Chapter SEVEN: The Awakening

What could it all mean?

I had suddenly awakened to a new world, one familiar enough to me before my sudden unconsciousness, but in which two whole years had been blotted out. Of my life or actions during that lost period I had absolutely no recollection. My mind was a perfect blank.

As I stood there I tried to recall; but my last remembrance was that horror when the girl Hatten had taken me, fettered and powerless, into that shabby little room in order to render me blind.

Happily I could still see. I gazed around the luxurious bedroom, with its rose-pink carpet, curtains, and handsome toilet fittings. I walked to the long mirror. But when I saw my reflection, I experienced a shock. I was certainly myself, but looked fully ten years older than on that night of my sinister adventure in Bloomsbury when the criminal known as Monkey Dick--so called because of his agility in climbing to upper windows--had attacked me and been accidentally shot in our struggle. I walked to the window and stood upon the balcony. The pale, pearly dawn was rising over Rome. The great piazza, with its palms, its ilexes, and flowers, was deserted, and no sound broke the quiet, save the plashing of the fountain.

Yes, the Eternal City was just the same as I had known it in my youth, when, with the dear old governor, I had spent nearly a year at the Russie, afterwards paying several visits to the capital again. I took a deep breath of the flower-scented air, refreshing after the crowded ballroom I had left; and then, returning into my room, I made a tour of it, and with curiosity examined my possessions. They were not many, scarcely anything I recognized.

On the little finger of my left hand was a fine signet-ring of lapis-lazuli. Upon it was the crest of the Hipwells--a dragon’s head. I removed it for examination, and inside found an inscription in facsimile of the same handwriting as the letter, which read: “From Illona. 3.8.24.”

The third of August, 1924! What could it commemorate? My marriage to my unknown wife? Was that possible?--for the date was within my lost years.

I replaced it upon my finger in utter bewilderment. Then I turned to the contents of my suit-case, which I emptied upon the bed.

Amid the miscellaneous collection which always accumulates in the kit of every man who is a constant traveler, almost the first thing that met my eye was a small leather case. On opening it, I found to my amazement that it was a drug-taker’s outfit! Surely I was not in the habit of taking morphine! I closed the little case and tossed it into the waste-paper basket, hoping that in my newly awakened state I should never handle it again. A case containing tie-pins and cuff-links--several sets with diamonds--was the next I opened. Among the pins was one of two square-cut diamonds with an emerald between, which I knew Joan had given me for my birthday, and a pair of red-enameled links with diamond centres were the ones I had long possessed. But my clothes were all unfamiliar, though they were smart enough, and, from the tabs, had been made by my usual tailor in Conduit Street.

In the pocket in the lid of the suit-case were some letters. These I took out, and, sitting at the writing table, I proceeded to examine them. There were hotel bills from Madrid, Brussels, and Athens, cities which I supposed I had visited in the course of my journeying as a King’s Foreign Service Messenger. That was, no doubt, my position; for, I had already found my _laisser-passer_ which claimed international courtesy, so that my luggage was exempt from Customs examination on all the frontiers of Europe. There was, too, my official badge, the little silver greyhound.

As, one after the other, I opened the letters, I became the more puzzled. Three were in French, couched in cryptic language, and dated from an address in Toulouse, demanding that I should disclose the identity of “the person to whose name it is needless to refer,” and apparently containing veiled threats.

Had the threats any connection with the urgent warning contained in the letter from Illona, my mysterious wife?

I realized that I was powerless to acknowledge receipt of her letter as I had no knowledge of her address in Lausanne, or of the name of her club in London. Yet she demanded an urgent response telegraphed to both addresses. She awaited my decision. On what point?

Suddenly I saw Joan’s familiar handwriting on an envelope addressed to “Lionel Hipwell, Esq., care of His Britannic Majesty’s Embassy, Madrid,” and, taking out the letter, I observed that it had been written from Queen’s Gate on the fifteenth of March.

When I had obtained my key from the _concierge_ I had seen by the big calendar hanging in his bureau that the date was the twenty-third of April. Hence a little more than a month ago I must have been in Madrid, and there received the letter from my adored one.

It was sad and full of reproaches.

“You were in London two whole days after your return from Athens,” she wrote. “Yet you had no time to come and see me, or to ring me up. You seem so taken up with your new friends, and especially with another woman, that you have no time for me nowadays. I saw you with my own eyes dining with her at the Berkeley. I watched you both, but you did not see me. Next morning I called at Sackville Street, but your new man told me you had left again for Madrid half an hour before.

“Is this treatment fair to me, Lionel? I do not upbraid you if you have transferred your love to this Woman from Nowhere and find her more attractive than myself. Probably she is. Anyhow, she appeared to be very amusing and witty. But at least tell me the truth. Do not continue to mislead me into the belief that you are still mine, I beg of you. A woman’s heart may suffer much, but there is a breaking strain--and mine is very near it!

“You wired from Vienna promising to come and see me instantly on your arrival, yet, instead, you prefer the society of your newly-found charmer. I know that while you are absent we cannot meet and discuss the future. If you wish to break our engagement, please tell me so. Do not be afraid. I can stand the shock, for I am now inured to your neglect and indifference. I shall know when you return from Madrid, and if you do not come to see me then I shall regard your silence as breaking our engagement, and that I myself shall be free, with only the bitter memory of one whom I have loved and still devotedly love.

“Your broken-hearted
“Joan.”

Twice I re-read the letter, and divined in it the poignant suffering of a woman’s soul.

What foolish act had I committed? Was I actually wedded to the mysterious Illona, the husband of a woman I could not remember? In my lost existence I had evidently enacted certain follies of which I held no recollection. What were they? One--the inexcusable vice of drug-taking--I had established beyond doubt. How many other ill-advised and irresponsible acts had I performed? Of how many foolish indiscretions had I been culpable?

In my perplexity I stood confused, perhaps half deranged.

Vainly I sought to disentangle the astounding situation, but the more I strove to remember, the darker and more inscrutable the past became. The mystery of it all was incomprehensible. For over two years I had evidently been leading a normal life, with few suspecting that my brain had become unbalanced or that my memory of the past was a blank. I had resolved on mental reservation from the first moment when the shock of my fall in the Embassy dining-room had aroused me to a sense of consciousness of things about me. I dared not make inquiry concerning anything lest my friends should believe me to be mad.

Without doubt the fearful horror of that never-to-be-forgotten night at Camberwell was responsible for the inconceivable state of my mind.

Already some unfortunate facts were only too clear. I had not replied to Joan’s appeal. Hence by my silence our engagement, I supposed, had been broken. But in what circumstances had I married the mysterious Illona, of whose address I was in ignorance and whom I had never seen? I must have married in secret, for Joan had not mentioned it, though she had watched me dining with someone at the Berkeley. Could the woman have been my wife?

What excuse could I make to Joan, tender memories of whom had arisen within me, and whom I loved with all my soul? How could I explain my marriage and my cruel betrayal? The complications were so many that I was frantic with uncertainty and bewilderment.

I renewed the search among my papers. There was a letter dated from Sackville Street signed “Edward Bruce.” Its servile tone showed it to be from my “new man,” as Joan called him. What was he like, I wondered? I pictured a tall, thin, grey-haired servant in morning-coat and grey trousers, very obsequious and discreet. What had become of the faithful Bolland?

Another paper was an account in my own handwriting of some expenses or other amounting to about ninety pounds, while my check-book showed that I had been spending a considerable sum of money, of late, with some furnishing firm in Paris.

Was it possible that I had set up an apartment for my unknown wife, Illona?

I subjected every object I possessed to the most careful scrutiny. Most things puzzled me. Even my clothes I had never set eyes on before. Yet the memoranda I had were written in a firm handwriting, evidently my own.

My brain was, indeed, in a whirl. I felt myself going mad. Therefore, I put on my clothes again, with a light coat over them, and, descending, went out into the silent, deserted street, past the great fountain, the waters of which awakened the echoes, until I found myself at last in that long, straight street, one of the greatest thoroughfares in the world, the famous Corso.

I detected it in the pale-grey light of the morning. The big electric lights were still flaring, and as I passed a silent policeman he politely wished me _buon giorno_.

I wandered past the Hôtel Russie, and higher up the hill till Rome lay at my feet. It was growing lighter every moment--a pearly-grey light tinged with rose-pink. At last, after my wanderings, I stood--as one day in my long-past youth--upon the site of the ancient Torris Maecentis in the beautiful garden of the Palazzo Colonna and looked around on the extensive view of the towers and cupolas, the palaces and monuments, which, on the seven hills, are modern Rome.

Suddenly I recollected that my father had taken me to that spot when I was about eighteen, to see Rome at dawn.

Again I stood there, to wonder and to think. Below me, bathed in the pale-gold of the rising sun, lay the red roofs of the Eternal City, picturesque, mysterious, the capital of a kingdom. It was a city which, from half effacement consequent on war, led by an ex-revolutionary, had risen to grandeur and prosperity, to a powerful place in Europe. I gazed on the wonderful dome of St. Peter’s, and beside it the colossal tower of Sant’ Angelo, with the winding Tiber and its bridges--Rome--the changeless city since the Christian era.

I knew Rome, but not with the superficiality that the tourist knows it. The modern traveler, swept from his home upon a _voyage à forfait_ by a tourist agency, enjoys the best views, experience, and comfort in the six days allotted to him--often four, alas!--and yet to see Rome even superficially it takes a month. Some, of course, care nothing for ancient monuments, the Coliseum, the Forum, the catacombs, or the haunts of Nero or Tiberius. They like, rather, to take their _apéritif_ at the Aregno, their lunch out at Tivoli, and dine and dance a their hotel, for too often sightseeing is a bore, and one does not believe in the throwing of coppers into the fountain.

Rome is Rome, after all, always the most impressionable capital of Europe. And, it will continue to be that, through all the ages.

In my state of mind these thoughts ran through my bewildered brain. Why, I know not.

If I had forsaken Joan Gell, what had occurred? I realized that, with my father’s fierce hatred of her father, it had been impossible to openly declare my love. We had both agreed on this, and our actions, until that fatal night in Camberwell, had been the acme of discretion. Yet I had indisputable evidence that I had married somebody named Illona; and further, my check-books showed heavy payments to form a home for the latter.

The one part, however, which gripped my brain and dulled my senses, was my admiration for the girl Angela. I knew that we had met before, and, further, I was conscious that she held me as clay in her hands. Her beauty was in my eyes diabolical, her laugh that of a Bacchante, and yet she was entirely irresistible. She was drawing me towards her as surely as a magnet draws a needle.

And I had promised to meet her at the State ball, at the Quirinale, that night.

I tried to resist; but, poor fool that I was, it was useless. Perhaps I may be forgiven on account of the unstable condition of my disordered brain. My mind, I think, had awakened, as I stood there leaning over that lichen-covered stone parapet, gazing across the Eternal City, over which was rising the pale rose and gold of morning. But my soul was still asleep. I was as yet as a man half drugged by a long sleep, in which two years of consciousness had been entirely blotted out.

It was seven o’clock in the morning before I returned to my bedroom at the Excelsior. Without taking off my evening-clothes, I sank upon the bed to sleep, tired and worn, with my brain wrapped still in cotton-wool.

At eleven I was awakened by the telephone ringing; and I answered it.

I heard Lord Kingscliffe’s voice.

“Is that you, Hipwell?” he asked. And when I had replied in the affirmative, he said: “I thought I’d let you know that you’ll have to leave for London to-morrow night. Sorry, Lionel. But you know in the service we are not our own masters.”

“Quite all right,” I replied, wondering why his voice seemed so sympathetic and apologetic.

“I shall see you at the Quirinale to-night. _Addio_,” His Excellency said.

And I hung up the receiver.

So my visit to Rome was to be cut short. Perhaps, after all, it was better so.