A DECLARATION.
‘When are we to begin the alterations?’ said the girl.
‘Not yet, my Victoria! No, not yet! Let all things stay as they are,
and let me stay with them, here by your side. Beautiful, perfect
creature! Let me speak what must be spoken: I love you!’
A moment before I had no thought that these words would ever pass my
lips. They were almost as much of a shock to me as to the girl. It
had been my secret; or shall I say that it was almost a secret to me?
Exquisite charm! In my calmer moments, I should have hated the thought
of ever tearing this tender veil of mystery and reserve, behind which
all that is sweetest in emotion dwells. To be able to love her as at
first one loves the light, without analysis, was the most stimulating
of joys; to have it all set down in quantitative inventory of vows, and
bonds, and declarations, might be quite another thing. Now, my heart
was naked to her gaze, and I stood silent with a sort of shame.
She, too, was silent. She had taken her hand from mine, and clasped
it in the other, behind her, just as on the day of our first meeting;
and there she stood, erect, contemplative, almost on the same spot.
The feet were drawn together, the head was thrown back; it was her
characteristic attitude for emergencies. So had I seen her first, the
beautiful piece of life, the divine animal, flawless in health and
strength and freshness as a Venus of the Louvre, yet all touched with
spiritual loveliness by the great eyes--fierce now, as I feared--and by
the heaving breast.
‘I cannot help it,’ I said, with a sort of sullen passion. ‘I felt so
sure that I could keep this thing back that I set no guard over myself.
Since it is out, take the truth. Whatever comes of it, we can never be
the same to each other again.’
‘We must be the same,’ she said, with all the deep liquid softness in
her voice, that was missing from her gaze. ‘Oh! I knew this would come
one day, I knew it would. And I did nothing to prevent it. The fault is
all mine.’
‘The fault?’
‘I am the wretchedest woman that ever lived,’ sobbed Victoria, suddenly
sinking to the ground in a passion of tears, and beating it, in the
wild despairing way of her sister-savages, when the boat took their
sweethearts away--statue no longer, but very flesh and blood in every
quivering nerve.
I did not try to raise her, I did not stir. In a few moments, when
the paroxysm had passed, she raised herself, and then came, in the
tenderest way, and took my hand, and looked straight into my eyes, this
time, through the blessed dews that dimmed her own.
‘You must know it. Some one else loves me. The word has been spoken. I
am promised. Come with me--but never tell a living soul! Then, I should
die.’
She led me swiftly to a small grove of wild trees, nestling in a dip
of the rock, and thin and poor, for they saw neither the eastern nor
the western sun. And, plunging into it, her hand still holding mine,
then climbing again, after the sharp descent, she stopped before a
dwarf-tree, where the Ancient would never have thought of looking for
any infraction of his forest laws. A rude monogram was carved on the
tree, with a date and two crosses.
‘We cut them together on our last day,’ said the girl, laying her
finger on one of the crosses, ‘and this was mine. This was cut from
his coat the same day,’ and she drew the wretched old navy-button from
its nest in her pure bosom. ‘Now you know all. I am promised; and if I
forget it, how can I ever say my prayers again?’
The monogram was V.A., and the A., I suppose, was the baptismal initial
of the mysterious Curly, who won the great battle with the slave-dhow,
and whose laugh and smile divided the honours of admiration with
mankind. Victoria’s poor secret was hardly worth the telling, for, of
course, I had guessed it long before. But what I had not guessed was
this fidelity of daily, hourly remembrance to the vanished hero of a
vanished ship--now, perhaps, firing her guns of joyous salutation in
some haven on the other side of the world.
Did I hint this to the beautiful devotee? Not I! One moment of
temptation came, but it passed; and I was spared the meanness of
tormenting her with a doubt. Since Curly was her religion, let him be
her religion still. Here was his shrine. It was hung all about with
strange little memorials of him that looked like aids to worship,
votive offerings of bits of ribbon on the branches of his sacred
tree. A necklace of shells, fastened in its place with pins, formed a
border in alto-relievo for the monogram and the date. In due course,
no doubt, there would be an altar for the navy-button and a temple for
the altar--so such things grow. I remembered what the girl had told me
of the old strain of idolatry in her blood. Yet truth and love are so
entrancing to the gaze that, in regarding them, the real amateur soon
loses all thought of self. The picture in this virgin’s soul was a
master-piece, not to be marred by a touch--Curly in his orisons, ever
praying with his face towards the Isle; seas and continents between
them, yet the electric thread of sympathy only the longer on that
account.
All this I fancied forth, and, as usual, in that kind of snap-shooting
at truth, I could not be quite sure of my mark. With all her hope and
trust in Curly, Victoria seemed full of a strange disquiet about him,
not easy to explain.
‘Five ships here since he left,’ she said, ‘and no word or token from
him--not so much as one of these,’ and she returned the button to her
breast. ‘The black people have killed him, perhaps. Every night and
every morning this last month I have come here to ask for a sign of
him, living or dead. You remember that night I saw the shape on the
Ridge: I half fancied--that was why I was so afraid; just because I was
with you. Have I done anything wrong? Have I done wrong? Nobody helps
me. I seem to stand all alone.’
‘Victoria, if you talk like that, I must tell you that I am by your
side.’
‘Dear, good friend, yes, I seem to be forgetting you. Why is it so hard
to do right? Why is our choice always between pain and pain?’
‘You shall not choose, princess; I will choose for you. Be my comrade,
and only that. I will ask for no more. As for me, let me be to you what
I like, what is best for me. All wisdom is in loving you, and I want
to be wise. If I must not speak to you, let me spend precious hours
by your side, looking, learning, for your eyes light for me the dark
places of the world.’
‘Comrades then,’ she said, smiling; and she gave me her hand.