_My Old Room._
Once more I was left alone in that room of dark oak, looking out on the
little ivy-mantled court, of which I was now reminded by the howling of
the storm within its high walls. Mrs. Blakesley had extemporised a bed
for me on the old sofa; and the fire was already blazing away
splendidly. I sat down beside it, and the sombre-hued Past rolled back
upon me.
After I had floated, as it were, upon the waves of memory for some time,
I suddenly glanced behind me and around the room, and a new and strange
experience dawned upon me. Time became to my consciousness what some
metaphysicians say it is in itself--only a _form_ of human thought. For
the Past had returned and had become the Present. I could not be sure
that the Past had passed, that I had not been dreaming through the whole
series of years and adventures, upon which I was able to look back. For
here was the room, all as before; and here was I, the same man, with the
same love glowing in my heart. I went on thinking. The storm went on
howling. The logs went on cheerily burning. I rose and walked about the
room, looking at everything as I had looked at it on the night of my
first arrival. I said to myself, “How strange that I should feel as if
all this had happened to me before!” And then I said, “Perhaps it _has_
happened to me before.” Again I said, “And when it did happen before, I
felt as if it had happened before that; and perhaps it has been
happening to me at intervals for ages.” I opened the door of the closet,
and looked at the door behind it, which led into the hall of the old
house. It was bolted. But the bolt slipped back at my touch; twelve
years were nothing in the history of its rust; or was it only yesterday
I had forced the iron free from the adhesion of the rust-welded
surfaces? I stood for a moment hesitating whether to open the door, and
have one peep into the wide hall, full of intent echoes, listening
breathless for one air of sound, that they might catch it up jubilant
and dash it into the ears of--Silence--their ancient enemy--their Death.
But I drew back, leaving the door unopened; and, sitting down again by
my fire, sank into a kind of unconscious weariness. Perhaps I slept--I
do not know; but as I became once more aware of myself, I awoke, as it
were, in the midst of an old long-buried night. I was sitting in my own
room, waiting for Lady Alice. And, as I sat waiting, and wishing she
would come, by slow degrees my wishes intensified themselves, till I
found myself, with all my gathered might, willing that she should come.
The minutes passed, but the will remained.
How shall I tell what followed? The door of the closet opened--slowly,
gently--and in walked Lady Alice, pale as death, her eyes closed, her
whole person asleep. With a gliding motion as in a dream, where the
volition that produces motion is unfelt, she seemed to me to dream
herself across the floor to my couch, on which she laid herself down as
gracefully, as simply, as in the old beautiful time. Her appearance did
not startle me, for my whole condition was in harmony with the
phenomenon. I rose noiselessly, covered her lightly from head to foot,
and sat down, as of old to watch. How beautiful she was! I thought she
had grown taller; but, perhaps, it was only that she had gained in form
without losing anything in grace. Her face was, as it had always been,
colourless; but neither it nor her figure showed any signs of suffering.
The holy sleep had fed her physical as well as shielded her mental
nature. But what would the waking be? Not all the power of the revived
past could shut out the anticipation of the dreadful difference to be
disclosed, the moment she should open those sleeping eyes. To what a
frightfully farther distance was that soul now removed, whose return I
had been wont to watch, as from the depths of the unknown world! That
was strange; this was terrible. Instead of the dawn of rosy intelligence
I had now to look for the fading of the loveliness as she woke, till her
face withered into the bewildered and indigent expression of the insane.
She was waking. My love with the unknown face was at hand. The reviving
flush came, grew, deepened. She opened her eyes. God be praised! They
were lovelier than ever. And the smile that broke over her face was the
very sunlight of the soul.
“Come again, you see!” she said gently, as she stretched her beautiful
arms towards me.
I could not speak. I could only submit to her embrace, and hold myself
with all my might, lest I should burst into helpless weeping. But a sob
or two broke their prison, and she felt the emotion she had not seen.
Relaxing her hold, she pushed me gently from her, and looked at me with
concern that grew as she looked.
“You are dreadfully changed, my Duncan! What is the matter? Has Lord
Hilton been rude to you? You look so much older, somehow. What can it
be?”
I understood at once how it was. The whole of those dreary twelve years
was gone. The thread of her consciousness had been cut, those years
dropped out, and the ends reunited. She thought this was one of her old
visits to me, when, as now, she had walked in her sleep. I answered,
“I will tell you all another time. I don’t want to waste the moments
with you, my Alice, in speaking about it. Lord Hilton _has_ behaved very
badly to me; but never mind.”
She half rose in anger; and her eyes looked insane for the first time.
“How dares he?” she said, and then checked herself with a sigh at her
own helplessness.
“But it will all come right, Alice,” I went on in terror lest I should
disturb her present conception of her circumstances. I felt as if the
very face I wore, with the changes of those twelve forgotten years,
which had passed over her like the breath of a spring wind, were a mask
of which I had to be ashamed before her. Her consciousness was my
involuntary standard of fact. Hope of my life as she was, there was thus
mingled with my delight in her presence a restless fear that made me
wish fervently that she would go. I wanted time to quiet my thoughts and
resolve how I should behave to her.
“Alice,” I said, “it is nearly morning. You were late to-night. Don’t
you think you had better go--for fear, you know?”
“Ah!” she said, with a smile, in which there was no doubt of fear, “you
are tired of me already! But I will go at once to dream about you.”
She rose.
“Go, my darling,” I said; “and mind you get some right sleep. Shall I go
with you?”
Much to my relief, she answered,
“No, no; please not. I can go alone as usual. When a ghost meets me, I
just walk through him, and then he’s nowhere; and I laugh.”
One kiss, one backward lingering look, and the door closed behind her. I
heard the echo of the great hall. I was alone. But what a loneliness--a
loneliness crowded with presence! I paced up and down the room, threw
myself on the couch she had left, started up, and paced again. It was
long before I could think. But the conviction grew upon me that she
would be mine yet. Mine yet? Mine she _was_, beyond all the power of
madness or demons; and mine I trusted she would be beyond the dispute of
the world. About me, at least, she was not insane. But what should I do?
The only chance of her recovery lay in seeing me still; but I could
resolve on nothing till I knew whether Mrs. Blakesley had discovered her
absence from her room; because, if I drew her, and she were watched and
prevented from coming, it would kill her, or worse. I must take
to-morrow to think.
Yet at the moment, by a sudden impulse, I opened the window gently,
stepped into the little grassy court, where the last of the storm was
still moaning, and withdrew the bolts of a door which led into an alley
of trees running along one side of the kitchen-garden. I felt like a
housebreaker; but I said, “It is _her_ right.” I pushed the bolts
forward again, so as just to touch the sockets and look as if they went
in, and then retreated into my own room, where I paced about till the
household was astir.