“‘I’ll go and look at her,’ I said. I went. As I opened the cupboard door she laughed again—a little, soft, musical laugh, suggestive of exquisite enjoyment. It drew me on. ‘Why,’ I cried, ‘I didn’t know that you could laugh. Where are you? Let’s free you from your prison. If you’re as pretty as your laughter, you should be well worth looking at.’
“There was the packing-case, all nailed and corded, exactly as it had been when placed on shipboard. As I touched it, she laughed again. Now that I had become more used to it, I found that there was something in the sound which braced me up; a quality which was suited to my mood. I drew the case into my dressing-room. I unpacked it. There she was inside, in the best possible condition; as ready, as willing, as happy, as on the day when I first saw her, in the place where she was born. She had borne her voyage and subsequent confinement surprisingly well; neither in her bearing nor appearance was there anything which even hinted at a trace of resentment for the treatment which she had received. As she showed me what she could do, laughing all the time, I said to myself, ‘With her aid I shall be more than a match for my brother.’
“I had got her out, but, like the genie the fisherman released in the Arabian story, she was not easy to put back again. Without her consent it was impossible to replace her in the packing-case. Her consent she refused to give. When I persisted in my attempts to do without it, she brought me nearer to a sudden end than I had ever been before. Whereupon I desisted. I left her where she was. That display of her powers, and of her readiness to use them, compelled me to the reflection that in her I had found not only a collaborator, but possibly something else as well. One thing I certainly had found—an inseparable companion.
“From that hour, when, in the silence of the night, and because I could not sleep, being troubled by thoughts of my brother, I took her from her packing-case, she has never left me for one moment alone. She has become part and parcel of my life; grown into the very web of my being; into the very heart of me; until now she holds me, body, soul, and spirit, with chains which never shall be broken. And to her it’s such an exquisite jest. Listen! She is laughing now.”
CHAPTER XXV.
THE GODDESS
I had been wondering, while Lawrence had been speaking, where, exactly, in what he said, was the dividing line between truth and falsehood; between sanity and madness. I could not satisfy myself upon the point; either then or afterwards. That the wildness of his speech and manner was an indication of the disorder of his mind was obvious; that in his brain there were the fires of delirium was sure; that the tale which he told was not all raving was as certain. It is probable that the life of dissipation which he had led had told upon his physical health; and that, as usual, the body had reacted on the mind.
Yet there was such an air of conviction in his bearing, and so much method in his madness, that even in his most amazing statements one could not but suspect, at least, a basis of fact. And it was because this was so that we listened, fascinated, to assertions which savoured of a world of dreams; and hung, with breathless interest, on words which told, as if they were everyday occurrences, of things of which it is not good to even think as coming within the sweep of possibility.
He held up his finger, repeating his last words in the form of an inquiry.
“Hark! don’t you hear her laughing now?”
I know not what we heard; I know not. We had been following, one by one, the steps which marked the progress of disorder in this man’s brain, until our own minds had become unbalanced too. But I thought that I heard the sound of a woman’s laughter, and it was because it appeared to come from behind the screen that I stepped forward to move the barrier, so that we might learn what it concealed. Lawrence sprang in front of me.