“AND AFTER THAT—THE DARK”
“Now,” said Lady Tintagel, as he put down his empty coffee-cup, “you may
talk. There is no further need to wait.”
“I want to tell you things from the beginning,” he said. “Will it bore
you if I begin at the beginning?”
“You could not bore me; and I would not miss one moment of the
beginning. Tell me all.”
“My name is Luke Sparrow, so named by the matron of the Foundlings’
Institution to which I was carried when a month old, or thereabouts, by
the arm of the Law. I began life on a door-step—a suburban door-step. I
have never known home, or kith, or kin. Like Melchisedec of old, I am
without father, without mother, without descent; but there the
resemblance ends; for Melchisedec was King of Salem, which is King of
Peace, whereas I, from my infancy, have been possessed by a most
restless demon. I was ‘Returned Empty’ and marked ‘Glass with Care’——”
“Returned empty?” There was horror in her voice. “What—what _do_ you
mean?”
“The label,” he said; “the label pinned to the unwanted bundle had,
printed in bold letters, on one side: RETURNED EMPTY, under which
somebody who knew it, had written, presumably, the date of my birth. On
the other side was printed GLASS WITH CARE, beneath which the same
careful person had taken the trouble to write a Bible reference, most
explicitly explaining the exact value of the said bundle: _Luke xii. 6_.
‘Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings?’ This apt quotation
inspired the matron, on christening Sunday, to bestow upon me the name
of Luke Sparrow. She was a good woman and meant well. But it was, ever
after, a standing joke at the institution.”
“Not one of them is forgotten before God,” said Lady Tintagel.
“Yes, I know. But the close of the verse did not appear to be
applicable, the bundle not containing a genuine sparrow but merely a
lonely little human child, ‘Returned Empty.’”
“Returned?” she said; “Empty!” There was tragedy in her voice.
He laughed. “Yes; _very_ empty—so the nurses said. Well, it was a bad
beginning. The physical emptiness was soon remedied; but the mental and
spiritual void remained unfilled. I’ve lived an utterly lonely life; and
the misery of it was, I didn’t seem able to accept companionship; I had
no capacity for friendship, no wish for homelife. I have always been
seeking, seeking, seeking for something I could not find. Lots of people
wanted to be friendly; heaps of people tried to be kind; but I could not
take their friendship, or accept their kindness. To misquote a
well-known saying, I was ‘_in_ the world but not _of_ the world.’ And
then I had a vice.”
“A vice?” Her eyes, which never left his face, darkened with
apprehension.
“Yes; a vice. Oh, not drink, or drugs, or other depravity. I have kept
my body sane and clean, and without much effort either. I love the sea
too well, and swim in it too often, for any form of moral squalor to
have a chance.”
“Squalor!” she exclaimed, with a fine disdain. “_You_ would have had no
need for squalor, you beautiful boy! All women must have loved you.”
“Boy?” He laughed. “Good Lord! I was never a boy! I was born with a
grown-up soul. Yes, they were kind; but I wanted none of their kindness.
All women were to me mere shadows. Love never called to me.”
“The vice?” she said. “What was it?”
“A mental thing. A morbid craving to look on at other people’s joys; to
view them, without sharing them; an absolute hunger to see home life,
though I had none of my own. This led me into the low-down practice of
prowling about after dark, peering in at lighted windows, like a lonely
soul from another world, spying on bliss he might not share. I began it
as quite a little chap, peeping and running away. The passion grew as I
grew. When my day’s work was over, I would walk miles to stalk
unshuttered windows. Many a time I have narrowly escaped being run in as
a probable burglar. Many a fright I have given to innocent people who
looked up suddenly and surprised my uncanny face pressed against the
glass. I know now what I was seeking. In some sub-conscious part of me I
knew that somewhere in the world was a window through which I should
look and see at last a room which would be HOME.
“So I prowled on. I was prowling to-night. But I never before wanted to
be invited to enter. I preferred to be outside. And—until to-night—I
never realised what a low-down habit it was. To my morbid emptiness it
seemed no wrong toward happy people, that I should just look upon their
joys.”
“But why—to-night?”
“Ah, because all is different. You have done something to me; I don’t
know what, or why. Something in your sub-consciousness must have reached
mine. You have burst the bars of my prison and set my spirit free. I
shall leave here and go back to the world, a man among men. Hitherto I
have felt—do you know the weird Schubert song?—a Doppelgänger. Good
Lord, the horror of it! But you have broken the spell. I don’t know how
you did it. Perhaps it was because you asked me in.”
“Why did you come in?” she whispered: “You, who always preferred to
remain outside.”
“Dare I tell you?” he asked. “Will you think it awful cheek? It was
because—at last—at last—it was Home.”
The woman on the couch opened wide her arms and leaned toward him with a
movement of extraordinary tenderness. Her face was illumined by a
radiance almost unearthly in its sublime joy.
“It _was_ Home,” she said. “It _is_ Home. Ah, do you not remember,
belovèd? Never call yourself Luke Sparrow again. Never call yourself a
foundling—you, whom I have found at last! I can tell you your name, if
there be still need to tell it: Nigel Guido Cardross Tintagel.”
“What?” The blood leapt into his face. His outstretched hands almost met
hers. “Are you—are _you_—my mother?”
“No, belovèd, no! Oh, Nigel, think again! Remember! You _must_
remember!”
His hands clutched his knees. He looked full into her eyes; a long,
steady gaze.
At last: “I remember nothing,” he said. “You will have to tell me. I
would to God you were my mother. But, if that may not be, then—in
Heaven’s name—what are you to me?”
Her voice was a pæan of triumphant joy.
“I am your wife.”
The man in the chair sat before her, petrified. His hands gripped his
knees. Twice he essayed to speak; but no sound would pass his lips.
At length: “Great God!” he said: “Am I mad, or are you?”
“Nigel,” she said, “my dearest, you have come back to me. My boundless
love, my desperate grief, my passionate prayers, have brought you back
to me. My lover, my husband, my heart’s dearest, try to remember!”
“I remember nothing,” he said. “This is the madness of a strange, wild
dream. Presently I shall wake and find myself lying on golden bracken,
while the dawn breaks in the east, and the stars pale in the sky. I have
dreamed this dream before. I shall wake. It will mean losing you; but I
_must_ wake.” He leapt to his feet and shouted the last words; “I _must_
wake!”
“Hush, my dearest, hush!” She spoke as if soothing a startled child.
“Sit down, and I will explain. I can make all clear, if you will listen
patiently. To you it is startling. But I have waited so long; I have
known so long that you were coming. Sit down and listen. Striding about
the room will not wake you, because this is no dream. It is blessed,
blessed reality. Listen, Nigel! Listen, belovèd! I will make it all
quite clear.”
She rose, poured out a glass of wine and brought it to him.
“Drink this. How your hand shakes!... No; I will not touch you; but I
beg of you to drink it.”
She crossed the room, unlocked a bureau, took from it a despatch-box and
placed it beside her on the couch.
“Now help me to tell you by listening calmly.
“We had three years of most perfect married life. No woman ever had such
a lover, such a husband, as you were to me. No man was ever so adored by
his wife as you were by me. We were old enough to understand our
happiness and to take it to the full. I was twenty-eight and you were
thirty when I lost you; but you were so gloriously young, so full of
life and love and laughter. I used to say you would never grow up.
Sometimes I felt like wife and mother in one, my heart overflowing with
the tenderness of both. Yet you were so wise and strong and grandly
good. In all things spiritual and mental I leaned on you and learned of
you.
“We had one little daughter, a year old on that fatal 12th of August;
but, dear though she was to us both, you were my All. My whole body and
soul were yours, wrapped up in you. And your love for me was such a
sweet deep mystery of tenderness that I scarce dared think of it, save
when you were near me. Surely it is given to few to love as we loved, to
experience what we experienced.
“We lived much in the open; riding, walking, climbing together. You were
a magnificent swimmer and loved the sea. Often at dawn, on a summer
morning, you would leave our bed, dash down to the shore, and swim up
the golden pathway, straight toward the rising sun.
“Our room is over this one. Our windows open on to a broad balcony
running along the top of the veranda. There a powerful telescope is
mounted.
“My heart always failed me over these early swims. You were so far from
the shore, out in the ocean; no possible help at hand. I used to watch
you through the telescope, and, knowing this, you would turn and smile
and wave to me and speak my name. Often you dived into the bottomless
deep of waters. Then your anxious wife could see nothing but an expanse
of sky and ocean. After what seemed an hour of suspense, you would
re-appear in the sparkling ripples, laughing, shaking the salt water
from your eyes, and bounding along with the strength and grace of a
splendid sea-lion. Then I would breathe again and slip back to bed as
you neared the shore and I lost you under the lee of the cliff.
“But, when you came back to my arms, I used to hold you close to my
beating heart and say: ‘Oh, Nigel, my dearest! Some day those
treacherous waters will swallow you up, and you will come back to me no
more.’
“‘I shall always come back to you, my sweet,’ you would make answer. ‘If
I lay fifty fathoms deep, and _you_ called, I should hear and come
back.’
“Then you would quite suddenly fall asleep; but I would keep vigil,
praying Heaven that you might never lie fifty fathoms deep, and loving
the salt on my lips, as I softly kissed your damp hair.
“Nigel, do you remember?”
The man in the chair put out his hand, groping blindly for the glass,
and moistened his lips before he made answer.
“I remember nothing,” he said.
“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.