CHAPTER XX.
That afternoon Edith casually inquired if I had yet revisited the
underground chamber in the garden in which I had been found.
"Not yet," I replied. "To be frank, I have shrunk thus far from doing
so, lest the visit might revive old associations rather too strongly
for my mental equilibrium."
"Ah, yes!" she said, "I can imagine that you have done well to stay
away. I ought to have thought of that."
"No," I said, "I am glad you spoke of it. The danger, if there was
any, existed only during the first day or two. Thanks to you, chiefly
and always, I feel my footing now so firm in this new world, that if
you will go with me to keep the ghosts off, I should really like to
visit the place this afternoon."
Edith demurred at first, but, finding that I was in earnest, consented
to accompany me. The rampart of earth thrown up from the excavation
was visible among the trees from the house, and a few steps brought us
to the spot. All remained as it was at the point when work was
interrupted by the discovery of the tenant of the chamber, save that
the door had been opened and the slab from the roof replaced.
Descending the sloping sides of the excavation, we went in at the door
and stood within the dimly-lighted room.
Everything was just as I had beheld it last on that evening one
hundred and thirteen years previous, just before closing my eyes for
that long sleep. I stood for some time silently looking about me. I
saw that my companion was furtively regarding me with an expression of
awed and sympathetic curiosity. I put out my hand to her and she
placed hers in it, the soft fingers responding with a reassuring
pressure to my clasp. Finally she whispered, "Had we not better go out
now? You must not try yourself too far. Oh, how strange it must be to
you!"
"On the contrary," I replied, "it does not seem strange; that is the
strangest part of it."
"Not strange?" she echoed.
"Even so," I replied. "The emotions with which you evidently credit
me, and which I anticipated would attend this visit, I simply do not
feel. I realize all that these surroundings suggest, but without the
agitation I expected. You can't be nearly as much surprised at this as
I am myself. Ever since that terrible morning when you came to my
help, I have tried to avoid thinking of my former life, just as I have
avoided coming here, for fear of the agitating effects. I am for all
the world like a man who has permitted an injured limb to lie
motionless under the impression that it is exquisitely sensitive, and
on trying to move it finds that it is paralyzed."
"Do you mean your memory is gone?"
"Not at all. I remember everything connected with my former life, but
with a total lack of keen sensation. I remember it for clearness as if
it had been but a day since then, but my feelings about what I
remember are as faint as if to my consciousness, as well as in fact, a
hundred years had intervened. Perhaps it is possible to explain this,
too. The effect of change in surroundings is like that of lapse of
time in making the past seem remote. When I first woke from that
trance, my former life appeared as yesterday, but now, since I have
learned to know my new surroundings, and to realize the prodigious
changes that have transformed the world, I no longer find it hard, but
very easy, to realize that I have slept a century. Can you conceive of
such a thing as living a hundred years in four days? It really seems
to me that I have done just that, and that it is this experience which
has given so remote and unreal an appearance to my former life. Can
you see how such a thing might be?"
"I can conceive it," replied Edith, meditatively, "and I think we
ought all to be thankful that it is so, for it will save you much
suffering, I am sure."
"Imagine," I said, in an effort to explain, as much to myself as to
her, the strangeness of my mental condition, "that a man first heard
of a bereavement many, many years, half a lifetime perhaps, after the
event occurred. I fancy his feeling would be perhaps something as mine
is. When I think of my friends in the world of that former day, and
the sorrow they must have felt for me, it is with a pensive pity,
rather than keen anguish, as of a sorrow long, long ago ended."
"You have told us nothing yet of your friends," said Edith. "Had you
many to mourn you?"
"Thank God, I had very few relatives, none nearer than cousins," I
replied. "But there was one, not a relative, but dearer to me than any
kin of blood. She had your name. She was to have been my wife soon. Ah
me!"
"Ah me!" sighed the Edith by my side. "Think of the heartache she must
have had."
Something in the deep feeling of this gentle girl touched a chord in
my benumbed heart. My eyes, before so dry, were flooded with the tears
that had till now refused to come. When I had regained my composure, I
saw that she too had been weeping freely.
"God bless your tender heart," I said. "Would you like to see her
picture?"
A small locket with Edith Bartlett's picture, secured about my neck
with a gold chain, had lain upon my breast all through that long
sleep, and removing this I opened and gave it to my companion. She
took it with eagerness, and after poring long over the sweet face,
touched the picture with her lips.
"I know that she was good and lovely enough to well deserve your
tears," she said; "but remember her heartache was over long ago, and
she has been in heaven for nearly a century."
It was indeed so. Whatever her sorrow had once been, for nearly a
century she had ceased to weep, and, my sudden passion spent, my own
tears dried away. I had loved her very dearly in my other life, but it
was a hundred years ago! I do not know but some may find in this
confession evidence of lack of feeling, but I think, perhaps, that
none can have had an experience sufficiently like mine to enable them
to judge me. As we were about to leave the chamber, my eye rested upon
the great iron safe which stood in one corner. Calling my companion's
attention to it, I said:—
This was my strong room as well as my sleeping room. In the safe
yonder are several thousand dollars in gold, and any amount of
securities. If I had known when I went to sleep that night just how
long my nap would be, I should still have thought that the gold was a
safe provision for my needs in any country or any century, however
distant. That a time would ever come when it would lose its purchasing
power, I should have considered the wildest of fancies. Nevertheless,
here I wake up to find myself among a people of whom a cartload of
gold will not procure a loaf of bread.
As might be expected, I did not succeed in impressing Edith that there
was anything remarkable in this fact. "Why in the world should it?"
she merely asked.
