One can sympathize profoundly with her in the difficult situation she was called upon to face. She knew by this time what the faults were on both sides, knew in particular that S. J.-B. was not a placid person; began to guess perhaps that explosions of temper were as essential to that generous nature as the thunderstorm is to a stretch of summer days. Meanwhile everyone was counting on her to solve the difficulty with a wave of her wand: and here was she, never very robust, weary with a long journey, called away from a congenial holiday to the intimate association with a thousand and one petty cares in addition to the special crisis that had summoned her home.
The extracts given above are a mere gleaning from many unpublished letters which bear witness to her devoted attachment to S. J.-B., but although her sympathy with her own mother was perhaps less fervent at this time than it afterwards became—she had a strong sense of filial affection and duty. Moreover she had her work in the world to do—invaluable work we know it proved—and she felt that she could only do it in an atmosphere of peace and quiet.
Assuredly it was not an easy situation to face. Looking back upon the whole story after more than half-a-century, one cannot but wish that she had simply compelled S. J.-B. to realize the truth,—that she found herself unable to live and do her work unless she could have the peace that her soul loved, that—much as she had profited up to a certain point by the stimulating friendship of one so unlike herself—the time had come when she found that friendship too stimulating under present conditions. Surely—one fancies—some arrangement might have been arrived at by which so mutually beneficial a friendship might have been continued.
Miss Hill, however, decided otherwise. In the watches of that first night, after a long talk with her Mother (a talk that, in the nature of the case, can scarcely have emphasized S. J.-B.’s point of view), before she had even seen her friend, she resolved to forego even the semblance of an attempt to reconcile these conflicting claims. Something must go, and that something must not be the mother and sisters to whom she had devoted most of her ardent young life, the mother and sisters who depended on her wisdom and goodness more even than they knew.
It was one thing to make the great resolve: it was quite another to explain it to the friend whose one conscious desire was to make Octa’s life an easy one.
So she set her face like a flint, and, for the first time in the course of their friendship, she refused to see S. J.-B.’s side of the question at all. Peace must be secured at all costs, and, if peace was to be secured, this delightful exacting friendship must end. S. J.-B. might retain her rooms for the time as a matter of business—
But neither S. J.-B. nor her indignant Mother would listen to that.
Well, then, let it all go. The time for half measures—or so Miss Hill thought—was over. All intercourse must cease. “The relentless knife must cut sheer through.”
How much the effort cost her we gather from the extent to which she overdid the part. She was at the end of her tether, so to speak, and acting, doubtless, on an instinct of sheer self-preservation, she would allow no discussion of any kind. She set her face so flintily that S. J.-B. was driven in uttermost bewilderment to the conclusion that the complete withdrawal was due to some extraordinary aberration on the part of her friend—an aberration for which so noble a being could not be responsible, and which might therefore come to an end as suddenly as it had begun. A thousand times she had said to herself, “Everything will be right when Octavia comes!” And now, behold, Octavia was here, and it was no Octavia. It was a fairy changeling to whom the beautiful past was a thing unknown. The rupture was so complete that it was no rupture. It was a nightmare, an inexplicable darkness at noonday, something so contrary to all known laws of nature that it could not last. This hope, this attitude of expectancy, was encouraged by the extraordinarily tender and appreciative letters which, at intervals for some years, broke through Miss Hill’s reserve. In one of these letters, dated Nov. 5th, she writes:
“Oh, Sophy, how splendidly you and your Mother did act those last days that now seem so far away.... When I see how deep your forethought was, so loving as to have remembered the very slightest things that might be the least trouble to us when you were no longer near to take care of us, one feels as if an angel had (may I not say still is taking) care of us.”