Chapter XI

Two weeks--the day had passed so rapidly--there was so much to observe--this peculiar household of ex-convicts, so quiet, so well-ordered; a great farm producing a good revenue, as attested by the immense bins of grain which I had inspected with Hugh and Elaine and the many mows packed with hay, the ample straw-stacks, well-fed cattle and spirited horses--all gave evidence of earnest desire to make good on the part of the “guests” who spent their evening in reading, debating, and discussion of present work and future prospects.

Craighead Hall seemed sufficient unto itself. The world outside the enclosure seemed remote and yet Hugh’s mail was voluminous; it was sorted and cared for by Fred Hunt, his secretary, a fair-haired youth who had served time for alleged forgery, though to me he protested innocence. I mixed freely with the “guests.” To the last man they were interesting; they came from the better class--educated, many refined; bitterness, hatred of fellowman who had “persecuted” them was rare. They were getting a new start in life.

I was surprised to find most of them young in years, especially those convicted of crimes of violence--unchecked anger. I never arose early enough to find the house asleep, and, while on duty, the prison habit of silence seemed to cling to them--no, not to all--I am forgetting the Chinaman.

He talked as freely as though he had always been at liberty with boon companions and he was a splendid maid-servant and devoted to both Hugh and his sister--and I was not a little pleased at the attention he extended to me. He was an expert clothes-presser--even ironed out my neck-scarfs and laundered my collars.

I was at ease, save for one perplexing obsession; I lived in a dream--the great mansion with the rows of whispering poplars and the mysterious river in front, sombre woods all around, enclosing us as in an embrace. I lost all worldly perspective; life’s accustomed activities became remote--for hours at a time my mind would dwell on the strange phenomenon observed in Elaine’s condition.

That the dead could communicate with the living was contrary to all my teachings, my belief. I asked Hugh for the “spirit writings” from which he got the details of Blank’s strange story. They were voluminous and in a handwriting distinctly different from Elaine’s clean-cut chirography which followed the English, square-topped letters.

Everything and more of John Blank’s life history as told by Hugh was there; many repetitions, as though a question had been repeated; answers irrelevant; for instance, a statement from Blank that he did not realize that he had passed from life through what we call death, until he found himself among many strangers; that he had lingered near his body, returned to his old home after visiting Craighead Hall; he had seen nothing of either heaven or hell and was still a dweller on earth with man embodied and disembodied and was not happier than while in the flesh. In fact, from the disjointed writings, I gathered that he was more timid and fearful of the world about him than when walking the earth.

He had not changed mentally. He had sought Hugh and Alix in Scotland, his sister in England, could not communicate with her, but “found in the little half-sister a real friend.”

Evidently Hugh or Elaine had asked what he meant by this statement, as there followed a line--“We are all looking for half-sisters or brothers who can take messages.”

He was reasonably happy near Hugh and Elaine, it appeared, and Craighead Hall was his home.

“Great Heavens!” I thought; “One more silent guest in this strange place.”

Had he walked down the broad staircase one bright morning I would not have been taken aback and, after reading this mass of evidence far into the night, I could fairly feel his presence.

I felt that Blank resented my intrusion into the affairs of this family and its relationship with him. I became an expert in deciphering the difficult writing which ran all together with no dots or crosses and I left no scrap unread.

Doubt as to the genuineness of Elaine’s communications with the spirit fled--but my Sunday-school teachings kept bobbing into my head--I could not, even at two o’clock in the afternoon, while sitting alone in the great sombre library, help offering up a silent supplication to the Son of the Father for guidance.

There was a stirring of the air in the room; in just that mental condition which induces one to expect the impossible, I jumped from my chair and turned toward the light to which my back had been that I might the better read, fully expecting to meet the earless phantom.

“Oh!” I exclaimed and almost collapsed through sheer nervous weakness. Elaine, in riding clothes, had playfully tiptoed into the room. A vision of beauty, but as startling an apparition as would have been John Blank in person, so foreign to my expectation was this visit.

“What in the world,” Elaine exclaimed, seeing my blanched face; then she gravely laughed, if I may so describe it, saying, “Throw away those papers; don’t let them bother you; they have upset you. I asked Hughie not to let you worry over them.”

I could not speak for a moment, so great had been my shock and Elaine seemingly appreciative of my condition, went on, “Hugh and I are riding to the village;” and with a mischievous smile, “If you could sit a horse for twenty miles and still wish to live tomorrow, I would ask instead of one, two escorts all through the lonely wood.”

Elaine looked more than surprised when I sprang quickly to her and took her disengaged hand--one held a riding crop--in both of mine.

Just then Hugh stepped into the room calling, “Elaine, we’ll be late returning--” stopped with an “Oh, I did not know Gordon was here.”

My reply was to drop her hand, push Hugh aside in my excitement and rush for the stair calling back, “Wait just a moment while I change.”

“Hold up,” Hugh called, “You haven’t any riding breeches. I’ll get you my Sunday-go-to-meeting pair; they are too grand for any city bridle-path equestrian, but Elaine’s knight-errants must be fittingly clad while on exhibition at the village.”

I was upstairs when the last of this good-humored speech reached me but it was pleasing--Hugh had not resented the familiarity witnessed. Hugh brought the breeches and a coat as well, told me to wear my vest as the night would be chilly.

“I’m as nervous as a fish,” I said to Hugh as he waited while I struggled with a row of buttons on the trouser leg and clasped on a pair of my host’s puttees.

“Pshaw, man,” Hugh retorted, “There is nothing in a twenty-mile ride to get excited about, especially while there are three of us,” he added, glancing sideways at me.

“It is the Blank writings,” I exclaimed.

“Oh that is it; well you must not let things of that nature worry you; they are--that’s all--just accept and forget them.”

Hugh, on a splendid mount, set an easy pace, riding a few yards ahead. I rode beside Elaine. The dogs set up a howl as we passed the kennels; open fields were traversed; the wood road was beautiful; my heart sang.

A verse from a book of my childhood floated into my memory--

_I saw the sunlight through the trees,
Checkering the grassy earth;
I felt the breath of the summer breeze
And my spirit was full of mirth._

The padlocked gate, a road which Elaine explained was the “concession line.” What that meant was nothing, but I dwelt on the voice as though an angel had spoken.

Hugh had spurred on ahead when we reached the main road, and as we approached the cemetery, I saw that he had dismounted and was leaning just as when I saw him first, on the white paling of the little plot outside the cemetery’s far corner.

As Elaine did not check her horse or give more than a glance toward Hugh, I made no comment but kept beside her. Truth is, I was not a finished horseman and had to watch my step with the rather mettlesome black under me.

“Here is where Hughie went to school,” Elaine said as we came abreast a clapboarded, one-story, red-painted, neat little building perched atop a considerable hill; the first break in a silence commencing at the cemetery.

My answer was cut short through a determined but most ungraceful attempt to avoid landing on my head on the roadway. My horse had set a front foot on a rolling stone as we took the down-grade of the hill. He went on one knee before recovering to break into a run--and I had my arms around his neck--a rather undignified figure, everything considered.

When my companion came alongside, she was laughing. The gloom gathered at the cemetery was dispelled and though the expense was mine, I was glad.

“You should always keep a tight rein while going downhill,” she twitted me on my horsemanship; solemnly advised me at the next hill then in sight; there was light badinage which I answered in kind to the best of my ability while we covered many miles; but I was always kept aloof from anything approaching sentimentality.

A step on the ladder of my dreams--I had called her Elaine and she dropped the Mr. and my name Gordon from her lips took on a new sound.

Rows of houses with gardens began to show the proximity of the village. Hugh rode with us. He pointed out the tall spire of the church on top of the hill beneath which the village nestles, saying, “Four lads in their early teens got ninety days each in the ‘Black Hole,’ the village lockup, for shooting up that spire when I was a boy.

“Father pleaded for them before the squire, I remember; he was the judge who later sentenced Haig, but though the lads were merely trying out a new rifle and were greatly alarmed when they found how far it would carry--they shot from the hill across the river--no mercy was shown.”

We were going down the hill; I held a tight rein and stole a glance at Elaine; she was looking at me and smiling. Hugh knew nothing of my mishap and kept on talking.

We tied our mounts in the open shed in the rear yard of the “Myrtle Bank.” Where the name originated, I cannot say.

Both Hugh and his sister were afoot before I could get out of the saddle. As we walked toward Front Street, Hugh was accosted by a scholarly-looking stranger and excused himself, saying, “Meet you at the post office in half an hour,” meantime looking at a thick timepiece.

Elaine dismissed me at the first and almost only dry goods store saying that “she did not wish to display to me her vanity.”

From my vantage point at the end of the bridge near the post office I watched Hugh approach. He looked neither to right nor left, though people, neighbors, almost, were passing and eyeing him; a fine upstanding figure, but the face was solemn, aloof, but, I thought, purposeful.

We entered the post office together. Hugh shook hands with an alert-looking young man, saying, “Mr. Montrose, this is our Postmaster, Mr. Harris. I am looking for your father, Mr. Harris.”

Mr. Harris acknowledged my greeting with a real, political, come-along handshake, saying to Hugh, “The governor will be out in a few minutes,” and we turned to see Elaine at the post wicket talking to the clerk.

She turned to me, “You remember Mr. Haig?”

Mr. Haig, the transformed, was a government employee. Certainly Hugh had done a good work here, for the young man, salved and reclaimed, held an air of confidence, though I noted the deferential manner when he greeted Hugh who put his hand through the wicket to Haig.

“Doing splendidly, sir, and all thanks to you, Mr. Craighead, and to you and Mr. Montrose,” he added, looking at Elaine.

Stepping back out of sight, Haig reappeared with a good-sized bundle of letters tied in a package and said, “A busy day, Mr. Craighead, I kept this one out as it was ‘Special.’”

I noted that it carried foreign postage stamps. Hugh started to open the letter, then stuck it in a side pocket of his coat as an important-looking gentleman came up with hand extended and greeted Hugh, who drew him aside, literally by the coat lapel, and called me by a glance.

“Senator Harris, Mr. Montrose,” Hugh was saying, “a Philadelphia lawyer, sojourning with us at the Hall. You will be interested in him. I hope to induce Mr. Montrose to associate himself with me in my reform work. He will stay with us and we shall enlarge our force just as soon as you put through my bill.”

The Senator was cold-eyed.

“My dream is that the government of Canada will set an example for the United States through taking up the work on a proper scale,” Hugh resumed.

“I can only operate in a small way. Every man turned out of a prison should have a home such as Craighead Hall where he can rest and get back some of his self-respect, be taught to be decent, shown that the world is for or against him only as he chooses. The Member who is instrumental in passing this measure will have the gratitude of thousands now living and a thousand thousand unborn.

“Millions of dollars lost under present systems of turning sewage right back into the streets will be saved to taxpayers through the lessening of crime, for I note, Senator, that most of our court and policing cost is expended on ex-criminals who repeat. Come to the Hall and see a model institution.”

The Senator, an influential member of the Upper Parliament I learned later, a typical Canadian politician whose very soul would revolt at the mention of graft--and yet who could see no impropriety in securing for his own son the best that the government could give in the way of plums, the postmastership; good-natured, but reserved in manner and speech, exceedingly proud of self and position, kept on smiling.

“I have for some time been thinking of affording myself the pleasure of calling on you and your charming sister,” the Senator said in a quiet but attractive voice which I mentally contrasted with the reply which would have been made by a member of our Congress not so affable; he would have said “All right, Hugh,” with mental reservation perhaps and, if no votes were involved, would have had ready a good alibi for their next meeting.

Not so this Canadian statesman. There are no politicians in Parliament, Upper or Lower, I have found--all statesmen.

When invited for a specific date, he urged “pressure of business,” coldly, I thought, though taking the number of a Canadian Member is difficult. He proceeded: “Precedence of other measures must be carefully considered before I undertake the introduction of such a radical bill--no, radical is perhaps the wrong appellation; I think well of the scheme, yet it would appeal to many of my colleagues as revolutionary.”

I thought Hugh was urging too earnestly. He put the direct question finally, “Will you or will you not,” in his own straightforward way.

The Senator turned aside and looked down through a window at the black stream carrying all the waters of a great river between rock walls not over a hundred and fifty feet apart--waters that moved so rapidly that the surface looked motionless, like glass; it required a bit of flotsam, shooting past one’s vision, gone in a second of time, to dispel the illusion.

The Senator spoke:

“Gentlemen, the power of that stream is nothing, it may be harnessed by man; what power can check the human torrent called the mind of the multitude? I value my seat. The unthinking, perhaps, among my constituents, complain of the inadequacy of our laws and courts in punishing crime; what would be the fate of a measure in amelioration?

“I but represent the wishes of my people. Petition--give me a request in writing from a safe majority and I will act.”

He addressed me. “Our laws are respected here; punishment for infraction is sure and swift. We have only a few, compared with the many varying statutes of each state of the United States opposing obstacles to the prompt meting out of justice. Our criminal laws are good, our judges are fearless and our juries seldom permit sentiment to sway them. Except in Quebec, our population is Anglo-Saxon--honesty and respect for law is a birthright, let the Frenchman adjust his own affairs in conformity with his moral view; our old Covenanting Scotchman would certainly resent the coddling of a criminal, even with ‘ex-’ prefixed; our Irish are generous, though they make the greater noise and cry louder for condign punishment; on impulse they would forgive.

“Mr. Craighead, go after the many Irish in this district. Avoid the Scotch and pick your Englishman--a few are impossible, many reasonable, but, my boy, all are pigheaded and must be properly approached or they will never sign up on your petition.

“Show every man how the meager tax he now pays may be wiped out almost to the vanishing point, leaving just enough to afford him a subject for complaint, and you will succeed.”

The Senator examined his watch, shot out his hand to Hugh, then to me and vanished through a swinging door. “I can’t see it,” Hugh said and I knew that Elaine, who had just joined us, saw as I did a great disappointment settle on Hugh.

We took tea, a light dinner and learned from Hugh that he had arranged with a traveling preacher to come to the Hall and lecture; I think he would have said preach had he not caught some understandable light in the eyes of his sister. A priest also was coming--it was not fair to “guests” of the Catholic faith that they should have no opportunity of conforming to their teachings.

Hugh, when Elaine protested at the teaching of impossibilities, stressed the point that man must have his religion and that he had not found the Joss of Fong missing when last he visited his room.

From the backs of our moving horses at the top of the hill where the Catholic Church stands sentinel over its little army below, lights seemed to dance like fireflies.

Hugh was silent, apparently depressed but doubtless thinking out a way for the furthering of his work.

As we rode on through the miles, Hugh, a horse’s length ahead, only the diapason of hoofbeats and the pleasant creaking of leathers conforming to the horses’ motions, broke the silence.

“She” was near me. I was happy and yet most miserably unhappy.

Once, as we came in through the silence of the dense woods, I reached across and laid my hand on the sleeve of her riding coat. She permitted the caress, understood it, I think, for she leaned a little forward in the saddle and turned her face toward me as though in acknowledgment. I wished then that I could have seen her eyes.

It was merely a touch of the hand on her sleeve, but the harmonies were awake.

“Jehovah,” I kept repeating, “is in His place in heaven,” and the ten long miles were all too short.