第 36 页

man's body was empty, like a cage without a bird. He also read

the thoughts in their minds.

"Now," said a large man in the carriage next the hearse, "I may

win her, since she is a widow."

The widow herself kept thinking: "Would it had been I! His life

was essential to the children, while I should scarcely have been

missed. I wish I had no duties here, and might follow him now."

While pondering on these things, he reached Sylvia's house, and

went into the little room in which he had so often seen her. The

warm southwesterly breeze blew through the open windows, and far

beyond Central Park the approaching sunset promised to be

beautiful. The table was covered with flowers, and though he had

often seen that variety, he had never before noticed the

marvellous combinations of colours, while the room was filled

with a thousand delicious perfumes. The thrush hanging in the

window sang divinely, and in a silver frame he saw a likeness of

himself.

"I have always loved this room," he thought, "but it seems to me

now like heaven."

He sat down in an arm-chair from force of habit, to await his

fiancee.

"Oh, for a walk with Sylvia by twilight!" his thoughts ran on,

"for she need not be at home again till after seven."

Presently he heard the soft rustle of her dress, and rose to meet

her. Though she looked in his direction, she did not seem to see

him, and walked past him to the window. She was the picture of

loveliness silhouetted against the sky. He went towards her, and

gazed into her deep-sea eyes, which had a far-away expression.

She turned, went gracefully to the mantelpiece, and took a

photograph of herself from behind the clock. On its back Ayrault

had scrawled a boyish verse composed by himself, which ran:

"My divine, most ideal Sylvia,

O vision, with eyes so blue,

'Tis in the highest degree consequential,

To my existence in fact essential,

That I should be loved by you."

As she read and reread those lines, with his whole soul he

yearned to have her look at him. He watched the colour come and

go in her clear, bright complexion, and was rejoiced to see in

her the personification of activity and health. Beneath his own

effusion on the photograph he saw something written in pencil, in

the hand he knew so well:

"Did you but know how I love you,

No more silly things would you ask.

With my whole heart and soul I adore you--

Idiot! goose! bombast!"

And as she glanced at it, these thoughts crossed her mind: "I

shall never call you such names again. How much I shall have to

tell you! It is provoking that you stay away so long."

He came still nearer--so near, in fact, that he could hear the

beating of her heart--but she still seemed entirely unconscious

of his presence. Losing his reserve and self-control, he

impulsively grasped at her hands, then fell on his knees, and

then, dumfounded, struggled to his feet. Her hands seemed to

slip through his; he was not able to touch her, and she was still

unaware of his presence.

Suddenly a whole flood of light and the truth burst upon him. He

had passed painlessly and unconsciously from the dreamland of

Saturn to the shadowland of eternity. The mystery was solved.

Like the dead bishop, he had become a free spirit. His prayer

was answered, and his body, struck by lightning, lay far away on

that great ringed planet. How he longed to take in his arms the

girl who had promised herself to him, and who, he now saw, loved

him with her whole heart; but he was only an immaterial spirit,

lighter even than the ether of space, and the unchangeable laws

of the universe seemed to him but the irony of fate. As a

spirit, he was intangible and invisible to those in the flesh,

and likewise they were beyond his control. The tragedy of life

then dawned upon him, and the awful results of death made

themselves felt. He glanced at Sylvia. On coming in she had

looked radiantly happy; now she seemed depressed, and even the

bird stopped singing.

"Oh," he thought, "could I but return to life for one hour, to

tell her how incessantly she has been in my thoughts, and how I

love her! Death, to the aged, is no loss--in fact, a

blessing--but now!" and he sobbed mentally in the anguish of his

soul. If he could but communicate with her, he thought; but he

remembered what the departed bishop had said, that it would take

most men centuries to do this, and that others could never learn.

By that time she, too, would be dead, perhaps having been the

wife of some one else, and he felt a sense of jealousy even

beyond the grave. Throwing himself upon a rug on the floor, in a

paroxysm of distress, he gazed at Sylvia.

"Oh, horrible mockery!" he thought, thinking of the spirit. "He

gave me worse than a stone when I asked for bread; for, in place

of freedom, he sent me death. Could I but be alive again for a

few moments!" But, with a bitter smile, he again remembered the

words of the bishop, "What would a soul in hell not give for but

one hour on earth?"

Sylvia had seated herself on a small sofa, on which, and next to

her, he had so often sat. Her gentle eyes had a thoughtful look,

while her face was the personification of intelligence and

beauty. She occasionally glanced at his photograph, which she

held in her hand.

"Sylvia, Sylvia!" he suddenly cried, rising to his knees at her

feet. "I love, I adore you! It was my longing to be with you

that brought me here. I know you can neither see nor hear me,

but cannot your soul commune with mine?"

"Is Dick here?" cried Sylvia, becoming deadly pale and getting

up, "or am I losing my reason?"

Seeing that she was distressed by the power of his mind, Ayrault

once more sank to the floor, burying his face in his hands.

Unable to endure this longer, and feeling as if his heart must

break, he rushed out into the street, wishing he might soothe his

anguish with a hypodermic injection of morphine, and that he had

a body with which to divert and suppress his soul.

Night had fallen, and the electric lamps cast their white rays on

the ground, while the stars overhead shone in their eternal

serenity and calm. Then was it once more brought home to him

that he was a spirit, for darkness and light were alike, and he

felt the beginning of that sense of prescience of which the

bishop had spoken. Passing through the houses of some of the

clubs to which he belonged, he saw his name still upon the list

of members, and then he went to the places of amusement he knew

so well. On all sides were familiar faces, but what interested

him most was the great division incessantly going on. Here were

jolly people enjoying life and playing cards, who, his foresight

showed him, would in less than a year be under ground-- like

Mercutio, in "Romeo and Juliet," to-day known as merry fellows,

who to-morrow would be grave men.

While his eyes beheld the sun, he had imagined the air felt warm

and balmy. He now saw that this had been a hallucination, for he

was chilled through and through. He also perceived that be cast

no shadow, and that no one observed his presence. He, on the

other hand, saw not only the air as it entered and left his

friends' lungs, but also the substance of their brains, and the

seeds of disease and death, whose presence they themselves did

not even suspect, and the seventy-five per cent of water in their

bodies, making them appear like sacks of liquid. In some he saw

the germs of consumption; in others, affections of the heart. In

all, he saw the incessant struggle between the healthy

blood-cells and the malignant, omnipresent bacilli that the cells

were trying to overcome. Many men and women he saw were in love,

and he could tell what all were about to do. Oh, the secrets

that were revealed, while the motives for acts were now laid bare

that till then he had misunderstood! He had often heard the old

saying, that if every person in a ball-room could read the

thoughts of the rest, the ball would seem a travesty on

enjoyment, rather than real pleasure, and now he perceived its

force. He also noticed that many were better than he had

supposed, and were trying, in a blundering but persevering way,

to obey their consciences. He saw some unselfish thoughts and

acts. Many things that he had attributed to irresolution or

inconsistency, he perceived were in reality self- sacrifice. He

went on in frantic disquiet, distance no longer being of

consequence, and in his roaming chanced to pass through the

graveyard in which many generations of his ancestors lay buried.

Within the leaden coffins he saw the cold remains; some well

preserved, others but handfuls of dust.

"Tell me, O my progenitors," he cried, "you whose blood till this

morning flowed in my veins, is there not some way by which I, as

a spirit, can commune with the material world? I have always

admired your judgment and wisdom, and you have all been in

Shadowland longer than I. Give me, I pray you, some ancestral

advice."

The only sound in answer was the hum of the insects that filled

the evening air. The moonlight shone softly, but in a ghastly

way, on the marble crosses of his vault and those around, and he

felt an unspeakable sadness within this abode of the dead. "How

many unfinished lives," he thought, "have ended beneath these

sods! Unimproved talents here are buried in the ground.

Unattained ambitions, and those who died before their time; those

who tried, in a half-hearted way, to improve their opportunities,

and accomplished something, and those who neglected them, and did

still less--all are together here, the just with the unjust,

though it be for the last time. The grave absorbs their bodies

and ends their probationary record, from which there is no

appeal."

Near by were some open graves, ready to receive their occupants,

while a little farther on he recognized the Cortlandt mausoleum,

looking exactly as when shown him, through his second sight, by

the spirit on the previous day.

From the graves filled recently, and from many others, rose

threads of coloured matter, in the form of gases, the forerunners

of miasma. He now perceived shadowy figures flitting about on

the ground and in the air, from whose eyes poured streams of

immaterial tears. Their brains, hearts, and vertebral columns

were the parts most easily seen, and they were filled with an

inextinguishable anguish and sorrow that from its very intensity

made itself seen as a blue flame. The ruffles and knickerbockers

in which some of these were attired, evidently by the effects of

the thoughts in their minds, doubtless from force of habit from

what they had worn on earth while alive, showed that they had

been dead at least two hundred years. Ayrault also now found

himself in street clothes, although when in his clubs he had worn

a dress suit.

"Tell me, fellow-spirits," he said, addressing them, "how can I

communicate with one that is still alive?"

They looked at him with moist eyes, but answered not a word.

"I attributed the misery in my heart," thought Ayrault, "entirely

to the distress at losing Sylvia, which God knows is enough; but

though I suspected it before, I now see, by my companions, that I

am in the depths of hell."

CHAPTER XII.

SHEOL.

Failing to find words to convey his thoughts, he threw himself

into an open grave, praying that the earth might hide his soul,

as he had supposed it some day would hide his body. But the

ground was like crystal, and he saw the white bones in the graves

all around him. Unable to endure these surroundings longer, he

rushed back to his old haunts, where he knew he should find the

friends of his youth. He did not pause to go by the usual way,

but passed, without stopping, through walls and buildings. Soon

he beheld the familiar scene, and heard his own name mentioned.

But there was no comfort here, and what he had seen of old was

but an incident to what he gazed on now. Praying with his whole

heart that he might make himself heard, he stepped upon a

foot-stool, and cried:

"Your bodies are decaying before me. You are burying your

talents in the ground. We must all stand for final sentence at

the last day, mortals and spirits alike-- there is not a shadow

of a shade of doubt. Your every thought will be known, and for

every evil deed and every idle word God will bring us into

judgment. The angel of death is among you and at work in your

very midst. Are you prepared to receive him? He has already

killed my body, and now that I can never die I wish there was a

grave for my soul. I was reassured by a vision that told me I

was safe, but either it was a hallucination, or I have been

betrayed by some spirit. Last night I still lived, and my body

obeyed my will. Since then I have experienced death, and with

the resulting increased knowledge comes the loss of all hope,

with keener pangs than I supposed could exist. Oh, that I had

now their opportunities, that I might write a thesis that should

live forever, and save millions of souls from the anguish of

mine! Inoculate your mortal bodies with the germs of faith and

mutual love, in a stronger degree than they dwelt in me, lest you

lose the life above."

But no one heard him, and he preached in vain.

He again rushed forth, and, after a half-involuntary effort,

found himself in the street before his loved one's home.

Scarcely knowing why, except that it had become nature to wish to

be near her, he stood for a long time opposite her dwelling.

"O house!" he cried, "inanimate object that can yet enthral me

so, I stand before your cold front as a suppliant from a very