Alas, no!
The events through which they had passed; the unfamiliar scenes encountered; the appurtenances of the very room in which they sat; the manner of the Colonel—all proclaimed the absence of illusion and confirmed the existence of stern reality.
Seventy-five years!
Truly, only a brief span in the cycle of time, in the relentlessly automatic passage of the ages, but how much in the individual life of man. Seventy-five years ago—who inhabited the house, the spot, in which we live? What was our particular ancestor doing; what was he like; what were his thoughts, ideas, aspirations, hopes, ambitions, this day just seventy-five years ago? How many hustling, bustling, hoping, fearing, aspiring men and women who have since passed away and of whom to-day there is not a human being who knows that they ever were on earth. And—seventy-five years hence! Who will then occupy the house, the spot where we to-day live? Who then, as the days sweep by, will ever give a passing thought to us, or perchance even remember we ever existed?
So, then, three-quarters of a century had passed and with the passage of time surroundings and conditions had also changed! And these two fortunate, or unfortunate, derelicts of the past—what of them? They were as relics of a bygone age; a species of human flotsam and jetsam cast up upon a foreign shore.
A sort of homesickness, a deadly nostalgia, was upon them. Instinctively they turned to each other for sympathy.
Kearns, with his stronger vitality and naturally high spirits, was the quicker to recover from the shock. He glanced down at his strong, knotted arm and wrist resting on the table. Even if he had been dead to the world for all these years, even if he was over a century old, his muscles were as strong as ever and the flow of life within him apparently unimpaired. And if a man’s nerves have the courage and his heart beats strong and full as at thirty, what matter how many years have passed over his head! Such was the thought which surged through Kearns’ mind. “A woman is as old as she looks, a man is as old as he feels,” was the inconsequent and frivolous idea which kept jangling through his brain. How strange it is that in the most critical moments of our lives, the incongruous and the odd will persist in obtruding themselves upon our mental perception.
From the chaos of emotion the announcement had developed in Kearns, curiosity began to grow. He roused himself and turned to question the Colonel. But the latter proved obdurate.
“Not another word will I tell you,” he declared; “not another word until medical advice is at hand. You can understand the loss to the world and to science should anything happen to you at this stage. I’ve sent for the doctor. He’ll be here shortly.”
As the Colonel spoke there came a rap on the door and the servant announced the arrival of the Doctor.