 | CHAPTER XII.
EUNICE AND CHRISTINA. Hedged in |  |
12. CHAPTER XII.
EUNICE AND CHRISTINA.
MRS. PURCELL took tea alone that night,
and felt like boxing the ears of both the
girls.
Anybody but Margaret would have been what
we call “downright cross,” when Eunice, about
the middle of the evening, crawled, dizzy and
white, down stairs, and felt her way to her
cricket, to tell her all that had happened.
Margaret was not cross, but Margaret was
worried, and thoroughly unstrung, and she broke
into bitter self-reproaches.
“I might have known — expected it! My
poor girls! I suppose I should have told Christina
long ago, but she was so happy, — you were
so happy! My poor, poor girls, — and I meant
to do the best thing for you both. This comes
of —”
Margaret checked herself. What would she
perhaps; something of the flitting annoyance
which people feel when a favorite experiment
falters or fails. What if this “experiment” of
doing one simple, Christ-like thing by the neglected
soul which chance — or Christ — had
flung across her path should now, and after all,
and for years to come, prove the reef upon which
the happiness of her home should split and wreck
itself?
“It all depends on Christina!” she said, with
some bitterness in her voice, “and we must own
it is hard for Christina. What has she said to
you?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Of course she must have been taken off her
guard, and grieved; but did she give you no
word or sign of affection — trust?”
“She gave me nothing. I asked for nothing.
I had no right to anything.”
Eunice spoke in a dull, dry way, which had
a singular and painful effect upon the ear. It
affected Mrs. Purcell with considerable physical
disquiet.
“You are sure you 're not sick?”
“Only the headache, — no.”
“Where is Christina?”
“Up stairs.”
“I will go and call her down.”
“No.”
“I will send you up to her.”
“I should not go.”
“Christina is behaving like a school-girl!”
“Christina was deceived. Christina loved me.”
“But Christina has such excellent, straightforward
sense. I am ashamed of her!”
“That is not right. It is I of whom you
should be ashamed. It is I of whom Christina
is ashamed. It is I who have made all the
misery. I wish —” In the dull dryness of
Eunice's voice something snapped, and she faltered
into a cry most pitiful to hear.
“I wish it were right to wish to be dead! I
wish it were right to wish to be dead and out
of the way!”
All Margaret's mother's heart, touched at first
for her own child, was wrung now, in this miserable
matter, for the outcast woman. So slight
a fact is the pain of the world in face of the
had sinned.
“I have hurt you!” she said.
Eunice shook her head in a very lonely way.
“Not much. Never mind. Let me go.”
She went away up stairs again, and shut herself
into her room, — the soft gray room which
Christina called “so like Nixy,” and which, by
chance or by fancy, had always fallen to Eunice
for her solitary occupation. A few changes had
crept by degrees into it at that time. The pictures
had disappeared; the little gray statuettes
were gone; the sole ornament of the room had
become an odd one, — a cross of some species
of white wood, uncarved and bare; quite a large
cross, and “inconvenient” Christina thought, —
though I believe she never said so. Nobody
said anything about it, or interfered with the
quaint, Roman Catholic fancy of the thing. It
stood out against the plain tint of the wall, nearly
as high as Eunice's shoulder. She did not
say her prayers to it, or hang her beads upon it.
As nearly as I can learn, she never did anything
more heretical than look at it; “liked,” she said,
“to feel that it was about.”
When, long after Margaret was asleep, long
after the house was still, Christina, that night,
came in, — for Christina came at last, — she
came upon a striking sight, — the room all in a
gray mist, for the candle had burned low; and
Eunice, in her black dress, at the foot of the
white cross.
Christina stopped upon the threshold, but
whether from reverence or from reluctance, how
should Eunice know?
Eunice neither turned nor spoke. She wished
that she could drop and die there, and never turn
or speak again, and so never, never look at the
figure standing in the door.
“Eunice!”
Eunice lifted a singular face. Whether to cry
out at the pain of it, whether to marvel at the
peace of it, Christina did not know. Eunice lifted
her face and rose, and looked the figure in the
door all over, once, twice, in silence.
Christina had on a white wrapper and held a
little lamp in her hand. She held it, having
come into the dim room so suddenly, high over
her head, to see the way; her round white arm
was bare and her hair loose; the light had a
from a soft shadow peered out a little blindly.
Something about her reminded Eunice of a
picture which she had seen of the woman hunting
for a lost piece of silver, after the house was
swept.
“You cannot find it,” she said.
“But I can!” said Christina. She put down
her lamp, and sat down quite full in the light
of it upon the edge of the bed. Eunice, exhausted,
sank again at the foot of her great cross,
and it was dark where she sat.
“Come here,” said Christina. Eunice shook
her head.
“Look at me then.” Eunice looked at her.
Christina, white all over, — white to the lips, —
sat smiling. All the stars had indeed gone out
of her eyes, but they shone, and something
sweeter than starlight was in them.
“I should like, if you will come, to kiss you,
dear.” Christina said this in a broken voice.
“I do not understand you.” Eunice spoke
with dreary quiet.
“If you will come,” repeated Christina, —
Eunice did not see that she quivered like a white
come, I should like to tell you how I hurt you,
wronged you, — for I had no time to think, and
I had never guessed, never dreamed! — and I
loved you, Eunice, I loved you so!”
Christina began at this to cry, and she cried
as women like her cry when their hearts are
breaking. What did she expect? Eunice sat
perfectly still.
“Why do you not speak to me?” Christina
cried, at length, breaking her sharp sobs off. “I
know that I wronged you, hurt you, but I cannot
bear this, Eunice!”
“Hush!” said Eunice, in stern surprise.
“Why do you talk of wrong and hurt? You
are compassionate, Christina, but you are unwise.”
“But I love you, Eunice. Is that compassion?
I honor you. Is that unwise?”
Eunice's drawn lip quivered a little; a slow,
warm light crept over her face.
“But I sinned,” she said.
“But I judged,” said Christina.
“I was stained, and outcast.”
“You are pure and honored.”
“I deceived you.”
“You loved me.”
“But now you can never forget.”
“But now I will never remember.”
“But a scar is a scar forever.”
“My eyes are holden,” said Christina; “I see
no scar. Eunice, see!” — she broke from the
strained, excited mood in which she seemed to be,
into a quiet, faltering voice, — “see, this is how it
is! I was taken all in a minute off my guard —
in the school-room there; but that was no excuse
for me. I wronged you, Eunice! I am
here to beg your pardon for thoughts I have had
of you to-night. I came in to tell you — that I
loved you — loved you — loved you, dear!”
It was then for the first time that Eunice fairly
lifted her haggard face, and held up her arms.
“Come here to me,” said Christina; “I will
not lift you from the foot of that cross. I
judged you. It is you who shall come to me.
There!”
But when she was yet a great way off, Christina
ran to meet her, and fell upon her neck and
kissed her.
“Stop a moment”; Eunice held her off. “I
be ashamed of me. I had rather you would not
love me than to be ashamed of me.”
“Eunice, look here!”
Eunice looked there, — straight into Christina's
spotless woman's eyes, — and it seemed to her as
if all the stars of heaven were shining in them
as the stars shine after storms.
| CHAPTER XII.
EUNICE AND CHRISTINA. Hedged in | |