In all possible and impossible dreams of my own future, Owen had figured as the grand central thought. Owen would show me the world, Owen would let me live with him. He had promised me this when I was a little child, and he was a fine noble-looking youth, and I had believed him, I believed him still. I had longed and yearned for him, I had never forgotten him. My love for my good and sober brother David was very calm and sisterly, but my love for Owen was the romance of my existence. And now he was coming home, crowned with laurels, doubtless. For he had been away so long, he had left us so suddenly and mysteriously, that only could his absence be accounted for by supposing that my beautiful and noble brother had gone on some very great, and important, and dangerous mission, from which he would return now, crowned with honour and glory.
“Oh, David!” I exclaimed, when I could find my voice, “is it true? How very, very happy I am.”
“Yes, Gwladys,” replied David, “it is true; but let us walk up and down this path, it is quite quiet here, and I have a story to tell you about Owen.”
“How glad I am,” I repeated, “I love him more than any one, and I quite knew how it would be, I always guessed it, I knew he would come back covered with glory. Yes, David, go on, tell me quickly, what did my darling do?”
I was rather impatient, and I wondered why David did not reply more joyfully, why, indeed, at first he did not speak at all. I could see no reason for his silence, the crowds of men and women who had filled the cathedral had dispersed, had wandered to hotels for refreshment, or gone to explore, if strangers, the beauties and antiquities the old town possessed. There was no one to molest or disturb us, as we walked up and down in this quiet part of the Close.
“Well, David,” I said, “go on, tell me about my darling.”
“Yes,” said David, “I will tell you, but I have got something else to say first.”
“What?” I asked, impatiently.
“This; you have made a mistake about Owen, you imagine him to be what he is not.”
“What do I imagine him to be?” I asked, angrily, for David’s tone put into my heart the falsest idea it ever entertained – namely, that he was jealous of my greater love for Owen.
“What do I imagine?” I asked.
“You imagine that Owen is a hero. Now, Gwladys, you cannot love Owen too much, nor ever show your love to him too much, but you can do him no good whatever, if you start with a false idea of him.”
I was silent, too amazed at these words to reply at once.
“I tell you this, Gwladys,” continued David, “because I really believe it is in your power to help Owen. Nay, more, I want you to help him.”
Still I said nothing, the idea suggested by David’s words might be flattering, but it was too startling to be taken in its full significance at first. What did it mean? In all my dreams of Owen I had never contemplated his requiring help from me; but David had said that my ideas were false, my dreams mistaken. I woke up into full and excited listening, at his next words.
“And now I mean to tell you why you have not seen Owen for so long – why he has been away from us all these years.”
“Four years, now,” I said. “Yes, David, I have often wondered why you gave me no reason for his long, long absence. I said nothing, but I felt it a good bit – I did indeed.”
“It was a story you could hardly hear when you were a little child. Even now I only tell it to you because of Owen’s unlooked-for and unexpected return; because, as I say, I want you to help Owen; but even now I shall only tell you its outline.”
“David, you speak of Owen’s return as if you were not glad – as if it were not quite the happiest news in the world.”
“It is not that, my dear.”
“But why? Do you not love him?”
“Most truly I love him.”
“Well, what is the story? How mysterious you are!”
“Yes, I am glad,” continued David, speaking more to himself than to me. “I suppose I ought to be quite glad – to have no distrust. How faithless Amy would call me!”
When he mentioned Amy, I knew he had forgotten my presence – the name made me patient. I waited quietly for his next remark.
As I have said, he was a man of few words. His ideas moved slowly, and his language hardly came fluently.
“There are two kinds of love,” he began, still in his indirect way. “There is the love that thinks the object it loves perfection, and will see no fault in it.”
“Yes,” I interrupted, enthusiastically; “I know of that love – it is the only kind worth having.”
“I cannot agree with you, dear. That love may be deep and intense, but it is not great. There is a love which sees faults in the object of its love, but loves on through all. Such – ”
“Such love I should not care for,” I interrupted.
“Such love I could not live without, Gwladys. Such is the Divine love.”
“But God’s love is not like ours,” I said.
“No, dear; and I have only made the remark to justify myself – for, Gwladys, I have loved Owen through his faults.”
I started impatiently; but David had now launched on his tale, and would not be interrupted.
“Yes,” he continued, “I loved and love Owen through his faults. I know that mother thought him perfect, and so did you. I am not surprised at either of your feelings with regard to him – he was undoubtedly very brilliant, and on the surface, Gwladys, you might almost have said that so noble a form must have held a noble soul. I do not say this will never be so; but this was not so when you knew him last.”
I would have spoken again, but David laid his hand on my arm, to silence me.
“He had much of good in him; but he was not noble; he had one great weakness – pleasure was dearer to him than duty. Even when a little lad he would leave his tasks unlearned, to play for half an hour longer with you; this was a small thing, but it grew, Gwladys – it grew. And he had great temptations. It was much harder for him to do the right than for me; he was so brilliant – so – so, not clever – but so ready-witted. He was a great favourite in society, and society brought with it heaps of temptations. He struggled against the temptations, but he did not struggle hard enough; and his natural weakness, his great love for pleasure, grew on the food he gave it.
“We were in different colleges, and did not see each other every day. He made some friends whose characters – well, they were not men he ought to know. I spoke to him about this; poor fellow! it has lain on my heart often, that I may have spoken harshly, taking on myself elder brother airs, and made myself a sort of mentor. I could not do this intentionally, but it is possible I may have done it unintentionally. I felt hot on the subject, for the fellows I spoke against seemed to me low, in every sense beneath his notice. I did not know that even then, they had a hold on him which he could not, even if he would, shake off. He got angry, he – quarrelled with me. After this, I did not see him for some time. I blame myself again here, for I might have gone to him, but I did not. He had said some words which hurt me, and I stayed away.” David paused. “Yes,” he continued, taking up his narrative without any comment from me, “I remember, it was the middle of the term. I was sitting with some fellows after dinner; we were smoking in my rooms. I remember how the sun looked on the water, and how jolly I felt. We were talking of my coming of age, and I had asked all these fellows to help me to celebrate the event at Tynycymmer, when suddenly a man I knew came to the door, and called me out; he was a great friend of mine, he looked awfully white and grave; he put his arm inside mine, and we went down through Christ Church meadows to the edge of the river. There, as we stood together looking down into the river, and nodding, as if nothing were the matter, to some men of