“We twain have met like ships upon the sea,
Who hold an hour’s converse, so short, so sweet,
One little hour, and then away they speed
On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam,
To meet no more.”
_The Life Drama._
Leicester heard from Mrs. Osborne the next morning. She gave a message
from Violet, simply begging to see Leicester on the afternoon of the
following day; and always kind and gentle, added from herself that she
was sure he had suffered much anxiety on their account, and that she
had felt for him.
Unable to bear the torture of his sisters’ looks during the next
thirty hours of uncertainty, Leicester wished them good-bye, with an
intimation that he should sleep out of town; and having calmed and
strengthened himself by those hours of solitary reflection, proceeded
at the appointed time to the house in Park Lane. He had thought much on
Rachel’s words, and was resolved if an opening was given, to act upon
them. It did, as he had expressed it to her, break his heart to be the
one to cause his sisters poverty or loss; but in his silent reflections
he felt there might be a pride of duty--to be vanquished like all other
kinds of pride--and he submitted himself to the necessity laid upon him.
He was shown into the drawing-room, and very quickly Violet came to
him there. At the very first glance, he saw how much she was changed.
Some countenances, especially when the features themselves are finely
formed, look as lovely or even lovelier in dejection and melancholy;
but it was not so with Violet. Her features had been so animated by the
light, and warmth, and good-will within, that they seemed to have lost
even the beauty of their form now that that inner light was darkened.
Their softness and smoothness seemed to be hardened into a stern
composure, and her dark blue eyes, which once, without metaphor, did
shine like stars, were now as dull and heavy as a stormy cloud.
Leicester saw the change in the very first glance, and, unable to argue
on its cause, seeing only the change which a few days’ sorrow had
made, was about to spring forward--all self forgotten, all the strife
between love and duty to his sisters forgotten--to spring forward,
lost in one feeling of love and compassion for her, when a second gaze
arrested him. That second gaze revealed not the change only, but a
something _in_ the change that awed and chilled him; he paused, while
the spring of love welled slowly backwards into the recesses of his
heart.
They met calmly, coldly, and silently; and with a slight movement
Violet directed him to a chair. He sat down and said nothing. He saw
the expected moment was come. He was nothing to her; and he would not,
by one forward word or movement, lay a claim upon her, or add to the
troubled passions of her mind.
It might have been but one minute. It seemed to him ten before she
spoke. Her lips parted twice before any sound was heard, and when she
did speak, it was hurriedly.
“There has been such a change, Mr. Leicester, as I never contemplated;
and in that change everything, all relations and engagements of life
are changed. It is well to face the truth at once.”
It was what he had expected. The engagement between them was dissolved.
He knew it; he had known it from the glance of her eye and the touch
of her hand; but he could not speak. He heard it in silence, only
steadfastly gazing at her, to hear all her will.
She had expected a word; perhaps in her innermost heart, in the
unconscious mysteries of the mind, had expected a denial, and more
hurriedly and passionately she went on:
“It is right to look things in the face. I am no longer what I was. My
hopes in life are changed; my duties are changed. I cannot be a wife
now; I must be a daughter, and a daughter only. Life has become very
dark, but I think if I am _free_,” and she drew a deep breath, as if
shaking herself from a chain that galled her, “I shall be strong enough
to bear it.” She stopped again, and a second time sighed a sigh, of
relief rather than of sorrow.
Leicester spoke at last. “All your will shall be done,” he said, in a
low but steady voice. “We are free. Henceforward we travel on alone.”
There was a something in the tone of his voice which made Violet’s
heart ache and throb, and then die; a something that faintly told the
love he bore her, the love and sympathy she was rejecting; but though
the voice spoke, the words were unimpassioned and cold. She offered
freedom, and it was accepted without one effort to bind her. Her proud
spirit felt it, and at the bidding of her proud spirit the fluttering
heart was stilled.
“He does not want a poor wife,” she inwardly said, with a kind of
passionate coldness, and she became strong again at the thought.
They were free, and they sat opposite to each other free; free and cold
and silent.
“You, have suffered much, and are much changed,” at last Leicester
gravely said.
Proud tears flashed in her eyes, and she said bitterly,
“We are badly taught. If we were taught in youth that human life is
subject to change like this, we should not set our hearts on any
earthly thing. I shall do so no more.”
“You are young,” he said, “to live and have no heart in the world. I
shall wish you better things.”
Her heart ached again. There was no passion in his calm voice, but it
touched some chord which for the moment seemed to strain almost to
breaking.
She shook her head, but said nothing.
There was a pause, and then Leicester began in the same tone, and
pursuing the same train of thought:
“When the violence of the shock is over, you will wake up as in a new
life, and I know you well enough to be sure that you will give, and
therefore find happiness, as you have hitherto done....”
“I shall have no power to give,” she interrupted, in the bitter
passionate tone in which she had last spoken; “the spring is dry.”
“Oh! Violet,” he said, unconsciously calling her by the name which
for many months had made a ceaseless strain of music in his heart,
“are your thoughts so poor as to think money alone can bless? You have
still yourself, and the good heart God has given you. I shall hear of
you,” he continued, after another moment’s pause, “I know I shall, the
friend, the comforter, the help of many! When the eye sees it will
bless you, when the ear hears it will leap for joy.”
Softer tears trembled in Violet’s eyes. She shook her head, but it was
more gently; and there was a passing away of pride, for the moment at
least, when she said,
“Why do you say ‘hear?’ We shall still be friends.”
“No, Violet,” he said, with a grave and melancholy dignity, “I cannot
be a friend. We part; henceforward we travel on alone. Some men might
bear to be friends, to live by the ashes of a fire that is gone out;
but I cannot. We are free, and we must part.”
Violet sat paralysed in heart and soul. Vaguely, dimly, she saw in the
far future the blank, if a blank _can_ be seen, she felt the aching
void, if a void _can_ be felt, which the loss of his love would make;
in the long vista of future years she saw, dimly indeed, yet saw it
still, the cravings and longings of her heart for a something which
she was wilfully casting away; but she saw and felt, and was dumb. She
had done the deed, she had set him free, and, suffer as she might, she
would not ask again the love she had rejected.
There was another long pause, and then Leicester slowly rose.
“What must be, should be quickly done,” he said, approaching her. “I
will not distress you with many words of parting. God bless you! and in
His good time make you happy again. Farewell!”
He took her hand; looked into her startled and troubled eyes; calmly
and gently, yet with impulsive movement, pressed his lips on her
cheek, and had left the room before she recovered from the amazed and
bewildered trance into which his sudden rising had cast her.
She could then have shrieked his name to call on him to return, but the
iron hand of pride and the stronger hand of a woman’s nature bound her
to her seat, and kept her still.
So they parted; and a silent barrier of days, and months, and years
grew up between those who, but an hour before, had been bound for life
to each other; a barrier caused not by circumstances of God’s sending,
not by the chances of human life, but by the pride of two hearts.