THE CRISIS APPROACHING.
While Oswald went about the streets so lightly, and thought so
pleasantly of his prospects, another mind, still more agitated than that
of Cara, was turning over and over all he had done for the last five or
six weeks, and all that he might be about to do in the future. Agnes in
her convent, with all her routine of duties--with the little tinkling
bell continually calling her to one thing or another, to matins or
evensong, to ‘meditation,’ to this service or that, to choir practice,
to dinner and tea and recreation--carried a tumult of fancies about with
her, which no one, except perhaps Sister Mary Jane, guessed. Oswald
would have stood aghast could he have seen into that little ocean of
excited feeling, where the waves rose higher and higher as the hours
went on, and sometimes a swelling tide almost swept the thinker herself
away--though indeed he would have been so unable to understand it that
the inspection would probably have taught him little. How easily he took
all this, which was so tremendous to her! and that not only because of
the difference between man and woman, but because of the fundamental
difference in temperament, which was greater still. Agnes had known but
little that was lovely or pleasant in her life. Her rectory-home was
neither; her father and mother and brothers and sisters were all vulgar
and commonplace, struggling for existence, and for such privileges as it
contained, one against another, and against the world, each grumbling at
the indulgences the other managed to secure. The parish and its
poor--and its rich, who were not much more attractive--had been all the
world she had known; and the only beings who had crossed her horizon,
who were not struggling like her own people, in the sordid race of
existence, to get something, whatever it might be, were the Sisters in
the House, and such a gentle retired person as Miss Cherry, who was not
fighting for anything, who was ready to yield to anyone, and whose mild
existence was evidently not pervaded by that constant recollection of
self which filled up all the life of the others. This was what had
brought the visionary girl into the House, which was sordid, too, in its
details, though not in its spirit. Then there had been suddenly
presented to her, just as she settled down to the work of the House, an
image of something new, something more spontaneous, more easy in
generosity, more noble in liberality than anything she had ever
encountered. What did it matter that this type of nobleness was a
handsome young man? Visionary Agnes, in the daring of her youth, saw no
harm, but rather a beautiful fitness, in the fact that this revelation
of the ideal should have all that was best in external as well as in
more important things. He had stopped short--no doubt with all the
brilliant world, which she did not know, waiting for him, arrested till
he should rejoin it--to carry the wounded child to the hospital. He had
left those mysterious glories of life, day after day and week after
week, to go and ask for little Emmy. How wonderful this was! The
devotion of Sister Mary Jane, the loving-kindness of Miss Cherry, faded
before such an example; for they had not the world at their feet as this
young paladin evidently had.
This was how the first chapter of the story came about. It opened her
eyes (Agnes thought) to nobleness undreamed of, and for the first few
weeks the universe itself had grown more bright to her. Could it be
possible, then, that in ‘the world’ itself, which the Sisters had
abjured--in that splendid glorious ‘society’ which even ascetic books
spoke of as something too full of enhancements and seductions to be
resisted by any but the most heroic, there were still opportunities of
living the highest unselfish life, to the glory of God and the comfort
of man? When Agnes found that this ideal hero of hers had thoughts less
exalted in his bosom--that so small a motive as the wish to see herself
and talk to her, had something to do with his devotion to the orphan,
her visionary mind received a shock. Probably, had Oswald’s enthusiasm
been for another, she would have been permanently disquieted by the
discovery; but there is something strangely conciliatory in the fact
that it is one’s self who is admired and followed. Such trivial emotions
detract from the perfection of an ideal character; but still it is a
much more easy thing to forgive your own lover than anyone else’s. And
the more he sought her, the more Agnes’s heart, in spite of herself,
inclined towards the man who could be thus moved. The ideal stole away,
but so insensibly, in rose-coloured clouds, that she had not discovered
the departure of her first admiration and wonder before something else
stole in. It was not all goodness, nobleness, Christian charity,
perhaps, that moved him; but what was it? Love, which in its way is
divine too. Only after this altogether new influence had made itself
felt did doubts appear, making a chaos in her mind. Were his sentiments
as true as she had first thought? Was it right to counterfeit goodness,
even in the name of love? Was not, after all, the life of the Sisters,
the life of sacrifice, more noble than the other smiling life, of which
he was the emblem? Was it not a mean thing to go back from that, and all
one’s high thoughts of it, to the common romance of a story-book? Might
not this romance lead back again to those vulgar beaten paths out of
which Agnes had supposed herself to have escaped? And, ah! was it true
after all? this was the refrain which kept coming back. Was it love and
not levity? Was he seeking her seriously, in honour and truth; or was it
possible that he was not noble at all, seeking her only for his own
amusement? These thoughts shook Agnes to the bottom of her soul. They
were like convulsions passing over her, tearing her spirit asunder. She
went on with her work and all her religious exercises, and nobody found
out how curiously unaware of what she was doing the girl was; living in
a dream, performing mechanically all outside functions. Who does know,
of those who are most near to us, what is going on in our minds? And not
a calm Sister, not a little orphan in the House, would have been more
incapable of comprehending, than was Oswald--to whom it would have
seemed impossible--that anything in the world could produce so much
emotion. Not only was it incomprehensible to him, but he could not even
have found it out; and that his conduct should move either Agnes or Cara
to this passionate suffering was an idea out of his grasp altogether. He
would have been astounded, and more than astounded, had he been able to
see into these two strange phases of unknown existence, which he could
not have realised; but yet he was interested as warmly as his nature
permitted. He was ‘in love;’ he was ready to do a great deal to secure
to himself the girl he loved. He was ready to proceed to the most
unmistakable conclusions, to commit himself, to blazon his love to the
eyes of day. Perhaps even the sense that it was in his power to do this,
without waiting for a keynote from anyone else, had something to do with
his perfect calm.
After this, however, the departure of Emmy brought a new phase to the
strange wooing. There was no reason now why Agnes should go out alone;
and watchful Sister Mary Jane, who was not satisfied with the shape the
affair was taking, exercised an undisclosed surveillance over her young
disciple. Things ‘of the world,’ like love and marriage, are out of the
way of professed Sisters, Anglican or otherwise; but Sister Mary Jane
had long recognised that Agnes Burchell had not a ‘vocation,’ and she
was a woman, though she was a Sister, and had a soft spot in her heart
which would have made her not inexorable to an incipient romance. But
why didn’t he ask me about her friends? Sister Mary Jane said to
herself. This seemed to her the test by which Oswald was to be known,
and he had borne its application badly. Accordingly she watched over
Agnes with double zeal, scarcely letting her out of her own sight.
Someone was always ready to accompany her, when she went out; and even
in the daily procession of the school-girls Agnes was never left alone.
Here, however, Oswald was just as much in advance of everything Agnes
could have thought of, as she was in advance of him in intensity of
feeling. Nothing could exceed the cleverness, the patience, the
pertinacity with which he baffled this attempt to shut him out from her.
He would not be shut out; he haunted the neighbourhood like the air they
breathed. The door seemed never to open but he was within reach, and
Agnes never went to a window without seeing him. He passed the
procession as it went demurely along the street; he was present
somewhere when it came out, and when it went in; whenever Agnes was
visible he was there. This might have been the most intolerable
persecution, enough to drive the victim crazy; but oddly enough it did
not produce this effect. On the contrary, the sense of his constant
presence near her, watching her perpetually, became like an intoxication
to Agnes. She went about more and more like a person in a dream. To feel
that when you lift your eyes you will most probably see a handsome face
full of tender interest, anxiously waiting to secure your answering
glance, and beautiful eyes full of love and eagerness watching you
wherever you go, is not a thing which produces a very displeasing effect
upon the mind of a girl. He could not approach her directly, had not a
chance of speaking to her; but he never gave her time to forget him. The
excitement of this pursuit delighted Oswald. It would have pleased him,
even had he been much less truly touched by genuine love than he was, so
far as that love can be considered genuine which springs from the sudden
impression made by a fair face, and which has no foundation (to speak
of) of personal knowledge or intimate acquaintance. As this, however, is
what is called love by the great majority of the world, we need not
apologise for Oswald’s sentiment, which was quite real and very
engrossing. But it suited his character admirably to carry it on in this
way. He enjoyed the sensation of foiling all precautions, and conveying
by a glance, by the taking off of his hat, by his mere appearance, as
much as other men do by chapters of more practical wooing. Agnes, after
a week or two of such treatment, began to forget all her doubts, and to
feel herself floated upwards into a visionary world, a kind of poetical
paradise, in which the true knight worships and the fair lady responds
at a saintly distance, infinitely above him yet beneath him, half
angelic yet half parasitic, owing to his worship the greater part of her
grandeur. She made a little feeble resistance, now and then, saying to
herself that she did not know him, that he did not know her; asking
herself how could this interchange of glances and the dozen words they
had spoken to each other form any foundation for ‘friendship,’ which in
the trouble of her mind was what she chose to call it? But such
arguments do not count for much in the mind of a girl who feels and
knows that all her comings and goings are marked by adoring eyes, that
some instinct guides her lover across her path whenever she leaves the
shelter of her home, and that his love is great enough to encounter
perpetual fatigue and trouble, and to make him give up his entire
leisure to the chance of seeing her. If it ever gleamed across her mind
that he might have found out an easier way by making love to her
parents, and that this would at once have delivered them both from all
possibility of misunderstanding, the idea faded as quickly as it
entered, driven away by the next appearance of Oswald’s reverential
salutation, his eager glance, his apparently accidental presence. Sister
Mary Jane very seldom went with the procession, and it was not etiquette
to talk of what was seen or heard outside, and the Superior of the House
was so occupied as to be beyond the possibility of gossip. So that she
did not hear of the daily appearance of the intruder. Sister Catherine
was short-sighted, and very much taken up with the demeanour of the
girls. If she remarked him at all with her dim eyes, she took it for
granted that he lived in the neighbourhood and was going to his
occupation, whatever it might be, when the girls went out for their
walk. ‘I don’t keep up the practice of recognising the people I knew in
the world,’ she said on one occasion, seeing somebody taking off his
hat. ‘Never mind whether it was for you or for me; it is best to take no
notice--unless, indeed, with real friends.’ But she did not mention the
incident to the Superior, and Agnes, though she trembled, said nothing.
The daily encounter was like wine in her veins. It intoxicated her with
a curious dreamy intoxication of the spirit. Her head was in the clouds
as she walked, and she did not know which was real--the curious life
which she passed like a dream in the House, or that glimpse of freedom
and light and sunshine which she had abroad, light in which he stood
enshrined like the young Saint Michael in the painted window. By degrees
that moment of encounter became the principal fact in the day. Who was
she to resist this fanciful, delicate worship? and Agnes did not know
that it was to him no visionary reverential distant worship, but the
most amusing and seductive pursuit in the world.
It was evident, however, that this could not go on indefinitely without
coming to some conclusion. A few weeks stole by; Oswald did not tire,
and Agnes grew more and more self-absorbed. She struggled, but
ineffectually, against the sweet, strange fascination which rapt her out
of the vulgar world altogether, in which she still went on mechanically
doing her duties, very good to the children, very submissive and sweet
to the Sisters, caring for nothing so much as to sit still in a corner
and muse and dream when her work was done. Agnes felt herself a very
unsatisfactory person all these weeks. She was ashamed to think how
little her heart was in her work, although she did it to all appearance
more dutifully than ever. All her little disquiet was over. She bore the
dulness of routine like an angel, because of this visionary refuge of
dreams which she had; but with all this outward sweetness Agnes felt
that in her early days in the House, when her heart rebelled at the
details, but was warm as an enthusiast’s in the spirit of the place, she
was more true than now. Now she was patient, docile, gentle with
everybody, and when she had an opportunity of quiet would stroll into
the little rude chapel with its bare walls--for what; for prayer? She
had gone there to pray for strength many a time when her patience was
nearly at an end before; but now what visions stole unwittingly yet too
sweetly upon her dreamy soul, what words imagined or remembered kept
echoing in her ears! Poor Agnes, how happy she was and how miserable!
Good Sister Catherine, short-sighted and dull, wondered over the young
teacher’s growth in grace, and whispered to the Superior that a great
work was going on, and that their young helper would soon devote
herself, as they had done, and join them altogether in their work. But
Sister Mary Jane, who was wise, shook her head. She saw something in the
dreamer’s eyes which did not mean devotion. And oh, how guilty poor
Agnes felt when, stealing out of chapel where her prayers had so soon
melted away into those musings, she encountered the blue eyes which
Oswald had thought too beautiful not to be merciful as well! Agnes
trembled daily to be asked, ‘What are you thinking of?’ What was she
thinking of? how could she tell anyone--much less Sister Mary Jane? It
was shameful, terrible, to carry such thoughts into such a place. How
she had fallen off from the first fervour, the early enthusiasm of
self-devotion! to what was that devotion now turned aside? Alas! alas!
But, all the same, in external matters the change was for the better.
The more pious of the girls thought her a true Agnes, fit votary of the
saint who bears the lamb. They hoped she would keep that gentle name and
be Sister Agnes when she was professed.
Thus Agnes got an altogether fictitious reputation while Oswald carried
on his wooing; and summer came, and the long evenings grew more and more
akin to dreams. Oswald did what few men of his class would do for love
or anything else--went without his dinner, evening after evening. In the
hot days the girls had their walk later; and, as soon as he found this
out, love and the excitement of pursuit and the determination to
succeed, persuaded him, between them, to this sublime point of
self-sacrifice. After a while he was rewarded. And this was how it came
about.
It was June; the summer had expanded until the days were almost at their
longest, and, as the season had all through been a very warm and bright
one, everything was in its perfection of summer beauty. Oswald had seen
the school procession trip in one evening by the door of the House,
leaving behind all the lovely glow of a summer sunset. He turned round
and walked away towards that brilliant western blaze with a sigh;
twilight was in his face, which the golden light caught aslant and
glorified. It was getting on to the wistful moment of the day when the
excitement of the sun’s departure is over, and Nature, too, sighs in
exhaustion and gentle sadness; and it was the wistful moment for the
lover, his lady just disappeared out of sight, and the impossibility of
following her, speaking to her, getting any point of connection with
her, overwhelming his mind. Was this how it was always to be; never to
get any further; never to do anything but wait and gaze and salute her
as she passed; was this to be all? Rather indeed this for her, than
anything with another! But yet the days were long, and it is dreary
always to wait:
When there suddenly appeared against the blaze in the west a black
poke-bonnet, the ugliest of its kind. He pricked up his ears and
quickened his steps. How he could think it might be she whom he had
just seen to disappear at the convent door, I don’t understand; but his
heart began to beat and his steps quickened as if by magic. Nothing
short, however, of a novel adaptation of the great Indian juggling trick
could have brought Agnes there. She was, on the contrary, safe in the
House, superintending the girls who were getting ready for tea, with the
sweetest angelic smile upon her face. The girls were hot from their
walk, tired and troublesome and noisy; but Agnes bore with them like a
saint--did not hear them, indeed, having retired into her private chapel
and place of musing. But if it was not Agnes, if indeed it was someone
as unlike Agnes as could be conceived, Agnes herself could scarcely have
been so desirable to meet. It was the old porteress of the House, the
lay Sister who had several times accompanied her on her expeditions to
the hospital. A sudden inspiration came to Oswald. There could be
nothing improper in addressing her, a perfectly safe person to whom his
interest in little Emmy could bear nothing but the most natural and
genuine aspect. He hastened up to her with anxious looks and asked how
the little patient was, and if any news of her had been received at the
House.
‘Oh, bless you, sir, yes!’ said the lay Sister; ‘she’s been very bad,
but now she’s better. She won’t be a long liver, that child. She’s very
delicate, but come when it will the little lamb is prepared. She is the
piousest child I ever came across.’
‘Do you mean to say she is dying?’ said Oswald, alarmed in spite of
himself.
‘Oh, no, sir! Some time, I make no doubt, but not now; but she has been
that delicate--you could blow her away with a puff of wind. So she has
never come back. Indeed, I hear the teacher of the third division,
that’s Miss Burchell--you’ve seen her--the one as always went to the
hospital----’
‘Oh, yes, I have seen her!’
‘Delicate, too, sir. I’m not easy deceived, and I saw in a moment as she
was not fit for the work.’
‘Is she ill?’ said Oswald, all tremulous and excited, feeling disposed
to rush forthwith to the House without rhyme or reason, and carry her
off.
‘Oh, no, sir; not at all! But Sister Mary Jane, she’s the Superior----’
‘Yes, yes; I know.’
‘She thinks that she’d be the better for a change, and so, as she wants
to send some more children to the Sanatorium, she’s made up her mind to
send her, for she’d be a deal the better she says of a little sea air
herself.’
‘Ah!’ said Oswald, ‘_she_ who is going to the Sanatorium is Sister Mary
Jane?’
‘Not at all, sir, oh no, the one that is going is Miss Burchell. Sister
Mary Jane is the Superior, and she thinks it will do her good and take
off her thoughts.’
‘Ah, I see,’ said Oswald, gravely. ‘When does Miss Burchell go? you
might ask her from me to remember me to little Emmy; when does she go!’
‘To-morrow, sir. I am sure, sir, you’re very good to think so much about
such a little thing as that; but she _is_ a dear little thing. I have
understood, sir, that it was you that paid for her going----’
‘That is a trifle, Sister----’
‘Oh, I am not called Sister,’ said the porteress, blushing with
pleasure, ‘I am not a lady like the rest. I am only in the House to open
the door and to do the chars; but if I was the Superior I could not be
more interested for little Emmy. Bless you, sir, she is the piousest
little thing! And thank you, sir, for your goodness to her; that child’s
prayers will bring down a blessing on you.’
‘Amen!’ said Oswald, himself feeling much more pious than usual. ‘I want
it badly enough----’
‘And I’ll tell Miss Burchell to give Emily your love----’
‘On second thoughts,’ said Oswald, astutely, ‘it will be better not to
say anything about it. The Sister Superior might not like a stranger to
send messages.’
‘That is very true,’ said the lay Sister, perceiving all at once that
she too might have come in for a rebuke; and after this she ran on into
sundry communications about Sister Catherine who was newly arrived and
not quite up to the work. ‘For them that know such ladies as Sister Mary
Jane and Miss Burchell is naturally particular,’ said the porteress.
‘Very naturally,’ said Oswald, with fervour. He asked her to put a
sovereign for him into the poor-box at the chapel door, and then sent
her off well pleased, while he turned back in great haste to prepare for
his going. Here was his opportunity at last.