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THE NEW ABELARD

A Romance

By Robert Buchanan

Author of ‘The Shadow Of The Sword’ ‘God And The Man’ ‘Etc

In Three Volumes--Vol. III.

London: Chatto & Windus, Piccadilly

1884

[Illustration: 0001]

[Illustration: 0001]




THE NEW ABELARD.




CHAPTER XXII--FROM THE POST-BAG.


I.


_Sir George Craik, Bart., to Alma Craik._

My dear Niece,-The receipt of your letter, dated ‘Lucerne,’ but bearing
the post-mark of Geneva, has at last relieved my mind from the weight of
anxiety which was oppressing it. Thank Heaven you are safe and well,
and bear your suffering with Christian resignation. In a little time,
I trust, you will have left this dark passage of your experience quite
behind you, and return to us looking and feeling like your old self.
George, who now, as always, shares my affectionate solicitude for you,
joins me in expressing that wish. The poor boy is still sadly troubled
at the remembrance of your misconception, and I sometimes think that his
health is affected. Do, if you can, try to send him a line or a message,
assuring him that your unhappy misunderstanding is over. Believe me, his
one thought in life is to secure your good esteem.

There is no news--none, that is to say, of any importance. We have kept
our promise to you, and your secret is still quite safe in our custody.
The man to whom you owe all this misery is still here, and still, I am
informed, prostituting the pulpit to his vicious heresies. If report is
to be believed, his utterances have of late been more extraordinary
than ever, and he is rapidly losing influence over his own congregation.
Sometimes I can scarcely conquer my indignation, knowing as I do that
with one word I could effectually silence his blasphemy, and drive him
beyond the pale of society. But in crushing him I should disgrace you,
and bring contempt upon our name; and these considerations, as well as
my pledge to keep silence, make any kind of public action impossible.
I must therefore wait patiently till the inevitable course of events,
accelerated by an indignant Providence, destroys the destroyer of your
peace.

In the mean time, my dear Alma, let me express my concern and regret
that you should be wandering from place to place without a protector. I
know your strength of mind, of course; but you are young and handsome,
and the world is censorious. Only say the word, and although business of
a rather important nature occupies me in London, I will put it aside
at any cost, and join you. In the absence of my dear brother, I am your
natural guardian. While legally your own mistress, you are morally under
my care, and I would make any sacrifice to be with you, especially at
this critical moment of your life.

I send this letter to the address you have given me at Lucerne. I hope
it will reach you soon and safely, and that you will, on seeing it, fall
in with my suggestion that I should come to you without delay.

With warmest love and sympathy, in which your cousin joins, believe me
as ever,--Your affectionate uncle,

George Craik.



II.


_From Alma Craik to Sir George Craik, Bart._

My dear Uncle,--I have just received your letter. Thank you for
attending to my request. With regard to your suggestion that you should
come to me, I know it is meant in all kindness, but as I told you
before leaving London, I prefer at present to be quite alone, with the
exception of my maid Hortense. I will let you know of my movements from
time to time,--Your affectionate niece,

Alma Craik.



III.

_Alma Craik to the Rev. Ambrose Bradley_.

Your letter, together with one from my uncle, found me at Lucerne, and
brought me at once grief and comfort: grief, that you still reproach
yourself over what was inevitable; comfort, that you are, as you assure
me, still endeavouring to pursue your religious work. Pray, pray, do not
write to me in such a strain again. You have neither wrecked my life
nor broken my heart, as you blame yourself for doing; I learned long
ago from our Divine Example that the world is one of sorrow, and I am
realising the truth in my own experience, that is all.

You ask me how and where I have spent my days, and whether I have at
present any fixed destination. I have been wandering, so to speak, among
the gravestones of the Catholic Church, visiting not only the great
shrines and cathedrals, but lingering in every obscure roadside chapel,
and halting at every Calvary, in southern and western France. Thence I
have come on to Switzerland, where religion grows drearier, and life
grows dismaller, in the shadow of the mountains. In a few days I shall
follow in your own footsteps, and go on to Italy--to Rome.

Write to me when you feel impelled to write. You shall be apprised of my
whereabouts from time to time.--Yours now as ever,

Alma.

P.S.--When I sat down to write the above, I thought I had so much to say
to you; and I have said nothing! Something numbs expression, though my
thoughts seem full to overflowing. I am like one who longs to speak, yet
fears to utter a syllable, lest her voice should be clothed with tears
and sobs. God help me! All the world is changed, and I can hardly
realise it, yet!



IV.

_Ambrose Bradley to Alma Craik._

Dearest Alma,--You tell me in your letter that you have said nothing
of the thoughts that struggle within you for utterance; alas! your words
are only too eloquent, less in what they say than in what they leave
unsaid. If I required any reminder of the mischief I have wrought, of
the beautiful dream that I have destroyed, it would come to me in the
pathetic reticence of the letter I have just received. Would to God that
you had never known me! Would to God that, having known me, you would
have despised me as I deserved! I was unworthy even to touch the hem of
your garment. I am like a wretch who has profaned the altar of a saint.
Your patience and devotion are an eternal rebuke. I could bear your
bitter blame; I cannot bear your forgiveness.

I am here as you left me; a guilty, conscience-stricken creature
struggling in a world of nightmares. Nothing now seems substantial,
permanent, or true. Every time that I stand up before my congregation I
am like a shadow addressing shadows; thought and language both fail me,
and I know not what platitudes flow from my lips; but when I am left
alone again, I awaken as from a dream to the horrible reality of my
guilt and my despair.

I have thought it all over again and again, trying to discover some
course by which I might bring succour to myself and peace to her I love;
and whichever way I look, I see but one path of escape, the rayless
descent of death. For, so long as I live, I darken your sunshine. My
very existence is a reminder to you of what I am, of what I might have
been.

But there, I will not pain you with my penitence, and I will hush my
self-reproaches in deference to your desire. Though the staff you placed
in my hand has become a reed, and though I seem to have no longer any
foothold on the solid ground of life, I will try to struggle on.

I dare not ask you to write to me--it seems an outrage to beg for such
a blessing; yet I know that you _will_ pity me, and write again.--Ever
yours,

Ambrose Bradley.




CHAPTER XXIII--ALMA’S WANDERINGS


               Scoff not at Koine, or if thou scoff beware

               Her vengeance waiting in the heaven and air;

               Her love is blessing, and her hate, despair.

               Yet see! how low the hoary mother lies,

               Prone on her face beneath the lonely skies--

               On her head ashes, dust upon her eyes.

               Men smile and pass, but many pitying stand,

               And some stoop down to kiss her withered hand,

               Whose sceptre is a reed, whose crown is sand.

               Think’st thou no pulse beats in that bounteous breast

               Which once sent throbs of rapture east and west?

               Nay, but she liveth, mighty tho’ opprest.

               Her arm could reach as low as hell, as high

               As the white mountains and the starry sky;

               She filled the empty heavens with her cry.

               Wait but a space, and watch--her trance of pain

               Shall dry away--her tears shall cease as rain--

               Queen of the nations, she shall smile again!

                        The Ladder of St. Augustine.

Bradley’s letter was fowarded from Lucerne after some little delay,
and reached Miss Craik at Brieg, just as she was preparing to proceed by
private conveyance to Domo d’Ossola. She had taken the carriage and
pair for herself and her maid, a young Frenchwoman; and as the vehicle
rounded its zigzag course towards the Klenenhorn she perused the
epistle line by line, until she had learned almost every word by heart.

Then, with the letter lying in her lap, she gazed sadly, almost
vacantly, around her on the gloomy forests and distant hills, the
precipices spanned by aerial bridges, the quaint villages clinging like
birds’-nests here and there, the dark vistas of mountain side gashed by
torrents frozen by distance to dazzling white.

Dreary beyond measure, though the skies were blue and the air full of
golden sunlight, seemed the wonderful scene:

               We make the world we look on, and create

               The summer or the winter with our seeing!

And cold and wintry indeed was all that Alma beheld that summer day.

Not even the glorious panorama unfolded beneath her gaze on passing the
Second Refuge had any charms to please her saddened sight. Leaving the
lovely valley of the Rhone, sparkling in sunlight, encircled by the
snow-crowned Alps, with the Jungfrau towering paramount, crowned
with glittering icy splendour and resting against a heaven of deep
insufferable blue, she passed through avenues of larch and fir, over
dizzy bridges, past the lovely glacier of the Kallwasser, till she
reached the high ascent of the Fifth Refuge.

Here the coarse spirit of the age arose before her, in the shape of
a party of English and American tourists crowding the diligence and
descending noisily for refreshment.

A little later she passed the barrier toll, and came in sight of the
Cross of ’Vantage. She arrested the carriage, and descended for a
few minutes, standing as it were suspended in mid air, in full view of
glacier upon glacier, closed in by the mighty chain of the Bernese Alps.

Never had she felt so utterly solitary. The beautiful world, the empty
sky, swam before her in all the loveliness of desolation, and turning
her face towards Aletsch, she wept bitterly.

As she stood thus, she was suddenly conscious of another figure standing
near to her, as if in rapt contemplation of the solemn scene. It was
that of a middle-aged man, rather above the middle stature, who carried
a small knapsack on his shoulders and leant upon an Alpine staff. She
saw only his side face, and his eyes were turned away; yet, curiously
enough, his form had an air of listening watchfulness, and the moment
she was conscious of his presence he turned and smiled, and raised his
hat. She noticed then that his sunburnt face was clean shaven, like
that of a priest, and that his eyes were black and piercing, though
remarkably good-humoured.

‘Pardon, Madame,’ he said in French, ‘but I think we have met before.’

She had turned away her head to hide her tears from the stranger’s gaze.
Without waiting for her answer, he proceeded.

‘In the hotel at Brieg. I was staying there when Madame arrived, and I
left at daybreak this morning to cross the Pass on foot.’

By this time she had mastered her agitation, and could regard the
stranger with a certain self-possession. His face, though not handsome,
was mobile and expressive; the eyebrows were black and prominent, the
forehead was high, the mouth large and well cut, with glittering
white teeth. It was difficult to tell the man’s age; for though his
countenance was so fresh that it looked quite young, his forehead and
cheeks, in repose, showed strongly-marked lines; and though his form
seemed strong and agile, he stooped greatly at the shoulders. To
complete the contradiction, his hair was as white as snow.

What mark is it that Rome puts upon her servants, that we seem to know
them under almost any habit or disguise? One glance convinced Alma that
the stranger either belonged to some of the holy orders, or was a lay
priest of the Romish Church.

‘I do not remember to have seen you before, Monsieur,’ she replied, also
in French, with a certain hauteur.

The stranger smiled again, and bowed apologetically.

‘Perhaps I was wrong to address Madame without a more formal
introduction. I know that in England it is not the custom. But here on
the mountain, far away from the conventions of the world, it would be
strange, would it not, to meet in silence? We are like two souls that
encounter on pilgrimage, both looking wearily towards the Celestial
Gate.’

‘Are you a priest, Monsieur?’ asked Alma abruptly.

The stranger bowed again.

‘A poor member of the Church, the Abbé Brest. I am journeying on
foot through the Simplon to the Lago Maggiore, and thence, with God’s
blessing, to Milan. But I shall rest yonder, at the New Hospice,
to-night.’

And he pointed across the mountain towards the refuge of the monks of
St. Bernard, close to the region of perpetual snow. The tall figure of
an Augustine monk, shading his eyes and looking up the road was visible;
and from the refectory within came the faint tolling of a bell mingled
from time to time with the deep barking of a dog.

‘The monks receive travellers still?’ asked Alma. ‘I suppose the Hospice
is rapidly becoming, like its compeers, nothing more or less than a big
hotel?’

‘Madame----’

‘Please do not call me Madame. I am unmarried.’

She spoke almost without reflection, and it was not until she had
uttered the words that their significance dawned upon her. Her face
became crimson with sudden shame.

It was characteristic of the stranger that he noticed the change in a
moment, but that, immediately on doing so, he turned away his eyes and
seemed deeply interested in the distant prospect, while he replied:--

‘I have again to ask your pardon for my stupidity. Mademoiselle, of
course, is English?’

‘Yes.’

‘And is therefore, perhaps, a little prejudiced against those who,
like the good monks of the Hospice, shut themselves from all human
companionship, save that of the wayfarers whom they live to save and
shelter? Yet, believe me, it is a life of sacred service! Even here,
among the lonely snows, reaches the arm of the Holy Mother, to plant
this cross by the wayside, as a symbol of her heavenly inspiration, and
to build that holy resting-place as a haven for those who are weary and
would rest.’

He spoke with the same soft insinuating smile as before, but his eye
kindled, and his pale face flushed with enthusiasm. Alma, who had turned
towards the carriage which stood awaiting her, looked at him with new
interest. Something in his words chimed in with a secret longing of her
heart.

‘I have been taught to believe, Monsieur, that your faith is practically
dead. Everywhere we see, instead of its living temples, only the ruins
of its old power. If its spirit exists still, it is only in places such
as this, in company with loneliness and death.’

‘Ah, but Mademoiselle is mistaken!’ returned the other, following by
her side as she walked slowly towards the carriage. ‘Had you seen what I
have seen, if you knew what I know, of the great Catholic reaction, you
would think differently. Other creeds, gloomier and more ambitious,
have displaced ours for a time in your England; but let me ask you--you,
Mademoiselle, who have a truly religious spirit--you who have yourself
suffered--what have those other creeds done for humanity? Believe me,
little or nothing. In times of despair and doubt, the world will again
turn to its first Comforter, the ever-patient and ever-loving Church of
Christ.’

They had by this time reached the carriage door. The stranger bowed
again and assisted Alma to her seat. Then he raised his hat with
profound respect in sign of farewell. The coachman was about to drive on
when Alma signed for him to delay.

‘I am on my way to Domo d’Ossola,’ she said. ‘A seat in my carriage is
at your service if you would prefer going on to remaining at the Hospice
for the night.’

‘Mademoiselle, it is too much! I could not think of obtruding myself
upon you! I, a stranger!’

Yet he seemed to look longingly at the comfortable seat in the vehicle,
and to require little more pressing to accept the offer.

‘Pray do not hesitate,’ said Alma, smiling, ‘unless you prefer the
company of the monks of the mountain.’

‘After that, I can hesitate no longer,’ returned the Abbé, looking
radiant with delight; and he forthwith entered the vehicle and placed
himself by Alma’s side.

Thus it came to pass that my heroine descended the Pass of the Simplon
in company with her new acquaintance, an avowed member of a Church
for which she had felt very little sympathy until that hour. To do him
justice, I must record the fact that she found him a most interesting
companion. His knowledge of the world was extensive, his learning little
short of profound, his manners were charming. He knew every inch of the
way, and pointed out the objects of interest, digressing lightly into
the topics they awakened. At every turn the prospect brightened. Leaving
the wild and barren slopes behind them, the travellers passed through
emerald pasturages, and through reaches of foliage broken by sounding
torrents, and at last emerging from the great valley, and crossing the
bridge of Crevola, they found themselves surrounded on every side by
vineyards, orchards, and green meadows. When the carriage drew up before
the door of the hotel at Domo d’Ossola, Alma felt that the time had
passed as if under enchantment. Although she had spoken very little, she
had quite unconsciously informed her new friend of three facts--that she
was a wealthy young Englishwoman travelling through Europe at her own
free will; that she had undergone an unhappy experience, involving,
doubtless, some person of the opposite sex; and that, in despair of
comfort from creeds colder and less forgiving, she was just in a fit
state of mind to seek refuge in the bosom of the Church of Rome.

The acquaintance, begun so curiously in the Simplon Pass, was destined
to continue. At Domo d’Ossola, Alma parted from the Abbé Brest, whose
destination was some obscure village on the banks of Lago Maggiore; but
a few weeks later, when staying at Milan, she encountered him again. She
had ascended the tower of the Duomo, and was gazing down on the streets
and marts of the beautiful city, when she heard a voice behind her
murmuring her name, and turning somewhat nervously, she encountered the
bright black eyes of the wandering Abbé.

He accosted her with his characteristic _bonhomie_.

‘Ah, Mademoiselle, it _is_ you!’ he cried smiling. ‘We are destined to
meet in the high places--here on the tower of the cathedral, there on
the heights of the Simplon!’

There was something so unexpected, so mysterious in the man’s
reappearance, that Alma was startled in spite of herself, but she
greeted him courteously, and they descended the tower steps together.
The Abbé kept a solemn silence as they walked through the sacred
building, with its mighty walls of white marble, its gorgeous
decorations, its antique tombs, its works in bronze and in mosaic; but
when they passed from the porch into the open sunlight, he became as
garrulous as ever.

They walked along together in the direction of the Grand Hotel, where
Alma was staying.

‘Have you driven out to the cathedral at Monza?’ inquired the Abbé in
the course of their conversation.

‘No; is it worth seeing?’

‘Certainly. Besides, it contains the sacred crown of Lombardy, the iron
band of which is made out of nails from the true cross.’

‘Indeed!’ exclaimed Alma with a smile that was incredulous, even
contemptuous. She glanced at her companion, and saw that he was smiling
too.

*****

It was not until she had been some weeks away from England that Alma
Craik quite realised her position in the world. In the first wild
excitement of her flight her only feeling was one of bewildered
agitation, mingled with a mad impulse to return upon her own footsteps,
and, reckless of the world’s opinion, take her place by Bradley’s side.
A word of encouragement from him at that period would have decided her
fate. But after the first pang of grief was over, after she was capable
of regretful retrospection, her spirit became numbed with utter despair.
She found herself solitary, friendless, hopeless, afflicted with an
incurable moral disease to which she was unable to give a name, but
which made her long, like the old anchorites and penitents, to seek some
desert place and yield her life to God.

In this mood of mind she turned for solace to religion, and found how
useless for all practical purposes was her creed of beautiful ideas.

Her faith in Christian facts had been shaken if not destroyed; the
Christian myth had the vagueness and strangeness of a dream; yet, true
to her old instincts, she haunted the temples of the Church, and felt
like one wandering through a great graveyard of the dead.

Travelling quite alone, for her maid was in no sense of the words a
confidante or a companion, she could not fail to awaken curious interest
in many with whom she was thrown into passing contact. Her extraordinary
personal beauty was heightened rather than obscured by her singularity
of dress; for though she wore no wedding-ring, she dressed in black
like a widow, and had the manners as well as the attire of a person
profoundly mourning. At the hotels she invariably engaged private
apartments, seldom or never descending to the public rooms, or joining
in the tables-d’hote. The general impression concerning her was that she
was an eccentric young Englishwoman of great wealth, recently bereaved
of some person very near and dear to her, possibly her husband.

Thus she lived in seclusion, resisting all friendly advances, whether
on the part of foreigners or of her own countrymen; and her acquaintance
with the Abbé Brest would never have passed beyond a few casual
courtesies had it not begun under circumstances so peculiar and in a
place so solitary, or had the man himself been anything but a member of
the mysterious Mother Church. But the woman’s spirit was pining for some
kind of guidance, and the magnetic name of Rome had already awakened in
it a melancholy fascination. The strange priest attracted her, firstly,
by his eloquent personality, secondly, by the authority he seemed to
derive from a power still pretending to achieve miracles: and though
in her heart she despised the pretensions and loathed the dogmas of his
Church, she felt in his presence the sympathy of a prescient mind. For
the rest, any companionship, if intellectual, was better than utter
social isolation.

So the meeting on the tower of the Duomo led to other meetings. The
Abbé became her constant companion, and her guide through all the many
temples of the queenly city.




CHAPTER XXIV--GLIMPSES OF THE UNSEEN.


               The earth has hubbies as the water hath,

               And these are of them!--_Macbeth._


While the woman he had so cruelly deceived and wronged was wandering
from city to city, and trying in vain to find rest and consolation,
Ambrose Bradley remained at the post where she had left him, the most
melancholy soul beneath the sun. All his happiness in his work being
gone, his ministration lost the fervour and originality that had at
first been its dominant attraction.

Sir George had not exaggerated when he said that the clergyman’s
flock was rapidly falling away from him. New lights were arising; new
religious whims and oddities were attracting the restless spirits of the
metropolis. A thought-reading charlatan from the New World, a learned
physiologist proving the oneness of the sympathetic system with
polarised light, a maniacal non-jurist asserting the prerogative of
affirmation at the bar of the House of Commons, became each a nine-days’
wonder. The utterances of the new gospel were forgotten, or disregarded
as flatulent and unprofitable; and Ambrose Bradley found his occupation
gone.

For all this he cared little or nothing. He was too lost in
contemplation of his own moral misery. All his thought and prayer being
to escape from this, he tried various distractions--the theatre, for
example, with its provincial theory of edification grafted on the
dry stem of what had once been a tree of literature. He was utterly
objectless and miserable, when, one morning, he received the following
letter:--

‘Monmouth Crescent, Bayswater.

‘My dear Sir,--Will you permit me to remind you, by means of this
letter, of the notes of introduction presented recently by me to you,
and written by our friends, -------- and ----------, in America? My
sister gives a _seance_ to-morrow evening, and several notabilities of
the scientific and literary world have promised to be present. If you
will honour us with your company, I think you will be able to form a
disinterested opinion on the importance of the new biology, as
manifestations of an extraordinary kind are confidently expected.

--With kind regards, in which my sister joins, I am, most faithfully
yours,

‘Salem Mapleleafe,

‘Solar Biologist’.’

‘P.S.--The _séance_ commences at five o’clock, in this domicile.’

Bradley’s first impulse was to throw the letter aside, and to write a
curt but polite refusal. On reflection, however, he saw in the proposed
séance a means of temporary distraction. Besides, the affair of the
mysterious photograph had left him not a little curious as to the
machinery used by the brother and sister--_arcades ambo_, or impostors
both, he was certain--to gull an undiscerning public.

At a little before five on the following evening, therefore, he
presented himself at the door of the house in Monmouth Crescent, sent up
his card, and was almost immediately shown into the drawing-room. To his
surprise he found no one there, but he had scarcely glanced round the
apartment when the door opened, and a slight sylph-like figure, clad in
white, appeared before him.

At a glance he recognised the face he had seen on the fading photograph.

‘How do you do, Mr. Bradley?’ said Eustasia, holding out a thin
transparent hand, and fixing her light eyes upon his face.

‘I received your brother’s invitation,’ he replied rather awkwardly. ‘I
am afraid I am a little before my time.’

‘Well, you’re the first to arrive. Salem’s upstairs washing, and will be
down directly. He’s real pleased to know you’ve come.’

She flitted lightly across the room, and sat down close to the window.
She looked white and worn, and all the life of her frame seemed
concentrated in her extraordinary eyes, which she fixed upon the visitor
with a steadiness calculated to discompose a timid man.

‘Won’t you sit down, Mr. Bradley?’ she said, repeating the name with a
curious familiarity.

‘You seem to know me well,’ he replied, seating himself, ‘though I do
not think we have ever met.’

‘Oh, yes, we have; leastways, I’ve often heard you preach. I knew a man
once in the States, who was the very image of _you_. He’s dead now, he
is.’

Her voice, with its strong foreign inflexion, rang so strangely and
plaintively on the last words, that Bradley was startled. He looked
at the girl more closely, and was struck by her unearthly beauty,
contrasting so oddly with her matter-of-fact, offhand manner.

‘Your brother tells me that you are a sibyl,’ he said, drawing his chair
nearer. ‘I am afraid, Miss Mapleleafe, you will find me a disturbing
influence. I have about as much faith in solar biology, spiritualism,
spirit-agency, or whatever you like to call it, as I have in--well,
Mumbo-Jumbo.’

Her eyes still looked brightly into his, and her wan face was lit up
with a curious smile.

‘That’s what they all say at first! Guess you think, then, that I’m an
impostor? Don’t be afraid to speak your mind; I’m used to it; I’ve had
worse than hard names thrown at me; stones and all that. I was stabbed
once down South, and I’ve the mark still!’

As she spoke, she bared her white arm to the elbow, and showed, just in
the fleshy part of the arm, the mark of an old scar.

‘The man that did that drew his knife in the dark, and pinioned my arm
to the table. The very man that was like _you_.’

And lifting her arm to her lips she kissed the scar, and murmured,
or crooned, to herself as she had done on the former occasion in the
presence of her brother. Bradley looked on in amazement. So far as he
could perceive at present, the woman was a half-mad creature, scarcely
responsible for what she said or did.

His embarrassment was not lessened when Eustasia, still holding the arm
to her lips, looked at him through thickly gathering tears, and then,
as if starting from a trance, gave vent to a wild yet musical laugh.

Scarcely knowing what to say, he continued the former topic of
conversation.

‘I presume you are what is called a clairvoyante. That, of course, I can
understand. But, do you really believe in supernatural manifestations?’

Here the voice of the little Professor, who had quietly entered the
room, supplied an answer.

‘Certainly not, sir. The office of solar biology is not to vindicate,
but to destroy, supernaturalism. _You_ mean superhuman, which is quite
another thing.

               ‘All things abide in Nature, nought subsists

               Beyond the infinite celestial scheme.

               Motes in the sunbeam are the lives of men,

               But in the moonlight and the stellar ray,

               In every burning flame of every sphere,

                   Exist intelligible agencies

                   Akin to thine and mine.

That’s how the great Bard puts it in a nutshell. Other lives in other
worlds, sir, but no life out or beyond Nature, which embraces the solid
universe to the remotest point in space.’

Concluding with this flourish, Professor Mapleleafe dropped down into
commonplace, wrung the visitor’s hand, and wished him a very good-day.

‘How do you feel, Eustasia?’ he continued with some anxiety, addressing
his sister. ‘Do you feel as if the atmosphere this afternoon was
properly conditioned?’

‘Yes, Salem, I think so.’

The Professor looked at his watch, and simultaneously there came a
loud rapping at the door. Presently three persons entered, a tall,
powerful-looking man, who was introduced as Doctor Kendall, and two
elderly gentlemen; then a minute later, a little gray-haired man, the
well-known Sir James Beaton, a famous physician of Edinburgh. The party
was completed by the landlady of the house, who came up dressed in black
silk, and wearing a widow’s cap.

‘Now, then, ladies and gentlemen,’ said the little Professor glibly, ‘we
shall, with your permission, begin in the usual manner, by darkening the
chamber and forming an ordinary circle. I warn you, however, that this
is trivial, and in the manner of professional mediums. As the séance
advances and the power deepens, we shall doubtless be lifted to higher
ground.’

So saying he drew the heavy curtains of the window, leaving the room in
semi-darkness. Then the party sat down around a small circular table,
and touched hands; Bradley sitting opposite Eustasia, who had Dr.
Kendall on her right and Sir James Beaton on her left. The usual
manifestations followed. The table rose bodily into the air, bells were
rung, tiny sparkles of light flashed about the room.

This lasted about a quarter of an hour, at the end of which time
Mapleleafe broke the circle, and drawing back a curtain, admitted some
light into the room. It was then discovered that Eustasia, sitting in
her place, with her hands resting upon the table, was in a state of
mesmeric trance; and ghastly and sibylline indeed she looked, with her
great eyes wide open, her golden hair fallen on her shoulders, her face
shining as if mysteriously anointed.

‘Eustasia!’ said the Professor softly.

The girl remained motionless, and did not seem to hear.

‘Eustasia!’ he repeated.

This time her lips moved, and a voice, that seemed shriller and clearer
than her own, replied:--

‘Eustasia is not here. I am Sira.’

‘Who is Sira?’

‘A spirit of the third magnitude, from the region of the moon.’

A titter ran round the company, and Sir James Beaton essayed a feeble
joke.

‘A lunar spirit--we shall not, I hope, be _de lunatico inquirendo_.’

‘Hush, sir!’ cried the Professor; then he continued, addressing the
medium his sister, ‘Let me know if the conditions are perfect or
imperfect?’

‘I cannot tell,’ was the reply.

‘Do you see anything, Sira?’

‘I see faint forms floating on the sunbeam. They come and go, they
change and fade. One is like a child, with its hand full of flowers.
They are lilies--O, I can see no more. I am blind. There is too much
light.’

The Professor drew the curtain, darkening the chamber. He then sat down
in his place at the table, and requested all present to touch hands once
more. So far, Bradley had looked on with impatience, not unmingled with
disgust. What he saw and heard was exactly what he had heard described a
hundred times.

With the darkening of the room, the manifestations recommenced. The
table moved about like a thing possessed, the very floor seemed to
tremble and upheave, the bells rang, the lights flashed.

Then all at once Bradley became aware of a strange sound, as if the
whole room were full of life.

‘Keep still!’ said the Professor. ‘Do not break the chain. Wait!’

A long silence followed; then the strange sound was heard again.

‘Are you there, my friend?’ asked the Professor.

There was no reply.

‘Are the conditions right?’

He was answered by a cry from the medium, so wild and strange that all
present were startled and awed.

‘See! see!’

‘What is it Sira?’ demanded the Professor.

‘Shapes like angels, carrying one that looks like a corpse. They are
singing--do you not hear them? Now they are touching me--they are
passing their hands over my hair. I see my mother; she is weeping and
bending over me. Mother! mother!’

Simultaneously, Bradley himself appeared conscious of glimpses like
human faces flashing and fading. In spite of his scepticism, a deep
dread, which was shared more or less by all present, fell upon him. Then
all at once he became aware of something like a living form, clad
in robes of dazzling whiteness, passing by him. An icy cold hand was
pressed to his forehead, leaving a clammy damp like dew.

‘I see a shape of some kind,’ he cried. ‘Does anyone else perceive it?’

‘Yes! yes! yes!’ came from several voices.

‘It is the spirit of a woman,’ murmured the medium.

‘Do you know her?’ added the Professor.

‘No; she belongs to the living world, not to the dead. I see far away,
somewhere on this planet, a beautiful lady lying asleep; she seems full
of sorrow, her pillow is wet with tears. This is the lady’s spirit,
brought hither by the magnetic influence of one she loves.’

‘Can you describe her to us more closely?’

‘Yes. She has dark hair, and splendid dark eyes; she is tall and lovely.
The lady and the spirit are alike, the counterpart of each other.’

Once more Bradley was conscious of the white form standing near him; he
reached out his hands to touch it, but it immediately vanished.

At the same moment he felt a touch like breath upon his face, and heard
a soft musical voice murmuring in his ear--

‘Ambrose! beloved!’

He started in wonder, for the voice seemed that of Alma Craik.

‘Be good enough not to break the chain!’ said the landlady, who occupied
the chair at his side.

Trembling violently, he returned his hands to their place, touching
those of his immediate neighbours on either side. The instant he did so,
he heard the voice again, and felt the touch like breath.

‘Ambrose, do you know me?’

‘Who is speaking?’ he demanded.

A hand soft as velvet and cold as ice was passed over his hair.

‘It is I, dearest!’ said the voice. ‘It is _Alma!_’

‘What brings you here?’ he murmured, almost inaudibly.

‘I knew you were in sorrow;--I came to bring you comfort, and to assure
you of my affection.’

The words were spoken in a low, just audible voice, close to his
ear, and it is doubtful if they were heard by any other member of the
company. In the meantime the more commonplace manifestations still
continued; the room was full of strange sounds, bells ringing, knocking,
shuffling of invisible feet.

Bradley was startled beyond measure. Either her supernatural presence
was close by him, or he was the victim of some cruel trick. Before he
could speak again, he felt the pressure of cold lips on his forehead,
and the same strange voice murmuring farewell.

Wild with excitement, not unmingled with suspicion, he again broke the
chain and sprang to his feet. There was a sharp cry from the medium,
as he sprang to the window and drew back the curtain, letting in the
daylight. But the act discovered nothing. All the members of the circle,
save himself, were sitting in their places. Eustasia, the medium, was
calmly leaning back in her chair. In a moment, however, she started,
put her hand quickly to her forehead as if in pain, and seemed to emerge
from her trance.

‘Salem,’ she cried in her own natural voice, ‘has anything happened?’

‘Mr. Bradley has broken the conditions, that’s all,’ returned the
Professor, with an air of offended dignity. ‘I do protest, ladies and
gentlemen, against that interruption. It has brought a most interesting
seance to a violent close.’

There was a general murmur from the company, and dissatisfied glances
were cast at the offender.

‘I am very sorry,’ said the clergyman. ‘I yielded to an irresistible
influence.’

‘The spirits won’t be trifled with, sir,’ cried Mapleleafe.

‘Certainly not,’ said one of the elderly gentlemen. ‘Solemn mysteries
like these should be approached in a fair and a--hum--a respectful
spirit. For my own part, I am quite satisfied with what I have seen. It
convinces me of--hum--the reality of these phenomena.’

The other elderly gentleman concurred. Dr. Kendall and Sir James, who
had been comparing notes, said that they would reserve their final
judgment until they had been present at another seance. In the mean time
they would go so far as to say that what they had witnessed was very
extraordinary indeed.

‘How are you now, Eustasia?’ said the Professor, addressing his sister.

‘My head aches. I feel as if I had been standing for hours in a burning
sun. When you called me back I was dreaming so strangely. I thought I
was in some celestial place, walking.

Bradley looked at the speaker’s face. It looked full of elfin or
witch-like rather than angelic light. Their eyes met, and Eustasia gave
a curious smile.

‘Will you come again, Mr. Bradley?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps; that is to say, if you will permit me.’

‘I do think, sir,’ interrupted the Professor, ‘that you have given
offence to the celestial intelligences, and I am not inclined to admit
you to our circle again.’

Several voices murmured approval.

‘You are wrong, brother,’ cried Eustasia, ‘you are quite wrong.’

‘What do you mean, Eustasia?’

‘I mean that Mr. Bradley is a medium himself, and a particular favourite
with spirits of the first order.’

The Professor seemed to reflect.

‘Well, if that’s so (and _you_ ought to know), it’s another matter. But
he’ll have to promise not to break the conditions. It ain’t fair to the
spirits; it ain’t fair to his fellow-inquirers.’

One by one the company departed, but Bradley still lingered, as if he
had something still to hear or say. At last, when the last visitor had
gone, and the landlady had grimly stalked away to continue her duties in
the basement of the house, he found himself alone with the brother and
sister.

He stood hesitating, hat in hand.

‘May I ask you a few questions?’ he said, addressing Eustasia.

‘Why, certainly,’ she replied.

‘While you were in the state of trance did you see or hear anything that
took place in this room?’’

Eustasia shook her head.

‘Do you know anything whatever of my private life?’

‘I guess not, except what I’ve read in the papers.’

‘Do you know a lady named Craik, who is one of the members of my
congregation?’

The answer came in another shake of the head, and a blank look
expressing entire ignorance. Either Eustasia knew nothing whatever,
or she was a most accomplished actress. Puzzled and amazed, yet still
suspecting fraud of some kind, Bradley took his leave.




CHAPTER XXV--A CATASTROPHE


                   ‘After life’s fitful fever, she sleeps well!’

The few days following the one on which the spiritualistic _séance_ was
held were passed by Bradley in a sort of dream. The more he thought
of what he had heard and seen, the more puzzled he became. At times he
seemed half inclined to believe in supernatural collaboration, then he
flouted his belief and laughed contemptuously at himself. Of course it
was all imposture, and he had been a dupe.

Then he thought of Eustasia, and the interest which she had at first
aroused in him rapidly changed to indignation and contempt.

Very soon these people ceased to occupy his thoughts at all; so
self-absorbed was he, indeed, in his own trouble that he forgot them as
completely as if they had never been. After all they were but shadows
which had flitted across his path and faded. Had he been left to himself
he would assuredly never have summoned them up again.

But he was evidently too valuable a convert to be let go in that way.
One morning he received the following note, written on delicate paper in
the most fairylike of fragile hands:

‘My dear Mr. Bradley,--We hold a _séance_ to-morrow night at six, and
hope you’ll come; at least, _I_ do! Salem don’t particularly want you,
since you broke the conditions, and he regards you as a disturbing
influence. I _know better_: the spirits like you, and I feel that with
you I could do great things; so I hope you’ll be here.

‘Eustasia Mapleleafe.’

Bradley read the letter through twice, then he gazed at it for a time
in trembling hesitation. Should he go? Why not? Suppose the people were
humbugs, were they worse than dozens of others he had met? and they had
at least the merit of bringing back to him the presence of the one being
who was all in all to him. His hesitation lasted only for a moment--the
repulsion came. He threw the letter aside.

À few days later a much more significant incident occurred. As Bradley
was leaving his house one morning he came face to face with a veiled
woman who stood before his door. He was about to pass: the lady laid a
retaining hand upon his arm and raised her veil.

It was Eustasia.

‘Guess you’re surprised to see me,’ she said, noticing his start;
‘suppose I may come in, though, now I’m here?’

Bradley pushed open the door, and led the way to his study. Eustasia
followed him; having reached the room, she sat down and eyed him
wistfully.

‘Did you get my letter?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t answer it?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

Bradley hesitated.

‘Do you want me to tell you?’ he said.

‘Why, certainly--else why do I ask you? but I see you don’t wish to tell
me. Why?’

‘Because I dislike giving unnecessary pain.’

‘Ah! in other words you believe me to be a humbug, but you haven’t the
cruelty to say so. Well, that don’t trouble me. _Prove_ me to be one,
and you may call me one, but give me a fair trial first.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Come to some more of our _séances_, will you? _do_ say you’ll come!’

She laid her hand gently upon his arm, and fixed her eyes almost
entreatingly upon him. He stared at her like one fascinated, then shrank
before her glance.

‘Why do you wish me to come?’ he said.

‘You know my thoughts and feelings on this subject. You and I are cast
in different moulds; we must go different ways.’

She smiled sadly.

‘The spirits will it otherwise,’ she said; while under her breath she
added, ‘and so do I.’

But he was in no mood to yield that day. As soon as Eustasia saw this
she rose to go. When her thin hand lay in his, she said softly:

‘Mr. Bradley, if ever you are in trouble come to _us_; you will find it
is not all humbug _then!_’

Eustasia returned home full of hope. ‘He will come,’ she said; ‘yes, he
will assuredly come.’ But days passed, and he neither came nor sent; at
last, growing impatient, she called again at his house; then she learned
that he had left London.

‘He has flown from me,’ she thought; ‘he feels my influence, and fears
it.’

But in this Eustasia was quite wrong. He was flying not from her but
from himself. The wretched life of self-reproach and misery which he was
compelled to lead was crushing him down so utterly that unless he made
some effort he would sink and sicken. Die? Well, after all, that would
not have been so hard; but the thought of leaving Alma was more than he
could bear. He must live for the sake of the days which might yet be in
store for them both.

He needed change, however, and he sought it for a few days on foreign
soil. He went over one morning to Boulogne, took rooms in the Hôtel de
Paris, and became one of the swarm of tourists which was there filling
the place.

The bathing season was then at its height, and people were all too
busy to notice him; he walked about like one in a dream, watching the
pleasure-seekers, but pondering for ever on the old theme.

After all it was well for him that he had left England, he thought--the
busy garrulous life of this place came as a relief after the dreary
monotony of town. In the evenings he strolled out to the concerts or
open-air dances, and observed the fisher girls, with their lovers moving
about in the gaslight; while in the mornings he strolled about the sand
watching with listless amusement the bathers who crowded down to the
water’s edge like bees in swarming time.

One morning, feeling more sick at heart than usual, he issued from the
hotel and bent his steps towards the strand. On that day the scene was
unusually animated. Flocks of fantastically-dressed children amused
themselves by making houses in the sand, while their _bonnes_ watched
over them, and their mammas, clad in equally fantastic costumes,
besieged the bathing-machines. Bradley walked for a time on the sands
watching the variegated crowd; it was amusing and distracting, and he
was about to look around for a quiet spot in which he could spend an
hour or so, when he was suddenly startled by an apparition.

A party of three were making their way towards the bathing-machines, and
were even then within a few yards of him. One was a child dressed in a
showy costume of serge, with long curls falling upon his shoulders; on
one side of him was a French _bonne_, on the other a lady extravagantly
attired in the most gorgeous of sea-side costumes. Her cheeks and lips
were painted a bright red, but her skin was white as alabaster. She
was laughing heartily at something which the little boy had said, when
suddenly her eyes fell upon Bradley, who stood now within two yards of
her.

It was his wife.

She did not pause nor shrink, but she ceased laughing, and a peculiar
look of thinly veiled contempt passed over her face as she walked on.

‘_Maman_,’ said the child in French, ‘who is that man, and why did he
stare so at you?’

The lady shrugged her shoulders, and laughed again.

‘He stared because he had nothing better to look at, I suppose, _chéri_;
but come, I shall miss my bath; you had best stay here with Augustine,
and make sand-hills till I rejoin you. _Au revoir_, Bébé.’

She left the child with the nurse, hastened on and entered one of the
bathing-machines, which was immediately drawn down into the sea.

Bradley still stood where she had left him, and his eyes remained fixed
upon the machine which held the woman whose very presence poisoned the
air he breathed. All his old feelings of repulsion returned tenfold; the
very sight of the woman seemed to degrade and drag him down.

As he stood there the door of the machine opened, and she came forth
again. This time she was the wonder of all. Her shapely limbs were
partly naked, and her body was covered with a quaintly cut bathing-dress
of red. She called out some instructions to her nurse; then she walked
down and entered the sea.

Bradley turned and walked away. He passed up the strand and sat down
listlessly on one of the seats on the terrace facing the water. He took
out Alma’s last letter, and read it through, and the bitterness of his
soul increased tenfold.

When would his misery end? he thought. Why did not death come and claim
his own, and leave him free? Wherever he went his existence was poisoned
by this miserable woman.

‘So it must ever be,’ he said bitterly. ‘I must leave this place, for
the very sight of her almost drives me mad.’

He rose and was about to move away, when he became conscious, for the
first time, that something unusual was taking place. He heard sounds of
crying and moaning, and everybody seemed to be rushing excitedly towards
the sand. What it was all about Bradley could not understand, for he
could see nothing. He stood and watched; every moment the cries grew
louder, and the crowd upon the sands increased. He seized upon a passing
Frenchman, and asked what the commotion meant.

‘_Ras de marée, monsieur!_’ rapidly explained the man as he rushed
onward.

Thoroughly mystified now, Bradley resolved to discover by personal
inspection what it all meant. Leaving the terrace he leapt upon the
shore, and gained the waiting crowd upon the sand. To get an explanation
from anyone here seemed to be impossible, for every individual member of
the crowd seemed to have gone crazy. The women threw up their bands and
moaned, the children screamed, while the men rushed half wildly about
the sands.

Bradley touched the arm of a passing Englishman.

‘What is all this panic about?’ he said.

‘The _ras de marée!_’ r Yes, but what is the ras de marée?’

‘Don’t you know? It is a sudden rising of the tide; it comes only once
in three years. It has surprised the bathers, many of whom are drowning.
See, several machines have gone to pieces, and the others are floating
like driftwood! Yonder are two boats out picking up the people, but if
the waves continue to rise like this they will never save them all. One
woman from that boat has fainted; no, good heavens, she is dead.’

The scene now became one of intense excitement. The water, rising higher
and higher, was breaking now into waves of foam; most of the machines
were dashed about like corks upon the ocean, their frightened occupants
giving forth the most fearful shrieks and cries. Suddenly there was a
cry for the lifeboat; immediately after it dashed down the sand, drawn
by two horses, and was launched out upon the sea; while Bradley and
others occupied themselves in attending to those who were laid fainting
upon the shore.

But the boats, rapidly as they went to work, proved insufficient to save
the mass of frightened humanity still struggling with the waves. The
screams and cries became heartrending as one after another sank to rise
no more. Suddenly there was another rush.

‘Leave the women to attend to the rescued,’ cried several voices. ‘Let
the men swim out to the rescue of those who are exhausted in the sea.’

There was a rush to the water; among the first was Bradley, who,
throwing off his coat, plunged boldly into the water. Many of those who
followed him were soon overcome by the force of the waves and driven
back to shore; but Bradley was a powerful swimmer, and went on.

He made straight for a figure which, seemingly overlooked by everyone
else, was drifting rapidly out to sea. On coming nearer he saw, by the
long black hair, which floated around her on the water, that the figure
was that of a woman. How she supported herself Bradley could not see;
she was neither swimming nor floating; her back was towards him, and she
might have fainted, for she made no sound.

On coming nearer he saw that she was supporting herself by means of a
plank, part of the _debris_ which had drifted from the broken machines.
By this time he was quite near to her;--she turned her face towards him,
and he almost cried out in pain.

He recognised his wife!

Yes, there she was, helpless and almost fainting--her eyes were heavy,
her lips blue; and he seemed to be looking straight into the face of
death. Bradley paused, and the two gazed into each other’s eyes. He saw
that her strength was going, but he made no attempt to put out a hand
to save her. He thought of the past, of the curse this woman had been
to him; and he knew that by merely doing nothing she would be taken from
him.

Should he let her die? Why not? If he had not swum out she most
assuredly would have sunk and been heard of no more. Again he looked at
her and she looked at him: her eyes were almost closed now: having once
looked into his face she seemed to have resigned all hopes of rescue.

No, he could not save her--the temptation was too great. He turned and
swam in the direction of another figure which was floating helplessly
upon the waves. He had only taken three strokes when a violent revulsion
of feeling came; with a terrible cry he turned again to the spot where
he had left the fainting and drowning woman. But she was not there--the
plank was floating upon the water--that was all.

Bradley dived, and reappeared holding the woman in his arms. Then he
struck out with her to the shore.

It was a matter of some difficulty to get there, for she lay like lead
in his hold. Having reached the shore, he carried her up the beach, and
placed her upon the sand.

Then he looked to see if she was conscious.

Yes, she still breathed;--he gave her some brandy, and did all in his
power to restore her to life. After a while she opened her eyes, and
looked into Bradley’s face.

‘Ah, it is _you!_ she murmured faintly, then, with a long-drawn sigh,
she sank back, dead!

Still dripping from his encounter with the sea, his face as white as the
dead face before him, Bradley stood like one turned to stone. Suddenly
he was aroused by a heartrending shriek. The little boy whom he had
seen with the dead woman broke from the bauds of his nurse, and sobbing
violently threw himself upon the dead body.

‘_Maman! maman!_’ he moaned.

The helpless cries of the child forced upon Bradley the necessity for
immediate action. Having learned from the nurse the address of the
house where ‘Mrs. Montmorency’ was staying, he had the body put upon a
stretcher and conveyed there. He himself walked beside it, and the child
followed, screaming and crying, in his nurse’s arms.

Having reached the house, the body was taken into a room to be properly
dressed, while Bradley tried every means in his power to console the
child! After a while he was told that all was done, and he went into the
chamber of death.




CHAPTER XXVI--THE LAST LOOK.


               Dead woman, shrouded white as snow

                   While Death the shade broods darkly nigh,

               Place thy cold hand in mine, and so--

                   ‘Good-bye.’

               No prayer or blessing hum of breath

                   Came from thy lips as thou didst die;

               I loath’d thee living, but in death--

                   ‘Good-bye!’

               So close together after all,

                   After long strife, stand thou and I,

               I bless thee, while I faintly call--

                   ‘Good-bye!’

               Good-bye the past and all its pain,

                   Kissing thy poor dead hand, I cry--

               Again, again, and yet again--

                   ‘Good-bye!’--_The Exile: a Poem._

It would have been difficult to analyse accurately the emotions which
filled the bosom of Ambrose Bradley, as he stood and looked upon the
dead face of the woman who, according to the law of the land and the
sacrament of the Church, had justly claimed to be his wife. He could not
conceal from himself that the knowledge of her death brought relief to
him and even joy; but mingled with that relief were other feelings less
reassuring--pity, remorse even, and a strange sense of humiliation.

He had never really loved the woman, and her conduct, previous to their
long separation, had been such as to kill all sympathy in the heart of
a less sensitive man, while what might be termed her unexpected
resurrection had roused in him a bitterness and a loathing beyond
expression. Yet now that the last word was said, the last atonement
made, now that he beheld the eyes that would never open again, and the
lips that would never again utter speech or sound, his soul was stirred
to infinite compassion.

After all, he thought, the blame had not been hers that they had been so
ill-suited to each other, and afterwards, when they met in after years,
she had not wilfully sought to destroy his peace. It had all been a
cruel fatality, from the first: another proof of the pitiless laws which
govern human nature, and make men and women suffer as sorely for errors
of ignorance and inexperience as for crimes of knowledge.

He knelt by the bedside, and taking her cold hand kissed it solemnly.
Peace was between them, he thought, then and for ever. _She_ too, with
all her faults and all her follies, had been a fellow-pilgrim by his
side towards the great bourne whence no pilgrim returns, and she had
reached it first. He remembered now, not the woman who had flaunted her
shamelessness before his eyes, but the pretty girl, almost a child, whom
he had first known and fancied that he loved. In the intensity of his
compassion and self-reproach he even exaggerated the tenderness he
had once felt for her; the ignoble episode of their first intercourse
catching a sad brightness reflected from the heavens of death. And in
this mood, penitent and pitying, he prayed that God might forgive them
both.

When he descended from the room, his eyes were red with tears. He found
the little boy sobbing wildly in the room below, attended by the kindly
Frenchwoman who kept the house. He tried to soothe him, but found it
impossible, his grief being most painful to witness, and violent in the
extreme.

‘Ah, monsieur, it is indeed a calamity!’ cried the woman. ‘Madame was so
good a mother, devoted to her child. But God is good--the little one has
a father still!’

Bradley understood the meaning of her words, but did not attempt to
undeceive her. His heart was welling over with tenderness towards the
pretty orphan, and he was thinking too of his own harsh judgments on the
dead, who, it was clear, had possessed many redeeming virtues, not the
least of them being her attachment to her boy.

‘You are right, madame,’ he replied, sadly, ‘and the little one shall
not lack fatherly love and care. Will you come with me for a few
moments? I wish to speak to you alone.’

He placed his hand tenderly on the child’s head, and again tried to
soothe him, but he shrank away with petulant screams and cries.
Walking to the front entrance he waited till he was joined there by the
landlady, and they stood talking in the open air.

‘How long had she been here, madame?’ he asked.

‘For a month, monsieur,’ was the reply. ‘She came late in the season
for the baths, with her _bonne_ and the little boy, and took my rooms.
Pardon, but I did not know madame had a husband living, and so near.’

‘We have been separated for many years. I came to Boulogne yesterday
quite by accident, not dreaming the lady was here. Can you tell me if
she has friends in Boulogne?’

‘I do not think so, monsieur. She lived quite alone, seeing no one, and
her only thought and care was for the little boy. She was a proud lady,
very rich and proud; nothing was too good for her, or for the child;
she lived, as the saying is, _en princesse_. But no, she had no friends!
Doubtless, being an English lady, though she spoke and looked like a
_compatriote_, all her friends were in her own land.’

‘Just so,’ returned Bradley, turning his head away to hide his tears;
for he thought to himself, ‘Poor Mary! After all, she was desolate like
myself! How pitiful that I, of all men, should close her eyes and follow
her to her last repose!’

‘Pardon, monsieur,’ said the woman, ‘but madame, perhaps, was not of our
Church? She was, no doubt, Protestant?’

It was a simple question, but simple as it was Bradley was startled by
it. He knew about as much of his dead wife’s professed belief as of the
source whence she had drawn her subsistence. But he replied:

‘Yes, certainly. Protestant, of course.’

‘Then monsieur will speak to the English clergyman, who dwells there on
the hill’ (here she pointed townward), ‘close to the English church. He
is a good man, Monsieur Robertson, and monsieur will find----’

‘I will speak to him,’ interrupted Bradley. ‘But I myself am an English
clergyman, and shall doubtless perform the last offices, when the time
comes.’

The woman looked at him in some astonishment, for his presence was the
reverse of clerical, and his struggle in and with the sea had left his
attire in most admired disorder, but she remembered the eccentricities of
the nation to which he belonged, and her wonder abated. After giving the
woman a few more general instructions, Bradley walked slowly and
thoughtfully to his hotel.

More than once already his thoughts had turned towards Alma, but he had
checked such thoughts and crushed them down in the presence of death;
left to himself, however, he could not conquer them, nor restrain a
certain feeling of satisfaction in his newly-found freedom. He would
write to Alma, as in duty bound, at once, and tell her of all that had
happened. And then? It was too late, perhaps, to make full amends, to
expect full forgiveness; but it was his duty to give to her in the sight
of the world the name he had once given to her secretly and in vain.

But the man’s troubled spirit, sensitive to a degree, shrank from the
idea of building up any new happiness on the grave of the poor woman
whose corpse he had just quitted. Although he was now a free man
legally, he still felt morally bound and fettered. All his wish and
prayer was to atone for the evil he had brought on the one being he
reverenced and loved. He did not dare, at least as yet, to think of
uniting his unworthy life with a life so infinitely more beautiful and
pure.

Yes, he would write to her. The question was, where his letter would
find her, and how soon?

When he had last heard from her she was at Milan, but that was several
weeks ago; and since then, though he had written twice, there had been
no response. She was possibly travelling farther southward; in all
possibility, to Home.

The next few days passed drearily enough. An examination of some letters
recently received by the deceased discovered two facts--first, that she
had a sister, living in Oxford, with whom she corresponded; and, second,
that her means of subsistence came quarterly from a firm of solicitors
in Bedford Bow, London. Next day the sister arrived by steamboat,
accompanied by her husband, a small tradesman. Bradley interviewed
the pair, and found them decent people, well acquainted with their
relative’s real position. The same day he received a communication from
the solicitors, notifying that the annuity enjoyed by ‘Mrs. Montmorency’
lapsed with her decease, but that a large sum of money had been settled
by the late Lord Ombermere upon the child, the interest of the sum to
be used for his maintenance and education, and the gross amount with
additions and under certain reservations, to be at his disposal on
attaining his majority.

On seeking an interview with the Rev. Mr. Robertson, the minister of the
English Church, Bradley soon found that his reputation had preceded him.

‘Do I address the famous Mr. Bradley, who some time ago seceded from the
English Church?’ asked the minister, a pale, elderly, clean-shaven man,
bearing no little resemblance to a Roman Catholic priest.

Bradley nodded, and at once saw the not too cordial manner of the other
sink to freezing point.

‘The unfortunate lady was your wife?’

‘Yes; but we had been separated for many years.’

‘Ah, indeed!’ sighed the clergyman with a long-drawn sigh, a furtive
glance of repulsion, and an inward exclamation of ‘no wonder!’

‘Although we lived apart, and although, to be frank, there was great
misunderstanding between us, all that is over for ever, you understand.
It is in a spirit of the greatest tenderness and compassion that I
wish to conduct the funeral service--to which I presume there is no
objection.’

Mr. Robertson started in amazement, as if a bomb had exploded under his
feet.

‘To conduct the funeral service! But you have seceded from the Church of
England.’

‘In a sense, yes; but I have never done so formally. I am still an
English clergyman.’

‘I could never consent to such a thing,’ cried the other, indignantly.
‘I should look upon it as profanity. Your published opinions are known
to me, sir; they have shocked me inexpressibly; and not only in my
opinion, but in that of my spiritual superiors, they are utterly
unworthy of one calling himself a Christian.’

‘Then you refuse me permission to officiate?’

‘Most emphatically. More than that, I shall require some assurance that
the lady did not share your heresies, before I will suffer the interment
to take place in the precincts of my church.’

‘Is not my assurance sufficient?’

‘No, sir, it is _not!_’ exclaimed the clergyman with scornful dignity.
‘I do not wish to say anything offensive, but, speaking as a Christian
and a pastor of the English Church, I can attach no weight whatever to
the assurances of one who is, in the public estimation, nothing better
than an avowed infidel. Good morning!’

So saying, with a last withering look, the clergyman turned on his heel
and walked away.

Seeing that remonstrance was useless, and might even cause public
scandal, Bradley forthwith abandoned his design; but at his suggestion
his wife’s sister saw the incumbent, and succeeded in convincing him
that Mrs. Montmorency had died in the true faith. The result of Mr.
Robertson’s pious indignation was soon apparent. The sister and her
husband, who had hitherto treated Bradley with marked respect, now
regarded him with sullen dislike and suspicion. They could not prevent
him, however, from following as chief mourner, when the day of the
funeral came.

That funeral was a dismal enough experience for Ambrose Bradley.
Never before had he felt so keenly the vanity of his own creed and the
isolation of his own opinions, as when he stood by the graveside and
listened to the last solemn words of the English burial service. He
seemed like a black shadow in the sacred place. The words of promise
and resurrection had little meaning for one who had come to regard
the promise as only beautiful ‘poetry,’ and the resurrection as only a
poet’s dream. And though the sense of his own sin lay on his heart like
lead, he saw no benign Presence blessing the miserable woman who had
departed, upraising her on wings of gladness; all he perceived was
Death’s infinite desolation, and the blackness of that open grave.




CHAPTER XXVII--THE SIREN.


                   Weave a circle round him thrice....

                   For he on honey-dew hath fed,

                   And drunk the milk of Paradise.--_Kubla Khan_.

Bradley’s first impulse, on quitting Boulogne, was to hasten at once
on to Italy, seek out Alma, and tell her all that had occurred; but
that impulse was no sooner felt than it was conquered. The man had a
quickening conscience left, and he could not have stood just then before
the woman he loved without the bitterest pain and humiliation. No, he
would write to her, he would break the news gently by letter, not by
word of mouth; and afterwards, perhaps, when his sense of spiritual
agony had somewhat worn away, he would go to her and throw himself upon
her tender mercy. So instead of flying on to Italy he returned by the
mail to London, and thence wrote at length to Alma, giving her full
details of his wife’s death.

By this time the man was so broken in spirit and so changed in body,
that even his worst enemies might have pitied him. The trouble of the
last few months had stript him of all his intellectual pride, and left
him supremely sad.

But now, as ever, the mind of the man, though its light was clouded,
turned in the direction of celestial or supermundane things. Readers who
are differently constituted, and who regard such speculations as trivial
or irrelevant, will doubtless have some difficulty in comprehending an
individual who, through all vicissitudes of moral experience, invariably
returned to the one set purpose of spiritual inquiry. To him one thing
was paramount, even over all his own sorrows--the solution of the great
problem of human life and immortality. This was his haunting idea, his
monomania, so to speak. Just as a physiologist would examine his
own blood under the microscope, just as a scientific inquirer would
sacrifice his own life and happiness for the verification of a theory,
so would Bradley ask himself, even when on the rack of moral torment,
How far does this suffering help me to a solution of the mystery of
life?

True, for a time he had been indifferent, even callous, drifting, on the
vague current of agnosticism, he knew not whither; but that did not
last for long: the very constitution of Bradley saved him from that
indifferentness which is the chronic disease of so many modern men.

Infinitely tender of heart, he had been moved to the depths by his
recent experience; he had felt, as all of us at some time feel, the
sanctifying and purifying power of Death. A mean man would have exulted
in the new freedom Death had brought; Bradley, on the other hand, stood
stupefied and aghast at his own liberation. On a point of conscience
he could have fought with, and perhaps conquered, all the prejudices
of society; but when his very conscience turned against him he was
paralysed with doubt, wonder, and despair.

He returned to London, and there awaited Alma’s answer. One day, urged
by a sudden impulse, he bent his steps towards the mysterious house in
Bayswater, and found Eustasia Mapleleafe sitting alone. Never had the
little lady looked so strange and _spirituelle._ Her elfin-like face
looked pale and worn, and her great wistful eyes were surrounded with
dark melancholy rings. But she looked up as he entered, with her old
smile.

‘I knew you would come,’ she cried. ‘I was thinking of you, and I felt
the celestial agencies were going to bring us together. And I’m real
glad to see you before we go away.’

‘You are leaving London?’ asked Bradley, as he seated himself close to
her.

‘Yes. Salem talks of going back home before winter sets in and the fogs
begin. I don’t seem able to breathe right in this air. If I stopped here
long, I think I should die.’

As she spoke, she passed her thin transparent hand across her forehead,
with a curious gesture of pain. As Bradley looked at her steadfastly she
averted his gaze, and a faint hectic flush came into her cheeks.

‘Guess you think it don’t matter much,’ she continued with the sharp
nervous laugh peculiar to her, ‘whether I live or die. Well, Mr.
Bradley, I suppose you’re right, and I’m sure I don’t care much how soon
I go.’

‘You are very young to talk like that,’ said Bradley gently; ‘but
perhaps I misunderstand you, and you mean that you would gladly exchange
this life for freer activity and larger happiness in another?’

Eustasia laughed again, but this time she looked full into her
questioner’s eyes.

‘I don’t know about that,’ she replied. ‘What I mean is that I am
downright tired, and should just like a good long spell of sleep.’ ‘But
surely, if your belief is true, you look for something more than that?’

‘I don’t think I do. You mean I want to join the spirits, and go
wandering about from one planet to another, or coming down to earth and
making people uncomfortable? That seems a _stupid_ sort of life, doesn’t
it?--about as stupid as this one? I’d rather tuck my head under my wing,
like a little bird, and go to sleep for ever!’

Bradley opened his eyes, amazed and a little disconcerted by the lady’s
candour. Before he could make any reply she continued, in a low voice:

‘You see, I’ve got no one in the world to care for me, except Salem,
my brother. He’s good to me, he is, but that doesn’t make up for
everything. I don’t feel like a girl, but like an old woman. I’d rather
be one of those foolish creatures you meet everywhere, who think of
nothing but millinery and flirtation, than what I am. That’s all the
good the spirits have done me, to spoil my good looks and make me old
before my time. I hate them sometimes; I hate myself for listening to
them, and I say what I said before--that if I’m to live on as _they_ do,
and go on in the same curious way, I’d sooner die!’

‘I wish you would be quite honest with me,’ said Bradley, after a brief
pause. ‘I see you are ill, and I am sure you are unhappy. Suppose much
of your illness, and all your unhappiness, came from your acquiescence
in a scheme of folly and self-deception? You already know my opinion on
these matters to which you allude. If I may speak quite frankly, I
have always suspected you and your brother--but your brother more than
you--of a conspiracy to deceive the public; and if I were not otherwise
interested in you, if I did not feel for you the utmost sympathy and
compassion, I should pass the matter by without a word. As it is, I
would give a great deal if I could penetrate into the true motives of
your conduct, and ascertain how far you are self-deluded.’

‘It’s no use,’ answered Eustasia, shaking her head sadly. ‘I can’t
explain it all even to myself; impossible to explain to you.’

‘But do you seriously and verily believe in the truth of these so-called
spiritual manifestations?’

‘Guess I do,’ returned the lady, with a decided nod.

‘You believe in them, even while you admit their stupidity, their
absurdity?’

‘If you ask me, I think life is a foolish business altogether. That’s
why I’d like to be done with it!’

‘But surely if spiritualism were an accepted fact, it would offer a
solution of all the mysterious phenomena of human existence? It would
demonstrate, at all events, that our experience does not cease with the
body, which limits its area so much.’

Eustasia sighed wearily, and folding her thin hands on her knee, looked
wearily at the fire, which flickered faintly in the grate. With all her
candour of speech, she still presented to her interlocutor an expression
of mysterious evasiveness. Nor was there any depth in her complaining
sorrow. It seemed rather petulant and shallow than really solemn and
profound.

‘I wish you wouldn’t talk about it,’ she said. ‘Talk to me about
yourself, Mr. Bradley. You’ve been in trouble, I know; _they_ told me.
I’ve liked you ever since I first saw you, and I wish I could give you
some help.’

Had Bradley been a different kind of man, he would scarcely have
misunderstood the look she gave him then, full as it was of passionate
admiration which she took no care to veil. Bending towards him, and
looking into his eyes, she placed her hand on his; and the warm touch
of the tremulous fingers went through him with a curious thrill. Nor did
she withdraw the hand as she continued:

‘I’ve only seen one man in the world like _you_. He’s dead, he is. But
you’re his image. I told Salem so the day I first saw you. Some folks
say that souls pass from one body into another, and I almost believe it
when I think of him and look at _you_.’

As she spoke, with tears in her eyes and a higher flush on her cheek,
there was a footstep in the room, and looking up she saw her brother,
who had entered unperceived. His appearance was fortunate, as it perhaps
saved her from some further indiscretions. Bradley, who had been too
absorbed in the thoughts awakened by her first question to notice the
peculiarity of her manner, held out his hand to the new-comer.

‘Glad to see you again,’ said the Professor. ‘I suppose Eustasia has
told you that we’re going back to the States? I calculate we haven’t
done much good by sailing over. The people of England are a whole age
behind the Americans, and won’t be ripe for our teaching till many a
year has passed.’

‘When do you leave London?’

‘In eight days. We’re going to take passage in the “Maria,” which sails
to-morrow week.’

‘Then you will give no more _séances?_ I am sorry, for I should have
liked to come again.’

Eustasia started, and looked eagerly at her brother.

‘Will you come _to-night?_’ she asked suddenly.

‘To-night!’ echoed Bradley. ‘Is a _séance_ to be held?’

‘No, no,’ interrupted Mapleleafe. ‘But yes,’ added Eustasia. ‘We shall
be alone, but that will be all the better. I should not like to leave
England without convincing Mr. Bradley that there is something in your
solar biology after all.’

‘You’ll waste your time, Eustasia,’ remarked the Professor drily. ‘You
know what the poet says?

                   A man convinced against his will

                   Is of the same opinion still.

And I guess you’ll never convert Mr. Bradley.’

‘I’ll try, at any rate,’ returned Eustasia, smiling; then turning to
the clergyman with an eager wistful look, she added, ‘You’ll come, won’t
you? To-night at seven.’

Bradley promised, and immediately afterwards took his leave. He had not
exaggerated in expressing his regret at the departure of the curious
pair; for since his strange experience at Boulogne he was intellectually
unstrung, and eager to receive spiritual impressions, even from
a quarter which he distrusted. He unconsciously felt, too, the
indescribable fascination which Eustasia, more than most women, knew how
to exert on highly organised persons of the opposite sex.

Left alone, the brother and sister looked at each other for some moments
in silence; then the Professor exclaimed half angrily:

‘You’ll kill yourself, Eustasia, that’s what _you’ll_ do! I’ve foreseen
it all along, just as I foresaw it when you first met Ulysses S.
Stedman. You’re clean gone on this man, and if I wasn’t ready to protect
you, Lord knows you’d make a fool of yourself again.’

Eustasia looked up in his face and laughed. It was curious to note her
change of look and manner; her face was still pale and elfin-like, but
her eyes were full of malicious light.

‘Never mind, Salem,’ she replied. ‘You just leave Mr. Bradley to me.’

‘He’s not worth spooning over, said Mapleleafe indignantly; ‘and let me
tell you, Eustasia, you’re not strong enough to go on like this. Think
of your state of health! Doctor Quin says you’ll break up if you don’t
take care!’

He paused, and looked at her in consternation. She was lying back in
the sofa with her thin arms joined behind her head, and ‘crooning’ to
herself, as was her frequent habit.

This time the words and tune were from a familiar play, which she had
seen represented at San Francisco.

               Black spirits and white,

                   Blue spirits and grey,

               Mingle, mingle, mingle,

                   You that mingle may!

‘I do believe you’re downright _mad!_’ exclaimed the little Professor.
‘Tell me the truth, Eustasia--do you love this man Bradley?’

Eustasia ceased singing, but remained in the same attitude.

‘I loved him who is dead,’ she replied, ‘and I love Mr. Bradley because
he is so like the other. If you give me time I will win him over; I will
make him love me.’

‘What nonsense you’re talking!’

‘Nonsense? It’s the truth!’ cried Eustasia, springing up and facing her
brother. ‘Why should I not love him? Why should he not love me? Am I to
spend all my life like a slave, with no one to care for me, no one to
give me a kind word? I won’t do it. I want to be free. I’m tired of
sitting at home all day alone, and playing the sibyl to the fools you
bring here at night. Lord knows I haven’t long to live; before I die I
want to draw in one good long breath of love and joy! Perhaps it will
kill me as you say--so much the better--I should like to die like that!’

‘Eustasia, will you listen to reason?’ exclaimed the distracted
Professor. ‘You’re following a will-o’-the-wisp, that’s what you are!
This man don’t care about any woman in the world but one, and you’re
wasting your precious time.’

‘I know my power, and you know it too, Salem. I’m going to bring him to
my feet.’

‘How, Eustasia?’

‘Wait, and you will see!’ answered the girl, with her low, nervous
laugh.

‘Think better of it!’ persisted her brother.

‘You promised me, after Ulysses S. Stedman died, to devote all your
life, strength, and thought to the beautiful cause of scientific
spiritualism. Nature has made you a living miracle, Eustasia! I
do admire to see one so gifted throwing herself away, just like a
schoolgirl, on the first good-looking man she meets!’

‘I hate spiritualism,’ was the reply. ‘What has it done for me? Broken
my heart, Salem, and wasted my life. I’ve dwelt too long with ghosts; I
want to feel my life as other women do. And I tell you I _will!_’

‘The poor Professor shook his head dubiously, but saw that there was no
more to be said--at any rate just then.

*****

At seven o’clock that evening Bradley returned to the house in
Bayswater, and found the brother and sister waiting for him.

Eustasia wore a loose-fitting robe of black velvet, cut low round the
bust, and without sleeves. Her neck and arms were beautifully though
delicately moulded, white and glistening as satin, and the small
serpent-like head, with its wonderfully brilliant eyes, was surmounted
by a circlet of pearls.

Bradley looked at her in surprise. Never before had she seemed so
weirdly pretty.

The Professor, on the other hand, despite his gnome-like brow, appeared
unusually ignoble and commonplace. He was ill at ease, too, and cast
distrustful glances from time to time at his sister, whose manner was
as brilliant as her appearance, and who seemed to have cast aside the
depression which she had shown during the early part of the day.

After some little desultory conversation, Bradley expressed his
impatience for the _séance_ to begin. The landlady of the house, herself
(as the reader is aware) an adept, was therefore summoned to give
the party, and due preparations made by drawing the window-blinds and
extinguishing the gas. Before the lights were quite put out, however,
the Professor addressed his sister.

‘Eustasia, you’re not well! Say the word, and I’m sure Mr. Bradley will
excuse you for to-night.’

The appeal was in vain, Eustasia persisting. The _séance_ began. The
Professor and Mrs. Piozzi Smith were _vis-à-vis_, while Eustasia, her
back towards the folding-doors communicating to the inner chamber, sat
opposite to Bradley.

The clergyman was far less master of himself than on the former
occasions. No sooner did he find himself in total darkness than his
heart began to beat with great muffled throbs, and nervous thrills ran
through his frame. Before there was the slightest intimation of any
supernatural presence, he seemed to see before him the dead face of his
wife, white and awful as he had beheld it in that darkened chamber at
Boulogne. Then the usual manifestations began; bells were rung, faint
lights flashed hither and thither, the table round which they were
seated rose in the air, mysterious hands were passed over Bradley’s
face. He tried to retain his self-possession, but found it impossible; a
sickening sense of horror and fearful anticipation overmastered him, so
that the clammy sweat stood upon his brow, and his body trembled like a
reed.

Presently the voice of the little Professor was heard saying:

‘Who is present? Will any of our dear friends make themselves known?’

There was a momentary pause. Then an answer came in the voice of
Eustasia, but deeper and less clear.

‘I am here.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Laura, a spirit of the winged planet Jupiter. I speak through the
bodily mouth of our dear sister, who is far away, walking with my
brethren by the lake of golden fire.’

‘Are you alone?’

‘N! others are present--I see them passing to and fro. One is bright and
beautiful. Her face is glorious, but she wears a raiment like a shroud.’

‘What does that betoken?’

‘It betokens that she has only just died.’

A shiver ran through Bradley’s frame. Could the dead indeed be present?
and if so, what dead? His thoughts flew back once more to that miserable
death-chamber by the sea. The next moment something like a cold hand
touched him, and alow voice murmured in his ear:

‘Ambrose! are you listening? It is I!’

‘Who speaks?’ he murmured under breath. ‘Alma! Do you know me?’

Was it possible? Doubtless lbs phantasy deceived him, but he seemed once
more to hear the very tones of her he loved.

‘Do not move!’ continued the voice. ‘Perhaps this is a last meeting for
a long time, for I am called away. It is your Alma’s spirit that speaks
to you; her body lies dead at Rome.’

A wild cry burst from Bradley’s lips, and he sank back in his chair,
paralysed and overpowered.

‘It is a cheat!’ he gasped. ‘It is no spirit that is speaking to me, but
a living woman.’

And he clutched in the direction of the voice, but touched only the
empty air.

‘If you break the conditions, I must depart!’ cried the voice faintly,
as if from a distant part of the room.

‘Shall I break up the _séance?_’ asked the Professor.

‘No!’ cried Bradley, again joining his hands with those of his
neighbours to complete the circle. ‘Go on! go on!’

‘Are our dear friends still present?’ demanded the Professor.

‘I am here,’ returned the voice of Eustasia. ‘I see the spirit of a
woman, weeping and wringing her hands; it is she that wears the shroud.
She speaks to me. She tells us that her earthly name was a word which
signifies holy.’

‘In God’s name,’ cried Bradley, ‘what does it mean? She of whom you
speak is not dead?--no, no!’

Again he felt the touch of a clammy hand, and again he heard the
mysterious voice.

‘Death is nothing; it is only a mystery--a change. The body is nothing;
the spirit is all-present and all-powerful. Keep quiet; and I will try
to materialise myself even more.’

He sat still in shivering expectation; then he felt a touch like breath
upon his forehead, and two lips, warm with life, were pressed close to
his, while at the same moment he felt what seemed a human bosom heaving
against his own. If this phenomenon was supernatural, it was certainly
very real; for the effect was of warm and living flesh. Certain now that
he was being imposed upon, Bradley determined to make certain by seizing
the substance of the apparition. He had scarcely, however, withdrawn his
arms from the circle, when the phenomenon ceased; there was a loud cry
from the others present; and on the gas being lit, Eustasia and the rest
were seen sitting quietly in their chairs, the former just recovering
from a state of trance.

‘I warned you, Eustasia,’ cried the Professor indignantly. ‘I knew
Mr. Bradley was not a fair inquirer, and would be certain to break the
conditions.’

‘It is an outrage,’ echoed the lady of the house. ‘The heavenly
intelligences will never forgive us.’

Without heeding these remonstrances, Bradley, deathly pale, was
gazing intently at Eustasia. She met his gaze quietly enough, but her
heightened colour and sparkling eyes betokened that she was labouring
under great excitement.

‘It is infamous!’ he cried. ‘I am certain _now_ that this is a vile
conspiracy.’

‘Take care, sir, take care!’ exclaimed the

Professor. ‘There’s law in the land, and----’

‘Hush, Salem!’ said Eustasia gently. ‘Mr. Bradley does not mean what he
says. He is too honourable to make charges which he cannot substantiate,
even against a helpless girl. He is agitated by what he has seen
tonight, but he will do us justice when he has thought it over.’

Without replying, Bradley took up his hat and moved to the door; but,
turning suddenly, he again addressed the medium:

‘I cannot guess by what means you have obtained your knowledge of my
private life, but you are trading upon it to destroy the happiness of
a fellow-creature. God forgive you! Your own self-reproach and
self-contempt will avenge me; I cannot wish you any sorer punishment
than the infamy and degradation of the life you lead.’

With these words he would have departed, but, swift as lightning,
Eustasia flitted across the room and blocked his way.

‘Don’t go yet!’ she cried. ‘Of what do you accuse me? Why do you blame
me for what the spirits have done?’

‘The spirits!’ he repeated bitterly. ‘I’m not a child, to be so easily
befooled. In one sense, indeed, you have conjured up devils, who some
day or another will compass your own destruction.’

‘That’s true enough--they _may_ be devils,’ said Eustasia. ‘Salem
knows--we all know--that we can’t prevent the powers of evil from
controlling the powers of good, and coming in their places. Guess some
of them have been at work to-night. Mr. Bradley, perhaps it’s our last
meeting on earth. Won’t you shake hands?’ As she spoke her wild eyes
were full of tears, which streamed down her face. Acting under a sudden
impulse, Bradley took her outstretched hand, held it firmly, and looked
her in the face.

‘Confess the cheat, and I will freely forgive you. It was _you_
personated one who is dear to me, and whom you pretended to be a spirit
risen from the grave.’

‘Don’t answer him, Eustasia!’ exclaimed the Professor. ‘He ought to know
that’s impossible, for you never left your seat.’

‘Certainly not,’ said Mrs. Piozzi Smith.

But Bradley, not heeding the interruption, still watched the girl and
grasped her passive hand.

‘Answer me! Tell me the truth!’

‘How can I tell you?’ answered Eustasia. ‘I was tranced, and my spirit
was far away. I don’t even know what happened.’

With a contemptuous gesture, Bradley released her, and walked from the
room. All his soul revolted at the recent experience; yet mingled with
his angry scepticism was a certain vague sense of dread. If, after all,
he had not been deceived, and something had happened to Alma; if, as the
_séance_ seemed to suggest, she was no longer living! The very thought
almost turned his brain. Dazed and terrified, he made his way down the
dark passage and left the house.

No sooner had he gone than Eustasia uttered a low cry, threw her arms
into the air, and sank swooning upon the floor.

Her brother raised her in a moment, and placed her upon the sofa. It
was some minutes before she recovered. When she did so, and gazed wildly
around, there was a tiny fleck of red upon her lips, like blood.

She looked up in her brother’s face, and began laughing hysterically.

‘Eustasia! For God’s sake, control yourself! You’ll make yourself
downright ill!’

Presently the hysterical fit passed away.

‘Leave us together, please!’ she said to the grim woman of the house.
‘I--I wish to speak to my brother.’

Directly the woman had retired, she took her brother by the hand.

‘Don’t be angry with me, Salem!’ she said softly. ‘I’m not long for this
world now, and I want you to grant me one request.’

‘What is it, Eustasia?’ asked the Professor, touched by her strangely
tender manner.

‘Don’t take me away from England just yet. Wait a little while longer.’

‘Eustasia, let me repeat, you’re following a will-o’-the-wisp, you are
indeed! Take my advice, and never see that man again!’

‘I must--I will!’ she cried. ‘O Salem, I’ve used him cruelly, but I love
him! I shall die now if you take me away!’




CHAPTER XXVIII--THE ETERNAL CITY


               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.




CHAPTER XXIX.--THE NAMELESS GRAVE.


               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.




CHAPTER XXX--IN PARIS


               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.




CHAPTER XXXI.--AMONG THE MOUNTAINS.


Give me thy hand, terrestrial; so! Give me thy hand, celestial;
so!--_Merry Wives of Windsor._


It was the close of a bright sunshiny day in the spring of 18--. The
sun was setting crimson on the lonely peak of the Zugspitz in the heart
of the Bavarian Highlands, and the shadows of the pine woods which
fringed the melancholy gorges beneath were lengthening towards the
valleys.

Through one of these mountain gorges, following a rocky footpath, a man
was rapidly walking. He was roughly, almost rudely, dressed in a sort of
tourist suit. On his head he wore a broadbrimmed felt hat of the shape
frequently worn by clergymen, and in his hand he carried a staff like a
shepherd’s crook.

Scarcely looking to left or right, but hastening with impatient paces
he hurried onward, less like a man hastening to some eagerly-sought
shelter, than like one flying from some hated thing behind his back. His
cheeks were pale and sunken, his eyes wild and sad. From time to time he
slackened his speed, and looked wearily around him--up to the desolate
sunlit peaks, down the darkening valley with its green pastures, belts
of woodland, and fields of growing corn.

But whichever way he looked, he seemed to find no joy in the prospect,
indeed hardly to behold the thing he looked on, but to gaze through it
and beyond it on some sorrowful portent.

Sometimes where the path became unusually steep and dangerous, he sprang
from rock to rock with reckless haste, or when its thread was broken,
as frequently happened by some brawling mountain stream, he entered the
torrent without hesitation, and passed recklessly across. Indeed, the
man seemed utterly indifferent to physical conditions, but labouring
rather under some spiritual possession, completely and literally
realising in his person the words of the poet:

               His own mind did like a tempest strong

               Come to him thus, and drave the weary wight along.

The wild scene was in complete harmony with his condition. It was still
and desolate, no sound seeming to break its solemn silence; but pausing
and listening intently, one would in reality have become conscious of
many sounds--the deep under-murmur of the mountain streams, the ‘sough’
of the wind in the pine woods, the faint tinkling of goat-bells from the
distant valleys, the solitary cry of rock doves from the mountain caves.

The man was Ambrose Bradley.

Nearly a year had elapsed since his sad experience in Rome. Since that
time he had wandered hither and thither like another Ahasuerus; wishing
for death, yet unable to die; burthened with the terrible weight of
his own sin and self-reproach, and finding no resting-place in all the
world.

Long before, as the reader well knows, the man’s faith in the
supernatural had faded, he had refined away his creed till it had wasted
away of its own inanition, and when the hour of trial came and he could
have called upon it for consolation, he was horrified to find that
it was a corpse, instead of a living thing. Then, in his horror and
despair, he had clutched at the straw of spiritualism, only to sink
lower and lower in the bitter waters of Marah. He found no hope for his
soul, no foothold for his feet. He had, to use his own expression, lost
the world.

It was now close upon night-time, and every moment the gorges along
which he was passing grew darker and darker.

Through the red smokes of sunset one lustrous star was just becoming
visible on the extremest peak of the mountain chain. But instead of
walking faster, Bradley began to linger, and presently, coming to
a gloomy chasm which seemed to make further progress dangerous,
impossible, he halted and looked down. The trunk of an uprooted
pine-tree lay close to the chasm’s brink. After looking quietly round
him, he sat down, pulled out a common wooden pipe, and began to smoke.

Presently he pulled out a letter bearing the Munich post-mark, and with
a face as dark as night began to look it through. It was dated from
London, and ran as follows:

‘Reform Club, March 5, 18-.

‘My dear Bradley,--Your brief note duly reached me, and I have duly
carried out your wishes with regard to the affairs of the new church. I
have also seen Sir George Craik, and found him more amenable to
reason than I expected. Though he still regards you with the intensest
animosity, he has sense enough to perceive that you are not directly
responsible for the unhappy affair at Rome. His thoughts seem now
chiefly bent on recovering his niece’s property from the clutches of the
Italian Jesuits, and in exposing the method by which they acquired such
dominion over the unhappy lady’s mind.

‘But I will not speak of this further at present, knowing the anguish it
must bring you. I will turn rather to the mere abstract matter of your
letter, and frankly open my mind to you on the subject.

‘What you say is very brief, but, from the manner in which it recurs in
your correspondence, I am sure it represents the absorbing topic of your
thoughts. Summed up in a few words, it affirms your conclusion that all
human effort is impossible to a man in your position, where the belief
in personal immortality is gone.

‘Now I need not go over the old ground, with which you are quite
as familiar as myself. I will not remind you of the folly and the
selfishness (from one point of view) of formulating a moral creed out
of what, in reality, is merely the hereditary instinct of
self-preservation. I will not repeat to you that it is nobler, after
all, to live impersonally in the beautiful future of Humanity than to
exist personally in a heaven of introspective dreams. But I should like,
if you will permit me, to point out that this Death, this cessation
of consciousness, which you dread so much, is not in itself an unmixed
evil. True, just at present, in the sharpness of your bereavement, you
see nothing but the shadow, and would eagerly follow into its oblivion
the shape of her you mourn. But as every day passes, this desire to die
will grow less keen; and ten years hence, perhaps, or twenty years,
you will look back upon to-day’s anguish with a calm, sweet sense of
spiritual gain, and with a peaceful sense of the sufficiency of life.
Then, perhaps, embracing a creed akin to ours, and having reached a
period when the physical frame begins slowly, and without pain, to melt
away, you will be quite content to accept--what shall I say?--Nirwâna.

‘What I mean, my dear friend, is this, simply: that Death is only evil
when it comes painfully or prematurely; coming in the natural order of
things, in the inevitable decay of Nature, it is by no means evil. And
so much is this the case that, if you were to discover the consensus of
opinion among the old, who are on the threshold of the grave, you would
find the majority quite content that life should end for ever. Tired out
with eighty or a hundred years of living, they gladly welcome sleep.
It is otherwise, of course, with the victims of accidental disease or
premature decay. But in the happy world to which we Positivists look
forward, these victims would not exist.

‘Day by day Science, which you despise too much, is enlarging the area
of human health. Think what has been done, even within the last decade,
to abolish both physical and social disease! Think what has yet to be
done to make life freer, purer, safer, happier!

I grant you the millennium of the Grand Être is still far off; but it
is most surely coming, and we can all aid, more or less, that blessed
consummation--not by idle wailing, by useless dreams, or by selfish
striving after an impossible personal reward, but by duty punctually
performed, by self-sacrifice cheerfully undergone, by daily and nightly
endeavours to ameliorate the condition of Man.

‘Men perish; Man is imperishable. Personal forms change; the great
living personality abides. And the time must come at last when Man shall
be as God, certain of his destiny, and knowing good and evil.

‘“A Job’s comforter!” I seem to hear you cry. Well, after all, you must
be your own physician.

                   No man can save another’s soul,

                   Or pay another’s debt!

But I wish that you, in your distracted wandering after certainty,
would turn your thoughts _our_ way, and try to understand what the great
Founder of our system has done, and will do, for the human race. I am
sure that the study would bring you comfort, late or soon.

‘I am, as ever, my dear Bradley,

‘Your friend and well-wisher,

‘John Cholmondeley.

‘P.S.--What are you doing in Munich? I hear of curious doings this year
at Ober-Ammergau, where that ghastly business, the Passion Play, is once
more in course of preparation.’

Bradley read this characteristic epistle with a gloomy frown, which
changed before he had finished to a look of bitter contempt; and, as he
read, he seemed once more conscious of the babble of literary club-land,
and the affected jargon of the new creeds of the future. Returning the
letter to his pocket, he continued to smoke till it was almost too dark
to see the wreaths of fume from his own pipe.

The night had completely fallen before he rose and proceeded on his way.




CHAPTER XXXII.--ANOTHER OLD LETTER.


               Love! if thy destined sacrifice am I,

                   Come, slay thy victim, and prepare thy fires;

               Plunged in thy depths of mercy let me die

                   The death which every soul that lives desires.

                        _Madame Guyon_ .


‘I AM writing these lines in my bedroom in the house of the Widow Gran,
in the village of Ober-Ammergau. They are the last you will receive from
me for a long time; perhaps the last I shall ever send you, for more and
more, as each day advances, I feel that my business with the world is
done.

‘What brought me hither I know not. I am sure it was with no direct
intention of witnessing what so many deem a mere mummery or outrage on
religion; but after many wanderings hither and thither, I found myself
in the neighbourhood, and whether instinctively or of set purpose,
approaching this lonely place.

‘As I have more than once told you, I have of late, ever since my
past trouble, been subject to a kind of waking nightmare, in which all
natural appearances have assumed a strange unreality, as of shapes seen
in dreams; and one characteristic of these seizures has been a curious
sense within my own mind that, vivid as such appearances seemed,
I should _remember_ nothing of them on actually _awaking_. A wise
physician would shake his head and murmur “diseased cerebration;” nor
would his diagnosis of my condition be less gloomy, on learning that
my physical powers remain unimpaired, and seem absolutely incapable of
fatigue. I eat and drink little; sleep less; yet I have the strength of
an athlete still, or so it seems.

‘I walked hither across the mountains, having no other shelter for
several nights than the boughs of the pine-woods where I slept. The
weather was far from warm, yet I felt no cold; the paths were dangerous,
yet no evil befell me. If I must speak the truth, I would gladly have
perished--by cold, by accident, by any swift and sudden means.

‘But when a man thirsts and hungers for death, Death, in its dull
perversity, generally spares him. More than once, among these dizzy
precipices and black ravines, I thought of suicide; one step would
have done it, one quick downward leap; but I was spared that last
degradation--indeed, I know not how.

‘It was night time when I left the mountains, and came out upon the
public road. The moon rose, pale and ghostly, dimly lighting my way.

‘Full of my own miserable phantasy, I walked on for hours and descended
at last to the outlying houses of a silent village, lying at the foot of
a low chain of melancholy hills. All was still; a thin white mist filled
the air, floating upward from the valley, and forming thick vaporous
clouds around the moon. Dimly I discerned the shadows of the houses, but
in none of the windows was there any light.

‘I stood hesitating, not knowing which way to direct my footsteps or at
which cottage door to knock and seek shelter, and never, at any moment
of my recent experience, was the sense of phantasy and unreality so full
upon me. While I was thus hesitating I suddenly became conscious of the
sound of voices coming from a small cottage situated on the roadside,
and hitherto scarcely discernible in the darkness. Without hesitation I
approached the door and knocked.

‘Immediately the voices ceased, and the moment afterwards the door
opened and a figure appeared on the threshold.

‘If the sense of unreality had been strong before it now became
paramount, for the figure I beheld wore a white priestly robe quaintly
embroidered with gold, and a golden headdress or coronet upon his head.
Nor was this all. The large apartment behind him--a kind of kitchen,
with rude benches around the ingle--was lit by several lamps, and within
it were clustered a fantastic group of figures in white tunics, plumed
head-dresses of Eastern device, and mantles of azure, crimson, and blue,
which swept the ground.

‘“Who is there?” said the form on the threshold in a deep voice, and
speaking German in a strong Bavarian patois.

‘I answered that I was an Englishman, and sought a night’s shelter.

‘“Come in!” said the man, and thus invited I crossed the threshold.

‘As the door closed behind me, I found myself in the large raftered
chamber, surrounded on every side by curious faces. Scattered here
and there about the room were rudely-carved figures, for the most part
representing the Crucifixion, many of them unfinished, and on a table
near the window was a set of carver’s tools. Rudely coloured pictures,
all of biblical subjects, were placed here and there upon the walls, and
over the fireplace hung a large Christ in ebony, coarsely carven.

‘Courteously enough the fantastic group parted and made way for me,
while one of the number, a woman, invited me to a seat beside the
hearth.

‘I sat down like one in a dream, and accosted the man who had invited me
to enter.

‘“What place is this?” I asked. “I have been walking all night and am
doubtful where I am.”

‘“You are at Ober-Ammergau!” was the reply.

‘I could have laughed had my spirit been less oppressed. For now, my
brain clearing, I began to understand what had befallen me. I remembered
the Passion Play and all that I had read concerning it. The fantastic
figures I beheld were those of some of the actors still attired in the
tinsel robes they wore upon the stage.

‘I asked if this was so, and was answered in the affirmative.

‘“We begin the play to-morrow,” said the man who had first spoken. “I
am Johann Diener the _Chorfuhrer_, and these are some of the members of
our chorus. We are up late, you see, preparing for to-morrow, and trying
on the new robes that have just been sent to us from Annheim. The pastor
of the village was here till a few minutes ago, seeing all things justly
ordered amongst us, and he would gladly have welcomed you, for he loves
the English.”

‘The man’s speech was gentle, his manner kindly in the extreme, but
I scarcely heeded him, although I knew now what the figures around me
were--the merest supernumeraries and chorus-singers of a tawdry show.
They seemed to me none the less ghostly and unreal, shadows acting in
some grim farce of death.

‘“Doubtless the gentleman is fatigued,” said a woman, addressing Johann
Diener, “and would wish to go to rest.”

‘I nodded wearily. Diener, however, seemed in some perplexity.

‘“It is not so easy,” he returned, “to find the gentleman a shelter. As
you all know, the village is overcrowded with strangers. However, if
he will follow ml I will take him to Joseph Mair, and see what can be
done.”

‘I thanked him, and without staying to alter his dress, he led the way
to the door.

‘We were soon out in the open street. Passing several chalets, Diener at
last reached one standing a little way from the roadside, and knocked.

‘“Come in,” cried a clear kind voice.

‘He opened the door and I followed him into an interior much resembling
the one we had just quitted, but smaller, and more full of tokens of the
woodcutter’s trade. The room was dimly lit by an oil lamp swinging from
the ceiling. Seated close to the fireplace, with his back towards us,
engaged in some handy work, was a man.

‘As we entered the man rose and stood looking towards us. I started in
wonder, and uttered an involuntary cry.

‘It was Jesus Christ, Jesus the son of Joseph, in his habit as he lived!

‘I had no time, and indeed I lacked the power, to separate the true
from the false in this singular manifestation. I saw before me, scarce
believing what I saw, the Christ of History, clad as the shape is clad
in the famous fresco of Leonardo, but looking at me with a face mobile,
gentle, beautiful, benign. At the same moment I perceived, scarcely
understanding its significance, the very crown of thorns, of which so
many a martyr since has dreamed. It was lying on the coarse table close
to a number of wood-carving tools, and close to it was a plate of some
red pigment, with which it had recently been stained.

‘Johann Diener advanced.

‘“I am glad to find you up, Joseph. This English gentleman seeks shelter
for the night, and I scarcely knew whither to take him.”

‘“You will not find a bed in the place,” returned the other; and he
continued addressing me. “Since this morning our little village has been
overrun, and many strangers have to camp out in the open air. Never has
Ober-Ammergau been so thronged.”

‘I scarcely listened to him; I was so lost in contemplation of the awful
personality he represented.

‘“Who are you?” I asked, gazing at him in amaze.

‘He smiled, and glanced down at his dress.

‘“I am Joseph Mair,” he replied. “Tomorrow I play the Christus, and as
you came I was repairing some portion of the attire, which I have not
worn for ten years past.”

‘Jesus of Nazareth! Joseph Mair! I understood all clearly now, but none
the less did I tremble with a sickening sense of awe.’

*****

‘That night I remained in the house of Joseph Mail sitting on a bench in
the ingle, half dying, half dreaming, till daylight came. Mair himself
soon left me, after having set before me some simple refreshment, of
which I did not care to partake. Alone in that chamber, I sat like a
haunted man, almost credulous that I had seen the Christ indeed.’

*****

‘I _have_ seen him! I understand now all the piteous humble pageant!
I have beheld the Master as He lived and died; not the creature of a
poet’s dream not the Divine Ideal I pictured in my blind and shadowy
creed; but Jesus who perished on Calvary, Jesus the Martyr of the World.

‘All day long, from dawn to sunset, I sat in my place, watching the
mysterious show. Words might faintly foreshadow to you what I beheld,
but all words would fail to tell you what I felt; for never before,
till these simple children of the mountains pictured it before me, had I
realised the full sadness and rapture of that celestial Life. How faint,
miserable, and unprofitable seemed my former creed, seen in the light
of the tremendous Reality foreshadowed on that stage, with the mountains
closing behind it, the blue heaven bending tranquilly above it, the
birds singing on the branches round about, the wind and sunshine shining
over it and bringing thither all the gentle motion of the world. Now for
the first time I conceived that the Divine Story was not a poet’s dream,
but a simple tale of sooth, a living experience which even the lowliest
could understand and before which the highest and wisest must reverently
bow.

‘I seem to see your look of wonder, and hear your cry of pitying pain.
Is the man mad? you ask. Is it possible that sorrow has so weakened
his brain that he can be overcome by such a summer cloud as the
_Passionspiel_ of a few rude peasants--a piece of mummery only worthy of
a smile! Well, so it is, or seems. I tell you this “poor show” has done
for me what all intellectual and moral effort has failed to do--it has
brought me face to face with the living God.

‘This at least I know, that there is no _via media_ between the full
acceptance of Christ’s miraculous life and death, and acquiescence in
the stark materialism of the new creed of scientific experience, whose
most potent word is the godless Nirwâna of Schopenhauer.

‘Man cannot live by the shadowy gods of men--by the poetic spectre of a
Divine Ideal, by the Christ of Fancy and of Poesy, by the Jesus of the
dilettante, by the Messiah of a fairy tale. Such gods may do for happy
hours; their ghostliness becomes apparent in times of spiritual despair
and gloom.

‘“Except a man be born again, he shall not enter the kingdom of Heaven!”
 I have heard these divine words from the lips of one who seemed the Lord
himself; nay, who perchance _was_ that very Lord, putting on again the
likeness of a poor peasant’s humanity, and clothing himself with flesh
as with a garment. I have seen and heard with a child’s eyes, a child’s
ears; and even as a child, I question no longer but believe.

‘_Mea culpa! mea culpa!_ In the light of that piteous martyrdom I
review the great sin of my life; but out of sin and its penalty has come
transfiguration. I know now that my beloved one was taken from me in
mercy, that I might follow in penitence and love. Patience, my darling,
for I shall come;--God grant that it may be soon!’




CONCLUSION.


The following letter, written in the summer of 18--, by John
Cholmondeley to Sir George Craik, contains all that remains to be told
concerning the fate of Ambrose Bradley, sometime minister of Fensea, and
a seceder from the Church of England:--

‘My dear Sir,--You will remember our conversation, when we last met in
London, concerning that friend of mine with whose fortunes those of your
lamented niece have been unhappily interwoven. Your language was then
sufficiently bitter and unforgiving. Perhaps you will think more gently
on the subject when you hear the news I have now to convey to you. The
Rev. Ambrose Bradley died a fortnight ago, at Ober-Ammergau, in the
Bavarian highlands.

‘From time to time, during his wanderings in the course of the past
year, we had been in correspondence; for, indeed, I was about the only
friend in the world with whom he was on terms of close intimacy. Ever
since the disappearance of Miss Craik his sufferings had been most
acute; and my own impression is that his intellect was permanently
weakened. But that, perhaps, is neither here nor there.

‘Some ten days ago, I received a communication from the village priest
of Ober-Ammergau, informing me that an Englishman had died very suddenly
and mysteriously in the village, and that the only clue to his friends
and connexions was a long letter found upon his person, addressed to me,
at my residence in the Temple. I immediately hastened over to Germany,
and found, as I had anticipated, that the corpse was that of my poor
friend. It was lying ready for interment in the cottage of Joseph Mair,
a wood-carver, and a leading actor in the Passion Play.

‘I found, on inquiry, that Mr. Bradley had been in the village for
several weeks, lodging at Mair’s cottage, and dividing his time between
constant attendance at the theatre, whenever the Passion Play was
represented, and long pedestrian excursions among the mountains. He was
strangely taciturn, indifferent to ordinary comforts, eating little or
nothing, and scarcely sleeping. So at least the man Mair informed me,
adding that he was very gentle and harmless, and to all intents and
purposes in perfect health.

‘Last Sunday week he attended the theatre as usual. That night he did
not return to the cottage of his host. Early next morning, Joseph Hair,
on going down to the theatre with his tools, to do some carpenter’s work
upon the stage, found the dead body of a man there, lying on his face,
with his arms clasped around the mimic Cross; and turning the dead face
up to the morning light, he recognised my poor friend.

‘That is all I have to tell you. His death, like his life, was a sad
affair. I followed him to his grave in the little burial-place of
Ober-Ammergau--where he rests in peace. I am, &c.,

‘John Cholmondeley.

‘Judging from some talk I had before leaving with the village priest, a
worthy old fellow who knew him well, I believe poor Bradley died in full
belief of the Christian faith; but as I have already hinted to you, his
intellect, for a long time before his death, was greatly weakened. Take
him for all in all, he was one of the best men I ever knew, and might
have been happy but for the unfortunate “set” of his mind towards
retrograde superstitions.’


THE END