Tims had ceased to be an inhabitant of Oxford. She was studying
physiology in London and luxuriating in the extraordinary cheapness of
life in Cranham Chambers. Not that she had any special need of
cheapness; but the spinster aunt who brought her up had, together with a
comfortable competence, left her the habit of parsimony. If, however,
she did not know how to enjoy her own income, she allowed many women
poorer than herself to benefit by it.
She was no correspondent; and an examination, followed by the serious
illness of her next-door neighbor--Mr. Fitzalan, a solitary man with a
small post in the British Museum--had prevented her from visiting Oxford
during Mildred's last invasion. She had imagined Milly Stewart to have
been leading for two undisturbed years the busily tranquil life proper
to her; adoring Ian and the baby, managing her house, and going
sometimes to church and sometimes to committees, without wholly
neglecting the cultivation of the mind. A letter from Milly, in which
she scented trouble, made her call herself sternly to account for her
long neglect of her friend.
It was now the Long Vacation, but Miss Burt was still at Ascham and
Lady Thomson was spending a week with her. She had stayed with the
Stewarts in the spring, and resolutely keeping a blind eye turned
towards whatever she ought to have disapproved in Mildred, had lauded
her return to bodily vigor, and also to good sense, in ceasing to fuss
about the health of Ian and the baby. Aunt Beatrice would have blushed
to own a husband and child whose health required care. This time when
she dined with the Stewarts she had found Milly reprehensibly pale and
dispirited. One day shortly afterwards she came in to tea. The nurse
happened to be out, and Tony, now a beautiful child of fifteen months,
was sitting on the drawing-room floor.
The two women were discussing plans for raising money to build a
gymnasium at Ascham, but Tony was not interested in the subject. He kept
working his way along the floor to his mother, partly on an elbow and a
knee, but mostly on his stomach. Arrived at his goal he would pull her
skirt, indicate as well as he could a little box lying by his neglected
picture-book, and grunt with much expression. A monkey lived inside the
box, and Tony, whose memory was retentive, persevered in expecting to
hear that monkey summoned by wild tattoos and subterranean growls until
it jumped up with a bang--a splendidly terrible thing of white bristles,
and scarlet snout--to dance the fandango to a lively if unmusical tune.
Then Tony, be sure, would laugh until he rolled from side to side. Mummy
never responded to his wishes now, but Daddy had pleaded for the
Jack-in-the-box to be spared, and sometimes when quite alone with Tony,
would play the monkey-game in his inferior paternal style, pleased with
such modified appreciation as the young critic might bestow upon him.
"I'm sorry Baby's so troublesome," apologized the distressed Milly, for
the third time lifting Tony up and replacing him in a sitting posture,
with his picture-book. "I'm trying to teach him to sit quiet, but I'm
afraid he's been played with a great deal more than he should have
been."
"To tell the truth, I thought so the last time I was here," replied Aunt
Beatrice. "But he's still young enough to be properly trained. It's such
waste of a reasonable person's time to spend it making idiotic noises at
a small baby. And it's a thousand times better for the child's brain and
nerves for it to be left entirely to itself."
Tony said nothing, but his face began to work in a threatening manner.
"I perfectly agree with you, Aunt Beatrice," responded Milly, eagerly.
Lady Thomson continued:
"Children should be spoken to as little as possible until they are from
two to two and a half years old; then they should be taught to speak
correctly."
Milly chimed in: "Yes, that's always been my own view. I do feel it so
important that their very first impressions should be the right ones,
that the first pictures they see should be good, that they should never
be sung to out of tune and in general--"
Apparently this programme for babies did not commend itself to Tony;
certainly the first item, enjoining silent development, did not. His
face had by this time worked the right number of minutes to produce a
roar, and it came. Milly picked him up, but the wounds of his spirit
were not to be immediately healed, and the roar continued. Finally he
had to be handed over to the parlor-maid, and so came to great happiness
in the kitchen, where there were no rules against infantile
conversation. Milly was flushed and disturbed.
"Baby has not been properly brought up," she said. "He's been allowed
his own way too much."
"Since you say so, Milly, I must confess I noticed in the spring that
you seemed to be bringing the child up in an easy-going, old-fashioned
way I should hardly have expected of you. I hope you will begin now to
study the theory of education. A mother should take her vocation
seriously. I own I don't altogether understand the taste for frivolities
which you have developed since you married. It's harmless, no doubt, but
it doesn't seem quite natural in a young woman who has taken a First in
Greats."
Milly's hands grasped the arms of her chair convulsively. She looked at
her aunt with desolation in her dark-ringed eyes. The last thing she had
ever intended was to mention the mysterious and disastrous fate that had
befallen her; yet she did it.
"The person you saw here last spring wasn't I. Oh, Aunt Beatrice! Can't
you see the difference?"
Lady Thomson looked at her in surprise:
"What do you mean? I was speaking of my visit to you in March."
"And don't you see the difference? Oh, how hateful you must have found
me!"
"Really, Mildred, I saw nothing hateful about you. On the contrary, if
you want the plain truth, I greatly prefer you in a cheerful,
common-sense mood, as you were then, even if your high spirits do lead
you into a little too much frivolity. I think it a more wholesome, and
therefore ultimately a more useful, frame of mind than this causeless
depression, which leads you to take such a morbid, exaggerated view of
things."
Every word pierced Milly's heart with a double pang.
"You liked her better than me?" she asked, piteously. "Yet I've always
tried to be just what you wanted me to be, Aunt Beatrice, to do
everything you thought right, and she--Oh, it's too awful!"
"What do you mean, Mildred?"
"I mean that the person you prefer to me as I am now, the person who was
here in March, wasn't I at all."
The fine healthy carnation of Lady Thomson's cheek paled. In her calm,
rapid way she at once found the explanation of Milly's unhealthy,
depressed appearance and manner. Poor Mildred Stewart was insane. Beyond
the paling of her cheek, however, Lady Thomson allowed no sign of shock
to be visible in her.
"That's an exaggerated way of talking," she replied. "I suppose you mean
your mood was different."
Milly was looking straight in front of her with haggard eyes.
"No; it simply wasn't I at all. You believe in the Bible, don't you?"
"Not in verbal inspiration, of course, but in a general way, yes,"
returned Lady Thomson, puzzled but guarded.
"Do you believe in the demoniacs? In possession by evil spirits?"
Milly was not looking at vacancy now. Her desperate hands clutched the
arms of her chair, as she leaned forward and fixed her aunt with hollow
eyes, awaiting her reply.
"Certainly not! Most certainly not! They were obviously cases of
epilepsy and insanity, misinterpreted by an ignorant age."
"No--it's all true, quite literally true. Three times, and for six
months or more each time, I have been possessed by a spirit that cannot
be good. I know it's not. It takes my body, it takes the love of people
I care for, away from me--" Milly's voice broke and she pressed her
handkerchief over her face. "You all think her--But she's bad, and some
day she'll do something wicked--something that will break my heart, and
you'll all insist it was I who did it, and you'll believe I'm a wicked
woman."
Lady Thomson looked very grave.
"Mildred, dear," she said, "try and collect yourself. It is really
wicked of you to give way to such terrible fancies. Would God permit
such a thing to happen to one of His children? We feel sure He would
not."
Milly shook her head, but the struggle with her hysterical sobs kept her
silent. Lady Thomson walked to the window, feeling more "upset" than she
had ever felt in her life. The window was open, but an awning shut out
the view of the street. From the window-boxes, filled with pink
geraniums and white stocks, a sweet, warm scent floated into the room,
and the rattle of the milkman's cart, the chink of his cans, fell upon
Lady Thomson's unheeding ears. So did voices in colloquy, but she did
not particularly note a female one of a thin, chirpy quality, addressing
the parlor-maid with a familiarity probably little appreciated by that
elegantly decorous damsel.
Milly had scarcely mastered her tears and Lady Thomson had just begun to
address her in quiet, firm tones, when Tims burst unannounced into the
room. Her hat was incredibly on one side, and her sallow face almost
crimson with heat, but bright with pleasure at finding herself once more
in Oxford.
"Hullo, old girl!" she cried, blind to the serious scene into which she
was precipitated. "How are you? Now don't kiss me"--throwing herself
into an attitude of violent defence against an embrace not yet
offered--"I'm too hot. Carried my bag myself all the way from the
station and saved the omnibus."
Lady Thomson fixed Tims with a look of more than usually cold
disapproval. Milly proffered a constrained greeting.
"Anything gone wrong?" asked Tims, after a minute, peering at Milly's
tear-stained eyes with her own short-sighted ones.
Milly answered with a forced self-restraint which appeared like cold
deliberation.
"Aunt Beatrice thinks I'm mad because I say I'm not the same person she
found in my place last March. I want you to tell her that it's not just
my fancy, but that you know that sometimes a quite different person
takes my place, and I'm not responsible for anything she says or does."
"Yes, that's a solemn Gospel fact, right enough," affirmed Tims.
Lady Thomson could hardly control her indignation, but she did, although
she spoke sternly to Tims.
"Do I understand you to say, Miss Timson, that it's a 'solemn Gospel
fact'--Gospel! Good Heavens--that Milly is possessed by a devil?"
Tims plumped down on the sofa and stared at Lady Thomson.
"Possessed by a devil? Good Lord, no! What do you mean?"
"Mildred believes herself to be possessed by an evil spirit."
Tims turned to Milly in consternation.
"Milly, old girl! Come! Poor old Milly! I never thought you were so
superstitious as all that. Besides, I know more about it than you do,
and I tell you straight, you mayn't be quite such a good sort when
you're in your other phase, but as to there being a devil in it--well,
devil's all nonsense, but if that were so, I should like to have a devil
myself, and the more the merrier."
Milly turned on her a face pale with horror and indignation. Her eyes
flashed and she raised a remonstrating hand.
"Hush!" she cried. "Hush! You don't know what dreadful things you're
saying. I don't know exactly what this spirit is that robs me of my
life; I'm only sure it's not Me and it's not good."
"Whatever may be the matter with you, Mildred," said Lady Thomson, "it
can't possibly be that. I suppose you have suffered from loss of memory
again and it's upset your nerves. Why will people have nerves? I should
advise you to go to Norton-Smith at once."
Milly's tears were flowing again but she managed to reply:
"I've been to Dr. Norton-Smith, Aunt Beatrice. He doesn't seem to
understand."
"He doesn't want to," interjected Tims, scornfully. "You don't suppose a
respectable English nerve-doctor wants to know anything about
psychology? They'd be interested in the case in France, or in the United
States, but they wouldn't be able to keep down Milly Number Two."
"Then what use would they be to me?" asked Milly, despairingly. "I can
only trust in God; and He seems to have forsaken me."
"No, no, my dear child!" cried Lady Thomson. "Don't talk in this painful
way. I can't imagine what you mean, Miss Timson. It all sounds
dreadfully mad."
"I can explain the whole case to you perfectly," stated Tims, with eager
confidence.
"I'd better go away," gasped Milly between her convulsive sobs. "I can't
bear any more. But Aunt Beatrice must know now. Tell her what you like,
only--only it isn't true."
Milly fled to her bedroom; the long, low room, so perfect in its
simplicity, its windows looking away into the sunshine over the pleasant
boughs of orchards and garden-plots and the gray shingled roofs of old
houses--the room from which on that November evening Milly's spirit had
been absent while Ian, the lover whom she had never known, had watched
his Beloved, the Desire of his soul and sense, returning to him from the
unimagined limbo to which she had again withdrawn.