“I know you are there; open, open, you son of Erebus!4 You inhospitable Turk!”
Thus admonished Briggs turned the key and threw wide open the door.
“It’s you, is it? Confound you, you’re always here when you’re not wanted,” he growled.
The visitor entered and closed the door behind him. With a laugh he stood his dripping umbrella back of the stove against the chimney-piece, and immediately a small stream began trickling over the uncarpeted floor; he then relieved himself of his damp outer garments.
“Son of Erebus, indeed, you ungrateful man. It’s as black as Hades in this room; a light, a light! Why did you keep me waiting out there like a drowned rat?”
The voice was soft and musical. Briggs lighted the student lamp. The light revealed a tall man with the beautiful face of a Greek God; but the sculptured features did not inspire confidence. There was that in the countenance of Aubrey Livingston that engendered doubt. But he had been kind to Briggs, was, in fact, his only friend in the college, or, indeed, in the world for that matter.
By an act of generosity he had helped the forlorn youth, then in his freshman year, over obstacles which bade fair to end his college days. Although the pecuniary obligation was long since paid, the affection and worship Reuel had conceived for his deliverer was dog-like in its devotion.
“Beastly night,” he continued, as he stretched his full length luxuriously in the only easy chair the room afforded. “What are you mooning about all alone in the darkness?”
“Same old thing,” replied Briggs briefly.
“No wonder the men say that you have a twist, Reuel.”
“Ah, man! But the problem of whence and whither! To solve it is my life; I live for that alone; let’m talk.”
“You ought to be re-named the ‘Science of Trance-States,’ Reuel. How a man can grind day and night beats me.” Livingston handed him a cigar and for a time they smoked in silence. At length Reuel said:
“Shake hands with Poverty once, Aubrey, and you will solve the secret of many a student’s success in life.”
“Doubtless it would do me good,” replied Livingston with a laugh, “but just at present, it’s the ladies, bless their sweet faces who disturb me, and not delving in books nor weeping over ways and means. Shades of my fathers, forbid that I should ever have to work!”
“Lucky dog!” growled Reuel, enviously, as he gazed admiringly at the handsome face turned up to the ceiling and gazing with soft caressing eyes at the ugly whitewashed wall through rings of curling smoke. “Yet you have a greater gift of duality than I,” he added dreamily. “Say what you will; ridicule me, torment me, but you know as well as I that the wonders of a material world cannot approach those of the undiscovered country within ourselves—the hidden self lying quiescent in every human soul.”
“True, Reuel, and I often wonder what becomes of the mind and morals, distinctive entities grouped in the republic known as man, when death comes. Good and evil in me contend; which will gain the mastery? Which will accompany me into the silent land?”
“Good and evil, God and the devil,” suggested Reuel. “Yes, sinner or saint, body or soul, which wins in the life struggle? I am not sure that it matters which,” he concluded with a shrug of his handsome shoulders. “I should know if I never saw you again until the struggle was over. Your face will tell its own tale in another five years. Now listen to this:” He caught up the book he had been reading and rapidly turning the leaves read over the various passages that had impressed him.
“A curious accumulation of data; the writer evidently takes himself seriously,” Livingston commented.
“And why not?” demanded Reuel. “You and I know enough to credit the author with honest intentions.”
“Yes; but are we prepared to go so far?”
“This man is himself a mystic. He gives his evidence clearly enough.”
“And do you credit it?”
“Every word! Could I but get the necessary subject, I would convince you; I would go farther than M. Binet in unveiling the vast scheme of compensation and retribution carried about in the vast recesses of the human soul.”
“Find the subject and I will find the money,” laughed Aubrey.
“Do you mean it, Aubrey? Will you join me in carrying forward a search for more light in the mysteries of existence?”
“I mean it. And now, Reuel, come down from the clouds, and come with me to a concert.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, ‘tonight,’” mimicked the other. “The blacker the night, the greater the need of amusement. You go out too little.”
“Who gives the concert?”
“Well, it’s a new departure in the musical world; something Northerners know nothing of; but I who am a Southerner, born and bred, or as the vulgar have it, ‘dyed in the wool,’ know and understand Negro music. It is a jubilee concert given by a party of Southern colored people at Tremont Temple. I have the tickets. Redpath has them in charge.”
“Well, if you say so, I suppose I must.” Briggs did not seem greatly impressed.
“Coming down to the practical, Reuel, what do you think of the Negro problem? Come to think of it, I have never heard you express an opinion about it. I believe it is the only burning question in the whole category of live issues and ologies about which you are silent.”
“I have a horror of discussing the woes of unfortunates, tramps, stray dogs and cats and Negroes—probably because I am an unfortunate myself.”
They smoked in silence.
1 A storm happening near the time of the spring or autumnal equinox. However, the equinox was in September—the storms were hardly “lingering equinoctials” but rather early winter storms.
2 The book is fictitious, but the passage quoted here appears in William James’s 1890 essay “The Hidden Self” (not coincidentally the subtitle of this novel). James himself refers to “M. Binet,” the putative author of the fictional book, who is clearly the French psychologist Alfred Binet (1857–1911). Binet’s work On Double Consciousness also appeared in 1890 and undoubtedly influenced Hopkins. Binet is best remembered today as a pioneer in measuring intelligence, and the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales and the Simon-Binet test are still in use.
3 “Alma mater” means nourishing or benign mother; this is a fanciful phrase to describe the school.
4 Erebus is a Greek god, the personification of darkness or shadow.
CHAPTER II
THE passing of slavery from the land marked a new era in the life of the nation. The war, too, had passed like a dream of horrors, and over the resumption of normal conditions in business and living, the whole country, as one man, rejoiced and heaved a deep sigh of absolute content.
Under the spur of the excitement occasioned by the Proclamation of Freedom, and the great need of schools for the blacks, thousands of dollars were contributed at the North, and agents were sent to Great Britain, where generosity towards the Negroes was boundless. Money came from all directions, pouring into the hands of philanthropists, who were anxious to prove that the country was able, not only to free the slave, but to pay the great debt it owed him,—protection as he embraced freedom, and a share in the great Government he had aided to found by sweat and toil and blood. It was soon discovered that the Negro possessed a phenomenal gift of music, and it was determined to utilize this gift in helping to support educational institutions of color in the Southland.
A band of students from Fisk University were touring the country, and those who had been fortunate enough to listen once to their matchless untrained voices singing their heartbreaking minor music with its grand and impossible intervals and sound combinations, were eager to listen again and yet again.
Wealthy and exclusive society women everywhere vied in showering benefits and patronage upon the new prodigies who had suddenly become the pets of the mu
sical world. The Temple was a blaze of light, and crowded from pit to dome. It was the first appearance of the troupe in New England, therefore it was a gala night, and Boston culture was out in force.
The two friends easily found their seats in the first balcony, and from that position idly scanned the vast audience to beguile the tedious waiting. Reuel’s thoughts were disturbed; he read over the program, but it carried no meaning to his pre-occupied mind; he was uneasy; the face he had seen outlined in the twilight haunted him. A great nervous dread of he knew not what possessed him, and he actually suffered as he sat there answering at random the running fire of comments made by Livingston on the audience, and replying none too cordially to the greetings of fellow-students, drawn to the affair, like himself, by curiosity.
“Great crowd for such a night,” observed one. “The weather matches your face, Briggs; why didn’t you leave it outside? Why do you look so down?”
Reuel shrugged his shoulders.
“They say there are some pretty girls in the troupe; one or two as white as we,” continued the speaker unabashed by Reuel’s surliness.
“They range at home from alabaster to ebony,” replied Livingston. “The results of amalgamation are worthy the careful attention of all medical experts.”
“Don’t talk shop, Livingston,” said Briggs peevishly.
“You are really more disagreeable than usual,” replied Livingston, pleasantly. “Do try to be like the other fellows, for once, Reuel.”
Silence ensued for a time, and then the irrepressible one of the party remarked: “The soprano soloist is great; heard her in New York.” At this there was a general laugh among the men. Good natured Charlie Vance was generally “stuck” once a month with the “loveliest girl, by Jove, you know.”
“That explains your presence here, Vance; what’s her name?”
“Dianthe Lusk.”
“Great name. I hope she comes up to it,—the flower of Jove.”5
“Flower of Jove, indeed! You’ll say so when you see her,” cried Charlie with his usual enthusiasm.
“What! Again, my son? ‘Like Dian’s kiss, unmasked, unsought, Love gives itself,’” quoted Livingston, with a smile on his handsome face.
“Oh, stow it! Aubrey, even your cold blood will be stirred at sight of her exquisite face; of her voice I will not speak; I cannot do it justice.”
“If this is to be the result of emancipation, I for one vote that we ask Congress to annul the Proclamation,” said Reuel, drily.
Now conversation ceased; a famous local organist began a concert on the organ to occupy the moments of waiting. The music soothed Reuel’s restlessness. He noticed that the platform usually occupied by the speaker’s desk, now held a number of chairs and a piano. Certainly, the assiduous advertising had brought large patronage for the new venture, he thought as he idly calculated the financial result from the number in the audience.
Soon the hot air, the glare of lights, the mingling of choice perfumes emanating from the dainty forms of elegantly attired women, acted upon him as an intoxicant. He began to feel the pervading excitement—the flutter of expectation, and presently the haunting face left him.
The prelude drew to a close; the last chord fell from the fingers of the artist; a line of figures—men and women—dark in hue and neatly dressed in quiet evening clothes, filed noiselessly from the anterooms and filled the chairs upon the platform. The silence in the house was painful. These were representatives of the people for whom God had sent the terrible scourge of blood upon the land to free from bondage. The old abolitionists in the vast audience felt the blood leave their faces beneath the stress of emotion.
The opening number was “The Lord’s Prayer.” Stealing, rising, swelling, gathering, as it thrilled the ear, all the delights of harmony in a grand minor cadence that told of deliverance from bondage and homage to God for his wonderful aid, sweeping the awed heart with an ecstasy that was almost pain; breathing, hovering, soaring, they held the vast multitude in speechless wonder.
Thunders of applause greeted the close of the hymn. Scarcely waiting for a silence, a female figure rose and came slowly to the edge of the platform and stood in the blaze of lights with hands modestly clasped before her. She was not in any way the preconceived idea of a Negro. Fair as the fairest woman in the hall, with wavy bands of chestnut hair, and great, melting eyes of brown, soft as those of childhood; a willowy figure of exquisite mould, clad in a sombre gown of black. There fell a voice upon the listening ear, in celestial showers of silver that passed all conceptions, all comparisons, all dreams; a voice beyond belief—a great soprano of unimaginable beauty, soaring heavenward in mighty intervals.
“Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land, tell ol’ Pharaoh, let my people go.” sang the woman in tones that awakened ringing harmonies in the heart of every listener.
“By Jove!” Reuel heard Livingston exclaim. For himself he was dazed, thrilled; never save among the great artists of the earth, was such a voice heard alive with the divine fire.
Some of the women in the audience wept; there was the distinct echo of a sob in the deathly quiet which gave tribute to the power of genius. Spellbound they sat beneath the outpoured anguish of a suffering soul. All the horror, the degradation from which a race had been delivered were in the pleading strains of the singer’s voice. It strained the senses almost beyond endurance. It pictured to that self-possessed, highly-cultured New England assemblage as nothing else ever had, the awfulness of the hell from which a people had been happily plucked.
Reuel was carried out of himself; he leaned forward in eager contemplation of the artist; he grew cold with terror and fear. Surely it could not be—he must be dreaming! It was incredible! Even as he whispered the words to himself the hall seemed to grow dim and shadowy; the sea of faces melted away; there before him in the blaze of light—like a lovely phantom—stood a woman wearing the face of his vision of the afternoon!
5 Dianthe is a Greek name that actually means “flower of the gods.”
CHAPTER III
IT was Hallow-eve.
The north wind blew a cutting blast over the stately Charles, and broke the waves into a miniature flood; it swept the streets of the University city, and danced on into the outlying suburbs tossing the last leaves about in gay disorder, not even sparing the quiet precincts of Mount Auburn cemetery. A deep, clear, moonless sky stretched overhead, from which hung myriads of sparkling stars.
In Mount Auburn, where the residences of the rich lay far apart, darkness and quietness had early settled down. The main street seemed given over to die duskiness of the evening, and with one exception, there seemed no light on earth or in heaven save the cold gleam of the stars.
The one exception was in the home of Charlie Vance, or “Adonis,” as he was called by his familiars. The Vance estate was a spacious house with rambling ells, tortuous chimney-stacks, and corners, eaves and ledges; the grounds were extensive and well kept telling silently of the opulence of its owner. Its windows sent forth a cheering light. Dinner was just over.
Within, on an old-fashioned hearth, blazed a glorious wood fire, which gave a rich coloring to the oak-paneled walls, and fell warmly on a group of young people seated and standing, chatting about the fire. At one side of it, in a chair of the Elizabethan period, sat the hostess, Molly Vance, only daughter of James Vance, Esq., and sister of “Adonis,” a beautiful girl of eighteen.
At the opposite side, leaning with folded arms against the high carved mantel, stood Aubrey Livingston; the beauty of his fair hair and blue eyes was never more marked as he stood there in the gleam of the fire and the soft candle light. He was talking vivaciously, his eyes turning from speaker to speaker, as he ran on, but resting chiefly with pride on his beautiful betrothed, Molly Vance.
The group was completed by two or three other men, among them Reuel Briggs, and three pretty girls. Suddenly a clock st
ruck the hour.
“Only nine,” exclaimed Molly. “Good people, what shall we do to wile the tedium of waiting for the witching hour? Have any one of you enough wisdom to make a suggestion?”
“Music,” said Livingston.
“We don’t want anything so commonplace.”
“Blind Man’s Buff,” suggested “Adonis.”
“Oh! Please not that, the men are so rough!”
“Let us,” broke in Cora Scott, “tell ghost stories.”
“Good, Cora! Yes, yes, yes.”
“No, no!” exclaimed a chorus of voices.
“Yes, yes,” laughed Molly, gaily, clapping her hands. “It is the very thing. Cora, you are the wise woman of the party. It is the very time, tonight is the new moon,6 and we can try our projects in the Hyde house.”
“The moon should be full to account for such madness,” said Livingston.
“Don’t be disagreeable, Aubrey,” replied Molly. “The ‘ayes’ have it. You’re with me, Mr. Briggs?”
“Of course, Miss Vance,” answered Reuel, “to go to the North Pole or Hades—only please tell us where is ‘Hyde house.’”
“Have you never heard? Why it’s the adjoining estate. It is reputed to be haunted, and a lady in white haunts the avenue in the most approved ghostly style.”
“Bosh!” said Livingston.
“Possibly,” remarked the laughing Molly, “but it is the ‘bosh’ of a century.”
“Go on, Miss Vance; don’t mind Aubrey. Who has seen the lady?”
“She is not easily seen,” proceeded Molly, “she only appears on Hallow-eve, when the moon is new, as it will be tonight. I had forgotten that fact when I invited you here. If anyone stands, tonight, in the avenue leading to the house, he will surely see the tall veiled figure gliding among the old hemlock trees.”
One or two shivered.
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