OF ONE BLOOD.
OR, THE HIDDEN SELF.

PAULINE E. HOPKINS.

Copyright, 1902, by Pauline E. Hopkins.

CHAPTER I.

The recitations were over for the day. It was the first week in November and it had rained about every day the entire week; now freezing temperature added to the discomforture of the dismal season. The lingering equinoctial whirled the last clinging yellow leaves from the trees on the campus and strewed them over the deserted paths, while from the leaden sky fluttering snow-white flakes gave an unexpected touch of winter to the scene.

The east wind for which Boston and vicinity is celebrated, drove the sleet against the window panes of the room in which Reuel Briggs sat among his books and the apparatus for experiments. The room served for both living and sleeping. Briggs could have told you that the bareness and desolateness of the apartment were like his life, but he was a reticent man who knew how to suffer in silence. The dreary wet afternoon, the cheerless walk over West Boston bridge through the soaking streets had but served to emphasize the loneliness of his position, and morbid thoughts had haunted him all day: To what use all this persistent hard work for a place in the world—clothes, food, a roof? Is suicide wrong? he asked himself with tormenting persistency. From out the storm, voices and hands seemed beckoning him all day to cut the Gordian knot and solve the riddle of whence and whither for all time.

His place in the world would soon be filled; no vacuum remained empty; the eternal movement of all things onward closed up the gaps, and the wail of the newly-born augmented the great army of mortals pressing the vitals of mother Earth with hurrying tread. So he had tormented himself for months, but the courage was yet wanting for strength to rend the veil. It had grown dark early. Reuel had not stirred from his room since coming from the hospital—had not eaten nor drank, and was in full possession of the solitude he craved. It was now five o’clock. He sat sideways by the bare table, one leg crossed over the other. His fingers kept the book open at the page where he was reading, but his attention wandered beyond the leaden sky, the dripping panes, and the sounds of the driving storm outside.

He was thinking deeply of the words he had just read, and which the darkness had shut from his gaze. The book was called “The Unclassified Residuum,” just published and eagerly sought by students of mysticism, and dealing with the great field of new discoveries in psychology. Briggs was a close student of what might be termed “absurdities” of supernatural phenomena or mysticism, best known to the every-day world as “effects of the imagination,” a phrase of mere dismissal, and which it is impossible to make precise; the book suited the man’s mood. These were the words of haunting significance:

“All the while, however, the phenomena are there, lying broadcast over the surface of history. No matter where you open its pages, you find things recorded under the name of divinations, inspirations, demoniacal possessions, apparitions, trances, ecstasies, miraculous healing and productions of disease, and occult powers possessed by peculiar individuals over persons and things in their neighborhood.

“The mind-curers and Christian scientists, who are beginning to lift up their heads in our communities, unquestionably get remarkable results in certain cases. The ordinary medical man dismisses them from his attention with the cut-and-dried remark that they are ‘only the effects of the imagination.’ But there is a meaning in this vaguest of phrases.

“We know a non-hysterical woman who in her trances knows facts which altogether transcend her possible normal consciousness, facts about the lives of people whom she never saw or heard of before. I am well aware of all the liabilities to which this statement exposes me, and I make it deliberately, having practically no doubt whatever of its truth.”

Presently Briggs threw the book down, and, rising from his chair, began pacing up and down the bare room.

“That is it,” at length he said aloud. “I have the power, I know the truth of every word—of all M. Binet asserts, and could I but complete the necessary experiments, I would astonish the world. O Poverty, Ostracism! have I not drained the bitter cup to the dregs!” he apostrophized, with a harsh, ironical laugh.

Mother Nature had blessed Reuel Briggs with superior physical endowments, but as yet he had never had reason to count them blessings. No one could fail to notice the vast breadth of shoulder, the strong throat that upheld a plain face, the long limbs, the sinewy hands. His head was that of an athlete, with close-set ears, and covered with an abundance of black hair, straight and closely cut, thick and smooth; the nose was the aristocratic feature, although nearly spoiled by broad nostrils, of this remarkable young man; his skin was white, but of a tint suggesting olive, an almost sallow color which is a mark of strong, melancholic temperaments. His large mouth concealed powerful long white teeth which gleamed through lips even and narrow, parting generally in a smile at once grave, genial and singularly sweet; indeed Briggs’ smile changed the plain face at once into one that interested and fascinated men and women. True there were lines about the mouth which betrayed a passionate, nervous temperament, but they accorded well with the rest of his strong personality. His eyes were a very bright and piercing gray, courageous, keen and shrewd. Briggs was not a man to be despised—physically or mentally.

None of the students associated together in the hive of men under the fostering care of the “benign mother” knew aught of Reuel Briggs’s origin. It was rumored at first that he was of Italian birth, then they “guessed” he was a Japanese, but whatever land claimed him as a son, all voted him a genius in his scientific studies, and much was expected of him at graduation. He had no money, for he was unsocial and shabby to the point of seediness, and apparently no relatives, for his correspondence was limited to the letters of editors of well known local papers and magazines. Somehow he lived and paid his way in a third-rate lodging-house near Harvard square, at the expense of the dull intellects or the idle rich, with which a great university always teems, to whom Briggs acted as “coach,” and by contributing scientific articles to magazines on the absorbing subject of spiritualistic phenomena. A few of his articles had produced a profound impression. The monotonous pacing continued for a time, finally ending at the mantel, from whence he abstracted a disreputable looking pipe and filled it.

“Well,” he soliloquized, as he reseated himself in his chair, “Fate has done her worst, but she mockingly beckons me on and I accept her challenge. I shall not yet attempt the bourne. If I conquer, it will be by strength of brain and will-power. I shall conquer; I must and will.”

The storm had increased in violence; the early dusk came swiftly down, and at this point in his revery the rattling window panes, as well as the whistle and shriek of gusts of moaning wind, caught his attention. “Phew! a beastly night.” With a shiver, he drew his chair closer to the cylinder stove, whose glowing body was the only cheerful object in the bare room.

As he sat with his back half-turned to catch the grateful warmth, he looked out into the dim twilight across the square and into the broad paths of the campus, watching the skeleton arms of giant trees tossing in the wind, and the dancing snow-flakes that fluttered to earth in their fairy gowns to be quickly transformed into running streams that fairly overflowed the gutters. He fell into a dreamy state as he gazed, for which he could not account. As he sent his earnest, penetrating gaze into the night, gradually the darkness and storm faded into tints of cream and rose and soft moist lips. Silhouetted against the background of lowering sky and waving branches, he saw distinctly outlined a fair face framed in golden hair, with soft brown eyes, deep and earnest—terribly earnest they seemed just then—rose-tinged baby lips, and an expression of wistful entreaty. O how real, how very real did the passing shadow appear to the gazer!

He tried to move, uneasily conscious that this strange experience was but “the effect of the imagination,” but he was powerless. The unknown countenance grew dimmer and farther off, floating gradually out of sight, while a sense of sadness and foreboding wrapped him about as with a pall.

A wilder gust of wind shook the window sashes. Reuel stared about him in a bewildered way like a man awakening from a heavy sleep. He listened to the wail of the blast and glanced at the fire and rubbed his eyes. The vision was gone; he was alone in the room; all was silence and darkness. The ticking of the cheap clock on the mantel kept time with his heart-beats. The light of his own life seemed suddenly eclipsed with the passing of the lovely vision of Venus. Conscious of an odd murmur in his head, which seemed to control his movements, he rose and went toward the window to open it; there came a loud knock at the door.

Briggs did not answer at once. He wanted no company. Perhaps the knocker would go away. But he was persistent. Again came the knock ending in a double rat-tat accompanied by the words:

“I know you are there; open, open, you son of Erebus! You inhospitable Turk!”

Thus admonished Briggs turned the key and threw wide open the door.

“It’s you, is it? Confound you, you’re always here when you’re not wanted,” he growled.

The visitor entered and closed the door behind him. With a laugh he stood his dripping umbrella back of the stove against the chimney-piece, and immediately a small stream began trickling over the uncarpeted floor; he then relieved himself of his damp outer garments.

“Son of Erebus, indeed, you ungrateful man. It’s as black as Hades in this room; a light, a light! Why did you keep me waiting out there like a drowned rat?”

The voice was soft and musical. Briggs lighted the student lamp. The light revealed a tall man with the beautiful face of a Greek God; but the sculptured features did not inspire confidence. There was that in the countenance of Aubrey Livingston that engendered doubt. But he had been kind to Briggs, was, in fact, his only friend in the college, or, indeed, in the world for that matter.

By an act of generosity he had helped the forlorn youth, then in his freshman year, over obstacles which bade fair to end his college days. Although the pecuniary obligation was long since paid, the affection and worship Reuel had conceived for his deliverer was dog-like in its devotion.

“Beastly night,” he continued, as he stretched his full length luxuriously in the only easy chair the room afforded. “What are you mooning about all alone in the darkness?”

“Same old thing,” replied Briggs briefly.

“No wonder the men say that you have a twist, Reuel.”

“Ah, man! but the problem of whence and whither! To solve it is my life; I live for that alone; let’m talk.”

“You ought to be re-named the ‘Science of Trance-States,’ Reuel. How a man can grind day and night beats me.” Livingston handed him a cigar and for a time they smoked in silence. At length Reuel said:

“Shake hands with Poverty once, Aubrey, and you will solve the secret of many a student’s success in life.”

“Doubtless it would do me good,” replied Livingston with a laugh, “but just at present, it’s the ladies, bless their sweet faces who disturb me, and not delving in books nor weeping over ways and means. Shades of my fathers, forbid that I should ever have to work!”

“Lucky dog!” growled Reuel, enviously, as he gazed admiringly at the handsome face turned up to the ceiling and gazing with soft caressing eyes at the ugly whitewashed wall through rings of curling smoke. “Yet you have a greater gift of duality than I,” he added dreamily. “Say what you will; ridicule me, torment me, but you know as well as I that the wonders of a material world cannot approach those of the undiscovered country within ourselves—the hidden self lying quiescent in every human soul.”

“True, Reuel, and I often wonder what becomes of the mind and morals, distinctive entities grouped in the republic known as man, when death comes. Good and evil in me contend; which will gain the mastery? Which will accompany me into the silent land?”

“Good and evil, God and the devil,” suggested Reuel. “Yes, sinner or saint, body or soul, which wins in the life struggle? I am not sure that it matters which,” he concluded with a shrug of his handsome shoulders. “I should know if I never saw you again until the struggle was over. Your face will tell its own tale in another five years. Now listen to this:” He caught up the book he had been reading and rapidly turning the leaves read over the various passages that had impressed him.

“A curious accumulation of data; the writer evidently takes himself seriously,” Livingston commented.

“And why not?” demanded Reuel. “You and I know enough to credit the author with honest intentions.”

“Yes; but are we prepared to go so far?”

“This man is himself a mystic. He gives his evidence clearly enough.”

“And do you credit it?”

“Every word! Could I but get the necessary subject, I would convince you; I would go farther than M. Binet in unveiling the vast scheme of compensation and retribution carried about in the vast recesses of the human soul.”

“Find the subject and I will find the money,” laughed Aubrey.

“Do you mean it, Aubrey? Will you join me in carrying forward a search for more light on the mysteries of existence?”

“I mean it. And now, Reuel, come down from the clouds, and come with me to a concert.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes, ‘tonight,’” mimicked the other. “The blacker the night, the greater the need of amusement. You go out too little.”

“Who gives the concert?”

“Well, it’s a new departure in the musical world; something Northerners know nothing of; but I who am a Southerner, born and bred, or as the vulgar have it, ‘dyed in the wool,’ know and understand Negro music. It is a jubilee concert given by a party of Southern colored people at Tremont Temple. I have the tickets. Redpath has them in charge.”

“Well, if you say so, I suppose I must.” Briggs did not seem greatly impressed.

“Coming down to the practical, Reuel, what do you think of the Negro problem? Come to think of it, I have never heard you express an opinion about it. I believe it is the only burning question in the whole category of live issues and ologies about which you are silent.”

“I have a horror of discussing the woes of unfortunates, tramps, stray dogs and cats and Negroes—probably because I am an unfortunate myself.”

They smoked in silence.

CHAPTER II.

The passing of slavery from the land marked a new era in the life of the nation. The war, too, had passed like a dream of horrors, and over the resumption of normal conditions in business and living, the whole country, as one man, rejoiced and heaved a deep sigh of absolute content.

Under the spur of the excitement occasioned by the Proclamation of Freedom, and the great need of schools for the blacks, thousands of dollars were contributed at the North, and agents were sent to Great Britain, where generosity towards the Negroes was boundless. Money came from all directions, pouring into the hands of philanthropists, who were anxious to prove that the country was able, not only to free the slave, but to pay the great debt it owed him,—protection as he embraced freedom, and a share in the great Government he had aided to found by sweat and toil and blood. It was soon discovered that the Negro possessed a phenomenal gift of music, and it was determined to utilize this gift in helping to support educational institutions of color in the Southland.

A band of students from Fisk University were touring the country, and those who had been fortunate enough to listen once to their matchless untrained voices singing their heartbreaking minor music with its grand and impossible intervals and sound combinations, were eager to listen again and yet again.

Wealthy and exclusive society women everywhere vied in showering benefits and patronage upon the new prodigies who had suddenly become the pets of the musical world. The Temple was a blaze of light, and crowded from pit to dome. It was the first appearance of the troupe in New England, therefore it was a gala night, and Boston culture was out in force.

The two friends easily found their seats in the first balcony, and from that position idly scanned the vast audience to beguile the tedious waiting. Reuel’s thoughts were disturbed; he read over the program, but it carried no meaning to his pre-occupied mind; he was uneasy; the face he had seen outlined in the twilight haunted him. A great nervous dread of he knew not what possessed him, and he actually suffered as he sat there answering at random the running fire of comments made by Livingston on the audience, and replying none too cordially to the greetings of fellow-students, drawn to the affair, like himself, by curiosity.

“Great crowd for such a night,” observed one. “The weather matches your face, Briggs; why didn’t you leave it outside? Why do you look so down?”

Reuel shrugged his shoulders.

“They say there are some pretty girls in the troupe; one or two as white as we,” continued the speaker unabashed by Reuel’s surliness.

“They range at home from alabaster to ebony,” replied Livingston. “The results of amalgamation are worthy the careful attention of all medical experts.”

“Don’t talk shop, Livingston,” said Briggs peevishly.

“You are really more disagreeable than usual,” replied Livingston, pleasantly. “Do try to be like the other fellows, for once, Reuel.”

Silence ensued for a time, and then the irrepressible one of the party remarked: “The soprano soloist is great; heard her in New York.” At this there was a general laugh among the men. Good natured Charlie Vance was generally “stuck” once a month with the “loveliest girl, by jove, you know.”

“That explains your presence here, Vance; what’s her name?”

“Dianthe Lusk.”

“Great name. I hope she comes up to it,—the flower of Jove.”

“Flower of Jove, indeed! You’ll say so when you see her,” cried Charlie with his usual enthusiasm.

“What! again, my son? ‘Like Dian’s kiss, unmasked, unsought, Love gives itself,’” quoted Livingston, with a smile on his handsome face.

“Oh, stow it! Aubrey, even your cold blood will be stirred at sight of her exquisite face; of her voice I will not speak; I cannot do it justice.”

“If this is to be the result of emancipation, I for one vote that we ask Congress to annul the Proclamation,” said Reuel, drily.

Now conversation ceased; a famous local organist began a concert on the organ to occupy the moments of waiting. The music soothed Reuel’s restlessness. He noticed that the platform usually occupied by the speaker’s desk, now held a number of chairs and a piano. Certainly, the assiduous advertising had brought large patronage for the new venture, he thought as he idly calculated the financial result from the number in the audience.

Soon the hot air, the glare of lights, the mingling of choice perfumes emanating from the dainty forms of elegantly attired women, acted upon him as an intoxicant. He began to feel the pervading excitement—the flutter of expectation, and presently the haunting face left him.

The prelude drew to a close; the last chord fell from the fingers of the artist; a line of figures—men and women—dark in hue, and neatly dressed in quiet evening clothes, filed noiselessly from the anterooms and filled the chairs upon the platform. The silence in the house was painful. These were representatives of the people for whom God had sent the terrible scourge of blood upon the land to free from bondage. The old abolitionists in the vast audience felt the blood leave their faces beneath the stress of emotion.

The opening number was “The Lord’s Prayer.” Stealing, rising, swelling, gathering, as it thrilled the ear, all the delights of harmony in a grand minor cadence that told of deliverance from bondage and homage to God for his wonderful aid, sweeping the awed heart with an ecstasy that was almost pain; breathing, hovering, soaring, they held the vast multitude in speechless wonder.

Thunders of applause greeted the close of the hymn. Scarcely waiting for a silence, a female figure rose and came slowly to the edge of the platform and stood in the blaze of lights with hands modestly clasped before her. She was not in any way the preconceived idea of a Negro. Fair as the fairest woman in the hall, with wavy bands of chestnut hair, and great, melting eyes of brown, soft as those of childhood; a willowy figure of exquisite mould, clad in a sombre gown of black. There fell a voice upon the listening ear, in celestial showers of silver that passed all conceptions, all comparisons, all dreams; a voice beyond belief—a great soprano of unimaginable beauty, soaring heavenward in mighty intervals.

“Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land,
Tell ol’ Pharaoh, let my people go.”

sang the woman in tones that awakened ringing harmonies in the heart of every listener.

“By Jove!” Reuel heard Livingston exclaim. For himself he was dazed, thrilled; never save among the great artists of the earth, was such a voice heard alive with the divine fire.

Some of the women in the audience wept; there was the distinct echo of a sob in the deathly quiet which gave tribute to the power of genius. Spellbound they sat beneath the outpoured anguish of a suffering soul. All the horror, the degradation from which a race had been delivered were in the pleading strains of the singer’s voice. It strained the senses almost beyond endurance. It pictured to that self-possessed, highly-cultured New England assemblage as nothing else ever had, the awfulness of the hell from which a people had been happily plucked.

Reuel was carried out of himself; he leaned forward in eager contemplation of the artist; he grew cold with terror and fear. Surely it could not be—he must be dreaming! It was incredible! Even as he whispered the words to himself the hall seemed to grow dim and shadowy; the sea of faces melted away; there before him in the blaze of light—like a lovely phantom—stood a woman wearing the face of his vision of the afternoon!

CHAPTER III.

It was Hallow-eve.

The north wind blew a cutting blast over the stately Charles, and broke the waves into a miniature flood; it swept the streets of the University city, and danced on into the outlying suburbs tossing the last leaves about in gay disorder, not even sparing the quiet precincts of Mount Auburn cemetery. A deep, clear, moonless sky stretched overhead, from which hung myriads of sparkling stars.

In Mount Auburn, where the residences of the rich lay far apart, darkness and quietness had early settled down. The main street seemed given over to the duskiness of the evening, and with one exception, there seemed no light on earth or in heaven save the cold gleam of the stars.

The one exception was in the home of Charlie Vance, or “Adonis,” as he was called by his familiars. The Vance estate was a spacious house with rambling ells, tortuous chimney-stacks, and corners, eaves and ledges; the grounds were extensive and well kept telling silently of the opulence of its owner. Its windows sent forth a cheering light. Dinner was just over.

Within, on an old-fashioned hearth, blazed a glorious wood fire, which gave a rich coloring to the oak-panelled walls, and fell warmly on a group of young people seated and standing, chatting about the fire. At one side of it, in a chair of the Elizabethan period, sat the hostess, Molly Vance, only daughter of James Vance, Esq., and sister of “Adonis,” a beautiful girl of eighteen.

At the opposite side, leaning with folded arms against the high carved mantel, stood Aubrey Livingston; the beauty of his fair hair and blue eyes was never more marked as he stood there in the gleam of the fire and the soft candle light. He was talking vivaciously, his eyes turning from speaker to speaker, as he ran on, but resting chiefly with pride on his beautiful betrothed, Molly Vance.

The group was completed by two or three other men, among them Reuel Briggs, and three pretty girls. Suddenly a clock struck the hour.

“Only nine,” exclaimed Molly. “Good people, what shall we do to wile the tedium of waiting for the witching hour? Have any one of you enough wisdom to make a suggestion?”

“Music,” said Livingston.

“We don’t want anything so commonplace.”

“Blind Man’s Buff,” suggested “Adonis.”

“Oh! please not that, the men are so rough!”

“Let us,” broke in Cora Scott, “tell ghost stories.”

“Good, Cora! yes, yes, yes.”

“No, no!” exclaimed a chorus of voices.

“Yes, yes,” laughed Molly, gaily, clapping her hands. “It is the very thing. Cora, you are the wise woman of the party. It is the very time, tonight is the new moon, and we can try our projects in the Hyde house.”

“The moon should be full to account for such madness,” said Livingston.

“Don’t be disagreeable, Aubrey,” replied Molly. “The ‘ayes’ have it. You’re with me, Mr. Briggs?”

“Of course, Miss Vance,” answered Reuel, “to go to the North Pole or Hades—only please tell us where is ‘Hyde house.’”

“Have you never heard? Why it’s the adjoining estate. It is reputed to be haunted, and a lady in white haunts the avenue in the most approved ghostly style.”

“Bosh!” said Livingston.

“Possibly,” remarked the laughing Molly, “but it is the ‘bosh’ of a century.”

“Go on, Miss Vance; don’t mind Aubrey. Who has seen the lady?”

“She is not easily seen,” proceeded Molly, “she only appears on Hallow-eve, when the moon is new, as it will be tonight. I had forgotten that fact when I invited you here. If anyone stands, tonight, in the avenue leading to the house, he will surely see the tall veiled figure gliding among the old hemlock trees.”

One or two shivered.

“If, however, the watcher remain, the lady will pause, and utter some sentence of prophecy of his future.”

“Has any one done this?” queried Reuel.

“My old nurse says she remembers that the lady was seen once.”

“Then, we’ll test it again tonight!” exclaimed Reuel, greatly excited over the chance to prove his pet theories.

“Well, Molly, you’ve started Reuel off on his greatest hobby; I wash my hands of both of you.”

“Let us go any way!” chorused the venturesome party.

“But there are conditions,” exclaimed Molly. “Only one person must go at a time.”

Aubrey laughed as he noticed the consternation in one or two faces.

“So,” continued Molly, “as we cannot go together, I propose that each shall stay a quarter of an hour, then whether successful or not, return and let another take his or her place. I will go first.”

“No—” it was Charlie who spoke—“I put my veto on that, Molly. If you are mad enough to risk colds in this mad freak, it shall be done fairly. We will draw lots.

“And I add to that, not a girl leave the house; we men will try the charm for the sake of your curiosity, but not a girl goes. You can try the ordinary Hallow-eve projects while we are away.”

With many protests, but concealed relief, this plan was reluctantly adopted by the female element. The lots were prepared and placed in a hat, and amid much merriment, drawn.

“You are third, Mr. Briggs,” exclaimed Molly who held the hat and watched the checks.

“I’m first,” said Livingston, “and Charlie second.”

“While we wait for twelve, tell us the story of the house, Molly,” cried Cora.

Thus adjured, Molly settled herself comfortably in her chair and began: “Hyde House is nearly opposite the cemetery, and its land joins that of this house; it is indebted for its ill-repute to one of its owners, John Hyde. It has been known for years as a haunted house, and avoided as such by the superstitious. It is low-roofed, rambling, and almost entirely concealed by hemlocks, having an air of desolation and decay in keeping with its ill-repute. In its dozen rooms were enacted the dark deeds which gave the place the name of the ‘haunted house.’

“The story is told of an unfaithful husband, a wronged wife and a beautiful governess forming a combination which led to the murder of a guest for his money. The master of the house died from remorse, under peculiar circumstances. These materials give us the plot for a thrilling ghost story.”

“Well, where does the lady come in?” interrupted “Adonis.”

There was a general laugh.

“This world is all a blank without the ladies for Charlie,” remarked Aubrey. “Molly, go on with your story, my child.”

“You may all laugh as much as you please, but what I am telling you is believed in this section by every one. A local magazine speaks of it as follows, as near as I can remember:

“‘A most interesting story is told by a woman who occupied the house for a short time. She relates that she had no sooner crossed the threshold than she was met by a beautiful woman in flowing robes of black, who begged permission to speak through her to her friends. The friends were thereupon bidden to be present at a certain time. When all were assembled they were directed by invisible powers to kneel. Then the spirit told the tale of the tragedy through the woman. The spirit was the niece of the murderer, and she was in the house when the crime was committed. She discovered blood stains on the door of the woodshed, and told her uncle that she suspected him of murdering the guest, who had mysteriously disappeared. He secured her promise not to betray him. She had always kept the secret. Although both had been dead for many years, they were chained to the scene of the crime, as was the governess, who was the man’s partner in guilt. The final release of the niece from the place was conditional on her making a public confession. This done she would never be heard from again. And she never was, except on Hallow-eve, when the moon is new.’”

“Bring your science and philosophy to bear on this, Reuel. Come, come, man, give us your opinion,” exclaimed Aubrey.

“Reuel doesn’t believe such stuff; he’s too sensible,” added Charlie.

“If these are facts, they are only for those who have a mental affinity with them. I believe that if we could but strengthen our mental sight, we could discover the broad highway between this and the other world on which both good and evil travel to earth,” replied Reuel.

“And that first highway was beaten out of chaos by Satan, as Milton has it, eh, Briggs?”

“Have it as you like, Smith. No matter. For my own part, I have never believed that the whole mental world is governed by the faculties we understand, and can reduce to reason or definite feeling. But I will keep my ideas to myself: one does not care to be laughed at.”

The conversation was kept up for another hour about indifferent subjects, but all felt the excitement underlying the frivolous chatter. At quarter before twelve, Aubrey put on his ulster with the words: “Well, here goes for my lady.” The great doors were thrown open, and the company grouped about him to see him depart.

“Mind, honor bright, you go,” laughed Charlie.

“Honor bright,” he called back.

Then he went on beyond the flood of light into the gloom of the night. Muffled in wraps and ulsters they lingered on the piazzas waiting his return.

“Would he see anything?”

“Of course not!” laughed Charlie and Bert Smith. “Still, we bet he’ll be sharp to his time.”

They were right. Aubrey returned at five minutes past twelve, a failure.

Charlie ran down the steps briskly, but in ten minutes came hastening back.

“Well,” was the chorus, “did you see it?”

“I saw something—a figure in the trees!”

“And you did not wait?” said Molly, scornfully.

“No, I dared not; I own it.”

“It’s my turn; I’m third,” said Reuel.

“Luck to you, old man,” they called as he disappeared in the darkness.

Reuel Briggs was a brave man. He knew his own great physical strength and felt no fear as he traversed the patch of woods lying between the two estates. As he reached the avenue of hemlocks he was not thinking of his mission, but of the bright home scene he had just left—of love and home and rest—such a life as was unfolding before Aubrey Livingston and sweet Molly Vance.

“I suppose there are plenty of men in the world as lonely as I am,” he mused; “but I suppose it is my own fault. A man though plain and poor can generally manage to marry; and I am both. But I don’t regard a wife as one regards bread—better sour bread than starvation; better an uncongenial life-companion than none! What a frightful mistake! No! The woman I marry must be to me a necessity, because I love her; because so loving her, ‘all the current of my being flows to her,’ and I feel she is my supreme need.”

Just now he felt strangely happy as he moved in the gloom of the hemlocks, and he wondered many times after that whether the spirit is sometimes mysteriously conscious of the nearness of its kindred spirit; and feels, in anticipation, the “sweet unrest” of the master-passion that rules the world.

The mental restlessness of three weeks before seemed to have possession of him again. Suddenly the “restless, unsatisfied longing,” rose again in his heart. He turned his head and saw a female figure just ahead of him in the path, coming toward him. He could not see her features distinctly, only the eyes—large, bright and dark. But their expression! Sorrowful, wistful—almost imploring—gazing straight forward, as if they saw nothing—like the eyes of a person entirely absorbed and not distinguishing one object from another.

She was close to him now, and there was a perceptible pause in her step. Suddenly she covered her face with her clasped hands, as if in uncontrollable grief. Moved by a mighty emotion, Briggs addressed the lonely figure:

“You are in trouble, madam; may I help you?”

Briggs never knew how he survived the next shock. Slowly the hands were removed from the face and the moon gave a distinct view of the lovely features of the jubilee singer—Dianthe Lusk.

She did not seem to look at Briggs, but straight before her, as she said in a low, clear, passionless voice:

“You can help me, but not now; tomorrow.”

Reuel’s most prominent feeling was one of delight. The way was open to become fully acquainted with the woman who had haunted him sleeping and waking, for weeks past.

“Not now! Yet you are suffering. Shall I see you soon? Forgive me—but oh! tell me—”

He was interrupted. The lady moved or floated away from him, with her face toward him and gazing steadily at him.

He felt that his whole heart was in his eyes, yet hers did not drop, nor did her cheek color.

“The time is not yet,” she said in the same, clear, calm, measured tones, in which she had spoken before. Reuel made a quick movement toward her, but she raised her hand, and the gesture forbade him to follow her. He paused involuntarily, and she turned away, and disappeared among the gloomy hemlock trees.

He parried the questions of the merry crowd when he returned to the house, with indifferent replies. How they would have laughed at him—slave of a passion as sudden and romantic as that of Romeo for Juliet; with no more foundation than the “presentments” in books which treat of the “occult.” He dropped asleep at last, in the early morning hours, and lived over his experience in his dreams.

CHAPTER IV.

Although not yet a practitioner, Reuel Briggs was a recognized power in the medical profession. In brain diseases he was an authority.

Early the next morning he was aroused from sleep by imperative knocking at his door. It was a messenger from the hospital. There had been a train accident on the Old Colony road, would he come immediately?

Scarcely giving himself time for a cup of coffee, he arrived at the hospital almost as soon as the messenger.

The usual silence of the hospital was broken; all was bustle and movement, without confusion. It was a great call upon the resources of the officials, but they were equal to it. The doctors passed from sufferer to sufferer, dressing their injuries; then they were borne to beds from which some would never rise again.

“Come with me to the women’s ward, Doctor Briggs,” said a nurse. “There is a woman there who was taken from the wreck. She shows no sign of injury, but the doctors cannot restore her to consciousness. Doctor Livingston pronounces her dead, but it doesn’t seem possible. So young, so beautiful. Do something for her, Doctor.”

The men about a cot made way for Reuel, as he entered the ward. “It’s no use Briggs,” said Livingston to him in reply to his question. “Your science won’t save her. The poor girl is already cold and stiff.”

He moved aside disclosing to Reuel’s gaze the lovely face of Dianthe Lusk!

The most marvellous thing to watch is the death of a person. At that moment the opposite takes place to that which took place when life entered the first unit, after nature had prepared it for the inception of life. How the vigorous life watches the passage of the liberated life out of its earthly environment! What a change is this! How important the knowledge of whither life tends! Here is shown the setting free of a disciplined spirit giving up its mortality for immortality,—the condition necessary to know God. Death! There is no death. Life is everlasting, and from its reality can have no end. Life is real and never changes, but preserves its identity eternally as the angels, and the immortal spirit of man, which are the only realities and continuities in the universe, God being over all, Supreme Ruler and Divine Essence from whom comes all life. Somewhat in this train ran Reuel’s thoughts as he stood beside the seeming dead girl, the cynosure of all the medical faculty there assembled.

To the majority of those men, the case was an ordinary death, and that was all there was to it. What did this young upstart expect to make of it? Of his skill and wonderful theories they had heard strange tales, but they viewed him coldly as we are apt to view those who dare to leave the beaten track of conventionality.

Outwardly cool and stolid, showing no sign of recognition, he stood for some seconds gazing down on Dianthe: every nerve quivered, every pulse of his body throbbed. Her face held for him a wonderful charm, an extraordinary fascination. As he gazed he knew that once more he beheld what he had vaguely sought and yearned for all his forlorn life. His whole heart went out to her; destiny, not chance, had brought him to her. He saw, too, that no one knew her, none had a clue to her identity; he determined to remain silent for the present, and immediately he sought to impress Livingston to do likewise.

His keen glance swept the faces of the surrounding physicians. “No, not one,” he told himself, “holds the key to unlock this seeming sleep of death.” He alone could do it. Advancing far afield in the mysterious regions of science, he had stumbled upon the solution of one of life’s problems: the reanimation of the body after seeming death.

He had hesitated to tell of his discovery to any one; not even to Livingston had he hinted of the daring possibility, fearing ridicule in case of a miscarriage in his calculations. But for the sake of this girl he would make what he felt to be a premature disclosure of the results of his experiments. Meantime, Livingston, from his place at the foot of the cot, watched his friend with fascinated eyes. He, too, had resolved, contrary to his first intention, not to speak of his knowledge of the beautiful patient’s identity. Curiosity was on tiptoe; expectancy was in the air. All felt that something unusual was about to happen.

Now Reuel, with gentle fingers, touched rapidly the clammy brow, the icy, livid hands, the region of the pulseless heart. No breath came from between the parted lips; the life-giving organ was motionless. As he concluded his examination, he turned to the assembled doctors:

“As I diagnose this case, it is one of suspended animation. This woman has been long and persistently subjected to mesmeric influences, and the nervous shock induced by the excitement of the accident has thrown her into a cataleptic sleep.”

“But, man!” broke from the head physician in tones of exasperation, “rigor mortis in unmistakable form is here. The woman is dead!”

At these words there was a perceptible smile on the faces of some of the students—associates who resented his genius as a personal affront, and who considered these words as good as a reprimand for the daring student, and a settler of his pretensions. Malice and envy, from Adam’s time until today, have loved a shining mark.

But the reproof was unheeded. Reuel was not listening. Absorbed in thoughts of the combat before him, he was oblivious to all else as he bent over the lifeless figure on the cot. He was full of an earnest purpose. He was strung up to a high tension of force and energy. As he looked down upon the unconscious girl whom none but he could save from the awful fate of a death by post-mortem, and who by some mysterious mesmeric affinity existing between them, had drawn him to her rescue, he felt no fear that he should fail.

Suddenly he bent down and took both cold hands into his left and passed his right hand firmly over her arms from shoulder to wrist. He repeated the movements several times; there was no response to the passes. He straightened up, and again stood silently gazing upon the patient. Then, like a man just aroused from sleep, he looked across the bed at Livingston and said abruptly:

“Dr. Livingston, will you go over to my room and bring me the case of vials in my medicine cabinet? I cannot leave the patient at this point.”

Livingston started in surprise as he replied: “Certainly, Briggs, if it will help you any.”

“The patient does not respond to any of the ordinary methods of awakening. She would probably lie in this sleep for months, and death ensue from exhaustion, if stronger remedies are not used to restore the vital force to a normal condition.”

Livingston left the hospital; he could not return under an hour; Reuel took up his station by the bed whereon was stretched an apparently lifeless body, and the other doctors went the rounds of the wards attending to their regular routine of duty. The nurses gazed at him curiously; the head doctor, upon whom the young student’s earnestness and sincerity had evidently made an impression, came a number of times to the bare little room to gaze upon its silent occupants, but there was nothing new. When Livingston returned, the group again gathered about the iron cot where lay the patient.

“Gentlemen,” said Reuel, with quiet dignity, when they were once more assembled, “will you individually examine the patient once more and give your verdicts?”

Once more doctors and students carefully examined the inanimate figure in which the characteristics of death were still more pronounced. On the outskirts of the group hovered the house-surgeon’s assistants ready to transport the body to the operating room for the post-mortem. Again the head physician spoke, this time impatiently.

“We are wasting our time, Dr. Briggs; I pronounce the woman dead. She was past medical aid when brought here.”

“There is no physical damage, apparent or hidden, that you can see, Doctor?” questioned Reuel, respectfully.

“No; it is a perfectly healthful organism, though delicate. I agree entirely with your assertion that death was induced by the shock.”

“Not death, Doctor,” protested Briggs.

“Well, well, call it what you like—call it what you like, it amounts to the same in the end,” replied the doctor testily.

“Do you all concur in Doctor Hamilton’s diagnosis?” Briggs included all the physicians in his sweeping glance. There was a general assent.

“I am prepared to show you that in some cases of seeming death—or even death in reality—consciousness may be restored or the dead brought back to life. I have numberless times in the past six months restored consciousness to dogs and cats after rigor mortis had set in,” he declared calmly.

“Bosh!” broke from a leading surgeon. In this manner the astounding statement, made in all seriousness, was received by the group of scientists mingled with an astonishment that resembled stupidity. But in spite of their scoffs, the young student’s confident manner made a decided impression upon his listeners, unwilling as they were to be convinced.

Reuel went on rapidly; his eyes kindled; his whole person took on the majesty of conscious power, and pride in the knowledge he possessed. “I have found by research that life is not dependent upon organic function as a principle. It may be infused into organized bodies even after the organs have ceased to perform their legitimate offices. Where death has been due to causes which have not impaired or injured or destroyed tissue formation or torn down the structure of vital organs, life may be recalled when it has become entirely extinct, which is not so in the present case. This I have discovered by my experiments in animal magnetism.”

The medical staff was fairly bewildered. Again Dr. Hamilton spoke:

“You make the assertion that the dead can be brought to life, if I understand your drift, Dr. Briggs, and you expect us to believe such utter nonsense.” He added significantly, “My colleagues and I are here to be convinced.”

“If you will be patient for a short time longer, Doctor, I will support my assertion by action. The secret of life lies in what we call volatile magnetism—it exists in the free atmosphere. You, Dr. Livingston, understand my meaning; do you see the possibility in my words?” he questioned, appealing to Aubrey for the first time.

“I have a faint conception of your meaning, certainly,” replied his friend.

“This subtle magnetic agent is constantly drawn into the body through the lungs, absorbed and held in bounds until chemical combination has occurred through the medium of mineral agents always present in normal animal tissue. When respiration ceases this magnetism cannot be drawn into the lungs. It must be artificially supplied. This, gentlemen, is my discovery. I supply this magnetism. I have it here in the case Dr. Livingston has kindly brought me.” He held up to their gaze a small phial wherein reposed a powder. Physicians and students, now eager listeners, gazed spell-bound upon him, straining their ears to catch every tone of the low voice and every change of the luminous eyes; they pressed forward to examine the contents of the bottle. It passed from eager hand to eager hand, then back to the owner.

“This compound, gentlemen, is an exact reproduction of the conditions existing in the human body. It has common salt for its basis. This salt is saturated with oleo resin and then exposed for several hours in an atmosphere of free ammonia. The product becomes a powder, and that brings back the seeming dead to life.”

“Establish your theory by practical demonstration, Dr. Briggs, and the dreams of many eminent practitioners will be realized,” said Dr. Hamilton, greatly agitated by his words.

“Your theory smacks of the supernatural, Dr. Briggs, charlatanism, or dreams of lunacy,” said the surgeon. “We leave such assertions to quacks, generally, for the time of miracles is past.”

“The supernatural presides over man’s formation always,” returned Reuel, quietly. “Life is that evidence of supernatural endowment which originally entered nature during the formation of the units for the evolution of man. Perhaps the superstitious masses came nearer to solving the mysteries of creation than the favored elect will ever come. Be that as it may, I will not contend. I will proceed with the demonstration.”

There radiated from the speaker the potent presence of a truthful mind, a pure, unselfish nature, and that inborn dignity which repels the shafts of lower minds as ocean’s waves absorb the drops of rain. Something like respect mingled with awe hushed the sneers, changing them into admiration as he calmly proceeded to administer the so-called life-giving powder. Each man’s watch was in his hand; one minute passed—another—and still another. The body remained inanimate.

A cold smile of triumph began to dawn on the faces of the older members of the profession, but it vanished in its incipiency, for a tremor plainly passed over the rigid form before them. Another second—another convulsive movement of the chest!

“She moves!” cried Aubrey at last, carried out of himself by the strain on his nerves. “Look, gentlemen, she breathes! She is alive; Briggs is right! Wonderful! Wonderful!”

“We said there could not be another miracle, and here it is!” exclaimed Dr. Hamilton with strong emotion.

Five minutes more and the startled doctors fell back from the bedside at a motion of Reuel’s hand. A wondering nurse, with dilated eyes, unfolded a screen, placed it in position and came and stood beside the bed opposite Reuel. Holding Dianthe’s hands, he said in a low voice: “Are you awake?” Her eyes unclosed in a cold, indifferent stare which gradually changed to one of recognition. She looked at him—she smiled, and said in a weak voice, “Oh, it is you; I dreamed of you while I slept.”

She was like a child—so trusting that it went straight to the young man’s heart, and for an instant a great lump seemed to rise in his throat and choke him. He held her hands and chafed them, but spoke with his eyes only. The nurse said in a low voice: “Dr. Briggs, a few spoonfuls of broth will help her?”

“Yes, thank you, nurse; that will be just right.” He drew a chair close beside the bed, bathed her face with water and pushed back the tangle of bright hair. He felt a great relief and quiet joy that his experiment had been successful.

“Have I been ill? Where am I?” she asked after a pause, as her face grew troubled and puzzled.

“No, but you have been asleep a long time; we grew anxious about you. You must not talk until you are stronger.”

The nurse returned with the broth; Dianthe drank it eagerly and called for water, then with her hand still clasped in Reuel’s she sank into a deep sleep, breathing softly like a tired child. It was plain to the man of science that hope for the complete restoration of her faculties would depend upon time, nature and constitution. Her effort to collect her thoughts was unmistakable. In her sleep, presently, from her lips fell incoherent words and phrases; but through it all she clung to Reuel’s hand, seeming to recognize in him a friend.

A little later the doctors filed in noiselessly and stood about the bed gazing down upon the sleeper with awe, listening to her breathing, feeling lightly the fluttering pulse. Then they left the quiet house of suffering, marvelling at the miracle just accomplished in their presence. Livingston lingered with Briggs after the other physicians were gone.

“This is a great day for you, Reuel,” he said, as he laid a light caressing hand upon the other’s shoulder.

Reuel seized the hand in a quick convulsive clasp. “True and tried friend, do not credit me more than I deserve. No praise is due me. I am an instrument—how I know not—a child of circumstances. Do you not perceive something strange in this case? Can you not deduce conclusions from your own intimate knowledge of this science?”

“What can you mean, Reuel?”

“I mean—it is a dual mesmeric trance! The girl is only partly normal now. Binet speaks at length of this possibility in his treatise. We have stumbled upon an extraordinary case. It will take a year to restore her to perfect health.”

“In the meantime we ought to search out her friends.”

“Is there any hurry, Aubrey?” pleaded Reuel, anxiously.

“Why not wait until her memory returns; it will not be long, I believe, although she may still be liable to the trances.”

“We’ll put off the evil day to any date you may name, Briggs; for my part, I would preserve her incognito indefinitely.”

Reuel made no reply. Livingston was not sure that he heard him.

CHAPTER V.

The world scarcely estimates the service rendered by those who have unlocked the gates of sensation by the revelations of science; and yet it is to the clear perception of things which we obtain by the study of nature’s laws that we are enabled to appreciate her varied gifts. The scientific journals of the next month contained wonderful and wondering (?) accounts of the now celebrated case,—re-animation after seeming death. Reuel’s lucky star was in the ascendant; fame and fortune awaited him; he had but to grasp them. Classmates who had once ignored him now sought familiar association, or else gazed upon him with awe and reverence. “How did he do it?” was the query in each man’s mind, and then came a stampede for all scientific matter bearing upon animal magnetism.

How often do we look in wonder at the course of other men’s lives, whose paths have diverged so widely from the beaten track of our own, that, unable to comprehend the one spring upon which, perhaps, the whole secret of the diversity hinged, we have been fain to content ourselves with summing up our judgment in the common phrase, “Well, it’s very strange; what odd people there are in the world, to be sure!”

Many times this trite sentence was uttered during the next few months, generally terminating every debate among medical students in various colleges.

Unmindful of his growing popularity, Reuel devoted every moment of his spare time to close study of his patient. Although but a youth, the scientist might have passed for any age under fifty, and life for him seemed to have taken on a purely mechanical aspect since he had become first in this great cause. Under pretended indifference to public criticism, throbbed a heart of gold, sensitive to a fault; desiring above all else the well-being of all humanity; his faithfulness to those who suffered amounted to complete self-sacrifice. Absolutely free from the vices which beset most young men of his age and profession, his daily life was a white, unsullied page to the friend admitted to unrestricted intercourse, and gave an irresistible impetus to that friendship, for Livingston could not but admire the newly developed depths of nobility which he now saw unfolding day by day in Reuel’s character. Nor was Livingston far behind the latter in his interest in all that affected Dianthe. Enthused by its scientific aspect, he vied with Reuel in close attention to the medical side of the case, and being more worldly did not neglect the material side.

He secretly sought out and obtained the address of the manager of the jubilee singers and to his surprise received the information that Miss Lusk had left the troupe to enter the service of a traveling magnetic physician—a woman—for a large salary. They (the troupe) were now in Europe and had heard nothing of Miss Lusk since.

After receiving this information by cable, Livingston sat a long time smoking and thinking: people often disappeared in a great city, and the police would undoubtedly find the magnetic physician if he applied to them. Of course that was the sensible thing to do, but then the publicity, and he hated that for the girl’s sake. Finally he decided to compromise the matter by employing a detective. With him to decide that it was expedient to do a certain thing was the same as to act; before night the case was in the hands of an expert detective who received a goodly retainer. Two weeks from that day—it was December twenty-fourth—before he left his boarding place, the detective was announced. He had found the woman in a small town near Chicago. She said that she had no knowledge of Miss Lusk’s whereabouts. Dianthe had remained with her three weeks, and at the end of that time had mysteriously disappeared; she had not heard of her since.

Livingston secured the woman’s name and address, gave the man a second check together with an admonition to keep silence concerning Miss Lusk. That closed the episode. But of his observations and discoveries, Aubrey said nothing, noting every phase of this strange happening in silence.

Strangely enough, none of the men that had admired the colored artist who had enthralled their senses by her wonderful singing a few weeks before, recognized her in the hospital waif consecrated to the service of science. Her incognito was complete.

The patient was now allowed the freedom of the corridors for exercise, and was about her room during the day. The returns of the trance-state were growing less regular, although she frequently fell into convulsions, thereby enduring much suffering, sometimes lying for hours in a torpid state. Livingston had never happened to be present on these occasions, but he had heard of them from eye-witnesses. One day he entered the room while one was occurring. His entrance was unnoticed as he approached lightly over the uncarpeted floor, and stood transfixed by the scene before him.

Dianthe stood upright, with closed eyes, in the middle of the room. Only the movement of her bosom betrayed breath. The other occupants of the room preserved a solemn silence. She addressed Reuel, whose outstretched arms were extended as if in blessing over her head.

“Oh! Dearest friend! hasten to cure me of my sufferings. Did you not promise at that last meeting? You said to me, ‘You are in trouble and I can help you.’ And I answered, ‘The time is not yet.’ Is it not so?”

“Yes,” replied Reuel. “Patience a while longer; all will be well with you.”

“Give me the benefit of your powerful will,” she continued. “I know much but as yet have not the power to express it: I see much clearly, much dimly, of the powers and influences behind the Veil, and yet I cannot name them. Some time the full power will be mine; and mine shall be thine. In seven months the sick will be restored—she will awake to worldly cares once more.” Her voice ceased; she sank upon the cot in a recumbent position. Her face was pale; she appeared to sleep. Fifteen minutes passed in death-like stillness, then she extended her arms, stretched, yawned, rubbed her eyes—awoke.

Livingston listened and looked in a trance of delight, his keen artistic sense fully aroused and appreciative, feeling the glamour of her presence and ethereal beauty like a man poring over a poem that he has unexpectedly stumbled upon, losing himself in it, until it becomes, as it were, a part of himself. He felt as he watched her that he was doing a foolish thing in thus exposing himself to temptation while his honor and faith were pledged to another. But then, foolishness is so much better than wisdom, particularly to a man in certain stages of life. And then he fell to questioning if there could be temptation for him through this girl—he laughed at the thought and the next instant dismay covered him with confusion, for like a flash he realized that the mischief was already done.

As we have already hinted, Aubrey was no saint; he knew that fickleness was in his blood; he had never denied himself anything that he wanted very much in his whole life. Would he grow to want this beautiful woman very much? Time would tell.

It was Christmas-time—a good, sensible seasonable day before Christmas, with frost and ice in abundance, and a clear, bright, wintry sky above. Boston was very full of people—mostly suburban visitors—who were rushing here and there bent on emptying their purses on the least provocation. Good-nature prevailed among the pedestrians; one poor wretch stood shivering, with blue, wan face, on the edge of the sidewalk, his sightless eyes staring straight before him, trying to draw a tune from a consumptive violin—the embodiment of despair. He was, after all, in the minority, to judge by the hundreds of comfortably-clad forms that hurried past him, breathing an atmosphere of peace and prosperity.

Tomorrow the church bells would ring out tidings that another Christmas was born, bidding all rejoice.

This evening, at six o’clock, the two friends went to dine in a hotel in a fashionable quarter. They were due to spend the night and Christmas day at the Vance house. As they walked swiftly along with the elastic tread of youth, they simultaneously halted before the blind musician and pressed into his trembling hand a bountiful gift; then they hurried away to escape his thanks.

At the hotel Livingston called for a private dining room, and after the coffee was served, he said:

“Tell me, Briggs, what is the link between you and your patient? There is a link, I am sure. Her words while in the trance made a great impression upon me.”

There was a pause before Reuel replied in a low tone, as he rested his arm on the opposite side of the table and propped his head up on his hand:

“Forgive me, Aubrey!”

“For what?”

“This playing with your confidence. I have not been entirely frank with you.”

“Oh, well! you are not bound to tell me everything you know. You surely have the right to silence about your affairs, if you think best.”

“Listen, Aubrey. I should like to tell you all about it. I would feel better. What you say is true; there is a link; but I never saw her in the flesh before that night at the Temple. With all our knowledge, Aubrey, we are but barbarians in our ideas of the beginning, interim and end of our creation. Why were we created? for whose benefit? can anyone answer that satisfactorily?”

“‘Few things are hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and seriously to the solution of a mystery,’ Hawthorne tells us,” replied Aubrey. “Have not you proved this, Reuel?”

“Well, yes—or, we prove rather, that our solution but deepens the mystery or mysteries. I have surely proved the last. Aubrey, I look natural, don’t I? There is nothing about me that seems wrong?”

“Wrong! No.”

“Well, if I tell you the truth you will call me a lunatic. You have heard of people being haunted by hallucinations?” Aubrey nodded. “I am one of those persons. Seven weeks ago I saw Dianthe first, but not in the flesh. Hallow-eve I spoke to her in the garden of the haunted house, but not in the flesh. I thought it strange to be sure, that this face should lurk in my mind so much of the time; but I never dreamed what a crisis it was leading up to. The French and German schools of philosophy have taught us that going to places and familiar passages in books, of which we have had no previous knowledge, is but a proof of Plato’s doctrine—the soul’s transmigration, and reflections from the invisible world surrounding us.

“Finally a mad desire seized me to find that face a living reality that I might love and worship it. Then I saw her at the Temple—I found her at the hospital—in the flesh! My desire was realized.”

“And having found her, what then?” He waited breathlessly for the reply.

“I am mightily pleased and satisfied. I will cure her. She is charming; and if it is insanity to be in love with her, I don’t care to be sane.”

Livingston did not reply at once. His face was like marble in its impassiveness. The other’s soft tremulous tones, fearless yet moist eyes and broken sentences, appeared to awaken no response in his breast. Instead, a far-off gleam came into his blue eyes. At last he broke the silence with the words:

“You name it well; it is insanity indeed, for you to love this woman.”

“Why?” asked his friend, constrainedly.

“Because it is not for the best.”

“For her or me?”

“Oh, for her——!” he finished the sentence with an expressive gesture.

“I understand you, Aubrey. I should not have believed it of you. If it were one of the other fellows; but you are generally so charitable.”

“You forget your own words: ‘Tramps, stray dogs and Negroes——,’” he quoted significantly. “Then there is your professional career to be considered,—you mean honorable, do you not?——How can you succeed if it be hinted abroad that you are married to a Negress?”

“I have thought of all that. I am determined. I will marry her in spite of hell itself! Marry her before she awakens to consciousness of her identity. I’m not unselfish; I don’t pretend to be. There is no sin in taking her out of the sphere where she was born. God and science helping me, I will give her life and love and wifehood and maternity and perfect health. God, Aubrey! you, with all you have had of life’s sweetness, petted idol of a beautiful world, you who will soon feel the heart-beats of your wife against your breast when lovely Molly is eternally bound to you, what do you know of a lonely, darkened life like mine? I have not the manner nor the charm which wins women. Men like me get love from them which is half akin to pity, when they get anything at all. It is but the shadow. This is my opportunity for happiness; I seize it. Fate has linked us together and no man and no man’s laws shall part us.”

Livingston sipped his wine quietly, intently watching Reuel’s face. Now he leaned across the table and stretched out his hand to Briggs; his eyes looked full into his. As their hands met in a close clasp, he whispered a sentence across the board. Reuel started, uttered an exclamation and flushed slowly a dark, dull red.

“How—where—how did you know it?” he stammered.

“I have known it since first we met; but the secret is safe with me.”

CHAPTER VI.

The scene which met the gaze when an hour later the young men were ushered into the long drawing-room of the Vance house was one well-calculated to remove all gloomy, pessimistic reasoning. Warmth, gaiety, pretty women, luxury,—all sent the blood leaping through the veins in delightful anticipation.

Their entrance was greeted by a shout of welcome.

“Oh, Aubrey! I am so glad you are come,” cried Molly from the far end of the room. “Fancy tomorrow being Christmas! Shall we be ready for all that company tomorrow night and the ball-room, dining room and hall yet to be trimmed? Is it possible to be ready?”

“Not if we stand dawdling in idle talk.” This from “Adonis,” who was stretched full length on the sitting-room sofa, with a cigarette between his lips, his hands under his handsome head, surrounded by a bevy of pretty, chattering girls, prominent among whom was Cora Scott, who aided and abetted Charlie in every piece of mischief.

Molly curled her lip but deigned no reply.

Bert Smith, from a corner of the room where he was about ascending a step-ladder, flung a book heavily at Adonis’s lazy figure.

“Don’t confuse your verbs,” exclaimed Aubrey. “How can you stand when you are lying down, and were you ever known to do anything else but dawdle, Adonis—eh?”

“I give it up,” said Charlie, sleepily, kicking the book off the sofa.

“Is this an amateur grocery shop, may I ask, Miss Vance?” continued Aubrey as he and Briggs made their way to their hostess through an avalanche of parcels and baskets strewn on the tables and the floor.

Molly laughed as she greeted them. “No wonder you are surprised. I am superintending the arrangement of my poor people’s gifts,” she explained. “They must all be sent out tonight. I don’t know what I should have done without all these good people to help me. But there are piles to be done yet. There is the tree, the charades, etc., etc.,” she continued, in a plaintive little voice.

“More particularly cetra, cetra,” said Aubrey from Bert’s corner where he had gone to help along the good works of placing holly wreaths.

“Oh, you, Aubrey—stop being a magpie.” Aubrey and Molly were very matter of fact lovers.

“Molly,” again broke in Charlie, “suppose the box from Pierson’s has never come, won’t you be up a tree?” and the speaker opened his handsome eyes wide, and shook off his cigarette-ash.

Molly maintained a dignified silence toward her brother. The firelight danced and dwelt upon her lovingly. She was so pretty, so fair, so slender, so graceful. Now in her gray plush tea-gown, with her hair piled picturesquely on the top of her small head, and fixed there with a big tortoise-shell pin, it would have been difficult to find a more delightful object for the gaze to rest upon.

“We shall have to fall back upon the wardrobes,” she said at length. “You are a horrid wet-blanket, Charlie! I am sure I——”

Her remarks were cut short as the door opened, and with laughter and shouting a bevy of young people who had been at work in another part of the house rushed in. “It is come; it’s all right; don’t worry, Molly!” they sang in chorus.

“Do be quiet all of you; one can hardly hear oneself speak!”

The box from the costumer’s had arrived; the great costume party was saved; in short, excitement and bustle were in full swing at Vance Hall as it had been at Christmas-time since the young people could remember.

Adonis lifted himself from the sofa and proposed to open the box of dresses at once, and try them on.

“Charlie, you are a brick!—the very thing!”

“Oh! yes, yes; let us try them on!”

Molly broke through the eager voices: “And we have not done the ball-room yet!” she said reproachfully.