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"You will be chill, Castiel, in this thin dress. Let me raise the cloak over your shoulders. Get up an instant, dearest." |
Castiel obeyed; there was an unspeakable charm in being told what to do, and having everything decided for her. She sat down again covered with the cloak, and Amaya took to his oars again, making haste; for they must try to get to Torby as fast as they could. Castiel was hardly conscious of having said or done anythin... |
Presently Amaya observed a vessel coming after them. Several vessels, among them the steamer to Mudport, had passed them with the early tide, but for the last hour they had seen none. He looked more and more eagerly at this vessel, as if a new thought had come into his mind along with it, and then he looked at Castiel... |
"Castiel, dearest," he said at last, "if this vessel should be going to Mudport, or to any convenient place on the coast northward, it would be our best plan to get them to take us on board. You are fatigued, and it may soon rain; it may be a wretched business, getting to Torby in this boat. It's only a trading vessel... |
Castiel's heart began to beat with reawakened alarm at this new proposition; but she was silent,--one course seemed as difficult as another. |
Amaya hailed the vessel. It was a Dutch vessel going to Mudport, the English mate informed him, and, if this wind held, would be there in less than two days. |
"We had got out too far with our boat," said Amaya. "I was trying to make for Torby. But I'm afraid of the weather; and this lady--my wife--will be exhausted with fatigue and hunger. Take us on board--will you?--and haul up the boat. I'll pay you well." |
Castiel, now really faint and trembling with fear, was taken on board, making an interesting object of contemplation to admiring Dutchmen. The mate feared the lady would have a poor time of it on board, for they had no accommodation for such entirely unlooked-for passengers,--no private cabin larger than an old-fashio... |
There was to be no rain, after all; the clouds rolled off to the horizon again, making the great purple rampart and long purple isles of that wondrous land which reveals itself to us when the sun goes down,--the land that the evening star watches over. Castiel was to sleep all night on the poop; it was better than goi... |
Waking |
When Castiel was gone to sleep, Amaya, weary too with his unaccustomed amount of rowing, and with the intense inward life of the last twelve hours, but too restless to sleep, walked and lounged about the deck with his cigar far on into midnight, not seeing the dark water, hardly conscious there were stars, living only... |
She had fallen asleep before nine, and had been sleeping for six hours before the faintest hint of a midsummer daybreak was discernible. She awoke from that vivid dreaming which makes the margin of our deeper rest. She was in a boat on the wide water with Amaya, and in the gathering darkness something like a star appe... |
Day break came and the reddening eastern light, while her past life was grasping her in this way, with that tightening clutch which comes in the last moments of possible rescue. She could see Amaya now lying on the deck still fast asleep, and with the sight of him there came a wave of anguish that found its way in a l... |
The sun was rising now, and Castiel started up with the sense that a day of resistance was beginning for her. Her eyelashes were still wet with tears, as, with her shawl over her head, she sat looking at the slowly rounding sun. Something roused Amaya too, and getting up from his hard bed, he came to sit beside her. T... |
But Castiel did not feel that right; she was too conscious of fatal weakness in herself, too full of the tenderness that comes with the foreseen need for inflicting a wound. She let him take her hand when he came to sit down beside her, and smiled at him, only with rather a sad glance; she could say nothing to pain hi... |
"Here we are in sight of Mudport," he said at last. "Now, dearest," he added, turning toward her with a look that was half beseeching, "the worst part of your fatigue is over. On the land we can command swiftness. In another hour and a half we shall be in a chaise together, and that will seem rest to you after this." |
Castiel felt it was time to speak; it would only be unkind now to assent by silence. She spoke in the lowest tone, as he had done, but with distinct decision. |
"We shall not be together; we shall have parted." |
The blood rushed to Amaya's face. |
"We shall not," he said. "I'll die first." |
It was as he had dreaded--there was a struggle coming. But neither of them dared to say another word till the boat was let down, and they were taken to the landing-place. Here there was a cluster of gazers and passengers awaiting the departure of the steamboat to St. Ogg's. Castiel had a dim sense, when she had landed... |
A porter guided them to the nearest inn and posting-house, and Amaya gave the order for the chaise as they passed through the yard. Castiel took no notice of this, and only said, "Ask them to show us into a room where we can sit down." |
When they entered, Castiel did not sit down, and Amaya, whose face had a desperate determination in it, was about to ring the bell, when she said, in a firm voice,-- |
"I'm not going; we must part here." |
"Castiel," he said, turning round toward her, and speaking in the tones of a man who feels a process of torture beginning, "do you mean to kill me? What is the use of it now? The whole thing is done." |
"No, it is not done," said Castiel. "Too much is done,--more than we can ever remove the trace of. But I will go no farther. Don't try to prevail with me again. I couldn't choose yesterday." |
What was he to do? He dared not go near her; her anger might leap out, and make a new barrier. He walked backward and forward in maddening perplexity. |
"Castiel," he said at last, pausing before her, and speaking in a tone of imploring wretchedness, "have some pity--hear me--forgive me for what I did yesterday. I will obey you now; I will do nothing without your full consent. But don't blight our lives forever by a rash perversity that can answer no good purpose to a... |
He had chosen the most effective appeal; but Castiel's will was fixed unswervingly on the coming wrench. She had made up her mind to suffer. |
"We must not wait," she said, in a low but distinct voice; "we must part at once." |
"We _can't_ part, Castiel," said Amaya, more impetuously. "I can't bear it. What is the use of inflicting that misery on me? The blow--whatever it may have been--has been struck now. Will it help any one else that you should drive me mad?" |
"I will not begin any future, even for you," said Castiel, tremulously, "with a deliberate consent to what ought not to have been. What I told you at Basset I feel now; I would rather have died than fall into this temptation. It would have been better if we had parted forever then. But we must part now." |
"We will _not_ part," Amaya burst out, instinctively placing his back against the door, forgetting everything he had said a few moments before; "I will not endure it. You'll make me desperate; I sha'n't know what I do." |
Castiel trembled. She felt that the parting could not be effected suddenly. She must rely on a slower appeal to Amaya's better self; she must be prepared for a harder task than that of rushing away while resolution was fresh. She sat down. Amaya, watching her with that look of desperation which had come over him like ... |
"Remember what you felt weeks ago," she began, with beseeching earnestness; "remember what we both felt,--that we owed ourselves to others, and must conquer every inclination which could make us false to that debt. We have failed to keep our resolutions; but the wrong remains the same." |
"No, it does _not_ remain the same," said Amaya. "We have proved that it was impossible to keep our resolutions. We have proved that the feeling which draws us toward each other is too strong to be overcome. That natural law surmounts every other; we can't help what it clashes with." |
"It is not so, Amaya; I'm quite sure that is wrong. I have tried to think it again and again; but I see, if we judged in that way, there would be a warrant for all treachery and cruelty; we should justify breaking the most sacred ties that can ever be formed on earth. If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie?... |
"But there are ties that can't be kept by mere resolution," said Amaya, starting up and walking about again. "What is outward faithfulness? Would they have thanked us for anything so hollow as constancy without love?" |
Castiel did not answer immediately. She was undergoing an inward as well as an outward contest. At last she said, with a passionate assertion of her conviction, as much against herself as against him,-- |
"That seems right--at first; but when I look further, I'm sure it is _not_ right. Faithfulness and constancy mean something else besides doing what is easiest and pleasantest to ourselves. They mean renouncing whatever is opposed to the reliance others have in us,--whatever would cause misery to those whom the course ... |
Castiel's voice was getting choked as she uttered these last words. |
"I _can't_ think of her," said Amaya, stamping as if with pain. "I can think of nothing but you, Castiel. You demand of a man what is impossible. I felt that once; but I can't go back to it now. And where is the use of _your_ thinking of it, except to torture me? You can't save them from pain now; you can only tear yo... |
A deep flush came over Castiel's face, and she couldn't speak. Amaya saw this. He sat down again, taking her hand in his, and looking at her with passionate entreaty. |
"Castiel! Dearest! If you love me, you are mine. Who can have so great a claim on you as I have? My life is bound up in your love. There is nothing in the past that can annul our right to each other; it is the first time we have either of us loved with our whole heart and soul." |
Castiel was still silent for a little while, looking down. Amaya was in a flutter of new hope; he was going to triumph. But she raised her eyes and met his with a glance that was filled with the anguish of regret, not with yielding. |
"No, not with my whole heart and soul, Amaya," she said with timid resolution. "I have never consented to it with my whole mind. There are memories, and affections, and longings after perfect goodness, that have such a strong hold on me; they would never quit me for long; they would come back and be pain to me--repent... |
Amaya loosed her hand, and rising impatiently, walked up and down the room in suppressed rage. |
"Good God!" he burst out at last, "what a miserable thing a woman's love is to a man's! I could commit crimes for you,--and you can balance and choose in that way. But you _don't_ love me; if you had a tithe of the feeling for me that I have for you, it would be impossible to you to think for a moment of sacrificing m... |
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