AN EXPLANATION.
I walked away in unutterable despondency, relieved only by one purpose,
one hope--to find Victoria. I had not far to go to seek her: her
statuesque form was outlined against the clear sky above the Peak.
She turned to greet me with a grave smile.
‘You came away before it was over; I was wiser than you, I came away
before it began. I suppose it is because we are wild people that we
make such a ceremony of saying “Good-bye.” Before they taught us to be
Christians, you know, we used to make just the same fuss about death.’
‘Is it good-bye, Victoria? I hardly know what it is. It looks like
dismissal, without a word of leave-taking. You seem to have sent me
away.’
‘I _have_ sent you away,’ she said, her voice trembling a little, and
then instantly recovering its tone. ‘Yes, I want always to be able to
feel that I told you, when the time had come, to go.’
A pang shot through my heart that was not regret, but a sort of jealous
rage.
‘You are a great observer of times and seasons, Victoria. Perhaps, even
now, I have lingered too long.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said, with the note deeper, richer than before, but no
less firm. Then she added, as though to make her meaning more clear:
‘If there were all the reasons in the world for keeping you, dearest
friend, you must still go, to save your mother’s life. You feel the
force of that reason as much as I do. Why seek for more?’
‘That reason, from myself to myself, Victoria, may be enough. It is not
enough from you to me.’
‘From me to you then,’ she said; ‘will this do? All things leave us, as
we stand here in this Isle; all things pass us by. Whatever comes to
us, as surely goes. Why should we hope to keep it, when that must be
the end? God has marked us out for solitude: let us bow to God’s will.
Nothing could keep you here: it is written. Nothing has kept others.’
The pang that had almost ceased darted through me again with its full
force, at these last words. ‘Cold, cruel heart!’ I said in a fury of
pain, ‘you have never cared to keep me. Why had you not pity enough to
let me die, when the waves tossed me here?’
She gave me one glance, of which I could not catch the full expression
in the uncertain light, straightened herself, folded her hands behind
her, and turned her face towards the sea.
The wrathful agony of my feelings endured even under this rebuke, much
as I felt I deserved it. I was distinctly aware that I was playing a
pitiful part before her, and distinctly unable to help playing it.
The torment of losing her, of being nothing to her, overpowered every
finer feeling: and the more I felt the degradation of my violence, the
more desperate the violence seemed to become. I felt only the goading
of the pain of loss, and, forgetting all my fine resolves to treat her
with the disdain with which I thought she was treating me, I caught her
in my arms and covered her lips, her eyes, her brow, with passionate
kisses, till she sank for support upon a jutting stone. It was no timid
first kiss of pastoral flirtation, but twenty, following as quick
on one another as a rain of angry blows. There was a sort of anger
in them, as well as love. I seemed to feel that I had been made the
sport of her innocence. What had I not lost by trying to outdo her in
tenderness, in generosity, and reserve? So I interpret my feelings now:
at the moment, nothing could have been more devoid of conscious motive
than the madness of this act. The brute that is in each of us, and
that is only half held in check by laws, observances, and uses, seemed
suddenly to have slipped his chain.
Yet, if the act was a surprise to me, in itself, it was a greater
surprise in its effect upon Victoria. The girl seemed to sink down,
from sheer want of the power of resistance. The lips parted, without
word or sound, but the eyes met the fierce gaze of mine with infinite
tenderness; and, when she did speak, this was what I heard:
‘Oh, I love you, I love you--better than my own life: and I will never
have you love me: and to-morrow you shall go away from me for ever.’
The thing had been said, and there was no unsaying it. In vain,
Victoria, resuming her self-control almost as quickly as she had lost
it, disengaged herself from my arms, which had sought her beautiful
shape.
She sat silent, in what I could not but feel was a silence of shame.
For the moment, I was silent too. We were both, in a manner, stunned
by the shock of that avowal. Victoria had said what she meant never to
say: I had heard what I never hoped to hear. If I had expectation of
anything--though, indeed, I think I had none--it was rather of anger
and fierce repulse.
I was the first to recover speech, if not self-possession. I took her
hand: thank Heaven I had enough sense and feeling left not to claim
her lips on the strength of what had just passed. I tried to tell her
something of what I had wanted to tell her all this weary time--how
my love for her had come, first, through the divine suggestion of her
shape, and voice, and ways, and how her soul had completed what they
had begun, and turned enchantment into one of the laws of being.
She listened, and soon, as I could see, no longer with shame. The hand
I held returned the pressure of my own, and I felt the thrilling touch
of the other on my brow and hair.
She spoke at last. ‘Listen, dear friend: now all must be said. It is
too late to blame you for what has happened, or even to blame myself
for letting it happen. It was to be. No human soul could be angry that
knew how I tried, not even----’
I would not let her utter the name. ‘Never speak of him. What can he be
to you? What fate does he deserve?’ but she laid her finger on my lips.
‘I know; my heart is yours, but only he shall release my hand.’
‘Victoria!’
‘Oh! listen, listen, and be still! I know all that must be said, and
all that must be done.
‘When you first came, my heart was his, or I thought it was. I thought
it had gone out with him into the world--your world, or the next
one, they are both just as far away from us. I don’t know what I felt
about you, except that I felt what was good and true and right. Was it
wrong to like you? How can anyone help liking you that knows you? You
spoke to me as no one had spoken to me before. You seemed to know all
things. I only wanted to listen to you, and still be true to him. All
my hope of myself was in being true. Our people do not always know what
that sort of truth is. There are the two strains in our blood; we are
English, and something else. It has shocked me, from my girlhood up, to
see how we sometimes forget. We feel so quickly; and all our feeling
is in each terrible moment as it flies. I set myself above our people;
I shuddered to think I should ever be like that. My love was part of
my respect for myself. Half our women have had their love tokens taken
away in Queen’s ships, and have still lived on to be wives and mothers
in the Isle. I could not, I would not be like that.
‘I did not blame then; I pitied! It is all so splendid when the Queen’s
ships come. The young men in them seem to have dropped from the sky.
It is like the book of the Heathen mythology, with the gods coming down.
‘When I saw you, I did not know it was to be like that. I felt sure of
myself, and, if I had doubted, still I should have felt sure of you.
Then slowly, slowly, slowly, came the dreadful change, though, if you
had not spoken that day, I might never have known that it had come.
When I did know, still it did not seem to be too late. My pride was
strong: I did not know the strength of my weakness. I went there every
day--to the thicket, and prayed to have him sent back to me. I tried
to shut you quite out from my heart, but still to keep you in my soul.
You were so good; you made me think I had done it. You tried to make me
think so; I knew you tried; and your very goodness only made it worse
and worse.
‘Then, I felt I was no longer sure of myself. I tried to keep away from
you; but, to have you near me, and not to see you, not to speak to you,
made all the world seem dead and cold. So, I always came back to find
you again, of my own accord, wanting to keep all my happiness, when I
ought to have chosen which part of it I should give up.’
‘Victoria, if only I had known; if only I had understood!’
‘Oh, how dreadful, if you thought me light-minded, playing you off
and on. All that I wanted was to like you as much as I dared, without
having you like me more than you ought. I should have done, what I see
now I must do--send you away, for both our sakes. If I did not see it
at once, pity, dear friend, pity, and forgive!
‘Then, I prayed again for help; and see how the help has come! We might
both of us have been too weak for that sacrifice, but now it is laid
upon us without our wills. You must go.’
‘I will come back, come to claim you, my Victoria, to bring you your
word of release, to take you, whether you will or no.’
‘You will never come back,’ she said in a tone that seemed to be beyond
both hope and despair, and she held my face up to the light and looked
down into it with tender yet tearless eyes. ‘You ought not to come
back: your place is in the great world--poor little great world! Try
to think there is something nobler than love for one--pity for all. Go;
and live for those poor people you have talked about to me.’
‘I am not equal to it: I could only die for them, at best.’
‘Still--I know what I am saying--others must claim you: your
station----’
‘O Victoria, is your opinion of me so low? Do you send me back to
resume the “English gentleman”; and to hide my shame in being nothing
in the smug proprieties of that poor creature’s lot?’
‘I do not know, dear friend, but this I feel--we must lose you for
ever: no one returns here.’
‘Then let me never go away,’ I cried, rising, and clasping her again to
my heart. ‘Let me love you, and be with you for ever, and forget all
the world beside.’
Once more I saw a beginning of that exquisite languor which had almost
made her mine. The lips of the beautiful creature parted, but only in
sighs; the eyes closed. Once more, too, my own lips approached them,
when the girl roused herself, by some mysterious exertion of will,
tore herself from my embrace, and ran to the very edge of the cliff.
‘Deep into the deep sea, beloved one, for ever beloved of my heart,
if you come one step more! Go now, go from me, and leave me to say my
prayers. I love you; take that last word from Victoria; you will never
hear her voice again.’
‘She shall hear mine. After such a last word, my Victoria, there must
be more. If you could have told me I was nothing to you, I would have
gone for ever; now, Death alone shall part you and me. Go, I must,
for a season, but your blessed promise, for promise it is, makes it
almost easy to say farewell. Be sure of this, I will come back to claim
you, from the other side of the world. I will leave you now, since my
presence troubles you; I will even set sail without trying to speak to
you again. But, before I go, you _shall_ give me a sign or a token--a
token of submission, my Victoria, I claim no less, a sign that you have
conquered your foolish superstition of fidelity, and your cruel pride.’