Part 39 (1/2)
”But would it make his life harder if we were to see each other sometimes?” said Philip. He was going to say something else, but checked himself.
”Oh, I'm sure he wouldn't like it. Don't ask me why, or anything about it,” said Maggie, in a distressed tone. ”My father feels so strongly about some things. He is not at all happy.”
”No more am I,” said Philip, impetuously; ”I am not happy.”
”Why?” said Maggie, gently. ”At least--I ought not to ask--but I'm very, very sorry.”
Philip turned to walk on, as if he had not patience to stand still any longer, and they went out of the hollow, winding amongst the trees and bushes in silence. After that last word of Philip's, Maggie could not bear to insist immediately on their parting.
”I've been a great deal happier,” she said at last, timidly, ”since I have given up thinking about what is easy and pleasant, and being discontented because I couldn't have my own will. Our life is determined for us; and it makes the mind very free when we give up wis.h.i.+ng, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us, and doing what is given us to do.”
”But I can't give up wis.h.i.+ng,” said Philip, impatiently. ”It seems to me we can never give up longing and wis.h.i.+ng while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we _must_ hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them until our feelings are deadened? I delight in fine pictures; I long to be able to paint such. I strive and strive, and can't produce what I want. That is pain to me, and always _will_ be pain, until my faculties lose their keenness, like aged eyes. Then there are many other things I long for,”--here Philip hesitated a little, and then said,--”things that other men have, and that will always be denied me.
My life will have nothing great or beautiful in it; I would rather not have lived.”
”Oh, Philip,” said Maggie, ”I wish you didn't feel so.” But her heart began to beat with something of Philip's discontent.
”Well, then,” said he, turning quickly round and fixing his gray eyes entreatingly on her face, ”I should be contented to live, if you would let me see you sometimes.” Then, checked by a fear which her face suggested, he looked away again and said more calmly, ”I have no friend to whom I can tell everything, no one who cares enough about me; and if I could only see you now and then, and you would let me talk to you a little, and show me that you cared for me, and that we may always be friends in heart, and help each other, then I might come to be glad of life.”
”But how can I see you, Philip?” said Maggie, falteringly. (Could she really do him good? It would be very hard to say ”good-by” this day, and not speak to him again. Here was a new interest to vary the days; it was so much easier to renounce the interest before it came.)
”If you would let me see you here sometimes,--walk with you here,--I would be contented if it were only once or twice in a month. _That_ could injure no one's happiness, and it would sweeten my life.
Besides,” Philip went on, with all the inventive astuteness of love at one-and-twenty, ”if there is any enmity between those who belong to us, we ought all the more to try and quench it by our friends.h.i.+p; I mean, that by our influence on both sides we might bring about a healing of the wounds that have been made in the past, if I could know everything about them. And I don't believe there is any enmity in my own father's mind; I think he has proved the contrary.”
Maggie shook her head slowly, and was silent, under conflicting thoughts. It seemed to her inclination, that to see Philip now and then, and keep up the bond of friends.h.i.+p with him, was something not only innocent, but good; perhaps she might really help him to find contentment as she had found it. The voice that said this made sweet music to Maggie; but athwart it there came an urgent, monotonous warning from another voice which she had been learning to obey,--the warning that such interviews implied secrecy; implied doing something she would dread to be discovered in, something that, if discovered, must cause anger and pain; and that the admission of anything so near doubleness would act as a spiritual blight. Yet the music would swell out again, like chimes borne onward by a recurrent breeze, persuading her that the wrong lay all in the faults and weaknesses of others, and that there was such a thing as futile sacrifice for one to the injury of another. It was very cruel for Philip that he should be shrunk from, because of an unjustifiable vindictiveness toward his father,--poor Philip, whom some people would shrink from only because he was deformed. The idea that he might become her lover or that her meeting him could cause disapproval in that light, had not occurred to her; and Philip saw the absence of this idea clearly enough, saw it with a certain pang, although it made her consent to his request the less unlikely. There was bitterness to him in the perception that Maggie was almost as frank and unconstrained toward him as when she was a child.
”I can't say either yes or no,” she said at last, turning round and walking toward the way she come; ”I must wait, lest I should decide wrongly. I must seek for guidance.”
”May I come again, then, to-morrow, or the next day, or next week?”
”I think I had better write,” said Maggie, faltering again. ”I have to go to St. Ogg's sometimes, and I can put the letter in the post.”
”Oh no,” said Philip eagerly; ”that would not be so well. My father might see the letter--and--he has not any enmity, I believe, but he views things differently from me; he thinks a great deal about wealth and position. Pray let me come here once more. _Tell_ me when it shall be; or if you can't tell me, I will come as often as I can till I do see you.”
”I think it must be so, then,” said Maggie, ”for I can't be quite certain of coming here any particular evening.”
Maggie felt a great relief in adjourning the decision. She was free now to enjoy the minutes of companions.h.i.+p; she almost thought she might linger a little; the next time they met she should have to pain Philip by telling him her determination.
”I can't help thinking,” she said, looking smilingly at him, after a few moments of silence, ”how strange it is that we should have met and talked to each other, just as if it had been only yesterday when we parted at Lorton. And yet we must both be very much altered in those five years,--I think it is five years. How was it you seemed to have a sort of feeling that I was the same Maggie? I was not quite so sure that you would be the same; I know you are so clever, and you must have seen and learnt so much to fill your mind; I was not quite sure you would care about me now.”
”I have never had any doubt that you would be the same, whenever I migh see you,” said Philip,--”I mean, the same in everything that made me like you better than any one else. I don't want to explain that; I don't think any of the strongest effects our natures are susceptible of can ever be explained. We can neither detect the process by which they are arrived at, nor the mode in which they act on us. The greatest of painters only once painted a mysteriously divine child; he couldn't have told how he did it, and we can't tell why we feel it to be divine. I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our understandings can make no complete inventory of. Certain strains of music affect me so strangely; I can never hear them without their changing my whole att.i.tude of mind for a time, and if the effect would last, I might be capable of heroisms.”
”Ah! I know what you mean about music; _I_ feel so,” said Maggie, clasping her hands with her old impetuosity. ”At least,” she added, in a saddened tone, ”I used to feel so when I had any music; I never have any now except the organ at church.”
”And you long for it, Maggie?” said Philip, looking at her with affectionate pity. ”Ah, you can have very little that is beautiful in your life. Have you many books? You were so fond of them when you were a little girl.”
They were come back to the hollow, round which the dog-roses grew, and they both paused under the charm of the faery evening light, reflected from the pale pink cl.u.s.ters.
”No, I have given up books,” said Maggie, quietly, ”except a very, very few.”