JIM’S REWARD
AN East Indian reclining chair, eased with soft pillows and placed in the
embrasure of a western window, took the rays of the sinking sun, and was
breathed upon by the light evening air. The window was open, and across a
breadth of green park enclosure was visible the broad gleam of the Hudson,
flowing seaward beneath its parapets of brown rock. Miriam, as she lay in
the chair, had just opened her eyes upon this familiar scene; and not less
familiar was the spacious room which she knew she could see by turning her
head; she had often sat there on summer evenings like this, holding
discourse with Mary Faust on matters, deep or trifling, of heaven and
earth. There was a wonderful scent of roses in the room, and when she
lifted a hand indolently to her head she was surprised to find herself
wearing a crown of roses; roses, too, trailed along the sides of the chair
and hung down to the floor, as if she were lying upon a bed of them.
Magnificent flowers they were, and not of any species that she remembered.
Where had they come from?
As she idly debated this question in her mind, she was conscious of a sort
of gentle puzzlement in her thoughts; the continuity of events seemed
broken; she could not recall what had preceded her coming to this room.
Had she fallen asleep, and had Mary caused her to be conveyed hither in
that condition? She was not wont to take naps at this hour. Had she been
ill? That seemed still more unlikely; illness and she were strangers. Had
Mary, for some undisclosed purpose, thrown her into a trance? Least
probable of all!
What had they been doing that day? She had arrived early; she had found
Mary absorbed in mathematical calculations of the transcendent order; they
had exchanged a few words, and then Miriam had gone alone into the
laboratory. There she had paced up and down for a while, revolving the
great enterprise which they had so long been working on together. Would
it, after all, prove actually practicable? Theoretically, there seemed to
be no opening for doubt; and yet— Finally, the better to pursue her
meditations, she remembered seating herself in the chair of the
psycho-physical engine; and her hand—her right hand—had rested on the head
of the great lever. Would anything really happen were she to press it
down?
She recalled the flitting of that thought through her brain. The lever was
so nicely adjusted as to move at a very slight impulse; and then—
She uttered a sharp cry—a cry of terror. She huddled down in the chair,
half raising her hands as if to ward off a blow. She panted as from a
race. Her feeling was that a world was falling down upon her to crush her.
After a few moments she pressed her hands over her eyes and quick moans
broke from her. She felt a hand laid gently on her head—a cool, soothing
hand. By and by she sat up and stared fearfully about her.
“Oh, Mary, what happened?” she muttered. “Was it true?”
“Take your time, dear,” Mary replied. “You got back safe. It’s all right.
Shall I tell Jenny to bring you a cup of tea?”
“Jenny! But she was—we were taken up in a moment. Oh, my poor Jenny!”
“Jenny was my affair,” said Mary Faust, with her grave smile. “I furnished
her, and of course I provided for her return. She is none the worse for
the trip.”
Miriam had not yet recovered her spiritual footing. “Saturn!” she
murmured. “Lamara—Zarga! Torpeon!”
Suddenly she snatched at the right sleeve of her dress, and tore it
across, exposing the shoulder. She scrutinized it eagerly. The mark was
still there, but instead of red it now appeared as a white scar. Mary
Faust eyed it with interest.
“He must have stamped it deep!” she observed. “It has survived your
Saturnian incarnation. But its power is gone; it’s only a memento now.”
“I was there!” said Miriam wonderingly; “and this is our own earth again!”
“It was a trying experience,” said her friend in a matter-of-fact tone;
“but our science is vindicated, and we need never repeat the experiment.
We’ll talk it over at our leisure some other time. What lovely roses you
brought back with you! The place looked like a conservatory! We understand
the principle, of course; but it was exquisitely done! I wish I could have
been with you; but I kept in touch as well as I could.”
“They know and honor you there; and Solarion!” “Yes, I have much to thank
him for. But don’t be agitated, dear; things will take their proper places
by degrees. The world will be under a great obligation to you. Your
departure was a little premature, but after all it was better so. There
was only one sad thing about it; and that, too, has beauty and
consolation. Dear little Jim!”
Miriam turned and bent upon her friend a long and poignant look. She tried
to command herself, but her lips quivered and tears ran down her face.
“So may worlds,” she faltered, “and death in all of them! Jim was a hero,
and he died for me; but why must the other be taken, and I be left?
Without him, what use am I? I had begun to know what love is; and now I am
alone! Mary, his spirit was with me in that last terrible scene; I could
even see him and hear his voice. Why couldn’t he stay with me, if only as
a spirit? God has all power, in heaven and on earth!”
“The scope of science does not include such problems,” said Mary Faust
composedly. “But I should suppose that any conscious intercourse between
the two planes of life must be exceptional and transient—in our present
stage of development, at any rate. Spirit consorts with spirit, and flesh
with flesh; that is normal and wholesome. To overstep the boundaries is
dangerous and leads to confusions. Neither side can be of use in its place
if it is continually trespassing upon the other. If I had a lover, and
knew that he was still alive and loved me, why should I mourn because his
senses and mine function for a while under different conditions, and are
themselves of a different order? If he had ceased to be, or loved me no
more, that might be a cause for mourning.”
“You are wise and reasonable,” said Miriam, with a sigh; “but it seems to
me to be cause for mourning, too, that a warm, loving, beating human heart
must survive in the ice of your logic, with only a memory and a hope—which
may become frozen, too.”
“Matters may turn out better than you think,” was Mary Faust’s reply.
“Meanwhile, your father is waiting in the next room. Will you go to him?”
“Dearest father!” exclaimed Miriam rising. “Yes, there are more loves than
one.”
She wiped the tears from her cheeks, and with the rose-wreaths still
clinging about her, followed her friend into the shadowy spaces of the
laboratory.
From the gloom the sturdy figure of the white-headed old contractor
started forward, grasped his daughter by the shoulders with trembling
hands, and gazed into her face with a devouring look.
“Me own colleen!” he cried in a breaking voice. “Come back safe and alive
to her old daddy! Glory be to God and all the blessed saints! Oh, honey,
honey, don’t ye never be doin’ the likes again. Sure, the heart was most
bruck in me!” He held her to him with an almost desperate clutch. “Take
all ye want in this world—marry any man ye like—but, stay where the old
daddy that loves ye can feast his eyes on ye.”
“Darling daddy!” murmured she; “You’re all I have left; thank God for
you.”
“Long live Oireland!” rejoined the old man fervently but incoherently.
Two tall figures stood in the background; one of them began to come
forward, not quickly, but with an inevitableness like the drawing of
planet to planet. The other, with a cigar between his fingers, watched the
scene with an amused but genuine interest.
Miriam did not observe the newcomer till he was close upon her. Without
directly looking at him, she involuntarily drew back a little, with a
feeling that no outsider should intrude upon this meeting. At this moment
Mary Faust touched a button, and the room was filled with light.
Miriam’s arms fell to her sides, nor was there strength in her to lift a
finger. Nor had her lips power to form themselves into a smile; but the
soul within her rushed into her widely opened eyes with such a radiance of
speechless joy that the others turned aside and retired noiselessly into a
remote part of the great chamber, realizing that the place of these two
was holy ground. He came forward another step; but not yet did she believe
that this was more than a return of that blessed vision which had been
granted her on the other side of space. Oh, was not this happiness enough!
She seemed to herself to be floating in a shining void of heaven, with the
glow of a great warmth suffusing her. How real, how near seemed his face.
Or was it that she herself had unawares been borne to paradise, and they
were met to part no more!
“I cannot bear it, love!” she whispered. “It seems too real. And then to
have you go again.”
But now she felt a touch; his arms, firm and strong, were round her; his
lips were upon her lips, and no illusion or magic prevented them. Her cry
sprang forth like the warbling of a bird—joy, passion, and music in one:
“Oh, Jack; my darling, my love, my own! It’s you; it’s you, you, your own
blessed self! Jack, it’s forever!” Her hands caught at him, gripped him
hard, his arms, his shoulders, his face; her fingers plunged in his hair.
“Oh, love, you were dead, and are alive again!”
Twilight had entered into night when the lovers compelled themselves to
issue from their paradise, and join the others where they sat at a table
near an open window in the laboratory. The window was wide and high, and
commanded a large view of the heavens in that quarter. A great star hung
midway aloft, giving out a serene light. The lights in the room had been
lowered, as if not to detract from its radiance. Miriam’s hold upon her
lover’s arm tightened:
“Jack, we were there”
“Eight hundred million miles!” said he.
“And you went there for me!”
“I would go to Sirius for you; the universe is not large enough to keep me
from you. Nothing is too far for love.”
The tall man who had been Jack’s companion rose from the table, and came
forward with a jolly bow and smile. Miriam recognized Sam Paladin.
“I’m very glad to see you home again, Miss Mayne,” he said, grasping her
hand. “I used to fancy I’d done some trotting about, but I shall sit at
your feet henceforth. As for that boy Jack, he deserves less credit. Who
wouldn’t do as much for such an object?”
“Sure and I’d have gone meself, if they’d let me,” said Terence Mayne.
Jenny brought the tea, curtsying happily to her mistress and looking more
natural than ever.
After some chat about some business and politics, chiefly between Terence
and Sam, Mary Faust suddenly excused herself and went out. She returned
after a few minutes.
“I have had a message from our friends,” she said, addressing Miriam and
Jack more especially, and with as much simplicity as if the message were
from down-town. “Lamara and the judges have conferred, and she wishes you
to know the result. Will you follow me—all of you?”
They got up, and she led them to a part of the laboratory partitioned off
from the main room, and fitted up somewhat after the manner of an oratory.
Neither the lovers nor the other two had any notion of what was to happen.
There was an oval window looking to the south and east, through which the
rays of the planet Saturn fell and rested upon a couch, draped with a robe
of white samite, bordered with blue. Mary Faust, with a reverent gesture,
turned back this coverlet, and the body of Jim was revealed, with his
crutch beside him. There was no other illumination in the place than what
proceeded from the planet: but as the eyes of the spectators grew
accustomed to the dimness, the face of the little gnome was distinctly
visible. There was a trace of the good-humored grin on his lips, with
which he had met all the vagaries of fortune; but also an innocent
lovableness which his indomitable spirit had disguised during his earthly
life. All gazed upon this spectacle with affectionate sympathy.
“Lamara told me,” said Mary Faust, breaking the silence, “that the highest
honor among Saturnians is indicated by a halo, symbolizing the perfect
love that has no thought of self. It is bestowed by the ruler of the
planet, sitting in counsel with the wisest of the realm; but the gift does
not come from them, but from the Source of life and love, who communicates
it to them as almoners. And she asked me to bring you here for witness.”
As they stood about the couch, Miriam’s hand in Jack’s, Sam and Terence
gravely attentive, the faint, diffused light gathered more definitely upon
the dead urchin’s head. At length it seemed as if the light emanated
therefrom, rather than from the distant globe. Still it brightened, and
now assumed the form of a ring of purest radiance, shining above his
forehead; if a circle of pearls could be fire, they would appear thus. It
was visible for several minutes; and whether it then vanished, or whether
the eyes of the onlookers were unable any longer to discern it, was
doubtful. Perhaps it was a thing which only persons of good will and pure
heats could have seen at all.
They went out in silence; but the meaning of the halo sank deep into the
lovers’ souls, and its light guided their life.