Mrs. Slater went away the next morning. On the following day but one Miss
Ludington received a letter from her. She told her friend how glad she
was that she had not postponed her visit to her, for if she had set it
for a single day later she could not have made it at all. When she
returned home she found that her husband had received an offer of a
lucrative business position in Cincinnati, contingent on his immediate
removal there.
They had been in a whirl of packing ever since, and were to take that
night's train for Cincinnati, and whether they ever again came East to
live was very doubtful. In a postscript, written crosswise, she said:
"I have been in such a rush ever since I came home that I declare I had
clean forgotten till this moment about my promise to hunt up Mrs.
Legrand's address for you. Very likely you have also forgotten by this
time our talk about her, and if so it will not matter. But it vexes me to
fail in a promise, and, if possible, I will snatch a moment before we
leave to send a note to the friend I spoke of, and ask her to look the
woman up for you."
Instead of being disappointed, Miss Ludington was, on the whole, relieved
to get this letter, and inclined to hope that Mrs. Slater had failed to
find the time to write her friend. In that case this extraordinary
project of visiting a spiritualist medium would quietly fall through,
which was the best thing that could happen.
The fact is, after sleeping on it, she had seen clearly that such a
proceeding for a person of her position and antecedents would not only be
preposterous, but almost disreputable. She was astonished at herself to
think that her feelings could have been so wrought upon as to cause her
seriously to contemplate such a step. All her life she had held the
conviction, which she supposed to be shared by all persons of culture and
respectability, that spiritualism was a low and immoral superstition,
invariably implying fraud in its professors, and folly in its dupes:
something, in fact, quite below the notice of persons of intelligence or
good taste. As for the idea that this medium could show her the spirit of
her former self, or any other real spirit, it was simply imbecile to
entertain it for a moment.
If, however, Miss Ludington was relieved by Mrs. Slater's letter, Paul
was keenly disappointed. His prejudice against spiritualism was by no
means so deeply rooted as hers. In a general way he had always believed
mediums to be frauds, and their shows mere shams, but he had been ready
to allow with Mrs. Slater, that, mixed up in all this fraud, there might
be a very little truth.
His mind admitted a bare possibility that this Mrs. Legrand might be able
to show him the living face and form of his spirit-love. That possibility
once admitted had completely dominated his imagination, and it made
little difference whether it was one chance in a thousand or one in a
million. He was like the victim of the lottery mania, whose absorption in
contemplating the possibility of drawing the prize renders him quite
oblivious of the nine hundred and ninety-nine blank tickets.
Previous to Mrs. Slater's visit he had been quite content in his devotion
to an ideal mistress, for the reason that any nearer approach to her had
not occurred to him as a possibility. But now the suggestion that he
might see her face to face had so inflamed his imagination that it was
out of the question for him to regain his former serenity. He resolved
that, in case they should fail to hear from Mrs. Slater's friend, he
would set about finding Mrs. Legrand himself, or, failing that, would go
to some other medium. There would be no solace for the fever that had now
got into his blood, until experiment should justify his daring hope, or
prove it baseless.
However, the third day after Mrs. Slater's letter there came one from her
friend, Mrs. Rhinehart. She said that she had received a note from Mrs.
Slater, who had suddenly been called to Cincinnati, telling that Miss
Ludington desired the address of Mrs. Legrand, with a view to securing a
private séance. She could have sent the address at once, as she had it;
but Mrs. Legrand was so overrun with business that an application to her
by letter, especially from a stranger like Miss Ludington, might not have
any result. And so Mrs. Rhinehart, who had been only too happy to oblige
any friend of Mrs. Slater's, had called personally upon Mrs. Legrand to
arrange for the séance. The medium had told her at first that she was
full of previous engagements for a month ahead, and that it would be
impossible to give Miss Ludington a séance. When, however, Mrs. Rhinehart
told her that Miss Ludington's purpose in asking for the séance was to
test the question whether our past selves have immortal souls distinct
from our present selves, Mrs. Legrand became greatly interested, and at
once said that she would cancel a previous appointment, and give Miss
Ludington a séance the following evening, at her parlours, No. -- East
Tenth Street, at nine o'clock. Mrs. Legrand had said that while she had
never heard a belief in the immortality of past selves avowed, there had
not been lacking in her relations with the spirit-world some mysterious
experiences that seemed to confirm it. She should, therefore, look
forward to the issue of the experiment the following evening with nearly
as much confidence, and quite as much interest, as Miss Ludington
herself. Mrs. Rhinehart hoped that the following evening would be
convenient for Miss Ludington. She had assumed the responsibility of
making the engagement positive, as she might have failed in securing a
séance altogether had she waited to communicate with Miss Ludington.
Hoping that "the conditions would be favourable," she remained, &c. &c.
When Miss Ludington had read this letter to Paul, she intimated, though
rather faintly, that it was still not too late to withdraw from the
enterprise; they could send Mrs. Legrand her fee, say that it was not
convenient for them to come on the evening fixed, and so let the matter
drop. Paul stared at her in astonishment, and said that, if she did not
feel like going, he would go alone, as he had at first proposed. Upon
this Miss Ludington once more declared that they would go together, and
said nothing further about sacrificing the appointment.
The fact is she did not really wish to sacrifice it. She was experiencing
a revulsion of feeling; Mrs. Rhinehart's letter had affected her almost
as strongly as Mrs. Slater's talk. The fact that Mrs. Legrand had at once
seen the reasonableness and probability of the belief in the immortality
of past selves made it difficult for Miss Ludington to think of her as a
mere vulgar impostor. The vague hint of the medium's as to strange
experiences with the spirit world, confirmatory of this belief, appealed
to her imagination in a powerful manner. Of what description might the
mysterious monitions be, which, coming to this woman in the dim
between-world where she groped, had prepared her to accept as true, on
its first statement, a belief that to others seemed so hard to credit?
What clutchings of spirit fingers in the dark! What moanings of souls
whom no one recognised!
The confidence which Mrs. Legrand had expressed that the séance would
prove a success affected Miss Ludington very powerfully. It impressed her
as the judgment of an expert; it compelled her to recognize not only as
possible, but even as probable, that, on the evening of the following
day, she should behold the beautiful girl whom once, so many years
before, she had called herself; for so at best would words express this
wonder.
With a trembling ecstasy, which in vain she tried to reason down, she
began to prepare herself for the presence of one fresh from the face of
God and the awful precincts of eternity.
As for Paul, there was no conflict of feeling with prejudice in his case;
he gave himself wholly up to a delirious expectation. How would his
immortal mistress look? How would she move? What would be her
stature--what her bearing? How would she gaze upon him? If not with love
he should die at her feet. If with love how should he bear it?
Mrs. Rhinehart's letter had been received in the morning, and during the
rest of the day Miss Ludington and Paul seemed quite to forget each other
in their absorption in the thoughts suggested by the approaching event.
They sat abstracted and silent at table, and, on rising, went each their
own way. In the exalted state of their imaginations the enterprise they
had in hand would not bear talking over.
When she retired to bed Miss Ludington found that sleep was out of the
question. About two o'clock in the morning she heard Paul leave his room
and go downstairs. Putting on dressing-gown and slippers she softly
followed him. There was a light in the sitting-room and the door was
ajar. Stepping noiselessly to it she looked in.
Paul was standing before, the fireplace, leaning on the mantelpiece, and
looking up into the eyes of the girl above, smiling and talking softly to
her, Miss Ludington entered the room and laid her hand gently on his arm.
Her appearance did not seem to startle him in the least. "Paul, my dear
boy!" she said, "you had better go to bed."
"It's no use," he said; "I can't sleep, and I had to come down here and
look at her. Think, just think, aunty, that to-morrow we shall see her."
The young fellow's nervous excitement culminated in a burst of ecstatic
tears, and soon afterwards Miss Ludington induced him to go to bed.
How much more he loved the girl than even she did! She was filled with
dread as she thought of the effect which a disappointment of the hope he
had given himself up to might produce. And what folly, after all, it was
to expect anything but disappointment!
The spectacle of Paul's fatuous confidence had taken hers away.