“You do not understand me at all. What I meant was entirely different. There should be no difference between us. Why should there be? Why should there be? In a few hours more we shall both be alike; flesh of one flesh, and bone of one bone. I am not quite sure that I have got it right. But I am not far out at any rate.”
“Your diffidence is your one good point. You are very far out when you overcome it. Have the kindness to keep at a proper distance and hear what I have to say. I believe that you mean well, Stephen Chapman; so far as you have any meaning left. I believe that you mean well by me; and, in your weak manner, like me. But if you had gone all around the world, you could not have found one to suit you less. I used to think that I was humble; as of course I ought to be; but when I search into myself, I find the proudest of the proud. Nothing but great misery could have led me to this knowledge. I speak to you now for the last time, Stephen; and I never meant to speak as I do. But I believe that, in your little way, you like me; and I cannot bear to be thought too hard.”
Here Alice could not check a sigh and a tear, at the thought of the name she might leave behind.
“What shall I do? What can I do?” cried Stephen, not being such a very hard fellow, any more than the rest of us; but feeling himself unworthy even to touch her pocket-handkerchief.
“You have nothing to do, I should hope, indeed,” answered Alice, recovering dignity; “I am very glad that, whatever happens, you may blame other people. Please to remember that I said that. And good-bye, Captain Chapman.”
“Good-bye, till dinner-time, my darling—well, then, good-bye, Miss Lorraine.”
“At any rate I am glad,” she thought, as she hastened to her room, “that, even to him, I have said my last, as kindly as I could manage it.”
When she entered her room, it was three o’clock, and the day already waning; though the snow from hill and valley, and the rime of quiet frost, spread the flat pervading whiteness of the cold and hazy light. Alice looked out, and thought a little; and the scene was by no means cheering. The eastern side of the steep straight coombe (up which clomb the main road to the house) lay thirty or forty feet deep in snow, being filled by the drift that swept over its crest, for nearly the breadth of the coombe itself. But under the western rampart still a dark-brown path was open, where the wind, leaping over the eastern scarp, had whirled the snow up the western. And here, through her own pet garden, fell a direct path down to the Woeburn.
She had long been ready to believe that here her young and lively life must end. Down this steep and narrow way she had gazed, or glanced, or peeped (according to the measure of her courage), ever since the Woeburn rose, and she was sure what it meant for her. Now looking at it, with her mind made up, and her courage steadfast, she could not help perceiving that she had a great deal to be thankful for. Her life had been very bright and happy, and it had been long enough. She had learned to love all pleasant creatures, and to make them love her. She had found that nature has tenfold more of kindness than of cruelty; and that of her kindness, all the best and dearest ends in death. Painless death, the honest and peaceful end of earthly things; noble death, that settles all things, scarcely leaving other life (its brief exception) time to mourn.