Then, as Mrs Chester stooped to kiss her cheek, she whispered hastily, “Tell her not to mention the past—never to mention it again! We will turn over a new leaf to-day and think only of the future.”
Chapter Twenty Three.
Good-bye to Hurst Manor.
The morning of the day dawned on which the invalids were to travel to Erley Chase, and Rhoda lay awake upon her bed, listening to the echo of the girls’ voices as they sang the morning hymn in the hall below. Her heart was softened with a feeling at once of thankfulness and dread—thankfulness that Evie’s life had been spared, and her friendship renewed, and dread because, she dimly realised, this was the last of the dear school days as they had been. Even if she returned after the holidays, which seemed doubtful, it would be a changed house indeed, with the older girls scattered all over the country, and Evie no longer at hand to soothe and lighten every trouble. Her thoughts went back to her first coming to Hurst Manor eighteen months before, and dwelt sadly on her own ambitious hopes. It had all seemed so easy, so certain; she had planned her career with such happy assurance, with never a thought but that success and distinction lay waiting for her grasp; and it had all ended in this—that she was returning home, enfeebled in health, foiled in ambition, with the bitter weight on her conscience that her self-will had inflicted a life-long injury on the kindest of friends.
“I have failed!” sighed Rhoda humbly to herself. “But why? I never meant to do wrong. I intended only to work hard and get on. Surely, surely, there was nothing wicked in that? It can’t be possible to be too industrious, and yet Evie evidently thought something was wrong, and the Vicar... What can it have been? I wish, I wish I knew! I’m tired of going my own way, for it leads to nothing but misery and disappointment. I should like to find out the secret of being happy and contented like other people.” Her eyes filled with tears, those blue eyes which had been so full of confidence, and she clasped her fingers upon the counterpane. The roll of the organ sounded through the house, and the girls’ clear voices singing a familiar tune. She listened unthinkingly, until suddenly one verse struck sharply on her ear, and startled her into vivid attention:—
“The trivial round, the common task, Will furnish all we ought to ask; Room to deny ourselves, a road To bring us daily nearer God.”
She had heard those words a hundred times before, had repeated them at her mother’s knee, had sung them in church, not once, but many times, yet it seemed that until that moment no conception of their meaning had penetrated to her brain. What was it, which was all we ought to ask? “Room to deny ourselves!”—to put ourselves last—to be careless of our own position? And this path of self-denial was the road that led to God Himself? Was this what Evie had meant when she spoke of the secret which each one must find out for herself? Was this the explanation of the contentment which the Vicar had found in his ill-paying parish? “Room to deny oneself!” Oh, but this had been far, far from her own ambitions. She had asked for room to distinguish herself, to shine among her fellows, to be first and foremost, praised and applauded. Her own advancement had been the one absorbing aim in life, and to gratify it she had been willing to see others fail, and to congratulate herself in the face of their distress. Never once in all the miseries of disappointment which she had undergone had it occurred to her that the explanation of her difficulties lay in the motive underlying her efforts—the point of view from which she had started. Other girls had worked as hard as herself, but with some definite and worthy aim, such as to help their parents, or to fit themselves for work in life. Rhoda was honest, even when honesty was to her own hurt, and she acknowledged it had been far otherwise in her case when she had failed in her examination, it had not been deficiency in knowledge which she had deplored, but the certificate, the star to her name, the outward and visible signs of success. When she realised the hopelessness of seeing her name on the Record Wall, loss of honour and glory had been her regret, not sorrow for the thought that she had passed through school and failed to leave behind a tradition of well-doing whereby future scholars might be strengthened and encouraged!
Rhoda hid her face in the pillow and lay still, communing with her own heart. How bitter they are, these moments of self-revelation! How mysterious is the way in which the veil seems suddenly to lift and show us the true figure, instead of the mythical vision which we have cherished in our thoughts! They come suddenly at the most unexpected moments, roused by apparently the most trivial of causes, so that the friend by our side has no idea of the crisis through which we are passing.