Young women after a common game are shrewd. Juliana may have seen that Rose was not steady on the plank she walked, and required support.
"I don"t know," she said, turning her cheek to her pillow.
"What an answer!" Rose exclaimed. "Have you no opinion? What did you say yesterday? It"s silent as the grave with me: but if you do care for him, you must think one thing or the other."
"I suppose not, then--no," said Juliana.
Repeating the languid words bitterly, Rose continued:
"What is it to love without having faith in him you love? You make my mind easier."
Juliana caught the implied taunt, and said, fretfully:
"I"m ill. You"re so pa.s.sionate. You don"t tell me what it is. How can I answer you?"
"Never mind," said Rose, moving to the door, wondering why she had spoken at all: but when Juliana sprang forward, and caught her by the dress to stop her, and with a most unwonted outburst of affection, begged of her to tell her all, the wound in Rose"s breast began to bleed, and she was glad to speak.
"Juley, do you-can you believe that he wrote that letter which poor Ferdinand was--accused of writing?"
Juliana appeared to muse, and then responded: "Why should he do such a thing?"
"O my goodness, what a girl!" Rose interjected.
"Well, then, to please you, Rose, of course I think he is too honourable."
"You do think so, Juley? But if he himself confessed it--what then? You would not believe him, would you?"
"Oh, then I can"t say. Why should he condemn himself?"
"But you would know--you would know that he was a man to suffer death rather than be guilty of the smallest baseness. His birth--what is that!" Rose filliped her fingers: "But his acts--what he is himself you would be sure of, would you not? Dear Juley! Oh, for heaven"s sake, speak out plainly to me."
A wily look had crept over Juliana"s features.
"Certainly," she said, in a tone that belied it, and drawing Rose to her bosom, the groan she heard there was pa.s.sing sweet to her.
"He has confessed it to Mama," sobbed Rose. "Why did he not come to me first? He has confessed it--the abominable thing has come out of his own mouth. He went to her last night..."
Juliana patted her shoulders regularly as they heaved. When words were intelligible between them, Juliana said:
"At least, dear, you must admit that he has redeemed it."
"Redeemed it? Could he do less?" Rose dried her eyes vehemently, as if the tears shamed her. "A man who could have let another suffer for his crime--I could never have lifted my head again. I think I would have cut off this hand that plighted itself to him! As it is, I hardly dare look at myself. But you don"t think it, dear? You know it to be false! false!
false!"
"Why should Mr. Harrington confess it?" said Juliana.
"Oh, don"t speak his name!" cried Rose.
Her cousin smiled. "So many strange things happen," she said, and sighed.
"Don"t sigh: I shall think you believe it!" cried Rose. An appearance of constrained repose was a.s.sumed. Rose glanced up, studied for an instant, and breathlessly uttered: "You do, you do believe it, Juley?"
For answer, Juliana hugged her with much warmth, and recommenced the patting.
"I dare say it"s a mistake," she remarked. "He may have been jealous of Ferdinand. You know I have not seen the letter. I have only heard of it. In love, they say, you ought to excuse... And the want of religious education! His sister..."
Rose interrupted her with a sharp shudder. Might it not be possible that one who had the same blood as the Countess would stoop to a momentary vileness.
How changed was Rose from the haughty damsel of yesterday!
"Do you think my lover could tell a lie?" "He--would not love me long if I did!"
These phrases arose and rang in Juliana"s ears while she pursued the task of comforting the broken spirit that now lay p.r.o.ne on the bed, and now impetuously paced the room. Rose had come thinking the moment Juliana"s name was mentioned, that here was the one to fortify her faith in Evan: one who, because she loved, could not doubt him. She moaned in a terror of distrust, loathing her cousin: not asking herself why she needed support. And indeed she was too young for much clear self-questioning, and her blood was flowing too quickly for her brain to perceive more than one thing at a time.
"Does your mother believe it?" said Juliana, evading a direct a.s.sault.
"Mama? She never doubts what you speak," answered Rose, disconsolately.
"She does?"
"Yes."
Whereat Juliana looked most grave, and Rose felt that it was hard to breathe.
She had grown very cold and calm, and Juliana had to be expansive unprovoked.
"Believe nothing, dear, till you hear it from his own lips. If he can look in your face and say that he did it... well, then! But of course he cannot. It must be some wonderful piece of generosity to his rival."
"So I thought, Juley! so I thought," cried Rose, at the new light, and Juliana smiled contemptuously, and the light flickered and died, and all was darker than before in the bosom of Rose. She had borne so much that this new drop was poison.
"Of course it must be that, if it is anything," Juliana pursued. "You were made to be happy, Rose. And consider, if it is true, people of very low birth, till they have lived long with other people, and if they have no religion, are so very likely to do things. You do not judge them as you do real gentlemen, and one must not be too harsh--I only wish to prepare you for the worst."
A dim form of that very idea had pa.s.sed through Rose, giving her small comfort.
"Let him tell you with his own lips that what he has told your mother is true, and then, and not till then, believe him," Juliana concluded, and they kissed kindly, and separated. Rose had suddenly lost her firm step, but no sooner was Juliana alone than she left the bed, and addressed her visage to the gla.s.s with brightening eyes, as one who saw the glimmer of young hope therein.
"She love him! Not if he told me so ten thousand times would I believe it! and before he has said a syllable she doubts him. Asking me in that frantic way! as if I couldn"t see that she wanted me to help her to her faith in him, as she calls it. Not name his name? Mr. Harrington! I may call him Evan: some day!"
Half-uttered, half-mused, the unconscious exclamations issued from her, and for many a weary day since she had dreamed of love, and studied that which is said to attract the creature, she had not been so glowingly elated or looked so much farther in the gla.s.s than its pale reflection.
CHAPTER x.x.xVI. BEFORE BREAKFAST
Cold through the night the dark-fringed stream had whispered under Evan"s eyes, and the night breeze voiced "Fool, fool!" to him, not without a distant echo in his heart. By symbols and sensations he knew that Rose was lost to him. There was no moon: the water seemed aimless, pa.s.sing on carelessly to oblivion. Now and then, the trees stirred and talked, or a noise was heard from the pastures. He had slain the life that lived in them, and the great glory they were to bring forth, and the end to which all things moved. Had less than the loss of Rose been involved, the young man might have found himself looking out on a world beneath notice, and have been sighing for one more worthy of his clouded excellence but the immense misery present to him in the contemplation of Rose"s sad restrained contempt, saved him from the silly elation which is the last, and generally successful, struggle of human nature in those who can so far master it to commit a sacrifice. The loss of that brave high young soul-Rose, who had lifted him out of the mire with her own white hands: Rose, the image of all that he worshipped: Rose, so closely wedded to him that to be cut away from her was to fall like pallid clay from the soaring spirit: surely he was stunned and senseless when he went to utter the words to her mother! Now that he was awake, and could feel his self-inflicted pain, he marvelled at his rashness and foolishness, as perhaps numerous mangled warriors have done for a time, when the battle-field was cool, and they were weak, and the uproar of their jarred nerves has beset them, lying uncherished.
By degrees he grew aware of a little consolatory touch, like the point of a needle, in his consciousness. Laxley would certainly insult him!