Volume 20 — CHAPTER II.

It was not Laidley who entered, but Mrs. Combe, then the most-famous clairvoyant in the United States. According to statements of men both shrewd and honest she had lately succeeded in bringing the dead back to them in actual bodily presence. The voice was heard, then the spirit slowly grew into matter beside them. They could feel and see its warm flesh, its hair and clothing, and even while they held it it melted again into the impalpable air, and was gone. The account was attested by persons of such integrity and prominence as to command attention from scientific men. They knew, of course, that it was a trick, but the trick must be so well managed as to be worth the trouble of exposure. Hence, Mrs. Combe upon her entrance was received with silent, keen attention.

She was a tall pillar-like woman, with some heavy drapery of black velvet or cloth about her: there were massive coils of coarse black hair, dead narrow eyes of the same color, a closely-shut jaw: no point of light in the figure, but a rope of unburnished gold about her neck. She stood with her hands dropped at her sides, immovable, while her husband, a greasy little manikin with a Jewish face, turned on the light and waved the attention of the audience to her: "This is Miriam Combe, the first person since the Witch of Endor who has succeeded in materializing the shpirits of the dead. Our meeting here to-day is under peculiar shircumstances. A zhentleman unknown to me and Mrs. Combe, but who, I am told, is near death, desires to recall the shpirit of a dead friend. Zhentlemans will reconize the fact that the thing we propose to do depends upon the states of minds and matters about us. If these elements are disturbed by unbelief or by too much light or noise when the soul shtruggling to return wants silence and darkness, why—it cannot make for itself a body—dat's all."

"You compel belief, in a word, before you prove to us that we ought to believe," said a professor from a Baptist college in New Jersey, smiling blandly down upon him. "Scientifically—"

"I knows noting of scientifics. I knows dat my wife hash de power to ashist de souls to clode demselves wid matter. I don't pretend to explain where she got dat power, I don't know what ish dat power: I only know she hash it. If zhentlemans will submit to the conditions, they shall zhoodge for demselves."

"Now, the ignorance of this man impresses me favorably," said the professor to his friends. "He is evidently incapable of inventing a successful trick even of conjuring. If any great unknown force of Nature has chosen him or his wife as tools, we should not despise the manifestation because the tools are very gross matter. They are the steel wire charged with the lightning, perhaps."

Dr. Dehr came forward and touched the motionless woman, shaking his head solemnly: "She is highly charged with electricity now, sir. The air is vital, as I might say, with spiritual presences. I have no doubt, gentlemen, before we part, that we shall see one of the most remarkable phenomena of the nineteenth century."

"How well she poses!" whispered Miss Fleming to the judge. "But the stage-properties are bad: the velvet is cotton, and the gold brass-gilt."

"Now, to me," said the judge emphatically, "there is a dreadful reality, a dead look, in her face. What Poe would have made of this scene! There was a man who could grapple with these supreme mysteries! No! that woman undoubtedly has learned the secret of life and of death. She can afford to be passive." The judge's very whisper was judicial, though pulpy.

It was not possible that the woman should have heard them, yet a moment after she lifted her eyes and motioned slowly toward them.

"God bless my soul, ma'am! You don't want me!" cried the judge.

Waring half rose, laughing, but with cold chills down his backbone, and then dropped into his seat, relieved: "You are the chosen victim, Miss Fleming."

Cornelia went up to the medium. She was confident the whole affair was a vulgar trick, but there was a stricture at her heart as if an iron hand had been laid upon it. The energy went out of her step, the blood from her face.

The woman laid her hand on her arm. "I need you," she said in a deep voice. "You have great magnetic force: you can aid this soul to return to life if you will. Sit there." She placed both her hands lightly on Cornelia's forehead. Miss Fleming dropped into the seat: she could not have done otherwise.

"Before we opens the séance," proceeded Combe, "zhentlemans can examine de cabinet and convince demselves dere is no trick."

The cabinet was a light triangular structure of black walnut, about seven feet in height, placed in one corner of the room, though with an open space between it and the wall. It moved on casters: the door was on the side facing the audience. Miss Fleming observed with amusement that the seat given her removed her to the farthest distance from this door.

"You will notish dat dere is absolutely noting in de cabinet but a chair—zhoost de walls and de floor and de chair. Miriam will sit there, and de door will be closed. When it opens you will see de embodied spirit beside her."

"Hillo!" cried the judge, "what's this behind the cabinet?"

"It is a window overlooking de garden: I had it boarded up to prevent you sushpecting me of trickery. But you sushpect mine boards, mein Gott! Exshamine dem, exshamine dem! Go outside."

The judge did so. "They are screwed on honestly enough," he said to the spectators. "A ghost had need of a battering-ram to come through that window. It opens on an area thirty feet deep."

The woman went into the cabinet and the door was closed. Steps were heard upon the stairs.

"It ish de zhentleman who calls for de shpirit to appear," said Combe in a whisper.

The door opened, and Laidley, supported by Captain Swendon, entered, giving a quick appealing look about him as he halted for a moment on the threshold. The dignity of approaching death was in his weak, ghastly face, and the judge rose involuntarily, just as he would have stood uncovered if a corpse had gone by. Laidley took the seat which the captain with his usual bluster placed for him opposite the door of the cabinet. Combe turned out the lights: the room was in absolute darkness. The judge moved uneasily near to Waring: "Don't laugh at me, Mr. Waring. But I really feel that there is a Presence in this room which is not human. I wish I had listened to my wife. She does not approve of this sort of thing at all: she thinks no good churchman should meddle with it. But there is something in the room."

"Yes, I am conscious of what you mean. But it is a physical force, not spiritual. Not electricity, either. It is something which has never affected my senses before. Whatever it is, it is the stock in trade of these people."

They were ordered by Combe to join hands, and everybody obeyed excepting the captain's daughter, who stood unnoticed by one of the curtained windows.

A profound silence followed, broken by a stifled sob from some over-nervous woman. The low roll of an organ filled the void and died. After that there was no complete sound but at intervals the silence took breath, spoke in a half-articulate wail, and was dumb again.

Pale nebulous light shone in the cabinet and faded: then a single ray fell direct on Laidley's face. It stood out from the night around like a bas-relief—livid, commonplace, a presentment of every-day death. Each man present suddenly saw his own grave open, and the world beyond brought within reach through this insignificant man.

"The spirits of many of the dead are present," said the sepulchral voice within the cabinet. "What do you ask of them?"

Laidley's lips moved: he grasped the arms of his chair, half rose: then he fumbled mechanically in his pocket for his cigar-case, and not finding it sank back helplessly.

"What do you ask of them? Their time is brief."

"I'm a very ill man," he piped feebly: "the doctors give me no hope at all. I want advice about a certain matter before—before it's too late. It is a great wrong I have done that I want to set right."

"Can any of the dead counsel you? Or do you summon one soul to appear?"

"There is but one who knows."

"Call for her, then."

Laidley looked about him uncertainly: then he said in a hoarse whisper, "Virginie Morôt!"

The captain sprang to his feet: "My wife? No, no! for God's sake!"

The light was swiftly drawn back into the cabinet and extinguished. After several minutes the voice was heard again: "The spirit summoned is present. But it has not the force to resume a material body unless the need is urgent. You must state the question you would have answered."

"I must see Virginie here, in bodily presence, before I'll accept any answer," said Laidley obstinately. "I'll have no hocus-pocus by mediums or raps. If the dead know anything, she knows why I need her. I have had money to which she had a—well, a claim. I've not spent it, perhaps, in the best way. I have a mind now to atone for my mistake by leaving it to a charity where I know it will do great good."

An amazed whistle broke through the darkness from the corner where the judge sat. The captain caught Laidley's shoulder. "William," he whispered, "surely you forget Jane."

Laidley shook him off. "The money is my own," he said loudly, "to do with as I choose. But if Virginie can return from the dead, she shall decide for me."

"It's enough to bring her back," muttered the judge. "Do you hear that?" thumping Waring's knee—"that miserable shrimp swindling her child in order to buy God's good-will for himself!"

There was a prolonged silence. At last a voice was heard: "She will appear to you."

The organ rolled heavily, low soft thunders of music rose and fell, a faint yellowish vapor stole out from under the cabinet and filled the darkness with a visible haze. Captain Swendon stumbled to his feet and went back to his daughter: "I can't bear it, child! I can't bear it!" dropping into a chair.

She took his hand in her own, which were quite cool, and stroked and kissed it. But she did not speak nor take her eyes from the door of the cabinet.

It opened. Within sat Miriam, immovable, her eyes closed. Beside her stood a shadowy luminous figure covered with a filmy veil. It moved forward into the room. So thick was the vapor that the figure itself appeared but a shade.

Laidley stooped forward, his hands on his knees, his lips apart, his eyes dilated with terror.

The veil slowly fell from the face of the spirit, and revealed, indistinctly as the negative of a photograph, a small thin woman with eager, restless eyes, and black hair rolled in puffs high on the head in the fashion of many years ago.

"Virginie!" gasped Laidley.

The captain shuddered, and hid his face. His daughter, with a quick step backward, threw aside the curtains and flung open the shutters. The broad daylight streamed in.

Combe sprang toward her with an oath.

The young girl held back the curtain steadily. "We need fresh air," she said smiling resolutely in his face.

The rush of air, the daylight, the cheerful voice wakened the room as out of a vision of death. The men started to their feet; there was a tumult of voices and laughter; the materialized soul staggered back to reach the cabinet. The whole of the cheap trickery was bared: her hair was an ill-fitting wig, the chalk lay in patches on her face, the vapor of Hades was only salt burning in a dish: the boards removed from the window showed her snug hiding-place inside.

Dr. Dehr's fury made itself heard above the confusion: "You have brought Spiritualism into disrepute by your infernal imposture!" clutching the poor wretch by the shoulder, while another intemperate disciple called loudly for the police. The woman began to sob, but did not utter a word.

"Let her go, doctor," said Mr. Waring, coming up. "We paid to see a farce, and it was really a very nice bit of acting. This poor girl was hired, no doubt: she is only earning her living."

"What has she done?" cried Dehr. "Spiritualism in Philadelphia never has attracted the class of investigators that are here to-day, and she—" shaking her viciously—"she's an impostor!"

"Damnation! she's a woman!" wrenching his hand from her. She gave Waring a keen furtive glance, and drew quickly aside. While some of the seekers after truth demanded their five dollars back with New England obstinacy, and Combe chattered and screeched at them, she stood in the middle of the room, immovable, her sombre sallow face set, her tawdry stage-properties about her—the crown of false black hair, the sweeping drapery, the smoking dish with fumes of ghastly vapor.

Mr. Waring went up to a short, broadly-built man in gray who had been seated in the background during the séance. "I did not know that you were in town or here, Mr. Neckart," he said with a certain marked respect. "That is not an unpicturesque figure, I think. She would serve as a study of Night, now—a stormy, muggy town-night, full of ooze and slime." Mr. Waring's manner and rhetoric were uneasy and deferential. Mr. Neckart was a power in a region quite outside of the little fastidious gossiping club of men and women whom he was wont to call the World.

"Your Night, apparently, has little relish for the morning," he said.

The woman's threatening eyes, in fact, were fixed on the tall fair girl, the captain's daughter, who stood in the window, busied with buttoning her father's overcoat and pinning his empty sleeve to his breast. She was looking up at him, and talking: the wind stirred her loose pale-gold hair; behind her branches of white roses from a vine outside thrust themselves in at the window: the birds chirped in the rustling maples beyond.

"What a wonderful effect of light and color!" said Waring, who had lounged through studios and galleries enough to enable him to parcel out the world into so many bits of palette and brush-work. "Observe the atmosphere of sunshine and youth. Cabanel might paint the girl's face for the Dawn. Eyes of that profound blue appear to hold the light latent."

"There seems to be unusual candor in them," said Mr. Neckart, glancing carelessly at Jane again, and drawing on his gloves. "A lack of shrewdness remarkable in an American woman."

"The Swendons are Swedes by descent, you know. A little phlegm, a lack of passion, is to be expected, eh? Now, my own taste prefers the American type—features animated by a nimbler brain; as there, for example," looking toward Miss Fleming. "Ugly beyond apology. But there is a subtle attraction in it."

"No doubt you are right. I really know very little about women," indifferently. He nodded good-evening, glancing at his watch as he went out.

The captain was conscious of some malignant influence at his back, and turning, saw the woman, who had gradually approached, and now stood still. He hastily stepped between her and his daughter: "Good God! Stand back, Jane! This woman is following you."

"She looks as if she had the evil eye. But they are very fine eyes," said the young girl, inspecting her quietly, as if she had been a toad that stood suddenly upright in her way.

"I owe you an ill turn, and I shall pay it," said the woman with a tragic wave of the arms. "I had a way to support myself and my boy for a year, and you have taken it from me."

"It was such a very poor way! Such a shabby farce! And it was my mother that—" She stopped, a slight tremor on the fair, quiet face.

"Oh, I shall pay you!" The woman gathered her cheap finery about her and swept from the room.

In the confusion Judge Rhodes had sought out Laidley, full of righteous wrath on behalf of his friend the captain, against this limp fellow who was going to enter heaven with a paltering apology for dishonesty on his lips. Laidley, however, was reclining in the easy-chair with his eyes closed, and the closed eyes gave so startling an appearance of death to the face that the judge was thrown back in his headlong charge. "Why, why, William! I'm sorry to see you looking so under the weather," he said kindly.

Laidley's eyes began to blink: he smiled miserably: "It's too late to throw the blame on the weather, judge. Though I'm going back to Aiken next week. I came North too soon."

"This affair has turned out a more palpable humbug than I expected," trying to approach the point at issue by a gentle roundabout ascent. "I wish Van Ness had been here—Pliny Van Ness. There's a man whose advice I seek since I came to Philadelphia on all important matters. A man whose integrity, justice—God bless me, William! You must know Pliny Van Ness. Why don't you take his counsel, instead of meddling with these wretched mediums? Raising the dead to tell you what to do? Bah! If you had asked me, now—"

Laidley had drawn himself up in the chair, his watery eyes gathering a faint eagerness: "Sit down. Here. I wish to speak to you, judge. Nobody will hear us."

"Certainly. As you ask me now—I know the whole case. Don't try to talk: it only makes you cough. You want to say that the property—"

"I want to say nothing about the property. My will was made last week. I am determined to throw my means into that channel where it will best contribute to God's service. He will not scorn a late repentance. But Van Ness—it was about Van Ness I wanted to talk to you."

"If your will was made last week, why did you try to bring back poor dead Virginie to advise you?"

"I don't know," said Laidley, coughing nervously—"I don't know. I thought she would confirm me—I—I want to be just to her daughter, God knows!"

"What is your idea of justice?"

"Why this—this," eagerly, catching the judge's red, fat hand in his cold fingers. "Jane will be a woman whom Van Ness would be apt to approve. I know he's fastidious. But she's very delicate and fair—as fine a bit of human flesh as I ever saw. As for mind, she has none. A mere child. He could mould her—mould her. Eh? I think I could throw out an inducement which would lead him to look favorably on her—when she's of a marriageable age, that is. If the girl were married to such a man as Van Ness, surely she would be well placed for life. Nobody could blame me for not making an heiress of her."

"Jane? Van Ness?" said the judge thoughtfully. "Well, Van Ness is a man whom any woman in the country should be proud to marry. But he is impregnable to that sort of thing. And Jane is but a child, as you say. The scheme seems to me utterly unfeasible, Laidley. Besides, what has it to do with her claims on you?"

"It has everything to do with them. I give her instead of money a home and husband such as no money can buy. They must be brought together, judge. You must do it. I have a word to say to Van Ness that will open his eyes to her merits. I will plant the seed, as I might say. It will grow fast enough."

The judge was silent as he helped Laidley, still talking eagerly, down the stairs and into his carriage. The whole fantastic scheme was, as he saw, the cowardly device of the dying man to appease his conscience. That this poor creature should have any power to influence Van Ness, the purest and strongest of men, was a mere bit of braggadocio, which surely did not deceive even Laidley himself.

But what could he do? To stab with reproach, even to argue with this nerveless, worn-out man, flaccid in mind and body, seemed to the kindly old fellow as cruel as to torture a dying fish or other cold-blooded creature of whose condition or capacity for suffering he could have no just idea.

Rebecca Harding Davis.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]