All-Story Weekly/Volume 98/Number 3/Fires Rekindled/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I.
E. A. A.
AFTER ten days of uneasy experiences on the Atlantic, I resume this journal. This is written at my new lodgings, 22 Lower Seymour Street, London.
Joan met me at the Charing Cross Station on my arrival. What a handsome woman! I hadn't seen her since her marriage. Were I ever to marry (which is absurd!) it would be with one of her type—brunette, dignified, sensitive, gentle. We had been all our lives affectionate chums, and the ominous posture of affairs in France seemed to unite us more than ever.
We met this morning by appointment to seek lodgings for me, and this apartment is the first one we examined. The house is a small and old one of darkened brick, in a respectable, but not fashionable, quarter of the city. The owner is a widow, respectable and antique—Mrs. Blodgett. The house, she told us, had been in possession of her family for more than one hundred years, and the upper floor had always been let to lodgers. "Genteel folks always, and some of 'em famous," she observed. A long row of black-bound books on a shelf in her sitting-room turned out to be family archives—in fact, account-books which she and her predecessors had kept of business dealings with their lodgers! How odd and un-American!
The old lady excused herself from going up-stairs with us to the vacant apartment: "I'm a good bit heavier than what I was forty years ago, and goin' up-stairs catches me in the back!" Rosy, rotund and wrinkled she is, in white cap and apron and black dress—sacred to the memory of a spouse who died "back in the eighties!" So Joan and I went up the dark little carpeted staircase and entered the room by a door on the left of the landing.
As I crossed the threshold, and almost before casting my eyes over the room. I had a singular sensation, on which I am disposed to dwell a little.
"But I know this place perfectly well!" I exclaimed to myself, but audibly.
"Considering this is your first visit to London," remarked Joan, smiling, "you lose no time in feeling at home!"
I smiled, too. "Nevertheless, our place at home isn't more familiar."
"That 'been-here-before feeling'!" she rejoined. "Isn't there some psychological or physiological explanation of it?"
Without replying I sat down in a big, old easy chair covered with worn and patched black leather, springless, but still comfortable.
"I've sat in this chair times out of mind," I said; and I was about to add—"with a beautiful woman in my lap!" but checked myself. What had come over me?
In the partition opposite the front windows there were two doors; between them a dark oak bookcase, reaching to the ceiling, the shelves filled with dusty old volumes. The wall-paper was dull-green, faded by time to quite a fashionable shade. In the corner of the room to the right, next the door on that side, hung in a tarnished frame an ancient lithographed portrait, too dim for its subject to be discernible at my distance. At the other end of the room, near the other door, stood a massive table, covered with a thick cloth of a yellowish color.
"Joan," said I, "let us try an experiment. Begin with that portrait over there: unless I mistake, it's of the Prince Regent, afterward George IV, and down in the left-hand corner his signature is written, with something added—'My respectful admiration,' I think!"
With an amused laugh my sister stepped over to the corner. Her first careless look at the portrait became close and interested.
"I declare, John, you're right!" she said at last, turning round to me in perplexity. "It is the prince, and his signature, too: the sentence is so faded I can't quite make it out! But what does this mean?"
"I don't know! The wall-paper is different, though it used to be green, too, but with some sort of arabesque pattern in yellow on it. But now take a look at those books. I can name two of them, at least—'Keats's Endymion' and 'Moore's Irish Melodies.'"
She stared at me, with a wrinkle between her brows, and then slowly approached the bookcase. "The titles on the backs of most of them are almost illegible," she murmured. "Oh, here!" she muttered after a moment, taking out one of the volumes and opening it at the title-page. "This is witchcraft!" she added, meeting my eyes in dismay.
"Is it the 'Endymion'?"
"No, but it's 'Moore's Melodies'! John, you came here this morning, before I met you!"
"I certainly did not! You know yourself I hadn't finished dressing when you arrived." I got up and came to the book-case. "And here's the other book," I said, pulling it out and showing it to her. "Now listen while I describe what's behind those doors!"
"I wouldn't dare open them!" she said. "You frighten me!"
"I feel a little terrified myself," I replied, "but there's a very agreeable vibration here, for all that! I don't believe in reincarnation, and the theory about nonsimultaneous action of the two lobes of the brain is a rather desperate guess. But," I continued, pointing to the door beside the portrait, "the kitchen is in there, with the sink on the right, where I've often helped the girl wash up the dishes"—I opened the door and we looked in and confirmed my assertion—"but this is the door of the bedroom, with which I am better acquainted." I laid a hand on the door-knob.
"Don't, John!" entreated Joan. "If you do, I'm going to pray that you'll be disappointed!"
"It's too late! Here's what we shall see: On the left there'll be a window, and beside it a dressing-table built into the wall—quite an unusual construction. Right in front of us there will be a large alcove, half as big as the rest of the room, with another window at the end of it. It looks out into the area, where a young lime-tree is growing. In the alcove is the bed, an old-fashioned four-poster with curtains. Shall I tell you any more?"
"Open the door!" said Joan recklessly.
I did so. The fixed dressing-table had been newly upholstered with blue and white dimity, and the curtains had been removed from the bed—there was no other variation from my description. I walked over to the window in the alcove.
"There's the lime-tree," I observed, "only it's ever so much bigger than I remember it. It's taller than the house now; it used to be hardly as high as this window-sill."
As I stood looking down into the area I was visited by another perception—or reminiscence.
"This window, you notice," I said to my sister, "is fitted with folding-shutters, solid panels, in the style of three generations ago. There are three panels. I am going to show you, in the center panel, some initials cut into the wood. I cut them myself, one autumn morning, with the sun falling in over my shoulder, as it does now. There are five letters—three above and two just below. The top ones are E. A. A.; the under ones, J. H. Are you ready?"
"I don't believe it!" Joan exclaimed.
I pulled open the shutter. There, precisely, were the initials!
"Let us get out of this house at once!" said Joan, catching me by the arm and trying to draw me away.
"By no means. Here I stay as long as I'm in London. I've never liked any rooms so well. As you say, I'm at home here! Oh, here, at last, is a discrepancy!"
I had been scrutinizing the letters, and I now pointed to the two last.
"That seems to be an L instead of a J," I said. "The tail is on the right instead of on the left."
"There, you see!" cried my sister triumphantly, "that disproves the whole thing!"
"Wait a moment—I can explain it," I returned after a moment's thought. "Don't you remember, when we were little, father and mother used to call me 'Lionel'? But I wasn't christened till I was eight or nine years old, and then they decided to name me after our grandfather, John. Why, you used to call me Lionel half the time!"
Joan admitted this reluctantly. "But what of that?" she added. "You were not here when you were eight or nine years old, or any other time, and there are plenty of people whose initials are L. H. Besides, who is E. A. A.?"
"I've been trying to think. It seems just on the tip of my tongue, but it won't come off. But I know she was a woman—she is, maybe!—for when was all this?"
"The letters have been there for ages. They've been painted over scores of times; and that tree must be at least a hundred years old. My dear, it's nothing but a string of coincidences—lucky guesses! Don't let us think any more about it! It gives me a most uncomfortable feeling. Please don't stay here—I shan't have a moment's peace!"
But I said that a string of guesses or coincidences was no just cause for uneasiness. "I feel a peculiarly agreeable influence here: I've made up my mind to lease the apartment for a year, and in order to settle the matter, I shall pay Mrs. Blodgett in advance! Now I'll go back to the hotel and have my things sent over here. I can't thank you enough for guiding me here! Remember, you've invited me to dine with you to-morrow. From what I'm told, a dinner isn't too easy to get in London nowadays!"
Joan sighed. "Nor breakfast nor lunch, either! I know you'll starve to death, or be carried off by evil spirits! You must arrange with Mrs. Blodgett to give you your meals here; you have a kitchen, at any rate! Let's go down and talk to her!"
Mrs. Blodgett readily agreed to ration me, observing that her maid-of-all-work, Kittie, was "a cook born and bred"; so that, at any rate, the radical simplicity of my habitual diet would present no difficulties. In the back of my mind, while we talked, was an undefined notion that I had been before served, in that house, by another skilful cook; but her name had not been Kittie, nor had she anything of Kittie's amiable and blowzy aspect. Possibly this may have prompted my interjecting an inquiry, made, however, in a tone becomingly playful, as to whether the house, like other good old English houses I had heard of, enjoyed the reputation of being haunted?
Good Mrs. Blodgett seemed a little indignant.
"Never nothin' of that sort, sir!" she asseverated. "Me nor my forebears has never had no such complaints, but always expresses 'emselves perfectly satisfied!"
"I'm sure I shall be satisfied," I assured her conciliatingly; "and if the ghost were a nice one I shouldn't complain."
The negotiations thus happily concluded, Joan and I parted, she going to her cottage in St. John's Wood and I to wind up my affairs at my hotel. I was more impatient to get established in my lodgings than I allowed my sister to think. Now that I am here, I am conscious of a secret, inexplicable delight!
It had pleased me to know that, so far as my landlady's word could be trusted, I had the monopoly of whatever "haunting" could be predicated of the house. I should have felt jealous of any participant in the occult sensations I had experienced. The influence, vibration, or whatever it may be termed, which had met me in the rooms, and had been so singularly accredited by the fulfilment of my various little surmises—especially in the really remarkable case of the initials—had been poignantly inviting and, so to say, caressing! It was personal, sweetly familiar, and above all, distinctly sexual or feminine!
It is upon me now more powerfully than never!
I can compare the sensation only with that of a lover who should visit the apartment of his beloved mistress. Everything speaks of her: traces of her touch, her presence, are on all sides. She seems to be moving about in the bedroom, preparing herself to go with me to some little festival. I can almost hear her humming snatches of a lightsome song. At this moment I can almost believe she is standing at my shoulder! And yet I am alone, the door is locked, and I am perfectly aware that all this is—
I was going to write "nonsense," but I won't do it! It is simply something that is entirely unprecedented in my experience, and that I don't understand.
Some years ago I was induced by an open mind, or by curiosity, to investigate occult phenomena, and to find out whether I were "suggestible" in that direction. Hypnotism, clairvoyance, telepathy, spiritualism, Buddhism, psychometry. and other cults—I explored them all, and with a willingness to be convinced rather than the contrary. But my results were negative; nothing seized me; I felt no assurance of an authentic revelation. Phenomena for which I couldn't account did take place, but they aroused no emotion deeper than curiosity, and not much even of that. Some obscure physiological—perhaps pathological—force seemed to be at the base of them all, and the minds of the faithful didn't strike me as of an elevated order. The further I delved the less of spirit did I seem to find. At last I fell away, feeling that I was wasting time.
Another thing bearing on the present situation is the fact that I have never known or been attracted by women, with the exception, of course, of my mother and sister. This doesn't mean that I am insensible to woman—the ewig weibliche—in the abstract. I'm a man, and don't consider myself a sexual freak! But my health was delicate in my youth, and my habits secluded and studious. My father died when I was a child, and my mother, Joan, and I lived in a place somewhat removed from ordinary social access. I loved, and love, beauty, feminine or other, but as a spectator. I can feel the allurement of woman in poetry and art, but I was never subject to any personal attraction to individual women. And, at my present age, I never expected to be!
Therefore, upon the whole, I should hold myself to be a person as little likely as anyone else in the world to be subject to occult influences, or to a personal sexual passion. I am not of that habit or constitution.
And yet, here I am, alone in London, my face flushed and my breathing disturbed by something intensely feminine and personal, which, nevertheless, has no apparent actual existence! Of the verity of the emotion aroused in me there is certainly no question, but for any rational or conceivable grounds for it, I speculate in vain!
No doubt an alienist would call me insane: but I know better!
When I went into her bedroom—our bedroom!—there was an effluence there, a fragrance, not of flowers or of commercial scents, but of her—that gave my nerves a delicious shock of anticipation and joy. It was exquisitely individual: and when I struck a match to light the bedroom candle (these ancient conveniences survive in Mrs. Blodgett's establishment), I was near believing that its light would show her face on the pillow of the bed! It showed the pillow only, but the persuasion of her presence remained.
That persuasion, or conviction, wanes or increases, but upon the whole I think it becomes stronger. It is not, however—so far, at any rate—accompanied by any idea of what she looks like; my imagination—or memory—fails to define her features or form. I feel only that she is utterly lovable, and that I love her; and I can't help believing that I shall know and realize more and more of her as time goes on.
Is this a memory of something that has been, or a premonition of something to come? Or is it independent of past and future? Or is it a hallucination?
It is not a hallucination. Hallucinations deceive the physical senses; but what she communicates to me penetrates to a depth in me far beyond the sphere of sense.
I wish I knew her name! "E. A. A." must be her initials, but what do they stand for? "Exquisite Adorable Angel," perhaps!
It's late—time I was asleep. By the way, I had a message from Joan this after-noon saying that poor Philip's horse had been shot under him, and that he was in a base hospital with a broken leg. She was to cross over to France and go to him to-night, and didn't know when she might be back, so our dinner to-morrow is off. I am grieved for her and for him, but I confess I am relieved on my own account. Fond as I am of my sister, I wish to keep this experience all to myself!
I shall sleep in E. A. A.'s bed to-night!