Part 21 (1/2)

One evening towards the close of his second year at Porthlooe, and about the date of his purchase of the _Providence_ schooner, I happened to be walking homewards from a visit to a sick paris.h.i.+oner, when at Cove Bottom, by the miller's footbridge, I pa.s.sed two figures--a man and a woman standing there and conversing in the dusk. I could not help recognising them; and halfway up the hill I came to a sudden resolution and turned back.

”Mr. Laquedem,” said I, approaching them, ”I put it to you, as a man of education and decent feeling, is this quite honourable?”

”I believe, sir,” he answered courteously enough, ”I can convince you that it is. But clearly this is neither the time nor the place.”

”You must excuse me,” I went on, ”but I have known Julia since she was a child.”

To this he made an extraordinary answer. ”No longer?” he asked; and added, with a change of tone, ”Had you not forbidden me the vicarage, sir, I might have something to say to you.”

”If it concern the girl's spiritual welfare--or yours--I shall be happy to hear it.”

”In that case,” said he, ”I will do myself the pleasure of calling upon you--shall we say to-morrow evening?”

He was as good as his word. At nine o'clock next evening--about the hour of his former visit--Frances ushered him into my parlour.

The similarity of circ.u.mstance may have suggested to me to draw the comparison; at any rate I observed then for the first time that rapid ageing of his features which afterwards became a matter of common remark. The face was no longer that of the young man who had entered my parlour two years before; already some streaks of grey showed in his black locks, and he seemed even to move wearily.

”I fear you are unwell,” said I, offering a chair.

”I have reason to believe,” he answered, ”that I am dying.” And then, as I uttered some expression of dismay and concern, he cut me short.

”Oh, there will be no hurry about it! I mean, perhaps, no more than that all men carry about with them the seeds of their mortality--so why not I? But I came to talk of Julia Constantine, not of myself.”

”You may guess, Mr. Laquedem, that as her vicar, and having known her and her affliction all her life, I take something of a fatherly interest in the girl.”

”And having known her so long, do you not begin to observe some change in her, of late?”

”Why, to be sure,” said I, ”she seems brighter.”

He nodded. ”_I_ have done that; or rather, love has done it.”

”Be careful, sir!” I cried. ”Be careful of what you are going to tell me! If you have intended or wrought any harm to that girl, I tell you solemnly--”

But he held up a hand. ”Ah, sir, be charitable! I tell you solemnly our love is not of that kind. We who have loved, and lost, and sought each other, and loved again through centuries, have outlearned that rougher pa.s.sion. When she was a princess of Rome and I a Christian Jew led forth to the lions--”

I stood up, grasping the back of my chair and staring. At last I knew.

This young man was stark mad.

He read my conviction at once. ”I think, sir,” he went on, changing his tone, ”the learned antiquary to whom, as you told me, you were sending your tracing of the plaque, has by this time replied with some information about it.”

Relieved at this change of subject, I answered quietly (while considering how best to get him out of the house), ”My friend tells me that a similar design is found in Landulph Church, on the tomb of Theodore Paleologus, who died in 1636.”

”Precisely; of Theodore Paleologus, descendant of the Constantines.”

I began to grasp his insane meaning. ”The race, so far as we know, is extinct,” said I.

”The race of the Constantines,” said he slowly and composedly, ”is never extinct; and while it lasts, the soul of Julia Constantine will come to birth again and know the soul of the Jew, until--”

I waited.

”--Until their love lifts the curse, and the Jew can die.”

”This is mere madness,” said I, my tongue blurting it out at length.