It is my last chance of confession. I little
thought I should ever have another. Late as it
is, shall I avail myself of it? Nay! if not before,
why now? Why now?—when there
are so much stronger reasons for silence—when
to speak would be to knock to atoms the newly-built
edifice of Barbara’s happiness—to
rake up the old and nearly dead ashes of Frank’s
frustrated, and for aught I know, sincerely repented
sin? So I answer, faintly indeed, yet quite audibly
and distinctly:
“Nothing.”
“NOTHING?” (in an accent and with eyes
of the keenest, wistfulest interrogation, as if he
would wring from me, against my will, the confession
I so resolutely withhold).
But I turn away from that heart-breaking, heart-broken
scrutiny, and answer:
“Nothing!”
“She dwells with beauty—beauty
that must die,
And joy whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu!”
Thus I accomplished my second lie: I that, at
home, used to be a proverb for blunt truth-telling.
They say that “facilis descensus Averni.”
I do not agree with them. I have not found it
easy. To me it has seemed a very steep and precipitous
road, set with sharp flints that cut the feet, and
make the blood flow.
I think the second falsehood was almost harder to
utter than the first: but, indeed, they were
both very disagreeable. I cannot think why any
one should have thought it necessary to invent the
doctrine of a future retribution for sin.
It appears to me that, in this very life of the present,
each little delinquency is so heavily paid for—so
exorbitantly overpaid, indeed. Look, for instance,
at my own case. I told a lie—a lie
more of the letter than the spirit—and
since then I have spent six months of my flourishing
youth absolutely devoid of pleasure, and largely penetrated
with pain.
I have stood just outside my paradise, peeping under
and over the flaming sword of the angel that guards
it. I have been near enough to smell the flowers—to
see the downy, perfumed fruits—to hear the
song of the angels as they go up and down within its
paths; but I have been outside.
Now I have told another lie, and I suppose—nay,
what better can I hope?—that I shall live
in the same state of weary, disproportioned retribution
to the end of the chapter.
These are the thoughts, interspersed and diversified
with loud sighs, that are employing my mind one ripe
and misty morning a few days later than the incidents
last detailed.
Barbara is to arrive to-day. She is coming to
pay us a visit—coming, like the lady mentioned
by Tennyson, in “In Memoriam”—not,
indeed, “to bring her babe,” but to “make
her boast.” And how, pray, am I to listen
with complacent congratulation to this boast?
For the first time in my life I dread the coming of
Barbara. How am I, whose acting, on the few occasions
when I have attempted it, has been of the most improbably
wooden description—how am I, I say, to counterfeit
the extravagant joy, the lively sympathy, that Barbara
will expect—and naturally expect—
from me?
