Ethel Churchill/Chapter 30
CHAPTER XXX.
A FIRST DISAPPOINTMENT.
The deep, the lone, the dreaming hours,
That I have past with thee,
When thou hadst not a single thought
Of how thou wert with me.
I heard thy voice, I spoke again,
I gazed upon thy face;
And never scene of actual life
Could bear a deeper trace
Than all that fancy conjured up,
And make thee look and say;
Till I have loathed reality,
That chased such dream away.
Alas! this is vain, fond, and false;
Thy heart is not for me;
And, knowing this, how can I waste
My very soul on thee?
I believe that, to the young, suspense is the most intolerable suffering. Active misery always brings with it its own power of endurance. What a common expression it is to hear,—"Well, if I had known what I had to go through beforehand, I should never have believed it possible that I could have done it." But it is a dreadful thing to be left alone with your imagination, to have to fancy the worst, and yet not know what that worst may be; and this, in early youth, has a degree of acute anguish that after years cannot know. As we advance in life, we find all things here too utterly worthless to grieve over them as we once could grieve: we grow cold and careless; the dust, to which we are hastening, has entered into the heart.
But no girl of Ethel Churchill's age could hold this "inevitable creed." Hitherto she had thought but little—she had only felt. She loved Norbourne Courtenaye without a doubt, and without a fear. To her it seemed so natural to love him, that his affection appeared a thing of course, the inevitable consequence of her own. A sweet instinct soon told her that she was beloved, and it wanted no confirmation of words. Words are for the worldly, the witty, the practised; not for the simple, the timid, and the impassioned. It never occurred to her to question of the future: every thing was absorbed in the intense happiness of the present. She saw him go, unfettered by a vow, unbound by aught of promise; yet his change never crossed her mind. She was sad to part with him—very sad; it was the sunshine past from her daily existence: but the sadness was unmixed with fear. He had never said that he would write, yet she fully relied upon his writing; simply because she felt that, in his place, she would have written.
Norbourne was very wrong not to write. True, he was so situated that an explanation was impossible; still a letter would have been a consolation, and she would so readily have believed whatever he had written. He said to himself, "How can I write? what shall I write? It is impossible to tell her on whose sweet face I have gazed till, though the soft eyes were never raised, she knew that I could not but look; she by whose side I have lingered hours—how can I tell her that I am about to marry another?"
Day by day passed by, and Ethel remained in an uncertainty that grew more and more insupportable. It was sad to mark the change that was passing over her. Her soft colour faded, or else deepened with feverish agitation. Her step, that had been so light, now loitered on its way;
For nothing like the weary step
Betrays the weary heart.
She used to bound through the plantations, her eye first caught by one object, then another, gazing round for something to admire and to love. Now she walked slowly, her eyes fixed on the ground, as if, in all the wide fair world, there was nothing to attract nor to interest. She fed her birds carefully still; but she no longer lingered by the cage to watch, nor sought to win their caresses by a playfulness that showed she was half a child. Now her work dropped on her knee, and her book fell from her hand; she was perpetually seeking excuses for change of place; and the change brought added discomfort. The sole thing to which she turned with any wish to do, was the frequent visits that she paid to Sir Jasper Meredith.
The restraint that she put upon herself, while with her grandmother, was too much for one so young and unpractised; it was so hard to talk on every subject but the one of which her very soul was full: but going to that kind old man was a relief—it brought its own reward, because it was a kindness. It soothed her to feel that she was of importance to any one; and she was so grateful to Henrietta for her affectionate notes and messages—her friend, at least had not forgotten her. Moreover, she took a strange pleasure in seeing Sir Jasper Meredith receive letters: it was the heart hovering about the object that was yet consuming it. By degrees their conversations grew more and more interesting. A few weeks before, there would have been nothing in herself that responded to his gloomy views of humanity; now she felt their truth in her own depression.
The old poet pursued the usual course, when he said,—
"When I am sad, to sadness I applie
Each leaf, each flower, each herbe, that I passe bye."
Ethel looked on the fair face of nature only to see one image, and she now surrounded it with all the agonies of doubt.