"I wonder how many lives there are like mine in this prosperous England of ours, eminently respectable, comfortable, and altogether protected from the worst hazards of fate, happy even, according to the standard measure of happiness among the squirearchy of England—and yet cold and colourless. I wonder how many men there are in every generation who drift along the slow current of a sluggish river, and who call that monotonous progress living. Up the river with the rising tide; down the river with the ebbing tide; up and down, to and fro, between level banks that are always the same, with never a hill and never a crag to break the monotony of the outlook.
"We have a river within a stone's throw of my gates which always seems to me the outward and visible sign of my inward and spiritual life, a river that flows past farms and villages, and for any variety of curve or accident of beauty might just as well be a canal—a useful river bearing the laden barges down to the sea, a river on which a pleasure-boat is as rare as a kingfisher on its banks. And so much might be said of my life; a useful life within the everyday limits of English morality; but a life that nobody will remember or regret, outside my own household, when I am gone.
"This is no complaint that I am writing, to be read when I am in my grave by the son I hope to leave behind me. Far be such a thought from me the writer, and from him the reader. It is only a statement, a history of a youthful experience which has influenced my mature years, chiefly because on that boyish romance I spent all the stock of passionate feeling with which nature had endowed me. It was not much, perhaps, in the beginning. I was no Byronic hero. I was only an impulsive and somewhat sentimental youth, ready to fall in love with the first interesting girl I met, but not to find my Egeria among the audience at a music-hall, or in a dancing garden.
"Do not mistake me, Allan. I have loved your mother truly and even warmly, but never romantically. All that constitutes the poetry, the romance of love, the fond enthusiasm of the lover, vanished out of my life before I was three and twenty. All that came afterwards was plain prose.
"It was in the second year of my university life, and towards the end of the long vacation, that I allowed myself to be persuaded to attend a séance to be given by some so-called spiritualists in the neighbourhood of Russell Square. Mr. Home, the spiritualist, had been frightening and astonishing people by certain unexplainable manifestations, and he had been lucky enough to number among his patrons and disciples such men as Bulwer Lytton, William and Robert Chambers, and others of almost equal distinction. To the common herd it seemed that, there must be some value in manifestations which could interest and even convince these superior intellects; so, with the prestige of Home's performances, and with an article in the Cornhill Magazine to assist them, the people near Russell Square were doing very good business.
"Twice, and sometimes three times a week, they gave a séance, and though they did not take money at the doors, or advertise their entertainment in the daily papers, they had their regular subscribers among the faithful, and these subscribers could dispose of tickets of admission among the common herd. As two of the common herd, Gerald Standish and I got our tickets from Mrs. Ravenshaw, a literary lady of Gerald's acquaintance, who had written a spiritualistic novel, and was a profound believer in all the spiritualistic phenomena. Her vivid description of the dark séance and its wonders had aroused Gerald's curiosity, and he insisted that I, who was known among the men of my year as a favourite pupil of the then famous mathematical coach, should go with him and bring the severe laws of pure science to bear upon the spirit world.
"I was incurious and indifferent, but Gerald Standish was a genius, and my particular chum. I could not, therefore, be so churlish as to refuse so slight a concession. We dined together at the Horseshoe Restaurant, then in the bloom of novelty; and, after a very temperate dinner, we walked through the autumn dusk to the quiet street on the eastward side of Russell Square, where the priest and priestess of the spirit-world had set up their temple.
"The approach of the mysteries was sadly commonplace, a shabby hall door, an airless passage that smelt of dinner, and for the temple itself a front parlour sparsely furnished with the most Philistine of furniture. When we entered, the room was empty of humanity. An oil-lamp on a cheffonier by the fireplace dimly lighted the all-pervading shabbiness. The scanty moreen curtains—lodging-house curtains of the poorest type—were drawn. The furniture consisted of a dozen or so of heavily made mahogany chairs with horse-hair cushions, a large round table on a massive pedestal, supported on three clumsily carved claws, and a bookcase against the wall facing the windows, or I should say rather a piece of furniture which might be supposed to contain books, as the contents were hidden by a brass lattice-work lined with faded green silk. The gloom of the scene was inexpressible, and seemed accentuated by a dismal street cry which rose and fell ever and anon from the distance of Hunter or Coram Street.
"'We are the first,' Gerald whispered, a fact of which I did not require to be informed, and for which he ought to have apologized, seeing that he had deprived me of my after-dinner coffee, and dragged me off yawning, full of alarm lest we should be late.
"Gradually, and in dismal silence, diversified only by occasional whisperings, about a dozen people assembled in the dimness of the dreary room. Among them came Mrs. Ravenshaw and her jovial, business-like husband, who seated themselves next Gerald and me, and confided their experiences of past séances. The lady was full of faith and enthusiasm. The gentleman was beginning to have doubts. He had heard things from unbelievers which had somewhat unsettled him. He had invested a good many half-guineas in this dismal form of entertainment, and had wasted a good deal of time in bringing his gifted wife all the way from Shooter's Hill, and, so far, they had got no forwarder than on the first séance. They had seen strange things. They had felt the ghastly touch of hands that seemed like dead hands, and which ordinary people would run a mile to avoid. That heavy mahogany table had shuddered and thrilled under the touch of meeting hands; had lifted itself like a rearing horse; had throbbed out messages purporting to come from the dead. Strange sounds had been in the air; angelic singing, as of souls in Elysium; and some among the audience had gone away after each séance touched and satisfied, believing themselves upon the threshold of other worlds, feeling their commonplace lives shone upon by supernal light, content henceforward to dwell upon this dull cold earth, since they were now assured of a link between earth and heaven.