Chapter VII

Sleep would not come. Were they all crazy in this mysterious house? Had I, through contact, lost my sense of reality? I certainly saw a shadowy man standing over Hugh, yet how could such a thing be? Penetrating beyond death. One reads about such things; reads of the Christ in person appearing on the third day after crucifixion, yes, and I had never thought sufficiently deeply to determine whether or not I believed this. Was it not labeled Gospel? And on other occasions the Master appeared. I thought of all recorded appearance of spirits as I remembered my Bible, all the old superstitions as we call them. Then my mind came back to Elaine.

What, exactly, did Hugh mean by drawing aside the veil? Second sight perhaps, but second sight is not a malady, it is a gift, if there is such a thing, an extra sense. I thought of her beautiful, spirituelle face, speaking eyes, golden bronze hair, then of the aged, ashen face of the girl in white, felt her pressed against me as she dropped from the apple tree.

I awoke with the sun shining in my window, facing south--late. Hugh in riding clothes, was standing beside a saddled horse, held by one of the silent men. The horse was a beautiful beast, one could almost use his polished flank for a mirror.

I called a greeting and Hugh called back, “Hope you had a good rest,” as he came across the yard and as he reached the veranda stairhead, “Sorry I cannot stay to entertain you today. I have had breakfast and must go to the village; urgent call and cannot say when I shall be back. Elaine excuses herself this morning. Will be with you shortly, I trust; amuse yourself and prowl about, there are many oddities about the old place worth investigating.”

We shook hands and I assured him that I felt quite at home, secretly rejoicing in anticipation of a day alone with my young hostess.

My breakfast came shortly after Hugh had mounted his horse, waved to me with his riding crop, and disappeared.

The day was warm and windless; a boatload of rivermen was the only thing moving on the placid water in front. These men were taking in and piling in great piles, on the shore of the next point of land to the east, the long logs, called booms, which had served to keep the timber floating down the river, out of the shallow water dotted with trees among which they would otherwise lodge.

I whiled away the morning, going no farther afield than the landing pier, always keeping an eye on the house, momentarily hoping that Elaine would present herself on the veranda.

Luncheon over; I dined alone, again sought the pier where I could have a good view of the house. What a formidable affair it was, rising through its entire length of fully 120 feet, two high stories and a Tudor style palisade atop, all tooled gray limestone, upper and lower veranda stretched across its front for about eighty feet to a tower coming out to the twelve-foot verandas’ width, serving to break the severity of the facade. The house shut off a view of the rise of the hill into the side of which it was fitted.

Disinclined to intrude through inquiry as to the welfare of my hostess, I nevertheless felt quite anxious and finally repaired to the house.

I was shocked on entering the great hall; an unmistakable odor of something afire assailed me. I took the stairs in a few bounds, ran through the hall following my sense of smell until it brought me to the room which I knew was being occupied by Fong Wing, the Chinaman.

Without ceremony I swung open the door and burst in upon the celestial, to find Fong on hands and knees on the floor, before him an improvised shrine, a Buddha, black with age, an oblong plate in front, full of burning punk sticks, the room full of smoke and scattered about in orderly disorder, thousands of small discs of paper, white and pink.

“What in heaven’s name--” here I stopped. Another worshipper, another religion, a devotee as earnest and orthodox as could be found in any Catholic, Protestant or offshoot branch of the Christian church; a heathen, and yet was there to the Deity anything in his manner of worship differentiating his supplication or thank-offering from that of the Christian?

Fong, as becomes any worshipper disturbed in his devotions who naturally does not wish to break off the established connection abruptly, took his time and while I stood, open-mouthed, arose.

I apologized, “Fong, I’m sorry, I thought the house was afire.”

“Allee light, allee light, Mista Montlose.”

“What the devil are you doing with all this paper stuff? You’ll set the house ablaze same day,” I retorted.

“Dlive away devil-man makee li’l Missie sick. We ketchee him last night,” Fong replied.

Fong’s eyes were big and startled as he sputtered out, “No, no! No see him, quick devil-man come, Missie talk, talk, bymby nearly all night. Soon Missie die; Fong dlive devil-man away, maybe.”

The doubt in the “maybe” registered despair, question as to the efficacy of his supplication. There flashed through my mind the prayer of the Christian, the penance, the intermediary, Mary, the Saints, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius; the blood offering of the Hebrews, the burning punk wood of the Chinaman; wherein lies the difference? Is it not in fact in the reflex, is not the end attained in the act itself? Else why should this heathen pray, this one of the five hundred millions of Chinese now living and condemned as we are told to an eternity in Hell. Is religion merely an emotion? Does devotion have its genesis in fear?

“How is your little mistress?” I asked the innocent-faced Chinaman, whom I regarded much as I would a child.

“Velly bad, velly bad. Velly sick. Not eat, while lookee allee same die, last night, today, now maybe.”

“Take me to her,” I ordered, peremptorily, forgetting propriety or anything except that I must get help.

Fong opened a door in the side of his room, crossed a hallway, quietly swung wide another door and I stepped into Elaine’s chamber.

My heart stopped beating. She was lying on a great high mahogany bed with four carved posts marking the corners rising half-way to the room’s ceiling. The westering sun slanting across the white bed-covering caught her face in its full light. She was as motionless as the dead; gray with the pallor of death, there was no rise and fall of the chest, not even a quiver of the throat.

I thought her dead as I stood for a moment looking not at the girl Elaine as I carried her in my heart but at that other ashen-faced woman into whom Elaine was unaccountably metamorphosed on my first night’s sojourn at Craighead Hall.

Gently I placed my hand on her brow, it was cold--but moist--wet in fact.

“This is not death,” I said aloud, though I had forgotten Fong who stood about six feet away with hands clenched together and raised above and in front of his head.

She was lying on her back, arms outstretched. I hastily placed a finger on her left wrist. Thank God! a pulse, feeble heart-beats, regular, in contrast with mine!

Fong, trained lady’s maid of the prison warden’s feminine household, was at home in this emergency. The Chinaman brought cold water, laved her brow, face and throat, talking an unintelligible jargon in low crooning tones.

I stood silent and helpless until Fong directed me to perform a similar office with hands and arms, applying linen wrung out in cold water and rubbing vigorously.

A faint tinge of color gradually replaced the pallor. She sighed, suddenly sat up, eyes wide open and lips apart as though in alarm. She threw out her hands, palms outward as though to ward off--Fong dropped to his knees. I think he thanked some deity, perhaps only the intermediary; it was in Chinese; as for me, I thanked God direct and in good Anglo-Saxon and so loudly that it seemed to arouse Elaine and explain to her the cause of the intrusion.

“Why the reception?” came in a hysterical, whispered laugh from Elaine, her big eyes resting on mine, then she sank back onto the pillows, the eyes closed; she seemed utterly exhausted.

“I shall go for a doctor,” I urged, but she shook her head.

“No! No doctor can do anything. I shall be all right in a little while,” and she seemed to fall asleep as I stood irresolute, not knowing whether to obey or go at once to the village for a physician.

I turned on hearing a rustling as of paper being gathered together, to find the Celestial with a sheaf of leaves in his hands, moon-eyed as he looked at me saying, “Devil-liting, Missie liting to Devil-man, allee time talk, talk, talk.”

I took the sheaf of papers from Fong’s hand. There was no writing, nothing but almost perpendicular strokes on them. These strokes were usually from left to right across the page and while they all ran together in unbroken order, there seemed a semblance of word form. Opposite is a facsimile of one paragraph that struck my eye.

At first meaningless, God help us, I thought, it is a mental disorder, possibly incurable; then my eye caught in the pencil-strokes the words “No the old life.” I followed, partially guessing, partially deciphering, until I had the whole paragraph. This one read:

“No the old life was too hard but until in this life I did not know what the true meaning was--”

Great heavens, I had never suspected. I had read of mediums, automatic writings--men and women allegedly possessing the gift of transcribing without volition messages from the dead. Could such a thing be possible? I had never given the absurd claim a serious thought. ’Twas beyond the range of the possible, yet here in my hands under my very eyes was evidence that such a thing existed. Evidence, not proof, I reflected. Recollection of descriptions of the medium’s physical manifestations when the desire or urge to write came fitted this case.

I glanced over to where Elaine lay, her face calm and turned slightly away from me; the rise and fall of the coverlet showed an easy breathing. Gone all semblance of death, a girl again, she peacefully slept. What was the cause? Why should a mental impairment take this peculiar phase, create this ability to put on paper what a dormant physical consciousness permits the subconscious to receive and through the pliant physical, transcribe? Did Elaine desire to write? No, I preferred the thought that some peculiar complex brought the urge and that she was helpless. Was she a “medium?” Surely the symptoms, the pallor, the unnatural in every respect; did they not resemble very closely those described in what I had at various times read and cast aside as fanciful?

All delicate scruples were cast to the winds. I shamelessly took a pile of written pages of this seemingly meaningless tracery, sat at the little mahogany desk and painstakingly traced the lines.

Fong placed a shaded lamp on the desk top, carefully seeing that no ray of light fell on the quiet sleeper, his little mistress, and left the room. Strange how noiseless a Chinaman can be. I scarcely sensed that he was in the room, so absorbed was I in deciphering the writing, evidently traced for the full line without removal of pencil from the paper. No crossed t’s or dotted i’s, but words stood out as legibly as though in print.

As I read, hour after hour, with no realization as to the passing of time or thought as to my indelicate act, I became more and more mystified. Why should Elaine’s pencil trace such things?

Here apparently was something urging my hostess to “send me away; keep me away from Hugh.”

The name “Hogarth” drew my attention; it seemed to stand out as though written in India ink on a sheet lying on the desk which had fallen from my hand and my errand to this house, which I must admit had become a secondary matter, came sharply before me.

“Send him away, he cannot find Hogarth. He must go away.”

Evidently a question had been asked then. Did Elaine talk or merely think the question?

The next line, “No, you never heard of him, he is nothing to you, he will never be found.”

Another question, a new line, “yes, gone away, can never be found. No, I cannot find him here.”

I searched for further mention of Hogarth through the entire pile of written sheets, went back to where I had left off.

One line said “Hugh must be warned, wait for me.”

Were these lines written while Hugh and I sat in the library on the previous evening? Was the shadowy form that I had seen bending over Hugh the dictator of these alleged messages? Was there then in this thing something more tangible than the meanderings of a mind asleep, even deranged? What did this girl know about Hogarth? Surely I had gleaned from Hugh that the man was unknown to him and therefore Elaine could not have had him in mind. The name Hogarth held only in dim recollection, that uncertain, was all that Hugh had, and of that I was convinced.

I could feel a peculiar chill as of fear as I sat in the semi-darkness of this silent night, a silence so intense as to be oppressive. Not a sound came from the sleeper. For the first time there dawned on my consciousness the thought, “Perhaps this is reality.”

The words of Paul came to me “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain.” “Christ is risen, Christ is risen,” sung by many a sweet-voiced choir had passed me by, the story of the resurrection accepted as a matter spiritual, not as conscious life after death. Was my mind willing to accept such a thing as a spirit, a living entity after death, knowing the things of life, earthly life, seeing the happenings of today’s events, remembering the past, just as though alive in the flesh?

“Go to the Bible for help in all dilemmas,” was my mother’s adjuration. “There you shall learn the truth.”

At fourteen, had I been a Catholic, I should have been known as an oblate, so possessed was I with religious fervor and I knew my Holy Bible thoroughly. That I should cast back at this hour for negation or affirmation of a new and somewhat terrifying thought to a book which I had for years neglected to use did not occur to me as strange. Do we not, almost to a man, when dire trouble overtakes us, go to God as we know him through the teachings during our youth?

The words of Saul “Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit that I may go to her and inquire of her,” and the reply, “Behold there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor,” floated to my consciousness. And Samuel through this medium talked with Saul, told him things as they were.

Could I question the inspired word of God? No! The medium saw and identified Samuel to Saul. God’s laws being unchangeable, man being the same today as in Saul’s time, natural law unchanged, spirits released from the body must today exist as they did before Christ came, and if they could communicate then, they can communicate now and as I thought of the events of last night, fear smote me hard.

How long I pondered these things I know not, nor did I notice, except vaguely that the Chinaman had noiselessly entered and as quietly left the room. Hours must have passed. I remember thinking:

“What change in humanity might be wrought through the conviction, no, the knowledge, that one was never alone, always accompanied by the spirit of a friend who had passed on.”

Should one know his every act was seen by somebody would the world not walk more circumspectly? Would not crime be lessened and life rendered sweeter?

Things seemed unreal. I fancied an influence strange and new to me, which I did not try to analyze, drawing me on to a point where superstition superseded my usual common sense, and I do not know where my thoughts would have carried me had not Fong Wing quietly entered the room with a tray, an eggnog, a bowl of broth and three strips of brown toast; an immaterial observation, everything considered, but something real, tangible.

Fong spoke, “Dlink this, Missie,” presenting the tray.

Then I awoke to the fact that Elaine, awake and questioning-eyed was looking at me.

I sprang to the bedside, “Elaine! Elaine! You have been desperately ill,” I almost shouted and at the same time realized I had addressed her thus familiarly.

She did not seem to notice the use of her Christian name, merely smiled and said as she took the drink from Fong’s hands, “I’m awfully sorry to have worried you. Really, I’ve slept wonderfully. Where is Hughie?”

Then without awaiting an answer to her query, while looking intently past me at her desk, added,

“Thank you for your consideration. I had a miserable headache, but am much--”

At that moment she must have seen the sheets of paper which I had absent-mindedly kept in hand for her expression suddenly changed.

I cannot describe the change. Have you ever wounded a doe, run her to exhaustion’s point and just before using the huntsman’s knife to end her misery, caught the look in your victim’s eyes? If so, you then have seen what I saw as I looked at my hostess; a beseeching, wounded, pleading look which imposed its force on every fibre of my being and brought me to my knees beside the bed asking forgiveness, asking for her confidence, bringing in the name of Hugh, help for her, my anxiety, everything except the one emotion obsessing me, the wish consuming me, everything but the whole truth, that I loved her and was cold with the fear that I had unforgivably offended.

I felt her small hand laid lightly on my bowed head, heard a low pleading voice say, “Please go.”

I do not know how I got out of her presence, nor why I should have walked so far through the night. Dawn came while I was atop a high hill a mile at least from the house, with thoughts inchoate but even yet holding to the night’s events and their possible sequel.

I must have slept all day. Hugh had returned, for my first sensation on awakening was hearing him call from the orchard, “A beautiful sunset, John.”

With spirits at low ebb, realizing that I must give an explanation and offer an apology to the brother of the young lady whose privacy I had encroached upon in the desperation of good purpose, I dressed hastily and went down to the orchard, thinking that my status at the Craighead home would be altered, yes, possibly my visit abridged through the untoward events of the night.

Hugh, standing head bared under an apple tree, called out a quiet, “Hello, Gordon, glad to see you out,” gave me courage and when he, looking frankly and with friendship in the look, held out his hand, I could not suppress the moisture which shut him from my vision as my hand clasped his and his left arm went over my shoulders, giving me a little familiar pull toward him.

“We must save her, Gordon,” and “Yes, Hugh,” was all that was said, but it filled my very soul with gladness.

I excused myself to return to my room to change for dinner as Hugh informed me, “We shall have the little girl’s company at dinner this evening.”