THE CHARIOT OF THE FLESH
BY
HEDLEY PEEK
LONDON
LAWRENCE & BULLEN, LTD.
1897
NEW YORK
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
1897
[All rights reserved]
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON & BUNGAY.
Dedicated
TO
REV. S. A. TIPPLE
FOR THIRTY YEARS MY FRIEND AND TEACHER
In our definitions we grope after the spiritual by
describing it as invisible. The true meaning of spiritual
is real.--EMERSON.
THE CHARIOT OF THE FLESH
PART I
CHAPTER I
It is nearly eleven years since Alan Sydney leftEngland, but I have only recently been releasedfrom my promise of secrecy. So sacred to me isthe memory of our friendship, that, even now, Ishrink from the task of narrating his strange andcurious history. A strong impulse, however, urgesme to break silence.
The village of Anstead, near which we both lived,is in Surrey, possibly the best county in England tofind mixed society. Here the old-fashioned farmers,the labourers who have never travelled as far asLondon, and a few country squires are mingledwith, and influenced by, retired London shopkeepers,merchant princes--with or without H's--anda sprinkling of literary and scientific dabblers;these last are regarded with suspicion by all, butespecially by the retired Army and Navy magnates.
Nobody seemed to know to which class AlanSydney belonged, and strange to say he wasadmitted, chiefly, I fancy, bec