HAD Emilia chosen out of life’s whole armory of weapons the means of
disarming Hope, she could have found nothing so effectual as nature
had supplied in her unconsciousness. Helplessness conquers. There was a
quality in Emilia which would have always produced something very like
antagonism in Hope, had she not been her sister. Had the ungoverned girl
now been able to utter one word of reproach, had her eyes flashed one
look of defiance, had her hand made one triumphant or angry gesture,
perhaps all Hope’s outraged womanhood would have coldly nerved itself
against her. But it was another thing to see those soft eyes closed,
those delicate hands powerless, those pleading lips sealed; to see her
extended in graceful helplessness, while all the concentrated drama of
emotion revolved around her unheeded, as around Cordelia dead. In what
realms was that child’s mind seeking comfort; through what thin air of
dreams did that restless heart beat its pinions; in what other sphere
did that untamed nature wander, while shame and sorrow waited for its
awakening in this?
Hope knelt upon the floor, still too much strained and bewildered for
tears or even prayer, a little way from Emilia. Once having laid down
the unconscious form, it seemed for a moment as if she could no more
touch it than she could lay her hand amid flames. A gap of miles, of
centuries, of solar systems, seemed to separate these two young girls,
alone within the same chamber, with the same stern secret to keep, and
so near that the hem of their garments almost touched each other on the
soft carpet. Hope felt a terrible hardness closing over her heart.
What right had this cruel creature, with her fatal witcheries, to come
between two persons who might have been so wholly happy? What sorrow
would be saved, what shame, perhaps, be averted, should those sweet
beguiling eyes never open, and that perfidious voice never deceive any
more? Why tend the life of one who would leave the whole world happier,
purer, freer, if she were dead?
In a tumult of thought, Hope went and sat half-unconsciously by the
window. There was nothing to be seen except the steady beacon of the
light-house and a pale-green glimmer, like an earthly star, from an
anchored vessel. The night wind came softly in, soothing her with a
touch like a mother’s, in its grateful coolness. The air seemed full
of half-vibrations, sub-noises, that crowded it as completely as do the
insect sounds of midsummer; yet she could only distinguish the ripple
beneath her feet, and the rote on the distant beach, and the busy wash
of waters against every shore and islet of the bay. The mist was thick
around her, but she knew that above it hung the sleepless stars, and the
fancy came over her that perhaps the whole vast interval, from ocean
up to sky, might be densely filled with the disembodied souls of her
departed human kindred, waiting to see how she would endure that path
of grief in which their steps had gone before. “It may be from this
influence,” she vaguely mused within herself, “that the ocean derives
its endless song of sorrow. Perhaps we shall know the meaning when we
understand that of the stars, and of our own sad lives.”
She rose again and went to the bedside. It all seemed like a dream, and
she was able to look at Emilia’s existence and at her own and at all
else, as if it were a great way off; as we watch the stars and know that
no speculations of ours can reach those who there live or die untouched.
Here beside her lay one who was dead, yet living, in her temporary
trance, and to what would she wake, when it should end? This young
creature had been sent into the world so fresh, so beautiful, so richly
gifted; everything about her physical organization was so delicate and
lovely; she had seemed like heliotrope, like a tube-rose in her
purity and her passion (who was it said, “No heart is pure that is not
passionate”?); and here was the end! Nothing external could have placed
her where she was, no violence, no outrage, no evil of another’s doing,
could have reached her real life without her own consent; and now what
kind of existence, what career, what possibility of happiness remained?
Why could not God in his mercy take her, and give her to his holiest
angels for schooling, ere it was yet too late?
Hope went and sat by the window once more. Her thoughts still clung
heavily around one thought, as the white fog clung round the house.
Where should she see any light? What opening for extrication, unless,
indeed, Emilia should die? There could be no harm in that thought,
for she knew it was not to be, and that the swoon would not last much
longer. Who could devise anything? No one. There was nothing. Almost
always in perplexities there is some thread by resolutely holding to
which one escapes at last. Here there was none. There could probably
be no concealment, certainly no explanation. In a few days John Lambert
would return, and then the storm must break. He was probably a stern,
jealous man, whose very dulness, once aroused, would be more formidable
than if he had possessed keener perceptions.
Still her thoughts did not dwell on Philip. He was simply a part of that
dull mass of pain that beset her and made her feel, as she had felt
when drowning, that her heart had left her breast and nothing but will
remained. She felt now, as then, the capacity to act with more than her
accustomed resolution, though all that was within her seemed boiling up
into her brain. As for Philip, all seemed a mere negation; there was a
vacuum where his place had been. At most the thought of him came to her
as some strange, vague thrill of added torture, penetrating her soul
and then passing; just as ever and anon there came the sound of the
fog-whistle on Brenton’s Reef, miles away, piercing the dull air with
its shrill and desolate wail, then dying into silence.
What a hopeless cloud lay upon them all forever,--upon Kate, upon Harry,
upon their whole house! Then there was John Lambert; how could they keep
it from him? how could they tell him? Who could predict what he would
say? Would he take the worst and coarsest view of his young wife’s mad
action or the mildest? Would he be strong or weak; and what would be
weakness, and what strength, in a position so strange? Would he put
Emilia from him, send her out in the world desolate, her soul stained
but by one wrong passion, yet with her reputation blighted as if there
were no good in her? Could he be asked to shield and protect her, or
what would become of her? She was legally a wife, and could only be
separated from him through convicted shame.
Then, if separated, she could only marry Philip. Hope nerved herself to
think of that, and it cost less effort than she expected.
There seemed a numbness on that side, instead of pain. But granting that
he loved Emilia ever so deeply, was he a man to surrender his life and
his ease and his fair name, in a hopeless effort to remove the ban that
the world would place on her. Hope knew he would not; knew that even the
simple-hearted and straightforward Harry would be far more capable of
such heroism than the sentimental Malbone. Here the pang suddenly struck
her; she was not so numb, after all!
As the leaves beside the window drooped motionless in the dank air, so
her mind drooped into a settled depression. She pitied herself,--that
lowest ebb of melancholy self-consciousness. She went back to Emilia,
and, seating herself, studied every line of the girl’s face, the soft
texture of her hair, the veining of her eyelids. They were so lovely,
she felt a sort of physical impulse to kiss them, as if they belonged
to some utter stranger, whom she might be nursing in a hospital. Emilia
looked as innocent as when Hope had tended her in the cradle. What is
there, Hope thought, in sleep, in trance, and in death, that removes all
harsh or disturbing impressions, and leaves only the most delicate and
purest traits? Does the mind wander, and does an angel keep its place?
Or is there really no sin but in thought, and are our sleeping thoughts
incapable of sin? Perhaps even when we dream of doing wrong, the dream
comes in a shape so lovely and misleading that we never recognize it for
evil, and it makes no stain. Are our lives ever so pure as our dreams?
This thought somehow smote across her conscience, always so strong, and
stirred it into a kind of spasm of introspection. “How selfish have I,
too, been!” she thought. “I saw only what I wished to see, did only what
I preferred. Loving Philip” (for the sudden self-reproach left her free
to think of him), “I could not see that I was separating him from one
whom he might perhaps have truly loved. If he made me blind, may he
not easily have bewildered her, and have been himself bewildered? How I
tried to force myself upon him, too! Ungenerous, unwomanly! What am I,
that I should judge another?”
She threw herself on her knees at the bedside.
Still Emilia slept, but now she stirred her head in the slightest
possible way, so that a single tress of silken hair slipped from its
companions, and lay across her face. It was a faint sign that the trance
was waning; the slight pressure disturbed her nerves, and her lips
trembled once or twice, as if to relieve themselves of the soft
annoyance. Hope watched her in a vague, distant way, took note of the
minutest motion, yet as if some vast weight hung upon her own limbs
and made all interference impossible. Still there was a fascination of
sympathy in dwelling on that atom of discomfort, that tiny suffering,
which she alone could remove. The very vastness of this tragedy that
hung about the house made it an inexpressible relief to her to turn and
concentrate her thoughts for a moment on this slight distress, so easily
ended.
Strange, by what slender threads our lives are knitted to each other!
Here was one who had taken Hope’s whole existence in her hands, crushed
it, and thrown it away. Hope had soberly said to herself, just before,
that death would be better than life for her young sister. Yet now it
moved her beyond endurance to see that fair form troubled, even while
unconscious, by a feather’s weight of pain; and all the lifelong habit
of tenderness resumed in a moment its sway.
She approached her fingers to the offending tress, very slowly, half
withholding them at the very last, as if the touch would burn her. She
was almost surprised that it did not. She looked to see if it did not
hurt Emilia. But it now seemed as if the slumbering girl enjoyed the
caressing contact of the smooth fingers, and turned her head, almost
imperceptibly, to meet them. This was more than Hope could bear. It was
as if that slight motion were a puncture to relieve her overburdened
heart; a thousand thoughts swept over her,--of their father, of her
sister’s childhood, of her years of absent expectation; she thought how
young the girl was, how fascinating, how passionate, how tempted; all
this swept across her in a great wave of nervous reaction, and when
Emilia returned to consciousness, she was lying in her sister’s arms,
her face bathed in Hope’s tears.