The way of the spirit

by H. Rider Haggard

“Oh, yes,” said the General, “I remember. He’s the fellow who made a mess of things. Good man too, but there was a woman in it. Well, hang me, if I haven’t seen his ghost without a leg and with a beard a yard long. Can’t mistake that voice. Heard it right across the square at Abu-Klea. Most astonishing thing.”

For years afterwards this meeting with the mutilated shade of Rupert Ullershaw was the general’s favourite ghost story, especially in future days when certain facts came to be common knowledge.

Rupert passed the Athenaeum. With some trouble, for they were slippery, he negotiated the steps beyond the Duke of York’s column, then hurried on past the Horse Guards and the Foreign Office, till at length he reached the Embankment, and being very tired, sat down on a seat by the river. Before long a policeman came and disturbed him, asking what he was doing loitering there. He replied humbly enough that he believed it was a public place, whereon the policeman stared at him as the general had done, and went by. Still he rose and walked forward till he came to where the shadows were deep between two lamps, for here the thickening fog gave him privacy, and placing his bag by him, leaned upon the parapet and listened to the murmur of the river beneath.

Then and there it was, now when the exertions of walking were done with, that the whole weight of his miseries struck Rupert full. His soul descended into hell; he saw and understood the awful truth. Wrecked bodily, ruined in reputation, deserted by the world, scorned as loathsome by Edith, Devene’s daughter, who had only married him for what he had to give, there was no outcast in all that cruel London more lonesome, more hopeless than he, who, not ten months before, had been one of its fêted and sought-after favourites. It was that day twelvemonth, New Year’s Eve, he remembered, that he had proposed to and been accepted by Edith, remembered also the words spoken to him then by Lady Devene and his mother, of which now he felt the full meaning, although he had paid little attention to them at the time. Those women understood; his love had blinded him.

What was there left for him to do—who had promised to “remain dead?” The lapping of the water beneath seemed to shape an answer. It spoke to him as the thud of the steamer and the beat of the train had spoken once before, and well he understood its meaning. All his hopes lay buried beneath that water of death, and there also were his mother and many a good friend and comrade. Why should he not seek them? Edith would be pleased, for then he would remain dead indeed. Yet it was a wicked act. Well, sometimes circumstances outweighed scruples, and in that matter he felt as though he must take his chance—like Edith. If there were any worse place than this world in which, after all, with one exception, he had done his best, it must be bad indeed. Here was a deep that could have no depth below it, and therein he sojourned.

It would be easy. The wide handles of that accursed and weighty bag would pass over his head, a very fitting brick to drown a dog that had had its day. He was quite alone in the dreary place, where no one lingered on such a night. Why should they, when Salvation Army shelters were available? He could not go there, he could not go anywhere, he would be found out or recognised. The Thames mud was the best bed for him who felt so very tired.

Rupert leaned further over the parapet, nerving himself to the desperate deed, he who was almost mad with shame and sorrow. Then it was in the grey mist that lay upon the water, quite hiding it from his sight, that he seemed to see something form which gradually took the shape of a woman’s face, surrounded by cloudy, outspread hair. He could see it clearly, and in it the tender, pitying eyes from which tears ran, so clearly that at once he knew it for the face of Mea, as after all those weeks of darkness it had first appeared to his returning sight. Yes, as it had arisen then upon the blindness of his body with its assurance of light renewed, so did it arise again upon the utter blackness of his soul’s despair, a beacon of hope in the midst of that desperate shipwreck, a token of love unchanging and unchanged above this seething bitterness of scorn and hate.

Of a sudden, as the shadow passed, he remembered the promise which he had made to Mea when she warned him that sometimes things went amiss. He had thought it idle enough even then who only gave it to please her, and since that day it had rarely crossed his mind. Now he knew, however, that her true affection for him had endowed her with some strange foresight of the woes about to fall upon his defenceless head, and thereby, in a way unforeseen by herself or him, had provided him with a door of escape from the dreadful habitations into which his spirit was to be driven by Destiny. Mea would welcome back her friend who had no other friend in all the world; moreover, in such an event as this he had sworn that he would return to her.

Then, should he sink in that river, he would be a liar as well as a coward. No, the river was done with. Mea had saved him from this sin, at the very thought of which he felt even now that he would live to shiver and be ashamed.

New life came back to Rupert, hope was born again, and its first manifestation was of a very material nature. He felt hungry who had eaten little that day and undergone much. Taking up the bag, which but a few minutes before he had intended to put to such a dreadful purpose, he lifted his crutch and made his way briskly across the Embankment, and along one of the side streets into the Strand. Here he found a modest-looking eating-house, and entering, ordered himself some food, for which the waiter, noting his appearance, demanded payment in advance. While he ate he bethought himself, and as a result, took up a paper that lay near by and began to search the advertisements. Soon he discovered what he wanted. On the following morning, Monday, a steamer of one of the smaller and less known lines was advertised to sail for Egypt and other places, leaving Liverpool at eleven o’clock a.m. Rupert asked for an A.B.C. Railway Guide, and found that there was a train from Euston about 10.30, which reached Liverpool in the early morning.