E. Nesbit

“ For the first day or two I thought it was merely a touch of marsh-fever, that would pass off with no worse consequence than a little weakness; but on the third day I perceived that she would die.
Hurst met me as I came from her bedside, stood aside on the narrow landing for me to pass, and followed me down into the little sitting-room, which, deprived for three days of her presence, already bore the air of a room long deserted. He came in after me and shut the door.
“You’re wrong,” he said abruptly, reading my thoughts as usual; “she won’t die—she can’t die.” ”

“ The nurse, who had followed me, came in before I could shake off the horror that held me moveless. We both went down into the vault. Weak, exhausted by illness and sorrow, John Hurst had yet found strength to follow his love to the grave. I tell you he had crossed that wold alone, in the grey of the chill dawn; alone he had raised the stone and gone down to her. He had opened her coffin, and he lay on the floor of the vault with his wife’s body in his arms. ”

“ We passed across the moat, and Hurst pulled a knotted rope that hung beside the great iron-bound door. A bell clanged loudly inside. In the moment we spent there, waiting, Hurst pushed back a brier that was trailing across the arch, and let it fall outside the handrail.
“Nature is too much with us here,” he said, laughing. “The clematis spends its time tripping one up or clawing at one’s hair, and we are always expecting the ivy to force itself through the window and make an uninvited third at our dinner-table.” ”

“ She was a thousand times more beautiful than any woman with brown eyes could be. My heart almost stopped beating. “With life or death in the balance: Right!” To be beautiful is not the same thing as to be dear, thank God. I went forward and took her hand with a free heart.
It was a pleasant fortnight I spent with them. They had had one tower completely repaired, and in its queer eight-sided rooms we lived, when we were not out among the marshes or by the blue sea at Pevensey.
Mrs. Hurst had made the rooms quaintly charming by a medley of Liberty stuffs and Wardour Street furniture. ”

“ You can’t control the great facts of life and death by hypnotism. She is dead; she is dead, and her body lies in its place. But her soul is with God who gave it.”
“No!” he cried, with such strength as the fever had left him. ”

“ It was more than a year after their marriage that I had a letter from Hurst.
“Congratulate me, old man! Crowds of uncles and cousins have died, and I am Hurst of Hurstcote, which God wot I never thought to be. The place is all to pieces, but we can’t live anywhere else. If you can get away about September, come down and see us. We shall be installed. I have everything now that I ever longed for—Hurstcote—cradle of our race—and all that, the only woman in the world for my wife, and——but that’s enough for any man, surely.—John Hurst of Hurstcote.” ”

“ He leaned on his elbow, and looked at me with wide eyes.
“Think,” he said, “what she must feel. Out of the body, and yet tied to it, all alone among the dead. Oh, make haste, make haste, for if I am not mad, and I have really fettered her soul, there is but one way!”
“And that is?”
“I must die too. Her soul can leave her body when I die.”
I called the nurse, and left him. I went out, and across the wold to the church, but I did not go in. I carried the screwdriver and the lanthorn, lest he should send the nurse to see if I had taken them. ”

“ I am not mad, I am not wandering. I am as sane as you are. Now listen, and if you’ve a human heart in you, you’ll help me. When I married her I gave up hypnotism and all the old studies; she hated the whole business. ”

“ How would Hurst make it habitable? Even if he had inherited much money with the castle, and intended to restore the building, that would be a work of years, not months. What would he do?
In September I went to see.
Hurst met me at Pevensey Station.
“Let’s walk up,” he said; “there’s a cart to bring your traps. Eh! but it’s good to see you again, Bernard.” ”

“ Hurst went abroad, to Paris or Leipzig or somewhere, to study hypnotism, and to prepare notes for his book on “Black Magic.” This came out in the autumn, and had a strange and brilliant success. Hurst became famous, famous as men do become nowadays. ”