Chapter IV: Part 4

“I’s done been mahied fo’ times. Yassum! By de preachah ebry time; dey couldn’t hab no foolishness wid dis chile. My first husband’s name was Cæsah Mahshall. He b’longed to Kunnel Mahshall, who at dat time was courtin’ my mastah’s daughtah, Miss Betty, an’ ob course Cæsah he spen’ a heap ob time ’round dar. Cæsah he a likely boy, an’ all de gals tort dey gwine git him. But laws! I knowed he didn’t keer for none o’ dem niggahs. I did keep a mighty keen eye, dough, on Lize. She a yaller gal allus a-rollin’ her eyes an’ tossin’ her head, an’ thinkin’ herself good as white folkses; one o’ dese yer sly kind, too, a sayin’ flatterin’ things dat make a man think she a-dyin’ for lub o’ him. I gib her mighty little chance to try any of her sassy tricks on Cæsah. Men’s dat pow’ful vain--you des know it’s so, honey--dey swallahs ebry soft an’ sugary speech ob de female sect as ef ’twar de libin’ trufe. But Cæsah he wouldn’t hab no one but des’ me. He sayed I was like Solomon’s wife dat de Bible tells ob, ‘black but comely.’ I ax de preachah once ef Solomon was a cullud gemlan. He look scared, an’ sayed he couldn’t ’splain dat tex’ to an ig’nant pusson like me; sayed it didn’t mean what it sayed, but was a yallerglory ’bout de chu’ch. Preachahs don’t know ebry thing more’n we’uns, an’ what’s de use for twis’ de words ob de good book diff’rent from what dey is?

“Well, Cæsah an’ me we done got mahied, an’ lived in a little cabin neah my mastah’s house, cause I had to wo’k hahd waitin’ on ole mistis an’ de young ladies. Dey wore heaps ob fine muslins an’ lawns in dem days an’ no one could do de washin’ an’ i’nin’ to suit dem but me. But I had a little time in my own house an’ Cæsah he come often. I was dat happy I went roun’ singin’ from mawnin’ twel night; neber tort ’bout the nex’ day an’ what it might bring fo’th. Ef I was too happy with de things ob dis worl’, de Lawd knows my heart been heavy dis many yeahs to pay foh it. ’Pears like all dat’s happen since has des’ teched de outside ob my feelin’s an’ lef’ all de heavenly sweetness ob dat time shet off to itself.

“De time went by twel one mawnin’ in de summah Cæsah he agwine to come an’ tote de chile ober in de hills to a camp-meetin’. She was two munce old, an’ I hadn’t neber had her ’way from home befo’. Dar’s no tellin’ how proud we bofe was ob dat baby.

“Dat mawnin’ I dress her an’ I waited. De people roun’ de place dey get ready an’ go. None ob dem stopped to talk, but I ’membered aft’wards dey look mighty queah at me. Lize, dat yaller gal I’se tellin’ yo’ ob, she run back an’ hug de baby. Yo’ pore crittah, I thought, yo’d gib all dat finery for sich a honey-drop!

“An’ I waited. Plenty things might ob happen for to keep Cæsah away, so I sang Rosy to sleep. Den somehow I ’gan to ’member de looks an’ de whispers dat I hadn’t noticed at de time, an’ it seem to grow dark, dough de sun was a-shinin’; an’ de chills crep ober me. Ole mistis’s mockin’-bird up at de big house, how it did sing! I ’spise a mockin’-bird eber sence. I waited--an’ aft’ while ole mistis come walkin’ down the paf. She was bawn an’ raised in de Nawf, was ole mistis, an’ neber ’peared to like de black people. She hab berry sharp eyes--’bout de color ob de blade ob a new razah,--an’ when she come close an’ look at me I felt as ef dey cut me clean froo. She hab a soft voice, an’ dar was a little smile on her face when she tole me--she tole me--she stretch up an’ pick some yaller roses from de bush dat grow’d ober de do’, an’ she say dat if I ’spect to git to camp-meetin’ I better be agwine; dat I’d haf to pack de chile de whole way, for Cæsah he fur ’nough off now. She tole me he been sold down Souf, whar he’d be ’bliged to pick cotton an’ git ober some ob his fine notions.

“When she were gone ’way I tore de yaller rosebush down an’ tromp it undah my feet. Aftah dat for a spell I don’t rightly ’member what happened. Dey tole me dat Cæsah he try to ’scape frum de tradahs; dat dey chase him wid de dogs, an’ when de men tort he gwine to cross de ribah dey done shoot him dead. Heabenly Mastah! an’ I lubed him so!

“I lib through it all. Many a woman, black or white, could tell yo’ dat she goes on a-libin’ an’ every night a-prayin’ de Lawd her soul to take.

“I foun’ out dat Kunnel Mahshall he felt so mighty pore dat he had to sell some of his people. De Kunnel he one o’ de real Kentucky gemlen; great man to be a-bettin’ an’ a-hoss racin’. He’d loss a heap of money on his fas’ hoss, ’kase it wasn’t so fas’ as some o’ de rest, an’ he an’ Miss Betty gwine to be mahied; so ob co’se he must hab money--an’ he sold Cæsah.

“Den Rosy died; an’ when I look at her in de little coffin I’s dat glad I couldn’t cry. I’s glad, honey, ’kase she nebber hab no trouble.

“Well, de time go on, an’ diff’rent men dey ax me to marry, but I tole dem to go off ’bout deir business. But laws! a man cain’t b’lieve a woman don’t keer nuffin fer him! So dey kep hangin’ roun’ twel Mistis she say I mus’ marry. Mistis she hab a thrifty turn an’ wanted all her people to marry an’ raise chillen, kase chillen proputty in dem days. Bless de Lawd! I didn’t hab no mo’ chillen fer her to count as I do de pigs.

“At las’ I mahied Big Tom to git shet ob him, but I done miss it, fer shore as yo’ lib, dat crittah tuck de kinsumption. He war de mos’ misable, no-’count niggah I ’member to hab knowed. I waited on dat man night an’ day, an’ like to run my laigs off; tried to be as good to him as ef he were de light ob my eyes; but nuffin pleased him no ways. One day he shied a flat-i’n at me an’ cut a gash ober my lef’ year. De scar’s dah yit. I’s pow’ful mad den, an’ says I, ‘Ole man, ye kin cough yo’ livah an’ lights up foh all me, an’ de soonah de bettah.’

“’Bout dat time mastah done send him down de ribah on some business. Tom he were mastah’s right han’, an’ mastah didn’t pay no ’tention to de kinsumption dat he say ailded him. Well, de steamboat blowed up, an’ I s’pose Tom done get blowed up too, for I’s neber seed him since.

“Aft’ dat, a spell, I mahied Joe, ’kase he was lively, an’ kept us all a-laughin’ with his jokes. He played de fiddle like an angel, too, an’ when I sot an’ listened, seemed as ef I could see beyond the stahs clar into de New Jerusalem. But Joe didn’t have good jedgment ’bout some mattahs. De wah was gwine on by dis time, an’ nuffin’ would do but Joe he mus’ go with Kunnel Mahshall down into Jawgy for to jine de ’federate ahmy. De Kunnel was his mastah, but he didn’t hab to go. He was gwine to be a drummah, an’ was dat heedless he nevah ’flected dad he was on de wrong side; reckon he nevah s’posed dar’d be anything else but playin’ on de fife an’ drum. In de berry fust’ skrimmage dey had, Joe was killed. Might a knowed he’d hab bad luck, an’ I tole him so ’fore he went. Joe had a good heart, dough, an’ I don’t ‘spect de Lawd will be hahd on him for habin’ been bawn so giddy.

“Aftah while, when de prockelmation set de culled people free, de family bruck up, an’ I went up to Louieville for to get washin’ an i’nin’. Dah I met Mistah Smith at pra’r-meetin’. He were pow’ful in pra’r, an’ he seem struck with my ’pearance (I had on my violent dress for de fust time). At de second pra’r-meetin’ he tole me he’d had a hebenly vision which sayed I was to be his second pahtnah. Co’se I couldn’t stan’ out ’gainst de will ob de Lawd, an’ dat’s why I’s now Mrs. Smith. His name was Obadiah, but he ’quested me for to call him Mistah Smith; sayed it ’corded bettah wid de condition ob de woman to be ’spectful to de husban’; man, he say, bein’ so s’perior.

“Mistah Smith an’ me we done git along comf’tably twel he died, which was des befo’ I come heah. I nebah had no fault to fine, ’cept dat he did talk too much ’bout de fust Mrs. Smith. I’s had a heap ob trouble wid dat boy ob hers, but I’s tried to do my juty by him. I’s whipped him once a week reg’lah, ’kase he’s pow’ful bad, but he’s mos’ too big for me now, an’ I’se ’fraid de debbil’ll ketch him.

“What’ll I do in hebben wid so many husban’s? I won’t hab but one, bless de Lawd, an’ dat’s Cæsah. Tom he won’t be dah; Joe he’ll be so tuck up wid de harps an’ de banjos dat he won’t think ob nuffin’ else; an’ Mistah Smith can ’joy hisself wid dat fust wife.

“I’ll hab Cæsah an’ I’ll hab Rosy, an’ we’ll hab a little mansion with a passion vine an’ roses roun’ de do’; an’ we’ll be happy for ebber an’ ebber. Glory! Glory!”

* * * * *

The light that shone on the black face as she turned away was a token of faith and hope; an outward sign of an inward grace the whitest of us seldom wear.

Floating back to the room, like an echo of a thought, came a triumphant voice:

“Dah ebahlasting spring abides,
An’ nevah fading flowahs.”

AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE

Mrs. Abner Hale and Mrs. Silas Adams walked slowly out Main street after the regular Thursday meeting of the Branchville Ladies’ Literary Circle. When these ladies organized their society they decided to call it a circle instead of a club, because the latter word sounded “so mannish, somehow.”

“That was a beautiful paper of Alfaretta Miller’s on theosophy,” Mrs. Hale remarked, in rather a questioning way.

“Oh, lovely!” said her companion, in the tone women use when they wish to be agreeable, no matter what their real thoughts may be concerning the matter under discussion. “Yes, Alfaretta can write on most any subject. She’s got a good mind. She’s a credit to our Circle.”

“What idea did you get from the paper?” pursued Mrs. Hale, hesitatingly, and then, with an impetuous outburst, “Martha Adams, what _is_ theosophy, anyway?”

“Land! Mrs. Hale, don’t ask me. I haven’t the faintest idea, and never expect to have, if I should hear a dozen papers. Alfaretta wanted me to be prepared to discuss the subject and loaned me a book to read up in, but it made me dizzy. I did copy a sentence or two out, though, that I meant to recite off at the proper time, just to show that I wasn’t ignorant, but I forgot it. To tell the truth, I kind of lost track of what she was saying in studying out just how the trimming was fixed on Jennie Wilson’s new silk waist. I’m making one for my Sis, you know. Near as I can get at it, from all I’ve read and heard, theosophy is a sort of spiritualism that the heathen believe in and that our folks have taken up out of curiosity--sort of a moony, spooky thing, with spheres and mahatmas--whatever they are--and astral bodies, and ever-so-many-times-on-earth, and all that kind of foolishness. I ain’t sure that it’s quite the thing to talk about in our Circle. Some that’s not so well balanced as you and me might be influenced by it. Not but what there’s deep things that it would be real satisfying to know about. Sometimes I think there’s something genuine about spiritualism--the rapping and slate-writing kind.”

Mrs. Hale looked at the speaker with an expression of severe disapproval, but had no chance to utter a word of protest before that voluble lady began again.

“Yes, I do, Mrs. Hale. Lemme tell you something.” Here Mrs. Adams’s voice was lowered to a confidential whisper, although no one was within sight or hearing. “The most of it’s foolishness, I’ll allow, and there’s a lot of humbuggery about it, but there’s queer, unaccountable things, too. Cousin Jim Lawson’s wife was telling me one of ’em the last time I was in Indianapolis. She’d been to visit a slate-writing medium and had had a communication from her mother, who’d died suddenly not long before when she was away from home on a visit. Cousin Jim’s wife couldn’t reconcile herself to having no last word, and so she went to this medium, who, it seems, is no common person, but a real lady. She’d always had the power, but only a few knew about it, and she never thought of earning money by it until after she was left a widow and had to do something to make a living for herself and little girl.”

“Well”--and here the whisper grew more impressive--“Cousin Jim’s wife, she went and never told her name or anything, and right inside of that double slate, with the medium’s hands laid flat on top in plain sight, came a message signed by her mother, Eunice Bascom, telling her she (Mrs. Bascom) was very happy, was glad to have the opportunity to talk to her and urge her to be reconciled, and also to tell her to give her (the mother’s) cashmere dress and her wrappers and aprons to Jane, the other daughter, and to keep the new black silk and the fur collar herself. Cousin Jim’s wife said you could a’ knocked her down with a feather. The thought had come to her several times that that would be a fair way to divide their mother’s things, seeing she had so much more use for dressy clothes than Jane, who lived in the country and never went anywhere, but she hadn’t had the clothes in mind that day at all, and had no notion anything would be said about them. It was a real comfort to her, though, to have what you might call official authority for disposing of the garments, for she’d been a little afraid Jane would be inclined to complain; so she bought the slate with the writing on and took it home with her. Now, Mrs. Hale, wasn’t that remarkable?”

“It seems to me,” protested that lady in reply, “that I shouldn’t like to have my mother come back from the other world to talk about clothes,” but as she was going on to express her fixed objection to such doings, such unholy tampering with sacred things, as she considered it, they reached Mrs. Adams’s gate, and that sprightly person, after unavailingly urging her companion to enter, hurried in, saying she would sew a little on Sis’s waist before dark.

Mrs. Hale, who was not really a townswoman at all, but a farmer’s wife, and lived nearly a mile beyond the point where the highway ceased to be a street and became the pike, went leisurely on her way over the quiet country road, saying to herself, with a shake of the head, that Martha Adams was a good soul, but too ready to believe everything she heard. Then her mind drifted to other matters. She always remembered her wandering thoughts of that afternoon, and sometimes spoke of them long after, as showing how little foreknowledge has the human mind. She thought complacently of her own paper on the French Revolution, which she had read before the Circle the week previous. She was sixty years old and had never done such a thing before, and it was a great event in her life, but she told her husband, when it was over, that she didn’t see but what her piece was “full as good as the average.” She owned frankly that she got the most of it from the encyclopedia and the rest from an old magazine belonging to Joe, “but, of course, they couldn’t expect me to write a thing like that out of my own head,” she said, “and if I used the same language, why, what’s the difference? I’m sure I couldn’t have said it as well, and, anyway, it was all new to the Circle.”

But the Circle soon passed into the background on this autumn afternoon, and Joe, never far from the front in the mother’s mind, occupied her thoughts exclusively--Joe, the son of her old age, she called him. He was a young civil engineer, and through the influence of an instructor in the school of which he was a graduate had had the good fortune, as he considered it, to be made one of a government surveying party to Alaska that summer, starting in April. He was on his way home now. A letter had come from Seattle saying he had left the party, which was coming east over the northern route, and was about to go down the coast in a small sailing vessel, whose captain had happened to take a liking to him. He did this because it was inexpensive and he wanted a glimpse of California, not knowing when he should visit the western coast again. He must have reached San Francisco by this time, his mother reflected, and another letter was nearly due, though possibly he would not think it worth while to write, he was coming so soon himself. Mrs. Hale’s fond heart beat faster at the very thought of seeing her boy once more, and as she looked about her over the fields, golden with the September sunshine, the sight, dear from long association, seemed to take on a new charm. It was a beautiful world, she thought, not realizing that it was the contentment of her soul that made the Indiana landscape doubly fair.

She entered the door of her home with a song in her heart and upon her lips. She put her bonnet carefully away, and, with a look at the clock to assure herself that she had yet a few minutes before it was time to prepare supper for Abner and the hired man, she sat down to rest and to glance at the paper she had brought from the post-office. She opened the sheet and looked over it with mild interest. What fate turned her eyes straight upon the obscure paragraph that in times of much news would have found no space in the inland paper? Thus blindly and unsuspectingly are we led into the tragedies of our lives. It was a brief dispatch, dated at San Francisco, and mentioning the sinking of the schooner Yakima through being run down by the steamship Montana. The Yakima was bound for San Francisco with a cargo of coal, and filled and sank so rapidly after the collision that only one person on board escaped. The Montana put out her boats and picked up one sailor, who reported that in addition to the crew the schooner had had on board one passenger, a man from Indiana named Hale. The cause of the accident would be investigated and the responsibility fixed, said the dispatch.

The mind comprehends slowly the full meaning of death when a loved one has gone. It is only as weeks and months pass that the loss, the desolation, the awful loneliness are realized. Sitting with her paper in her hand that afternoon, Mrs. Hale saw her husband coming through the orchard, and her first conscious thought was one of pity for him that he had no son. Concerning her own bereavement she had, as yet, no sensation; the sudden blow had made her numb. She watched him come slowly and heavily through the gate and up the walk--a gray-haired man, with bent shoulders, who had not kept his youthful elasticity as had his wife.

“He has not many years of grief to bear,” she said, as she went out to him, bearing the message of evil.

* * * * *

The history of the next few days she could hardly have told later. She went about her household tasks mechanically, for the living must eat and drink, though the best loved lie dead, but her mind wandered far and scarce knew what her hands did. There was a sending of telegraphic messages, a writing of letters and the gathering of all the information that could be secured, but this was little more than the first newspaper dispatch had contained. The Yakima had sunk, only one person on board had been picked up at the time--which was just after midnight on the 20th of September--and the sea being rough that night there was no probability, even had any one been overlooked in the careful search made, that a survivor could have remained afloat till morning.

Hope, catching at the faintest chance, died hard, but when weeks went by and brought no word Joseph Hale’s death was accepted as a certainty. His mother put on a black gown; his father went to and fro about his work with a look that made the neighbors say he was aging fast; they tried to bear their affliction with the fortitude and resignation becoming to their Christian professions, but they knew that for them the zest of life had passed with their son’s going, and that the years to come must be endured, not enjoyed. They read the grief in each other’s eyes, but spoke little of it, Abner being taciturn at all times, and his wife, like so many men and women of the Anglo-Saxon race, never having learned to express her deepest emotions in words.

One day in October services in memory of the young man were held in the Presbyterian church. Sympathy with the bereaved parents was deep, and the curious, but not unkindly, desire of their friends to see how they were affected by the remarks of the minister, and how they bore their sorrow, caused the emotion of a young woman near the door to go unnoticed. She was Nellie Hamilton, a teacher in one of the village schools. She and Joe Hale had known each other all their lives, and were on such friendly footing and so free from self-consciousness that no one had thought of them as lovers. She had been aware for a long time of the state of her own affections, but it was only a few days before his departure that Joe had begun to learn where his heart belonged. She had seen the awakening in his eyes; she had felt it in the subtle change of manner; she had read his secret through the prescience of her own love, and her heart leaped in her bosom and was glad. He had not spoken before he went away, but she did not feel the less secure, for she saw also that he had not discovered her secret, and was in that state of doubt where he feared to test his fate. Maiden-like, and with a touch of coquetry, she had refrained from betraying a hint of the truth, coyly holding back, confident in the knowledge that when she chose to offer a sign he would come. Not long since had come a letter telling her that on his return he had a question to ask--one which he had “always thought a man ought to be brave enough to put to a woman face to face, and not by letter.” A reply would not have reached him had she written it, and now he was dead; he was dead and would never know; was dead and she had not the right to weep for him, but must go about with calm face, for she had not let him speak, and he was not hers in the sight of the world. She envied his mother the liberty of tears, of outspoken grief and of unsmiling face. Life was bitter.

The days went on drearily. Mrs. Hale neglected the Ladies’ Circle, the Missionary Society and all the various interests that had made her social world, and, shut in her rural home, brooded over her loss. October passed and November came, with heavier rains and more lowering clouds, it seemed, than ever November had had before. Thanksgiving day approached, and Mrs. Hale grew restless. On that day it had been the custom to invite to dinner all the kinfolk living thereabout, but this time she and her husband could not make festivity for themselves or others. When the morning came Mrs. Hale arose and went about her tasks with an unusual look of determination.

“Father,” she said to her husband at breakfast, “I don’t feel as if I could go to our church this morning, and I am going into the city. I know you don’t want to go, so I sha’n’t ask you. I’ll come out on the one-o’clock train, which will give me time to have dinner by three. It’ll be a good dinner. I’ve fixed ready for it.”

Abner offered no objection to the plan, but hitched up the horse and took his wife to the train, meeting her, also, upon her return. Her face bore a different expression, he noticed, from that it had worn in the morning--a brighter, more cheerful look. They chatted of various things on their way home--of Rev. Mr. Willetts’s sermon, which Abner had heard; of the music by the new choir, which Abner did not like, because he didn’t know what was being sung--tunes or words.

“That Hamilton girl--Nellie is her name, isn’t it?--took sick in meeting,” he said casually. “Screamed and had to be helped out to the air. Hystericky, I guess.”

“Poor thing!” commented his wife. “I expect she’s overworked and run down. I must ask her out to spend some Sunday. She and Joe used to be good friends.”

They ate their Thanksgiving dinner rather silently and their thanks were not fervent, but perhaps the Lord forgave them, knowing their sore hearts. It was not till dinner was over and Abner’s chores done that Mrs. Hale disclosed the purpose of her morning’s visit to Indianapolis and its result. It had not occurred to her husband’s rather slow-moving mind, until that moment, that she had as yet said nothing about it. He had assumed that she had attended a city church and had received consolation from the words of the pastor. If she was nervous over the confession of a different course of action she did not betray the feeling, but went boldly about it.

“Father, I’ve got something to tell you. I went in town to-day and visited a spiritualist medium--a slate-writer. She didn’t know I was coming. She didn’t know my name. She didn’t ask a question, but she sat down at a little table, took this little folding slate that Johnny Miller left here (I carried it with me), laid her hands on it, never a minute out of my sight, and while I was looking the little pencil inside began to scratch, and when it stopped here was this writing,” and Mrs. Hale produced the slate and began to read from its pages.

“Dear Mother,” the writing ran. “Dear Mother: I am so glad you have come at last. Have been looking for you anxiously. I knew you grieved because I passed into the spirit world before you, and because you knew so little of the going, but I knew you never believed that one who had gone could ever return and talk to his friends, so was afraid the truth would not be impressed on you and you would not come. But it is true, mother. This is your own Joey boy. It was all true about the shipwreck; we went down without warning and were drowned. I didn’t have time to think about it, and you will be glad to know I didn’t suffer. I shouldn’t have wanted to go if I had known beforehand what was to happen, but it’s all right now. I am happy--perfectly happy. Everything is beautiful here. I can’t tell you just how it is, because we are not permitted, but you will know some day. Father isn’t looking well. Now that that affair of Lester’s is off his mind he ought to cheer up. Tell him not to fret about me. It’s all right. Come and talk to me again some day soon. Your loving son, Joseph Albert Hale.”

Down in one corner was added: “What have you done with old Major? I don’t see him about.”

Mrs. Hale read this communication, as she called it, slowly and impressively, but with visible excitement and elation. Then she paused a moment for her husband to speak, but he remained silent, and she burst out:

“Isn’t it wonderful, Abner? I know you never believed in spiritualism, and neither did I, but you can’t deny that there’s something in this. Why, here’s Joe’s very own handwriting, and his signature, with the quirl at the end that he always makes and his middle name written out in full. That was a notion he picked up when he was at school, but I never could get into the fashion of addressing his letters any other way than ‘Joseph A.’ And in the letter he calls himself ‘Joey boy.’ I used to call him ‘Joey,’ you know, for a pet name. And who but Joey could have mentioned that trouble with his cousin Lester, when only we four ever knew you got the young rascal out of a scrape, and you know very well none of us ever mentioned it--Lester least of all. Then, father, he says you are not looking well, which is true, and shows he must have seen you. Think of that! And he missed old Major. I never wrote to him that the dog had died; kind of hated to. I tell you, father, it’s wonderful, wonderful! I never would have believed that I could have an atom of faith in spiritualism, and I must say that I wish Joe could communicate with us at first hand, and not through a total stranger. But this way is better than nothing, and what I’ve got here’s a great comfort to me. I’m going again, and if you--”

Abner’s face had slowly assumed an expression that caused his wife to pause suddenly and observe him with some apprehension. He looked at her fixedly and sternly, then spoke with a voice trembling with anger:

“Sarah Jane!” They addressed each other in the sweet, old-fashioned way, as “father” and “mother,” except on those occasions when storms loomed in the domestic sky. “Sarah Jane Hale, has it come to this, that you, a professing Christian for forty years, a member of the Presbyterian church in good standing; that you, the wife of a ruling elder, have taken up with this abominable witchcraft, and have the indecency to glory in it? Have you not read that the wrath of God comes upon those who practice such vile arts? Have you forgotten your religion? Do you care nothing for the safety of your immortal soul? I am shocked, Sarah Jane! I am astonished and grieved, and I insist that there shall be no more of this idolatrous business. It was thoughtlessness that led you to the den of the witch this time, may be, but the visit must not be repeated. I want you to promise not to go again, and I should like to hear you say you are sorry for this visit.”

Mrs. Hale, after a gasp of surprise, got her breath and her bearings.

“She is not a witch, but a respectable lady, I’d have you know, Abner Hale, and she doesn’t live in a den, but in a house that’s better than this one, and she’s a member of the Baptist church. And I wouldn’t be as narrow-minded and stiff-necked as you are for a farm. There’s things in this world that you haven’t found out yet, if you are a ruling elder; and, anyway, I won’t be dictated to just as if I were a disobedient child and had no judgment or rights of my own. You don’t seem to understand how I miss Joe. It was a real comfort to me, that letter from him, and I’m not sorry I went, and I shall go again if I want to. So there!”

After which feminine outburst she threw herself upon the lounge and sobbed with as much abandon as if she were ten years old instead of sixty. Abner was not moved to compassion by her tears.

“Sarah Jane,” he said, solemnly, “I am disappointed. I have always considered you a sensible woman--one not likely to be led away from true Christian principles, though at times you haven’t been as faithful to the means of grace as would be becoming in an elder’s wife. I know Joe’s death was hard on you. He was my son, too, but I haven’t found it necessary to consort with Satan’s emissaries for comfort. This taking up with evil things is a matter that calls for church discipline. It ought to be laid before the session, but I ain’t ready to do that yet, Sarah Jane. I want you to have time to consider the iniquity of your course before it is made public, and until you can realize it I sha’n’t speak a word to you, not a word from this hour.”

Mrs. Hale dried her tears suddenly and sat up, looking at her husband with curiosity.

“Are you six years old or sixty-five, Abner Hale, getting mad and ‘not speaking?’” she inquired, sharply.

Abner deigned no reply, but wound the clock, kicked the cat out and slammed the door with more energy than was becoming to a ruling elder, then stalked majestically off to bed in silence.

Mrs. Hale was not especially overcome by this exhibition of conjugal authority. The neighbors were wont to speak of Mr. Hale as “terribly set in his ways and domineering.” On account of these traits the women were inclined to congratulate themselves on not being married to him, but this feeling was not really a sound basis for an adverse verdict on his character. The disposition of women to wonder how other women can “put up” with their respective husbands arises, perhaps, out of feminine inability to comprehend thoroughly the idiosyncrasies of more than one man at a time. Not all wives are martyrs who seem so to outside eyes. At all events, Mrs. Hale had never so regarded herself, and did not now. She had lived with Abner for forty years and understood him. He had “ways,” and she had adapted herself to them, bringing him, in the long run, to her way of thinking; or, at least, so modifying his asperities of thought and character as to make him quite satisfactory to her. She had never run so directly counter to his prejudices as in this case, but was not alarmed at his wrath and only moderately resentful.

“I didn’t suppose he’d take it so hard,” she said long afterward, “but I might have remembered that he hadn’t been thinking the matter over for a month or so, as I had. I ought to have talked it up to him in advance and got him into the notion by degrees. Poor soul! He tried not to show it, but he grieved for Joe every day and all day while he was alone at his work, and his nerves were all wrought up. Women ain’t the only ones that get cross and crabbed from nervousness. However, I wasn’t going to give in right at once. I didn’t want him to think he could dictate to me that way. It doesn’t do to give a man such an advantage, even once.”

Down in the village that Thanksgiving night, while this domestic episode took place in the farm-house, pretty Nellie Hamilton lay upon her bed with wide-open eyes, staring into the dark, her mind intent upon the experience of the morning. The choir had performed its final “voluntary,” the minister had just given out his text, “Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving,” and the congregation was settling itself into the pews, when choir, minister and people faded out of sight and she looked upon a far different scene--not only looked upon it, but seemed a part of it. There before her, almost at her feet, was a lake, half shadowed by a mountain, whose bare and rocky summit pierced the sky. A vivid green forest, whose appearance was strange and tropical, circled the water and was thick about her. In a little opening were two or three huts, and near them, swung between two trees, was a hammock, in which lay her lover, Joe Hale. Pale and ill he looked, but was unmistakably Joe. As she stood, or seemed to stand, ready to step forward to his side, so softly as not to awaken him, she became aware of a swarthy, half-clothed foreign-looking man slipping toward the hammock from the further side. His face wore an evil look, and he glanced furtively about. His hand crept toward the pocket in the breast of the flannel shirt worn by the occupant of the hammock, but the movement, soft as it was, roused the sleeper, and he started up. Quicker than it could be told, a bright blade flashed in the air, blood spurted over the sick man’s breast and he fell back as if dead. It was at this moment that Nellie Hamilton startled the congregation with a scream, and was assisted to her home under the belief that she was suddenly taken ill.

Lying there, puzzling over it, she could not solve the mystery. It could not be a dream. She had just seated herself when the vision came, and had had no time in which to grow drowsy if she were so inclined. She was thinking of Joe at the time; it was seldom in those days that he was far from her mind, but she pictured him as battling with fierce waves, and as sinking slowly, surely, and, at last, despairingly, into their cruel depths--a hideous vision that haunted her, awake or asleep. She had never associated him with far southern lands; she had never been outside of her own state of Indiana, yet she knew that an actual tropical landscape could never be more real to her than this phantasmal scene of the morning. She could almost see it yet--the shining green of trees, whose names she did not know, the vines that stretched from branch to branch like great serpents, the rank undergrowth, the intense blue of the sky, the mountain, with its upper height a bare, stony peak. What did it mean? She remembered hearing her Scotch grandfather talk mysteriously of second sight, but had never troubled herself to know just what he meant, and she had never before had an experience like this. Besides, if Joe had been drowned in the Pacific, and he must have been drowned, or he would have been heard from long ago, this vision must have been a delusion. Could she be losing her mind? she wondered drearily, and fell at last into troubled sleep.

The days and weeks dragged slowly by, Abner Hale kept strictly to the letter of his threat to speak no word to his wife until she showed signs of repentance for what he considered her ill conduct. She addressed him freely when occasion required, and sometimes when it did not, but he made the hired man his medium of communication, directing his remarks ostensibly to that personage, but really to Mrs. Hale; and the hired man, being but a stupid creature, concerned more with eating all that was set before him than with what went on in the house, never discovered that he was used as a convenience. With neighbors who dropped in Abner talked freely and even eagerly, which, in view of his usual taciturnity, caused them some surprise. Once his wife detected him furtively examining the slate containing Joe’s letter, which she kept in a drawer of Joe’s old desk, but he showed no sign of interest when she made another visit to the city, and he had reason to assume that she again visited the woman he had denounced as an agent of the evil one.

She did, in fact, visit that person, not once, but twice or more, as the holidays drew near, and she felt the need of aid in resisting the depressing influences of other people’s gayety. Each time was repeated, with somewhat greater amplification, the story that had been told on the slate the first day. Each time some allusions were made or questions asked which convinced her anew that Joe’s spirit must inspire the pencil’s movements, since none but he and herself had knowledge of the matters involved. Each time came the assurance afresh that the unseen writer was Joe, her son, come back to her in this way from the other world. She could not doubt that this was true, but somehow the slate writings did not continue to be the comfort to her that she had first found them. There was a consciousness of something lacking, something unsatisfactory; there was a barrier between her and her son that she could not overcome. He told her so little, after all. It dawned on her one day that he had really written nothing that she had not herself known or believed before. She was thinking of this as she left the station one afternoon on her way home from one of these visits, and had wondered if it would not be just as well to fall in with Abner’s notions and tell him she was willing to give up the medium. “But I won’t do it just yet,” she decided. “He hasn’t been behaving well, and I don’t want to encourage him in such doings by giving in so easily. He ought to come half way, anyhow, and I think he will before long. He’s getting very uneasy.”

Nevertheless, she sighed as she thought of her silent home, and when she chanced to meet Nellie Hamilton, something wistful in the girl’s face attracted her notice and she urged her to accompany her to the farm. Visitors were always welcome now.

“Come out and spend the afternoon with me, and if, as you say, you must be home to-night, Abner will bring you.”

It was the last day of the year, but the clear, crisp air and the bright sunshine brought suggestions of spring, and both women felt cheered in a vague way when they reached the country home. Mrs. Hale talked to Nellie of her lost son that afternoon, and found a sympathetic listener. She related anecdotes of his boyhood; she brought out the tintypes and photographs he had had taken at various stages of his career; she showed specimens of his handiwork about the house; she told how thoughtful and considerate he was always and what a source of comfort. But with all the confidences bestowed she did not mention her visits to the medium or the story on the slate; all that was too intimate an experience to relate to this girl, who, for all her evident appreciation of Joe, might have an ignorant prejudice against spiritualistic manifestations. She had had it herself not so long ago. Nor did Nellie Hamilton venture to tell the elder woman of her vision on Thanksgiving day, nor of the later one the day before Christmas.

It rained on the latter occasion, and as she stood on the school-house step, looking up the dreary street, after the children had gone home, suddenly street and houses vanished, the dark sky cleared, and before her stretched a wide sweep of gray, sandy desert, patches of gray-green vegetation only adding to the dreariness; not far distant were barren hills, and beyond them arose mountains, gray, too, and craggy, with lines of white near their summits, glittering in the pitiless sunshine. Almost at her feet lay a horse, gasping as if for breath, his tongue, cracked and bleeding, hanging from his mouth. Near him a man was stretched face downward on the sand. As she looked he raised his head, and, with dull eyes, gazed drearily about, but she had not needed the movement to know that the man was Joe Hale. He was gaunt of frame, but his face was brown, not white, as she had seen it the other time, and there was a red scar on his forehead not there before. The gray desert stretched away until it melted into the horizon line, and no other creature was in sight in all its space. But while she looked, and before she could take the one step forward that seemed to divide her from the man she loved, the scene was changed, and she stood upon the school-house steps, staring blankly into the muddy street of Branchville.

She began to be afraid of herself, and would have liked to take Joe’s mother into her confidence and ask what these visions could mean, but had not the courage. So the two women talked together about one who was so dear to both, and each kept from the other her closest thoughts concerning him. After supper, when the guest would go, pleading duties that demanded her attention in the early New Year’s morning, Abner entreated delay, and as they sat about the fire he, too, conscious of sympathy, fell to relating stories of the dear lost son. And while they talked the gate opened, a step was heard on the walk, then on the porch, and Mrs. Hale, her face suddenly radiant with hope and joy, rose swiftly, and before he could touch the latch opened the door to her son. The intuition of the mother rose superior at this moment to the mysterious power that brought visions from far off to the younger woman.

There were laughter and tears, kisses and embraces, and if the visitor shared these neither father nor mother stopped to wonder. There were incoherent questions and answers when all talked at once and no one listened; there was silence of deep emotion as the parents looked upon their boy, who had been lost and was found, and put their hands upon him again and again to be convinced anew that he was truly in the flesh. And when the excitement quieted they all gathered close while Joe told them the story of his adventures; how he had been shipwrecked, as they had read in the papers; how the steamship had made little effort instead of much to save its victims; how he had clung to a floating plank till morning and had been picked up by a tramp boat which had mysterious errands, whose nature he did not inquire, to Central American ports, and was anxious to avoid California harbors for reasons that he suspected to have connection with customs officers.

He told how, at his own solicitation, he was put ashore at the first Guatemalan port, and how, instead of being able to work his way back to San Francisco, as he had hoped, being without money after the shipwreck, he fell ill with fever and would have fared badly but for a party of American miners and prospectors, themselves scant of funds, who ran across him, doctored him, and took him far into the interior before he fairly realized their kind purpose. They were going north overland in search of one of the famous lost mines of Mexico, to whose location they thought they had a clew. It was a wild country they traveled through, and their journeying was slow. They did not come near the civilization of which railroad trains and telegraph wires were a part, and so he wrote no letters, but looked forward to the day when he should reach home in person, and fretted that progress was so slow.

“I had one or two close calls,” he said lightly, with the disregard for dangers past common to the young. “While I was lying in a hammock one day (it was the Thanksgiving day here, by the way, and I was dreaming of home), a Mexican thief crept up and gave me this,” touching a scar on his forehead, “and another on my shoulder. He aimed at my heart, of course, and it’s a wonder he missed. And only last Monday, just a week ago to-day, I thought I was gone. I had left my friends to their rainbow chasing and started to make the rest of the way to Tucson alone. I wandered off the trail, my skeleton of a horse broke down--we were both famished for water--and I thought for a bit that the jig was up. But while I was on the sand thinking the matter over, what did I hear--or, rather, feel--but the faint jarring of a railroad train and the echo of a far-off whistle! It was miles away, but I knew I was all right. It was the sweetest music I ever heard. Actually, the old horse pricked up his ears, scrambled to his feet and jogged on. We struck the track after two or three hours and followed it to a station. From there I got to Tucson, where Tom Bailey, my old room-mate, is, and he lent me money to get home with. So here I am.”

The women shuddered at the tale, and looked upon this youth, who talked so carelessly of his perils, as a hero of heroes.

The hour grew late, and Nellie, making a movement of withdrawal, found Joe eager with his proposal to accompany her. She was unwilling to disturb the family group, but read entreaty in the young man’s eyes, and so declined her hostess’s invitation to remain. They scorned the thought of driving, and went out gayly to walk the short mile on the highway, that was to them that night a path to paradise. Under the moonlit sky Joe asked her the question he had said ought never to be written, and she whispered her answer so low that even the owl blinking in the tree overhead could not hear. But Joe heard.

As they loitered down the road, unmindful that it was the season of frost and not of roses, she told him of her visions, and a wonder fell upon them that she had seen so true. Yet, after all, they reflected, with the beautiful confidence of youth in the supreme power of love, it was not so strange that two souls in such harmony as theirs should come to each other across the world. As they looked up at the starry sky, thinking of this, heaven seemed very near, and they caught a glimpse of its mysteries. Then the bells rang that ushered in a new year, and they felt that it was the beginning of life for them.

* * * * *

Back in the farm-house another subject was under discussion. Mrs. Hale had stood in the doorway looking after her son with a pang at her heart in spite of her joy at his return. Sudden insight had come to her, and she knew that though the lost was found he would never be all her own again. She sighed as she shut the door and turned, with absent-minded gaze, toward her husband. He sat by the fire, with a hand on each knee and a puzzled expression on his face. Through all the confusion and excitement of the evening he had remained faithful to his promise, and had not addressed a word to his wife, but now, without preamble, and as if no silence had intervened, he began:

“Mother, what do you reckon it was that made the writing on them slates at Madame Victorine’s?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “It certainly wasn’t Joe, for he didn’t get drowned and he wasn’t dead, and still some of the things written were family matters no one could have knowledge of but one of us three. But it wasn’t Madame Victorine; it was Mrs. Mary Ellen Johnson who was the medium.” Then, with the swift intuition of a woman who reads her husband like a book: “Abner Hale, I believe you went to visit Madame Victorine yourself to get slate writings, or you wouldn’t know anything about her! You did. I know by your sheepish look you did. Madame Victorine, of all creatures, too! Why, she isn’t a decent woman, if all they say’s true; five or six husbands, and nobody knows where one of ’em is, or whether they’re alive or dead. You ought to be ashamed of yourself--an elder in the church. And all the time holding off from speaking to your own wife.”

Abner got in a word here.

“I wanted to investigate a little on your account, and I thought you mentioned Madame Victorine,” he urged, feebly.