie?'
'No, no. You may set me quite right. I don't speak of the past, Mr Wrayburn, but of the present and the future. Are we not here now, because through two days you have followed me so closely where there are so many eyes to see you, that I consented to this appointment as an escape?'
'Again, not very flattering to my self-love,' said Eugene, moodily;'but yes. Yes. Yes.'
'Then I beseech you, Mr Wrayburn, I beg and pray you, leave this neighbourhood. If you do not, consider to what you will drive me.'
He did consider within himself for a moment or two, and then retorted, 'Drive you? To what shall I drive you, Lizzie?'
'You will drive me away. I live here peacefully and respected, and I am well employed here. You will force me to quit this place as Iquitted London, and--by following me again--will force me to quit the next place in which I may find refuge, as I quitted this.'
'Are you so determined, Lizzie--forgive the word I am going to use, for its literal truth--to fly from a lover?'
'I am so determined,' she answered resolutely, though trembling, 'to fly from such a lover. There was a poor woman died here but a little while ago, scores of years older than I am, whom I found by chance, lying on the wet earth. You may have heard some account of her?'
'I think I have,' he answered, 'if her name was Higden.'
'Her name was Higden. Though she was so weak and old, she kept true to one purpose to the very last. Even at the very last, she made me promise that her purpose should be kept to, after she was dead, so settled was her determination. What she did, I can do.
Mr Wrayburn, if I believed--but I do not believe--that you could be so cruel to me as to drive me from place to place to wear me out, you should drive me to death and not do it.'