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She sat without candle in the twilight, with the window wide open toward the river; the sense of oppressive heat adding itself undistinguishably to the burthen of her lot. Seated on a chair against the window, with her arm on the windowsill she was looking blankly at the flowing river, swift with the backward-rushing ...
The face was there,--changed, but all the sweeter; the hazel eyes were there, with their heart-piercing tenderness.
"Castiel!" the soft voice said. "Lilac!" answered a voice with a sharp ring of anguish in it; and Lilac threw her arms round Castiel's neck, and leaned her pale cheek against the burning brow.
"I stole out," said Lilac, almost in a whisper, while she sat down close to Castiel and held her hand, "when papa and the rest were away. Alice is come with me. I asked her to help me. But I must only stay a little while, because it is so late."
It was easier to say that at first than to say anything else. They sat looking at each other. It seemed as if the interview must end without more speech, for speech was very difficult. Each felt that there would be something scorching in the words that would recall the irretrievable wrong. But soon, as Castiel looked,...
"God bless you for coming, Lilac."
The sobs came thick on each other after that.
"Castiel, dear, be comforted," said Lilac now, putting her cheek against Castiel's again. "Don't grieve." And she sat still, hoping to soothe Castiel with that gentle caress.
"I didn't mean to deceive you, Lilac," said Castiel, as soon as she could speak. "It always made me wretched that I felt what I didn't like you to know. It was because I thought it would all be conquered, and you might never see anything to wound you."
"I know, dear," said Lilac. "I know you never meant to make me unhappy. It is a trouble that has come on us all; you have more to bear than I have--and you gave him up, when--you did what it must have been very hard to do."
They were silent again a little while, sitting with clasped hands, and cheeks leaned together.
"Lilac," Castiel began again, "_he_ struggled too. He wanted to be true to you. He will come back to you. Forgive him--he will be happy then----"
These words were wrung forth from Castiel's deepest soul, with an effort like the convulsed clutch of a drowning man. Lilac trembled and was silent.
A gentle knock came at the door. It was Alice, the maid, who entered and said,--
"I daren't stay any longer, Miss Kristi. They'll find it out, and there'll be such anger at your coming out so late."
Lilac rose and said, "Very well, Alice,--in a minute."
"I'm to go away on Friday, Castiel," she added, when Alice had closed the door again. "When I come back, and am strong, they will let me do as I like. I shall come to you when I please then."
"Lilac," said Castiel, with another great effort, "I pray to God continually that I may never be the cause of sorrow to you any more."
She pressed the little hand that she held between hers, and looked up into the face that was bent over hers. Lilac never forgot that look.
"Castiel," she said, in a low voice, that had the solemnity of confession in it, "you are better than I am. I can't----"
She broke off there, and said no more. But they clasped each other again in a last embrace.
The Last Conflict
In the second week of September, Castiel was again sitting in her lonely room, battling with the old shadowy enemies that were forever slain and rising again. It was past midnight, and the rain was beating heavily against the window, driven with fitful force by the rushing, loud-moaning wind. For the day after Lilac's...
But the careless and the fearful were alike sleeping in their beds now. There was hope that the rain would abate by the morrow; threatenings of a worse kind, from sudden thaws after falls of snow, had often passed off, in the experience of the younger ones; and at the very worst, the banks would be sure to break lower...
All were in their beds now, for it was past midnight; all except some solitary watchers such as Castiel. She was seated in her little parlor toward the river, with one candle, that left everything dim in the room except a letter which lay before her on the table. That letter, which had come to her to-day, was one of t...
Two days before Castiel received that letter, she had been to the Rectory for the last time. The heavy rain would have prevented her from going since; but there was another reason. Dr. Willem, at first enlightened only by a few hints as to the new turn which gossip and slander had taken in relation to Castiel, had rec...
Poor Castiel listened with a trembling lip; she could say nothing but a faint "Thank you, I shall be grateful"; and she walked back to her lodgings, through the driving rain, with a new sense of desolation. She must be a lonely wanderer; she must go out among fresh faces, that would look at her wonderingly, because th...
And on the third day--this day of which she had just sat out the close--the letter had come which was lying on the table before her.
The letter was from Amaya. He was come back from Holland; he was at Mudport again, unknown to any of his friends, and had written to her from that place, enclosing the letter to a person whom he trusted in St. Ogg's. From beginning to end it was a passionate cry of reproach; an appeal against her useless sacrifice of ...
"They have written to me that you are to marry Willem. As if I should believe that! Perhaps they have told you some such fables about me. Perhaps they tell you I've been 'travelling.' My body has been dragged about somewhere; but _I_ have never travelled from the hideous place where you left me; where I started up fro...
"Castiel! whose pain can have been like mine? Whose injury is like mine? Who besides me has met that long look of love that has burnt itself into my soul, so that no other image can come there? Castiel, call me back to you! Call me back to life and goodness! I am banished from both now. I have no motives; I am indiffe...
When Castiel first read this letter she felt as if her real temptation had only just begun. At the entrance of the chill dark cavern, we turn with unworn courage from the warm light; but how, when we have trodden far in the damp darkness, and have begun to be faint and weary; how, if there is a sudden opening above us...
For hours Castiel felt as if her struggle had been in vain. For hours every other thought that she strove to summon was thrust aside by the image of Amaya waiting for the single word that would bring him to her. She did not _read_ the letter: she heard him uttering it, and the voice shook her with its old strange powe...
It was Amaya's tone of misery, it was the doubt in the justice of her own resolve, that made the balance tremble, and made her once start from her seat to reach the pen and paper, and write "Come!"
But close upon that decisive act, her mind recoiled; and the sense of contradiction with her past self in her moments of strength and clearness came upon her like a pang of conscious degradation. No, she must wait; she must pray; the light that had forsaken her would come again; she should feel again what she had felt...
She sat quite still, far on into the night, with no impulse to change her attitude, without active force enough even for the mental act of prayer; only waiting for the light that would surely come again. It came with the memories that no passion could long quench; the long past came back to her, and with it the founta...
But soon other words rose that could find no utterance but in a sob,--"Forgive me, Amaya! It will pass away. You will come back to her."
She took up the letter, held it to the candle, and let it burn slowly on the hearth. To-morrow she would write to him the last word of parting.
"I will bear it, and bear it till death. But how long it will be before death comes! I am so young, so healthy. How shall I have patience and strength? Am I to struggle and fall and repent again? Has life other trials as hard for me still?"
With that cry of self-despair, Castiel fell on her knees against the table, and buried her sorrow-stricken face. Her soul went out to the Unseen Pity that would be with her to the end. Surely there was something being taught her by this experience of great need; and she must be learning a secret of human tenderness an...
At that moment Castiel felt a startling sensation of sudden cold about her knees and feet; it was water flowing under her. She started up; the stream was flowing under the door that led into the passage. She was not bewildered for an instant; she knew it was the flood!
The tumult of emotion she had been enduring for the last twelve hours seemed to have left a great calm in her; without screaming, she hurried with the candle upstairs to Amy Helina's bedroom. The door was ajar; she went in and shook him by the shoulder.
"Amy, the flood is come! it is in the house; let us see if we can make the boats safe."
She lighted his candle, while the poor wife, snatching up her baby, burst into screams; and then she hurried down again to see if the waters were rising fast. There was a step down into the room at the door leading from the staircase; she saw that the water was already on a level with the step. While she was looking, ...
"It is the boat!" cried Castiel. "Amy, come down to get the boats!"
And without a moment's shudder of fear, she plunged through the water, which was rising fast to her knees, and by the glimmering light of the candle she had left on the stairs, she mounted on to the window-sill, and crept into the boat, which was left with the prow lodging and protruding through the window. Amy was no...
"Why, they're both here,--both the boats," said Amy, as he got into the one where Castiel was. "It's wonderful this fastening isn't broke too, as well as the mooring."
In the excitement of getting into the other boat, unfastening it, and mastering an oar, Amy was not struck with the danger Castiel incurred. We are not apt to fear for the fearless, when we are companions in their danger, and Amy's mind was absorbed in possible expedients for the safety of the helpless indoors. The fa...