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MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE.

FEBRUARY, 1896.

CHAPTER X.

A BRIDE ELECT.

He threw away the cigar as he raised his hat and came forward to greet me. “Forgive me," he said, "if I have waited here listening to your music. I have been anxious to speak to you for a long time now, and I could not forego the chance of finding you alone. This path behind the church is a private one; will it tax your patience too much to grant me a few moments here and now ? If we walk up and down we shall not be observed, and you must let me unburden you of that."

He took the roll of music from me as he spoke, and I turned mechanically to walk beside him. I might doubt him from a distance, and regard him through the distorting mists of Janie's hinted accusation; but nothing of this could endure against the charm of his presence. Perhaps he divined the feeling, for as I surrendered the parcel and our eyes met, his regard, which had been penetrating, anxious, insistent, softened into a smile. told you once before I had the instinct of knowing a friend; it is on the faith of this that I dare speak to you of what lies next my heart, of matters on which to all else my lips are sealed. I could not approach you when my enemy was at your elbow; but now, No. 436.-VOL. LXXIII.

"I

-now, Miss Varney, tell me. You saw her in the crystal,-Barbara, my angel, my beloved? How did she come before you, and with what surroundings? Every detail is important; tell me all."

I

It was fresh in my memory,—the parting cloud, the anxious eager face, the lips which seemed to speak. described it, replying as well as I could to his questions. He had drawn my hand within his arm as we paced slowly to and fro, and he pressed it against his side with a groan. "It is given," he said, "to the pure in heart. I have gazed into that crystal since I moved it from before you, but to me no vision was vouchsafed. She is obdurate, dead as alive. But I will cross the line of division; I will find her. You have sought here; I seek beyond. She cannot elude me for ever, for she is mine."

I caught at the one point which seemed comprehensible in this wild speech. "You agree then with Mr. Alleyne at last? You think she is dead?"

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mine, and question the right of an unanswered love. Yet mine she was inalienably, both in this world and in that world to come, about which we have a way of talking so glibly and taking so little practical thought; no father's denial, no marriage vows if she had lived to assume them, would have altered what I mean. She is the other half of my soul. Divided we might have been divided you will say we are; but it is only for a season. Our union in the end is sure, -for Hell or Heaven. And whether in Hell or Heaven it matters little, for where she is will be Heaven to me."

A madman's utterance you will say who read it, and wonder that I did not leave him forthwith to seek the safety of sane companionship. But if you had heard it from those grave lips, spoken with that air of authoritative conviction, you might have thought differently, for the time.

"You will ask me," he went on, "why if I have this conviction I am not content to wait. The time was when I thought it easy, were it for half an eternity; knowing the end to be sure however long she might elude me, might play with me and keep me at bay as she did when I was her earthly lover. But I cannot, I can

not.

There is an end to endurance. All my being craves for her; without her my strength is as water. Ambition is dead, the world is empty, and beyond it is only,-Barbara. I have eyes for nothing else, ears for nothing. but her voice. From her station of vantage she draws me while she repulses me; and it comes to this,-I must compel her or follow her." He had turned to face me in the passion of this declaration. That he was in deadly earnest none could doubt, or that the power of this extraordinary fancy upon him was real and actual.

"I have been at fault in all my

I

labours," he said almost with violence. "The body is nothing, an image of clay, no more. It is the spirit, the living Ego in whatever form it manifests, that is the centre of desire." suppose something of my bewilderment was evident; his manner altered, and a chill ghost of a smile curved his lips. "You are Barbara's near kinswoman; you are like her in mind as well as outwardly. You will be my friend, you will respect my confidence, but your belief is slow of ignition. Everything must be tried at the bar of reason, a reason trained to be narrow; you cannot trust your intuitions. There is just the same hardness about you as about her, though you listen so compassionately."

I made a grasp after my vanishing common sense, -with both hands as it were, and a prick of indignation to help me. "Surely," I said, "you did not talk like this to Barbara!

"You must give me credit for a certain discretion; I would not alarm the girl I hoped to win. Nor do I mean to alarm you, but if you are to help me I must have you understand both my position and my claim.”

"To help you!" I echoed. "How is it possible for me to help you?" "You have shown the faculty of perceiving her under the new conditions. If you are associated with me in the quest, it may prove transferable, as second sight is said to be. Let her come as she will,-reveal what she will, so that she comes."

I shook my head. "If I could give you any comfort of heart I would gladly," I answered; "but I have never been accustomed to attach to these things the importance you do. They are outside the circle of common experience and of my conceptions of life, and have brought me nothing but trouble and perplexity. I wish indeed it were possible to transfer to you what you call my faculty. But you must

remember I am not the only one who has exercised it; if it were so I could easily believe myself the victim of hallucination."

"I know,-Alleyne and the servant but it may all radiate through you in a way you do not understand."

"If it means anything at all, if it is truly Barbara, I am inclined to believe with old Evans that she is distressed at our ignorance of her fate, and is longing to come back and enlighten us."

"Then, don't you think it worth while to follow up the clue by any means our limited knowledge indicates, so that she may enlighten us? Be that as it will, so long as she comes back to me."

"Evans has heard footsteps; Lady Sudeleigh followed a figure in the road, though Gregory does not wish it mentioned, and it may have been a chance resemblance. And here in the church, not an hour ago, the child who blows the organ for me was frightened by an appearance he professed to recognise." I told the story as little Sykes had told it to me the figure kneeling at the altar rails the first day, of which he had not felt afraid; and then the appearance that came behind me as I sat playing, which struck him with such consternation and awe, and yet was recognisable as "Miss Barbara who went away." I was almost afraid of the eagerness of my listener, such a fire of hope, elation, yearning, seemed to blaze up in him as he listened. He took my hand again in a close clasp, and I felt the compulsion of his will closing round me and paralysing resistance.

"You have indicated the path," he said. "You asked how you might help me, and yourself have shown the way. You are not expected at the house yet; the child's terror cut short your hour. Come back into the church with me; repeat the conditions which

attracted her, and see if she will return."

It was a sign of his influence over me that I had no thought of refusal. We turned back to the door, and when I bungled with inapt fingers at the lock, he opened it for me and followed me in. The place had never seemed so deserted or struck so chill; the shadows had deepened and the light had faded since I left it, though there remained sufficient for our purpose. I took my seat, and opened the symphony in the midst of which Sykes had failed me, and he took the child's place at the lever facing the length of the dim church; the organ was at the west end under the tower. As soon as the indicator had risen I began to play, trying to lose myself in my office and forget the strange situation into which I had been drawn. And strange indeed it was; the darkening church, the watch for the manifestation of a disembodied spirit in which in some mysterious fashion I was to aid, the companionship of one whose sanity was at least questionable. I glanced round at him from time to time, but his eyes were always intent on vacancy, glowing bright under the shadow of contracted brows out of a face deathly pale. His forehead was damp and the veins stood out upon it, while his lips moved soundlessly. Still for all this he was sufficiently master of himself to keep the lever at work; and I played on to the end of my symphony, and then turned back to the opening bars and repeated it, long as it was. As the last chords died away and my hands dropped, I paused out of sheer fatigue, wondering whether I had done my part and what had resulted. I heard a long quivering sigh at my elbow; Mr. Redworth was leaning on the arrested lever, and when I turned to him he spoke more naturally, though in a

voice low and exhausted. "You have been very good, Miss Varney. I have felt her presence: it seems to thrill all the air about me; but she withholds herself from sight and touch. There is a barrier I must break down."

I thought better of the question which rose to my lips, but he answered it presently as if it had been spoken, though not till we had left the church. He gathered up the music for me and closed the organ; and when at the outer door he gave me back the keys, he said: "I will tell you what I mean to do. It will be a secret between you and me only, a secret you will keep." He turned again into the path where we had walked before, and I with him, drawn by his will in the matter, though I would fain have escaped to the house.

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"The true alchemist," he went on, "has open to him two spheres, the physical and the celestial; but if he would tread the higher way he must utterly put from him all advantage of the inferior, not serving God and Mammon. I must nullify my work of forty years, my dreams of worldly eminence, of advantage and nown; but that is a small matter. Alverius Vericus, an older writer than Paracelsus, describes the successive steps of initiation, and the chemical compound whereby, in conjunction with certain abstinences, the necessary condition of body is attained. The first is termed the Threshold, and the initiate enters with the figure of a drawn sword against the Elemental shapes; but here the danger is only to the resolution of the inner man; the union with mortality is not threatened. The second step is the Vestibule; here the emblem is changed to a smoking torch, and he sees, but as in a glass darkly. In this the danger is but slightly increased; but the initiate is warned to test his

powers of body and soul before advancing to the Presence Chamber where we see face to face. The behest is that he should set his affairs in order and depart as one that cometh not again. Yet many of the masters have dwelt in the Presence Chamber, and gone in and out from the ways of the world, beholding when they would their soul's desire. It is possible she may come to me on the threshold; that the dimness of the vestibule may not divide us; but if needful I shall advance to full initiation where success is certain. If that is so, I may have to ask a favour at your hands; it will only be a slight one, entailing a less troublesome task than I have imposed on you to-day. I need not ask if you will guard my confidence; I see it in your face."

He had bared his head as he spoke, pushing back the waves of silvered hair; and he remained uncovered as we said farewell. I did not see him after that for many days.

These were the days of Eleanor's danger and the crisis of her illness. I will not follow all the hopes and fears of that anxious time, which seemed to draw Gregory and his wife nearer together than perhaps they had ever been in their lives before. That was well, and it was well she was given back to him; for the shock of what came after would have been too great had either stood alone. Mr. Redworth was not neglectful of his friends he came or sent frequently to inquire, but he did not ask to see me; and as it happened through all that time when I was stirring abroad but little, we did not chance to meet. I confess I often thought of him and of our last interview under the shadow of the church; dissatisfied with myself that I had entered no protest of any sort against the wild words I had been forced to

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