Chapter VIII

Summoned half an hour later by the Chinaman, all smiles, I met Elaine and Hugh at the foot of the grand stairway, an embarrassing moment for me. A momentary casting down of her eyes, then they were raised in all their glory to mine and I grasped a little warm extended hand which nestled in mine with just the hint of a returned pressure, but the day was saved, it spelled forgiveness.

Our hostess was pale, but in good spirit. During dinner, Hugh explained that his urgent call to the village was to see the member of Parliament from his district making a flying visit home; in the interest of a proposed law touching on prison reform generally and in particular the establishment by the province of a provincial home for released prisoners. He had not accomplished anything definite, but had arranged for the care of Haig, had seen the Presbyterian minister, the Reeve, Sheriff and the Postmaster and thought he had paved the way for the boy’s return without more embarrassment to the unfortunate youth than could naturally be avoided.

These and other topics while the serving man was present. We three alone, an embarrassing silence ensued.

Elaine broke the spell.

“Hughie, I am glad that Mr. Montrose--”

“Gordon,” Hugh interrupted.

“Mr. Gordon, then,” she said, looking at me smilingly, “knows our secret. I wish you would tell him everything--how at first we enjoyed the novelty, experimented with it, played with the fire until we were burned. We never even suspected danger. I was as eager for the experiment as the others. But now it possesses me, controls me, and I am powerless. He found me in Scotland, now he lives right here, right here beside me.”

Her voice rose as she continued, “The man wanted to get through a message, many messages relating to Hugh’s affairs. Gradually he unfolded secrets, family secrets, things not known to Alix and Hughie or myself. I was only a child. Then later when we heard his dreadful story we were so moved that it seemed cruel to refuse to listen to him.”

Hugh spoke. “I encouraged the damnable practice.”

“Because we were in the dark,” Elaine continued, becoming more calm. “The thing was so unbelievable! A dead man, buried in that little enclosure where you and Hughie met, sending his messages telling his history, and always keeping back something, just as though he were alive and talking to me. Don’t think him tyrannical or unkind. He is unhappy. He has not changed in the spirit world. He guides us, helps us through his messages. It was he who urged Hugh to take up this work.”

“I--lose myself often. I can’t help listening to him. I don’t need to write, I can repeat the words as they come to me. When I’m awake, I can keep away from it by sheer will-power, but when I’m asleep, or just falling asleep, I can’t help myself. I must get up and write. That was the first stage--questioning aloud and writing the answers, and now I can’t stop. My right arm is cold this minute.”

Her face was white, not the ashen hue of the first visitation, her right arm extended, the first finger and thumb pressed together as though holding a pencil and rotating rapidly as though drawing many small circles. I had seen many of these circles among the automatic writings last night and wondered as to their significance.

“Save me, Hughie,” she whispered.

Hugh sat as though petrified, gazing at the extended hand. Was there too much light, or did Hugh see the form of his old friend? I do not know, but if not actually visible, doubtless from memory’s storehouse there came to Hugh the vision of the deformed John Blank to paralyze action.

I grasped Elaine’s cold hand, seized her arm, brought her to her feet and shook her violently before realizing what I was doing. Then remembering the treatment administered the evening before, rubbed her arm vigorously for a minute until warmth, imagined if not real, was there.

The blood returned to the girl’s face. Embarrassed, we looked at each other and she and I laughed. Mine was certainly not my usual exhibition of hilarity.

Hugh put his arm about his sister’s waist and half carried her to a large easy-chair where she sat on the great leather arm with one white arm about his neck.

“Exorcising a devil,” was my first coherent thought. Christ driving out evil spirits from humans into swine, a queer proceeding. He must have a super-mind--strong--did not Elaine say she kept Blank away through exercise of will-power--Luther seeing the evil one, _D’Evil_, _sans apostrophe_, Devil, and throwing his inkwell at his Satanic majesty, effectively putting him to flight, else we would all, I presume, still be Catholic; these measures, the methods applied, crowded in on me as I moved from the table to a seat near Hugh and Elaine. My brain was chaotically striving for a defensive weapon for Elaine’s protection.

“Thank God I never see him. I should die of fright. Hughie has described him to me, but oh, how I pity him, even now. He is so sad, so unhappy in a state where we think our worries are over.”

There was silence for a moment, then she resumed,

“Do you know, Mr.----, do you know, Gordon, I am told that we do not change when our bodies die; we awaken to find ourselves just as we were, knowing nothing more than when we lived. We are cared for until able to care for ourselves, influenced by those with whom we come in contact, and just as here, there are the good and the bad. Some day I shall show you the messages.”

I sat spellbound. A little hand came out toward me which I eagerly grasped and touched with my lips. I think pity inspired her gracious act for certainly I felt woebegone and probably looked it.

“Is that what we call Heaven, or is it Hell?” I managed to say.

“Perhaps we should call it Purgatory as there seem to be conditions or places which my friend cannot reach,” Elaine replied gravely, then, in a lighter tone, “I shall be in no hurry to make the change. I like life here pretty well, just Hugh and I and our work and the great outdoors,” and she gave her brother a hug which seemed to bring him back to himself.

“Make it a trinity, take me into the circle, I implore,” I said earnestly.

Elaine twisted Hugh’s face upward playfully so that she might see his eyes and said, “Perhaps we shall, Hughie, after he knows all about us, though our skeleton may scare him away back to Pennsylvania. I wish you would go on and tell Gordon the rest of our history; I shall stay and correct you, should you malign your infant sister too frequently.”

Hugh promptly commenced. “I think I was telling you of this girl’s abnormality; the first signs, when the lamp went out. One evening in June, Elaine and a girl-friend were playing with a new toy, a planchette. For a time only undecipherable scribblings resulted, then there was written: ‘I wish to speak with Hugh.’

“The girl came into the study calling: ‘Mr. Hugh, somebody on the planchette is calling for you.’

“I answered, ‘Show him in, I am busy.’

“Elaine then called me and the pencil certainly wrote, ‘I must give Hugh a message.’

“‘I am not consciously guiding the thing,’ Elaine said, and while Alix, McFarlane and I looked on, the pencil wrote, but not in Elaine’s square-topped letters, rather more like a man’s handwriting, ‘Hallowed is dying. You are needed at Craighead Hall.’

“McFarlane said, ‘Drop the dratted thing. It is a machination of the devil.’

“I urged Elaine to try again but she could get only nonsensical things, some vile words, yet even these were a source of wonder to us as they could not have originated in the brain of my little sister.

“That evening we were discussing the peculiarity of thought transference; McFarlane said she had been thinking about the old man at the Hall. We talked of Mesmer and his peculiar gift.

“Elaine suddenly exclaimed, ‘Hugh, Hugh, look what the board has written; I wonder if I guided it.’

“There it was in the same handwriting, ‘Tell Hugh, John Blank says Hallowed is dead. Hugh should come at once.’

“We were mystified, did not think to ask any question of thin air. It would at that stage of inexperience and ignorance have seemed to all of us a silly proceeding.

“We all, except McFarlane, tried the board with no result. Elaine, accused of hoaxing, was advised not unkindly by her sister to devote her energies to the piano or her books. We were always kindly toward each other and the incident evidently hurt this tender flower for she said nothing further about the planchette, though I learned later that during the month following she still played with the board.

“One day there came a letter from one Alexander Douglas of Valleyford, saying that he had officiated at the burial of John Hallowed two days previously and was writing at the request of Lindsay Micklejohn who had worked under Hallowed.

“I remembered Lindsay whose education was nil, my first thought being, ‘How will he run the place? He cannot write.’

“Alix was the first of us to hark back to the message. We compared dates, then stood looking stupidly at each other. Elaine had not said a word. Now she quietly told us that she had received many repetitions of the statement that Hallowed was dead, that she had asked aloud while alone as one of the messages came, ‘Where are you?’ and the pencil wrote: ‘Right here’ and described a lot of circles.

“She went to her room and brought quite a number of sheets of paper, timidly, yet I thought feeling rather proud of her gift and gratified that the genuineness of the message had been established. She was in good health, though at times Alix chided her for not getting outdoors more. She looked pale and did not eat much.

“McFarlane who came in as usual that evening was dumbfounded; I think he was more shocked than any of us. He kept his eyes on Elaine as though she was something set apart.

“‘Uncanny,’ I heard him muttering to himself, and caught the words ‘a witch, that leetle young ane.’

“Now came trouble. Elaine just would accompany me; all our joint protests were vain. Alix asked McFarlane to go with us. He protested that he could not go and added, ‘Neither can you, lass,’ and I was surprised to see the masterful Alix accept the verdict without protest.

“Hysterics, oceans of tears, a fainting spell and the little minx had her way. My employers accepted my resignation, giving me a ‘to whom it may concern’ recommendation, carefully, I noted, weighing its wording so that no responsibility would rest on them should I go wrong. Bless them, theirs was a splendid school for a youth; the chalk-line was never permitted to fade and the work habit was taught every day.

“We four were on the dock at Liverpool when McFarlane exploded his bombshell. He put his arm around Alix’ waist, held out his hand to me and said, ‘For sax year gane, Hugh, this wee girlie has been me wedded wifie; she wadna permeet me to tell.’

“He was all excitement and as usual lapsed into his natural tongue.

“‘Is it true?’ to Alix, was all I could say.

“Yes, it was true; Alix exacted secrecy because she was the little mother to Elaine and myself; looking back now I think she mothered McFarlane also and did not wish our close relationship and happy home disturbed. I was glad; so was Elaine, that during my absence Alix had a protector, a man I liked; he seemed more like a father than a brother.

“Elaine put her arms about her sister, cried a little, but incongruously said, ‘Now I shall have Hughie all to myself. You have James.’

“After goodbyes had been spoken, Elaine aboard and I just about to step onto the deck of the lighter which was to carry us to the waiting ship, my newly found brother-in-law whispered in my ear while holding my hand, ‘Anoo ye’ll ken why Alix canna gae. Ye’ll hae a neephe an ye return.’”

One of McFarlane’s injunctions laid when he knew I was going back to Canada was that I should immediately seek out John Blank, get his full history and relay it to him promptly. We had all settled on the theory that Blank had been able to project his thoughts through space into the mind of Elaine who automatically transcribed them. This theory was strengthened when Elaine informed us that she had discarded the planchette and wrote just as easily without it, but always in a handwriting different from hers.

“The sea took its toll of both Elaine and myself. We were rejoiced after the long voyage to find ourselves with our two small traveling trunks at the station where fifteen years before I first saw a locomotive. A carriage and an express wagon conveyed us clear across the old-time swamp to Verde Island. A new corduroy road, while rather uncomfortable, was much better than walking.

“Big Beaver, a shriveled old Indian then, and he is alive yet, deigned to take my hand, said ‘How’ and grimaced, one could scarcely call it smiled, at Elaine.

“When well out in the river in the same canoe that had brought McFarlane and his sad tidings to us, Beaver said, ‘Where other girl?’

“I told him about Alix and McFarlane, also who Elaine was, but it is difficult to say whether or not an Indian is interested. Beaver merely grunted and when we reached a point in the river where Elaine first saw the old pile of stone here, the Indian said, ‘She tip,’ as the child jumped to her feet with an ‘Oh, oh, that’s beautiful. I’ll never leave that wonderful fairy castle.’

“I told her to sit quietly or we would never reach it.

“Micklejohn was awaiting us, big, kindly, raw-boned fellow that he was. He sleeps beside Hallowed over on the ‘burnt hill,’ as we call it, drowned in a dare-devil attempt to shoot the rapids below the village.

“I missed Hallowed, felt sad, but Elaine’s gladness cheered me. She was all over the house during the first few days; explored from cellar to garret, had to have explained how the water that comes out of the rock under the kitchen in a big stream is pumped by its own force through the use of an engine called a ‘ram’ set away back in a rock chamber. The water is raised to the stone tower on the west of the house and from there flows with some force throughout the whole place including the garden and stables.

“On making an inspection of the vaults in which vegetables and fruit were stored, the third day after our arrival, I heard voices in the vault in which father kept his private boxes and papers and on looking in, found Elaine, the cook and the housemaid before the door of the inner vault which father had always kept locked. The cook had inserted the hooked end of the grate poker into a hole where a big brass bolt had served as a handle in pulling the massive stone door open.

“‘What is in here, Hugh?’ Elaine asked.

“I told her of its previous use and that it was empty and Micklejohn who was with me explained that he had found the lock broken but sprung; he had endeavored to get the door open and failed. The bolt had been removed, in the belief that by putting a hook through to the inside the lock could be forced, but the bolt went in only about six inches and the door was a foot thick. Elaine appropriated this vault as her own because of the inner door being closed.

“Hallowed had added at least two hundred acres to the cleared land. There was quite a sum to my credit in the bank at Valleyford and over a thousand dollars in currency in the oak chest.

“My first work was in identifying myself at the bank, accomplished without difficulty.

“A week from the day I reached home I started in to comply with McFarlane’s injunction to interview John Blank.

“I took the small canoe one afternoon and found my way through the back channel to Blank’s landing, somewhat in need of repair; walked slowly through the deep shade of the ash swamp and up through the rows of currant bushes, thinking how I would be met by the unfortunate man and the kindly wife and of what he would say to me.

“I intended asking all about his wonderful gift of thought transference.

“The house had that deserted appearance which chills the blood. I rapped on the door several times, called, ‘Mr. Blank.’

“Not a sound. Somewhere out on the river a loon sent up its lonesome cry. It threatened rain. After a time I tried to open the door. Something held it firm. The window--I could see that a hickory peg slipped through a hole in the sash into the jamb, secured it. Finally I broke one of the small panes of glass, slipped my arm in and pulled the peg. I called again through the open pane. The door and window, being fastened from the inside, added to my conviction that the man was there, perhaps very ill, so I pushed open the window and managed to crawl through, letting it slip down into place as quietly as possible, though it made a disquieting noise.

“The day was cloudy and though the room where I had once sat with Mr. and Mrs. Blank at dinner was in order, the light was dim. I felt like a burglar, called a couple of times, then opened the door of the south room where you found Haig.”

Here Hugh stopped, looked at Elaine, who had been quietly sleeping for some time, looked at me, shifted his sister to a more comfortable position. I merely nodded and Hugh continued.

“There was nothing but the little white dresser, bed and blue furniture there. Then I lifted the latch of the north room door. It was fastened from the inside. Placing a chair against the door I stood upon it and looked over the top of the partition; a long, square cornered box of cedar was on the floor, a small pine box, open and half full of something white resembling in the dim light flour or chalk stood close beside it and there was some of the white substance on the floor. The braided wool mat was covered with it. Otherwise the room was in order, the bed ‘made up.’

“Nobody was in the house. I was about to withdraw, had even thought of the note of apology for housebreaking that I should leave with an invitation to come to the Hall, when my eye caught a piece of white paper tacked onto the top of the chest.

“I swung over the partition and landed almost atop the small box. On the card, tacked at its four corners, I found written:

JOHN BLANK

and underneath was the verse which you read on his tombstone the day we met. On a folded sheet of paper, slipped partially under the tacked card was written in bold though cramped handwriting,

“‘Life is intolerable, sleep the only solace. There is no God of mercy, my life is proof positive. No more sorrow, no more yearning, only sleep. Why not sleep? This is my will and testament that all I possess shall be the property of one Hugh Craighead of Edinburgh, Scotland. I make no conditions but pray that he may make use of his vast inheritance in searching prisons for the unhappy victims of circumstances such as I, that they may have wrongs righted. Stranger, show mercy in death to one to whom mercy in life has never been shown. Bury me as I am.’

“I never was a coward, yet some feeling other than horror took possession of me. I unbolted the bedroom door, fled across the outer room, raised the bar and swung the front door wide; getting outside was my first thought, for I did not doubt that the body of Blank was in the big chest and the thought unmanned me.

“A thin misty rain was falling, but I sat head in hands on a crude seat fashioned from a section of a tree, unmindful; anything was better than this horrible house.

“My inheritance. The pity of it, the poor fellow giving all he had to the boy who had not repulsed him, the deformed.

“Then came unworthy thoughts. If a body was in that box, it could not be that of Blank for Elaine had caught his thought message. The message had said he was right there in Edinburgh. Probably he was there now, certainly this house had been closed for some weeks. The dust on my clothing attested this, but why this mockery, a hoax. I should find nothing alarming in the chest.

“I applied a match to the carefully trimmed wick of a tallow dip sitting on the table, walked boldly into the room, examined the white substance. It was lime, but that spoke nothing. I took hold of the top of the chest, seemingly a loose lid as it overlapped the lower box, raised it while standing at the south end, perhaps a foot, then dropped it quickly, reeled from the room, ran from the house down through the garden and was in my canoe before I remembered the door. It was open.

“Had the house been afire--perhaps it was as I had left the light on the little stand--I could not have forced myself back.

“As I paddled my canoe over the long four miles through the quietly falling rain, night came and with it a sense of my responsibility as a citizen. The coroner must come. I must again see this awful evidence of a tragedy. Who but I, last in the thoughts of this man, should see his earthly house decently interred; but Elaine’s happiness must not be encroached upon. I must ride to the village. Lindsay would not do. Elaine must be made to think I had an urgent call, a veterinary for one of the horses; no, one of the men could go for such a thing as that; the night was bad; I had it--Smith up the river road had sent an Indian for me. Elaine did not know of my visit to the Blank place, otherwise she would have insisted upon accompanying me.

“I found my little sister asleep on a divan, looking unusually pale; a book, the family Bible, was on the floor. There was also a couple of small sheets of my mother’s writing paper there and a pencil beside her hand. The paper was covered with that peculiar, perpendicular writing which I had not seen since we left Edinburgh. Hard to decipher but finally after repairing to my lighted room I traced the words: ‘Hugh must respect my request.’

“Another line, ‘He will know. Hugh must keep secret.’

“I did not attempt to read further but returned at once to Elaine’s room and quietly shook her. Wide-awake and wild-eyed she looked at me a second, then exclaimed, ‘My, what a terrible dream! Why should he follow me here?’

“Gently I put an arm about her; told her she must stay out in the open air more. She replied, ‘I was out in the woods, just before the mist became rain. I was enjoying the quiet and the damp smell, when a feeling that I must return to the house came over me. I thought something might have happened to you, but when I reached my room I knew--you know the rest Hughie--and he seemed so anxious. The words just came into my head, repeated over and over. Don’t you see, Hughie, that the writing is just like that through the planchette? What is it? What does it all mean?’

“‘Just a troublesome dream, child,’ was all I could say. I told her I must ride up to Smith’s on some urgent call or he would not have sent for me, sent the maid to her room and, supperless, rode out through the dark woods.

“That was a long, hard ride. Village lights looked good when I reached the top of the last hill. My thoughts had not been friendly companions. I was disobeying a written request of the dead and Elaine’s writings troubled me. Somehow in the light of events, thought transference did not fit. The man, John Blank, was dead, had been, to my thinking, dead for weeks. I could not fathom it.

“I sought out the doctor who served as coroner. He listened in silence to my story, then went to a cupboard in the corner of the office, took out a bottle, poured two generous portions of the contents, handed one glass to me saying, ‘Take another drink, young man, ’twill clear your brain,’ adding after he had swallowed the entire contents of his glass, ‘Damn me if I believe a word of it; how could a man murder himself and put the body in a coffin? Put that under your belt and you’ll feel better.’

“Alcohol and I were almost strangers but I took the doctor’s advice and drank most of the stuff. Scotch, he called it. The result was I heard the doctor’s voice as though from a distance saying that Sandy Campbell said that while hunting he had once seen Blank on the river, that some years ago somebody had said in the post office that he had seen Blank and a woman taking a train at Beauville, but he, the doctor-coroner, had never set eyes on him, did not really believe the county harbored such a person.

“‘Why, he must have been either a ticket-of-leave man or an escaped criminal.’

“Vaguely I gleaned that the doctor with some villagers would come to the Hall on the morrow, take boats and hold an inquest, should he find that I was sane and had seen what I stated.

“Long after midnight I aroused a stable boy to care for my horse. The road home was heavy but the rain had ceased falling. I came in through the orchard way, slipped quietly into Elaine’s room, found her sleeping like a baby and retired, wondering if I had done right in summoning the official or if I should not rather have taken a spade, dug a grave and covered from an unsympathetic world all that was left of my friend John Blank.

“They came next day about eleven o’clock, a joking, inquisitive lot. None had ever seen Craighead Hall. My father always stood aloof from the people of the village and township. To a man these seven were silenced when ushered through the front door. I felt a pang of regret. Father would have dined these yokels in the servants’ hall instead of here. To carry out the deception which I had practised on Elaine, we took fishing tackle in the boats. Micklejohn, I took into my confidence and he accompanied the jury with the doctor and myself.

“The door stood ajar as when I had fled Blank’s house. The air was less oppressive than when I had entered the day before. The tallow dip, exhausted of fuel, had harmlessly burned the wick and gone out.

“The coroner, erstwhile jocular and careless, became now the public officer, swore his jury of six, examined the room thoroughly, felt the lime in the box, rubbed it between finger and thumb, lifted, as I had, the box lid and closed it as quickly. The box was carried by the six men and placed on the dining table.

“When the jury was seated, I read the letter, then made a plea that its request be heeded and that no further examination be made. I identified the body as that of John Blank. The old doctor merely shook his head, removed the lid of the chest and I turned my back and looked out the window through the long rows of current bushes down to the dismal black ash swamp and thought of the dead years that had passed since my memorable evening as a guest in this place.

“‘Ingenious’ the coroner called it, could one believe the evidence of one’s eyes. Could any man deliberately prepare in this way to cut the thread of life, fashion out a box, fill it with quicklime, pile it over his person, keep at his side enough to fill out the spaces, leaving only a hand and face clear? The cover was doubtless kept up at the end where the head rested through the use of a neatly fashioned prop, fitting into a slight groove in the top of the right side of the box. A slight jar only was necessary to dislodge the prop permitting the cover to close down into place. The verdict was suicide by the taking of cyanide of potassium.

“Inwardly I mentally apologized; the villagers were after all, kindly fellows, sobered and shocked. They volunteered aid in taking the body away from this almost inaccessible spot. Micklejohn and I led the sad procession of canoes homeward and we carried with us in our canoe all that was mortal of one of God’s creatures who was glad to exchange the certainties of life for the unknown beyond.

“We did not go near the Hall. With the aid of the young men, we conveyed the remains to the little church on the main road, got the sexton to open the church door, but could not arrange for a plot of ground for burial.

“Next day by appointment the six young men met us and for the first time I learned that God frowns on a suicide and that the sacred half-acre could not be his resting place. Indignant, I sought among the curious onlookers who had sprung from nowhere apparently, for the owner of the land adjoining the little cemetery, and pressing on him a banknote of such size that cupidity overcame disinclination, I secured the little six by ten plot where you found me. I declined the aid of the minister; helped dig the grave and without so much as a prayer laid to rest the stranger whose life was a living death, to whom death in a terrible form came as a relief.

“I wrote McFarlane details of the matter, visited the county seat and found that the government had never given title to the Blank place. Through purchase I added over a thousand acres, good and bad, to my estate.

“In due season a letter came from McFarlane urging me to comply with Blank’s request--fit up the farm as a refuge, apply my talent as a barrister, he called it, in releasing prisoners unjustly or overly punished--and enclosing a £5,000 draft.

“I filled out the Craighead estate to its present proportions and while at the village one day purchasing material for the building of the surrounding fence, I sat in court and heard Haig and his companions sentenced. This decided me. I worked on Haig’s case first, but fruitlessly, until justice as the Canadians see it, was satisfied.

“Many sad cases came to my attention. In five years I have given aid to nearly two hundred unfortunates. Some day the province will be moved to a sense of justice and we shall have a commission carrying on the work on a large scale. My work is insignificant. I must see our representative soon and secure his aid in the next sitting of Parliament.”

Hugh interrupted his story here to look at Elaine who had moved uneasily and said, “Gordon, this child is more to me than sister. She seems to like you. Can’t you manage to spend the fall and winter with us?”

My heart seemed to stop functioning. “This is my opportunity,” flashed through my brain, but the struggle for speech was apparently so strenuous that it attracted from Hugh a surprised glance at me. Haltingly I answered, “Nothing would please me better, provided my firm will let me off. They certainly sent me on a wild goose chase. Hogarth seems to have vanished into thin air from here and he stayed here only one afternoon.”

“Perhaps if you arranged to spend a few months at the Hall you might by visiting the neighboring villages and railway points, even going to Montreal and Quebec, our foreign shipping ports, find some trace of the man. He certainly would eventually return to England,” Hugh said, then added, “I must get this youngster to bed. Fong has peeked in here twice to see what has become of his charge.”

I offered to assist, but without knowing just how. Hugh, frail-appearing, just picked her up in his arms, saying, “I shall be back,” opened the panel and disappeared.