| Chapter 20
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| That afternoon Edith casually inquired if I had yet revisited
the underground chamber in the garden in which I had been
found.
| 1 | |
| "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."
| 2 | |
| "Ah, yes!" she said, "I can imagine that you have done well to
stay away. I ought to have thought of that."
| 3 | |
| "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."
| 4 | |
| 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.
| 5 | |
| 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!"
| 6 | |
| "On the contrary," I replied, "it does not seem strange; that is
the strangest part of it."
| 7 | |
| "Not strange?" she echoed.
| 8 | |
| "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."
| 9 | |
| "Do you mean your memory is gone?"
| 10 | |
| "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?"
| 11 | |
| "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."
| 12 | |
| "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."
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| "You have told us nothing yet of your friends," said Edith.
"Had you many to mourn you?"
| 14 | |
| "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!"
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| "Ah me!" sighed the Edith by my side. "Think of the
heartache she must have had."
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| 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.
| 17 | |
| "God bless your tender heart," I said. "Would you like to see
her picture?"
| 18 | |
| 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.
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| "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."
| 20 | |
| 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:
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| "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."
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| 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.
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