"But to-morrow--to-morrow you will keep for me. I may expect you at the
usual time?" said young Mrs. Medway to her old friend Major Graham, as
she shook hands with him.
"To-morrow? Certainly. I _have_ kept it for you, Anne. I always said I
should," he answered. There was a slight touch of reproach in his tone.
She lifted her eyes for half a second to his face as if she would have
said more. But after all it was only the words, "Good-bye, then, till
to-morrow," that were uttered, quietly and almost coldly, as Major
Graham left the room.
"I can't quite make Anne out sometimes," he said to himself. "She
is surely _very_ cold. And yet I know she has real affection for
me--_sisterly_ affection, I suppose. Ah, well! so much the better.
But still, just when a fellow's off for heaven knows how long,
and--and--altogether it does seem a little overstrained. She can't but
know what might have come to pass had we not been separated for so
long--or had I been richer; and I don't think she could have been
exactly in love with Medway, though by all accounts he was a very decent
fellow. She is so inconsistent too--she seemed really disappointed when
I said I couldn't stay to-day. But I'm a fool to think so much about
her. I am as poor as ever and she is rich. A fatal barrier! It's a good
thing that she _is_ cold, and that I have plenty of other matters to
think about."
And thus congratulating himself he dismissed, or believed that he
dismissed for the time being, all thought of Anne Medway from his mind.
It was true that he had plenty of other things to occupy it with, for
the day after to-morrow was to see his departure from England for an
indefinite period.
Mrs. Medway meantime sat sadly and silently in the library where Major
Graham had left her. Her sweet gray eyes were fixed on the fire burning
brightly and cheerfully in the waning afternoon light, but she saw
nothing about her. Her thoughts were busily travelling along a road
which had grown very familiar to them of late: she was recalling all
her past intercourse with Kenneth Graham since the time when, as boy
and girl, they had scarcely remembered that they were not "real" brother
and sister--all through the pleasant years of frequent meeting and
unconstrained companionship to the melancholy day when Kenneth was
ordered to India, and they bade each other a long farewell! That was ten
years ago now, and they had not met again till last spring, when Major
Graham returned to find his old playfellow a widow, young, rich, and
lovely, but lonely in a sense--save that she had two children--for she
was without near relations, and was not the type of woman to make quick
or numerous friendships.
The renewal of the old relations had been very pleasant--only too
pleasant, Anne had of late begun to think. For the news of Kenneth's
having decided to go abroad again had made her realise all he had become
to her, and the discovery brought with it sharp misgiving, and even
humiliation.
"He does not care for me--not as I do for him," she was saying to
herself as she sat by the fire. "There would have been no necessity for
his leaving England again had he done so. It cannot be because I am
rich and he poor, surely? He is not the sort of man to let such a mere
accident as that stand in the way if he really cared for me. No, it is
that he does not care for me except as a sort of sister. But still--he
said he had kept his _last_ evening for me--at least he cares for no one
else _more_, and that is something. Who knows--perhaps to-morrow--when
it comes to really saying good-bye----?" and a faint flush of renewed
hope rose to her cheeks and a brighter gleam to her eyes.
The door opened, and a gray-haired man-servant came in gently.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," he said apologetically; "I was not sure if
Major Graham had gone. Will he be here to dinner, if you please?"
"Not to-night, Ambrose. I shall be quite alone. But Major Graham will
dine here to-morrow; he does not leave till Thursday morning."
"Very well, ma'am," said Ambrose, as he discreetly retired.
He had been many years in the Medway household. He had respected his
late master, but for his young mistress he had actual affection, and
being of a somewhat sentimental turn, he had constructed for her benefit
a very pretty little romance of which Major Graham was the hero. It had
been a real blow to poor Ambrose to learn that the gentleman in question
was on the eve of his departure without any sign of a satisfactory third
volume, and he was rather surprised to see that Mrs. Medway seemed this
evening in better spirits than for some time past.
"It's maybe understood between themselves," he reflected, as he made
his way back to his own quarters. "I'm sure I hope so, for he's a real
gentleman and she's as sweet a lady as ever stepped, which I should know
if any one should, having seen her patience with poor master as was
really called for through his long illness. She deserves a happy ending,
and I'm sure I hope she may have it, poor lady."
"To-morrow at the usual time," meaning five o'clock or thereabouts,
brought Kenneth for his last visit. Anne had been expecting him with an
anxiety she was almost ashamed to own to herself, yet her manner was so
calm and collected that no one could have guessed the tumult of hope
and fear, of wild grief at his leaving, of intense longing for any
word--were it but a word--to prove that all was not on _her_ side only.
"I could bear his being away--for years even, if he thought it must
be--if I could but look forward--if I had the _right_ to look forward to
his return," she said to herself.
But the evening passed on tranquilly, and to all appearance pleasantly,
without a word or look more than might have been between real brother
and sister. Kenneth talked kindly--tenderly even--of the past; repeated
more than once the pleasure it had been to him to find again his old
friend so little changed, so completely his old friend still. The boys
came in to say good-night, and "good-bye, alas! my lads," added their
tall friend with a sigh. "Don't forget me quite, Hal and Charlie, and
don't let your mother forget me either, eh?" To which the little fellows
replied solemnly, though hardly understanding why he patted their curly
heads with a lingering hand this evening, or why mamma looked grave at
his words.
And Anne bore it all without flinching, and smiled and talked a little
more than usual perhaps, though all the time her heart was bursting, and
Kenneth wondered more than ever if, after all, she _had_ "much heart or
feeling to speak of."
"You will be bringing back a wife with you perhaps," she said once.
"Shall you tell her about your sister Anne, Kenneth?"
Major Graham looked at her earnestly for half an instant before he
replied, but Anne's eyes were not turned towards him, and she did not
see the look. And his words almost belied it.
"Certainly I shall tell her of you," he said, "that is to say, if she
ever comes to exist. At present few things are less probable. Still I
am old enough now never to say, '_Fontaine, je ne boirai jamais de ton
eau._' But," he went on, "I may return to find _you_ married again,
Anne. You are still so young and you are rather lonely."
"No," said Anne with a sudden fierceness which he had never seen in her
before, "I shall _never_ marry again--_never_," and she looked him full
in the face with a strange sparkle in her eyes which almost frightened
him.
"I beg your pardon," he said meekly. And though the momentary
excitement faded as quickly as it had come, and Anne, murmuring some
half-intelligible excuse, was again her quiet self, this momentary
glimpse of a fierier nature beneath gave him food for reflection.
"Can Medway have not been what he seemed on the surface, after all?" he
thought to himself. "What can make her so vindictive against matrimony?"
But it was growing late, and Kenneth had still some last preparations to
make. He rose slowly and reluctantly from his chair.
"I must be going, I fear," he said.
Anne too had risen. They stood together on the hearthrug. A slight,
very slight shiver passed through her. Kenneth perceived it.
"You have caught cold, I fear," he said kindly; for the room was warm
and the fire was burning brightly.
"No, I don't think so," she said indifferently.
"You will write to me now and then?" he said next.
"Oh, certainly--not very often perhaps," she replied lightly, "but now
and then. Stay," and she turned away towards her writing-table, "tell me
exactly how to address you. Your name--is your surname enough?--there is
no other Graham in your regiment?"
"No," he said absently, "I suppose not. Yes, just my name and the
regiment and Allagherry, which will be our headquarters. You might, if
you were _very_ amiable--you might write to Galles--a letter overland
would wait for me there," for it was the days of "long sea" for all
troops to India.
Anne returned to her former position on the hearthrug--the moment at the
table had restored her courage. "We shall see," she said, smiling again.
Then Kenneth said once more, "I _must_ go;" but he lingered still a
moment.
"You must have caught cold, Anne, or else you are very tired. You are so
white," and from his height above her, though Anne herself was tall, he
laid his hand on her shoulder gently and as a brother might have done,
and looked down at her pale face half inquiringly. A flush of colour
rose for an instant to her cheeks. The temptation was strong upon her to
throw off that calmly caressing hand, but she resisted it, and looked
up bravely with a light almost of defiance in her eyes.
"I am perfectly well, I assure you. But perhaps I am a little tired. I
suppose it is getting late."
And Kenneth stifled a sigh of scarcely realised disappointment, and
quickly drew back his hand.
"Yes, it is late. I am very thoughtless. Good-bye then, Anne. God bless
you."
And before she had time to answer he was gone.
Ambrose met him in the hall, with well-meaning officiousness bringing
forward his coat and hat. His presence helped to dissipate an impulse
which seized Major Graham to rush upstairs again for one other word of
farewell. Had he done so what would he have found? Anne sobbing--sobbing
with the terrible intensity of a self-contained nature once the strain
is withdrawn--sobbing in the bitterness of her grief and the cruelty of
her mortification, with but one consolation.
"At least he does not despise me. I hid it well," she whispered to
herself.
And Kenneth Graham, as he drove away in his cab, repeated to himself,
"She is _so_ cold, this evening particularly. And yet, can it be that it
was to hide any other feeling? If I thought so--good God!" and he half
started up as if to call to the driver, but sat down again. "No, no, I
must not be a fool. I could not stand a repulse from _her_--I could
never see her again. Better not risk it. And then I am so poor!"
And in the bustle and hurry of his departure he tried to forget the
wild fancy which for a moment had disturbed him. He sailed the next
day.
But the few weeks which followed passed heavily for Anne. It was a dead
time of year--there was no special necessity for her exerting herself to
throw off the overwhelming depression, and strong and brave as she was,
she allowed herself, to some extent, to yield to it.
"If only he had not come back--if I had never seen him again!" she
repeated to herself incessantly. "I had in a sense forgotten him--the
thought of him never troubled me all the years of my marriage. I suppose
I had never before understood how I _could_ care. How I wish I had never
learnt it! How I _wish_ he had never come back!"
It was above all in the afternoons--the dull, early dark, autumn
afternoons--which for some weeks had been enlivened by the expectation,
sure two or three times a week to be fulfilled, of Major Graham's
"dropping in"--that the aching pain, the weary longing, grew so bad as
to be well-nigh intolerable.
"How shall I bear it?" said poor Anne to herself sometimes; "it is so
wrong, so unwomanly! So selfish, too, when I think of my children. How
much I have to be thankful for--why should I ruin my life by crying for
the one thing that is not for me? It is worse, far worse than if he had
died; had I known that he had loved me, I could have borne his death, it
seems to me."
She was sitting alone one afternoon about five weeks after Kenneth had
left, thinking sadly over and over the same thoughts, when a tap at the
door made her look up.
"Come in," she said, though the tap hardly sounded like that of her
maid, and no one else was likely to come to the door of her own room
where she happened to be. "Come in," and somewhat to her surprise the
door half opened and old Ambrose's voice replied--
"If you please, ma'am----" then stopped and hesitated.
"Come in," she repeated with a touch of impatience. "What is it,
Ambrose? Where is Seton?"
"If you please, ma'am, I couldn't find her--that is to say," Ambrose
went on nervously, "I didn't look for her. I thought, ma'am, I would
rather tell you myself. You mustn't be startled, ma'am," and Anne at
this looking up at the old man saw that he was pale and
startled-looking himself, "but it's--it's Major Graham."
"Major Graham?" repeated Anne, and to herself her voice sounded almost
like a scream. "What about him? Have you heard anything?"
"It's _him_, ma'am--him himself!" said Ambrose. "He's in the library.
I'm a little afraid, ma'am, there may be something wrong--he looked so
strange and he did not answer when I spoke to him. But he's in the
library, ma'am."
Anne did not wait to hear more. She rushed past Ambrose, across
the landing, and down the two flights of steps which led to the
library--a half-way house room, between the ground-floor and the
drawing-room--almost before his voice had stopped. At the door she
hesitated a moment, and in that moment all sorts of wild suppositions
flashed across her brain. What was it? What was she going to hear? Had
Kenneth turned back half-way out to India for _her_ sake? Had some
trouble befallen him, in which he had come to seek her sympathy? What
_could_ it be? and her heart beating so as almost to suffocate her, she
opened the door.
Yes--there he stood--on the hearthrug as she had last seen him in that
room. But he did not seem to hear her come in, for he made no movement
towards her; he did not even turn his head in her direction.
More and more startled and perturbed, Anne hastily went up to him.
"Kenneth," she cried, "what is it? What is the matter?"
She had held out her hand as she hurried towards him, but he did not
seem to see it. He stood there still, without moving--his face slightly
turned away, till she was close beside him.
"Kenneth," she repeated, this time with a thrill of something very like
anguish in her tone, "what is the matter? Are you angry with me?
_Kenneth_--speak."
Then at last he slowly turned his head and looked at her with a strange,
half-wistful anxiety in his eyes--he gazed at her as if his very soul
were in that gaze, and lifting his right hand, gently laid it on her
shoulder as he had done the evening he had bidden her farewell. She did
not shrink from his touch, but strange to say, she did not feel it,
and some indefinable instinct made her turn her eyes away from his and
glance at her shoulder. But even as she did so she saw that his hand
was no longer there, and with a thrill of fear she exclaimed again,
"_Speak_, Kenneth, _speak_ to me!"
The words fell on empty air. There was no Kenneth beside her. She was
standing on the hearthrug alone.
Then, for the first time, there came over her that awful chill of terror
so often described, yet so indescribable to all but the few who have
felt it for themselves. With a terrible though half-stifled cry, Anne
turned towards the door. It opened before she reached it, and she
half fell into old Ambrose's arms. Fortunately for her--for her reason,
perhaps--his vague misgiving had made him follow her, though of what he
was afraid he could scarcely have told.
"Oh, ma'am--oh, my poor lady!" he exclaimed, as he half led, half
carried her back to her own room, "what is it? Has he gone? But how
could he have gone? I was close by--I never saw him pass."
"He is not there--_he has not been there_," said poor Anne, trembling
and clinging to her old servant. "Oh, Ambrose, what you and I have seen
was no living Kenneth Graham--no living man at all. Ambrose--he came
thus to say good-bye to me. He is dead," and the tears burst forth as
she spoke, and Anne sobbed convulsively.
Ambrose looked at her in distress and consternation past words. Then at
last he found courage to speak.
"My poor lady," he repeated. "It must be so. I misdoubted me and I
did not know why. He did not ring, but I was passing by the door
and something--a sort of feeling that there was some one waiting
outside--made me open it. To my astonishment it was he," and Ambrose
himself could not repress a sort of tremor. "He did not speak, but
seemed to pass me and be up the stairs and in the library in an instant.
And then, not knowing what to do, I went to your room, ma'am. Forgive me
if I did wrong."
"No, no," said Anne, "you could not have done otherwise. Ring the bell,
Ambrose; tell Seton I have had bad news, and that you think it has upset
me. But wait at the door till she comes. I--I am afraid to be left
alone."
And Mrs. Medway looked so deadly pale and faint, that when Seton came
hurrying in answer to the sharply-rung bell, it needed no explanation
for her to see that Mrs. Medway was really ill. Seton was a practical,
matter-of-fact person, and the bustle of attending to her mistress,
trying to make her warm again--for Anne was shivering with cold--and
persuading her to take some restoratives, effectually drove any inquiry
as to the cause of the sudden seizure out of the maid's head. And by
the time Mrs. Medway was better, Seton had invented a satisfactory
explanation of it all, for herself.
"You need a change, ma'am. It's too dull for anybody staying in town at
this season; and it's beginning to tell on your nerves, ma'am," was the
maid's idea.
And some little time after the strange occurrence Mrs. Medway was
persuaded to leave town for the country.
But not till she had seen in the newspapers the fatal paragraph she knew
would sooner or later be there--the announcement of the death, on board
Her Majesty's troopship _Ariadne_ a few days before reaching the Cape,
of "Major R. R. Graham," of the 113th regiment.
She "had known it," she said to herself; yet when she saw it there,
staring her in the face, she realised that she had been living in a hope
which she had not allowed to herself that the apparition might in the
end prove capable of other explanation. She would gladly have taken
refuge in the thought that it was a dream, an optical delusion fed of
her fancy incessantly brooding on her friend and on his last visit--that
her brain was in some way disarranged or disturbed--anything, anything
would have been welcome to her. But against all such was opposed the
fact that it was not herself alone who had seen Kenneth Graham that
fatal afternoon.
And now, when the worst was certain, she recognised this still more
clearly as the strongest testimony to the apparition not having been the
product of her own imagination. And old Ambrose, her sole confidant, in
his simple way agreed with her.
"If I had not seen him too, ma'am, or if I alone had seen him," he said,
furtively wiping his eyes. "But the two of us. No, it could have but
the one meaning," and he looked sadly at the open newspaper. "There's
a slight discrimpancy, ma'am," he said as he pointed to the paragraph.
"Our Major Graham's name was '_K._ R.' not '_R._ R.'"
"It is only a misprint. I noticed that," said Anne wearily. "No,
Ambrose, there can be no mistake. But I do not want any one--not _any
one_--ever to hear the story. You will promise me that, Ambrose?" and
the old man repeated the promise he had already given.
There was another "discrimpancy" which had struck Anne more forcibly,
but which she refrained from mentioning to Ambrose.
"It can mean nothing; it is no use putting it into his head," she said
to herself. "Still, it is strange."
The facts were these. The newspaper gave the date of Major Graham's
death as the 25th November--the afternoon on which he had appeared to
Mrs. Medway and her servant was that of the 26th. This left no
possibility of calculating that the vision had occurred at or even
shortly after the moment of the death.
"It must be a mistake in the announcement," Anne decided. And then she
gave herself up to the acceptance of the fact. Kenneth was dead. Life
held no individual future for her any more--nothing to look forward to,
no hopes, however tremblingly admitted, that "some day" he might return,
and return to discover--to own, perhaps, to himself and to her that he
did love her, and that only mistaken pride, or her own coldness, or one
of the hundred "mistakes" or "perhapses" by which men, so much more than
women, allow to drift away from them the happiness they might grasp, had
misled and withheld him! No; all was over. Henceforth she must live in
her children alone--in the interests of others she must find her
happiness.
"And in one blessed thought," said the poor girl--for she was little
more--even at the first to herself; "that after all he _did_ love me,
that I may, without shame, say so in my heart, for I was his last
thought. It was--it must have been--to tell me so that he came that day.
My Kenneth--yes, he was mine after all."
Some little time passed. In the quiet country place whither, sorely
against Seton's desires, Mrs. Medway had betaken herself for "change,"
she heard no mention of Major Graham's death. One or two friends
casually alluded to it in their letters as "very sad," but that was all.
And Anne was glad of it.
"I must brace myself to hear it spoken of and discussed by the friends
who knew him well--who knew how well _I_ knew him"--she reflected. "But
I am glad to escape it for a while."
It was February already, more than three months since Kenneth Graham had
left England, when one morning--among letters forwarded from her London
address--came a thin foreign paper one with the traces of travel upon
it--of which the superscription made Anne start and then turn pale and
cold.
"I did not think of this," she said to herself. "He must have left it to
be forwarded to me. It is terrible--getting a letter after the hand that
wrote it has been long dead and cold."
With trembling fingers she opened it.
"My dear--may I say my dearest Anne," were the first words that her eyes
fell on. Her own filled with tears. Wiping them away before going on to
read more, she caught sight of the date. "On board H.M.'s troopship
_Ariadne_, 27th November."
Anne started. Stranger and stranger. _Two_ days later than the reported
date of his death--and the writing so strong and clear. No sign of
weakness or illness even! She read on with frantic eagerness; it was
not a very long letter, but when Anne had read the two or three somewhat
hurriedly written pages, her face had changed as if from careworn, pallid
middle age, back to fresh, sunny youth. She fell on her knees in fervent,
unspoken thanksgiving. She kissed the letter--the dear, beautiful letter,
as if it were a living thing!
"It is too much--too much," she said. "What have I done to deserve such
blessedness?"
This was what the letter told. The officer whose death had been
announced was not "our Major Graham," not Graham of the 113th at all,
but an officer belonging to another regiment who had come on board at
Madeira to return to India, believing his health to be quite restored.
"The doctors had in some way mistaken his case," wrote Kenneth, "for he
broke down again quite suddenly and died two days ago. He was a very
good fellow, and we have all been very cut up about it. He took a fancy
to me, and I have been up some nights with him, and I am rather done
up myself. I write this to post at the Cape, for a fear has struck me
that--his initials being so like mine--some report may reach you that it
is _I_, not he. Would you care very much, dear Anne? I dare to think you
would--but I cannot in a letter tell you why. I must wait till I see
you. I have had a somewhat strange experience, and it is possible, just
possible, that I may be able to tell you all about it, _viva voce_,
sooner than I had any idea of when I last saw you. In the meantime,
good-bye and God bless you, my dear child."
Then followed a postscript--of some days' later date, written in great
perturbation of spirit at finding that the letter had, by mistake, not
been posted at the Cape. "After all my anxiety that you should see it
as soon as or before the newspapers, it is really too bad. I cannot
understand how it happened. I suppose it was that I was so busy getting
poor Graham's papers and things together to send on shore, that I
overlooked it. It cannot now be posted till we get to Galles."
That was all. But was it not enough, and more than enough? The next few
weeks passed for Anne Medway like a happy dream. She was content now to
wait--years even--she had recovered faith in herself, faith in the
future.
The next Indian mail brought her no letter, somewhat to her surprise.
She wondered what had made Kenneth allude to his perhaps seeing her
again before long--she wondered almost more, what was the "strange
experience" to which he referred. Could it have had any connection
with her _most_ strange experience that November afternoon? And thus
"wondering" she was sitting alone--in her own house again by this
time--one evening towards the end of April, when a ring at the bell made
her look up from the book she was reading, half dreamily asking herself
what visitor could be coming so late. She heard steps and voices--a door
shutting--then Ambrose opened that of the drawing-room where she was
sitting and came up to her, his wrinkled old face all flushed and
beaming.
"It was me that frightened you so that day, ma'am," he began. "It's
right it should be me again. But it's himself--his very own self this
time. You may believe me, indeed."
Anne started to her feet. She felt herself growing pale--she trembled so
that she could scarcely stand.
"Where is he?" she said. "You have not put him into the library--anywhere
but there?"
"He would have it so, ma'am. He said he would explain to you. Oh, go to
him, ma'am--you'll see it'll be all right."
Anne made her way to the library. But at the door a strange tremor
seized her. She could scarcely control herself to open it. Yes--there
again on the hearthrug stood the tall figure she had so often pictured
thus to herself. She trembled and all but fell, but his voice--his own
hearty, living voice--speaking to her in accents tenderer and deeper
than ever heretofore--reassured her, and dispersed at once the fear that
had hovered about her.
"Anne, my dear Anne. It is I myself. Don't look so frightened;" and in a
moment he had led her forward, and stood with his hand on her shoulder,
looking with his kind, earnest eyes into hers.
"Yes," he said dreamily, "it was just thus. Oh, how often I have thought
of this moment! Anne, if I am mistaken forgive my presumption, but I can't
think I am. Anne, my darling, you _do_ love me?"
There was no need of words. Anne hid her face on his shoulder for one
happy moment. Then amidst the tears that _would_ come she told him
all--all she had suffered and hoped and feared--her love and her agony
of humiliation when she thought it was not returned--her terrible grief
when she thought him dead; and yet the consolation of believing herself
to have been his last thought in life.
"So you shall be--my first and my last," he answered. "My Anne--my very
own."
And then she told him more of the strange story we know. He listened
with intense eagerness, but without testifying much surprise, far less
incredulity.
"I anticipated something of the kind," he said, after a moment or two of
silence. "It is very strange. Listen, Anne: at the time, the exact time,
so far as I can roughly calculate, at which you thought you saw me, I
was _dreaming_ of you. It was between four and five o'clock in the
afternoon, was it not?"
Anne bowed her head in assent.
"That would have made it about six o'clock where we then were," he went
on consideringly. "Yes; it was about seven when I awoke. I had lain down
that afternoon with a frightful headache. Poor Graham had died shortly
before midnight the night before, and I had not been able to sleep,
though I was very tired. I daresay I was not altogether in what the
doctors call a normal condition, from the physical fatigue and the effect
generally of having watched him die. I was feeling less _earthly_, if you
can understand, than one usually does. It is--to me at least--_impossible_
to watch a deathbed without wondering about it all--about what comes
after--intensely. And Graham was so good, so patient and resigned and
trustful, though it was awfully hard for him to die. He had every reason
to wish to live. Well, Anne, when I fell asleep that afternoon I at
once began dreaming about you. I had been thinking about you a great
deal, constantly almost, ever since we set sail. For, just before
starting, I had got a hint that this appointment--I have not told you
about it yet, but that will keep; I have accepted it, as you see by my
being here--I got a hint that it would probably be offered me, and that
if I didn't mind paying my passage back almost as soon as I got out, I
had better make up my mind to accept it. I felt that it hung upon _you_,
and yet I did not see how to find out what you would say without--without
risking what I _had_--your sisterly friendship. It came into my head
just as I was falling asleep that I would write to you from the Cape,
and tell you of Graham's death to avoid any mistaken report, and that
I might in my letter somehow feel my way a little. This was all in my
mind, and as I fell asleep it got confused so that I did not know
afterwards clearly where to separate it from my dream."
"And what was the dream?" asked Anne breathlessly.
"_Almost precisely what you saw_," he replied. "I fancied myself
here--rushing upstairs to the library in my haste to see you--to tell
you I was not dead, and to ask you if you would have cared much had it
been so. I saw all the scene--the hall, the staircase already lighted.
This room--and you coming in at the door with a half-frightened,
half-eager look in your face. Then it grew confused. I next remember
standing here beside you on the hearthrug with my hand on your
shoulder--_thus_, Anne--and gazing into your eyes, and struggling,
_struggling_ to ask you what I wanted so terribly to know. But the
words would not come, and the agony seemed to awake me. Yet with the
awaking came the answer. _Something_ had answered me; I said to myself,
'Yes, Anne does love me.'"
And Anne remembered the strange feeling of joy which had come to her
even in the first bitterness of her grief. She turned to the hand that
still lay on her shoulder and kissed it. "Oh, Kenneth," she said, "how
thankful we should be! But how strange, to think that we owe all to a
dream! _Was_ it a dream, Kenneth?"
He shook his head.
"You must ask that of wiser people than I," he said. "I suppose it was."
"But how could it have been a dream?" said Anne again. "You forget,
Kenneth--Ambrose saw you too."
"Though I did not see him, nor even think of him. Yes, that makes it
even more incomprehensible. It must have been the old fellow's devotion
to you, Anne, that made him sympathise with you, somehow."
"I am glad he saw you," said Anne. "I should prefer to think it more
than a dream. And there is always more evidence in favour of any story
of the kind if it has been witnessed by two. But there is one other
thing I want to ask you. It has struck me since that you answered me
rather abstractedly that last evening when I spoke about your address,
and asked if there was any other of the name in your regiment. Once or
twice I have drawn a faint ray of hope from remembering your not very
decided answer."
"Yes, it was stupid of me; I half remembered it afterwards. I should
have explained it, but it scarcely seemed worth while. I did know
another Major Graham might be joining us at Funchal, for that very day I
had been entrusted with letters for him. But I _was_ abstracted that
evening, Anne. I was trying to persuade myself I didn't care for what I
now know I care for more than for life itself--your love--Anne."