The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim (books to read now txt) 📕

he realised that the volume was upside down, and even when he had righted it, the words he saw had no meaning for him. All the time a queer procession of women’s faces was passing before his eyes⁠—Caroline, with her half-flirtatious, wholly sentimental bon camaraderie; Stephanie, with her voluptuous figure and passion-lit eyes; and then, blotting the others utterly out of his thoughts and memory, Rosamund, with all the sweetness of life shining out of her eager face. He saw her as she had come to him last, with that little unspoken cry upon her tremulous lips, and the haunting appeal in her soft eyes. All other memories faded away. They were as though they had never been. Those dreary years of exile in Africa, the day by day tension of his precarious life, were absolutely forgotten. His heart was calling all the time for an unknown boon. He felt himself immeshed in a world of cobwebs, of weakness more potent than all his boasted strength. Then he suddenly felt that the madness which he had begun to fear had really come. It was the thing for which he longed yet dreaded most⁠—the faint click, the soft withdrawal of the panel, actually pushed back by a pair of white hands. Rosamund herself was there. Her eyes shone at him, mystically, wonderfully. Her lips were parted in a delightful smile, a smile in which there was a spice of girlish mischief. She turned for a moment to close the panel. Then she came towards him with her finger upraised.

“I cannot sleep,” she said softly. “Do you mind my coming for a few minutes?”

“Of course not,” he answered. “Come and sit down.”

She curled up in his easy-chair.

“Just for a moment,” she murmured contentedly. “Give me your hands, dear. But how cold! You must come nearer to the fire yourself.”

He sat on the arm of her chair, and she stroked his head with her hands.

“You were not afraid, then?” she asked, “when you saw me come through the panel?”

“I should never be afraid of any harm that you might bring me, dear,” he assured her.

“Because all that foolishness is really gone,” she continued eagerly. “I know that whatever happened to poor Roger, it was not you who killed him. Even if I heard his ghost calling again tonight, I should have no fear. I can’t think why I ever wanted to hurt you, Everard. I am sure that I always loved you.”

His arm went very softly around her. She responded to his embrace without hesitation. Her cheek rested upon his shoulder, he felt the warmth of her arm through her white, fur-lined dressing-gown.

“Why do you doubt any longer then,” he asked hoarsely, “that I am your husband?”

She sighed.

“Ah, but I know you are not,” she answered. “Is it wrong of me to feel what I do for you, I wonder? You are so like yet so unlike him. He is dead. He died in Africa. Isn’t it strange that I should know it? But I do!”

“But who am I then?” he whispered.

She looked at him pitifully.

“I do not know,” she confessed, “but you are kind to me, and when I feel you are near I am happy. It is because I wanted to see you that I would not stay any longer at the nursing home. That must mean that I am very fond of you.”

“You are not afraid,” he asked, “to be here alone with me?”

She put her other arm around his neck and drew his face down.

“I am not afraid,” she assured him. “I am happy. But, dear, what is the matter? A moment ago you were cold. Now your head is wet, your hands are burning. Are you not happy because I am here?”

Her lips were seeking his. His own touched them for a moment. Then he kissed her on both cheeks. She made a little grimace.

“I am afraid,” she said, “that you are not really fond of me.”

“Can’t you believe,” he asked hoarsely, “that I am really Everard⁠—your husband? Look at me. Can’t you feel that you have loved me before?”

She shook her head a little sadly.

“No, you are not Everard,” she sighed; “but,” she added, her eyes lighting up, “you bring me love and happiness and life, and⁠—”

A few seconds before, Dominey felt from his soul that he would have welcomed an earthquake, a thunderbolt, the crumbling of the floor beneath his feet to have been spared the torture of her sweet importunities. Yet nothing so horrible as this interruption which really came could ever have presented itself before his mind. Half in his arms, with her head thrown back, listening⁠—he, too, horrified, convulsed for a moment even with real physical fear⁠—they heard the silence of the night broken by that one awful cry, the cry of a man’s soul in torment, imprisoned in the jaws of a beast. They listened to it together until its echoes died away. Then what was, perhaps, the most astonishing thing of all, she nodded her head slowly, unperturbed, unterrified.

“You see,” she said, “I must go back. He will not let me stay here. He must think that you are Everard. It is only I who know that you are not.”

She slipped from the chair, kissed him, and, walking quite firmly across the floor, touched the spring and passed through the panel. Even then she turned around and waved a little goodbye to him. There was no sign of fear in her face; only a little dumb disappointment. The panel glided to and shut out the vision of her. Dominey held his head like a man who fears madness.

XIX

Dawn the next morning was heralded by only a thin line of red parting the masses of black-grey snow clouds which still hung low down in the east. The wind had dropped, and there was something ghostly about the still twilight as Dominey issued from the back regions and made his way through the untrodden snow