Angela went home very thoughtful. The next three days she spent in
writing. First, she wrote a clear and methodical account of all the
events that had happened since Arthur’s first departure, more than a
year ago, and attached to it copies of the various documents that had
passed between herself and George, including one of the undertaking
that her husband had signed before the marriage. This account was in
the form of a statement, which she signed, and, taking it to Mr.
Fraser, read it to him, and got him to sign it too. It took her two
whole days to write, and, when it was done, she labelled it “to be read
first.” On the third day she wrote the following letter to go with the
statement:
“For the first time in my life, Arthur, I take up my pen to write to
you, and in truth the difficulty of the task before me, as well as my
own want of skill, tends to bewilder me, and, though I have much upon
my mind to say, I scarcely know if it will reach you—if, indeed, this
letter is ever destined to lie open in your hands—in an intelligible
form.
“The statement that I enclose, however, will—in case you do not already
know them—tell you all the details of what has happened since you left
me more than a year ago. From it you will learn how cruelly I was
deceived into marrying George Caresfoot, believing you dead. Oh,
through all eternity, never shall I forget that fearful night, nor
cease to thank God for my merciful escape from the fiend whom I had
married. And then came the morning, and brought you—the dead—alive
before my eyes. And whilst I stood in the first tumult of my amaze—
forgetful of everything but that it was you, my own, my beloved Arthur,
no spirit, but you in flesh and blood—whilst I yet stood thus, stricken
to silence by the shock of an unutterable joy—you broke upon me with
those dreadful words, so that I choked, feeling how just they must seem
to you, and could not answer.
“And yet it sometimes fills me with wonder and indignation to think of
them; wonder that you could believe me so mad as to throw away the love
of my life, and indignation that you could deem me so lost as to
dishonour it. They drove me mad, those words, and from that moment
forward I remember nothing but a chaos of the mind heaving endlessly
like the sea. But all this has passed, and I am thankful to say that I
am quite well again now.
“Still I should not have written to you, Arthur; I did not even know
where you were, and I never thought of recovering you. After what has
passed, I looked upon you as altogether lost to me for this world. But
a few days ago I went at her own request to see Lady Bellamy. All she
said to me I will not now repeat, lest I should render this letter too
wearisome to read, though a great deal of it was strange enough to be
well worth repetition. In the upshot, however, she said that I had
better write to you, and told me where to write. And so I write to you,
dear. There was also another thing that she told me of sad import for
myself, but which I must not shrink to face. She said that there lived
at Madeira, where you are, a lady who is in love with you, and is
herself both beautiful and wealthy, to whom you would have gone for
comfort in your trouble, and in all probability have married.
“Now, Arthur, I do not know if this is the case, but, if so, I hasten
to say that I do not blame you. You smarted under what must have seemed
to you an intolerable wrong, and you went for consolation to her who
had it to offer. In a man that is perhaps natural, though it is not a
woman’s way. If it be so, I say from my heart, be as happy as you can.
But remember what I told you long ago, and do not fall into any
delusions on the matter; do not imagine because circumstances have
shaped themselves thus, therefore I am to be put out of your mind and
forgotten, for this is not so. I cannot be forgotten, though for a
while I may be justly discarded; it is possible that for this world you
have passed out of my reach, but in the next I shall claim you as my
own.
“Yes, Arthur, I have made up my mind to lose you for this life as a
fitting reward for my folly. But do not think that I do so without a
pang, for, believe me, since my mind emerged stronger and clearer from
the storms through which it has passed, bringing back to me the full
life and strength of my womanhood, I have longed for you with an ever-
increasing longing. I am not ashamed to own that I would give worlds to
feel your arms about me and your kiss upon my lips. Why should I be? Am
I not yours, body and soul?
“But, dear, it has been given to me, perhaps as a compensation for all
I have undergone and that is still left for me to undergo, to grasp a
more enduring end than that of earthly ecstasy: for I can look forward
with a confident assurance to the day when we shall embrace upon the
threshold of the Infinite. Do not call this foolish imagination, or
call it imagination, if you will—for what is imagination? Is it not the
connecting link between us and our souls, and recalling memories of our
home. Imagination, what would our higher life be without it? It is what
the mind is to the body, it is the soul’s _thought_.
“So in my imagination—since I know no better term—I foresee that
heavenly hour, and I am not jealous for the earthly moment. Nor,
indeed, have I altogether lost you, for at times, in the stillness of
the night, when the earthly part is plunged in sleep and my spirit is
released from the thraldom of the senses, it, at indefinite periods,
has the power to summon your beloved form to its presence, and in this
communion Nature vindicates her faithfulness. Thus, through the long
night rest comes upon me with your presence.
“And at last there will come a greater rest; at last—having lived
misunderstood—we shall die, alone, and then the real life or lives will
begin. It is not always night, for the Dawn is set beyond the night,
and through the gates of Dawn we shall journey to the day. It is not
always night; even in the womb of darkness throbs the promise of the
morning. I often wonder, Arthur, how and what this change will be.
Shall we be even as we are, but still, through unnumbered ages, growing
slowly on to the Divine, or, casting off the very semblance of
mortality, shall we rise at one wide sweep to the pinnacle of fulfilled
time, there to learn the purposes and mark the measure of all Being.
“How can I know? But this I believe, that whatever the change, however
wide and deep the darkness which stretches between what is and what is
not yet, we cannot lose ourselves therein. Identity will still be ours,
and memory, the Janus-headed, will still pursue us, calling to our
minds the enacted evil and that good which, having been, must always
be. For we are immortal, and though we put off the mortal dress —yes,
though our forms become as variable as the clouds, and assume
proportions of which we cannot dream—yet shall memory companion us and
identity remain. For we are each fashioned apart for ever, and built
about with such an iron wall of individual life that all the force of
time and change cannot so much as shake it. And while I am myself, and
yet in any shape endure, of this be certain—the love that is a part of
me will endure also. Oh, herein is set my hope—nay, not my hope, for
hope upon the tongue whispers doubt within the heart, but the most
fixed unchanging star of all my heaven. It is not always night, for the
Dawn is set beyond the night; and oh, my heart’s beloved, at daybreak
we shall meet again!
“Oh! Arthur, even now I long for the purer air and flashing sympathies
of that vast Hereafter, when the strong sense of knowledge shall
scarcely find a limit ere it overleaps it; when visible power shall
radiate from our being, and living on together through countless
Existences, Periods, and Spheres, we shall progress from majesty to
ever-growing majesty! Oh, for the day when you and I, messengers from
the Seat of Power, shall sail high above these darkling worlds, and,
seeing into each other’s souls, shall learn what love’s communion is!
“Do not think me foolish, dear, for writing to you thus. I do not wish
to make you the victim of an outburst of thought that you may think
hysterical. But perhaps I may never be able to write to you again in
this way; your wife, if you are married, may be jealous, or other
things may occur to prevent it. I feel it, therefore, necessary to tell
you my inmost thoughts now whilst I can, so that you may always
remember them during the long coming years, and especially when you
draw near to the end of the journey. I hope, dearest Arthur, that
nothing will ever make you forget them, and also that, for the sake of
the pure love you will for ever bear me, you will always live up to
your noblest and your best, for in this way our meeting will be made
more perfect.
“Of course it is possible that you may still be free, and, after you
know that I am not quite so much to blame as you may have thought,
still willing to give your name to me. It is a blessed hope, but I
scarcely dare to dwell upon it.
“The other day I was reading a book Mr. Fraser lent me, which took my
fancy very much, it was so full of contradictions. The unexpected
always happened in it, and there was both grief and laughter in its
pages. It did not end quite well or quite badly, or, rather it had _no_
end, and deep down underneath the plotless story, only peeping up now
and again when the actors were troubled, there ran a vein of real
sorrow and sad, unchanging love. There was a hero in this odd book
which was so like life—who, by the way, was no hero at all, but a
curious, restless creature who seemed to have missed his mark in life,
and went along looking for old truths and new ideas with his eyes so
fixed upon the stars that he was always stumbling over the pebbles in
his path, and thinking that they were rocks. He was a sensitive man,
too, and as weak as he was sensitive, and often fell into pitfalls and
did what he should not, and yet, for all that, he had a quaint and
gentle mind, and there was something to like in him—at least, so
thought the women in that book. There was a heroine, too, who was all
that a heroine should be, very sweet and very beautiful, and she really
had a heart, only she would not let it beat. And of course the hero and
heroine loved each other: of course, too, they both behaved badly, and
things went wrong, or there would have been no book.
“But I tell you this story because once, in a rather touching scene,
this hero who made such a mess of things set forth one of the ideas
that he had found, and thought new, but which was really so very old.
He told the heroine that he had read in the stars that happiness has
only one key, and that its name is ‘Love,’ that, amidst all the
mutabilities and disillusions of our life, the pure love of a man and
woman alone stands firm and beautiful, alone defies change and
disappointment; that it is the heaven-sent salve for all our troubles,
the remedy for our mistakes, the magic glass reflecting only what is
true and good. But in the end her facts overcame his theories, and he
might have spared himself the trouble of telling. And, for all his
star-gazing, this hero had no real philosophy, but in his grief and
unresting pain went and threw himself into the biggest pitfalls that he
could find, and would have perished there, had not a good angel come
and dragged him out again and brushed the mud off his clothes, and,
taking him by the hand, led him along a safer path. And so for awhile
he drops out of the story, which says that, when he is not thinking of
the lost heroine, he is perhaps happier than he deserves to be.
“Now, Arthur, I think that this foolish hero was right, and the
sensible heroine he worshipped so blindly, wrong.
“If you are still unmarried, and still care to put his theories to the
test, I believe that we also can make as beautiful a thing of our lives
as he thought that he and his heroine could, and, ourselves supremely
happy in each other’s perfect love, may perhaps be able to add to the
happiness of some of our fellow-travellers. That is, I think, as noble
an end as a a man and woman can set before themselves.
“But if, on the other hand, you are tied to this other woman who loves
you by ties that cannot be broken, or that honour will not let you
break; or if you are unforgiving, and no longer wish to marry me as I
wish to marry you, then till that bright hour of immortal hope—
farewell. Yes, Arthur, farewell till the gate of Time has closed for
us—till, in the presence of God our Father, I shall for ever call you
mine.
“Alas! I am so weak that my tears fall as I write the word. Perhaps I
may never speak or write to you again, so once more, my dearest, my
beloved, my earthly treasure and my heavenly hope, farewell. May the
blessing of God be as constantly around you as my thoughts, and may He
teach you that these are not foolish words, but rather the faint shadow
of an undying light!
“I send back the ring that was used to trick me with. Perhaps, whatever
happens, you will wear it for my sake. It is, you know, a symbol of
Eternity.
“Angela Caresfoot.”