CHAPTER XX.

LINKED LIVES.

Linton Herrick, losing not a day nor an hour in London, had carried the great news to Zenobia. Much that wired and wireless messages could not convey, he, as one of the inner circle, was in a position to explain. But the triumph of the Friends of the Phoenix and the restoration of Wilson Renshaw did not exhaust the subject of their conversation. Linton was charged with an impressive and confidential message from Renshaw himself. The restored Minister entreated the daughter of the dead President to resort to no act of public reparation; he besought her to let the dead past hold its dead. The story of her father's crime need never be given in its fulness to a censorious world. Against his enemy the rescued rival nourished no resentful bitterness. His feeling, rather, was one of sorrow that the temptations of power and ambition and the weakness of human nature had wrought the moral ruin of a man in whom he had discerned many admirable and striking qualities.

Zenobia Jardine was greatly moved. She recognised the nobility of Renshaw's attitude, but she still had misgivings as to her own path of duty. The messages reached her at a time when she was torn with conflicting feelings, bewildered by new sensations, impressed with new aspects of human life, agitated by complex thoughts and emotions to which hitherto she had been a stranger. It was a crisis in her life. Subtle but masterful influences were at work upon her inmost being. Scales had failed, as it were, from her eyes, and her soul looked out upon possibilities of which in her unenlightened days she had never even dreamed. Love, duty, religion--each and all had acquired for her a deep and wonderful significance, and in her heart she feared to be presented with the problem of choice. Could these things be reconciled in the light of the revelation that had come to her? Would they be her armour and her strength wherewith she could go forward to some great predestined goal; or, if she chose the one, must she of necessity eschew the rest? One thing she knew for certain when she again held Linton's hand and looked into his face. This was the man she loved and always would love--stranger still, it seemed as if he were a man she always _had_ loved. But she knew now of his daring, his fidelity, his narrow escape from death, and realised his clear, though unspoken devotion to herself.

And he, for his part, had known no peace until he found himself at her side again. Renshaw had placed at his disposal the _Albatross_, one of the swiftest of the Government air-ships, and another engineer had succeeded to the place of poor Wilton. Westwards he had rushed on the wings of the _Albatross_, leaving the lights of London, its crowded streets, its shouting and excited multitudes, far behind.

And now, side by side, he and Zenobia and Peter, her dog, engaged in dog-like explorations on the route, went slowly across the quaint bridge with its low-roofed shops that spans the Avon, and passed through the streets of ancient Bath.

"What would you do? What is your advice?" the girl asked, turning to him suddenly. They had been silent for some time, but each knew well what occupied the other's thoughts. "Respect Renshaw's wishes," was Linton's firm reply.

"But the will--the confession is in the will," said Zenobia.

"The will need not be proved. With or without it, what your father left belongs to you, his sole next of kin."

She looked down thoughtfully. "It is your advice?" she asked, quietly.

"Yes, mine as well as his."

"Then I shall follow it."

When next they spoke it was upon another subject.

"This place strikes me oddly," said Linton, looking round as they went up the slopes of Victoria Park. "I have never been here before, and yet I have a curious feeling...."

She turned quickly. "How strange! I know what you are going to say."

"I believe you have the same feeling--as if we had been here before, you and I together, as if all that surrounds us were familiar."

"Is this the first time you have felt like this?" she asked eagerly.

"No, but I have never felt quite what I am feeling now." Again, with puzzled brow, he glanced round.

"Once," she went on, hesitatingly, "the first time we went up in the _Bladud_, you remember that night ...?"

"Yes, yes, I felt it then," cried Linton, pausing.

"And the other night," Zenobia continued, seriously, "when I looked from a window down on the lights of Bath I had a strange sensation as if it were a scene which I had always known, and after that I had a dream in which that feeling was confirmed."

"Curious," said Linton.

"Do you believe in the theory of pre-existence?" she asked, abruptly, "do you think it possible that in some former state of being you and I or others can have met before?"

"It may be so," he answered gravely. "Wise men have held the theory. Who can limit the life of the ego--fix its beginning, or appoint its end?"

"If the breath of God is in us," said Zenobia solemnly, "all things must be possible. We, too, must be eternal. We may sleep and we may wake, but all the time we live. The soul does not belong to time, but to Eternity, and Eternity is an everlasting Now."

"Yes," said Linton, "why should not the spirit have an all-pervading presence:--

"Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man!"

While they were speaking thus gravely, they entered the Botanical Garden on the slope of the hill. Opposite the bench on which they sat down they noticed a sundial of curious construction. On the face of the dial, fixed at an angle, was an iron cross. They looked at the sacred emblem, at first vaguely, and then with growing attention. Below it was an inscription.

"What mysteries, what mysteries enfold us," murmured Zenobia. She turned to him with a smile and a sigh that were pathetic. "What, I wonder, is the true philosophy of life?" she whispered.

Linton sat silent for a moment. Then he leaned forward, and as he did so one hand closed upon and held her own. "I think we have it here in this inscription:--

"The hours are found around the Cross, and while 'tis fine, The time is measured by a moving line, But if the sky be clouded, mark the loss Of hours not ruled by shadows from the Cross."

"Ah! The Cross! The Cross!" sighed Zenobia.

Linton repeated the word in a pondering and half-puzzled tone, raising his hat with instinctive reverence. "I feel more than ever that this place is not new to me," he added, rising and looking round with wondering eyes.

"And I, too, have the same persistent sense of memory," half whispered Zenobia. "There is a tradition that perhaps explains my dream--do you know it?--that in the days of the Romans there was a heathen temple here, where we are sitting, and that an early convert to Christianity, a sculptor of great skill, erected a cross upon its threshold."

"And the sculptor was put to death! I have read it, or did I dream it?" He turned and looked down upon the city, as if seeking some clue or inspiration. "There was a priestess," he said slowly, "a priestess...."

Zenobia had risen to her feet. "A priestess of the Temple of Sul. Yes! she, too, was put to death. They buried her alive." She pressed the backs of her hands to her brow; her gaze assumed an almost tragic intensity. "She had listened to the sculptor. They found her kneeling by the Cross, and in the Temple of Sul the sacred fire had gone out...."

She paused. Each looked into the other's eyes. A flash of inspiration came to both of them.

"Your face," she said, "is the face of the sculptor in my dream."

* * * * *

Heavy clouds had been rapidly gathering overhead; the atmosphere had grown strangely oppressive. So full had they been of other thoughts that no reference had been made to the developments of natural phenomena which had lately caused so much dismay in the locality, and, indeed, throughout the country. It was known that the signs of disturbance already chronicled had gradually diminished, and for some days the volume of water rising from the thermal spring had been little more than normal. The emission of smoke or vapour arising from the fissure on Lansdown had entirely ceased. But at this moment the sombre clouds that had gathered over the city seemed to be heavily charged with electricity, and there was a peculiarity in the sultry atmosphere which suggested some threatening association with the abnormal signs that lately had caused so much alarm.

The day, throughout, had been exceptionally hot for the time of year, but it seemed to Linton as if the mercury must now be mounting up by leaps and bounds. An unnatural, brooding stillness had spread over the whole town. The few people who were walking in the Park did so languidly and in silence; a heavy weight pressed irresistibly upon the spirit. All things, animate and inanimate, seemed to be subsiding, drooping, under the pressure of some gloomy and mysterious influence.

Peter, returning from sniffing explorations in the undergrowth of the gardens, came whining to his mistress's feet, as if seeking for the consolation of close companionship. Zenobia sat down and patted the dog affectionately.

"Peter is frightened," she said, "there must be a storm coming."

Linton looked around, but answered nothing. But he realised that the signs within and without were such as people who lived in tropical countries had more than once described to him.

Peter sniffed the air, and then gave voice to a long and piteous howl.

"We had better be going," said Linton, while Zenobia, still stooping, tried to soothe the dog.

When she looked up there was an expression on Linton's face that puzzled her. She rose quickly and laid her hand upon his arm, following his gaze upward and around.

"What does it mean?" she asked, breathlessly.

"If this were not England," he replied, with hesitation, "I should think it meant...."

As he spoke a low but formidable rumble became suddenly audible, coming not from above, but from below. Fraught with indescribable awe and menace, it produced an instantaneously petrifying effect. They stood rigid, holding to each other, waiting, listening for the coming climax. It came as in a flash. The rumble grew into a thunderous roar. A blue flame suddenly shot into the heavy clouds above them, and beneath their feet the solid earth rocked and swayed, again and yet again, as if with the rolling motion of a mighty wave.