"I told him the truth, including the fact of his own despicableness."
"And he believed it?"
"I helped him to the belief by a pretty thorough thrashing."
"Oh!" cried Hilda.
"He deserved it, dear."
"But--I had exposed myself to it; he thought himself justified."
"I had to disabuse him of that thought. He bawled out something like a challenge under the salutary lesson, but when I promptly seconded the suggestion--insisted on the extreme satisfaction it would give me to have a shot at him--the bourgeois strain came out. He fairly whined. I was disappointed. I had bloodthirsty desires."
"Oh, I am very glad he whined then! Don"t speak of such horrors. You know I am hysterical."
Odd still stood before her, and Hilda put out her hand.
"How can I thank you?" He put her hand to his lips, not looking at her but down at the heavy folds of her white dress; it had a shroud-like look that gave him a shudder. Hilda"s life seemed shroud-like, shutting her out from all brightness, from all love--love hers by right, and only hers.
"You know, you know that I would do anything for you," he said.
The hand he kissed drew him down beside her, hardly consciously, and he yielded to the longing he felt in her for comforting kindness and nearness; yielded, too, to his own growing weakness; but he still held the hand to his lips, not daring to look at her. This childlike trust, this dependence, were dreadful. The long kiss seemed to his troubled soul a momentary shield. He found her eyes on him when he raised his own.
"I never thought it would come true--in this way," she said.
"What come true?"
"That you would really care for me."
Her pure look seemed to flutter to him, to fold peaceful wings on his breast; its very contentment const.i.tuted a caress. The child was still a child, and yet in the look there were worlds of ignorant revelation. A shock of possibilities made Odd dizzy, and the certain strain of weakness in him made it impossible for him to warn and protect her ignorance.
He was conscious of a quick grasp at the transcendental friendship of which alone she was aware.
"My little friend, I care for you dearly, dearly." But with the words, his hold on the transcendental friendship slipped, fundamental truths surged up; he took both her hands, and clasping them on his breast, said, hardly conscious of his words--
"Sweetest, n.o.blest--dearest," with an emotion only too contagious, for Hilda"s eyes filled with tears. The sight of these tears, her weakness, the horrible unfairness of her position, appealed, even at this moment, to all his manliness. He controlled himself from taking her into his arms, and his grasp on her hands held her from him.
"I understand, Hilda, I understand it all--all you have suffered; the loneliness, the injustice, the dreary drudgery. I know, dear, I know that you have been unhappy."
"Oh yes! I have been unhappy! so unhappy!" The tears rolled down her cheeks while she spoke, fell on Odd"s hands clasping hers. "No one ever cared for me, no one. Papa, mamma, Katherine even, not really; isn"t it cruel, cruel?" This self-pity, so uncharacteristic, showing as it did the revulsion in her whole nature, filled Odd with a sort of helpless terror. "That is what I wanted; some one to care; I thought it must be my fault." The words came in sighing breaths, incoherent: "I have been so lonely."
"My child! My poor, poor child!"
"Let me tell you everything. I _must_ tell you now since you care for me. I have been so fond of you--always. You remember when I was a child?" Odd held her hands tightly and mechanically. Poor little hands; they gave him the feeling of light spars clung to in a whirling shipwreck. "Even then I was lonely, I see that now; and even then it weighed upon me, that thought that I was not to the people I loved what they were to me. I felt no injustice. I must be unworthy. It seems to me that all my life I have struggled to make people love me, to make them take me near to them. But you! You were near at once. Do I explain? It sounds morbid, doesn"t it? But it isn"t, for my loneliness was almost unconscious, and I merely felt that with you I was happy, that things were clear, that you understood everything. You did, didn"t you? Only I don"t think you ever quite understood my grat.i.tude, my utter devotion to you." Hilda"s tears had ceased as she went on speaking, and she smiled now at Odd, a quivering smile.
"And then you went away, and I never saw you again. Ah! I can"t tell you what I suffered."
Odd bent his head upon the hands clasped in his.
"But how could you have known?" said Hilda tenderly; "I was really very silly and very unreasonable. I thought you would come back _because_ I needed you. I needed the sunshine. Perhaps you were right about the shadow. But for years I waited for you. I felt sure you knew I was waiting. You said you would come back you know; I never forgot that."
She paused a moment: "It all ended in Florence," she went on sadly; "such a bleak, bitter day, just the day for burying an illusion. I see the cold emptiness of the big room now; oh! the melancholy of it! where I was sitting alone. All came upon me suddenly, the reality. You know those crumbling shocks of reality. I realized that I had waited for something that could never come; that you had never really understood, and that it would have been impossible for you to understand. I was a pretty, touching little incident to you, and you were everything to me.
I realized, too, how silly it would all seem to any one; how it would be misinterpreted and smiled at as a case of puppy-love perhaps. A sort of cold shame crept through me, and I felt really alone then. Do you know what that feeling is?" Her hand under his forehead lifted his head a little as though to question his face, but putting both her hands over his eyes he would not look at her.
"You are so sorry?" Odd nodded. "But you have had that feeling?
Imprisoned in oneself; looking, longing for a voice, a smile,--and silence, always, always silence. A thing quite apart from the surface intercourse of everyday life, not touched by it. You have so many friends, so many windows in your prison, you can"t know."
"I know."
"Really?"
"Yes, yes."
"And you call out for help and no one hears. Oh, I can"t explain properly; do you understand?"
"I understand, dear."
"Well, after that day in Florence, the last cranny of my prison seemed walled up. And--oh, then our troubles came, worse and worse.
Responsibilities braced me up--far healthier, of course. And your books! Their strength; their philosophy--don"t tell me I might find it all in Marcus Aurelius; your way of saying it went more deeply in me.
Just to do one"s duty; to love people and be sorry for them, and not snivel over oneself. Ah! if you knew all your books had been to me!
Would you like it, I wonder?" Again the tenderness, almost playful, in her voice. Odd raised his head and looked at her.
"And when I came at last, what did you think?"
The loving candor of her eyes dwelt on him.
"When you came?" she repeated. "Then I saw at once that you were Katherine"s friend, and that your books were the nearest I should ever get to you." Hilda"s voice hesitated a little; a doubt of the exact.i.tude of her perceptions from this point showed itself in a certain perplexity of tone. "And--I don"t quite understand myself, for I didn"t plan anything--but just because I felt so much I was afraid that you would imagine I made claims on you. I was resolved that you should see that I had reached your standpoint--that I had forgotten--that the present had no connection with the past."
"But I had not forgotten," Odd groaned.
"No?" Hilda smiled rather lightly; "it would have been very strange if you hadn"t. Besides, as I say, I saw at once that you were Katherine"s, and that it was right and natural. Your books taught me, too, the true peace of renunciation, you see! Not that this called for renunciation exactly," and again Hilda paused with the faint look of perplexity.
"There was nothing to renounce since you were hers, except I must have felt a certain disappointment. I felt a little frozen. Such dull egotism!" She turned her eyes away, looking vaguely out into the dusky room. "But even on that first day I meant that you should see, and that she should see, that I knew that the past made no bond: in my heart it might, not in yours, I knew, for all your kindness."
"Go on, Hilda," said Odd, as she paused.
"Well, you know all the rest. When you were engaged and she more than friend, I had hoped for it, and I saw that my turn might come; that I might step into Kathy"s vacated shoes, so to speak; that we might be friends, and all my dreams be fulfilled after all. I began then to let myself know that I did care, for I had tried to help myself before by pretending that I didn"t. I wouldn"t do anything to make you like me. If you were to like me, you would of yourself; all the joy of having you care for me would be in having made no effort. And the dream did come true. I saw more and more that you cared. To-day I feel it, like sunshine." Odd still stared at her, and again through sudden tears she smiled at him. "Only--isn"t it strange?--things are always so; it must be, too, that I am weak, overwrought, for I feel so sad, as though I were at the bottom of the sea, and looking up through it at the sun."
"Great heavens!" muttered Odd. He looked at her for a silent moment, then suddenly putting his arm around her neck, he drew her to him.
He did not kiss her, but he said, leaning his head against hers--
"And I--so unworthy!"
"No, no," said Hilda, and with a little sigh, "not unworthy, dear Peter."
"I, dully stumbling about your exquisite soul," Peter went on, pressing her head more closely to his. "Ah, Hilda! Hilda!"
"What, dear friend?"