"THE DEAD MAN TOUCH'D ME FROM THE PAST."
"I wonder how many lives there are like mine in this prosperous England
of ours, eminently respectable, comfortable, and altogether protected
from the worst hazards of fate, happy even, according to the standard
measure of happiness among the squirearchy of England--and yet cold and
colourless. I wonder how many men there are in every generation who
drift along the slow current of a sluggish river, and who call that
monotonous progress living. Up the river with the rising tide; down
the river with the ebbing tide; up and down, to and fro, between level
banks that are always the same, with never a hill and never a crag to
break the monotony of the outlook.
"We have a river within a stone's throw of my gates which always seems
to me the outward and visible sign of my inward and spiritual life,
a river that flows past farms and villages, and for any variety of
curve or accident of beauty might just as well be a canal--a useful
river bearing the laden barges down to the sea, a river on which a
pleasure-boat is as rare as a kingfisher on its banks. And so much
might be said of my life; a useful life within the everyday limits
of English morality; but a life that nobody will remember or regret,
outside my own household, when I am gone.
"This is no complaint that I am writing, to be read when I am in my
grave by the son I hope to leave behind me. Far be such a thought
from me the writer, and from him the reader. It is only a statement,
a history of a youthful experience which has influenced my mature
years, chiefly because on that boyish romance I spent all the stock
of passionate feeling with which nature had endowed me. It was not
much, perhaps, in the beginning. I was no Byronic hero. I was only an
impulsive and somewhat sentimental youth, ready to fall in love with
the first interesting girl I met, but not to find my Egeria among the
audience at a music-hall, or in a dancing garden.
"Do not mistake me, Allan. I have loved your mother truly and even
warmly, but never romantically. All that constitutes the poetry, the
romance of love, the fond enthusiasm of the lover, vanished out of my
life before I was three and twenty. All that came afterwards was plain
prose.
"It was in the second year of my university life, and towards the
end of the long vacation, that I allowed myself to be persuaded to
attend a _séance_ to be given by some so-called spiritualists in the
neighbourhood of Russell Square. Mr. Home, the spiritualist, had
been frightening and astonishing people by certain unexplainable
manifestations, and he had been lucky enough to number among his
patrons and disciples such men as Bulwer Lytton, William and Robert
Chambers, and others of almost equal distinction. To the common herd
it seemed that, there must be some value in manifestations which could
interest and even convince these superior intellects; so, with the
prestige of Home's performances, and with an article in the _Cornhill
Magazine_ to assist them, the people near Russell Square were doing
very good business.
"Twice, and sometimes three times a week, they gave a _séance_, and
though they did not take money at the doors, or advertise their
entertainment in the daily papers, they had their regular subscribers
among the faithful, and these subscribers could dispose of tickets of
admission among the common herd. As two of the common herd, Gerald
Standish and I got our tickets from Mrs. Ravenshaw, a literary lady
of Gerald's acquaintance, who had written a spiritualistic novel, and
was a profound believer in all the spiritualistic phenomena. Her vivid
description of the dark _séance_ and its wonders had aroused Gerald's
curiosity, and he insisted that I, who was known among the men of my
year as a favourite pupil of the then famous mathematical coach,
should go with him and bring the severe laws of pure science to bear
upon the spirit world.
"I was incurious and indifferent, but Gerald Standish was a genius, and
my particular chum. I could not, therefore, be so churlish as to refuse
so slight a concession. We dined together at the Horseshoe Restaurant,
then in the bloom of novelty; and, after a very temperate dinner, we
walked through the autumn dusk to the quiet street on the eastward side
of Russell Square, where the priest and priestess of the spirit-world
had set up their temple.
"The approach of the mysteries was sadly commonplace, a shabby hall
door, an airless passage that smelt of dinner, and for the temple
itself a front parlour sparsely furnished with the most Philistine of
furniture. When we entered, the room was empty of humanity. An oil-lamp
on a cheffonier by the fireplace dimly lighted the all-pervading
shabbiness. The scanty moreen curtains--lodging-house curtains of
the poorest type--were drawn. The furniture consisted of a dozen or
so of heavily made mahogany chairs with horse-hair cushions, a large
round table on a massive pedestal, supported on three clumsily carved
claws, and a bookcase against the wall facing the windows, or I should
say rather a piece of furniture which might be supposed to contain
books, as the contents were hidden by a brass lattice-work lined with
faded green silk. The gloom of the scene was inexpressible, and seemed
accentuated by a dismal street cry which rose and fell ever and anon
from the distance of Hunter or Coram Street.
"'We are the first,' Gerald whispered, a fact of which I did not
require to be informed, and for which he ought to have apologized,
seeing that he had deprived me of my after-dinner coffee, and dragged
me off yawning, full of alarm lest we should be late.
"Gradually, and in dismal silence, diversified only by occasional
whisperings, about a dozen people assembled in the dimness of
the dreary room. Among them came Mrs. Ravenshaw and her jovial,
business-like husband, who seated themselves next Gerald and me, and
confided their experiences of past _séances_. The lady was full of
faith and enthusiasm. The gentleman was beginning to have doubts.
He had heard things from unbelievers which had somewhat unsettled
him. He had invested a good many half-guineas in this dismal form of
entertainment, and had wasted a good deal of time in bringing his
gifted wife all the way from Shooter's Hill, and, so far, they had
got no forwarder than on the first _séance_. They had seen strange
things. They had felt the ghastly touch of hands that seemed like
dead hands, and which ordinary people would run a mile to avoid. That
heavy mahogany table had shuddered and thrilled under the touch of
meeting hands; had lifted itself like a rearing horse; had throbbed
out messages purporting to come from the dead. Strange sounds had been
in the air; angelic singing, as of souls in Elysium; and some among
the audience had gone away after each _séance_ touched and satisfied,
believing themselves upon the threshold of other worlds, feeling their
commonplace lives shone upon by supernal light, content henceforward to
dwell upon this dull cold earth, since they were now assured of a link
between earth and heaven.
"Mrs. Ravenshaw, as became an imaginative writer, was of this
idealistic temperament, receptive, confiding; but her husband was a
man of business, and wanted to see value for his money. He explained
his views to me in a confidential voice while we waited. 'Yes,
they had undoubtedly seen and heard strange things. They had seen
bodies--living human bodies--floating in the air--yes, floating in the
frowsy atmosphere of this shabby parlour, atmosphere which it were base
flattery to call "air." They had enjoyed this abnormal experience; but,
after all, how is the cause of humanity, or the march of enlightenment
to be advantaged by the flotation of an exceptional subject here and
there? If everybody could float, well and good. The gain would be
immense, except for boot-makers and chiropodists, who must suffer for
the general weal. But for mediumistic persons, at the rate of one per
million of the population, to be carried by viewless powers on the
empty air was of the smallest practical use. An improvement in the
construction of balloons would be infinitely more valuable.'
"We waited nearly an hour in all--we had arrived half an hour before
the stated opening of the _séance_, and we waited five and twenty
minutes more, and were yawning and fidgeting hopelessly before the door
opened, and a dismal-looking man with a pallid face and long hair, came
into the room, followed by a slovenly woman in black, with bare arms,
and a towzled, highly artistic flaxen head. He bowed solemnly to the
assembled company, looked from the company to the woman, and murmured
in a sepulchral voice, 'My wife,' by way of general introduction.
"The flaxen-headed lady seated herself at the large round table, and
the dark-haired vampire-like man crept about the room inviting his
audience to take their places at the same mystic table. We formed a
circle, hand touching hand, the long-haired professor on one side of
the table, the flaxen wife on the other. Gerald and I were separated by
the width of the table, and the enthusiastic novelist and her practical
husband were also as far apart as circumstances would permit.
"My next neighbour on the right was a tall, burly man with a strong
North of Ireland accent, a captain in the mercantile marine, Mrs.
Ravenshaw informed me. The people who met in this dreary room had come
by some knowledge of one another's social status and opinions, although
conversation was sternly discouraged as offensive to the impalpable
company we were there to cultivate. A gloomy silence, and a vaguely
uncomfortable expectancy of something ghastly were the prevailing
characteristics of the assembly.
"Mrs. Ravenshaw had informed me that the seaman on my right was an
unbeliever, and that he courted the spirits only with the malicious
desire of doing them a bad turn. There had been the premonitory
symptoms of a row on more than one occasion, and he had been the source
and centre of the adverse feeling which had shown itself at those times.
"My left-hand neighbour was an elderly woman in black, who looked like
a spinster, and who, instead of the bonnet of everyday life, wore a
rusty Spanish mantilla, and a black velvet band across her high narrow
forehead, confining braids of chestnut hair whose artificial origin was
patent to every eye. As the _séance_ progressed she frequently shed
tears. Mrs. Ravenshaw, who was in her confidence, whispered to me that
this lady came there to hold mystic converse with an officer in the
East-India Company's Service, to whom she had been betrothed thirty
years before, and who had died in Bengal, after marrying the daughter
of a native money-lender and an English governess. It comforted his
devoted sweetheart to hear from his own lips, as it were, that he had
led a wretched existence with his half-caste wife, and had never ceased
to repent his inconstancy to his dearest Amanda. Amanda was the name
of the lady in the mantilla, Amanda Jones. It amuses me to recall these
details, to dwell upon the opening of a scene which I entered upon so
casually, and which was to exercise so lasting an influence upon my
life.
"The _séance_ proceeded after the vulgar routine of such mysteries
in England and in America. We sat in the frowzy darkness, and heard
each other's breathing as we listened to the mysterious rappings, now
here, now there, now high, now low, as of some sportive dressmaker
rapping her thimbled finger on table, or shutter, or ceiling, or
wall. We heard strange messages thumped out, or throbbed out by the
excitable mahogany, which became more and more vehement, as if the
beating of our hearts, the swift current of blood in all our arteries
were being gradually absorbed by that vitalised wood. The German
woman translated the rappings into strange scraps of speech, which
for some of the audience were full of meaning--private communications
from friends long dead, allusions to the past, which were sometimes
received in blank wonder, sometimes welcomed as proof irresistible of
thought-transference between the dead and the living. The mighty dead,
with names familiar to us all, condescended to hold communion with us.
Spinosa, Bacon, Shelley, Sir John Franklin, Mesmer--a strange mixture
of personalities--but, alas! the feebleness of their communications
gave a crushing blow to the theory of a progressive existence beyond
the grave.
"'I should like to know how it's done,' said the sea-captain, suddenly,
in an aggressive voice, which irreverent interruption the professor and
some of the audience rebuked by an indignant hush.
"The whole business wearied me. I was moved to melancholy rather than
to laughter as I realized the depth of human credulity which was
indicated by the hushed expectancy of the dozen or so of people sitting
round a table in the dark in a shabby Bloomsbury lodging-house, and
expecting communications from the world after death--the inexplicable
shadow-land of which to think is to enter into the regions of all that
is most serious and solemn in human thought--through the interposition
of a shabby charlatan who took money for the exhibition of his power.
"I sat in the darkness, bored and disgusted, utterly incurious,
desiring nothing but the close of the manifestations and escape into
the open air, when suddenly, in a faint light, which came I knew not
whence, I saw a face on the opposite side of the circle of faces, a
face which assuredly had not been among the audience before the lamp
was darkened at the beginning of the _séance_. Yet so far as my sense
of hearing, which was particularly acute, could inform me, no door had
opened, no footstep had crossed the floor since we had seated ourselves
at the table, and had formed the circle, hand touching hand.
"This hitherto unseen face had a wan and mournful beauty which at once
changed my feelings from apathy to interest. The eyes were of a lovely
blue, and were remarkable for that translucent brilliancy which is
rarely seen after childhood; the features were delicate to attenuation,
and, in the faint light, the cheeks looked hollow and colourless, and
even the lips were of a sickly pallor. The loveliness of those large
ethereal eyes counterbalanced all want of life and colour in the rest
of the face, which, had those eyes been hidden under lowered lids,
might have seemed the face of the dead. I looked at it, awe-stricken.
Its presence had in one instant transformed the scene of vulgar
imposture to a temple and a shrine. I watched and waited, spell-bound.
"There were subdued whisperings round the table, and a general
excitement and expectancy which indicated the beginning of a more
enthralling performance than the vagabond rappings on table and
wainscot, or even the furtive and flying touch of smooth cold hands.
"For some minutes, for an interval that seemed much longer than it
really was, nothing happened.
"The face looked at us--or, rather, looked beyond us; the pale lips
were parted as in prayer or invocation; the long yellow hair streaming
over the shoulders gleamed faintly in the dim, uncertain light, which
came and went from some mysterious source. The door opening on the
entrance hall was behind my side of the table, and I have little doubt
that the curiously soft and searching light, which fluttered every
now and then across the circle and lingered on the face opposite, was
manipulated by some one outside the door.
"Presently there came a shower of raps--here, there, everywhere, on
ceiling, wainscot, doors, above our heads, under our feet--while a
strain of organ music, so softly played as to seem remote, crept into
the room, and increased the confusion of our senses, distracted past
endurance by those meaningless rappings.
"Suddenly a young woman at the end of the table gave a hysterical cry.
"'She is rising, she is rising!' she said. 'Oh, to think of it, to
think of it! To think how He rose--He whom they had slain--and
vanished from the loving eyes of His disciples! She is like the angels
who gather round His throne. Who can doubt now?'
"'It's humbug, and we all know it's humbug,' grumbled the sea-dog on
my right. 'But it's clever humbug; and it isn't easy to catch them
napping.'
"'Hush!' said the professor's wife indignantly. 'Watch her, and be
silent.'
"We watched. I had not once taken my eyes from that pale, spiritual
face, with the eyes that had a look of seeing things in an immeasurable
distance--the things that are not of this earth. Suddenly the dreamy
tranquillity of the countenance changed to violent emotion, an ecstatic
smile parted the pale lips, and, for the first time since I had been
conscious of her presence, those exquisite lips spoke.
"'It is coming, it is coming!' she cried. 'Take me, take me, take me!'
And then from speech to song seemed a natural transition, as she sang
in a silver-sweet soprano--
"'Angels ever bright and fair,
Take, oh take me to your care.'
"As that lovely melody floated through the room, the slender, girlish
form was wafted slowly upward with steady, gradual motion, until it
hovered halfway between the ceiling and the floor, the long white robe
flowing far below the feet, the golden hair falling below the waist.
Nothing more like the conventional idea of an angelic presence could
have offered itself to the excited imagination. The figure remained
suspended, the arms lifted, and the semi-transparent hands scattering
flowers, while we gazed, enthralled by the beauty and gracefulness of
that strange vision, and for the moment the hardest of us, even the
sea-dog at my side, was a believer.
"Nothing so beautiful could be false, dishonest, ignoble. No; whatever
the rest of the _séance_ might be, this at least was no vulgar
cheat. We were in the presence of a mysterious being, exceptionally
gifted--human, perhaps; but not as the common herd are human.
"I was weak enough to think thus. I had abandoned myself wholly to the
glamour of the scene, when the sea-dog started to his feet, as the
girl gave a shrill cry of fear. She hung for a moment or two over the
table, head downward, and fell in a heap between two of the seated
spectators, her head striking against the edge of the table, her long
hair streaming wide, and faint moanings as of acute pain issuing from
her pallid lips.
"In an instant all was noise and confusion. The sea-captain struck
a match, Mr. Ravenshaw produced an end of wax candle, and everybody
crowded round the girl, talking and exclaiming unrestrainedly.
"'There, now; didn't I tell you so? All a cheat from beginning to end.'
"'He ought to be prosecuted.'
"'Nobody but fools would have ever believed in such stuff.'
"'Look here!' cried the sea-captain, 'she was held up by a straight
iron rod which passes through the floor, and a cross-bar, like a
pantomime fairy. She was strapped to the cross-bar, and the strap broke
and let her go. She's the artfullest hussy I ever had anything to do
with; for I'll be hanged if she hadn't almost taken me in with that
face and voice of hers. 'Waft me, angels,' and looking just like an
angel, and all the time this swindler was strapping her on to the iron
bar.'
"The swindler defended himself angrily, in a jumble of German and
English, getting more German as he grew more desperate. They were
all clamouring round him. The flaxen-headed Frau had slipped away in
the beginning of the skirmish. The golden-haired girl had fainted--a
genuine faint, apparently, whatever else might be false--and her head
was lying on Mrs. Ravenshaw's shoulder; that lady's womanly compassion
for helpless girlhood being stronger even than her indignation at
having been hoaxed.
"'Give us back our money!' cried three or four voices out of the
dimness. 'Give us back our money for the whole series of _séances_!'
"'Half-guinea tickets! Dear enough if the thing had been genuine!'
"'An impudent swindle!'
"'Will somebody run for the police?' said the sea-captain. 'I'll stay
and take care they don't give us the slip. Who'll go?'
"There were half a dozen volunteers, who began to grope their way to
the door.
"'One's enough,' said the sea-captain. 'Take care that fellow doesn't
make a bolt of it.'
"The warning came too late. As he spoke, spirit-lips blew out the
candle which Mr. Ravenshaw was patiently holding above the group of
fainting girl and kindly woman, like one of the living candlesticks in
the 'Legend of Montrose,' and the room was dark. There was a sound of
scuffling, a rush, the door opened and shut again, and a key turned in
the lock with decisive emphasis.
"'Done!' cried the sea-captain, making his way to the curtained window.
"It was curtained and shuttered, and the opening of the shutters
occupied some minutes, even for the seaman's practised hands. There
were bolts--old-fashioned bolts--with mechanism designed to defy
burglary, in the days when wealth and fashion inhabited Bloomsbury. Wax
matches sputtered and emitted faint gleams and flashes of light here
and there in the room. Two or three people had found their way to the
locked door, and were shaking and kicking it savagely, without effect.
"At last the bolts gave way, the deft hands having found the trick
of them. The seaman flung open the shutters, and the light of the
street-lamp streamed into the room.
"The girl was still unconscious, lying across two chairs, her head on
the novelist's shoulder.
"'Shamming, no doubt,' said the seaman.
"'No, no; there is no acting here,' said the lady. 'Her face and hands
are deadly cold. Ah, she is beginning to recover. How she shudders,
poor child!'
"A long-drawn, shivering sob broke from the white lips, which I could
see faintly in uncertain light from the street-lamp. The seaman was
talking to some one outside, asking him to send the first policeman he
met, or to go to the nearest police-office and send some one from there.
"'What's the matter?' asked the voice outside. 'Anybody hurt?'
"'No; but I want to give some one in charge.'
"'All right,' said the voice; and then we heard footsteps hurrying off.
"'Whom are you going to give in charge?' asked Mr. Ravenshaw, in his
calm, practical way. 'Not this shivering girl, surely. The other birds
are flown.'
"'She may shiver,' retorted the seaman angrily. 'I shall be glad to see
her shiver before the beak, to-morrow. He'll talk to her. Shivering
won't get over _him_. He's used to it. Of course she's fainted. A woman
can always faint when she finds herself in a difficulty. We'll have her
up for obtaining money upon false pretences, all the same.'
"The united efforts of three or four of the party had burst open the
door of the room, and everybody except the little group about the
girl--myself among them--made for the street door, which was not locked.
"A couple of policemen arrived a few minutes afterwards, and thereupon
began a severe inspection of the house from cellar to garret. They
found an old woman in a back kitchen, who explained that the dining
and drawing-room floors, and the front kitchen were let to the
table-turning gentleman and his wife, and the young lady who lived with
them. They had occupied the rooms nearly three months, had paid some
rent, but were considerably in arrear. The landlord, who occupied the
second floor, had gone into the country to see a sick daughter. Two
young men lodged in the attics--printer's readers--but they were seldom
in before eleven.
"In a word, the old woman, who was general drudge and caretaker, was
alone in the basement with a plethoric spaniel, too old and obese to
bark, and a tabby cat. All the rest of the house was empty of human
life.
"The policemen and the late believers in Herr Kaltardern's occult
powers explored every corner of the rooms which the Germans and their
accomplice had inhabited. The personal belongings of the three were
of the slightest, the Kaltarderns' sole possession being a large
carpet bag of ancient and obsolete fashion, and a brush and comb.
The room occupied by the girl was clean and tidy, and contained a
respectable-looking wooden trunk.
"The machinery of the imposture stood confessed in this investigation.
The bookcase was a dummy piece of furniture which concealed a door
of communication between the front and back rooms. Door of room, and
door of bookcase, the front of which opened in one piece, were both so
artfully padded with baize as to open and shut noiselessly; and it was
by this means that the tricksters had been able to bring their innocent
accomplice into the room unobserved, or to go in and out themselves
while the sceptical among their audience might be watching the only
obvious entrance to the room. In the kitchen below the iron rod and
the hole through the ceiling plainly indicated the means by which the
girl had been lifted off her feet. The transverse bar was attached to
the rod in the room above, by the noiseless hands of the professor.
"All this I heard afterwards from Gerald, who took an active part in
the investigation. For myself, while the inquisitive explorers were
tramping in and out of the rooms above and below, I remained beside the
two good people who were caring for the helpless sharer in the foolish
show--accomplice or victim, as the case might be.
"I had found and relighted the lamp, and by its light Mrs. Ravenshaw
and I examined the girl's forehead, which had been severely cut in her
fall. While we were gently drying the blood which stained her eyelids
and cheeks, she opened her eyes and looked at us with a bewildered
expression.
"'Oh, how my head aches!' she moaned. 'What was it hurt me like that?'
"'You were hurt in your fall,' I answered. 'Your head struck the edge
of the table.'
"'But how could I fall? How could they let me fall?'
"'The strap round your waist broke, and you fell from the iron bar.'
"She looked at me in amazement--simulated, as I thought--and it
distressed me to think that fair young face should be capable of such a
lying look.
"'What strap? The spirits were holding me up--wafting me towards the
sky.'
"'Very likely,' I answered, picking up the broken strap and showing it
to her; 'but the spirits couldn't manage it without a little mechanical
aid. And the mechanical aid was not as sound as it ought to have been.'
"The girl took the strap in her hands, and looked at it and felt it
with an expression of countenance so full of hopeless bewilderment that
I began to doubt my previous conviction, to doubt even the evidence
of my senses. Could any youthful face be so trained to depict unreal
emotion? Could so childlike a creature be such a consummate actress?
"'Was this round my waist?' she asked, looking from me to the
kind-hearted woman whose arms were still supporting her slender,
undeveloped figure.
"'Yes, this was round your waist, and by this you were strapped to this
iron bar here. You see, the rod passes through the floor. The cross-bar
must have been fastened to it while you were singing. My poor child,
pray do not try to sustain a falsehood. You are so young that you are
hardly responsible for what you have done. You were in these people's
power, and they could make you do what they liked. Pray be candid with
us. We want to befriend you if we can, do we not, Mrs. Ravenshaw?'
"'Yes, indeed we do, poor thing!' answered the lady heartily. 'Only be
truthful with us.'
"'Indeed, I am telling the truth,' the girl protested tearfully. 'I
did not know of that strap, or of the iron rod. They told me I was
gifted--that I was in communion with my dear dead father, when I felt
my soul uplifted--as I have felt it often and often, sitting singing to
myself, alone in my room. I have felt as if my spirit were soaring away
and away, upward to that world beyond the skies where my father and my
mother are. I have felt as if, while my body remained below, my spirit
were floating upward and upward, away from earth and sorrow. I told the
Frau how I used to feel, because I believed in her. She brought me into
communion with my father. He used to rap out messages of love; and she
taught me how to understand the spirit language. That was how I came to
know her. That was how I was willing to go with them and join in their
_séances_.'
"'I begin to understand,' said I. 'They told you that you were gifted,
and that you had a power of floating upward from the floor to the
ceiling?'
"'Yes. It came upon me unawares. They asked me to sing, and to let my
spirit float towards heaven as I sang. I always used to feel like
that of an evening in our church in the country. I used to feel my
soul lifted upward when I sang the _Magnificat_. And one night at a
_séance_, soon after we came to London, I was singing, and I felt
myself floating upward. It seemed as if some powerful hands were
holding me up; and I felt round me in the half-darkness, and there was
no one near. I was moving alone, without any visible help; and I felt
that it was the passionate longing of my spirit to approach the spirit
of my dead father which was lifting me up. And, oh, was it only that
horrid strap and that iron rod?' she exclaimed, bursting into tears.
'How cruel--how cruel to cheat me like that!'
"She had evidently no thought of the public who were cheated, or of
her own position as a detected impostor, or the tool and accomplice of
impostors. Her tears were for the dream so rudely broken.
"The tramping in and out of rooms was over by this time. The majority
of the audience were leaving the house, the sea-dog loud in his
disgust and indignation till the last moment.
"'I should have liked to give that young hussey in charge,' he said in
a loud voice as he passed the half-open door, evidently arguing with
some milder-tempered victim; 'but, as you say, she's little more than a
child, and no magistrate would punish her.'
"I breathed more freely when I heard the street door bang behind this
gentleman and the policemen.
"'They're all gone except ourselves,' said Gerald. 'The gifted German
and his wife have shown us a clean pair of heels, and there's only an
old charwoman in the basement. She tells me your young friend there
came from the country--somewhere in Sussex--and always behaved herself
very nicely. The old woman seems fond of her.'
"'Yes, she was always kind to me,' said the girl.
"'Was she? Well, I hope she'll be kind to you now you're left high and
dry,' said Gerald. 'These people won't come back any more, I take it.
They travel in light marching order--a grubby old carpet bag, and a
brush and comb which would account for the lady's tangled head. They
won't come back to fetch _those_, at the risk of being had up for
obtaining money upon false pretences. And what's to become of you, I
wonder?'--to the girl. 'Have you any money?'
"'No, sir.'
"'Any friends in London?'
"'No.'
"'Any friends in the country--in the place you left?'
"'Not now. No one would be kind to me now. There was a kind lady who
wanted to apprentice me to her dressmaker when my father died, and I
was left quite alone; but I hated the idea of dressmaking; and one
night there was a spiritualistic _séance_ at the school-house, and I
went, because I had heard of messages from the dead, and I thought if
it were possible for the dead to speak to the living, my father would
not leave me without one word of consolation. We loved each other so
dearly; we were all the world to each other; and people said the dead
had spoken--had sent messages of love and comfort. So I went to the
dark _séance_, and I asked them to call my father's spirit; and there
was a message rapped out, and I believed that it was from him; and
next day I met Madame Kaltardern in the street, and I asked her if
the messages were really true; and she said they were true, and she
spoke very kindly to me, and asked me if I would like to be a medium,
and said she was sure I was gifted--I could be a clairvoyant if I
liked--she could see from the shape of my eyes that I had the power,
and it would be a great pity for me not to use it. She said it was a
glorious life to be in constant communion with great spirits.'
"'And you thought you would like it better than dressmaking?' said Mrs.
Ravenshaw, sympathetically.
"'It was of my father I thought. He had been dead such a short time.
Sometimes I could hardly believe that he was dead. When I sat alone in
the firelight, I used to fancy he was in the room with me; I used to
speak to him, and beg him to answer me.'
"'And were there any raps then?' asked the practical Ravenshaw.
"'No, never when I was alone. The Kaltarderns came back after
Christmas, and there was another _séance_, for the benefit of the
Infirmary, and I went again; and Madame told me my father was speaking
to me. He rapped out a strange message about the organ. I was to bid
good-bye to the organ of which I was so fond; for I had a gift that was
greater than music; and I was to go with those who could cultivate that
gift. So the next day, when Madame Kaltardern asked me to go away with
them, and promised to develop my mediumistic power, I consented to go.
I was to be like their adopted daughter. They were to clothe me and
feed me, but they were to give me no money. A gift like mine could not
be paid for with money. If I tried to make money by my power, I should
lose it. I did not want money from them. I wanted to be brought into
communion with the spirit world, with my father whom I loved so dearly,
and with my mother, who died when I was eight years old, and with my
little sister Lucy, who died soon after mother--the little sister I
used to nurse. My only world was the world of the dead. And, oh, was it
all trickery--all? Those messages from father and mother--those baby
kisses, so soft, so quick, so light; the hand upon my forehead--the
hand of the dead--touching me and blessing me! Was it all false, all
trickery?'
"She rocked herself to and fro sobbing, unconsolable at the thought of
her vanished dream-world.
"'I'm afraid so, my dear,' said Ravenshaw, kindly. 'I'm afraid it was
all humbug. You have been duped yourself, while you have helped to
dupe others. It was uncommonly clever of them to get an unconscious
accomplice. And now what is to be done with this poor thing? That is
the question,' he concluded, appealing to his wife and me.
"'Yes, that's the question with a vengeance,' said Gerald. 'We can't
leave her in this house in the care of a deaf old woman, to bear the
brunt of the landlord's anger when he comes home and finds the birds
flown and his arrears of rent the baddest of bad debts. Poor child! we
must get her away somehow. Have you no friends in the country who would
give you a home?' he asked the girl.
"'No,' she answered, fighting with her sobs. 'People were very kind to
me just at first after my father's death; and then I think they got
tired of me. They said I was helpless; I ought to have been able to put
my hand to something useful. The only thing I cared for was music. I
used to sing in the choir; but it was only a village church, and the
choir were only paid a pound a quarter. I couldn't live upon that; and
I couldn't play the organ well enough to take my father's place. And
then Miss Grimshawe, a rich old lady, offered to apprentice me to a
dressmaker; but I hated the idea of that. Dressmakers' girls are so
common; and my father was a gentleman, though he was poor. When I told
Miss Grimshawe I was going away with the Kaltarderns, she was very
angry. She said I should end badly. Everybody was angry. I can never go
back to them; they would all turn from me.'
"Mr. Ravenshaw looked suspicious; Mrs. Ravenshaw looked serious;
and even I asked myself whether the girl's story, so plausible, so
convincing to my awakened interest, might not, after all, be a tissue
of romance, which sounded natural, because it had been recited so often.
"Gerald was the most business-like among us.
"'What is your name?' he asked.
"'Esperanza Campbell.'
"'Esperanza? Why, that's a Spanish name!'
"'My mother was a Spaniard.'
"'So! And what is the name of the village where your father played the
organ?'
"'Besbery, near Petworth.'
"'Besbery!' repeated Gerald, pencilling memoranda on his linen cuff.
'Do you remember the name of the vicar, or rector?'
"'There was only a curate-in-charge--Mr. Harrison.'
"'Very good,' said Gerald.' Now, what we have to do is to get this poor
young lady into a decent lodging, where the landlady will take care
of her till we can help her to find some employment, or respectable
situation, not mediumistic. I suppose it would hardly be convenient
to you to take her home with you, and keep her for a week or so, Mrs.
Ravenshaw?' Gerald inquired, as an afterthought.
"Mrs. Ravenshaw hastened to explain that, with children,
nursery-governess, and spinster aunt, every bed in her house at
Shooter's Hill was occupied.
"'We have not known what it is to have a spare bedroom for the last
three years,' she said.
"'Babies have accumulated rather rapidly,' said Ravenshaw. Poor
creature, how my careless, independent bachelorhood pitied him! 'And
every second baby means another servant. If one could only bring them
up in a frame, like geranium cuttings!'
"'I think I know of a lodging-house where Miss Campbell could find a
temporary home, not far from here,' I said.
"'Think you know?' cried Gerald, impatiently. 'You can't think about
knowing; you know or don't know. Where is it?'
"'In Great Ormond Street.'
"'Capital--close by. I'll go and get a cab. Miss Campbell, just put
your traps together, and--and do up your hair, and get on a gown,'
looking at her flowing robe and dishevelled hair with evident distaste,
'while I'm gone.'
"He was out of the room in a moment.
"'Are you sure the house is perfectly respectable, Mr. Beresford?'
inquired Mrs. Ravenshaw, who, as a fiction-weaver, no doubt let her
imagination run upon the horrors of the great city and the secret
iniquities of lodging-house keepers, from Hogarth's time downwards.
"I told her that I could trust my own sister to the house in Great
Ormond Street, which was kept by my old nurse and my father's old
butler, who had retired from service about five years before, and had
invested their savings in the furnishing of a spacious old-fashioned
house in a district where rents were then low, for the accommodation
of all that is most respectable in the way of families and single
gentlemen.
"'I can vouch for my old nurse Martha as one of the best and kindest of
women, as well as one of the shrewdest,' I said.
"The girl heard this discussion unmoved and uninterested by the trouble
we were taking on her behalf. Her sobs had subsided, but she was crying
silently, weeping over the cruel end of a dream which had been more to
her than all the waking world. She told me afterwards how much and how
real that dream had been to her.
"Mrs. Ravenshaw went to her room with her, and helped her to exchange
the long white alb-like garment for a tidy black gown, on which the
crape trimming had grown rusty with much wear. I can see her now as she
came back into the lamplight in that plain black gown, and with her
yellow hair rolled into a massive coil at the back of her head, the
graceful figure, so girlish, so willowy in its tall slenderness, the
fair pale face, and dark-blue eyes heavy with tears.
"She had a poor little black-straw hat in her hand, which she put on
presently, before we went downstairs to the cab. Gerald and I carried
her box. There was no one to object to its removal. The old woman in
the basement made no sign. One of the printers let himself in with a
latch-key while we were in the hall, looked at us curiously, and went
upstairs without a word.
"Mrs. Ravenshaw kissed Esperanza, and wished her a friendly good night,
promising to do what she could to help her in the future; and then she
and her husband hurried away to catch the last train to Shooter's Hill."