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• Her Fair Fame.
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THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
The Ghost of
Guy Thyrle.
H IReaUstic IRomattce*
BY
EDGAR FAWCETT.
LONDON:
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WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C.
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I895.
[All rights reserved.]
EPISTOLARY PROEM.
A /r Y dear * * * *
■I-''J- Do you remember how you once called a few
former tales of mine (" Douglas Duane," " Solarion,"
" The Romance of Two Brothers," and perhaps also
" The Great White Emerald ") ghost-stories pure and
simple ? I then declared to you that I had never
written a positive ghost-story in my life ; and now,
t „
when I send you my "Ghost of Guy Thyrle," I am
obstinate in repeating this assertion. Here, as in those
other works, you will discern no truly " superstitious "
element. If certain readers choose to decide that Guy
Thyrle's weird experiences were other than the coinage
of Raymond Savernay's hallucination, it is not because
I have failed to give them full liberty to form an
opposite belief. Perhaps I am only a poor pioneer,
after all, in the direction of trying to write the modern
wonder-tale. It seems to me that this will never die
till what we once called the Supernatural and now (so
7
8
EPISTOLARY PROEM.
many of us!) call the Unknowable, dies as well.
Mankind loves the marvellous; but his intelligence
now rejects, in great measure, the marvellous unallied
with sanity of presentment. We may grant that final
causes are still dark as of old, but we will not accept
mere myth and fable clad in the guise of truth.
Romance, pushed back from the grooves of exploitation
in which it once so easily moved, seeks new paths,
and persists in finding them. It must find them, if
at all, among those dim regions which the torch of
science has not yet bathed in full beams of discovery.
Its visions and spectres and mysteries must there
or nowhere abide. Whenever we have spoken to-
gether of realism, my friend, you will recall how I
have always held that a few polemic writers are
not decrying the romantic, but rather the artificial.
Romance is a shadow cast by the unknown, and
follows it with necessitous pursuit. It can only perish
when human knowledge has reached omniscience.
Till then it may alter with our mental progress in
countless ways, but the two existences are really one.
Books like " Zanoni " and " A Strange Story " thrilled
us in earlier years. Nowadays we want a different
kind of romanticism, a kind that accommodates itself
more naturally to our intensified sceptic tastes. It
is the actual, the tangible, the ordinary, the explained,
that realism always respects. From the vague, the
EPISTOLARY PROEM.
9
remote, the unusual, the problematic, it recoils. Yet
frequently the two forces of realism and romanticism
have met, as in Balzac's " Peau de Chagrin," which
might be called a fairy-tale written by a materialist.
To make our romances acceptable with the world of
modern readers, we must clothe them in rationalistic
raiment. So clothed, my friend, I should name them
"realistic romances"—stories where the astonishing
and peculiar are blent with the possible and account-
able. They may be as wonderful as you will, but
they must not touch on the mere flimsiness of miracle.
They can be excessively improbable; but their impro-
bability must be based upon scientific fact, and not
upon fantastic, emotional, and purely imaginative
groundwork. From this point of view I occasionally
strive to prove my faith in the unperished charm and
potency of romance. What results I have thus far
reaped may be meagre enough ; but I am sure that
your amity, despite such drawback, will permit the
present effort to tyrannise, even as experimental failure,
over your valued attention.
Sincerely,
Edgar Fawcett.
THE
GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
I.
" TY AYMOND should go abroad."
Jtv « He does look ill."
" It isn't that he's really ill, Vivien ; he's come down
here from Oxford in a state of nerves."
Vivien Savernay looked out on the lovely vernal
lawns while she slowly stirred her coffee. " Oh,
Cecil, he'll be all right in a few days. You've often
said that the air of Storrowby worked wonders with
him."
Raymond Savernay, as it chanced, overheard all
this. He gave a soft laugh, which made his brother
and sister-in-law discover him at the doorway of the
breakfast-room.
" Oh, you dreadful eavesdropper!" exclaimed
Vivien.
" I'm sure you don't think me one," he said. He
was very fond of Vivien, and kissed her blooming
ii
12
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
young cheek for good-morning, as she lifted it to him
in a way at once matter-of-course and bewitching.
Then he nodded to his brother Cecil, and after that he
went to the sideboard and got what he wanted and
brought it to the table.
" Cecil's right in one sense," he at length said,
breaking a silence. " I am in a state of nerves. But it
isn't a morbid state."
" Oh, isn't it ? " laughed Cecil, who was blond and
ruddy, and looked the picture of a prosperous young
Englishman. " Last night you sat up with me till
midnight and told me all kinds of gruesome things.
One minute I thought you believed in the immortality
of the soul, Ray, and the next I thought you didn't.
And, meanwhile, you smoked scores of cigarettes. I
left Oxford only four years ago, and they didn't
consume cigarettes there by the bushel then. I'm
afraid dear old Balliol has been retrograding."
" Don't they believe everywhere at Oxford in the
immortality of the soul ? " asked Vivien, with shocked
surprise. " I thought it was so orthodox."
" It used to be," said Cecil Savernay, looking at his
brother.
" Oh, it is yet," protested Raymond. u My dear
Vivien," he pursued, " Cecil finds me odd and droll
because I'm passionately interested in the doings of the
Society of Psychical Research. It isn't an Oxonian
affair at all. It's something of an American origin."
" It sounds clever enough to be American," said
Vivien. She had met certain New Yorkers, Phila-
delphians, Bostonians and Chicagoans, of both sexes,
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
13
during her last London season, and, to use her own
phrase, " swore by" them.
" I reminded Raymond," said his brother, " of the
ghost over at Gowerleigh, and he immediately took out
a little carnet and booked it."
" Did you, Ray ? did you ? " cried Vivien, clapping
her hands together in an ecstasy of amusement. " Oh,
how delightful! Is that the way you must do when
you belong to the Society of What's-its-name ?—book
all the ghosts you hear about ? Please make me a
member, won't you ? We'll go ghost-hunting together."
Raymond, who was slender and pale, with large,
soft, shadowy eyes, looked at his merry kinswoman in
a pensively amused way.
"You forget, Vivien," he said, "that you and Cecil
are going up to London inside the week. There, of
course, are plenty of ghosts; but you'll never pay the
least heed to them. You'll drive in the Park, and go
to dances in Mayfair, and look in at the opera and the
new plays. Perhaps the ghosts will do just the same ;
only you won't know it, and won't care."
" Ugh ! " shuddered Vivien. " Cecil's right. You
are in a state of nerves. We must take you with us to
London. You're a great swell, you know; you've been
graduated with such honours. You haven't got Stor-
rowby, but you're more of a catch than Cecil was (don't
scowl at me over your coffee-cup, Cecil), though you
are a younger son, for your mother, Lady Adelaide,
left you her estates in the south, and that big pot of
money, besides; and we'll marry ycu (won't we, Cecil?)
to the belle of the season."
14 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
"I sha'n't marry the belle of the season, even if she'll
have me," smiled Raymond, in his musing manner.
" And I'm not going to Devonshire for an age yet. I
prefer the Midland counties ; Illsley Park is a beautiful
property; but I was born here at Storrowby, and I'm
going to keep bachelor's hall here till the autumn;
Cecil told me I could. Possibly I may run up to
London now and th'en, though, and get a glimpse of
you in all your fashionable grandeur."
" I don't believe you will," pouted Vivien. " You've
got too sharp an eye on that ghost at Gowerleigh."
She said it without real meaning, and never gave it a
second thought. Later, just before the townward trip,
she observed to her husband,—
" He isn't himself, somehow. There are times when
he's curiously tired. Do you know, I found him asleep
on the great lounge in the morning-room yesterday,
only an hour or so after breakfast ? He woke with a
sharp start, and stared at me for many seconds as
though I were some one else. Then, with a heavy
sigh, he said, 'I have had such a curious dream.'"
Here Vivien's blithe mouth saddened, and she laid a
hand on her husband's arm. "Cecil, since he won't
come with us to London, dear, perhaps we'd better not
leave him here all alone."
Cecil shrugged his shoulders. " Upon my word," he
replied, " I believe that's precisely what would please
him better than anything else."
II.
ND Cecil Savernay was right Not that Raymond
had no family love ; his young heart was, indeed,
overbrimming with it. Vivien, to his eyes, was the
rarest little wife in all England, and his brother the
mightiest of good fellows.
But sometimes, when we know we are not in the
best of health, we shrink from the vigilance and solici-
tude of those who are most dear to us. It was this
way with Raymond. It seemed to him that a few
weeks of lazy solitude here in Storrowby would work
wonders for his jaded brain. He knew every turn of
its Tudor symmetries, every tree on the fluctuant
emerald of its lawns. A boy, he had plucked roses
from the urns of its terraces; a boy, he had scampered
on his pony through the rugged vistas of its oaks.
When Cecil and Vivien departed he bade them a
most affectionate farewell. Would he join them soon
in London ? " Perhaps," he answered, and they both
decided that the word was too dreamily and dubiously
spoken.
What his brother had said of him was quite true.
The question of human immortality had keenly inter-
16 THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
ested him of late. There had been a time, not long
ago, when its threatened mental absorption had made
him fear he would not secure at Oxford the honours
which afterwards were happily won there. As for the
American movement, a sudden acute sympathy had
caused him to give open signs of how he approved and
endorsed it.
" I should like," he kept musing, " to send this
Society of Psychical Research some important bit of
personal experience. But nothing has ever happened
to me that in the faintest way might go to prove there
is really a life after death. Some of the dreams which
have taken from my sleep the element of needed rest
are beyond doubt marvellous. I seem to live another
life in them, now and then. Their sanity, their veri-
similitude, their pungent realism and actuality, are
astounding. And yet the hard strain of recent study,
there at Balliol, accounts for all of them. And in every
case I clearly realise, on waking, that they are ' such
stuff as dreams are made of.' It would be so different,
I am certain, if any spiritual visitation befell me. Then
I should at once be confident no mere cerebral trick
had snared my understanding."
One delightful day, with a book under his arm, he
strolled for nearly two miles, ending at the grey stone
structure of Gowerleigh. The ivies had climbed sheer
to some of the turrets' tops, he noted, since last he had
seen this small but charming old residence, an almost
perfect specimen of the early Norman style. He had
got from the housekeeper at Storrowby a certain rather
weightsome bunch of keys, which not only unlocked
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 17
for him the main front doorway, but every chamber, as
well, whose threshold he desired to cross. Every-
where through the interior order and cleanliness reigned.
Here were the same tokens of careful tendance that
one saw among the paths and carriage-drives and
flower-plots outside. The bed-linen looked as though
the smoothing hand of a servant had just left it; the
window-panes were specklessly polished. Raymond
remembered how his brother had long ago given orders
that Gowerleigh should be kept in a condition of the
most thorough culture and repair.
He opened a window in one of the largest bedrooms
on the second floor. A gush of bland air set the
snowy curtains fluttering. Beyond billows of greenery
he could see the roofs of his childhood's home. He
sank into a large, soft chair, and opened the book he
had brought with him. It was not ill-written, for a
work of its kind. It gave the experiences of a cele-
brated " medium," and teemed, for its reader, with the
incredible. Still, its pages fascinated him, and he had
a number of books like it, bought during the past
year or two, which would often affect him with equal
potency.
His intellect was of the imaginative class. Liv-
ing a hundred years ago, he might have made an
admirably reverential priest. But to-day modern seep-
ticism battled with inherited belief. He might give
up all doctrinal faith, but there was another residual
surrender harder to achieve. And then a certain con-
sideration, too, kept constantly haunting him, and
formed the chief reason why he had been so enticed by
2
18 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
such a motive as that evidently sheathed in the idea of
a society for psychical research. He found it hard, at
times, to credit the entire incredibility of all those
marvellous tales, records, and experiences, which had
managed to embalm themselves in literary form. Such
a book, for example, as " Crowe's Night Side of Nature "
—could its numerous, almost numberless annals, be in
every case the mere product of fantasy, falsehood, and
topsy-turvy rumour ? Of course, in many cases, mis-
representation, mendacity, must have played their
devil-may-care parts. But could this universally have
been possible ? Among such masses of fabrication
must there not lurk at least a few glimmerings of truth ?
And then he would recall the theogonies of the
ancients—especially those of Greece and Rome. Had
not time proved their complete falsity ? Did not later
definitions of them blend in declaring that all were
vacuous myth ? And yet how tremendous was their
grasp, their sway, for centuries! To Jove, Juno, Diana,
Venus, Minerva, how sincere was the tribute paid, and
concerning them how intricate and subtle were the
details of ceremonious worship ! What, then, should
a rationalist say of the countless "ghost stories" that
nowadays challenged human credence?
Raymond Savernay presently ceased reading his
book, and let his eyes roam about the spacious apart-
ment where he sat. Possibly, he reflected, this, was
the very room intended for that unhappy girl as her
bridal chamber.
" Here," he thought, " would indeed be a ghost-story
worth sending the Society. What a powerful con-
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
tribution they might deem it' if I could only mail
them, over there in Boston, certain narrative dis-
closures quorum magna pars fui! And the whole
reputed tragedy happened but a few years ago. How
I wish that I had„ some sort of authentic data about
this Gowerleigh Ghost! They say it appears to some-
body as soon as people take the place and begin to
sleep here. How ridiculous!—there's my modern
agnosticism. How curious and extraordinary !—there's
my inherent superstition. Was ever a man so cast
about between two forces of. feeling doubt and faith—
as am I ? Nevertheless, one mood remains immobile
—a genuine hunger for some practical test. I should
welcome that. Now that I'm alone over there at
Storrowby, I could spend a night here without dread-
ing Cecil's gentle sarcasms or Vivien's droll shivers."
Thus deliberating, Raymond looked from the near
window and saw an amethyst sky overarch breadths
of landscape, so green and yet so glistening that their
pastoral undulations seemed like an incarnate troth-
plight between earth and sun. Then he turned his
gaze inward upon the placid chamber, and saw there
nothing but peace, neatness, refinement, and a kind of
domestic beauty, broodingly delicate.
" How incongruous ! " he almost said aloud.
He was thinking, now, not of the alleged ghost at
Gowerleigh, but of the actual tragedy once played
there. And with one finger making a book-mark for
the volume on his lap, he soon found himself recalling
just what the facts of this mystic and momentous
episode had been.
III.
OWERLEIGH had stood for many years the
property of the Fythian family; but not long
ago they had parted with it to Cecil Savernay. Its
domain was not broad, but the Savernays had always
coveted those acres, as a completion of what Nature
herself had seemed to design for their own seignorial
realm. When the chance came to buy, Cecil had
bought. He had never meant to pull down Gowerleigh;
this would have seemed to him an act of shocking
vandalism. But after the purchase several different
tenants occupied it, and all quitted it with the same
complaint. It was haunted ; it had a ghost.
Cecil always treated these declarations with scorn
and hilarity mixed. " They mean the ghost of Guy
Thyrle," he would scoff, " and they would never have
dreamed of seeing it if the babble of village-folk,
and of provincial newspapers, and probably of our
own servants here at Storrowby besides, hadn't set their
nerves nonsensically tingling. Very soon Gowerleigh'll
become unleasable, with all this rot spreading broad-
cast. Well, let it. I'll keep it in decent order for
my son on his wedding-day, if luck's good enough
to make me the father of one."
THE GHOST OF GUV THYRLE.
21
And so, with a kind of jovial defiance, Cecil had gone
on treating the fine edifice and its encompassing grounds
quite as respectfully as if they were a part of his own
abode. Raymond had always applauded his course ;
and while to-day he felt newly imbued with a sense of
the loveliness and decorum that pervaded Gowerleigh,
his approbation quietly deepened.
Musingly he reviewed all that either he or his
brother knew of that uncanny Fythian story. Lord
Henry Fythian, second son of the Marquis of Ullinford,
had occupied the house when it all happened. There
had always been a Fythian at Gowerleigh for Heaven
knew how many decades back, and he had always been
a younger son, or a cousin, or some sort of kin, to the
living peer. This Lord Henry had married very late
in life, and was an aged widower when his daughter
Violet had passed her eighteenth year. He brought
her out in London with something of a flourish; for
she was pretty, had tea-rose colouring, and eyes like
her name, and would get Gowerleigh, when her father
died, and four thousand a year besides. During her
second season Violet became engaged to a talented
though not very popular young man named Guy
Thyrle. Her father began by disapproving the
betrothal, it was rumoured, though there is no doubt
that, later, it secured his sanction. But suddenly, one
morning, Guy Thyrle was found dead in his London
home by Vincent Ardilange, a friend who had lived
with him for some time, and whom he firmly trusted
and dearly loved. Thyrle had been among the first to
hail and applaud the modern idea of cremation, and
22 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
Vincent Ardilange had produced a paper, signed by
the deceased and dated several years back, in which,
besides its acknowledgment of membership to a certain
cremation society, he put into the form of positive
entreaty a desire that his body should be burned to
ashes before burial. Ardilange had, therefore, super-
intended the holding of this ceremonial.
Ardilange's marriage to Violet Fythian was to have
been held at Gowerleigh on a certain day in early
autumn. The bridegroom, the bridesmaids, and all the
assembled guests, were waiting the appearance of Violet,
when suddenly the most frightful shriek rang forth
from one of her apartments. It was a small chamber,
and she had gone there, in her wedding robes, for a
moment, seemingly desirous of a brief solitary interval.
Her women, horrified by the shriek, rushed in to her.
They found her fallen on the floor, with a photograph
of Guy Thyrle, her dead lover, clutched in one hand.
When they raised her she was dead.
The story of this romantic death diffused itself
abroad with a speed and sharpness that resembled poor
Violet's blood-curdling cry. And what added to the
grim poetry of the whole occurrence, clinching it with
stronger tenacity of tradition to the picturesque stone
walls of Gowerleigh, was the fact that during the next
few weeks Vincent Ardilange, the man who had been
on the verge of marrying Violet and had so prominently
concerned himself with the cremation of Guy Thyrle's
corpse, committed suicide. Naturally, stories now
floated about that he had murdered Guy Thyrle and
(•fiat the spirit of the slain had appeared to Violet just
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 23
before her wedding-hour, informing her of this ghastly
truth. In vain Ardilange's defenders made it clear
that Guy Thyrle had been pronounced dead by two
physicians of excellent repute before his cremation, and
that the cause of his death had formally been declared
cardiac paralysis. In vain, too, did Lord Henry
Fythian flout and scoff the whole phantasmal tale. He
died at Vichy within the year following his daughter's
demise, though not either of grief or shock. He simply
succumbed to gout, at an age when it is apt to carry
off many high-livers like himself who have for years
neglected its omens. After his death Gowerleigh fell
to a sister who had married a German baron who had
lived away from England for years, and who detested
the idea of returning there. She readily enough
assented to Cecil Savernay's offer of purchase, and so
the estate of Storrowby absorbed just that tract of land
which its owners for several past generations had
craved. "It's a charming possession," Cecil had at first
exulted. " It's like having a dower-house. I'm proud
and delighted to own it, and I intend to be very
tyrannical about leasing it to only the most agreeable
of tenants."
He failed in this plan, and at length consented that
people should occupy it of whom he knew little and
cared less. After a few weeks of residence, these
occupants deserted Gowerleigh. They had seen the
ghost of Guy Thyrle there; or, if they had not seen
it, they were said to believe as much, and to state so in
shuddering avowal.
" Preposterous rubbish 1 " Cecil now declared. At
24 THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
this time he and Vivien had been married about six
months. " Let's move over there for a while," he
said to his wife. " Are you at all nervous about
going ? "
" Not in the least," laughed Vivien.
They spent three nights at Gowerleigh, and had not
the faintest ghostly experience. This course in the
master of Storrowby produced its effect. Shortly
afterwards a new family of tenants moved into the
shunned house. They stayed there precisely a month.
Then the head, an irascible barrister, threatened suit
against Cecil for having presumed to jeopardise the life
of his young and invalid daughter.
" I don't understand you," said Cecil, with a kind of
merry haughtiness. " How, pray, have I jeopardised
the life of your daughter ? "
" I will tell you, sir," began the angry barrister. . . .
But poor Cecil soon found that no lucid disclosure was
vouchsafed him. What had happened to the young
lady ? Had she seen or heard any phenomenal thing ?
The answers to these inquiries were no less voluble
than vague.
" The girl," he afterwards said to Vivien, " has heard
that wedding-day story and also certain prattle about
our other tenants having quitted the house in a pell-
mell scare. She no more saw any ghost than there's
any ghost to see. ' Give a dog a bad name,' Viv, dear.
It's too idiotic, but I suppose we've got to stand it.
And they talk of the superstition of the Dark Ages
being dead! Not a bit of it. Luckily, however, we
can have cakes and ale without getting them from the
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 25
Gowerleigh rental. . . . I've a good mind to refuse the
place to the next fellow that wants it!"
But Cecil did not. A weak-lunged Frenchman, with
a little tawny, moustached wife, who had persuaded him
that "Eenglish" air would bring him marvels of
betterment, made a bid for the house and secured it.
They stayed six months, and finally departed, with
audible shivers.
One or two of the latter reached Cecil's ears. He
went over to Gowerleigh, and requested to see the
Count de Lespinasse. Cecil spoke French execrably,
as do many cultured Britons; but on meeting the
Count (who spoke scarcely any English at all) he made
himself rather memorably understood.
" You no longer wish to remain at Gowerleigh," he
said, " and that, of course, monsieur, is quite your own
affair. But you will pardon me for saying that to
spread reports of its being haunted is an injury to
myself as its owner."
The count, a spectrally pale person, whose white
growth of beard always covered a pair of lantern jaws
with the effect of his having needed shaving the day
before yesterday, now put a skinny hand , to his hollow
chest and denied that he had ever spoken a derogatory
word about Gowerleigh.
Cecil chanced to feel certain that this was a falsehood.
Presently Madame de Lespinasse appeared, and airily
confirmed the assertion of her spouse.
"Then," said Cecil, "I am to understand that you
both will support me in declaring this house free from
ghostly intrusions ? "
26 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
Madame exchanged a glance with the count. " Since
we learned that terrible story, monsieur " began the
latter, with solemnity. . . .
His wife waved him an interruption with one restless
hand. It made Cecil think of the shops on the Parisian
boulevards, or say on the Rue de la Paix, where, if you
wanted to buy anything, from a paper of pins to a
dozen of shirts, you always began with "Monsieur," only
to have " madame " step up and take possession of you.
And madame now took the most irritating possession
of her landlord. She did not believe in ghosts—oh,
jamais de la vie! But very strange things had
happened here of late. Some people might call it
nerves; she herself had no nerves to speak of, but her
husband, being an invalid, was less fortunate. Seen
anything ? Oh, it was best not to go into details
before Monsieur le Comte. They had made up their
minds, in any case, to try Vichy. Monsieur de
Lespinasse had a friend who had written him marvels
about Vichy at just this particular season. . . . Had
they heard strange noises? Well, yes, many, many.
Had they known that dreadful story before taking the
house? Possibly no; possibly yes. One hears such
a quantity of things that one forgets. The gossip of
servants? Ah, who could prevent that from finding
its way to one's ears ? Had any ghost actually been
seen ? Ah, would not Monsieur Savernay please be
careful ? The count did not wish to talk, and madame
herself preferred to be silent. On that one subject,
" N'en parlons plus, Monsieur Savernay, n'en parlons
plus, je vous supplie ! "
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
27
After this tantalisingly mystic appeal Cecil found
himself requested, with the utmost courtesy, to stay to
luncheon. Smiling blandly below the dusky down of
her moustache, madame besought him to try a cup of
chocolate or a glass of Chateau Larose.
He escaped, however, as civilly as his irritation
would permit.
" The same old story!" he exclaimed to Vivien,
when they again met one another. " Hang all future
tenants for Gowerleigh ! I'll keep it up—it sha'n't run
to waste; but if I'm offered five thousand a year for
it to-morrow I'll say, ' No, thank you; the ghost
objects.'"
IV.
SITTING there in the cool, commodious room,
Raymond let his musings languidly drift him
along, like the current of a stream that moves amid
mutable landscape. He recalled coming down from
Oxford, one vacation, and having a rather heated talk
with his brother.
" You're too sweeping altogether, Cecil."
"That's the way to deal with cobwebs."
"Cobwebs, like ghost-stories, are very complicated
affairs. You shouldn't forget that, my dear brother."
" I don't, Ray. Their complication, as you call it, is
just what makes 'em so hard to destroy."
Here Raymond, who had found time to read many
tough and abstruse books, outside of collegiate demands
upon his intellect, said, with hardy directness,—
" Look here now, Cecil, you treat an immense mass
of human testimony with an immense amount of dis-
respect."
" Bah 1" said Cecil.
" ' Bah 1'" frowned Raymond, " is not an answer:
it's an evasion, and a pretty lame one."
" Lame, is it ? " laughed Cecil. " I'll take one of its
28
THE GHOST OF GUY THYkLE. 29
crutches, young Mr. Impudence, and break it over your
head."
"Insult me in whatever way you wish, except by
calling me young. You've no right to do that. I'm
only three years and eight months younger than you
"And six times as clever, I admit, Ray. But oh,
not half so sensible! Mass of human testimony!
Why, there isn't a ghost-story ever recounted that a
logical, unemotional investigator wouldn't be able to
put his hat through if he tried."
" The amazing disclosures of spirit-manifestation in
America "
" Have never been scientifically verified. Assertions
of miraculous doings have been made; that is all. If
you bring up mind-reading, hypnotism, and all that,
I've nothing to say. There's no ghostly element in
those. Either they're true or false. If true, then
they're dependent on some natural law or laws, yet
undiscovered. Recollect, please, that we're talking of
only one thing—the existence of the spirits of human
beings after death, and of their power to make that
existence palpable to living beings here on earth."
" Agreed. . . . Then how about the revelations from
India ? "
" India ! " gaily jeered Cecil. " The land of jugglers !
Superstition has had its clutch on the throat of India
for thousands of years. Nature, there, is a constant
terrorism. For that matter, the very word 'oriental'
is an indorsement of brummagem magic. The whole
East is the very cradle of silly mysticism. Every-
30 2§gE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
thing they haven't understood they've spiritualised.
When it thundered, that meant one god ; when the
earth opened, it meant another. The instant anything
scared them out of their wits, from a snake to a
cyclone, they got down on their knees and worshipped
it. No India talk for me, please ! Even the poor old
ghost over at Gowerleigh is more respectable."
" You slept three consecutive nights over there at
Gowerleigh, you tell me," recommenced Raymond, after
a perceptible pause.
"Of course I did," smiled Cecil. "And I'll confess
to you, Ray, that each night I made an ass of myself.
Dear little Vivien didn't know it; she was too sound
asleep—Heaven bless her healthy young nerves 1"
" Pray how did you make an ass of yourself ? " asked
Raymond, with gentle satire, " since you are so
magnanimous as to confess the possibility of at least
this one miracle having occurred ? "
Cecil took a pen-wiper from the library table, near
which he sat, and fired at his brother's head its black
butterfly of flannel. It struck Raymond's lighted
cigarette and put it out. At which Raymond rose
and took very deliberate aim, with the same missile,
failing, however, to quench the spark, of his brother's
cigar.
" Now," muttered Cecil, " I will be magnanimous. I
can afford to be."
" Let's hear," said Raymond, re-seating himself, " this
particular, up-to-date asinity."
" Take care; I'll put out that fresh cigarette you're
lighting."
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE,
3i
" It won't matter. I've lots more."
" Of course you have. You ought to be placed on
an allowance of them. I believe they're nicotinizing
you into a bigoted spiritualist. . . . Well, my acts of
folly were these: each of the three nights I spent a
good hour roaming about that house with a candle.
And in the dimness and the almost deathly stillness I
kept repeating, ' Guy Thyrle, Guy Thyrle, are you
here ?' And several times I—well, I made overtures
decidedly more social. Not anything of the wilder
theatrical sort, don't you know ? But it was a kind of
Macbeth-like invocation business, nevertheless. . . . Are
you laughing at me, off there in the shadow ? "
" Not a bit, Cecil. I'm only thinking that you and
your vaunted scepticism are not such fast friends, after
all. . . . And Guy Thyrle was irresponsive, eh ? "
" Implacably. And because there wasn't any such
bugaboo to be otherwise."
" Then why did you seek to call him from his vasty
deep ? "
" Simply for a final proof "
" That he was mythical ? But you forget that you
totally disbelieved in him before. Now, if perfect faith
is the sworn foe of doubt, surely complete incredulity
should be "
" Hold your tongue, Ray. Haven't I admitted my
own idiocy ? ". . .
And so they had wrangled, that day, though frater-
nally enough. Later, they had held many more talks
together, and the younger brother had begun to look
upon the elder as a rationalist whose scorn of all so-
32 THE GHOST OH GUY THY RLE.
termed supernaturalism could scarcely have been shaken
if he saw the dead rise from their graves.
Thenceforward Gowerleigh had remained unleased,
nor was any occupant sought for. And while he moved
from room to room, this fragrant and melodious morning,
a resolve shaped itself in Raymond's mind.
He, too, would make a test like that of Cecil. He,
too, would sleep at Gowerleigh, not for three nights,
but a week of them.
" I mean to give the ghost a glorious chance," he
said to himself, grimly jocose. "There'll not be .a
shred of excuse for him, this time, if he doesn't, as
Cecil would phrase it, 4 turn up.'"
V.
BUT no such event occurred. Raymond changed
his apartment every night in the whole seven.
Each night he slept ill. He had no fear, and at times
he had in place of it an expectancy high-strung and
acute. He would rise, long after midnight, and sit in
total darkness. There was no moon that week, or he
would have let its light stream through the windows.
Repeatedly he stretched forth his hand and waited
for some responding touch. Repeatedly, too, he pro-
nounced the name " Guy Thyrle." Once, at surely
two in the morning, he descended into the cellar, and
stood there for a long interval, amid pitchy gloom.
But no manifestation ever came to him. At times he
wondered why he did not imagine one. But always
he would tell himself, instantly afterwards, that nothing
save the most palpable proof would satisfy him. If,
for example, a hand had caught his own, or a touch
had fallen upon his person, darkness would have given
him only added reason for wrestling with the Presence,
whatever it was. Intensely emotional in his desire,
he stayed, notwithstanding, intensely cool and brave.
Cecil, he felt certain, could not have been more so.
33 3
34
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
"And yet Cecil," he admitted, "has not my sense of
awe, my imagination, my nervous impressionability.
Where these would land me if I once found myself
face-to-face with what I believed was Spirit, Heaven
knows !"
At the end of the week he was pierced with disap-
pointment, while mocking his receptivity to its pangs.
"As if I expected anything would happen!" passed
one minute through his thoughts, and " As if I did not
expect it!" came, absurdly contradictory, the next.
At last he bade good-bye to Gowerleigh; he would go
there no more. Its very symmetries and serenities
had grown irritating to him. Meanwhile, he had re-
ceived two or three happy letters from Cecil and
Vivien. They were enjoying London vastly ; it had
never been so gay, so full of novel and delightful
people. Had he not had enough of solitude? Why
would he not join them soon ?
He decided one hour to obey their genial summons,
and the following hour decided that he would stay
on at Storrowby. He knew that his health had con-
tinued to fail him, but in the way men know such facts
when they are wilfully averse to the recognition of
them. His first night in his old home was perturbed,
packed with fatiguing dreams. At Gowerleigh, too, he
had dreamed dismally, luridly, fantastically. But he
had never confused dreaming with waking, and he had
always laid, as it were, a physician's finger on his own
pulse, to mark just how febrile or normal were its
beats. He had it hauntingly on his conscience, how-
ever, that he needed a real physician to retune some-
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
35
thing in him which had grown oddly discordant. But
at this point he told himself that if he resorted at all
to medical aid it should be of the finest and most
eminent. Hence he concluded to go up to London,
after all, and thus to blend practical benefit there with
whatever diversion his two cherished relatives might
have in store for him.
u I hope my new mood will be permanent," he
thought, unconscious of the mental malady to which
this feeble self-distrust perhaps pointed. " If it prove
so, I'll have my things packed to-morrow and take a
sudden plunge into town turmoils."
But a little later he remembered that he had left at
Gowerleigh (in the very chamber where he had first
sat and meditated, not many days ago) a certain
enamelled match-box which had been the gift of a dear
Oxford friend, and which he valued specially for this
reason. He therefore determined to visit the place
once more, and did so that afternoon.
The sky was clouded, now, and all the distances
looked vaporously grey. Every tree was one torpor
of breezeless green. The humid heat oppressed and
tired him. After he had found his little match-box on
the sill of the same window near which he had paused,
that recent morning, he sank quite exhaustedly into
the same easy-chair he had occupied then.
His gaze wandered about the sunless and placid
room. He was not thinking of Guy Thyrle's ghost.
This was a subject now wholly dismissed, if not for-
gotten.
Suddenly, against the walnut panel of a large
36 THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
wardrobe he saw what seemed to him a transparent
white figure. The panel was polished, and he at first
explained this effect by some reflection of light on the
mirror-like glimmerings of its surface. Perhaps even
some out-of-door image had been pictured there,
caught up through one of the open windows from the
adjacent lawn.
Raymond slowly rose. The figure did not change
in the least. It was very shadowy, like a sketch done
lightly in chalk against a background of pale tints.
The limbs and breast were quite nude, and vaguer
than the face, which was that of a man somewhat older
than thirty, with a short, black, curly beard. It had
a look of wildness and great pain ; the instant Raymond
fully scanned it, he perceived this. The mouth curved
downwards at either corner, the brows were knit, the
nostrils tense and tremulous. But though a face
ravaged by agony and despair, the look of it was still
not human. It seemed to affirm, in some piteous yet
mystic way, that its capacity both of suffering and joy
was spiritual of scope, and hence almost incalculably
keener and broader than any which mortals might
know. The sublimity of torture conveyed by it awed
Raymond.
He approached it, and as he did so it in turn
approached him. It seemed to float out from the panel,
as though a shape painted there had become possessed
of motion. To its observer this act was far more
appalling than if night and dead silence had accom-
panied it. Recently, here at Gowerleigh, night and
dead silence would have been for Raymond a natural
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
37
surrounding of some such anticipated spectre. Now,
in prosaic daylight, unprepared for the least phe-
nomenal occurrence, he faced the apparition with
fluttering heart and whitening cheeks.
It drew nearer, lifted well above the floor, a vision
colourless, nebulous. One might have fancied that
some sort of calm air-current had gently propelled it
and then left it poised there before him, as buoyant
and quiescent as a leaf on a still pool.
" I am the ghost of Guy Thyrle," it seemed to say.
But the voice did not cause its lips to move. This
sound merely flowed forth from them, as from the
stirless marble or bronze of a statue's.
VI.
NE morning, two days later, when Raymond
Savernay suddenly appeared at his brother's
handsome little house in Curzon Street, Cecil was
overwhelmed to see him.
" Ray, my boy, so you've really come to us! Vivien
will be delighted. Too bad that she's just driven off—
I suppose to Redfern's, in Regent Street, or to-
squandering of guineas in the Burlington Arcade.
Excuse these topsy-turvy flannels. I was tired, from
late hours (one does keep such awful hours here!), and
so lay down for a little snooze before the garden-party
at which we're promised, this afternoon, somewhere
over in Surrey. . . . But, by Jove! my boy, now that
I look at you closer, you seem tired, too."
" I am, Cecil—if that's the right name for it."
Cecil had been holding his brother cordially by both
hands. He loosed his clasp now, and they both sank
into seats, facing one another, so close together that
their knees almost touched.
" You mean that you're truly quite ill, Ray ? "
" Does it strike you that I look ill ? " Then, with
a smothered sigh, "Yes, I know it does. If you
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
39
hadn't told me so already I could read it in your odd
stare."
Cecil kept silent, at first. Those feverish eyes, that
drawn mouth, that new, livid pallor—what way but one
to define them ?
" Ray," he soon said, " you're pulled down ; there's
not a doubt of it. You must see a doctor. That's
why you came, old fellow ? We'll go together and
have a talk with the best that can be found in
London."
Raymond shook his head. Then for a moment he
closed his eyes, and when he re-opened them their
hectic light appealed to Cecil as pathetic in its
brilliance.
" No doctor can possibly do me any good," he
answered.
" Ray ! What are you saying ? "
He laid one hand on Cecil's arm, keeping it there
while he murmured,—
u I've seen him ; I've seen Guy Thyrle; I've met
him, face to face, as I meet you now—all that is left
of him! "
Cecil looked horror-stricken ; then his mouth mel-
lowed into a smile.
" Ray," he cried, " don't be absurd. You've had
a specially nasty nightmare; it's nothing but that!,v
He rose, and took Raymond by both shoulders, lean-
ing over him and gently shaking him. " We'll go at
once to Dr. Lascombe ; I'm sure he'll be just your
man. He has an immense practice, and deserves it..
Nervous disorders are his specialty. I chance to
40 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
know him personally. Three years ago, while you
were at Oxford, I'd come up here and was seized
with a series of the most frightful headaches. He
cured me—oh, but you remember, of course, my boy;
I'm sure I've told you about him before. And I've
been to see him lately, and he's just as nice and
interesting as ever. It's only a short drive from here
—to Harley Street, you know. . . . Wait till I get
myself into civilised clothes, Ray. I'll be with you
in five minutes. There, now ; sit precisely where you
are, and ring that bell if you want anything."
Off darted Cecil. His brother sat quite still for a
short while. Then he took out a little memorandum-
book and stared down at its open pages. Cecil was
absent scarcely more than ten minutes. When he
reappeared he was not only attired in a morning coat,
but was drawing on a pair of modish gloves.
Raymond quietly quitted his chair.
" Cecil," he said, with tones that had a throb of
reproach in them, " I clearly understand your anxiety.
But, pray, is not your present course of action a
trifle precipitate?"
" My dear Ray ! You think so now ; but I'm sure
you'll view the matter differently after we three—
you, Lascombe, and I—have had an intimate chat
together."
" An intimate chat together," repeated Raymond,
sneering the words, though fatiguedly rather than
bitterly. " And that will mean—what ? A prescrip-
tion, from your medical friend, of bromides and other
sedatives, and his advice that I should dose myself
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
4i
with some sort of German or Austrian water, forswear
tobacco, live on a rigidly Spartan diet "
" No, Ray," began his hearer. " Perhaps, on the
contrary "
" Pardon me. Perhaps, on the contrary, he will
counsel me to take a voyage round the world." Here
Raymond smiled. " How if I myself proposed for
myself to take a voyage out of the world ? "
Cecil looked steadily at his brother. Then he bit
his lip, and gave his head an impatient toss.
" That's very queer talk, Ray, from a sane man."
" Not so queer as you think it."
" Out of the world ? What can such a phrase mean
except ? "
" Suicide ? "
" Yes." . . . Here Cecil drew close to his inter-
locutor. " I know you too well," he went on, with
much mingled gravity and sweetness, " to believe you
capable of coming here and telling me that you've any
such silly, sensational intent! "
Raymond gave a short, sad laugh. " I haven't told
you so. But when you've heard what I really did
come here to tell you I'm convinced that you will
justify suicide in me if I choose to commit it."
" Oh, Ray, Ray ! "
Receding a little, the younger brother said,—
" Don't pity me. There's another whom you should
pity infinitely more."
"Another? "
" Guy Thyrle—or all, as I said, that is left of him."
Cecil began agitatedly to pull off his gloves. He
42
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
dearly loved his brother, and now felt confident that
the curse of insanity had overtaken him. This visit
to Dr. Lascombe must be abandoned—at least, for the
present. Plainly there was . some sort of demented
confession that Raymond would be willing to make.
"This little room," he now said, "is a sort of
private den of my own. Nobody need bother us for
an age if you'll just settle yourself comfortably on
that big lounge yonder, and speak out with perfect
frankness all that you care to disclose. Will you not
do so, dear boy ?" And he put an arm fondlingly
about Raymond's neck.
The tenderness of these words wrought an abrupt
and unforeseen effect. Raymond suddenly embraced
his brother, and became convulsed by a passionate flow
of tears.
A little later Cecil led him to the lounge. He sank
upon it, and while the paroxysm wore itself out in
recurrent sobs, exquisitely strange and painful to hear,
Cecil once more slipped from the room.
He stayed away only long enough to scribble a brief
note to Vivien, pending her return. In this note he
informed her that Raymond had arrived, that he was
deplorably ailing and unstrung, that they would pro-
bably remain in privacy together for a good while, and
that the best plan was not to look them up at all, but
go to the garden-party alone. He gave a few orders,
also, to one of the footmen. This concerned the serving
of luncheon, for which he would ring when he desired it.
Returning, he found Raymond much calmer. He
still reclined on the lounge. Cecil drew a chair to his
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
43
side and took one of his hands. The hand was drily
hot, but the face above it wrung Cecil's heart.
"When you feel stronger, Ray," he soon said, "you
must tell me everything.. Will you ? "
" I—I don't know; I am not sure about it. I came
here to speak right out, with no reserve. It seemed to
me that I must; and then there was only you. But
now, Cecil, you've discouraged me. I see in your face
that you will only rate as madness anything I may say.
And yet . . . you yourself went to Gowerleigh and passed
three nights there."
" Did you go as well ? "
Raymond nodded, and a loitering sigh escaped him.
" Yes, I went as well. I spent seven nights there.
But nothing happened then. What befell me was in
broad daylight." He spoke on, recounting where and
how he had looked upon the phantom. He ceased
suddenly in his recital, after stating how it had floated
towards him and then paused motionless.
Cecil, though sceptic to the bone, felt his flesh crawl.
Raymond, who had spoken with head supported by
one hand and an elbow buried in a cushion of the
lounge, here lifted himself to a sitting posture.
" I have ordered luncheon to be served here," Cecil
said, rising, with tremors in his voice that he failed to
steady. "You must have a glass or two of sherry,
Ray, before " And he stopped short.
"Before I tell you the rest? " asked Raymond, with
a desolate smile flashing over his face. " The rest! "
he repeated, in quivering whisper and as though quite
to himself.
44 THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
When luncheon was brought, Cecil forced his brother
■ to swallow a slice or two of cold fowl. But he ate
with plain disrelish, and then drank several glasses of
wine in an automatic way. At once the wine seemed
both to strengthen and excite him. He got up and
began almost impetuously to pace the chamber. At
length, with a smothered moan, he returned to his
former place on the lounge.
" Of course there is more to tell me," proposed Cecil,
with as much easy levity as his discomfiture would
permit.
" Yes—there's more."
" Well ? "
Cecil was now seated again. He leaned forward,
and tried to hold with his own Raymond's disquieted
and burning gaze.
" Yes, there's more. The Thing spoke to me. It
spoke on and on for hours. I seem to recall every
syllable it said. But even if I repeated the whole
thrilling monologue, you, Cecil, would think mere mad-
ness the mood into which it has plunged me."
"What mood, Ray? "
Many minutes passed before a sentence of response
came. And then, in tumult of volubility, these words
were poured upon their listener :
" Conceive, Cecil, of a human soul that is doomed
for all eternity to wander homeless, hopeless, aimless,
denied the right to die ! We say ' all eternity,' as if it
had an all or a part ; it has neither; it has merely
immensity, and this encircles for ever one lost and
agonised spirit 1 "
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
45
Cecil began to drum faintly with his finger-nails on
the table near him. He could not look into his brother's
haggard yet enkindled face and call this declaration
absurd; still, here in his Mayfair house, with cab-
wheels echoing outside and all huge, practical London
surrounding him, it perforce wore an incongruity sharply
grotesque.
" The . . . the ghost of Guy Thyrle said this to you,
Ray ? "
" This, and far more."
" Upon my word,'I hope it wasn't all so ghastly."
"Ah, Cecil, Cecil," came the weary and yet reproach-
ful answer, " don't treat lightly what to me teems with
unspeakable pity and awe 1"
" I agree with you that it's most horrifyijjg and
melancholy, if it's true."
"True?" cried Raymond, letting one uplifted arm
stay arched for a moment above his head. " If it isn't
true I'm a living lie myself. And ah, how its truth
has burned into my soul! "
" Ray, you must not let yourself go like this ! You
must draw a tighter rein, dear boy! " While he thus
spoke, Cecil Savernay had lost all further doubt con-
cerning his brother's sanity.
"Oh, I can keep myself calm enough," Raymond
muttered, " till the time comes."
" ' Till the time comes,' Ray ? Now, what can you
possibly mean by that ? Frankly let me learn."
With drawn lips, with tightened nostrils, with one
hand fluttering in strange disquiet about the region of
his throat, Raymond huskily answered,—
46 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
" Oh, I'll be very frank ! You may think now that
I'm crazed, but you will not think so when you've
heard all he confided to me. The great point, Cecil,
is this : I must die to save him. I must die to give
Guy Thryle's ghost repose from its terrible wanderings.
Here's no finely heroic conception ; it's merely what
any man with a human heart in his breast would feel
himself bound to do. We talk of moral obligation.
Mine is of stupendous pressure. He has made the
course inflexibly clear to me. In brief summary, his
case stands thus: Not many years ago he made a
great discovery, this man, Guy Thyrle. He not only
found out that he had a soul, but he mastered a means
of causing it to desert his physical flesh at will. I
don't imply any theosophical stuff about the ' astral
bodies ' of those Eastern dreamers. I affirm that Guy
Thyrle did not merely solve through science the problem
of the existence of a soul, but that he could make it
leave his body whenever the inclination so directed
him. . . . Never mind the details, Cecil; these, if you
choose to hear them, will be imparted later."
" I see, dear Ray. And the bare facts are . . . ? "
" Some time previously he had joined a cremation
society at Bristol. A certain bond of agreement existed
(half forgotten by himself) which authorised the society
to cremate him on his death."
" Yes . . . well ? "
"This document had been made use of by a friend of
his—an enemy in reality—a man whom he had told of
the amazing power which he had managed to secure.
When, after flights and wanderings, Guy Thyrle's ghost
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
47
one day resought its body, every shred of it had been
resolved into—ashes ! "
" Horrible indeed ! " broke from Cecil. He rose and
peered gropingly along the mantel, as if in search of a
match for the unlighted cigar he held.
Meanwhile it was speeding through his brain,—
" Poor, dear Ray! How desperately sad! Ah,
what can I do for him ? It's heart-breaking to see his
mind going like this ! . . . What can I—what ought I
to do ? "
VII.
S Cecil reapproached him, Raymond again began
to speak.
" If Guy Thyrle could have regained his body, and
gone through the process of actually dying—whether
by violence or what we call a natural death—the terrific
doom that now curses him might have been averted.
As it is, he came to me a suppliant. It is only with
supreme difficulty that he can materialise himself. Of
the influences which enable him to do this he is always
confusedly doubtful. They are dependent upon certain
atmospheric conditions which he is powerless to explain.
He is simply aware that these conditions demand on
his own part a prodigious struggle—something like the
swimming of a stream whose cross-current threatens
every second to whirl us over some near abyss. After-
wards his exhaustion is intense, and the pain that
follows it like that of one buried alive and gasping
below a coffin-lid."
" Ray 1 What are you saying ? "
" This came to me from his spectral lips—those
immovable lips, that seemed to hold behind their pale
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
49
curves all the sorrow of all ages and races and climes.
. . . Such despair had breathed through his recital that
when he spoke of a possible freedom I almost felt
myself shouting with joy—with the joy, Cecil, of
realising that some sort of help could conceivably reach
him in his unspeakable durance, exile, calamity ! "
" Joy, Ray ? How is that ? "
" There's no other word for it. Say you are walking
in the street and see some fellow-creature in great peril.
A building is about to fall and crush him; there is a
dog crazed by rabies in another street whose near
corner he is about to turn. Your impulse is inevitably
to save him. If the situation is worse, and involves
threat to your own life, you still wish to take personal
risks. This is but natural with men of ordinary
courage and sympathy. . . . But intensify these condi-
tions a million-fold. Say that you are brought into
contact with a fellow-creature whose tortures must be
eternal unless you yourself will to relieve them.
Would not you so will at the cost of your own life ?
Except to some callous egotist, dying would seem
triviality beside such endless living as his ! And he
has made me certain, Cecil, that my own death would be
his deliverance."
Cecil controlled his face, and thought how strange
were the freaks and tricks of madness. His brother's
air was impressive, convincing; it almost made you
forget the fatuity of what he said. But for his woful
pallor and the strange brilliance of his eyes, even Cecil
might have felt credence duped, at least transiently.
Now he said,—
4
5°
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
" Dear Ray, your words are fantasy itself! I only
hope that soon you and I will smile at them together."
Then he paused, not liking the cloud that his own
words had quickly put into Raymond's face. "Well,"
he added, with an effort at laughter, " this ghost of Guy
Thyrle is certainly a very selfish fellow. I can't see that
he has the least business to require so huge a sacrifice
from you or from anybody."
" He does not require it," burst from Raymond.
" He has merely disclosed to me the way in which I
could release him, were I so to will."
" And this mode of release is—your own death ? "
" My own death, if I choose, by dying, to rid him
from his present endless curse."
" If you choose, that is, to commit suicide as an act
of personal sacrifice."
"Yes."
"But how can your performance of this act aid
him ? "
" He has made that whole question as clear as it lies
in his power to make it. By discovering the means
which enabled him to quit his body whenever he so
desired, Guy Thyrle (having dealt with purely scientific
methods of search into natural laws) violated none of
those mystic ordinances which enfold and intersect
and underlie the whole enigma of the universe itself.
But there was some hidden power that he did violate,
though unwittingly, when he failed to find the body
he had deserted at will. This body had become dis-
integrated—resolved into a state impossible for his
rehabitation. Compare his spirit, if you please, to a
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
5i
key of some unique design whose lock has been
shattered. One slight note in the enormous and
complex harmony has become discordant. That note
is Guy Thyrle. In the mighty melody it can never
resume its former place, save by a single process of
reinstatement. A fellow-creature must voluntarily die
for him, and while so dying must will that Guy Thy rids
spirit shall instantly flash into the corpse from which
his own flies."
With bowed head, Cecil was now nursing one knee.
" Poetic, certainly, Ray," he murmured, sorrow and
bewilderment both inwardly thrilling him. " But this
reincarnation of which you tell me—'how could your
phantom visitor have found out its expediency except
he were in close communion with that unseen Power
which might grant him, through its omnipotence, a far
less ghastly way of breaking his dismal ban ? "
For a moment Raymond seemed to muse. Then,
shaking his head in quick negative, " The spirit of
Guy Thyrle knows nothing of any primal Power. He
has motion and perception which to us would be
miraculous. But of ultimate causes he knows nothing.
Even the shades of men and women who have died
natural deaths are invisible to him. Till he, too, has
naturally died he can never envisage the Mystery
discernible through death alone. With spiritual eyes
he can look upon the material in ways that it now
appals me to think of. But, never having really died,
he is powerless to bridge by any species of mental in-
telligence the chasm between matter and those awful
energies which are its origin
52
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
H And yet he knows . . . ? "
" And yet he knows, by some unexplainable instinct,
the secret of his restoration back within normal limits
of entity."
Here a wistful fervour displaced the hard eager-
ness that had filled for many minutes Raymond's
blanched face. He clasped his hands together, and
then let them slowly fall into his lap, leaning forward
in a posture of earnest entreaty.
" Oh, Cecil, let me tell you the whole story, just as
he told it me that morning at Gowerleigh ! "
" Willingly, Ray."
"It will be long—I warn you, it will be long."
" Never mind, Ray. But your strength "
" My strength is wholly equal to the narration."
u And you remember . . . ? "
" Everything—everything ! I seem to see a long
written scroll within my brain, where each word is
clear as though stamped there in script of scorch.
What already I have said on this subject, Cecil, sounds
forlornly inadequate. But from beginning to end I
could recount Guy Thyrle's whole history, just as he
himself related it."
" Pray do so, then, dear boy."
And waiting for no further solicitation, Raymond
began. Hundreds of sentences flowed from his lips,
but nearly all were delivered in a voice as tranquil
as lit was vibrant. Even during less composed in-
tervals, however, Cecil noticed the recitative quality
of his tones. He appeared to repeat rather than
originate, to echo rather than affirm. Several times
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 53
he went back in a phrase and gave it with a new
turn, as though he had not at first rightly remembered
it. . . .
"When he had ended, the summer twilight was
flooding the chamber, and in its delicate bluish dim-
ness the brothers' faces looked vague, each to each.
"There," said Raymond; "you have heard it all
now."
" Yes."
Cecil did not know that he spoke. He had drawn
out his watch, and was staring down at it. He closed
it with a little snap of the gold case. Then, not being
aware that he had taken it out, he took it out again,
and this time made sure of the hour.
Raymond lay at full length on the lounge, now.
He had let himself slip quietly into this posture after
having ceased to speak. His face looked ashen and
very tired. His eyes had closed, but they opened the
moment he heard his brother's voice once more.
" Ray," said Cecil, standing over him, " I feel that
you must be exhausted. Take this fresh glass of
wine."
" Thanks."
He drank the wine, raising himself a little to do so.
Then he dropped back, and smiled up into Cecil's
face, wistfully, yet somehow with a sort of drowsy
triumph.
" You feel like a short nap, don't you ?" Cecil
soon pursued. " Dinner is not till half after eight.
You've lots of time for the most refreshing of dozes."
" Very well."
54 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
" If I leave you now, Ray, you'll stay here, will you
not ? "
" Stay here ? "
" Yes, just here in this room. Dinner will be served
you, as luncheon was."
" All right."
" But, Ray. . . ." And Cecil let one hand tenderly
stroke the locks above his brother's forehead. "You
must make me a promise before I go."
" A promise ? "
" Yes." And then Cecil bent down, whispering
wha?t more he chose to say.
" I promise," came at length Raymond's answer,
slow and lingering.
" On your honour, Ray ! "
"On my honour, Cecil. . . . You'll find me here
when you return. And shall you be long gone ? "
" I can't state how long. But my absence may last
several hours. Meanwhile, trust in my return as a
certainty. And remember, Ray, your sacred promise
has been given me."
"I remember."
Cecil turned away. He stood quite still for a few
seconds, with an irresolute, worried sombreness gloom-
ing every feature. Then he veered round again and
went up to his brother and touched his brow with a kiss.
" You have sacredly promised, Ray, haven't you ? "
"Yes."
" Well, then, I sacredly trust you."
For many minutes after Cecil had left him, Raymond
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
55
lay quite still. Then he slowly drew his form from the
lounge, and went to the mirror just above the mantel
and watched there, for many minutes more, his own
haggard reflection. As if addressing this, he said, in
dogged undertone,—
" I've repeated to him the whole story. And he
does not believe a word of it. He was intensely
moved, and yet he does not believe a word of it. He
thinks it all the coinage of lunacy. How well I read
him ! That friend of his—that Leverett Lascombe, of
whom I've so often heard him speak, is first to hear
and then to act—Cecil has gone to him. When he
comes back he will bring Dr. Lascombe. . . . And
what will be the result ? Do I not know as clearly as
if this instant I faced it? No matter how I protest
and rebel—an asylum. Discipline, close watching,
being dosed with drugs for weeks, months, perhaps
years. Here I am, absolutely sane, and yet my sanity
will profit me nothing. The very love that Cecil bears
me will strengthen his zeal of gaolership."
Raymond left the mirror, and reseated himself on
the lounge. In brooding way he drew forth a small
pistol and held it loosely between both hollowed hands.
"Of course I could find means to fight against my
continued imprisonment. A man of my wealth—but
pah! why think of that ? Having heard his heart-
breaking appeal, knowing that I possessed the power
to end his anguish—so unprecedented, so infernal—
what would all my future life become but one pro-
longed conscience-pang ? "
A new thought seemed to strike him. He started,
56 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
slightly shuddering. Then he looked down with great
steadiness at the pistol, and gave a brief, chill laugh.
" I promised dear old Cecil that I would not. Yes,
I promised. But had I not seen in his eyes the
bigoted ' no surrender' of the irreversible doubter ?
Should such a promise be binding? What is the sin
of breaking it beside the sin of leaving Guy Thyrle's
agonised spirit to endure that thraldom on and on
through incalculable ages ? "
He rose once more. A second time he drew near
the mirror. As before, he stared at his own image.
He held the weapon in one lax hand, its slim, lustrous
tube pointing downwards. From the dimming London
streets outside there came a drowsy roar, which the
stillness of the little close-shut room seemed to deepen.
His face, the outlines of his brows and temples, were
almost momentarily growing less distinct. Notwith-
standing this, he could yet behold himself quite clearly.
" Guy Thyrle," he said aloud, with low resonance,
"is not your whole dreadful story one insistent
entreaty ? "
He stood perfectly motionless and silent for some
time, after this, except that his grasp on the handle
of the pistol was no longer lax. It had sensibly
tightened.
VIII.
" T EVERETT, I'm so glad I found you at home."
J—* " Have you forgotten my hours, Cecil ? "
" No—yes. I've forgotten everything, my friend,
except that I need you."
" Need me ? "
" Oh, unspeakably."
"You're excited."
" My cab-horse tumbled flat in Piccadilly, and I had
to get out. I suppose that has something to do with
my distraught bearing. Why is it that whenever one
is wildly hurried in London one always chooses a bad
cab-horse ? "
" Wildly hurried, Cecil ? Mrs. Savernay "
" Oh, Vivien is still at Lady Archie Challoner's
garden-party, I suppose. No, Leverett, it's not she."
Then, quite rattlingly, but with good coherence,
Cecil spoke on. Meanwhile the strictest attention was
manifest in Leverett Lascombe's air. He might have
been eight-and-thirty, and he had a clean-shorn face of
cameo-like delicacy. He was thought very handsome,
both by men and women, and was renowned for his
fascinating deportment with the latter. As a physician
57
58
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
of nervous diseases he had reached within a few years
astonishing heights. He had been called a bloodless
infidel, and his face, with its chiselled lips and nostrils,
had surely a cold look ; but the large eyes could beam
very warm and soft from under the broad brow. As
a rule unbelievers are not popular, even with our end-
of-the-century communities. They who do not write
" God " and " miracle " and " soul " and " immortality "
with a capital as the first letter of each, very rarely
learn, in at least one sense, how to spell the word
" success." But Leverett Lascombe had learned. Pro-
bably he had done so in a way both audacious and
facile ; by blending cool indifference to public sympathy
with exceptional medical skill.
" All this," he at length said, when Cecil came to a
pause, "is surely most extraordinary."
" You mean, Leverett . . . ? "
" His dreaming like that, and not being afterwards
conscious that it was a dream."
" You think, then, that beyond doubt he did dream ? "
" Oh, I should say that the cerebral trouble first
developed in that way. He fell asleep there at Gower-
leigh, and in a few seconds may have dreamed all this
grisly chronicle which you say it took him hours to
unfold."
"This seems incredible."
" A good many things do seem so when one studies
the structure and phenomena of the human brain.
Permanent conditions of hallucination are now esta-
blished in your brother."
" And these make his case a serious one ? "
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
59
" Naturally, my dear Cecil, I can say nothing until I
see him. All hallucinations, however, are serious."
" And what I've told you about his conviction that he
ought to kill himself in order to release the spirit of
Guy Thyrle from its dolorous bondage ? "
" It's picturesque, isn't it?" said Leverett Lascombe
musingly. He glanced about him, at the walls of this
private apartment in which he had received Cecil.
Severe simplicity reigned everywhere. The carpets
and furniture were costly, but so plain and modest that
to perceive their value was to scan them closely. On
the walls, however, hung certain etchings of exquisite
rarity.
" Picturesque, Leverett ? To me it's terrifying."
" True . . . true. Insanity, though, has its poetic
splendours. Sometimes one can't help being struck by
their sublimity, which verges on the Miltonic."
" But the intense consistency of Ray's assertions ! "
Dr. Lascombe started, pursing for a second, in
grave deprecation, his sensitive, fine-cut lips.
" Consistency, Cecil ? You surely don't wish me to
accede that you—always hitherto a thinker after my
own heart—have been led to believe your brother really
saw that ghost! "
Cecil drooped his eyes. "Oh, Leverett," he mur-
mured, " if you had heard his story as I heard it 1"
There came a pause, and then whatever largeness of
character, of dominating individualism, belonged to this
man, Leverett Lascombe, affirmed itself with decisive
speed.
" I have heard many fairy-tales from mad people.
60 THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
They often remind me of the superstitions, both social
and religious, which thousands of sane people are to-day
venting and exploiting. My friend, madness, after all,
as I study it, is a much greater factor of the human
intellect than I dreamed it was twenty years ago.
Everywhere, I see, men take on trust what exact
knowledge would recoil from as the riff-raff of random
fancy. This very credulity is a kind of dementia.
Now, the human brain, when in perfect order, Cecil, is
a rather prosaic affair. A complete equilibrium of all
our mental faculties is hardly more interesting than a
flatland, dotted over with shrubs. ... I can imagine that
this ' story' of your brother's is instinct with poetry,
feeling, beauty, and even a felicitous kind of horror.
But for an instant to credit it! . . . Think : a spirit
that has left its body through some Cagliostroish mode
of exit, finds, one day, that body turned into ashes on
application for re-entrance there ! "
"You put the thing humorously, Leverett. I
might have known you would."
" Oh, but, my dear Cecil! This spirit, then, wails
that he can neither positively die nor yet enjoy his full
rights of citizenship as a ghost in ghostland ! Why,
the thrill in the thing is supposable enough; we thrill
over the battles of gods in the 1 Iliad' and ' Paradise
Lost.' But to accept them as verity! I'd as soon—
and so ought you—admit that my pen-wiper, here,
could flap its black flannel wings, and turn into a
bat if so desirous ! "
" I know all this, Leverett—I know, I know ! "
burst from Cecil, impetuously. " Still, I cannot help
THE GHOST OF GUY THVRLE. 61
feeling that if you'd heard what I have lately heard
from Raymond, your faith in his having merety
dreamed it would be shaken as you're now unable to
conceive 1"
Lascombe slowly rose. "I'll hear the story," he
said. " Will it take so very long ? I think you told
me it was voluminous."
" You've not the time, now," answered Cecil, as if
in courteous afterthought. " I realise too well your
many pressing engagements."
" I will make time, in this case," said Lascombe,
with decision. ... He quitted the room, presently, and
Cecil heard his voice outside, or thought he heard it,
as though giving certain orders to attendants, assist-
ants, or both. Cecil felt grateful enough when his
friend returned, and he said so. " It's no slight affair,
I well understand, Leverett, to ask a long audience
from one of the most famous physicians in London."
"Oh," smiled Lascombe, "it isn't precisely stopping
the planet's revolution. ... Now, frankly, Cecil, tell
me: while we sit here, you speaking and I listening,
shall you have no dread of leaving your brother alone
in Curzon Street ? "
" Dread ? " he repeated, turning pale. " Ah, Leverett,
do you think there is danger . . . ? "
" How can I tell ? That is for you to judge. The
hallucination exists, I should say, beyond all doubt."
" But his oath—his sacred promise to me?"
" Oath ? Promise ? He made one ? You did not
mention this before."
"Did I not ? " sighed Cecil, with a hurried pass of
62
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
one hand across his forehead. When he had spoken
further, Lascombe slowly nodded, yet as if in assent
that was dashed with doubt.
" My dear Cecil, he may keep that promise, and he
may not. Madness is madness. I dare not encourage
you."
Cecil seemed to reflect. " Madness ! " he suddenly
exclaimed. " Oh, Leverett, I can't believe him mad!
I can't, and I'm certain that you, if you saw him, if
you heard him "
" My dear Cecil," came the gentle interruption, "if
you think this way it is best I made you no answer at
all."
" I see—I see," faltered Cecil. He straightened
himself in his chair, crossed his legs, and folded his
arms. "The risk," he now said, with resolute accents,
" I'm prepared personally to take. Mad or not mad,
I feel confident Ray will never lift a hand against his
own life till he sees me once more. Afterwards I admit
that I should not trust him. But afterwards, acting on
your counsel, Leverett, I will employ every means of
watch and ward that your tried experience may suggest."
" So be it, Cecil. And now for the ghostly dis-
closure."
A long pause followed. Cecil closed. his eyes and
placed a flattened hand against either temple, as though
sternly bewildered and oppressed. But soon his entire
demeanour changed ; new energy and calmness in-
formed him. A little later he commenced the narration
of what had been imparted so recently by his brother.
The story was given in a far more broken and hesitant
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLET. 63
way than when he had heard it from Raymond's lips.
At times, too, he even stumbled or halted outright in the
telling of it. What he said will therefore not be
recorded in his own language. It has indeed been
thought best to borrow neither his nor the more con-
vincing voice of his brother, but to unfold in coming
pages an impersonal chronicle, as though rearranged
by one closely aware of all the leading facts, mindful
that each of these shall secure due saliency of presenta-
tion, and conscientious in retaining whatever drama,
poetry, or spiritual suggestion the original record may
have disclosed.
IX.
LL Guy Thyrle's early life was dull and tame.
His mother died in his third year, and he was
brought up by a sour, faded old aunt, too fond of
nursing her own aches and pains to care much for a
boy's pleasures or griefs. Guy's father was the gentlest
and most amiable of beings, but for eight or nine years
he took slight notice of his only child. Thyrle Grange
was once a valuable property, but through its master's
indolence (and that, perhaps, of his ancestors as well)
it had become heavily mortgaged and been mismanaged
in other ways. For hours at a time Godfrey Thyrle
would sit in his immense library* devouring books. He
was that queer combination, an unscholarly bookman.
He used to say that he read because he was too lazy
to do anything else. But he rarely read from any
volume that did not enshrine good literature.
Now and then he would see his little son in an alcove
of one of the library windows, or on a lounge, buried
in a pile of cushions. Guy would always have a book,
but his father took it for granted that pictures and not
print allured him. He would stroke the boy's hair or
pat his head, but that was all. He seldom spoke to
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
65
him. He had got into the habit of regarding Guy as
quite without the normal share of brains.
This was but natural, though it clearly betrayed his
lazy and absent way of drowsing through life. When
Guy was three years old he received a severe wound
on the head by being flung from a carriage. The
horses had taken fright and the nurse at his side had
been killed. * Had she not clasped little Guy in her
arms at the fatal moment, he, too, would have met
death. As it was, a fracture of the skull placed his
life in peril, and when recovery came, several physicians
declared that it would leave him permanently demented.
And so, for a long time, it seemed to leave him. God-
frey Thyrle accepted the affliction with a philosophic
sigh. There is no doubt that for a good while after-
wards his son gave every sign of confirmed idiocy.
But as Guy grew older his faculties brightened and
strengthened. Meanwhile his father had accepted him,
so to speak, as a little mental invalid impossible of
cure. More than once his aunt, Miss Martha Thyrle,
would tell her brother of the child's u improvement."
But he never seemed to realise the full force of this
information, and one day the elderly lady, with her
sallow face wrinkled into quite a scolding scowl, said
tartly,—
" I do think, Godfrey, you ought to treat your son
better. That Miss Clagg I engaged for his governess
is delighted with him. He's getting on remarkably
well in his lessons. All that brain-trouble has passed.
He is now a bright, nice boy, though very shy and
bashful. He looks on you as a kind of genial bugaboo.
5
66 THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
It's dreadful that you shouldn't notice him in the leas.t.
Of course I can't give him the care I would give if I
were less of a sufferer. You told me, not long ago,
that you often found him in the library, busied with
the pictures in certain books there. This is entirely a
mistake. The boy reads those books, and it certainly
is your duty to guide him in his perusals of them, for
Heaven knows what distressing sort of entertainment
he may drift into, browsing on some of those Eighteenth
Century authors your shelves are full of."
That speech of his sister's had a world of meaning
for the queer, apathetic spirit of Godfrey Thyrle. He
at once woke to the fact that his child was intelligent,
and soon found out that this intelligence teemed with
interest and charm. The father's memory of books
now seemed to him like an unopened mine whose veins
of precious ore spread so richly just below terrene sur-
faces that to work them cost slight effort. He soon
became Guy's firm friend, and delighted to aid Miss
Clagg, the governess, in all questions of the boy's
educational cult. There is no doubt that Guy's pre-
cocity helped greatly to stimulate and gladden the other-
wise rather aimless and dreary years of his father's
life. These years were not many, for Godfrey Thyrle
died when his son had scarcely reached seventeen.
By the time that tutors had fitted him for entrance
into Cambridge, his Aunt Martha had also passed
away.
At Cambridge Guy soon distinguished himself,
though in a way quite unforeseen. His taste for
what is called the " humanities" lessened suddenly.
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
6 7
Classical and literary studies ceased to attract him, and
he became entranced by the exact sciences. Especially
for chemistry he showed striking aptitude, and at the
end of his college career he had won, in this department,
shining honours.
Meanwhile he had not been popular with his Trinity
co-disciples. Having previously lived a lonely life
there at the Grange, he was ill-prepared to mingle on
easy social terms with the students of the stately old
historic town. His name and place in the world were
good, but he soon acquired the repute of investing them
with spurious importance. By some he was called
arrogant, by others unsympathetic, by a few wantonly
uncivil, and by a few more callously selfish. No doubt
these verdicts were in all cases explainable by a native
reserve and that lack of outward winsomeness which
can agreeably decorate so many hypocrisies.
" I believe that in all these four years," he said, a
day or two before leaving Cambridge, " I have made
but a single friend."
He said it to Vincent Ardilange, who perfectly under-
stood that it was he himself to whom Guy alluded.
These two young men had become intimates at the
university, though in many ways, it would seem, they
were markedly opposite. Guy was slender of build
and dark of face; Ardilange was blond and plump.
Then, while one rarely even smiled, the other would
often over-bubble with merriment. Ardilange liked
music, and played with fair skill; but he was really a
painter of talent. Already he had thrown off several
landscapes, both in oil and watercolours, that were
68
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
genuinely sunny and breezy and made people think of
himself. He detested chemistry and all kindred sciences.
To-day, with his usual jaunty and crisp manner, he
answered Guy's rather sombre observation.
"Stuff, old chap! You'd be awfully liked if you
came more out of your shell. Besides, they've huge
respect for you."
"Sometimes I think, Vincent, that I'd rather be liked
than respected—rather be held approachable than
venerable."
" Approachable ? " returned Ardilange, with an im-
pudent twinkle in his blue eyes. " My dear fellow,
how can you hope to be, in any finer and truer sense,
while those unearthly fumes and stenches for ever clothe
you ? "
Guy's pale face coloured a little ; the joke did not
just please him.
" I hope I don't carry them with me outside my
laboratory, Vincent ? "
" But you scarcely ever leave it, you know," merrily
exaggerated his friend. " There ; now don't be annoyed
at my rubbish."
" I'm not annoyed."
" Some day you'll be a great chemist; everybody
thinks so."
"Such a vast throng have already gazed on my
budding greatness!"
" Don't pelt yourself with needless ironies. Life will
do enough of that, even for so prosperous a person as
you are."
" Prosperous, Vincent ? "
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 69
"Certainly. You'll invent extraordinary things—
perhaps a telephone between here and Mars; or you'll
show how the earth can be tunnelled; or you'll be the
first successful balloonist ever known ; or "
" Spare me further flattering prophecies," Guy said.
" As it is, I may expect a week of insomnia."
"I'm not afraid for you; you've already too many
queer drugs to banish it with." Here Ardilange put
his head saucily on one side, pursuing, " There doesn't
seem much chance that you'll ever marry, by the way."
" Oh, really now ! "
" / don't expect to marry, either; " and Ardilange
heaved a large sigh. " Good heavens, I've nothing to
marry on! Four hundred a year, and no further
prospects! But, of course, with you it's different.
You're the heir of Thyrle Grange, and a parti, and all
that. ... I say, Guy."
" Well ? "
" Wouldn't it be rather jolly if you and I could com-
bine studio and laboratory, eh ? No; I don't mean
' combine '—I mean ' connect.' " And now Ardilange
drooped his head a little, and studied a ring on one of
his pink, chubby hands. He looked pensive, and to
look so was with him such a rarity that it had the effect
of an almost startling pathos.
Guy seemed surprised, but did not speak. He was
fond of his friend to such a degree that now and then
it struck him he was almost foolishly fond.
" The truth is, Guy, we've been rather warm chums
for a good while, and I hate the thought of our putting
half the island between us hereafter. But it's got to
7 o
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
be, unless you'd like me for a companion in the future;
and I shouldn't be surprised if you didn't much object."
" I'm thousands of miles from objecting 1" Guy struck
in, honestly and earnestly.
" How sweet of you, Guy—how remarkably sweet of
you ! I hate to go back and live permanently there
with my people. You say you don't want to spend
each full year at Thyrle Grange, and it's occurred to
me that we might take a small house together in
London. You'd have your laboratory, and all that sort
of thing, you know, and there'd probably be an attic
that I could daub my canvasses in—for there's no
other earthly occupation that I could ever undertake
without a certainty of disgraceful failure. (Of course I
was only chaffing you about those bad smells, and
you're perfectly well aware of it—only, you're so droll
about not taking a joke that you sometimes tempt a
fellow to be mischievous.) And then in the drawing-
room I could have a piano ; and you know you're fond
of my playing, trashy as it often is. . . . Upon my word,
I do believe we could get on delightfully together ! But
I don't want you to treat this idea of mine with anything
save utter contempt, dear old Guy, unless you thoroughly
endorse and approve it."
The subtle and wily people in this curious world are
by no means always those of whom we might say,
putting our hand on their shoulders, " You plot and
oconnive," or " You are the sworn servant of selfish
interests." Vincent Ardilange cared no more for Guy
than for twenty other men he knew. What he really
did care for was to dwell in London and escape the
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 71
tedium of country life. He had considerably less than
four hundred a year, but he felt confident that in a little
while he could arrange some neat falsehood about
pecuniary loss and disappointment, so that Guy would
waive the question of his contributing at all to future
household expenses in case they shared a London home
together. He was a born parasite and deceiver, not-
withstanding his frank, juvenile face and his mirthful,
innocent manner. He was not viciously insincere, for
the reason that he would have shrunk from designing
any actual ill to any fellow mortal. But in his blithe
and lightsome way he was a power for bad, and simply
because he would at all times coolly push his own
purposes and desires just as far as effort could make
them go, indifferent to whatever discomfort or pain the}''
wrought, garbed in their debonair domino of smiles.
With a speed and ease that surprised himself he
now managed to gain precisely the ends he sought.
Guy shrank from the idea of absolute solitude, and
Ardilange's company suggested to him just the desired
compromise. He knew that for hours each day he
would be absorbed in studies and experiments ; and
while actual society might bore him, the gleam of this
one engaging face and the sound of this one diverting
voice would appreciably soothe fatigue.
But Vincent, while triumphing in his success, en-
countered what seemed to him a rebuff of fate. With
much secret annoyance he discovered that Guy's in-
heritance had come to him in a perplexing financial
tangle. The heir of Thyrle Grange went home to find
that creditors were threatening almost to take the roof
72
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
from over his head. Here was a chance, however, for
Vincent to brim and shine with seeming sympathy.
He dropped down upon Guy as his guest, and stayed
with him, in apparent friendly anxiety, till the affairs of
his host took a far more hopeful turn. Intellectually,
as in temperament, the opposite of his father, Guy faced
with energy and shrewdness the fresh demands upon
his time and thought. In less than six weeks he had
settled the whole trying problem. " I have no leisure,"
he said to Vincent, " for ponderous and ever-procrasti-
nated lawsuits, and these my own solicitors tell me are
inevitable unless I accept an arrangement proposed by
themselves. According to this arrangement the whole
estate must go (I need not dip into details, my dear
Vincent, which already have grown abhorrent through
dreary repetition), and the liquidation of all legal debts
deserving the name will bring me a clear continuous
annuity of three thousand pounds a year, with perhaps
a few hundreds more."
Ardilange's blue eyes flashed with an almost tearful
cordiality. "My dear Guy," he exclaimed, "even if
you might gain more by taxing your patience and
racking your nerves with tedious litigations, I am
certain that you will never regret coming to these
swifter though less profitable terms. With all my
heart, dear boy, I congratulate you !"
And yet inwardly Ardilange was pierced with
chagrin. Three thousand a year, and a little over!
He had expected six thousand, at least. That would
have enabled Guy to either own or lease a fine house
somewhere in the region of May fair.
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
73
As it was, Guy leased a fairly spacious house in
Regent's Park, and although Vincent had no great
liking for the locality he refrained from even hinting
that his friend was over-economical. "I'll take the
gifts that the gods provide," philosophised this young
prince of parasites. He not only took them, but he
contrived gracefully to forget, as well, that he had ever
proposed towards them a less pensioning posture.
Of this fact Guy had no wish to remind him.
Perhaps it never at all occurred to him that Ardilange
had quietly slipped into his home and gone on accepting
there gratuitous bed and board. With a certain relief,
indeed, he gave the management of servants and all
household affairs to this bold yet suave dependent.
For weeks he was chiefly concerned in fitting up a
laboratory on the third floor of the building. With this
he combined a library, bringing from the Grange his
father's large collection of books. A number of these,
which were works of a philosophic sort, he prized;
others he held in esteem as literature; still others,
which treated of scientific themes, he considered nearly
worthless, rating them as behind the age and inferior to
his own recent and ample purchases. In a moment he
could step from library to laboratory, and in the latter
apartment he gathered countless instruments, apparati
and jars of chemicals, all arranged with the neatest
order and care. From his library again, he could step
into his bedroom, whose windows overlooked the park.
Ardilange, with laughing concession, had set up his
studio in the third room of the second floor, saying that
noxious odours mounted more than they descended,
74
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
and that he should hence be measurably safe from
them while he dreamed his artistic dreams.
"Precious few I'm afraid they will prove, though,"
he meanwhile told himself, with secret delight. "Of
course I should like now and then to turn an honest
penny with my daubings. But then the attractions of
town life will doubtless keep such a lazy devil as I
pretty constantly away from his easel. It's all a
glorious windfall of luck, and I mean to profit by it.
Lodgings free, and rather handsome ones at that.
I'm not the stuff spendthrifts are made of, and I
couldn't be dissipated if I tried. I love charming
women, and clever men, and gay doings, and being
petted, flattered, spoiled. Before the end of the next
London season I shall have become, with my good
name and connections, one of the popular drawing-
room darlings. As for my being really the ' sponge'
I am, who will presume to suspect it ? I know how to
drop sly and telling innuendoes, every now and then,
about ' paying my way,' and all that. And the entire
charming little arrangement may go on indefinitely—
why not ? That tiresome plodder upstairs will only
be happy while spending hours each day with his nose
over a crucible. Of course he will agonise me, some-
times, when he forces on me his grim companionship.
But then I understand so well the art of not seeming to
be agonised. And I shall reap such a lot of fun ; it's
going to be a clear harvest of wheat, with only a bushel
or two of inconsiderable tares. . . . Good heavens, if
only a few thousands of the forlorn folk in this world
could realise what mighty gain lies just at their elbows
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 75
through merely making themselves merry and pleasant
with folk more prosperous than themselves ! But no
doubt the real nest-feathering hypocrite is born with
his gift. It's like a talent for comedy ; you can cultivate
it, but you must first have inherited it. I daresay I'd
have been a good practical comedian. . . . Well, for that
matter, I am one, and intend to remain one. Only, I
choose to avoid the footlights, and act my part in a
play not written by man—the ridiculous, delightful,
complex old comedie humaine."
X.
RDILANGE'S bedroom was directly beneath Guy's
library. Beyond, looking upon the park, was a
chamber which at Guy's expense he made exceedingly
pretty, and which he called the general drawing-room,
though in reality it soon became exclusively his own.
Here he placed his piano (a very excellent one, paid
for by Guy) and here, after a few months, he held
pleasant little afternoon gatherings (now and then
showing a new-painted picture on an easel), where
modish friends of either sex would come and drink tea
with him and listen to his rattling concert-hall songs,
in his weak and rather wilding tenor. For he did not
find it at all hard to make himself a favourite in the smart
sets. His cousin, Lady Bonnicastle, was at present
one of the London leaders. She had three unmarried
daughters on her hands, and Ardilange rapidly made
himself very charming to each one of them. They
were all both ugly and stupid ; a wicked person once
nicknamed them the Lisp, the Limp, and the Leer.
But he made himself very charming, all the same, and
in return their mother and her three ineligible maidens
u got him everywhere."
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 77
Now and then, after the tea-drinkings began, Guy
would appear and try to enjoy himself. But he usually
failed in the dreariest way, and would tell his friend
at dinner that evening (if Ardilange chanced not to
dine away from home) that he had been wearied half
to death. Oddly enough, however, he liked the flip-
pancies of this one associate, though they often teemed
with gossip concerning a world whose fashionable deeds
and misdeeds were equally tame and dull to him. His
affection for Ardilange was deep and sincere, though
other mastering aims and motives made him sometimes
forget its very existence. For instance, he would leave
his laboratory of an afternoon, and inquire of the
servants if Mr. Ardilange were at home or not. Then,
finding him absent, he would take a long walk of
several miles, provided the erratic London weather
chanced to be fair. If it were inclement he would
journey for two or three hours in a cab, not seldom
bidding his driver to push through the slums of White-
chapel. When alone and certain that no one observed
him, he gradually fell into the habit of talking aloud .to
himself. In a cab this form of behaviour but slightly
mattered ; on the open street it sometimes evoked stares
and smiles.
Though avoidant of so-termed society, Guy was no
anchorite. His walks or drives would frequently end
at the doors of men famed in science. His distinction
at Cambridge had followed him to London, and his
close acquaintance with every new movement in the
pursuits he cherished was both accurate and wide.
Unlike most zealots of his type and trend, he had an
78 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
eager taste for philosophic research, and in spite of
early religious ideas that had bitten themselves like
potent acids into his being, he persistently weighed the
question of whether or no complete extinction ensued
upon death. There were times in which he found
himself dominated by the most uncompromising dis-
trust; then this mood of negation would seem to waver
and tremble, like the boughs of a dense tree penetrated
by breezes of dawn. Repeatedly, to his annoyance,
Guy found that the savants with whom he talked on
scientific subjects either scorned philosophy and religion,
or else preferred to treat them with silence. Almost
irritatedly he said, one day, to a celebrated inventor
whom he was visiting,—
" Have you, then, concluded quite to ignore the
asserted spiritual part of man ? "
A smile and a shrug first answered this direct query.
Soon, however, these translated themselves into verbal
response. " What you call the ' asserted spiritual part
of man ' is to me asserted nonsense." . . .
Elsewhere, in the company of an analytic chemist
who had made several momentous discoveries, he met
the most opposite of rejoinders.
"I do not permit myself," said this personage, "to
either dream or speculate on these mighty finalities. I
simply believe in them—take them for granted; that
is all."
" You are, then, a churchman ? " asked Guy.
" I am the only real sort of churchman," came the
reply. u I am a Roman Catholic."
Again, after holding with a noted electrician an
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
79
argument that seemed on either side to radiate the
coldest materialism, he was amazed to learn that his
interlocutor was a devout and sincere Presbyterian.
" Science," he would now frequently find himself
musing, "is with some of its ablest votaries a god,
and with others but the first and lowest step of an
altar whose topmost heights are lost in mists of the
Unknowable. . . . Well, I suppose these divergencies
in human faiths are all explainable by temperament.
Happy the man who can either profoundly believe or
sweepingly doubt. I seem to stand at perpetual middle-
distance between these two mental states."
Electricity fascinated him more and more. In his
laboratory he gathered almost every known means for
its appliance and development. Some of the brilliant
achievements compassed, by Edison at a later day more
than foreshadowed themselves, then, to his gifted and
watchful vision. But his purposes, his experiments,
belonged to another region of inquiry. An idea had
dawned upon him, like a dim-glimmering light at the
egress of some long black cave. Far beyond it, he had
many a toilful and stumbling step to take till it should
prove for him either beacon or will-o'-the-wisp.
There were times when his desire was burningly
intense to probe the mysteries that lie on the other side
of the grave. If only nothingness lay there, then he
longed to learn this. But what frequently failed him
was hope and faith in his own powers. Allow that it
seemed as if he might so blend the subtlest agencies of
electricity with a certain drug of marvellous stimulating
properties—a drug which he had chanced to discover
80 THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
in the course of precipitations, distillations, and other
like phases of chemical analysis : allow this. But then,
seeming and being were often, in science, antipodes.
He might labour on for years and in the end find some
" reductio ad," like a malicious imp, holding its sides
in mockeries of laughter.
For two years he did labour on, and with a dogged
zeal of whose thoroughness and continuity he himself
scarcely guessed. Now and then Ardilange would
gaily chaff him about his prodigious " find." .When
was it to dawn upon a wonderstricken world ? What
would it be ? The growing and ripening of wheat and
other cereals in ten minutes' time ? He did so hope it
might be an instantaneous production of the most
superb strawberries ; he had such a passion for fine
strawberries, as Guy knew. Or how about peaches ?
What a glorious thing to have a little vial containing
a colourless liquid (all important and mysterious
chemical discoveries were always "colourless liquids,"
were they not ?) and to sprinkle a few drops on the
ground and presently to see one's self embowered by a
peach-tree in which blushed the most appetising fruit 1
At these pleasantries Guy would indulgently smile.
From any one but Ardilange he would almost surely
have resented them. Once he said, while they were
dining together at home, and dining well—for his friend
always arranged that a generous larder, skilled cookery,
and choice wine, should emanate from what he rather
drolly called in his own reflections " the household
purse "—" You grow more frivolous, Vincent, as you
plunge deeper into London diversions. It's an empty
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 81
life, from my point of view, as I think you already
know. And yet mine, from your point of view, is no
doubt quite as vacuous." Here Guy shrugged his
shoulders and sighed faintly. " The truth is, I've none
of those great ambitions with which you accredit me,
and if, indeed, I had them I should lamentably lack the
ability to exploit them."
Even as he thus spoke Guy realised the flimsy false-
hood of his assertion. Secretly a particular ambition
within him had augmented month by month. As for
the ability to compass it, that point was, indeed, a
dubious one. " I can never be sure," he now kept
reflecting, " whether I am a mere chaser of shadows or
no—never until the time of trial comes, and I stand
at the parting of the ways. On one side will frown
Failure, on one will smile Success. And beyond that
smile—ah, what dizzying revelations may sleep in
awful ambush! As I feel now, so thousands of others
must have felt who have dared to push knowledge a
single jealous inch past the bounds of the explored.
All can have said with equal truth—
"'We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.'
But what of those who have watched their sails, on
that sea, hang windless, their ships drowse becalmed ?
Is this dreary fate to be mine ? Shall I win, after
determined struggle, only a dower of compulsory torpor
and sloth ? Shall I have migrated, with infinite
patience, footsore and tired, only to find myself in the
flat and arid country of disappointment ? Am I de-
6
82 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
stined to pitch my tent there and drink the brackish
waters of its wells, feed on the bitter herbs of its
plains ? Who knows, who knows ? Men with all the
self-belief of a Newton, a Galileo, a Herschel, a Coper-
nicus, have waked from it to admit themselves worth-
less visionaries. It is not the aim that counts, but the
deed. It is not the striving, but the accomplishment.
Hell is paved, they say, with good intentions. The
path to that victory which now holds for me the place
of heaven, is white with bones of those who have
sought it and died ! "
XI.
GUY was now haunted by moods of the most
harrowing depression. He doubted the intrinsic
efficacy of his drug; he doubted the possibility of
charging it, in one designed molecular way, with the
special and curious electrical current he had engen-
dered; and, more than this, even if so charged, he
doubted his own courage unflinchingly to test it on
himself.
At last a period came, however, when either such
test must be made or the entire project abandoned.
The fluid that he had obtained after months of the
most careful preparation, looked commonplace enough
in the ordinary flask which now held it. He smiled,
one day, while observing its muddy, viscous brown,
and recalled Ardilange's reference to the romantic
" colourless liquid " of the wondersmith. Here was a
liquid that looked as if it might be some quack cough-
medicine; and yet the flaskful was worth ten times its
weight in gold at the very least, and every drop meant
surely a month of severe study and toil.
Guy was aware that the dose which he intended to
take from it might in an hour or so produce death.
83
84
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
Trial of it on animals could not aid him in the faintest
way; for that matter, he would have felt but too
certain that any of the smaller domestic animals to
which he might administer it would at once succumb.
In other forms he had himself partaken of the drug.
Onarline, he had called it, from the Greek word
that means "dream," as no other name for it existed
in the medical pharmacopoeia, and had made slow and
painstaking observations of its effects. These had
roused his amazement and dismay. No other solution
of opium at all resembled it, and yet opium was its
beginning, its base. Laudanum, morphine, chloroform,
were each as different from it as some slim sapling from
the hugest tree. And yet its qualities were kindred to
those of all the soporifics horn of that one potent
source. Accident had caused Guy to make proof of
its peculiar influence. He had been suffering from a
savage headache, and drank a few drops of it only an
hour or two after becoming convinced that he had
added a new chemical compound to the long list of
those already recorded. What befell him, a few
minutes later, he never forgot. The sleep which
followed was a wholly tranquil one, and yet dreamful
sensations attended it which filled him, on awakening,
with an excited surprise. Several times afterwards, he
again drank sparingly of the ^tiiall vialful he had
produced. Each time he was more memorably im-
pressed. Finally he made a solemn resolve, or rather
two resolves in one. He would not use the liquid
again for a year, and he would keep, during that
interval, his discovery a strict secret. Enormous
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 85
fascination lay in the spell it could exert. More than
once he had almost felt himself a disembodied spirit,
and had returned from the thrall it wrought with a
sense of some bond, strained yet infrangible, whose
release would have afforded thrilling and magnificent
emancipations. The habit of drinking the drug must,
he assured himself, soon resemble that of its simpler
parent, opium, and from such habit he determined
resolutely to shrink. But for the purpose of deciding
just in what way onarline differed as a narcotic from
the other offsprings of opium, he put himself, during
three successive nights, under the sway of morphine.
At length his conviction became positive; the drug he
had ^discovered dealt in no mere sensuous deliriums.
Its empire over the human brain lay in wider and
more mystic latitudes.
How the thought of electrical combination and
interfusion first occurred to him he could ill have told.
Days of reverie, of expectation, of disappointment, of
dabbling in this acid, brooding over that alkali, at last
had brought him to his present rather insecure harbour
of mingled faith and distrust.
Still, his future course was now a clear-lit path.
He had determined unfalteringly to tread it. If it
should lead him to death, so let it lead. Quite
tranquilly he made the same preparations which a man
would make on the eve of fighting a duel with some
skilled and bloodthirsty foe. He caused his will to be
drawn up, and left all his possessions to Vincent
Ardilange, outside of a few minor legacies to three or
four distant cousins. The night on which he intended
86
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
to take his draught was rainy and gusty, and Ardilange,
who had proposed to dine at a fashionable club and
go afterwards to the first performance of a new play,
had already decided on remaining at home when Guy
astonished him by requesting that he would do so.
" In the name of all that's amazing," he said, " you
don't mean that you're really lonely ? "
" Oh, not that," Guy answered. " But I somehow
felt in a talkative mood. There are still some bottles
of that famous port my father left me," he added, with
a wistful inflection, " and perhaps you might care for
a glass at dinner this forlornly dismal evening."
At almost any other time Ardilange would have
been pierced by ennui. Policy would have made him
assent, but with covert pangs of annoyance. His life
had so widely diverged from Guy's during the past
year that it was almost as if they lived in two different
houses. He had, indeed, begun to regard his bene-
factor as the grimmest and most wearisome of mortals.
Of old he had genuinely admired him for certain gifts
of mind that close acquaintanceship had served to
reveal. But nowadays the man struck his volatile
guest as merely taciturn and tedious. Ardilange
looked upon that incessant seclusion there in the
laboratory as a gruesome monomania, which failed
(luckily for his own comfort-loving tastes) to assume
any aggressive or suicidal character.
But to-night at dinner Guy filled him with fresh
amazement. He was not merely his old self; he was
tenfold more brilliant and engaging than Ardilange
had ever before known him. His dark eyes kindled,
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE
87
his lips lost their severity of curve, his talk became
humorous, poetic, sarcastic, original. " How strange,"
his auditor found himself thinking, "that this man
should have learned so much about the follies and
foibles of his race by immersing himself in solitude
and filling his lungs and nostrils with mephitic fumes!
How really superb, though, he has suddenly become !
I wonder if it's the port. No doubt it is ; he's usually
so abstemious. I'll get him to take another glass or
two. And then I can gather courage to ask him to
lend me that extra five hundred. Not that I need
courage, after all; for he's never in the least dis-
obliging."
But the port had little to do with Guy's altered
state. Approaching death acts on some people as a
kind of intoxicant, and here was a human soul that
felt it might be standing below the very lintels of
another life.
XII.
OT only did Guy grant Ardilange the " loan'
for which he had the assurance to ask, but he
joined to this acquiescence a few words that made his
young pensioner tingle queerly through every pleasured
"You may soon get all my worldly goods, Vincent
—who knows ? It isn't supposable that I shall
survive you, living the malodorous life I do. Ah, that
pleases you, that ' malodorous,' doesn't it ? "
Guy had risen from the table, and had begun to
pace the floor of the dining-room, with the fingers of
either hand tightly interlaced behind his back. He
paused, presently, at Ardilange's side, watching him
as he cracked a Madeira nut with a silver implement.
Then, for a moment, he stroked the boyish head, over-
flossed with its yellowish, bright-threaded hair.
" Don't you know what fun you've often poked at
me for the horrid smells I call from the vasty deeps
of my crucibles ? " Herewith he drew a chair close
to his friend and sank into it. " Yes," he pursued,
" I'll go first, of course. And if I do, Vincent, how
nerve
88
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 89
would you like my ghost to pay you an occasional
visit ? "
Ardilange laughed, and then gave a kind of burlesque
shudder. " Guy ! You've just been so nice and jolly
and sympathetic ! Pray don't change ! " He stopped
short, and waved an arm towards a big rear window,
where the storm, in rainy onslaught, was whipping the
panes. li Hear how dreary it is outside ! All the more
reason for being cheerful indoors."
" All the more reason," Guy echoed, with drooped
eyes, and as though he repeated the words while
thinking of something else. Abruptly he looked
straight at Ardilange, who was now stirring his coffee
with a tiny spoon.
" You'd be afraid of me if I were a ghost, wouldn't
you, Vincent ? " he went on.
" My dear Guy !" sharply broke from his friend.
u You know how I detest all mention of death, and the
grave, and those morbid subjects! Have you for-
gotten how I scolded you at Cambridge for joining that
cremation society, and how I begged you to put your
papers of agreement in some other hands than mine ? "
Guy started. " I—I had forgotten that," he said
stumblingly. He then seemed to muse, knitting his
brows and nervously folding his arms " Yes—yes.
How odd you should mention it now! "
" Now ?" repeated Ardilange, as though a trifle
mystified.
" Yes—now." Guy got up from his chair. He
went to the mantel, and leaned in silence for some time
over the hissing and sparkling little fire below it.
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
" Have you those papers of agreement, Vincent ? "
he suddenly said, veering round. " Of late, after pay-
ing my yearly dues to the society, I have always meant
to ask you for the papers, but repeatedly this has
slipped my memory."
" I have them; yes, Guy," he said, after a brief
silence. " But they're down in the country."
" Ah."
Ardilange rose. "You're sorry they're not here,
Guy ? "
" Yes—yes."
" They're in a chest that I sent home, after leaving
college—a chest full of riff-raff—old essays, exami-
nation papers, text-books, Heaven knows what. If
you want them very much I could run down there
and "
" Never mind." Here Guy approached him and
caught his hand. " Promise me faithfully, will you,
Vincent, that if anything should happen you'll not let
those cremation people get hold of me ! Have me
buried in the ordinary way, do you understand ?
Promise me this, on your honour!"
" Of—of course I promise," stammered Ardilange.
His jovial face had paled; there were sparks of alarm
in the mild blue of his eyes. " But, Guy," he hurried
on, "you talk as if—as if you were going to kill your-
self! " The idea of his friend committing suicide here
in this lonely house, with the mournful rain and wind
outside, was so horrible to him that it completely
spoiled his delighted anticipation of being left possessor
of Guy's handsome income. He had a crawling
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 91
sensation of terror, as though he had been told that
somewhere in the building there was a serpent escaped
from the " Zoo," not far away.
But Guy's prompt and placid answer reassured
him. " Don't be absurd, Vincent," he said. " Your
reminder gave me a sort of shock ; that is all. I've
quite got over this old cremation fad. You've sacredly
promised—well and good. Now come upstairs into
the drawing-room and play me some of your merry
tunes."
Ardilange at once complied. But Guy listened for
only about ten minutes to his playing; its very brisk-
ness and blitheness appeared to sadden him. Every
vestige of his former vivacity had now departed, and
at length, with an air of abruptness and absorption, he
rose and left the room.
Ardilange continued for some time longer to play.
He fancied that Guy might perhaps return. But he
did not return, and at length the performer's fingers
grew lax and his own melodies rang in his ears like
jeering jingles. He got up from the piano with a
shiver. What if Guy did really meditate some horrid
deed ? Ardilange went softly upstairs and stood in
the little hall outside the three chambers, listening.
Before long he heard Guy clear his throat in the most
natural manner. This sound came from the library,
where he was no doubt seated with a book.
At least partially reassured, Ardilange went down-
stairs. Many another man, feeling anxiety concerning a
friend who had also been his benefactor, would have
re-sought this friend's company, tried every art of
92 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
amusement or distraction, and never have left him until
confident that no calamitous impulse would at least on
that special night overmaster him. But with Ardilange
there was merely a feeling of relief, marred by an oppres-
sive sense of solitude, since so few of his evenings
were ever passed at home. And forthwith he did a
most characteristic thing. " Bother the weather ! " he
muttered, and had a servant fetch him a cab. Wrapped
in a mackintosh, he found that being driven abroad was
not, after all, so dire a doing. He missed two acts of the
new play, but .relished two others, and between them
chatted with Lady This and Mrs. That, and flitted from
pillar to post, with his rosy complexion and his limpid
laugh, and quite forgot Guy's " queer behaviour," and
deported himself generally like the hollow and shallow
and amiable self-worshipper that he was.
It was nearly midnight when Guy passed from his
library into his bedroom. He carried with him the
flask, from which he poured a small quantity. Then
he locked the flask in a certain drawer of his dressing-
table. In this room there was a lounge, and above it
flamed the full-lighted gas-jet. He turned the gas-jet
quite low, and then he threw himself on the lounge.
Meanwhile he had placed the glass on the floor just
beneath one of his elbows. He now reached for it,
and drank its contents at a single swift gulp.
For certainly five minutes he did not undergo the
least sensation of a peculiar kind. Then, with extreme
quickness, the dim room seemed to exhale from every
quarter white clouds of muffling mist. After that
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
93
came a second of nameless yet poignant agony—of
suffocation, of acute, intolerable strain. Then,
blank. . . .
When consciousness returned he stood in his own
room, though it was not as if he really stood, and
glancing down at his feet he perceived that they were
underlaid by air, the floor being almost a yard below
them. Catching a glimpse of one arm he touched it,
and found that his hand passed through it, as if through
vapour. Then, with both hands, he now felt his legs,
thighs, shoulders, breast. It was like seeking to
manipulate a volume of smoke. There was no resist-
ance, no tangibility. He put a palm at the place where
he surmised either temple to be. The palms met and
passed one another, and as he slowly lowered them
and looked at them he discerned that the right and left
had interchanged places and that the arms of each were
crossed. In other words, his brain and skull, like his
body and limbs, were shadow. And yet he could see.
Was it possible that he looked forth from eyes that
possessed vision and yet were actually immaterial ?
He sought with gathered fingers the orb of one eye.
Instantly sight was obscured, and yet the fingers
themselves met nothingness. He removed them, and
the clarity of sight was restored.
He now glanced here and there at his surroundings.
The dim-lit chamber was precisely as he had seen it a
few minutes before taking the draught. On the mantel
ticked a large-faced clock from its bulky black-marble
encasement. The time at which it pointed told him
clearly that between his mental collapse and the
94
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
present resuscitation only a few seconds must have
intervened.
And now a most astounding thing happened. One
of the maid servants, whom " company " below stairs
had probably prevented from performing her usual
earlier offices in his bedroom, suddenly opened the
door that led from the outer hall. She had a flurried
and rather precipitate manner as she crossed the
threshold; she evidently took for granted that her
master was in his laboratory or library. He so seldom
went to bed at this hour that her mistake was very
natural, even if her neglect of duty challenged excuse.
She was humming a little tune as she bustled straight
up to Guy, and passed through him, her head reaching,
let us say, the region of his heart and ribs. For all
that she knew or felt of his presence, he might as well
have been a shaft of moonlight slanted from window to
floor.
But the woman suddenly gave a faint cry, whisked
round, and hurried on tiptoe from the chamber. Guy
wondered what had caused this precipitate flight. But
the next moment he had ceased to wonder. On the
lounge, dressed precisely as when he had swallowed
the draught, lay his own body. The face, with its
closed eyes and placid lips, looked as though he slept;
but there was no perceptible sign of breathing, and the
pallor of either cheek had surely an almost deathlike
tint. Guy, watching himself in this wondrous way, felt
pangs of horror.
His discovery had seemed the most triumphant
success. But what if he had really failed to make his
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
95
soul desert its body whenever it so desired, and had
simply succeeded in producing death ? There lay the
body : would re-entrance into it be possible ? Or had
the drug killed him, as he had feared it might kill, and
was his present condition that of a spirit freed per-
manently from the flesh ? He stared down at his own
image, now, in an agony of remorse. And this was
his victory 1 Ah, why had he been so insensate as
even to fancy that science could achieve the miraculous ?
He had sought from nature a mighty and magnificent
boon, and she had contemptuously answered him by
giving him—death !
XIII.
PRESENTLY it occurred to Guy that although the
incorporeal creature he had found himself he was
nevertheless capable of thought. Had he not also
the power of will ? He made an effort to descend and
walk the floor, and at once succeeded in doing so.
Then he approached his body and stood beside it.
Something seemed to draw him nearer. He flung
himself forward with a passionate shout. But the
shout produced only silence, and his contact with the
prone shape on the lounge was wholly futile. It
was now plain to him that he could not make him-
self either seen, heard, or felt. In a kneeling posture
he crouched beside his body. il If this be not
death," he meditated, " if it is only that severance of
spiritual from physical which I have worked so long
to attain, then why have I never at all considered the
question of how I might return into my body when so
desirous ? " But no sooner, in his bewilderment and
agitation, had he begun thus to reflect, than a recollec-
tion flashed upon him that he had always firmly trusted
the efficacy of volition as a means of so returning.
With intense earnestness he now willed that he might
96
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
97
reinhabit the form stretched before him. At first there
was no response to this mute yet strenuous appeal.
Then came drowsiness, followed by a new feeling
(exquisitely grateful after the turmoil and distress
which had preceded it) of dropping into soft depths
of slumber. ...
When Guy again woke, dawn had filled the room—
a rainy and livid London dawn, that made the yellow
gas-jet above the lounge glimmer with an incongruous
and spiteful violence. In a trice he apprehended that
he was reincarnate, no longer an ethereal essence. The
recent past keenly recurred to him, but not by any
means with such reminder as that of an unwholesome
dream. He quickly became aware of just what he had
ventured and just what he had attained. . . . Rising from
the lounge he was beset by a weakness that caused him
to totter towards the bell, which he clutched and rang
in desperate fashion. A wakeful servant luckily heard
his summons at this hour when nearly everybody
sleeps with special soundness. " I am very ill," he
said to the man who soon sought him. " Get me
to bed, and wake Mr. Ardilange."
Those were the last coherent words that he spoke
for a long time. His illness baffled the physicians
who attended him, just as it bored unspeakably the
friend whose deepest pity it should have roused.
Lying for hours at a time with closed eyes and
every bodily sign of complete collapse, he would pour
forth rambling sentences that to his listeners were
language quite divorced from reason.
But his rapid recovery, his entire restoration to
7
g8 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
health, puzzled the physicians even more than his
prostration. They could not account for the hope
and cheer that seemed to animate him with such
unexpected speed. The truth was, he now exulted
in the sovereign mastery of his secret acquirement,
and told himself that he stood on the threshold of
stupendous future experiences. When he again drank
of his drug he would lift it to his lips in splendid tran-
quillity of confidence. There would be no further
dread of death's vengeful defeat, of his own inability
to repossess the corpse transiently abandoned. He
had become more than convalescent, he was indeed
almost thoroughly well again, when he began to
observe in Ardilange what he fancied was a certain
repressed air of accusation.
" I verily believe, Vincent," he declared one day,
" that you suspect me of having tried to kill myself."
Ardilange coloured. There was something feline
in his dainty detestation of everything "disagreeable."
Guy's suicide would have affected him, if it had hap-
pened, like an upset from a cab, like a false slip that
landed him in some slushy gutter. And yet how could
he help being sorry that Guy had not really killed
himself? One would have forgotten the shock, after
a while, and one could go on the Continent, take a
yachting trip, get a glimpse of India or Japan, do
almost anything delightful, on three thousand pounds
a year. Besides, it would even be a little more than
that. And had he not every reason to feel quite con-
fident, now that his good, kind friend had him down
in his will for the entire fortune ?
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
99
But aloud to Guy, most sweetly and humanly,
Ardilange said, "It would break my heart if I did
suspect you of anything so horrible. . . . Still," he
added, with a sigh, "your illness, that night—or
rather that morning—will always be the strangest of
mysteries to me."
"Ah," exclaimed Guy, with a curious flashing look,
as of mingled pride and joy—a look which the other
had often seen in his eyes of late, " there are some
mysteries, Vincent, stranger than that."
He was often tempted to disclose everything to
Ardilange. But for the present at least he determined
to restrain this impulse. There would be time enough
to ponder its expediency. Meanwhile he would wholly
alter his life. He would bid farewell to all scientific
studies; he would travel, and thoroughly restore his
health. Ultimately, no doubt, he would give his
glorious and unparalleled treasure of knowledge to the
world. But first he would himself test its potentialities.
Even if these were disappointing, unilluminative, he
would still have pushed science farther than did
Newton, Copernicus and Galileo all combined—have
pushed it greatly farther, indeed, than the most erudite
thinker of this or any age had ever presumed to
prophesy that it could advance. As for fear of once
more using the drug, he had not the faintest qualm of
it. The prospect of again taking it at some future time
became fraught for him with richest exhilaration. But
he still had strong misgivings about the fidelity, so to
speak, of onarline. It might turn treacherous and deal
death to one who over-rashly braved its powers.
ioo THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
Hence perfect health, in all subsequent relations with
it, was the most needful of preparative gains.
To the wonderment of Ardilange, every sign of its
former character was soon made to vanish from the
laboratory, and a pretty sitting-room appeared in its
place. Later the drawing-room, too, was decorated and.
refurnished, Ardilange himself directing these improve-
ments.
" But, my dear Guy," the latter had asked, a why
adorn the house only to leave it ? Have you not said
that we shall soon go to Switzerland and Italy ? "
" But not to remain there for ever, I hope, Vincent.
And when we return I shall ask you to present me to
some of your many London friends."
" With pleasure," faltered Ardilange, covertly aghast.
" We can give little dinners and other entertain-
ments here in Regent's Park. Your friends are
doubtless the veriest opposites of my few acquaint-
ances. That is why it would please me to know some
of them."
Ardilange here burst into a peal of laughter. He
went up to Guy and seized both his hands, beginning
to shake them with eager jollity.
" I'm delighted; I'm enchanted," he exclaimed.
" What pleasant times we shall have together! You
know how I've always regretted your secluded mode
of living !"
But inwardly he abhorred this change. Guy a man
of the world!—a follower of fashion ! It was too
ridiculous! People would laugh at his lame attempts.
It would be like going about with a hunchback who
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE. 101
thought himself symmetrical. As if the leopard could
voluntarily change his spots 1 Never would there be
a worse fiasco than Guy Thyrle, the social penitent!
But rarely has there been a worse prophet than
Ardilange proved. They soon left London and spent
more than three months in the most delightful con-
tinental travel. Absence from his laboratory seemed
to make a new man of Guy. His health became better
than he had known it since boyhood. Nearly every
trace of moroseness, of melancholy, even of reserve,
had left him. He had grown conventional to the
nicest degree in his dress, a reformation that his
companion warmly welcomed. In other times avoidant
of strangers, he was now willing to meet them more
than half-way. Life, that had once seemed to weary
him except where it concerned the most self-isolating
of tasks, now showed every sign of offering him
countless attractions.
When they returned to London, Ardilange was
hiding behind his genial face a heart full of jealousy
and disgust. He was only too certain, now, that Guy
would surpass and outshine him always and every-
where. Far better if he had remained the recluse of
other days! " I had it all my own way," gloomily
mused the dependent, 11 until this extraordinary change
took place in him. Now I must play second fiddle.
He hasn't my good looks—he is still rather lanky of
figure and too pale, too dark, too grave of countenance;
but he has thrice my brains, and his conversation
attracts women and men with an equal charm. There
isn't the least doubt that I have grown to hate him,
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
and that I'd give a year out of my life, deeply as I
also hate the idea of growing older, if I could once
again get him back among those horrid ill-smelling
decoctions, and make him the same apathetic, reticent
creature he used to be !"
But Ardilange, on their return to London, used his
suavest arts in seeking invitations for Guy. It was
not, however, a difficult performance. Here was a
name with which to conjure among match-making
mammas.
One afternoon, at a crowded reception, Guy touched
his friend's arm, saying! " What a lovely girl is
talking to your friend, Mrs. Acton !"
" Isn't she sweet ? " Ardilange answered. " She's
Violet Fythian."
" Violet Fythian—what a charming name! She
looks as if she had a name just like that."
" Do you think so ? I'll tell her."
u No," objected Guy, " let me tell her, if you
please."
Ardilange furtively bit his lip. He had often thought
of this girl during his absence from England, and on
his return he had almost immediately gone down to
her pretty country home (a place called Gowerleigh)
spending a night there. He had been very politely
received, but then Violet had many male admirers,
and her grim old widower of a father was too clearly
aware that Mr. Vincent Ardilange by no means ranked
among the richest of them.
" Of course I'll present you with pleasure," he now
told Guy. The stab of jealousy that had gone through
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 103
his heart astonished himself. It seemed to hint of
stupid superstition, too—as if Guy, who had lately
robbed him of so much peace of mind, was destined
to take from him the girl whom he still had ardent
hopes of marrying.
" It's hardly needful for me to ask her permission,"
he went on, " we know each other so well; and then,
she has heard me speak of you so often."
" Who are her people ? " asked Guy, not in the least
snobbishly, but with an idea of posting himself for
reasons both of civility and comfort.
" She's the daughter of Lord Henry Fythian,
who is a second or third son of the Marquis of
Ullinford."
Guy soon afterwards made his bow to the young
lady, and for nearly an hour did not leave her side.
Other devotees came and went; he lingered on.
Afterwards he could not for his life have told half
of what he said to Violet Fythian or half of what she
answered him. But the echoes of her melodious voice
rang in his ears all that evening, and the vision of her
wild-flower beauty haunted his memory. Like most
men who do not greatly care for women, Guy found
something almost repellent in a woman who was in-
tellectual. In the demure blue of this girl's eyes he
saw fathomless wells of sympathy that were worth
to him all the wisdom of a De Stael. That little
childish roseleaf curl of her upper lip had for him a
value beyond all the wit that was ever spoken by an
Aspasia.
" She's going to be at the opera to-morrow evening,"
io4 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
he said afterwards to the inwardly maddened Ardilange.
" Let us go, shall we ? "
" Ah, my dear Guy," was the pensive though
smiling answer, " a fellow of my means has to think
twice before he allows himself the luxury of opera-
going."
" Oh, never mind that. Come with me. Your
Violet has quite enchanted me. I hear the gurgle
of brooks and the basso of bees while I look at her.
It's an exquisite type. Is there any one at her feet?
I suppose scores are."
" She's a belle," replied Ardilange, " when here in
town, though Lord Henry keeps her a good deal at
Gowerleigh." He felt as if his heart would burst with
venomous anger. Hundreds of natures would have
been shielded by gratitude from the infamy of any
such rancorous visitations ; but gratitude and Vincent
Ardilange scarcely knew one another by sight. Guy
had presumed to upset his tranquil domestication as
a happy bachelor in Regent's Park. Hence the author
of all his previous contentment had grown a nuisance.
This admiration of Violet Fythian rendered him a
worse nuisance still. He was just the man to fall in
love at an instant's notice. Ardilange was like a
mongrel with a bone : it did not matter whether or
no the hand that withdrew the bone had given him
many another before now; he would have liked to
flesh his fangs in this hand, just the same. Between
himself and the mongrel, however, dwelt an important
.difference : one was eager to snarl and snap, but the
other was willing to cloak ferocity in bland complaisance.
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 105
His petty and irritated mind had now no memorial
regard for all Guy's past benevolence. Half the
resentment that he cherished was owing to that very
security and prosperity of living which the creator of
them had lately disturbed. If Guy had been an
ordinary outsider he would have rated him merely as
an inevitable torment. But with the evil zeal of a
spirit lawlessly selfish, he found it easy to measure
present discomfitures by former benefits.
He had erred, notwithstanding, in the belief that
Guy had yet become strongly enamoured of Violet
Fythian. The girl had wrought upon him a vivid
and peculiar impression; but just then he was in-
terested in the continuance of his new and far health-
fuller life, chiefly because of its value as preparation
for a second trial of the draught. This second trial he
now aimed soon to make. Opportunity seemed lack-
ing, however, and yet he told himself that he was in
splendid trim for his fresh and firmer attempt. Pre-
viously he had been using life as though it were a
mental training-school; latterly he had used it as
though it were a gymnasium, replete with all
kinds of aidful activities, muscle-nurturing and anti-
dyspeptic.
As affairs turned out, Ardilange did not go with his
friend to the opera next evening, nor was he in London
for several evenings to come. Intensely to his annoy-
ance, he had received a letter from his people in the
country which made it imperative to depart at once.
But his face bore no sign of chagrin as he approached
Guy with the letter in his hand; he simply looked like
106 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
a very sorrowful young gentleman, and said, in accents
that seemed tremulous with grief,—
" I shall have to go down into Warwickshire without
delay. Father's very low. It was quite sudden; he
had had a stroke before this one, you know, and now
my dear brothers and sisters are afraid there is no
hope."
Guy was full of sympathy, but the other secretly
cursed it and would have liked to hurl it back into his
face. And while Ardilange spent the next night in a
houseful of grave-faced brothers and weeping sisters,
and sat beside the father who was just conscious enough
to look love and thankfulness into the eyes of his eldest-
born, he was thinking of the opera, and the lights, and
the splendid dresses, and of Violet Fythian being talked
to by the man whom of all others he should love most
and whom of all others he most abhorred. But his
people, down there in Warwickshire, did not dream of
this. They were almost pinchingly poor, and strove
hard to live like gentlefolk on very little. But it was
a source of great pride and joy to them that their dear
Vincent should be living in such fashion and luxury
up there in London. He never sent them anything,
and they didn't expect it; he had so many other ways
of spending his money. They loved him deeply and
were tremendously proud of him, and always mentioned
his name to the neighbours with a little backward tilt
of the head. And he, on his own side, rarely wrote
them, but beamed his sunniest upon them whenever
he " ran down " for a night, and with the consummate,
exquisite, devilish hypocrisy, that grew and fattened
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 107
each new year like a huge black reptile within the
murky depths of his spirit, pretended that he loved
them in return.
Guy went alone to the opera and saw Violet Fythian
there. She was seraphic, in a pale blue robe, with her
bronze hair seeming too heavy for her delicate, pearly
throat. She said " yes " to Guy in a way that made
him think her lovelier than ever, and " no" in a way
that made him ask himself if her peer for charm was
to be found on earth—and besides " yes " and " no "
she said very little indeed. She introduced him to her
father, Lord Henry Fythian, whom Guy thought repul-
sive, with his parchment face, and his monocle, and his
far-away manner, as if he considered one the dirt under
his feet, but would try, for the sake of decency, not to
show it any more than he could help. And Guy sat
with Violet through two whole acts of La Sonnam-
bula, and then went home, telling himself that this,
for the present, must end his worldly doings. Or
perhaps, for that matter, they would soon become
worldlier yet; he thrilled, indeed, at the thought of
what glimpses into the unknowable, the unguessable,
even here on this planet, they might afford. And as
for beyond. . . . He felt his breath shorten and quicken
when there was any question of that!
For now he had resolved to profit by the absence
of Ardilange and make his second trial of the draught.
It would in truth be his first actual trial, since the
other was only an affair of preliminary venture. In
a certain sense he looked upon his friend's departure
as a rare bit of luck. In another sense he had sincerest
108 THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
pity for " dear Vincent," threatened by so afflicting a
bereavement.
That same afternoon he had sought a big, second-
rate hotel, not far from Paddington station. In engag-
ing his room he had told the proprietor that he desired
perfect privacy for three days at the furthest, and that
he should probably remain closeted for that time. He
gave a false name, and stated that he was engaged in
the preparation of a difficult legal document. Extreme
seclusion, he pursued, was essentially desirable; he
would pay in advance double the sum usually charged.
" I desire no service whatever," he said, and when the
man looked at him with suspicion he coolly explained
that he was living entirely on a nerve-food regimen, by
order of his physicians. He then produced a bottle,
partly filled, of somebody's " Life Nourisher," which he
had secured from a chemist in Piccadilly. His slender
frame and thinnish face gave plausibility to this state-
ment, but in any case the large amount which he care-
lessly volunteered to repay, provided he were released
from all intrusion of servants, would have pushed to
easy completion his plan.
And this plan, he had assured himself, was preferable
to the taking of the draught at his own home. There
the servants would undoubtedly have been astonished
by his remaining immured for any long interval in his
apartments. Perhaps, even in this large though obscure
hotel, a continuously locked door might create surprised
talk. But, after all, the chances of escaping comment
were strong, and as for positive discovery—the dis-
covery that he lay apparently dead within the chamber
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
he had hired—this contingency had much less dread for
him when he had gone upstairs into the chamber itself
and had noted that its door held a bolt on the inside.
Having left the opera, he walked for some distance
before hailing a cab. It was a night of early June, and
over London, in all her darkness and mystery, arched
a cloudless moonlit heaven of humid amethyst. Passing
into Trafalgar Square he marked the Nelson Monument,
looming larger than itself in the azure haze, and the
four massive lions, now more lifelike because more
shadowy, scowling at its base. How tremendous was
the fame, how resonant was the event here com-
memorated! And yet how insignificant might both
perhaps appear when viewed from the vastness he
burned to explore! For although as yet he had tested
scarcely a single possibility of that bodiless life, still did
he feel fixedly certain that it waited to deluge his spirit
with unimaginable novelties. He half recalled a line
from a modern poem—
"With space at my feet like a star,"
and told himself that the wonderful amplitude conveyed
by this line put into words at least partly adequate the
boundlessness of his expectations.
Reaching home, he changed his dress, put his
precious flask into a portmanteau with some other
garments, and told his servant that he was going out
of town for probably three days. Then he had himself
driven to the hotel. It was now a little after midnight.
He had no sooner entered his room than a knock
sounded at his door.
I IO
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
" Excuse me, sir," said the woman to whom he
opened it, " but I'm thinkin' as there must be some
mistake somehow ? "
" Some mistake ? " Guy repeated. " About what ? "
He saw that she was taking him in from toe to
crown, with her little red-brown eyes. She was very
thin and pale, and her nose was a trifle flattened at
the end, giving her a sulky look.
" Why, sir, about your not wantin' nobody to come
near ye for three whole days."
11 There is no mistake," said Guy—" none whatever."
The woman gave him another of her measuring
looks, which was returned with such composure and
directness that she recoiled a little nervously and spoke
half across one shoulder.
" Well! I must say it looks queer."
" There is nothing, my good woman, at all queer
about it," returned Guy. And then he told her what
he had told the proprietor downstairs. " However,"
he added, rather haughtily, " I see no reason why any
explanation is due to you. It's only a question of your
receiving orders from your master, and carrying them
out." Herewith he shut the door; but a second before
he did so he saw an impudent smile flicker out bale-
fully below the flattened nose.
" I don't like that woman," he thought.
Then he forgot all about everything on earth (includ-
ing even sweet Violet Fythian) except one thing alone.
He bolted his door, and took from his portmanteau
the flask. He poured out the same dose as formerly,
and left it in a glass while he changed his boots for
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. iii
slippers and his coat for a dressing-gown. After this
he took the glass containing the draught and drained it.
Then he turned his gas completely out, causing a
sudden beam of moonlight to slant across the floor,
and flung himself, with hardly a second of hesitation,
on the bed.
XIV.
LOSING his eyes, he waited for unconsciousness
to overcome him; and he waited this time a
briefer interval than before. But the sense of nothing-
ness quickly was followed, it seemed, by one of calm,
self-reliant vitality. His own form gave him no shock,
now, as he looked down upon it. The eyes were
closed, and in the dim moonlight his breathless, material
self seemed wholly peaceful. But the hands were dis-
posed somewhat awkwardly, failing to suggest the idea
of easy repose. He took them by the wrists, with
intent of settling them at either side, and then suddenly
became aware that it was just as if a slight breeze had
essayed to take them thus, since his misty fingers broke
about them and then re-shaped.
Recollecting former attempts of a like sort, he desisted
promptly from all further effort. He perceived that, as
before, he was the pale copy of his naked self—a
vapoury translation of it into terms impalpable yet
sentient. Fear of having met death instead of a wider
and more potent life, no longer troubled him. He was
like a strong bird, sure that its powers of flight were
imperial, yet ignorant of their reach and scope.
112
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 113
He soon willed to pass beyond the bolted door of
his chamber, and found that as he met its panels they
offered no obstruction. He seemed to slip through the
solid wood as though it were a breadth of merely liquid
resistance. In the outside hall it now chanced that he
came face to face with the woman who had recently
visited his room. She had a wearied air, and bore a
burden of what seemed numerous dingy towels. An
instinctive impulse of flight for a moment swayed him.
Then he stood quite still, and the woman drew closer
until her shoulder and out-crooked arm entered his
right side, moving beyond. Desiring, as it were, a
last proof of his own complete intangibility, he turned,
darted backwards, stood in front of her and waved both
arms, • She continued her course without the faintest
sign of seeing him, and in another instant her entire
form, slenderer than his and several inches less in
height, had cloven midway his wraithlike anatomy.
This occurrence made assurance doubly sure. Grown
firmly self-trustful, Guy glided into lower regions. He
passed several people in the large main hall of the
hotel. They no more discerned him, he felt certain,
than if he had been an ant crawling on the carpet.
Out in the streets it was the same, though relatively
few people were now abroad. He found that he could
travel with excessive speed ; then it struck him that
this speed might be augmented by the exertion of will-
power. Accordingly he willed to be in Regent Street,
and some force shot him there ; lightning could not
have leaped the interspace more nimbly. He thus
perceived that distance could be annihilated at pleasure,
8
U4
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
and without the faintest fatigue. Could hundreds of
miles be thus magically dealt with ? He was about to
will himself in the north of England, when he chanced
to see the lighted windows of a club to which he
belonged. Though his membership had been rather
a brief one, he had still become acquainted with not
a few of its regular frequenters. He entered, and
moved upstairs. From one of the dining-rooms floated
laughter. He followed the sound, and paused beside
a gay supper-party of eight or ten. The tongue-
loosening champagne flowed freely. To Guy's acute
surprise Jje discovered that they were talking of himself.
And in %ne or two cases the unkindest words came from
lips that had smiled upon him most blandly.
"I'm sorry they ever let Guy Thyrle into the club.
It gives me a chill to look at him."
" Right. He's a perfect death's-head."
" Don't agree with-you a bit."
" Neither do I. That pale face and those burning
black eyes are to uty thinking the essence of distinction."
" Ugh ! . . . How can you say it ? ""
" He looks like Monte Christo."
" No—Cagliostro."
" No—a successful Italian barber."
" The women don't say that."
" Bless my soul, Sir Harry, what do the women
say ? "
" Oh, I've heard three of my own acquaintance pro-
nounce him one of the handsomest and most high-bred
looking men of theirs."
As he closely regarded the company Guy became
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 115
aware of something new, curious, astounding. By
will-power he was enabled to obtain a kind of psychic
spectrum of each individual at whom he steadily gazed.
For example, he had never gauged the actual character
of a certain Mr. Beddoes Hamilton, a gentleman with
whom he had often talked of late, and whose true
personality kept constantly evading him. But he now
became as certain of this man's evil qualities as though
they were the greenness of a leaf or the sharpness of a
grass-blade. This species of observation was a mystery
to himself; or, in other words, it was an extra sense.
One cannot explain sight, hearing, taste, or touch ; one
can simply accept and utilise their agencies. So with
this unprecedented capacity. Guy actually saw nothing;
he grew conscious of certain forces for good or ill at
work in the minds whose manifestations he was em-
powered to survey and study.
Again, he singled from the group a man whom he
had held wholly heartless and mundane. He found
/»"
that in this judgment he had entirely erred. Here was
a nature iced over with cynicism, it was true, yet very
thiply at that. Beyond were traits of generosity,
sympathy, even humanitarianism. . . . Fascinated by
this unforeseen gift, he made other repetitions of it.
Then he slipped forth from the building and regained
the street.
For hours and hours he contemplated his fellow-
mortals under conditions mercilessly searching. He
learned secrets that would not merely have com-
promised; they would have damned. It seemed to
him as if he would never tire of looking into the souls,
ii6 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
hearts, consciences, of men and women. Life for him
was totally disprivacied. He lighted on hypocrisy and
meanness where he had counted on sincerity and
benevolence. Husbands whom he had credited with
fidelity disclosed its rankest reverse. Wives whom he
had named models of virtue proved themselves vicious
to the core. While it was still night he came upon a
young girl whose painted face and purchasable smile
bespoke the most depraved of careers. But this
unhappy wanton amazed him by an actual innate
purity which no soilure had really destroyed—as though
want, not perversity, had pushed her into her present
groove of shame. . . . Afterwards he recalled this
incongruity, being reminded of it by another—that of
a sweet-faced woman, young, with a mien the ideal of
chastity. But selfishness, cruelty, and luxuriousness
were the real possessors of this fair creature's soul, and
to look beyond her innocent beauty was to see faculties
and feelings that would better have suited the shrivelled
features of a hag.
There was no social secret, no political plot, which
Guy might not now unravel at pleasure. The entire
scheme and system of operative life were laid bare to
him. He was so captivated by this department of his
freshly acquired knowledge that he forgot all other
avenues of exploitation through which it might daringly
dart. He looked on the inner workings of what we
call the world ; he plunged himself into the chambers
of those mysterious looms whereon the fabric of human
deeds, hopes, longings, and passions, are spun. What
unanticipated crimes, hatred, miseries, remorses,
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
117
crowded upon him! What haunts of unsuspected
happiness he viewed, what haunts of unsuspected
despair ! Life was a tragedy—yes ! But how golden
were the threads that ran through its woofs of gloom !
Who could be an optimist, seeing what he saw ?
Who could be a pessimist, seeing what he saw ? And
always one point kept baffling his reach and aim. He
closely inspected the religions of his kind, and could
land on no surety as to their falsehood or truth, since
he sought in vain either the evidence of a God or the
absence of a God. This door was relentlessly shut to
him. Then in awe he lifted his gaze heavenward. It
was now the noon of the next day, with a sky that
chanced to be quite free from usual London mists and
fogs. The sun blazed in gulfs of purplish blue, and all
about him floated pale, moist, monstrous English
clouds. Guy thought of what answers to this elusive
question might there be found. Would the mystic will-
power that flashed him from point to point here in this
huge town, bear him yonder through star-sown voids
of space ? And if this were true might he not actually
confront Deity itself? To think of such achievement
being vouchsafed one who still lived! To think of
re-occupying his flesh, re-awakening as man, and saying
with human lips, " I have seen God " !
But before he ventured to explore either earth or
heaven, he chose to visit the home of Violet Fythian.
What if he should look in upon her mind and soul, only
to recoil with disappointment ? What if all her trusted
purity and goodness were illusion and dream ?
He willed to reach Violet Fythian's home, and swiftly
118 . THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
entered a pretty dining-room in Clarges Street, where
she £at with her father at luncheon. The meal was
breakfast, however; Lord Henry was a late riser.
Instantly it became certain to Guy that Violet was the
most amiable and stainless of women. She had not
strength of character; she was almost fatally pliable
under stress of suasion : she might yield to the power
of ardent entreaty even when her higher nature sounded
clearest warnings. But she was good and sweet and
chaste, however the savageries of life might find her
feeble to resist their storm.
Lord Henry made his watcher think 'of some plain,
full of stiff stubble after a long drought. He had a
spirit all arid pride and juiceless egotism. But through
its drear level trickled a tiny silver rill of paternal
fondness. He gave hints of this truth in the words he
was now speaking.
"My dear Violet, you know that I could not have
any thoughts about you except those which concern
your welfare."
" Of course, papa."
" You are all that is left me, my child. If I am
selfish to others I am wholly the opposite to you."
" Surely you are selfish to no one, papa, dear ?"
" Oh, yes. But we will not discuss that." And
Lord Henry waved his egg-spoon faintly in one slim
white hand. "You must remember, Violet, that you
come, on both sides, of a very old English race. Your
mother, though her people were untitled, had in her
veins the best blood of the country. Now, my dear, if
this Mr. Thyrle should ask you in marriage "
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
119
" Why, papa ! He hasn't dreamed of doing it! "
" But if he should, Violet (and he evidently admires
you), the fact of his mother having been a Rothwell
would make me stoutly oppose his wishes. Those
Rothwells are a mere product of yesterday. Forty
years ago they were tradespeople in Leeds. I say
nothing whatever against the Thyrles. Godfrey Thyrle,
this gentleman's father, was a man of fine acquirements,
though extreme indolence. They used to say that
Miss Rothwell asked him to marry her and that pure
laziness prevented him from answering no."
" Oh, papa! What an odd story ! Do you really
believe it can be true ? "
" I suspect it, my dear Violet, I suspect it," returned
her father, with his wonted nose-in-the-air grimness.
u But the other tale has, I admit, a more doubtful
sound—that Mr. Thyrle read a book while he was
being married, and not only forgot the ring but saicL' I
won't' for 11 will' twice."
While Violet's laugh rang silvery, a sudden strange
sensation was felt by Guy. It had the effect upon
him of a nameless pain, and with it went a traction that
seemed wrought by countless tiny cords all pulling
him one way. In a second he divined the origin of
these curious feelings, and willed to regain the chamber
where his body rested.
No sooner had he reached, as it were, his own bed-
side, than he perceived just where the trouble lay.
The proprietor of the hotel, the maidservant with the
flattened nose, and three or four other attendants of
either sex, were standing near him. His hands were
120
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
being violently chafed, a wet cloth had been placed on
his forehead, and a bottle of sal-volatile was being held
to his nostrils.
" It looks decidedly like a case of attempted suicide,"
the proprietor was saying. " Elizabeth, you believed
something was wrong, you tell us, from the first.
Well, I can hardly blame you for your disobedience of
my orders, after all, since your listening at the door
and your having sent for the hotel locksmith have
resulted in this unpleasant discovery."
The woman with the flattened nose looked compli-
mented. Guy wished, for the moment, that he was
less intangible ; he would have liked to give the nose
a tweak that would have startled her half out of her
impertinent and interfering wits.
He now approached his body, and willed to re-possess
it. Immediately the same absolute blank which before
had fallen upon him fell upon him now. To those
gathered near the bed there was not a visible sign,
however faint, of this second mysterious rehabilitation.
XV.
HE did not awake to consciousness at all quickly.
He was aware of effort and struggle before
opening his eyes, and for some time afterwards he lay
exhausted and speechless.
But he soon acquired strength enough to wave away
his would-be helpers, and when voice came to him he
employed it in rather decisive reprimand.
" I have not been quite so insensible, Mr. Sandford,
as you perhaps thought," he said, addressing the pro-
prietor. " I heard you state that you suspected me of
attempted suicide, and I have also learned that the
woman, there, whom you call Elizabeth, entered my
room against your orders and my own. The truth is,
I am subject to fits of syncope like the one in which
you have seen me. They are not the result of any
drug, and I usually recover from them without the
need of assistance."
" Do you mean, sir, that you are afflicted by epilepsy?"
asked Mr. Sandford, with a curiosity both polite and
sympathetic.
" My ailment is somewhat of that character," re-
121
122
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
turned Guy, glad to have so plausible a definition
supplied him. " If it had not been for your meddle-
some maidservant," he pursued, with clear asperity,
" I should have caused you no annoyance whatever."
" Oh, never mind the annoyance, sir," began Mr.
Sandford. . . . But Guy, prostrated as he felt, cut him
short, and desired to be left alone with one of the
male servants. When this request was granted, he
ordered the man to assist him in undressing, and
repaired at once to bed. Here he remained for the
rest of that day, and the next night, having given
strict injunctions that no physician should be sent him.
Nourishment he caused to be brought him, but when
Elizabeth appeared with it in the doorway he com-
manded her to retire from the room instantly and send
it by another employe. His repugnance towards her
grew in proportion as he recognised the fact of his own
physical collapse. For would he not have made, this
time, a far more searching and spacious voyage before
again returning to his body, if it had not been for that
prying nuisance of a woman ?
On the following day he rose from bed and quitted
the hotel. He was still in a most jaded state. After
reaching home he again lay down, and not until
another day had passed did he feel that his strength
was completely restored. Ardilange was still absent,
but a letter soon came from him. It informed Guy
that his poor, dear father had passed away, and that
he and all his kindred were plunged in grief. He
wrote with the deepest tenderness and feeling, and
ended by asking Guy for a loan of three hundred
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
123
pounds. Without a single qualm of unwillingness
Guy sent him the amount. Three days afterwards
Ardilange came back, mournfully beaming with thanks.
He had one hundred pounds of the money safely
stowed in his pocket-book, but in his frank, sweet
blue eyes he had only the richest and tenderest
emotion. He told his friend with tears—positive, un-
deniable tears—that his remittance had been a god-
send to the straitened family income. His deep
mourning became his fresh complexion, and the
accustomed blithesome cadences of his voice were
modulated into such amiable minorchords of sadness
that they touched his hearer with profound pity.
Guy now felt thoroughly strong and well. The
memory of his past weakness, after having rejoined
flesh with spirit, had already grown vague to him.
Other memories abode, and these were intoxicating,
victorious. He was like the opium-eater who has
recovered from all illness consequent on his latest
indulgence, %nd who longs again to test what new
enjoyments repetition of it may produce.
The season was now latter May, and London had
grown brilliant socially, however capricious its un-
trustworthy skies. Ardilange inwardly cursed his
habiliments of woe. Guy could go where he pleased,
and never fear a single frown from the august brows
of propriety. He, on the other hand, must mope and
languish, pretending a melancholy which he wholly
failed to feel.
And Guy, as days passed on, disclosed tendencies
that roused in his observer fresh envy and surprise.
124
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
He accepted many invitations, and was frequently
the host at large and sumptuous dinners. These he
did not hold at the house in Regent's Park, and
chiefly because of sympathy with Ardilange in his
recent bereaved mood.
" I know, dear boy," he once said, " how unpleasant
to you would be all ' sounds of revelry' at such a time.
And there are so many other places, you know—the
Savoy, the Bristol, and a lot of like restaurants—
where I can entertain with perfect facility. Besides,
this house, in any case, would be small for a formidable
banquet."
Ardilange choked down his spleen and answered,
with a thoughtful smile,—
"It does seem so strange, Guy, to hear you talk
of giving formidable banquets. I somehow cannot get
used to the idea that society interests you."
" It interests me very greatly," said Guy. " There's
every reason why it should, Vincent," he went on,
and then suddenly paused.
" Every reason ? " repeated Ardilange, as their eyes
met. Guy made no response, and the other con-
tinued, " I suppose you mean that you are such a
personage, so sought after, so admired. Well, my
dear Guy, nobody can credit all this more firmly and
loyally than can I—poor painter of ill-selling pictures
that I am ! "
" Nonsense, Vincent. I meant nothing so shock-
ingly conceited. But the truth is, I've begun to treat
human beings as I once treated my chemicals. I pore
over them, watch their manifestations of attraction and
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 125
repulsion, and altogether study them with remarkable
zest."
Repeatedly Guy was now on the verge of imparting
to Ardilange his secret. Where could he find a more
sympathetic counsellor with regard to certain future
actions ? Other men might be jealous of the radiant
fame which he was destined to secure; other men
might shrink horrified from participation in enterprise
replete for them with irreligion. But surely Vincent
was moulded after no such petty pattern. He might
aid, advise, restrain. He might do more—and here
rose a most vitally important point for consideration—
he might guard from all disturbance the abandoned
body of his friend. . . . Still, Guy shrank from the
revelation. He feared its appalling effect; he dreaded
the mere watching of his listener's face while he dealt
in such unparalleled disclosures. He felt doubtful,
too, * of Ardilange's nervous stamina. So sensitive
and cheerful and human a spirit as his might suffer
so acutely from dismay and amazement that even
madness might ensue.
An unprecedented keenness of diversion now fell to
the lot of Guy. He was constantly in the company
of men and women whose present springs of action
were laid pitilessly bare to him. While looking at
these people with those other clairvoyant eyes he had
been able to read their past acts in distinct and un-
broken sequence. The chronicle that his "ghost"
afterwards unfolded to Raymond Savernay was for this
reason thoroughly lucid respecting the base hypocrisy
of Ardilange. He was fated hereafter, as we shall
126
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
learn, to confront that hypocrisy in all its most baleful
colours ; and hence, in the recital which he subsequently
gave, every detail of his accredited friend's traitorous
conduct had grown plain to him as though it were
substance normally reflected in some material mirror.
And the same rule held good with these people whom
he now daily met. The record of their past lives had
been an open scroll to him. As before was stated,
this new sense defied explanation. What they were,
morally and spiritually, his marvellous gaze had seen.
But it had seen more, reading what they had been morally
and spiritually, as though every deed of their former
lives had left behind it a legible sequence of signs and
meanings, like the tracks of birds in sea-shore sand.
Going abroad into society now afforded him infinite
amusement, blended with infinite philosophic sadness.
He watched the masquerade of life as no one, in all our
annals of mankind, could ever before have watched it.
The masqueraders were ignorant that their disguises
were futile for him. On this account their concealments,
their duplicities, were the essence of sinister self-aban-
donment. At times Guy was tempted to startle some
of them by puzzling innuendoes, and at times he did.
The result failed to increase his popularity, as may well
be imagined. He was voted both a cynic and a prig
by certain associates ; by others he was condemned as
an unpalatable spy. Still others began to fear him as
a person teeming with acumen darksome, Mephis-
tophelian. But he was nevertheless accepted every-
where, though in some quarters rather cordially disliked.
" I heard not long ago," he said one day to Ardilange,
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
12 7
" that some kind acquaintance had called Violet
Fythian's polite treatment of me Beauty smiling on the
Beast. That isn't very pleasant to hear, Vincent, you
must admit." y
" It's merely silly, Guy," was the answer. " Why
give it a thought ? "
" Oh, its acrimony bears a certain amount of truth,
no doubt. Compared to that spotless girl I am a poor
enough sort of creature; what man among even the
best of us could dare rate himself otherwise ? You
could, perhaps, Vincent. ..."
"I?"
" Oh, yes. I often fancy you haven't a fault. This
may be fanaticism, but if so, I prefer to retain it
unrefuted."
" Guy, you're always so good to me !"
Guy laughed, and a little harshly. "Somebody else
is good to you as well, I'm fancying."
" Somebody else ? Why, you don't mean "
"Violet Fythian ? Oh, no; of course not!" and
again Guy harshly laughed. But the next instant every
trace of acerbity faded from him. " I know you go
there a good deal, Vincent. Why, haven't we met
there two or three times of late ? I've taken for
granted that your motives were merely friendship, since
long ago you led me to believe that you didn't intend
ever to marry. But if now you were to tell me that
you loved Violet Fythian, do you know, Vincent, what
I'd feel seriously tempted to do ? Well, to go to her
father and inform him you'd make his daughter an
incomparable husband ! "
128 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
" But, Guy ! You care for the girl yourself."
" Never mind. You are sunshine, and that's a more
marriageable quality than shadow. I ought to think
of Violet's happiness, you know."
A fine light, as of gratitude, kindled in Ardilange's eyes.
He rose and warmly grasped Guy's hand. " You're
the soul of generosity!" he cried. ''But Lord Henry
Fythian would spurn a poor church-mouse like me."
" Oh, if it comes to that," muttered Guy, " he's no
admirer of myself for a son-in-law."
'' You've spoken with him then ? "
" No; but I've overheard him Well," Guy
broke off, with a sudden fond and wistful look, " there's
something momentous I want to explain to you, some
day, and those tidings will form a part of it."
Ardilange had no hope of ever marrying Violet
Fythian. But there were times when envy would paint
for him an enticing picture. He saw himself the
inheritor of Guy Thyrle's property, and hence the suitor
cordially endorsed by Lord Henry. Had not Guy
admitted that he was the heir of that coveted three
thousand a year ? He had murderous moments when
he thought of his benefactor's will, lying somewhere in
the care of Guy's solicitor, and waiting for death to
inform it with such precious meaning. But Ardilange
had neither the courage nor the brutality of the ordinary
assassin. Fear of punishment would have deterred
him, on the one hand, from any criminal act; and on
the other, effeminate daintiness. But he belonged to
the class who might score their graveyardfuls of victims
if secret hate and malice could kill.
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
129
Guy had a qualm of actual fright after his noble
burst of liberalism. What if Vincent Ardilange had
really accepted that self-abnegating offer ? To give up
Violet almost meant giving up life, now. And yet he
felt that the idiotic pride of Lord Henry was going to
plant itself bulkily in his path. It occurred to him that
this impediment might be met and removed. One
afternoon he deliberately waited in Clarges Street, at
a short distance from the Fythian residence, knowing
that Violet had an engagement to drive in the Park
with a certain lady. The lady called for her, she
entered her friend's landau, and was driven off. Guy
then rang the bell at her door, asking if she were at
home. In place of Violet he requested to see Lord
Henry, her father, who received him with three extended
fingers and a smile of ice.
" This," thought Guy, " is a bad beginning. But
perhaps I shall get better treatment before I have done
with his lordship. We shall see what we shall see."
o
XVI.
WHEN they were seated, Guy looked steadily for
a moment at his gloves, as though seeking to
light on some flaw in their neat-fitting kid. Almost
abruptly, then, he raised his eyes to the forbidding face
of his companion.
"I am pleased, Lord Henry," he said, " to find you
at home. I prefer, on this occasion, to meet you quite
alone."
" Ah ? Yes ? Really, Mr. Thyrle ? "
" I have something important to tell you, and I shall
tell it without hesitation. Your daughter, Miss Violet,
has so greatly attracted me that I wish to make her
my wife. Have I your permission to pay her my
addresses ? "
Lord Henry gave a great start, and then a great
stare. He folded his long arms, for a moment, cough-
ing gutturally. He crossed his long legs for another
moment, still coughing. Then he unfolded his arms
and uncrossed his legs, and said with curt, sonorous
brevity,—
" I'm very sorry, Mr. Thyrle, but it can't be thought
of."
130
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
Guy rose. " May I ask why, Lord Henry ? In the
matter of settlements I am prepared "
" Oh, I understand—yes—of course," was the inter-
ruption. And here Violet's father rose also. He
waved one hand with airy decision. " It can not be.
You are in every sense eligible, of course, but I must
inform you that I do not wish my daughter to marry
for some time yet."
" I am in every sense eligible ?" Guy coolly
answered, with the questioning inflection strong in his
tones. "Are you sure, sir, that you think me so ?"
" What is that ? I—I don't understand you," came
the flurried yet haughty response.
"But I understand you, I think. You have a strong
dislike to my mother's people—the Rothwells."
" I ? " broke amazedly from Lord Henry. "You—
you've got wind of that ? I am not aware that I ever
circulated the fact of such dislike, Mr. Thyrle."
" But I happen to know," pressed Guy, " that you
hold the Rothwell family—the Rothwell blood, if you
please—in considerable contempt. All my near kindred
on my mother's side are now dead, it is true, but you
nevertheless remember them against me in the most
curiously snobbish way."
" Snobbish ! " broke from Lord Henry. The word
enraged him, as it is apt to enrage so many snobs
when they hear it applied to themselves.
" That was my word, sir. I'm sorry if you don't like
it. You disapprove the poor Rothwells because they
were in trade. But your father, the late Marquis of
Ullinford, married a brewer's daughter, and his father
132
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
married an actress (and not at all a remarkable actress,
either) out of Covent Garden."
Lord Henry had turned nearly as white as his
collar. " 1 see, Mr. Thyrle, that you have been
studying the Fythian genealogy."
Guy quickly answered, "Whether your daughter
were sprung from princes or from peasants would
matter alike to me. I want her for my wife, that is
all; and I want your sanction of my marriage with
her."
Lord Henry gave a gruff little sigh of disgust. " I
refuse this sanction. I must tell you so bluntly, since
you have dealt most bluntly with me."
"Surely I have dealt with you on the most ordinary
terms of retaliation. You have sneered at my pedigree ;
I have reminded you of your own."
From the other's dull eyes came a sombre flash.
" How can you possibly have known that I had any
aversion whatever to this Rothwell relationship?
Surely my daughter has not told you of it ? Violet
is, I hope, too well-bred for that."
" Miss Violet has not breathed a hint of it," said
Guy, smiling coldly, "although you confess by your
just-spoken words that you have informed her it exists."
Lord Henry ranked the losing of one's temper as
among the cardinal vulgarities. He would almost as
soon have worn a low hat with a frock coat as perpe-
trate an " explosion." Nevertheless, it cost him a stout
effort not to show in either voice or language the
exasperation he now felt.
" Really, Mr. Thyrle," he said, smothering all wrath,
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
133
but letting his fingers slip with tell-tale nervousness
up and down the slender gold thread of his monocle,
" it would be quite futile, now, for me to mask under
civility what I should far rather have so disguised.
You are determined, too evidently, on having nothing
but the crudest truth. Well, then, you cannot be my
son-in-law unless Violet chooses to elope with you;
and I fancy she may have been somewhat too wisely
brought up for that."
" Oh," said Guy, with a shrug, " I don't intend to
marry her on any such clandestine terms, if you please.
I intend to do so, if at all, with your full consent."
For a moment Lord Henry visibly trembled. " Are
you aware, sir, that your word ' intend' is, in the
circumstances, insulting ? "
" I did not so wish it to appear," said Guy, with a
sort of marble meekness. Then he went on, stroking
his chin in a half-furtive way,—
" No man, Lord Henry, can help his ancestry.
Mine, all in all, is quite as good as yours, though
you're the son of a marquis and I'm the son of a
commoner. But a man's past . . . well, it seems to
me we're really not such automatons, after all. Our
past we can help, or ought to help, I am persuaded."
Lord Henry's clenched hand was now striking, with
short, strenuous raps, the velvet coverlid of the mantel
against which he had backed himself.
" This, sir," he said, in freezing monotone, " is all
Greek to me. Pray, are you trying to deliver for me
a lecture on ethics ? "
"Not a lecture—no. I'm a poor hand at oratory."
134 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
" Indeed ? I should have supposed you very
glib."
"You would have erred, believe me. To remind a
fellow-mortal of his previous mistakes cannot be called
the same thing as to reproach him for them."
" Previous mistakes ? Then you have some idea—— ? "
" Of bringing to your recollection the existence of
a certain household, in a rather obscure section of
West Kensington, where you occasionally go, and
where you meet the mother of two children whose
father I am sure you will not deny to be Lord Henry
Fythian."
The effect of these placid words did not surprise
Guy. His host caught the back of a chair almost
staggeringly, and fell into it afterwards with a fierce,
wild sort of gasp.
" You—you know about this, Thyrle ? "
" I know about it," answered Guy, with easiest com-
posure, going slowly nearer to the dumfounded man.
11 I know about it, but I beg you will not ask me how
or why. The knowledge is possessed by me—that I
can say, and that is all. Oh, by the way, it is not
all, Lord Henry; in one sense it is not all, by any
means. For I should add that the fact of this com-
promising relation has never been breathed by me to
a living soul, and that you are as absolutely safe from
scandal to-day as you have been for several years past.
I should add, too " (and here Guy's voice, which already
was courteously lowered, became suavity itself), " that
as your future son-in-law I would of course guard you
from exposure with the most zealous care."
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 135
By this time Lord Henry's face was greyishly
pallid. . . . Afterwards his natural colour distinctly
revived, and very probably because he had held a
good ten minutes of further talk with his tranquil yet
bomb-throwing visitor. . . .
XVII
DAY or two later, Guy's engagement to Violet
Fythian had become widely known. Just how
he urged his suit Guy himself could afterwards ill
remember. Violet, with timid sweetness, received him
one morning. She had on a gown of pale-green
clinging stuff, exquisitely becoming, and for the first
time he perceived the sea-shell tints on the insides of
her slim and delicate hands. He spoke of her father's
permission to ask her if she would be his wife, and
he saw the soft old yellowish lace at her bosom tremble
as though her beating heart stirred it. But she said
nothing, and her silence seemed to him the most
felicitous of answers. He went on speaking, and
once she said u Yes," and once " No," and once " Oh,
I'm very honoured to have you care for me so greatly."
This last sentence seemed voluminous to him with
complaisance and acquiescence. He felt that it sealed
his blissful fate ; and when he sought to kiss her on
the lips, she would not let him do so, but turned coyly
to him her roseate cheek. And he was glad yet sorry
because of her reluctance, telling himself that he pre-
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE. 137
ferred it, after all, to the richest ardour of passionate
reciprocity, since her purity and gentleness would have
made any note of passion in her seem an unpleasing
discord.
Perhaps he may have dimly realised, through all
this delightful interview, that she had consented to
marry him simply because her father had so com-
manded, and that despite her virginal charms of
unsullied goodness, Violet was a beautiful nonentity
and triviality, neither despicable nor admirable, but
simply to be pitied for her childish feebleness and
flimsy pliancy.
Thousands of men have loved women of just this
vapid and colourless type. Guy not merely loved, but
with an almost deifying ardour. If Violet had been
womanly instead of womanish, if her character had
held a few genuine sparks of decision, of resolution,
of definite individualism, this dark history might never
have emerged from the shadow and ghastliness of its
origin. But she was a girl without will of her own,
and hence as potentially baneful to the hearts and
minds of men as though cursed with the most vicious
waywardness. The wicked women of the world are
not always its worst evils. The women who break
and ruin lives are often not worthy the loyal devotion
of an imbecile. Teeming with fascination, they are
fatally winsome, because behind their power as inane
sorceresses lies nothing save an apathy maddeningly
malleable and ductile to the earnest and energetic
lover. They are like pits whose rims bristle with
enchanting blooms. To draw near them, to quaff the
138 THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
odours they exhale, is heavenly delight. To draw
still nearer may mean the sinking of a deep despair,
the gloom of a death-in-life.
But Guy, the newly accepted lover, thought no such
dismal thoughts as these. He talked freely and
copiously to Ardilange of his happiness ; and never
was adroiter simulation of concord and amity than that
which he received in answer. He now accompanied
Violet everywhere as her future husband, and if Lord
Henry did not make for the pair a precisely genial
background he did not by any means make for them
a dolorous one. Tales got about that he detested the
marriage, and had for some reason been forced into
permitting it. But few believed such rumours, and
when her father withdrew Violet to Gowerleigh during
the second week of July, it was rather generally con-
ceded that Lord Henry's gout had more to do with
their departure than even the waning season. He was
certainly ill for some time after reaching his pretty
little estate, but his symptoms were those of severe
nervous depression. Guy alone understood the true
cause of this ailment. He abhorred, with his over-
weening pride, the idea of making his daughter the
wife of a man who had tightened the screws upon him,
who had compelled him to eat and swallow his own
prejudices, however autocratic and insipid.
Guy was both vexed and diverted by this turn of
affairs. His impulses toward Violet's parent, however,
were in the main kindly. His own happiness coloured
with prismatic tints even the present sullen stolidity
of this gentleman. He went and came from Gower-
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
139
leigh week after week, and always found Ardilange
waiting to greet him with an affectionate smile. But
behind that smile what a black, malicious little imp was
lurking!
Ardilange knew Gowerleigh so well! He had
strolled among its groves and terraces last autumn,
with Violet Fythian, more times than memory could
count. On the little stone parapet at the edge of the
winding river, how often had they stood together
among the silvery jungles of willows and fed the great
white swans, timid yet eager! One morning he had
ventured to tell Violet that in her movements and her
walk she made him think of a swan. To this platitude
she had replied, " How very nice ! " and it had seemed
to Ardilange pleasanter to hear just such fatuity from
her lips than if some brilliant woman had gaily flung
back at him some most felicitous bit of repartee. . . .
And now Guy basked in the light of those lovely eyes,
lived in the enchantment of that priceless presence!
And Guy had made his will, and had left three thou-
sand pounds a year to him, Vincent Ardilange! With
what a golden shower of happiness Destiny might
overwhelm him! But then Destiny was obstinate,
unpropitiable, and though she dealt in the unexpected,
she did so at her own capricious whim. Dead men's
shoes were very dear to her, Ardilange had begun to
think. With the misery that loves company he mused
upon the large number of his acquaintances whom she
kept waiting for them.
" My dear Vincent," said Guy, one afternoon, having
just run up to London from Gowarleigh and his envied
140 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
elysium there, " I want to tell you that the day of my
marriage has been fixed."
" Dear Guy, you know that such tidings cannot but
please me ! And what day has been decided on ? "
Guy informed him.
" So early in September ? " came the bland reply.
" Ah! with all my heart I congratulate you, for I know
that the nearer the date the deeper will be your
approbation of it."
" True. . . . And you'll serve as my best man, will
you not, Vincent ? "
" Indeed, yes, Guy ! How could I refuse such an
honour ? "
" Honour ? Nonsense ! "
" Privilege, then, if you like that better."
" I don't like it a bit better. Say friendly service,
and the whole ground is covered. We shall have a
very quiet wedding. The Marquis of Ullinford is ill,
and won't be able to come. There will be a few of
the nearest Fythian relations—that is all. So your
mourning need not make you feel as if it were a dis-
respectful festivity."
" Yes, I see. That will be more grateful to me."
" How is your poor mother, by the way ? "
u She is quite well, thanks, and far more consoled
than we might have expected."
" How glad I am to hear that! You run down there
quite often, don't you ? "
" Oh, yes."
Ardilange had really not been with his family but
twice since the funeral, and then he had paid them
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
141
merely the most flying visits. Lying, however, on
this point was quite safe, as the distance of his parental
home from London was short, and almost any prolonged
absence from the house in Regent's Park could be con-
strued as having a filial and brotherly motive. All the
time he was chafing under his forced retirement from
society. The fashionable theatres were perforce for-
bidden to him, though he had risked being seen at some
of the most important and amusing concert-halls, such
as the Alhambra, the Pavilion, and the Empire. At the
Oxford he had felt safer, and at some of the commoner
resorts almost wholly safe. But, after all, such places
did not divert him. He might have enjoyed their per-
formances if these had been witnessed in the company
of elegant and modish people. Essentially a sybarite,
he enjoyed nothing that did not contain the element of
daintiness, of exclusion. On this account his mourning
attire was a constant onus to him, because it barred him
from participation in the joys and sports of the classes,
apart from the masses. He loathed the masses except
when they appealed to him in the form of servitude, as
coachmen, butlers, footmen, and the like.
" My dear boy," said Guy, now looking at him with
steadiness, u I trust you will feel some little satisfaction
when I inform you that I've returned to London for an
uninterrupted stay of at least ten days.
" Satisfaction ? " Ardilange echoed; " how possibly
could I fail to feel it? . . . But can you truly mean
that you will absent yourself from Violet for so long a
time ? "
" Yes."
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
Guy rose, went to a window, and stood for quite a
while staring out at the breezy and tremulous trees in
the opposite park. The light was failing, and some of
the foliage was flecked with the slanted gold of sunset.
As he turned slowly, and once more faced Ardilange,
the latter perceived that he had grown paler and that
his dark eyes were brimming with an odd brightness.
" I'm going to make a voyage, Vincent," he cried
strangely, and flung himself into the chair he . had just
quitted.
" A voyage ? " Ardilange murmured. Sudden fear
possessed him. There was that in Guy's manner which
made him doubtful of the man's complete sanity. He
could not for his life have explained this feeling. It
crept over him, somehow, with abruptness and yet with
stealth.
" A voyage," repeated Guy. " An immensely long
one, and yet no doubt in a certain sense amazingly
brief. In another sense, too, miraculous; for all the
time I am making it I shall still be visible to you, here
in this very house."
As he ended these words, Guy laughed. The laugh
was so bleak and elfin that it vibrated with an electric
stress through all the nerves of its hearer.
XVIII.
HERE is no doubt that Ardilange was frightened.
Ever since the assertion in Guy of that most
unexpected change from gravity to relative levity, he
had been visited by suspicions that his friend was
insane. Never courageous, he felt a twinge of actual
terror as Guy dreamily said to him,—
" This evening, after dinner, you and I must have a
talk, Vincent—a tremendously serious talk. I have
a certain revelation to make to you—one which shall
be made because of the perfect faith I repose in you,
and the loving regard, dear boy, that you long ago
inspired."
During dinner Ardilange thought Guy's conduct
abstracted and suspicious. Later, when they went
together into the small sitting-room, Ardilange lit a
cigarette; and then he said, as if to break a silence
which was growing oppressively portentous,—
" With all your new liking for the world, Guy, you
never learned to become a smoker, did you ? "
Guy had buried himself in a huge easy-chair. The
" No."
144
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
room was dim, and from the dusky recess into which
he sank his black eyes burned like two malign
stars.
Then, in another minute, he went on, "Tobacco or
wine would have been poison to my brain. One I
absolutely avoid ; the other I use in most sparing
way."
" But now that you've given up all study, Guy "
" I'm putting myself to tests, each one more racking,
perhaps, than five years of study might prove."
"Tests, Guy? I don't understand you."
" Of course you don't."
" Is this preliminary to the revelation that you
designed making me ? "
" M—yes ; yes."
New silence became torturing to Ardilange. Just as
he had feared that Guy intended suicide on the evening
when the draught had first been taken, so he now
feared madness. Did not everything in the variant
oddity of this man's recent career point to some such
explanation ? And madness was a malady so un-
trustworthy, so incalculable. Every fastidious inch
of Ardilange's frame began to shrink and quiver.
But he once more desperately broke the silence.
"You mean, Guy, that I'm to hear something very
important ? "
" Prodigiously."
" Is it about . . . yourself?"
The gaze of Guy seemed to shine towards him, from
its ambush of shadow, with a still more lambent and
magnetic gleam.
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
145
" It's about myself—oh, yes." In another instant
Guy sat bolt upright. The light of the single lamp on
the central table struck across his face, showing both
its pallor and fervour. " But it's about more than I—
immeasurably more. You recall ... I deserted my
studies, Vincent; I threw aside all that old sequestered
life; I became a part of the living, acting present."
" Surely I recall, Guy."
" And you never guessed a reason for the
change ? "
"You never told me of any reason ? "
" But you never invented one ? "
" Oh, yes," replied Ardilange, sweetly, curbing his
inward agitation. " I assured myself that your native
amiability and large-heartedness had caused you to
fling aside all that prolonged mood of unsocial self-
absorption."
" Ah ! that's just like you, dear Vincent! But you
guessed wrongly. . . . Now, listen, please, for I am
going to acquaint you with my true reason for breaking
retorts and crucibles, for throwing in the slop-jar, so
to speak, those chemicals whose nauseous odours used
to rouse your disgust."
After this Guy spoke on, clearly and tranquilly, for
a good half-hour, His voice was so low that some-
times passing vehicles in the street outside nearly
drowned it.
At length he paused. His eyes had been drooped
through the greater part of his monologue. Lifting
them, now, he perceived that the face of his hearer
was lividly pale.
10
146 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
" Guy, Guy," Ardilange gasped, u can this possibly
be true ? "
Then the speaker's eyes closed, and his head fell
backwards. Guy, thinking that he had fainted, sprang
towards him.
XIX.
BUT speedily Ardilange revived. Standing over
him, Guy murmured compassionately, while he
stroked the blond curls on the white, boyish fore-
head,—
" This has been too much for you. I was too
precipitate, unprefaced."
" No," asserted Ardilange, his natural rosy tints
returning. " Still, what you say . . . passes . . .
credence."
" But you believe it, of course ? " shot Guy.
" Of course, . . . since you tell it me."
After a little pause, still standing over him and with
fingers on the pulse of one wrist, Guy said,—
" Vincent, let me get you a glass of wine."
" No, thanks. I shall be perfectly strong in a few
more seconds."
Guy went back to his chair. " I don't wonder at
your disarray. Stronger men than you might have
betrayed more."
And through Ardilange's mind this thought was now
sweeping: " What a fool I've been to believe him,
i47
148 THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
even for five minutes ! There's not a doubt that he s
mad. This magic draught, indeed ! He grants
himself, it's related to opium."
But aloud, " And you mean to take this draught
again, Guy ? "
" Yes. Once more."
" But you admit that its effects made you ill ? "
" Each time that I returned to my body I did so under
the force of severe nervous shock The first time I
was terrified by the thought that I could not re-enter it.
The second time—well, I've told you of how it was
molested through the prying officiousness of that hotel
servant."
" Then you do mean to take the draught once
more!" lamented Ardilange, as if with the deepest
concern.
" As I said—once more. I think that may be the
last time. ..." His face suddenly lightened, and
a smile flashed along the line of his lips. Vincent, I'll
tell you what I'll do. I'll give you my promise—my
sacred word of honour—that this shall be the last time.
Violet's love shall hold me here ever afterwards; for
there's little doubt she will live many years longer than
I. After this final taking of the draught I'll give my
secret to the world. Ah, what a tempest of triumph
will break upon me ! " And Guy softly clapped his
hands, then flung them waveringly into the air.
(" Mad, mad, mad ! " Ardilange kept thinking. " Still,
to all appearances, harmlessly.")
" Guy," he again said aloud, " if you take this draught
a third time when shall you take it ? "
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
149
" To-night."
"To-night?" Ardilange faltered.
"Yes." Guy's look now became immensely serious,
" And this time, Vincent, I mean to avoid all wretched
disturbances. I shall leave my body in your care."
" In my care ! "
"As a trust—an almost holy trust. You will guard:
it, Iknow."
Ardilange felt himself inwardly shiver. "You—you
will seem as if dead, Guy, after you have drunk of
it ? "
" Yes. I've made all clear, have I not ? " Here
Guy rose and took out his watch. " Come with me,"
he added, "into my bedchamber."
They both went thither. Guy 'took the precious
flask from a small cabinet, which he unlocked.
" There it is," he said, holding the jug-shaped glass
vessel well up against the saffron gas-jet. " You asked
me, downstairs," he went on, " whether I should seem
as if dead after I had drunk this. My dear Vincent, I
shall be dead, to all intents and purposes. Mark that,
please, my faithful friend: I shall be dead. Your task
is to watch me until I revive."
" Yes, Guy."
"After I've taken the draught, stay here beside me.
Very soon you will not only see all outward vitality,
all seeming consciousness, leave me, but you will see
me as much a corpse as though I had slipped a razor
clean and deep through my windpipe."
Ardilange concealed a shudder. " Well, then," he
said, "I will stay here beside you."
150 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
" Thanks, thanks," Guy murmured.
"I need not have dreamed you would refuse. For
that matter, Vincent, I did not dream it."
At this point Guy went up to Ardilange and let a
hand rest on either of his shoulders. " If I were at all
dubious," he continued, " about the result of this new
exploit, I would have altered my will."
" Your will, Guy ? "
11 Of course, in case of my death, everything should
now go to Violet. I would have left her everything, if
I had feared death, even though our marriage remains
in the future. So, as it happens, Vincent, you are still
my heir. However, there is not a shadow of a chance
that I shall die—not a shadow 1 "
Just here Guy reached his arm towards a shelf on the
wall where several glasses stood. The next minute his
elbow, because of some oblique downward motion,
struck the flask off the table on which he had placed it.
As it fell on the floor he uttered a sharp cry. Then he
seized it and rushed with it to the light. By this time
Ardilange was at his side.
" It's spilled, Guy ? "
" No—not all. There's enough left. See ! How
strange 1 Just the draught I wanted—hardly; I should
say, a half-drop too little ! "
With trembling hands Guy poured the residue of
the liquid into a glass.
Again a cry left his lips, and this time a glad one.
u Precisely enough ! How lucky, Vincent! Look 1 "
Ardilange said nothing. Somehow he could only
think of what Guy had said about his unaltered will.
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
Guy placed the glass on the table. He then looked
Ardilange full in the eyes.
"Vincent," he said.
" Well, Guy ? "
" Leave me, now, for about five minutes, will you ? "
"Yes . . . if you insist."
Guy then spoke again, briefly and with rapid in-
structive force. "You quite understand?" were his
ending words.
" Quite."
"No one is to come near me except yourself."
" No one."
"Your vigil may be for two, three, even four days,
Vincent."
"Yes."
" And I shall seem dead—absolutely dead."
" I follow you."
" Watch and wait. That is all. You promise ? "
" I promise."
Gpy touched with his lips Ardilange's forehead.
" Good-night, then, and . . . au revoir. When you
return to this room you will find me apparently a
corpse. And return, as I told you, in about five
minutes."
" As you wish, Guy."
XX.
RDILANGE went into the front room, closing the
door behind him. This room was faintly lighted,
but with quick hands, urged by fear, he turned up the
gas to its fullest power. Then he went to one of the
windows and stood staring down at the lamps in the
"The man is mad," he told himself, "and believes
he has taken this drug before. He has probably never
taken it. If in reality he has done so, then it is merely
some decoction resembling morphine which he imagines
will accomplish those absurd marvels. He says I shall
find him apparently a corpse! What unspeakable
rubbish 1 If I find him dead, why ... he will be dead;
that is all."
Then Ardilange recollected the unaltered will, which
left him heir to three thousand pounds a year. This
thought was so fascinating, so absorbing, that he drew
from it a kind of ecstasy. For longer than five minutes
he waited here in the front room. Then he quietly
unclosed the door of Guy's bedroom.
The light was still brightly burning. Guy's form lay
park.
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE. 153
stretched on the bed. His hands were peacefully
disposed at either side. Ardilange drew near the bed
and stood watching him. His face, with closed eyes,
looked restful and serene. Timidly Ardilange touched
his forehead. Then he took one of Guy's wrists,
holding it between finger and thumb. Then he
unclosed his friend's waistcoat and bent down, putting
an ear to his heart. ... No pulsation, absolutely none.
" He has killed himself," Ardilange breathed, aloud.
" What shall I do ? "
Cold with agitation, he dropped into a chair. How
if Guy, after all, had told the truth ? This drug might
have just the wondrous properties which he had
ascribed to it. In that case he would be doing his
friend an injury unspeakable, even if he summoned a
physician. For he had no shadow of doubt that any
physician who came to Guy's bedside would pronounce
him dead. And had not he, Ardilange, given his
sacred promise that he would guard the body until he
saw in it signs of returning life ?
Having really given this promise, he would have
endeavoured religiously to keep it at all hazards,
provided he had been a man of honourable instinct, of
moral purpose. But he was neither, as we know.
Seated here beside Guy's lifeless form, he felt all the
tremors of cowardice, all the lures of temptation. He
knew well the thing that he might do, and yet he was
afraid to do it. He knew well the thing that he ought
to do, and yet he longed to leave it undone. A deep
sense of conviction had fallen upon him that Guy's
story had been true—that the vigil he had required
154
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
would result as he himself had so confidently stated.
And yet against this sense of conviction he had already
begun silently to fight. . . .
On a sudden there came to him a certain remem-
brance, dizzyingly sharp. For some reason he had
recalled the papers which Guy had given him relative
to the latter's membership of a cremation society.
He had, indeed, intended to destroy these papers, just
as Guy had requested. But they had both forgotten
the subject after that rainy evening, months ago, on
which Guy had broached it.
Beads of sweat broke out on Ardilange's brow while
he sat motionless, with hands hanging at his sides, and
watched the still figure on the bed.
XXL
SPIRITUALLY wakening, Guy first thought of
using those powers, now fully comprehended by
him, in a far different way from any which he had
heretofore tried.
He willed to rise a great distance in heaven, and to
follow the apparent westward course of the sun.
Instantly he saw London melt beneath him into a dot
of sombre vapour. Then sweeps of dusky land broad-
ened on either side till the whole expanse became
spheric, and he marked the ocean throbbing in sensi-
tive splendour below white swarms' of stars. He
glided downward, and watched the steamships and
other vessels, ploughing their way from coast to coast.
Less noticed than if he had been the tiniest of sea-birds,
he lit on some of their decks. Now he saw rugged
sailors, asleep in their berths, and heard them snoring
with animal snores ; now he saw pale and sick women,
starting at the break of every rougher wave; now
children, slumbering quietly, or wakeful with the petu-
lance born of nausea. Again he saw watchful men,
with eyes steadfast as the pilot planets above them,
i55
156 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
watching amid deceptive marine darkness for all
stealthy perils that might lurk there. Still again he
saw indolence and neglect, drowsy, criminal, in place
of this finer vigilance; still again he saw two ships
almost crash together with mutual ruin on those
heaving liquid highways, because one pair of eyes
blinked and another was locked tight.
Through great breathing, pulsating steamers he
roamed everywhere, thrilled with admiration at the
perfect discipline, the incomparable craftmanship which
made them defy as they did the awful sea they sailed.
Luxury, comfort, thrift, cleanliness, power, levity,
speed—what marvels of modern science these floating
leviathans bespoke ! And yet even here, amid all the
triumphant grandeur of their mechanism, one could
mark the drear disparities and contrasts wrought by
riches and poverty. And such chasms of difference
lay between those sumptuous cabins and these almost
fetid steerage-bunks!
Presently the skies lightened, and beyond billows
of tumbling silver he traced dark lines of coast. This
was America, glimmering in the vast twilight of an
ended day. Suddenly the sun broke upon him, with
orb so petailed by scarlet and purple cloud that it
looked like a mighty passion-flower. He chose to
speed northward, and it changed, this sunset, to a
mighty lily. Bleak cliffs loomed beyond the sluggish
and treacherous fogs of Labrador, that traitor of lands,
with its eternally dismal banks for ages a sobbing
sepulchre of wrecks. Mists floated here and there in
tattered curves and spirals, like phantoms of the lost
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 157
souls whose dying shrieks and prayers have rung out
so often above the surges of this accursed strand.
Northward, as he passed inland, Guy saw pine-
trees pinnacled against the ghostly crystal of the air,
and towering rocks at whose bases big waves bellowed.
On and on swept meadows where the grass clung
almost scant as moss, and the homes of men were
few. Soon these grew fewer still, and he gazed down
upon a world of desolation. Then this altered to a
world not of earthy but icy barrenness. He still
perceived, however, pulses of living water in those
great bays and inlets and channels which cut the
frozen land. He had presently gained a point where
the sun, like a huge diamond, blazed on colossal bergs
of ice, that gave forth emerald or bluish splendours.
In a kind of cave, hollowed at the base of a scintillating
ice-plinth, he saw an immense white bear, reared erect,
with its sleek, pale head beautiful as a serpent's, and
in its trim-furred claws a great wriggling fish. Then,
farther northward, he came upon a sight of appalling
tragedy.
The flow of a certain stream had ceased, and with
clutches more strong than iron it had closed round
a battered, sea-worn, ship, once noble and stalwart.
On the decks lay four or five corpses, each with its
hueless, upturned fa.ce a haggard record of anguish.
Near by, on the ridgy solid of what once was water,
lay two sailors who had left the ship and had kindled
a fire of faggots they were powerless to keep aflame.
It was dying, and they knew that its death meant
their own. One was a grizzled man, of burly frame,
158 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
and one a slender boy. Guy, watching them, became
aware that they were father and son. The look in
the father's eyes meant measureless agony. The look
in the son's eyes meant fearful physical pain. One
arm had been rotted away by the awful cold, and had
fallen at his side. Both the father's legs were
paralysed. But his right arm and hand were capable,
and he slowly drew forth a pistol from his heavy-,
coated breast.
Then he gazed at the dying fire, and then he lifted
his eyes to the drawn, despairful face of the boy.
And the boy, who had understood, smiled. "Yes,"
he murmured—" yes !"
The father put the pistol to his son's temple. There
came a flash, and with it a quick report, like the bark
of a dog, cleaving the deadly stillness.
The boy fell forward, with blood from his shattered
temple bathing his father's breast. Then, while he
lay there, in the embrace of one who had given him
both life and death, the father bowed his own head
against the muzzle of the pistol and drew its trigger. . . .
" O Sphinx of Ice," thought Guy, turning his look
still farther northward, " when shall your (Edipus
find you ? Thousands and thousands have perished
trying to guess your secret. Thousands and thou-
sands more, perchance, will perish before it is laid
bare !" . . .
Then he moved still farther northward, in his
magnificent aerial freedom, till he found the great-
starred night of the Pole itself. Auroral glories, in
stupendous fans of rosy or blood-red brilliance, were
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
159
brightening and flickering high above a bend of the
horizon. The glitters from titanic piles of ice were
at whiles lambent rainbows, at whiles like daggers of
white sheen. No mortal, Guy mused, had ever looked
till now upon the awe and mystery of this horribly
beauteous land. The famed North-West Passage ?
He could trace no sign of it. All was locked in lonely
slumber. No bird or beast could live in these im-
placable layers of endless frost. They stretched and
loomed, one glacial amplitude of death. If a god
reigned here, surely it could be no deity of mercy, but
some spirit of cruelty and scoff.
XXII.
IN a trice Guy had slanted his course southward.
This coast of snow-crowned mountains, with the
dash of the sea at their gigantic feet, was Alaska,
loveless and arctic, but in portions habitable at least.
Then he darted towards Asia, and realised what
enormity of realm is that which we call Russian. He
saw both the clemency and terror of Siberia, for parts
of it were fertile and flowery, parts of it boreal and
bleak. Here, too, the peasantry, in their dumb way,
were contented; there tyranny held hideous court.
He penetrated the gloom of prisons, and saw the
tender backs of women and the sinewy backs of men
bleed under the loathsome knout. " Is there a God
here?" he asked himself, "more than in those frozen
tracts I have lately left ?" He heard groans from
dungeons where captives lay swarming with vermin
and almost fed upon filth. He thought of liberty,
that holiest boon of liberty, which had been sung by
poets, applauded by philosophers, vaunted by states-
men, and in whose name rivers of blood and tears have
flowed.
160
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 161
Was it here ? Was it yonder, past the massive
barriers of the Ural chain ? And yet this mighty
empire covered nearly half the planet. From a
hundred millions of its mortals how many were not
steeped in bigotry to the lips ? How few believed
otherwise than after this fashion : We obey the will
of God, and the will of God is the will of our lord, the
Czar ?
He witnessed the lawless tyrannies everywhere, the
arrogance of the nobles, and their own smaller czar-
ships on their own domains. He remembered that
these, although their former serfs were now freed in
name, held myriads of paupers in the bondage of
poverty, and that many of them came from a race
of ruthless despots—monsters who had not hesitated,
when ill or dying, to have the entrails of their under-
lings ripped open and to plunge bare feet in the
sickening orifice thus made.
He passed, amid the gloomy stateliness of St. Peters-
burg, into the palace of the Emperor himself—this
terrible autocrat, whose own power might easily have
been for him a conception fit to drive him mad.
Soldiers at the gateways; soldiers pacing the court-
yards; soldiers in the long and lofty halls. At every
angle of the grand stairways, a soldier. Soldiers in
solemn sentinelship along the upper halls, long and
lofty as those below. Then an ante-room, with more
soldiers in it, armed to the teeth. Beyond, an arras,
and behind its heavy folds two priests of the Greek
Church, waiting audience in a second ante-room. Then
a huge bolted door, guarded on its farther side by four
11
162
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
or five more soldiers, in poses of leonine indolence.
And beyond, an emperor's home indeed !—a paradise
of perfume, and colour, and luxury.
In a small room, hung with purple velvets, the
Emperor was seated. Before him rose an immense
desk, shaped from costly woods and inlaid with mala-
chite. He lolled in his cushioned chair; a glance told
that his form was kingly, both in girth and height.
He had the face of the Slav and Teuton mixed—the
face given him by past unions of his progenitors with
princesses of German blood. The desk was loaded
with papers of many sorts; a few bore the imperial
seal. Off at his right was an alcove in which gleamed
a silver prie dieu, surmounted by a massive ivory crucifix,
and between the two gleamed a small oval ivory portrait
(priceless in value, framed with emeralds and pearls)
of his father, murdered by the Nihilists. Illumining
this picture were two antique agate lamps, which burned
perpetually, fed by oil the Church had blessed.
Standing near the Emperor, in attitudes of deep
obeisance, were two nobles of great rank. He had
noticed neither of them for a long time, or possibly had
not seemed to notice. His left hand slowly ploughed
the thick, dark masses of his beard. Suddenly he
leapt from his chair and stood frowning at them both.
" What was that ? " he cried, and his face paled as if
with terror—this strong, martial, half-savage face.
Neither of the courtiers answered. They simply
bowed their heads and fixed their eyes on the floor.
The Emperor, with a faint laugh, sank into another
chair, directly opposite his belittered desk. By a touch
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE. 163
on the electric bell at his side he could have plunged
either of these nobles into dungeons, or have had them
knouted to death. They knew this; they were his
ministers, and great nobles as well, but they knew it.
They kept their heads bowed and their eyes fixed on
the floor.
Alexander scanned some of the documents before
him. He gave another laugh, this time one with a
sickly ring.
"I—I was lost in thought," he muttered. "But it
seemed to me that I saw a strange gesture, a queer
sign, exchanged between you two."
Then he paused, peering at the papers and drooping
over them his full-necked, majestic head.
" Pardon me," came his murmur now, soft and even
courteous. " I—I am a trifle nervous to-day. Certain
reports, rumours, have unstrung me."
That word "pardon" acted like magic on both
courtiers. They approached him and breathed in his
ears the most profuse flatteries, the most ardent
condolences.
"And these sworn servitors," thought Guy, " aristo-
crats like himself, have passed the jealous ranks of his
death-dealing Cossacks and Moujiks, only to find them-
selves suspected as his assassins ! "
What a life it was! Overwhelmingly potent, yet so
miserable that the meanest clod in his realm might
have refused to share it with him !
He selected four documents and gave each of the
nobles two, after dashing at the bottom of all his name.
It was a name whose pen-stroke could have made
164 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
Europe tremble had he so willed. But he did not so
will—not, at least, to-day. Two of the signatures
meant death; two meant worse than death—Siberia
for life.
He touched the bell at his side. There sounded a
drawing of bolts, a grating of locks. The nobles, with
profound bows, disappeared. But as they did so a
dog's bark was heard in the outer chamber, and past
them rushed a magnificent hound, that sprang upon
the Emperor and licked his hands and face in a frenzy
of welcome.
He was alone with the dog now. He caught him by
his collar, engraved with the imperial arms, and pressed
a kiss upon the short, tawny fur of his splendid head.
"Ah," he sighed, "you've been with the Empress,
my good Igor. You smell of violets."
In another minute he perceived that a note was tied
by a slender white ribbon to the dog's collar. He
rent the note, and read in a cipher often used between
himself and the Empress :
" I am lunching with the Grand Duchess, as you
desired. But I have just heard the most horrible thing.
A friend of friends, one whom we almost trusted as we
trust one another (can you not guess whom I mean ?)
has been won from us by our fiercest foes, and the
police will soon bring you the most copious and
damning reports.
'' Yours,
" Dagmar."
The reader of these lines tore them slowly into bits.
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 165
His face had darkly flushed. With a strangled sigh
he clenched the fragments in one big hand—a hand
that might have felled a bull.
And then a strange thing occurred. His lips
trembled; his eyes filled with tears ; his almost gigantic
form shook and swayed with racking sobs.
This Emperor of all the Russias wept like a child.
This man of unexampled, preposterous power, shed
tears that all his might and splendour had not force to
restrain.
There were bleared eyes in glooms of prisons ;
haggard eyes in hovels of towns and villages ; fierce
eyes in foreign lands of exile;—that would have wept
with passionate gladness (however misery might have
dried and hardened them) to have looked upon one of
those royal tears, shed by a tyrant whom the hearts he
had wrung and stung and widowed and broken, now
loathed and scorned 1
XXIII.
UY passed into Austria. He entered the palace
of Francis Joseph. It was evening there. The
Austrian Emperor, a man of distinguished bearing yet
grief-ravaged face, stood in a rich and beautiful room,
dressed in deep mourning, and as a private gentleman
would dress—one who is about to dine, perhaps with
certain invited guests.
A servant of the imperial household stood near him.
Francis Joseph, with listless look, was glancing at a
letter. He tossed it aside, and said,—
" The Empress has returned from Ischl, Hans ? "
" Yes, your Majesty."
a She will not dine with us ? "
" I think not, your Majesty."
" Inquire. . . . No, stay, Hans. ... I will go to her
myself."
Francis Joseph passed through stately corridors to
the apartments of his wife. It was not like the home
of his Russian brother. Here were no soldiers at all,
but only a few footmen, bland and trained. When
alone with the black-robed Empress, he first kissed her
166
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE. 167
hand, then brushed her lips with his own, fringed white
as snow.
In answer to a certain soft question she shook her
head sadly.
" No, Franz, I shall dine alone. It would kill me to
meet so many."
" So many, Elizabeth ? " He named four of their
most intimate friends, all people of great rank, one the
reigning minister.
"No. At Ischl I have been like a nun. I would let
no one see me but my women. Franz, I believe that I
am going mad."
"Absurd!" he faltered. And he only faltered it
because the sweetness of her starry eyes had become
blent with wildness. Her beauty still was dazzling.
Delicate yet regal, clad in equal degree with dignity
and suavity, it might be said of her that any throne
was fortunate which had secured so enchanting a
presence.
But grief and shock had told upon her. She was
like some great garden lily after a fierce storm which it
has defied. She had come forth victorious, but she
would never again be just the same lovely lily as of old.
"You will visit me here after they are gone, will you
not, Franz ? "
" Yes," he said. His gaze betrayed a boundless
pity. He took her hands and held them. " We are
both suffering now, Elizabeth, and we are both doomed
henceforth to suffer. But remember, there is God.
You believed in Him when I married you. Have you
lost faith in Him now ? "
168
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
Her magnificent eyes flashed mutinously for a
minute. Then her underlip trembled, and he felt the
clasp of her hands grow into a tense clutch.
" We who reign must pretend that we believe.
Religion is policy with us." She laughed, here, faintly
and forlornly. "I think I'm at best a bad Catholic,
Franz, but I know the folly of affirming it."
" Elizabeth I "
" Ah, do not reproach me for my doubts of God's
mercy! You yourself have felt them—perhaps
more keenly than 11 And why should we' not
both be ready almost to curse Heaven ? . . . Our
sorrow "
"No, no!" he broke in. "Our sorrow should
chasten us, discipline us, bring us more closely together.
It should remind us that we are royal, and that hence
we should royally endure. Our people look to us for
example, aid, guidance, and we owe to them this
sacred duty of resignation and fortitude!"
" Our people ! " Elizabeth of Austria bitterly cried.
"What are they? A conglomerate of discontented
tribes !—an enormous, disloyal rabble of factious princi-
palities ! "
She had snatched her hands from those of the
Emperor, and had receded several steps. But in an
instant she re-advanced and threw both arms about his
neck. Her exquisite head drooped on his shoulder, and
rested there while she brokenly pursued,—
"Forgive me, my husband! You say rightly that
suffering is now our doom. We have lost our boy—our
darling! It is true that sorrow brings us more closely
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE. 169
together, but however closely we may cling, Franz, a
grave must always lie between us! Our son, our
delight, our idol, our imperial successor—our Rudolph !
He, the heir of an empire, to die like that! He, a
Hapsburg, with the blood of a hundred kings in his
veins, to die like some vulgar gommeux from the
Parisian boulevards! . . . Pah ! I would rather have
killed him with my own hand !—and so, I am certain,
would you! "
Francis Joseph bowed his face over the heavy hair
of that drooped and anguish-stricken head. For an
interval of acute emotion his tears and hers flowed
together. . . .
" This," thought Guy, " is one of the prices paid for
greatness. Infinite prestige, enviable pre-eminence on
one side ; on the other, harrowing bereavement, and
the sham of a sovereignty whereover civic disruption
hangs in ceaseless threat! " . . .
Guy passed into Germany. Here he beheld a new
Emperor, passionately patriotic, boyishly egotistic,
teeming with a taste for the spectacular. His realm
was divided, as it seemed, into three elemental parts.
First, those who revered him for the traditions which
had surrounded his cradle; second, those who toler-
ated him through terror of change; third, those who
detested him merely because he was a monarch, and
would equally have detested him whether he had
been a Commodus or a Titus, a Caligula or an
Antoninus. He saw this youth, absurdly powerful,
now thirsting for the military glories of his ancestor,
Frederick, and now trembling for the safety of a realm
17o THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
piteously vulnerable, a realm whose frontiers were one
constant lure to invasion.
"At least," Guy told himself, however, "this man
should be happy. His place on his throne is reason-
ably firm. He is not yet forty. His wife worships
him. He has a family of loving and lovable children.
He is a star of celebrity and importance. Birth has
made him one man among many millions."
And yet the chance soon befell Guy of hearing
certain words from William's own lips, and they were
words that he would probably have spoken to only one
living creature apart from his own wife.
This exceptional being was Prince Bismarck. The
loud-renowned reconciliation had occurred. The
deposed dignitary had been received at Berlin with
hysteric popular plaudits. Just before the grand
banquet of welcome took place, Bismarck and the
young Emperor met alone. William, his breast
blazing with orders, and attired in a uniform that
became his graceful and rather raw-boned type better
than any civilian's garb which he could don, addressed
in these terms the man whom his grandfather had adored,
his father had mistrusted, and his mother had hated,—
" Prince, this moment of our renewed friendship is
the happiest I have ever known."
Bismarck bowed, yet with awkward restraint. That
grim face, which so lately had been the fear, the
abhorrence and the admiration of Europe, found it
hard to summon even the semblance of a smile.
" I saw your Majesty in his cradle, and through after
years I watched in you the growing intellect and self-
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
171
reliance which have now rendered you so firm and
fearless a ruler."
William's lips tightened, and then relaxed into a
bitter smile. u Ah, Prince," he replied, " these, I fear,
are but dubious compliments. You call me fearless.
I am, after all, only of the sort—that end-of-the-
century sort—which a man of your traditions and
creeds would be sorely tempted to despise."
" Despise ? " came the gruff mutter. " I should hate
even to dream of such an emotion towards the grandson
of united Germany's first emperor."
William made a gesture passionate though repressed.
"But at least give me permission to despise myself!
This at times I undoubtedly do. Believed by the
world a military fanatic hungering after fame on the
field, I am ceaselessly tortured by a sense of the horror
and infamy of war. They call me the ' war lord.' I
loathe from the inmost depths of my soul that burden
of barbarism which still rests on our beloved Fatherland.
If I had my natural will as a man, and could cease to
serve the abominations of an enforced rulership, I
would to-morrow show Europe, by a complete national
disarmament, the hatred in which I hold its hordes of
mercenaries, glaring defiance at one another across
the barriers of kingdoms. But what, positioned as I
am, can I honestly patriotically do ? Russia gives me
her doubtful clemency, Austria her non-committal
politeness, Italy her velvet deceit, and France her
historic odium."
For an instant the deep-lined visage of Bismarck
became convulsed. " What can you do ?" he ex-
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
claimed, clenching both hands where they hung at his
sides. " You can remain a Hohenzollern, and get a
new Von Moltke to keep thousands of soldiers in
perfect readiness for instant action."
Just then a personage of high rank parted the
draperies of a certain door, announcing that the guests
for the banquet were all assembled and that the
presence of the Emperor and his renowned ex-
Chancellor was now due in another apartment of
the palace.
William dismissed this emissary almost curtly. He
then turned to Bismarck.
"A new Von Moltke," he answered, with a sudden
sad yet sunny smile sweeping across his face, "is as
difficult to get, I imagine, as a new Bismarck."
He then offered his arm, but Bismarck, either with a
rudeness born of disgust, or from an obscurity of sight
caused by his illness and old age, failed to accept the
honour thus conferred.
Gnawing his beard, William stood for a moment
irresolute and haughty. But soon, in controlled
undertone, he said,—
" Let us enter the banquet-room merely side by
side, then, since you prefer it. In ideas, Prince, we
are surely not allied. The symbol of our being so is
perhaps best for us to avoid."
Whether or no Bismarck's lapse was intentional, he
now spoke with clouded brows.
" Our ideas, your Majesty, are antipodal. I was
always a bad courtier; hence I cannot help reminding
you that while you deign to address my Emperor's
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
173
most devoted of adherents you still address the man
who made united Germany what she now has become."
"The reminder is unnecessary," William coldly
retorted. "Less so, by far, I should suppose, than
for me to ask that you will heed a certain other fact,
quite as noteworthy. If you are the man who made
Germany I am the Sovereign whom God has appointed
to rule her."
" I don't know anything about God," muttered Bis-
marck, with surly audacity. " But I know something
about the force of cannon well directed and of muskets
well aimed."
" I wish that I knew less about either of the latter,"
replied William—" or had reason both to know and
care far less."
The great Bismarck held up a gaunt forefinger, and
for an instant his sluggish eyes were spangled by dots
of rebellious fire.
" Hug to yourself those mad fancies," he almost
growled, " and the dies irae will not be distant."
" Bah ! " shrugged the young Emperor, off his guard.
" It's surely time that you understood I prefer to do
my own thinking."
" Say, rather, that your Majesty prefers to select for
his ministers those who will think as he dictates."
" Prince, you are insolent."
" I am candid; there's a difference."
"Oh, you have always been candid, as far as that
goes. You were candid, just now, when you hinted
that my imperial grandfather was a puppet in your
hands."
174
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
"Your Majesty is well aware," the old man here
literally snarled, "that I hinted no such thing. And
as for my being insolent, as for my talking of puppets,
I might, if I had chosen, have referred to your present
relations with that fellow, Von Caprivi—an upstart
because of whom you thrust me, the devoted servant
of your family, contemptuously out at gates !"
" Ah," cried William, " you are incorrigible ! "
" I am sincere ; I say what I mean ; I say what is
the truth."
William veered away, and stood for a moment with
back turned to his famous guest, and with cheeks pale
from wrath. Suddenly he wheeled round again.
" You speak of sincerity ! " he scoffed—"you ! A
man whose reputation is that of the wiliest, craftiest
and cruellest of all European statesmen 1 "
Bismarck's eyes closed, and he drew in two or three
stertorous breaths.
" This, indeed, your Majesty, is a superb example of
the ingratitude of kings."
William folded his arms, and spoke gruffly, in his
throat. " What I said you dragged from me. I have
always felt it, but you forced me to put it in words. The
overtures I made you have meant a desire for recon-
ciliation. Spurn them now and here, if you please.
The people of Berlin have magnificently received you
to-day. But if you think yourself, on this account or
on any account, privileged to fling slurs upon me and
to insult the minister whom I trust, you have grievously
erred. If you prefer not to appear at the banquet
prepared for you, have the goodness instantly thus to
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
175
decide. In that case I shall not hesitate to appear
there alone, and openly to declare that your disloyal
conduct and language have prevented me from sharing
the honour of your companionship."
" You—you will do this ?" gasped Bismarck, in
amazement.
"1 will do it unhesitatingly. . . . Come, Prince, decide.
I am hungry, and at the same time I respect my cooks.
They at least are good subjects; they do not complain
of my ingratitude."
- Bismarck's hueless and furrowed cheeks took a new
shade of pallor. He staggered backwards a few steps,
and his answer came choked and husky,—
" I—I will go with your Majesty, if it pleases you to
lead the way."
" Not at all."
Here William again extended his arm; and with
such saliency that its pointed elbow was not for an
instant to be undiscerned.
" I will enter the banquet-hall," he continued, " but
in one way. You refused, a minute ago, to take my
arm "
"No, your Majesty, I could not have refused ! "
" You pretended not to see. It is the same. We
will not argue, Prince; we will either go and eat our
dinner side by side, or dine in separate apartments.
It shall be precisely as your mood may direct."
Bismarck slipped his hand inside the royal arm.
" Your grandfather," he said, in tones like muffled
thunder, " would not have treated me like this."
" My grandfather was himself. I am I."
176 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE
" Beware of overweening egotism. It wrecked even
the first Napoleon."
"The first Napoleon was a far worse upstart than
you have presumed to call my good and faithful Von
Capri vi."
" He had genius, however, your Majesty "
" So had you."
" Ah, then, you grant it ? "
" I have never denied it. But mankind is very
weary of that sort of genius—the military sort. It
craves humanitarianism, for a change."
"Yesl And, on getting it, will treat it as France
treated her sixteenth Louis ! "
" All the same, men will get it sooner or later."
" And cut their own throats with it."
William of Germany laughed, with fleeting loudness
and strange melancholy as well.
"No, Prince, I am afraid they will first cut ours. . . ."
Guy saw the two eminent figures lose themselves
behind folds of tapestry. Their voices came to him,
at first clearly audible, then dying away into silence.
" Here," he thought, " is indeed a glimpse behind
history! . . . Will the world ever know this young
Emperor's real soul, as he has just bared it to the
bloodless autocrat whom he had both the courage and
the self-belief to depose ? "
XXIV.
GUY visited many another land. But in Russia,
Germany, and Austria, besides Italy and France,
he looked face to face upon the growing savagery and
desperation of anarchy. He haunted meetings of
miserable and bloodthirsty men, which the police would
have entered and dispersed at their peril, but whose
secrecy defined their best vigilance. The loathing
which he had before felt for this ghastly human
development melted into pity. He saw depths of hate
which he had not believed could possibly exist in the
souls of his own species. And yet these, he found,
were tragically measurable by the criminal indifference
of society to its paupers, its desperadoes, and its
profligates. His finer perceptions could supply him
with no solution of the whole hateful problem, except
one: ampler individual charities, given with a spirit
of personal tenderness, fellowship, and love. But to
expect love, in thousands of cases, seemed practically
absurd. For example, a certain village, not far from
the Tyrol, where nearly every inhabitant was equally
filthy and ignorant, had been afflicted by a throat
i77 12
178 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
disease resembling diphtheria, but even more rapid
and fatal in its results. He entered a certain hovel
where a wild-eyed woman stood beside the three
corpses of her children. The woman was half delirious
from grief. Her nature, her surroundings, possibly
her laziness, and no doubt the counsels of a scampish
husband, had long ago turned her into the stuff of
which anarchy is made. She stood in the centre of
her foul den, and evoked curses upon the rich ; she
seemed only to know them by.that name—" the rich."
Presently a Sister of Mercy crossed her threshold
and brought her both food and wine, with a donation
in money from a titled lady whose castle-turrets were
visible against the horizon.
"Ah," cried the woman fiercely, snatching the gifts
with an animal frenzy from their bearer, " but where
is the countess herself at a time like this ? "
The nun meekly murmured a few words.
"Fled to Vienna! I thought as much! That is
how they behave, these haughty devils ! What she
has sent me would but half pay for one of her cheapest
Paris gowns. She has gone to town, forsooth—to her
lovers and the mistresses of her lovers "
The nun, with beseeching look, raised a monitory
finger. But she could not by gentle rebuke stay the
torrent of this bereaved creature's invective. Impreca-
tion and insult poured from her lips. Then, suddenly,
she curled those lips in scorn, fixing her bloodshot eyes
upon the pale, grieved face before her.
" And why do you come ? Ah, I know, I know!
It's because you think that by good deeds like this you
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE. 179
can buy just so much heaven hereafter. But your
priests have fooled you! There's no God and there's
no heaven. You are good only because you're afraid
to be bad. Pah ! I despise such cowardice ! "
The nun shivered, raising her eyes to the cobwebbed
roof of the wretched cabin. " I am good (if I deserve
to be called so in any real sense) ' because of the
infinite mercy and love of Christ."
The woman gave a scoffing cry, and put one hand
to her throat. . . . A-few hours later she lay dead
beside her children, killed by the same pest that had
slain them. . . .
Before this, however, Guy had roamed a settlement
in the northern part of Russia. Cholera had broken
out there with frightful violence. People lay writhing
and shrieking along the main thoroughfare, and now
and then a passing priest was seen kneeling beside
them, and begging them to kiss his outstretched
crucifix.
Guy crossed the threshold of a certain hut. An old
couple lay there, each on a bed of rags, each smitten
by the dire scourge. They had both secretly been
Nihilists for years, and the scornful hatred that they
now poured forth upon the Czar, the aristocracy, the
corruption of their country's government, formed a
tete-a-tete pregnant with unrelieved horror, blasphemy,
and despair.
In another hut he saw a woman kneel beside her
dead son—a young man of noble frame and comely
features.
" Oh, God," she moaned, " take me I My Vladimir
180 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
was my all! I will not live without him! I will
not! " And she reached towards a near table, caught
from it a knife, made an incision in the breast of the
corpse, just above the region of the heart, and then
sucked the wound. " It tastes good 1" she cried ; " it
tastes of death !" . . . Before long she was writhing
in the mortal agonies of cholera beside her dead
son.
Again and again Guy said to himself, " In this
squalor, breeding pestilence as it does, I behold the
soil from which that baleful flower of Anarchy has
bloomed. Every red petal of it means the blood of
countless accursed lives. Cholera itself, and all scourges
like it, are indeed a sort of anarchy. Surely there
must be some answer to this awful inequality between
the rich and poor. Massacre and rapine are but a
ridiculous answer. The men who dream they can
better the world by killing kings forget that they
merely fortify with martyrs the cause they would
crush. • The men who dream of great co-operative
commonwealths forget that in thousands of their own
race lie greeds, egotisms, and evil passions, which would
soon make life for the masses more burdensome still.
It is safe to say that no living or dead thinker has yet
solved this baffling problem of social reform. The
only hope, through millions of coming years, is in
science. Some mighty force may be discovered amid
the unexplored mysteries of Nature that will enable
mankind to live without labour—as, for example, the
wondrous turning of the common, inexhaustible air
into food and raiment. If there be another hope, its
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE. 181
name is fraternity, human love. Not merely the love
that gives, but the love that abdicates and renounces.
Not merely the love that pities and helps, but the love
that sacrifices and self-effaces. Not merely the love
which says, ' I will take off my coat that another fellow-
being shall not shiver with cold,' but the love which
says, ' I will go naked that another fellow-being shall
not feel a breath of the biting blast.' Absolute self-
surrender—that is the millennial requirement. Till
that is met and answered the entire structure of society
must remain as it now is—an enormous combination of
miseries and a minor annex of contentment, shot
through with luxury. Socialism has not to-day a
principle that is not founded on the ideal; and the
ideal, applied to practical life, becomes practical failure.
As for this divine condition of universal philanthropy,
many at the present hour advocate it with their tongues
and their pens—who advocates it with his living and
illumining deeds ? Human nature is capable of great
sacrifices. Motherhood, and the love of man for
woman, teem with its holiest sanctities. But these,
after all, are selfish. How far away, how infinitely
remote, is that sort of altruism which would make one
individual, clean of habit and pure of thought, minister
with unreligious, undutiful, but simply affectionate and
spontaneous fervour, to some sin-soiled creature,
degraded equally both in soul and body? Philan-
thropy, before it succeeds and obtains as a social
motor, must become a passion. All duties are per-
formed with perfunctory zeal; they are merely duties,
and hence they cannot, in their fulfilment, reach
182
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
heights higher than those of calculating intellectualism.
A mother does not think when she gives the milk in
her breast to her hungry child. But if, by the wayside,
for example, she saw some wretched starveling whom
she knew that no help could reach, no salvation from
death by hunger, except through this same self-
abandoning act of nutriment, would she not feel, even
though she bared her breast and knelt down beside
the sufferer and bade him or her drink, shivers of
repulsion, not thrills of gladness and love ? If glad-
ness and love came to her because of this act, and
because she was succouring one of her own race
and not one of her own family—father, mother,
brother, sister, or even cousin, let us say—then this
woman would have been the actual and real philan-
thropist, not the philanthropist written of and dreamed
of. She would have gained the threshold of a heavenly
temple-gate; and if the stricken wretch whom she had
aided covered her even by transient physical contact
with filth, with vermin, and if yet she still did not
shrink, and still not only helped humanely but loved
humanly, then she would have been the first to take
life's richest spiritual happiness. . . . But will such a
mortal ever tread the soil of this planet? And even
though time should evolve a few such mortals, how
slight will be their influence of regeneration for the
myriad others of their kind !" . . .
An episode somewhat resembling his own imagined
one, occurred, not long afterwards, within Guy's new
and unmatched experience. This time the scene was in
a cholera-cursed portion of Asiatic Turkey.
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 183
The pest, during five hours, had killed a father and
four children. Two corpses lay twisted by their last
agonies on the floor beside a woman who could not
rise, having lately given birth to an infant. She was
very weak, and beset by a growing delirium, which
made her constantly call upon the name of a beloved
sister, married far more prosperously than herself, and
living in Angora, miles distant. " Esmeh 1 Esmeh 1 "
she kept calling. Then, blindly, instinctively, she
would strive to give her babe suck. But this was
futile; her breast had become dry.
" Esmeh! Esmeh!" she kept calling. And the
famished babe seemed to repeat her cry.
Outside, the very air of the little town had become
death. The authorities, who should have buried the
dead, had hurried away in fear. From doorways and
windows of houses floated the effluvia of corruption.
Now and then a shriek broke the hot noonday air.
In a garden an old man was frantically trying to dig
a grave. The death-sweat was on his face while he
thus tried, and before he had finished the grave, by a
horrible coincidence, he fell headlong over his spade
into the half-dug pit and lay there dead.
" Esmeh! Esmeh!" the prostrate woman kept
wailing.
Suddenly a step sounded at the threshold of the
little house, and Esmeh dashed into the room. She
was a strong, handsome woman, with great black eyes
and black hair worn in heavy ropes. Her attire
bespoke thrift. She had travelled as far as the
terrified railway folk had dared to take her, and she had
184 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
walked the remaining distance—seven miles, at the
least.
She shuddered at the corpses on the floor, and stood
for a moment as if about to fly. Then her sister's
voice rang from a dim corner of the room. Fear died
in an instant from her face. She did not merely go to
the bedside. She drooped her body upon its edge and
leaned down, gathering the sick woman to her bosom.
Then another cry sounded. She understood. A wild,
strange, tender, beautiful light softened the bold black-
ness of her eyes.
She knew that it was death to be where she was.
She had left by stealth her own home, where the
youngest child was scarcely two months old.
" Esmeh ! Esmeh ! You came to me ! You came
to me ! I was sure you would not stay away much
longer 1 I was sure they tried to keep you from
me. . . . I " And then the woman fainted in her
arms. Esmeh laid her head back on the pillow. As
she did so the wailing of the new-born child smote
her ears.
She rose and stood for a few seconds irresolute.
She thought of her own health and hardihood and
love of life. She thought of the husband whose com-
mand she had disobeyed; of the two sturdy little boys
whom she adored ; of the babe whom she had left in a
neighbour's care.
Then she looked at her sister's white, piteous face.
The wailing of the tiny infant in the bed plaintively
loudened. On a sudden she stooped down, caught
the breathing atom to her breast, and with her large,
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 185
sunburned, peasant's hands, began to unfasten the
front of her robe. . . .
" Deeds like these," mused Guy, as he watched her,
" are perhaps the beginning of humanity's golden age,
however centuries may still retard it. Men were apes,
once. Before the sun in heaven has begun to cool,
may they not have altered to angels ? "
XXV.
" T IFE is not all melancholy and anguish," he
J—* reflected. " Let me seek happiness, declared
so often by the optimistic philosphers as ubiquitous.
Let me seek it among the humble and poor, where
one would least expect it to flower and fructify."
He sought it, and found it in bright abundance.
There was plenty of happiness, even amid the worst
poverty. But he noted, among the poor, one inevit-
able fact : the denser the ignorance, the securer the
contentment. Happiness, with those wounded by want,
was an affair of education—or, rather, the lack of it.
Rarely were the unlettered ever rebels against their
toilful and needy dooms. Those who had learned to
think had learned to suffer. So long as degradation
consorted with unenlightenment, the result was apathy.
When it became the companion of cultivation the union
meant either misery, despair, or revolt.
Guy journeyed into Eastern lands. The marvellous
arousal of Japan stirred his actual reverence. The
sloth and torpidity of China pierced him with disgust.
Here he 'penetrated apartments in which, if he had
been visible and vulnerable, death must swiftly have
186
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 187
befallen him. In these he saw a sallow, feeble boy-
Emperor, clad with preposterous magnificence, wor-
shipped as the demigod he was idiotically believed
to be, and surfeited with luxuries and sensualisms.
Everywhere superstition and stagnation spread their
twin tyrannies over the realm. Caste was cringed
to, and the swarms of commoner mortals were held
scarcely higher than dogs. Here, for almost three
thousand years, progress had paused, and precedent,
which is the cherished child of bigotry, had shared
with its parent undisturbed sway. Horrible diseases
ravaged great tracts of country. The most cultured
mandarin of the empire would have told you that
these were visitations of Divine wrath. Throughout
the poorer quarters of Pekin and other large towns,
men and women wallowed swinishly in stenchful offal.
But always, however famine-plagued or vermin-pestered,
they clung to their hideous little grinning gods, and
knelt before them, and prayed to them, and held them
in veneration, which was another form of expressing
their abject fear of what new, unknown ills these
impish little divinities might have the spleen and
spite to inflict.
Many parts of Africa Guy traversed, but those which
chiefly enticed him were the immense lonely sweeps
where no man ever came,.
" Or had come, since the making of the world."
He explored the mighty mountain called Kenia,
towering thousands of feet from almost the very line
of the equator, its bases for ever swathed in mists of
188 THE GH0S7 OF GUY THYRLE.
sickening heat, its summit flashing with perpetual
snows. He witnessed the wonders of tropic vegeta-
tion, and the still more vivid wonders of tropic animal
life. He saw the lion, with its massive, ruminative
face and its velvet footsteps, prowl to the verges of
pools where the pale-spotted gazelles came to lap their
timid draughts. In deeps of dense forests, marked
here and there by enormous prone trees that the deadly
lightnings of this clime had levelled, he would see,
leaning and swaying from thick leafage, a flat, oval,
mottled head, its lidless eyes horribly vigilant. Under-
neath a panther would pass, or a dappled wild-cat, or
even a sturdy yet sinuous leopard. With instantaneous
dart and plunge the ambushed serpent would leap
downwards upon its prey, and crush it between
muscular and clammy coils. Everywhere, throughout
these appalling solitudes, Guy would note the presence
of a pitiless and self-destructive society. Man might
be absent, but the fiercest and savagest semblances
of man were multitudinous.
And every species preyed . upon some other—the
stronger upon the weaker. He thought of Tennyson's
lines, written in the youth of his fame, and so often
denounced as " morbid "—that convenient term of de-
nunciation when a writer fearlessly, and without paltry
euphemism, confronts the gloomy truths of life :
" For nature is one wfih rapine, a harm no preacher can heal;
The May-fly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow is speared by
the shrike,
And the whole little world where I sit is a world of plunder
and prey."
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE. 189
Guy's world, however, was far from little. Its
immensity had never before been conceived by him.
And to think that it was merely one planet of in-
numerable others, whirling about their central suns!
With what eternal solemnity and pathos the mon-
strous ocean broke upon its thousands of shores!
Ceaselessly, while he wandered, the roars and plashes
and sobs of the sea haunted his ears. He desired to
pierce, the depths of this voluminous liquid power,
encircling the hugest continent, the tiniest isle, with
an equal clasp of majesty and cadence.
First, however, he roamed Southern America, and
found there stretches of uninhabited country which he
felt but too sure that coming generations would inhabit,
would build splendid cities in, would love for their
glorious climate and their peerless fecundity of soil.
Fresh Londons, Parises, Viennas, New Yorks, would
surely spring up hereafter in these lands loved of
breeze and sun.
Northwards through Mexico he swept; but before
reaching the land made historic by Aztec reign and
ruin, he paused beside the banks of the Amazon, that
river which sometimes forgets to be a river, in its
sublime meanderings, and deports itself like a sea.
The Mediterranean of rivers, Guy called it, and
scarcely a region which he had gazed on in the mystic
heart of Africa rivalled the luxuriance of flowerage that
bordered its banks. He recalled plateaus of the Hima-
layas, where heavenly blooms abounded, and where
ferns throve in stately delicacy, under the shadow of
those stupendous peaks which have been named the
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
u wall of the world." Brazil, for pure beauty of
prodigal blossomings, transcended even the floral
splendours of that other clime. He came, in the
sorching sunlight of midday, upon a certain glade
whence the scintillant Amazon could be glimpsed
between bounteous tree-tops.
It was all one riot and blazonry of orchids. The
profusion of colour was almost painfully dazzling.
Every tree-trunk, near or far, was muffled by these
gorgeous parasites. Every tree-bough was garbed in
their glorious purples, emeralds, azures, golds, and
scarlets. Certain trees they had killed, and the
branches of these gleamed as if accusingly from their
overwhelming dependencies of brilliance and symmetry
and grace.
And yet possibly no human eye had ever looked
upon all this floral enchantment. . " What a contradic-
tion," thought Guy, u of the pious faith which has so
long declared Nature the creator of charms for the
pleasurement of man! Man came into the world
millions of years after it was born, and will no doubt
depart from it millions of years before it ceases to exist.
Nature, in haughty unconcern of him, will run her
course and be repellent or winsome, hideous or ador-
able, despite his joy or pain, his exultation or agony."
' " Why," he again mused, " do we believe that
animals are all under special Divine care ? Can the
naturalist conscientiously believe so, knowing what he
cannot fail to know ? Have not animals the same
struggle-to-live imposed upon them as that which
burdens the majority of men ? In seeking its daily
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 191
subsistence, even the meek dove is cruel; but con-
stantly the dove feels itself in danger of being devoured
by some stronger bird or beast. Is it true that there
is some mercy which 1 tempers the wind to the shorn
lamb' ? In the horrible tornado that lately swept over
Paraguay, did I not see hundreds of dumb creatures
dashed to death ? "
Even while he thus meditated (engirt by wide pampas
of long, drooping, glossy grass), Guy saw a herd
of wild cattle approach him, their shapes dark-limned
against the airy opal of the horizon. They drew
nearer, and passed him ; but as they galloped on he saw
they had left three trembling, reelings bulks in their
wake, and one after another these fell. The deep
grasses of the region were full of poisonous snakes
whose fangs had had the chance to wreak speedy death
in this dread and viewless way.
Soon afterwards he came to a breadth of country
parched by months of drouth. All sorts of animals
had come down from the encircling hills into a broad
plateau where once had lain a lake, now become one
yellow stretch of sun-baked clay. The thirst-maddened
creatures all had but a single aim—to drink one
another's blood. Even the fawns were fierce, and the
monkeys, usually so timid, shot angry chatters from
their limp-hanging jaws. The tigers, once lords of
these lands, were challenged and fought by jaguar or
hyaena, formerly their yielding victims. The whole arid
place, beamed upon by a scorching sun, had grown one
sanguinary and fantastic battle-field. A horde of the
enormous anacondas, native to this clime, incessantly
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
coiled and sprang, every trace of their wonted sluggish-
ness gone, and their beautiful mottled bodies full of
electric agility. Their hisses blent with the horrifying
volume of screeches, roars, moans, and snarls, that rose
through the torrid stagnance of the air.
Guy said to himself, " How often do we declare of
one another that our own base passions lead us into
the wickedness ot war, and that an offended Deity
regards with grief our human massacres and slaughters !
But here are hundreds of unreasoning beasts urged
into conflict, inflicting pain and death upon one another,
and with impulses for which they are surely not
responsible. If the theory of reward or punishment
after death be true for human beings, it can scarcely
hold good for these poor brutes, that here are called
upon to suffer acutely, and yet that will attain, accord-
ing to all the tenets of Christian faith, only extinction
when they perish." . . .
Guy now recalled his intended roamings through the
depths of ocean. But suddenly it occurred to him that
he might use his will-power, before making submarine
ventures, to search the roots of the great continents
whose surfaces he had wandered. Uncertain what
effects might follow this new exertion of the force he
had already so miraculously tested, he stood, just at
the beginning of twilight, on the western shore of
Lower California. Chili, with its heavenly balm of
atmosphere; with its delicious mists driving softly in
from the sea and replacing the rain that so seldom fell
upon its fertile meadows and woodlands; with majesties
of eastern mountains for ever bastioning its landward
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
193
frontier;—Chili the pearl of habitable countries, and one
whither future millions will doubtless congregate (to
make history, and perhaps to make it more peaceful,
philosophic, and worthy of perusal than now) had lately
seemed to him a terrestrial paradise. But here, while
haunting a coast rich in blossomy verdure, rimmed by
rocks at whose feet broke tenderly the grand yet mild
Pacific, watching beyond endless levels of empurpled
ocean the sun drown himself in a still remoter ocean of
amber and crimson cloud, Guy felt that this lonely yet
lovely peninsula of the Occident, this western Italy
which might perhaps enshrine future Venices, Florences,
and even Romes, was a corner of the world over which
unborn poets were destined to rave.
He now willed to pass downwards, believing that this
special tongue of land was opulent in undiscovered
gold.
For perhaps five seconds of time he found no
response to his desire. Hitherto will and action had
been simultaneous with him. Had he taxed his mystic
powers beyond their limit ? Had their splendid slayery
at last reached the bound of rebellion? Before the
lapse of another second these quick self-questionings
were answered.
*3
XXVI.
DOWNWARDS he felt himself sink, till at last
he willed to pause. The sensation was now
curiously novel. He had before passed through solidity,
but never, like this, through solidity continued and
unvaried. Every faculty was, however, still awake.
He almost tasted the mineral qualities of the rocks and
soil that pressed, though with facile pliancy, against his
lips. He was, of course, in pitchy darkness, yet to his
sight darkness did not really exist. He was like one
who glides through a passage just wide enough to
admit his form, and so lit from some unseen source
that either wall is clearly visible. And of keenest
interest proved this subterranean journey. Huge veins
of precious ore would sometimes meet him; then for
miles he would find no trace of them. 'Whithersoever
the whim suited, he shot. More than once, at the roots
of mountains, in hiding-places wholly inaccessible to
man, he came upon masses of gold that might have
purchased a continent. For ever, unless some terrific
earthquake flung this treasure to the surface of the
globe, would it bide thus, unmined, uncoined, and
194
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 195
undreamed of. His progress was high or low, as he
willed. Curious experiences befell him. Once, in
Montana, he was conscious that just above him a group
of workmen stood with solemn faces at the mouth of an
exhausted silver-mine. The owners of this mine,
assured that its resources were now null, were paying
off their men, in gloomy silence. Bitter disappointment
had beset them at the knowledge of their possession
having become worthless ; and as for the men discharged
from further employment, this catastrophe meant for
them the threat of future starvation. And yet, just
close enough to this abandoned cavity for a few
strenuous blows of the pick-axes to make it shine
through one of the rugged sides, reposed a vast fern-
like branch of silver.
Again, haunting Brazil and Africa, he saw diamonds
larger than the Koh-i-nor, which had lain for untold
centuries unexcavated. Now and then their layers were
so near the upper crust of earth that their non-discovery
seemed amazing. The deeper dig of a strong bird's
talons would almost have brought them to light.
In India, near the sacred city of Benares, he came
upon a well at which many of the indigent people of the
lowest caste constantly drank. Its bottom was paved
with emeralds of almost priceless worth.
So, too, in the Ural Mountains he moved beneath a
village where the dwellers lived on black bread and a
kind of succulent herb which grew in profusion there-
abouts. Their homes were on the spur of a great
mountain, gradual in its upward slope, and thousands
of years before they were all born to the lives of priva-
196 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
tion they now endured, bedded in the quartz which
abounded, hardly twenty feet below; dwarfish clusters of
fir-trees, rubies of perfect water and amazing size had
lain.
Yet (stranger than even this, for irony and pathos)
he chanced, in one of the most dreary and barren
districts of China, upon a village where at least five
thousand wretched rice-farmers barely held life and
soul together. The yellow and sluggish tides of the
Yang-tse-Kiang crawled between those sandy lowlands
whence hordes of half-famished beings drew their
sole nourishment. Some of them were almost living
skeletons; others were half paralysed from incessant
famine, or the close semblance of it. A certain number,
walled off from the rest, were lepers. Guy had already
seen the manifestations of want in many forms, but this
Chinese assemblage, with its populace of paupers, hollow
in cheek and frail in frame, surpassed for pure human
misery and forlornness all others he had yet lighted upon.
Throughout hundreds of surrounding miles no dream
of this particular tract of country being auriferous had
ever entered the mind of a single Mongolian. And yet
the very region over which so much destitution and
wretchedness were spread, teemed, hardly more than
fifty feet below those sickly rice-fields and woebegone
sandbanks, with gold as rich as any veins of Australia
or Southern Africa had ever yielded.
Guy, however, spiritualised by his draught of onar-
line, was still vividly conscious of future vantage to be
won from these subterranean flights. " When I return
to my body," he told himself, "what a millionaire I
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 197
shall find it in my power to become ! I can give Violet
gems that will make her the envy of princesses, and I
can house her far more palatially than if she were a
daughter of the Rothschilds."
He had seen many beautiful women, and not a few
brilliant ones. But Violet Fythian, meek, chaste, yet
wholly without a gleam of intellectuality, still held for
him an unlessening charm.
"I long," he told himself, "to look on her lovely
face again. . . . Still, before she and I meet, fresh
explorations await me."
He again thought of the sea. Already he had darted
through certain channels of it. But to plunge into the
centre of the earth, straight to its core, now affected
him both as an invitation and a command.
He willed, therefore, to take this new journey, and
with slow descent. His desire was instantly granted.
He found himself dropping gently downwards, and on
either side of him he had leisure to observe and to
marvel.
XXVII.
A DEEP stratum of water at first met him. Then
this environment changed to muddy ooze and
viscous slime. Still lower, wondrous geological mys-
teries were revealed to him. He not only saw the
enormous age of the planet through masses of car-
bonised forests, but still lower down he looked upon
embedded skeletons which were undoubtedly the " miss-
ing links " between man and ape. Knowing enough of
biological science to comprehend the monstrous mean-
ing of these fossils, he gazed upon them with awe.
What merciless refutation did they fling at zealots,
aflame with the Mosaic theory! How superbly they
confirmed the evolutional creeds of Darwinism!
Later, with fresh thrills of awe, he found himself in
the heart of an immense buried metropolis. Rust,
soilure, erosion, decay, petrifaction—every conceivable
agency that time in its destructive effort could possibly
employ—had here become operative. And yet signs
were manifest of a city as large as London, though
reared with a style of architecture to which those of
Memphis or Thebes would have seemed comparatively
108
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
199
familiar and recent. Thoroughfares, palaces, temples,
private and public buildings, the bones of strange
animals and the bones of strange men and women,
everywhere abounded.
" What a sepulchre," he thought, " is this planet we
call earth! The city 1 am beholding is perhaps a
million years older, at the least, than oldest Troy.
The human beings who lived here had bodies different
from our own. Though plainly men and women, they
were physically nearer to beasts than ourselves.
Evolution here reveals the great, loitering pauses in its
progressions. And we, who are of yesterday, can ill
conceive the fearful convulsions and cataclysms which
have rent and tortured this, our native star, ages before
our births."
Deeper down he met fire, and that riot of imprisoned
gases which would break its way to outer air at certain
periods of combustive violence, through the craters of
volcanoes, or the fissures wrought by earthquakes,
wherever thinness in the surface of the sphere allowed
them their perilous egress.
Here was proof incontestable that the earth, like her
larger luminiferous brother, had once been a sun, and
had cooled off through uncounted centuries till her
dissipated fervours were now moribund though still
fierce, miles below her meadows and valleys and hills.
" I will roam the underworld of sea," said Guy ; and
at once he moved among new testimonies, new revela-
tions, of the globe's enormous age. Sunk leagues
below the billows of the Atlantic, he lighted on ponder-
ous carven stones that may have served as buttresses
200
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
of imperial gateways; on golden images of long-for-
gotten gods; on curious implements of warfare; on
over-flung triumphal chariots; on bronze roofages and
pillars, friezed and sculptured with enigmatic beauty
and richness—all glimmering through the greenish
dusk of this weird marine haunt, amid great sea-plants
and masses of tangled grass, whence legions of fish,
monsters or pygmies, would-for ever float.
The opulence of treasure buried in earth had as-
tounded him. But here, though less bounteous, it
was often of more appealing kind; it concerned the
numberless wrecks of vessels, beslimed, weed-mantled,
yet still discernible as marks of man's unperishing
desire through centuries past—his inveterate impulse
to wage fight with the tyrannies and frustrations of
ocean. ^
How grand, in these latter years, had be^n his
success 1 Some wrecks were relatively so recent that
Guy could wander through their cabins and other
compartments, finding there skeletons which the action
of the sea had not yet annihilated. In a certain ca.bin
he found two skeletons intertwined oddly, the hand of
one clutching a bag from which a mass of gold coins had
dropped on the soaked and soggy floor. All through
the rest of the ship he could discover not a sign of any
human creature who might have gone down with it.
Did this mean that the ship had been mercifully met by
some other just before it sank, and that avarice had
made these two denizens die in their greedy contest,
rather than seek the rescue their fellow-sailors found ?
Once he came upon a big bark, half rotted away;
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 201
but in its hold he saw a cluster of perhaps two hundred
skeletons, all so packed and tangled together that <they
looked like the bleached roots of some gigantic up-
heaved tree.
" A slave-ship," thought Guy, " on its way from
Africa to the land which was even then vaunting itself
as the freest country on earth !"
Again he roamed the interior of what must once
have been a large and stalwart steamer. Her smoke-
stacks lay near by, rusted and overthrown. From
a great cavity in the long, dead-black, eroded deck,
floated a whale, whose white, sleek belly and vast,
flapping fins loomed eerie in the liquid emerald
vagueness. Below, Guy discerned skeletons, or the
remains of them, in horrid profusion. Seven hundred,
at least, he iudged, must be lodged there. Nearly all
the state-rooms were vacant, but most of the passage-
ways were choked with these ghastly emblems of
vanished lives.
"The horror of the iceberg at dead of night," he
mused. " They heard the vessel strike. The alarm
sounded. They rushed from their beds. There was
no time for a boat to be lowered. . . . Ah ! what
tragedies this ruffian and omnivorous ocean has wrought
in its time ! "
He emerged near a lovely tract of rock-bound beach
on the Mediterranean side of the Spanish coast. In
the cloudless heaven beamed a full moon. The oscillant
and rhythmic waves glittered lazily at his feet. Never
had he seen the moon so effulgent yet so crystalline.
" Is it a dead world ? " he asked himself. " Are the
202
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
astronomers right when they tell us that it revolves,
the huge cinder of its former vitality, round this other
larger world, in which evolution has not yet reaped
aeons enough for the full astral drama of birth, youth,
maturity, old age, and death ? "
Doubting if he had power to quit the planet where-
in such marvels of discovery had been permitted him,
he nevertheless willed to visit this other lunar orb,
glimmering towards him with an invitation at once so
radiant and so tender.
In an instant, however, he had ceased to doubt.
As often before, will and achievement were almost
simultaneous.
XXVIII.
HE stood, as it first seemed to him, in a world
of bright-lit ghastliness. Even the torpors of
the Pole had not struck him as more woefully dreary.
But soon this impression faded. He realised that he
was surrounded by the most majestic and magnificent
memories. The Appennines and Cordilleras were
indeed the mountain-chains that science had affirmed
them; the Mare Crisium was truly the dried-up sea
it had been called; Tycho, Plato, and Aristotle, were
the extinct volcanoes that telescopes had long ago
pronounced them. But human eye had never even
dimly approached a vision of the ended glory, the
accomplished evolution, which this dead world declared.
Atmosphere had wholly left it; sweeping round the
warm and fertile «arth, it was death in attendance upon
life.
But ah 1 what superabundance of departed life it
expressed! Everything was now silence, immobility,
lethargy; but how grandl}' did these engirt innumerable
mighty mementoes ! This sphere was dead, yet it
teemed with proof of having once lived sublimely.
203
204
THE GHOST OF GUY:i$IYRLE.
So dense must once have been rKS* population that some
of its cities were more than a thousand miles in
circuit.
And here, what architecture! ^'Crumbled and broken
and dismantled in many ways, its height, its sculp-
turings, its untraditional yet entrancing beauty of
contour, might not only have eclipsed, at their proudest
periods, Athens or Rome, but have made these
terrestrial cities appear, by contrast, like the meanest
hut beside the haughtiest castle.
This had been a volcanic world. The expansive
hollows of craters at many of the mountain summits
clearly showed it. But ages ago the inward fire of
the globe must have exhausted its rage ; for along
the verges of these craters noble structures yet
towered, and here, as almost everywhere, reigned the
melancholy and thrilling evidence that cities of superb
magnitude and splendour had been reared and had
thriven. Everywhere, too, was the evidence of
amazing mechanical skill. It flashed across Guy that
the inhabitants of this world had perhaps long ago
solved what we now call the " social question" by
making machinery their one universal labourer. Elec-
tricity had no doubt become a willing slave to them,
and electricity (as certain strange engines and apparati
suggested) in states of development which would to-
day address us as purely miraculous. Other forces,
too, they had seemingly conquered and utilised—
perhaps that mysterious vibratory one which our own
well-abused Keeley claims at least to have vaguely
descried, or perhaps that fearful energy which is the
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLB.
205
opposite of gravitation, and keeps the stais in their
courses instead of massing them all together, solidify-
ing them into a single orb beside which Canopus would
glisten like a grain of sand.
There was no trace of ice, as there was none of
moisture. The disappearance of the atmosphere had
left every fragment of soil desiccated into adamantine
hardness. All vegetation, arrested in its decay, was
rigid as iron. The meadows and valleys and slopes
would have wounded by their firm spikes of grass-
blades any human foot which ventured to tread them.
It was like a world on which some gorgon might have
gazed. If a bird had flown heedlessly into the
branches of its woodlands it would have dropped dead
from the wounds wrought by stem and leaf.
Guy penetrated the incredibly beautiful structures,
but for a long time found no semblance of any being
whose strength and intelligence might have helped to
rear them. At last ..he entered a building of special
lordliness, and there looked upon a sight which he
could never have forgotten, if recollection had been
spared him, for millions of future years.
In a great circular hall, furnished with couches and
chairs of exquisite design and richest vestiture, he
beheld a throng of seated or recumbent shapes—fifty,
it may have been, in all.
Intuitively the truth rushed upon him. These were
the last survivors upon this dying star, and they had
here assembled to await and to meet the extinction
which they knew was their inevitable doom.
On few faces had corruption left the faintest sign.
2o6
the ghost of guy thyrle.
And such faces 1 He seemed to have entered upon
an assemblage of dead gods and goddesses. The men
made him think of statues in the Vatican, only their
figures were lordlier. They all had soft-curling beards,
and their features, classically regular, were a wondrous
mixture of mildness and strength. The women, too,
were colossal, but marvels of feminine loveliness.
And in the visages of either sex a sweet tranquillity
held sway—an expression that seemed born of match-
less wisdom, of wisdom so perfected that it had become
a splendid sanctity and security melted in one. There
was no hint of the least death-struggle in the attitudes
of these awful yet winsome shapes, clad with pale,
loose-flowing robes. Some pungent opiate might have
passed into the air of the hall and stealthily invaded
their nostrils, for all token any of them showed that
death had come with a single pang of pain, or grief, or
fear.
Presently Guy perceived that the intensity of his
emotion had prevented him from observing a massive
pillar in the centre of the hall, wrought from some
ink-black metal which he had never before seen.
On one polished side of this pillar was an inscription
in small letters of inlaid gold. To Guy it was un-
intelligible; but he willed to comprehend it, and soon
its meaning dawned upon him thus:—
"We, the last human inhabitants of Alalia, knowing that
in a short time the atmosphere of this world will have
deserted it and that hence our death from suffocation will
become merely a question of days, and even hours, have
resolved to assemble here when extinction first 'warns us
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 207
of its irresistible blight, and to perish peacefully by means
of a painless volatile poison which we shall cause to be
diffused, at a certain moment, through this chamber wherein
with resignation and serenity we shall have met."
" 1 was right, then," Guy said to his own agitated
thoughts. " Here is a voluntary surrender of life by
beings who must have tasted and tested its divinest
possibilities."
He now read on :—
" Without plaint or reluctance we accept our certain end.
Each of us has lived more than a thousand years in a
planet where we have been taught by long lines of ancestors
that death was sure to befall us eventually, and that when
it came it would bring us that placid blank of eternal repose
which all our grandest and most recent thinkers and dis-
coverers have made unanswerable fact. We have had the
good fortune to survive every superstition which has cursed
Alalia; and these have been as numberless as they were
grim. We have achieved, as a race, glorious and golden
things. From wars, massacres, tyrannies, and every sort
of social vileness, we have risen to a state of holy and
altruistic calm. Our world has gradually matured and
ripened through centuries and centuries of change. We
began as animals; we have become the nearest conceivable
approach to angels. Long ago we replaced the god of
imagination by the god of knowledge. We believe that we
have reached through knowledge the ultimate and final
limit of mortal attainment. We do not deny that Some-
thing may lie beyond our search, but we have found it easy
to communicate with many of the stars that surround us,
and though we have lighted on many which were either
in conditions where no Alalian life existed, many in which
208 the ghost of guy thyrle.
Alalian life was yet brutally debased and degraded, many
in which either fiery or watery immaturity was alone mani-
fest, on other and innumerable bodies we have encountered
civilisations resembling our own, and in stages of progress,
development, emancipation, resembling that stage at which
we have arrived. But not from the most enlightened orb
that our voyagers, with their fine and far-venturing vehicles
of navigation, have visited, can we assert that credible
tidings have been borne to us of a general advancement,
social, physical, or of any sort whatever, superior to our
own. We believe ourselves to have scaled the summit of
all mental and moral excellence, to have put forth the
crowning and faultless flower of existence. Now that the
limit of our height and range and thrift has been reached,
we do not die unwillingly, but accept fate with that placidity
which our confidence in its just ordinance engenders. We
know that our beloved and beautiful Alalia is dying, as
many and many another world has died. It bows before
the same law that sooner or later must overtake all its
incalculable multitudes of kindred, and that already has
overtaken trillions and quadrillions of these. We know the
idleness of rebellion against law, and we know that there
is not a being in the universe that must not sooner or later
perish like ourselves. Even Osdupol, our mighty sun,
must in time lose his fires and whirl, rayless and livid,
round that other sun of which he and all his system of
satellites are each in turn a satellite. . . . But there is one
great regret which we here enduringly record. Night and
day for ever blazes in the heaven, beheld by one hemisphere
of Alalia, though by another hemisphere for ever unseen,
the globe Rastalia.* For centuries this parental world wa§.
the object of our devout veneration. The grandest and*
brightest denizen of our sky, we long adored it as our
* Earth must here undoubtedly be meant.—Editors.
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
209
special god. Then science told us what it really was, and
what was its relation to our own planet. This made us
revere it all the more, though in a different manner,, and
finally with our air-ships we were able to visit it. That was
long, long ago, and ever since then we have constantly
landed on it through regular annual journeys. At first we
were bitterly disappointed to find it barren of all life, full
of chasms from which liquid lava streamed, and whirling
winds that wrecked our stoutest craft and slew scores of
our brave explorers. But through many centuries we have
watched its many changes, so similar to those which our
own inferior world has undergone. We are certain that
hereafter a race resembling our own will begin and gradually
develop upon its surface. But hitherto we have found
in Rastalia no more important living creatures than those
which are important through bulk alone—mammoth, wallow-
ing, slow-moving invertebrates, coloured like the tracts of
slimy soil they inhabit, and overbrowed by enormous
aquatic growths. . . . Infinite is our regret that we, the
habitants of Alalia, a servant orb, should not exist long
enough to meet and greet on our master orb, Rastalia,
those populations which in the future are certain to inhabit
it, certain to pass, as we have passed, through terrible
evolutional vicissitudes, and certain to gain, as we have
gained, a priceless beatific calm. But no; the Inscrutable,
the Unknowable, has otherwise decreed. And now that
its atmosphere is slowly leaving our lovely Alalia; now that
its former pride and affluence and comeliness are all
threatened with such frigid and perpetuated blight as that
of an embalmed corpse;—we have chosen to erect this
sempiternal pillar and to engrave upon it this legend. For
we are now firmly convinced that Rastalia will in the future
find means to attain this petrified memento we shall have
become, reaching it by means and methods (notwithstanding
14
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
its vanished atmosphere) which we ourselves could now
disclose and demonstrate. But, alas ! our star shall have
perished too early for that! It is destined to beam upon
the sorrows, joys, triumphs, agonies, hopes, and struggles
of Rastalia's future races, for unimaginable years. It is
destined to move, a dead world, round one slowly
ripening and maturing into our own lost potency of
growth .... We, the dying Alalia, salute Rastalia, yet
unborn !"
Here ended the inscription. Below it was a date.
Guy gazed, and understood. The date meant ten
millions of years back in the past.
" And we on earth," he thought, " are yet only
groping our way, after so huge a stretch of time, towards
the realised ideal of this perished satellite ! "
When he emerged from the majestic structure con-
secrated by an interstellar message of such sublimity
and eloquence, he saw that the heavens had darkened,
if these regions of them could ever be said to darken at
all. For their dusk was continually lighted by the
earth, and that loomed an immense mild sun, a shield
of golden, rayless fire, dimming many a constellation
visible from its own soil.
Guy quitted the borders of this wonderful city and
soon paused at the approaches of another.
Here he came upon a statue of great size, towering
dark against the dreamy twilight gold of the sky. It
was the shape of a man, a giant, with the brows of a
poet, and the lips and jaws of an intrepid sailor or
soldier. On its pedestal certain words were carven.
Guy willed to read them. . . .
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
211
" THIS IS THE STATUE OF
TALKA DONIA,
an Alalian who immortalised himself by being the first to
have voyaged through infinite space, and who reached, at
last, after ten perilous and dreadful efforts, the surface of
our neighbour world, Rastalia."
"In a sense, their Columbus," Guy mused.. "How
he dwarfs ours ! ... If I have landed on this lunar
sphere," his reverie proceeded, " why should I not as
easily gain that prouder one, the luminary that is lord
both of moon and earth ? What mountainous seas of
fire would I behold there, what possible showers of
blazing asteroids, what elemental travail and tumult,
what maelstroms of liquid flame, what yellow Chim-
borazos and Conchinjungas of molten stone flung up
this moment, to break, like prodigious bubbles, the
next! . . . And then the fathomless world-strewn
spaces below, above, to right and left! • These, in their
dizzying wealth of disclosure, would still await me.
Why should I not ? "
Here something, a vague yet perceptible current of
influence, arrested the daring desire of his thought.
He glanced downwards at the dim sweep of ruin
beneath him. Then he looked at the earth, blotting
with its enormous disc of gold the grey crystal of the
sky, and revealing, in ghostly outline, the continents
which he had roamed and could now faintly recognise.
It seemed to him that in this planet whence all
atmosphere had long ago fled, he could suddenly feel
212 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
the coolness and flutter of a delicate, keen, unaccount-
able breeze.
Then strange and wild yearning possessed him,
blended with throbs of exquisite pain.
It flashed through his mind : " There on earth some
calamitous thing is happening to the body I deserted
He sought to will that he might instantly rush earth-
wards. But the violence of his agitation forbade. He
remained motionless, the prey of torturing fear.
XXIX.
RDILANGE, before dawn, had grown far less
timid. After all, he had argued with Ijjs own
selfish terrors, suppose Guy should come back in a few
hours to re-inhabit his body, absurd as the idea seemed?
He need then only throw himself at the feet of his
friend and implore forgiveness, urging as excuse his
own irresistible conviction that death had really oo-
curred. But if Guy's astonishing story were indeed
true and he should still stay absent from his body until
it had been reduced to ashes, how rich a result for
the man who would inherit by will his entire fortune
and marry, in all probability, Violet Fythian as well!
With the brightness of a sunny London day Ardilange
felt his fluttered nerves turn steadier, and his resolve
hardily strengthen. He gave the alarm to the servants
at about ten o'clock that morning, saying that he had
just knocked at the door of Mr. Thyrle's room and
had so made his dreadful discovery. A physician was
promptly summoned, and while he examined the sup-
posed corpse of Guy, Ardilange underwent certain new
thrills of affright. What if he should be suspected of
214 the ghost of guy thyrle.
having assassinated his friend ? What if an autopsy
revealed the presence of poison, and the eye of
suspicion should suddenly fix itself, with damning
interrogation, upon him ?
But no. The physician soon pronounced Guy's
death to have been caused by paralysis of the heart,
though he insisted on calling in a brother practitioner
to support him or disprove him in this assertion.
Such course of action dealt Ardilange new throes of
fear. But he soon drew easier breath again. The
second physician's verdict fully endorsed that of the
first.
Now he felt quite safe. Quietly but capably he
spread the news abroad. Friends and acquaintances
flocked, before evening, to the house in Regent's Park.
And when evening came, with it arrived Violet and
her father, obedient to a telegram sent them at
Gowerleigh.
Violet was sad, but perfectly calm. She went into
the chamber where her lover lay, and stood beside
him. Her father accompanied her, and they both
gazed in silence at the man whom they believed to
be dead. It struck Ardilange that Lord Henry's face
hinted of a triumph and satisfaction which he strove
decorously to control. Violet's blue eyes melted slowly
into tears, and her lovely head drooped. On a sudden
she bent forward and touched Guy's brow with her
lips.
The next moment she started back, and her look
met that of Ardilange.
" He—he does not seem to be dead 1 " she faltered.
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 215
"True," Ardilange replied; "he appears wonder-
fully natural."
"No, no," said Violet; "I did not mean that. His
flesh has not the coldness of death. It seems to me
more like the flesh of one in a trance."
She turned her swimming eyes upon her father, now.
Lord Henry responded with a slight frown.
" My dear daughter!" he reproved, in a gently
shocked way, and with the edges of his lips.
Violet clasped his arm with one timid hand. " Papa,
I may be wrong," she quavered—" oh, yes, I—I mean
that of course I am wrong! But I had the idea—the
fancy, if you will—that perhaps his heart is still
beating, that the blood still is flowing in his veins, only
so sluggishly, so sleepily, so "
Here she gave a bleak little laugh, and fainted
completely away just in time for Lord Henry's arms to
keep her from falling. . . .
Ardilange tingled with fresh alarm at this strange
conduct of Violet. His conscience, in the matter of
becoming anybody's murderer, might not lastingly have
suffered; but his nerves were sadly unequal to so grim
a responsibility as that which the assassin's role would
entail.
Nevertheless, on this same evening he took a late
train down to the residence of his family, secured Guy's
agreement with a certain cremation society located at
Bristol, and returned to town before eleven o'clock the
next day. He awakened the household, on his un-
timely arrival, but received only the gladdest welcomes.
His relatives mingled their tears with his own. Poor,
216 the ghost of guy thyrle.
dear Vincent! What a terrible bereavement was this
sudden death of his beloved friend, Mr. Thyrle! Two
brothers and two sisters went with him to the station,
next morning, and bade him the most loving of farewells.
It bored him to death that they should rise so early
and not let him slip back to town in the quiet way
he preferred. But he found it thoroughly easy to
convince them that he was honoured and delighted by
their little act of affection, and pressed their hands
and kissed their cheeks, and made it seem that in his
intense sorrow he had quite forgotten to drop as much
as a single sovereign into the poor, depleted family
purse. And they, who had spread for him a nice little
supper out of their slender larder, and had improvised
for him an excellent if simple breakfast, never thought
of reproaching him for penuriousness, but waved their
adieux to him as the train started, and said to one
another afterwards, " Dear Vincent! how dreadfully
cut up he is by Mr. Thyrle's death, yet what self-
command he shows in hurrying down here to Warwick-
shire and getting those important papers which he tells
us will be needed by the solicitor immediately after the
funeral!"
Armed with these same " important papers," Ardi-
lange sped back to town. On reaching Regent's Park
he found the body guarded by the undertaker and
servants with whom he had left it in charge.
Not a word reached him that hinted of Guy's having
shown the vaguest sign of resuscitation. Somehow
he was keenly relieved at this. For hours past he
had been repeating to his thoughts, " The man was
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 217
mad, the man was mad. He killed himself because
of a mad idea—a ridiculous monomania. Those two
other miraculous capers of which he told me existed
in his fancy alone. Two physicians have pronounced
him dead. I should be a fool to tell others what he
told me. People would merely laugh if I should tell
them."
But he told people, nevertheless, that Guy had be-
longed for several years past to a cremation society
in Bristol, and showed them the signed agreement of
his membership, and telegraphed to the society for
instructions with regard to the corpse of his friend.
They sent, at his request, an envoy, and soon it
became known that immediately after the funeral Guy
Thyrle's body would be taken to Bristol, and would
there be burned, and that his ashes would subsequently
be enclosed in an urn, and that this urn would then be
coffined and placed in the vault of his ancestors .at
Thyrle Grange.
All this time it was clear to Ardilange that in one
way at least he played a liar's and traitor's part, since
he knew perfectly well that Guy had no longer wished
to keep his name on the list of the society's members,
and that sheer forgetfulness had prevented him from
having it erased.
The funeral was somewhat large, considering how
rainy and gusty was the day on which it occurred.
It was held at a church several streets away from
Guy's former abode, a church whose doors he had
never entered. Apart from Violet and her father,
Ardilange was the only real " mourner." A few
218 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
distant relatives appeared, in raiment rather pre-
tentiously black, but nearly all who had the slightest
knowledge concerning the lineage and kindred of the
deceased openly expressed their belief that these persons
had been summoned by none save the worldliest motives.
With Ardilange there was almost universal sympathy.
His popularity insured this, and his boyish face, when
any one caught a glimpse of its drooped profile, evinced
a forlorn sorrow which only the coldest scoffer could
have doubted.
Violet Fythian roused no sympathy whatever. She
looked like a beautiful statue, and her pale, emotionless
face corroborated the wide belief that she had con-
sented to marry Guy without having a spark of love
for him.
Neither she nor her father accompanied Ardilange
to the crematory. In fact, he went to Bristol quite
alone, after confiding Guy's remains to the representa-
tives of the society.
His heart was full of triumph. He meant to marry
Violet now, and did not doubt that he could do so.
Why should he doubt? Was not his birth of the
best ? Had he not good looks, an air, the power of
pleasing women who were most fastidious ? And say
that Violet had no grand passion for him. She would
not feel it for any living man ; she could only re-
ciprocate mildly while some man felt it and avowed
it for her.
And in a little while Violet would have ceased even
to remember the sudden taking off of Guy ; and in the
old family vault near Thyrle Grange there would rest
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE. 219
an urn of white ashes, and those ashes would mean
that he, Vincent Ardilange, was heir to three thousand
pounds a year.
Of course, Lord Henry would object, at first. He
would toy with the thin gold cord of his eye-glass, and
would mutter things, 'and drawl things, and procras-
tinate, and demur. But in the end the violet eyes of
his Violet would be sure to say, u Do, papa ;" and since
there would most probably be no other suitor in the
field with a better claim, pecuniary and aristocratic
combined, papa would at last say, " Well, my boy,
take her."
Thus did Vincent Ardilange map out, with bloodless
egotism, his own alluring, unclouded future. ... At
Bristol they showed him the big metallic crematory,
and fully explained to him its lustral and wholesome
process of incineration. He refrained from seeing the
body of his friend borne into the oven, but he waited
in a chamber of the building not far away from it, and
at last received tidings that if he chose he could pre-
sently look upon the final and complete results of Mr.
Thyrle's cremation.
This he agreed to do, though with many a furtive
shudder. It would be so much better not to torment
one's nerves with any such doleful business. One was
so entirely willing to take the Society's word that it had
demeaned itself capably and without any odious hitch.
Still, of course he must accede to their proposal; it
might strike them as strange if he refused.
So he let them bring him into a hot chamber whose
walls and ceiling were of plasterless brick, and in whose
220
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
centre stood the crematory, which they warned him not
to touch because the heat of it, though rapidly moderat-
ing, was still intense. And then they opened in one
of its metal sides a door, and he looked through the
aperture, and saw a large, square, hollow recess, and
in the middle of its floor a small heap of pearl-coloured
ashes, delicate of grain as the finest powder.
This was Guy—or all that was left of him, thought
Ardilange, withdrawing his head.
Not all. The spiritual Guy, having broken that
bond of retardment which had for a brief while paralysed
his wonderful will-power, had darted precipitately from
Alalia to Rastalia, from moon to earth.
He had found his body just as the fierce fires below
the crematory had irreparably decomposed it. The
strange discomfort which he had felt thousands and
thousands of miles aloof, was now horrible as Dante
ever strove to portray. Without the blessed relief of
unconsciousness he felt himself being burned alive. It
seemed to him that from his phantom lips the wildest
shrieks of torture must be streaming. Yet no sound
came from them. It was his doom not only to suffer
pangs that a Nero or a Caligula had never in their
maddest dreams of cruelty been able to inflict upon a
single victim, but to suffer these pangs in silence as
well 1
XXX.
" A ND so you thought my letter kind?" asked
il. Violet Fythian.
"Yes, wonderfully kind," replied Ardilange.
" I am so glad."
" Since poor, dear Guy's death I have so often wanted
to come down here to Gowerleigh."
" Have you, really ? How nice 1"
Violet said this in her old, sweet, commonplace way—
not an apathetic way, but one huelessly polite.
Months had passed since Ardilange had seen her.
It was spring, now ; and to-day, as they moved together
through the greening lawns of Gowerleigh, they could
hear the silver trebles of the thrushes ringing below
a heaven where monstrous white clouds continually
sailed.
Sometimes these clouds, in true English fashion, sent
a pattering shower of transient rain upon the sweet
verdure of grasses and tree-tops. Ardilange would then
in a trice raise his umbrella, and Violet, looking so
pathetically lovely in her black gown of some soft,
silky stuff, would catch his arm and cling to him with
merry helplessness.
221
222 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
" We shall get ourselves wet through," she would
say. " Had we not better go indoors ?" Then a
mutter of mellow thunder would sound, beyond deeps
of tender greenery massed against the mutable horizon.
"Only listen! This time it will be a drencher,
surely!"
" Oh, I think not," Ardilange would answer. And
once, when the sun suddenly broke out and smiled
upon thousands of bediamonded boughs and grass-
blades, and he felt Violet's arm unloose itself from
his own, and reluctantly caused his umbrella to
collapse, he put this bold question :
" Pray tell me, Miss Violet: did your father propose
my pleasant invitation ? Or did you suggest to him
that you would like to have me run down here—that
you would like to see me again ? "
Violet coloured faintly ; she never blushed outright.
" Oh, I think papa first spoke of my inviting you,"
she said. " I always act by his advice, you know,
in everything."
Ardilange nodded. " I thought," he sighed, " that
the wind blew that way." With lowered and very
loverlike tones, he went on, " It would have suited
me ever so much better if the idea had originated
with yourself. Come, now : was it not yours ? "
But Violet had no more coquetry than a grenadier.
With all her bloomlike grace and yielding femininity,
she for ever dealt in the bluntest candours.
"It was papa's idea," she said, with homely direct-
ness. " He thought it would be best."
" And you agreed with him ? "
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
223
"Oh, I always agree with papa."
" Then you're neither glad nor sorry that I obeyed
your summons ? "
" It was not a summons," Violet said demurely.
" It was only an invitation."
" Yes; I know. . . . But perhaps you pitied me in
my loneliness."
" It hadn't occurred to me that you were lonel}^.
Were you ? "
And Violet turned upon him the maidenly glory of
her mild blue eyes.
" Lonely ? How can you ask ? Since Guy's death
I have felt—crushed."
"No? Really?"
" We were such devoted friends, you know."
"Yes, I remember. And he left you everything,
did he not ? "
" Everything ? " . . . Here Ardilange furtively bit
his lip.
" All his fortune, I mean. Papa told me that he
did."
"'Papa,'" thought Ardilange, "would hate your
dear, unsophisticated prattle. Had ever so angelically
innocent a girl so inflexible a worldling for her
father ? "
But aloud, " My dear Miss Violet, Guy's goodness
to me has been unspeakable. Thanks to his tender
remembrance, I am now a rich man. ... As I have
told you, my days, for some time, have been spent
in travel. But incessantly I thought of . . . your
father, of Gowerleigh—of you."
224 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
" That was ever so good of you, now, was it not ? "
"Good? Oh, I can't say. But it was surely irre-
sistible. And when I reached London your delightful
letter waited me in my lodgings there. How oppor-
tunely it came! By the post-mark I saw that it was
only three days old."
This was easily explained. Lord Henry had seen
an announcement in one of the society journals to the
effect that Mr. Vincent Ardilange, after having spent
several months in Italy, had just returned to London,
where he would occupy through the season his new
residence, No. —, Brooke Street. Now, Lord Henry
had not regretted the death of Guy Thyrle, but he
had keenly regretted the loss to Violet of those three
thousand pounds a year. Sons-in-law with incomes
of that figure did not precisely spring up at the ask-
ing. Besides, these Ardilanges, though they had been
poor for two or three generations, were of excellent
Warwickshire stock. And then there was in view no
better match for Violet, just at the present time. And
it was not well for a girl who had been engaged and
whose lover had died, to drift along unmarried. He,
Lord Henry, was afraid his already angered gout would
harshly resent a frivolous London May and June.
There couldn't be much question as to Ardilange's
former liking of Violet. Perhaps his new prosperity
hadn't weakened that sentiment in the least. By all
means there was good reason for getting Violet to
write, and thus to discover how the land lay with
Ardilange—that untrustworthy pays du tendre, which
changes the charm and warmth of its sunshine so
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
225
many times before a young man has come to " forty
years." Hence Lord Henry's hest, naturally followed
by his daughter's obedient letter.
Of course Ardilange had divined all this. He came
to Gowerleigh filled with hope of soon announcing his
engagement to Violet. As we know, he loved the
girl; for even such disloyal and faithless men can
often love loyally and faithfully.
After a little while he grew confident that to urge his
suit with Violet would be futile enough. So that same
evening, while Lord Henry was sipping the second
of the two glasses of strong old sherry which he
allowed himself after dinner, and which his physicians
frowned upon and totally forbade, Ardilange said his
say.
Violet's father pretended to be deeply shocked.
And then it became hypocrisy pitted against hypocrisy.
" My dear Vincent," said Lord Henry, with a quick
little sip of his sherry, " I recollect that Violet and
you were very friendly before her engagement."
Ardilange looked at the tablecloth, pretending to
be embarrassed. " Ah," he murmured, " I was at the
feet of Miss Violet—metaphorically, you know—a few
minutes after we'd first met, and I've remained there
ever since. But, of course, I was nobody, then—I
mean matrimonially."
" Nonsense, my boy. Don't run yourself down.
You could never help being somebody."
"Thanks. You're so good. But if I'd ventured,
you know, there must have been a question of settle-
ments, and all that. ..."
15
226 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
" Oh, Violet has prospects," Lord Henry broke in.
And then, lying with beautiful oily fluency, he added,
" Moreover, I'd rather see her married to the man of
her choice, provided he were a gentleman (a gentleman,
let us say, like yourself), than to the Duke of Canter-
bury, with his seven other titles and his blue ribbon,
and all his numberless pounds sterling besides."
" What a brazen falsehood! " thought Ardilange.
But aloud, " Oh, I've always comprehended how
perfect a father you are to her. I'm sure you felt just
that way about my dear dead friend, Guy. But Violet
is young, and has recovered from her attachment to
him. Why should she not have become consoled ? It
is only natural. Youth recoils from sorrow, like a
flower from darkness."
" That was to me a kind of baleful fascination on
my child's part," declared Lord Henry, with nose in
the air while he took another sip or two of sherry.
"For my own part, Vincent, I must tell you that I
never liked Guy Thyrle. He always struck me as
sinister and repellent. I used to fancy that he had
almost hypnotised Violet into caring for him, and
I "
" Oh, pray do not speak like that about my dear,
dear friend ! " pleadingly interrupted Ardilange. Tears
glistened unshed in his genial eyes, and his rosy face
looked the picture of tenderly plaintive appeal.
So Lord Henry forbore from saying another word
about the dead man whom he had abhorred while
living and whom he found much more endurable now
that he realised how this dead man was the means of
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
227
probably giving him a really acceptable son-in-law with
three thousand a year. And before he had finished
his second glass of sherry the vital question had been
put him, and he had answered it with a suavity and
graciousness which even so soured and arrogant an
old fellow as himself knew how to assume at certain
rare and necessitous periods.
Soon the new engagement transpired, and gossips
began to wag their tongues, in London and elsewhere.
But surely, after all, they had little enough cause for
scandalous tattle. Was there anything grotesque or
even extraordinary in a girl marrying the intimate
friend of her dead sweetheart ?—especially when the
dead sweetheart had left the intimate friend every penny
of a plenteous fortune ?
The wedding was fixed for the last day in April.
The bridesmaids were chiefly chosen from Violet's
relatives—the Ladies Enid and Eleanor Mary Fythian,
daughters of the present Marquis of Ullinford, her
uncle; the Misses Elaine and Hildegarde Prynne,
daughters of Lady Emily Prynne, her aunt; and so on.
But there were to be eight bridesmaids altogether, and
two of Ardilange's sisters were selected. They were
both comely young damsels, and the gladness and
pride of following their beloved brother to the altar
put new bloom into their virginal faces and lit with
sweeter sparkles their azure English eyes.
As for Ardilange, their presence bored him terribly.
Of course, he had had to " do" for his people down
there in Warwickshire. He had spent upon them
about five hundred pounds, at first, and this act had
228 THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
seemed to them superb in its princeliness. Afterwards
he had been less liberal, but they had not dreamed of
complaining. It was so desirable that dear Vincent
should see Italy 1 He painted, as it was, so deliciously 1
But who could tell what wonders of improvement a
glimpse of the Roman and Florentine and Venetian
galleries might effect! They did not know that their
adored brother's " painting " had been for a long time
past the idlest of farces, and that whatever gleam of
artistic industry once bode in him was pleasantly
paralysed by the generosity of the man whose income
he now enjoyed.
Lilias and Edith must now be gowned creditably for
the wedding. Then his mother, and all the little
multitude of brothers and sisters, must be brought on
in nice trim to Gowerleigh. Ardilange loathed the
whole bother and expense of this, but he concealed
every trace of disgust and ennui under the brightest of
smiles, the kindliest of speeches. He was always
lavish enough with his money to everybody except folk
of his own blood. Not that he liked, at any time, to
part with either the pound or the shilling; but then he
was so selfish that it stung him to have people think
him mean. And in his ridiculously loving and excusing
and admiring " home circle " (if such it could with any
shadow of justice Be termed) dwelt not a hint of danger
that even some act of sordid avarice would ever run the
risk of receiving its rightful name. There it would
have been decorated with the tenderest euphemy,
smothered in the most prismatic and amorous mis-
interpretation !
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE
The thirtieth of April at last dawned propitious and
balmy. Gowerleigh was full of girls as smiling as the
weather, of young men sturdy as the strong lawn-trees.
The house was not large enough to hold any big bevy
of guests, but a few merry and pretty matrons had
gathered there, and a sprinkling of sedater husbands,
and six or seven autumnal but engaging dowagers,
with their husbands yet more sedate and sometimes
a trifle gouty as well. And even the Marquis of
Ullinford himself had condescended to appear at the
eleventh hour, yet on that account all the more fer-
vently welcomed by Lord Henry, his phenomenal snob
of a brother.
The hour of the wedding was fixed for ten o'clock.
Violet, who looked enchantingly lovely in her white
satin and pearls, had received from two tirewomen the
last touches they could bestow upon her toilet. She
gazed at herself in a long mirror, and then turned to
her maids, murmuring, "1 wish to be alone for a little
while."
But one of them (an old household servant) said,
quite solicitously, " It is already past the hour, Miss
Violet. And all the bridesmaids are waiting outside in
the hall."
Violet, imperative for one of the few times in her
gentle life, raised a forbidding hand.
u Never mind, Sanders. I will go into the next
room. You can wait for me here. As I said, I must
be alone for a little while. But it will not be longer."
She glided to a near door, crossed its threshold, and
then closed it.
230 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
Sanders looked at the other woman. " Dear, sweet,
innocent darling! She has gone to pray."
The other woman nodded with a veiled sort of
ridicule. She was new at Gowerleigh. Besides, being
a spinster, she had solidly prosaic views on all questions
of matrimony.
Suddenly a shriek rang from the closed chamber.
It seemed like the horror of hours packed into a second
of sound. Those who heard it (and they were a
whole houseful of merry-makers) remembered it for the
rest of their lives—and remembered, as well, the two
other heart-cleaving cries that followed it.
Breaking the icy thrall of their fear, Sanders and her
companion were the first to reach Violet. She lay on
the floor, in a white, huddled heap, as they entered.
They raised her head, and a ray of sunlight caught the
diamond star which had been Ardilange's gift to her,
and made it flash with mocking splendour from the
laces of her bridal veil. Almost to glance at her face
was to see that she no longer lived.
XXXI.
And Guy? . . .
His agony at last had ended. So exquisite was
the relief this cessation brought, that for a while he
forgot even to observe the pale residuum of ashes into
which his body had been changed. Then he looked
upon it, and a fear passed through him that almost
equalled the pain from which he had lately been
delivered.
Presently he saw a door in the big oven-like place
open, and the head and face of Ardilange appear. For
a moment he forgot that he was bodiless, and dashed
towards the aperture. Then, in the eyes of Ardilange—
those eyes which he had always thought so rich with
honesty and loving-kindness—-he discerned an expres-
sion of fleeting, triumphant joy.
The door closed. Guy left the crematory. He was
near Ardilange while the latter gave certain orders to
the officials who had re-approached him. He heard
these orders; they concerned, as it were, his own
interment. Meanwhile, he was using the psychic
power he possessed to read this man's mind and soul.
231
232 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
Since the annihilation of his body he found that this
power was stronger, more penetrative. The effect of
gazing into Ardilange's spiritual depths proved no less
one of horror than surprise. It was like looking
beyond the sheen and dimpled mirth of some woodland
stream to discover loathsome and slimy shapes below
its glitters and ripples. All his past, everything that
this chronicle has recorded of his depraved selfishness
and bloodless duplicity, became clear as day to Guy.
And he had left this man his fortune—left him,
too, perhaps, the woman whom he loved! Vincent
Ardilange had been the falsest of false friends. His
hypocrisy smelled to heaven. This burning of the body
he had sworn to guard was an abomination of treachery.
" He deserves," brooded Guy, " tenfold the torture
I have just borne—if such an amplification of it were
possible. And yet I am powerless to punish him. I
can do nothing. I must endure not merely his past
infamy; I must impotently watch the fulfilment of new
damnable schemes."
Then the thought of real death, the longing for
absolute extinction, pressed upon him. Was there any
way in which he could perish and forget ?
"Why," he asked himself, "did not this destruction
of my body make me at least appreciably different from
the strange entity that I am ? Why did it not either
whelm me with oblivion or set me in new cycles of
vitality and intelligence ? Apparently I have gained
much without gaining, in any sense, all. What is the all?
Surely I am now a disembodied spirit. I see more
clairvoyantly than before my flesh was destroyed. I
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
233
view every detail of Vincent Ardilange's past life; I am
conscious of every ignoble aim that now stirs him.
And yet I cannot place in his hateful path one smallest
impediment; I cannot whisper the faintest word of
warning in his ear. I must watch his villainous
plans mature and succeed. It is horrible, appalling.
Perhaps it is hell, and perhaps there has always been a
hell, though I have scoffed at the idea of any God
existing except He were too much a God of mercy to
allow also the existence of a hell."
He kept following Ardilange, always, everywhere, in
his wrath and suffering. Once, when he stood in the
old Thyrle cemetery on the grounds of the Grange
(whose new possessors permitted this last scion of his
race to be buried there) and shed tears while a coffin
was being lowered into an open grave, and was gazed
on in his devilish factitious grief by a little group of old
servants, every one of whose faces had been known to
their dead master since he was a baby, Guy forgot that
he was air, cloud, mist, nothingness in any palpable
sense, and sprang at Vincent's throat and clutched it, and
shrieked, "Liar 1 scoundrel I viper ! 'Lagain and again.
But Ardilange went on weeping and wiping his eyes.
Guy's furious assault was no more perceptible to him
than would have been a slight thermometric change.
Guy followed him persistently, after this. Anger
had now faded, and a feeling of melancholy and
measureless contempt replaced it. He witnessed the
last interview in London between Ardilange, Violet,
and Lord Henry. He heard Ardilange softly and
reverently say,—
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
" Well, it is all over with poor, dear Guy. I have
obeyed his earnest wishes regarding cremation. It
shocked me to do so, but, after all, I was only fulfilling
my bounden duty. I—I dared not shirk it." Here he
looked at Lord Henry. " Do you not think, sir, that I
was right ? " he gently inquired.
Lord Henry made a grimace that was gargoylishly
unbecoming, and shrugged his angular shoulders.
" Oh, yes," he mumbled sulkily. " If a man has
those horrible ideas and leaves instructions that they
shall be carried out, what is one to do but posthum-
ously exploit them ? "
Here Violet said, in her sweet voice, " I never knew
that Guy had any such strange wish."
" He had many odd convictions and desires," Lord
Henry here struck in. "This preference was, in my
opinion, barbarous." And he gave a little disgusted
cough that expressed his hatred of it—a hatred which
he always felt, in lesser or greater degree, for every plan
or creed or purpose in life flavoured, however faintly,
by the unconventional.
"Ah," appealed Ardilange, "pray do not call any
thought or impulse of dear Guy's by so harsh a name
as barbarous ! " And there were tears in his voice,
now, if not in his gaze, and the lines of his pink,
boyish lips quivered as he turned his look, brimming
with wistful entreaty, towards Violet.
And Violet, who rarely presumed to chide her father,
or even hint a rebuke to him, now timidly but somehow
firmly said,—
" Dear papa, ought we not to remember that Mr.
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
235
Ardilange was Guy's treasured friend, and that Guy
was his ? "
Lord Henry stared for a moment at Violet with the
arrogant surprise that came so natural to him. Then
his hard face suddenly softened a little, and he looked
at Ardilange with his dim, proud, cold look, saying,—
" Guy Thyrle proved himself a very excellent friend
to you, I'm told. Is it not true ? "
" He proved himself a matchless friend!" cried
Ardilange, with the sweetest, richest, tenderest throbs
in his voice. " He left me everything—his fortune, his
estate, his books, his collection of scientific instruments
—all! "
" And not even a souvenir to Violet! " muttered Lord
Henry, with tart curtness.
"Papa!" said Violet, in pained undertone. "You
forget how suddenly he died."
" No—I remember," said Lord Henry, as if to himself.
" It was very unexpected, of course—horribly so !"
After a minute he drily added, looking full at Ardi-
lange, " You're to be congratulated. You're to be very
heartily congratulated."
Ardilange bowed his head, and raised one hand,
waving it to and fro.
" Ah, sir, don't speak of that! I'd give ten times
the heritage poor Guy left me if I could only look on
his dear face again ! "
And Guy, hovering near, heard this rascality of
hypocrisy leave the craven lips that framed them.
XXXII.
S he had looked into other souls, he now had
searched with that same supernatural regard
(mysteriously sharpened and strengthened since his
bodily death) the soul of Violet.
Never till then had he felt conscious that any human
life could be so spotlessly pure. In her character he
discerned just the feebleness and pliancy by which he
had always believed it marked. But her purity, her
lovely, girlish innocence, her spontaneous and fragrant
charity, her incapacity to hate any living mortal, and
her holy willingness to help all fellow-sufferers! Ah,
how little the absence of that colder element we call
intellect might matter while the heart beat with such
soft yet sovereign strokes !
When Violet and her father went back to Gowerleigh,
Guy, as it were, accompanied them. He perceived that
his own loss brought her no keen grief, and he read
in her nature the incapacity to feel any actual passion.
But his death had filled her with mournfulness, because
it had been so sudden and so untimely. She had sym-
pathy and compassion for ever at her side, like obedient
236
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
237
handmaids, and if Guy had left parents, sisters, or any
near relatives whom his demise would grievously have
afflicted, her words of comfort, her efforts at consolation,
would have sought them with eager yet unobtrusive
zeal.
There at Gowerleigh Guy's ordeal was for days and
days one continuous despair. The spirit of Violet had
made him dream of some temple in whose marble
interior burned the perpetual tapering azure of one
sacred altar-flame. Passionless the girl might be, but
he had loved her for just what he had believed her,
and if he could have used upon her this clearer vision
now, at a time when dread and misery and the most
mordant sense of outrage were mercilessly martyrising
him, he might have greeted this new revelation of her
purity and goodness with transports of delicious
surprise.
As it was, to know her duteous and chaste as he
knew her now, yet humble as she was unsullied and
.faultless, thrilled him with a more devoted and allegiant
love. Piteously impotent to rouse her heed even as
much as a falling leaf or a passing bird might do, he
nevertheless would clasp her in his phantom arms a
hundred times each day, and shower upon her tranquil,
irresponsive face the air and shadow and dream and
mocking impetuosity of his kisses. Infinite was the
pathos of his position, his doom. Often he would
gladly have died, but death taunted him with his
own indestructibility, just as life taunted him with
his impotence to live like those whom he saw
about him, like those of whose race, type, flesh-and-
23B THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
blood vitality, he had once been himself so distinctive
a part.
He could see no other beings that resembled his
present self. All those he saw were shapes of the
animal kind, whether man or beast or bird or reptile.
Surely he was a spirit; and yet where was that spirit
world to which incontestably he must belong ? He
was able in one way to view the invisible, yet in others
he wholly failed. Why was this ? Why could he
behold in the brains of living and breathing people,
whenever he so desired, the very processes, of
cerebration there, and plunge his intelligence at will
down to the root of every moral or immoral action
they might commit or plan, yet remain impotent to
discern a single wraith or shade like himself?
What meant this new mystery ?
He soon made a most curious discovery. It was
this : he had become invisible to himself. If he held
his hand before him he could not see it. If he looked
down at his feet and lower limbs—blankness ! And
yet he felt an intuitive confidence that he possessed
some sort of shape, however unfleshly and intangible.
Slowly there dawned upon him a kind of solution
to this enigma. The death he had died was abnormal,
unprecedented, impious. His spirit had not left its
mortal coil with such exit as nature's fixed laws have
devised. The treachery of Ardilange had more
than merely assassinated his body: it had relegated
his soul into some dolorous and unexampled banish-
ment!
He could not really die, and he could only live in
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
239
a sort of maddening solitude that never brought him
actual madness, but would seem to set him on the
horrid verge of its abyss and then defy him to over-
leap it. A certain vague comfort (if by that name
it could be called) relieved him as he grew surer
and surer that Ardilange would not present himself
at Gowerleigh—at least, not for some time yet. A
letter came from Italy to Lord Henry, which he read
aloud to his daughter. Guy listened to the reading
of this letter, brimful of sickening flatteries about
himself from the man of whom he could only think as
his wilful murderer. It contained innuendoes, perfumed
with more than a mere hope, of again meeting Violet,
but it also mentioned as remote the time of his intended
return to England.
Guy told himself then that he would leave Gowerleigh,
that he would tear from his mind all thought of Violet,
that he would seek, if possible, some means of altering
this intolerable existence, whether for better or
worse.
"If there be a God," he cried, in that voice of his
which was indeed only an inaudible agony—" if there
be a God, and I have offended Him, I will seek Him
throughout His universe till I can fling myself at His
feet and implore His pardon ! "
So he willed to attain a system beyond our own
solar one, feeling that the Deity whom he desired to
reach had at least the attribute of remoteness, if none
other conceivable to his humbler ken. And his will, as
before, triumphed instantly over space, though now
it was a question not of millions but quadrillions of
240 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
miles. He found himself on a star of vast magnitude,
a dark planet, unknown to all astronomers, revolving
about the gigantic Canopus, in the constellation Navis
Argo, a sun many hundreds of times larger than our
own.
XXXIII
THIS planet astounded him, at first, by its dazzling
beauty. He landed in a valley of it, just as
its luminary was sinking behind a range of mountains
which enclosed like an amphitheatre, the plateau on
which he had chanced. In the sky above him four
moons had begun to brighten. One was a delicate
amber, one a rich emerald green, and the remaining
two were pearly, like our own. They were all full
orbs, with no sign of any lunar changes in their
discs. The sublime sun which lighted this sublime
world sank behind peaks empurpled by its receding
splendours. New and strange constellations broke
faintly forth in the glooming heavens. But almost
a semicircle of the rounded mountain chain glowed
with a wild yet dying glory. Here their steep sides
blazed in saffron and their summits flashed lavish
orange lustres below and between the pallor of crown-
ing snows. Guy looked at their violent, spectacular,
sunflower beauty; then his gaze swept the soil beneath
him, tawny and sterile.
Suddenly the truth grew clear. He had landed on a
241 16
242 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
world of gold I As large as liquid Jupiter it hung in
space one spheric mass of the most precious metal
known to earthly man—a metal whose relatively meagre
existence on that smaller satellite of our own sun had
been the chief bane and curse of its inhabitants. Here
it was almost ubiquitous, varied by veins of occasional
quartz. There were mountains after mountains of
solid gold ; there were rivers whose beds and banks
teemed with it and radiated it.
And the people! . . . Guy found them in tribes
and settlements, dispersed here and there among the
lowlands bordered by Alps and Antilles of this priceless
ore. But to them, in another sense, it was priceless.
They were all little impish dwarfs, living in perpetual
dread of wild animals that resembled our tigers, lions,
and leopards. They were stupid and sluggish, en-
slaving their women and worshipping a god whom they
had carved in countless rude shapes from the wood of
trees. For trees of any sort were very rare with them;
they fed upon their leaves and boiled their ligneous
fibres for food. And out of their wood they formed
little pieces, like francs and shillings, which served them
as money. They were all poor and needy. Round
them loomed and sloped and lapsed and hollowed
unimaginable volumes of gold; but they spent or
hoarded these scanty stores of wooden money. And so
for centuries and centuries these innumerable droves of
dull-witted pygmies had gone on living.
" Surely," thought Guy, " God is not here."
He fled to many more stars, after that—stars in
Canis Major, where the monster Sirius burns, and in
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 243
Taurus, where Aldebaran reigns with an only slighter
radiance; stars in Lyra, with its huge bluish-white
Vega; in Perseus and Cetus, with their strange twins,
Algol and Mira, together one revolving beacon-light of
the heavens, now dim almost to utter extinction, now
effulgent as their brightest brother suns.
Continually one fact kept striking him: So many
thousands of stellar bodies had neither a trace of ever
having been inhabited by any sort of living creature,
or the apparent promise that such result would befall
them. Many were mere mineral masses, with leagues
of rock either blistered by tropic sunshine or scintillant
beneath polar ice. Many were in constant volcanic
agitation ; fearful blooms of fire for ever rose from their
soil, spreading forth petals that faded while you gazed.
Many had no atmosphere, yet gave not a sign of
having had it and lost it. Some were enormous pendant
water-drops, like globules of dew magnified an incon-
ceivable number of times. Evolution was now almost
refuted as a theory, and then again the change from
simple to complex, from homogeneity to heterogeneity,
became tellingly plain.
But where, so to speak, the footsteps of perished man
were distinguishable, these would often indicate that
countless ages had passed since the feet that made
them had crumbled to dust. This reminded Guy of a
thought by which he had long ago been visited : Was
man the chief purpose of the universe, and was he not,
however dispersedly he might exist throughout its
realm, only an incident, and even a minor incident,
of its entire creation ? Indeed, the testimony of his
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
instability, his impermanence, confronted Guy with
ever-strengthening force.
Yet as man he was sometimes but vaguely recognis-
able. In myriads of other worlds the highest animal
form was by no means of the Adamic type. In one
world our wanderer found a population of lizards
speaking, thinking, and civilised—though not, however,
of the overgrown Saurian type, and no longer inverte-
brate, but a survival that had reached, for certain reasons
of environment, the highest place of any living species
on this particular sphere. Again, he found that lions
had become the masters of another planet; these,
unlike the lizards, had rather augmented than lessened
in stature, judged by an earthly standard; but both
dominating races stood and moved upright, and their
front legs and paws had become arms, furnished with
hands and fingers as flexible as our own.
The Lizards were in a star that swung round a sun
called Mirach, in the constellation Andromeda. It was
a star that for some unexplained cause had continued
one miry round, unbroken by even a single hill, and full
of swampish wastes, though its clusters of vegetation
were so luxuriant that their verdure, grandeur, and
grace, robbed it at frequent intervals of all dismal
traits. The Lizards, who had gained what struck Guy
as so extraordinary a precedence over all animate
neighbours, roused his wonder by the marked social
and intellectual progress of their various nations.
With unbounded patience and energy they had over-
come the stubborn and discouraging characteristics of
their sluggish planet. Physically they repelled him,
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
245
even in their advanced and highly cultured state,
though he perceived that they had their ideals of
beauty, and he did not doubt that if they had beheld
one of the most enchanting forms of earthly loveliness
—say the Sistine Madonna, or the Apollo of the
Vatican—they would have treated it with indifference,
or perhaps contempt.
The Lions were, on the other hand, a magnificent
and most captivating people. Their massive and noble
faces were informed with mildness,dignity, and wisdom.
They dwelt on a star of no great size in the constella-
tion Virgo, their sun being Vindematrix. But this
star they had made gloriously habitable, and the
records of their great warriors, philosophers, statesmen,
historians, poets, and orators, would far have surpassed
those of Athens or Rome. In oratory they specially
excelled, and while he listened to the mellow and
voluminous tones of one of their most famous public
speakers, Guy was oddly, almost absurdly, reminded
of the caged creatures whose raucous roars he had
heard, not far from his home, in Regent's Park. Their
garments were flowing and of harmonious folds.
Majesty formed the paramount claim in their presences,
and clearly held it as regarded either sex; but wedded
to majesty were kindliness and a sense of baser bestial
passions crushed and conquered.
" Survival of the fittest indeed !" Guy meditated.
"And man, on that tiny grain he calls Earth, has dared
to call himself the lord of creation 1 These lizards,
these lions, are as much men as he, and in many
respects his superiors besides."
246 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
Other weird forms he found in other planets. One
was ruled over by legions of splendid winged beings
who seemed to him like nothing so much as a blending
of our finest human athletes and those condors that
haunt the peaks and slopes of the South American
Sierras. . . . Another (a planet thousands of times
vaster than the sun Sirius himself) was peopled by
men; ... by men the counterparts of those on earth
in every respect save one—size.
And what bewilderingly mighty size! They could
have crossed the Atlantic as we cross a narrow brook.
Alas 1 poor, ridiculed Munchausen, he was not, after
all, so reckless a blageur\ Guy felt, while near them,
a mite, a speck, an atom. One of their finger-tips, if
he had been flesh and blood, could have crushed him
as we crush a gnat. They could have breathed Guy
into their lungs and exhaled him, and not known it.
Their heads were often in the clouds, or well above
the clouds, which drifted about their waists and thighs.
One of their hands, if stretched out, would have covered
half the area of London, and so prodigious was their
strength that by a tap of one of their feet they could
have sent the Houses of Parliament toppling over into
the Thames. Their homes were spacious as hollowed
mountains. They now lived in perfect peace with one
another, but their past history had been a long horror
of bloodshed and war and massacre. Tame enough
seemed the fights in the " Iliad " and the 11 Niebelungen
Lied," beside their awful conflicts. Notwithstanding the
tremendous dimensions of their planet, its density was
far slighter than that of the Earth, and hence the weight
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
247
of these colossi was wholly disproportionate to their
stature and girth. Awe-stirring indeed were the
pictures they made when gathered together, backed or
fronted or engirt by their hills, each as large, at the
least, as an entire Switzerland, and gazing into one
another's immense bland blue eyes, like big luminous
lakes.
Guy believed, at first, that on this star he had finally
found some distinct approach to the Deity for whom
he was searching. But soon his new faith vanished.
These magnified semblances of his own fellow-men
surpassed the latter in virtue and wisdom, and touches
of ideal altruism were evident in their jpodes of peaceful
and philanthropic living. But there it ended. They
knew no more of God than did their tiny terrestrial
brethren, though their temples of worship towered
above the fiercest assaults of storms, and near them
our haughtiest cathedral would have looked toy-like by
contrast.
In another star, a satellite asteroid moon of some-
what ambitious volume, he chanced upon a race of men
who were scarcely larger than ants. If his vision had
been that of the body in which he had once lived and
moved, he might have passed their dense throngs, and
•their well-built cities, and their numerous churches,
and their galleries of art, and their halls of justice, and
their royal palaces, with no more heed than if he were
moving through a meadow haunted by swarms of
midges.
*In weariness he again murmured, " God is not here.
I can find Him nowhere. . . . Ah! were not the
248 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
Pantheists the truest of all thinkers ? Is not the
universe itself God ? I remember reading of some old
philosopher who asserted that our earth was alive and
conscious. If he had said that all matter was alive
yet wwconscious he might have been nearer the truth.
Alive yet unconscious, and for ever blindly, dumbly,
instinctively seeking to create a God. What if the
irresistible force shall strive on and on for ages and
ages yet, till at last, like the work of a sculptor who
has spoiled numberless statues trying to make one
perfect and peerless, God be finally born of this aeonic
effort and struggle ? "
Among his many remarkable experiences, none more
impressed him than that of a star in which the chief
dwellers were men and women like those on earth,
though finer and shapelier in build, and of visage for
the most part comelier. This star revolved about
Capella in Auriga, and was considerably smaller than
our own. It was the loveliest of worlds; besides being
a very Arcadia of pastoral enchantment, it abounded in
marble quarries, and its cities and towns were built,
with architecture of surpassing grace, almost entirely
of this stone. Its inhabitants had seemingly reached
a high state of enlightenment, only to become cursed
(blessed, they would have termed it) by a most singular
cult and predilection. Nearly all their barriers of
nationality had been swept away, and throughout the
whole sphere reigned political, social, and intellectual
accord.
But for some reason thousands of both sexes had
become intoxicated by the desire to die. In past ages
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
249
they had been preceded by the most optimistic thinkers,
and by religionists of a fervid, even fanatical type.
But somehow the majority of them had grown to
believe in only one god—the deity of Death. Their
planet was also fairly rich in a certain black marble
of inky darkness, and from this they erected stately
fanes and churches to the grim Power whose almighty
rule they so admired and revered.
But they erected to Death, as well, another species
of temple. It was always very large, and filled with
chambers where every conceivable device of art was
manifest in entrancing phases. To enter each chamber
meant to die there, for through unseen apertures in
wall or ceiling a certain poisonous gas was made to
stream, an opiate that lulled its victims to sleep after
several moments of ecstatic delight, and then for ever
banned them from all possibility of awakening. Guy
thought of the Alalians, and their method of self-
extinction. But here was a far different motive,
producing a far different result.
The voluntary suicide chose which chamber he or
she would perish in. One, for example, was a pine
grove, underspread with moss, musical with tender
winds, and faintly showing beyond fringy boscage of
boughs, the faultless electric representation of a dreamy
summer moon.
One was the effect (however contrived) of a huge
desert overarched by a heavenful of thick-thronging
stars. The expression of supreme solitude and lone-
liness could not have been more vividly conveyed.
One was a garden of roses, red and white, and
250
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
beyond it was a porphyry balustrade, and still beyond
that a fountain of rich-carved marble, playing diamond
jets against an afternoon sky of drowsy lavender. Tall
and slim-stemmed trees clustered here and there, more
tremulous than aspens and more feathery than maiden-
hair.
One was gorgeous and sumptuous with tapestries,
carpets, divans, and cushions, of a hundred intertangled
yet harmonious tints. . . . One, again, was appointed
in breadths and heavy folds of dead-black velvet, starred
by lamps which were skulls filled with blood-red light.
. . . And still another was the counterpart of the last,
save that its hangings were of spotless white, and its
lamps crystal lilies, whence steamed a radiance pure
as the beams of our own winter moon. . . .
Towards the edifice in which these variable and fas-
cinating apartments had been, by some scenic wizardry,
constructed and arranged, certain processions of old
and young would wind at special hours of each day.
Every individual chose the particular surrounding in
which it seemed most delectable to die. On all the
faces of these suicidal votaries Guy could observe but
a single look of silent ecstasy. Sometimes two lovers
would walk together, or a young child hand-in-hand
with a parent. There was no hint of tragedy in these
death-seeking assemblages. Not seldom a whole family
could be counted among them. All went with the same
willingness that would have marked some pilgrimage to
a religious shrine. Rarely was there a gleam of melan-
choly on any face; often there was rapturous revelry,
however, and a wild, expectant gladness. One easily
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 251
guessed, too, that for the most part they were people
well above all cares and frets of want. And it was a
common thing to see them, as they moved onwards, play
upon musical instruments like our pipes and lutes and
citherns. There were those, also, who went along with
soft, dancing motions, like the choric participants in a
Greek festival.
Guy thought of what Schopenhauer had said about
life being an affliction, and the wisdom mankind could
and might hereafter show through conquering the will-
to-live by a volition directly its reverse.
" A world in love with death!" he thought. " A
world whose fair hills and plains and cities will soon
become one lovely and languorous desolation ! A world
which has convinced itself that life ends all, and that
the Hereafter means one infinite lethean eternity of
rest 1 . . . How terrible, yet, mingled with the heathen
poetry which they have cast over it, how mournfully
beautiful!
" But here, surely, I should not linger. Here, surely,
is no sign of the God I am seeking."
For ever the thought kept haunting him that although
he was spirit all spirituality bode aloof from him, or, if
not aloof, obdurately undiscernible. He saw people
die, and could perceive their last vital inward pangs;
he could watch their souls, each striving and struggling
to gain release from clay. But when release came he
was powerless to catch one vaguest glimpse of the
unfettered souls themselves.
Why was this ? In passion, fright, frenzy, he kept
querying why. He must seek the answer somewhere.
252 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
And was there a " somewhere " in which he might seek.
it ? Was that somewhere God, and had the infinity
that encompassed God barred against him gates view-
less as air yet rigid as iron ? Having died without
really dying, must he partake of an immortality eternal
yet companionless ?
He swept onwards, past systems and systems of un-
recorded stars. Here it was the same as among those
astral cohorts which the sky-gazers of earth had science
visually to observe and count. Suns, moons, planets,
asteroids, in numbers incalculable! Worlds that yet
were floating coils and wreaths and ragged drifts of
vapour; worlds that yet were prodigious heavenly bon-
fires, fed by showers of attracted meteors and even by
occasional vast nomadic comets; worlds that teemed
with a beauty eclipsing the conception of man ; worlds
hideous beyond all human belief; worlds just born,
youthful, matured, dying, or dead; worlds of sin, de-
gradation and debauchery; worlds of chastity, idealism,
and peace ; worlds in which not a single animal or
vegetable shape bore the faintest likeness to those we
meet on earth; worlds in which trees thought and
spoke and saw; worlds that were earth in miniature
or a thousand-fold magnified; worlds in which wolves,
serpents, tigers, birds, and countless other creatures ot
indescribable sort, had won mastery, and risen by in-
flexible laws of evolution to that same superiority over
their primary conditions which marks the ascendency
of earthly man over his ancestral ape.
Here were the same appalling distances between
system and system. On and on he sped, yet con-
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
253
tinually space unfolded new proofs of its awful
fecundity.
" Yet space," mused Guy, " is in itself material. I
learned before I became what I am that the light of
Alpha Lyrse could not vibrate towards Earth except
through some appreciable medium. And even the
ghost that I have grown could not exist in a surround-
ing of nothingness. This interstellar ether, however
tenuous and inane, is still matter, though matter in-
tensely rarefied. There must be some point, therefore,
at which existence ceases, and nothingness begins.
When I reach nothingness I may reach death. And
the attainment of death—eternal extinction—would be
my next most precious boon and bourne after I had
missed the attainment of God!"
Immense flights followed, yet all with the same
futile result.
Suddenly an idea flashed upon him. " Let me test,"
he said to himself, " the will-power that I have so long
passionately yet aimlessly used. Let me test this will-
power to its utmost capacity. If it fails, I may sink
with its failure into that very oblivion which I no
longer fear, and for whose calm my agony thirsts !"
Then he willed mightily, and the stress of his desire,
if put into words, would thus have sounded :
"Beyond all matter, beyond all so-called space, I
would find the Unknowable."
Instantly, as it seemed, he was stricken with utter
blindness. Yet he remained conscious. "I am still
I," he thought, and he knew that to think like this
must mean that he had not yet perished.
254 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
The blindness was like densest night, but it soon
became plain to him that his hearing had in no wise
lessened. For sounds were all about him, sounds
whose precise character he could not tell, yet which
reminded him of rustling and fluttering garments, , of
soft feet on softer grass, of light breezes among leaves,
of water delicately tumbling and tinkling over ledges of
rock. Then he grew aware that voices were speaking,
and with very melodious intonations. Now they drew
nearer; now they receded. They spoke in a strange
tongue. He willed to understand its lovely cadences.
But his gift failed him, here: they remained unin-
telligible.
In his mind a certain conviction slowly strengthened:
He had entered at last into a realm of spirits like
himself, and if he had actually died before so entering
it, this blindness would perhaps never have afflicted
him. He could not see his surroundings because he
was apart from them although one with them. He
had no means of proving this belief, but he stood
pierced by an intuition of its truth.
He waited, fairly brave yet deeply awesmitten,
wondering what course it would be wiser for him to
take. Should he will to return earthwards ? Had he
tasked his will-power to its utmost limits? Would it
obey him if he conceded this, and determined on escape
from influences heavy with hostility and repulsion ?
But somehow, suddenly and yet gradually, one ot
the voices floated nearer to him than any of those
which he had heretofore heard. At first he had only
the sense of its delicious rhythmic modulations, its
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
255
aeolian allegros, deepening into mellow adagios—its
magic declension from music to speech, and its quick,
supple rise again from speech to music. Then he
became aware that both what it sang and what it spoke
were one equally melodious and articulate message, all
of which he clearly understood. . . .
"You are the one mortal, throughout the range of
creation, whose soul has been sundered from its body
otherwise than through the natural divorce of death.
You have disobeyed no law of the universe, yet the
destruction of your body, before death normally
released you from it, has brought you (though not by
any fault of your own) into conflict with other forces
which your faculties, still finite, cannot comprehend.
Hence, though half spirit, you are still half matter as
well. Your wanderings, your sufferings, have been
vast. Here there is no help for you. Profoundly as
you are pitied, the pain and horror of your fate must
continue for eternity the same as now."
Silence followed these words, whose dulcet sorceries
had first enraptured their listener, and then fired him
with despairing revolt.
" If your voice," he cried, " be not that of God,
then tell me where I can find God and implore His
mercy I"
There was no answer.
A certain encouragement had now come to Guy.
For the first time since the taking of the draught he
was enabled to hear his own voice. This, in a way,
compensated for the dead-black blindness that had
fallen upon his vision.
256 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
"God must be omnipotent," he again cried. "He
made His laws; therefore He can break them. If He
will not restore me to my earthly life, why should He
refuse me death ? "
"There is no death," answered the voice, after a
long pause.
" But there is God ? If so, let Him create some truce,
armistice, cessation of torment, for me, His creature.
Why should my doom continue eternally? As you
tell me, I have been visited with it through no fault of
my own. He who is Himself infinity can certainly
bestow upon me endless unconsciousness."
After a still longer pause the voice said,—
" This is the utterance of your despair, not of your
hope. In reality you crave restoration to the shape
you have quitted on the planet of your birth."
" Since you read my real desire so keenly—yes."
" But the shape you have quitted no longer is. It
has become a part of the universal, the all."
" God could put me back into it if He chose. With
Him, to do and to choose are one. If this were not so,
He would not be God. And that He should do this
would be as easy as that He should grant me the next
best boon—annihilation absolute. Either would be as
easy as that He should crush in one clasp, like an
eggshell, all the sublimity of His handicraft."
So long a silence here ensued that Guy, in the depth
of his desolation, marvelled miserably whether or no he
had offended his viewless interlocutor past all hope of
response.
But at length the tenderness and plaintiveness, the
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
257
dignity and gravity, the flexibility and rich sweetness,
of this incomparable Voice, became reassertive.
"You use with glibness the word 'God.' If in
every way you had become spiritual you might dimly
realise what mighty silences encompass it. Imagine a
temple with more stairs to its portal than the quintil-
lions of stars you have seen. Imagine that the first
stair is Law, and that beyond and beyond and beyond
are altitudes of ascension where even the feet of spirits
have never presumed to venture."
"You mean, then," answered Guy, with reckless
mutiny, " that God is only a grander imitation of the
kingly majesties he has permitted upon his planets ?
If so, I defy him."
" Your defiance is part of him."
" I long for his most hideous punishment, then, since
any new species of torture would now refresh me in
my monotony of wretchedness ! "
" Your longing is also he."
" I loathe, I execrate him ! "
" He is your loathing and your execration."
" I deny his supremacy, and I affirm that there are
other deities above him, who would despise and avenge
the insolence and tyranny with which he curses me."
"He is the blasphemy with which you blaspheme him."
"Then I denounce him as devilish, not Divine, and
I cry for succour, with tears of anguish dropping from
these blinded eyes, upon that loftier Spirit who must
be his master—the Spirit of goodness, who has for-
gotten or overlooked all horrors and calamities by
which myriads of his mortals are incessantly racked."
17
258 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
"God is the devil you denounce him, the divinity
you refuse him, the loftier Spirit to whom you cry for
succour, the goodness, the forgetting, the overlooking,
whereof you rave. .The horrors and calamities by
which myriads of his mortals are incessantly racked—
these are he. If you strive to conceive him as either
angelic or demoniac, your conception is Himself. He
is includible, omnipresent. He is you; he is I. He
is darkness; he is light. He is doubt; he is faith.
He is existence—he is even the blankness and nullity
of its opposite."
"Ah, then," rang from Guy, with still more of
baffled rebellion, " I can only hurl back upon him the
cowardice and despotism of which you have shown me
so horribly that he consists."
" No; you cannot insult him, for he himself would
be the insult. . . ."
Guy said no more. The blindness weighed like lead
upon his eyes. He could hear the distant sounds as
before, breathing of tranquillity, happiness, and beauty.
He tried dimly to apprehend what an eternity of
solitude would mean, whether spent in stability or
unrest. His unaltered love for Violet made him half
decide that he would re-seek Earth and remain near her
until she died.
Then shudderingly came to him the thought that
thus remaining near her would mean watching her die,
whether abruptly or in lingering fashion, at the stealthy
demand of old age. How horrible would such a vigil
prove!
"I can at least be patient," he resolved. "Such
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 259
challenge, if no other, I can fling to this unparalleled
persecution !" And here the mockery smote him of a
patience that mast be limitless !
He bowed his phantom head; he raised in sorrow
and imprecation his phantom hands. The anguish he
endured was like that of fabled Prometheus; only, for
him the beak of the vulture would unceasingly gnaw,
the chain for ever would repulse Time's biting teeth, and
for ever would stay adamant the rock to which it was
wedded.
Then the longing to look once more on Violet gave
him a kind of courage, a kind of hope. In another
instant he would have willed to fly Earthwards, had not
the Voice, placid and yet sonorous, kindly and yet
august, again spoken.
"There is one chance left you," it said, "of shatter-
ing this bondage which bears to liberty so forlorn a
likeness. If you can find on your own natal planet a
fellow-mortal who will die for your sole sake—who
will deliberately meet death in order that you may
disenthral yourself from these strange conditions which
I cannot make clear to }rou, but which will swiftly
become clear when you are once freed of them—then
complete and joyful release will await you."
♦ Guy listened, in surprise that soon grew scorn.
" How can I possibly find a fellow-mortal willing to
perform this sacrifice ? " he at length questioned.
" He may exist. It is at least conceivable."
" But how can I materialise myself so that he can
even know of my presence ? "
" That I cannot explain to you. There will be a few
26O THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
rare intervals favouring such materialisation. You
will not even know any one of these when it arrives.
It will be dependent upon electric and atmospheric
phases, coincidences, accords. You may know it only
if you will to know at the propitious moment. Perhaps
you may wait for what is a year in your world or even
much longer, before the opportunity dawns. Even
then you may not see it, and only by random tests you
can tell it. It may last but a brief while ; it may last
through an entire night, an entire day. This is your
hope. Centuries on centuries, remember, and centuries
infinitely multiplied by these, will be given you for the
discovery of your potential saviour. If he hears your
dreadful story, if he is touched by it and will kill him-
self in your behalf, then the course on your side is easy
indeed."
" What course ? "
"This: He perishes by his own hand. While his
spirit leaves its body, you watch for the moment of its
departure. It will be the opening of a doorway,
through which one passes and the other enters. The
new-comer will be you. Recall how you repossessed
yourself of your own body twice before. You simply
willed to re-enter it, and your purpose was achieved.
In this supposable instance you can will to re-enter
the body which your benefactor has just deserted.
The centres of his vitality, still throbbing, still
measurely sentient, will receive you, a spirit. Then,
through its dying warmths and vibrations, you, re-
placing there its lost tenant, would know death as did
he—would die for the first time, naturally, as did he.
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 261
The process of your actual death (your first real and
natural death) might be either speedy or slow ; but
comparatively soon you would become emancipated
from all this fettering force which now so oppresses
and thwarts you. . . . These are my final words. For
occult yet weightiest reasons it is forbidden that I
speak further. . . . Farewell! And may every mood
and trick and caprice of what for better name you Earth-
dwellers would term accident, befriend and favour your
future quest! "
Guy waited, longer than he knew, wrapped in reverie.
. . . Then he willed to speed Earthwards, and as he
did so the darkness dropped from his eyes, and he
beheld himself whirled through space, as a comet or
meteor, if it had vision and thought, might so behold
itself.
XXXIV.
GAIN he was at Gowerleigh. He had been
beyond the rule of time, yet his absence, mea-
sured by time here on earth, had lasted for many
months. And when he again entered the home of
Violet a new torture waited him there.
It was the evening before her marriage with Ardilange.
He saw and heard the betrothed pair exchange their
brief farewells in a quiet little room, withdrawn from
the merriment and laughter of to-morrow's wedding
guests. Ardilange was to spend the night at a neigh-
bouring inn. His carriage waited outside, and as he
passed from the house into the pleasant April starlight,
a smiling troop, which included his happy bridesmaid
sisters, followed him with jests and jocund badinage.
Guy followed him, too. He entered the carriage
with him. There he placed himself at the side of
this man, his betrayer, his assassig.
The carriage moved on. Ardilange leaned from its
window and waved his hand merrily to the gay group
on the lamplit porch.
Guy clutched his throat with one ghostly hand.
"Monster! devil!" he tried to shout.
362
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
263
Ardilange sank back in the carriage. A smile lighted
his lips. For a moment he thought aloud.
"What a lucky fellow I am! No wonder that I
feel as devilish happy as I do !"
Soon he lit a cigarette, and unconsciously puffed
some of its smoke into the face of the spectre beside
him.
Guy, at this point, willed intensely that he might
take a visible shape. But to his burning desire there
was no response. Again and again he put forth the
effort. Each time only sickening failure answered him.
He followed Ardilange into his room at the inn.
He stayed beside him till he had gone to bed and had
dropped into the most peaceful sleep—a kind of sleep
that we are used to say the just and good alone enjoy.
All this time he had striven, striven. But it was futile.
Then he went out of the inn and haunted the lawns
of Gowerleigh. Its lighted windows were darkening,
one by one ; the guests were going to their repose.
He hovered near the casements of one room which
had formerly been Violet's. The curtains were jealously
drawn. With ease he could, of course, have set their
concealments at naught; but such an act, even if he
had been momentarily tempted by it, would have seemed
to him the ignoblest desecration of his love.
Meanwhile this swift-approaching marriage was a
new ordeal of affliction. To prevent it, to postpone
it, he would have faced a quinquennium, a decade, a
century of such pain as he had already endured.
For hours he poured out his soul in passionate
prayer. If only the privilege could be granted him
,264 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
of appearing to Violet and telling her what" a scorpion
was Aj^dilange 1 Though unutterably remote and un-
definable, had not a God been proven to him ? If, as
that strange Voice would have phrased it, God was the
prayer with which he himself prayed, then all the more
poignantly must his own entreaty appeal. " O Mystery
that Thou art," he supplicated, "be moved this once,
amid Thine awful mysticism, in my behalf! Thou that
art pardon, absolve my past irreverence! Thou that
art pity, assuage my present despair ! "
He saw the dawn gleam in furrows of pearl and
rose, till all the stars among whose silver labyrinths
he had wandered were lost from the firmament they
had gemmed.
Gowerleigh woke again, more populous with merry-
makers than perchance it had ever been before. The
festal preparations were recommenced. The day was
gloriously propitious. Love seemed to vitalise the
air of the dwelling, in whose nooks and halls and
corridors young men and maidens met, with smiles
and murmured sentences, as though breathing into
their youthful hearts ascertain delicate bridal contagion,
born of the coming nuptials.
Guy could never find Violet alone. He shadowed
her everywhere throughout the house, but always a
friend, an acquaintance, a servant, was at her side.
At last, when the hour came for her to don her
wedding attire, he began to feel the chance infinitesimal
that his prayers had been heeded.
While she stood, with completed costume, a light of
loveliness between her two attendants, and while the
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
265
bridesmaids were gathered in the hall just outside her
dressing-room, he determined that he would make the
effort of appearing to her, notwithstanding the presence
of the two women.
Here was his last chance, to warn her—-why not take
it ? Even if she could merely give one look at the
rebuking sorrow of his face, this might serve to keep
her from ah act of such fatal self-soilure.
Suddenly, with a dreary kind of joy, he saw that she
gently insisted on passing into the next chamber and
closing its door. Thither he followed her. Quickly
she opened the lower drawer of a small writing-desk,
and drew forth his own picture—a photograph which
he had given her soon after their betrothal.
" Guy," she murmured aloud, " poor Guy! You
loved me, and if you are looking at me now I pray
you to forgive me for any disloyalty that I may seem
to commit. You will understand everything, I am
sure—my own weak nature, my father's urgency, the
spell of attraction that Vincent has exerted over me! "
Then she kissed the photograph, and gazed down at
it through gathering tears.
Guy, at this moment, willed to become visible.
Having closed the drawer, she turned, and saw him.
" Guy ! "
" Yes, Violet! Do not fear. I have come to im-
plore of you. . . ."
There he ceased, for Violet's face had grown
deathly; her sweet blue eyes glared at him with
maniacal change. He drew nearer to her, and she
sprang backwards, shrieking. ...
266 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
Either the effect of her woful affright, or some other
potency not to be gauged, made him lapse again into
the imperceptibility he so loathed.
When the servants rushed in and found Violet prone
upon the floor, Guy's arms were about her, but these
women did not know it. Their own arms passed
through his as they raised her. She had already
ceased to breathe.
XXXV.
" "XT O, no ! Impossible ! "
1M " I-t's true."
" She'll revive soon."
" What caused it ? "
" Dead ? Absurd ! "
" Erskine's with her; he's a great physician, you
recollect."
" What does Erskine say ? "
" It isn't he; it's Bellwood."
" Well, they're both doctors."
" Pray, all be quiet! "
" The stairs are crowded to suffocation."
"The bridegroom's sister, you knoW. . . . She's
fainted. They're carrying her through the hall."
"Do make room."
" Were not those shrieks horrible ? "
" Some one else has fainted ? "
" Yes. . . . Don't push so."
"Let Lord Henry get to her."
" How white he looks ? "
" They've told him she's dead."
267
268
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
" I don't believe a word of it."
" Her wedding-day ! How ghastly ! "
" Was it heart disease ? "
" She was always frail and delicate."
"They say she's opened her eyes—that she's feeling
better."
" Ah, we shall have a wedding after all."
"No, no. . . : It's young Lady Hildegarde, who had
swooned and is coming to."
" Then there's no hope ?."
" Not the least hope of anybody ceasing to behave
like an idiot."
" Oh, Jack ! how can you joke at such a time ? "
" Then it is true ? "
" She's Oh, think ! On her bridal day ! "
" Dead ? "
" Dead!"
" Oh, no, no ! Let me see her! I will get past."
" They're locking the door 1"
" Let me go in."
" Let me."
" Dead !"
" I can't believe it! "
" Why will not somebody stop this uproar ? "
And so the babel of voices went on and on. . . .
Guy had already grasped the truth. Violet was
dead! . . .
His materialisation had brought with it acute suffer-
ing. Unconscious of just what lonely spot he had
sought, for days he lingered there, oppressed by an
almost comatose exhaustion.
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 269
"My prayers were answered," he told himself, on
reviving, with dismal sarcasm. " I appealed to her,
and my presence has killed her!"
He did not know, after regaining strength, whither
he sped or where he paused. He felt as if he had
murdered Violet, and his sense of guilt taught him a
new kind of pain. At last the thought of Ardilange
returned to him. After many wild and aimless wander-
ings among mountains and along sea-coasts, wherever
he could win from nature some sympathy with the
solemnities of his own moods, he returned to Gower-
leigh.
Ardilange was not there. Lord Henry was on the
eve of departure for that European spa at which he
afterwards died. The house seemed to exhale melan-
choly ; its windows were being barred ; the furniture
was covered with brown holland; the shadow of grief
and dejection, already so sombre, had begun to settle
still drearier about these walls in which laughter so
lately rang, and had been so cruelly checked.
He sought Ardilange, and soon found him in his
new London home. He had been ill, and had given
out among his friends that the cause of his illness was
nervous fatigue. This was quite true; the shock of
Violet's death had indeed prostrated him. But he bore
his illness with a dainty sort of resignation. The best
physicians attended him; he took the opiates they
prescribed for his sleeplessness and bad dreams; he
passed his days like the relatively rich invalid that
he was. Growing stronger, he had himself driven out
in the Park, leaning back on the cushions of his pretty
270
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
landau, and bowing and smiling to the friends who
passed him. His rosy and cherubic face had interest-
ingly paled and thinned. Everybody whom he knew,
and many who knew him only by name, had kind
words for his illness and misfortune. It was true of
him, as it is true of many dastardly hypocrites like
him, that he had almost never in his life made a real
foe.
But there was one foe who watched him, who
followed him, who read his inmost thoughts, who saw
how a complacent self-satisfaction augmented with his
convalescence, and who longed to front him, accuse
him, denounce him, shower scorn and disgust upon
him, brand him as the traitorous Iscariot that he was.
One evening, at his charming little new home in
Brooke Street, he gave a kind of reception which he
managed to make appear reluctant on his own part,
and to resemble a " surprise party," actuated by the
most delicate impulses of condolence.
A few smart young women of fashion dropped in
upon him, and a few men either modish, or talented, or
both. Two or three of the latter were painters, for
now that he was prosperous and yet had failed, himself,
to become a noted painter (either through laziness, or
mediocrity, or both) he could afford to say pleasant,
encouraging things to those whose brushes meant more
or less their bread.
They were all very gracious and gentle with him.
One lovely lady would not let him rise when his foot-
men served the refreshments, but sat beside him and
insisted 011 serving him with her own fair hands.
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
Another, who had a delicious golden voice, would not
sing till he asked from her a song, though handsome
young Lord Berrilcroft, an almost ridiculously marri-
ageable peer, had murmured many entreaties. The
host was petted, and made much of, and tenderly yet
discreetly compassionated by all his guests. And
when the hour of departure came (which they all voted
should be early, because u our poor, dear invalid, you
know, must not sit up late) geniality and congratula-
tion and every warmest wish for his early and complete
recovery were poured upon him in a flattering perfumed
shower.
Meanwhile Guy had witnessed all this dainty adula-
tion. He had looked into Ardilange's soul and seen
there only the pleasured vanity of a lawless egotism.
He perceived that the wound of Violet's loss had
already healed. He read the beginnings of new selfish
ambitions and designs.
" If to-night I could confront him ! " he thought.
Ardilange passed upstairs to his luxurious little
suite of chambers, where a valet waited to help him
prepare for bed. When he was quite alone, having
dismissed the servant, he went towards a table on
which stood a large vial, filled with a dark-red
liquid.
Guy willed to know the quality of this liquid, and
swiftly discovered it.
Ardilange, standing there in his pyjamas of soft
white silk, spilled from the vial into a glass, with
great care, three or four drops. Then he poured into
the glass water from a small crystal pitcher.
272 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
During this action Guy willed supremely to become
materialised before him. The effort cost him deepest
pain. Had it failed ? Yes ... no. In another
moment, just as Ardilange was lifting the glass to his
lips, he saw the man on whose ashes he had gazed in
the crematory at Bristol. His face turned whiter than
those ashes were then, and he reeled, clutching a brass
knob of the bedstead near him.
"You killed me," said Guy. "You are more than
a murderer. You are a monster of cowardice and
treachery. . . . Drink the contents of that vial."
Ardilange's eyes blazed horrified refusal. His nos-
trils widened and quivered; his mouth caught a
gnomish, dragged-down ugliness.
"Drink!" said Guy, and pointed to the vial.
The fear-maddened man tried to cry out. Only a
little husky rattle sounded in his throat. Impelled by a
stress totally irresistible, he moved nearer to the table.
" Drink!"
He stretched one hand towards the vial, and
clutched it.
" Drink ! "
He strove to articulate the word " Pity !" and failed.
Globules of sweat rolled down his livid cheeks. He
could not take his gaze from Guy's, which seemed the
mirror of his own contemptible past. In that mirror
he seemed to read every damning detail of his former
villainy.
Then, at last, he found a voice.
" Oh, in the name of human mercy, Guy Thyrle,
forgive me!"
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
" Drink ! " answered Guy.
He knew the spell he exerted to be one of terrorism
alone. If Ardilange broke this spell (as easily a braver
man might have done) Guy realised that he would be
helpless against such mutiny, since this " materialisa-
tion " had left him only a visible shadow, after all.
But Ardilange, with chattering teeth, stood enslaved
by the apparition he stared at. As he had lived a
hypocrite, so he died a coward. And the poisonous
drug, of which at first he had so guardedly taken only
a few jealous drops, was now swift to overthrow and
slay him.
# * # # #
No sooner had his arch-enemy ceased to live than
Guy felt how wholly futile had been all the triumph of
his vengeance.
" What really have I accomplished ?" he would
mourn, through later months and even years of hapless
wandering. " I cannot truly die; I cannot definitely
live. The hope held out to me by that veiled and far-
away Presence is only the dimmest of consolations.
Where can I find a mortal on earth who would sacrifice
himself to save me ? "
Then remembering that he could read the minds and
moods of his fellow-beings, he sought those whom
suicide had tempted through extremity of misery. But
somehow, in these attempts, fate was for ever against
him. For suicide, whether prompted by insanity or
excessive sorrow, is nearly always a precipitate, impul-
sive act. And how impracticable for him to appear
before some grief-gloomed man or woman (even if he
18
274 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
could control the difficulties which always opposed any
such manifestation) and ask of their overwearied or
distraught intelligences the patience needful for his
wild, uncanny recital! Still more impracticable, under
conditions thus darkly unprecedented, to beseech from
them the giving of that curious, blood-freezing boon !
After a certain interval, through motives born solely
of memorial sentiment, he found himself constantly
haunting the interior and grounds of Gowerleigh. The
tales told of his ghostly apparitions there partook some-
what of truth, though in several cases they were mere
imaginative falsehood. More than one of the tenants
who helped to give the house a bad name had none but
hysteric and baseless reasons for doing so.
But there were certain times when poor Guy did
seek to discover whether or no he could assume an
earthly shape. Often his endeavours proved wholly
vain. Now and then they succeeded, though briefly,
and hence all the eldritch repute that gathered about
Gowerleigh. It was not until Cecil Savernay came
there to sleep that an intensity of hope began to stir
him. . And yet even when Cecil, in the midnight
darkness and loneliness, called his name, he felt that
here was no fellow-creature capable of rendering him
the aid for which he yearned. Not Cecil, forsooth,
young, happily married, in love with life, and treasur-
ing like some golden largess of heritage the rich
promises and prophecies of his future! Still he strove,
passionately and pathetically, to answer the summons
of this bold young sceptic each time it was daringly
given. Daringly, and almost flippantly, too, yet with
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
275
an undercurrent of serious earnestness that might augur
benefit unborn.
But the struggling phantom could not break its
bonds. Again and again it willed, and strained, and
toiled. Impossible 1 Some electric, atmospheric, mag-
netic opposition dominated and denied. And so Cecil
left Gowerleigh the scoffer that he had entered it. . . .
With the coming of his dreamy, dubious, intro-
spective, and perhaps morbid-minded brother, all was
changed. Guy tingled with hope, now. His efforts
grew even more strenuous. Yet they failed and failed.
"It must be that I am eternally cursed," he medi-
tated, in his new misery. " This, no doubt, is meant
as my punishment for having caused Ardilange to kill
himself. Surely I am right; for here, in taunting
mockery, moves and sits and broods before me the
man whom my story might pierce with the most
precious and releasing pity ! . . ."
Raymond Savernay quitted Gowerleigh. He had
seen no ghost there.
An accident made him return. To Guy it was a
glorious accident. In the full sunshine of a certain (
day he was granted what all - the weird influences of
darkness had refused to him. He was permitted to
achieve an incarnation more permanent and more
distinctive than any which had ever yet been granted
him.
Raymond Savernay heard his story. And all which
heretofore has been chronicled is the story that
Raymond Savernay heard.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
LEVERETT LASCOMBE had listened for nearly
three hours to Cecil's account of what the ghost
of Guy Thyrle had told his brother.
" You're tired/' he said, as Cecil finished.
"Yes . . . no," came the faltered answer.
" Let me get you something to lessen your fatigue."
. . . As Cecil leaned back in his chair, with eyes
transiently closed, a glass was put to his lips.
He drank the contents of the glass; it quickly
revived him.
" Well, Leverett," he said, with re-brightened de-
meanour, "what have you to tell me now?"
" Tell you ? "
"Ah, Leverett," bridled Cecil, "you can't define all
this as a mere dream on my brother's part 1 "
" I cannot possibly define it as anything else."
Cecil rose, with a long, soft sigh.
" You've been very good to listen, anyway," he
murmured.
" Very good ? " retorted Dr. Lascombe. He sprang
from his chair and caught both of Cecil's hands. " I've
276
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
2 77
listened to the whole thing, dear boy, with immense
interest."
Cecil nodded. " And you're quite unconvinced ? "
Lascombe laid a hand on the shoulder of his friend.
"Unconvinced! Oh, Cecil!"
" I see. It's not even to be discussed with you."
" No, no. It's to be discussed immeasurably, if you
please," answered Leverett Lascombe. " It's to be
discussed scientifically, I mean, in a way that would
cause both of us to stop at the insurmountable
frontiers."
" Frontiers ? Of what ? "
" Human knowledge."
" And then all Ray's experience was "
" Cerebral hallucination."
" You don't believe he ever saw the ghost of Guy
Thyrle?"
" No."
" You don't believe there is any ghost of Guy
Thyrle ? "
" No."
" You think Ray dreamed this astonishing story ? "
" I am certain he did."
" Certain, Leverett ? Take care of your science."
Lascombe faintly laughed. " Oh, science always
can take care of itself."
" But—good heavens, man !—where did the entire
astonishing and baleful and thrilling tale originate ? "
" In a diseased brain—that brain your poor brother's."
Cecil tossed his head almost angrily. " Is a diseased
brain so logical ? "
27B THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
" Study, as I have done, the so-called ' logic' of
lunatics. Its accuracy, within certain well-defined
limits, would surprise you."
"Then you mean that Ray's declaration is a mere
figment of madness ? "
" I have not seen him—I have not studied his case."
" But you denounce what I have narrated as lunacy ? "
" No. I declare what you have narrated to be the
product of a diseased brain. There is a difference.
Your brother's picturesque and splendid hallucination
may vanish—or may not—under careful medical treat-
ment."
" Picturesque ! Splendid ! You grant that much ?
Is the whole tale, then (romantic and sinister and
frightful and humanly appealing), to be nullified and
dissipated by bromides of potassium, lithia, or
chloral ? "
"I wish it could be," said Leverett Lascombe, with
gentle yet ardent sincerity.
" You wish it could be! Then you mean, Leverett
? »
" That there are certain forms of dementia which we
poor leeches can never cure. We can only watch- their
development and feel ourselves powerless to arrest
them."
Cecil gnawed his lips. After a slight silence he
broke forth,—
" Leverett Lascombe, I honestly believe of you that
if the angel Gabriel appeared in this room, wings,
trumpet, and all, you would insist on his spuriousness,
hypocrisy, humbug!"
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 279
Lascombe spoke a little sadly, then. " Cecil, Cecil,
I should want to find out whether his wings had a
clear anatomical connection with his dorsal structure—
why not ? I should want to find out whether or no
his trumpet were of clearly analysable metal—why not ?
And I should persist in my desire to find out—why
not ?—whether or no his alleged ' angelhood' were a
masquerade or an actuality."
" I see," muttered Cecil, as if he did not see at all.
..." It's growing late. Will you go with me to
Curzon Street ? "
" Willingly."
" And then you will begin a course of treatment with
Ray ? "
" There is nothing I will not try to do for him."
" And you think an asylum positively requisite ? "
" When I have seen him I will tell you."
" How can you tell me, dear Leverett, after merely
having seen him ? "
" There are signs. The eye gives them more than
any other facial feature. Then, of course, I must speak
with him. There is so much in that. Hallucination
betrays itself. We always want to get at the uncon-
scious disclosure of it. Your brother might say to me
a hundred sane things. The hundred-and-first might
prove him mad."
Cecil stared, for a moment, at the floor. Suddenly
lifting his head, he questioned,—
" Do you persist in believing all I have recounted to
you a mere coinage of Ray's fancy ? "
With his placid face firm as iron, Leverett Lascombe
28o the ghost of guy thyrle.
stayed for several minutes unresponsive. Then he
shrugged his shoulders, and curtly answered,-—
" Let's call a cab and drive to Curzon Street. "
**#'#*
No sooner had Cecil reached home than his wife
flew to him in the hall. Her face was a tragedy of
pallor.
" Oh, Cecil, such a frightful thing has happened !"
Her husband saw how she was trembling, and
caught her tightly in his arms.
" Vivien," he said, u try to be calmer."
" Yes—yes—I will try, Cecil. But, Ray—poor, dear,
reckless Ray. . . . "
Then there were other words from Vivien—words
gasped and shivered and sighed and sobbed.
Lascombe understood before Cecil did.
" Pray, Mrs. Savernay," he asked, " where is the
room ? "
Vivien told. " The shot," she had already said to
Cecil," sounded scarcely five minutes ago. I was
wondering what kept you. I didn't know that
Raymond was in the house. I was so tired after
Lady Archie's garden-party that I told my maid to let
me rest a little till you came. I lay on the lounge in
my dressing-room. I must have fallen asleep, and I
am almost sure that the shot wakened me."
Four or five servants barred Lascombe's entrance to
the room where Raymond Savernay lay, with a red
bullet-wound in his right temple.
" Send them all away," he said to Cecil, who soon
joined him while he stood at the suicide's couch.
THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE. 281
" Make them go. . . . That's right. Close and lock
the door. . . . Now we're alone together, are we
not ? "
" Yes," fell from Cecil. In another instant he flung
himself beside the form of his brother. A pistol
gleamed just below Raymond's drooped hand. From
his head the blood oozed in a tiny stream.
" Ray ! Ray ! My brother ! You broke your word
to me ! You killed yourself to save Guy Thyrle ! "
Lascombe's fingers were on the pulse of the fallen
man.
" He is dead, Cecil."
" Ah, horrible, horrible 1" Cecil cried. He kissed
the brow of his brother again and again, kneeling
bowed beside the couch.
Lascombe presently plucked him by the sleeve.
" Come, how, Cecil," he said, " be a man. You
must face this bad, hard thing—you must"
And he drew Cecil to a remote part of the room,
forcing him to seat himself, and standing over him,
grave and collected.
" Ray's really dead ? " Cecil moaned.
" Beyond all doubt."
" He died, then, to save that unhappy wandering
spirit from its dreadful doom ! "
Leverett Lascombe smiled, very faintly, and then
gave a quick shake of the head. " He died, Cecil,
because his unhappy hallucination drove him to death.
That is all."
" Ah, Leverett, you believe it !"
" Absolutely."
282
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
"And you still think Guy Thyrle's story all a
myth ? "
" I know it to be. . . . Come, now, Cecil, we must
not leave him here a minute longer. ... You under-
stand me. . . . There are processes not merely
mortuary, but legal as well "
" Leverett! Look ! "
Cecil had sprung from his seat, gripping Lascombe's
arm.
The form of Raymond was slowly lifting itself from
the couch.
"Good God!" broke from Lascombe; "he's alive,
then !"
Cecil darted to his brother's side.
" Ray! Ray! " he exclaimed. Then he drew back a
step or two, shuddering audibly.
As Lascombe joined him, Cecil went on, in a voice
strangled by tremors,—
" Somehow, the look isn't Raymond's. It's his face,
Leverett, but not his look."
" Right," said a weak, smothered voice, issuing from
Raymond Savernay's* lips, yet sounding to the ears
of his brother utterly unfamiliar. " I am not he—I am
not your brother. I am the spirit of Guy Thyrle, and
your brother, with sublime generosity, has given me his
body to die in."
Another second, and the speaker's eyes closed. His
head fell backwards on the pillow of the couch, and his
white face became suddenly illumined by a smile of the
richest gladness.
Cecil never forgot that smile. It haunted him for
THE GHOST OF GUY THY RLE.
283
years afterwards; it glimmered upon him through the
gathering darkness of his own death. Its vanishment
seemed to him like the extinction of some splendid
morning star in brightening deeps of dawn. Its tri-
umph, its exultation, its gratitude, its holy suggestive-
ness of release and relief and escape and expectancy
and penitence and beatitude—dwelt with him and
thrilled him through all his after life.
When Lascombe said that death had now really
come to Raymond, and that the semblance of it had
deceived him at first, and that what then happened had
been the deluding coma which so often follows a
cerebral injury, whether by concussion or bullet-wound,
Cecil ^simply answered, with a quiet nod and a sad
little smile,—
" Oh, poor Ray was dead when we entered the room
and found him there on the couch. I'm certain of it."
"But, Cecil!" urged Lascombe. "You can't cling
to such an absurd theory! Now, dear boy, you carit!n
" I shall cling to it all my remaining days, Leverett."
" What ? That Guy Thyrle really spoke those
words? That it was not all the persistence of the
hallucination in your, brother up to the moment of his
death ? "
" You did not hear Raymond's story from his own
lips, Leverett, as did I."
"That would have made no difference—none what-
ever," exclaimed Lascombe, with unwonted heat. " Ah,
Cecil," he pursued reproachfully, " from such intellects
as yours we have a right to expect scorn of superstition,
not encouragement of it! "
284 THE GHOST OF GUY THYRLE.
Cecil made no answer. He had folded his arms
and drooped his head.
"Of what are you thinking?" presently said
Lascombe, laying a hand on his shoulder.
Cecil started, and looked up into his friend's clear,
unswerving eyes.
" Thinking ? I ? . . . Oh, I was merely thinking
what a big-hearted, humanitarian, altruistic fellow that
dear dead brother of mine has shown himself! Indeed,
indeed, he was the saviour of Guy Thyrle !"
Lascombe heaved an amical sigh, yet one full of
intolerance, impatience, even ridicule.
"Ah, you're incorrigible! . . . Still, you'll change.
It's only natural, I suppose, that you should feel as you
do. Trust me, in a little while your entire mental view
of the matter will radically alter."
"Never!" replied Cecil.
And, as already recorded, it never did alter, from
then till his dying hour.
THE END.
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