The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance Part 32

He turned up his face, full of light and laughter, to mine, and I thought then, how easy it would be to fling away all my doubts and scruples, give up the idea of making any more search for what perhaps I should never find, and take the joy which seemed proffered and the love which my heart knew was its own to claim! Yet something still pulled me back, and not only pulled me back, but on and away--something which inwardly told me I had much to learn before I dared accept a happiness I had not deserved. Nevertheless some of my thoughts found sudden speech.

"Rafel--" I began, and then paused, amazed at my own boldness in thus addressing him. He drew closer to me, the boat he stood in swaying under him.

"Go on!" he said, with a little tremor in his voice--"My name never sounded so sweetly in my own ears! What is it you would have me do?"

"Nothing!" I answered, half afraid of myself as I spoke--"Nothing--but this. Just to think that I am not merely wilful or rebellious in parting from you for a little while--for if it is true--"

"If what is true?" he interposed, gently.

"If it is true that we are friends not for a time but for eternity"--I said, in steadier tones--"then it can only be for a little while that we shall be separated. And then afterwards I shall be quite sure--"

"Yes--quite sure of what you are sure of now!" he said--"As sure as any immortal creature can be of an immortal truth! Do you know how long we have been separated already?"

I shook my head, smiling a little.

"Well, I will not tell you!" he answered--"It might frighten you! But by all the powers of earth and heaven, we shall not traverse such distances apart again--not if I can prevent it!"

"And can you?" I asked, half wistfully.

"I can! And I will! For I am stronger than you--and the strongest wins!

Your eyes look startled--there are glimpses of the moon in them, and they are soft eyes--not angry ones. I have seen them full of anger,--an anger that stabbed me to the heart!--but that was in the days gone by, when I was weaker than you. This time the position has changed--and _I_ am master!"

"Not yet!" I said, resolutely, withdrawing my hand from his--"I yield to nothing--not even to happiness--till I KNOW!"

A slight shadow darkened the attractiveness of his features.

"That is what the world says of G.o.d--'I will not yield till I know!'

But it is as plastic clay in His hands, all the time, and it never knows!"

I was silent--and there was a pause in which no sound was heard but the movement of the water under the little boat in which he stood. Then--

"Good-night!" he said.

"Good-night!" I answered, and moved by a swift impulse, I stooped and kissed the firm hand that rested so near me, gripping the edge of the port-hole. He looked up with a sudden light in his eyes.

"Is that a sign of grace and consolation?" he asked, smiling--"Well! I am content! And I have waited so long that I can wait yet a little longer."

So speaking, he let go his hold from alongside the yacht, and in another minute had seated himself in the boat and was rowing away across the moonlit water. I watched him as every stroke of the oars widened the distance between us, half hoping that he might look back, wave his hand, or even return again--but no!--his boat soon vanished like a small black speck on the sea, and I knew myself to be left alone. Restraining with difficulty the tears that rose to my eyes, I shut the port-hole and drew its little curtain across it--then I sat down to read the letter he had left with me. It ran as follows:

Beloved,--

I call you by this name as I have always called you through many cycles of time,--it should sound upon your ears as familiarly as a note of music struck in response to another similar note in far distance. You are not satisfied with the proofs given you by your own inner consciousness, which testify to the unalterable fact that you and I are, and must be, as one,--that we have played with fate against each other, and sometimes striven to escape from each other, all in vain;--it is not enough for you to know (as you do know) that the moment our eyes met our spirits rushed together in a sudden ecstasy which, had we dared to yield to it, would have outleaped convention and made of us no more than two flames in one fire! If you are honest with yourself as I am honest with myself, you will admit that this is so,--that the emotion which overwhelmed us was reasonless, formless and wholly beyond all a.n.a.lysis, yet more insistent than any other force having claim on our lives. But it is not sufficient for you to realise this,--or to trace through every step of the journey you have made, the gradual leading of your soul to mine,--from that last night you pa.s.sed in your own home, when every fibre of your being grew warm with the prescience of coming joy, to this present moment, even through dreams of infinite benediction in which I shared--no!--it is not sufficient for you!--you must 'know'--you must learn--you must probe into deeper mysteries, and study and suffer to the last! Well, if it must be so, it must,--and I shall rely on the eternal fitness of things to save you from your own possible rashness and bring you back to me,--for without you now I can do nothing more. I have done much--and much remains to be done--but if I am to attain, you must crown the attainment--if my ambition is to find completion, you alone can be its completeness. If you have the strength and the courage to face the ordeal through which Aselzion sends those who seek to follow his teaching, you will indeed have justified your claim to be considered higher than merest woman,--though you have risen above that level already. The lives of women generally, and of men too, are so small and sordid and self-centred, thanks to their obstinate refusal to see anything better or wider than their own immediate outlook, that it is hardly worth while considering them in the light of that deeper knowledge which teaches of the REAL life behind the seeming one. In the ordinary way of existence men and women meet and mate with very little more intelligence or thought about it than the lower animals; and the results of such meeting and mating are seen in the degenerate and dying nations of to-day. Moreover, they are content to be born for no other visible reason than to die--and no matter how often they may be told there is no such thing as death, they receive the a.s.sertion with as much indignant incredulity as the priesthood of Rome received Galileo's a.s.surance that the earth moves round the sun. But we--you and I--who know that life, being ALL Life, CANNOT die,--ought to be wiser in our present s.p.a.ce of time than to doubt each other's infinite capability for love and the perfect world of beauty which love creates. _I_ do not doubt--my doubting days are past, and the whips of sorrow have lashed me into shape as well as into strength, but YOU hesitate,--because you have been rendered weak by much misunderstanding. However, it has partially comforted me to place the position fully before you, and having done this I feel that you must be free to go your own way. I do not say 'I love you!'--such a phrase from me would be merest folly, knowing that you must be mine, whether now or at the end of many more centuries. Your soul is deathless as mine is--it is eternally young, as mine is,--and the force that gives us life and love is divine and indestructible, so that for us there can be no end to the happiness which is ours to claim when we will. For the rest I leave you to decide--you will go to the House of Aselzion and perhaps you will remain there some time,--at any rate when you depart from thence you will have learned much, and you will know what is best for yourself and for me.

My beloved, I commend you to G.o.d with all my adoring soul and am

Your lover, Rafel Santoris

A folded paper fell out of this letter,--it contained full instructions as to the way I should go on the journey I intended to make to the mysterious House of Aselzion--and I was glad to find that I should not have to travel as far as I had at first imagined. I began at once to make my plans for leaving the Harlands as soon as possible, and before going to bed I wrote to my friend Francesca, who I knew would certainly expect me to visit her in Inverness-s.h.i.+re as soon as my cruise in the Harlands' yacht was over, and briefly stated that business of an important nature called me abroad for two or three weeks, but that I fully antic.i.p.ated being at home in England again before the end of October. As it was now just verging on the end of August, I thought I was allowing myself a fairly wide margin for absence. When I had folded and sealed my letter ready for posting, an irresistible sense of sleep came over me, and I yielded to it gratefully. I found myself too overcome by it even to think,--and I laid my head down upon the pillows with a peaceful consciousness that all was well,--that all would be well--and that in trying to make sure of the intentions of Fate towards me both in life and love, I could not be considered as altogether foolish. Of course, judged by the majority of people, I know I am already counted as worse than foolish for the impressions and experiences I here undertake to narrate, but that kind of judgment does not affect me, seeing that their own daily and hourly folly is so visibly p.r.o.nounced and has such unsatisfactory and frequently disastrous results, that mine--if it indeed be folly to choose lasting and eternal things rather than ephemeral and temporal ones,--cannot but seem light in comparison. Love, as the world generally conceives of it, is hardly worth having--for if we become devoted to persons who must in time be severed from us by death or other causes, we have merely wasted the wealth of our affections. Only as a perfect, eternal, binding force is love of any value,--and unless one can be sure in one's own self that there is the strength and truth and courage to make it thus perfect, eternal and binding, it is better to have nothing to do with what after all is the divinest of divine pa.s.sions,--the pa.s.sion of creativeness, from which springs all thought, all endeavour, all accomplishment.

When I woke the next morning I did not need to be told that the 'Dream'

had set her wonderful sails and flown. A sense of utter desolation was in the air, and my own loneliness was impressed upon me with overwhelming bitterness and force. It was a calm, brilliant morning, and when I went up on deck the magnificent scenery of Loch Scavaig was, to my thinking, lessened in effect by the excessive glare of the sun.

The water was smooth as oil, and where the 'Dream' had been anch.o.r.ed, showing her beautiful lines and tapering spars against the background of the mountains, there was now a dreary vacancy. The whole scene looked intolerably dull and lifeless, and I was impatient to be away from it. I said as much at breakfast, a meal at which Catherine Harland never appeared, and where I was accustomed to take the head of the table, at Mr. Harland's request, to dispense the tea and coffee. Dr.

Brayle seemed malignly amused at my remark.

"The interest of the place has evidently vanished with Mr. Santoris, so far as you are concerned!" he said--"He is certainly a remarkable man, and owns a remarkable yacht--but beyond that I am not sure that his room is not better than his company."

"I daresay you feel it so,"--said Mr. Harland, who had for some moments been unusually taciturn and preoccupied--"Your theories are diametrically opposed to his, and, for that matter, so are mine. But I confess I should like to have tested his medical skill--he a.s.sured me positively that he could cure me of my illness in three months."

"Why do you not let him try?" suggested Brayle, with an air of forced lightness--"He will be a man of miracles if he can cure what the whole medical profession knows to be incurable. But I'm quite willing to retire in his favour, if you wish it."

Mr. Harland's bristling eyebrows met over his nose in a saturnine frown.

"Well, are you willing?" he said--"I rather doubt it! And if you are, I'm not. I've no faith in mysticism or psychism of any kind. It bores me to think about it. And nothing has puzzled me at all concerning Santoris except his extraordinarily youthful appearance. That is a problem to me,--and I should like to solve it."

"He looks about thirty-eight or forty,"--said Brayle, "And I should say that is his age." "That his age!" Mr. Harland gave a short, derisive laugh--"Why, he's over sixty if he's a day! That's the mystery of it.

There is not a touch of 'years' about him. Instead of growing old, he grows young."

Brayle looked up quizzically at his patron.

"I've already hinted," he said, "that he may not be the Santoris you knew at Oxford. He may be a relative, cleverly masquerading as the original man--"

"That won't stand a moment's argument," interposed Mr. Harland--"And I'll tell you how I know it won't. We had a quarrel once, and I slashed his arm with a clasp-knife pretty heavily." Here a sudden quiver of something,--shame or remorse perhaps--came over his hard face and changed its expression for a moment. "It was all my fault--I had a devilish temper, and he was calm--his calmness irritated me;--moreover, I was drunk. Santoris knew I was drunk,--and he wanted to get me home to my rooms and to bed before I made too great a disgrace of myself--then--THAT happened. I remember the blood pouring from his arm--it frightened me and sobered me. Well, when he came on board here the other night he showed me the scar of the very wound I had inflicted. So I know he's the same man."

We all sat silent.

"He was always studying the 'occult'"--went on Mr. Harland--"And I was scarcely surprised that he should 'think out' that antique piece of jewellery from your pocket last night. He actually told me it belonged to you ages ago, when you were quite another and more important person!"

Dr. Brayle laughed loudly, almost boisterously.

"What a fictionist the man must be!" he exclaimed. "Why doesn't he write a novel? Mr. Swinton, I wish you would take a few notes for me of what Mr. Santoris said about that collar of jewels,--I should like to keep the record."

Mr. Swinton smiled an obliging a.s.sent.

"I certainly will,"--he said. "I was fortunately present when Mr.

Santoris expressed his curious ideas about the jewels to Mr. Harland."

"Oh, well, if you are going to record it,"--said Mr. Harland, half laughingly--"you had better be careful to put it all down. The collar--according to Santoris--belonged to Dr. Brayle when his personality was that of an Italian n.o.bleman residing in Florence about the year 1537--he wore it on one unfortunate occasion when he murdered a man, and the jewels have not had much of a career since that period.

Now they have come back into his possession--"

"Father, who told you all this?"

The voice was sharp and thin, and we turned round amazed to see Catherine standing in the doorway of the saloon, white and trembling, with wild eyes looking as though they saw ghosts. Dr. Brayle hastened to her.

"Miss Harland, pray go back to your cabin--you are not strong enough--"

"What's the matter, Catherine?" asked her father--"I'm only repeating some of the nonsense Santoris told me about that collar of jewels--"

"It's not nonsense!" cried Catherine. "It's all true! I remember it all--we planned the murder together--he and I!"--and she pointed to Dr.