by A. A. Milne
"Shall I tell him?" suggested Dick.
"No, let him remember. He can remember his Infant of Prague; his mind is full of that again. Why should he not be able to remember my baby son?"
"Oh, lor!" sighed Dr. Dick. "Why not put that poser to Ronnie direct, instead of putting it to me? Forgive me for saying so, but you are suffering just now from a reaction, after the terrible strain through which you have passed. And Ronnie is wretched too, because he remembers how you let fly at him that evening, and he thinks you really meant it."
"I did," said Helen. "Of course, had I known how ill he was, poor old boy, I should have been more patient. But I have a little son to consider now, as well as Ronnie. I did think him selfish, and I do."
"My dear angel," said Dr. Dick, "we are all selfish, every mother's son of us; and it is you blessed women who make us so."
She looked at him, with softening eyes. "You are not selfish, Dick," she said.
"I am," he answered; "and a long chalk worse than Ronnie. I combine ambition with my selfishness. I jolly well mean to get to the top of the tree, and I don't care how I get there. I down every one who dares stand in my way; or—I use them as stepping-stones. There! Isn't that a worse Upas tree than poor old Ronnie's? Mine is a life untouched by love, or any gentler feelings. All that sort of thing was killed in me when I was quite a little chap. It is the story of a broken halo. Perhaps I'll tell it you some day. Meanwhile, this being Christmas Eve and not Ash Wednesday, I'll make no more confessions. Don't you want to hear the result of my psychic investigations, concerning our mirror experiences?"
"Exceedingly," said Helen. "Have you time to tell me now?"
"Heaps of time. It won't take long. Last night I told the whole story to a man who makes a special study of these matters, and knows more about things psychic than any other man in England. The Brands asked me to dinner and arranged to have him also. After dinner he and I went down alone to the doctor's consulting room, and talked the whole thing out. I was careful to mention no names. You don't want to be credited with a haunted room at the Grange, neither do we want Ronnie's name mixed up with psychical phenomena. Now I will give you this man's opinion and explanation, exactly as he gave it to me. Only, remember, I pass it on as his. I do not necessarily endorse it.
"He holds that inanimate objects, such as beds, walls, cupboards, staircases, have a power of receiving, absorbing and retaining impressions transmitted to them through contact with human minds in extreme conditions of stress and tension. This would especially be the case with intimately personal things, such as musical instruments, or favourite chairs. Old rooms and ancient furniture might retain these impressions for centuries; and, under certain circumstances, transmit them to any mind, with which they came in contact, happening to be strung up to the right key to respond to the psychic impression. He considers that this theory accounts for practically all ghost stories and haunted rooms, passages, and staircases. It reduces all apparitions to the subjective rather than the objective plane; in other words the spirit of a murdered man does not return at certain times to the room in which he was done to death; but his agonised mind, in its last conscious moments, left an impress upon that room which produces a subjective picture of the scene, or part of the scene, upon any mind psychically en rapport with that impress. I confess this idea appeals to me. It accounts for the undoubted fact that certain old rooms are undeniably creepy; also that apparitions, unconnected with actual flesh and blood, have been seen by sane and trustworthy witnesses. It does away with the French word for ghost—revenant. There is no such thing as a 'comer-back,' or an 'earth-bound spirit.' Personally, I do not believe in immortality, in the usually accepted sense of the word; but I have always felt that were there such a thing as a disembodied spirit, it would have something better to do than to walk along old corridors, frightening housemaids! But, to come to the point, concerning our own particular experience.
"I carefully told him every detail. He believes that probably the old Florentine chair and the 'cello had been in conjunction before, and had both played their part in the scene which was re-acted in the mirror. If so, poor old Ron was jolly well in for it, seated in the chair, and holding the 'cello. His already over-excited brain found itself caught between them. The fitful firelight and the large mirror supplied excellent mediums for the visualisation of the subjective picture. Of course, we do not yet know what Ronnie saw. I trust we never shall. It is to be hoped he has forgotten it. Had you and I seen nothing, we should unquestionably have dismissed the whole thing as merely a delirious nightmare of Ronnie's unhinged brain.
"But the undoubted fact remains that we each saw, reflected in that mirror, objects which were not at that moment in the room. In fact we saw the past reflected, rather than the present. My psychic authority considers that both our impressions came to us through Ronnie's mind, and were already fading, owing to the fact that he had become unconscious. I, coming in later than you, merely saw the Florentine chair in position. All else in my view of the reflection appertained to the actual present, into which the long-ago past was then rapidly merging. But you, coming in a few moments sooner, and being far more en rapport with the spirit of the scene, saw the tall man in a red cloak—whom you call the Avenger—strangling the girl. By the way, why do you call him the Avenger?"
"Because," said Helen, slowly, "there was murder in the cruel face of the woman, and there was a dagger in her hand. She had struck her blow before he appeared upon the scene. I know this, because it was the flare of his crimson cloak, as he rushed in, which first caught my eye, in the firelight, and made me look into the mirror at all. Before that I was intent on Ronnie. The Avenger seized the woman from behind; I saw his brown hands on the whiteness of her throat. Grief and horror were on his face, as he looked over her shoulder, and past the chair, at the prostrate heap upon the floor."
"Which heap," said Dick, trying to speak lightly, "was our poor Ronnie."
"No," said Helen, gazing straight before her into the fire, "the heap upon the floor was not Ronnie."
"But—I am positive!—I saw it myself! I saw you kneeling beside it. I helped to sort it, afterwards. The actual heap on the floor was the broken chair, Ronnie mixed up with it; and, on top of both, that unholy Infant, whose precocious receptivity is responsible for the entire business. I exonerate the Florentine chair; I exonerate poor Ronnie. I shall always maintain that that confounded 'cello worked the whole show, out of its own unaided tummy!"
But Helen did not laugh. She did not even smile. "The heap on the floor was not Ronnie," she repeated firmly, "nor was I kneeling beside it. The Italian chair had not fallen over. Not a single thing appertaining to the present, was reflected in the picture as I first saw it. Dick, there was a conclusion to my vision of which I have never told you."
"Oh, lor!" said Dick. "When I guaranteed the psychic chap that I was putting him in full possession of every detail!"
"I am sorry, Dick. But until this moment I have never felt able to tell you. I cannot do so now, unless you are nice."
"I am nice," said Dick, "very nice! Tell me quick."
"Well, as I knelt transfixed, watching—the heap on the floor moved and arose. It was a slight dark man, with a white face, and a mass of tumbled black hair. He lifted from off his breast as he got up, a violoncello. He did not look at the woman, nor at the man in the crimson cloak; he stood staring, as if petrified with grief and dismay, at his 'cello. Following his eyes, I saw a dark jagged stab, piercing its right breast, just above the f hole. The anguish on the 'cellist's face, was terrible to see. Then—oh, Dick, I don't know how to tell you!"
"Go on, Helen," he said, gently.
"Then he turned from the 'cello, and looked at me; and, Dick, it was the soul of Ronnie—my Ronnie—in deepest trouble over his Infant of Prague, which looked at me through those deep sad eyes. I cannot explain to you how I knew it! He was totally unlike my big fair Ronnie, but—it was the soul of Ronnie, in great distress, looking at me! The moment I realised thi
s, I seemed set free from the past. The 'cellist, the woman, the Avenger, all vanished instantly. I saw myself reflected, I saw you, I saw the studio; I saw Ronnie on the floor. I turned to him at once, lifted the 'cello from his breast, and drew his head into my lap."
"Was there a jagged hole—"
"No, not a scratch. The stab belonged to a century ago. But, listen Dick! Several days later, when I had a moment in which to remember Ronnie's poor Infant of Prague, I examined it in a good light, and found the place where the hole made by that dagger had been skilfully mended."
"Lor!" said Dr. Dick. "We're getting on! Don't you think you and I and the Infant might put our heads together, and write a psychic book! But now—seriously. Do you really believe Ronnie was once a slim, pale person, with a shock of black hair? And if he and his Infant lived together in past ages, where were you and I? Are we altogether out of it? Or are you the lady with the dagger, and I the noble party in the flaming cloak?"
She smiled, and a look of quiet peace was in her eyes.
"Dick," she said, "I am not troubled at all about the past. My whole concern is with the present; my earnest looking forward is to the future. And remember, that which set me completely free to think only of the present, was when my Ronnie's soul looked out at me from that strange vision of the past. I cannot say exactly what I believe. But I know my entire responsibility is to the present; my hope and confidence are towards the future. I realise, as I have never realised before, the deep meaning of the words: 'Lord, Thou hast been our Dwelling-place, in all generations.' I am content to leave it at that."
Dick sat silent; sobered, impressed, by a calm confidence of faith, which was new to him.
Then he said: "Good for you, Helen, that you can take it so. Personally, I believe in nothing which I cannot fully explain and understand. 'Faith,' in your sense of the word, has no place in my vocabulary. I was a very small boy when my faith took to itself wings and flew away; and, curiously enough, it was while I was singing lustily, in the village church at Dinglevale: 'As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end, Amen'!"
"It will come back again," said Helen. "Dick, I know it will come back. Some day you will come to me and you will say: 'It has come back.' The thrusting hand and the prying finger are the fashion nowadays, I know. But the grand old faith which will win out in the end, is the faith which stands with clasped hands, in deepest reverence of belief; and, lifting adoring eyes, is not ashamed to say to the revelation of a Risen Christ: 'My Lord and my God!'"
Dick stirred uneasily in his chair.
"We have got off the subject," he said, "and it's about time we looked up Ronnie. But, first of all: how much of all this do you mean to tell Ronnie?"
"Nothing whatever, if I can help it," replied Helen. "So far as I know, I hope, after this morning, never to mention the subject again."
"I think you are wise. And now let me give you a three-fold bit of advice. Smash the mirror; burn the chair; brain the Infant!"
Helen laughed. "No, no, Dick!" she said. "I can do none of those things. I must take tenderest care of Ronnie's Infant. I have had his valuable old chair carefully mended; and I must not let him think I fear the mirror."
"You're a brave woman," said Dick. "Believing what you do, you're a brave woman to live in the house with that mirror. Or, perhaps, it comes of believing so much. A certainty of confidence, which asks no questions, must be to some extent a fortifying thing. By the way, you will remember that the long rigmarole I gave you was not my own explanation, but the expert's? Mine is considerably simpler and shorter. In fact, it can be summed up in three words."
"What is your explanation, Dick?"
"Whisky and soda," said Dr. Dick, bravely. "You mixed it stiffer than you knew. I was dead beat, and had had no food. I have always been a fairly abstemious chap; in my profession we have to be: woe betide the man who isn't. But since I saw that chair standing on its four legs in the mirror, when it was lying broken on the floor in reality, I have not touched a drop of alcohol. There! I make you a present of that for your next temperance meeting. Now let's go out and buck Ronnie up. Remember, he'll feel jolly flat for a bit, with no temperature. Temperature is a thing you miss, when it has become a habit."
"He Never Knew!"
Ronnie saw Dick off by the mid-day train.
After the train had begun to move, Dick leaned from the window, and said suddenly: "Ronnie! talk to your wife about her Leipzig letter, and—the kid, you know."
Ronnie kept pace with the train long enough to say: "I wish you wouldn't call it the 'kid,' Dick; it is the 'Infant.' And Helen declines to talk of it."
Then he dropped behind, and Dick flung himself into a corner of his compartment, with a face of comic despair. "Merciful heavens," he said, "slay that Infant!"
Meanwhile Ronnie was saying to a porter: "When is the next train for town?"
"One fifty-five, sir."
"Then I have no chance now of catching the three o'clock from town, for Hollymead?"
"Not from town, sir. But there is a way, by changing twice, which gets you across country, and you pick up the three o'clock all right at Huntingford, four ten."
"Are you sure, my man? I was told there was no way across country."
"The one fifty-five is the only train in the day by which you can do it, sir. I happen to know, because I have a sister lives at Hollymead, so I've done it m'self. If trains aren't late, you hit off the three o'clock at Huntingford."
"Thanks," said Ronnie, noting down particulars. Then he walked rapidly back to the hotel.
"I can't stand it," he said. "I shall bolt! With me off her hands, she can go and have a jolly Christmas at the Dalmains. She is always welcome there. I must get away alone and think matters out. I know everything is all wrong, and yet I don't exactly know what has come between us. I only know I am wretched, and so is she. It is still the poison of the Upas. If I knew why she suddenly considered me utterly, preposterously, altogether, selfish, I would do my level best to put it right. But I don't."
He found Helen in the hall, anxiously watching the door. She took up a paper, as he came in.
"Helen," he said, "do you mind if we lunch punctually at one o'clock? I am going out before two."
"Why, certainly we will," said Helen. "You must have had a very early breakfast, Ronnie. But don't overdo, darling. Remember what Dick said. Shall I come with you?"
"I would rather go alone," said Ronnie. "I want to think things over."
She rose and stood beside him.
"Ronnie dear, we seem to have lost all count of days. But, as a matter of fact, to-morrow is Christmas Day. Would you like to go home this afternoon? We can order a car for two o'clock, and be at the Grange for tea. Ronnie, wouldn't it be rather lovely? Think of the little cosy tea-table, and your own especial chair, and the soft lamp-light—"
She paused abruptly. The mental picture had recalled to both the evening on which they last stood together in that golden lamplight.
Ronnie hesitated, looking at the floor. Then he raised his eyes to Helen's. "I don't think I could bear it," he said, turned from her quickly, and went upstairs.
In his room he scribbled a note.
"My wife—I am awfully sorry, but I simply had to bolt. Don't be alarmed. I have gone home to the Grange. I believe, when I am by myself in the house where we spent the three years I thought so perfect and so happy, I shall find out what is the matter; I shall get to the very root of the Upas tree.
"I know I somehow hurt you horribly on the night I reached home, by asking you to come to the studio to hear me play my 'cello; but, before God, I haven't the faintest idea why!
"You would not have said what you did, had you known I was ill; but neither would you have said it, unless it had been true. If it was true then, it is true now. If it is true now, we can't spend Christmas Day together.
"I want you to go to the Dalmains by motor, as soon as you find this, and have a jolly, restful time with them. You look worn out.<
br />
"RONNIE."
"P.S.—I am obliged to leave this in my room. I hope you will find it there. I don't even know where your room is, Helen, in this beastly hotel."
Ronnie considered his postscript; then crossed out "beastly" and substituted "large." But "beastly" still showed, pathetically, beneath the line. And, by-and-by, the heart of Ronnie's wife, from which all clouds had suddenly rolled away, understood it, and wept over it, and kissed it; and thought "beastly" a dear word! It was so quaintly like Ronnie to substitute "large" for "beastly."
All clouds had rolled away, before Helen read the note; for this is what had happened.
Ronnie had excused himself when lunch was half over.
Helen let him go, trying to act on Dr. Dick's advice not to worry him by seeming to watch or follow him.
So she sat on alone, finishing luncheon, and thus did not see Ronnie walk out of the front door, carrying his bag.
Soon afterwards she passed into the hall, and sat dipping into the papers and thinking over her talk with Dick.
Presently a page stepped up to her with a letter on a salver.
Her heart stood still as she saw the stamp, the post-mark, and the writing. It was from Aubrey Treherne, forwarded from Hollymead.
Helen was sorely tempted for a moment to burn it unread. She had suffered so much through a former letter in that handwriting. She suddenly realised how cruelly Aubrey's words about Ronnie had, in the light of Ronnie's subsequent behaviour, eaten into her soul.
She looked at the fire. She rose and moved towards it, the letter in her hand.
Then better counsels prevailed.
She went slowly upstairs to her sitting-room, closed the door, sat down, and opened Aubrey's letter.
It contained a smaller envelope sealed, on which was written: "Read letter first."
She opened the folded sheets.
"DEAR HELEN,
