Chapter IX

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.