Belford's Magazine, Vol II, No. 10, March 1889

Before the blonde loveliness of the Saxon girl, Romaine paled, while a shudder rent her from head to foot. She sighed heavily, and turned to Morton with a piteous gesture.

"My dear Loyd," she murmured sadly, "never again call me Paula."

He recoiled from her as though each innocent word had stung him to the quick.

"My God!" he cried, "if I thought – " when he checked himself before her look of abject terror, came to her, and took her in his arms. "My darling," he faltered, "if you only knew what agony the mere suspicion of your doubt causes me, you would have pity upon me!"

He spoke with such suppressed passion, with such wild anguish in his haggard eyes, that her alarm faded to helpless amazement.

"I have expressed no doubt," she murmured; "what can you mean?"

"Oh, I do not know," he moaned. "Perhaps I am not quite myself; all the happiness of this day has unnerved me. But – but you bid me never to call you Paula again; what do you mean?"

"Why, simply that I am so inferior to her in loveliness," she answered with a flurried smile.

"Did I ask, did I expect, you to look like her?" he demanded fiercely. "Can you not understand that the flesh is dust, and to dust returns; but the soul is immortal? Paula's body is dust, but her immortal soul lives – lives, not in the realms of bliss to which it fled, released, but —where does it live to-day, at this very instant? I want to hear you tell me!"

He caught her delicate shoulders between his strong white hands and glared like some ravenous animal into her startled face.

"Answer me!" he commanded.

"O Loyd," she wailed, "how wildly you speak! How can I tell where her soul may be, since I can see no reason why it should not be in heaven!"

"If it is in heaven," he cried, thrusting her violently from him, "then am I in hell!"

With a stifled cry, poor Romaine staggered to a chair and sank upon it, overcome by the conviction that she had allied herself to a madman.

And in the ominous pause that ensued, a light rap sounded upon the closed door.

With a muttered ejaculation Morton pulled himself together and went to inquire into the untimely intrusion. Upon opening the door, he found his man upon the threshold, stammering some words of apology, which were summarily cut short.

"What do you want?" Morton demanded sternly.

"There is a lady in the office, sir."

"Where are your wits, that you have forgotten your orders? I am not at home to patients."

"But she has called repeatedly, sir."

"Send her to Doctor Chalmers, my colleague."

"She declares that she will not leave without seeing you. Here is her card."

The sight of that graven name seemed for an instant to petrify the beholder, and several seconds elapsed ere he was able to command himself sufficiently to speak.

Going to his shrinking wife, he raised her hand and pressed it to his lips in a way that was infinitely pathetic.

"I must leave you for a moment, to attend to an urgent case," he whispered; "and while I am gone, I beseech you to pardon a love which transcends all bounds. Some day you will understand all I have suffered. Be lenient with me, for I am an object for pity!"

In the dimness of his office, which had undergone no renovation and no decoration, he found himself confronted by the tall and slender figure of a woman whom he knew full well. The veil had been raised from before the appealing beauty of the face which bore but slight traces of alteration since last he looked upon Margaret Revaleon!

His greeting was of so cordial a nature as to preclude all attempt on the part of his visitor to apologize for her intrusion.

"I am more than glad to see you, Mrs. Revaleon," he exclaimed, excitedly; "your visit is most opportune. For the past week you have been omnipresent in my thoughts. Who shall say that I am not developing something of your own peculiar clairvoyance?"

"I trust not," she said, regarding the speaker with apparent uneasiness.

But he continued, with precipitate heedlessness,

"And how do you find yourself since last we met?"

"My condition remains unchanged," replied the woman. "Indeed, I am satisfied that I have developed into what is popularly known as a spiritualistic medium. But I am wretched at the thought of being the unwilling possessor of this so-called odyllic power; and I have come to you again to beseech you to treat me for a malady which I am convinced you can cure if you will."

Yielding to his adroit guidance, Margaret Revaleon found herself once more seated in the luxurious patient's chair, while the young doctor seated himself before her with his back to the light.

Thus advantageously placed, he replied with a smile,

"Indeed, my dear madam, you overestimate my ability. I do not profess electro-biology. In order to do so, I should be obliged to enter upon an exhaustive course of reading of Reichenbach and his disciples. In point of fact, I have no sympathy with the believers in mesmerism and its concomitant fancies."

"No?" she answered dreamily, that singular absence of inspection dulling her tawny eyes. "Do you know, doctor, that I am impressed to tell you that you are possessed of the mesmeric power to an extraordinary degree?"

He winced consciously, but rejoined soothingly, doing his utmost to increase the stupor which was fast gaining command of his visitor,

"It may be as you say; it is certainly a power second only to your own. What else have you to impart? Anything that you might say, I should regard as oracular."

He thrilled from head to foot with a sense akin to sickening faintness, as he saw her eye-lids slowly droop while she extended her slim, white hands to him.

"Give me your hands," she murmured; "oh, dear, dear, dear! Stand back; do not crowd so! How many there are here! – Ah!"

The final word was simply an exhalation. She slumbered profoundly, breathing stertorously at first, but swiftly relapsing into perfect calm. The trance had begun. The portals of eternity seemed to be widening. The solemnity of the moment was supreme.

Morton's features became rigid as he watched; his haggard eyes started from their sockets and the drops of an icy sweat pearled upon his brow. He had longed for this moment, and yet, now that it was his, he would have given his immortal soul to have been able to play the coward and escape the consequences.

In fact he did withdraw his hands from the slight grasp, but in the next moment he was held spell-bound, for Margaret Revaleon was speaking in that weirdly vaticinal tone.

"Poor Romaine! Where is she?"

"Who speaks? Who are you?" gasped Morton, once more grasping the outstretched hands.

"Her father. You should know me. I am Sidney – Sidney – "

"Sidney Effingham!"

"Yes, and I am called back to earth in spite of myself. There is trouble here among those I dearly love, and I am pained, disturbed in my happiness."

"Your widow and son are well," murmured Morton, profoundly awed by the impressive tone of the presence.

"Yes, yes; but Romaine! my daughter, where is she? She is no longer with her mother."

"Of course she is not!" exclaimed Morton; "is she not with you in heaven?"

The violence of the query appeared to disturb the medium; her eyelids fluttered and her breathing became labored, as though the conditions of the trance had been deranged. Presently, however, the transient agitation subsided and a name escaped her lips.

"Loyd!"

"Who speaks?" whispered Morton, vaguely conscious of a change of personality.

"How can you ask? Can you not guess?"

"No!" he cried wildly; "O God! I do not dare to guess, even to think! In heaven's name, do not tell me who you may be! and – and yet I must know! I am resolved to dare death itself to be satisfied! Who is it that speaks?"

"Paula, your wife – and I am waiting!"

The listening air seemed to cringe before the maddened shriek that filled the house.

Morton struggled to his feet and for a moment hovered above the quiescent figure beneath him with hands outstretched and hooked like the talons of a bird of prey; then with a groan he sank back into his chair; his arms fell like plummets at his sides and his head dropped forward upon his breast.

Meanwhile, in the luxurious chamber over which presided the radiant portrait of the dead, garlanded in roses, the unhappy bride paced to and fro, now wringing her delicate hands, and again dashing the terrified tears from her eyes. Each moment but served to increase her helpless alarm; she knew her husband's return to be immediate, at least inevitable, and yet she could not support the thought of his advent. In a word, the last shackle which bound her soul in mystic spell had fallen away, and she was herself again. It had required weeks to right the disordered brain and give it the strength requisite to battle with the mesmeric power of its master; but at last, late as it was, her mind had fully regained its normal functions.

In the midst of her pitiful quandary Romaine was startled by an impetuous step outside the closed door. She recoiled to the furthest corner of the room, and stood bracing her fainting body against the wall.

Contrary to her expectation it was Colston Drummond who flung wide the door and stood before her.

The revulsion of feeling well-nigh overpowered her, yet in some way she was able to demand, in answer to his passionate utterance of her name,

"Why are you here?"

"To protect you, Romaine."

"You forget that I can claim a husband's protection," she retorted valiantly.

"It is from him that I seek to protect you," Drummond exclaimed; "you should not have written to me as you did, should not have laid bare your tortured heart and revealed the secret which I have had every reason to suspect, which my great love for you divined long, long ago, if you did not wish me to fly to your rescue!"

She held up beseeching hands, as though she would ward off that which she would welcome, and cried piteously,

"Too late! It is too late!"

Whatever he might have said remained unuttered, since at the moment that frenzied cry reached their ears, freezing their blood with its baleful import.

"Merciful heaven!" gasped Romaine; "it is Loyd's voice! Something dreadful has occurred! Oh, prove yourself my protector, and come with me! Come, quick, quick!"

In the excitement of the moment, the brooding twilight, and their unfamiliarity with the house they lost much precious time. Indeed they were only guided at last to the grim little office by the sudden opening of a door through which the figure of a woman escaped and passed them in swift flight.

And then they entered in awed silence, to find the bridegroom sitting in the gloaming of his nuptial-day with pendent arms and sunken head, lost —

"In that blessed mood,In which the burden of the mystery,In which the heavy and the weary weightOf all this unintelligible world,Is lightened!"THE END

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Copyrighted, 1889, Belford, Clarke & Co.