Ainslee's Magazine/The Dark Veil/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
Before one of us could utter a word, the little woman hurried on.
“Ah, the lovely girl has begun to talk very fast now! I can hardly understand what she says, because she's half crying. It's to you she speaks, sir—I don't know your name! But, yes, its Robert. 'Robert!' the girl is sobbing. 'Have you forgotten me already?' Do those words convey any special impression to your mind, sir, or has this spirit mistaken you for some one else?”
Robert was ghastly; and Joyce looked as if she were going to faint. Even I—to whom this scene meant less than to them—even I was flabbergasted. That is the one word! If you don't know what it means, you're lucky, because in that case you've never been it. I should translate from experience: “flabbergasted, astounded, and bewildered at the same time, with a slight dash of premature second childhood thrown in.”
I heard Robert answer in a strained voice: “The words do convey an impression to my mind. But, this is too sacred, too private a subject. We can't discuss it here. I”
“I know!” the little woman breathlessly agreed. “She feels it, too. She wouldn't have chosen a place like this. She's explaining how for a long time she's tried to reach you, but couldn't make you understand. Now I've given her the chance. She's suffering terribly because of the barrier between you. I pity her. I wish I could help! Maybe I could, if you'd care to come to my rooms. I'm staying in this hotel. I've just arrived in England from New York, my first visit. I haven't been in London much more than two hours now! I've got a little suite upstairs.”
If she'd a little suite at the Savoy, the woman must have money. She couldn't be a common or garden medium, cadging for mere fees. Besides, no common or garden person, an absolute stranger to Robert Lorillard, met by sheer accident, could have described June Dana, and that gray dress of four years ago and her jewels, too! Robert's name she might have picked up, if Joyce or I had let it drop by accident; but the last was inexplicable. The thing that had happened, that was happening, seemed to me miraculous and tragic. I felt that fate had seized the bright bird of happiness and would crush it to death, unless something intervened. And what could intervene? I struggled not to see the future as a foregone conclusion. But I could see it in no other way except by shutting my eyes.
Robert turned to Joyce. He didn't say to her, “What am I to do?” Yet she read the silent question and answered it.
“Of course, you must go,” she said. “It—whether it's genuine or not, you'll have to find out. You can't let it drop.”
“No, I can't let it drop,” he echoed. He looked stricken. He, too, saw the dark, fatal hand grasping the white bird.
He had loved June passionately, but the beautiful body he'd held in his arms lay under that sundial by the riverside. Her spirit was of another world. And he'd not have been a human, hot-blooded man, if the reproachful wraith of an old love could be more to him than the brave girl who'd saved his life and won his soul back from despair.
I saw, as if through their eyes, the thing they faced together, those two; and suddenly I rebelled against that figure of destiny. I was wild to save the white bird before its wings had ceased to beat. I didn't know at all what to do. But I had to do something. I simply had to!
Miss Reardon rose.
“Would you like to come with me now?” she asked, addressing Robert, not Joyce or me. She ignored us, but not in a rude way. Indeed, there was a direct and rather childlike simplicity in her manner which impressed one with her genuineness. I was afraid, horribly afraid, and almost sure that she was genuine. I respected her against my will, because she didn't worry to be polite; but at the same time I didn't intend to be shunted. I determined to be in at the death, or whatever it was!
“Aren't you going to invite us, too?” I asked. “If the—the apparition is the spirit we think we recognize, she and I were dear friends.”
Miss Reardon's round, mild eyes searched my face. Then they turned as if to consult another face which only they could see. It was creepy to watch them gaze steadily at something in that big, empty armchair.
“Yes,” she agreed. “The lady—lady—could it be 'June?'—it sounds like June!—says it's true you were her friend. But she says, 'Not the other!' The other mustn't come.”
“I don't wish to come!” Joyce protested. She was waxen pale. “I'll go home,” she said to Robert. “Don't bother about me. Don't think about me at all. Afterward you can tell me whatever you care to tell.”
“No!” Robert and I spoke together, moved by the same thought. “Don't go home. Wait here for us.”
“Very well,” the girl consented, more to save argument at such a moment, I think, than because she wished to do what we asked.
Joyce sank down in one of the chairs we had taken, and Robert and I followed Miss Reardon. She appeared to think that we were sure to have heard her name, and to know it. But I was a stranger in the world of spiritualism. Her air of being modestly proud of her name seemed to prove, however, that her reputation as a medium was good, that she'd never been found out in any fraud. And going up in the lift the words spoke themselves over and over in my head:
“She couldn't know who Robert is, if it's true she's never been in England before, and if she has come to London to-day. At least, I don't see how she could!”
In silence we let Miss Reardon lead us to the sitting room of her suite on the third floor. It was small but pretty, and smelled of La France roses, though none were visible, nor were there any other flowers there. Robert and looked at each other, as this perfume rushed to meet us. La France roses were June's favorites, and belonged to the month of her birth. Robert had sent them to her often, especially when they were out of season and difficult to get.
“She is here, waiting for us!” exclaimed Miss Reardon. “Oh, surely you must see her on the sofa, with her feet crossed and such pretty diamond buckles on her shoes! Her lap is full of roses. She holds up one rose. She kisses it, to you—Robert—Robert—some name that begins with L. I can't hear it clearly. But Robert is enough.”
Yes, Robert was enough, more than enough!
Miss Reardon asked, in an almost matter-of-fact way, if he would like to sit down on the sofa beside June, who wished him to do so. He didn't answer but he sat down, and his eyes stared at vacancy. I knew from their expression, however, that he saw nothing.
“What will be the next thing?” I wondered.
I had not long to wait to find out!
“She asks me to take your hand, and hers. Then she will talk to you through me,” Miss Reardon explained. As she spoke, she drew up a small chair in front of the sofa, leaned forward, took Robert's right hand in hers, and held out the left as if grasping another hand, a hand unseen.
As the medium did this, with thin elbows resting on thin knees, she closed her eyes. A look of blankness came over her face like a mist. I can't describe it in any other way. Presently her chin dropped slightly. She seemed to sleep.
Neither Robert nor I had uttered a word since we entered the room. We waited tensely.
Just what I expected to happen I hardly know, for I had no experience of manifestations or séances. But what did happen surprised me so that I started, and just contrived to suppress a gasp.
A voice! It did not sound like Miss Reardon's voice, with its rather pleasant American accent. It was a creamy, English voice, young and full-noted. “June!” I whispered under my breath, where I sat across the length of the room from the sofa. I glanced at Robert. There was surprise on his face, and some other emotion, deep as his heart. But it was not joy.
“Dearest, have you forgotten me so soon?” the voice asked. “Speak to me! It's I, your June.”
It was a wrench for Robert to speak, I know. There was the pull of self-consciousness in the opposite direction, distaste for conversation with the invisible, while alien eyes watched, alien ears listened. And then, to reply as if to June was virtually to admit that he believed in her presence, that all doubt of the medium was erased from his mind. But after a second's pause he obeyed the command.
“No,” he said; “I've not forgotten, and I never can forget.”
“Yet you are engaged to marry this Joyce Arnold!” mourned the voice that was like June's.
I almost jumped out of my chair at the sound of Joyce's name. It was another proof that the medium was genuine.
Robert's tone as he answered was more convinced than before, I thought. And the youth had died out of his eyes. They looked old.
“Do you want me to live all my life alone, now that I've lost you, June?” he asked.
“Darling, you are not alone!” answered the voice. “I'm always with you. I love you so much that I've chosen to stay near you, and be earth-bound, rather than lead my own life on the plane where I might be. I thought you would want me here. I thought that some day, if I tried long enough, you would feel my touch, you would see my face. I hoped I was succeeding when I looked at you from the eyes of my portrait in your study. Now and then it seemed as if you knew. But then that girl interfered. Oh, Robert, in giving up my progression from plane to plane till you could join me, has the sacrifice been all in vain?”
The voice wrung my heart. It shook as with a gust of tears. Its pleading sent little stabs of ice through my veins. So what must Robert have felt?
“No, no! The sacrifice isn't in vain!” he cried. “I didn't know, I didn't understand that those on the other side came back to us and cared for us in the same way they cared on earth. I am yours now and always, June, of course. Order my life as you will.”
“Ah, my dear one, I thank you!” The voice rose high in happiness. “I felt you wouldn't fail me if I could only reach you, and at last my prayer is answered. Nothing can separate us now through eternity, if you love me. You won't marry that girl!”
“Not if it is against your wish, June. It must be that you see things more clearly where you are, than I can see them. If you tell me to break my word to Joyce Arnold, I must—I will do so.”
“I tell you this, my dearest,” said the voice. “If you do not break with her, you and I are lost to each other forever. When I chose to be earth-bound, I staked everything on my belief in your love. Without it in full, I shall drift—drift, through the years, through ages, I know not how long in expiation. Besides, I am not dead. I am more alive than I was in what you call life. You are my beloved husband, as much as you ever were. Think what I suffer seeing another woman in your arms! My capacity for suffering is increased a thousandfold, as is my capacity for joy. If you make her your wife as”
“I will not!” Robert choked. “I promise you that. Never shall you suffer through me, if I can help it.”
“Darling!” breathed the voice. “My husband! How happy you make me. This is our true marriage—the marriage of spirits. Oh, do not let the barrier rise between us again. Put Joyce Arnold out of your heart as well as your life, and talk to me every day in future. Will you do that?”
“How am I to talk to you every day?” he asked.
“As we are talking now. Through a medium. This one will not always be near you. But there will be somebody. I've often tried to get word through to you. I never could, because you wouldn't believe. Now you believe, and we need not be parted again. You know the way to open the door. It is never shut. It stands ajar. Remember!”
“I will remember,” Robert echoed. And his voice was sad as the sound of the sea on a lonely shore at night. There was no warm happiness for him in the opening of a door between two worlds. The loss of Joyce was more to him than the gain of this spirit wife who claimed him from far off as all her own. It seemed to me that a released soul should have read the truth in his unveiled heart. But perhaps it did read and did not care.
The voice was talking on.
“I am repaid for everything now,” it said. “My sacrifice is no sacrifice. For to-day I must say good-by, for power is leaving me. I have felt too much. I must rest, and regain vitality—for to-morrow. To-morrow, Robert, my Robert! By that time we can talk with no restraint, for you will have parted with Joyce Arnold. After to-day you will never see her again?”
“No. After to-day I will never see her again, voluntarily, as that is your wish.”
“Good! What time to-morrow will you talk with me?”
“At any time you name.”
“At this same hour, then, in this same room.”
“So be it. If the medium consents,”
“I shall make her consent. And you and I will agree upon some one else to bring us together, when she must go elsewhere, as I can see through her mind that she soon must. Good-by, dearest husband, for twenty-four long hours. Yet it isn't really good-by, for I am seldom far from you. Now that you know, you will feel me near, I am always”
The voice seemed to fade. The last words were a faint whisper. The new sentence died as it began. The medium's eyelids quivered. Her flat breast rose and fell. The influence was gone!