Chapter XV

"_Bless you, Claire,_" began Stephen's next letter, "_you make even
my life worth living. Your letters are my one delight. All the
same, we are poles apart in some things. You say, 'Oh, the joy of
wanting nothing!' I would say, 'Oh, the misery of wanting nothing!'
But fortunately there is one great want that keeps my old bones
above ground, and that is the longing I have to see you and Judy
and Eric again. Of course I was a fool not to marry. It may be fun
to be a bachelor when you're young, but it's hell when you're old.
I marvel at the number of women who face a life of single
cussedness voluntarily. With me, there has been only one woman, and
she holds this letter in her hands, as she has always held the
writer's heart in her hands. But I've known plenty of women who
would have made good wives, and perhaps given me Judys and Erics._

"_Yes, you are right; I took defeat badly. My advice, now, would
always be to marry--as best one can. There is nearly always a
compromise to be made. There would have been no compromise, on my
part, had I married you. Therefore it was not to be, for the
perfect thing is always out of reach. Don't tell me your marriage
with Robert was perfect. Robert was my best friend and I knew his
faults. But he made you happy, and that is the great thing. It
ought to be carven on a man's tombstone, 'He made a woman happy.'
Well, at least, they can carve on mine, 'He made no woman unhappy.'_

"_I am feeling much better to-day, so Miss McPherson is
correspondingly gloomy. But she is a good, devoted soul, and has
borne with me wonderfully, and I have settled something on her.
Which brings me to your last letter. If Judy and that fellow want
to marry, I will gladly settle something on Judy. Don't tell her,
of course. People who really care for each other ought to be
endowed if they can't afford to marry. I don't see the good of
waiting till I'm dead. I will do what I should do if Judy were my
daughter. You must let me know how things go. There's only my niece
Monica to think of. She'll give what I leave her to the Church. I
don't mind that, for though the Church has never done much for
me--admittedly through my own fault--it has for other people._

"_And that brings me to a subject I approach with diffidence. Don't
think me in my dotage, Claire, if I tell you that I have become
interested in Spiritualism. I've been reading a great deal, and I
have come to the unalterable conclusion that men like Crooks, Myers,
Lodge and Doyle know what they are talking about. Some of us take
our religion on trust. Others of us want to find out. Having
floundered in a sea of agnosticism all my life long, I now begin to
feel the ground beneath my feet. I got more out of the 'Vital
Message' in an hour than I've got out of parsons in seventy years.
I believe that if Spiritualism were rightly understood, it would
fuse all religions and all sects. I need hardly tell you that the
Spiritualism I mean does not depend on knockings and rappings, and
the horrible fake-séances of the mercenary minded. Some day I must
talk to you about this. I have said enough here, perhaps too much;
but I wanted to tell you of the thing that has meant so much to me._

"_If I continue as well as this I may come to London next month.
London! Shall I know it, I wonder? It will not know me. But you
will, and that is all I ask._

"STEPHEN."

To this, Madame Claire made immediate reply:

"_My dear Stephen,_

"_Your long letter was all too short for my liking. I feel you are
really better, and I can't tell you how happy that makes me. About
your coming I hardly dare to think. How good, how good it will be!
There is a brass band of sorts playing under my window, and I wish
it would stay and play all day. That shows how happy I am. And to
that end, I am wondering whether it would be better to pay or to
refrain from paying. I am uncritical enough at the moment to feel
that any music is good music._

"_How pleasant it would be if we could have appropriate music at all
crucial, or difficult, or delightful moments in our lives! When one
is first introduced to one's husband's relations, for instance. I
think Chopin would help to tide us over that. In a bloodless battle
with one's dressmaker over a bill, I would recommend Tchaikowsky,
or Rimsky-Korsakov. For moments of deep feeling, for love, we would
each, I imagine, choose something different. I think I would choose
Bach, for Bach is too great for sentiment. As for dying--every one
should die to music. I should think young people, for instance,
would choose to drift into eternity upon the strains of the
loveliest and latest waltz. At least I have often heard them say
they could die waltzing. There are bits of Wagner that I wouldn't
mind dying to. You'll say dying is too serious a subject for jest.
But I can't see that it's any more serious than living, which so
many people are entirely frivolous about._

"_Ah, no, Stephen, I don't think you are in your dotage. I too have
read a good deal about Spiritualism, and I believe that what these
men say is true. But I suppose I am one of those fortunate people
who have faith, and that being so I had no need of proof. I don't
know how my faith came to me. I have always had it, and so don't
deserve any credit for it. The credit goes to people like you, who
have had to struggle all their lives against unbelief. I believe,
too, that so long as there is a diversity of creatures on this
globe, so long will there be a diversity of religions. There is
only one God, but the roads to the understanding of God are many._

"_And so for you, and thousands like you, there is Crooks, with his
laboratories and his cameras and his proofs. And for others there is
Beauty. Hear what Tagore says:_

"'Thou art the sky and Thou art also the nest.

O Thou Beautiful! How in the nest Thy love embraceth the soul
with sweet sounds and color and fragrant odors!

Morning cometh there, bearing in her golden basket the wreath
of beauty, silently to crown the earth.

And there cometh Evening, o'er lonely meadows deserted of the
herds, by trackless ways, carrying in her golden pitcher
cool draughts of peace from the ocean-calms of the west.

But where Thine infinite sky spreadeth for the soul to take
her flight, a stainless white radiance reigneth; wherein is
neither day nor night, nor form nor color, nor ever any word.'

"_And for others again, there is simply--_

"'I am the Resurrection and the Life....'

"_Write again soon. I long to know how you are progressing._

"_Yours as ever,_

"CLAIRE."