Chapter XVIII

For some moments the young man dared not move. The anguish of his shattered ribs, the choking up-rush of blood from his lungs, was so present to him, that he turned deadly faint. By degrees he realised that all these sensations were illusory; or rather memory of that which had, long ago, befallen him. Then he asked himself--was the cry which had just now answered his cry illusory, a matter of memory, likewise? This he must ascertain. He began speaking slowly and softly; and the conviction of his identity with that other Laurence Rivers, his namesake, was so complete, that in speaking as he did he had no sense of practising any deceit upon his hearer.

"Agnes," he said, "do you remember the summer morning when, like a lazy fellow, I fell asleep under the lime-trees, and how you came to me just as I woke up, and how we spoke to one another, and how my brother Dudley interrupted our conversation."

A pause followed, during which he listened with almost feverish anxiety, looking up into the sweet, dimly-seen face. Was it possible that she had already gained in physical attributes and powers to the point of audible speech? He almost prayed it might be so; and yet what tremendous issues such development opened up!

At last the low, far-away voice began to answer him. The words came lispingly, at first, with a pathetic effort and hesitancy. It was as the utterance of a baby child but just learning to articulate.

"How could I fail to remember that morning, since the joy of it proved the prelude to the sorrow of your departure?"

Laurence could barely control his excitement; but he just managed to remain very still and to continue speaking slowly and softly.

"Was that so?" he said. "I had forgotten."

"Surely it was so," she answered. "For Dudley brought you the orders, which had just been delivered by a despatch-rider, requiring your immediate return to your ship."

"Yes, yes--of course. I begin to recollect," he rejoined. "Lord Nelson had news of the whereabouts of the French fleet, and we put to sea at a few hours' notice. Recollect, dear me, I should rather think I did! It was an awful rush to get one's kit together, and get through, and there was no end of a bother about post-horses."

Laurence rose to his feet. It was impossible to him to sit still any longer. This strange awakening of memory, and the miracle of his sweet, phantom companion's recovered speech, moved him too deeply. He went across to the escritoire.

"Come here, Agnes," he said. "I want to look at you. I must see you clearly. And I--I want you to look at me. Come."

While speaking he struck a match, and lighted, first the tall wax candles standing upon the escritoire, and then those in the candelabra upon the chimney-piece. Beheld in their mellow light, the room assumed a more than ever familiar and friendly aspect. Laurence felt that he was at home--at home, consciously, and with a security and content upon him such as he had never experienced before. It was singularly pleasant to feel thus. Moving back he stood in front of the slender, rose-clad figure. His manner was serious, though very gentle, and his voice somewhat broken by the emotion under which he laboured.

"See, I have opened your little treasure-chest for you," he said. "And I have read your dear letters--that constituted no breach of faith, or act of presumption, considering how often I have read them already. I have put everything carefully back in its place, save our two miniatures, which lie here side by side. I tell you honestly, I am perplexed. I can't fit in the bits of the puzzle, or piece out the story as yet; but that, to my mind, doesn't matter very much. For we are here together, once again, you and I."

He shifted the position of the candles so that their full light should fall upon her.

"Now let me look at you," he said.

And as he looked his eyes grew somewhat moist, for he perceived that which he had blindly desired, blindly sought all his days, that which had been as an ache at his heart even in his gayest hours, because he needed it and had it not--though he had had no knowledge of what indeed it was he needed--now stood visibly before him. Sweet phantom, old-time love, exquisite companion--having found her, how could he ever again let her go? Listening to her pretty, halting speech the flattering belief had once more grown strong in him that he had the power--had he also the will--to restore her to complete and living womanhood. The ambition of so doing possessed him with redoubled force; and the love of her, rooted so deeply in that mysterious former life and former personality of his, possessed him too. Considerations of right and wrong, of duty, even of honour, he brushed aside. The peace and content of the present, the daring effort, the triumph and delight of the future should that effort succeed, rendered him callous to all things beside. Then a touch of self-distrust took him. Did he please, as he was pleased? He wondered.

"Agnes," he asked her almost wistfully, "tell me, have I changed very much?"

Her eyes, which had grown somewhat shy beneath his searching scrutiny, regained their serenity. She replied more readily, and in more assured accents, while a gentle playfulness was perceptible in her bearing.

"You appear older," she said; "but I will not reproach you with that, since I think you have matured in character rather than greatly increased in years. I could fancy you taller, were not such a supposition absurd. The fashion of your clothes is much altered--you affect very sober colours now."

But suddenly her expression changed. A wide-eyed, haunting sadness came back into her lovely face, and she spread abroad her hands in mingled apology and appeal.

"Ah! indeed," she cried, "I fear a long, long period has elapsed during my illness and alienation of mind. You have had time and to spare in which to grow older, to acquire new habits of thought, perchance--but that idea I cannot tolerate--to form fresh ties. I bitterly deplore my weakness, but they assured me of your death. Their purpose was not cruel, I am sure; but when I refused to believe their statements, your brother Dudley and Mrs. Lambart sent for our rector, Mr. Burkinshaw, to talk with me and preach resignation. He preached to deaf ears, poor man! How could I be resigned to see all the joy of my life cut down as grass under the sweep of a scythe? I did not believe them, yet their reiterated assertions so worked on me that they killed hope in me, and, in so doing, killed reason likewise. Yet in my heart of hearts, Laurence, I have always known that you would come again."

She clasped her hands high on her bosom and smiled upon him.

"And you have come, oh! my love," she said; "you have come!"

"Yes, in good truth," he answered, while a sense of fear took him--"I have come."

For he was filled with pity and with wonder concerning the end of this adventure; while her innocent passion softened his whole nature to a great tenderness, as the sun softens the frozen earth in spring. Then he held out his hand to her in invitation, and led her across to the brocade-covered sofa, set corner-wise between the piano and the fireplace, and for a while they both remained silent, sitting there side by side. And as the minutes slid away, the young man's fears departed, and content returned to him. It was so natural to sit with her thus! Yet his content had an underlying pathos in it, since their situation--his and hers--though immediately happy was so very strange.

At last he asked her:--"Did you know me from the first?"

And she replied with an air of gracious diffidence infinitely engaging:--"I can hardly tell you. For so long confusion has reigned in my poor mind that all had become to me vague and undetermined. I was so very tired that even that which I most craved, I, in a measure, shrank from. I seemed to wander everlastingly in blank and desolate places. I seemed to move in an interspace between the confines of two worlds, to neither of which could I gain admittance. I could not go forward, neither could I go back. Everything baffled me; everything was so difficult to understand."

"But now you have left those blank and desolate places? Now you understand?" Laurence asked, keenly interested in, yet a little dreading her answer.

"I think so. Still joy has been too long a stranger, for me wholly to trust it even yet. And I fear there are still lapses and deficiencies in my intelligence. I could fancy--but doubtless these are but silly fancies, born of illness--that I am not as I used to be, and that I feel the miss of much I once had and now have not."

She looked up at him, her eyes troubled once more to their very depths.

"In what am I lacking, Laurence?" she inquired piteously. "I feel that I am lacking, and I tremble lest I should disappoint you. Indeed, I will strive to remedy my fault, whatever it may be, if you will but be patient with me and tell me plainly of it, and give me opportunity to effect a cure."

But he answered her soothingly, stung by the humility and innocence of her attitude.

"You are wanting in nothing that time will not set right. But we must make haste slowly, sweetheart. So put all these sick fancies out of your head. We will worry neither about past or future; but, like true economists, will enjoy the present. Now let us talk of the time before I left you to rejoin my ship. Of that other melancholy time, after I left you and before I came back, and of the changes it has brought along with it, we will talk some other day--I trust there are many days for us ahead."

And so they remained speaking of the incidents of that mysterious former life, of which Laurence's recollection became momentarily more circumstantial and coherent--speaking of little things, merry and tender, such as lovers love--until, more than once, gusts of gentle laughter swept through the yellow drawing-room, which, for such a length of years, had been empty of all sound of human mirth. And not until the rose-red fingers of the dawn--in colour matching his fairy-lady's rose-red gown--first touched the eastern sky above the dome of the lime grove and the broken outline of the woods, did Laurence and Agnes Rivers cease to talk. Then she got up from her place in pretty haste.

"Ah!" she said, smiling, "I must go. Good Mrs. Lambart will reprove my indiscretion in having remained here so late."

But Laurence was bound to ask her one question, which had been in his mind during the whole course of their interview, yet had not so far dared put to her.

"Tell me," he said, "I waited for you--why did you not meet me here last night?"

"Ah!" she replied, "do not let us closely inquire into that. Something terrible was abroad in the house. I think it was the Shadow of Death. It stood between us--or I dreamed it did so.--But we fought against it. We conquered it--at least I dreamed that we did. And it is gone.--But now, dear love, indeed I too must go. Good-night, or rather good-morrow. Carry happy thoughts away with you, even as I do, to sweeten rest."

And, without more ado, she flitted across the room, as though her little feet in their diamond-powdered slippers could not go soberly, but must dance for very joy, and, passing behind the tall escritoire, Laurence once again was aware that she had disappeared and left no trace.