CHAPTER VII
LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM
After waiting a few minutes, Jess said "Good-night," and went straightto Bessie's room. Her sister had undressed, and was sitting on herbed, wrapped in a blue dressing-gown that suited her fair complexionadmirably, and with a very desponding expression on her beautiful face.Bessie was one of those people who are easily elated and easily castdown.
Jess came up to her and kissed her.
"What is it, love?" she said. And Bessie could never have divined thegnawing anxiety that was eating at her heart as she said it.
"Oh, Jess, I'm so glad that you have come. I do so want you to adviseme--that is, to tell me what you think," and she paused.
"You must tell _me_ what it is all about first, Bessie dear," she said,sitting down opposite to her in such a position that her face was shadedfrom the light. Bessie tapped her naked foot against the matting withwhich the little room was carpeted. It was an exceedingly pretty foot.
"Well, dear old girl, it is just this--Frank Muller has been here to askme to marry him."
"Oh," said Jess, with a sigh of relief. So that was all? She felt asthough a ton-weight had been lifted from her heart. She had expectedthis bit of news for some time.
"He wanted me to marry him, and when I said I would not, he behavedlike--like----"
"Like a Boer," suggested Jess.
"Like a _brute_," went on Bessie with emphasis.
"So you don't care for Frank Muller?"
"Care for him! I loathe the man. You don't know how I loathe him, withhis handsome bad face and his cruel eyes. I always loathed him, and nowI hate him too. But I will tell you all about it;" and she did, withmany feminine comments and interpolations.
Jess sat quite still, and waited till she had finished.
"Well, dear," she said at last, "you are not going to marry him, and sothere is an end of it. You can't detest the man more than I do. I havewatched him for years," she went on, with rising anger, "and I tell youthat Frank Muller is a liar and a traitor. That man would betray his ownfather if he thought it to his interest to do so. He hates uncle--I amsure he does, although he pretends to be so fond of him. I am certainthat he has tried often and often to stir up the Boers against him.Old Hans Coetzee told me that he denounced him to the Veld-Cornet asan _uitlander_ and a _verdomde Engelsmann_ about two years before theannexation, and tried to get him to persuade the Landrost to report himas a law-breaker to the Raad; while all the time he was pretending tobe so friendly. Then in the Sikukuni war it was Frank Muller who causedthem to commandeer uncle's two best waggons and spans. He gave nonehimself, nothing but a couple of bags of meal. He is a wicked fellow,Bessie, and a dangerous fellow; but he has more brains and more powerabout him than any man in the Transvaal, and you will have to be verycareful, or he will do us all a bad turn."
"Ah!" said Bessie; "well, he can't do much now that the country isEnglish."
"I am not so sure of that. I am not so sure that the country is goingto stop English. You laugh at me for reading the home papers, but I seethings there that make me doubtful. The other party is in power now inEngland, and one does not know what they may do; you heard what unclesaid to-night. They might give us up to the Boers. You must rememberthat we far-away people are only the counters with which they play theirgame."
"Nonsense, Jess," said Bessie indignantly. "Englishmen are not likethat. When they say a thing, they stick to it."
"They used to, you mean," answered Jess with a shrug, and got up fromher chair to go to bed.
Bessie began to fidget her white feet over one another.
"Stop a bit, Jess dear," she said. "I want to speak to you aboutsomething else."
Jess sat or rather dropped back into her chair, and her pale face turnedpaler than ever; but Bessie blushed very red and hesitated.
"It's about Captain Niel," she said at length.
"Oh," answered Jess with a little laugh, and her voice sounded cold andstrange in her own ears. "Has he been following Frank Muller's example,and proposing to you too?"
"No-o," said Bessie, "but"--and here she rose, and, sitting on a stoolby her elder sister's chair, rested her forehead against her knee--"butI love him, and I _believe_ that he loves me. This morning he told methat I was the prettiest woman he had seen at home or abroad, and thesweetest too; and do you know," she said, looking up and giving a happylittle laugh, "I think he meant it."
"Are you joking, Bessie, or are you really in earnest?"
"In earnest! ah, but that I am, and I am not ashamed to say it. I fellin love with John Niel when he killed that cock ostrich. He looked sostrong and savage as he fought with it. It is a fine thing to see a manput out all his strength. And then he is such a gentleman!--so differentfrom the men we meet round here. Oh yes, I fell in love with him atonce, and I have got deeper and deeper in love with him ever since,and if he does not marry me I think that it will break my heart. There,that's the truth, Jess dear," and she dropped her golden head on to hersister's knees and began to cry softly at the thought.
But the sister sat there on the chair, her hand hanging idly by herside, her white face set and impassive as that of an Egyptian Sphinx,and the large eyes gazing far away through the window, against which therain was beating--far away out into the night and the storm. She heardthe surging of the storm, she heard her sister's weeping, her eyesperceived the dark square of the window through which they appeared tolook, she could feel Bessie's head upon her knee--yes, she could seeand hear and feel, and yet it seemed to her that she was _dead_. Thelightning had fallen on her soul as it fell on the pillar of rock, andit was as the pillar is. And it had fallen so soon! there had beensuch a little span of happiness and hope! And so she sat, like a stonySphinx, and Bessie wept softly before her, like a beautiful, breathing,loving human suppliant, and the two formed a picture and a contrastsuch as the student of human nature does not often get the chance ofstudying.
It was the eldest sister who spoke first after all.
"Well, dear," she said, "what are you crying about? You love CaptainNiel, and you believe that he loves you. Surely there is nothing to cryabout."
"Well, I don't know that there is," said Bessie, more cheerfully; "but Iwas thinking how dreadful it would be if I lost him."
"I do not think that you need be afraid," said Jess; "and now, dear,I really must go to bed, I am so tired. Good-night, my dear; God blessyou! I think that you have made a very wise choice. Captain Niel is aman whom any woman might love, and be proud of loving."
In another minute she was in her room, and there her composure left her,for she was but a loving woman after all. She flung herself upon herbed, and, hiding her face in the pillow, burst into a paroxysm ofweeping--a very different thing from Bessie's gentle tears. Her griefabsolutely convulsed her, and she pushed the bedclothes against hermouth to prevent the sound of it penetrating the partition wall andreaching John Niel's ears, for his room was next to hers. Even in themidst of her suffering the thought of the irony of the thing forceditself into her mind. There, separated from her only by a few inches oflath and plaster and some four or five feet of space, was the man forwhom she mourned thus, and yet he was as ignorant of it as though hewere thousands of miles away. Sometimes at such acute crises in ourlives the limitations of our physical nature do strike us after thisfashion. It is strange to be so near and yet so far, and it brings theabsolute and utter loneliness of every created being home to the mindin a manner that is forcible and at times almost terrible. John Nielsinking composedly to sleep, his mind happy with the recollection ofthose two right and left shots, and Jess, lying on her bed, six feetaway, and sobbing out her stormy heart over him, are indeed but types ofwhat is continually happening in this remarkable world. How often do weunderstand one another's grief? And, when we do, by what standard canwe measure it? More especially is comprehension rare, if we chance tobe the original cause of the trouble. Do we think of the feelings of thebeetles it is our painful duty to crush into nothingness? Not at all. Ifwe have any
compunctions, they are quickly absorbed in the pride of ourcapture. And more often still, as in the present case, we set our footupon the poor victim by pure accident or venial carelessness.
Presently John was fast asleep, and Jess, her paroxysm past, waswalking up and down, down and up, her little room, her bare feetfalling noiselessly on the carpeting as she strove to wear out the firstbitterness of her woe. Oh that it lay in her power to recall the pastfew days! Oh that she had never seen his face, which must now be everbefore her eyes! But for her there was no such possibility, and she feltit. She knew her own nature well. Her heart had spoken, and the word itsaid must roll on continually through the spaces of her mind. Who canrecall the spoken word, and who can set a limit on its echoes? It is notso with most women, but here and there may be found a nature where it isso. Spirits like this poor girl's are too deep, and partake too muchof a divine immutability, to shift and suit themselves to the changingcircumstances of a fickle world. They have no middle course; they cannothalt half-way; they set all their fortune on a throw. And when the throwis lost their hearts are broken, and their happiness passes away like aswallow.
For in such a nature love rises like the wind on the quiet breast ofsome far sea. None can say whence it comes or whither it blows; butthere it is, lashing the waters to a storm, so that they roll in thunderall the long day through, throwing their white arms on high, as theyclasp at the evasive air, till the darkness that is death comes down andcovers them.
What is the interpretation of it? Why does the great wind stir thedeep waters? It does but ripple the shallow pool as it passes, forshallowness can but ripple and throw up shadows. We cannot tell, butthis we know--that deep things only can be deeply moved. It is thepenalty of depth and greatness; it is the price they pay for thedivine privilege of suffering and sympathy. The shallow pools, thelooking-glasses of our little life, know nought, feel nought. Poorthings! they can but ripple and reflect. But the deep sea, in itstorture, may perchance catch some echo of God's voice sounding down thedriven gale; and, as it lifts itself and tosses its waves in agony, mayperceive a glow, flowing from a celestial sky that is set beyond thehorizon that bounds its being.
Suffering, or rather mental suffering, is a prerogative of greatness,and even here there lies an exquisite joy at its core. For everythinghas its compensations. Nerves such as these can thrill with a highhappiness, that will sweep unfelt over the mass of men. Thus he who isstricken with grief at the sight of the world's misery--as all great andgood men must be--is at times lifted up with joy by catching some faintgleam of the almighty purpose that underlies it. So it was with the Sonof Man in His darkest hours; the Spirit that enabled Him to compass outthe measure of the world's suffering and sin enabled Him also, knowingtheir purposes, to gaze beyond them; and thus it is, too, with thosedeep-hearted children of His race, who partake, however dimly, of Hisdivinity.
Thus, even in this hour of her darkest bitterness and grief, a gleamof comfort struggled to Jess's breast just as the first ray of dawn wasstruggling through the stormy night. She would sacrifice herself to hersister--that she had determined on; and hence came that cold gleamof happiness, for there is happiness in self-sacrifice, whatever thecynical may say. At first her woman's nature had risen in rebellionagainst the thought. Why should she throw her life away? She had as gooda right to this man as Bessie, and she knew that by the strength of herown hand she could hold him against Bessie in all her beauty, howeverfar things had gone between them; and she believed, as a jealous womanis prone to do, that they had gone much farther than was the case.
But by-and-by, as she pursued that weary march, her better self rose up,and mastered the promptings of her heart. Bessie loved him, and Bessiewas weaker than she, and less suited to bear pain, and she had sworn toher dying mother--for Bessie had been her mother's darling--to promoteher happiness, and, come what would, to comfort and protect her by everymeans in her power. It was a wide oath, and she was only a child whenshe took it, but it bound her conscience none the less, and surely itcovered this. Besides, she dearly loved her--far, far more than sheloved herself. No, Bessie should have her lover, and she should neverknow what it had cost her to give him up; and as for herself, well, shemust go away like a wounded buck, and hide till she got well--or died.
She laughed a drear little laugh, and stayed to brush her hair just asthe broad lights of the dawn came streaming across the misty veldt. Butshe did not look at her face again in the glass; she cared no moreabout it now. Then she threw herself down to sleep the sleep of utterexhaustion before it was time to go out again and face the world and hernew sorrow.
Poor Jess! Love's young dream had not overshadowed her for long. It hadtarried just three hours. But it had left other dreams behind.
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