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- Herausgeber: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859 – August 13, 1930) was an American novelist, journalist, playwright, historian, and editor. She is considered a pioneer in her use of the romantic novel to explore social and racial themes. She is also known to have prominent connections to other influential African-American figures of the time, such as Booker T. Washington and William Wells Brown.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Pauline E. Hopkins
OF ONE BLOOD OR THE HIDDEN SELF
Illustrated
Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859 – August 13, 1930) was an American novelist, journalist, playwright, historian, and editor. She is considered a pioneer in her use of the romantic novel to explore social and racial themes.
She is also known to have prominent connections to other influential African-American figures of the time, such as Booker T. Washington and William Wells Brown.
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 discomfiture of the dismal season. The lingering equinoctial[1] 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.”[2]
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’s 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”[3] 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 had 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 snowflakes 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![4] 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 in 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.”[5]
“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 die 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-paneled 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,[6] 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.
