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48 - Beetle by Richard Marsh · Beetle

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  Speaker 1: The Beadle by Richard Marsh Chapter forty eight. The conclusion
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  Speaker 1: of the matter. It is several years since I bore
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  Speaker 1: my part in the events which I have rapidly sketched,
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  Speaker 1: or I should not have felt justified in giving them
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  Speaker 1: publicity exactly how many years? For reasons which should be
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  Speaker 1: sufficiently obvious, I must decline to say. Marjorie Lindon still
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  Speaker 1: lives a spark of life which was left in her
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  Speaker 1: when she was extricated from among the debris of the
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  Speaker 1: wrecked express was fanned again into flame. Her restoration was, however,
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  Speaker 1: not merely an affair of weeks or months. It was
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  Speaker 1: a matter of years. I believe that even after her
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  Speaker 1: physical powers were completely restored, in itself a tedious task,
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  Speaker 1: she was for something like three years under medical supervision
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  Speaker 1: as a lunatic. But all that skill and money could
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  Speaker 1: do was done, and in course of time the great
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  Speaker 1: healer the results were entirely satisfactory. Her father is dead
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  Speaker 1: and has left her in possession of the family estates.
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  Speaker 1: She is married to the individual who in these pages
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  Speaker 1: has been known as Paul Lessingham, where his real name divulged.
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  Speaker 1: She would be recognized as the popular and universally reverenced
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  Speaker 1: wife of one of the greatest statesmen the age has seen.
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  Speaker 1: Nothing has been said to her about the faithful day
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  Speaker 1: on which she was consciously or unconsciously paraded through London
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  Speaker 1: in the tattered masculine habiliments of a vagabond. She herself
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  Speaker 1: has never once alluded to it. With the return of reason,
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  Speaker 1: the affair seems to have passed from her memory as
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  Speaker 1: wholly as if it had never been, which, although she
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  Speaker 1: may not know it is not the least cause she
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  Speaker 1: has for thankfulness. Therefore, what actually transpired will never, in
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  Speaker 1: all human probability be certainly known, and particularly what precisely
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  Speaker 1: occurred in the railway carriage during that dreadful moment of
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  Speaker 1: sudden passing from life unto death. What became of the
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  Speaker 1: creature who all but did her to death? Who he was,
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  Speaker 1: if it was a he, which is extremely doubtful, whence
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  Speaker 1: he came, whither he went? What was the purport of
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  Speaker 1: his presence here to this hour? These things are puzzles.
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  Speaker 1: Paul Lessingham has not since been troubled by his old
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  Speaker 1: tormentor he has ceased to be a haunted man. Nonetheless,
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  Speaker 1: he continues to have what seems to be a constitutional
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  Speaker 1: dis relish for the subject of beadles. Nor can he
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  Speaker 1: himself be induced to speak of them should they be
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  Speaker 1: mentioned in a general conversation. Should he be unable to
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  Speaker 1: immediately bring about a change of theme, he will, if possible,
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  Speaker 1: get up and leave the room. More on this point,
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  Speaker 1: he and his wife are one. The fact may not
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  Speaker 1: be generally known, but it is so. Also I have
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  Speaker 1: reason to believe that there still are moments in which
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  Speaker 1: he harks back, with something like physical shrinking to that
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  Speaker 1: awful nightmare of the past, and in which he praised
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  Speaker 1: God that as it is distant from him now, so
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  Speaker 1: may it be kept far off from him forever. Before closing,
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  Speaker 1: one matter may be casually mentioned. The tale has never
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  Speaker 1: been told, but I have unimpeachable authority for its authenticity.
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  Speaker 1: During the recent expeditionary advance towards Dongola, a body of
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  Speaker 1: Native troops which was encamped at a remote spot in
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  Speaker 1: the desert, was aroused one night by what seemed to
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  Speaker 1: be the sound of a loud explosion. The next morning,
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  Speaker 1: at a distance of a couple of miles from the camp,
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  Speaker 1: a huge hole was discovered in the ground, as if
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  Speaker 1: blasting operations on an enormous scale had recently been carried on.
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  Speaker 1: In the hole itself and round about it were found
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  Speaker 1: fragments of what seemed to bodies. Credible witnesses have assured
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  Speaker 1: me that they were bodies, neither of men nor women,
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  Speaker 1: but of creatures of some monstrous growth. I prefer to believe,
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  Speaker 1: since no scientific examination of the remains took place, that
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  Speaker 1: these witnesses ignorantly though innocently erred, One thing is sure.
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  Speaker 1: Numerous pieces of both stone and of metal were seen,
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  Speaker 1: which went far to suggest that some curious subterranean building
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  Speaker 1: had been blown up by the force of the explosion.
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  Speaker 1: Especially were the proportions of molded metal, which seemed to
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  Speaker 1: belong to what must have been an immense bronze statue.
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  Speaker 1: There were picked up, also more than a dozen replicas
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  Speaker 1: in bronze of the Willhelm's sacred sacribus. That the den
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  Speaker 1: of demons described by Paul Lessingham had that night at
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  Speaker 1: last come to an end, and that these things which
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  Speaker 1: lay scattered here and there on that treeless plain were
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  Speaker 1: the evidence of its final destruction. If not a hypothesis
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  Speaker 1: which I should care to advance with any degree of certainty,
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  Speaker 1: but putting this and that together, the facts seemed to
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  Speaker 1: point that way, and it is a consummation devoutly to
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  Speaker 1: be desired by the bye. Sydney Atherton has married Miss
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  Speaker 1: Dora Grayling. Her wealth has made him one of the
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  Speaker 1: richest men in England. She began, the story goes, by
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  Speaker 1: loving him immensely. I can answer for the fact that
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  Speaker 1: he has ended by a love her as much. Their
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  Speaker 1: devotion to each other contradicts the pessimistic nonsense which supposes
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  Speaker 1: that every marriage must be of necessity of failure. He
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  Speaker 1: continues his career of an inventor, his investigations into the
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  Speaker 1: subject of aerial flight, which have brought the flying machine
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  Speaker 1: within the range of practical politics or on everybody's tongue.
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  Speaker 1: The best man at Atherton's wedding was Percy Woodville, now
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  Speaker 1: the Earl of Barnes. Within six months afterwards he married
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  Speaker 1: one of missus Atherton's bridemaids. It was never certainly shown
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  Speaker 1: how Robert Holt came to his end. At the inquest,
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  Speaker 1: the coroner's jury was content to return a verdict of
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  Speaker 1: died of exhaustion. He lies buried in kensal Green Cemetery
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  Speaker 1: under a handsome tombstone, the cost of which, had he
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  Speaker 1: had it in his pockets, might have indefinitely prolonged his days.
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  Speaker 1: It should be mentioned that that portion of this strange history,
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  Speaker 1: which purports to be the surprising narration of Robert Holt,
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  Speaker 1: was compiled from the statements which Holt made to Atherton
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  Speaker 1: and to Miss Lindon, as she then was when a
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  Speaker 1: much stained, shattered derlic he lay at the lady's father's house.
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  Speaker 1: Miss Lindon's contribution towards the elucidation of the mystery was
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  Speaker 1: written with her own hand, after her physical strength had
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  Speaker 1: come back to her, and while mentally she still hovered
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  Speaker 1: between the darkness and the light, her one relaxation was writing.
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  Speaker 1: Although she would never speak of what she had written,
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  Speaker 1: it was found that her theme was always the same.
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  Speaker 1: She confided to pen and paper what she would not
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  Speaker 1: speak of with her lips. She told, and retold, and
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  Speaker 1: retold again the story of her love and of her tribulation,
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  Speaker 1: so far as it contained in the present volume. Her
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  Speaker 1: m s s invariably began and ended at the same point.
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  Speaker 1: They have all of them been destroyed, with one exception.
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  Speaker 1: That exception is herein placed before the reader on the
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  Speaker 1: subject of the mystery of the Beadle. I do not
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  Speaker 1: propose to pronounce a confident opinion. Atherton and I have
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  Speaker 1: talked it over many and many a time, and at
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  Speaker 1: the end we have got no forigder. So far as
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  Speaker 1: I am personally concerned. Experience has taught me that there
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  Speaker 1: are indeed more things in heaven and Earth than are
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  Speaker 1: dreamed of in our philosophy, and I am quite prepared
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  Speaker 1: to believe that the so called the Beadle, which others
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  Speaker 1: saw but I never was or is, for it cannot
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  Speaker 1: be certainly shown that the thing is not still existing,
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  Speaker 1: a creature born neither of God nor Man. End of
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  Speaker 1: Chapter forty eight recording by Anthony Wilson. End of the
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  Speaker 1: Beadle by Richard Marsh