Tired of reading? Add this page to your Bookmarks or Favorites and finish it later.
|
|
It actually diminished Hope's hold on Philip, that she had at
this time the whole field to herself. Emilia had gone for a
few weeks to the mountains, with the household of which she was
a guest. An ideal and unreasonable passion is strongest in
absence, when the dream is all pure dream, and safe from the
discrepancies of daily life. When the two girls were together,
Emilia often showed herself so plainly Hope's inferior, that it
jarred on Philip's fine perceptions. But in Emilia's absence
the spell of temperament, or whatever else brought them
together, resumed its sway unchecked; she became one great
magnet of attraction, and all the currents of the universe
appeared to flow from the direction where her eyes were
shining. When she was out of sight, he needed to make no
allowance for her defects, to reproach himself with no overt
acts of disloyalty to Hope, to recognize no criticisms of his
own intellect or conscience. He could resign himself to his
reveries, and pursue them into new subtleties day by day.
There was Mrs. Meredith's house, too, where they had been so
happy. And now the blinds were pitilessly closed, all but one
where the Venetian slats had slipped, and stood half open as if
some dainty fingers held them, and some lovely eyes looked
through. He gazed so long and so often on that silent
house,--by day, when the scorching sunshine searched its pores
as if to purge away every haunting association, or by night,
when the mantle of darkness hung tenderly above it, and seemed
to collect the dear remembrances again,--that his fancy by
degrees grew morbid, and its pictures unreal. "It is
impossible," he one day thought to himself, "that she should
have lived in that room so long, sat in that window, dreamed on
that couch, reflected herself in that mirror, breathed that
air, without somehow detaching invisible fibres of her being,
delicate films of herself, that must gradually, she being gone,
draw together into a separate individuality an image not quite
bodiless, that replaces her in her absence, as the holy
Theocrite was replaced by the angel. If there are ghosts of the
dead, why not ghosts of the living also?" This lover's fancy so
pleased him that he brought to bear upon it the whole force of
his imagination, and it grew stronger day by day. To him,
thenceforth, the house was haunted, and all its floating traces
of herself visible or invisible,--from the ribbon that he saw
entangled in the window-blind to every intangible and fancied
atom she had imparted to the atmosphere,--came at last to
organize themselves into one phantom shape for him and looked
out, a wraith of Emilia, through those relentless blinds. As
the vision grew more vivid, he saw the dim figure moving
through the house, wan, restless, tender, lingering where they
had lingered, haunting every nook where they had been happy
once. In the windy moanings of the silent night he could put
his ear at the keyhole, and could fancy that he heard the wild
signals of her love and despair.
|