CHAPTER IV.
‘Look, then, into thine heart and write!’
‘Look, then, into thine heart and write!’
‘Look, then, into thine heart and write!’
Very intently, too, and as if surprised or trying to remember. Her large eyes seemed singularly brilliant, and for a while the only thing living about her. But all at once, as though memory had returned, she sprang to her feet and stood, strong, and utterly without support, and questioned him with those eyes silently but eloquently. The queerest thing about it all to Wyndham was that, instead of being enfeebled by the strange draught she had drunk, she looked younger, more vigorous, and altogether another person from the forlorn, poor child of eight hours ago. Her eyes were now like stars, her lips red and warm; the drug had, beyond doubt,a property that even the Professor had never dreamt of; it gave not only rest, but renewed health and life to those who drank it.
Seeing Wyndham did not or could not speak, she did.
‘I am alive—alive!’ she cried, with young and happy exultation. Where was the desire for death that lay so heavily on her only a few hours ago? It was all gone. Now it was plain that she desired life—life only. Her voice rang through the room fresh and clear, filling it with music of a hope renewed, and so penetrating that it even pierced into the room beyond. And as it reached it, another cry broke forth—a cry this time old and feeble.
Wyndham rushed to answer it, taking with him his last memory of the girl, as she then stood, with her arms thrown out as if in quick delight, and her whole strange, beautiful face one ray of gladness.
The Professor was sitting up in bed a mere wreck, but with expectation on every feature. He was trembling visibly.
‘That voice!’ he whispered wildly—‘that voice! I know it. Long years ago I knew it. Boy, speak—tell me, whose voice was that?’
Wyndham knelt down beside him, and took his hand in his. He, too, was trembling excessively, and his eyes were full of tears.
‘Sir,’ he said softly, ‘she is alive.’
‘She—she—who?’ asked the Professor. He bent forward; his features were working.
‘That girl ... last night.... She lives, sir. Your experiment has not failed, after all.’
He feared to look at the Professor when he had said this, and bent his head, leaning his forehead on the wrinkled hand he held. It quivered slightly beneath him, but not much, and presently the old man spoke.
‘She lives?’ His voice was stronger now. Wyndham looked up, and found the Professor looking almost his normal self, and with that expression in his eyes that the young man knew as meaning a sharp calculation.
‘Yes; I have spoken to her. Will you see her?’
‘No.’ The Professor silenced him by a gesture. He was evidently in the midst of a quick calculation now.
‘The hour she woke?’ he asked presently, with such a vigorous ring in his tone that Wyndham rose to his feet astonished.
‘Two minutes ago.’
‘Hah!’ The Professor went back to his calculations. Presently a shout broke from him. ‘I see it now!’ he cried victoriously; ‘I see where the mistake lay! Fool that I was not to have seen it before! It was a miscalculation, but one easy to be rectified. An hour or two will do it. Here, help me up, Paul.’
‘But, Professor, it is impossible; you must rest; you——’
‘Not another moment, not one, I tell you!’ cried the Professor furiously. He lunged out of bed. ‘This thing must be seen to at once. What time can any man be sure of, that he should waste it? The discovery must be assured. And what time have I?’
He fell forward; he had fainted. Wyndhamlaid him back, and rushed frantically into the next room.
The girl was standing just where he had left her. But her arms were outstretched no longer; they were better employed—they were doing up her hair.
There was a glass on a wall opposite to him, and by this she was trying to bring herself back to as perfect a state of respectability as circumstances permitted her.
‘You must go,’ said Wyndham, ‘and at once. Do you hear—at once?’
And, indeed, it was imperative that she should be out of the house before the arrival of the doctor, for whom he was now about to go.
She rose. And suddenly gladness died from her face, her arms dropped to her sides; something of the old misery, but not all, settled down on her once more.
‘I can go,’ she said. ‘I—I am not so afraid now, when it is day; but—he said——’
Poor child! she had remembered the bargain of the night before. She had not thought itworthy of thought then, believing Death indeed lay before her when she drank that draught; but when she woke, when memory returned to her (and it always came quickly after such a draught as that), she had gladly told herself that now all her troubles were at an end, that the old man would provide for her, protect her. And now this young man, so forbidding, so unkind, with his harsh voice and ways; and yet last night he had seemed so kind!
‘He is dying!’ said Wyndham shortly. ‘A doctor must be summoned without delay. I shall arrange for your going—for your safety; but you must be quick.’ He rang the bell for Denis, who was waiting for him below. The Professor’s only servant was a charwoman, who left nightly at ten, and did not return till the same time next morning.
‘You need provide for nothing,’ said the girl. She caught up the little shawl that had been wrapped round her last night, and moved towards the door.
‘Stay a moment; you can’t go like this,’said the young man distractedly. ‘I have a servant who will take you to some place of safety. It is impossible that you should go like this. Why’—awkwardly—‘you haven’t even got a bonnet.’
She stopped and looked at him.
‘It is not you who are responsible,’ she said. ‘And’—she drew her breath quickly—‘after all, no one is. I took that drug of my own accord, of my own will, but he did promise to—to—— But if he is dying?’ She looked at him anxiously, making the last speech a question.
‘I am afraid so.’
‘Then that is at an end.’ She went towards the door.
‘Wait for my servant,’ entreated he, following her and laying a hand upon her arm. ‘I cannot allow you to go like this.’
‘I don’t see what it is to you,’ said she.
‘It is much—a great deal. For one thing, the Professor, if he recovers, would never forgive me for letting you go out of his life without reparation—without the fulfilmentof his promise to you. He is indebted to you, remember. It’—eagerly—‘was a bargain. And, after all, if you throw off his responsibility now, where will you go? You say you have no home—no——’
‘Nothing! nothing!’ she said. He could see her face pale again, and again that dreadful look of despair, of hopelessness, that had crowned her last night, aged and made miserable her face.
He turned gladly from the sad contemplation of it to address Denis, who had entered the room, his small twinkling eyes as bright as ever; but, then, he had slept tranquilly the whole night through by a kitchen fire that would have been hard to rival in heat and brilliancy. Amongst all Denis’s many virtues, one stood out: he could always be depended on to look after himself. And really that is a great thing in a faithful servant; so many of them like to pose as martyrs in the cause.
Wyndham led his servant a little aside.
‘You see this——’ He hesitated for aword, and then said, ‘young lady; you will take her away at once. There is not a moment to be lost. Get her out of the house directly. I am going for a doctor. The Professor is seriously ill. Do you understand? You are to lose no time. You must take her away at once.’
Denis stared at him in the appallingly nonunderstanding way that belongs, I believe, to Irish servants alone. It doesn’t mean that they don’t understand; it only means that they are taking it all in, with a cleverness that few other servants can show at a moment’s notice.
‘An’ where, yer honour?’
‘Anywhere out of this!’
This struck him as abominably unfeeling, and he added hastily: ‘To the safest place you know—the very safest. I depend upon you, Denis. Treat her as you would your own daughter.’