The old mansion echoed with their laughter, with their
delightful and original pranks. Mr. Orth knew nothing of
children, therefore all the pranks he invented were as
original as his faculty. The little girl clung to his hand or
knee as they both followed the adventurous course of
their common idol, the boy. When Orth realized how
alive they were, he opened each room of his home to
them in turn, that evermore he might have sacred and
poignant memories with all parts of the stately mansion
The Bell in the Fog
109
where he must dwell alone to the end. He selected their
bedrooms, and hovered over them— not through infantile disorders, which were beyond even his imagination
— but through those painful intervals incident upon the
enterprising spirit of the boy and the devoted obedience
of the girl to fraternal command. He ignored the second
Lord Teignmouth; he was himself their father, and he
admired himself extravagantly for the first time; art had
chastened him long since. Oddly enough, the children
had no mother, not even the memory of one.
He wrote the book more slowly than was his wont, and
spent delightful hours pondering upon the chapter of the
morrow. He looked forward to the conclusion with a sort
of terror, and made up his mind that when the inevitable
last word was written he should start at once for Hom-
burg. Incalculable times a day he went to the gallery, for
he no longer had any desire to write the children out of
his mind, and his eyes hungered for them. They were his
now. It was with an effort that he sometimes humorously
reminded himself that another man had fathered them,
and that their little skeletons were under the choir of the
chapel. Not even for peace of mind would he have
descended into the vaults of the lords of Chillingsworth
and looked upon the marble effigies of his children.
Nevertheless, when in a superhumorous mood, he dwelt
upon his high satisfaction in having been enabled by his
great-aunt to purchase all that was left of them.
For two months he lived in his fool’s paradise, and
then he knew that the book must end. He nerved himself
to nurse the little girl through her wasting illness, and
when he clasped her hands, his own shook, his knees
trembled. Desolation settled upon the house, and he
wished he had left one comer of it to which he could
retreat unhaunted by the child’s presence. He took long
tramps, avoiding the river with a sensation next to panic.
It was two days before he got back to his table, and then
he had made up his mind to let the boy live. To kill him
off, too, was more than his augmented stock of human
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nature could endure. After all, the lad’s death had been
purely accidental, wanton. It was just that he should
live— with one of the author’s inimitable suggestions of
future greatness; but, at the end, the parting was almost
as bitter as the other. Orth knew then how men feel when
their sons go forth to encounter the world and ask no
more of the old companionship.
The author’s boxes were packed. He sent the manuscript to his publisher an hour after it was finished— he could not have given it a final reading to have saved it
from failure— directed his secretary to examine the
proof under a microscope, and left the next morning for
Homburg. There, in inmost circles, he forgot his children. He visited in several of the great houses of the Continent until November; then returned to London to
find his book the literary topic of the day. His secretary
handed him the reviews; and for once in a way he read
the finalities of the nameless. He found himself hailed as
a genius, and compared in astonished phrases to the
prodigiously clever talent which the world for twenty
years had isolated under the name of Ralph Orth. This
pleased him, for every writer is human enough to wish to
be hailed as a genius, and immediately. Many are, and
many wait; it depends upon the fashion of the moment,
and the needs and bias of those who write of writers.
Orth had waited twenty years; but his past was bedecked
with the headstones of geniuses long since forgotten. He
was gratified to come thus publicly into his estate, but
soon reminded himself that all the adulation of which a
belated world was capable could not give him one thrill
of the pleasure which the companionship of that book
had given him, while creating. It was the keenest pleasure
in his memory, and when a man is fifty and has written
many books, that is saying a great deal.
He allowed what society was in town to lavish honors
upon him for something over a month, then cancelled all
his engagements and went down to Chillingsworth.
The Bell in the Fog
111
His estate was in Hertfordshire, that county of gentle
hills and tangled lanes, of ancient oaks and wide wild
heaths, of historic houses, and dark woods, and green
fields innumerable— a Wordsworthian shire, steeped in
the deepest peace of England. As Orth drove towards his
own gates he had the typical English sunset to gaze upon,
a red streak with a church spire against it. His woods
were silent. In the fields, the cows stood as if conscious of
their part. The ivy on his old gray towers had been young
with his children.
He spent a haunted night, but the next day stranger
happenings began.
II
He rose early, and went for one of his long walks.
England seems to cry out to be walked upon, and Orth,
like others of the transplanted, experienced to the full the
country’s gift of foot-restlessness and mental calm. Calm
flees, however, when the ego is rampant, and today, as
upon others too recent, Orth’s soul was as restless as his
feet. He had walked for two hours when he entered the
wood of his neighbor’s estate, a domain seldom honored
by him, as it, too, had been bought by an American— a
flighty hunting widow, who displeased the fastidious
taste of the author. He heard children’s voices, and
turned with the quick prompting of retreat.
As he did so, he came face-to-face, on the narrow path,
with a little girl. For the moment he was possessed by the
most hideous sensation which can visit a man’s being—
abject terror. He believed that body and soul were
disintegrating. The child before him was his child, the
original of a portrait in which the artist, dead two
centuries ago, had missed exact fidelity, after all. The
difference, even his rolling vision took note, lay in the
warm pure living whiteness and the deeper spiritual
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Gertrude Atherton
suggestion of the child in his path. Fortunately for his
self-respect, the surrender lasted but a moment. The
little girl spoke.
“You look real sick,” she said. “Shall I l
ead you
home?”
The voice was soft and sweet, but the intonation, the
vernacular, were American, and not of the highest class.
The shock was, if possible, more agonizing than the
other, but this time Orth rose to the occasion.
“Who are you?” he demanded, with asperity. “What is
your name? Where do you live?”
The child smiled, an angelic smile, although she was
evidently amused. “I never had so many questions asked
me all at once,” she said. “But I don’t mind, and I’m glad
you’re not sick. I’m Mrs. Jennie Root’s little girl— my
father’s dead. My name is Blanche— you are sick! No?—
and I live in Rome, New York State. We’ve come over
here to visit pa’s relations.”
Orth took the child’s hand in his. It was very warm
and soft.
“Take me to your mother,” he said, firmly; “now, at
once. You can return and play afterwards. And as I
wouldn’t have you disappointed for the world, I’ll send
to town today for a beautiful doll.”
The little girl, whose face had fallen, flashed her
delight, but walked with great dignity beside him. He
groaned in his depths as he saw they were pointing for
the widow’s house, but made up his mind that he would
know the history of the child and of all her ancestors, if
he had to sit down at table with his obnoxious neighbor.
To his surprise, however, the child did not lead him into
the park, but towards one of the old stone houses of the
tenantry.
“Pa’s great-great-great-grandfather lived there,” she
remarked, with all the American’s pride of ancestry.
Orth did not smile, however. Only the warm clasp of the
hand in his, the soft thrilling voice of his still mysterious
companion, prevented him from feeling as if moving
The Bell in the Fog
113
through the mazes of one of his own famous ghost
stories.
The child ushered him into the dining-room, where an
old man was seated at the table reading his Bible. The
room was at least eight hundred years old. The ceiling
was supported by the trunk of a tree, black, and probably
petrified. The windows had still their diamond panes,
separated, no doubt, by the original lead. Beyond was a
large kitchen in which were several women. The old
man, who looked patriarchal enough to have laid the
foundations of his dwelling, glanced up and regarded the
visitor without hospitality. His expression softened as
his eyes moved to the child.
“Who ’ave ye brought?” he asked. He removed his
spectacles. “Ah!” He rose, and offered the author a chair.
At the same moment, the women entered the room.
“Of course you’ve fallen in love with Blanche, sir,”
said one of them. “Everybody does.”
“Yes, that is it. Quite so.” Confusion still prevailing
among his faculties, he clung to the naked truth. “This
little girl has interested and startled me because she
bears a precise resemblance to one of the portraits in
Chillingsworth— painted about two hundred years ago.
Such extraordinary likenesses do not occur without
reason, as a rule, and, as I admired my portrait so deeply
that I have written a story about it, you will not think it
unnatural if I am more than curious to discover the
reason for this resemblance. The little girl tells me that
her ancestors lived in this very house, and as my little girl
lived next door, so to speak, there undoubtedly is a
natural reason for the resemblance.”
His host closed the Bible, put his spectacles in his
pocket, and hobbled out of the house.
“He’ll never talk of family secrets,” said an elderly
woman, who introduced herself as the old man’s daughter, and had placed bread and milk before the guest.
“There are secrets in every family, and we have ours, but
he’ll never tell those old tales. All I can tell you is that an
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Gertrude Atherton
ancestor of little Blanche went to wreck and ruin because
of some fine lady’s doings, and killed himself. The story
is that his boys turned out bad. One of them saw his
crime, and never got over the shock; he was foolish like,
after. The mother was a poor scared sort of creature, and
hadn’t much influence over the other boy. There seemed
to be blight on all the man’s descendants, until one of
them went to America. Since then, they haven’t prospered, exactly, but they’ve done better, and they don’t drink so heavy.”
“They haven’t done so well,” remarked a worn
patient-looking woman. Orth typed her as belonging to
the small middle-class of an interior town of the eastern
United States.
“You are not the child’s mother?”
“Yes, sir. Everybody is surprised; you needn’t apologize. She doesn’t look like any of us, although her brothers and sisters are good enough for anybody to be
proud of. But we all think she strayed in by mistake, for
she looks like any lady’s child, and, of course, we’re only
middle-class.”
Orth gasped. It was the first time he had ever heard a
native American use the term middle-class with a personal application. For the moment, he forgot the child.
His analytical mind raked in the new specimen. He
questioned, and learned that the woman’s husband had
kept a hat store in Rome, New York; that her boys were
clerks, her girls in stores, or type-writing. They kept her
and little Blanche— who had come after her other children were well grown— in comfort; and they were all very happy together. The boys broke out, occasionally;
but, on the whole, were the best in the world, and her
girls were worthy of far better than they had. All were
robust, except Blanche. “She coming so late, when I was
no longer young, makes her delicate,” she remarked,
with a slight blush, the signal of her chaste Americanism;
“but I guess she’ll get along all right. She couldn’t have
better care if she was a queen’s clyld.”
The Bell in the Fog
115
Orth, who had gratefully consumed the bread and
milk, rose. “Is that really all you can tell me?” he asked.
“That’s all,” replied the daughter of the house. “And
you couldn’t pry open father’s mouth.”
Orth shook hands cordially with all of them, for he
could be charming when he chose. He offered to escort
the little girl back to her playmates in the wood, and she
took prompt possession of his hand. As he was leaving,
he turned suddenly to Mrs. Root. “Why did you call her
Blanche?” he asked.
“She was so white and dainty, she just looked it.”
Orth took the next train for London, and from Lord
Teignmouth obtained the address of the aunt who lived
on the family traditions, and a cordial note of introduction to her. He then spent an hour anticipating, in a toy shop, the whims and pleasures of a child—an incident of
paternity which his book-
children had not inspired. He
bought the finest doll, piano, French dishes, cooking
apparatus, and playhouse in the shop, and signed a check
for thirty pounds with a sensation of positive rapture.
Then he took the train for Lancashire, where the Lady
Mildred Mortlake lived in another ancestral home.
Possibly there are few imaginative writers who have
not a leaning, secret or avowed, to the oceult. The
creative gift is in very close relationship with the Great
Force behind the universe; for aught we know, may be an
atom thereof. It is not strange, therefore, that the lesser
and closer of the unseen forces should send their vibrations to it occasionally; or, at all events, that the imagination should incline its ear to the most mysterious and picturesque of all beliefs. Orth frankly dallied with the
old dogma. He formulated no personal faith of any sort,
but his creative faculty, that ego within an ego, had made
more than one excursion into the invisible and brought
back literary treasure.
The Lady Mildred received with sweetness and warmth
the generous contributor to the family sieve, and listened
with fluttering interest to all he had not told the world
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Gertrude Atherton
— she had read the book—and to the strange, Americanized sequel.
“ I am all at sea,” concluded Orth. “What had my little
girl to do with the tragedy? What relation was she to the
lady who drove the young man to destruction— ?”
“The closest,” interrupted Lady Mildred. “She was
herself!”
Orth stared at her. Again he had a confused sense of
disintegration. Lady Mildred, gratified by the success of
her bolt, proceeded less dramatically:
“Wally was up here just after I read your book, and I
discovered he had given you the wrong history of the
picture. Not that he knew it. It is a story we have left
untold as often as possible, and I tell it to you only
because you would probably become a monomaniac if I
didn’t. Blanche Mortlake— that Blanche— there had
been several of her name, but there has not been one
since— did not die in childhood, but lived to be twenty-
four. She was an angelic child, but little angels sometimes grow up into very naughty girls. I believe she was delicate as a child, which probably gave her that spiritual
Visions of Fear - Foundations of Fear III (1992) Page 14
