CHAPTER XI.A LITTLE BOARD BRIDGES THE GREAT GULF.
Even here the soul of man is a member of the immaterial world; present and future, life and death, make one continuous whole in the order of spiritual nature.—Kant.
Even here the soul of man is a member of the immaterial world; present and future, life and death, make one continuous whole in the order of spiritual nature.—Kant.
Cartice Doring was one of those blessed beings who intermeddle not with the affairs of another. She asked no questions and was free from the vulgar vice of curiosity. She listened with sympathetic interest to all confidences that came to her, but solicited none. This made her a charming and lovable friend. Speaking once of the pernicious habit some well-meaning but ill-taught persons have of asking where you were born, if your parents are living, what religion you adhere to and the thousand other catechetical shots which compose their list of topics of conversation, she said:
“There may be a reason why the simplest and apparently most inoffensive question may give pain, so I never ask any. I have no wish to, for I have no curiosity. When I make a new acquaintance I am not concerned with the locality of his birth, the residence of his parents, or any part of his personal history. What heisindividually, not the accidents of his life, interests me,and that reveals itself as I become acquainted with him, without any probing on my part. Neither do I wish to bore into the sacred recesses of a friend’s heart. What she tells me I shall listen to lovingly; what she does not tell me I do not even wish to know.”
Hence it was that when the Butterfly fell into a meditative mood one evening when they were together, Cartice did not disturb her. By and by Chrissalyn said:
“I dreamed of Prescott last night. At least I suppose it was a dream, though it seemed extremely real. I was walking on the street and met him, and he held in his hand that queer little heart-shaped toy somebody sent you once—a thing with a French name that I don’t recall now, but you said it meant ‘little board.’—It has three legs, and one of them is a pencil.”
“A planchette,” suggested Mrs. Doring.
“Yes; that’s it. Well, Prescott held that up before me and said, ‘Try it, Butterfly! Try it!’”
Cartice’s eyes widened with interest.
“You remember we did try to write with it once long ago,” said the Butterfly, “but it only wrote foolishness, so we flung it aside and never tried again. I have been thinking about it all day, and should like to try it again, for I can’t get Prescott’s face, as I saw it last night, out of my mind.”
The planchette was brought forth, and its history retold. The donor was a man from whom Death had taken every member of his family. For years the desire of his heart had been to know if the dead are dead, or if they still live though unseen of men. After he went to another city, he wrote Mrs. Doring that he had received some startling revelations through Planchette, and sent her one, that she might experiment for herself. Having some ability with the brush and palette, he had painted an allegory on the under side of the tiny walnut board. Psyche in the celestial robes was passing upward out of sight. Cupid in fashionable modern attire, had thrown aside his bow and arrows, and held his right hand on a Planchette, upon which he concentrated all his attention, saying to it:
“Tell me hopeful messagesTo beguile earth’s sorrow;But of evil things, Oh! keepSilence till to-morrow.Then, perchance, I’ll be asleep.”
“A pretty thought,” said Cartice, displaying the picture, and reading the text aloud. “Love is always anxious to know the fate of the soul. He hopes, but seeks for something to keep hope alive. Benson wrote me extraordinary things about Planchette, but I tried it several times and got nothing.”
“But I got something when I tried,” said Mrs.Layton, with an air of interest. “To be sure it was rank nonsense, but it was something, andIdidn’t do it myself, whatever it was.”
“No; you said it was the work of the devil, and flung the planchette aside in disgust. What a convenience the devil is, anyway! How could the world get on without him? Everything the veriest dunce doesn’t understand is laid at his door. If he had never been invented, who would shoulder all the mysteries? Poor devil! Without being to blame he has been a terrific stumbling-block to the enlightenment of mankind. Wherever a persevering and heroic mind clipped out a crevice in the wall of ignorance, some dense-minded being was on hand to seize the devil and put him into it, to obscure whatever light might filter through. And so, though innocent himself, he has kept mankind in darkness through the centuries.”
However, devil or no devil, they covered a table with a big sheet of white paper, of the kind used by theRegister, and put Planchette upon it. The Butterfly put her tiny hand thereon, and they awaited its pleasure. As they were ignorant of the particular methods of its operation, they could but grope tentatively till they found the true way, just as the human race has groped upward through countless vain experiments and innumerable grievous blunders into such light as it now enjoys.
The occasion was in no way tinged with solemnity. They built no hopes on its outcome, nor gave it serious thought. It was the Butterfly’s inspiration, born of her dream. So little importance did they attach to it, that they fell to chatting of other things at once, leaving Planchette to its own devices, Mrs. Layton’s hand still resting on it, however.
Suddenly their chatter ceased. Planchette began to move across the paper, not aimlessly, as they expected, but deliberately and precisely, with intelligence and force. As suddenly as it had begun it stopped. They lifted it up and looked at its trail, and there was a word plainly and evenly written--the word “Gaily.”
“More of its nonsense, just as I feared,” sighed the Butterfly, in disgust.
“Well, try it again, dear,” pleaded her friend. “It’s worth studying, even if it does write nonsense. It’s extraordinary that it writes at all.”
With polite alacrity it wrote again with more ease and speed than before: “Do you not remember Gaily—Gaily, the Troubadour?”
This had no meaning for the Butterfly, and she was about to express her displeasure, when she glanced at her friend. Cartice was leaning far back in the chair, her face white and drawn, her mouth slightly open, her eyes startled and staring, and her breath coming in gasps.
“O Cartice, dearest! Don’t look like that!Don’t!” Chrissalyn cried in a terrified voice, jumping up and seizing her friend in her arms, alternately shaking and embracing her. “What is it? What do you see? What has happened?”
Mrs. Doring tried to speak, but her mouth was parched and dry, her tongue leaden. She could only point with her finger at the writing.
“Yes, yes; but it’s only foolishness—a line out of one of Moore’s old songs. Don’t be frightened at the silly thing. It must have come from my mind somehow, though I wasn’t thinking of it.”
“It means everything to me,” Cartice gasped at last. “I understand it. Try again, dear. Try again. I will explain presently.”
Rather rebelliously Chrissalyn straightened Planchette and put her tiny hand again upon it, growling; “I feel more like smashing the mischievous thing than humoring it, since it gave you such a fright.”
“It was not fright, dear. It was astonishment, awe, wonder—many emotions blended, but fear was not among them.”
Several minutes passed but Planchette moved not. The operator’s patience would have been exhausted, had not her friend kept her faithful to the work with cheering speeches. Presently the weird little instrument began to walk off again, leaving this line in big, bold letters:
“Gaily, the Troubadour, offers his love once more to the tall, young pine.”
Cartice read it aloud, then threw up her hands and burst into weeping—a weeping that was half-laughing, an ebullition of pent-up emotion like that which comes at the fortunate ending of a long strain of anxiety.
“He lives! He lives!” she cried, in passionate joy. “All live—all, all who have gone out of our sight into the silence. Not one is dead. Not one has ever died. The greatest of questions is answered.”
Picking up Planchette she touched her lips to it reverently. Then putting her arms around her dazed friend, she kissed her again and again, saying:
“Chrissalyn, dear Chrissalyn, you have always been a blessing and a comfort to me; but now you have opened the whole universe to me; you have given me light—the brightest light that can come to any one. That scrawling line tells me more than any volume ever printed could. It is from an old-time friend, who died soon after I last saw him, one who loved me well. His name was Westfield, but because of his fondness for quoting from Moore in political speeches, and what the slang of newspaper offices calls ‘fine writing,’ his chums dubbed him, ‘Gaily, the Troubadour,’ and by this affectionate nickname one of his old comrades frequently addressed himin my presence. And he named me a tall young pine. You knew none of this, for I am sure I never told you about him. Therefore it cannot have been taken from your mind, neither can it have been drawn from mine, for I never thought ofhim. If I had any one in mind, it was Prescott, because you had dreamed of Prescott in connection with Planchette, and because I have wondered so much about him since he went away—wondered in what part of the universe his dauntless spirit has found action, or if heisat all. Yet I scarcely dared hope even for him, for there was the possibility that death was the end of everything. I had no proof to the contrary.”
The Butterfly was a trifle dazed by the emotion of her friend, who was usually so self-possessed. Even by the light of her explanation she could scarcely take it in. The subject of death, no matter how treated, was repugnant to her. Even proof that death was not death had but little interest for her. Of course there was something afterward. Everybody knew that. Wasn’t it all set down in the books somewhere, straight enough? But what was the use of dwelling on a subject that had so many unpleasant features in it? Or why delve after the facts in regard to it? That was her manner of dealing with this mighty question. What attracted her was life—yes, life, poor, cramped, hard and ugly as someof it had been for her, still she loved it, found joy in it, craved it and its material pleasures and never wanted to be reminded that it had an end. A new gown could arouse her enthusiasm, and a flashing jewel give her supreme pleasure; but death, ugh! who wanted to talk of so gruesome an event? Dead people lived somewhere, as a matter of course, but wasn’t it best to let them alone in their own place wherever it is, and have nothing to do with them?
This is a curious attitude of mind toward a subject of more importance to us than any other, yet thousands of presumably intelligent people think the same. They want the dead treated like dangerous criminals, although their nearest and dearest may be of them. They shut them away with relentless cruelty, doing their best to put them out of their very thoughts. In this way they slay them more effectually than Death himself has slain them. Resistlessly they move on to the same end themselves, yet zealously refuse to learn aught of what that end may be. Astonishing mental darkness and indolence, but alas! not uncommon.
It was some time before Cartice recovered self-possession and induced her friend to go on with the experiment. But the chain was broken, Planchette refused to move again.
Still, Mrs. Doring had enough to dwell upon. Late into the night she lay awake, thinking ofit, marveling at it and rejoicing in the new light that had come to her. True, it was a little thing, perhaps, or might appear so to those who are ever ready to make havoc of whatever differs from the usual and accepted, but its possibilities might be limitless, and already it had expanded her world into infinity.
Whatever the intelligence that acted through Planchette might be, it was subject to a law in its manifestations, of which as yet she knew next to nothing. For more light thereon she must study by experiment. Simple as this law appeared to be in its operations, it was mighty in its results, since it annihilated space and destroyed death, the last and greatest enemy whose destruction has long been foretold. But are not all nature’s laws astonishingly simple, when understood? So simple that the searcher after knowledge, filled with delusion that it was afar off on inaccessible heights, for ages passed them by, trod them under foot, touched them at every turn, yet found them not.
A few evenings later the two friends were ready to begin the fascinating work of experimenting with Planchette, the Butterfly’s tiny hand resting on its heart-shaped back, inviting it to action. Was ever priestess of the occult so emphatically a creature of worldly attributes as she? Her pretty face, soft, fair hair, slight, graceful figure modishly attired, and gentle bearingconveyed no suggestion of power to reveal hidden mysteries.
In silence they waited a little while, Planchette as still as could be. Then, unexpectedly it whirled away at a startling pace, with a force well-nigh resistless. When it reached the end of the paper, which completely covered the table, they picked it up and carried it back to the place of beginning, the hand of the pretty priestess was replaced, and it went on at tearing speed, until its message was finished. Then they looked and saw this in big, firm chirography:
“Love laughs at Death as well as at locksmiths—Pagan.”
Cartice read it aloud with a whitening face and staring eyes.
“Prescott!” she whispered, with a husky voice, motioning to Chrissalyn to put her hand again on Planchette. Pagan was a name she had given him and which he delighted in, though unknown to any but her. The little board whirled away again with the same determined swing. Its very movements were characteristic of him, who had ever a trace of savageness and fierceness in all he did and much that he said. These were its words:
“Butterfly, tell her what I told you as we went home that last night.”
Now Chrissalyn began to tremble and tears gushed from her shining eyes. The convictionthat it was Prescott who thus silently spoke to them came to her with overwhelming force.
“Cartice, it is Prescott, I am sure. He loved you with all his heart, and you know how intense that heart was in everything. I saw it from the very day I introduced him to you at the market house, when we went to hear Gabriel Norris preach. He adored you, but never spoke of it, and you were too blind and had too little vanity to see it. But that last night before his death, when he and I were walking home together after we had spent the evening with you, he told me about it. You remember he spoke of having a presentiment that happiness was near him, and he looked almost transfigured that night. He said he believed that somehow you would soon be free from your husband, and then he would take you whether or no. He swore to that. But the next morning he was dead. That’s what he wants me to tell—that’s what he means when he says ‘Love laughs at death as well as at locksmiths.’ He is the same—just the same kind, fierce old savage. He loves you still.”
“Why, Butterfly, this is astonishing,” said Cartice, in amazement. “I thought you and he loved each other, and that you were made for each other.”
“Iloved him; but he loved you, not me.”
This touched Mrs. Doring beyond her power to express. She tried to speak, but could saynothing, for a great lump, like a live coal, had closed her throat.
“I was never jealous,” continued Chrissalyn, “no, never; but a trifle melancholy at times, wishing he loved me instead of you, because I saw that you didn’t love him, only as a good comrade, and didn’t know that he loved you. If you had loved him I don’t think I should have been jealous, because I love you so much.”
Both pairs of eyes were moist now. Cartice rearranged Planchette, and after kissing her friend’s dainty hand placed it thereon again.
“Yes; it is true, I love you, Cartice, and did from the beginning,” wrote the little board, with the same impetuous dash.
“I thank you for telling me,” said Cartice, humbly. “But how are we to be sure that you are Prescott. Give us a proof if you can, though it be only to write your name in the old way.”
“Gordon Prescott,” was instantly and rapidly written in the firm, sharp-pointed handwriting characteristic of the man—a good fac-simile of the original signature, even without making allowance for the clumsiness of the implement. Then came “Good-night” in the same hand, and nothing could induce Planchette to further movement.
They talked it over. Even Chrissalyn was interested. Prescott writing through Planchette did not seem like dead people coming back in thegruesome way she dreaded. Rather was it as though he had never died, but only become invisible. There was nothing about this to inspire terror. After the first surprise of it, it even seemed natural; and it was a pleasure to have a word from him, though it were of his love for another. What matter? She loved him,—that was enough. And it was a comfort to know that he was sometimes near, in spite of the fact that she had believed dead people ought to keep to themselves. However, with Prescott it was different. Somehow he was not dead people.
Then, too, the priestess had her vanity—a streak of the kind that wants appreciation for her ability as well as her beauty. Cartice’s gifts of pen and pencil she had craved, if not envied. Now that she knew she had a power her friend had not—one which Cartice thought of inestimable value—she saw that this gave her additional importance in Mrs. Doring’s eyes, hence she secretly plumed herself a little.
She consented to continuing their experiments with Planchette on condition that no one else should ever be told. Were it known, she would be called a “spirit medium,” and that would be disgraceful, unendurable. They might say almost anything else of her and she wouldn’t mind; but to have that name fastened upon her would be a calamity.
A “medium!” To her the word was beyondwords in its despicable significance. Were not mediums a disreputable order of human buzzards, who preyed upon the credulity and holiest emotions of honest folk? Were they not despised, abhorred, shunned and feared by the better class of society? Were they not ignorant, frowsy, ugly and generally dirty? Did they not invariably say “sect” when they meant “sex,” and talk mind-weakening twaddle about “controls,” “influences,” “impressions” and so on, in English that was in open warfare with all grammatical rules? And were they not frequently chummy with invisible Indians,—going about boasting that they were constantly attended by some “Blackhawk,” “Fire-eye,” “Thunder-Tongue,” “Yellow Feather,” or “Crow-on-the-head,” who made them the mouthpieces of idiotic gibbering?
Do they not come out of cabinets, wearing trailing robes and tin crowns, trying to palm themselves off as dead and gone kings and queens? Have they not an uncanny affinity for tables? And do they not talk through trumpets, ring bells and play other stupid pranks and lay the blame of it all on the defenceless dead? Had they not thrown discredit upon Noah Webster himself, accusing him of a written message which said, “It is tite times”?
Truly their sins were as scarlet. Cartice admitted their iniquities without argument, andpromised her friend that never, never, even in her most secret thoughts would she call her a medium, much less breathe the opprobrious epithet to others.
They went patiently on with their investigation, devoting two evenings a week to Planchette and telling no one. It was by no means all fair weather work either. They soon found that the only thing they could be sure of was that they could depend on nothing; that with the intelligence which manipulated Planchette no contract could be made. They came, or they came not, just as it suited their good pleasure, and were obedient to no mandate or appeal. They were arbitrary always, and, as in most affairs of life, it was the unexpected that happened. From what the investigators could learn, it would seem, asMr.W. T. Stead says, that although this world is queer the next appears to be queerer.
As they went on, they held more and more to the belief that they were actually communicating with persons who had lived in flesh-and-blood bodies like our own, and who still lived, retaining the same characteristics that distinguished them here, but invisible to our eyes—inhabitants perhaps of the much discussed Fourth Dimension of Space. At least, one and all represented themselves as the persons whom we call dead, but who live—live in a freer, larger life.
Occasionally they gave proofs of their identityso convincing that all doubt vanished. They made it clear that the spark of divinity we call individuality is a persistent, indestructible, deathless thing. Again, messages were written which were not only trifling and valueless, but also unsettling.
However, Cartice and the pretty priestess went on, feeling their way through laws as yet scarcely discernible, but stupendous. It was soon evident that each spirit could manifest its individuality through Planchette as forcibly and unmistakably as is done here by means of epistolary correspondence—more clearly, perhaps, since when the little board writes, its movements and general behavior betray the mannerisms of the unseen writer. When a woman spoke through it the feminine touch was unmistakable, and the writing itself showed the finer element of femininity. It must be remembered that the Butterfly, as the visible operator, was simply part of the implement. The real writers were inhabitants of the unseen world. These the two investigators sometimes spoke of as spirits, though they realized that assuredly they were people like ourselves, though existing under different conditions. They were spirits, without doubt; yet so are we, though most of us are unaware of our true being.
But few women came. Cartice was surprised at this, and asked one the reason why. She said the men were stronger, and were so eager to writethat they crowded women out and took possession of the opportunity. Hence it may be supposed that masculine selfishness is not eliminated from the character by dropping the body, and that what we call brute strength, (which is in reality, strength of the spirit) is still formidable where bodies, as we know them, are not.
It was noticeable that these invisible folk seldom spoke of themselves as dead. They had almost no use for the word. They spoke of those we call living as “people still with you,” and of those whom we call dead as “with us.” When asked if they knew such and such a person, they sometimes met the question with the inquiry, “Is he with you or with us?”
At times they readily wrote during a whole evening, first one, then another, and so on, each writer showing a different personality by means of manner, chirography, style of speech and character of thought. At such times page after page as large as the table top would be covered. Again, evenings would pass with but trifling results, and now and then no communication whatever would be received. Nor could the investigators learn the reason of this. Simply, so it was, and the fact had to be accepted without explanation.
The revelations were not always serious. Occasionally they were of clown-like jollity, evidently proceeding from clownish intellects. Frequentlythe writers refused to give any clue to their identity, and as for names there was a palpable avoidance of them that was puzzling. Occasionally a name would be given as readily as when its owner was here, but usually friends and acquaintances revealed themselves by their peculiar characteristics and references to past events, and this, of course, was the better method, as any mischievous spirit could pretend to be somebody else, if names were the sole reliance.
Prescott came often, and was always unmistakably Prescott. Transition had not changed him. His individuality, so original, distinct and strong, was as conspicuous and recognizable, revealed through the little board, as when he had mingled with men, uttering himself boldly, without fear or favor.
Sometimes he burst upon his two faithful friends like a tornado, making Planchette fly fiercely. They could almost see him sweep others aside and take possession. His speech was crisp, keen and sparkling, as in the old days, but, if possible, he was less communicative about himself than ever. When they questioned him on that point, he made neat evasions; but they gathered the impression that he was not entirely satisfied. Though he did not say so, they could not help feeling that the activities of life here still attracted him, and that he was not content at being unable to take part in them.
Remembering his sneers and jeers at all belief in the extension of life beyond death, in whatever form, Cartice reminded him of them, and asked what he thought now of his previous errors. With his customary frankness he answered:
“I was a fool then; but I confess now that I always believed far more than I would have acknowledged. I was afraid you would think me weak if I admitted all I thought possible. I was a coward, you see, though I showed precious little mercy to other cowards.”
Then she asked about his presentiment of happiness on his last evening on earth, and he answered: “I suppose it was given me so I might know that the end of trouble and turmoil was at hand; but I was blind, as you all are, and did not understand.”
She begged him to relate his experiences in the new life from his first moment of consciousness. To this entreaty he replied:
“I will try to do so sometime when I am better instructed than now. As yet I am too new here to tell you what you wish to know. I have much to learn before I can be a safe teacher for anybody.”
To many questions he made neither answer nor apology for his failure to answer. It was plain that he could not, would not or dare not tell much about the life he was now living. Once in response to a particularly direct question bearingon that, he said, with a shade of sadness in the words:
“Wait in patience, and be as happy as you can till your time comes.”
And again: “Could you but see how things are carried on here you would know how foolish some of your questions are.”
From this they gathered that conditions in the unseen world are vastly different from those we are familiar with here, but in what respect they could form no idea.
He had been a strong advocate of cremation. When asked if he still held to his former opinions on that subject, he said:
“To us it makes no difference what is done with the carcass. To you it is important that it does not endanger the public health.”
Once when Cartice remarked to her friend, as they sat together awaiting Planchette’s pleasure, that perhaps the disembodied people suffer because of the destruction of their bodies, Prescott sprang upon them in a kind of fury, writing with savage haste:
“Do you suffer when you cut your finger-nails and throw away the cuttings? Or when you clip your hair and burn the clippings? The body is of the same character, mere waste material—cast-off clothes.”
When asked why he did not always come when they called him and awaited him, he said:
“I wish you understood. I come when possible, but I cannot always control the matter.”
Sometimes Cartice and Chrissalyn devoted an afternoon to Planchette, but generally with less satisfactory results than when they experimented in the evening. The reason of this they could not fix upon until Prescott gave them a clue. On one such occasion, he said with petulance: “Why do you call us in the broad day, when we can give you more satisfaction at night? Day is your time for action, but night is ours. Life here is the antithesis of life with you. Conditions are reversed.”
“May we inquire why you cannot do so well for us in the daytime when you do come?” Mrs. Doring asked, humbly.
“Because the vibrations of light are destructive to the power we make use of for purposes of communication with you.”
This, then, is a rational explanation of the dark séances so much condemned by persons unacquainted with psychic law, and which, unhappily afford such fine opportunities for knavish deception.
“You speak of our calling you. Does it really call you when we sit with the Planchette and ask for you?”
“Yes; through a law it would be difficult for you to understand, however carefully I might try to explain it. Even I as yet comprehend itbut dimly. Your thought reaches us, for thought is omnipotent in all the universe, and is the finest form of electricity which travels with incredible speed. Your desire is a great force going forth to draw to you what you desire. The law of demand is met by the law of supply throughout all worlds, when it is properly set in motion. Your sitting expectantly, with Planchette as the instrument of communication, makes a magnetic centre, a veritable telegraph office to which we can come and through which we can transmit messages. It is all done under law, and so is everything in the universe. Find out the laws that govern your own being and there is no limit to your powers.”