The House of Mystery

by Will Irwin

  III

  THE LIGHT

  As Dr. Blake tucked his racket under his arm and came down to the net,the breeze caught a corner of her veil and let the sunlight run clearacross her face. He realized, in that moment, how the burning interestas a man, which he had developed in these three weeks for AnnetteMarkham, had quite submerged his interest as a physician. For health,this was a different creature from the one whom he had studied in theparlor-car. Her color ran high; the greatest alarmist in the professionwould have wasted no thought on her heart valves; the look as of one"called" had passed. Though she still appeared a little grave, it was ahealthy, attractive gravity; and take it all in all she had smiled muchduring three weeks of daily walks and rides and tennis. Indeed, nowthat he remembered it, her tennis measured the gradual change. Shewould never be good at tennis; she had no inner strength and no "gamesense." But at first she had played in a kind of stupor; again andagain she would stand at the backline in a brown study until thepassage of the ball woke her with an apologetic start. Now, shefrolicked through the game with all vigor, zest and attention, goingafter every shot, smiling and sparkling over her good plays, prettilyput out at her bad ones.

  While he helped her on with her sweater--lingering too long over thatlittle service of courtesy--he expressed this.

  "Do you know that for physical condition you're no more the same girlwhom I first met than--than I am!"

  She laughed a little at the comparison. "And you are no more the sameman whom I first met--than I am!"

  He laughed too at this tribute to his summer coating of bronze overred. "I feel pretty fit," he admitted.

  "My summer always has that effect," she went on. "Do you know that forall I've been so much out of the active world"--a shadow fell on hereyes,--"I long for country and farms? How I wish I could live alwaysout-of-doors! The day might come--" the shadow lifted a little--"whenI'd retire to a farm for good."

  "You've one of those constitutions which require air and light andsunshine," he answered.

  "You're quite right. I actually bleach in the shadow--like lettuce.That's why Aunt Paula always sends me away for a month every now andthen to the quietest place proper for a well-brought-up young person."

  His eyes shadowed as though they had caught that blasting shade inhers. From gossip about the Mountain House, later from her ownadmission, he knew who "Aunt Paula" was--"a spirit medium, orsomething," said the gossip; "a great teacher of a new philosophy,"said Annette Markham.

  Dr. Blake, partly because adventure had kept him over-young, held stillhis basic, youthful ideas about the proper environment for woman.Whenever the name "Aunt Paula," softened with the accents of affection,proceeded from that low, contralto voice, it hurt the new thing,greater than any conventional idea, which was growing up in him. Heeven suspected, at such times, what might be the "something nobler thannursing."

  A big apple tree shaded the sidelines of the Mountain House tenniscourt. A bench fringed its trunk. Annette threw herself down, backagainst the bark. It was late afternoon. The other house-guests dronedover bridge on the piazzas or walked in the far woods; they were aloneout-of-doors. And Annette, always, until now, so chary of confidences,developed the true patient's weakness and began to talk symptoms.

  "It is curious the state I'm in before Aunt Paula sends me away," shesaid; "I was a nervous child, and though I've outgrown it, I still haveattacks of nerve fag or something like it. I can feel them coming onand so can she. You know we've been together so much that it'slike--like two bees in adjoining cells. The cell-wall has worn thin; wecan almost touch. She knows it often before I do. She makes me go tobed early; often she puts me to sleep holding my hand, as she used todo when I was a little girl. But even sleep doesn't much help. I comeout of it with a kind of fright and heaviness. I have little memoriesof curious dreams and a queer sense, too, that I mustn't remember whatI've dreamed. I grow tired and heavy--I can always see it in my face.Then Aunt Paula sends me away, and I become all right again--as I amnow."

  Blake did not express the impatient thought of his mind. He only said:

  "A little sluggishness of the blood and a little congestion of thebrain. I had such sleep once after I'd done too much work and foughttoo much heat in the Cavite Hospital. Only with me it took the form ofnightmare--mostly, I was in process of being boloed."

  "Yes, perhaps it was that"--her eyes deepened to their most farawayblue--"and perhaps it is something else. I think it may be. Aunt Paulathinks so, too, though she never says it."

  What was the something? Did she stand again on the edge of revelation?Events had gone past the time when he could wait patiently for herconfidence, could approach it through tact. It was the moment not forsnipping but for bold charging. And his blood ran hot.

  "This something--won't you tell me what it is? Why are you always somysterious with me? Why--when I want to know everything about you?"After he had said this, he knew that there was no going backward.Doubts, fears, terrors of conventionalities, awe of his conservative,blood-proud mother in Paris--all flew to the winds.

  Perhaps she caught something of this in his face, for she drew away atrifle and said:

  "I might have told you long ago, but I wasn't sure of your sympathy."

  "I want you to be sure of my sympathy in all things."

  "Ah, but your mind is between!" That phrase brought a shock to Dr.Blake. At the only spiritualistic seance he had ever attended, a greasyaffair in a hall bedroom, he had heard that very phrase. A picture ofthis woman, so clean and windblown of mind and soul, caught like atrapped fly in the web of the unclean and corrupt--it was that whichquite whirled him off his feet.

  "Between our hearts then, between our hearts!" he cried. "Oh, Annette,I love you!" His voice came out of him low and distinct, but all thepower in the world vibrated behind it. "I have loved you always. You'vebeen with me everywhere I went, because I was looking for you. I'veseen a part of you in the best of every woman"--he pulled himself up,for neither by look nor gesture did she respond--"I've no right to besaying this--"

  "If you have not," she answered, and a delicate blush ran over herskin, "no other man has!" She said it simply, but with a curious kindof pride.

  He would have taken her hand on this, but the grave, direct gaze of hersapphirine eyes restrained him. It was not the look of a woman whogives herself, but rather that of a woman who grieves for theungivable.

  "Ah," she said, "if anyone's to blame, it is I. I've brought it onmyself! I've been weak--weak!"

  "No," he said, "I brought it on--God brought it on--but what does thatmatter?

  "It's _here_. I can no more fight it than I can fight the sea."

  Now her head dropped forward and her hands, with that gracefullyuncertain motion which was like flower-stalks swayed by a breeze, hadcovered her face.

  "I can't speak if I look at you," she said, "and I must before you gofurther--I must tell you all about myself so that you will understand."

  The confidence, long sought, was coming, he thought; and he thoughtalso how little he cared for it now that he was pursuing a greaterthing.

  "You know so little about me that I must begin far back--you don't evenknow about my aunt--"

  "I know something--what you've said, what Mrs. Cole at the MountainHouse told me. She's Mrs. Paula Markham--" his mind went on, "the greatfakir of the spook doctors," but his lips stifled the phrase and saidafter a pause, "the great medium."

  "I don't like to hear her called that," said Annette. "In spite of whatI'm going to tell you, I never saw but once the thing they call amedium. That was years ago--but the horrible sacrilege of it has neverleft me. She had a part of truth, and she was desecrating it by guessesand catch words--selling it for money! Aunt Paula is broader than I.'It's part of the truth,' she said, 'that woman is desecrating thework, but she's serving in her way.' I suppose so--but since then I'venever liked to hear Aunt Paula called a medium."

  She paused a second on this.

  "If I were only sure of your sympathy!" A note
of pleading fluttered inher voice.

  "No thought of yours, however I regard it, but is sure of mysympathy--because it's yours," he answered.

  As though she had not heard, she went on.

  "I was an orphan. I never knew my father and mother. The first things Iremember are of the country--perhaps that is why I love theout-of-doors--the sky through my window, filled with huge, puffy,ice-cream clouds, a little new-born pig that somebody put in my bed onemorning--daisy-fields like snow--and the darling peep-peep-peep oflittle bunches of yellow down that I was always trying to catch andnever succeeding. I couldn't say _chicken_. I always said _shicken_"She paused. With that tenderness which every woman entertains for herown little girlhood, she smiled.

  "I've told you of the five white birches. I was looking at them andnaming them on my fingers the day that Aunt Paula came. My childhoodended there. I seemed to grow up all at once."

  Blake muttered something inarticulate. But at her look of inquiry, hemerely said. "Go on!"

  "She isn't really my aunt by blood,--Aunt Paula isn't. Youunderstand--my father and her husband were brothers. They alldied--everybody died but just Aunt Paula and me. So she took me awaywith her. And after that it was always the dreadful noise and confusionof New York, with only my one doll--black Dinah--a rag-baby. Ithought," she interrupted herself wistfully, "I'd send Dinah to youwhen I got back to New York. Would you like her?"

  "Like her--like her! My--my--" But he swallowed his words. "Go on!" Hecommanded again.

  "Afterwards came London and then India. Such education as I had, I gotfrom governesses. I didn't have very much as girls go in my--in myclass. I didn't understand that then, any more than I understand why Iwasn't allowed to go to school or to play with other girls. There was atime when I rebelled frightfully at that. I can tell definitely justwhen it began. We were passing a convent in the Bronx, and it wasrecess time. The sisters in their starched caps were sewing over by thefence, and the girls were playing--a ring game, 'Go in and out thewindow'--I can hear it now. I crowded my little face against thepickets to watch, and two little girls who weren't in the game passedclose to me. The nearest one--I 'm sure I'd know her now if I saw hergrown up. She was of about my own age, very dark, with the silkiestblack hair and the longest black eyelashes that I ever saw. She had adimple at one corner of her mouth. She wore on her arm a littlebracelet with a gold heart dangling from it. I wasn't allowed anyjewelry; and it came into my mind that I'd like a gold bracelet likethat, before it came that I'd like such a friend for my very ownest anddearest. The other girl, a red-haired minx who walked with her armabout _my_ girl's waist--how jealous I was of her! I watched until AuntPaula dragged me away. As I went, I shouted over my shoulder, 'Hello,little girl!' The little dark girl saw me, and shouted back, 'Hello!'Dear little thing. I hope she's grown up safe and very happy! She'llnever know what she meant to me!"

  Her lips quivered again. Looking up into her face, Blake wondered foran instant at the sudden softness of her eyes. Then he realized thatthey were slowly filling with tears. He reached again to seize herhands.

  "Oh, no, no--wait!" she said, weakly. After a pause, she resumed:

  "That got up rebellion in me. All children have such periods, I'veheard. I'm docile enough now. But before I was through with this one,Aunt Paula had to make my destiny clear to me--long before she meant todo so. And I grew to be resigned, and then glad, because it was agreater thing."

  Here a rapid, inexplicable change crossed her face. From its firmnessof health and strength, it fell toward the look of one "called"--

  "I must go back again. Between Aunt Paula and me there was always agreat sympathy. It's hard to describe. Often we do not have to speakeven of the most important things. When I come to know more about otherpeople, I wondered at first why they needed to do so much talking.Things have happened--things that I would not expect you to believe--"

  She had kindled now, and she looked into his eyes like some sybil,divinely unconscious, preaching the unbelievable.

  "I knew dimly, as a child knows, and accepts, that Aunt Paula had somewonderful mission and that it had to do with the other world--allyou're taught when they teach you to say your prayers. Little by littleshe made me understand. I grew up before I understood fully. TheGuides--Aunt Paula's--I have none as yet--had told her that I was aLight."

  He caught at this word, for his lover's impatience was burning andbeating within him.

  "Light!" he said; "my Light!"

  She regarded him gravely, and then, as though his fervor had frightenedher, she looked beyond at the apple leaves.

  "Don't--you'll know soon why you mustn't. Oh, help me, for I amunhappy!" She controlled a little upward ripple of her throat. "She,the Guides say, is a great Light, but I am to be a greater. They senther to find me, and they directed her to keep me as she has--away fromthe world. When she first told me that, I was terrified. She had to sitbeside me and hold my hand until I went to sleep. It's wonderful howquickly I do sleep when Aunt Paula's with me--she's the most soothingperson in the world. If it weren't for her, I don't know what I'd dowhen I get into my tired times."

  "You're never going to have any more tired times, Light," he said.

  She went on inflexibly, but he knew that she had heard:

  "There was one thing which I did not understand, and neither perhapsdid Aunt Paula. The Guides sometimes seem foolish, but in the endthey're always wise; I suppose they waited until the time should come.Though I tried to help it along, though I cried with impatience, Icouldn't begin to get voices. I've sat in dark rooms for hours, as AuntPaula wished me to do. I've felt many true things, but I could neversay honestly that I heard anything. But the Guides told Aunt Paula'wait.' And at last she learned what was the matter.

  "I don't know quite how to tell you this next. It came on the way backfrom India. She had gone there--but perhaps you won't be interested toknow why she went. Though I was more than twenty, I'd never had whatyou might call a flirtation. I'd been kept by the Guides away frommen--as I'd once been kept from other children. There was a youngEnglishman on the steamer. And I liked him."

  Blake gave a sudden start, and rose automatically. So this confidenceled to another man--that was the obstacle! She seemed to catch histhought.

  "Oh, not that!" she cried; "he was only an incident--won't you hearme?" Blake dropped at her feet again.

  "But I liked him, though never any more--he was a friend and girls needto play. But he wanted to be more than a friend. Aunt Paula passed uson the deck one evening. After I had gone to bed, she came into mystateroom. When the power is in her, I know it--and I never saw it sostrong as that night. It shone out of her. But that wasn't the strangething. Only twice before, had I heard the voices speak from hermouth--mostly, she used to tell me what they said to her. But it wasnot Aunt Paula talking then--it was Martha, her first and best control.Shall I tell you all she said?"

  Out of the confused impulses running through Dr. Blake, his sense ofhumor spurted a moment to the fore. He found himself struggling to keepback a smile at the picture of some fat old woman in a dressing gownsimulating hysteria that she might ruin a love affair. He was hard putto make his voice sound sincere, as he answered:

  "Yes, all."

  "She said: 'Child, you are more influenced by this man than you know.It is not the great love, but it is dangerous. You are to be the greatLight only after you have put aside a great earthly love. This vesselfrom which I am speaking'--she meant Aunt Paula of course--'yielded toan earthly love. That is why she is less than you will be. Would youimperil truth?' It was something like that, only more. Ah, do you seenow?"

  "I see," said his sense of humor, "that your Aunt Paula is a mostunlimited fakir."

  "I see," said his voice, "but do you _believe_ it?"

  "I've so much cause to believe that I can never tell you all. AfterAunt Paula came out of it, I told her what Martha had said. She wasdear and sympathetic. She put me to sleep; and when I woke, I wasresigned. I did not see him alone again. Now I u
nderstand more clearly.When I have had that earthly love and put it aside, when I have_proved_ myself to my Guides--then the voices will come to me. Marthahas repeated it to Aunt Paula whenever I have gone away from home. Sherepeated it before I came up here--"

  "They had cause to repeat it," he took her up fiercely; "cause torepeat it!"

  "I--I'm afraid so. But how should I know? I looked at you--and itseemed right, everlastingly right, that I should know you. And then Idid--so suddenly and easily that it made me shudder afterwards for fearthe test had come--the agony which I have been afraid to face. Ah, it'sbold saying this!" She drooped forward, and her porcelain skin turnedto rose.

  Blake sat breathless, dumb. Never had she seemed so far away from himas then; never had she seemed so desirable. He struggled with hisvoice, but no word came; and it was she who spoke first.

  "Now I know--it is the agony!"

  At this admission, all the love and all the irritation in him came uptogether into a force which drove him on. They were alone; none otherlooked; but had all the world been looking, he might have done what hedid. He rose to his feet, he dropped both his hands on her shoulders,he devoured her sapphirine eyes with his eyes, and his voice was steelas he spoke:

  "You love me. You have always loved me. In spite of everything, youwill marry me! You will say it before you are done with me!"

  He stopped suddenly, for her eyelids were drooping. Had he not been aphysician, he would have said that she was going to faint. But hercolor did not change. And suddenly she was speaking in a low tone whichmocked his, but with no expression nor intonations:

  "I love you. I have always loved you. In spite of everything, I shallmarry you."

  He dropped his hands from her shoulders with a bewildered impulse toseize her in his arms; then the publicity of the place came to him, andhe drew his hands back. On that motion, her eyes opened and she flasheda little away from him.

  "What did I say?" she exclaimed; "and why--oh, don't touch me--don'tcome near--can't you see it makes it harder for me to renounce?"

  "But you said--"

  "I said before you touched me--ah, don't touch me again--that I_should_ make it hard--the harder I make it, the more I shall grow--butI can't bear so much!" She had risen, was moving away.

  "Let's walk," he said shortly; and then, "Even if you put me aside,won't you keep me in your life?"

  "The Guides will tell me," she answered simply.

  "But I may see you--call on you in the city?"

  "Unless the Guides forbid."

  They were walking side by side now; they had turned from the sunkenarena, which surrounded the tennis court, toward the house. Blake sawthat the driver of the Mountain House stage was approaching. He waved ayellow envelope as he came on:

  "Been looking for you, Miss Markham. Telegram. Charges paid."

  Dr. Blake stepped away as Annette, in the preliminary flutter of fearwith which a woman always receives a telegram, tore open the envelopeand read the enclosure. Without a word, she handed it over to him. Itread:

  ANNETTE MARKHAM:

  Take next train home. Advice of Martha. Wire arrival.

  PAULA MARKHAM.

  "Perhaps the Guides know," she said, smiling but quivering, too."Perhaps they're going to make it easier for me."