CfortteU Ittioctaitg ffiibratg Jftttaca, ^tm f oth BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 - Cornell University Library PR 4262.N4 1892 The new Abelard; a foij^jjlfji:,,. Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013445766 POPULAR TWO-SHILLING NOVELS. V This is a SELECTION only.^FULL LISTS of. nearly COO NOVELS free, by MARY ALBERT. Brooke Finchle^'a Daughter. By MPS. ALEXANDER. Maid. Wife, or Widow? | Valerie's Fate. By GRANT ALLEN. Strange Stories, i Tbe Seckoning Hand. In all Shades. The Devil's Die. For Maiime'B Sake. This Mortal Coll. l-nlllstla. I £abylon,l The Tents of Shem. The Great Taboo. ALAN ST. AUBYN.— A Fellow of Trinity. ARTEMUS WARD.— Complete Worka. By Rev. S. BARING GOULD. Red Spider. l Eve. ' By FRANK BARRETT. Fettered Jor Life. | Between Life and Death. The bin of Olga Zassoulich. By BESANT AND RICE. Ready-Money Mortihoy With Haip and Crown. ■mis Son of Vulcan. My Little GlrL 'ihe Case of Mr.Lucraft Tue Golden Butterfly. By Cella'a Arbour. The Monks of Thelema 'TwasmlTafalgar'sIiay The Seamy Side. Ten Tears' Tenant. Chaplain of the Fleet. By WALTER BESANT. All Sorts & Conditions. World went well then. Ihe Captains' Room. Herr Paulus. All in a Garden Fair. For Faith A Freedom. Dorothy Forster. To Call her Mine. Uncle cfack. The Beil of St. Paul's. Children of Glbeon. Tne Holy Rose. By BRET HARTE. An Heiress of Red Dog. i Crabriel Conroy. Luck of Roaring Camp Maruja. I Flip. Califomian stories. ( AFhyllisof the Sierras By ROBERT BUCHANAN. Martyrdomof Madeline By Shadow of the Sword. A Child of Nature. God and the Man. Annan Water. | Matt. Ihe New Abelard. Love Me for Ever. Foxglove Manor. Master of the Mine. The Heir of Xtinne. By HALL CAINE. The Shadow of a Crime. | A Son of Hagar. The Deemster. By COMWl^NDER CAMERON,, Ihe Cruise of the "Blacit Prince." By MPS. ARCHER CLIVE. PaulFerroll. | Why Paul Ferroll Killed ilisWlfe By MORTIMER & FRANCES COLLINS. Sweet Anne Page. , Transmigration. Midnight to Midnight. ' A Fight wich Fortune Sweet and Twenty, The Village Comedy. Frances. | You Flay me FaAad. Blacksmith and Scholar. By WILKIE COLLINS. Armadale. I AfterDark Antonlna | No Name. Hide and Seek | BasU. The Dead Secret, Queen of Hearts. My MlscellanieB. Ihe Woman in White. Moonstone. | Legaeyof Man and Wife. [Cain. Poor MIbb Finch. Mies or Mra.7 Ihe New Magdalen. By DUTTON COOK. Leo. I Paul Foster's Daughter. By 0. EGBERT CRADDOCK. The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains. By A. DAUDET.— TheEvangeUst By J. LEITH DERWENT. Our Lady of Tears. | Circe's Lovers. CONAN DOYLE, &c.~strange Secrets. The FroEen Deep. The Law and the Lady. The Two Destinies. The Haunted Hotel. The Fallen Leaves. Jezebel's Daughter. The Black Robe. Heart and Science. "I Say No." The Evil Geniua Uttle Novels. A Rogue's Life. By CHARLES orCKENS. Sketches by Boz. I Oliver Twist. The Fkkwlck Papers. | Nicholas NicUebv. By DICK DONOVAN. The Man-Hunter. i Who Poisoned Hetty Caught at Last I Duncan ? Tracked and Taken. Detective's Triumphs. Manfrom Manchester, | In the Grip of the Law. By Mrs. ANNIE EDWARDES. A Point of Honour, j Archie Lovell. By M. BETHAM-EDWARDS. Kitty. I FeUcia. By EDWARD EGG LESTON.— Boxy. By PERCY FITZGERALD. Bella Donna. Folly. I Fatal Zero. Second Mrs. TUlotson. By R. E. F Olympla. One by One. Queen Cophetua. _ By HAROLD FREDERfc. Seth's Brother's Wife, j The Lawtou GlrL By CHARLES GIBBON. 76, Brooke Street. Never Forgotten. The Lady of Branteme. RANClLLON. A Real Queen. King or Knave 7 Romances of tiie Law. Robin Gray. For Lack of Gold. What will World Say 7 In Honour Bound. In Love and War. For the King. In Pastures Green. Queen of the Meadow. Flower of the Foresfi. Fancy Free. A Heart's Problem, The Braes of 1 arrow. The Golden Shaft. Of High Degree. Loving a Dream. Bv Mead and Streaox A Hard Knot. Heart's Delight. The Dead Heart. Blood-Money. By WILLIAM GILBERT. Dr. Austin's Guests. | James Duke. The Wizard of the Mountain. ERNES FGLANVILLE.- I Lost Helreaa. By HENRY GREVILLE. A Noble Woman, j Nikanor. By JOHN HABBERTON. Brueton's Bayou. j Country Luck. By A. HALLIDAY.-ETery-Day Papeii. By Lady DUFFUS HARDY. Faul Wjrnter's Sacrifice. By THOMAS HARDY, TTnder Ihe Greenwood Tree. By JULIAN HAWTHORNE. Gartll. I Dust. I Fortune's FooL Ellice Qnentln. Beatrix Randtriph. Sebagnan Strome. Miss Cadogna. Spectre oi Camera, I Love— or a Name i David Poindexter's Disappearance. SIR A. HELPS.— Ivan do Eiroa. By HENRY HERMAN.— A Leading Lae manifest. She was rather short-sighted, and, whenever examining anything or anybody, slightly closed her eye- ' If I were as rich as you,' continued Miss Combe after a pause, ' I know what I should do with my money.' ' Indeed 1 pray tell me.' * I should build a church to the New Faith ! ' ' Are you serious ? ' said Alma merrily. ' Unfortunately, I don't know what the new faith is.' ' The faith of Humanity ; not Comte's, which is Frenchi- fied rubbish, but the beautiful faith in human perfection, and the divine fiiture of the race. Just think what a Church it would make ! In the centre an altar " to the Unknown God"; painted windows all round, with the figures of all the great teachers, from Socrates to Herbert Spencer, and signs of the zodiac and figures of the pli^nets, if you like, on the celestial roof.' 'I don't quite see, Agatha, in what respect the new Church would be an improvement on the old one,' returned , Alma ; and as she spoke her eyes travelled over the gtiU ALMA. 47 landscape, and saw far away, between her and the sea, the glittering spire of the church of Fensea. 'It would be different in every particular,' said Mis? Cotnbe good-humouredly. 'In the first place, the architec- ture would be, of course, pure Greek, and there would be none of the paraphernalia of superstition.' ' And Jesus Christ ? — would He have any place there at all 7' or would you banish Him with the rest of the gods? ' ' Heaven forbid ! He should be pictured in the very central window, over the altar — ^not bleeding, horrible, and crucified, but as the happy painters represented Him in the early centuries, a beautiful young Shepherd — yes, beautiful as Apollo — carrying under His arm a stray lamb.' Alma sighed, and shook her head again. She was amused with her friend's opinions, and they never seemed to shock her, but her own attitude of mind with regard to Christianity was very different. ' I don't think we have got so far as that yet,' she said, still watching the distant spire. 'If you abolish Christ crucified you abolish Christ the Saviour altogether; for sorrow, suffering, and death were the signs of His heavenly mission. Besides, I am of Mr. Bradley's opinion, and think we have too many churches already.' ' Does he think so 7 ' exclaimed Miss Combe with some surprise. ' Yes, I have often heard him say that God's temple is the best — the open fields for a floor and the vatdted heavens for a roof.' Miss Combe rose, and they strolled on together. ' Is he as heterodox as ever ? ' asked Miss Combe. ' Mr. Bradley 7 I don't know what you mean by heterodox, but he has his own opinions on the articled of his religion.' 'Just so. He doesn't believe in the miracles, for example.' ' Have you heard him say so ? ' ' Not explicitly, but I have heard * ' You mustn't believe all the nonsense you hear,* cried Alma eagerly. ' He is tpo intellectual for the people, and they don't tmderstand him. You shall go to church next Sunday, and hear him preach.' 48 THE NMW ABJELABD. ' But I'm not a churoli-goer,' said the elder lady, Bmilicg. 'On Sundays I always read Herbert Spencer. Sermons are always so stupid.' ' Not always. Wait till you hear Mr. Bradley. When I listen to him, I alw;ays think of the great Abelard, whom they called " the angel of bright discourse." He says such wonderful things, and his voice is so beautiful. As he speaks, the church seems indeed a narrow place — too small for such words, for such a speaker ; and you long to hear him on some mountain top, preaching to a multitude under the open sky.' Miss Combe did not answer, but peeping sideways at her companion she saw that her face was warmly flushed, and her eyes were strangely bright and sparkling. She knew something, but not much, of Alma's relations with the vicar, and she hoped with aU her heart that they woidd never lead to matrimony. Alma was too wise a vestal, too precious to the cause of causes, to be thrown away on a mere country clergyman. In fact. Miss Combe had an errant brother of her Own who, though an objectionable person, was a freethinker, and in her eyes just the sort of husband for her friend. He was rather poor, not parti- cularly handsome, and somewhat averse to soap and water ; but he had held his own in platform argument with divers clergymen, and was generally accounted a ticklish subject for the Christians. So she presently remarked : — ' The finest speaker I ever heard is my brother Tom. I wish you could hear Am.' Alma had never done so, and, indeed, had never en- countered the worthy in question. ' Is he a clergyman ? ' she asked innocently. < Heaven forbid ! ' cried Miss Combe. ' No ; he speaks, at the Hall of Science.' ' Oh 1 ' 'We don't quite agree philosophically, for he is too thick with Bradlaugh's party, but I know he's coming round to Agnosticism. Poor Tom ! He is so clever, and has been so unfortunate. He married miserably, you know.' ' Indeed,' -said Alma, not much interested. ' There was a black-eyed sibyl of a woman who admired ALMA 49 one of the Socialist lecturers, and when he died actually went to his lodgings, out off his head, and carried it home under her cloak in the omnibus.' ' Horrible ! ' said Alma with a Shudder. ' But wha.t for?' ■■' To hod, my dear, so,that she might keep the skull as a sacred relic I When Tom was introduced to her she had it under a glass case on her mantelpiece. Well, she was a very intellectual di:eature, wonderfully " advanced," as they call it, and Tom was infatuated enough to make her his wife. They lived together for a year or so ; after which she took to Spiritualism, and finally died in a madhouse. So poor Tom's fi:ee, and I hope when he marries again he'll be more lucky.' .Of course Miss Combe did not for a moment believe that her brother would have ever had any attraction in the eyes of her rich friend ; for Tom Combe was the reverse of winsome, even to humbler maidens — few of whom felt drawn to a man who never brushed his hair, had a beard like a Communist refugee, and smelt strongly of beer and tobaeeo. ftit blood is thicker than water, and Miss Combe could not forbear putting in a word in season. The word made little or no impression. The stately beauty walked silently on full of her own thoughts and dreams. CHAPTER VII. A SIDK CCKKENT. That bore of bores — a tedious male cousin ! — Old Play. loiTEEiNG slowly onward from stile to stile, from .field to field, and from pasture to pasture, the two ladies at last reached a country road leading right through the heart of the parish, and commandiqg from time to time a view .of the distant sea. They found Pensea, as usual, fast asleep, basking in the midst of its own breath ; the red-tiled houses dormant, the population invisible, save in ;the square or imarket-place opposite the tavern, where a drowsy cart- horse was blinking into a water trough, and a somnambji- s 50 THE NEW ABELARD. listic ostler was vacantly looking on. Even in the open shops such as Kadford the linendraper's and Summerhayea the grocer's, nothing seemed doing. But just as they left the village behind "tibem, and saw in front of them the spire of the village church peeping through the trees, they suddenly came face to face with a human being who was walking towards them in great haste and with some indications of ill-temper. 'Ah, here -you are!' ejaculated this individual. 'I have been hunting for you up and down.' He was a man under thirty, and looking very little over twenty, though his face showed little of the brightnesa and candour of early manhood. His hair was cropped close and he was clean-shaven; his eyes were yellowish and large, of an expression so fixed and peculiar as to have been compared by irreverent friends to 'hard-boiled eggs';' his forehead was low, his jaw coarse and determined. With regard to his dress, it was of the description known as horsey; short coat and tight-fitting trousers of light tweed, a low-crowned hat of the same material, white neckcloth fastened by a horseshoe pin. This was George Craik, son of Sir George Craik, Bart., of Craik Castle, in the neighbourhood, and Alma's cousin on her father's side. Alma greeted him with a nod, while he shook hands with her companion. ' Did you ride over, George ? ' she inquired. ' Yes ; I put my nag up at the George, and walked up to the Larches. Not -finding you at home, I strolled down to the vicarage, thinking to find you there. But old Bradley is not at home ; so I suppose there was no attraction to take you.' The young lady's cheek flushed, and she looked at her relation, not too amicably. ' Old Bradley, as yoiicall him (though he is about your own age, I suppose), is away in London. Did you want to see him 7 ' George shrugged his shoulders, and struck at his boots irritably with his riding-whip. ' I wanted to see you, as I told you. By the way, though, what's this they're telling me about Bradley and A SIDE CUMRENT. 61 the. Bishop 7 He's come to the length of his tether at last, I suppose 1 Well, I always said he was no better than an atheist, and a confounded radical into the bargain.' 'An atheist, I presume,' returned the young lady superciliously, 'is a person who does not believe in a Supreme Being. When you describe Mr. Bradley as one, you forget he is a minister of the Church of Christ.' George Craik scowled, and then laughed contemptu- ously. ' Of course you defend him 1 ' he cried. You will tell me next, I dare say, that you share his opinions.' ' When you explain to me what they are, I will inform you,' responded Alma, moving slowly on, while George lounged after her, and Miss Combe listened in amused amazement. ' It's a scandal,' proceeded the young man, ' that a- feUow like that should retain a living in the Church, Cripps tells me that his sermon last Sunday went slap in the fece of the Bible. I myself have heard him say that some German fellow had proved the Gospels to be a tissue of falsehoods.' Without directly answering this invective, Alma looked coldly round at her cousin over her shoulder. Her ex- pression was not encouraging, and her manner showed a very natural irritation. ' How amiable we are this morning ! ' she exclaimed. ' Pray, do you come all the way from Craik to give me a discussion on the whole duty of. a Christian clergyman ? Eeally, George, such attempts at edification have a curious effect, coming from you.'' The yoiing man flushed scarlet, and winced nervously under his cousin's too ardent contempt. ' I don't pretend to be a saint,' he said, ' but I know what I'm talking about. I call Bradley a renegade ! It's a mean thing, in my opinion, to take money for preaching opinions in which a man does not believe.' ' Only just now you said that he preached heresy — or atheism — whatever you hke to call it.' ' Yes ;. and is paid for preaching the very reverse.' Alma could no longer conceal her irritation. 'Why should we discuss a topic you do not undei^ E 2 62 TSB NEW ASELAMD. stand? Mr. Bradley is a gentleman whose aims are too high for the ordinary comprehension, that is all.' ' Of course you think me a fool, and are polite enough to say so ! ' persisted George. ~ ' Well, I should not mind BO much if Bradley had not succeeded in infecting you with his pernicious opinions. He has done so, though you may deny it 1 Since he came to the neighbourhood, you have not been like the same girl. The fellow ought to be horsewhipped if he had his deserts.' Alma stopped short, and looked the speaker in the face. 'Be good enough to leave me, — and come back when you are in a better temper.' George gave a disagreeable laugh. 'No ; I'm coming to lunch with you.' 'That you shall not, unless you promise to conduct yourself like a gentleman.' * Well, hang the parson, since you can't bear him to be discussed. I, didn't come over to quarrel.' 'You generally succeed in doing so, however.' ' No fault of ;nine ; you snap a fellow's head off, when he wants to give you a bit of good advice. There, there,' he added, laughing again, but not cordially, ' let us drop the subject. I want something to eat.' . Alma echoed the laugh, with about an equal amount of cordiality. 'Now you are talking of what you do understand. Lunch will be served at two.' As she spoke they were passing by the church gate, and saw, across the churchyard, with its long rank grass, and tombstones stained with mossy slime, the old parish church of Pensea: — a quaint timeworn structure, with an arched and gargoyled entrance, Gothic windows, and a beliry of strange device. High up in the belfry, and on the boughs of the great ash-trees surrounding the burial acre, jackdaws were gathered, sleepily discussing the weather and their family affairs. A footpath, much overgrown with grass, crossed from the church porch to a door in the weather- beaten wall communicating with the adjacent vicarage — * large, dismal, old-fashioned residence, buried in gloomy foliage. Miss Combe glanced at church and churchyard with A SIDE CrmRMNT. 63 .the air of superior enlightenment which a Christian mission- ary might assume on approaching some temple of Buddha or Brahma. George, glancing over the wall, uttered an exclamation, ' What's the matter now ? ' demanded Alina. ' Brown's blind mare grazing among the graves,' said young Craik with righteous indignation. H^ was about to enlarge further on the delinquencies of the vicar, and the shameful condition of the parish, of which he had just dis- covered a fresh illustration, but, remembering his recent experience, he controlled himself and contented himself with throwing a stone at the animal, which was leisurely cropping the grass surrounding an ancient headstone. They walked on, and passed the front of the vicarage, which looked out through sombre ash-trees on the road. The place seemed dreary and desolate enough, despite a few flower-beds and a green lawn. The windows were mantled in dark ivy, which drooped in heavy clusters over the gloomy door. Leaving the vicarage behind them, the three followed the country road for about a mile, when, passing through the gate of a pretty lodge, they entered an avenue of larch- trees leading up to the mansion to which they gave their name. Here all was bright and well-kept, the grass swards cleanly swept and variegated with flower-beds, and leading on to shrubberies full of flowering trees. The house itself, an elegant modern structure, stood upon a slight eminence, and was reached by two marble terraces commanding a sunny view of the open fields and distant sea. It may be well to explain here that the Larches, with a large extent of the surrounding property, belonged to Miss Alma Craik in her own right, the lady being an orphan and an only child. Her father, a rich railway contractor, had bought the property and built the house just before she was born. During her infancy her mother had died, and before she was of age her father too had joined the great majority ; so that she found herself, at a very early age, the heiress to a large property, and with no relations in the world save her uncle. Sir George Craik, and his son. Sir George, who had been knighted on the completion of a great railway bridge considered a triumph of engineering 64 THE NEW ABELARD. Bkill, had bought an adjacent property at about the time when his brother purchased the lands of Fensea. The same contrast which was noticeable between the cousins had existed between the brothers, Thomas and George Craik. They were both Scotchmen, and had begun life as common working engineers, but there the resem- blance ceased. Thomas had been a comparative recluse, .thoughtful, melancholy, of advanced opinions, fond of books and abstruse speculation ; and his daughter's liberal educa- tion had been the consequence of his culture, and in a measure of his radicalism. George was a man of the world, quick, fond of money, a Conservative in politics, and a courtier by disposition, whose ambition was to found a * family,' and who disapproved of all social changes un- connected with the spread of the railway system and the euccess of his own commercial speculations. Young George was his only son, and had acquired, at a very early age, all the instincts (not to speak of many of the vices) of the born aristocrat. He was particularly sensitive on the score of his lowly origin, and his great grudge against society was that it had not provided him with an old-fashioned ancestry. Failing the fact, he assumed all the fiction, of an hereditary heir of the soil, but would have given half his heirloom to anyone who could have produced for him an authentic ' family tree,' and convinced him that, despite his fether's beginnings, his blood had in it a dash of ' blue.' George Craik lunched with his cousin and her com- panion in a spacious chamber, communicating with the terrace by French windows opening to the ground. He was not s. conversationalist, and the meal passed in comparative silence. Alma could not fail to perceive that the young man was unusually preoccupied and taciturn. At last he rose without ceremony, strolled out on the terrace, and lit a cigar. He paced up and down for some minutes, then, with the air of one whose mind is made up, he looked in and beckoned to his" cousin. ' Come out here,' he said. ' Never mind your hat ; there is no sun to speak of.' After a moment's hesitation she stepped out and joined him. ' Do you want me ? ' she asked, carelessly. ' I would A 8IBE CURRENT. 06 rather leave you to your smoke and go to the library with Miss Combe. We're studying Herbert Spencer's "First Principles " together, and she reads a portion aloud every afternoon.' She knew that something was coming by the fixed gaze with which he regarded her, and the peculiar expression in his eyes. His manner was far less like that of a lover than that of a somewhat sulky and tyrannical elder brother ; and indeed they had been so much together from childhood upward that she felt the relation between them to be quite a Iraternal one. Nevertheless, his mind just then was occupied with a warmer sentiment— the one indeed which often leads the way to wedlock. He began abruptly enough. ' I say, Alma, how long is this to last ? ' he demanded, not without asperity, ^ What, pray?' ' Our perpetual misunderstandings. I declare if I did not know what a queer girl you are, I should think you detested me.' ' I like you well enough, George — when you are agree- able, which is not so often as I could wish.' Thus she answered, with a somewhat weary laugh. ' But you know I like you, better than anything in the world,' he cried, eagerly. ' You know I have set my heart on making you my wife.' ' Don't talk nonsense, George 1 ' replied Alma. ' Love between cousins is an absurdity.' She would have added an ' enormity,' having during her vagrant studies imbibed strong views on the subject of consanguinity, but, advanced as she was, she was not quite advanced enough to discuss a physiological and social problem with the man who wanted to marry her. In simple truth, she had the strongest personal objection to her cousin in his present character of lover. , ' I don't see the absurdity of it,' answered the young man, 'nor does my father. His heart is set upon this nlatch, as you know ; and besides, he does not at all approve of your living the life you do — sdone, without a protector, and all that sort of thing.' By this time Alma had quite recovered herself, and 86 THE NEW ABELARD. was able to reaSsume the air of sweet superiority which is at once so bewitching in a pretty woman, or so irritating. It did not bewitch Georgfe Craik ; it irritated him beyond measure. A not inconsiderable experience of vulgar amours in the country, not to speak of the business known as ' sowing wild oats ' in Paris and London, had familiarised him with a different type of woman. In his cousin's presence he felt, not abashed, but at a disadvantage. She had a manner, too, of talking down to him as to a younger brother, which he disliked exceedingly ; and more than once, when' he had talked to her in the language of love, he had smarted under her ridicule. So now, instead of taking the matter too seriously; she smiled frankly in his face and quietly took his arm. * You must not talk like that, George,' she said, walking up and down with him. ' When you do, I feel as if you were a very little boy and I quite an old woman. Even if I cared for you in that way — and I don't, and never shall — we are not at all suited to each other ; our thoughts and aims in life are altogether different. I like you very much as a cousin, of course, and that is just the reason why I can never think of you as a husband. Don't talk of it again^ please ! — and forgive me for being quite frank. I should not like you to have any misconception on the subject.' ' I know what it is,' he cried, angrily; 'it is that clergy- man fellow ! He has come between us.' ' Nothing of the sort,' answered Alma with heightened colour. ' If there was not another man in the world,- it would be all the same so far as you and I are concerned.' ' I don't believe a word of it. Bradley is your choice A pretty choice ! A fellow who is almost a beggar,- and in a very short time will be kicked out of the Church as a heretic' She released his arm and drew away from him in deep exasperation ; but her feeling towards him was still that of an elder sister annoyed at the gaucherie of a privileged brother. , ' If you continue to talk like tha,t of Mr. Bradley, we shall quarrel, George.- I think you had better go home now and think it over. In any case, you will do no good by abusing an innocent man who' is vastly your euperior.' A SIDE CUMRENT. 67 All the bad blood of George Craik's heart now niounted to bis face, and bis frame shook with rage. 'Bradley will hxve to reckon with me,' he exclaimed, furiously. ' What right has he to raise his eyes towards you? Until he came down here, we were the best of friends ; but he' has poisoned your heart against me and against all your friends. Never mind 1 I'll have it out with him before many days are done 1 ' Without deigning to reply. Alma walked from him into the house. An hour later George Craik mounted his horse at the inn and rode furiously homeward. An observer of human nature, noticing the expression of his countenance, and taking count of his square-set jaw and savage mouth, would have concluded perhaps that Alma estimated his opposition, and perhaps his whole character, somewhat too lightly. He had a bull-dog's tenacity when he had once made up his mind to a course of action. But when he was gone the high-spirited lady of his affections dismissed him completely from her tiioughts. She joined Miss Combe in the library, and was soon busy with the problem of the Unknowable, as presented in the pages of the clearest-headed philosppher of our time. CHAPTER vin. MYSTIFICATIONS. ' What God hath joined, no man shall put asunder,' Even BO I heard the preacher cry — and blunder ! Alas, the sweet old text applied could be' Only in Eden, or in Arcady. This text, methinks, is apter, more in season — ' What man joins, God shall sunder — -when there's reason ! ' Mayfair : a Satire. Ambrose Bradley came back from London a miserable man. Alighting late in the evening at the nearest railway station, nearly ten miles distant, he left his bag to be sent on by the carrier, and walked home through the darkness on foot. It was late when he knocked at the vicarage door, and was admitted by his housekeeper, a melancholy 68 THE NEW ABEhAMD. village woman, whose husband combined the offices of gardener and sexton. The house was dark and desolate, like his thoughts. He shut himself up in his study, and at once occupied himself in writing his sermon for the next day, which was Sunday. This task occupied him until the early summer dawn crept coldly into the room. The Sunday came, dull and rainy ; and Bradley went forth to face his congregation with a deepening sense of guilt and shame. A glance showed him that Alma occu- pied her usual place, close under the pulpit, but he was careful not to meet her eyes. Not far from her sat Sir George Craik and his son, both looking the very reverse of pious minded. It was a very old church, with low Gothic arches and narrow painted windows, through which little sunlight ever came. Iq the centre of the nave was the tomb of the old knight of Fensea, who had once owned the surround- ing lands, but whose race had been extinct for nearly a century ; he was depicted, life-size, in crusader's costume, with long two-handed sword by his side, and hands crossed lying on his breast. On the time-stained walls around were other tombstones, with quaint Latin inscriptions, some almost illegible; but one of brand-new marble recorded the virtues of Thomas' Craik, deceased, the civil engineer. Alma noticed in a moment that Bradley was ghastly pale, and that he faced his congregation with scarcely a remnant of his old assurance, or rather enthusiasm. His voice, however, was clear and resonant as ever, and under perfect command. He preached a dreary sermon, orthodox enough to please the most exacting, and on an old familiar text referring to those sins which are said, sooner or later, to ' find us out.' All those members of the flock who had signed the letter to the Bishop were there in force, eager to detect new heresy, or confirmation of the old back- sliding. They were disappointed, and exchanged puzzled looks with one another. Sir George Craik, who had been warned by his son to expect something scandalous, listened with a puzzled scowl. The service over, Alma lingered in the graveyard. MYSTIFICATIONS. 69 expecting the clergyman to come and seek her, aa he was accustomed to do. - He did not appear ; but in his stead came her uncle and cousin, the former affectionately effusive, the latter with an air of respectful injury. They went home with her and spent the afternoon. When they had driven away, she announced her intention, in spite of showery weather and slushy roads, of going to evening service. Miss Combe expressed her desire of accompany- ing her, but meeting with no encouragement, decided to remain at home. There were very few people at the'chuich that evening, and the service was very short. Again Alma noticed the vicar's death^pale face and always averted eyes, and she instinctively felt that something terrible had wrought a change in him. When the service was done, she waited for him, but he did not come. Half an hour afterwards, when it was quite dark, she knocked at the vicarage door. It was answered by the melancholy housekeeper. ' Is Mr. Bradley at home ? I wish to speak to him.' The woman looked confused and uncomfortable. ' He be in, miss, but I think he be gone to bed wi' a headache. He said he were not to be disturbed, unless it were a sick call.' Utterly amazed and deeply troubled. Alma turned from the door. ' Tell him that I asked for him,' she said coldly. ' I will, miss,' was the reply ; and the door was closed. With a heavy heart, Alma walked away. Had she yielded to her first impulse, she would have returned and insisted on an interview ; but she was too ashamed. Knowing as she did the closeness of the relationship between them, knowing that the man was her accepted lover, she was utterly at a loss to account for his extra- ordinary conduct. Could anything have turned his heart against her, or have aroused his displeasure? He had always been so different ; so eager to meet her gaze and to seek her company. Now, it was clear, he was com- pletely changed, and had carefully avoided her ; nay, she had no doubt whatever, from the housekeeper's manner, that he had iustrticted her to deny him. ■60 THH NMW ABSLAMD. She -walked on, half pained, half indignant. The night was darkj the road desolate. All at once she heard footsteps behind her, as of one rapidly running. Presently someone came up breathless, and she heard a voice calling her name. ' Is it you, Alma ? ' called the voice, which she recog- nised at once as that of Bradley. ' Yes, it is I,' she answered coldly. The next moment he was by her side. • I came after you. I could not let you go home with- out speaking a word to you.' The voice wais strangely agitated, and its agitation communicated itself to the hearer. She turned to him trembling violently, with an impulsive cry. ' O Ambrose, what has happened ? ' ' Do not ask me to-night,' was the reply. * When I have thought it all over, I shall be able to explain, but not now. My darling, you must forgive me if I seem unkind and rude, but I have been in great, great trouble, and even now I can scarcely realise it all.' ' You have seen the Bishop 7 ' she asked, thinking to touch the quick of his trouble, and lead him to confession. ' I have seen him, and, as I expected, I shall have to resign or suffer a long persecution. Do not ask me to tell you more yet ! Only forgive me for having seemed cold aad unkind — I would cut off my right hand rather than cause you pain.' They were walking on side by side in the direction of the Larches. Not once did Bradley attempt to embrace the woman he loved, or even to take her hand. For a time she retained her self-possession, but at last, yielding to the sharp strain upon her heart, she stopped short, and with a Sob, threw her arms around his neck. ' Ambrose, why are you so strange ? Have we not sworn to be all in all to one anothei"? Have I not said that your people shall be my people, your God my God ? Do not speak as if there was any change. Whatever persecution you suffer I have a right to share.' He seemed to shrink fi:om her in terror, and tried to disengage himself from her embrace. ' Don't, my darling 1 I can't bear it S J need all my MYSTIFICATIONS. 61 strength, and you make me weak as a child. All tliat ia over now. I have no right to love you.' 'No right 7' ' None. I thought it might have been, but now I know it is impossible. And I am not worthy of you ; I was never worthy.' ' Ambrose ! has your heart then changed ? ' ' It will never change. I shall love you till I die. But now you must see that all is different, that our love is without hope and without blessing. There, there ; don't weep ! ' 'You will always be the same to me,' she cried. ' Whatever happens, or has happened, nothing can part you and me, if your heart is still the same.' ' You do not understand ! ' ha returned, and as he spoke he gently put her aside. ' All must be as if we had never met. God help me, I am not so lost, so selfish, as to involve you in my ruin, or to preserve your love with a living lie. Have compassion on Ine ! I will see you again, or better still, I will write to you — and then, you will understand.' Before she could say another word to him he was gone. She stood alone on the dark road, not far from the lights of the lodge. She called after him, but he gave no answer, made no sign. Terror-stricken, appalled, and ashamed, she walked on homeward, and entering the house, passed up to her room, locked the door, and had her dark hour alone. The next day Alma rose early after a sleepless night. She found awaiting her on the breakfast table a letter which had been brought by hand. She opened it and read as follows : Mt Darling, — Yes, I shall call you so for the last time, though it means almost blasphemy. You would gather from my wild words last night that what has happened for ever puts out of sight ^nd hope my dream of making you my wife. You shall not share my degradation. You shall not bear the burthen of my imfortunate opinions as a clergyman, now that my social and religious plans and aims have fallen like a house of Cards. It is not that I hare ceased to regard you as the 62 lUJi! JH-EW ABELARD. one human being that could make martyrdom happy for me, or existence endurable. As long as life lasts I shall know that its only consecration would have come from you, the best and noblest woman I have ever met, or can hope to meet. But the very ground has opened under my feet. Instead of being a free agent, as I believed, I am a slave, to whom love is a forbidden thing. Even to think of it (as I have done once or twice; God help me, in my horror and despair) is an outrage upon you. I shall soon be far from here. I could not bear to dwell in the same place with one so dear, and to know that she was lost to me for ever. Grant me your forgiveness, and if you can, forget that I ever came to darken your life.- My darling I my darling I I cry again for the last time from the depths of my broken heart, that God may bless you ! For the little time that remains to me I shall have this one comfort — the memory of your goodness, and that you once loved me ! Ambkose Beadlet. Alma read this letter again and again in the solitude of her own chamber, and the more she read it the more utterly inscrutable it seemed. That night Bradley sat alone in his study, a broken and despairing man. Before him on his desk lay a letter just written, in which he formally communicated to the Bishop his resignation of his living, and begged to be superseded as soon' as possible. His eyes were red with weeping, his whole aspect was indescribably weary and forlorn. So lost was he in his own miserable thoughts, that he failed to notice a ring at the outer door, and a momentary whispering which followed the opening of the door. In another instant the chamber door opened, and a ■woman, cloaked and veiled, appeared upon the threshold. ' Alma ! ' he cried, recognising the figure in a moment, and rising to his feet in overmastering agitation. Without a word she closed the door, and then, lifting her veil to show a face- as white as marble, gazed at him with eyes of infinite sorrow and compassion. Meeting the gaze, and trembling before it, he sank again into his chair^ and hid his face in his hands. • Yes, I have come ! ' she said in a low voice ; then, MYSTIFICATIONS. 68 withoTifanother word, she crossed the room and laid hei hand softly upon his shoulder. Feeling the tender touch, he shivered and sobted aloud. ' O, why did you come ? ' he cried. ' You — you — have; read my letter ? ' ' Yes, Ambrose,' she answered in the same low, far- away, despairing voice. ' That is why I came — to comfort you if I could. Look up 1 speak to me 1 I can bear everything if I can only be still certain of your love.' He uncovered his face, and gazed at her in astonishment. ' What 1 can you forgive me ? ' ' I have nothing to forgive,' she replied mournfully. ' Can you think that my esteem for you is so slight a thing, so light a straw, that even this cruel wind of evil fortune can blow it away 7 I know that you have been honourable in word and deed ; I know that you are the noblest and the best of men. It is no fault of yours, dear, if God is so hard upon us; no, no, you are not to blame.' ' But you do not understand ! I am a broken man. I must leave this place, and ' ' Listen to me,' she said, interrupting him with that air of gentle mastery which had ever exercised so great a spell upon him, and whiclj gave to her passionate beauty a certain splendour of command. ' Do you think you are quite just to me when you speak — ^as you have spoken — of leaving Fensea, and bidding me an eternal farewell? Since this trouble in the church, you have acted as if I had no part and parcel in your life, save that which might come if we were merely married people ; you have thought of me as of a woman to whom you were betrothed, not as of a loving friend whom you might trust till death. Do you think that my faith in you is so slight a thing that it cannot survive even the loss of you as a lo-ver, if that must be ? Do you not know that I am all yours, to the deepest fibre of my being, that your sorrow is my sorrow, your God my God — even as I said 7 I am your sister still, even if I am not to be your wife, and whither you go, be sure I shall follow.' He listened to her in wonder ; for in proportion as ho was troubled, she was strangely calm, and her voice had a holy fervour before which he bent in reverent humiliation. 84 THE NEW ABELARD. When she ceased, with her soft hand still upon his shoulder, he raised his, eyes to her, and they were dim with tears. ' You are too good ! ' h6 said. •' I am the dust beneath your feet.' * You are my hero and my master. As Heloise was to Abelard, so would I be to you. So why should you grieve? I shall be to you as before, a loving friend, perhaps a comforter, till death separates us in this world, to meet in a better and a fairer.' He took her hands in his own, and kissed them, his tears still falling. 'Thank God you are so true 1 But how shall I look you in ,the face after what has happened 7 You must despise me so much — ^yes, yes, you must ! ' She would have answered him with fresh words of Bweet assurance, but he continued passionately : ' Think of the world, Alma ! Think of your own future, your own happiness ! Your life would be blighted, your love wasted, if you continued to care for me. Better to forget me ! better to say farewell ! ' *Do yoni say that, Ambrose? ' she replied ; 'you who first taught me that love once born is imperishable, and that those He has once united— -not through the body merely, but through a sacrament of.souls. — can never be sundered ? Nay, you have still your work to do in the world, and I — shall I not help you still ? You will not go away ? ' ' I have written my resignation to the Bishop. I shall quit this place and the Church's ministry for ever.' ' Do not decide in haste,' she said. ' Is this the letter ? ' And as she spoke she went to the desk and took the letter in her hand. 'Yes.' ' Let me hum the letter.' 'Alma!' ' Give yourself another week to think it over, for my sake. All this has been so strange and so sudden that you have not had time to think it out. For my sake, Teflect.' She held the letter over the lamp and looked at him for his answer ; he hung down his head in silence, and, taking the attitude for acquiescenqe, she suffered the paper to xeach the flame, and in a few seconds it was consumed. MYSTTFICATIOm. 6S * Gdod night 1 ' she said. * I must go now.' ' Good night I and God bless yon, Alma ! ' They parted without one kiss or embrace, but, holding toqh other's hands, they looked long and tenderly into each other's &ces. Then Alma went as she came, slipping quietly away into the night. But no sooner had she left the vicarage than all her self-command forsook her, and she wept hysterically under cover of the darkness. ' Yes, his God is my God,' she murmured to herself. ' May He give me strength to bear this sorrow, and keep us together till the end 1 ' CHAPTER IX. FAREWELL TO FENSEA. I am sick of timeserving. I was born in the land of Mother* Nakedness ; she trho bare me was a true woman, and my father was sworn vassal to King Candour, ere he died of a sunstroke; but villains robbed me of my birthright, and I was sent to serve as a mercenary in the army of old Hypocrisy, whom all men now hail Emperor and Pope. Now my armour is rotten, my sword is broken, and I shall never fight more. Heigho ! I would I were sleeping under a green tree, in the land where the light shines, and there is no lying ! — The Comedy of Cotmterfeits, After that night's parting the lovers did not meet for several days. Bradley went gloomily about his parochial duties, and when he was not so engaged he was shut up in his study, engaged in correspondence or gloomy contempla- tion. Alma did not seek him out again, for the very simple reason that the nervous shock she had received had seriously afEected her generally robust health, and brought on a sort of feverish hysteria complicated with sleepless- ness, so that she kept her room for some days, finding a homely nurse in Miss Combe. When Sunday came she was too unwell to go to church. In the afternoon she received the following letter : — Dearest Alma, — For sol must still call you, since my spirit shrinks from addressing you under any more formal name. I have heard that you are ill, and I know the F 66 THE NEW ABEZARD. cause is not far to seek, since it must lie at the door of liim whose friendship has brought you so much inisery. Pray God it is only a passing shadow in your sunny life ! An eternity of punishment would not adequately meet my guilt if it should seriously imperil your happiness or your health ! Write to me, since I dare not, must not, come to you — just one word to tell me you are better, and that my fears on your account are without foundation. In the pulpit to-day, when I missed your dear face, I felt terror- stricken and utterly abandoned. Hell itself seemed open- ing under my feet, and every word I uttered seemed miserable blasphemy. • I knew then, if I did, not know it before, that my faith, my religion, my eternal happiness or misery, still depend on you. A. B. Two hours later Bradley received this reply : — ' Do not distress yourself, dearest. I shall soon be quite well again.' I have been thinking it all over in solitude, and I feel quite sure that if we are patient God will help us. Try to forget your great persecution, and think rather of what is more solemn and urgent — ^your position in the Church, and the justification of your faith before the world.' Aihbrose Bradley read the above, and thought it strangely cold and calm ; . he was himself too distracted to read between ,the lines and perceive the bitter anguish of the writer-. He still lacked the moral courage to make a clean breast of the truth, and confess to Alma that his change had come through that sad discovery in London. He dreaded her sorrow more than her anger ; for he knew, or feared, that the one unpardonable sin in her eyes would, be^to have loved another woman. She Ijad no suspicion of the truth. An entanglement of a disgraceful kind, involving the life of a person of her own sex, was the last thing to occur to her mind in connection with her lover. She attributed everything, his change of manner, his strange passion, his unreasoning despair, to the exquisite eensitivensss of a proudly intellectual nature. How de- luded she was by her own idolatry of his character the reader knows. What cared he for the Church's inquisi- tion now t What cared he for dogmatic niceties, or spiri- FAIIEWELL TO FSKSEA. 67 tual difficulties, or philosoptic problems. He was sick of the whole business. The great problem troubled him no longer, save that he felt more and more in revolt against any kind of authority, more and more tired of the sins and follies and blind fatalities of the world., Even' her tender appeals to his vanity seemed trivial and beside the question. His ambition was dead. Again and again he tried to summon up courage enough to make a complete explanation ; but his heart failed him, and so he temporised. He could not say the word which, in all probability, would sunder them for ever. He would wait ; perhaps Heaven, in its mercy, might relieve him, and justify him. In his own mind he felt himself a martyr ; yet he could escape the sense of contamination consequent on the possession of so guilty a secret. The pure currents of his life seemed poisoned, — as indeed they were. The situation was a perilous one. Behind all Alma's assumption of tender acquiescence, she was deeply wounded by her lover's want of confidence in her devotion. Hia manner had shocked her inexpressibly, more even than she yet knew, yet it only drew her more eagerly towards him. In her despair and angfir, she turned to the topic which, from the first moment of their acquaintance, had been constantly upon his. tongue, and she tried to persuade her- self that her strongest feeling towards him was religious and ^ ^eHec tual. In reality, she was hungering towards "Hlmwith all the suppressed and suffocating passion of an unusually passionate nature. Had he been a reckless man, unrestrained by moral sanctions, she would have been at his mercy. So implicit was her iaith in the veracity of his perception, and so strong at the same time was hia personal attraction for her, that she might have been ready, for his sake, had he told her the whole truth, to accept aa right any course of conduct, however questionable, which he might sanctify as right and just. From all this it will be gathered that Miss Alma Craik was in a position of no inconsiderable peril. She had long been dwelling far too much in the sphere of ideas, not to Bay crotchets, for a young lady without protectors. Her one safeguard was her natural purity of disposition, coupled i'2 M THE NEW ABELABD. ■with her strength of will. She was not the, sort of woman to be seduced into wrong-doing, as weak women are seduced, against her conscience. Any mistake she might make in life Was certain to be the result of her own intel- lectual acquiescence, — or 72 THE NEW ABELARD. It has been very well said by a wit of tWs nation that if on any fine day the news arrived in Paris that ' God was dead,^ it would not cause the slightest astonishment or interest in a single salon ; indeed, to all political intents qnd purposes the Divinity is regarded as extinct. A few old-fashioned people go to church, and here and there in the streets you see little girls in white going to confirma- tion ; but the majority of the people are entirely without the religious sentiment in any form. A loathsome publica- tion, with hideous illustrations, called the Bible pour Eire, is just now being issued in penny numbers ; and the character of its humour may be guessed when I tell you that one of the pictures represents the ' bon Dieu,' dressed like an old clothesman, striking a lucifer on the sole of his boot, while underneath are the words, ' And God said. Let there be Light!' The same want of good taste, to put reverence aside as out of the question, is quite as manifest in the higher liteiature, as where Hugo himself, in a recent poem, thus describes the Tout-Puissant, or All-Powerful : — Fris d'an vieux rhumatisme incurable a I'ichine, Apr&s ayoir crth le monde, et la machine Des astres pMe-mMe au fond des horizons, La vie et I'engrenage inorme des saisons, La fleiiT, I'oiseau, la femme, et I'abime, et la terre, Dieu s'est laissi tomber dans son fauteuil-Voltaire! Is it any wonder that a few simple souls, who still cherish a certain reverence for the obsolete orthodox terminology should go over in despair to Rome 7 One of the great questions of the day, discussed in a spirit of the most brutal secularity, is Divorce. I know your exalted views on this subject, your love of the beauti- ful old fashion which made marriage eternal, a sacrament of souls, not to be abolished even by death itself. Well, our French neighbours wish to render it a simple contract, to be dissolved at the whim of the contracting parties. Theii; own social life, they think, is a living satire on the old dispensation. But I sat down' to write you a letter about myself, and here I am prosing about the idle topics of the day, from religioQ to the matrimonial musical glasses. I am wonder- fully well in body; in fact, never better. But oh, my FROM THE POST-BAG. 73 Alma, I am still miserably sick of soul I More than ever do I perceive that the world wants a creed. When the idea of God is effaced from society, it becomes — this Paris — a death's head with a mask, of pleasure : — The time is out of joint — ah cursed spite, That ever I was born to see it right ! All my foolish plans hare fallen like a house of cards. I myself seem strangling in the coils of the modern snake of Pessimism. If it were not for you, my guardian angel, my star of comfort, I think I should try euthanasia. Write to me ! Tell me of yourself, of Fensea ; no news that comes from my heaven on earth will fail to interest and soothe me. What do you think of my successor ? and what does the local Inquisition think of him ? Next to the music of your voice will be the melody of your written words. And forgive this long rambling letter. I write of trifles light as air, because I cannot write of what is deepest in my heart. — Yours always, Ambrose Bradley. II. From Alma Craih to Ambrose Bradley, Thanks, dearest Ambeoss, for your long and loving letter. It came to me in good season, when I was weary and anxious on your account, and lam grateful for its good tidings and its tone of growing cheerfulness. You see my prescription is already working wonders, for you. wrote like your old self — almost ! I am so glad that you are well in health, so thankful you are beginning to forget your trouble. If such a cure is possible in a few short weeks, what will time not do in a year 7 There is no news, that is, none worth telling.. Your successor (since you ask concerning him) Is a mild old gentleman with the most happy faith in all the articles of the Athanasian creed — particularly that of eternal punishment, which he expounds with the most benevolent of smiles. I should say he will be a favourite ; indeed, he is a favourite already, though he has the dis- advantage, from the spinster point of view, of being a very, very married man. He has a wife and seven children, all girls, and is far too poor in this world's goods to think 7< THE NEW ABELARD. much of his vested interest m those of the next world. I have heard him' preach once, which has sufficed. What you say of life in France interests me exceedingly, and my heart bleeds for those poor priests Of the despised yet divine creed. If you had not taught me a purer and a better faith, I think I should be a Koman Catholic, and even as it is, I can feel nothing but sympathy for the Church which, after all, possesses more than all others the form of the Christian tradition. Agatha Combe has returned to London. She ia still full of that beautiful idea (was it yours or mine, or does it belpng to both of us ?) of the New Church, in which KellgioD, Science, and Art should all meet together in one temple, as the handmaids of God. I hope you have not dismissed it from your mind, or forgotten that, at a word from you, it may be realised. Agatha's conception of it was, I fear, a little too secular ; her Temple of worship would bear too close a resemblance ,to her brother's dingy Hall of Science. She has just finished a treatise, or essay, to be published in one of the eclectic magazines, the subject, ' Is growth possible to a dogmatic reUgion 7 ' Her answer .is in the negative, and she is dreadfully severe on what she calls the ' tinkering ' fraternity, particularly her bete noire, young Mr. Mallock. Poor Agatha ! She should have been a man by rights, but cruel fate, by just a move- • ment of the balance, made her the dearest of old maids, and a^^liLe ! Under happier conditions, with just a little less of the intellectual leaven, she would have made a capital wife for such a parson as your successor ; for in spite of her cleverness, and what they call her infidelity, she is horribly superstitious — won't pass a pin in the road without lilting it up, throws salt over her shoulder if she happens to spill a morsel, and can tell your fortune by the cards! Besides all this, she is a born humanitarian; her thoughts for ever running on the poor, and flannel, and soup-kitchens, and (not to leave the lower animals out of her large heart) the woes of the vivisected dogs and rabbits. And yet, when the pen is in her hand and her controversial vein is open, die hurls her argumentative thunderbolts about like a positive Demon I There, I am trying to rattle on, as if I were a pretty PROM THE P08T-BA9. 78 girl of eighteen. But my heart, like yours, is very full. Sometimes I feel as if you were lost to me for ever ; as if you were gone into a great darkness, and would never come back. Dearest, you think of me sometimes — nay, often?-!— and when your wound is healed, you will come back to me, better and stronger and happier than ever, will you not 7 For am I not your Kachel, who still follows you in soul wherever you go ? I sit here for hours together, thinking of the happy day,s that are fled for ever ; then I wander out to the churchyard, and look at the dear old vicarage, and wherever I go I find some traces of him I love. Yesterday I went over to the abbey. Do you remember, dear, when we last met there, and swore our troth in the moonlight, with our cars full of the solemn murmuring of the sea ? That reminds me of what you say concerning the French agitation on the subject of Divorce. I read some time ago an abstract of ^ M. Naquet'a famous discourse — it was published in the English newspapers — and I felt ashamed and sad beyond measure. How low must a nation have fallen when one of its politicians dares to measure with a social foot-rule the holiest of human covenants ! If marriage is a bond to be worn or aban- doned at pleasure, if there is nothing more sacred between man and woman than the mere union of the body, God help us women, and me most of all 1 For has not God already united my soul to yours, not as yet by the sacra- ment of the Church, but by that sacrament of Love which is also eternal ; and if we were spiritually sundered, should I not die ; and if I thought that Detith could break our sacrament of Love, should I not become even as those out- cast ones who believe there is no God ? I have never loved another man ; you have never loved (how often have you not sworn it to me !) another woman. Well, then, can man ever sejjarate what God has so joined together? Even if we were never man and wife in the conventional sense, even if we never stand together at the earthly altar, in the eyes of Heaven we are man and wife, and we have been united at the altar of God. This, at least, is my con- ception of Marriage. Between those diat love, Divorce (as these hucksters call it) is impossible. 7C TRE NEW ABELAMD. Alas ! I write wildly, and my Abelard will smile at liia liandmaid's eager words. ' Methinks the lady doth protest too much,' I hear him exclaim with Shakespeare. But I know that you hold with me that thos^ things are holy beyond vulgar conception. Write to me again soon. All my joy ia life is hearing from you. — ^Bver your own, Alma. III. From Ambrose Bradley to Alma Craik. Dearest Alma, — Just a few lines to say that I am going On to Germany ; I will write to you a^ain directly I come to an anchorage in that brave land. For I am sick of France and Frenchmen ; sick of a people that have not bpen lessonedjjy misfortune, but still hunger for aggression and ' revenge ; sick of the Dead Sea fruit of Parisian pleasure, poisoned and heart-eaten by the canker-worm of unbelief. Our English poetess is virtuously indignant (you remember) with those who underrate this nation. The English have a seorufal insular way Of calling the Prenoh light, &c. And it is true they are not light, but with the weight of their own blind vanity, heavy as lead. The curse of .spiritual dulness is upon them. They talk rhodomontade and belifve in nothing. How I bum for the pure intel- lectual air of that nobler people- which, in the name of the God of Justice, recently taught France so terrible a lesson I Here, in France, ftvery man is a free agent, despising every- thing, the govemmMit which he supports, the ideas which he fulminates, despising most his own free, frivolous, miserable self: there, in Germany, each man is a patriot and a pillar of the state, his only dream to uphold the political fabric of a great nation. To efface one's selfish interest is the first step to becoming a good citizen ; to believe in the government of God,, follows as a natural consequence. What you say about our spiritual union, touches me to the soul, though it is but the echo of my own fervent belief. But I am not so sure that all earthly unions, even FROlt THE POST-BAG. 77 when founded in affection and good faith, are indissoluble. Surely also, there are marriages which it is righteous to shatter and destroy 7 You are a pure woman, to whom even a thought of impurity is impossible ; but alas 1 all women are not made in the same angelic mould, and we see every day the spectacle of men linked to partners in every respect unworthy. Surely you would not hold that the union of a true man with a false woman, a woman who (for example) was untrue to her husband in thought and deed, is to last for ever ? 1 know that is the Catholic teaching, that marriage is a permanent sacrament, and that no act of the parties, however abominable, can render either of them free to marry again ; and we find even such half-hearted Liberals as Gladstone upholding it (see his * Ecclesiastical Essays '), and flinging mud in the blind face of Milton, because (out of the. bitterness of his own cruel experience) he argued the contrary. Divorce is recognised in our own country and countenanced by our own religion ; and I believe it to b& necessary for the guarantee of human happiness. What is most hideous in our England is the horrible institution of the civil Court, where causes that should be heard in camera are exposed shamefully to the light of day ; so that men would rather bear their life- long torture than submit to the ordeal of a degrading publicity, and only shameless men and women dare to claim their freedom at so terrible a price. I intended to write only a few lines, and here am I arguing with you on paper, just as we used to argue in the old times vivA voce, on a quite indifferent question. Forgive me 1 And yet writing so seems like having one of our nice, long, cosy, serious talks. Discussions of this kind are like emptying one's pocket to find what they contain ; I never thought I had any ideas on the subject till I began, schoolboy-like, to turn them out ! God bless you, my darling ! When you hear from me next, I shall be in the land of the * ich ' and the ' nicht ich,' of beer and philosophy, of Deutschthum and Stras- bourg piea. Ambrose Bradley. ro TEE NEW ABELARD. IV. The Same to the Same. ..Deaeest, — I wrote to you the other day from Berlin— merely a line to say that my movements were uncertain, and asking you to address your next letter cave of (rradener the banker, here at Frankfort. I suppose there must have been some delay in the transmission, or the letter must have gone astray : at all events, here I am, and grievously disappointed to find you have not -written. Darling,- do not keep me in suspense ; , but answer this by return, and then you shaU have a long prosy letter descriptive of my recent experiences. Write ! -write ! Ambrose Bkadlet. - Alma Craik to Ambrose Bradley, Dearest Ambrose,-^ You are right in supposing that your letter from Berlin went astray ; it has certainly never reached me, and you can imagine my impatience in con- sequence. However, all's well that ends well ; and the sight of your*^ dear handwriting is like spring sunshine. Since I last wrote to you I have been reading in a French translation those wonderful letters of Heloise to the great Abelard, and his to her ; and somehow they seemed to bring you close to me, to recall your dear face, the very sound of your beautiful voice. Dearest, what would you have said if I had addressed this letter to you in the old, sweet terms used by my prototype — not for the world to see, but for your loving eyes alone ? ' A son maltre, ou plutSt k son p6re ; h, son ^poux, ou plutot a son fr^re : sa^ scrvante, ou plutot sa fiUe ; son Spouse, ou plutdt sa soeur ; k Ambrose, Alma.! ■ , AH these and more are you to me, my master and my father, vay husband and my brother ; while I am at once your servant and your daughter, your sister and your spouse. Do you believe, did you ever feel inclined to believe, in the transmigration of souls ? As I read these letters, I seem to have lived before, in a stranger, stormier time ; and every word she wrote seemed FROM TB.E POST-BAO. 79 to be the very echo of my burning heart. Ah ! but bur lot is happier, is it not ? There is no shadow of sin upon us to darken our loving dream : we have nothing to undo, nothing to regret ; and surely our spiritual union is blest by God. For myself, I want only one thing yet to com- plete my happiness — to see you raised as he was raised to a crown of honour and glory in the world. What I think of you, all mankind must think of you, when they know you as I know you, my apostle of all that is great and good. Ah, dearest, I would gladly die, if by so doing I could win you the honour you deserve. But I must stop now. When I begin to write to you, I scarcely know when to cease. Adieu, tout mon Men ! , Alma. VI. Ambrose Bradley, to Alma Craih. 'A Alma, sa bien-aim^e Spouse et scBur en Jesus- Christ, Ambrose son ^poux et frere en J^sus- Christ ! ' Shall I begin thus, dearest, in the very words of the great man to whom, despite my undeserving, you have lovingly compared me? You see I remember them well. But alas ! Abelard was thrown on different days, when at least faith was possible. What would he have become, I wonder, had he been born when the faith was shipwrecked, and when the trumpet of Buroclydon was sounding the. de- struction of all the creeds? Yonder, in France, one began to doubt everything, even the divinity of love ; so I fled from the Parisian Sodom, trusting to find hope and com- fort among the conquerors of Sedan. Alas ! I begin to think that I am a sort of modern Diogenes, seeking in vain for a people with a Soul. I went first to Berlin, and found there all the vice of Paris without its beauty, all the in- fidelity of Frenchmen without their fitful enthusiasm in forlorn causes. The people of Gerlnany, it appears to me, put God and Bismarck in the same category ; they accept both as a solution of the political difficulty, but they truly reverence neither. The typical German is a monstrosity, a living -contradiction : intellectually an atheist, he assents to the conventional uses of Deity ; politically a freethinker, 80 THE NEW ASEZABD. he is a slave to the idea of nationality and a staunch up- holderof the divine right of kings. Long ago, the philo- sophers, armed with the jargon of an insincere idealism, demolished Deism with one hand and set it up with the other; what they proved by elaborate treatises not to exist, they established as the only order of things worth believing ; till at last the culmination of philosophic incon- sistency was reached in Hegel, who began by the destruc- tion of all religion and ended in the totem- worship of second childhood. In the course of a very short experience, I have learned cordially to dislike the Germans, and to perceive that, in spite of their tall talk and their splendid organisation, they are completely without ideas. . In proportion as they have advanced politically they have retrograded intellectually. They have no literature now an^ no philosophy ; in one word, no spiritual zeal. They have stuck up as their leader a man with the moral outlook of Brander in ' Faust,' a swashbuckler politician, who swaggers up and down Jlufope and frowns down liberalism wherever it appears. Upon my word, I even preferred the Sullen Talent which he defeated at Sedan. I think I see you smiling at my seeming anger ; but I am not angry at all — only woefully disenchanted. This muddy nation stupefies me like its own beer. Its morality is a sham, oscillating between female slavery in the kitchen and male drunkenness in the beer-garden. The horrible military element predominates everywhere ; every shopkeeper is a martinet, every philosopher a drill sergeant. And just in time to reap the fruit of the predominant materialism or realism, has arisen the new Buddha Gautama without his beneficence, his beauty, his tender- ness, or his love for the. species. Here in Frankfort (which I came to eagerly, thinking of its famous Judenstrasse, and eager to find the idea of the ' one God ' at least among the Jews), I walk in the new Buddha's footsteps wherever I go. His name was Arthur Schopenhauer, a German of Germans, with the one non-nati6nal "merit, that he threw aside the mask of religion and morality. He was a piggish, selfish, conceited, honest scoundrel, fond of gormandii^ngi FROM TSE POST-BA0. 81 in love with his own shadow, miserable, and a money- grubber, like all his race. One anecdote they tell of him is ivorth a thousand, as expressing the character of the man. Seated. at a tahle dilute here one day, and observing a ptriinger's astonishment at the amount he was consuming, Schopenhauer said, 'I see you are astonished, sir, tliat 1 eat twice as much as you, but the explanation is simple — / have twice as much brains ! ' The idea of this Heliogabalus of pessimism was that life is altogether an unmixed evil ; that all things are .miserable of necefsity, even the birds when they sing on the green boughs, and the babes when they crow upon the breast; and' that the only happiness, to be secured by every man as soon as possible, and the sooner the better, was in Nirwtlna, or total extinction. A cheerful creed, witliout a God of any kind — nay, without a single godlike Kentiment ! There are pessimists and pessimists. Gautama Buddha himselfi /aciVe piiaceps, based his creed upon infi- nite pity; his sense of the sorrows of his fellow-creatures was so terrible as to make existence practically unbearable. John Calvin was a Christian pessimist; his whole, nature was warped by the sense of infinite sin and overclouded by the shadow of infinite justice. But this Buddha of the Teutons is a diffei-ent being ; neither love nor pity, only a predominating selfishness complicated with constitutional Kuspicion. And yet, poor man, he was happy enough when hia disciples hailed him as the greatest philosopher of the age, the clearest intellect on the planet; and nothing is more touching . than to witness how, as his influence grew, and he emerged from neglect, his faith in human natiire brightened. Had he lived a little longer and risen still higher in esteem — had the powers that be crowned him, and the world applauded him, he too, like Hegel, would doubtless have added to his creed a corollary that, though there is no God, religion is an excellent thing ; that though there is no goodness, virtue is the only living truth I Be that as it may, I am thoroughly convinced that there is no wa media. between Christ's Christianity and Schopenhauer's pessimism ; and these two religions, like 82 THE NEW ABELARD the gods of good and evil, are just now preparing for a final struggle on the battle-field of European thought. Just at present I feel almost a pessimist myself, and in- clined to laugh more than ever at poor Kingsley's feeble twaddle about this ' singularly well-constructed world.' Every face I see, whether of Jew or Gentile, is scribbled like the ledger with figures of addition and subtraction ; every eye is crowsfooted with tables of compound interest ; and the money-bags waddle up and down the streets, and look out of the country house windows, like things without a soul. But across the river at Sachsenhausen, there are trees, in which the birds sing, and pretty children, and lovers talking in the summer shade. I go there in the summer afternoons and smoke my pipe, and think over the problem of the time. Think you, dearest, that Schopen- hauer was rigTit, and that there is no gladness or goodnesp in the world? Is the deathblow of foolish supernaturalisnj the; destruction also of heavenly love and hope? Nay, God forbid I Rut this hideous pessimism is the natural revolt of the human heart, after centuries of optimistic lies. Perhaps, when another century has fled, mankind may thank God for Schopenhauer, who proved the potency of materialistic Will, and for Strauss, who has shown the fallacy of human judgment. The Germans have given us these two men as types of their own degradation ; and when we have thoroughly digested their bitter gospel, we shall know how little hope for humanity lies that way. Meantime, the Divine Ideal, the spiritual Christ survives — the master of the secret of sorrow, the lord of the shadowy land of hope. He turns his back upon the temple erected in his name ;. he averts his sweet eyes from those who deny He is, or ever was. He is patient, know- ing that his kingdom must some day come. More than ever now do I feel what a power the Church might be if it would only reconstruct itself by the light of the new knowledge. Without it, both Prance and Germany are plunged into darkness and spiritual death. As if man, constituted as he is, can exist without religion 1 As if the creed of cakes and ale, or the gospel of Deutsch- thum and Sauer-kraut were in any true sense of the word religion at all 1 No, the hope and salvation of tJie FROM THE POST-BAG. 83 human race lies now, as it lay eighteen hundred years ago, in the Christian promise. If this life were all, if this world were the play and not the prelude, then the new Buddha would have conquered, and nothing be left us but Nirw^na. But the Spirit of Man, which has created Christ and imagined God, knows better. It trusts its own deathless instinct, and by the same law through which the swallow wings its way, it prepares for flight to a sunnier zone. Pray, my Alma, that even this holy instinct is not merely a dream 1 Pray that God may keep us together till the time comes to follow the summer of our love to its bright and heavenly home ! — Tours till death, and after death, Ambeose Bradley. VII. Alma Craih to Ambrose Bradley. Youu last letter, dearest Ambrose, has reached me here in London, where I am staying for a short time with Agatha Combe. Everybody is out of town, and even the Grosvenor Club (where I am writing this letter) is quite deserted. I never like London so much as when it is empty of everybody that one knows. And so you find the Germans as shallow as the French, and as far away from the living truth it is your dream to preach .? For my own part, I think they must be rather a stupid people, in spite of their philosophic airs. Agatha has persuaded me lately to read a book by a man called Haeckel, who is constructing the whole history of Evolu- tion as children make drawings, out of his own head ; and when the silly man is at a loss for a link in the chain, he invents one, and calls it by a Latin name ! I suppose Evolution is true (and I know you believe in it), but if I may trust my poor woman's wit, it proves nothing what- ever. The mystery of life remains just the same when all is said and done ; and I see as great a miracle in a drop of albumen passing through endless progressions till it flowers in sense and soul, as in the creation of all things at the fiai of an omnipotent personal God and Father. The pool purblind German abolishes God altogether. G2 84 THE NEW ABELARD. Agatha has read your Schopenhauer, and thinks him a ■wonderful" man ; I believe, too, he has many disciples in this country.' To me, judging from what I hear of him, and ' also from your description of him, he seems another fifyjzo! 'giant — a Fee-fo-fi-fum full of self-conceit and hasty pudding, and sure to fall a victim, some day, to Little Jack Horner. But every word you write (it seems always like your own dear voice speaking !) makes me think of your- self, of your quarrel with the Church, and of your justi- fication before the world. If purblind men like these can persuade the world to listen to them, why should your 'one talent, which is death to lose,' be wasted or thrown away 7 'When you have wandered a little longer, you must return and take your place as a teacher and a preacher in the land. You must not continue to be an exile. You are my hero, my Abelard, my teacher of all that is great and good to a perverse generation, and I shall never be happy until you reach the summit of your spiritual ambition and are recognised as a modern apostle. You must not leave the ministry ; you must not abandon your vocation ; or if you do so, it must be only to change the scene of your labours. ' Agatha Combe tells me that , there is a great field for a man like ' yoii in London ; that the cultivated people here are sick of the old dogmas, and yetequally sick of mere materialism; that what they want is a leader such as you, who would take his stand upon the laws of reason, ' and preach a purified and exalted Christian ideal. Well, since the English Establishment has rejected you, why not, in the greatest ' city of the World,' form a Church of your own ? I have often thought of this, but never so much as lately. There you are tongue-tied and hand-tied, at the mercy of the ignorant who could never comprehend you; here you. could speak' with a free voice, as the great Abelard did when he defied' the thunders of the Vatican. ' Kemember, I am rich. You have only to say the word; and your handmaid (am I not still that, and your ' spouse nnd your sister ?) will upbuild you a Temple ! Ah, how proudly ! ' Yes,^think of «/«s,; think of the great work of your life, not of its trivial disappointments. Be worthy of my dream of you, my Abelard. When I see you wear youy FROM IKE POST-BAG. 85 crown of honour with all the world worshipping the new teaching, I shall be blest indeed. Alma. VIII. Ambrose Bradley to Alma Craik, Dearest Alma, — How good you are 1 How tenderly do you touch the core of my own secret thought, making my whole spirit vibrate to the old . ambition, and my memory tremble with the enthusiasm of my first youth. Oh, to be a modern Apostle, as you say ! to sway the multi- tude with words of power, to overthrow at once the tables of the money-changers of materialism, and the dollish idols of the Old Church. , But I know too well my own incapacity, as compared with the magnitude of that mighty task. , I believe at once too little and too much ; I should , shock the priests of Christ, and to the priests of Antichrist I should be a stand- ing jest ; neither Montague nor Capulet would spare me, and I should lose my spiritual life in some miserable polemical brawl. , It is so good of you, so like you, to think of it, and to offer out of your own store to build me a church ; but I am not so lost, so unworthy, as to take advantage of your loving charity, and to secure my own success — or rather, my almost certain failure — on such a foundation. - . And that remmds me, , dearest, of what in my mad vanity I had nearly forgotten — the differerice betw:een our positions in the world. You are a rich woman ; Ij as you know, am very poor. It was different, perhaps, when I was an honoured member of the Church, with all its prizes and honours before me ; I certainly felt it to be different, though the disparity always existed. But now 1 I am an outcast, a ruined man, without property of any kind. It would be base beyond measure to think of dragging you down to my present. level ; and, remember, I have now no opportunity to rise. If you linked your lot with mine, all, the world would think that I loved you, not for. your dear self, but for your gold ; they would despise me, and thinkyou were insane. No, dearest, I have thought it sadly 86 TBE NEW ABELARD ovet, again and again, and I see that it is hopeless. I have lost you for ever. When you receive this, I shall be on my way to Rome. How the very writing of that word thrills me, as if there were still magic in the name that witched the world ! Rome ! the City of the Martyrs ! the City of the Church ! the City of the Dead ! Her glory is laid low, her pride is dust arid ashes, her voice is senile and old, and yet . . . the name, the mighty deathless name, one to conjure with yet. Sometimes, in my spiritual despair, I hear a voice whispering in my ear that one word ' Kome ' ; and, I seem to hear a mighty music, and a cry of rejoicing, and to see a veiled Figure arising with the keys of all the creeds,^- behind her on the right her handmaid Science, behind her on the left her handmaid Art, and over her the effulgence of the new- risen sun of Christ. And if such a dream were real, were it not possible, mv Alma, that you and I might enter the new Temple, not as man and wife, but as sister and brother ? There was something after all in that old idea of the consecrated priest and the vestal virgin. I often think with St. Paul that there is too much marrying and giving in marriage. ' Brother and sister ' sounds sweetly, does it not 7 Forgive my wild words. I hardly know what I am writing. Your loving letter has stirred all the fountains of my spirit, your kindness has made me ashamed. You shall hear from me again, from the very heart of the Seven Hills ! Meantime, God bless you 1 — ^Ever your faithful and devoted, Ambrosk Bradley. IX. Alma Craik to Ambrose Bradley. Be true to your old dream, dearest Ambrose, and re- member that in its fraition lies my only chance of happi- ness. Do not talk of unworthiness or unfitness ; yon are cruel to me when you distrust yourself. Will you be very angry if I tell you a secret ? Will you forgive me if I say to you that oven now the place where you shall preach the good tidings is rising from the ground, and that in a little FROM TEE POST-BAG. 87 wliile, when you return, it will be ready to welcome ita master ? But there, I have said too much. If there is anything more you v/ould know, you must guesa it, clearest ! Enough to say that you hd,ve friends who love you, and who are not idle. If I thought you meant what you said in your last I should indeed despair; but it was the shadow of that abominable Schopenhauer who spoke, and not my Abelard. To tell me that I am rich, and you are poor — as if even a mountain of money, high as Ararat, could separate those whom God has joined ! To talk of the world's opinion, the people's misconception — as if the poor things who trawl on the ground could alter the lives of those who soar with living thoughts to heaven ! Get thee behind me, Schopenhauer ! When any voice, however like his own, talks of the overthrow of the man I love, I only smile. I know better than to be deceived by a trick of the ventrilo- quist. You and I know, my Ambrose, that you have not been overthrown at all — that you have not fallen, but risen — how high, the world shall know in a very little while. Meantime, gather up strength, both of the body and the mind. Drink strength from the air of the holy city, and come back to wear your priestly robes. Your dream will be realised, be sure of that ! Do you think to daunt me when you say that I must not be your wife ? Do you think your handmaid cares so long as she may serve at your feet 7 Call her by what name you please, spouse or sister, is it not all the same? Your hope is my hope, your country my country, your God my God — now and for ever. Only let us labour together earnestly, truthfully, patiently, and all will be Well. — Yours alwayB faithfully and afiectionately, Alii A. 88 THE laSW ABELARD CHAPTER XI. AN ilCTEESS AT HOME. On a certain Monday in June, litde mexathmuLyearafter the last letter of the correspondence quoted in the preceding chapter, two young men of the period were seated in the smoking-room of the Traveller's Club. One was young George Craik, the other was Cholmondeley, of the ' Charing Cross Chronicle.' ' 'lassure you, my dear fellow,' the journalist was say- ing,' ' that if you are in want of a religion- ' 'Which I am not' interjected George, sullenly. ' If you are in want of a new sensation, then, you will find this new Church just the, thing to suit you. It has now .been opened nearly a month, and is rapidly becopiing the fashion. , At the service yesterday I saw, among other notabilities, both Tyndall and Huxley, Thomas Carlyle, Hermann Vezin the actor, John Mill the philosopher, Dottie Destrange of the -Prince's, Labouchere, and two colonial bishops. I'There, is an article on Bradley in this morning's " Telegraph," and his picture is going into next week's " Vanity Fair." ' . • . , , • But the fellow is an atheist and a Radical I ' ' My dear Craik, so am 1 1 ' * Oh, you're diiferent 1 ' returned the other with a dis- agreeable laugh. . ' Nobody believes you in earnest when you talk or write that kind of nonsense.' ' Whereas, you .would say, Bradley is an enthusiast ? Just so ; and his enthusiasm is contagious. When I listen to him, I almost catch it myself, for half an hour. But you mistake altogether, by the way, when you call him atheistical, or even Radical. He is a Churchman still, though the Church has banged its door in his face, and his dream is to conserve all that is best and strongest in Christianity.' ' I don't know anything about that,' said Craik, savagely. ' AH I know is that he's an infernal humbug, and ought to be lynched.' AN ACTRESS AT SOME. 89 ' Pj ay don't abuse him 1 lie is my friend, and a noble fdlow.' _ . ' I don't care wbether ho is your friend or not — he is a Ecoundrel.' Cholmondeley made an angry gesture, then remember- ing who was speaking, shrugged liis shoulders. 'Why, how has he offended youl Stop, though, I remember 1 The fair founder of his church is j our cousin.' , ' Yes,' answered the other with an oath, ' and she would have been ray wife if he had not come in the way. It was all arranged, you know, .and I should have had Alma and — and all her money; but she met him, and lie filled her mind with atheism, and radicalism, and rubbish. A : year ago, when he was kicked out of his living, I thought she was done with him ; but he hadn't been gone a month before she followed him to London, and all this nonsense began. The governor has almost gone down on his knees to her, but it's no use. Fancy her putting down ten thousand pounds in solid cash for this New Church business ; and not a day passes but he swindles her out of more.' , ' Bradley is not a swindler,' answered the journalist quietly. ' For the rest, I suppose that they will soon mairy.' ' Not if I can help it ! , Marry that man 1 It would be a standing disgrace to the family.' ' But they are engaged, or something of that sort. As for its being a disgrace, that is rubbish. Why, Bradley might marry a duke's daughter if he plefised. Little Lady Augusta Knovvles is crazy about him.' True to his sarcastic instinct, Cholmondeley added, ' Of course I know the little woman has a hump, apd luis only just got over her grande passion ibr Montepulciaiio the opera singer. But a duke's daughter— think of that ! ' , George Craik only ground his teeth and made no reply. Shortly afterwards the two men separated, Cholmon- deley strolling to his office, Craik (whom we shall accom- pany) hailing a hansom and driving towards St. John's Wood. . 90 TEE NEW ABELARD. Before seeking, in the young man's company, tliose doubtful regions which a modern satirist has termed The shady groves of the Evangelist, let us give a few explanatory words touching the subject of the above conversation. It had all come about exactly as described. Yielding to Alma's intercesfion, and ia- spired, moreover, by the enthusiasm of a large circle in London, Bradley had at last consented to open a relicioiis campaign on his own account in the very heart of the metropolis. A large sum of money was subscribed, Alma heading the list with a princely donation, a site was fielected in the neighbourhood of Regent's Park, and a church was built, called by its followers the New Church, and in every respect quite a magnificent temple. The stained windows were designed by leading artists of the aesthetic school, the subjects partly religious, partly secular (St. Wordsworth, in the guise of a good shepherd, forming one of the subjects, and St. Shelley, rapt up into the clouds and playing on a harp, forming another), and the subject over the altar was an extraordinary figure-piece by Watts, ' Christ rebuking Superstition ' — the latter a straw-haired damsel with a lunatic expression, grasping in her hands a couple of fiery snakes. Of course there was a scandal. The papers were full of it, even while the New Church was building. Public interest was thoroughly awakened ; and when it became current gossip that a young heiress, of fabulous wealth and unexampled personal beauty, had practically created the endowment, society was fluttered through and through. Savage attacks ap- . peared on Bradley in the religious journals. Enthusiastic articles concerning him were published in the secular newspapers. He rapidly became notorious. When he began to preach, the enthusiasm was intensified ; for his striking presence and magnificent voice, not to speak of the ' fiery matter ' he had to deliver, carried everything before them. It may safely be assumed that time had at last recon- eiled him to the secret trouble of his life. Before settling in London he had ascertained, to his infinite relief, that Mrs. Montmorency had gone to Paris and had remained AN ACTRESS AT HOME. 91 there with her child, under the same ' protection ' as before. Finding hia secret safe from the world, he began unconsciously to dismiss it from his mind, the more rapidly as Alma's relations towards him became more and more those of a devoted sister. Presently his old en- thusiasm came back upon him, and with it a sense of new power and mastery. He began to feel an unspeakable sacredness in the tie which bound him to the woman he loved ; and although it had seemed at first that he could only think of her in one capacity, that of his wife and the partner of his home, her sisterhood seemed indescribably sweet and satisfying. Then, again, her extraordinary belief in him inspired him with fresh ambition, and at last, full of an almost youthful ardour, he stepped out into the full sunshine of his London ministry. In the least amiable mood possible, even to him, Greorge Craik drove northward, and passing the very portals of Bradley's new church, reached the shady groves he sought. Alighting in a quiet street close to the ' Eyre Arms,' he stood before a bijou villa all embowered in foliage, with a high garden wall, a gate with a wicket, and the very tiniest of green lawns. He rang the bell, and the gate was opened by a black-eyed girl in smart servant's costume ; on which, without a word, he strolled in. ' Mistress up ? ' he asked sharply ; though it was past twelve o'clock. ' She's just breakfasting,' was the reply. Crossing the lawn, Craik found himself before a pair ol French windows reaching to the ground ; they stood wide open", revealing the interior of a small sitting-room or break- fast parlour, gorgeously if not tastily furnished — a sort of green-and-gold cage, in which was sitting, sipping her coffee and yawning over a penny theatrical paper, a pretty lady of uncertain age. Her little figure was wrapt in a loose silk morning gown, on her tiny feet were Turkish slippers, in her lap was one pug dog, while another slept at her feet. Her eyes were very large, innocent, and blue, her natural dark hair was bleached to a lovely gold by the art of the coiffeur, and her cheeks had about as much colour as those of a stucco bust. 93 THE NEW ABEZARD. This was Miss Dottie Destrange, of the 'Frivolity' Theatre, a lady famous for her falsetto voice and her dances. On seeing Craik she merely nodded, but did not attempt to rise. . . ' Good morning, Georgie ! ' she said — for she loved the diminutive, and was fond of using that form of address to her particular friends. , f Why didn't you come yesterday ? I waited for you all day — no, not exactly all day, though — but except a couple of hours in the afternoon, when I went to churchi' Craik entered the room and threw himself into a chair. ' Went to church ? ' he echoed with an ugly laugh. ' I didn't know yoM ever patronised that kind of entertainment.' * I don't as a rule, but Carrie Carruthers called for me in her brougham, and took me off to hear the new preacher down in Eegent's Park. Aram was there, and no end of theatrical people, besides all sorts of swells ; and, what do you think, in one of the painted glass windows there was 'a figure of Shakespeare, just like the one on our drop curtain ! I think it's blasphemous, Georgie. I wonder the roof didn't fall in ! ' , . The fair doves of the theatre, we may remark in parenthesis, have seldom much respect for the temple in which , they themselves flutter ; they cannot shake from their minds the idea that it is a heathen structure, and that they themselves are, at the best, but pretty pagans. Hence they are often disposed to receive in, quite a humble spirit the ministrations of their mortal enemiesj the oflicers of the Protestant Church. , : , George Craik scowled at the fair one as he had scowled at Cholmoudeley. , , ' You heard that man Bradley, I suppose ? ' ' Yes ; I think that was his name. Do you know him, George?' , .. , . ; . . . ' I know no good of him. I wish the rooiliad fallen in, and smashed him up. Talk about something , else ; and look here, don't let me catch you going there again, or we shall quarrel. I won't have anyone I know going sneaking after that humbug.' ' All right, Georgie dear,' replied the damsel, smiling maliciously. ' Then it's true, I suppose, that, he's going; to AN ACTRESS AT HOME. 03 marry your cousin ? I saw her sitting right under him, and thought her awfully pretty.' ' You let her alone,' grumbled George, ' and mind your own affairs.' ' ' 'Why don't you marry her yourself, Georgie?' per- sisted his tormentor. ' I hopg what I have heard isn't true ? ' ' What have you heard ? ' ' That she prefers the parson ! ' The young man sprang up with an oath, and Miss Dottie burst into a peal of shrill laughter. He strode olF into the garden, and she followed him. Coming into the full sunlight, she looked even more like plaster of Paris, or stuccoj than in the subdued light of the chamber; her hair grew more strawlike, her eyes more colourless, her whole appearance more faded and jaded. ' I had a letter this morning from Eatty,' she said care- lessly, to change the subject. 'Kitty who?' 'Kitty Montmorency. She says old Ombermere is very ill, and thinks he's breaking up. By the way, that reminds me — Kitty's first husband was a man named Bradley, who was to have entered the Church. I suppose it can't be the same.' She spoke with little thought of the consequences, and was not prepared for the change which suddenly came over her companion. ' Her husband, did you say ? ' he exclaimed, gripping her arm. ' Were they married ? ' ' I suppose so.' ' And the man was named Bradley— Ambrose Bradley ? ' ' I'm not quite sure about the Christian name.' ' How long was this ago ? ' ' Oh, a long time — ten years,' she replied ; then with a sudden remembrance of her own claims to juvenility, which she had ■ forgotten for a moment, she added, 'when I was quite a child.' George Craik looked at her for a long time with a baleful expression, but he scarcely saw her, being lost in thought. He knew as well as she did that she was ten or fifteen years older than she gave herself out to be, but he 94 THE NEW ABELABD. was not thinking of that. He was wondering if he had, by the merest accident, discovered a means of turning the tables on the man he hated. At last he spoke. ' Tell me all you know. Let us have no humbug, but tell me everything, Did you ever see Bradley before you saw him yesterday ?' * Never, Georgie.' ' But Kitty Montmorency was once married to, or living with, a man of that name ? You are quite sure ? ' ' Yes. But after all, what does it signify, un- less ' She paused suddenly, for all at once the full significance of the situation flashed upon her. 'You see how it stands,' cried her companion. 'If this is the same man, and it is quite possible, it will be worth a thousand pounds to me — ah, ten thousand ! "What is Kitty's address ? ' ' Hotel de la Grande Bretagne, Eue Caumartin, Paris.' ' All right, Dottie. I shall go over to-night by the mail.' The next morning George Craik arrived in Paris, and drove straight to the hotel in the Eue Caumartin — an old iashioned building, with a great courtyard, round which ran open-air galleries communicating with the various suites of rooms. On inquiring for Mrs. Montmorency he ascertained that she had gone out very early, and was not expected home till midday. He left his card and drove on to the Grand Hotel. It might be a fool's errand which had brought him over .but he was determined, with the bulldog tenacity of his nature, to see it through to the end. Arrived at the hotel, he deposited his Gladstone-bag in the hall, and then, to pass the time, inspected the visitor's list,- preparatory to writing down his own name. Presently he uttered a whistle, as he came to the entry^ ' Lord and Lady Ombermere and family, London.' He turned to the clerk of the office, and said carelessly in French — ■ ' ' I see Lord Ombermere's name down. Is his lordship gtill here 7 ' 'Yea,' was the reply, 'He has been here all the AN ACTBMSS AT SOME. 95 winter^ Unfortunately, since the ■warm weather began, milord has been very ill, and since last week he has been almost given up by the physicians.' CHAPTER XII. IN A SICK ROOM. Ah blessed promise ! Shall it be fulfilled, Tho' the eye glazes and the sense is still'd ? Shall that fair Shape -which beckon'd -with bright hand Out of the Mirage of a Heavenly Land, Fade to a cloud that moves with blighting breath Over the ever-troublons sea of Death? Ah, no ; for on the crown of Zion's Hill, Cloth'd on with peace, the fair Shape beckons still ! The New Crusade. It was a curious sensation for Ambrose Bradley, after bitter experience of a somewhat ignominious persecution, to find himself all at once — by a mere shuffle of the cards, as it were — one of the most popular persons in all Bo- liemia; I say Bohemia advisedly, for of course that greater world of fashion and religion, which Bohemia merely fringes, regarded the New Church, and its pastor w^ith supreme ihdiiFerence. But the worship of Bohemia is something ; nay, Bradley found it much. He could count among the occasional visitors to his temple some of the leading names in Art and Science. Fair votaries came to him by legions, led by the impas- sioned and enthusiastic Alma Craik. The society journals made much of him ; one of them, in a series of articlf s called ' Celebrities in their Slippers,' gave a glowing picture of the new apostle in his studj', in which the sweetest of Raphael's Madonnas looked down wonderingly on Milo's Venus, and where .Newman's ' Parochial Ser- mons ' stood side by side with Tyndall's Belfast address, and the original edition of the 'Vestiges of Creation.' The correspondent of the ' New York Herald ' telegraphed, on more than one occasion, the whole, or nearly the whole, of one of his Sunday discourses — which, printfti in large 96 THE NEW ABELARD. type, occupied , two columns of the great Transatlantic daily; and he received forthwith,- from an enterprising Yankee caterer, an offer of any number of dollars per lecture, if he would enter into a contract to ' stump ' the States. Surely this was fame, of a sort. Although, if the truth must be told, even Bohemia diil not take the New Church over-seriously, Bradley found his intellectual forces expand with the growing sense of power. Standing in no fear of any authority, human or super- human, he gradually advanced more and more into the arena of spiritual, controversy ; retired further and further from the old landmarks of dogmatic religion ; drew nearer and still nearer to the position of an accredited teacher of religious sestheticism. Always literary and artistic, rather 'than puritanical, in his sympathies, he found himself before long at that standpoint which regards the Bible merely as a poetical mas>terpiece, and accepts Christianity as simply one manifestation, though a central one, of the great scheme of human morals. Thus the cloud of splendid supernaturalism, on which alone has been projected from time immemorial the mirage of a heavenly promise, gradually dissolved away before his sight, And like the cloudy fabric of a vision Left not a -vrrack behind. The creed of spiritual sorrow wa-s exchanged for the creed of spiritual pleasure. The man, forgetful of all harsh experience, became rapt in the contemplation of 'beautiful ideas 'T—of an intellectual phantasmagoria in which Christ and Buddha, St. John and Shakespeare, Mary Magdalene and Mary Shelley, the angels of the church and the winged pterodactyls of the chalk, flashed and faded in everchanging kaleidoscopic dream. - The mood which welcomed all forma of belief, em- braced none utterly, but contemplated all, became vague, chaotic, and "transcendental ; and Ambrose Bradley found himself in a fairy world where nothing seemed real and solemn enough as a law for life. IN A SICK BOOM. 97 For a time, of course, he failed to realise his own position. He still rejoiced in the belief that he was bnilding the foundation of his New Church, which was essentially the Old Church, on the rock of common sense. He was stUl certain that the Christ of history, the accredited Saviour of mankind, was blessing and consecrating his eager endeavour. He still persuaded himself that his creed was a creed of regeneration, his mission apostolic. He had taken a small house on the borders of Kegent's Park, and not far away from the church which Alma had built for him as a. voluntary offering. It was arranged plainly but comfortably, with a touch of the then pre- dominant sestheticism ; the decorations tasteful, the furni. ture mediseval ; but all this was Alma's doing and, throughout, her choosing. Bradley himself remained unchanged ; a strong unpretending man of simple habits, more like an athletic curate in his dress and bearing, than like a fashionable preacher. Of course it goes without saying that he was ostracised by the preachers of his own maternal Church, the Church of England ; so that he added the consciousness of sweet and painless martyrdom to that of popular success. Attacks upon him appeared from time to time in the less important religious journals ; but the great organs of the national creed treated him and his performances with silent contempt. He was seated in his study one morning in early summer, reading one of the attacks to which I have just alluded, when Miss Craik was shown in. He sprang up to welcome her, with outstretched hands. 'I want you to come with me at once,' she said. ' Agatha Combe is worse, and I should like you to see her.' ' Of course I will come,' answered Bradley. ' But I thought she was almost recovered ? ' ' She has had a relapse ; not a serious one, I trust, but I am a little alarmed about her. She talks so curiously.' ' Indeed 1 ' ' Yes ; about dying. She says she has a presentiment that she won't live. Poor Agatha 1 When she talks lika that, it is strange indeed.' B 98 THTH NEW ABBLARD. Leaving tha house together, Bradley and Alma entered Regent's Park. Their way lay right across, towards the shady .sides of Primrose Hill, where Miss Combe was then residing. The day was fait and sunny, and there was an tinusual number of pleasure-seekers and pedestrians in the park. A number of boys were playing , cricket on the spaces allotted for that recreation, nursemaids and children were sprinkled everywhere, and near the gate of the Zoological Gardens, which they passed, a brass band was merrily performing. Bradley's heart was light, and he looked round on the bright scene with a kindling eye, in the full pride of his physical strength and intellectual vigour, ' After all,' he said, ' those teachers are wise who proclaim that health is happiness. ^ What a joyful world it would be if everyone were well and strong.' ' Ah yes ! ' said his companion. * But when sickness comes ' She sighed heavily, for she was- thinking of her friend Agatha Combe. ' I sometimes think that the sum of human misery is trifling compared to that of human happiness,' pursued the clergyman. ' Unless one is a downright pessimist, a very Schopenhauer, surely one must see that the preponderance is in favour of enjoyment. Look at these ragged boys — how merry they are ! There is not so much wretchedness in the world, perhaps, as some of us imagine.' She glanced at him curiously, uncertain whither his thoughts were tending. He speedily made his meaning plain. 'Religion and Sorrow have hitherto gone hand in hand, vanishing through the gate of the grave. But why should not Religion and Joy be united this side the last mystery ? Why should not this world be the Paradise of all our • dreams ? ' ' It can never be so, Ambrose,' replied Alma, ' until we can abolish Death.' , , ' And we can do that in a measure ; that is to say, we can abolish premature -decay, sickness, disease. Look what Science has done in fifty years 1 More than other- Avwrldliness has done ia a thousand I When Death comes IN A SICK ROOM 99 gently, at the natural end of life, it generally comes as a blessing — as the last sacranient of peace. I think if I could live man's allotted term, useful, happy, loving and beloved, I could be content to sleep and never wake again.' Alma did not answer. Her thoughts were wandering, or she would have shrunk to find her idolised teacher turning so ominously towards materialism. But indeed it was not the first time that Bradley's thoughts had drifted in that direction. It is not in moments of personal happi- ness or success that we lean with any eagerness towards the supernatural. Glimpses of a world to come are Vouch- safed chiefly to those who weep and those who fail ; and in proportion as the radiance of this life brightens, fades the faint aurora of the other. In a small cottage, not far from Chalk Farm, they found Miss Combe. She was staying, as her custom was, with friends, the friends on this occasion being the editor of au evening paper and his wife ; and she had scarcely arrived on her visit — some weeks before — when she had begun to ail. She was sitting up when Alma arrived, in an arm-chair drawn close to the window of a little back parlour, commanding a distant view of Hampstead Hill. Wrapt in a loose dressing-gown, and leaning back in lier chair, she was just touched by the spring sunshine, the brightness of which even the smoke from the great city could not subdue. She did not seem to be in pain, but her face was pale and flaccid, her eyes were heavy and dull. Her ailment was a weakness of the heart's action, compli. cated with internal malady of another kind. Tears stood in Alma's eyes as she embraced and kissed her old friend. ' I have brought Mr. Bradley to see you,' she cried. ' I am glad to see you looking so much better.' Miss Combe smiled and held out her hand to Bradley, who took it gently. ' When you came in,' she said, ' I was half dreaming. I thought I was a little child again, playing with brother Tom in the old churchyard at Taviton. Tom has only just gone out; he has been here all the morning. Said brother Tom, the unwashed apostle of the Hall of B2 100 THE NEW ABELABD Science, had left unmistalcable traces of his presence, for a strong odour of bad tobacco pervaded the room. - ' It seems like old times,' proceeded the little lady, with a sad smile, ' to be sick, and to be visited by aclergyman. I shall die in tbe odour of sanctity after all.' ' You must not talk of dying,' cried Alma. ' You will soon be all right, again.' ' I'm afraid not, dear,' answered Miss Combe. ' I saw my mother's face again last night, and it never stayed so long. I take it as a warning that I shall soon be called away.' Strange enough it seemed to both those who listened, to hear a person of Miss Combe's advanced views talking in the vocabulary of commonplace supierstition. ' Don't think I am repining,' she continued. ' If I were not ripe, do you think I should be gathered ? I am going where we all must go^who knows whither 7 and, after all, I've had a " good time,", as the Yankees say. Do' you believe, Mr. Bradley,' she added, turning her keen, grave eyes on the clergyman, ' that an atheist can be a spiritualist,' and hold relations with an unseen world ? ' ' You are no atheist, Miss Combe,' he answered. ' God forbid ! ' ' I don't know,' was the reply. ' I am, not one in the same degree as my brother Tom, of course; but I am afraid I have no living faith beyond the region of ghosts and fairies. The idea of Deity is incomprehensible to me, save as that of the "magnified non-natural Man" my teachers have long ago discarded. I think I might still understand the anthropomorphic God of my childhood, but having lost Him I can comprehend no other.' ' The other is not far to seek,' responded Bradley, bending towards her, and speaking eagerly. 'You will find him in Jesus Christ — the living, breathing godhead, whose touch and inspiration we all can feel.' ' I'm afraid / can't,' said Miss Combe. ' I can under- stand Jesus the man, but Christ the God, who walked in the flesh and was crucified, is beyond the horizon of my conception — even of my sympathy.' ' Don't say that,' cried Alma. ' I am sure you believe in our loving Saviour.' IN A SICK ROOM. 101 Miss Combe did not reply, but turned her face wearily to the spring sunlight. ' If there is no other life,' she said, after a long pause, ' the idea of Jesus Christ is a mockery. Don't you think so, Mr. Bradley ? ' 'Not' altogether,' replied Bradley, after a moment's hesitation. ■ 'If the life we live here were all, if, after a season, we vanished like the flow;ers, we should still neecl the comfort of Christ's message — his injunction to " love one another." The central idea of Christianity is peace and good fellowship ; and if our life had raised itself to that ideal of love, it would be an ideal life, and its brevity would be of little consequence.' Miss Combe smiled. Her keen intelligence went right into the' speaker's mind, and saw the true meaning of that shallow^ptipusia. Bradley noticed the smUe, and coloured "slightly under the calm, penetrating gaze of the little woman. ' I have always been taught to believe,' said Miss Combe, quietly, ' that the true secret of the success of Christianity was its heavenly prdmise^ta pledge of a future life.' ' Of course,' cried Alma. ' Certainly that promise was given,' said Bradley, ' and I have no doubt that, in some way or another, it will be fulfilled.' ' What do you mean by in some way or another ? ' asked Miss Combe. ' I mean that Christ's Heaven may not be a heaven of physical consciousness, but of painless and passive perfec- tion ; bringing to the weary peace and' forgetfulness, to the happy absolute absorption into the eternal and unconscious life of God.' ' Nirwina, in short 1 ' said Miss Combe dryly. • ' Well, for my own part, I should not care so much for so sleepy a Paradise. I postulate a heaven where I should meet and know my' mother, arid where the happy cry of living creatures would rise like a foimlain into the clear azure for evermore.' ' ' ' Surely,' said Bradley, gently, ' we all hope as much \ ' ' • ' But do we believe it ? ' returned Miss Combe. * That 102 THE NEW ABELARB. is the question. All human experience, all physiology, all true psychology, is against it. The letter of the eternal Universe, written on the open Book of Astronomy, speaks of eternal death and change. Shall we survive' while systems perish, while suns go out like sparks, and the void is sown with the wrecks of worn-out worlds ? ' In this strain the conversation continued for some little time longer. Seeing the invalid's tender yearning, Bradley spoke yet more hopefully of the great Christian promise, describing the soul as imperishable, and the moral order of the universe as stationary and secure ; but what he said was half-hearted, and carried with it no conviction. He felt for the first time the helplessness of a transcendental Christianity, like his own. Presently he returned, almost unconsciously, to the point from which he had set forth. ' There is something, perhaps,' he said, ' in the Posi- tivist conception of mankind as one ever-changing and practically deathless Being. Though men perish, Man survives. Children spring like flowers in the dark foot- prints of Death, and in them the dead inherit the world.' , * That creed would possibly suit me,' returneid Miss Combe, smiling sadly again, ' if I were a mother, if I were to live again in my own offspring. I'm afraid it is a creed with little comfort for childless men, or for old maids like myself 1 No; my selfishness requires something much more tangible. If I am frankly told that I must die, that consciousness ceases for ever with the physical breath of life, I can understand it, and accept my doom ; it is disagreeable, since I am rather fond of life and activity, but I can accept it. It is no consolation what- ever to reflect that I am to exist vicariously, without con- sciousness of the fact, in other old maids to come ! The condition of moral existence is — consciousness; without that, I shall be practically abolished. Such a creed, as the other you have named, is simple materialism, disguise it as you will.' ' I am not preaching Positivism,' cried Bradley ; ' God forbid ! I only said there was something in its central idea. Christ's promise is that we shall live again ! Can we not accept that promise without asking " how ? " ' 'No, we can't; that ia to say, / can't. It is the IN A SICK ROOZr. 103 " how " which forms the puzzle. Besides, the Bible ex- pressly speaks of the resurrection of the body.' ' A poetical expression,' suggested Bradley. ' Yes ; but something more,' persisted the little woman. 'I can't conceive an existence without those physical attributes with which I was born. When I think of my dead mother, it is of the very face and form I used to know ; the same eyes, the same sweet lips, the same smile, the same touch of loving hands. Either we shall exist again as we are, or ' ' Of course we shall so exist,' broke in Alma, more and more nervous at the turn the conversation was taking. ' Is it not all beautifully expressed in St. Paul ? "We sow a physical body, we shall reap a spiritual body ; but they will be one and the same. But pray do not talk of it any more. You are not dying, dear, thank God ! ' Half an hour later Bradley and Alma left the house together. 'I am sorry dear Agatha has not more faith,' said Alma, thoughtfiiUy, as they wandered back towards the park. ' I think she has a great deal,' said Bradley, quickly. ' But I was shocked to see her looking so ill and worn. Is she having good medical advice ? ' ' The best in London. Dr. Harley sees her nearly every day. Poor Agatha ! She has not had too much happiness in this world. She has worked so hard, and all alone I ' They entered the park gate, and came again among the greenness and the sunshine. Everything seemed light and happiness, and the air had that indescribable sense of resurrection in it which comes with the early shining of the primrose and the reawakening of the year. Bradley glanced at his companion. Never had she seemed so bright and. beautiful ! With the flush of the rose on her cheek, and her eyes ftill of pensive light, she moved lightly and gracefully at his side. A lark rose from the grass not far away, and warbled ecstatically overhead. Bradley felt his blood stir and move 'ike sap in the bough at the magic touch of the season, 104 TEE NEW ABELARD. att|J witli kindling eyes he drew nearer to his companion's Bide. ' Well, dearest, you were a true prophet,' he said, talfing her hand and drawing it softly within his arm. ' It has all come to pass, through you. The New Church flourishes in spite of those who hate all things new ; and I have you — you only — to thank for it all.' ' I want no thanks,' replied Alma. ' It is reward enough to forward the good work, and to make you happy.' ' Happy ?' Yes, I ought to be happy, should I not ? ' * And you are, I hope, dear Ambrose ! ' 'Yes, I think so. Only sometimes — on a day like this, for example — I cannot help looking back with a sigh to the dear old times at Fensea. A benediction seems to rest upon ' the quiet country life, which contented me then so little. I miss the peaceful fields, the loneli- ness and rest of the fens, the silence of the encircling sea! ' ' And Goody Tilbury's red cloak 1 ' cried Alma, smiling. ' And the scowl of Summerhayes the grocer, and the good Bishop's blessing 1 ' ' Ah, but after all the life was a gentle one tiU I de- stroyed it. The poor souls loved me, till I became too much for them. And then, Alma, the days with you 1 Your first coming, like a ministering angel, to make this sordid earth seem like a heavenly dream ! To-day, dearest, it almost seems as if my heaven was behind, and not before me ! I should like to live those blissful moments over again — every one ! ' • Alma laughed outright, for she had a vivid remem- brance of her friend's infinite vexations as a countiy clergyman. ' That's right,' he said, smiling fondly ; ' laugh at me, if you please, but I am quite serious in what I say. Here, in the great world of London, though we see so much of one another, we do not seem quite so closely united as we did yonder.' ' Not so united 1 ' she cried, all Let sweet face clouded in a moment. ' Well, united as before, but differently. In the con- m A SICK ROOM. 105 stant storm and stress of my occupation, there ip not the same pastoral consecration. The world is too much with us ; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. In those days, dearest,' he added, sinking his voice to a whisper, ' we used to speak oftener of love, we used to dream — did we not ? — of being man and wife.' She drooped her gentle eyes, which had been fixed upon him earnestly, and coloured softly; then, with a pretty touch of coquetry, laughed again. 'I am not jealous,' she said, 'and since you have anctther bride ' ' Another bride,' he repeated, with a startled look of surprise. ' I mean your Church,' she said gaily. ' Ah yes,' he said, relieved. ' But do you know I find this same bride of mine a somewhat dull companion, and a poor exchange, at any rate, for a bride of flesh and blood. Dearest, I have been thinking it all over 1 "Why should we not realise our old dream, and live in love together 7 ' Alma stood silent. They were in a lonely part of the park, in a footway winding through its very centre. Close at hand was one of the wooden benches. With beating heart and heightened colour, she strolled to the seat and sat down. Bradley followed, placed himself by her side, and gently took her hand. 'Well?' he said. She turned her head and looked quietly into his eyes. Her grave fond look brought the bright blood to his own cheeks, and just glancing round to see that they were unobserved, he caught her in his arms and kissed her passionately — on lips that kissed again. ' Shall it be as I wish 7 ' he exclaimed. ' Yes, Ambrose,' she answered. ' What you wish, I wish too ; now as always, your will is my law.' ' And when 7 ' ' When you please,' she answered. ■ ' Only before I marry you, you must promise me one thing.' 106 TSE NEW ABELARD. ' Yes ! yes ! ' ' To regard me still as only your handmaid ; to look Upon your Church always as your true Bride, to whom you are most deeply bound.' ' I'll try, dear ; but -vtill you be very angry if I some- times forget her, when I feel your loving arms aroUnd me ? ' ' Very angry,' she said, smiling radiantly upon him. They rose up, and walked on together hand in hand. CHAPTER Xm. A KUNAWAT COUPLE. Ambrose Beadley returned home that day like a man in a dream ; and it was not till he had sat for a long time, thinking alone, that he completely realised what he had done. But the state of things which led to so amatot-y a crisis had been going on for a long time ; indeed, the more his worldly prosperity increased, and the greater his social influence grew, the feebler became his spiritual resistance to the temptation against which he had fought BO long. It is the tendency of all transcendental forms of thought, even of a transcendental Christianity, to relax the moral fibre of their recipient, and to render vague and indetermined his general outlook upon life. The harshest possible Calvinism is bracing and invigorating, compared with any kind of creed with a terminology purely sub- jective. Bradley's belief was liberal in the extreme in its con- struction, or obliteration, of religious dogmas ; it soon became equally liberal, or lax, in its conception of moral sanctions. The man still retained, and was destined to retain till lie end of his days, the very loftiest conception of human duty. His conscience, in every act of existence, was the loadstone of his deeds. But the most rigid don- Bcience, relying entirely on its own insight, is liable to corruption. Certainly Bradley!s was. He had not ad- vanced very far along the easy path which leads to agnosticism, before he had begun to ask himself — What, A nUKAWAT COUPLE. 107 after all, ia the moral law ? are not certain forms of self- Baorifice Quixotic and unnecessary? and, finally, why should I live a life of martyrdom, because my path was crossed in youth by an unworthy woman ? Since that nocturnal meeting after his visit to the theatre, Bradley had seen nothing of Mrs. Montmorency, but he had ascertained that she was spending the greater part of her time somewhere abroad. Further investiga- tions, pursued through a private inquiry office, con- vinced him of two things : first, that there was not the faintest possibility of the lady voluntarily crossing his path again, and, second, that his secret was perfectly safe in the keeping of one whom its disclosure might possibly ruin. Satisfied thus far of his security, he had torn that dark leaf out of his book of life, and thrown it away into the waters of forgetf ulness. Then, with his growing sense of mastery, grew Alma's fascination. She could not conceal, she scarcely attempted to con- ceal, the deep passion of worship with which she regarded him. Had he been a man ten times colder and stronger, he could scarcely have resisted the spell. As it was, he did not resist it, but drew nearer and nearer to the sweet spirit who wove it, as we have seen. One sunny morning, about a month after the occur- rence of that little love scene in Regent's Park, Bradley rose early, packed a small hand vaUse, and drove off in a hansom to Victoria Station. He was quietly attired in clothes not at all clerical in cut, and without the idiite neckcloth or any other external badge of his profession. Arriving at the station, he found himself just in time to catch the nine o'clock train to Eussetdeane, a lonely railway station taking its name from a village three miles distant, lying on the direct line to Eastbourne and Newhaven. He took his ticket, and entered a first-class carriage as the train started. The carriage had no other occupant, and, leaning back in his seat, he was soon plunged in deep reflection. ' At times his brow was knitted, his face darkened', showing that his thoughts were gloomy and disturbed enough ; but ever and anon, his eyes brightened, and his 1(58 TSE NEW ABELABD. features caught a gleam of joyful expectation. Whenever the train stopped, which it did very frequently, he shrank back in hia comer, as if dreading some scrutinising eye; but no one saw or heeded him, and no one entered the carriage which he occupied alone. At last, after a journey of about an hour and a half, the train stopped at Eussetdeane. It was a very lonely station indeed, quite primitive in its arrangements, and suri-ounded on every side by green hills and white quarries of chalk. A-a. infirm porter and a melancholy station-master officiated on the platform, but when Bradley .alighted, valise in hand, who should step smilingly up to him but Alma, prettily attired in a quiet country costume, and rosy with the sweet country air. The train steamed away ; porter and station-master standing stone still, and watching it till the last faint glimpse of it faded in the distance ; then they looked at each other, seemed to awake from a trance, and slowly approached the sohtary passenger and his companion. ' Going to Eussetdeane, measter 7 ' demanded the porter, ■wheezily, while the station-master looked on from the lofty heights of his superior position. Bradley nodded, and handed over his valise. ' I have a fly outside the station,' explained Alma ; and passing round the platform and over a wooden foot-bridge, to platform and offices on the other side, they found the fly in question — an antique structure of the post-chaise species, drawn by two ill-groomed horses, a white and a roan, and driven by a preternaturally old boy of sixteen or seven- teen. ^ At what hour does the next down train pass to New- haven ? ' asked Bradley, as he tipped the porter, and took his seat by Alma's side. ' The down train, measter ? ' repeated the old man. 'There be one at three, and another at five. Be you a-going on ? ' Bradley nodded, and the fly drove slowly away along the country road. The back of the boy'a head was just visible over the front part of the vehicle, which was vast and deep ; so Bradley's arm stole round his companion'a waist, and they exchanged an aflTectionate kiss. ' A RUNAWAY COUPLE. lOD ' I have the licence in my pocket, dearest,' he whispered. ' Is all arranged ? ' ' Yes. The clergyman of the parish is such a dear old man, and quite sympathetic. He thinks it is an elopement, and as he ran away .with his own wife, who is twenty years younger than himself, he is sympathy itself I ' ' Did he recognise my name, when you mentioned it ? ' ' Not a bit,' answered Alma, laughing. ' He lives too far out of the world to know anything or anybody, and, as I told you, he is eighty years of age. I really tliink he believes that Queen Victoria is still an unmarried lady, and he talks about Bonaparte just as if it were sixty years ago.' 'Almal' ' Yes, Ambrose ! ' * You don't mind this secret marriage ? ' ' Not at all — since it is your wish.' 'I think, it is better to keep the affair private, at least for a little time. You know how I hate publicity in a matter so sacred ; and since we are all in all to each other ' He drew her still closer and kissed her again. , As he did so, he was conscious of a curious sound as of suppressed laughter, and, glancing up, he saw the eyes of the weird boy intently regarding him. ' Well, what is it ? ' cried Bradley, impatiently, while Alma shrank away blushing crimson. The eyes of the weird boy did not droop, nor was he at all abashed. Still indulging in an internal chuckle, like the suppressed croak of a young raven, he pulled his horses up, and pointed with his whip towards the distant country prospect. ' There be Eussetdeane church spire ! ' he said. Bradley glanced impatiently in the direction so indi. cated, and saw, peeping through a cluster of trees, some two miles off, the spire in question. He nodded, and ordered the boy to drive on. Then, turning to Alma, he saw her eyes twinkling with merry laugliter. ' You see we are found out already I ' she whispered. ' He thinks we are a runaway couple, and so, after all, we are.' 110 TME NEW ABEZARD. The carriage rumbled along for another mile, and evei and anon they caught the eyes of the weird boy, peeping backward ; but being forewarned, they sat, primly enough, upon their good behaviour. Suddenly the carriage stopped again. ' Missis ! ' croaked the weird boy. ' Well ? ' said Alma, smiling up at him, ' Where be I a-driving to ? Back to the " Wheat- sheaf"?' ' No ; right to the church door,' answered Alma, laughing. The boy did not reply, but fixing his weather eye on Bradley, indulged in a wink of such preternatural mean- ing, that Alma was once more convulsed with laughter. Then, after giving vent to a prolonged 'whistle, he cracked his whip, and urged his horses on. Through green lanes, sweet with hanging honeysuckle and Sprinkled' with flowers of early summer ; past sleepy ponds, covered with emerald slime and haunted by dragon flies glittering like gold ; along upland stretches of broad pasture, commanding distant views of wood-land, thorpe and river ; ' they passed along that sunny summer day ; until at last, creeping along an avenue of ashes and flower- ing limes, they came to the gate, of an old church, where the carriage stopped. : The lovers alighted, and ordering the boy to remain in attendance, approached the church — a time-worn, rain- stdined edifice hailf smothered in ivy, and with rooks cawing from its belfry tower. ' ' They were evidently expected. The clerk, a little old man who walked with a stick, met them^ at the church door, and informed them that the clergyman was waiting i'or them in the vestry. A few minutes later, the two were made man and wife —the solitary spectator of the ceremony, except the oiBcials, being the weird boy, who had stolen from his seat, atid left his horses waiting in the road, in order to see what was going on. The clergyman, ancient and time-worn as his church, mumbled a benediction, and, after subscribing their n^mes in the" register and paying the customary fees, they ghook hands with him, and came again out into the sun* shine. A RUNAWAY COUPLE. Ill Whatever the future might bring forth to cloud hel marriage path, that bridal morning waa like a dream of paradise to Alma Craik. In a private room of the old • Wheatsheaf/ a room sweet with newly-cut flowers, and overlooking orchards stretching down to the banks of a pretty liver, they breakfasted, or lunched, together — on simple, fare, it is true, but with all things cleau and pure. A summer shower passed over the orchards as they sat by the open window hand in hand; and then, as the sun flashed out again, the trees dript diamonds, and the long grass glittered with golden dew. ' How sweet and still it is here, my darling ! I wish we could stay in such a spot for ever, and never return again to the dreary city and the busy world.' She crept to his side as he spoke, and rested her head upon his shoulder. ' Are you happy now, dear Ambrose ? ' 'Quite happy,' he replied. Presently a buxom serving maid tript in to say that the carriage was waiting; and, descending to the door, they found the vehicle, with Alma's travelling trunk and the clergyman's valise upon the box. The weird boy was still there, jubilant. Somehow or other he had procured a large white rosette, which he had pinned to the breast of his coat. Two or three sleepy village folk, whom the news of the wedding had partially aroused from their chronic state of torpor, were clustering on the pavement ; and the landlord and landlady stood at the door to wish the strange couple God speed. Away they drove, while one of the slumberous villagers started a feeble cheer. Through the green lanes, along the grassy uplands, they passed back to the railway station, which they reached just in time to catch, as they had planned, the down train to Newhaven. That afternoon they crossed by the tidal boat to Dieppe, where, in a brand new hotel lacing the sea, they slept that night. They were almost the only visitors, for the summer bathing season had scarcely begun, and they would have found the place cheerless enough had they been in a lesa happy mood of mind. The next day found them wandering about the pictu« 112 THE NEW AJIELARD. resque old town, visiting the ■wharves and the old churches, and strolling on the deserted esplanade which faced the sea. They thought themselves unsuspected, but somehow every- one knew their secret — that they were a married couple on their honeymoon. When they returned to the hotel to lunch, they found a bunch of orange-blossoms on the table, placed there by the hands of a sympathetic landlady. ' We must go on farther,' said Bradley, rather irritably. ' I suppose the newly-married alight here often, and being experts in that sort of commodity,, they recognise it at a glance.' So that afternoon they went on to Eouen, where they arrived as the sun was setting on that town of charming bridges. When their train reached the station, a train arrived almost simultaneously from Paris, and as there was a ten minutes' interval for both upward and downward passengers, the platform was thronged. Bradley passed through the crowd, with Alma hanging upon his arm. He looked neither to right nor left, but seemed bent on passing out of the station ; and he did not notice- a dark-eyed lady by whom he was evidently recognised. On seeing him, she started, and drew back among the crowd,- leading by the hand a little boy. But when he had passed she looked after him, and more particularly after his beautiful companion. . ' It is he, sure enough ! ' she muttered. ' But who is that stylish party in his company ? I should very much like to know.' The lady was ' Mrs. Montmorency,' clad like a widow in complete weeds, and travelling with her little boy, also dressed in funeral black, from Paris to London. CHAPTER XIV. A MYSTERY. Bradley and his bride were only absent from London five days ; no one missed them, and of course no one suspected that they had gone away in company. Before the next A MYSTERY. 113 Sunday came round, they were lining just as before^she in her own rooms, he in the residence at Eegent's Park. This was the arrangement made between them, the clergy- man's plea being that it was better to keep their marriage secret for a time, until the, New Church was more safely established in public estimation. Quite happy in the loving secret between them,- Alma had acquiesced without a word. Their only, confidant, for the time being,, waa.Misa Combe, who was then staying at Hastings, and to whom Alma wrote in the following terms : 'Dearest Agatha, — It is all over, and we are man and wife. Ko one in the world is to know but you, yet awhile. I know you will keep our secret, and rejoice in our happiness. ' It was all decided very hastily. Ambrose thought it better to marry secretly , thinking (foolish man !) thiit many would misunderstand his motives, and believing that, as an unmarried person, he can better pursue the good work to which we are both devoted. After all, it matters very little. For years we have been one in soul, as you know ; and what God long ago joined man could never have put asunder. Still, it is sweet to know that my hero, my apostle, ray Abelard — as I call him, is entirely mine, for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse. I am very happy, dear; proud and hopeful, too, as a loving wile can be. . ' Write and tell me that you are better. , Surely . this bright weather should complete your cure, and drive those gloomy thoughts away 7 In a few days I shall come ami see you; perhaps we may come together. So I won't write good bye, but au revoir ! Your loving friend. Alma Bradley. ' P.S. — My cousin George is back in town. Just fancy how he would scowl if he were to read the above signature.' It so happened that George Craik, although he was not BO favoured as to read his. cousin's signature as a married woman, and although he had no suspicion whatever as yet that she had entered, as she imagined, into the holy estate of.matrimony, was scowling, in his^ least amiable frame of jiuiud about the time when Alma wrote the above letter, I 114 THE JKffl7 ADELARD He had returned to London from Paris a good deal mystified, for, having procured an interview with Mrs. Montmorency, whom (as the reader knows) he had gone over to see, he had elicited nothing from that lady but a flat denial of any knowledge of or connection with his rival the clergyman. So he came back at once, baffled but not beaten, took to the old club life, attended the different race meetings, and resumed altogether the life of a young gentleman about town. But although he saw little of his cousin, he (as he him- self figuratively expressed it) ' kept his eye upon her.' The more he read about Bradley and his doings — which appeared shocking indeed to his unsophisticated mind — the more indignant he felt that Alma, and her fortune," should ever be thrown away on one so unworthy. Mean- time he was in the unenviable position of a man surrounded by duns and debts. He had bills out in the hands of the Jews, and he saw no prospect whatever of meeting them. Having far exceeded the very liberal allowance given him by his father, he knew that there was no hope of assistance in that direction. His only chance of social resuscitation was a wealthy marriage, and with his cousin hanging like a tempting bait before him, he felt like a very Tantalus, miserable, indignant and ill-used. ' His rooms were in the Albany, and here one morning his father found him, sitting over a late breakfast. ' Well, George,' said the baronet, standing on the hearthrug and glancing round at the highly siiggestive ])rints which adorned the walls ; ' well, George, how long is this to last? ' The young man glanced up gloomily as he sipped his coffee. ' What do you mean 7 ' he demanded. ' You know very well. But just look at this letter, which I have received, from a man called Tavistock, this morning.' And he tossed it over the table to his son. George took it up, looked at it, and flushed crimson. It was a letter informing Sir George Craik tljat the writer held in his hands a dishonoured acceptance of his son's for the sum of three hundred pounds, and that unless it was taken up A MYSTEBY. 115 within a week proceedings ■ in bankruptcy would be instituted. * D the Jew 1 ' cried George. * I'll wring his •neck ! He had no right to write to you ! ' ' I suppose he thought it was the only way,' returned the baronet ; ' but he is quite out in his calculations. If you suppose that I shall pay any more of your debts you are mistaken. I am quite tired of it all. You have played all your cards wrong and must take the consequences.' George scowled more furiously than ever, but made no immediate reply. After a pause, however, he said in an injured way — ' I don't know what you mean by pla3dng my cards wrong. I have done my best. If my cousin Alma has given me the cold shoulder, because she has gone cranky on religion, it is no fault of mine.' ' I am not astonished that she has thrown you over,' cried Sir George. * What possible interest could a young girl of her disposition find in a fellow who bets away hia last shilling, and covers his room with pictures of horses and portraits of jockeys and ballet girls ? If you had had any common sense, you might at least have pretended to take some interest in her pursuits.' ' I'm not a hypocrite,' retorted George, ' and I can't talk atheism.' ' Eubbish ! you know as well as I do that Alma is a high-spirited girl, and only wants humouring. These new- fangled ideas of hers are absurd enough, but irritating opposition will never lead her to get rid of them.' ' She's in love with that fellow Bradley ! ' ' Nothing of the kind. She is in love with her own wild fancies, which he is wise enough to humour, and you are indiscreet enough to oppose. If there had been any- thing serious between them, a marriage would have come ofE long ago ; but, absurd as Alma is, she is not mad enough to throw herself away on a mere adventurer like that, without a penny in the world.' ' What is a fellow to do ? ' pleaded George, dolefully. ' She snubs me more than ever ! ' ' The more she snubs you the more you ought to pursue her. Show your devotion to her — go to the church 12 116 THE NEW ABELARD. — seem to be interested in Iier crotchets — and take my word for it, her sympathies will soon turn in your direction.' ' Father and son continued to talk for some time in the same strain, and after an hour's conversation Sir George went away in a better humour. George' drest himself carefully; and when it was about midday hailed a cab a:nd was driven down to the Gaiety Theatre, where he had an appointment with Miss Dottie Destrange. The occasion was one of those matinees when aspiring amateurs attempt to take critical opinion by storm, and the debutante this time was a certain Mrs. Temple Grainger, who was to appear as ' Juliet ' in the Hunchback, and afterwards as ' Juliet ' in the famous balcony scene of Shakespeare's play. Mrs. Grainger, . whose husband was somewhere in the mysterious limbo of mysterious husbands, called India, was well known in a certain section of society, and no less a person than His Koyal Highness the Prince of Wales had promised to be present at her debut. , George was to join Miss Destrange in the stalls, where he duly found her, and was greeted with a careless smile. The seats all round were thronged with well-known mem- bers of society ; actresses, actors, critics. The Prince was already in his bo?, and the curtain was just ringing up. It is no part of my business to chronicle the success or failure of Mrs. Temple Grainger; but, if cheers and "floral offerings signify anything, she was in high favour with her audience. At the end of the second act, George Craik rose and surveyed the house through his opera glass. As he did so, he was conscious of a figure saluting hiin from' one of the stage boxes, and to his surprise he reoog- nised^-;Mrs. Montmorency. She was gorgeously drest in black, and liberally painted and powdered. George bowed to her carelessly ; when to his surprise she beckoned him to her. He rose from his seat and walked over to the side of the stalls immediately underneath her box. She leant over to him, and they shook hands. ' Will you come in ? ' she said. ' I want to speak to you.' A MTSTEBT. ' 117 He nodded, passed round to tie back of the box, entered, and took a seat by the lady's side. ' I thought you were still in Paris,' he said. ' I came over about a fortnight ago,' she replied. ' I suppose you have heard of his lordship's death ? ' * Yea. I saw it in the papers.' * I waited till after the funeral, then I came away. But we won't talk about that; I've hardly got over it yet. I've something else to say to you.' ♦Well?' ' Do you remember a question you asked me in Paris — whether I knew anything of a clergyman of the name of Bradley who was paying his addresses to your cousin ? ' ' Of course I do ; and you said ' , ' That I only knew him very slightly.' ' Pardon me, but you said you didn't know him at all ! ' ' Did I ? Then I made a slight mistake. I do know the person you mean by sight ! ' George Craik looked at the speaker with some astonish- ment, for he had a good memory, and a very vivid recol- lection of what she had said to him during their interview. * I dare say Iwas distrait,' she continued, with a curious smile and a flash of her dark eyes. ' I was in such trouble about poor Ombermere. "What I want to tell you is that I saw Mr. Bradley the other day at Eouen, as I was re- turning from Paris.' 'At Eouen,' repeated George Craik. ' Yes, on the railway platform, in company with a very charming lady, who was hanging on his arm, and regard- ing him with very evident adoration.' George pricked up his ears like a little terrier; he smelt mischief of some sort. ' I fancy you must be mistaken,' he said. ' Bradley is not likely to have been travelling across the Channel.' ' I am not al; all mistaken,' answered Mrs. Montmo- rency. ' Mr. Bradley'.s appearance is peculiar, his face especially, and I am sure it was himself. What I want to find out is, who was his companion ? ' ' I hardly see what interest that can be to you,' ob- served George suspiciously, ' since you only know him— by sight ! ' 118 THE NEW ABELABD. ' The lady interested me. I was wondering if it could be your charming cousin.' George started as if he had been shot. ' My cousin Alma i Impossible I Surely you don't know what you are saying 1 ' ' Oh yes, I do. Tell me, what is your cousin like ? ' After some slight further urging, George described Alma's personal appearance as closely as possible. Mrs. Montmorency listened quietly, taking note of all the de- tails of the description. Then she tapped George with her fan, and laughed outright. ' Then I was right after all ! ' she cried. ' It was Miss Alma Craik — that's her namp, isn't it ? ' ' Yes ; but, good heavens, it is simply impossible ! Alma in company with that scoundrel, over there in France 7 You must be mistaken ! ' But Mrs. Montmorency was quite certain that she had made no mistake in the matter. In her turn she described Alma's appearance so minutely, so cleverly, that her com- panion became lost in astonished belief. When the act drop was rung up, he sat staring like one bewitched, see- ing nothing, hearing nothing, but gazing wildly at Mrs. Montmorency. Suddenly he rose to go. ' Don't go yet,' whispered the lady. ' I must — I can't stay ! ' he replied. ' I'll find out from my cousin herself if what you have told me is true.' ' Aprls ? ' ' Aprls 1 ' echoed the young man, looking livid. ' Why, apres, I'll have it out with the man ! ' Mrs. Montmorency put her gloved hand upon his arm. 'Don't do anything rash, mon cher,' she said. 'I think you told me that you loved your cousin, and that you would give a thousand pounds to get her away from your rival? ' ' A thousand I twenty thousand ! anything 1 ' ' Suppose I could help you ? ' said Mrs. Montmorency, Bmiling wickedly. ' Can you ? will you ? But how 1 ' ' You must give me time to think it over. Find out, A MYSTERY. 119 iu the first place, if what I suspect is true, and then come and tell me all about it ! ' George Craik promised, and hurriedly left die theatre, without even waiting to say farewell, or make any apolo- gies, to Miss Destrange. He was determined to call upon his cousin without a moment's delay, and get, if possible, to the bottom of the mystery of her unaccountable ap- pearance, accompanied by Bradley, at the Bouen railway station. CHAPTER XV. THE COUSINS. Madam, our house's honour is in question ! I prithee, when you play at wantonness, Bemember that our blood flows clean and pure, In one unbroken and unmuddied line. From crystal sources. I'm your champion. Madam, against yourself ! — The Will and the Way, George Ckaik was not the man to let the grass grow under his feet when he was moving with set purpose to any object. As we have already hinted, he possessed a certain bull- dog tenacity, very dangerous to his opponents. . And now all the suspicions of a nature naturally suspicious, all the spitef ulness of a disposition naturally spiteful, being fully and unexpectedly aroused, his furious instinct urged him to seek, without a moment's breathing-time, the presence of his refractory cousin. Coupled with his jealous excitement was a lofty moral indignation. The family credit was at stake — so at least he assured himself — and he had a perfect right to demand an explana- tion. Had he reflected a little, he might have known that Alma was the last person in the world to give any ex- planation whatever if peremptorily demanded, or to admit her cousin's right to demand it ; her spirit was stubborn as' his own, and her attitude of intellectual superiority was, he should have known by old experience, quite invincible. Quitting the theatre, he leapt into a hansom, and waa 120 THE NEW ABELABD. driven direct to Alma's rooms. It was by this time about five in the afternoon, and he made certain of finding' his cousin at home. He was mistaken. Miss Craik was out, and had been out the greater part of the day. 'Do you know where I can find her? ' he asked of the domestic, a smart servant maid. ' I 'don't know, sir,' was the reply. ' She went out in the morning with Mr. Bradley, and has not been home to lunch.' ' Does she dine at home ? ' ' Yes, sir — at seven.' ' Then I will wait for her.' And so saying ho walked into the drawing-room and sat down. , He had cooled a little by this time,' and before Alma made her appearance he had time to cool a good deal more. Fidgetting impatiently in his chair, he began to ask himself how he could best approach the subject on which he had come. He regretted now that he had not called for his father and brought him with him ; that, no doubt", would have' been the most diplomatic course to adopt. The more he thought over the information he had received, the more he questioned its authenticity ; and if, after all, the actress had made a mistake, as he began to suspect and fear, what a fool he would be made to look in his cousin's eyes ! The prospect of being made to appear absurd sent a thrill of horror through his blood; for this young person, as has already been seen, dreaded, above all things in the world, the shaft of ridicule. Time slipped by, and George Craik grew more and more uneasy. At last seven o'clock struck, and Alma had not appeared. Growling to himself like an irritable dog, the young man rose and touched the electric bell. 'My cousin is very late,' he said to the servant when she appeared. 'Yes, sir ; she is very uncertain.' ' It is seven o'clock. You said she dined at seven.' 'Yes, sir. But sopaetimes she does not return to dinner. If she is not here at the hour we don't expect her.' George Craik uttered an angry exclamation. THM COmiNS 121 ' Where the deuce can she be ? ' he cried, scowling ominously. ' I can't say, sir,' returned the servant smiling. ' Miss Craik is most uncertain, as I told you. She may be dining, out — with Mr. Bradley.' The young man seized his hat, and began striding up and down the room. Then he stopped, and seeing a curibus smile still lingering on the servant's face, said sharply : ' What are you laughing at ? This is no laughing matter. I tell you I must see my cousin 1 ' ' I'm very sorry, sir, but ' George moved towards the door. * I'll go and look for her,' he said. ' If she returns before I find her, tell her I'll come the first thing in the morning.' And, fuming savagely, he left the house. His temper, never very amiable, was now aroused to the extreme point of irritation, and the servant's suggestion that Alma might at that very moment be in his rival's company roused in him a certain frenzy. It was scandalous ; it was insuffer- able. If he could not have it out that night with her, he would seek the clergyman, and force him to some sort of an avowal. Bent on that purpose, he hurried away to- wards Bradley's house.- He passed on foot round Regent's Park, and came to the neig'nbourhood of the New Church and the adjoining house where Bradley dwelt. It was quite dark now, and the outskirts of the park were quite deserted. As he approached the house he saw the street-door standing open, and heard the sound of voices. He pri0ked up his ears and drew back into the shadow. A light silvery laugh rose upon the air, followed by the low, deep tones of a man's voice. Then the door was closed, and two figures stepped out into the road, crossing to the opposite side, under the shadow of the trees. They passed across the lamplight on the other side of the way, and he recognised his cousin's figure, arm-in-arm with that of the clergyman. They passed on, laughing and talking merrily together. Keeping them well at a distance, he quietly followed. 123 THE NMW ABELARB. They passed round the park, following the road by which he himself had come. Happy and unsuspicious, they continued to talk as they went ; and though he was not near enough to follow their conversation, he heard enough to show him that they were on the tenderest and most loving terms. More than once he felt inclined to stride forward, Xopfront them, and have it out with his rival; but, his courage failing him, he continued to follow like a spy. At last they reached the quiet street where Alma dwelt, and paused on tiie doorstep of her houi he fixed the glass into his'right eye, thereby imparting to his curious physiognomy an appearance of jaunty audacity not at all ■in iteeping with his general appearance. ' You come at a -rather awkward time,' said Bradley. ' I seldom or never receive visits on Sunday evening, and to-night especially ■ " ' A SOIAR BIOLOGIST. til He paused and coughed uneasily, looking very ill at ease. ' I understand, I quite understand,' returned the Pro- fessor, gazing up at him in real or assumed admiration, ' You devote your seventh-day evening to retirement and to meditation. Well, sir, I'm real grieved to disturb you ; but sister and I heard you preach this morning, and I may at once tell you that for a good square sermon and elocu- tion fit for the Senate, we never heard anyone to match you, though we've heard a few. After hearing you orate, I couldn't rest till I presented my lines of introduction, and that's a fact. Sister would have come to you, but a friendly spirit from the planet Mars dropt in just as she was fixing herself, and she had to stay.' Bradley looked in surprise at the speaker, beginning to fancy that he was conversing with a lunatic ; but the Professor's manner was quite commonplace and matter-of- fact. ' Have you been long in Europe ? ' he asked, hardly knowing what to say. ' Two months, sir. We have just come from Paris, where we were uncommon well entertained by the American circle. You are aware, of course, that my sister has transcendental gifts? ' ' That she is clairvoyante ? So Knowlesworth says in his letter. I may tell you at once that I am a total dis- believer in such matters. I believe spiritualism, even clairvoyance, to be mere imposture.' ' Indeed, sir ? ' said the Professor, without the slightest sign of astonishment or irritation. ' You don't believe in solar biology 7 ' ' I don't even know what that means,' answered Bradley with a smile. ' May I explain, sir? Solar biology is the science which demonstrates our connection with radiant existences of the central luminary of this universe; our dependence and interdependence as spiritual beings on the ebb and flow of consciousness from that shining centre ; our life hitherto, now, and hereafter, as solar elements. We are sunbeams, sir, materialised ; thought is, psychic sunlight. On the basis of that great principle is established the reality of oui 142 THE NEW ABELARD. porrespondence with spiritual substances, alien to us, exist, ing in the other solar worlds.' Bradley shrugged his shoulders. His mood of mind at that moment was the very reverse of conciliatory towards any form of transcendentalism, and this seemed,, arrant nonsense. ' Let me tell you frankly,' he said, ' that in all such matters as these I am a pure materialist.' ' Exactly,' cried the Professor. ' So are we, sir.' ' Materialists ? ' ' Why, certainly. Spiritualism is materialism ; in other words, everything is spirit matter. All bodies, as the great Swedenbvr^ demonstrated long ago, are spirit ; thought is spirit^ — taat is to say, sir,- sunlight. The same great prin- ciple of which I have spoken is the destruction of all re- ligion save the' religion of solar science. It demolishes Theism, which has been the will-o'-the wisp of the world, abolishes Christianity, which has been its bane. The God of the Universe is solar Force, which is universal and pan- theistic.' ' Pi:ay sit down,' said Bradley, now for the first time becoming interested. ' If I understand you, there is no personal God ? ' ' Of course not,' returned the little man, sidling into a chair and dropping his eyeglass. ' A personal God is, as the scientists call it, merely an anthropomorphic Boom, As the great cosmic Bard of solar biology expresses it in hia sublime epic : The radiant flux and reflux, the serene Atomic ebb and flow of force divine. This, this alone, is G-od, the DemiurguB; By this alone we are, and still shall be. jby ! the Phantom of the Unoondition'd Fades into nothingness before the breath Of that eternal erer-efSuent Life Whose centre is the shining solar Heart Of countless throbbing pulses, each a world ! - The quotation was delivered with extraordinary rapidity, and in the off-hand matter-of-fact manner charac- teristic of the speaker. Then, after pausing a moment, and fixing his glass again, the Professor demanded eagerly : ' What do you think of that, sir ? ' ; A. SOLAR BIOLOGIST. 143 ' I think,' answered Bradley, laughing contemptuously, ' that it is very poor science, and still poorer poetry.' ' You think so, really ? ' cried the Professor, not in the least disconcerted, 'I think I could convince you by a few ordinary manifestations that it's at any rate common sense.' It was now quite clear tp Bradley that the man was a charlatan, and he was in no mood to listen to spiritualistic jargon. What both amused and puzzled him was that two such men as his American correspondents should have franked the professor to decent society by letters of intro- duction. He reflected, however, that from time immemorial men of genius, eager for glimpses of a better life and a serener state of things, had been led ' by the nose,' like Faust, by charlatans. Now, Bradley, though an amiable man, had a very ominous frown when he was displeased ; and just now his brow came down and his eyes looked out of positive caverns as he said : 'I have already told you what I think of spiritualism and spiritualistic manifestations. I believe my opinion is that of all educated men.' * Spiritualism, as commonly imderstood, is one thing, sir,' returned the Professor, quietly ; ' spiritualistic ma- terialism, or solar science, is another. Our creed, sir, like your own, is the destruction of supernaturalism. If you will permit me once more to quote our sublime Bard, he sings as follows : All things abide in Nature ; Form and Soul, ' Matter and Thought, IWotion, Desire, and Dream, Evolve within her ever-heaving breast ; Within her, ■we subsist ; beyond and o'er hep Is naught but Chaos and primaeval Night. The Shadow of that Night for centuries Projected Man's phantasmie Deity, Formless, fantastic hideous, and unreal; God is Existence, alid as parts of God Men ebb and flow, for evermore divine. ' If you abolish supernaturalism,' asked the clergyman, impatiently, ' what do you mean by manifestations ?•' ' Just this,' returned the little man, glibly, ' the inter- change of communications between beings of this sphere and beings otherwise conditioned. This world is one of I** THE NEW ABEZABH. mdny, all of which liave a two-fold existence — in the sphere of matter and in the sphere of ideas. Death, which vulgar materialists consider the end of consciousness, ia merely one of the many phenomena of change; and spiritualistic realities, being indestructible ' Bradley rose impatiently. ' I am afraid,' he exclaimed, ' that I cannot discuss the matter any longer. Our opinions on the subject are hope- lessly antagonistic, and, to speak frankly, I have an invin- cible repugnance to the subject itself.' ' Shared, I am sorry to say, by many of your English men of science.' ' Shared, I am glad to say, by most thinking men.' * Well, well, sir, I won't detain you at present,' returned the Professor, not in the least ruffled. ' Perhaps you will permit me to call upon you at a more suitable time, and to introduce my sister ? ' ' Keally, I ' began Bradley, with some embarrass- ment. ^ Bustasia Mapleleafe is a most remarkable woman, sir. She ia a medium of the first degree. She possesses the power of prophecy, of clairvoyance, and of thought-reading. The book of the soul is open to her, and you would wonder at her remarkable divinations.' ' I must still plead my entire scepticism,' said Bradley, coldly., ' I guess Eustasia Mapleleafe would convert you. She was one of your congregation to-day, and, between ourselves, is greatly concerned on your account.' ' Concerned on my account ! ' echoed the clergyman. ' Yes, sir. She believes you to be under the sway of malign influences, possibly lunar or stellar.- She perceived a dark spectrum on the radiant orb of your mind, troubling the solar effluence which all cerebral matter emits, and which is more particularly emitted by the phosphorescent cells of the human brain.' Bradley wotdd by this time have considered that he was talking to a raving madn;ian had not the Professor been self-contained and matter-of-fact. As it was, he could hardly conceive him to be quite sane. At any other time, perh9.ps, he ;might have listened with patience and even A. SOLAR BIOLO0IST. 145 amusement to the fluent little American ; but tliat day, as the reader is aware, his spirit was far too pre-ocoupied. His face darkened unpleasantly as the Professor touched on his state of mind during the sermon, and he glanced almost angrily towards the door. ' May I bring my sister ? ' persisted the Professor. • Or stay — with your leave, sir, I'll write cur address upon that card, and perhaps you will favour her with a call.' As he spoke, he took up his own card from the table, and wrote upon it with a pencil. ' That's it, sir — care of Mrs. Piozzi Baker, 17 Monmouth Crescent, Bayswater.' So saying, he held out his hand^ which Bradley took mechanically, and then, with a polite boW, passed from the room and out of the house. Bi'adley resumed his seat, and the meditations which his pertinacious visitor had interrupted ; but the interrup- tion, irritating as it was, had done him good. Absurd as the Professor's talk had been, it was suggestive of that kind of speculation which has invariably a fascination for imaginative men, and from time to time, amidst his gloomy musings over his own condition, amidst his despair, his dread and his self-reproach, the clergyman fomid himself reminded of the odd propositions of the sorcalled biologist. After all, there was something in the little man's creed, absurd as it was, which brought a thinker face to face with the great phenomena of life and being. How wretched and ignoble seemed his position, in face of the eternal problem, which even spiritualism was an attempt to solve ! He was afraid now to look in the mirror of Nature, lest he should behold only his own lineaments, distorted by mise- rable fears. He felt, for the time being, infamous.' A degrading falsehood,' like an iron ring, held him chained and bound. Even the strange charlatan had discovered the secret of his misery. He would soon be a laughing-stock to all the world ; he, who had aspired to be the world's teacher and prophet,, who would have flown like an eagle into the very central radiance of the sun of Truth ! He rose impatiently, and paced up and down the room. I, 146 THE NEW ABELAItl). ■As h6 did 80, his eye fell upon something wHte, lying at the feet of the chair where his visitor had been sitting. He stooped and picked it up. He found it to be a large envelope, open, and containing two photographs. Hardly knowing what he did, he took out the pictures, and ex- amined them. The first rather puzzled him, though he soon realised its character. It represented the little Professor, seated in an arm-chair, reading a book open upon his knee ; behind him was a shadowy something in white floating drapery, which, on close scrutiny, disclosed the outline of a human face and form, white and vague like the filmy likeness seen in a smouldering fire. ' Beneath this picture was written in a small clear hand, — ' Professor Mapleleafe and Azaleus, a Spirit of the Third Magnitude, from the Evening Star.' It was simply a curious specimen of what is known as * Spirit-Photography.' The clergyman returned it to its envelope with a smile of contempt. The second photograph was different ; it was the like- ness of a woman, clad in white muslin, and reclining upon a sofa. The figure was petite, almost fairy-like in its fragility ; the hair, which fell in masses over the naked shoulders, very fair ; the face, elfin-like, but exceedingly pretty ; the eyes, which looked right out from the picture into those of the spectator, were wonderfully large, lustrous and wild. So luminous and searching were these eyes, so rapt and feager the pale face, that Bradley was startled, as if he were looking into the countenance of a living person. Beneath this picture were written the words — ' Eustasia Mapleleafe.' 'T!(ie clergyman looked at this picture again and again, with a curious fascination. As he did- so, holding it close to the lamplight, a peculiar thrill ran through his frame, and his hand tingled as if it 'touched the warm hand of some living being. At last, with an effort, he returned it also to the envelope, which he threw carelessly upon his desk. It was quite clear that the Professor had dropt the pictures, and Bradley determined to send them by that night's post. So he sat down, and addressed the envelope according to the address on the card ; but before sealing A SOLAR BIOLOGIST. CM7 it up, he took out the photographs and inspected them again. A new surprise awaited him. The photograph of the Professor afld his ghostly familiar remained as it had been; but the photogr^h of the woman, or girl, was mysteriously changed — that is to say, it had become so faint and vague as to be almost unrecognisable. The dress and figure were dim as a wreath of vapour, the face was b^ank and featureless, the eyes were faded and indistinct. " The entire effect was that of some ghostly presence, fading slowly away before the vision. Bradley was amazed, in spite of himself, and his whole frame, shook with agitation. He held the sun-picture again to the lamp-light, in- specting it closely, and every instant it seemed to grow fainter an& fainter, till nothing remained on the paper but a formless outline, like the spirit-presence permanent on the other photograph. By instinct a superstitious or rather a nervous man, Bradley now felt as if he were under the influence of some extraordinary spell. Abeady unstrung by the events of the day, he trembled from head to foot. At last, with an effort, he conquered his agitation, sealed up the photographs, and rang for the servant to put the letter in the post. Although he suspected some trick, he was greatly troubled and perplexed ; nor would his trouble and per- plexity have been much lessened, if at all, had he been acquainted with the truth — :that the little Professor had left the photographs in the room not by accident, but in- tentionally, and for a purpose which will be better "underi stood at a later period of the present story. &3 1*8 TEE NEW ABELARD. CHAPTER XIX. 'EirSTASIA MAFLELEAfie. 'O eyes of paJe forget-me-not blue, Wash'd more pale by a dreamy dew I O red red lips, dainty tresses, O heart the breath of the world distresses! little lady, do they divine That they have /aJ«o»reed thee and thine t Fools ! let them fathom fire, and beat Xight in a mortar ; ay, and heat Soul in a crucible ! Let them try To conquer the light, and the wind, and the sky ! Daikly the secret faces lurk, We know them least where most they work ; And here they meet to mix in thee, For a strange and mystic entity, Making of thy pale soul, in truth, A life half trickery and half truth t Ballads of St. Ale. Monmouth Crescent, Bayawater, is one of those fcrlorn yet thickly populated streets which lie under the immediate donainioni. of the great Whiteley, of Westbourne Groye. The houses are adapted to limited means and large families; and ii» front of them is an arid piece of railed-in ground, •where crude vegetable substances crawl up in the likeness of trees and grass. The crescent is chiefly inhabited by lodging-hoi^e and boarding-house keepers, City clerks, and widows who advertise for persons * to share the comforts of a chee,rful Kopie,' with late dinners ,and carpet balls in the evening. It is shabby-genteel,, impecunious, and generally depressing. To one of the dingiest houses in this dingy crescent, Profei^sor Mapleleafe, after his interview with our hero, cheerfully made his way. He took the 'bus which runs along Marylebone Road to the Royal Oak, and thence made his way on foot to the house door. In answer to his knock the door was opened by a tall red-haired matron wearing a kitchen apron over her blask stuff dress. Her complexion was sandy and very EVSTASIA MAPLELEAFE. 149 pale, licr eyes . wer6 bold and almost fierce, her whole manner was self-asseitire and almost aggressive ; but she greeted the Professor with a familiar smile, as with a friendly nod he passed her by, hastening upstairs to the first floor. He opened a door and entered a large room furnished in faded crimson velvet, with a ditiing-room sideboard at one end,, cheap lithographs on the walls; and mantelpiece ornamented with huge diells and figures in common china. The room was, quite dark, save for the light of a small parafiin lamp with pink shade ; and on a sofa near the window the figure of a young woman was reclining, drest in white muslin, and with one arm, naked almost to the shoulder, dabbling in a small glass water- tank, placed upon a low seat, and containing several smaU water-lilies in full bloom. Anyone who had seen the photograph which the Pro- fessor had left behind him in the clergyman's house, would have recognised the original at a glance. There was the same "petiti almost child-like figure, the same loose, flowing, golden hair, the same elfin-like but pretty face, the same large, wild, lustrous eyes. But the face of the original was older, sharper, and more careworn than might have been guessed from the picture. It was the face of a woman of about four- or five-and-tWenty, and though the lips were red and full-coloured, and the eyes full of life and lightness, the complexion had the dulness of chronic ill- health. The hand which hung in the water, playing with the lily-leaves, was thin and transparent, but the arm was white as snow and beautifully rounded. The effect would have been perfectly poetic and ethereal, but it was spoiled to some extent by the remains of a ■meal which stood on the table close by-^a tray covered with a soiled cloth, some greasy earthenware plates, the remains of a mutton chop, potatoes and bread. .As the, Professor entered, his sister looked up and greetepl him by name. ' You are late, Salem,* she said with an unmistakable American accent. ' I Was wondering what kept you.* 'I'll- tell you,' returned the Professor. 'I've been 130 tse new aselard. having a talk with Mr. Ambrose Bradley, at his own house. I gave him our lines of introduction. I'm real sorry to find that he's as ignorant as a redskin of the great science of solar biology, and the Way he received me was not reassuring — indeed, he almost showed me the door.' 'You're used to that, Salem,' said Eustasia with a curious smile. 'Guess I am,' returned the Professor dryly; 'only I did calculate on something different from a man of Bradley's acquirements, I did indeed. However, he's just one of those men who believe in nothing by halves or quarters, and if we can once win him over to an approval of our fundamental propositions, he'll be the most valuable of all recruits to new causes — a hot convert.' The woman sighed — a sigh so long, so weary, that it seemed to come from the very depths of her being, and her expression grew more and more sad and ermuyee, as she drew her slender fingers softly through the waters of the tank. ' Ain't you well to-night, Eustasia ? ' inquired the Professor, looking at her with some concern. ' As well as usual,' was the reply. ' Suppose European air don't suit me ; I've never been quite myself since I came across to this country.' Her voice was soft and musical enough, and just then, when a peculiar wistful light fiUed the faces of both, it was quite possible to believe them to be brother and sister. But in all other outward respects, they were utterly unlike. ' Tell me more about this young clergyman,' she continued afler a pause. ' I am interested in him. The moment I saw him I said to myself he is the very image of —of ' She paused without finishing the sentence, and looked -meaningly at her brother. ' Of Ulysses E. Stedman, you mean? ' cried the Pro- fessor, holding up his forefinger. ' ' Eustasia, take care ! You promised me never to think of him any more, and I 'expect you to keep your word.' ' But don't you see the resemblance t ' ' Well, I dare say I do, for Ulysses was well-lo&king EUSTA8IA MAPLELEAFB. 161 enough when he wasn't in liquor. Don't talk about himj and don't think about him ! He's biu-ied somewhere down Florida way, and I ain't sorry on your account neither.' ' Killed ! murdered 1 and so young ! ' cried the girl, with a cry so startling, and so full of pain, that her brother looked aghast. As he sp'oke, she drew her dripping right liand from the tank and placed it wildly upon her forehead. The water-drops streamed down her face like tears, while her whole countenance looked livid with pain. ' Eustasia ! ' ' I loved him, Salem ! I loved him with all my soiil ! ' ' Well, I know you did,' said the little man soothingly. ' I warned you against him, but you wouldn't listen. Now that's all over ; and as for Ulysses being murdered, he was killed in a free fight, he was, and he only got what he'd given to many another. Don't you take on, Eustasia 1 If. ever you marry, it will be a better man than he was.' ' Marry 7 ' cried the girl with a bitter laugh. ' Who'd marry me 7 Who'd ever look at such a thing as I am 7 Even he despised me, Salem, and thought me a cheat and an impostor. Wherever we go, it's the old story. I hate the life; I hate myself. I'd rather be a beggar in the street than what I am.' ' Don't tmder-reckon yourself, Eustasia ! Don't under- reckon your wonderful gifts ! ' ' What are my gifts worth 7 ' said Eustasia. * Can they bring Mm back to me 7 Can they bring back those happy, happy days we spent together 7 Haven't I tried, and tried, and tried, to get a glimpse of his face, to feel again the touch of his hand; and he never comes — he will never come-^never, never 1 I wish I was with him in the grave, I do.' Her grief was truly pitiable, yet there was something querulous and ignoble in it too, which prevented it from catching the tone of true sorrow. For the rest, the man whose memoiy awakened so much emotion had bfeen pretty much what the Professor described him to be— _a handsome scoundrel, "with the manners of a gentleman and the tastes of a rowdy. A professional gambler, he had been known as one of the most dangerous adventurers in the Southern States, having betrayed more women, and killed more men^ 152 THE KEW ABULARD. than any person in his district, A random shot had at last laid him low, to the great relief of the respectable portion of the community. The Professor eyed his sister thoughtfully, waiting till her emotion had subsided. He had not long to wait. Either the emotion was shallow itself, or Eustasia had extra- ordinary power of self-control. Her face became com- paratively untroubled, though it retained its peculiar pallor ; and reaching out her hand, she again touched the water and the lUies swimming therein. ' Salem 1 ' she said presently. ' ' Yes, Eustasia.' •Tell me more about this Mr. Bradley. Is he married 7 ' * Certainly not.' 'Engaged to be married ? ' ' I believe so. They say he is to marry Miss Craik, the heiress, whom we saw in church to-day.' Eustasia put no more questions; but curiously enough, began crooning to herself, iii a low voice, some wild air. Her eyes flashed and her face became illuminated; -and as she sang, she drew her limp hand to and fro in the water, among the flowers, keeping time to the measure. All her sorrow seemed to leave her, giving place to a dreamy pleasure. There was something feline and almost for- i)idding in her manner. She looked like a pythoness intoning oracles : — Dark eyes aswim with sibylline desire, And vagrant locks of amber ! Her voice was clear though subdued, resembling, to some fextent, the purring of a cat. * What are you singing, Eustasia 7 ' ' " In lilac time when blue birds sing," Salem.' ' What a queer girl you are 1 ' cried the Professor, not without a certain wondering admiration. 'I declare I sometimes feel afraid of you. Anyone could see with half an eye that we were brother and sister, only on one side of the femily. Your mother was a remarkable woman, like yourself. Father used to say sometimes he'd married a ghost-seer ; and it might have been, for she hailed from EUSTASIA MAPLELEAFM 153 the Highlands of Scotland. At any rate, you inherit her Eustasia ceased her singing, and laughed again — this time wi1:h & low, self-'Satisfied gladness. * It's all I do inherit, brother Salem,' she said ; adding, in a low voice, as if to herself, ' But it's something, after all.' ' Something 1 ' cried the Professor. ' It's a Divine privilege, that's what it is I To think that when you like you can close your eyes, see the mystical-coming and going of cosmic forces, and, as the sublime Bard expresses it, Penetrate where no luman foot hath trod Into the ever-quickeniisg glories of God, See star with star conjoined as soul with soul, Swim onward to the dim mysterious goal, Hear rapturous breathings of the Force which flows From founts wherein the eternal godhead glows 1 I envy you, Eustasia ; I do, indeed.' Eustasia laughed again, less pleasantly. ' Guess you don't believe all that. Sometimes I think myself that it's all nervous delusion.' ' Nervous force you nipan. Well, and what is nervous force but solar being ? What you see and hear is as real as — as real as^-spiritual photography. Talking of that, I gave Mr. Bradley one of your pictures, taken under test conditions.' ' You gave it him 7 ' ' Dropt it in his room, where he's certain to find it.' ' Why did you do that ? ' demanded the girl almost sharply-. ' Why 7 Because, as I told you, I want to win him f>ver. Such a man as he is will be invaluable to us, here ^ in England. He has the gift of tongues, to begin with ; and then he knows any number of influential and wealthy people. What we want now, Eustasia, is money.' ' We always have wanted it, as long as I can re- member.' ' I don't mean what you mean,' cried the Professor indignantly. ' I mean money to push the great cause, to propagate the new religion, to open up more and more the arcanum of mystic biology. We want money, and we want 1S4 TEB NEW ABELABD. converts. If we can win Bradley over to our side, it wont be a bad beginning.' ' Who is to win him over? I?' ' Why, of course. You must see him, and when you do, I think it is as good as done. Only mind this, Eustasia ! Keep your head cool, and don't go spooning. Tou're too susceptible, you are ! If I hadn't been by to look after you, you'd have thrown yourself away a dozen times.' Eustasia smiled and shook her head. Then, with a weary sigh, she arose. ' I'll go to bed now, Salem.' ' Demand get your beauty-sleep. You'll want all your strength to-morrow. We have a seance at seven, at the house of Mrs. Upton. Tyndall is invited, and I calculate you'll want to have all your wits about you.' ' Good-night ! ' ' Good-night,' said the Professor, kissing her on the forehead ; then, with a quiet change from his glib, matter- of-fact manner to one of real tenderness, he added, looking wistfully into her eyes, ' Keep up your spirits, Eustasia ! We shan't stay here long, and then we'll go back to America and take a long spell of rest.' Eustasia sighed again, and then glided from the room. She was so light and fragile that her feet seemed to make no sound,, and in her white floating drapery she seemed almost like a ghost. Left alone, the Professor sat down to the table, drew out a pencil and number of letters, and began making notes in a large pocket-book. Presently he paused thoughtfully, and looked at the door by- which Euatasia had retreated. ' Poor girl 1 ' he muttered. ' Her soul's too big for her body, and that's a fact. I'm afraid she'll decline like her mother^ and die young,' XEE thunderclap. Ifia CHAPTER XX. THE TIIUNDEKCLAt, The Miglity and the Merciful are one ; The morning dew that scarcely tends the flowers, Exhaled to heaven, becomes the thunderbolt That strikes the tree at noon. Jud/is Iscariot : a Drama, There are moments in a man's life when all the forces of life and society seem to conspire for his destruction ; when, look which way he will, he sees no loophole for escape ; *hen every step he takes forward seems a step downward towards some pitiless Inferno, and when to make even one step backward is impossible, because the precipice down which he has been thrust seems steep as a wall. Yet there is still hope foi: such a man, if his own conscience is not in revolt against him ; for that conscience, like a'vety angel, may uplift him by the hair and hold him miraculously froni despair and death. Woe to him, however, if he has no such living help ! Beyond that, there is surely no succour for him, beyond the infinite mercy, the cruel kindness, of his avenging God. The moment of which I speak had come to Ambrose Bradley. Even in the very heyday of his pride, when he tliought himself strong enough to walk alone, without faith, almost without vital belief, his sins had found h im out, and he saw the Inferno waiting^^tFEis-f eetr — He knew that there was no escape. He saw the powers of evil arrayed on every side against him. And cruellest of all the enemies leagued for his destruction, was the conscience which might have been his sweetest and surest friend. It was too late now for regrets, it was too late now to reshape his course. Had he only exhibited a man's courage, and, instead of snatching an ignoble happiness, confided the whole truth to the woman he loved, she might have pitied and forgiven him; but he had accepted her love under a lie, and to confide the truth to her now would ,i56 TEE NEW ASELARD. Biniply be to make a confession of his moral baseness. He dared not, could not, tell her ; yet he knew that detection was inevitable. Madly (""despairingly, he wrestled with his 3gony> and soon lay prostrate before it, a strong man self- stripped of his spiritual and moral strength. Not that he was tamely acquiescent ; not that he accepted his fate as just. On the contrary, his whole spirit rose in revolt and in- dignation. He had tried to serve God — so at least he assured, himself; he had tried to become a living lesson and example to a hard and unbelieving world ; he had tried to upbuild again a Temple where men might worship in all honesty and freedom; and what was the result? For a slight fault, a venial blunder, of hia own youth, he was betrayed to a punishment which threatened to be ever- His intellect rebelled at the idea. With failing strength he tried to balance himself on the Satanic foothold of revolt. His doubts thickened around him like a cloud. If there was a just God, if there was a God at all, why had he made such a world ? In simple truth, the man's fatal position was entirely the consequence of his own laek-oflmora l courage.^ He had missed the supreme moment, he had lacked the supreme sanction, which would have saved him, even had his danger been twenty -.fold more desperate than it had been. Instead of standing erect in his own strength, and defying the Evil One, %ho threatened to hurl him down and destroy him, he had taken- the- Evil One'sr hand and accepted it's support.. Yes, the devil had helped him, but at what a cost J * Get thee behind me, Satan ! ' he should have said. It was the sheerest folly to say it now. He cowered in terror at the thought of Alma's holy indignation. He dreaded not her anger, which he could have borne, but lier disenchantment, which he could not bear. Her trust in him had been so absolute, her self-surrender so. supreme ; but its motive had heea, hia goodness, her feith in his unsullied truth. She had been his handmaid,. «s .she had, called herself, and had trusted herself to him, THE THUNDERCLAP. 157 body and soul. So complete had been* his intellectual authority over her, that even had he told her his secret and thereupon assured her that he was morally a free man, though legally fettered, she would have accepted his genial pleading, and still have given him her love. He was quite sure of tiat. But he had chosen a course of mere decep- tion, he had refused to make her his confidant, and she had married him ill all faith and fervour, believing there was no corner in all his heart where he had anything to conceal. It was just possible that she might still forgive him ; it was simply impossible that she could ever revere and respect him, as she hitherto had flone. Does he who reads these lines quite realise what it is to fall from the pure estate of a loving woman's worship 7 Has he ever been so throned in a loving heart as to under- stand how, kingly is the condition — how terrible the fall from that sweet power 7 So honoured and Enthroned, he is still a king, though he is a beggar of all men's charity, though he has not a roof to cover his head ; so dethroned and fallen, he is still a beggar, though all the world pro- claims him king. Mephistopheles Minor, in the shape of gay George Craik, junior, scarcely slept on his discover^, or rather on his suspicions. He was now perfectly convinced that there was some mysterious connection between the clergyman and Mrs. Montmorency ; and as the actress refused for the time being to lend herself to any sort of open persecution, he determined to act on his own responsibility. So he again canvassed Miss Destrange and the other light ladies of his acquaintance, and receiving from them further corro- boration of the statement that Mrs. Montmorency had been previously married, he had no doubt whatever that Ambrose Bradley Was the roan who had once stood to her in the relation of a husband. Armed' with this information, he sought out his father on the Monday morning, foundfhim at his club, told him of all he knew, and asked his advice. 'My only wish, you know,' he explained, 'iS' to save Alma from fliat man, who' is evidently a scoundrel ; so I 1S8 THE NEW ABELARB. thought I would come to you at once. The question is, what is to be done 1 ' ■' It's a horrible complicaition,' said the baronet, honestly shocked. ' Do you actually mean to tell me that you sus- pect an improper relationship between Alma and this infernal infidel?' ' I shouldn't likei to go as far as that ; but they were seen travelling together, like man and wife, in France.' ' Good heavens ! it is incredible.' ' I should like to shoot the fellow 1 ' cried George, furiously. 'And I would, too, if this was a duelling country. Shooting's too gpod for him — he ought to be hung ! ' The upshot of the conversation was that father and son determined to visit Alma at once together, and to make one last attempt to bring her to reason. At a little after midday they were at her door. The baronet stalked in past the servant with an expression of the loftiest moral indignation. ' Tell Miss Craik that I wish to see her at once,' he said. It was some minutes before Alma appeared. When she did so, attired in a pink morning peignoir of the most bfecoming fashion, her face was bright as sunshine. But it became clouded directly she met her uncle's eyes. She saw at a glance that he had come on an unpleasant errand. George Craik sulked in a comer, waiting for his father to conduct the attack. ' What has brought you over so early, uncle ? ' she demanded. ' I hope George has not been talking nonsense to you about me. He has been here before on the same errand, and I had to show him the door.' ' George has your interest at heart,' returned the baronet, fuming; 'and if you doubt his disinterestedness, perhaps you wQl do me the justice to believe that / am your true friend, as well as your relation. Now my brother is gone, I am your nearest protector. It is enough to make your father rise in his grave to hear what I have beard.' 'What have you heard?' cried Alma, turning pa]e with indignation, ' Don't go too far, uncle, or I shall THE TBUNBEBCLAP. 169 quarrel with you as well as George ; and I should be sorry for that.' ' Will you, give me an explanation of your conduct — yes or no 7 — or do you refuse my right to question you ? Remember, Alma, the honour of our family — your lather's honour — is in question.' ' How absurd you are ! ' cried A^ma, with a forced laugh. ' But th^re, I will try to keep my temper. What is it that you want to know ? ' And she sat down quietly, with folded hands, as if waiting to be interrogated. ' Is it the fact, as I am informed, that you and Mr. Bradley were seen travelling alone together, some weeks ago, in Normandy F ' Alma hesitated before speaking ; then, smiling to her- self, she said : ' Suppose it is true, uncle — what then % ' The baronet's face went red as crimson, and he paced furiously up and down the room. * What then 1 Good heavens, can you ask that ques- tion? Do you know that your character is at stake? Then you do not deny it ? ' • No ; for it is true.' Father and son looked at one another; then the baronet proceeded : ' Then all the rest is true. You are that man's mistress-! ' The shot struck home ; but Alma was prepared for it, and, without changing her attitude in the least, she quietly replied :, ' No, uncle ; I am ihat man's wife ! ' ' His wife 1 ' ejaculated father and son in the same breath. 'Yes. We were married some weeks ago, and after the wedding went for a. fevF days to France. There! I intended to keep the. secret till I was free to tell it, but gross, cruel importjinity has Wrung it'. from me. Do not thiak, however,' she continued, rising to her feet and exchanging her self-possessed manner for one of angry wrath, 'that I shall ever forgive you — either of you, for your' shameful suspicions concerning me. You might have 160 THE NEW ABELARD. lipared me so many insults ; you might have known me better. However, now you know the truth, perhaps you will relieve me from any further persecution.' Father and son exchanged another look. 'Do yoii actually affirm that you are married?' ex- claimed the baronet. ' Actually,' returned theyoung lady, with a sarcastic bow. Thereupon George Craik sprang to his feet, prepared to deliver the coup de grace. * Tell her the truth, father 1 ' he exclaimed. ' Tell her that she is no more married than I am I ' ' What does he mean 7 ' cried Alma, looking af her uncle. ' Is he mad 1 ' ' He means simply this. Alma,' said Sir George, after a prompting glance from his son .: ' if you have gone through the marriage ceremony with this man, this infidel, you have been shamefully betrayed. The scoundrel was unable to marry again, if, as we have reason to believe, hia firs); wife is still living ! ' The (iwo men — father and son — had struck their blow boldly but very cruelly, and, it came with full force on the devoted woman's head. At first Alma could scarcely believe her ears. She started in her chair, put out her hands quickly as if to ward ofiF another savage attack, and then shrank in terror, while every vestige of colour in her cheeks faded away. Sir George stood gazing down at her, also greatly agitated, for he was well-bred enough to feel that the part he was playing was Tinmanly, almost cowardly. He had spoken and acted on a mere surmise, and even at that moment, amidst the storm of liis nervous indignation, the horrible thought flashed upon him that he might be \*rong after all. ' ' " His first wife is still living 1 " ' repeated Alma with a quick involuntary shudder, scarcely able to realise the words. * Uncle, what do you mean ? Have you gone mad, as well as George ? Of whom are you speaking ? Of— of Mr. Bradley?' ' Of that abominable man,' cried the baronet, ' who, if my information is correct, and if there is law in the land, shall certainly pay the penalty of his atrocious crime I Do TBE TSTTNDBRCLAP. 161 not think that we blame you,' he added more gently ; ' no, for you are not to blame. You have been the dupe, the victim of a villain 1 ' Like a prisoner sick with terror, yet gathering all his strength about him to protest against the death-sentence for a crime of which he is innocent, Alma rose, and trembling violently, still clutching the chair for support, looked at her uncle. ' I do not believe one word of what you say ! I believe it is an infamous falsehood. But whether it is true or false, I shall never forgive you in this world for the words you have spoken to me to-night.' ' I have only done my duty. Alma I ' returned Sir George, imeasily, moving as he spoke towards her and reaching out his arms to support her. ' My poor child — courage I George and I will protect and save you.' Hereupon Mephistopheles junior uttered a sullen half- audible murmur, which was understood to be a solemn promise to punch the fellow's head — ^yes, smash him — on the very earliest opportunity ! ' Don't touch me ! ' exclaimed Alma. ' Don't approach me ? What is your authority for this cruel libel on Mr. Bradley ? You talk of punishment. It is you that will be punished, be sure of that, if you cannot justify so shameful an accusation.' The two men looked at each other. If, after all, the ground should give way beneath them ! But it was too late to draw back or temporise. ' Tell her, father,' said George, with a prompting look. ' You ask our authority for the statement,' replied the baronet. ' My dear Alma, the thing is past a doubt. We have seen the — the person.' ' The person. What person ? ' ' Bradley's wife ! ' ' He has no wife but me,' cried Alma. ' I love him^ he is my husband 1 ' Then, as Sir George shrugged his shoulders pityingly, she leant forward eagerly, and demanded in quick, spasmodic ips : — ' Who is the woman who wrongs my rights ? Who is M 162 IHE NEW ABELARD. the creature who has filled you with this falsehood 7 Who is she ? Tell me ! ' 'She is at present passing under the name o£. Mont- morency, and is, I believe, an actress.' As he spoke, there came suddenly in Alma's remem- brance the vivid picture of the woman whom she had seen talking with the clergyman in the vestry, and simul- ■ taneously she was conscious of the sickly odour of scent which had surrounded her like a fume of poison. Alma grew faint. Some terrible and foreboding presence seemed over- powering her. She thought of the painted face, the shameless dress and bearing of the strange woman, of Bradley's peculiar air of nervous uneasiness, of the thrill of dislike and-repulsion which had run momentarily through her own frame as she left them together. Overcome by an indescribable and sickening horror, she put her hand to her forehead, tottered, and seemed about to fall. Solicitous and alarmed, the baronet once more ap- proached her as if to support her. But before he could touch her she had shrunk shuddering away. Weak and terrified now, she uttered a despairing moan. ' Oh 1 why did you come here to tell me this ? ' she cried. ' Why did you come here to break my heart and wreck my Hie 1 If you had had any pity or care for me, you would have spared me ; you would have left me to discover my misery for myself. Go now, go; you have done all you can. I shall soon know for myself whether your cruel tale is false or true.' ' It is true,' said Sir George. ' Do not be unjust, my child. We could not, knowing what we did, suflFer your to remain at the mercy of that man. Now, be advised. Leave the afiair to us, who are devoted to you ; we will see that you are justified, and that the true culprit is punished as h6 deserves.' And the two men made a movement towards the door. ' Stop ! ' cried Alma. ' What do you intend to do ? ' ' Apply for a warrant, and have the scoundrel appre- ]iended without delay.' ' You will do so at your peril,' exclaimed Alma, with sudden energy. 'I:forbid you to interfere between him and me. Yes, I forbid you I Even if things are as you TBE THUNDERCLAP. 163 say — and I will never believe it till I receive the assurance from his own lips, never ! — even if things are as you say, the wrong is mine, not yours, and I need no one to come between me and the man I love.' 'The man you love ! ' echoed Sir George in amazement. ' Alma, this is infatuation 1 ' ' I love him, uncle, and love such as mine is not a light thing to be destroyed by the first breath of calumny or misfortune. What has taken place is between him and me alone.' *I beg your pardon,' returned her uncle, with a re- currence to his old anger. ' Our good name — the honour of the house — is at stake; and if you are too far lost to consider these, it is my duty, as the head of the family, to act on your behalf.' ' Certainly,' echoed young George between his set teeth. ' And how would you vindicate them ? ' asked Alma, passionately. ' By outraging and degrading me ? Yes ; for if you utter to any other soul one syllable of this story, you drag my good name in the mire, and make me the martyr. I need no protection, I ask no justification. If necessary I can bear my misery, as I have borne my happiness, in silence and alone.' ' But,' persisted Sir George, 'you will surely let us take some steps to ' ' Whatever I do will be done on my own responsibility. I am my own mistress. Uncle, you must promise me — you must swear to me — to do nothing without my will and consent. You can serve me yet ; you can show that you are still capable of kindliness and compassion, by saving me from proceedings which you would regret, and which I should certainly not survive.' Sir George looked at his son in fresh perplexity. In the whirlwind of his excitement he had hardly taken into calculation the unpleasantness of a public exposure. True, it would destroy and punish the man, but, on the other hand, it would certainly bring disgrace on the family. Alma's eccentricities, both of opinion and of conduct, which he had held in very holy horror, would become the theme of the paragraph-niaker and the leader-writer, and the M 2 164 TSE NEW ABELARD. immediate consequence wonld be to make the name of Craik ridiculous. So he stammered and hesitated. George Craik, the younger, however, had none of his father's scruples. He cared little or nothing now for his cousin's reputation. All he wanted was to expose, smash, pulverise, and destroy Bradley, the man whom he had, always cordially detested, and who had -subjected him to innumerable indignities on the part of his cousin. So, seeing Alma's helplessness, and no longer dreading her indignation, he plucked up heart of grace and took his full part iuithe discussion. ', The fellow deserves penal servitude for life,' he said, ' and in my opinion, Alma, it's your duty to prosecute him. It is the only course you can take in justice to yourself and your friends. I know it will be deucedly unpleasant, but not more unpleasant than going through the Divorce Court, which respectable people do every day.' ' Silence ! ' exclaimed his cousin, turning upon him with tremulous indignation. ' Eh— what 7 ' ejaculated George. ' I will not discuss Mr. Bradley with you. To my uncle I will listen, because I know he has a good heart, and because he is my dear father's brother ; but I forbid you to speak to me on the subject. I owe all this misery and humiliation to you, and you only.' ' That's all humbug ! ' George began furiously, but his father interposed and waved him to silence. 'Alma is excited — naturally excited; in her cooler senses she will acknowledge that she, does you an injustice. Hush, George ! My dear child,' he continued, addressing Alma, ' all my son and I desire to do is to save you pain. You have been disgracefully misled, and, I repeat, I pity rather than blame you. To be sure, you have been a little headstrong, a little opinionated, and I am afraid the doc- trines promulgated by your evil genius have led you to take too rash a view of — hum — ^moral sanctions. Depend upon it, loose ideas in matters of religion lead, directly and in- directly, to the destruction of morality. Not that I accuse you of wilful misconduct. Heaven forbid ! But you have erred from want of caution, froin — if I may so express it — a lack of discretion ; for you should have been aware that THJi TMUNDERCLAP. 1G5 the man that believes in neithnr Our Maker nor Our Saviour — an — in short, an infidel — would not be deterred by any moral consideration from acta of vice and crime.' . This was a long speech, but Alma paid little or no attention to it. She stood against the mantelpiece, leaning her Ibrehead against it, and trembling with agony. But she did not cry — the tears would not come yet. She was still too lost in amazement, pain, and dread. Suddenly, as Sir George ended, she looked up and B^id: ' The name of this woman — this actress ? Where is she to be found 7' ' Her name — as I told you, her assumed name — is Montmorency. George can give you her address ; but I think, on the whole, you had better not see her.' ' I must' replied Alma, firmly. Sir George glanced at his son, who thereupon took out a notebook and wrote on one of the leaves, which he tore out and handed to his father. ' Here is the address,' said the baronet, passing the paper on to Alma. She took it without looking at it, and threw it on the mantelpiece. 'Now pray leave me. But. before you go, promise to do nothing — to keep this matter secret — until you hear from me. I must first ascertain that what you say is true.' ' We will do as you desire, Alma,' returned Sir George ; ' only I think it would be better, much better, to let us act for you.' ' No. I only am concerned. I am not a child, and am able to protect myself.' 'Very well,' said her uncle; 'but try, my child, to remember that you have friends who are waiting to serve you. I am heart-broken — George is heart-broken — at this sad affair. Do nothing rash, I beseech you, and do not forget, in this hour of humiliation, that there is One above who can give you comfort, if you will turn humbly and reverently to Him.' With this parting homily the worthy baronet approached his niece, drew her to him, and kissed her benignantly on the forehead. But she shrank away quickly, with a low cry of distress. 166 THE NEW ABELARD. ' Do not touch me — do not speak to me ! Leave the now, for God's sake ! ' After a long-drawn sigh, expressive of supreme sym- pathy and commiseration, and a prolonged look full of quasi-paternal emotion, Sir George left the room. George followed, with a muttered ' Good-night ! ' to which his cousin paid no attention. Father and son passed out into the street, where the manner of both underwent a decided change. ' Well, that's over 1 ' exclaimed the baronet. ' The poor girl bears it far better than I expected, for it is a horrible situation.' ' Then you mean to do as she tells you,' said George, 'and let the scoundrel alone ? ' ' For the time being, yes. After all, Alma is right,- and we must endeavour to avoid a public exposure.' ' It's sure to come out. It's bigamy, you know — Bigamy 1 ' he added, with more emphasis and a capital letter. ' So it is — if it is true. At present, you know, we have no proofs whatever — only suspicions. God bless me ! how ridiculous we should look if the whole thing turns out a mare's nest after all ! Alma will never forgive us 1 You really feel convinced that there was a previous marriage ? ' ' I'm sure of it,' returned George. ' And, whether or not ' He did not finish the sentence ; but what he added to himself, spitefully enough, was to the effect that ' whether or not,' he had paid out hu cousin for all her contumelious and persistent snubbing. TBE Com'JSSSIOJV. 167 CHAPTER XXI. THE CONFESSIOK. ' Dieu, qui, dAs le commencement de la creation, avez en tirant la femme d'une o6te de I'homme ^tabli le grand sacrement du mariage, vous qui I'avez honorSe et relev^e si haut soit en tous, in- carnant dans le sein d'une femme, soit en commen^ant vos miracles par celui des noces de Cana, Toua qui aTez jadis accord^ ce re- mMe, suivant tos yues, a mon incontinente faiblesse, ne repoussez pas les' priires de votre servante : je les verse humblement aux pieds de votre divine majeste pour mes pechte et pour ceux de mon bien-aime. Dieu qui ^tes la bonti meme, pardonnez a nos crimes si grands, et que I'immensite de votre mis6ricorde ee mesure a la multitude de nos fautes. Prenez contre vos serviteurs la verge de la correction, non le glaive de la fureur. Frappez la chair pour conserver les 4mes. Venez en pacificateur, non en vengeur ; avec bonti plfitot qu'avee justice ; en ykre misericordieux, non en maitra severe.' — The Prai/er of Seloise (writterifor her by Abelard.) Alma remained as her uncle and cousin had left her, leaning against the mantelpiece, with her eyes fixed, her frame convulsively trembling. Yet her look and manner still would have confirmed Sir George in his opinion that she bore the shock ' better than might have been expected.' She did not cry or moan. Once or twice her hand was pressed upon her heart, as if to still its beating, that was all. Nevertheless, she was already aware that the supreme sorrow, the fatal dishaUucination, of her life had come. She saw all her cherished hopes and dreams, her fairy castles of hope and love, falling to pieces like houses of cards ; the idol of her life falling with them, changing to clay and dust ; the whole world darkening, all beauty vrithering, in a chilly wind from the eternity of shadows. If Ambrose Bradley was base, if the one true man she had ever known and loved was false, what remained ? Nothing but disgrace and death. He had been in her eyes next to God, without speck or flaw, perfectly noble and supreme; one by one he had 168 TBM NEW ASJiLARD. absorbed all her childish faiths, while in idolatry of passion she had knelt at his feet adoring him — Ho for God only, she for God in him. And that godhead had sufficed. She had given up to him, together with her faith, her hope, her understanding, her entire spiritual life. Passionate by nature, she had never loved any other human creature ; even such slight thrills of sympathy as most maidens feel, and which by some are christened ' ex- periences,' having been almost or quite unknown to her. She had been a studious, reserved girl, with a manner which repelled the approaches of beardless young men of her own age; her beauty attracted them, but her steadfast intel- lectual eyes frightened and cowed the moat impudent among them. Not till she came into collision with Bradley did she understand what personal passiou meant ; and even the first overtures were intellectual, leading only by very slow degrees to a more tender relationship. / Alma Craik, in fact, was of the same fine clay of which enthusiasts have been made in all ages. Born in the age of Pericles, she would doubtless have belonged to the class of which Aspasia was an immortal type ; in the early days of Christianity she would have perhaps figured as a Saint ; in its mediaeval days as a proselytising abbess ; and now, in the days of Christian decadence, she opened her dreamy eyes on the troublous lights of spiritual Science, found in them her inspiration and her hea'^enly hope. But men cannot live by bread alone, and women cannot exist without love. Her large impulsive nature was barren and incom- plete till she had discovered what the Greek hetairai found in Pericles, what the feminine martyrs found in Jesus, what Eloisa found in Abelard ; that is to say, the realisation of a masculine ideal. She waited, almost without anticipa- tion, till the hour was ripe. Love comes not as a slave To any beckoning finger ; tut, some day. When least expected, cometh as a King, ^ And takes his throne. So at last it was with the one love of Alma's life. Without doubt, without fear or question, she suffered her i;ii:e confession. i69 lover to take full sovereignty, and to remain thenceforth throned and crowned. And now, she asked herself shudderingly, was it all over 7 Had the end of her dream come, when she ha 1 scarcely realised its beginning ? If this was so, the beauti- ful world was destroyed. If Bradley was unworthy, there was no goodness in man; and if the divine type in humanity was broken like a cast of clay, there was no com- fort in religion, no certainty of God. She looked at her watch; it was not far from midnight. She moved from her support, and walked nervously up and down the room. At last her mind was made up. She put on her hat and mantle, and left the house. In her hand she clutched the piece of paper which George Craik had given her, and which contained the name and address of Mrs. Montmorency. The place was close at hand, not far indeed from Bradley's residence and her own. She hastened thither without hesitation. Her way lay along the borders of the park, past the very Church which she had spared no ex- pense to build, so that she came into its shadow almost before she knew. It was a still and windless night ; the skies were blue and clear, with scarcely a cloud, and the air was full of the vitreous pour of the summer moon, which glimmered on the church windows with ghostly silvern light. From the ground there exhaled a sickly heavy odour — the scent of the heated dew-charged earth. Alma stood for some time looking at the building with the fortunes of which her own seemed so closely and mysteriously blent. Its shadow fell upon her with ominous darkness. Black and sepulchral it seemed now, instead of bright and full of joy. As she gazed upon it, and remem- bered how she had laboured to upbuild it, how she had watched it grow stone by stone, and felt the joy a child might feel in marking the growth of some radiant flower, it seemed the very embodiment of her own despair. Now, for the first time, her tears began to flow, but slowly, as if from sources in an arid heart. If she had heard the truth that day, the labour of her life was done ; 170 TME NMW ABELARD. the place she looked upon was curst, and the sooner some thunderbolt of God struck it, or the hand of man razed it to the ground, the better for all the world. There was a light in the house close by — in the room where she knew her lover was sitting. She crept close to the rails of the garden, and looked at the light through her tears. As she gazed, she prayed ; prayed that God might spare her yet, rebuke the satanic calumny, and restore her lord and maater to her, pure and perfect as he had been. Then, in her pity for him and for herself, she thought how base he might think her if she sought from any lips but his own the confirmation of her horrible fear. She would be faithful till the last. Instead of seeking out the shameless woman, she would go in and ask Bradley himself to confess the truth. Swift action followed the thought. She opened the gate, crossed the small garden, and rang the bell. The hollow sound, breaking on the solemn stillness, startled her, and she shrank trembling in the doorway ; then she heard the sound of bolts being drawn, and the next moment the house door opened, and the clergyman appeared on the threshold, holding a light. He looked wild and haggard enough, for indeed he had been having his dark hour alone. He wore a black dress- ing jacket with no waistcoat, and the collar of his shirt was open and tieless, falling open to show his powerful muscular throat. ' Alma ! ' he exclaimed in astonishment. ' Tou here, and so late I ' ' Yes, it is I,' she answered in a low voice. ' I wish to speak to you. May I come in ? ' He could not see her face, but the tones of her voice startled him, as he drew back to let her enter. She passed by him without a word, and hastened along the lobby to the study. He closed the door softly, and followed her. The moment he came into the bright lamplight of the room he saw her standing and facing him, her face white as death, her eyes dilated. ' My darling, what is it ? Are you ill 7 ' he cried. _ But he had no need to ask any question. He saw in a moment that she knew his secret. THE concession: 171 * Close the door,' she said in a low voice ; and after he had obeyed her she continued, ' Ambrose, I have come hero to-night because I could not rest at home till I had spoken to you. I have heard something terrible — so terrible that, had I believed it utterly, I think I should not be living now. It is something that concerns us both — me, most of all. Do you know what I mean ? Tell me, for God's sake, if you know 1 Spare me the pain of an explanation if you can. Ah, God help me 1 I see you know ! ' Their eyes met. He could not lie to her now. ' Yes, I know,' he replied. ' But it is not true ? Tell me it is not true ? ' As she gazed at him, and stretched out her arms in wild entreaty, his grief was pitiful beyond measure. He turned his eyes away with a groan of agony. S]ie came close to him, and, taking his head in her trembling hands, turned his face again to hers. He col- lected all his strength to meet her reproachful gaze, while he replied, in a deep tremulous voice :-, — ' You have heard that I have deceived you, that I am the most miserable wretch beneath the sun. You have heard — God help me 1 — that there is a woman living, other than yourself, who claims to be my wife.' ' Yes 1 that is what I have heard. But I do not believe — I will not believe it. I have come to have from your own lips the assurance that it is a falsehood. Dear Ambrose, tell me so. I will believe you. Whatever you tell me, I wiU believe with all my soul.' She clung to him tenderly as she spoke, with the tears streaming fast down her face. Disengaging himself gently, he crossed the room to his desk, and placed his hand - upon some papers scattered there, with the ink fresh upon them. ' When I heard you knock,' he said, ' I was trying to write down, for your eyes to read, what my lips refused to tell, what I could not speak for utter, overpowering shame. I knew the secret must soon be known ; I wished to be first to reveal it to you, that you might know the whole unvarnished truth, I was too late, I find. My enemies have been before me, and you have come to reproach ma —38 1 deserve.' 172 THE NJSW ABELARD. 'I have Tiot come for that,' answered Alma, sobbing, ' It is too late for reproaches. I only wish to know my fate.' ' Then try and listen, while I tell you everything,' said Bradley, in the same tone of utter misery and despair. ' I am speaking my own death-warrant, I know ; for with every word I utter I shall be tearing away another ' living link that binds you to my already broken heart. I have nothing to say in my own justification ; no, not one word. If you could strike me dead at your feet, in your just and holy anger, it would be dealing with me as I deserve; I should have been ■ strong ; I was weak, a coward 1 I deserve neither mercy nor pity.' It was strange how calm they both seemed ; he as he addressed her in his low deep voice, she as she stood and listened. Both'were deathly pale, but Alma's tears were checked, as she looked in despair upon tht> man who had wrecked her life. Then he told her the whole story : of how, in his youthful infatuation, he had married Mary Goodwin, how they had lived a wretched life together, how she had fled from him, and how for many a year he had thought her dead. His face trembled and his cheek flushed as he spoke of the new life that had dawned upon him, when long afterwards he became acquainted with herself; while she listened in agony, thinking of the pollution of that other woman's embraces from which he had. passed. But presently she hearkened more peacefully, and a faint diin hope began to quicken in her soul — for as yet she but dimly apprehended Bradley's situation. So far as she had' heard, the man was comparatively blameless. The episode of his youth was a repulsive one, but the record of his manhood was clear. He had believed the woman dead, he had had every reason to believe it, and he had been, to all intents and purposes, free. As he ceased, he heaved a sigh of deep relief, and her tears flowed more freely. She moved across the room, and took his hand. ' I understand now,' she said. ' Ambrose, why did you not confide in me from the first 7 There should have been no secrets between us. I would freely have forgiven THE COXFMSSION. 173 you. . . And I forgive you now 1 When you married me, you believed the woman dead and in her grave. If she has arisen to part us so cruelly, the blame is not youra — thank God for that 1 ' But he shrank from her touch, and uttering a cry of agony sank into a chair, and hid his face in his hands. ' Ambrose ! ' she murmured, bending over him. ' ' Do not touch me,' he cried ; ' I have more to tell you yet — something that must break the last bond uniting us together, and degrade me for ever in your eyes. Alma, do not pity me ; your pity tortures and destroys me, for I do not deserve it— I am a villain 1 Listen, then 1 I betrayed you wilfully, diabolically ; for w;hen I went through the marriage ceremony with you I hnew that Mary Goodwin was still alive ! ' ' You knew it ! — and, knowing it, you ' She paused in horror, unable to complete the sentence* ' I knew it, for I had seen her with my own eyes — so long ago as when I was vicar of Fensea. You remember my visit to London ; you remember my trouble then, and you attributed it to my struggle with the Church authorities. That was the beginning of my fall ; I was a coward and a liar from that hour ; for I had met and spoken with my first wife.' She shrank away from him now, indeed. The last remnant of his old nobility had fallen from him, leaving him utterly contemptible and ignoble. ' Afterwards,' he continued, 'I was like a man for whose soul the angels of light and darkness struggle. You saw my anguish, but little guessed its cause. I had tried to ily from temptation. I went abroad ; even there, your heavenly kindness reached me, and I was drawn back to your side. Then for a time I forgot everything, in the pride of intellect and newly-acquired success. By accident, I heard the woman had gone abroad ; and 1 knew well, or at least I believed, that she would never cross my path again. My love for you grew hourly ; and I saw that you were unhappy, so long as our lives were passed asunder. Then in an evil moment I turned to my creed for inspirai- tion. I did not turn to God, for I had almost ceased to believe in Him ; but I sought justification from my con- 174 THE NEW ASELARD. science, which the spirit of evil had already warped. 1 reasoned with myself; 1 persuaded myself that I had been a martyr, that I owed the woman no faith, that I was still moi-ally free. I examined the laws of marriage, and, the wish being father to the thought, found in them only felly, injustice, and superstition. I said to myself, " She and I are already divorced by her own innumerable acts of in- famy ; " I asked myself, " Shall I live on a perpetual bond- slave to a form which I despise, to a creature who is utterly unworthy 7 " Coward that I was, I yielded, forgetting that no happiness can be upbuilt upon a lie. And see how I am punished 1 I have lost you for ever ; I have lost my soul alive ! I, who should have been your instructor in all things holy, have been your guide in all things evil. I have brought the curse of heaven upon myself. I have put out my last strength in wickedness, and brought the roof of the temple down upon my head.' In this manner his words flowed on, in a wild stream of sorrowful self-reproach. It seemed, indeed, that he found a relief in denouncing himself as infamous, and in prostrating himself, as it were, under the heel of the woman he had wronged. But the more he reproached himself; the greater her compassion grew ; till at last, in an agony of sympathy and pain, she knelt down by his side, and, sobbing passionately, put her arms around him. 'Ambrose,' she murmured, 'Ambrose, do not speak so I do not break my heart ! That woman shall not come between us. I do not care for the world, I do not care for the judgment of men. Bid me to remain with you to the end, and I will obey you.' And she hid her face, blinded with weeping, upon his breast. For a time there was silence; then the clergyman, con- quering his emotion, gathered strength to speak again. ' Alma ! my darling ! Do not tempt me with your divine goodness. Do not think me quite so lost as to spare myself and to destroy you. I have been weak hitherto ; henceforth I will be cruel and inexorable. Do not waste a thought upon me; I am not worth it. To-morrow I shall leave London. If I live, I will try, in penitence and- TEE CONFESSION. 176 suffering, to atone ; but whether I live or die, you must forget that I ever lived to darken yoiir young life.' As he spoke, he endeavoured gently to diseng.oge himself, but her arms were wound about him, and he could not stir. 'No,' she answered, 'you must not leave me. I will still be your companion, your handmaid. Grant me that last mercy. Let me be your loving sister still, if I may not be your wife.' ' Alma, it is impossible. We must part ! ' ' If you go, I will follow you. Ambrose, you will not leave me behind you, to die of a broken heart. To see you, to be near you, will be enough ; it is all I ask. You will continue the great work you have begun, and I — I will look on, and pray for you as before.' It was more than the man could bear ; he too began to sob convulsively, as if utterly broken. ' O God ! God ! ' he cried, ' I forgot Thee in mine own vain-glory, in my wicked lust of happiness and power ! I wandered farther and farther away from Thy altars, from my childish faith, and at every step I took, my pride and folly grew 1 But now, at last, I know that it was a brazen image that I worshipped — nay, worse, the Phantom of my own miserable sinful self. Punish me, but let me come back to Thee ! Destroy, but save me ! I know now there is no God but One' — the living, bleeding Christ whom I endea- , voured to dethrone ! ' She drew her face from his breast, and looked at him in terror. It seemed to her tliat he was raving. ' Ambrose ! my poor Ambrose ! God has forgiven you-, as I forgive you. You have been his faithful servant, His apostle ! ' ' I have been a villain ! I have fallen, as Satan fell, from intellectual vanity and pride. You talk to me of the great work that I have done ; Alma, that work has been wholly evil, my creed a rotten reed. A materialist at heart, I thought that I could reject all certitude of faith, all fixity of form. My God became a shadow, my Christ a figment, my morality a platitude and a lie. Believing and accepting everything in the sphere of ideas, I believed nothing, accepted nothing, in the sphere of living facts. Descending by slow degrees to a creed of shallow' 176 , THE NEW ABMLARD. materialism, I justified falseness to myself, and treachery to you. I -walked in my blind self-idolatry, till the solid ground was rent open beneath me, as you have seen. In that final hour of temptation, of which I have spoken, a Christian would have turned to the Cross and found salva- tion. What was that Cross to me ? A dream of the poet's brain — a symbol which could not help me. I turned from it, and have to face, as my eternal punish- ment, all the horror and infamy of the old Hell.' Every word that he uttered was true, even truer than he yet realised. ^He had refined away his faith till it had become a mere figment. Christ the Divine Ideal had been powerless to keep him to the narrow path, whereas Christ the living Law-giver might have enabled him to walk on a path thrice as narrow, yea, on the very edge of the great gulf, where there is scarcely foothold for a fly. I who write these lines, though, perchance, far away as Bradley him- self from the acceptance of a Christian terminology, can at least say this for the Christian scheme^— that it is complete as a law for life. , Once accept its facts and theories, and it becomes as strong as an angel's arm to hold us up in hours of weariness, weakness, and vacillation. The difficulty lies in that acceptance. But for common workaday use and practical human needs, transcendentalism, however Chris- tian in its ideas, is utterly infirm. It will do when there is fair weather, when the beauty of Art will do, and when even the feeble glimmer of eestheticism looks like sunlight and pure air. But when sorrow comes, when temptation beckons, when what is wanted is a staff to lean upon, and a Divine finger to point and guide, woe to him who puts his trust in any transcendental creed, however fair. It is the tendency of modem agnosticism to slacken the moral fibre of men, even more than to weaken their intellectual grasp. The laws of human life are written in letters of brass on the rook of Science, and it is the task of true Keligion to read them and translate them for the common use. But the agnostic is aa short-sighted as an owl, while the atheist is as blind as a bat ; the one will not, and the other cannot, read the colossal cypher, in- terpret the simple speech, of God. mn confession: m Ambrose Bradley was a man of keen intellect and re- markable intuitions, but he had broadened his faith to to great an extent that it became like one of many ways in a wilderness, leading anywhere, or nowhere. He had been able to accept ideals, hever to cope with practicali- ties. His creed was beautiful as a rainbow, as many- coloured, as capable of stretching from heaven to earth and earth to heaven, but it faded, rainbow-like, when the sun sank and the darkness came. So must it be with all creeds which are not solid as the ground we walk on, strength-giving as the air we breathe, simple as the thoughts of childhood, and inexorable as the solemn verity of death. Such has been, throughout all success or failure, and such is, practical Christianity. Blessed is he who, in days of backsliding and unbelief, can become as a little child and lean all his hope upon it. Its earthly penance and its heavenly promise are interchangeable terms. The Chris- tian dies that he may live ; suiFers that he may enjoy ; relinquishes that he may gain ; sacrifices his life that he may save it. He knows the beatitude of suffering, which no merely happy man can know. We who are worlds re- moved from the simple faith of the early world may at least admit all this, and then, with a sigh for the lost illu- sion, go dismally upon our way. That night Ambrose Bradley found, to his astonishment, that Alma was still at his mercy, that at a word from him she woi^ld defy the world. Therein came his last tempta- tion, his last chance of moral redemption. The Devil was at hand busily conjuring, but a holier presence was also there. The man's soul was worth saving, and there was still a stake. The game was decided for the time being when the clergyman spoke as :^ollows : — ' My darling, I am not so utterly lost as to let you share my degradation. I do not deserve your pity any^ more than I have deserved your love. Your goodness only makes me feel my own baseness twenty-fold. I should have told you the whole truth: I failed to do so, and , I grossly deceived you ; therefore it is just that I Ghould be punished and driven forth. I have broken the IM TSE NEW ABELARD. laws of my country as well aa the precepts of my creed. 1 shall leave England to-morrow, never to return,' ' You must not go,' answered Alma. ' I know that we must separate. I see that it is sin to remain together, but over and above our miserable selves is the holy labour to which you have set your hand. Do not, I conjure yoUj abandon that ! The last boon I shall ask you is to laboui' on in the church I upbuilt for you, and to keep your vow of faithful service.' ' Alma, it is impossible. In a few days, possibly in a few hours, our secret will be known, and then ' ' Your secret is safe with me,' she replied, ' and I will answer for my uncle and my cousin — that they shall leave you in peace. It is I that must leave England, not you. Your flight would cause a scandal and would destroy the great work for ever ; my departure will be unnoticed and unheeded. Promise me, promise me to remain.' ' I cannot. Alma ! — God forbid ! — and allow you, who are blatneless, to be driven forth from your country and your home 1 ' • ' I have no home, no country now,' she said, and as she spoke her voice was full of the pathos of infinite despair. 'I l6st these, I lost everything, when I lost you. Dearest Ambrose, there is but one atonement possible for both of us ! We must forget our vain happineps, and work for God.' . Her face became Madonna-like in its beautiful resig- nation. Bradley looked at her in wonder, and never before had he hated himself so much for what he had done; Had she heaped reproaches upon him, had she turned from him in the pride, of passionate disdain, he could have borne it far better. But in so much as slie assumed the sweetness of, an angel, did he feel the misery and self-scorn of a devil. And, if the truth must be spoken. Alma wondered at herself. She had thought at first, when the quick of her pain was first touched, that she must madden and die ol agony ; but her nature seemed flooded now with a piteous calm, and her mind hushed itself to the dead stillness ol resignation. Alas ! she had yet to discover how deep and incurable was the wound that she had received ; how it WSE CONFESSION. 179 ! to fester and refuse all healing, even from the sacred juents of religion. ' Promise me,' she continued after a pause, ' to remain I labour in your vocation.' ' Alma, I cannot ! ' 'Yovi must. You say you owe me reparation; let your aration be this-^to grant my last request.' ' But it is a mockery ! ' he pleaded. ' Alma, if you iw how hollow, how empty of all living faith, my soul I become ! ' ' Your faith is not dead,' she replied. ' Even if it be, who works miracles will restore it to life. Promise to as I beseech you, and be sure then of my forgiveness. )mise 1 ' ' I promise,' he said at last, unable to resist her. ' Good-bye 1 ' she said, holding out her hand, which he k sobbing and covered with kisses. ' I shall go away to le still place abroad where I may try to find peace. I Y write to you sometimes, may I not 1 Surely there 1 be no sin in that ! Yes, I will write to you ; and you 'ou will let me know that you are well and happy.' ' O Alma ! ' he sobbed, falling on his knees before her, y love ! my better angel ! I have destroyed you, I have upled on the undriven snow ! ' ' God is good,' she answered. ' Perhaps even this great row is sent upon us in mercy, not in wrath. I will try think so I Once more, good-bye ! ' He rose to his feet, and, taking her tear-drenched face ;Iy between his hands, kissed her upon the brow. ' God bless and protect you ! ' he cried. ' Pray for me, darling I I shall need all your prayers ! Pray for ma 1 forgive me ! ' A minute later, and he was left alone. He would have owed her out into the night, as far as her own door, but I begged him not to do so. He stood at the gate, watch- : her as she flitted away. Then, with a cry of anguish, looked towards his empty church standing shadowy ia I cold moonlight, and re-entered his desolate home. ISO TEE NEW ABELABD. CHAPTER XXII. FEOM THE POST-BAO. I. Sir Qeorge Craik, Bart-, to Alma Graik. My deak Niece, — The receipt of your letter, dated ' Lucerne,' but bearing the post-mark of Geneva, has at last relieved my mind from the weight of anxiety which was oppressing it. Thank Heaven you are safe and well, and bear your suffering with Christian resignation. In a little time, I trust, you will have left this dark passage of your experience quite behind you, and retitrn to ua look- ing and feeling like your old self. George, who now, as always, shares my affectionate solicitude for you, joins me in expressing that wish. The poor boy is still sadly troubled at the remembrance of your misconception, and I sometimes think that his health is affected. Do, if you can, try to send him a line or a message, assuring him that ■ your unhappy misunderstanding is over. Believe me, his one thought in. life is to secure your good esteem. There is no news — none, that is to say, of any import- ance. We have kept our promise to you, and your secret is still qiiite safe in our custody. The man to whom you owe all this misery is still here, and still, I am informed, prostituting the pulpit to his vicious heresies. If report is to be believed, his utterances have of late been more iextrabrdinary than ever, and he is rapidly losing influence over his own congregation. Sometimes I can scarcely conquer my indignation, knowing as I do that with one word I could effectually silence his blasphemy, and drive him beyond the pale of society. But in crushing him I should disgrace you, and bring contempt upon our name ; and these considerations, as well as my pledge to keep silence, make any kind of public action impossible. I must the-refore wait patiently till the inevitable course of events, accelerated by an indignant Providence, destroys the destroyer of your peace. In the meantime, my dear Alma, let me express m; FROM THE POST-BAG. 181 eoncem and regret that you should be wandering from place to place -without a protector. I know your strength of mind, of course; but you are young and handsome, and the world is censorious. Only say the word, and although business of a rather important nature occupies me in London, I will put it aside at any cost and join you. In the absence of my dear brother, I am your natural guardian. While legally your own mistress, you are morally under my care, and I would make any sacrifice to be with you, especially at this critical moment of your life. I send this letter to the address you have given me at Lucerne. I hope it will reach you soon and safely, and that you will, on seeing it, fall in with my suggestion that I should come to you without delay. With warmest love' and sympathy, in which your cousin joins, believe me as ever, — Your affectionate uncle, Geoege Craik. IL From Alma Craik to Sir George Craik, Bart. Mr DEAK Uncle, — I have just received your letter. Thank you for attending to my request. With regard to your suggestion that you should come to me, I know it is meant in all kindness, but as I told you before leaving London, I prefer at present to be quite alone, with the exception of my maid Hortense. I will let you know of my movements £:om time to time. — Tour affectionate niece, Alma Ceaik. m. Alma Craik to the Beo. Ambrose Bradley. Tour letter, together with one from my uncle, fouad me at Lucerne, and brought me at once grief and comfort: grief, that you still reproach yourself over what was inevitable ; comfort, that you are, as you assure me, still endeavouring to pursue your religious work. Pray, pray, do not write to me in such a strain again. You have neither wrecked my life nor broken my heart, as you blam^ 182 TSE NEW ABELARD. yourself for doing; I learned long ago from our Divine' Example that the world is one of sorrow, and I am realising the truth in my own experience, that is all. You ask me how and where I have spent my days, and whether I have at present any fixed destination. I have been wandering, so to speak, among the gravestones of the Catholic Church, visiting not only the great shrines and cathedrals, but lingering in every obscure roadside chapel, and halting at every Calvary, in southern and western France. Thence I have come on to Switzerland, where religion grows drearier, and life grows dismaller, in the shadow of the mountains. In a few days I shall follow in your own footsteps, and go on to Italy — tO' Home. Write to me when you feel impelled to write. You shall be apprised of my whereabouts from time to time. — Yours now as ever, Alma. P.S. — ^When I sat down to- write the above, I thought I had so much to say to you ; and I have said nothing ! Something numbs expression, though my thoughts seem full to overflowing. I am like one who longs to speak, yet fears to utter a syllable, lest her voice should be clothed with tears and sobs. God help me I All the world is changed, and I can hardly realise it, yet 1 IV. Ambrose Bradley to Alma Craik. Dearest Alma, — ^You teU me in your letter that you have said nothing of the thoughts that struggle within you for utterance; alas! your words are only too eloquent, less in what they say than in what they leave unsaid. If I required any reminder of the mischief I have wrought, of the beautiful dream that I have destroyed, it would come to me in the pathetic reticence of the letter I have just received. Would to God that you had never known me ! Would to God that, having known me, you would have despised me as I deserved I I was unworthy even to touch the hem of your garment. I am like a wretch who has profaned the altar of a saint. Your patience and devotion are an eternal rebuke. I could bear your bitter blame ; I cannot bear your forgiveness. FROM TBE POST-BAG. 183 I am here as you left me; a guilty, conscience- strioken creature struggling in a world of nightmares. Nothing now seems substantial, permanent, or true. Every time that I stand up before my congregation I am like a shadow addressing shadows; thought and language both fail me, and I know not what platitudes flow iirom my lips ; but when I am leil alone again, I awaken as from a dream to the horrible reality of my guilt and my despair. I have thought it all over again and again, trying to discover some course by which I might bring succour to myself and peace to her I love; and whichever way I look, I see but one path of escape, the rayless descent of death. For, so long as I live, I darken your sunshine. My very existence is a reminder to you of what I am, of what I might have been. But there, I will not pain you with my penitence, and I will hush my self-reproaches in deference to your desire. Though the staff you' placed in my hand has become a reed, and though I seem to have no longer any foothold on the solid ground of life, I will try to struggle on. I dare not ask you to write to me — it seems an outrage to beg for such a messing ; yet I know that you will pity me, and write again. — Ever youre, Ambrose Bradley. »8t TBE NEW ABELARD. CHAPTER XXIII. alma's wanderings. Scoff not at Eonie, or if thou scoff beware Her vengeance waiting in the heaven and air; Her love is blessing, and her hate, despair. Yet see ! how low the hoary mother lies. Prone on her face beneath the lonely skies — On her head ashes, dust upon her eyes. Mpn smile and pass, but many pitying stand. And some stoop down to kiss her withered hand, ■Whose sceptre is a reed, whose crown is sand. Think'st thou no pulse beats in that bounteous breast Which once sent throbs of rapture east and west? Nay, but she liveth, mighty tho' opprest. Her arm could reach as low as hell, as high As the white mountains and the starry sky ; She filled the empty heavens with her cry. Wait but a space, and watch — her trance of pain Shall dry away — her tears shall cease as rain — Queen of the nations, she shall smile again ! The Ladder of St. Augustine, . Bradley's letter was forwarded from Lucerne after some little delay, and reached Miss Craik at Brieg, just as she was preparing to proceed by private conveyance to Dome d'Ossola. She had taken the carriage and pair for herself and her maid, a young Frenchwoman ; and as the vehicle rounded its zigzag course towards the Klenenhorn, she perused the epistle line by line, until she had learned almost every word by heart. Then, with the letter lying in her lap, she gazed sadly, almost vacantly, around her on the gloomy forests and distant hills, the precipices spanned by aerial bridges, the quaint villages clinging like bird's-nests here and there, the dark vistas of mountain side gashed by torrents frozen by distance to dazzling white. Dreary beyond measure, though the skies were blue and the air full of golden sunlight, seemed the wonderful scene : — We make th,e world we look on, and create The summer or the winter with our seeing 1 AZMA'S WANDERIN6S. 185 And cold and wintry indeed was all that Alma beheld that summer day. Not even the glorious panorama unfolded beneath her gaze on passing the Second Refuge had any charms to please her saddened sight. Leaving the lovely valley of the Rhone, sparkling in sunlight, encircled by the snow- crowned Alps, with the Jungfrau towering paramount, crowned with glittering icy splendour and resting against a heaven of deep insufferable blue, she passed through avenues of larch and fir, over dizzy bridges, past the lovely glacier of the Kaltwasser, till she reached the high ascent of the Fifth Refuge. ' Here the coarse spirit of the age arose before her, in the shape of a party of English and American tourists crowding the diligence and descending noisily for refresh- ment. A little later she passed the barrier toll, and came in sight of the Cross of 'Vantage. She arrested the carriage, and descended for a few minutes, standing as it were suspended in mid air, in full view of glacier upon glacier, closed in by the mighty chain of the Bernese Alps. Never had she felt so utterly solitary. The beautiful world, the empty sky, swam before her in all the love- liness of desolation, and turning her face towards Aletsch, she wept bitterly. As she stood thus, she was suddenly conscious of another figure standing near to her, as if in rapt contem- plation of the solemn scene. It was that of a middle-aged man, rather above the middle stature, who carried a small knapsack on his shoulders and leant upon an Alpine staff. She saw only his side face, and his eyes were turned away; yet, curiously enough, his form had an air of listening watchfulness, and the moment she was conscious of his presence he turned and smiled, and raised his hat. She noticed then that his sunburnt face was clean shaven, like that of a priest, and that his eyes were black and piercing, though remarkably good-humoured. ' Pardon, Madame,' he said in French, ' but I think we have met before,' She had turned away her head to bide her tears from 186 THE NEW ABELARD. the stranger's gaze. Without waiting for her answer, he proceeded. ' In the hotel at Brieg. I was staying there when Madame arrived, and I left at day-break this morning to cross the Pass on fobt.' By this time she had mastered her agitation, and could regard the stranger with a certain self-possession. His face, though not handsome, was mobile and expressive ; the eyebrows were black and prominent, the forehead was high, the mouth large and well cut, with glittering white teeth. It was difficult to tell the man's age ; for though his countenance was so fresh that it looked quite young, his forehead and cheeks, in repose, showed strongly- marked lines ; and though his form seemed strong and agile, he stooped greatly at the shoulders. To complete the contradiction, his hair was as white as snow. What mark is' it that Eome puts upon her servants, that we seem to know them under almost any habit or disguise ? One glance convinced Alma that the stranger either belonged to some of the holy orders, or was a lay priest of the Komish Church. ' 1 do not remember to have seen you before. Monsieur,' she replied, also in French, with a certain hauteur. The stranger smiled again, and bowed apologetically. ' Perhaps I was wrong to address Madame without a more formal introduction. I know that in England it is not the custom. But here on the mountain, far away from the conventions of the world, it would be strange, would it not, to meet in silence 7 We are like two souls that encounter on pilgrimage, both looking wearily towards the Celestial Gate.' ' Are you a priest, Monsieur ? ' asked Alma abruptly. The stranger bowed again. ' A poor member of the Church, the Abb^ Brest. I am journeying on foot through the Simplort to the Lago Maggiore, and thence, with God's blessing, to Milan. But I shall rest yonder, at the New Hospice, to-night.' And he pointed across the mountain towards the refuge of the monks of St. Bernard, close to the region of per- petual snow. The tall figure of an Augustine monk, shading his eyes and looking up the road, was visible ; and from ALMA'S WANBERISTQS. 187 the refectory within came the fnint tolling of a bell mingled from time to time with the deep barking of a dog. ' The monks receive travellers still 7 ' asked Alma. ' I suppose the Hospice is rapidly becoming, like its compeers, nothing more or less than a big hotel. ' ' Madame ' ' Please do not call me Madame. I am unmarried.' She spoke almost without reflection, and it was not until she had uttered the words that their significance dawned upon her. Her face became crimson with sudden shame. It was characteristic of the stranger that he noticed the change in a moment, but that, immediately on doing so, he turned away his eyes and seemed deeply interested in the distant prospect, while he replied : — ' I have again to ask your pardon for my stupidity. Mademoiselle, of course, is English ? ' •Yes.' ' And is therefore, perhaps, a little prejudiced against those who, like the good monks of the Hospice, shut themselves from all human companionship, save that of the wayfarers whom they live to save and shelter 7 Yet, believe me, it is a life of sacred service 1 Even here, among the lonely snows, reaches the arm of the Holy Mother, to plant this cross by the wayside, as a symbol of her heavenly inspiration, and to build that holy resting- place as a haven for those who are weary and would rest.' He spoke with the same soft insinuating smile as be- fore, but his eye kindled, and his pale face flushed with enthusiasm. Alma, who had turned towards the carriage which stood awaiting her, looked at him with new interest. Something in his words chimed in with a secret longing of her heart. 'I have been taught to believe. Monsieur, that your faith is practically dead. Everywhere we see, instead of its living temples, only the ruins of its old power. If its spirit exists stUl, it is only in plapes such as this, in com- pany with loneliness and death.' ' Ah, but Mademoiselle is mistaken ! ' returned the other, following by her side as she walked slowly towards the carriage. ' Had you seen what I have seen, if you knew 188 THE NEW ABELARB. what I know, of the great Catholic reaotion, you would think differently. Other creeds, gloomier and more am- bitious, have displaced ours for a time in your England ; but let me ask you — :you. Mademoiselle, who have a truly religious spirit— you who have yourself sufEered — what have those other creeds done for humanity ? Believe me, littlp or nothing. In times of despair and doubt, the world will awain turn to its first Comforter, the ever-patient and ever-loving Church of Christ.' They had by this time reached the carriage door. The stranger bowed again and assisted Alma to her seat. Then he raised his hat with profound respect in sign of farewell. The coachman was about to drive on when Alma signed for him to delay. ' I am on my way to Domo d'Ossola,' she said. ' A seat in my carriage is at your service if you would prefer going on to remaining at the Hospice for the night.' ' Mademoiselle, it is too much ! I could not think of obtruding myself upon you. I, a stranger 1 ' Yet he seemed to look longingly at the comfortable seat in the vehicle, and to require little more pressing to accept the offer, 'Pray do not hesitate,' said Alma, smiling, 'unless you prefer the company of the monks of the mountain.' ~ ' After that, I can hesitate no longer,' returned the Abb^, looking radiant with delight ; and he forthwith entered the vehicle and placed himself by Alma's side. Thus it came to pass that my heroine descended the Pass of the Simplon in company with her new acquaintance, an avowed member of a Church, for which she had felt very little sympathy until that hour. To do him justice, I must record the fact that she found him a most interest- ing companion. His knowledge of the world was extensive, his learning little short of profound, his manners were charming. He knew every inch of the way, and pointed out the objects of interest, digressing lightly into the topics they awakened. At every turn the prospect brightened. Leaving the wild and barren slopes behind them, the travellers passed through emerald pasturages, and through reaches of foliage broken by sounding torrents, and at last emerging from the great valley, and _ ALMA'S WANDEUINQS. 18J crossing the bridge of Crevola, they found themselves sur- rounded on every side by vineyards, orchards, and green meadows. When the carriage drew up before the door of the hotel at Dome d'Ossola, Alma felt that the time had passed as if under enchantment. Although she had spoken very little, she had quite unconsciously informed her new friend of three facts — that she was a wealthy young Englishwoman travelling through Europe at her own free will ; that she had undergone an unhappy ex- perience, involving, doubtless, some person of the opposite sex ; and that, in despair of comfort from creeds colder and less forgiving, she was just in a ,fit state of mind to seek refuge in the bosom of the Church of Eome. The acquaintance, begun so curiously in the Simplon Pass, was destined to continue. At Domo d'Ossola, Alma parted from the Abbe Brest, whose destination was some obscure village on the banks of Lago Maggiore ; but a few weeks later, when staying at Milan, she encountered him again. She had ascended the tower of the Duomo, and was gazing down on the streets and marts of the beautiful city, when she heard a voice behind her murmuring her name, and turning somewhat nervously, she encountered the bright black eyas of the wandering Abb6. He accosted her with his characteristic bonJiomie. ' Ah, Mademoiselle, it is you ! ' he cried smiling. ' We are destined to meet in the high places — ^here on the tower of the cathedral, there on the heights of the Simplon 1 ' There was something so unexpected, so mysterious in the man's reappearance, that Alma was startled in spite of herself, but she greeted him courteously, and they de- scended the tower steps together. The Abb^ kept a solemn silence as they walked through the sacred building, with its mighty walls of white marble, its gorgeous deco- rations, its antique tombs, its works in bronze and in mosaic ; but when they passed from the porch into the open sunlight, he became as garrulous as ever. They walked along together in the direction of the Grand Hotel, where Alma was staying. ' Have you driven out to the cathedral at Monza ? ' inquired the Abb6 in the course of their conversation. 190 THE NEW ABELARD. ' No ; is it worth seeing ? ' ' Certainly. Besides, it contains the sacred crown of Lombardy, the iron band of which is made out of nails from the true cross.' ' Indeed ! ' exclaimed Alma with a smile that was incredulous, even contemptuous. She glanced at her com- panion, and saw that, he was smiling too. It was not until she had been some weeks away from England that Alma Craik quite realised her position in the world. In the first wild excitement of her flight her only feeling was one of bewildered agitation, mingled with a mad impulse to return upon her own footsteps, and, reck- less of the world's opinion, take her place by Bradley's side. A word of encouragement from him at that period would have decided her fate. But after the first pang of grief was over, after she was capable of regretful retro- spection, her spirit became numbed with utter despair. >She found herself solitary, friendless, hopeless, afBicted with an incurable moral disease to which she was unable to give a name, but which made her long, like the old anchorites and penitents, to seek ' some desert place and yield her life to God. . In this mood of mind she turned for solace to religion, and found how useless for all practical purposes was her creed of beautiful ideas. Her faith in Christian facts had been shaken if not destroyed ; the Christian myth had the vagueness and strangeness of a dream ; yet, true to her old instincts, she haunted the temples of the Church, and felt like one wandering through a great graveyard of the dead. Travelling quite alone, for her maid was in no sense of the words a confidante or a companion, she could not fail to awaken curious interest in many with whom she was thrown into passing contact. Her extraordinary personal beauty was heightened rather than obscured by _he^ singularity of dress ; for though she wore no wedding-ring, she dressed in black like a widow, and had the manners as well as the attire of a person profoundly mourning. At the hotels she invariably engaged private apartments, seldom or never descending to the public rooms, or joining in the tables-d'hote. The general impression concerning ALMA'S WANDERING^. 191 her was that she was an eccentric young Englishwoman' of great wealth, recently bereaved of some person very near and dear to her, possibly her husband. Thus she lived in seclusion, resisting all friendly advances, whether on the part of foreigners or of her own countrymen ; and her acquaintance with the Abb^ Brest would never have passed beyond a few casual courtesies had it not begun under circumstances so peculiar and in a place 80 solitary, or had the man himself been anything but a member of the mysterious Mother Church. But the woman's spirit was pining for some kind of guidance, and the magnetic name of Rome had already awakened in it a melancholy fascination. The strange priest attracted her, firstly, by his eloquent personality, secondly, by the authority he seemed to derive from a power still pretend- ing to achieve miracles : and though in her heart she despised the pretensions and loathed the dogmas of his Church, she felt in his presence the sympathy of a prescient mind. For the rest, any companionship, if intellectual, was better than utter social isolation. So the meeting on the tower of the Duomo led to other meetings. The Abb^ became her constant com- / panion, and her guide through all the many temples oil the queenly city. ',' CHAPTER XXIV. GLIMPSES OF THE UNSEEN. The earth has bubbles as the water hath, And these are of them ! — Macbeth. While the woman he had so cruelly deceived and wronged was wandering from city to city, and trying in vain to find rest and consolation, Ambrose Bradley re- mained at the post where she had left him, the most melancholy soul beneath the sun. All his happiness in his work being gone, his ministration lost the fervour and originality that had at first been its dominant attraction. Sir George had not exaggerated when he said that the clergyman's flock was rapidly falling away from him. New 19)J tHE 2^EW ABELAS.D. lights were arising; new religious whims and oddities wer$ attracting the restless spirits of the metropolis. A thought-reading charlatan from the New World, a learned physiologist proving the oneness of the- sympathetic system with polarised light, a maniacal non-jurist asserting the prerogative of affirmation at the bar of the House of Commons, became each a nine-days' wonder. The utterances of the new gospel were forgotten, or disregarded as flatulent and unprofitable ; and Ambrose Bradley found his occupation gone. For all this he cared little or nothing. He was too lost in contemplation of his own moral misery. ' All his thought and prayer being to escape firom this, he tried various distractions — the theatre, for example, with its provincial theory of edification grafted on the dry stem of what had once been a tree of literature, He was ut|terly objectless and miserable, when, one morning, he received the following letter : — ' Monmouth Crsscent, Bayswatar. ' My dear Sir, — Will you permit me to remind you, by means of this letter, of the notes of introduction pre- sented recently by me to you, and written by our friends, and , in Atnerica? My sister gives a seance. to-morrow evening, and several notabilities of the scientific and literary world have promised to be present. If you will honour us with your company, I think you will be able to form a disinterested opinion on the importance of the new biology, as manifestations of an extraordinary kind are confidently expected. — With kind regards, in which my sister joins, I am, most faithfully yours, 'Salem Mapleleafe, * Solar Biologist. 'P.S. — The siance commences at five o'clock, in this domicile.' Bradley's first impulse was to throw the letter aside, and to write a curt but polite refusal. On reflection, however, he saw in the proposed seance a means of temporary distraction. Besides, the affair of the mys- terious photograph had left him not a little curious as to the miichinery used by the brother and sister— arcacfes arribo. GLIMPSES OF TBM umEElsr. 193 or impostots, both, he was certain — to gull an undiscerning public. At a little before five on the following eTening, there- fore, he presented himself at the door of the house in Monmouth Crescent, sent up his card, and was almost immediately shown into the drawing-room. To his sur- prise he found no one there, but he had scarcely glanced round the apartment when the door opened, and a slight sylph-like figure, clad in white, appeared before him. At a glance he recognised the face he had seen on the fading photograph. ' How do you do, Mr. Bradley 7 ' said Euatasia, holding out a thin transparent hand, and fixing her light eyes upon his face. 'I received your brother's invitation,' he replied rather awkwardly, ' I am afraid I am a little before my time.' ' Well, you're the first to arrive. Salem's upstairs washing, and will be down directly. He's real pleased to know you've come.' She flitted lightly across the room, and sat down close to the window. She looked white and worn, and all the life of her fi^^me seemed concentrated in her extraordinary eyes, which she fixed upon the visitor with a steadiness calculated to discompose a timid man. ' Won't you sit down, Mr.' Bradley ? ' she said, repeat- ing the name with a curious familiarity. ' You seem to know me well,' he replied, seating him- self, ' though I do not think we have ever met.' 'Oh, yes, we have ; leastways, I've often heard you preach. I knew a man once' in the States, who was the very image of you. He's dead now, he is.' Her voice, with its strong foreign inflexion, rang so strangely, and plaintively on the last words, that Bradley was startled. He looked at the girl more closely, and was struck by her unearthly beauty, contrasting so oddly with her matter-of-fact, off-hand manner. ' Your brother tells me that you are a sibyl,' he said, drawing his chair nearer. ' I am afraid. Miss Mapleleafe. you will find me a disturbing influence. I have about as much faith in solar biology, spiritualism, spirit-agency, or 194 THE NEW ABELARD. whatever you like tp call it, as I have in — well, Mumbo- Jumbo/ Her eyes still looked brightly ihto his, and her wan Ihce was lit up with a curious smile. -^ ' That's Tvhat they all say at first! Guess you think, then, thiat I'm. an impostor ? ; Don't be afraid to speak your mind;, I'm used to it; I've had' worse than! hard names thrown at me ; stones and all that. I was stabbed once down South, and I've the mark still ! ' As she spoke, she liared her white arm to the ' elbow, and showed, just in the fleshy part of the arm, the mark of an old scar. ' The man that did that drew his knife in the dark, and pinioned my arm to the table. The very man that was like gm.'' i And lifting her arm to her lips she kissed the scar, and murmured, or crooned, to herself as she had done on the former occasion in the presence of her brother. . Bradley looked on in amazement. So far as he could perceive at present, the woman was a half-mad creature, scarcely responsible for what she said or did. His embarrassment was not lessened when Eustasia,' still holding the arm to her lips, looked at him through thickly-gathering tears, and then, as if starting from a trance, gave vent to a wild yet musical laugh. ' Scarcely knowing what to say, he continued the former topic of conversation. ' I presume you are what is called a clairvoyante. That, of course, I can understand. But, do you really believe in siipematural manifestations ? ' Here the- voice of the little Professor, who had quietly entered the room, supplied an answer. ' Certainly not, sir. The oflSce of solar biology is not to vindicate, but to destroy, supernaturalism; You mean superhuman, which is quite another thing. All things abide in ^Tatixre, nouglit subeiGb) Beyond the infinite celestial scheme. . Hotes in the sunbeams are the lives of men, But in the moonlight and the stellar ray, In every burning flame of every sphere. Exist intelligible agencies Akin to thine and mine. GLIMPSES OF THE VNSEEN. 195 That's how the great Bard puts it in a nutshell. Other lives in other worlds, sir, but no life out or beyond Nature, which embraces the solid universe to the remotest point in space.' Concluding with this flourish, Professor Mapleleafe dropped down into cotamonplace, wrung the visitor's hand, and wished him a very good-day. ' How do you feel,-Eust&sia? ' he continued with some anxiety, addressing his sister. ' Do you feel as if the atmosphere this afternoon was jiroperly cohditioned ? * ' Yes, Salem, I think so.' The Professor looked at his watch, and simultaneously there came a loud rapping at the door. Presently three persons entered, a talJ, -powerful-looking man, who was introduced as Doctor Kendall, and two elderly gentlemen ; then, a minute later, a little grey-haired man, the well- known Sir James Beaton,a famous physician of Edinburgh. The party was completed by the landlady of the house, who came up dressed in black silk, and'wearing a widow's cap. ' Now, then, ladies and gentlemen,' said the little Pro- fessor glibly, ' we shall, with your permission, begin in the usual manner, by darkening the chamber and forming an ordinary circle. I warn you, however, that this is trivial, and in the manner of professional mediums. As the seance advances and the power deepens, wo shall doubtless be lifted to higher ground.' So saying, he drew the heavy curtains of the window, leaving 'the room in semi-darkness. Then the party sat down around a small circular table, and touched hands ; Bradley sitting opposite Bustasia, who had Dr. Kendall on her right and Sir James Beaton on her left; The usual manifestations followed; The table rose bodily into the air, bells were rung, tiny sparkles of light flashed about the room. This lasted about a quarter of an hour, at the end of which time Mapleleafe broke the circle, and drawing back a curtain, admitted some light into the room. ' It' was then discovered that Eustasia, sitting in her place, with her hands resting upon the table, was in a state of mesmerio trance; and ghastly and sibylline indeed she looked, with 0% i«6 TSE NEW ABELABD. her great eyes wide open, ter golden hair fallen on he! shoulders, her face shining as if mysteriously anointed. ' Eustasia 1 ' said the Professor softly. The girl remained motionless, arid did not seem to hear. ' Eustasia ! ' he repeated. This time her lips moved, and a voice, that seemed shriller and clearer than'her own, replied : — ' Eustasia is not here. I am Sira.' 'WhoisSira?' * A spirit of the third magnitude, from the region of the moon.' A titter ran round the company, and Sir James Beaton essayed a feeble joke. ' A lunar spirit — we shall not, I hope, be de lunatico inqiiirendo.^ ' Hush, sir ! ' cried the Professor ; then he continued, addressing the medium his sister, ' Let me know if the conditions are perfect or imperfect ? ' * I cannot tell,' was the reply. * Do you see anything, Sira ? ' ' I see faint forms floating on the sunbeam. They come and go, they change arid fade. One is like a child, with its hands full of flowers. They are lilies — O, I can see no more. I am blind. There is too much light.' The Professor drew the curtain, darkening the chamber. He then sat down in his place at tZie table; and requested all present to touch hands once more. So far, Bradley had looked on with impatience, not unmingled with disgust. What he saw and heard was exactly what he had heard described a hundred times. With the darkening of the room, the manifestations recommenced. The table moved about like a thin t possessed, the very floor seemed to tremble and upheave, the bells rang, the lights flashed. Then all at once" Bradley became aware of a strange sound, as if the whole room were full of life. ' Keep still ! ' said the Professor. ' Do not break the chain. Wait ! ' A long silence followed; then a, strange sound was heard again. ^ Are you there, my friend 7 ' asked the Frofeesoi* GLIMPSES OF TEE VNSEEN. 197 There was no reply. ' Are the conditions right 7 ' He was answered by a ciy from the medium, so wild and strange that all present were startled and awed. 'Seel see!' ' What is it, Sira ? ' demanded the Professor. ' Shapes like angels, carrying one that looks like a corpse. They are singing^^do you not hear them 7 Now they are touching me — they are passing their hands over my hair. I see my mother ; she is weeping and bending over me. Mother I mother ! ' Simultaneously, Bradley himself appeared conscious of glimpses like human faces flashing and fading. In spite of his scepticism, a deep dread, which was shared.more or less by all present, "fell upon him. Then all at once he became aware of something like a living form, clad in robes of dazzling whiteness, passing. by him. An icy cold hand was pressed to his forehead, leaving a clammy damp like dew. * I see a shape of some kind,' he cried. ' Does anyone else perceive it 7 ' * Yes 1 yes 1 yes ! ' came from several voices. ' It is the spirit of a woman,' murmured the medium. ' Do you know her 7 ' added the Professor. * Nq ; she belongs to the living world, not to the dead. I see far away, somewhere on this planet, a beautiful lady lying asleep ; she seems full of sorrow, her pillow is wet with tears. This is the lady's spirit, brought hither by the magnetic influence of one she loves.' ' Can you describe her to us more closely 7 ' * Yes. She has dark hair, and splendid dark eyes ; she is tall and lovely. The lady-and the spirit are alike, the counterpart of each other.' Once more Bradley was conscious of the white form standing near him ; he reached out his hands to touch it, but it immediately vanished. At the same moment he felt a touch like breath upon his face, and heard a soft musical voice murmuring in his ear-^ 'Ambrose! beloved!' He started in wonder, for the voice seemed that of Alma Crai^. 198 TSE NEW ABELABD. ' Be good enough not to break the chain ! ' said the landlady, who occupied the chair at his side; •Trembling violently, ' he returned his hands to th^ir place, tonchingJ:h6se.o£Msim'mediaten6ighbou:^s on either side. The instant he did so, he heard the voice again, and felt the touch Eke' ibreath. • ■ ■ '' Ambrose^ . do you kno'v^ me ? ' * Who is speaking!?' he demanded. A hand soft as velvet and cold as ice was passed over bis hair. ' It is I, dearest ! ' said the voicei ' It is Alma 1 ' ' What brings you Jiere ? ' he murmured, almost inaudibly. ' I knew you were in sorrow;— 'I came to bring you comfort, and to assure you of my afifection.' The words were 'Spoken ^in a low, just audible voice, close to'hia ear, > and it is- doubtful if they were heard by any other member of the company. In the meantime the more commonplace manifestations still continued; the room was full of strange sounds, bells ringing, knocking, shuffling of invisible feet* Bradley was startled ^'beyond ' ineasure. Either her supernatural presence was close by him, or he was the victim of some cruel 'trick. Before he could speak rfgain, he felt the pressure of cold .lipsi on his forehead, and tho same strange voice murmuring farewell. Wild with excitement, mot'.unmingled with suspicion, he again broke the chain and sprang to his feet. There was a sharp cry froni the - medium, as he sprang to the window arid drew'back the curtain, letting in the daylight. But the act discovered nothing.- AH the members df the circle, save himself,' wereSmttiisig in their places. Eustasia, the medium, was calmly leaning^back- in her chair. In a moment,' however, she started, "put her hand quickly to her forehead as if in pain, and seemed to emerge from her trance. ' Salem,' she cried in her own natural voice, * has anything happened 7 ' ■ 'Mr. Bradley has broken the conditions, that's all,' returned the Professor, with ah' air 6f 'offended dignity. 'I do protest, ladies- and gentlemen, against that inteixup- OLIilPSES OF THE UNSEEN. 199 tiooi It' h^a brought r3 most interesting seance to a violent close.'' , i . "There was a general murmur from the company, and dissatisfied glances were cast at the offender. 'I am very sorry,' said the clergyman. 'I yielded to an irresistible influence.' ' The spirits won't be trifled with, sir,' cried Mapleleafe. 'Certainly, not,' said one ,of the elderly gentlemen. ' Solemn mysteries like these should be appi;oaehed in a fair and a — ^hum — a tespectful spirit. For iny own part, I am quite' Satisfied with whajt I,have seen. It convinces me of — ^hum — the reality of these phenomena.' The other elderly gentleman. fiofiourred. Dr. Kendall and- Sir, Jinles, who had been comparing notes, said that they would reserve their; final judgment Bntil they had been present at another seance. In the meantime they would go I BO far as to saytliat what they had witnessed was, veiy extraordinary indeed. ' How are ' you now, Eustasia ? ' said the Professor, addressiqg.bis mt^t. ' ' My head aches.. I feel as if I had been stand&ig for hours in a'brirntng sliil. Wbenyou called me back 1 was dreaming so Strangely. I thought I was in some celestial place, walking hand in hand with the Lord Jesus.' Bradley Jooked at the speaker's face. It looked full of elfin or witch-Iike rather than angelic light. Their eyes met, and Eustasia gave a curious smile. ' Will you come agiiin, Mr. Bradley ? ' ' I don't kriow.^-; Perhaps ;, that -^a to say, if you will permit me.' ' I do think, sir,' interrupted the Professor, ' that you have given, pffence to the celestial intelligences, and I am not inclined to admit you to our circle agaiii.' Several voices murmured, approval. 'You are wrong, brothqr,' cried Eustasia, 'you aro quite wrong.' . , , ' What do you mean, Eustasia ? ' ' I m^an that Mr. Bradley is a medium himself) and a particular favourite with spirits of the first order,' The Professor seemed to reflect. ' Well, if that's so (and you ought to know), it's 200 THM NEW ABELARD. another matter. But he'll have to promise not to break the conditions. It ain't fair to the spirits ; it ain't fair to ' his felloTV-inquirers.* One by one the company departed, but Bradley stUl •lingered, as if he had something stUl to hear or say. At last, when the last visitor had gone, and the landlady had grimly stalked away to continue her duties in the base- ment of the house, he found himself alone with the brother arid sister. He stood hesitating, hat in hand. ' May I ask you a few questions ? * he said, addressing Eustasia. ' Why, certainly,* she replied. ' While you were in the state of trance did yoti see or hear anything that took place in this room ? " ' Eustasia shook her head. ' Do you know anything whatever of my private life?' ." ' 'I guess not, except what I've read in the papers.' ' Do you know a lady named Craik, who is one of the nielribers of my congregation ? ' 'Th« answer came in another shake of the head, and a blaiiklboTi expressing entire ignorance. Either Eustasia knew nothing whatever, or she was a most accomplished ' actress. Puzzled and amazed, yet still •suspecting fraud of some kind, Bradley tbok his leave. GHAPTER XXV. A CATASTEOPHE. •After life's fitful fever, she sleeps well ' The few days following the one on which the spiritualistic ■ seance was held Were passed by Bradley in a sort of dream. The more he thought of what he had heard and seen, the more puzzled he became. At times he seemed half inclined to believe in supernatural collaboration, then he flouted his belief and laughed contemptuously at himself. Of course it was all imposture, and he tad been a dupe. Then he thought of Eustasia, and the interest which A. CATASTBOFSn. 201 she had at first aroused in him rapidly changed to indigna- tion and contempt. Very soon these people ceased to occupy his thoughts at all ; so self-absorbed was he, indeed, in bis own trouble that he forgot them as completely a's if they had never been. After all they were but shadows which had flitted across his path and faded. Had he been left to himself he would assuredly never have summoned them up again. But he was evidently too valuable a convert to be let go in that way. One morning he received the following note, written on delicate paper in the most fairy-like of fragile hands : — ' Mt dear Mb. Bradley, — ^We hold a seance to-morrow night at six, and hope you'll come ; at least, / do ! Salem don't particularly want you, since you broke the con- ditions, and he regards you as a disturbing influence. I Iznow better : the spirits like you, and I feel that with you I could do great things ; so I hope you'U be here, ' EnsTASiA Mapleleafe.' Bradley read the letter through twice, then he gazed at it for a time in trembling hesitation. Should he go 7 Why not 1 Suppose the people were humbugs, were they worse than dozens of others he had met 7 and they had at least the merit of bringing back to him the presence of the one being who was all in all to him. His hesitation lasted only for a moment — the repulsion came. He threw the letter aside. A few days later a much more significant incident occurred. As Bradley was leaving his house one morning ' he came face to face with a veiled woman who stood before his door. He was about to pass : the lady laid a retaining hand upon his arm and raised her veil. It was Eustasia. ' • ' Guess you're surprised to see me,' she said, noticing his start; 'suppose I may come in, though, now I'm here 7' Bradley pushed open the door, and led the way to his study. Eustasia followed him ; having reached the room, she sat down and eyed him wistfully. , ' Did you get my letter 7 ' she asked. 202 THE NEW ABELABD. 'YesA ' You didn't answer it 7 ' *No.' 'Whynot?^ Bradley hesitated. ' Do you want me to tell yon 7 ' he said. ' Why, certkinlyi-telse why do I ask you 7 but I see you don't wish too tell' me. Why ? ' ' Because I dislike giving unnecessary pain.' ' Ah ! in othei* words you believe me to b&-a Jiflifibug, but you hayerft the cruelty tp say so. Well, that don't trouble me. Prove me to be aa^i)s& you may call me one, but give me a faiciriaiJmft? ' What do jawjaBan.? ' '•CoBM*»«ome more of bur seances, will you? do say qwrffl come ! ' She laid .hpr hand gently upon his arm, and fixed her eyes almost jenti;e^tirigly upon him. He stared at her like one fascinated, then shrank before her glance. 'Why do you wish me to come?' he said. 'You know my thoughts and feeliiligs on 'this subject. Yoti and I are cast in diiferent moulds ; we must go different ways.' She smiled sadly; ' The spirits will, it otherwise,' she said ; while under her breath she. added, ' and so -do I.' ' But he was in no mood to yield that day. As soon as Eustasia saw>this she rose to go. When her thin hand lay in his, she said softly : 'Mr. Bradley, if ever you are in trouble come to us; you will find it is not all humbug thetii ! ' Eustasia. returned home full of hope. 'He will come,' she said ; 'yes, he will assuredly come.' But days passed, and he neither came nor sent ; at last, growing impatient, she called again at his house ; then she learned that he had left London. . 'Ha has flown from me,' she thought; 'he feels my influence, and fears it.' But in this Eustasia was quite wrong. He was flying not from her but irom. himself. The wretched life of self-reproach and misery which he was compelled to lead was crushing him down eo utterly that unless he> made A CATA8TB0PSE. 203 Eome effort he would sink and sicken. Die ? Well, after all, thai; would not have been so hard ; but the thoiight of leaving Alma was more than he could bear. He must live for the sake of the days which might yet be in store for them both. He needed change, Jiowever,.and he sought it for a few dajs on foreign soil, He. wpnt over one morning to Boulogne, took rooms in the H8tel de Paris, and became one of the swarm of tourists which was there filling the place. The bathing season was then at its height, and people were all too busy to notice him ;. he walked about Bke one in a dream, watching the pleasure-seekers, but pondering for ever on the old theme. After all it was well for him that he had left England, lie thpught — the busy garrulous life of this place came as a -•TCllegaitg^tiigAMM3nmrn3otQnjr3o£,^}Bwa.- SaiSisa-^mEsaB^ he strolled out to tlie concerts or open-air dances, and observed the fisher-girls with their lovers moving about in the gaslight ; while in the mornings. he .stTolIed about the sand watching with listless amusement the bathers who crowded down to the water's edge like bees in swarming time. i One morning, feeling more sick at heart than usual, he issued from the hotel and bent his steps towards the strand. On that day the scene was unusually aniniated. Flocks of fantastically-dressed children ami^sed themselves by making houses in the sand, while their bonnes watched over them, and their mammas, clad in equally fantastic costumes, besieged the bathing-machines. Bradley walked for a time pn the sands watching the variegated crowd. It was amusing and distracting, and he was about to look around for a quiet spot in which he could spend an hour or so, when he was suddenly startled by an apparition. A party of three were making their way towards the bathing-machines, and were even then within a few yards of him. One was a child dressed in a showy costume of serge, with long curls falling upon his shoulders. On one sideof iim was a French bonne, on the other a lady extrav- agantly attired in the most gorgeons of sea-eide costumes. ,IIer cheeks and lips were painted a bright red, ; bat her 204 THE NEW ABELABD. Bkin was white as alabaster. She was laughing heartily at something which the little boy had said, when suddenly her eyes fell upon Bradley, who stood now within two yards of her. It was his wife 1 She did not pause nor shrink, "but she ceased laughing, and a peculiar look of thinly-veiled contempt passed over her face as she walked on. * Maman,' said the child in French, ' who is that man, and why did he stare so at you ? ' The lady shrugged her shoulders,' and laughed, again. * He stared because he had nothing better to look at, I suppose, cheri ; but come, I shall miss my bath ; you had best stay here with Augustine, and make sand-hifl^ till I rejoin you. ' Au revoir, B^be.' She left the child with the nurse, hastened on and entered one of the bathing-machines, which was imme- diately drawn down into the sea. Bradley still stood where she had left him, and his eyes remained fixed upon the machine which held the woman whose very presence poisoned the air he breathed. All his old feelings of repulsion returned tenfold ; the very sight of the woman seemed to degrade p,nd drag him down. As he stood there the door of the machine opened and she came forth again. This time she was the wonder of all. Her shapely limbs were partly naked and her body was covered with a quaintly-cut bathing-dress of red. She called out some instructions to her nurse ; then she walked down and entered the sea. Bradley turned and walked away. He passed up the strand and sat down listlessly on one of the seats on the terrace facing the water. He took out Alma's last letter and^read it through, and the bitterness of his soul increased tenfold. When would his misery end ? he thought. "Why did not death come and claim his own and leave him free ? Wherever he went his existence was poisoned by this miserable woman. ' So it must ever b6,' he said bitterly. ' I must leave this place, for the very sight of her almost drives me mad.' He rose and was about to move away, when he became j1 CATASTUOPBE. 206 conscious, for the first time, that something unusual was taking place. He heard sounds of crying and moaning, and everybody seemed to be rushing excitedly towards the sand. What it was all about Bradley could not understand, for he could see nothing. He stood and watched. Every moment the cries grew louder and the crowd upon the Bands increased. He seized upon a passing Frenchman, and asked what the commotion meant. ' £as de mare'e, monsieur 1 ' rapidly explained the man as he rushed onward. Thoroughly mystified now, Bradley resolved to discover by personal inspection what it all meant. Leaving the terrace he leapt upon the shore and gained the waiting crowd upon the sand. To get an explanation from anyone here seemed to be impossible, for every individual member of the crowd seemed to have gone crazy. The women threw up their hands and moaned, the children screamed, while the men rushed half wildly about the sands. • Bradley touched the arm of a passing Englishman, ' What is all this panic about ? ' he said. ' The ras de mare'e ! ' ' Yes, but what is the ras de maree ? ' ' Don't you know 7 It is a sudden rising of the tide ; it comes only once in three years. It has surprised the bathers, many of whom are drowning. See, several machines have gone to pieces, and the' others are floating like driftwood 1 Yonder are two boats out picking up the people, but if the waves continue to rise like this, they will never save them all. One woman from that boat has fainted — no, good heavens, she is dead ! ' The scene now became one of intense excitement. The ■vyater, rising higher and higher, w4s breaking now into waves of foam. Most of the machines were dashed about like corks upon the ocean, their frightened occupants giving forth the most fearful shrieks and cries. Suddenly there was a cry for the lifeboat ; immediately after it dashed down the sand, drawn by two horses, and was launched out upon the sea, while Bradley and others occupied themselves in attending to those who were laid fainting upon the shore. But the boats, rapidly as they, went to work, proved insufficient to save ^he mass of frightened humanity still 206 THE NEW ABELAUD. struggling with the waves. The screams and cries became heartrending as one aifter another sank to rise no more, Suddenly there was another rush. 'Leave the women to attend to the rescued,' cried several voices. ' Let the men swim out, to the rescue of those who are exhausted in the sea.' There was a rush to the water. Among th« first was Bradley, who, throwing off his coat, plungedi boldly into the water. Many of those who followed him were soon overcome by the force of the waves and driven back to shore, but Bcadley, was a powerful swimmer and went on. He made straight for a figure which, seemingly over- looked by everyone else, was drifting rapidly out to sea. On coming nearer, he saw by the long black hair, which floated around her on the water, that the figure was that of a woman. How she supported herself Bradley could not see. She was neither swimming nor floating. Her back was towards him, and she might have fainted, for she made no sound. On coming nearer he saw that she was supporting her- self by means of a plank, part of the debris which -had drifted from the broken machines. By this time he wa-i quite near to herj^she turned her face towards him, and he almost cried out in pain. He recognised his wife ! Yes, there she was, helpless and almost fainting— her eyes were heavy, her lips blue ; and he seemed to be look- ing straight into tl^e face of death. Bradley paused, and the two gazed into each other's eyes. He saw that her strength was going,; but he made.no attempt to put out a hand to save her. He thought of the past, of the curse this woman had been to him ; and h§ knew that by merely doing nothing she would be taken from him. Should he let her die ? ■ "Why not ? If he had not swum out she most assuredly would have sunk. and been heard of no more. Again he looked at her and she looked at him: her eyes were almost closed now: having once looked into his face she seemed to haye resigned all hopes of rescue. No, he could not save her — ^the temptation was too great. He turned and swam in the directioi) of another A CATASTROPEE. 207 figure which was floating helplessly upon the waves. He had only taken three strokes when a violent revulsion of feeling came ; with a terrible cry he turned again to the spot where he had left the fainting and drowning woman But she was not there — ^the plank was floating upon the water — ^that was all. Bradley divei^, and reappeared holding the woman in his arms. Then he struck out with her to the shore. It was a matter of some diiBculty to get there, for she lay like lead in his hold. Having reached the shore, he carried her up the beach, and {)laced her upon the sand. Then he looked to see if she was conscious. , Yes, she still breathed ; — ^he gave her some brandy, and did all in his power to restore her to life. After a, whUe she opened her eyes, and looked into Bradley's face. ' Ah, it is you ! ' she murmured faintly, then, with a long-drawn sigh, she saiik back, dead I , , Still dripping from his encounter with the sea, his face as white as'the dead face before him, Bradley stood like one turned to stone. Suddenly he was aroused by a heart- rending shriek. • The little boy whom he had seen with the dead woman broke from the hands of his nurse, and eobbing violently threw himself upon the dead body. ' Mannanl maman ! ' he moaned. The helpless cries of the child forced upon Bradley the necessity, for immediate action. Having learned fiom the nurse the address of the Jiouse where ' Mrs. Montmorenqy ' 'was staying, he had the body put upon a stretcher and conveyed there. ,He himself walked beside it, and the child followed, sci^eaming and crying, in his nur.ie's arms. Having reached, the house,' the, body was taken into a room to h& properly, dressed, while, ^Jradley tried every means in his power to con^le the child! Alter, a while ha was told thf^t, all was done,, and he went into the chamber of death. ' ' TSE JifMW ASELARD. CHAPTER XXVI. THE LAST LOOK. Dead woman, shrouded white as snow While Death the ehade broods darkly n'gh, Place thy cold hand in mine, and so — 'Good-bye!' No prayer or blessing born of breath Came from thy lips as thou didst die ; I loath'd thee living, but in death — 'Gfood-bye!' So close together after ^11, After long strife, stand thou and 1, I bless thee while I faintly call — 'GTood-byfe!' Good-bye the past and all its -^tm. Kissing thy poor dead hand, I cry^- Again, again, and yet again^ ' Good-bye ! '—The Exile : a Poem. It would have been difficult to analyse accurately the emotions 'which filled the bosom of Ambrose Bradley, asi he stood and looked upon the dead face of the woman who, according to the law of the land and the sacrament of the Church, had justly claimed to be his wife. He could hot conceal from himself that the knowledge of h-er deatli brought relief to him and even joy ; but mingled with that telief were ' other feelings less reassuring — ^pity, remorse even, and a strange sense of humiliation. He had never really loved'the woman, and her conduct, previous to their long separation, had been such as to kill all sympathy in the heart of a less sensitive man, while what might be termed her unexpected resurrection had roused in him a bitterness and a loathing beyond expression. Yet now that the last word was said, the last atonement made, now tliat he beheld the eyes that would never open again, and the lips that would never again utter speech or sound, hia soul was stirred to infinite compassion. After all, he thought, the blame had not been hers that they had been bo ill-suited to each other, and aflervrard's, THE LAST LOOK. 209 when they met in after years, she had not wilfully Bought to destroy his peace. It had all been a cruel fatality, from the first : another proof of the pitiless laws which govern human nature, and make men and women suffer as sorely for errors of ignorance and inexperience as for crimes of knowledge. He knelt by the bedside, and taking her cold hand kissed it solemnly. Peace was between them, he thought, then and for ever. She too, with all her faults and all her follies, had been a fellow-pilgrim by his side towards the great bourne whence no pilgrim returns, and she had reached it first. He remembered now, not the woman who had flaunted her shamelessness before his eyes, but the pretty girl, almost a child, whom he had first known and fancied that he loved. In the intensity of his compassion and self-reproach he even exaggerated the tenderness he had once felt for her; the ignoble episode of their first intercourse catching a sad brightness reflected from the heavens of death. And in this mood, penitent and pitying, he prayed that God might forgive them both. When he descended from the room, his eyes were red with tears. He found the little boy sobbing wildly in the room below, attended by the kindly Frenchwoman who kept the house. He tried, to soothe him, but found it impossible, his grief being most painful to witness, and violent in the extreme. ' Ah, monsieur, it is indeed a calamity ! ' cried the woman. ' Madame was so good a mother, devoted to her child. But God is good — the little one Has a father still ! ' Bradley understood the meaning of her words, ,but did not attempt to undeceive her. His heart was welling over with tenderness towards the pretty orphan, and he was thinking too of his own harsh judgments on the dead, who, it was clear, had possessed many redeeming virtues, not the least of them being her attachment to her boy. ' You are right, madame^ he replied, sadly, ' and the little one shall not lack fatherly love and care. WiU you come with me for a few moments ? I wish to speak to you alone.' He placed his hand tenderly on the child's head, and again tried to soothe him, but he shrank away with petu- P 210 ISE NEW ABELARD. lant Bcreams and cries. Walking to the front entrance he waited till he waa. joined there by the landlady, ^nd they stood talking' in the open i^r^ : , ' How long had -she feeen here, inadama?,' he asked. ' For a month, monsiear,'i was. the reply. : f She came late in the season for the baths, with her bonne and the little boy) and -took jnly rooms. Pardon, ibut L: did; not know madame had a husbaind living, and so near.' I ' We have been separated for many years. I came to Boulogne' yesterday quite by accident, ,not dreaming the lady was here. Cane you tell me if she' has friends in Boulogne ? ' ' I do, not think so, monsieur. She- lived ■ quite alone/ seeing no one, and- her only thought and care was for the little boy. She 'was a proud lady, rery rich and proud ; nothing was too good for her, or, for the child ; she livedo as the saying, is, en pein6esse. But ?.o, she had no friends ! Doubtless,' being an English lady, though she -spoke and looked like a compatriote, all her frieasls were in her own land.' • ' Just so,' returned Bradley, turning his head away to hide his tears ; for he thought to himself, ' Poor Mary ! After all, she was desolate: like myself I How pitiful that I, of all men,: should close her eyes and follow her to her last repose ! ' 'Pardon, monsieur,' said the woman, 'but madame^ perhaps, was not of our Church? She was, no doubt, Protestant?' It was a simple question, but, sim])le as it was, Bradley was startled by it.' He knew about as much- of his dead wife's professed belief as of th'B source whence she had drawn her subsistence. But he replied : ' Ye^, certainly. Protestant, of course.' ' Then monsieur wilL ^eak to the English elergyman, who dwells thereon the hill '•■ (here she pointed townward), ' close to Ijie English church; He is a good man, Monsieur Robertson, and monsieur will find ' . ' 'I will speak ito him,' interrupted Bj-adley. ' But I myself am an English clergyman, and shall', doubtless perform the last offices,: when the-itilne Corhfesi' The woman .looked at him in some astonishment, for ''TtiE LAST.ZOOSr '^ au his pceeetiee was thie reverse of detical, and his struggle in and with the sea had left his attirS in-juost admired dis- order 'f but die remeinberefd'the eccentriSiitiesof the nation to which he belongedjr&nd' her wander abated. • After giving the womania felV mor^.generalanstructions, Bradley walked'slpwiy and thoughtfully to his hotel. , ,-- More than once already his thoughts had turned towards Alma, but he had checked such thoughts and crushed them down in the presence of death; left to, himself, however, he could not conquer them, nor restrain, a certain feeling of satisfaction in his. newly-found freedom. He would write to Alma, as.'ia' duty bound, at once, and tell, her of all that had happened. And then?-' It was too late,r perhaps, to, makei-fiilLatnends, to expect full forgiveness; but it was his duty to give to her in the sight of the world the name he bad once.'given to her secretly and in vain. But the man's troubled spirit, sensitive to a degree, shrank from the idea.of;buiIding.up any new happiness on the grave of the poor woman, whose corpse he, had just quitted. Although he was no,w a free man legally, he still felt morally bound and fettered. Ail his wish and prayer was to atone for the evil he had brought on the one being he reverehced atid loved. He did not dare, at least as yet, to think of uniting his unworthy life with a life so infinitely more beautiful and pure. Yes, he would write' to her. The question was, where his letter would find her, and how soon? When he. had last heard froin her she was at Milan, but that was several weeks ago ; and since then, .though he had written itwice, ithere- had' been.no response, i She* was possibly travelling farther southward ; in alL possibility, to Koine. ■ .' ; . ' : . The next few days passed drearily enough; , An examinatidn of some, letters recently received: by the de- ceased discovered two facts^first,; that .she had a sister^ living in . Ox&rd, with* whom! she . corresponded ; ' and^ socondjthatiher means of subsistence came quarterly from a firm of solicitors in Bedford Row, London. Next day the sister arrived by steamboat, accoinpanied bj^r her hus^ band, a small tradesman. Bradley interviewed the pair, and found them decent people, well acquainted with' their * 2 218 TSE NEW ABELAllD. relative's real position. The same day he received a com- munication from the solicitors, notifying that the annuity enjoyed by * Mrs. Montmorency' lapsed with her decease, but that a large Bum of money had been settled by the late Lord Ombermere upon the child, the interest of the sum to be used for his maintenance and education, and the gross amount with additions and under certain reservations, to be at his disposal on attaining his majority. On seeking an interview with the Rev. Mr. Robertson, the minister of the English Church, Bradley soon found that his reputation had preceded him. * Do I address the famous Mr. Bradley, who some time ago seceded from the English Church?' asked the minister, a pale, elderly, clean-shaven man, bearing no little resem- blance to a Roman Catholic priest. Bradley nodded, and at once saw the not too cordial manner of the other sink to freezing-point. ' The unfortunate lady was your wife 7 ' ' Yes ; but we had been separated for many years.' 'Ah, in deed 1' sighed the clergyman with a long- drawn sigh, a furtive glance of repulsion, and an inward exclamation of * No wonder ! ' ' Although we lived apart, and although, to be frank, there was great misunderstanding between us, all that is over for ever, you imderstand. It is in a spirit of the greatest tend^rntesEi and compassion that I wish to conduct the funeral service — ^to which I presume there is no objection.' Mr. Ijobertson started in amazement, as if a bomb had fex^l(ided tinder his feet. ' To conduct the funeral service I But you have Seceded from the Church of England.' ' In a sense, yes ; but I have never done so formally. I am still an English clergyman.' ' I could never consent to such a thing,' cried the other, indignantly. 'I should look upon it as profanity. Your piibli'shed opinions are known to me, sir ; they have shocked me inexpressibly ; and not only in my opinion, but in that of my spiritual superiors, they are utterly un- worthy of one calling himself a Christian.' * Then you refuse me permission to officiate 7 ' Most emphatically. More than that, I shall ret][uire TBE LAST LOOK. 213- Bome assurance that the lady did not share your heresies, before I will suffer the interment to take place in the pre- cincts of my church.' ' Is not my assurance sufficient 7 ' 'No, sir, it is «oi !' exclaimed the clergyman with scornful dignity. ' I do not wish to say anything offen- sive, but speaking as a Christian, and a pastor of the English Church, I can attach no weight whatever to the assurances of one who is, in the public estimation, nothing better than an avowed infidel. Good morning I ' So saying, with a last withering look, the clergyman turned on his heel and walked away. , Seeing that remonstrance was useless, and might even cause public scandal, Bradley forthwith abandoned his design; but, at his suggestion, his wife's sister saw the incumbent, and succeeded in conviiicing him that Mrs. Montmorency had died in the true faith. . The result of Mr. Robertson's pious indignation was soon apparent. The sister and her husband, who had hitherto treated Bradley with marked respect, now regarded him with sullen dislike and suspicion. They could not prevent him, how- ever, from following as chief mourner, when the day of the funeral came. That funeral was a dismal enough experience for Ambrose Bradley. Never before had he felt so keenly the vanity of his own creed and the isolation of his own opinions, as when he stood by the graveside and listened to the last solemn words of the English burial service. He seemed like a black shadow in the sacred place. The words of promise and resurrection had little meaning for one who. had come to regard the promise as only beautiful 'poetry,' and the resurrection as only a poet's dream. And though the sense of his own sin lay on his heart like lead, he saw no benign Presence blessing the miserable woman who had departed, upraising her on wings of glad- ness. All he perceived was Death's infinite desolation, »nd the blackness of that open grave. 214 THE NEW ABELABD. CHAPTER XXVII. THE SIREN. ., Weare a drele round hinfthrfee. , > For he on honey-dew batb fed, I ' . And drunk the miJ..kla Khan, i I . ■ 1 ' ': ■ r I ■■ ■ ■ Bradley's first impulse, on quittipg Boulogne, was to hasten at once ott' to 'Italy, seek out i[lina,'and ;teli lier all tbat had occurred ; J)ut 'thai impulse was 'no sooner felt thanit was conquered.'' /tie man had a quickening con- science left, and he could not have stood just then before the woman he loved without the bitterest pain and humilia- tion. No ; he would write to her. He . would break the news gently by letter, not by word of mouth ; and after- wards, perhaps, when ' his sense of spiritual ^gony had somewhat worn awayj he would go to her, and throw himself upon her tender mercy. So instead of flying on to Italy, he returned by the mail to London, and thence wrote at length to Alma, giving her full details of his wife'^ death. ^ ,! ! By this time the man was so broken in spirit, and so changed in^ body, that even his worst enernies might hav^ pitiedhim.' The trouble' of the^last^fe^r months had stript him of all his intellectual pride, and left him 'supremely Bad. ' . . But now, as ever, the mind of the man, though its light was cloudei), turned in the direction of celestial or supermundane jpiings. Eeaders who ^are- diflferently cour stituted, and who regard such speculations as trivial or irrelevant, will, doubtless, have some difficulty in compre- hending an individual who, through all vicissitudes of moral experience, invariably returned to the one set pur- pose of q)iritiial inquiry. To him one thing was para- mount, even over all his own sorrow's— the solution of the great problem of human life and immortality. This was his haunting idea, his monomania, so to speak. Just as a p]>ysiologist would examine his own blood under the ±jij!j aiujujy. 215 microacopfr, just as a scientific inquirer would sacrifice his own life and happiness for the verification of a theory, so would Bradley ask himself, even when on the rack of moral tormient, How far does this suffering help me to a solution of the mystery of life? True, for a time he had been indifferent, even callous, drifting, on the vagua current of agnosticism, he knew not whither ; but that did not Jast for long. The very consti- tution of Bradley saved him from that indifferentness which is the chronic disease of so many modern men. Infinitely tender of heart, he had been moved to' the depths by his recent experience. He had felt, as all of us at some time feel, the sanctifying and purifying power of death. A mean man would have exulted in the new free- dom death had brought. Bradley, on the other hand, stood stupefied and aghast at his own liberation. On a point of conscience he could have fought with, and perhaps conquered, all the prejudices of society, but when his very conscience turned against him he was paralysed with doubt, wonder, and. despair. He returned to London, and there awaited Alma's answer. One day, urged by a sudden impulse, he bent his steps towards the mysterious house in Bayswater, and found Eustasia Mapleleafe sitting alone. Never had the little lady looked feo strange and spirituelle. • Her elfin-like face looked pale and worn, and her great wistful eyes were surrounded with dark, melancholy rings. But she looked up as he entered with her old smile. ' I knew you would come,' she cried. ' I was thinking of you, and I felt the celestial agencies were going to bring us together; And I'm real glad to see you before we go away.' ; ' You are leaving London ? ' asked Bradley, as he seated himself close to her. ' Yes. Salem talks of going back home before winter sets iii and the fogs begin. I don't seem able to hreathe right in this air. If I stopped here long 1 think I should die.' . As she spoke she passed her thin transparent hand across her forehead with a curious gesture of pain. As Bradley looked at her steadfastly she averted his gaee, and a faint hectic flush came into her cheeks. 216 THE NEW ABEUlMD. ' Guess you think it don't matter much,' she continued, with the sharp, nervous laugh peculiar to her, ' whether I live or die. Well, Mr. Bradley, I suppose you're right, and I'm sure I don't care much how soon I go.' ' You are very young to talk like that,' said Bradley, gently. ' But perhaps' I misunderstand you, and you mean that you would gladly exchange this life for freer activity aud larger happiness in another.' ' Euatasia laughed again, hut this time she looked full into her questioner's eyes. ' I don't know about that,' she replied. ' What I mean is that I am downright' tired, and should just like a good long spell of sleep.' ' But surely, if your belief is true, you look for some- thing, more than that 1 ' ' ' I don't think I do. You mean I want to join the spirits and go wandering about from one planet to another, or coming down to earth and making people uncomfortable. That seems a stupid sort of life^ doesn't it? — ^about as stupid as this one. I'd rather tuck my head under my wing, like a little bird, and go to sleep for ever.' Bradley opened his eyes, amazed and a little discon- certed by the lady's candour. Before he could make any reply, she continued, in a low voice : * You see, I've got no one in the world to care for me, ■ except Salem, tbj brother. He's good to me, he is, but that doesn't make up for everything. I don't feel like a girl, but like an old woman. I'd father be one of those foolish creatures you meet everywhere, who think of nothing but millinery and flirtation, than what I am. That's all the good the spirits have done me, to spoil my good looks and make me old before my time. I hate them^ sometimes. I hate myself for'listening to them, and I say what I said "before — that if I'm to live on as they do, and go on in the same curious way, I'd sooner die ! ' ' I wish you would be quite honest with me,' said Bradley, after a brief pause. ' I see you are ill, and I am sure you are unhappy. Suppose much of your illness and all your unhappiness came from your acquiescence in a scheme of folly and self-deception ? You already know my opinion on these matters to which you allude. If I may TMM SlllEN. : 217 ppeak quite frankly, I have always suspected you and your brother— rbut your brothei- more thail you — of a con- spiracy to deceive the public, and if I were not otherwise interested in you, if I did not feel for you the utmost sympathy and compassion, I should pass the matter by without a word. As it is, I would give a great deal i£ I could penetrate into the true motives of your conduct and ascertain how far you are self-deluded.' 'It's no use,' answered Eustasia, shaking her head sadly. ' I can't explain it all even to myself; impossible to explain to you.' ' But do you seriously and verily believe in the truth of these so-called spiritual manifestations?' ' Guess I do,' returned the lady, with a decided nod. ' You believe in them, even while you admit their stupidity, their absurdity ? ' ' If you ask me, I think life is a foolish business alto- gether. That's why I'd like to be done with it.' ' But surely if spiritualism were an kccepted fact, it would offer a solution of all the mysterious phenomena of human existence 7 It would demonstrate, at all events, that our experience does not cease with the body, which limits its area so much.' Eustasia sighed wearily, and folding her thin hands on her knee looked wearily at the fire, which flickered faintly in the grate. With all her candour of speech, she still presented to her interlocutor an expression of mysterious evasiveness. Nor was there any depth in her complaining sorrow. It seemed rather petulant and shallow than really solemn and profound. ' I wish you wouldn't talk about it,' she said. ' Talk to me about yourself, Mr. Bradley. You've been in trouble, I know ; they told me. I've liked you ever since I first saw you, and I wish I could give you some help.' Had Bradley been a different kind of man, he would; scarcely have misunderstood the look she gave him then, full as it was of passionate admiration which she took no care to veil. Bending towards him, and looking into his eyes, she placed her hand on his ; and the warm touch of the tremulous fingers went through him with a curious thrill. Nor did she withdraw the hand as she continued : 218 THE NEW ABELAUD. ' I've Only seen one man in the world like you. He's dead, he is. But you're his image. I told Salem so the day I first saw you. Some folks say that souls pass from one body, into- another, and I almost believe it when I think of him and look at you.' As she spoke, with tears in her eyes and a higher flush on her cheek, there was a footstep in the room, and looking up she saw her brother, who had entered unperceived. His appearance was fortunate, as it perhaps saved her from some further indiscretions. Bradley, who had been too ab- sorbed in the thoughts awakened by her first question to notice the peculiarity of her manner, held out his hand to the new-comer, 'Glad to see you again,' said the Professor. ' 'I suppose Eustasia has told you that we're going back to the States 7 I calculate we haven't done much good bysailing over. The people of England are a whole age behind Ijbe Americans, and won't be ripe for our teaching till many a year has passed.' ' When do you leave London 7 ' ' In eight days. We're going to take passage in the Maria^ which sails to-morrow week.' ' Then you will give no more seances 1 I am soiTy, for I should have liked to come again.' Eustasia started, and looked eagerly at her brother. ' Will you come to-night 7 ' she asked suddenly. * To-night 1 ' echoed Bradley. ' Is a seance to be held?' ' No, no,' interrupted Mapleleafe. ' But yes,' added Eustasia. ' We shall be alone, but that will , be all the better. I should not like to leave England without convincing Mr. Bradley that there is something in your solar biology, after all.' ' You'll waste your time; Eustasia,' remarked the Professor drily. ' You know what the poet says 7 A man convinced against hia will Is of the same opinion still. And I guess you'll never convert Mr. Bradley.' ' ril try, at any rate,' returned Eustasia, smiling ; then turning to the clergyman with an eager wistful look, she added, ' You'll come, won't you J To-night at seven.' THE SIBEK 219 Bradley promised, and immediately afterwards took bis leave. He had not exaggerated in expressing his regret at the departure of the curious pair; for since his strange experience at Boulogne he was intellectually un- strung, and eager to receive spiritual impressions, even from a quarter which he distrusted. He unconsciously felt, too,' the indescribable fascination which Eustasia, more than most women, knew how to exert on highly-organised persons of the opposite sex. Left alone, the brother and sister looked at each other for some moments in silence ; then the Professor exclaimed half angrily : * You'll kill yourself, Eustasia, that's what ymCll do ! I've foreseen it all along, just as I foresaw it when you first met Ulysses S. Stedman. You're clean gone on this man, and if I wasn't ready to protect you. Lord knows you'd make a fool of yourself again .^ Eustasia looked up in his face and laughed. It was curious to note her change of look and manner ; her face was still pale and elfin-like, but her eyes were full of malicious light. ' Never mind, Salem,' she replied. ' You just leave Mr. Bradley to me.' ' He's not worth spooning over,' said Mapleleafe indig- nantly ; ' and, let me tell you, Eustasia, you're not strong enough to go on like this. Think of your state of health ! Doctor Quin says you'll break up if you don't take care ! ' He paused, and looked at her in consternation. She was lying back in the sofa with her thin arms joined behind her head, and crooning to herself, as was her frequent habit. This time the words and tune were from a familiar play, which she had seen represented at San Francisco. Black spirits and vhite. Blue spirits and grey. Mingle, mingle, mingle, You that mingle may ! ' I do believe you're downright mad ! ' exclaimed the little Professor. ' TeU me the truth, Eustasia — do you love this man Bradley 7 ' Eustasia ceased singing, but remained in the same attitude. 220 THE NEW ABELARt). ' I loved him who is dead,' she replied, ' and I love Mr. ^radley because he is so like the other. If you give me time I will win him over ; I will make him love me.'' ' What nonsense you're talking 1 ' * Nonsense ? It's the truth ! ' cried Eustasia, springing up and facing her brother. ' Why should I not love him ? Why should he not love me ? Am I to spend all my life like a slave, with no one to care for me, no one to give me a kind word? I won't do it. I want to be free. I'm tired of sitting at home all day alone, and playing the sibyl to the fools ;you bring here at night. Lord knows I haven't long to live; before I die I want to draw in one good long breath of love and joy 1 Perhaps it will kill me as you say — so much the better — I should like to die like that ! ' ' Eustasia, will you listen to . reason ? ' exclaimed the distracted Professor. ' You're following a will-o'-the-wisp, that's what you are 1 This man don't care about any woman in the world but one, and you're wasting your precious time.' ' I know my power, and you know it too, Salem. I'm going to bringhim to my feet.' ' How, Eustasia ? ' ' Wait, and you will see I ' answered the girl, with her low, nervous laugh. ' Think better of it !' persisted her brother. 'You promised me, after Ulysses S. Stedman died, to devote all your life, strength, and thought to the beautiful cause of scientific, spiritualism. Nature has made you a living miracle, Eustasia 1 I do admire to see one so gifted throw- ing herself away, just like a school-girl, on the first good- looking man she meets ! ' ' I hate spirittialism,' was the reply. ' What has it done for me 7 Broken my heart, Salem, and wasted my life. I've dwelt too long jvith ghosts ; I want to feel my life as other women do, And-I tell you I will 1 ' The poor Professor shook his head dubiously, but saw that there was no more to be said — at any rate just then. ■At seven o'clock that evening Bradley returned to the house in Bayswater, and found the brother and sister wait- ing for him. THE SIREN. 221 Eustasia wore a loose-fitting robe of black velvet, cut low round the bust, and without sleeves. Her neck and arms were beautifully though delicately moulded, white and glistening as satin, and the 'small serpent-like head, with its wonderfully brilliant eyes, was surmounted by a circlet of pearls. Bradley looked at her in surprise. Never before had she seemed so weirdly pretty. The Professor, on the other hand, despite his gnome- like brow, appeared unusually ignoble and commonplace. He was ill at ease, too, and cast distrustful glances from time to time at his sister,' whose manner was as brilliant as her appearance, and who seemed to have cast aside the de- pression which she had shown during the early part of the day. After some little desultory conversation, Bradley ex- pressed his impatience for the seance to, begin. The land- lady of the house, herself (as the reader is aware) an adept, was therefore summoned to give the party, and due prepa- rations made by drawing the window-blinds and extinguisli- ing the gas. Before the lights were quite put out, however, the Professor addressed his sister. ' Eustasia, you're not well! Say the word, and I'm sure Mr. Bradley will excuse you for to-night.' The appeal was in vain, Eustasia persisting. The seance began. The Professor and Mrs. Piozzi Smith were vis-a-vis, while Eustasia, her back towards the folding-doors communicating to the inner chamber, sat opposite to Bradley. The clergyman was far less master of himself than' on the former occasions. No sooner did he find himself in total darkness than his heart began to beat with great muffled throbs, and nervous thrills ran through his frame. Before there was the slightest intimation of any super- natural presence, he seemed to see before him the dead face of his Tfrife, white and awful as he had beheld it in that darkened chamber at Boulogne. Then the usual manifes- tations began; bells were rung, faint lights flashed hither and thither, the table round which they were seated' rose in the air, mysterious hands were passed over Bradley's face. He tried to retain his self-possession, but found it 222 TSE NEW ABELARD. impossible ; a sickening sense of horror'and fearfal antici- pation overmastered him, so that the clammy snreat stood upon his brow, and his body trembled like a reed. Presently the voice of the little Professor was heard saying: ' Who is present ? Will any of our dear friends make thetoselVeS known 7 ', There was a momentary pause. Then an answer came in the voice of Eustasia, but deeper and less clear. ' I am here.' •Who are you?' ' Laura, a spirit of the winged planet Jupiter. I speak through the bodily mouth of our dear sister, who is far away, walking with my brethren by the lake of golden fire.' ' Are you alone ? ' . ' No ! others are present— -I see them passing to and fro. One is blight and beautiful. Her face is glorious, but she wears a raiment like a shroud.' ' What does .that betoken 7 ' ' It betokens that she has only just died. A shiver ran through Bradley's frame. Could the dead indeed be present 7 and if so, what dead 7 His thoughts flew baok'once more to that miserable death-chamber by the sea. The next moment something like a cold hand touched him, and a low voice murmured in his ear : ' Ambrose I are you listening 7 It is 1 1 ' ' ' Who speaks 7 ' he murmured under breath, 'Almal . Do .you know me 7 ' Was it possible 7 Doubtless his phantasy deceived him, but he seemed once more to hear the very tones of her he loved. *,Do not move 1 ' continued the voice.' ' Perhaps this is a last inieeting f or a long time, for I am called away. It is your Alma's spirit that speaks to you ; her body lies dead abEome.? A wild cry burst from Bradley's lips, and he sank back inhis^shair, paralysed and overpowered. ' ^ It is a cheat ! ' he gasped. 'It is no ■ spirit that ia speaking to me, but a living' woman.' And he clutched in the direction of the voice, but touched only the empty air. TSM SIREN. 223 ' Bradley,' she said, ' what is it? ' IN PARIS. 24T, He passed his hand across his brow as if to dispel' a dream, and looked at her curiously. 'Eustasia,' he said, using for the first time her Chris- tian name, ' speak the truth to me to-day ; tell me, is all this real?' 'Is what real?'' she asked, trembling. His presence made her faint, and the sound of her name, as he had spoken it, rang continually in her ears. ' Is it not all a lie ? Tell me that what you have done once you can do again ; that you can bring me once more into the presence of the spirit of her I love ! ' ' Of her yon love ? ' said the girl, fixing her large eyes wistfully upon his face. ' What — what do you want me to do ? ' ' Prove that it is not all a lie and a cheat : if you are a true woman, as I trust, I want you to bring back to me the spirit of my darling who is dead 1 ' She shrank for a moment from him, a sickening feel- ing of despair clouding all her senses ; then she bowed her head. ' When will you come ? ' she said. ' To-night.' Euatasia sank into her chair, and, without anothei^ word, Bradley departed. At seven o'clock that night Bradley returned, and found the sibyl waiting for him. She was quite alone. Since the morning her manner had completely changed ; her hands were trembling, her cheek was flushed, but there was a look of strange deter- mination about her lips and in her eyes. Bradley shook hands with her, then looked around as if expecting others. She smiled curiously. 'We are to be alone!' she said — 'quite alon6. I thought it better for you ! ' Eor some time she made no attempt to move; at length, noticing Bradley's impatience, she said quietly — ' We wiU begin.' * She rose and placed herself opposite Bradley, and fixed her eyes intently upon him. Then, at her request, he turned down the gas ; they were in almost total dark- ness touching hands. 8 242 IBE NEW ABELAUD. For some time after Bradley sat in a strange dream, scarcely conscious of anything that was taking place, and touching the outstretched hands of Eustasia with his own. Suddenly a soft voice close to his ear murmured — ' Ambrose, my love ! ' He started from his chair, and gazed wildly about him. He could see nothing, but he could feel something stirring close to him. Then he • staggered back like a drunken man, atid fell back in his chair. 'Alma!' he cried piteously, still conscious of the medium's trembling hands, 'Alma, my darling, come to me!' For a moment there was silence, and Bradley could hear the beating of his heart. Then he became conscious of a soft hand upon his head ; of lips that seemed to him like warm human lips pressed against his forehead. Gasping and trembling he cried — ' Alma, speak ;' is it you ? * The same soft voice answered him — 'Yes, it is 11': The hand passed again softly over his head and around his neck, and a pair of lips rich and warm were pressed passionately against his own. Half mad with excitement, Bradley threw one arm around the figure he felt to be near him, sprang to his feet while it struggled to disen- gage itself, turned up the light, and gazed full into the eyes of — Eustasia Mapleleafe. Never till his dying day did Bradley forget the expres- sion of the face which the sibyl now turned towards his own, while, half crouching, half struggling, she tried to free herself from the grip of his powerful arms; for though the cheeks were pale as death, the eyes wildly dilated, they expressed no terror — rather a mad and reckless despera- tion. The mask had quite fallen ; any attempt at further disguise would have been sheer waste of force and time, and Eustasia stood revealed once and for all as a cunning and dangerous trickster, a serpent of miserable deceit. Yet she did not quail. She looked at the man boldlj', and presently, seeing he continued to regard her stead- fastly, as if lost in horrified wonder, she gave vent to her characteristic, scarcely audible, crooning laugh. IN PARIS. 213 A thrill of horror went through him, as if he were under the spell o£ something diabolic. For a moment he felt impelled to seize her by the throat and strangle her, or to savagely dash her to the ground. Conquering the impulse, he held her still as in a vicej until at last he found a voice — ' Then you have lied to me ? It has all been A lie from the beginning?' ' Let me go,' she panted, ' and I will answer you 1 ' ' Answer me now,' he said between his set teeth. But the sibyl was not made of the sort of stuff to be conquered by intimidation. A fierce look came into her wonderful eyes, and her lips were closely compressed to- gether. ' Speak — ^^or I may, kill you ! ' he cried. ' Ell me, then ! ' she answered. ' Guess I don't care ! ' There was something in the wild face which mastered him in spite of himself. His hands relaxed, his arms sank useless at his side, and he uttered a deep despairmg groan.^ Simultaneously she sprang to her feet, and stood looking^ down at him. ' Why did you break the conditions ? ' she asked in a low voice. ' The spirits won't be trifled with in that way, and they'll never forgive you, or me ; never.' He made no sign that he heard her, but stood moveless, his head sunk between his shoulders, his eyes fixed upon the ground. Struck by the sudden change in him, she moved towards him, and was about to touch him on the shoulder, when he rose, still white as death, and faced her once more. ' Do not touch me I ' he cried. ' Do not touch me, and do not, if you have a vestige of goodness left within you, try to torture me again. But look me in the face, and answer me, if you can, truly, remembering it is the last time we shall ever meet. When you have told me the truth, I shall leave this place, never to return ; shall leave you, never to look upon your face again. Tell me the truth, woman, and I will try to forgive you ; it will be very hard, but I will try. I know I have been your dupe from the beginning, and that what I have seen and heard has been only a treacherous mirage called up by an adventuress and B2 244 THE NEW ABELARD. her accomplioea. Is it not so 1 Speak ! Let me have the truth from your own lips.' ' I can't tell,' answered E astasia coldly. ' If you mean that my brother and I have conspired to deceive you, it is Ti falsehood. We are simply agents in the hands of higher agencies than ours.' 'Once more, cease that Jargon,' cried Bradley; 'tha time has long past for its use. Will you confess, before we part for ever ? You wiU not 1 Then good-bye, and God forgive you.' So saying he moved towards the door ; but with a sharp, Hrd-like cry she called him back. ' Stay I you must not go 1 ' He turned again towards her : ' Then will you be honest with me 7 It is the last and only thing I shall ask of you.' ' I — I will try,' she answered in a broken voice. 'You will!' ' Yes ; if you will listen to me patiently.' She sank into a' chair, and covered her face with her hands. He stood watching her, and saw that her thin, white, trembling fingers were wet with tears. * Promise,' she said, ' that what I am about to say to you shall never be told to any other living soul.' * I promise.' ' Not even to my brother.' * Not even to Azm.' There was a long pause, during which he waited im- patiently for her to continue. At last, conquering her agitation, she uncovered her face, and motioned to a chair opposite to her ; he obeyed her almost mechanically, and sat down. She looked long and wistfully at him, and sighed several times as if in pain. \ Salem says I shan't live long,' she murmured thought- fully. ' To-night, more than ever, I felt like dying.' She paused and waited as if expecting him to speak, but he was silent. ' Guesa you don't care if I live or die 7 ' she added piteously, more like a sick child than a grown woman — ■ and waited again. ' I think I do care,' he answered sadly, ' for in spite of IN PARIS. 245 nil the anguish you have caused me, I am sorry for you. But I am not mysfelf , not the man you once knew. All my Boul is set upon one quest, and I care for nothing more in all the world. I used to believe there was a God ; that there was a life after death ; that if those who loved each other parted here, they might meet again elsewhere. In my despair and doubt, I thought that you could give me assurance and heavenly hope ; and I clutched at the shadows you summoned up before me. I know now how unreal they were ; I know now that you were playing tricks upon my miserable soul.' She listened to him, and when he ceased began to cry again. ' I never meant any harm to you,^ she sobbed ! ' I — ■ I loved you too well.' * You loved me ! ' he echoed in amaze. She nodded quickly, glancing at him with her keen wild eyes. ' Yes, Mr. Bradley. When Salem first took me to hear you preach, you seemed like the spirit of a man I once loved, and who once loved me. He's dead now, he is ; died over there in the States, years ago. Well, afterwards, when I saw you again, I began to make believe to myself that you were that very man, and that he was living again in you. You think me crazy, don't you ? Ah well, you'll think me crazier when you hear all the rest. I soon found out all about you ; it wasn't very hard, and our people have ways of learning things you'd never guess. I didn't look far till I found out your secret ; that you loved another woman, I mean. That made me care for you all the more.' Her manner now was quite simple and matter-of-fact. Her face was quite tearless, and, with hands folded in her lap, she sat quietly looking into his face. He listened in sheer stupefaction. Until that moment no suspicion of the truth had ever flashed upon his mind. As Eustasia spoke, her features sfeemed to become elfin-like and old, with a set expression of dreary and incurable pain ; but she made her avowal wifihout the slightest indication of shame or self- reproach, though her manner, from time to time, was that of one pleading for sympathy and pity. She continued — 216 THE NEW ABELARD. ' You don't understand me yet, and I guess you never ■will. Tinnot a European, and I haven't been brought up like other girl?. I, don't seem ever to have been quite- young. . I grew friends with the spirits when I wasn't old enough to understand, and they seem to have stolen my light heart away, and put another in its place.' ' Why do you speak of such things as if they were real ? You know the whole thing is a trick and a lie.' ' No, I don't,' she answered quickly. * I'm not deny- ing that I've played tricks with them, just as they've played tricks with me; but they're downright real — they are indeed. First mother used to come to me, when I was very little ; then others, and in after-days I saw Mm ; yes, after he was dead. Then sometimes,, when they wouldn't come, Salem helped out the manifestations, thaf s all.' ' For God's sake, be honest with me ! ' cried Bradley. ' Confess- that all these things are simple imposture. That photograph of yourself, for example — do you remember? — the picture your brother left in my room, and which faded away when, I breathed upon it ? ' She nodded her head again, and laughed strangely : ' It was a man out West that taught Salem how to do that,' she replied naively. ' Then it was a trick, as I suspected 7 ' ' Yes, I guess that was a trick. It was soipething they used in fixing the likeness, which made it grmv invisible after it had been a certain time in contact with the atmo- spheric ail.' Bradley uttered an impatient exclamation : ' And aU the rest was of a piece with that ! Well, I could have forgiven you everything but having personified one who is now lost to me for ever.' ' I never did. I suppose you wished to see her, and .she came to you out of the spirit-land.' ' Now you are lying to me again.' f Don't .you thiijk I'm lying,' was the answer; 'for it's gospel-truth I'm telling you. I'm not so bad as you think me,, not half so bad.' Again shrinking from her, he looked at her with angei and loathing. ' The device was exposed to-day,' he said sternly^ 7JV" PARI8. 247 ' You spoke to me with her voice, and tirlien I turned up the light I found that I was holding in my arms no spirit, but yourself.' ' Well, I'm not denying that's true,' she answered with another laugh, ' Something came over me — I don't know how it happened — and then, all at once, I was kissing you, and I had broken the conditions.' By this time Bradley's brain had cleared, and he was better able to grasp the horrible reality of the situation. It was quite clear to him that the sibyl was either an utter impostor, or a person whose mental faculties were darkened by fitful clouds of insanity. What startled and horrified him most of all was the utter want of maidenly shame, the curious and weird sang-froid, with which she made her extraordinary confession. Her frankness, so far as it went, was something terrible — or, as the Scotch express it, ' un- canny.' Across his recollection, as he looked and listened, came the thought of one of those mysterious sibyls, familiar to mediseval superstition, who come into the world with all the outward form and beauty of women, but without a soul, but who might gain a spiritual ex- istence in some mysterious way by absorbing the souls of men. The idea was a ghastly one, in harmony with his distempered fancy, and he could not shake it away.' ' Tell me,' said Eustasia gently, ' tell me one thing, now I have told you so much. Is that poor lady dead indeed — I mean the lady you used to love ? ' The question went into his heart like a knife, and trith livid face he rose to his feet. ' Do not speak of her 1 ' he cried, ' I cannot bear it — it is blasphemy 1 Miserable woman, do you think that you will ever be forgiven for tampering, as you have done, with the terrible truth of death? I came to you in the last despairing hope that among all the phantoms you have conjured up before me there might be some reality ; for I was blind and mad, and scarcely knew what I did. If it is any satisfaction to you, know that you have turned the world into a tomb for me, and destroyed my last faint ray of faith in a living God. In my misery, I clung to the thought of your spirit world ; and I came to you for some 248 THE liFEW ABELABD. fresh assurance that such a world might be. All that is over pow. It is a cheat and a fraud like all the rest.' With these words he left her, passing quickly from the room. Directly afterwards she heard the street door close behind him. Tottering to the window, she looked down in the street, and saw him stalk rapidly by, his white face set hard as granite, his eyes looking steadily before him, fixed on vacancy. As he disappeared, she uttered a low cry of pain, and placed her hand upon her heart. CHAPTER XXXI. AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. Give me thy hand, terrestrial ; so ! Grive me thy hand, celestial; BO ! — Merry Wives of Windsor. It was the close of a bright sunshiny day in the spring of 18' — . The sun was setting crimson on the lonely peak of t)he Zugspitz in the heart of the Bavarian Highlands, and the shadows of the pine woods which fringed the melancholy gorges beneath were lengthening towards the valleys. Through one of these mountain gorges, following a rocky footpath, a man was rapidly walking. He was roughly, almost rudely, dressed in a sort of tourist suit. On his head he wore a broadbrimmed felt hat of the shape frequently worn by clergymen, and in his hand he carried a staff like a shepherd's crook. Scarcely looking to left or right, but hastening with impatient paces he hurried onward, less like a man hastening to some eagerly sought shelter, than like one flying from some hated thing behind his back. His. cheeks, were pale and sunken, his eyes wild and sad. From time to time he slackened his speed, and looked wearily around him — up to the desolate sunlit peaks, down the darkening^ valley with its green pastures, belts of woodland and fields of growing corn. But whichever way he looked, he seemed to find no joy in the prospect, indeed hardly to behold the thing he looked on, but to gaze through it and beyond it on somo sorrowM portent. AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 249 Sometimes where the path became unusually steep and dangerous, he sprang from rock to rock with reckless haste, or when its thread was broken, as frequently hap- pened, by some brawling mountain stream, he entered the torrent without hesitation, and passed recklessly across. Indeed, the man seemed utterly indifferent to physical conditions, but labouring rather xmder some spiritual possession, completely and literally realising in his person the words of the poet : Eis own mind did like a tempest strong Come to him thus, and drove the weary wight along. The wild scene was in complete harmony with his con- dition. It was still and desolate, no sound seeming to break its solemn silence; but pausing and listening intently, one would in reality have become conscious of many sounds — the deep under-murmur of the mountain streams, the ' sough ' of the wind in the pine woods, the faint tinkling of goat-bells from the distant valleys, the solitary cry of rock doves from the mountain caves. The man was Ambrose Bradley. Nearly a year_^d elaped since his sad experience in Borne. Since that tTme he had wandered hither and thither like another Ahasuerus; wishing for death, yet unable to die ; burthened with the terrible weight of his own sin and self-reproach, and finding no resting-place in all the world. Long before, as the reader well knows, the man's faith in the supernatural had faded. He had refined away hisN creed tiU it had wasted away of its own inanition, and when the hour of trial came and he could have called upon it for consolation, he was horrified to find that it was a corpse, instead of a living thing. Then, in his horror and despair, he had clutched at the straw of spiritualism, only to sink lower and lower in the bitter waters of Marah. He found no hope for • his soul, no foothold for his feet. He had, to use his own expression, lost the world. It was now close upon night-time, and every moment the gorges along which he was passing grew darker and darker. Through the led Bmokes of sunset one lustrous star 250 TSE NEW ABELARD. ■was just becoming visible on the extremest peak of the mountain chain. But instead of walking faster^ Bradiejr began to linger, and presently, coming to a gloomy' chaam which seemed to make further progress dangerpB(^ ini- possible, he halted and looked down. The tnmk of an uprooted pine-tree lay close to the chasm's hrink. After looking quietly round him, Jie sat down, pulled out a common wooden pipe, and began to smoke. Presently he pulled out a letter bearing the Munich post-mark, and with a face as dark as night began to look it through. It was dated from London, and ran as follows : ' Eeform Glut, March 5, 18 ; ' My dear Bradley, — ^Your brief note duly reached me, and I have duly carried out your wishes with regards to the affairs of the new church. I have also seen Sir George Craik, and found him more amenable to reason than I expected. Though he still regards you with the intensest animosity, he has sense enough to perceive that you are not directly responsible for the unhappy affair at Borne. His thoughts seem now chiefly bent on recovering his niece's property from the clutches of the Italian Jesuits, and in exposing the method by which they acquired such dominion over the unhappy lady's mind. ' But I will not speak of this further at present, knowing the anguish it must bring you. I will turn rather to the mere abstract matter of your letter, and frankly open my mind to you on the subject. ' What you say is very brief, but, from the manner in which it recurs in your correspondence, I am sure it represents the abs6rbing topic of your thoughts. Summed up in a few words, it affirms your conclusion that all human effort is impossible, to a man in your position, where the belief in personal immortality is gone. ' Now I need not go over the' old ground, with which you are quite as familiar as myself. I will not remind you of the folly and the selfishness (from one point of view) of formulating a moral creed out of what> in reality, ia merely the hereditary instinct of self-preservation. I will not repeat to you that it is nobler, after all, to live imjer- AMONG THE MOWVTAINS. 251 Bonally in the beautiful future of Humanity than io exist personally in a heaven of introspective dreamB. But I should like, if you will permit me, to point out that' this Death, this cessation of consciousness, which you dread so much, is not in itself an unmixed evil. True, just at pre- sent, in the sharpness of your bereavement, you see nothing but the shadow, and would eagerly follow into its oblivion the shape of her you mourn. But as every day passes, this desire to die will grow less keen ; and ten years hence, perhaps, or twenty years, you will look back upon to-day's anguish with a calm, sweet sense of spiritual gain, and with a peaceful sense of the sufficiency of life. Then, perhaps, embracing a creed akin to ours, and having reached a period when the physical frame begins slowly, and without pain, to melt away, you will be quite content to accept — what shall I say ? — Nirw§,na. 'What I mean, my dear friend, is this, simply i 'fliat Death is only evil when it comes ^lainftdly or prematurely ; coming in the natural order of things, in the inevitable decay of Nature, it is by no means evil. And so much is this the case that, if you were to discover the consensus of opinion among the old, who are on the threshold of the grave, you would find the majority quite content that life should end for ever. Tired out with eighty or a hundred years of living, they gladly welcome sleep. It is other- wise, of course, with the victims of accidental disease or premature decay. But in the happy world to which we Positivists look forward, these victims would not exist. ' Day by day Science, which you despise too much, is enlarging the area of human health. Think what has been done, even within the last decade, to abolish both physical and social disease I Think what has yet to be done to make life freer, purer, safer, happier ! I grant yon the millennium of the Grand £tre is still fer off; but it is most surely coming, and we can all aid, more or less, that blessed consummation — not by idle wailing, by useless dreams, or by selfish striving after an impossible personal reward, but by dijty punctually performed, by self-sacrifice cheerfully undergone, by daily and nightly endeavours to ameliorate the condition of Man. ■* Men perish ; Man is imperishable. Personal forma 252 THE NEW ABELARD. change ; tte great living persohality abides. And the time must come at last when Man shall be as God, certain of his destiny, and knowing good and evil. ' " A Job's comforter 1 " I seem to hear you cry. Well, after all, you must be your own physician. Ko man can save another's Boul, Or pay another's debt ! But I wish that you, in your distracted wandering after certainty-, would turn your thoughts our way, and try to understand what the great Founder of our system has done, and will do, for the human race. I am sure that the study will bring you comfort, late or soon. ' I am, as ever, my dear Bradley, — Your friend and well-wisher, John Cholmondelet. 'P.8. — What are you doing in Munich? I hear of curious doings this year at Ober-Ammergau, where that ghastly business, the Passion Play, is once more in course of preparation.' Bradley read this characteristic' epistle with a gloomy frown, which changed before he had finished to a look ot bitter contempt; and, as he read, he seemed once more conscious of the babble of literary club-land, and the affected jargon of the new creeds of the future. Return- ing the letter to his pocket, he continued to smoke tUl it was almost too dark to see the wreaths of fume from his own pipe. The night had completely fallen before he rose and proceeded on his way. CHAPTER XXXn. ANOTHER OLD LETTEE. Love ! if thy destined sacrifice am I, Come, slay thy victim, and prepare thy fires j Plunged in thy depths of mercy let me die The death which every Eoul that lives desires. Madame Gm/on. ' I AM writing these lines in my bedroom in the house of the WidQw Gran, in the village of Ober-Ammergau. They ANOTHEU OLD LETTER. 253 are the last you will receive from me for a long time; perhaps the last I shall ever send you, for more and more, as each day advances^. I feel that my business with the •world is done. ' What brought me hither I know not, I am sure it •was with no direct intention of witnessing what so many deem a mere mtimmery or outrage on religion ; but after many wanderings hither and thither, I found myself in the neighbourhood, and whether instinctively or of set purpose, approaching this lonely place'. ' As I have more than once told you, I have of late, ever since my past trouble, been subject to a kind of waking nightmare, in which all natural appearances" have assumed a strange unreality, as of shapes seen in dreams ; and one characteristic of these seizures has been a curious sense within my own mind that, vivid as such appearances seemed, I shoiild remeniber nothing of them on actually awaking. A wise physician would shake his head and murmur " diseased cerebration ; " nor woidd his diagnosis of my condition be less gloomy, on learning that my physical powers remain unimpaired, and seem absolutely incapable of fatigue. I eat and drink little; sleep less; jet I have the strength of an athlete still, or so it seems. ' I walked hither across the mountains, having no other shelter for several nights than the boughs of the pine- woods where I slept. The weather was far from warm, yet I felt no cold; the paths were dangerous, yet no evil befell me. If I must speak the truth, I would gladly have perished — by cold, by accident, by any swift and sudden means. 'But when a man thirsts and hungers for death, Death, in its dull perversity, generally spares him. More than once, among these dizzy precipices and black ravines, I thought of suicide ; one step would have done it, one quick downward leap ; but I was spared that last degradation — ■ indeed, I know not how. ' It was night time when I left the mountains, and came put upon the public road. The moon rose, pale and ghostly, dimly lighting my way. ' Full of my own miserable phantasy, I walked on for hours and descended at last to the outlying houses of a alent village, lying at the foot of a low chain of melancholy 254 THE NEW ABEZARD. tills. All was still ; a tLiu white mist filled the air, floating upward from the vaUey, and forming thick vapor- ous clouds around the moon. Dimly I discerned the shadows of the houses, but in none of the windows was there any light. 'I stood hesitating, not knowing which way to direct my footsteps or at which cottage door to knock and seek shelter, and never, at any moment of my recent experience, was the sense of phantasy and unreality so full upon me. While I was thus hesitating I suddenly became conscious of the sound of voices coming from a small cottage situated on the , roadside, and hitherto scarcely discernible in the darkness. Without hesitation I approached the door and knocked. ' Immediately the voices ceased, and the moment after- wards the door opened and a figure appeared on the threshold. ' If the sense of unreality had been strong before it now became paramount, for the figure I beheld wore a white priestly robe quaintly etabroidered with gold, and a golden head-dress or coronet upon his head. Nor was this all. The large apartment behind him — a kind of kitchen, with rude benches around the ingle — was lit by several lamps, and within it were clustered a fantastic group of figures in white tunics, plumed head-dresses of Eastern device, and mantles of azure, crimson, and blue, which swept the ground. ' " Who is there? " said the form on the threshold in a deep voice, and speaking German in a strong Bavarian patois. ' I answered that I was an Englishman, and sought a night's shelter. * " Come in ! " said the map, and thus invited I crossed the threshold. ' As the door closed behind nie, I found myself in the large raftered chamber, surrounded on every side by curious faces. , Scattered , here and there about the room were I'udely-carved figures, for the most part representing the Crucifixion, many of them unfinished, and on a table near the window was a set of carver's tools. Eudely coloured pictures, all of biblical subjects, were placed here and there ANOTHER OLD LETTER. 255 upon the walls, and over the fireplace hung a large Christ in ebony, coarsely carveu. ' Courteously enough the fiintaatic group parted and made way for me, while one of the number, a woman, invited me to a seat beside the hearth. ' I sat down like one in a dream, and accosted the man who had invited me to enter. ' " What place is this ? " I asked. ♦' I have been walk- ing all night and am doubtful where I am.' ' " You are at Ober-Ammergau ! " was the reply. ' I could have laughed had my spirit been less op- pressed. For now, my brain clearing, I began to under- stand what had befallen me. I remembered the Passion Play and all that I had read concerning it. The fantastic figures I beheld were those of some of the actors still attired in the tinsel robes they wore upon the stage. ' I asked if this was so, and was answered in the affirmative. ' " We begin the play to-morrow," said the man who had first spoken. " I am Johann Diener the Chorfuhrei; and these are some of the members of our chorus. We are up late, you see, preparing for to-morrow, and trying on the new robes that have just been sent to us from Annheim. The pastor of the village was here till a few minutes ago, seeing all things justly ordered amongst us, and he would gladly have welcomed you, for he loves the English." ' The man's speech was gentle, his manner kindly in the extreme, but I scarcely heeded him, although I knew now what the figures around me were — the merest super- numeraries and chorus-singers of a tawdry show. They seemed to me none the less ghostly and unreal, shadows acting in some grim farce of death. ' " Doubtless the gentleman is fatigued," said a woman, addressing Johann Diener, "and would wish to go to rest." ' I nodded wearily. Diener, however, seemed in some perplexity. ' " It is not so easy J" he returned, " to find the gentle- man a shelter. As you all know, the village is over- crowded with strangers. However, if he will follow me, 256 THE NEW ABELAIID. I will take him to Joseph Mair, and see what can be done." ' I thanked him, and without staying to alter hia dtess, he led the way to the door. ' We were soon out in the open street. Passing several ch&lets, Diener at last reached one standing a little way from the roadside, and knocked. ' " Come in," cried a clear kind voice. • He opened the door and I followed him into an interior much resembling the one we had just quitted, but smaller, and more full of tokens of the woodcutter's trade. The room was dimly lit by an oil lamp swinging from the ceiling. Seated close to the fireplace, with his back towards us, engaged in some handy work, was a man. 'As we entered the man rose and stood looking towards us. I started in wonder, and uttered an in- voluntary cry. ' It was Jesus Christ, Jesus the son of Joseph, in his habit as he lived I 'I had no time, and indeed I lacked the power, ta separate the true from the false in this singular manifes- tation. I saw before me, scarce believing what I saw, the Christ of History, clad as the shape is clad in the famous fresco of Leonardo, but looking at me with a face mobile, gentle, beautiful, benign. At the same moment I per- ceived, scarcely understanding its significance, the very crown of thorns, of which so many a martyr since has dreamed. It was lying on the coarse table close to a number of wood- carving tools, and close to it was a plate of some red pigment, with which it had recently been stained. ' Johann Diener advanced : '"I am glad to find you up, Joseph. This English gentleman seeks shelter for the night, and I scarcely knew 'whither to take him," ' " Tou will not find a bed in the place," returned the other ; and he continued addressing me. " Since this morning our little village has been overrun, and many strangers have to camp out in the open air. Never has Ober-Ammergau been so thronged." • I scarcely listened to him ; I was so lost in contempla- tion of the awful personality he represe'iited. ANOTHER OLO LETTER. 257 * " Who are you ? " I asked, gazing at him in amaze. ' He smiled, and glanced down at his dress. ' " I am Joseph Mair," he replied. " To-morrow I play the Christus, and as you came I was repairing some portion of the attire, which I have not worn for ten years past." ' Jesus of Nazareth 1 Joseph Mair ! I understood all clearly now, but none the less did I tremble with a sickening sense of awe. ' That night I remained in the house of Joseph Me Edition de Luxe has the plates mounted, and may also be had bound in pij*skin with clasps, 25V. net. Large crown 8vo, cloih, 75. td. net each ; parchment, loj.Gt/ net each. Women of Florence. By Prof. Isi- DORO DEL LUNGO. 'lYansIated by Maky G.Steegmann. 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