"And that is your creed of life and death?"

"We can only argue from the known to the unknown," was her reply.

"And do you not long for something more?"

"Long!" And there was pa.s.sion in her voice.

"Then, to you, religion, immortality, have no interest?"

"Yes, interest," was her reply, "but, like everything else, it is because of my ignorance. I know I am very ignorant, Mr. Erskine, and I dare say you will laugh at me for talking in the way I do; but, so far as I have read of the origins of religions, they are simply the result of a fear of the unknown. People are afraid to die, and they have evolved a sort of hope that there is a life other than this. I know it is a cheerless creed, but don't facts bear out what I have said? In different parts of the world are different religions, and each and all of them are characteristic of the people who believe in them. Wasn't Matthew Arnold right when he said that the Greeks manufactured a G.o.d with cla.s.sical features and golden hair, while the negroes created a G.o.d with black skin, thick lips, and woolly hair?"

"Do you go far enough back, even then?" I asked. "You are simply dealing with the shape of the G.o.d. What is the origin of the idea?"

"I suppose man invented it," was her reply.

"Yes, but how? After all, knowledge is built upon other knowledge.

Imagination is the play of the mind around ascertained facts. 'No man hath seen G.o.d at any time.' How, then, have people come to believe in Him, except through some deeper and more wonderful faculty, which conveyed it to the mind? For the mind, after all, is only the vehicle, and not the creator, of thought."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"You get beyond me there, Mr. Erskine. When you dabble in metaphysics I am lost. Still, is it not a fact that the more intellectual the race the less religious it becomes? Take France, for example. Paris is the great clearing-house of ideas, and yet the French are an unbelieving people."

"Is that altogether true?" was my reply, for I was led to take up an att.i.tude of the soundness of which I was far from being convinced. "Is not France literally sick and tired of the atheism which surged over the nation at the time of the Revolution? France no longer glories in hard unbelief, and, as far as I know, the French people are simply longing for faith, and, for that matter, are going back to faith. Not, perhaps, the faith which the Revolution destroyed, but to something deeper, diviner."

She seemed thoughtful, and for some time neither of us spoke. Then she burst out laughing merrily.

"Don't things seem reversed?" she said. "Here are you, a scholar of Oxford, and a clever lawyer, upholding tradition, imagination, intuition, superst.i.tion, while I, an ignorant girl, am discarding it all."

"Perhaps," I replied, "that is because life is long to you, short to me.

When one comes to what seems the end of things, one looks at life differently. There," I went on, for at that moment we had pa.s.sed a lad with his arm round a girl's waist, "that boy lives in heaven. He is with the girl he loves. Suppose you tried to convince that boy and girl there was no such thing as romance, would they believe you?"

"Perhaps not," she replied; "but I could take you down the village yonder, and show you men and women who, twenty years ago, were just as romantic as those two cooing doves; and to-day the men loaf round the village lanes, smoking, or, perhaps, are in the public-house drinking; while the women are slatternly, discontented, standing at the wash-tub, or scrubbing out cottages. Where now is the romance, or, for that matter, the love?"

"Then you don't believe in love either?"

She was silent, and I watched her face closely, and again I was struck by her appearance. Yes, no doubt, Isabella Lethbridge was more than ordinarily handsome. Her features, without being beautiful, were fine.

The flash of her eyes betokened intelligence beyond the ordinary. At that moment, too, there was a look in them which I had not seen before--a kind of longing, a sense of unsatisfaction, something wistful.

"Love?" she repeated. "No, I don't think I believe in it."

"Surely," I said, "that is going a little bit too far."

"Yes, perhaps it is," was her answer. "There is love--the love of a mother for her child. You see it everywhere. A lion will fight for her whelps, a hen will protect her chickens. But I suppose you were meaning the love which man has for a woman, and woman for man?"

"Yes," I replied, "I was. I was thinking of that lover and his la.s.s whom we have just pa.s.sed."

"I do not know," she replied. "All I know is that I never felt it, and yet I confess to being twenty-four. It is an awful age, isn't it? Fancy a girl of twenty-four never having been in love! Yet, facts are facts. I do not deny that there is such a thing as affinity; but love, as I understand it, is, or ought to be, something spiritual, something divine, something which outlasts youth and all that youth means; something which defies the ravages of time, that laughs at impossibilities. No. I do not believe there is such a thing."

"Then what is the use of living?" I asked.

"I hardly know. We have a kind of clinging to life, at least the great majority of us have, although I suppose in the more highly cultured States suicides are becoming more common. We shudder at what we call death, and so we seek to live. If, like the old Greeks, we surrounded death with beautiful thoughts----"

"Ah yes," I interrupted; "but then we get into the realms of religion.

The Greeks believed in an immortal part, and love to them was eternal."

"True," she replied. "But where is the old Greek mythology now? It has become a thing of the past. Mr. Erskine, will you forgive me for talking all this nonsense, for it is nonsense? I know I am floundering in a deep sea and saying foolish things. Besides, I must leave you. There is a house here where I must call."

She held out her hand as she spoke, and looked at me. I felt as though she were trying to fascinate me. For a second our eyes met, and I felt her hand quiver in mine. At that moment something was born in my mind and heart which I had never experienced before. I confess it here, because probably no one will read these lines but myself. I felt towards Isabella Lethbridge as I had never felt towards any woman before. Even in those days when I had flirted and danced and laughed with girls of my own age, and with whom I fancied myself in love, I had never felt towards a woman as I felt towards her.

"Good-day, Miss Lethbridge," I said, as I walked away.

"I hope you will come up to Trecarrel again soon," she said. "Please don't wait for a formal invitation; we shall always be glad to see you.

At least, _I_ shall," and she gave me a bewildering smile.

I walked some little distance down the road, then turned and watched her till she was out of sight. I tried to a.n.a.lyze the new feelings which had come into my life.

"Why am I so interested in her?" I asked. "What is this which has come to me so suddenly? Whatever it is, it is not love." And I knew I spoke the truth, even as I know it now. Yet she fascinated me. I reflected that her talk had been pedantic, the product of an ill-balanced mind, and, while she was clever, she was superficial. Yet she attracted me in a way I could not understand. She had moved me as no other woman had moved me, but I knew, as I know now, that I was not in love with her.

I walked slowly along. We had come to the end of June, and the birds were singing gaily. Away in the distance I could see the sheen of the waves in the sunlight. The great line of cliffs stood out boldly; the world was very fair. A weight seemed to have rolled from my shoulders.

Oh, it was good to live--good to bask in the sunlight on that summer day! I laughed aloud. No romance! no mystery! no religion! no love! The girl had almost made me believe in what she had said, although at the back of my mind I felt it was all wrong. I looked at my watch, and knew that I must be returning, or Simpson would be anxious about me. He had become quite paternal in his care.

I descended the steep hill towards the little copse at the back of my house. Once or twice I stopped and listened to the waves as they rolled on the hard, yellow beach, while the sea-gulls hovered over the great beetling cliffs.

"I won't die!" I cried. "I simply won't!"

And yet I knew at the time that death had taken possession of me, was even then gnawing away at the centre of my life.

I entered the little copse and drew near to the house. I had gone, perhaps, twenty yards, when I stopped. Peering at me through the leaves of the bushes, which grew thick on the side of the cliff, was a pair of gleaming eyes. They seemed to me to be the eyes of a madman, a maniac.

Perhaps my imagination was excited, and my mind unbalanced, but I thought I saw revenge, hatred, murder. The eyes were large and staring.

I could see no face, no form. I felt no fear, only a sense of wonder and a desire to know. I took a step in the direction of those wild, maniacal orbs, and I heard a cry--hoa.r.s.e, agonized. I took another step forward and looked again, and saw nothing, neither did I hear another sound.

Feverishly I made my way towards the spot, but there was nothing there.

No footmarks could I discover, no signs of any one having been there. I am perfectly certain I saw what I have described, as sure as that I am sitting in my little room at this moment, but although I searched everywhere I could discover nothing.

I returned to my house and began to dress for dinner; but all the while I was haunted by those wild, staring eyes.

VIII

MYSTERY

"Simpson," I said, after dinner, "do you believe in ghosts?"

"Yes, sir, I think so, sir."

"What are your views about them?"