University of Virginia Library

18. XVIII.
HOPE'S VIGIL.

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
its 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.