A Journey in Other Worlds Part 23

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 pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 h.e.l.l 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 d.i.c.k 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. Pa.s.sing 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 he 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 pa.s.s 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 G.o.d knows is enough; but though I suspected it before, I now see, by my companions, that I am in the depths of h.e.l.l."

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 pa.s.sed, 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 G.o.d 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 rea.s.sured 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 distant realm; yet in my sadness I am colder than your stones, more alone than in a desolate place. She that dwells within you holds my love. I long for her shadow or the sound of her step. I am more wretchedly in love than ever--I, an impotent, invisible spirit. Must I bear this sorrow in addition to my others, in my fruitless search for rest? My life will be a waking nightmare, most bitter irony of fate."

The trees swayed above his head, and the moon, in its last quarter, looked dreamily at him.

"Ah," thought Ayrault, "could I but sleep and be happy! Drowsiness and weariness, fatigue's grasp is on me; or may Sylvia's nearness soothe, as her voice has brought me calm! Quiet I may some day enjoy, but slumber again, never! I see that souls in hades must ever have their misdeeds before them. Happy man in this world, the repentant's sins are forgiven! You lose your care in sleep. Somnolence and drowsiness--balm of aching hearts, angels of mercy! Mortals, how blessed! until you die, G.o.d sends you this rest. When I recall summer evenings with Sylvia, while gentle zephyrs fanned our brows, I would change Pope's famous line to 'Man never is, but always HAS BEEN blessed.'"

A clock in a church-steeple now struck three, the sound ringing through the still night air.

"It will soon be time for ghosts to go," thought Ayrault. "I must not haunt her dwelling."

There was a light in Sylvia's study, and Ayrault remained meditatively gazing at it.

"Happy lamp," he thought, "to shed your light on one so fair! She can see you, and you shine, for her. You are better off than I. Would that her soul might shine for me, as your light shines for her! The light of my life has departed. O that the darkness were complete! I am dead," his thoughts ran on, and when the privilege--bitter word!--that permits me to remain here has expired, I must doubtless return to Saturn, and there in purgatory work out my probation. But what comfort is it that a few centuries hence I may be able to revisit my native earth?--

The flowers will bloom in the morning light, And the lark salute the sun, The earth will continue to roll through s.p.a.ce, And I may be nearer my final grace, But Sylvia's life-thread will be spun.

"Even Sylvia's house will be a heap of ruins, or its place will be taken by something else. If I had Sylvia, I should care for nothing; as I have lost her, even this sight, though sweet, must always bring regret. I wish, at all events, I might see Sylvia, if only with these spirit-eyes, since, as a mortal, she may never gladden my sight again."

To his surprise, he now perceived that he could see, notwithstanding the drawn shades. Sylvia was at her writing-desk, in a light-coloured wrapper. She sat there resting her head on her hand, looking thoughtful but worried. Though it was so late, she had not retired.

The thrush that Ayrault had often in life admired, and that she had for some reason brought up-stairs, was silent and asleep.

"Happy bird!" he said, "you obtain rest and forgetfulness on covering your head; but what wing can cover my soul? I used to wish I might flutter towards heaven on natural wings like you, little thrush. Now I can, indeed, outfly you. But whatever I do I'm unhappy, and wherever I go I'm in h.e.l.l. What is man in his helpless, first spiritual state?

He is but a flower, and withers soon. Had I, like the bishop, been less blind, and obeyed my conscience clear, I might have returned to my native earth while Sylvia still sojourns here; and coming thus by virtue of development, I should be able to commune with her.