"Lucifer, Star of the Morning! How art thou fallen!"
I found myself, without having met any one of my family, in my own room,
in the semi-darkness, seated on a chair by my bedside, unnerved, faint,
miserable with a misery such as I had never felt before. The window was
open, and there came up a faint scent of sweetbrier and wall-flowers in
soft, balmy gusts, driven into the room by the April night wind. There
rose a moon and flooded the earth with radiance. Then came a sound of
footsteps; the door of the next room, that belonging to Adelaide, was
opened. I heard her come in, strike a match, and light her candle; the
click of the catch as the blind rolled down. There was a door between
her room and mine, and presently she passed it, and bearing a candle in
her hand, stood in my presence. My sister was very beautiful, very
proud. She was cleverer, stronger, more decided than I, or rather, while
she had those qualities very strongly developed, I was almost without
them. She always held her head up, and had one of those majestic figures
which require no back-boards to teach them uprightness, no master of
deportment to instill grace into their movements. Her toilet and mine
were not, as may be supposed, of very rich materials or varied
character; but while my things always looked as bad of their kind as
they could--fitted badly, sat badly, were creased and crumpled--hers
always had a look of freshness; she wore the merest old black merino as
if it were velvet, and a muslin frill like a point-lace collar. There
are such people in the world. I have always admired them, envied them,
wondered at them from afar; it has never been my fate in the smallest
degree to approach or emulate them.
Her pale face, with its perfect outlines, was just illumined by the
candle she held, and the light also caught the crown of massive plaits
which she wore around her head. She set the candle down. I sat still and
looked at her.
"You are there, May," she remarked.
"Yes," was my subdued response.
"Where have you been all evening?"
"It does not matter to any one."
"Indeed it does. You were talking to Sir Peter Le Marchant. I saw you
meet him from my bedroom window."
"Did you?"
"Did he propose to you?" she inquired, with a composure which seemed to
me frightful. "Worldly," I thought, was a weak word to apply to her, and
I was suffering acutely.
"He did."
"Well, I suppose it would be a little difficult to accept him."
"I did not accept him."
"What?" she inquired, as if she had not quite caught what I said.
"I refused him," said I, slightly raising my voice.
"What are you telling me?"
"The truth."
"Sir Peter has fif--"
"Don't mention Sir Peter to me again," said I, nervously, and feeling as
if my heart would break. I had never quarreled with Adelaide before. No
reconciliation afterward could ever make up for the anguish which I was
going through now.
"Just listen to me," she said, bending over me, her lips drawn together.
"I ought to have spoken to you before. I don't know whether you have
ever given any thought to our position and circumstances. If not, it
would be as well that you should do so now. Papa is fifty-five years
old, and has three hundred a year. In the course of time he will die,
and as his life is not insured, and he has regularly spent every penny
of his income--naturally it would have been strange if he hadn't--what
is to become of us when he is dead?"
"We can work."
"Work!" said she, with inexpressible scorn. "Work! Pray what can we do
in the way of work? What kind of education have we had? The village
school-mistress could make us look very small in the matter of geography
and history. We have not been trained to work, and, let me tell you,
May, unskilled labor does not pay in these days."
"I am sure you can do anything, Adelaide, and I will teach singing. I
can sing."
"Pooh! Do you suppose that because you can take C in alt. you are
competent to teach singing? You don't know how to sing yourself yet.
Your face is your fortune. So is mine my fortune. So is Stella's her
fortune. You have enjoyed yourself all your life; you have had seventeen
years of play and amusement, and now you behave like a baby. You refuse
to endure a little discomfort, as the price of placing yourself and your
family forever out of the reach of trouble and trial. Why, if you were
Sir Peter's wife, you could do what you liked with him. I don't say
anything about myself; but oh! May, I am ashamed of you, I am ashamed of
you! I thought you had more in you. Is it possible that you are nothing
but a romp--nothing but a vulgar tomboy? Good Heaven! If the chance had
been mine!"
"What would you have done?" I whispered, subdued for the moment, but
obstinate in my heart as ever.
"I am nobody now; no one knows me. But if I had had the chance that you
have had to-night, in another year I would have been known and envied by
half the women in England. Bah! Circumstances are too disgusting, too
unkind!"
"Oh! Adelaide, nothing could have made up for being tied to that man,"
said I, in a small voice; "and I am not ambitious."
"Ambitious! You are selfish--downright, grossly, inordinately selfish.
Do you suppose no one else ever had to do what they did not like? Why
did you not stop to think instead of rushing away from the thing like
some unreasoning animal?"
"Adelaide! Sir Peter! To marry him?" I implored in tears. "How could I?
I should die of shame at the very thought. Who could help seeing that I
had sold myself to him?"
"And who would think any the worse of you? And what if they did? With
fifteen thousand a year you may defy public opinion."
"Oh, don't! don't!" I cried, covering my face with my hands. "Adelaide,
you will break my heart!"
Burying my face in the bed-quilt, I sobbed irrepressibly. Adelaide's
apparent unconsciousness of, or callousness to, the stabs she was giving
me, and the anguish they caused me, almost distracted me.
She loosed my arm, remarking, with bitter vexation:
"I feel as if I could shake you!"
She left the room. I was left to my meditations. My head--my heart
too--ached distractingly; my arm was sore where Adelaide had grasped it;
I felt as if she had taken my mind by the shoulders and shaken it
roughly. I fastened both doors of my room, resolving that neither she
nor any one else should penetrate to my presence again that night.
What was I to do? Where to turn? I began now to realize that the _Res
dom_, which had always seemed to me so abundant for all occasions, were
really _Res Angusta_, and that circumstances might occur in which they
would be miserably inadequate.