Volume III Part 17 (1/2)
She worked on till tea-time, and was too engrossed to hear the bell, which clanged l.u.s.tily for every meal in the orderly household: a bell whose clamour was somewhat too much for the repast it heralded.
This evening Vixen did not hear the bell, inviting her to weak tea and bread-and-b.u.t.ter. The ringing of those other bells obscured the sound.
She was sitting with her book before her, but her eyes fixed on vacancy, when Miss Skipwith, newly interested in her charge, came to inquire the cause of her delay. The girl looked at her languidly, and seemed slow to understand what she said.
”I don't care for any tea,” she replied at last. ”I would rather go on with the history. It is tremendously interesting, especially the hieroglyphics. I have been trying to make them out. It is so nice to know that a figure like a chopper means a G.o.d, and that a goose with a black ball above his hack means Pharaoh, son of the sun. And then the table of dynasties: can anything be more interesting than those? It makes one's head go round just a little at first, when one has to grope backwards through so many centuries, but that's nothing.”
”My dear, you are working too hard. It is foolish to begin with such impetuosity. A fire that burns so fiercely will soon exhaust itself.
_Festina lente_. We must hasten slowly, if we want to make solid progress. Why, my poor child, your fore-head is burning. You will read yourself into a fever.”
”I think I am in a fever already,” said Vixen.
Miss Skipwith was unusually kind. She insisted upon helping her charge to undress, and would not leave her till she was lying quietly in bed.
She was going to draw down the blinds, but against this Vixen protested vehemently.
”Pray leave me the sky,” she cried; ”it is something to look at through the long blank night. The stars come and go, and the clouds are always changing. I believe I should go mad if it were not for the sky.”
Poor Miss Skipwith felt seriously uneasy. The first draught from the fountain of knowledge had evidently exercised an intoxicating effect upon Violet Tempest. It was as if she had been taking opium or has.h.i.+sh.
The girl's brain was affected.
”You have studied too long,” she said. ”This must not occur again. I feel myself responsible to your parents for your health.”
”To my parents,” echoed Vixen, with a sudden sigh; ”I have only one, and she is happier in my absence than when I was with her. You need not be uneasy about me if I fall ill. No one will care. If I were to die, no one would be sorry. I have no place in the world. No one would miss me.”
”My dear, it is absolutely wicked to talk in this strain; just as you are developing new powers, an intellect which may make you a pillar and a landmark in your age.”
”I don't want to be a pillar or a landmark,” said Vixen impatiently. ”I don't want to have my name a.s.sociated with 'movements,' or to write letters to The Times. I should like to have been happy my own way.”
She turned her back upon Miss Skipwith, and lay so still that the excellent lady supposed she was dropping off to sleep.
”A good night's rest will restore her, and she will awake with renewed appet.i.te for knowledge,” she murmured benevolently as she went back to her Swedenborgian studies.
CHAPTER IX.
The nearest Way to Norway.
No such blessing as a good night's rest was in store for Violet Tempest on that night of the first of August. She lay in a state of half-consciousness that was near akin to delirium. When she closed her eyes for a little while the demon of evil dreams took hold of her. She was in the old familiar home-scenes with her dear dead father. She acted over again that awful tragedy of sudden death. She was upbraiding her mother about Captain Winstanley. Bitter words were on her lips; words more bitter than even she had ever spoken in all her intensity of adverse feeling. She was in the woody hollow by Rufus's stone, blindfold, with arms stretched helplessly out, seeking for Rorie among the smooth beech-boles, with a dreadful sense of loneliness, and a fear that he was far away, and that she would perish, lost and alone, in that dismal wood.
So the slow night wore on to morning. Sometimes she lay staring idly at the stars, s.h.i.+ning so serenely in that calm summer sky. She wondered what life was like, yonder, in those remote worlds. Was humanity's portion as sad, fate as adverse, there as here? Then she thought of Egypt, and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra--that story of a wild, undisciplined love, grand in its lawless pa.s.sion--its awful doom. To have loved thus, and died thus, seemed a higher destiny than to do right, and patiently conquer sorrow, and live on somehow to the dismal end of the dull blameless chapter.
At last, with what laggard steps, with what oppressive tardiness, came the dawn, in long streaks of lurid light above the edge of the distant waters.
”'Red sky at morning is the shepherd's warning!'” cried Vixen, with dry lips. ”Thank G.o.d there will be rain to-day! Welcome change after the hot arid skies, and the cruel brazen sun, mocking all the miseries of this troubled earth.”
She felt almost as wildly glad as the Ancient Mariner, at the idea of that blessed relief; and then, by-and-by, with the changeful light s.h.i.+ning on her face, she fell into a deep sleep.
Perhaps that morning sleep saved Vixen from an impending fever. It was the first refres.h.i.+ng slumber she had had for a week--a sweet dreamless sleep. The breakfast-bell rang unheeded. The rain, forecast by that red sky, fell in soft showers upon the verdant isle, and the grateful earth gave back its sweetest perfumes to the cool, moist air.
Miss Skipwith came softly in to look at her charge, saw her sleeping peacefully, and as softly retired.