In the night of the seven-hill’d city, disrobed, and uncrown’d,
and undone,
Thou moanest, O Rizpah, Madonna, and countest the hones of
thy son.
The bier is vacant above thee, His corpse is no longer thereon,
A wind came out of the dark, and he fell as a leaf, and is gone!
They have taken thy crown, O Rizpah, and driven thee forth
with the swine,
But the bones of thy Son they have left thee—yea, wash them
with tears—they are thine!
Thou moanest an old incantation, thou troublest earth with thy
cries....
Ah, God, if the bones should hear thee, and join once again,
and arise!—Home: a Poem.
As the days passed, Bradley found his state of suspense and anxiety intolerable. Day after day he had hoped to hear from Alma, until at length disappointment culminated in despair.
He then determined he should know with certainty what had become of her, and resolved to go to Milan.
What he had seen at the séance had impressed him more than he would admit to himself. He could not believe that any evil had happened—he would not believe it without the most positive evidence of the fact. So he said to himself one hour, and the next his heart grew sick with an uncontrollable dread; and he refused to hope that the revelation of the séance was a delusion.
He left his home and proceeded to the station in the former mood, but the train had hardly moved from the platform when his despair seized him, and if he could he would have relinquished the journey. Alternating thus between hope and despair, he travelled without a break, and in due course he reached Milan.
His inquiries about Alma were promptly answered.
The beautiful and wealthy English lady was well known. She had, until quite recently, been the occupant of a splendid suite of apartments in the best quarter of the city; but she had gone.
Bradley heard all this, and almost savagely he repeated after his informant, an old Italian waiter who spoke English well, the word ‘Gone!’
‘Gone where?’ he demanded. ‘You must know where she has gone to?’
‘Yes, Signor; she has gone to Rome!’
‘To Rome! And her address there is——?’
‘That I do not know, Signor.’
‘Have me taken to the house she occupied when here,’ Bradley ordered; and he was driven to the house Alma had dwelt in.
There also he failed to learn Alina’s address. All that was known was that she had gone to Rome; that her departure had been sudden, and that she had said she would not return to Milan.
Dismissing the carriage that had brought him, he walked back to his hotel.
It was night; the cool breeze from the Alps was delightfully refreshing after the sultry heat of the day; the moon was full and the fair old city was looking its fairest, but these things Bradley heeded not. Outward beauty he could not see, for all his mind and soul was dark—the ancient palaces, the glorious Cathedral, the splendid Carrara marble statue of Leonardo, and the bronze one of Cavour, were passed unnoticed and uncared for. One thing only was in his mind—to get to Rome to find Alma. One thing was certain: she had left Milan in good health, and must surely be safe still.
‘Ah!’ he said to himself, ‘when did she leave Milan? Fool that I am, not to have learned,’ and, almost running, he returned to the house and inquired.
He was disappointed with the information he received. Alma had left Milan some time before the séance in London had been held.
Entering a restaurant, he found that he could get a train to Tome at midnight. He returned to his hotel, ate a morsel of food, drank some wine, and then went to the railway station.
It was early morning when he entered the Eternal City, and the lack of stir upon the streets troubled and depressed him. It accentuated the difference between his present visit and the last he had made, and he cried in his heart most bitterly that the burden of his sorrow was too great.
He was about to tell the driver of the fiacre to take him to his old quarters on the Piazza di Spagna, when he changed his mind. If he went there he would be in the midst of his countrymen, and in his then mood the last being he wished to see was an Englishman. So he asked the driver to take him to any quiet and good boarding-house he knew, and was taken to one in the Piazza Sta. Maria in Monti.
In the course of the day he went out to learn what he could of Alma.
He met several acquaintances, but they had neither seen nor heard of her; indeed, they were not in her circle, and though they had seen or heard of her, they would hardly have remembered. Bradley well knew the families Alma would be likely to visit, but he shrank from inquiring at their houses; he went to the doors of several and turned away without asking to be admitted.
By-and-by he went into the Caffé Nuovo, and eagerly scanned the papers, but found no mention of Alma in them. A small knot of young Englishmen and Americans sat near to him, and he thought at last that he caught the name of Miss Craik mentioned in their conversation.
He listened with painful attention, and found that they were speaking of some one the Jesuits had ‘hooked,’ as they put it.
‘And, by Jove, it was a haul!’ one young fellow said. ‘Any amount of cash, I am told.’
‘That is so,’ replied one of his comrades; and the girl is wonderfully beautiful, they say.’
Bradley started at this, and listened more intently than before.
‘Yes,’ the first speaker said, ‘she is beautiful. I had her pointed out to me in Milan, and I thought her the best-looking woman I had ever seen.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Bradley, stepping up to the speakers. ‘I—I would like to know the name of the lady you refer to.’
‘Oh, certainly; her name is Miss Alma Craik.’
‘Alma living!’ Bradley shrieked, and staggered, like one in drink, out of the caffé.
Dazed and half maddened, he found his way to the lodging. He locked the door of his room and paced the floor, now clenching his hands together, then holding his forehead in them as if to still its bounding pain.
‘Taken by the Jesuits!’ he muttered.
‘Then she is dead indeed—ay, worse than dead!’
He paused at length at the window and looked out. The next instant he sprang back with a look of utter horror on his face.
‘What if she is over there!’ he gasped, and sank into a chair.
By over there he meant the convent of the Farnesiani nus. From the window he could see down the cul-de-sac that led to the convent. He knew the place well; he knew it to be well deserving of its name, the Living Tomb, and that of its inmates it was said ‘they daily die and dig their own graves.’
If Alma was indeed in there, then she was lost.
Bradley shook off as far as he could his feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, and with frenzied haste he rose from the chair, left the house, and went over towards the convent.
He knew that the only way to communicate with the inmates was to mount to a platform above the walls of the houses, and to rap on a barrel projecting from the platform. He had once been there and had been admitted. He forgot that then he had proper credentials, and that now he had none.
He was soon on the platform, and not only rapped, but thundered on the barrel.
A muffled voice from the interior demanded his business.
His reply was whether an Englishwoman named Craik was within the convent. To that question he had no answer, and the voice within did not speak again.
He stayed long and repeated his question again and again in the hope of obtaining an answer, and only left when he had attracted attention, and was invited by the police to desist.
What was to be done? he asked himself as he stood in the street. Do something he must, but what?
‘I have it!’ he said. ‘I will go to the Jesuit head-quarters and demand to be informed;’ and putting his resolve into action he walked thither.
He was courteously received, and asked his business.
‘My business is a painful one,’ Bradley began. ‘I wish to know if an English lady named Craik has joined your church?’
‘She did return to the true faith,’ replied the priest, raising his eyes to heaven, ‘and for her return the Holy Virgin and the Saints be praised!’
‘And now—where is she now?’
With painful expectancy he waited for the priest to answer.
‘Now! now, Signor, she is dead!’ was the reply.
Bradley heard, and fell prone upon the floor.
On recovering from his swoon, Bradley found himself surrounded by several priests, one of whom was sprinkling his face with water, while another was beating the palms of his hands. Pale and trembling, he struggled to his feet, and gazed wildly around him, until his eyes fell upon the face of the aged official whom he had just accosted. He endeavoured to question him again, but the little Italian at his command seemed to have forsaken him, and he stammered and gasped in a kind of stupefaction.
At this moment he heard a voice accost him in excellent English; a softly musical voice, full of beautiful vibrations.
‘I am sorry, sir, at your indisposition. If you will permit me, I will conduct you back to your hotel.’
The speaker, like his companions, had the clean-shaven face of a priest, but his expression was bright and good-humoured. His eyebrows were black and prominent, but his hair was white as snow.
Bradley clutched him by the arm.
‘What—what does it mean? I must have been dreaming. I came here to inquire after a dear friend—a lady; and that man told me—told me——’
‘Pray calm yourself,’ said the stranger gently. ‘First let me take you home, and then I myself will give you whatever information you desire.’
‘No!’ cried Bradley, ‘I will have the truth now!’
And as he faced the group of priests his eyes flashed and his hands were clenched convulsively. To his distracted gaze they seemed like evil spirits congregated for his torture and torment.
‘What is it you desire to know?’ demanded he who had spoken in English. As he spoke he glanced quietly at his companions, with a significant movement of the eyebrows; and, as if understanding the sign, they withdrew from the apartment, leaving himself and Bradley quite alone.
‘Pray sit down,’ he continued gently, before Bradley could answer his former question.
But the other paid no attention to the request.
‘Do not trifle with me,’ he cried, ‘but tell me at once what I demand to know. I have been to the convent, seeking one who is said to have recently joined your church—which God forbid! When I mentioned her name I received no answer; but it is common gossip that a lady bearing her name was recently taken there. You can tell me if this is true.’
The priest looked at him steadfastly, and, as it seemed, very sadly.
‘Will you tell me the lady’s name?’
‘She is known as Miss Alma Craik, but she has a right to another name, which she shall bear.’
‘Alas!’ said the other, with a deep sigh and a look full of infinite compassion, ‘I knew the poor lady well. Perhaps, if you have been in correspondence with her, she mentioned my name—the Abbé Brest?’
‘Never,’ exclaimed Bradley.
‘What is it you wish to know concerning her? I will help you as well as I can.’
‘First, I wish to be assured that that man lied (though of course I know he lied) when he said that evil had happened to her, that—that she had died. Next, I demand to know where she is, that I may speak to her. Do not attempt to keep her from me! I will see her!’ The face of the Abbé seemed to harden, while his eyes retained their sad, steadfast gaze.
‘Pardon me,’ he said after a moment’s reflection, ‘and do not think that I put the question in rudeness or with any want of brotherly sympathy—but by what right do you, a stranger, solicit this information? If I give it you, I must be able to justify myself before my superiors. The lady, or, as I should rather say, our poor Sister, is, as I understand, in no way related to you by blood?’
‘She is my wife!’ answered Bradley.
It was now the other’s turn to express, or at least assume, astonishment. Uttering an incredulous exclamation, he raised his eyes to heaven, and slightly elevated his hands.
‘Do you think I lie?’ cried Bradley sternly. ‘Do you think I lie, like those of your church, whose trade it is to do so? I tell you I have come here to claim her who is my wife, by the laws of man and God!’
Again the Abbé repeated his pantomime expressive of pitiful incredulity.
‘Surely you deceive yourself,’ he said. ‘Miss Craik was never married. She lived unmated, and in blessed virginity was baptised into our church.’
‘Where is she? Let me speak to her!’ cried Bradley, with a sudden access of his old passion.
The Abbé pointed upward.
‘She is with the saints of heaven!’ he said, and crossed himself.
Again the unfortunate clergyman’s head went round, and again he seemed about to fall; but recovering himself with a shuddering effort, he clutched the priest by the arm, exclaiming—
‘Torture me no more! You are juggling with my life, as you have done with hers. But tell me it is all false, and I will forgive you. Though you are a priest, you have at least the heart of a man. Have pity! If what you have said is true, I am destroyed body and soul—yes, body and soul! Have mercy upon me! Tell me my darling is not dead!’
The Abbe’s face went white as death, and at the same moment his lustrous eyes seemed to fill with tears. Trembling violently, he took Bradley’s hand, and pressed it tenderly. Then releasing him, he glanced upward and turned towards the door of the chamber.
‘Stay here till I return,’ he said in a low voice, and disappeared.
Half swooning, Bradley sank into a chair, covering his face with his hands. A quarter of an hour passed, and he still remained in the same position. Tears streamed from his eyes, and from time to time he moaned aloud in complete despair. Suddenly he felt a touch upon his shoulder, and looking up he again encountered the compassionate eyes of the Abbé Brest.
‘Come with me!’ the Abbé said.
Bradley was too lost in his own wild fears and horrible conjectures to take any particular note of the manner of the priest. Had he done so, he would have perceived that it betrayed no little hesitation and agitation. But he rose eagerly, though as it were mechanically, and followed the Abbé to the door.
A minute afterwards they were walking side by side in the open sunshine.
To the bewildered mind of Ambrose Bradley it all seemed like a dream. The sunlight dazzled his brain so that his eyes could scarcely see, and he was only conscious of hurrying along through a crowd of living ghosts.
Suddenly he stopped, tottering.
‘What is the matter?’ cried the Abbé, supporting him. ‘You are ill again, I fear; let me call a carriage.’
And, suiting the action to the word, he beckoned up a carriage which was just then passing. By this time Bradley had recovered from his momentary faintness.
‘Where are you taking me?’ he demanded.
‘Get in, and I will tell you!’ returned the other; and when Bradley had seated himself, he leant over to the driver and said something in a low voice.
Bradley repeated his question, while the vehicle moved slowly away.
‘I am going to make inquiries,’ was the reply; ‘and as an assurance of my sympathy and good faith, I have obtained permission for you to accompany me. But let me now conjure you to summon all your strength to bear the inevitable; and let it be your comfort if, as I believe and fear, something terrible has happened, to know that there is much in this world sadder far than death.’
‘I ask you once more,’ said Bradley in a broken voice, ‘where are you taking me?’
‘To those who can set your mind at rest, once and for ever.’
‘Who are they?’
‘The Farnesiani sisters,’ returned the Abbé.
Bradley sank back on his seat stupefied, with a sickening sense of horror.
The mental strain and agony were growing almost too much for him to bear. Into that brief day he had concentrated the torture of a lifetime; and never before had he known with what utterness of despairing passion he loved the woman whom he indeed held to be, in the sight of God, his wife. With frenzied self-reproach he blamed himself for all that had taken place. Had he never consented to an ignoble deception, never gone through the mockery of a marriage ceremony with Alma, they might still have been at peace together; legally separated for the time being, but spiritually joined for ever; pure and sacred for each other, and for all the world. But now—now it seemed that he had lost her, body and soul!
The carriage presently halted, and Bradley saw at a glance that they were at the corner of the cul-de-sac leading to the convent. They alighted, and the Abbé paid the driver. A couple of minutes later they were standing on the platform above the walls of the houses.
All around them the bright sunshine burnt golden over the quivering roofs of Rome, and the sleepy hum of the Eternal City rolled up to them like the murmur of a summer sea.
There they stood like two black spots on the aerial brightness; and again Bradley fell into one of those waking trances which he had of late so frequently experienced, and which he had frequently compared, in his calmer moments, to the weird seizures of the young Prince, ‘blue-eyed and fair of face,’ in the ‘Princess.’
He moved, looked, spoke as usual, showing no outward indication of his condition; but a mist was upon his mind, and nothing was real; he seemed rather a disembodied spirit than a man; the Abbe’s voice strange and far off, though clear and distinct as a bell; and when the Abbé rapped on the barrel, as he himself had done so recently, the voice that answered the summons sounded like a voice from the very grave itself.
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of Ocean shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrend’ring up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to th’ insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod.—Thanatopsis.
It seemed a dream still, but a horrible sunless dream, all that followed; and in after years Ambrose Bradley never remembered it without a thrill of horror, finding it ever impossible to disentangle the reality from illusion, or to separate the darkness of the visible experience from that of his own mental condition. But this, as far as he could piece the ideas together, was what he remembered.
Accompanied by the mysterious Abbé, he seemed to descend into the bowels of the earth, and to follow the figure of a veiled and sibylline figure who held a lamp. Passing through dark subterranean passages, he came to a low corridor, the walls and ceiling of which were of solid stone, and at the further end of which was a door containing an iron grating.
The priest approached the door, and said something in a low voice to some one beyond.
There was a pause; then the door revolved on its hinges, and they entered,—to find themselves in a black and vault-like chamber, the darkness of which was literally ‘made visible’ by one thin, spectral stream of light, trickling through an orifice in the arched ceiling.
Here they found themselves in the presence of a tall figure stoled in black, which the Abbé saluted with profound reverence. It was to all intents and purposes the figure of a woman, but the voice which responded to the priest’s salutation in Italian was deep—almost—as that of a man.
‘What is your errand, brother?’ demanded the woman after the first formal greeting was over. As she spoke she turned her eyes on Bradley, and they shone bright and piercing through her veil.
‘I come direct from the Holy Office,’ answered the Abbé, ‘and am deputed to inquire of you concerning one who was until recently an inmate of this sacred place,—a poor suffering Sister, who came here to find peace, consolation, and blessed rest. This English signor, who accompanies me, is deeply interested in her of whom I speak, and the Holy Office permits that you should tell him all you know.
The woman again gazed fixedly at Bradley as she replied—
‘She who enters here as an inmate leaves behind her at the gate her past life, her worldly goods, her kith and kin, her very name. Death itself could not strip her more bare of all that she has been. She becomes a ghost, a shadow, a cipher. How am I to follow the fate of one whose trace in the world has disappeared?’
‘You are trifling with me!’ cried Bradley.
‘Tell me at once, is she or is she not an inmate of this living hell?’
‘Do not blaspheme!’ cried the Abbé in English, while the veiled woman crossed herself with a shudder. ‘It is only in compassion for your great anguish of mind that our blessed Sister will help you, and such words as you are too prone to use will not serve your cause. Sister,’ he continued in Italian, addressing the woman, ‘the English signor would not willingly offend, though he has spoken wildly, out of the depth of his trouble. Now listen! It is on the record of the Holy Office that on a certain day some few months ago an English lady, under sanction, entered these walls and voluntarily said farewell to the world for ever, choosing the blessed path of a divine death-in-life to the sins and sorrows of an existence which was surely life-in-death. The name she once bore, and the date on which she entered the convent, are written down on this paper. Please read them, and then perhaps you will be able to guide us in our search.’
So saying, the Abbé handed to the woman a folded piece of paper. She took it quietly, and, stepping slowly to the part of the chamber which was lit by the beam of chilly sunshine, opened the paper and appeared to read the writing upon it. As she did so, the dim and doubtful radiance fell upon her, and showed through the black but semi-transparent veil the dim outline of a livid human face.
Leaving the chamber, she approached a large vaulted archway at its inner end, and beckoned to the two men. Without a word they followed.
Still full of the wild sense of unreality, like a man walking or groping his way in a land of ghosts, Bradley walked on. Passing along a dismal stone corridor, where, at every step he took,
He dragged
Foot-echoes after him!
past passage after passage of vaulted stone, dimly conscious as he went of low doors opening into the gloomiest of cells, he hurried in the wake of his veiled guide. Was it only his distempered fancy, or did he indeed hear, from time to time, the sound of low wailings and dreary ululations proceeding from the darkness on every side of him? Once, as they crossed an open space dimly lit by dreary shafts of daylight, he saw a figure in sable weeds, on hands and knees, with her lips pressed close against the stone pavement; but at a word from his guide the figure rose with a feeble moan and fluttered away down a corridor into the surrounding darkness.
At last they seemed to pass from darkness into partial sunshine, and Bradley found himself standing in the open air. On every side, and high as the eye could reach, rose gloomy walls with overhanging caves and buttresses, leaving only one narrow space above where the blue of heaven was dimly seen. There was a flutter of wings, and the shadows of a flight of birds passed overhead—doves which made their home in the gloomy recesses of the roofs and walls.
Beneath was a sort of quadrangle, some twenty feet square, covered with grass, which for the most part grew knee-deep, interspersed with nettles and gloomy weeds, and which was in other places stunted and decayed, as if withered by some hideous mildew or blight. Here and there there was a rude wooden cross stuck into the earth, and indicating what looked to the eye like a neglected grave.
The Sister led the way through the long undergrowth, till she reached the side of a mound on which the grass had scarcely grown at all, and on which was set one of those coarse crosses.
‘You ask me what has become of the poor penitent you seek. She died in the holy faith, and her mortal body is buried here.’
With a wild shriek Bradley fell on his knees, and tearing the cross from the earth read the inscription rudely carved upon it:—
‘Sister Alma.
Obiit 18—.’
That was all. Bradley gazed at the cross in utter agony and desolation; then shrieking again aloud, fell forward on his face. The faint light from the far-off blue crept down over him, and over the two black figures, who gazed in wonder upon him; and thus for a long time he lost the sense of life and time, and lay as if dead.
Lay a garland on my hearse,
Of the dismal yew;
Maidens, willow gardens bear;
Say I died true.
My love was false, but I was firm
From my hour of birth;
Upon my buried body lie
Lightly, gentle earth.—The Maid’s Tragedy.
Professor Mapleleafe speedily saw that to oppose his sister would be inopportune—might perhaps even cause her decline and death. He determined’ therefore to humour her, and to delay for a short time their proposed return to America.
‘Look here, Eustasia,’ he said to her one day, ‘I find I’ve got something to do in Paris; you shall come with me. Perhaps the change there may bring you back to your old self again. Anyhow we’ll try it; for if this goes on much longer you’ll die!’
‘No, Salem, I shan’t die till I’ve seen him again!’ she answered, with a faint forced smile.
They set about making their preparations at once, and were soon on their way to Paris. The movement and change had given colour to Eustasia’s cheeks, and brought a pleasurable light of excitement into her eyes, so that already her brother’s spirits were raised.
‘She’ll forget him,’ he said to himself, ‘and we’ll be what we were before he came!’
But in this Salem was mistaken. Eustasia was not likely to forget Bradley. Indeed, it was the thought of seeing him again that seemed to give new life to her rapidly wasting frame. She knew that he had left England; she thought that, like herself, he might be travelling to get rid of his own distracting thoughts; so wherever she went she looked about her to try and catch a glimpse of his face.
They fixed themselves in Paris, and Salem soon dropped into the old life. He fell amongst some kindred spirits, and the séances began again; Eustasia taking part in them to please her brother, but no more. She was utterly changed; each day as it rolled away seemed to take with it a part of her life, until her wasted frame became almost as etherealised as those of the spirits with whom she had dealt so much.
With constant nursing and brooding upon, her fascination for the Englishman increased; it seemed, indeed, to be the one thing which kept her thin thread of life from finally breaking.
‘If I could see him again,’ she murmured to herself, ‘only once again, and then (as Salem says) die!’
The wish of her heart was destined to be realised: she did at least see Bradley once again.
She was sitting at home one day alone, when the door of the room opened, and more like a spectre than a man he walked in.
At the first glimpse of his face Eustasia uttered a wild cry and staggered a few steps forward, as if about to throw herself into his arms; but suddenly she controlled herself, and sank half swooning into a chair.
‘You have come!’ she said at length, raising her eyes wistfully to his; ‘you have come at last!’
He did not answer, but kept his eyes fixed upon hers with a look which made her shudder.
‘How—how did you find me?’ she asked faintly.
‘I came to Paris, and by accident I heard of you,’ he answered in a hollow voice.
Again there was silence. Bradley kept his eyes fixed upon the sibyl with a look which thrilled her to the soul. There was something about him which she could not understand; something which made her fear him. Looking at him more closely, she saw that he was curiously changed; his eyes were sunken and hollow; and though they were fixed upon her they seemed to be looking at something far away; his hair, too, had turned quite grey.
She rose from her seat, approached him, and gently laid her hand upon his arm.
‘Mr. Bradley,’ she said, ‘what is it?’
He passed his hand across his brow as if to dispel a dream, and looked at her curiously.
‘Eustasia,’ he said, using for the first time her Christian name, ‘speak the truth to me to-day; tell me, is all this real?’
‘Is what real?’ she asked, trembling. His presence made her faint, and the sound of her name, as he had spoken it, rang continually in her ears.
‘Is it not all a lie? Tell me that what you have done once you can do again; that you can bring me once more into the presence of the spirit of her I love!’
‘Of her you love?’ said the girl, fixing her large eyes wistfully upon his face. ‘What—what do you want me to do?’
‘Prove that it is not all a lie and a cheat: if you are a true woman, as I trust, I want you to bring back to me the spirit of my darling who is dead!’
She shrank for a moment from him, a sickening feeling of despair clouding all her senses; then she bowed her head.
‘When will you come?’ she said.
‘To-night.’
Eustasia sank into her chair, and, without another word, Bradley departed.
At seven o’clock that night Bradley returned, and found the sibyl waiting for him.
She was quite alone. Since the morning her manner had completely changed; her hands were trembling, her cheek was hushed, but there was a look of strange determination about her lips and in her eyes. Bradley shook hands with her, then looked around as if expecting others.
She smiled curiously.
‘We are to be alone!’ she said—‘quite alone. I thought it better for you!’
For some time she made no attempt to move; at length, noticing Bradley’s impatience, she said quietly—
‘We will begin.’
She rose and placed herself opposite Bradley, and fixed her eyes intently upon him. Then, at her request, he turned down the gas; they were in almost total darkness touching hands.
For some time after Bradley sat in a strange dream, scarcely conscious of anything that was taking place, and touching the outstretched hands of Eustasia with his own.
Suddenly a soft voice close to his ear murmured,—
‘Ambrose, my love!’
He started from his chair, and gazed wildly about him. He could see nothing, but he could feel something stirring close to him. Then he staggered back like a drunken man, and fell back in his chair.
‘Alma!’ he cried piteously, still conscious of the medium’s trembling hands, ‘Alma, my darling, come to me!’
For a moment there was silence, and Bradley could hear the beating of his heart. Then he became conscious of a soft hand upon his head; of lips that seemed to him like warm human lips pressed against his fore head.
Gasping and trembling he cried—
‘Alma, speak; is it you?’
The same soft voice answered him—
‘Yes, it is I!’
The hand passed again softly over his head and around his neck, and a pair of lips rich and warm were pressed passionately against his own. Half mad with excitement, Bradley threw one arm around the figure he felt to be near him, sprang to his feet while it struggled to disengage itself, turned up the light, and gazed full into the eyes of—Eustasia Mapleleafe.
Never till his dying day did Bradley forget the expression of the face which the sibyl now turned towards his own, while, half crouching, half struggling, she tried to free herself from the grip of his powerful arms; for though the cheeks were pale as death, the eyes wildly dilated, they expressed no terror—rather a mad and reckless desperation. The mask had quite fallen; any attempt at further disguise would have been sheer waste of force and time, and Eustasia stood revealed once and for all as a cunning and dangerous trickster, a serpent of miserable deceit.
Yet she did not quail. She looked at the man boldly, and presently, seeing he continued to regard her steadfastly, as if lost in horrified wonder, she gave vent to her characteristic, scarcely audible, crooning laugh.
A thrill of horror went through him, as if he were under the spell of something diabolic.
For a moment he felt impelled to seize her by the throat and strangle her, or to savagely dash her to the ground. Conquering the impulse, he held her still as in a vice, until at last he found a voice—
‘Then you have lied to me? It has all been a lie from the beginning?’
‘Let me go,’ she panted, ‘and I will answer you!’
‘Answer me now,’ he said between his set teeth.
But the sibyl was not made of the sort of stuff to be conquered by intimidation. A fierce look came into her wonderful eyes, and her lips were closely compressed together.
‘Speak—or I may kill you! he cried.
‘Kill me, then!’ she answered. ‘Guess I don t care!’
There was something in the wild face which mastered him in spite of himself. His hands relaxed, his arms sank useless at his side, and he uttered a deep despairing groan. Simultaneously she sprang to her feet, and stood looking down at him.
‘Why did you break the conditions?’ she asked in a low voice. ‘The spirits won’t be trifled with in that way, and they’ll never forgive you, or me; never.’
He made no sign that he heard her, but stood moveless, his head sunk between his shoulders, his eyes fixed upon the ground. Struck by the sudden change in him, she moved towards him, and was about to touch him on the shoulder, when he rose, still white as death, and faced her once more.
‘Do not touch me!’ he cried. ‘Do not touch me, and do not, if you have a vestige of goodness left within you, try to torture me again. But look me in the face, and answer me, if you can, truly, remembering it is the last time we shall ever meet. When you have told me the truth, I shall leave this place, never to return; shall leave you, never to look upon your face again. Tell me the truth, woman, and I will try to forgive you; it will be very hard, but I will try. I know I have been your dupe from the beginning, and that what I have seen and heard has been only a treacherous mirage called up by an adventuress and her accomplices. Is it not so? Speak! Let me have the truth from your own lips.’
‘I can’t tell,’ answered Eustasia coldly. ‘If you mean that my brother and I have conspired to deceive you, it is a falsehood.
We are simply agents in the hands of higher agencies than ours.’
‘Once more, cease that jargon,’ cried Bradley; ‘the time has long past for its use. Will you confess, before we part for ever? You will not? Then good-bye, and God forgive you.’
So saying he moved towards the door; but with a sharp, bird-like cry she called him back.
‘Stay! you must not go!’
He turned again towards her.
‘Then will you be honest with me? It is the last and only thing I shall ask of you.’
‘I—I will try,’ she answered in a broken voice.
‘You will!’
‘Yes; if you will listen to me patiently.’
She sank into a chair, and covered her face with her hands. He stood watching her, and saw that her thin, white, trembling fingers were wet with tears.
‘Promise,’ she said, ‘that what I am about to say to you shall never be told to any other living soul.’
‘I promise.’
‘Not even to my brother.’
‘Not even to him.’
There was a long pause, during which he waited impatiently for her to continue. At last, conquering her agitation, she uncovered her face, and motioned to a chair opposite to her; he obeyed her almost mechanically, and sat down. She looked long and wistfully at him, and sighed several times as if in pain.
‘Salem says I shan’t live long,’ she murmured thoughtfully. ‘To-night, more than ever, I felt like dying.’
She paused and waited as if expecting him to speak, but he was silent.
‘Guess you don’t care if I live or die?’ she added piteously, more like a sick child than a grown woman—and waited again.
‘I think I do care,’ he answered sadly, ‘for in spite of all the anguish you have caused me, I am sorry for you. But I am not myself, not the man you once knew. All my soul is set upon one quest, and I care for nothing more in all the world. I used to believe there was a God; that there was a life after death; that if those who loved each other parted here, they might meet again elsewhere. In my despair and doubt, I thought that you could give me assurance and heavenly hope; and I clutched at the shadows you summoned up before me. I know now how unreal they were; I know now that you were playing tricks upon my miserable soul.’
She listened to him, and when he ceased began to cry again.
‘I never meant any harm to you,’ she sobbed! ‘I—I loved you too well.’
‘You loved me!’ he echoed in amaze.
She nodded quickly, glancing at him with her keen wild eyes.
‘Yes, Mr. Bradley. When Salem first took me to hear you preach, you seemed like the spirit of a man I once loved, and who once loved me. He’s dead now, he is; died over there in the States, years ago. Well, afterwards, when I saw you again, I began to make believe to myself that you were that very man, and that he was living again in you. You think me crazy, don’t you? Ah well, you’ll think me crazier when you hear all the rest. I soon found out all about you; it wasn’t very hard, and our people have ways of learning things you’d never guess. I didn’t look far till I found out your secret; that you loved another woman, I mean. That made me care for you all the more.’
Her manner now was quite simple and matter-of-fact. Her face was quite tearless, and, with hands folded in her lap, she sat quietly looking into his face. He listened in sheer stupefaction. Until that moment no suspicion of the truth had ever flashed upon his mind. As Eustasia spoke, her features seemed to become elfin-like and old, with a set expression of dreary and incurable pain; but she made her avowal without the slightest indication of shame or self-reproach, though her manner, from time to time, was that of one pleading for sympathy and pity.
She continued—
‘You don’t understand me yet, and I guess you never will. I’m not a European, and I haven’t been brought up like other girls. I don’t seem ever to have been quite young. I grew friends with the spirits when I wasn’t old enough to understand, and they seem to have stolen my right heart away, and put another in its place.’
‘Why do you speak of such things as if they were real? You know the whole thing is a trick and a lie.’
‘No, I don’t,’ she answered quickly. ‘I’m not denying that I’ve played tricks with them, just as they’ve played tricks with me; but they’re downright real—they are indeed. First mother used to come to me, when I was very little; then others, and in after-days I saw him; yes, after he was dead. Then sometimes, when they wouldn’t come, Salem helped out the manifestations, that’s all.’
‘For God’s sake, be honest with me!’ cried Bradley. ‘Confess that all these things are simple imposture. That photograph of yourself, for example—do you remember?—the picture your brother left in my room, and which faded away when I breathed upon it?’ She nodded her head again, and laughed strangely.
‘It was a man out West that taught Salem how to do that,’ she replied naïvely.
‘Then it was a trick, as I suspected?’
‘Yes, I guess that was a trick. It was something they used in fixing the likeness, which made it grow invisible after it had been a certain time in contact with the atmospheric air.’
Bradley uttered an impatient exclamation.
‘And all the rest was of a piece with that! Well, I could have forgiven you everything but having personified one who is now lost to me for ever.’
‘I never did. I suppose you wished to see her, and she came to you out of the spirit-land.’
‘Now you are lying to me again.’
‘Don’t you think I’m lying,’ was the answer; ‘for its gospel-truth I’m telling you. I’m not so bad as you think me, not half so bad.’
Again shrinking from lier, lie looked at her with aimer and loathing.
‘The device was exposed to-day,’ he said sternly. ‘You spoke to me with her voice, and when I turned up the light I found that I was holding in my arms no spirit, but yourself.’
‘Well, I’m not denying that’s true,’ she answered with another laugh. ‘Something came over me—I don’t know how it happened—and then, all at one, I was kissing you, and I had broken the conditions.’
By this time Bradley’s brain had cleared, and he was better able to grasp the horrible reality of the situation. It was quite clear to him that the sibyl was either an utter impostor, or a person whose mental faculties were darkened by fitful clouds of insanity. What startled and horrified him most of all was the utter want of maidenly shame, the curious and weird sang-froid, with which she made her extraordinary confession. Her frankness, so far as it went, was something terrible—or, as the Scotch express it, ‘uncanny.’ Across his recollection, as he looked and listened, came the thought of one of these mysterious sibyls, familiar to mediæval superstition, who come into the world with all the outward form and beauty of women, but without a Soul, but who might gain a spiritual existence in some mysterious way by absorbing the souls of men. The idea was a ghastly one, in harmony with his distempered fancy, and he could not shake it away.
‘Tell me,’ said Eustasia gently, ‘tell me one thing, now I have told you so much. Is that poor lady dead indeed—I mean the lady you used to love?’
The question went into his heart like a knife, and with livid face he rose to Ins feet.
‘Do not speak of her!’ he cried. ‘I cannot bear it—it is blasphemy! Miserable woman, do you think that you will ever be forgiven for tampering, as you have done, with the terrible truth of death? I came to you in the last despairing hope that among all the phantoms you have conjured up before me there might be some reality; for I was blind and mad, and scarcely knew what I did. If it is any satisfaction to you, know that you have turned the world into a tomb for me, and destroyed my last faint ray of faith in a living God. In my misery, I clung to the thought of your spirit world; and I came to you for some fresh assurance that such a world might be. All that is over now. It is a cheat and a fraud like all the rest.’
With these words he left her, passing quickly from the room. Directly afterwards she heard the street door close behind him. Tottering to the window, she looked down in the street, and saw him stalk rapidly by, his white face set hard as granite, his eyes looking steadily before him, fixed on vacancy. As he disappeared, she uttered a low cry of pain, and placed her hand upon her heart.