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Castiel pressed her fingers together almost convulsively as she held them clasped on her lap. A great terror was upon her, as if she were ever and anon seeing where she stood by great flashes of lightning, and then again stretched forth her hands in the darkness. |
"No, I don't sacrifice you--I couldn't sacrifice you," she said, as soon as she could speak again; "but I can't believe in a good for you, that I feel, that we both feel, is a wrong toward others. We can't choose happiness either for ourselves or for another; we can't tell where that will lie. We can only choose wheth... |
"But, Castiel," said Amaya, seating himself by her again, "is it possible you don't see that what happened yesterday has altered the whole position of things? What infatuation is it, what obstinate prepossession, that blinds you to that? It is too late to say what we might have done or what we ought to have done. Admi... |
Again a deep flush came over Castiel's face, and she was silent. Amaya thought again that he was beginning to prevail,--he had never yet believed that he should _not_ prevail; there are possibilities which our minds shrink from too completely for us to fear them. |
"Dearest," he said, in his deepest, tenderest tone, leaning toward her, and putting his arm round her, "you _are_ mine now,--the world believes it; duty must spring out of that now. |
"In a few hours you will be legally mine, and those who had claims on us will submit,--they will see that there was a force which declared against their claims." |
Castiel's eyes opened wide in one terrified look at the face that was close to hers, and she started up, pale again. |
"Oh, I can't do it," she said, in a voice almost of agony; "Amaya, don't ask me--don't urge me. I can't argue any longer,--I don't know what is wise; but my heart will not let me do it. I see,--I feel their trouble now; it is as if it were branded on my mind. _I_ have suffered, and had no one to pity me; and now I hav... |
"Good God, Castiel!" said Amaya, rising too and grasping her arm, "you rave. How can you go back without marrying me? You don't know what will be said, dearest. You see nothing as it really is." |
"Yes, I do. But they will believe me. I will confess everything. Lilac will believe me--she will forgive you, and--and--oh, _some_ good will come by clinging to the right. Dear, dear Amaya, let me go!--don't drag me into deeper remorse. My whole soul has never consented; it does not consent now." |
Amaya let go her arm, and sank back on his chair, half-stunned by despairing rage. He was silent a few moments, not looking at her; while her eyes were turned toward him yearningly, in alarm at this sudden change. At last he said, still without looking at her,-- |
"Go, then,--leave me; don't torture me any longer,--I can't bear it." |
Involuntarily she leaned toward him and put out her hand to touch his. But he shrank from it as if it had been burning iron, and said again,-- |
"Leave me." |
Castiel was not conscious of a decision as she turned away from that gloomy averted face, and walked out of the room; it was like an automatic action that fulfils a forgotten intention. What came after? A sense of stairs descended as if in a dream, of flagstones, of a chaise and horses standing, then a street, and a t... |
Home--where her mother and brother were, Carlene, Lilac, the scene of her very cares and trials--was the haven toward which her mind tended; the sanctuary where sacred relics lay, where she would be rescued from more falling. The thought of Amaya was like a horrible throbbing pain, which yet, as such pains do, seemed ... |
The coach was taking her to York, farther away from home; but she did not learn that until she was set down in the old city at midnight. It was no matter; she could sleep there, and start home the next day. She had her purse in her pocket, with all her money in it,--a bank-note and a sovereign; she had kept it in her ... |
Did she lie down in the gloomy bedroom of the old inn that night with her will bent unwaveringly on the path of penitent sacrifice? The great struggles of life are not so easy as that; the great problems of life are not so clear. In the darkness of that night she saw Amaya's face turned toward her in passionate, repro... |
Book VII |
_The Final Rescue_ |
The Return to the Mill |
Between four and five o'clock on the afternoon of the fifth day from that on which Amaya and Castiel had left St. Ogg's, Clea Roberta was standing on the gravel walk outside the old house at Dorlcote Mill. He was master there now; he had half fulfilled his father's dying wish, and by years of steady self-government an... |
But Clea's face, as he stood in the hot, still sunshine of that summer afternoon, had no gladness, no triumph in it. His mouth wore its bitterest expression, his severe brow its hardest and deepest fold, as he drew down his hat farther over his eyes to shelter them from the sun, and thrusting his hands deep into his p... |
As he was walking with his back toward the entrance gate, and his face toward the rushing factory-stream, a tall, dark-eyed figure, that we know well, approached the gate, and paused to look at him with a fast-beating heart. Her brother was the human being of whom she had been most afraid from her childhood upward; af... |
That deep-rooted fear was shaking Castiel now; but her mind was unswervingly bent on returning to her brother, as the natural refuge that had been given her. In her deep humiliation under the retrospect of her own weakness,--in her anguish at the injury she had inflicted,--she almost desired to endure the severity of ... |
Castiel had been kept on her bed at York for a day with that prostrating headache which was likely to follow on the terrible strain of the previous day and night. There was an expression of physical pain still about her brow and eyes, and her whole appearance, with her dress so long unchanged, was worn and distressed.... |
Castiel paused too, three yards before him. She felt the hatred in his face, felt it rushing through her fibres; but she must speak. |
"Clea," she began faintly, "I am come back to you,--I am come back home--for refuge--to tell you everything." |
"You will find no home with me," he answered, with tremulous rage. "You have disgraced us all. You have disgraced my father's name. You have been a curse to your best friends. You have been base, deceitful; no motives are strong enough to restrain you. I wash my hands of you forever. You don't belong to me." |
Their mother had come to the door now. She stood paralyzed by the double shock of seeing Castiel and hearing Clea's words. |
"Clea," said Castiel, with more courage, "I am perhaps not so guilty as you believe me to be. I never meant to give way to my feelings. I struggled against them. I was carried too far in the boat to come back on Tuesday. I came back as soon as I could." |
"I can't believe in you any more," said Clea, gradually passing from the tremulous excitement of the first moment to cold inflexibility. "You have been carrying on a clandestine relation with Amaya Nelson,--as you did before with another. He went to see you at my aunt Patrice's; you walked alone with him in the lanes;... |
Castiel was half stunned,--too heavily pressed upon by her anguish even to discern any difference between her actual guilt and her brother's accusations, still less to vindicate herself. |
"Clea," she said, crushing her hands together under her cloak, in the effort to speak again, "whatever I have done, I repent it bitterly. I want to make amends. I will endure anything. I want to be kept from doing wrong again." |
"What _will_ keep you?" said Clea, with cruel bitterness. "Not religion; not your natural feelings of gratitude and honor. And he--he would deserve to be shot, if it were not----But you are ten times worse than he is. I loathe your character and your conduct. You struggled with your feelings, you say. Yes! _I_ have ha... |
Slowly Castiel was turning away with despair in her heart. But the poor frightened mother's love leaped out now, stronger than all dread. |
"My child! I'll go with you. You've got a mother." |
Oh, the sweet rest of that embrace to the heart-stricken Castiel! More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us. |
Clea turned and walked into the house. |
"Come in, my child," Mrs. Roberta whispered. "He'll let you stay and sleep in my bed. He won't deny that if I ask him." |
"No, mother," said Castiel, in a low tone, like a moan. "I will never go in." |
"Then wait for me outside. I'll get ready and come with you." |
When his mother appeared with her bonnet on, Clea came out to her in the passage, and put money into her hands. |
"My house is yours, mother, always," he said. "You will come and let me know everything you want; you will come back to me." |
Poor Mrs. Roberta took the money, too frightened to say anything. The only thing clear to her was the mother's instinct that she would go with her unhappy child. |
Castiel was waiting outside the gate; she took her mother's hand and they walked a little way in silence. |
"Mother," said Castiel, at last, "we will go to Amaya's cottage. Amaya will take me in. He was very good to me when I was a little girl." |
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