When dinner was over—Miss Terry would have none—they went and sat upon
the moonlit deck. The little vessel was under all her canvas, for the
breeze was light, and skimmed over the water like a gull with its wings
spread. In the low light Madeira was nothing but a blot on the
sky-line. The crew were forward, with the solitary exception of the man
steering the vessel from his elevated position on the bridge; and
sitting as they were, abaft the deck-cabin, the two were utterly alone
between the great silence of the stars and of the sea. She looked into
his face, and it was tender towards her—that night was made for
lovers—and tears of happiness stood in her eyes. She took his hand in
hers, and her head nestled upon his breast.
“I should like to sail on for ever so, quite alone with you. I never
again wish to see the land or the sun, or any other sea than this, or
any other eyes than yours, to hear any more of the things that I have
known, to learn to know any fresh things. If I could choose, I would
ask that I might now glide gently from your arms into those of eternal
sleep. Oh! Arthur, I am so happy now—so happy that I scarcely dare to
speak, for fear lest I should break the spell, and I feel so good—so
much nearer heaven. When I think of all my past life, it seems like a
stupid dream full of little nothings, of which I cannot recall any
memory except that they were empty and without meaning. But the future
is worse than the past, because it looks fair, and snakes always hide
in flowers. It makes me afraid. How do I know what the future will
bring? I wish that the present—the pleasant, certain present that I
hold with my hand—could last for ever.”
“Who does know, Mildred? If the human race could see the pleasant
surprises in store for it individually, I believe that it would drown
itself _en masse_. Who has not sometimes caught at the skirt of to-day
and cried, ‘Stay a little—do not let to-morrow come yet!’ You know the
lines—
“‘O temps suspends ton vol, et vous heures propices
Suspendez votre cours,
Laissez nous savourer les rapides delices
Des plus beaux de nos jours.’
“Lamartine only crystallized a universal aspiration when he wrote
that.”
“Oh! Arthur, I tell you of love and happiness wide as the great sea
round us, and you talk of ‘universal aspirations.’ It is the first cold
breath from that grey-skied future that I fear. Oh! dear, I wonder—you
do not know how I wonder—if, should you ask me again, I shall ever with
a clear conscience be able to say, ‘Arthur, I will marry you.’”
“My dear, I asked you to be my wife last night, and what I said then I
say again now. In any case, until you dismiss me, I consider myself
bound to you; but I tell you frankly that I should myself prefer that
you would marry me for both our sakes.”
“How cold and correct you are, how clearly you realize the position in
which I am likely to be put, and in what a gentlemanlike way you assure
me that your honour will always keep you bound to me! That is a weak
thread, Arthur, in matters of the heart. Let Angela reappear as my
rival—would honour keep you to my side? Honour, forsooth! it is like a
nurse’s bogey in the cupboard—it is a shibboleth men use to frighten
naughty women with, which for themselves is almost devoid of meaning.
Even in this light I can see your face flush at her name. What chance
shall I ever have against her?”
“Do not speak of her, Mildred; let her memory be dead between us. She
who belonged to me before God, and whom I believed in as I believe in
my God, she offered me the most deadly insult that a woman can offer to
a man she loves—she sold herself. What do I care what the price was,
whether it were money, or position, or convenience, or the approbation
of her surroundings? The result is the same. Never mention her name to
me again; I tell you that I hate her.”
“What a tirade! There is warmth enough about you now. I shall be
careful how I touch on the subject again; but your very energy shows
that you are deceiving yourself. I wish I could hear you speak of me
like that, because then I should know you loved me. Oh! if she only
knew it—she has her revenge for all your bitter words. You are lashed
to her chariot-wheels, Arthur. You do _not_ hate her; on the contrary,
you still long to see her face; it is still your secret and most
cherished hope that you will meet her again either in this or another
world. You love her as much as ever. If she were dead, you could bear
it; but the sharpest sting of your suffering lies in the humiliating
sense that you are forced to worship a god you know to be false, and to
give your own pure love to a woman whom you see debased.”
He put his hands to his face and groaned aloud.
“You are right,” he said. “I would rather have known her dead than know
her as she is. But there is no reason why I should bore you with all
this.”
“Arthur, you are nothing if not considerate, and I do not pretend that
this is a very pleasant conversation for me; but I began it, so I
suppose I must endure to see you groaning for another woman. You say,”
she went on, with a sudden flash of passion, “that you should like to
see her dead. I say that I should like to kill her, for she has struck
me a double blow—she has injured you whom I love, and she has beggared
me of your affection. Oh! Arthur,” she continued, changing her voice
and throwing a caressing arm about his neck, “have you no heart left to
give _me?_ is there no lingering spark that _I_ can cherish and blow to
flame? I will never treat you so, dear. Learn to love me, and I will
marry you and make you happy, make you forget this faithless woman with
the angel face. I will——” here her voice broke down in sobs, and in the
starlight the great tears glistened upon her coral-tinted face like
dew-drops on a pomegranate’s blushing rind.
“There, there, dear, I will try to forget; don’t cry,” and he touched
her on the forehead with his lips.
She stopped, and then said, with just the faintest tinge of bitterness
in her voice: “If it had been Angela who cried, you would not be so
cold, you would have kissed away her tears.”
Who can say what hidden chord of feeling those words touched, or what
memories they awoke? but their effect upon Arthur was striking. He
sprang up upon the deck, his eyes blazing, and his face white with
anger.
“How often,” he said, “must I forbid you to mention the name of that
woman to me? Do you take a pleasure in torturing me? Curse her, may she
eat out her empty heart in solitude, and find no living thing to
comfort her! May she suffer as she makes me suffer, till her life
becomes a hell——”
“Be quiet, Arthur, it is shameful to say such things.”
He stopped, and after the sharp ring of his voice, that echoed like the
cry wrung from a person in intense pain, the loneliness and quiet of
the night were very deep. And then an answer came to his mad, unmanly
imprecations. For suddenly the air round them was filled with the sound
of his own name uttered in such wild, despairing accents as, once
heard, were not likely to be forgotten, accents which seemed to be
around them and over them, and heard in their own brains, and yet to
come travelling from immeasurable distances across the waste of waters.
“_Arthur! Arthur!_”
The sound that had sprung from nothing died away into nothingness
again, and the moonlight glanced, and the waters heaved, and gave no
sign of the place of its birth. It had come and gone, awful,
untraceable, and in the place of its solemnity reigned silence
absolute.
They looked at each other with scared eyes.
“_As I am a living man that voice was Angela’s!_”
This was all he said.