‘After life’s fitful fever, she sleeps well!’
The few days following the one on which the spiritualistic séance was held were passed by Bradley in a sort of dream. The more he thought of what he had heard and seen, the more puzzled he became. At times he seemed half inclined to believe in supernatural collaboration, then he flouted his belief and laughed contemptuously at himself. Of course it was all imposture, and he had been a dupe.
Then he thought of Eustasia, and the interest which she had at first aroused in him rapidly changed to indignation and contempt.
Very soon these people ceased to occupy his thoughts at all; so self-absorbed was he, indeed, in his own trouble that he forgot them as completely as if they had never been. After all they were but shadows which had flitted across his path and faded. Had he been left to himself he would assuredly never have summoned them up again.
But he was evidently too valuable a convert to be let go in that way. One morning he received the following note, written on delicate paper in the most fairylike of fragile hands:
‘My dear Mr. Bradley,—We hold a séance to-morrow night at six, and hope you’ll come; at least, I do! Salem don’t particularly want you, since you broke the conditions, and he regards you as a disturbing influence. I know better: the spirits like you, and I feel that with you I could do great things; so I hope you’ll be here.
‘Eustasia Mapleleafe.’
Bradley read the letter through twice, then he gazed at it for a time in trembling hesitation. Should he go? Why not? Suppose the people were humbugs, were they worse than dozens of others he had met? and they had at least the merit of bringing back to him the presence of the one being who was all in all to him. His hesitation lasted only for a moment—the repulsion came. He threw the letter aside.
À few days later a much more significant incident occurred. As Bradley was leaving his house one morning he came face to face with a veiled woman who stood before his door. He was about to pass: the lady laid a retaining hand upon his arm and raised her veil.
It was Eustasia.
‘Guess you’re surprised to see me,’ she said, noticing his start; ‘suppose I may come in, though, now I’m here?’
Bradley pushed open the door, and led the way to his study. Eustasia followed him; having reached the room, she sat down and eyed him wistfully.
‘Did you get my letter?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t answer it?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
Bradley hesitated.
‘Do you want me to tell you?’ he said.
‘Why, certainly—else why do I ask you? but I see you don’t wish to tell me. Why?’
‘Because I dislike giving unnecessary pain.’
‘Ah! in other words you believe me to be a humbug, but you haven’t the cruelty to say so. Well, that don’t trouble me. Prove me to be one, and you may call me one, but give me a fair trial first.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Come to some more of our séances, will you? do say you’ll come!’
She laid her hand gently upon his arm, and fixed her eyes almost entreatingly upon him. He stared at her like one fascinated, then shrank before her glance.
‘Why do you wish me to come?’ he said.
‘You know my thoughts and feelings on this subject. You and I are cast in different moulds; we must go different ways.’
She smiled sadly.
‘The spirits will it otherwise,’ she said; while under her breath she added, ‘and so do I.’
But he was in no mood to yield that day. As soon as Eustasia saw this she rose to go. When her thin hand lay in his, she said softly:
‘Mr. Bradley, if ever you are in trouble come to us; you will find it is not all humbug then!’
Eustasia returned home full of hope. ‘He will come,’ she said; ‘yes, he will assuredly come.’ But days passed, and he neither came nor sent; at last, growing impatient, she called again at his house; then she learned that he had left London.
‘He has flown from me,’ she thought; ‘he feels my influence, and fears it.’
But in this Eustasia was quite wrong. He was flying not from her but from himself. The wretched life of self-reproach and misery which he was compelled to lead was crushing him down so utterly that unless he made some effort he would sink and sicken. Die? Well, after all, that would not have been so hard; but the thought of leaving Alma was more than he could bear. He must live for the sake of the days which might yet be in store for them both.
He needed change, however, and he sought it for a few days on foreign soil. He went over one morning to Boulogne, took rooms in the Hôtel de Paris, and became one of the swarm of tourists which was there filling the place.
The bathing season was then at its height, and people were all too busy to notice him; he walked about like one in a dream, watching the pleasure-seekers, but pondering for ever on the old theme.
After all it was well for him that he had left England, he thought—the busy garrulous life of this place came as a relief after the dreary monotony of town. In the evenings he strolled out to the concerts or open-air dances, and observed the fisher girls, with their lovers moving about in the gaslight; while in the mornings he strolled about the sand watching with listless amusement the bathers who crowded down to the water’s edge like bees in swarming time.
One morning, feeling more sick at heart than usual, he issued from the hotel and bent his steps towards the strand. On that day the scene was unusually animated. Flocks of fantastically-dressed children amused themselves by making houses in the sand, while their bonnes watched over them, and their mammas, clad in equally fantastic costumes, besieged the bathing-machines. Bradley walked for a time on the sands watching the variegated crowd; it was amusing and distracting, and he was about to look around for a quiet spot in which he could spend an hour or so, when he was suddenly startled by an apparition.
A party of three were making their way towards the bathing-machines, and were even then within a few yards of him. One was a child dressed in a showy costume of serge, with long curls falling upon his shoulders; on one side of him was a French bonne, on the other a lady extravagantly attired in the most gorgeous of sea-side costumes. Her cheeks and lips were painted a bright red, but her skin was white as alabaster. She was laughing heartily at something which the little boy had said, when suddenly her eyes fell upon Bradley, who stood now within two yards of her.
It was his wife.
She did not pause nor shrink, but she ceased laughing, and a peculiar look of thinly veiled contempt passed over her face as she walked on.
‘Maman,’ said the child in French, ‘who is that man, and why did he stare so at you?’
The lady shrugged her shoulders, and laughed again.
‘He stared because he had nothing better to look at, I suppose, chéri; but come, I shall miss my bath; you had best stay here with Augustine, and make sand-hills till I rejoin you. Au revoir, Bébé.’
She left the child with the nurse, hastened on and entered one of the bathing-machines, which was immediately drawn down into the sea.
Bradley still stood where she had left him, and his eyes remained fixed upon the machine which held the woman whose very presence poisoned the air he breathed. All his old feelings of repulsion returned tenfold; the very sight of the woman seemed to degrade and drag him down.
As he stood there the door of the machine opened, and she came forth again. This time she was the wonder of all. Her shapely limbs were partly naked, and her body was covered with a quaintly cut bathing-dress of red. She called out some instructions to her nurse; then she walked down and entered the sea.
Bradley turned and walked away. He passed up the strand and sat down listlessly on one of the seats on the terrace facing the water. He took out Alma’s last letter, and read it through, and the bitterness of his soul increased tenfold.
When would his misery end? he thought. Why did not death come and claim his own, and leave him free? Wherever he went his existence was poisoned by this miserable woman.
‘So it must ever be,’ he said bitterly. ‘I must leave this place, for the very sight of her almost drives me mad.’
He rose and was about to move away, when he became conscious, for the first time, that something unusual was taking place. He heard sounds of crying and moaning, and everybody seemed to be rushing excitedly towards the sand. What it was all about Bradley could not understand, for he could see nothing. He stood and watched; every moment the cries grew louder, and the crowd upon the sands increased. He seized upon a passing Frenchman, and asked what the commotion meant.
‘Ras de marée, monsieur!’ rapidly explained the man as he rushed onward.
Thoroughly mystified now, Bradley resolved to discover by personal inspection what it all meant. Leaving the terrace he leapt upon the shore, and gained the waiting crowd upon the sand. To get an explanation from anyone here seemed to be impossible, for every individual member of the crowd seemed to have gone crazy. The women threw up their bands and moaned, the children screamed, while the men rushed half wildly about the sands.
Bradley touched the arm of a passing Englishman.
‘What is all this panic about?’ he said.
‘The ras de marée!’ r Yes, but what is the ras de marée?’
‘Don’t you know? It is a sudden rising of the tide; it comes only once in three years. It has surprised the bathers, many of whom are drowning. See, several machines have gone to pieces, and the others are floating like driftwood! Yonder are two boats out picking up the people, but if the waves continue to rise like this they will never save them all. One woman from that boat has fainted; no, good heavens, she is dead.’
The scene now became one of intense excitement. The water, rising higher and higher, was breaking now into waves of foam; most of the machines were dashed about like corks upon the ocean, their frightened occupants giving forth the most fearful shrieks and cries. Suddenly there was a cry for the lifeboat; immediately after it dashed down the sand, drawn by two horses, and was launched out upon the sea; while Bradley and others occupied themselves in attending to those who were laid fainting upon the shore.
But the boats, rapidly as they went to work, proved insufficient to save the mass of frightened humanity still struggling with the waves. The screams and cries became heartrending as one after another sank to rise no more. Suddenly there was another rush.
‘Leave the women to attend to the rescued,’ cried several voices. ‘Let the men swim out to the rescue of those who are exhausted in the sea.’
There was a rush to the water; among the first was Bradley, who, throwing off his coat, plunged boldly into the water. Many of those who followed him were soon overcome by the force of the waves and driven back to shore; but Bradley was a powerful swimmer, and went on.
He made straight for a figure which, seemingly overlooked by everyone else, was drifting rapidly out to sea. On coming nearer he saw, by the long black hair, which floated around her on the water, that the figure was that of a woman. How she supported herself Bradley could not see; she was neither swimming nor floating; her back was towards him, and she might have fainted, for she made no sound.
On coming nearer he saw that she was supporting herself by means of a plank, part of the debris which had drifted from the broken machines. By this time he was quite near to her;—she turned her face towards him, and he almost cried out in pain.
He recognised his wife!
Yes, there she was, helpless and almost fainting—her eyes were heavy, her lips blue; and he seemed to be looking straight into the face of death. Bradley paused, and the two gazed into each other’s eyes. He saw that her strength was going, but he made no attempt to put out a hand to save her. He thought of the past, of the curse this woman had been to him; and he knew that by merely doing nothing she would be taken from him.
Should he let her die? Why not? If he had not swum out she most assuredly would have sunk and been heard of no more. Again he looked at her and she looked at him: her eyes were almost closed now: having once looked into his face she seemed to have resigned all hopes of rescue.
No, he could not save her—the temptation was too great. He turned and swam in the direction of another figure which was floating helplessly upon the waves. He had only taken three strokes when a violent revulsion of feeling came; with a terrible cry he turned again to the spot where he had left the fainting and drowning woman. But she was not there—the plank was floating upon the water—that was all.
Bradley dived, and reappeared holding the woman in his arms. Then he struck out with her to the shore.
It was a matter of some difficulty to get there, for she lay like lead in his hold. Having reached the shore, he carried her up the beach, and placed her upon the sand.
Then he looked to see if she was conscious.
Yes, she still breathed;—he gave her some brandy, and did all in his power to restore her to life. After a while she opened her eyes, and looked into Bradley’s face.
‘Ah, it is you! she murmured faintly, then, with a long-drawn sigh, she sank back, dead!
Still dripping from his encounter with the sea, his face as white as the dead face before him, Bradley stood like one turned to stone. Suddenly he was aroused by a heartrending shriek. The little boy whom he had seen with the dead woman broke from the bauds of his nurse, and sobbing violently threw himself upon the dead body.
‘Maman! maman!’ he moaned.
The helpless cries of the child forced upon Bradley the necessity for immediate action. Having learned from the nurse the address of the house where ‘Mrs. Montmorency’ was staying, he had the body put upon a stretcher and conveyed there. He himself walked beside it, and the child followed, screaming and crying, in his nurse’s arms.
Having reached the house, the body was taken into a room to be properly dressed, while Bradley tried every means in his power to console the child! After a while he was told that all was done, and he went into the chamber of death.
Dead woman, shrouded white as snow
While Death the shade broods darkly nigh,
Place thy cold hand in mine, and so—
‘Good-bye.’
No prayer or blessing hum of breath
Came from thy lips as thou didst die;
I loath’d thee living, but in death—
‘Good-bye!’
So close together after all,
After long strife, stand thou and I,
I bless thee, while I faintly call—
‘Good-bye!’
Good-bye the past and all its pain,
Kissing thy poor dead hand, I cry—
Again, again, and yet again—
‘Good-bye!’—The Exile: a Poem.
It would have been difficult to analyse accurately the emotions which filled the bosom of Ambrose Bradley, as he stood and looked upon the dead face of the woman who, according to the law of the land and the sacrament of the Church, had justly claimed to be his wife. He could not conceal from himself that the knowledge of her death brought relief to him and even joy; but mingled with that relief were other feelings less reassuring—pity, remorse even, and a strange sense of humiliation.
He had never really loved the woman, and her conduct, previous to their long separation, had been such as to kill all sympathy in the heart of a less sensitive man, while what might be termed her unexpected resurrection had roused in him a bitterness and a loathing beyond expression. Yet now that the last word was said, the last atonement made, now that he beheld the eyes that would never open again, and the lips that would never again utter speech or sound, his soul was stirred to infinite compassion.
After all, he thought, the blame had not been hers that they had been so ill-suited to each other, and afterwards, when they met in after years, she had not wilfully sought to destroy his peace. It had all been a cruel fatality, from the first: another proof of the pitiless laws which govern human nature, and make men and women suffer as sorely for errors of ignorance and inexperience as for crimes of knowledge.
He knelt by the bedside, and taking her cold hand kissed it solemnly. Peace was between them, he thought, then and for ever. She too, with all her faults and all her follies, had been a fellow-pilgrim by his side towards the great bourne whence no pilgrim returns, and she had reached it first. He remembered now, not the woman who had flaunted her shamelessness before his eyes, but the pretty girl, almost a child, whom he had first known and fancied that he loved. In the intensity of his compassion and self-reproach he even exaggerated the tenderness he had once felt for her; the ignoble episode of their first intercourse catching a sad brightness reflected from the heavens of death. And in this mood, penitent and pitying, he prayed that God might forgive them both.
When he descended from the room, his eyes were red with tears. He found the little boy sobbing wildly in the room below, attended by the kindly Frenchwoman who kept the house. He tried to soothe him, but found it impossible, his grief being most painful to witness, and violent in the extreme.
‘Ah, monsieur, it is indeed a calamity!’ cried the woman. ‘Madame was so good a mother, devoted to her child. But God is good—the little one has a father still!’
Bradley understood the meaning of her words, but did not attempt to undeceive her. His heart was welling over with tenderness towards the pretty orphan, and he was thinking too of his own harsh judgments on the dead, who, it was clear, had possessed many redeeming virtues, not the least of them being her attachment to her boy.
‘You are right, madame,’ he replied, sadly, ‘and the little one shall not lack fatherly love and care. Will you come with me for a few moments? I wish to speak to you alone.’
He placed his hand tenderly on the child’s head, and again tried to soothe him, but he shrank away with petulant screams and cries. Walking to the front entrance he waited till he was joined there by the landlady, and they stood talking in the open air.
‘How long had she been here, madame?’ he asked.
‘For a month, monsieur,’ was the reply. ‘She came late in the season for the baths, with her bonne and the little boy, and took my rooms. Pardon, but I did not know madame had a husband living, and so near.’
‘We have been separated for many years. I came to Boulogne yesterday quite by accident, not dreaming the lady was here. Can you tell me if she has friends in Boulogne?’
‘I do not think so, monsieur. She lived quite alone, seeing no one, and her only thought and care was for the little boy. She was a proud lady, very rich and proud; nothing was too good for her, or for the child; she lived, as the saying is, en princesse. But no, she had no friends! Doubtless, being an English lady, though she spoke and looked like a compatriote, all her friends were in her own land.’
‘Just so,’ returned Bradley, turning his head away to hide his tears; for he thought to himself, ‘Poor Mary! After all, she was desolate like myself! How pitiful that I, of all men, should close her eyes and follow her to her last repose!’
‘Pardon, monsieur,’ said the woman, ‘but madame, perhaps, was not of our Church? She was, no doubt, Protestant?’
It was a simple question, but simple as it was Bradley was startled by it. He knew about as much of his dead wife’s professed belief as of the source whence she had drawn her subsistence. But he replied:
‘Yes, certainly. Protestant, of course.’
‘Then monsieur will speak to the English clergyman, who dwells there on the hill’ (here she pointed townward), ‘close to the English church. He is a good man, Monsieur Robertson, and monsieur will find——’
‘I will speak to him,’ interrupted Bradley. ‘But I myself am an English clergyman, and shall doubtless perform the last offices, when the time comes.’
The woman looked at him in some astonishment, for his presence was the reverse of clerical, and his struggle in and with the sea had left his attire in most admired disorder, but she remembered the eccentricities of the nation to which he belonged, and her wonder abated. After giving the woman a few more general instructions, Bradley walked slowly and thoughtfully to his hotel.
More than once already his thoughts had turned towards Alma, but he had checked such thoughts and crushed them down in the presence of death; left to himself, however, he could not conquer them, nor restrain a certain feeling of satisfaction in his newly-found freedom. He would write to Alma, as in duty bound, at once, and tell her of all that had happened. And then? It was too late, perhaps, to make full amends, to expect full forgiveness; but it was his duty to give to her in the sight of the world the name he had once given to her secretly and in vain.
But the man’s troubled spirit, sensitive to a degree, shrank from the idea of building up any new happiness on the grave of the poor woman whose corpse he had just quitted. Although he was now a free man legally, he still felt morally bound and fettered. All his wish and prayer was to atone for the evil he had brought on the one being he reverenced and loved. He did not dare, at least as yet, to think of uniting his unworthy life with a life so infinitely more beautiful and pure.
Yes, he would write to her. The question was, where his letter would find her, and how soon?
When he had last heard from her she was at Milan, but that was several weeks ago; and since then, though he had written twice, there had been no response. She was possibly travelling farther southward; in all possibility, to Home.
The next few days passed drearily enough. An examination of some letters recently received by the deceased discovered two facts—first, that she had a sister, living in Oxford, with whom she corresponded; and, second, that her means of subsistence came quarterly from a firm of solicitors in Bedford Bow, London. Next day the sister arrived by steamboat, accompanied by her husband, a small tradesman. Bradley interviewed the pair, and found them decent people, well acquainted with their relative’s real position. The same day he received a communication from the solicitors, notifying that the annuity enjoyed by ‘Mrs. Montmorency’ lapsed with her decease, but that a large sum of money had been settled by the late Lord Ombermere upon the child, the interest of the sum to be used for his maintenance and education, and the gross amount with additions and under certain reservations, to be at his disposal on attaining his majority.
On seeking an interview with the Rev. Mr. Robertson, the minister of the English Church, Bradley soon found that his reputation had preceded him.
‘Do I address the famous Mr. Bradley, who some time ago seceded from the English Church?’ asked the minister, a pale, elderly, clean-shaven man, bearing no little resemblance to a Roman Catholic priest.
Bradley nodded, and at once saw the not too cordial manner of the other sink to freezing point.
‘The unfortunate lady was your wife?’
‘Yes; but we had been separated for many years.’
‘Ah, indeed!’ sighed the clergyman with a long-drawn sigh, a furtive glance of repulsion, and an inward exclamation of ‘no wonder!’
‘Although we lived apart, and although, to be frank, there was great misunderstanding between us, all that is over for ever, you understand. It is in a spirit of the greatest tenderness and compassion that I wish to conduct the funeral service—to which I presume there is no objection.’
Mr. Robertson started in amazement, as if a bomb had exploded under his feet.
‘To conduct the funeral service! But you have seceded from the Church of England.’
‘In a sense, yes; but I have never done so formally. I am still an English clergyman.’
‘I could never consent to such a thing,’ cried the other, indignantly. ‘I should look upon it as profanity. Your published opinions are known to me, sir; they have shocked me inexpressibly; and not only in my opinion, but in that of my spiritual superiors, they are utterly unworthy of one calling himself a Christian.’
‘Then you refuse me permission to officiate?’
‘Most emphatically. More than that, I shall require some assurance that the lady did not share your heresies, before I will suffer the interment to take place in the precincts of my church.’
‘Is not my assurance sufficient?’
‘No, sir, it is not!’ exclaimed the clergyman with scornful dignity. ‘I do not wish to say anything offensive, but, speaking as a Christian and a pastor of the English Church, I can attach no weight whatever to the assurances of one who is, in the public estimation, nothing better than an avowed infidel. Good morning!’
So saying, with a last withering look, the clergyman turned on his heel and walked away.
Seeing that remonstrance was useless, and might even cause public scandal, Bradley forthwith abandoned his design; but at his suggestion his wife’s sister saw the incumbent, and succeeded in convincing him that Mrs. Montmorency had died in the true faith. The result of Mr. Robertson’s pious indignation was soon apparent. The sister and her husband, who had hitherto treated Bradley with marked respect, now regarded him with sullen dislike and suspicion. They could not prevent him, however, from following as chief mourner, when the day of the funeral came.
That funeral was a dismal enough experience for Ambrose Bradley. Never before had he felt so keenly the vanity of his own creed and the isolation of his own opinions, as when he stood by the graveside and listened to the last solemn words of the English burial service. He seemed like a black shadow in the sacred place. The words of promise and resurrection had little meaning for one who had come to regard the promise as only beautiful ‘poetry,’ and the resurrection as only a poet’s dream. And though the sense of his own sin lay on his heart like lead, he saw no benign Presence blessing the miserable woman who had departed, upraising her on wings of gladness; all he perceived was Death’s infinite desolation, and the blackness of that open grave.
Weave a circle round him thrice....
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.—Kubla Khan.
Bradley’s first impulse, on quitting Boulogne, was to hasten at once on to Italy, seek out Alma, and tell her all that had occurred; but that impulse was no sooner felt than it was conquered. The man had a quickening conscience left, and he could not have stood just then before the woman he loved without the bitterest pain and humiliation. No, he would write to her, he would break the news gently by letter, not by word of mouth; and afterwards, perhaps, when his sense of spiritual agony had somewhat worn away, he would go to her and throw himself upon her tender mercy. So instead of flying on to Italy he returned by the mail to London, and thence wrote at length to Alma, giving her full details of his wife’s death.
By this time the man was so broken in spirit and so changed in body, that even his worst enemies might have pitied him. The trouble of the last few months had stript him of all his intellectual pride, and left him supremely sad.
But now, as ever, the mind of the man, though its light was clouded, turned in the direction of celestial or supermundane things. Readers who are differently constituted, and who regard such speculations as trivial or irrelevant, will doubtless have some difficulty in comprehending an individual who, through all vicissitudes of moral experience, invariably returned to the one set purpose of spiritual inquiry. To him one thing was paramount, even over all his own sorrows—the solution of the great problem of human life and immortality. This was his haunting idea, his monomania, so to speak. Just as a physiologist would examine his own blood under the microscope, just as a scientific inquirer would sacrifice his own life and happiness for the verification of a theory, so would Bradley ask himself, even when on the rack of moral torment, How far does this suffering help me to a solution of the mystery of life?
True, for a time he had been indifferent, even callous, drifting, on the vague current of agnosticism, he knew not whither; but that did not last for long: the very constitution of Bradley saved him from that indifferentness which is the chronic disease of so many modern men.
Infinitely tender of heart, he had been moved to the depths by his recent experience; he had felt, as all of us at some time feel, the sanctifying and purifying power of Death. A mean man would have exulted in the new freedom Death had brought; Bradley, on the other hand, stood stupefied and aghast at his own liberation. On a point of conscience he could have fought with, and perhaps conquered, all the prejudices of society; but when his very conscience turned against him he was paralysed with doubt, wonder, and despair.
He returned to London, and there awaited Alma’s answer. One day, urged by a sudden impulse, he bent his steps towards the mysterious house in Bayswater, and found Eustasia Mapleleafe sitting alone. Never had the little lady looked so strange and spirituelle. Her elfin-like face looked pale and worn, and her great wistful eyes were surrounded with dark melancholy rings. But she looked up as he entered, with her old smile.
‘I knew you would come,’ she cried. ‘I was thinking of you, and I felt the celestial agencies were going to bring us together. And I’m real glad to see you before we go away.’
‘You are leaving London?’ asked Bradley, as he seated himself close to her.
‘Yes. Salem talks of going back home before winter sets in and the fogs begin. I don’t seem able to breathe right in this air. If I stopped here long, I think I should die.’
As she spoke, she passed her thin transparent hand across her forehead, with a curious gesture of pain. As Bradley looked at her steadfastly she averted his gaze, and a faint hectic flush came into her cheeks.
‘Guess you think it don’t matter much,’ she continued with the sharp nervous laugh peculiar to her, ‘whether I live or die. Well, Mr. Bradley, I suppose you’re right, and I’m sure I don’t care much how soon I go.’
‘You are very young to talk like that,’ said Bradley gently; ‘but perhaps I misunderstand you, and you mean that you would gladly exchange this life for freer activity and larger happiness in another?’
Eustasia laughed again, but this time she looked full into her questioner’s eyes.
‘I don’t know about that,’ she replied. ‘What I mean is that I am downright tired, and should just like a good long spell of sleep.’ ‘But surely, if your belief is true, you look for something more than that?’
‘I don’t think I do. You mean I want to join the spirits, and go wandering about from one planet to another, or coming down to earth and making people uncomfortable? That seems a stupid sort of life, doesn’t it?—about as stupid as this one? I’d rather tuck my head under my wing, like a little bird, and go to sleep for ever!’
Bradley opened his eyes, amazed and a little disconcerted by the lady’s candour. Before he could make any reply she continued, in a low voice:
‘You see, I’ve got no one in the world to care for me, except Salem, my brother. He’s good to me, he is, but that doesn’t make up for everything. I don’t feel like a girl, but like an old woman. I’d rather be one of those foolish creatures you meet everywhere, who think of nothing but millinery and flirtation, than what I am. That’s all the good the spirits have done me, to spoil my good looks and make me old before my time. I hate them sometimes; I hate myself for listening to them, and I say what I said before—that if I’m to live on as they do, and go on in the same curious way, I’d sooner die!’
‘I wish you would be quite honest with me,’ said Bradley, after a brief pause. ‘I see you are ill, and I am sure you are unhappy. Suppose much of your illness, and all your unhappiness, came from your acquiescence in a scheme of folly and self-deception? You already know my opinion on these matters to which you allude. If I may speak quite frankly, I have always suspected you and your brother—but your brother more than you—of a conspiracy to deceive the public; and if I were not otherwise interested in you, if I did not feel for you the utmost sympathy and compassion, I should pass the matter by without a word. As it is, I would give a great deal if I could penetrate into the true motives of your conduct, and ascertain how far you are self-deluded.’
‘It’s no use,’ answered Eustasia, shaking her head sadly. ‘I can’t explain it all even to myself; impossible to explain to you.’
‘But do you seriously and verily believe in the truth of these so-called spiritual manifestations?’
‘Guess I do,’ returned the lady, with a decided nod.
‘You believe in them, even while you admit their stupidity, their absurdity?’
‘If you ask me, I think life is a foolish business altogether. That’s why I’d like to be done with it!’
‘But surely if spiritualism were an accepted fact, it would offer a solution of all the mysterious phenomena of human existence? It would demonstrate, at all events, that our experience does not cease with the body, which limits its area so much.’
Eustasia sighed wearily, and folding her thin hands on her knee, looked wearily at the fire, which flickered faintly in the grate. With all her candour of speech, she still presented to her interlocutor an expression of mysterious evasiveness. Nor was there any depth in her complaining sorrow. It seemed rather petulant and shallow than really solemn and profound.
‘I wish you wouldn’t talk about it,’ she said. ‘Talk to me about yourself, Mr. Bradley. You’ve been in trouble, I know; they told me. I’ve liked you ever since I first saw you, and I wish I could give you some help.’
Had Bradley been a different kind of man, he would scarcely have misunderstood the look she gave him then, full as it was of passionate admiration which she took no care to veil. Bending towards him, and looking into his eyes, she placed her hand on his; and the warm touch of the tremulous fingers went through him with a curious thrill. Nor did she withdraw the hand as she continued:
‘I’ve only seen one man in the world like you. He’s dead, he is. But you’re his image. I told Salem so the day I first saw you. Some folks say that souls pass from one body into another, and I almost believe it when I think of him and look at you.’
As she spoke, with tears in her eyes and a higher flush on her cheek, there was a footstep in the room, and looking up she saw her brother, who had entered unperceived. His appearance was fortunate, as it perhaps saved her from some further indiscretions. Bradley, who had been too absorbed in the thoughts awakened by her first question to notice the peculiarity of her manner, held out his hand to the new-comer.
‘Glad to see you again,’ said the Professor. ‘I suppose Eustasia has told you that we’re going back to the States? I calculate we haven’t done much good by sailing over. The people of England are a whole age behind the Americans, and won’t be ripe for our teaching till many a year has passed.’
‘When do you leave London?’
‘In eight days. We’re going to take passage in the “Maria,” which sails to-morrow week.’
‘Then you will give no more séances? I am sorry, for I should have liked to come again.’
Eustasia started, and looked eagerly at her brother.
‘Will you come to-night?’ she asked suddenly.
‘To-night!’ echoed Bradley. ‘Is a séance to be held?’
‘No, no,’ interrupted Mapleleafe. ‘But yes,’ added Eustasia. ‘We shall be alone, but that will be all the better. I should not like to leave England without convincing Mr. Bradley that there is something in your solar biology after all.’
‘You’ll waste your time, Eustasia,’ remarked the Professor drily. ‘You know what the poet says?
A man convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still.
And I guess you’ll never convert Mr. Bradley.’
‘I’ll try, at any rate,’ returned Eustasia, smiling; then turning to the clergyman with an eager wistful look, she added, ‘You’ll come, won’t you? To-night at seven.’
Bradley promised, and immediately afterwards took his leave. He had not exaggerated in expressing his regret at the departure of the curious pair; for since his strange experience at Boulogne he was intellectually unstrung, and eager to receive spiritual impressions, even from a quarter which he distrusted. He unconsciously felt, too, the indescribable fascination which Eustasia, more than most women, knew how to exert on highly organised persons of the opposite sex.
Left alone, the brother and sister looked at each other for some moments in silence; then the Professor exclaimed half angrily:
‘You’ll kill yourself, Eustasia, that’s what you’ll do! I’ve foreseen it all along, just as I foresaw it when you first met Ulysses S. Stedman. You’re clean gone on this man, and if I wasn’t ready to protect you, Lord knows you’d make a fool of yourself again.’
Eustasia looked up in his face and laughed. It was curious to note her change of look and manner; her face was still pale and elfin-like, but her eyes were full of malicious light.
‘Never mind, Salem,’ she replied. ‘You just leave Mr. Bradley to me.’
‘He’s not worth spooning over, said Mapleleafe indignantly; ‘and let me tell you, Eustasia, you’re not strong enough to go on like this. Think of your state of health! Doctor Quin says you’ll break up if you don’t take care!’
He paused, and looked at her in consternation. She was lying back in the sofa with her thin arms joined behind her head, and ‘crooning’ to herself, as was her frequent habit.
This time the words and tune were from a familiar play, which she had seen represented at San Francisco.
Black spirits and white,
Blue spirits and grey,
Mingle, mingle, mingle,
You that mingle may!
‘I do believe you’re downright mad!’ exclaimed the little Professor. ‘Tell me the truth, Eustasia—do you love this man Bradley?’
Eustasia ceased singing, but remained in the same attitude.
‘I loved him who is dead,’ she replied, ‘and I love Mr. Bradley because he is so like the other. If you give me time I will win him over; I will make him love me.’
‘What nonsense you’re talking!’
‘Nonsense? It’s the truth!’ cried Eustasia, springing up and facing her brother. ‘Why should I not love him? Why should he not love me? Am I to spend all my life like a slave, with no one to care for me, no one to give me a kind word? I won’t do it. I want to be free. I’m tired of sitting at home all day alone, and playing the sibyl to the fools you bring here at night. Lord knows I haven’t long to live; before I die I want to draw in one good long breath of love and joy! Perhaps it will kill me as you say—so much the better—I should like to die like that!’
‘Eustasia, will you listen to reason?’ exclaimed the distracted Professor. ‘You’re following a will-o’-the-wisp, that’s what you are! This man don’t care about any woman in the world but one, and you’re wasting your precious time.’
‘I know my power, and you know it too, Salem. I’m going to bring him to my feet.’
‘How, Eustasia?’
‘Wait, and you will see!’ answered the girl, with her low, nervous laugh.
‘Think better of it!’ persisted her brother.
‘You promised me, after Ulysses S. Stedman died, to devote all your life, strength, and thought to the beautiful cause of scientific spiritualism. Nature has made you a living miracle, Eustasia! I do admire to see one so gifted throwing herself away, just like a schoolgirl, on the first good-looking man she meets!’
‘I hate spiritualism,’ was the reply. ‘What has it done for me? Broken my heart, Salem, and wasted my life. I’ve dwelt too long with ghosts; I want to feel my life as other women do. And I tell you I will!’
‘The poor Professor shook his head dubiously, but saw that there was no more to be said—at any rate just then.
At seven o’clock that evening Bradley returned to the house in Bayswater, and found the brother and sister waiting for him.
Eustasia wore a loose-fitting robe of black velvet, cut low round the bust, and without sleeves. Her neck and arms were beautifully though delicately moulded, white and glistening as satin, and the small serpent-like head, with its wonderfully brilliant eyes, was surmounted by a circlet of pearls.
Bradley looked at her in surprise. Never before had she seemed so weirdly pretty.
The Professor, on the other hand, despite his gnome-like brow, appeared unusually ignoble and commonplace. He was ill at ease, too, and cast distrustful glances from time to time at his sister, whose manner was as brilliant as her appearance, and who seemed to have cast aside the depression which she had shown during the early part of the day.
After some little desultory conversation, Bradley expressed his impatience for the séance to begin. The landlady of the house, herself (as the reader is aware) an adept, was therefore summoned to give the party, and due preparations made by drawing the window-blinds and extinguishing the gas. Before the lights were quite put out, however, the Professor addressed his sister.
‘Eustasia, you’re not well! Say the word, and I’m sure Mr. Bradley will excuse you for to-night.’
The appeal was in vain, Eustasia persisting. The séance began. The Professor and Mrs. Piozzi Smith were vis-à-vis, while Eustasia, her back towards the folding-doors communicating to the inner chamber, sat opposite to Bradley.
The clergyman was far less master of himself than on the former occasions. No sooner did he find himself in total darkness than his heart began to beat with great muffled throbs, and nervous thrills ran through his frame. Before there was the slightest intimation of any supernatural presence, he seemed to see before him the dead face of his wife, white and awful as he had beheld it in that darkened chamber at Boulogne. Then the usual manifestations began; bells were rung, faint lights flashed hither and thither, the table round which they were seated rose in the air, mysterious hands were passed over Bradley’s face. He tried to retain his self-possession, but found it impossible; a sickening sense of horror and fearful anticipation overmastered him, so that the clammy sweat stood upon his brow, and his body trembled like a reed.
Presently the voice of the little Professor was heard saying:
‘Who is present? Will any of our dear friends make themselves known?’
There was a momentary pause. Then an answer came in the voice of Eustasia, but deeper and less clear.
‘I am here.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Laura, a spirit of the winged planet Jupiter. I speak through the bodily mouth of our dear sister, who is far away, walking with my brethren by the lake of golden fire.’
‘Are you alone?’
‘N! others are present—I see them passing to and fro. One is bright and beautiful. Her face is glorious, but she wears a raiment like a shroud.’
‘What does that betoken?’
‘It betokens that she has only just died.’
A shiver ran through Bradley’s frame. Could the dead indeed be present? and if so, what dead? His thoughts flew back once more to that miserable death-chamber by the sea. The next moment something like a cold hand touched him, and alow voice murmured in his ear:
‘Ambrose! are you listening? It is I!’
‘Who speaks?’ he murmured under breath. ‘Alma! Do you know me?’
Was it possible? Doubtless lbs phantasy deceived him, but he seemed once more to hear the very tones of her he loved.
‘Do not move!’ continued the voice. ‘Perhaps this is a last meeting for a long time, for I am called away. It is your Alma’s spirit that speaks to you; her body lies dead at Rome.’
A wild cry burst from Bradley’s lips, and he sank back in his chair, paralysed and overpowered.
‘It is a cheat!’ he gasped. ‘It is no spirit that is speaking to me, but a living woman.’
And he clutched in the direction of the voice, but touched only the empty air.
‘If you break the conditions, I must depart!’ cried the voice faintly, as if from a distant part of the room.
‘Shall I break up the séance?’ asked the Professor.
‘No!’ cried Bradley, again joining his hands with those of his neighbours to complete the circle. ‘Go on! go on!’
‘Are our dear friends still present?’ demanded the Professor.
‘I am here,’ returned the voice of Eustasia. ‘I see the spirit of a woman, weeping and wringing her hands; it is she that wears the shroud. She speaks to me. She tells us that her earthly name was a word which signifies holy.’
‘In God’s name,’ cried Bradley, ‘what does it mean? She of whom you speak is not dead?—no, no!’
Again he felt the touch of a clammy hand, and again he heard the mysterious voice.
‘Death is nothing; it is only a mystery—a change. The body is nothing; the spirit is all-present and all-powerful. Keep quiet; and I will try to materialise myself even more.’
He sat still in shivering expectation; then he felt a touch like breath upon his forehead, and two lips, warm with life, were pressed close to his, while at the same moment he felt what seemed a human bosom heaving against his own. If this phenomenon was supernatural, it was certainly very real; for the effect was of warm and living flesh. Certain now that he was being imposed upon, Bradley determined to make certain by seizing the substance of the apparition. He had scarcely, however, withdrawn his arms from the circle, when the phenomenon ceased; there was a loud cry from the others present; and on the gas being lit, Eustasia and the rest were seen sitting quietly in their chairs, the former just recovering from a state of trance.
‘I warned you, Eustasia,’ cried the Professor indignantly. ‘I knew Mr. Bradley was not a fair inquirer, and would be certain to break the conditions.’
‘It is an outrage,’ echoed the lady of the house. ‘The heavenly intelligences will never forgive us.’
Without heeding these remonstrances, Bradley, deathly pale, was gazing intently at Eustasia. She met his gaze quietly enough, but her heightened colour and sparkling eyes betokened that she was labouring under great excitement.
‘It is infamous!’ he cried. ‘I am certain now that this is a vile conspiracy.’
‘Take care, sir, take care!’ exclaimed the
Professor. ‘There’s law in the land, and——’
‘Hush, Salem!’ said Eustasia gently. ‘Mr. Bradley does not mean what he says. He is too honourable to make charges which he cannot substantiate, even against a helpless girl. He is agitated by what he has seen tonight, but he will do us justice when he has thought it over.’
Without replying, Bradley took up his hat and moved to the door; but, turning suddenly, he again addressed the medium:
‘I cannot guess by what means you have obtained your knowledge of my private life, but you are trading upon it to destroy the happiness of a fellow-creature. God forgive you! Your own self-reproach and self-contempt will avenge me; I cannot wish you any sorer punishment than the infamy and degradation of the life you lead.’
With these words he would have departed, but, swift as lightning, Eustasia flitted across the room and blocked his way.
‘Don’t go yet!’ she cried. ‘Of what do you accuse me? Why do you blame me for what the spirits have done?’
‘The spirits!’ he repeated bitterly. ‘I’m not a child, to be so easily befooled. In one sense, indeed, you have conjured up devils, who some day or another will compass your own destruction.’
‘That’s true enough—they may be devils,’ said Eustasia. ‘Salem knows—we all know—that we can’t prevent the powers of evil from controlling the powers of good, and coming in their places. Guess some of them have been at work to-night. Mr. Bradley, perhaps it’s our last meeting on earth. Won’t you shake hands?’ As she spoke her wild eyes were full of tears, which streamed down her face. Acting under a sudden impulse, Bradley took her outstretched hand, held it firmly, and looked her in the face.
‘Confess the cheat, and I will freely forgive you. It was you personated one who is dear to me, and whom you pretended to be a spirit risen from the grave.’
‘Don’t answer him, Eustasia!’ exclaimed the Professor. ‘He ought to know that’s impossible, for you never left your seat.’
‘Certainly not,’ said Mrs. Piozzi Smith.
But Bradley, not heeding the interruption, still watched the girl and grasped her passive hand.
‘Answer me! Tell me the truth!’
‘How can I tell you?’ answered Eustasia. ‘I was tranced, and my spirit was far away. I don’t even know what happened.’
With a contemptuous gesture, Bradley released her, and walked from the room. All his soul revolted at the recent experience; yet mingled with his angry scepticism was a certain vague sense of dread. If, after all, he had not been deceived, and something had happened to Alma; if, as the séance seemed to suggest, she was no longer living! The very thought almost turned his brain. Dazed and terrified, he made his way down the dark passage and left the house.
No sooner had he gone than Eustasia uttered a low cry, threw her arms into the air, and sank swooning upon the floor.
Her brother raised her in a moment, and placed her upon the sofa. It was some minutes before she recovered. When she did so, and gazed wildly around, there was a tiny fleck of red upon her lips, like blood.
She looked up in her brother’s face, and began laughing hysterically.
‘Eustasia! For God’s sake, control yourself! You’ll make yourself downright ill!’
Presently the hysterical fit passed away.
‘Leave us together, please!’ she said to the grim woman of the house. ‘I—I wish to speak to my brother.’
Directly the woman had retired, she took her brother by the hand.
‘Don’t be angry with me, Salem!’ she said softly. ‘I’m not long for this world now, and I want you to grant me one request.’
‘What is it, Eustasia?’ asked the Professor, touched by her strangely tender manner.
‘Don’t take me away from England just yet. Wait a little while longer.’
‘Eustasia, let me repeat, you’re following a will-o’-the-wisp, you are indeed! Take my advice, and never see that man again!’
‘I must—I will!’ she cried. ‘O Salem, I’ve used him cruelly, but I love him! I shall die now if you take me away!’