come at last. Have been looking for you anxiously. I knew you grieved
because I passed into the spirit world before you, and because you
knew so little of the going, but I knew you never believed that one
who had gone could ever return and talk to his friends, so was afraid
the truth would not be impressed on you and you would not come. But it
is true, mother. This is your own Joey boy. It was all true about the
shipwreck; we went down without warning and were drowned. I didn’t have
time to think about it, and you will be glad to know I didn’t suffer.
I shouldn’t have wanted to go if I had known beforehand what was to
happen, but it’s all right now. I am happy--perfectly happy. Everything
is beautiful here. I can’t tell you just how it is, because we are not
permitted, but you will know some day. Father isn’t looking well. Now
that that affair of Lester’s is off his mind he ought to cheer up. Tell
him not to fret about me. It’s all right. Come and talk to me again
some day soon. Your loving son, Joseph Albert Hale.”
Down in one corner was added: “What have you done with old Major? I
don’t see him about.”
Mrs. Hale read this communication, as she called it, slowly and
impressively, but with visible excitement and elation. Then she paused
a moment for her husband to speak, but he remained silent, and she
burst out:
“Isn’t it wonderful, Abner? I know you never believed in spiritualism,
and neither did I, but you can’t deny that there’s something in this.
Why, here’s Joe’s very own handwriting, and his signature, with the
quirl at the end that he always makes and his middle name written out
in full. That was a notion he picked up when he was at school, but I
never could get into the fashion of addressing his letters any other
way than ‘Joseph A.’ And in the letter he calls himself ‘Joey boy.’ I
used to call him ‘Joey,’ you know, for a pet name. And who but Joey
could have mentioned that trouble with his cousin Lester, when only we
four ever knew you got the young rascal out of a scrape, and you know
very well none of us ever mentioned it--Lester least of all. Then,
father, he says you are not looking well, which is true, and shows he
must have seen you. Think of that! And he missed old Major. I never
wrote to him that the dog had died; kind of hated to. I tell you,
father, it’s wonderful, wonderful! I never would have believed that I
could have an atom of faith in spiritualism, and I must say that I wish
Joe could communicate with us at first hand, and not through a total
stranger. But this way is better than nothing, and what I’ve got here’s
a great comfort to me. I’m going again, and if you--”
Abner’s face had slowly assumed an expression that caused his wife to
pause suddenly and observe him with some apprehension. He looked at her
fixedly and sternly, then spoke with a voice trembling with anger:
“Sarah Jane!” They addressed each other in the sweet, old-fashioned
way, as “father” and “mother,” except on those occasions when storms
loomed in the domestic sky. “Sarah Jane Hale, has it come to this,
that you, a professing Christian for forty years, a member of the
Presbyterian church in good standing; that you, the wife of a ruling
elder, have taken up with this abominable witchcraft, and have the
indecency to glory in it? Have you not read that the wrath of God
comes upon those who practice such vile arts? Have you forgotten your
religion? Do you care nothing for the safety of your immortal soul?
I am shocked, Sarah Jane! I am astonished and grieved, and I insist
that there shall be no more of this idolatrous business. It was
thoughtlessness that led you to the den of the witch this time, may be,
but the visit must not be repeated. I want you to promise not to go
again, and I should like to hear you say you are sorry for this visit.”
Mrs. Hale, after a gasp of surprise, got her breath and her bearings.
“She is not a witch, but a respectable lady, I’d have you know, Abner
Hale, and she doesn’t live in a den, but in a house that’s better than
this one, and she’s a member of the Baptist church. And I wouldn’t
be as narrow-minded and stiff-necked as you are for a farm. There’s
things in this world that you haven’t found out yet, if you are a
ruling elder; and, anyway, I won’t be dictated to just as if I were a
disobedient child and had no judgment or rights of my own. You don’t
seem to understand how I miss Joe. It was a real comfort to me, that
letter from him, and I’m not sorry I went, and I shall go again if I
want to. So there!”
After which feminine outburst she threw herself upon the lounge and
sobbed with as much abandon as if she were ten years old instead of
sixty. Abner was not moved to compassion by her tears.
“Sarah Jane,” he said, solemnly, “I am disappointed. I have always
considered you a sensible woman--one not likely to be led away from
true Christian principles, though at times you haven’t been as faithful
to the means of grace as would be becoming in an elder’s wife. I know
Joe’s death was hard on you. He was my son, too, but I haven’t found it
necessary to consort with Satan’s emissaries for comfort. This taking
up with evil things is a matter that calls for church discipline. It
ought to be laid before the session, but I ain’t ready to do that yet,
Sarah Jane. I want you to have time to consider the iniquity of your
course before it is made public, and until you can realize it I sha’n’t
speak a word to you, not a word from this hour.”
Mrs. Hale dried her tears suddenly and sat up, looking at her husband
with curiosity.
“Are you six years old or sixty-five, Abner Hale, getting mad and ‘not
speaking?’” she inquired, sharply.
Abner deigned no reply, but wound the clock, kicked the cat out and
slammed the door with more energy than was becoming to a ruling elder,
then stalked majestically off to bed in silence.
Mrs. Hale was not especially overcome by this exhibition of conjugal
authority. The neighbors were wont to speak of Mr. Hale as “terribly
set in his ways and domineering.” On account of these traits the
women were inclined to congratulate themselves on not being married
to him, but this feeling was not really a sound basis for an adverse
verdict on his character. The disposition of women to wonder how other
women can “put up” with their respective husbands arises, perhaps,
out of feminine inability to comprehend thoroughly the idiosyncrasies
of more than one man at a time. Not all wives are martyrs who seem
so to outside eyes. At all events, Mrs. Hale had never so regarded
herself, and did not now. She had lived with Abner for forty years and
understood him. He had “ways,” and she had adapted herself to them,
bringing him, in the long run, to her way of thinking; or, at least,
so modifying his asperities of thought and character as to make him
quite satisfactory to her. She had never run so directly counter to his
prejudices as in this case, but was not alarmed at his wrath and only
moderately resentful.
“I didn’t suppose he’d take it so hard,” she said long afterward, “but
I might have remembered that he hadn’t been thinking the matter over
for a month or so, as I had. I ought to have talked it up to him in
advance and got him into the notion by degrees. Poor soul! He tried
not to show it, but he grieved for Joe every day and all day while he
was alone at his work, and his nerves were all wrought up. Women ain’t
the only ones that get cross and crabbed from nervousness. However,
I wasn’t going to give in right at once. I didn’t want him to think
he could dictate to me that way. It doesn’t do to give a man such an
advantage, even once.”
Down in the village that Thanksgiving night, while this domestic
episode took place in the farm-house, pretty Nellie Hamilton lay upon
her bed with wide-open eyes, staring into the dark, her mind intent
upon the experience of the morning. The choir had performed its final
“voluntary,” the minister had just given out his text, “Let us come
before His presence with thanksgiving,” and the congregation was
settling itself into the pews, when choir, minister and people faded
out of sight and she looked upon a far different scene--not only looked
upon it, but seemed a part of it. There before her, almost at her
feet, was a lake, half shadowed by a mountain, whose bare and rocky
summit pierced the sky. A vivid green forest, whose appearance was
strange and tropical, circled the water and was thick about her. In a
little opening were two or three huts, and near them, swung between two
trees, was a hammock, in which lay her lover, Joe Hale. Pale and ill
he looked, but was unmistakably Joe. As she stood, or seemed to stand,
ready to step forward to his side, so softly as not to awaken him, she
became aware of a swarthy, half-clothed foreign-looking man slipping
toward the hammock from the further side. His face wore an evil look,
and he glanced furtively about. His hand crept toward the pocket in the
breast of the flannel shirt worn by the occupant of the hammock, but
the movement, soft as it was, roused the sleeper, and he started up.
Quicker than it could be told, a bright blade flashed in the air, blood
spurted over the sick man’s breast and he fell back as if dead. It was
at this moment that Nellie Hamilton startled the congregation with a
scream, and was assisted to her home under the belief that she was
suddenly taken ill.
Lying there, puzzling over it, she could not solve the mystery. It
could not be a dream. She had just seated herself when the vision came,
and had had no time in which to grow drowsy if she were so inclined.
She was thinking of Joe at the time; it was seldom in those days that
he was far from her mind, but she pictured him as battling with fierce
waves, and as sinking slowly, surely, and, at last, despairingly, into
their cruel depths--a hideous vision that haunted her, awake or asleep.
She had never associated him with far southern lands; she had never
been outside of her own state of Indiana, yet she knew that an actual
tropical landscape could never be more real to her than this phantasmal
scene of the morning. She could almost see it yet--the shining green
of trees, whose names she did not know, the vines that stretched from
branch to branch like great serpents, the rank undergrowth, the intense
blue of the sky, the mountain, with its upper height a bare, stony
peak. What did it mean? She remembered hearing her Scotch grandfather
talk mysteriously of second sight, but had never troubled herself to
know just what he meant, and she had never before had an experience
like this. Besides, if Joe had been drowned in the Pacific, and he must
have been drowned, or he would have been heard from long ago, this
vision must have been a delusion. Could she be losing her mind? she
wondered drearily, and fell at last into troubled sleep.
The days and weeks dragged slowly by, Abner Hale kept strictly to the
letter of his threat to speak no word to his wife until she showed
signs of repentance for what he considered her ill conduct. She
addressed him freely when occasion required, and sometimes when it did
not, but he made the hired man his medium of communication, directing
his remarks ostensibly to that personage, but really to Mrs. Hale; and
the hired man, being but a stupid creature, concerned more with eating
all that was set before him than with what went on in the house,
never discovered that he was used as a convenience. With neighbors who
dropped in Abner talked freely and even eagerly, which, in view of his
usual taciturnity, caused them some surprise. Once his wife detected
him furtively examining the slate containing Joe’s letter, which she
kept in a drawer of Joe’s old desk, but he showed no sign of interest
when she made another visit to the city, and he had reason to assume
that she again visited the woman he had denounced as an agent of the
evil one.
She did, in fact, visit that person, not once, but twice or more, as
the holidays drew near, and she felt the need of aid in resisting
the depressing influences of other people’s gayety. Each time was
repeated, with somewhat greater amplification, the story that had been
told on the slate the first day. Each time some allusions were made
or questions asked which convinced her anew that Joe’s spirit must
inspire the pencil’s movements, since none but he and herself had
knowledge of the matters involved. Each time came the assurance afresh
that the unseen writer was Joe, her son, come back to her in this way
from the other world. She could not doubt that this was true, but
somehow the slate writings did not continue to be the comfort to her
that she had first found them. There was a consciousness of something
lacking, something unsatisfactory; there was a barrier between her
and her son that she could not overcome. He told her so little, after
all. It dawned on her one day that he had really written nothing that
she had not herself known or believed before. She was thinking of
this as she left the station one afternoon on her way home from one
of these visits, and had wondered if it would not be just as well to
fall in with Abner’s notions and tell him she was willing to give up
the medium. “But I won’t do it just yet,” she decided. “He hasn’t been
behaving well, and I don’t want to encourage him in such doings by
giving in so easily. He ought to come half way, anyhow, and I think he
will before long. He’s getting very uneasy.”
Nevertheless, she sighed as she thought of her silent home, and when
she chanced to meet Nellie Hamilton, something wistful in the girl’s
face attracted her notice and she urged her to accompany her to the
farm. Visitors were always welcome now.
“Come out and spend the afternoon with me, and if, as you say, you must
be home to-night, Abner will bring you.”
It was the last day of the year, but the clear, crisp air and the
bright sunshine brought suggestions of spring, and both women felt
cheered in a vague way when they reached the country home. Mrs.
Hale talked to Nellie of her lost son that afternoon, and found a
sympathetic listener. She related anecdotes of his boyhood; she brought
out the tintypes and photographs he had had taken at various stages of
his career; she showed specimens of his handiwork about the house; she
told how thoughtful and considerate he was always and what a source
of comfort. But with all the confidences bestowed she did not mention
her visits to the medium or the story on the slate; all that was
too intimate an experience to relate to this girl, who, for all her
evident appreciation of Joe, might have an ignorant prejudice against
spiritualistic manifestations. She had had it herself not so long ago.
Nor did Nellie Hamilton venture to tell the elder woman of her vision
on Thanksgiving day, nor of the later one the day before Christmas.
It rained on the latter occasion, and as she stood on the school-house
step, looking up the dreary street, after the children had gone home,
suddenly street and houses vanished, the dark sky cleared, and before
her stretched a wide sweep of gray, sandy desert, patches of gray-green
vegetation only adding to the dreariness; not far distant were barren
hills, and beyond them arose mountains, gray, too, and craggy, with
lines of white near their summits, glittering in the pitiless sunshine.
Almost at her feet lay a horse, gasping as if for breath, his tongue,
cracked and bleeding, hanging from his mouth. Near him a man was
stretched face downward on the sand. As she looked he raised his head,
and, with dull eyes, gazed drearily about, but she had not needed the
movement to know that the man was Joe Hale. He was gaunt of frame,
but his face was brown, not white, as she had seen it the other time,
and there was a red scar on his forehead not there before. The gray
desert stretched away until it melted into the horizon line, and no
other creature was in sight in all its space. But while she looked,
and before she could take the one step forward that seemed to divide
her from the man she loved, the scene was changed, and she stood upon
the school-house steps, staring blankly into the muddy street of
Branchville.
She began to be afraid of herself, and would have liked to take Joe’s
mother into her confidence and ask what these visions could mean, but
had not the courage. So the two women talked together about one who
was so dear to both, and each kept from the other her closest thoughts
concerning him. After supper, when the guest would go, pleading duties
that demanded her attention in the early New Year’s morning, Abner
entreated delay, and as they sat about the fire he, too, conscious of
sympathy, fell to relating stories of the dear lost son. And while
they talked the gate opened, a step was heard on the walk, then on the
porch, and Mrs. Hale, her face suddenly radiant with hope and joy, rose
swiftly, and before he could touch the latch opened the door to her
son. The intuition of the mother rose superior at this moment to the
mysterious power that brought visions from far off to the younger woman.
There were laughter and tears, kisses and embraces, and if the visitor
shared these neither father nor mother stopped to wonder. There were
incoherent questions and answers when all talked at once and no one
listened; there was silence of deep emotion as the parents looked
upon their boy, who had been lost and was found, and put their hands
upon him again and again to be convinced anew that he was truly in
the flesh. And when the excitement quieted they all gathered close
while Joe told them the story of his adventures; how he had been
shipwrecked, as they had read in the papers; how the steamship had made
little effort instead of much to save its victims; how he had clung
to a floating plank till morning and had been picked up by a tramp
boat which had mysterious errands, whose nature he did not inquire, to
Central American ports, and was anxious to avoid California harbors for
reasons that he suspected to have connection with customs officers.
He told how, at his own solicitation, he was put ashore at the first
Guatemalan port, and how, instead of being able to work his way back
to San Francisco, as he had hoped, being without money after the
shipwreck, he fell ill with fever and would have fared badly but for a
party of American miners and prospectors, themselves scant of funds,
who ran across him, doctored him, and took him far into the interior
before he fairly realized their kind purpose. They were going north
overland in search of one of the famous lost mines of Mexico, to whose
location they thought they had a clew. It was a wild country they
traveled through, and their journeying was slow. They did not come near
the civilization of which railroad trains and telegraph wires were a
part, and so he wrote no letters, but looked forward to the day when he
should reach home in person, and fretted that progress was so slow.
“I had one or two close calls,” he said lightly, with the disregard for
dangers past common to the young. “While I was lying in a hammock one
day (it was the Thanksgiving day here, by the way, and I was dreaming
of home), a Mexican thief crept up and gave me this,” touching a scar
on his forehead, “and another on my shoulder. He aimed at my heart,
of course, and it’s a wonder he missed. And only last Monday, just a
week ago to-day, I thought I was gone. I had left my friends to their
rainbow chasing and started to make the rest of the way to Tucson
alone. I wandered off the trail, my skeleton of a horse broke down--we
were both famished for water--and I thought for a bit that the jig was
up. But while I was on the sand thinking the matter over, what did I
hear--or, rather, feel--but the faint jarring of a railroad train and
the echo of a far-off whistle! It was miles away, but I knew I was all
right. It was the sweetest music I ever heard. Actually, the old horse
pricked up his ears, scrambled to his feet and jogged on. We struck the
track after two or three hours and followed it to a station. From there
I got to Tucson, where Tom Bailey, my old room-mate, is, and he lent me
money to get home with. So here I am.”
The women shuddered at the tale, and looked upon this youth, who talked
so carelessly of his perils, as a hero of heroes.
The hour grew late, and Nellie, making a movement of withdrawal, found
Joe eager with his proposal to accompany her. She was unwilling to
disturb the family group, but read entreaty in the young man’s eyes,
and so declined her hostess’s invitation to remain. They scorned the
thought of driving, and went out gayly to walk the short mile on the
highway, that was to them that night a path to paradise. Under the
moonlit sky Joe asked her the question he had said ought never to be
written, and she whispered her answer so low that even the owl blinking
in the tree overhead could not hear. But Joe heard.
As they loitered down the road, unmindful that it was the season of
frost and not of roses, she told him of her visions, and a wonder fell
upon them that she had seen so true. Yet, after all, they reflected,
with the beautiful confidence of youth in the supreme power of love, it
was not so strange that two souls in such harmony as theirs should come
to each other across the world. As they looked up at the starry sky,
thinking of this, heaven seemed very near, and they caught a glimpse of
its mysteries. Then the bells rang that ushered in a new year, and they
felt that it was the beginning of life for them.
* * * * *
Back in the farm-house another subject was under discussion. Mrs. Hale
had stood in the doorway looking after her son with a pang at her heart
in spite of her joy at his return. Sudden insight had come to her, and
she knew that though the lost was found he would never be all her own
again. She sighed as she shut the door and turned, with absent-minded
gaze, toward her husband. He sat by the fire, with a hand on each knee
and a puzzled expression on his face. Through all the confusion and
excitement of the evening he had remained faithful to his promise, and
had not addressed a word to his wife, but now, without preamble, and as
if no silence had intervened, he began:
“Mother, what do you reckon it was that made the writing on them slates
at Madame Victorine’s?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “It certainly wasn’t Joe, for he didn’t
get drowned and he wasn’t dead, and still some of the things written
were family matters no one could have knowledge of but one of us three.
But it wasn’t Madame Victorine; it was Mrs. Mary Ellen Johnson who was
the medium.” Then, with the swift intuition of a woman who reads her
husband like a book: “Abner Hale, I believe you went to visit Madame
Victorine yourself to get slate writings, or you wouldn’t know anything
about her! You did. I know by your sheepish look you did. Madame
Victorine, of all creatures, too! Why, she isn’t a decent woman, if
all they say’s true; five or six husbands, and nobody knows where one
of ’em is, or whether they’re alive or dead. You ought to be ashamed
of yourself--an elder in the church. And all the time holding off from
speaking to your own wife.”
Abner got in a word here.
“I wanted to investigate a little on your account, and I thought you
mentioned Madame Victorine,” he urged, feebly.
“My account--nothing!” was her scornful ejaculation. “You were just
filled with curiosity, for one thing, and a desire to hear from Joe,
for another--don’t deny it! And not speaking a word to me for a whole
month, and talking of church discipline! Huh!”
Abner had risen to his feet and affected a dignity it was obvious he
did not altogether feel.
“Well, mother,” he said, in a conciliatory tone, but with the masculine
reluctance to owning himself in the wrong clearly apparent; “well,
mother, I guess we haven’t either of us done anything we want to talk
about before folks. It looks as if the devil was in the thing, anyway,
as I told you at first. I guess we’d better say nothing about the
matter to any one--to any one, not even to Joe.”
She looked at him intently and reflected for a moment, then laughed a
little, not being without humor.
“I guess so, too,” she said.
And she never did mention the affair to any one but Joe, who, of
course, told his wife.
AN ITINERANT PAIR
Were you ever at Michigan City, in Indiana? Stop! Let me put the
question more carefully. Were you ever compelled to wait for a train at
Michigan City? The first inquiry sounds innocent enough, but a Hoosier
would detect a covert insult in it. Why? Because one of the three state
penitentiaries is situated there and is the town’s chief distinction to
the outside public. A native of the state living elsewhere can conceive
of no reason why a man should voluntarily take up his residence in the
place, or even why he should “stop off,” except to visit some erring
and unfortunate relative. Hence, to avoid trouble, those persons in
search of local information do well to be on their guard.