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Page 24
Nevertheless, her mind was not so entirely torpid as it appeared, nor was
she so absolutely self-absorbed. One idea was rising day by day out of
the dark confusion of her thoughts, and that was the goodness and
generosity of her lover. In this appreciation there was not the faintest
glows of gratitude. She left herself wholly out of the account as only
one could do with whom wretchedness has abolished for the time all
interest in self. She was personally past being benefited. Her sense of
his love and generosity was as disinterested as if some other person had
been their object. Her admiration was such as one feels for a hero of
history or fiction.
Often, when all within her seemed growing hard and still and dead, she
felt that crying would make her feel better. At such times, to help her
to cry, for the tears did not flow easily, she would sit down to the
piano, the only times she ever touched it, and play over some of the
simple airs associated with her life at home. Sometimes, after playing
and crying a while, she would lapse into sweetly mournful day-dreams of
how happy she might have been if she had returned Henry's love in those
old days. She wondered in a puzzled way why it was that she had not. It
seemed so strange to her now that she could have failed in doing so. But
all this time it was only as a might-have-been that she thought of loving
him, as one who feels himself mortally sick thinks of what he might have
done when he was well, as a life-convict thinks of what he might have
done when free, as a disembodied spirit might think of what it might have
done when living. The consciousness of her disgrace, ever with her, had,
in the past month or two, built up an impassable wall between her past
life and her present state of existence. She no longer thought of herself
in the present tense, still less the future.
He had not kissed her since that kiss at their first interview, which
threw her into such a paroxysm of weeping. But one evening, when she had
been more silent and dull than usual, and more unresponsive to his
efforts to interest her, as he rose to go he drew her a moment to his
side and pressed his lips to hers, as if constrained to find some
expression for the tenderness so cruelly balked of any outflow in words.
He went quickly out, but she continued to stand motionless, in the
attitude of one startled by a sudden discovery. There was a frightened
look in her dilated eyes. Her face was flooded to the roots of her hair
with a deep flush. It was a crimson most unlike the tint of blissful
shame with which the cheeks announce love's dawn in happy hearts. She
threw herself upon the sofa, and buried her scorched face in the pillow
while her form shook with dry sobs.
Love had, in a moment, stripped the protecting cicatrice of a hard
indifference from her smarting shame, and it was as if for the first time
she were made fully conscious of the desperation of her condition.
The maiden who finds her stainless purity all too lustreless a gift for
him she loves, may fancy what were the feelings of Madeline, as love,
with its royal longing to give, was born in her heart. With what lilies
of virgin innocence would she fain have rewarded her lover! but her
lilies were yellow, their fragrance was stale. With what an unworn crown
would she have crowned him! but she had rifled her maiden regalia to
adorn an impostor. And love came to her now, not as to others, but
whetting the fangs of remorse and blowing the fires of shame.
But one thing it opened her eyes to, and made certain from the first
instant of her new consciousness, namely, that since she loved him she
could not keep her promise to marry him. In her previous mood of dead
indifference to all things, it had not mattered to her one way or the
other. Reckless what became of her, she had only a feeling that seeing he
had been so good he ought to have any satisfaction he could find in
marrying her. But what her indifference would have abandoned to him her
love could not endure the thought of giving. The worthlessness of the
gift, which before had not concerned her, now made its giving impossible.
While before she had thought with indifference of submitting to a love
she did not return, now that she returned it the idea of being happy in
it seemed to her guilty and shameless. Thus to gather the honey of
happiness from her own abasement was a further degradation, compared with
which she could now almost respect herself. The consciousness that she
had taken pleasure in that kiss made her seem to herself a brazen thing.
Her heart ached with a helpless yearning over him for the disappointment
she knew he must now suffer at her hands. She tried, but in vain, to feel
that she might, after all, marry him, might do this crowning violence to
her nature, and accept a shameful happiness for his sake.
One morning a bitter thing happened to her. She had slept unusually well,
and her dreams had been sweet and serene, untinged by any shadow of her
waking thoughts, as if, indeed, the visions intended for the sleeping
brain of some fortunate woman had by mistake strayed into hers. For a
while she had lain, half dozing, half awake, pleasantly conscious of the
soft, warm bed, and only half emerged from the atmosphere of dreamland.
As at last she opened her eyes, the newly risen sun, bright from his
ocean bath, was shining into the room, and the birds were singing. A
lilac bush before the window was moving in the breeze, and the shadows of
its twigs were netting the sunbeams on the wall as they danced to and
fro.
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