"She is abused, stolen from me, and corrupted by spells and
medicines bought of mountebanks."
"A day in April never came so sweet to show how costly summer was at
hand," may be quoted as applicable to the rare dawn that succeeded
that night of mystic import at Belvoir. The whole world seemed
instinct with the smile of jocund spring. The dreary night had wept
itself away, leaving its tears to jewel each new-born blade of grass.
High up upon the spacious lawn crocuses fluttered their imperial
raiment while snowdrops nodded and shook their bells as the bland wind
swept by. The brook, swollen to a ruffled sea that inundated the
low-land meadows, swirled through the willow-copse plumed to its crest
with golden down in token of its glad revival. The trees stretched
forth their yearning arms green with enamel of new buds; and over all
the sun, rejoicing in release, shot his bright lances into nook and
dell where lurked the mists of yesterday.
Yet, despite the allurements of the outer world, the inmates of
Belvoir House remained invisible, and the stately white columns were
left to mount guard over their sharply defined shadows along the sunny
piazza.
Within the mansion much of the silence and gloom of the preceding
night prevailed. Breakfast had been prepared as usual, but the
appointed hour had passed unheeded, a significant fact in a household
of such rigid regulation. By and by, however, a rustle upon the
staircase announced the appearance of Mrs. Effingham.
Meeting a servant upon the way, the lady inquired where she should
find Mr. Drummond; the man replied that he was closeted in the library
with his young master, Hubert.
Thither she went directly, entering suddenly, and surprising the young
gentlemen in the depths of earnest conversation.
"You have seen Romaine?" they inquired simultaneously.
"Yes, I have just left her."
"How is she?"
"Apparently safe."
Thereupon a strained silence ensued, during which Drummond led Mrs.
Effingham to a divan and seated himself beside her, while Hubert
watched the pair with an intentness that reflected the motive of his
interrupted conversation with his future brother-in-law.
Colston Drummond was the first to break the silence.
"How do you find Romaine?" he asked.
The lines of anxious care deepened upon the lady's face as she
replied.
"I have said that I consider her perfectly safe."
"_Mentally_ as well as physically?"
"How can I tell? As yet I have seen no signs of derangement in her."
"Ah!" exclaimed Drummond, eagerly, "then you refuse to credit _his_
announcement that she is mad!"
"If you mean Loyd, I believe that he has spoken in accordance with his
convictions."
"He _may_ be mistaken," was the terse reply.
Serena Effingham glanced in a startled way from one to the other of
the young men, and it was Hubert who came to her relief.
"Colley has been urging the necessity of calling in another
physician," he explained. "But I tell him, mother, that we have reason
to have implicit faith in Loyd's ability; besides, it would seem like
insult to send for any one now that she is out of danger."
Drummond passed his hand over his curling hair with a gesture eloquent
of impatient doubt.
"Of course, I will not interfere if you are satisfied," he said. "But
I beg you to answer me one question, for I feel that I shall never
sleep, nor rest in peace until it is answered."
"What is it, my dear boy?" inquired Mrs. Effingham.
"You will grant me that Romaine is my affianced wife?" he demanded.
"No one disputes that point."
"And she loves me with her whole heart and soul? No, you need not
answer that question! Here upon my heart lies her last letter, written
within the month. I want no better evidence that she is mine, as truly
as woman was ever man's."
"Well? What more do you ask?"
"What more?" he cried excitedly. "I ask why she screamed at sight of
me last night, crying piteously, 'Why will you torture me? Take him
away and let me rest!' Can you explain such words upon _her_ lips, and
at sight of _me_?"
"She was not herself, Colston. Her attitude towards you is proof that
her mind is indeed deranged."
He shook his head dejectedly.
"You have just told me that as yet you have seen no signs of
derangement in her," he said. "Tell me, if you can, why she should
seem insane to me, yet sane to you?"
At this juncture Serena Effingham turned to Drummond and flung her
arms about his neck.
"My darling boy," she murmured, gently; "for you are that, and ever
will be to me. You are worn out with fatigue and excitement. The shock
of finding Romaine so ill, after your long and hopeful journey, has
completely unhinged you. But I sympathize with you. Remember, that my
love for her is akin to yours, and remember, too, that God is good;
and I believe that, if we pray unceasingly, He in His mercy will give
her back to us, sane and whole again."
He stooped and kissed her up-turned forehead, as he replied,
"God bless you, dear mother. I would that my faith were such as
yours!"
Then, releasing himself from the lady's embrace, he rose, adding,
"I am going to breakfast with my mother at Drummond Lodge. Meanwhile,
_watch Romaine_! I shall return later in the day and shall depend upon
an interview with her."
"Which I may almost promise shall be granted you."
The voice that uttered these unexpected words was low of pitch yet
startlingly sonorous; indeed, so unprepared were the trio for the
sudden intrusion, that they were quite thrown off their guard, and
turned about in some disarray.
Doctor Loyd Morton proved to be the intruder. He stood upon the
threshold of the apartment, parting the drapery with one outstretched
hand, while the extreme pallor of his countenance, the firmness of his
glance, as well as his pronounced dignity of mien, failed not to
impress his beholders.
Divining that the situation threatened to become strained, Mrs.
Effingham remarked quickly,
"We have been waiting for you to breakfast with us, Loyd." Then
turning to Drummond, she added, "We shall look for you at dinner,
Colston. Always bear in mind that you are at home at Belvoir."
Drummond bowed in silence, and with one glance at Morton, who had
advanced a step, still holding the drapery, he passed into the hall,
accompanied by Hubert.
The moment the drapery fell into place again, Serena Effingham
advanced impulsively and kissed Morton with the maternal fervor which
had ever been her wont with him.
"What a debt we owe you, Loyd, dear," she murmured beneath her breath,
while her eyes lingered upon the swaying folds that hid Drummond from
her view.
"Address your thanks to God," he replied, steadily, holding her in his
arms.
"You have saved her life!"
"Say rather that He has spared her."
"She would have died had you not come to us."
The firmness of his glance never wavered for an instant as he
answered,
"That is true; but we must bear in mind that I am but an instrument in
the hands of the Almighty."
And his words were uttered with as sincere a conviction as had ever
possessed him. However deeply he may have been impressed by the
questionable part he was enacting, he was satisfied that Romaine
Effingham would have been laid beside her father and brother in the
tomb but for his influence, at the moment of the crisis. Through his
interposition, he told himself, her body had been saved; with the fate
that had befallen her soul he was not concerned. In a series of
gyrations, never-ending in their recurrence, the words seemed to dance
through his brain, "A body is theirs, a soul is mine; a soul is mine,
a body is theirs," and so on, and on, and on, with incessant swirl and
swing until, dazed and confused, he was forced to seek the palliative
of fresh air under pretence of making a hasty round of visits upon his
patients.
Meanwhile, above stairs in her dainty chamber, Romaine had been
clothed in a robe of delicate texture, snowy as the billowy rifts of
swan's-down that strayed about the neck and down the front, and had
been placed in the azure depths of silken cushions upon a lounge that
stood where the flood of genial sunshine streamed in. Beside her a
huge cluster of mingled Freesia and golden jonquils spent their rich
fragrance upon the air, conjuring, as it were, a hint of the exuberant
spring-tide within the house. A very festival of warmth and light
seemed to hold the chamber beneath its inspiring spell, calling forth
ethereal tones in the blues of the rugs and hangings, and investing
the silver upon the toilet-table with a quite magical glitter.
A little maid, meek-eyed as any dove, went here and there with
noiseless step, putting the finishing touches to the final arrangement
of the room. Now and again she would cast a dutiful glance towards the
couch whereon lay her fair young mistress, with eye-lids drooping
until the dark lashes rested upon her pale cheeks, her slender fingers
interlaced upon her breast.
There were sparrows chirping somewhere about the casements, while from
the distance the hum of pastoral life came drowsily to the ear.
The little maid fluttered her plumed brush about a Dresden cavalier,
ruthlessly smothering a kiss that he had been vainly endeavoring for
years to blow from the tips of his effeminate fingers to a mincing
shepherdess, beyond the clock upon the mantle. In due time she
relieved the love-lorn knight and fell upon his inamorata, favoring
her with the same unceremonious treatment. The clock chimed twelve to
the accompaniment of a brief waltz, presumably executed upon the lute
of the china goat-herd that surmounted the time-piece, and at the same
moment Romaine Effingham stirred. In an instant the faithful watcher
was beside the couch.
"Miss Romaine!" she breathed, "it is I, Joan. Can I do anything for
Miss Romaine?"
One of the slender hands was raised and rested lightly upon the little
maid's head.
"Yes," was the low reply. "You may find him and send him to me."
"Who, Miss Romaine? Mr. Hubert?"
"No."
"Mr. Drummond?"
"No, no," emphatically, but not impatiently.
"Ah! I know--Doctor Morton?"
"Oh, yes!" with a sigh. "Loyd; go and find him."
"Yes, Miss Romaine."
But instead of Loyd Morton it was Serena Effingham who had hastened
promptly to her daughter's side.
"Here I am, dear," she said, stooping to caress the fair low brow. "I
have been besieged by callers to inquire for you, but from this moment
I will deny myself to everyone until you are quite strong and well
again."
"But I sent for Loyd," persisted the girl, in the same calm tone.
"Loyd has gone to visit his patients, my darling; but you may depend
upon it he will not be gone long."
"I hope not. O, how devoted he is! Why, it is to him that I owe my
life, for he has brought me back to life; and yet--and yet how strange
it seems that I cannot recollect where I have been in all this time!"
"Dearest child, do not distress yourself," urged the mother anxiously;
"you will recall everything in time and all will be well."
"Ah, but it is not distress to me! It was like a dream of heaven when
I heard his voice calling me to come out of the shadow into the
radiance that his dear face shed about me! Oh, there can be no death
where he is, and no sorrow while he is by!"
She smiled as one smiles in sleep, and let her eye-lids droop until
the lashes cast their shadow.
Each of the strange words deepened the pallor upon Serena Effingham's
face, a sign of anxious care, perhaps not wholly due to her
consciousness of the fact that her daughter was actually under the
spell of a gentle hallucination; as a matter of fact it pained her
that that hallucination had taken a course somewhat at variance with
Drummond's interests.
As she had determined, from that moment she devoted herself to
Romaine. The greater part of the time the girl slept soundly; during
the intervals of wakefulness she seemed happy and at perfect peace
within herself. Occasionally she would break her complacent silence by
inquiries for Morton; otherwise she appeared inclined to enter into no
sort of converse.
Such nourishment as was offered her she accepted with relish,
remarking once, with a fleeting smile, "I have seen enough of death
for one lifetime; and I want to live, since I have so much to live
for."
Plainly her volition materially assisted her convalescence, which was
rapid--visible almost from hour to hour. And thus the uneventful
afternoon waned to early evening. The goat-herd rehearsed his brief
waltz over and over again, and the sun went westward, withdrawing his
rays from the silken hangings and the silver upon the toilet-table.
Lacking in incident as the day had proved at Belvoir, to Loyd Morton
it had been an epoch of emotions such as he had never dreamed of
realizing.
Upon leaving Belvoir, he had gone directly to his house in town, into
which he admitted himself with a latch-key. The object of his haste
was to place himself before a portrait of his wife which hung in a
room held sacred to her memory. Here, amid a thousand mementos of the
happy past, it was his custom to sit during his leisure hours,
brooding upon the wreck that had overtaken him.
To-day, however, he entered the mortuary apartment with buoyant step,
wafting a smiling kiss up at the fair-haired Gretchen that gazed upon
him from her frame above the mantel-piece. He flung wide the windows
and blinds, even sweeping back the draperies, that the April sun might
beam in and rob the place of shadow.
Then he placed himself before the portrait, and thus addressed it,
giving vent to his pent-up exaltation,
"I no longer beseech you to speak to me with those beloved lips," he
cried, "nor to smile upon me with those eyes that heaven has tinted
with its own blue! And yet I must adore your image, which, after all,
is lost to me. But what care I, since your immortal soul actuates
other lips to breathe your love for me, and kindles other eyes with
that same deathless love when silence falls between us? O, Paula, my
idol! tell me why I should be so infinitely blessed, when other men
languish in their bereavement? Thou knowest _now_ that I am as other
men are--as full of frailty and sin as any; then, why am I favored
with the lot of angels? O my God, it cannot be that I have died and
_this_ is heaven!--this being with you and yet not seeing you, this
exquisite aggravation which is mingled agony and bliss! By some
strange decree, you are with me again, yet I cannot see, I cannot
touch, you. Am I perhaps in purgatory? Or, worse, what if I should
wake to find myself in a Fool's Paradise! Heaven forbid; for that
would drive me mad, and then my unbalanced spirit would wander
gibbering through all eternity, and know you not! Oh, no, no, no! It
is the magic of our great love that has united us in this communion,
which ameliorates the misery of our transient separation, and I thank
God for it! Another day, and mayhap I shall be with you indeed--in the
spirit, in heaven! But, oh, my love, my life, my all in all, my
divinity, never desert me! In mercy and in love remain with me until
the hour of my release; then lead me back with thee!"
Thus more or less coherently he rambled on before the gazing portrait,
in wild salutation and petition, until the sudden opening of the door
hurled him from the heights of exaltation to earth.
Upon the threshold stood his man, amazed and at the same time abashed.
"You will excuse me, sir," he began brokenly; "but I had no idea you
were in the house. I heard voices up here, and I thought thieves had
got in, or--or that the place was haunted!"
"I suppose I have the right to come and go and speak in my own house
as I choose?" retorted Morton testily, conscious of his inexplicable
demeanor, and impotently furious accordingly. "Close the blinds and
windows, and shut the room up. Have there been any calls?"
"No end of them, sir--and letters."
Glad to make his escape from a predicament that bordered too closely
upon the ridiculous to be comfortable, Morton hastily descended to his
office. In the ante-chamber, in which he had received Hubert Effingham
on the preceding evening, he found ample affirmation of his man's
statement that he had been sought during his absence. The slate was
covered with names and requests, while upon a table lay a salver
heaped with letters. These he mechanically examined until, at the very
bottom of the heap, he came upon a missive which promptly arrested his
attention. It was addressed in pencil and unsealed. A moment later and
he had possessed himself of the startling information contained
within.
He rang the bell in haste and excitedly anticipated the advent of his
man by throwing open the door into the hall.
"When was this note left?" he demanded.
"Last evening, sir."
"At what hour?"
"Just before you left the house, sir, with Mr. Effingham."
"_Before_ I left the house!" exclaimed Morton; "in heaven's name, why
did you not bring it to me? It is a case of life and death! It should
have been attended to without the loss of a moment. As I could not
attend to it myself, I should have sent Chalmers in my place."
The poor man looked panic-stricken.
"You will excuse me, sir," he faltered, "but I knocked twice on the
study-door while the messenger waited, but I got no response. I
thought you couldn't come, so sent the messenger away."
"But why did you not give me the note before I went away with Mr.
Effingham?"
"Well, the truth is, sir," stammered the man, "I had no idea you were
going to leave during office-hours, so I just slipped down to finish a
cup o' tea, and when I came up you were off and away."
"Fool! Do you know that your negligence may have cost Miss Casson her
life?"
"Casson!" gasped the man, turning pale to the lips and staggering
against the wall for support, "the Lord save us, sir; she's dead!"
"_Dead!_" echoed Morton, in horror.
"Dead, sir! They sent round word early this morning to say that she
died at midnight sharp."
Morton staggered into his study, slamming the door in the man's face.
He threw himself into the deep reclining-chair which Margaret Revaleon
had occupied, and pressed his head between his hands in a desperate
endeavor to collect his wits.
Hark! was it a repeating voice, or some mad phantasy, the coinage of
his excited brain, that reproduced those thrilling words:
"You will be called to attend a dying woman,--you _are_ called,
already is the messenger here. A woman's soul is trembling upon the
threshold of eternity. If you are alone with her when that soul takes
wing, my spirit will instantly take its place--and your skill will do
the rest. Accomplish the resurrection of that body and secure our
further communion."
_Two_ women were approaching the threshold of death and _two_
messengers were waiting to summon him while those portentous words
were being uttered! To _which_ of the two should he have gone? _Which_
one was intended, destined for the promised reincarnation?