‘Look, then, into thine heart and write!’
Very intently, too, and as if surprised or trying to remember. Her large
eyes seemed singularly brilliant, and for a while the only thing living
about her. But all at once, as though memory had returned, she sprang to
her feet and stood, strong, and utterly without support, and questioned
him with those eyes silently but eloquently. The queerest thing about it
all to Wyndham was that, instead of being enfeebled by the strange
draught she had drunk, she looked younger, more vigorous, and altogether
another person from the forlorn, poor child of eight hours ago. Her eyes
were now like stars, her lips red and warm; the drug had, beyond doubt,
a property that even the Professor had never dreamt of; it gave not only
rest, but renewed health and life to those who drank it.
Seeing Wyndham did not or could not speak, she did.
‘I am alive—alive!’ she cried, with young and happy exultation. Where
was the desire for death that lay so heavily on her only a few hours
ago? It was all gone. Now it was plain that she desired life—life only.
Her voice rang through the room fresh and clear, filling it with music
of a hope renewed, and so penetrating that it even pierced into the room
beyond. And as it reached it, another cry broke forth—a cry this time
old and feeble.
Wyndham rushed to answer it, taking with him his last memory of the
girl, as she then stood, with her arms thrown out as if in quick
delight, and her whole strange, beautiful face one ray of gladness.
The Professor was sitting up in bed a mere wreck, but with expectation
on every feature. He was trembling visibly.
‘That voice!’ he whispered wildly—‘that voice! I know it. Long years ago
I knew it. Boy, speak—tell me, whose voice was that?’
Wyndham knelt down beside him, and took his hand in his. He, too, was
trembling excessively, and his eyes were full of tears.
‘Sir,’ he said softly, ‘she is alive.’
‘She—she—who?’ asked the Professor. He bent forward; his features were
working.
‘That girl ... last night.... She lives, sir. Your experiment has not
failed, after all.’
He feared to look at the Professor when he had said this, and bent his
head, leaning his forehead on the wrinkled hand he held. It quivered
slightly beneath him, but not much, and presently the old man spoke.
‘She lives?’ His voice was stronger now. Wyndham looked up, and found
the Professor looking almost his normal self, and with that expression
in his eyes that the young man knew as meaning a sharp calculation.
‘Yes; I have spoken to her. Will you see her?’
‘No.’ The Professor silenced him by a gesture. He was evidently in the
midst of a quick calculation now.
‘The hour she woke?’ he asked presently, with such a vigorous ring in
his tone that Wyndham rose to his feet astonished.
‘Two minutes ago.’
‘Hah!’ The Professor went back to his calculations. Presently a shout
broke from him. ‘I see it now!’ he cried victoriously; ‘I see where the
mistake lay! Fool that I was not to have seen it before! It was a
miscalculation, but one easy to be rectified. An hour or two will do it.
Here, help me up, Paul.’
‘But, Professor, it is impossible; you must rest; you——’
‘Not another moment, not one, I tell you!’ cried the Professor
furiously. He lunged out of bed. ‘This thing must be seen to at once.
What time can any man be sure of, that he should waste it? The discovery
must be assured. And what time have I?’
He fell forward; he had fainted. Wyndham laid him back, and rushed
frantically into the next room.
The girl was standing just where he had left her. But her arms were
outstretched no longer; they were better employed—they were doing up her
hair.
There was a glass on a wall opposite to him, and by this she was trying
to bring herself back to as perfect a state of respectability as
circumstances permitted her.
‘You must go,’ said Wyndham, ‘and at once. Do you hear—at once?’
And, indeed, it was imperative that she should be out of the house
before the arrival of the doctor, for whom he was now about to go.
She rose. And suddenly gladness died from her face, her arms dropped to
her sides; something of the old misery, but not all, settled down on her
once more.
‘I can go,’ she said. ‘I—I am not so afraid now, when it is day; but—he
said——’
Poor child! she had remembered the bargain of the night before. She had
not thought it worthy of thought then, believing Death indeed lay before
her when she drank that draught; but when she woke, when memory returned
to her (and it always came quickly after such a draught as that), she
had gladly told herself that now all her troubles were at an end, that
the old man would provide for her, protect her. And now this young man,
so forbidding, so unkind, with his harsh voice and ways; and yet last
night he had seemed so kind!
‘He is dying!’ said Wyndham shortly. ‘A doctor must be summoned without
delay. I shall arrange for your going—for your safety; but you must be
quick.’ He rang the bell for Denis, who was waiting for him below. The
Professor’s only servant was a charwoman, who left nightly at ten, and
did not return till the same time next morning.
‘You need provide for nothing,’ said the girl. She caught up the little
shawl that had been wrapped round her last night, and moved towards the
door.
‘Stay a moment; you can’t go like this,’ said the young man
distractedly. ‘I have a servant who will take you to some place
of safety. It is impossible that you should go like this.
Why’—awkwardly—‘you haven’t even got a bonnet.’
She stopped and looked at him.
‘It is not you who are responsible,’ she said. ‘And’—she drew her breath
quickly—‘after all, no one is. I took that drug of my own accord, of my
own will, but he did promise to—to—— But if he is dying?’ She looked at
him anxiously, making the last speech a question.
‘I am afraid so.’
‘Then that is at an end.’ She went towards the door.
‘Wait for my servant,’ entreated he, following her and laying a hand
upon her arm. ‘I cannot allow you to go like this.’
‘I don’t see what it is to you,’ said she.
‘It is much—a great deal. For one thing, the Professor, if he recovers,
would never forgive me for letting you go out of his life without
reparation—without the fulfilment of his promise to you. He is indebted
to you, remember. It’—eagerly—‘was a bargain. And, after all, if you
throw off his responsibility now, where will you go? You say you have no
home—no——’
‘Nothing! nothing!’ she said. He could see her face pale again, and
again that dreadful look of despair, of hopelessness, that had crowned
her last night, aged and made miserable her face.
He turned gladly from the sad contemplation of it to address Denis, who
had entered the room, his small twinkling eyes as bright as ever; but,
then, he had slept tranquilly the whole night through by a kitchen fire
that would have been hard to rival in heat and brilliancy. Amongst all
Denis’s many virtues, one stood out: he could always be depended on to
look after himself. And really that is a great thing in a faithful
servant; so many of them like to pose as martyrs in the cause.
Wyndham led his servant a little aside.
‘You see this——’ He hesitated for a word, and then said, ‘young lady;
you will take her away at once. There is not a moment to be lost. Get
her out of the house directly. I am going for a doctor. The Professor is
seriously ill. Do you understand? You are to lose no time. You must take
her away at once.’
Denis stared at him in the appallingly nonunderstanding way that
belongs, I believe, to Irish servants alone. It doesn’t mean that they
don’t understand; it only means that they are taking it all in, with a
cleverness that few other servants can show at a moment’s notice.
‘An’ where, yer honour?’
‘Anywhere out of this!’
This struck him as abominably unfeeling, and he added hastily: ‘To the
safest place you know—the very safest. I depend upon you, Denis. Treat
her as you would your own daughter.’