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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cecilia de Noël, by Lanoe Falconer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Cecilia de Noël
+
+Author: Lanoe Falconer
+
+Release Date: March 4, 2005 [EBook #15258]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CECILIA DE NOËL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Patricia A. Benoy and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "So we went down our stairs."--Chap. II.]
+
+_Cecilia de Noël_
+
+BY
+
+LANOE FALCONER
+
+MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
+ST. MARTINS ST., LONDON
+1910
+
+[Illustration: Title Page]
+
+
+CECILIA DE NOËL
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ATHERLEY'S GOSPEL
+
+
+"There is no revelation but that of science," said Atherley.
+
+It was after dinner in the drawing-room. From the cold of the early
+spring night, closed shutters and drawn curtains carefully protected us;
+shaded lamps and a wood fire diffused an exquisite twilight; we breathed
+a mild and even balmy atmosphere scented with hothouse flowers.
+
+"And this revelation completely satisfies all reasonable desires," he
+continued, surveying his small audience from the hearthrug where he
+stood; "mind, I say all reasonable desires. If you have a healthy
+appetite for bread, you will get it and plenty of it, but if you have a
+sickly craving for manna, why then you will come badly off, that is all.
+This is the gospel of fact, not of fancy: of things as they actually
+are, you know, instead of as A dreamt they were, or B decided they ought
+to be, or C would like to have them. So this gospel is apt to look a
+little dull beside the highly coloured romances the churches have
+accustomed us to--as a modern plate-glass window might, compared with a
+stained-glass oriel in a mediæval cathedral. There is no doubt which is
+the prettier of the two. The question is, do you want pretty colour or
+do you want clear daylight?" He paused, but neither of his listeners
+spoke. Lady Atherley was counting the stitches of her knitting; I was
+too tired; so he resumed: "For my part, I prefer the daylight and the
+glass, without any daubing. What does science discover in the universe?
+Precision, accuracy, reliability--any amount of it; but as to pity,
+mercy, love! The fact is, that famous simile of the angel playing at
+chess was a mistake. Very smart, I grant you, but altogether misleading.
+Why! the orthodox quote it as much as the others--always a bad sign. It
+tickles these anthropomorphic fancies, which are at the bottom of all
+their creeds. Imagine yourself playing at chess, not with an angel, but
+with an automaton, an admirably constructed automaton whose mechanism
+can outwit your brains any day: calm and strong, if you like, but no
+more playing for love than the clock behind me is ticking for love;
+there you have a much clearer notion of existence. A much clearer
+notion, and a much more satisfactory notion too, I say. Fair play and no
+favour! What more can you ask, if you are fit to live?"
+
+His kindling glance sought the farther end of the long drawing-room; had
+it fallen upon me instead, perhaps that last challenge might have been
+less assured; and yet how bravely it became the speaker, whose
+wide-browed head a no less admirable frame supported. Even the stiff
+evening uniform of his class could not conceal the grace of form which
+health and activity had moulded, working through highly favoured
+generations. There was latent force implied in every line of it, and,
+in the steady poise of look and mien, that perfect nervous balance
+which is the crown of strength.
+
+"And with our creed, of course, we shift our moral code as well. The ten
+commandments, or at least the second table, we retain for obvious
+reasons, but the theological virtues must be got rid of as quickly as
+possible. Charity, for instance, is a mischievous quality--it is too
+indulgent to weakness, which is not to be indulged or encouraged, but
+stamped out. Hope is another pernicious quality leading to all kinds of
+preposterous expectations which never are, or can be, fulfilled; and as
+to faith, it is simply a vice. So far from taking anything on trust, you
+must refuse to accept any statement whatsoever till it is proved so
+plainly you can't help believing it whether you like it or not; just as
+a theorem in--"
+
+"George," said Lady Atherley, "what is that noise?"
+
+The question, timed as Lady Atherley's remarks so often were, came with
+something of a shock. Her husband, thus checked in full flight, seemed
+to reel for a moment, but quickly recovering himself, asked resignedly:
+"What noise?"
+
+"Such a strange noise, like the howling of a dog."
+
+"Probably it is the howling of a dog."
+
+"No, for it came from inside the house, and Tip sleeps outside now, in
+the saddle-room, I believe. It sounded in the servants' wing. Did you
+hear it, Mr. Lyndsay?"
+
+I confessed that I had not.
+
+"Well, as I can offer no explanation," said Atherley, "perhaps I may be
+allowed to go on with what I was saying. Doubt, obstinate and almost
+invincible doubt, is the virtue we must now cultivate, just as--"
+
+"Why, there it is again," cried Lady Atherley.
+
+Atherley instantly rang the bell near him, and while Lady Atherley
+continued to repeat that it was very strange, and that she could not
+imagine what it could be, he waited silently till his summons was
+answered by a footman.
+
+"Charles, what is the meaning of that crying or howling which seems to
+come from your end of the house?"
+
+"I think, Sir George," said Charles, with the coldly impassive manner of
+a highly-trained servant--"I think, Sir George, it must be Ann, the
+kitchen-maid, that you hear."
+
+"Indeed! and may I ask what Ann, the kitchen-maid, is supposed to be
+doing?"
+
+"If you please, Sir George, she is in hysterics."
+
+"Oh! why?" exclaimed Lady Atherley plaintively.
+
+"Because, my lady, Mrs. Mallet has seen the ghost!"
+
+"Because Mrs. Mallet has seen the ghost!" repeated Atherley. "Pray, what
+is Mrs. Mallet herself doing under the circumstances?"
+
+"She is having some brandy-and-water, Sir George."
+
+"Mrs. Mallet is a sensible woman," said Atherley heartily; "Ann, the
+kitchen-maid, had better follow her example."
+
+"You may go, Charles," said Lady Atherley; and, as the door closed
+behind him, exclaimed, "I wish that horrid woman had never entered the
+house!"
+
+"What horrid woman? Your too sympathetic kitchen-maid?"
+
+"No, that--that Mrs. Mallet."
+
+"Why are you angry with her? Because she has seen the ghost?"
+
+"Yes, for I told her most particularly the very day I engaged her, after
+Mrs. Webb left us in that sudden way--I told her I never allowed the
+ghost to be mentioned."
+
+"And why, my dear, did you break your own excellent rule by mentioning
+it to her?"
+
+"Because she had the impertinence to tell me, almost directly she came
+into the morning-room, that she knew all about the ghost; but I stopped
+her at once, and said that if ever she spoke of such a thing especially
+to the other servants, I should be very much displeased; and now she
+goes and behaves in this way."
+
+"Where did you pick up this viper?"
+
+"She comes from Quarley Beacon. There was no one in this stupid village
+who could cook at all, and Cecilia de Noël, who recommended her--"
+
+"Cecilia de Noël!" repeated Atherley, with that long-drawn emphasis
+which suggests so much. "My dear Jane, I must say that in taking a
+servant on Cissy's recommendation you did not display your usual sound
+common sense. I should as soon have thought of asking her to buy me a
+gun, knowing that she would carefully pick out the one least likely to
+shoot anything. Cissy is accustomed to look upon a servant as something
+to be waited on and taken care of. Her own household, as we all know,
+is composed chiefly of chronic invalids."
+
+"But I explained to Cecilia that I wanted somebody who was strong as
+well as a good cook; and I am sure there is nothing the matter with Mrs.
+Mallet. She is as fat as possible, and as red! Besides, she has never
+been one of Cecilia's servants; she only goes there to help sometimes;
+and she says she is perfectly respectable."
+
+"Mrs. Mallet says that Cissy is perfectly respectable?"
+
+"No, George; it is not likely that I should allow a person in Mrs.
+Mallet's position to speak disrespectfully to me about Cecilia. Cecilia
+said Mrs. Mallet was perfectly respectable."
+
+"I should not think dear old Ciss exactly knew the meaning of the word."
+
+"Cecilia may be peculiar in many ways, but she is too much of a lady to
+send me any one who was not quite nice. I don't believe there is
+anything against Mrs. Mallet's character. She cooks very well, you must
+allow that; you said only two days ago you never had tasted an omelette
+so nicely made in England."
+
+"Did she cook that omelette? Then I am sure she is perfectly
+respectable; and pray let her see as many ghosts as she cares to,
+especially if it leads to nothing worse than her taking a moderate
+quantity of brandy. Time to smoke, Lindy. I am off."
+
+I dragged myself up after my usual fashion, and was preparing to follow
+him, when Lady Atherley, directly he was gone, began:
+
+"It is such a pity that clever people can never see things as others do.
+George always goes on in this way as if the ghost were of no
+consequence, but I always knew how it would be. Of course it is nice
+that George should come in for the place, as he might not have done if
+his uncle had married, and people said it would be delightful to live in
+such an old house, but there are a good many drawbacks, I can assure
+you. Sir Marmaduke lived abroad for years before he died, and everything
+has got into such a state. We have had to nearly refurnish the house;
+the bedrooms are not done yet. The servants' accommodation is very bad
+too, and there was no proper cooking-range in the kitchen. But the worst
+of all is the ghost. Directly I heard of it I knew we should have
+trouble with the servants; and we had not been here a month when our
+cook, who had lived with us for years, gave warning because the place
+was damp. At first she said it was the ghost, but when I told her not to
+talk such nonsense she said it was the damp. And then it is so awkward
+about visitors. What are we to do when the fishing season begins? I
+cannot get George to understand that some people have a great objection
+to anything of the kind, and are quite angry if you put them into a
+haunted room. And it is much worse than having only one haunted room,
+because we could make that into a bachelor's bedroom--I don't think they
+mind; or a linen cupboard, as they do at Wimbourne Castle; but this
+ghost seems to appear in all the rooms, and even in the halls and
+passages, so I cannot think what we are to do."
+
+I said it was extraordinary, and I meant it. That a ghost should venture
+into Atherley's neighbourhood was less amazing than that it should
+continue to exist in his wife's presence, so much more fatal than his
+eloquence to all but the tangible and the solid. Her orthodoxy is above
+suspicion, but after some hours of her society I am unable to
+contemplate any aspects of life save the comfortable and the
+uncomfortable: while the Universe itself appears to me only a gigantic
+apparatus especially designed to provide Lady Atherley and her class
+with cans of hot water at stated intervals, costly repasts elaborately
+served, and all other requisites of irreproachable civilisation.
+
+But before I had time to say more, Atherley in his smoking-coat looked
+in to see if I was coming or not.
+
+"Don't keep Mr. Lyndsay up late, George," said my kind hostess; "he
+looks so tired."
+
+"You look dead beat," he said later on, in his own particular and untidy
+den, as he carefully stuffed the bowl of his pipe. "I think it would go
+better with you, old chap, if you did not hold yourself in quite so
+tight. I don't want you to rave or commit suicide in some untidy
+fashion, as the hero of a French novel does; but you are as well-behaved
+as a woman, without a woman's grand resources of hysterics and general
+unreasonableness all round. You always were a little too good for human
+nature's daily food. Your notions on some points are quite unwholesomely
+superfine. It would be a comfort to see you let out in some way. I wish
+you would have a real good fling for once."
+
+"I should have to pay too dear for it afterwards. My superfine habits
+are not a matter of choice only, you must remember."
+
+"Oh!--the women! Not the best of them is worth bothering about, let
+alone a shameless jilt."
+
+"You were always hard upon her, George. She jilted a cripple for a very
+fine specimen of the race. Some of your favourite physiologists would
+say she was quite right."
+
+"You never understood her, Lindy. It was not a case of jilting a cripple
+at all. She jilted three thousand a year and a small place for ten
+thousand a year and a big one."
+
+After all, it did hurt a little, which Atherley must have divined, for
+crossing the room on some pretext or another he let his strong hand
+rest, just for an instant, gently upon my shoulder, thus, after the
+manner of his race, mutely and concisely expressing affection and
+sympathy that might have swelled a canto.
+
+"I shall be sorry," he said presently, lying rather than sitting in the
+deep chair beside the fire, "very sorry, if the ghost is going to make
+itself a nuisance."
+
+"What is the story of the ghost?"
+
+"Story! God bless you, it has none to tell, sir; at least it never has
+told it, and no one else rightly knows it. It--I mean the ghost--is
+older than the family. We found it here when we came into the place
+about two hundred years ago, and it refused to be dislodged. It is
+rather uncertain in its habits. Sometimes it is not heard of for years;
+then all at once it reappears, generally, I may observe, when some
+imaginative female in the house is in love, or out of spirits, or bored
+in any other way. She sees it, and then, of course--the complaint being
+highly infectious--so do a lot more. One of the family started the
+theory it was the ghost of the portrait, or rather the unknown
+individual whose portrait hangs high up over the sideboard in the
+dining-room."
+
+"You don't mean the lady in green velvet with the snuff-box?"
+
+"Certainly not; that is my own great-grand-aunt. I mean a square of
+black canvas with one round yellow spot in the middle and a dirty white
+smudge under the spot. There are members of this family--Aunt Eleanour,
+for instance--who tell me the yellow spot is a man's face and the dirty
+white smudge is an Elizabethan ruff. Then there is a picture of a man in
+armour in the oak room, which I don't believe is a portrait at all; but
+Aunt Henrietta swears it is, and of the ghost, too--as he was before he
+died, of course. And very interesting details both my aunts are ready to
+furnish concerning the two originals. It is extraordinary what an amount
+of information is always forthcoming about things of which nobody can
+know anything--as about the next world, for instance. The, last time I
+went to church the preacher gave as minute an account of what our
+post-mortem experiences were to be as if he had gone through it all
+himself several times."
+
+"Well, does the ghost usually appear in a ruff or in armour?"
+
+"It depends entirely upon who sees it--a ghost always does. Last night,
+for instance, I lay you odds it wore neither ruff nor armour, because
+Mrs. Mallet is not likely to have heard of either the one or the other.
+Not that she saw the ghost--not she. What she saw was a bogie, not a
+ghost."
+
+"Why, what is the difference?"
+
+"Immense! As big as that which separates the objective from the
+subjective. Any one can see a bogie. It is a real thing belonging to the
+external world. It may be a bright light, a white sheet, or a black
+shadow--always at night, you know, or at least in the dusk, when you are
+apt to be a little mixed in your observations. The best example of a
+bogie was Sir Walter Scott's. It looked--in the twilight
+remember--exactly like Lord Byron, who had not long departed this life
+at the time Sir Walter saw it. Nine men out of ten would have gone off
+and sworn they had seen a ghost; why, religions have been founded on
+just such stuff: but Sir Walter, as sane a man as ever lived--though he
+did write poetry--kept his head clear and went up closer to his ghost,
+which proved on examination to be a waterproof."
+
+"A waterproof?"
+
+"Or a railway rug--I forget which: the moral is the same."
+
+"Well, what is a ghost?"
+
+"A ghost is nothing--an airy nothing manufactured by your own disordered
+senses of your own over-excited brain."
+
+"I beg to observe that I never saw a ghost in my life."
+
+"I am glad to hear it. It does you credit. If ever any one had an excuse
+for seeing a ghost it would be a man whose spine was jarred. But I meant
+nothing personal by the pronoun--only to give greater force to my
+remarks. The first person singular will do instead. The ghost belongs to
+the same lot, as the faces that make mouths at me when I have
+brain-fever, the reptiles that crawl about when I have an attack of the
+D.T., or--to take a more familiar example--the spots I see floating
+before my eyes when my liver is out of order. You will allow there is
+nothing supernatural in all that?"
+
+"Certainly. Though, did not that pretty niece of Mrs. Molyneux's say she
+used to see those spots floating before her eyes when a misfortune was
+impending?"
+
+"I fancy she did, and true enough too, as such spots would very likely
+precede a bilious attack, which is misfortune enough while it lasts. But
+still, even Mrs. Molyneux's niece, even Mrs. Molyneux herself, would
+not say the fever faces, or the reptiles, or the spots, were
+supernatural. And in fact the ghost is, so far, more--more _recherché_,
+let us say, than the other things. It takes more than a bilious attack
+or a fever, or even D.T., to produce a ghost. It takes nothing less than
+a pretty high degree of nervous sensibility and excitable imagination.
+Now these two disorders have not been much developed yet by the masses,
+in spite of the school-boards: ergo, any apparition which leads to
+hysterics or brandy-and-water in the servants' hall is a bogie, not a
+ghost."
+
+He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and added:
+
+"And now, Lindy, as we don't want another ghost haunting the house. I
+will conduct you to by-by."
+
+It was a strange house, Weald Manor, designed, one might suppose, by
+some inveterate enemy of light. It lay at the foot of a steep hill which
+screened it from the morning sun, and the few windows which looked
+towards the rising day were so shaped as to admit but little of its
+brightness. At night it was even worse, at least in the halls and
+passages, for there, owing probably to the dark oak which lined both
+walls and floor, a generous supply of lamps did little more than
+illumine the surface of the darkness, leaving unfathomed and unexplained
+mysterious shadows that brooded in distant corners, or, towering
+giant-wise to the ceiling, loomed ominously overhead.
+Will-o'-the-wisp-like reflections from our lighted candles danced in the
+polished surface of panel and balustrade, as from the hall we went
+upstairs, I helping myself from step to step by Atherley's arm, as
+instinctively, as unconsciously almost, as he offered it. We stopped on
+the first landing. Before us rose the stairs leading to the gallery
+where Atherley's bedroom was: to our left ran "the bachelor's passage,"
+where I was lodged.
+
+"Night, night," were Atherley's parting words. "Don't dream of flirts or
+ghosts, but sleep sound."
+
+Sleep sound! the kind words sounded like mockery. Sleep to me, always
+chary of her presence, was at best but a fair-weather friend, instantly
+deserting me when pain or exhaustion made me crave the more for rest and
+forgetfulness; but I had something to do in the interim--a little
+_auto-da-fé_ to perform, by which, with that faith in ceremonial, so
+deep laid in human nature, I meant once for all to lay the ghost that
+haunted me--the ghost of a delightful but irrevocable past, with which
+I had dallied too long.
+
+Sitting before the wood-fire I slowly unfolded them: the three
+faintly-perfumed sheets with the gilt monogram above the pointed
+writing:
+
+     "Dear Mr. Lyndsay," ran the first, "why did you not come over
+     to-day? I was expecting you to appear all the afternoon.--Yours
+     sincerely, G.E.L."
+
+The second was dated four weeks later--
+
+     "You silly boy! I forbid you ever to write or talk of yourself in
+     such a way again. You are not a cripple; and if you had ever had a
+     mother or a sister, you would know how little women think of such
+     things. How many more assurances do you expect from me? Do you wish
+     me to propose to you again? No, if you won't have me, go.--Yours,
+     in spite of yourself, GLADYS."
+
+The third--the third is too long to quote entire; besides, the substance
+is contained in this last sentence--
+
+     "So I think, my dear Mr. Lyndsay, for your sake more than my own,
+     our engagement had better be broken off."
+
+In this letter, dated six weeks ago, she had charged me to burn all that
+she had written to me, and as yet I had not done so, shrinking from the
+sharp unreasonable pain with which we bury the beloved dead. But the
+time of my mourning was accomplished. I tore the paper into fragments
+and dropped them into the flames.
+
+It must have been the pang with which I watched them darken and shrivel
+that brought back the memory of another sharp stab. It was that day ten
+years ago, when I walked for the first time after my accident. Supported
+by a stick on one side, and by Atherley on the other, I crawled down the
+long gallery at home and halted before a high wide-open window to see
+the sunlit view of park and woods and distant downland. Then all at
+once, ridden by my groom, Charming went past with feet that verily
+danced upon the greensward, and quivering nostrils that rapturously
+inhaled the breath of spring and of morning. I said: "George, I want
+_you_ to have Charming." And it made me smile, even in that bitter
+moment, to remember how indistinctly, how churlishly almost, Atherley
+accepted the gift, in his eager haste to get me out of sight and thought
+of it.
+
+It was long before the last fluttering rags had vanished, transmuted
+into fiery dust. The clock on the landing had many times chanted its
+dirge since I had heard below the footsteps of the servants carrying
+away the lamps from the sitting-rooms and the hall. Later still came the
+far-off sound of Atherley's door closing behind him, like the final
+good-night of the waking day. Over all the unconscious household had
+stolen that silence which is more than silence, that hush which seems to
+wait for something, that stillness of the night-watch which is kept
+alone. It was familiar enough to me, but to-night it had a new meaning;
+like the sunlight that shines when we are happy, or the rain that falls
+when we are weeping, it seemed, as if in sympathy, to be repeating and
+accenting what I could not so vividly have told in words. In my life,
+and for the second time, there was the same desolate pause, as if the
+dreary tale were finished and only the drearier epilogue remained to
+live through--the same sense of sad separation from the happy and the
+healthful.
+
+I made a great effort to read, holding the book before me and compelling
+myself to follow the sentences, but that power of abstraction which can
+conquer pain does not belong to temperaments like mine. If only I could
+have slept, as men have been able to do even upon the rack; but every
+hour that passed left me more awake, more alive, more supersensitive to
+suffering.
+
+Early in the morning, long before the dawn, I must have been feverish, I
+think. My head and hands burned, the air of the room stifled me, I was
+losing my self-control.
+
+I opened the window and leant out. The cool air revived me bodily, but
+to the fever of the spirit it brought no relief. To my heart, if not to
+my lips, sprang the old old cry for help which anguish has wrung from
+generation after generation. The agony of mine, I felt wildly, must
+pierce through sense, time, space, everything--even to the Living Heart
+of all, and bring thence some token of pity! For one instant my passion
+seemed to beat against the silent heavens, then to fall back bruised and
+bleeding.
+
+Out of the darkness came not so much as a wind whisper or the twinkle of
+a star.
+
+Was Atherley right after all?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE STRANGER'S GOSPEL
+
+
+From the short unsatisfying slumber which sometimes follows a night of
+insomnia I was awakened by the laughter and shouts of children. When I
+looked out I saw brooding above the hollow a still gray day, in whose
+light the woodlands of the park were all in sombre brown, and the trout
+stream between its sedgy banks glided dark and lustreless.
+
+On the lawn, still wet with dew, and crossed by the shadows of the bare
+elms, Atherley's little sons, Harold and Denis, were playing with a very
+unlovely but much-beloved mongrel called Tip. They had bought him with
+their own pocket-money from a tinker who was ill-using him, and then
+claimed for him the hospitality of their parents; so, though Atherley
+often spoke of the dog as a disgrace to the household, he remained a
+member thereof, and received, from a family incapable of being uncivil,
+far less unkind, to an animal, as much attention as if he had been
+high-bred and beautiful--which indeed he plainly supposed himself to be.
+
+When, about an hour later, after their daily custom, this almost
+inseparable trio fell into the breakfast-room as if the door had
+suddenly given way before them, the boys were able to revenge themselves
+for the rebuke this entrance provoked by the tidings they brought with
+them.
+
+"I say, old Mallet is going," cried Harold cheerfully, as he wriggled
+himself on to his chair. "Denis, mind I want some of that egg-stuff."
+
+"Take your arms off the table, Harold," said Lady Atherley. "Pray, how
+do you know Mrs. Mallet is going?"
+
+"She said so herself. She said," he went on, screwing up his nose and
+speaking in a falsetto to express the intensity of his scorn--"she said
+she was afraid of the ghost."
+
+"I told you I did not allow that word to be mentioned."
+
+"I did not; it was old Mallet."
+
+"But, pray, what were you doing in old Mallet's domain?" asked Atherley.
+
+"Cooking cabbage for Tip."
+
+"Hum! What with ghosts by night and boys by day, our cook seems to have
+a pleasant time of it; I shall be glad when Miss Jones's holidays are
+over. Castleman, is it true that Mrs. Mallet talks of leaving us because
+of the ghost?"
+
+"I am sure I don't know, Sir George," answered the old butler. "She was
+going on about it very foolish this morning."
+
+"And how is the kitchen-maid?"
+
+"Has not come down yet, Sir George; says her nerve is shook," said
+Castleman, retiring with a plate to the sideboard; then added, with the
+freedom of an old servant, "Bile, _I_ should say."
+
+"Probably. We had better send for Doctor What's-his-name."
+
+"The usual doctor is away," said Lady Atherley. "There is a London
+doctor in his place. He is clever, Lady Sylvia said, but he gives
+himself airs."
+
+"Never mind what he gives himself if he gives his patients the right
+thing."
+
+"And after all we can manage very well without Ann, but what are we to
+do about Mrs. Mallet? I always told you how it would be."
+
+"But, my dear, it is not my fault. You look as reproachfully at me as if
+it were my ghost which was causing all this disturbance instead of the
+ghost of a remote ancestor--predecessor, in fact."
+
+"No, but you will always talk just as if it was of no consequence."
+
+"I don't talk of the cook's going as being of no consequence. Far from
+it. But you must not let her go, that is all."
+
+"How can I prevent her going? I think you had better talk to her
+yourself."
+
+"I should like to meet her very much; would not you, Lindy? I should
+like to hear her story; it must be a blood-curdling one, to judge from
+its effect upon Ann. The only person I have yet met who pretended to
+have seen the ghost was Aunt Eleanour."
+
+"And what was it like, daddy?" asked Denis, much interested.
+
+"She did not say, Den. She would never tell me anything about it."
+
+"Would she tell me?"
+
+"I am afraid not. I don't think she would tell any one, except perhaps
+Mr. Lyndsay. He has a way of worming things out of people."
+
+"Mr. Lyndsay, how do you worm things out of people?"
+
+"I don't know, Denis; you must ask your father."
+
+"First, by never asking any questions," said Atherley promptly; "and
+then by a curious way he has of looking as if he was listening
+attentively to what was said to him, instead of thinking, as most people
+do, what he shall say himself when he gets a chance of putting a word
+in."
+
+"But how could Aunt Eleanour see the ghost when there is not any such
+thing?" cried Harold.
+
+"How indeed!" said his father, rising; "that is just the puzzle. It will
+take you years to find it out. Lindy, look into the morning-room in
+about half an hour, and you will hear a tale whose lightest word will
+harrow up thy soul, etc., etc."
+
+As Lady Atherley kindly seconded this invitation I accepted it, though
+not with the consequences predicted. Anything less suggestive of the
+supernatural, or in every way less like the typical ghost-seer, was
+surely never produced than the round and rubicund little person I found
+in conversation with the Atherleys. Mrs. Mallet was a brunette who might
+once have considered herself a beauty, to judge by the self-conscious
+and self-satisfied simper which the ghastliest recollections were unable
+to banish. As I entered I caught only the last words of Atherley's
+speech--
+
+"---- treating you well, Mrs. Mallet?"
+
+"Oh no, Sir George," answered Mrs. Mallet, standing very straight and
+stiff, with two plump red hands folded demurely before her; "which I
+have not a word to say against any one, but have met, ever since I come
+here, with the greatest of kindness and respect. But the noises, sir,
+the noises of a night is more than I can abear."
+
+"Oh, they are only rats, Mrs. Mallet."
+
+"No rats in this world ever made sech a noise, Sir George; which the
+very first night as I slep here, there come the most mysterioustest
+sounds as ever I hear, which I says to Hann, 'Whatever are you a-doing?'
+which she woke up all of a suddent, as young people will, and said she
+never hear nor yet see nothing."
+
+"What was the noise like, Mrs. Mallet?"
+
+"Well, Sir George, I can only compare it to the dragging of heavy
+furniture, which I really thought at first it was her ladyship a-coming
+upstairs to waken me, took bad with burglars or a fire."
+
+"But, Mrs. Mallet, I am sure you are too brave a woman to mind a little
+noise."
+
+"It is not only noises, Sir George. Last night--"
+
+Mrs. Mallet drew a long breath and closed her eyes.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Mallet, pray go on; I am very curious to hear what did happen
+last night."
+
+"It makes the cold chills run over me to think of it. We was all gone to
+bed--leastways the maids and me, and Hann and me was but just got to my
+room when says she to me, 'Oh la! whatever do you think?' says she; 'I
+promised Ellen when she went out this afternoon as I would shut the
+windows in the pink bedroom at four o'clock, and never come to think of
+it till this minute,' she says. 'Oh dear,' I says, 'and them new
+chintzes will be entirely ruined with the damp. Why, what a
+good-for-nothing girl you are!' I says, 'and what you thinks on half
+your time is more than I can tell.' 'Whatever shall I do?' she says,
+'for go along there at this time of night all by myself I dare not,'
+says she. 'Well,' I says, 'rather than you should go alone, I'll go
+along with you,' I says, 'for stay here by myself I would not,' I says,
+'not if any one was to pay me hundreds.' So we went down our stairs and
+along our passage to the door which you go into the gallery, Hann
+a-clutching hold of me and starting, which when we come into the
+gallery I was all of a tremble, and she shook so I said, 'La! Hann, for
+goodness' sake do carry that candle straight, or you will grease the
+carpet shameful;' and come to the pink room I says, 'Open the door.'
+'La!' says she, 'what if we was to see the ghost?' 'Hold your silly
+nonsense this minute,' I says, 'and open the door,' which she do, but
+stand right back for to let me go first, when, true as ever I am
+standing here, my lady, I see something white go by like a flash, and
+struck me cold in the face, and blew the candle out, and then come the
+fearfullest noise, which thunderclaps is nothing to it. Hann began
+a-screaming, and we ran as fast as ever we could till we come to the
+pantry, where Mr. Castleman and the footman was. I thought I should ha'
+died: died I thought I should. My face was as white as that
+antimacassar."
+
+"How could you see your face, Mrs. Mallet?" somewhat peevishly objected
+Lady Atherley.
+
+But Mrs. Mallet with great dignity retorted--
+
+"Which I looked down my nose, and it were like a corpse's."
+
+"Very alarming," said Atherley, "but easily explained. Directly you
+opened the door there was, of course, a draught from the open window.
+That draught blew the candle out and knocked something over, probably a
+screen."
+
+"La' bless you, Sir George, it was more like paving-stones than screens
+a-falling."
+
+And indeed Mrs. Mallet was so far right, that when, to settle the
+weighty question once for all, we adjourned in a body to the pink
+bedroom, we discovered that nothing less than the ceiling, or at least a
+portion of it, had fallen, and was lying in a heap of broken plaster
+upon the floor. However, the moral, as Atherley hastened to observe, was
+the same.
+
+"You see, Mrs. Mallet, this was what made the noise."
+
+Mrs. Mallet made no reply, but it was evident she neither saw nor
+intended to see anything of the kind; and Atherley wisely substituted
+bribery for reasoning. But even with this he made little way till
+accidentally he mentioned the name of Mrs. de Noël, when, as if it had
+been a name to conjure by, Mrs. Mallet showed signs of softening.
+
+"Yes, think of Mrs. de Noël, Mrs. Mallet; what will she say if you leave
+her cousin to starve?"
+
+"I should not wish such a thing to happen for a moment," said Mrs.
+Mallet, as if this had been no figure of speech but the actual
+alternative, "not to any relation of Mrs. de Noël."
+
+And shortly after the debate ended with a cheerful "Well, Mrs. Mallet,
+you will give us another trial," from Atherley.
+
+"There," he exclaimed, as we all three returned to the
+morning-room--"there is as splendid an example of the manufacture of a
+bogie as you are ever likely to meet with. All the spiritual phenomena
+are produced much in the same way. Work yourself up into a great state
+of terror and excitement, in the first place; in the next, procure one
+companion, if not more, as credulous and excitable as yourself; go at a
+late hour and with a dim light to a place where you have been told you
+will see something supernatural; steadfastly and determinedly look out
+for it, and--you will have your reward. These are precisely the lines on
+which a spiritual séance is conducted, only instead of plaster, which is
+not always so obliging as to fall in the nick of time, you have a paid
+medium who supplies the material for your fancy to work upon. Mrs.
+Mallet, you see, has discovered all this for herself--that woman is a
+born genius. Just think what she might have been and seen if she had
+lived in a sphere where neither cooking nor any other rational
+occupation interfered with her pursuit of the supernatural. Mrs.
+Molyneux would be nowhere beside her."
+
+"I suppose she really does intend to stay," said Lady Atherley.
+
+"Of course she does. I always told you my powers of persuasion were
+irresistible."
+
+"But how annoying about the ceiling," said Lady Atherley. "Over the new
+carpet, too! What can make the plaster fall in this way?"
+
+"It is the quality of the climate," said Atherley. "It is horribly
+destructive. If you would read the batch of letters now on my
+writing-table from tenant-farmers you would see what I mean: barns,
+roofs, gates, everything is falling to pieces and must immediately be
+repaired--at the landlord's expense, of course."
+
+"We must send for a plasterer," said Lady Atherley, "and then the
+doctor. Perhaps you would have time to go round his way, George."
+
+"No, I have no time to go anywhere but to Northside farm. Hunt has been
+waiting nearly half an hour for me, as it is. Lindy, would you like to
+come with me?"
+
+"No, thank you, George; I too am a landowner, and I mean to look over my
+audit accounts to-day."
+
+"Don't compare yourself to a poor overworked underpaid landowner like
+me. You are one of the landlords they spout about in London parks on
+Sundays. You have nothing to do but sign receipts for your rents, paid
+in full and up to date."
+
+"Mr. Lyndsay is an excellent landlord," said Lady Atherley; "and they
+tell me the new church and the schools he has built are charming."
+
+"Very mischievous things both," said Atherley. "Ta-ta."
+
+That afternoon, Atherley being still absent, and Lady Atherley having
+gone forth to pay a round of calls, the little boys undertook my
+entertainment. They were in rather a sober mood for them, having just
+forfeited four weeks' pocket-money towards expenses incurred by Tip in
+the dairy, where they had foolishly allowed him to enter; so they
+accepted very good-humouredly my objections to wading in the river or
+climbing trees, and took me instead for a walk to Beggar's Stile. We
+climbed up the steep carriage-drive to the lodge, passed through the big
+iron gates, turned sharply to the left, and went down the road which the
+park palings border and the elms behind them shade, past the little
+copse beyond the park, till we came to a tumble-down gate with a stile
+beside it in the hedgerow; and this was Beggar's Stile. It was just on
+the brow of the little hill which sloped gradually downward to the
+village beneath, and commanded a wide view of the broad shallow valley
+and of the rising ground beyond.
+
+I was glad to sit down on the step of the stile.
+
+"Are you tired already, Mr. Lyndsay?" inquired Harold incredulously.
+
+"Yes, a little."
+
+"I s'pose you are tired because you always have to pull your leg after
+you," said Denis, turning upon me two large topaz-coloured eyes. "Does
+it hurt you, Mr. Lyndsay?"
+
+"Mother told you not to talk about Mr. Lyndsay's leg," observed Harold
+sharply.
+
+"No, she didn't; she said I was not to talk about the funny way he
+walked. She said--"
+
+"Well, never mind, little man," I interrupted. "Is that Weald down
+there?"
+
+"Yes," cried Denis, maintaining his balance on the topmost bar but one
+of the gate with enviable ease. "All these cottages and houses belong to
+Weald, and it is all daddy's on this side of the river down to where you
+see the white railings a long way down near the poplars, and that is the
+road we go to tea with Aunt Eleanour; and do you see a little blue
+speck on the hill over there? You could see if you had a telescope.
+Daddy showed me once; but you must shut your eye. That is Quarley
+Beacon, where Aunt Cissy lives."
+
+"No, she does not, stupid," cried Harold, now suspended, head downwards,
+by one foot, from the topmost rail of the gate. "No one lives there. She
+lives in Quarley Manor, just behind."
+
+Denis replied indirectly to the discourteous tone of this speech by
+trying with the point of his own foot to dislodge that by which Harold
+maintained his remarkable position, and a scuffle ensued, wherein,
+though a non-combatant, I seemed likely to get the worst, when their
+attention was fortunately diverted by the sight of Tip sneaking off, and
+evidently with the vilest motives, towards the covert.
+
+My memory was haunted that day by certain words spoken seven months ago
+by Atherley, and by me at the time very ungraciously received:
+
+"Remember, if you do come a cropper, it will go hard with you, old man;
+you can't shoot or hunt or fish off the blues, like other men."
+
+No, nor could I work them off, as some might have done. I possessed no
+distinct talents, no marked vocation. If there was nothing behind and
+beyond all this, what an empty freak of destiny my life would have
+been--full, not even of sound and fury, but of dull common-place
+suffering: a tale told by an idiot with a spice of malice in him.
+
+Then the view before me made itself felt, as a gentle persistent sound
+might have done: a flat, almost featureless scene--a little village
+church with cottages and gardens clustering about it, straggling away
+from it, by copses and meadows in which winter had left only the
+tenderest shades of the saddest colours. The winding river brightened
+the dull picture with broken glints of silver, and the tawny hues of the
+foreground faded through soft gradations of violet and azure into a far
+distance of pearly grey. It is not the scenery men cross continents and
+oceans to admire, and yet it has a message of its own. I felt it that
+day when I was heart-weary, and was glad that in one corner of this
+restless world the little hills preach peace.
+
+Meantime Tip had been recaptured, and when he, or rather the ground
+close beside him, had been beaten severely with sticks, and he himself
+upbraided in terms which left the censors hoarse, we went down again
+into the hollow. Then Lady Atherley returned and gave me tea; and
+afterwards, in the library, I worked at accounts till it was nearly too
+dark to write. No doubt on the high ground the sky was aflame with
+brilliant colour, of which only a dim reflection tinged the dreary view
+of sward and leafless trees, to which, for some mysterious reason, a gig
+crawling down the carriage-drive gave the last touch of desolation.
+
+Just as I laid my pen aside the door opened, and Castleman introduced a
+stranger.
+
+"If you will wait here, sir, I will find her ladyship."
+
+The new-comer was young and slight, with an erect carriage and a firm
+step. He had the finely-cut features and dull colouring which I
+associate with the high-pressure life of a busy town, so that I guessed
+who he was before his first words told me.
+
+"No, thank you, I will not sit down; I expect to be called to my patient
+immediately."
+
+The thought of this said patient made me smile, and in explanation I
+told him from what she was supposed to be suffering.
+
+"Well; it is less common than other forms of feverishness, but will
+probably yield to the same remedies," was his only comment.
+
+"You do not believe in ghosts?"
+
+"Pardon me, I do, just as I believe in all symptoms. When my patient
+tells me he hears bells ringing in his ear, or feels the ground swaying
+under his feet, I believe him implicitly, though I know nothing of the
+kind is actually taking place. The ghost, so far, belongs to the same
+class as the other experiences, that it is a symptom--it may be of a
+very trifling, it may be of a very serious, disorder."
+
+The voice, the keen flash of the eye, impressed me. I recognised one of
+those alert intelligences, beside whose vivid flame the mental life of
+most men seems to smoulder. I wished to hear him speak again.
+
+"Is this your view of all supernatural manifestations?"
+
+"Of all so-called supernatural manifestations; I don't understand the
+word or the distinction. No event which has actually taken place can be
+supernatural. Since it belongs to the actual it must be governed by, it
+must be the outcome of, laws which everywhere govern the actual--everywhere
+and at all times. In fact, it must be natural, whatever we
+may think of it."
+
+"Then if a miracle could be proven, it would be no miracle to you?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"And it could convince you of nothing?"
+
+"Neither me nor any one else who has outgrown his childhood, I should
+think. I have never been able to understand the outcry of the orthodox
+over their lost miracles. It makes their position neither better nor
+worse. The miracles could never prove their creeds. How am I to
+recognise a divine messenger? He makes the furniture float about the
+room; he changes that coal into gold; he projects himself or his image
+here when he is a thousand miles away. Why, an emissary from the devil
+might do as much! It only proves--always supposing he really does
+these things instead of merely appearing to do so--it proves that he is
+better acquainted with natural laws than I am. What if he could kill me
+by an effort of the will? What if he could bring me to life again? It is
+always the same; he might still be morally my inferior; he might be a
+false prophet after all."
+
+He took out his watch and looked at it, by this simple action
+illustrating and reminding me of the difference between us--he talking
+to pass away the time, I thinking aloud the gnawing question at my
+heart.
+
+"And you have no hope for anything beyond this?"
+
+Something in my voice must have struck his ear, trained like every other
+organ of observation to quick and fine perception, for he looked at me
+more attentively, and it was in a gentler tone that he said--
+
+"Surely, you do not mean for a life beyond this? One's best hope must be
+that the whole miserable business ends with death."
+
+"Have you found life so wretched?"
+
+"I am not speaking from my own particular point of view. I am
+singularly, exceptionally, fortunate, I am healthy; I have tastes which
+I can gratify, work which I keenly enjoy. Whether the tastes are worth
+gratifying or the work worth doing I cannot say. At least they act as an
+anodyne to self-consciousness; they help me to forget the farce in
+which I play my part. Like Solomon, and all who have had the best of
+life, I call it vanity. What do you suppose it is to those--by far the
+largest number, remember--who have had the worst of it? To them it is
+not vanity, it is misery."
+
+"But they suffer under the invariable laws you speak of--laws working
+towards deliverance and happiness in the future."
+
+"The future? Yes, I know that form of consolation which seems to satisfy
+so many. To me it seems a hollow one. I have never yet been able to
+understand how any amount of ecstasy enjoyed by B a million years hence
+can make up for the torture A is suffering to-day. I suppose, dealing so
+much with individuals as I do, I am inclined to individualise like a
+woman. I think of units rather than of the mass. At this moment I have
+before me a patient now left suffering pain as acute as any the rack
+ever inflicted. How does it affect his case that centuries later such
+pain may be unknown?"
+
+"Of course, the individual's one and only hope is a future existence.
+Then it may be all made up to him."
+
+"I see no reason to hope so. Either there is no God, and we shall still
+be at the mercy of the blind destiny we suffer under here; or there is a
+God, the God who looks on at this world and makes no sign! The sooner we
+escape from Him by annihilation the better."
+
+"Christians would tell you He had given a sign."
+
+"Yes; so they do in words and deny it in deeds. Nothing is sadder in
+the whole tragedy, or comedy, than these pitiable efforts to hide the
+truth, to gloss it over with fables which nobody in his heart of hearts
+believes--at least in these days. Why not face the worst like men? If we
+can't help being unhappy we can help being dishonest and cowardly.
+Existence is a misfortune. Let us frankly confess that it is, and make
+the best of it."
+
+He was not looking at his watch now; he was pacing the room. At last, he
+was in earnest, and had forgotten all accidents of time and place before
+the same enigma which perplexed myself.
+
+"The best of it!" I re-echoed. "Surely, under these circumstances, the
+best thing would be to commit suicide?"
+
+"No," he cried, stopping and turning sharply upon me. "The worst,
+because the most cowardly; so long as you have strength, brains,
+money--anything with which you can do good."
+
+He looked past me through the window into the outer air, no longer
+faintly tinged, but dyed deep red by the light of the unseen but
+resplendent sunset, and added slowly, dejectedly, as if speaking to
+himself as much as to me--
+
+"Yes, there is one thing worth living for--to help to make it all a
+little more bearable for the others."
+
+And then all at once, his face, so virile yet so delicate, so young and
+yet so sad, reminded me of one I had seen in an old picture--the face of
+an angel watching beside the dead Christ; and I cried--
+
+"But are you certain He has made no sign; not hundreds of years ago,
+but in your own lifetime? not to saint or apostle, but to you, yourself?
+Has nothing which has happened to you, nothing you have ever seen or
+read or heard, tempted you to hope in something better?"
+
+"Yes," he said deliberately; "I have had my weak moments. My conviction
+has wavered, not before religious teaching of any kind, however, nor
+before Nature, in which some people seem to find such promise; but I
+have met one or two women, and one man--all of them unknown,
+unremarkable people--whom the world never heard of, nor is likely to
+hear of, living uneventful obscure lives in out-of-the-way corners. For
+instance, there is a lady in this very neighbourhood, a relation of Sir
+George Atherley, I believe, Mrs. de No--"
+
+"Her ladyship would like to see you in the drawing-room, sir," said
+Castleman, suddenly coming in.
+
+The doctor bowed to me and immediately left the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MRS. MOSTYN'S GOSPEL
+
+
+"No, they have not seen any more ghosts, sir," replied Castleman
+scornfully next day, "and never need have seen any. It is all along of
+this tea-drinking. We did not have this bother when the women took their
+beer regular. These teetotallers have done a lot of harm. They ought to
+be put down by Act of Parliament."
+
+And the kitchen-maid was better. Mrs. Mallet, indeed, assured Lady
+Atherley that Hann was not long for this world, having turned just the
+same colour as the late Mr. Mallet did on the eve of his death; but
+fortunately the patient herself, as well as the doctor, took a more
+hopeful view of the case.
+
+"I can see Mrs. Mallet is a horrible old croaker," said Lady Atherley.
+
+"Let her croak," said Atherley, "so long as she cooks as she did last
+night. That curry would have got her absolution for anything if your
+uncle had been here."
+
+"That reminds me, George, the ceiling of the spare room is not mended
+yet."
+
+"Why, I thought you sent to Whitford for a plasterer yesterday?"
+
+"Yes, and he came; but Mrs. Mallet has some extraordinary story about
+his falling into his bucket and spoiling his Sunday coat, and going home
+at once to change it. I can't make it out, but nothing is done to the
+ceiling."
+
+"I make it out," said Atherley; "I make out that he was a little the
+worse for drink. Have we not a plasterer in the village?"
+
+"I think there is one. I fancy the Jacksons did not wish us to employ
+him, because he is a dissenter; but after all, giving him work is not
+the same as giving him presents."
+
+"No, indeed; nor do I see why, because he is a dissenter, I, who am only
+an infidel, am to put up with a hole in my ceiling."
+
+"Only, I don't know what his name is."
+
+"His name is Smart. Everybody in our village is called Smart--most
+inappropriately too."
+
+"No, George, the man the doctor told us about who is so dangerously
+ill is called Monk."
+
+"I am glad to hear it; but he doesn't belong to our parish, though he
+lives so close. He is actually in Rood Warren. His cottage is at the
+other side of the Common."
+
+"Then we can leave the wine and things as we go. And, George, while the
+boys are having tea with Aunt Eleanour, I think I shall drive on to
+Quarley Beacon and try and persuade Cecilia to come back and spend the
+night with us. I think we could manage to put her up in the little blue
+dressing-room. She is so good-natured; she won't mind its being so
+small."
+
+"Yes, do; I want Lyndsay to see her. And give my best love to Aunt
+Eleanour, and say that if she is going to send me any more tracts
+against Popery, I should be extremely obliged if she would prepay the
+postage sufficiently."
+
+"Oh no, George, I could not. It was only threepence."
+
+"Well, then, tell her it is no good sending any at all, because I have
+made up my mind to go over to Rome next July."
+
+"No, George; she might not like it, and I don't believe you are going to
+do anything of the kind. Oh, are you off already? I thought you would
+settle something about the plasterer."
+
+"No, no; I can't think of plasterers and repairs to-day. Even the
+galley-slave has his holiday--this is mine. I am going to see the hounds
+throw off at Rood Acre, and forget for one day that I have an inch of
+landed property in the world."
+
+"But, George, if the pink-room ceiling is not put right by Saturday,
+where shall we put Uncle Augustus?"
+
+"Into the room just opposite to Lindy's."
+
+"What! that little room? In the bachelor's passage? A man of his age,
+and of his position!"
+
+"I am sure it is large enough for any one under a bishop. Besides, I
+don't think he is fussy about anything except his dinner."
+
+"It is not the way he is accustomed to be treated when he is on a visit,
+I can assure you. He is a person who is generally considered a great
+deal."
+
+"Well, I consider him a great deal. I consider him one of the finest old
+heathen I ever knew."
+
+Fortunately for their domestic peace, Lady Atherley usually misses the
+points of her husband's speeches, but there are some which jar upon her
+sense of the becoming, and this was one of them.
+
+"I don't think," she observed to me, the offender himself having
+escaped, "that even if Uncle Augustus were not my uncle, a heathen is a
+proper name to call a clergyman, especially a canon--and one who is so
+looked up to in the Church. Have you ever heard him preach? But you must
+have heard about him, and about his sermons? I thought so. They are
+beautiful. When he preaches the church is crammed, and with the best
+people--in the season, when they are in town. And he has written a great
+many religious books too--sermons and hymns and manuals. There is a
+little book in red morocco you may have seen in my sitting-room--I know
+it was there a week ago--which he gave me, _The Life of Prayer_, with a
+short meditation and a hymn for every hour of the day--all composed by
+him. We don't see so much of him as I could wish. He is so grieved about
+George's views. He gave him some of his own sermons, but of course
+George would not look at them; and--so annoying--the last time he came I
+put the sermons, two beautiful large volumes of them, on the
+drawing-room table, and when we were all there after dinner George asked
+me quite loud what these smart books were, and where they came from. So
+altogether he has not come to see us for a long time; but as he happened
+to be staying with the Mountshires, I begged him to come over for a
+night or two; so you will hear him preach on Sunday."
+
+At lunch that day Lady Atherley proposed that I should accompany them to
+Woodcote. "Do come, Mr. Lyndsay," said Denis. "We shall have cakes for
+tea, and jam-sandwiches as well."
+
+"And there is an awfully jolly banister for sliding down," added Harold,
+"without any turns or landing, you know."
+
+I professed myself unable to resist such inducements. Indeed, I was
+almost glad to go. The recollection of Mrs. Mostyn's cheerful face was as
+alluring to me that day as the thought of a glowing hearth might be to
+the beggar on the door-step. Here, at least, was one to whom life was a
+blessing; who partook of all it could bestow with an appetite as
+healthfully keen as her nephew's, but without his disinclination or
+disregard for anything besides.
+
+The mild March day felt milder, the rooks cawed more cheerfully, and the
+spring flowers shone out more fearlessly around us when we had passed
+through the white gates of Woodcote--a favoured spot gently declining to
+the sunniest quarter, and sheltered from the north and north-east by
+barricades of elm-woods. The tiny domain was exquisitely ordered, as I
+love to see everything which appertains to women; and within the low
+white house, furnished after the simple and stiff fashion of a past
+generation, reigned the same dainty neatness, the same sunny
+cheerfulness, the native atmosphere of its chatelaine Mrs. Mostyn--a
+white-haired old lady long past seventy, with the bloom of youth on her
+cheek, its vivacity in her step, and its sparkle in her eyes.
+
+Hardly were the first greetings exchanged when the children opened the
+ball of conversation by inquiring eagerly when tea would be ready.
+
+"How can you be so greedy?" said their mother. "Why, you have only just
+finished your dinner."
+
+"We dined at half-past one, and it is nearly half-past three."
+
+"Poor darlings!" cried Mrs. Mostyn, regarding them with the enraptured
+gaze of the true child-lover; "their drive has made them hungry; and we
+cannot have tea very well before half-past four, because some old women
+from the village have come up to have tea, and the servants are busy
+attending to them. But I can tell you what you could do, dears. You know
+the way to the dairy; one of the maids is sure to be there; tell her to
+give you some cream. You will like that, won't you? Yes, you can go out
+by this door."
+
+"And remember to--"
+
+Lady Atherley's exhortation remained unfinished, her sons having darted
+through the door-window like arrows from the bow.
+
+"Since Miss Jones has been gone for her holiday the children are quite
+unmanageable," she observed.
+
+"Oh, it is such a good sign!" cried Mrs. Mostyn heartily; "it shows they
+are so thoroughly well. Mr. Lyndsay, why have you chosen that
+uncomfortable chair? Come and sit over beside me, if you are not afraid
+of the fire. And now, Jane, my love, tell me how you are getting on at
+Weald."
+
+Then followed a long catalogue of accidents and disappointments, of
+faithlessness and incapacity, to which Mrs. Mostyn supplied a running
+commentary of interjections sympathetic and consoling. There were,
+moreover, many changes for the worse since Sir Marmaduke had resided
+there: the shooting and the fishing had been alike neglected; the
+farmers were impoverished; the old places had changed hands.
+
+"And a good many quite new people have come to live in small houses
+round Weald," said Lady Atherley. "They have left cards on us. Do you
+know what they are like?"
+
+"Quite ladies and gentlemen, I believe, and nice enough as long as you
+don't get to know them too intimately; but they are always
+quarrelling."
+
+"About what?"
+
+"About everything; but especially about church matters--decorations and
+anthems and other rubbish. What they want is less of the church and more
+of the Bible."
+
+"I believe Mr. Jackson has a Bible-class every week."
+
+"But is it a Bible-class, or is it only called so? There is Mr. Austin
+at Rood Warren, a Romanist in disguise if ever there was one: he is by
+way of having a Bible-class, and one of our farmers' daughters attended
+it. 'And what part of the Bible are you studying now?' I asked her. 'We
+are studying early church history.' 'I don't know any such chapter in
+the Bible as that,' I said, and yet I know my Bible pretty well. She
+explained it was a continuation of the Acts of the Apostles. I said:
+'My dear child, don't you be misled by any jugglery of that kind; there
+is no continuation of the Bible; and as to what people call the early
+church, its doings and sayings are of no consequence at all. The one
+question we have to ask ourselves is this: '"What does the Book say?"'
+What is in the Book is God's word: what is not in the Book is only
+man's."
+
+The effect of this exposition on Lady Atherley was to make her ask
+eagerly whether the curate in charge at Rood Warren was one of the
+Austyns of Temple Leigh.
+
+"I believe he is a nephew," Mrs. Mostyn admitted, quite gloomily for
+her. "It is painful to see people of good standing going astray in this
+manner."
+
+"I was thinking it would be so convenient to get a young man over to
+dinner sometimes; and Rood Warren cannot be very far from us, for one of
+Mr. Austyn's parishioners lives just at the end of Weald."
+
+"If you take my advice, my dearest Jane, you will not have anything to
+do with him. He is certain to be attractive--men of that sort always
+are; and there is no saying what he might do: perhaps gain an influence
+over George himself."
+
+"I don't think there need be any fear of that, for at dinner, you know,
+we need not have any religious discussions; I never will have them; they
+are almost as bad as politics, they make people so cross."
+
+Then she rose and explained her visit to Mrs. de Noël.
+
+"But, Mr. Lyndsay," said Mrs. Mostyn, "are you going to desert the old
+woman for the young one, or are you going to stay and see my gardens and
+have tea? That is right. Good-bye, my dearest Jane. Give my dear love to
+Cissy, and tell her to come over and see me--but I shall have a glimpse
+of her on your way back."
+
+"I hope Mrs. de Noël may be persuaded to come back," I said, as the
+carriage drove off, and we walked along a gravel path by lawns of velvet
+smoothness; "I would so much like to meet her."
+
+"Have you never met her? Dear Cecilia! She is a sweet creature--the
+sweetest, I think, I ever met, though perhaps I ought not to say so of
+my own niece. She wants but one thing--the grace of God."
+
+We passed into a little wood, tapestried with ivy, carpeted with
+clustering primroses, and she continued--
+
+"It is most mysterious. Both Cecilia and George, being left orphans so
+early, were brought up by my dear sister Henrietta. She was a believing
+Christian, and no children ever had greater religious advantages than
+these two. As soon as they could speak they learnt hymns or texts of
+Scripture, and before they could read they knew whole chapters of the
+Bible by heart. George even now, I will say that for him, knows his
+Bible better than a good many clergymen. And the Sabbath, too. They were
+taught to reverence the Lord's day in a way children never are nowadays.
+All games and picture-books put away on Saturday night; regularly to
+church morning and afternoon, and in the evening Henrietta would talk to
+them and question them about the sermon. And after all, here is George
+who says he believes in nothing; and as to Cecilia, I never can make out
+what she does or does not believe. However, I am quite happy in my mind
+about them. I feel they are of the elect. I am as certain of their
+salvation as I am of my own."
+
+A sudden scampering of feet upon the gravel was followed by the
+appearance of the boys, rosy with exercise and excitement.
+
+"Well, my darling boys, have you had your cream?"
+
+"Oh yes, Aunt Eleanour," cried Harold, "and we have been into the
+farm-yard and seen the little pigs. Such jolly little beasts, Mr.
+Lyndsay, and squeak so funnily when you pull their tails."
+
+"Oh, but I can't have my pigs unkindly treated."
+
+"Not unkindly, auntie," cried Denis, swinging affectionately upon my
+arm; "we only just tried to make their tails go straight, you know. And,
+Mr. Lyndsay, there is such a dear little baby calf."
+
+"But I want to give apples to the horses," cried Harold.
+
+So we went to the fruit-house for apples, which Mrs. Mostyn herself
+selected from an upper shelf, mounting a ladder with equal agility and
+grace; then to the stables, where these dainties were crunched by two
+very fat carriage-horses; then to the miniature farm-yard, and the tiny
+ivy-covered dairy beyond; and just as I was beginning to feel the first
+qualms of my besetting humiliation, fatigue, Mrs. Mostyn led us round to
+the garden--a garden with high red walls, and a dial in the
+meeting-place of the flower-bordered paths; and we sat down in a rustic
+seat cosily fitted into one sunny corner, just behind a great bed of
+hyacinths in flower.
+
+The children had but one regret: Tip had been left behind.
+
+"But mamma would not let us bring him," cried Harold in an aggrieved
+tone, "because he will roll in the flower-beds."
+
+"Do you think it is nearly half-past four, Aunt Eleanour?" asked Denis.
+
+"Very nearly, I should think. Suppose you were to go and see if they
+have brought the tea-kettle in; and if they have, call to me from the
+drawing-room window, and I will come."
+
+The tempered sunlight fell full upon the delicate hyacinth
+clusters--coral, snow-white, and faintest lilac--exhaling their
+exquisite odour, and the warm sweet air seemed to enwrap us tenderly. My
+spirits, heavy as lead, began to rise--strangely, irrationally. Sunlight
+has always for me a supersensuous beauty, while the colour and perfume
+of flowers move me as sound vibrations move the musician. Just then it
+was to me as if through Nature, from that which is behind Nature, there
+reached me a pitying, a comforting caress.
+
+And in the same key were Mrs. Mostyn's words when she next spoke.
+
+"Mr. Lyndsay, I am an old woman and you are very young, and my heart
+goes out to all young creatures in sorrow, especially to one who has no
+mother of his own, no, nor father even, to comfort him. I know what
+trouble you have had. Would you be offended if I said how deeply I felt
+for you?"
+
+"Offended, Mrs. Mostyn!"
+
+"No. I see you understand me; you will not think me obtrusive when I say
+that I pray this great trial may be for your lasting good; may lead you
+to seek and to find salvation. The truth is brought home to us in many
+different ways, by many different instruments. My own eyes were opened
+by very extraordinary means."
+
+She was silent for a few instants, and then went on--
+
+"When I was young, Mr. Lyndsay, I lived for the world only. I went to
+church, of course, like other people, and said my prayers and called
+myself a Christian, but I did not know what the word meant. My sister
+Henrietta would often talk seriously to me, but it had no effect, and
+she was quite grieved over my hardened state; but my dear mother, a true
+saint, used to tell her to have no fear, that some day I should be
+sharply awakened to my soul's danger. But it was not till years after
+she was in heaven that her words came true."
+
+I looked at her and waited.
+
+"We were still living at Weald Manor with my brother Marmaduke, and we
+had young people staying with us. They were all going--all but
+myself--to a ball at Carchester. I stayed at home because I had a slight
+cold, which made me feel tired and feverish, and disinclined to be
+dancing till early next morning. I went to bed early, and when I had
+sent away my maid I sat beside the fire for a little, thinking. You know
+the long gallery?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"My room was there; so I was quite alone, for the servants slept, just
+as they do now, in the opposite end of the house. But I had my dog with
+me, such a dear little thing, a black-and-tan terrier. He was lying
+asleep on the rug beside me. Well, all at once he got up and put his
+head on one side as if he heard something, and he began barking. I only
+said 'Nonsense, Totty, lie down,' and paid no more attention to him,
+till some moments afterwards he made a strange kind of noise as if he
+were trying to bark and was choked in some way. This made me look at
+him, and then I observed that he was trembling from head to foot, and
+staring in the strangest way at something behind me. I will honestly
+tell you he made me feel so uncomfortable I was afraid to look round;
+and still it was almost as bad to sit there and not look round, so at
+last I summoned up courage and turned my head. Then I saw it."
+
+"The ghost?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What was it like?"
+
+"It was like a shadow, only darker, and not lying against the wall as a
+shadow would do, but standing out from it in the air. It stood a little
+way from me in a corner of the room. It was in the shape of a man, with
+a ruff round his neck, and sleeves puffed out at the shoulders, as you
+often see in old pictures; but I don't remember much about that, for at
+the time I could think of nothing but the face."
+
+"And that--?"
+
+"That was simply dreadful. I can't tell you what it was like. I could
+not have imagined it, if I had not seen it. It was the look--the look
+in its eyes. After all these years it makes me tremble when I think of
+it. But what I felt was not the same nervous feeling which made me
+afraid to turn round. It went much deeper--indeed it went deeper than
+anything in my life had ever gone before; it went right down to my soul,
+in fact, and made me feel I had a soul."
+
+She had turned quite pale.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Lyndsay, strange as it sounds, the mere sight of that face
+made me realise in an instant what I had read and heard thousands of
+times, and what my mother and Henrietta had told me over and over again
+about the utter nothingness of earthly aims and comforts--of what in an
+ordinary way is called life. I had heard very fine sermons preached
+about the same thing: 'What is our life, it is even a vapour,' and the
+'vain shadow' in which we walk. Have you ever thought how we can go on
+hearing and even repeating true and wise words without getting at their
+real sense, and, what is worse, without suspecting our own ignorance?"
+
+"I know it well."
+
+"When Henrietta used to say that the whirl of worldly occupations and
+interests and amusements in which I was so engrossed did not deserve to
+be called life, and could never satisfy the eternal soul within me, it
+used to seem to me an exaggerated way of saying that the next world
+would be better than this one; but I saw the meaning of her words, I saw
+the truth of them, as I see these flowers before me, and feel the gravel
+under my feet: it came to me in a moment, the night these terrible eyes
+looked into mine. The feeling did not last, but I have never forgotten
+it, and never shall. It was as if a veil were lifted for an instant, and
+I was standing outside of my life and looking back at it; and it seemed
+so poor and worthless and unreal--I can't explain myself properly."
+
+"And did the figure remain for any time?"
+
+"I do not know. I think I must have fainted. They found me lying in a
+half-unconscious state in my chair when they came home. I was ill in bed
+for weeks with what the doctors call low fever. But neither the fever
+nor anything else could remove the impression that had been made. That
+terrible thing was a blessed messenger to me. My real conversion was
+not till years later, but the way was prepared by the great shock I then
+received, and which roused me to a sense of my danger."
+
+"What do you think the thing you saw Was, Mrs. Mostyn?"
+
+"The ghost?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Slowly, thoughtfully, she answered me--
+
+"I am certain it was a lost soul: nothing else could have worn that
+dreadful look."
+
+She paused for a few moments and then continued--
+
+"Perhaps you are one of those who do not believe in the punishment of
+sin?"
+
+"Who can disbelieve it, Mrs. Mostyn? Call it what we like, it is a fact.
+It confronts us on every side. We might as well refuse to believe in
+death."
+
+"It is not that I meant! I was talking of punishment in the next world,
+Mr. Lyndsay."
+
+"Well, there, too, no doubt it must continue, until the uttermost
+farthing is paid. I believe--at least I hope--that."
+
+She shook her head with a troubled expression.
+
+"There is no paying that debt in the next world. It can only be paid
+here. Here, a free pardon is offered to us, and if we do not accept it,
+then---- It is the fashion, even among believers, nowadays to avoid this
+awful subject. Preachers of the Gospel do not speak of it in the pulpit
+as they once did. It is considered too shocking for our modern notions.
+I have no patience with such weakness, such folly--worse than folly. It
+seems to me even more wrong to try and hide this terrible danger from
+ourselves and from others than to deny it altogether, as some poor
+deluded souls do. Mr. Lyndsay, have you ever realised what the place of
+torment will be like?"
+
+"Yes; once, Mrs. Mostyn."
+
+"You were in pain?"
+
+"I suppose it was pain," I said.
+
+For always, when anything revives this recollection, seared into my
+memory, the question rises: was it merely pain, physical pain, of which
+we all speak so easily and lightly? It lasted only ten minutes; ten
+minutes by the clock, that is. For me time was annihilated. There was no
+past or future, but only an intolerable present, in which mind and soul
+were blotted out, and all of sentient existence that remained was the
+animal consciousness of agony. I cannot share men's stoical contempt
+for a Gehenna, which is nothing worse.
+
+"Mr. Lyndsay, imagine pain, worse than any ever endured on earth going
+on and on, for ever!"
+
+A bird, not a thrush, but one of the minor singers, lighting on a bough
+near us, trilled one simple but ecstatic phrase.
+
+"Do you really and truly believe, Mrs. Mostyn, that this will be the
+fate of any single being?"
+
+"Of any single being? Do we not know that it is what will happen to the
+greatest number? For what does the Book say? 'Many are called but few
+are chosen.'"
+
+Through the still, mild air, across the sun-steeped gardens, came the
+voices of the children--
+
+"Aunt Eleanour! Aunt Eleanour!"
+
+"Many are called," she repeated, "but few are chosen; and those who are
+not chosen shall be cast into everlasting fire."
+
+There was a pause. She turned to look at me, and, as if struck by
+something in my face, said gently, soothingly:
+
+"Yes, it is a terrible thought, but only for the unregenerate. It has no
+terror for me. I trust it need have no terror for you. After all, how
+simple, how easy is the way of escape! You have only to believe."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"And then you are safe, safe for evermore. Think of that. The foolish
+people who wish to explain away eternal punishment, forget that at the
+same time they explain away eternal happiness! You will be safe now,
+and after death you will be in heaven for evermore."
+
+"I shall be in heaven for evermore, and always there will be hell."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where the others will be?"
+
+"What others? Only the wicked!"
+
+"Aunt Eleanour! Aunt Eleanour!" called the children once more.
+
+"I must go to them! But, Mr. Lyndsay, think over what I have said."
+
+And I remained and obeyed her, and beheld, entire, distinct, the spectre
+that drives men to madness or despair--illimitable omnipotent Malice. In
+its shadow the colour of the flowers was quenched, and the music of the
+birds rang false. Yet it wore the consecration of time and authority!
+What if it were true?
+
+"Mr. Lyndsay," said Denis at my elbow, "Aunt Eleanour has sent me to
+fetch you to tea. Mr. Lyndsay, do you hear? Why do you look so strange?"
+
+He caught my hand anxiously as he spoke, and by that little human touch
+the spell was broken. The phantom vanished; and, looking into the
+child's eyes, I felt it was a lie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+CANON VERNADE'S GOSPEL
+
+
+There was no Mrs. de Noël in the carriage when it returned; she had gone
+to London to stay with Mrs. Donnithorne, whom Atherley spoke of as Aunt
+Henrietta, and was not expected home till Wednesday.
+
+"I am sorry," Lady Atherley observed, as we drove home through the dusk;
+"I should like to have had her here when Uncle Augustus was with us. I
+would have asked Mrs. Mostyn to dine with us, but I am not sure she and
+Uncle Augustus would get on. When her sister, Mrs. Donnithorne, met
+Uncle Augustus and his wife at lunch at our house once, she said she
+thought no minister of the Gospel ought to allow his child to take part
+in worldly amusements or ceremonials. It was very awkward, because Uncle
+Augustus's eldest girl had been presented only the day before. And Aunt
+Clara, Uncle Augustus's wife, you know, who is rather quick, said it
+depended whether the minister of the Gospel was a gentleman or a
+shoe-black, because Mrs. Donnithorne was attending a dissenting chapel
+then where the preacher was quite a common uneducated sort of person.
+And after that they would not talk to each other, and, altogether, I
+remember, it was very unpleasant. I do think it is such a pity," cried
+Lady Atherley with real feeling, "when people will take up these extreme
+religious views, as all the Atherleys do. I am sure it is quite a
+comfort to have someone like you in the house, Mr. Lyndsay, who is not
+particular about religion."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"If this is the best Aunt Eleanour has to show in the way of a ghost,
+she does well to keep so quiet about it," was Atherley's comment on that
+part of the story which, by special permission, I repeated to him next
+day. "I never heard a weaker ghost story. She explains the whole thing
+away as she tells it. She was, as she candidly admits, ill and
+feverish--sickening for a fever, in fact, when the most rational
+person's senses are apt to play them strange tricks. She is alone at the
+dead of night in a house she believes to be haunted; and then her
+dog--an odious little beast, I remember him well, always barking at
+something or nothing;--the dog suggests there is somebody near. She
+looks round into a dark part of the room, and naturally, inevitably--all
+things considered--sees a ghost. Did you say it wore a ruff and puffed
+sleeves?"
+
+"So Mrs. Mostyn said."
+
+"Of course, because, as I told you, Aunt Eleanour believed in the
+Elizabethan portrait theory. If it had been Aunt Henrietta, the ghost
+would have been in armour. Ghosts and all visitors from the other world
+obligingly correspond with the preconceived notions of the visionary.
+When a white robe and a halo were considered the proper celestial
+outfit, saints and angels always appeared with white robes and halos. In
+the same way, the African savage, who believes in a god with a crooked
+leg, always sees him in dreams, waking or asleep, with a crooked leg;
+and--"
+
+Here we were interrupted by a great stir in the hall outside, and Lady
+Atherley looked in to explain that the carriage with Uncle Augustus was
+just coming down the drive.
+
+Her manner reminded me of the full importance of this arrival, as well
+as of the unfortunate circumstance that, owing to the ill-timed absence
+of the dissenting plasterer, the Canon must be lodged in the little room
+opposite to my own.
+
+However, when I went into the drawing-room, I found him accepting his
+niece's apologies and explanations with great good-humour. To me also he
+was especially gracious.
+
+"I had the pleasure of dining at Lindesford, Mr. Lyndsay, when you must
+have been in long clothes. I remember we had some of the finest trout I
+ever tasted. Are they still as good in your river?"
+
+His voice, like himself, was massive and impressive; his bearing and
+manner inspired me with wistful admiration: what must life be to a man
+so self-confident, and so rightly self-confident?
+
+"Is not Uncle Augustus a fine-looking man?" asked Lady Atherley, when he
+had left the room with Atherley. "I cannot think why they do not make
+him a bishop; he would look so well in the robes. He ought to have had
+something when the last ministry was in, for Aunt Clara and Lord
+Lingford are cousins; but, unfortunately, the families were on bad terms
+because of a lawsuit."
+
+The morning after was bright and fair, so that
+sunlight mingled with the drowsy calm--Sunday in the country as we
+remember it, looking lovingly back from lands that are not English to
+the tenderer side of the Puritan Sabbath. But I missed my little
+_aubade_ from the lawn, and not till breakfast-time did I behold my
+small friends, who then came into the breakfast-room, one on either side
+of their mother--two miniature sailors, exquisitely neat but visibly
+dejected. Behind walked Tip, demurely recognising the change in the
+atmosphere, but, undisturbed thereby, he at once, with his usual air of
+self-satisfied dignity, assumed his place in the largest arm-chair.
+
+"The landau could take us all to church except you, George," said Lady
+Atherley, looking thoughtfully into the fire as we waited for breakfast
+and the Canon. "But I suppose you would prefer to walk?"
+
+"Why should you suppose I am going to church, either walking or
+driving?"
+
+"Well, I certainly hoped you would have gone to-day; as Uncle Augustus
+is going to preach it seems only polite to do so."
+
+"Well, I don't mind; I daresay it will do me no harm; and if it is
+understood I attend only out of consideration for my wife's uncle,
+then--"
+
+He was interrupted by the entrance of the person in question.
+
+Many times during breakfast Denis looked thoughtfully at his
+great-uncle, and at last inquired--
+
+"Do you preach very long sermons, Uncle Augustus?"
+
+"They are not generally considered so," replied the Canon with some
+dignity.
+
+"Denis, I have often told you not to ask questions," said Lady Atherley.
+
+"When I am grown up," remarked Harold, "I will be an atheist."
+
+"Do you know what an atheist is?" inquired his father.
+
+"Yes, it is people who never go to church."
+
+"But they go to lecture-rooms, which you would find worse."
+
+"But they don't have sermons."
+
+"Don't they? Hours long, especially when they bury each other."
+
+"Oh!" said Harold, evidently taken aback, and somewhat reconciled to the
+church.
+
+"When I am grown up," said Denis, "I mean to be the same church as Aunt
+Cissy."
+
+"And what may that be?" inquired the Canon.
+
+Denis was silent and looked perplexed; but some time afterwards, when we
+were talking of other things, he called out, with the joy of one who has
+captured that elusive thing, a definition:
+
+"In Aunt Cissy's church they climb trees and make toffee on Sundays."
+
+After which Lady Atherley seemed glad to take them both away with her.
+
+It was perhaps this remark that led the Canon to ask, on the way to
+church--
+
+"Is it true that Mrs. de Noël attends a dissenting chapel?"
+
+"No," said Lady Atherley. "But I know why people say so. She lent a
+field last year to the Methodists to have their camp-meeting in."
+
+"Oh! but that is a pity," said the Canon. "A very great pity--a person
+in her position encouraging dissent, especially when there is no real
+occasion for it. Clara's nephew, young Littlemore, did something of the
+kind last year, but then he was standing for the county; and though that
+hardly justifies, it excuses, a little pandering to the multitude."
+
+"Cissy only let them have it once," said Lady Atherley, as if making the
+best of it. "And, indeed, I believe it rained so hard that day they were
+not able to have the meeting after all."
+
+Then the carriage stopped before the lych-gate, through which the
+fresh-faced school children were trooping; and while the bell clanged
+its last monotonous summons, we walked up between the village graves to
+the old church porch that older yews overshadow, where the village lads
+were loitering, as Sunday after Sunday their sleeping forefathers had
+loitered before them.
+
+We worshipped that morning in a magnificent pew to one side of the
+chancel, and quite as large, from which we enjoyed a full view of clergy
+and congregation. The former consisted of the Canon, Mr. Jackson,
+clergyman of the parish, and a young man I had not seen before. Not a
+large number had mustered to hear the Canon; the front seats were well
+filled by men and women in goodly apparel, but in the pews behind and in
+the side aisles there was a mere sprinkling of worshippers in the Sunday
+dress of country labourers. Our supplicaitions were offered with as
+little ritualistic pageantry as Mrs. Mostyn herself could have desired,
+though the choir probably sang oftener and better than she would have
+approved. In spite of their efforts it was as uninspiring a service as I
+have ever taken part in. This was not due, as might be suspected, to
+Atherley's presence, for his demeanour was irreproachable. His little
+sons, delighted at having him with them, carefully found his places for
+him in prayer and hymnbook, and kept watch that he did not lose them
+afterwards, so that he perforce assumed a really edifying degree of
+attention. Nor, indeed, did the rest of the congregation err in the
+direction of restlessness or wandering looks, but rather in the opposite
+extreme, insomuch that during the litany, when we were no longer
+supported by music, and had, most of us, assumed attitudes favourable
+to repose, we appeared one and all to succumb to it, especially towards
+the close, when, from the body of the church at least, only the aged
+clerk was heard to cry for mercy. But with the third service, there came
+a change, which reminded me of how once in a foreign cathedral, when the
+procession filed by--the singing-men nudging each other, the
+standard-bearers giggling, and the English tourists craning to see the
+sight--the face of one white-haired old bishop beneath his canopy
+transformed for me a foolish piece of mummery into a prayer in action.
+So it was again, when the young stranger turned to us his pale clear-cut
+face, solemn with an awe as rapt as if he verily stood before the throne
+of Him he called upon, and felt Its glory beating on his face; then, by
+that one earnest and believing presence, all was transformed and
+redeemed; the old emblems recovered their first significance, the
+time-worn phrases glowed with life again, and we ourselves were
+altered--our very heaviness was pathetic: it was the lethargy of death
+itself, and our poor sleepy prayers the strain of manacled captives
+striving to be free.
+
+The Canon's sermon did not maintain this high-strung mood, though why
+not it would be difficult to say. Like all his, it was eloquent,
+brilliant even, declaimed by a fine voice of wide compass, whose varying
+tones he used with the skill of a practised orator. The text was "Our
+conversation is in Heaven," its theme the contrast between the man of
+this world, with his heart fixed upon its pomps, its vanities, its
+honours, and the believer indifferent to all these, esteeming them as
+dross merely compared to the heavenly treasure, the one thing needful.
+Certainly the utter worthlessness of the prizes for which men labour and
+so late take rest, barter their happiness, their peace, their honour,
+was never more scathingly depicted. I remember the organ-like bass of
+his note in passages which denounced the grovelling worship of earthly
+pre-eminence and riches, the clarion-like cry with which he concluded a
+stirring eulogy of the Christian's nobler service of things unseen.
+
+"Brethren, as His kingdom is not of this world, so too our kingdom is
+not of this world."
+
+"I think you will admit, George," said Lady Atherley, as we left the
+church, "that you have had a good sermon to-day."
+
+"Yes, indeed," heartily assented Atherley. "It was excellent. Your uncle
+certainly knows his business, which is more than can be said of most
+preachers. It was a really splendid performance. But who on earth was he
+talking about--those wonderful people who don't care for money or
+success, or the best of everything generally? I never met any like
+them."
+
+"My dear George! How extraordinary you are! Any one could see, I should
+have thought, that he meant Christians."
+
+Atherley and the children walked home while we waited for the Canon, who
+stayed behind to exchange a few words in the vestry with his old
+schoolfellow, Mr. Jackson.
+
+As we drove home he made, aloud, some reflections, probably suggested by
+the difference between their positions.
+
+"It really grieves me to see Jackson where he is at his age. He deserves
+a better living. He is an excellent fellow, and not without ability, but
+wanting, unfortunately, in tact and _savoir-faire_. He always had an
+unhappy knack of blurting out the truth in season and out of season. I
+did my best to get him a good living once--a first-rate living--in Sir
+John Marsh's gift; and I warned him before he went to lunch with Sir
+John to be careful what he said. 'Sir John,' I said, 'is one of the old
+school; he thinks the Squire is pope of the parish, and you will have to
+humour him a little. He will talk a great deal of nonsense in this
+strain, and be careful not to contradict him, for he can't bear it.'
+But Jackson did contradict him--flatly; he told me so himself, and, of
+course, Sir John would have nothing to say to him. 'But he made such
+extravagant statements,' said Jackson. 'If I had kept quiet he would
+have thought I agreed with him.'--'What did that matter?' I said. 'Once
+you were vicar you could have shown him you didn't.'--'The truth is,'
+said Jackson, 'I cannot sit by and hear black called white without
+protesting.' That is Jackson all over! A man of that kind will never get
+on. And then, such an imprudent marriage--a woman without a penny!"
+
+"I have never seen any one who wore such extraordinary bonnets," said
+Lady Atherley.
+
+"Who was that young man who bowed to the altar and crossed himself?"
+asked the Canon.
+
+"I suppose that must be Mr. Austyn, curate in charge at Rood Warren. He
+comes over to help Mr. Jackson sometimes, I believe. George has met him;
+I have not. I want to get him over to dinner. He is a nephew of Mr.
+Austyn of Temple Leigh."
+
+"Oh, that family!" said the Canon. "I am sorry he has taken up such an
+extreme line. It is a great mistake. In the Church, preferment in these
+days always goes to the moderate men."
+
+"Rood Warren is not far from here," said Lady Atherley, "and he has a
+parishioner--Oh, that reminds me. Mr. Lyndsay, would you be so kind as
+to look out and tell the coachman to drive round by Monk's? I want to
+leave some soup."
+
+"Monk, I presume, is a sick labourer?" said the Canon. "I hope you are
+not as indiscriminate in your charities as most Ladies Bountiful."
+
+"Mr. Jackson says this is a really deserving case. He knows all about
+him, though he really is in Mr. Austyn's parish. Monk has never had
+anything from the parish, and been working hard all his life, and he is
+past seventy. He was breaking stones on the road a few weeks ago; but he
+caught a chill or something one very cold day, and has been laid up ever
+since. This is the house. Oh, Mr. Lyndsay, you should not trouble to get
+out. As you are so kind, will you carry this in?"
+
+The interior of the tiny thatched cottage was scrupulously clean and
+neat, as they nearly all are in the valley, but barer and more scantily
+furnished than most of them. No photographs or pictures decorated the
+white-washed walls, no scraps of carpet or matting hid the red-brick
+floor. The Monks were evidently of the poorest. An old piece of faded
+curtain had been hung from a rope between the chimney-piece and the door
+to shield the patient from the draught. He sat in a stiff wooden
+arm-chair near the fire, drawing his breath laboriously. "He was better
+now," said his wife, a nurse as old and as frail-looking as himself.
+"Nights was the worst." His shoulders were bent, his hair white with
+age, his withered features almost as coarse and as unshapely as the poor
+clothes he wore. The mask had been rough-hewn, to begin with; time and
+exposure had further defaced it. No gleam of intellectual life
+transpierced and illumined all. It was the face of an animal--ugly,
+ignorant, honest, patient. As I looked at it there came over me a rush
+of the pity I have so often felt for this suffering of age in
+poverty--so unpicturesque, so unwinning, to shallow sight so
+unpathetic--and I put out my hand and let it rest for a moment on his
+own, knotted with rheumatism, stained and seamed with toil. Then he
+looked up at me from under his shaggy brows with haggard, wistful eyes,
+and gasped: "It's hard work, sir; it's hard work." And I went out into
+the sunshine, feeling that I had heard the epitome of his life.
+
+That night Mrs. Mallet surpassed herself by her rendering of a menu,
+especially composed by Atherley for the delectation of their guest.
+Their pains were not wasted. The Canon's commendation of each
+course--and we talked of little else, I remember, from soup to
+dessert--was as discriminating as it was warm.
+
+"I am glad you approve of our cook, Uncle," said Lady Atherley in the
+drawing-room afterwards, "for she is only a stop-gap. Our own cook left
+us quite suddenly the other day, and we had such difficulty in finding
+this one to take her place. No one can imagine how inconvenient it is to
+have a haunted house."
+
+"My dear Jane, you don't mean to tell me you are afraid of ghosts?"
+
+"Oh no, Uncle."
+
+"And I am sure your husband is not?"
+
+"No; but unfortunately cooks are."
+
+"Eh! what?"
+
+Then Lady Atherley willingly repeated the story of her troubles.
+
+"Preposterous! perfectly preposterous!" cried the Canon. "The Education
+Act in operation for all these years, and our lower orders still believe
+in bogies and hobgoblins! And yet it is hardly to be wondered at; their
+social superiors are not much wiser. The nonsense which is talked in
+society at present is perfectly incredible. Persons who are supposed to
+be in their right mind gravely relate to me such incidents that I could
+imagine myself transported to the Middle Ages. I hear of miraculous
+cures, of spirits summoned from the dead, of men and women floating in
+the air; and as to diabolic possession, it seems to have become as
+common as colds in the head."
+
+He had risen, and now addressed us from the hearthrug.
+
+"Then Mrs. Molyneux and others come and tell me about personal friends
+of their own who can foretell everything that is going to happen; who
+can read your inmost thoughts; who can compel others to do this and to
+do that, whether they like it or no; who, being themselves in one
+quarter of the globe, constantly appear to their acquaintances in
+another. 'What!' I say. 'They can be in two places at once, then!
+Certainly no conjurer can equal that!'"
+
+"And what do they say to that?" asked Atherley.
+
+"Oh, they assure me the extraordinary beings who perform these marvels
+are not impostors, but very superior and religious characters. 'If they
+are not impostors,' I say, 'then their right place is the lunatic
+asylum.' 'Oh but, Canon Vernade, you don't understand; it is only our
+Western ignorance which makes such things seem astonishing! Far more
+marvellous things are going on, and have been going on for centuries, in
+the East; for instance, in the Brotherhoods of--I forget--some
+unpronounceable name.' 'And how do you know they have?' I ask. 'Oh, by
+their traditions, which have been handed on for generations.' 'That is
+very reliable information indeed,' I say. 'Pray, have you ever played a
+game of Russian scandal?' 'Well; but, then, there are the sacred books.
+There can be no mistake about them, for they have been translated by
+learned European professors, who say the religious sentiments are
+perfectly beautiful.' 'Very possibly,' I say. 'But it does not follow
+that the historical statements are correct.'"
+
+"I gave my ladies' Bible-class a serious lecture about it all the other
+day. I said: 'Do, my dear ladies, get rid of these childish notions,
+these uncivilised hankerings after marvels and magic, which make you the
+dupe of one charlatan after another. Take up science, for a change;
+study natural philosophy; try and acquire accurate notions of the system
+under which we live; realise that we are not moving on the stage of a
+Christmas pantomime, but in a universe governed by fixed laws, in which
+the miraculous performances you describe to me never can, and never
+could, have taken place. And be sure of this, that any book and any
+teacher, however admirable their moral teaching, who tell you that two
+and two make anything but four, are not inspired, so far as arithmetic
+and common sense are concerned.'"
+
+"Hear, hear!" cried Atherley heartily.
+
+The Canon's brow contracted a little.
+
+"I need hardly explain," he said, "that what I said did not apply to
+revealed truth. Jane, my dear, as I must leave by an early train
+to-morrow, I think I shall say good-night."
+
+I fell asleep that night early, and dreamt that I was sitting with
+Gladys in the frescoed dining-room of an old Italian palace. It was
+night, and through the open window came one long shaft of moonlight,
+that vanished in the aureole of the shaded lamp standing with wine and
+fruit upon the table between us. And I said in my dream--
+
+"Oh, Gladys, will it be always like this, or must we part again?"
+
+And she, smiling her slow soft smile, said: "You may stay with me till
+the knock comes."
+
+"What knock, my darling?"
+
+But even as I spoke I heard it, low and penetrating, and I stretched out
+my arms imploringly towards Gladys; but she only smiled, and the knock
+was repeated, and the whole scene dissolved around me, and I was sitting
+up in bed in semi-darkness, while somebody was tapping with a quick
+agitated touch at my door. I remembered then that I had forgotten to
+unlock it before I went to bed, and I rose at once and made haste to
+open it, not without a passing thrill of unpleasant conjecture as to
+what might be behind it. It was a tall figure in a long grey garment,
+who carried a lighted candle in his hand. For a moment, startled and
+stupefied as I was, I failed to recognise the livid face.
+
+"Canon Vernade! You are ill?"
+
+Too ill to speak, it would seem, for without a word he staggered forward
+and sank into a chair, letting the candle almost drop from his hand on
+to the table beside him; but when I put out my hand to ring the bell, he
+stayed me by a gesture. I looked at him, deadly pale, with blue shadows
+about the mouth and eyes, his head thrown helplessly back, and then I
+remembered some brandy I had in my dressing-bag. He took the glass from
+me and raised it to his lips with a trembling hand. I stood watching
+him, debating within myself whether I should disobey him by calling for
+help or not; but presently, to my great relief, I saw the stimulant take
+effect, and life come slowly surging back in colour to his cheeks, in
+strength to his whole prostrate frame. He straightened himself a little,
+and turned upon me a less distracted gaze than before.
+
+"Mr. Lyndsay, there is something horrible in this house."
+
+"Have you seen it?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I saw nothing; it is what I felt."
+
+He shuddered.
+
+I looked towards the grate. The fire had long been out, but the wood was
+still unconsumed, and I managed, inexpertly enough, to relight it. When
+a long blue flame sprang up, he drew his chair near the hearth and
+stretched towards the blaze his still tremulous hands.
+
+"Mr. Lyndsay," he said, in a voice as strangely altered as his whole
+appearance, "may I sit here a little--till it is light? I dread to go
+back to that room. But don't let me keep you up."
+
+I said, and in all honesty, that I had no inclination to sleep. I put on
+my dressing-gown, threw a rug over his knees, and took my place opposite
+to him on the other side of the fire; and thus we kept our strange
+vigil, while slowly above us broke the grim, cold dawn of early
+spring-time, which even the birds do not brighten with their babble.
+
+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 Noël, how introduced
+I know not, but it gave me an excuse for asking--
+
+"Lady Atherley, what is Mrs. de Noël 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 _primâ 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 mediæval turn of mind and his quite mediæval 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 Noël," 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 Noël; 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 Noël, '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 Noël 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 Noël 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 Noël 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 Noël--"
+
+The swing door closed behind her, and the sounds of her grief and her
+reiterated appeals to Mrs. de Noël 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 Noël?' 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 Mâyâ, 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 Noël."
+
+"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 Noël? 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 Noël?" 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 Noël 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 Noël 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 Noël 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 Noël,
+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 Noël 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 Noël 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 Noël, "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 Noël 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 Noël
+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 Noël, 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 Noël.
+
+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 Noël 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 Noël 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 Noël 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 Noël 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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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Cecilia de Noël, by Lanoe Falconer
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cecilia de Noël, by Lanoe Falconer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Cecilia de Noël
+
+Author: Lanoe Falconer
+
+Release Date: March 4, 2005 [EBook #15258]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CECILIA DE NOËL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Patricia A. Benoy and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" >
+<img src="images/tp720.png" width="457" height="720" alt="Title Page" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" >
+<a href="images/gs700f.png">
+<img src="images/gstnf.png" width="320" height="489"
+alt="&quot;So we went down our stairs.&quot;&mdash;Chap. II." title="" /></a>
+<br /><b>&quot;So we went down our stairs.&quot;&mdash;Chap. II.</b>
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1><i>Cecilia de No&euml;l</i></h1>
+
+<h4>BY</h4>
+
+<h2>LANOE FALCONER</h2>
+
+<h4>
+MACMILLAN &amp; CO., <span class='smcap'>Limited</span><br />
+ST. MARTINS ST., LONDON<br />
+1910<br /></h4>
+<p><a name="Page_0" id="Page_0" /></p>
+
+
+
+<p><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1" /></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2><ins class ="correction" style="text-decoration: none"
+title= "Table of Contents added by Transcriber.">CONTENTS</ins></h2>
+
+<table summary = "Table of Contents">
+<tbody>
+<tr>
+   <td><small>CHAPTER</small></td>
+   <td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+    <td align= "left"><a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>I</b></a></td>
+    <td>ATHERLEY'S GOSPEL</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+    <td align= "left"><a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>II</b></a></td>
+    <td>THE STRANGER'S GOSPEL</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+     <td align= "left"><a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>III</b></a></td>
+     <td>MRS. MOSTYN'S GOSPEL</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+    <td align= "left"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>IV</b></a></td>
+    <td>CANON VERNADE'S GOSPEL</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+    <td align= "left"><a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>V</b></a></td>
+    <td>AUSTYN'S GOSPEL</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+    <td align= "left"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>VI</b></a></td>
+    <td>MRS. MOLYNEUX'S GOSPEL</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+    <td align= "left"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>VII</b></a></td>
+    <td>CECILIA'S GOSPEL</td>
+</tr>
+
+</tbody>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CECILIA DE NO&Euml;L</h2>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I" />CHAPTER I</h3>
+
+<h4>ATHERLEY'S GOSPEL</h4>
+
+
+<p>&quot;There is no revelation but that of science,&quot; said Atherley.</p>
+
+<p>It was after dinner in the drawing-room. From the cold of the early
+spring night, closed shutters and drawn curtains carefully protected us;
+shaded lamps and a wood fire diffused an exquisite twilight; we breathed
+a mild and even balmy atmosphere scented with hothouse flowers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And this revelation completely satisfies all reasonable desires,&quot; he
+continued, <a name="Page_2" id="Page_2" />surveying his small audience from the hearthrug where he
+stood; &quot;mind, I say all reasonable desires. If you have a healthy
+appetite for bread, you will get it and plenty of it, but if you have a
+sickly craving for manna, why then you will come badly off, that is all.
+This is the gospel of fact, not of fancy: of things as they actually
+are, you know, instead of as A dreamt they were, or B decided they ought
+to be, or C would like to have them. So this gospel is apt to look a
+little dull beside the highly coloured romances the churches have
+accustomed us to&mdash;as a modern plate-glass window might, compared with a
+stained-glass oriel in a medi&aelig;val cathedral. There is no doubt which is
+the prettier of the two. The question is, do you want pretty colour or
+do you want clear daylight?&quot;<a name="Page_3" id="Page_3" /> He paused, but neither of his listeners
+spoke. Lady Atherley was counting the stitches of her knitting; I was
+too tired; so he resumed: &quot;For my part, I prefer the daylight and the
+glass, without any daubing. What does science discover in the universe?
+Precision, accuracy, reliability&mdash;any amount of it; but as to pity,
+mercy, love! The fact is, that famous simile of the angel playing at
+chess was a mistake. Very smart, I grant you, but altogether misleading.
+Why! the orthodox quote it as much as the others&mdash;always a bad sign. It
+tickles these anthropomorphic fancies, which are at the bottom of all
+their creeds. Imagine yourself playing at chess, not with an angel, but
+with an automaton, an admirably constructed automaton whose mechanism
+can outwit your brains any day: calm and <a name="Page_4" id="Page_4" />strong, if you like, but no
+more playing for love than the clock behind me is ticking for love;
+there you have a much clearer notion of existence. A much clearer
+notion, and a much more satisfactory notion too, I say. Fair play and no
+favour! What more can you ask, if you are fit to live?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His kindling glance sought the farther end of the long drawing-room; had
+it fallen upon me instead, perhaps that last challenge might have been
+less assured; and yet how bravely it became the speaker, whose
+wide-browed head a no less admirable frame supported. Even the stiff
+evening uniform of his class could not conceal the grace of form which
+health and activity had moulded, working through highly favoured
+generations. There was latent force implied in every line of it, and,
+<a name="Page_5" id="Page_5" />in the steady poise of look and mien, that perfect nervous balance
+which is the crown of strength.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And with our creed, of course, we shift our moral code as well. The ten
+commandments, or at least the second table, we retain for obvious
+reasons, but the theological virtues must be got rid of as quickly as
+possible. Charity, for instance, is a mischievous quality&mdash;it is too
+indulgent to weakness, which is not to be indulged or encouraged, but
+stamped out. Hope is another pernicious quality leading to all kinds of
+preposterous expectations which never are, or can be, fulfilled; and as
+to faith, it is simply a vice. So far from taking anything on trust, you
+must refuse to accept any statement whatsoever till it is proved so
+plainly you can't help believing it whether <a name="Page_6" id="Page_6" />you like it or not; just as
+a theorem in&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;George,&quot; said Lady Atherley, &quot;what is that noise?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The question, timed as Lady Atherley's remarks so often were, came with
+something of a shock. Her husband, thus checked in full flight, seemed
+to reel for a moment, but quickly recovering himself, asked resignedly:
+&quot;What noise?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Such a strange noise, like the howling of a dog.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Probably it is the howling of a dog.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, for it came from inside the house, and Tip sleeps outside now, in
+the saddle-room, I believe. It sounded in the servants' wing. Did you
+hear it, Mr. Lyndsay?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I confessed that I had not.<a name="Page_7" id="Page_7" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, as I can offer no explanation,&quot; said Atherley, &quot;perhaps I may be
+allowed to go on with what I was saying. Doubt, obstinate and almost
+invincible doubt, is the virtue we must now cultivate, just as&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, there it is again,&quot; cried Lady Atherley.</p>
+
+<p>Atherley instantly rang the bell near him, and while Lady Atherley
+continued to repeat that it was very strange, and that she could not
+imagine what it could be, he waited silently till his summons was
+answered by a footman.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Charles, what is the meaning of that crying or howling which seems to
+come from your end of the house?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think, Sir George,&quot; said Charles, with the coldly impassive manner of
+a highly-trained servant&mdash;&quot;I think, Sir<a name="Page_8" id="Page_8" /> George, it must be Ann, the
+kitchen-maid, that you hear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed! and may I ask what Ann, the kitchen-maid, is supposed to be
+doing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you please, Sir George, she is in hysterics.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! why?&quot; exclaimed Lady Atherley plaintively.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because, my lady, Mrs. Mallet has seen the ghost!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because Mrs. Mallet has seen the ghost!&quot; repeated Atherley. &quot;Pray, what
+is Mrs. Mallet herself doing under the circumstances?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is having some brandy-and-water, Sir George.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mrs. Mallet is a sensible woman,&quot; said Atherley heartily; &quot;Ann, the
+kitchen-maid, had better follow her example.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You may go, Charles,&quot; said Lady<a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" /> Atherley; and, as the door closed
+behind him, exclaimed, &quot;I wish that horrid woman had never entered the
+house!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What horrid woman? Your too sympathetic kitchen-maid?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, that&mdash;that Mrs. Mallet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why are you angry with her? Because she has seen the ghost?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, for I told her most particularly the very day I engaged her, after
+Mrs. Webb left us in that sudden way&mdash;I told her I never allowed the
+ghost to be mentioned.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And why, my dear, did you break your own excellent rule by mentioning
+it to her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because she had the impertinence to tell me, almost directly she came
+into the morning-room, that she knew all about the ghost; but I stopped
+her at once, and said <a name="Page_10" id="Page_10" />that if ever she spoke of such a thing especially
+to the other servants, I should be very much displeased; and now she
+goes and behaves in this way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where did you pick up this viper?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She comes from Quarley Beacon. There was no one in this stupid village
+who could cook at all, and Cecilia de No&euml;l, who recommended her&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cecilia de No&euml;l!&quot; repeated Atherley, with that long-drawn emphasis
+which suggests so much. &quot;My dear Jane, I must say that in taking a
+servant on Cissy's recommendation you did not display your usual sound
+common sense. I should as soon have thought of asking her to buy me a
+gun, knowing that she would carefully pick out the one least likely to
+shoot anything. Cissy is accustomed to look upon a servant as something
+<a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" />to be waited on and taken care of. Her own household, as we all know,
+is composed chiefly of chronic invalids.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I explained to Cecilia that I wanted somebody who was strong as
+well as a good cook; and I am sure there is nothing the matter with Mrs.
+Mallet. She is as fat as possible, and as red! Besides, she has never
+been one of Cecilia's servants; she only goes there to help sometimes;
+and she says she is perfectly respectable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mrs. Mallet says that Cissy is perfectly respectable?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, George; it is not likely that I should allow a person in Mrs.
+Mallet's position to speak disrespectfully to me about Cecilia. Cecilia
+said Mrs. Mallet was perfectly respectable.&quot;<a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;I should not think dear old Ciss exactly knew the meaning of the word.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cecilia may be peculiar in many ways, but she is too much of a lady to
+send me any one who was not quite nice. I don't believe there is
+anything against Mrs. Mallet's character. She cooks very well, you must
+allow that; you said only two days ago you never had tasted an omelette
+so nicely made in England.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did she cook that omelette? Then I am sure she is perfectly
+respectable; and pray let her see as many ghosts as she cares to,
+especially if it leads to nothing worse than her taking a moderate
+quantity of brandy. Time to smoke, Lindy. I am off.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I dragged myself up after my usual fashion, and was preparing to follow
+him, when Lady Atherley, directly he was gone, began:<a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is such a pity that clever people can never see things as others do.
+George always goes on in this way as if the ghost were of no
+consequence, but I always knew how it would be. Of course it is nice
+that George should come in for the place, as he might not have done if
+his uncle had married, and people said it would be delightful to live in
+such an old house, but there are a good many drawbacks, I can assure
+you. Sir Marmaduke lived abroad for years before he died, and everything
+has got into such a state. We have had to nearly refurnish the house;
+the bedrooms are not done yet. The servants' accommodation is very bad
+too, and there was no proper cooking-range in the kitchen. But the worst
+of all is the ghost. Directly I heard of it I knew we should have
+trouble with the servants; and we had not been <a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" />here a month when our
+cook, who had lived with us for years, gave warning because the place
+was damp. At first she said it was the ghost, but when I told her not to
+talk such nonsense she said it was the damp. And then it is so awkward
+about visitors. What are we to do when the fishing season begins? I
+cannot get George to understand that some people have a great objection
+to anything of the kind, and are quite angry if you put them into a
+haunted room. And it is much worse than having only one haunted room,
+because we could make that into a bachelor's bedroom&mdash;I don't think they
+mind; or a linen cupboard, as they do at Wimbourne Castle; but this
+ghost seems to appear in all the rooms, and even in the halls and
+passages, so I cannot think what we are to do.&quot;<a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" /></p>
+
+<p>I said it was extraordinary, and I meant it. That a ghost should venture
+into Atherley's neighbourhood was less amazing than that it should
+continue to exist in his wife's presence, so much more fatal than his
+eloquence to all but the tangible and the solid. Her orthodoxy is above
+suspicion, but after some hours of her society I am unable to
+contemplate any aspects of life save the comfortable and the
+uncomfortable: while the Universe itself appears to me only a gigantic
+apparatus especially designed to provide Lady Atherley and her class
+with cans of hot water at stated intervals, costly repasts elaborately
+served, and all other requisites of irreproachable civilisation.</p>
+
+<p>But before I had time to say more, Atherley in his smoking-coat looked
+in to see if I was coming or not.<a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't keep Mr. Lyndsay up late, George,&quot; said my kind hostess; &quot;he
+looks so tired.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You look dead beat,&quot; he said later on, in his own particular and untidy
+den, as he carefully stuffed the bowl of his pipe. &quot;I think it would go
+better with you, old chap, if you did not hold yourself in quite so
+tight. I don't want you to rave or commit suicide in some untidy
+fashion, as the hero of a French novel does; but you are as well-behaved
+as a woman, without a woman's grand resources of hysterics and general
+unreasonableness all round. You always were a little too good for human
+nature's daily food. Your notions on some points are quite unwholesomely
+superfine. It would be a comfort to see you let out in some way. I wish
+you would have a real good fling for once.&quot;<a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;I should have to pay too dear for it afterwards. My superfine habits
+are not a matter of choice only, you must remember.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!&mdash;the women! Not the best of them is worth bothering about, let
+alone a shameless jilt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You were always hard upon her, George. She jilted a cripple for a very
+fine specimen of the race. Some of your favourite physiologists would
+say she was quite right.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You never understood her, Lindy. It was not a case of jilting a cripple
+at all. She jilted three thousand a year and a small place for ten
+thousand a year and a big one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After all, it did hurt a little, which Atherley must have divined, for
+crossing the room on some pretext or another he let his <a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" />strong hand
+rest, just for an instant, gently upon my shoulder, thus, after the
+manner of his race, mutely and concisely expressing affection and
+sympathy that might have swelled a canto.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall be sorry,&quot; he said presently, lying rather than sitting in the
+deep chair beside the fire, &quot;very sorry, if the ghost is going to make
+itself a nuisance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is the story of the ghost?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Story! God bless you, it has none to tell, sir; at least it never has
+told it, and no one else rightly knows it. It&mdash;I mean the ghost&mdash;is
+older than the family. We found it here when we came into the place
+about two hundred years ago, and it refused to be dislodged. It is
+rather uncertain in its habits. Sometimes it is not heard of for years;
+then all at once it reappears, generally, I may observe, when some
+imagina<a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" />tive female in the house is in love, or out of spirits, or bored
+in any other way. She sees it, and then, of course&mdash;the complaint being
+highly infectious&mdash;so do a lot more. One of the family started the
+theory it was the ghost of the portrait, or rather the unknown
+individual whose portrait hangs high up over the sideboard in the
+dining-room.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You don't mean the lady in green velvet with the snuff-box?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly not; that is my own great-grand-aunt. I mean a square of
+black canvas with one round yellow spot in the middle and a dirty white
+smudge under the spot. There are members of this family&mdash;Aunt Eleanour,
+for instance&mdash;who tell me the yellow spot is a man's face and the dirty
+white smudge is an Elizabethan ruff. Then there is a picture of a man in
+armour <a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" />in the oak room, which I don't believe is a portrait at all; but
+Aunt Henrietta swears it is, and of the ghost, too&mdash;as he was before he
+died, of course. And very interesting details both my aunts are ready to
+furnish concerning the two originals. It is extraordinary what an amount
+of information is always forthcoming about things of which nobody can
+know anything&mdash;as about the next world, for instance. The, last time I
+went to church the preacher gave as minute an account of what our
+post-mortem experiences were to be as if he had gone through it all
+himself several times.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, does the ghost usually appear in a ruff or in armour?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It depends entirely upon who sees it&mdash;a ghost always does. Last night,
+for instance, I lay you odds it wore neither <a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" />ruff nor armour, because
+Mrs. Mallet is not likely to have heard of either the one or the other.
+Not that she saw the ghost&mdash;not she. What she saw was a bogie, not a
+ghost.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, what is the difference?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Immense! As big as that which separates the objective from the
+subjective. Any one can see a bogie. It is a real thing belonging to the
+external world. It may be a bright light, a white sheet, or a black
+shadow&mdash;always at night, you know, or at least in the dusk, when you are
+apt to be a little mixed in your observations. The best example of a
+bogie was Sir Walter Scott's. It looked&mdash;in the twilight
+remember&mdash;exactly like Lord Byron, who had not long departed this life
+at the time Sir Walter saw it. Nine men out of ten would have gone off
+and sworn they <a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" />had seen a ghost; why, religions have been founded on
+just such stuff: but Sir Walter, as sane a man as ever lived&mdash;though he
+did write poetry&mdash;kept his head clear and went up closer to his ghost,
+which proved on examination to be a waterproof.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A waterproof?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Or a railway rug&mdash;I forget which: the moral is the same.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, what is a ghost?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A ghost is nothing&mdash;an airy nothing manufactured by your own disordered
+senses of your own over-excited brain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I beg to observe that I never saw a ghost in my life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am glad to hear it. It does you credit. If ever any one had an excuse
+for seeing a ghost it would be a man whose spine was jarred. But I meant
+nothing <a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" />personal by the pronoun&mdash;only to give greater force to my
+remarks. The first person singular will do instead. The ghost belongs to
+the same lot, as the faces that make mouths at me when I have
+brain-fever, the reptiles that crawl about when I have an attack of the
+D.T., or&mdash;to take a more familiar example&mdash;the spots I see floating
+before my eyes when my liver is out of order. You will allow there is
+nothing supernatural in all that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly. Though, did not that pretty niece of Mrs. Molyneux's say she
+used to see those spots floating before her eyes when a misfortune was
+impending?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I fancy she did, and true enough too, as such spots would very likely
+precede a bilious attack, which is misfortune enough while it lasts. But
+still, even Mrs. Molyneux's niece, even Mrs. Molyneux herself, <a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" />would
+not say the fever faces, or the reptiles, or the spots, were
+supernatural. And in fact the ghost is, so far, more&mdash;more <i>recherch&eacute;</i>,
+let us say, than the other things. It takes more than a bilious attack
+or a fever, or even D.T., to produce a ghost. It takes nothing less than
+a pretty high degree of nervous sensibility and excitable imagination.
+Now these two disorders have not been much developed yet by the masses,
+in spite of the school-boards: ergo, any apparition which leads to
+hysterics or brandy-and-water in the servants' hall is a bogie, not a
+ghost.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and added:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And now, Lindy, as we don't want another ghost haunting the house. I
+will conduct you to by-by.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was a strange house, Weald Manor, <a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" />designed, one might suppose, by
+some inveterate enemy of light. It lay at the foot of a steep hill which
+screened it from the morning sun, and the few windows which looked
+towards the rising day were so shaped as to admit but little of its
+brightness. At night it was even worse, at least in the halls and
+passages, for there, owing probably to the dark oak which lined both
+walls and floor, a generous supply of lamps did little more than
+illumine the surface of the darkness, leaving unfathomed and unexplained
+mysterious shadows that brooded in distant corners, or, towering
+giant-wise to the ceiling, loomed ominously overhead.
+Will-o'-the-wisp-like reflections from our lighted candles danced in the
+polished surface of panel and balustrade, as from the hall we went
+upstairs, I helping myself from step to step by Atherley's <a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" />arm, as
+instinctively, as unconsciously almost, as he offered it. We stopped on
+the first landing. Before us rose the stairs leading to the gallery
+where Atherley's bedroom was: to our left ran &quot;the bachelor's passage,&quot;
+where I was lodged.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Night, night,&quot; were Atherley's parting words. &quot;Don't dream of flirts or
+ghosts, but sleep sound.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sleep sound! the kind words sounded like mockery. Sleep to me, always
+chary of her presence, was at best but a fair-weather friend, instantly
+deserting me when pain or exhaustion made me crave the more for rest and
+forgetfulness; but I had something to do in the interim&mdash;a little
+<i>auto-da-f&eacute;</i> to perform, by which, with that faith in ceremonial, so
+deep laid in human nature, I meant once for all to lay the ghost that
+haunted me&mdash;the ghost of a <a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" />delightful but irrevocable past, with which
+I had dallied too long.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting before the wood-fire I slowly unfolded them: the three
+faintly-perfumed sheets with the gilt monogram above the pointed
+writing:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Dear Mr. Lyndsay,&quot; ran the first, &quot;why did you not come over
+     to-day? I was expecting you to appear all the afternoon.&mdash;Yours
+     sincerely, G.E.L.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The second was dated four weeks later&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;You silly boy! I forbid you ever to write or talk of yourself in
+     such a way again. You are not a cripple; and if you had ever had a
+     mother or a sister, you would know how little women think of such
+     things. How many more assurances do you expect from me? Do you wish
+     <a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" />me to propose to you again? No, if you won't have me, go.&mdash;Yours,
+     in spite of yourself, <span class='smcap'>Gladys</span>.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The third&mdash;the third is too long to quote entire; besides, the substance
+is contained in this last sentence&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;So I think, my dear Mr. Lyndsay, for your sake more than my own,
+     our engagement had better be broken off.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>In this letter, dated six weeks ago, she had charged me to burn all that
+she had written to me, and as yet I had not done so, shrinking from the
+sharp unreasonable pain with which we bury the beloved dead. But the
+time of my mourning was accomplished. I tore the paper into fragments
+and dropped them into the flames.</p>
+
+<p>It must have been the pang with which<a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" /> I watched them darken and shrivel
+that brought back the memory of another sharp stab. It was that day ten
+years ago, when I walked for the first time after my accident. Supported
+by a stick on one side, and by Atherley on the other, I crawled down the
+long gallery at home and halted before a high wide-open window to see
+the sunlit view of park and woods and distant downland. Then all at
+once, ridden by my groom, Charming went past with feet that verily
+danced upon the greensward, and quivering nostrils that rapturously
+inhaled the breath of spring and of morning. I said: &quot;George, I want
+<i>you</i> to have Charming.&quot; And it made me smile, even in that bitter
+moment, to remember how indistinctly, how churlishly almost, Atherley
+accepted the gift, in his eager haste to get me out of sight and thought
+of it.<a name="Page_30" id="Page_30" /></p>
+
+<p>It was long before the last fluttering rags had vanished, transmuted
+into fiery dust. The clock on the landing had many times chanted its
+dirge since I had heard below the footsteps of the servants carrying
+away the lamps from the sitting-rooms and the hall. Later still came the
+far-off sound of Atherley's door closing behind him, like the final
+good-night of the waking day. Over all the unconscious household had
+stolen that silence which is more than silence, that hush which seems to
+wait for something, that stillness of the night-watch which is kept
+alone. It was familiar enough to me, but to-night it had a new meaning;
+like the sunlight that shines when we are happy, or the rain that falls
+when we are weeping, it seemed, as if in sympathy, to be repeating and
+accenting what I could not so vividly have told in <a name="Page_31" id="Page_31" />words. In my life,
+and for the second time, there was the same desolate pause, as if the
+dreary tale were finished and only the drearier epilogue remained to
+live through&mdash;the same sense of sad separation from the happy and the
+healthful.</p>
+
+<p>I made a great effort to read, holding the book before me and compelling
+myself to follow the sentences, but that power of abstraction which can
+conquer pain does not belong to temperaments like mine. If only I could
+have slept, as men have been able to do even upon the rack; but every
+hour that passed left me more awake, more alive, more supersensitive to
+suffering.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the morning, long before the dawn, I must have been feverish, I
+think. My head and hands burned, the air of the room stifled me, I was
+losing my self-control.<a name="Page_32" id="Page_32" /></p>
+
+<p>I opened the window and leant out. The cool air revived me bodily, but
+to the fever of the spirit it brought no relief. To my heart, if not to
+my lips, sprang the old old cry for help which anguish has wrung from
+generation after generation. The agony of mine, I felt wildly, must
+pierce through sense, time, space, everything&mdash;even to the Living Heart
+of all, and bring thence some token of pity! For one instant my passion
+seemed to beat against the silent heavens, then to fall back bruised and
+bleeding.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the darkness came not so much as a wind whisper or the twinkle of
+a star.</p>
+
+<p>Was Atherley right after all?<a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" /></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II" />CHAPTER II</h3>
+
+<h4>THE STRANGER'S GOSPEL</h4>
+
+
+<p>From the short unsatisfying slumber which sometimes follows a night of
+insomnia I was awakened by the laughter and shouts of children. When I
+looked out I saw brooding above the hollow a still gray day, in whose
+light the woodlands of the park were all in sombre brown, and the trout
+stream between its sedgy banks glided dark and lustreless.</p>
+
+<p>On the lawn, still wet with dew, and crossed by the shadows of the bare
+elms, Atherley's little sons, Harold and Denis, were playing with a very
+unlovely but <a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" />much-beloved mongrel called Tip. They had bought him with
+their own pocket-money from a tinker who was ill-using him, and then
+claimed for him the hospitality of their parents; so, though Atherley
+often spoke of the dog as a disgrace to the household, he remained a
+member thereof, and received, from a family incapable of being uncivil,
+far less unkind, to an animal, as much attention as if he had been
+high-bred and beautiful&mdash;which indeed he plainly supposed himself to be.</p>
+
+<p>When, about an hour later, after their daily custom, this almost
+inseparable trio fell into the breakfast-room as if the door had
+suddenly given way before them, the boys were able to revenge themselves
+for the rebuke this entrance provoked by the tidings they brought with
+them.<a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;I say, old Mallet is going,&quot; cried Harold cheerfully, as he wriggled
+himself on to his chair. &quot;Denis, mind I want some of that egg-stuff.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Take your arms off the table, Harold,&quot; said Lady Atherley. &quot;Pray, how
+do you know Mrs. Mallet is going?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She said so herself. She said,&quot; he went on, screwing up his nose and
+speaking in a falsetto to express the intensity of his scorn&mdash;&quot;she said
+she was afraid of the ghost.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I told you I did not allow that word to be mentioned.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I did not; it was old Mallet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, pray, what were you doing in old Mallet's domain?&quot; asked Atherley.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cooking cabbage for Tip.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hum! What with ghosts by night and boys by day, our cook seems to have
+a <a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" />pleasant time of it; I shall be glad when Miss Jones's holidays are
+over. Castleman, is it true that Mrs. Mallet talks of leaving us because
+of the ghost?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am sure I don't know, Sir George,&quot; answered the old butler. &quot;She was
+going on about it very foolish this morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And how is the kitchen-maid?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has not come down yet, Sir George; says her nerve is shook,&quot; said
+Castleman, retiring with a plate to the sideboard; then added, with the
+freedom of an old servant, &quot;Bile, <i>I</i> should say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Probably. We had better send for Doctor What's-his-name.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The usual doctor is away,&quot; said Lady Atherley. &quot;There is a London
+doctor in his place. He is clever, Lady Sylvia said, but he gives
+himself airs.&quot;<a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never mind what he gives himself if he gives his patients the right
+thing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And after all we can manage very well without Ann, but what are we to
+do about Mrs. Mallet? I always told you how it would be.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, my dear, it is not my fault. You look as reproachfully at me as if
+it were my ghost which was causing all this disturbance instead of the
+ghost of a remote ancestor&mdash;predecessor, in fact.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, but you will always talk just as if it was of no consequence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't talk of the cook's going as being of no consequence. Far from
+it. But you must not let her go, that is all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How can I prevent her going? I think you had better talk to her
+yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I should like to meet her very much; <a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" />would not you, Lindy? I should
+like to hear her story; it must be a blood-curdling one, to judge from
+its effect upon Ann. The only person I have yet met who pretended to
+have seen the ghost was Aunt Eleanour.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what was it like, daddy?&quot; asked Denis, much interested.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She did not say, Den. She would never tell me anything about it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Would she tell me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am afraid not. I don't think she would tell any one, except perhaps
+Mr. Lyndsay. He has a way of worming things out of people.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Lyndsay, how do you worm things out of people?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know, Denis; you must ask your father.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;First, by never asking any questions,&quot;<a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" /> said Atherley promptly; &quot;and
+then by a curious way he has of looking as if he was listening
+attentively to what was said to him, instead of thinking, as most people
+do, what he shall say himself when he gets a chance of putting a word
+in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But how could Aunt Eleanour see the ghost when there is not any such
+thing?&quot; cried Harold.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How indeed!&quot; said his father, rising; &quot;that is just the puzzle. It will
+take you years to find it out. Lindy, look into the morning-room in
+about half an hour, and you will hear a tale whose lightest word will
+harrow up thy soul, etc., etc.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As Lady Atherley kindly seconded this invitation I accepted it, though
+not with the consequences predicted. Anything less suggestive of the
+supernatural, or in every way less like the typical ghost-seer, <a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" />was
+surely never produced than the round and rubicund little person I found
+in conversation with the Atherleys. Mrs. Mallet was a brunette who might
+once have considered herself a beauty, to judge by the self-conscious
+and self-satisfied simper which the ghastliest recollections were unable
+to banish. As I entered I caught only the last words of Atherley's
+speech&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;&mdash;&mdash; treating you well, Mrs. Mallet?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh no, Sir George,&quot; answered Mrs. Mallet, standing very straight and
+stiff, with two plump red hands folded demurely before her; &quot;which I
+have not a word to say against any one, but have met, ever since I come
+here, with the greatest of kindness and respect. But the noises, sir,
+the noises of a night is more than I can abear.&quot;<a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, they are only rats, Mrs. Mallet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No rats in this world ever made sech a noise, Sir George; which the
+very first night as I slep here, there come the most mysterioustest
+sounds as ever I hear, which I says to Hann, 'Whatever are you a-doing?'
+which she woke up all of a suddent, as young people will, and said she
+never hear nor yet see nothing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What was the noise like, Mrs. Mallet?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, Sir George, I can only compare it to the dragging of heavy
+furniture, which I really thought at first it was her ladyship a-coming
+upstairs to waken me, took bad with burglars or a fire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, Mrs. Mallet, I am sure you are too brave a woman to mind a little
+noise.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not only noises, Sir George. Last night&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" />Mrs. Mallet drew a long breath and closed her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Mrs. Mallet, pray go on; I am very curious to hear what did happen
+last night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It makes the cold chills run over me to think of it. We was all gone to
+bed&mdash;leastways the maids and me, and Hann and me was but just got to my
+room when says she to me, 'Oh la! whatever do you think?' says she; 'I
+promised Ellen when she went out this afternoon as I would shut the
+windows in the pink bedroom at four o'clock, and never come to think of
+it till this minute,' she says. 'Oh dear,' I says, 'and them new
+chintzes will be entirely ruined with the damp. Why, what a
+good-for-nothing girl you are!' I says, 'and what you thinks on half
+your time is more than I <a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" />can tell.' 'Whatever shall I do?' she says,
+'for go along there at this time of night all by myself I dare not,'
+says she. 'Well,' I says, 'rather than you should go alone, I'll go
+along with you,' I says, 'for stay here by myself I would not,' I says,
+'not if any one was to pay me hundreds.' So we went down our stairs and
+along our passage to the door which you go into the gallery, Hann
+a-clutching hold of me and starting, which when we come into the
+gallery I was all of a tremble, and she shook so I said, 'La! Hann, for
+goodness' sake do carry that candle straight, or you will grease the
+carpet shameful;' and come to the pink room I says, 'Open the door.'
+'La!' says she, 'what if we was to see the ghost?' 'Hold your silly
+nonsense this minute,' I says, 'and open the door,'<a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" /> which she do, but
+stand right back for to let me go first, when, true as ever I am
+standing here, my lady, I see something white go by like a flash, and
+struck me cold in the face, and blew the candle out, and then come the
+fearfullest noise, which thunderclaps is nothing to it. Hann began
+a-screaming, and we ran as fast as ever we could till we come to the
+pantry, where Mr. Castleman and the footman was. I thought I should ha'
+died: died I thought I should. My face was as white as that
+antimacassar.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How could you see your face, Mrs. Mallet?&quot; somewhat peevishly objected
+Lady Atherley.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Mallet with great dignity retorted&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which I looked down my nose, and it were like a corpse's.&quot;<a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very alarming,&quot; said Atherley, &quot;but easily explained. Directly you
+opened the door there was, of course, a draught from the open window.
+That draught blew the candle out and knocked something over, probably a
+screen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;La' bless you, Sir George, it was more like paving-stones than screens
+a-falling.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And indeed Mrs. Mallet was so far right, that when, to settle the
+weighty question once for all, we adjourned in a body to the pink
+bedroom, we discovered that nothing less than the ceiling, or at least a
+portion of it, had fallen, and was lying in a heap of broken plaster
+upon the floor. However, the moral, as Atherley hastened to observe, was
+the same.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You see, Mrs. Mallet, this was what made the noise.&quot;<a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" /></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mallet made no reply, but it was evident she neither saw nor
+intended to see anything of the kind; and Atherley wisely substituted
+bribery for reasoning. But even with this he made little way till
+accidentally he mentioned the name of Mrs. de No&euml;l, when, as if it had
+been a name to conjure by, Mrs. Mallet showed signs of softening.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, think of Mrs. de No&euml;l, Mrs. Mallet; what will she say if you leave
+her cousin to starve?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I should not wish such a thing to happen for a moment,&quot; said Mrs.
+Mallet, as if this had been no figure of speech but the actual
+alternative, &quot;not to any relation of Mrs. de No&euml;l.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And shortly after the debate ended with a cheerful &quot;Well, Mrs. Mallet,
+you will give us another trial,&quot; from Atherley.<a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;There,&quot; he exclaimed, as we all three returned to the
+morning-room&mdash;&quot;there is as splendid an example of the manufacture of a
+bogie as you are ever likely to meet with. All the spiritual phenomena
+are produced much in the same way. Work yourself up into a great state
+of terror and excitement, in the first place; in the next, procure one
+companion, if not more, as credulous and excitable as yourself; go at a
+late hour and with a dim light to a place where you have been told you
+will see something supernatural; steadfastly and determinedly look out
+for it, and&mdash;you will have your reward. These are precisely the lines on
+which a spiritual s&eacute;ance is conducted, only instead of plaster, which is
+not always so obliging as to fall in the nick of time, you have a paid
+medium who supplies the material for your fancy to work <a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" />upon. Mrs.
+Mallet, you see, has discovered all this for herself&mdash;that woman is a
+born genius. Just think what she might have been and seen if she had
+lived in a sphere where neither cooking nor any other rational
+occupation interfered with her pursuit of the supernatural. Mrs.
+Molyneux would be nowhere beside her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose she really does intend to stay,&quot; said Lady Atherley.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course she does. I always told you my powers of persuasion were
+irresistible.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But how annoying about the ceiling,&quot; said Lady Atherley. &quot;Over the new
+carpet, too! What can make the plaster fall in this way?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is the quality of the climate,&quot; said Atherley. &quot;It is horribly
+destructive. If you would read the batch of letters now <a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" />on my
+writing-table from tenant-farmers you would see what I mean: barns,
+roofs, gates, everything is falling to pieces and must immediately be
+repaired&mdash;at the landlord's expense, of course.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We must send for a plasterer,&quot; said Lady Atherley, &quot;and then the
+doctor. Perhaps you would have time to go round his way, George.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I have no time to go anywhere but to Northside farm. Hunt has been
+waiting nearly half an hour for me, as it is. Lindy, would you like to
+come with me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, thank you, George; I too am a landowner, and I mean to look over my
+audit accounts to-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't compare yourself to a poor overworked underpaid landowner like
+me. You are one of the landlords they spout <a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" />about in London parks on
+Sundays. You have nothing to do but sign receipts for your rents, paid
+in full and up to date.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Lyndsay is an excellent landlord,&quot; said Lady Atherley; &quot;and they
+tell me the new church and the schools he has built are charming.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very mischievous things both,&quot; said Atherley. &quot;Ta-ta.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon, Atherley being still absent, and Lady Atherley having
+gone forth to pay a round of calls, the little boys undertook my
+entertainment. They were in rather a sober mood for them, having just
+forfeited four weeks' pocket-money towards expenses incurred by Tip in
+the dairy, where they had foolishly allowed him to enter; so they
+accepted very good-humouredly my objections to wading in the river or
+climbing trees, and took me <a name="Page_51" id="Page_51" />instead for a walk to Beggar's Stile. We
+climbed up the steep carriage-drive to the lodge, passed through the big
+iron gates, turned sharply to the left, and went down the road which the
+park palings border and the elms behind them shade, past the little
+copse beyond the park, till we came to a tumble-down gate with a stile
+beside it in the hedgerow; and this was Beggar's Stile. It was just on
+the brow of the little hill which sloped gradually downward to the
+village beneath, and commanded a wide view of the broad shallow valley
+and of the rising ground beyond.</p>
+
+<p>I was glad to sit down on the step of the stile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you tired already, Mr. Lyndsay?&quot; inquired Harold incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, a little.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I s'pose you are tired because you <a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" />always have to pull your leg after
+you,&quot; said Denis, turning upon me two large topaz-coloured eyes. &quot;Does
+it hurt you, Mr. Lyndsay?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mother told you not to talk about Mr. Lyndsay's leg,&quot; observed Harold
+sharply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, she didn't; she said I was not to talk about the funny way he
+walked. She said&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, never mind, little man,&quot; I interrupted. &quot;Is that Weald down
+there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; cried Denis, maintaining his balance on the topmost bar but one
+of the gate with enviable ease. &quot;All these cottages and houses belong to
+Weald, and it is all daddy's on this side of the river down to where you
+see the white railings a long way down near the poplars, and that is the
+road we go to tea with Aunt<a name="Page_53" id="Page_53" /> Eleanour; and do you see a little blue
+speck on the hill over there? You could see if you had a telescope.
+Daddy showed me once; but you must shut your eye. That is Quarley
+Beacon, where Aunt Cissy lives.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, she does not, stupid,&quot; cried Harold, now suspended, head downwards,
+by one foot, from the topmost rail of the gate. &quot;No one lives there. She
+lives in Quarley Manor, just behind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Denis replied indirectly to the discourteous tone of this speech by
+trying with the point of his own foot to dislodge that by which Harold
+maintained his remarkable position, and a scuffle ensued, wherein,
+though a non-combatant, I seemed likely to get the worst, when their
+attention was fortunately diverted by the sight of Tip sneaking off, and
+evidently <a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" />with the vilest motives, towards the covert.</p>
+
+<p>My memory was haunted that day by certain words spoken seven months ago
+by Atherley, and by me at the time very ungraciously received:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Remember, if you do come a cropper, it will go hard with you, old man;
+you can't shoot or hunt or fish off the blues, like other men.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>No, nor could I work them off, as some might have done. I possessed no
+distinct talents, no marked vocation. If there was nothing behind and
+beyond all this, what an empty freak of destiny my life would have
+been&mdash;full, not even of sound and fury, but of dull common-place
+suffering: a tale told by an idiot with a spice of malice in him.</p>
+
+<p>Then the view before me made itself <a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" />felt, as a gentle persistent sound
+might have done: a flat, almost featureless scene&mdash;a little village
+church with cottages and gardens clustering about it, straggling away
+from it, by copses and meadows in which winter had left only the
+tenderest shades of the saddest colours. The winding river brightened
+the dull picture with broken glints of silver, and the tawny hues of the
+foreground faded through soft gradations of violet and azure into a far
+distance of pearly grey. It is not the scenery men cross continents and
+oceans to admire, and yet it has a message of its own. I felt it that
+day when I was heart-weary, and was glad that in one corner of this
+restless world the little hills preach peace.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Tip had been recaptured, and when he, or rather the ground
+close <a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" />beside him, had been beaten severely with sticks, and he himself
+upbraided in terms which left the censors hoarse, we went down again
+into the hollow. Then Lady Atherley returned and gave me tea; and
+afterwards, in the library, I worked at accounts till it was nearly too
+dark to write. No doubt on the high ground the sky was aflame with
+brilliant colour, of which only a dim reflection tinged the dreary view
+of sward and leafless trees, to which, for some mysterious reason, a gig
+crawling down the carriage-drive gave the last touch of desolation.</p>
+
+<p>Just as I laid my pen aside the door opened, and Castleman introduced a
+stranger.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you will wait here, sir, I will find her ladyship.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The new-comer was young and slight, <a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" />with an erect carriage and a firm
+step. He had the finely-cut features and dull colouring which I
+associate with the high-pressure life of a busy town, so that I guessed
+who he was before his first words told me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, thank you, I will not sit down; I expect to be called to my patient
+immediately.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The thought of this said patient made me smile, and in explanation I
+told him from what she was supposed to be suffering.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well; it is less common than other forms of feverishness, but will
+probably yield to the same remedies,&quot; was his only comment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You do not believe in ghosts?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pardon me, I do, just as I believe in all symptoms. When my patient
+tells me <a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" />he hears bells ringing in his ear, or feels the ground swaying
+under his feet, I believe him implicitly, though I know nothing of the
+kind is actually taking place. The ghost, so far, belongs to the same
+class as the other experiences, that it is a symptom&mdash;it may be of a
+very trifling, it may be of a very serious, disorder.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The voice, the keen flash of the eye, impressed me. I recognised one of
+those alert intelligences, beside whose vivid flame the mental life of
+most men seems to smoulder. I wished to hear him speak again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is this your view of all supernatural manifestations?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of all so-called supernatural manifestations; I don't understand the
+word or the distinction. No event which has actually <a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" />taken place can be
+supernatural. Since it belongs to the actual it must be governed by, it
+must be the outcome of, laws which everywhere govern the actual&mdash;everywhere
+and at all times. In fact, it must be natural, whatever we
+may think of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then if a miracle could be proven, it would be no miracle to you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And it could convince you of nothing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Neither me nor any one else who has outgrown his childhood, I should
+think. I have never been able to understand the outcry of the orthodox
+over their lost miracles. It makes their position neither better nor
+worse. The miracles could never prove their creeds. How am I to
+recognise a divine messenger? He makes <a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" />the furniture float about the
+room; he changes that coal into gold; he projects himself or his image
+here when he is a thousand miles away. Why, an emissary from the devil
+might do as much! It only proves&mdash;always supposing he really does
+these things instead of merely appearing to do so&mdash;it proves that he is
+better acquainted with natural laws than I am. What if he could kill me
+by an effort of the will? What if he could bring me to life again? It is
+always the same; he might still be morally my inferior; he might be a
+false prophet after all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He took out his watch and looked at it, by this simple action
+illustrating and reminding me of the difference between us&mdash;he talking
+to pass away the time, I thinking aloud the gnawing question at my
+heart.<a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you have no hope for anything beyond this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Something in my voice must have struck his ear, trained like every other
+organ of observation to quick and fine perception, for he looked at me
+more attentively, and it was in a gentler tone that he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Surely, you do not mean for a life beyond this? One's best hope must be
+that the whole miserable business ends with death.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you found life so wretched?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am not speaking from my own particular point of view. I am
+singularly, exceptionally, fortunate, I am healthy; I have tastes which
+I can gratify, work which I keenly enjoy. Whether the tastes are worth
+gratifying or the work worth doing I cannot say. At least they act as an
+<a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" />anodyne to self-consciousness; they help me to forget the farce in
+which I play my part. Like Solomon, and all who have had the best of
+life, I call it vanity. What do you suppose it is to those&mdash;by far the
+largest number, remember&mdash;who have had the worst of it? To them it is
+not vanity, it is misery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But they suffer under the invariable laws you speak of&mdash;laws working
+towards deliverance and happiness in the future.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The future? Yes, I know that form of consolation which seems to satisfy
+so many. To me it seems a hollow one. I have never yet been able to
+understand how any amount of ecstasy enjoyed by B a million years hence
+can make up for the torture A is suffering to-day. I suppose, dealing so
+much with individuals as I do,<a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" /> I am inclined to individualise like a
+woman. I think of units rather than of the mass. At this moment I have
+before me a patient now left suffering pain as acute as any the rack
+ever inflicted. How does it affect his case that centuries later such
+pain may be unknown?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course, the individual's one and only hope is a future existence.
+Then it may be all made up to him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see no reason to hope so. Either there is no God, and we shall still
+be at the mercy of the blind destiny we suffer under here; or there is a
+God, the God who looks on at this world and makes no sign! The sooner we
+escape from Him by annihilation the better.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Christians would tell you He had given a sign.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; so they do in words and deny it <a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" />in deeds. Nothing is sadder in
+the whole tragedy, or comedy, than these pitiable efforts to hide the
+truth, to gloss it over with fables which nobody in his heart of hearts
+believes&mdash;at least in these days. Why not face the worst like men? If we
+can't help being unhappy we can help being dishonest and cowardly.
+Existence is a misfortune. Let us frankly confess that it is, and make
+the best of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was not looking at his watch now; he was pacing the room. At last, he
+was in earnest, and had forgotten all accidents of time and place before
+the same enigma which perplexed myself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The best of it!&quot; I re-echoed. &quot;Surely, under these circumstances, the
+best thing would be to commit suicide?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he cried, stopping and turning <a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" />sharply upon me. &quot;The worst,
+because the most cowardly; so long as you have strength, brains,
+money&mdash;anything with which you can do good.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked past me through the window into the outer air, no longer
+faintly tinged, but dyed deep red by the light of the unseen but
+resplendent sunset, and added slowly, dejectedly, as if speaking to
+himself as much as to me&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, there is one thing worth living for&mdash;to help to make it all a
+little more bearable for the others.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then all at once, his face, so virile yet so delicate, so young and
+yet so sad, reminded me of one I had seen in an old picture&mdash;the face of
+an angel watching beside the dead Christ; and I cried&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But are you certain He has made no <a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" />sign; not hundreds of years ago,
+but in your own lifetime? not to saint or apostle, but to you, yourself?
+Has nothing which has happened to you, nothing you have ever seen or
+read or heard, tempted you to hope in something better?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he said deliberately; &quot;I have had my weak moments. My conviction
+has wavered, not before religious teaching of any kind, however, nor
+before Nature, in which some people seem to find such promise; but I
+have met one or two women, and one man&mdash;all of them unknown,
+unremarkable people&mdash;whom the world never heard of, nor is likely to
+hear of, living uneventful obscure lives in out-of-the-way corners. For
+instance, there is a lady in this very neighbourhood, a relation of Sir
+George Atherley, I believe, Mrs. de No&mdash;&quot;<a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Her ladyship would like to see you in the drawing-room, sir,&quot; said
+Castleman, suddenly coming in.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor bowed to me and immediately left the room.<a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" /></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III" />CHAPTER III</h3>
+
+<h4>MRS. MOSTYN'S GOSPEL</h4>
+
+
+<p>&quot;No, they have not seen any more ghosts, sir,&quot; replied Castleman
+scornfully next day, &quot;and never need have seen any. It is all along of
+this tea-drinking. We did not have this bother when the women took their
+beer regular. These teetotallers have done a lot of harm. They ought to
+be put down by Act of Parliament.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the kitchen-maid was better. Mrs. Mallet, indeed, assured Lady
+Atherley that Hann was not long for this world, <a name="Page_69" id="Page_69" />having turned just the
+same colour as the late Mr. Mallet did on the eve of his death; but
+fortunately the patient herself, as well as the doctor, took a more
+hopeful view of the case.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can see Mrs. Mallet is a horrible old croaker,&quot; said Lady Atherley.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let her croak,&quot; said Atherley, &quot;so long as she cooks as she did last
+night. That curry would have got her absolution for anything if your
+uncle had been here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That reminds me, George, the ceiling of the spare room is not mended
+yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I thought you sent to Whitford for a plasterer yesterday?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, and he came; but Mrs. Mallet has some extraordinary story about
+his falling into his bucket and spoiling his Sunday coat, and going home
+at once to <a name="Page_70" id="Page_70" />change it. I can't make it out, but nothing is done to the
+ceiling.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I make it out,&quot; said Atherley; &quot;I make out that he was a little the
+worse for drink. Have we not a plasterer in the village?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think there is one. I fancy the Jacksons did not wish us to employ
+him, because he is a dissenter; but after all, giving him work is not
+the same as giving him presents.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, indeed; nor do I see why, because he is a dissenter, I, who am only
+an infidel, am to put up with a hole in my ceiling.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only, I don't know what his name is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His name is Smart. Everybody in our village is called Smart&mdash;most
+inappropriately too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, George, the man the doctor told <a name="Page_71" id="Page_71" />us about who is so dangerously
+ill is called Monk.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am glad to hear it; but he doesn't belong to our parish, though he
+lives so close. He is actually in Rood Warren. His cottage is at the
+other side of the Common.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then we can leave the wine and things as we go. And, George, while the
+boys are having tea with Aunt Eleanour, I think I shall drive on to
+Quarley Beacon and try and persuade Cecilia to come back and spend the
+night with us. I think we could manage to put her up in the little blue
+dressing-room. She is so good-natured; she won't mind its being so
+small.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, do; I want Lyndsay to see her. And give my best love to Aunt
+Eleanour, and say that if she is going to send me <a name="Page_72" id="Page_72" />any more tracts
+against Popery, I should be extremely obliged if she would prepay the
+postage sufficiently.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh no, George, I could not. It was only threepence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, then, tell her it is no good sending any at all, because I have
+made up my mind to go over to Rome next July.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, George; she might not like it, and I don't believe you are going to
+do anything of the kind. Oh, are you off already? I thought you would
+settle something about the plasterer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no; I can't think of plasterers and repairs to-day. Even the
+galley-slave has his holiday&mdash;this is mine. I am going to see the hounds
+throw off at Rood Acre, and forget for one day that I have an inch of
+landed property in the world.&quot;<a name="Page_73" id="Page_73" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, George, if the pink-room ceiling is not put right by Saturday,
+where shall we put Uncle Augustus?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Into the room just opposite to Lindy's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What! that little room? In the bachelor's passage? A man of his age,
+and of his position!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am sure it is large enough for any one under a bishop. Besides, I
+don't think he is fussy about anything except his dinner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not the way he is accustomed to be treated when he is on a visit,
+I can assure you. He is a person who is generally considered a great
+deal.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I consider him a great
+<ins class="correction" style="text-decoration: none"
+         title="Transcriber's Note: The original text reads 'greal'">
+    great</ins>
+ deal. I consider him one of the finest old
+heathen I ever knew.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately for their domestic peace,<a name="Page_74" id="Page_74" /> Lady Atherley usually misses the
+points of her husband's speeches, but there are some which jar upon her
+sense of the becoming, and this was one of them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't think,&quot; she observed to me, the offender himself having
+escaped, &quot;that even if Uncle Augustus were not my uncle, a heathen is a
+proper name to call a clergyman, especially a canon&mdash;and one who is so
+looked up to in the Church. Have you ever heard him preach? But you must
+have heard about him, and about his sermons? I thought so. They are
+beautiful. When he preaches the church is crammed, and with the best
+people&mdash;in the season, when they are in town. And he has written a great
+many religious books too&mdash;sermons and hymns and manuals. There is a
+little book in red <a name="Page_75" id="Page_75" />morocco you may have seen in my sitting-room&mdash;I know
+it was there a week ago&mdash;which he gave me, <i>The Life of Prayer</i>, with a
+short meditation and a hymn for every hour of the day&mdash;all composed by
+him. We don't see so much of him as I could wish. He is so grieved about
+George's views. He gave him some of his own sermons, but of course
+George would not look at them; and&mdash;so annoying&mdash;the last time he came I
+put the sermons, two beautiful large volumes of them, on the
+drawing-room table, and when we were all there after dinner George asked
+me quite loud what these smart books were, and where they came from. So
+altogether he has not come to see us for a long time; but as he happened
+to be staying with the Mountshires, I begged him to come over for a
+night or <a name="Page_76" id="Page_76" />two; so you will hear him preach on Sunday.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At lunch that day Lady Atherley proposed that I should accompany them to
+Woodcote. &quot;Do come, Mr. Lyndsay,&quot; said Denis. &quot;We shall have cakes for
+tea, and jam-sandwiches as well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And there is an awfully jolly banister for sliding down,&quot; added Harold,
+&quot;without any turns or landing, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I professed myself unable to resist such inducements. Indeed, I was
+almost glad to go. The recollection of Mrs. Mostyn's cheerful face was as
+alluring to me that day as the thought of a glowing hearth might be to
+the beggar on the door-step. Here, at least, was one to whom life was a
+blessing; who partook of all it could bestow with an appetite as
+healthfully keen as her nephew's, but without his <a name="Page_77" id="Page_77" />disinclination or
+disregard for anything besides.</p>
+
+<p>The mild March day felt milder, the rooks cawed more cheerfully, and the
+spring flowers shone out more fearlessly around us when we had passed
+through the white gates of Woodcote&mdash;a favoured spot gently declining to
+the sunniest quarter, and sheltered from the north and north-east by
+barricades of elm-woods. The tiny domain was exquisitely ordered, as I
+love to see everything which appertains to women; and within the low
+white house, furnished after the simple and stiff fashion of a past
+generation, reigned the same dainty neatness, the same sunny
+cheerfulness, the native atmosphere of its chatelaine Mrs. Mostyn&mdash;a
+white-haired old lady long past seventy, with the bloom of youth on her
+cheek, its vivacity <a name="Page_78" id="Page_78" />in her step, and its sparkle in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Hardly were the first greetings exchanged when the children opened the
+ball of conversation by inquiring eagerly when tea would be ready.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How can you be so greedy?&quot; said their mother. &quot;Why, you have only just
+finished your dinner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We dined at half-past one, and it is nearly half-past three.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor darlings!&quot; cried Mrs. Mostyn, regarding them with the enraptured
+gaze of the true child-lover; &quot;their drive has made them hungry; and we
+cannot have tea very well before half-past four, because some old women
+from the village have come up to have tea, and the servants are busy
+attending to them. But I can tell you what you could do, dears. You know
+<a name="Page_79" id="Page_79" />the way to the dairy; one of the maids is sure to be there; tell her to
+give you some cream. You will like that, won't you? Yes, you can go out
+by this door.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And remember to&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Lady Atherley's exhortation remained unfinished, her sons having darted
+through the door-window like arrows from the bow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Since Miss Jones has been gone for her holiday the children are quite
+unmanageable,&quot; she observed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, it is such a good sign!&quot; cried Mrs. Mostyn heartily; &quot;it shows they
+are so thoroughly well. Mr. Lyndsay, why have you chosen that
+uncomfortable chair? Come and sit over beside me, if you are not afraid
+of the fire. And now, Jane, my love, tell me how you are getting on at
+Weald.&quot;<a name="Page_80" id="Page_80" /></p>
+
+<p>Then followed a long catalogue of accidents and disappointments, of
+faithlessness and incapacity, to which Mrs. Mostyn supplied a running
+commentary of interjections sympathetic and consoling. There were,
+moreover, many changes for the worse since Sir Marmaduke had resided
+there: the shooting and the fishing had been alike neglected; the
+farmers were impoverished; the old places had changed hands.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And a good many quite new people have come to live in small houses
+round Weald,&quot; said Lady Atherley. &quot;They have left cards on us. Do you
+know what they are like?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quite ladies and gentlemen, I believe, and nice enough as long as you
+don't get to know them too intimately; but they are always
+quarrelling.&quot;<a name="Page_81" id="Page_81" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;About what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About everything; but especially about church matters&mdash;decorations and
+anthems and other rubbish. What they want is less of the church and more
+of the Bible.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe Mr. Jackson has a Bible-class every week.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But is it a Bible-class, or is it only called so? There is Mr. Austin
+at Rood Warren, a Romanist in disguise if ever there was one: he is by
+way of having a Bible-class, and one of our farmers' daughters attended
+it. 'And what part of the Bible are you studying now?' I asked her. 'We
+are studying early church history.' 'I don't know any such chapter in
+the Bible as that,' I said, and yet I know my Bible pretty well. She
+explained it was a continuation of the Acts <a name="Page_82" id="Page_82" />of the Apostles. I said:
+'My dear child, don't you be misled by any jugglery of that kind; there
+is no continuation of the Bible; and as to what people call the early
+church, its doings and sayings are of no consequence at all. The one
+question we have to ask ourselves is this: '&quot;What does the Book say?&quot;'
+What is in the Book is God's word: what is not in the Book is only
+man's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The effect of this exposition on Lady Atherley was to make her ask
+eagerly whether the curate in charge at Rood Warren was one of the
+Austyns of Temple Leigh.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe he is a nephew,&quot; Mrs. Mostyn admitted, quite gloomily for
+her. &quot;It is painful to see people of good standing going astray in this
+manner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was thinking it would be so con<a name="Page_83" id="Page_83" />venient to get a young man over to
+dinner sometimes; and Rood Warren cannot be very far from us, for one of
+Mr. Austyn's parishioners lives just at the end of Weald.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you take my advice, my dearest Jane, you will not have anything to
+do with him. He is certain to be attractive&mdash;men of that sort always
+are; and there is no saying what he might do: perhaps gain an influence
+over George himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't think there need be any fear of that, for at dinner, you know,
+we need not have any religious discussions; I never will have them; they
+are almost as bad as politics, they make people so cross.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then she rose and explained her visit to Mrs. de No&euml;l.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, Mr. Lyndsay,&quot; said Mrs. Mostyn,<a name="Page_84" id="Page_84" /> &quot;are you going to desert the old
+woman for the young one, or are you going to stay and see my gardens and
+have tea? That is right. Good-bye, my dearest Jane. Give my dear love to
+Cissy, and tell her to come over and see me&mdash;but I shall have a glimpse
+of her on your way back.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope Mrs. de No&euml;l may be persuaded to come back,&quot; I said, as the
+carriage drove off, and we walked along a gravel path by lawns of velvet
+smoothness; &quot;I would so much like to meet her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you never met her? Dear Cecilia! She is a sweet creature&mdash;the
+sweetest, I think, I ever met, though perhaps I ought not to say so of
+my own niece. She wants but one thing&mdash;the grace of God.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We passed into a little wood, tapestried <a name="Page_85" id="Page_85" />with ivy, carpeted with
+clustering primroses, and she continued&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is most mysterious. Both Cecilia and George, being left orphans so
+early, were brought up by my dear sister Henrietta. She was a believing
+Christian, and no children ever had greater religious advantages than
+these two. As soon as they could speak they learnt hymns or texts of
+Scripture, and before they could read they knew whole chapters of the
+Bible by heart. George even now, I will say that for him, knows his
+Bible better than a good many clergymen. And the Sabbath, too. They were
+taught to reverence the Lord's day in a way
+<ins class="correction" style="text-decoration: none"
+         title="Transcriber's Note: The original text reads 'childen'">children</ins>
+never are nowadays.
+All games and picture-books put away on Saturday night; regularly to
+church morning and afternoon, and in the evening Henrietta would talk to
+them and <a name="Page_86" id="Page_86" />question them about the sermon. And after all, here is George
+who says he believes in nothing; and as to Cecilia, I never can make out
+what she does or does not believe. However, I am quite happy in my mind
+about them. I feel they are of the elect. I am as certain of their
+salvation as I am of my own.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A sudden scampering of feet upon the gravel was followed by the
+appearance of the boys, rosy with exercise and excitement.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, my darling boys, have you had your cream?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh yes, Aunt Eleanour,&quot; cried Harold, &quot;and we have been into the
+farm-yard and seen the little pigs. Such jolly little beasts, Mr.
+Lyndsay, and squeak so funnily when you pull their tails.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_87" id="Page_87" />Oh, but I can't have my pigs unkindly treated.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not unkindly, auntie,&quot; cried Denis, swinging affectionately upon my
+arm; &quot;we only just tried to make their tails go straight, you know. And,
+Mr. Lyndsay, there is such a dear little baby calf.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I want to give apples to the horses,&quot; cried Harold.</p>
+
+<p>So we went to the fruit-house for apples, which Mrs. Mostyn herself
+selected from an upper shelf, mounting a ladder with equal agility and
+grace; then to the stables, where these dainties were crunched by two
+very fat carriage-horses; then to the miniature farm-yard, and the tiny
+ivy-covered dairy beyond; and just as I was beginning to feel the first
+qualms of my besetting humiliation, fatigue, Mrs. Mostyn led us round to
+the garden&mdash;a <a name="Page_88" id="Page_88" />garden with high red walls, and a dial in the
+meeting-place of the flower-bordered paths; and we sat down in a rustic
+seat cosily fitted into one sunny corner, just behind a great bed of
+hyacinths in flower.</p>
+
+<p>The children had but one regret: Tip had been left behind.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But mamma would not let us bring him,&quot; cried Harold in an aggrieved
+tone, &quot;because he will roll in the flower-beds.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you think it is nearly half-past four, Aunt Eleanour?&quot; asked Denis.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very nearly, I should think. Suppose you were to go and see if they
+have brought the tea-kettle in; and if they have, call to me from the
+drawing-room window, and I will come.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The tempered sunlight fell full upon the delicate hyacinth
+clusters&mdash;coral, snow-<a name="Page_89" id="Page_89" />white, and faintest lilac&mdash;exhaling their
+exquisite odour, and the warm sweet air seemed to enwrap us tenderly. My
+spirits, heavy as lead, began to rise&mdash;strangely, irrationally. Sunlight
+has always for me a supersensuous beauty, while the colour and perfume
+of flowers move me as sound vibrations move the musician. Just then it
+was to me as if through Nature, from that which is behind Nature, there
+reached me a pitying, a comforting caress.</p>
+
+<p>And in the same key were Mrs. Mostyn's words when she next spoke.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Lyndsay, I am an old woman and you are very young, and my heart
+goes out to all young creatures in sorrow, especially to one who has no
+mother of his own, no, nor father even, to comfort him. I know what
+trouble you have had.<a name="Page_90" id="Page_90" /> Would you be offended if I said how deeply I felt
+for you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Offended, Mrs. Mostyn!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I see you understand me; you will not think me obtrusive when I say
+that I pray this great trial may be for your lasting good; may lead you
+to seek and to find salvation. The truth is brought home to us in many
+different ways, by many different instruments. My own eyes were opened
+by very extraordinary means.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was silent for a few instants, and then went on&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I was young, Mr. Lyndsay, I lived for the world only. I went to
+church, of course, like other people, and said my prayers and called
+myself a Christian, but I did not know what the word meant. My sister
+Henrietta <a name="Page_91" id="Page_91" />would often talk seriously to me, but it had no effect, and
+she was quite grieved over my hardened state; but my dear mother, a true
+saint, used to tell her to have no fear, that some day I should be
+sharply awakened to my soul's danger. But it was not till years after
+she was in heaven that her words came true.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked at her and waited.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We were still living at Weald Manor with my brother Marmaduke, and we
+had young people staying with us. They were all going&mdash;all but
+myself&mdash;to a ball at Carchester. I stayed at home because I had a slight
+cold, which made me feel tired and feverish, and disinclined to be
+dancing till early next morning. I went to bed early, and when I had
+sent away my maid I sat beside the fire for a little, thinking. You know
+the long gallery?&quot;<a name="Page_92" id="Page_92" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My room was there; so I was quite alone, for the servants slept, just
+as they do now, in the opposite end of the house. But I had my dog with
+me, such a dear little thing, a black-and-tan terrier. He was lying
+asleep on the rug beside me. Well, all at once he got up and put his
+head on one side as if he heard something, and he began barking. I only
+said 'Nonsense, Totty, lie down,' and paid no more attention to him,
+till some moments afterwards he made a strange kind of noise as if he
+were trying to bark and was choked in some way. This made me look at
+him, and then I observed that he was trembling from head to foot, and
+staring in the strangest way at something behind me. I will honestly
+tell you he made me feel so uncomfortable I was afraid to look <a name="Page_93" id="Page_93" />round;
+and still it was almost as bad to sit there and not look round, so at
+last I summoned up courage and turned my head. Then I saw it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The ghost?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What was it like?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was like a shadow, only darker, and not lying against the wall as a
+shadow would do, but standing out from it in the air. It stood a little
+way from me in a corner of the room. It was in the shape of a man, with
+a ruff round his neck, and sleeves puffed out at the shoulders, as you
+often see in old pictures; but I don't remember much about that, for at
+the time I could think of nothing but the face.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And that&mdash;?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That was simply dreadful. I can't tell you what it was like. I could
+not <a name="Page_94" id="Page_94" />have imagined it, if I had not seen it. It was the look&mdash;the look
+in its eyes. After all these years it makes me tremble when I think of
+it. But what I felt was not the same nervous feeling which made me
+afraid to turn round. It went much deeper&mdash;indeed it went deeper than
+anything in my life had ever gone before; it went right down to my soul,
+in fact, and made me feel I had a soul.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She had turned quite pale.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Mr. Lyndsay, strange as it sounds, the mere sight of that face
+made me realise in an instant what I had read and heard thousands of
+times, and what my mother and Henrietta had told me over and over again
+about the utter nothingness of earthly aims and comforts&mdash;of what in an
+ordinary way is called life. I had heard very fine sermons preached
+<a name="Page_95" id="Page_95" />about the same thing: 'What is our life, it is even a vapour,' and the
+'vain shadow' in which we walk. Have you ever thought how we can go on
+hearing and even repeating true and wise words without getting at their
+real sense, and, what is worse, without suspecting our own ignorance?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know it well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When Henrietta used to say that the whirl of worldly occupations and
+interests and amusements in which I was so engrossed did not deserve to
+be called life, and could never satisfy the eternal soul within me, it
+used to seem to me an exaggerated way of saying that the next world
+would be better than this one; but I saw the meaning of her words, I saw
+the truth of them, as I see these flowers before me, and feel the gravel
+under my feet: it <a name="Page_96" id="Page_96" />came to me in a moment, the night these terrible eyes
+looked into mine. The feeling did not last, but I have never forgotten
+it, and never shall. It was as if a veil were lifted for an instant, and
+I was standing outside of my life and looking back at it; and it seemed
+so poor and worthless and unreal&mdash;I can't explain myself properly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And did the figure remain for any time?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not know. I think I must have fainted. They found me lying in a
+half-unconscious state in my chair when they came home. I was ill in bed
+for weeks with what the doctors call low fever. But neither the fever
+nor anything else could remove the impression that had been made. That
+terrible thing was a blessed messenger to me. My real conversion <a name="Page_97" id="Page_97" />was
+not till years later, but the way was prepared by the great shock I then
+received, and which roused me to a sense of my danger.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you think the thing you saw Was, Mrs. Mostyn?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The ghost?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Slowly, thoughtfully, she answered me&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am certain it was a lost soul: nothing else could have worn that
+dreadful look.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She paused for a few moments and then continued&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps you are one of those who do not believe in the punishment of
+sin?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who can disbelieve it, Mrs. Mostyn? Call it what we like, it is a fact.
+It confronts us on every side. We might as well refuse to believe in
+death.&quot;<a name="Page_98" id="Page_98" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not that I meant! I was talking of punishment in the next world,
+Mr. Lyndsay.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, there, too, no doubt it must continue, until the uttermost
+farthing is paid. I believe&mdash;at least I hope&mdash;that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head with a troubled expression.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is no paying that debt in the next world. It can only be paid
+here. Here, a free pardon is offered to us, and if we do not accept it,
+then&mdash;&mdash; It is the fashion, even among believers, nowadays to avoid this
+awful subject. Preachers of the Gospel do not speak of it in the pulpit
+as they once did. It is considered too shocking for our modern notions.
+I have no patience with such weakness, such folly&mdash;worse than folly. It
+seems to me even more wrong to try and hide this <a name="Page_99" id="Page_99" />terrible danger from
+ourselves and from others than to deny it altogether, as some poor
+deluded souls do. Mr. Lyndsay, have you ever realised what the place of
+torment will be like?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; once, Mrs. Mostyn.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You were in pain?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose it was pain,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>For always, when anything revives this recollection, seared into my
+memory, the question rises: was it merely pain, physical pain, of which
+we all speak so easily and lightly? It lasted only ten minutes; ten
+minutes by the clock, that is. For me time was annihilated. There was no
+past or future, but only an intolerable present, in which mind and soul
+were blotted out, and all of sentient existence that remained was the
+animal consciousness of agony. I cannot share men's stoical con<a name="Page_100" id="Page_100" />tempt
+for a Gehenna, which is nothing worse.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Lyndsay, imagine pain, worse than any ever endured on earth going
+on and on, for ever!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A bird, not a thrush, but one of the minor singers, lighting on a bough
+near us, trilled one simple but ecstatic phrase.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you really and truly believe, Mrs. Mostyn, that this will be the
+fate of any single being?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of any single being? Do we not know that it is what will happen to the
+greatest number? For what does the Book say? 'Many are called but few
+are chosen.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Through the still, mild air, across the sun-steeped gardens, came the
+voices of the children&mdash;<a name="Page_101" id="Page_101" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aunt Eleanour! Aunt Eleanour!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Many are called,&quot; she repeated, &quot;but few are chosen; and those who are
+not chosen shall be cast into everlasting fire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. She turned to look at me, and, as if struck by
+something in my face, said gently, soothingly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, it is a terrible thought, but only for the unregenerate. It has no
+terror for me. I trust it need have no terror for you. After all, how
+simple, how easy is the way of escape! You have only to believe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And then you are safe, safe for evermore. Think of that. The foolish
+people who wish to explain away eternal punishment, forget that at the
+same time they explain away eternal happiness! You <a name="Page_102" id="Page_102" />will be safe now,
+and after death you will be in heaven for evermore.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall be in heaven for evermore, and always there will be hell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where the others will be?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What others? Only the wicked!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aunt Eleanour! Aunt Eleanour!&quot; called the children once more.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must go to them! But, Mr. Lyndsay, think over what I have said.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And I remained and obeyed her, and beheld, entire, distinct, the spectre
+that drives men to madness or despair&mdash;illimitable omnipotent Malice. In
+its shadow the colour of the flowers was quenched, and the music of the
+birds rang false. Yet it wore the consecration of time and authority!
+What if it were true?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Lyndsay,&quot; said Denis at my <a name="Page_103" id="Page_103" />elbow, &quot;Aunt Eleanour has sent me to
+fetch you to tea. Mr. Lyndsay, do you hear? Why do you look so strange?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He caught my hand anxiously as he spoke, and by that little human touch
+the spell was broken. The phantom vanished; and, looking into the
+child's eyes, I felt it was a lie.<a name="Page_104" id="Page_104" /></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV" />CHAPTER IV</h3>
+
+<h4>CANON VERNADE'S GOSPEL</h4>
+
+
+<p>There was no Mrs. de No&euml;l in the carriage when it returned; she had gone
+to London to stay with Mrs. Donnithorne, whom Atherley spoke of as Aunt
+Henrietta, and was not expected home till Wednesday.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am sorry,&quot; Lady Atherley observed, as we drove home through the dusk;
+&quot;I should like to have had her here when Uncle Augustus was with us. I
+would have asked Mrs. Mostyn to dine with us, but I am not sure she and
+Uncle Augustus would get on. When her sister, Mrs.<a name="Page_105" id="Page_105" /> Donnithorne, met
+Uncle Augustus and his wife at lunch at our house once, she said she
+thought no minister of the Gospel ought to allow his child to take part
+in worldly amusements or ceremonials. It was very awkward, because Uncle
+Augustus's eldest girl had been presented only the day before. And Aunt
+Clara, Uncle Augustus's wife, you know, who is rather quick, said it
+depended whether the minister of the Gospel was a gentleman or a
+shoe-black, because Mrs. Donnithorne was attending a dissenting chapel
+then where the preacher was quite a common uneducated sort of person.
+And after that they would not talk to each other, and, altogether, I
+remember, it was very unpleasant. I do think it is such a pity,&quot; cried
+Lady Atherley with real feeling, &quot;when people will take up these extreme
+<a name="Page_106" id="Page_106" />religious views, as all the Atherleys do. I am sure it is quite a
+comfort to have someone like you in the house, Mr. Lyndsay, who is not
+particular about religion.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>&quot;If this is the best Aunt Eleanour has to show in the way of a ghost,
+she does well to keep so quiet about it,&quot; was Atherley's comment on that
+part of the story which, by special permission, I repeated to him next
+day. &quot;I never heard a weaker ghost story. She explains the whole thing
+away as she tells it. She was, as she candidly admits, ill and
+feverish&mdash;sickening for a fever, in fact, when the most rational
+person's senses are apt to play them strange tricks. She is alone at the
+dead of night in a house she believes to be haunted; and <a name="Page_107" id="Page_107" />then her
+dog&mdash;an odious little beast, I remember him well, always barking at
+something or nothing;&mdash;the dog suggests there is somebody near. She
+looks round into a dark part of the room, and naturally, inevitably&mdash;all
+things considered&mdash;sees a ghost. Did you say it wore a ruff and puffed
+sleeves?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So Mrs. Mostyn said.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course, because, as I told you, Aunt Eleanour believed in the
+Elizabethan portrait theory. If it had been Aunt Henrietta, the ghost
+would have been in armour. Ghosts and all visitors from the other world
+obligingly correspond with the preconceived notions of the visionary.
+When a white robe and a halo were considered the proper celestial
+outfit, saints and angels always appeared with white robes and halos. In
+the same way, the African <a name="Page_108" id="Page_108" />savage, who believes in a god with a crooked
+leg, always sees him in dreams, waking or asleep, with a crooked leg;
+and&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here we were interrupted by a great stir in the hall outside, and Lady
+Atherley looked in to explain that the carriage with Uncle Augustus was
+just coming down the drive.</p>
+
+<p>Her manner reminded me of the full importance of this arrival, as well
+as of the unfortunate circumstance that, owing to the ill-timed absence
+of the dissenting plasterer, the Canon must be lodged in the little room
+opposite to my own.</p>
+
+<p>However, when I went into the drawing-room, I found him accepting his
+niece's apologies and explanations with great good-humour. To me also he
+was especially gracious.<a name="Page_109" id="Page_109" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;I had the pleasure of dining at Lindesford, Mr. Lyndsay, when you must
+have been in long clothes. I remember we had some of the finest trout I
+ever tasted. Are they still as good in your river?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His voice, like himself, was massive and impressive; his bearing and
+manner inspired me with wistful admiration: what must life be to a man
+so self-confident, and so rightly self-confident?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is not Uncle Augustus a fine-looking man?&quot; asked Lady Atherley, when he
+had left the room with Atherley. &quot;I cannot think why they do not make
+him a bishop; he would look so well in the robes. He ought to have had
+something when the last ministry was in, for Aunt Clara and Lord
+Lingford are cousins; but, unfortunately, the families were on bad terms
+because of a lawsuit.&quot;<a name="Page_110" id="Page_110" /></p>
+
+<p>The morning after was bright and fair, so that
+sunlight mingled with the drowsy calm&mdash;Sunday in the country as we
+remember it, looking lovingly back from lands that are not English to
+the tenderer side of the Puritan Sabbath. But I missed my little
+<i>aubade</i> from the lawn, and not till breakfast-time did I behold my
+small friends, who then came into the breakfast-room, one on either side
+of their mother&mdash;two miniature sailors, exquisitely neat but visibly
+dejected. Behind walked Tip, demurely recognising the change in the
+atmosphere, but, undisturbed thereby, he at once, with his usual air of
+self-satisfied dignity, assumed his place in the largest arm-chair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The landau could take us all to church except you, George,&quot; said Lady
+Atherley, looking thoughtfully into the <a name="Page_111" id="Page_111" />fire as we waited for breakfast
+and the Canon. &quot;But I suppose you would prefer to walk?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why should you suppose I am going to church, either walking or
+driving?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I certainly hoped you would have gone to-day; as Uncle Augustus
+is going to preach it seems only polite to do so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I don't mind; I daresay it will do me no harm; and if it is
+understood I attend only out of consideration for my wife's uncle,
+then&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was interrupted by the entrance of the person in question.</p>
+
+<p>Many times during breakfast Denis looked thoughtfully at his
+great-uncle, and at last inquired&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you preach very long sermons, Uncle Augustus?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_112" id="Page_112" />They are not generally considered so,&quot; replied the Canon with some
+dignity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Denis, I have often told you not to ask questions,&quot; said Lady Atherley.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I am grown up,&quot; remarked Harold, &quot;I will be an atheist.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you know what an atheist is?&quot; inquired his father.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, it is people who never go to church.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But they go to lecture-rooms, which you would find worse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But they don't have sermons.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't they? Hours long, especially when they bury each other.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!&quot; said Harold, evidently taken aback, and somewhat reconciled to the
+church.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I am grown up,&quot; said Denis,<a name="Page_113" id="Page_113" /> &quot;I mean to be the same church as Aunt
+Cissy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what may that be?&quot; inquired the Canon.</p>
+
+<p>Denis was silent and looked perplexed; but some time afterwards, when we
+were talking of other things, he called out, with the joy of one who has
+captured that elusive thing, a definition:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In Aunt Cissy's church they climb trees and make toffee on Sundays.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After which Lady Atherley seemed glad to take them both away with her.</p>
+
+<p>It was perhaps this remark that led the Canon to ask, on the way to
+church&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it true that Mrs. de No&euml;l attends a dissenting chapel?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said Lady Atherley. &quot;But I know why people say so. She lent a
+<a name="Page_114" id="Page_114" />field last year to the Methodists to have their camp-meeting in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! but that is a pity,&quot; said the Canon. &quot;A very great pity&mdash;a person
+in her position encouraging dissent, especially when there is no real
+occasion for it. Clara's nephew, young Littlemore, did something of the
+kind last year, but then he was standing for the county; and though that
+hardly justifies, it excuses, a little pandering to the multitude.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cissy only let them have it once,&quot; said Lady Atherley, as if making the
+best of it. &quot;And, indeed, I believe it rained so hard that day they were
+not able to have the meeting after all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then the carriage stopped before the lych-gate, through which the
+fresh-faced school children were trooping; and while the bell clanged
+its last monotonous <a name="Page_115" id="Page_115" />summons, we walked up between the village graves to
+the old church porch that older yews overshadow, where the village lads
+were loitering, as Sunday after Sunday their sleeping forefathers had
+loitered before them.</p>
+
+<p>We worshipped that morning in a magnificent pew to one side of the
+chancel, and quite as large, from which we enjoyed a full view of clergy
+and congregation. The former consisted of the Canon, Mr. Jackson,
+clergyman of the parish, and a young man I had not seen before. Not a
+large number had mustered to hear the Canon; the front seats were well
+filled by men and women in goodly apparel, but in the pews behind and in
+the side aisles there was a mere sprinkling of worshippers in the Sunday
+dress of country labourers. Our supplicai<a name="Page_116" id="Page_116" />tions were offered with as
+little ritualistic pageantry as Mrs. Mostyn herself could have desired,
+though the choir probably sang oftener and better than she would have
+approved. In spite of their efforts it was as uninspiring a service as I
+have ever taken part in. This was not due, as might be suspected, to
+Atherley's presence, for his demeanour was irreproachable. His little
+sons, delighted at having him with them, carefully found his places for
+him in prayer and hymnbook, and kept watch that he did not lose them
+afterwards, so that he perforce assumed a really edifying degree of
+attention. Nor, indeed, did the rest of the congregation err in the
+direction of restlessness or wandering looks, but rather in the opposite
+extreme, insomuch that during the litany, when we were no longer
+<a name="Page_117" id="Page_117" />supported by music, and had, most of us, assumed attitudes favourable
+to repose, we appeared one and all to succumb to it, especially towards
+the close, when, from the body of the church at least, only the aged
+clerk was heard to cry for mercy. But with the third service, there came
+a change, which reminded me of how once in a foreign cathedral, when the
+procession filed by&mdash;the singing-men nudging each other, the
+standard-bearers giggling, and the English tourists craning to see the
+sight&mdash;the face of one white-haired old bishop beneath his canopy
+transformed for me a foolish piece of mummery into a prayer in action.
+So it was again, when the young stranger turned to us his pale clear-cut
+face, solemn with an awe as rapt as if he verily stood before the throne
+of Him he called upon, and felt Its glory <a name="Page_118" id="Page_118" />beating on his face; then, by
+that one earnest and believing presence, all was transformed and
+redeemed; the old emblems recovered their first significance, the
+time-worn phrases glowed with life again, and we ourselves were
+altered&mdash;our very heaviness was pathetic: it was the lethargy of death
+itself, and our poor sleepy prayers the strain of manacled captives
+striving to be free.</p>
+
+<p>The Canon's sermon did not maintain this high-strung mood, though why
+not it would be difficult to say. Like all his, it was eloquent,
+brilliant even, declaimed by a fine voice of wide compass, whose varying
+tones he used with the skill of a practised orator. The text was &quot;Our
+conversation is in Heaven,&quot; its theme the contrast between the man of
+this world, with his heart fixed upon its pomps, its <a name="Page_119" id="Page_119" />vanities, its
+honours, and the believer indifferent to all these, esteeming them as
+dross merely compared to the heavenly treasure, the one thing needful.
+Certainly the utter worthlessness of the prizes for which men labour and
+so late take rest, barter their happiness, their peace, their honour,
+was never more scathingly depicted. I remember the organ-like bass of
+his note in passages which denounced the grovelling worship of earthly
+pre-eminence and riches, the clarion-like cry with which he concluded a
+stirring eulogy of the Christian's nobler service of things unseen.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Brethren, as His kingdom is not of this world, so too our kingdom is
+not of this world.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think you will admit, George,&quot; said Lady Atherley, as we left the
+church,<a name="Page_120" id="Page_120" /> &quot;that you have had a good sermon to-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, indeed,&quot; heartily assented Atherley. &quot;It was excellent. Your uncle
+certainly knows his business, which is more than can be said of most
+preachers. It was a really
+<ins class="correction" style="text-decoration: none"
+         title="Transcriber's Note: The original text reads 'spendid'">
+    splendid</ins>
+performance. But who on earth was he
+talking about&mdash;those wonderful people who don't care for money or
+success, or the best of everything generally? I never met any like
+them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear George! How extraordinary you are! Any one could see, I should
+have thought, that he meant Christians.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Atherley and the children walked home while we waited for the Canon, who
+stayed behind to exchange a few words in the vestry with his old
+schoolfellow, Mr. Jackson.<a name="Page_121" id="Page_121" /></p>
+
+<p>As we drove home he made, aloud, some reflections, probably suggested by
+the difference between their positions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It really grieves me to see Jackson where he is at his age. He deserves
+a better living. He is an excellent fellow, and not without ability, but
+wanting, unfortunately, in tact and <i>savoir-faire</i>. He always had an
+unhappy knack of blurting out the truth in season and out of season. I
+did my best to get him a good living once&mdash;a first-rate living&mdash;in Sir
+John Marsh's gift; and I warned him before he went to lunch with Sir
+John to be careful what he said. 'Sir John,' I said, 'is one of the old
+school; he thinks the Squire is pope of the parish, and you will have to
+humour him a little. He will talk a great deal of nonsense in this
+strain, and be careful not to contradict him, for <a name="Page_122" id="Page_122" />he can't bear it.'
+But Jackson did contradict him&mdash;flatly; he told me so himself, and, of
+course, Sir John would have nothing to say to him. 'But he made such
+extravagant statements,' said Jackson. 'If I had kept quiet he would
+have thought I agreed with him.'&mdash;'What did that matter?' I said. 'Once
+you were vicar you could have shown him you didn't.'&mdash;'The truth is,'
+said Jackson, 'I cannot sit by and hear black called white without
+protesting.' That is Jackson all over! A man of that kind will never get
+on. And then, such an imprudent marriage&mdash;a woman without a penny!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have never seen any one who wore such extraordinary bonnets,&quot; said
+Lady Atherley.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who was that young man who bowed <a name="Page_123" id="Page_123" />to the altar and crossed himself?&quot;
+asked the Canon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose that must be Mr. Austyn, curate in charge at Rood Warren. He
+comes over to help Mr. Jackson sometimes, I believe. George has met him;
+I have not. I want to get him over to dinner. He is a nephew of Mr.
+Austyn of Temple Leigh.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, that family!&quot; said the Canon. &quot;I am sorry he has taken up such an
+extreme line. It is a great mistake. In the Church, preferment in these
+days always goes to the moderate men.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Rood Warren is not far from here,&quot; said Lady Atherley, &quot;and he has a
+parishioner&mdash;Oh, that reminds me. Mr. Lyndsay, would you be so kind as
+to look out and tell the coachman to drive round by Monk's? I want to
+leave some soup.&quot;<a name="Page_124" id="Page_124" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Monk, I presume, is a sick labourer?&quot; said the Canon. &quot;I hope you are
+not as indiscriminate in your charities as most Ladies Bountiful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Jackson says this is a really deserving case. He knows all about
+him, though he really is in Mr. Austyn's parish. Monk has never had
+anything from the parish, and been working hard all his life, and he is
+past seventy. He was breaking stones on the road a few weeks ago; but he
+caught a chill or something one very cold day, and has been laid up ever
+since. This is the house. Oh, Mr. Lyndsay, you should not trouble to get
+out. As you are so kind, will you carry this in?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The interior of the tiny thatched cottage was scrupulously clean and
+neat, as they nearly all are in the valley, but barer and more scantily
+furnished than <a name="Page_125" id="Page_125" />most of them. No photographs or pictures decorated the
+white-washed walls, no scraps of carpet or matting hid the red-brick
+floor. The Monks were evidently of the poorest. An old piece of faded
+curtain had been hung from a rope between the chimney-piece and the door
+to shield the patient from the draught. He sat in a stiff wooden
+arm-chair near the fire, drawing his breath laboriously. &quot;He was better
+now,&quot; said his wife, a nurse as old and as frail-looking as himself.
+&quot;Nights was the worst.&quot; His shoulders were bent, his hair white with
+age, his withered features almost as coarse and as unshapely as the poor
+clothes he wore. The mask had been rough-hewn, to begin with; time and
+exposure had further defaced it. No gleam of intellectual life
+transpierced and illumined all.<a name="Page_126" id="Page_126" /> It was the face of an animal&mdash;ugly,
+ignorant, honest, patient. As I looked at it there came over me a rush
+of the pity I have so often felt for this suffering of age in
+poverty&mdash;so unpicturesque, so unwinning, to shallow sight so
+unpathetic&mdash;and I put out my hand and let it rest for a moment on his
+own, knotted with rheumatism, stained and seamed with toil. Then he
+looked up at me from under his shaggy brows with haggard, wistful eyes,
+and gasped: &quot;It's hard work, sir; it's hard work.&quot; And I went out into
+the sunshine, feeling that I had heard the epitome of his life.</p>
+
+<p>That night Mrs. Mallet surpassed herself by her rendering of a menu,
+especially composed by Atherley for the delectation of their guest.
+Their pains were not wasted. The Canon's commendation of <a name="Page_127" id="Page_127" />each
+course&mdash;and we talked of little else, I remember, from soup to
+dessert&mdash;was as discriminating as it was warm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am glad you approve of our cook, Uncle,&quot; said Lady Atherley in the
+drawing-room afterwards, &quot;for she is only a stop-gap. Our own cook left
+us quite suddenly the other day, and we had such difficulty in finding
+this one to take her place. No one can imagine how inconvenient it is to
+have a haunted house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear Jane, you don't mean to tell me you are afraid of ghosts?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh no, Uncle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And I am sure your husband is not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; but unfortunately cooks are.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Eh! what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then Lady Atherley willingly repeated the story of her troubles.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Preposterous! perfectly preposterous!&quot;<a name="Page_128" id="Page_128" /> cried the Canon. &quot;The Education
+Act in operation for all these years, and our lower orders still believe
+in bogies and hobgoblins! And yet it is hardly to be wondered at; their
+social superiors are not much wiser. The nonsense which is talked in
+society at present is perfectly incredible. Persons who are supposed to
+be in their right mind gravely relate to me such incidents that I could
+imagine myself transported to the Middle Ages. I hear of miraculous
+cures, of spirits summoned from the dead, of men and women floating in
+the air; and as to diabolic possession, it seems to have become as
+common as colds in the head.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He had risen, and now addressed us from the hearthrug.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then Mrs. Molyneux and others come and tell me about personal friends
+of <a name="Page_129" id="Page_129" />their own who can foretell everything that is going to happen; who
+can read your inmost thoughts; who can compel others to do this and to
+do that, whether they like it or no; who, being themselves in one
+quarter of the globe, constantly appear to their acquaintances in
+another. 'What!' I say. 'They can be in two places at once, then!
+Certainly no conjurer can equal that!'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what do they say to that?&quot; asked Atherley.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, they assure me the extraordinary beings who perform these marvels
+are not impostors, but very superior and religious characters. 'If they
+are not impostors,' I say, 'then their right place is the lunatic
+asylum.' 'Oh but, Canon Vernade, you don't understand; it is only our
+Western ignorance which makes <a name="Page_130" id="Page_130" />such things seem astonishing! Far more
+marvellous things are going on, and have been going on for centuries, in
+the East; for instance, in the Brotherhoods of&mdash;I forget&mdash;some
+unpronounceable name.' 'And how do you know they have?' I ask. 'Oh, by
+their traditions, which have been handed on for generations.' 'That is
+very reliable information indeed,' I say. 'Pray, have you ever played a
+game of Russian scandal?' 'Well; but, then, there are the sacred books.
+There can be no mistake about them, for they have been translated by
+learned European professors, who say the religious sentiments are
+perfectly beautiful.' 'Very possibly,' I say. 'But it does not follow
+that the historical statements are correct.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I gave my ladies' Bible-class a serious <a name="Page_131" id="Page_131" />lecture about it all the other
+day. I said: 'Do, my dear ladies, get rid of these childish notions,
+these uncivilised hankerings after marvels and magic, which make you the
+dupe of one charlatan after another. Take up science, for a change;
+study natural philosophy; try and acquire accurate notions of the system
+under which we live; realise that we are not moving on the stage of a
+Christmas pantomime, but in a universe governed by fixed laws, in which
+the miraculous performances you describe to me never can, and never
+could, have taken place. And be sure of this, that any book and any
+teacher, however admirable their moral teaching, who tell you that two
+and two make anything but four, are not inspired, so far as arithmetic
+and common sense are concerned.'&quot;<a name="Page_132" id="Page_132" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hear, hear!&quot; cried Atherley heartily.</p>
+
+<p>The Canon's brow contracted a little.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I need hardly explain,&quot; he said, &quot;that what I said did not apply to
+revealed truth. Jane, my dear, as I must leave by an early train
+to-morrow, I think I shall say good-night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I fell asleep that night early, and dreamt that I was sitting with
+Gladys in the frescoed dining-room of an old Italian palace. It was
+night, and through the open window came one long shaft of moonlight,
+that vanished in the aureole of the shaded lamp standing with wine and
+fruit upon the table between us. And I said in my dream&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Gladys, will it be always like this, or must we part again?&quot;<a name="Page_133" id="Page_133" /></p>
+
+<p>And she, smiling her slow soft smile, said: &quot;You may stay with me till
+the knock comes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What knock, my darling?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But even as I spoke I heard it, low and penetrating, and I stretched out
+my arms imploringly towards Gladys; but she only smiled, and the knock
+was repeated, and the whole scene dissolved around me, and I was sitting
+up in bed in semi-darkness, while somebody was tapping with a quick
+agitated touch at my door. I remembered then that I had forgotten to
+unlock it before I went to bed, and I rose at once and made haste to
+open it, not without a passing thrill of unpleasant conjecture as to
+what might be behind it. It was a tall figure in a long grey garment,
+who carried a lighted candle in his hand. For a moment, startled and
+stupefied as I <a name="Page_134" id="Page_134" />was, I failed to recognise the livid face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Canon Vernade! You are ill?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Too ill to speak, it would seem, for without a word he staggered forward
+and sank into a chair, letting the candle almost drop from his hand on
+to the table beside him; but when I put out my hand to ring the bell, he
+stayed me by a gesture. I looked at him, deadly pale, with blue shadows
+about the mouth and eyes, his head thrown helplessly back, and then I
+remembered some brandy I had in my dressing-bag. He took the glass from
+me and raised it to his lips with a trembling hand. I stood watching
+him, debating within myself whether I should disobey him by calling for
+help or not; but presently, to my great relief, I saw the stimulant take
+effect, and life come slowly <a name="Page_135" id="Page_135" />surging back in colour to his cheeks, in
+strength to his whole prostrate frame. He straightened himself a little,
+and turned upon me a less distracted gaze than before.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Lyndsay, there is something horrible in this house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you seen it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I saw nothing; it is what I felt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>I looked towards the grate. The fire had long been out, but the wood was
+still unconsumed, and I managed, inexpertly enough, to relight it. When
+a long blue flame sprang up, he drew his chair near the hearth and
+stretched towards the blaze his still tremulous hands.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Lyndsay,&quot; he said, in a voice as strangely altered as his whole
+appearance,<a name="Page_136" id="Page_136" /> &quot;may I sit here a little&mdash;till it is light? I dread to go
+back to that room. But don't let me keep you up.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said, and in all honesty, that I had no inclination to sleep. I put on
+my dressing-gown, threw a rug over his knees, and took my place opposite
+to him on the other side of the fire; and thus we kept our strange
+vigil, while slowly above us broke the grim, cold dawn of early
+spring-time, which even the birds do not brighten with their babble.</p>
+
+<p>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 <a name="Page_137" id="Page_137" />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&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What if it were all a delusion, and there be no Father, no Saviour?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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; <a name="Page_138" id="Page_138" />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.<a name="Page_139" id="Page_139" /></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V" />CHAPTER V</h3>
+
+<h4>AUSTYN'S GOSPEL</h4>
+
+
+<p>&quot;He did not see the ghost, you say; he only felt it? I should think he
+did&mdash;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.&quot;<a name="Page_140" id="Page_140" /></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You always account for the mechanism, but not for the effect. Why
+should indigestion take that mental form?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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&mdash;that, I need hardly say, I
+have <a name="Page_141" id="Page_141" />never experienced. Indeed, I don't dream.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But the ghost&mdash;the ghost he almost saw.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The sinking horror produced the ghost, instead of <i>vice versa</i>, 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 <a name="Page_142" id="Page_142" />knocking at the door when
+they call you in the morning? And ghosts are only waking dreams.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wonder if you ever had an illusion yourself&mdash;gave way to it, I mean.
+You were in love once&mdash;twice,&quot; I added hastily, in deference to Lady
+Atherley.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only once,&quot; said Atherley, calmly. &quot;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&mdash;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&mdash;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 <a name="Page_143" id="Page_143" />distinctly depressing, like half your religious
+beliefs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;George,&quot; said Lady Atherley, coming into the room at this instant;
+&quot;have you&mdash;oh, dear! what a state this room is in!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is the housemaids. They never will leave things as I put them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And it was only dusted and tidied an hour ago. Mr. Lyndsay, did you
+ever see anything like it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said &quot;Never.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If Lindy has a fault in this world, it is that he is as pernickety, as
+my old nurse used to say&mdash;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is what you always do do, before <a name="Page_144" id="Page_144" />you have been an hour there,&quot; I
+observed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Jane, in Heaven's name leave those things alone! Is this sort of thing
+all you came in for?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; I really came in to ask if you had read Lucinda Molyneux's letter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is not all. She wants to come and stay here for a few days.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What! Here? Now? Why, what&mdash;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<a name="Page_145" id="Page_145" /> 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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed! and how many times a year does he have a birthday?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When is she coming, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To-morrow. You would have seen that if you had read the letter. And
+there is a message for you in it, too.&quot;<a name="Page_146" id="Page_146" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;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&mdash;'studying
+for months under the guidance of its great apostle Baron Zinkersen&mdash;'
+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'&mdash;future underlined&mdash;'and I believe it will please even Sir
+George, for it so distinctly coincides with his own favourite theories.'
+Favourite theories, indeed! I <a name="Page_147" id="Page_147" />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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, George, he did not take any plate. It was money, and money Lucinda
+gave him herself for bringing her letters from her father.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where was her father, then?&quot; I inquired, much interested.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, he was&mdash;a&mdash;he was dead,&quot; answered Lady Atherley; &quot;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.&quot;<a name="Page_148" id="Page_148" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;The apostle I liked best,&quot; said Atherley, &quot;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!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dreadful woman!&quot; cried Lady Atherley. &quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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,<a name="Page_149" id="Page_149" /> Lindy, five years ago, when they raised poor old
+Professor Delaine, and he danced on the table and spelt bliss with one
+<i>s</i>? 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?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What! To dine?&quot; said Atherley. &quot;He won't come out to dinner in Lent.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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, <a name="Page_150" id="Page_150" />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;&mdash;&quot;We believe a thing, when we are prepared to act as if
+it were true.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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 <a name="Page_151" id="Page_151" />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.</p>
+
+<p>Profusion there was in one thing only&mdash;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 <a name="Page_152" id="Page_152" />his surroundings as in the little cottage at Rood
+Warren.</p>
+
+<p>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. &quot;I did hope he would have come in for a bit of lunch first,&quot; she
+said, sadly.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I cannot see why,&quot; observed Lady Atherley, as we sat together over the
+drawing-room fire after tea, &quot;because it is possible to have a very nice
+dinner without meat. I remember one we had <a name="Page_153" id="Page_153" />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&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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 No&euml;l, how introduced
+I know not, but it gave me an excuse for asking&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lady Atherley, what is Mrs. de No&euml;l like?&quot;<a name="Page_154" id="Page_154" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is she clever?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She seems a great favourite.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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 <a name="Page_155" id="Page_155" />fortunate that
+she married a sailor, because he is so much away from home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't they get on, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Strange people!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well; strange people to have on a visit. Invalids and&mdash;people that have
+nowhere else they could go to.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you mean poor people from the East End?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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 <a name="Page_156" id="Page_156" />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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a little pause, and then Lady Atherley added&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The door opened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_157" id="Page_157" />Why, George; how late you are, and&mdash;how wet! Is it raining?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; hard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you bought the ponies?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Austyn!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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 <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158" />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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh dear! I wish I had known he was coming. I would have ordered a
+dinner he would like.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Judging by his appearance, I should say the dinner he would like will
+be easily provided.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;not taking
+the lead in conversation, but <a name="Page_159" id="Page_159" />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.</p>
+
+<p>Atherley was impressed and even surprised to a degree unflattering to
+the rural clergy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is indeed a <i>rara avis</i> of a country curate,&quot; he confided to me
+after dinner, while Lady Atherley was unravelling with Austyn his
+connection with various families of her acquaintance. &quot;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&mdash;everybody has in this neighbourhood; <a name="Page_160" id="Page_160" />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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This led me to ask Austyn, as we went down the bachelor's passage to our
+rooms, if he were afraid of ghosts.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, but I have seen others who did, or thought they did. Do you believe
+in ghosts?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not know that I have considered the subject sufficiently to say
+whether I do or not. I see no <i>prim&acirc; facie</i> objection to <a name="Page_161" id="Page_161" />their
+appearance. That it would be supernatural offers no difficulty to a
+Christian whose religion is founded on, and bound up with, the
+supernatural.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you do see anything, I should like to know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I did not expect to find you up, Mr.<a name="Page_162" id="Page_162" /> 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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Breakfast is ready,&quot; said a servant at the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let me come down with you and hear about it,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast was set ready for him, but he refused to touch it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But tell me what you saw.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must have slept two or three hours when I awoke with the feeling that
+there was someone besides myself in the room.<a name="Page_163" id="Page_163" /> 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&mdash;my shutters were not
+closed&mdash;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; <i>that</i> 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&mdash;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 <a name="Page_164" id="Page_164" />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&quot;&mdash;he
+hesitated for an instant, and then added&mdash;&quot;in virtue of a higher power.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;moonlight, kneeling saint, and watching demon, which the leaf of
+some illustrated missal might have furnished.</p>
+
+<p>The bronze timepiece over the fireplace struck half-past six.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wonder if the carriage is at the door,&quot; said Austyn, rather
+anxiously. He went into the hall and looked out through the narrow
+windows. There was no carriage <a name="Page_165" id="Page_165" />visible, and I deeply regretted the
+second interruption that must follow when it did come.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us walk up the hill and on a little way together. The carriage will
+overtake us. My curiosity is not yet satisfied.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;brilliant, amber-tinted above the long blue shadows.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I had to speak first.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now tell me what the face was like.&quot;<a name="Page_166" id="Page_166" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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&mdash;that was like nothing I have ever felt before. It was the
+realisation of much which I have <a name="Page_167" id="Page_167" />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 &quot;stuff that dreams are made of&quot;&mdash;&quot;a dream within
+a dream,&quot; as one modern writer has called it; &quot;the shadow of a dream,&quot;
+as another has it. But last night&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He stood still, gazing straight before him, as if he saw something that
+I could not see.<a name="Page_168" id="Page_168" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;But last night,&quot; I repeated, as we walked on again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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&mdash;the real
+Life, illimitable, unfathomable, the element of our true being, with its
+eternal possibilities of misery or joy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And all this came to you through something of an evil nature?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; it was like the effect of lightning oh a pitch-dark night&mdash;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 <a name="Page_169" id="Page_169" />death must bring with it.
+Will you not rest here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But the ghost itself?&quot; I said, looking up at him as we both rested our
+arms upon the gate. &quot;What do you think of that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am afraid there is no possible doubt what that was. Its face, as I
+tell you, was a revelation of evil&mdash;evil and its punishment. It was a
+lost soul.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you mean by a lost soul, a soul that is in never-ending torment?&quot;<a name="Page_170" id="Page_170" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;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&mdash;eternal separation from the Divine
+Being.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Even if they repent and desire to be reunited to Him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly; that must be part of their suffering.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet you believe in a good God?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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<a name="Page_171" id="Page_171" /> Church; their first manifestation of God is
+always of 'one that is angry with us and threatens evil.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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 <a name="Page_172" id="Page_172" />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 <i>is</i> a God, a Sovereign, a Lawgiver, a Judge.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was gone, and I still stood thinking of his words, and of his gaze
+while he spoke them.<a name="Page_173" id="Page_173" /></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>And slowly, sadly, I repeated to myself the words&mdash;Sovereign, Lawgiver,
+Judge.</p>
+
+<p>I was hungering for bread; I was given a stone.<a name="Page_174" id="Page_174" /></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI" />CHAPTER VI</h3>
+
+<h4>MRS. MOLYNEUX'S GOSPEL</h4>
+
+
+<p>&quot;The room is all ready now,&quot; said Lady Atherley, &quot;but Lucinda has never
+written to say what train she is coming by.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A good thing, too,&quot; said Atherley; &quot;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.&quot;<a name="Page_175" id="Page_175" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you want to do at the other end of the village?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And on your way back,&quot; said Lady Atherley, &quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your last two stories are too highflown <a name="Page_176" id="Page_176" />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 medi&aelig;val turn of mind and his quite medi&aelig;val 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 <a name="Page_177" id="Page_177" />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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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 <a name="Page_178" id="Page_178" />wait for me. Heaven only knows when I shall be released.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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. &quot;Would you like to see
+him, sir?&quot; 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.</p>
+
+<p>Since then I have seen death&mdash;&quot;in state&quot; as it is called&mdash;invested with
+more <a name="Page_179" id="Page_179" />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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <a name="Page_180" id="Page_180" />intonation
+with which it is delivered. But the main question&mdash;the subject of
+Atherley's conversion&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not mention the name of the religion I wish to speak to you about,
+because&mdash;now I hope you won't be angry, but I am going to be quite
+horribly rude&mdash;because Sir George is certain to be so prejudiced
+against&mdash;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 <a name="Page_181" id="Page_181" />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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, that is so much to its credit,&quot; Atherley generously acknowledged.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And then, people said it was very immoral. Far from that; it has a very
+high ethical standard indeed&mdash;a very moral aim. One of its chief objects
+is to establish a universal brotherhood amongst men of all nations and
+sects.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A what?&quot; asked Atherley.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A universal brotherhood.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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 <i>ad nauseam</i> for centuries!&quot;<a name="Page_182" id="Page_182" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;By the Christian Church, I suppose you mean. And pray how have they
+practised their preaching?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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 <a name="Page_183" id="Page_183" />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&mdash;and even with the Mahommedans too, for that matter&mdash;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&mdash;this is what is so remarkable and elevated about it&mdash;it has
+nothing to do with God at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing to do with what did you say?&quot; asked Lady Atherley, diverted by
+this last remark from a long row of loops upon an ivory needle which she
+appeared to be counting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing to do with God.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you know, Lucinda,&quot; said Lady<a name="Page_184" id="Page_184" /> Atherley, &quot;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&mdash;just till the servants are out of the
+room? They might perhaps think it a little odd.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Atherley, &quot;and even unorthodox.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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, <a name="Page_185" id="Page_185" />like its cultivation of a sixth sense, for
+instance&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you mean common sense?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I never was more serious in my life. Show me a religion which
+cultivates common sense, and I will embrace it at once.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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, <a name="Page_186" id="Page_186" />and talk as easily with spirits as I am
+talking with you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed!&quot; said Lady Atherley politely, with her eyes fixed anxiously on
+something which had gone wrong with her knitting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Besides, <i>le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle</i>,&quot; said Atherley, &quot;if the
+spirits you are to converse with are anything like those we used to meet
+in your drawing-room.&quot;<a name="Page_187" id="Page_187" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is not the same thing at all; these were only spooks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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&mdash;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&mdash;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
+<a name="Page_188" id="Page_188" />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,&quot; said Mrs.
+Molyneux, resuming her fan, which she furled and unfurled as she
+continued, &quot;I was reading in a delightful book the other day&mdash;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&mdash;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 <a name="Page_189" id="Page_189" />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&mdash;and He
+has not any. Indeed, even to speak of Him as <i>He</i> is not right; the
+pronoun is very anthropomorphic and misleading. So, when you come to
+consider all this carefully, it is quite evident&mdash;though it sounds
+rather strange at first&mdash;that the only way you can really honour and
+reverence God is by forgetting Him altogether.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here Mrs. Molyneux paused, panting prettily for breath; but quickly
+recovering herself, proceeded: &quot;So in fact, it is just the same,
+practically speaking&mdash;re<a name="Page_190" id="Page_190" />member I say only practically speaking&mdash;as if
+there were no God; and this religion&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Excuse me,&quot; said Atherley; &quot;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?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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
+<a name="Page_191" id="Page_191" />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 <a name="Page_192" id="Page_192" />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&mdash;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&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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, <a name="Page_193" id="Page_193" />and Mrs.
+Molyneux to denounce it with unabated fervour.</p>
+
+<p>My thoughts wandered&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, how I pray that I may see the ghost!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The night was stormy, and I could not sleep. The wind wailed fitfully
+outside the house, while within doors and win<a name="Page_194" id="Page_194" />dows 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the cries of a woman in terror
+or in pain.</p>
+
+<p>They disturbed even the sleepers, it was evident; for when I reached the
+end <a name="Page_195" id="Page_195" />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.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Anything wrong?&quot; I called as he passed me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only Mrs. Molyneux's prayer has been granted.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course she was bound to see it,&quot; he said next day, as we sat
+together over a late breakfast. &quot;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
+<a name="Page_196" id="Page_196" />described as being in her sitting-room: and Jane herself was up till
+late&mdash;or rather early&mdash;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hardly had he said the words when outside, in the hall, resounded a
+prolonged and stentorian wail.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What on earth is the matter now?&quot; said Atherley, rising and making for
+the door. He opened it just in time for us to see Mrs. Mallet go
+by&mdash;Mrs. Mallet bathed in tears and weeping as I never have heard an
+adult weep before or since&mdash;in a manner which is graphically and
+literally <a name="Page_197" id="Page_197" />described by the phrase &quot;roaring and crying.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, Mrs. Mallet! What on earth is the matter?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Send for Mrs. de No&euml;l,&quot; cried Mrs. Mallet in tones necessarily raised
+to a high and piercing key by the sobs with which they were accompanied.
+&quot;Send for Mrs. de No&euml;l; 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 <a name="Page_198" id="Page_198" />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 No&euml;l, '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&mdash;and Hann can tell you that I speak the truth, for she was
+there&mdash;'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&mdash;more than
+ever I told a soul since I come here, which I promised Mrs. de No&euml;l 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, <a name="Page_199" id="Page_199" />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 No&euml;l 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 No&euml;l 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 No&euml;l&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The swing door closed behind her, and the sounds of her grief and her
+reiterated appeals to Mrs. de No&euml;l died slowly away in the distance.<a name="Page_200" id="Page_200" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;What on earth have you been saying to her?&quot; said Atherley to his wife,
+who had come out into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But she can cook. Pray what are we to do for dinner?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am sure I don't know. I never knew anything so unlucky as it all is,
+and Lucinda looking so ill.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you had better send for the doctor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She won't hear of it. She says nobody could do her any good but
+Cecilia.&quot;<a name="Page_201" id="Page_201" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;What! 'Send for Mrs. de No&euml;l?' Poor Cissy! What do these excited
+females imagine she is going to do?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know, but I do wish we could get her here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But she is in London, is she not, with Aunt Henrietta?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, and only comes home to-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose she is sure to come?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Like a shot, if you say we are all ill.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, that would frighten her. I will just say we want her particularly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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 <a name="Page_202" id="Page_202" />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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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 <a name="Page_203" id="Page_203" />should go into the drawing-room and talk
+to Mrs. Molyneux, who had just come down.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did she ask to see me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; but when I proposed your going in, she did not say no.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;she, the most ready, the most voluble of <a name="Page_204" id="Page_204" />women.
+Then followed an awkward pause, which I desperately broke by saying I
+was afraid she was not better.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Better! I was not ill,&quot; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Lyndsay, why are you going? Was I rude? I did not mean to be.
+Forgive me; I am so miserable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You could not be rude, I think, even if you wished to. It is I who am
+inconsiderate in intruding&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are not intruding; please stay.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I would gladly stay if I could help you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can any one help me, I wonder?&quot;<a name="Page_205" id="Page_205" /> 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&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can any one help me, I wonder?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I sat down on a chair near her and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you think it would help you to talk of what has frightened you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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&mdash;just as words and nothing more.&quot;<a name="Page_206" id="Page_206" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can you tell me what you saw?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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&mdash;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 M&acirc;y&acirc;, a delusion, this
+sense&mdash;life&mdash;it is no life at all. The actual life is behind, under it
+all; it goes deep deep down, it stretches on, on&mdash;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 <a name="Page_207" id="Page_207" />have no sense for you any more than they would
+have had for me yesterday.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But tell me, why should this discovery of this other life make you so
+miserable?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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&mdash;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&mdash;<a name="Page_208" id="Page_208" />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?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She lifted towards me a face quivering with excitement, and eyes that
+waited wild and famished for my answer&mdash;the answer I had not for her,
+and then indeed I tasted the full bitterness of the cup of unbelief.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; she said presently, &quot;I knew it; no one can do me any good but
+Cecilia de No&euml;l.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And she believes?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not what she believes, it is what she is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209" />She rested her head upon her hand and looked musingly towards the
+window, down which the drops were trickling, and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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 <a name="Page_210" id="Page_210" />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&mdash;men as well
+as women. I know why&mdash;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,&quot;&mdash;she hesitated <a name="Page_211" id="Page_211" />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, &quot;like that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Mrs. Molyneux,&quot; I cried, &quot;if there be love like that in the world,
+then&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The door opened and Castleman entered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you please, sir, the carriage is at the door.&quot;<a name="Page_212" id="Page_212" /></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII" />CHAPTER VII</h3>
+
+<h4>CECILIA'S GOSPEL</h4>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <a name="Page_213" id="Page_213" />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 No&euml;l? And yet no, I reflected as I went towards them, for she held a
+baby in her arms&mdash;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&mdash;<a name="Page_214" id="Page_214" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mrs. de No&euml;l?&quot; I murmured inquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>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 <a name="Page_215" id="Page_215" />of most men, even of the better sort.
+&quot;I will love you, my neighbour,&quot; we thereon decipher, &quot;when I have
+attended to my own business, in the first place; if you are lovable, or
+at least likeable, in the second.&quot; But in the transparent gaze that
+Cecilia de No&euml;l 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 <a name="Page_216" id="Page_216" />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.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Law bless me, mem!&quot; said the newcomer, &quot;I could not think wherever you
+could be. I have been looking up and down for you, all through the
+first-class carriages.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am so sorry, Parkins,&quot; said Mrs. de No&euml;l penitently; &quot;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 <a name="Page_217" id="Page_217" />got into a third-class carriage, so I thought
+the best way would be to get in with them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And where, if you please, mem,&quot; inquired Parkins, in an icy tone and
+with a face stiffened by repressed displeasure&mdash;&quot;where do you think you
+have left your dressing-bag and humbrella?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. de No&euml;l fixed her sweet eyes upon the speaker, as if striving to
+recollect the answer to this question and then replied&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Upon which Parkins gave a snort of irrepressible exasperation, and,
+evidently renouncing her mistress as beyond hope, <a name="Page_218" id="Page_218" />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 No&euml;l,
+still on the same spot and in the same attitude as we had left her, and
+all that she said was&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was embarrassed by this question, to which my own experience did not
+<a name="Page_219" id="Page_219" />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 No&euml;l 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&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, you are hurt! you&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She stopped abruptly; she had divined the truth, and her eyes grew
+softer with such tender pity as not yet had shone for me&mdash;motherless,
+sisterless&mdash;on any woman's face. As we drove home that evening she heard
+the story that never had been told before.<a name="Page_220" id="Page_220" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;You may have your faults, Cissy,&quot; said Atherley, &quot;but I will say this
+for you&mdash;for smoothing people down when they have been rubbed the wrong
+way, you never had your equal.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mrs. Molyneux, I hear, has gone to sleep,&quot; he went on; &quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor Parkins is rather put out,&quot; said Mrs. de No&euml;l in her slow gentle
+way. &quot;It is all my fault. I forgot to pack up <a name="Page_221" id="Page_221" />the bodice of my best
+evening gown, and Parkins says it is the only one I look fit to be seen
+in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, my dear Cecilia,&quot; said Lady Atherley, looking up from the work
+which she pursued beside a shaded lamp, &quot;why did not Parkins pack it up
+herself?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, I expect he has a nice time of it,&quot; said Atherley. &quot;However, it is
+not my fault. I warned him how it would be <a name="Page_222" id="Page_222" />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.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't believe you said anything of the kind,&quot; observed Lady Atherley.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So he was,&quot; agreed Atherley; &quot;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.&quot;<a name="Page_223" id="Page_223" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;What!&quot; cried Lady Atherley incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What really did happen, Jane,&quot; said Mrs. de No&euml;l, &quot;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.&quot;<a name="Page_224" id="Page_224" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not a doubt of it,&quot; said Atherley.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do not believe him, Cecilia,&quot; said Lady Atherley: &quot;he thinks there is
+no one in the world like you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fortunately for the world,&quot; said Atherley; &quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He went, and soon afterwards Lady Atherley followed him.</p>
+
+<p>Then the two little boys came in with Tip.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We are not allowed to take him upstairs,&quot; explained Harold, &quot;so we
+thought he might stay with you and Mr. Lyndsay for a little, till
+Charles comes for him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you would let him lie upon your <a name="Page_225" id="Page_225" />dress, Aunt Cissy,&quot; suggested
+Denis; &quot;he would like that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Silence followed, broken only by the ticking of the clock and the
+wailing of the wind outside. Mrs. de No&euml;l 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, <a name="Page_226" id="Page_226" />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&mdash;for ever. But,
+alas! the clock was checking the flying minutes and chanting the
+departing quarters, and presently the dressing-bell rang, Mrs. de No&euml;l
+stirred, gave a long sigh, and, plainly from the fulness of her <a name="Page_227" id="Page_227" />heart
+and of the thoughts she had so long been following, said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By the way,&quot; said Atherley that night after dinner, when Mrs. Molyneux
+was not present, &quot;where are you going to put Cissy to-night? Are you
+going to make a bachelor of her too?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, such an uncomfortable arrangement!&quot; said Lady Atherley. &quot;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.&quot;<a name="Page_228" id="Page_228" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cissy is to keep the ghost at bay, is she?&quot; said Atherley. &quot;I hope she
+may. I don't want another night as lively as the last.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who else has seen the ghost?&quot; asked Mrs. de No&euml;l, thoughtfully. &quot;Has
+Mr. Lyndsay?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Would you tell me, Mr. Lyndsay?&quot; asked Mrs. de No&euml;l.</p>
+
+<p>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.<a name="Page_229" id="Page_229" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well now, Cissy is thoroughly well frightened,&quot; observed Atherley.
+&quot;Perhaps we had better go to bed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is no good saying so to Lucinda,&quot; said Lady Atherley, as we all
+rose, &quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>I was late for breakfast that day.<a name="Page_230" id="Page_230" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Lyndsay, Tip is all right again,&quot; cried Denis at sight of me. &quot;Mrs.
+Mallet says it was chicken bones he stole from the cat's dish.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that all?&quot; observed Atherley sardonically; &quot;I thought he must have
+seen the ghost. By the bye, Cissy, did you see it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Mrs. de No&euml;l simply, at which Atherley visibly started, and
+instantly began talking of something else.</p>
+
+<p>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 <a name="Page_231" id="Page_231" />hoped we should have no more trouble with the ghost, when
+she answered in words I have often since admiringly quoted&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After Mrs. Molyneux had started, with Mrs. de No&euml;l 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.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I thought you had gone to pay calls with Lady Atherley?&quot;<a name="Page_232" id="Page_232" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Certainly to meet Mrs. de No&euml;l 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.</p>
+
+<p>We went on till we reached Beggar's Stile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sit down,&quot; said Atherley, tossing on to the wet step a coat he carried
+over his <a name="Page_233" id="Page_233" />arm. &quot;And there is a cigarette; you must smoke, if you please,
+or at least pretend to do so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What does all this mean? What are you up to, George?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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&mdash;Here she is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He went forward to meet and to stop <a name="Page_234" id="Page_234" />the carriage, out of which, at his
+suggestion, Mrs. de No&euml;l readily came down to join us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do not get up, Mr. Lyndsay,&quot; she called out as she came towards us, &quot;or
+I will go away. I don't want to sit down.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sit down, Lindy,&quot; said Atherley sharply, &quot;Cissy likes tobacco in the
+open air.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She rested her arms upon the gate and looked downwards.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The dear dear old river! It makes me feel young again to look at it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cissy,&quot; said Atherley, his arms on the gate, his eyes staring straight
+towards the opposite horizon, &quot;tell us about the ghost; were you
+frightened?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a certain tension in the pause which followed. Would she tell
+us or not? I almost felt Atherley's rebound <a name="Page_235" id="Page_235" />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:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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 <a name="Page_236" id="Page_236" />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&mdash;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 <a name="Page_237" id="Page_237" />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&mdash;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&mdash;oh die so gladly! And always as if this
+were <a name="Page_238" id="Page_238" />something not our own, but part of that wonderful great Love above
+us, about us, everywhere, clasping us all so tenderly and safely!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here her voice trembled and failed; she waited a little and then went
+on, &quot;Ah, I am too stupid to say rightly what I mean, but you who are
+clever will understand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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 ...&mdash;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&mdash;so much <a name="Page_239" id="Page_239" />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.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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?<a name="Page_240" id="Page_240" /></p>
+
+<p>&quot;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&mdash;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&mdash;sorrow more hopeless, more lonely. For the strange
+thing was, the <a name="Page_241" id="Page_241" />moaning seemed to come from so far far away; not only
+from somewhere millions and millions of miles away, but&mdash;this is the
+strangest of all&mdash;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 <a name="Page_242" id="Page_242" />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&mdash;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&mdash;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, <a name="Page_243" id="Page_243" />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 <a name="Page_244" id="Page_244" />in this world and in this
+place. And I said: 'Why did you not turn for help to God?'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then it gave a terrible answer: it said, 'What is God?'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'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.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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, <a name="Page_245" id="Page_245" />and perhaps I may make
+you feel what I feel all around us.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And at last it spoke, and the whisper was not far away, but near. It
+said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'It is enough; now I know what God is!'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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 <a name="Page_246" id="Page_246" />strong feeling that I have been able to help
+it, and that it will trouble you no more.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Surely it is late! I must go at once. I promised to have tea with the
+children.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>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&mdash;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 <a name="Page_247" id="Page_247" />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.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps I saw all things irradiated by the light which had risen
+upon my darkness&mdash;the light that never was on land or sea, but shines
+reflected in the human face.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>&quot;George, I am waiting for your interpretation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is very simple, Lindy,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>But there was a tone in his voice I had heard once&mdash;and only
+once&mdash;before, when, <a name="Page_248" id="Page_248" />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.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And let it be a dream,&quot; I said. &quot;It is of no consequence, for the
+dreamer remains, breathing and walking on this solid earth. I have
+touched her hand, I<a name="Page_249" id="Page_249" /> 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?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But Atherley was silent.
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_END" id="THE_END" />THE END</h2>
+
+<p><small>Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents was added by the transcriber to ease navigation.  Several spelling errors were
+corrected: childen/children, greal/great, spendid/splendid.</small></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h6><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250" />
+<span class='smcap'>Richard Clay And Sons, Limited</span>,<br />
+BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND<br />
+BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
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+<p><b>19 Cometh Up as a Flower.</b> By <span class='smcap'>Rhoda Broughton.</span></p>
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+<p><b>20 Cecilia de Noel.</b> By <span class='smcap'>Lanoe Falconer.</span></p>
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+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cecilia de Noel, by Lanoe Falconer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Cecilia de Noel
+
+Author: Lanoe Falconer
+
+Release Date: March 4, 2005 [EBook #15258]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CECILIA DE NOEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Patricia A. Benoy and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "So we went down our stairs."--Chap. II.]
+
+_Cecilia de Noel_
+
+BY
+
+LANOE FALCONER
+
+MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
+ST. MARTINS ST., LONDON
+1910
+
+[Illustration: Title Page]
+
+
+CECILIA DE NOEL
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ATHERLEY'S GOSPEL
+
+
+"There is no revelation but that of science," said Atherley.
+
+It was after dinner in the drawing-room. From the cold of the early
+spring night, closed shutters and drawn curtains carefully protected us;
+shaded lamps and a wood fire diffused an exquisite twilight; we breathed
+a mild and even balmy atmosphere scented with hothouse flowers.
+
+"And this revelation completely satisfies all reasonable desires," he
+continued, surveying his small audience from the hearthrug where he
+stood; "mind, I say all reasonable desires. If you have a healthy
+appetite for bread, you will get it and plenty of it, but if you have a
+sickly craving for manna, why then you will come badly off, that is all.
+This is the gospel of fact, not of fancy: of things as they actually
+are, you know, instead of as A dreamt they were, or B decided they ought
+to be, or C would like to have them. So this gospel is apt to look a
+little dull beside the highly coloured romances the churches have
+accustomed us to--as a modern plate-glass window might, compared with a
+stained-glass oriel in a mediaeval cathedral. There is no doubt which is
+the prettier of the two. The question is, do you want pretty colour or
+do you want clear daylight?" He paused, but neither of his listeners
+spoke. Lady Atherley was counting the stitches of her knitting; I was
+too tired; so he resumed: "For my part, I prefer the daylight and the
+glass, without any daubing. What does science discover in the universe?
+Precision, accuracy, reliability--any amount of it; but as to pity,
+mercy, love! The fact is, that famous simile of the angel playing at
+chess was a mistake. Very smart, I grant you, but altogether misleading.
+Why! the orthodox quote it as much as the others--always a bad sign. It
+tickles these anthropomorphic fancies, which are at the bottom of all
+their creeds. Imagine yourself playing at chess, not with an angel, but
+with an automaton, an admirably constructed automaton whose mechanism
+can outwit your brains any day: calm and strong, if you like, but no
+more playing for love than the clock behind me is ticking for love;
+there you have a much clearer notion of existence. A much clearer
+notion, and a much more satisfactory notion too, I say. Fair play and no
+favour! What more can you ask, if you are fit to live?"
+
+His kindling glance sought the farther end of the long drawing-room; had
+it fallen upon me instead, perhaps that last challenge might have been
+less assured; and yet how bravely it became the speaker, whose
+wide-browed head a no less admirable frame supported. Even the stiff
+evening uniform of his class could not conceal the grace of form which
+health and activity had moulded, working through highly favoured
+generations. There was latent force implied in every line of it, and,
+in the steady poise of look and mien, that perfect nervous balance
+which is the crown of strength.
+
+"And with our creed, of course, we shift our moral code as well. The ten
+commandments, or at least the second table, we retain for obvious
+reasons, but the theological virtues must be got rid of as quickly as
+possible. Charity, for instance, is a mischievous quality--it is too
+indulgent to weakness, which is not to be indulged or encouraged, but
+stamped out. Hope is another pernicious quality leading to all kinds of
+preposterous expectations which never are, or can be, fulfilled; and as
+to faith, it is simply a vice. So far from taking anything on trust, you
+must refuse to accept any statement whatsoever till it is proved so
+plainly you can't help believing it whether you like it or not; just as
+a theorem in--"
+
+"George," said Lady Atherley, "what is that noise?"
+
+The question, timed as Lady Atherley's remarks so often were, came with
+something of a shock. Her husband, thus checked in full flight, seemed
+to reel for a moment, but quickly recovering himself, asked resignedly:
+"What noise?"
+
+"Such a strange noise, like the howling of a dog."
+
+"Probably it is the howling of a dog."
+
+"No, for it came from inside the house, and Tip sleeps outside now, in
+the saddle-room, I believe. It sounded in the servants' wing. Did you
+hear it, Mr. Lyndsay?"
+
+I confessed that I had not.
+
+"Well, as I can offer no explanation," said Atherley, "perhaps I may be
+allowed to go on with what I was saying. Doubt, obstinate and almost
+invincible doubt, is the virtue we must now cultivate, just as--"
+
+"Why, there it is again," cried Lady Atherley.
+
+Atherley instantly rang the bell near him, and while Lady Atherley
+continued to repeat that it was very strange, and that she could not
+imagine what it could be, he waited silently till his summons was
+answered by a footman.
+
+"Charles, what is the meaning of that crying or howling which seems to
+come from your end of the house?"
+
+"I think, Sir George," said Charles, with the coldly impassive manner of
+a highly-trained servant--"I think, Sir George, it must be Ann, the
+kitchen-maid, that you hear."
+
+"Indeed! and may I ask what Ann, the kitchen-maid, is supposed to be
+doing?"
+
+"If you please, Sir George, she is in hysterics."
+
+"Oh! why?" exclaimed Lady Atherley plaintively.
+
+"Because, my lady, Mrs. Mallet has seen the ghost!"
+
+"Because Mrs. Mallet has seen the ghost!" repeated Atherley. "Pray, what
+is Mrs. Mallet herself doing under the circumstances?"
+
+"She is having some brandy-and-water, Sir George."
+
+"Mrs. Mallet is a sensible woman," said Atherley heartily; "Ann, the
+kitchen-maid, had better follow her example."
+
+"You may go, Charles," said Lady Atherley; and, as the door closed
+behind him, exclaimed, "I wish that horrid woman had never entered the
+house!"
+
+"What horrid woman? Your too sympathetic kitchen-maid?"
+
+"No, that--that Mrs. Mallet."
+
+"Why are you angry with her? Because she has seen the ghost?"
+
+"Yes, for I told her most particularly the very day I engaged her, after
+Mrs. Webb left us in that sudden way--I told her I never allowed the
+ghost to be mentioned."
+
+"And why, my dear, did you break your own excellent rule by mentioning
+it to her?"
+
+"Because she had the impertinence to tell me, almost directly she came
+into the morning-room, that she knew all about the ghost; but I stopped
+her at once, and said that if ever she spoke of such a thing especially
+to the other servants, I should be very much displeased; and now she
+goes and behaves in this way."
+
+"Where did you pick up this viper?"
+
+"She comes from Quarley Beacon. There was no one in this stupid village
+who could cook at all, and Cecilia de Noel, who recommended her--"
+
+"Cecilia de Noel!" repeated Atherley, with that long-drawn emphasis
+which suggests so much. "My dear Jane, I must say that in taking a
+servant on Cissy's recommendation you did not display your usual sound
+common sense. I should as soon have thought of asking her to buy me a
+gun, knowing that she would carefully pick out the one least likely to
+shoot anything. Cissy is accustomed to look upon a servant as something
+to be waited on and taken care of. Her own household, as we all know,
+is composed chiefly of chronic invalids."
+
+"But I explained to Cecilia that I wanted somebody who was strong as
+well as a good cook; and I am sure there is nothing the matter with Mrs.
+Mallet. She is as fat as possible, and as red! Besides, she has never
+been one of Cecilia's servants; she only goes there to help sometimes;
+and she says she is perfectly respectable."
+
+"Mrs. Mallet says that Cissy is perfectly respectable?"
+
+"No, George; it is not likely that I should allow a person in Mrs.
+Mallet's position to speak disrespectfully to me about Cecilia. Cecilia
+said Mrs. Mallet was perfectly respectable."
+
+"I should not think dear old Ciss exactly knew the meaning of the word."
+
+"Cecilia may be peculiar in many ways, but she is too much of a lady to
+send me any one who was not quite nice. I don't believe there is
+anything against Mrs. Mallet's character. She cooks very well, you must
+allow that; you said only two days ago you never had tasted an omelette
+so nicely made in England."
+
+"Did she cook that omelette? Then I am sure she is perfectly
+respectable; and pray let her see as many ghosts as she cares to,
+especially if it leads to nothing worse than her taking a moderate
+quantity of brandy. Time to smoke, Lindy. I am off."
+
+I dragged myself up after my usual fashion, and was preparing to follow
+him, when Lady Atherley, directly he was gone, began:
+
+"It is such a pity that clever people can never see things as others do.
+George always goes on in this way as if the ghost were of no
+consequence, but I always knew how it would be. Of course it is nice
+that George should come in for the place, as he might not have done if
+his uncle had married, and people said it would be delightful to live in
+such an old house, but there are a good many drawbacks, I can assure
+you. Sir Marmaduke lived abroad for years before he died, and everything
+has got into such a state. We have had to nearly refurnish the house;
+the bedrooms are not done yet. The servants' accommodation is very bad
+too, and there was no proper cooking-range in the kitchen. But the worst
+of all is the ghost. Directly I heard of it I knew we should have
+trouble with the servants; and we had not been here a month when our
+cook, who had lived with us for years, gave warning because the place
+was damp. At first she said it was the ghost, but when I told her not to
+talk such nonsense she said it was the damp. And then it is so awkward
+about visitors. What are we to do when the fishing season begins? I
+cannot get George to understand that some people have a great objection
+to anything of the kind, and are quite angry if you put them into a
+haunted room. And it is much worse than having only one haunted room,
+because we could make that into a bachelor's bedroom--I don't think they
+mind; or a linen cupboard, as they do at Wimbourne Castle; but this
+ghost seems to appear in all the rooms, and even in the halls and
+passages, so I cannot think what we are to do."
+
+I said it was extraordinary, and I meant it. That a ghost should venture
+into Atherley's neighbourhood was less amazing than that it should
+continue to exist in his wife's presence, so much more fatal than his
+eloquence to all but the tangible and the solid. Her orthodoxy is above
+suspicion, but after some hours of her society I am unable to
+contemplate any aspects of life save the comfortable and the
+uncomfortable: while the Universe itself appears to me only a gigantic
+apparatus especially designed to provide Lady Atherley and her class
+with cans of hot water at stated intervals, costly repasts elaborately
+served, and all other requisites of irreproachable civilisation.
+
+But before I had time to say more, Atherley in his smoking-coat looked
+in to see if I was coming or not.
+
+"Don't keep Mr. Lyndsay up late, George," said my kind hostess; "he
+looks so tired."
+
+"You look dead beat," he said later on, in his own particular and untidy
+den, as he carefully stuffed the bowl of his pipe. "I think it would go
+better with you, old chap, if you did not hold yourself in quite so
+tight. I don't want you to rave or commit suicide in some untidy
+fashion, as the hero of a French novel does; but you are as well-behaved
+as a woman, without a woman's grand resources of hysterics and general
+unreasonableness all round. You always were a little too good for human
+nature's daily food. Your notions on some points are quite unwholesomely
+superfine. It would be a comfort to see you let out in some way. I wish
+you would have a real good fling for once."
+
+"I should have to pay too dear for it afterwards. My superfine habits
+are not a matter of choice only, you must remember."
+
+"Oh!--the women! Not the best of them is worth bothering about, let
+alone a shameless jilt."
+
+"You were always hard upon her, George. She jilted a cripple for a very
+fine specimen of the race. Some of your favourite physiologists would
+say she was quite right."
+
+"You never understood her, Lindy. It was not a case of jilting a cripple
+at all. She jilted three thousand a year and a small place for ten
+thousand a year and a big one."
+
+After all, it did hurt a little, which Atherley must have divined, for
+crossing the room on some pretext or another he let his strong hand
+rest, just for an instant, gently upon my shoulder, thus, after the
+manner of his race, mutely and concisely expressing affection and
+sympathy that might have swelled a canto.
+
+"I shall be sorry," he said presently, lying rather than sitting in the
+deep chair beside the fire, "very sorry, if the ghost is going to make
+itself a nuisance."
+
+"What is the story of the ghost?"
+
+"Story! God bless you, it has none to tell, sir; at least it never has
+told it, and no one else rightly knows it. It--I mean the ghost--is
+older than the family. We found it here when we came into the place
+about two hundred years ago, and it refused to be dislodged. It is
+rather uncertain in its habits. Sometimes it is not heard of for years;
+then all at once it reappears, generally, I may observe, when some
+imaginative female in the house is in love, or out of spirits, or bored
+in any other way. She sees it, and then, of course--the complaint being
+highly infectious--so do a lot more. One of the family started the
+theory it was the ghost of the portrait, or rather the unknown
+individual whose portrait hangs high up over the sideboard in the
+dining-room."
+
+"You don't mean the lady in green velvet with the snuff-box?"
+
+"Certainly not; that is my own great-grand-aunt. I mean a square of
+black canvas with one round yellow spot in the middle and a dirty white
+smudge under the spot. There are members of this family--Aunt Eleanour,
+for instance--who tell me the yellow spot is a man's face and the dirty
+white smudge is an Elizabethan ruff. Then there is a picture of a man in
+armour in the oak room, which I don't believe is a portrait at all; but
+Aunt Henrietta swears it is, and of the ghost, too--as he was before he
+died, of course. And very interesting details both my aunts are ready to
+furnish concerning the two originals. It is extraordinary what an amount
+of information is always forthcoming about things of which nobody can
+know anything--as about the next world, for instance. The, last time I
+went to church the preacher gave as minute an account of what our
+post-mortem experiences were to be as if he had gone through it all
+himself several times."
+
+"Well, does the ghost usually appear in a ruff or in armour?"
+
+"It depends entirely upon who sees it--a ghost always does. Last night,
+for instance, I lay you odds it wore neither ruff nor armour, because
+Mrs. Mallet is not likely to have heard of either the one or the other.
+Not that she saw the ghost--not she. What she saw was a bogie, not a
+ghost."
+
+"Why, what is the difference?"
+
+"Immense! As big as that which separates the objective from the
+subjective. Any one can see a bogie. It is a real thing belonging to the
+external world. It may be a bright light, a white sheet, or a black
+shadow--always at night, you know, or at least in the dusk, when you are
+apt to be a little mixed in your observations. The best example of a
+bogie was Sir Walter Scott's. It looked--in the twilight
+remember--exactly like Lord Byron, who had not long departed this life
+at the time Sir Walter saw it. Nine men out of ten would have gone off
+and sworn they had seen a ghost; why, religions have been founded on
+just such stuff: but Sir Walter, as sane a man as ever lived--though he
+did write poetry--kept his head clear and went up closer to his ghost,
+which proved on examination to be a waterproof."
+
+"A waterproof?"
+
+"Or a railway rug--I forget which: the moral is the same."
+
+"Well, what is a ghost?"
+
+"A ghost is nothing--an airy nothing manufactured by your own disordered
+senses of your own over-excited brain."
+
+"I beg to observe that I never saw a ghost in my life."
+
+"I am glad to hear it. It does you credit. If ever any one had an excuse
+for seeing a ghost it would be a man whose spine was jarred. But I meant
+nothing personal by the pronoun--only to give greater force to my
+remarks. The first person singular will do instead. The ghost belongs to
+the same lot, as the faces that make mouths at me when I have
+brain-fever, the reptiles that crawl about when I have an attack of the
+D.T., or--to take a more familiar example--the spots I see floating
+before my eyes when my liver is out of order. You will allow there is
+nothing supernatural in all that?"
+
+"Certainly. Though, did not that pretty niece of Mrs. Molyneux's say she
+used to see those spots floating before her eyes when a misfortune was
+impending?"
+
+"I fancy she did, and true enough too, as such spots would very likely
+precede a bilious attack, which is misfortune enough while it lasts. But
+still, even Mrs. Molyneux's niece, even Mrs. Molyneux herself, would
+not say the fever faces, or the reptiles, or the spots, were
+supernatural. And in fact the ghost is, so far, more--more _recherche_,
+let us say, than the other things. It takes more than a bilious attack
+or a fever, or even D.T., to produce a ghost. It takes nothing less than
+a pretty high degree of nervous sensibility and excitable imagination.
+Now these two disorders have not been much developed yet by the masses,
+in spite of the school-boards: ergo, any apparition which leads to
+hysterics or brandy-and-water in the servants' hall is a bogie, not a
+ghost."
+
+He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and added:
+
+"And now, Lindy, as we don't want another ghost haunting the house. I
+will conduct you to by-by."
+
+It was a strange house, Weald Manor, designed, one might suppose, by
+some inveterate enemy of light. It lay at the foot of a steep hill which
+screened it from the morning sun, and the few windows which looked
+towards the rising day were so shaped as to admit but little of its
+brightness. At night it was even worse, at least in the halls and
+passages, for there, owing probably to the dark oak which lined both
+walls and floor, a generous supply of lamps did little more than
+illumine the surface of the darkness, leaving unfathomed and unexplained
+mysterious shadows that brooded in distant corners, or, towering
+giant-wise to the ceiling, loomed ominously overhead.
+Will-o'-the-wisp-like reflections from our lighted candles danced in the
+polished surface of panel and balustrade, as from the hall we went
+upstairs, I helping myself from step to step by Atherley's arm, as
+instinctively, as unconsciously almost, as he offered it. We stopped on
+the first landing. Before us rose the stairs leading to the gallery
+where Atherley's bedroom was: to our left ran "the bachelor's passage,"
+where I was lodged.
+
+"Night, night," were Atherley's parting words. "Don't dream of flirts or
+ghosts, but sleep sound."
+
+Sleep sound! the kind words sounded like mockery. Sleep to me, always
+chary of her presence, was at best but a fair-weather friend, instantly
+deserting me when pain or exhaustion made me crave the more for rest and
+forgetfulness; but I had something to do in the interim--a little
+_auto-da-fe_ to perform, by which, with that faith in ceremonial, so
+deep laid in human nature, I meant once for all to lay the ghost that
+haunted me--the ghost of a delightful but irrevocable past, with which
+I had dallied too long.
+
+Sitting before the wood-fire I slowly unfolded them: the three
+faintly-perfumed sheets with the gilt monogram above the pointed
+writing:
+
+     "Dear Mr. Lyndsay," ran the first, "why did you not come over
+     to-day? I was expecting you to appear all the afternoon.--Yours
+     sincerely, G.E.L."
+
+The second was dated four weeks later--
+
+     "You silly boy! I forbid you ever to write or talk of yourself in
+     such a way again. You are not a cripple; and if you had ever had a
+     mother or a sister, you would know how little women think of such
+     things. How many more assurances do you expect from me? Do you wish
+     me to propose to you again? No, if you won't have me, go.--Yours,
+     in spite of yourself, GLADYS."
+
+The third--the third is too long to quote entire; besides, the substance
+is contained in this last sentence--
+
+     "So I think, my dear Mr. Lyndsay, for your sake more than my own,
+     our engagement had better be broken off."
+
+In this letter, dated six weeks ago, she had charged me to burn all that
+she had written to me, and as yet I had not done so, shrinking from the
+sharp unreasonable pain with which we bury the beloved dead. But the
+time of my mourning was accomplished. I tore the paper into fragments
+and dropped them into the flames.
+
+It must have been the pang with which I watched them darken and shrivel
+that brought back the memory of another sharp stab. It was that day ten
+years ago, when I walked for the first time after my accident. Supported
+by a stick on one side, and by Atherley on the other, I crawled down the
+long gallery at home and halted before a high wide-open window to see
+the sunlit view of park and woods and distant downland. Then all at
+once, ridden by my groom, Charming went past with feet that verily
+danced upon the greensward, and quivering nostrils that rapturously
+inhaled the breath of spring and of morning. I said: "George, I want
+_you_ to have Charming." And it made me smile, even in that bitter
+moment, to remember how indistinctly, how churlishly almost, Atherley
+accepted the gift, in his eager haste to get me out of sight and thought
+of it.
+
+It was long before the last fluttering rags had vanished, transmuted
+into fiery dust. The clock on the landing had many times chanted its
+dirge since I had heard below the footsteps of the servants carrying
+away the lamps from the sitting-rooms and the hall. Later still came the
+far-off sound of Atherley's door closing behind him, like the final
+good-night of the waking day. Over all the unconscious household had
+stolen that silence which is more than silence, that hush which seems to
+wait for something, that stillness of the night-watch which is kept
+alone. It was familiar enough to me, but to-night it had a new meaning;
+like the sunlight that shines when we are happy, or the rain that falls
+when we are weeping, it seemed, as if in sympathy, to be repeating and
+accenting what I could not so vividly have told in words. In my life,
+and for the second time, there was the same desolate pause, as if the
+dreary tale were finished and only the drearier epilogue remained to
+live through--the same sense of sad separation from the happy and the
+healthful.
+
+I made a great effort to read, holding the book before me and compelling
+myself to follow the sentences, but that power of abstraction which can
+conquer pain does not belong to temperaments like mine. If only I could
+have slept, as men have been able to do even upon the rack; but every
+hour that passed left me more awake, more alive, more supersensitive to
+suffering.
+
+Early in the morning, long before the dawn, I must have been feverish, I
+think. My head and hands burned, the air of the room stifled me, I was
+losing my self-control.
+
+I opened the window and leant out. The cool air revived me bodily, but
+to the fever of the spirit it brought no relief. To my heart, if not to
+my lips, sprang the old old cry for help which anguish has wrung from
+generation after generation. The agony of mine, I felt wildly, must
+pierce through sense, time, space, everything--even to the Living Heart
+of all, and bring thence some token of pity! For one instant my passion
+seemed to beat against the silent heavens, then to fall back bruised and
+bleeding.
+
+Out of the darkness came not so much as a wind whisper or the twinkle of
+a star.
+
+Was Atherley right after all?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE STRANGER'S GOSPEL
+
+
+From the short unsatisfying slumber which sometimes follows a night of
+insomnia I was awakened by the laughter and shouts of children. When I
+looked out I saw brooding above the hollow a still gray day, in whose
+light the woodlands of the park were all in sombre brown, and the trout
+stream between its sedgy banks glided dark and lustreless.
+
+On the lawn, still wet with dew, and crossed by the shadows of the bare
+elms, Atherley's little sons, Harold and Denis, were playing with a very
+unlovely but much-beloved mongrel called Tip. They had bought him with
+their own pocket-money from a tinker who was ill-using him, and then
+claimed for him the hospitality of their parents; so, though Atherley
+often spoke of the dog as a disgrace to the household, he remained a
+member thereof, and received, from a family incapable of being uncivil,
+far less unkind, to an animal, as much attention as if he had been
+high-bred and beautiful--which indeed he plainly supposed himself to be.
+
+When, about an hour later, after their daily custom, this almost
+inseparable trio fell into the breakfast-room as if the door had
+suddenly given way before them, the boys were able to revenge themselves
+for the rebuke this entrance provoked by the tidings they brought with
+them.
+
+"I say, old Mallet is going," cried Harold cheerfully, as he wriggled
+himself on to his chair. "Denis, mind I want some of that egg-stuff."
+
+"Take your arms off the table, Harold," said Lady Atherley. "Pray, how
+do you know Mrs. Mallet is going?"
+
+"She said so herself. She said," he went on, screwing up his nose and
+speaking in a falsetto to express the intensity of his scorn--"she said
+she was afraid of the ghost."
+
+"I told you I did not allow that word to be mentioned."
+
+"I did not; it was old Mallet."
+
+"But, pray, what were you doing in old Mallet's domain?" asked Atherley.
+
+"Cooking cabbage for Tip."
+
+"Hum! What with ghosts by night and boys by day, our cook seems to have
+a pleasant time of it; I shall be glad when Miss Jones's holidays are
+over. Castleman, is it true that Mrs. Mallet talks of leaving us because
+of the ghost?"
+
+"I am sure I don't know, Sir George," answered the old butler. "She was
+going on about it very foolish this morning."
+
+"And how is the kitchen-maid?"
+
+"Has not come down yet, Sir George; says her nerve is shook," said
+Castleman, retiring with a plate to the sideboard; then added, with the
+freedom of an old servant, "Bile, _I_ should say."
+
+"Probably. We had better send for Doctor What's-his-name."
+
+"The usual doctor is away," said Lady Atherley. "There is a London
+doctor in his place. He is clever, Lady Sylvia said, but he gives
+himself airs."
+
+"Never mind what he gives himself if he gives his patients the right
+thing."
+
+"And after all we can manage very well without Ann, but what are we to
+do about Mrs. Mallet? I always told you how it would be."
+
+"But, my dear, it is not my fault. You look as reproachfully at me as if
+it were my ghost which was causing all this disturbance instead of the
+ghost of a remote ancestor--predecessor, in fact."
+
+"No, but you will always talk just as if it was of no consequence."
+
+"I don't talk of the cook's going as being of no consequence. Far from
+it. But you must not let her go, that is all."
+
+"How can I prevent her going? I think you had better talk to her
+yourself."
+
+"I should like to meet her very much; would not you, Lindy? I should
+like to hear her story; it must be a blood-curdling one, to judge from
+its effect upon Ann. The only person I have yet met who pretended to
+have seen the ghost was Aunt Eleanour."
+
+"And what was it like, daddy?" asked Denis, much interested.
+
+"She did not say, Den. She would never tell me anything about it."
+
+"Would she tell me?"
+
+"I am afraid not. I don't think she would tell any one, except perhaps
+Mr. Lyndsay. He has a way of worming things out of people."
+
+"Mr. Lyndsay, how do you worm things out of people?"
+
+"I don't know, Denis; you must ask your father."
+
+"First, by never asking any questions," said Atherley promptly; "and
+then by a curious way he has of looking as if he was listening
+attentively to what was said to him, instead of thinking, as most people
+do, what he shall say himself when he gets a chance of putting a word
+in."
+
+"But how could Aunt Eleanour see the ghost when there is not any such
+thing?" cried Harold.
+
+"How indeed!" said his father, rising; "that is just the puzzle. It will
+take you years to find it out. Lindy, look into the morning-room in
+about half an hour, and you will hear a tale whose lightest word will
+harrow up thy soul, etc., etc."
+
+As Lady Atherley kindly seconded this invitation I accepted it, though
+not with the consequences predicted. Anything less suggestive of the
+supernatural, or in every way less like the typical ghost-seer, was
+surely never produced than the round and rubicund little person I found
+in conversation with the Atherleys. Mrs. Mallet was a brunette who might
+once have considered herself a beauty, to judge by the self-conscious
+and self-satisfied simper which the ghastliest recollections were unable
+to banish. As I entered I caught only the last words of Atherley's
+speech--
+
+"---- treating you well, Mrs. Mallet?"
+
+"Oh no, Sir George," answered Mrs. Mallet, standing very straight and
+stiff, with two plump red hands folded demurely before her; "which I
+have not a word to say against any one, but have met, ever since I come
+here, with the greatest of kindness and respect. But the noises, sir,
+the noises of a night is more than I can abear."
+
+"Oh, they are only rats, Mrs. Mallet."
+
+"No rats in this world ever made sech a noise, Sir George; which the
+very first night as I slep here, there come the most mysterioustest
+sounds as ever I hear, which I says to Hann, 'Whatever are you a-doing?'
+which she woke up all of a suddent, as young people will, and said she
+never hear nor yet see nothing."
+
+"What was the noise like, Mrs. Mallet?"
+
+"Well, Sir George, I can only compare it to the dragging of heavy
+furniture, which I really thought at first it was her ladyship a-coming
+upstairs to waken me, took bad with burglars or a fire."
+
+"But, Mrs. Mallet, I am sure you are too brave a woman to mind a little
+noise."
+
+"It is not only noises, Sir George. Last night--"
+
+Mrs. Mallet drew a long breath and closed her eyes.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Mallet, pray go on; I am very curious to hear what did happen
+last night."
+
+"It makes the cold chills run over me to think of it. We was all gone to
+bed--leastways the maids and me, and Hann and me was but just got to my
+room when says she to me, 'Oh la! whatever do you think?' says she; 'I
+promised Ellen when she went out this afternoon as I would shut the
+windows in the pink bedroom at four o'clock, and never come to think of
+it till this minute,' she says. 'Oh dear,' I says, 'and them new
+chintzes will be entirely ruined with the damp. Why, what a
+good-for-nothing girl you are!' I says, 'and what you thinks on half
+your time is more than I can tell.' 'Whatever shall I do?' she says,
+'for go along there at this time of night all by myself I dare not,'
+says she. 'Well,' I says, 'rather than you should go alone, I'll go
+along with you,' I says, 'for stay here by myself I would not,' I says,
+'not if any one was to pay me hundreds.' So we went down our stairs and
+along our passage to the door which you go into the gallery, Hann
+a-clutching hold of me and starting, which when we come into the
+gallery I was all of a tremble, and she shook so I said, 'La! Hann, for
+goodness' sake do carry that candle straight, or you will grease the
+carpet shameful;' and come to the pink room I says, 'Open the door.'
+'La!' says she, 'what if we was to see the ghost?' 'Hold your silly
+nonsense this minute,' I says, 'and open the door,' which she do, but
+stand right back for to let me go first, when, true as ever I am
+standing here, my lady, I see something white go by like a flash, and
+struck me cold in the face, and blew the candle out, and then come the
+fearfullest noise, which thunderclaps is nothing to it. Hann began
+a-screaming, and we ran as fast as ever we could till we come to the
+pantry, where Mr. Castleman and the footman was. I thought I should ha'
+died: died I thought I should. My face was as white as that
+antimacassar."
+
+"How could you see your face, Mrs. Mallet?" somewhat peevishly objected
+Lady Atherley.
+
+But Mrs. Mallet with great dignity retorted--
+
+"Which I looked down my nose, and it were like a corpse's."
+
+"Very alarming," said Atherley, "but easily explained. Directly you
+opened the door there was, of course, a draught from the open window.
+That draught blew the candle out and knocked something over, probably a
+screen."
+
+"La' bless you, Sir George, it was more like paving-stones than screens
+a-falling."
+
+And indeed Mrs. Mallet was so far right, that when, to settle the
+weighty question once for all, we adjourned in a body to the pink
+bedroom, we discovered that nothing less than the ceiling, or at least a
+portion of it, had fallen, and was lying in a heap of broken plaster
+upon the floor. However, the moral, as Atherley hastened to observe, was
+the same.
+
+"You see, Mrs. Mallet, this was what made the noise."
+
+Mrs. Mallet made no reply, but it was evident she neither saw nor
+intended to see anything of the kind; and Atherley wisely substituted
+bribery for reasoning. But even with this he made little way till
+accidentally he mentioned the name of Mrs. de Noel, when, as if it had
+been a name to conjure by, Mrs. Mallet showed signs of softening.
+
+"Yes, think of Mrs. de Noel, Mrs. Mallet; what will she say if you leave
+her cousin to starve?"
+
+"I should not wish such a thing to happen for a moment," said Mrs.
+Mallet, as if this had been no figure of speech but the actual
+alternative, "not to any relation of Mrs. de Noel."
+
+And shortly after the debate ended with a cheerful "Well, Mrs. Mallet,
+you will give us another trial," from Atherley.
+
+"There," he exclaimed, as we all three returned to the
+morning-room--"there is as splendid an example of the manufacture of a
+bogie as you are ever likely to meet with. All the spiritual phenomena
+are produced much in the same way. Work yourself up into a great state
+of terror and excitement, in the first place; in the next, procure one
+companion, if not more, as credulous and excitable as yourself; go at a
+late hour and with a dim light to a place where you have been told you
+will see something supernatural; steadfastly and determinedly look out
+for it, and--you will have your reward. These are precisely the lines on
+which a spiritual seance is conducted, only instead of plaster, which is
+not always so obliging as to fall in the nick of time, you have a paid
+medium who supplies the material for your fancy to work upon. Mrs.
+Mallet, you see, has discovered all this for herself--that woman is a
+born genius. Just think what she might have been and seen if she had
+lived in a sphere where neither cooking nor any other rational
+occupation interfered with her pursuit of the supernatural. Mrs.
+Molyneux would be nowhere beside her."
+
+"I suppose she really does intend to stay," said Lady Atherley.
+
+"Of course she does. I always told you my powers of persuasion were
+irresistible."
+
+"But how annoying about the ceiling," said Lady Atherley. "Over the new
+carpet, too! What can make the plaster fall in this way?"
+
+"It is the quality of the climate," said Atherley. "It is horribly
+destructive. If you would read the batch of letters now on my
+writing-table from tenant-farmers you would see what I mean: barns,
+roofs, gates, everything is falling to pieces and must immediately be
+repaired--at the landlord's expense, of course."
+
+"We must send for a plasterer," said Lady Atherley, "and then the
+doctor. Perhaps you would have time to go round his way, George."
+
+"No, I have no time to go anywhere but to Northside farm. Hunt has been
+waiting nearly half an hour for me, as it is. Lindy, would you like to
+come with me?"
+
+"No, thank you, George; I too am a landowner, and I mean to look over my
+audit accounts to-day."
+
+"Don't compare yourself to a poor overworked underpaid landowner like
+me. You are one of the landlords they spout about in London parks on
+Sundays. You have nothing to do but sign receipts for your rents, paid
+in full and up to date."
+
+"Mr. Lyndsay is an excellent landlord," said Lady Atherley; "and they
+tell me the new church and the schools he has built are charming."
+
+"Very mischievous things both," said Atherley. "Ta-ta."
+
+That afternoon, Atherley being still absent, and Lady Atherley having
+gone forth to pay a round of calls, the little boys undertook my
+entertainment. They were in rather a sober mood for them, having just
+forfeited four weeks' pocket-money towards expenses incurred by Tip in
+the dairy, where they had foolishly allowed him to enter; so they
+accepted very good-humouredly my objections to wading in the river or
+climbing trees, and took me instead for a walk to Beggar's Stile. We
+climbed up the steep carriage-drive to the lodge, passed through the big
+iron gates, turned sharply to the left, and went down the road which the
+park palings border and the elms behind them shade, past the little
+copse beyond the park, till we came to a tumble-down gate with a stile
+beside it in the hedgerow; and this was Beggar's Stile. It was just on
+the brow of the little hill which sloped gradually downward to the
+village beneath, and commanded a wide view of the broad shallow valley
+and of the rising ground beyond.
+
+I was glad to sit down on the step of the stile.
+
+"Are you tired already, Mr. Lyndsay?" inquired Harold incredulously.
+
+"Yes, a little."
+
+"I s'pose you are tired because you always have to pull your leg after
+you," said Denis, turning upon me two large topaz-coloured eyes. "Does
+it hurt you, Mr. Lyndsay?"
+
+"Mother told you not to talk about Mr. Lyndsay's leg," observed Harold
+sharply.
+
+"No, she didn't; she said I was not to talk about the funny way he
+walked. She said--"
+
+"Well, never mind, little man," I interrupted. "Is that Weald down
+there?"
+
+"Yes," cried Denis, maintaining his balance on the topmost bar but one
+of the gate with enviable ease. "All these cottages and houses belong to
+Weald, and it is all daddy's on this side of the river down to where you
+see the white railings a long way down near the poplars, and that is the
+road we go to tea with Aunt Eleanour; and do you see a little blue
+speck on the hill over there? You could see if you had a telescope.
+Daddy showed me once; but you must shut your eye. That is Quarley
+Beacon, where Aunt Cissy lives."
+
+"No, she does not, stupid," cried Harold, now suspended, head downwards,
+by one foot, from the topmost rail of the gate. "No one lives there. She
+lives in Quarley Manor, just behind."
+
+Denis replied indirectly to the discourteous tone of this speech by
+trying with the point of his own foot to dislodge that by which Harold
+maintained his remarkable position, and a scuffle ensued, wherein,
+though a non-combatant, I seemed likely to get the worst, when their
+attention was fortunately diverted by the sight of Tip sneaking off, and
+evidently with the vilest motives, towards the covert.
+
+My memory was haunted that day by certain words spoken seven months ago
+by Atherley, and by me at the time very ungraciously received:
+
+"Remember, if you do come a cropper, it will go hard with you, old man;
+you can't shoot or hunt or fish off the blues, like other men."
+
+No, nor could I work them off, as some might have done. I possessed no
+distinct talents, no marked vocation. If there was nothing behind and
+beyond all this, what an empty freak of destiny my life would have
+been--full, not even of sound and fury, but of dull common-place
+suffering: a tale told by an idiot with a spice of malice in him.
+
+Then the view before me made itself felt, as a gentle persistent sound
+might have done: a flat, almost featureless scene--a little village
+church with cottages and gardens clustering about it, straggling away
+from it, by copses and meadows in which winter had left only the
+tenderest shades of the saddest colours. The winding river brightened
+the dull picture with broken glints of silver, and the tawny hues of the
+foreground faded through soft gradations of violet and azure into a far
+distance of pearly grey. It is not the scenery men cross continents and
+oceans to admire, and yet it has a message of its own. I felt it that
+day when I was heart-weary, and was glad that in one corner of this
+restless world the little hills preach peace.
+
+Meantime Tip had been recaptured, and when he, or rather the ground
+close beside him, had been beaten severely with sticks, and he himself
+upbraided in terms which left the censors hoarse, we went down again
+into the hollow. Then Lady Atherley returned and gave me tea; and
+afterwards, in the library, I worked at accounts till it was nearly too
+dark to write. No doubt on the high ground the sky was aflame with
+brilliant colour, of which only a dim reflection tinged the dreary view
+of sward and leafless trees, to which, for some mysterious reason, a gig
+crawling down the carriage-drive gave the last touch of desolation.
+
+Just as I laid my pen aside the door opened, and Castleman introduced a
+stranger.
+
+"If you will wait here, sir, I will find her ladyship."
+
+The new-comer was young and slight, with an erect carriage and a firm
+step. He had the finely-cut features and dull colouring which I
+associate with the high-pressure life of a busy town, so that I guessed
+who he was before his first words told me.
+
+"No, thank you, I will not sit down; I expect to be called to my patient
+immediately."
+
+The thought of this said patient made me smile, and in explanation I
+told him from what she was supposed to be suffering.
+
+"Well; it is less common than other forms of feverishness, but will
+probably yield to the same remedies," was his only comment.
+
+"You do not believe in ghosts?"
+
+"Pardon me, I do, just as I believe in all symptoms. When my patient
+tells me he hears bells ringing in his ear, or feels the ground swaying
+under his feet, I believe him implicitly, though I know nothing of the
+kind is actually taking place. The ghost, so far, belongs to the same
+class as the other experiences, that it is a symptom--it may be of a
+very trifling, it may be of a very serious, disorder."
+
+The voice, the keen flash of the eye, impressed me. I recognised one of
+those alert intelligences, beside whose vivid flame the mental life of
+most men seems to smoulder. I wished to hear him speak again.
+
+"Is this your view of all supernatural manifestations?"
+
+"Of all so-called supernatural manifestations; I don't understand the
+word or the distinction. No event which has actually taken place can be
+supernatural. Since it belongs to the actual it must be governed by, it
+must be the outcome of, laws which everywhere govern the actual--everywhere
+and at all times. In fact, it must be natural, whatever we
+may think of it."
+
+"Then if a miracle could be proven, it would be no miracle to you?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"And it could convince you of nothing?"
+
+"Neither me nor any one else who has outgrown his childhood, I should
+think. I have never been able to understand the outcry of the orthodox
+over their lost miracles. It makes their position neither better nor
+worse. The miracles could never prove their creeds. How am I to
+recognise a divine messenger? He makes the furniture float about the
+room; he changes that coal into gold; he projects himself or his image
+here when he is a thousand miles away. Why, an emissary from the devil
+might do as much! It only proves--always supposing he really does
+these things instead of merely appearing to do so--it proves that he is
+better acquainted with natural laws than I am. What if he could kill me
+by an effort of the will? What if he could bring me to life again? It is
+always the same; he might still be morally my inferior; he might be a
+false prophet after all."
+
+He took out his watch and looked at it, by this simple action
+illustrating and reminding me of the difference between us--he talking
+to pass away the time, I thinking aloud the gnawing question at my
+heart.
+
+"And you have no hope for anything beyond this?"
+
+Something in my voice must have struck his ear, trained like every other
+organ of observation to quick and fine perception, for he looked at me
+more attentively, and it was in a gentler tone that he said--
+
+"Surely, you do not mean for a life beyond this? One's best hope must be
+that the whole miserable business ends with death."
+
+"Have you found life so wretched?"
+
+"I am not speaking from my own particular point of view. I am
+singularly, exceptionally, fortunate, I am healthy; I have tastes which
+I can gratify, work which I keenly enjoy. Whether the tastes are worth
+gratifying or the work worth doing I cannot say. At least they act as an
+anodyne to self-consciousness; they help me to forget the farce in
+which I play my part. Like Solomon, and all who have had the best of
+life, I call it vanity. What do you suppose it is to those--by far the
+largest number, remember--who have had the worst of it? To them it is
+not vanity, it is misery."
+
+"But they suffer under the invariable laws you speak of--laws working
+towards deliverance and happiness in the future."
+
+"The future? Yes, I know that form of consolation which seems to satisfy
+so many. To me it seems a hollow one. I have never yet been able to
+understand how any amount of ecstasy enjoyed by B a million years hence
+can make up for the torture A is suffering to-day. I suppose, dealing so
+much with individuals as I do, I am inclined to individualise like a
+woman. I think of units rather than of the mass. At this moment I have
+before me a patient now left suffering pain as acute as any the rack
+ever inflicted. How does it affect his case that centuries later such
+pain may be unknown?"
+
+"Of course, the individual's one and only hope is a future existence.
+Then it may be all made up to him."
+
+"I see no reason to hope so. Either there is no God, and we shall still
+be at the mercy of the blind destiny we suffer under here; or there is a
+God, the God who looks on at this world and makes no sign! The sooner we
+escape from Him by annihilation the better."
+
+"Christians would tell you He had given a sign."
+
+"Yes; so they do in words and deny it in deeds. Nothing is sadder in
+the whole tragedy, or comedy, than these pitiable efforts to hide the
+truth, to gloss it over with fables which nobody in his heart of hearts
+believes--at least in these days. Why not face the worst like men? If we
+can't help being unhappy we can help being dishonest and cowardly.
+Existence is a misfortune. Let us frankly confess that it is, and make
+the best of it."
+
+He was not looking at his watch now; he was pacing the room. At last, he
+was in earnest, and had forgotten all accidents of time and place before
+the same enigma which perplexed myself.
+
+"The best of it!" I re-echoed. "Surely, under these circumstances, the
+best thing would be to commit suicide?"
+
+"No," he cried, stopping and turning sharply upon me. "The worst,
+because the most cowardly; so long as you have strength, brains,
+money--anything with which you can do good."
+
+He looked past me through the window into the outer air, no longer
+faintly tinged, but dyed deep red by the light of the unseen but
+resplendent sunset, and added slowly, dejectedly, as if speaking to
+himself as much as to me--
+
+"Yes, there is one thing worth living for--to help to make it all a
+little more bearable for the others."
+
+And then all at once, his face, so virile yet so delicate, so young and
+yet so sad, reminded me of one I had seen in an old picture--the face of
+an angel watching beside the dead Christ; and I cried--
+
+"But are you certain He has made no sign; not hundreds of years ago,
+but in your own lifetime? not to saint or apostle, but to you, yourself?
+Has nothing which has happened to you, nothing you have ever seen or
+read or heard, tempted you to hope in something better?"
+
+"Yes," he said deliberately; "I have had my weak moments. My conviction
+has wavered, not before religious teaching of any kind, however, nor
+before Nature, in which some people seem to find such promise; but I
+have met one or two women, and one man--all of them unknown,
+unremarkable people--whom the world never heard of, nor is likely to
+hear of, living uneventful obscure lives in out-of-the-way corners. For
+instance, there is a lady in this very neighbourhood, a relation of Sir
+George Atherley, I believe, Mrs. de No--"
+
+"Her ladyship would like to see you in the drawing-room, sir," said
+Castleman, suddenly coming in.
+
+The doctor bowed to me and immediately left the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MRS. MOSTYN'S GOSPEL
+
+
+"No, they have not seen any more ghosts, sir," replied Castleman
+scornfully next day, "and never need have seen any. It is all along of
+this tea-drinking. We did not have this bother when the women took their
+beer regular. These teetotallers have done a lot of harm. They ought to
+be put down by Act of Parliament."
+
+And the kitchen-maid was better. Mrs. Mallet, indeed, assured Lady
+Atherley that Hann was not long for this world, having turned just the
+same colour as the late Mr. Mallet did on the eve of his death; but
+fortunately the patient herself, as well as the doctor, took a more
+hopeful view of the case.
+
+"I can see Mrs. Mallet is a horrible old croaker," said Lady Atherley.
+
+"Let her croak," said Atherley, "so long as she cooks as she did last
+night. That curry would have got her absolution for anything if your
+uncle had been here."
+
+"That reminds me, George, the ceiling of the spare room is not mended
+yet."
+
+"Why, I thought you sent to Whitford for a plasterer yesterday?"
+
+"Yes, and he came; but Mrs. Mallet has some extraordinary story about
+his falling into his bucket and spoiling his Sunday coat, and going home
+at once to change it. I can't make it out, but nothing is done to the
+ceiling."
+
+"I make it out," said Atherley; "I make out that he was a little the
+worse for drink. Have we not a plasterer in the village?"
+
+"I think there is one. I fancy the Jacksons did not wish us to employ
+him, because he is a dissenter; but after all, giving him work is not
+the same as giving him presents."
+
+"No, indeed; nor do I see why, because he is a dissenter, I, who am only
+an infidel, am to put up with a hole in my ceiling."
+
+"Only, I don't know what his name is."
+
+"His name is Smart. Everybody in our village is called Smart--most
+inappropriately too."
+
+"No, George, the man the doctor told us about who is so dangerously
+ill is called Monk."
+
+"I am glad to hear it; but he doesn't belong to our parish, though he
+lives so close. He is actually in Rood Warren. His cottage is at the
+other side of the Common."
+
+"Then we can leave the wine and things as we go. And, George, while the
+boys are having tea with Aunt Eleanour, I think I shall drive on to
+Quarley Beacon and try and persuade Cecilia to come back and spend the
+night with us. I think we could manage to put her up in the little blue
+dressing-room. She is so good-natured; she won't mind its being so
+small."
+
+"Yes, do; I want Lyndsay to see her. And give my best love to Aunt
+Eleanour, and say that if she is going to send me any more tracts
+against Popery, I should be extremely obliged if she would prepay the
+postage sufficiently."
+
+"Oh no, George, I could not. It was only threepence."
+
+"Well, then, tell her it is no good sending any at all, because I have
+made up my mind to go over to Rome next July."
+
+"No, George; she might not like it, and I don't believe you are going to
+do anything of the kind. Oh, are you off already? I thought you would
+settle something about the plasterer."
+
+"No, no; I can't think of plasterers and repairs to-day. Even the
+galley-slave has his holiday--this is mine. I am going to see the hounds
+throw off at Rood Acre, and forget for one day that I have an inch of
+landed property in the world."
+
+"But, George, if the pink-room ceiling is not put right by Saturday,
+where shall we put Uncle Augustus?"
+
+"Into the room just opposite to Lindy's."
+
+"What! that little room? In the bachelor's passage? A man of his age,
+and of his position!"
+
+"I am sure it is large enough for any one under a bishop. Besides, I
+don't think he is fussy about anything except his dinner."
+
+"It is not the way he is accustomed to be treated when he is on a visit,
+I can assure you. He is a person who is generally considered a great
+deal."
+
+"Well, I consider him a great deal. I consider him one of the finest old
+heathen I ever knew."
+
+Fortunately for their domestic peace, Lady Atherley usually misses the
+points of her husband's speeches, but there are some which jar upon her
+sense of the becoming, and this was one of them.
+
+"I don't think," she observed to me, the offender himself having
+escaped, "that even if Uncle Augustus were not my uncle, a heathen is a
+proper name to call a clergyman, especially a canon--and one who is so
+looked up to in the Church. Have you ever heard him preach? But you must
+have heard about him, and about his sermons? I thought so. They are
+beautiful. When he preaches the church is crammed, and with the best
+people--in the season, when they are in town. And he has written a great
+many religious books too--sermons and hymns and manuals. There is a
+little book in red morocco you may have seen in my sitting-room--I know
+it was there a week ago--which he gave me, _The Life of Prayer_, with a
+short meditation and a hymn for every hour of the day--all composed by
+him. We don't see so much of him as I could wish. He is so grieved about
+George's views. He gave him some of his own sermons, but of course
+George would not look at them; and--so annoying--the last time he came I
+put the sermons, two beautiful large volumes of them, on the
+drawing-room table, and when we were all there after dinner George asked
+me quite loud what these smart books were, and where they came from. So
+altogether he has not come to see us for a long time; but as he happened
+to be staying with the Mountshires, I begged him to come over for a
+night or two; so you will hear him preach on Sunday."
+
+At lunch that day Lady Atherley proposed that I should accompany them to
+Woodcote. "Do come, Mr. Lyndsay," said Denis. "We shall have cakes for
+tea, and jam-sandwiches as well."
+
+"And there is an awfully jolly banister for sliding down," added Harold,
+"without any turns or landing, you know."
+
+I professed myself unable to resist such inducements. Indeed, I was
+almost glad to go. The recollection of Mrs. Mostyn's cheerful face was as
+alluring to me that day as the thought of a glowing hearth might be to
+the beggar on the door-step. Here, at least, was one to whom life was a
+blessing; who partook of all it could bestow with an appetite as
+healthfully keen as her nephew's, but without his disinclination or
+disregard for anything besides.
+
+The mild March day felt milder, the rooks cawed more cheerfully, and the
+spring flowers shone out more fearlessly around us when we had passed
+through the white gates of Woodcote--a favoured spot gently declining to
+the sunniest quarter, and sheltered from the north and north-east by
+barricades of elm-woods. The tiny domain was exquisitely ordered, as I
+love to see everything which appertains to women; and within the low
+white house, furnished after the simple and stiff fashion of a past
+generation, reigned the same dainty neatness, the same sunny
+cheerfulness, the native atmosphere of its chatelaine Mrs. Mostyn--a
+white-haired old lady long past seventy, with the bloom of youth on her
+cheek, its vivacity in her step, and its sparkle in her eyes.
+
+Hardly were the first greetings exchanged when the children opened the
+ball of conversation by inquiring eagerly when tea would be ready.
+
+"How can you be so greedy?" said their mother. "Why, you have only just
+finished your dinner."
+
+"We dined at half-past one, and it is nearly half-past three."
+
+"Poor darlings!" cried Mrs. Mostyn, regarding them with the enraptured
+gaze of the true child-lover; "their drive has made them hungry; and we
+cannot have tea very well before half-past four, because some old women
+from the village have come up to have tea, and the servants are busy
+attending to them. But I can tell you what you could do, dears. You know
+the way to the dairy; one of the maids is sure to be there; tell her to
+give you some cream. You will like that, won't you? Yes, you can go out
+by this door."
+
+"And remember to--"
+
+Lady Atherley's exhortation remained unfinished, her sons having darted
+through the door-window like arrows from the bow.
+
+"Since Miss Jones has been gone for her holiday the children are quite
+unmanageable," she observed.
+
+"Oh, it is such a good sign!" cried Mrs. Mostyn heartily; "it shows they
+are so thoroughly well. Mr. Lyndsay, why have you chosen that
+uncomfortable chair? Come and sit over beside me, if you are not afraid
+of the fire. And now, Jane, my love, tell me how you are getting on at
+Weald."
+
+Then followed a long catalogue of accidents and disappointments, of
+faithlessness and incapacity, to which Mrs. Mostyn supplied a running
+commentary of interjections sympathetic and consoling. There were,
+moreover, many changes for the worse since Sir Marmaduke had resided
+there: the shooting and the fishing had been alike neglected; the
+farmers were impoverished; the old places had changed hands.
+
+"And a good many quite new people have come to live in small houses
+round Weald," said Lady Atherley. "They have left cards on us. Do you
+know what they are like?"
+
+"Quite ladies and gentlemen, I believe, and nice enough as long as you
+don't get to know them too intimately; but they are always
+quarrelling."
+
+"About what?"
+
+"About everything; but especially about church matters--decorations and
+anthems and other rubbish. What they want is less of the church and more
+of the Bible."
+
+"I believe Mr. Jackson has a Bible-class every week."
+
+"But is it a Bible-class, or is it only called so? There is Mr. Austin
+at Rood Warren, a Romanist in disguise if ever there was one: he is by
+way of having a Bible-class, and one of our farmers' daughters attended
+it. 'And what part of the Bible are you studying now?' I asked her. 'We
+are studying early church history.' 'I don't know any such chapter in
+the Bible as that,' I said, and yet I know my Bible pretty well. She
+explained it was a continuation of the Acts of the Apostles. I said:
+'My dear child, don't you be misled by any jugglery of that kind; there
+is no continuation of the Bible; and as to what people call the early
+church, its doings and sayings are of no consequence at all. The one
+question we have to ask ourselves is this: '"What does the Book say?"'
+What is in the Book is God's word: what is not in the Book is only
+man's."
+
+The effect of this exposition on Lady Atherley was to make her ask
+eagerly whether the curate in charge at Rood Warren was one of the
+Austyns of Temple Leigh.
+
+"I believe he is a nephew," Mrs. Mostyn admitted, quite gloomily for
+her. "It is painful to see people of good standing going astray in this
+manner."
+
+"I was thinking it would be so convenient to get a young man over to
+dinner sometimes; and Rood Warren cannot be very far from us, for one of
+Mr. Austyn's parishioners lives just at the end of Weald."
+
+"If you take my advice, my dearest Jane, you will not have anything to
+do with him. He is certain to be attractive--men of that sort always
+are; and there is no saying what he might do: perhaps gain an influence
+over George himself."
+
+"I don't think there need be any fear of that, for at dinner, you know,
+we need not have any religious discussions; I never will have them; they
+are almost as bad as politics, they make people so cross."
+
+Then she rose and explained her visit to Mrs. de Noel.
+
+"But, Mr. Lyndsay," said Mrs. Mostyn, "are you going to desert the old
+woman for the young one, or are you going to stay and see my gardens and
+have tea? That is right. Good-bye, my dearest Jane. Give my dear love to
+Cissy, and tell her to come over and see me--but I shall have a glimpse
+of her on your way back."
+
+"I hope Mrs. de Noel may be persuaded to come back," I said, as the
+carriage drove off, and we walked along a gravel path by lawns of velvet
+smoothness; "I would so much like to meet her."
+
+"Have you never met her? Dear Cecilia! She is a sweet creature--the
+sweetest, I think, I ever met, though perhaps I ought not to say so of
+my own niece. She wants but one thing--the grace of God."
+
+We passed into a little wood, tapestried with ivy, carpeted with
+clustering primroses, and she continued--
+
+"It is most mysterious. Both Cecilia and George, being left orphans so
+early, were brought up by my dear sister Henrietta. She was a believing
+Christian, and no children ever had greater religious advantages than
+these two. As soon as they could speak they learnt hymns or texts of
+Scripture, and before they could read they knew whole chapters of the
+Bible by heart. George even now, I will say that for him, knows his
+Bible better than a good many clergymen. And the Sabbath, too. They were
+taught to reverence the Lord's day in a way children never are nowadays.
+All games and picture-books put away on Saturday night; regularly to
+church morning and afternoon, and in the evening Henrietta would talk to
+them and question them about the sermon. And after all, here is George
+who says he believes in nothing; and as to Cecilia, I never can make out
+what she does or does not believe. However, I am quite happy in my mind
+about them. I feel they are of the elect. I am as certain of their
+salvation as I am of my own."
+
+A sudden scampering of feet upon the gravel was followed by the
+appearance of the boys, rosy with exercise and excitement.
+
+"Well, my darling boys, have you had your cream?"
+
+"Oh yes, Aunt Eleanour," cried Harold, "and we have been into the
+farm-yard and seen the little pigs. Such jolly little beasts, Mr.
+Lyndsay, and squeak so funnily when you pull their tails."
+
+"Oh, but I can't have my pigs unkindly treated."
+
+"Not unkindly, auntie," cried Denis, swinging affectionately upon my
+arm; "we only just tried to make their tails go straight, you know. And,
+Mr. Lyndsay, there is such a dear little baby calf."
+
+"But I want to give apples to the horses," cried Harold.
+
+So we went to the fruit-house for apples, which Mrs. Mostyn herself
+selected from an upper shelf, mounting a ladder with equal agility and
+grace; then to the stables, where these dainties were crunched by two
+very fat carriage-horses; then to the miniature farm-yard, and the tiny
+ivy-covered dairy beyond; and just as I was beginning to feel the first
+qualms of my besetting humiliation, fatigue, Mrs. Mostyn led us round to
+the garden--a garden with high red walls, and a dial in the
+meeting-place of the flower-bordered paths; and we sat down in a rustic
+seat cosily fitted into one sunny corner, just behind a great bed of
+hyacinths in flower.
+
+The children had but one regret: Tip had been left behind.
+
+"But mamma would not let us bring him," cried Harold in an aggrieved
+tone, "because he will roll in the flower-beds."
+
+"Do you think it is nearly half-past four, Aunt Eleanour?" asked Denis.
+
+"Very nearly, I should think. Suppose you were to go and see if they
+have brought the tea-kettle in; and if they have, call to me from the
+drawing-room window, and I will come."
+
+The tempered sunlight fell full upon the delicate hyacinth
+clusters--coral, snow-white, and faintest lilac--exhaling their
+exquisite odour, and the warm sweet air seemed to enwrap us tenderly. My
+spirits, heavy as lead, began to rise--strangely, irrationally. Sunlight
+has always for me a supersensuous beauty, while the colour and perfume
+of flowers move me as sound vibrations move the musician. Just then it
+was to me as if through Nature, from that which is behind Nature, there
+reached me a pitying, a comforting caress.
+
+And in the same key were Mrs. Mostyn's words when she next spoke.
+
+"Mr. Lyndsay, I am an old woman and you are very young, and my heart
+goes out to all young creatures in sorrow, especially to one who has no
+mother of his own, no, nor father even, to comfort him. I know what
+trouble you have had. Would you be offended if I said how deeply I felt
+for you?"
+
+"Offended, Mrs. Mostyn!"
+
+"No. I see you understand me; you will not think me obtrusive when I say
+that I pray this great trial may be for your lasting good; may lead you
+to seek and to find salvation. The truth is brought home to us in many
+different ways, by many different instruments. My own eyes were opened
+by very extraordinary means."
+
+She was silent for a few instants, and then went on--
+
+"When I was young, Mr. Lyndsay, I lived for the world only. I went to
+church, of course, like other people, and said my prayers and called
+myself a Christian, but I did not know what the word meant. My sister
+Henrietta would often talk seriously to me, but it had no effect, and
+she was quite grieved over my hardened state; but my dear mother, a true
+saint, used to tell her to have no fear, that some day I should be
+sharply awakened to my soul's danger. But it was not till years after
+she was in heaven that her words came true."
+
+I looked at her and waited.
+
+"We were still living at Weald Manor with my brother Marmaduke, and we
+had young people staying with us. They were all going--all but
+myself--to a ball at Carchester. I stayed at home because I had a slight
+cold, which made me feel tired and feverish, and disinclined to be
+dancing till early next morning. I went to bed early, and when I had
+sent away my maid I sat beside the fire for a little, thinking. You know
+the long gallery?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"My room was there; so I was quite alone, for the servants slept, just
+as they do now, in the opposite end of the house. But I had my dog with
+me, such a dear little thing, a black-and-tan terrier. He was lying
+asleep on the rug beside me. Well, all at once he got up and put his
+head on one side as if he heard something, and he began barking. I only
+said 'Nonsense, Totty, lie down,' and paid no more attention to him,
+till some moments afterwards he made a strange kind of noise as if he
+were trying to bark and was choked in some way. This made me look at
+him, and then I observed that he was trembling from head to foot, and
+staring in the strangest way at something behind me. I will honestly
+tell you he made me feel so uncomfortable I was afraid to look round;
+and still it was almost as bad to sit there and not look round, so at
+last I summoned up courage and turned my head. Then I saw it."
+
+"The ghost?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What was it like?"
+
+"It was like a shadow, only darker, and not lying against the wall as a
+shadow would do, but standing out from it in the air. It stood a little
+way from me in a corner of the room. It was in the shape of a man, with
+a ruff round his neck, and sleeves puffed out at the shoulders, as you
+often see in old pictures; but I don't remember much about that, for at
+the time I could think of nothing but the face."
+
+"And that--?"
+
+"That was simply dreadful. I can't tell you what it was like. I could
+not have imagined it, if I had not seen it. It was the look--the look
+in its eyes. After all these years it makes me tremble when I think of
+it. But what I felt was not the same nervous feeling which made me
+afraid to turn round. It went much deeper--indeed it went deeper than
+anything in my life had ever gone before; it went right down to my soul,
+in fact, and made me feel I had a soul."
+
+She had turned quite pale.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Lyndsay, strange as it sounds, the mere sight of that face
+made me realise in an instant what I had read and heard thousands of
+times, and what my mother and Henrietta had told me over and over again
+about the utter nothingness of earthly aims and comforts--of what in an
+ordinary way is called life. I had heard very fine sermons preached
+about the same thing: 'What is our life, it is even a vapour,' and the
+'vain shadow' in which we walk. Have you ever thought how we can go on
+hearing and even repeating true and wise words without getting at their
+real sense, and, what is worse, without suspecting our own ignorance?"
+
+"I know it well."
+
+"When Henrietta used to say that the whirl of worldly occupations and
+interests and amusements in which I was so engrossed did not deserve to
+be called life, and could never satisfy the eternal soul within me, it
+used to seem to me an exaggerated way of saying that the next world
+would be better than this one; but I saw the meaning of her words, I saw
+the truth of them, as I see these flowers before me, and feel the gravel
+under my feet: it came to me in a moment, the night these terrible eyes
+looked into mine. The feeling did not last, but I have never forgotten
+it, and never shall. It was as if a veil were lifted for an instant, and
+I was standing outside of my life and looking back at it; and it seemed
+so poor and worthless and unreal--I can't explain myself properly."
+
+"And did the figure remain for any time?"
+
+"I do not know. I think I must have fainted. They found me lying in a
+half-unconscious state in my chair when they came home. I was ill in bed
+for weeks with what the doctors call low fever. But neither the fever
+nor anything else could remove the impression that had been made. That
+terrible thing was a blessed messenger to me. My real conversion was
+not till years later, but the way was prepared by the great shock I then
+received, and which roused me to a sense of my danger."
+
+"What do you think the thing you saw Was, Mrs. Mostyn?"
+
+"The ghost?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Slowly, thoughtfully, she answered me--
+
+"I am certain it was a lost soul: nothing else could have worn that
+dreadful look."
+
+She paused for a few moments and then continued--
+
+"Perhaps you are one of those who do not believe in the punishment of
+sin?"
+
+"Who can disbelieve it, Mrs. Mostyn? Call it what we like, it is a fact.
+It confronts us on every side. We might as well refuse to believe in
+death."
+
+"It is not that I meant! I was talking of punishment in the next world,
+Mr. Lyndsay."
+
+"Well, there, too, no doubt it must continue, until the uttermost
+farthing is paid. I believe--at least I hope--that."
+
+She shook her head with a troubled expression.
+
+"There is no paying that debt in the next world. It can only be paid
+here. Here, a free pardon is offered to us, and if we do not accept it,
+then---- It is the fashion, even among believers, nowadays to avoid this
+awful subject. Preachers of the Gospel do not speak of it in the pulpit
+as they once did. It is considered too shocking for our modern notions.
+I have no patience with such weakness, such folly--worse than folly. It
+seems to me even more wrong to try and hide this terrible danger from
+ourselves and from others than to deny it altogether, as some poor
+deluded souls do. Mr. Lyndsay, have you ever realised what the place of
+torment will be like?"
+
+"Yes; once, Mrs. Mostyn."
+
+"You were in pain?"
+
+"I suppose it was pain," I said.
+
+For always, when anything revives this recollection, seared into my
+memory, the question rises: was it merely pain, physical pain, of which
+we all speak so easily and lightly? It lasted only ten minutes; ten
+minutes by the clock, that is. For me time was annihilated. There was no
+past or future, but only an intolerable present, in which mind and soul
+were blotted out, and all of sentient existence that remained was the
+animal consciousness of agony. I cannot share men's stoical contempt
+for a Gehenna, which is nothing worse.
+
+"Mr. Lyndsay, imagine pain, worse than any ever endured on earth going
+on and on, for ever!"
+
+A bird, not a thrush, but one of the minor singers, lighting on a bough
+near us, trilled one simple but ecstatic phrase.
+
+"Do you really and truly believe, Mrs. Mostyn, that this will be the
+fate of any single being?"
+
+"Of any single being? Do we not know that it is what will happen to the
+greatest number? For what does the Book say? 'Many are called but few
+are chosen.'"
+
+Through the still, mild air, across the sun-steeped gardens, came the
+voices of the children--
+
+"Aunt Eleanour! Aunt Eleanour!"
+
+"Many are called," she repeated, "but few are chosen; and those who are
+not chosen shall be cast into everlasting fire."
+
+There was a pause. She turned to look at me, and, as if struck by
+something in my face, said gently, soothingly:
+
+"Yes, it is a terrible thought, but only for the unregenerate. It has no
+terror for me. I trust it need have no terror for you. After all, how
+simple, how easy is the way of escape! You have only to believe."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"And then you are safe, safe for evermore. Think of that. The foolish
+people who wish to explain away eternal punishment, forget that at the
+same time they explain away eternal happiness! You will be safe now,
+and after death you will be in heaven for evermore."
+
+"I shall be in heaven for evermore, and always there will be hell."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where the others will be?"
+
+"What others? Only the wicked!"
+
+"Aunt Eleanour! Aunt Eleanour!" called the children once more.
+
+"I must go to them! But, Mr. Lyndsay, think over what I have said."
+
+And I remained and obeyed her, and beheld, entire, distinct, the spectre
+that drives men to madness or despair--illimitable omnipotent Malice. In
+its shadow the colour of the flowers was quenched, and the music of the
+birds rang false. Yet it wore the consecration of time and authority!
+What if it were true?
+
+"Mr. Lyndsay," said Denis at my elbow, "Aunt Eleanour has sent me to
+fetch you to tea. Mr. Lyndsay, do you hear? Why do you look so strange?"
+
+He caught my hand anxiously as he spoke, and by that little human touch
+the spell was broken. The phantom vanished; and, looking into the
+child's eyes, I felt it was a lie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+CANON VERNADE'S GOSPEL
+
+
+There was no Mrs. de Noel in the carriage when it returned; she had gone
+to London to stay with Mrs. Donnithorne, whom Atherley spoke of as Aunt
+Henrietta, and was not expected home till Wednesday.
+
+"I am sorry," Lady Atherley observed, as we drove home through the dusk;
+"I should like to have had her here when Uncle Augustus was with us. I
+would have asked Mrs. Mostyn to dine with us, but I am not sure she and
+Uncle Augustus would get on. When her sister, Mrs. Donnithorne, met
+Uncle Augustus and his wife at lunch at our house once, she said she
+thought no minister of the Gospel ought to allow his child to take part
+in worldly amusements or ceremonials. It was very awkward, because Uncle
+Augustus's eldest girl had been presented only the day before. And Aunt
+Clara, Uncle Augustus's wife, you know, who is rather quick, said it
+depended whether the minister of the Gospel was a gentleman or a
+shoe-black, because Mrs. Donnithorne was attending a dissenting chapel
+then where the preacher was quite a common uneducated sort of person.
+And after that they would not talk to each other, and, altogether, I
+remember, it was very unpleasant. I do think it is such a pity," cried
+Lady Atherley with real feeling, "when people will take up these extreme
+religious views, as all the Atherleys do. I am sure it is quite a
+comfort to have someone like you in the house, Mr. Lyndsay, who is not
+particular about religion."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"If this is the best Aunt Eleanour has to show in the way of a ghost,
+she does well to keep so quiet about it," was Atherley's comment on that
+part of the story which, by special permission, I repeated to him next
+day. "I never heard a weaker ghost story. She explains the whole thing
+away as she tells it. She was, as she candidly admits, ill and
+feverish--sickening for a fever, in fact, when the most rational
+person's senses are apt to play them strange tricks. She is alone at the
+dead of night in a house she believes to be haunted; and then her
+dog--an odious little beast, I remember him well, always barking at
+something or nothing;--the dog suggests there is somebody near. She
+looks round into a dark part of the room, and naturally, inevitably--all
+things considered--sees a ghost. Did you say it wore a ruff and puffed
+sleeves?"
+
+"So Mrs. Mostyn said."
+
+"Of course, because, as I told you, Aunt Eleanour believed in the
+Elizabethan portrait theory. If it had been Aunt Henrietta, the ghost
+would have been in armour. Ghosts and all visitors from the other world
+obligingly correspond with the preconceived notions of the visionary.
+When a white robe and a halo were considered the proper celestial
+outfit, saints and angels always appeared with white robes and halos. In
+the same way, the African savage, who believes in a god with a crooked
+leg, always sees him in dreams, waking or asleep, with a crooked leg;
+and--"
+
+Here we were interrupted by a great stir in the hall outside, and Lady
+Atherley looked in to explain that the carriage with Uncle Augustus was
+just coming down the drive.
+
+Her manner reminded me of the full importance of this arrival, as well
+as of the unfortunate circumstance that, owing to the ill-timed absence
+of the dissenting plasterer, the Canon must be lodged in the little room
+opposite to my own.
+
+However, when I went into the drawing-room, I found him accepting his
+niece's apologies and explanations with great good-humour. To me also he
+was especially gracious.
+
+"I had the pleasure of dining at Lindesford, Mr. Lyndsay, when you must
+have been in long clothes. I remember we had some of the finest trout I
+ever tasted. Are they still as good in your river?"
+
+His voice, like himself, was massive and impressive; his bearing and
+manner inspired me with wistful admiration: what must life be to a man
+so self-confident, and so rightly self-confident?
+
+"Is not Uncle Augustus a fine-looking man?" asked Lady Atherley, when he
+had left the room with Atherley. "I cannot think why they do not make
+him a bishop; he would look so well in the robes. He ought to have had
+something when the last ministry was in, for Aunt Clara and Lord
+Lingford are cousins; but, unfortunately, the families were on bad terms
+because of a lawsuit."
+
+The morning after was bright and fair, so that
+sunlight mingled with the drowsy calm--Sunday in the country as we
+remember it, looking lovingly back from lands that are not English to
+the tenderer side of the Puritan Sabbath. But I missed my little
+_aubade_ from the lawn, and not till breakfast-time did I behold my
+small friends, who then came into the breakfast-room, one on either side
+of their mother--two miniature sailors, exquisitely neat but visibly
+dejected. Behind walked Tip, demurely recognising the change in the
+atmosphere, but, undisturbed thereby, he at once, with his usual air of
+self-satisfied dignity, assumed his place in the largest arm-chair.
+
+"The landau could take us all to church except you, George," said Lady
+Atherley, looking thoughtfully into the fire as we waited for breakfast
+and the Canon. "But I suppose you would prefer to walk?"
+
+"Why should you suppose I am going to church, either walking or
+driving?"
+
+"Well, I certainly hoped you would have gone to-day; as Uncle Augustus
+is going to preach it seems only polite to do so."
+
+"Well, I don't mind; I daresay it will do me no harm; and if it is
+understood I attend only out of consideration for my wife's uncle,
+then--"
+
+He was interrupted by the entrance of the person in question.
+
+Many times during breakfast Denis looked thoughtfully at his
+great-uncle, and at last inquired--
+
+"Do you preach very long sermons, Uncle Augustus?"
+
+"They are not generally considered so," replied the Canon with some
+dignity.
+
+"Denis, I have often told you not to ask questions," said Lady Atherley.
+
+"When I am grown up," remarked Harold, "I will be an atheist."
+
+"Do you know what an atheist is?" inquired his father.
+
+"Yes, it is people who never go to church."
+
+"But they go to lecture-rooms, which you would find worse."
+
+"But they don't have sermons."
+
+"Don't they? Hours long, especially when they bury each other."
+
+"Oh!" said Harold, evidently taken aback, and somewhat reconciled to the
+church.
+
+"When I am grown up," said Denis, "I mean to be the same church as Aunt
+Cissy."
+
+"And what may that be?" inquired the Canon.
+
+Denis was silent and looked perplexed; but some time afterwards, when we
+were talking of other things, he called out, with the joy of one who has
+captured that elusive thing, a definition:
+
+"In Aunt Cissy's church they climb trees and make toffee on Sundays."
+
+After which Lady Atherley seemed glad to take them both away with her.
+
+It was perhaps this remark that led the Canon to ask, on the way to
+church--
+
+"Is it true that Mrs. de Noel attends a dissenting chapel?"
+
+"No," said Lady Atherley. "But I know why people say so. She lent a
+field last year to the Methodists to have their camp-meeting in."
+
+"Oh! but that is a pity," said the Canon. "A very great pity--a person
+in her position encouraging dissent, especially when there is no real
+occasion for it. Clara's nephew, young Littlemore, did something of the
+kind last year, but then he was standing for the county; and though that
+hardly justifies, it excuses, a little pandering to the multitude."
+
+"Cissy only let them have it once," said Lady Atherley, as if making the
+best of it. "And, indeed, I believe it rained so hard that day they were
+not able to have the meeting after all."
+
+Then the carriage stopped before the lych-gate, through which the
+fresh-faced school children were trooping; and while the bell clanged
+its last monotonous summons, we walked up between the village graves to
+the old church porch that older yews overshadow, where the village lads
+were loitering, as Sunday after Sunday their sleeping forefathers had
+loitered before them.
+
+We worshipped that morning in a magnificent pew to one side of the
+chancel, and quite as large, from which we enjoyed a full view of clergy
+and congregation. The former consisted of the Canon, Mr. Jackson,
+clergyman of the parish, and a young man I had not seen before. Not a
+large number had mustered to hear the Canon; the front seats were well
+filled by men and women in goodly apparel, but in the pews behind and in
+the side aisles there was a mere sprinkling of worshippers in the Sunday
+dress of country labourers. Our supplicaitions were offered with as
+little ritualistic pageantry as Mrs. Mostyn herself could have desired,
+though the choir probably sang oftener and better than she would have
+approved. In spite of their efforts it was as uninspiring a service as I
+have ever taken part in. This was not due, as might be suspected, to
+Atherley's presence, for his demeanour was irreproachable. His little
+sons, delighted at having him with them, carefully found his places for
+him in prayer and hymnbook, and kept watch that he did not lose them
+afterwards, so that he perforce assumed a really edifying degree of
+attention. Nor, indeed, did the rest of the congregation err in the
+direction of restlessness or wandering looks, but rather in the opposite
+extreme, insomuch that during the litany, when we were no longer
+supported by music, and had, most of us, assumed attitudes favourable
+to repose, we appeared one and all to succumb to it, especially towards
+the close, when, from the body of the church at least, only the aged
+clerk was heard to cry for mercy. But with the third service, there came
+a change, which reminded me of how once in a foreign cathedral, when the
+procession filed by--the singing-men nudging each other, the
+standard-bearers giggling, and the English tourists craning to see the
+sight--the face of one white-haired old bishop beneath his canopy
+transformed for me a foolish piece of mummery into a prayer in action.
+So it was again, when the young stranger turned to us his pale clear-cut
+face, solemn with an awe as rapt as if he verily stood before the throne
+of Him he called upon, and felt Its glory beating on his face; then, by
+that one earnest and believing presence, all was transformed and
+redeemed; the old emblems recovered their first significance, the
+time-worn phrases glowed with life again, and we ourselves were
+altered--our very heaviness was pathetic: it was the lethargy of death
+itself, and our poor sleepy prayers the strain of manacled captives
+striving to be free.
+
+The Canon's sermon did not maintain this high-strung mood, though why
+not it would be difficult to say. Like all his, it was eloquent,
+brilliant even, declaimed by a fine voice of wide compass, whose varying
+tones he used with the skill of a practised orator. The text was "Our
+conversation is in Heaven," its theme the contrast between the man of
+this world, with his heart fixed upon its pomps, its vanities, its
+honours, and the believer indifferent to all these, esteeming them as
+dross merely compared to the heavenly treasure, the one thing needful.
+Certainly the utter worthlessness of the prizes for which men labour and
+so late take rest, barter their happiness, their peace, their honour,
+was never more scathingly depicted. I remember the organ-like bass of
+his note in passages which denounced the grovelling worship of earthly
+pre-eminence and riches, the clarion-like cry with which he concluded a
+stirring eulogy of the Christian's nobler service of things unseen.
+
+"Brethren, as His kingdom is not of this world, so too our kingdom is
+not of this world."
+
+"I think you will admit, George," said Lady Atherley, as we left the
+church, "that you have had a good sermon to-day."
+
+"Yes, indeed," heartily assented Atherley. "It was excellent. Your uncle
+certainly knows his business, which is more than can be said of most
+preachers. It was a really splendid performance. But who on earth was he
+talking about--those wonderful people who don't care for money or
+success, or the best of everything generally? I never met any like
+them."
+
+"My dear George! How extraordinary you are! Any one could see, I should
+have thought, that he meant Christians."
+
+Atherley and the children walked home while we waited for the Canon, who
+stayed behind to exchange a few words in the vestry with his old
+schoolfellow, Mr. Jackson.
+
+As we drove home he made, aloud, some reflections, probably suggested by
+the difference between their positions.
+
+"It really grieves me to see Jackson where he is at his age. He deserves
+a better living. He is an excellent fellow, and not without ability, but
+wanting, unfortunately, in tact and _savoir-faire_. He always had an
+unhappy knack of blurting out the truth in season and out of season. I
+did my best to get him a good living once--a first-rate living--in Sir
+John Marsh's gift; and I warned him before he went to lunch with Sir
+John to be careful what he said. 'Sir John,' I said, 'is one of the old
+school; he thinks the Squire is pope of the parish, and you will have to
+humour him a little. He will talk a great deal of nonsense in this
+strain, and be careful not to contradict him, for he can't bear it.'
+But Jackson did contradict him--flatly; he told me so himself, and, of
+course, Sir John would have nothing to say to him. 'But he made such
+extravagant statements,' said Jackson. 'If I had kept quiet he would
+have thought I agreed with him.'--'What did that matter?' I said. 'Once
+you were vicar you could have shown him you didn't.'--'The truth is,'
+said Jackson, 'I cannot sit by and hear black called white without
+protesting.' That is Jackson all over! A man of that kind will never get
+on. And then, such an imprudent marriage--a woman without a penny!"
+
+"I have never seen any one who wore such extraordinary bonnets," said
+Lady Atherley.
+
+"Who was that young man who bowed to the altar and crossed himself?"
+asked the Canon.
+
+"I suppose that must be Mr. Austyn, curate in charge at Rood Warren. He
+comes over to help Mr. Jackson sometimes, I believe. George has met him;
+I have not. I want to get him over to dinner. He is a nephew of Mr.
+Austyn of Temple Leigh."
+
+"Oh, that family!" said the Canon. "I am sorry he has taken up such an
+extreme line. It is a great mistake. In the Church, preferment in these
+days always goes to the moderate men."
+
+"Rood Warren is not far from here," said Lady Atherley, "and he has a
+parishioner--Oh, that reminds me. Mr. Lyndsay, would you be so kind as
+to look out and tell the coachman to drive round by Monk's? I want to
+leave some soup."
+
+"Monk, I presume, is a sick labourer?" said the Canon. "I hope you are
+not as indiscriminate in your charities as most Ladies Bountiful."
+
+"Mr. Jackson says this is a really deserving case. He knows all about
+him, though he really is in Mr. Austyn's parish. Monk has never had
+anything from the parish, and been working hard all his life, and he is
+past seventy. He was breaking stones on the road a few weeks ago; but he
+caught a chill or something one very cold day, and has been laid up ever
+since. This is the house. Oh, Mr. Lyndsay, you should not trouble to get
+out. As you are so kind, will you carry this in?"
+
+The interior of the tiny thatched cottage was scrupulously clean and
+neat, as they nearly all are in the valley, but barer and more scantily
+furnished than most of them. No photographs or pictures decorated the
+white-washed walls, no scraps of carpet or matting hid the red-brick
+floor. The Monks were evidently of the poorest. An old piece of faded
+curtain had been hung from a rope between the chimney-piece and the door
+to shield the patient from the draught. He sat in a stiff wooden
+arm-chair near the fire, drawing his breath laboriously. "He was better
+now," said his wife, a nurse as old and as frail-looking as himself.
+"Nights was the worst." His shoulders were bent, his hair white with
+age, his withered features almost as coarse and as unshapely as the poor
+clothes he wore. The mask had been rough-hewn, to begin with; time and
+exposure had further defaced it. No gleam of intellectual life
+transpierced and illumined all. It was the face of an animal--ugly,
+ignorant, honest, patient. As I looked at it there came over me a rush
+of the pity I have so often felt for this suffering of age in
+poverty--so unpicturesque, so unwinning, to shallow sight so
+unpathetic--and I put out my hand and let it rest for a moment on his
+own, knotted with rheumatism, stained and seamed with toil. Then he
+looked up at me from under his shaggy brows with haggard, wistful eyes,
+and gasped: "It's hard work, sir; it's hard work." And I went out into
+the sunshine, feeling that I had heard the epitome of his life.
+
+That night Mrs. Mallet surpassed herself by her rendering of a menu,
+especially composed by Atherley for the delectation of their guest.
+Their pains were not wasted. The Canon's commendation of each
+course--and we talked of little else, I remember, from soup to
+dessert--was as discriminating as it was warm.
+
+"I am glad you approve of our cook, Uncle," said Lady Atherley in the
+drawing-room afterwards, "for she is only a stop-gap. Our own cook left
+us quite suddenly the other day, and we had such difficulty in finding
+this one to take her place. No one can imagine how inconvenient it is to
+have a haunted house."
+
+"My dear Jane, you don't mean to tell me you are afraid of ghosts?"
+
+"Oh no, Uncle."
+
+"And I am sure your husband is not?"
+
+"No; but unfortunately cooks are."
+
+"Eh! what?"
+
+Then Lady Atherley willingly repeated the story of her troubles.
+
+"Preposterous! perfectly preposterous!" cried the Canon. "The Education
+Act in operation for all these years, and our lower orders still believe
+in bogies and hobgoblins! And yet it is hardly to be wondered at; their
+social superiors are not much wiser. The nonsense which is talked in
+society at present is perfectly incredible. Persons who are supposed to
+be in their right mind gravely relate to me such incidents that I could
+imagine myself transported to the Middle Ages. I hear of miraculous
+cures, of spirits summoned from the dead, of men and women floating in
+the air; and as to diabolic possession, it seems to have become as
+common as colds in the head."
+
+He had risen, and now addressed us from the hearthrug.
+
+"Then Mrs. Molyneux and others come and tell me about personal friends
+of their own who can foretell everything that is going to happen; who
+can read your inmost thoughts; who can compel others to do this and to
+do that, whether they like it or no; who, being themselves in one
+quarter of the globe, constantly appear to their acquaintances in
+another. 'What!' I say. 'They can be in two places at once, then!
+Certainly no conjurer can equal that!'"
+
+"And what do they say to that?" asked Atherley.
+
+"Oh, they assure me the extraordinary beings who perform these marvels
+are not impostors, but very superior and religious characters. 'If they
+are not impostors,' I say, 'then their right place is the lunatic
+asylum.' 'Oh but, Canon Vernade, you don't understand; it is only our
+Western ignorance which makes such things seem astonishing! Far more
+marvellous things are going on, and have been going on for centuries, in
+the East; for instance, in the Brotherhoods of--I forget--some
+unpronounceable name.' 'And how do you know they have?' I ask. 'Oh, by
+their traditions, which have been handed on for generations.' 'That is
+very reliable information indeed,' I say. 'Pray, have you ever played a
+game of Russian scandal?' 'Well; but, then, there are the sacred books.
+There can be no mistake about them, for they have been translated by
+learned European professors, who say the religious sentiments are
+perfectly beautiful.' 'Very possibly,' I say. 'But it does not follow
+that the historical statements are correct.'"
+
+"I gave my ladies' Bible-class a serious lecture about it all the other
+day. I said: 'Do, my dear ladies, get rid of these childish notions,
+these uncivilised hankerings after marvels and magic, which make you the
+dupe of one charlatan after another. Take up science, for a change;
+study natural philosophy; try and acquire accurate notions of the system
+under which we live; realise that we are not moving on the stage of a
+Christmas pantomime, but in a universe governed by fixed laws, in which
+the miraculous performances you describe to me never can, and never
+could, have taken place. And be sure of this, that any book and any
+teacher, however admirable their moral teaching, who tell you that two
+and two make anything but four, are not inspired, so far as arithmetic
+and common sense are concerned.'"
+
+"Hear, hear!" cried Atherley heartily.
+
+The Canon's brow contracted a little.
+
+"I need hardly explain," he said, "that what I said did not apply to
+revealed truth. Jane, my dear, as I must leave by an early train
+to-morrow, I think I shall say good-night."
+
+I fell asleep that night early, and dreamt that I was sitting with
+Gladys in the frescoed dining-room of an old Italian palace. It was
+night, and through the open window came one long shaft of moonlight,
+that vanished in the aureole of the shaded lamp standing with wine and
+fruit upon the table between us. And I said in my dream--
+
+"Oh, Gladys, will it be always like this, or must we part again?"
+
+And she, smiling her slow soft smile, said: "You may stay with me till
+the knock comes."
+
+"What knock, my darling?"
+
+But even as I spoke I heard it, low and penetrating, and I stretched out
+my arms imploringly towards Gladys; but she only smiled, and the knock
+was repeated, and the whole scene dissolved around me, and I was sitting
+up in bed in semi-darkness, while somebody was tapping with a quick
+agitated touch at my door. I remembered then that I had forgotten to
+unlock it before I went to bed, and I rose at once and made haste to
+open it, not without a passing thrill of unpleasant conjecture as to
+what might be behind it. It was a tall figure in a long grey garment,
+who carried a lighted candle in his hand. For a moment, startled and
+stupefied as I was, I failed to recognise the livid face.
+
+"Canon Vernade! You are ill?"
+
+Too ill to speak, it would seem, for without a word he staggered forward
+and sank into a chair, letting the candle almost drop from his hand on
+to the table beside him; but when I put out my hand to ring the bell, he
+stayed me by a gesture. I looked at him, deadly pale, with blue shadows
+about the mouth and eyes, his head thrown helplessly back, and then I
+remembered some brandy I had in my dressing-bag. He took the glass from
+me and raised it to his lips with a trembling hand. I stood watching
+him, debating within myself whether I should disobey him by calling for
+help or not; but presently, to my great relief, I saw the stimulant take
+effect, and life come slowly surging back in colour to his cheeks, in
+strength to his whole prostrate frame. He straightened himself a little,
+and turned upon me a less distracted gaze than before.
+
+"Mr. Lyndsay, there is something horrible in this house."
+
+"Have you seen it?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I saw nothing; it is what I felt."
+
+He shuddered.
+
+I looked towards the grate. The fire had long been out, but the wood was
+still unconsumed, and I managed, inexpertly enough, to relight it. When
+a long blue flame sprang up, he drew his chair near the hearth and
+stretched towards the blaze his still tremulous hands.
+
+"Mr. Lyndsay," he said, in a voice as strangely altered as his whole
+appearance, "may I sit here a little--till it is light? I dread to go
+back to that room. But don't let me keep you up."
+
+I said, and in all honesty, that I had no inclination to sleep. I put on
+my dressing-gown, threw a rug over his knees, and took my place opposite
+to him on the other side of the fire; and thus we kept our strange
+vigil, while slowly above us broke the grim, cold dawn of early
+spring-time, which even the birds do not brighten with their babble.
+
+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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