Poor Angel! The religion that had consisted partly in music, flowers, and excitement, and the rest in mechanical party-spirit, had been totally unreal and unpractical, though with a sound theology and fitful aspirations for better things when she should have had her swing.
When religion such as she had made it proved wholly inadequate to her need, her friend's influence led her to the central Verity where alone rest could be found. Then having brought herself to the sense of individual pardon through faith, she discarded all besides, hotly revenging herself on what she took for impediments, and striving to stir up that assurance of forgiveness which was all feeling by all external means. The discovery of the inconsistency of her guides, and the knowledge of Felix's condition had come upon her at the same time, and the latter had blotted out everything else. During the ensuing weeks everything was lost in the sight of her brother's fatal suffering, all through her own ungovernable levity. The sting she had smothered in the vague en masse repentance which made an unsorted heap of her sins, and lavished hard names on it, now came forth with a barb of poisoned acuteness. For those two months devoted attendance on her brother had been her whole religion, but there was that about him which always made the endeavour to please him no small training, how much more when he was on the verge of the River.
He did not preach or argue, he was simply himself, and the constant endeavour to ascertain his doings and understand his expression revealed to her much of his mind, all the more perhaps because she never spoke, she hardly thought, she only received impressions. And above all, that upward look with which he met that last full absolution, that expression of intense acceptance and gratitude of sight rather than faith, had dwelt on her ever since, not merely casting out the memory of the pain-wrung features, but even overmastering the image of the grand monumental placidity which had settled down on the countenance at rest from its labours.
That absolution! She had heard it before, perhaps too early, certainly too much as a matter of course, for actions whose faultiness was visible enough, but which involved no true contrition. So little had it touched her innermost soul, or so little innermost was there to be touched, that its familiarity had made her spurn it as an empty insufficient delusion in her despair in the summer, and catch at the notion which condemned its utterance by a mere man as vain and presumptuous. Her careless touch had turned the Golden Key to lead, and only when she saw it held to the faithful did the gold shine out once more.
There was no pause to think till the mortal struggle was over, but then came the revulsion, and the peace she had seen so real in her brother brought her back to the wildest longing to experience the same, through the same means, and yet the reluctance to turn to the ordinary helps before her still made her hang back from her brother Clement, or Mr. Fulmort. They would look, if not say, 'So here you are at last.' If their principles were right, as Felix's acceptance proved, of course it was their own fault that she had not been more good. They shared in her intolerable loathing for whatever was around her, her madness to be out of sight of everything and everybody, and wretched feeling of impatience. The sight of Sister Constance suddenly gave this longing an object. Her old love of St Faith's revived, and therewith the desire to find a spiritual healer in Mr. Willoughby, the chaplain, who was comparatively a stranger to her, though Mr. Audley had left Cherry under his care, and he had of late become a good deal noted as a director. This was what she wanted to say! Could she but have talked to Sister Constance, and shown the peculiarity of her case, the insufficiency of her guides, the really tragic nature of her troubles, she must have obtained the object she had become set upon in these few minutes, namely, leaving the dreariness of home by hurrying to St Faith's and Mr. Willoughby, when Lance should return to his business on Monday.
Cruel Sister, to have postponed such misery to John Harewood's dinner! 'Commune with your own heart.' A fine way of refusing confidence! Yet Angela was nurse enough to know the need of punctuality in relieving guard, and Sister Constance could not have been spared much longer. Wilmet knew it was Alda's last evening, and must not be allowed to dwell on the thought. For poor Alda durst not ask for a respite. She must go away with her husband as soon as the funeral was over, for she believed Ferdinand Travis was still at hand, and durst not inquire. She was still conscious. Nay, most poignant grief of all was the sense that the dark noble countenance was dearer to her than when she had raved about its beauty, and that it could still make her heart throb wildly. It was a humiliating, involuntary sin, the outcome of the voluntary sin of past years, of those blind heartless manoeuvres to which she looked back in amazement as she contrasted her actual life with that which she had thrown away, while watching unconscious manifestations of devoted conjugal affection, such as she had never before missed because she had never conceived them. Avoidance was all that was possible to her. Her little girls must be her refuge! Was not the man still single, and could she help feeling a certain satisfaction in the thought?
Poor Alda! She was up in her sister's room that afternoon when Marilda and Miss Martha Hepburn encountered one another on their daily visit of inquiry in the cottage drawing-room, and Miss Martha had ventured on congratulating Miss Underwood.
'Who told you?' bluntly exclaimed Marilda.
'I beg your pardon! Indeed—I thought—We heard it on good authority—Shall we contradict it?'
'Say nothing about it! We particularly wish it not to be mentioned,' almost growled the heiress, 'I would have given anything that it should not have been known at such a time.'