by Grant Allen
They sat there long, those two others, watching her anxiously. Many times Sirena looked across with a mute inquiring look in her eyes towards Haviland Dumaresq; and each time the gray old philosopher, heart-broken himself and torn with remorse, framed his lips into a mute ‘No’ when Sirena would have spoken to his heart-broken daughter. It was better to let this dazed and paralyzed mood wear itself out to its natural term by pure inanition. Psyche had so discounted her grief already that the final announcement came, not as a sudden shock, but merely as a clear and fatal certainty, where before there had been nothing but doubt and hesitation.
At last, with a sudden return of power, she rose from her seat on the great rock, and moved towards the house, neither seeing nor yet groping, but finding her way, as it seemed, by pure instinct. Her tread was firm and her voice steady.
‘Say nothing of all this at the villa, Sirena,’ she said calmly, turning round as she reached the road. ‘I can bear it all now. I feel stronger already. He died without pain, Sir Austen says. And it’s something, at least, to know exactly what happened to him.’
Sirena walked on by her side and wondered. But, in truth, Psyche had no reason to weep. A strange yet natural strength seemed to buoy her up. It was the strength of despair, backed up and reinforced by the strength of duty. Her own life was cut off from her altogether now. She had nothing left to live for henceforth but her father. When he was gone, she might fade away as she would, like a withered flower.
CHAPTER XLII.
THE MEETING.
For the next three days the same unnatural peace of soul possessed Psyche. Sirena and Geraldine Maitland, who were constantly in attendance, could hardly understand her strange, unvarying calmness. But Haviland Dumaresq, nearer to her in blood, and liker in fibre, understood it only too well. Psychologist that he was, he knew what it meant — a self annihilated.
When a soul is dead, it doesn’t complain; it doesn’t grieve; it doesn’t even despair. It lives on with a vague sort of vegetative life — a life which stands to the psychical health in the same relation as the state of coma stands to the bodily functions. That was indeed the sort of life that Psyche was now fast falling into.
On the third morning after the final collapse, Sirena received a telegram from her sister, dated from Constantine:
‘Sir Austen better, and able to travel. We are all coming on together at once. We shall reach Algiers by to-night’s train. Come in with a carriage from the Orangers to the depot to meet us.’
She showed the telegram in much doubt to Dumaresq. How to comport themselves? The old man turned it over in his mind for a moment.
‘Shall we let her know they’re coming or not?’ he asked, hesitating. ‘Either way, Sirena, seems fraught with alternative danger.’
‘Let her know,’ Sirena answered, with American boldness and feminine instinct. ‘Say to her “Corona and Cyrus are coming.” She’ll be anxious to know whatever they can tell her. You needn’t mention that Sir Austen’s with them.’
‘But suppose she should want to go down and meet them?’ Haviland Dumaresq suggested.
The events of the last twelve months had so thoroughly unmanned him, that that proud spirit condescended even, for the first time in life, to ask somebody else’s advice about his own movements.
‘Let her go,’ Sirena answered, after a second’s consideration. ‘It’ll do her good, Mr. Dumaresq, even to move. Anything that sort of takes her out of herself is good for her, I opinionate. She’ll want to hear what Sir Austen has to say. And if she sees him, it’ll satisfy her to learn the worst at once. After all, Sir Austen was the last man to see him.’
‘I can’t bear to tell her!’ Haviland Dumaresq cried, recoiling. ‘Will you, Sirena?’
With a nod, Sirena slipped from the room to Psyche. She told her the message very gently. Psyche, sitting by the open window, where the sun shone warm on her face, and the insects hummed, and the scent of the great white Japanese lilies floated in upon the breeze, listened with that strange dull calmness still all unbroken.
‘We’ll go to meet them,’ she said simply, folding her hands on her lap in Quaker fashion. ‘I can bear all now. I can bear anything. Do you know, Sirena, I felt almost happy in the warm, bright sunlight just this minute — happy like a lizard — before you came into the room to tell me. The light fell upon me till I felt it with my face; and it seemed as if the world were all dead to me at once, and my eyes were gone, and my senses were failing; and just the sunlight and the breeze and the flowers remained, and the noise of insects, and the vague sense that, after all, he wasn’t now so very, very far from me. He was farther away, you know, before we knew all. And now, I think, he knows all too — and perhaps he forgives me.’
‘You must rouse yourself!’ Sirena cried, with a face all tears. ‘Oh, Psyche, you must really try to rouse yourself! You mustn’t let your life just dream itself away and fade out like that. For your father’s sake, dear Psyche, you must try to rouse yourself.’
‘I can’t,’ Psyche answered, moving her sightless eyes quietly round in the broad sunshine. ‘I don’t seem to have impulse enough left now for anything but this. I like to feel the sun fall full upon my eyes. I can feel it hot — oh, so hot! — on my eyeballs. I’m quite resigned — quite resigned now, Sirena; and I feel somehow that if I were to try and rouse myself, the pang in my heart would come back at once as fierce and cruel and painful as ever. It would come like a spasm, and cut through and through me.’
‘But you’ll go down to meet Cyrus?’ Sirena cried, with a despairing look.
‘Oh yes, I’ll go down to meet Corona and your brother,’ Psyche answered, with a quiet, half-inaudible sigh. ‘I couldn’t bear not to go down and meet them. I want to hear the worst at once, Sirena. I think when I’ve heard it, dear, it’ll be all over. And, besides, I want to thank them both so much for the trouble they’ve taken.’
And she kissed her new friend’s hand softly and tenderly.
At six o’clock that night they were at Algiers station, Haviland Dumaresq and Sirena supporting and guiding the blind girl’s steps, and Psyche, pale but resolute still, walking firm with unfailing feet between them. After all, she was still Dumaresq’s daughter. Though eyes and nerves might desert her at a pinch, that unconquerable will should never fail to sustain her.
At ten minutes past six the train steamed, snorting, into the bare station. As it came, Psyche’s heart sank slowly within her. She knew not why, but a faint fluttering possessed her soul. She remembered that fluttering well of yore: how strange! how unexpected! She had felt it more than once — in her happy time — in the old, old days — that summer at Petherton.
She hardly knew herself what the fluttering foreboded.
The train pulled up at the platform in front. Haviland Dumaresq, too agitated in soul to know what he was doing, left Psyche for the moment in Sirena’s care, and rushed forward along the line in search of Cyrus and Corona. Sirena drew Psyche gently along, and stopped at last in front of a full carriage, whence two or three people were descending deliberately, with true African laziness, among their rugs and bundles. Corona’s grave face gazed out at her ruthfully in the background behind, and Cyrus stood beside her, looking very solemn.
‘Take care, Sir Austen,’ Corona whispered under her breath. ‘Perhaps you’d better not get out just yet. My sister’s there, and I — I fancy she’s got a friend of hers with her. She’s very much agitated. I don’t want you to get out too soon and shock her.’
‘Shock her!’ Sir Austen answered, in genuine surprise. ‘Why, what do you mean, Miss Vanrenen? I’m wasted, I know; but I don’t quite understand what there is about my appearance — —’
But Cyrus would permit him to say no more.
‘Not just now,’ he interposed, in an authoritative voice. ‘We’ll explain by-and-by. Let my sister get out first, and then I’ll come myself. Good-evening, Sirena. Good-evening, Miss Dumaresq.’
At that name Sir Austen gave a sudden start of astonishmen
t.
‘Miss Dumaresq!’ he repeated, with extreme incredulity. ‘Not — not Miss Dumaresq, Haviland Dumaresq’s daughter?’
As he spoke, in a voice loud enough to be heard outside the carriage, Sirena started back with alarm to see Psyche’s face, pale as death before, grow suddenly crimson, while a terrible thrill passed visibly like a wave through her whole body. Corona was pausing on the step now, and Cyrus, with one hand outstretched in a warning attitude above his shoulder, was endeavouring to prevent Sir Austen from descending. But Sir Austen, undeterred by his vain remonstrance, burst wildly to the door with incredible strength for a man just recovered from the fierce throes of fever, and crying aloud in his paroxysm, ‘It’s she! It’s Psyche!’ rushed frantically out upon the open platform.
Next moment, to Sirena and Corona’s unspeakable astonishment, Psyche herself, rushing forward with equal ardour to meet him, lay fainting and sobbing in Sir Austen’s arms, in one fierce torrent of outpouring emotion.
For a full minute she lay there still, panting hard for breath, and now once more deadly pale in the face, with the awful pallor of a broken heart too suddenly relieved from an unbearable pressure. Sirena and Corona, taking it all dimly in, but not even now understanding to the full what it really meant, stood reverently by, endeavouring to shade them with their screening bodies from the prying eyes of the other passengers, and too agitated themselves to make any effort at calming the agitation of those two weak and overwrought lovers.
At last Haviland Dumaresq, having walked in vain to the train’s end without recognising anybody, turned back in his quest, and came suddenly face to face with the unconscious couple.
Corona noticed, even in that moment of hurry, excitement, and surprise, that as soon as his eyes fell upon Sir Austen, a strange gleam of joy, not unmixed with an expression of incredulous astonishment, lighted up the old philosopher’s cold and clear-cut features. He advanced, all trembling, with outstretched hand.
‘Why, Linnell!’ he cried, in a voice half choked with its own delight. ‘You back! You safe! They said you were dead! This is wonderful, wonderful! They told us it was the other one!’
‘What! it isn’t Sir Austen after all, then!’ Cyrus cried, half piqued to think he hadn’t really been hob-nobbing these last three days with a genuine unadulterated English baronet.
‘No, no,’ Dumaresq answered, still grasping the painter’s hand hard in his trembling fingers. ‘It isn’t Sir Austen at all, thank God; it’s his cousin, his cousin!’
Linnell turned round, with poor Psyche half fainting still, and supported on his arm.
‘Yes,’ he said quietly, with a deep sigh of regret. ‘It is Sir Austen — I’m Sir Austen now: my cousin lies dead in the desert behind me.’
Corona and Sirena stood off, all aghast. Then Cyrus’s chance was gone for ever; and Psyche would yet be a real My Lady!
After all, it would be something to talk about in Cincinnati: ‘Our friend Lady Linnell, who was once Miss Dumaresq.’ And only to think they’d be able to call a real My Lady by her given name, Psyche!
For if there is any being alive on this oblate spheroid of ours who thoroughly appreciates at its fullest value the social importance of rank and title and ‘our old nobility,’ that being’s home is by the setting sun, and his land is surely the great Western Republic.
But Psyche only knew that He had come back again.
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE FAITH CURE.
For a minute or two they crowded in silent awe and suspense round poor fainting Psyche, whom excess of joy, too sudden joy, had affected so profoundly as no shock of grief could ever have affected that resolute nature. Then Haviland Dumaresq, half seizing her in his arms, led her gently aside; and the chef de gare, perceiving her weak and shattered condition, brought out a chair and placed it for her by the wall with something more than mere conventional French politeness.
‘Mademoiselle is moved?’ he asked good-humouredly. ‘Mademoiselle recovers a long-lost friend? A brother, perhaps? A parent? An acquaintance? May I venture to recommend for mademoiselle some eau de fleurs d’oranger in a little water? That calms the nerves; that restores the circulation.’
He brought her that universal panacea of his race in a full tumbler, and Dumaresq, trembling, held it to Psyche’s lips. But Psyche waved the sickly decoction away with her hand rapidly, and sat still, fanning herself in a whirl of joy. Her whole soul was divided within her by conflicting emotions. She hardly knew as yet whether she could survive the shock, the terrible shock of finding her painter alive again and restored to her so unexpectedly.
One thing only she did not feel — the faintest shame or maidenly shrinking at the way she had flung herself without one thought of reserve into Linnell’s arms as he stepped out on the platform. She couldn’t tell how, but no doubt or fear remained any longer: she knew now, knew to an absolute certainty, that she loved Linnell, and that Linnell loved her. After all they had both done and suffered, the idea of greeting him in any other fashion than that never even occurred to her. Nor, to say the truth, did it occur to Linnell either. For both, in the delight of that unexpected meeting, the past was blotted out at one single blow, and they stood face to face at last rejoicing, too full of joy to admit the intervention of any other smaller or less worthy feeling.
That practical Corona was the first to make a decisive move.
‘Say, Cyrus,’ she exclaimed, turning round abruptly, ‘you’ve got the checks. I gave ’em to you at Constantine. Just you run and look after my baggage, will you?’
Thus admonished as to the common concerns of our everyday existence, poor crestfallen Cyrus, feeling himself somewhat awkwardly at a discount in this pretty little domestic drama of European life, went off as he was bid to recover the luggage. In a few minutes more he returned in triumph to the spot where the little group still sat or stood immovable, and recommended a retreat to the cabs outside with all expedition. For, to say the truth, they were beginning to attract some whispering attention.
‘Can you move, dear?’ Sirena asked, bending gently over Psyche with sisterly interest; ‘or would you like us to ask some of the depot folk to lift the chair and carry you out to the carriage?’
Psyche rose, abashed at last, from the chair where she sat. ‘I can walk,’ she answered, now blushing violently, and just conscious for the first time since Linnell’s arrival of that alternative aspect of the unexpected episode. ‘But where is He going to stop this evening?’
‘Sir Austen?’ Corona asked. ‘Oh, we’ve fixed up all that as we came along in the cars. He’s going along up with the rest of us to the Orangers.’
‘If I may, Psyche,’ Linnell added wistfully.
Psyche made no answer, but looked at him through her tears. Then taking her father’s hand tremulously in hers, she walked over with the rest to the door of the station. The Arabs and the porters were already engaged in the usual pitched battle outside for the possession of the boxes. Psyche stood by and looked on, while the two conflicting powers mounted the luggage on the front with many loud cries and shouts of ‘Ar-r-ri.’
‘We shall want two cabs,’ Corona whispered in her brother’s ear. ‘Let Sir Austen and the Dumaresqs go up alone together.’
Cyrus turned round and gazed with a sudden start into Psyche’s face. Psyche blushed: her eyes met his all unawares for a second, and then dropped timidly. Cyrus had not presence of mind to conceal his surprise. ‘Why, she sees!’ he exclaimed in a tone of the profoundest and most naïf astonishment. ‘Have her eyes got all right again while we were away, then, Sirena? She sees to-night just as well as anybody! She walked like an arrow straight out of the depot!’
Psyche herself started in return, almost equally astonished at this new discovery. In the tumult of mingled emotion and internal feeling at that supreme crisis of her life she actually forgot for the first minute or two she had recovered her sight; or, to speak more correctly, she never so much as remembered at all she had lost it. The moment she heard L
innell’s voice in the carriage, her senses were quickened to the utmost pitch of effort and efficiency. She knew it was Linnell: she was sure it was Linnell; and at that sudden revulsion, breaking forward in a wild rush of joy, she looked, without ever even thinking of it, in the direction whence that familiar voice proceeded. In a second the disused nervous tracts resumed, as if by magic, their forgotten function. Science was right: it was mere obsolescence. She saw her lover, her dead lover, in that second of joy, as distinctly as she had ever beheld anything on earth in her whole life before.
Yes, Haviland Dumaresq was justified after all. Happiness is the best of all possible tonics. As they rode up together through the crowded streets, Linnell sitting opposite her in the light fiacre, and all the world at once recovered, Psyche still forgot she had ever been blinded. Her father watched her with anxious care. Was it only a false flicker, he wondered to himself, or would her sight come back again as clear and strong and distinct as ever?
Day after day he watched her carefully. Would a relapse come? But he had no need now to watch any longer. The cause was gone, and the effect disappeared as if by magic along with it. For awhile, indeed, Psyche’s eyes were a little less serviceable and trustworthy than of old: occasional short fits of dimness supervened: the long disuse and waste required to be repaired by gradual rebuilding. But joy works wonders unknown to medicine. With each fresh day spent at the Orangers under these new conditions, Psyche’s health recovered itself at once with the marvellous rapidity of early youth. Algiers was glorified for her into an earthly paradise. Those beautiful walks on the breezy hills, those valley strolls among the asphodels and the orchids and the Spanish broom, with Linnell by her side to take her little hand as she clambered among the rocks, and to whisper soft words into her tingling ear, brought unwonted roses back to that cheek, so pale and white in the beginning of the winter. The joy that might have killed her restored her to life. She revelled in the light, the warmth, the sunshine.
