A folded paper fell out of this letter,--it contained full instructions
as to the way I should go on the journey I intended to make to the
mysterious House of Aselzion--and I was glad to find that I should not
have to travel as far as I had at first imagined. I began at once to
make my plans for leaving the Harlands as soon as possible, and before
going to bed I wrote to my friend Francesca, who I knew would certainly
expect me to visit her in Inverness-shire as soon as my cruise in the
Harlands' yacht was over, and briefly stated that business of an
important nature called me abroad for two or three weeks, but that I
fully anticipated being at home in England again before the end of
October. As it was now just verging on the end of August, I thought I
was allowing myself a fairly wide margin for absence. When I had folded
and sealed my letter ready for posting, an irresistible sense of sleep
came over me, and I yielded to it gratefully. I found myself too
overcome by it even to think,--and I laid my head down upon the pillows
with a peaceful consciousness that all was well,--that all would be
well--and that in trying to make sure of the intentions of Fate towards
me both in life and love, I could not be considered as altogether
foolish. Of course, judged by the majority of people, I know I am
already counted as worse than foolish for the impressions and
experiences I here undertake to narrate, but that kind of judgment does
not affect me, seeing that their own daily and hourly folly is so
visibly pronounced and has such unsatisfactory and frequently
disastrous results, that mine--if it indeed be folly to choose lasting
and eternal things rather than ephemeral and temporal ones,--cannot but
seem light in comparison. Love, as the world generally conceives of it,
is hardly worth having--for if we become devoted to persons who must in
time be severed from us by death or other causes, we have merely wasted
the wealth of our affections. Only as a perfect, eternal, binding force
is love of any value,--and unless one can be sure in one's own self
that there is the strength and truth and courage to make it thus
perfect, eternal and binding, it is better to have nothing to do with
what after all is the divinest of divine passions,--the passion of
creativeness, from which springs all thought, all endeavour, all
accomplishment.
When I woke the next morning I did not need to be told that the 'Dream'
had set her wonderful sails and flown. A sense of utter desolation was
in the air, and my own loneliness was impressed upon me with
overwhelming bitterness and force. It was a calm, brilliant morning,
and when I went up on deck the magnificent scenery of Loch Scavaig was,
to my thinking, lessened in effect by the excessive glare of the sun.
The water was smooth as oil, and where the 'Dream' had been anchored,
showing her beautiful lines and tapering spars against the background
of the mountains, there was now a dreary vacancy. The whole scene
looked intolerably dull and lifeless, and I was impatient to be away
from it. I said as much at breakfast, a meal at which Catherine Harland
never appeared, and where I was accustomed to take the head of the
table, at Mr. Harland's request, to dispense the tea and coffee. Dr.
Brayle seemed malignly amused at my remark.
"The interest of the place has evidently vanished with Mr. Santoris, so
far as you are concerned!" he said--"He is certainly a remarkable man,
and owns a remarkable yacht--but beyond that I am not sure that his
room is not better than his company."
"I daresay you feel it so,"--said Mr. Harland, who had for some moments
been unusually taciturn and preoccupied--"Your theories are
diametrically opposed to his, and, for that matter, so are mine. But I
confess I should like to have tested his medical skill--he assured me
positively that he could cure me of my illness in three months."
"Why do you not let him try?" suggested Brayle, with an air of forced
lightness--"He will be a man of miracles if he can cure what the whole
medical profession knows to be incurable. But I'm quite willing to
retire in his favour, if you wish it."
Mr. Harland's bristling eyebrows met over his nose in a saturnine frown.
"Well, are you willing?" he said--"I rather doubt it! And if you are,
I'm not. I've no faith in mysticism or psychism of any kind. It bores
me to think about it. And nothing has puzzled me at all concerning
Santoris except his extraordinarily youthful appearance. That is a
problem to me,--and I should like to solve it."
"He looks about thirty-eight or forty,"--said Brayle, "And I should say
that is his age." "That his age!" Mr. Harland gave a short, derisive
laugh--"Why, he's over sixty if he's a day! That's the mystery of it.
There is not a touch of 'years' about him. Instead of growing old, he
grows young."
Brayle looked up quizzically at his patron.
"I've already hinted," he said, "that he may not be the Santoris you
knew at Oxford. He may be a relative, cleverly masquerading as the
original man--"
"That won't stand a moment's argument," interposed Mr. Harland--"And
I'll tell you how I know it won't. We had a quarrel once, and I slashed
his arm with a clasp-knife pretty heavily." Here a sudden quiver of
something,--shame or remorse perhaps--came over his hard face and
changed its expression for a moment. "It was all my fault--I had a
devilish temper, and he was calm--his calmness irritated me;--moreover,
I was drunk. Santoris knew I was drunk,--and he wanted to get me home
to my rooms and to bed before I made too great a disgrace of
myself--then--THAT happened. I remember the blood pouring from his
arm--it frightened me and sobered me. Well, when he came on board here
the other night he showed me the scar of the very wound I had
inflicted. So I know he's the same man."
We all sat silent.
"He was always studying the 'occult'"--went on Mr. Harland--"And I was
scarcely surprised that he should 'think out' that antique piece of
jewellery from your pocket last night. He actually told me it belonged
to you ages ago, when you were quite another and more important person!"
Dr. Brayle laughed loudly, almost boisterously.
"What a fictionist the man must be!" he exclaimed. "Why doesn't he
write a novel? Mr. Swinton, I wish you would take a few notes for me of
what Mr. Santoris said about that collar of jewels,--I should like to
keep the record."
Mr. Swinton smiled an obliging assent.
"I certainly will,"--he said. "I was fortunately present when Mr.
Santoris expressed his curious ideas about the jewels to Mr. Harland."
"Oh, well, if you are going to record it,"--said Mr. Harland, half
laughingly--"you had better be careful to put it all down. The
collar--according to Santoris--belonged to Dr. Brayle when his
personality was that of an Italian nobleman residing in Florence about
the year 1537--he wore it on one unfortunate occasion when he murdered
a man, and the jewels have not had much of a career since that period.
Now they have come back into his possession--"
"Father, who told you all this?"
The voice was sharp and thin, and we turned round amazed to see
Catherine standing in the doorway of the saloon, white and trembling,
with wild eyes looking as though they saw ghosts. Dr. Brayle hastened
to her.
"Miss Harland, pray go back to your cabin--you are not strong enough--"
"What's the matter, Catherine?" asked her father--"I'm only repeating
some of the nonsense Santoris told me about that collar of jewels--"
"It's not nonsense!" cried Catherine. "It's all true! I remember it
all--we planned the murder together--he and I!"--and she pointed to Dr.
Brayle--"I told him how the lovers used to meet in secret,--the poor
hunted things!--how he--that great artist he patronised--came to her
room from the garden entrance at night, and how they talked for hours
behind the rose-trees in the avenue--and she--she!--I hated her because
I thought you loved her--YOU!" and again she turned to Dr. Brayle,
clutching at his arm--"Yes--I thought you loved her!--but she--she
loved HIM!--and--" here she paused, shuddering violently, and seemed to
lose herself in chaotic ideas--"And so the yacht has gone, and there is
peace!--and perhaps we shall forget again!--we were allowed to forget
for a little while, but it has all come back to haunt and terrify us--"
And with these words, which broke off in a kind of inarticulate cry,
she sank downward in a swoon, Dr. Brayle managing to save her from
falling quite to the ground.
Everything was at once in confusion, and while the servants were busy
hurrying to and fro for cold water, smelling salts and other reviving
cordials, and Catherine was being laid on the sofa and attended to by
Dr. Brayle, I slipped away and went up on deck, feeling myself quite
overpowered and bewildered by the suddenness and strangeness of the
episodes in which I had become involved. In a minute or two Mr. Harland
followed me, looking troubled and perplexed.
"What does all this mean?" he said--"I am quite at a loss to understand
Catherine's condition. She is hysterical, of course,--but what has
caused it? What mad idea has she got into her head about a murder?"