‘I feel as if I had,’ he replied suddenly. ‘I feel just as if I had been here twenty years ago, worse luck. The moment I came into the room I saw it all. I felt—oh, well, I felt that I must have been here in the ruins ever so long ago, and had the worst time here that anyone ever had—as if I had been tied by the leg here, somehow, and pinned down in damnable terror and pain.’
‘Come along out of it,’ said Kingston quietly, after a pause. He dared not trust himself to say more. An idea had been born in his brain—born, or called once more to life?—an idea so wild, so fantastic, that he hardly dared to entertain it. And yet, in the depths of his heart, he knew that it was the truth. In silence he led the way towards the Castle, while his visitor tried to impress upon his unheeding ears a dozen apologies for the gross and idiotic folly of which his nerves had made him guilty.
As soon as he was out of the fateful room all his self-possession seemed to have returned, and he could not account for the sudden vertigo of terror that had haunted him there. What had come over him he could not imagine. Mr. Darnley must certainly think him the most confounded idiot. What must Mr. Darnley think of anyone who could let himself be made such a rude, mannerless idiot of by a sort of hysterical schoolgirl qualm? The whole thing was too asinine for words. He had no excuse to make.
And all the time Mr. Darnley said nothing, heard nothing of his guest’s protestations. This beautiful nervous boy had no interest for Kingston Darnley; he did not care what he said or felt or looked like. But the terror that haunted Ivor Restormel was not his; the mysterious attraction that filled him was not his own. Somewhere, deep down in his being, lived Something that had felt that terror, Something that exercised that attraction over Kingston, Something that called to Kingston as an old friend. And that Something, Kingston knew it, heard it calling to him imperiously out of the eternal past. It was the Something that had once carried the name and shape of Isabel. There was no mistaking it. Now at last Kingston understood what it was that had gripped him yesterday on the road, what inexplicable summons of old friendship. The dead had come back to him after many years. But clothed in alien flesh, forming part of a new personality, shut off from recognition by the barriers of the body. For in this boy lived only the one fragmentary recollection of the final catastrophe. Nothing in Kingston’s soul, no call of ancient kinship, no appeal to bygone pledges, could penetrate to the ears of that secret self. The dead had come back, known to him, but incapable of knowing him again. How could he wake memory in that changed thing which had returned, at once the same, and yet so different, in its freedom from that bond which once had made them one, and now, still as strong as ever in the hold it had over himself, had broken and fallen away for ever from the other soul it had gripped? Kingston looked at his visitor with a feeling that drew near to hatred. This stranger held the thing he still loved. The body and the shape of it was an irrelevant, a maddening accident; it was the secret thing that Kingston called to, the secret thing that was prevented from hearing by this new personality in which it had clothed itself. Kingston felt a sharp grudge against Ivor Restormel, his body, his brain, his beauty. That body, that brain, that beauty made the locked casket that imprisoned the living dead. And yet, inasmuch as Ivor Restormel was the shrine of that lost passion, he was, on the other hand, ineffably precious and sacred. He could not be let go. The boy himself was less than nothing; but what he held was more than everything.
Ivor Restormel thought his host justifiably offended, and tried to mitigate the effect of his own silly rudeness. But his pleasant chatter fell on unheeding ears, and he began to think that he had alienated Mr. Darnley beyond reconciliation. And no wonder. Who could be expected to put up with a puling idiot like that? Ivor Restormel mentally kicked himself, and felt that he would gladly have vindicated his character by returning into those haunted rooms. Without having any special wish to please either of the Darnleys, he was one of those people who always like to be popular, and grow faintly unhappy when they fail to make a favourable impression. He did all he could to mollify his host, and was distressed, though not surprised, to find all his efforts fall flat. In ordinary circumstances he would not have minded so much; but now he felt that he really owed Mr. Darnley some extra pleasantness, if only to make up for having just made so egregious an ass of himself. He tried his level best to set matters right; but for a long time he got no answer—or at most an absent-minded monosyllable. Kingston was not yet equal to conversing with this tiresome young interloper who had come between himself and the dead, while, at the same time, revealing at last to him the return of the lost. They walked in silence up and down the garden together, while Gundred watched them from an upper window, disliking the visitor as much as ever, and wondering when in the world he would begin to think about going.
‘Wanted to see the pictures, didn’t you?’ said Kingston abruptly at last, cutting, regardless, into something that the other was saying.
Ivor Restormel felt more and more out of place. Evidently he would do well to say good-bye. However, he could not escape from this civility of his host, however perfunctory. So he followed Kingston as he strode into the Castle, paying no attention to the boy at his heels. Gradually Kingston was beginning to recover his composure and face the inevitable. This wonderful secret certainty of his must be cherished and acted on, though already he began to taste something of the pain that had been foretold him, from incessant yearning knowledge of a thing that could not recognise him in turn, and could never recognise him again. The door between them was of locked iron—a vain agony to beat against. And yet it was not an agony that he could spare himself, for, though the door was of locked iron for ever, yet behind it dwelt the thing he had sought for so long. He saw now the irony of his fate. But nothing could divert its course. Ivor Restormel found his host growing calmer and more courteous again. Soon he was even cordial, and the tension of the situation seemed at an end. The two men passed through the picture-gallery, giving a share of attention to every picture, though each, in reality, was busy with his own thoughts, Ivor feeling the satisfaction of successful effort, and Kingston foreboding the anguish of an effort that could never be successful. At last they had gone the length of the gallery, and stood before the old panel of Queen Isabel.
‘Here is the She-wolf,’ said Kingston pleasantly. ‘Don’t you think she looks her name? Isabel of France and England.’
The younger man laughed uneasily.
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘An evil lady, I suppose? It is curious what a horror I have of the very name. Isabel—it seems to stand to me for everything I hate most in the world, fire included. I must have some beastly memory somewhere connected with the name of Isabel, but I cannot lay my hands upon it.’