Repeating Romeo

May Belleville Brown

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Etext from Pulpgen.com

THE limousine panted and throbbed for a moment, then turned in a wide curve and slid away from the little station, its headlights throwing a white path down the hard- frozen country road. Theodora sat upright and tense, conscious of a peculiar atmosphere, which gave her—usually so strong-hearted—an inward quiver. That she should find herself shut in the car for a ten-mile drive with a man whom she had not met, and after dark of a winter's night, was unusual, of course, but almost every unusual circumstance yields to explanation.

This one combined the fact that, although strangers to each other, they were to be fellow guests at that most hospitable place, Warren Lodge, and that their host was already meeting a belated train on another road, sending the chauffeur and footman for these two.

She had caught a glimpse of her companion as he stood on the platform, and had seen that his strong face, with well-cut lips, slightly cleft chin, and dark eyes shaded by his soft-hat brim, was unmistakably that of a gentleman; but the girl's tremor was spreading inwardly, and in amazement at herself she realized that a little more would set her teeth to chattering. It was not fear, but a sense of something impending, which possessed her.

For a moment the pair sat, watching, between the men on the outer seat, the streaks of light from the lamps as they swung out into the road. Then the broad shoulder near her own turned toward her a trifle.

“Pending a regular introduction at the end of our ride, can we not form a probationary acquaintance, to be ratified later?”

His voice was deep and quiet, yet through its self-possession, like a tautened thread, ran a strained note, which showed that he, too, felt the surcharged atmosphere.

“Women first, I suppose?” queried Theodora, conscious that the lightness which she tried to put into her voice shrilled it almost to a shriek. “Very well. I am Theodora Langdon.”

“And I am John Godwin, for the past four years of Buenos Aires, before that of——”

He broke off as Theodora shrank back with a little cry of agitation. Was it his pulse or hers that pounded in the air?

“What is it? What does this mean?” he demanded.

“This?” Her own voice a whisper, as she fenced with him.

“Yes; everything. The very air sings with it.” For a moment even the throbbing of the car seemed stilled by their beating hearts. Then, falteringly, reluctantly, she began:

“John Godwin—now; and that other time so long ago. And before that, Richard Dudley; do you not remember?”

“What is it you wish me to remember?” he replied, with a man's horror of an emotional crisis.

“Why, Hope Winslow, and Margaret Mortimer, and everything else—always!” Then, as he was silent: “Have you no memories of other lives, no dreams of other times and places? Oh!”

For a little space he sought for words; then, at her anguished exclamation, he started to life and speech.

“Memories? Dreams? Yes, my life has been full of them, but all illusive, intangible. What do you know of Margaret Mortimer, of Hope Winslow?”

“I am Theodora Langdon, she began tremulously, as a frightened child repeats its lesson. “I was Hope Winslow, and before that, Margaret Mortimer and earlier still, Elditha the Saxon——”

He caught her trembling hands in one of his and, reaching out, snapped on the light. For a long moment each looked into the other's white, agitated face—his strong, bronzed by many suns; hers a fair setting for her luminous grey eyes. He released the light. And the panting darkness again surrounded them. He felt a tear on his hand.

“Tell me the first that you remember,” she murmured sobbingly.

“It was in a life so remote that, compared to this, it could scarcely be called life,” he began slowly, dropping into a stilted form of speech, as one repeats by rote. “Emperor Claudius had sent an army to conquer Britain, but the people were stubborn. The gods upheld them, and it was on the priests and followers of that faith that we finally turned our arms.

“We drove them from stand to stand across the country until they were at their last refuge—an island off the western coast. There was a multitude on the shores as we landed. A little aloof from them stood a slender, white-robed girl, with terrified eyes. As we swung around to hurl ourselves upon them, my command being at the extreme right, I came face to face with her.

“In a moment the alien land, the dreadful carnage, disappeared. I saw myself back under Italian skies, in the peristyle of my Roman home, with this sweet maiden at my side. For a moment we looked; then I swept toward her with outstretched arms, and we stood breast to breast. The breath of our lips mingled for one brief instant.

“Then the old druid priest descended upon us, his long, white beard wagging with rage, snatched her from my arms, and I saw his sacrificial knife tear a deep gash in her white breast. I forgot everything else, save that I flung myself at him and that something cold clutched my heart. Then I fell, my cheek finding the soft cheek that but a little while before had pressed my own, but that even now was growing cold.”

“I did not belong to them,” sobbed the girl in explanation; “but when the Romans came my people placed me with the Druid priestesses for safety, as the invaders thought but lightly of the Britain women. It was like a terrible dream when the boats landed. I stood cold and shaking until the glint of your armor in the sun struck my face, and then I saw your eyes. “A moment of silence, and then, with an indrawn breath, she asked: “Where do you pick up the next thread?”

“I remember a great castle,” he said slowly. “with the setting sun gilding its towers. As the drawbridge was lowered I rode slowly through the broad entrance. And then——”

“I remember, too,” broke in Theodora, as he hesitated. “I sat at the window overlooking the courtyard, and you rode in, with lance at rest and open visor.”

“Yes, yes!” answered the man. “You were the Lady Elditha, and you held me for many days. When the time came that I must leave, we exchanged vows, and for the riband from your hair I gave you the amulet that hung about my neck. You sat at an upper window, and as I reached the hilltop I turned to wave a last adieu.”

“And my flaxen-haired Sir Ethelred came back to me no more!” The girl's cry was almost a wail. “I watched from the tower window morning and evening for months, and then for years; and at last, pale and wasted, I sought the convent where my aunt was the Abbess Helga, and wore out my days working a marvelous altar-cloth.

“I stood before it only last year, and thought my heart would burst as I remembered all the sorrow I had sewn into that web of lace. I looked at the stolid custodians of the museum, and thought of the tale I might add to their glib story of its antiquity—of how the Lady Elditha, heartbroken far her lover, Sir Ethelred. and persecuted by the wicked Sir Sagramour, had worked her life's history into its tedious stitches.”

“So Sir Sagramour returned to persecute you, did be?” The man spoke indignantly, “It was he, too, when I stopped for a drink, many leagues from the castle, rushed at me, and found a joint in my armor with his lance. He took my horse and left me wounded on the bank, where I suffered purgatory what with the fever and pain, and the thought that I would seem faithless to you, until unconsciousness mercifully blotted out the world. So the wretch returned to persecute you? I'll——”

He choked back his threat, partly roused to a sense of the futility of a threat when the culprit had been dust since the middle ages, yet still but half realizing that he was John Godwin and not Saxon Ethelred.

In speech and thought the pair had dropped out of the twentieth century and were in the dimness of the past. Theodora might have been a slender lass, with plaited hair and embroidered girdle, riding a snow-white palfrey; and he an armored knight on a richly caparisoned charger. For them the twentieth century had not arrived, so there was nothing incongruous in the fact that they were speaking in the language of the modern historical novel.

“Then came our happy childhood at Mortimer Lodge, whose Italian gardens swept down to the river's edge,” said Theodora, stroking the hand which held hers. “We were cousins, you know, and I almost worshiped you, from the day when you took me, a lonely orphan, under your protection.

“There were lovely summer days, with their sweet twilights,” added the girl musingly; “our walks on the terraces; our studies together; our rides; our boats on the river, and our merry bouts at battledore.”

“And there were the days when we were half afraid of each other.” the man fell into Theodora's mood, “and faltered when we met, awed by the happiness which we dimly comprehended. Then came that cursed day when the blackest king of England stopped at the lodge with his train and set his covetous eyes on your beauty. You were the Lady Margaret Mortimer, and your rank earned you the appointment of lady-in-waiting to his ugly queen, Catherine Parr. A sovereign's wish is the subject's law, and you must go, even though we all knew to what dangers—and that parting was like death!”

“But I was true! Oh, I was true!” cried the girl. “Even when I was threatened with death if I did not accept the king's suit, and when condemned to the block, I was true!”

“True! You were truth itself!” exclaimed the man. “Because I knew it. I moved every power known to me to secure your release from Henry's toils. The queen herself helped me, until she like to have lost her own head in the matter, only escaping the block by a compliment that sopped the old man's vanity.

“But all my estates and influence failed, and in despair and rage that such white purity must meet death, I brought sentence upon myself—an easy thing then when Henry executed as heretics all who declared Protestantism, and as traitors all who acknowledged the authority of the Pope.”

“And when I rode on the hurdle to the scaffold. I was brave,” cried she. “My foot did not falter at the steps, nor my knees tremble as I faced the mob. I thought of my lover, Richard Dudley and was strong, because I knew that I died worthy of him!”

“I was dragged on the same hurdle the same day, sweetheart; and I heard men marvel at your bravery. I could have kissed the ax that took your life, and I laughed as I laid my neck on the stains of your sweet blood.”

There fell a silence between them, disturbed only by the purring of the limousine

“There was once more,” whispered the girl. “Yes. When Hope Winslow came to the new country to marry another John Godwin. How beautiful you looked to me that day, as you stood before me in your Puritan garb of gray and white. I had loved you in our prosperous English home, but never as I did when I saw you against the background of our rough life.

“We were married, and I took you to the little clearing where I had built a log hut, and where I was even then raising a better house which should rival any in the new world for luxury. Such were the demands of our pioneer life that not even on our marriage day could I stay with you, but that same afternoon must visit the woodchopper's camp.”

He hesitated a moment, and then went on in a lower voice: “When I came back my wife of a few hours lay across our doorstep with an Indian arrow in her breast and the home that I was building for her was a heap of smoldering ashes.”

The two drew closer together in trembling silence overcome by the weight of centuries, by the sorrows which their reincarnate souls had suffered. Their present life was, after all, but a watch in the night. Then the assurance that fate, after pursuing them mercilessly for two thousand years, had at last brought them together in a land and a time when man and woman may love unafraid, overwhelmed them with its wonderful meaning. With a deep indrawing of breath his arms were about her, and her cheek was nestled fondly against his.

Even as they met there came a shock, a cry. The steering-gear snapped, the body of the limousine hurled forward and sidewise, struck one of the great stone posts which guarded the entrance to the Warren estate, and was ripped open like a ripe melon. To their last conscious second they clung together; then the force of the blow tore them apart.

Pinned under the running-gear, the chauffeur, though uninjured, was helpless. The footman alone of the party was free to hasten to the house, spurred by the knowledge that the two occupants of the car were unconscious in the road. It was but a few minutes until he returned with Mr. Warren himself and several guests and servants.

They found the pair lying close, he on his face, with one arm thrown as though in protection, across her body, and his hand clutching a fold of her gown so convulsively that it was necessary to cut the cloth in order to separate them. Her fingers, thrown loosely out, just touched his hair, and her lips were parted in a smile.

His opening eyes looked uncomprehendingly about him at first. He was on a broad couch in the main hall of Warren Lodge opposite a blazing fireplace. A hush seemed to have settled suddenly where, but a moment before, his whole universe was filled with sound.

Then, leaning forward from a deep chair at his side, Theodora, white and shaken, but with a brave smile, came into his range of vision. His hand went numbly out and clung to hers. His horizon widened to let his host and hostess within his wavering sight.

“How bad is it, old man?” asked Godwin, trying to move his stiffened limbs.

“We don't exactly know until the doctor comes, John, was the answer. “Your arm was twisted under you and seems to be broken, and you must have been bruised up a bit; but I don't think it's very bad.”

“And Theodora—Miss Langdon?”

“Theodora isn't hurt at all,” she reassured him. “Just shaken up a little, but all right now. I am going to wait here until the doctor comes and they move you to your room.”

“Warren, have you another car besides that bunch of watch springs out there in the road?” the injured man asked abruptly. There was no question that he was wide awake now.

“Yes, the runabout is off for the doctor, but Old Faithful is in the garage—not much for style, but great for noise and speed. What can we do for you?”

“Who else of the old crowd is here?” Godwin asked irrelevantly.

“Whittier and Carson and their wives. They are waiting in the library to hear about you.”

“Good!” There was satisfaction in his voice, and he issued orders with an assured air. “Send one or both of them to the nearest court-house to bring back a license for John Godwin and Theodora Langdon to marry. If they have to see us in person, tell them to load up your all-powerful official and his records—by force if necessary— and bring him here.

“Also they are to get a preacher on the same trip. Until they are back I will not be moved anywhere, doctor or no doctor. I shall lie here and hold Theodora's hand until the preacher and the license are in the room and the ceremony has been performed. I am taking no more chances.”

He looked appealingly at the girl. “Sweetheart,” he whispered.

There was a gasp of surprise from his auditors. Then the girl, slipping from her chair, knelt within the circle of his good arm and laid her cheek softly on his breast.

“But—but—I did not know that you and Theodora were even acquainted!” exclaimed Mrs. Warren in amazement.

The face that Theodora raised was pale no longer, but flushing rosily, as she answered with a meaning smile:

“Oh, we have known each other for ages!”