Part 14

I said nothing. But the matter had taken a hold on me which I could not shake off. I determined to look through the absurdity and mystery of this so-called spiritualism until I had discovered the truth which Warrick believed lay in it. I could not divest myself, either, of an unaccountable impression that at last we were upon the track of the missing man.

I induced Mrs. Wylie to remain on the boat during its next run, for the boy’s sake, who grew stronger and more rugged every day. There was the making of a man in the little fellow; he had a hearty, straightforward look in his puny face, that made a friend of everybody. For the woman, from the day when the message came to her from her husband, dead, she gave way in mind or body as if some sinew had been snapped which had held her up. I fancied that unconsciously she had been keeping some vague hope alive which was gone now, forever. She crept out now to the hurricane-deck, and sat all day; where her look settled, or her hands fell on her lap, there they rested, immovable. As I knew her better, I discovered why the men held her in such a pitying aspect. She was a simple-hearted, credulous creature, such as everybody feels bound and anxious to take care of when they are left drifting about the world.

So we made our way up to the headwaters of the Ohio. It was late in October, I remember,--warm, yellow sunshine by day, and cold nights. The fields nipped brown and red in the early frosts. I used to think if anything could take the poor woman’s thoughts off the dead, the cheerful sights and sounds along shore ought to do it. The water was unusually clear, and curdled and bubbled back from the edge of the boat all day, filled with a frothed, green light; the hills on both sides kept rising back and back to the sky beyond, mottled with purple and crimson and blackish greens; we passed thousands of little islands shying out of the current, which were mere beds of feathery moss and golden-rod. Then there were pretty, new little villages, and the busy larger towns, and farms, at long intervals; and when these were passed we floated into the deep solitude again. I noticed it the more because we were out of our usual run; the Strader plied then between Louisville and New Orleans. But the woman saw nothing of it, I think.

When we reached Pittsburg, and had discharged cargo, I determined, with Warrick, to make a final test of the matter. F. was then in the city, just back from England, the most successful medium, next to Home, who ever left the States. He was willing, “for a consideration,” to hold a private _séance_ and bring us in contact with any of the dead.

He was hardly the person to whom one would think St. Peter would have lent his keys for ever so short a time; an oily, bloated sensualist, with thick lips, and thicker eyelids half closed over a dull, sleepy eye. He was dressed like an Orleans blackleg, gaudy with purple velvet waistcoat and flash jewelry. But if there was any truth in spiritualism, here was its interpreter. I engaged him to come on board on Saturday evening; no one was to be present but Warrick, Ellen, and myself; the boat was empty at the time, with the exception of its regular crew, below. There was but little persuasion needed to induce Ellen to consent.

“He may bring me another message,” with a light flickering into her eyes. “Joe will be glad to find the way.” It is people like Ellen who are always sure converts of spiritualism; it seems so natural to them that their dead should come back, that they are blind to any absurd discrepancies in the manner. On Saturday morning, on the wharf, I met Stein, who had left the boat some two years before, and remembering his old liking for Joe, told him what we were about to do. Stein was a hard-headed, shrewd little Yankee; I was surprised, therefore, to see how discomposed and startled he appeared at the first mention of the affair; he denounced F. as a humbug with a great deal of heat, and tried to persuade and chaff me out of it; but finding he could not, asked leave to come himself to the _séance_.

“You’re bitten, Captain,” he said. “It will be easy to persuade you that you see ghosts yourself. You had better let me bring a little daylight with me.”

I told Warrick of my meeting with Stein, and he, having nothing else to do, sauntered off in the afternoon to bring him down. I told Ellen also, who, to my surprise, reddened and grew pale, when I named him.

“He is a man whom I have no reason to like,” she said. “But it does not matter.”

In the evening F. came on board, stopping in the outer cabin, where we were soon joined by Stein. We waited an hour for Warrick, who did not return, and then entered the saloon where Ellen was seated. I noticed that Stein drew back, muttering, “You did not tell me that woman was here,” and that no greeting passed between them.

The _séance_ proceeded according to the usual formula. We sat around a bare table, on which were placed by Stein and myself the names of those whom we wished to appear written on scraps of paper rolled up in pellets, and laid in a small heap. Ellen wrote none. “He will come,” she said, simply.

But few raps were heard. F. delivered the messages by writing, his fat, lumpy hand moving spasmodically over the sheets of paper. From several of the names written on the pellets came communications, vague and meaningless, any one of which might have been exchanged for the other without loss of force.

F. glanced shrewdly around from time to time, fixing his strange, introverted gaze oftenest on Ellen and little Joe, who had crept in and stood looking him boldly in the face. He turned to me.

“One whom you desire to appear has not yet come? So far the _séance_ has failed--for you?” he said.

I nodded. His face heightened in color as if the blood slowly rose to his head; the veins swelled; drops of sweat oozed out on his neck and forehead; he peered sharply about the room, as if out of the dark shadows he expected visible spirits to rise.

“He is coming!” said Ellen, with a gasp. Stein became ghastly pale at the words, and looked, terrified, over his shoulder, recovering himself with a feeble laugh.

The table where we sat was under the chandelier, two of the lamps of which barely sufficed to light that end of the cabin. The remainder stretched, long and narrow and black, to the far upper deck. The medium, looking at Stein as if he saw through him into this outer darkness, sat motionless. There was a long silence. Then he raised his hand, made a slow beckoning movement into the shadow. Ellen and Stein turned their pale faces, breathlessly.

“They are coming! They are here!” he said. “They tell me all you would know. The man you seek is not dead. He was cheated, deceived, carried off to Caraccas that another man might marry his wife.”

As his voice rose, Stein rose with it, stood facing him with a look of terror and ferocity, like a wild animal whose lair has suddenly been uncovered. Sudden light flashed on me. I sprang up; Ellen cowered with a cry, but above all sounded F.’s sharp, monotonous sentences.

“He is not dead; he has returned! He is--_here_!” as Stein, with an oath, pointed into the shadow where Warrick appeared, and leaped back as though the ghost of his victim confronted him.

It was no ghost. A little, red-headed, weak-eyed fellow had his arms about Ellen’s neck, holding her to his breast as if he had the strength of a lion. Warrick, the medium, and I exclaimed and swore, choking for words; but he was silent. He only held her as close as if he had indeed come back from the grave to find her, putting back her head, now and then, and looking at her with a wonderful love in his puny, insignificant face.

“Ellen! Ellen!” he said at last; “they told me you were dead,--you and the boy. This my Joe!--little Joe?” picking up the boy, handling his legs and arms and looking into his face, his own contorted and wet with tears. We men moved off down into the lower cabin, leaving them alone; but I saw Joe a long time after, still sitting there with his wife clinging to him, and the boy on his knees, and I could not help it, I went in and held out my hand. “I congratulate you, old fellow! God has been good to you!”

But he only looked up with a bewildered smile. “Yes, God has been good. This is Ellen, Captain. And my little son. _My little son._”

Wylie’s story is soon told. Stein had persuaded him to give his creditors the slip and make for California, promising to join him shortly, and that they would speedily make their fortunes. Wylie was a man easily led, and consented. He was concealed under a trap-door in the cigar-shop, and escaped while Fordyce and I sought the police.

Stein had intercepted his letters to his wife until such time as he could send him word of her death. In his own plans upon her he was disappointed.

I am glad to say that Joe brought back enough yellow dust to keep the wolf from the door for many a day. He and his wife are living somewhere in Indiana. Joe, their son, was a drummer-boy in the Thirty-sixth Ohio, under Captain Saunders, and I’ll venture to say no braver heart kept time to his “Rat-tat-too” than that which beat under his own little jacket.

I consented to write down these facts, as I said, because of their bearing upon the matter of spiritualism. In this case, as in every other of which I have become cognizant, the mediums have only put into shape the thoughts of those who question them. To admit that certain persons can at will become possessed of the secret movements in the mind of another, will solve the whole mystery. In this case of Wylie, the mediums, Lusk, the woman at Cincinnati, and finally F., simply reproduced the surmises or knowledge of Warrick, Ellen, and Stein. It is not agreeable to think that an animal so gross as F. should have power to decipher our inmost thoughts. Better that, however, than to believe that those we have lost should hold out their hands to us through such a messenger.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Kant, who carried his demands of unconditional veracity to so extravagant a length as to affirm, that, if a man were to see an innocent person escape from a murderer, it would be his duty, on being questioned by the murderer, to tell the truth, and to point out the retreat of the innocent person, under any certainty of causing murder. Lest this doctrine should be supposed to have escaped him in any heat of dispute, on being taxed with it by a celebrated French writer, he solemnly reaffirmed it, with his reasons.

[B] “June 1, 1675.--Drinke part of 3 boules of punch (a liquor very strainge to me),” says the Rev. Mr. Henry Teonge, in his Diary lately published. In a note on this passage, a reference is made to Fryer’s Travels to the East Indies, 1672, who speaks of “that enervating liquor called _Paunch_ (which is Indostan for five), from five ingredients.” Made thus, it seems the medical men called it Diapente; if with four only, Diatessaron. No doubt, it was its evangelical name that recommended it to the Rev. Mr. Teonge.