Yesterday evening would have proved that, had proof been needed.
How she had debated whether she would accept that girl’s invitation, and see him again whom she had solemnly sworn never more to see! She had kept her oath, and had fled at the last moment.
But was such a flight to be called a victory? Had she not been conquered—did she not lie here helpless, shattered, bleeding? Her deadly wound had never been healed, only insufficiently and with difficulty bound up; and now she had torn off the bandages, and might bleed to death! There was no more hope for her.
All else within was dull, dead, and insensible. She had fancied that she felt a kind of respect for Philip’s activity and daring—that she was bound to him by at least a feeble bond of fraternal love. And yet this morning, when Aunt Rikchen had brought the terrible news, and had wept and lamented so that it might have moved a heart of stone, she had not even been touched. She had received it like any other piece of sensational intelligence which her aunt was in the habit of reading out of the newspaper and making remarks upon. She seemed turned to stone in the selfishness of her passion, so that it had not even occurred to her to go to her father and say to him, “You have still one child, father.”
But could she have said that without lying—was she still at heart the child of the man who, in an hour of madness, had obtained from her that letter of renunciation, every syllable of which had been like a poisoned arrow in her heart? Had he attempted to compensate her, in some measure at least, for so enormous, so unsurpassable a sacrifice, by multiplying his own love to her a hundredfold? Perhaps his pride forbade him that, or he shrank from hers, which he knew so well. Well, then, she was well acquainted with his pride too. She could see his expression if she went to him in his room; she could hear his voice saying, “You have come to me about that wretched man; I wish to hear nothing more about the matter than is, unfortunately, necessary for me to hear. In my house at least I may be spared; so as you have come to see me at last, talk of something else.”
No, no, her father did not need her; and for herself! others might importune him with their troubles, and humble themselves before him—her proud father’s prouder daughter would sooner die a martyr at the stake!
Cilli was better off. She was sitting now beside her father’s sickbed, and listening patiently to his childish complaints of how foolish he had been to believe in Philip, and how just was the punishment that the savings of many years, so carefully accumulated in a thousand frugal ways, and by unceasing self-denial through so many long years, should have been lost in one night, with the millions of the gambler on whose cards he had staked his little fortune! Then she would comfort the old man, and believe every word that came from her pure lips. And in secret she had another comfort, at which she only hinted sometimes in mysterious words, as if she were ashamed of such divine help—the comfort of believing that, as one consecrated to early death, she needed no earthly consolation.
She might well be secure of that consolation! How transparent her white skin had grown in the last few weeks; how spiritually beautiful the expression of her pure features; how unearthly the look of her great, blind eyes!
Oh, how happy she was! To die so young, before the faintest stain had marred even the hem of her white robes! To find above, if there was anything above—and for her there must surely be—a heaven which she had already created for herself on earth in her pure, humble heart! To rise from joy to bliss—from light into glory! Oh, how happy she was!
And she herself, most miserable! That world above was only a beautiful fable to her ever since her restless brain had begun to work behind her burning brow. Her passionate heart had once desired to possess all earthly joy as the sea receives into its bosom the streams which roll gleefully and exultingly into it, and now it was pining away like the barren desert under a sky of brass; and her vigorous form seemed made to drag the weary burden of life through the never-ending years to a far-distant, desolate grave, like some captive hero who, bending under the heavy load bound upon his strong shoulders, may not hope to break down or fall beneath the lash of his driver like his weaker companion, but must throw away his load, and turn upon his tormentors, crying, “You or I!”
But there was no alternative here. Death was very sure for those who did not fear it!
Did she fear death?
She!
With this chisel, with the first tool from off her table, she would accomplish it with her own hand, if—
If within her deepest, inmost heart, where some spring that she had thought dried up must still be bubbling, a siren voice had not wailed and whispered: “Do not die! for so you would kill me, the last and mightiest of all the sisters. Only one moment is mine, and there is night before me and after me; but this one moment surpasses the bliss of eternity!”
In the next room to her had been noise and whistling and singing the whole morning, louder than usual, as the master had been absent today; and there had been much talk as to whether, when there was a Mrs. Sculptor—some wit had suggested this—things would be quite so lively in the studio. Now
