This was no illusion. The likeness was there, evanescent, independent of feature, yet distinct.
Expression, gaze, attitude of body and carriage of hands all said to Lestrange: Here is Emmeline reborn, living again—her gaze, her expression, her attitude, her very self. It was only lately that Mr. Kearney had noticed the child falling into what he called “moody fits.” It was only now that the negligent eye of Lestrange, sharpened maybe by his return to the normal, saw what Kearney had missed. Nothing supernatural, something as common as the ground he stood on, and as strange—the parent reappearing in the child.
Then, as Lestrange gazed on this wonder which was yet so commonplace, it passed away. Kearney broke from the trees on the opposite side, carrying a bunch of bananas he had been to fetch, and Emmeline, sighting him, vanished—turned, as if touched by a magic wand, into Dick, who went running towards the sailor across the sward.
CHAPTER III
IN THE GARDEN OF GOD THERE IS TRUTH
Yes, the promise of the vision had not been entirely broken, but that night, as he lay sleepless in the house, Lestrange almost wished it had.
If you have been waiting years for the return of someone you love, will you be satisfied with a likeness, however vivid and living, even if that likeness is wrought from flesh and blood and spirit?
In the days that followed, watching closely now, he saw that not only had heredity given the child the attributes of the mother, but of the father. Perhaps to the absolute isolation of the parents from the world was due this more than ordinary duplicity and simplicity of mind-structure in the child—he could not tell—but the fact was there. Racing about like a dog, following Kearney, imitating him in the things he did, the child was the Dick of long ago, different somewhat in face, but Dick to the life; tired of play or seized with a fit of day-dreaming, Emmeline would peep forth. Even in play, sometimes, Lestrange would notice the characteristics of the mother in the child’s love for coloured things, flowers, bits of coral and bright shells, and in the careful way the toys would be collected and hidden.
Sometimes so vivid was the impression that he could have thrown out his arms and cried: “Emmeline!” only that he knew Emmeline would know him not.
One day, suddenly moved by an impulse he could not resist, he caught the child up in his arms. It let itself be held unresisting, and then, sighting Kearney, who had suddenly appeared, it struggled free and ran to the sailor.