CHAPTER VII.
"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 aséanceto 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 theCornhill Magazineto assist them, the people near Russell Square were doing very good business.
"Twice, and sometimes three times a week, they gave aséance, 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 darkséanceand 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 pastséances. 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 firstséance. 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 eachséancetouched 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 theséance, 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 theséanceprogressed 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.
"Theséanceproceeded 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 theséance. 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.'
"'Angels ever bright and fair,Take, oh take me to your care.'
"'Angels ever bright and fair,Take, oh take me to your care.'
"'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 theséancemight 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 ofséances!'
"'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 overhim. 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 theirséances.'
"'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 theMagnificat. And one night at aséance, 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 fetchthose, 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 spiritualisticséanceat 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 darkséance, 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 anotherséance, 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."