THE MYSTICS, page 1
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THE MYSTICS
KATHERINE CECIL
THURSTON
WILDSIDE PRESS
THE MYSTICS
This edition published in 2007 by Wildside Press, LLC.
www.wildsidebooks.com
CHAPTER I
Of all the sensations to which the human mind is a prey, there is
none so powerful in its finality, so chilling in its sense of an
impending event as the knowledge that Death — grim, implacable
Death — has cast his shadow on a life that custom and circum-
stance have rendered familiar. Whatever the personal feeling may
be — whether dismay, despair, or relief — no man or woman can
watch that advancing shadow without a quailing at the heart, an
individual shrinking from the terrible, natural mystery that we
must all face in turn — each for himself and each alone.
In a gaunt house on the loneliest point where the Scottish
coast overlooks the Irish Sea, John Henderson was watching his
uncle die. In the plain, whitewashed room where the sick man lay,
a fire was burning and a couple of oil-lamps shed an uncertain
glow; but outside, the wind roared inland from the shore, and the
rain splashed in furious showers against the windows of the
house. It was a night of tumult and darkness; but neither the old
man who lay waiting for the end nor the young man who watched
that end approaching gave any heed to the turmoil of the ele-
ments. Each was self-engrossed.
Except for an occasional rasping cough, or a slow, indrawn
breath, no sign came from the small iron bedstead on which the
dying man lay. His hard, emaciated face was set in an impene-
trable mask; his glazed eyes were fixed immovably on a distant
portion of the ceiling; and his hands lay clasped upon his breast,
covering some object that depended from his neck.
He had lain thus since the doctor from the neighboring town
had braved the rising storm and ridden over to see him in the fall
of the evening; and no accentuation of the gale that lashed the
house, no increase in the roar of the ocean three hundred yards
away, had power to interrupt his lethargy.
In curious contrast was the expression that marked his
nephew’s face. An extraordinary suppressed energy was visible in
every line of John Henderson’s body as he sat crouching over the
fire; and a look of irrepressible excitement smoldered in the eyes
that gazed into the glowing coals. He was barely twenty-three
T H E M Y S T I C S | 5
years old, but the self-control that comes from endurance and privation sat unmistakably on his knitted brows and closed lips. He
was neither handsome of feature nor graceful of figure, yet there
was something more striking and interesting than either grace or
beauty in the strong, youthful form and the strong, intelligent
face. For a long time he retained his crouching seat on the wooden
stool that stood before the hearth; then at last the activity at work within his mind made further inaction intolerable. He rose and
turned towards the bed.
The dying man lay motionless, awaiting the final summons
with that aloofness that suggests a spirit already partially extri-
cated from its covering of flesh. His glassy eyes were still fixed and immovable save for an occasional twitching of the eyelids; his
pallid lips were drawn back from his strong, prominent teeth; and
the skin about his temples looked shrivelled and sallow. The doc-
tor’s parting words came sharply to the younger man’s mind.
“Sit still and watch him — you can do no more.”
He reiterated this injunction many times mentally as he stood
contemplating the man who for seven interminable years had
ruled, repressed, and worked him as he might have worked a well-
constructed, manageable machine; and a sudden rush of joy, of
freedom and recompense flooded his heart and set his pulses
throbbing. He momentarily lost sight of the grim shadow hov-
ering over the house. The sense of emancipation rose tumultu-
ously, over-ruling even the immense solemnity of approaching
Death.
John Henderson had known little of the easy, pleasant paths
of life, carpeted by wealth and sheltered by influence. His most
childish and distant recollections carried him back to days of anx-
ious poverty. His father, the elder son of a wealthy Scottish land-
owner, had quarrelled with his father, and at the age of twenty left his home, disinherited in favor of his younger brother. Possessed
of a peculiar temperament — passionate, headstrong, dogged in
his resolves, he had shaken the dust of Scotland from his feet;
sworn never to be beholden to either father or brother for the
fraction of a penny, and had gone out into the world to seek his
fortune. But the fortune had been far to seek. For years he had fol-
6 | K A T H E R I N E C E C I L T H U R S T O N
lowed the sea; for years he had toiled on land; but in every undertaking failure stalked him. Finally, at the age of fifty, he touched success for the first time. He fell in love and found his love
returned. But here again the irony of fate was constant in its pur-
suit. The object of his choice was the daughter of an artist, a man
as needy, as entirely unfortunate as he himself.
But love at fifty is sometimes as blind as love at twenty-five.
With an improvidence that belied his nationality, Alick Hen-
derson married after a courtship as brief as it was happy. For a
year he shared the hap-hazard life of his wife and father-in-law;
then Nature saw fit to alter the small ménage. The artist died, and almost at the same time little John was born.
With the coming of the child, Henderson conceived a new
impetus and also a new sense of bitterness and self-reproach. A
homeless failure may tramp the face of the earth and feel no
shame; but the unsuccessful man who is a husband and a father
moves upon a different plane. He has ties — responsibilities —
something for which he must answer to himself.
There is pathos in the picture of a man setting forth at fifty-
one to conquer the world anew; and its grim futility is not good to
look upon. Henderson had failed for himself, and he failed equal-
ly for others. The years that followed his marriage were but the
unwinding of a pitifully old story. Before his boy was ten years old he had run the gamut of humiliation; he had done everything that
the pinch of poverty could demand, except apply for aid to his
brother Andrew. This even the faithful, patient wife who had
stood stanch in all his trials never dared to suggest.
In this atmosphere John learned to look upon life. A naturally
high-spirited and courageous child, he gradually fell under that
spell of premature understanding that is the portion of a mind
forced too soon to realize the significance of ways and means. Day
by day his serious eyes gre
his mother’s beloved face; to know the cost at which his own edu-
cation, his own wants, were supplied by the tired, silent father,
who, despite his shabby clothes and prematurely broken air,
seemed perpetually to move in the glamour of a past romance; and
gradually, steadily, passionately, as these things came home to
T H E M Y S T I C S | 7
him, there grew up in his youthful mind a desire to compensate by his own future for the struggle he daily witnessed.
Many were the nights when — his lessons for the next day fin-
ished, and his father away at one of the many precarious tasks that
kept the household together — he would draw close to his mother,
as she sat industriously sewing, and beg her for the hundredth
time to recount the story of the grim Scotch home where his father
had lost his birthright; of the stern old grandfather who had died
inexorably unforgiving; of the unknown uncle of whom rumor
told many eccentric stories. And, roused by the recital, his boyish
face would flush, his boyish mind leap forward towards the fu-
ture.
“’Twill all come back, mother!” he would cry. “’Twill all come
back! I’ll win it back!”
And, with a sobbing laugh, his mother would drop her sewing
and draw him to her heart in a sudden yearning of love and pride.
In such surroundings and in such an atmosphere he passed
sixteen years; then the first upheaval of his life took place. His
father died.
His first recollection — when the terrible necessities of the
event were past, and his own grief and consternation had partially
subsided — was the remembrance of his mother calling him to her
room; of her kissing him, crying over him and telling him of the
resolve she had taken to write and make known his existence to his
uncle in Scotland.
The confession at first overwhelmed him. His own pride, his
sense of loyalty to his father’s memory prompted him to cry out
against the idea as against a sacrilege. Then slowly his boyish,
immature mind grasped something of the nobility that prompted
the decision — something of the inexpressible love that counted
sentiment and personal dignity as nothing beside his own future;
and in a passion of gratitude he flung his arms about his mother,
repeating the old childish vows with a new and deeper force.
So the letter to Scotland was despatched; and a time of sharp
suspense followed for mother and son. Then, one never-to-be-
forgotten day, the answer arrived.
Andrew Henderson wrote unemotionally. He expressed for-
8 | K A T H E R I N E C E C I L T H U R S T O N
mal regret for his brother’s death, but evinced no interest in his sister-in-law’s position. He briefly described himself as living an
isolated life in a small house on the sea-coast, a dozen miles from
the family home which had remained untenanted since his fa-
ther’s death. He admitted that with advancing years the duties of
life had begun to weigh upon him, diverting his mind and time
from the graver pursuits to which his life was devoted; finally he
grudgingly suggested that, should his nephew care to undertake
the duties of secretary at a salary of sixty pounds a year, he might find a home with him.
The immediate feeling that followed the reading of the letter
was fraught with chilling disappointment. On the moment, pride
again asserted itself, urging a swift refusal of the rich man’s pro-
posal; then once more the patience that had kept Mrs. Henderson
brave and gentle during seventeen years of wearing poverty made
itself felt. All thought of personal grievance faded from her mind
as she pointed out the urgent necessity of John’s being seen and
known by this uncle, whose only relation and ostensible heir he
was. She talked for long, wisely and kindly — as mothers talk out
of the unselfish fulness of their hearts — and with every word the
golden castles of her imagination rose tower on tower to form the
citadel in which her son was to reign supreme.
So wisely and so lovingly did she talk that she persuaded not
only the boy, but herself, into the belief that he had but to reach
Scotland to make his inheritance sure; and before the day closed
she wrote to Andrew Henderson accepting his offer. A week later
the whole light of her life went out, as she watched the train steam out of the station, carrying John northward.
Upon the days that followed his arrival in Scotland there is no
need to dwell. He came as a stranger, and as a stranger he was
introduced by his uncle to the routine of work expected of him.
No mention was made of his recent loss, no suggestion was given
that his mother should make her double bereavement easier by
visits to her son. Whatever of hope or sentiment he had brought
with him, he was left to destroy or smother as best he could.
The first week resolved itself into one round of boyish home-
sickness and desolation; then gradually, as the marvellous healing
T H E M Y S T I C S | 9
properties of youth began to stir, a new feeling awakened in his mind — a sense of curiosity concerning the strange old man
whom fate, by a twist of the wheel, had made the arbiter of his life.
Even to one so young and inexperienced, it was impossible to
know Andrew Henderson and not to feel that some strange pecu-
liarity set him apart from other men. In his ascetic face, in his
large, light-blue eyes, in his extraordinary air of abstraction and
aloofness from mundane things, there was something that fasci-
nated and repelled; and with a wondering interest the boy studied
these things, trying in his unformed way to reconcile them with
his narrow experience of human nature.
For many weeks he sought without success for some key to the
attitude of this new-found relative. Then one evening — when
solution seemed least near — the key, metaphorically speaking,
fell at his feet. Returning home from a ramble over the headland,
his observant eye was caught by the sight of a narrow foot-track
that, crossing the main pathway of the cliff, wound steeply up-
ward and seemingly lost itself in a tangle of gorse and bracken.
Stirred by a boyish desire for exploration, he paused, turned into
this obscure track, and incontinently began its ascent.
For some hundreds of yards it led upward in a sharp incline;
and with its added steepness, the ardor of the explorer warmed.
With impetuous haste he climbed the last dozen yards; when, as
the anticipated summit was reached, he halted in abrupt, dis-
mayed surprise; for with alarming suddenness the land broke off
short, disclosing a deep gap or fissure, carpeted with heather and
surrounded by natural protecting walls of rock, in the centre of
which was set a miniature chapel built of dark stone.
At sight of the little edifice, he thrilled with adventurous sur-
prise. There was something mysterious, something almost fine in
the sight of the small temple, with the setting sun gleaming on its
solid walls, its low, massive door and round window of thick
stained glass. He leaned out over the shelving rock, staring down
upon it with wide, astonished eyes; then the natural instinct of the boy overtopped every other feeling. With a quick-movement of
excitement and expectation, he began to descend into the hollow.
But though he walked round the little building a dozen times,
1 0 | K A T H E R I N E C E C I L T H U R S T O N
shook the heavy door and peered ineffectually into the opaque window, nothing rewarded his curiosity, and after half an hour of
diligent endeavor he was compelled to return home no wiser than
when he had first stood on the summit of the path and looked
down into the rocky cleft.
All that evening, however, the thought of his discovery re-
mained with him. At the eight-o’clock supper of porridge, vegeta-
