never mentioned the circumstance in her letters to her family; and the first news that reached them of my unaccountable disappearance, was in that which announced my wife’s death. She had unhappily confided her situation to no one; and a woman from the village, summoned in haste when the extremity came, was the only aid she had.
Whether from want of skill or from Clara’s previous state of mental suffering remains uncertain; but mother and child both perished; and, I confess, when my confidential agent, who alone was acquainted with my address, communicated the event to me, I looked on it as the best possible termination to a frightful tragedy.
Years elapsed; Elfdale was odious to me; I would have sold it, but it was entailed. England was odious to me—I may say the whole world was odious to me; but of all creatures in it the Wellwoods were the most so; from my earliest years they had been the real source of all my misery. But for them I might have had a happy childhood, if my father’s heart had not been turned to stone by the criminality of Sir Ralph and my mother; how different might every thing have been with me through life! How well I understand his hatred of them! Oh! if he had but confided in me! And, ah! if I had but died believing myself only a victim and not a criminal!
On Lady Wellwood and her son’s arrival at Elfdale, they found Clara and her infant buried, and the secret that was to account for my extraordinary absence was buried with them. Lady W was sure that her unfortunate daughter had never had a suspicion that she was anything but Sir Ralph’s niece; and although she almost suspected that my strange disappearance was in some way connected with the old calumny about my mother, it was neither possible, nor now, she thought, worth while to attempt clearing it up.
Long years afterwards, when Lady Wellwood was dead and Sir Ralph was married and living at Staughton, one day a foreigner presented himself at the back-door and requested to speak with him. On being admitted he said he was a courier by profession, and that he had been requested to deliver a box, which he had brought with him, into the hands of the baronet. The person who sent it was now dead—he had also been a courier, of the name of Rosetti—beyond this the bearer knew nothing.
On opening the box a full narration of the above circumstances was found in the handwriting of the late Sir Ralph, together with letters corroborating the statements he made respecting the birth of Clara and the innocence of my mother, whose picture an accurate copy in little of the one at Elfdale, was also found there,—that picture which, perhaps, in the flurry of the moment, and to avert further questions, Lady Wellwood had told Clara was the picture of her mother. The nurse who went to London with Rose and Emily was the mother of Phibbs, the gardener. She knew the truth, and her silence had been bought by Lady Wellwood. This woman was now dead, but her son still lived. He had never quitted Elfdale, and though a very old man, was working there when, on the occasion of this news reaching me, I returned to England.
When I questioned him he confirmed the whole statement, and assured me that aware of my enmity to him, and foreseeing that sooner or later the report of my mother’s guilt would reach me, he had hoped to appease my ill-will and win my favour by revealing the truths, but that I had cut off the opportunity myself by my conduct towards him on the morning after my return, and by my subsequent disappearance from the spot.
Now, how much of my misery and the misery of those connected with me was due to adverse fate, and how much to my own mistaken line of conduct, it is difficult to say; but of this I am sure that had I been treated with kindness and affection in my childhood, the faults of my character, which I fear were in some degree innate, might have been modified; and certain it is, that if my father, instead of shutting up his secrets and his sorrows in his own breast, had made me his confidant, he would himself have found sympathy and consolations, and I should have escaped a life of needless suffering and never-dying remorse.
SPIRIT RAPPING MADE EASY.—No. II.
THE CORNHILL NARRATIVE AND THE
PERFORMANCES OF MR. HOME. BY KATERFELTO.
(Concluded from page 494.)
I now come to the performances of Mr. Home himself, which are conceived to be so conclusive by Mr. Howitt and the whole Spiritualist fraternity.
If Mr. Home will meet some half dozen persons (myself included), to be named by the Editor of this Magazine, and, under the conditions which they will prescribe, as essential to a full and fair examination, will prevail on the Spirits to manifest themselves more clearly, or if, under such conditions, they will even repeat the effects mentioned in the “Cornhill” narrative, I will, if I fail in accounting for the phenomena on some known laws of nature, at once admit Mr. Home’s pretensions as a Medium of the Spirit world. If he will not accept this challenge, or, if professedly accepting it, he or the Spirits (I treat them as synonymous) decline the manifestations required for an adequate test, I shall maintain my right to regard him as a clever charlatan. On such occasions as these the avowal of one’s convictions is of far more importance than politeness to individuals; and I proceed in this spirit to perform a public duty.
The representations of Mr. Home himself, as to his relations with the Spirit world, I esteem of no consequence, and I put them aside. Whether he claims or disclaims a mastery of the “secrets of the grave” is perfectly immaterial to the question on which I propose to meet him. This question is a very short, or, at least, a very plain one. Is Mr. Home himself a conscious and controlling agent in the effects produced, and are the manifestations of the so-called Spirits the tricks and devices of his own ingenuity? Is he, in short, a conjuror, without the candour to avow his function? If so, he may tell us that he “is thoroughly impassive in these matters, and that, whatever happens, happens from causes over which he has