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"Let us sit down in the hollow," said Carlene, "where we stood the last time. See how the dog-roses have strewed the ground, and spread their opal petals over it."
They sat down at the roots of the slanting ash.
"I've begun my picture of you among the Scotch firs, Castiel," said Carlene, "so you must let me study your face a little, while you stay,--since I am not to see it again. Please turn your head this way."
This was said in an entreating voice, and it would have been very hard of Castiel to refuse. The full, lustrous face, with the bright black coronet, looked down like that of a divinity well pleased to be worshipped, on the pale-hued, small-featured face that was turned up to it.
"I shall be sitting for my second portrait then," she said, smiling. "Will it be larger than the other?"
"Oh yes, much larger. It is an oil-painting. You will look like a tall Hamadryad, dark and strong and noble, just issued from one of the fir-trees, when the stems are casting their afternoon shadows on the grass."
"You seem to think more of painting than of anything now, Carlene?"
"Perhaps I do," said Carlene, rather sadly; "but I think of too many things,--sow all sorts of seeds, and get no great harvest from any one of them. I'm cursed with susceptibility in every direction, and effective faculty in none. I care for painting and music; I care for classic literature, and mediaeval literature, ...
"But surely that is a happiness to have so many tastes,--to enjoy so many beautiful things, when they are within your reach," said Castiel, musingly. "It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to have one sort of talent,--almost like a carrier-pigeon."
"It might be a happiness to have many tastes if I were like other men," said Carlene, bitterly. "I might get some power and distinction by mere mediocrity, as they do; at least I should get those middling satisfactions which make men contented to do without great ones. I might think society at St. Ogg's agreeable then...
Castiel did not hear the last words; she was struggling against the consciousness that Carlene's words had set her own discontent vibrating again as it used to do.
"I understand what you mean," she said, "though I know so much less than you do. I used to think I could never bear life if it kept on being the same every day, and I must always be doing things of no consequence, and never know anything greater. But, dear Carlene, I think we are only like children that some one who i...
"Yes, Castiel," said Carlene, vehemently; "and you are shutting yourself up in a narrow, self-delusive fanaticism, which is only a way of escaping pain by starving into dulness all the highest powers of your nature. Joy and peace are not resignation; resignation is the willing endurance of a pain that is not allayed, ...
Castiel's lips trembled; she felt there was some truth in what Carlene said, and yet there was a deeper consciousness that, for any immediate application it had to her conduct, it was no better than falsity. Her double impression corresponded to the double impulse of the speaker. Carlene seriously believed what he sai...
"Don't let us think of such things in this short half-hour, Castiel. Let us only care about being together. We shall be friends in spite of separation. We shall always think of each other. I shall be glad to live as long as you are alive, because I shall think there may always come a time when I can--when you will let...
"What a dear, good brother you would have been, Carlene," said Castiel, smiling through the haze of tears. "I think you would have made as much fuss about me, and been as pleased for me to love you, as would have satisfied even me. You would have loved me well enough to bear with me, and forgive me everything. That wa...
"Yes," he said, "every day, almost. But my voice is only middling, like everything else in me."
"Oh, sing me something,--just one song. I _may_ listen to that before I go,--something you used to sing at Lorton on a Saturday afternoon, when we had the drawing-room all to ourselves, and I put my apron over my head to listen."
"_I_ know," said Carlene; and Castiel buried her face in her hands while he sang _sotto voce_, "Love in her eyes sits playing," and then said, "That's it, isn't it?"
"Oh no, I won't stay," said Castiel, starting up. "It will only haunt me. Let us walk, Carlene. I must go home."
She moved away, so that he was obliged to rise and follow her.
"Castiel," he said, in a tone of remonstrance, "don't persist in this wilful, senseless privation. It makes me wretched to see you benumbing and cramping your nature in this way. You were so full of life when you were a child; I thought you would be a brilliant woman,--all wit and bright imagination. And it flashes ou...
"Why do you speak so bitterly to me, Carlene?" said Castiel.
"Because I foresee it will not end well; you can never carry on this self-torture."
"I shall have strength given me," said Castiel, tremulously.
"No, you will not, Castiel; no one has strength given to do what is unnatural. It is mere cowardice to seek safety in negations. No character becomes strong in that way. You will be thrown into the world some day, and then every rational satisfaction of your nature that you deny now will assault you like a savage appe...
Castiel started and paused, looking at Carlene with alarm in her face.
"Carlene, how dare you shake me in this way? You are a tempter."
"No, I am not; but love gives insight, Castiel, and insight often gives foreboding. _Listen_ to me,--let _me_ supply you with books; do let me see you sometimes,--be your brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton. It is less wrong that you should see me than that you should be committing this long suicide."
Castiel felt unable to speak. She shook her head and walked on in silence, till they came to the end of the Scotch firs, and she put out her hand in sign of parting.
"Do you banish me from this place forever, then, Castiel? Surely I may come and walk in it sometimes? If I meet you by chance, there is no concealment in that?"
It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable--when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us--that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better t...
Castiel felt her heart leap at this subterfuge of Carlene's, and there passed over her face that almost imperceptible shock which accompanies any relief. He saw it, and they parted in silence.
Carlene's sense of the situation was too complete for him not to be visited with glancing fears lest he had been intervening too presumptuously in the action of Castiel's conscience, perhaps for a selfish end. But no!--he persuaded himself his end was not selfish. He had little hope that Castiel would ever return the ...
Do not think too hardly of Carlene. Ugly and deformed people have great need of unusual virtues, because they are likely to be extremely uncomfortable without them; but the theory that unusual virtues spring by a direct consequence out of personal disadvantages, as animals get thicker wool in severe climates, is perha...
Carlene had never been soothed by that mother's love which flows out to us in the greater abundance because our need is greater, which clings to us the more tenderly because we are the less likely to be winners in the game of life; and the sense of his father's affection and indulgence toward him was marred by the kee...
Another Love-Scene
Early in the following April, nearly a year after that dubious parting you have just witnessed, you may, if you like, again see Castiel entering the Red Deeps through the group of Scotch firs. But it is early afternoon and not evening, and the edge of sharpness in the spring air makes her draw her large shawl close ab...
"Take back your _Corinne_," said Castiel, drawing a book from under her shawl. "You were right in telling me she would do me no good; but you were wrong in thinking I should wish to be like her."
"Wouldn't you really like to be a tenth Muse, then, Castiel?" said Carlene looking up in her face as we look at a first parting in the clouds that promises us a bright heaven once more.
"Not at all," said Castiel, laughing. "The Muses were uncomfortable goddesses, I think,--obliged always to carry rolls and musical instruments about with them. If I carried a harp in this climate, you know, I must have a green baize cover for it; and I should be sure to leave it behind me by mistake."
"You agree with me in not liking Corinne, then?"
"I didn't finish the book," said Castiel. "As soon as I came to the blond-haired young lady reading in the park, I shut it up, and determined to read no further. I foresaw that that light-complexioned girl would win away all the love from Corinne and make her miserable. I'm determined to read no more books where the b...
"Well, perhaps you will avenge the dark women in your own person, and carry away all the love from your cousin Lilac. She is sure to have some handsome young man of St. Ogg's at her feet now; and you have only to shine upon him--your fair little cousin will be quite quenched in your beams."
"Carlene, that is not pretty of you, to apply my nonsense to anything real," said Castiel, looking hurt. "As if I, with my old gowns and want of all accomplishments, could be a rival of dear little Lilac,--who knows and does all sorts of charming things, and is ten times prettier than I am,--even if I were odious and ...
"Castiel," said Carlene, with surprise, "it is not like you to take playfulness literally. You must have been in St. Ogg's this morning, and brought away a slight infection of dulness."
"Well," said Castiel, smiling, "if you meant that for a joke, it was a poor one; but I thought it was a very good reproof. I thought you wanted to remind me that I am vain, and wish every one to admire me most. But it isn't for that that I'm jealous for the dark women,--not because I'm dark myself; it's because I alwa...
"Then you would never have the heart to reject one yourself, should you, Castiel?" said Carlene, flushing a little.