He shook the invalid’s hand, patted Victoria upon her bowed head as she still knelt beside the bed, and left the room.
No word was spoken between the two who were so near together, yet who felt themselves being separated by a hand powerful, but tempered with a divine love and compassion most soothing to their bleeding hearts.
At last Andrew raised Victoria’s head and looked into the sad depths of her tearful eyes. Then gathering her to his breast with all his feeble strength, he placed his lips to her’s in a long caress which she felt to be one of renunciation for all time.
BOOK THE THIRD.
CHAPTER I.
FIVE YEARS AFTER.
At the most northern apex of Great Britain there is a quaint village called Dunscansby Head. The turbulent waters of Pentland Firth wash the beach, along which are scattered a few simple huts inhabited principally by fishermen’s families. No more wild or lonely spot could well be imagined. It seems almost shut off from the entire world, and a place which none but those who wished to escape from all society would have chosen. One would be as completely hidden as though buried forever, and here Victoria had brought Roger accompanied by Adam, and a stout Scotch woman whom she had picked up as she passed through Scotland.
Why Victoria had chosen this particular spot she could not have explained if she had been questioned. When it had been decided that she should take Roger away—that she must separate from Andrew perhaps for all time—she had a desire to seek some place far removed from her home—and those who were so dear to her—a place where she might live unknown, and where nobody knew her. The doctor had said that a sea-voyage might be beneficial to Roger. Victoria grasped at the suggestion with eagerness. With the ocean between her and her love, she might find peace, so hurriedly gathering a few necessary articles together, she set out for New York, bound upon a journey to where she knew not. The doctor accompanied her at Andrew’s urgent request. The idea of the tenderly-nurtured woman—whose every wish had been gratified almost before it was spoken—going out into the world with an imbecile, and a tongueless servant as her only companions, was gall and wormwood to the man who knew that his sin was the cause of her banishment. As his bodily health improved his mind became stronger and more active, and he would sit by the window looking out over his fair lands—fair no longer to him because the one who had made them enjoyable was about to leave them, and perhaps forever. If Victoria entered the room his eyes followed her about hungrily. Often when she passed near him he would secretly catch her gown and press it to his lips. If she turned suddenly toward him as if about to speak, she only saw him stolidly gazing out the window, seemingly unconscious of her presence.
This, too, was a bitter, trying time for her. Another burden had been laid upon her already overtaxed shoulders. The doctor objected to little Mary accompanying her. Much as she rebelled at the thought of parting with her child, she acknowledged the doctor’s superior wisdom in ordering Mary’s detention. The child was old beyond her years, her memory was wonderfully retentive. If Victoria persisted in taking her she must expect to be asked very embarrassing questions as the child grew. Now, if left behind, and the subject never referred to, the old man she had seen in the gabled room would soon fade from her memory. Not so if she was brought into daily contact with him as she must necessarily be if she accompanied Victoria.
Another thing the doctor argued—and here he showed fine diplomacy—was Andrew’s loneliness if bereft of all his loved ones. The doctor pictured the long winter days when Andrew would see no cheering faces. The still longer nights when his chamber would be empty, and no restless little figure tumbling in its crib, or a sweet, shrill voice shouting for a drink of water. Victoria could not withstand this last plea. The thought of brightening Andrew’s loneliness by sacrificing her own pleasure tempered her keen anguish at leaving this dear bone of her bone, and flesh of her flesh, and so one day when Andrew had come in from his first short walk, she said with a smile in which there was no shadow of the fierce pain at her heart: “I am going to leave our sunbeam with you, Andrew. She is such a chatterbox, and will enliven the long winter days, and the little crib beside your bed will not be empty when you waken in the night.”