The recitations were over for the day. It was the first week in
November and it had rained about every day the entire week; now
freezing temperature added to the discomforture of the dismal season.
The lingering equinoctial whirled the last clinging yellow leaves
from the trees on the campus and strewed them over the deserted
paths, while from the leaden sky fluttering snow-white flakes gave an
unexpected touch of winter to the scene.
The east wind for which Boston and vicinity is celebrated, drove the
sleet against the window panes of the room in which Reuel Briggs sat
among his books and the apparatus for experiments. The room served
for both living and sleeping. Briggs could have told you that the
bareness and desolateness of the apartment were like his life, but
he was a reticent man who knew how to suffer in silence. The dreary
wet afternoon, the cheerless walk over West Boston bridge through the
soaking streets had but served to emphasize the loneliness of his
position, and morbid thoughts had haunted him all day: To what use all
this persistent hard work for a place in the world--clothes, food, a
roof? Is suicide wrong? he asked himself with tormenting persistency.
From out the storm, voices and hands seemed beckoning him all day to
cut the Gordian knot and solve the riddle of whence and whither for all
time.
His place in the world would soon be filled; no vacuum remained empty;
the eternal movement of all things onward closed up the gaps, and the
wail of the newly-born augmented the great army of mortals pressing
the vitals of mother Earth with hurrying tread. So he had tormented
himself for months, but the courage was yet wanting for strength to
rend the veil. It had grown dark early. Reuel had not stirred from his
room since coming from the hospital--had not eaten nor drank, and was
in full possession of the solitude he craved. It was now five o’clock.
He sat sideways by the bare table, one leg crossed over the other. His
fingers kept the book open at the page where he was reading, but his
attention wandered beyond the leaden sky, the dripping panes, and the
sounds of the driving storm outside.
He was thinking deeply of the words he had just read, and which the
darkness had shut from his gaze. The book was called “The Unclassified
Residuum,” just published and eagerly sought by students of mysticism,
and dealing with the great field of new discoveries in psychology.
Briggs was a close student of what might be termed “absurdities” of
supernatural phenomena or _mysticism_, best known to the every-day
world as “effects of the imagination,” a phrase of mere dismissal, and
which it is impossible to make precise; the book suited the man’s mood.
These were the words of haunting significance:
“All the while, however, the phenomena are there, lying broadcast over
the surface of history. No matter where you open its pages, you find
things recorded under the name of divinations, inspirations, demoniacal
possessions, apparitions, trances, ecstasies, miraculous healing
and productions of disease, and occult powers possessed by peculiar
individuals over persons and things in their neighborhood.
“The mind-curers and Christian scientists, who are beginning to lift up
their heads in our communities, unquestionably get remarkable results
in certain cases. The ordinary medical man dismisses them from his
attention with the cut-and-dried remark that they are ‘only the effects
of the imagination.’ But there is a meaning in this vaguest of phrases.
“We know a non-hysterical woman who in her trances knows facts which
altogether transcend her _possible_ normal consciousness, facts about
the lives of people whom she never saw or heard of before. I am well
aware of all the liabilities to which this statement exposes me, and
I make it deliberately, having practically no doubt whatever of its
truth.”
Presently Briggs threw the book down, and, rising from his chair, began
pacing up and down the bare room.
“That is it,” at length he said aloud. “I have the power, I know
the truth of every word--of all M. Binet asserts, and could I but
complete the necessary experiments, I would astonish the world. O
Poverty, Ostracism! have I not drained the bitter cup to the dregs!” he
apostrophized, with a harsh, ironical laugh.
Mother Nature had blessed Reuel Briggs with superior physical
endowments, but as yet he had never had reason to count them blessings.
No one could fail to notice the vast breadth of shoulder, the strong
throat that upheld a plain face, the long limbs, the sinewy hands. His
head was that of an athlete, with close-set ears, and covered with an
abundance of black hair, straight and closely cut, thick and smooth;
the nose was the aristocratic feature, although nearly spoiled by
broad nostrils, of this remarkable young man; his skin was white, but
of a tint suggesting olive, an almost sallow color which is a mark of
strong, melancholic temperaments. His large mouth concealed powerful
long white teeth which gleamed through lips even and narrow, parting
generally in a smile at once grave, genial and singularly sweet; indeed
Briggs’ smile changed the plain face at once into one that interested
and fascinated men and women. True there were lines about the mouth
which betrayed a passionate, nervous temperament, but they accorded
well with the rest of his strong personality. His eyes were a very
bright and piercing gray, courageous, keen and shrewd. Briggs was not a
man to be despised--physically or mentally.
None of the students associated together in the hive of men under the
fostering care of the “benign mother” knew aught of Reuel Briggs’s
origin. It was rumored at first that he was of Italian birth, then
they “guessed” he was a Japanese, but whatever land claimed him as a
son, all voted him a genius in his scientific studies, and much was
expected of him at graduation. He had no money, for he was unsocial
and shabby to the point of seediness, and apparently no relatives, for
his correspondence was limited to the letters of editors of well known
local papers and magazines. Somehow he lived and paid his way in a
third-rate lodging-house near Harvard square, at the expense of the
dull intellects or the idle rich, with which a great university always
teems, to whom Briggs acted as “coach,” and by contributing scientific
articles to magazines on the absorbing subject of spiritualistic
phenomena. A few of his articles had produced a profound impression.
The monotonous pacing continued for a time, finally ending at the
mantel, from whence he abstracted a disreputable looking pipe and
filled it.
“Well,” he soliloquized, as he reseated himself in his chair, “Fate
has done her worst, but she mockingly beckons me on and I accept her
challenge. I shall not yet attempt the bourne. If I conquer, it will be
by strength of brain and will-power. I shall conquer; I must and will.”
The storm had increased in violence; the early dusk came swiftly down,
and at this point in his revery the rattling window panes, as well as
the whistle and shriek of gusts of moaning wind, caught his attention.
“Phew! a beastly night.” With a shiver, he drew his chair closer to the
cylinder stove, whose glowing body was the only cheerful object in the
bare room.
As he sat with his back half-turned to catch the grateful warmth, he
looked out into the dim twilight across the square and into the broad
paths of the campus, watching the skeleton arms of giant trees tossing
in the wind, and the dancing snow-flakes that fluttered to earth in
their fairy gowns to be quickly transformed into running streams that
fairly overflowed the gutters. He fell into a dreamy state as he gazed,
for which he could not account. As he sent his earnest, penetrating
gaze into the night, gradually the darkness and storm faded into
tints of cream and rose and soft moist lips. Silhouetted against the
background of lowering sky and waving branches, he saw distinctly
outlined a fair face framed in golden hair, with soft brown eyes, deep
and earnest--terribly earnest they seemed just then--rose-tinged baby
lips, and an expression of wistful entreaty. O how real, how very real
did the passing shadow appear to the gazer!
He tried to move, uneasily conscious that this strange experience was
but “the effect of the imagination,” but he was powerless. The unknown
countenance grew dimmer and farther off, floating gradually out of
sight, while a sense of sadness and foreboding wrapped him about as
with a pall.
A wilder gust of wind shook the window sashes. Reuel stared about
him in a bewildered way like a man awakening from a heavy sleep. He
listened to the wail of the blast and glanced at the fire and rubbed
his eyes. The vision was gone; he was alone in the room; all was
silence and darkness. The ticking of the cheap clock on the mantel kept
time with his heart-beats. The light of his own life seemed suddenly
eclipsed with the passing of the lovely vision of Venus. Conscious of
an odd murmur in his head, which seemed to control his movements, he
rose and went toward the window to open it; there came a loud knock at
the door.
Briggs did not answer at once. He wanted no company. Perhaps the
knocker would go away. But he was persistent. Again came the knock
ending in a double rat-tat accompanied by the words:
“I know you are there; open, open, you son of Erebus! You inhospitable
Turk!”
Thus admonished Briggs turned the key and threw wide open the door.
“It’s you, is it? Confound you, you’re always here when you’re not
wanted,” he growled.
The visitor entered and closed the door behind him. With a laugh
he stood his dripping umbrella back of the stove against the
chimney-piece, and immediately a small stream began trickling over the
uncarpeted floor; he then relieved himself of his damp outer garments.
“Son of Erebus, indeed, you ungrateful man. It’s as black as Hades in
this room; a light, a light! Why did you keep me waiting out there like
a drowned rat?”
The voice was soft and musical. Briggs lighted the student lamp. The
light revealed a tall man with the beautiful face of a Greek God; but
the sculptured features did not inspire confidence. There was that in
the countenance of Aubrey Livingston that engendered doubt. But he had
been kind to Briggs, was, in fact, his only friend in the college, or,
indeed, in the world for that matter.
By an act of generosity he had helped the forlorn youth, then in his
freshman year, over obstacles which bade fair to end his college days.
Although the pecuniary obligation was long since paid, the affection
and worship Reuel had conceived for his deliverer was dog-like in its
devotion.
“Beastly night,” he continued, as he stretched his full length
luxuriously in the only easy chair the room afforded. “What are you
mooning about all alone in the darkness?”
“Same old thing,” replied Briggs briefly.
“No wonder the men say that you have a twist, Reuel.”
“Ah, man! but the problem of whence and whither! To solve it is my
life; I live for that alone; let’m talk.”
“You ought to be re-named the ‘Science of Trance-States,’ Reuel. How a
man can grind day and night beats me.” Livingston handed him a cigar
and for a time they smoked in silence. At length Reuel said:
“Shake hands with Poverty once, Aubrey, and you will solve the secret
of many a student’s success in life.”
“Doubtless it would do me good,” replied Livingston with a laugh, “but
just at present, it’s the ladies, bless their sweet faces who disturb
me, and not delving in books nor weeping over ways and means. Shades of
my fathers, forbid that I should ever have to work!”
“Lucky dog!” growled Reuel, enviously, as he gazed admiringly at the
handsome face turned up to the ceiling and gazing with soft caressing
eyes at the ugly whitewashed wall through rings of curling smoke.
“Yet you have a greater gift of duality than I,” he added dreamily.
“Say what you will; ridicule me, torment me, but you know as well as
I that the wonders of a material world cannot approach those of the
undiscovered country within ourselves--the hidden self lying quiescent
in every human soul.”
“True, Reuel, and I often wonder what becomes of the mind and morals,
distinctive entities grouped in the republic known as man, when death
comes. Good and evil in me contend; which will gain the mastery? Which
will accompany me into the silent land?”
“Good and evil, God and the devil,” suggested Reuel. “Yes, sinner or
saint, body or soul, which wins in the life struggle? I am not sure
that it matters which,” he concluded with a shrug of his handsome
shoulders. “I should know if I never saw you again until the struggle
was over. Your face will tell its own tale in another five years. Now
listen to this:” He caught up the book he had been reading and rapidly
turning the leaves read over the various passages that had impressed
him.
“A curious accumulation of data; the writer evidently takes himself
seriously,” Livingston commented.
“And why not?” demanded Reuel. “You and I know enough to credit the
author with honest intentions.”
“Yes; but are we prepared to go so far?”
“This man is himself a mystic. He gives his evidence clearly enough.”
“And do you credit it?”
“Every word! Could I but get the necessary subject, I would convince
you; I would go farther than M. Binet in unveiling the vast scheme of
compensation and retribution carried about in the vast recesses of the
human soul.”
“Find the subject and I will find the money,” laughed Aubrey.
“Do you mean it, Aubrey? Will you join me in carrying forward a search
for more light on the mysteries of existence?”
“I mean it. And now, Reuel, come down from the clouds, and come with me
to a concert.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, ‘tonight,’” mimicked the other. “The blacker the night, the
greater the need of amusement. You go out too little.”
“Who gives the concert?”
“Well, it’s a new departure in the musical world; something Northerners
know nothing of; but I who am a Southerner, born and bred, or as the
vulgar have it, ‘dyed in the wool,’ know and understand Negro music.
It is a jubilee concert given by a party of Southern colored people at
Tremont Temple. I have the tickets. Redpath has them in charge.”
“Well, if you say so, I suppose I must.” Briggs did not seem greatly
impressed.
“Coming down to the practical, Reuel, what do you think of the Negro
problem? Come to think of it, I have never heard you express an opinion
about it. I believe it is the only burning question in the whole
category of live issues and ologies about which you are silent.”
“I have a horror of discussing the woes of unfortunates, tramps, stray
dogs and cats and Negroes--probably because I am an unfortunate myself.”
They smoked in silence.