Sir James Carus, the well-known scientist, had for some time been
employing Miss Timson in the capacity of assistant, and spoke highly of
her talents. She began to have a reputation in scientific circles, and
owing to her duties with Carus she could not come to the Stewarts' as
often as she had formerly done. But she preserved her habit of
dismissing the parlor-maid at the door and creeping up to the
drawing-room like a thief in the night.
On the day following Sir Cyril Meres's luncheon-party she arrived in her
usual fashion. The windows were shaded against the afternoon sun, but
the sky was now overcast, and such a twilight reigned within that at
first she could distinguish little, and the drawing-room seemed to her
to be empty. But in a minute she discerned a white figure supine in a
large arm-chair--Mildred, and asleep.
She had a writing-board on her knee, and a hand resting on it still held
a stylograph. She must have dozed over her writing; yet she did not stir
when her name was uttered. Tims noticed a peculiar stillness in her, a
something almost inanimate in her attitude and countenance, which
suggested that this was no ordinary siesta. The idea that Milly might
even now be resurgent fluttered Tims's pulses with a mixed emotion.
"Good old Milly! Poor old girl!" she breathed to the white figure in the
arm-chair. "Don't be in a hurry! You won't find it all beer and skittles
when you're here."
It seemed to her that a slight convulsion passed over the sleeper's
face.
Tims seated herself on a low chair, in the attitude of certain gargoyles
that crouch under the eaves of old churches, elbows on knees, chin on
hands, and fixed her eyes in silence on her silent companion. In spite
of her work along the acknowledged lines of science, she had pursued her
hypnotic studies furtively, half in scorn and half in fear of her
scientific brethren. What would she not have given to be enabled to
watch, to comprehend the changes passing within that human form so close
to her that she could see its every external detail, could touch it by
the out-stretching of a hand! But its inner shrine, its secret place,
remained barred against those feeble implements of sense with which
nature has provided the explorative human intelligence. Its content was
more mysterious, more inaccessible than that of the remotest star which
yields the secret of its substance to the spectroscope of the
astronomer.
Tims's thoughts had forsaken the personal side of the question, when she
was recalled to it by seeing the right hand in which the stylograph had
been lying begin to twitch, the fingers to contract. There was no
answering movement in the face--even when the sleeper at length firmly
grasped the pen and suddenly sat up. Tims rose quickly, and then
perceived, lying on the writing-board, a directed envelope and a
half-finished note to herself. She slipped the note-paper nearer to the
twitching hand, and after a few meaningless flourishes, it wrote slowly
and tentatively:
"Tims--Milly--cannot get back. Help me ... Save Ian. Wicked creature--no
conscience--"
Here the power of the hand began to fail, and the writing was terminated
by mere scrawls. The sleeper's eyes were now open, but not wide. They
had a strange, glassy look in them, nor did she show any consciousness
of Tims's presence. She dropped the pen, folded the paper in the same
slow and tentative manner in which she had written upon it, and placed
it in the directed envelope lying there. Then her face contracted, her
fingers slackened, and she fell back again to the depths of the chair.
"Milly!" cried Tims, almost involuntarily bending over her. "Milly!"
Again there was a slight contraction of the face and of the whole body.
At the moment that Tims uttered Milly's name, Ian was entering the room.
His long legs brought him up to the chair in an instant, and he asked,
without the usual salutation:
"What's the matter? Has--has the change happened?"
His voice unconsciously spoke dismay. Tims looked at him.
"No, not exactly," she articulated, slowly; and, after a pause: "Poor
old Milly's trying to come back, that's all."
She paused again; then:
"You look a bit worried, old man."
He tossed back his head with a gesture he had kept from the days when
the crest of raven-black hair had been wont to grow too long and
encroach on his forehead. It was grizzled now, and much less intrusive.
"I'm about tired out," he said, shortly.
"Look here," she continued, "if you really want Milly back, just say so.
She's kind of knocking at the door, and I believe I could let her in if
I tried."
He dropped wearily into a chair.
"For Heaven's sake, Miss Timson, don't put the responsibility on me!"
"I can't help it," returned Tims. "She's managed to get this through to
me--" She handed Milly's scrawled message to Ian.
He read it, then read it again and handed it back.
"Strange, certainly."
"Does it mean anything in particular?"
He shrugged his shoulders almost impatiently and sighed.
"Oh no! It's the poor child's usual cry when she's here. She's got it
into her head that the self she doesn't know is frightfully wicked, and
makes me miserable. I've tried over and over again to convince her, but
it's all nonsense."
He thought to himself: "She is coming back still full of this mortal,
heart-rending jealousy, and we shall have more painful scenes."
"Well, it's your business to say what I'm to do," insisted Tims. "I
don't think she'd have troubled to write if she'd found she could get
back altogether without my help; but the other one's grown a bit too
strong for her. Do you want Milly back?"
The remorseless Tims forced on Ian a plain question which in his own
mind he habitually sought to evade. He leaned back and shaded his eyes
with his hand. After a silence he spoke, low, as if with effort:
"I can't honestly say I want the change to happen just now, Miss Timson.
It means a great deal of agitation, a thorough upheaval of everything.
We have an extremely troublesome business on at the Merchants'
Guild--I've just come away from a four hours' meeting; and upon my word
I don't think I can stand a--domestic revolution at the same time. It
would utterly unfit me for my work."
He did not add that he had been looking forward to receiving helpful
counsel from Mildred, with her clear common-sense, seasoned with wit.
Tims wagged her head and stared in his face.
"Poor old M.!" she ejaculated, slowly.
Miss Timson still possessed the rare power of irritating Ian Stewart. He
grew restive.
"I suppose I am a selfish brute. Men always are, aren't they? But, after
all, my wife enjoys life in her present state at least as much as she
does in the other."
"Not for the same reason, dear boy," returned Tims. "Old M., bless her,
just lives for you. You don't imagine, do you, that Mildred cares about
you like that?"
Ian flushed slightly, and his face hardened.
"One can't very well discuss one's wife's feeling for one's self," he
said. "I believe I have every reason to be happy, however things are.
And I very much doubt, Miss Timson, whether you can really effect the
change in her in any way. At any rate, I'd rather you didn't try,
please. I'll have her moved to her room, where she'll most likely sleep
till to-morrow."
Tims bent over the sleeper. Then:
"I don't believe she will, somehow. You'd better leave her with me for
the present, and I'll let you know if anything happens."
He obeyed, and in a minute she heard the front door close after him.
Tims sat down in the chair which he had vacated.
"Poor old M.!" she ejaculated again, presently, and added: "What idiots
men are! All except old Carus and Mr. Fitzallan. He's sensible enough."
Her thoughts wandered away, until they were recalled by the door opening
a mere chink to let a child slip into the room--a slim, tall child, in a
blue smock--Tony. His thick, dark hair was cropped boywise now, and the
likeness of the beautiful, sensitive child face to Ian's was more
marked. It was evident that in him there was to be no blending of
strains, but an exact reproduction of the paternal type.
Tims was in his eyes purely a comic character, but the ready grin with
which he usually greeted her was replaced to-day by a little,
inattentive smile. He went past her and stood by the sofa, looking
fixedly at his mother with a grave mouth and a slight frown on his
forehead. At length he turned away, and was about to leave the room as
quietly as he had come, when Tims brought him to a stand-still at her
knee. He held up an admonishing finger.
"Sh! Don't you wake my Mummy, or Daddy 'll be angry with you."
"We sha'n't wake her; she's too fast asleep. Tell me why you looked so
solemnly at her just now, Tony?"
Tony, his hands held fast, wriggled, rubbed his shoulder against his
ear, and for all answer laughed in a childish, silly way. Such is the
depth and secretiveness of children, whom we call transparent.
"Did you think Mummy was dead?"
"What's 'dead'?" asked Tony, with interest, putting off his mask of
inanity.
"People are dead when they've gone to sleep and will never wake again,"
returned Tims.
Tony thought a minute; then his dark eyes grew very large. He whispered
slowly, as though with difficulty formulating his ideas:
"Doesn't they _never_ wake? Doesn't they wake up after ever so long,
when peoples can't remember everything--and it makes them want to cry,
only grown-up people aren't 'lowed?"
Tims was puzzled. But even in her bewilderment it occurred to her that
if poor Milly should return, she would be distressed to find in what a
slovenly manner Tony was allowed to express himself.
"I don't know what you mean, Tony. Say it again and put it more
clearly."
Tims had around her neck a necklace composed of casts of coins in the
British Museum. She did not usually wear ornaments, because she
possessed none, except a hair-bracelet, two brooches, and a large gold
cross which had belonged to her late aunt. Tony's soft, slender fingers
went to the necklace, and ignoring her question, he asked: "Why have you
got these funny things round your neck, Auntie Tims?"
"They're not funny. They're beautiful--copies of money which the old
Greeks used to use. A gentleman gave it to me." Tims spoke with a grand
carelessness. "I dare say if you're a good boy he'll tell you stories
about them himself some day. But I want you to explain what it was you
meant to say about dead people. Dead people don't come back, you know."
Tony touched her hand, which lay open on her knee, and played with the
fingers a minute. Then raising his eyes he said, plaintively:
"I do so want my tea."
Once more he had wiped the conversational slate, and the baffled Tims
dismissed him. He opened the door a little and slipped out; put his dark
head in again with an engaging smile, said politely, "I sha'n't be away
_very_ long," and closed the door softly behind him. For that soft
closing of the door was one of the things poor Milly had taught him
which the little 'peoples' did contrive to remember.
The sleeper now began to stir slightly in her sleep, and before Tony's
somewhat prolonged tea was over, she sat up and looked about her.
"Is that Tims?" she asked, in a colorless voice.
"Yes--is it you, Milly?"
"No. What makes you think so?"
"Milly's been trying to come back. I suppose she couldn't manage it."
"Ah!"--there was a deep satisfaction in Mildred's tone now; "I thought
she couldn't!"