My darling was right. For a long hour after leaving Blackwater I
continued to stand on the captain's bridge, looking back at the lighted
windows of the house above Port Raa, and asking myself the question
which for sixteen months thereafter was to haunt me day and night--Why
had I left her behind me?
In spite of all her importunities, all her sweet unselfish thought of my
own aims and interests, all her confidence in herself, all her brave
determination to share responsibility for whatever the future might have
in store for us--Why had I left her behind me?
The woman God gave me was mine--why had I left her in the house of a man
who, notwithstanding his infidelities and brutalities, had a right in
the eyes of the law, the church, and the world to call her his wife and
to treat her accordingly?
Let me make no pretence of a penitence I did not feel. Never for one
moment did I reproach myself for what had happened. Never for the shadow
of a moment did I reproach her. She had given herself to me of her
queenly right and sovereign grace as every good woman in the world must
give herself to the man she loves if their union is to be pure and true.
But why did I not see then, as I see now, that it is the law of
Nature--the cruel and at the same time the glorious law of Nature--that
the woman shall bear the burden, the woman shall pay the price?
It is over now, and though many a time since my sweet girl has said out
of her stainless heart that everything has worked out for the best, and
suffering is God's salt for keeping our souls alive, when I think of
what she went through for me, while I was out of all reach and sight, I
know I shall never forgive myself for leaving her behind--never, never
never.