Sleep would not come. Were they all crazy in this mysterious house?
Had I, through contact, lost my sense of reality? I certainly saw
a shadowy man standing over Hugh, yet how could such a thing be?
Penetrating beyond death. One reads about such things; reads of the
Christ in person appearing on the third day after crucifixion, yes, and
I had never thought sufficiently deeply to determine whether or not I
believed this. Was it not labeled Gospel? And on other occasions the
Master appeared. I thought of all recorded appearance of spirits as I
remembered my Bible, all the old superstitions as we call them. Then my
mind came back to Elaine.
What, exactly, did Hugh mean by drawing aside the veil? Second sight
perhaps, but second sight is not a malady, it is a gift, if there is
such a thing, an extra sense. I thought of her beautiful, spirituelle
face, speaking eyes, golden bronze hair, then of the aged, ashen face
of the girl in white, felt her pressed against me as she dropped from
the apple tree.
I awoke with the sun shining in my window, facing south--late. Hugh in
riding clothes, was standing beside a saddled horse, held by one of the
silent men. The horse was a beautiful beast, one could almost use his
polished flank for a mirror.
I called a greeting and Hugh called back, “Hope you had a good rest,”
as he came across the yard and as he reached the veranda stairhead,
“Sorry I cannot stay to entertain you today. I have had breakfast and
must go to the village; urgent call and cannot say when I shall be
back. Elaine excuses herself this morning. Will be with you shortly, I
trust; amuse yourself and prowl about, there are many oddities about
the old place worth investigating.”
We shook hands and I assured him that I felt quite at home, secretly
rejoicing in anticipation of a day alone with my young hostess.
My breakfast came shortly after Hugh had mounted his horse, waved to me
with his riding crop, and disappeared.
The day was warm and windless; a boatload of rivermen was the only
thing moving on the placid water in front. These men were taking in and
piling in great piles, on the shore of the next point of land to the
east, the long logs, called booms, which had served to keep the timber
floating down the river, out of the shallow water dotted with trees
among which they would otherwise lodge.
I whiled away the morning, going no farther afield than the landing
pier, always keeping an eye on the house, momentarily hoping that
Elaine would present herself on the veranda.
Luncheon over; I dined alone, again sought the pier where I could have
a good view of the house. What a formidable affair it was, rising
through its entire length of fully 120 feet, two high stories and a
Tudor style palisade atop, all tooled gray limestone, upper and lower
veranda stretched across its front for about eighty feet to a tower
coming out to the twelve-foot verandas’ width, serving to break the
severity of the facade. The house shut off a view of the rise of the
hill into the side of which it was fitted.
Disinclined to intrude through inquiry as to the welfare of my hostess,
I nevertheless felt quite anxious and finally repaired to the house.
I was shocked on entering the great hall; an unmistakable odor of
something afire assailed me. I took the stairs in a few bounds, ran
through the hall following my sense of smell until it brought me to the
room which I knew was being occupied by Fong Wing, the Chinaman.
Without ceremony I swung open the door and burst in upon the celestial,
to find Fong on hands and knees on the floor, before him an improvised
shrine, a Buddha, black with age, an oblong plate in front, full of
burning punk sticks, the room full of smoke and scattered about in
orderly disorder, thousands of small discs of paper, white and pink.
“What in heaven’s name--” here I stopped. Another worshipper, another
religion, a devotee as earnest and orthodox as could be found in any
Catholic, Protestant or offshoot branch of the Christian church; a
heathen, and yet was there to the Deity anything in his manner of
worship differentiating his supplication or thank-offering from that of
the Christian?
Fong, as becomes any worshipper disturbed in his devotions who
naturally does not wish to break off the established connection
abruptly, took his time and while I stood, open-mouthed, arose.
I apologized, “Fong, I’m sorry, I thought the house was afire.”
“Allee light, allee light, Mista Montlose.”
“What the devil are you doing with all this paper stuff? You’ll set the
house ablaze same day,” I retorted.
“Dlive away devil-man makee li’l Missie sick. We ketchee him last
night,” Fong replied.
Fong’s eyes were big and startled as he sputtered out, “No, no! No see
him, quick devil-man come, Missie talk, talk, bymby nearly all night.
Soon Missie die; Fong dlive devil-man away, maybe.”
The doubt in the “maybe” registered despair, question as to the
efficacy of his supplication. There flashed through my mind the
prayer of the Christian, the penance, the intermediary, Mary, the
Saints, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius; the blood offering of the Hebrews,
the burning punk wood of the Chinaman; wherein lies the difference?
Is it not in fact in the reflex, is not the end attained in the act
itself? Else why should this heathen pray, this one of the five hundred
millions of Chinese now living and condemned as we are told to an
eternity in Hell. Is religion merely an emotion? Does devotion have its
genesis in fear?
“How is your little mistress?” I asked the innocent-faced Chinaman,
whom I regarded much as I would a child.
“Velly bad, velly bad. Velly sick. Not eat, while lookee allee same
die, last night, today, now maybe.”
“Take me to her,” I ordered, peremptorily, forgetting propriety or
anything except that I must get help.
Fong opened a door in the side of his room, crossed a hallway, quietly
swung wide another door and I stepped into Elaine’s chamber.
My heart stopped beating. She was lying on a great high mahogany
bed with four carved posts marking the corners rising half-way to
the room’s ceiling. The westering sun slanting across the white
bed-covering caught her face in its full light. She was as motionless
as the dead; gray with the pallor of death, there was no rise and fall
of the chest, not even a quiver of the throat.
I thought her dead as I stood for a moment looking not at the girl
Elaine as I carried her in my heart but at that other ashen-faced woman
into whom Elaine was unaccountably metamorphosed on my first night’s
sojourn at Craighead Hall.
Gently I placed my hand on her brow, it was cold--but moist--wet in
fact.
“This is not death,” I said aloud, though I had forgotten Fong who
stood about six feet away with hands clenched together and raised above
and in front of his head.
She was lying on her back, arms outstretched. I hastily placed a finger
on her left wrist. Thank God! a pulse, feeble heart-beats, regular, in
contrast with mine!
Fong, trained lady’s maid of the prison warden’s feminine household,
was at home in this emergency. The Chinaman brought cold water, laved
her brow, face and throat, talking an unintelligible jargon in low
crooning tones.
I stood silent and helpless until Fong directed me to perform a similar
office with hands and arms, applying linen wrung out in cold water and
rubbing vigorously.
A faint tinge of color gradually replaced the pallor. She sighed,
suddenly sat up, eyes wide open and lips apart as though in alarm.
She threw out her hands, palms outward as though to ward off--Fong
dropped to his knees. I think he thanked some deity, perhaps only the
intermediary; it was in Chinese; as for me, I thanked God direct and
in good Anglo-Saxon and so loudly that it seemed to arouse Elaine and
explain to her the cause of the intrusion.
“Why the reception?” came in a hysterical, whispered laugh from Elaine,
her big eyes resting on mine, then she sank back onto the pillows, the
eyes closed; she seemed utterly exhausted.
“I shall go for a doctor,” I urged, but she shook her head.
“No! No doctor can do anything. I shall be all right in a little
while,” and she seemed to fall asleep as I stood irresolute, not
knowing whether to obey or go at once to the village for a physician.
I turned on hearing a rustling as of paper being gathered together, to
find the Celestial with a sheaf of leaves in his hands, moon-eyed as he
looked at me saying, “Devil-liting, Missie liting to Devil-man, allee
time talk, talk, talk.”
I took the sheaf of papers from Fong’s hand. There was no writing,
nothing but almost perpendicular strokes on them. These strokes were
usually from left to right across the page and while they all ran
together in unbroken order, there seemed a semblance of word form.
Opposite is a facsimile of one paragraph that struck my eye.
At first meaningless, God help us, I thought, it is a mental disorder,
possibly incurable; then my eye caught in the pencil-strokes the
words “No the old life.” I followed, partially guessing, partially
deciphering, until I had the whole paragraph. This one read:
[Illustration]
“No the old life was too hard but until in this life I did not know
what the true meaning was--”
Great heavens, I had never suspected. I had read of mediums, automatic
writings--men and women allegedly possessing the gift of transcribing
without volition messages from the dead. Could such a thing be
possible? I had never given the absurd claim a serious thought. ’Twas
beyond the range of the possible, yet here in my hands under my very
eyes was evidence that such a thing existed. Evidence, not proof,
I reflected. Recollection of descriptions of the medium’s physical
manifestations when the desire or urge to write came fitted this case.
I glanced over to where Elaine lay, her face calm and turned slightly
away from me; the rise and fall of the coverlet showed an easy
breathing. Gone all semblance of death, a girl again, she peacefully
slept. What was the cause? Why should a mental impairment take this
peculiar phase, create this ability to put on paper what a dormant
physical consciousness permits the subconscious to receive and through
the pliant physical, transcribe? Did Elaine desire to write? No, I
preferred the thought that some peculiar complex brought the urge and
that she was helpless. Was she a “medium?” Surely the symptoms, the
pallor, the unnatural in every respect; did they not resemble very
closely those described in what I had at various times read and cast
aside as fanciful?
All delicate scruples were cast to the winds. I shamelessly took a pile
of written pages of this seemingly meaningless tracery, sat at the
little mahogany desk and painstakingly traced the lines.
Fong placed a shaded lamp on the desk top, carefully seeing that no
ray of light fell on the quiet sleeper, his little mistress, and left
the room. Strange how noiseless a Chinaman can be. I scarcely sensed
that he was in the room, so absorbed was I in deciphering the writing,
evidently traced for the full line without removal of pencil from the
paper. No crossed t’s or dotted i’s, but words stood out as legibly as
though in print.
As I read, hour after hour, with no realization as to the passing
of time or thought as to my indelicate act, I became more and more
mystified. Why should Elaine’s pencil trace such things?
Here apparently was something urging my hostess to “send me away; keep
me away from Hugh.”
The name “Hogarth” drew my attention; it seemed to stand out as though
written in India ink on a sheet lying on the desk which had fallen from
my hand and my errand to this house, which I must admit had become a
secondary matter, came sharply before me.
“Send him away, he cannot find Hogarth. He must go away.”
Evidently a question had been asked then. Did Elaine talk or merely
think the question?
The next line, “No, you never heard of him, he is nothing to you, he
will never be found.”
Another question, a new line, “yes, gone away, can never be found. No,
I cannot find him here.”
I searched for further mention of Hogarth through the entire pile of
written sheets, went back to where I had left off.
One line said “Hugh must be warned, wait for me.”
Were these lines written while Hugh and I sat in the library on the
previous evening? Was the shadowy form that I had seen bending over
Hugh the dictator of these alleged messages? Was there then in this
thing something more tangible than the meanderings of a mind asleep,
even deranged? What did this girl know about Hogarth? Surely I had
gleaned from Hugh that the man was unknown to him and therefore Elaine
could not have had him in mind. The name Hogarth held only in dim
recollection, that uncertain, was all that Hugh had, and of that I was
convinced.
I could feel a peculiar chill as of fear as I sat in the semi-darkness
of this silent night, a silence so intense as to be oppressive. Not
a sound came from the sleeper. For the first time there dawned on my
consciousness the thought, “Perhaps this is reality.”
The words of Paul came to me “If Christ be not risen, then is our
preaching vain and your faith is also vain.” “Christ is risen, Christ
is risen,” sung by many a sweet-voiced choir had passed me by, the
story of the resurrection accepted as a matter spiritual, not as
conscious life after death. Was my mind willing to accept such a thing
as a spirit, a living entity after death, knowing the things of life,
earthly life, seeing the happenings of today’s events, remembering the
past, just as though alive in the flesh?
“Go to the Bible for help in all dilemmas,” was my mother’s adjuration.
“There you shall learn the truth.”
At fourteen, had I been a Catholic, I should have been known as an
oblate, so possessed was I with religious fervor and I knew my Holy
Bible thoroughly. That I should cast back at this hour for negation or
affirmation of a new and somewhat terrifying thought to a book which I
had for years neglected to use did not occur to me as strange. Do we
not, almost to a man, when dire trouble overtakes us, go to God as we
know him through the teachings during our youth?
The words of Saul “Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit that
I may go to her and inquire of her,” and the reply, “Behold there
is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor,” floated to my
consciousness. And Samuel through this medium talked with Saul, told
him things as they were.
Could I question the inspired word of God? No! The medium saw and
identified Samuel to Saul. God’s laws being unchangeable, man being the
same today as in Saul’s time, natural law unchanged, spirits released
from the body must today exist as they did before Christ came, and if
they could communicate then, they can communicate now and as I thought
of the events of last night, fear smote me hard.
How long I pondered these things I know not, nor did I notice, except
vaguely that the Chinaman had noiselessly entered and as quietly left
the room. Hours must have passed. I remember thinking:
“What change in humanity might be wrought through the conviction, no,
the knowledge, that one was never alone, always accompanied by the
spirit of a friend who had passed on.”
Should one know his every act was seen by somebody would the world not
walk more circumspectly? Would not crime be lessened and life rendered
sweeter?
Things seemed unreal. I fancied an influence strange and new to
me, which I did not try to analyze, drawing me on to a point where
superstition superseded my usual common sense, and I do not know where
my thoughts would have carried me had not Fong Wing quietly entered the
room with a tray, an eggnog, a bowl of broth and three strips of brown
toast; an immaterial observation, everything considered, but something
real, tangible.
Fong spoke, “Dlink this, Missie,” presenting the tray.
Then I awoke to the fact that Elaine, awake and questioning-eyed was
looking at me.
I sprang to the bedside, “Elaine! Elaine! You have been desperately
ill,” I almost shouted and at the same time realized I had addressed
her thus familiarly.
She did not seem to notice the use of her Christian name, merely smiled
and said as she took the drink from Fong’s hands, “I’m awfully sorry to
have worried you. Really, I’ve slept wonderfully. Where is Hughie?”
Then without awaiting an answer to her query, while looking intently
past me at her desk, added,
“Thank you for your consideration. I had a miserable headache, but am
much--”
At that moment she must have seen the sheets of paper which I had
absent-mindedly kept in hand for her expression suddenly changed.
I cannot describe the change. Have you ever wounded a doe, run her to
exhaustion’s point and just before using the huntsman’s knife to end
her misery, caught the look in your victim’s eyes? If so, you then
have seen what I saw as I looked at my hostess; a beseeching, wounded,
pleading look which imposed its force on every fibre of my being and
brought me to my knees beside the bed asking forgiveness, asking for
her confidence, bringing in the name of Hugh, help for her, my anxiety,
everything except the one emotion obsessing me, the wish consuming me,
everything but the whole truth, that I loved her and was cold with the
fear that I had unforgivably offended.
I felt her small hand laid lightly on my bowed head, heard a low
pleading voice say, “Please go.”
I do not know how I got out of her presence, nor why I should have
walked so far through the night. Dawn came while I was atop a high hill
a mile at least from the house, with thoughts inchoate but even yet
holding to the night’s events and their possible sequel.
I must have slept all day. Hugh had returned, for my first sensation on
awakening was hearing him call from the orchard, “A beautiful sunset,
John.”
With spirits at low ebb, realizing that I must give an explanation and
offer an apology to the brother of the young lady whose privacy I had
encroached upon in the desperation of good purpose, I dressed hastily
and went down to the orchard, thinking that my status at the Craighead
home would be altered, yes, possibly my visit abridged through the
untoward events of the night.
Hugh, standing head bared under an apple tree, called out a quiet,
“Hello, Gordon, glad to see you out,” gave me courage and when he,
looking frankly and with friendship in the look, held out his hand, I
could not suppress the moisture which shut him from my vision as my
hand clasped his and his left arm went over my shoulders, giving me a
little familiar pull toward him.
“We must save her, Gordon,” and “Yes, Hugh,” was all that was said, but
it filled my very soul with gladness.
I excused myself to return to my room to change for dinner as Hugh
informed me, “We shall have the little girl’s company at dinner this
evening.”
[Illustration]