“….A broken line of black trees stood clear against the rapidly-darkening sky, but, as we reached the foot of the hill, heaven and earth were wrapped in the shadows of night. And then my day was done. Doubt was buried, and the “big word” bound our hearts in the joy of that priceless sympathy which carries human aspirations beyond the storm and stress of human life to a knowledge of the Divine. We said little; when hearts are at one, few words are needed, for either knows the other’s thoughts.
But you were slow to unbend, making a brave fight against fate, and keeping true to your creed, though seven days would bring the end. To me, the light of that one brilliant day had been intensified by the rapidly approaching shadow of the inevitable parting. I wonder—now that the bitterness of separation has come, now that I vaguely ask myself what has happened to Time since I lost you—whether, if we could have that day again, you would again be so merciless in your determination to hold love in leash, and give no sign of either the passion or the pain that was tearing your heart. I think it was a hard fight, for, though you concealed your thoughts, you could not hide the physical effects of the struggle. Did you know how your weariness distressed me, and what I would have given to have the right to try to comfort you?
I have a confused memory of those other days. Brief meetings and partings; insane desires to make any excuse to write to you, or hear from you, though I had but just left your presence; a hopeless and helpless feeling that I had a thousand things to say to you, and yet that I never could say one of them, because the time was so short that every idea was swallowed up in the ever-present dread of your departure, and the ceaseless repetition of your cry, ” I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it.” From out that vague background shine two stars, two brilliant memories to light the darkness of the weary months until I see your face again — a blissful memory and a sign. All the rest seems swallowed up in the bitterness of that parting, which comes back like some horrible nightmare.
Only black water under a heavy overcast sky; only the knowledge that the end had come; that what should be said must be said then, with the instant realisation that the pain of the moment, the feeling of impotent rebellion against fate, destroyed all power of reflection, and the impulse to recklessness was only choked back by the cold words of a publicly spoken farewell. Then rapid motion, and in one minute the envious darkness had taken everything but the horrible sense of loss and inconsolable regret. Whatever my suffering, it was worse for you; I at least was alone, alone with a voice which ever murmured in my ears that despairing cry, “I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it.”
When two who have been brought together, so close together that they have said the “big word” without faltering, are suddenly swept asunder by the receding wave of adverse circumstances, there must ever arise in their hearts that evil question, “How is it now? Is it the same? Or have time, and distance, and a thousand other enemies, so filled the space between us that the memory of either is growing dim, and the influence of the other waning, waning till the absence of all binding tie begins to feel like a very bond. Will the vision simply fade gradually out of sight? “For us there is no promise, no tie, no protestations of fealty; only knowledge, and that forced upon us rather than sought. You give or you don’t give, that is all; if you also take away, you are within your right.
There may be reasons and reasons, I understand them all; and I have only one desire, that whatever prevails may secure you happiness. What you can give seems to me so unlike what others ever have to give, so infinitely beyond price, that, where I might gain, it is not right that I should speak. Therefore I cannot urge, I dare not even plead, a cause that has less to recommend it than the forlornest hope.”
from Of love, not in fiction,
by FS.
perkaraperkara 