Whereupon, for no apparent reason, the tears sprang into Minola's eyes, and she found a vain wish arising in her heart that she had never renewed her acquaintance with Lucy Money, never been persuaded by Mary Blanchet to visit her, never stood upon her threshold and met Victor Heron there.
"Why not wish at once that I had never been born?" she said, half tearful, half scornful of her tears. "One thing is as easy now as the other, and as useful, and not to have been born would have saved many idle hours and much heartache."
CHAPTER XV.
A MORNING CONFIDENCE.
Minola rose next morning with a bewildering and oppressed sense of disappointment and defeat. The whole of her scheme of life had broken down. Her little bubble world had burst. All her plans of bold independence and of contented life, of isolation from social trammels, and freedom from woman's weaknesses, had broken down. She had always thought scorn of those who said that women could not feel friendship for men without danger of feeling love—and now, what was she but a cruel, mocking evidence of the folly of her confidence? Alas, no romantic schoolgirl could have fallen more suddenly into love than Minola had done. There was but one man whom she had ever seen with whom she had coveted a friendship, and she now knew, only too well, that in her breast the friendship had already caught fire and blazed into love. Where was Alceste now, and the Alceste standard by which she had proposed to test all men and women, well convinced beforehand that she would find them wanting? She could not even flatter herself that she had been faithful to her faith, and that if she had succumbed at the very outset, it was because the first comer actually proved to be an Alceste. No, she could not cram this complacent conviction into her mind. Victor Heron was a generous and noble-hearted young man, she felt assured; but she had not fallen in love with him because of any assurance that he was like the hero of her girlhood. She made no attempt to deceive herself in this way. In her proud resentment of her weakness she even trampled upon it with undeserved scorn. "I fell in love with him," she said to herself, "just as the silliest girl falls in love—because he was there, and I couldn't help it."
It was not merely Lucy's revelation which had forced upon Minola a knowledge of her own feelings. This had perhaps so sent conviction home as to render illusion or self-deception impossible any longer, but it was not that which first told her of her weakness. That had long been more and more making itself known to her. It was plain to her now that since the first day when she stood upon the bridge with him in the park, and looked into the canal, she had loved him. "Oh, why did I not know it then?" she asked wearily of herself. "I could have avoided him—have never seen him again—and it might so have come to nothing, and at least we should not have to meet."
Amid all her pain of the night and the morning, one question was ever repeating itself, "Will this last?" That the fever which burned her was love—genuine love—the regular old love of the romances and the poets—she could not doubt. She knew it because it was so new a feeling. Had she walked among a fever-stricken population, refusing to believe in the danger of infection, and satisfied that the fearless and the wise were safe, and had she suddenly felt the strange pains and unfamiliar heats, and found the senses beginning to wander, she would have known that this was fever. The pangs of death are new to all alike when they come, but those who are about to die are conscious—even in their last moments of consciousness—that this new summons has the one awful meaning. So did Minola know only too well what the meaning was of this new pain. "Will it last?" was her cry to herself. "Shall I have to go through life with this torture always to bear? Is it true that women have to bear this for years and years—that some of them never get over it? Oh, I shall never get over it—never, never!" she cried out in bitterness. She was very bitter now against herself and fate. She did not feel that it is better to love vainly than not at all. Indeed, such consoling conviction belongs to the poet who philosophizes on love, or to the disappointed lover who is already beginning to be consoled. It does not do much good to any one in the actual hour of pain. Minola cordially and passionately wished that she had not loved, or seen any one whom she could love. She was full of wrath and scorn for herself, and believed herself humbled and shamed. Her whole life was crossed; her quiet was all gone; she was now doomed to an existence of perpetual self-constraint and renunciation, and even deception. She had a secret which she must conceal from the world as if it was a murder. She must watch her words, her movements, her very glances, lest any sudden utterance, or gesture, or blush should betray her. She would wake in the night in terror, lest in some dream she might have called out some word or name which had roused Mary Blanchet in the next room, and betrayed her. She must meet Victor Heron, heaven knows how often, and talk with him as a friend, and never let one gleam of the truth appear. She must hear Lucy Money tell of her love, and be the confidante of her childlike emotions. Not often, perhaps, has a proud and sensitive girl been tried so strangely. "I thought I hated men before," she kept saying to herself. "I do hate them now; and women and all. I hate him most of all because I know that I so love him."
All this poor Minola kept saying or thinking to herself that morning as she listlessly dressed. It is not too much to say that the very air seemed changed for her. She had only one resolve to sustain her, but that was at least as strong as her love, or as death—the resolve that, come what would, she must keep her secret. Victor Heron believed himself her friend, and desired to be nothing more. No human soul but her own must know that her feeling to him was not the same. She would have known the need of that resolve even if she had never been entrusted with poor dear little Lucy's secret. But the more calmly she thought over that little story the more she thought it likely that Lucy's dream might come to be fulfilled.
The world—that is to say, the breakfast room and the Money family—had to be faced. The family were as pleasant as ever, except Lucy, who looked pale and troubled, and at whom her father looked once or twice keenly, but without making any remark.
"I have had a letter from Lady Limpenny already this morning," Mr. Money observed.