“You don’t believe we get answers from the dead, ma’am?” she asked.
“No,” said Lucy, “certainly not! Not in that way. The dead have cast off their bodies, and if they do hold any communication with us, it must be as if we too were out of the flesh.”
“My father always said we had no call to have any dealings with the blessed dead,” remarked Clementina. “We never had any portrait of Niel. But after he was killed, Rachel’s sweetheart sent us home a little one in a case. It had been taken after Niel was in India. But when my father saw what it was, he wouldn’t take a second look. After the neighbours had been told about the death, my father never named Niel again. He never spoke of our mother.” And Clementina sighed and went about her business.
Lucy drew a long breath. The mere thought of such suppressed existence seemed to choke her. There may be danger of righteous indignation or strong emotion merely frittering itself away in the “soft luxurious flow” of too copious expression. A deep thinker has cautioned us.
“Prune thou thy words, the thoughts control
That o’er thee swell and throng:
They will condense within thy soul
And change to purpose strong.”
But merely to smother and bury is not to control and direct. It is rather to deprive healthful force of its lawful function, and to screen fevered force from wholesome cure. Surely speech is to the mind as an opened window is to a chamber. If the chamber be fresh already, then its freshness but meets newer freshness. If it be filled with noxious vapours, they escape and fresh air enters.
It struck Lucy, too, as singular how this Highland father and daughter, unlike the Brands in every other respect, yet resembled them in one particular.