In a little room high up in the house, her very own sitting-room, heaped
with roses and heliotrope and carnations, its windows looking out to the
Surrey hills and a gurgling brook—blue as steel in the winter cold, its
snow-white banks edged with irregular shrubberies icicle-hung, Helen and
Latham sat in close conference.
A glorious fire flamed on the broad hearth in the corner. Helen had
inherited her father’s love of fires. When the war came, crippling their
servant staff both at Curzon Street and at Deep Dale, and making the
replenishing of coal cellars arduous, and posters on every hoarding
admonished patriotism to economize fuel, Richard Bransby had installed a
gas-fire in his library. Helen had opposed this, she had so loved the
great mixed fire of logs and of coal before which so many of her
childhood’s gloamings had been spent, so many of her acute young dreams
dreamed, but for once the father had not yielded to her. In one
particular the gas-fire had appealed to him—it minimized the intrusions
of servants when he best liked to have his “den” to himself. Humbly
born, but with none of the excrescent caddishness of smaller-souled
_nouveaux riches_, he had no liking for the visible presence of his
domestic retinue, and when servants were ill-trained and imperfectly
unobtrusive, little irritated him more than to have them about, and,
except by Helen, he was a man easily irritated. So gas had replaced wood
and anthracite in his room. But not so in Helen’s. She meant well by her
country, but the logs piled high on her hearth. The patriotisms of youth
are apt to be thoughtless, in every country. Often Youth makes the great
sacrifice—England needs no telling of that—but Age makes the ten
thousand daily burnt-offerings that in their infinite aggregate heap
high in the scale of a people’s devotion; and, perhaps, win as tender
approval from the Angel that records.
The morning sun streamed in riotously. A room could not be prettier or
more cozy. It made a brilliant background to the slender, black-clad
girl-figure, and the handsome, middle-aged man, dressed as carefully as
she—in a gray morning suit—and almost as slender. Dr. Latham took
every care of his figure.
“I hope you are not going to be angry with me,” Helen said, looking at
him a little ruefully.
“My dear child!”
“Because, you see, I have brought you here under false pretenses.”
“False pretenses!” her old friend laughed contentedly, “that’s
actionable.”
“I’m not ill. It isn’t about my health I want to see you.”
“Then I’ve lost a very attractive patient,” he mocked at her in
affectionate retort.
“Don’t joke—please. It is very serious.”
“So you wrote.”
“And I didn’t say I was ill. But, of course, that would be what you
thought, when I begged you to come for a few days, and knowing how busy
you always are, and asking you to say nothing to Aunt Caroline or any
one, but just seem to be on an ordinary visit.”
“I was delighted to come,” he assured her gravely. “And, as it happens,
I did not think you were ill.”
“No?”
“No.”
“How was that, Dr. Latham?”
“Can’t say in the least; but I didn’t. And—now—well—tell me.”
“It’s about something you once said.”
He wondered if it were something he had said about Angela Hilary. He
hoped not. He had said some very foolish things—but that was long
ago—before he really knew that radiant woman. “Something I once said?”
he echoed a little anxiously.
Helen nodded.
“I am afraid I don’t remember. What was it?”
“That night that——” But she choked at the words. For a moment she
could not speak. Latham gave her time. He was used to giving people
time—and especially women. Presently she went on, finding another way
to put it—“That last night—when you spoke of the dead coming back. You
said that if two people loved each other very dearly, and one was left
behind and needed the one who had gone, he would come back.”
“I said he might try,” Latham corrected her gently.
“You were right.”
“What do you mean?” The man was half amused, half startled, but the
physician was anxious.
“Daddy—Daddy is trying to come back to me,” she said very simply.
“Miss Bransby!” For a moment he wondered if Angela had been taking this
overwrought child to materializing circles or trumpet mediums or some
other such bosh. But no, Angela wouldn’t. She did the wildest
things—small things—but in the important things she had the greatest
good sense: he had proved it.
“Oh,” Helen assured him, “I am sure of it—I am sure of it. There’s
something he wants me to do, but I can’t understand what it is. That is
why I asked you to come here—I thought you might help me.”
Latham was moved, and perturbed. “My dear child,” he began lamely.
But Helen could brook no interruption now. Her words came fast enough,
now she had started. “For weeks,” she insisted breathlessly, “I’ve had
this feeling—for weeks I’ve known that he was doing his utmost to tell
me something. At first I tried to put it aside. I thought it was my
grief or my longing for him that deceived me into thinking this—but I
couldn’t. It always came back stronger than ever—until to-day when I
suddenly realized—I can’t tell you just how—there is something he
wants _me_ to do _in the library_.”
“My dear, my dear, my idle remarks have put these ideas in your head.”
The doctor was thoroughly alarmed for her now, though still he could
detect no hint of illness or disorder. “You are overwrought.”
“No, no!” the girl cried. “It isn’t that. It’s the strain of not being
able to understand—it’s almost more than I can bear. Oh, Dr. Latham,
can’t you help me to find out what it is that Daddy wants me to do?”
He studied her gravely—puzzled, troubled, strange thoughts surging in
his mind. She seemed perfectly normal. And he knew that while love,
religious mania, money troubles, filled insane asylums almost to
bursting, that the percentage of patients so incarcerated as the result
of spiritualism was almost _nil_, and quite negligible—general rumor
notwithstanding. (Rumor’s a libelous jade.) He felt less sure of a right
course than he often did. And he said sadly, but with little conviction,
“I’m afraid I can’t help you, Miss Bransby.”
“But surely——” She rose and stood before him, her eyes flushed with
entreaty, her clasped hands stretched toward him in pleading.
He rose too and laid a grave arm about her slight shoulder, saying
tenderly, “What I said that night—it was no more than an idle
speculation—I had no ground for it. And, naturally, your great grief
coming so soon afterwards impressed my words upon your mind.”
“Oh, no——” Helen said, her tears gathering.
“Come! come!” Latham coaxed her. “You’re imagining things.”
She pulled from his arm, and moved to the window, answering him almost
violently, “No, no! _It’s too vivid—it’s too real!_”
“But surely,” he urged, “if your father could bring you to this house,
direct you to the library—you said the library?”—she nodded her head
emphatically—“he could tell you what he wanted you to do there. You
have had to bear a great sorrow—it has unsettled you and given you this
delusion—a delusion that comes to so many people who have lost what you
have lost; you must conquer it!”
Perhaps he might have convinced and influenced her more, had he been
more convinced himself, had she convinced and influenced him less. She
persisted with him, wearily. “But—don’t you see? I thought you would
see. Oh, please try to see. If I lose this—I lose—everything. I was so
sure it was about Hugh—I was so sure Daddy was going to bring him back
to me.” She sat down by the fire crying piteously now.
Latham’s own eyes felt odd. He knelt down on the hearthrug, and gathered
her hands into his. “Poor child!” It was all he could say. What else was
there to say?
She looked at him desperately. “Then you don’t believe?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” he admitted—very softly.
He saw her mouth quiver, and then the sobs came thick and fast, and she
hid her face on his shoulder.