“Is it so?” said Winifred, with a forlorn look from the window into the night where the stars were shining, and the late moon rising. “‘Oh that I had the wings of a dove!’—I don’t think I ever understood before what that meant.”
“And what does it mean, Winnie? The dove flies home, not into the wilds, which is what you are thinking of.”
“That is true,” said the girl, “and I have no home, except with you. I have still you”—
“He will come back to-morrow,” Miss Farrell said.
“No, he will not come back. They insulted him, and I—did not want him. That is true. I did not want him. I wanted none of his advice. I preferred to be left to do what I had to do myself. It is true, Miss Farrell. Can a man ever forgive that? It would have been natural that he should have done everything for me, and instead of that— Are not these all great mysteries?” said Winifred after a pause. “A woman should not be able to do so. She should put herself into the hands of her husband. Am I unwomanly?—you used to frighten me with the word; but I could not do it. I did not want him. My heart rose against his interference. If I knew that he felt so to me, I—I should be wounded to death. And yet—it was so—it is quite true. I think he will never forgive me.”
“It is a mystery, Winnie. I don’t know how it is. When you are married everything changes, or so people say. But love forgives everything, dear.”
“Not that,” Winifred said.
She sat by her fire, when her friend left her, in a state of mind which it is impossible to describe in words. It was despair. Despair is generally tragical and exalted; and perhaps that passion is more easy to bear with the excitement that belongs to it than the quiet consciousness that one has come to a dead pause in one’s life, and that neither on one side or the other is there any outlet. Winifred was perfectly calm and still. She sat amid all the comfort of her chamber, gazing dimly into the cheerful fire. She was rich. She was highly esteemed. She had many friends. And yet she had come to a pass when everything failed her. Her brothers stood hostile about her, feeling her with justice to be their supplanter, to stand in their way. Her lover had left her, feeling with justice that she wronged his love and rejected his aid. With justice—that was the sting. To be misunderstood is terrible, yet it is a thing that can be surmounted; but to be guilty, whether by any fault of yours, whether by terrible complication of events, whether by the constitution of your mind, which is the worst of all, this is despair. And there was no way of deliverance. She could not make over her undesired wealth to her brothers, which had at first seemed to be so easy a way; and also, far worse, far deeper, far more terrible, she could not make Edward see how she could put him away from her, yet love him. She felt herself to sit alone, as if upon a pinnacle of solitude, regarding all around and seeing no point from which there could come any help. It is seldom that the soul is thus overwhelmed on all sides. When one hope fails, another dawns upon the horizon; rarely, rarely is there no aid near. But to Winifred it seemed that everything was gone from her. Her lover and friends stood aloof. Her life was cut off. To liberate every one and turn evil into good, the thing best to be done seemed that she should die. But she knew that of all aspirations in the world that is the most futile. Death does not come to the call of misery. Those who would die, live on: those who would live are stricken in the midst of their happiness. Perhaps to a more cheerful and buoyant nature the crisis would have been less terrible; but to her it seemed that everything was over, and life come to a standstill. She was baffled and foiled in all that she wished, and that which she did not desire was forced upon her. There seemed no strength left in her to fight against all the adverse forces around. Her heart failed altogether, and she felt in herself no power even to meet them, to begin again the discussion, to hear again, perhaps, the baseless threat which had driven Edward away. Ah, it was not that which had driven him away. It was she herself who had been the cause; she who had not wanted him, who even now, in the bitterness of the loss, which seemed to her as if it must be for ever, still felt a faint relief in the thought that at least no conflict between his will and hers would embitter the crisis, and that she should be left undisturbed to do for her brothers all that could be done, alone.
Next day she was so shaken and worn out with the experiences of that terrible evening, that she kept her room and saw no one, save Miss Farrell. Edward made no appearance; he did not even inquire for her, and till the evening, when Mr. Babington arrived, Winifred saw no one. The state of the house, in which George and his family held a sort of encampment on one side, and Tom a hostile position on the other, was a very strange one. There was a certain forlorn yet tragi-comic separation between them. Even in the dining-room, where they sat at table together, Mrs. George kept nervously at one end, as far apart as she could place herself from her brother-in-law. The few words that were interchanged between the brothers she did everything in her power to interrupt or stop. She kept George by her side, occupied him with the children, watched over him with a sort of unquiet care. Tom had assumed his father’s place at the foot of the table before the others perceived what that meant. They established themselves at the head, George and his wife together, talking to each other in low voices, while there was no one with whom Tom could make up a faction. The servants walked with strange looks from the one end to the other, serving the two groups who were separated by the white stretch of flower-decorated table. Old Hopkins groaned, yet so reported the matter that the company in the housekeeper’s room shook their sides with mirth. “It was for all the world like one of them big hotels as I’ve been to many a time with master. Two lots, with a scoff and a scowl for everything that each other did.” Notwithstanding this disunion, however, the two brothers had several conferences in the course of the day. They had a common interest, though they thus pitted themselves against each other. It was Tom who was the chief spokesman in these almost stealthy interviews. Tom was so sore and resentful against his sister, that he was willing to make common cause with George against her.
“If it is as she says,” he said, “there’s no jury in England but would find undue influence, and perhaps incapacity for managing his own affairs. We have the strongest case I ever heard of.”