With an impulse that she made no attempt to resist, she went down the steps and ran quickly across the lawn, and, standing behind the gate, under the heavy shadow of the trees, strained her eyes through the darkness, and gazed over toward the next house. Mr. Andrews was talking with the man, who presently went away, and then he walked up and down on the piazza slowly; it was easy to hear his regular tread upon the boards, and to see a dark figure cross the lighted windows. That was as near as he would ever be to her again, perhaps.
After a few moments he came down the steps, walked slowly along the path, and stood leaning against the gate. She could see the spark of his cigar. They were not two hundred feet apart. If she had spoken in her ordinary tone, he could have heard her; the stillness of the night was unusual. There was no breeze, no rustle of the leaves overhead; no one was moving, apparently, at either house—no one passing along the road. Her heart beat so violently she put both hands over it to smother the sound. Why should she not speak? It was her last chance, her very last. If the night had not been so dark, she might have spoken. If the stars had been shining, or moonlight had made it possible for them to see each other, if the hour had been earlier, if there had been any issue but one, from the speaking—if, in fact, it were not what it was, to speak, she might have spoken.
The minutes passed—how long, and yet how swift, they were in passing. She had made no decision in her own mind what to do; she meant to speak, and yet something in her held her back from speaking. There are some things we do without thought, they do themselves without any help from us, and so this thing was done, and a great moment in two lives was lost—or gained perhaps, who knows? She stood spell-bound as she saw the tiny spark of light waver, then, tossed away, drop down and go out in the damp grass. Then she heard him turn and go slowly towards the house—always slowly, she could have spoken a hundred times before he reached the piazza steps. Then he took a turn or two up and down the piazza, and then, opening the front door, went in, shutting it behind him.
It was not till that door shut, that Missy realized what had come to pass in her life, and what she had done, or left undone. A great blankness and dreariness settled down upon her with an instant pall. She did not blame herself—she could not have spoken, no woman of her make could have spoken. She did not blame herself, but she blamed her fate, that put her where she stood, that made her as she was. An angry rebellion slowly awoke within her. It is safer to blame yourself than to blame fate. Poor Missy took the unsafest way, and went into the house, hardening her heart, and resisting the destiny that lay before her.
CHAPTER XXIV.
SHUT AND BARRED.
The destiny that lay before her was a little harder than even she knew, when she went into the hall that night, throwing off the damp cloak that she had worn, and mechanically walking to the fire in the library to warm herself, after her half-hour in the chilly night air. She thought she knew how dull and hateful her life was to be, how lonely, how uneventful. She was still young—twenty-nine is young when you are twenty-nine, not, of course, when you are seventeen. She had just found out what it is, to have life full and intense in emotion and interest, and now she was turned back into the old path that had seemed good enough before, when she did not know any better one. But still, with resolute courage, she said to herself, her mother, and duty, and study, and health, and money, might do something for her yet, and, after a year or two of bitterness, restore her to content and usefulness.
These things she said to herself, not on that first night of pain, but the next day, when she walked past the shut-up house, and wondered, under the cold gray sky, at the strength of the emotion that had filled her as she had watched, through the darkness, the glimmer of the cigar spark by the gate. Thank heaven, she hadn't spoken! She knew just as well now what she had lost, as then, but daylight, and east wind, level values inevitably. It was all worth less—living and dying, love and loneliness. She could bear what she had chosen, she hadn't any doubt.