The blow was as hard as if it had struck her for the first time. I told Warrick the story without comment.
“It goes dead against the other,” he exclaimed. “And yet where did either woman get their knowledge of the business we wanted cleared. The blood-mark on the chin, the possibility that the dead man had been drugged and murdered? There’s truth in it, in all the muddle.”
I said nothing. But the matter had taken a hold on me which I could not shake off. I determined to look through the absurdity and mystery of this so-called spiritualism until I had discovered the truth which Warrick believed lay in it. I could not divest myself, either, of an unaccountable impression that at last we were upon the track of the missing man.
I induced Mrs. Wylie to remain on the boat during its next run, for the boy’s sake, who grew stronger and more rugged every day. There was the making of a man in the little fellow; he had a hearty, straightforward look in his puny face, that made a friend of everybody. For the woman, from the day when the message came to her from her husband, dead, she gave way in mind or body as if some sinew had been snapped which had held her up. I fancied that unconsciously she had been keeping some vague hope alive which was gone now, forever. She crept out now to the hurricane-deck, and sat all day; where her look settled, or her hands fell on her lap, there they rested, immovable. As I knew her better, I discovered why the men held her in such a pitying aspect. She was a simple-hearted, credulous creature, such as everybody feels bound and anxious to take care of when they are left drifting about the world.
So we made our way up to the headwaters of the Ohio. It was late in October, I remember,—warm, yellow sunshine by day, and cold nights. The fields nipped brown and red in the early frosts. I used to think if anything could take the poor woman’s thoughts off the dead, the cheerful sights and sounds along shore ought to do it. The water was unusually clear, and curdled and bubbled back from the edge of the boat all day, filled with a frothed, green light; the hills on both sides kept rising back and back to the sky beyond, mottled with purple and crimson and blackish greens; we passed thousands of little islands shying out of the current, which were mere beds of feathery moss and golden-rod. Then there were pretty, new little villages, and the busy larger towns, and farms, at long intervals; and when these were passed we floated into the deep solitude again. I noticed it the more because we were out of our usual run; the Strader plied then between Louisville and New Orleans. But the woman saw nothing of it, I think.
When we reached Pittsburg, and had discharged cargo, I determined, with Warrick, to make a final test of the matter. F. was then in the city, just back from England, the most successful medium, next to Home, who ever left the States. He was willing, “for a consideration,” to hold a private séance and bring us in contact with any of the dead.
He was hardly the person to whom one would think St. Peter would have lent his keys for ever so short a time; an oily, bloated sensualist, with thick lips, and thicker eyelids half closed over a dull, sleepy eye. He was dressed like an Orleans blackleg, gaudy with purple velvet waistcoat and flash jewelry. But if there was any truth in spiritualism, here was its interpreter. I engaged him to come on board on Saturday evening; no one was to be present but Warrick, Ellen, and myself; the boat was empty at the time, with the exception of its regular crew, below. There was but little persuasion needed to induce Ellen to consent.
“He may bring me another message,” with a light flickering into her eyes. “Joe will be glad to find the way.” It is people like Ellen who are always sure converts of spiritualism; it seems so natural to them that their dead should come back, that they are blind to any absurd discrepancies in the manner. On Saturday morning, on the wharf, I met Stein, who had left the boat some two years before, and remembering his old liking for Joe, told him what we were about to do. Stein was a hard-headed, shrewd little Yankee; I was surprised, therefore, to see how discomposed and startled he appeared at the first mention of the affair; he denounced F. as a humbug with a great deal of heat, and tried to persuade and chaff me out of it; but finding he could not, asked leave to come himself to the séance.
“You’re bitten, Captain,” he said. “It will be easy to persuade you that you see ghosts yourself. You had better let me bring a little daylight with me.”
I told Warrick of my meeting with Stein, and he, having nothing else to do, sauntered off in the afternoon to bring him down. I told Ellen also, who, to my surprise, reddened and grew pale, when I named him.