text stringlengths 0 106k |
|---|
"But I must go," said Castiel, in a distressed voice. "I must leave some time to pack. Don't press me to stay, dear Lilac." |
Lilac was silent for two or three minutes, looking away and ruminating. At length she knelt down by her cousin, and looking up in her face with anxious seriousness, said,-- |
"Castiel, is it that you don't love Carlene well enough to marry him? Tell me--trust me." |
Castiel held Lilac's hands tightly in silence a little while. Her own hands were quite cold. But when she spoke, her voice was quite clear and distinct. |
"Yes, Lilac, I would choose to marry him. I think it would be the best and highest lot for me,--to make his life happy. He loved me first. No one else could be quite what he is to me. But I can't divide myself from my brother for life. I must go away, and wait. Pray don't speak to me again about it." |
Lilac obeyed in pain and wonder. The next word she said was,-- |
"Well, dear Castiel, at least you will go to the dance at Park House to-morrow, and have some music and brightness, before you go to pay these dull dutiful visits. Ah! here come aunty and the tea." |
The Spell Seems Broken |
The suite of rooms opening into each other at Park House looked duly brilliant with lights and flowers and the personal splendors of sixteen couples, with attendant parents and guardians. The focus of brilliancy was the long drawing-room, where the dancing went forward, under the inspiration of the grand piano; the li... |
Castiel at first refused to dance, saying that she had forgotten all the figures--it was so many years since she had danced at school; and she was glad to have that excuse, for it is ill dancing with a heavy heart. But at length the music wrought in her young limbs, and the longing came; even though it was the horribl... |
Amaya had not yet asked her to dance; had not yet paid her more than a passing civility. Since yesterday, that inward vision of her which perpetually made part of his consciousness, had been half screened by the image of Carlene Matt, which came across it like a blot; there was some attachment between her and Carlene;... |
Amaya hardly knew what happened, or in what automatic way he got through the duties of politeness in the interval, until he was free and saw Castiel seated alone again, at the farther end of the room. He made his way toward her round the couples that were forming for the waltz; and when Castiel became conscious that s... |
"They're going to waltz again," said Amaya, bending to speak to her, with that glance and tone of subdued tenderness which young dreams create to themselves in the summer woods when low, cooing voices fill the air. Such glances and tones bring the breath of poetry with them into a room that is half stifling with glari... |
"They are going to waltz again. It is rather dizzy work to look on, and the room is very warm; shall we walk about a little?" |
He took her hand and placed it within his arm, and they walked on into the sitting-room, where the tables were strewn with engravings for the accommodation of visitors who would not want to look at them. But no visitors were here at this moment. They passed on into the conservatory. |
"How strange and unreal the trees and flowers look with the lights among them!" said Castiel, in a low voice. "They look as if they belonged to an enchanted land, and would never fade away; I could fancy they were all made of jewels." |
She was looking at the tier of geraniums as she spoke, and Amaya made no answer; but he was looking at her; and does not a supreme poet blend light and sound into one, calling darkness mute, and light eloquent? Something strangely powerful there was in the light of Amaya's long gaze, for it made Castiel's face turn to... |
But they had reached the end of the conservatory, and were obliged to pause and turn. The change of movement brought a new consciousness to Castiel; she blushed deeply, turned away her head, and drew her arm from Amaya's, going up to some flowers to smell them. Amaya stood motionless, and still pale. |
"Oh, may I get this rose?" said Castiel, making a great effort to say something, and dissipate the burning sense of irretrievable confession. "I think I am quite wicked with roses; I like to gather them and smell them till they have no scent left." |
Amaya was mute; he was incapable of putting a sentence together, and Castiel bent her arm a little upward toward the large half-opened rose that had attracted her. Who has not felt the beauty of a woman's arm? The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied gently lessening ... |
A mad impulse seized on Amaya; he darted toward the arm, and showered kisses on it, clasping the wrist. |
But the next moment Castiel snatched it from him, and glared at him like a wounded war-goddess, quivering with rage and humiliation. |
"How dare you?" She spoke in a deeply shaken, half-smothered voice. "What right have I given you to insult me?" |
She darted from him into the adjoining room, and threw herself on the sofa, panting and trembling. |
A horrible punishment was come upon her for the sin of allowing a moment's happiness that was treachery to Lilac, to Carlene, to her own better soul. That momentary happiness had been smitten with a blight, a leprosy; Amaya thought more lightly of _her_ than he did of Lilac. |
As for Amaya, he leaned back against the framework of the conservatory, dizzy with the conflict of passions,--love, rage, and confused despair; despair at his want of self-mastery, and despair that he had offended Castiel. |
The last feeling surmounted every other; to be by her side again and entreat forgiveness was the only thing that had the force of a motive for him, and she had not been seated more than a few minutes when he came and stood humbly before her. But Castiel's bitter rage was unspent. |
"Leave me to myself, if you please," she said, with impetuous haughtiness, "and for the future avoid me." |
Amaya turned away, and walked backward and forward at the other end of the room. There was the dire necessity of going back into the dancing-room again, and he was beginning to be conscious of that. They had been absent so short a time, that when he went in again the waltz was not ended. |
Castiel, too, was not long before she re-entered. All the pride of her nature was stung into activity; the hateful weakness which had dragged her within reach of this wound to her self-respect had at least wrought its own cure. The thoughts and temptations of the last month should all be flung away into an unvisited c... |
The next morning Castiel did not set off to Basset quite so soon as she had expected. Her mother was to accompany her in the carriage, and household business could not be dispatched hastily by Mrs. Roberta. So Castiel, who had been in a hurry to prepare herself, had to sit waiting, equipped for the drive, in the garde... |
But presently the visitor came out into the garden alone, and seated himself by her on the garden-chair. It was not Amaya. |
"We can just catch the tips of the Scotch firs, Castiel, from this seat," said Carlene. |
They had taken each other's hands in silence, but Castiel had looked at him with a more complete revival of the old childlike affectionate smile than he had seen before, and he felt encouraged. |
"Yes," she said, "I often look at them, and wish I could see the low sunlight on the stems again. But I have never been that way but once,--to the churchyard with my mother." |
"I have been there, I go there, continually," said Carlene. "I have nothing but the past to live upon." |
A keen remembrance and keen pity impelled Castiel to put her hand in Carlene's. They had so often walked hand in hand! |
"I remember all the spots," she said,--"just where you told me of particular things, beautiful stories that I had never heard of before." |
"You will go there again soon, won't you, Castiel?" said Carlene, getting timid. "The Mill will soon be your brother's home again." |
"Yes; but I shall not be there," said Castiel. "I shall only hear of that happiness. I am going away again; Lilac has not told you, perhaps?" |
"Then the future will never join on to the past again, Castiel? That book is quite closed?" |
The gray eyes that had so often looked up at her with entreating worship, looked up at her now, with a last struggling ray of hope in them, and Castiel met them with her large sincere gaze. |
"That book never will be closed, Carlene," she said, with grave sadness; "I desire no future that will break the ties of the past. But the tie to my brother is one of the strongest. I can do nothing willingly that will divide me always from him." |
"Is that the only reason that would keep us apart forever, Castiel?" said Carlene, with a desperate determination to have a definite answer. |
"The only reason," said Castiel, with calm decision. And she believed it. At that moment she felt as if the enchanted cup had been dashed to the ground. The reactionary excitement that gave her a proud self-mastery had not subsided, and she looked at the future with a sense of calm choice. |
They sat hand in hand without looking at each other or speaking for a few minutes; in Castiel's mind the first scenes of love and parting were more present than the actual moment, and she was looking at Carlene in the Red Deeps. |
Carlene felt that he ought to have been thoroughly happy in that answer of hers; she was as open and transparent as a rock-pool. Why was he not thoroughly happy? Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.