you will, you
must, blame me, and yet it is
for your sake and for that of my own honour that I
separate you from us. You have a right that I
should say more, hard as it is. My daughter,
whom you have known almost all her innocent life,
would, if you married her, bring, through those most
nearly and inseparably connected with her, a stain
and a blot upon your name; no honourable man can ever
make her his wife, and the best prayer that can be
made for her is, that she may remain as unconscious
of all earthly love as she is now of yours. We
are going away, not just yet, but very soon, to try
to lose ourselves in the world; very possibly an explanation
of much that I have not courage to tell you may soon
become so public that even in England you may hear
of it, and thank me for what I have written.”
The letter broke off abruptly, but there was a postscript
reminding him that no one, not even his father, knew
more, or, indeed, as much as he did, of her secret,
and bidding him not betray her; this postscript, however,
remained at first unnoticed: there was enough
in the letter itself to bewilder and stupefy its unfortunate
reader. He went over it again and again, trying,
trying to understand it; to make certain that there
was not some strange mistake, some other meaning in
it than that which first appeared. But no; it
was distinct enough, though the writing was strangely
unsteady, as if the writer’s hand had trembled
at the task. The task of doing what? Only
of destroying a hope; and hope is not life, nor even
youth, or strength, or sense, or capacity for work,
and yet when Maurice rose from his solitary breakfast-table,
and carried his letters away to his own room, although
he looked and moved, and even spoke to a passing servant
just as usual, he felt as if he had been suddenly
paralysed, and struck down from vigorous life into
the shadow of death. He sat in his room and tried
to think, but no thoughts came; only a perpetual reiteration
of the words, “You and Lucia must not meet again.”
Over and over, and over again, the same still incomprehensible
sentence kept ringing in his ears. It was much
the same thing as if some power had said to him, “You
must put away from you, divorce, and utterly forget,
all your past life; all your nature, as it has grown
up, to this present time; and take a different individuality.”
The two things might equally well be said, for they
were equally impossible. He laughed as this idea
struck him. His senses were beginning to come
back, and they told him plainly enough that any separation
from Lucia, except by her own free choice and will,
was as impossible as if they were already vowed to
each other “till death us do part.”
There was so much comfort in this conviction that
at last he was able to turn to the latter part of
the letter, and to occupy himself with that mysterious
yet terrible sentence, which said that Lucia, his
purest and loveliest of women, whom all his long intimacy
had not been able to bring down from the pedestal
of honour and tender reverence on which his love had
placed her, would bring a blot upon her husband’s
name.
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