Unto the Third and Fourth Generation/Chapter7
VII.
I left the hypnotist at Clousedale Hall, and went back to the Wheatsheaf. Not until then did I realize what the tension had been, and what it still must be. How I passed the four nights and days that followed I do not know. One creeping terror dominated every sleeping and waking hour—that Lucy would never come out of the trance into which our mysterious forces had laid her. I went up to the house constantly, and as often as I approached it I glanced nervously from the farthest point of sight to assure myself that the blinds had not been drawn down. I crept up stairs on tiptoe, and stole along the corridors like a thief. I know that short as the time of waiting was, measured in relation to life, I wasted away in it and grew pale and haggard. It ought to have reassured me, but hardly did, that meantime the hypnotist did not turn a hair. A smug content shone on his face as often as I looked at it with fearful eyes.
Lucy's condition continued good. Her pulse was regular, and her heart normal. She took nourishment in sustaining quantities, by the means they had of passing it through her almost motionless lips.
I had no thought to waste on the people of Cleator, but it was impossible not to know that in some way public opinion was against me. Even Mrs. Tyson, the landlady, at first so friendly a soul, was clearly looking at me askance. Suspicion, which I had feared might settle on Lucy, was resting on myself instead.
But I lived through everything, and even Saturday night came at length. It was the night before the morning appointed for Lucy's wakening, and I did not attempt to sleep. When I ought to have gone to bed I wandered out into the locality of the mines, and at early morning I found myself like a lost soul encircling the smelting house of “Owd Bony.” The bank fires burning the refuse of iron ore sent a red glow into the world of darkness. Mountains and dale were blotted out; nothing was visible but the tongues of flame leaping from the squat mouths of the chimneys, and nothing was audible but the deep panting of the laboring engine that brought the iron out of the bowels of the earth. In my mood at that time it seemed a fit scene for the mysterious and awful rites which were being enacted in the big house behind the trees, with my love as the silent and unconscious subject.
The morning dawned very fresh and bright and beautiful. The sun shone and the birds sang, and there was no cloud or wind. As early as I dared I went up to the house. The doctor and the Scots minister arrived soon after me. I could not help seeing, in their grim sallowness, a certain satisfaction at my nervousness and pallor. It was almost as if they hoped for a tragic issue, or at least foresaw a ghastly triumph over me if things should not go well.
La Mothe joined us after a period of waiting. He looked cheerful and spoke cheerily. There was an irritating atmosphere of “everydayness” about the man's manner. He had been sleeping and had just awakened. I think he yawned as he bade us good morning.
In due course we all four passed into the bed room. That peaceful place was full of a holy calm. Lucy lay there as I had last seen her, with the tranquil face of a sleeping angel. I thought I had never beheld a human countenance so saintly. There was not a line of evil passion, not a trace of that spiritual alloy which the touch of the world brings to the soul that is fresh from God. The air around her seemed to breathe of heaven.
“Is everything ready, nurse?” said the hypnotist.
“Yes,” Mrs. Hill replied.
“Bring up that small table and set it near to the bed.”
This was done.
“Now set a wine glass on the table with the decanter of brandy.”
This was done also. The time for the awakening was at hand. There was no sound in the room except the chirping of the cheerful fire, the singing of the birds outside, the shuffling of the feet and the rasping of the breath of the hypnotist. The rest of us were perfectly quiet. Our very hearts seemed to stand still.
I must have lived a lifetime during the next two minutes. The tension was terrible. No physical pain can compare with the agony of suspense like that.
The hypnotist approached my darling, squared his breast across her body, and putting his fingers lightly on her forehead raised her eyelids with his thumbs. Her pupils were turned up—I could not look at her, I could not look away.
At the next moment the hypnotist was leaning closely over her, with his face close to her face, blowing softly into her eyes.
There was a measureless period of suspense. Lucy lay without a sign of life.
The hypnotist was holding the eyelids wide open and blowing strongly upon the pupils. The pupils were moving; they were coming down.
Then close to the silent face, very close, the hypnotist began to speak. In a loud, deep voice, caressing and yet commanding, he cried, “You're all right!”
Lucy's eyelids twitched under his fingers, but there was no other response.
“You're all right!” cried the hypnotist, as one calling into a deep cavern.
“All right! All right!”
The voice seemed to be dragging back the reluctant soul.
The sleeper moved. There was a clutching of the counterpane, a swelling of the bosom, a deep, audible breathing, and then the whole body rolled over on its side, as a child does when it is awakening in the morning from the long, unbroken sleep of the night.
I had begun to breathe freely again under mingled feelings of relief and joy.
“Speak to her,” said the hypnotist.
I tried but could not, then tried again and uttered a husky gurgle.
“Have no fear. She is quite safe. In two minutes more she will be awake and well. Speak to her. Let your voice be the first that she hears on returning to consciousness and to the world. Recall some incident of the past—the more tender the better. We will leave you.”
He motioned the doctor and the minister to go out with him, and they passed into the boudoir together. I reached over to my dear one and took her hand and kissed her, and then in a whisper I called her by name:
“Lucy!”
There was a moment's silence, as if the soul of the sleeper were listening, and then in a toneless, somnambulistic voice she answered,
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the day we parted in London?”
There was another pause, and then came a flood of words:
“What a lovely sunset! See how sweetly the red glow stretches down the river. How beautiful the world is! And how good!”
I remembered the words. I had heard her speak them before. She was living over again the incidents of our last evening at Sir George Chute's.
“What a long, long time it must be before we meet again! Christmas! Will it ever come? I shall count the days like the prisoner of Chillon.”
I remembered how I had answered her when she said this before, and in the same way I answered her again:
“Let us hope that like him you will not become too fond of your prison to leave it for good when I come in the spring to fetch you.”
There was a little trill of laughter, like the ghostly echo of the merry note that danced in my ears on that June night when we sat on the balcony looking down at the sleeping Thames.
“They are lighting the lamps in the drawing room. Would you like me to sing something?”
In another moment my darling was singing from her bed in the breaking sleep of her spirit, just as she had sung to me at that happy parting seven months before:
“And when my seven long years are done——”
Suddenly the voice broke and then frayed away, and the song stopped. Lucy moved and opened her eyes. I was face to face with her, and she looked on me with a bewildered gaze. Then the light of love came into her eyes, and in an ardent, penetrating, passionate tone, she cried, “Robert!” and stretched out her hand.
“I was dreaming of you,” she said. “I thought we were together in London and I was singing.”
“And so you were, my love,” I answered, as well as I was able for the sobs that choked me.
Then she raised berself on her elbow, and realized where we were.
“I remember—you brought the French doctor early this morning. What time is it now?”
I made what shift I could to answer her question, and little by little everything came back. Her distress was more than I could bear to witness, and I crept away.
Yet before I left the room I realized that the hypnotist, who had come to the little table, was pouring brandy from the decanter into the glass.
“Offer her this,” he said to the nurse, who had been hovering about the bed head.
But Lucy only glanced at the glass, and cried, with a look of repulsion and a voice of pain:
“No, no! Take it away. It makes me sick.”
In the agony of my suspense I had forgotten our mission. We had succeeded. The drink crave was gone.