I made my way to the library, where my friend met me with a laugh. 'You mustn't keep away from me, old man,' he said, 'I want you—want you badly.'
CHAPTER XXXV
AFTERWARDS
We were alone in the library, Lord Carbis, Lady Carbis, Edgecumbe and myself, and certainly it was one of the strangest gatherings ever I experienced.
The excitement was intense, and yet we spoke together quietly, as though we lived in a world of commonplaces. But nothing was commonplace. Never in my life did I realize the effect which joy can have, as I realized it then. Years before, Lord and Lady Carbis had received news that their son had died in India. What that news had meant to them at the time I had no idea. He was their only son, and on him all their hopes had centred. They had mourned for him as dead, and his loss had meant a blank in their lives which no words can describe.
Then, suddenly and without warning, they had come into a strange house, and found their son standing before them. As I think of it now, I wonder that the shock did not do them serious harm, and I can quite understand the incoherent, almost meaningless words they uttered.
To Edgecumbe the shock must have been still greater. For years the greatest part of his life had been a blank to him. As I have set forth in these pages, all his life before the time when he awoke to consciousness in India had practically no meaning to him. And then, suddenly, the thick, dark curtain was torn aside, and he woke to the fact that his memory was restored, that he was not homeless or nameless, but that his father and mother stood before him.'
'Jack has told me all about you,' Lord Carbis said, as I entered the room; 'told me what you did for him, what a friend you have been to him! God bless you, sir! I don't know how to express my feelings, I—I hardly know what I am saying, but you understand,—I am sure you understand.'
'Isn't it a lark, old man,' Edgecumbe said with a laugh, 'isn't it,—isn't it?—but there—I can't put it into words. Half the time I seem to be dreaming. Things which happened years ago are coming in crowds back to me, until half the time I am wondering whether after all I am not somebody else. And yet I know I am not somebody else. Why, here's dad, and here's the little mater'; and he looked at them joyfully.
I could not help watching him anxiously, for after all he had just gone through an experience which happens to but one man in a million. It seemed to me as though I dimly understood the strange processes through which his brain must have gone in order to bring about the present state of things. During the earlier part of the day, all his past had been a blank, now much of it was real to him. He had been like a man with his life cut in two, one half being unknown to him; and now, as if by a miracle, that half was restored. I wondered how he felt. I feared he would not be able to stand the shock, and that he would suffer a terrible reaction afterwards.