So saying, he motioned me to follow him, and led the way from the room, carrying with him a small shaded lamp.
When we entered an adjoining apartment the shadows there were so dense, and the light we had with us was so feeble, that, for some moments, I could discern nothing. A dull fire smouldered in the grate, but shed no light on the interior of the room, which seemed furnished as a small parlour. There was a large sofa at the farther end, and someone lay upon it covered with rugs. Dr. Wygram held the light a little lower, the rays fell upon an upturned face, that of a boy apparently asleep. I started, for was it not the self-same face upon which the flickering light of a railway carriage lamp had fallen so many years before? The very same, in every lineament, nothing was changed.
I am not naturally quick in coming to a conclusion. Things dawn upon me now even more slowly than of old. I was startled for the moment, nothing more; though a creeping horror moved already towards my heart, I had not felt its actual touch.
“That is my sorrow,” said the father, turning to me, without diverting the rays of the lamp from his son’s face; then, without another word, motioned me to follow him out. I did so. The shadows fell once more upon the sleeper, even as the shadows of the years had fallen, till that moment, upon my recollection of his features.
On a sudden the full significance of what I had seen rushed upon me.
“Great God!” I cried, “what is this, Wygram? Speak!”
We were in the corridor now, and he did not return an answer. We re-entered the lighted room. My patience gave way.
“For Heaven’s sake,” I said, “Wygram, tell me what is the meaning of this! How is your son—the boy sleeping yonder—the same, unchanged—?” The query died upon my lips, for he to whom I spoke was pale as ashes. I read the answer of my inarticulate question, there and then, in his face. By virtue of some nightmare spell, the boy I had seen so many years before, the boy, who by this time should have been a grown man, was slumbering, still a boy, in the room we had just quitted.
They say that when, in dreams, anything manifestly absurd or inconsistent presents itself, the dreamer at once awakes. In the sitting-room of the cottage that night, seated beside my old friend, how often did I think myself dreaming, and long for the moment of waking to be precipitated by the seeming contradiction I had just witnessed! For some time neither of us spoke. Dr. Wygram sat motionless with the blank and, as it were, featureless expression on his countenance which I have so often seen sudden calamity impart. Yet his affliction, new and inexplicable to me as yet, must have become familiar enough to himself. After all, it must have been its first, its only revelation to another, which, as it were, reawakened himself to a sense of its utter bewilderment and hopelessness. And to me (of all men) he had turned for help, for counsel, in circumstances so astounding! What could I do? My own brain was in a whirl. The sense of wonderment once past, a painful search for possible explanation succeeded—explanation of what? That was the puzzling difficulty. A problem was before me, but, from lack of all precedent, the conditions of effectual presentation were wanting. How, then, attempt the solution?