laugh that suddenly died into profound silence.
She shook her head; raised her forefinger slowly, pointing into the
shadow behind him.
“What do you see?”
“I see a ship--three-masted--a bark.” (Warrick started, nodding his head
with a muttered oath.) “The sea is frozen; the ship is wedged between
masses of ice; the sky is like a bronze plane above; there is neither
sun nor wind.”
“On a whaler!” burst in Warrick. “I always knew it! I was in just such a
scrape, off--Go on, go on.”
“There are two men on deck. One is heavily built, gray-headed; the other
is spare, short, with red hair. There is a blood-mark on his chin.”
“Wylie! Alive!”
“Alive. His clothes are gray--”
“He wore gray the day he left,” said Warrick. “But, come to think of it
now, he wouldn’t--”
“I was wrong. He wears a sailor’s dress.”
She got up hastily, putting her hand to her forehead. Her face was
covered with a cold sweat. “Nothing--nothing! I am sick. Stop--no
more,” she gasped.
Mrs. Pallet, the carpenter’s wife, put her arm about her. “I’ll take her
to her room, Captain?” looking at me. “There’s no cheating in her, at
any rate,” as she led her out. “It’s my belief it’s the Devil’s work.”
Warrick straightened himself and drew a long breath. “Do you think it is
the Devil’s work, sir?”
“God knows.”
“It is the truth, whether or no. Wylie always had a hankering for a sea
life. He used to listen to my old whaling yarns twenty times over. And
I’ve heard lately, Captain, that poor Joe was deep in debt when he
disappeared. Some old matters, before he came aboard the Strader. He had
a reason for going. But Ellen thinks him dead,--thinks him dead,”
stroking his whiskers. “Would you tell her of this now, eh, Captain?”
looking up.
“Yes, I would,” after a pause. “It can do no harm. But gently, Warrick,
gently.”
It did do harm, however gently it was told. The next day Wylie’s wife
came to me where I stood alone, near the texas. Her nose was red from
crying, and her eyes angry, which made the rest of her face more
hunger-nipped and pale. She touched my sleeve, and then drew off,
holding her little boy by the hand.
“Captain Roberts,” she said, in a low, steady voice, “there is a woman
on the boat who pretends to have seen my husband alive. If he is alive,
he has deserted me. He is dead.”
“Be calm, madam.”
“He is dead. You shall not think ill of Joe.” She was silent a moment,
holding her throat with one hand. “If he is alive, he has deserted me,
and--I’ll tell you, Captain Roberts, but I never meant to tell any
living man. When you brought me and Joe on the boat, I hadn’t touched
meat for four months. It took all I could make to keep life in the boy,
and barely that. I went out scrubbing when sewing failed me. I scrubbed
and whitewashed. I didn’t beg. Do you think Joe would have left me to
that? and him alive? He’s dead. There’s some days I’ve went through--if
Joe had been on the face of the earth he’d have come to me them days.
He’s dead; he’s waiting, somewheres--”
She held little Joe tighter by the hand, looking beyond me--God knows
where--into the place where old Joe waited for her, I suppose; the
somewheres where the poor starved soul hoped to find the comfort and
love of her married life again. I hesitated. “Would you like to see this
woman? I will not say that I credit her assertions, but there is a
curious--”
She drew herself up, growing pale. “I, sir? No; I only wished that you
should do my husband justice. For the woman--no matter. I will not
detain you, Captain Roberts.” And so, scarcely waiting for me to speak
to the boy, she drew him away with her.
“That cut Ellen hard,” Warrick said,--“hard. These women would rather a
man should die any day than cease to care for them. But it’s true. Joe
Wylie went on a whaler, sir.”
The girl Lusk went ashore at New Albany, and I saw her no more. She
became afterward a noted medium, I believe; and old A., by the way,
used to consult her in all of his undertakings, or rather his wife,
through her.
The matter puzzled me. I did _not_ believe the spirits of the dead had
anything to do with it; though the woman, before she went off the boat,
brought me a message from one who has been gone from me this many a
year. I will say no more of this. Since she died I have not named her
name. I did not believe the words came from her. I did not believe the
girl Lusk was an impostor. I thought, as every impartial, cool observer
must, that there was a something--not charlatanism--in this matter, and
I think, in the end, I got the key to it; but of that you must judge.
The matter puzzled and troubled me so much that I determined to try an
experiment, which, perhaps, was cruel. I took Ellen to a medium, without
warning her of my intention. Warrick told me of her,--“She has never
showed herself in public.” He said, “She takes no pay. That makes me
trust her. She’s miserably poor, too; a huckster in the Cincinnati
market.”
It was early dawn when I took Ellen to her. She occupied a corner of the
market as a fruit and vegetable stall, and as we came near was hanging
nets of apples and oranges in front of it, I remember. A skinny,
sour-visaged, middle-aged woman, dressed in a sluttish gown and calico
sun-bonnet. I noticed the same peculiarity in the eye as in the girl
Lusk: they were opaque, gray, dead. The market-house was nearly empty; a
few butchers were arranging their meat at some distance inside, or
swallowing their coffee at the eating-stalls by the light of a few
candles. This woman’s stall was out on the solitary street, however, and
the pleasant morning light shone about it.
I made a pretence of buying some fruit. “This is the business for which
I brought you ashore,” I said to Ellen.
It was impossible that the woman could have heard me, yet she turned
sharply, eying Ellen as she came forward.
“It was for no oranges you come. Why didn’t ye say what you come for? If
there’s any dead belonging to ye, I’ll bring ye word from them. There’s
spirits all about me; there’s spirits at yer back, there’s spirits
fillin’ the street. What’ll you have, my young man?” to a boy who
stopped. “Eight and ten cents them is.”
Ellen drew back. “Let us go, let us go,” she said.
At that moment a series of soft double-knocks, as if made by two
knuckles of a gloved hand, sounded all about us,--under the pavement, on
the roof, on the stall.
“There’s yer change.--I’ve a message for _you_,” suddenly facing Ellen;
“there’s a spirit here to speak to you.”
“He is dead, then?” catching both hands together as if to support
herself.
The woman took down a greasy card, on which the alphabet was printed,
from a nail where it hung, and ran her pencil lightly along it, as the
raps continued in swift, soft succession. She spelled out this
message:--
“I think of you here. Of you and Joe. You will come to me.”
“Where--how was it done?” I cried.
The woman glanced at Ellen, who leaned against the edge of the block.
“I was murdered; drugged and murdered,” was the answer.
“He is dead. There is no chance any more.” That was all she said, with a
strange inconsistency, forgetting her anger of the other day. “There is
no chance, no chance,” I heard her mutter, as we went back to the boat;
“he’s gone now.”
The blow was as hard as if it had struck her for the first time. I told
Warrick the story without comment.
“It goes dead against the other,” he exclaimed. “And yet where did
either woman get their knowledge of the business we wanted cleared. The
blood-mark on the chin, the possibility that the dead man had been
drugged and murdered? There’s truth in it, in all the muddle.”
I said nothing. But the matter had taken a hold on me which I could not
shake off. I determined to look through the absurdity and mystery of
this so-called spiritualism until I had discovered the truth which
Warrick believed lay in it. I could not divest myself, either, of an
unaccountable impression that at last we were upon the track of the
missing man.
I induced Mrs. Wylie to remain on the boat during its next run, for the
boy’s sake, who grew stronger and more rugged every day. There was the
making of a man in the little fellow; he had a hearty, straightforward
look in his puny face, that made a friend of everybody. For the woman,
from the day when the message came to her from her husband, dead, she
gave way in mind or body as if some sinew had been snapped which had
held her up. I fancied that unconsciously she had been keeping some
vague hope alive which was gone now, forever. She crept out now to the
hurricane-deck, and sat all day; where her look settled, or her hands
fell on her lap, there they rested, immovable. As I knew her better, I
discovered why the men held her in such a pitying aspect. She was a
simple-hearted, credulous creature, such as everybody feels bound and
anxious to take care of when they are left drifting about the world.
So we made our way up to the headwaters of the Ohio. It was late in
October, I remember,--warm, yellow sunshine by day, and cold nights. The
fields nipped brown and red in the early frosts. I used to think if
anything could take the poor woman’s thoughts off the dead, the cheerful
sights and sounds along shore ought to do it. The water was unusually
clear, and curdled and bubbled back from the edge of the boat all day,
filled with a frothed, green light; the hills on both sides kept rising
back and back to the sky beyond, mottled with purple and crimson and
blackish greens; we passed thousands of little islands shying out of the
current, which were mere beds of feathery moss and golden-rod. Then
there were pretty, new little villages, and the busy larger towns, and
farms, at long intervals; and when these were passed we floated into the
deep solitude again. I noticed it the more because we were out of our
usual run; the Strader plied then between Louisville and New Orleans.
But the woman saw nothing of it, I think.
When we reached Pittsburg, and had discharged cargo, I determined, with
Warrick, to make a final test of the matter. F. was then in the city,
just back from England, the most successful medium, next to Home, who
ever left the States. He was willing, “for a consideration,” to hold a
private _séance_ and bring us in contact with any of the dead.
He was hardly the person to whom one would think St. Peter would have
lent his keys for ever so short a time; an oily, bloated sensualist,
with thick lips, and thicker eyelids half closed over a dull, sleepy
eye. He was dressed like an Orleans blackleg, gaudy with purple velvet
waistcoat and flash jewelry. But if there was any truth in spiritualism,
here was its interpreter. I engaged him to come on board on Saturday
evening; no one was to be present but Warrick, Ellen, and myself; the
boat was empty at the time, with the exception of its regular crew,
below. There was but little persuasion needed to induce Ellen to
consent.
“He may bring me another message,” with a light flickering into her
eyes. “Joe will be glad to find the way.” It is people like Ellen who
are always sure converts of spiritualism; it seems so natural to them
that their dead should come back, that they are blind to any absurd
discrepancies in the manner. On Saturday morning, on the wharf, I met
Stein, who had left the boat some two years before, and remembering his
old liking for Joe, told him what we were about to do. Stein was a
hard-headed, shrewd little Yankee; I was surprised, therefore, to see
how discomposed and startled he appeared at the first mention of the
affair; he denounced F. as a humbug with a great deal of heat, and tried
to persuade and chaff me out of it; but finding he could not, asked
leave to come himself to the _séance_.
“You’re bitten, Captain,” he said. “It will be easy to persuade you that
you see ghosts yourself. You had better let me bring a little daylight
with me.”
I told Warrick of my meeting with Stein, and he, having nothing else to
do, sauntered off in the afternoon to bring him down. I told Ellen also,
who, to my surprise, reddened and grew pale, when I named him.
“He is a man whom I have no reason to like,” she said. “But it does not
matter.”
In the evening F. came on board, stopping in the outer cabin, where we
were soon joined by Stein. We waited an hour for Warrick, who did not
return, and then entered the saloon where Ellen was seated. I noticed
that Stein drew back, muttering, “You did not tell me that woman was
here,” and that no greeting passed between them.
The _séance_ proceeded according to the usual formula. We sat around a
bare table, on which were placed by Stein and myself the names of those
whom we wished to appear written on scraps of paper rolled up in
pellets, and laid in a small heap. Ellen wrote none. “He will come,” she
said, simply.
But few raps were heard. F. delivered the messages by writing, his fat,
lumpy hand moving spasmodically over the sheets of paper. From several
of the names written on the pellets came communications, vague and
meaningless, any one of which might have been exchanged for the other
without loss of force.
F. glanced shrewdly around from time to time, fixing his strange,
introverted gaze oftenest on Ellen and little Joe, who had crept in and
stood looking him boldly in the face. He turned to me.
“One whom you desire to appear has not yet come? So far the _séance_ has
failed--for you?” he said.
I nodded. His face heightened in color as if the blood slowly rose to
his head; the veins swelled; drops of sweat oozed out on his neck and
forehead; he peered sharply about the room, as if out of the dark
shadows he expected visible spirits to rise.
“He is coming!” said Ellen, with a gasp. Stein became ghastly pale at
the words, and looked, terrified, over his shoulder, recovering himself
with a feeble laugh.
The table where we sat was under the chandelier, two of the lamps of
which barely sufficed to light that end of the cabin. The remainder
stretched, long and narrow and black, to the far upper deck. The medium,
looking at Stein as if he saw through him into this outer darkness, sat
motionless. There was a long silence. Then he raised his hand, made a
slow beckoning movement into the shadow. Ellen and Stein turned their
pale faces, breathlessly.
“They are coming! They are here!” he said. “They tell me all you would
know. The man you seek is not dead. He was cheated, deceived, carried
off to Caraccas that another man might marry his wife.”
As his voice rose, Stein rose with it, stood facing him with a look of
terror and ferocity, like a wild animal whose lair has suddenly been
uncovered. Sudden light flashed on me. I sprang up; Ellen cowered with a
cry, but above all sounded F.’s sharp, monotonous sentences.
“He is not dead; he has returned! He is--_here_!” as Stein, with an
oath, pointed into the shadow where Warrick appeared, and leaped back as
though the ghost of his victim confronted him.
It was no ghost. A little, red-headed, weak-eyed fellow had his arms
about Ellen’s neck, holding her to his breast as if he had the strength
of a lion. Warrick, the medium, and I exclaimed and swore, choking for
words; but he was silent. He only held her as close as if he had indeed
come back from the grave to find her, putting back her head, now and
then, and looking at her with a wonderful love in his puny,
insignificant face.
“Ellen! Ellen!” he said at last; “they told me you were dead,--you and
the boy. This my Joe!--little Joe?” picking up the boy, handling his
legs and arms and looking into his face, his own contorted and wet with
tears. We men moved off down into the lower cabin, leaving them alone;
but I saw Joe a long time after, still sitting there with his wife
clinging to him, and the boy on his knees, and I could not help it, I
went in and held out my hand. “I congratulate you, old fellow! God has
been good to you!”
But he only looked up with a bewildered smile. “Yes, God has been good.
This is Ellen, Captain. And my little son. _My little son._”
Wylie’s story is soon told. Stein had persuaded him to give his
creditors the slip and make for California, promising to join him
shortly, and that they would speedily make their fortunes. Wylie was a
man easily led, and consented. He was concealed under a trap-door in
the cigar-shop, and escaped while Fordyce and I sought the police.
Stein had intercepted his letters to his wife until such time as he
could send him word of her death. In his own plans upon her he was
disappointed.
I am glad to say that Joe brought back enough yellow dust to keep the
wolf from the door for many a day. He and his wife are living somewhere
in Indiana. Joe, their son, was a drummer-boy in the Thirty-sixth Ohio,
under Captain Saunders, and I’ll venture to say no braver heart kept
time to his “Rat-tat-too” than that which beat under his own little
jacket.
I consented to write down these facts, as I said, because of their
bearing upon the matter of spiritualism. In this case, as in every other
of which I have become cognizant, the mediums have only put into shape
the thoughts of those who question them. To admit that certain persons
can at will become possessed of the secret movements in the mind of
another, will solve the whole mystery. In this case of Wylie, the
mediums, Lusk, the woman at Cincinnati, and finally F., simply
reproduced the surmises or knowledge of Warrick, Ellen, and Stein. It is
not agreeable to think that an animal so gross as F. should have power
to decipher our inmost thoughts. Better that, however, than to believe
that those we have lost should hold out their hands to us through such a
messenger.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Kant, who carried his demands of unconditional veracity to so
extravagant a length as to affirm, that, if a man were to see an
innocent person escape from a murderer, it would be his duty, on being
questioned by the murderer, to tell the truth, and to point out the
retreat of the innocent person, under any certainty of causing murder.
Lest this doctrine should be supposed to have escaped him in any heat
of dispute, on being taxed with it by a celebrated French writer, he
solemnly reaffirmed it, with his reasons.
[B] “June 1, 1675.--Drinke part of 3 boules of punch (a liquor very
strainge to me),” says the Rev. Mr. Henry Teonge, in his Diary lately
published. In a note on this passage, a reference is made to Fryer’s
Travels to the East Indies, 1672, who speaks of “that enervating liquor
called _Paunch_ (which is Indostan for five), from five ingredients.”
Made thus, it seems the medical men called it Diapente; if with
four only, Diatessaron. No doubt, it was its evangelical name that
recommended it to the Rev. Mr. Teonge.