Free Beneath London by James P. Blaylock

death, and in fact revealed to Mother Laswell the exact moment on the previous day when it came into her mind that her mother had breathed her last.
    Mother Laswell poured tea into their cups now, and passed around the milk and sugar, then sat back in her chair. “Clara lost her sight when she was seven years old,” she told them. “Shortly thereafter Sarah Wright expelled her husband – the scoundrel Clemson Wright – from the cottage. It was… very bad. He beat Sarah, do you see? And he took the money that she had laid by – that she had received from her own mother. He never returned, thank heaven. Clara came to live here some few months later, nearly eight years ago now.”
    “Was the loss of Clara’s eyesight organic in nature?” St. Ives asked Mother Laswell. “Did it advance over time?”
    “It was quite sudden, in fact.”
    “Is it
psychical
in nature, then?”
    She shrugged, as if the question was not vital. “
Hysterical
, do you mean? It’s an unhappy word, Professor. Will it surprise you to know that I corresponded with Monsieur Charcot himself on just that subject? Have you heard the name, sir?”
    “A prominent physician in France, although with some tolerably modern notions.”
    “My good friend Mabel Morningstar had met the man. He was a friend of Mabel’s late husband. Charcot suggested that I convey Clara to Paris for a course of hypnotic therapy. We were to be prepared to stay for some time. Clara refused to go, and neither Sarah nor I insisted. Half of me believed that Charcot was a charlatan, you see – another Mesmer, if you will, who intended to publicize Clara’s misfortune in order to promote himself.”
    “Indeed,” St. Ives said, “I believe that the jury is still out on that subject, ma’am, although Charcot’s work has borne interesting fruit. I have no business playing the grand inquisitor, but may I ask whether Clemson Wright misused the girl?”
    “There you have it,” Mother Laswell said.
    “Ah. And now this terrible business.” St. Ives shook his head and stared into his teacup, as if reading the leaves.
    “And yet Clara possesses a strength of spirit that I envy,” Mother Laswell said. “Sometimes I feel like a weakling when I’m in her presence.”
    Alice looked out through the dark afternoon and saw that Clara was still in the lamp-lit barn, feeding an apple to the mule. It astonished her that children could undergo such hardships and still have any happiness in them. Mother Laswell poured more tea into their cups. She looked worn out, and not merely from the day’s tribulations, Alice thought, but from early years of trouble and pain – a wicked, murderous husband of her own, and a son who was worse. Both dead now, and the world better off without them. Their malicious ghosts still haunted her life, however.
    “Shall I tell you something that will surprise you?” Mother Laswell asked, breaking the silence.
    “By all means,” St. Ives said.
    “I’ll reveal to you that Clara is a hydroscope of enormous power. Her ability to sense the presence of underground water and of dead things buried near it is quite remarkable.”
    “Do you mean that she’s mastered the art of the divining rod?” Alice asked.
    “No, Alice. I mean that Clara
is
the divining rod – a human hydroscope. She falls into fits if she stands above underground water, even very deep beneath the earth. She begins to spin, and can’t help herself. She’ll seize if she’s not forcibly moved away.”
    “I’ll tell you truthfully,” St. Ives said, “that I’m skeptical of wands and hydroscopes having the power to find buried human bodies or treasures or suchlike. The notion was exploded long ago.”
    “You would not be skeptical if you’d witnessed Clara entering a cemetery, Professor. In truth we keep her very nearly a prisoner at Hereafter Farm, for the ground beneath her can become a living nightmare if she’s not careful. Her mother fashioned a pair of shoes soled with sheet