I solved the mystery of the opening of the sliding door while Hugh was
absent. As he had not used his hands, I tried out treading on different
spots on a Persian rug lying in front of where the panel opened and
was startled on planting my toe firmly on a tree pattern on the right
hand side to see the wall glide to the right in front of me. Instantly
removing the pressure, the panel slipped back into place but not before
I had glimpsed in the shadows of the staircase the form of a man, dim,
merely an outline, but certainly it was a man’s outline and nobody was
there when Hugh had gone up those stairs a few moments ago.
I was feeling for the particular spot on the tree pattern rug when
Hugh opened the door of the library, evidently having used the front
stairway. “You look startled,” he said as he came near where I was
standing looking at the wall.
“There’s a man in there,” I exclaimed. “I saw him when I stepped on the
rug and the panel opened.”
Hugh laid a hand on my shoulder and said in a quiet, even voice, “Don’t
let these apparitions worry you, my friend. They come and go, but they
can do you no harm. The dead roam at will. I have seen my father in
this room since my return but have never had a word from him.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes; Hugh deliberately filled his pipe.
He had not smoked while Elaine was with us. I watched him spread the
mouth of a deerskin tobacco bag, pour tobacco into the palm of his left
hand, roll it, then fill a large English briar pipe.
“My father’s,” he said, holding up the pipe before applying a match
which gave out a blue flame as the sulphur burned. “Often I have
watched father sit here and fill this pipe; he would sit for hours
after mother retired and seldom spoke.”
“Do you favor him or your mother?” I asked.
“My mother,” he replied. “I have none of his features. He had a
hawk’s beak of a nose and the high cheek-bones of a Scot. Mother sang
beautifully.”
There came a silence, then Hugh resumed reminiscently, “Father used to
sing a doleful little song to us children. It ran thus,” and Hugh, in a
deep low voice false in tone, sang,
“‘_There was a little dog and his name was Bopeep,
He waded in the waters so deep, deep, deep.
He climbed up the mountains so high, high, high,
And the poor little doggie had only one eye!_’
“That’s the only song I ever heard father sing,” Hugh said, “but let
me relieve your mind. I see you eyeing the panel,” and he walked over
to the wall and the panel opened wide. There was nothing there but the
little square at the foot of a stair going up to the right from the
opening. Closing the panel, Hugh said, while resuming his seat, “Nature
is peculiar. There is nothing between us in life and those whom we
call the dead. People talk about a veil, as though a gauze, something,
hung between. We make our own veil; we living ones; the other fellow
can see us but we interpose the flesh, the earthly, the human part of
us between our subconscious self, our silent guest, and the living
entities who choose to make our home theirs,” adding, “Do you know,
Gordon, the heathen Japs, the Shintoists who place food with their
dead are nearer the truth than we Christians? We call them forefather
worshippers. Nonsense! They venerate the spirit of their fathers,
recognizing their existence.”
“What about food placed on graves?” I asked.
“Not without reason,” Hugh replied, “A reborn spirit carries with it
enough of the fleshly life to set up a desire for sustenance; the
emanations from food are sufficient, the use of the food itself is not
expected. Many an old skinflint who has during his life grudgingly
given of his plenty for the support of proselyting missionaries to
Japan and China will have a great shock when the doctor has made his
last guess and the minister has said his last prayer and he awakens
to things as they are and many such fellows will try to find a medium
through which he may warn his pet heir not to follow in his foolish
footsteps, and squander his patrimony. Much better to use that money
helping the unfortunates all about him,” Hugh added.
“Shall we retire or do you wish me to go on with our history?” Hugh
asked.
“I could not possibly sleep a wink. Go ahead, you were telling me about
hearing Haig sentenced and taking up your present work,” I responded.
“Well,” Hugh commenced, “you of the city may wonder what there was for
a girl of fifteen and a man grown, to interest them. Our servants fled
when the nature of our ‘guests’ became known. The white-haired man,
Stanton, was the first to come. Others followed. The cook and the maid
quit as did gradually many of the farm hands. The ‘guests’ replaced
them until after Micklejohn’s untimely death almost every member of my
household, if I may so term them, was an ex-convict.
“Did that alarm Elaine? No indeed. She and I enjoyed life in our own
way. We canoed, fished, hunted. Many a bear and wolf has fallen to her
rifle and the killing of our most dangerous pest, the wily lynx, was
our greatest adventure. The wolves often chased deer across the ice to
the great tamarack swamp up the river and we acquired many a wolf pelt
in the deer path. Fall, with the whole river a sheet of glass before
the snow came, found both of us skating for miles, exploring shorelines
up to where the rapids made the ice dangerous and down seven miles to
the rapids below us. We heard from Alix and McFarlane and in due time
came news of a Hugh McFarlane, the promised nephew.
“Constant exercise, pleasurable yet hard, toughened both my sister and
myself. Neither of us knew fear though wild animals abounded, many like
the gray wolf and the lynx, dangerous.
“In the fall of our second year here, a matter of land title took me to
Cobourg. The journey was shortened many miles through the use of the
river road instead of the main thoroughfare through Valleyford, but
night travel over the short cut was not safe. I thought to try it once
as I wished to make home that night. There was no moon; no road, merely
a bridle-path, but my mare was surefooted and we were within four miles
of home before I heard anything worse than a wolf howl and the cry of
lynx at a distance.
“Something told me to turn in at the Smith cabin about five miles up
the river, but I had promised Elaine that I would return that night, so
I rode on into a stretch of dense timber where objects at arm’s length
were undiscernible and I knew this particular stretch of wood as the
haunt of numerous lynx. I was unarmed, except for a riding crop.
“Cries like those of an infant in pain came from a point just passed,
then an answer from directly ahead. My mare stopped short in her rapid
walk, snorted and sprang sidewise, almost unseating me. At the same
instant a great bulk catapulted from the limb of a tree overhead,
alighting on the mare’s back just behind me. I could feel the horse
flesh under me wince and in the same split second came a terrific shock
from right shoulder to hip. The right hip was thrown up in my effort to
retain my saddle when my mount had jumped to the right and the teeth
of the brute had evidently missed a vital part as I could feel them
tear through my flesh as the mare pivoted, again to the right, throwing
the beast off and I lay low on her neck as she ran madly back over
the road, dark as a pocket, through which we had just picked our way
carefully.
“The whole misadventure happened in less time than it takes to tell of
it and in a few minutes I found myself at the door of Smith’s cabin,
nearly a mile from the place of the accident; even before I half fell
from the saddle I felt faint but attributed the feeling to excitement,
but as I staggered to the cabin door I realized that my boot was full
of blood and that I must have help quickly.
“Smith opened the door as my hand reached it and I fell in, knocking
a rifle from the hands of my host. You must know, Gordon, that my
neighbors were always afraid of my ex-convict ‘guests.’ They could not
believe in the harmlessness of the poor broken fellows.
“‘A bad tear’ Smith called my wound. The paw of the lynx had scored me
deeply from shoulder to thigh; that was nothing. The animal’s teeth had
sunk to the bone of the right thigh and had torn clean out through the
flesh and clothing and the rough surgery of my kindly neighbor did not
effectually stop the loss of blood.
“I wished to take a lantern and get on home in some way, but Smith
bound me so tightly in strips torn from his cotton sheets that I could
not move; while I slept and before dawn the good fellow rode my mare to
the Hall and I awoke to find a couple of men standing over me in the
little one-roomed cabin.
“I had to be carried to the creek where two of my men in a canoe met us.
“I am telling you of this incident, Gordon, as it marked a new phase in
our lives at the Hall.
“The men carried me to my room; I marveled that Elaine was not about,
though Micklejohn said they had not disturbed her. One maid was still
with us. I had her summoned and sent her to Elaine to say that I was
home, had been detained through a slight accident but was all right.
“The maid returned, wild-eyed, saying the Miss was lying on the floor
with a lot of letters scattered about and could not be awakened. With
the maid’s help I got to Elaine’s room and fainted from pain and
weakness.
“There the doctor found us and I shall never forget the shocked look
in my sister’s eyes as she saw my ensanguined garments. The doctor had
ministered only to me. She awoke as though from a troubled sleep, gave
a little cry, pillowed my head in her lap and said, ‘I know all about
it, Hughie. It is all written there. John Blank told me about your
accident; that you were at the Smith cabin and a lot of other things
before that. We must look into this thing when you are well, Hughie.’
“I shall never forget that morning, Gordon. The mystery of the thing
overpowered me. You must remember that Elaine had had, subsequent to
the date of his body’s burial, no message from Blank.”
As Hugh got to this point the clock in the great hall boomed the hour
of midnight.
“Shall we woo the gentle goddess Nephe?” Hugh said quietly. “I do not
feel like going further with my story tonight; merely thinking of my
lack of good sense during the days that followed will keep me awake for
hours.”
I breakfasted in my room, having learned from a silent young man, who
had evidently been awaiting my awakening from an eight-hour sleep that
“Mr. and Miss Craighead had arisen early and gone to inspect the work
being done on an outlying farm.”
I wrote my firm in Philadelphia asking for an indefinite leave of
absence, that “I might search the vicinity for trace of the missing
Hogarth.”
The truth is, however, that I wished an excuse to prolong my visit at
Craighead Hall. I even thought seriously of tendering my resignation
and offering Craighead my services for what they might be worth. The
work was to my liking but I knew while I wrote and reflected that I
was lying to myself; that my great desire to stay on at Craighead Hall
was actuated by one and only one thought--and I could not under any
circumstances put that thought into words until I was better known to
both Hugh and Elaine.
At dinner that evening I heard about the new house on a farm, a mile
or was it two or more miles away? My thoughts were not on farms and
improvements. Could it be possible that the animated girl sitting
opposite me had any affliction--certainly she showed no traces--seemed
much interested in every subject under discussion and expressed genuine
pleasure when I told of writing for a prolonged leave of absence from
my office.
“We shall have lots of fun gathering the annual crop of hazelnuts from
the plains up the river, and I know you will enjoy skating when the
ice first forms, it is so thrilling to feel it bend underfoot, though
it is quite safe,” Elaine remarked and Hugh said, “Gordon, I wish you
would consider seriously a proposition to become a member of the firm
of Craighead and Montrose, two Scots, good and true, though Scotch
people say I am more English than Scotch in my tastes and manners.”
I answered that it would be difficult to drive me away just now
and I ventured a glance at Elaine, alas, unconscious of my real
meaning--though she did look at me slightly quizzically. I took it that
she thought my remark merely politeness.
I expressed a desire that Hugh should continue his story.
Hugh looked at his sister saying, “Suppose we walk down by the river,
the evening is so glorious. Will you come along, Elaine?”
“Thank you, no,” Elaine said. “I must finish some sewing,” and
turning to me, “You see, Gordon, young ladies must dress even in the
wilderness. I think Fong is going to prove a good seamstress,” and
curtseying in an old-fashioned way, as children sometimes do even
today, she blew a kiss to Hugh and ran lightly up the path to the
house. We had been dining in the little bower in the orchard.
Hugh sent the man in for topcoats and presently we were at the pier. I
suggested a quiet canoe ride and that I should wield the paddle. Hugh
reclined on cushions forward. His eyes seemed to be searching out some
spot in the starry heavens. Perhaps they saw nothing.
We were on a lake of glass; the night was warm for September. Our house
lights had disappeared. It was as though there were no other of God’s
creatures within a thousand miles.
Silence intense; the canoe drifted; I was startled when I heard Hugh
say, evidently soliloquizing:
“Guests star-scattered on the grass--the atheistic tent-maker. He
believed and yet did not believe. Like all of us, his naturally
searching soul was shackled through involuntary absorption of false
interpretations of truths revealed, given cryptically, grudgingly it
seems, as though the intention is that we shall use our own God-given
intelligence; we must choose at the crossroads. Others may not furnish
the finger-boards, though that is just what our numerous creedists are
doing and what they were doing for old Omar. Graves arranged in the
order of the constellations. What we term religion is probably co-eval
with thinking man, yet how many different gestures we find in an
identical purpose, worship of God.
“Why should a Being Supreme demand worship--the thought implies a
weakness in the all-strong. Laws, by whomsoever or by whatsoever Ruler
or Force, laws under which man was brought from the lower form to his
present estate, tried and not found wanting, demand respect, obedience,
but servility--no! such a thought is repugnant. Perhaps old Moses
slipped in the little line anent ‘bowing down and worshipping’ during
the darkness between electric flashes on Sinai, just to make his own
task easier. The Israelites of the Exodus differed little from the
masses of religionists of today. They required a good scare to keep
them in line.”
Hugh suddenly sat upright and addressed me.
“Gordon, I am going to tell you a strange story--the real history of
John Blank, covering a decade or more of his life. The terrible method
adopted in his passing out and the mental anguish entailed in the
contemplation are as nothing compared with the man’s sufferings during
the period which I shall cover. Every word that I shall say to you I
implicitly believe and so will you, Gordon, when I tell you how the
story came to me.
“The wound made by the teeth of the lynx was slow in healing; it was
three months before I left my room. Those were momentous months.
Neither Elaine nor I knew that we were saddling upon her a burden
seemingly impossible of removal. We knew nothing about what is called a
medium--one through whose peculiarly attuned subconscious messages from
those known as the dead are transmitted to the living. We knew nothing
about the danger to the medium of the loss of his or her personality or
that reason itself is endangered through such practice. We learned in
time that the work affects the medium’s health distressingly but we
could not quit--every word of this history was written by Elaine while
under a mental stress which neither she nor I could explain.
“At first her appearance was merely such as undue excitement would
naturally produce. As the daily seances continued into weeks, months,
she gradually paled, faded, lost her appetite, her interest in
everything except this one obsession.
“The culmination was six months of serious illness, until spring came
and I carried her to this canoe and spent weeks, in fact, the whole
summer, in diverting her mind. Gradually youth won back; lapses were
infrequent, but, friend Gordon, she is still in danger and somehow I
feel that in sharing with you our troubles, we shall find relief--”
Hugh paused because I had impulsively reached forward and grasped
his hand, stammering, “With God’s help, Hugh, we shall save her--I
love her--give her to me. We can travel to cities where there must be
psychiatrists who have cured other cases.”
Hugh looked nonplussed.
“Gordon,” he said, taking my hand, “I never dreamed the slightest thing
about your caring for my little sister. She is only a child; have you
spoken to her?”
“Not a word; I would not dare, yet,” I replied, “I want your assent; I
shall stay here until I win her.”
Hugh made no reply for so long a period that I doubted the wisdom of
my impulsiveness. Then he said, “You know, Gordon, I am my sister’s
only guardian. I like you. I do not know much about you--but I like
you. You will not object to my investigating you. I have the means in
Philadelphia. Supposing we let it rest here.”
Then, after a pause, “I never thought about Elaine’s marrying--I shall
never marry. My chosen work shall be my spouse. Better not say anything
to Elaine. She likes you but I’ll warrant no thought of marriage has
ever entered her head.”
My reply was the answer of Jacob to his uncle Laban--“Seven years or
twice seven would be a short term to serve.”
Hugh said then, “You must hear Blank’s story. Elaine and I are, in some
way as yet unknown, involved. There is some connection as McFarlane
has urged further questioning--urged without knowing what it means to
Elaine; that we learn more of Blank’s early life--says it is important
to all of us--though I cannot conceive why.”
I replied to Hugh, “I shall be patient, and I shall not interrupt while
you proceed,” and Hugh lay back on the cushions and resumed his recital:
“My sister who always hated a lie, told me just after the surgeon had
left me, sewed, plastered and strapped, on my back in bed, that she was
sitting up awaiting my return from Cobourg when she became possessed
with a desire to write a message that repeated itself in her brain; she
was in her room, her account-book was at hand. You see she was trying
to become of use to me in the handling of the place.
“The first message she involuntarily wrote was, ‘Hugh is at the Smith
cabin and will not be home tonight.’
“She said she cried aloud, ‘Why?’ and into her brain one word at a
time came the answer, she received just as a stenographer receives
dictation, without knowing the full message until she had written:
“‘Hugh has met with an accident, not serious, will not be home tonight.’
“Remember my sister knew at the time that John Blank was dead but we
had not reasoned as to date or thought about the message that came the
day I found his body.
“Elaine said she talked with John Blank; wrote the incredible
information that he had been with me in the woods--had been with me all
day; had endeavored to influence me to stop at the Smith place before
entering the wood; could not get the warning message to me; that had
she been with me he could have told her--every detail of the incident
in the inky darkness was there before me, written in that peculiar
vertical-stroke writing.
“Some of the messages were repeated and Elaine wrote in for me the
questions asked. I was convinced. No person on earth could have been
privy to the circumstances set forth; in fact, I could not have
furnished details more exactly.
“Elaine had slept through sheer exhaustion. At daybreak she had
awakened, excitedly re-read the messages, seized paper and pencil and
feeling weak, returned to her bed, called aloud, ‘Mr. Blank, are you
here?’
“Promptly the pencil wrote, ‘Yes,’ and circled in a score of minute
circles, then wrote, ‘All is well.’
“A sort of obligation, a relationship into which gratitude entered
largely, established itself in Elaine. She had lost all embarrassment
at questioning aloud and seemed to regard her correspondent as somebody
really existing.
“Elaine had drawn a couch to my bedside on the following evening and
while again reading the messages, suggested that she get in touch with
and ask Mr. Blank any questions I wished to propound. The minx had
paper and pencil with her and asked, at my suggestion, ‘How were you
mutilated?’
“The pencil wrote, ‘The events were too terrible.’
“From that moment I urged Elaine to get his history and before we
realized it, hours had passed. Strange things were being set forth
on the many sheets of paper that fell from the hands of Elaine. As
darkness clouded my bedroom I thought I could see behind Elaine a
shadowy form. My mind pictured John Blank as I had seen him in the
flesh; but there was no repugnant feeling for the distorted, mutilated
face. I felt only a great surge of pity, even though I did not know at
that time all that had been written.
“We both became absorbed in the story as it unfolded and I feel shame
in saying that I failed to interrupt as my sister’s face became drawn
and colorless. She worked until exhausted and slept or at least seemed
to sleep. I also slept, I think with the aid of the drug administered
by the surgeon.
“For weeks this was repeated until we had the entire story and I
laboriously wrote it out for transmission to McFarlane while still
confined to my bed.”
Hugh sat up in the canoe and looked shoreward.
“We have drifted past the landing,” he said, and I took up my paddle
and turned the boat about.
“Shall we go in? I’m afraid my sister may be waiting for us,” and as I
gently propelled the light little craft upstream, Hugh mused, rather
than spoke to me, “The living dead do not seem to differ much from the
living. They seem to hold on to what we regard as the shortcomings of
the flesh--even to a show of cunning in evading questions which they
do not or cannot answer; in short they are just what they were in
the body--no better, no worse--but with the ability, apparently, of
moving with the velocity of light or electricity. It would appear that
we are, dead, of the same mental calibre as when living, apparently
a little more subdued, a little awed, as though aware of a loss of
something possessed when alive in the flesh.
“There was nothing assertive, nothing to indicate a greater nobility
such as we are accustomed to attributing to our dead throughout Blank’s
recital of his misfortunes. This case may be exceptional; the man was a
suicide and this has been my only experience. I may err in estimating
the changes ordained by nature for every living creature. There are,
doubtless, degrees of intelligence and perhaps station.”
As the boat quietly glided alongside the pier, Elaine, with a cheery
hallo of welcome, came running down the parkway from the house and
walked between Hugh and myself. I could feel the warmth of her body
as we strolled houseward, or was it the quickening of my own blood
circulation through accelerated heart-beats as I thought, “Now there is
another holding my secret.”
But Hugh gave no sign.
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