“And if they’ve done anything to him--they have done it to me
too--for he is more to me than----”

Her words grew vaguer and vaguer as she returned slowly to her normal
waking state, and now she stopped altogether, as though suddenly aware
that she had been surprised into telling secrets. But all the way back,
as we carried her carefully through the trees, the girl smiled and
murmured Sangree’s name and asked if he was injured, until it finally
became clear to me that the wild soul of the one had called to the
wild soul of the other and in the secret depths of their beings the
call had been heard and understood. John Silence was right. In the
abyss of her heart, too deep at first for recognition, the girl loved
him, and had loved him from the very beginning. Once her normal waking
consciousness recognised the fact they would leap together like twin
flames, and his affliction would be at an end; his intense desire would
be satisfied; he would be cured. And in Sangree’s tent Dr. Silence and I sat up for the remainder of the
night--this wonderful and haunted night that had shown us such strange
glimpses of a new heaven and a new hell--for the Canadian tossed upon
his balsam boughs with high fever in his blood, and upon each cheek a
dark and curious contusion showed, throbbing with severe pain although
the skin was not broken and there was no outward and visible sign of
blood. “Maloney shot straight, you see,” whispered Dr. Silence to me after the
clergyman had gone to his tent, and had put Joan to sleep beside her
mother, who, by the way, had never once awakened. “The bullet must have
passed clean through the face, for both cheeks are stained. He’ll wear
these marks all his life--smaller, but always there. They’re the most
curious scars in the world, these scars transferred by repercussion
from an injured Double. They’ll remain visible until just before his
death, and then with the withdrawal of the subtle body they will
disappear finally.”

His words mingled in my dazed mind with the sighs of the troubled
sleeper and the crying of the wind about the tent. Nothing seemed to
paralyse my powers of realisation so much as these twin stains of
mysterious significance upon the face before me. It was odd, too, how speedily and easily the Camp resigned itself
again to sleep and quietness, as though a stage curtain had suddenly
dropped down upon the action and concealed it; and nothing contributed
so vividly to the feeling that I had been a spectator of some kind of
visionary drama as the dramatic nature of the change in the girl’s
attitude. Yet, as a matter of fact, the change had not been so sudden and
revolutionary as appeared. Underneath, in those remoter regions
of consciousness where the emotions, unknown to their owners, do
secretly mature, and owe thence their abrupt revelation to some abrupt
psychological climax, there can be no doubt that Joan’s love for the
Canadian had been growing steadily and irresistibly all the time. It
had now rushed to the surface so that she recognised it; that was all. And it has always seemed to me that the presence of John Silence,
so potent, so quietly efficacious, produced an effect, if one may
say so, of a psychic forcing-house, and hastened incalculably the
bringing together of these two “wild” lovers. In that sudden awakening
had occurred the very psychological climax required to reveal the
passionate emotion accumulated below. The deeper knowledge had leaped
across and transferred itself to her ordinary consciousness, and in
that shock the collision of the personalities had shaken them to the
depths and shown her the truth beyond all possibility of doubt. “He’s sleeping quietly now,” the doctor said, interrupting my
reflections. “If you will watch alone for a bit I’ll go to Maloney’s
tent and help him to arrange his thoughts.” He smiled in anticipation
of that “arrangement.” “He’ll never quite understand how a wound on the
Double can transfer itself to the physical body, but at least I can
persuade him that the less he talks and ‘explains’ tomorrow, the sooner
the forces will run their natural course now to peace and quietness.”

He went away softly, and with the removal of his presence Sangree,
sleeping heavily, turned over and groaned with the pain of his broken
head. And it was in the still hour just before the dawn, when all the islands
were hushed, the wind and sea still dreaming, and the stars visible
through clearing mists, that a figure crept silently over the ridge and
reached the door of the tent where I dozed beside the sufferer, before
I was aware of its presence. The flap was cautiously lifted a few
inches and in looked--Joan. That same instant Sangree woke and sat up on his bed of branches. He
recognised her before I could say a word, and uttered a low cry. It was
pain and joy mingled, and this time all human. And the girl too was no
longer walking in her sleep, but fully aware of what she was doing. I
was only just able to prevent him springing from his blankets. “Joan, Joan!” he cried, and in a flash she answered him, “I’m here--I’m
with you always now,” and had pushed past me into the tent and flung
herself upon his breast. “I knew you would come to me in the end,” I heard him whisper. “It was all too big for me to understand at first,” she murmured, “and
for a long time I was frightened----”

“But not now!” he cried louder; “you don’t feel afraid now of--of
anything that’s in me----”

“I fear nothing,” she cried, “nothing, nothing!”

I led her outside again. She looked steadily into my face with eyes
shining and her whole being transformed. In some intuitive way,
surviving probably from the somnambulism, she knew or guessed as much
as I knew. “You must talk tomorrow with John Silence,” I said gently, leading her
towards her own tent. “He understands everything.”

I left her at the door, and as I went back softly to take up my place
of sentry again with the Canadian, I saw the first streaks of dawn
lighting up the far rim of the sea behind the distant islands. And, as though to emphasise the eternal closeness of comedy to tragedy,
two small details rose out of the scene and impressed me so vividly
that I remember them to this very day. For in the tent where I had
just left Joan, all aquiver with her new happiness, there rose plainly
to my ears the grotesque sounds of the Bo’sun’s Mate heavily snoring,
oblivious of all things in heaven or hell; and from Maloney’s tent, so
still was the night, where I looked across and saw the lantern’s glow,
there came to me, through the trees, the monotonous rising and falling
of a human voice that was beyond question the sound of a man praying to
his God. _Printed by_ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED _Edinburgh_




Transcriber’s Note:

  Punctuation has been standardised.