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THE MOLE BURROWS.
I slept again after my dream, and do not know whether he came into my
room as he generally did when he had not said good-night to me. Of course
I woke unhappy, and the morning-world had lost something of its natural
glow, its lovely freshness: it was not this time a thing new-born of the
creating word. I dawdled with my dressing. The face kept coming, and
brought me no peace, yet brought me something for which it seemed worth
while even to lose my peace. But I did not know then, and do not yet know
what the loss of peace actually means. I only know that it must be
something far more terrible than anything I have ever known. I remained
so far true to my uncle, however, that not even for what the face seemed
to promise me, would I have consented to cause him trouble. For what I
saw in the face, I would do anything, I thought, except that.
I went to him at the usual hour, determined that nothing should distract
me from my work--that he should perceive no difference in me. I was not
at the moment awake to the fact that here again were love and deception
hand in hand. But another love than mine was there: my uncle loved me
immeasurably more than I yet loved that heavenly vision. True love is
keen-sighted as the eagle, and my uncle's love was love true, therefore
he saw what I sought to hide. It is only the shadow of love, generally a
grotesque, ugly thing, like so many other shadows, that is blind either
to the troubles or the faults of the shadow it seems to love. The moment
our eyes met, I saw that he saw something in mine that was not there when
last we parted. But he said nothing, and we sat down to our lessons.
Every now and then as they proceeded, however, I felt rather than saw his
eyes rest on me for a moment, questioning. I had never known them rest on
me so before. Plainly he was aware of some change; and could there be
anything different in the relation of two who so long had loved each
other, without something being less well and good than before? Nor was it
indeed wonderful he should see a difference; for, with all the might of
my resolve to do even better than usual, I would now and then find myself
unconscious of what either of us had last been saying. The face had come
yet again, and driven everything from its presence! I grew angry--not
with the youth, but with his face, for appearing so often when I did not
invite it. Once I caught myself on the verge of crying out, "Can't you
wait? I will come presently!" and my uncle looked up as if I had spoken.
Perhaps he had as good as heard the words; he possessed what almost
seemed a supernatural faculty of divining the thought of another--not, I
was sure, by any effort to perceive it, but by involuntary intuition. He
uttered no inquiring word, but a light sigh escaped him, which all but
made me burst into tears. I was on one side of a widening gulf, and he on
the other!
Our lessons ended, he rose immediately and left the room. Five minutes
passed, and then came the clatter of his horse's feet on the stones of
the yard. A moment more, and I heard him ride away at a quick trot. I
burst into tears where I still sat beside my uncle's empty chair. I was
weary like one in a dream searching in vain for a spot whereupon to set
down her heart-breaking burden. There was no one but my uncle to whom I
could tell any trouble, and the trouble I could not have told him had
hitherto been unimaginable! From this my reader may judge what a trouble
it was that I could not tell him my trouble. I was a traitor to my only
friend! Had I begun to love him less? had I begun to turn away from him?
I dared not believe it. That would have been to give eternity to my
misery. But it might be that at heart I was a bad, treacherous girl! I
had again a secret from him! I was not with him!
I went into the garden. The day was sultry and oppressive. Coolness or
comfort was nowhere. I sought the shadow of the live yew-walls; there was
shelter in the shadow, but it oppressed the lungs while it comforted the
eyes. Not a breath of wind breathed; the atmosphere seemed to have lost
its life-giving. I went out into the wilderness. There the air was filled
and heaped with the odours of the heavenly plants that crowded its humble
floor, but they gave me no welcome. Between two bushes that flamed out
roses, I lay down, and the heather and the rose-trees closed above me. My
mind was in such a confusion of pain and pleasure--not without a hope of
deliverance somewhere in its clouded sky--that I could think no more, and
fell asleep.
I imagine that, had I never again seen the young man, I should not have
suffered. I think that, by slow natural degrees, his phantasmal presence
would have ceased to haunt me, and gradually I should have returned to my
former condition. I do not mean I should have forgotten him, but neither
should I have been troubled when I thought of him. I know I should never
have regretted having seen him. In that, I had nothing to blame myself
for, and should have felt--not that a glory had passed away from the
earth, but that I had had a vision of bliss. What it was, I should not
have had the power to recall, but it would have left with me the faith
that I had beheld something too ethereal for my memory to store. I should
have consoled myself both with the dream, and with the conviction that I
should not dream it again. The peaceful sense of recovered nearness to my
uncle would have been far more precious than the dream. The sudden fire
of transfiguration that had for a moment flamed out of the All, and
straightway withdrawn, would have become a memory only; but none the less
would that enlargement of the child way of seeing things have remained
with me. I do not think that would ever have left me: it is the care of
the prudent wise that bleaches the grass, and is as the fumes of sulphur
to the red rose of life.
Outwearied with inward conflict, I slept a dreamless sleep.
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