Rosa was seated upon the upper step of the west porch, her chin
cradled in her hand, her elbow on her knee, gazing on the darkening
sky, and crooning Scotch ballads in a pensive, dreamy way. Mabel,
from her perch, eyed her as if she were a creature belonging to
another world--seen dimly, and comprehended yet more imperfectly.
Yet it could not have been half an hour--thirty fleeting
minutes--since the two had talked as dear friends out of the fulness
of their hearts. Where were the hopes and happy memories that had
made hers then a garden of pleasant things, a fruitful field which
Heaven had blessed? In that little inch of time, the flood had come
and taken them all away.
Would the dry aching in her throat and chest ever be less? Tears had
gushed freely and healthfully after her last leave-taking with
Frederic--the looked farewell, which was all Winston's surveillance
had granted them. She had been wounded then by her brother's
singular want of tact or feeling. She had not the spirit to resent
anything to-night, unless it were that God had made and suffered to
live a being so wretched and useless as herself. She supposed it was
wicked--but she did not care! She ought to be resigned to the
mysterious dispensations of Providence--that was the prescribed
phraseology of pious people. She had heard the cant times without
number. What more would they have than her utter destitution of love
and bliss? Was she not miserable enough to satisfy the sternest
believer in purgatorial purification? to appease the wrath even of
Him who had wrought her desolation? It must be the judgment of a
retributive Deity upon her idolatrous affection that she was
bearing--her worship of Frederic. Yes, she had loved him; she loved
him now better than she did anything else upon earth--better than
she did anything in Heaven.
In the partial insanity of her woe and despair, she lifted her gray
face and vacant eyes to the vast, empty vault, beyond which dwelt
her Maker afar off, and said the words aloud--spat them at Him
through hard, ashy lips.
"I love him! I love him! You have taken him from me--but I will love
him for all that!"
Heaven--or Fate--her blasphemous mood did not distinguish the one
from the other--was a robber. Her brother was pitiless as the death
that would not answer to her call. Between them she was bereaved.
It was but a touch--the lightest breath of natural feeling that
broke up the hot crust, that shut down the fountain of tears--Rosa's
voice, tuneful and sad as a nightingale's, chanting the border-lays
she loved so well: "When I gae out at e'en.
Or walk at morning air,
Ilk rustling bush will seem to say
I used to meet thee there.
Then I'll sit down and cry,
And live beneath the tree.
And when a leaf falls in my lap,
I'll oa' it a word from thee."