Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/347

. 20, 1862.] ‘Stop, let me light my cigar.’

“I sank slowly down on the grass: how long I remained I know not: the stars were high and bright in the sky when I was conscious again. I staggered as I rose, and was as weak as if, after a twelvemonth’s illness, I had risen from my bed. We hear of broken hearts, but that is a fable. My heart was wounded to the core. The wound is as fresh now as it was then—but it is not broken. The event of Rupert’s departure was in itself nothing, but the few careless words with which he threw away a friendship which should have been lifelong, gave me the measure of his indifference, and gave me an insight into his character. To part me from Ida, and Ida from me, was as cruel as it was unnecessary. It was not, however, cruelty, it was simply the thoughtlessness of utter selfishness. Though my intelligence had always seen the faults in Rupert’s self, my heart had refused to acknowledge or realise them in Ida’s father. We are told we should trace in the lineaments of the present sinner the future seraph—those lineaments which exist in all, however faintly the outline may be preserved. I had certainly done this with him. I might compare the operation of my love for Ida on my estimate of Rupert’s character to the effect of a stereoscope on a photograph—of itself, a cold flat portrait, but when we look through the glasses, we see the same picture rounded into living beauty. It is a deception, we know, but through these glasses we can never see it otherwise.

“How shall I describe what I felt? I was alone. The life which had been so rich a few months back, and which might have been so still, for nothing need have been altered, even though Rupert’s absence was necessary, was now an entire waste. The whole was an illusion. I had no longer a brother, a child. In truth I had never possessed them. Had this been a love disappointment, pride would have risen to my aid. I should have trampled it under my feet, and have stood strong, even on the ashes of my soul. But if the babe a mother has been nursing on her breast, were suddenly to change into a serpent and to sting her, would not a mother’s cry be heard? Where would be the pride then? I had so little that I was anxious to find myself in fault. I scrutinised myself severely, and found, of course, that I had not been perfect, but my faults had been like grains of sand in the great sea of love with which I had surrounded Rupert and his child. How diligently I sought to blame myself, seems quite foolish now. Had he and I stood for one moment, in an equality of position, I could have borne up bravely; but I, I stood where I had been before, and where I should always be, for he had never loved me, and I had lost nothing; it was he, who had cast away an affection for him and his, which I had a mournful conviction he had not and could never inspire again. It required circumstances, as peculiar as those in which we were placed, to call it into being. If you stood with one you loved beside a precipice, firm and steadfast yourself, but he held only by your hand, what would be your feelings, if in sheer wantonness he threw your hand aside and sank down before your eyes? I knew that Madame Serrano, with all her gentle blandishments, with all her delicate allurements, was not capable if able, or able if capable, to hold him up for a moment—she might fall with him, or separating herself from him, give impetus to his fall: she could do no more. To Ida she was entirely indifferent. She had children of her own: she had not that yearning towards a child which I, the childless and worse than widowed, had so long suffered from, and had so gladly satisfied, by holding Ida to my heart. For himself, also (though in a far less anxious manner), when I reflected on his future life and the many arid scenes of toil before him, linked as he was to a great, but perhaps hopeless cause, I trembled, but what availed my help now. Yet I had given it, unselfishly, honestly, faithfully; many a week in which Rupert had regained the light-heartedness of his earlier youth, cheerfulness unusual to him, a buoyancy of heart and mind he might never again experience, attested this.

“With this fatal love at his heart, even if free, how could he hope to find in another marriage, the happiness that his first had deprived him of. He had no heart with which to win a bride, and yet the parental affection which was his, as the sun shone on him without his yea or his nay, he closed his eyes to, and shut out from himself and from his child.

“I had a sufficient knowledge of the human heart to perceive that nothing is so odious to a man who loves one woman, than the fulsome love of another who would be a rival to her; but there was no challenge or emulation here, the territories of friendship and love are so wide apart. Love is not robbed because Friendship is enriched. Men do not forsake the ties of blood because they love, and my love had all the spontaneousness, but none of the exigencies, of a blood relationship.

“I know that a rose-leaf dropped into a lover’s hand by the one he loves, outweighs the sacrifice of a friend’s whole life; nor do I blame this, for

I did not feel aggrieved at any preference of love over friendship. In my younger, happier days, I too had dreamed of love: a love which like light in a lamp, would give flame to my whole being, which should glorify me into beauty, exalt me into genius, sanctify me into goodness; but I had long known that this consummation of happiness was not to be mine in this life, and I could fancy I understood why. I had a latent capacity for happiness, which, had it received its full satisfaction, would have made me feel immortal; if I had tasted of that fruit, I should have dreamed, I could not know death! My affection for Rupert had none of the elements of love in it; there was no appropriation in it; I never sought his sympathy; I was content to give him all mine: I knew his life throughout; and as to me, he knew and sought to know as little of my past, as if I had been born the day he arrived, and cared as little for my future as if I were to die the day he left.

“As soon as I reached the house I went to Ida’s room. I threw myself on my child’s bed, and buried my face in her little pillow. Indignation, resentment, disappointment, despair at the separation from Ida, compassion for myself, were all sunk