out of their beds and ran to join the bucket brigade to try and put the fire out. It was also an exciting night for Will. He and Beatrix had gone for a walk in the moonlight, and he had at last been able to muster the courage to tell her what had been hiding in his heart for some time.
This is how he began: “I care for you, Miss Potter. I care deeply. I don’t suppose this is any secret to you—I am sure it has been increasingly apparent each time we’ve been together this last year, and perhaps even before.”
It had indeed become apparent, and Beatrix had observed it with growing uneasiness. It was not that she did not have warm feelings of her own. Oh, no, not at all! She knew how she felt and she was fully aware of the danger of it, for those warm feelings for Will Heelis were complicated by equally warm feelings of loyalty to Norman Warne and his family. (Norman’s sister Millie would surely be hurt if she found out that Beatrix was beginning to care for someone else.) And her parents—
Oh, dear. Well, that, of course, was the most significant complication, for Beatrix knew that her mother and father would oppose her relationship with Will Heelis in exactly the way they had opposed her engagement to Norman, and for exactly the same reasons. They would say that Will (who was, after all, just a country solicitor, the son of a country parson and his country wife) was not “the right sort of person” to marry their daughter. In fact, they still did not intend that their daughter should marry anyone at all, ever, but should stay with them at Bolton Gardens and look after them in their old age. And Beatrix (who was very modern in some ways and very old-fashioned in others) could not imagine marrying without her parents’ consent.
Well, you can see the dilemma she was in. So it was no wonder that Beatrix was uneasy, and that she would really much rather that Will had never found whatever had been hiding in his heart. She wanted to make him stop, but she couldn’t, for he hadn’t yet finished.
“Please do believe me when I say,” he was going on, “that I am not insensible to your feelings for Mr. Warne, nor to your difficulties with your parents. But I must tell you truly, and from my heart, that if your circumstances change—”
At that point, he had paused. Beatrix was not putting her fingers in her ears (that would have been terribly rude) but he could see by the look on her face that she did not want to hear what he had to say. Having opened the subject, however, he could not see any comfortable way to close it, and so he had taken a deep breath and stumbled on.
“I know your parents believe me unworthy. It is true—I am unworthy, and I should never wish to cause you a single moment’s unhappiness on my account. But if ... if your circumstances can ever permit you to consider having me, Miss Potter, my heart . . . my heart is yours. Truly, honestly, and eternally yours.”
I don’t know about you, but if I had been Miss Potter and Mr. Heelis had offered to give me his heart, truly, honestly, and eternally, I should not have hesitated one instant. I should have said, “Yes! Oh, yes, yes, yes!” on the spot. But our Beatrix (who had the foresight to see that matters were coming to a head) had already practiced her “no.” And so she delivered it, firmly and compactly.
“I do care for you, but our friendship must remain a friendship. I still have an enduring fondness for Norman, and my parents present a substantial obstacle to my living my life as I would choose to live it.”
Now, Will could have accepted Beatrix’s rejection and gone on about his business, as any well-mannered Victorian gentleman should have done. (I am perfectly aware that Queen Victoria had by this time been dead for a decade, but that doesn’t change the fact that Will and Beatrix are thoroughgoing Victorians, just as proper as you please. Neither would have liked being called “Edwardian,” for King Edward, while he was a very good king, had a very bad reputation for playing fast and loose with the ladies.) Will’s heart would, of course, have been completely broken, but humans are resilient, and it takes