“On the twenty-fifth of August last I was close in with the Cuban
coast.... The mate, Sebright, got boiling water for them.... Afterwards
a heavy fog. They boarded us in many boats....” He was giving all the
old evidence over again, fastening another stone around my neck. But
suddenly he said: “This gentleman came alongside in a leaky dinghy. A
dead shot. He saved all our lives.”
His bullet-head, the stare of his round blue eyes seemed to draw me out
of a delirium. I called out:
“Williams, for God’s sake, Williams, where is Seraphina? Did she come
with you?” There was an immense roaring in my head, and the ushers were
shouting, “Silence! Silence!” I called out again.
Williams was smiling idiotically; then he shook his head and put his
finger to his mouth to warn me to keep silence. I only noted the shake
of the head. Sera-phina had not come. The Havana people must have taken
her. It was all over with me. The roaring noise made me think that I
was on a beach by the sea, with the smugglers, perhaps, at night down
in Kent. The silence that fell upon the court was like the silence of a
grave. Then someone began to speak in measured, portentous Spanish, that
seemed a memory of the past.
“I, the ambassador of his Catholic Majesty, being here upon my honour
and on my oath, demand the re-surrender of this gentleman, whose
courage equals his innocence. Documents which have just reached my hands
establish clearly the mistake of which he is the victim. The functionary
who is called _Alcayde_ of the _carcel_ at Havana confused the men.
Nikola el Escoces escaped, having murdered the judge whose place it was
to identify. I demand that the prisoner be set at liberty...”
A long time after a harsh voice said:
“Your Excellency, we retire, of course, from the prosecution.”
A different one directed:
“Gentlemen of the jury, you will return a verdict of ‘Not Guilty’...”
Down below they were cheering uproariously because my life was saved.
But it was I that had to face my saved life. I sat there, my head bowed
into my hands. The old judge was speaking to me in a tone of lofty
compassion:
“You have suffered much, as it seems, but suffering is the lot of us
men. Rejoice now that your character is cleared; that here in this
public place you have received the verdict of your countrymen that
restores you to the liberties of our country and the affection of your
kindred. I rejoice with you who am a very old man, at the end of my
life....”
It was rather tremendous, his deep voice, his weighted words. Suffering
is the lot of us men!... The formidable legal array, the great powers
of a nation, had stood up to teach me that, and they had taught me
that--suffering is the lot of us men!
It takes long enough to realize that someone is dead at a distance. I
had done that. But how long, how long it needs to know that the life of
your heart has come back from the dead. For years afterwards I could not
bear to have her out of my sight.
Of our first meeting in London all I remember is a speechlessness that
was like the awed hesitation of our overtried souls before the greatness
of a change from the verge of despair to the opening of a supreme joy.
The whole world, the whole of life, with her return, had changed all
around me; it enveloped me, it enfolded me so lightly as not to be felt,
so suddenly as not to be believed in, so completely that that whole
meeting was an embrace, so softly that at last it lapsed into a sense of
rest that was like the fall of a beneficent and welcome death.
For suffering is the lot of man, but not inevitable failure or worthless
despair which is without end--suffering, the mark of manhood, which
bears within its pain a hope of felicity like a jewel set in iron....
Her first words were:
“You broke our compact. You went away from me whilst I was sleeping.”
Only the deepness of her reproach revealed the depth of her love,
and the suffering she too had endured to reach a union that was to be
without end--and to forgive.
And, looking back, we see Romance--that subtle thing that is
mirage--that is life. It is the goodness of the years we have lived
through, of the old time when we did this or that, when we dwelt here
or there. Looking back, it seems a wonderful enough thing that I who
am this, and she who is that, commencing so far away a life that, after
such sufferings borne together and apart, ended so tranquilly there in a
world so stable--that she and I should have passed through so much, good
chance and evil chance, sad hours and joyful, all lived down and swept
away into the little heap of dust that is life. That, too, is Romance!