JULIANA
The sick night-light burned steadily in Juliana’s chamber. On a couch,
beside her bed, Caroline lay sleeping, tired with a long watch. Two
sentences had been passed on Juliana: one on her heart: one on her
body: “Thou art not loved”; and, “Thou must die.” The frail passion of
her struggle against her destiny was over with her. Quiet as that quiet
which Nature was taking her to, her body reposed. Calm as the solitary
night-light before her open eyes, her spirit was wasting away. “If I am
not loved, then let me die!” In such a sense she bowed to her fate.
At an hour like this, watching the round of light on the ceiling, with
its narrowing inner rings, a sufferer from whom pain has fled looks
back to the shores she is leaving, and would be well with them who walk
there. It is false to imagine that schemers and workers in the dark are
destitute of the saving gift of conscience. They have it, and it is
perhaps made livelier in them than with easy people; and therefore,
they are imperatively spurred to hoodwink it. Hence, their
self-delusion is deep and endures. They march to their object, and
gaining or losing it, the voice that calls to them is the voice of a
blind creature, whom any answer, provided that the answer is ready,
will silence. And at an hour like this, when finally they snatch their
minute of sight on the threshold of black night, their souls may
compare with yonder shining circle on the ceiling, which, as the light
below gasps for air, contracts, and extends but to mingle with the
darkness. They would be nobler, better, boundlessly good to all;—to
those who have injured them to those whom they have injured. Alas! for
any definite deed the limit of their circle is immoveable, and they
must act within it. The trick they have played themselves imprisons
them. Beyond it, they cease to be.
Lying in this utter stillness, Juliana thought of Rose; of her beloved
by Evan. The fever that had left her blood, had left it stagnant, and
her thoughts were quite emotionless. She looked faintly on a far
picture. She saw Rose blooming with pleasures in Elburne House, sliding
as a boat borne by the river’s tide to sea, away from her living joy.
The breast of Rose was lucid to her, and in that hour of insight she
had clear knowledge of her cousin’s heart; how it scoffed at its base
love, and unwittingly betrayed the power on her still, by clinging to
the world and what it would give her to fill the void; how externally
the lake was untroubled, and a mirror to the passing day; and how
within there pressed a flood against an iron dam. Evan, too, she saw.
The Countess was right in her judgement of Juliana’s love. Juliana
looked very little to his qualities. She loved him when she thought him
guilty, which made her conceive that her love was of a diviner cast
than Rose was capable of. Guilt did not spoil his beauty to her; his
gentleness and glowing manhood were unchanged; and when she knew him as
he was, the revelation of his high nature simply confirmed her
impression of his physical perfections. She had done him a wrong; at
her death news would come to him, and it might be that he would bless
her name. Because she sighed no longer for those dear lips and strong
arms to close about her tremulous frame, it seemed to her that she had
quite surrendered him. Generous to Evan, she would be just to Rose.
Beneath her pillow she found pencil and paper, and with difficulty,
scarce seeing her letters in the brown light, she began to trace lines
of farewell to Rose. Her conscience dictated to her thus, “Tell Rose
that she was too ready to accept his guilt; and that in this as in all
things, she acted with the precipitation of her character. Tell her
that you always trusted, and that now you know him innocent. Give her
the proofs you have. Show that he did it to shield his intriguing
sister. Tell her that you write this only to make her just to him. End
with a prayer that Rose may be happy.”
Ere Juliana had finished one sentence, she resigned the pencil. Was it
not much, even at the gates of death, to be the instrument to send Rose
into his arms? The picture swayed before her, helping her weakness. She
found herself dreaming that he had kissed her once. Dorothy, she
remembered, had danced up to her one day, to relate what the maids of
the house said of the gentleman—(at whom, it is known, they look with
the licence of cats toward kings); and Dorothy’s fresh careless mouth
had told how one observant maid, amorously minded, proclaimed of Evan,
to a companion of her sex, that, “he was the only gentleman who gave
you an idea of how he would look when he was kissing you.” Juliana
cherished that vision likewise. Young ladies are not supposed to do so,
if menial maids are; but Juliana did cherish it, and it possessed her
fancy. Bear in your recollection that she was not a healthy person.
Diseased little heroines may be made attractive, and are now popular;
but strip off the cleverly woven robe which is fashioned to cover them,
and you will find them in certain matters bearing a resemblance to
menial maids.
While the thoughts of his kiss lasted, she could do nothing; but lay
with her two hands out on the bed, and her eyelids closed. Then waking,
she took the pencil again. It would not move: her bloodless fingers
fell from it.
“If they do not meet, and he never marries, I may claim him in the next
world,” she mused.
But conscience continued uneasy. She turned her wrist and trailed a
letter from beneath the pillow. It was from Mrs. Shorne. Juliana knew
the contents. She raised it unopened as high as her faltering hands
permitted, and read like one whose shut eyes read syllables of fire on
the darkness.
“Rose has at last definitely engaged herself to Ferdinand, you will be
glad to hear, and we may now treat her as a woman.”
Having absorbed these words, Juliana’s hand found strength to write,
with little difficulty, what she had to say to Rose. She conceived it
to be neither sublime nor generous: not even good; merely her peculiar
duty. When it was done, she gave a long, low sigh of relief.
Caroline whispered, “Dearest child, are you awake?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“Sorrowful, dear?”
“Very quiet.”
Caroline reached her hand over to her, and felt the paper. “What is
this?”
“My good-bye to Rose. I want it folded now.”
Caroline slipped from the couch to fulfil her wish. She enclosed the
pencilled scrap of paper, sealed it, and asked, “Is that right?”
“Now unlock my desk,” Juliana uttered, feebly. “Put it beside a letter
addressed to a law-gentleman. Post both the morning I am gone.”
Caroline promised to obey, and coming to Juliana to mark her looks,
observed a faint pleased smile dying away, and had her hand gently
squeezed. Juliana’s conscience had preceded her contentedly to its last
sleep; and she, beneath that round of light on the ceiling, drew on her
counted breaths in peace till dawn.