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Page 50
"On the second of May, at one o'clock in the afternoon, you will pass
out of the body."
I would not have believed them if I could have helped myself, I sighed
for the calm days when I had laughed at medium and prophet, and sneered
at ghost and rapping. I took lodgings in Philadelphia, locked my doors,
and paced my rooms all day and half the night, tortured by my thoughts,
and consulting books of medicine to discover what evidence I could by
any possibility give of unsuspected disease. I was at that time
absolutely well and strong; absolutely well and strong I was forced to
confess myself, after having waded through Latin adjectives and
anatomical illustrations enough to make a ghost of Hercules. I devoted
two days to researches in genealogical pathology, and was rewarded for
my pains by discovering myself to be the possessor of one great-aunt who
had died of heart disease at the advanced age of two months.
Heart disease, then, I settled upon. The alternative was accident.
"Which will it be?" I asked in vain. Upon this point my friends the
mediums held a delicate reserve. "The Influences were confusing, and
they were not prepared to state with exactness."
"Why _don't_ you come home?" my wife wrote in distress and perplexity.
"You promised to come ten days ago, and they need you at the office, and
I need you more than anybody."
"I need you more than anybody!" When the little clinging needs of three
weeks grew into the great want of a lifetime,--O, how could I tell _her_
what was coming?
I did not tell her. When I had hurried home, when she came bounding
through the hall to meet me, when she held up her face, half laughing,
half crying, and flushing and paling, to mine,--the poor little face
that by and by would never watch and glow at my coming,--I could not
tell her.
When the children were in bed and we were alone after tea, she climbed
gravely up into my lap from the little cricket on which she had been
sitting, and put her hands upon my shoulders.
"You're sober, Fred, and pale. Something ails you, you know, and you are
going to tell me all about it."
Her pretty, mischievous face swam suddenly before my eyes. I kissed it,
put her gently down as I would a child, and went away alone till I felt
more like myself.
The winter set in gloomily enough. It may have been the snow-storms, of
which we had an average of one every other day, or it may have been the
storm in my own heart which I was weathering alone.
Whether to believe those people, or whether to laugh at their
predictions; whether to tell my wife, or whether to continue
silent,--these questions tormented me through many wakeful nights and
dreary days. My fears were in nowise allayed by a letter which' I
received one day in January from Gertrude Fellows.
"Why don't you read it aloud? What's the news?" asked Alison. But at one
glance over the opening page I folded the sheet, and did not read it
till I could lock myself into the library alone. The letter ran:--
"I have been much disturbed lately on your behalf. My mother and your
brother Joseph appear to me nearly every day, and charge me with some
message to you which I cannot distinctly grasp. It seems to be clear,
however, as far as this: that some calamity is to befall you in the
spring,--in May, I should say. It seems to me to be of the nature of
death. I do not learn that you can avoid it, but that they desire you to
be prepared for it."
After receiving this last warning, certain uncomfortable words filed
through my brain for days together:--
"Set thine house in order, for thou shalt surely die."
"Never knew you read your Bible so much in all your life," said Alison,
with a pretty pout. "You'll grow so good that I can't begin to keep up
with you. When I try to read my polyglot, the baby comes and bites the
corners, and squeals till I put it away and take him up."
As the winter wore away I arrived at this conclusion: If I were in fact
destined to death in the spring, my wife could not help herself or me by
the knowledge of it. If events proved that I was deluded in the dread,
and I had shared it with her, she would have had all her pain and
anxiety to no purpose. In either case I would insure her happiness for
these few months; they might be her last happy months. At any rate
happiness was a good thing, and she could not have too much of it. To
say that I myself felt no uneasiness as to the event would be
affectation. The old sword of Damocles hung over me. The hair might
hold, but it was a hair.
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