A chair creaked softly, and I started, while the skin tightened over my cheeks and my tongue dried and tasted salt. The medium seemed to be writhing about, making little soft urging noises, like muffled groans or the nameless sound that goes with lifting a heavy burden or suddenly exerting the whole strength of the body. Then the peculiar padded rapping began. The incongruously matter-of-fact voice of the professor asked: "Are the hands all here?" and the circle counted in a low tone while the raps went irregularly on. Some woman across the room giggled nervously. Why these trivial details did not interrupt and relieve the tension, I do not know; but their very absurdity seemed to intensify it; I was hot and puffy and a trifle faint. Suddenly Maclean gripped my knee, and muttered: "Look at the table— My God, look at the table—!"
I do not know just how to describe it; to say that I saw is not literally accurate, for it was really too dark to see; the table and the group around it were no more than a bulk in the midst of darkness. But as I strained my eyes toward it, that blur of unconvincingcloudiness which I had seen or fancied before swelled into mid-air, showing against the dark like black with light upon it against black in shadow. And illuminated as it were by that visible darkness, the table beneath it rose up from its place under the circle of hands, wavered as though afloat upon the rising stream of a fountain, then settled with a thud and a creak down again upon the floor. There was a momentary silence, full of crowded breathings. While I was wondering confusedly how much of it I had only imagined, Professor Shelburgh said calmly: "That's the best levitation we've had so far. Who did it? Who is there?" And the throaty, querulous contralto answered: "I did. Miriam. Do you want any more?"
Another man somewhere in the circle stammered uncomfortably: "I—well—er—I beg your pardon, but—could you move something quite beyond our reach? One of those things on the bookcase, for instance?"
"What for?" whined the voice, "you wouldn't believe it anyway— I don't want to talk to you— Is mother there?"
Maclean's hand relaxed upon my knee, and he sniffed audibly. But the answer brought my heartinto my throat, for I knew who made it, beyond the possibility of mistake.
"Yes, dear," Mrs. Tabor said quietly. "What is it?"
"I wanted—to see you— Why didn't you come last time?— I get—lonely sometimes—"
"I couldn't come before. Aren't you happy?" She might have been speaking to a child crying in its bed.
"I want to—come back— I want—you, mother dear— I'm very happy, but I—went away too soon."
"But I've seen you every day at home, dear child."
"It isn't the—the same— I can't talk—to you—there— You're afraid of—something— I see fear—in your heart—and—that frightens me."
"You mustn't be afraid, Miriam—you mustn't. Nobody shall take you away!"
A flush and a wave of nausea went over me, and I felt my hair bristling, not with nervousness, but with a kind of anger. The unwholesomeness of the whole scene was too sickening—the poor mother's hysterical fondness, the utter sincerity of her emotion, and the sentimentalism that whined in reply, so perfectly calculated to irritate and control the crippled mind. And the element of distorted love made it all the worse, a beauty turned sour. Ithought of the dainty little lady that had fenced with words so deftly; and only the need to understand once for all made me endure to listen.
"Ask something that no one but yourself can know," the professor put in. Perhaps even he felt some embarrassment.
Mrs. Tabor hesitated. "I wonder if I ought," she said, half to herself, "I do so want to know."
The voice grew steadier: "Ask me what you will—mother darling— I know already—what you fear."
"Miriam, did I understand what—what I saw the other day?"
I grew suddenly cold, and felt as if the floor were sinking under me.
"The other day—? Fix your mind upon it, mother dear— I see you now— I see you very much frightened— You thought a new trouble was coming—Another trouble like the first—not for yourself—but—"
"Oh, it wasn't myself!" The dry terror of the tone was dreadfully like something I remembered. "It was for her—you know it was for her. They looked as if— Does she love him, Miriam? Does she love him?"
That was more than I would bear. The whole unnatural dialogue had been profane enough; but this new sacrilege— The switch of the electric light was in the wall behind me, and before the spirit voice could speak again, my fingers had found and pressed it.
The medium gave a tearing scream that was horrible to hear, twisted herself out of her chair, and jerked and wriggled on the floor, choking and gurgling. In the sharp yellow glare, the whole room was one hysterical confusion, men and women scrambling to their feet, or sitting dazed, their hands before their eyes. The professor cried angrily: "Confound it, man, you're crazy! You're crazy! You may have killed her. Don't you know how dangerous it is to turn on light that way?" and stooped over the struggling woman on the floor, with scowling sidelong glances back at me. A couple of other men came forward threateningly, and a bejeweled woman, who seemed to be the hostess, cried acidly: "Mercy on us, who is the fellow? One of those reporters?"
"Madam, I can promise you no publicity," said I, and I strode over to where Mrs. Tabor had sunk forward on the table, her head motionless upon heroutstretched arms. Maclean came to my rescue just in time.
"One moment, ladies and gentlemen! Look there—the lady had fainted, you see? Fainted before the lights went on, you see? My friend did exactly right. Now let's keep this all as quiet as possible—we don't want a sensation in the papers." Then as he helped me to raise Mrs. Tabor from her chair, he muttered: "Darn you, Laurie, what in blazes was bitin' you anyhow?"
Between us, we half carried her from the room, while the others were attending to the medium and at cross-purposes among themselves. She had not actually fainted away, and in spite of her shock was able to walk down-stairs with a little help. The door-bell had been ringing violently as we came into the upper hall; and we were still upon the stairs when a flustered maid opened the door upon Mr. Tabor.
"Is Mrs. George Tabor—" he began. Then he caught sight of us and sprang past the maid with a growl.
"It's I, Mr. Tabor—Crosby. She's been to an entertainment here, and broken down. I'll tell you later. Have you got the car outside?"
"Yes, thank God. And Sheila's out there too. Come."
"I'm perfectly well," Mrs. Tabor said faintly. "Nothing to worry any one. Why are you all so nervous about me?"
"I'll go back now," said Maclean, as we reached the front door, "an' hush up this gang up-stairs. There ain't goin' to be any disturbance about this. That crowd's more afraid of the leadin' dailies than they are of the devil, you see?"
I nodded, and the door closed behind us. Mr. Tabor did not say a word as we led his wife across the sidewalk and into the palpitating car. He motioned for me to follow her.
"Not if you can spare me, sir," I said. "I'll be out early to-morrow. I think I've found a key to the whole trouble, and I've got to see about it."
He turned, frowning into my eyes under the white bristle of his brows.
"Crosby," he growled, "either we've a good deal to thank you for, or else—or else you'd better not come to-morrow."
It was a situation in which I felt that I needed counsel, and that of an expert order; so I made my way as fast as a taxicab could carry me to the home of Doctor Immanuel Paulus. Unless I was very much mistaken, I had something which would interest him. A messenger boy was running down his steps as I climbed them, and in the hall stood Doctor Paulus himself, opening the yellow envelop of a telegram. He nodded without looking at me, and with some sibilance of excuse, read the message. Then he thrust it into his pocket.
"Very sorry," he said, "but I can not give any interview this evening. I am called out of town. Besides, I have not orderly arranged my ideas as yet. Come around on the Monday, and I will have something for your paper."
"I'm not a reporter," I interrupted hastily, for already he had found his gloves and hat. "I want to see you about Mrs. Tabor."
"What is that—Mrs. Tabor? Carefully, carefully, young man. Names are names. What have you with her to do?"
By this time I had found a card. "I'm a friend of the Tabors," I said, "and their trouble is no secret from me. You've been looking for a continual irritating cause of Mrs. Tabor's hysteria. Well, I've just found one."
"Clever," he shrilled, "diabolically clever. But it will not do, young man. I have known these your American reporters—"
"If you say that again," I burst out, "you'll have me for a patient. Call the Tabors on the 'phone—any of them will tell you I'm in their confidence; and I can identify myself. We're both of us wasting time."
The sculptured face scowled at me for an instant, then relaxed with a piercing cackle of mirth. "Good. I waste time no more, then, but I believe you. See," he spread out the telegram. "It is to her I go. Now, if you come with me—"
"Mrs. Tabor has just started home from New York in the motor," said I. "Our train leaves in half an hour. Are you ready?"
Doctor Paulus did not say another word until wewere safely aboard the train and out of the tunnel. Then he turned suddenly upon me.
"Have I not seen you at a so-called spiritualistic séance," he chirped.
"Yes," I said, "where we both heard a mysterious voice called familiarly by the name of Mrs. Tabor's elder daughter. What is more, I have just seen Mrs. Tabor herself at another séance, where she talked with this so-called spirit intimately. She has been doing so, unknown to her family, for a long time; and there is your irritating cause. That's why she has hallucinations of her daughter's presence."
Doctor Paulus received my revelation with somewhat humiliating calm. He showed not the least astonishment, nor did he answer for some minutes, but sat frowning in front of him, and drumming with a large white hand upon the window-sill. When he spoke again, it was with a smile.
"Mr. Crosby, I find myself—yes—interested somewhat in you. First I see you at spiritualism; then before a house where another séance is about to be; next I pass you in the subway, and a few minutes thereafter I presently behold you riding a child's bicycle after my brougham to discover me— Now also, I recall to have seen you in the country,when I was with the young medical man who sends this impetuous telegram. Therefore I say, since you are not a reporter, you have a mind either unbalanced or very well balanced. And you now bring me eagerly this information, so that you are with the Tabors much interested, which may prove—you are no relation, is it not so?" He laid his hand upon my knee. "It is not your mind then, but a heart unbalanced, which produces often great mental activity."
I was both embarrassed and impatient. "Am I right, then, about Mrs. Tabor?" I asked. "Isn't there a chance of a permanent cure for her by removing her from this spiritualism business? If we can only—"
He held up his hand. "Let us not leap to the conclusion. That is what I tell always to the Doctor Reid. He is a bright young man, but he leaps too much to the conclusion. So probably he has said to you that Mrs. Tabor is a paranoiac, which may be so; or perhaps with continual irritation of the mind, only hysteria that may be aided by removal of the irritation. I am too old to be quickly sure. Now, I repeat to Reid that a medical man must save his mental or physical jumps for cases of extremity. He must not jump all the time; that is how you areneurasthenic in America. Hysteria, that we can by removing suggestions and introspections palliate, or perhaps cure. And there may be also hallucinations and the fixed idea. Therefore it is so like a shadow of insanity. The daughter's death, we knew of that. And I have said that some continual suggestion was to be sought for, which might produce this illusion of her daughter's continual presence, such as you have perhaps found. So we are ready to consider. Tell me now all that you know, carefully. Not your own deductions I want, but the facts alone."
When I had finished, he sat silent for a long time, frowning on his hand as it drummed idly on the window-ledge.
"Why do you conclude that she has for some time been attending spiritualisms unknown to her family?" he asked abruptly at last.
"They all seemed to know her, and to recognize the voice called Miriam. She went about it besides in a very accustomed way. And before her first disappearance this summer—the first I knew of personally—she had a telephone message from Mrs. Mahl. I answered it, and I recognized her voice afterward."
After another long silence I ventured: "Hasn't she always been worse after she has been away?"
He answered in a preoccupied tone, as if I had merely tapped the current of his own thought: "It seemed at first to me a temporary breakdown only, which I looked to grow better. I have been much disappointed that it has not, and she grows periodically worse coincidently with disappearances of which they do not know in time to control them. So I tell them that some harmful practice is added to the original cause, and they assure me that no new thing comes into her life, unless—" he looked at me quizzically—"a young man whose interest in the remaining daughter causes him to follow scientists about on bicycles. I recommend quiet and the removal of reminiscences, and still the irritation goes on. Now, as to spiritualism, there I have not made up my mind. I investigate it as a human abnormality, for to me, like the Roman, nothing human is to be thought foreign. It looks to be trickery, and yet that is not sure, but there may be scientific interest there. Certainly so great a man as Lombroso found much to interest. In the end we shall, as I think, find all manifestations physical, or perhaps there is here some little known semi-psychic force disengaged from the living persons present. Of the dead there is little cause to speculate. However it be ofall this, there is without any doubt acute nerve-strain very bad for the neuropathic, and aggravated by belief. Yes, it is perhaps cause enough, and perhaps effect only."
The train was pulling into Stamford as he ended, and it was not until the waiting automobile had carried us nearly to the house that Doctor Paulus spoke again.
"I think," he said, "that possibly, I say possibly, Mr. Crosby, you have made a valuable discovery. At least we know now the circumstances better. But on the one hand these visits to séances may be aggravating cause of the unbalancement, and on the other mere results of unnatural cravings in the unbalanced mind. It is a circle, and we seek the slenderest point where it may be broken."
Mr. Tabor met us at the door, and as we came up the steps Reid slipped eagerly past him.
"Splendid!" he exclaimed, wringing the great man's hand. "Splendid! Hoped it would be this train, but I hardly dared think so. I know how important your time is. Very good of you to come out, very good indeed. Now as to the case; manifestations unfortunately very clear just now. Very unfortunate, but I'm afraid we have been right allalong. Come out to my rooms a moment, and I'll give you the whole matter in detail. Better to run over the whole thing scientifically."
Doctor Paulus smiled at me dryly: "I shall be most happy," he shrilled, and after a formal word or two with Mr. Tabor, stalked soberly around the house. Mr. Tabor and I went into the living-room without speaking.
"Has Lady told you—?" I began.
He nodded. "I hardly know what to say to you, Crosby. I feel very sorry for you both. I am sorry for all of us. Mrs. Tabor has not been herself at all since the other day, and of course for the time everything else is secondary to her. But don't think that I'm anything but very glad personally." He held out his hand.
I took it in silence, and a moment later, Lady came in, greeting me very quietly, as if my presence at this time were entirely a matter of course. Father and daughter evidently understood each other. We sat almost in silence until the two doctors returned, Paulus frowning downward and Reid more jerkily busy than ever. The scene had the air of a deliberate family council.
"Mr. Tabor," Doctor Paulus began, "I havethought better not to disturb our patient by an interview just now, since she is asleep after so long a wakefulness. Doctor Reid besides has made the conditions very clear. Only on one point he has not been able to inform me wholly: It appears that Mrs. Tabor has attended meetings of spiritualists habitually in secret, which accounts for those excursions of which we know lately. How long ago may we possibly date the commencement of this practice?"
"She was interested in spiritualism carelessly and as a sort of fad before Miriam's marriage," Mr. Tabor answered, "but so far as I know, she never actually attended any sittings then; and she hasn't spoken of it for years. She might, of course, have kept it secret all along; it's only within the last few months that we have tried to follow all her movements."
Doctor Paulus settled heavily into a chair, and fell to drumming on the arm of it. Lady stood beside her father, her arm resting upon his shoulder; and Reid paced nervously up and down the room. A chirp and a rustle made me notice the canary hanging in the farther window. Finally Paulus looked up.
"Do you prefer to have my opinion in private?" he asked.
Mr. Tabor was looking older than I had ever seen him. "Your opinion means a great deal to all of us, Doctor," he said. Reid stopped a moment in his pacing.
"Well, my opinion is not quite positive, because I have not certainly all the facts. That is the fault with all our opinions, that we never can base them upon wholly complete data. Mrs. Tabor we have thought insane, and there was much to bear that out. So if I had been certain that all her illusions proceeded from within her own mind, I should have said that it was surely so. But now Mr. Crosby makes known to us this external suggestion of spirits, with its continual reminding of her trouble and the unnatural strain. He argues also—and I am not at all certain but that he argues rightly—that this practice, this superstition of hers, may be the cause of her deterioration, so that by removing it she will grow better or perhaps well. Is it so far clear?"
"Quite so, exactly," Reid broke in. "Perfectly clear, Doctor, perfectly. But why not effect rather than cause? Another symptom, that's all. Fixedidea, unnatural craving for communication with the other world, because the mind is unbalanced by loss."
"I think that is to place the horse after the wagon, as we say. It is certainly a vicious circle, but still—"
"Precisely," exclaimed Reid, "but the impulse comes—"
Doctor Paulus held up a white hand. "Wait a little. I do not come to conclusions hastily. Now I conclude that Mrs. Tabor is thus far no more than hysterical, and what we have to do is first to remove entirely from her this superstitious influence." The shrill voice took suddenly a sharper edge. "Moreover, Doctor Reid, I will say to you that only two other men in the world know more than I know of my specialty, and of those unfortunately neither one is here." He waited until Reid subsided into a seat, then went slowly on: "Now the question is how this harmful belief is to be removed, and that is the difficult matter."
"If she were in a sanatorium—" Reid began.
"She'd worry herself to pieces," Lady interrupted; and Doctor Paulus nodded heavily. "She'd feel imprisoned, and imagine and brood and worry, and the atmosphere of impersonal restraint wouldmake her worse. We can at least help to keep her mind off herself and make her cheerful."
"We can prevent from now on, I think, any further communications," said Mr. Tabor.
"But the trouble's inside her own mind," snapped Reid; and the shrill voice of his colleague added:
"That is partly true, so far as she has now hallucinations and re-creates her own harm. Suppose then we held her from seeking harm elsewhere, that is something; but still even so she feels restraint, and still her misbelief goes on. If we could reach that—but how to make her not thus believe?" He fell silent, and the white hand began its drumming again. I felt irritably that he was the most deliberate man in the world.
Suddenly I found Lady's eyes upon me. "I think Mr. Crosby has something to suggest," she said, and with her words a suggestion came to me.
Reid snorted.
Doctor Paulus smiled very gravely. "That busy mind of Mr. Crosby has before been useful," he said. "What is this idea, then?"
"It sounds pretty wild and theatrical," said I, "but couldn't we reach the root of the trouble by making the cure come from the same source? We might tellher for ever that her ideas were false and harmful, and she'd only feel that we were profane. But if the medium herself denied them—these visions and voices must be at least partly a fake. Now, if we can persuade or force her to show Mrs. Tabor how it's done—and I think I know how to exert pressure upon her—then might not the illusion be dispelled once for all? I mean, whether Mrs. Mahl is a fake or not, can't she be made to undo the work she has done, and discredit the dangerous belief she has taught?"
Mr. Tabor was leaning forward in his chair as I finished. Reid was walking the floor again and shrugging his shoulders; and Lady was looking at me with eyes of absolute belief.
"Fake?" asked Doctor Paulus unexpectedly.
"Sham, trick, fraud," I explained, and he nodded, frowning.
"Oh, but this whole thing's absurd," Reid put in. "Crosby's a good fellow and clever, and all that, but he's a layman and this is a complicated problem. It's all one if after another. If the woman's willing to expose herself, and if she does it well, and if mother believes her, and if all this would have anything to do with the case. Besides it would be ashock, a violent shock, a dangerous shock. No sense at all in it. Melodrama isn't medicine."
"I am not so sure," said Doctor Paulus. "It is unusual and what you call theatrical, but my work is unusual and many times theatrical also. I have need to act much of the time with my patients. With the individual mind one must use each time an individual cure. This at least strikes at the cause of the trouble, and might succeed. With your permission, Mr. Tabor, we will try it."
"But her heart, man, her heart," objected Reid, "what about her heart, and the shock?"
"Well, we can dare, I think, to risk that. Every operation is a risk that we judge wise to take, and this is a malignant misbelief to be extirpated. There will be no unreasonable danger."
"If we can somehow get this medium out here—" said Mr. Tabor.
"That I shall manage, to bring her to-morrow afternoon, telling her perhaps of a private sitting in the interest of science. I am not often so much away, but this case is of importance." He rose, and looked at his watch. "Is not that the motor-car now at the door?"
On the step he turned to me with his quizzicalsmile. "It is perhaps well for us all to have your mind stimulated, Mr. Crosby. That is a beautiful and intelligent young lady." He looked abruptly from me to the midnight sky. "It appears, if I do not mistake, that we shall have rain," he chirped. "Good night," and he stepped gravely into the limousine and closed the door with a slam.
The morning came dark and stormy, with a September gale driving in from the Sound, and the trees lashing and tossing gustily through gray slants of rain. It was so dark that until nearly noon we kept the lights burning; and through the unnatural morning we sat about listlessly, unwilling to talk about the impending crisis and unable to talk long of anything else for the unspoken weight of it upon our minds. Mrs. Tabor kept her room, with Sheila and most of the time Lady busy with her. She seemed hardly to remember the night before, save as a vague shock; and physically she was less weakened by it than might have been expected; but her mind wavered continually, and she confused with her hallucination of Miriam the identity of those about her. The rest of us talked and read by snatches, and stared restlessly out of the rain-fleckedwindows. Mr. Tabor and I began a game of chess.
It was well on in the afternoon when the automobile came in sight, swishing through the sodden grayness with curtains drawn and hood and running-gear splashed with clinging clots of clay. None of us knew who saw it first; only that we three men were at the door together encouraging one another with our eyes. The medium greeted us with a gush of caressing politeness, glancing covertly among us as she removed her wraps, and bracing herself visibly beneath her unconcern. It was she who made the first move, after Doctor Paulus had introduced us and we were seated in Mr. Tabor's study behind closed doors.
"Mr. Crosby is the gentleman who turned the light on me last evening," she said. I wish I could express the undulating rise and fall of her inflection. It was almost as if she sang the words. "Of course with him present I would not be willing to do anything. It was very painful, besides the risk, a dreadful shock like that."
"I shall not be in the room," I answered, "and I'm sorry to have caused you any discomfort, Mrs. Mahl. We needed the light, I thought."
"Oh, it wasn't the pain;" she smiled with lifted eyes. "We grow so used to it that we don't consider suffering. It was very dangerous, waking one out of control suddenly. You might have killed me, but of course you weren't aware." She turned to Doctor Paulus: "You understand, Doctor, how it is, how it strains the vitality. The gentleman didn't realize."
We had become, at the outset, four strong men leagued against an appealing and helpless woman. Perhaps I should say three; for Doctor Paulus did not seem impressed.
"Yes, I know," he chirped. "We need not, however, consider that. You are here, madam, as I have told you, for a scientific experiment under my direction. Mr. Crosby will not be in the room. With your permission, I will now explain the nature of that experiment. There is in this house a lady, a patient of mine, Mrs. Tabor, who has for some time frequently sat with you. She has on these occasions habitually conversed, as she believes, with the spirit of her daughter Miriam that is some years dead."
"That is our greatest work." She was not looking at Doctor Paulus, but at the rest of us. "To be able to soften the great separation. You othershope for a reunion beyond the grave, but we ourselves know. If you could only believe—if you could realize how wonderful it is to have communion with your—"
"We shall not go into that," said Doctor Paulus. "Mrs. Tabor, as I said, believes. She is therefore in a hysterical condition to which you have largely helped to contribute. I do not say she is insane; she is not. But I do say she stands on the parting of the ways, and that, to save her mind, or as it may be, her life, it is necessary that these unhealthy conversations shall cease."
The medium looked now at Doctor Paulus. "The poor woman! Isn't it terrible? But you know, I can't believe, Doctor, that the sittings do anything but soothe and comfort her. It can't be that you think her insane just because she believes in spiritualism? You believe too much yourself for that."
Doctor Paulus looked at her steadily. "I have told you plainly that she is not insane yet," he said.
"See here," snapped Reid. He had been shuffling his feet and fidgeting in his chair for some minutes. "No use discussing the ethics of your business with you. Let's come right down to the facts. We're not asking for advice. We're stating a case. Plainfact is that Mrs. Tabor's going insane. You can stop it by showing her that these suppressed spirits are a trick. Will you do it, or not? That's the whole question."
The medium had risen, and was looking for her handkerchief, eying Reid with meek fearlessness. "Of course, I'm used to this," she murmured, "but not among educated people. A few centuries ago, Doctor, your profession was regarded in the same light. I don't imagine we can have anything in common. Is the car still at the door?"
"Hold on, Walter," Mr. Tabor interrupted quietly. "Mrs. Mahl, you must allow for our feelings in this matter. Please sit down again. Now, we make no charges against you. The issue is not whether you are sincere in your beliefs, nor whether we agree with them." He moved one hand in a slow, broad gesture. "All that we leave aside. The point is here: Mrs. Tabor's belief in these things is harmful and dangerous to her. And it must be done away with, like any other harmful and dangerous thing. We don't ask whether it is illusion or fact; we ask you, for the sake of her health, to make her believe that it is an illusion."
"You know, of course, that I have no control overthe spirit voice," said Mrs. Mahl blandly. "Do you wish me to refuse to sit for her?"
"Here and now, we wish to have you sit for her," Doctor Paulus put in, "and show her, once for all, how this her daughter's spirit is made. It is to cure her of all credulousness in it, for with her mind clean of such poison she shall recover."
"Would you have me lie to her even for her good?" The woman was either a wonderful actress or a more wonderful self-deceiver. She turned to Mr. Tabor appealingly: "How can I deny my own faith? Do you think the truth can ever be wrong?"
Mr. Tabor went suddenly purple: "If it is the truth," he growled, "it's a truth out of hell, and we're going to fight it. But it isn't."
Not in the least disconcerted by her false move, she turned back to Doctor Paulus. "Doctor," she said, dropping her air of martyrdom and speaking more incisively than I had yet heard her, "you are the one who knows. These gentlemen do not understand. You know that there are mysteries here that your science can't explain, whatever you think about them. You know the difference between my powers and the fakes of a two-dollar clairvoyant. You know it in spite of yourself. Now tell mehow you can reconcile it with your conscience, to bring me up here to listen to such a proposal as this?"
The alienist's Napoleonic face hardened, and his voice took a shriller edge.
"We shall not go into that," he said. "And now we will make an end of this talking. You are partly sincere, but you are charlatan also. I have seen all the records, and I have attended your sittings, and I have all the data, you understand. And I have my position, so that people listen to me. You have done tricks, once, twice, many times, and I have all the facts and the dates. So. You will do as I say, and I will remember that you are part honest. Or, otherwise; if you will not, then I expose you altogether, publicly."
"You can say anything you like," she retorted coolly. "I don't care a bit. Just because you're a big doctor, you needn't think I care. Folks are so used to you scientific men denying everything, that when you support us it helps, and when you attack us it don't matter. You think your little crowd of wise ones is the whole earth. My clients have faith in me. Go ahead, and expose all you want to."
"Wouldn't it be wiser to make friends of us?" Mr. Tabor asked slowly.
"We'll make you a by-word," sputtered Reid. "We'll run you out of the country. That's what we'll do, we'll run you out of the country."
She smiled: "All right, Doctor. Run along." Then rising to her feet again, with a sweeping gesture, "Say what you will, all of you," she cried tragically, "I defy you!" And she marched over to the door.
"One moment, Mrs. Mahl," said I. "The man who was with me at your sittings was a reporter, the only one there. If I say so, he'll scare-head you as a faker—in letters all across the front page. You won't be a serious impostor, or have the strength of a weak cause. We won't attack you and give you a chance to defend yourself, but we'll make a nationwide mock of you. You'll be a joke, with comic drawings."
"You're trying to bluff me," she sneered. Then all at once, her coolness gave way, and she flung herself around upon us in a flood of tears: "You're a nice crowd of men, aren't you?" she sobbed, "to make a dead set on one woman this way!" She came swiftly up to me, and caught both my hands,leaning against me with upturned face. "Did you see anything wrong at my sittings? Have you anything against me, that you'd swear to, yourself?"
"Not a thing," I answered. "What of that?"
"Then you'dlieabout me?" I could feel the hurry of her breathing.
"I would," said I, "with the greatest pleasure, in every paper in New York." I stepped back. "Excuse me, I'm going to telephone."
She looked around at the others with the eyes of a cornered cat. Then she dropped back into her chair.
"Very well," she sniffed, "I'll do it. I'll deny my faith to preserve my usefulness. And God will punish you."
The granite face of Doctor Immanuel Paulus relaxed into a grim smile.
"The press, in America," said he. "That is a fine weapon."
Mrs. Mahl, having finally yielded, was not long in recovering from her emotion; and while Mr. Tabor went to bring his wife, the two doctors rapidly discussed the precise needs of the case, and with the medium's assistance formulated a plan of action.I am bound to say that she entered into the scheme as unreservedly as though it had been from the first her own; suggesting eagerly how this and that detail might best be managed, and showing a familiarity with Mrs. Tabor's trouble, and with nervous abnormality in general, hardly less complete and practical than theirs. Presently we heard the voices of the others in the hall, and she went quietly out to meet them. Then came a confused blur of tones, Mrs. Tabor's in timid protest and Sheila and Lady in reassurance; then Mr. Tabor, a little louder than the rest: "Not in the least, my dear. Why should I? You should have told me all about it from the first." Then the voices grew quieter, and at last blunted into silence behind the heavy curtains of the living-room. We waited an interminable five minutes gazing into one another's rigid faces, and hearing only the restless movement of Reid. At last, Doctor Paulus nodded at us, and we tiptoed noiselessly across the hall to where around the edges of the close-drawn curtains we could hear and see.
At a little card-table, drawn out into the center of the floor, sat Mrs. Tabor and the medium, face to face. Between them and beyond the table was Mr. Tabor; Lady sat on her mother's nearer side, andSheila, with her back to us, completed the circle. They were all leaning forward intently, something in the attitude of people saying grace before a meal. The windows were not covered, but the dull light of the late and stormy afternoon came inward only as a leaden grayness, in which faces and the details of the surroundings were heavily and vaguely visible, like shadows of themselves. In the window at the far end of the room, the canary hopped carelessly about his cage, with an occasional cricket-like chirp; and but for this the house was quiet enough for us to hear the swish of wind along the leaves of the vine-covered veranda and the ripple of the rain upon the glass.
I knew now that my excited sensations at the previous sittings must have been imaginary in their origin; for even here, in the presence of this open and prearranged imposture, I felt the same curious sense of tension, the same intimacy as of a surrounding crowd, the same oppressive heaviness of the atmosphere. I could hardly believe in the airy spaciousness of the high room, or the physical distance between me and my fellow-watchers. My breath came laboriously, and I wondered how those within could fail to hear the slow pounding of myheart and the rustle of our heavy breathing behind the curtain. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Reid raise his brows toward his superior, and he answered by a frowning nod. At last after an interval doubtless far shorter than before, but interminable to our strained anticipation, the medium shuddered slightly, and fell back in her chair. Her face twisted convulsively, and her hands and head made little twitching, aimless movements, unpleasantly like the reflexive spasms of a dying animal. She moaned softly once or twice, then relaxed limply; and the voice of Miriam began to speak.
"Here I am—mother—why did—you—bring me here?"
Mr. Tabor leaned back, his white brows drawn into a savage knot. Sheila covered her eyes and fell to rocking slowly to and fro. Lady made no sign; but I knew what sacrilege it was to her, and I could hardly hold myself. Yet the mother answered without regarding them.
"I like to have you near me, dearest. Does this place trouble you?"
"Why should it—trouble me?— As well—here—as anywhere— Nothing matters—to me."
"That's more like yourself than anything I'veheard you say— George, did you hear? Can you doubt now after that?"
Her husband answered only with a gesture, and the voice went on.
"Are you—sure you know me, mother?"
The two scientists exchanged glances. Mrs. Tabor began a hurried protest, but the voice interrupted.
"Because you may be—only imagining—it may not be real."
The querulous throaty tone was the same, but the words came each time more quickly, and the wail was dying out of them. The comic aspect of the whole scene struck me suddenly with revolting. It was so terribly important and at the same time such a tawdry practical joke.
"Miriam, what are you saying?" Mrs. Tabor was leaning forward toward the sound, her face tense and frightened.
"Oh, anything I please—it's quite easy— Don't you begin to understand?"
"Oh, what do you mean? Miriam! Mrs. Mahl, what is happening?"
The medium never stirred, nor moved a muscle of her face, as the spirit-voice replied: "Just the samething that's happened right along, Mrs. Tabor. Don't you see now? You were always so sure that any voice could do for you to recognize. You've laid yourself open to it."
Mrs. Tabor looked for the first time as one might who listens to the dead. Her voice frightened me, it was so calm.
"What do you mean?" she said monotonously. I saw Reid move as if to part the curtain, glancing sharply at Doctor Paulus as he did so; but the older man's mouth was a bloodless line, and he shook his great head, whispering: "Not yet, Reid; not yet."
"Listen," said the voice. "Here's what you call Miriam talking." Its tone changed abruptly: "Now here's me. I'm doing it." The medium rose quietly from her chair, and stepped out into the room: "The whole thing's just—a trick," she said, shifting from one voice to the other in alternate phrases. "You believe in—ghosts—and so I gave you—what you believe." She came around the table. "Do you understand now?"
Sheila was sobbing aloud, but none of the others seemed to notice her. Mrs. Tabor sat for an instant as if frozen, staring vacantly in front of her. Then as the medium approached, she shrank away suddenlywith a childish cry of fear. "It isn't true!" she cried. "It isn't true!" and she swung limply forward upon the little table, and lay still.
Lady and Mr. Tabor were beside her in an instant, as we three sprang forward into the room. Sheila was on her feet, muttering, "You've killed her, ye brute beasts—" But a look from Doctor Paulus silenced her, as he waved the rest of us back and bent over the unconscious woman, his broad fingers pressed along the slender wrist. For a moment we watched his face in silence, as if it were the very face of destiny. Then the canary gave a sudden shrill scream, and fluttered palpitating into a corner of its cage, beating so violently against the wires that tiny feathers floated loosely out and down. The medium whispered: "Oh, my God!" and cringed sidelong, raising her arms as if one struck at her. And my hair thrilled and my heart sickened and stopped, for even while she spoke, a voice came out of the empty air above our heads; a voice like nothing that I had heard before, a woman's voice thin and tremulous, with a fragile resonance in it, as though it spoke into a bell.
"Oh, mother, mother," it wailed. "Why don't you let me go and rest?"
I think Lady clutched at my arm, but I can not remember. The one memory that remains to me of that moment is the face of Doctor Paulus. His color had turned from ivory to chalk, his mouth was drawn open in a snarling square and his eyes shrank back hollowly, glaring into nothingness. For a second he stood so, clawing in front of him with his hands, a living horror. Then with an effort that shook him from head to foot, the strong soul of the man commanded him. "It's nothing," he whispered, "I understand it. Take hold of yourselves." The hands dropped, and he bent again over Mrs. Tabor. The next moment Sheila had sprung out in front of us, and was speaking to the voice that we could not see.
"Miriam Reid," she cried, in a high chanting cadence between song and speech, "if it's yourselfthat's here, lie down to your rest again, an' leave us. Go back to your place in purgatory, darling till the white angels come to carry ye higher in their own good time. In the name av God an' Mary, in the name av the Blessed Saints, go back! Go back to your home between hell an' Heaven, an' come no more among us here!"
"Get some water, Reid," snapped Doctor Paulus. "Quiet that woman, some of you."
But Sheila had done before we could move or speak to her. With her last words, she flung her arms wide apart, above her head, and brought them inward and downward in some strange formal gesture. Then as swiftly and certainly as if she had planned it all from the beginning, she caught a little bottle from her breast, and sprinkled its contents in the upturned face of Mrs. Tabor. We caught hold of her just as she was making the sign of the Cross. But she was perfectly quiet now, with nothing more to say or do, and stood motionless like the rest of us, breathing deep breaths and watching.
The cool shock of the water did its work. Mrs. Tabor's eyelids quivered, and she gasped faintly. Reid came hurrying back with a glass of water, and stood at the side of his superior, looking foolishlydisappointed as he realized the anticipation of his errand.
"She comes out of it all right," Doctor Paulus muttered. "No harm. It is more the trance condition than an ordinary faint." He looked up at Sheila with a grim smile. "Superstition is a fine thing—sometimes, under medical direction. Now I leave her to you, Reid, a few minutes. It is better that at first she sees only her own." He beckoned to the medium, and the two went out of the room together. Then as we stood about, Mrs. Tabor caught another breath, and another. Her hands groped a moment, and her eyes opened. She looked around at us wonderingly, as we raised her up in her seat.
"Thank God," said Lady softly. And Sheila answered from the other side: "The Saints be praised."
She sat very quietly for a little time, looking about her. Lady had wiped the water from her face, and she seemed her natural self again, the girlish color returning to her cheeks and a certain bird-like vivacity in her whole pose. Then, as if memory of a sudden returned to her, she crumpled over, hiding her tragic little face in her hands. She began to crysoftly at first in little sobbing, heart-broken gasps, which took on gradually a wailing intensity very dreadful to hear.
"Oh, my dear, my dear, my dear!" she repeated over and over again, in a desolate and ceaseless iteration that grew into a horror and which alone we dared not stop. Doctor Paulus, we knew, must be within call and listening. I think that all of us wondered why he did not return; we resented this permitted continuance of suffering. Finally it was Lady who made the first move among us.
She dropped on her knees beside her mother, putting her arm tenderly about the convulsed little form, and pressing her cheek close against her mother's own. "Mother, dear," she whispered very softly.
A pause came in Mrs. Tabor's sobbing and she stretched one hand half as if to push Lady away, half as if to hold her as something real and tangible.
"Where is the doctor?" she asked.
Evidently Doctor Paulus had been listening, for at the murmured question he stepped in and came across the room to Mrs. Tabor. She faced him shrinkingly, but nerved herself for the question.
"Why have you taken her from me?" she asked brokenly, at last.
Doctor Paulus' face was very kind and very serious.
"I know that now it seems so," he answered, "but all that will for you pass away. It is not that we have taken the daughter that is dead away. For you see now, and you will understand how all that came only out of yourself, like a picture that you made of your own sorrow. It was in a circle, how you made by grieving this grief like a thing from outside coming to make you grieve the more. A circle that seems as well to begin at one point as at another, is it not so? And this cruel light so suddenly has made you see the true beginning. So now it is all gone because you have known that it was never there at all." He moved his broad hands suddenly as one waving away smoke. "There is not any longer for you that other world which never was, which was a burden and a trouble always to you because it was made out of trouble. But this good world you have again, and of that only the good part, all your dear ones here truly returned because that evil nothing is gone from between. Is it not so?"
She had been facing him like a creature at bay, silent and resisting, the horror in her strained little by little into desperation as he spoke. I do not knowwhat held us from interference, for the man was blindly tottering on toward a precipice, clumsily ignorant of the condition he must face; and every fatuous word grated like sand between the teeth. One had a desire to lay physical hands upon him.
"Doctor," Reid broke out, "for God's sake—"
Doctor Paulus never turned his head. "Be still, young man," he said quietly, and Reid's voice died into a stammer as he went steadily on.
"If it was cruel, this way to show you wholly the truth, so we must hurt once not to have to hurt more. But it is better to have the truth now, is it not so? For you have all these that are living, and you will be well again. Oh, there is no miracle; all does not in a moment change. Now and then still you will hear the voices and see these things which are not. But you will know now that they are only of yourself, and so they will go away. This we understand in the good old story of casting out devils. And it is good to be sure that the daughter is at rest, from the beginning. I want you to understand it all very clearly. You have been sick, but you are going to be well, not well all at once, remember, but better day by day, and when discouraging days come I want you to remember this: that even when things seemconfused and unhappy and unreal, yet it does not make any difference. For you have your loved ones about you and they will help and when things are bad and you are a little afraid, you can call for Doctor Paulus. I have never given my word falsely or for encouraging alone. Time and these loved ones will help, but most of all your own will will make your life what it should be, will bring you back to happiness."
It is impossible to describe the convincing strength of the man as he stood towering among us; the very compellent force of his individuality was reflected in the dawning belief in Mrs. Tabor's eyes. Like a child she laid her little hand in the doctor's great one.
"I am going to try, Doctor," she said. "I see that I have been sick, but with all you dear people I shall get well." And for the first time her eyes left the doctor's face and turned to the rest of us who had drawn a little apart, but as they met mine their expression changed and a flicker of the old terror came into them, a terror that was reflected in my own heart.
"George," she asked sharply, "what is Mr. Crosby doing here?"
"Why, my dear—" Mr. Tabor stammered.
"I know. I remember now." She struggled to her feet, and the old terror was upon her face. "I meant to tell you about it. Mr. Crosby has not been honest with us. I came into the room a while ago and found him with Lady, and—" She broke off suddenly, looking quickly from one to another of our startled faces. "What is the matter with you all?" she cried; then in that level, hollow tone we had learned to fear. "I see now. You know—you have known all along; and that was the secret you were keeping from me."
No one spoke. She looked downward at her hands, then glanced again in a puzzled way from one to another of us. Mr. Tabor was the picture of despair, old and white and worn, his whole strength shaken by the vision of our final failure. Lady stood erect, her color coming and going, tragedy in her eyes; and near her Sheila, a gaunt and sturdy comfort, sure in the inherited wisdom of homely faith. And as I looked at these two women, each in her own way upheld beyond her strength or her understanding, I made my resolve. I glanced at Doctor Paulus, but he made no sign. If I must take the responsibility of an answer upon myself I determined that at the worst I would leave no issue of the fightunknown; if we had failed, we must measure the whole depth of our failure.
"Mrs. Tabor," I said, "there is no secret any more. Lady is going to marry me."
She gave me one look. "All that I had left," she whispered; and then again she began to cry, but this time softly, turning away from us toward the window at the end of the room. Sheila followed and put an arm about her, and the two stood together apart from us under the fading light, while above their heads the canary burst out into a mockery of song. No one knew what to say or do; but after a little, Reid's itch for efficiency drove him into speech.
"It all comes right down to this, mother—" he began. A look from Lady dried the words upon his tongue, and the silence fell once more. Then slowly and confidently Lady came over to me and slipped her dear hand into mine.
"You are right, Laurence," she said, "the truth is best for all of us now."
"Mrs. Tabor," said Doctor Paulus, "you do not lose your daughter, but gain, I think, a very good son. Indeed it is Mr. Crosby who has helped us much to our knowledge that you were going to be well and strong again."
The calm strange voice broke in at just the precise instant to relieve the tension. Mrs. Tabor looked up.
"Oh, you need not be afraid, Doctor," she said, as she wiped away her tears, "but you do well to remind me. I know—I know there's nothing really the matter with me except that I'm a little tired. And goodness gracious, what are you good people standing there so stiff and solemn for? It's all right! you've made me understand. Turn the lights on, Sheila—and— Lady, what have you done with my ring?" She came across to where we stood together, and took a hand of each in her own. She glanced over her shoulder at Paulus, "And you mustn't any of you think of going away this weather. The house is big enough to hold us—and, Mr. Crosby, I'm going to put you in Miriam's room."