CHAPTER IV
As with this power there came freedom, expansion, and growth, he found himself able to reconstruct out of thought the house he had formerly called home.
He was back in it all at once—without effort, without coming from a distance, without journeying through space, without meeting the discords between timelessness and time. He was simply there, walking about the rooms and halls as he had done ever since his childhood.
He judged it to be evening, for his father was at home. It was what he, Lester, had wanted. His appeal was to be for Molly, that the family should pity her, should take her in, should make her one of themselves, and help her through the time that was ahead of her. He knew his appearing might be a shock to them, but it would be a shock to his father least of all.
The father was seated in the dining-room, reading a book by an electric lamp. When the supper was cleared away, he could have this room to himself. It was a cheerful room, with deep-red curtains drawn, and a deep-red cloth on the table. Lester entered without journeying through space, much as he had been in the habit of entering all his life. His sense of presence, of vitality, was so strong that he wondered his father did not look up.
"Father!"
But the father kept on reading.
"Father!"
There was no indication that he had been heard.
He went nearer. He placed himself where he must be seen. He spoke with more force.
"Father! I want to talk to you about Molly."
The father turned a page. Lester could hear the rattle of the paper. He could hear the little cough when his father cleared his throat. He could see the dark shade in his father's cheeks which showed he needed shaving. There was nothing about that well-known face obscure or unfamiliar; but he could make no sign of his coming that could be recognized.
Presently Cora came in and sat down. She began to talk about the book in her father's hands. To Lester it was like something on the stage, something done by human beings, but not part of life's reality. It struck him for the first time that mortal happenings pass in a realm of illusion.
From the fact that Cora was in colors he inferred that the news from France had not yet reached them.
"Cora," he said, "I want to talk to you about Molly."
"Oh, it's interesting enough," Cora admitted, in response to something said by her father, "especially the first part; but so trivial. If the dead really do live again I should think they'd find some better occupation than playing with a ouija-board."
"A ouija-board," the father argued, "might be only the simplest means they can find of getting their messages over."
"Then, since they're so limited in what they can do, why shouldn't they tell us something worth our knowing, when they've got the opportunity? This boy"—she waved her hand toward the book—"does no more than describe the same old life on earth—with variations."
"But perhaps with variations they live the same old life on earth."
"Then I don't want to believe in it." Cora's manner was decisive and professional as such manners are depicted by actresses. "As a matter of fact," she summed up, "the more I think, and the more I read, the less I'm inclined to accept a life beyond the grave as a possibility. Such books"—again she indicated that in her father's hand—"express a natural human yearning, as do also the myths of the New Testament, but—" She left her sentence there. The father, too, left it there, as if at heart he agreed with her.
"I wonder where mother is," Lester asked himself, and immediately was in her room upstairs.
She was seated before a mirror, trying on a hat. Another hat was on a chair beside her. Two bandboxes with a disarray of silver paper stood beside her on the floor. Ethelind, short-skirted, and moving with nimble, sylphlike feet, was standing back to get the effect.
"I think I like that one the better of the two," she was saying, "and yet I don't know but—"
"Oh, they're awful, both of them," the mother complained. "It's funny I can never get a hat that suits me but the same old thing."
Lester went forward. He meant that she should see him first in the mirror. The reflection would startle her, of course, but he should be able to reassure her.
It was he who was startled first, since, standing before the mirror, he didn't get his own reflection. He felt so solid, so warm, so full of energy, that it seemed to him impossible that a reflection should not be cast. But there was nothing—nothing but the image of his mother casting her bright eyes up at the cockatoo crest on a hat that suggested a Mephistopheles.
"Mother, I want to talk to you about Molly."
"Oh, dear, what an old hag I'm beginning to look!"
"Oh no, you're not, mother dear," Ethelind returned, cheerfully. "That's just worry. One of these days the war will be over and he'll be coming back a great general—"
"What's the use of the war being over and his coming back a great general, when that creature will have the first say in him?"
Ethelind came behind her mother, to give the hat a twitch to a more effective angle.
"Mother dear, I don't believe he'd like to have you talk in that way."
Lester appealed to his sister.
"Ethelind, I want you to help me. I want you all to think of Molly. I'm not coming home; but I'm well and happy. That is, I could be happy if I only knew that she was being taken care of and that you were good to her."
But Ethelind only twitched the hat again, and the subject dropped. As it did a curtain seemed to come down on the scenes that had meant home to him, once more suggesting the action of a play.
There followed for Lester a further phase of unfolding thought, though with no solution of some of his perplexities.
"But it's always so," the Bavarian explained to him. "We can go to them more easily than they can come to us. The spiritual can to some slight degree re-embody the material; but spiritual things are only spiritually discerned. Jesus of Nazareth after His Resurrection could at times reincarnate Himself before His disciples; but they could not spiritualize themselves so as to follow Him when He disappeared. That can only be accomplished in proportion as they lay off the mortal and temporary by degrees, or burst out of it with a bound, as you and I did."
And yet in Lester's consciousness the vibrancy of life in his surroundings grew more tense. It was as if he were rising and ever rising on a mounting wave of vitality, but always riding on the top. Something like this energy he had felt in running, or rowing, or swimming, or on horseback, or in one or another of the sports in which he had excelled; but never with this joyousness of strength. The physical had given some sign of it, though it had been no more than as the single note of a shepherd's pipe to the fullness of an orchestra, or as the tramp of a lone step to the onrush of a million men.
And in one such swelling, exultant, glorious moment he came where Molly was in her little living-room in the apartment with a kitchenette. She was sitting at a table, with two or three books before her. One of them was open and to it from time to time she dropped her eyes. She raised them soon again to look straight into the air, as if she saw beyond walls into the reality where he was. There was no trouble in her eyes, nor sorrow, nor anxiety. In every feature there was peace, with the look of expectation.
He did not try at once to enter into communication with her. It was enough for him to study the pure face with its expression of repose. But he followed her thought as her eyes fell to the page of the book again. It was as if he were reading the words himself:
"And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. . . . If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead."
She lifted her eyes and reflected on that. He drew nearer, bending over and about her.
"Molly, I'm here."
He saw her expression brighten. It was almost as if she had said, "Yes, I know."
"I want you to know, darling, that I'm not coming home."
Whatever was passing through her mind, she nodded, though no shade fell on her bright face.
"I'm well," he continued. "You must think of me as happy and as taken care of."
Again there was that nod, as if she assented to something she had heard. Presently she began to read again:
"Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, all he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death."
"That enemy is destroyed, Molly. I've proved it. There's no death; there's nothing but life. There's not even a shock, or a minute of unhappiness. There's nothing but life, and then more life, and then life again. I was never so alive as I am at this instant, or so capable of doing things. Except for you, Molly, sweet one, and the baby that's coming, and the family, I wouldn't go back."
If her eyes grew grave it was with thought and not with foreboding. She returned once more to her book:
"For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory."
"Yes," he said to her, "that is what has happened to me. Death has been swallowed up in victory. If strength and energy and safety and joy constitute victory, then I'm victorious. If it were not for you, O my love—"
But she closed her book suddenly and rose. As she did so he could hear the words she uttered, almost aloud.
"I must do that," she said, with determination. "It's what he'd like. I must take it on myself."