One morning toward the end of August, Whitwell, who was starting
homeward, after leaving his ladies, burdened with their wishes and
charges for the morrow, met Westover coming up the hill with his
painting-gear in his hand. "Say!" he hailed him. "Why don't you come down
to the house to-night? Jackson's goin' to come, and, if you ha'n't seen
him work the plantchette for a spell, you'll be surprised. There a'n't
hardly anybody he can't have up. You'll come? Good enough!"
What affected Westover first of all at the seance, and perhaps most of
all, was the quality of the air in the little house; it was close and
stuffy, mixed with an odor of mould and an ancient smell of rats. The
kerosene-lamp set in the centre of the table, where Jackson afterward
placed his planchette, devoured the little life that was left in it. At
the gasps which Westover gave, with some despairing glances at the closed
windows, Whitwell said: "Hot? Well, I guess it is a little. But, you see,
Jackson has got to be careful about the night air; but I guess I can fix
it for you." He went out into the ell, and Westover heard him raising a
window. He came back and asked, "That do? It 'll get around in here
directly," and Westover had to profess relief.
Jackson came in presently with the little Canuck, whom Whitwell presented
to Westover: "Know Jombateeste?"
The two were talking about a landslide which had taken place on the other
side of the mountain; the news had just come that they had found among
the ruins the body of the farm-hand who had been missing since the
morning of the slide; his funeral was to be the next day.
Jackson put his planchette on the table, and sat down before it with a
sigh; the Canuck remained standing, and on foot he was scarcely a head
higher than the seated Yankees. "Well," Jackson said, "I suppose he knows
all about it now," meaning the dead farm-hand.
"Yes," Westover suggested, "if he knows anything."
"Know anything!" Whitwell shouted. "Why, man, don't you believe he's as
much alive as ever he was?"
"I hope so," said Westover, submissively.
"Don't you know it?"
"Not as I know other things. In fact, I don't know it," said Westover,
and he was painfully aware of having shocked his hearers by the
agnosticism so common among men in towns that he had confessed it quite
simply and unconsciously. He perceived that faith in the soul and life
everlasting was as quick as ever in the hills, whatever grotesque or
unwonted form it wore. Jackson sat with closed eyes and his head fallen
back; Whitwell stared at the painter, with open mouth; the little Canuck
began to walk up and down impatiently; Westover felt a reproach, almost
an abhorrence, in all of them.