Dr. Paull's Theory: A Romance

They say lookers-on see more of the game than the players. I shall write down all that has happened, and review it as a third person might before sending a brief statement to Helven. I do not think myself that when he reads it he will retain any reasonable doubt of the reincarnation of Lilia’s soul.

I know now who instigated that paragraph; but more of that in its proper place.

Was I glad when my life was unexpectedly taken out of my own hands, and my wild dream of entertaining Mercedes and inviting the Forwoods at the same time, was suddenly realised? I cannot tell. I have felt emotions called forth by an extraordinary position, therefore cannot classify them.

My first step when I received a few words from Mercedes, that she and her husband would come here, was to come down myself and see to things, after sending off Ralph a few days in advance.

A surprise awaited me. I had certainly given mammy carte blanche to pledge my credit to any reasonable amount, but hardly considered how thoroughly she would set to work. I scarcely recognised the old brougham under its new paint and varnish, nor Andrew the groom in his brand-new livery. As I drove through the wood, the roads were in capital condition, the young trees were flourishing, the desolate look had gone. The same with the garden—the beds bright with flowers, the turf close shaven. The house? The house looked as when I first saw it—the veranda and shutters bright green, the creepers carefully trailed.

Rover, poor old Nero’s descendant after I don’t know how many generations, came leaping about me quite delighted at the change about him; and there, at the hall-door, stood mammy in a very becoming cap, quite the mistress of the mansion. Ralph came springing out more like other lads than I have yet seen him. Poor boy! I felt a pang of remorse. Has my barren life overshadowed his? Heaven forgive me if it has! I thought I was doing my best.

The hall had been modernised, the billiard-table renovated. But the drawing-room! Could it be the room where I saw Lilia leaning against the piano? The brown draperies, the neutral tints had disappeared. It was gold and white everywhere: the room had positively a bridal look, and even the plants in the white flower-stands were white and yellow.

“This looks a thorough woman’s den,” I remarked. “If I were left to myself, I should not set my foot across the threshold.”

“Don’t be churlish,” mammy said. “You have invited a princess, and you must entertain her properly, especially as it is only for once.”

“Why only for once?” I asked.

Poor innocent mammy! how little she suspected who it was she was to play hostess to.

“I thought they lived in Spain?” she said, looking curiously at me.

I hurried her upstairs, where the arrangements for the guests were wonderfully managed. Then I felt a sudden uneasiness. Coming down in the train I had determined to give Lilia—God pardon me if I dare to call Mercedes by her old name!—to give the one who is really my own darling the opportunity of showing herself to me in gleams of recognition of her old home. I had planned that some day she should come into the library and find me seated at the table—those pistols before me—then, then, when I am convinced of her soul’s identity, my love for her and hers for me could not be sinful or even faulty, it would be the most natural thing in the world. Now, her old home was changed, scarcely recognisable.

“You have not done anything to the library?” I cried, almost fiercely, I fear; for poor mammy seemed dreadfully “upset,” as women call it, until I pacified her.

The library furniture had been recovered and the position of the chairs and tables altered, that was all. I soon had all the things back in their places. The books were untouched. Standing at the door, the room looked so much the same I could almost conjure up the figure of Sir Roderick, seated in his chair, his long pipe in his mouth.

Oh the misery of recalling the past! Yet, yet, had they not died, would Lilia’s soul and my soul have ever known each other as they do now?

I went to meet her at the station. They were all to have a saloon carriage—the prince and princess, the Forwoods, and Lady Boisville. I had invited the count, much against my wish, but in deference to Lady Forwood’s advice. “If you did not, the prince might make an excuse at the last moment, in which case it would hardly do for Mercedes to come,” she said. And recognising that she was right in her suggestion, I wrote to the fellow. Fortunately he had accepted an invitation to deer-stalk, and was going to the Lakes on his way (or said he was, which amounted to the same thing).

Driving to the station in the brougham (the waggonette followed for the men), I felt a dread that she would not come. It seemed too glorious a crown to my wasted, weary life that she would live under my roof, that every hour of each day I could look at her and listen to her voice, that morning and night I should touch her hand.

“Impossible!” I said to myself. “It cannot happen, it will not happen; something will prevent it all at the last moment.”

Shall I ever forget waiting on the platform that September evening? The houses and trees growing dark against a yellow sunset, people coming out of the booking-office and buying papers (travellers by the incoming train), porters trundling the luggage to the end of the platform. How could they all go on in this senseless, mechanical way when the one great event of my life was happening—when Joy was coming for the first time to my tired, thirsty soul?

Then came an awful minute. The signal was down. The electric bell had sounded, “ding-dong, ding-dong” went the porter’s handbell. “Andrew!” I shouted (it seemed to me a shill, frantic cry, but it can scarcely have been, for he only said, “All right, sir,” and no one else looked round), then I saw the steam-cloud and the black engine-front, and rattle-rattle the train came slowly nearer and alongside, how slowly! Was tortoise ever so abominably languid in its creepings?

No one there! That was my first belief. I went up and down by the first-class carriages, then someone touched me on the shoulder—Sir David.

“They put us at the wrong end,” he said. How jovial he looked in his shooting suit! “Oh, yes, we’ve all come.” What more he said I don’t know. I turned and saw her wrapped up in a cloak, her face so pale, sweet and wistful under a heavy black hat; just a little colour came to her lips as our eyes met, and I took her hand upon my arm. Her touch strengthened me. I cooled down and was able to behave decently, respectably. Ralph appeared—Mrs. Mervyn had sent him, I suppose—and Mr. Mervyn came out of the booking-office. I never was more delighted to see them in my life; for Lady Forwood preferred the waggonette, and I gave her and the prince and the other men over to Mervyn, and was thus able to drive home opposite her and Lady Boisville.

Lady Boisville, good-natured soul, was pleased with everything.

“What white sand, what purple heather, what very majestic pines, Dr. Paull!” she said, looking at the dear old trees through her eye-glass.

But, my darling, what did she say, or think? Would she recognise? Would some gleam of a soul-memory beyond our knowledge and power of understanding show itself? I watched her narrowly, breathlessly. As the shadows flitted across her face, I fancied I saw a troubled expression in her eyes.

It vanished as she looked at me. She smiled. “Can I walk here, some day?” she asked me.

I replied that “she must do exactly as she pleased.” I wished her to understand that while she was in my domain, she was its queen.

She laughed—a laugh which chilled me, for it was Lilia’s laugh. Those two women, so utterly unlike in outline, feature, colouring, laughed alike. One physical detail in common—one only!

Arrived home, mammy welcomed her so warmly, in so motherly a way, I felt grateful. The ladies disappeared to their rooms. A cloud obscured the sunshine. Then came the prince, and Forwood, and the valets and maids, and the rest of the inevitable paraphernalia. Well! if you have the pearl, I suppose you must take the oystershell as well.

Was this my old bachelor, or rather widower domain, which used to look so grim and forlorn, all echoes and musty odours, where Ralph and I used to stroll about together in an aimless fashion, always, I fancy, feeling a certain amount of relief when we got back to bustling London, which, however noisy and grimy, is life-full? This pleasant, well-lighted house, where, thanks to mammy’s arrangements, bright patches of colour met the eye at every turn; deftly placed bits of china, or banks of plants glowing with bloom. I felt self-reproach. No, I have not lived as I ought to have lived. I have taught my boy to live beside a tomb.

I went down to the drawing-room. I was gazing at the fading sunset out of the open window, after wondering at the pretty effects of light made by lamps set about the room with coloured shades, when I started—it was Lilia’s laugh again.

She came into the room; she was dressed in glistening white, with lilies at her breast, and Rover was leaping about her.

“Your dog is very friendly,” she said, and she patted the obtrusive animal, which was panting with pleasure.

“He is not generally so,” I said, with a scared sensation. In the dim light it recalled Lilia and her Nero too forcibly. “He is mostly surly to strangers.”

“He reminds me of some dog, but I cannot remember where I have seen the dog,” she said, thoughtfully, coming to me at the window, but her attention was arrested by the sunset. What happy minutes those were, as we stood side by side gazing at the monarch of the sky sinking into his purple bed! (Those were her words, not mine.)

It was delightful to see her look bright as she sat by my side at dinner. In the evening she played her guitar, and sang to it. It was a peep into the country of her birth. I could imagine the hidalgos and donnas pacing amid the picturesque buildings, and many other things. When Mercedes, during this visit to me, was purely Spanish, I almost ceased to believe in the identity I so firmly hold in my own mind as hers.

Next morning I took my guests about the place; carefully avoiding the terrace. I had a plan about the terrace.

In the afternoon Mercedes and I, Lady Forwood and the prince, drove in the waggonette. I took them to see the ruins of an ancient abbey. Lady Forwood absorbed the prince’s attention—(for such a born boor as he is, I must say he behaved very decently)—and I was able to tell my love the old tales of the bygone monastery, and to watch the changing expressions that flit across her pure face, like the clouds across a summer sky. What intense reverence this child-woman has for all that is holy! As we walked through the ruins of the monkish chapel I was shamed by her hushed, almost awestruck manner.

“God has lived here,” she said, casting a longing look back as I removed the hurdle, placed to keep out the sheep, for her to pass out. “And it is a ruin!”

“God is everywhere,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “But it makes me sad that those monks, they are all gone from your land.”

Then she told me of all that the nuns had been to her in her haunted childhood; of their cheerfulness, their patience with the child who was unlike other children. I did not wonder she reverenced religious orders. For my part, realising as I did that Lilia’s love for me was the cause of Mercedes’ sad life, I blessed them.

Returning home, my chastened mood was roughly dispelled by a significant incident.

A fine barouche and pair drove past us: in it sat Colonel Roderick Pym, his wife, Lady Carnwood—(how objectionable is that fashion of re-married widows retaining their late husband’s name!)—and his pretty stepdaughters. I cut him dead, as I have steadily done. To my astonishment he bowed low, raising his hat, and the prince did the same.

I looked at Mrs. Mervyn. She got very red. The prince explained.

“Who is that gentilman?” he asked me. “I see him with my fren, the count. I not know at all that he live here.”

This explained the paragraph in the paper. Roderick Pym and the count in league! Without absolute confirmation I would swear those two are our enemies.

Our enemies? How natural it has been to class myself with my twin soul; but to what will it lead? How will our spiritual union end? That spiritual union which came about this-wise.

First of all, after some bright days spent almost entirely with her—days made up of long strolls in the part of the garden which had been best kept up since Lilia’s death (the flower-gardens in the Pinewood, including the terrace, I had let go; it would have been useless expense to keep them trim and fair as in Sir Roderick’s time)—after our drives, our chats at dinner, rendered livelier by little sparrings between Lady Forwood and Mrs. Mervyn, and our talks in the softly lighted drawing-room, peace was disturbed by a telegram which arrived one day at luncheon for the prince.

He turned a yellowish white, and a remarkably nasty expression changed his face from moderately pleasant to cowardly hang-dog. Still, he was well-bred enough to conceal further emotion.

I saw Mercedes look uneasy. After luncheon he evidently asked her for a tête-à-tête, quite an event between those two. I was sitting in the library, anxious, when a tap came at the door, and enter Sir David and the prince.

“The prince, not feeling his English equal to the occasion, Paull, wishes me to explain to you that some bad news about a recent speculation obliges him to return to town at once,” said Sir David; then, evidently noticing my dismayed look, he added, hurriedly: “He asks a continuance of your hospitality for the princess.”

Of course, I said I should be delighted. I was not sorry to be rid of the man; but somehow I augured ill for Mercedes for the future. Heaven avert the evil, whatever it may be!

No drive that afternoon. The prince departed, luggage, valet, and all. I did not see Mercedes till just before dinner. She looked pale, but not unhappy. As I took her in to dinner, she said:

“Can I see you, alone, this evening?”

During dinner the wild idea flashed across me to take her to the spot she had dreamed of, the spot where I had seen her in that strange vision twenty years ago.

The very thought of it exhilarated me. I was excited. I felt as if each moment that passed a year was slipping from my shoulders. I was rejuvenating. I hurried the men over their wine. Then I went into the drawing-room and got mammy away into a corner.

“Don’t look surprised at what I am going to say,” I said in an undertone. “And don’t exclaim, or look round. You must do something for me.”

She stared at me. I must have looked wild, but very quietly she said:

“If I can.”

“It is the merest trifle,” I said. “I wish to show the princess a certain spot in the grounds by moonlight. Keep them all amused till we come back.”

She said something, but I did not listen. I left her at once. I made Lady Forwood sit down at the piano, and when everyone was attentive (she plays well) I told Mercedes to slip away, quietly, soon after I left the room, and I went into the hall.

It was a glorious night, with a brilliant golden moon that bathed everything in a warm light. Presently she came gliding into the hall and up to me like a ghost, and would have seated herself on the divan, but I said, “No, the garden,” and wrapping her light cloak, which was hanging near, round her shoulders, I took her out.

Out into the stillness. It was so still, we could hear the voices of the people in the drawing-room, and the sound of our footsteps on the gravel was so loud I fancied that it must be audible in the house.

We walked on for some time, side by side, in silence. Presently we came to the pine grove. The light fell through the straight rows of slender trunks as the sunlight falls by day, only it was a yellowish white that silvered the sandy water tracks, glimmered upon the pebbles, and made fairy dells of the clumps of bracken. By common accord we halted here. As we stood still, a soft night wind arose and went sighing among the pine-tops; the feathered crests of the slim trees nodded to one another as if, so it seemed to me, they mourned my folly.

And she? She drew a long breath.

“This beautiful scent!” she said. “How I love it!”

“Have you pinewoods in Spain?” I asked.

“Such as this? No,” she said, beginning to walk again. There was not a shadow of embarrassment at being alone with me, in almost a forest, at this hour. She is too simple-minded for that. “But this perfume, it is like a room in our (I mean my father’s) castle in the country in Spain.”

She explained that the Duque’s drawing-rooms, as we call them, were each furnished in some luxurious material. One was all malachite, from the doors to the table furniture; another was silver, another cedar.

“In the cedar room I was most happy,” she said; “it seemed that I knew that odour, it was like home, and this scent of your pines is the same.”

Then I asked her what she wished to say to me. She hesitated for a few moments. Then she put her hand on my arm with the childlike abandon so peculiarly hers.

“Tell me what I must do,” she said. “The prince he has gone away to see, someone else he should not go to see.”

She asked me such a question! Anger, jealousy! I have been angry often, too often—but jealousy? I have condemned others for that meanest passion in human nature, and now I am punished. I know what it is!

“What do you mean?” I said. “I do not understand.”

“Ah!” (It was a sob rather than a sigh.) “Monsieur, I am sure you do not understand,” she said, once more standing still, but this time confronting me. “You were good to your wife, I know that!”

“I was not good to my wife,” I said, bitterly. “You must not come to me for advice. Ask Lady Forwood, Mrs. Mervyn, anyone, not me!”

At that moment I forgot my theory, that Mercedes’ soul and Lilia’s are one and the same; this was the wife of the Prince Andriocchi, and I, daring to love her as no man should dare to love another man’s wife, was burning with jealousy, and was false to Lilia’s memory.

“Never tell me you are not good,” she said; “I know better.”

The words were ordinary enough. But at the end of her speech she gave a little satisfied laugh—Lilia’s laugh.

I felt less human—the ghostly, creepy sensation reasserted itself.

“How can you know better?” I said.

“I know you are good,” she said. “You are an angel among other men: and I ask you what I am to do. I should feel sorry, should I not, when the prince does wrong?”

I felt my breath go—as after a blow.

“Certainly,” I said.

“Do not think me wicked,” she said, her voice trembling. “Oh, I knew I ought to be sorry when he was going away—and I knew well that he would see someone that he ought not to see while he is away—but I did not feel sorry, I am glad!”

“Glad?” I said, assuming as shocked a tone as I could—(sinner—liar—when I was transported with joy and relief!). “Surely not glad?”

“Yes, glad,” she said. “Because I should be glad if everyone would go and leave me alone—with you.”

“This is foolish,” I said, chidingly. “You will know better when you have seen more of me.”

Then I changed the conversation to the subject of her dreams. We were nearing the spot where I meant to test her identity.

There was a narrow path between clumps of laurels. This was the path I had traversed alone in my dream years ago—when I emerged into the open I had seen this very woman—this woman I loved—seated on the stone seat opposite to me.

Now—she was by my side. As we came across the grass plat I summoned all my courage. I did not know whether I wished to be convinced that she was Lilia—or that she was not. I only felt abject fear—for the first time in my life I was an entire coward: I sickened, I was in a cold sweat.

“Will you sit here a minute?” I asked. “I want to see what time it is. I must strike a match under the bushes—there is too much wind here.”

I slipped away, and going round came slowly into the moonlight opposite to her. Ah! it was terrible to see her seated there, then to see her spring up and come to me—for once in my life, to experience a realised dream.

“Let us go,” she said, passionately—I had never seen her so disturbed. “I remember—come—!”

I accompanied her, passively. She went along the path between the laurels, then, after but a moment’s hesitation, she took the path leading to the terrace.

A few swift steps and she turned back to see if I followed.

“Come!” she said, in a voice of pain. “Come!”

Then, after one more poise—like a bird before it takes flight—she hurried up the slope and was at the end of the terrace. The wide, grassy avenue was before us.

I joined her. It was a long time since I had visited the spot. The long grass was rank and weedy, the beds were unkempt—I could see that much in this light. The scene by moonlight, that light which chastens and beautifies, was desolate—what would it be by the light of day?

The shame that I had neglected this favourite resort of Lilia’s partially levelled emotions, brought me back in some degree to ordinary common sense. But my practical mood did not last long. I followed Mercedes across the grass, blaming myself that I had let her come here, to a spot which was a disgrace to its proprietor in its neglected state—when to my astonishment she flung her arm about the stone fountain and turned upon me.

Her face, in the moonlight, looked drawn—I should scarcely have recognised her, nor indeed should I have recognised her sweet, dear voice.

Oh! what was it she said, in those hard, shrill tones? I was so unnerved, I can hardly recall those terrible words.

But she spoke with reproach.

“Where is the water here?” she asked. “There were fish—gold fish, silver fish—where are they? Where are the flowers? There were roses, red roses there,” and, pointing to a bed where Sir Roderick by careful expenditure had cultivated some hardy rose trees, she fell prone at my feet.

I had my token—she knew the place as it was of old, before she had awakened in this world.

Perhaps the greatest mystery among these many mysteries is this—I can write it all down, just as it happened, calmly, coolly, as I should record an exceptional case in medicine.

I took her in my arms and carried her back through the wood into the flower garden of the house. She was a dead weight, but I was impervious to ordinary impressions. Then I laid her upon a wide wooden bench in the Italian garden, and by slow degrees she recovered. Before the clock struck ten, she was able to join them all in the drawing-room.

I have a great power over her. I found that when I had sufficiently rallied from my emotions to exercise my will, that willing her to be her ordinary self (while her hands were in mine and my eyes fixed upon her face) “brought her to,” as the nurses say, at once.

This had opened up another aspect of affairs. If I have this power over her, may not that possibly be the cause of her liking for me—even of her impressions of her dreams? I must investigate, search, leave no stone unturned to unearth the truth. Too much is at stake.

Next day, I willed her to be cheerful and happy, and she was so. (Another symptom, which I duly recorded.)

I found she had not as perfectly clear a recollection of that terrible evening as I have myself. I was thankful for this. I was as commonplace as I could possibly be during those days before the prince’s return. I took care she should have no time to meditate, and mammy, Lady Forwood, and good Lady Boisville helped me. I don’t know what they have thought of it all, but they have consciously or unconsciously abetted me with that woman’s own gift of tact which is worth a king’s—no, an emperor’s—ransom, aye, and far more!

The prince returned, unexpectedly, one rainy afternoon. He came in a station fly. When he entered the hall we men were playing billiards.

I fancied he looked sulky, but during the short time that followed before the general departure he was amiability itself, and has declared his intention of remaining in England the winter, also to look out for a country house near here for the——

Dr. Paull was seated in his library a misty autumn morning writing the above, when a tap at his door disturbed him.

The servant brought him a telegram:

“Come at once to London. This evening at half-past nine I will be at your house.