The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance Part 33

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?"

I looked away from him across the sunlit expanse of sea.

"I really cannot tell you," I said, at last--"I am quite as much in the dark as you are. I think she is overwrought, and that she has perhaps taken some of the things Mr. Santoris said too much to heart.

Then"--here I hesitated--"she said the other day that she was tired of this yachting trip--in fact, I think it is simply a case of nerves."

"She must have very odd nerves if they persuade her to believe that she and Brayle committed a murder together ages ago"--said Mr. Harland, irritably;--"I never heard of such nonsense in all my life!"

I was silent.

"I have told Captain Derrick to weigh anchor and get out of this,"--he continued, brusquely. "We shall make for Portree at once. There is something witch-like and uncanny about the place"--and he looked round as he spoke at the splendour of the mountains, s.h.i.+ning with almost crystalline clearness in the glory of the morning sun--"I feel as if it were haunted!"

"By what?" I asked.

"By memories," he answered--"And not altogether pleasant ones!"

I looked at him, and a moment's thought decided me that the opportunity had come for me to broach the subject of my intended departure, and I did so. I said that I felt I had allowed myself sufficient holiday, and that it would be necessary for me to take the ordinary steamer from Portree the morning after our arrival there in order to reach Glasgow as soon as possible. Mr. Harland surveyed me inquisitively.

"Why do you want to go by the steamer?" he asked--"Why not go with us back to Rothesay, for example?"

"I would rather lose no time,"--I said--then I added impulsively:--"Dear Mr. Harland, Catherine will be much better when I am gone--I know she will! You will be able to prolong the yachting trip which will benefit your health,--and I should be really most unhappy if you curtailed it on my account--"

He interrupted me.

"Why do you say that Catherine will be better when you are gone?" he demanded--"It was her own most particular wish that you should accompany us."

"She did not know what moved her to such a desire," I said,--then, seeing his look of astonishment, I smiled; "I am not a congenial spirit to her, nor to any of you, really! but she has been most kind, and so have you--and I thank you ever so much for all you have done for me--you have done much more than you know!--only I feel it is better to go now--now, before--"

"Before what?" he asked.

"Well, before we all hate each other!" I said, playfully--"It is quite on the cards that we shall come to that! Dr. Brayle thinks my presence quite as harmful to Catherine as that of Mr. Santoris;--I am full of 'theories' which he considers prejudicial,--and so, perhaps, they ARE--to HIM!"

Mr. Harland drew closer to me where I stood leaning against the deck rail and spoke in a lower tone.

"Tell me," he said,--"and be perfectly frank about it--what is it you see in Brayle that rouses such a spirit of antagonism in you?"

"If I give you a straight answer, such as I feel to be the truth in myself, will you be offended?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"No"--he answered--"I shall not be offended. I simply want to know what you think, and I shall remember what you say and see if it proves correct."

"Well, in the first place," I said--"I see nothing in Dr. Brayle but what can be seen in hundreds of worldly-minded men such as he. But he is not a true physician, for he makes no real effort to cure you of your illness, while Catherine has no illness at all that demands a cure. He merely humours the weakness of her nerves, a weakness she has created by dwelling morbidly on her own self and her own particular miseries,--and all his future plans with regard to her and to you are settled. They are quite clear and reasonable. You will die,--in fact, it is, in his opinion, necessary for you to die,--it would be very troublesome and inconvenient to him if, by some chance, you were cured, and continued to live. When you are gone he will marry Catherine, your only child and heiress, and he will have no further personal anxieties.

I dislike this self-seeking att.i.tude on his part, and my only wonder is that you do not perceive it. For the rest, my antagonism to Dr. Brayle is instinctive and has its origin far back--perhaps in a bygone existence!"

He listened to my words with attentive patience.

"Well, I shall study the man more carefully,"--he said, after a pause;--"You may be right. At present I think you are wrong. As for any cure for me, I know there is none. I have consulted medical works on the subject and am perfectly convinced that Brayle is doing his best.

He can do no more. And now one word to yourself;"--here he laid a hand kindly on mine--"I have noticed--I could not help noticing that you were greatly taken by Santoris--and I should almost have fancied him rather fascinated by you had I not known him to be absolutely indifferent to womenkind. But let me tell you he is not a safe friend or guide for anyone. His theories are extravagant and impossible--his idea that there is no death, for example, when death stares us in the face every day, is perfectly absurd--and he is likely to lead you into much perplexity, the more so as you are too much of a believer in occult things already. I wish I could persuade you to listen to me seriously on one or two points--"

I smiled. "I am listening!" I said.

"Well, child, you listen perhaps, but you are not convinced. Realise, if you can, that these fantastic chimeras of a past and future life exist only in the heated imagination of the abnormal idealist. There is nothing beyond our actual sight and immediate living consciousness;--we know we are born and that we die--but why, we cannot tell and never shall be able to tell. We must try and manage the 'In-Between,'--the gap dividing birth and death,--as best we can, and that's all. I wish you would settle down to these facts reasonably--you would be far better balanced in mind and action--"

"If I thought as you do,"--I interrupted him--"I would jump from this vessel into the sea and let the waters close over me! There would be neither use nor sense in living for an 'In-Between' leading merely to nothingness."

He pa.s.sed his hand across his brows perplexedly.

"It certainly seems useless,"--he admitted--"but there it is. It is better to accept it than run amok among inexplicable infinities."

We were interrupted here by the sailors busying themselves in preparations for getting the yacht under way, and our conversation being thus broken off abruptly was not again resumed. By eleven o'clock we were steaming out of Loch Scavaig, and as I looked back on the sombre mountain-peaks that stood sentinel-wise round the deeply hidden magnificence of Loch Coruisk, I wondered if my visionary experience there had been only the work of my own excited imagination, or whether it really had foundation in fact? The letter from Santoris lay against my heart as actual testimony that he at least was real--that I had met and known him, and that so far as anything could be believed he had declared himself my 'lover'! But was ever love so expressed?--and had it ever before such a far-off beginning?

I soon ceased to perplex myself with futile speculations on the subject, however, and as the last peaks of the Scavaig hills vanished in pale blue distance I felt as if I had been brought suddenly back from a fairyland to a curiously dull and commonplace world. Everyone on board the 'Diana' seemed occupied with the veriest trifles,--Catherine remained too ill to appear all day, and Dr. Brayle was in almost constant attendance upon her. A vague sense of discomfort pervaded the whole atmosphere of the yacht,--she was a floating palace filled with every imaginable luxury, yet now she seemed a mere tawdry upholsterer's triumph compared with the exquisite grace and taste of the 'Dream'--and I was eager to be away from her. I busied myself during the day in packing my things ready for departure with the eagerness of a child leaving school for the holidays, and I was delighted when we arrived at Portree and anch.o.r.ed there that evening. It was after dinner, at about nine o'clock, that Catherine sent for me, hearing I had determined to go next morning. I found her in her bed, looking very white and feeble, with a scared look in her eyes which became intensified the moment she saw me.

"You are really going away?" she said, faintly--"I hope we have not offended you?"

I went up to her, took her poor thin hand and kissed it.

"No indeed!"--I answered--"Why should I be offended?"

"Father is vexed you are going,"--she went on--"He says it is all my silly nonsense and hysterical fancies--do you think it is?"

"I prefer not to say what I think,"--I replied, gently. "Dear Catherine, there are some things in life which cannot be explained, and it is better not to try and explain them. But believe me, I can never thank you enough for this yachting trip--you have done more for me than you will ever know!--and so far from being 'offended' I am grateful!--grateful beyond all words!"

She held my hands, looking at me wistfully.

"You will go away,"--she said, in a low tone--"and we shall perhaps never meet again. I don't think it likely we shall. People often try to meet again and never do--haven't you noticed that? It seems fated that they shall only know each other for a little while just to serve some purpose, and then part altogether. Besides, you live in a different world from ours. You believe in things that I can't even understand--You think there is a G.o.d--and you think each human being has a soul--"

"Are you not taught the same in your churches?" I interrupted.

She looked startled.

"Oh yes!--but then one never thinks seriously about it! You know that if we DID think seriously about it we could never live as we do. One goes to church for convention's sake--because it's respectable; but suppose you were to say to a clergyman that if your soul is 'immortal'

it follows in reason that it must always have existed and always will exist, he would declare you to be 'unorthodox.' That's where all the puzzle and contradiction comes in--so that I don't believe in the soul at all."

"Are you sure you do not?" I enquired, meaningly.

She was silent. Then she suddenly broke out.

"Well, I don't want to believe in it! I don't want to think about it!

I'd rather not! It's terrible! If a soul has never died and never will die, its burden of memories must be awful!--horrible!--no h.e.l.l could be worse!"

"But suppose they are beautiful and happy memories?" I suggested.