Chapter XXIV

They were startled and frightened. This was twice that her senses had yielded to unconsciousness that night. The strong, bright, pretty Aline who had left them three months ago had never fainted in her life.

“What dreadful experience she must have passed through since she left us! How pale and thin she looks!” Mrs. Rodney cried, in anguish.

Effie wept silently. She had never known how dear was her volatile younger sister until now. She knelt beside her, chafing the cold, white hands between her own, warm, rosy palms, while she silently prayed for Aline’s recovery.

They wished now that Aline’s hasty words had not driven Dr. Anthony away, for her swoon was a long and deep one. All their efforts failed to rouse her. She remained cold and white, with scarcely any discernible pulse, and the most slow and muffled heart-beats. Her limbs seemed to grow more rigid and deathly every minute.

They removed her to her own little chamber, and laid her on her little white bed. No one guessed that, from the tower window of Delaney House, a pair of eyes had been watching anxiously for hours to see the light flashing from the little end window so long darkened by its owner’s absence.

When it appeared, shedding a glow of light upon the dying foliage of the garden, and Oran Delaney saw the moving figures behind the white curtain, he experienced a sensation of relief. The child was at home again, surrounded by those dear ones for whom she had pined. She would soon forget the brief shadow he had thrown over her life for a little while. They had taken her home and forgiven her, and all would go on as before in his neighbor’s house. The thought lifted a burden from his heart. He gave a sigh of relief, and threw himself down upon his couch to seek refuge from his haunting thoughts in uneasy slumbers.

Meanwhile, Aline lay locked in that deep trance of unconsciousness.

They tried every method of rousing her, but their efforts did not meet with the least success.

She lay mute and pale before them like one dead. The dark lashes lay all stirless upon the marble-white cheeks; her lips did not unclose to repeat those sorrowful words whose bitterness seemed to have broken her heart. She seemed to have passed away without a regret from that world in which henceforth she had no part save sorrow: and her father, as he gazed upon the pale and rigid face almost wished that it were so.

She was so sweet and beautiful and he had had such great hopes for her. How could he bear to see her live with this great shadow of silence and mystery upon her life? How could he bear that the cold, carping eyes of her little world should rest upon her in suspicion and distrust? And for himself; he was very proud; how could he endure to be pointed at as the father of a girl whose willful silence most probably concealed terrible disgrace.

“I wish that she had never been born!” he cried out, in the bitterness of his heart, and then when his own heart reproached him, he made excuses to it. “She can have no happiness in life, no respect, no confiding love, no domestic bliss, no peace. There will always be a shadow on her life. She had better be dead, or never have been born.”

He remembered those wild words of the Spanish student:

“Yet I fain would die!
To go through life unloving and unloved;
To feel that thirst and hunger of the soul
We cannot still; that longing, that wild impulse,
And struggle after something we have not,
And cannot have; the effort to be strong;
And, like the Spartan boy, to smile and smile,
While secret wounds do bleed beneath our cloaks:
All this the dead feel not--the dead alone!
Would I were with them!”

“The girl is like me. She is proud, although she is so loving. I believe she would sooner be dead than live the life that lies before her,” he said to himself.

And he was right. The cold, gray, rainy dawn peeped in at the windows and saw Aline struggling slowly back to life and consciousness. She put out her hands and pushed them away from her with their restoratives. She would have none of them. She flung out her hands in despair.

“You should have let me die!” she cried out, wildly. “How could any one wish for me to live?”

“Oh, my darling, do not talk so!” cried her mother, forgetting everything save the passionate mother-love that filled her heart. “You must live to be my comfort when Effie is taken from me. You know she will be married soon to Dr. Anthony, and I should be so lonely, when she went were it not for you, my love!”

“Oh, mamma, how can I be any comfort to you?” cried poor Aline, in despair. “You will be ashamed of me--you will never--never forget all that my willfulness has brought on me--perhaps you will hate me after awhile. If you did, mamma, I could not blame you. I quite deserve it, I know!”

“Hush, my darling! How could a mother hate her child?” cried poor Mrs. Rodney, tearfully, and forgetting all her dignity in genuine mother-love. “I do not believe you are guilty, Aline! How could my little white-souled girl be a sinner? Live for me, Aline, and we will not care for the world. We will let it go by. We will not heed its smiles or its frowns.”

But Aline sighed in heaviness of heart. Her trouble was too fresh, her wound was too deep for her to find comfort anywhere.

“Oh, mamma, you are so good to me,” she cried. “I never knew how good before. I do not wish to live. I am proud, though you might not have thought so in the old, willful days. I cannot live such a life as my father has painted for me. I shall die like a flower that has no rain and no sunshine. And that will be best. I do not care to live!”

And this was the girl who had dreamed of finding life all fair and desirable at fourscore--who had laughed at Oran Delaney’s croakings such a little, little while ago.

She lay there among the snowy pillows, in the little room for which she had sighed so often, and vainly thinking that she would be so glad and happy when she returned to it once again, and she wished in her heart that she might die.

She was quite a different girl at dawn from the one on whom yesterday’s sun had set. Then her life lay before her, all bright and fair, like a landscape in the morning sun. Now it was like the same scene at twilight, with the sad rain falling and dimming all in its somber veil.

“I am done with my life, if all is like they tell me,” she said, soberly, to herself. “What shall I do with all the years that lie before me yet till I die?”

Like a flash, her thoughts went back to Delaney House and the beautiful blue room that had held her a captive those three months. Before her mind’s eye came a dark, grave, handsome face; in her ears rang a deep and musical voice, with a tone of subtle melancholy. He was reading the poem she had not cared to hear, but which seemed at this moment to have burned itself in on her memory:

“How many years will it be, I wonder
And how will their slow length pass,
Till I shall find rest in silence under
The trees and the waving grass?”

“Perhaps you may even subscribe to its sad sentiments some day,” Oran Delaney had said to her, and how scornfully she had derided the idea.

Was she the same girl? Scarcely. She had a vague fancy that she would wake up presently and find that she had been sleeping and dreaming some horrid dream.

She furtively pinched herself, and found that she was not dreaming at all. She was broad awake, and the new day was shining in at her windows, chill and murky and sunless, like the life that lay before her.

“And all for such a little, little act of folly,” she said to herself, with a terrible sinking at the heart.

Mr. Rodney suddenly came over to her. He took Aline’s cold white hands and smoothed them gently between his strong warm ones.

“Aline,” he said, “do you think it quite right to hold yourself bound by the oath you spoke of? Do not the dreadful consequences it entails on you justify you in breaking it?”

She shook her head slowly.

“I do not care,” she replied.

“It must be a very solemn oath that can bind you under such circumstances,” he said, slowly. “Is your decision quite unalterable, my dear?”

“Yes, papa,” she replied, with a deep sigh.

He was silent for a moment, and an echo of her own sad sigh drifted over his lips. When he looked back at her again there was a new light in his eyes.

“Aline, I have been thinking of a new plan,” he said.

“A new plan?” she echoed.

“Yes; I cannot bear to see your life blighted, all your chances of happiness destroyed. We will go away from here and make our home in some distant spot, where this strange story can never follow you. You may yet be happy.”

Her young heart thrilled with sudden joy. She looked at him with grateful affection.

“Papa, would you, indeed, do so much for me?” she inquired.

He bowed silently, and gently pressed her hand. Aline forgot his harshness and anger of a little while ago, and remembered only the patient, unalterable love that was ready to make such a sacrifice for her sake.

“And you, mamma?” she inquired, turning her wistful eyes upon Mrs. Rodney’s pale and altered face.

“I am quite willing, dear,” she replied.

“You are too good and kind to me, papa and mamma; I do not deserve it. I must not let you make such a sacrifice for my sake!” she cried.

“There is too much at stake to call it a sacrifice,” Mr. Rodney answered.

“At least we need not make it yet,” Aline cried, musingly. “Oh, papa, I can hardly believe yet that my friends will be unkind to me, that they will believe evil of me because I am fettered by a mysterious vow. Let us make the trial. Let us give them the chance to trust me if they will. Do not let us go away just yet. Let us stay and be convinced. Perhaps the world is not so hard as you think. How could it be so unjust and cruel?”