But Sibyl refused to be comforted. Her love for Mr. Loftus, if small things may be called by large names, was the first violent emotion of a feeble and impulsive mind in a feeble body, both swayed by veering influences, both shaken by the changing currents of early womanhood, as a silver birch is shaken with its leaves.
A woman with a deeper heart, and with a slight perception of Mr. Loftus's character, would have reverently folded her devotion in her heart and have gone on her way ennobled by it. But with Sibyl, to admire anything was to wish to possess it; to tire of anything was to cast it away.
Mr. Loftus was in her eyes without an equal in the world. Therefore—the reasoning from her point of view was conclusive—she must marry him. She had no knowledge, she had not even a glimpse, of the gulf of feeling, far wider than the gulf of years, which separated him from her. She imagined no one appreciated him, or entered into the dark places of his mind, as she did. She mistook his patient comprehension of her trivial aspirations, and his unfailing kindness to all young and crude ideas, for the perfect sympathy of two kindred souls, and was wont to speak mysteriously to Peggy of how minds that were really related drew each other out and enriched each other.
It is always a dangerous experiment to awaken a sleeping soul to the pageant of life. Mr. Loftus had endeavoured to do this for Sibyl, consciously, gently, with great care, out of the mixed admiration and pity with which she inspired him, in the hope that, in later years, when her feet would be swept from under her, she might find something to cling to, amid the wreck of happiness which his dispassionate gaze foresaw that she would one day achieve out of her life.
He had run the risk which all who would fain help others must be content to run—the risk that their work will be thrown away. He saw that the little rock-pool which reflected his own face was shallow, but he had not gauged the measure of its shallowness. His deep enthusiasms, tried and tempered before she was born, weary now with his own weariness, aroused hers as the Atlantic wave, sweeping up the rocks, just reaches and arouses the rock-pool, and sends a flight of ripples over it, which, if you look very close, break in mimic waves against the further edge. And before the thunder of the wave is silent the pool is glass once more.
On natures like these the only influence which can make any impression is a personal one. It is overwhelming while it lasts; but it is the teacher who is everything—the teaching is nothing. And when he is removed, they passively drift under another personal influence, as under another wave, and the work of the first, the foundation patiently and lovingly built in its pretty yellow sand, is swept away, or remains in futile fragments, as a mark of the folly of one who built on sand.
Certain strong, abiding principles Mr. Loftus had sought to instil into Sibyl's mind. She had perceived their truth and beauty; but she cared nothing for them in reality, and had fallen at the feet of the man who had awakened those exquisite feelings in her.
And now either she would not, or could not, get up. She clung to her imaginary passion with all the obstinacy which is inherent in weak natures. The disappointment had undermined her delicately-poised health. As she walked down towards the Spey alone on this particular June afternoon, she looked more fragile and ethereal than ever. The faint colour had gone from her cheek, and with it half her evanescent prettiness had departed. Her slight, willowy figure seemed to have no substance beneath the many folds of white material in which her despairing dressmaker had draped her. With the suicidal recklessness of youth, she made no attempt to turn her mind to other thoughts, but pondered instead upon her trouble, with the unreasoning rebellion against it with which, in early life, we all meet these friends in disguise.
She picked her way down the steep hillside, through the wakened broom and sleeping heather, and along the edge of the little oasis of oatfield, where so many thousands of round, river-worn stones had been gleaned into heaps, and where so many thousands still remained among the springing corn. The long labour and the patience and the partial failure which that little field meant, reclaimed from the heather, but not wholly reclaimed from the stones, had often touched Lady Pierpoint, who knew what labour was; but it did not appeal to Sibyl.