 Chapter 15 of Sons of Fire by Mary Elizabeth Braden. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Let no man live as I have lived. Alan went back to Suffolk and Suzette's life resumed its placid course, a life in which she had for the most part to find her own amusements and occupations. General Vincent was fond and proud of his daughter, but he was not a man to make a companion of a daughter except at the social board. If Suzette were at home at 12 o'clock to superintend the meal, which she called Tiffin, and in her place in the drawing room a quarter of an hour before the 8 o'clock dinner, if she played him to sleep after dinner and herself to be beaten at chess whenever he fancied an evening game, she fulfilled the whole duty of a daughter as understood by General Vincent. For the rest, he had a supreme belief in her high principles and discretion. Her name on the tableau in the parlor at the Sacré-Cœur had stood forth conspicuously for all the virtues, order, obedience, propriety, truthfulness. The nuns who expect perfection in the young human vessel had discovered no crack or flaw in Suzette. She has not only amiability and kindness of heart, said the Reverend Mother at the parting interview with the pupil's father, she has plenty of common sense and she will never give you any trouble. When the general took his daughter to India, there had been some talk of a companion governess or a governess companion for Suzette, but against this inflection the girl herself protested strongly. If I am not old enough or wise enough to take care of myself, I will go back to the convent, she declared. I would rather take the veil than submit to be governed by Mrs. General. I had learnt everything the nuns could teach me before I left the Sacré-Cœur. I am not going to be taught by an inferior teacher, some smatterer perhaps. Nobody can teach like the sisters of the Sacré-Cœur. General Vincent had been preached out by his female relatives on this subject of the governess companion. Suzette is too young and too pretty to be alone, said one. Suzette will get into idle habits if there is no one to direct her mind, said another. A girl's education has only begun when she leaves school, said a third as gloomy, and therefore shadowing of evil as if they had been the three fatal sisters. But the general loved his daughter and when withdrawing her from the convent, had promised her that her life should be happy, so he abandoned an idea that had never been his own. A Mrs. General would have been a deucid expensive importation, he told his friends afterwards, and I knew there would be plenty of nice women to look after Susie. Suzette had proved quite capable of looking after herself unaided by the nice women. Indeed, her conduct had been, or should have been, a liberal education to more than one of those nice women who might have found their matronly exuberances of conversation and behavior in a manner rebuked by the girl's discretion and self-respect. Suzette passed unsmarched through the furnace of a season at Simla and a season at Ninetal and came to Rustic Wiltshire with all the frank gaiety of happy girlhood and all the savoir-faire, which comes of two years' society experience. She had been courted and wooed and had blighted the hopes of more than one eligible admirer. When she came to match him, there was again a question of chaperone or a companion. The odious word, governess, was abandoned. But it was said that Indian society was less conventional than English society and that what might be permitted at Simla could hardly be endured in Rustic Wiltshire. And again, Suzette threatened to go back to her convent if she were not to be trusted with the conduct of her own life. If I cannot take care of myself, I am only fit for a cloister, she said. I would rather be a lay sister and scrub floors than be led about by some prim personage paid to keep watch and ward over me a hired guardian of my manners and my complexion. Mrs. Mornington, who was less conventional than the rest of the general's womankind, put in her word for her niece. Suzette once knew chaperone while I am living within five minutes' walk, she said. She can come to me in all her little domestic difficulties and as for parties, she is not likely to be asked to do any ceremonious affair to which I shall not be asked to. Mrs. Mornington had been as kind and helpful as she had promised to be and in all domestic cruxes, in all details of home life, in the arrangement of a dinner or the purchase of household goods, Suzette had taken counsel with her aunt. The matters appertaining to the Grove and to Marsh House were conterminous and a gate had been made in the fence so that Suzette could run to her aunt at any hour without hat or gloves and without showing herself on the high road. If ever we quarrel, that gate will have to be nailed up, said Mrs. Mornington. It makes a quarrel much more awful when there is a communication of that kind. The walling up of a gate is a public manifesto. If ever we bar each other out, Suzette all match and will know it within 24 hours. Suzette was not afraid that the gate would have to be nailed up. She was fond of her aunt and fully appreciated that lady's hard-headed qualities, but although she went to her aunt Mornington for advice about the gardener and the cook, the etiquette of invitations and the law of selection with reference to a dinner party, it was to Mrs. Warnock she went for sympathy in the higher needs of life. It was to Mrs. Warnock she revealed the mysteries of her heart and her imagination. I seem to have known you all my life, she told that lady, and I'm never afraid of being troublesome. You never can be troublesome, Mrs. Warnock answered, looking at her with admiring affection. I don't know what I should do without you, Suzette. You and Alan have given my poor, worn-out life a new brightness. Alan, how fond you are of Alan, Suzette said musingly. It seems so strange that you should have taken him to your heart so quickly, only because he is like your son. Not only on that account, Suzette, that was the beginning. I'm fond of Alan for his own sake. His fine character has endeared him to me. You think he has a fine character? Think, I know he has. Surely you know him too, Susie. You ought to have learnt his value by this time. Yes, I know he is good, generous, honest and true. His love for his father is very beautiful, and yet he found time to come all this way to spend an hour or two with unworthy frivolous me. He did not think that a sacrifice, Susie, for he adores you. You really think so? That he cares as much as that? I am very sure that he loves with his whole heart and mind, as his father may have done before him. Oh, his father would have been in earnest. I have no doubt in any affection, but I doubt if he was ever tremendously in love with Lady Emily, she is all that is sweet and dear in her frank, homely way, but not a person to inspire a grand passion. Alan's father must have loved and lost in his early youth. There is a shade of melancholy in his voice and manner, nothing gloomy or dismal, but just that touch of seriousness which tells of deep thoughts. He is the most interesting man. I wish you could have seen him while he was at Beechhurst. I fear he will never leave Fendike again. Mrs. Warnock sighed and sat silent while Suzette went to the piano and played a short feud by their favorite Sebastian Bach, played with tender touch, lengthening out every slow passage in her pensive reverie. There had been no more concerned taunt duets Jeffrey had been treated her to go on with their mutual study of doberio and the older composers, Cruelli, Tartini and the rest, but she had obstinately refused. The music is difficult and tiring, she said. This was her first excuse. We will play simpler music, the lightest we can find. There are plenty of easy duets. Please don't think me capricious if I confess that I don't care about playing with the violin. It takes too much out of one. I am too anxious. Why should you be anxious? I'm not going to be angry or disagreeable at your brioche. Should you make any? Still, she refused lightly but persistently and he saw that she had made up her mind. I begin to understand, he said with an offended air and there was never any further talk of Suzette as an accompanist. Jeffrey was seldom at home in the daytime after this refusal and life at the manner dropped back into the old groove. Mrs. Warnock and Suzette spent some hours of every day together. And now that the weather often made the garden impossible, the organ and piano afforded their chief occupation and amusement. Suzette was enthusiastic and pleased with her own improvement under her friend's guidance. It was not so much tuition as sympathy which the older woman gave to the younger. Suzette's musical talent since she left her convent had been withering in an atmosphere of chilling indifference. Her mother liked to be played to sleep after dinner but he hardly knew one air from another and he called everything his daughter played, Rubenstein. Wonderful fellow that Rubenstein used to say. There seems no end to his compositions and to my notion they've only one fault. They're all alike. Suzette heard of Jeffrey though she rarely saw him. His mother talked to him daily but there was a regretful tone in all her talk. This comb seemed quite satisfactory to the sun and air. His horses were failures. The hunting was bad. Rotten, Jeffrey called it but could give no justification for this charge of rottenness. The sport might be good enough for the neighbors in general but it was not good enough for a man who had run the whole gamut of sport in Bengal under the best possible conditions. Jeffrey doubted if there was any hunting worth talking about except in the Shires or in Ireland. He thought of going to Ireland directly after Christmas. He is bored and unhappy here, Suzette. Mrs. Warnock said one morning when Suzette found her particularly low-spirited the life that suits Ireland and other young men in the neighborhood is not good enough for Jeffrey. He has been sport by fortune perhaps for it is his sad inheritance. I was an unhappy woman when he was born and a portion of my sorrow has descended upon my son. This was the first time she'd ever spoken to Suzette of her past life or its sorrows. You must not think that, dear Mrs. Warnock. Your son is tired of this humdrum country life and he'll be all the better and brighter for a change. Let him go to Ireland and hunt. He will be so much the fond review when he comes back. Mrs. Warnock sighed and began to walk about the room in a restless way. Oh, Suzette, Suzette, she said. I'm very unhappy about him. I don't know what will become of us, my son and me. We have all the elements of happiness that we are not happy. It was a month after the little dinner at Marsh House and Suzette and her sweetheart had not met since that evening. There had been no change for the better and Mr. Carew's condition and Alan had felt it impossible to leave the father over whose dwindling hours the shadow of the end was stealing gently, gradually, inevitably. There were days when all was hushed and still as at the approach of doom when the head of the household lay silent and exhausted within closed doors and all Alan could do was to comfort his mother in her aching anxiety. This he did with tenderous thoughtfulness during her sustaining her, tempting her out into the gardens and meadows, begotting hers to temporary forgetfulness of a sorrow that was so near. There were happier or seemingly happier days when the invalid was well enough to sit in his library among the books which had been his life companions. In these waiting hours he could only handle his books, fond of them as it were, slowly turning the leaves, reading a paragraph here and there or pausing to contemplate the outside of a volume in love with a tasteful binding, the creamy valent or gold diapered back, the painted edges, the devices to which he had given such careful thought in the uneventful years when collecting and rebinding these books had been the most serious business of his life. He laid down one volume and took up another capriciously, sometimes with an impatient, sometimes with a regretful sigh. He could not read more than a page without fatigue. His eyes clouded and his head ached at any sustained exertion. His son kept him company through the great winter day in the warm glow of the luxurious room sheltered by tapestry, portier and tall Indian screens. His son fetched and carried for him between the book table by the hearth and the shelves that lined the room from floor to ceiling and filled an empty room beyond and overflowed into the corridor. My day is done, George Carew said with a sigh. These books have been my life, Alan, and now I have outlived them. The zest has gone out of them all. And now in these last days, I know what a mistake my life has been. Let no man live as I have done and think that he is wise. A life without variety or action is something less than life. Never envy the student his peaceful meditative days. Be sure that when the end is near, he will look back as I do and feel that he has wasted his life. Yes, even though he leaves some monumental work which the world will treasure when he is in the dust, he will have meant more enduring than brass, grander than marble. The man himself, when the shadows darken round him, will know how much he has lost. Life means action, Alan, and variety and the knowledge of this glorious world into which we are born. The student is a worm and no man. Let no sorrow or disappointment or life as mine has been blighted. Dear Father, I have always known there was a cloud upon your life, but at least you have made others happy as husband, father, master. I have not been a domestic tyrant. That is about the best I can say for myself. I've been tolerably indulgent to the kindness of the wives. I've loved my only son. Small merits these men whose home life has been cloudless. But I might have done better, Alan. I might have risen superior to that youthful sorrow. I might have taken my dear Emily closer to my heart, travelled over this varied world with her, shown her all that is strangest and fairest under far-off skies instead of letting her vegetate here. I might have gone into Parliament, put my shoulder to the wheel of progress, helped as other men help with unselfish toil, struggling on, hopefully, through the great dismal swamp of mistake and muddleheadedness. Better for a better any life of laborious endeavor, even if futile in result than the culture idler's paradise. Better far for me, since in such a life I should have forgotten the past, might have been a cheerful companion in the present. I chose to feed my morbid fancies to live the life of retrospection and introspection, and now that the end has come, I begin to understand what a contemptible creature I have been. Contemptible, my dear father, if every student were so to upgrade himself after a life of plain living and high thinking, such as you have led, plain living and high thinking are of very little good, Alan, if they result in their useful work. Plain living and high thinking may be only a polite synonym for selfish sloth. Father, I will not hear you depreciate yourself. My dear son, it is something to have won your love, and my mother, is it not something to have made her happy? For that I must thank her own sweet disposition. My reproach is that I might have made her happier. I wronged her by brooding over an old sorrow. She has not been jealous of the love that came before you belonged to her. She loves and honors you. Far beyond my merits, Providence has been very good to me, Alan. There was a silence, more books were asked for and brought, languidly opened, closed and laid aside. Yes, the zest had gone out of them. The langer of excessive weakness can find no beauty, even in things most beautiful. End of Chapter 15. Chapter 16 of Sons of Fire by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chance cannot change my love, nor time impair. Suzette endured her lover's absence with a philosophical cheerfulness, which somewhat surprised her aunt. Upon my word, Susie, I am half inclined to think that you don't care, a straw for Alan. Mrs. Mornington exclaimed one day when her niece came singing across the wintry lawn, crisp under her footsteps after the morning frost. Suzette looked angrier than her aunt had ever seen her look till this moment. Auntie, how can you say anything so horrid, not care for Alan when he is in sad trouble too? This morning's letter gives a most melancholy account of his father. I fear the end must be very near. It was very wrong of me to come running and singing over the grass, but these frosty mornings are so delicious. Look at that glorious blue up there. And when all is over, Alan will come back to you, I suppose. I must say you have endured the separation in the calmest way. Why should I make myself unhappy about it? I know that it is Alan's duty to be at Fendike. The only thing I regret is that I can't be there to cheer him a little in his sorrow. And you do not mind being parted from him. You can live without him. Suzette smiled at the sentimental question from the lips of her practical aunt, whose ideas seemed rarely to soar above the daily cares of housekeeping and the considerations of two pence as against two pence half penny. I've had to live without him over twenty years, Auntie. Yes, but I thought that the moment a girl was engaged, she found life impossible in the absence of her sweetheart. I think that kind of girl must be very empty-headed. And your little brains are well furnished, and then you have Mrs. Warnock and her son to fill up your days. Said Mrs. Mournington with a searching look. I have Mrs. Warnock, and I'm very fond of her. I see very little of Mrs. Warnock's son. Where is he then? I thought he was at the manor. He is seldom at home in the daytime, and I'm never there in the evening. And so you never meet, you are like boxing cocks. So much the more satisfactory for Alan, I should say. Really, Aunt, you are in a most provoking mood this morning. I'm afraid the butcher's book must be heavier than it ought to be. It was Tuesday, Mrs. Mournington's terrible day, the day on which the tradesman's books came up for judgment, the day on which the cook trembled and even the housemaid felt the electricity in the atmosphere. Seven and twenty shillings higher than it ought to be, said the lady. But that isn't what set me thinking about you and Alan. I've been thinking about you forever so long. I'm afraid you are not so fond of him as you ought to be. Auntie, you have no right to say that. Why not pray, Miss? Because perhaps if you had not urged me to accept him, I might not have said yes when he asked me the second time. Oh, pray, don't look so frightened. I'm very fond of him, very fond of him. I know that he is good and true and kind and that he loves me better than I deserve to be loved and thinks me better than I am. Cleverer, prettier, altogether superior to my work a day so. And it is very sweet to have a lover who thinks of one in that exalted way. But I'm not romantically in love, Auntie. I don't believe that it is in my nature to be romantic. I see the bright and happy side of life. I see things to laugh at. I am not sentimental. Well, I dare say Alan can get on without sentiment so long as he knows you like him better than anybody else in the world. And now, as there is no reason whatever for delay, the sooner you marry him, the better. I'm afraid he will lose his father before long, Auntie, and then he can't marry for at least a year. Not since child, he won't be a widow. I dare say Lady Emily will be marrying by that time. Three months will be quite long enough for Alan to wait. You can make the wedding as quiet as you like. Suzette did not prolong the argument. The subject was too remote to need discussion. Mrs. Mornington went back to her tradesman's books and Suzette left her absorbed in the calculation of legs and sirloins and the deeper mystery of soup, meat, and gravy beef. Christmas had come and gone a very tranquil season that match him marked only by the decoration of the church and the new bonnets in the trades people's pews. It was a dog-grade day at the end of the year, the last day but one, and Suzette was walking home in the early dusk after what she called a long morning with Mrs. Warnock a long morning which generally lasted till late in the afternoon. But these midwinter days were too short to allow of Suzette walking home alone after tea so unless her own or her aunt's pony carriage was coming for her, she left Mrs. Warnock before dusk. Today Mrs. Warnock had been sadder even than her want as if saddened by the last news from Fendike and sorrowing for Alan's loss. So Suzette had stayed longer than usual and as she walked homeward the shadows of evening began to fall darkly and the leafless woods looked black against the faint pale saffron of the western sky. The sun had shown himself only an hour before his setting up hail and wintry sun. Presently in the stillness she heard horses hoots walking slowly on the moist road and the next turn in the past showed her Jeffrey Warnock in his red coat leading his horse. It was the first time that I have met since her refusal to play any more duets with him and without knowing why she felt considerable embarrassment at the meeting and was sorry when he stopped to shake hands and stopped as if he meant to enter into conversation. Going home alone in the darkness Vincent, yes the darkness comes upon one unawares in these short winter days. I stayed with Mrs. Warnock because she seemed out of spirits. I'm glad you are home early to cheer her. That is tantamount to saying you are glad I have blamed my horse. I should be on the other side of Andover in one of the best runs of the season if it were not for that fact. The run is always quite the best or so one's dear friends tell one afterwards. I'm sorry for your horse, I hope he isn't much hurt. I don't know, lameness in a horse is generally an impenetrable mystery. One only knows that he is lame. The stable will find half a dozen theories to account for it and the vet will find a seventh and very likely they may all be wrong. I'll walk with you to the high road at least and give the poor horse extra work not for the world. And I'll take him on till I am within Halu of the stables and then come back to you if you'll walk on very slowly. Pray doubt I'm not at all afraid of the dusk. Please walk slowly he answered looking back at her and hurrying on with his horse. Suzette was vexed at his persistence but she did not want to be rude to him were it only for his mother's sake. How much better it would have been had he gone straight home to cheer that fond mother by his company instead of wasting his time to watch him as he would perhaps insist upon doing. He looked white and haggard Suzette thought but that might only be the effect of the dim grey light or it might be that he was tired after a laborious day. She had not much time to think about him. His footsteps sounded on the road behind her. He was running to overtake her. It occurred to her that she might turn this persistence of his to good account. She might talk to him about his mother and urge him to spend a little more of his time at home and more to cheer that lonely life. I met one of the lads he said and got rid of that poor brute. I'm so sorry you should think it necessary to come with me. You mean you are sorry that I should snatch a brief and perilous joy half an hour in your company after having abstained from pleasure and peril so long? If you are going to talk nonsense I should go back to the house and ask your mother to send me home in her broom. Then I won't talk nonsense I don't want to offend you I'm not offended. Something offended you in our duets. What was it I wonder? Some ignorant sin of mine. Some passage played tropo appassionato. Some long lingering chord that sounded like a sigh from an overlaid in heart. Did the music speak too plainly, Suzette? This is too bad of you, exclaimed Suzette, pale with anger. You take a mean advantage of finding me alone here. I won't walk another step with you. She turned and walked quickly in the opposite direction as she spoke, but she was some distance from the house. At least ten minutes walking her heart sank at the thought of how much Jeffrey Warnock could say to her in ten minutes. Her heart was beating violently, louder and faster than she had ever felt it beat. Did it matter so much what nonsense he might talk to her? Mere idle froth from idle lips? Yes, it seemed to her to matter very much. She would be guilty of unpardonable treason to Alan if she let this man talk. It seemed to her as if these wild words of his, mere Rotomantad, made an epic in her life. He seized her by the arm with passionate vehemence, but not roughly. Suzette, Suzette, you must, you shall hear me, he said. Go which way you will, I go with you. I did not mean to speak. I have tried honestly to avoid you. Short of leaving this place altogether, I have done my uttermost. But fate meant us to meet, you see. I named my horse the soundest hunter of them all. Fate sent you by this lonely path at the nick of time. You shall hear me. Say what you like to me when you have heard. Be as hard, as cruel, as constant to your affianced lover as you please. But you shall know that you have another lover, a lover who has been silent till tonight, but who loves you with a love which is his doom. Who says that about love and doom, Shakespeare or Tennyson, I suppose, those two fellows have said everything. Mr. Warnock, you are very cruel, she faulted. You know how dearly I love your mother, and that I wouldn't for the world do anything to wound her feelings, but you are making it impossible for me ever to enter her house again. Why impossible? You are trembling, Suzette. Oh, my love, my dear, dear girl, you tremble at my touch. My words go home to your heart. Suzette, that other man has not all your heart. If he had, you would not have been afraid to go on with our music. If your heart was his orpheus himself could not have moved you. I was not afraid you were talking nonsense. I left off playing because Alan did not like to see me, absorbed in an occupation which he could not share. It was my duty to defer to his opinion. Yes, he heard, he understood. He knew that my heart was going out to you, my longing, passionate heart. He could read my mystery, though you could not. Suzette, is it hopeless for me? Is he barely, and indeed, the chosen? Or do you care for him only because he came to you first? When you knew not what love means, you gave yourself lightly because he is what people call a good fellow. He cannot love you as I love you, Suzette. Love is something less than all the world for him. No duty beside a father's sick bed would keep me from my dearest if she were mine. I would be your slave. I could live upon one kind word a month. If only I might be new you to behold and adore. He had released her arm, was walked in close by her side, still in the direction of the manor house. She hurring impetuously, trying to conquer her agitation, trying to make light of his foolishness, and yet deeply moved. You were very unkind, she said at last, with a piteousness that was like the complaint of a child. Unkind? I am a miserable wretch, pleading for life, and you call me unkind. Suzette, have pity on me. I have not succumbed without a struggle. I loved you from the hour we met, from that first hour when my heart warmed in the sunlight of your eyes. On looking back, it seems to me now that I must have so loved you from the beginning. I can recall no hour in which I did not love you, but I have fought the good fights, Suzette, self-banished from the presence I love. I have lived between Earth and Sky until though I have something of the sportsman's instinct, I have come almost to hate the music of the hounds and the call of the huntsman's horn. Because in every mile my horse galloped, he was carrying me further from you, and the time spent far afield was an hour I might have spent with you. It is cruel of you to persecute me like this. No, no, Suzette, you must not talk of persecution if I am rough and vehement. Tonight it is because I am resolute to ask the question that has been burning on my lips ever since I knew you. I will not be put off on that, but once the question asked and answered, I have done, and if it must be so, you have done with me. There shall be no such thing as persecution. I am here at your side, as good a man than Alan Carew, but I think as good a man with as fair a record of as old and honorable a race richer in this world's gear. But that's not much to such a woman as Suzette. It is for you to choose between us, and it is not because you said yes to him before you had ever seen my face that you are to say no to me if there is the faintest whisper in your heart that pleads for me against him. She stood silent, her eyelids drooping over eyes that were not tearless, his words thrilled her as his violin had thrilled her sometimes in some lingering, planted passage of old world music. His face was near hers, and his hand was on her shoulder detaining her. The intellectuality, the refinement of the delicately chiseled features, the power of the clear complexion were intensified by the dim light. She could not but feel the charm of his manner. He was like Alan, yet how unlike. There was a fascination in this face, a music in this voice, a wanting in Alan, frank and bright and honest and true though he was, there was in this man just the element of poetry, an unreasoning impulse which influences a woman in her first youth more than all the manly virtues that ever went to the making of the Christian hero. Suzette had time to feel the power of that personal charm before she collected herself sufficiently to answer him with becoming firmness. For some moments she was silent under the influence of a spell that she knew must be fatal. To her peace and Alan's happiness should she weakly yield. No, she would not be so poor, so fickle a creature, she would be staunch and true worthy of Alan's love and of her father's confidence. Why, if I were to paltre with the situation, she thought if I were to play fast and loose with Alan, my father might think he had been mistaken and trusting me without a chaperone. He would never respect me or believe in me again. And Alan, what could Alan think of me were I capable of betraying him? Her heart turned cold at the idea of his indignation, grief discussed at woman's perfidy. She knew not whether anger or sorrow would prevail. She conquered her agitation with an effort and answered this troublesome lover as lightly as she could. She did not want Geoffrey to know how he had shaken her nerves by this unexpected appeal. She knew now, standing by his side with that eloquent face so near her own, a musical voice pleading to her, she knew how often his image had been present to her thoughts at disco manner while he himself was away. It is very foolish of you to waste such big words upon another man's sweetheart, she said, pray believe that when I accepted Alan Carew, as my future husband, I accepted him once and forever. There was no question of seeing someone else a little later and liking someone else a little better. There may be girls who do that sort of thing, but I should be sorry that anybody could think me capable of such inconstancy. Alan Carew and I belong to each other for the rest of our lives. Is that a final answer, Miss Vincent? Absolutely final. Then I can say no more except to ask your forgiveness for having said too much already. If you will go on to the house and talk to my mother for a few minutes, I'll go to the stables and order the broom to take you home. It is too dark for you to walk home alone. There was no occasion for the broom. A pair of lamps in the drive announced the arrival of Miss Vincent's pony cart which had been sent to Fetcher. End of Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Of Sons of Fire by Mary Elizabeth Briden This LibriVox recording is in the public domain at Evensong The windows were darkened at Fendike. The passing bell had told the years of the life that was done sounding solemnly and slowly across the level fields the deep narrow river the mill streams and pine woods the scattered hamlets lying far apart on the great flat where the sun sets linger late and long. All was over and Alan had to put aside his own sorrow in order to comfort his mother who was heartbroken at the loss of a husband she had idolized with a love so quiet and intrusive so little given to sentimental utterances that it might have been mistaken for indifference. She wandered about the darkened house like some lost soul in the dim underworld unable to think of anything or to speak of anything but her loss. She looked to Alan for everything asserted her authority in no detail. Let all be as he wished she said to her son let us think only of pleasing him you know what he would like Alan for so much towards the last he talked you so freely think only of him and of his wishes she could not divest herself of the idea that her husband was looking on at all that happened that this or that arrangement might be displeasing to him she was sure that he would wish the sternest simplicity as to the funeral his own farm laborers were to carry him to his grave and the burial was to be at dusk he had himself prescribed those two donations he wished to be laid in his grave at set of sun when the harlings daily toil was over and the humblest of his neighbors could have leisure to follow him to his last bed and then he had quoted parson hawkers touching lines sunset should be the time they said to close their brother's narrow bed it is at that pleasant hour of day the laborer treads his homeward way his work is o'er his toil is done and therefore at the set of sun to wait the wages of the dead we lay our harling in his bed those lines were written for the tillers of the earth but george caru's thoughts of himself were as humble as if he had been the lowest of day laborers indeed in those closing hours of life when the record of a man's existence is suddenly spread out before him like the scroll which the prophet laid before the king there is much in that comprehensive survey to humiliate the proudest of god's servants much which makes him who has labored strenuously despair at the insufficiency of the result the unprofitableness of his labor how then could such a man as george caru fail to perceive his unworthiness a man who had let life go by him who had done nothing saved by a careless automatic beneficence to help or better his fellow men to whom duty had been an empty word and that christian religion a formula the squire fendike was laid to rest in the pale twilight of early march the winter birds sounding their melancholy even song as the coffin was lowered into the grave the widow and her son stood side by side with those humbler neighbors and dependents clustering round them no one had been bitten to the funeral no hour had been named and the gentry of the district whose houses lay somewhat wide apart knew nothing of the arrangements till afterwards no empty carriages to testify to the decent grief which stays at home while livery servants offer the tribute of solemn faces and black gloves side by side lady emily and her son walk through the grounds of fendike to the churchyard adjoining the wintry darkness had fallen gently on those humble graves when the last amen had been spoken and mother and son turned slowly and sadly towards the desolate home alan stayed in his mother's sitting room till after midnight talking of their dead lady emily found a sad pleasure in talking of the husband she had lost indwelling fondly upon his virtues his calm and studious life his non-interference with her household arrangements his perfect contentment with the things that satisfied her there never was a better husband alan she said with a tearful sigh and yet I know I was not his first love not his first love alas so used alan when he had been his mother good night and was seated alone in front of his father's bureau alone in the dead middle of the night steeped in the vivid light of the large reading lamp under its spreading silk and shade while all the rest of the room was in shadow not his first love poor mother it is happy for you that you know not how near that first love was to being the last and only love of your husband's life thank god you did not know the voice in the old suffoc manner house while his father was gradually fading out of life alan had argued with himself as to whether it was or was not his duty to reveal mrs. war knocks identity with the woman to whom george caru had dedicated a lifetime of regret and to give his father the option of summoning that sad ghost out of the past of clasping once again the vanished hand and hearing the voice that has so long been unheard there would have been to the dying men in one brief hour of reunion but that hour could not give back youth or youthful dreams there would have been the irony of fate in a meeting on the brink of the grave and whatever touch of feverish gladness there might have been for the dying in that brief hour it's after consequences would have been full of evil for the morning wife better infinitely better that she should never know the romance of her husband's youth never be able to identify the woman he loved or to inflict upon her own tender heart the self-torture of comparison with such a woman as mrs. war knock for lady emily in her happy ignorance of all details that early love was but a vague memory of a remote past a memory too shadowy to be the cause of retrospective jealousy she knew that her husband had loved and soared and she knew no more it must needs be painful to her to identify his lost love in the person of a lady whom her son valued as a friend and to whom her son's future wife was warmly attached alan had felt therefore that he was fully justified in leaving mrs. war knock story unrevealed even though by that silence he deprived the man who had loved her of the last year full farewell the final touch of hands that had long been parted he was full of sadness tonight as he turned the key in the lock and lifted the heavy lid of the bureau at which he had so often seen his father writing letters and papers with neat leisurely hands and that pensive placidity which characterized all the details of his life that bureau was the one repository for all papers of a private nature the one spot peculiarly associated with him whom they had laid in the grave at even song no one else had ever written on that desk or possessed the keys of those quaintly inlaid drawers and now the secrets of the dead were at the mercy of the survivors so far as he had left any trace of them among those neatly docketed papers those packets of letters folded and tied with red tape or packed in large envelopes sealed in label alan touched those packets with reverent hands glanced at their endorsement and replaced them in the drawers or pigeon holes as he had found them he was looking for the manuscript of which his father told him the story of a love which never found its earthly clothes yes it was here under his hand a thin octavo bound in limp Morocco a manuscript of something less than a hundred pages in the handy new so well the small neat hand that to alan's fancy told of the leisurely life the mind free from fever and fret the heart that beat in slow time and had long outlived the quick alternations of passionate feeling alan drew his chair near the lamp and began to read end of chapter 17 chapter 18 of sons of fire by Mary Elizabeth Braden this LibriVox recording is in the public domain the dead man touched me from the past I wonder how many lives there are like mine in this prosperous England of ours eminently respectable comfortable and altogether protected from the worst hazards of fate happy even according to the standard measure of happiness among the squararchy of England and yet cold and colorless I wonder how many men there are in every generation who drift along the slow current of a sluggish river and who call that placid monotonous movement living up the river with the rising tide down the river with the ebbing tide up and down to and fro between level banks that are always the same with never a hill and never a crag to break the monotony of the outlook we have a river within a stone's throw of my gates which always seems to me the outward invisible sign of my inward and spiritual life a river that flows past farms and villages and for any variety of curve or accident of beauty might just as well be a canal a useful river bearing the laden barges down to the sea a river on which a pleasure boat is as rare as a kingfisher on his banks and so much might be said of my life a useful life within the everyday limits of English morality but a life that nobody will remember or regret outside my own household when I am gone this is no complaint that I am writing to be read when I am in my grave by the sun I hope to leave behind me for be such a thought from me the writer and from him the reader it is only a statement a history of a youthful experience which has influenced my mature years chiefly because on that boyish romance I spent all the stock of passionate feeling with which nature had endowed me it was not much perhaps in the beginning I was no ironic hero I was only an impulsive and somewhat sentimental youth ready to fall in love with the first interesting girl I met but not to find my egeria among the audience of a music hall or in a dancing garden do not mistake me Alan I have loved your mother truly and even warmly but never romantically all that constitutes the poetry the romance of love the fond enthusiasm of the lover vanished out of my life before I was three and twenty all that came afterwards was plain prose it was in the second year of my university life and towards the end of the long vacation that I allowed myself to be persuaded to attend a seance to be given by some so called spiritualists in the neighborhood of Russell Square Mr. Home the spiritualist had been frightening and astonishing people by certain unexplainable manifestations and he had been lucky enough to see disciples such Ms. Boerlitten William and Robert Chambers and others of almost equal distinction to the common heard it seemed that there must be some value in manifestations which could interest and even convince the superior intellects so with the prestige of Holmes performances and with an article in the Corn Hill magazine to assist Russell Square were doing very good business twice and sometimes three times a week they gave a seance and though they did not take money at the doors or advertise their entertainment in the daily papers they had their regular subscribers among the faithful and these subscribers could dispose of tickets of admission among the common heard as to the common heard Gerald Standish and I got our tickets from Mrs. Raven Shaw a literary lady of Gerald's acquaintance who had written a spiritualistic novel and was a profound believer in all the spiritualistic phenomenon her vivid description of the dark seance and his wonders had aroused Gerald's curiosity and he insisted that I who was known among the men of my year as a pupil of the then famous mathematical coach should go with him and bring the severe laws of pure science to bear upon the spirit world I was incurious and indifferent but Gerald Standish was a genius and my particular chum I could not therefore be so churlish as to refuse so slight a concession we dined together at the horseshoe restaurant then in the room of novelty and after a very temperate dinner we walked through the autumn dusk to the quiet street on the east side of Russell Square where the priest and priestess of the spirit world had set up their temple the approach to the mysteries was sadly commonplace a shabby hall door an airless passage that smelt of dinner and for the temple itself a front parlor filled with filistine of furniture when we entered the room was empty of humanity an oil lamp on a cheffionier by the fireplace dimly lighted the all-pervading shabbiness the scanty marine curtains lodging house curtains of the porous type were drawn the furniture consisted of a dozen or so of heavily made mahogany chairs with horsehair cushions a large round table on a massive pedestal supported on three clumsily carved claws and a bookcase against the wall facing the windows or I should say rather a piece of furniture which might be supposed to contain books as the contents were hidden by brass latticework lined with faded green silk the gloom of the scene was inexpressible and seemed accentuated by a dismal street cry which rose and fell ever and anon from the distance of Hunter or Corum Street we are the first Gerald whispered a fact of which I did not require to be informed and for which he ought to have apologised seeing that he had deprived me of my after-dinner coffee and dragged me off yawning full of alarm lest we should be late gradually an indismal silence diversified only by occasional whisperings about a dozen people assembled in the dimness of the dreary room among them came Mrs. Raven Shaw and her jovial business-like husband who seated themselves next Gerald and me and confided their experiences of past séances the lady was full of faith and enthusiasm the gentleman was beginning to have doubts he had heard things from believers which had somewhat unsettled him he had invested a good many half-ginnis in this dismal form of entertainment and had wasted a good deal of time in bringing his gifted wife all the way from Shooters Hill and so far they had got no forwarder than on the first séance they had seen strange things they had felt the ghastly touch of hands that seemed like dead hands and which ordinary people would have run a mile to avoid that heavy mahogany table had shuttered and thrilled under the touch of meeting hands and lifted itself up like a rearing horse had throbbed out messages purporting to come from the dead strange sounds had been in the air angelic singing as of souls in Elysium and some among the audience had gone away after each séance touched and satisfied believing themselves upon the threshold of other worlds feeling their commonplace lives shown upon by a light supernal content hands forward to dwell upon this dull cold earth since they were now sure of a link between earth and heaven Mrs. Raven Shaw as became an imaginative writer was of this idealistic temperament receptive confiding but her husband was a man of business and wanted to see value for his money he explained his views to me in a confidential voice while we waited yes they had are surely seen and heard strange things they had seen bodies living human bodies floating in the air yes floating in the frowsy atmosphere of this shabby parlor atmosphere which it was base to call air they had seen this phenomenon but after all how is the cause of humanity or the march of enlightenment to be advantaged by the flotation of an exceptional subject here and there if everybody could float well and good the gain would be immense except for boot makers and shiropatists who must suffer for the general wheel before medium mystic persons at the rate of one per million of the population to be carried by viewless powers on the empty air was of the smallest practical use an improvement in the construction of balloons would be infinitely more valuable we waited nearly an hour in all we had arrived half an hour before the stated opening of the seance and we waited five and twenty minutes more dawning and fidgeting hopelessly before the door opened and a dismal looking man with a pallid face and long hair came into the room followed by a slovenly woman in black with bare arms and a towsel highly artistic flaxen head he bowed solemnly to the assembled company looked from the company to the woman and murmured in a sepulchral voice my wife general introduction the flaxen headed lady seated herself at the large round table and the dark haired vampire like man crept about the room inviting his audience to take their places at the same mystic table we formed a circle hand touching hand the long haired professor on one side of the table the flaxen wife on the other Gerald and I were separated by the width of the table and the enthusiastic novelist and her practical husband were also as far apart as circumstances would permit my next neighbor on the right was a tall burly man with a strong north of Ireland accent a captain in the mercantile marine Mrs. Raven Shaw informed me the people who met in this brewery room had come by some knowledge of one another's social status and opinions although conversation was certainly discouraged as offensive to the impalpable company we were there to cultivate a gloomy silence and a vaguely uncomfortable expectancy of something gasly were the prevailing characteristics of the assembly Mrs. Raven Shaw had informed me that the sea men on my right was an unbeliever and that he courted the spirits only with his desire of doing them a bad turn. There had been the premonitory symptoms of a row on more than one occasion and he had been the sole cause of the adverse feeling which had shown itself at those times. My left hand neighbor was an elderly woman in black who looked like a spinster and who instead of the bonnet of everyday life were a rusty Spanish mantilla and a black velvet band across her high narrow forehead confining braids of chestnut hair whose artificial origin was patented to every eye. As the seance progressed this lady frequently shed tears, Mrs. Raven Shaw who was in her confidence had whispered to me that she came there to hold misty converse with an officer in the East India Company's service to whom she had been betrothed 30 years and who had died in Bengal after marrying the daughter of a native moneylender and an English governess. It comforted his devoted sweetheart to hear from his own lips as it were that he had led a wretched existence with his half-caste wife and had never ceased to repent his inconstancy to his dearest Amanda. Amanda was the name of the lady in the mantilla, Amanda Jones. It amuses me to recall these details to dwell upon the opening of a scene which I entered upon so casually and which was to exercise so lasting an influence upon my life. The seance proceeded after the vulgar routine of such mysteries in England and in America. We sat in the frowsy darkness and heard each other's breathing as we listened to the mysterious wrappings now here, now there, now high, now low as of some sportive dressmaker wrapping her thumbled finger on table or shutter or ceiling or wall. We heard strange messages thumped out or throbbed out by the excitable mahogany which became more and more vehement as if the beating of our hearts, the swift current of blood and all our arteries were being gradually absorbed by that vitalized wood. The German woman translated the wrappings into strange scraps of speech which for some of the audience were full of meaning, private communications from friends long dead, allusions to the past which were sometimes received in blank wonder, sometimes welcomed as proof irresistible of thought transference between the dead and the living. The mighty dead with names familiar to us all condescended to whole communion with us, Spinoza, Bacon, Shelly, Sir John Franklin, Mesmer a strange mixture of personalities but alas the feebleness of their communications was crushing evidence against the theory of a progressive existence beyond the grave. I should like to know how it's done said the sea captain suddenly in an aggressive voice which irreverence the professor and some of the audience rebuked by an indignant hushed. The whole business wearied me. I was moved to melancholy rather than to laughter as I realized the depth of human credulity which was indicated by the hushed expectancy of the dozen or so of people sitting round a table in the dark in a shabby Bloomsbury lodging house and expecting communications from the world after death, the inexplicable shadow land of which you think is to enter into the regions of all that is most serious and solemn in human thought through the interposition of a shabby charlatan who took money for the exhibition of his power. I sat in the darkness weary and disgusted, utterly incurious, desiring nothing but the clothes of the manifestations and escape into the open air when suddenly in a faint one light which came I knew not whence I saw a face on the opposite side of the circle of faces, a face which assuredly had not been among the audience before the lamp was darkened at the beginning of the séance, yet so far as my sense of hearing which was particularly acute could inform me no door had opened, no footstep had crossed the floor since we had seated ourselves at the center of the circle and had formed the circle hand touching hand. It was a face of a wand and mournful beauty which at once changed my feelings from delistapathy to keenest interest. The eyes were of a lovely blue and were remarkable for that translucent brilliancy which is rarely seen after childhood the features were delicate to attenuation but hollow and colorless and even the lips were of a sickly pallor. The loveliness of those large ethereal eyes counter balanced all want of life and color in the rest of the face which had those eyes been closed might have seen the face of the dead. I looked at it awe-stricken its presence had in one instant transformed the scene of vulgar imposter to a sample and a shrine I watched and waited spellbound. There were subdued with springs round the table and a general excitement and expectancy which indicated the beginning of a more enthralling performance than the bag of bound wrappings on table and Wayne Scott or even the furtive and flying touch of smooth cold hands. For some minutes for an interval that seemed much longer than it the face looked at us or rather looked beyond us the pale lips were parted as in prayer or invocation the long yellow hair streaming over the shoulders gleamed faintly in the dim uncertain light which came and went from some mysterious source the door opening on the entrance hall was behind my side of the table and I little doubt that curiously soft and searching light which flooded every now one then across the circle and lingered on the face opposite was manipulated by someone outside the door presently there came a shower of raps here there everywhere on ceiling Wayne Scott doors above our heads under our feet while a strain of organ music so softly played as to seem remote crept into the room and increased the confusion of our senses distracted past endurance by those meaningless wrappings suddenly a young woman at the end of the table gave a hysterical cry she is rising she is rising she said oh to think of it to think of it to think how he rose he whom they had slain and vanished from the loving eyes of his disciples she is like the angels who gather around his throne who can doubt the humbug and we all know it's humbug grumble the sea dog on my right but it's clever humbug and it isn't easy to catch them napping hush said the professor's wife indignantly watch her and be silent we watched I had not once taken my eyes from that pale spiritual face with the eyes that had a look of seeing things in an immeasurable distance the things that are not of this earth suddenly the dreamy tranquility of the countenance changed to violent emotion a vivid smile brightened the pale lips and sparkled in the luminous eyes and for the first time since I had looked upon them those exquisite lips spoke it is coming it is coming she cried take me take me take me and then from speech to song seemed a natural transition as she sang in a silver sweet soprano angels ever bright and fair take oh take me to your care as that lovely melody floated with clear vibrations through the room the slender girlish form was wafted slowly upward with steady gradual motion until it hovered halfway between the ceiling and the floor the long white robe flowing far below the feet the golden hair falling below the waist nothing more like the conventional idea of an angelic presence could have offered itself to the excited imagination the figure remained suspended the arms lifted and the semi-transparent hands scattering flowers while we gazed enthralled by the beauty and gracefulness of that strange vision and for the moment the hardest of us even the sea dog at my side was a believer nothing so beautiful could be false dishonest, ignoble no whatever the rest of the seance might be this at least was no vulgar cheat we were in the presence of a mysterious being exceptionally gifted human perhaps but not as the common herd are human I was weak enough to think thus I had abandoned myself wholly to the glamour of the scene when the sea dog started to his feet as the girl gave a shrill cry of fear may hung for a moment or two over the table, head downward and fell in a heap between two of the seated spectators her head striking against the edge of the table her long hair streaming wide and faint moanings as of acute pain issuing from her pallid lips in an instant the scene was all noise and confusion the sea captain struck a match Mr. Raven Shaw produced an end of wax candle and everybody crowded round the girl exclaiming unrestrainedly there now didn't I tell you so all a cheat from beginning to end he ought to be prosecuted nobody but fools would have ever believed in such stuff look here cried the sea captain she was held up by a straight iron rod that passes through the floor and a crossbar like a pantomime fairy she was strapped to the crossbar and the strap broke and let her go she's the artfuless Hussie I ever had anything to do with Robby hanged if she hadn't almost taken me in with that face and voice of hers waft me angels and looking just like an angel and all the time this swindler was strapping her on to the iron bar the swindler defended himself angrily in German English getting more German as he grew more desperate they were all clamoring around him the flags and headed Frau had slipped away in the beginning of the skirmish the golden haired girl had fainted faint apparently whatever else might be false and her head was lying on Mrs. Raven Shaw's shoulder that lady's womanly compassion for helpless girlhood being stronger even than her indignation at having been hoaxed give us back our money cried three or four voices out of the dimness give us back our money for the whole series of seances half guinea tickets dear enough if the thing had been genuine and impudent swindle will somebody run for the police said the sea captain I'll stay and take care they don't give us the slip there were half a dozen volunteers who began to group their way to the door once enough said the sea captain take care that fella doesn't make a bolt of it the warning came too late as he spoke some spirit lips blew out the candle which Mr. Raven Shaw was patiently holding above the group of fainting girl and kindly woman like one of the living candlesticks and the legend of Montrose and the room was dark there was a sound of scuffling a rush the door opened and shut again and a key turned in the lock with decisive emphasis done cried the sea captain making his way to the curtain window it was curtain and shuttered and the opening of the shutters occupied some minutes even for the seamen's practice hands there were both soul fashion bolts with mechanism designed to defy burglary in the urban wealth and fashion inhabited Bloomsbury wax matches sputtered and emitted faint gleams and flashes of light here and there in the room two or three people had found their way to the locked door and were shaking and kicking it savagely without effect at last the bolts gave way the deft hands having found the trick of them the seamen flung open the shutters and the light of the street lamp streamed into the room the girl was still unconscious lying across two chairs her head on the novelist's shoulder shamming no doubt said the seamen no no there is no acting here said the lady her face and hands are deadly cold ah she's beginning to recover how she shutters poor child a long drawn shivering sob wrote from the white lips which I could see faintly in the uncertain light from the street lamp the seamen was talking to someone outside asking him to send the first policeman he met or to go to the nearest police office and send someone from there what's the matter asked the voice outside anybody heard no but I want to give someone in charge alright said the voice and then we heard footsteps hurrying off whom are you going to give in charge asked Mr. Ravenshaw in his calm practical way not this shivering girl surely the other birds are flown she may shiver retorted the seamen angrily I shall be glad to see her shiver before the beak tomorrow he'll talk to her shivering won't get over him of course she's fainted a woman can always faint when she finds herself in a difficulty will have her up for obtaining money upon false pretenses all the same the united efforts of three or four of the party had burst open the door and everybody except the little group about the girl herself among them made for the street door which was unfastened a couple of policemen arrived a few minutes afterwards and there upon began a severe inspection of the house from seller to Garrett they found an old woman in the kitchen who explained that the dining and drawing room floors were led to the table turning gentlemen and his wife and the young lady who lived with them they had occupied the rooms nearly three months had paid some rent but were considerably in a rear the landlord who occupied the second floor had gone into the country to see a sick daughter two young men lodged in the attics printers readers but they were seldom in before eleven in a word the old woman who was general drudge and caretaker was alone in the basement with a plethora spaniel to old and obese to bark and a tabby cat all the rest of the house was empty of human life the policemen the great believers in hair hair called to our dirns oh called powers explored every corner of the rooms which the Germans and their accomplice had inhabited the personal belongings of the three were of the slightest the called her dirns soul possession being a large carpet bag of ancient and almost forgotten fashion and a brushing comb the room occupied by the girl was clean and tidy and contained a respectable looking wooden trunk all this I heard afterwards from Gerald who took an active part in the investigation for myself while the inquisitive explorers were tramping in and out of the rooms above and below I remained beside the two good people who were caring for the helpless share in the foolish show accomplice or victim as the case might be I had found and relighted the lamp and by its light Mrs. Ravenshaw and I examined the girl's forehead which had been severely cut in her fall while we were gently drawing the blood which stained her eyelids and cheeks she opened her eyes and looked at us with a bewildered expression oh how my head aches she moaned what was it hurt me like that you were hurt in your fall I answered your head struck the edge of the table but how could I fall how could they let me fall the strap round your waist broke and you fell from the iron bar she looked at me in amazement simulated as I thought and it distressed me to think that fair young face should be capable of such a lying look what strap the spirits were holding me up wafting me towards the sky very likely I answered picking up the broken strap and showing it to her but the spirits couldn't manage it without a little mechanical aid and the mechanical aid was not as sound as it ought to have been the girl took the strap in her hands and looked at it and felt it with an expression of countenance so full of hopeless bewilderment that I began to doubt my previous conviction to doubt even the evidence of my senses could any youthful face be so trained to depict unreal emotion could so childlike a creature be such a consummate actress was this round my waist she asked looking from me to the kind-hearted woman under undeveloped figure yes this was round your waist and by this you were strapped to this iron bar here you see the rod passes through the floor the crossbar must have been fastened to it while you were singing my poor child they do not try to sustain a false suit you are so young that you are hardly responsible for what you have done you were in these people's power and they could make you do what they liked pray be candid with us do we not Mrs. Ravenshaw yes indeed we do poor thing answered the lady heartily only be truthful with us indeed I am telling the truth the girl protested tearfully I did not know of that strap or of the iron rod they told me I was gifted that I was in communion with my dear dead father when I felt my soul uplifted as I have felt it often and often sitting singing to myself alone in my room as if my spirit were soaring away and away upward to that world beyond the skies where my father and my mother are I felt as if while my body remained below my spirit were floating upward and upward away from earth and sorrow I told the fra how I used to feel because I believed in her she brought me into communion with my father he used to wrap out messages of love and she taught me how to understand the spirit language that was how I came to know her I was willing to go with them and join in their seances I began to understand that I they told you that you were gifted and that you had a power of floating upward from the floor to the ceiling yes it came upon me unawares they asked me to sing and to let my spirit float towards heaven as I sang I always used to feel like that of an evening in our church I used to feel my soul lift upward when I sang the Magnificat of Seant soon after we came to London I was singing and I felt myself floating upward it seemed as if some powerful hands were holding me up and I felt around me in the half darkness and there was no one near I was moving alone without any visible help and I felt that it was the passionate longing of my spirit to approach the spirit of my dead father which was lifting me up and oh was it only that horrid strap and that iron rod she exclaimed bursting into tears how cruel how cruel to cheat me like that she had evidently no thought of the public who were cheated or of her own position as a detected imposter or the tool and accomplice of imposters her tears were for the hallucination so roughly dispelled the tramping in and out of rooms was over by this time the majority of the audience were leaving the house the sea dog loud in his disgust and indignation till the last moment I should have liked to give that young Hussie in charge he said in a loud voice as he passed the half open door evidently arguing with some mild tempered victim but as you say she's little more than a child and no magistrate would punish her I breathed more freely when I heard the street door bang behind this gentleman and the policeman they're all gone except ourselves said Gerald the gifted German and his wife have shown us a clean pair of heels and there's only an old charwoman in the basement she tells me your young friend there came from the country somewhere in Sussex and always behaved herself very nicely the old woman seems fond of her yes she was always kind to me said the girl was she well I hope she'll be kind to you now you're left high and dry said Gerald these people won't come back anymore I take it they travel in light marching order a grubby cold carpet bag and a brush and comb which would account for the ladies tangled head they won't come back to fetch those at the risk of being had up for obtaining money upon false pretenses and what's to become of you I wonder to the girl have you any money no sir any friends in London no any friends in the country in the place you left not now no one would be kind to me now there was a kind lady who wanted to apprentice me to her dressmaker and I was left quite alone but I hated the idea of dressmaking and one night there was a spiritualistic seance at the schoolhouse and I went because I'd heard of messages from the dead and I thought if it were possible for the dead to speak to the living my father would not leave me without one word of consolation we loved each other so dearly we were all the world to each other and people said the dead is spoken has sent messages of love and comfort so I went to the dark seance and I asked them to call my father's spirit and there was a message wrapped out and I believed that it was from him and next day I met Madame Calte Hardern in the street and I asked her if the messages were really true and she said they were true and she spoke very kindly to me and asked me if I would like to be a medium and said she was sure I was gifted I could be a clairvoyant if I liked and it was a glorious life to be in constant communion with great spirits and you thought you would like it better than dressmaking so Mrs. Ravenshaw sympathetically it was of my father I thought he had been dead such a short time sometimes I could hardly believe that he was dead when I sat alone in the firelight I used to fancy he was in the room with me I used to speak to him and beg him to answer me and were there any raps then asked the practical Ravenshaw no never when I was alone though Calte Hardern came back after Christmas and there was another seance for the benefit of the infirmary and I went again and Madame told me my father was speaking to me he wrapped out a strange message about the organ I was to bid goodbye to the organ of which I was so fond for I had a gift that was greater than music and I was to go with those who could cultivate that gift so the next day when Madame Calte Hardern asked me to go away with them and promised to develop my amistic power I consented to go I was to be like their adopted daughter they were to clothe me and feed me but they were to give me no money a gift like mine could not be paid for with money if I tried to make money by my power I should lose it I did not want money from them I wanted to be brought into communion with the spirit world with my father whom I love so dearly and with my mother who died when I was eight years old and with my little sister Lucy died soon after mother the little sister I used to nurse my only world was the world of the dead and oh was it all trickery all those messages from father mother there's baby kisses so soft so quick so light the hand upon my forehead the hand of the dead touching me and blessing me was it all false all trickery she rocked herself to and fro sobbing unconsolable at the thought of her vanished dream world I'm afraid so my dear said Raven Shaw kindly I'm afraid it was all humbug you've been duped yourself while you have helped to dupe others and now what is to be done with her that is the question he asked appealing to his wife and me yes that's the question with a vengeance said Gerald we can't leave her in this house and we care of a deaf old woman to bear the brunt of the landlord's anger when he comes home and finds the birds flown in his arrears of rent the baddest of bad deaths poor child we must get her away somehow have you no friends in the country a home he asked the girl no she answered fighting with her sobs people were very kind to me just at first after my father's death and then I think they got tired of me they said I was helpless I ought to have been able to put my hand to something useful the only thing I cared for was music I used to sing in the choir but it was only a village church and the choir was only paid a pound a quarter I couldn't live upon that and I couldn't play the organ well enough to take my father's place and then Miss Grimshaw a rich old lady offered to apprentice me to a dressmaker but I hated the idea of that dressmaker's girls are so common and my father was a gentleman though he was poor when I told Miss Grimshaw I was going away with the kaltaldurns she was very angry she said I should end badly everybody was angry I could never go back to them they would all turn from me Mr. Ravenshaw looks suspicious Mrs. Ravenshaw looked serious and even I asked myself whether the girl's story so plausible so convincing to my awakened interest might not after all be a tissue of romance which sounded natural because it had been recited so often Gerald was the most business like among us what is your name he asked Esperanza Campbell Esperanza why that's a Spanish name my mother was a Spaniard so and what is the name of the village where your father played the organ Bezbury near Petworth Bezbury repeated Gerald penciling memoranda on his linen cuff do you remember the name of the vicar or rector there was only a curate in charge Mr. Harrison very good said Gerald now what we have to do is to get this poor young lady into some decent lodging where the landlady will take care of her till we can help her to find some employment or respectable situation not mediumistic I suppose it would hardly be convenient to you to make her home with you and keep her for a week or so Mrs. Raven Shaw Gerald inquired as an afterthought Mrs. Raven Shaw hastened to explain that with children nursery governess and Spencer aunt every bed in her house at Shooters Hill was occupied we have not known what it is to have a spare bedroom for the last three years she said babies have accumulated rather rapidly said Raven Shaw poor creature how much careless independent bachelorhood pitied him and every baby means another servant if one could only bring them up in a frame like geranium cuttings I think I know of a lodging house where Miss Campbell could find a temporary home not far from here I said thank you know cried Gerald impatiently you can't think about knowing you know or don't know where is it in great Oremond Street capital close by I'll go and get a cab Miss Campbell just put your traps together and and do up your hair and get on our gown looking at her flowing hair with evident distaste while I'm gone he was out of the room in a moment are you sure the house is perfectly respectable Mr. Bearsford inquired Mrs. Raven Shaw who is a fiction weaver no doubt let her imagination run upon the horrors of the great city and the secret iniquities of lodging housekeepers from Hogar's time downwards I told her that I could trust my own sister to the house in great Oremond Street which was kept by my old nurse and my father's old butler who had retired from service about five years before and had invested their savings in the furnishing of a roomy and old fashioned house for the accommodation of all that is most respectable in the way of families and single gentlemen I can vouch for my old nurse Martha as one of the best and kindest of women as well as one of the shrewdest I said the girl heard this discussion I moved and uninterested by the trouble we were taking on her behalf her sobs had subsided but she was crying silently weeping over the cruel end of a dream which had been more to her than all the waking world she told me afterwards how much and how real that dream had been to her Mrs. Raven Shaw went to her room with her and helped her to exchange the long white owl black garment for a tidy black gown on which the crate trimming had grown rusty with much wear I can see it now as she came back into the lamp light in that plain black gown and with her yellow hair rolled into a massive at the back of her head the graceful figure so girlish so will we in its tall slenderness the fair pale face and dark blue eyes heavy with tears she carried a poor little black straw hat in her hand which she put on presently before we went downstairs to the cat Gerald and I carried her box there was no one to object to its removal the old woman in the basement made no sign one of the printers let himself in with that latch key while we were in the hall looked at us curious they went upstairs without a word Mrs. Raven Shaw kissed Esperanza and wished her a friendly goodnight promising to do what she could to help her in the future and then she and her husband hurried away to catch the last train to Shooters Hill end of chapter 18