A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future

by John Jacob Astor

  CHAPTER XI.

  DREAMLAND TO SHADOWLAND.

  As Ayrault's consciousness returned, he fancied he heard music.Though distant, it was distinct, and seemed to ring from theether of space. Occasionally it sounded even more remote, but itwas rhythmical and continuous, inspiring and stirring him asnothing that he had ever heard before. Finally, it was overcomeby the more vivid impressions upon his other senses, and he foundhimself walking in the streets of his native city. It wasspring, and the trees were white with buds. The long shadows ofthe late afternoon stretched across the way, but the clear skygave indication of prolonged twilight, and the air was warm andbalmy. Nature was filled with life, and seemed to be proclaimingthat the cold was past.

  As he moved along the street he met a funeral procession.

  "What a pity," he thought, "a man should die, with summer so nearat hand!"

  He was also surprised at the keenness of his sight; for, inclosedin each man's body, he saw the outline of his soul. But the deadman's body was empty, like a cage without a bird. He also readthe thoughts in their minds.

  "Now," said a large man in the carriage next the hearse, "I maywin her, since she is a widow."

  The widow herself kept thinking: "Would it had been I! His lifewas essential to the children, while I should scarcely have beenmissed. I wish I had no duties here, and might follow him now."

  While pondering on these things, he reached Sylvia's house, andwent into the little room in which he had so often seen her. Thewarm southwesterly breeze blew through the open windows, and farbeyond Central Park the approaching sunset promised to bebeautiful. The table was covered with flowers, and though he hadoften seen that variety, he had never before noticed themarvellous combinations of colours, while the room was filledwith a thousand delicious perfumes. The thrush hanging in thewindow sang divinely, and in a silver frame he saw a likeness ofhimself.

  "I have always loved this room," he thought, "but it seems to menow like heaven."

  He sat down in an arm-chair from force of habit, to await hisfiancee.

  "Oh, for a walk with Sylvia by twilight!" his thoughts ran on,"for she need not be at home again till after seven."

  Presently he heard the soft rustle of her dress, and rose to meether. Though she looked in his direction, she did not seem to seehim, and walked past him to the window. She was the picture ofloveliness silhouetted against the sky. He went towards her, andgazed into her deep-sea eyes, which had a far-away expression.She turned, went gracefully to the mantelpiece, and took aphotograph of herself from behind the clock. On its back Ayraulthad scrawled a boyish verse composed by himself, which ran:

  "My divine, most ideal Sylvia, O vision, with eyes so blue, 'Tis in the highest degree consequential, To my existence in fact essential, That I should be loved by you."

  As she read and reread those lines, with his whole soul heyearned to have her look at him. He watched the colour come andgo in her clear, bright complexion, and was rejoiced to see inher the personification of activity and health. Beneath his owneffusion on the photograph he saw something written in pencil, inthe hand he knew so well:

  "Did you but know how I love you, No more silly things would you ask. With my whole heart and soul I adore you-- Idiot! goose! bombast!"

  And as she glanced at it, these thoughts crossed her mind: "Ishall never call you such names again. How much I shall have totell you! It is provoking that you stay away so long."

  He came still nearer--so near, in fact, that he could hear thebeating of her heart--but she still seemed entirely unconsciousof his presence. Losing his reserve and self-control, heimpulsively grasped at her hands, then fell on his knees, andthen, dumfounded, struggled to his feet. Her hands seemed toslip through his; he was not able to touch her, and she was stillunaware of his presence.

  Suddenly a whole flood of light and the truth burst upon him. Hehad passed painlessly and unconsciously from the dreamland ofSaturn to the shadowland of eternity. The mystery was solved.Like the dead bishop, he had become a free spirit. His prayerwas answered, and his body, struck by lightning, lay far away onthat great ringed planet. How he longed to take in his arms thegirl who had promised herself to him, and who, he now saw, lovedhim with her whole heart; but he was only an immaterial spirit,lighter even than the ether of space, and the unchangeable lawsof the universe seemed to him but the irony of fate. As aspirit, he was intangible and invisible to those in the flesh,and likewise they were beyond his control. The tragedy of lifethen dawned upon him, and the awful results of death madethemselves felt. He glanced at Sylvia. On coming in she hadlooked radiantly happy; now she seemed depressed, and even thebird stopped singing.

  "Oh," he thought, "could I but return to life for one hour, totell her how incessantly she has been in my thoughts, and how Ilove her! Death, to the aged, is no loss--in fact, ablessing--but now!" and he sobbed mentally in the anguish of hissoul. If he could but communicate with her, he thought; but heremembered what the departed bishop had said, that it would takemost men centuries to do this, and that others could never learn.By that time she, too, would be dead, perhaps having been thewife of some one else, and he felt a sense of jealousy evenbeyond the grave. Throwing himself upon a rug on the floor, in aparoxysm of distress, he gazed at Sylvia.

  "Oh, horrible mockery!" he thought, thinking of the spirit. "Hegave me worse than a stone when I asked for bread; for, in placeof freedom, he sent me death. Could I but be alive again for afew moments!" But, with a bitter smile, he again remembered thewords of the bishop, "What would a soul in hell not give for butone hour on earth?"

  Sylvia had seated herself on a small sofa, on which, and next toher, he had so often sat. Her gentle eyes had a thoughtful look,while her face was the personification of intelligence andbeauty. She occasionally glanced at his photograph, which sheheld in her hand.

  "Sylvia, Sylvia!" he suddenly cried, rising to his knees at herfeet. "I love, I adore you! It was my longing to be with youthat brought me here. I know you can neither see nor hear me,but cannot your soul commune with mine?"

  "Is Dick here?" cried Sylvia, becoming deadly pale and gettingup, "or am I losing my reason?"

  Seeing that she was distressed by the power of his mind, Ayraultonce more sank to the floor, burying his face in his hands.

  Unable to endure this longer, and feeling as if his heart mustbreak, he rushed out into the street, wishing he might soothe hisanguish with a hypodermic injection of morphine, and that he hada body with which to divert and suppress his soul.

  Night had fallen, and the electric lamps cast their white rays onthe ground, while the stars overhead shone in their eternalserenity and calm. Then was it once more brought home to himthat he was a spirit, for darkness and light were alike, and hefelt the beginning of that sense of prescience of which thebishop had spoken. Passing through the houses of some of theclubs to which he belonged, he saw his name still upon the listof members, and then he went to the places of amusement he knewso well. On all sides were familiar faces, but what interestedhim most was the great division incessantly going on. Here werejolly people enjoying life and playing cards, who, his foresightshowed him, would in less than a year be under ground-- likeMercutio, in "Romeo and Juliet," to-day known as merry fellows,who to-morrow would be grave men.

  While his eyes beheld the sun, he had imagined the air felt warmand balmy. He now saw that this had been a hallucination, for hewas chilled through and through. He also perceived that be castno shadow, and that no one observed his presence. He, on theother hand, saw not only the air as it entered and left hisfriends' lungs, but also the substance of their brains, and theseeds of disease and death, whose presence they themselves didnot even suspect, and the seventy-five per cent of water in theirbodies, making them appear like sacks of liquid. In some he sawthe germs of consumption; in others, affections of the hear
t. Inall, he saw the incessant struggle between the healthyblood-cells and the malignant, omnipresent bacilli that the cellswere trying to overcome. Many men and women he saw were in love,and he could tell what all were about to do. Oh, the secretsthat were revealed, while the motives for acts were now laid barethat till then he had misunderstood! He had often heard the oldsaying, that if every person in a ball-room could read thethoughts of the rest, the ball would seem a travesty onenjoyment, rather than real pleasure, and now he perceived itsforce. He also noticed that many were better than he hadsupposed, and were trying, in a blundering but persevering way,to obey their consciences. He saw some unselfish thoughts andacts. Many things that he had attributed to irresolution orinconsistency, he perceived were in reality self- sacrifice. Hewent on in frantic disquiet, distance no longer being ofconsequence, and in his roaming chanced to pass through thegraveyard in which many generations of his ancestors lay buried.Within the leaden coffins he saw the cold remains; some wellpreserved, others but handfuls of dust.

  "Tell me, O my progenitors," he cried, "you whose blood till thismorning flowed in my veins, is there not some way by which I, asa spirit, can commune with the material world? I have alwaysadmired your judgment and wisdom, and you have all been inShadowland longer than I. Give me, I pray you, some ancestraladvice."

  The only sound in answer was the hum of the insects that filledthe evening air. The moonlight shone softly, but in a ghastlyway, on the marble crosses of his vault and those around, and hefelt an unspeakable sadness within this abode of the dead. "Howmany unfinished lives," he thought, "have ended beneath thesesods! Unimproved talents here are buried in the ground.Unattained ambitions, and those who died before their time; thosewho tried, in a half-hearted way, to improve their opportunities,and accomplished something, and those who neglected them, and didstill less--all are together here, the just with the unjust,though it be for the last time. The grave absorbs their bodiesand ends their probationary record, from which there is noappeal."

  Near by were some open graves, ready to receive their occupants,while a little farther on he recognized the Cortlandt mausoleum,looking exactly as when shown him, through his second sight, bythe spirit on the previous day.

  From the graves filled recently, and from many others, rosethreads of coloured matter, in the form of gases, the forerunnersof miasma. He now perceived shadowy figures flitting about onthe ground and in the air, from whose eyes poured streams ofimmaterial tears. Their brains, hearts, and vertebral columnswere the parts most easily seen, and they were filled with aninextinguishable anguish and sorrow that from its very intensitymade itself seen as a blue flame. The ruffles and knickerbockersin which some of these were attired, evidently by the effects ofthe thoughts in their minds, doubtless from force of habit fromwhat they had worn on earth while alive, showed that they hadbeen dead at least two hundred years. Ayrault also now foundhimself in street clothes, although when in his clubs he had worna dress suit.

  "Tell me, fellow-spirits," he said, addressing them, "how can Icommunicate with one that is still alive?"

  They looked at him with moist eyes, but answered not a word.

  "I attributed the misery in my heart," thought Ayrault, "entirelyto the distress at losing Sylvia, which God knows is enough; butthough I suspected it before, I now see, by my companions, that Iam in the depths of hell."