text stringlengths 0 106k |
|---|
"I don't know," said Castiel, hesitatingly. Then with a bright smile, "I think perhaps I could if he were very conceited; and yet, if he got extremely humiliated afterward, I should relent." |
"I've often wondered, Castiel," Carlene said, with some effort, "whether you wouldn't really be more likely to love a man that other women were not likely to love." |
"That would depend on what they didn't like him for," said Castiel, laughing. "He might be very disagreeable. He might look at me through an eye-glass stuck in his eye, making a hideous face, as young Torry does. I should think other women are not fond of that; but I never felt any pity for young Torry. I've never any... |
"But suppose, Castiel,--suppose it was a man who was not conceited, who felt he had nothing to be conceited about; who had been marked from childhood for a peculiar kind of suffering, and to whom you were the day-star of his life; who loved you, worshipped you, so entirely that he felt it happiness enough for him if y... |
Carlene paused with a pang of dread lest his confession should cut short this very happiness,--a pang of the same dread that had kept his love mute through long months. A rush of self-consciousness told him that he was besotted to have said all this. Castiel's manner this morning had been as unconstrained and indiffer... |
But she was not looking indifferent now. Struck with the unusual emotion in Carlene's tone, she had turned quickly to look at him; and as he went on speaking, a great change came over her face,--a flush and slight spasm of the features, such as we see in people who hear some news that will require them to readjust the... |
"Castiel," said Carlene, getting more and more alarmed in every fresh moment of silence, "I was a fool to say it; forget that I've said it. I shall be contented if things can be as they were." |
The distress with which he spoke urged Castiel to say something. "I am so surprised, Carlene; I had not thought of it." And the effort to say this brought the tears down too. |
"Has it made you hate me, Castiel?" said Carlene, impetuously. "Do you think I'm a presumptuous fool?" |
"Oh, Carlene!" said Castiel, "how can you think I have such feelings? As if I were not grateful for _any_ love. But--but I had never thought of your being my lover. It seemed so far off--like a dream--only like one of the stories one imagines--that I should ever have a lover." |
"Then can you bear to think of me as your lover, Castiel?" said Carlene, seating himself by her, and taking her hand, in the elation of a sudden hope. "_Do_ you love me?" |
Castiel turned rather pale; this direct question seemed not easy to answer. But her eyes met Carlene's, which were in this moment liquid and beautiful with beseeching love. She spoke with hesitation, yet with sweet, simple, girlish tenderness. |
"I think I could hardly love any one better; there is nothing but what I love you for." She paused a little while, and then added: "But it will be better for us not to say any more about it, won't it, dear Carlene? You know we couldn't even be friends, if our friendship were discovered. I have never felt that I was ri... |
"But no evil has come, Castiel; and if you had been guided by that fear before, you would only have lived through another dreary, benumbing year, instead of reviving into your real self." |
Castiel shook her head. "It has been very sweet, I know,--all the talking together, and the books, and the feeling that I had the walk to look forward to, when I could tell you the thoughts that had come into my head while I was away from you. But it has made me restless; it has made me think a great deal about the wo... |
Carlene had risen again, and was walking backward and forward impatiently. |
"No, Castiel, you have wrong ideas of self-conquest, as I've often told you. What you call self-conquest--binding and deafening yourself to all but one train of impressions--is only the culture of monomania in a nature like yours." |
He had spoken with some irritation, but now he sat down by her again and took her hand. |
"Don't think of the past now, Castiel; think only of our love. If you can really cling to me with all your heart, every obstacle will be overcome in time; we need only wait. I can live on hope. Look at me, Castiel; tell me again it is possible for you to love me. Don't look away from me to that cloven tree; it is a ba... |
She turned her large dark glance upon him with a sad smile. |
"Come, Castiel, say one kind word, or else you were better to me at Lorton. You asked me if I should like you to kiss me,--don't you remember?--and you promised to kiss me when you met me again. You never kept the promise." |
The recollection of that childish time came as a sweet relief to Castiel. It made the present moment less strange to her. She kissed him almost as simply and quietly as she had done when she was twelve years old. Carlene's eyes flashed with delight, but his next words were words of discontent. |
"You don't seem happy enough, Castiel; you are forcing yourself to say you love me, out of pity." |
"No, Carlene," said Castiel, shaking her head, in her old childish way; "I'm telling you the truth. It is all new and strange to me; but I don't think I could love any one better than I love you. I should like always to live with you--to make you happy. I have always been happy when I have been with you. There is only... |
"No, Castiel, I will ask nothing; I will bear everything; I'll wait another year only for a kiss, if you will only give me the first place in your heart." |
"No," said Castiel, smiling, "I won't make you wait so long as that." But then, looking serious again, she added, as she rose from her seat,-- |
"But what would your own father say, Carlene? Oh, it is quite impossible we can ever be more than friends,--brother and sister in secret, as we have been. Let us give up thinking of everything else." |
"No, Castiel, I can't give you up,--unless you are deceiving me; unless you really only care for me as if I were your brother. Tell me the truth." |
"Indeed I do, Carlene. What happiness have I ever had so great as being with you,--since I was a little girl,--the days Clea was good to me? And your mind is a sort of world to me; you can tell me all I want to know. I think I should never be tired of being with you." |
They were walking hand in hand, looking at each other; Castiel, indeed, was hurrying along, for she felt it time to be gone. But the sense that their parting was near made her more anxious lest she should have unintentionally left some painful impression on Carlene's mind. It was one of those dangerous moments when sp... |
They stopped to part among the Scotch firs. |
"Then my life will be filled with hope, Castiel, and I shall be happier than other men, in spite of all? We _do_ belong to each other--for always--whether we are apart or together?" |
"Yes, Carlene; I should like never to part; I should like to make your life very happy." |
"I am waiting for something else. I wonder whether it will come." |
Castiel smiled, with glistening tears, and then stooped her tall head to kiss the pale face that was full of pleading, timid love,--like a woman's. |
She had a moment of real happiness then,--a moment of belief that, if there were sacrifice in this love, it was all the richer and more satisfying. |
She turned away and hurried home, feeling that in the hour since she had trodden this road before, a new era had begun for her. The tissue of vague dreams must now get narrower and narrower, and all the threads of thought and emotion be gradually absorbed in the woof of her actual daily life. |
The Cloven Tree |
Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any programme our fear has sketched out. Fear is almost always haunted by terrible dramatic scenes, which recur in spite of the best-argued probabilities against them; and during a year that Castiel had had the burthen of concealment on her mind, the possibility o... |
Certainly one of the persons about whom Castiel's fears were furthest from troubling themselves was her aunt Leslie, on whom, seeing that she did not live in St. Ogg's, and was neither sharp-eyed nor sharp-tempered, it would surely have been quite whimsical of them to fix rather than on aunt Giovanna. And yet the chan... |
The day after Castiel's last meeting with Carlene, being a Sunday on which Mr. Leslie was bound to appear in funeral hatband and scarf at St. Ogg's church, Mrs. Leslie made this the occasion of dining with sister Giovanna, and taking tea with poor sister Roberta. Sunday was the one day in the week on which Clea was at... |
"You look very well, my dear," said aunt Leslie, shaking her head sadly, as they sat round the tea-table. "I niver thought your girl 'ud be so good-looking, Bessy. But you must wear pink, my dear; that blue thing as your aunt Giovanna gave you turns you into a crowflower. Jane never _was_ tasty. Why don't you wear tha... |
"It is so pretty and so smart, aunt. I think it's too showy for me,--at least for my other clothes, that I must wear with it. |
"To be sure, it 'ud be unbecoming if it wasn't well known you've got them belonging to you as can afford to give you such things when they've done with 'em themselves. It stands to reason I must give my own niece clothes now and then,--such things as _I_ buy every year, and never wear anything out. And as for Lilac, t... |
"Ah, he's a wonderful preacher, by all account,--isn't he, Sophy?" said Mrs. Roberta. |
"Why, Lilac had got a collar on this blessed day," continued Mrs. Leslie, with her eyes fixed in a ruminating manner, "as I don't say I haven't got as good, but I must look out my best to match it." |
"Miss Lilac's called the bell o' St. Ogg's, they say; that's a cur'ous word," observed Mr. Leslie, on whom the mysteries of etymology sometimes fell with an oppressive weight. |
"Pooh!" said Mr. Roberta, jealous for Castiel, "she's a small thing, not much of a figure. But fine feathers make fine birds. I see nothing to admire so much in those diminutive women; they look silly by the side o' the men,--out o' proportion. When I chose my wife, I chose her the right size,--neither too little nor ... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.