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Page 21
"I wanted to arrange for another seance," he said.
"Will you write, or will you call to-morrow?" asked Alta, in a
business-like manner.
Paul said he would call. Then he hesitated.
"Excuse me," he said, "but may I ask you if there is any one now in the
parlour where we were last night?"
"No one is there," replied the little girl.
"Could you let me just go in and see where she was?" asked Paul, humbly.
"I would not keep you a moment."
Alta, in her character of door-keeper to this house of mystery, was,
doubtless, in the habit of seeing queer people, bent on queer errands.
She merely asked him to step within the hall, saying that she would speak
to her mother. Presently she returned with the desired permission, and,
producing a key, unlocked the parlour door, and ushered Paul in.
It was late in the afternoon, and the heavy curtains and blinds left the
rooms almost dark. There was barely light enough to see that all was just
as it had been the night before. The sounds of the street penetrated the
closed apartments but faintly. With the step of one on holy ground, Paul
advanced to the spot where he had been seated when the vision appeared to
him the night before.
Aided by the darkness, the silence, and by the identity of the
surroundings, the memory of that vision returned to him as he stood there
with a vividness which, in the overwrought condition of his nerves, it
was impossible for him to distinguish from reality. Once more a radiant
figure glided noiselessly from the cabinet, which was darkly outlined in
the corner of the room, and stood before him. Once more her eyes burned
on his, until, forgetting all but her beauty, he put forth his arms to
clasp her. A startled exclamation from Alta banished the vision, and he
perceived that he was smiling upon the empty air.
He went away from the house ecstatically happy. He believed that he had
really seen her. He had no doubt that, aided by the mediumship of love,
she had actually appeared to him a second time in a form only a little
less material than the night before.
Of this experience he did not tell Miss Ludington. This interview, which
Ida had granted to him alone, he kept as a precious secret.
The next day, as he had promised, Paul called at Mrs. Legrand's and saw
Dr. Hull. That gentleman was unable to promise him anything definite
about a seance, on account of Mrs. Legrand's continued illness.
"Is she seriously sick?" asked Paul, with a new terror.
"I think not," said Dr. Hull; "but her trouble is of the heart, the
result of the nervous crises which a trance medium is necessarily subject
to, and a disease of the heart may at any time take an unexpected turn."
"Has she the best advice?" asked Paul. "Excuse me; but if she has not,
and if her pecuniary means do not enable her to afford it, I beg you will
let me secure it for her."
Dr. Hull thanked him, but said that he was a physician himself, and that,
on account of his acquaintance with her constitutional peculiarities,
Mrs. Legrand considered him, and he considered himself, better able to
treat her than any strange physician. "You seem to be very much
interested in her case," added the doctor, with a slight intonation of
surprise.
"Can you wonder?" replied Paul. "Is she not door-keeper between this
world and the world of spirits where my love is? Don't think me brutal if
I confess to you that what I think of most is that her death might close
that door."
"I do not think you brutal," replied Dr. Hull; "what you feel is very
natural."
"Is it not strange--is it not hard to bear," cried Paul, giving way to
his feelings, "that the key of the gate between the world of spirits and
of men should be intrusted to a weak and sickly woman?"
"It is hard to bear, no doubt," replied Dr. Hull; "but it is not strange.
It is in accordance with the laws by which this world has always been
conducted. From the beginning has not the power of calling spirits out of
the unknown into this earth life been intrusted to weak and sickly women?
What the world loosely calls spiritualism is no isolated phenomenon or
set of phenomena. The universe is spiritual. Much as we claim for our
mediums, the mediumship of motherhood is far more marvellous. Our mediums
can enable spirits already alive, and able by their own wills to
cooperate, to pass before our eyes for a moment. To hold them longer in
our view exceeds their power. But these other women, these mothers, call
souls out of nothingness, and clothe them with bodies, so that they
speak, walk, work, love, and hate, some forty, some fifty, some seventy
years."
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