THE REAPER
The spring brought trouble deep and lasting to the home of Nathan. Their
child, upon whom Lissa had rested her heart and hopes after the manner
of all mothers since the dawn of creation, sickened and died.
One day its little, warm lips had been pressed to hers, while its eyes
looked inquiringly into her face with the mysterious intensity of
infancy. The next, the waxen body lay cold and still before her
unknowing and unheeding, and the weighted agony of her heart was beyond
expression.
Oh, mothers who have had this experience, how I pity you! How my heart
bleeds for you! It is to tear out a vital part of your being, to rend
the very cords of life, to see that precious little casket of clay, so
pure, so fair, borne away. How can you bear it?
Lissa did not bear her trial bravely, but sank beneath it. For days she
neither ate nor slept. She would sit in the spot where her baby died,
and beg that it should return to her. She would pray that it might
become materialized and appear to her as the children she had at one
time seen come from a cabinet at a seance. That seemed to be her one
thought, to see it, to feel its little warm hands once more.
Nathan watched her with increasing anxiety, scarce naming, even to
himself, what he feared. At last one morning she startled him by
declaring that the child had come to her in the night. That she had seen
it and touched its hands.
“It was but a dream, dearest. Little Lucy is safe in Jesus’ arms. Think
of that, Lissa, safe!”
She turned from him impatiently.
“I don’t want to think of it. I want her myself. I have the best right
to her. It was cruel to take my baby, my only one. He must let her come
back to me.”
“But, my dear, that is impossible. Our little one is safe in a better
world, where no harm nor evil can approach her. She is waiting for us
there. Some day you can go to her, Lissa, but she may not come to you.”
“But I know she can and does. She is there in that corner of the room.
Sit very still, and she will come to you. See her?”
Nathan, startled in spite of himself, would sit, awed and expectant,
looking in the direction indicated, while his wife, wrapped in eager
absorption, would remain motionless, becoming angry if he disturbed her.
And thus the weeks passed, bringing no relief. Lissa’s nature seemed
completely changed. She no longer took interest in her household
affairs, but left everything to her domestic, who at best was an
indifferent housekeeper. Nathan came home each week to find neglect and
chaos, where had once been care and order.
Lissa was petulant and easily irritated, and her dark, sad eyes looked
as if she never slept. She lost in flesh and color and her constant and
ever-recurring theme of conversation was the child she had lost.
“Ah, how far from comforting is this belief which my poor wife has
embraced! If Lissa would only become reconciled to the fact that the
child cannot come to her again, she would soon recover from her sorrow,”
he said to Mark Cramer, as after an unusually trying hour with her he
walked slowly with his brother-in-law toward the latter’s house. “It is
certainly wrong to try to recall the dead.”
“I agree with you. God pity those who have no other belief than
spiritism.”
“Amen!” replied Nathan. “It has been weighed in the balance and found
wanting. Poor Lissa keeps herself and every one around her wretched by
constantly talking of her lost one. I feel at times she is losing her
mind. She seems to care for nothing but what she calls ‘communing with
her child.’ I can see that she is failing in health as well as mind. I
hoped when the first outburst of grief was over she would, like other
mothers, become resigned, but if anything she is becoming more absorbed
in it. I cannot blame her friends for staying away from her. They do not
want to hear the same story continually. If I propose that we go away
for a time she looks alarmed and refuses to leave the house, because of
the nightly visits of her little one. Surely, surely, Mark, it is a
delusion. It cannot be that she _does_ see her?” he questioned.
“I certainly believe, Nate, that she is self-deceived and that unless
her mind can in some way be diverted and given other food she will die
or become insane. I was surprised to-day to see the change in her, even
in the short time I have been gone.”
“If she would only take some interest in her household affairs, but she
leaves everything to Neoka, who is poorly fitted for such
responsibility. I might send for her mother—”
Mark shook his head. “I am afraid her mother gives too much credence to
this wretched fallacy that is making all the trouble,” he said.
“Well,” groaned Nathan, “I’m to blame for all this! If I had never
brought that man Russell into the neighborhood this need never have
happened.”
“Possibly not, but you don’t know. The Devil usually has some way of
finding victims. He might have sent along some other of his emissaries.
I suppose he has plenty, even of _this_ kind. But I will think about
this and see if I cannot find some way of deliverance.”
“Heaven grant you may, and soon!”
“I’ve often wondered,” said Mark, “why you ever had anything to do with
this belief. I always supposed you too sound a man to be deceived
easily, and yet you have half seemed to accept the doctrine.”
“I never told you of an experience I had, a number of years ago, while I
was railroading, did I? You know I ran on the road three or four years.
At the time the incident happened I was acting as conductor on a freight
train running between R—— and Council Bluffs. I had a friend, George
Marvin, who was also a railroad man, and we were close chums. He was a
splendid fellow and supported a widowed mother, who idolized him.
“One day he came down to the station and told me he had had a bad dream
the night before, and felt sure that if he went out upon his run he’d
meet with an accident. I pooh-poohed at him, but he was terribly
depressed and insisted that he’d had a warning and must not go. So
finally we hunted one of the boys to go in his place, and he jumped on a
passing train to ride up to the street-crossing near his home, standing
on the step of the third car from the engine. As the train moved out
between the tracks upon which other cars were standing, George leaned
out too far, was struck by some projection from a freight car, knocked
under the wheels, and killed instantly.
“It was a terrible thing. I couldn’t sleep for nights after it happened.
And his poor mother—well, she never got over it. It killed her inside of
six weeks.
“Two or three weeks after George was killed I took a freight train up to
the junction, where I was ordered to side-track and wait for the express
to pass me. I was some behind time, owing to an accident up the road,
when I pulled out onto the switch, and I was slowing up to stop, when
the rear door of the caboose was thrown open with a bang, and if you’ll
believe me, there stood George Marvin, as natural as life.
“‘Nate,’ he said, ‘go back and close your switch.’ Then he jumped off,
and the door closed. For a moment I forgot but that George was living. I
rubbed my eyes to see if I was awake. I went to the end of the car, and
looked out, but no one was in sight. There were four drovers in the car
playing cards and laughing. While I was looking at them and wondering
what it all meant, the door flew open again and George Marvin once more
appeared. ‘Nate,’ he said, very slowly and expressively, ‘go back and
close your switch.’ I asked the drovers if they saw any one. They said,
‘Yes, a fellow told you to close your switch.’ ‘That man has been dead
two weeks,’ I said.
“They urged me to go back and see what it meant, and as the train had
stopped, I ran back and found a piece of coal had fallen between the
rails and prevented the switch—which worked automatically—from closing.
I got it out and closed the switch just as the express came in sight.
Otherwise it would have run into us, and another railroad horror would
have been recorded. Now how do you account for that?”
“Had it not been for the drovers seeing the vision I should think you
might have seen, standing in the rear of the car, that the switch did
not close; but as you were carrying on another train of thought, perhaps
thinking of your friend, you were not conscious of noticing it; and that
the other part of your mind warned you. Your imagination supplied the
vision.”
“But the drovers?”
“Well, perhaps it was thought transference. You received the impression
passively, scarcely realizing it. The passive mind might have
transferred it to their minds. I must confess there is much we cannot
understand even in the laws that govern mental telepathy.”