第76章

LESLIE RETURNS

A fortnight later Leslie Moore came home alone to the old house where she had spent so many bitter years. In the June twilight she went over the fields to Anne's, and appeared with ghost-like suddenness in the scented garden.

"Leslie!" cried Anne in amazement. "Where have you sprung from? We never knew you were coming. Why didn't you write? We would have met you.""I couldn't write somehow, Anne. It seemed so futile to try to say anything with pen and ink. And I wanted to get back quietly and unobserved."Anne put her arms about Leslie and kissed her. Leslie returned the kiss warmly. She looked pale and tired, and she gave a little sigh as she dropped down on the grasses beside a great bed of daffodils that were gleaming through the pale, silvery twilight like golden stars.

"And you have come home alone, Leslie?"

"Yes. George Moore's sister came to Montreal and took him home with her. Poor fellow, he was sorry to part with me--though I was a stranger to him when his memory first came back. He clung to me in those first hard days when he was trying to realise that Dick's death was not the thing of yesterday that it seemed to him.

It was all very hard for him. I helped him all Icould. When his sister came it was easier for him, because it seemed to him only the other day that he had seen her last. Fortunately she had not changed much, and that helped him, too.""It is all so strange and wonderful, Leslie. I think we none of us realise it yet.""I cannot. When I went into the house over there an hour ago, I felt that it MUST be a dream--that Dick must be there, with his childish smile, as he had been for so long. Anne, I seem stunned yet. I'm not glad or sorry--or ANYTHING. I feel as if something had been torn suddenly out of my life and left a terrible hole.

I feel as if I couldn't be _I_--as if I must have changed into somebody else and couldn't get used to it.

It gives me a horrible lonely, dazed, helpless feeling.

It's good to see you again--it seems as if you were a sort of anchor for my drifting soul. Oh, Anne, Idread it all--the gossip and wonderment and questioning. When I think of that, I wish that I need not have come home at all. Dr. Dave was at the station when I came off the train--he brought me home. Poor old man, he feels very badly because he told me years ago that nothing could be done for Dick. `I honestly thought so, Leslie,' he said to me today. `But Ishould have told you not to depend on my opinion--Ishould have told you to go to a specialist. If I had, you would have been saved many bitter years, and poor George Moore many wasted ones. I blame myself very much, Leslie.' I told him not to do that--he had done what he thought right. He has always been so kind to me--I couldn't bear to see him worrying over it.""And Dick--George, I mean? Is his memory fully restored?""Practically. Of course, there are a great many details he can't recall yet--but he remembers more and more every day. He went out for a walk on the evening after Dick was buried. He had Dick's money and watch on him; he meant to bring them home to me, along with my letter. He admits he went to a place where the sailors resorted--and he remembers drinking--and nothing else. Anne, I shall never forget the moment he remembered his own name. I saw him looking at me with an intelligent but puzzled expression. I said, `Do you know me, Dick?' He answered, `I never saw you before.

Who are you? And my name is not Dick. I am George Moore, and Dick died of yellow fever yesterday! Where am I? What has happened to me?' I--I fainted, Anne.

And ever since I have felt as if I were in a dream.""You will soon adjust yourself to this new state of things, Leslie. And you are young--life is before you--you will have many beautiful years yet.""Perhaps I shall be able to look at it in that way after a while, Anne. Just now I feel too tired and indifferent to think about the future. I'm--I'm--Anne, I'm lonely. I miss Dick. Isn't it all very strange?