The Prophet's Mantle

The Prophet's Mantle by Edith Nesbit

Old Richard Ferrier, a self-made Derbyshire millowner, lies dying at Thornsett Edge, troubled by a growing coldness between his two sons, Dick and Roland. Summoning each in turn, he extracts promises that they will remain friends, then has his solicitor, Mr Gates, alter his will: the mill and its profits are to pass to Dick and Roland jointly on condition that they work it together for twenty-one years; should they quarrel and separate, the money is to accumulate for ten years and then go entirely to the Manchester Infirmary. Satisfied, old Ferrier dies, attended at the last only by Dick. At Thornsett village the mill hands gossip over the funeral, remarking on the brothers' rivalry over Clare Stanley of Aspinshaw and on the disappearance, some months earlier, of Alice Hatfield, foster-sister to the two young men, who vanished suddenly after being seen with a strange gentleman and has never returned home. Roland had left home mysteriously at the same time, and the coincidence has bred suspicion between the brothers, sharpened by their rivalry for Clare's affection. In London, Clare and her father, Mr Stanley, narrowly escape being run down by runaway carriage horses outside a theatre; their rescuer is Count Michael Litvinoff, a Russian exile living at Morley's Hotel, who is invited to call and quickly becomes a favourite of both father and daughter with his singing, his charm, and his stories of persecution in Russia. Dick and Roland, also in London on business, are drawn into his circle; Roland in particular is captivated, and both brothers accompany Litvinoff to hear him lecture on Nihilism at a working men's club in Soho, where his eloquence and his authorship of a banned pamphlet, "A Prophetic Vision," win him great applause. Unnoticed by the brothers, Alice Hatfield is in the audience. Walking back from the Soho meeting, Dick recognizes Alice in the street, follows her to her poor lodging in Spray's Buildings, and learns that she is living alone, supporting herself by tailoring, unmarried, and estranged from her family through some fault she will not fully explain, though she insists the man in the case did not desert her. Dick's suspicions fasten on Roland. Returning to the same building later to keep an appointment with Alice, Dick instead encounters Roland there under circumstances that seem damning; the brothers quarrel violently on the staircase, Roland ordering Dick never to speak to him again "on this side of the grave." Dick, further inflamed, goes to Clare and half-accuses Roland of ruining a woman, provoking her indignation at his want of proof and effectively ending his own hopes with her. He then instructs Gates to dissolve the partnership and close the mill, and visits his father's grave. Meanwhile Alice, overwhelmed by loneliness and illness, faints and is found by her landlady, Mrs Fludger, to be with child. Turned out of her lodging, she wanders through London at night and is on the point of drowning herself from Blackfriars Bridge when she is saved by a night watchman, Toomey, who hands her into the care of a mysterious countryman, Petrovitch. Petrovitch, tender and resourceful, learns her story: she calls herself "Mrs Litvinoff," having lived as the common-law wife of a man of that name who persuaded her that a legal marriage would compromise his revolutionary principles; her conscience eventually drove her to leave him. Petrovitch arranges lodgings for her with the kindly Toomeys, secures a doctor's care, and, through an intermediary named Hirsch, obtains money from Count Litvinoff himself for "an exile's distressed wife," without revealing whose wife she is. It becomes clear, though unstated to the other characters, that Litvinoff and Alice's seducer are one and the same, and that Petrovitch and Hirsch's associates regard Litvinoff's public revolutionary reputation ("the Mantle of the Prophet") with a certain private irony. Litvinoff, for his part, continues to cultivate both the Ferriers and Clare Stanley, subtly deepening the brothers' estrangement: he warns Dick against believing ill of Roland while feeding suspicion, and hints to Clare that Dick's accusations arise from jealous rivalry. He also addresses a Socialist society, the Cleon, where Clare hears Petrovitch lecture and is powerfully affected by his ideas, to Litvinoff's mild vexation. With the brothers permanently sundered and the mill's closure set in motion, Litvinoff travels north to spend Christmas at Thornsett Edge as Roland's guest. At the station he meets, and briefly avoids, Alice's father John Hatfield, then walks with him toward the village, drawing out his bitterness against "the gentlefolks" and recounting his own tale of revolutionary flight from Russia. Joined by Roland, Litvinoff continues on toward Aspinshaw to inquire after Mrs Stanley's health. As the two men approach the house through the garden, they hear a gunshot, a woman's scream, and the sound of a heavy fall, and both spring through the hedge toward the sound.

By Edith Nesbit · First published 1885 · Genre: Fantasy, Adventure, Children's Literature · 32 chapters · 112,458 words

First lines

The light was fading among the Derbyshire hills. The trees, now almost bare, were stirred by the fretful wind into what seemed like a passionate wail for their own lost loveliness, and on the wide bare stretch of moorland behind the house the strange weird cry of the plovers sounded like a dirge over the dead summer. The sharp, intermittent rain had beaten all the beauty out of the few late autumn flowers in the garden, and it was tender of the twilight to hasten to deepen into a darkness heavy enough to hide such a grey desolate picture.

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Fantasy · Adventure · Children's Literature · Classic · British Literature · Victorian Era · Religion · Spirituality · Prophesy · Mystery · Family · Friendship

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