Volume Two—Chapter Eleven.
“Have you no Secret Enemy?”
“Good-bye!”
Who among us has not uttered the mournful word? Not merely in airy, hollow fashion, when passing out of a drawing-room door, but in dire sadness, as we look our last upon the face from which we are about to be divided by time or distance—and, it may be, upon which there is small chance of our ever looking again in life? The train rolls out of the station; the plank is hurriedly thrown back on to the thronged quay, and, as the great ship glides from her moorings handkerchiefs wave and voices no longer audible to each other still continue to articulate, it may be in accents of heartsick pain, or through a forced and broken smile, or even in tones of genuine cheerfulness, the saddest of all words—“Good-bye.”
The fatal Monday morning has come at last; and there, in the grey dawn, Lilian stands bidding farewell to her lover. A light is burning in the sitting-room, and without it is almost dark, for the morning is lowering and cloudy. Now and then a puff of warm wind, which seems to herald rain, sighs mournfully through the trees, whirling up the dust in little eddies along the empty street—and they two are alone, for none of the household are astir, which neither regrets. And thus they stand, looking into each other’s eyes and both hesitating to frame the word—“Good-bye.”
The conditions of parting are unequal, it is true. To the man, going forth on this dark, desolate morning, the time of separation will be abundantly occupied—downright hard, honest soldiering—no mere child’s play, and if during those long months there is hardship and privation, there is also the excitement of peril and the stir of strife, the rough sociality of camp, and the healthful glow and energy of life in the open. To the woman it means a period of weary and inactive waiting; of days unbrightened by the strong, tender presence she has learnt to love so dearly; of nights, wakeful and self-tormenting, when the overwrought brain will conjure up visions of deadly peril, of the flashing spears and wild war-cry of the savage foe, of the wasting form of fell disease following on wet and exposure, of the swift lightning and the raging of flooded rivers, and every contingency probable and improbable, attendant upon campaigning in a barbarous land.
“Wherever you are, and whatever you do, you will take care of yourself,” she is saying. “You will not run any unnecessary risks, even for other people. Your life belongs to me now, love.”
“It does,” he answers, softly and tenderly. “Keep up a good heart, my sweet. Don’t go imagining all sorts of horrors while I am away, for, remember, that after these years I was not sent back to you to be taken away again. Mine is a charmed life—never fear.”