MY OWN DEAR COMRADE--I call you my own because you are all that I
ever had, but even now the memory of our few brief interviews is
all that is left to me, for I must go without you. So happy was I
when we first met, that I don't mind telling you, since we shall
not meet again, how, in anticipation, I rested in your dear arms
and felt your loving caresses; for you were all the world to me
then--the only world I had ever known--and the break of day seemed
close at hand. But soon the thought of drawing you down into that
awful abyss 'twixt heaven and earth, which has whirled its black
shadows about me for more than a century, seized me, and I could
not willingly make a thrall of the one I loved; and so I leave you
to those for whom you are fitted, while I shall continue my
solitary life as before. You say that you are lonely without me!
But what is your loneliness to mine? I, who never had a comrade;
who never felt the joy of friendship; and who was dazed with the
sudden flush of love, of hunger satisfied, of companionship! Have
you ever felt the want of these, dear Paul? Have you ever known
what it is to be alone--to live in an empty world--and that, not
for a time, but for ages? Yes, you will say, you understand it, and
that you pity me, and yet you do not know its meaning; for you at
least can live out the life for which God and nature have fitted
you, while I am fit for nothing. You know not what it is to be
shunned; to be avoided; to be feared! You go your way, and smile
and nod to those you meet, and they are pleased to see you. You are
welcome among your friends, as they to you. Live on in that
precious state, and feel blessed and happy, for there are worse
conditions, although you know it not.
And now I am going to tell you a strange thing. It is this: I have
shadowed your life from the hour of your birth. I have watched your
career, and where able have guided and helped you, knowing that you
were one whom I could love. I have helped to make you what you are,
and therefore my right of possession is doubly founded, even though
my love be too great to lead you astray. Gradually I led you up to
the hour when all was ripe, and then mentally impressed you with
the letter which you thought you received, and which I knew would
affect you through your strongest characteristics--love of
adventure, and--curiosity--as well as from the fact that you were
susceptible to mental influence. You came, and I was happy--more
happy than you will ever know--until my unsated Karma thwarted my
plan, and showed that while seeking my own peace, I might possibly
endanger yours. That ended all. I could go no further. But even
now, as before, I shall come to you in spirit, during the still
hours of night; for my love is more intense and strangely different
from that which waking men are wont to feel. It is that which
sometimes comes in dreams. Do you not know what I mean?
You will feel bewildered on reading this, and at a loss to
understand many things, but remember that your inward or spiritual
sight has been opened through the power of hypnotism, and you must
not judge things as in your normal state.
When you reached our little station of Guir, you were expecting to
find me there, and expectation is the proper frame of mind in which
to produce a strong impression; and therefore, although you did not
know what I was like, Ah Ben and I together easily made you see me
as I was, together with the cart and horse; and although you
actually got into the stage which was waiting, you thought you were
in the cart with me. The incident of the broken spring was merely
suggested as a fitting means to bring you back physically from the
coach to the cart, where for the first time, in the moonlight, you
saw me in semi-material form, visible as a shadow to some men, but
wholly so to you. Had I appeared thus at the station, I should have
alarmed all who saw me, and so I came to you only. The two worlds
are so closely intermingled that men often live in one while their
bodies are in another, and to those who are susceptible, the
immaterial can be made more real than the other. I know these
things, because, while at home in neither, I have been in both.
And now, dear comrade, think sometimes of her who loves you, and to
whom you have been the only joy; and she will be with you always,
although you may not know it, except in your dreams.
One more word. Think happily of the dead, for they are happy, and
in a way you can not understand. If you love them truly, rejoice
that they have gone, for what you call their death is but their
birth, with powers transcending those of their former state, as
light transcends the darkness. Disturb them not with idle
yearnings, lest your thought unsettle the serenity of their lives.
Let the ignorance which has ruined me be a warning. Some day I
shall complete my term of loneliness, and begin life anew. We will
know each other then, dear Paul, as here. Remember, I shall always
be your spirit guide. DOROTHY.
Henley folded the letter and looked about him in bewilderment, and
with a sense of loneliness he had never known before. He thought he
could realize the emptiness of life, the dissociation with all
things, of which Dorothy had spoken. He was adrift, without anchor in
either world. Heart-broken and crushed, he determined to find the
girl at all hazards, and bounded down the garden path in search of Ah
Ben, who alone could help him. At the last of the boxwood trees he
stopped, and then, _in an agony of horror, beheld the roofless ruin
of the old house as Ah Ben had shown it to him_. The crumbling walls
and broken belfry, half hidden amid the encroaching trees, were all
that was left of Guir House and its spacious grounds. Heaps of stone
and piles of rubbish beset his path, and the open portals, choked
with wild grass and bushes, showed glimpses of the sky beyond. In a
panic of terror lest his reason had gone, Paul flew madly on in the
direction from which Dorothy had first brought him. But not an
indication of what once were ornamental grounds remained. Beyond, an
unbroken forest was upon every side, and the growth was wild and
dense. On he rushed, with both hands pressed tightly against his
head, neither knowing nor caring whither he went. But at last two
shadowy forms emerged from a dense thicket of calmia upon his left,
and Paul felt that their influence was kindly, and that they had come
to guide him back into the world he had left behind.