If Miss Ludington's desire for another glimpse of Ida had lacked the
passionate intensity of Paul's, she had, notwithstanding, longed for it
very ardently, and when at nine o'clock the next night the carriage drew
up before Mrs. Legrand's door, she was in a transport of sweet
anticipation.
As for Paul he had dressed himself with extreme care for the occasion,
and looked to his best advantage. He had said to himself, "Shall I not
show her as much observance as I would pay to a living woman?" And who
can say--for very odd, sometimes, are the inarticulate processes of the
mind--that there was not at the bottom of his thoughts something of the
universal lover's willingness to let his mistress see him at his best?
They found the front parlour occupied as before by Mrs. Legrand and Dr.
Hull, when Alta showed them in. The medium was, as previously, the
picture of ill-health, and if she did not look noticeably worse than
before her sickness, it was merely because she had looked as badly as
possible then. In response to inquiries about her health she admitted
that she did not really feel equal to resuming her séances quite so soon,
and but for disliking to disappoint them would have postponed this
evening's appointment. Dr. Hull had, indeed, urged her to do so.
"You must not think of giving a séance if there is any risk of injury to
your health," said Miss Ludington, though not without being sensible of a
pang of disappointment. "We could not think of letting you do that, could
we, Paul?"
Paul's reply to this humane suggestion was not so prompt as it should
have been. In his heart he felt at that moment that he was as bad as a
murderer. He knew that he was willing this woman should risk not only her
health, but even her life, rather than that he should fail to see Ida. He
was striving to repress this feeling, so far at least as to say that he
would not insist upon going on with the séance, when Mrs. Legrand, with a
glance through her half-shut eyelids, intimating that she perfectly
understood his thoughts, said, in a tone which put an end to the
discussion, "Excuse me, but I shall certainly give the séance. I am much
obliged for your interest in me; but I am rather notional about keeping
my promises, and it is a peculiarity in which my friends have to indulge
in. I daresay I shall be none the worse for the exertion."
"Doctor," she added, "will you allow our friends to inspect the cabinet?"
"That is quite needless," said Paul.
"Our friends are often willing to waive an inspection," replied Dr. Hull.
"We are grateful for the confidence shown, but, in justice to ourselves,
as well as for their own more absolute assurance, we always insist upon
it. Otherwise, suspicions of fraud not entertained, perhaps, at the time,
might afterwards occur to the mind, or be suggested by others, to which
they would have no conclusive answer."
Upon this Miss Ludington and Paul permitted themselves to be conducted
upon the same tour of inspection that they had made the former evening.
They found everything precisely as it had been on that occasion. There
was no possibility of concealing any person in the cabinet or the back
parlour, and no apparent or conceivable means by which any person could
reach those apartments, except through the front parlour.
On their return to the latter apartment the proceedings followed the
order observed at the previous séance. Mrs. Legrand rose from her chair
and walked feebly through the back parlour into the cabinet. Dr. Hull
then locked and braced a chair against the door opening into the hall,
giving the key to Paul. Then, having arranged the three chairs as before,
across the double door between the parlours, he seated Miss Ludington and
Paul, and, having turned the gas down, took the third chair.
All being ready, Alta, who was at the piano, struck the opening chords of
the same soft, low music that she had played at the previous séance.
It seemed to Miss Ludington that she played much longer than before, and
she began to think that either there was to be some failure in the
séance, or that something had happened to Mrs. Legrand.
Perhaps she was dead. This horrible thought, added to the strain of
expectancy, affected her nerves so that in another moment she must have
screamed out, when, as before, she felt a faint, cool air fan her
forehead, and a few seconds later Ida appeared at the door of the cabinet
and glided into the room.
She was dressed as at her former appearance, in white, with her shoulders
bare, and the wealth of her golden hair falling to her waist behind.
From the moment that she emerged from the shadows of the cabinet Paul's
eyes were glued to her face with an intensity quite beyond any ordinary
terms of description.
Fancy having not over a minute in which to photograph upon the mind a
form the recollection of which is to furnish the consolation of a
lifetime. The difficulties of securing this second séance, and the doubt
that involved the obtaining of another, had deeply impressed him. He
might never again see Ida on earth, and upon the fidelity with which his
memory retained every feature of her face, every line of her figure, his
thoughts by day, and his dreams by night, might have to depend for their
texture until he should meet her in another world.
The lingering looks that are the lover's luxury were not for these
fleeting seconds. His gaze burned upon her face and played around her
form like lightning. He grudged the instantaneous muscles of the eye the
time they took to make the circuit of her figure.
But when, as on that other night, she came close up to him and smiled
upon him, time and circumstance were instantly forgotten, and he fell
into a state of enchantment in which will and thought were inert.
He was aroused from it by an extraordinary change that came over her. She
started and shivered slightly in every limb. The recognition faded out of
her eyes and gave place to a blank bewilderment.
Then came a turning of her head from side to side, while, with dilated
eyes, she explored the dim recesses of the room with the startled
expression of an awakened sleep-walker. She half turned toward the
cabinet and made an undecided movement in that direction, and then, as if
the invisible cord that drew her thither had broken, she wavered,
stopped, and seemed to drift toward the opposite corner of the room.
At that moment there was a gasp from the cabinet.
Dr. Hull leaped to his feet and sprang toward it, at the same time, by a
turn of the stopcock by his side, setting the gas in both rooms at full
blaze.
Alta, with a loud scream, rushed after him, and Miss Ludington and Paul
followed them.
The pupils of their eyes had been dilated to the utmost in order to
follow the movements of the apparition in the nearly complete darkness,
and the first effect of the sudden blaze of gaslight was to dazzle them
so completely that they had actually to grope their way to the cabinet.
The scene in the little apartment of the medium was a heartrending one.
Mrs. Legrand's body and lower limbs lay on the sofa, which was the only
article of furniture, and Dr. Hull was in the act of lifting her head
from the floor to which it had fallen. Her eyes were half open, and the
black rings around them showed with ghastly plainness against the awful
pallor which the rest of her face had taken on. One hand was clenched.
The other was clutching her bodice, as if in the act of tearing it open.
A little foam flecked the blue lips.
Alta threw herself upon her mother's body, sobbing, "Oh, mamma, wake up!
do! do!"
"Is she dead?" asked Miss Ludington, in horrified accents.
"I don't know; I fear so. I warned her; I told her it would come. But she
would do it," cried the doctor incoherently, as he tried to feel her
pulse with one hand while he tore at the fastenings of her dress with the
other. He set Paul at work chafing the hands of the unconscious woman,
while Miss Ludington sprinkled her face and chest with ice-water from a
small pitcher that stood in a corner of the cabinet, and the doctor
himself endeavoured in vain to force some of the contents of a vial
through her clenched teeth. "It is of no use," he said, finally; "she is
past help--she is dead!"
At this Miss Ludington and Paul stood aside, and Alta, throwing herself
upon her mother's form, burst into an agony of tears. "She was all I
had," she sobbed.
"Had Mrs. Legrand friends?" asked Miss Ludington, conscience-stricken
with the thought that she had indirectly been in part responsible for
this terrible event.
"She had friends who will look after Alta," said Dr. Hull.
Their assistance being no longer needed, Miss Ludington and Paul turned
from the sad scene and stepped forth from the cabinet into the back
parlour.
The tragedy which they had just witnessed had to a great extent driven
from their thoughts the events of the séance which it had broken off so
abruptly. The impression left on their minds was that the spirit-form of
Ida had vanished in the blinding flood of gas-light through which they
had groped their way to the cabinet on hearing the death-rattle of the
medium.
But now in the remotest corner of the room, towards which they had last
seen the form of the spirit drifting, there stood a young girl. She was
bending forward, shielding her eyes with her right hand from the flaring
gas, as she peered curiously about the room, her whole attitude
expressive of complete bewilderment.
It was Ida; but what a change had passed upon her! This was no pale
spirit, counterfeiting for a few brief moments, with the aid of darkness,
the semblance of mortal flesh, but an unmistakable daughter of earth. Her
bosom was palpitating with agitation, and, instead of the lofty serenity
of a spirit, her eyes expressed the trouble of a perplexed girl who is
fast becoming frightened.
As Paul and Miss Ludington stepped forth from the cabinet she fixed upon
them a pair of questioning eyes. There was not a particle of recognition
in their expression. Presently she spoke. Her voice was a mezzo-soprano,
low and sweet, but just now sharpened by an accent of apprehension.
"Where am I?" she asked.
After a moment, during which their brains reeled with an amazement so
utter that they doubted the evidence of their senses--doubted even their
own existence and identities, there had simultaneously flashed over the
minds of Paul and Miss Ludington the explanation of what they beheld.
The prodigy, the theoretical possibility of which they had discussed
after the séance of the week before, and scarcely thought of since, had
come to pass. Dr. Hull had proved wrong, and Paul had proved right. A
medium had died during a materialization, and the materialized spirit had
succeeded to her vitality, and was alive as one of them.
It was no longer the spirit of Ida, knowing them by a spirit's intuition,
which was before them, but the girl Ida Ludington, whose curious,
unrecognizing glance testified to her ignorance of aught which the Hilton
school-girl of forty years ago had not known.
It was with an inexpressible throb of exultation, after the stupor of
their first momentary astonishment, that they comprehended the miracle by
which in the moment when the hope of ever beholding Ida again had seemed
taken from them, had restored her not only to their eyes, but to life.
But how should they accost her, how make themselves known to her, how go
about even to answer the question she had asked without terrifying her
with new and deeper mysteries?
While they stood dumb, with hearts yearning toward her, but powerless to
think of words with which to address her, Dr. Hull, hearing the sound of
her voice, stepped out from the cabinet. At the sight of Ida he started
back astounded, and Paul heard him exclaim under his breath, "I never
thought of this"
Then he laid his hand on Paul's arm and said, in an agitated whisper,
"You were right. It has happened as you said. My God, what can we say to
her?"
Meanwhile, Ida was evidently becoming much alarmed at the strange looks
bent upon her. "Perhaps, sir," she said, addressing Dr. Hull, with an
appealing accent, "you will tell me how I came in this place?"
Then ensued an extraordinary scene of explanation, in which, seconding
one another's efforts, striving to hit upon simpler analogies, plainer
terms, Paul the doctor, and Miss Ludington sought to make clear to this
waif from eternity, so strangely stranded on the shores of Time, the
conditions and circumstances under which she had resumed an earthly
existence.
For a while she only grew more terrified at their explanations, appearing
to find them totally unintelligible, and, though her fears were gradually
dissipated by the tenderness of their demeanour, her bewilderment seemed
to increase. For a long time she continued to turn her face, with a
pathetic expression of mental endeavour, from one to another, as they
addressed her, only to shake her head slowly and sadly at last.
"I seem to have lost myself," she said, pressing her hand to her
forehead. "I do not understand anything you say."
"It is a hard matter to understand," replied Dr. Hull. "Understanding
will come later. Meanwhile, look in at the door of this room and you will
see the body of the woman to whose life you have succeeded. Then you will
believe us though you do not understand us."
As he spoke he indicated the door of the cabinet.
Ida stepped thither and looked in, recoiling with a sharp cry of horror.
The terror in her face was piteous, and in a moment Miss Ludington was at
her side, supporting and soothing her. Sobbing and trembling Ida
submitted unresistingly to her ministrations, and even rested her head on
Miss Ludington's shoulder.
The golden hair brushed the grey locks; the full bosom heaved against the
shrunken breast of age; the wrinkled, scarred, and sallow face of the old
woman touched the rounded cheek of the girl.
Fully as Paul believed that he had realized the essential and eternal
distinction between the successive persons who constitute an
individuality, he grew dizzy with the sheer wonder of the spectacle as he
saw age thus consoling youth, and reflected upon the relation of these
two persons to each other.
Presently Ida raised her head and said, "It may be as you say. My mind is
all confused. I cannot think now. Perhaps I shall understand it better
after a while."
"If you will come home with me now," said Miss Ludington, "before you
sleep I will convince you what we are to each other. Will you come with
me?"
"Oh, yes!" exclaimed the girl. "Let us go. Let us leave this awful
place;" and she glanced with a shudder at the door of the cabinet.
A few moments later the house of death had been left behind, and Miss
Ludington's carriage, with its three passengers was rolling homewards.
Before leaving, Miss Ludington had told Dr. Hull that he might command
her so far as any pecuniary assistance should be needed either with
reference to the funeral or in connection with providing for Alta. She
said that it would be a relief to her to be allowed to do anything she
could. Dr. Hull thanked her and said that, as Mrs. Legrand had friends in
the city, it would probably be unnecessary to trouble her. If for no
other purpose, however, he said that he should possibly communicate with
her hereafter with a view to informing himself as to the future of the
young lady who had that night assumed the earth-life which his dear
friend, Mrs. Legrand, had laid aside.
It was an incident of this extraordinary situation that Miss Ludington
found herself at disadvantage even in expressing the formal condolence
she proffered. With Ida before her eyes it was impossible that she should
honestly profess to deplore the event, however tragical, which had
brought her back to earth. As for Paul he said nothing at all.
The rattling of the wheels on the stony pavement was enough of itself to
make conversation difficult in the carriage; even if it would otherwise
have flowed easily in a company so strangely assorted. As the light of
the street lamps from time to time flashed in at the windows Paul saw
that Ida's face continued to wear the look of helpless daze which it had
assumed from the moment that the sight of the dead woman in the cabinet
had convinced her that she could not trust her own knowledge as to the
relations of those about her.
But when at last the carriage rolled through the gates of Miss
Ludington's estate, and the houses of the mimic village began to glance
by, her manner instantly changed. With an exclamation of joyful surprise,
she put her head out at the window, and then looking back at them, cried,
delightedly, "Why it's Hilton! You have brought me home! There's our
house!" No sooner had she alighted than she ran up the walk to the door,
and tried to open it. Paul, hurrying after, unlocked it, and she burst
in, while he and Miss Ludington followed her, wondering.
The servants had gone to bed, leaving the lower part of the house dimly
lighted. Ida hurried on ahead from room to room with the confident step
of one whose feet knew every turning. It was evident that she needed no
one to introduce her there.
When Miss Ludington and Paul followed her into the sitting-room, she was
standing before her own picture in an attitude of utter astonishment.
"Where did they get that picture of me?" she demanded. "I never had a
picture painted."
For a few moments there was no reply. Those she addressed were engrossed
in comparing the portrait with its original. The resemblance was striking
enough, but it was no wonder that after once seeing the living Ida, Paul
had found the canvas stiff and hard and lifeless.
"No," said Miss Ludington, "you never had a picture painted. It was not
till many years after you had left the world that this picture was
painted. It was enlarged from this portrait of you. Do you remember it?"
and taking the locket containing the ivory portrait of Ida from her neck
where she had worn it so many years, she opened and gave it to the girl.
"Why, it is my ivory portrait!" exclaimed Ida. "How did you come by it?
What do you mean about my leaving the world? Something strange has
happened to me, I know, but did I die? I don't remember dying. Oh, can't
somebody explain what has happened to me?"
The dazed look which had disappeared from her face since her recognition
of the village and the homestead had come back, and her last words were a
bitter cry that went to the hearts of the listeners.
Now, all the time they had been in the carriage, Paul had been trying to
think of some mode of setting her relationship to Miss Ludington in a
light so clear that she must comprehend it, for it was evident that the
confused explanations at Mrs. Legrand's had availed little, if anything,
to that end. Unless this could be done she seemed likely to remain
indefinitely in this dazed mental state, which must be so exquisitely
painful to her, and was scarcely less so to them.
"If you will listen to me patiently," he said, "I will try to explain.
You know that some strange thing has happened to you, and you must expect
to find the explanation as strange as the thing itself; but it is not
hard to understand."
Ida's eyes were fixed on him with the expression of one listening for her
life.
"Do you remember being a little girl of nine or ten years old?" he asked.
"Oh, yes!" she answered. "I remember that perfectly well."
"You are now a young woman," he went on. "Where is that little girl whom
you remember? What has become of her?"
"Why, I don't know," replied Ida. "I suppose she is somewhere in me."
"But you don't look like a little girl, or think or act or feel like one.
How can she be in you?"
"Where else could she be?" replied Ida.
"Oh, there is no lack of room for her," said Paul; "the universe is big
enough for all the souls that ever lived in it. Suppose, now, you
believed her to be still alive as a spirit, just as she was, still alive
somewhere in the land of spirits, not transformed into the young lady
that you are at all, you understand, for that would only be another way
of saying that she was dead, but just as she was, a child, with a child's
loves, a child's thoughts, a child's feelings, and a child's face--can
you suppose such a thing, just as an effort of imagination?"
"Oh, yes!" said Ida; "I can suppose that."
"Well, then," said Paul, "suppose also that you remembered this little
girl very tenderly, and longed to look on her face again, although
knowing that she was a spirit now. Suppose that you went to a woman
having a mysterious power to call up the spirits of the departed, and
suppose that she called up the spirit of this child-self of yours, and
that you recognized it, and suppose that just at that moment the woman
died, and her earthly life was transferred to the spirit of the child, so
that instead of being a spirit, she became again a living child, but
unable to recognize you who loved her so well, because when she lived on
earth, you, of course, had not yet come into existence. Suppose you
brought this child home with you----"
"What do you mean?" interrupted Ida, with dilating eyes. "Am I----"
"You are to that woman," broke in Paul, indicating Miss Ludington, "what
the child would have been to you. You are bound to her by the same tie by
which that little girl would have been bound to you. She remembers and
loves you as you would remember and love that child; but you do not know
her any more than that child would know you. You both share the name of
Ida Ludington, according to the usage of men as to names; but I think
there is no danger of your being confounded with each other, either in
your own eyes or those of lookers-on."
Ida had at last comprehended. The piercing look, expressive of mingled
attraction and repulsion, which she fixed upon Miss Ludington, left no
doubt of that. It implied alarm, mistrust, and something that was almost
defiance, yet with hints of a possible tenderness.
It was such a look as a daughter, stolen from her cradle and grown to
maidenhood among strangers, might fix upon the woman claiming to be her
mother, except that not only was Miss Ludington a stranger to Ida, but
the relation which she claimed to sustain to her was one that had never
before been realized between living persons on earth, however it might
be, in heaven.
"Do you understand?" said Paul.
"I--think--I--do. But how--strange--it is!" she replied, in lingering
tones, her gaze continuing to rest, as if fascinated, upon Miss
Ludington.
The latter's face expressed a great elation, an impassioned tenderness
held in check through fear of terrifying its object.
"I do not wonder it seems strange," she said, very softly. "You have yet
no evidence as to who I am. I remember you--oh, how well!--but you cannot
remember me, nor is there any instinct answering to memory by which you
can recognize me. You have a right to require that I should prove that I
am what I claim to be; that I am also Ida Ludington; that I am your later
self. Do not fear, my darling. I shall be able to convince you very
soon."
She made Ida sit down, and then went to an ancient secretary, that stood
in a corner of the room, and unlocked a drawer, the key to which she
always carried on her person.
Paul remembered from the time he was a little boy seeing her open this
drawer on Sunday afternoons and cry over the keepsakes which it
contained.
She took out now a bundle of letters, a piece of ribbon, a locket, a
bunch of faded flowers, and a few other trifles, and brought them to Ida.
Paul left the room on tiptoe. This was a scene where a third person, one
might almost say a second person, would be an interloper.
When, a long time after, he returned, Miss Ludington was sitting in the
chair where Ida had been sitting, smiling and crying, and the girl, with
eyes that shone like stars, was bending over her, and kissing the tears
away.
The night was now almost spent, and the early dawn of midsummer, peering
through the windows, and already dimming the lights, warned them that the
day would soon be at hand.
"You shall have your own bedroom," said Miss Ludington. The face of the
old lady was flushed, and her high-pitched and tremulous voice betrayed
an exhilaration like that of intoxication. "You will excuse me for having
cluttered it up with my things; to-morrow I will take them away. You see
I had not dared hope you would come back to me. I had expected to go to
you."
"I and you--you and I." The girl repeated the words after her, slowly, as
if trying to grasp their full meaning as she uttered them. Then a sudden
terror leaped into her eyes, and she cried shudderingly: "Oh, how strange
it is!"
"You do not doubt it? You do not doubt it still?" exclaimed Miss
Ludington, in anguished tones.
"No, no!" said the girl, recovering herself with an evident effort. "I
cannot doubt it. I do not," and she threw her aims about Miss Ludington's
neck in an embrace in which, nevertheless, a subtle shrinking still
mingled with the impulse of tenderness which had overcome it.
When presently Miss Ludington and Ida went upstairs together, the latter,
with eager, unhesitating step, led the way through a complexity of
roundabout passages, and past many other doors, to that of the chamber
which had been the common possession of the girl and the woman. Miss
Ludington followed her, wondering, yet not wondering.
"It seems so strange to see you so familiar with this house," she said,
with a little hysterical laugh, "and yet, of course, I know it is not
strange."
"No," replied the girl, looking at her with a certain astonishment, "I
should think not. It would be strange, indeed, if I were not familiar
here. The only strange thing is to feel that I am not at home here, that
I am a guest in this house."
"You are not a guest," exclaimed Miss Ludington, hurriedly, for she saw
the dazed look coming again into the girl's eyes. "You shall be mistress
here. Paul and I ask nothing better than to be your servants."
To pass from the waking to the dreaming state is in general to exchange a
prosaic and matter-of-fact world for one of fantastic improbabilities;
but it is safe to assume that the three persons who fell asleep beneath
Miss Ludington's roof that morning, just as the birds began to twitter,
encountered in dreamland no experiences so strange as those which they
had passed through with their eyes open the previous evening.