Silently staring into the fire, he vouchsafed no further explanations, and I did not venture to ask for any; but I doubt if even such language as he could command would have been so full of horrible suggestion as that grey set face, and the terror-stricken gaze, which the growing light made every minute more distinct, more weird. What had so suddenly and so completely overthrown, not his own strength merely, but the defences of his faith? He groped amongst them still, for, from time to time, I heard him murmuring to himself familiar verses of prayer and psalm and gospel, as if he sought therewith to banish some haunting fear, to quiet some torturing suspicion. And at last, when the dull grey day had fully broken, he turned towards me, and cried in tones more heart-piercing than ever startled the great congregations in church or cathedral—

"What if it were all a delusion, and there be no Father, no Saviour?"

And the horror of that abyss into which he looked, flashing from his mind to my own, left me silent and helpless before him. Yet I longed to give him comfort; for, with the regal self-possession which had fallen from him, there had slipped from me too some undefined instinct of distrust and disapproval. All that I felt now was the sad tie of brotherhood which united us, poor human atoms, strong only in our capacity to suffer, tossed and driven, whitherward we knew not, in the purposeless play of soulless and unpitying forces.



CHAPTER V

AUSTYN'S GOSPEL

"He did not see the ghost, you say; he only felt it? I should think he did—on his chest. I never heard of a clearer case of nightmare. You must be careful whom you tell the story to, old chap; for at the first go-off it sounds as if it was not merely eating too much that was the matter. It was, however, indigestion sure enough. No wonder! If a man of his age who takes no exercise will eat three square meals a day, what else can he expect? And Mallet is rather liberal with her cream."

Atherley it was, of course, who propounded this simple interpretation of the night's alarms, as he sat in his smoking-room reviewing his trout-flies after an early breakfast we had taken with the Canon.

"You always account for the mechanism, but not for the effect. Why should indigestion take that mental form?"

"Why, because indigestion constantly does in sleep, and out of it as well, for that matter. A nightmare is not always a sense of oppression on the chest only; it may be an overpowering dread of something you dream you see. Indigestion can produce, waking or asleep, a very good imitation of what is experienced in a blue funk. And there is another kind of dream which is produced by fasting—that, I need hardly say, I have never experienced. Indeed, I don't dream."

"But the ghost—the ghost he almost saw."

"The sinking horror produced the ghost, instead of vice versa, as you might suppose. It is like a dream. In unpleasant dreams we fancy it is the dream itself which makes us feel uncomfortable. It is just the other way round. It is the discomfort that produces the dream. Have you ever dreamt you were tramping through snow, and felt cold in consequence? I did the other night. But I did not feel cold because I dreamt I was walking through snow, but because I had not enough blankets on my bed; and because I felt cold I dreamt about the snow. Don't you know the dream you make up in a few moments about the knocking at the door when they call you in the morning? And ghosts are only waking dreams."

"I wonder if you ever had an illusion yourself—gave way to it, I mean. You were in love once—twice," I added hastily, in deference to Lady Atherley.

"Only once," said Atherley, calmly. "Do you ever see her now, Lindy? She has grown enormously fat. Certainly I have had my illusions, and I don't object to them when they are pleasant and harmless—on the contrary. Now, falling in love, if you don't fall too deep, is pleasant, and it never lasts long enough to do much mischief. Marriage, of course, you will say, may be mischievous—only for the individual, it is useful for the race. What I object to is the deliberate culture of illusions which are not pleasant but distinctly depressing, like half your religious beliefs."

"George," said Lady Atherley, coming into the room at this instant; "have you—oh, dear! what a state this room is in!"

"It is the housemaids. They never will leave things as I put them."

"And it was only dusted and tidied an hour ago. Mr. Lyndsay, did you ever see anything like it?"

I said "Never."

"If Lindy has a fault in this world, it is that he is as pernickety, as my old nurse used to say—as pernickety as an old maid. The stiff formality of his room would give me the creeps, if anything could. The first thing I always want to do when I see it is to make hay in it."

"It is what you always do do, before you have been an hour there," I observed.

"Jane, in Heaven's name leave those things alone! Is this sort of thing all you came in for?"

"No; I really came in to ask if you had read Lucinda Molyneux's letter."

"No, I have not; her writing is too bad for anything. Besides, I know exactly what she has got to say. She has at last found the religion which she has been looking for all her life, and she intends to be whatever it is for evermore."

"That is not all. She wants to come and stay here for a few days."

"What! Here? Now? Why, what—oh, I forgot the ghost! By Jove! You see, Jane, there are some advantages in having one on the premises when it procures you a visit from a social star like Mrs. Molyneux. But where are you going to put her? Not in the bachelor's room, where your poor uncle made such a night of it? It wouldn't hold her dressing bag, let alone herself."

"Oh, but I hope the pink room will be ready. The plasterer from Whitford came out yesterday to apologise, and said he had been keeping his birthday."

"Indeed! and how many times a year does he have a birthday?"

"I don't know, but he was quite sober; and he did the most of it yesterday and will finish it to-day, so it will be all right."

"When is she coming, then?"

"To-morrow. You would have seen that if you had read the letter. And there is a message for you in it, too."

"Then find me the place, like an angel; I cannot wade through all these sheets of hieroglyphics. In the postscript? Let me see: 'Tell Sir George I look forward to explaining to him the religious teaching which I have been studying for months.' Months! Come; there must be something in a religion which Mrs. Molyneux sticks to for months at a time—'studying for months under the guidance of its great apostle Baron Zinkersen—' What is this name? 'The deeper I go into it all the more I feel in it that faith, satisfying to the reason as well as to the emotions, for which I have been searching all my life. It is certainly the religion of the future'—future underlined—'and I believe it will please even Sir George, for it so distinctly coincides with his own favourite theories.' Favourite theories, indeed! I haven't any. My mind is as open as day to truth from any quarter. Only I distrust apostles with no vowels in their names ever since that one, two years ago, made off with the spoons."

"No, George, he did not take any plate. It was money, and money Lucinda gave him herself for bringing her letters from her father."

"Where was her father, then?" I inquired, much interested.

"Well, he was—a—he was dead," answered Lady Atherley; "and after some time, a very low sort of person called upon Lucinda and said she wrote all the letters; but Lucinda could not get the money back without going to law, as some people wished her to do; but I am glad she did not, as I think the papers would have said very unpleasant things about it."

"The apostle I liked best," said Atherley, "was the American one. I really admired old Stamps, and old Stamps admired me; for she knew I thoroughly understood what an unmitigated humbug she was. She had a fine sense of humour, too. How her eyes used to twinkle when I asked posers at her prayer-meetings!"

"Dreadful woman!" cried Lady Atherley. "Lucinda brought her to lunch once. Such black nails, and she said she could make the plates and dishes fly about the room, but I said I would rather not. I am thankful she does not want to bring this baron with her."

"I would not have him. I draw the line there, and also at spiritual seances. I am too old for them. Do you remember one I took you to at Mrs. Molyneux's, Lindy, five years ago, when they raised poor old Professor Delaine, and he danced on the table and spelt bliss with one s? I was haunted for weeks afterwards by the dread that there might be a future life, in which we should make fools of ourselves in the same way. What is this?"

"It is the carriage just come back from the station. Mr. Lyndsay and the little boys are going over to Rood Warren with a note for me. I hope you will see Mr. Austyn, Mr. Lyndsay, and persuade him to come over to-morrow."

"What! To dine?" said Atherley. "He won't come out to dinner in Lent."

I thought so myself, but I was glad of the excuse to see again the delicate, austere face. As we drove along, I tried to define to myself the quality which marked it out from others. Not sweetness, not marked benevolence, but the repose of absolute spiritual conviction. Austyn's God can never be my God, and in his heaven I should find no rest; but, one among ten thousand, he believed in both, as the martyrs believed who perished in the flames, with a faith which would have stood the atheist's test;—"We believe a thing, when we are prepared to act as if it were true."

Rood Warren lay in a little hollow beside an armlet of the stream that waters all the valley. The hamlet consisted of a tiny church and a group of labourers' cottages, in one of which, presumably because there was no other habitation for him, the curate in charge made his home. An apple-faced old woman received me at the door, and hospitably invited me to wait within for Mr. Austyn's return from morning service, which I did, while the carriage, with the little boys and Tip in it, drove up and down before the door. The room in which I waited, evidently the one sitting-room, was destitute of luxury or comfort as a monk's cell.

Profusion there was in one thing only—books. They indeed furnished the room, clothing the walls and covering the table; but ornaments there were none, not even sacred or symbolical, save, indeed, one large and beautifully-carved crucifix over a mantelpiece covered with letters and manuscripts. I have thought of this early home of Austyn's many a time as dignities have been literally thrust upon him by a world which since then has discovered his intellectual rank. He will end his days in a palace, and, one may confidently predict of him, remain as absolutely indifferent to his surroundings as in the little cottage at Rood Warren.

But he did not come, and presently his housekeeper came in with many apologies to explain he would not be back for hours, having started after service on a round of parish visiting instead of first returning home, as she had expected. She herself was plainly depressed by the fact. "I did hope he would have come in for a bit of lunch first," she said, sadly.

All I could do was to leave the note, to which late in the day came an answer, declining simply and directly on the ground that he did not dine out in Lent.

"I cannot see why," observed Lady Atherley, as we sat together over the drawing-room fire after tea, "because it is possible to have a very nice dinner without meat. I remember one we had abroad once at an hotel on Good Friday. There were sixteen courses, chiefly fish, no meat even in the soup, only cream and eggs and that sort of thing, all beautifully cooked with exquisite sauces. Even George said he would not mind fasting in that way. It would have been nice if he could have come to meet Mrs. Molyneux to-morrow. I am sure they must be connected in some way, because Lord—"

And then my mind wandered whilst Lady Atherley entered into some genealogical calculations, for which she has nothing less than a genius. My attention was once again captured by the name de Noel, how introduced I know not, but it gave me an excuse for asking—

"Lady Atherley, what is Mrs. de Noel like?"

"Cecilia? She is rather tall and rather fair, with brown hair. Not exactly pretty, but very ladylike-looking. I think she would be very good-looking if she thought more about her dress."

"Is she clever?"

"No, not at all; and that is very strange, for the Atherleys are such a clever family, and she has quite the ways of a clever person, too; so odd, and so stupid about little things that anyone can remember. I don't believe she could tell you, if you asked her, what relation her husband was to Lord Stowell."

"She seems a great favourite."

"Oh, no one could possibly help liking her. She is the most good-natured person; there is nothing she would not do to help one; she is a dear thing, but most odd, so very odd. I often think it is so fortunate that she married a sailor, because he is so much away from home."

"Don't they get on, then?"

"Oh dear, yes; they are devoted to each other, and he thinks everything she does quite perfect. But then he is very different from most men; he thinks so little about eating, and he takes everything so easy; I don't think he cares what strange people Cecilia asks to the house."

"Strange people!"

"Well; strange people to have on a visit. Invalids and—people that have nowhere else they could go to."

"Do you mean poor people from the East End?"

"Oh no; some of them are quite rich. She had an idiot there with his mother once who was heir to a very large fortune in the Colonies somewhere; but of course nobody else would have had them, and I think it must have been very uncomfortable. And then once she actually had a woman who had taken to drinking. I did not see her, I am thankful to say, but there was a deformed person once staying there, I saw him being wheeled about the garden. It was very unpleasant. I think people like that should always live shut up."

There was a little pause, and then Lady Atherley added—

"Cecilia has never been the same since her baby died. She used to have such a bright colour before that. He was not quite two years old, but she felt it dreadfully; and it was a great pity, for if he had lived he would have come in for all the Stowell property."

The door opened.

"Why, George; how late you are, and—how wet! Is it raining?"

"Yes; hard."

"Have you bought the ponies?"

"No; they won't do at all. But whom do you think I picked up on the way home? You will never guess. Your pet parson, Mr. Austyn."

"Mr. Austyn!"

"Yes; I found him by the roadside not far from Monk's cottage, where he had been visiting, looking sadly at a spring-cart, which the owner thereof, one of the Rood Warren farmers, had managed to upset and damage considerably. He was giving Austyn a lift home when the spill took place. So, remembering your hankering and Lindy's for the society of this young Ritualist, I persuaded him that instead of tramping six miles through the wet he should come here and put up for the night with us; so, leaving the farmer free to get home on his pony, I clinched the matter by promising to send him back to-morrow in time for his eight o'clock service."

"Oh dear! I wish I had known he was coming. I would have ordered a dinner he would like."

"Judging by his appearance, I should say the dinner he would like will be easily provided."

Atherley was right. Mr. Austyn's dinner consisted of soup, bread, and water. He would not even touch the fish or the eggs elaborately prepared for his especial benefit. Yet he was far from being a skeleton at the feast, to whose immaterial side he contributed a good deal—not taking the lead in conversation, but readily following whosoever did, giving his opinions on one topic after another in the manner of a man well informed, cultured, thoughtful, original even, and at the same time with no warmer interest in all he spoke of than the inhabitant of another planet might have shown.

Atherley was impressed and even surprised to a degree unflattering to the rural clergy.

"This is indeed a rara avis of a country curate," he confided to me after dinner, while Lady Atherley was unravelling with Austyn his connection with various families of her acquaintance. "We shall hear of him in time to come, if, in the meanwhile, he does not starve himself to death. By the way, I lay you odds he sees the ghost. To begin with; he has heard of it—everybody has in this neighbourhood; and then St. Anthony himself was never in a more favourable condition for spiritual visitations. Look at him; he is blue with asceticism. But he won't turn tail to the ghost; he'll hold his own. There's metal in him."

This led me to ask Austyn, as we went down the bachelor's passage to our rooms, if he were afraid of ghosts.

"No; that is, I don't feel any fear now. Whether I should do so if face to face with one, is another question. This house has the reputation of being haunted, I believe. Have you seen the ghost yourself?"

"No, but I have seen others who did, or thought they did. Do you believe in ghosts?"

"I do not know that I have considered the subject sufficiently to say whether I do or not. I see no prima facie objection to their appearance. That it would be supernatural offers no difficulty to a Christian whose religion is founded on, and bound up with, the supernatural."

"If you do see anything, I should like to know."

I went away, wondering why he repelled as well as attracted me; what it was behind the almost awe-inspiring purity and earnestness I felt in him that left me with a chill sense of disappointment? The question was so perplexing and so interesting that I determined to follow it up next day, and ordered my servant to call me as early as Mr. Austyn was wakened.

In the morning I had just finished dressing, but had not put out my candles, when a knock at the door was followed by the entrance of Austyn himself.

"I did not expect to find you up, Mr. Lyndsay; I knocked gently, lest you should be asleep. In case you were not, I intended to come and tell you that I had seen the ghost."

"Breakfast is ready," said a servant at the door.

"Let me come down with you and hear about it," I said.

We went down through staircase and hall, still plunged in darkness, to the dining-room, where lamps and fire burned brightly. Their glow falling on Austyn's face showed me how pale it was, and worn as if from watching.

Breakfast was set ready for him, but he refused to touch it.

"But tell me what you saw."

"I must have slept two or three hours when I awoke with the feeling that there was someone besides myself in the room. I thought at first it was the remains of a dream and would quickly fade away; but it did not, it grew stronger. Then I raised myself in bed and looked round. The space between the sash of the window and the curtains—my shutters were not closed—allowed one narrow stream of moonlight to enter and lie across the floor. Near this, standing on the brink of it, as it were, and rising dark against it, was a shadowy figure. Nothing was clearly outlined but the face; that I saw only too distinctly. I rose and remained up for at least an hour before it vanished. I heard the clock outside strike the hour twice. I was not looking at it all this time—on the contrary, my hands were clasped across my closed eyes; but when from time to time I turned to see if it was gone, it was reminded me of a wild beast waiting to spring, and I seemed to myself to be holding it at bay all the time with a great strain of the will, and, of course"—he hesitated for an instant, and then added—"in virtue of a higher power."

The reserve of all his school forbade him to say more, but I understood as well as if he had told me that he had been on his knees, praying all the time, and there rose before my mind a picture of the scene—moonlight, kneeling saint, and watching demon, which the leaf of some illustrated missal might have furnished.

The bronze timepiece over the fireplace struck half-past six.

"I wonder if the carriage is at the door," said Austyn, rather anxiously. He went into the hall and looked out through the narrow windows. There was no carriage visible, and I deeply regretted the second interruption that must follow when it did come.

"Let us walk up the hill and on a little way together. The carriage will overtake us. My curiosity is not yet satisfied."

"Then first, Mr. Lyndsay, you must go back and drink some coffee; you are not strong as I am, or accustomed to go out fasting into the morning air."

Outside in the shadow of the hill, where the fog lay thick and white, the gloom and the cold of the night still lingered, but as we climbed the hill we climbed, too, into the brightness of a sunny morning—brilliant, amber-tinted above the long blue shadows.

* * * * *

I had to speak first.

"Now tell me what the face was like."

"I do not think I can. To begin with, I have a very indistinct remembrance of either the form or the colouring. Even at the time my impression of both was very vague; what so overwhelmed and transfixed my attention, to the exclusion of everything besides itself, was the look upon the face."

"And that?"

"And that I literally cannot describe. I know no words that could depict it, no images that could suggest it; you might as well ask me to tell you what a new colour was like if I had seen it in my dreams, as some people declare they have done. I could convey some faint idea of it by describing its effect upon myself, but that, too, is very difficult—that was like nothing I have ever felt before. It was the realisation of much which I have affirmed all my life, and steadfastly believed as well, but only with what might be called a notional assent, as the blind man might believe that light is sweet, or one who had never experienced pain might believe it was something from which the senses shrink. Every day that I have recited the creed, and declared my belief in the Life Everlasting, I have by implication confessed my entire disbelief in any other. I knew that what seemed so solid is not solid, so real is not real; that the life of the flesh, of the senses, of things seen, is but the "stuff that dreams are made of"—"a dream within a dream," as one modern writer has called it; "the shadow of a dream," as another has it. But last night—"

He stood still, gazing straight before him, as if he saw something that I could not see.

"But last night," I repeated, as we walked on again.

"Last night? I not only believed, I saw, I felt it with a sudden intuition conveyed to me in some inexplicable manner by the vision of that face. I felt the utter insignificance of what we name existence, and I perceived too behind it that which it conceals from us—the real Life, illimitable, unfathomable, the element of our true being, with its eternal possibilities of misery or joy."

"And all this came to you through something of an evil nature?"

"Yes; it was like the effect of lightning oh a pitch-dark night—the same vivid and lurid illumination of things unperceived before. It must be like the revelation of death, I should think, without, thank God, that fearful sense of the irrevocable which death must bring with it. Will you not rest here?"

For we had reached Beggar's Stile. But I was not tired for once, so keen, so life-giving was the air, sparkling with that fine elixir whereby morning braces us for the day's conflict. Below, through slowly-dissolving mists, the village showed as if it smiled, each little cottage hearth lifting its soft spiral of smoke to a zenith immeasurably deep, immaculately blue.

"But the ghost itself?" I said, looking up at him as we both rested our arms upon the gate. "What do you think of that?"

"I am afraid there is no possible doubt what that was. Its face, as I tell you, was a revelation of evil—evil and its punishment. It was a lost soul."

"Do you mean by a lost soul, a soul that is in never-ending torment?"

"Not in physical torment, certainly; that would be a very material interpretation of the doctrine. Besides, the Church has always recognised degree and difference in the punishment of the lost. This, however, they all have in common—eternal separation from the Divine Being."

"Even if they repent and desire to be reunited to Him?"

"Certainly; that must be part of their suffering."

"And yet you believe in a good God?"

"In what else could I believe, even without revelation? But goodness, divine goodness, is far from excluding severity and wrath, and even vengeance. Here the witness of science and of history are in accord with that of the Christian Church; their first manifestation of God is always of 'one that is angry with us and threatens evil.'"

The carriage had overtaken us and stopped now close to us. I rose to say good-bye. Austyn shook me by the hand and moved towards the carriage; then, as if checked by a sudden thought, returned upon his steps and stood before me, his earnest eyes fixed upon me as if the whole self-denying soul within him hungered to waken mine.

"I feel I must speak one word before I leave you, even if it be out of season. With the recollection of last night still so fresh, even the serious things of life seem trifles, far more its small conventionalities. Mr. Lyndsay, your friend has made his choice, but you are dallying between belief and unbelief. Oh, do not dally long! We need no spirit from the dead to tell us life is short. Do we not feel it passing quicker and quicker every year? The one thing that is serious in all its shows and delusions is the question it puts to each one of us, and which we answer to our eternal loss or gain. Many different voices call to us in this age of false prophets, but one only threatens as well as invites. Would it not be only wise, prudent even, to give the preference to that? Mr. Lyndsay, I beseech you, accept the teaching of the Church, which is one with that of conscience and of nature, and believe that there is a God, a Sovereign, a Lawgiver, a Judge."

He was gone, and I still stood thinking of his words, and of his gaze while he spoke them.

The mists were all gone, now, leaving behind them in shimmering dewdrops an iridescent veil on mead and copse and garden; the river gleamed in diamond curves and loops, while in the covert near me the birds were singing as if from hearts that over-brimmed with joy.

And slowly, sadly, I repeated to myself the words—Sovereign, Lawgiver, Judge.

I was hungering for bread; I was given a stone.



CHAPTER VI

MRS. MOLYNEUX'S GOSPEL

"The room is all ready now," said Lady Atherley, "but Lucinda has never written to say what train she is coming by."

"A good thing, too," said Atherley; "we shall not have to send for her. Those unlucky horses are worked off their legs already. Is that the carriage coming back from Rood Warren? Harold, run and stop it, and tell Marsh to drive round to the door before he goes to the stables. I may as well have a lift down to the other end of the village."

"What do you want to do at the other end of the village?"

"I don't want to do anything, but my unlucky fate as a landowner compels me to go over and look at an eel-weir which has just burst. Lindy, come along with me, and cheer me up with one of your ghost stories. You are as good as a Christmas annual."

"And on your way back," said Lady Atherley, "would you mind the carriage stopping to leave some brandy at Monk's? Mr. Austyn told me last night he was so weak, and the doctor has ordered him brandy every hour."

Atherley was disappointed with what he called my last edition of the ghost; he complained that it was little more definite than the Canon's.

"Your last two stories are too highflown for my simple tastes. I want a good coherent description of the ghost himself, not the particular emotions he excited. I had expected better things from Austyn. Upon my word, as far as we have gone, old Aunt Eleanour's is the best. I think Austyn, with his mediaeval turn of mind and his quite mediaeval habit of living upon air, might have managed to raise something with horns and hoofs. It is a curious thing that in the dark ages the devil was always appearing to somebody. He doesn't make himself so cheap now. He has evidently more to do; but there is a fashion in ghosts as in other things, and that reminds me our ghost, from all we hear of it, is decidedly rococo. If you study the reports of societies that hunt the supernatural, you will find that the latest thing in ghosts is very quiet and commonplace. Rattling chains and blue lights, and even fancy dress, have quite gone out. And the people who see the ghosts are not even startled at first sight; they think it is a visitor, or a man come to wind the clocks. In fact, the chic thing for a ghost in these days is to be mistaken for a living person."

"What puzzles me is that a sceptic like you can so easily swallow the astonishing coincidence of these different people all having imagined the ghost in the same house."

"Why, the coincidence is not a bit more astonishing than several people in the same place having the same fever. Nothing in the world is so infectious as ghost-seeing. The oftener a ghost is seen, the oftener it will be seen. In this sort of thing particularly, one fool makes many. No, don't wait for me. Heaven only knows when I shall be released."

The door of Monk's cottage was open, but no one was to be seen within, and no one answered to my knock, so, anxious to see him again, I groped my way up the dark ladder-like stairs to the room above. The first thing I saw was the bed where Monk himself was lying. They had drawn the sheet across his face: I saw what had happened. His wife was standing near, looking not so much grieved as stunned and tired. "Would you like to see him, sir?" she asked, stretching out her withered hand to draw the sheet aside. I was glad afterwards I had not refused, as, but for fear of being ungracious, I would have done.

Since then I have seen death—"in state" as it is called—invested with more than royal pomp, but I have never felt his presence so majestic as in that poor little garret. I know his seal may be painful, grotesque even: here it was wholly benign and beautiful. All discolorations had disappeared in an even pallor as of old ivory; all furrows of age and pain were smoothed away, and the rude peasant face was transfigured, glorified, by that smile of ineffable and triumphant repose.

Many times that day it rose before me, never more vividly than when, at dinner, Mrs. Molyneux, in colours as brilliant as her complexion, and jewels as sparkling as her eyes, recounted in her silvery treble the latest flowers of fashionable gossip. I am always glad to be one of any audience which Mrs. Molyneux addresses, not so much out of admiration for the discourse itself, as for the charm of gesture and intonation with which it is delivered. But the main question—the subject of Atherley's conversion—she did not approach till we were in the drawing-room, luxuriously established in deep and softly-cushioned chairs. Then, near the fire, but turned away from it so as to face us all, and in the prettiest of attitudes, she began, gracefully emphasising her more important points by movements of her spangled fan.

"I do not mention the name of the religion I wish to speak to you about, because—now I hope you won't be angry, but I am going to be quite horribly rude—because Sir George is certain to be so prejudiced against—oh yes, Sir George, you are; everybody is at first. Even I was, because it has been so horribly misrepresented by people who really know nothing about it. For instance, I have myself heard it said that it was only a kind of spiritualism. On the contrary, it is very much opposed to it, and has quite convinced me for one of the wickedness and danger of spiritualism."

"Well, that is so much to its credit," Atherley generously acknowledged.

"And then, people said it was very immoral. Far from that; it has a very high ethical standard indeed—a very moral aim. One of its chief objects is to establish a universal brotherhood amongst men of all nations and sects."

"A what?" asked Atherley.

"A universal brotherhood."

"My dear Mrs. Molyneux, you don't mean to seriously offer that as a novelty. I never heard anything so hackneyed in my life. Why, it has been preached ad nauseam for centuries!"

"By the Christian Church, I suppose you mean. And pray how have they practised their preaching?"

"Oh, but excuse me; that is not the question. If your religion is as brand-new as you gave me to understand, there has been no time for practice. It must be all theory, and I hoped I was going to hear something original."

"Oh really, Sir George, you are quite too naughty. How can I explain things if you are so flippant and impatient? In one sense, it is a very old religion; it is the truth which is in all religions, and some of its interesting doctrines were taught ages before Christianity was ever heard of, and proved, too, by miracles far far more wonderful than any in the New Testament. However, it is no good talking to you about that; what I really wanted you to understand is how infinitely superior it is to all other religions in its theological teaching. You know, Sir George, you are always finding fault with all the Christian Churches—and even with the Mahommedans too, for that matter—because they are so anthropomorphic, because they imply that God is a personal being. Very well, then, you cannot say that about this religion, because—this is what is so remarkable and elevated about it—it has nothing to do with God at all."

"Nothing to do with what did you say?" asked Lady Atherley, diverted by this last remark from a long row of loops upon an ivory needle which she appeared to be counting.

"Nothing to do with God."

"Do you know, Lucinda," said Lady Atherley, "if you would not mind, I fancy the coffee is just coming in, and perhaps it would be as well just to wait for a little, you know—just till the servants are out of the room? They might perhaps think it a little odd."

"Yes," said Atherley, "and even unorthodox."

Mrs. Molyneux submitted to this interruption with the greatest sweetness and composure, and dilated on the beauty of the new chair-covers till Castleman and the footman had retired, when, with a coffee-cup instead of a fan in her exquisite hand, she took up the thread of her exposition.

"As I was saying, the distinction of this religion is that it has nothing to do with God. Of course it has other great advantages, which I will explain later, like its cultivation of a sixth sense, for instance—"

"Do you mean common sense?"

"Jane, what am I to do with Sir George? He is really incorrigible. How can I possibly explain things if you will not be serious?"

"I never was more serious in my life. Show me a religion which cultivates common sense, and I will embrace it at once."

"It is just because I knew you would go on in this way that I do not attempt to say anything about the supernatural side of this religion, though it is very important and most extraordinary. I assure you, my dear Jane, the powers that people develop under it are really marvellous. I have friends who can see into another world as plainly as you can see this drawing-room, and talk as easily with spirits as I am talking with you."

"Indeed!" said Lady Atherley politely, with her eyes fixed anxiously on something which had gone wrong with her knitting.

"Unfortunately, for that kind of thing you require to undergo such severe treatment; my health would not stand it; the London season itself is almost too much for me. It is a pity, for they all say I have great natural gifts that way, and I should have so loved to have taken it up; but to begin with, one must have no animal food and no stimulants, and the doctors always tell me I require a great deal of both."

"Besides, le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle," said Atherley, "if the spirits you are to converse with are anything like those we used to meet in your drawing-room."

"That is not the same thing at all; these were only spooks."

"Only what?"

"No, I will not explain; you only mean to make fun of it, and there is nothing to laugh at. What I am trying to show you is that side of the religion you will really approve—the unanthropomorphic side. It is not anything like atheism, you know, as some ill-natured people have said; it does not declare there is no God; it only declares that it is worse than useless to try and think of Him, far less pray to Him—because it is simply impossible. And that is quite scientific and philosophical, is it not? For all the great men are agreed now that the conditioned can know nothing of the unconditioned, and the finite can know nothing of the infinite. It is quite absurd to try, you know; and it is equally absurd to say anything about Him. You can't call Him Providence, because, as the universe is governed by fixed laws, there is nothing for him to provide; and we have no business to call Him Creator, because we don't really know that things were created. Besides," said Mrs. Molyneux, resuming her fan, which she furled and unfurled as she continued, "I was reading in a delightful book the other day—I can't remember the author's name, but I think it begins with K or P. It explained so clearly that if the universe was created at all, it was created by the human mind. Then you can't call Him Father—it is quite blasphemous; and it is almost as bad to say He is merciful or loving, or anything of that kind, because mercy and love are only human attributes; and so is consciousness too, therefore we know He cannot be conscious; and I believe, according to the highest philosophical teaching, He has not any Being. So that altogether it is impossible, without being irreverent, to think of Him, far less speak to Him or of Him, because we cannot do so without ascribing to Him some conceivable quality—and He has not any. Indeed, even to speak of Him as He is not right; the pronoun is very anthropomorphic and misleading. So, when you come to consider all this carefully, it is quite evident—though it sounds rather strange at first—that the only way you can really honour and reverence God is by forgetting Him altogether."

Here Mrs. Molyneux paused, panting prettily for breath; but quickly recovering herself, proceeded: "So in fact, it is just the same, practically speaking—remember I say only practically speaking—as if there were no God; and this religion—"

"Excuse me," said Atherley; "but if, as you have so forcibly explained to us, there is, practically speaking, no God, why should we hamper ourselves with any religion at all?"

"Why, to satisfy the universal craving after an ideal; the yearning for something beyond the sordid realities of animal existence and of daily life; to comfort, to elevate—"

"No, no, my dear Mrs. Molyneux; pardon me, but the sooner we get rid of all this sort of rubbish the better. It is the indulgence they have given to such feelings that has made all the religions such a curse to the world. I don't believe, to begin with, that they are universal. I never experienced any such cravings and yearnings except when I was out of sorts; and I never met a thoroughly happy or healthy person who did. If people keep their bodies in good order and their minds well employed, they have no time for yearnings. It was bad enough when there was some pretext for them; when we imagined there was a God and a world which was better than this one. But now we know there is not the slightest ground for supposing anything of the kind, we had better have the courage of our opinions, and live up to them, or down to them. As to the word 'ideal,' it ought to be expunged from the vocabulary; I would like to make it penal to pronounce, or write, or print the word for a century. Why, we have been surfeited with the ideal by the Christian Churches; that's why we find the real so little to our taste. We've been so long fed upon sweet trash, we can't relish wholesome food. The cure for that is to take wholesome food or starve, not provide another sickly substitute. Pray, let us have no more religions. On the contrary, our first duty is to be as irreligious as possible—to believe in as little as we can, to trust in nobody but ourselves, to hope for nothing but the actual, to get rid of all high-flown notions of human beings and their destiny, and, above all, to avoid as poison the ideal, the sublime, the—"

His words were drowned at last in musical cries of indignation from Mrs. Molyneux. I remember no more of the discussion, except that Atherley continued to reiterate his doctrine in different words, and Mrs. Molyneux to denounce it with unabated fervour.

My thoughts wandered—I heard no more. I was tired and depressed, and felt grateful to Lady Atherley when, with invariable punctuality, at a quarter to eleven, she interrupted the symposium by rising and proposing that we should all go to bed.

My last distinct recollection of that evening is of Mrs. Molyneux, with the folds of her gown in one hand, and a bedroom candlestick in the other, mounting the dark oak stairs, and calling out fervently as she went—

"Oh, how I pray that I may see the ghost!"

The night was stormy, and I could not sleep. The wind wailed fitfully outside the house, while within doors and windows rattled, and on the stairs and in the passages wandered strange and unaccountable noises, like stealthy footsteps or stifled voices. To this dreary accompaniment, as I lay awake in the darkness, I heard the lessons of the last few days repeated: witness after witness rose and gave his varying testimony; and when, before the discord and irony of it all, I bitterly repeated Pilate's question, the smile on that dead face would rise before me, and then I hoped again.

Between three and four the wind fell during a short space, and all responsive noises ceased. For a few minutes reigned absolute silence, then it was broken by two piercing cries—the cries of a woman in terror or in pain.

They disturbed even the sleepers, it was evident; for when I reached the end of my passage I heard opening doors, hurrying footsteps, and bells ringing violently in the gallery. After a little the stir was increased, presumably by servants arriving from the farther wing; but no one came my way till Atherley himself, in his dressing-gown, went hurriedly downstairs.

"Anything wrong?" I called as he passed me.

"Only Mrs. Molyneux's prayer has been granted."

"Of course she was bound to see it," he said next day, as we sat together over a late breakfast. "It would have been a miracle if she had not; but if I had known the interview was to be followed by such unpleasant consequences I shouldn't have asked her down. I was wandering about for hours looking for an imaginary bottle of sal-volatile Jane described as being in her sitting-room: and Jane herself was up till late—or rather early—this morning, trying to soothe Mrs. Molyneux, who does not appear to have found the ghost quite such pleasant company as she expected. Oh yes, Jane is down; she breakfasted in her own room. I believe she is ordering dinner at this minute in the next room."

Hardly had he said the words when outside, in the hall, resounded a prolonged and stentorian wail.

"What on earth is the matter now?" said Atherley, rising and making for the door. He opened it just in time for us to see Mrs. Mallet go by—Mrs. Mallet bathed in tears and weeping as I never have heard an adult weep before or since—in a manner which is graphically and literally described by the phrase "roaring and crying."

"Why, Mrs. Mallet! What on earth is the matter?"

"Send for Mrs. de Noel," cried Mrs. Mallet in tones necessarily raised to a high and piercing key by the sobs with which they were accompanied. "Send for Mrs. de Noel; send for that dear lady, and she will tell you whether a word has been said against my character till I come here, which I never wish to do, being frightened pretty nigh to death with what one told me and the other; and if you don't believe me, ask Mrs. Stubbs as keeps the little sweet-shop near the church, if any one in the village will so much as come up the avenue after dark; and says to me, the very day I come here, 'You have a nerve,' she says; 'I wouldn't sleep there if you was to pay me,' she says; and I says, not wishing to speak against a family that was cousin to Mrs. de Noel, 'Noises is neither here nor there,' I says, 'and ghostisses keeps mostly to the gentry's wing,' I says. And then to say as I put about that they was all over the house, and frighten the London lady's maid, which all I said was—and Hann can tell you that I speak the truth, for she was there—'some says one thing,' says I, 'and some says another, but I takes no notice of nothink.' But put up with a deal, I have—more than ever I told a soul since I come here, which I promised Mrs. de Noel when she asked me to oblige her; which the blue lights I have seen a many times, and tapping of coffin-nails on the wall, and never close my eyes for nights sometimes, but am entirely wore away, and my nerve that weak; and then to be so hurt in my feelings, and spoke to as I am not accustomed, but always treated everywhere I goes with the greatest of kindness and respect, which ask Mrs. de Noel she will tell you, since ever I was a widow; but pack my things I will, and walk every step of the way, if it was pouring cats and dogs, I would, rather than stay another minute here to be so put upon; and send for Mrs. de Noel if you don't believe me, and she will tell you the many high families she recommended me, and always give satisfaction. Send for Mrs. de Noel—"

The swing door closed behind her, and the sounds of her grief and her reiterated appeals to Mrs. de Noel died slowly away in the distance.

"What on earth have you been saying to her?" said Atherley to his wife, who had come out into the hall.

"Only that she behaved very badly indeed in speaking about the ghost to Mrs. Molyneux's maid, who, of course, repeated it all directly and made Lucinda nervous. She is a most troublesome, mischievous old woman."

"But she can cook. Pray what are we to do for dinner?"

"I am sure I don't know. I never knew anything so unlucky as it all is, and Lucinda looking so ill."

"Well, you had better send for the doctor."

"She won't hear of it. She says nobody could do her any good but Cecilia."

"What! 'Send for Mrs. de Noel?' Poor Cissy! What do these excited females imagine she is going to do?"

"I don't know, but I do wish we could get her here."

"But she is in London, is she not, with Aunt Henrietta?"

"Yes, and only comes home to-day."

"Well, I will tell you what we might do if you want her badly. Telegraph to her to London and ask her to come straight on here."

"I suppose she is sure to come?"

"Like a shot, if you say we are all ill."

"No, that would frighten her. I will just say we want her particularly."

"Yes, and say the carriage shall meet the 5.15 at Whitford station, and then she will feel bound to come. And as I shall not be back in time, send Lindy to meet her. It will do him good. He looks as if he had been sitting up all night with the ghost."

It was a melancholy day. The wind was quieter, but the rain still fell. Indoors we were all in low spirits, not even excepting the little boys, much concerned about Tip, who was not his usual brisk and complacent self. His nose was hot, his little stump of a tail was limp, he hid himself under chairs and tables, whence he turned upon us sorrowful and beseeching eyes, and, most alarming symptom of all, refused sweet biscuits. During the afternoon he was confided to me by his little masters while they made an expedition to the stables, and I was sitting reading by the library fire with the invalid beside me when Lady Atherley came in to propose I should go into the drawing-room and talk to Mrs. Molyneux, who had just come down.

"Did she ask to see me?"

"No; but when I proposed your going in, she did not say no."

I did as I was asked to do, but with some misgivings. It was one of the few occasions when my misfortune became an advantage. No one, especially no woman, was likely to rebuff too sharply the intruder who dragged himself into her presence. So far from that, Mrs. Molyneux, who was leaning against the mantelpiece and looking down listlessly into the fire, moved to welcome me with a smile and to offer me a hand startlingly cold. But after that she resumed her first attitude and made no attempt to converse—she, the most ready, the most voluble of women. Then followed an awkward pause, which I desperately broke by saying I was afraid she was not better.

"Better! I was not ill," she answered, almost impatiently, and walked away towards the other side of the room. I understood that she wished to be alone, and was moving towards the door as quietly as possible when I was suddenly checked by her hand upon my elbow.

"Mr. Lyndsay, why are you going? Was I rude? I did not mean to be. Forgive me; I am so miserable."

"You could not be rude, I think, even if you wished to. It is I who am inconsiderate in intruding—"

"You are not intruding; please stay."

"I would gladly stay if I could help you."

"Can any one help me, I wonder?" She went slowly back to the fire and sat down upon the fender-stool, and resting her chin upon her hand, and looking dreamily before her, repeated—

"Can any one help me, I wonder?"

I sat down on a chair near her and said—

"Do you think it would help you to talk of what has frightened you?"

"I don't think I can. I would tell you, Mr. Lyndsay, if I could tell any one; for you know what it is to be weak and suffering; you are as sympathetic as a woman, and more merciful than some women. But part of the horror of it all is that I cannot explain it. Words seem to be no good, just because I have used them so easily and so meaninglessly all my life—just as words and nothing more."

"Can you tell me what you saw?"

"A face, only a face, when I woke up suddenly. It looked as if it were painted on the darkness. But oh, the dreadfulness of it and what it brought with it! Do you remember the line, 'Bring with you airs from heaven or blasts from hell'? Yes, it was in hell, because hell is not a great gulf, like Dante described, as I used to think; it is no place at all—it is something we make ourselves. I felt all this as I saw the face, for we ourselves are not what we think. Part of what I used to play with was true enough; it is all Maya, a delusion, this sense—life—it is no life at all. The actual life is behind, under it all; it goes deep deep down, it stretches on, on—and yet it has nothing to do with space or time. I feel as if I were beating myself against a stone wall. My words can have no sense for you any more than they would have had for me yesterday."

"But tell me, why should this discovery of this other life make you so miserable?"

"Oh, because it brings such a want with it. How can I explain? It is like a poor wretch stupefied with drink. Don't you know the poor creatures in the Eastend sometimes drink just that they may not feel how hungry and how cold they are? 'They remember their misery no more.' Is the life of the world and of outward things like that, if we live too much in it? I used to be so contented with it all—its pleasures, its little triumphs, even its gossip; and what I called my aspirations I satisfied with what was nothing more than phrases. And now I have found my real self, now I am awake, I want much more, and there is nothing—only a great silence, a great loneliness like that in the face. And the theories I talked about are no comfort any more; they are just what pretty speeches would be to a person in torture. Oh, Mr. Lyndsay, I always feel that you are real, that you are good; tell me what you know. Is there nothing but this dark void beyond when life falls away from us?"

She lifted towards me a face quivering with excitement, and eyes that waited wild and famished for my answer—the answer I had not for her, and then indeed I tasted the full bitterness of the cup of unbelief.

"No," she said presently, "I knew it; no one can do me any good but Cecilia de Noel."

"And she believes?"

"It is not what she believes, it is what she is."

She rested her head upon her hand and looked musingly towards the window, down which the drops were trickling, and said—

"Ever since I have known Cecilia I have always felt that if all the world failed this would be left. Not that I really imagined the world would fail me, but you know how one imagines things, how one asks oneself questions. If I was like this, if I was like that, what should I do? I used to say to myself, if the very worst happened to me, if I was ill of some loathsome disease from which everybody shrank away, or if my mind was unhinged and I was tempted with horrible temptations like I have read about, I would go to Cecilia. She would not turn from me; she would run to meet me as the father in the parable did, not because I was her friend but because I was in trouble. All who are in trouble are Cecilia's friends, and she feels to them just as other people feel towards their own children. And I could tell her everything, show her everything. Others feel the same; I have heard them say so—men as well as women. I know why—Cecilia's pity is so reverent, so pure. A great London doctor said to me once, 'Remember, nothing is shocking or disgusting to a doctor.' That is like Cecilia. No suffering could ever be disgusting or shocking to Cecilia, nor ridiculous, nor grotesque. The more humiliating it was, the more pitiful it would be to her. Anything that suffers is sacred to Cecilia. She would comfort, as if she went on her knees to one; and her touch on one's wounds, one's ugliest wounds, would be like,"—she hesitated and looked about her in quest of a comparison, then, pointing to a picture over the door, a picture of the Magdalene, kissing the bleeding feet upon the Cross, ended, "like that."

"Oh, Mrs. Molyneux," I cried, "if there be love like that in the world, then—"

The door opened and Castleman entered.

"If you please, sir, the carriage is at the door."



CHAPTER VII

CECILIA'S GOSPEL

The rain gradually ceased falling as we drove onward and upward to the station. It stood on high ground, overlooking a wide sweep of downland and fallow, bordered towards the west by close-set woodlands, purple that evening against a sky of limpid gold, which the storm-clouds discovered as they lifted.

I had not long to wait, for, punctual to its time, the train steamed into the station. From that part of the train to which I first looked, four or five passengers stepped out; not one of them certainly the lady that I waited for. Glancing from side to side I saw, standing at the far end of the platform, two women; one of them was tall; could this be Mrs. de Noel? And yet no, I reflected as I went towards them, for she held a baby in her arms—a baby moreover swathed, not in white and laces, but in a tattered and discoloured shawl: while her companion, lifting out baskets and bundles from a third-class carriage, was poorly and evenly miserably clad. But again, as I drew nearer, I observed that the long fine hand which supported the child was delicately gloved, and that the cloak which swung back from the encircling arm was lined and bordered with very costly fur. This and something in the whole outline—

"Mrs. de Noel?" I murmured inquiringly.

Then she turned towards me, and I saw her, as I often see her now in dreams, against that sunset background of aerial gold which the artist of circumstance had painted behind her, like a new Madonna, holding the child of poverty to her heart, pressing her cheek against its tiny head with a gesture whose exquisite tenderness, for at least that fleeting instant, seemed to bridge across the gulf which still yawns between Dives and Lazarus. So standing, she looked at me with two soft brown eyes, neither large nor beautiful, but in their outlook direct and simple as a child's. Remembering as I met them what Mrs. Molyneux had said, I saw and comprehended as well what she meant. Benevolence is but faintly inscribed, on the faces of most men, even of the better sort. "I will love you, my neighbour," we thereon decipher, "when I have attended to my own business, in the first place; if you are lovable, or at least likeable, in the second." But in the transparent gaze that Cecilia de Noel turned upon her fellows beamed love poured forth without stint and without condition. It was as if every man, woman, and child who approached her became instantly to her more interesting than herself, their defects more tolerable, their wants more imperative, their sorrows more moving than her own. In this lay the source of that mysterious charm so many have felt, so few have understood, and yielding to which even those least capable of appreciating her confessed that, whatever her conduct might be, she herself was irresistibly lovable. A kind of dream-like haze seemed to envelop us as I introduced myself, as she smiled upon me, as she resigned the child to its mother and bid them tenderly farewell; but the clear air of the real became distinct again when there stood suddenly before us a fat elderly female, whose countenance was flushed with mingled anxiety and displeasure.

"Law bless me, mem!" said the newcomer, "I could not think wherever you could be. I have been looking up and down for you, all through the first-class carriages."

"I am so sorry, Parkins," said Mrs. de Noel penitently; "I ought to have let you know that I changed my carriage at Carchester. I wanted to nurse a baby whose mother was looking ill and tired. I saw them on the platform, and then they got into a third-class carriage, so I thought the best way would be to get in with them."

"And where, if you please, mem," inquired Parkins, in an icy tone and with a face stiffened by repressed displeasure—"where do you think you have left your dressing-bag and humbrella?"

Mrs. de Noel fixed her sweet eyes upon the speaker, as if striving to recollect the answer to this question and then replied—

"She told me she lived quite near the station. I wish I had asked her how far. She is much too weak to walk any distance. I might have found a fly for her, might I not?"

Upon which Parkins gave a snort of irrepressible exasperation, and, evidently renouncing her mistress as beyond hope, forthwith departed in search of the missing property. I accompanied her, and, with the aid of the guard, we speedily found and secured both bag and umbrella, and, as the train steamed off, returned with these treasures to Mrs. de Noel, still on the same spot and in the same attitude as we had left her, and all that she said was—

"It was so stupid, so forgetful, so just like me not to have asked her more about it. She had been ill; the journey itself was more than she could stand; and then to have to carry the baby! She said it was not far, but perhaps she only said that to please me. Poor people are so afraid of distressing one; they often make themselves out better off than they really are, don't they?"

I was embarrassed by this question, to which my own experience did not authorise me to answer yes; but I evaded the difficulty by consulting a porter, who fortunately knew the woman, and was able to assure us that her cottage was barely a stone's throw from the station. When I had conveyed to Mrs. de Noel this information, which she received with an eager gratitude that the recovery of her bag and umbrella had failed to rouse, we left the station to go to the carriage, and then it was that, pausing suddenly, she cried out in dismay—

"Ah, you are hurt! you—"

She stopped abruptly; she had divined the truth, and her eyes grew softer with such tender pity as not yet had shone for me—motherless, sisterless—on any woman's face. As we drove home that evening she heard the story that never had been told before.

"You may have your faults, Cissy," said Atherley, "but I will say this for you—for smoothing people down when they have been rubbed the wrong way, you never had your equal."

He lay back in a comfortable chair looking at his cousin, who, sitting on a low seat opposite the drawing-room fire, shaded her eyes from the glare with a little hand-screen.

"Mrs. Molyneux, I hear, has gone to sleep," he went on; "and Mrs. Mallet is unpacking her boxes. The only person who does not seem altogether happy is my old friend Parkins. When I inquired after her health a few minutes ago her manner to me was barely civil."

"Poor Parkins is rather put out," said Mrs. de Noel in her slow gentle way. "It is all my fault. I forgot to pack up the bodice of my best evening gown, and Parkins says it is the only one I look fit to be seen in."

"But, my dear Cecilia," said Lady Atherley, looking up from the work which she pursued beside a shaded lamp, "why did not Parkins pack it up herself?"

"Oh, because she had some shopping of her own to do this forenoon, so she asked me to finish packing for her, and of course I said I would; and I promised to try and forget nothing; and then, after all, I went and left the bodice in a drawer. It is provoking! The fact is, James spoils me so when he is at home. He remembers everything for me, and when I do forget anything he never scolds me."

"Ah, I expect he has a nice time of it," said Atherley. "However, it is not my fault. I warned him how it would be when he was engaged. I said: 'I hope, for one thing, you can live on air, old chap for you will get nothing more for dinner if you trust to Cissy to order it.'"

"I don't believe you said anything of the kind," observed Lady Atherley.

"No, dear Jane; of course he did not. He was very much pleased with our marriage. He said James was the only man he ever knew who was fit to marry me."

"So he was," agreed Atherley; "the only man whose temper could stand all he would have to put up with. We had good proof of that even on the wedding-day, when you kept him kicking his heels for half an hour in the church while you were admiring the effect of your new finery in the glass."

"What!" cried Lady Atherley incredulously.

"What really did happen, Jane," said Mrs. de Noel, "was that when Edith Molyneux was trying on my wreath before a looking-glass over the fireplace, she unfortunately dropped it into the grate, and got it in such a mess. It took us a long time to get the black off, and some of the sprays were so spoiled, we had to take them out. And it was very unpleasant for Edith, as Aunt Henrietta was extremely angry, because the wreath was her present, you know, and it was very expensive; and as to Parkins, poor dear, she was so vexed she positively cried. She said I was the most trying lady she had ever waited upon. She often says so. I am afraid it is true."

"Not a doubt of it," said Atherley.

"Do not believe him, Cecilia," said Lady Atherley: "he thinks there is no one in the world like you."

"Fortunately for the world," said Atherley; "any more of the sort would spoil it. But I am not going to stay here to be bullied by two women at once. Rather than that, I will go and write letters."

He went, and soon afterwards Lady Atherley followed him.

Then the two little boys came in with Tip.

"We are not allowed to take him upstairs," explained Harold, "so we thought he might stay with you and Mr. Lyndsay for a little, till Charles comes for him."

"If you would let him lie upon your dress, Aunt Cissy," suggested Denis; "he would like that."

Accordingly he was carefully settled on the outspread folds of the serge gown; and after the little boys had condoled with him in tones so melancholy that he was affected almost to tears, they went off to supper and to bed.

Silence followed, broken only by the ticking of the clock and the wailing of the wind outside. Mrs. de Noel gazed into the fire with intent and unseeing eyes. Its warm red light softly illumined her whole face and figure, for in her abstraction she had let the hand-screen fall, and was stroking mechanically the little sleek head that nestled against her. Meantime I stared attentively at her, thinking I might do so without offence, seeing she had forgotten me and all else around her. Once, indeed, as if rising for a minute to the surface, with eyes that appeared to waken, she looked up and encountered my earnest gaze, but without shade of displeasure or discomfiture. She only smiled upon me, placidly as a sister might smile upon a brother, benignly as one might smile upon a child, and fell into her dream again. It was a wonderful look, especially from a woman, as unique in its complete unconsciousness as in its warm goodwill; it was as soothing as the touch of her fine soft fingers must have been on Tip's hot head. I felt I could have curled myself up, as he did, at her feet and slept on—for ever. But, alas! the clock was checking the flying minutes and chanting the departing quarters, and presently the dressing-bell rang, Mrs. de Noel stirred, gave a long sigh, and, plainly from the fulness of her heart and of the thoughts she had so long been following, said—

"Mr. Lyndsay, is it not strange? So many people from the great world come and ask me if there is any God. Really good people, you know, so honourable, so generous, so self-sacrificing. It is just the same to me as if they should ask me whether the sun was shining, when all the time I saw the sunshine on their faces."

"By the way," said Atherley that night after dinner, when Mrs. Molyneux was not present, "where are you going to put Cissy to-night? Are you going to make a bachelor of her too?"

"Oh, such an uncomfortable arrangement!" said Lady Atherley. "But Lucinda has set her heart on having Cecilia near her; so they have put up a little bed in the dressing-room for her."

"Cissy is to keep the ghost at bay, is she?" said Atherley. "I hope she may. I don't want another night as lively as the last."

"Who else has seen the ghost?" asked Mrs. de Noel, thoughtfully. "Has Mr. Lyndsay?"

"No, Lindy will never see the ghost; he is too much of a sceptic. Even if he saw it he would not believe in it, and there is nothing a ghost hates like that. But he has seen the people who saw the ghost, and he tells their several stories very well."

"Would you tell me, Mr. Lyndsay?" asked Mrs. de Noel.

I could do nothing but obey her wish; still I secretly questioned the wisdom of doing so, especially when, as I went on, I observed stealing over her listening face the shadow of some disturbing thought.

"Well now, Cissy is thoroughly well frightened," observed Atherley. "Perhaps we had better go to bed."

"It is no good saying so to Lucinda," said Lady Atherley, as we all rose, "because it only puts her out; but I shall always feel certain myself it was a mouse; because I remember in the house we had at Bournemouth two years ago there was a mouse in my room which often made such a noise knocking down the plaster inside the wall, it used to quite startle me."

That night the storm finally subsided. When the morning came the rain fell no longer, the cry of the wind had ceased, and the cloud-curtain above us was growing lighter and softer as if penetrated and suffused by the growing sunshine behind it.

I was late for breakfast that day.

"Mr. Lyndsay, Tip is all right again," cried Denis at sight of me. "Mrs. Mallet says it was chicken bones he stole from the cat's dish."

"Is that all?" observed Atherley sardonically; "I thought he must have seen the ghost. By the bye, Cissy, did you see it?"

"Yes," said Mrs. de Noel simply, at which Atherley visibly started, and instantly began talking of something else.

Mrs. Molyneux was to leave by an afternoon train, but, to the relief of everybody, it was discovered that Mrs. Mallet had indefinitely postponed her departure. She remained in the mildest of humours and in the most philosophical of tempers, as I myself can testify; for, meeting her by accident in the hall, I was encouraged by the amiability of her simper to say that I hoped we should have no more trouble with the ghost, when she answered in words I have often since admiringly quoted—

"Perhaps not, sir, but I don't seem to care even if we do; for I had a dream last night, and a spirit seemed to whisper in my ear, 'Don't be afraid; it is only a token of death.'"

After Mrs. Molyneux had started, with Mrs. de Noel as her companion as far as the station, and all the rest of the party had gone out to sun themselves in the brightness of the afternoon, I worked through a long arrears of correspondence: and I was just finishing a letter, when Atherley, whom I supposed to be far distant, came into the library.

"I thought you had gone to pay calls with Lady Atherley?"

"Is it likely? Look here, Lindy, it is quite hot out of doors. Come, and let me tug you up the hill to meet Cissy coming home from the station, and then I promise you a rare treat."

Certainly to meet Mrs. de Noel anywhere might be so considered, but I did not ask if that was what he meant. It was milder; one felt it more at every step upward. The sun, low as it was, shone warmly as well as brilliantly between the clouds that he had thrust asunder and scattered in wild and beautiful disorder. It was one of those incredible days in early spring, balmy, tender, which our island summer cannot always match.

We went on till we reached Beggar's Stile.

"Sit down," said Atherley, tossing on to the wet step a coat he carried over his arm. "And there is a cigarette; you must smoke, if you please, or at least pretend to do so."

"What does all this mean? What are you up to, George?"

"I am up to a delicate psychical investigation which requires the greatest care. The medium is made of such uncommon stuff; she has not a particle of brass in her composition. So she requires to be carefully isolated from all disturbing influences. I allow you to be present at the experiment, because discretion is one of your strongest points, and you always know when to hold your tongue. Besides, it will improve your mind. Cissy's story is certain to be odd, like herself, and will illustrate what I am always saying that—Here she is."

He went forward to meet and to stop the carriage, out of which, at his suggestion, Mrs. de Noel readily came down to join us.

"Do not get up, Mr. Lyndsay," she called out as she came towards us, "or I will go away. I don't want to sit down."

"Sit down, Lindy," said Atherley sharply, "Cissy likes tobacco in the open air."

She rested her arms upon the gate and looked downwards.

"The dear dear old river! It makes me feel young again to look at it."

"Cissy," said Atherley, his arms on the gate, his eyes staring straight towards the opposite horizon, "tell us about the ghost; were you frightened?"

There was a certain tension in the pause which followed. Would she tell us or not? I almost felt Atherley's rebound of satisfaction as well as my own at the sound of her voice. It was uncertain and faint at first, but by degrees grew firm again, as timidity was lost in the interest of what she told:

"Last night I sat up with Mrs. Molyneux, holding her hand till she fell asleep, and that was very late, and then I went to the dressing-room, where I was to sleep; and as I undressed, I thought over what Mr. Lyndsay had told us about the ghost; and the more I thought, the more sad and strange it seemed that not one of those who saw it, not even Aunt Eleanour, who is so kind and thoughtful, had had one pitying thought for it. And we who heard about it were just the same, for it seemed to us quite natural and even right that everybody should shrink away from it because it was so horrible; though that should only make them the more kind; just as we feel we must be more tender and loving to any one who is deformed, and the more shocking his deformity the more tender and loving. And what, I thought, if this poor spirit had come by any chance to ask for something; if it were in pain and longed for relief, or sinful and longed for forgiveness? How dreadful then that other beings should turn from it, instead of going to meet it and comfort it—so dreadful that I almost wished that I might see it, and have the strength to speak to it! And it came into my head that this might happen, for often and often when I have been very anxious to serve some one, the wish has been granted in a quite wonderful way. So when I said my prayers, I asked especially that if it should appear to me, I might have strength to forget all selfish fear and try only to know what it wanted. And as I prayed the foolish shrinking dread we have of such things seemed to fade away; just as when I have prayed for those towards whom I felt cold or unforgiving, the hardness has all melted away into love towards them. And after that came to me that lovely feeling which we all have sometimes—in church, or when we are praying alone, or more often in the open air, on beautiful summer days when it is warm and still; as if one's heart were beating and overflowing with love towards everything in this world and in all the worlds; as if the very grasses and the stones were clear, but dearest of all, the creatures that still suffer, so that to wipe away their tears forever, one feels that one would die—oh die so gladly! And always as if this were something not our own, but part of that wonderful great Love above us, about us, everywhere, clasping us all so tenderly and safely!"

Here her voice trembled and failed; she waited a little and then went on, "Ah, I am too stupid to say rightly what I mean, but you who are clever will understand.

"It was so sweet that I knelt on, drinking it in for a long time; not praying, you know, but just resting, and feeling as if I were in heaven, till all at once, I cannot explain why, I moved and looked round. It was there at the other end of the room. It was ...—much worse than I had dreaded it would be; as if it looked out of some great horror deeper than I could understand. The loving feeling was gone, and I was afraid—so much afraid, I only wanted to get out of sight of it. And I think I would have gone, but it stretched out its hands to me as if it were asking for something, and then, of course, I could not go. So, though I was trembling a little, I went nearer and looked into its face. And after that I was not afraid any more, I was too sorry for it; its poor poor eyes were so full of anguish. I cried: 'Oh, why do you look at me like that? Tell me what I shall do.'

"And directly I spoke I heard it moan. Oh, George, oh, Mr. Lyndsay, how can I tell you what that moaning was like! Do you know how a little change in the face of some one you love, or a little tremble in his voice, can make you see quite clearly what nobody, not even the great poets, had been able to show you before?

"George, do you remember the day that grandmother died, when they all broke down and cried a little at dinner, all except Uncle Marmaduke? He sat up looking so white and stern at the end of the table. And I, foolish little child, thought he was not so grieved as the others—that he did not love his mother so much. But next day, quite by chance, I heard him, all alone, sobbing over her coffin. I remember standing outside the door and listening, and each sob went through my heart with a little stab, and I knew for the first time what sorrow was. But even his sobs were not so pitiful as the moans of that poor spirit. While I listened I learnt that in another world there may be worse for us to bear than even here—sorrow more hopeless, more lonely. For the strange thing was, the moaning seemed to come from so far far away; not only from somewhere millions and millions of miles away, but—this is the strangest of all—as if it came to me from time long since past, ages and ages ago. I know this sounds like nonsense, but indeed I am trying to put into words the weary long distance that seemed to stretch between us, like one I never should be able to cross. At last it spoke to me in a whisper which I could only just hear; at least it was more like a whisper than anything else I can think of, and it seemed to come like the moaning from far far away. It thanked me so meekly for looking at it and speaking to it. It told me that by sins committed against others when it was on earth it had broken the bond between itself and all other creatures. While it was what we call alive, it did not feel this, for the senses confuse us and hide many things from the good, and so still more from the wicked; but when it died and lost the body by which it seemed to be kept near to other beings, it found itself imprisoned in the most dreadful loneliness—loneliness which no one in this world can even imagine. Even the pain of solitary confinement, so it told me, which drives men mad, is only like a shadow or type of this loneliness of spirits. Others there might be, but it knew nothing of them—nothing besides this great empty darkness everywhere, except the place it had once lived in, and the people who were moving about it; and even those it could only perceive dimly as if looking through a mist, and always so unutterably away from them all. I am not giving its own words, you know, George, because I cannot remember them. I am not certain it did speak to me; the thoughts seemed to pass in some strange way into my mind; I cannot explain how, for the still far-away voice did not really speak. Sometimes, it told me, the loneliness became agony, and it longed for a word or a sign from some other being, just as Dives longed for the drop of cold water; and at such times it was able to make the living people see it. But that, alas! was useless, for it only alarmed them so much that the bravest and most benevolent rushed away in terror or would not let it come near them. But still it went on showing itself to one after another, always hoping that some one would take pity on it and speak to it, for it felt that if comfort ever came to it, it must be through a living soul, and it knew of none save those in this world and in this place. And I said: 'Why did you not turn for help to God?'

"Then it gave a terrible answer: it said, 'What is God?'

"And when I heard these words there came over me a wild kind of pity, such as I used to feel when I saw my little child struggling for breath when he was ill, and I held out my arms to this poor lonely thing, but it shrank back, crying:

"'Speak to me, but do not touch me, brave human creature. I am all death, and if you come too near me the Death in me may kill the life in you.'

"But I said: 'No Death can kill the life in me, even though it kill my body. Dear fellow-spirit, I cannot tell you what I know; but let me take you in my arms; rest for an instant on my heart, and perhaps I may make you feel what I feel all around us.'

"And as I spoke I threw my arms around the shadowy form and strained it to my breast. And I felt as if I were pressing to me only air, but air colder than any ice, so that my heart seemed to stop beating, and I could hardly breathe. But I still clasped it closer and closer, and as I grew colder it seemed to grow less chill.

"And at last it spoke, and the whisper was not far away, but near. It said:

"'It is enough; now I know what God is!'

"After that I remember nothing more, till I woke up and found myself lying on the floor beside the bed. It was morning, and the spirit was not there; but I have a strong feeling that I have been able to help it, and that it will trouble you no more.

"Surely it is late! I must go at once. I promised to have tea with the children."

* * * * *

Neither of us spoke; neither of us stirred; when the sound of her light footfall was heard no more, there was complete silence. Below, the mists had gathered so thickly that now they spread across the valley one dead white sea of vapour in which village and woods and stream were all buried—all except the little church spire, that, still unsubmerged, pointed triumphantly to the sky; and what a sky! For that which yesterday had steeped us in cold and darkness, now, piled even to the zenith in mountainous cloud-masses, was dyed, every crest and summit of it, in crimson fire, pouring from a great fount of colour, where, to the west, the heavens opened to show that wonder-world whence saints and singers have drawn their loveliest images of the Rest to come.

But perhaps I saw all things irradiated by the light which had risen upon my darkness—the light that never was on land or sea, but shines reflected in the human face.

* * * * *

"George, I am waiting for your interpretation."

"It is very simple, Lindy," he said.

But there was a tone in his voice I had heard once—and only once—before, when, through the first terrible hours that followed my accident, he sat patiently beside me in the darkened room, holding my hot hand in his broad cool palm.

"It is very simple. It is the most easily explained of all the accounts. It was a dream from beginning to end. She fell asleep praying, thinking, as she says; what was more natural or inevitable than that she should dream of the ghost? And it all confirms what I say: that visions are composed by the person who sees them. Nothing could be more characteristic of Cissy than the story she has just told us."

"And let it be a dream," I said. "It is of no consequence, for the dreamer remains, breathing and walking on this solid earth. I have touched her hand, I have looked into her face. Thank God! she is no vision, the woman who could dream this dream! George, how do you explain the miracle of her existence?"

But Atherley was silent.



THE END



Transcriber's Note: Several spelling errors were corrected: childen/children, greal/great and spendid/splendid.

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