Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  The apparition beckoned to the speaker.

  “You can touch it,” said the doctor.

  The woman bent over the table, and thrust her hand into the box; the apparition melted away; a single fragrant tuberose was flung upon the table. “Oh, oh!” sobbed the woman. “My Lily’s favorite flower! She always liked snow-drops above everything, because they came the first thing in the spring. Oh, to think she can come to me, — to know that she is living yet, and can never die! I’m sure I felt her little hand an instant, — so smooth and soft, so cold!”

  “They always seem to be cold,” philosophized Boynton. “A more exquisite vitality coming in contact with our own would naturally give the sensation of cold. But you must sit down, now, Mrs. Blodgett,” added the doctor, kindly. “Look! There is another hand.”

  A large wrinkled hand, like that of an elderly woman, crept tremulously through the opening of the box, sank, and then creeping upward again laid its fingers out over the edge of the opening. No one recognized it, and it would have won no general acclaim if Mrs. Merrifield had not called attention to the lace which encircled the wrist; she caught a bit of this between her thumb and finger, and detained it a moment while the other ladies bent over and examined it. There was but one voice; it was real lace.

  One hand after another now appeared in the box, some of them finding a difficulty in making their way up through the aperture, which had been formed by cutting across in the figure of an X the black cloth which had lined the bottom of the box, and which now hung down in triangular flaps. The slow and feeble effort of the apparitions to free themselves from these dangling pieces of cloth heightened their effectiveness. From time to time a hand violently responded to the demand from one of the circle, “Is it for me?” and several persons were allowed to place their hands in the box and touch the materializations. These persons testified that they felt a distinct pressure from the spectral hands.

  “Would you like to try, Mr. Phillips?” politely asked the doctor.

  “Thanks, yes,” said Phillips, after a hesitation. He put his hand into the box: the apparitional hand, apparently that of a young girl, dealt him a flying touch, and vanished. Phillips nervously withdrew his hand.

  “Did you feel it?” inquired Dr. Boynton.

  “Yes,” answered Phillips.

  “Oh, what was it like? Wasn’t it smooth and soft and cold?” demanded the mother of the first apparition.

  “Yes,” said Phillips; “it was a sensation like the touch of a kid glove.”

  “Oh, of course, of course!” Mr. Eccles burst out, in a sort of scornful groan. “A stuffed glove Î If we are to approach the investigation in this spirit” —

  “I beg your pardon?” said Phillips, inquiringly. “I’m sure,” interposed Dr. Boynton, “that Mr. Phillips, whom I have had the honor of introducing to this circle, has intended nothing but a bona fide description of the sensation he experienced.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Phillips.

  “You were not aware, then,” pursued the doctor, “that there have been attempts to impugn the character of these and similar materializations, — in fact, to prove that these hands are merely stuffed gloves, mechanically operated?”

  “Not at all I” cried Phillips.

  “I was certain of your good feeling, your delicacy,” said the doctor. “We will go on, friends.” But the apparitions had apparently ceased, while the raps, which had been keeping up a sort of desultory, telegraphic tattoo throughout, when not actively in use as a means of conversation with the disembodied presences, suddenly seemed to cover the whole surface of the table with their detonation.

  “The materializations are over,” said Mrs. Le Roy, speaking for the first time. Her voice, small and thin, oddly contrasted with her physical bulk.

  “Oh, pshaw, Mrs. Le Roy!” protested Hatch, “don’t give it up, that way. Come! I want Jim. Ladies, join me in loud cries for Jim.”

  Several of the ladies beset Mrs. Le Roy, who at last yielded so far as to ask if Jim were present. A sharp affirmative rap responded, and after an interval, during which the spectators peered anxiously into the dark box, a sort of dull fumbling was heard, and another materialization was evidently in progress.

  “You can’t see the hand of a gentleman of Jim’s complexion against that black cloth,” said Hatch, rising. “Lend me your handkerchiefs, ladies. James has a salt and sullen rheum offends him.”

  Several ladies made haste to offer their handkerchiefs, and, leaning over, Hatch draped them about the bottom of the box. The flaps were again agitated, and a large black hand showed itself distinctly against the white ground formed by the handkerchiefs. It was hailed with a burst of ecstasy from all those who seemed to be frequenters of these séances, and it wagged an awkward salutation to the company.

  “Good for you, good for you, James!” said Hatch, approvingly. “Rings? Wish to adorn your person, James?” he continued. The hand gesticulated an imaginable assent to this proposal, and Hatch gravely said, “Your rings, ladies.” A half dozen were passed to him, and he contrived, with some trouble, to slip them on the fingers of the hand, which continually moved itself, in spite of many caressing demands from the ladies (with whom Jim was apparently a favorite spectre) that he would hold still, and Hatch’s repeated admonition that he should moderate his transports. When the rings were all in place, the hand was still dissatisfied, as it seemed, and beckoned toward Egeria. “Want Miss Boynton’s ring?” asked Hatch.

  The girl gave a start, involuntarily laying hold of the ring, and Dr. Boynton said instantly, “He cannot have it. The ring was her mother’s.” This drew general attention to Miss Boynton’s ring: it was what is called a marchioness ring, and was set with a long, black stone, sharply pointed at either end.

  “All right; beg pardon, doctor,” said Hatch, respectfully; but the hand, after a moment’s hesitation, sank through the aperture, as if in dudgeon, and was heard knocking off the rings against the table underneath. This seemed a climax for which the familiars of the house had been waiting. The ladies who had lent their rings to Mr. Hatch, and had joined their coaxing voices to his in entreating the black hand to be quiet, now rose with a rustle of drapery, and joyously cackled satisfaction in Jim’s characteristic behavior.

  “That is the last,” Mrs. Le Roy announced, and withdrew. Some one turned on the light, and Hatch began to pick up the rings under the table; this was the occasion of renewed delight in Jim on the part of the ladies to whom Hatch restored their property.

  “Would you like to look under the table?” asked Dr. Boynton of Ford, politely lifting the cloth and throwing it back.

  “I don’t care to look,” said Ford, remaining seated, and keeping the same impassive face with which he had witnessed all the shows of the séance.

  Dr. Boynton directed a glance of invitation at Phillips, who stooped and peered curiously at the under side of the table, and then passed his hand over the carpet beneath the aperture. “No signs of a trap?” suggested the doctor.

  “No, quite solid,” said Phillips.

  “These things are evidently merely in their inception,” remarked the doctor, candidly. “I wouldn’t advise their implicit acceptation under all circumstances, but here the conditions strike me as simple and really very fair.”

  “I’ve been very greatly interested indeed,” said Phillips, “and I shouldn’t at all attempt to explain what I’ve seen.”

  “We shall now try our own experiment,” said the doctor, looking round at the windows, through the blinds and curtains of which the early twilight was stealing. “Mr. Hatch, will you put up the battening?” While Hatch made haste to darken the windows completely with some light wooden sheathings prepared for the purpose, Dr. Boynton included Ford also in his explanation. “What we are about to do requires the exclusion of all light. These intelligences, whatever they are, that visit us seem peculiarly sensitive to certain qualities of light; they sometimes endure candles pretty well, but they dislike gas even more than d
aylight, and we shall shut that off entirely. Yes, my dear,” he said, turning lightly toward his daughter, who, apparently relieved from the spell under which she had sat throughout the séance, now approached him, and addressed him some entreaty in a low tone, to which the anxiety of her serious face gave its effect. Ford watched them narrowly while they spoke together; she evidently beseeching, and her father urging with a sort of obdurate kindness, from which she turned at last in despair, and sat listlessly down again in her place. One might have interpreted the substance of their difference as light or weighty, but there could be no doubt of its result in the girl’s reluctant obedience. She sat with her long hands in her lap and her eyes downcast, while the young man bent his glance upon her with a somewhat softened curiosity. Phillips drew up a chair beside her, and began to address her some evening-party conversation, to which, after her first terrified start at the sound of his voice, she listened with a look of dull mystification, and a vague and monosyllabic comment. He was in the midst of this difficult part when Dr. Boynton announced that the preparations were now perfect, and invited the company to seat themselves in a circle around his daughter, from whose side Phillips was necessarily driven. Mrs. Le Roy reentered, and after a survey of the forming circle took her place with the rest. Dr. Boynton instantly shut off the gas, and several of the circle, led by Miss Merrill, began to sing. It was music in a minor key, and as the sound of it fell the air was suddenly filled with noises of a heterogeneous variety. Voices whispered here and there, overhead and, as it appeared, underfoot; a fan was caught up, and each person in the circle was swiftly and violently fanned; a music-box, placed on Phillips’s knee, was wound up, and then set floating, as it seemed, through the air; rings were snatched from some fingers and roughly thrust upon others, amidst the cries and nervous laughter of the women.

  Through all, the mystical voices continued, and now they began to be recognized by different persons in the circle. The mother of one briefly visited him, and exhorted him to have faith in a life to come; the little sister of another revealed that she could never tell the beauty of the spirit-land; a lady cried out, “Oh, John, is that you kissing me?” to which a hollow whisper answered, “Yes; persevere, and all will be well.” Suddenly a sharp smack was heard, and another lady, whose chubbiness had no doubt commended her as a medium for this sort of communication, exclaimed, with a hysterical laugh, “Oh, here’s Jim, again! He’s slapping me on the shoulder!” and in another instant this frolic ghost had passed round the circle, slapping shoulders and knees in the absolute darkness with amazing precision.

  Jim went as suddenly as he came, and then there was a lull in the demonstrations. They began again with the voices, amidst which was heard the rhythmic clapping of hands, as Egeria beat her palms together, to prove that she had no material agency in the feats performed. Then, one of the circle called out, “Oh, delicious! Somebody is pressing a perfumed handkerchief to my face!”

  “And mine!”

  “And mine!” came quickly from others.

  “Be careful,” warned the small voice of Mrs. Le Roy, “not to break the circle now, or some one will get hurt.”

  She had scarcely spoken, when there came a shriek of pain and terror, with the muffled noise of a struggle; then a fainter cry, and a fall to the floor.

  All sprang to their feet in confusion.

  “Egeria! Egeria!” shouted Dr. Boynton. The girl made no answer. “Oh, light the gas, light the gas!” he entreated; and now the crowning wonder of the séance appeared. A hand of bluish flame shone in the air, and was seen to hover near one of the gas-burners, which it touched; as the gas flashed up and the hand vanished, a groan of admiration burst forth, which was hardly checked by the spectacle that the strong light revealed.

  Egeria lay stretched along the floor in a swoon, the masses of her yellow hair disordered and tossed about her pale face. Her arms were flung outward, and the hand on which she wore her ring showed a stain of blood, oozing from a cut in a finger next the ring; the hand must have been caught in a savage clutch, and the sharp point of the setting crushed into the tender flesh.

  Ford was already on his knees beside the girl, over whose insensible face he bowed himself to lift her fallen head.

  “I told you,” said Mrs. Le Roy, “that some one would get hurt if anybody broke the circle.”

  “It has been a glorious time I” cried Dr. Boynton, with sparkling eyes, while he went about shaking hands with one and another. “It has surpassed my utmost hopes! We stand upon the verge of a great era! The whole history of supernaturalism shows nothing like it! The key to the mystery is found!”

  The company thronged eagerly about him, some to ask what the key was, others to talk of the wonderful hand. Egeria was forgotten; she might have been trodden under foot but for the active efforts of Hatch, who cleared a circle about her, and at last managed to withdraw the doctor from his auditors and secure his attention for the young girl.

  “Oh, a faint, a mere faint,” he said, as he bent over her and touched her pulse. “The facts established are richly worth all they have cost. Ah!” he added, “we must have air to revive her.”

  “You won’t get it in this crowd!” said Hatch, looking savagely round.

  “We had better carry her to her room,” said Mrs. Le Roy.

  “Yes, yes; very good, very good!” cried the doctor, absently trying to gather the languid shape into his arms. He presently desisted, and turned again to the group which Hatch had forced aside, and began to talk of the luminous hand and its points of difference from the hands shown in the box.

  Hatch glanced round after him in despair, and then, with a look at Ford, said, “We must manage it somehow.” He bent over the inanimate girl, and with consummate reverence and delicacy drew her into his arms, and made some steps toward the door.

  “It won’t do; you ‘re too little, Mr. Hatch,” said Mrs. Le Roy, with brutal common sense. “You never could carry her up them stairs in the world. Give her to the other gentleman, and go and fetch Dr. Boynton, if you can ever get him away.”

  Hatch hesitated a moment, and with another look at Ford surrendered his burden to him. Ford received it as reverently as the other had given it; the beautiful face lay white upon his shoulder; the long, bright, disheveled hair fell over his arm; in his strong clasp he lifted her as lightly as if she had been indeed some pale phantom.

  Phillips, standing aloof from the other group and intent upon this tableau, was able to describe it very effectively, a few evenings afterwards, to a lady who knew both himself and Ford well enough to enjoy it.

  II.

  Mr. Phillips’s father had been in business on that obscure line which divides the wholesale merchant’s social acceptability from the lost condition of the retail dealer. When he died, however, his son emerged forever from the social twilight in which the father had been content to remain. He took account of his means, and found that he had enough to live handsomely upon, not only without anything like shop-keeping, but without business of any sort, and he courageously resolved to be a man of leisure. He had certain tastes which qualified him for this life; he had read much, and he had traveled abroad. He joined a club convenient to the lodging which he kept in his paternal home, letting out the rest of the house to a thrifty woman whose interest it was that he should have nothing to complain of. Every morning, at nine precisely, he breakfasted at the club, beside one of the pleasantest windows; the sun came in there in the afternoon, and except in the winter months he dined at another table. His breakfast and his dinner were the chief events of a day which he had the wisdom to keep as like every other day as he could, unless for some very good reason. When he had finished either meal, he turned over the newspapers and magazines, largely English, in the reading-room; after dinner he often dozed a few minutes in his chair. For the rest, he paid visits and went about to the picture stores and to the studios. Now and then he bought a painting, which in his hands turned out a good investment; but his passion was bric-a-brac, and he liked
the excitement of the auction-room, where he picked up from time to time a rug, a queer vase, a colonial clock, a claw-footed table or chest of drawers, and added them to his stores.

  He kept up with the current literature, and distilled from it a polite essence, with which he knew how to perfume his conversation in the measure agreeable to ladies willing to learn what it was distinguished to read. With many he was an authority in such matters, and with nearly all he was acceptable for a certain freshness of the susceptibilities, which he studiously preserved, growing them under glass, as it were, when it was past their natural seasons to flourish in the open air. Now and then one revolted against this artificial bloom, and declared that Mr. Phillips’s emotions smelt of the watering-pot; but commonly they were well liked by the sex with which, even if he had not preferred, he would have been forced mainly to associate. There is no society but that of women for an idler in our country; the other men are busy and tired, with little patience and little sympathy for men who are not busy and tired.

  Such men as Phillips consorted with were of the feminine temperament, like artists and musicians (he had a pretty taste in music); or else they were of the intensely masculine sort, like Ford, to whom he had attached himself. He liked to have their queer intimacy noted, and to talk of it with the ladies of his circle, finding it as much of a mystery as he could. At these times he treated his friend as a bit of vertu, telling at what length his lovely listener would of how he had happened to pick Ford up. He bore much from him in the way of contemptuous sarcasm; it illustrated the strange fascination which such a man as Ford had for such a man as Phillips. He lay in wait for his friend’s characteristics, and when he had surprised this trait or that in him he was fond of exhibiting his capture.

  The tie that bound Ford, on his part, to Phillips was not tangible; it was hardly more than force of habit, or like an indifferent yielding to the advances made by the latter. Doubtless the absence of any other intimacy had much to do with this apparent intimacy. They had as little in common in matters of taste as in temperament. Ford openly scorned bric-a-brac; he rarely went into society; for the ladies in whose company Phillips liked to bask he cared as slightly as for stamped leather or Saracenic tiles. He was not of Bostonian origin, and had come to the city a much younger man than we find him. He was known to a few persons of like tastes for his scientific studies, which he pursued somewhat fitfully, as his poverty, and that dark industry known as writing for the press, by which he eked out his poverty, permitted. He wrote a caustic style; and this, together with his brooding look and his taciturn and evasive habits, gave rise to conjecture that his past life concealed a disappointment in love, “Or perhaps,” suggested a fair analyst, “in literature.” Several mornings after the séance at Mrs. Le Roy’s, he sat on one of the many benches which the time found vacant in the Public Garden. It was yet far too early for the nurse-maids and their charges and suitors; the marble Venus of the fountain was surprised without her shower on; Mr. Ball’s equestrian Washington drew his sword in solitude unbroken by a policeman upon Dr. Rimmer’s Hamilton in Commonwealth Avenue; the whole precinct rested in patrician insensibility to the plebeian hour of seven; and Ford, if he had cared, would have been safe from the polite amaze of that neighborhood at finding one even of its remote acquaintance in those pleasure-grounds at that period of the day. He sat in a place which was habitual with him; for he lodged in one of the boarding-houses on a street near by, and he made the Public Garden the resort of such leisure as each day afforded him, seeking always the same seat under the same Kilmarnock willow, and suffering a sense of invasion when he found it taken. Commonly his leisure fell much later in the day; and he had now the aspect of a sleep-broken man, rather than the early riser who takes the air on principle or from choice. He sat and gazed absently over at the pond, where the swans lay still on the still water, with their white reflections under them as distinct and substantial to the eye as their own bulk.