"It is happy," she said, "because it is home."
I asked Lauretta if she would play.
"In the house?" she inquired.
"No," I replied, "here, where Nature's wondrous works are closest to us."
The zithers were brought out, and mother and daughter played. I was not yet strong enough to bear the tension of great excitement, and I leant back in the easy chair they had provided for me, and closed my eyes. Whether I slept or not I should not, at the time, have been able to decide, nor for how long I lay thus, listening to the sweet strains. Awake or asleep, I was in a kind of dreamland, in which there was no discordant note; and even when I heard the music merge into the Tyrolean air which I had so often heard in fancy during my residence in Rosemullion, and concerning which Mrs. Fortress had questioned me, I did not regard it as strange or unusual. It was played by those to whom I had been spiritually drawn. I recognised now the meaning of the mysterious strains I used to hear in the silent woods. The players and I were one; our lives were one, I who had all my life scoffed at fate, suddenly renounced my faith. Chance had not brought us together; it was Destiny.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
As I lay in this dreamy condition I became conscious that the music had ceased and that the players had departed. But I was not alone; Doctor Louis was with me.
These facts were made apparent by my inner sense, for I did not attempt to open my eyes. Indeed, without a determined effort I should not have succeeded. A wave of cold air passed over my eyelids; another; another. This did not proceed from an uncontrolled natural force; Doctor Louis had risen from his seat, and was now standing in close proximity to me. I did not pause to consider whether he had moved towards me stealthily, in order not to disturb me. I was content to accept certain facts without inquiry as to how they were produced. Again the wave of cold air across my eyelids; again; again.
"To seal them," was the expression of my thought. "So be it--but this learned doctor shall not quite succeed. He is endeavouring to magnetise me to his will, but my power is no less than his; it may be greater. Hidden force shall meet hidden force in friendly and amiable contest. He will not be aware that I am resisting him, and the advantage will be on my side. I will play with him as one skilled in fence plays with an apprentice. My dear doctor's power is the product of cultivation; he has learnt the art he practises. To me it is natural, born in my birth without a doubt. What matter how transmitted? That I am I is the potent fact; and being I, and of and in the world, I am, to myself, supreme. What to me would be the marvels of nature, the genius of centuries, the memorials of time from the first breath of creation, were I not in existence? Therefore am I, to myself, supreme. The present lives; the past is at rest. The future? A grey veil spreads itself before me, shutting out from my view the years of mortal life through which I have yet to pass. But I possess a talisman. I breathe upon the veil the form of a rose, white and most lovely, with just a tinge of creamy pink, and it dissolves into a vision of flowers, amidst which I walk, clasping a hand which, but that it is flesh and blood, might be the hand of an angel. It is an angel's hand--mine, and no other man's; mine, to gladden my hours, and to be for ever creative of joy, of peace, of beauty. How fair the view! I will have no other.
"I am not fearful that the doctor has evil intentions towards me; and truly I have none towards him. As regards our relations to each other, spiritual and temporal, nothing is yet fixed.