CHAPTER XXITHE REAPER
The spring brought trouble deep and lasting to the home of Nathan. Their child, upon whom Lissa had rested her heart and hopes after the manner of all mothers since the dawn of creation, sickened and died.
One day its little, warm lips had been pressed to hers, while its eyes looked inquiringly into her face with the mysterious intensity of infancy. The next, the waxen body lay cold and still before her unknowing and unheeding, and the weighted agony of her heart was beyond expression.
Oh, mothers who have had this experience, how I pity you! How my heart bleeds for you! It is to tear out a vital part of your being, to rend the very cords of life, to see that precious little casket of clay, so pure, so fair, borne away. How can you bear it?
Lissa did not bear her trial bravely, but sank beneath it. For days she neither ate nor slept. She would sit in the spot where her baby died, and beg that it should return to her. She would pray that it might become materialized and appear to her as the children she had at one time seen come from a cabinet at a seance. That seemed to be her one thought, to see it, to feel its little warm hands once more.
Nathan watched her with increasing anxiety, scarce naming, even to himself, what he feared. At last one morning she startled him by declaring that the child had come to her in the night. That she had seen it and touched its hands.
“It was but a dream, dearest. Little Lucy is safe in Jesus’ arms. Think of that, Lissa, safe!�
She turned from him impatiently.
“I don’t want to think of it. I want her myself. I have the best right to her. It was cruel to take my baby, my only one. He must let her come back to me.�
“But, my dear, that is impossible. Our little one is safe in a better world, where no harm nor evil can approach her. She is waiting for us there. Some day you can go to her, Lissa, but she may not come to you.�
“But I know she can and does. She is there in that corner of the room. Sit very still, and she will come to you. See her?�
Nathan, startled in spite of himself, would sit, awed and expectant, looking in the direction indicated, while his wife, wrapped in eager absorption, would remain motionless, becoming angry if he disturbed her.
And thus the weeks passed, bringing no relief. Lissa’s nature seemed completely changed. She no longer took interest in her household affairs, but left everything to her domestic, who at best was an indifferent housekeeper. Nathan came home each week to find neglect and chaos, where had once been care and order.
Lissa was petulant and easily irritated, and her dark, sad eyes looked as if she never slept. She lost in flesh and color and her constant and ever-recurring theme of conversation was the child she had lost.
“Ah, how far from comforting is this belief which my poor wife has embraced! If Lissa would only become reconciled to the fact that the child cannot come to her again, she would soon recover from her sorrow,� he said to Mark Cramer, as after an unusually trying hour with her he walked slowly with his brother-in-law toward the latter’s house. “It is certainly wrong to try to recall the dead.�
“I agree with you. God pity those who have no other belief than spiritism.�
“Amen!� replied Nathan. “It has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Poor Lissa keeps herself and every one around her wretched by constantly talking of her lost one. I feel at times she is losing her mind. She seems to care for nothing but what she calls ‘communing with her child.’ I can see that she is failing in health as well as mind. I hoped when the first outburst of grief was over she would, like other mothers, become resigned, but if anything she is becoming more absorbed in it. I cannot blame her friends for staying away from her. They do not want to hear the same story continually. If I propose that we go away for a time she looks alarmed and refuses to leave the house, because of the nightly visits of her little one. Surely, surely, Mark, it is a delusion. It cannot be that shedoessee her?� he questioned.
“I certainly believe, Nate, that she is self-deceived and that unless her mind can in some way be diverted and given other food she will die or become insane. I was surprised to-day to see the change in her, even in the short time I have been gone.�
“If she would only take some interest in her household affairs, but she leaves everything to Neoka, who is poorly fitted for such responsibility. I might send for her mother—�
Mark shook his head. “I am afraid her mother gives too much credence to this wretched fallacy that is making all the trouble,� he said.
“Well,� groaned Nathan, “I’m to blame for all this! If I had never brought that man Russell into the neighborhood this need never have happened.�
“Possibly not, but you don’t know. The Devil usually has some way of finding victims. He might have sent along some other of his emissaries. I suppose he has plenty, even ofthiskind. But I will think about this and see if I cannot find some way of deliverance.�
“Heaven grant you may, and soon!�
“I’ve often wondered,� said Mark, “why you ever had anything to do with this belief. I always supposed you too sound a man to be deceived easily, and yet you have half seemed to accept the doctrine.�
“I never told you of an experience I had, a number of years ago, while I was railroading, did I? You know I ran on the road three or four years. At the time the incident happened I was acting as conductor on a freight train running between R—— and Council Bluffs. I had a friend, George Marvin,who was also a railroad man, and we were close chums. He was a splendid fellow and supported a widowed mother, who idolized him.
“One day he came down to the station and told me he had had a bad dream the night before, and felt sure that if he went out upon his run he’d meet with an accident. I pooh-poohed at him, but he was terribly depressed and insisted that he’d had a warning and must not go. So finally we hunted one of the boys to go in his place, and he jumped on a passing train to ride up to the street-crossing near his home, standing on the step of the third car from the engine. As the train moved out between the tracks upon which other cars were standing, George leaned out too far, was struck by some projection from a freight car, knocked under the wheels, and killed instantly.
“It was a terrible thing. I couldn’t sleep for nights after it happened. And his poor mother—well, she never got over it. It killed her inside of six weeks.
“Two or three weeks after George was killed I took a freight train up to the junction, where I was ordered to side-track and wait for the express to pass me. I was some behind time, owing to an accident up the road, when I pulled out onto the switch, and I was slowing up to stop, when the rear door of the caboose was thrown open with a bang, and if you’ll believe me, there stood George Marvin, as natural as life.
“‘Nate,’ he said, ‘go back and close your switch.’ Then he jumped off, and the door closed. For a momentI forgot but that George was living. I rubbed my eyes to see if I was awake. I went to the end of the car, and looked out, but no one was in sight. There were four drovers in the car playing cards and laughing. While I was looking at them and wondering what it all meant, the door flew open again and George Marvin once more appeared. ‘Nate,’ he said, very slowly and expressively, ‘go back and close your switch.’ I asked the drovers if they saw any one. They said, ‘Yes, a fellow told you to close your switch.’ ‘That man has been dead two weeks,’ I said.
“They urged me to go back and see what it meant, and as the train had stopped, I ran back and found a piece of coal had fallen between the rails and prevented the switch—which worked automatically—from closing. I got it out and closed the switch just as the express came in sight. Otherwise it would have run into us, and another railroad horror would have been recorded. Now how do you account for that?�
“Had it not been for the drovers seeing the vision I should think you might have seen, standing in the rear of the car, that the switch did not close; but as you were carrying on another train of thought, perhaps thinking of your friend, you were not conscious of noticing it; and that the other part of your mind warned you. Your imagination supplied the vision.�
“But the drovers?�
“Well, perhaps it was thought transference. You received the impression passively, scarcely realizingit. The passive mind might have transferred it to their minds. I must confess there is much we cannot understand even in the laws that govern mental telepathy.�