Chapter XIX: The Great Chance 239 (2)

“One lovely August evening we sat together on the shore. It was our baby’s birthday. She was a year old. It had been a happy, merry day. We had been up to the nursery, where, surrounded by soft, furry toys, she slept. We stood together on either side of her crib, looking down at the rose-petal face with its aureola of tumbled golden hair.

“‘Nothing of the Italian there,’ you remarked. Your dark colouring and vivid vitality came from an Italian grandfather on your mother’s side, from whom you also took your second name.

“‘I want a little Guido, some day,’ I whispered, as we turned away.

“‘All in good time,’ you answered, laughing softly, and slipped your arm through mine.

“We strolled down to the beach and watched a blood-red sunset.

“A sudden wind arose, gusty and fitful, blowing countless little white caps across the bay.

“A French woman, who, with her two daughters, had taken a hunting lodge near by for the season, joined us on the beach. We found them pleasant neighbours, vivacious and amusing. Madame de Villebois had walked along the shore. ‘_Mes filles_’ were out sailing, in their little ‘_barquette à voile_.’ Presently it leapt into view, rounding the point; a pretty picture in the sunset glow.

“Seated upon the rocks just below this cliff, we watched the tiny skiff dancing and curtseying toward the middle of our bay.

“‘Gusty for sailing,’ you remarked; and the next moment we could see that they were in difficulties. The sail flapped loose, then bellied suddenly, and the boat lurched.

“‘Oh, Sir Nigel,’ cried madame, with clasped hands, ‘bring out your rowing boat and go to help them!’

“‘I’m awfully sorry,’ you said; ‘but the boat is under repairs.’

“At that instant the sail belched again; the girls stood up; the skiff heeled over, and they were flung into the water.

“Then followed a pandemonium of screaming. Madame shrieked, and flew to the water’s edge, crying: ‘Sir Nigel, save them! Save them! _Oh, mon Dieu! Mes enfants!_’

“The girls screamed in the water, catching at the bottom of the upturned boat. They could swim enough just to keep their heads above water. Their shrieks of terror were appalling.

“You flung off your coat and dashed down the beach in your flannels.

“‘Keep madame out of the sea, darling,’ you shouted out to me, as I ran behind you. ‘I will bring the girls in, one at a time.’

“I put my arms round the frantic mother, and we stood together watching you.

“Even in such a moment, my heart thrilled at sight of your magnificent swimming, as you forged through the waves at almost incredible speed. It did not occur to me to be afraid. Often, when I had misjudged my strength or been caught by the current, you had brought me safely to shore, swimming on your back with one arm around me, while I lay on your chest in perfect security, hearing your voice close to my ear, saying: ‘All right, my darling! We can’t sink. Breathe, and rest, and trust yourself to me.’ These slim French girls would be nothing, compared with my height and weight.

“‘He will save them easily, madame,’ I said. ‘Keep calm. He will bring them in, one at a time.’

“The frantic screams of the girls became more ear-piercing. I had never heard a sound so appalling.

“‘Hold on!’ you shouted. ‘Hold on! I am coming! Hold on!’

“Just before you reached them, one lost her grip of the boat; it slipped away from her clinging fingers, and, turning, she swam and struggled toward you. In an instant you had her by the arm, holding her up.

“I remember wondering why she did not cease screaming. You were evidently reasoning with her and trying to draw her on to your chest.

“At that moment the other girl left the boat, swam up behind you, and clasped you frantically round the throat.

“You let go of the first, in order to seize those throttling fingers; but she caught at your wrists and held them.

“Instantly you all went under, in a churning mass; then came to the surface—you fighting desperately—only to disappear again.

“Then, for one instant I saw a brown hand appear, pointing heavenward; a girl’s white fingers locked around the wrist.

“Then that also vanished, and nothing remained, but the boat, drifting bottom upwards, and the fainting French woman in my arms.

“My Man, my Life, my All, lay drowning fathoms deep in the treacherous, cruel sea, while I stood helpless on the shore.

* * * * *

“When the precious body was recovered a week later, those gripping fingers had to be cut from throat and wrists, that it might lie alone in the graveyard on the hill. I was not allowed to see It; so my last memory of my Darling was that vision of him in his glorious strength, as he swam through the waters, with no thought of personal danger, shouting to the drowning girls: ‘Hold on! I am coming!’

“And, when the chill waters of my own despair threatened to engulf me, I seemed to hear again those ringing tones: ‘Hold on! I AM COMING!’

“Then something happened which gave them a new meaning, and awakened in my own mind a train of thought which surely saved my reason.

“Your will was found, leaving all you possessed to me, and with it a letter addressed: ‘_To my wife: for her eye alone._’

“I had been so haunted by the remembrance of that right hand, pointing skyward from the sea, and now I was to receive a message, penned by those precious fingers, which should indeed point out a ray of hope in the black sky of my sunless future.

“Nigel, do you remember?”

The man in the chair slipped his brown hands into the pockets of his coat. He did not lift his eyes from the floor.

“I remember nothing,” he said, very low.

“Then I must shew you your letter, which no eye save my own has ever seen.”

She unlocked the despatch-box, took from it a small jewel-case, opened this with a gold key hanging from a chain around her wrist; then, from a sealed envelope, drew some half-dozen sheets of closely written manuscript. Leaning forward, she held them toward him.

Slowly, with evident reluctance, the lean brown hand came out of the coat pocket.

He took them from her, and let his eyes rest on the first page.

There followed moments of tense silence.

The tall clock, in a corner of the room, ticked loudly.

Out seaward, a nightbird screeched.

An owl in the fir wood behind the house, hooted thrice.

The fire fell together, and shot up tongues of flame.

At last he lifted hunted eyes to her face.

“It is my handwriting,” he said, “or something very like it. But it is dated August 12th, 1882, thirteen months before my birth.”

“Read it,” said Lady Tintagel.

“I cannot.”

“You must.”

She rose, placed a shaded electric lamp on the table at his elbow; then switched off all other lights.

Seated in shadow on the couch, she watched the dark face, so fine in its stern intentness, bending over the paper; the strong, nervous hand waiting to turn each page; the dark hair, from which no cropping could cut the curl.

“God in heaven,” she sighed, “he has come back to me in answer to the insistence of my frantic prayer; but he has returned emptied of all memory. Oh, of Thine infinite mercy, let there rise in his mind the floodtide of remembrance.”

Thus she prayed and yearned and hoped, while the man in the chair slowly read the letter, written, in his own handwriting, a year before his birth.

“_August 12th, 1882._

“MY OWN SWEET WIFE,

“You and I are so full of happy, buoyant life, that it seems a strange anomaly that I should sit down to write to you of death: we are so intimately one in heart and mind, so wedded in each moment of our perfect life together, that there seems no need to face the possibility of parting. Yet, lately, there has come to me a chill presentiment that, in the very midst of life and joy, a sudden death may come with one swift stroke; that you and I, belovèd, counting on fifty blissful years together, may, in one fatal moment, be wrenched apart.

“So I have made my will, leaving everything to you. All is in order. Fergusson will manage the estate. Thomas and his wife can be wholly trusted in the house. I leave my wife in faithful hands.

“So much for outward things. But what can I say to comfort you, my Love, my Own, in the utter loneliness of heart and soul, which will, alas, be yours when you read this?

“Try to realise that we are not lost to one another.

“‘Nothing can untwine
Thy life from mine.’

“We are eternally one, belovèd. Time is made up of uncertainties; not so Eternity. ‘_Lord, Thou hast been our Dwelling Place in all generations._’ When we pass out of Time, we just go home again to that safe Dwelling Place. We are so safe in Eternity.

“And our love, yours and mine, being eternal, we shall find one another again. Don’t think of me as dead. Think of me as more vividly alive than ever; yours still; always wholly, utterly yours.

“But, my belovèd, however hard you find it to bear the sudden silence, however much you long for just one word, one sign—never turn to a spiritualistic medium, or to spiritualism in any form. I hold that thing to be a most damnable device of the Devil’s for bamboozling the minds of men; leading stricken hearts to believe they are holding converse with their Dead, when, in reality, demons intervene and whisper foolish nothings, till they trap the soul, confuse the mind, and wreck the moral and spiritual life. _Better a holy silence, than a lying whisper._ Better a parting bravely borne in faith and patience, than an attempt to bridge the chasm by forbidden means.

“Yet we _may_ meet again on earth, if it be God’s will for us, before we spend our great Eternity together. We have often talked of this. You know how firmly we believe that we have met before, in other times, in other climes; that we have lived and loved, striven together, risen together to God’s great purposes of fresh development. We may yet meet again in Time; find each other, know each other; ‘rise, on stepping-stones of our dead selves, to higher things.’ Many adventures into Time may be necessary to our full completion for Eternity. Remember all we have said of this subject, and do not think of Death as the end. It is but a passing on to fuller life, to fresh beginnings, to greater opportunities.

“Of course we must bear in mind that all this is necessarily speculative. We cannot dogmatise upon uncertainties. Ideas of our own concerning the future state can be but theoretical. The only certainties are to be found in Divine revelation, and our theories, if they are worth anything, will harmonise with the Word of God.

“However, two great certainties I leave you to cling to in your loneliness:—Our eternal Dwelling Place is in the love of God; and our own perfect love remains to us eternally. Wherever I may be while you read this, I am loving you still, with my whole being; I am all your own, and I hold you mine for ever.

“Now I will lock away this letter with my will and other papers. Please God, it may be fifty years before your dear eyes rest upon it. The fact that I have written it, lifts from me the dull weight of vague apprehension.

“As I sit writing in the Oak Room, you lie in our chamber overhead, with our little one in your arms. Your precious life has been spared, and a new life has been given. Heaviness endured for a night, but joy came in the morning. You have come safely through this dreaded ordeal. Why should I apprehend an unknown danger?

“So I will put away all apprehension with this letter, and go up to the radiance of your smile and the glad certainty which is mine when I clasp you closely in my arms, my wife, my own!

“Your lover and your husband, in Time and in Eternity,

“NIGEL TINTAGEL.”

He folded the many sheets and returned them to the envelope.

A strange calm had entered into his soul, a quiet strength which seemed to say: “Knowing so much, I must know more; I must know all.”

He ceased to feel hunted and haunted. He had been brought face to face, in these pages, with a great love; whether his own or another’s seemed at that moment scarcely to matter. The very knowledge of such a love lifted him to a higher plane. Luke Sparrow had seen deep into the most sacred recesses of the heart of Nigel Tintagel. His own empty heart received this as a trust. A patient strength replaced his restive horror of resentment at a situation so utterly beyond all human understanding.

He laid the letter on the table beside him, switched off the light, turned his chair so that he looked into the fire and did not face the woman on the couch, and said, very gently: “What happened next?”

“Nigel,” she said: “Do you remember?”

“I remember nothing,” he answered; but the harshness was gone from his voice; its tone was infinitely sad and tender. “I remember nothing. But I am ready to listen. I want you to tell me all. I will try to understand. You need not fear any wild outbursts now. For the sake of what you believe—whether it be true or not—I would give my life to bring you comfort. Tell me all.”

The firelight flickered on the tragic face. She saw a look of peace it had not held before. She saw a faint suggestion of the look of youth which, in its appeal to her tenderness, had made the man she loved so adorable.

“Oh, Nigel,” she whispered; “Nigel, belovèd!”

“What happened next?”

“I read your letter many times. Your arms seemed to steal around me as I read. I turned my face against your breast, and wept myself to calmness. It mattered not that my head was buried in my pillow. Your letter had brought you so near; you came between me and all outward things. I repeated again and again: ‘Nothing can untwine my life from thine.’

“The warning against spiritualism reached me just in time. The poor French ‘Madame’ was an ardent spiritualist. She had secured a medium, and was already in communication with her daughters. They had told her their favourite flowers and had reminded her that they used to prefer ‘_Chocolat_’ to ‘_café au lait_,’ for breakfast. Also that ‘Antoinette’ used to darn their stockings. Antoinette was an old ‘_bonne_’ who had been with them many years.

“These undeniable facts filled ‘Madame’ with a holy rapture. She implored me to come and receive like comfort. I might have yielded, had it not been for your timely warning.

“Madame’s husband, sons, another daughter and two cousins, had come to her in her sorrow. She was quickly growing resigned—comforted—almost elated. Her ‘deuil’ was infinitely becoming.

“But I? I had been robbed of my All. I dreaded Madame de Villebois’ frequent visits, yet knew my darling would not wish me to refuse to see her, lest she should think I resented the awful part her children had played in my life’s tragedy. And, after all, it was madame’s outpourings which first caused the Great Idea to formulate in my mind.

“‘Ah,’ she cried one day, ‘the brave, the wonderful Sir Nigel! So full of “_joie de vivre_”! So life abounding! No; he cannot stay _parmi les morts_. Such as he, must live again.... Quite soon, quite soon, he will live again. _Il reviendra!_’

“‘Quite soon? Quite soon?’ I repeated the words, when my visitor had departed. _Quite soon!_ Ah, what it would be to know that my darling was on earth again; breathing the same air; seeing the same sunshine. Oh, if he came back _quite soon_!

“I remembered all you had thought and said on this great subject. You took the Bible instance of the prophet Elijah reappearing in John the Baptist—‘_More_ than a prophet’ because a prophet twice born—as giving important data from which to draw conclusions.

“Christ Himself had said, in unmistakable language: ‘If ye will receive it, this is Elijah which was for to come.... _And they knew him not_, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed.’ These clear statements, you said, swept away all possibility of explaining John the Baptist as a mere type of Elijah. He was, without doubt, a reincarnation of the great prophet of fire. Elijah, caught away on the banks of the river Jordan, his mission incomplete, reappearing on the same spot more than eight centuries later, to continue his work of ‘turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just.’

“It would take too long were I to endeavour to remind you of the perfect working out of every detail in the wonderful, inspired story—the comparatively slight stress laid upon the preparation of the little earthly body, miraculous though it was; the thirty years of silence and mystery in the deserts; then the triumphant heralding of the full-grown prophet: ‘There was a man, _sent from God_, whose name was John’: his very appearance exactly corresponding to the Old Testament descriptions of Elijah.

“You held that, though the actual physical body of a child is prepared by his parents, according to nature’s laws, his spirit—his _ego_—comes direct from God, entering the body, at the moment of birth, with the first independent breath the baby draws. ‘God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.’ This followed the forming of the body. ‘Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God Who gave it.’ You cannot _return_ to a place, unless you have been there before.

“From this you argued that, though a certain amount of likeness to the parents might be inherited, the _ego_, being the essential part, would mould the body into the appearance it had worn before. A strongly developed spirit, rich with many former experiences, would probably stamp its own likeness so strongly on the bodily development that very little resemblance to the immediate parents would obtain. This is why, in brilliant, gifted children we see so little family likeness; whereas in families in which all are as alike as peas in a pod, you find a lack of gifts, a poverty of mental development, a want of originality, which point to no previous experiences. Having no individual _ego_ of its own, the newly created spirit in its first existence, allows the body to become an exact copy of its parents. ‘Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image.’

“With all reverence, you regarded the incarnation of our blessed Lord as throwing important light upon this point. From all eternity He had had an outward form. Man was created in His image. He was the pattern from which man was fashioned. In Old Testament records we find that He appeared many times upon earth and was seen of men: to Adam, to Abraham, to Joshua, to Gideon, to Manoah, to Daniel. These all knew Him, as we say in human parlance, by sight. The hosts of heaven knew Him and adored Him in His divinely glorious outward form. Now comes the time when He is to lay aside that glory and be born, very man, of the substance of an earthly mother. The little body, stainless and sinless, is prepared of a pure virgin through the operation of the Holy Ghost. ‘A body hast Thou prepared for me.’ At the moment of its birth, the great _ego_ of the Son of God enters into it. Then ‘When He bringeth in the first begotten into the world, He saith, And let all the angels of God worship Him’—the scene on Bethlehem’s hills. By degrees that body grows, moulded by the _ego_ within, into the perfect likeness of what a body must ever be, indwelt by the great _Ego_—the Son of God. He is seen by angels, and recognised. He is seen by demons, and recognised. He is seen by Moses and Elijah on the holy mount and, undoubtedly, recognised. Then—the work of redemption accomplished—raised from the grave and glorified, He takes that same body, bearing the actual scars of crucifixion, back into the Heavens. Would their King return to them in wholly different guise?

“No; the _ego_, in its changeless consistency, has done its perfect work. Whether ‘in the beginning, with God,’ or born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem’s stable, or ascending triumphant ‘far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come’—He is, in outward appearance, as well as in nature and character, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.

“From these sacred facts you deduced that any reincarnation of a fully developed _ego_ would probably reproduce again the likeness to its previous bodily appearance, modified to a certain extent by a diversity of parents, less or more, according to the strength and richness of the _ego_.

“From this it follows that if one lived who still held the conscious recollection of a person in one incarnation, and if a second incarnation followed so quickly that a meeting on this earth could take place between the newly-arrived and the one who remembered, there would probably be recognition on the part of the latter.

“You also believed that the handwriting, with certain modifications, would be the same; handwriting being so closely allied to character, when allowed free development.

“You believed that the sub-conscious mind is an eternal thing, and holds stored within it every detail of every episode in every incarnation, be they many or few. But the conscious mind and memory, being dependent upon the growth and development of the actual physical brain, knows and remembers the happenings of that body’s life, only. The sub-conscious mind cannot be drawn upon consciously; but sometimes there springs up from it, into the conscious mind, a haunting memory of previous existence: ‘I have been there before! I have done this before!’

“Love being so largely a matter of the sub-consciousness, lovers are quick to find and to recognise one another, when they meet again reincarnate. This accounts for the sudden instinctive attraction known as ‘love at first sight.’ It is, in reality, two faithful lovers hailing one another with joy and delight by the unconscious means of the sub-conscious memory. After marriage this sub-conscious memory may become an exquisite certainty, adding a richness to the bliss of newly-wedded love.

“Great gifts can also be handed up to the new body from the sub-conscious _ego_. A born musician is one who, having become a great musician before by means of long study and practice, is re-born rich in the possession of the gift of musical expression. A born orator has been a practised speaker in a former life, and now, without knowing that he does so, draws freely on his sub-conciousness for inspiration.

“_Genius_ is the natural intellect so attuned to the sub-conscious mind that its fount of inspiration flows through it unhindered.

“_Madness_ is the sub-conscious mind gaining undue control, bursting the dams of reason and restraint, and carrying all before it into mental chaos. A writer who, discovering that he can do more vividly imaginative work when his sub-consciousness is in the ascendency, puts himself under the influence of drugs in order to obtain this mental condition, may, for a time, produce work which will astonish the world; but, before long, there will come the inevitable fiasco—loss of will power, loss of mental and moral perspective; nerve and brain irritation; insanity!

“Ah, how crudely and disjointedly I am repeating all this! It was your favourite subject, and I might give you essays of your own to read, with chapter and verse, and carefully worked out illustration. I have them all here. I almost know them by heart. But this hurried outline must serve to remind us of all you held and believed.

“Well—to take up the thread of the happenings of those sad days—first, your letter; secondly, Madame de Villebois’ remark; thirdly, my recollection of all you had taught and told me, awakened in me the passionate desire that your rebirth into the world should take place at once. In my awful loss and loneliness it seemed to me that such unspeakable comfort would come from the knowledge that my belovèd was actually on earth again; even if, at first, he were but a little, helpless babe.

“I had always loved the photographs of my baby Nigel so tenderly—I seemed to have known and loved you at every age. At times I saw each age in you and adored it as I saw it.

“And the years would pass, and you would grow up. After all, when you were a man of twenty, I should only be forty-eight. We should certainly have found each other by then, and my darling would know me, and would not think me old, for had he not written: ‘Wherever I may be I am loving you still, with my whole being. I am all your own, and I hold you mine for ever.... We _may_ meet again on earth, if it be God’s will for us.’ I knew you meant by this, a fresh incarnation for both; but I could not see why I must wait during long, lonely years, or why death must come first.

“I began to pray with desperate, frantic energy that my darling might come back without delay.

“A wild, sweet joy and comfort came to soothe my agony.

“I walked along the shore and prayed aloud. I roamed the moors in paroxysms of petition. I prayed all night. I thought of the many little bodies there must be, prepared and ready, just waiting for a splendid, eager spirit to enter them at the moment of birth. Could not my darling be sent to one of these and, growing up in it to his full beauty and stature, come and find his wife again?

“At last, one night, I remembered that morning when you came in from a swim at sunrise, when I had been so fearful for your safety, and how I had said: ‘Oh, Nigel, my dearest! Some day those treacherous waters will swallow you up, and you will come back to me no more.’ But you, lying in my arms, had made answer: ‘I shall always come back to you, my sweet. If I lay fifty fathoms deep and _you_ called, I should hear and come back.’

“I remembered this, just before midnight, on the 11th of September.

“I had begun to feel as if all my prayers and pleadings with heaven had been useless, had failed to obtain any response.

“Now, I would take my husband at his word, and call him—call him—call him!

“I slipped from my bed, opened the French window and went out on to the balcony.

“There stood the telescope through which I used to watch you while you swam!

“A high wind blew, warm but boisterous.

“The sea roared and pounded against the rocks at the base of the cliff.

“I stood in the wind-swept darkness and lifted my eyes to the distant stars.

“‘Nigel!’ I called aloud: ‘Oh, Nigel, my lover, my husband, come back to earth! Come out of Eternity, back into Time. I cannot _live_ on this earth without you. You promised—you _promised_ to come from fifty fathoms deep, if I called. NIGEL! COME! Ask to be born once more. Then grow up quickly, and seek, and seek, and seek, belovèd, until you find me. Nigel, your own wife calls! Oh, Nigel! COME!’

“Long I stood, with clasped hands, gazing upward to the stars.

“The wind moaned and shrieked through the pines. The sea roared in the distance. Behind the house, an owl hooted, like a lost soul in agony, and seemed to mock my prayer.

“Up on the hill, the church bell tolled thrice.

“Suddenly an intense drowsiness overcame me—I, who for a month past had scarcely slept. I crept back to bed and fell asleep as my head touched the pillow.

“I slept until ten o’clock the next morning, then woke with such a sense of comfort and joy, that I could not understand what had happened.

“Then I remembered my call to you at midnight. And then I knew—knew with an unhesitating certainty—that my belovèd had kept his word; that some time between midnight and ten o’clock, on this 12th of September, 1883, he had come back, for my sake, and was now on earth once more, spending his first day as a little living, growing, beautiful man-child.

“Oh, the wonder of those hours! My breasts thrilled and ached with joy and longing. Ah, if I could but press his baby lips against them! The wife in me was merged in the wish that I could be his mother! I lived again. I smiled and laughed. For a long, weary month I had trailed about. I now ran up and down stairs. I lifted my arms to the sun and blessed him, as he rose in the heavens, because he was shining on my little boy. I tried to picture his nursery, his bassinet, his little gowns and flannels.

“My household evidently thought me demented; but I knew that this joy had saved my reason.

“During the next few days I scanned with eager eyes the births’ column in the ‘Times,’ making a list of the names and addresses of all the parents who had had sons on the 12th of September.

“Oh, Nigel, Nigel! I little thought—a door-step! A deserted bundle! A Foundlings’ Institution! Oh, my dear, if I could have flown to that door-step and found you, and brought you home! But—did you not say there was a date on the label, the date of your birth, written beneath ‘Returned Empty’?”

“Yes,” he said. “You shall see the label. There is a date.”

He drew his chair near to the couch, so that he could reach her hands with his own. He took the label from his pocket-book, and laid it upon her lap. She lifted it and, bending toward him, read it by the firelight.

RETURNED EMPTY

_September 12th, 1883._

“Oh, Nigel,” she said, “the day—the very day!”

“I know,” he answered. “I was listening for it as you talked. I felt it would come.”

“And it is to-day,” she said. “To-day! This is your thirtieth birthday.”

He looked at her with a wistful smile; a smile of such pathetic melancholy that it chilled her heart.

“It is,” he said. “And nobody in the whole world knows it, save you and I.”

She stretched out her hands.

He took them in his and held them firmly. They looked into each other’s eyes in silence.

“Speak to me,” she whispered.

“Not yet,” he said. “You have more to tell. And it has always been my way to think long and steadily, and then to speak—and to speak to the point. You and I are facing an awful mystery; but at least we are facing it together.”

Suddenly she felt herself before a judgment-seat.

“Oh, Nigel,” she whispered, “I am afraid.”

“You need not be,” he answered and, bending, laid his lips upon her hand. “I have read Nigel Tintagel’s letter.”

“And do you remember?”

“I remember nothing. But my soul is slowly struggling up into the light. After long years in outer darkness, at last I am finding the way home to God.”

Again he laid his lips upon her hands; but they were cold as death, and her heart trembled.

“Tell me the rest,” he said.

She steadied her voice with an effort.

“There is not much to tell. It has been a long, long time of seeking and waiting. I kept count of each year. I made little clothes of the right size, and gave them away. In the summers I went from one seaside place to another and roamed about the shore, seeking among the little boys who shouted and played, rode donkeys, wielded their wooden spades, and made sand castles. I neglected my little daughter because I wanted only the boy who was doubly my own. Then I remembered she was yours, and flew back to make amends.

“When the right time came, I went to the public schools, Eton, Harrow, Marlborough, Rugby. I watched the sports; I saw the prize-givings. Crowds of fine British lads were there; but the face I sought was not among them.

“Later, I went to Oxford and Cambridge. I saw degrees conferred; I viewed the races. I went to Lord’s; you had been keen on cricket. But you were not there.

“At last I knew your education must be over. You must have taken your place in the world—a man among men. Then I gave up my search, and waited here—just waited. Your room was always ready. I felt certain you would come to me at last.

“Eight years ago our daughter married. Then I was left alone, and I was glad. Little Nigel was born, and he was _so_ like you. But that was no comfort to me; it was you I wanted, not a likeness. I never doubted that you would find me at last.

“And to-night—to-night, after thirty years—I looked up and saw my husband’s eyes gazing in at me through the window.

“The very greatness of the moment kept me calm. I had just to make sure you would not go. I could not tell Colin and Eva; they would have thought me mad. But old Thomas knew. He recognised you at once.”

“Recognised me?”

“Yes, Nigel. He had known and loved and served you from boyhood. He ran beside your pony the first time you rode alone. He and his wife are the only people left among the household who remember you. When I sent him to fetch you in, I told him you had come at last, and warned him to give no sign of recognition until I had found out how much you knew. He has shared with me the long years of vigil.”

Luke Sparrow buried his face in his hands.

“Good God,” he muttered; “let me keep my reason.”

Midnight sounded slowly from a distant belfry.

The old clock in the corner whirred its warning, and struck the hour.

Lady Tintagel took up her jewel-case.

“Come and sit here beside me, and see why Thomas could not fail to know you.”

He rose. His knees shook. He felt queer and dizzy. It had been a long time of mental strain.

Lady Tintagel turned on a light behind her, and moved the despatch-box.

He took his seat beside her on the couch.

A packet of faded photographs were in her hand.

“This is the first. Your mother gave it to me; my baby Nigel; six months old. She used to call you her little Black Prince, because of your dark eyes and regal bearing.”

He took the faded picture and bent over it.

The bright eyes of the baby had survived the yellowing process of sixty years. They held a look of baby omniscience as they stared into the haunted eyes of the man who bent and looked. The little figure sat erect, one finger lifted as if solemnly pointing a moral. The mother, on whose lap the baby sat, was so much absorbed in watching its expression, that her back was turned. He could see only a gracious figure and smoothly braided hair.

“Aged three,” said Lady Tintagel, passing another.

The same bright eyes, now merry with childish laughter, and half hidden in a mass of tumbled curls. Bare legs, white socks, strap shoes, a wooden horse. The marvel was that he stayed still ten seconds to be photographed. He must have whooped and run, the moment it was over.

“Aged seven,” said Lady Tintagel. “I love him in his kilt.”

A graceful little figure in full Highland dress; standing, as if just arrested in a dance, one hand above his head; his dark eyes shining, his curls escaping from the Glengarry bonnet.

The man’s hand shook, as he laid it down.

“No more just now,” he said, thickly. “I don’t—see very clearly.”

“Just the last,” she insisted, “the last of all; that you may understand how it was that Thomas knew you.”

She drew out a cabinet portrait and placed it in his hands. Beneath it was written: “_Nigel, one week before I lost him. August, 1883._”

A man in flannels, carrying a pair of sculls over his shoulder; smiling that he should be caught by a photographer on his way to the boats; his whole face and figure radiating health and happiness; a look of well-being, of honest, genial love to all mankind; of innate goodness, purity, strength—a man made for love and for companionship; a man to whom a woman would trust herself, body and soul, and never regret it.

No contrast could have been more marked than that between the man portrayed and the man who now looked at the portrait; but the contrast was one of heart, mind, and character, not of outward semblance. For, as he looked, seeing only the portrait, in a room growing suddenly black, he knew he looked upon himself—himself, as he might have been; himself, as he once was.

Lady Tintagel returned the others to their place of safety. She fitted them all in with loving care; then turned to take the last.

“Can you wonder——” she began; then paused dismayed.

The man beside her tried to rise, groped blindly for support, then swayed slowly forward, and fell senseless at her feet.

SCENE VIII
THE DAWN BREAKS

When consciousness returned, he found himself stretched at full length upon the couch.

Lady Tintagel knelt beside him, her arms around him.

He could feel the rapid beating of her heart; her soft, quick breathing, mingled with kisses, on his brow and hair. Words of tenderness unthinkable poured from her lips.

He woke at once to vivid consciousness; but lay with eyes closed, waiting till he could gather up his strength, master himself, and take hold on calm speech.

And all the while her flood of tenderness poured over him. It was as if his helplessness had broken down all barriers, his loss of consciousness had burst the bonds of her reserve. The love and longing of those thirty years throbbed in her clasping arms.

“My Love, my own! Don’t go from me again. Ah, when you wake you will remember all! Nigel, you will remember.”

She held him closer to her breast. He felt the desperate strength in those poor clinging arms.

“Dear God, when he awakes, he will remember! He will call his own wife by her name. He will know all at last. At last he will remember.”

Her tears and kisses rained upon his face.

At length he spoke.

“Loose me,” he said.

“Mine,” she murmured, her trembling lips against his hair. “Mine again, at last. I have waited so long—so long.”

He shrank away from her.

“Loose me,” he said, “loose me and let me go. I do not want to hurt you.”

“You could not hurt me, Nigel. I am past being hurt. My love would welcome pain.” Yet her lips quivered. Her eyes searched his. No answering light of love was in their sombre depths.

“You would loose me at once,” he said, “if you could know how much I loathe that you should hold and touch me.”

Her arms fell away from him. She pressed her hands against her breasts, as if his words had been an actual blow. She recoiled from him, moving backwards on her knees, gazing at him in dumb dismay; then hid her stricken face in both her hands.

He sprang to his feet, crossed to the window, and flung aside a curtain.

Dawn was breaking, in one pale silver streak on the horizon.

Sea birds called to one another in the distance.

A chill mist lay on the lawn. In the corner of the veranda he could see the ghostly outline of the chair in which he had waited the night before.

He turned back into the lighted room.

The fire burned low. He stirred the embers and threw on fresh logs.

He raised Lady Tintagel from her knees and led her to the couch.

“Forgive me,” he said. “How I hate to give you pain! But our only hope is to be absolutely honest with ourselves and with each other.”

She lifted sorrowful eyes, but made no answer.

“Will you forgive me if that which I must say is hard to hear? It would help me if you could say: ‘I will forgive you’”

Her smile was sadder far than tears.

“We never forgave one another, Nigel. If need for forgiveness arose, love had already met it, and swept it away. Besides, I do not blame you for my pain. Say what you will.”

He stood long silent, looking into the heart of the red embers.

At last he spoke.

“It is dangerous work,” he said, “to tamper with the Dead. The Dead are safe with God, at home in that eternal Dwelling Place. Do you realise the awful wrong you did to me and to yourself, by that insistent call which brought me back? Through all these years in the great Life beyond, the fulness of my love would have been yours. That letter told you of a changeless tie—you mine, I yours, for ever. But it also spoke of a parting bravely borne, in faith and patience. A sorrow thus endured would have kept us both safe in the Will of God. But you called me back, with passionate insistence, and—it seems—I responded to the passion of that appeal, and came. But in so doing, I put myself outside the supreme Will. Had I waited God’s time for my return to earthly life, I might have come strong in His strength and grace, filled with his Holy Spirit, ready to overcome, to rise at His command to a higher level than I had before attained. Instead of which I am but a poor derelict, shipwrecked upon life’s ocean, drifting rudderless at the mercy of each wind of circumstance. And alas, I returned empty—emptied of that Spark Divine, which is the very essence of the life of man; emptied of aspiration; emptied of the capacity for love. I have no assurance of the Love of God; I have no remembrance of my love for you; I have no power to feel love for others or to accept love offered me. For thirty wasted years I have been seeking, seeking, ever seeking, for earthly love, and now that I have found it, it is Dead Sea fruit—mere dust and ashes. I wander, God forsaken, like the demons of old, ‘walking through dry places, seeking rest, and finding none.’ I have no faith, I have no hope; I ask only for Oblivion. ‘Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up?’ You who call yourself my loving wife?

“One sentence in that letter which you say is my own, wakes in me a realisation of all that I have lost. ‘Lord, Thou hast been our Dwelling Place in all generations.’ My soul remembers that divine security; but I have left it, and there is no return. You thought, while I lay senseless I should remember things of Time. Not so, but in a lightning flash of revelation I saw again Eternity.”

Turning, he raised both arms, lifting his face with a light upon it which was not the dawn, nor any earthly light, but a pale reflection of the light of Heaven.

“God’s Will!” he said. “When we go home to that great Dwelling Place, our holy passion is to do His Will. All earthly things—loves, hopes, desires—assume their right proportions. The one Essential is the great Will of God—that He in us, by us, through us, may in all things be glorified. All, in our earthly lives, which made for this, abides, and is ours still. All else is dross and cannot stand the fire—that purity of motive which is the very birthright of each immortal soul set free from earthly trammels of the flesh. To know His will and do it—this is Life Eternal; this is the joy supreme.”

His arms dropped. The light faded from his countenance.

“I left it, at the call of earthly love. I stand before you empty, godless, damned.”

“Nigel,” she said; “my heart is broken.”

“I would I had a heart to break,” he said.

The despair in her face left him cold. Yet still her faithful love caught at a straw of comfort.

“At least we are together in our misery.”

“I am going,” he said.

“Nigel! You will not leave me?”

“How can I stay? A year younger than your own daughter, I cannot stand in my rightful place—nor would I, if I could.”

“Nigel, stay as my son.”

“How can I? I am not your son, and I will not be a rich woman’s protégé. I may have no capacity for love, but I have honour. I shall go, as I came, empty and alone. I will take nothing with me from this great house which you tell me is, in reality, my own.”

“Nigel, there is one thing you _must_ take with you. It was your tenderest gift to me. It has been so precious all these years; but now I have forfeited the right to wear it.”

She drew her wedding-ring from her finger.

“I have failed you, utterly.”

She held it out to him.

“The golden circlet, emblem of a love which is eternal, would mock me in my hopeless desolation. Take it, Nigel. It is all you can do for me. When you placed it on my finger, you had just said: ‘Till death us do part’; and death has parted us.”

“Not death,” he said. “Life has parted us, not death.”

A heavy sense of sorrow and compunction gripped him.

“Why do you ask me to do this? It leaves you neither wife nor widow.”

“I _am_ neither wife nor widow. I am not your widow, for you live. I am not your wife, for you loathe me, and are leaving me forever.”

“I do not loathe you,” he said, in low, remorseful tones. “But you have shewn me what I was; and you have made me what I am.”

A spasm of deathly agony wrung her heart. Could he not spare her one cruel stab?

She pressed the ring upon him.

“Take it, I implore you. And if ever the remembrance returns of all that this ring once meant to us, come back to me, and place it again upon my hand.”

He took it. For what had it stood when last he held it in his hand? The complete possession of a perfect love?

He slipped it on to his little finger.

His gnawing misery grew. Why could he not say one word of kindness or of comfort to this stricken woman whose faithful heart was breaking?

His hell was within him, “where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”

He rose abruptly. “I must go!” he said.

He crossed to the garden door and flung it wide.

A stream of golden sunshine poured in, paling the artificial light, and flooding the room with radiance.

The sun had risen, a great golden ball, above the sea, and was slowly ascending from the pearly mist on the horizon.

“I must go,” he said, again; but a dreamy quality had come into his voice, and he leaned against the door post, gazing at the sunrise.

She came and stood beside him, and together they looked up to the rosy sky, flecked with soft billowy clouds of pearly whiteness, and down on the wide expanse of opal sea, reflecting in a royal highway from shore to horizon, the crimson glory of the rising sun.

The water seemed to shout, once more, in a silent chorus of sparkling voices: “This is the way to the City of Gold! Leap from the cliff! Take to the waters! This—and this only—is your road for Home.”

Suddenly a look of hope shone in his eyes. His whole figure sprang to alertness. He was transformed.

“I must go!” he cried. “There lies the way.” He pointed to the sparkling path upon the waters. “It is my only chance; my one way Home.”

“Not that, Nigel! Oh, not that!” Her clinging hands caught at his coat. “You always said those who did that would lose—”

“Lose!” he shouted. “What have I to lose? Returned empty! I have nothing to lose.”

He wrenched himself free from her detaining fingers. He gave no backward glance. He sped across the lawn, like a hound loosed from the leash; leapt the iron gate, and disappeared down the zigzag path leading to the beach.

SCENE IX
THE WATCHER

Lady Tintagel turned back into the Oak Room, switched off the pale lights, gathered up her treasures, locked the despatch-box and, taking it with her, crossed the hall and slowly mounted the stairs to her bedroom. Each step meant a separate effort. The mainspring of her life was broken. This was the end.

Arrived at her room, she slipped off her velvet gown, put on a soft white wrapper, and laid herself down upon the bed.

“‘They went away toward the sunrising,’” she quoted. “Where is it written?” She repeated it, mechanically. “‘They went away toward the sunrising.’”

Then memory returned and with it the shock of realisation.

He had gone. He had gone for ever. He was swimming into the sunrise, and never coming back.

Dear God—was there no hope, no help?

She rose from the bed.

She must watch to the end.

She went out on to the wide balcony, overlooking the sea, where stood the telescope.

SCENE X
“WHEN THAT WHICH DREW FROM OUT THE BOUNDLESS DEEP—TURNS AGAIN HOME”

When Luke Sparrow reached the beach, he tore at his boot-laces, flung off his coat and, in less than twenty seconds, was swimming up the sunlit way, his eyes dazzled by the golden glory, his heart throbbing from his rapid race down the cliff.

He seemed to have burst invisible shackles which hitherto had held him captive.

“Free!” he shouted. “Free! On to the sunrise! No going back!”

Wild sea birds, flying above him, swooped and dipped, till their wings almost touched his face as they passed.

He laughed, and echoed their wild cries.

“God give me wings, that I may mount and rise!”

He dived into green depths where fishes flopped against his face, and waving arms of giant sea-weed tried to catch him as he passed.

He came to the surface gasping; dashed the water from his eyes; then settled into a steady breast stroke, swimming out to sea, straight to the sun.

He swam. He swam. He swam. On, toward the shoreless horizon.

His heart pounded in his ears. Still he swam on.

His arms felt like lead. He folded them across his breast and swam without them.

His legs could move no more. He turned upon his back and lay, like a bit of driftwood, resting.

He grinned at the blue sky above him.

“Flotsam and jetson,” he remarked confidentially to a swooping gull. “‘Returned Empty. This side up, with care.’ That’s more to the point just now. Don’t peck at my eyes, you greedy brute! Wait a week for that.... Here lies a poor derelict on the ocean of Time, at the mercy of every wind of circumstance.... Swim, you fool! Yonder lies your one way Home.”

He turned over, and swam on and on, into the dazzling glory.

At length a dream-like sense of unreality came over him, a strange, sweet peace; a wish to fall asleep.

He heard church bells in the distance, growing nearer.

At first he thought they came floating out to sea from the land he had left behind, and he ceased swimming that he might listen.

Then they pealed louder, coming up—up—from the green depths beneath him.

_Come down and find us!
Come down and find us!_

He looked down and instantly sank—deep, deep, deep into the cool silence. Instinctively he held his breath, threw up his hands and rose to the surface; gasped, took a long breath; raised his arms above his head and went down like a stone.

Deeper, deeper, deeper.

The church bells pealed so loudly, he thought their clanging clamour would burst the drums of his ears.

_They lose their immortality
They lose their immortality
Those who do this
Those who do this
Those who do this
Those who do this
They lose their immortality._

He was entangled in flapping sea-weed, but he fought himself free. It was very dark.

He threw up his arms and rose slowly to the surface.

The sun seemed miles above him, a pale phantom, luminous through the green waters.

It grew brighter. He reached the surface. It blazed upon him.

The church bells stopped suddenly. Everything stopped. His heart stopped. There was a great silence.