"I will never permit her sweet touch again," said Miriam, toiling up
the staircase, "if I can find strength of heart to forbid it. But, O! it
would be so soothing in this wintry fever-fit of my heart. There can be
no harm to my white Hilda in one parting kiss. That shall be all!"
But, on reaching the upper landing-place, Miriam paused, and stirred not
again till she had brought herself to an immovable resolve.
"My lips, my hand, shall never meet Hilda's more," said she.
Meanwhile, Hilda sat listlessly in her painting-room. Had you looked
into the little adjoining chamber, you might have seen the slight
imprint of her figure on the bed, but would also have detected at once
that the white counterpane had not been turned down. The pillow was more
disturbed; she had turned her face upon it, the poor child, and bedewed
it with some of those tears (among the most chill and forlorn that gush
from human sorrow) which the innocent heart pours forth at its first
actual discovery that sin is in the world. The young and pure are not
apt to find out that miserable truth until it is brought home to them by
the guiltiness of some trusted friend. They may have heard much of
the evil of the world, and seem to know it, but only as an impalpable
theory. In due time, some mortal, whom they reverence too highly,
is commissioned by Providence to teach them this direful lesson; he
perpetrates a sin; and Adam falls anew, and Paradise, heretofore in
unfaded bloom, is lost again, and dosed forever, with the fiery swords
gleaming at its gates.
The chair in which Hilda sat was near the portrait of Beatrice Cenci,
which had not yet been taken from the easel. It is a peculiarity of
this picture, that its profoundest expression eludes a straightforward
glance, and can only be caught by side glimpses, or when the eye
falls casually upon it; even as if the painted face had a life and
consciousness of its own, and, resolving not to betray its secret of
grief or guilt, permitted the true tokens to come forth only when it
imagined itself unseen. No other such magical effect has ever been
wrought by pencil.
Now, opposite the easel hung a looking-glass, in which Beatrice's face
and Hilda's were both reflected. In one of her weary, nerveless changes
of position, Hilda happened to throw her eyes on the glass, and took in
both these images at one unpremeditated glance. She fancied--nor was it
without horror--that Beatrice's expression, seen aside and vanishing in
a moment, had been depicted in her own face likewise, and flitted from
it as timorously.
"Am I, too, stained with guilt?" thought the poor girl, hiding her face
in her hands.
Not so, thank Heaven! But, as regards Beatrice's picture, the incident
suggests a theory which may account for its unutterable grief and
mysterious shadow of guilt, without detracting from the purity which we
love to attribute to that ill-fated girl. Who, indeed, can look at that
mouth,--with its lips half apart, as innocent as a babe's that has
been crying, and not pronounce Beatrice sinless? It was the intimate
consciousness of her father's sin that threw its shadow over her, and
frightened her into a remote and inaccessible region, where no sympathy
could come. It was the knowledge of Miriam's guilt that lent the same
expression to Hilda's face.