I
Islands of all shapes and sizes troop northward from Stockholm by the
hundred, and the little steamer that threads their intricate mazes in
summer leaves the traveller in a somewhat bewildered state as regards
the points of the compass when it reaches the end of its journey at
Waxholm. But it is only after Waxholm that the true islands begin, so to
speak, to run wild, and start up the coast on their tangled course of a
hundred miles of deserted loveliness, and it was in the very heart of
this delightful confusion that we pitched our tents for a summer
holiday. A veritable wilderness of islands lay about us: from the mere
round button of a rock that bore a single fir, to the mountainous
stretch of a square mile, densely wooded, and bounded by precipitous
cliffs; so close together often that a strip of water ran between no
wider than a country lane, or, again, so far that an expanse stretched
like the open sea for miles.
Although the larger islands boasted farms and fishing stations, the
majority were uninhabited. Carpeted with moss and heather, their
coast-lines showed a series of ravines and clefts and little sandy bays,
with a growth of splendid pine-woods that came down to the water's edge
and led the eye through unknown depths of shadow and mystery into the
very heart of primitive forest.
The particular islands to which we had camping rights by virtue of
paying a nominal sum to a Stockholm merchant lay together in a
picturesque group far beyond the reach of the steamer, one being a mere
reef with a fringe of fairy-like birches, and two others, cliff-bound
monsters rising with wooded heads out of the sea. The fourth, which we
selected because it enclosed a little lagoon suitable for anchorage,
bathing, night-lines, and what-not, shall have what description is
necessary as the story proceeds; but, so far as paying rent was
concerned, we might equally well have pitched our tents on any one of a
hundred others that clustered about us as thickly as a swarm of bees.
It was in the blaze of an evening in July, the air clear as crystal, the
sea a cobalt blue, when we left the steamer on the borders of
civilisation and sailed away with maps, compasses, and provisions for
the little group of dots in the Skägård that were to be our home for the
next two months. The dinghy and my Canadian canoe trailed behind us,
with tents and dunnage carefully piled aboard, and when the point of
cliff intervened to hide the steamer and the Waxholm hotel we realised
for the first time that the horror of trains and houses was far behind
us, the fever of men and cities, the weariness of streets and confined
spaces. The wilderness opened up on all sides into endless blue reaches,
and the map and compasses were so frequently called into requisition
that we went astray more often than not and progress was enchantingly
slow. It took us, for instance, two whole days to find our
crescent-shaped home, and the camps we made on the way were so
fascinating that we left them with difficulty and regret, for each
island seemed more desirable than the one before it, and over all lay
the spell of haunting peace, remoteness from the turmoil of the world,
and the freedom of open and desolate spaces.
And so many of these spots of world-beauty have I sought out and dwelt
in, that in my mind remains only a composite memory of their faces, a
true map of heaven, as it were, from which this particular one stands
forth with unusual sharpness because of the strange things that happened
there, and also, I think, because anything in which John Silence played
a part has a habit of fixing itself in the mind with a living and
lasting quality of vividness.
For the moment, however, Dr. Silence was not of the party. Some private
case in the interior of Hungary claimed his attention, and it was not
till later--the 15th of August, to be exact--that I had arranged to meet
him in Berlin and then return to London together for our harvest of
winter work. All the members of our party, however, were known to him
more or less well, and on this third day as we sailed through the narrow
opening into the lagoon and saw the circular ridge of trees in a gold
and crimson sunset before us, his last words to me when we parted in
London for some unaccountable reason came back very sharply to my
memory, and recalled the curious impression of prophecy with which I had
first heard them:
"Enjoy your holiday and store up all the force you can," he had said as
the train slipped out of Victoria; "and we will meet in Berlin on the
15th--unless you should send for me sooner."
And now suddenly the words returned to me so clearly that it seemed I
almost heard his voice in my ear: "Unless you should send for me
sooner"; and returned, moreover, with a significance I was wholly at a
loss to understand that touched somewhere in the depths of my mind a
vague sense of apprehension that they had all along been intended in the
nature of a prophecy.
In the lagoon, then, the wind failed us this July evening, as was only
natural behind the shelter of the belt of woods, and we took to the
oars, all breathless with the beauty of this first sight of our island
home, yet all talking in somewhat hushed voices of the best place to
land, the depth of water, the safest place to anchor, to put up the
tents in, the most sheltered spot for the camp-fires, and a dozen things
of importance that crop up when a home in the wilderness has actually to
be made.
And during this busy sunset hour of unloading before the dark, the souls
of my companions adopted the trick of presenting themselves very vividly
anew before my mind, and introducing themselves afresh.
In reality, I suppose, our party was in no sense singular. In the
conventional life at home they certainly seemed ordinary enough, but
suddenly, as we passed through these gates of the wilderness, I saw them
more sharply than before, with characters stripped of the atmosphere of
men and cities. A complete change of setting often furnishes a
startlingly new view of people hitherto held for well-known; they
present another facet of their personalities. I seemed to see my own
party almost as new people--people I had not known properly hitherto,
people who would drop all disguises and henceforth reveal themselves as
they really were. And each one seemed to say: "Now you will see me as I
am. You will see me here in this primitive life of the wilderness
without clothes. All my masks and veils I have left behind in the abodes
of men. So, look out for surprises!"
The Reverend Timothy Maloney helped me to put up the tents, long
practice making the process easy, and while he drove in pegs and
tightened ropes, his coat off, his flannel collar flying open without a
tie, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that he was cut out for
the life of a pioneer rather than the church. He was fifty years of age,
muscular, blue-eyed and hearty, and he took his share of the work, and
more, without shirking. The way he handled the axe in cutting down
saplings for the tent-poles was a delight to see, and his eye in judging
the level was unfailing.
Bullied as a young man into a lucrative family living, he had in turn
bullied his mind into some semblance of orthodox beliefs, doing the
honours of the little country church with an energy that made one think
of a coal-heaver tending china; and it was only in the past few years
that he had resigned the living and taken instead to cramming young men
for their examinations. This suited him better. It enabled him, too, to
indulge his passion for spells of "wild life," and to spend the summer
months of most years under canvas in one part of the world or another
where he could take his young men with him and combine "reading" with
open air.
His wife usually accompanied him, and there was no doubt she enjoyed
the trips, for she possessed, though in less degree, the same joy of the
wilderness that was his own distinguishing characteristic. The only
difference was that while he regarded it as the real life, she regarded
it as an interlude. While he camped out with his heart and mind, she
played at camping out with her clothes and body. None the less, she made
a splendid companion, and to watch her busy cooking dinner over the fire
we had built among the stones was to understand that her heart was in
the business for the moment and that she was happy even with the detail.
Mrs. Maloney at home, knitting in the sun and believing that the world
was made in six days, was one woman; but Mrs. Maloney, standing with
bare arms over the smoke of a wood fire under the pine trees, was
another; and Peter Sangree, the Canadian pupil, with his pale skin, and
his loose, though not ungainly figure, stood beside her in very
unfavourable contrast as he scraped potatoes and sliced bacon with
slender white fingers that seemed better suited to hold a pen than a
knife. She ordered him about like a slave, and he obeyed, too, with
willing pleasure, for in spite of his general appearance of debility he
was as happy to be in camp as any of them.
But more than any other member of the party, Joan Maloney, the daughter,
was the one who seemed a natural and genuine part of the landscape, who
belonged to it all just in the same way that the trees and the moss and
the grey rocks running out into the water belonged to it. For she was
obviously in her right and natural setting, a creature of the wilds, a
gipsy in her own home.
To any one with a discerning eye this would have been more or less
apparent, but to me, who had known her during all the twenty-two years
of her life and was familiar with the ins and outs of her primitive,
utterly un-modern type, it was strikingly clear. To see her there made
it impossible to imagine her again in civilisation. I lost all
recollection of how she looked in a town. The memory somehow evaporated.
This slim creature before me, flitting to and fro with the grace of the
woodland life, swift, supple, adroit, on her knees blowing the fire, or
stirring the frying-pan through a veil of smoke, suddenly seemed the
only way I had ever really seen her. Here she was at home; in London she
became some one concealed by clothes, an artificial doll overdressed and
moving by clockwork, only a portion of her alive. Here she was alive all
over.
I forget altogether how she was dressed, just as I forget how any
particular tree was dressed, or how the markings ran on any one of the
boulders that lay about the Camp. She looked just as wild and natural
and untamed as everything else that went to make up the scene, and more
than that I cannot say.
Pretty, she was decidedly not. She was thin, skinny, dark-haired, and
possessed of great physical strength in the form of endurance. She had,
too, something of the force and vigorous purpose of a man, tempestuous
sometimes and wild to passionate, frightening her mother, and puzzling
her easy-going father with her storms of waywardness, while at the same
time she stirred his admiration by her violence. A pagan of the pagans
she was besides, and with some haunting suggestion of old-world pagan
beauty about her dark face and eyes. Altogether an odd and difficult
character, but with a generosity and high courage that made her very
lovable.
In town life she always seemed to me to feel cramped, bored, a devil in
a cage, in her eyes a hunted expression as though any moment she dreaded
to be caught. But up in these spacious solitudes all this disappeared.
Away from the limitations that plagued and stung her, she would show at
her best, and as I watched her moving about the Camp I repeatedly found
myself thinking of a wild creature that had just obtained its freedom
and was trying its muscles.
Peter Sangree, of course, at once went down before her. But she was so
obviously beyond his reach, and besides so well able to take care of
herself, that I think her parents gave the matter but little thought,
and he himself worshipped at a respectful distance, keeping admirable
control of his passion in all respects save one; for at his age the eyes
are difficult to master, and the yearning, almost the devouring,
expression often visible in them was probably there unknown even to
himself. He, better than any one else, understood that he had fallen in
love with something most hard of attainment, something that drew him to
the very edge of life, and almost beyond it. It, no doubt, was a secret
and terrible joy to him, this passionate worship from afar; only I think
he suffered more than any one guessed, and that his want of vitality was
due in large measure to the constant stream of unsatisfied yearning that
poured for ever from his soul and body. Moreover, it seemed to me, who
now saw them for the first time together, that there was an unnamable
something--an elusive quality of some kind--that marked them as
belonging to the same world, and that although the girl ignored him she
was secretly, and perhaps unknown to herself, drawn by some attribute
very deep in her own nature to some quality equally deep in his.
This, then, was the party when we first settled down into our two
months' camp on the island in the Baltic Sea. Other figures flitted from
time to time across the scene, and sometimes one reading man, sometimes
another, came to join us and spend his four hours a day in the
clergyman's tent, but they came for short periods only, and they went
without leaving much trace in my memory, and certainly they played no
important part in what subsequently happened.
The weather favoured us that night, so that by sunset the tents were up,
the boats unloaded, a store of wood collected and chopped into lengths,
and the candle-lanterns hung round ready for lighting on the trees.
Sangree, too, had picked deep mattresses of balsam boughs for the
women's beds, and had cleared little paths of brushwood from their tents
to the central fireplace. All was prepared for bad weather. It was a
cosy supper and a well-cooked one that we sat down to and ate under the
stars, and, according to the clergyman, the only meal fit to eat we had
seen since we left London a week before.
The deep stillness, after that roar of steamers, trains, and tourists,
held something that thrilled, for as we lay round the fire there was no
sound but the faint sighing of the pines and the soft lapping of the
waves along the shore and against the sides of the boat in the lagoon.
The ghostly outline of her white sails was just visible through the
trees, idly rocking to and fro in her calm anchorage, her sheets
flapping gently against the mast. Beyond lay the dim blue shapes of
other islands floating in the night, and from all the great spaces about
us came the murmur of the sea and the soft breathing of great woods. The
odours of the wilderness--smells of wind and earth, of trees and water,
clean, vigorous, and mighty--were the true odours of a virgin world
unspoilt by men, more penetrating and more subtly intoxicating than any
other perfume in the whole world. Oh!--and dangerously strong, too, no
doubt, for some natures!
"Ahhh!" breathed out the clergyman after supper, with an indescribable
gesture of satisfaction and relief. "Here there is freedom, and room for
body and mind to turn in. Here one can work and rest and play. Here one
can be alive and absorb something of the earth-forces that never get
within touching distance in the cities. By George, I shall make a
permanent camp here and come when it is time to die!"
The good man was merely giving vent to his delight at being under
canvas. He said the same thing every year, and he said it often. But it
more or less expressed the superficial feelings of us all. And when, a
little later, he turned to compliment his wife on the fried potatoes,
and discovered that she was snoring, with her back against a tree, he
grunted with content at the sight and put a ground-sheet over her feet,
as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to fall asleep
after dinner, and then moved back to his own corner, smoking his pipe
with great satisfaction.
And I, smoking mine too, lay and fought against the most delicious
sleep imaginable, while my eyes wandered from the fire to the stars
peeping through the branches, and then back again to the group about me.
The Rev. Timothy soon let his pipe go out, and succumbed as his wife had
done, for he had worked hard and eaten well. Sangree, also smoking,
leaned against a tree with his gaze fixed on the girl, a depth of
yearning in his face that he could not hide, and that really distressed
me for him. And Joan herself, with wide staring eyes, alert, full of the
new forces of the place, evidently keyed up by the magic of finding
herself among all the things her soul recognised as "home," sat rigid by
the fire, her thoughts roaming through the spaces, the blood stirring
about her heart. She was as unconscious of the Canadian's gaze as she
was that her parents both slept. She looked to me more like a tree, or
something that had grown out of the island, than a living girl of the
century; and when I spoke across to her in a whisper and suggested a
tour of investigation, she started and looked up at me as though she
heard a voice in her dreams.
Sangree leaped up and joined us, and without waking the others we three
went over the ridge of the island and made our way down to the shore
behind. The water lay like a lake before us still coloured by the
sunset. The air was keen and scented, wafting the smell of the wooded
islands that hung about us in the darkening air. Very small waves
tumbled softly on the sand. The sea was sown with stars, and everywhere
breathed and pulsed the beauty of the northern summer night. I confess I
speedily lost consciousness of the human presences beside me, and I have
little doubt Joan did too. Only Sangree felt otherwise, I suppose, for
presently we heard him sighing; and I can well imagine that he absorbed
the whole wonder and passion of the scene into his aching heart, to
swell the pain there that was more searching even than the pain at the
sight of such matchless and incomprehensible beauty.
The splash of a fish jumping broke the spell.
"I wish we had the canoe now," remarked Joan; "we could paddle out to
the other islands."
"Of course," I said; "wait here and I'll go across for it," and was
turning to feel my way back through the darkness when she stopped me in
a voice that meant what it said.
"No; Mr. Sangree will get it. We will wait here and cooee to guide him."
The Canadian was off in a moment, for she had only to hint of her wishes
and he obeyed.
"Keep out from shore in case of rocks," I cried out as he went, "and
turn to the right out of the lagoon. That's the shortest way round by
the map."
My voice travelled across the still waters and woke echoes in the
distant islands that came back to us like people calling out of space.
It was only thirty or forty yards over the ridge and down the other side
to the lagoon where the boats lay, but it was a good mile to coast round
the shore in the dark to where we stood and waited. We heard him
stumbling away among the boulders, and then the sounds suddenly ceased
as he topped the ridge and went down past the fire on the other side.
"I didn't want to be left alone with him," the girl said presently in a
low voice. "I'm always afraid he's going to say or do something--" She
hesitated a moment, looking quickly over her shoulder towards the ridge
where he had just disappeared--"something that might lead to
unpleasantness."
She stopped abruptly.
"_You_ frightened, Joan!" I exclaimed, with genuine surprise. "This is a
new light on your wicked character. I thought the human being who could
frighten you did not exist." Then I suddenly realised she was talking
seriously--looking to me for help of some kind--and at once I dropped
the teasing attitude.
"He's very far gone, I think, Joan," I added gravely. "You must be kind
to him, whatever else you may feel. He's exceedingly fond of you."
"I know, but I can't help it," she whispered, lest her voice should
carry in the stillness; "there's something about him that--that makes me
feel creepy and half afraid."
"But, poor man, it's not his fault if he is delicate and sometimes looks
like death," I laughed gently, by way of defending what I felt to be a
very innocent member of my sex.
"Oh, but it's not that I mean," she answered quickly; "it's something I
feel about him, something in his soul, something he hardly knows
himself, but that may come out if we are much together. It draws me, I
feel, tremendously. It stirs what is wild in me--deep down--oh, very
deep down,--yet at the same time makes me feel afraid."
"I suppose his thoughts are always playing about you," I said, "but he's
nice-minded and--"
"Yes, yes," she interrupted impatiently, "I can trust myself absolutely
with him. He's gentle and singularly pure-minded. But there's something
else that--" She stopped again sharply to listen. Then she came up close
beside me in the darkness, whispering--
"You know, Mr. Hubbard, sometimes my intuitions warn me a little too
strongly to be ignored. Oh, yes, you needn't tell me again that it's
difficult to distinguish between fancy and intuition. I know all that.
But I also know that there's something deep down in that man's soul that
calls to something deep down in mine. And at present it frightens me.
Because I cannot make out what it is; and I know, I _know_, he'll do
something some day that--that will shake my life to the very bottom."
She laughed a little at the strangeness of her own description.
I turned to look at her more closely, but the darkness was too great to
show her face. There was an intensity, almost of suppressed passion, in
her voice that took me completely by surprise.
"Nonsense, Joan," I said, a little severely; "you know him well. He's
been with your father for months now."
"But that was in London; and up here it's different--I mean, I feel that
it may be different. Life in a place like this blows away the restraints
of the artificial life at home. I know, oh, I know what I'm saying. I
feel all untied in a place like this; the rigidity of one's nature
begins to melt and flow. Surely _you_ must understand what I mean!"
"Of course I understand," I replied, yet not wishing to encourage her in
her present line of thought, "and it's a grand experience--for a short
time. But you're overtired to-night, Joan, like the rest of us. A few
days in this air will set you above all fears of the kind you mention."
Then, after a moment's silence, I added, feeling I should estrange her
confidence altogether if I blundered any more and treated her like a
child--
"I think, perhaps, the true explanation is that you pity him for loving
you, and at the same time you feel the repulsion of the healthy,
vigorous animal for what is weak and timid. If he came up boldly and
took you by the throat and shouted that he would force you to love
him--well, then you would feel no fear at all. You would know exactly
how to deal with him. Isn't it, perhaps, something of that kind?"
The girl made no reply, and when I took her hand I felt that it trembled
a little and was cold.
"It's not his love that I'm afraid of," she said hurriedly, for at this
moment we heard the dip of a paddle in the water, "it's something in his
very soul that terrifies me in a way I have never been terrified
before,--yet fascinates me. In town I was hardly conscious of his
presence. But the moment we got away from civilisation, it began to
come. He seems so--so _real_ up here. I dread being alone with him. It
makes me feel that something must burst and tear its way out--that he
would do something--or I should do something--I don't know exactly what
I mean, probably,--but that I should let myself go and scream--"
"Joan!"
"Don't be alarmed," she laughed shortly; "I shan't do anything silly,
but I wanted to tell you my feelings in case I needed your help. When I
have intuitions as strong as this they are never wrong, only I don't
know yet what it means exactly."
"You must hold out for the month, at any rate," I said in as
matter-of-fact a voice as I could manage, for her manner had somehow
changed my surprise to a subtle sense of alarm. "Sangree only stays the
month, you know. And, anyhow, you are such an odd creature yourself that
you should feel generously towards other odd creatures," I ended lamely,
with a forced laugh.
She gave my hand a sudden pressure. "I'm glad I've told you at any
rate," she said quickly under her breath, for the canoe was now gliding
up silently like a ghost to our feet, "and I'm glad you're here, too,"
she added as we moved down towards the water to meet it.
I made Sangree change into the bows and got into the steering seat
myself, putting the girl between us so that I could watch them both by
keeping their outlines against the sea and stars. For the intuitions of
certain folk--women and children usually, I confess--I have always felt
a great respect that has more often than not been justified by
experience; and now the curious emotion stirred in me by the girl's
words remained somewhat vividly in my consciousness. I explained it in
some measure by the fact that the girl, tired out by the fatigue of many
days' travel, had suffered a vigorous reaction of some kind from the
strong, desolate scenery, and further, perhaps, that she had been
treated to my own experience of seeing the members of the party in a new
light--the Canadian, being partly a stranger, more vividly than the rest
of us. But, at the same time, I felt it was quite possible that she had
sensed some subtle link between his personality and her own, some
quality that she had hitherto ignored and that the routine of town life
had kept buried out of sight. The only thing that seemed difficult to
explain was the fear she had spoken of, and this I hoped the wholesome
effects of camp-life and exercise would sweep away naturally in the
course of time.
We made the tour of the island without speaking. It was all too
beautiful for speech. The trees crowded down to the shore to hear us
pass. We saw their fine dark heads, bowed low with splendid dignity to
watch us, forgetting for a moment that the stars were caught in the
needled network of their hair. Against the sky in the west, where still
lingered the sunset gold, we saw the wild toss of the horizon, shaggy
with forest and cliff, gripping the heart like the motive in a symphony,
and sending the sense of beauty all a-shiver through the mind--all these
surrounding islands standing above the water like low clouds, and like
them seeming to post along silently into the engulfing night. We heard
the musical drip-drip of the paddle, and the little wash of our waves on
the shore, and then suddenly we found ourselves at the opening of the
lagoon again, having made the complete circuit of our home.
The Reverend Timothy had awakened from sleep and was singing to himself;
and the sound of his voice as we glided down the fifty yards of enclosed
water was pleasant to hear and undeniably wholesome. We saw the glow of
the fire up among the trees on the ridge, and his shadow moving about as
he threw on more wood.
"There you are!" he called aloud. "Good again! Been setting the
night-lines, eh? Capital! And your mother's still fast asleep, Joan."
His cheery laugh floated across the water; he had not been in the least
disturbed by our absence, for old campers are not easily alarmed.
"Now, remember," he went on, after we had told our little tale of travel
by the fire, and Mrs. Maloney had asked for the fourth time exactly
where her tent was and whether the door faced east or south, "every one
takes their turn at cooking breakfast, and one of the men is always out
at sunrise to catch it first. Hubbard, I'll toss you which you do in the
morning and which I do!" He lost the toss. "Then I'll catch it," I said,
laughing at his discomfiture, for I knew he loathed stirring porridge.
"And mind you don't burn it as you did every blessed time last year on
the Volga," I added by way of reminder.
Mrs. Maloney's fifth interruption about the door of her tent, and her
further pointed observation that it was past nine o'clock, set us
lighting lanterns and putting the fire out for safety.
But before we separated for the night the clergyman had a time-honoured
little ritual of his own to go through that no one had the heart to deny
him. He always did this. It was a relic of his pulpit habits. He glanced
briefly from one to the other of us, his face grave and earnest, his
hands lifted to the stars and his eyes all closed and puckered up
beneath a momentary frown. Then he offered up a short, almost inaudible
prayer, thanking Heaven for our safe arrival, begging for good weather,
no illness or accidents, plenty of fish, and strong sailing winds.
And then, unexpectedly--no one knew why exactly--he ended up with an
abrupt request that nothing from the kingdom of darkness should be
allowed to afflict our peace, and no evil thing come near to disturb us
in the night-time.
And while he uttered these last surprising words, so strangely unlike
his usual ending, it chanced that I looked up and let my eyes wander
round the group assembled about the dying fire. And it certainly seemed
to me that Sangree's face underwent a sudden and visible alteration. He
was staring at Joan, and as he stared the change ran over it like a
shadow and was gone. I started in spite of myself, for something oddly
concentrated, potent, collected, had come into the expression usually so
scattered and feeble. But it was all swift as a passing meteor, and when
I looked a second time his face was normal and he was looking among the
trees.
And Joan, luckily, had not observed him, her head being bowed and her
eyes tightly closed while her father prayed.
"The girl has a vivid imagination indeed," I thought, half laughing, as
I lit the lanterns, "if her thoughts can put a glamour upon mine in this
way"; and yet somehow, when we said good-night, I took occasion to give
her a few vigorous words of encouragement, and went to her tent to make
sure I could find it quickly in the night in case anything happened. In
her quick way the girl understood and thanked me, and the last thing I
heard as I moved off to the men's quarters was Mrs. Maloney crying that
there were beetles in her tent, and Joan's laughter as she went to help
her turn them out.
Half an hour later the island was silent as the grave, but for the
mournful voices of the wind as it sighed up from the sea. Like white
sentries stood the three tents of the men on one side of the ridge, and
on the other side, half hidden by some birches, whose leaves just
shivered as the breeze caught them, the women's tents, patches of
ghostly grey, gathered more closely together for mutual shelter and
protection. Something like fifty yards of broken ground, grey rock, moss
and lichen, lay between, and over all lay the curtain of the night and
the great whispering winds from the forests of Scandinavia.
And the very last thing, just before floating away on that mighty wave
that carries one so softly off into the deeps of forgetfulness, I again
heard the voice of John Silence as the train moved out of Victoria
Station; and by some subtle connection that met me on the very threshold
of consciousness there rose in my mind simultaneously the memory of the
girl's half-given confidence, and of her distress. As by some wizardry
of approaching dreams they seemed in that instant to be related; but
before I could analyse the why and the wherefore, both sank away out of
sight again, and I was off beyond recall.
"Unless you should send for me sooner."