“From the Dead” is a ghost story by the English writer and poet Edith Nesbit (1858–1924), first published in her Grim Tales
Collection of short stories by Edith Nesbit, first published in 1893. (1893) collection of short stories.[1]
The story is told as a first-person narrative by Arthur, who is engaged to Elvire. It begins as Arthur is reading a letter brought to him by Ida, a friend of Elvire’s, which she says she found in her brother Oscar’s desk. The letter from Elvire is addressed to Oscar, and describes her love for him, and her desire that Arthur would give her up so that they could be together. Bitterly, Arthur writes a short note to Elvire calling off their engagement. Six months later Oscar and Elvire are married, and within a year Arthur has married Ida.
For “three golden weeks” Arthur and Ida are blissfully happy, until one evening Ida admits that she had forged the letter apparently from Elvire. Arthur leaves the house to clear his mind, and when he returns Ida has disappeared; despite his best efforts he is unable to find her.
A few months later Ida sends arthur a telegram from Apinshaw Farm, in Mellor, Derbyshire, saying “Come to me at once. I am dying. You must come.” But by the time Arthur arrives at the farmhouse, Ida is dead from the complications of childbirth.
Arthur spends the night at the farm with his new son, sleeping next to the room in which Ida is laid out. He wakes up to hear noises coming from the room next door, and then Ida appears in his room asking for forgiveness. Arthur admits that he does still love her, but when she suggests that they kiss he panics, and she leaves. He hears something heavy fall in the passage outside his room, and finds Ida’s body in a crumpled heap.
Doctors suggest that Ida could have been suffering from catalepsy, so might not have been dead when she visited Arthur’s room. Which leaves him to wonder whether, if he had actually welcomed her advances instead of recoiling from them, Ida might still be alive.
External links
- Full text of “From the Dead” at Project Gutenberg
