“If, however, the watcher remain, the lady will pause, and utter some sentence of prophecy of his future.”
“Has any one done this?” queried Reuel.
“My old nurse says she remembers that the lady was seen once.”
“Then, we’ll test it again tonight!” exclaimed Reuel, greatly excited over the chance to prove his pet theories.
“Well, Molly, you’ve started Reuel off on his greatest hobby; I wash my hands of both of you.”
“Let us go any way!” chorused the venturesome party.
“But there are conditions,” exclaimed Molly. “Only one person must go at a time.”
Aubrey laughed as he noticed the consternation in one or two faces.
“So,” continued Molly, “as we cannot go together, I propose that each shall stay a quarter of an hour, then whether successful or not, return and let another take his or her place. I will go first.”
“No—” it was Charlie who spoke—“I put my veto on that, Molly. If you are mad enough to risk colds in this mad freak, it shall be done fairly. We will draw lots.”
“And I add to that, not a girl leave the house; we men will try the charm for the sake of your curiosity, but not a girl goes. You can try the ordinary Hallow-eve projects while we are away.”
With many protests, but concealed relief, this plan was reluctantly adopted by the female element. The lots were prepared and placed in a hat, and amid much merriment, drawn.
“You are third, Mr. Briggs,” exclaimed Molly who held the hat and watched the checks.
“I’m first,” said Livingston, “and Charlie second.”
“While we wait for twelve, tell us the story of the house, Molly,” cried Cora.
Thus adjured, Molly settled herself comfortably in her chair and began: “Hyde House is nearly opposite the cemetery, and its land joins that of this house; it is indebted for its ill-repute to one of its owners, John Hyde. It has been known for years as a haunted house, and avoided as such by the superstitious. It is low-roofed, rambling, and almost entirely concealed by hemlocks, having an air of desolation and decay in keeping with its ill-repute. In its dozen rooms were enacted the dark deeds which gave the place the name of the ‘haunted house.’
“The story is told of an unfaithful husband, a wronged wife and a beautiful governess forming a combination which led to the murder of a guest for his money. The master of the house died from remorse, under peculiar circumstances. These materials give us the plot for a thrilling ghost story.”
“Well, where does the lady come in?” interrupted “Adonis.”
There was a general laugh.
“This world is all a blank without the ladies for Charlie,” remarked Aubrey. “Molly, go on with your story, my child.”
“You may all laugh as much as you please, but what I am telling you is believed in this section by every one. A local magazine speaks of it as follows, as near as I can remember:
“‘A most interesting story is told by a woman who occupied the house for a short time. She relates that she had no sooner crossed the threshold than she was met by a beautiful woman in flowing robes of black, who begged permission to speak through her to her friends. The friends were thereupon bidden to be present at a certain time. When all were assembled they were directed by invisible powers to kneel. Then the spirit told the tale of the tragedy through the woman. The spirit was the niece of the murderer, and she was in the house when the crime was committed. She discovered blood stains on the door of the woodshed, and told her uncle that she suspected him of murdering the guest, who had mysteriously disappeared. He secured her promise not to betray him. She had always kept the secret. Although both had been dead for many years, they were chained to the scene of the crime, as was the governess, who was the man’s partner in guilt. The final release of the niece from the place was conditional on her making a public confession. This done she would never be heard from again. And she never was, except on Hallow-eve, when the moon is new.’”
“Bring your science and philosophy to bear on this, Reuel. Come, come, man, give us your opinion,” exclaimed Aubrey.
“Reuel doesn’t believe such stuff; he’s too sensible,” added Charlie.
“If these are facts, they are only for those who have a mental affinity with them. I believe that if we could but strengthen our mental sight, we could discover the broad highway between this and the other world on which both good and evil travel to earth,” replied Reuel.
“And that first highway was beaten out of chaos by Satan, as Milton has it, eh, Briggs?”
“Have it as you like, Smith. No matter. For my own part, I have never believed that the whole mental world is governed by the faculties we understand, and can reduce to reason or definite feeling. But I will keep my ideas to myself; one does not care to be laughed at.”
The conversation was kept up for another hour about indifferent subjects, but all felt the excitement underlying the frivolous chatter. At quarter before twelve, Aubrey put on his ulster with the words: “Well, here goes for my lady.” The great doors were thrown open, and the company grouped about him to see him depart.
“Mind, honor bright, you go,” laughed Charlie.
“Honor bright,” he called back.
Then he went on beyond the flood of light into the gloom of the night. Muffled in wraps and ulsters they lingered on the piazzas waiting his return.
“Would he see anything?”
“Of course not!” laughed Charlie and Bert Smith. “Still, we bet he’ll be sharp to his time.”
They were right. Aubrey returned at five minutes past twelve, a failure.
Charlie ran down the steps briskly, but in ten minutes came hastening back.
“Well,” was the chorus, “did you see it?”
“I saw something—a figure in the trees!”
“And you did not wait?” said Molly, scornfully.
“No, I dared not; I own it.”
“It’s my turn; I’m third,” said Reuel.
“Luck to you, old man,” they called as he disappeared in the darkness.
Reuel Briggs was a brave man. He knew his own great physical strength and felt no fear as he traversed the patch of woods lying between the two estates. As he reached the avenue of hemlocks he was not thinking of his mission, but of the bright home scene he had just left—of love and home and rest—such a life as was unfolding before Aubrey Livingston and sweet Molly Vance.
“I suppose there are plenty of men in the world as lonely as I am,” he mused; “but I suppose it is my own fault. A man though plain and poor can generally manage to marry; and I am both. But I don’t regard a wife as one regards bread—better sour bread than starvation; better an uncongenial life-companion than none! What a frightful mistake! No! The woman I marry must be to me a necessity, because I love her; because so loving her, ‘all the current of my being flows to her,’ and I feel she is my supreme need.”
Just now he felt strangely happy as he moved in the gloom of the hemlocks, and lie wondered many times after that whether the spirit is sometimes mysteriously conscious of the nearness of its kindred spirit; and feels, in anticipation, the “sweet unrest” of the master-passion that rules the world.
The mental restlessness of three weeks before seemed to have possession of him again. Suddenly the “restless, unsatisfied longing,” rose again in his heart. He turned his head and saw a female figure just ahead of him in the path, coming toward him. He could not see her features distinctly, only the eyes—large, bright and dark. But their expression! Sorrowful, wistful—almost imploring—gazing straightforward, as if they saw nothing—like the eyes of a person entirely absorbed and not distinguishing one object from another.
She was close to him now, and there was a perceptible pause in her step. Suddenly she covered her face with her clasped hands, as if in uncontrollable grief. Moved by a mighty emotion, Briggs add
ressed the lonely figure:
“You are in trouble, madam; may I help you?”
Briggs never knew how he survived the next shock. Slowly the hands were removed from the face and the moon gave a distinct view of the lovely features of the jubilee singer—Dianthe Lusk.
She did not seem to look at Briggs, but straight before her, as she said in a low, clear, passionless voice:
“You can help me, but not now; tomorrow.”
Reuel’s most prominent feeling was one of delight. The way was open to become fully acquainted with the woman who had haunted him sleeping and waking, for weeks past.
“Not now! Yet you are suffering. Shall I see you soon? Forgive me—but oh! Tell me—”
He was interrupted. The lady moved or floated away from him, with her face toward him and gazing steadily at him.
He felt that his whole heart was in his eyes, yet hers did not drop, nor did her cheek color.
“The time is not yet,” she said in the same, clear, calm, measured tones in which she had spoken before. Reuel made a quick movement toward her, but she raised her hand, and the gesture forbade him to follow her. He paused involuntarily, and she turned away, and disappeared among the gloomy hemlock trees.
He parried the questions of the merry crowd when he returned to the house, with indifferent replies. How they would have laughed at him—slave of a passion as sudden and romantic as that of Romeo for Juliet; with no more foundation than the “presentments” in books which treat of the “occult.” He dropped asleep at last, in the early morning hours, and lived over his experience in his dreams.
6 The new moon was on November 1 in 1891.
CHAPTER IV
ALTHOUGH not yet a practitioner, Reuel Briggs was a recognized power in the medical profession. In brain diseases he was an authority.
Early the next morning he was aroused from sleep by imperative knocking at his door. It was a messenger from the hospital. There had been a train accident on the Old Colony road, would he come immediately?
Scarcely giving himself time for a cup of coffee, he arrived at the hospital almost as soon as the messenger.
The usual silence of the hospital was broken; all was bustle and movement, without confusion. It was a great call upon the resources of the officials, but they were equal to it. The doctors passed from sufferer to sufferer, dressing their injuries; then they were borne to beds from which some would never rise again.
“Come with me to the women’s ward, Doctor Briggs,” said a nurse. “There is a woman there who was taken from the wreck. She shows no sign of injury, but the doctors cannot restore her to consciousness. Doctor Livingston pronounces her dead, but it doesn’t seem possible. So young, so beautiful. Do something for her, Doctor.”
The men about a cot made way for Reuel, as he entered the ward. “It’s no use, Briggs,” said Livingston to him in reply to his question. “Your science won’t save her. The poor girl is already cold and stiff.”
He moved aside disclosing to Reuel’s gaze the lovely face of Dianthe Lusk!
The most marvellous thing to watch is the death of a person. At that moment the opposite takes place to that which took place when life entered the first unit, after nature had prepared it for the inception of life. How the vigorous life watches the passage of the liberated life out of its earthly environment! What a change is this! How important the knowledge of whither life tends! Here is shown the setting free of a disciplined spirit giving up its mortality for immortality,—the condition necessary to know God. Death! There is no death. Life is everlasting, and from its reality can have no end. Life is real and never changes, but preserves its identity eternally as the angels, and the immortal spirit of man, which are the only realities and continuities in the universe, God being over all, Supreme Ruler and Divine Essence from whom comes all life. Somewhat in this train ran Reuel’s thoughts as he stood beside the seeming dead girl, the cynosure of all the medical faculty there assembled.
To the majority of those men, the case was an ordinary death, and that was all there was to it. What did this young upstart expect to make of it? Of his skill and wonderful theories they had heard strange tales, but they viewed him coldly as we are apt to view those who dare to leave the beaten track of conventionality.
Outwardly cool and stolid, showing no sign of recognition, he stood for some seconds gazing down on Dianthe: every nerve quivered, every pulse of his body throbbed. Her face held for him a wonderful charm, an extraordinary fascination. As he gazed he knew that once more he beheld what he had vaguely sought and yearned for all his forlorn life. His whole heart went out to her; destiny, not chance, had brought him to her. He saw, too, that no one knew her, none had a clue to her identity; he determined to remain silent for the present, and immediately he sought to impress Livingston to do likewise.
His keen glance swept the faces of the surrounding physicians. “No, not one,” he told himself, “holds the key to unlock this seeming sleep of death.” He alone could do it. Advancing far afield in the mysterious regions of science, he had stumbled upon the solution of one of life’s problems: the reanimation of the body after seeming death.
He had hesitated to tell of his discovery to any one; not even to Livingston had he hinted of the daring possibility, fearing ridicule in case of a miscarriage in his calculations. But for the sake of this girl he would make what he felt to be a premature disclosure of the results of his experiments. Meantime, Livingston, from his place at the foot of the cot, watched his friend with fascinated eyes. He, too, had resolved, contrary to his first intention, not to speak of his knowledge of the beautiful patient’s identity. Curiosity was on tiptoe; expectancy was in the air. All felt that something unusual was about to happen.
Now Reuel, with gentle fingers, touched rapidly the clammy brow, the icy, livid hands, the region of the pulseless heart. No breath came from between the parted lips; the life-giving organ was motionless. As he concluded his examination, he turned to the assembled doctors:
“As I diagnose this case, it is one of suspended animation. This woman has been long and persistently subjected to mesmeric influences, and the nervous shock induced by the excitement of the accident has thrown her into a cataleptic sleep.”
“But, man!” broke from the head physician in tones of exasperation, “rigor mortis in unmistakable form is here. The woman is dead!”
At these words there was a perceptible smile on the faces of some of the students—associates who resented his genius as a personal affront, and who considered these words as good as a reprimand for the daring student, and a settler of his pretensions. Malice and envy, from Adam’s time until today, have loved a shining mark.
But the reproof was unheeded. Reuel was not listening. Absorbed in thoughts of the combat before him, he was oblivious to all else as he bent over the lifeless figure on the cot. He was full of an earnest purpose. He was strung up to a high tension of force and energy. As he looked down upon the unconscious girl whom none but he could save from the awful fate of a death by post-mortem, and who by some mysterious mesmeric affinity existing between them, had drawn him to her rescue, he felt no fear that he should fail.
Suddenly he bent down and took both cold hands into his left and passed his right hand firmly over her arms from shoulder to wrist. He repeated the movements several times; there was no response to the passes. He straightened up, and again stood silently gazing upon the patient. Then, like a man just aroused from sleep, he looked across the bed at Livingston and said abruptly:
“Dr. Livingston, will you go over to my room and bring me the case of vials in my medicine cabinet? I cannot leave the patient at this point.”
Livingston started in surprise as he replied: “Certainly, Briggs, if it will help you any.”
“The patient does not respond to any of the ordinary methods of awakening. She would probably lie in this sleep for months, and death ensue from exhaus
tion, if stronger remedies are not used to restore the vital force to a normal condition.”
Livingston left the hospital; he could not return under an hour; Reuel took up his station by the bed whereon was stretched an apparently lifeless body, and the other doctors went the rounds of the wards attending to their regular routine of duty. The nurses gazed at him curiously; the head doctor, upon whom the young student’s earnestness and sincerity had evidently made an impression, came a number of times to the bare little room to gaze upon its silent occupants, but there was nothing new. When Livingston returned, the group again gathered about the iron cot where lay the patient.
“Gentlemen,” said Reuel, with quiet dignity, when they were once more assembled, “will you individually examine the patient once more and give your verdicts?”
Once more doctors and students carefully examined the inanimate figure in which the characteristics of death were still more pronounced. On the outskirts of the group hovered the house-surgeon’s assistants ready to transport the body to the operating room for the post-mortem. Again the head physician spoke, this time impatiently.
“We are wasting our time, Dr. Briggs; I pronounce the woman dead. She was past medical aid when brought here.”
“There is no physical damage, apparent or hidden, that you can see, Doctor?” questioned Reuel, respectfully.
“No; it is a perfectly healthful organism, though delicate. I agree entirely with your assertion that death was induced by the shock.”
“Not death, Doctor,” protested Briggs.
“Well, well, call it what you like—call it what you like, it amounts to the same in the end,” replied the doctor testily.
“Do you all concur in Doctor Hamilton’s diagnosis?” Briggs included all the physicians in his sweeping glance. There was a general assent.
“I am prepared to show you that in some cases of seeming death—or even death in reality—consciousness may be restored or the dead brought back to life. I have numberless times in the past six months restored consciousness to dogs and cats after rigor mortis had set in,” he declared calmly.
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