The #1920 Club: From the Vast Deep by Marie Belloc Lowndes

“Ladies and gentlemen!” she cried. “This is a time of year when ghosts are said to walk. Why shouldn’t we hold a séance, here and now, and call up spirits from the vasty deep?”

Marie Belloc Lowndes has been a favourite of mine since I read her The Story of Ivy and so I was delighted to have discovered a book of hers for the #1920 Club, From the Vast Deep, known more commonly by its 1921 US publication title, From Out the Vasty Deep.

Blanche Farrow is a troubled lady. When the novel opens, her maid, Pegler, informs her that she would no longer be sleeping in the adjoining room as the room is haunted, insisting that she saw the face of a child floating in the moat outside and then a lady with a wicked face kept her awake in the night, her dress rustling along the floor as she walked across the room. The last thing Blanche wants right now is a hysterical maid on her hand as she has a special duty to perform. She has been asked to act as hostess by her friend, the widower Lionel Varick, at the first house-party being given by him at Wyndfell, an old ancient house that Varick inherited after the death of his wife, Millie.

It is an odd, assorted group that Varick has invited for Christmas: There are old Mr. Burnby and his spinster sister along with their niece Helen Brabazon. The old people are rather peevish and Blanche is surprised that they have been invited but Lionel tells her that Helen was Millie’s intimate friend and since he wanted her to attend the party, he had to invite her uncle and aunt too. There is Sir Lyon Dilsford whom Blanche rather likes and a sulky scion of a wealthy family, James Tapester. Varick had also invited an old friend, Dr. Paton, who had attended to his wife during her last illness but the doctor has been delayed.

Unluckily it was an oddly composed party, not so happily chosen as it might have been, and she wondered uneasily whether it would be a success.

In order to have young people at the party, Blanche invites her niece, Bubbles and her slave friend, Bill Donnington. Bubbles, who is as effervescent as her name, does add a spark to the whole party. However, she has been indulging a lot in the occult, prompting her father to write to Blanche:

I wish you’d say a word to her about all this spiritualistic rot. She seems to be getting deeper and deeper into it. It’s impairing her looks, making her nervous and almost hysterical—in a word, quite unlike herself. I spoke to her some time ago, and desired her most earnestly to desist from it. But a father has no power nowadays! I have talked the matter over with young Donnington (of whom I sometimes suspect she is fonder than she knows), and he quite agrees with me. After all, she’s a child still, and doesn’t realize what vieux jeu all that sort of thing is… In a sense I’ve only myself to thank, for I used to amuse myself in testing her amazing thought-reading powers when she was a little girl.”

However, in order to liven things up, Bubbles insists on holding a seance and as the party gathers round her, she brings up secrets from the past. Though unnerved, the party does not take things that seriously and some remain skeptical till unquiet spirits begin to materialize and sins thought buried come back to haunt:

Strange, half-forgotten stories of Indian magic—of a man hung up in chains padlocked by British officers, and then, a moment later, that same man, freed, standing in their midst, the chains rattling together, empty—floated through Blanche Farrow’s mind. Was it possible that Bubbles possessed uncanny powers—powers which had something to do with the immemorial magic of the immemorial East? Blanche had once heard the phenomenon of the vanishing rope trick discussed at some length between a number of clever people. She had paid very little attention to what had been said at the time, but she now strained her memory to recapture the sense of the words which had been uttered. One of the men present, a distinguished scientist, had actually seen the trick done. He had seen an Indian swarm up the rope and disappear—into thin air! What had he called it? Collective hypnotism? Yes, that was the expression he had used…

And before long, death’s long shadow creeps up…

Set during Christmas, this is a book for Christmas. It has everything that we love about the season: Mystery, Murder, Haunted Houses, Ghosts, Sins Past and Present, Flickering Candles, Staircases. I am surprised that I have never seen it on a list of Christmas reads. And though it is not the season nowadays, I absolutely loved reading it yesterday, a day which was overcast throughout with constant rain, thunder, and lightening. Finishing it in the dark of the night with the rain falling outside added that extra touch to the reading.

However, Lowndes’ book is not merely atmospheric, it also has such rich characterization. After having read a few books recently where I did not much care about the characters, it was wonderful to read a book where the characters present such a variety and I became concerned about and fond of quite a few, with the gambling-addict, loyal Blanche, emerging my favourite. [The only one who irritated me was Bubbles with her mixture of malice and dominance. And I wonder about the future of the relationship she formed.] Also the odd assorted group with its undercurrent of tensions, sarcastic thoughts and remarks, malice, ignorance and knowledge added to the unsettling aspect as well as humour of the novel:

As regards Lionel Varick, the second day of his house-party at Wyndfell Hall opened most inauspiciously, for, when approaching the dining-room, he became aware that the door was not really closed, and that Mr. Burnaby and his niece were having what seemed to be an animated and even angry discussion.

“I don’t like this place, and I don’t care for your fine friend, Mr. Varick—” Such was the very unpleasant observation which the speaker’s unlucky host overheard.

And to me, the most moving remark of the book was this:

“You’re a brick!” he exclaimed. “I ought to tell you to go away, too, but I won’t be proud, Blanche. I’ll accept your kindness.”

As must be clear, I absolutely loved the book. If you haven’t read it, do read it now or reserve it for Christmas:). And if you have read it, do let me know how you found it. Seriously, this is a book that is crying out for republication. I hope some publishing house publishes it because I’d love to buy a copy. It is for keeps.

*

First Line: “I always thought that you, Pegler, were such a very sensible woman.”

Publication Details: ebook

First Published: 1920

Source: Project Gutenberg

Other books read of the same author: (Among others) The End of Her Honeymoon; The House by the Sea; The Story of Ivy.

Other Opinions: Valli’s Book Den

*

Submitted for the #1920 Book Club