“Do you think I acted heartlessly that day when I made fun of him—there in the schoolhouse?”
“I did think so, then.”
“Do you now? Do you believe I’m sorry?”
“How can I tell? You seemed unfeeling then, but I don’t believe you were; and you seem sorry now—”
“And you don’t believe I am! Oh me, I wonder if I am! Rachel, you do believe I know how to feel, don’t you?”
“How can you ask such a thing as that?” returned the girl in a startled accent.
“I wonder if I do! It seems to me that I know how to feel, but that I never feel. It seems to me that I am always acting out the thing I ought to be or want to be, and never being it. Don’t trust me, Rachel—not even now; I think that I’m very remorseful and sorry, but who knows if I am? I keep asking myself what I should do if he were to die—what would become of me. I try to scare myself about it; but my soul seems to be in a perfect torpor; I can’t stir it. Rachel, Rachel! I did try to make him in love with me—all I could. There was such a deadly charm in it—his perfect faith in me, whatever I said or did. But it frightened me at last, too; and I didn’t know what to do; and that day when I behaved so about him, I was frantic; if I hadn’t made fun of him, the thought of what I had done would have killed me. But I honored him all the time. Oh, he was my true, true lover; and when I thought how recklessly I had gone on, it almost drove me wild. Rachel, do you know what I did?” She poured out the whole story, and then she said, “But now I seem not to be able to care any more. It’s all like a dream: it’s some one running and running after me, and I am laughing and beckoning him on, and all of a sudden there he lies without help or motion; it can’t give him any pleasure to see me, now; I can’t do anything for him that some one else can’t do better, or that he won’t be as glad of from another. It’s as if he were in prison, and I sat at the door outside, waiting in this horrible lethargy. When he comes out, what will he say to me? I think that I should die if he upbraided me; but if he didn’t I should go mad. No, no! That’s what some other woman would do. Rachel, isn’t it awful to bring all these things home to yourself, and yet not suffer from them? Oh, but I care—I care because I can’t care. My heart lies like a stone in my breast, and I’m furious because I can’t break it, or hurt it. Rachel, if you give way before me I don’t know where I shall end. You must never yield to me, no matter what mood I’m in, or else I shall lose the one real friend I have in the world—the only one I can be myself to, if there is really anything of me.”
As she ceased to speak, Gilbert came in to take his place for the night. He asked Rachel in a low voice what was next to be done, but he took no notice of Mrs. Farrell save to give her a slight nod.
No one else treated her with coldness now; but in his manner toward her there still lingered a trace of resentment. It had a tone of irony, to which she submitted meekly, like one resolved to bear a just penalty; and if there were times when he forgot to be severe and she forgot to be sad, then afterward he was the more satirical and she the more patient. It began to be said by some of the ladies that Mr. Gilbert had rather a capricious temper; but he had his defenders, who maintained that he was merely run down with worry and confinement over his friend.
One day he came into Mrs. Gilbert’s room, and found Mrs. Farrell with her. He offered to go away if he had burst upon a confidential interview, seeing that they fell silent at his coming, but Mrs. Farrell said that they had just finished their talk, and that now she was going.