by Simon Stern
I found the Sundays very lonely in her absence, and did not know what to do with myself without her. One Sunday afternoon I went for a solitary walk in Kensington Gardens. Strolling moodily round the corner of some bushes I suddenly came upon an old gentleman and a young lady seated upon a garden seat. My astonishment was very great to recognise in the latter my wife, for she had once volunteered the statement that when she left me she never by any chance remained in town, but always travelled a great distance in the short time. Naturally I went up to her. I noticed that she looked very pale and was crying, and as I approached, I heard the old gentleman speaking to her in angry tones.
“Why, Evelyn, my dear,” I said, “it is a very great surprise to me to find you in town to-day. But what is the matter with you, darling, why are you crying like this? And why is this gentleman whom I do not know speaking harshly to you? What does it mean, dear? Tell me at once for it goes to my heart to see you thus unhappy.”
I do not know which of the couple looked more astonished when I thus addressed her. Both Evelyn and the old gentleman stared at me in the blankest amazement, Evelyn made not the slightest attempt to recognise me in any way. Indeed she put on an expression as if she really did not know me. There was silence for a moment, and then the old gentleman, turning to my wife, said sternly:
“Evelyn, who is this person who presumes to address you so familiarly.”
She replied with an air of truth—“I do not know him at all, Papa. I have never seen him before in all my life.”
I staggered as if struck at the lie. I had never known her to lie before, and then such a lie! To disown me like this! But I had not time for much reflection before the old man turned furiously upon me.
“By what right, sir, do you dare to address my daughter when she declares she does not know you”—
“By a very simple right,” I replied, “the right that a husband has to address his wife. She has been my wife for nearly a year.”
“Her husband! Oh! thank God that she is married,” said her father, “then I have been blaming her undeservedly for what I thought her approaching shame. Evelyn, my child, why did you not trust your poor old father, instead of causing all this distress? But why do you disown your husband now you see there is no cause to do so? On the contrary, introduce him to me, and let us all be friends together. What is his name?”
If I had been surprised before, I was much more surprised than ever when Evelyn, instead of complying with her father’s request rose from her seat, and angrily stamping on the ground said, looking me straight in the face—“Married! I am not married. Husband! I have no husband, at any rate if so he is not a husband of this world. I have never even seen this man before, and he is a liar if he says that I am his wife.”
“But I am not a liar,” I retorted. “And I do say distinctly that you are my wife Evelyn, and you have your wedding ring to prove it. Inside that ring is inscribed the date on which you married me at St. Paul’s, Knightsbridge, last year, the 13th of July—”
“Now although I don’t know how you know my name, I can prove you are a liar,” said Evelyn, pulling off her glove. “See, I have no wedding ring—”
“No,” I answered, “but see, here is the white mark where it has been, and even if for some extraordinary reason you have taken it off, can you deny to me that you are about to become a mother, the mother of my child?”
“Oh! Heavens, this is too much, father. I repeat to you most positively that I do not know him—and yet in some extraordinary way he seems to know all about me, even that I have been in some awful way the victim of some unintelligible misfortune. But he profits on it, and calls me his wife, well knowing it is false. Can it be that he is himself in some way the cause of all this misery?”
There was no mistake about her voice—it was distinctly my wife’s voice.
“What in God’s name does all this mean?” exclaimed the father. “True, she has been away week after week with friends or relatives, and may possibly be married to you as you say, but why does she so persistently deny it?”
“Be good enough to tell me your name, sir,” I said.
“Thomas Montgomery, sir,” he replied—“And yours?”
“George Ashburton is my name, and I insist upon you and my wife here, who is apparently your daughter, accompanying me to St. Paul’s, Knightsbridge, to see the register of marriages.”
He said he would accede to my request, and Evelyn had perforce to accompany us. He saw the register, and his daughter’s name as being married to me. When Evelyn again denied having ever been married there at all, both the clerk and the clergyman who had performed the ceremony told her father they identified her perfectly. After that she became quieted, resigned, and silent, but I insisted upon the father, who was completely dumbfounded, accompanying me to my house, which poor Evelyn declared vehemently she had never seen before. But the servants recognised her without doubt as being their mistress, and her photographs and dresses about the rooms completely convinced the father that she was most undoubtedly my wife. He became perfectly furious with her at length for what he declared to be her double deception, and despite her prayers and entreaties left her with me, saying that I was her husband and her place was with me, and that he washed his hands of her altogether. After he left, the poor girl fainted, and I had to put her in her own bed. She was quite ill and delirious all the afternoon and night, after coming to her senses. At length the doctor who was in the habit of attending her had to be fetched, when he found her declaring that she was not my wife, and that I had no business in her room, and so on—he took me on one side and told me he considered the case most dangerous. There was no doubt, he said, that her mind was completely off its balance.
This was what I feared myself from her extraordinary behaviour. However, although she declared she was perfectly well, and wanted no medicine, he made her take a very powerful opiate, which soon sent her into a trance, like sleep, which lasted until seven next morning. Then she awoke, but alas, no better, for she seemed not to know me in the least, and was perfectly horrified at finding me by her side. She wished to rise and leave the room and the house, and had to be detained by force. At ten o’clock, tired out, she fell asleep again, and at twelve she awoke perfectly cured apparently as far as her brain was concerned, although very weak. She knew me now perfectly, and was most loving in her manner, but asked me how she happened to be in bed, and seemed to know nothing about the day before. Indeed she seemed to think it utterly impossible she could have come to my house on the previous day, until I told her all about the meeting with her father and her strange manner. Then she became very serious, and saying, “I feared something of that sort would happen at last—the end will probably come soon now,” she turned on her side and wept bitterly. But she would tell me nothing as to why she wept.
All that week she was in weak health and early on the Saturday morning she was confined of a boy, and a fine little fellow he was too, bright and intelligent looking, with eyes like his mother’s. As the evening approached Evelyn became very anxious. She asked for her child, and pressed him to her breast, looking at me the while with the deepest love. I saw there was deep anguish in her glance.
“Do you know, George, my darling,” she said, “that this is Saturday, and that I ought to be away as usual at twelve o’clock to-night? But how can I go and leave my sweet young infant, leave him to be nursed by another, who not only will not care for him, but will probably even hate him. And yet what will happen if I do not go, God only knows.”
“You are too weak to go in any case,” I said. “Why you would kill yourself if you tried even to walk across the room, so that must settle the matter for you, dearest.”
“Ah! that would not matter,” she replied, “for since what took place last Sunday, my spirit could go, and yet I could leave my body here as it is now. But it would be somebody else’s soul that would dominate my body, just as it was last Sunday. She would not in the least understand being ill in bed with a baby, and wh
o knows how she might treat the child? She is an unmarried girl, and might even murder it in her despair. It would be different if I could only see her and explain everything to the spirit form that conceals her identity now—but if we meet and talk it will be death to me certainly, perhaps to her too. No, I must not go, I must take all risks and stay here.” And putting her arms around my neck she wept on my heart.
“My darling wife,” I said, “I do not wish to distress you, but do you not think the time has now come to tell me all—”
“Yes,” said she, “it has. I will disclose everything. Listen my love. When you were very young and first of all began to attend spiritualistic séances, you frequently saw a spirit who gave herself the name of Muriel. I am that spirit— Nay, do not interrupt. In the first instance you could only see my face, then by degrees I used to be able to materialise more and more, until at length I came in the fullest materialised form and was for the time being as much flesh and blood as I am now. And we used to converse together for hours—until at length, you, in your mad boyish fashion, fell madly in love with me—Muriel—the spirit. And then one day, in a séance at which you alone were present, with the entranced medium, you persuaded me to allow you to kiss me. When you did so you embraced me so madly, so ardently, and I was so gained by your love, that I returned your kisses with the passion of the human being I was for the time, not with the chaste salute of a spirit. Then, you remember, to your despair I dematerialised in your arms. I scarcely had the time to whisper, “Farewell, I love you,” ere I was gone. And as a punishment, for ten long years I never was allowed to see you again, and with the cares of life you forgot your spirit love completely. However, my love for you had sunk deep into my nature, so much so that when the time came for either my advancement into another and a higher cycle in the spirit world—or else retardation in my former condition for a hundred thousand years, coupled with the temporary possession of you—I chose you, and I thank God, and shall thank God to all eternity that I did so. And this is how it was done. The girl whose earthly form I bear, Evelyn Montgomery, whom I had often met at séances, had lost an earthly lover whom she adored more than life itself. In the world of spirits he made a similar sacrifice to that I have done that he might be allowed to have her with him at times in the spirit. Then it was ordained that while I might assume her earthly form to be near you, she might, for all but thirty-six hours in every week, assume my own spirit form as the ethereal Muriel. But while I, being really a spirit, can find out, if I like, her earthly doings—she, belonging to an inferior order of beings to myself, cannot tell what I do. Hence her distress and astonishment when you forced her, in this my body which is also hers, to accompany you as your wife—also her distress at finding she was about to become a mother. Now to-night, I ought as usual to yield up to her for thirty-six hours this earthly frame, but I am physically unable to do so, and should I and she ever meet and speak of our own free will it has been from the beginning ordained that she—that is also I, in her earthly form will surely die. Not that she would mind; on the contrary, it would be her greatest happiness to join her spirit lover. But to me, my ever-loved darling, it will mean one hundred thousand years of regret to quit my earthly husband. But we shall see what happens to-night. I greatly fear, my husband, my beloved one, that you will lose me in any case—till then lavish upon me all the love of your soul. I will cherish its recollection and yours to all eternity.”
That was all her story, wonderful and sad—but true—too true. Only too well did I now remember my spirit love, Muriel, and now I understood also why I had loved my Evelyn from the first. Between eleven and twelve that night, Evelyn dozed with her infant at her breast. She then woke, and kissing the child, gave it to the nurse, telling her to take it to the next room and close the door. She then threw herself into my arms.
“She is come, George,” she whispered, “see, there is my own spirit shape materialising behind you.”
I turned, and saw the well-known beautiful spirit, Muriel. She spoke musically:
“Since you have not abandoned the form of Evelyn Montgomery to-night, spirit Muriel, I have been obliged to come myself in person and yield up your spirit form to you for the customary thirty-six hours.”
“Alas!” answered my darling wife, “it will not be for thirty-six hours only, but for ever, since you have voluntarily spoken to me. Do you forget the ordinance, Evelyn?”
“Ah!” answered the other, “how happy I shall be to regain my own body and die, sister.”
“And how sad I, to give up my husband, for eternity,” whispered now my dying wife, “although I know we, too, shall meet again in the spirit world.”
Even as she spoke the spirit form of the real Evelyn, had dematerialised, and passed into the body of my expiring wife. And then a new Muriel rapidly materialised as the spirit of my wife assumed its own spiritual form, and as the spirit Muriel placed her lips on mine in one last, lingering embrace, the body of Evelyn Montgomery gave up the ghost. And they passed away together.
THE HAUNTED OVEN by W. L. Blackley
Thady Brophy an’ his wife Bridget wur well-to-do farming people, and worked hard and had good luck. Somehow or other things done well wid them; Biddy would get the butther to come in her churn the couldest day in winter, whin her neighbours would be workin’ the dash hour afther hour widout the sign of a thickening till their hearts was almost broke. And Thady’s pigs never died, an’ his fowls never roosted their breastbones crooked, and his horses never broke their knees, an’ the wireworm never got into his turnips, and all his calves was heifer calves. Everybody said they had the luck of the fairies, and ne’er a thing in the wide world to throuble thim; and so they had till they’d filled a long stockin’ with sovereigns, and made their fortune, and thin nothin’ would contint them but they must take a bigger farm, and move into a new house. The new house was a fine ould ancient building, fifty or sixty miles from Kilcoskan, where they’d made their money. And what do ye think put it into their heads to go there and set up for gentility? Why the name of the place was Glanbrophy, and Thady made sure that some of his forefathers must have lived there, an’ Biddy thought it would sound mighty purty av’ he was to buy it, and hear people talkin’ of him as Mr. Brophy of Glanbrophy, an’ thin she wint on thinking, as we’re all apt to do, of how it might go on an’ on, from gineration to gineration, an’ that maybe in coorse ov time her great-great-grandson might be a magistrate, an’ sarve on the grand jury, an’ maybe get to be a high sheriff an’ have a hand in a fine hanging now an’ thin, an’ so have something for the family to take pride in. So Biddy set her heart on Thady buying Glanbrophy, an’ she sint him over to look at the place. So he rode over quiet an’ asy, an’ never let on to anyone he was thinking to buy it: an’ he asked the neighbours all sorts of questions and came home to Biddy. “Biddy, acushla,” he says, “we can get Glanbrophy for half the valley,’’ he says; “but I don’t think I’ll take it, all the same,” he says. “An’ why not thin?” she ses; “didn’t I send ye over there just to take it out of a face?” “Ay, but Biddy,” he ses; “the raison they have for letting it go cheap is bekase there’s a ghost there, an’ sure I thought it med be makin’ you narvous, you darlint.” But Thady’s kind tongue was spakin’ (as most of us do now an’ thin that’s got the luck to have a wife) one word for her an’ two for himself; for though he was six foot high in his stockin’ feet, the thought of a sperrit’d give him an ague as aisy as kiss your hand. “Is it make me narvous, acushla,” ses Biddy; “sure it’s funnin’ you are now! The sorra a ghost in sivin counties oud frighten me, an’ it’s kindly obleeged to thim I feel for cheapening Glanbrophy for us, so as to let us into our ould ancient family estate. So jist settle the business as soon as ye can, an’ see av’ we can’t move in three weeks afore Christmas,” she says, “an’ it’s a hearty welcome we’ll give the sperrit,” she says, “whether they be leprechauns, or fairies, or fetches, or brigaboos. Be off, Thady, hot fut to the lawyer, an’ come back to me as Misth
er Brophy of Glanbrophy, or by the pipers I’ll haunt you myself, worse than the biggest old ghost that ever frightened the five small senses out of a fullsized fool before.”
Well, Thady knew whin Biddy spoke that-a-way that she meant what she said, an’ so, for to save time and throuble, he writ off, like a sinsible chap, and bought Glanbrophy out an’ out. Troth, an’ if every marrid man in this very room would do like Thady, some ov’ you, I’ll be bound, would have an aisier life than ye have.
Well, the place was theirs’, an’ they had the mischief’s own lot of fuss moving. Biddy hadn’t thought of that; an’ some of the things was badly packed, an’ the breakages wint to her very heart. There was three cups out of seven of her grandmother’s tayset all to smithereens, an’ she cut the tops of two of her fingers getting the pieces out ov’ the hay, an’ in short, she had all sorts of worry. But she was a jolly kind ov’ a woman, whin she had her own way, an’ made no more fuss nor she could help. An’ by degrees things got pleasanter, an’ every day she found somethin’ new about Glanbrophy that plazed her, an’ the best part of a fortnight passed away, an’ they never heard the sound or seen the sign of a ghost, an’ they were as proud as Punch ov’ their bargain.
Well, wan mornin’ ses Biddy to Thady, “There was but the wan thing wantin’, Thady,” she says, “to make me a happy woman,” she says. “All these years at Kilcoskan we had to ate bakers’ bread, bekase there wasn’t an oven, an’ the dickens a chance ov’ barm to rise the dough. An’ sure I was always havin’ the heartburn from all the alum an’ stuff they did be puttin’ in the bread; but now,” ses she, “there’s a lovely old oven here, an’ there’s a big brewery half a mile off, jist beyant our estate, an’ I can have barm every day av I want it. An’ I’ve set in a beautiful bakin’ of bread, an’ now that we’ve got our ancesthors’ estate, an’ we’re the Brophys of Glanbrophy, wid an illigant outside kyar, an’ a beautiful oven of me own, an’ home baked bread, I feel somehow, as if I’d be quite contint for to die, so I would, Thady.”