As I approached the scene of my former life, I met many people. I had
struck a realm of spirits who at first perplexed me. They did not look
happy, and seemed possessed by great unrest. I observed that, though
they fluttered and moved impatiently, none rose far above the surface of
the earth. Most of them were employed in one way or another upon it.
Some bought and sold; some eat and drank; others occupied themselves in
coarse pleasures, from which one could but turn away the eyes. There
were those who were busied in more refined ways:--students with eyes
fastened to dusty volumes; virtuosos who hung about a picture, a statue,
a tapestry, that had enslaved them; one musical creature I saw, who
ought to have been of exquisite organization, judging from his hands--he
played perpetually upon an instrument that he could not tune; women, I
saw too, who robed and disrobed without a glint of pleasure in their
faded faces.
There were ruder souls than any of these--but one sought for them in the
dens of the earth; their dead hands still were red with stains of blood,
and in their dead hearts reigned the remnants of hideous passions.
Of all these appearances, which I still found it natural to call
phenomena as I should once have done, it will be remembered that I
received the temporary and imperfect impression of a person passing
swiftly through a crowd, so that I do not wish my account to be accepted
for anything more trustworthy than it is.
While I was wondering greatly what it meant, some one joined and spoke
to me familiarly, and, turning, I saw it to be that old neighbor, Mrs.
Mersey, to whom I have alluded, who, like myself, seemed to be bent upon
an errand, and to be but a visitor upon the earth. She was a most lovely
spirit, as she had always been, and I grasped her hand cordially while
we swept on rapidly together to our journey’s end.
“Do tell me,” I whispered, as soon as I could draw her near enough, “who
all these people are, and what it means. I fear to guess. And yet indeed
they seem like the dead who cannot get away.”
“Alas,” she sighed, “you have said it. They loved nothing, they lived
for nothing, they believed in nothing, they cultivated themselves for
nothing but the earth. They simply lack the spiritual momentum to get
away from it. It is as much the working of a natural law as the progress
of a fever. Many of my duties have been among such as these. I know them
well. They need time and tact in treatment, and oh, the greatest
patience! At first it discouraged me, but I am learning the enthusiasm
of my work.”
“These, then,” I said, “were those I saw in that first hour, when my
father led me out of the house, and through the street. I saw you among
them, Mrs. Mersey, but I knew even then that you were not of them. But
surely they do not stay forever prisoners of the earth? Surely such a
blot on the face of spiritual life cannot but fade away? I am a
new-comer. I am still quite ignorant, you see. But I do not understand,
any more than I did before, how that could be.”
“They have their choice,” she answered vaguely. But when I saw the high
solemnity of her aspect, I feared to press my questions. I could not,
however, or I did not forbear saying:--
“At least _you_ must have already persuaded many to sever themselves
from such a condition as this?”
“Already some, I hope,” she replied evasively, as she moved away. She
always had remarkably fine manners, of which death had by no means
deprived her. I admired her graciousness and dignity as she passed from
my side to that of one we met, who, in a dejected voice, called her by
her name, and intimated that he wished to speak with her. He was a pale
and restless youth, and I thought, but was not sure, for we separated so
quickly, that it was the little fellow I spoke of, Bobby Bend. I looked
back, after I had advanced some distance on my way, and saw the two
together, conversing earnestly. While I was still watching them, it
seemed to me, though I cannot be positive upon this point, that they had
changed their course, and were quietly ascending, she leading, he
following, above the dismal sphere in which she found the lad, and that
his heavy, awkward, downward motions became freer, struggling upward, as
I gazed.
I had now come to the location of my old home, and, as I passed through
the familiar village streets, I saw that night was coming on. I met many
whom I knew, both of those called dead and living. The former recognized
me, but the latter saw me not. No one detained me, however, for I felt
in haste which I could not conceal.
With high-beating heart, I approached the dear old house. No one was
astir. As I turned the handle of the door, a soft, sickening touch
crawled around my wrist; recoiling, I found that I was entwisted in a
piece of crape that the wind had blown against me.
I went in softly; but I might have spared myself the pains. No one heard
me, though the heavy door creaked, I thought, as emphatically as it
always had--loudest when we were out latest, and longest when we shut it
quickest. I went into the parlor and stood, for a moment, uncertain what
to do.
Alice was there, and my married sister Jane, with her husband and little
boy. They sat about the fire, conversing sadly. Alice’s pretty eyes were
disfigured with crying. They spoke constantly of me. Alice was relating
to Jane and her family the particulars of my illness. I was touched to
hear her call me “patient and sweet;”--none the less because she had
often told me I was the most impatient member of the family.
No one had observed my entrance. Of course I was prepared for this, but
I cannot tell why I should have felt it, as I certainly did. A low
bamboo chair, cushioned with green _crétonne_, stood by the table. I had
a fancy for this chair, and, pleased that they had left it unoccupied,
advanced and took it, in the old way. It was with something almost like
a shock, that I found myself unnoticed in the very centre of their
group.
While I sat there, Jane moved to fix the fire, and, in returning, made
as if she would take the bamboo chair.
“Oh, don’t!” said Alice, sobbing freshly. Jane’s own tears sprang, and
she turned away.
“It seems to me,” said my brother-in-law, looking about with the patient
grimace of a business man compelled to waste time at a funeral, “that
there has a cold draught come into this room from somewhere. Nobody has
left the front door open, I hope? I’ll go and see.”
He went, glad of the excuse to stir about, poor fellow, and I presume he
took a comfortable smoke outside.
The little boy started after his father, but was bidden back, and
crawled up into the chair where I was sitting. I took the child upon my
lap, and let him stay. No one removed him, he grew so quiet, and he was
soon asleep in my arm. This pleased me; but I could not be contented
long, so I kissed the boy and put him down. He cried bitterly, and ran
to his mother for comfort.
While they were occupied with him, I stole away. I thought I knew where
Mother would be, and was ashamed of myself at the reluctance I certainly
had to enter my own room, under these exciting circumstances.
Conquering this timidity, as unwomanly and unworthy, I went up and
opened the familiar door. I had begun to learn that neither sound nor
sight followed my motions now, so that I was not surprised at attracting
no attention from the lonely occupant of the room. I closed the
door--from long habit I still made an effort to turn the latch
softly--and resolutely examined what I saw.
My mother was there, as I had expected. The room was cold--there was no
fire,--and she had on her heavy blanket shawl. The gas was lighted, and
one of my red candles, but both burned dimly. The poor woman’s magenta
geranium had frozen. My mother sat in the red easy-chair, which, being a
huge, old-fashioned thing, surrounded and shielded her from the
draught. My clothes, and medicines, and all the little signs of sickness
had been removed. The room was swept, and orderly. Above the bed, the
pictures and the carved cross looked down.
Below them, calm as sleep, and cold as frost, and terrible as silence,
lay that which had been I.
_She_ did not shrink. She was sitting close beside it. She gazed at it
with the tenderness which death itself could not affright. Mother was
not crying. She did not look as if she had shed tears for a long time.
But her wanness and the drawn lines about her mouth were hard to see.
Her aged hands trembled as she cut the locks of hair from the neck of
the dead. She was growing to be an old woman. And I--her first-born--I
had been her staff of life, and on me she had thought to lean in her
widowed age. She seemed to me to have grown feeble fast in the time
since I had left her.
All my soul rushed to my lips, and I cried out--it seemed that either
the dead or the living must hear that cry--
“Mother! Oh, my dear _mother_!”
But deaf as life, she sat before me. She had just cut off the lock of
hair she wanted; as I spoke, the curling ends of it twined around her
fingers; I tried to snatch it away, thinking thus to arrest her
attention.
The lock of hair trembled, turned, and clung the closer to the living
hand. She pressed it to her lips with the passion of desolation.
“But, Mother,” I cried once more, “I am _here_.” I flung my arms about
her and kissed her again and again. I called and entreated her by every
dear name that household love had taught us. I besought her to turn, to
see, to hear, to believe, to be comforted. I told her how blest was I,
how bountiful was death.
“I am alive,” I said. “I am alive! I see you, I touch you, hear you,
love you, hold you!” I tried argument and severity; I tried tenderness
and ridicule.
She turned at this: it seemed to me that she regarded me. She stretched
her arms out; her aged hands groped to and fro as if she felt for
something and found it not; she shook her head, her dim eyes gazed
blankly into mine. She sighed patiently, and rose as if to leave the
room, but hesitated,--covered the face of the dead body--caressed it
once or twice as if it had been a living infant--and then, taking up her
Bible, which had been upon the chair beside her, dropped upon her knees,
and holding the book against her sunken cheek, abandoned herself to
silent prayer.
This was more than I could bear just then, and, thinking to collect
myself by a few moments’ solitude, I left her. But as I stood in the
dark hall, uncertain and unquiet, I noticed a long, narrow line of light
at my feet, and, following it confusedly, found that it came from the
crack in the closed, but unlatched door of another well-remembered room.
I pushed the door open hurriedly and closed it behind me.
My brother sat in this room alone. His fire was blazing cheerfully and,
flashing, revealed the deer’s-head from the Adirondacks, the stuffed
rose-curlew from Florida, the gull’s wing from Cape Ann, the gun and
rifle and bamboo fish-pole, the class photographs over the mantel, the
feminine features on porcelain in velvet frames, all the little
trappings with which I was familiar. Tom had been trying to study, but
his Homer lay pushed away, with crumpled leaves, upon the table. Buried
in his lexicon--one strong elbow intervening--down, like a hero thrown,
the boy’s face had gone.
“Tom,” I said quietly--I always spoke quietly to Tom, who had a
constitutional fear of what he called “emotions”--“Tom, you’d better be
studying your Greek. I’d much rather see you. Come, I’ll help you.”
He did not move, poor fellow, and as I came nearer, I saw, to my
heart-break, that our Tom was crying. Sobs shook his huge frame, and
down between the iron fingers, toughened by base-ball matches, tears had
streamed upon the pages of the Odyssey.
“Tom, Tom, old fellow, _don’t_!” I cried, and, hungry as love, I took
the boy. I got upon the arm of the smoking chair, as I used to, and so
had my hands about his neck, and my cheek upon his curly hair, and would
have soothed him. Indeed, he did grow calm, and calmer, as if he yielded
to my touch; and presently he lifted his wet face, and looked about the
room, half ashamed, half defiant, as if to ask who saw that.
“Come, Tom,” I tried again. “It really isn’t so bad as you think. And
there is Mother catching cold in that room. Go and get her away from the
body. It is no place for her. She’ll get sick. Nobody can manage her as
well as you.”
As if he heard me, he arose. As if he knew me, he looked for the
flashing of an instant into my eyes.
“I don’t see how a girl of her sense can be _dead_,” said the boy aloud.
He stretched his arms once above his head, and out into the bright,
empty room, and I heard him groan in a way that wrung my heart. I went
impulsively to him, and as his arms closed, they closed about me
strongly. He stood for a moment quite still. I could feel the nervous
strain subsiding all over his big soul and body.
“Hush,” I whispered. “I’m no more dead than you are.”
If he heard, what he felt, God knows. I speak of a mystery. No optical
illusion, no tactual hallucination could hold the boy who took all the
medals at the gymnasium. The hearty, healthy fellow could receive no
abnormal sign from the love and longing of the dead. Only spirit unto
spirit could attempt that strange out-reaching. Spirit unto spirit, was
it done? Still, I relate a mystery, and what shall I say? His professor
in the class-room of metaphysics would teach him next week that grief
owns the law of the rhythm of motion; and that at the oscillation of the
pendulum the excitement of anguish shall subside into apathy which
mourners alike treat as a disloyalty to the dead, and court as a nervous
relief to the living.
Be this as it may, the boy grew suddenly calm, and even cheerful, and
followed me at once. I led him directly to his mother, and left them for
a time alone together.
After this my own calm, because my own confidence, increased. My dreary
sense of helplessness before the suffering of those I loved, gave place
to the consciousness of power to reach them. I detected this power in
myself in an undeveloped form, and realized that it might require
exercise and culture, like all other powers, if I would make valuable
use of it. I could already regard the cultivation of the faculty which
would enable love to defy death, and spirit to conquer matter, as likely
to be one of the occupations of a full life.
I went out into the fresh air for a time to think these thoughts through
by myself, undisturbed by the sight of grief that I could not remove;
and strolled up and down the village streets in the frosty night.
When I returned to the house they had all separated for the night, sadly
seeking sleep in view of the events of the morrow, when, as I had
already inferred, the funeral would take place.
I spent the night among them, chiefly with my mother and Tom, passing
unnoticed from room to room, and comforting them in such ways as I found
possible. The boy had locked his door, but after a few trials I found
myself able to pass the medium of this resisting matter, and to enter
and depart according to my will. Tom finished his lesson in the Odyssey,
and I sat by and helped him when I could. This I found possible in
simple ways, which I may explain farther at another time. We had often
studied together, and his mind the more readily, therefore, responded to
the influence of my own. He was soon well asleep, and I was free to give
all my attention to my poor mother. Of those long and solemn hours, what
shall I say? I thought she would never, never rest. I held her in these
arms the live-long night. With these hands I caressed and calmed her.
With these lips I kissed her. With this breath I warmed her cold brow
and fingers. With all my soul and body I willed that I would comfort
her, and I believe, thank God, I did. At dawn she slept peacefully; she
slept late, and rose refreshed. I remained closely by her throughout the
day.
They did their best, let me say, to provide me with a Christian funeral,
partly in accordance with some wishes I had expressed in writing,
partly from the impulse of their own good sense. Not a curtain was drawn
to darken the house of death. The blessed winter sunshine flowed in like
the current of a broad stream, through low, wide windows. No ghastly
“funeral flowers” filled the room; there was only a cluster of red pinks
upon the coffin, and the air was sweet but not heavy with the carnation
perfume that they knew I loved. My dead body and face they had covered
with a deep red pall, just shaded off the black, as dark as darkness
could be, and yet be redness. Not a bell was tolled. Not a tear--at
least, I mean, by those nearest me--not a tear was shed. As the body was
carried from the house, the voices of unseen singers lifted the German
funeral chant:--
“Go forth! go on, with solemn song,
Short is the way; the rest is long!”