The club of masks

by Allen Upward

Lightly, O lightly, broke upon me the knowledge that she loved me. What I had never hoped for had come to pass. I had been content to worship her in silence. Endymion might so have worshipped Artemis if he had been the first to see her. Bottom, the weaver, might so have worshipped Titania if the magic juice had touched his eyelids before hers. She had been as unapproachable in my eyes as any inhabitant of the moonlit world of sleep. It was with almost a pang, with a strange shrinking of the heart, that I first perceived that she was mortal like myself, and that I had awakened her. I seemed to have broken into a temple and profaned the shrine.

I do not recollect that we said anything. One day when we were walking side by side along a sunken lane that led to a little waterfall I stooped suddenly and kissed her.

From that day we were sweethearts as openly as any rustic pair. To her it was all as natural as the romances she had read, and she can never have had the least suspicion of the misgivings that had vexed my soul. She seemed surprised even when I touched on the social gulf that separated us. She owned sorrowfully that her father would never hear of such a match, but she evidently took it for granted that I should not heed his opposition. I was her knight, and it was for me to overcome every obstacle in the way. Her faith in me was perfect. All affection for her father had been crushed out of her in childhood. She had loved me more easily, and she loved me more passionately, because she had no one else to love.

And what were we to do? I was barely of age. I was not qualified; I had no means of support except a dwindling legacy that would be exhausted by the time I was able to earn my first fee. The knights of old seem never to have been troubled by such hindrances as these; the dragons they vanquished were creatures who could be subdued by strength of arm; they never had to ride into anything worse than an ogre’s castle or a wizard’s cave. The terrors of the bank parlour and the house-agent’s office were unknown to them; and they never had to face a baker or a butcher armed with his weekly bill.

I put off as long as I could the pain of confessing to Violet that these dragons in the way must take years to vanquish. And at first she hardly grasped what it would mean to her. The mere waiting, I could see, would cost her less than me. After all, courtship is the supreme time of womanhood. Then she is queen indeed, and marriage is for her dethronement. Her bridal is like the glorious pyre on which the Hindu widow once expired in religious ecstasy. It was not until she realized that I was going that Violet broke down.

There the burden was shifted to the other side. Delay is the suffering of man, separation the suffering of woman. I had my work to go back to; I had my friends and all the distractions of life in London. She had nothing before her but her remote and solitary prison.

We had fallen into the way of meeting most often in the deserted barn. Its situation assured us of a privacy more secure than that of the lanes and woods. No one could approach us without being seen, and no one ever did approach. No one could see through the openings—a bare two inches wide in the thick wall; and no one could overhear. A pile of bracken made our seat, and there we rested many a long summer afternoon, the battered door thrown wide to let us count the windings of the river far below, while we talked of all the coming years might bring.

So it was there we met on that last afternoon to say good-bye. We had put off till the last moment any consideration of what was to happen next. We had made no plans to meet again. I did not even know that Lord Ledbury had a house in London, to which Violet was taken at rare intervals, when it happened to be without a tenant, but always under strict guard and more for business than for pleasure. We had not even discussed any plans for correspondence, though it was evident that I could not write to her at her father’s house without everything coming out. It was understood between us that my very existence must be kept secret if it were possible. Beyond that we had not found courage to face the situation.

And now we had to face it at last, and it was too much for us to bear. It seemed to both of us like death. It was idle to think that we could part like that, uncertain if ever we should meet again. It was a waste of breath to pronounce the word good-bye when we were clinging to each other in the desperation of young life in travail with its destiny. I dare not try to recall that agony.... I stole across with the footstep of a felon and closed the battered door.

When I had slain my love I understood too late what I had done. Her anguish was a revelation to me of what her utter purity had been. We passed out from that brief frenzy into a strange world. The sun had fallen from our sky, and Joshua could not have called it back again. We were two spectres in each other’s sight. I did not ask her to forgive me—I could not forgive myself. Rather would I have begged her to reproach me. But no such thought was in her mind. Her whole feeling was one of horror at what she had destroyed in herself; and I was only hateful to her as the mirror in which she had seen her unknown self. She moved her lips to implore me never to let her see me again. She shuddered past me, and went down the hill with the stumbling gait of a wounded bird.