I became unnerved. My work suffered. It began to trickle back to me accompanied by the regrets of editors; and to writers the regrets of editors are the most poignant in the world.
The situation was saved by the most up-to-date tout of the whole back-door tribe. He persuaded Elizabeth to go in for Spiritualism. Do not misunderstand me. You can be a Spiritualist and also keep a gramophone, but, if you are Elizabeth, you cannot keep the two running at the same time if you must pay a shilling per week for each. When she sought my opinion I strongly advised the séances, which I said were cheap at the price; indeed I thought they were when the gramophone departed.
It was now Elizabeth's turn to become unnerved. She has a mind that is peculiarly open to impressions, and communion with the spirits unbalanced her. She justified her expenditure of a shilling weekly by placing the utmost faith in them.
"I 'ad a message from them there spirits larst night," she informed me one day, "an' they tell me I must change my 'abitation."
"What do you mean?" I asked, startled.
"I put a message through, arskin' them when I should get a settled young man, an' they told me that the fates are agen me in my present dwellin', so if you'll please take my notice from—"
I will not go through the sickening formula. Every housewife must have heard it several times at least in the past year or so. I accepted Elizabeth's resignation and began to concentrate on newspaper announcements. But I took an utter dislike to the spirits and listened with cold aloofness when Elizabeth began, "I was talkin' to the spirit of my young man larst night—"
"I didn't know you had the spirit of any young man," I interrupted.
"Yes, I 'ave. I mean Ned Akroyd, 'oo was drownded."
Now I have never believed in the alleged drowning of the said Ned. The news—conveyed to Elizabeth by his mate—that he had fallen from a ferry-boat near Eel Pie Island seemed unconvincing, especially as it happened shortly after Elizabeth had lent him fifteen-and-six.