"'The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit—'"
"'The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit—'"
"'The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit—'"
A heavy cane came down on his head, and an angry voice broke in, "Damn you! Is this what I shipped a first mate for? To keep my daughter up till near midnight, and wake me up making love to her over my window? Zaza, go below at once!" The captain had rounded the corner of the house in his pajamas.
The girl screamed as the cane was poised for a second blow; but Bridge said nothing, nor did the cane descend again. The mate raised his two arms high above his head, leaned backward over the low poop-rail, sagged down, and slid headlong over it into the sea.
Again the girl screamed, and the captain, shouting "Man overboard!" sprang to a life-buoy fastened to the taffrail, tore it loose, and threw it. "My God! what have I done?" he said chokingly. "I did not mean to knock him overboard."
No one heard this. The girl had swooned in the alley, and the man at the wheel was snugly ensconced in a warm, sound-proof wheelhouse, with but one window open.
"Put your wheel down!" ordered the captain through the window. "Bring her up till she shakes. All hands forward, there! Come aft four men and clear away this quarter-boat. Weather main-brace the rest of you!"
They did all that men may do. They hove the ship to, lowered a boat, and searched till daylight. But Bridge, who could not swim, was not found; and the ship went on, with a remorseful captain trying to comfort a frantic girl, who in two days was down with brain-fever.
Zaza was a troublesome patient, and as the captain had now to stand watch with his second mate he could give her little of the attention she needed—he could spend with her only an hour or so from each watch below, and, if all was well with the ship, a few minutes from the watch on deck. In her lucid moments there was small comfort for the unhappy man. Not a drop of medicine would she take from his hand, nor a morsel of food, and not a word would she speak to him; but in the steady, scornful, unforgiving look in her dark blue eyes was a world of reproach.
Yet, when the fever pressed her hard, she would talk, calling him "father," and ask him to look so that he too could see. And, as he could not look into the realm she was in, she must perforce explain, insisting that he could see if only he would look. For she could see so clearly, she said; and as her explanations were repeated again and again, broken in upon by the awakenings to lucidity, it was some time before what she saw took on sequence and color. Then it was a picture and a story complete.
A long, heaving sea she saw first, and a floating life-buoy; then a man clinging to its edge, not intelligently, as would a man who knows life-buoys and the way to use them. This man made no attempt to place it under his arms; he simply clung to its edge, and was frequently immersed, as the circular ring turned in the water. This man was Mr. Bridge, she said; but on his face was no perturbation as to his plight. He smiled, and clung to the life-buoy as though animated by instinct alone. There was no expression other than the smile, nothing of shock, nor interest, nor anxiety. With the rising of the sun there came into the picture a lateen-rigged craft filled with swarthy men, and it steered close to the man; and they pulled him, still smiling vacantly, into the vessel. They gave him a flagon to drink from; but he would not, till tutored. They put food to his mouth, and after a time he ate mechanically.
The picture now embraced a high, mountainous coast, deeply indented with fiords and bays, and the dark men of the lateen craft were landing, taking with them the smiling man who could not eat nor drink without help. Then she saw him wandering alone along the beach in the rain, still smiling, and looking at the sea from which he had escaped. She saw him again, unkempt and unshaven, still alone, still smiling; and later with his clothing in tatters, his hair to his shoulders, his beard covering his features, and the merciless rain beating him. But though his mouth and chin were hidden, in his eyes was still the vacant look at the sea, and the smile. One more picture completed the list; he was more than ever a creature of rags and ends, and emaciated—a living, breathing skeleton, asleep in a cave, but smiling as he slept.
It ended in time, and Captain Munson sailed his ship into Melbourne with his daughter convalescent, but so worn out himself that he deputized another skipper to unload her and take her up the China Sea with a cargo of wool, while he and the girl recuperated. She was still reserved, if not frigid, in her manner; but never alluded to the unfortunate happening that killed her filial love for him. And little by little the color came to her cheek, and the light to her eye, so that her father hoped that her trouble of mind had left her.
But he hoped too much. She came to him one day and said, "Father, when does the ship come back?"
"Ought to be here next week, Zaza. Why?"
"Have you chartered her?"
"Thought of a load of hides for New York."
"Give it up. You will admit that she belongs to me, will you not?"
"When you're of age, of course. Your grandmother left you everything."
"I was of age yesterday—twenty-one, legal age in all countries. As I own the ship, I shall decide what to do with her."
"What do you want to do?"
"Go back to the middle of the Indian Ocean. There is a man there who needs help."
"Daughter, Zaza, my poor girl! Your mind has left you. Don't be so absurd. He is dead. He could not have lived. You know I'm sorry. I'll never forgive myself. But this will do no good."
"He is not dead. He is calling me all the time. I hear it strongest as I waken from sleep. I hear it as I have heard it all my life. He calls me the name I called myself when little, before I knew my own name. I called myself Zenie. I would say Zenie will do this, or that. And ever since I can remember I have heard this voice calling to me, 'Zenie, come back!' I heard it in the fog that night on the steamship, and I went to him. I could not help it. He was the man on lookout, and I seemed to know him. You came after me. Do you recall it? He told me later that he had loved a little girl named Zenie, who died. I am that girl. I know it. I know it!"
"Great God, girl! What nonsense is this? Are you crazy?"
"I fear I may be unless this stops," she answered, pausing in her restless pacing of the floor, and looking at him with dilated eyes. "I dreamed of him this morning. He was on land, and it was raining. His clothing was in tatters, he was bearded, and his hair was long and matted. He was thin with starvation and suffering; but he called to me, so beseechingly, 'Zenie, come back!'"
"You had such ravings when you were delirious, Zaza. It is part of your fever, nothing more."
"It is more! It is truth! He is alive, or I should not hear. Were he dead, I should not be alive; for he called me back from the unknown to meet him and help him. He needs me now. I am going to him!"
The father stared in silence, while the girl walked the floor.
"I expect you to waive all legal transfer of the property," she went on. "I expect you to recognize me as owner of the ship, and to take her where I direct. If you will not, I shall take such action as I find necessary, or possible, and employ another captain. If I am thwarted, I shall go myself. I am a navigator."
"Zaza, you are mad!" said the father solemnly.
"Do not say that, or I shall go mad. There are things in life past our comprehension or analysis. This is one of them. All I know is what I feel—that he is part of myself, or I part of him."
"You have fallen in love with him, and you think these things."
"Do not confound cause and effect."
"What land is he on? Do you pretend to know that?"
"We shall find him. Something will guide us—God, if you like."
The father regarded her fixedly for a moment; then sighed, and said, "I suppose I may as well humor you, for a while at least. We shall take in ballast as soon as she arrives, and go. But what a waste of time!"
So the big ship, able to earn an annual dividend of sixteen per cent. of her cost, left Melbourne in ballast, practically in charge of a crazed girl bent on finding a man drowned ten months before.
According to accepted standards no alienist would have hesitated in pronouncing her crazed. She slept little, was careless of her personal appearance, and walked the deck aimlessly, occasionally peering at the compass, and looking at the helmsman in a way to make him steer better for a time. She nagged her father when stress of wind compelled the shortening of sail. She took the sun at midday with Bridge's sextant, and took chronometer sights to work out the longitude, sharply criticizing her father for an error of a few seconds in his calculations. She grudged the necessity of reaching south to the forty-fifth parallel to avoid the strong head winds on the fortieth. Night and day she was up, worrying her distracted father and the two mates with questions, comments, and speculations. She pored over the chart, on which was pricked off the ship's position when Bridge had gone overboard, and pricked off herself the daily position as the ship beat her way westward.
But it was not till the ship had arrived at the fatal spot, and her father had prepared a series of logical deductions for her consideration, that she showed anything of definiteness in her whims and fancies. She had insisted that they heave the ship to that night, as she did not care to go farther in the darkness, and had lain down to pass the night as she could—not to sleep, she told her father, but to pray to God for light and hope and method. And in an hour she was up.
"Father," she said as she awakened the old man in his berth, "we must head south by west, half west. I know the course."
"What do you know?" grunted the wearied and conscience stricken man. "Go back to bed, and let me sleep! Sleep yourself! Let me alone, or I'll be as mad as you are!"
She got out the chart and spread it on the cabin table. Then, with her eyes gleaming with the concentrated stare of the insane, she traced out the drift of the ship since the last plotting, and from the point reached drew a line south by west, half west. It struck a large, irregular island, and she read its name, Desolation Island. She went on deck, disheveled and careless, her hair flying in the wind, and asked the officer of the watch to heave the log and give her the best of his judgment as to the ship's drift through the night. Then she went back to her berth, and did not appear until daylight, when she came up and again interviewed the officer in charge.
"Father," she said, when the old man had turned out for breakfast, "look at this chart." She spread it out, clear of the dishes, and drew a line from the night time position of the ship to the point indicated by her drift, and from this point drew a line south by west. It intercepted the other on the coast of Desolation Island.
"Last night, father," she said, "he was calling insistently. I saw him plainly, and he held a compass in his hands, and pointed to the lubber's point. It was at south by west, half west. I told you that; but you refused to believe me. I have plotted the drift during the night—eleven miles due southwest—and here is the drift on this line. Here, too, is our position this morning. Just before I wakened I saw a large compass, filling the whole room, and the lubber's point was at south by west. A south by west line from here intercepts the same spot on the coast of Desolation Island as the other. Father, he is there! It all fits in. We must go to him."
"Well, well, we'll try," said the old man weakly. "God knows I want to ease your mind, and until you are sure I suppose you'll think he's still alive. It's a tough job, though, to search an island eighty miles long where it rains continually."
Sail was made, and the wheel put up; but as the wind was light it was nightfall before the big, light ship sailed into an estuary, with two men at the leadlines, and anchored in the dusk, not half a mile from the beach. The girl would have lowered a boat and gone ashore at once; but this was beyond all reason, they told her, the two mates joining the captain in the protest. This was not what they had signed for, they contended.
So, up and down from her berth to the deck, and back and forth from end to end of the ship, the half demented young woman passed the night, and at the first glimmer of daylight was beyond her limitations. The quarter boat was proved leaky, and had been left behind. All others were inboard, stowed upside down on the forward house. The ship's one life-buoy had gone with Bridge.
She procured a piece of spun yarn from the booby hatch, triced her skirts up to her waist, and, unseen by the sleepy anchor watch forward, went down the side on a rope's end belayed to a pin. There was a brisk wind blowing in from the open sea, and a short, crispy wave motion with which she must contend; but she struck out bravely for the beach.
"I am coming!" she called wildly. "I am coming—coming!"
Skilled seamen and fishermen are often deceived in the look of a surf viewed from seaward, and many a boat's crew that hopes to beach safely is caught and half drowned in a furious turmoil that can be seen only from the shore. This mad girl had no advantage of such experience, and probably would not have been influenced by it had it come to her. She swam vigorously at first, then rested awhile on her back, and went on, swimming till tired, and floating until rested.
But, at a hundred yards from the beach, she found conditions which precluded these spells of rest. The seas broke over her, and floating was impossible. She was forced to expend her strength. Then the spun-yarn belt loosened, and her skirts embarrassed her movements; it became more and more difficult to make headway. All she could do was to keep her head above water, while the aching pain of fatigue attacked her limbs, and the bitter salt water flung into her mouth by the spiteful seas choked its way down her throat, and into her lungs. Struggling weakly, and more weakly, she sank beneath and remained until consciousness was nearly gone; then the back wash of the undertow brought her to the surface, and with the one breath of air she procured came another inrush of water. Barely moving her limbs now, she went under again; and when next she appeared she had ceased to struggle, or breathe, or think.
Once more she went under, and when she came to light the surf was rolling her up the beach, and dragging her back—an inert, lifeless form, with eyes wide open and staring, and a wealth of golden hair wrapped round the pale and wasted face. A final heave of the pitiless sea threw her face downward on a fringe of rocks at high-water mark. One large stone caught the body at the waist line, and the head sank down beyond it until the forehead rested on another. Thus supported, the chin sank, the mouth opened, and the water from her lungs issued forth in a tiny stream and went back into the sea, which, having killed her, now left her alone.
But the cold rain still pelted her.
A mile away a thing crawled out of a cave—a mindless creature in the form of a man, a disorganized organism that looked into the morning sky with lightless eyes and meaningless smile. Emaciated and begrimed, with hair and beard to his shoulders, clad in what had once been shirt and trousers, but were now a flimsy covering of rags, he presented but one human attribute beyond his meaningless smile: the articulate voice.
He began to move, in a swift walk that soon increased to a jog trot and then to a run. Straight as a path may go, over rocks, hills, and marshy ground, down the declivity to the sea, went this smiling creature, pausing at times to look into the sky and murmur, "Zenie, come back!"
There was something yellow on the beach, right in his path, and at the same swift run he approached it. He stood silently over the quiet form of the dead girl, looking at it with smile unchanged, but with the beginning of expression flitting and twitching over his gaunt features. Then he stooped and turned the body over, bringing to view the pale, damp face.
"Zenie, come back!" he breathed softly. "Zenie, come back!"
The girl's chest rose convulsively, and sank, then rose again with a deeper inhalation, and the staring eyes closed.
The mindless thing stood erect, with a face suffused by a rush of blood, staggered, and turned; then, in a deep, sonorous voice, declaimed:
"'Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.'"
"'Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.'"
"'Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.'"
It was the finish of the quatrain begun by Bridge, and interrupted by the blow of the cane.
"What?" he continued, as he looked down on the faintly breathing figure of the girl. "Miss Munson! What—what is it? Where are we? We were in the alleyway a minute ago. What has happened? Tell me! Where's the ship?"
The girl's eyes opened, and a faint smile came to her face.
"What is it?" he insisted, stooping down and taking her cold, wet hands. "Miss Munson, what has happened? We're ashore, and you're all wet! Have you been overboard? You said you could swim! Why, there's the ship now, at anchor! They're putting off with a boat! But why? Tell me, Miss Munson! What does it mean? I've grown a beard! Why—tell me! What is it? Zaza, tell me!"
The cold, wet hands of the girl closed gently on his big, bony fingers. "Not Zaza!" she whispered. "Zenie! I am Zenie! I know I am!"
There was nothing abnormal in the character of Beverton except a tendency, while very young, to walk in his sleep, and nothing in his twenty-five years of life of which he was really ashamed except a deed of his infancy, born of the above-named tendency, for which he had been severely punished at the time. The punishment, no doubt, impressed the incident on his mind, and he recalled it occasionally, always with a flush of shame, while he lived his years of boyhood, youth, and early manhood. He remembered being rudely awakened from sleep, not in a crib where his mother had placed him, nor beside her, where he sometimes slept, but flat on his back on the carpeted floor of a long hall, dimly illumined by distant gas jets, the soft glow from which showed him a woman in a night-robe looking down upon him with angry eyes, and a purple-faced child, a little younger than himself, gasping and choking in her arms. His cheek burned from the slap she had given him, and his head hurt from the impact with the floor, so he joined the other baby in protest, and the uproar brought several uniformed hall-boys and a night clerk, who led him to the room occupied by his parents. After punishment, and when able to understand, he learned what he had done in his sleep—left his crib, sought the hall, buried his small fingers in the throat of this other sleep-walking infant—whom he had never seen before—and might possibly have murdered it had not its mother wakened and arrived in time to interfere. He was well spanked for the feat.
His mother believed in both punishment and prayer as factors in reform. For a long time he received nightly spankings in bed, with injunctions to stay where he was put until morning, and supplemented his "Now I lay me down to sleep" with a plea to be cured of his infirmity.
The treatment was successful; the unconscious cerebration left him, but the spankings continued until he had outgrown the conscious cruelty common to all children, then, having ceased vivisection of insects and angle-worms, and overcome his antagonism to the aged, the helpless, and the infirm of his own species, he began his development into a cheery, generous, and humane character, which, assisted by good health, good home training, and a good education, found, at manhood, outward expression in six feet of good looks.
These good points brought him a wife—a creature as well favored as himself, but his very antithesis in disposition and physique. He was of the blond type, calm, masterful, and imperturbable in temperament; she of the brunette, warm-hearted, and impulsive, yielding him neither obedience nor spoken approval, and meeting him half-way only upon the common ground of love, which Mother Nature provides for the agreement of her opposites.
Beverton was content with her, and managed her in a way peculiar to himself. Whether it was the best way or not, is hard to decide; for it is possible that with more antagonism from him there would have been less from her. But it was successful. As instance—she had thrown a plate of newly buttered griddle-cakes across the breakfast table; her aim being good, they had struck him fairly in the face, and the melted butter smeared not only his face and shirt-front, but a gorgeous puff cravat which her own fingers had made for him. He smilingly left the table, changed his raiment, and they finished breakfast in silence; then, instead of going to business, he cleared the kitchen table and began cleaning the neckwear. A full hour he spent at the task, much in her way and to the neglect of his business, when she broke her moody silence with:
"What are you doing? Why do you not go down town?"
"I will soon, my dear," he answered amiably. "Just as soon as I get the syrup and butter out of this tie you made. I don't mind washing my face twice instead of once, but I hate to see this tie soiled."
She was upon him instantly, her arms about his neck and tears in her eyes, while she begged, brokenly, for forgiveness. It was granted, of course, and for a long time griddle-cakes were omitted from their discussions.
Again, inspired by a natural and wifely desire to "jog some spirit into him," she had carefully prepared a slippery place on the front yard walk which a slight snow concealed from his view when he arrived in the evening. He came down hard, and though he was not hurt, he pretended to be; for he saw through her trick at once, and to punish her howled for assistance and blamed his own carelessness, but uttered no word of suspicion or reproach. Neighbors assisted him in, and all that evening, prone upon the couch, he enjoyed the ministrations of a contrite and tearful wife, who tried to atone for her sins of commission (and omission, for she did not confess) by softly spoken sympathy and frequent service of watered brandy to relieve the pain—a remedy which Beverton liked, but which was denied him as a beverage.
And so, as their young married life went on, he shamed and tamed her, not by breaking her spirit, but by compelling her to break it herself; and though she remained a tigress against those sheimaginedhis enemies—for the man had none—she displayed toward him an attitude of meekness, adoration, and almost slavish obedience which made him at times regret the transformation; for her tantrums were the charm which had first attracted him.
But at this period it seemed to him that the tantrums had struck in. They slept in separate rooms, and one night he awoke to find her leaning over him with a pail of water poised above his head. Before he could catch the tilting pail, she had deluged him, but even this did not disturb his equanimity; he merely sprang out of bed, caught her by the arm, and asked what he had done to deserve a ducking. She answered with a scream, and, dropping the pail, clung to him in the darkness. She did not know where she was—she could not explain, but at last he understood.
"Do you walk in your sleep, Grace?" he asked, gently.
"Oh, no—yes," she stammered; "but not since our marriage. I thought it had left me. Oh, I'm so sorry. Did I waken you?"
"With a bucket of water," he answered, dryly as was possible in his moist condition. "I had the habit when very young, but they cured me by radical treatment. You're too old to be punished, Grace, but we must findsomeway. You may set fire to me next time."
But he knew of no way, and when she had repeated the feat with the pail of water, and a little later made a midnight assault upon him with the carving-knife, he could only nail her bedroom window partly open for ventilation, and put a bolt on his side of her door. Her grief and horror were pathetic, and it sorely tried Beverton to lock up his wife like a wild beast; but she had become a menace to his health, and perhaps his life; for, though on each occasion he had wakened in time to realize her intent, he had not wakened in time to save himself completely. He had not quite avoided the downcoming knife; aimed at his heart, it had grazed his arm as he wrenched from under.
It was a very fine piece of polished hardware, this knife—and belonged to a carving-set given to them at their wedding. On the day following her demonstration with it, and before he had announced her sentence of nightly imprisonment, she had bound the knife, fork, and steel together with a rosette of ribbons, and with the aid of a step-ladder hung them high on the dining-room wall; then she burned the ladder, and when Beverton arrived in the evening showed him the exhibit.
"There," she said, with a determined little frown, "is the only deadly weapon in the house, and it is out of my reach. Let it stay there; I hate the sight of it, and could never bear to have it on the table again; but if it be up there—out of the way—where I can't help seeing it, perhaps—perhaps—it will—" The rest was convulsive sobbing.
Beverton comforted her, and meaning to lock her up at bedtime, suggested putting the harrowing reminder out of sight in some safe place; but she would not consent, even though she approved of the bolt on her door.
"I might find that knife in my sleep, no matter where you hid it," she said. "Lock me up, instead, and then, if I pick the lock, I cannot reach the knife."
So there it remained, and as they used their dining-room for a sitting-room and as she had resolutely placed the beribboned and glittering display squarely opposite her favorite seat, she had full opportunity of benefiting by any deterrent influence it possessed. As to its possessing such an influence, she could only surmise and hope; however, she confessed that it fascinated her.
"I can't keep my eyes off it," she explained one evening, while they sat reading in the dining-room. "For the dozenth time to-night I've found my gaze creep up to that knife. Why is it? And the hateful thing makes me sleepy—just looking at it."
"Well," responded Beverton, grimly, "if it could only keep you asleep, it would be all right, wouldn't it?" Then, observing that the speech had pained her, he arose, kissed the flushed cheek, and added gently, "Don't look at it, girl; face the other way and get interested in your book. What are you reading?"
"It's so hard to get interested," she said, wearily, "in what you don't understand. It's a sea novel." She held up the book and turned the leaves. "What does topgallant clewlines mean, Tom?—fore-and-aft, clew-up and clew-down? And here's a word, 'mizzen.' And clew-garnet—what does that mean? It's a strange language."
"Blest if I know. Pick the story out. Never mind the descriptions."
They resumed their reading, and it was ten minutes later when Beverton, aroused by the unusual quiet, looked again at his wife. The book lay on her lap, held open by her hands, but she was not reading—she was staring up at the hardware glistening in the lamplight, with eyes that were wide-open, but almost as lightless as the eyes of a corpse. And as Beverton looked at them, the eyelids fluttered together and closed in sleep. Beverton watched, and in a moment they opened, with an expression in them that he had never seen before—so strange, hard, and murderous it seemed.
"Grace," said the startled man, rising to his feet, "are you awake?"
"Awake," she screamed—"screech" better describes the hard, raspy tone with which she answered him. "Aye, awake and ready—for eighteen hours, come eight bells; and all guns o' the port battery down the mizzen hatch, and all hands drunk but the cook. What's to do?"
"Wake up, Grace," he commanded.
A convulsive shiver passed through her, she uttered a little gasp, then closed her eyes, and opened them with her natural smile.
"Why, I did go to sleep, after all, didn't I?" she asked, softly.
"Yes, and talked and looked like the very deuce. Let's see what you are reading." He took the book from her hands, but neither on the open page nor upon any preceding could he find words similar to those she had spoken.
"What were you dreaming of when I spoke to you?" he inquired.
"I didn't dream—at least, I don't remember. Did you speak?" She yawned and arose. "I'll go to bed, Tom," she said. "Lock me up."
Beverton read the book, after she had retired, from the beginning to the opened page; then sat down and pondered far into the night.
Next evening, on his way home, he visited a physician—a personal friend, who had once met Mrs. Beverton—and to him he stated the trouble.
"Self-hypnotized," said the doctor, "by the usual method—staring at a bright object. Practically in the same condition as when sleep-walking. You can cure her by suggestion."
"How—what do you mean?"
"Don't you know that a somnambulist will always obey orders—will believe anything that is spoken in a firm, commanding tone, the same as though hypnotized?"
"She didn't look and act like it. And where did she get that sailor talk? It wasn't in the book she was reading."
"The book suggested the train of thought, nevertheless. The subconscious memory is absolute. She read those words at some time in her life, or heard them spoken—possibly in infancy."
"Well, it's too much for me. Can you take charge of her case?"
"No—although there is not, perhaps, a man in town more studied in this subject than myself. But there is no one more unfit to operate. I am too subjective, as the phrase is—too good a subject, easily hypnotized, and thus unable to control even a self-hypnotized person. As there is not a professional hypnotist in town it devolves upon you."
"But I know nothing about it."
"Learn. Your natural mastery over her renders you the one above all others to treat her successfully. Let her stare at the knife again—or any bright object. Lead back into her past, and try to find what was on her mind when she first walked in her sleep; then tell her that her fears or anxiety were groundless, and that she must never get up in her sleep again."
He gave Beverton as much of practical instruction as was safe for a novice to possess, and with some misgivings the half-credulous young husband resolved to experiment alone. But in his first attempt to do so, he found unexpected developments in the situation that seemed to remove the solution farther yet from his powers.
Not daring to take her into his confidence, he waited, evening after evening, for her to place herself under favoring conditions—to take up the wearying tale of the sea, and to rest her eyes and brain by staring at the glistening array of steel on the wall. She capriciously and vivaciously declared that she would have nothing more to do with either, that she would divert her mind by polishing up her neglected accomplishment of stenography (from practice of which he had rescued her by marriage), and while he fidgeted and made occasional more or less adroit references to the story, which he pretended to admire, she translated into hieroglyphics the random thoughts of her brain.
"For if I make a widow of myself some night," she said, "and an angel of you, Tommie, and escape execution, I will need to earn my living, don't you see? But if you like that horrid story, suppose you read to me from where I left off, and I'll take it down for practice."
He had committed himself, and was bound to the task. He began at the top of the page and read, but she mercifully stopped him part way to the bottom, so that she might transcribe her notes and verify. This measured her interest in the story, and as he had none himself he gladly ceased, and she began her transcription. While waiting for her he glanced at the ornament on the wall. It was bright, pleasing to the eye—artistic in finish and design. It attracted his gaze, and having secured it, held it; for the longer he looked the less inclined he felt to look elsewhere, and at last, with the knife filling his vision to the exclusion of the fork and steel, his eyelids drooped and his senses left him.
When he wakened he was on his knees, with hands clasped in supplication before his wife, who, with tears in her eyes, but with laughter quivering on her lips—in fact, nearly hysterical, had arisen from her chair with her pencil and notebook.
"Why, Tom," she said, "what is the matter with you? You were not yourself; it was so absurd and ridiculous. Did you go to sleep, and do you talk in your sleep, as I walk in mine?"
"No," he answered, rising and blinking sheepishly. "Did I? Yes, perhaps I did doze off—in the chair. Did I get up?"
"Yes, and got down—on your knees to me, with your eyes impassionedly fixed on mine—oh, it was so funny, but it frightened me; you were so intense—and you delivered yourself of—well, I took it down in shorthand, and I'll transcribe it first, and then read."
He sat down in his chair, and she worked busily for a few moments, and then said: "Now, I'll read first what I took down from that horrid sea-story, and you take the book and follow me to see if I've made mistakes."
He picked up the book from the floor, found the page, and scanned it while she read from her copy as follows:
"'—which had blown, at times, with a force that nearly amounted to a little gale, was lulling and becoming uncertain, as though awed by the more violent power that was gathering along the borders of the sea, in the direction of the neighboring continent. Each moment the eastern puffs of air lost their strength and became more and more feeble, until, in an incredibly short period, the heavy sails were heard flapping against the masts—a frightful and ominous calm succeeding.'
"Now," she said, "did I make any mistakes in this?"
"No," he answered, "word for word it is correct."
"Very well. You know I stopped you at this point, and when I had written it out in longhand, I said 'I'm ready. Go on,' and turned to a new page; but you, instead of reading more, dropped the book, got down on your knees, and—just listen—you uttered this in tones of the utmost distress:
"'Sir, my life is in your hands; but as to my body, in relation to that which you would persuade me to, my soul shall sooner be separated from it, through the violence of your arms, than I shall condescend to your request.'"
"And I said that in my sleep?" inquired the amazed Beverton.
"You did," laughed his wife, "in the most plaintive, piping feminine accents imaginable. You were a perfect picture of virtue in distress. What were you dreaming of?"
"I don't remember. Isn't this the page"—he glanced at the book—"that you were reading when you fell asleep the other evening?"
"Yes, I think so; but I was looking at the knife when I dropped off."
"So was I," he responded. "Now, this is one of Cooper's tales, written, I think, about the middle of this century; and, though it is full of nautical language, there is nothing in it, up to this page, that resembles this prayerful speech of mine, or your reprehensible language the other evening, which you uttered, by the way, in hoarse, masculine tones."
"Did I?" she asked. "What did I say?"
"Something about 'eight bells,' and 'all hands drunk.' I've forgotten it all; but did you ever listen to any sailor yarns? Have you ever read any sea-stories besides this?"
"I never saw a sailor in my life, that I know of. I never read a sea-story, either, and never shall. I don't like them."
"Then it isn't the book, Grace, that affects us; it must be the knife. It is merely a bright object which, if looked at steadily, will put a person into a hypnotic sleep. At least, that is what I have heard."
"And then we talk," she said. "But why should you talk like a virtuous maiden and I like a bad man?"
"I don't know," he said. "I know very little of hypnotism."
"Thomas Beverton," she said, with mock severity, "did you ever listen to a prayer from a helpless female in your power?"
"No," he answered, laughing. "No, I swear it. I've always done the praying myself."
"I suppose so," she rejoined, with a pout. Then, rising, she added: "If you are going to talk in your sleep, I'm going to listen, and I'll know all about your love affairs, remember that."
And with this truly feminine disposition of the question, she went to bed.
Beverton secured a broom from the kitchen and, reaching up, unhooked the carving-set and examined each piece carefully. The fork was a fork, the steel a steel, the knife a knife—simple in design and workmanship—such as could be found in any hardware store; but the knife possessed one slight peculiarity that his questioning eye noticed. Though it was ground in the conventional bowie-knife shape, yet the blade as a whole had more curve than is usual in carving-knives, while the long concave in the back of the blade, near the point, was very short and deep. A further exaggeration of these peculiarities would have given the blade the look of a Moorish scimitar; but, even so, would have carried no occult significance to Beverton's mind, and as it certainly did possess an unpleasant and material connection with the problem before him, he decided to remove it. Putting on his hat and overcoat, he took the three pieces out to the back yard and hurled them, one by one, over the fence into a deep snow-drift. Then he returned and, as was his custom, read until sleepy.
It was two hours later before the desired condition arrived, and laying down his book, he discovered that he had not bolted his untrusty wife in her room. He arose and looked in, only to see that her bed was empty. He called, but she did not answer, and, thoroughly awake now, he ran through the rooms of the house, but did not find her. As he reached the dining-room, however, to don his hat and coat, he saw her enter from the kitchen. She was in her nightdress, which was wet with clinging snow; in her eyes was the lightless stare of somnambulism, and in her hand the knife. In spite of his temperament, Beverton shivered as he watched her expressionless stare, then remembering his friend's instructions, pulled himself together, and said:
"Drop that knife. Drop it at once."
The knife clattered on the floor; he advanced, picked it up, and placed it on the sideboard. Then he faced her, calm and determined, resolved to solve the problem.
"Why do you walk in your sleep?" he demanded. She stood quiescent before him; and though her features moved with inward emotion, she did not reply.
"Why do you walk in your sleep?" he again demanded. "Answer me."
"To save myself," she said, slowly, and in plaintive, aggrieved tones.
"From whom?" asked Beverton.
"From my enemy—who would kill me."
"Who is your enemy? Why would he kill you?"
"I do not know. I know I must kill him, or he will kill me."
"This is nonsense," said Beverton, sternly, warming to the problem.
"Nonsense?" Her face seemed troubled, as though the mind behind was in doubt.
"Rank nonsense. No one would harm you. Everyone loves you. What makes you think he would kill you?"
"He tried." The set face of the young wife took on an expression of fright and horror. "He met me when I was looking for him, trying to explain. He clutched me by the throat. He would have killed me if he could. He will kill me yet if I cannot explain."
"When did he choke you?" asked Beverton. "Where was it?" he asked, with perspiration starting from his forehead and an incident of his childhood in his mind.
"In the hall—the long hall."
"He was a baby," ventured Beverton. "How could he harm you?"
She waited a moment, as though the question puzzled her, then said:
"A baby, yes. I was a baby, too."
"Where was this long hall?"
Again the play of emotion on her features, but no answer.
"Was it in a hotel?"
"A hotel, yes."
"What hotel? Where was it?"
"The Mansion House, Main Street, Buffalo."
Beverton shook in the knees. She had named the hotel where his parents had stopped while traveling—where he had last walked in his sleep.
"Grace," he said, as firmly and gently as he could with his tongue trembling against the roof of his mouth. "He did not mean to hurt you; he did not know you at the time. He will never hurt you. You must never seek him again, either to kill or explain to him. He is satisfied."
"Has he forgiven? Does he realize that—that—I—that—"
Her face became troubled again, and she reached forth her hands, clutching at the air, as though trying to grasp the elusive memory.
"Yes, he has forgiven," said Beverton, steadier of voice now at the apparent success of the experiment. "And you will never seek him again, will you? It is all settled now."
"All settled," she repeated, while her countenance softened.
"You will not worry any more, will you?"
"No more. It is all settled. He has forgiven me."
"You will never walk in your sleep again, will you, Grace?"
"No, it is all settled. He has forgiven me."
Had Beverton sent her to bed now he might have spared himself a life-long puzzle which ever baffled solution; but, with fairly good command of himself, he yielded to curiosity, and asked:
"What had you done to him? What had he to forgive?"
Her face became convulsed; the query seemed a blow that gave her agony. With arms extended and fingers clutching again, she tottered, but did not fall; and he mercilessly repeated the question. She did not answer, and he, blindly desirous of prompting her, reached for the knife on the sideboard.
"Had it anything to do with this?" he asked.
"The scimitar," she exclaimed, hoarsely. "I killed her with it." Then she pressed her hands to her brow, held them tightly, and her eyes closed, while her frame stiffened visibly under the pressure. When she removed her hands and looked at him, she seemed another person; for in her eyes was the strange, hard expression they had worn when she had dozed off in her chair. They lighted on the carving-knife, and before he could move she pounced upon him and wrenched it from his hand.
"Ha," she exclaimed, in the same harsh, raspy voice as before; "and would the señorita harm herself—or me? 'Tis a pretty plaything"—she ran her finger along the edge—"but too sharp for the Lady Isobel. Moorish make, I trow—we took it from the Spanish plate-ship off Tortuga—but better fit to slay than to prod. And had ye thought, my obstinate charmer, that when my patience is given out, it may be this that shall slit your smooth white throat?" With a meaning and somewhat quizzical smile at him, she laid the knife on the sideboard.
Beverton kept his nerve, remembering her recent amenability to his suggestions.
"Who are you?" he asked, tentatively, seeking an opening for further inquiry.
"Ha-ha," she laughed. "An idle question to ask of Hal Morgan. Are ye so little informed of a man known to your countrymen from Madrid to Panama?"
"And where are you?"
"Where am I? Where indeed, but in the stateroom of my Lady Isobel, who, if I mistake not, is still intractable. We will try the water-cure, for once more." She lifted her face to the ceiling and called: "On deck there. A bucket o' water. Send it below by the steward."
As though the order were obeyed, she stepped to the kitchen-door, just beyond which was the sink; and from this she lifted at arm's length—a feat of strength impossible to her when awake—the pail of water which always stood there. Turning toward him she swung it backward, one hand supporting it, the other gripping the bottom edge, and would have deluged him had he not spoken. "Wait," he said, sternly. "The water-cure will not avail."
Her eyes wavered before his steady gaze, and she slowly lowered the pail to the floor. For a moment it seemed that she would waken, or at least lapse into softer mood; for her features grew composed, and her eyes lost their glitter; but they rested on the knife, and immediately hardened.
"Then, here's to the end o' it," she said, impatiently, and springing forward she seized it, then with another bound sidewise, she reached Beverton and plunged the knife in his shoulder.
It was done so swiftly that he had not time to dodge, and he sank, weak and nerveless under the blow, the knife slipping from her hand and remaining in the wound. Looking up with failing eyes, he beheld her standing with arms listless by her side, the tension gone from her face, and her gaze wandering mildly about the room.
"Grace," he gasped, "you've killed me. Wake up!"
The last was a whisper, but she heard it; and Beverton's last remembrance before he fainted was of her piercing scream as she wakened and looked down upon him.
She had not killed him; on the contrary, though he bled copiously until their aroused servant had summoned the doctor, he recovered from the wound and loss of blood long before his wife recovered from the brain-fever that followed her awakening; and it was while she was delirious, and he convalescent enough to talk that the doctor, after listening for an hour to her raving one day, entered the room of the other patient, and said:
"She is past the crisis—perspiring and sound asleep, and will recover rapidly. But, Beverton, though while delirious she was most certainly in as subjective a condition as when self-hypnotized, yet she has not uttered one word of a nautical or piratical nature."
"And what of that?" replied Beverton weakly, but doggedly. "According to those books of yours"—he pointed to a pile of them at the foot of his bed—"and I've studied them well while lying here—there are one, two, or more sub-normal personalities within us, any one of which can become dominant."
"Admitted; but is that a proof of reincarnation?—that the soul of your wife once lived in the body of a pirate named Hal Morgan, and that your soul animated the form of a beauteous maiden captured by him?"
"I can accept no other explanation. As infants we were subconscious enemies. I drove her back farther, seeking the cause; I saw the convulsive transition. I heard her use language she could not have learned in this life."
The doctor smiled, and drawing a book from his pocket, said: "Then here is something to further strengthen your belief—for a time. I took the copy of your maidenly speech to a librarian in the city, told him what was necessary to interest him, and he found this book for me. It is Pyle's compilation of the lives of the buccaneers, and in Esquemeling's account of the doings of Captain Henry Morgan is this—" He opened the book, searched the pages, and read:
"'—but the lady, not willing to consent, or accept his presents, showing herself like Susannah for constancy, he presently changed his note, and addressed her in another tone, threatening a thousand cruelties and hard usages. To all of which she gave only this resolute and positive answer—'
"Listen now," said the doctor. "'Sir, my life is in your hands; but as to my body, in relation to that which you would persuade me to, my soul shall sooner be separated from it, through the violence of your arms, than I shall condescend to your request.'"
"And what more do you want?" asked Beverton, excitedly. "The very words I spoke; and I never saw that book."
"Wait," said the doctor, smiling. "This follows:
"'Captain Morgan, understanding this her heroic resolution, commanded her to be stripped of the best of her apparel, and imprisoned in a darksome, stinking cellar; here she was allowed a small quantity of meat and drink, wherewith she had much ado to sustain life.'
"No need of reading the whole account," said the doctor, closing the book. "This occurred in the city of Panama, which Morgan had just captured, and the lady was never at sea with him. His men took her from Tavoga or Tagovilla, and he released her on the march from Panama to the coast. He did not kill her."
"Then why should I hate her as a baby?"
"I do not know. Children have strange antipathies, and while very young are much in the subjective state."
"But the sailor talk; where did she get it? Where did I get that quotation you just read?"
"Telepathy," said the doctor. "It is the subconscious mind which projects and reads thoughts. You were both subjective from an inherent tendency and the influence of that shiny knife on the wall. Your fear of punishment and bedtime prayers were a strong auto-suggestion against somnambulism; but the knife overcame it in your case, and your wife never met with any deterrent influence whatever. Now, Beverton, one of you—it makes no difference which—has read the mind of the other, and this one has read the mind of some strong, projective personality—some man or woman thoroughly enthused and interested in the history of the seventeenth-century pirates—some one who has lately read this book, and other accounts of Morgan's adventures."
"And the scimitar-like shape of the knife—the sea-story by Cooper?"
"Coincidences, both of them—and suggestions."
Beverton was silent a few moments, then said with a weary sigh: "I cannot convince myself. I wish I could. It is strong evidence, as you say, toward telepathy, but does not disprove reincarnation. How did she find that knife in the snow? It was dark. I did not know where it fell."
"Your subconscious mind knew. So did hers. It was merely clairvoyance."
The doctor rose. "It does not disprove, I admit, Beverton," he said; "and if you must know, you can only learn by experimenting farther. The knife, fork, and steel are at the bottom of the river, as you directed. But you can hypnotize her by other means."
"Not for the world," said Beverton. "I guess I'll wait until she walks in her sleep again, if I experiment any more."
But Mrs. Beverton never accommodated him; neither would she have a pointed knife in the house, nor permit her eyes to more than merely rest upon anything bright for the rest of her life.