Victoria withdrew into the shade of the room.
The next morning was the last morning; yet who would have guessed it? It began just as the others had begun, with early wanderings on the breezy hills, with laughter, with the giving and taking of tokens. It went on like the other mornings, only now the ship had landed the last of our simple stores, and her boat was waiting to take her people off. She was to fire a Royal Salute, as she left us, by particular request, and to hoist the Royal Standard, and man the yards. The girls seemed merrier than ever at the prospect of it. The Captain, at the head of his officers, stood at the landing-stage; the Ancient faced him, with his smiling subjects in the rear. There was but one more ceremony, and it was accomplished when the two grasped hands, as the boat, now freighted with our departing guests, with one strong shove, left the shores of the Island.
Then, for a truth, the womankind seemed to feel that it was parting, and a cry went up from them as blood-curdling as a cry of ‘Murder!’ heard in the night. It was the fatal gift of intensity in extremes common to these southern natures. The place of gladness was, in a moment, turned into the place of grief; they threw themselves on the ground, and bit their dishevelled hair; they stretched supplicating hands towards the boat. It was a tropic storm of woe. Never had I seen such utter abandonment of the very hope of hope. It made one sick to think of the pain there is in the world—the pain that clings like a shadow to every joy, and that sets its seal on every decisive fact of being, from birth to death, on the going out, equally with the coming in, as though to forbid all false comfort in the belief of mere alternation. For alternation there is not; with a wail begins the dismal account of human experience, and with a groan it ends, whatever may come between. Poor wretches! bloated out of all beauty with the water of their tears, I could have killed them as they grovelled there, for very rage of pity. Anything to stop these dreary sequences of sorrow. The three days of beatitude are past; and, for the promise of all the coming years, listen to the Ancient as he turns away:
‘Never again with thee, Robin!
Never again by the light of the moon.’
CHAPTER XIII.
A MISSION.
A deep melancholy, an extreme lassitude follow our great bereavement. ’Tis as though Death had passed over us, and his lingering shadow still blighted the sunlight of the Isle. We turned to work again, but, at first, only like automaton figures. There is the action of labour, but little effect. We eat and drink in much the same mechanical way. A bird’s-eye view of us would suggest something in waxwork on a grand scale. Our talk is depressing as a demonstration on the phonograph, the topics indifferent, the tones a mere resurrection of the voice. No one speaks of the ship that is dead and gone.
Victoria, whose personal share in the common sorrow can be but small, seems to grieve as much as any of us. I am not allowed to be with her now—rather I see she does not want me, and I keep away. When she starts for the Peak, I start for the Watcher’s Cave, and we pine on opposite heights. Her simple household duties done, she will disappear for the whole day. I pass a good deal of time in the Ancient’s library, reading yellow British classics, out of the old scuttled ship. They are interleaved with book-marks, each a delicate feminine finger beckoning to a place of refreshment and rest. It is a question of time and season, and perhaps Victoria herself will tell me when to speak.
But I tire of waiting at last, the sooner because, till now, she has shared all her thoughts with me; and, one day, I track her to a silent shelter of woods south of the ridge. She lies in the high grass, picking a flower to pieces, but otherwise quite still.
‘Victoria.’