Across the Stream Part 30

"Oh well, that settles it," said Archie. "Helena must have all she wants. That is part of Helena, isn't it?"

For a moment Jessie thought that he was speaking with the bitterest irony, but immediately afterwards she withdrew that, for it struck her that Archie was, in some inexplicable way, perfectly sincere: there was the unmistakable ring of truth in his voice; he meant what he said. And, as if to endorse that, he went on:

"We all do what Helena wants: you, I, the Bradshaw, all of us. She wants to be loved, isn't that it? and to want to be loved is a royal command; all proper people must obey. I have been a rebel you know, and,--oh Jessie, how awfully ashamed I am! I let myself hate Helena; I encouraged myself to hate her. But I've returned to my allegiance, thank G.o.d."

She turned an enquiring face to him.

"Archie, dear," she said, "I am so thankful that you are so changed.

You're utterly different from what you have been. Last night you were bitter and terrible: you made my heart ache. But all to-day you've been absolutely your old self again. And it's so immense and so sudden. Can't you tell me at all what caused it? I should love to know, if you feel like telling me."

He took her arm again.

"I'll tell you one thing," he said. "You did me a lot of good last night when you made me realize your friendship. That helped; I do believe that helped."

Jessie could not quite accept this, though it warmed her heart that Archie thought of that.

"But you always knew my friendship," she said.

"I know I did. But I appreciated it most when I felt absolutely empty.

There's something more than that, though..."

He paused.

"Ah, do tell me," said Jessie.

He could not make up his mind on the instant, for he knew Jessie's repugnance to the whole idea of those supernatural communications. But he felt warm and alert and expansive; besides, her friendship, which he truly valued, yearned for his confidence, which is the meat and drink of friendship. Sometimes it was necessary to deceive your friends; it had been necessary for him to deceive her about the disposal of the whisky-bottle; but, though she might not approve, he could at least tell her what had made sunshine all day for him, and what was making it now.

"It's this," he said. "Martin came to me last night. I talked to him; I saw him. It has put me right: he has made me see things quite differently. He told me to be patient, to cling to love always, to let my hate be turned into love. I can't express to you at all what a difference that made to me. I felt he knew; he could see, as he said, that the darkness in which I thought I walked was not darkness at all. I know you have no sympathy with his coming to me: it seems to you either nonsense or something very dangerous. But I know you have sympathy with the result of it."

Suddenly his explanation of the voices she had heard last night occurred to him.

"When you told me this morning that you had heard talking in my room,"

he said, "I did not mean to tell you about Martin, and so I invented something--oh yes, that I had been reading aloud what I had written, to account for it. It wasn't true, but I had to tell some fib. And did you really hear conversation going on? That's awfully interesting."

"I thought I did," said she. "And there was knocking or hammering. Did you invent something about that too?"

"Oh yes," said Archie. "But I don't really know what the knocking was.

As I was going off into trance, I heard loud knocking of some sort, but I didn't let it disturb the oncoming of the trance. It deepened, and then Martin came, and I talked with him and saw him."

"Oh Archie, how do you know it was he?" she cried, wildly enough, hardly knowing what she meant, but speaking from the dictate of some nightmare that screamed and struggled in her mind.

"Why, of course it was he," said Archie. "I recognized him, superficially, that is to say, from my knowledge of my own face, just as I recognized the photograph in the cache at Grives from its likeness to me. But I know it was he in some far more essential and inward manner.

It _was_ Martin."

"Will he come again?" asked the girl.

"I hope so, many times. Indeed, he promised to. I needed him, he got permission to come to me in my need. Is he not ministering to it?

Haven't you seen the immense change in me?"

Undeniably she had seen that, and for a moment a little pang of human disappointment came over her.

"I'm afraid, then, the knowledge of my friendship hasn't had much to do with it," she said.

"Jessie, don't think I undervalue that," said Archie, speaking quite frankly and sincerely. "I thank you for it tremendously; I love to know it is there. I may count on it always, mayn't I?"

They still stood a moment under the star-swarming sky, sundered by the night from all other presences.

"I needn't a.s.sure you of that," she said. "And, Archie, I may be utterly wrong in what I feel about Martin's communications to you. Who knows what conditions exist for the souls of those we have loved, and whom we neither of us believe have died with the decay of the perishable body?

But, my dear, do be careful. If in some miraculous way you have been given access which is denied to almost all mankind, do use it only in truth and love and reverence."

"You're frightened about it," said Archie.

"I know I am. If Martin can come to you, why should not other spirits?

Other spirits, intelligences terrible and devilish, might deceive you into thinking that they were he. You remember at Silorno he said he couldn't come again."

"I know; but I wasn't in sore need then," said he.

They had again come opposite Lord Tintagel's study, and, even as they pa.s.sed, Archie saw him with his finger on the bell. Instantly he guessed that he was ringing to know why the whisky had not been brought. The footman would come and say that he had brought it...

Archie felt an exhilarated acuteness of brain: the situation had only to be put before him for him to see the answer to it. In his presence, remembering the contract of the morning, his father could not ask for the whisky.

"Come in and say good-night to my father, Jess," he said.

They entered together and immediately afterwards the footman came in from the hall-door. Lord Tintagel looked at him, then back at Archie, who was watching.

"It's nothing, James," he said. "I rang for something, but it doesn't matter."

The man left the room and immediately afterwards Jessie said good-night and went also. Archie turned to his father with a broad, kindly smile.

"Father, I believe I'm a great thought-reader," he said. "I believe I can tell you what you rang for."

His father's grim face relaxed.

"You young devil," he said.

Archie laughed.

"I've guessed right, then," he said. "You surely don't want to drink success to our contract again."

"But I don't know why James didn't bring the whisky as usual," said he.

"I--I forgot to tell him not to."

"But I didn't," said Archie.

"I see. Well, a bargain's a bargain. Only now there doesn't seem to be any particular reason for not going to bed."

Archie yawned rather elaborately, and went to the table where, earlier in the evening, he had put down his gla.s.s half filled with soda. He drank it, sniffing to see if there was any taint of spirit about it. But he had rinsed it thoroughly.