CHAPTER XV.
FORGETFULNESS, THE GREAT PANACEA.
A lonely life and much brooding inclines the mind to strange aspects.
Leon Dalrymple’s thoughts dwelt persistently on the dead girl—his divorced wife’s adopted daughter as he believed.
He felt a painful, almost jealous curiosity over her, wondering if she had usurped the love that belonged to Jessie as well as her place in her mother’s home.
“I should like to look upon her face!” he repeated over and over to himself, and the desire grew at last into a bold determination.
The early autumn twilight found him at the cemetery, whispering into the ear of the feeble old sexton who recoiled with surprise at his proposition:
“No, sir, no, it would be as much as my place is worth! I can’t do it!” he protested, but the clink of gold made him change his opinion.
“It is nothing, after all—only to give me one look at the dead girl’s face! What could they do to you even if they discovered the truth?” Dalrymple repeated impatiently, and he redoubled his bribe.
The cupidity of the old man made him falter in his opposition, and as a result they entered the vault just as the darkness of night settled over the earth, the sexton carrying a dark lantern, whose glare he turned on the bank of flowers that surrounded the casket, blending their rich, rare odors with the noisome odors of mortality.
They advanced toward the casket, but suddenly each recoiled and glared at the other.
“What was that? It sounded like a stifled moan!” exclaimed Dalrymple, in alarm.
“Nothing but the wind in the trees,” exclaimed the old sexton, recovering himself, and wrenching loose the lid of the casket, sending out gusts of rich fragrance from the covering of tuberoses.
A moment more, and the casket was open, Dalrymple advancing with a quickened heartthrob to gaze on the silent sleeper.
It was a startling scene.
The old vault dark and grim, with rows of dead-and-gone aristocrats ranged around, in the center the bier banked with flowers, supporting the casket that held—not a dead girl, but a living one, for as the two men gazed with bated breath on the exquisite face, a second low moan sounded on the air, and then a pair of large, soft, wondering, dark eyes opened suddenly, and gazed up into their startled faces!
It was enough to shake the nerves of the strongest man, to see the dead thus suddenly come to life, and the old sexton was not strong—in fact, he had suffered for years from an organic disease of the heart.
So the shock was more than his weak heart could bear.
His face changed to an ashen hue, his old eyes dilated wildly, his frame shook like a leaf in the wind, his knees knocked together, and finally, with an awful groan, he sank in a senseless heap on the floor of the vault.
Dalrymple took no heed of the old man’s fate. All his attention was riveted on the girl struggling back to life from her place among the dead.
It was no strange face that he gazed on, for years ago he had kissed a fair, childish face with lineaments like these, as he placed the little one in his tender sister’s arms, saying:
“Call her Jessie Lyndon, after yourself, dear, and train her up to be noble and loving and true, as you have always been. I would not have her brought up by her proud, rich, heartless mother, who deserted me for my poverty, but rather as you have been, dear, to make a loving wife to your husband through all reverses. I leave her in your care, and I will send you ample money for her support, but Heaven alone knows whether I shall ever return to the land where I have suffered such a cruel shipwreck of my happiness.”
That was twelve long years ago that he had wreaked what he believed justifiable revenge on a heartless wife, goaded by ceaseless brooding on his wrongs that had well-nigh turned his brain. Then he had exiled himself from his native land and became a lonely wanderer.
He had but one solace, and that was in his art. Music had always been a passion with him until love had become its rival. Now Cupid had fled, he turned back to his old love. Drifting to Germany, he found congenial friends, and for some years made a meager living for himself and child, sending all he could spare to America for his golden-haired darling.
Then came that long, long illness that swallowed up almost a year of his life in a hospital—that strange illness that baffled the learned physicians, some declaring it was melancholy madness, others an unaccountable loss of memory, but all agreeing that it must have been brought about by long brooding over something that had become almost a monomania.
When strength slowly returned and with it some glimmerings of painful memory, a clever man, the wisest physician at the hospital, said to him:
“You have been strangely ill, and the wisest among us could not rightly name your disease, but it was next door to madness. I have studied your case with keen interest, and I learn that you are a lonely man much given to brooding and moping. Am I right in suspecting that you have a hopeless sorrow hidden in your past?”
Leon Dalrymple could only bend his blond, curly head in silent assent.
“I knew it,” said the wise physician, and he added kindly:
“Cease brooding over this ill that you cannot remedy, for that way madness lies. Forgetfulness is the only panacea for a hopeless grief. You are a musician, they tell me. Give it up for a more practical life. The greatest bard in the world has written that music is the food of love. Thus it only ministers to your sorrow. Cast it aside for a totally different life. If you were strong enough, I should say try manual labor, that in exhausting the body, dulls and wearies the mind, curing its ills of brooding and melancholy. Try the Australian gold fields. Get rich and practical.”
The patient took his advice.
After years of toil and travel, when body and mind were both restored, he had permitted himself to dwell again with yearning memory on the past.
He was aghast when he counted up twelve years since he had come away.
“I must go home to my little Jessie!” he cried.
He had kissed her as a child and gone away—he found her again almost a woman, lying among funeral flowers in her soft, white shroud, but, thank Heaven, with the breath of life faintly heaving her bosom, and dawning in the dark of her tender eyes.
“Jessie, Jessie!” he cried, in a transport of joy, but she knew him not; her glance was dazed and frightened at her grim, unfamiliar surroundings.
It came to him suddenly that if she recovered consciousness fully and found she had been buried alive the shock might be too great for her reason.
She had closed her eyes again with a tired sigh, so he lifted her tenderly from her white satin bed, and bearing her outside, wrapped her carefully in his long, dark overcoat.