The Seance Read online

  "But surely," I said, "after today, her reputation is lost forever."

  "Not at all," he said cheerfully. "There will be a furore in the spiritualist press, and some of her followers will fall away, but others will replace them. It is all part of the game."

  "Is that how it seems to you?"

  His reply was lost in the cry of a street-vendor; we were approaching Oxford Street, and the traffic was increasing.

  "Miss Langton," he said, "I was on my way back to the Society's rooms in Westminster, but may I escort you home—if that is where you are going?"

  "Thank you, no, I am quite used to walking alone."

  "Then—may I hope to see you again?"

  "I am sorry," I said, "but that would be quite impossible. Good-bye, Mr. Raphael."

  I came home resolved to have no more to do with manifestations, but one glance at my mother, huddled upon the drawing-room sofa with the curtains drawn, was enough to change my mind. Vernon Raphael, at least, would not be allowed back into Miss Carver's circle, and with Mama's desolation filling the house like a miasma, I felt I had nothing to lose. And so I returned next day to Marylebone High Street. Miss Lester, as I thought, had not noticed me leaving, and graciously accepted my professions of sympathy for Miss Carver, as well as a donation of three guineas—my entire savings—to the spiritualist cause. I told her of my mother's plight, and asked whether it was true that spirits could materialise at different ages. If only, I said wistfully, Mama could hold Alma as she had been in infancy, she might find peace at last. Miss Lester asked me, among other things, if I could recall what scent Mama had used when Alma was still with us; perfumes, she said gravely, could be very helpful in summoning spirits. But of course, she added, Miss Carver would want to meet my mother before the séance. Mr. Raphael's shameful deception had gravely imperilled her health, and so, sadly, they would have to be on their guard against disruptive influences.

  At eight in the evening on the following Saturday, I was seated beside my mother in Miss Carver's séance room, covertly studying the other faces around the table. I had tried to persuade Mama of the need for secrecy, so as not to hurt Mrs. Veasey's feelings, but I was not at all sure she had understood, and I watched the last of the sitters being shown to their places with the sensation of having added one storey too many to a house of cards.

  Miss Carver was bound to her chair, as before. Miss Lester drew the curtains and invited us to join hands and sing "Lead, Kindly Light," and as the lights were extinguished, I felt my mother's hand trembling in mine. We had just reached the end of "The Lord Is My Shepherd" when a faint haze of light heralded Arabella's appearance. The singing died away; I heard a creak of chairs and a quickening of breath; but this time the light remained formless, floating like a will-o-the-wisp in the void. After a few seconds it began to drift away from me, following, I thought, the circumference of the table, though in that utter blackness I would not have known if the walls had dissolved around us.

  Then, from somewhere above my head, a voice began to sing in a thin, piping chant, to the tune of "All Things Bright and Beautiful." I had told Miss Lester about Alma's singing, but I shivered nonetheless, and my mother's hand jerked convulsively.

  "Alma?" she cried.

  The chanting ceased, and the scent of violet water floated down to us; a scent my mother had not worn since the day Alma died. The faint patch of light stirred and brightened and seemed to open like a flower into the glowing form of Arabella facing us across the table; only this time she was cradling something in her arms. Accompanied by murmurs of amazement, she glided around the room until she was standing directly behind us.

  "Alma has come from Heaven to comfort her Mama," said a woman's voice from the darkness overhead, "but she may only stay a little while."

  The scent of violet water grew stronger. My mother had already released my hand, though I could see only her outline, turning around in her chair and reaching out her arms toward the small, shimmering form, which stirred faintly as my mother received it; no mere doll, but a real infant in luminous swaddling clothes. "Alma," she murmured, "at last, at last, at last." Someone was weeping in the darkness nearby. Tears sprang to my own eyes, and I had to subdue the impulse to whisper my thanks to Miss Carver, stooped so close between us that I could feel the heat of her body. Thus we remained for perhaps twenty seconds before Miss Carver held out her arms again and my mother, to my surprise, surrendered the child with only a deep sigh, echoed around the table as the glowing figure turned and retreated and vanished into the dark.

  My mother smiled and wept by turns as we rattled homeward, thanking me over and over again. "At last," she kept saying, "at last I can rest in peace." I remember embracing Lettie as she opened the door to us; I remember, too, wondering how on earth I was to keep Mama from telling our fellow sitters in Lamb's Conduit Street, and whether I ought even to try; perhaps, after this, we would have no more need of séances. I tried to persuade Mama to take a glass of wine with supper, but she declined. "I am perfectly happy, dear Constance, and not in the least hungry. I shall go to bed now, and dream of Alma." And with that she kissed me and went on upstairs, whilst I went down to the kitchen to sup with Lettie and Mrs. Greaves and tell them as much as I dared, and thence to my own room, where I slept more deeply and peacefully than I had in a long time, and woke with autumn sunlight slanting in through my window. Mama did not come down to breakfast, but that was quite usual; Lettie's custom was to take a tray up at about ten, tap lightly on the door, and leave my mother to fetch it when she would. Thus it was not until eleven had struck that I became uneasy. At last we resolved to force the door with a poker, and found her tucked up in bed with Alma's christening gown held to her breast, and a faint smile on her face. There was an empty bottle of laudanum upon the night table beside her, and a note which read: "Forgive me—I could not wait."

  The days that followed are mercifully blurred in memory. I can picture—rather than recall—the feeling of leaden blackness filling my body, as if Mama's torment had descended upon me; I remember, too, the conviction that I would never eat or sleep again, but only lie upon my bed and stare dry-eyed into the dark, wondering what was to become of me, and whether, if I went to the police and confessed what I had done, I would be sent to prison. Yet I said nothing of the séances to Dr. Warburton, or to my father, when he appeared in a state of extreme irritation (it was most inconsiderate of Mama, he all but declared, to poison herself just as he was about to begin work on his second volume) and announced that he was giving up the lease on the house.

  We were seated, as with every conversation I had ever had with him, at the breakfast table; he did not seem to notice that I had eaten nothing.

  "It is a very great nuisance," he said, "but I suppose you will have to live with us in Cambridge. My sister will find work for you around the house, and for the rest you must try to be quiet and cause no further upheaval."

  "But what is to become of Lettie and Mrs. Greaves?"

  " They must look for new situations, of course."

  "But Papa—"

  "Kindly do not interrupt me. They will receive the usual month's wages in lieu of notice, which I consider more than generous, and you may give them references, if you choose. And now I have a great deal of business to conduct, thanks to your mother's—to this unfortunate event—no, not a word further, if you please. I shall not be home until late."

  To my surprise, Lettie and Mrs. Greaves took the news philosophically. "We'll be all right, my dear," said Mrs. Greaves, "I know you'll give us good characters; but it won't be much of a life for you, in Cambridge." Indeed I felt that I would as soon go to prison, but I had no spirit to protest. I sent Mrs. Veasey a painfully composed letter, saying that Mama had died and that I would not be able to see her or any of the circle again, and wondering, as I struggled with the wording, how long it would be before Miss Carver's circle intersected with Mrs. Veasey's. And so Mama was buried on a bleak October morning with only my father, Mrs. Greaves, Lettie, and
myself at her graveside.

  A week or so after the burial, I was folding away my mother's clothes, and wondering what I ought to do with Alma's things, when Lettie came up to tell me that a gentleman was here, asking to see me. My father was out, as usual; he claimed to be run off his feet with the business of closing up the house, but I suspected he was spending most of his time at the Museum. I went numbly downstairs expecting someone to do with books or furniture, and found instead a small, stocky man who seemed vaguely familiar, though I was sure I had never seen him before. He was wearing a green velveteen jacket, rather the worse for wear, and grey flannel trousers with a smear of paint on one knee, and looked to be somewhere between fifty and sixty. His head was bald on top, but surrounded by a mane of grey-brown hair, long and unruly at the sides, so that his ears were almost hidden. Tangled whiskers, a beard and a thick moustache obscured his mouth and much of his cheeks; his eyes were dark brown, the lower lids wrinkled and heavily lined, and his skin—what could be seen of it—was much weathered by the sun.

  "Miss Langton? My name is Frederick Price, and I think I must be your uncle; I saw the notice of my sister's—your mother's—death in The Times, and came to offer my condolences."

  I looked at him wonderingly; now that he had said it, I could see a very faint resemblance to my mother.

  " Thank you, sir. I am afraid my father will not be back until late—he is very seldom home. Will you have some tea?"

  "I really should not disturb you at such a sad time."

  "You would not be disturbing me," I said. His voice was low and slightly hesitant, and something in its cadence appealed to me. "I should welcome a change from my thoughts."

  I took him into the drawing room, where many of the ornaments had already been packed up; a half-filled box stood beside the fireplace.

  "You must wonder," he said, "why we have never met. The fact is, I lost touch with your mother after she married; I had no idea that she was living in London until I saw the funeral notice the other day. And—well, to be frank, we were never close, partly because I saw so little of her. I quarrelled with our father, you see; he wanted me to preach, and I wanted to paint, and it ended with his cutting me out of his will, and my running off to Italy before I was twenty-one. Poor Hester was left to look after him, and I suppose she must have resented it—who could blame her?—and then, when our father died I couldn't, or at least didn't, come home. The last letter I had from her was to say she was engaged to be married. I hoped she'd be happy at last .... And then I came back to London in '75, and took a house in St. John's Wood, where I've had my studio ever since, never knowing I had a niece living not three miles away."

  "And I never knew I had an artist for an uncle."

  "More a jack-of-all-trades, I should say. In my time I've been—let me see—an illustrator (which is how I make most of my living), a copyist, an engraver, a draughtsman, and a restorer, as well as a painter, of sorts ... Was it a long illness?—your mother, forgive me."

  "Yes, but not in the way you ... the truth is ..." And with that I was launched upon my story. He listened gravely and without surprise, even when I came to the séances, and I managed somehow to reach the end without breaking down.

  "And so you see, sir—though my father does not know it—I am the cause of my mother's death."

  "You judge yourself too harshly," he replied. "From everything you say, the wonder is that she did not choose to end her life long before this. Yours was a generous action, and you ought not reproach yourself."

  I did weep, at that, but I saw that it made him most uncomfortable, and controlled myself as soon as I could.

  "And now," he said, "you go with your father to your aunt in Cambridge?"

  "I have never met her. They don't want me, and I would far rather not, but yes, I must."

  "I see." He was silent for a while.

  "Constance—if I may"—he said at last—"I am a bachelor—and I know myself well enough to say that I am a selfish man. I like my quiet, and my comforts, and the certainty that I can go to my studio after breakfast and not be disturbed for the next ten hours. I have a cook and a maid, both excellent women, but they will sometimes bother me with questions. Now, if I had someone to keep house for me; someone who would study my likes and dislikes and see that everything ran smoothly—a quiet, reserved young woman, let us say—and especially if her father were disposed to make her an allowance, for I am frankly not well off ... it wouldn't be an onerous task, and the house is large enough for you to have your own quarters.... "

  A week later, I was installed in my uncle's house in Elsworthy Walk. I was so relieved not to be going to Cambridge that I should have been glad of a bed in the cellar; to find myself in a room on the top floor, looking eastward up the grassy slope of Primrose Hill, seemed altogether miraculous. The dining table was always strewn with books and papers; my uncle's idea of comfort was being able to leave things exactly where he wanted, and he was happy for us both to read at meals: sometimes a whole day would pass without our exchanging more than "good morning" and "good night." At first I could not leave the house without fearing that I would run into someone from Mrs. Veasey's or Miss Carver's circles, but I never did, and my uncle never referred to the séances again. Instead of the Foundling Hospital, I had Primrose Hill, and often that autumn I would sit by my window and watch the children at play, finding an obscure comfort in the sight.

  But even in this tranquil setting, it was many months before the burden of guilt and self-reproach began to lighten, only to be displaced by an increasing restlessness of spirit. My housekeeping duties were indeed far from onerous, leaving me with a great deal of time on my hands. My uncle, I soon realised, shrank from any display of emotion; not, I think, from any essential coldness, but because he feared its effect upon him. From certain things he let fall, I came to suspect that his conscience sometimes troubled him about his neglect of his family, especially my mother, whom he could have traced easily enough, and that taking me in had been his way of making amends. He seemed to like having me in the house; it gave him someone to talk to when he wished to talk, and left him to his own thoughts when he did not, and if he sensed my trouble, he gave no sign of it.

  I could not, in any case, have told him what my trouble was. I was accustomed to solitude, and did not miss—or did not think I missed—the society of people my own age; I had no particular talent or ambition, and certainly no desire to marry. And yet there was something I craved, a nameless, faceless yearning that could only be assuaged by walking for hours at a time in all kinds of weather, until I knew every street in the district, all the way to the edge of Hampstead, where the houses gave way to lanes and fields. But I never went back to Holborn.

  In the end I found a situation as day-governess to the children of a Captain Tremenheere, who was serving with the Royal Horse Artillery at the barracks on Ordnance Hill. My uncle was a little put out by this, but as I reminded him, my allowance from my father would end soon enough, and I could not live upon his charity. I was happier for the occupation, and grew very fond of my three pupils, and yet the restlessness remained; I could not shake off the feeling that I was sleepwalking through my days, waiting for my real life—whatever that might be—to begin.

  In the spring of 1888, my father died suddenly of a stroke. I had the news in a letter from my aunt, who wrote that he had left everything to her, with instructions to continue my allowance until I came of age the following January. She did not invite me to attend the funeral, nor did I wish to; I knew that I had meant nothing to him, and grieved, I think, for my own lack of feeling, rather than for the man I had scarcely known.

  The ensuing summer was so cold and wet that it scarcely merited the name, and the autumn was overshadowed by the continuing news of the atrocities in Whitechapel. My solitary walks were curtailed; I no longer felt at ease beyond the boundaries of St. John's Wood; and then in December Captain Tremenheere was posted to Aldershot, taking his family with him. My twenty-first birthday had passed w
ithout my finding another situation, until one morning after breakfast, whilst I was idly browsing through the personal column in The Times, I came upon the following advertisement:

  If Constance Mary Langton, daughter of the late Hester Jane Langton (née Price), formerly of Bartram's Court, Holborn, will contact Montague and Venning, Commissioners for Oaths, at their offices in Wentworth Road, Aldeburgh, she may learn something to her advantage.

  I had imagined that all would be revealed in Mr. Montague's reply, but his letter merely requested "such proofs as may readily be furnished" that I was indeed the Constance Mary Langton in question. My uncle joked, as he drafted a statement to this effect, that for all he knew I might simply have wandered into the house in Bartram's Court on the day he happened to call—a remark which troubled me more than he realised. I was also required to give the date and place of my birth—for the latter I could only put "in the country near Cambridge"—and to say whether I had any sisters "or other close female relatives" living, to which I replied that to the best of my knowledge I had none. In response to this, I received a note from Mr. Montague, saying that he would be coming up to London in a few days' time, and would like to call upon me, whenever might be convenient, "regarding a bequest." My uncle thought from the wording of the advertisement that the legacy must have come from someone on my mother's side, but could shed no further light; he had never taken much interest in their history. Most likely, he warned me, it would be a small sum of money, or a few decrepit pieces of furniture, willed to my mother by some forgotten aunt or cousin. But the prospect had reawakened my childhood fancy that there might be some mystery about my birth. I had never mentioned this to my uncle, and was secretly relieved when he declined to attend the interview, saying that it was my own business, now that I was of age; he could always be fetched from his studio if he were needed.