The Damned | Page 2

wants to pick up old links again."
"Naturally," I put in, "yourself chief among them." The veiled reference
to the house I let pass.
It involved discussing the dead man for one thing.
"I feel I ought to go anyhow," she resumed, "and of course it would be
jollier if you came too. You'd get in such a muddle here by yourself,
and eat wrong things, and forget to air the rooms, and--oh, everything!"
She looked up laughing. "Only," she added, "there's the British
Museum--?"
"But there's a big library there," I answered, "and all the books of
reference I could possibly want. It was of you I was thinking. You
could take up your painting again; you always sell half of what you
paint. It would be a splendid rest too, and Sussex is a jolly country to
walk in. By all means, Fanny, I advise--"
Our eyes met, as I stammered in my attempts to avoid expressing the
thought that hid in both our minds. My sister had a weakness for
dabbling in the various "new" theories of the day, and Mabel, who
before her marriage had belonged to foolish societies for investigating
the future life to the neglect of the present one, had fostered this
undesirable tendency. Her amiable, impressionable temperament was
open to every psychic wind that blew. I deplored, detested the whole
business. But even more than this I abhorred the later influence that Mr.
Franklyn had steeped his wife in, capturing her body and soul in his
somber doctrines. I had dreaded lest my sister also might be caught.
"Now that she is alone again--"
I stopped short. Our eyes now made pretence impossible, for the truth
had slipped out inevitably, stupidly, although unexpressed in definite
language. We laughed, turning our faces a moment to look at other
things in the room. Frances picked up a book and examined its cover as
though she had made an important discovery, while I took my case out

and lit a cigarette I did not want to smoke. We left the matter there. I
went out of the room before further explanation could cause tension.
Disagreements grow into discord from such tiny things--wrong
adjectives, or a chance inflection of the voice. Frances had a right to her
views of life as much as I had. At least, I reflected comfortably, we had
separated upon an agreement this time, recognized mutually, though
not actually stated.
And this point of meeting was, oddly enough, our way of regarding
some one who was dead.
For we had both disliked the husband with a great dislike, and during
his three years' married life had only been to the house once--for a
weekend visit; arriving late on Saturday, we had left after an early
breakfast on Monday morning. Ascribing my sister's dislike to a natural
jealousy at losing her old friend, I said merely that he displeased me.
Yet we both knew that the real emotion lay much deeper. Frances, loyal,
honorable creature, had kept silence; and beyond saying that house and
grounds--he altered one and laid out the other--distressed her as an
expression of his personality somehow ('distressed' was the word she
used), no further explanation had passed her lips.
Our dislike of his personality was easily accounted for--up to a point,
since both of us shared the artist's point of view that a creed, cut to
measure and carefully dried, was an ugly thing, and that a dogma to
which believers must subscribe or perish everlastingly was a barbarism
resting upon cruelty. But while my own dislike was purely due to an
abstract worship of Beauty, my sister's had another twist in it, for with
her "new" tendencies, she believed that all religions were an aspect of
truth and that no one, even the lowest wretch, could escape "heaven" in
the long run.
Samuel Franklyn, the rich banker, was a man universally respected and
admired, and the marriage, though Mabel was fifteen years his junior,
won general applause; his bride was an heiress in her own right--
breweries--and the story of her conversion at a revivalist meeting where
Samuel Franklyn had spoken fervidly of heaven, and terrifyingly of sin,
hell and damnation, even contained a touch of genuine romance. She

was a brand snatched from the burning; his detailed eloquence had
frightened her into heaven; salvation came in the nick of time; his
words had plucked her from the edge of that lake of fire and brimstone
where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. She regarded
him as a hero, sighed her relief upon his saintly shoulder, and accepted
the peace he offered her with a grateful resignation.
For her husband was a "religious man" who successfully combined
great riches with the glamour of winning souls. He was