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.
