CHAPTER XXV.ANOTHER PARTING.
I dropped the paper, and lay staring at the wall, with aching eyeballs, till long past dawn. What my thoughts were, need not be told. They were hardly thoughts; they were only pangs of remorse.
Then, suddenly, I rose, dressed in all haste, saved my paper from the leafy litter of the night, and went out to find the girl.
I met her, almost on the threshold, fresh from her morning dip in the sea; and, without greeting, put the paper in her hand—‘Victoria, what must I do?’
I watched her face as she read, and saw all its glow of youth and health die suddenly to an ashen cast. There was something so awful in the change that, without another word, I walked away.
When I returned to the house, the Ancientand the Skipper were alone, with the remains of their breakfast before them. Victoria, to all appearance, had served the meal as conscientiously as though nothing had happened. The old man pressed me to eat, and I broke bread.
‘No one seems to have any appetite this morning but you and me, Captain,’ he said. ‘I wonder what’s the matter with my girl?’
There was dead silence. I would not answer, and the Captain could not. He seemed to have an instinctive aversion to situations of that sort, and he began to resume the conversation which my entrance had interrupted.
‘Yes, sir, off to-morrow morning; repairs or no repairs. Time’s up. I’ve betted a hat on this voyage. It’s a go-as-you-please match against time, for the circumnavigation of the globe. Don’t try to keep me; I shall lose my hat!’
Victoria entered. If the red had not come back to her cheek, the sickening white had left. She seemed quite calm.
‘Our guest is going away to-morrow, girl,said the old man. ‘Tell him how we hate to say good-bye.’
‘Both our guests are going away, my father,’ was Victoria’s reply.
Her stern serenity seemed to preclude debate. I could only look at her. The old man, speechless, too, for the moment, glanced from one to the other of us. Even the Captain seemed roused to a perception of something out of the common.
‘Both going away,’ repeated the Ancient, after a pause. ‘Surely you, sir——’
‘My father,’ said Victoria gently, ‘I know what I am saying; and our friend knows it too. He must go. Let us try to thank God that we have kept him so long.’
‘What’s amiss?’ inquired the old man. ‘What have we done? I’ve always wanted him to think that he is master here.’
‘Dearest friend!’ I said, taking his honest hand—I could say no more.
‘This is it, my father,’ said the girl, coming to where we sat, and kissing the old man. ‘Our friend’s life is not our life. He has his own people, and his people call him. They have been calling to him ever since he came tous, and last night their voice reached him half way round the world. The time has come for another parting, that is all. Sooner or later, all things end that way with us. Our little Island is the house of parting, and God has made us to live alone.’
‘If I only knew what we had done amiss!’ repeated the foolish old man.
‘Oh, father, won’t you try to understand?’ she said, kissing him tenderly, again. ‘See what is written here,’ and she gave him the paper. ‘But you cannot know all it means. I will tell you, if only our friends will leave us together for a little while.’
We went out. The Captain, feeling the situation beyond him, had fallen into a watchful silence. I satisfied his natural curiosity in a few words, as soon as we were outside. I was glad of that relief of speech, such as it was. There was no relief possible, in utterance, for my deeper thoughts. I wanted something to rouse me from what seemed a creeping torpor of death.
It came, as we made our way through the settlement. The child that had been the herald of my coming was now the herald ofmy going. She was Victoria’s favourite, and she had perhaps received a hint when the girl’s resolution was formed. At any rate, the sprite was running from house to house, as briskly as on the day of that first message:—‘Mother, mother! here’s a lord.’ It was that scene again with a difference—the people trooping out of their cottages, the women crying, the men pressing forward to wring my hand, and all asking questions at once in the third person, though they seemed to be addressed to me; ‘Why is he going? What has happened? How did he get the message? Oh, his poor mother! Will she ever forgive us? Thirteen thousand miles away! Make him promise to come back. What will Victoria do?’ As they talked, others could be seen running towards us from the distant fields, leaving their work as they got wind of the dire report. ‘Business was suspended’ for the day.
Then the Ancient left his house, and joined the group. He held up his hand, and they gathered about him in full plebiscitary meeting of the settlement. ‘Friends,’ he said, ‘we are going to lose a brother. I hoped tokeep him for ever, but Victoria says he must go. I hoped he would forget the way back, and the home he left behind; but something has come to remind him of it. Even now I do not well know what it is, but something has come. The women, I think, will understand it better than we do. I hoped he would stay with us, and be our guide and teacher, and let me take my rest. We want a helper to show us how they do things out in the great world. Some say we are happier without it—who can tell? We are as children that have never known a mother’s knee. He could have shown us the way. I must not ask him to stay: Victoria says he ought to go, and Victoria knows’ (voices, ‘Yes, Victoria knows’). ‘If I might ask him, I would say, “Take all you want here—all it is in our power to give—my place, my bit of land——”’
‘Give him the long field under the Ridge!’ cried the voices again; ‘Build a house for him! Make him magistrate next year! Have two magistrates!’
All turned towards me. I shook my head. The children clustered about me, crying, and soon, with their treble, was mingleda deeper note of woe. How shall words paint the misery of that scene? As I had felt before, so I felt now—a rage of pity for the sorrow that seems to be our lot in life.
A word or act of power and control was wanting; and it came. Victoria, tearless, and with the set look on her face that I had caught for an instant on the day she saved my life at the Cave, stepped into our midst, and drew the old man aside. After that, not a word was spoken, and the assembly seemed to melt away.
Victoria had become the leader of the settlement; no one seemed to question her commands. They were not commands so much as imperious wishes which all divined. It was understood that the Captain was to give me passage to Europe; he was never asked to do it. Still less, was I asked if I would take the passage. Victoria pushed forward my departure with an energy, controlling and controlled, worthy of a crisis of battle. She stood on the beach while the whale boat laboured to and fro betwixt ship and shore to complete our exchange of stores with the American. The presents of the Islanders tome made the better part of an entire load. I had brought nothing to the Island but the clothes in which I stood upright, and a roll of paper money which the Ancient had always refused to diminish by the substance of a single note. The money had not been useless, for all that. It had enabled me to make some purchases, to repair my outfit, on the coming of the Queen’s ship, and now it procured from the crew of the trader a few presents for my generous hosts.
The excitement of these preparations helped to suspend the anguish of parting. But, at nightfall, this returned with cruel force, when the people gathered on the moonlit green, to sing me their simple songs of farewell. It was the whole settlement, save one: Victoria was not to be found. They came with cheerful faces: the sorrow of the morning, I knew, would be renewed in due season, but their natures lived ever in the moment as it passed. The children prattled and played; and, in the murmur of talk among their elders, there was no note of woe. Under the shining sun, it might have been a scene of joy; and, if the moonlight touched it into sadness, thiswas but a spiritual association of ideas. They sang all that they thought would please me, all that I had ever liked—the joyous songs, of course, in preference. All were sad songs to me. At last, with slow and measured cadence, their perfect voices rising in the perfect night, they began the one I had always loved most. It was a song of parting and of death, with the burden, ‘When I am gone—when I am gone.’
Before the second stanza was over, I had stolen from my place in the shadow, with such a passion of sorrow stirring to the very depths of my being, as I had never known in all my life.