Chapter Thirty Two.
In the Valley of the Shadow.
“Olive, it is I who have brought you to your death!”
His face was ghastly with the horror of his self-reproach and desperation. The two were standing now, locked in each other’s embrace, beneath the cliff, watching the narrow strip of beach rapidly disappear as the fierce tide came pouring in. Nothing could be seen immediately above, for the rock beetled overhead as though about to topple upon them, but running out on each side of the bay rose a crescent of frowning wall. And from thence no succour need be expected, for its summit was lost in the gathering mist. The winter twilight was fast descending, the chill blast howled and shrieked over the heaving, storm-lashed main, and a chaos of driving, leaping billows, whose great leaden backs and white rearing crests rose hideous and spectral in the gloaming as they dashed the one upon the other in their tumultuous rush, flinging themselves high against the adamantine walls and falling back with a roar and a hiss. The grim coastline was enveloped in wreathe of white spray, and the surf-lashed base of the heights rang again as it repelled the onset of each watery monster, while in showers of milky foam the sea ran from the black, slippery rocks. A scene of wild grandeur, unparalleled in its tremendous loneliness—a terrible scene, even when viewed from a point of safety. What must it then have been to the two who stood there awaiting an inevitable death!
“It is I who have brought you to this!” She looked up at him and nestled more closely in his embrace. In the midst of her bodily fear—the natural fear of a weak woman suddenly brought face to face with a horrible death—she was able to smile. And it was a smile of unselfish reassurance.
“No, dearest. It is not your doing,” she said. “If it had not been for finding me here, you would have gone your way in safety. Roland—it is I who have destroyed you.”
“By heaven—no!” he broke in passionately. “I would sooner die with you than live without you. But nothing can get rid of the fact that it is owing to me that you are here at all. You, for whom I would have given five hundred lives—would have lost the salvation of a thousand souls to see in safety now. Oh, my darling—my heart’s sweet love—will not your God again take me at my word and work a miracle to save only you!” he added with a despairing, bitter cry, as he sank upon his knees at her feet, still clasping her with both his arms.
She bent her face down till it rested against his, and her soft, caressing hands were round his neck.
“Hush—my own!” she said. “Do not talk in that desperate way. A very little while, and we shall be united to part no more. We—you especially—have been terribly tried; now we are about to pass through the waters of death, but our sweet Saviour is very merciful. He will not part us again.”
Her calm courage and the solemn conviction of her tender tones seemed to breathe a halo of peace amid that jarring scene of storm and chaos. Their faces were wet with the showers of salt spray, and the girl’s soft hair, partially unfastened, was tossed rudely about by the cutting wind. The thunder of the surf upon the shore and the shrieking of the fierce gale drowned all other sound, yet in an interval in the turmoil, her voice could be heard fervently praying. She pleaded that if it was agreeable to the Divine Will they might be rescued from their imminent peril, but if not, and it was appointed to them now to pass through the awful waters of death, that grace might be given them both patiently to undergo whatever period of penance might be necessary to their purification, so that they might at last be united, never again to part, safe in the Heavenly Country. Then, with her head upon her lover’s shoulder, his arms around her, and her hands in his, it seemed to Olive Ingelow that the world was very far away, and she could await with perfect resignation the short but terrible struggle which should set them both free.