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HO WELLS, I5ii---\^z^ AUTHOR or "IHB LADT OP THB AaOOSTOOK," "a FORBOONK CONCLUSIOM," " A CUAJfCB ACqUAINTAXCE," " VENKIIAH LIFE," BTO. iH ROSE-BELFORD PUBLISHING COMPANY. MDCCCLXXX. i THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. CHAPTER I. Some years ago, at a time when the rapid growth of the city was changing the character of many localities, two young men were sitting, one afternoon early in Aprii, in a parlour of a house on one of those streets which, without having yet accomplished their destiny as busi- ness thoroughfares, were no longer the homes of the de- corous ease that once inhabited them. The young men held their hats and canes in their hands, and they had that air of having just been admitted and of waiting to be received by the people of the house which rests grace- fully only on persons of the other sex. One was tall and spare, and he sat stiffly expectant; the other, who was much shorter and stouter, with the mature bloom which comes of good living and a cherished digestion, was more restless. As he rose from his chair, after a few moments, and went to examine some detail of the dim room, he moved with a quick, eager step, and with a stoo|) which suggested a connoisseur's habit of bending over and peer- ting at things. He returned to his seat, and glanced round [the parlour, as if to seize the whole effect more accurately. " So this is the home of the Pythoness, is it ? " he said. " If you like to call her a Pythoness," answered the )ther. " Oh, I don't know that I prefer it ; I'm quite willing Ito call her a test-medium. I thought perhaps Pythoness would respectfully idealize the business. What a queer, melancholy house, what a queer, melancholy street ! I don't think I was ever in a street before where quite so 4 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. many professional ladies, with English surnames, prefer- red Madam to Mrs. on their door-plates. And the poor old place has such a desperately conscious air of going to the deuce. Every house seems to wince as you go by, and button itself up to the chin for fe,ar you should find out it had no shirt on, — so to speak. I don't know what's the reason, but these material tokens of a social decay afflict me terribly : a tipsy v/oman isn't dreadfuller than a haggard old house, that's once been a home, in a street like this." " The street's going the usual way," said the other. " It will be all business in a few years." " But in the meantime it causes me inexpressible an- guish, and it will keep doing it. If I know where there's a thorn, I can't help going up and pressing my waistcoat against it. I foresee that I shall keep coming. This parlour alone is poignant enough to afford me the most rapturous pain; it pierces my soul. This tawdry red velvet wall-paper; the faded green reps of that sofa; those family photographs in their oval papier-mach^ frames ; that round table there in the corner, with its subscription literature and its tin-type albums ; and this -^ frantic tapestry carpet! I know not why the ghost-seers /^W/ affect this sort of street and this sort of parlour: the -s.^ spirits can't resist the deadly fascination ! No ghost with any strength of character could keep away. I sup- pose that this apartment is sw^arming, now, with disem- bodied ladies and gentlemen of the first distinction. Well, I like your going into this. I respect everybody's super- stition — except my own ; I can't respect that, you know." " Do you think I believe in these people's rubbish ? " " I didn't know. A man must believe in something. I couldn't think of anything else you believed in. I'm not sure I don't believe in it a trifle myself ; my nerves do. May I ask why you come here, if you refuse the particu- lar rubbish afforded by the establishment ? You're not a . curious man." " Why did you come ? " ■i ",-n THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 5 prefer- he poor f going I go by. aid find t know a social adfuUer me, in a er. "It sible an- •e there's ;\raistcoat g. This the most vdry red mt sofa; er-mach^ with its and this lost- seers our: the Vo ghost I sup- th disem- on. Well. v's super- m know, bish ? " lething. I I'm not nerves do. e particii- >u're not a •' You a.sked me. Besides, I have no occasion for a rea- son. I am an emotional, not a rational being, as I've of- ten told you." The taller man laughed dryly. " Very well, then, you don't need a reason from me. You can wait and see why I came." The short man gave a shrug. " I hope I shan't have to wait long. An emotional being has a right to he unrea- sonably impatient." A light sound of hesitating steps made itself heard in the next room ; the two men remained silent, and pre- sently one of the partition doors was rolled back, and a tall young girl in a somewhat theatrical robe of white serge, with a pale green scarf on her shoulders, appeared at the threshold. Her beautiful, serious face had a pallid quiet, broken by w^hat seemed the unnatural alertness of her blue eyes, which glanced quickly, like those of a child too early obliged to suspect and avert ; her blonde hair, which had a plastic massiveness, was drawn smoothly back from her temples, and lay heaped in a heavy coil on her neck, where its rich abundance showed when she turned her profile away, as if to make sure that some one was following in the room behind her. A door opened and closed there, and she came on towards the two men, who had risen. At sight of the taller of the two, she halted, while an elderly gentleman hurried forward, with a bustling graciousness, and ottered him his small, short hand. He had the same fair complexion as the girl, but his face was bright and eager; his thin, light hair was wavy and lustreless ; he looked hardly so tall as she. He had a mouth of delicacy and refinement, and a smile of infantine sweetness. "Ah, you've really come," he said, shaking the young man's hand cordially. " So many persons manifest an interest in our public stances, and then let the matter drop without going any further. I don't know whether I presented you to my daughter, the other day, Mr. Ford ? " 6 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTUV. Ford bowed gravely to the girl, who slightly returned his obeisance. " Let me introduce Mr. Phillips, Dr Boyn- ton, — a friend whom I ventured to bring with me." " Very glad to see you, Mr. Phillips. I was about to say — Oh ! my daughter, Mr. Phillips, Miss Egeria Boyn- ton. Take seats, gentlemen — 1 was about to say that one of the most curious facts connected with the phenomena is the ardour with which peoplt3 take the matter up on first acquaintance, and the entire indifference with which they let it drop. In our line of life, Mr. Phillips, as pub- lic exhibitors, we often have occasion to note this. It seldom happens but half a dozen persons come to me at the close of a stance, and ask earnestly for the privilege of pursuing their investigations with the aid of my daugh- ter's mediumship. But these persons rarely call ; I rarely see them at a second public stance, even. If I had not such abiding hopes of the phenomena myself, I should sometimes feel discouraged by the apathy and worse than apathy with which they are received, not the first, but the second time. You must excuse my expression of surprise at first greeting you, Mr. Ford, — you must, indeed. It was but too natural under the circumstances." " By all means," answered Ford. " I never thought of not coming. But I can't promise that you'll find me a ready believer." " Precisely," returned the other. " That is the very mood in which I could have wished you to come. I am myself, as I think I told you, merely an inquirer. In fact" — Dr. Boynton leaned forward, with his small, plump hands extended, as if the more conveniently to round his periods, but arrested himself, in the exi)lanation he was about to make, at something Mr. Phillips was saying to his daughter. " I couldn't help being interested in the character of your parlour, befoie you came in. Miss Boynton. These old Boston houses all have so much character. It's sur- prising what good taste people had fifty or sixty years 4 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. jtumed Boyn- • bout to 1 Boyn- hat one nomena • up on h which as pub- ihis. It le at the dlege of r daugh- I rarely had not I should I'se than ;, but the surprise Eleed. It ought of nd me a he very I aui lirer. In lis small, jiently to j)lanation Hips wa« iracter of 1. These It's sur- ety years ago, — the taste of the First Empire. That cornice is veiy pretty, — very sim[)le and very refined, neither glutted nor starved in design ; and that mantel, — how refreshing those sane and decent straight lines are after the squirms and wriggles of subsequent marble ! I don't know that I should have chosen urns for an ornament to the corners ; but we must not forget that we are mortal ; and there are cinerary associations with fire-places." Miss Boynton said nothing in return for this speech, the full sense of which had perhaps not quite reached her. She stared blankly at Phillips, to whom her father turned with his most winning smile. " An artist ? " asked Dr. Boynton. " A sutterer in the cause of art," returned Phillips, with ironical pathos. " Ah ! A connoisseur," said the doctor. " The fact is," said Phillips, " I was finding the modern equipment of your old-fashioned parlour intolerable, as you came in. You won't mind my not liking your land- lady's taste, Miss Boynton ? " he demanded, with suave ingratiation. Miss Boynton looked about the room, as if she had not seen it before. " It is ugly," she answered, quietly. " But it does as well as any." " Yes," her father eagerly interposed, " better than any other room in any other house in any other quarter of the city. We are still, as I may say, gentlemen, feeling our way towards what we believe a sublime truth. My daughter's development is yet so recent, so incomplete, that we must not reject any furthering influences, how- ever humble, however disagreeable. It is not by my own preference that we are here. I know, as well as you do, that this is a street inhabited by fortune-tellers and char- latans of low degree. For that very reason I have taken our lodgings here. The element, the atmosphere, of sim- ple, unquestioning faith brought into this vicinity by the dupes of these people is, unknown to them, of the highest 1 8 THE UNDISCOVEUED COUNTRY. use, the most vital advanta.f^e, to us in our present at- tempt. At the same time, I should not, I could not in candour, deny to these inetenders themselves a beneficial, a highly — I may cull it — evolutionary, influence upon my daughter. We desire no personal acquaintance with them. But they are of the old tradition of supernaturalism, — a tradition as old as nature, — and we cannot afford to reject the favour of the tradition which they represent. You will understand that, gentlemen. We cannot say, we hold — 01' we trust we hold — communion with spirits, and yet deny that there is something in second-sight, divina- tion, or whatever mysteries these people pretend to. "In some sort, we must psychologically ally ourselves with them. They are, no doubt, for the most pait and in most cases, shameless swindlers ; but it seems to be a con- dition of our success that we shall not deny — I don't saj'' that we shall believe — the fact of an occult power in ^ov.e of them. Their neighbourhood was very repulsive at tirst, and still is measurably so ; but we accept it, and have found it of advantage. We are mere experimenters, as yet, and claim nothing excej)t that my daughter is the medium, the instrument, of certain phenomena which we can explain only in one way ; we do not dispute the dif- ferent explanations of others. In the course of our in- vestigations, we neglect no theory, however slight, that may assist us. Now, in so simple a matter as dress, even, we have found by repeated experiment that the manifest- ations have a greater affinity for white than any other colour. This may point to some hidden truth — I don't say — in the old-fashioned ghost-stories, where the spectre always appears in white. At any rate, we think it worth while that my daughter should wear white, in both her public and her private stances, for the present. And green — -just now we seem to find a good effect in pale green^ Mr. Phillips, pale green." " If I may say it without impertinence to Miss Boyn- ton's father, in my character of connoisseur," said Phillips, TIIK UNDISCOVKUED COUNTRY. aent at- I not in neficial, pon my h them, ism, — a ■jO reject t. You my, we [•its, and divina- o. urselves t and in ►e a con- ion't say 'in soiMe 5 at tirst, nd have iters, as er is the irhich we the dif- our in- ht, that ss, even, lanifest- ly other -I don't spectre it worth joth her id green green, }s Boyn- Phillips, with a bow for the yoiinjj f^^iil, wliicli he delivered to the doctor, " I think the eftbct is very good indeed." " All ! yes, yes I" cried the doctor. " In that sense. I see. Very good. Ilowovei", I meant " — Dr. Boynton paused, bending on either visitor an exquisite stnile of child-like triumph. A series of light taps, beginning with a sound like a straining of the wood, and then sepa- rating into a sharper staccato, was heanl at different points in the room, chiefly on the table, and on the valves of the sliding doors. Phillips gave a little nervous start. Ford remained indifferent, but for the slow movement of his eyes in the direction of the young girl, who bent an appealing look on her i.ither The doctor lifted a hand to invoke attention ; the i.ips died away. " Giorgione, 1 presume. Will you ask, Egeria?" She hesitated. T .^n, in a somewhat tremulous voice, she demanded, " Is it you, Giorgione ? " A light shower of raps instantly resp^nticd. A thrill of strong excite- ment visibly passed over the girl, who clutched one hand with the other, and seemed to stay herself by a strong effort of will in her place on the sofa. "Calmly, my daughter, calmly!" said Dr. BojTiton, making a certain restraining gesture towards her. " Yes, it is Giorgione. He can never keep away when colour is mentioned. Very celebrated for his colouring, I am told, when alive. A Viennese painter, I believe, Mr. Phillips." " Venetian," answered Phillips, abstractedly. He re- called himself, and added with a forced lightness, " But I don't know that I can advise you to trust the professions of our rapping and tapping friend ; there are so few genuine Giorgiones." A brisk volley of taps discharged upon the wall directly behind Phillips's head caused him to turn abruptly and stare hard at the place. " Oh, you can't see it, Phillips," said Ford, with a spare laugh of derision. "No," said Dr. Boynton, sweetly, "you can ^ see it. At least, not yet. But if our experiments progress as 10 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. favourably as they have for the last six months, we may hope before a great while to render the invisible agencies of these sounds as sensible to sight as to hearing. Don't disturb yourself, Mr. Phillips. Mere playfulness, I assure you. They never inflict any real injury." While he spoke the raps renewed themselves here and there upon the woodwork, into the fibre of which they seemed at last to reenter, and died away in the sort of straining with which they began. "Egeria," said the doctor, turning impressively towards his daughter, " it seems to me the conditions are uncommonly propitious this afternoon. I think we may look for something of a very remarkable character." He glanced at the clock on the mantel, and confronted his visitor with a smiling face of apology. " Gentlemen, I suppose you came for a stance. My in- terest in the matter has betrayed me into remarks that have taken up too much of your time." " I came in the ho[)e of seeing some further proofs of your skill," said Ford ; " but if there is anything " — " Oh, no, no, no ! Not at all, not at all ! " hastily inter- rupted the doctor, with a deprecatory wave of his hand. " But — ah — I hardly know how to put it. The fact is, I am anxious for investigation by gentlemen of your in- telligence, and I should very much dislike to postpone you — Our landlady, who is a medium of note in her Avay, — she has lately come from Boston to the West, — had arranged this afternoon for a stance with a number of persons rather more grounded in the belief than your- selves, and " — The young men rose. " We won't detain you," said Ford. " We can come another time." " No, no ! Wait ! " Dr. Boynton waved them to their seats again, which they provisionally resumed, and turned to his daughter. " Egeria, I think I may venture to ask these gentlemen to join our friends ?" " There's no reason why they shouldn't stay, if they like," said the girl, impassively. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 11 we may agencies . Don't I assure /hile he ere upon 3emed at ling with turning me the noon. I markable ntel, and apology. My in- Eirks that )roofs of .» ily inter- bis hand, le fact is, your in- 30stpone )te in her st, — had nnber of an your- ou," said k^ 1 to their id turned e to ask , if they " We should be delighted," exclaimed Phillips, " if you'll let us ! I'm so little used to ghosts," he said, glanc- ing round at the walls and tables with an apprehensive- ness which was perhaps not altogether affected, " that, for my part, I should rather-like plenty of company, Miss Boynton, — if Messer Giorgione won't take it amiss." , " Ah, very good ! " interposed her father. " Very good, indeed. Ha ! Why I hesitated was that the sort of ex- periment to be tried this afternoon requires conditions, concessions, that I thought you might not care to offer, gentlemen. I wish to be perfectly frank with you ; what you will see might be produced by trickery, especially in a company of ten or a dozen persons, some of whom could be in collusion with the medium. I pass no judgment upon a certain order of phenomena in their present stage of development, but I make it a rule, myself, measurably to distrust all manifestations occurring in the presence of more than three persons beside the medium. Still, if you will do us the honour to remain, I can promise you some- thing very curious and interesting, — something novel in the present phase of supernaturalism ; nothing less than apparitions, gentlemen, or, as we call them, materializa- tions. You have heard, perhaps, of these materializations ?" " Yes," said Ford indifferently, " I have heard of them." "Mrs. Le Roy — our landlady — has made an eclectic study of the materializations of several other mediums, and she has succeeded, or claims to have succeeded, not only in reproducing them, but in calling about her many of the principal a()paritions who visit the original stances. . If you are not familiar with apparitions you may find it interesting." " Really, Dr. Boynton," said Phillips, " do you moan that I shall see my friend Giorgione performing that sort of tattoo on j^our wall paper?" " Not exactly," urbanely responded Dr. Boynton. " No. It's a curious feature of the manifestations that the audible spirits are never seen, and that those rendered THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. I' visible by the new development of materialization are in variably mute. But in a dark stance to follow the ma- terialization, my daughter " — Egeria rose from her place on the sofa and moved to- wards her father, who, alarmed at some expression of her face, started to his feet to encounter her. She laid her arms with a beseeching gesture on his shoulder. *' Father, father ! Give it up for to-day, do ! I can't go through with it. I am weak — sick ; I have no strength left. Everything is gone." " Why, Egeria ! My poor girl ! Excuse me, gentlemen : I will be with you in a moment." He cast a sustaining arm about her slim shape, and with the other hand pushed open one of the sliding doors, and disappeared with her from the room beyond. The men remained in a silence which Ford had appar- ently no intention of breaking. " Upon the whole," said Phillips, at last, " this is rather painful. Miss Boynton is very much like some other young ladies — for a Py- thoness. I should like to see the dark sdance, — if I may express myself so inconsequently, — but really I hope the old gentleman will give it up, as she suggested." "Don't flatter yourself," said Ford, gloomily. "The thing's just beginning." " Ford, I don't see how you have the heart to take your attitude towards these people," returned the other. " It was shocking to stand on the defensive against the girl, as if she were an impostor. She's a person you might help to escalloped oysters or ice-cream at an even- ing party, and not expect to talk half so magnificently as she looked. The man believes in himself, and it is your ironical attitude which annuls the honesty in him. That sort of thing kills any amount of genuineness in people." " Very likely," assented Ford. " He's coming back presently to say that our sphere — attitude, you call it ; his quackery has a different nomenclatuie — has annulled his daughter's power over the spirits." ^gnaAMjoU THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 13 3n are in the ma- loved to- ion of her She laid shoulder. can't go strength 3ntlemen : iustaining id pushed with her id appar- ole," said Boynton a Py- -if I may hope the y. " The ) to take he other, ainst the rson you an even- icently as t is your m. That 1 people." ing back Li call it ; annulled or Phillips went up to examine the mantel-piece again. " Well, why not ? " " Certainly, why not ? If you grant the one, there's no trouble about granting the other." " What do you make of what we heard ? " " Nothing." " You heard it ? " " I hear clatter any time I wake in the night. But I don't attribute it to disembodied spirits on that account." " Why not ? " " Because there are no disembodied spirits, for one thing." "Ah, I'm not so sure of that," said Phillips, with sprightly generosity. " Really ? You doubt everything." " That's very well, — but I suppose you mean anything. I prefer to keep an open mind. I don't snub ghosts, for I think I may b^3 one myself, some day." As he spoke the door- bell rang, and in the interval be- tween the ringing of the bell and the slow response of the servant, Dr. Boynton reentered, rubbing his hands and smiling. " Sorry to have been obliged to leave 3'^ou, gentlemen," he said. "You have witnessed, however, one of the most interesting phases of this mystery : mys- tery, I call it, for I'm as much in the dark about it as yourselves. My daughter felt so deeply the dissenting, the perhaps incredulous, mood — sphere — of one of you that she quite succumbed to it. Don't be alarmed ! In an ordinary medium it would be an end of everything for the time being, but she will take part in the stance all the same, to-day. I have been able to reinforce my daughter's powers by a gift — we will call it a gift — of my own. In former years I looked quite deeply into mesmerism, and I have never quite disused the practice of it, as a branch of my profession, — I am a physician. My wife, who has been dead my daughter's whole life," — an expression of pain, curious with reference to the eager 14 THE UNDISCJVERED COUNTRY. brightness of the man's wonted aspect, passed over the speaker's face, — " was a very impressible subject of mine, and in her childhood Egeria was so. Since we have dis- covered what seems her power as a medium, I have found the mesmeric force — the application of exterior will — of the greatest use in sustaining her against the exhaustion she would otherwise incur from the many conflicting in- fluences she is subject to, I can't regret — I rejoice, in fact — that this phenomenon has occurred as it has occur- red. It will enable me to present in her to-day the united action of those strange forces, equally occult, the mesmeric and the spiritistic. I have just left my daughter in a complete mesmeric trance, and you will see — ^you will see" — He broke ofl* abruptly, and went forward to meet a gentleman and lady, apparently two of the expected guests of Mrs. Le Roy. He greeted them with gay warmth as Mr. and Mrs. Merrifield, and was about to share their acquaintance with Ford and Phillips, when a tall man, with pale blue eyes and a thin growth of faded hair, of a like harshness on crown and chin, interrupted with a solemnly proffered hand. " Why, Weatherby," said the doctor, shaking his hand, " I did'nt hear you ring. " I found the girl still at the door, and had no occasion to ring," said Mr. Weatherby. " Right, right, — quite right ! " returned Dr. Boynton. " Glad to see you. Mr. Weatherby, Mr. Ford and Mr. Phillips, — inquirers. Mr. Weatherby is known among us, gentlemen, for powers which he is developing in the direction of levitation." Mr. Weatherby silently shook hands, regarding Phillips and Ford meantime with a re- mote keenness of glance, and then took a seat in a corner, with an air of established weariness, as if he had found levitation heavy work. Dr. Boynton continued to receive his guests, and next introduced to the strangers a large, watery-eyed man Mi. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 15 over the t of mine, have dis- ive found will — of s:haustion icting in- ejoice, in k,as occur- nday the y occult, it left my u will see meet a expected with gay about to ?, when a of faded terrupted satherby," hear you 3 occasion Boynton. and Mr. rn among ag in the tly shook ^ith a re- i a corner, had found , and next eyed man ■with a mottled face and reddish hair : " Mr. Eccles, — an Inquirer like yourselves, gentlemen, but in a different spir- it. Mr. Eccles has n(j doubt of the nature of the mani- |festations, but he is investigating the subject with a view #— with a view " — Dr. Boynton looked for help to the gen- tleman whose position he was trying to state, and the latter came to his aid with a vigorous alacrity which was flaccented by the lavish display of an upper and lower set lof artificial teeth. "With a view to determine whether something cannot *o» « oe done to protect us against the assumption by inferior || spirits of the identity of the better class of essences. 'I There are doubtless laws of the spirit-life, could we in- I voke them aright, which would hold these unruly masque- I raders in check. I am endeavouring to study the police I system — if I may use the expression — of the other world. ^ For I am satisfied that until we have learned to appeal 1 to the proper authorities against these pretenders, we I shall get nothing of value from the manifestations. At I present it seems to me that in most cases the phenomena j are held in contempt by all respectable spirits. This de- I plorable state of things has resulted, I have no doubt, in I great degree from the hostile manner in which investiga- i tion of the phenomena has been pursued in the material I world." "Yes," said Ford, "that's an interesting point. My friend, here, was just speaking of some things of the sort i before you came in. He mentioned the disadvantage to M the medium of what he called the ironical attitude ; he I contends that it makes them cheat." " No doubt, no doubt," replied Mr. Eccles. " But its effect upon the approximating spiritual sphere is still worse. It drives from that sphere all candid and sober- minded spirits, and none but frivolous triflers remain. Are you a believer in the phenomena, Mr. — ah — Phillips?" " 1 am scarcely even a witness of them yet," said Phil-* 16 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. ft ^1 lips. " But as a mere speculative observer, I don't see why one shouldn't come as worshipfuUy minded to a stance as to a church." " Precisely, precisely, sir " assented Mr. Eccles. " And yet I cannot say that a stance is exactly a religious ser- vice. No, it partakes rather of a dual nature. It will doubtless be elevated in character, as the retro and inter- acting influences improve. But at present it is a sort of informal reception at which friends from both worlds meet and commingle in social intercourse; in shori, a kind of bi-mundane — bi-mundane — " " Kettle-drum,* suggested Ford. " Ah !" breathed Mr. Eccles. He folded his arms, and set his artificial teeth to smile displeasure upon Ford's im- passible face. Anything that he may have been going to say farther was cut short by the approach of a gentle- man, at sight of whom his smile relaxed nothing of its displeasure. " Hello ! How do, Eccles ? " said the new-comer, gayly. He was a short and slight mar, and he planted himself in front of Mr. Eccles upon his very small, squarely stepping feet. Whatever may have been the tempera- ment of the invisible presences, those in the flesh were, with the exception of this gentleman, not at all lively : they were, in fact, of serious countenance and low spirits ; and they were evidently glad of this co-religionist who could take their common belief so cheerfully. He had come in the last, and he had been passing a light word with this one and that, before saluting Mr. Eccles, who alone seemed not glad to see him. He was dres?' i in a smart business suit, whose fashionableness was as> much at variance with the prevailing dress of the company as his gaiety with its prevailing solemnity. " How are you ? " he said, looking up into Mr. Eccles's dental smile. " Going to get after tho'3e scamps again ? Well, I'm glad of it. Behaved shamefully at Mrs. Merri- field's the other night ; knocked the chairs over and flung '^a THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 17 don't see nded to a es. " And igious ser- •e. It will and inter- is a sort of >th worlds n shorl, a ; arms, and Ford's im- Bn going to : a gentle- hing of its mer, gayly. ied himself I, squarely tempera- flesh were, all lively: ow spirits ; lonist who He had light word iccles, who res?' "l in a s fxn much ompany as Ir. Eccles's lips again ? Irs. Merri- ? and flung the flowers about, — ridiculous ! If they can't manage better than that, a man might as well go to a democratic iward meeting when he dies. Ah, doctor ! " I Dr. Boynton approached from the other room, which iiad been closed, and on which he again shut the folding ^oors. " Mr. Hatch ! " said the doctor radiantly, while |he pressed the other's hand in both his own, and made a |*ose-bud of his mouth. " You just complete our list. Glad to see you." I "Thanks, much?" said Mr. Hatch. "Where's Miss Algeria ? " > " In a moment," replied the doctor mysteriously. Then ^^e turned to the company, and said in a formal tone, "As fwe are all here, now, friends, we won't delay any farther." >{He advanced and flung open the doors to the back par- ;^our, discovering, in the middle of the room, a common fextension dining-table, draped merely with so much of a striped turkey-red supper-cloth as would fall over the ««dge and partly conceal the legs. The top of the table |was pierced by a hole some ten or twelve inches square, and over this hole was sot a box, open on one side, and lined with black velvet ; a single gas jet burned at a half pght overhead. L" Now, if you will take seats, ladies and gentlemen ! " id Dr. Boynton. " Mrs. Merrifield, will you sit on my right, so as to be next my daughter ? And Mr. Phillips on my left, here ? And you, Mr. Ford, on Miss Smiley's "eft, next to Mr. Eccles ? Mr. Hatch, take your place be- ween those two ladies — " "I'm there, doctor, every time," said Mr. Hatch, ►romptly obeying. " I must protest at the outset, Dr. Boynton," began r. Eccles, " against this sort of — " " Beg pardon. You're right Eccles," said Hatch, " I on't do it any more. But when I get down at a table ike this I feel gay, and I can't help running over a little, B 18 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRT. But no spillini^'s the word now. Do we join hands, doctor, comtne a Uordinaire ? " " Yes, all join hands, please," answered the doctor. " Well, I want these ladies to promise not to squeeze my hands, either of them," said Hatch. The ladies laughed, and Mr. Eccles, relinquishing the hands oi the persons next him, made a movement to rise, in which he was met by an imploring downward wave of Dr. Boyn- ton's hand. " PJease, Mr. Eccles, remain. Mr. Hatch, I may trust your kindness ? Miss Merrill, will you sing — ah — some- thing ? " A small, cheerful lady, on the sunny side of thirty, with a pair of spectacles gleaming on her amiable nose, responded to this last appeal. " I think we had better all sing, doctor." " I have a theory in wishing you to sing alone," said the doctor. " Oh, very well ! " Miss Merrill acquiesced. " Have yon any preference ? " " No. Anything devotional." " Maiden's prayer, Miss Merrill," suggested Hatch. This overcast Mr. Eccles again, but Miss Merrill took the fun in good part, and laughed. " I don't believe you know anything about devotional music, Mr. Hatch," she said. "That's so. My repertoire is out already," owned Hatch Miss Merrill raised her spectacles thoughtfully to the ceiling, and after a moment began to sing Flee as a Birc to your Mountain, in a. sweet contralto. As the thrillino tones filled the room all other sounds were quelled ; the circle at the table becp.ne motionlessly silent, and tb long sighing breath of the listeners alone made itseli heard in the pauses of the singing. Before the word: died away, a draught of cold air struck across the room and through the door at the head of the table, which un closed mysteriously, as if blown open by the wind, £ THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 19 inds, doctor, doctor, to squeeze The ladies lands 01 the in which he f Dr. Boyn- I may trust — ah — some- le of thirty, imiable nose, re had better r alone," said " Have you |l Hatch. Merrill toot it devotional ►wned Hatch tfuUy to the 'lee as a Birt the thrillinc quelled ; tht ent, and tht 5 made itsel )re the word: 'OSS the room )le, which un the wind, i figure in white was seen in the passage without. It drifted nearer and nearer, and with a pale green scarf over her shoulders Egeria softly and waveringly entered Jfche room. Her face was white, and her eyes had the Still, sightless look of those who walk in their sleep. She fidvanced, and sank into the chair between her father i,nd Mrs. Merrifield, and at the same moment that groan- ing and straining sound was heard, as if in the fibres of the wood ; and then the sounds grew sharper and more distinct, and a continuous rapping seemed to cover the ivhole surface of the table, with a noise like that of heavy clots of snow driving against a window pane. As Egeria took the chair left vacant for her, it could be seen that another had also found a place in the circle. This was a very large, dark woman of some fifty years, who silently salufced some of the company, half with- drawing from their sight as she sat down next to Mrs. Merrifield, behind the box. Egeria remained staring blankly before her for a mo- Bient. Then she said in a weary voice, " They are here." " Who are, my daughter ? " demanded her father. In a long sigh, " Legion," she responded. " We may thank Mr. Hatch for the company we are in," Mr. Eccles broke out resentfully. " I have pro- tested "— " Patience — a little patience, Mr. Eccles ! " implored Dr. ]$oynton. Then, without changing his polite tone, " Look f gain, Egeria," he said. " Are they all evil ? " .f " Their name is legion," wearily answered the girl, as lefore. j " Yes, yes, Egeria. They always come at first. But is mere no hope of help against them ? Look again — look ^refully." ^ " The innumerable host " — " 1 knew it,— I knew it ! " exulted the doctor. "Disperses them," said the girl, and lapsed into a sibnc© rhich she did not break again. 26 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. At a sign from the large woman, which proved to be Mrs. Le Roy, Dr. Boynton said, " Will you sing again, Miss Merrill ? " Miss Merrill repeated the closing stanza of the hymn she had already sung. While she sang, flitting gleams of white began to re- lieve themselves against the black interior of the box. They seemed to gather shape and substance ; as the sing- ing ceased, the little hand of a child moved back and forth in the gloom. " A moan broke from one of the women. " Oh, I hope it's for me ! " she quavered. They began, one after another, to ask, " Is it for me ? " the hand continuing to wave softly to and fro. When it came the turn of this woman, the hand was violently agi- tated ; she burst into tears. " It's my Lily, my darling little Lily." The apparition beckoned to the speaker. " You can touch it," said the doctor. The woman bent over the table, and thurst her hand into the box ; the apparition melted away ; a single fra- grant tuberose was flung upon the table. " Oh, oh 1 sobbed the woman. " My Lily's favorite flower ! She always liked snow drops above everything, because the) came the first thing in the spring. Oh, to think she can come to me — to knoiu she is living yet, and can never die I I'm sure 1 felt her little hand an instant — so smootli and soft, so cold ! " " They always seem to be cold," philosophized Boynton " A more exquisite vitality coming in contact with our own would naturally give the sensation of cold. But yoi; must sit down, now, Mrs. Blodgett," added the doctor kindly. " Look ! there is another hand." " A large wrinkled hand, like that of an elderly woman crept tremulously through the opening of the box, sank and then creeping upward again laid its fingers out ove: the edge of the opening. No one recognised it, and i: m THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 21 iroved to be sing again, f the hymn began to re- of the box. as the sing- 1 back and " Oh, I hope it for me ? ' 0. When it iolently agi- , my darling st her hand | a single fra "Oh, ohl' lower ! She 3ecause they link she can can never -so smootl zed Boynton ict with oui Id. But you the doctor lerly woman le box, sank ^ers out ove: id it, and ii %ould have won no general acclaim if Mrs. Merrifield had not called attention to the lace which encircled the wrist ; Bhe caught a bit of it between her thumb and finger, and ^detained it a moment, while the other ladies bent over iand examined it. There was but one voice; it was real lace. ■1 One hand after another now appeared in the box, some ^of them finding a difliculty in making their way up through the aperture, which had been formed by jutting sacross in the figure of an X the black cloth which had lined the bottom of the box, and which now hung down jin tiiangular flaps. The slow and feeble effort of the |apparitions to free themselves from these dangling pieces |of cloth heightened their effectiveness. From time to |time a hand violently responded to the demand from one tof the circle, " Is it for me ? " and several persons were i^allowed to place their hands in the box and touch the fmaterializations. These persons testified that they felt a |distinct pressure from the spectral hands. " Would you like to try, Mr. Phillips ? " politely asked he doctor. " Thanks, yes," said Phillips, after a hesitation. He put is hand into the box : the apparitional hand, apparently that of a young girl, dealt him a flying touch, and van- ished. Phillips nervously withdrew his hand. "Did you feel it ?" inquired Dr. Boynton. " Yes," answered Phillips. " Oh, what was it like ? Wasn't it smooth and soft and cold?" demanded the mother of the first apparition. " Yes," said Phillips ; " it was a sensation like the touch [of a kid glove." " Oh, of course, of course !" Mr. Eccles burst out, in a lort of scornful groan. " A stuffed glove ! If we are to pproach the investigation in this spirit" — " I beg your pardon ? " said Phillips, inquiringly. " I'm sure," interposed Dr. Boynton, " that Mr. Phillips, horn I have had the honour of introducing to this circle, has intended nothing but a bona fide description of the sensation he experienced." " I don't understand," said Phillips. " You were not aware, then," pursued the doctor, " that there have been attempts toimpuijn the character of these and similar materializations, — in fact, to prove that these hands are merely stuffed gloves, mechanically operated ?" "Not at all! "cried Phillips. " I was certain of your good feeling, your delicacy," said the doctor. " We will go on, friends." But the apparitions had apparently ceased, while the raps, which had been keeping up a sort of desultory, tele- graphic tattoo throughout, when not actively in use as a means of conversation with the disembodied presences, suddenly seemed to cover the whole surface of the tal ' with their detonation. " The materializations are over," said Mrs. Le Roy, speaking for the first time. Her voice, small and thin, oddly contrasted with her physical bulk. " Oh, pshaw, Mrs. Le Roy ! " protested Hatch, " don't give it up, that way. Come ! I want Jim. Ladies, join me in loud cries for Jim." Several of the ladies beset Mrs. Le Roy, who at last yielded so far as to ask if Jim were present. A sharp affirmative rap responded, and after an interval, during which the spectators peered anxiously into the dark box, a sort of dull fumbling was heard, and another materiali- zation was evidently in. progress. " You can't see the hand of a gentleman of Jim's com- plexion against that black cloth," said Hatch, rising. " Lend me your handkerchiefs, ladies. James has a salt and sullen rheum offends him." Several ladies made haste to offer their handkerchiefs, and, leaning over, Hatch draped them about the bottom of the box. The flaps were again agitated, and a large black hand showed itself distinctly against the white ground formed by the handkerchiefs, It was hailed with THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 23 [a burst of ecstasy from all those who seemed to be fre- luenters ofthe.se stances, and it wagged an awkward salu- ftation to the company. "Good for you, good for you, James ! " .said Hatch, ap- Iprovingly. " Rings ? Wish to adorn your person, James ?" [he continued. Tlie hand gesticulated an imnginable as- [sent to this prgposal, and Hatch gravely said, " Your rings, ladies." A half dozen were passed to him, and he contrived, with some trouble, to slip them on the fingers of the hand, which continually moved itself, in spite of many caressing demands from the ladies (with whom Jim was apparently a favourite spectre) that he would hold {still, and Hatch's repeated admonition that he should moderate his transports. When the rings were all in [place, the hand was still dis.satisfied, as it seemed, and I beckoned towards Egeria. " Want Miss Boynton's ring ? " asked Hatch. The girl gave a start, involuntarily laying hold of the I ring, and Dr. Boynton said instantly, " He cannot have it. The ring was her mother's." This drew general attention jto Miss Boynton's ring : it was what is called a marchion- |ess ring, and was set with a long, black stone, sharply pointed at either end. " All right ; beg pardon, doctor," .said Hatch, respect- [fully ; but the hand, after a moment's hesitation, sank 'through the aperture, as if in dudgeon, and was heard knocking off the rings against the table underneath. This i seemed a climax for which the familiars of the house had I been waiting. The ladies who had lent their rings to Mr. [Hatch, and had joined their coaxing voices to his in en- j treating the black hand to be quiet, now rose with a [rustle of drapery, and joyously cackled satisfaction in [Jim's characteristic behaviour. " That is the last," Mrs. Le Roy announced, and with- Idrew. Some one turned on the light, and Hatch began to pick up the rings under the table : this was the occasion 24 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. I I 111 ^ of renewed delight in Jim on the part of the ladies to whom Hatch restored their property. " Would you like to look under the table ? " asked Dr. Boynton of Ford, politely lifting the cloth and throwing it back. " I don't care to look," said Ford, remaining seated, and keeping the same impassive face with which he had wit- nessed all the shows of the stance. Dr. Boynton directed a glance of invitation at Phillips, who stooped and peered curiously at the under side of the table, and then passed his hand over the carpet beneath the aperture. " No signs of a trap ? " suggested the doctor. •' No, quite solid," said Phillips. *' These things are evidently merely in their inception," remarked the doctor, candidly. " I wouldn't advise their implicit acceptation under all circtimotances, but here the conditions strike me as simple and really very fair." " I've been very greatly interested indeed," said Phillips, " and I shouldn't at all attempt to explain what I've seen." " We shall now try our own experiment," said the doc- tor, looking round at the windows, through the blinds and curtains of which the early twilight was stealing. "Mr. Hatch, will you put up the battening?" While Hatch made haste to darken the windows completely with some light wooden sheathings prepared for the pur- pose. Dr. Boynton included Ford also in his explanation. " What we are about to do requires the exclusion of all light. These intelligences, whatever they are, that visit us seem peculiarly sensitive to certain qualities of light ; they sometimes endure candles pretty well, but they dis- like gas even more than daylight, and we shall shut that off entirely. Yes, my dear," he said, turning lightly to- ward his daughter, who, apparently relieved from the spell under which she had sat throughout the s^nce, now approached him, and addressed him some entreaty in a low tone, to which the anxiety of her serious face gave its effect. Ford watched them narrowly while they spokf" THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 25 together ; she evidently beseeching, and her father urging with a soi*t of obdurate kindness, from which she turned at last in despair, and sat listlessly down again in her place. One might have interpreted the substance of their difference as light or weighty, but there could be no doubt of its result in the girl's reluctant obedience. She sat with her long hands in her lap and her eyes downcast, while the young man bent his glance upon her with a somewhat softened curiosity. Phillips drew up a chair beside her, and began to address her some evening-party conversation, to which, afcer her first terrified start at the sound of his voice, she listened with a look of dull mys- tification, and a vague and monosyllabic comment. He was in the midst of this difficult part when Dr. Boynton announced that the preparations were now perfect, and invited the company to seat themselves in a circle around his daughter, from whose side Phillips was necessarily driven. Mrs. Le Roy reentered, and after a survey of the forming circle took her place with the rest. Dr. Boynton instantly shut off the gas, and several of the circle, led by Miss Merrill, began to sing. It was music in a minor key, and as the sound of it fell the air was suddenly filled with noises of a heterogeneous variety. Voices whispered here and there, overhead and, as it appeared, underfoot ; a fan was caught up, and each person in the circle was swiftly and violently fanned ; a music-box placed on Phillip's knee, was wound up, and then set floating, as it seemed, through the air ; rings were snatched from some fingers and roughly thrust upon others, amidst the cries and nervous laughter of the women. Through all the mystical voices continued, and now they began to be recognised by diflferent persons in the circle. The mother of one briefly visited him, and ex- horted him to have faith in a life to come ; the little sis- ter of another revealed that she could never tell the beauty of the spirit-land ; a lady cried out, " Oh, John, is that you kissing me ?" to which a hollow whisper ans- Kd 26 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. wered, " Yes ; persevere, and all will be well." Suddenly a sharp smack was heard, and another lady, whose chub- biness had no doubt commended her as a medium for this sort of communication, exclaimed, with a hysterical laugh, " Oh, here's Jim, a^ain ! He's slapping me on the shoul- der ! " and in another instant this frolic ghost had passed round the circle, slapping shoulders and knees in the ab- solute darkness with amazing precision. Jim went as suddenly as he came, and then there was a lull in the demonstrations. They began with the voices, amidst which was heard the rhythmic clapping of hands, as Egeria beat her palms together, to prove that she had no material agency in the feats performed. Then, one of the circle called out, " Oh, delicious ! Somebody is press- ing a perfumed handkerchief to my face ! " " And mine ! " " And mine ! " came quicjkly from others. " Be careful," warned tlie small voice of Mrs. Le Roy, " not to break the circle now, or some one will get hurt." She had scarcely spoken, when there came a shriek of pain and terror, with the muffled noise of a struggle ; then a fainter cry, and a fall to the floor. All sprang to their feet in confusion. " Egeria ! Egeria ! " shouted Dr. Boynton. The girl made no answer. " Oh, light the gas, light the gas ! " he entreated ; and now the crowning wonder of the stance appeared. A hand of bluish flame shone in the air, and was seen to hover near one of the gas-burners, which it touched; as the gas flashed up and the hand vanished, a groan of admiration burst forth, which was hardly checked by the spectacle that the strong light revealed. Egeria lay stretched along the floor in a swoon, the masses of her yellow hair disordered and tossed about her pale face. Her arms were flung outward, and the hand on which she wore her ring showed a stain of blood, oozing from a cut in a finger next the ring ; the hand ilL THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 27 must have been caught in a savage chitch, and the sharp point of the setting crushed into the tender flesh. Ford was already on his knees beside the girl, over whose insensible face he bowed himself to lift her fallen I head. " I told you," said Mrs. Le Roy, " that some one would get hurt if any body broke the circle." ' " It has been a glorious time ! " cried Dr. Boynton with sparkling eyes, while he went about shaking hands with one and another. " It has surpassed my utmost hopes ! We stand upon the verge of a great era ! The whole history of supematuralism shows nothing like it ! Tho key to the mystery is found ! " The company thronged eagerly about him, some to ask what the key was, others to talk of the wonderful hand. Egeria was forgotten ; she might have been trodden un- der foot but for the active efforts of Hatch, who cleared a circle about her, and at last managed to withdraw the doc- tor from his auditors and secure his attention for the young girl. " Oh, a faint, a mere faint," he said, as he bent over her and touched her pulse. " The facts established are richly worth all they have cost. Ah ! " he added, " we must have air to revive her." " You won't get it in this crowd ! " said Hatch, looking savagely round. " We had better carry her to her room," said Mrs. Le Roy. " Yes, yes ; very good, very good ! " cried the doctor, absently trying to gather the languid shape into his arms. He presently desisted, and turned again to the group which Hatch had forced aside, and began to talk of the luminous hand and its points of difference from the hands shown in the box. Hatch glanced round after him in despair, and then, I with a look at Ford, said, " We must manage it somehow." He bent over the inanimate girl, and with consummate THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. reverence and delicacy drew her into his arms, and made some steps toward the door. " It won't do ; you're too little, Mr. Hatch," said Mrs. Le Roy, with brutal common sense. " You never could carry her up them stairs in the world. Give her to the other gentleman, and go and fetch Dr. Boynton, if you can ever get him away." Hatch hesitated a moment, and with another look at Ford surrendered his burden to him. Ford received it as reverently as the other had given it ; the beautiful face lay white upon his shoulder ; the long, bright, disheveled hair fell over his arm ; in his strong clasp he lifted her as lightly as if she had been indeed some palf^ phantom. Philips, standing aloof from the other group and intent upon this tableau, was able to describe it very effectively, a few evenings afterwards, to a lady who knew both him- self and Ford well enough to enjoy it. m ii THE tJNDISCOVERED COUNfRY. 29 i, and made I," said Mrs. lever could e her to the Q, if you can ;her look at 3ceived it as autiful face ,, disheveled lifted her as lantom. p and intent y effectively, w both him- CHAPTER II. Mr. Phillips's father had been in business on that ob- scure line which divides the wholesale merchant's social j acceptability from the lost condition of the retail dealer. When he died, however, his son emerged forever from the social twilight in which the father had been content to remain. He took account of his means, and found that he had enough to live handsomely upon, not only without anything like shop-keeping, but without business of any sort, and he courageously resolved to be a man of leisure. He had certain tastes which qualified him for this life ; he had read much, and he had travelled abroad. He joined a club convenient to the lodging which he kept in his paternal home, letting out the rest of the house to a thrifty woman whose interest it was that he should have nothing to complain of. Every morning, at nine precisely, he breakfasted at the club, beside one of the pleasantest win- dows ; the sun came in there in the afternoon, and except .in the winter months he dined at another table. His breakfast and his dinner were the chief events of a day [which he had the wisdom to keep as like every other day [as he could, unless for some very good reason. When he [had finished either meal, he turned over the newspapers land magazines, largely English, in the reading-room ; after [dinner he often dozed a few minutes in his chair. For [the rest, he paid visits and went about to the picture [stores and to the studios. Now and then he bought a [painting, which in his hands turned out a good invest - jment ; but his passion was bric-A,-brac, and he likedthe [excitement of the auction-room, where he picked up from time to time a rug, a queer vase, a colonial clock, a claw- footed table or a chest of drawers, and added them to his Jtores. 86 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. He kept up with the current literature, and distilled from it a polite essence, with which he knew how to per- fume his conversation in the measure agreeable to ladies willing to learn what it was distinguished to read. With many he was an authority in such matters, and with nearly all he was acceptable for a certain freshness of the sus- ceptibilities, which he studiously preserved, growing them under glass, as it were, when it was ])ast their natural seasons to flourish in the open air. Now and then one revolted against this artificial bloom, and declared that Mr. Phillips's emotions smelt of the watering-pot ; but commonly they were well liked by the sex with which, even if he had not preferred, he would have been forced mainly to associate. There is no society but that of wo- men for an idler in our country ; the other men are busy and tired, with little patience and little sympathy for men who are not busy and tired. Such men as Phillips consorted with were of the femin- ine temperament, like artists and musicians (he had a pretty taste in music) ; or else they were of the intensely masculine sort, like Ford, to whom he had attached him- self. He liked to have their queer intimacy noted, and to talk of it with the ladies of his circle, finding it as much of a mystery as he could. At these times he treated his friend as a bit of vertu, telling at what length his lovely listener would of how he had happened to pick Ford up. He bore much from him in the way of contemptuous sar- casm ; it illustrated the strange fascination which such a man as Ford had for such a man as Phillips. He lay in wait for his friend's characteristics, and when*he had sur- prised this trait or that in him he was fond of exhibiting his capture. The tie that bound Ford, on his part, to Phillips was not tangible ; it was hardly more than force of habit, or like an indifferent yielding to the advances made by the latter. Doubtless the absence of any other intimacy had much to do with this apparent intimacy. They had as little in THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 31 common in matters of fcaste as in temperament. Ford open- lly scorned bric-^-brac ; he rarely went into society ; for the [ladies in whose company Phillips liked to bask he cared as slightly as for stamped leather or Saracenio tiles. He was not of Bostonian origin, and had come to the city a [much younger man than we find him. He was known to ;a few persons of like tastes for his scientific studies, which he pursued somewhat fitfully, as his poverty, and that I dark industry known as writing for the press, by which he I eked out his poverty, permitted. He wrote a caustic style ; I and this, together with his brooding look and his taciturn land evasive habits, gave rise to conjecture that his past I life concealed a disappointment in love, " Or perhaps," sug- 1 gested a fair analyst, " in literature." I Several mornings after the stance at Mrs. Le Koy's, he j sat on one of the many benches which the time found va- cant in the Public Garden. It was yet far too early for the nurse-maids and their charges and suitors ; the marble Venus of the fountain was surprised without her shower on; Mr. Ball's equestrian Washington drew his sword in solitude unbroken by a policeman upon Dr. Rimmer's j Hamilton in Commonwealth Avenue ; the whole precinct rested in patrician insensibility to the plebeian hour of seven ; and Ford, if he had cared, would have been safe [from the polite amaze of that neighbourhood at finding one even of its remote acquaintance in those pleasure- giounds at that period of the day. H e sat in a place which was habitual with him ; for he lodged in one of the board- ing-houses on a street near by, and he made the Public Garden the resort of such leisure as each day afforded him, seeking always the same seat under the same Kilmarnock willow, and suffering a sense of invasion when he found it taken. Commonly his leisure fell much later in the day; and he had now the aspect of a sleep-broken man, rather than the early riser who takes the air on principle or choice. He sat and gazed absently over at the pond, where the swans lay still on the still water, with their I I'l ill Jill I i in 32 TflE UNDISCOVERED COUNtRY. white reflections under them as distant and substantial to the eye as their own bulk, A few stragglers, looking as jaded as himself for the most part, lounged on the seats along the walks, or hung listless on the parapet of the bridge. The spiteful English sparrows scattered their sharp, irritating notes through the air, and quarrelid about over the grass, or made love like the nagging lovers out of a lady's novel. When Ford withdrew his absent eyes from the swans and looked up, he was aware of a large and flabby presence, which towered, in the sense that a lofty mould of jelly may be said to tower, on the path directly before him. In this he gradually recognised an acquaintance of the spiritual sdance, and finally knew the mottled face of Mr. Eccles ; the morning was unseasonably close and warm ; his hat was off, and the breeze played with the hair that crept thinly over his crown ; his shirt and collar were clean, but affected the spectator differently. " Ar-r-h — ^good morning ! " he said, with a slow, hard smoothness, staring intently at Ford, with a set smile and shut teeth. " How d'ye do ! " answered Ford, without interest. " Nice morning," said Mr. Eccles, turning half about, and describing it with a wave of his limp-rimmed silk hat. " Very pleasant," assented Ford, making no motion to rise, and neither inviting nor forbidding further conversa- tion. " A habitual early riser ? " suggested Mr. Eccles. " No, I merely happen to be up." " I rise early myself," said Mr. Eccles. " It is my diges- tion. I sleep badly." He looked, as he spoke, like a man who had never slept well. " Your friend, I presume, is not troubled in his digestion ? " '* If you mean Mr. Phillips," replied Ford, with a cold ray of amusement, " I believe not. He makes it a matter of conscience to digest well." "It isn't that, sir," said Mr. Eccles. " I have experi- THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 33 mented in the matter a great deal. I have tried to digest well on principle, but that does not reach the root of the trouble. It may be alleviated by the proper influences ; but this sourness " — he struck his stomach softly — " seems to be the material response to some spiritual ferment which we are at present powerless to escape. I am satisfied that the large majority of our indigestion, sir, comes from the existing imperfections of mediumization." •' Some philosophers attribute it to pie," said Ford, neu- trally. " That is a very superficial way of looking at it," re- turned Mr. Eccles. " If we could once establish the true relations with the other life, pie wouldn't stand in our way." " I've no doubt that those who establish their relations in the old-fashioned way, by dying, are not troubled by pie," said Ford. " Oh, death is not necessary to a complete rapport," returned Mr. Eccles, somewhat impatiently. " I have long been satisfied of that. It may even prove an obstacle. What we want is to place ourselves in connection with I the regions of order and peace. Till we can do this, we must feel the effects of the acidity, as I may call it, which I characterises the crude and unsettled spiritual existence j reached by our present system of mediumization. We I had an illustration of that the other night, sir, in the vul- gar violence of the manifestations. I was ashamed that any person of refinement should have been invited to witness such a — a saturnalia. I should have withdrawn from the circle myself, at once, as soon as I perceived what the character of the communication was likely to ]be, if it had not been for my regard for Dr. Boynton and [his daughter. There is no doubt in my mind, sir, that if I we had then been in communication with ladies and gen- Itlemen of the other life, the circle could have been broken [with impunity. As it was, you saw the brutality with rhich the violation of a single condition was resented by 34 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. I < the savage crew we had suffered to be called about us. They dreaded to lose an opportunity for riot. The con- sequence was that Miss Boynton's hand was caught and crushed till the setting of her ring cut to the bone ; then she was flung to the ground. The. only redeeming fea- ture, the only hopeful aspect, of the affair was the appa- rition which terminated the disgraceful scene. Undoubt- edly the hand which turned on the gas was a celestial agency of the highest and purest type. ' Ford let his gaze, which had been dwelling upon Mr, Eccles' face with cold scrutiny, drop to the ground. " I hope," he said, " that Miss Boynton has quite recovered from her — accident." " It was a shock," returned Mr. Eccles, candidly, " and her physique is delicate. She is a mingling of the finest elements, but the proportions are so adjusted that the equilibrium is very easily disturbed. Her digestion, I should aay, was normally very good. She is evidently in relation, for the most part, with settled and orderly essen- ces." He again set his teeth, and shone upon Ford with a wide, joyless smile. He waited for a moment, and Ford making no sign of interest, he said " Good morn- ing," and towered tremulously away, carrying his hat in his hand, and letting his baldness take the breeze as he walked. ' When he was gone, Ford sat in a long reverie, from which he was roused by the clock of the Arlington Street Church striking eight, which was his breakfast hour. He rose, and strolled down the path and across the street to his lodging, which he entered with his latch-key. The other boarders, with their morning freshness of toilet upon them, were lounging or tripping down-stairs to breakfast, and met him with various degrees of interest, umbrage, and indifference in their salutation as he went up. The men mostly growled at him, with settled dis- like in their tones ; some of the women beheld him with pique, others with kindly curiosity ; one little lady, in » THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 35 pretty morniDg-robe, warbled at him, as she swept her skirts aside to make room for him at the turn of the stairs, " Doing the early bird, Mr. Ford ? " " No ; the early worm," he returned, with as little effu- sion as he had lavished upon Mr. Eccles. The lady gave him the slant of a laughing face, turned up at hira, as she tripped down the stairs. " Don't dis- agree with the bird!" she said, saucily. She had achieved celebrity among the other ladies by not being afraid of him. He seemed not to think any answer necessary, and I passed up two more flights to his room, which was small I and in the rear of the house. It was cheerlessly furnished ! with a tumbled bed and two or three chairs and a large : table, on which many papers and books, arranged in scru- pulously neat order, left a small vacant space at one cor- ner for writing, where some sheets of fresh manuscript lay. On the window seat were some chemical materials I and apparatus ; on the chimney shelf some faded photo- j graphs ; a tobacco pouch and pipes. Ford's business was with the manuscript leaves, which he took up and tore care- fully into small pieces. He flung these into the grate, and then, with a conscious air, lifted one of the pipes, and fingered it a moment before he turned to leave the room. It was as if he had not liked the witness of his wonted environment of this act of his. He went on, down to breakfast, and took his place at a table as yet but sparsely [tenanted. The lively lady of the stairs-landing was there ; [she sat long at meat, morning, noon, and night, not for [the material, but for the mental refreshment; for she found that more people could be made to give some ac- count of themselves there than anywhere else. She was ipping her coffee out of her spoon, and looking about her )etween sips, with a disengaged air, when Ford came in, id she fastened upon him, over a good stretch of table, once. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. <\\\ " Perhaps you went out so early in order to see a ghost, Mr. Ford?" " Very likely," answered Ford, making a listless deci- sion between the steak and the bacon. "And did you?" "What?" ' " See one." " They always charge people not to say." " Ah, not nowadays ! They want you to go and tell all about it. That's what I understand from Mr. Phillips." She sank back a little into herself, with her eyes resting quietly upon Ford's inattentive face, and her elbow brought gracefully to her side, and softly stirred her coffee. She was not of the society in which Mr. Phillips ordinarily moved, but was one of the interesting people on its borders whom his leisure allowed him to culti- vate. She thus became in some sort of his world, — enough at least to know what was going on in it; and to be referred to there as Mr. Phillips's bright little friend, by ladies who did not like her. She waited for Ford to speak in response to her last remark ; but he was not one of those men who rush like air into any empty place ; he had the gift of reticence, and the lady who had planned the vacuum beheld his self-control with admiration. It piqued her to fresh effort ; she believed that his speaking was only a question of time. " Mr. Phillips," she went on, beginning to sip her coffee again, " gave me quite a glow- ing description of the Pythoness, as he called her ; quite a Medea-like beauty, I should judge, — if it was her own hair." " Mr. Pli jlips has a very catholic taste in female loveli- ness," Bixid Ford. " Bat leally, now, Mr. Ford," said the lady, in a tone of alluring candour, " weren't you very much frightened ?" " I am constitutionally timid." The lady laughed. " Then you were ! Wliat did you make of it all, Mr. Ford ? What do you suppose made the THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 37 cut in her hand ? Don't you think she made it herself ? You know Mr. Phillips likes mystery, and he wouldn't otfer the least suggestion." " Then I don't think it would be wise in me to hazard a guess. I don't see Mr. Perham, this morning," said Ford, lifting his eyes for the first time, and lazily looking at the vacant places about the lady. She visibly honoured him for this demonstration upon her weak point. She was a good-natured creature, and she liked skilful manoeuvring, especially in men, where it had the piquancy of a surprise. "Oh, no !' nhe smiled. " Poor Mr. Perham is not equal to these early breakfasts. If you were often down yourself, Mr. Ford, you would have noticed his absence before this. He lets me come down on condition that I bring him his modest chop with my own hand, when I come up. You have no idea what a truly amiable invalid is till you know Mr. Per- ham well." Ford expressed no concern for the intimate character of Mr. Perham, and after some further toying with her spoon Mrs. Perham slipped back to her point of attack: " I don't know but I ought to make my excuses for trying to pro- voke you to talk of the matter." " I don't mind your trying. But I should have been vexed if you had succeeded." " Yes, that would have been a dead loss of material. I suppose you intend to write about it." A flush passed over Ford's face, which Mrs. Perham glee- fully noted. He replied, a little off his balance, that he had no intention of writing of it. " Oh, then, you ho^ve written !" joyed Mrs. Perham. Ford did not answer, but put his napkin into his ring, and rose from his chair, quitting the room with a faintly visible inclination towards the end of the table at which Mrs. Perham sat. "Mrs. Perham, I don't see how you can bear to speak to that man," said one of the ladies. " His manners are odious !" cried another, 38 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. : I i "Oh, he has manners then — of some sort?" inquired a third. " I hadn't observed." " My dears," said Mrs. Perham, " he's charming ! He is as natural as the noble savage, and^twice as handsome. I like those men who show their contempt of you. At least, they're not hypocrites. And Mr. Ford's insolence has a sort of cold thrill about it that's delicious. Few men can retreat with dignity. He was routed, just now, but he went oflf like see the conquering hero." " He skulked off," said one of the unpersuaded. " Skulked? Did he really skulk? " demanded Mrs. Per- ham. " I wish I could believe I had made him skulk. Mary, have you Mr. Perham's chop ready ? I'll take it up — I said I took it." Mrs. Perham laughed, and disappeared with her little tray, like a conjugal Chocolatiere, and the ladies con- tinued for a decent space to talk about Ford. Then they began to talk about her. I ir I hi THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 39 inquired a ig ! He is idsome. I At least, mce has a w men can w, but he jd. i Mrs. Per- lim skulk, take it up L her little ladies con- Then they CHAPTER III. Ford went back to his room, and turned over some new books which he had on his table for review. He could not make his choice among these volumes, or else he found them all unworthy ; for after an absent glance at the deep chair in which he usually sat to read, he looked up his hat and went out, taking his way toward the shabbily adventurous street where the Boy n tons had their lodg- ings. Dr. Boynton met him at the door of his apartment with a smile of cheerful cordiality ; but when Ford mentioned his encounter with Mr. Eccles, and expressed his hope that Miss Boynton was better, " Well, no," answered the doctor, " I cannot say that she is. She has had a shock, — a shock from which she may be days and even weeks in recovering." He rubbed his small, soft hands together, and beamed upon Ford's cold front almost rapturously. " I am very sorry to hear it," said the latter, with a glance of misgiving. " Yes, yes," admitted the other. " In some respects it is regrettable. But there are in this case, as in all others, countervailing advantages." He settled himself comforta- bly in the corner of the sofa as he proceeded. " Yes. The whole episode, on its scientific side, has been eminently satisfactory. The character of the manifestations at the stance, the violence with which neglect of the conditions Wius resented, the subsequent effects, primary and secon- dary, on the nervous orgi\ni«vj ^f the medium, and indeed of almost all persons present, .lave been singularly im- pressive, and indicative of novel and momentous develop- ments, I dcn't know, Mr. Ford, whether you have had an opportunity of conversing with any of our friends, 10 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. since the evening in question, but I have seen many of them, and they have all testified to an experience which, however difficult of formulation, was most distinct. It appears to have been something analogous to the electri- zation of persons in the vicinity of a point struck by lightning. In the case of Mrs. Le Roy, there has scarcely been a cessation of the effects. The raps in her room have been almost continuous, a,nd the furniture of the whole house has been affected. Miss Boynton has suffered the greatest distress from the continuance of the manifesta- tions, and her mind is oppressed by influences which she is apparently powerless to throw off. In a word, every- thing has worked most harmoniously to the best advanc- age, and the progress made has been all that we could wish. Mr. Eccles perhaps told you of a iTiarked increase of the discomfort he habitually suffers f roii'. indigestion ? " Ford hardly knew whether to laugh or rige at all this, but he merely said that Mr. Eccles had mentioned his dyspepsia, and remained in a bitter indecision, while Dr. Boynton went on. " Ah, yes ! yes, yes ! I think we may safely refer the aggravation of his complaint to the influ- ences, still active, of our memorable stance. But I am not sure that Mr. Eccles's peculiar theory is the correct one. I distrust his speculations in some degree. A fer- ment of the kind he speaks of in the world of spirits would be more apt to ultimate itself here in ihe mind than in the stomach." " Do you generally distrust speculations in regard to these matters ? " asked Ford. "I distrust all special speculation," said tbe d ctor. " We physicians know what specialism leads to in med^'- cine. I prefer to base my convictions solely upon f{u:ts. ' " Are you able to satisfy yourself as to the facts oi the stance here, the other night ? " " Not absolutely, — no. Not entirely. As yet we aie only able to approximate facts." " Then as yet you have only approximated convi'.;tions ?" THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. { many of ice which, stinct. It he electri- struck by IS scarcely room have the whole ifFered the manifesta" which she ord, everv- jst ad van c- t we could ed increase ligestion ? " at all this, itioned his , while Dr. nk we may D the influ- But I am the correct ee. A fer- 1 of spirits ihe mind reajfe'^d to tbe d rotor, to in med^*- ipon fjicus. " 'acts 01 the yet we aie mvi'^tions?" "As yet I am only inquiring," said the doctor, with sweet acquiescence. " Startling and significant as those manifestations were, I feel that I am still only an inquirer. But 1 feel also that I have gained certain points which will almost infallibly lead me to a final conclusion in the matter." " Then yo'i mean to say," pursued Ford, "that as a man of science you rose from Mrs. Le Roy's experiments in sleight of hand, the other night, with a degree of satisfac- tion. Have you the ^4ightest confidence in her powers ? " " Why, there," replied Boynton, " you touch upon a strange problem. I am always aware, in these matters, of an obscurity of motive and of opinion which will not allow me to make any explicit answer to such a question as yours." " You obfuscate yourself before sitting down, as you darken the room, that you may be in a perfectly receptive condition ? " " Something of that nature, yes. But I should distin- guish : I should say that the obfuscation, though volun- tary, was very largely unconscious." Ford laughed. " I am afraid that I was in no state to judge of the exhibition, then. You are a man of such candour yourself that I am sure you will not blame my frankness in telling you that I thought the whole appari- tional performance a piece of gross trickery." " Not at all, not at all ! " cried Boynton, with friendly aniiuation. " From one point your position is perfectly tenable, — perfectly. You will remembei- that I myself warned you of the possibility of deceit in tlie effects pro- duced, and said that I always took part in such a sdance with the full knowledge of this possibility. At the same time, I always try, for my own sake, and for the sake of the higher truth to be attained, to keep this knowledge in abeyance, — in the dark, as we were saying." " I see," said Ford, dryly. He waited blankly a moment, while Boynton watched him with cheery interest. " I I: ; i iiii ll i! it 42 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. suppose it was my misfortune to have been able to expose the whole performance at any moment. I didn't think it worth while." " It was not worth while," Boynton interposed. "Those people would not have accepted your expose, — I can't say that I should have accepted it myself ; and in your effort to fulfil a mission, a mere mechanical duty, to so- ciety, you might have placed obstacles in the way of the most extraordinary developments. Nothing is clearer to my mind," he proceeded impressively, " than that it is our business, after the first intimations of a desire for converse on the part of spirits, to afford them every possible facility, to suggest, to arrange, to prepare, agencies for their use. Suppose you nad detected Madam Le Roy in the employ- ent of stuffed gloves ; at the very moment when you 'j.«^dupon the artificial apparition, a ^e-nume spirit hand might have been about to manifest itself, in obedience to the example given. My dear sir," cried Dr. Boynton, leaning from his perch on the sofa toward the place where Ford sat, " I have gone to the very bottom of this matter, and I find that in almost all cases there is a degree of so- licitation on the part of mediums ; that where this is most daring the results are most valuable ; and what I wish now to establish as a central principle of spiritistic science is the principle of solicitationism. If the disembodied spirits do not voluntarily approach, invite them ; if they cannot manifest their presence, show them by example the ways and means of so doing. Depend upon it, the whole science must die out without some such direct and vigor- ous effort on our part." He paused, leaving Ford in a strange perplexity. The smoothness and finish with which Boynton had formu- lated the preposterous ideas just expressed rendered it impossible for Ford to approach without irony a confes- sion which he had meant to make in a different spirit. ♦' Then you would not blame me if I had lost patience at THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 43 ) to expose 't think it I "Those ,— I can't id in your iity, to so- 7&y of the clearer to at it is our >r converse le facility, their use. le employ- when you ipirit hand edience to Boynton, ace where lis matter, jree of so- lis is most at I wish tic science sembodied 1 ; if they ample the the whole md vigor- dty. The ad formu- endered it ' a confes- ent spirit. )atience at any point of the game, and actively interfered in the process of solicitation ? " "As a mere exterior inquirer," returned Boynton, blandly, " I could not have blamed you." " In the dark stance,' ^ said Ford, '• I did interfere. It was my belief that Mrs. Le Roy was affording the agen- cies, as you express it, in that, too. It makes me sick to think that I should have hurt Miss Boynton, and if I could have suspected her of what I suspected Mrs. Le Roy I should never " — " You are quite right," interrupted Dr. Boynton, cour- teously as before, but with a touch of pride. " My daughter was entirely irresponsiblp, for she was purely the passive instrument of my will ; she was carrying out my plan — a plan which the sequel proved triumphantly successful." " I have said what I wished to say," remarked Ford, rising. " I can well believe that she did only as she was bidden. There were other things that showed that. I leave you to settle with yourself the little questions of honesty and decency in thrusting a helpless girl on the performance of a cheat like that. You seem to be well grounded in your great principle, and I dare say you won't be troubled by my opinions. But my opinion of you. Dr. Boynton, is that you are either the most unconscion- able knave and quack I have ever seen, or " — Boynton sprang to his feet. " Not another word, sir ! I regret for the sake of human nature to find you a ruf- fian. But there my concern in you ceases. I defy you to do your worst ! Leave the house ! " " You defy me ! " said Ford, setting his teeth, and struggling with the rage into which he found himself hurried. " What do you defy me to ? Do you suppose I am going to mix myself up in any public way with your affairs ? You are perfectly safe to go on and gull im- beciles to the end of time, for all I care." " I am an honest man ! " letorted Dr. Boynton. " I have fin unsullied life behind me, spent in the practice of an 44 •jrn THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. honourable profession and in earnest research into ques- tions, into mysteries, on the solution of which the dearest hopes of the race repose. Who are you, to attaint me of unworthy motives, to cry pretender and impostor at me ? I have met, in the course of my investigations, rude in- credulity from the thoughtless crowds who witnessed them, and insolent disdain from those qualified to ques- tion, but too proud or too indolent to do so. Till now this indifference has only accused my judgment. It re- mained for you to asperse my motives." Dr. Boynton looked the resentment of an outranged man ; he gained, in spite of his flowing rhetoric, a dignity- which he did not have before. Ford stared at him in momen- tary helplessness. He was at the disadvantage that every man must be whose habits of life and whose tem- perament remove him from personal encounter, and who meets others in that sort of intellectual struggle in which his antagonist is for the time necessarily passive. " You arraign me as a cheat," resumed Boynton, " and you dare to judge my principle by the imperfect first steps of those who attempt to put it in practice, by the crudest preliminary processes. But even here you have no ground to stand upon. Even here the ultimate fact ut- terly defeats and annihilates your insolent assumptions." " I don't know what you mean," began Ford, " and " — " I will tell you what I mean," interrupted Boynton, *' and you shall judge your own case. If all our endea- vours at spirit intercourse were for the ends of selfish deception, as you claim, how do you account for the final response to them ? I am willing to believe that it was your hand that inflicted a hurt upon a woman, — oh, whether my daughter or Mrs. Le Roy, it was still a woman, — and that invoked any possible consequence from the violation of conditions that you were bound in honour to respect; but whose hand was it that evolved itself from the darkness, and then dispersed that darkness ? THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 45 Whose hand was that which crowned my wildest hopes with success ? " " If you mean," said Ford, and he felt that after nil it was shocking to own it, " the hand which turned on the gas, it was my hand." '* Your hand ? " gasped Dr. Boynton. " My hand — prepared by a trick so common and simple that it could have deceived no one but children, or men and women so eager for lies " — '* Oh, it was the truth, the sacred, vital, saving truth, they longed for ! And it was this, it was this desire, you deluded ! " Dr. Boynton hid his face in his handkerchief and sank back upon the sofa. " Go, now," he said. " I will not, I cannot, I must not, hear one word of excuse from you. Your action is indefensible." " Excuse ? " cried Ford. " Do you really think I want to excuse myself ? Do you think " — " Why should you not wish to excuse yourself ? " solemnly demanded Bo^^nton, uncovering his face, which was pale, but calm. " liTou have dire need of excuse, if sacrilege is a crime." " Sacrilege ? " Ford was aware of forcing his laugh. " Yes, sacrilege. You intruded upon religious aspira- tions to turn them into ridicule. You derided the hope of immortality itself, — the evidences through which thousands cling to the belief in God." " You are such a preposterous creature that I don't quite know how to take you," said Ford, " but I will ask you what you were doing yourself in making those sim- pletons think there were spirits present among them." "I was leading them on to the evolution of a great truth, to the comfort of an assured immortality. But you, — were you aiming at anything higher than the grati- fication of the wretched vanity that delights in finding all endeavour as slow and hopeless as its own ? Oh, I know your position, young man ! I know the attitude of those shallow sciences which trace man backward to the brute, II! 46 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRV. I ttii mn\ and forward to the clod. Which of them do you profess ? They all join in a cowardly contempt of phenomena which they will not examine ; and if one of their followers, more just, more candid, than the rest, like Crookes, of London, ventures into the field of investigation, and dares to own the truth, they unite like a pack of wolves to destroy him. His methods are non-scientific ! Bah ! Did you think you were doing a fine thing, that day, when you lay in wait to dash our hopes, — to prove to us by the success of your trick that we were as the beasts that perish ?" " I can't say that I intended to trouble myself to expose you to them," said Ford. " Then how much better were you," retorted Boynton, " than the worst you think of me ? You call me an im- postor. What were you but an impostor who wished to fool them to the top of their bent, for the sake of laugh- ing them over in secret, or among others like your- self ?" " Here ! " cried Ford. " I am sick of this foolery, and I warn you now that I will laugh you over with this whole city, if I know you to give another stance or public exhibition of any sort here. I believe there are no laws that can reach you, but justice shall. I am going to put an end to your researches, in Boston, at least." " You threaten me, do you ?" cried Dr. Boynton, fol- lowing him in his retreat from the room. " You propose, in your small way, to play the tyrant, to fetter my action, to forbid me the exercise of my faculties in the pursuit of truth ! And you think I shall regard your threats ? Pooh, I fling them in your face ! I value tnem no more than 1 care for the miserable trick by which you have burlesqued without retarding my inquiries for an instant." " Very well," retorted Ford, " we will see !" He crushed on his hat, and left the house, Boynton pursuing him to the door, with noisy defiance, and remaining on the outer threshold to look alter him, THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 47 CHAPTER IV. Dr. Boynton watched Ford out of sight, and then, hot and flushed, turned back into the house. He did not re- turn to the parlour, where the stormy scene had taken place between them, but went to his daughter's room. Egeria lay there in the twilight that befriended the shab- hiness of the chamber, upon a lounge wheeled away from the wall, and at his entrance she asked, without lifting her eyes to his face (for women need not look at those dear to them to know their moods), " What is it, father ?" " Nothing, nothing," panted her father, with a poor show of evasion. "Yes, there is something," sadly persisted the girl. *' Something has happened to worry you." " Yes, you are right !" cried Mr. Boynton, with vehe- mence. " I have just met the grossest outrage and con- tumely from a man whom — whom — But, Egeria," he broke off, " tell me how you knew I was troubled. Did you hear angry talking ?" " No, I didn't hear anything. Who was the man, father ?" " Did you notice anything in my manner ?" " No, 1 saw nothing unusual." " Then how did you know ? Try to think, Egeria," said her father eagerly. " Try to trace the process of your intuition. This may be a very important clue, leading to the most significant results. How could you suspect, having heard nothing, and in this darkened room, having seen nothing, strange in my manner, — how could you divine that something had occurred to trouble me ? How did you know it ?" " Oh, I suppose I knew it because I love you so, father. There was nothing strange in that. Oh, father, you pro- 4S THE UNDISCOVERED COUNrRY. mised me that you wouldn't speak of those things again, just yet. They wear my life out." He had drawn his chair, in his excitement, close to her couch, and sat lean- ing intently over her. She put her arm rrund his neck, and gently pulled his face down on her pillow for a mo- ment. " Poor father ! What was it vexed you ?" Boynton freed himself, instantly reverting with his first vehemence to the outrage he had suffered. " It was that young man, — that Ford, who was here the other night. He has gone, after heaping every insult upon me, — after telling me to my face that it was he who seized your hand in the dark stance, and produced by a trick the effect of the luminous spirit hand which turned on the gas. He dared to call me an impostor, to taunt me with forcing you to take part in my deceptions, — and this after the fullest and freest and frankest statement from me of the principle upon which I proceed in these experi- ments. And he ended by threatening me — yes, by threat- ening me with public exposure if I gave another stance in this city. The insolent scoundrel ! If I had been a younger man, I should have replied in the only fitting manner. As it was, I treated his threats with contempt. I answered him taunt for taunt, and I defied him to do his worst. I a quack, — the shameless swindler ! To take pai-t in the mystery whose conditions bound him to good faith, and to defeat all its results by his miserable trickery !" Boynton started up and crossed the room. Suddenly he broke out, " Egeria, I don't believe him ! I don't believe that it was he who hurt you ! I don't be- lieve that he ^^oduced that effect of a luminous hand ! I believe that in both cases supernatural agencies were at work ; they must have been ; and a man capable of wish- ing to defeat our experiments would be quite capable of claiming to have done so. He is a heartless liar, and so I will tell him in any public place. He forbid me to give another stance in Boston ! He force me to quit this city in defeat and ignominy ! I would perish first 1" THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 49 " Oh, I wish we could go away ! Oh, I wish we could go home ! " moaned the girl, when the doctor's furious tir- ade had ended. "Egeria!" " Yes, father," said the girl, desperately ; " I hate this wandering life ; I'm afraid of these strange people, with their talk and their tricks and their dupes, and your part with them." " Egeria ! This to your father ? Do you join that scoundrel in his insult to me ? Do you wish to add a crueller sting to the pain I have suffered, — ^you who know how unselfish my motives are ? Do you deny the power — the strange power — which you have yourself repeatedly exercised, and which you have not been able to analyze ?" " No, no, father," said the girl fondly, rising from where she lay, and going quickly to the chair into which her father had sunk, " I don't deny it, and I don't doubt you. How could I doubt you ? " She sat down upon his knee, and drew his head against her breast. " But let's go away ! Let us go back to the country, and think it all over again, and tiy to see more clearly what it is, and — and pray about it !" She had dropped to her knees upon the floor, and held his hands beseechingly between her own. " Why shouldn't we go home ? " " Home ! home ! " repeated her father. " We have no home, Egeria ? We might go back to that hole where I have stifled all my life • ^at we should starve there. My practice had dwindled to nothing, before we left ; you know that. Their miserable bigotry could not tolerate my opinions. No, Egeria, we must make the world our home hereafter. We must be content to associate our names with the establishment of — of a supreme principle, and find our consolation where all the benefactors of man- kind have found it — in the grave." TV ynton paused, as if he had too deeply wrought upon his own sensibilities ; but he resumed with fresh animation : " But why look upon the dark side of things, Egeria ? Surely, you are D • I 60 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. M better with me here than in the old house, where they would have taught you to distrust and despise me ? You cannot regret having decided in my favour between your grandfather and me ? If you do " — " Oh^ no, father ! Never ! You are all tht world to me ; I know how good you are, and I shall never doubt your truth, whatever happens. But go — let us go away from here — from this town, where we've ' ^ nothing but trouble, where I'm sure there's some gi - trouble coming to us yet." " Do you think so, Egeria ? " asked her father with in- terest. " What makes you think so ? What is the character, the purport of your prescience ?" " It's no prescience ! It's nothing. It's only fear. Everything goes from me." " That is very curious ! " mused Boynton. " Could it be something in the local electric conditions ? " " Oh, father, father ! " moaned the girl in despair. " Well, well, my child ! What is it, then ? " " You have quarrelled with this — this Mr. Ford ? " " Yes, Egeria ; I told you." " And he has threatened you, if you { d — threatened to do something — I don't know — against us ? " " I suppose he means to vilify me in the public prints." " Oh, then don't provoke him, father, — don't provoke him. Let us go away." " Why, Egeria, are you afraid for your father ? " "I'm afraid for myself," answered the girl, cowering nearer to her father. " He will come to see us, and I shall fail, and he will ruin you ! " " Egeria," said Dr. Bo3mton, " this is very interesting. I remember that on the day he came here — the day of the stance — you seemed to be similarly affected by his sphere, his presence. Can you analyze your feeling sufficiently, my child, to tell me why he should affect you in this way?" « No," said Egeria. ' THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 51 " Do you remember any one else who has affected you as he has ? " " No, no one else." " Very curious! " mused Dr. Boynton, with a pleased air of scientific inquiry. " Very curioua, indeed! It opens up a wholly new field of investigation. All these things seem to proceed by a sort of indirection. We may be further froni the result we were seeking than I supposed ; but we may be upon the point of determining the nature of the chief obstacle in our way, and therefore — therefore — Um I Very strange, very strange ! Egeria, I have felt myself, ever since we came to Boston, something singularly antag- onistic in the conditions." " Oh, then you'll go away, won't you, father, — you'll go away at once ? " pleaded the girl. " I am not sure," answered Dr. Boynton, in the same musing tone as before, " wliat our duty is in the premises. Suppose, Egeria," he continued with spirit, — *' suppose that this antagonistic iniiuence were confined to a single person in a population of two hundred and fifty thousand souls ; would it not be a striking proof of the vastness of the resistance already overcome by spiritistic science, and at the same time an — a — a — indication of responsibility in the matter which we ought not to shun ? " " I don't understand you, father," said Egeria, fear- fully. " I mean," replied her father, " that it may be our duty to sink all personal feeling in this matter, and bend every energy to the conviction, the conversion, of the person who thus antagonizes us." The girl stood aghast, and for a moment did not reply, but glanced at her father's heated face and shining eyes in a sort of terror. Some instinct, perhaps, flashed upon her a fear against which the habit of her whole life re- belled, and kept her from directly opposing him. She subdued the tremor that ran through her, and answered, " You know that I think whatever you do, father. How m ! 52 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. — how" — She apparently wished to temporize, to catch at this thought and that ; without uttering any, she stopped short. "How should 1 go about it ?" radiantly demanded her father. " In the openest, the simplest manner possible, by submitting your--^your gift to the test of opposing wills ; by inviting this man to a public contest, in which, laying prejudice aside, he and I should enter the lists against each other in a fair struggle for supremacy. I am not afraid of the issue. In this view, he is no longer an enemy. He is a blind, opposing force of nature, which is simply to be overcome ; he can no more have insulted or wronged me than the rock against which I strike in the dark, than the tempest that dashes its drops in my face. Poor, helpless, blameless obstacle ! I am ashamed, Egeria, that T used harsh language to him ; I am ashamed that I retorted from my vantage-ground the merely mechanical outrage which I suffered from him. My first L""^ness must be to — to — ^apologize ; to seek him in a spirit of pas- sive good feeling, and to invite him in a sentiment of the widest liberality to enter upon this rivalry ; to — to" — He bustled about the room, seeking his hat. " It is my duty, it is my right, it is my sacred privilege, to go to him without a moment's delay, and withdraw every offensive expression that I have used in the heat of — of — contro- versy ; to solicit, upon whatever terms of personal humili- ation he makes, his co-operation in this experiment ; to conjure him b}" our common hopes of immortality" — Boynton had found that his hat was not in the room ; he made a swift dash towards the door. Egeria flung her- self against it, and, holding it fast, stretched out both her hands towards him. "Wait!" Her father suddenly arrested himself. " Egeria ! " " What — what" — the girl panted tumultuously, — "what — if I can't submit to the test ?" Boynton looked at her in stupefaction, as if this were a V THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY, 53 IS were a point that had not occurred to him ; but she confronted him steadily. " You cannot rv^fuse," he began. " You have not considered this matter yet, father," said the girl. " You Iiave not taken time" — " Time, time ! " retorted her father, with wild impa- tience. " There is no time ! Eternity hems us in on all sides ! It presses and invades at every p^iit! The man may die ; a wretched casualty — a falling timber on the street, a frightened horse, an open cellar- way — may snatch him from me before I can use him for the purpose to which Providence has appointed his being. And you talk of time ! Come, my daughter, let me pass ! You are not you, nor I I, in such a crisis as this." The girl moved from the door, and cast her aims about his neck, as he quickly advanced. " Oh, father, father !" she cried, " what is it you mean to do ? " " Why, I have told you, child," he ansv/ered, putting up his hands to unclasp her arms. " Yes ; but if I failed ? " she implored, clinging the closer. " Remember that I have been sick, that I am still very weak, and wait, — wait a little." Boynton's mood changed instantly. " Ha ! " he breathed, and continued in his tone of scientific investigation : "Are yoa sensible, Egeria, of any distinct loss of psychic force through the diminution of your physical strengh ? " " How can I tell, father ? It is you who do it. I see, or seem to see, whatever you tell m3. I have always done that. It began so long ago, when I was so little, that I can't remember anything different. I want to please you ; I want to help you ; but I don't know if I can, father. It has always come from my thinking that what you wished was perfectly wise and righf ." " Yes, yes," said Boynton, " that is of course a condi- tion of the highest clairvoyant force, though I don't re- member to have heard it formulated before." " And don't you see, father," said the girl, looking ten- derly into his face, as if she would fain interpose her love 64 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. between him and what she must say, " that if I lose this perfect confidence I lose my power to do what you want me to do ? " Dr. Boynton was hurt through the shield of her affec- tion. " Have I done anything to forfeit your trust in my purposes, Egeria ? If 1 have, it is certainly time for me to despair." " Oh, no, no, father ! I trust you ; I love you this moment more dearly than ever I did. But are you sure — are you sure that it will all come out as you think ? Are you sure that we are taking the right way ? We have been trying no\. a long while, and I can't see that we've accomplished anything ^erhaps I'm not a medium, but only a dreamer, and drt in what you tell me. I'm afraid sometimes it isn't right. I was thinking about it just before you came in. What if there should be nothing in it at all ? " " How nothing in it ? " " What if you were deceiving yourself ? I can't tell how much my wanting to please you makes me — Oh, I'm afraid — I'm afraid it's all wrong." " Egeria," said Dr. Boynton, severely, " I have often explained to you my principle in regard to these matters. These are the first steps. It is necessary that w^ should take them. Other steps will advance from the world of spirits to meet them. I am convinced — I know — that in your last stance we had direct proof of this ; and I will yet compel, I will extort from the lying villain the con- fession that he had no agency in the things he claims to have done." Boynton had lost his compassionate sense of Ford as an irresponsible moral force, and as he walked up and dot\^n the floor he broke from time to time into expressions of vivid injuriousness. " Listen, Egeria : I respect your conscientious scruples, though they belong to a petty personal conscience that I hoped before this you had exchanged for the race-conscience that gives me perfect freedom to think and to act. I will set the mat- THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 55 ter before you, and you will see the logical sequence of my course. In the development of the phenomena which now agitate the world, mesmerism came first, and spirit- ism came second. I follow this providential order, and I begin with mesmerism. In this, the results are un- questioned in your case. You have been accustomed all your life to my controlling influence, my magnetic force, by which you have seen, heard, touched, tasted, whatever I willed. I knew this and you knew it. A thousand successful experiments attest its truth. Well, when we come to deal with disembodied life, we have to deal with it as I deal with you. We have to show this life how to approach us ; to suggest, to intimate, to demonstrate, the ways and means of communication with us. The only perfectly ascertained fact of spiritistic science is the rap. This, with the innumerable exposures and explanations which expose and explain all other phenomena, remains a mystery, insoluble, whatever we attribute it to. But as a method of commerce with the other life, it is nearly worthless, — slow, vague, uncertain. We Tnust advance beyond it or retire forever from the border of the invis- ible world. Now, then, you see the unbroken chain of my reasoning, and as an investigator I take my stand boldly upon the necessity of first doing ourselves what we wish the spirits to do. A feeble sense of right and wrong may call it deceit ; a vulgar nihilism may call it trickery ; but the results will justify us, — they have jus- tified us. What I wish to do now, Egeria, is to determine whether an opposing force of doubt, embodied in a power- ful intellectual organism, such as this man's undoubtedly is, can annul, can annihilate, the progress we have made. We cannot meet this force too soon ; for if it is able to do this, we may have to retrace all our steps and begin de novo." Egeria listened drearily to her father's harangue, and at the pause he now made she looked hopelessly at his THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. eager face, and did not reply, though he evidently ex- pected some answer from her. " After all, Egeria," he resumed impatiently, " you have no manner of responsibility, moral or otherwise, in the affair. You have simply to yield yourself, as heretofore, to my will, and leave me to take the consequences. I will meet them all. But I wish, my daughter, to satisfy your minutest scruple. If you were acting in that stance upon the theories which you have often heard me ad- vance ; if you were supplying to the invisible agencies we had called about us the model, the prototype, the example, needed for communication with us ; and if when that man seized your hand — granting that it was he who did so — ^you were yourself consciously doing any of the things supposed to be done by the spirits " — " I tried to bring myself to it; but I couldn't, father ; I couldn't ! " " Then — then," panted her father, in a tumult of rising excitement, " it was not you who did those things ? It was not you " — " No, no ! " desolately answered the girl. " From the moment the windows were darkened till my hand was seized, I did nothing but sit quietly in the centre of the circle and strike my palms together, as Mrs. Le Roy told me." " Thank God ! " shouted Dr. Boynton, in an indescrib- able exaltation. " I knew I could not be wrong ; I knew that you had no part in those things. This is a glorious moment ! This — this — is worth toiling and suffering and enduring any fate for ! " He caught his daughter in his arms and pressed her to his heart, kissing her fondly and caressing her hair. " Now, ncjo, everything is clear before me." '* I am so glad, father," Egeria began. " I was afraid you expected — that you would be disappointed — but indeed" — •* No, no I You were right ! Your psychical percep- tions were better than my logic. They taught you where THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 57 to forbear. Your conscience — I am humiliated beyond expression to have undervalued it as a factor of our in- vestigation — has brought us this splendid triumph. Ege- ria, we stand upon the threshold of the temple ; its pene- tralia lie open before us ; we have defeated death ! " The girl was perhaps too well used to the rhetorical ecstasies of her father to be either exalted or alanned by them ; and she now merely looked inquiringly at him. " Don't you see, my dear," he continued with unabated transport, in reply to her look, " that if you did not do these things they were the results of supernatural agen- cies ? It is this fact, ascertained now past all peradven- ture, that makes my heart leap." " Oh ! " murmured Egeria, despairingly. " But I must not lose a moment, now. I must see this young man at once, and challenge him to the ordeal that will release you from his noxious influence. I hope that I shall be able to treat him in the right spirit, and with the tenderness due an erring mind ; I shall do my best, and I have every reason to be magnanimous. But his pretence of having performed by trick what was unques- tionably the work of spirits is a thing that he must not urge too far. Or, yes, let him do so ! 1 shall seek nothing of him but his consent to this contest. It may be for the general good that his discomfiture should not only be complete, but publicly complete." " Don't go, father, — don't go ! " implored Egeria, for sole answer and comment upon all this. " Let him alone, and let us go away." o "Go away ?" cried her father. " Never ! I must overrule you in this, my child," he continued caressingly. " I res- . pect, I revere your power ; but it is out of regard for that power that I must combat your weaker mood. It de- mands of me, as it were, that I should ascertain all its conditions, and remove every obstacle to its exercise." " Oh, I don't know what you mean," replied the girl, and broke into hopeless tears. 58 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. " You will know, Egeria," returned her father. " Not only shall I be clear to you, but you will be clear to your- self, as never before. I have now a clue that leads to final results, — the personal conscience in you, the race- conscience in me. I will be with you again in a little while, Egeria. Don't be troubled. Trust everything to me." He made haste to get himself out of the room, and paus- ing in the hall on the ground-floor long enough to secure the hat of a visitor of Mrs. Le Roy (who was then in a trance for the recovery of lost property belonging to this gentle- man) he issued from the door to which he had lately fol- lowed Ford in their common rage. The owner of the hat had a larger head than Boynton, who, as he pushed his way along the street^ with his face eagerly working from the excitement of his mind, had an effect at once alarming and grotesque ; the squalid little children of the street shrank from his approach in terror, and followed his going with derision. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 69 CHAPTER V. EoERiA had made a step after her father, as if to call him back, when he left the room, but she had turned again, and lain down upon her lounge without a word. It would have been useless to call him back ; he could only have come to renew the scene that had passed be- tween them, and the result would still have been the same. From her despair there was but one refuge. She could appeal for help now only to the source of her terrors. The fact, hemming her inexorably in, pressed upon her excited brain with a strange, benumbing stress, in which there was yet all possible keenness of pain. Presently, it seemed as if she shrieked out with a cry that rang through the house. In reality she had uttered a little scream in response to a knock at the door. " 0, did I wake you ? " asked the uncouth servant kindly, putting her head in. " Yes — no — I was not asleep," answered Egeria, lifting her face from the pillow. " There's a gentleman in the parlour wants to see your father ; and I don't know — well, I told him the doctor was out, but you was at home. Shall I say you'll see him ? He says you'll do just as well." Egeria sprang from her lounge, and flinging open a shutter began to arrange her hair. " Yes ; please tell him I'll come at once." At that moment she had but one sense, — the consciousness that Ford had come, and that she should have the courage to speak to him, and beseech him not to consent to her father's proposal. She did not know how or why she should have this courage, but all fear had left her. She hastily smoothed her hair and ar- 60 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. ranged her dress, and ran down the stairs into the par- lour to encounter her enemy with such eagerness as a girl might show in hastening to greet her lover. It was Mr. Hatch who came forward to meet her, and who took her hand. " Didn't expect to see me here, Miss Egeria ? Well, I'm rather surprised myself. But I had to come back from Philadelphia, before I'd fairly got started on my grand rounds, and I thought I'd make one more attempt to say good-by to the doctor and you." " I understood — I thought " — began Egeria, her voice shaken with her disappointment, " I thought it was — it was " — She stopped and tears cams into her eyes. ' " I'm sorry it isn't, Miss Egeria," said Hatch kindly. " I would be willing to be anybody else in the world you wanted to see." " Oh, I didn't want to see them ! I was afraid to see them, and I hoped they had come," answered Egeria. Hatch smiled, but he looked at her compassionately, his head set scrutinizingly on one side, while she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes, and recovered herself in a sort of cold despair. " I want you to let me ask you what's the matter, Miss Egeria," he said, impulsively. ** You won't think I'm trying to pry into your trouble ? " " Oh, no ! " " Well, we all know what the doctor is : he's as good as gold, and as simple as a child, but he hasn't got the prac- tical virtues, — or vices, whichever you choose to call 'em. Now, you know, Miss Egeria, that I respect the doctor rather more than I should my own father, if I had one : has the doctor run short of money ? " " Oh, no, no ! Not that I know of ! It isn't that at all," Egeria hastened to say. " Well, that's one point gained," said Hatch. " I'm glad of it. You'll excuse my asking ? " " Yes, — oh, yes," she answered. " Well, then, is it something that I can help you about ? THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 61 I don't care to know what it is, but I do want to help you. If I can, without knowing, you needn't tell me." " You can't help me. But there's no reason why you shouldn't know. You can't help me against my father, can you ? " she asked, putting the case aa women do, at worse than the worst, so as to have the comfort of find- ing the truth short of the extreme. " How can any one help me against him ? " Then, as Hatch stood waiting with a somewhat hopeless and wholly puzzled face, " He doesn't mean any harm," she hurried on distractedly, " but if he does it, he will kill me. He Ims done it, and nothing can save me ! He's talking with him at this moment, and planning it all out ; and when they are ready I shall have to go out before the people, and try it, and fail." " Is it some test of your power ? " asked Hatch. " Yes," answered the girl. " That man who was here the other night — that Mr. Ford, — father has gone to him to get him to make some public appointment, and try whe- ther I can do the things he says I can't do. He has been here. Father wants him to come and test it himself, and that's what he's gone to him for ; and I know he will ; and I can't do anything when he's by." She said no more and Hatch began to walk up and down the room. Presently he stopped before her. " Well, Miss Egeria, there's only one way out of it. The way is to go and talk to that fellow, and get him not to keep his appointment with your father, if he's made one." " For me to go ? I thought of that ; and then" — " Oh, no," said Hatch with a smile. " Fll do the going and talking. You make yourself easy about it. But after that, don't you think we could get your father to give this thing up, and go home ? " " Oh, if we only could ! " cried the girl. " But it's no use. I have been talking to him, and begging him to ; but he'll never go back in the world. He hates my grand- father." " The old gentleman was rough on him ; but you can't 62 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. much wonder at it. I'm not saying anything against the doctor, mind; 1 don't go back on him; I don't forget what he did for me. But we can talk about all that after- wards. What we've got to do now is to go and beg off from that fellow. Good-by, Miss Egeria ; I mustn't lose time," She stopped him. "I can't let you. It would be throwing blame on my father. I'd rather let him kill me." " Oh, I'll make it all right about the doctor," said Hatch. " No one shall have a right to blame him for anything. Don't you be troubled. I'll fix it. Don't worry ! " Egeria faltered. "You'll only lose your time. It won't do any good." " But you don't tell me not to go ? " " It won't do any good," she said. " Well," said Hatch, " I'm going to see this man, and then I'm coming back to have a talk with the doctor. I want to go away to-morrow feeling first-rate, and I don't believe I shall feel just right unless you take the Eastern road back to Maine about the time I take the Boston and Albany for Omaha." Egeria followed him from the room, and responded with a hopeless look to the bright nod with which he turned to her at the outer door. As it closed she stood a moment in the dim entry, and then crept languidly up the stairs to her own room ; she cast herself upon the lounge again with her ace to the wall, and lay there in the apathy which is the refuge from overstress of feeling. The worst could not be worse than the worst ; and whatever hap- pened, itcould butbeanotherform, not another degreeof ill. Hatch hurried upon his errand, and climbed, heated and panting, to Ford's room, and to a loud " Come in ! " which followed his knock, he responded by entering and shutting the door behind him. Ford stood before the fireplace, striking against the brick a burning paper with which he had been lighting his pipe. In this act he looked round at Hatch over his IHE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 68 shoulder, at first vaguely, and then with recognition, but , not certainly with welcome. " Oh," he said. " Mr. Ford ? " asked Hatch. "Yes." " I met you at Mrs. Le Roy's. I don't know whether you remember me." " Yes, I do," said Ford. He drew two or three whifFs at his pipe. " Will you sit down ? You know Mr. Phillips." He indicated with a motion of his head a third person, whose face, black against the window, Hatch had not made out. At the mention of his name, Phillips came forward in his brisk way, and shook hands with Hatch. " Oh, yes," he said. " Mr. Hatch hasn't forgotten me. I feel myself memorable since that night. I was then an element of the supernatural. Have you seen our friends lately ? " " Yes," said Hatch. *' I've just come from them." " They're well, I hope ? Miss Boynton struck me as a most interesting person. Doesn't her life of excitements wear upon her ? Most young ladies find one world as much as they can stand ; mingling in the society of two, as she does, must be rather fatiguing." "Miss Boynton isn't very well, or, rather, she hasn't been." " Ah, I'm sorry to hear that," said Phillips. " I hope it's nothing serious." " Well, no," replied Hatch, uneasily. He turned to Ford, who from his superior stature had been smoking down upon Phillips and himself. " Mr. Ford," he added, " I came here from Dr. Boynton's to see you." " Yes ? " said Ford. Phillips made a polite movement in the direction of his hat. " I think I'll be going. Ford," he explained. " You can go," returned Ford, taking his pipe from his mouth, " but it isn't necessary. This gentleman can have nothing confidential to say to me. I'd rather you'd stay, — for once." u THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. " You're so flattering," said Phillips, " that I will stay, if Mr. Hatch doesn't object. My engagement's at one." " Oh, not at all," said Hatch, reluctantly. Ford had remained standing, with his back to the fire-place, and Hatch had not accepted his invitation, or his permission, to sit down. " As Mr. Phillips was at Mrs. Le Roy's that night, he might as well hear what I have to say. Mr. Ford," he added abruptly, " I want you to do me a great favour." " Why should I do you a great favour, Mr. Hatch ? " asked Ford, while he looked with half-closed eyes at the ceiling, and blew a cloud of smoke above Hatch's head. Hatch glanced sharply at him, to see whether he spoke in gratuitous insolence or ill-timed jest. He decided for the latter, apparently, for he returned jocosely, " Well, do yourself a great favour, then." " I don't feel the need of that," said Ford. " What isit?" " Has Dr. Boynton been here this morning ? " asked Hatch, with the anxiety he could not hide. " No," said Ford, taking out his pipe and looking at him. " Then that makes it a great deal easier. I want to ask you, when he comes — I know he is coming — to refuse the proposition he will make to you." " What proposition is Dr. Boynton coming to make me ? " demanded Ford, with his pipe between his fingers. Hatch faltered, and scanned Ford's unyielding face. " I shall have to tell you, of course. He is coming to pro pose a public test stance with you, ii: which Miss Boyn- ton's powers shall be put to proof. I ask you to refuse it.* Ford did not change countenance, but Phillips, from the easy-chair into v» hich he had cast himself, smiled, and studied now his friend's sad, colrl ^ isage, and now the eager, anxious face of Hatch " n wiiose behalf do you ask this ? " Ford inquired, ^ ung to smoke again. " By what right do you ask it "Miss Boynton has been sicK, and '.s still very much THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 05 unstrung. It would be a kindness, a mercy, to her, if you would refuse." " How do you know ? Do you ask it from her ? " Hatch hesitated in an interval of silence that prolonged itself painfully. " I don't come at her request," he said at last. Ford made no comment, but continued to smoke. His pipe died out : he sti-uck a match and kindled it again ; and then smoked as before. " Mr. Hatch," he asked finally, " are you a spiritualist ? " " I am a spiritualist, but I am not a fool," replied Hatch. " Then you don't care for the effect of this stance on the fortunes of your creed ? " •' No, I don't. 1 care for the effect of it on a young lady who dreads it, and who — and on a man that I owe a good deal to. Look here, Mr. Ford ; I don't decide on these things. I suppose spiritualism is a matter of faith, like other religions. These people are in earnest about it ; that is. Dr. Boynton is, and his daughter thinks and does whatever he tells her to. I'm sorry they're in the busi- ness, and I wish they were out of it. They're good peo- ple, and as innocent as babies, both of 'em. I don't like the way you take with me, but you can walk over me as much as you like, if you'll grant this favour. I'm in hopes to get them back to where they belong. I used to live in their town, and I know all about them. He's a visionary, but he's a good man, and their people are first- rate people. I would do anything I could for him. He's got a heart as tender as a child." " Very likely," said Ford, with irony. " But I fail to see why I should let this child-like philanthropist go about preying upon the public. I may have my own opinion of his innocence. What if I told you I had de- tected him in a trick the other night ? " " I shouldn't believe you," answered Hatch, promptly. Phillips half started out of his chair, but Ford smoked S T^HE UNDISCOVEIIED COUKT^RV. on unperturbed, and asked, as if the question were a pure abstraction, " Why ? " " Because I know that they couldn't chei\t." " But if I told you they did, should you consider them innocent ? " " I shouldn't doubt them in the least. And let me tell you Ford turned his back upon Hatch, and knocked the ashes of his pipe out against the corner of the chimney piece. " Mr. Hatch, you said, a moment ago, that you were a spiritualist, but not a fool. I shall not say whe- ther J will or will not refuse Dr. Boynton's proposition." Ford began to fill his pipe again, and paid not enough regard to Hatch's presence to seem to wish him away ; it was quite as if he were not there, so far as Ford was con- cerned. " Look here," Hatch began, " I am sorry that I offended you. I'm anxious to get you to say that you won't accept Dr. Boynton's challenge." " I perceive that you are anxious," assented Ford. " Oh, if I only — It's a very serious matter, — it is in- deed ! I would do anything to get you to say that. Come, now 1 The young lady is in delicate health ; she will do whatever her father tells her, and if she does this I believe it will kill her." Ford made no reply. "I can see the thing from your point of view. I suppose you feel that you have a public duty to perform, and all that sort of thing. Well, now, I'm going to make a strong move to get Dr. Boynton out of this business, uny way ; and I ask you just to hold on till I have a char.ce to try. Can't vou tell him that you'll think it over ? Can't you go so far as to put him off a day, or half a day ? " Ford took a book, and going to a chair at the window began to look into it. " Come," pleaded tbeother/'give me some sort of answer." Ford seemed not to have heard him. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. C7 " Well, sir," said Hatch, *' I've done with you !;' He stared tA, Ford in even more amaze than anger, and after waiting a moment, as if searching his mind for some fit- ting reproach, he turned and went out of the room. Phillips rose from his chair with a shrug. " My dear fellow," he said, " I hope you'll let me know when this ordeal takes place." " What ordeal ? " asked Ford, without looking up from his book. " Surely I needn't specify your public test stance with the Pythoness and her papa." " I am not going to meet Dr. Boynton in the way you mean," returned Ford, quietly. " No ? W^hy, this is magnanimity ! " " I've no doubt it's inconceivable to you." " Not at all ! I know you better ; you could be mag- nanimous to carry a point. But it must be inconceivable to our friend who has just left us. I fancied he was some- thing in lea thei'. Should you say shoes, or leather generally?" Ford scorned to notice the conjecture as to Hatch's business. " Are you fool enough to suppose that Dr. Boyn- ton ever intended to come to me on such an en*and ? ^' " Why, I fancied so." " You had better bridle your fancy, then. He has too much method in his madness for that. What he wanted was my refusal, beforehand, for professional use. He didn't get it. This fellow is part of the game. He is a brother dilettante, it seems. He dabbles in ghosts as you dabble in bric-d-brac. He believes as much in ghosts as you believe in your Bonifazios. They may be genuine ; in the mean time, you like to talk as if they were. Upon the whole, I believe I prefer blind superstition." " Why, so do I," said Phillips. "The trouble is to get your blind superstition. I confess that when I was at Mi's. Le Roy's, — what an uncommonly good factitious name for the profession ! — and saw the perfoimance of the phan- tom-like Egeria, — that's a good name, too I — I experienced G8 THE UNDISCOVEHED COUNTRY. a very agreeable sensation of fear. It was really some- thing to be proud of. But it wouldn't last. It haunted me for a night or two ; but I'm no more afraid in the dark now than I was before. And the worst of it is that my interest in the affair is gone with my terrors. Appari- tions have palled upon me. It is quite as the good doctor said : people bore themselves with stances very soon. The question at present is, Will you go with me to Mrs. Burton's to lunch ? " " No," said Ford. " You're in the wrong, Ford," argued Phillips. ** You would please Mrs, Burton by coming ; but it won't matter to her if you don't. That's the attitude of society to- wards the individual, and upon the whole one can't com- plain of it. You had better come. Mrs. Burton is really making a very pretty fist at a salon. In the first place, she keeps Burton out of the way : it's essential to a salon not to have the husband in it. You will meet the passing- Englishman there, whoever he is : you stand a chance of seeing the starring actor or actress, — operatic or dramatic'; authors we have always with us, and painters of course. Mrs. Burton is so far from pretty herself that she is not afraid to ask charming women who are also beautiful; you've no idea what decorative qualities beautiful women have. And then she introduces the purely American ele- ment, the visiting young lady. Really, she has an un- common feeling for pretty girls ; I never knew her to have an inharmonious young person staying with her yet , with her sense of values, the composition of her salon is delight- ful. Will you come ? She told me to bring you ; what ex- cuse shall I make ? " " Tell her that I'm not the sort of person to be brought." "Oh, there you do yourself wrong. I shall be more just to her ideal of you. Good-by." A knock was heard at the door, and Ford, without rising, gi-owled, " Come in." The door fiew open, and Boynton burst into the room THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 69 in the face of Phillips, who was just going out. He caught him by the hand. " Why, Mr. Phillips, is it possible ? This is doubly for tunate. Finding you and Mr. Ford together, — it 's more than I could have hoped ■ I consider it a privilege — a privilege, in the old religious sense — to be allowed to say in your presence what I wish to say to our good friend here. Mr. Ford, I wish Mr. Phillips to hear me ask your pardon — humbly ask your pardon — for the violent lan- guage I used towards you at my lodging an hour ago." Phillips grinned his triumph at Ford, but softened the derision to a smile, as he turned again to Boynton. " Will you sit down ? " said Ford, with grave kindness, and without any token of surprise. " Thanks, thanks ! But not till I have taken you by the hand." Boynton stretched forth his small hand, and took the mechanically granted hand of Ford. " I wish to say that I have been unexpectedly enabled to see the subject matter of our difference from your point of view, and that I now recognise not only the justice, but the neces- sity — the necessity by operation of an inflexible law — cf your attitude. In all these things," continued Boynton, placing himself luxuriously in Ford's deep chair, and didactically pressing the tips of his fingers together, " there U a law which I had quite lost sight of, — the law of progression through the antagonism of opposites." Phillips made an ironical murmur of assent and admi- ration ; Ford remained silent. " We are both, outside of our mere individual conscious ness, blind forces. I affirm, you deny. We grind upon each other in the encounter of life, and a spark of light is evoked by the attrition. It was just so this morning : light was evoked by which I shall always see the correct- ness of your position and the error of mine. Understand me : I do not at all agree with you in your opinion of the phenomena ; and I have come, so far as that is concerned, to cement our enmity, if I may so speak." He smiled upon Ford with caressing suavity. " But what I have 70 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. come for first is to withdraw all offensive expressions, and to say that I approve of your action on the afternoon of the stance." He beamed upon Ford, and then turned hi.s triumphantly amiable face upon Phillips. ** Ford," said the latter, " this is very handsome ! '* " Not at all, not at all ! " cried Boynton ; " simple duty, — self-interest even. For I have a request to make of Mr. Ford, — a favour to ask. I wish Mr. Ford not only to continue steadfast in his opposition to my theories, but to assist me in a public exhibition, by antagonizing to the utmost of his power their application. I have learned from my daughter that she had no agency in the pheno- mena which we witnessed the other night, and of whose verity I am now perfectly convinced ; and I wish Mr. Ford to join me in testing her supernatural gifts, either before a popular audience, or such persons, in considerable number, as we may select in common." " I must refuse, Dr. Boynton," said Ford, gently. Boynton's face fell. " I hope," he said, " you do not refuse because I have been remiss in not coming to you sooner." ' No," began Ford ; but Boynton interrupted him. " I started almost immediately upon your departure from my lodgings, to' follow you up and make this appli- cation. But I was delayed by an accident : a child was run over in the street almost before my eyes, and was car- ried into the next apothecary's. The force of habit is strong ; I remembered that 1 was a physician, and forgot the larger in the lesser duty, till other attendance could bo procured." Ford frowned. " It has nothing to do with your delay. What you propose is quite out of the way I could not consent to it on any conditions. I went to your stance the other day out of an idle whim. I don't care anything about the matter. I don't care whether there is any truth in your opinions, or error in mine. I refuse because I am thoroughly indifferent to the whole thing." THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 71 Boynton rose and buttoned his threadbare coat across his plump chest. " And you consider, sir," he said, ♦' that you have incurred no responsibility towards me, towards humanity, by going as far as you have, and then refusing to proceed ? " " That is my feeling," said Ford, respectfully. Boynton stood as if stupefied. " And — and — Excuse me, sir," he said, coming to himself, " if I remark upon the suddenness of your indifference. One hour ago, you threatened that if I pursued my inquiries in this city you would expose me, as I understood, in the public prints. You left me with that threat upon your lips." Phillips looked inquiringly at Ford, who said. " I left you in a passion that I am ashamed of. I have no idea of carrying out that threat." " looh ! sir," cried Boynton, with mounting scorn. " You refuse, not from indifference, but from the sense of your inability to cope with me in this test." " I am willing you should think that," assented Ford. " I call this gentleman to witness," said Boynton, " that you have slunk out of a contest which you have provoked, and that you are afraid to meet me upon terms even of your own choosing. An hour ago I parted with you in hate ; I now leave you in contempt. Good morning, Mr. Phillips." Boynton had already turned his back upon Ford ; he now strutted from the room without looking at him again. " Our friend is violent," observed Phillips, when the door had closed upon him. Ford made no reply, and Phillips continued : " I fancied his accident rather too opportune." " Very likely," said Ford. " And you won't go with me to Mrs. Burton's ? " "No." " I don't wonder at your indifference to society, with such really dramatic excitements in your own life. The matinee has been extraordinarily brilliant — for a matinee. They're apt to be tame," f2 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. CHAPTER VI. In spite of the defiant temper in which Boynton had quitted Ford's lodging, he reached his own in extreme de jection. He found Hatch with Egeria in the parlour. " Well, my friend," he said, wringing Hatch's hand, as he passed him on his way from the door to the sofa, " I have met with a great disappointment." Neither Hatch nor Egeria questioned him, but after rn exchange of anxi- ous glances waited silently. "It isn't that I care for the frustration of my hopes ; I do care for that ; but that is a small matter compared with the loss of my faith in hu- man nature, my reliance upon the willingness of man to make sacrifices tending to — to — solve, to unravel, our common riddle." He let his head fall upon his breast. " Oh, father," pleaded Egeria, tremulously, after the lit tie dramatic pause which Boynton had let follow upon his period, " did you go to see him ? " " Yes," said her father. " And did he — is he going to do it ? " Bojmton lifted his head. " No," he said, solemnly ; " he refuses." Egeria drew a long breath, and turned very Eale. She seemed about to fall from her chair, which she ad drawn next the corner of the sofa on which he had thrown himself. Hatch made a movement toward her, but she recovered herself, and sat strongly upright. " He refused ? " she gasped. " My dear friend," said her father, looking toward Hatch, while he took her cold hand and gently smoothed it, " I must explain that I have had two interviews with this man, and what their nature has been. He came here this morning to boast that it was he who caught Egeria's THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 73 hand in the stance that day. I drove him from the house. Afterwards, upon conversing with Egeria, I learnt that the manifestations were really genuine, and that at the moment he caught her hand she had no agency whatever in their production." Hatch looked at Egeria. " I could have bet my soul on that ! " " On leaniing this," pursued Boynton, " I at once deter- mined to challenge him to a new test, in which he should pit his influence over Egeria against mine, and the public should decide upon the result. He has just refused the challenge, peremptorily and finally, and I have branded him as a coward in the presence of Mr. Phillips.^' Boynton flung his daughter's hand away. Hatch and Egeria had the effect of refraining from looking at each other. At last the young fellow said, recovering some- thing of his wonted cheery audacity, " Well, of course it's a disappointment, doctor, but why not look at the bright side of it ? " " What bright side of it ? " asked the doctor, tragically. " Oh, it has its bright side," said Hatch, undauntedly. " It saves Miss Egeria from a good deal, and I'm glad of that, for one." The doctor mistook the word. " Ordeal ! There is no ordeal ; there could have been no question about the re- sult ! " " Not with you or me. But there's no use trying to deny it, — the public is against yc ij, and would he glad to have her fail." " Oh, yes, father ; you know how it has always been," cried Egeria. " The circumstances had never been propitious before ; but now they were all with us. We covid not have failed !" replied her father. " Well, you might," said Hatch. " What do you think did produce the manifestations that day, doctor ? " " Do you ask that question ? " demanded the doctor, in ■ 74 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. astonishment. " I answer, with an absolute certainty, such as I never reached before, the disembodied spirits of the dead ! " " I doubt it," said Hatch, quietly. " You doubt it ? " shouted Boynton, in amaze. " Dr. Boynton, you've told me twenty times that you wouldn't give a straw for manifestations that took place in the presence of a dozen persons. Now, what makes you pin your faith to what happened the other day ? " Boynton was silent ; all his reasons, so prompt and facile, seemed to have forsaken him. " There were too many people on hand that day for me. You know I'm as much interested in these things, doctor, as anybody, and I should be the last to give aid and comfort to the enemy ; but I couldn't go these materializations, and the dark sdance was rather too dark for me. I'll tell you what, doctor, I wish you'd go back home, and start new." Hatch planted himself directly in front of Boynton, who looked at him with astonishment and rising indignation. " By what right do you presume to advise me ? " he asked, with stately emphasis. " Well, by no right," said Hatch, easily ; " or else tlic right that I have from the good you've always done me." The doctor waived away the sense of this with a gesture which was still statelj^ but no longer severe. ' I only speak from my interest in you and Miss Egeria, here. I think it's wearing on her — wearing on you l3oth.'* " Has my daughter complained to you. ? " demanded Boynton, with more than his former hauteur, looking round at her. She returned his look with a glance of ten- der reproach, and Hatch answered : — " No more than you, doctor. I'm talking of what I see. And I think you've made a wrong start. I think you've made a mistake. You oughtn't to have ever mixed yourself up with professional mediums. You were on the right tack at home. Now, I say, you just go back there, and you form a disinterested circle — people that haven't THE undiscover:.d country. 75 got money in it — and you go on with your investigations there ; and when you've- got a sure thing of it, you come out with it. But don't you do it till then ! Heh ? " " There is reason in what you urge," replied Boynton ; " or rather there was reason. But I have advanced beyond the point you indicate. I have got a sure thing of it, as you say. I am as fully persuaded of the reality of those manifestations as I am of my own existence." " Which ones ?" asked Hatch. " Those in the dark stance, and " " I'm not! " returned Hatch ; " but I don't want you to take my opinion for proof against them. I'm going to lieadquarters for that, and all I ask is, Don't you inter- fere with my little game." He took the doctor by the shoulders in a friendly caress, as he spoke, and then he rang the bell. The servant-girl put in her unkempt head at the door, with a look of surprise, after first going to the outer door, to see if the ring had come from there ; evidently, she was not used to being rung for in-doors. "Ah, Mary — Jenny — Bridget — Susy — Polly — ^whatever it is," said Hatch ; " you just ask Mrs. Le Roy to step here half a second, that's a good girl, and I'll dance at your wedding." The girl vanished, grinning. As the big woman appeared at the door, " Walk right in, Mrs. Le Roy," he called out, and she advanced questioningly, while he closed the door behind her. " Now it's all among friends, you know, Mrs. Le Roy ; we won't keep you a minute. You know the doctor has some peculiar theories on this subject. We don't care about the materializations, — they're .all light; but you just tell us now how much you helped along in the dark stance, the other day." " Well," said Mrs. Le Roy, with a sly look at each of her listeners, and a smile that ended in a small, thin chuckle, " give the spirits a chance, — that was the doctor's idea, as I undei-stand it." " Exactly," said Hatch, "and you did give *em a chance ? " " Now, Mr. Hatch," said the huge sibyl, with a mixture 70 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. of cunning, and of that liking for Hatch which all women seemed to feel, " what are you up to ? " ** I give you my word, Mrs. Le Roy, I'm up to nothing you'd object to. I just want to know how mvxh a chance you gave *em." Mrs. Le Roy hesitated a mo;nent. " Well, pretty much all they wanted, I guess," she an- swered, at length. " Do you mean," said Boynton, " that you produced tho phenomena in the dark stance ? " " Well, I did give the spirits a fair chance, as you may say," admitted Mrs. Le Roy, with some awe and some apparent pity for Boynton. He dropped his face in his hands, and bowed his head against the back of the sofa. " Oh, woman, woman ! " he groaned. " The witness can now retire," said Hatch, and amid Mrs. Le Roy's protestations of good intention and regret, and her mystification as to what it all meant, he took her by her vast shoulders 'and pushed her out of the door. " You're all right, Mrs. Le Roy," he explained. " See you again in half a second. Now, doctor," he continued, turn- ing to the desperate figure on the sofa, " you see how it is. It's just as I said ; you're on the wrong tack. Yon can't make any headway in connection with professional mediums. You can't have your theories applied in the right spirit. What you want to do is to back out and start new." Boynton controlled himself, and, turning about, looked up at Hatch with a candour that was full of immediate courage and enterprise. " My friend, you are right ! I see my eiTor, now ; but experience alone could have shown it to me. I have attempted to work in the public way, when I should have strictly confined myself to the social w.ay. 1 see that my success depends upon the application of my thepries by followers purely disinterested. It may be that no progi*ess can be otherwise achieved, in psychological THE Ui^DISCOVERED COUNTRY. 77 science. The experiment niw.st bo absolutely free from mercenary alloy." " Yes," said Hatch ; " if you let them see that there is money in it, you can't get an honest count. Human na- ture is too much for you." " The true method," Boynton mused aloud, ** would be first to form some sort of society, in which there would thus be leisure and disposition for the higher research. There are elements in our own neighbourhood which could ]»e as favourably operated with as — . Yes, the result will l)e much slower than I thought; but in the end it will be sure, beyond all perad venture. Egeria ! " he cried, starting up, " we will go home !" " At once — now — to-day ? " asked the girl, her pale cheeks flushing. " This very hour. There is not a moment to be lost. Go and put our things together, child." Egeria turned towards the door ; then she came back towards Hatch. " We won't say good-by now, Miss Egeria. I shall be at the depot to see you off." " Yes, don't delay," said her father, impatiently. " We will be off* by the first train." She went out, and he me- chanically carried his hand to his pocket. "We can't go!" he cried, as if a sudden pang had caught him. " I haven't five dollars in the world ; we are in arrears for board. You see, my dean friend, there is no hope." " Oh, yes, there is,"^ said Hatch, with the ease of a man who had suspected something of this kind. " This gives me a chance to pay you my old bill, doctor." " My dear sir, I hope you wouldn't offer me an affront," said Boynton, staying the hand with which Hatch was opening his porte-monnaie. " That's what I said to you when you wouldn't let me settle with you for my sickness, — or words to that eflfect." " Mr. Hatch, you — move me!" " How much do you owe Mrs. Le Roy ? " asked Hatch« 78 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. " I haven't the least idea," replied Boynton. " It may be three weeks — it may be two. How long have we been here ? " " We must nsk Mrs. Le Roy that." Hatch ranj? again, and this time Mrs. Le Roy herself answered the bell. " The doctor's going away, Mrs. Le Roy, and he wants to pay up." " Well, I'm really sorry," said the woman, who had her bonnet on, as if about to go out, "to have you go. Dr. Boyn- ton — ^you and Miss Egeria both. But I guess you better. I thought, may be, Mr. Hatch was up to something of tlmt kind. I don't think you're just fit for the business. You put too much dependence on other folks, and you're sure to get exposed in the end. I don't suppose but what there's as much truth in it as there is in anything," she said, by way of reservation. Boynton answered nothing, and at a look from Hatch Mrs. Le Roy added, " Well, it's two weeks — thirty dollars in all." She took the money from Hatch and put it in the pocket of her dress. " Well, I'm going out now, and I shall be gone till evening ; so if I don't see you again, I'll say good-by at once. Dr. Boynton. Come and see me when you're up to Boston." She held out her hand to Boynton, who refused it witli a very short " Mo ! " and a quick shake of the head. " You are a charlatan," he added — " an impostor." Mrs. Le Roy stared at him, until his meaning dawned upon her. Then it amused her through her whole huge person, which shook with her enjoyment. " Why, land alive, man ! what are you ? " " Something quite beyond your comprehension," replied Boynton, with overwhelming state. " Well, well I " said Mrs. Le Roy, « j she went contented- ly out of the room, " you certainb are a new kind of fool. ' They heard the stairs creak under her tread as she went slowly and comfortably up ; then they heard her voice, as she made her adieux to Egeria, who was probably too dimly informed as to her father's point of honour to be able to THE UNDISOOVEREB COUNTRT. » take her stand upon it. " Poor child ! " they heard Mrs. Le Roy's voice saying, " 1 liope you'll stay at home, and get well rested. You look half sick, now. Good-by. I wish I could stay and see you off. But I can't. I've got a sce-aunts with a patient of mine at her house, and I sup- pose I must go." She added in a louder tone, for the lis- tenei-s below, " Take care of that poor old father of yours, and don't let him excite himself. / should be afiuid he'd go out of his head — if he was mine." Hatch looked at his watch. " You won't be able to get the two o'clock train," he said. " But I'll tell you what," he added : " you don't want to stay here to-night after what's passed between you and Mrs. Le Roy, and you can take the five o'clock train on the Fitch burg road as far as Ayer Junction, and there you can connect with a train on the new road to Portland. You'll have a little night travel." " Oh, that will make no difference," said the doctor. " I would rather travel all night than stay here. I feel that if I'm to begin anew I can't begin too soon. I shall be eternally grateful to you for your suggestion, my dear friend. I am sure now that it is in the right direction." " Good !" said Hatch. " I shall not leave till nine o'clock on the Albany road, and I shall have plenty of time to see you off. You'll have to bank with me to the extent of tickets home, and I'll have to come down any way and get them for you : I haven't the money about me for them now." Hatch seemed to think that the doctor might take of- fence at this, but he merely said, " Yes, yes ; quite right," and gave his hand dreamily, as the young man went out. " Tell Miss Egeria I will meet you at the depot. Be there with you half an hour before the train starts." " Thanks," said Boynton, and hardly waited for him to be gone before he lapsed into the easy corner of the sofa,> apparently forgetful of all that had vexed him ; his face was eager with the rush of his hopes and purposes as he abandoned himself to a sort of intense reverie. At times 30 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. he rose and walked the floor, but mostly he kept his placu on the sofa. He took no counsel with Egeria, and he gave her no help in the work of packing, about which she went swiftly in the rooms overhead. It was not a great work, and it was finished before his T-everie was ended. She looked in at the door when it was done, dressed for going out in a castume which was at once fantastic and shabby In her village life it had once been her best dress, and it looked as if there had subsequently been some sketchy at tempts to make it over into a street costume for city use ; her bonnet was of a former season; her soiled gloves were frayed at more than one of the fingers. " I shall be back in a minute, father," she said, buttoning one of the poor gloves. " I'm going out on an errand." He looked at her but did not seem to see her, and she passed on out. At the next corner she stepped, after a hesitation at the door, into a little shop where they sold newspapers and stationery and bought a few sheets of note-paper and en- velopes, halting some time in her choice, and finally decid ing on some paper of an outlandish colour and envelopes of a rhomboid shape : tliey were not in good taste, but they were recommended to Egeria as a kind that the shop wo- man " sold a great many of." Returning to her own room she wrote a letter, which, when finished, she tore up, hid- ing the fragments in her pocket ; she began a second, which she also destroyed ; at last she took the pieces of the first, and carefully putting them together copied them slowly in the small, painful hand of one neither acquainted with the bold angularities of the fashionable female scrawl, nor accustomed to write any hand. At the letter-box in front of the Fitchburg depot she faltered a moment ; then, for her father was pushing on into the building, she caught her letter from her pocket and posted it. THK UNDISLUVEUMD (JOUNTUY, 81 CHAP'J'ER vir. Ford received Eijeria's lettrr tlie next iiiorniii'r. He txainiued its outside, as people do that of letters coming to them iu strange handvvritin;,', and he l»estovveive curiosity upon the person who could choose that out- landish shape for a missive. Ag upon it. But he put it by, at last, and did a good morning's work; and at one o'clock he gathered up the copy he had made, and carried it out to the newspaper ottice. He found himself without appetite for the lunch at his boarding house, and he wandei-ed about, the early part of the afternoon, playing in his mind with a tendency which was drawing hiu) in the direction of the Boyntons. The origin of all our impulses is o' scure, and every motive iVom which we act is mixed. Even when it is simplest we like to feign that it is rlifibrent from what it really is, 82 THE UNDISCOVF.RED (OUXTIIY. and often wc do not know what it is. It would be idle, then, to attempt to give the reason Ford alleged to him- Helf for yielding to the attraction which he felt. Kis cheek flushed and his pulse quickened, as he mounted the steps to Mrs. Le Roy's door ; but this was the mood, half shame and half thrilled expectation, of many people who rang her bell. The door was s«t ajar by the servant, who revealed a three-quarters view of her face and a slice of her person in response to Ford's summons. He asked if Dr. Boynton or Miss Boynton were at home, and she answered that they were gone, adding, " I don't know as they're gone for good ;" and as he turned lingeringly away she said that Mrs. Le Roy was in. " I'll see her," rejoined Ford, and entered. Mrs. Le Roy made him wait her coming some minutes. He must hive been announced to her merely as a gentle- man, for after greeting him fii*st with " How do you do, sir ?" she added, "Ah, horv do you do ?" as if upon recog- nition, and offered him her hand. " I don't know that I ought to have troubled you," said Ford, " but I wished to ask when you expected Dr. Boyn- ton back." " Why, they ain't coming back !'* exclaimed Mrs. Le Roy. " They've gone home. Didn't she tell you so ?" "She? Who?" asked Ford. . "The girl." "Miss Boynton ?" " Laws, no ! The girl at the door." " Oh ! " replied Ford, in confusion. " No ; she said she wasn't certain." " Well, they have." Ford rose. After a moment's hesitation, he asked, " They live somewhere in Maine, I believe ?" "Yes, down there some'er's," assented Mrs. Le Roy, indifferently. " Do you know their address ?" THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 83 " Well, no, I don't," Mrs. Le Roy admitted. She asked, after a questioning glance at Ford, " Did you want to find out anything about them ?" " Yes," returned Ford. " Well," exclaimed Mrs. Le Roy, " I could give you a sue-aunts." "Au'hatr " A see-aunt? -consult the spirits." " Oh ! " said x^ord. " No, thanks. I haven't time now," he said, as he would put off an importunate barber who had offered him a shampoo. " I'm sorry to have troubled you." " Not at all," said Mrs. Le Roy, following him out into the hall. " We have test see-auntses the first Sunday evenin' of every month. Should be pleased to sec you anv time." "Thanks," said Ford. At the head of the street he met Phillips, walking toward the Public Garden. " Ah," said Phillips, " I was thinking of you." " Were you ?" growled Ford. "Yes. I wanted to ask if you'd heard anything mowe of the Pythoness and her papa. They're as curious an outcome of this bubble-and-squeak that we call our civili- zation as anything I know of. How did you find them ?" " I didn't find thom ; they've gone away," said Ford, not caring to deny the imputation that he had been to look them up. " Gone away ? How extraordinary ! Has the doctor found Boston such a barren field, after all ? Ford, you've deprived us of a phenomenon. You ought to have met him. It isn't often that a father comes and invites a young man to contest his control over his daughter. The contest is generally against the old gentleman's wishes. Where have they gone ?" " They've gone home," replied Ford. " And that is"— "I don't know. In Maine, somewhere." 84 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. " I might have known, in Maine, — the land of Noreni- bega, the mystical city. The witches settled Maine, when they were driven out of Salem. You will find all the witch names down there. Well, I'm sorry they're gone. I had counted upon seeing more of them. One doesn't often find such people in one's way. I've been speculat- ing about them since I saw you, and I find myself of two minds in regard to them — just as I was before I began. I suppose we must consider them [)arts of a fraud ; tlie question is whether they are conscious or unconscious parts of 't. If they're unconscious, it's pathetic; it' they're conscious, they're fascinating. 1 don't wonder you couldn't keep away — that you had to come and tiy for another interview with them. As for me, I wonder that I haven't fluttered about them continually ever since I first saw them. The girl is such a deliciously abnormal creature. It is girlhood at odds with itself If she Iuim been her father's ' subject' ever since childhood, of course none of the ordinary young girl interests have entered into her life. She hasn't known the delight of dress and of dancing; she hasn't had 'attentions;' upon my word' that's very suggestive ! It means that she's kept a chiM like simplicity, and that she could go on and help out her father's purposes, no matter how tricky they were, witli no more sense of guilt than a child who makes believe talk with imaginary visitors. Yes, the Pythoness could be innocent in the midst of fraud. Come, I call that a pretty conjecture !" " Why do you waste it on me ? " said Ford. " You could have made your fortune for the evening with that piece of quackery at the next place where you dine." " Oh, it isn't lost," said Phillips. " I wasn't wasting it ; I was merely trying it on. Will you go with me to see a picture I am hesitating about ? " " No ; you know I don't understand pictures." " Ah, that's the reason I want you to see it. You arc the light of the public square, the average ignorance, — an element of criticism not to be despised." THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 85 " If I thought I could be of use/' said Ford, " I'd come " " You can. But what is the matter? Why thi.s com- mon decency ? " "I owe you a debt of gratitude. You've given shape to the infernal sophistry that was floating through my mind and made it disgusting." o j , Phillips laugiied. "About the Pythoness? My dear fellow I m proud of that conjecture. It was worthy of Hawthorne. ^ 86 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. CHAPTER VIII. Egeria and her father had reached the station an hour before their train was to start ; and the time, after the first flush of their arrival, began to hang heavy on her father's hands. Now that he had set his face homeward, he was intolerant of delay. He looked at the waiting- room clock, and compared it with the clock above the tracks outside ; he blamed Hatch for not being there to meet them, and fretted lest he should not come at all. It would be extremely embarrassing to be left behind, he said ; he complained that it had the effect of placing him in a dependent position, and that Hatch had taken ad- vantage of his temporary destitution to inflict a humilia- tion upon him. He said he would go out and look about the station while waiting, and he impatiently permitted Egeria to go with him. An idle throng were hanging about the draw of Charlestown bridge, watching some men in a barge who were supplying air to a sub-marine diver at the bottom of the dock. The locality of the diver was indicated by the bubbles that rose and floated away on the swift tide. " Egeria," said her father, with instant speculation, " if it were possible to isolate a medium thus absolutely from all adverse influence, great results might be exi)ected. A speaking-tube of rubber, running from the mouth of the submerged medium " — He looked at the girl, who smiled faintly. " I shouldn't have the courage to go under the water, — I should be afraid of the fish." " At first, no doubt," replied her father. " But I was not thinking of you. I should like to see the experiment tried with Mi"s. LeRoy." THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. m Boynton was not jesting, and his daughter did not laugh at a proposal which would doubtless have amused the seeress nei'self . " How strange," said Egeria, as they turned away, " the westeni sky is ! " " Yes ; the wind has changed to the east. The Prob- abilities, this moiTiing, promised a storm." "And the frames of all these railroad dra vv -bridges against that strange sky " — " Yes, yes," said her father ; " they look like so many gibbets. It's a homicidal sight, — or suicidal." He gave a little shiver, and they walked back into the station, where the train they were to take was just making up. Boyn- ton looked about for Hatch, but was arrested in his im- patient scrutiny of the others by the presence of two men, whose peaceful faces no less than their quaint dress dis- tinguished them from the rest of the thickening crowd. They wore low-crowned, broad-brimmed hats of beaver ; one was habited in a straight-skirted coat of drab, and the other in a light garment of dark blue ; their feet, in broad, flat shoes, protruded from pantaloons of a con- scientiously unfashionable pattern. Their hair hung long in their necks, and when one lifted his hat to wipe his forehead he showed his hair cut in front like a young lady's bang. They seemed quite at their ease under the glance of the passers, and talked quietly on, even when Boynton, expressing a doubt as to whether they were Quakers, halted Egeria, and lingered near them. " That is so, Joseph," said one who seemed the younger, and was much the graver of the two. "It began with our people, and I think it will get its only true development among us. In the world outside, its professors are as bad as the hireling priesthood of the churches." " Yee," assented he called Joseph, with that t[uaint corruption through which the people of his sect fail in the scriptural injunction they strive to obey. " As soon as the money element touched it, it began to degenerate, and now it's a trade, like any other. They are tempted all the while to eke it out with imposture." 88 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. " \jiy, Kliliii, not ill all c.'iscs. At least, tlicy pulled her father away with her. The two men turned at the sound of their going, ar.il gazed after them. "That is a strange couple," said he called Joseph. "Did you notice them as they stood here ? " " Y'ee, I saw them. They seemed to be listening. But we were not saying anything to be ashamed of, and L thought they could not receive any harm from overhear- ing us. They looked like stage plaj'ers to me : before I was gathered in, I used often to see such folks." " Do you think they are man and wife i " " Nav, 1 don't know." Tirn T'NDrscovKnED coun'Trv. 89 i\V \()\Cr " Ife scLMiM'fl too oM to li(! lu'j' hiishaiul." "That often liapiicns in tlio world." '• VtM'," snian«l. And tlicrc is somethini,^ plcas- iii;;- in a pretty yonn^j^ conpU; : they seem liappy." " Nay, ' returned the other, " wliat docs it matter to us ])()'.v they mate to<;'(»thei- :• ' They stooi»aire checked. " I've ^ot your tnmks cheeke^" I have all the time there is." replied Hatch, cheerily, \ 00 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. " Then oblige me by remaining here for a moment with Egeria, — for one moment only." He left them and they looked blankly at each other. " Your father," Hatch began, " seems a little off the notion of going back." " Yes," assented Egeria, dispiritedly. " Well, of course ; that's the reaction. But he'll be all right again when the train's started. I know how that is. Miss Egeria," he added, looking down at the neat valise between his feet, " I didn't tell the doctor, but I hope you won't object to company part of your journey. I'm going on your train as far as Ayer Junction." He met her look of amaze with one of triumphant kindliness. " Yes. You know I can go West Hoosac Tunnel way." " I didn't know," said Egeria. " Well, I can. And I thought I might be of use to you in changing cars at the Junction, and so I'm going." " I don't know what to say to you," Egeria murmured, brokenly. " I thought you'd be glad," said Hatch. " Yes ; only you do too much," returned the girl. " Well, I'm a little in debt to your father, yet ; and I would do anything for — for your father. I hope you'll make him push straight through to-night. I don't think your father's quite well. Miss Egeria. He needs rest. He ought to be home." " Yes, he needs rest," said Egeria sadly. " I'm glad .we're going home. But you know how it is, there, be- tween him and grandfather," she added, reluctantly. " I don't know just where we'll go. We can't go to our old house ; there are people in it ; and father wouldn't go to grandfather's, after what's passed." " Oh, you'll find friends there," said Hatch, hopefully. " At any rate, you'll be among your kind of folks, and that's something. And that reminds me ; here's a little note I want you to give your giandfather for me. I always liked the old gentleman," he added, giving her a THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 91 letter. " He and I got along first-rate together. And I guess you can patch it up between him and your father." " Mr. Hatch, ' said Egeria, looking at the letter — " Or no, no matter." "What is it?" " Nothing ; merely something I was going to ask you, — to ask your advice. But it's done now, and so it would be of no use." Hatch laughed. " That's the time ladies usually apply for advice, — after a thing's done. And, as you say, it ain't of much use then, — at least, not for that occasion." Egeria smiled sadly, " I suppose I wanted you to think I had done right." " Well, I think that without your asking me." Egeria put the letter away in her handbag, and put that carefully behind her on the seat, before she asked, a little tremulously, " Mr. Hatch, what do you think made him change his mind about it after he talked witii you ? " An angry flush passed over Hatch's face, as he followed her meaning, and recalled the encounter of the morning. " I don't know. Such a man as that wouldn't need any reason. Perhaps he didn't change his mind. He mightn't choose to let me know what he intended to do." Boynton returned from the outside, and interrupted their talk. " 1 went to see if I could find those two men," he .said to Egeria. " Some remarks that they dropped had a pecu- liar interest for me. But they were gone. Did you notice them, Mr. Hatch ? They stood near us when we first caught sight of you." " Parties in broad-brims ? Yes, I saw them. But I didn't notice them particularly. What were they talking about?" " The life hereafter," said Boynton solemnly, " and the angelic life on earth." " Well, I don't know about the last, but the first is a good subject for a railroad depot. Makes you think IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) m // (l ^ 1 1.0 I.I 1.25 t ^ IIIM t 1^ IIIM 1.8 U IIIIII.6 V] <^ /i /: % .'^'''" '>i^ % 7 /^ Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. M580 (716) 872-4i03 d2 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY whether you've bought your insuiaiice ticket. Quakers, I suppose." " No, they were not Quakers," ansv\'ered the doctor, with dry ofience. '" Well, they looked it," said Hatch. " Perhaps they be- lontfed to .some of the new reliirious brotherhoods. I've seen fellows going round with skirts down to their heels; J believe they are pretty goctd fellows, too ; they take care of the sick and poor. But I don't see why they can't do it in sack coats." " It's possible that tlies(^ are of the brotherhood you mean," said the doctor. " I wish I could see them again." He looked vexed and disappointed. " Well, you may run across 'em," returned Hatch, easily. " Perhaps they'll be on our train." He added, at the doc- tor's inquiring look, " I'm going to Troy by the tunnel route ; I shall be with you as far as Ayer Junction." " Oh," returned the doctor, with a little surpri.se, but with as little interest. " Isn't it time to go on board ? " " Guess we might as well," said Hatch, gathering up Egeria's things and her fathers, beside his own compact luggage, and following Boynton, as he went out free- handed. Hatch had taken his berth in the sleeping-car, and he got them seats in thio luxurious vehicle as far as the Junction. Boynton stared anxiously about the car, and walked down the aisle. " Remain here with Mr. Hatch a moment, Egeria," he said. " I will be back pre- sently." Egeria made a little start of protest, but Hatch repressed lier with a touch. '' Let him go," he Avhispered, as the doctor pushed off. " He's after those Corsrcan Brothers. They can't do him any harm, and the^^'ll occupy his mind. Who did you think they were ? " " I couldn't tell," said Egeria. ' I was sure they were Quakers ; but they didn't use the plain language. I think father thought they were talking about the spirits," she added, dejectedly. THE UNDlSCOVERlvi:) COUNTRY f)3 " Well, I'm sorry for that,'" replied Hatch. " I think he's got enough of the spirits for one while. But probably they weren't, if they're any of those new kind of brotheiis. If they are, I hope he'll find 'em. They can give him some talk on the other side." The doctor came back, and sat down with an air of satisfaction. " I've found them, Egeria," he said. " But tlie seats all about them w^ere occupied, so that I couldn't flfet a place near them. I ov erheard them say that they were going to Ayer, where friends are to meet them." " Well, that's lucky," Hatch interposed. " You may get a glimpse of them there. You'll have to wait twenty minutes for connections. It's surprising how much you can do in twenty minutes when you're on the road. Wliy, twenty minutes on the road are as long as the good old tw )nty minutes ^ fellow used to have Avhun he was a boy. But they won't go any further in the way of time, gen- erally, then twenty dollars will in the way of money, now- adays ; we seem to have got an irredeemable paper cur- rency in both things, since I grew up. I wisli we could get back to a gold basis. I should like to see half a day or half a dollar of the old size. Why, doctor, you must remember when they were both as big as the full moon I" The weather had been growing colder since morning, and they had run out under clearer skies than those of the sea-board, the sun sot at last in a series of cloudy bars, through which his red face looked as through the bars of a visor, before it dipped out of sight, and left the west pale and ashen. The lengthening twilight of the season pre- • vailed over the landscape, sodden from long snow, and showing as yet no consciousness of the spring. It was sad and bare, and the girl shrank from its cold melancholy after a shivering glance. Presently her father rose and went into the next car. " Going to make sure of his Brothers," .said the young man. He looked at his watch. " We're a little late ; but I shall have time to see vou on board the Portland train 04 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTKY. when we get to the Junction. We ought to have had the twenty minutes there together ; but we shan't ; my train leaves before yours does. I wish I was going on the whole way with you ! " " I wish you were," responded Egeria. " But you mustn't lose any time when we get to the Junction ; you might miss your own train." " I couldn't afford to do that. But there'll be time. Now, I'll tell you what, Miss Egeria : I want you to write to me when you get home. You know I shall want to know you've got there." " Yes, I will," answered Egeria. " There ! " said Hatch, tearing a leaf from his pocket- book, on which he had written, " that'll fetch me. I shall be a fortnight in Omaha before I push on to California. When I get back, in June, I'm coming to see you ! " " You may be sure we shall be glad to have you," an- swered Egeria, putting the address in her bag. " I'm so eager to get home, it seems as if I could fly. I'd rather be in the gi-ave-yard there than lead the life we have the last three months, I hope I shall never come away again!" she added, while the tears started to her eyes. " Well, I hope you won't if you don't want to," said Hatch. " But I guess we won't talk about grave-yards in that connection. I'm coming back to find you strong and well, and your father in the good old track again." " Yes," murmured the girl. The doctor came in and resumed his seat. ** Corsican Brothers ail right ? " asked Hatch. " They are still there," replied the doctor, gravely ac- cepting the designation. " Well, you'll have to cut it shorter than I thought for, at Ayer," said Hatch. " We're a little behind time. But I guess you can transact all the business 3'^ou have with them in fifteen minutes." " In fifteen minutes ? " Boynton looked doubtful and unhappy. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 05 " Why," said Hatch, with a laugh, " I'll see that you get the whole time. I'll find your train with Miss Egeria, and put her into it. You ought to have some supper, though. I'll ask the Brothers to hold on till you've had a cup of tea." " I shall want nothing to eat," replied the doctor, ex- citedly. " If you will take charge of Egeria, I shall be obliged to you. I must speak to them." " All right," said Hatch. " Don't be anxious," he whis- pered to Egeria, as they emerged into the crowd and clamour at the Junction. Locomotives were fuming and fretting under cover of the station : without, their bells were bleating everywhere; people ran to and fro, and were pushed about by men with long trucks; the baggage men hurled the trunks from one train to another, and called out the check numbers in metallic nasals. Hatch made his way with Egeria to the train standing across the Fitchburg track, and piled up her things in a seat. " Remember the train and car," he said, making her look round, when they came out again. " Now come get some- thing to eat." He hurried her into the eating-room, and ordering supper he left her and went to find the doctor. It was some minutes before he returned with him, crest- fallen and disappointed. " Did you see them ? " asked Egeria, interpreting his gloom aright. " No," said her father, " I have missed them." " Good-bye, doctor, good-bye, Miss Egeria," said Hatch, who had been paying for the supper. " That's my train," he added, at the sound of a bell. " Good luck to you ! " Egeria clung to his hand. " But your supper ! " " That's the doctor's supper. I shall snatch a bite at Fitchburg." " Oh ! " moaned Egeria. But he was gone, and she turned to urge her father to eat " Oh, I want nothing, — I want nothing," he said, impa- tiently ! but the girl pressed him, and after she had made 96 THE UNDISCOVERED COLTNTUV. him drink a cup of tea, slio followed him out of the eat- i.u;r-i'ooi;i. At the door, he gave a joyful start. Theiv, not ten paces away, were the men whom he had seen at the depot in Boston, and whom he had been so anxiously seeking. A third, dressed like them, and of a like placi dity of countenance, was talking with them. Nothing' now could prevent Boyuton from accosting them. Jit.' launched himself towards theui with an excitemLiit strangely contrasting with then* own calm. " Gentlemen," he said, " I must beg your pardon fur addressing you. But I saw you in the depot at Boston" — " Yee," interi'Upted he called Elihu, tian({uilly, "we saw you there." " And — and — I chanced to overhear something in your conversation " — "Yee," said the other, as before, "we saw you listening.' " Well, well ! I confess it, — T confess it I" cried Boynton, even more impatient than disconcerted. "I felt con strained to listen : your words seemed to me a message, a prophecy, a revelation. May I ask, gentlemen, if you were talking about spiritualism ? " " Yee, we were." " Father, — father, we shall lose our train ! " pleaded Egeria. The three strange men, from studying Boynton intently, turned and looked kindly at her, while he continued, " And were you — you were — Gentlemen, this is a subject tliat interests me greatly, — vitally, I may say. Pardon me if I seem too bold. You were saying that this science, this dispensation, — this — this — call it what you will, — originated with some rociety of which you are members ? ' " Yee." The bell was ringing for their train to start ; Egeria essayed another meek appeal of " Father, our train is go- ing! " and was hushed with a harsh " Silence !" froui Boynton, who eagerly pursued, " And this society — this — Gentlemen, what are you ? " TiiE ItNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 97 " We are of the people called Shakers," replied Joseph. " Exactly ! Exactly ! I see it, — I understand it all ! I understand now how you can make the only just claim to the development of these phenomena. In your com- munity alone is the unselfish, the self -devoted, basis to be found, without which we can rear no superstructure to the skies. I have wasted my life ! " he cried, — " wasted my life ! Does your community live near here ? " " Yee," answered ihe eldest Shaker, cautiously, " some miles back. This brother has driven over from home." " I wish to be one of you ! " said the doctor. " Nay," answered the Shaker, " that needs reflection." A train began to cross the front of the station. Egeria's long-suffering broke in tears. At sight of her distress, the Shaker added, " Friend, there goes your train." " Well, well ! " exclaimed Boynton, distractedly, " you shall hear from me ! " He turned with Egeria, and ran towards the cars, the Shakers following, and making sig- nals to the engineer. The train moved slowly, and Egeria and her father scrambled q,board. She led the way to the rear car, in which her things were left ; but on going to the seat mid-way of it which Hatch had chosen for her, she conld not find them. She sank down, stupefied. Her father noticed neither her loss nor her distress. She waited hopelessly for the conductor's coming, and when he ap- peared she asked him timidly if he had seen her things. He said he would ask the brakeman about them, and added in the tone of formal demand, '* Tickets ! " The doctor surrendered them without looking at the conductor. " These tickets are for Portland," said the conductor. "You're on the wrong train, — this is the down train." " Oh, put us off, then, please," implored Egeria, " and we'll walk back." " Up train left before this did," said the man, " and you couldn't get in it any way." d8 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. " Oh, what shall we do ! " lamented the girl. " How shall we ever get home ? " " I can take you on to Egerton ; train doesn't stop till we get there. You can go up on the morning express." " But we can't pay ! " gasped Egeria. " Our money was all in one of my bags ! ' The conductor looked as if tliis might or might not be true. He glanced at Egeria's shabby dress, and h\s fiice hardened as he said, " 1 can take you to Egerton," and passed on. Boynton had shown little concern in the matter, as if it were no affair of his. Egeria did not appeal to him for counsel or comfort, but sank back into her seat, and wept silently. In the twilight her tears could not be seen; when it grew darker, and the lamps were turned up, she averted her face, and stared out of the black window with streaming eyes. When the train stopped, and the brakeman called " Egerton," she led her father from the car, and began to walk with him from the station up into the village. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 99 CHAPTER IX. Egerton is a village that presents a winning aspect to the summer visitor when he goes thither in June, and finds it at peace with all the world, in the shadow of immemorial, uncanker- wormed elms. Its chief street w; nders quaintly, with a pleasant rise and fall, and on either hand are the large square mansions of a former clay, and the trim, well-kept Freneh-roof villas of ours. Hammocks, with girls reading novels in them, are swung between door-yard trees ; swift buggies go by on the wide, dustless street ; the children of summer visitors, a. little too well dressed, play in the cool paths ; all day long there is lounging and light literature and smoking and flirtation on the piazzas of the big summer hotel. But the place is far from being a mere summer resort ; it is a village, with its own life, expressed in comfortable homes, in a post-oflice, an apothecary's, a local bank, and various stores, all elm-embowered. A lovely country lies about it, dipping to a fertile valley on one side, and stretching on the other level and far, with an outlook to yet farther hills. On the chilly April eve when Egeria and her father walked aimlessly away from the station up into the vil- lage, it did not wear the welcome it gives the summer visitor. Here and there a lamp pierced the gathering night, and about the stores and post-oflftce there was a languid stir ; but the houses darkled away into the gloom of the country. A wind was rising ; it took the elms over the street, and swung their long, pendulous boughs about under the sky, dully luminous under the coming storm. The doctor had seemed carelessly indifferent about all 100 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. that had happened ; indeed, scarcely cognizant of it. lie looked vaguely round as they passed through the space in front of the hotel. " Where arc you going, Egeria ? " he asked. " I don't know. We have no money." " No money ? " " You gave me the money, and I put it into my 'bag that was carried off on the train to Portland." " Ah, true, true," responded the father, as if he granted the trivial point for argument's sake. He added, with a sort of philosophical interest in the fact, " Well, we are beggars now, — houseless beggars, who don't know how to beg ! Yet I have no doubt that there are doors enough on this street that would fly open at our touch, if it were known that we were without shelter and in need. Where shall we apply, my dear ? " " Oh, I don't know,— I don't know." "All the houses seem dark," mused Boynton aloud. ** If we rang, and made them the trouble of lighting hall and parlour lamps in the belief we were visitors, it would have a bad effect. We will stop at the first house where we see a light at the front windows." But when they came to such a house it seemed too brightly lighted, and they walked wearily by. At last, they paused before a door where the illumination was neither too brilliant nor too faint ; and while they stood questioning themselves as to the form of their petition, the lamp at the window was suddenly blown out. They did not speak, but turned and kept on their way. They had passed through the denser part of the village, and the houses began to straggle at wider and wider intervals along the road. Presently they found themselves in the open country, between meadows and fields, with what seemed a long stretch of forest in front of them. But before they reached it they came to a wayside country store, in front of which they halted. " I have an idea, Egeria," said her father. " I will step into this store and pledge your ring for a night's lodging." THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 101 « Well," said Egeria, yielding it with dull indifference. She went with him to the door and lingered there while he addressed the man behind the counter with his airy flourish. It required time for the situation to make itself intelligible. Then the man took the ring extended to him, and looked coldly, not at it, but at Boynton. When the rustic leisure of the establishment had gathered itself about the transaction, he returned it. "I ain't no gold- smith," he said. " I beg your pardon ? " queried Boynton. The man lifted his voice : " May be it's gold, and may be it's brass." " Brass ? " " Well, you'd ought to know. Anyhow, I guess we can't trade." The spectators admired a fellow-citizen's cool ability to deal with a confidence man. Boynton turned away with dignity, and addressed a young fellow in the group. " Can you tell me," he said, politely, " my shortest way to Ayer Junction ? I was brought here by mistaking the downward for the upward train, at that point." The listeners grinned at the shallow imposture, but the young man answered civilly that if he was going to walk he had better take the road to Vardley, keeping due northward on that street. He came to the door to be more explicit, and, throwing it open, discovered Egeria to the others. " Funny pair of tramps," said one of them, loud enough for the wanderers to hear. " I guess they ain't any traTnps" said the storekeeper, darkly. " Why ? " asked the other. " Well, / guess they ain't tramps," repeated the man in authority. His success in coping with Boynton made the rest feel that he had a meaning withheld for the present from regard for the public good ; they kept silent ; his interlocutor spread out his hands as in an act of submis- 102 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. sion above the stove. He did not speak again, but after a while another took up the word. " They say them Shakers at Vardley keeps a house a puppose for lodgin' tramps," he said, holding liis knee be- tween his clasped hands, as he sat, an.l striking the heel of his boot against the side of the stove. Another silence followed, while a lounger on the other side of the stove worked his lips for expectoration against the iron ; but it was too lukewarm to hiss. " The old gentlemjin can put up with them, and keep his ring, if he steps along pretty spry. 'Tain't more'n about live mile, is it, Parker ? " After a decent pause, " Well, I don't know what the country 's comin' to," sighed a local pessimist. " Oh, I guess it '11 all come out right in the end," re- turned a local optimist. This put the pessimist down ; the talk had wandered from horses at Boynton's appearance, and now it reverted to horses. The young fellow who had gone to the door with Dr. Boynton did not return within ; he walked a little way up the street with him and Egeria,and recollected to warn them about a turning to the right which they were not to take. When he parted with them at a corner, he stood and gazed after them, with perhaps a kindly impulse in his heart fainting through bashfulness and doubt, while they held their way till they drew near the edge of the forest. It looked black and dreadful under the darkened sky ; they stopped before reaching it at a little house which stood upon its borders. " We must ask here," said Egeria, desperately, " Well, you ask, then, my dear," said her father. " They won't deny a woman." Egeria knocked, and after a long interval the light from the rear of the house disappeared, and, the door being opened, was held scarily aloft above the head of an elderly woman, who surveyed them with an excited face. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 103 rom Egeria briefly told hor story, and endod with a prayer for a night's shelter. " Just let us sit by your tire. Wo won't trouble you, and in the morning we will go on." The woman did not change countenance. " You hain't any of them that's escaped from the reform school ? " i ho demanded, in a high, frightened voice. Egeria again explained their case. " I don't know where the reform school is. Tliis is my father, and we are honest people ! " she added, indignantly. " Well," said the woman, in the same key as before, and clinging to her preconception, " I guess you better go back. The ofF'cers is sure to catch you." " Oh, and wont you let us in ? " "Why, I couldn't, you know — T couldn't. You just keep right along. It's early yet, an«l 1'" res a tavern up this road, — well, it ain't morn four mil<^, if it's that; you can put up there." " I"' this the road to \ ardley ? " asked Boyaton. " ies, yes, — straight along," said the ^voman, w^ho had been making the apertu/e between them smaller and smaller ; she now finally closed the door with a quick bang, and bolted it. " What shall we do ? " whispered Egeria. " I don't know," her father faltered, in reply. " Let us go back to the station," said the girl. " They will let us stay there, and then in the morning we can take the train — Oh, but we haven't any money to pay our way back ! " She broke out into a wild sobbing. "Don't cry, don't cry," said her father, soothingly. " We will walk on. Some one mnsit receive us. Or, if not, we can't starve in a single night, and at this season we can't perish of cold." As they resumed their way something struck lightly in their faces. " Rain ? " said Boynton, stretching out his hand. " No," answered Egeria, " snow." Neither spoke as they entered the deep shadow of the forest, which in this part of Massachusetts covers miles 104 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. of country, where the farmer has ceased to coax his wizened crops from the sterile soil and has abandoned it in dt-rtpair to the wilderness from which his ancestors conquered it. The road before the wanderers began to whiten. " Oh, when shall we come to a house ? " moaned the girl, shrinking closer to her father, and clinging more heavily to his arm. She started at the sound of voices and the red glare that came from a sheltered hollow of the woods beside the valley into which the road descended. Around a large fire crouched a party of tramps : one held a tilted bottle to his mouth, and another clutched at it; the rest were shouting and singing. As Egeria and her father came into the range of the firelight, the men saw them. They yelled to them to stop and have a drink. The one who had the bottle snatched up a brand from the fire with his left hand and ran towards them. His foot must have caught in some root or vine ; he fell, rolled over his bottle and torch, and while he screamed out that he was burning up, and the rest rushed upon him with laughter for his mis- hap and curses for the loss of his bottle, Egeria and he r father fled into the shadows beyond the light. Terror gave her force, but when she felt herself safe her strength began to fail. " I can't go any farther," she said, releasing her hand from her father's arm, and sinking upon the wayside bank. " We will wait here till morning." He made her no answer, but stood looking up and down the road. " Egeria," he said at last, " I fancy that it's lighter ahead of us than it is behind, and that we're near the edge of the woods. Try to come a few steps farther." He lifted her to her feet, and they moved painfully for- ward. It was as he said : in a little while the woods broke away on either hand, and they stood in the middle of cross-roads ; on one corner was a house. But as they drew near the verge of the open, the sound of voices THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 105 coax his mdoned it ancestors ten. «0h, the gir], ! heavily red glare ds beside ad a large ed bottle rest were same into ey yelled had the his left e caught >ttle and aingup, his mis- and he t elf safe ir hand e bank. ddown lat it's re near rther." ly for- woods niddle B they voices stayed them ; they were the voices of young men and young girls laughing and calling to one another, as they issued from this house on the corner. " It's a school- house," said her father ; " they've had some sort of frolic there." " Well, you won't get the Unabridged for spelling merry, Jim ! " shouted one of the youths to another. " Oh, how does he spell it ? " cried one of the girls. *' He spells it M-a-r-y ! " The laugh that followed repeated itself in the woods. " That's a good joke for hoot-owls ! " retorted some one who might be Jim. " A spelling-match," Boynton interpreted. A noise of joyous screaming and scuffling came from within the house as a light was quenched there, with cries of " I should think you'd be ashamed ! " and " Now, you stop ! " and the like ; and a bevy* of young people came scuriying from the door. " Hello ! " shouted one of the young men, " what about the books ? " " I don't know," answered another. " Guess nobody 'ill hurt the books before morning." " I wish they'd steal mine ! " said the gay voice of a girl. " But the tire — we've left a roaring fire." " Well, let it burn the old thing down." " All right ! " They hurried forward, shouting to the party ahead, who answered with a medley of derisive noises. When they were all gone, and their voices had died away, the wanderers crept to the door of the school-house, which they tried anxiously. It opened, and they entered. A gush of mellow light from the stove door, left open to let the fire die soon, softly illuminated the interior. They drew some benches close to the stove, and saftk away from the sense of all their misery. 106 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. CHAPTER X. The last thing of which Egeria had been aware before she fell asleep was her own shadow thrown by the fire- light against the school-house door. She thought it was this when she looked again. But the door melted away from around the shadow, and the shadow took feature and expression. Rousing herself with a start, she saw that it was a young girl, cloaked and hooded, stand- ing in the open doorway. The pale, bluish light of a snowy morning filled the school-room. The girl stood still, and looked at Egeria with a stony gaze of fear. The past came back to her ; the situation realized itself. Her father, a shabby, disreputable heap of crumpled clothing and tumbled hair, was still asleep ; her own beautiful hair had fallen down her shoulder. " We will go, — we will go," she whispered to the girl in the door- way, with a face as frightened as her own. " It's my father. We were walking to Vardley ; we didn't know where we were, and we found the school-house door unlocked, and we came in." She caught at the wander- ing coils of her hair, and twisted tkem into place, and tied on her bonnet. The girl in the door-way looked as if she would like to run away, but she came in, gasping, and shut the door behind her. " You're not tramps ? " she made out to ask. " Oh, no. no, no ! " replied Egeria, and she incoherently poured out the story of their misadventure. The other girl drew a long breath. "And you were going to Vardley Station ? " " Yes."^ " That's more than three miles from here." Egeria did not say anything, but she turned to wake her father. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 107 re before the fire- it it Was -ed away - feature she saw , stand- :ht of a rf stood sar. The If. Her clothing f»l hair ;he girl 3r own. 5 didn't se door ander- !e, and d like e door o ask. rently were a did 'ther. "Oh, don't wake him ! " cried the other girl, with a new start of terror, and a partial flight towards the door. " I mean," she added, coming back with a blush, " let him sleep. I — I'jn the teacher ; and I've come to build the fire. You can warm by it before you go. The scholars won't be here yet for an hour." Every word was visibly a conquest from fear, a fulfilment of duty. The teacher took oflf her water-proof, the hood of which she had drawn up over her head, and showed herself a short, plain girl, with a homely face full of sense and goodness. Her hair, cut short, clung about her large head in tight rings. She looked at Egeria's ethereal beauty and the masses of her hair, not enviously, but with a kind of compassionate admiration. The fire had gone down in the stove, and there was still imbedded in the ashes a line of live embers keeping the shape of the original maple stick. She raked the coals forward, laid on some splintti o and bark, and then logs, and closed the door ; the fire shouted and roared within. The teacher sat down on a bench across the stove from Egeria, took into her lap the tin pail she had brought with her, and raised the lid, discovering a smaller pail within, packed round with pieces of mince-pie, doughnuts, and biscuit with slices of cold meat between the buttered halves. She lifted this out, and set it on the stove ; she tore some leaves out of a copy-book, and laying them on the iron put the slices of pie on them. She did not say anything to Egeria, who had no authority to interfere with her proceedings. "I'm sorry it isn't cotfee," she said, looking into the pail on the stove ; " but I can't drink coffee; so it's only cracked cocoa. Now wake him." But the stir of garments, the low voices, and the fra- grant smell of the cocoa and mince-pie had already roused Boynton. He lifted himself, looked at Egeria, and stared at the teacher, to whom presently he made a courteous bow. She replied by pouring some of the cocoa into a I 108 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTBY. saucer, which she took from the bottom of the larger pail, and handing it to him. " I beg your pardon ? " he said sweetly. " There's another saucer," said the teacher evasively ; " but you'll have to eat your pie out of them afterwards." Her father saw Egeria supplied with cocoa, and then drank with the simple greed of a child. " This — this lady is the teacher, father," said Egeria. Boynton, brightened by his draught, bowed again, and the teacher gravely acknowledged his salutation. " I've told her how we came here." " Yes, yes," said Boynton ; " most disagreeable coinci- dence. I can assure you that in a somewhat checkered career I have never met with a more painful experience. At times, really I have hardly been able to recognise my own identity. But it's well for once, no doubt, to find ourselves in the position in which we have often contem- plated others." The teacher took the pie from the smoking paper and slid a piece into each saucer. " I presume it isn't very wholesome," she said, " but I've heard that Mr. Emerson says, if you will eat it, you'd best eat it for breakfast, so that you can have the whole day to digest it in." " Emerson," said the doctor, receiving his saucer with one hand, while he opened his handkerchief and spread it on his knees with the other, " is a very receptive mind. I fancy that there is a social principle in these matters which isn't clearly ascertained yet. Where whole com- munities eat pie, as ours do, there must be an unconscious co-operative force in its digestion." The teacher looked at him, but answered nothing. " I'm afraid," said Egeria ruefully, " that it's your din- ner." " The children always want me to eat part of theirs," the teacher explained. " I couldn't think of your asking at a house for your breakfast. The country is overrun with ti'amps, and they might suppose " — She stopped and THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 109 blushed, and then she added with rigid self-justice, " Well, I don't know as it was so strange I should." " No," said Egeria, " you couldn't have thought any- thing else. That's what they took us for everywhere." She spoke with patience and without bitterness, but she did not eat her breakfast with the hungry relish of the outcast she had been mistaken for. The teacher sat looking at them, and a new sense of their forlornness seemed to flash upon her. " Why, you have no outside things ! " " No," said Egeria; "they all went off" on the train we lost." The teacher said, like one thinking aloud, "If you are not telling me the truth about your selves, it will be your loss, and not mine." Then she added, "I don't want you should try to walk to Ayer ; it would kill you, in this snow. You must take the cars at Vardley Station." She drew out her purse. " There," she said, handing Egeria some bits of scrip, " it's ten cents apiece to the Junction ; and here," she continued, thriftly putting the biscuit to- gether in a scrap of ^aper, " is something for your lunch on the cars." Egeria made no reply. From i,ime to time she had lapsed from all apparent sense of what was going on. She now looked blankly at the teacher. Her father was not so helpless. " My dear young lady," he exclaimed, " you are perfectly right in your estimate of the consequences and penalties ! If we were deceiving you, we should be the sufferers, and not you. There is a law in these things which no individual will abrogate. In the end, truth and good always triumph." He had finished his pie, and he now took a draught of cocoa. " Have you many pupils ? " he asked. " No," replied the teacher, " not many. The old people say there used to be forty or fifty, but now there are only sixteen." Boynton shook his head. " Yes, it is this universal o ! ! 110 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. tendency to the cities and the large towns which is ruin- ing us. Well, Egeria, shall we be going ? " He had eaten and drunken to his apparent refreshment, and he was now ready to push on. Egeria cast a look out of the window, and rose lan- guidly. " I'd ask you to stay," said the teacher, taking note of her weariness, "but the children will be coming very soon, and " " Oh, no, no ! we couldn't stay. We must go." The teacher took down her waterproof from the peg on which she had hung it, and, eyeing it a moment thought- fully, handed it to Egeria. " I want you to wear this. You'll take your death if you go out that way. You can give it to the depot man at Vardley Station, and tell him it's Miss Thorn's. He'll send it back by the stage this afternoon, and I'll get it in plenty of time." Egeria did not reply, but stood looking at the teacher with a jaded and wondering regard. " I will take it for her. Miss Thorn," said the doctor, advancing with a sprightly air, and receiving the cloak. " I will see that it is duly returned. And let me thank you," he added, " for your kindness at a time when, really, we should have been embarrassed without it. My name is Boynton, — Dr. Boynton. Though you can scarcely have heard of it." " No," said the teacher, reluctantly, but firmly. " Ah ! " returned the doctor. But he did not attempt to enlighten her ignorance. He said, " Come, Egeria," and led the way to the door. The girl turned and looked vaguely at the teacher ; but no words of farewell or of thauks passed between them. The doctor issued cheerfully, even gaily, from the school-house door. The wind had changed and was blow- ing from the south. Whiffs of white cloud were sailing far overhead in the vast expanse of blue, from which poured a mellow sunshine. The snow, translucent in the THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. Ill light, and dark blue in the shadow, clung lazily to the trees and the eaves, from which at times the breeze de- tached it, and tossed it away in large, soft clots. Some unseen crows made themselves heard in the distance; near by, on the fence, a little bird stopped and sang. " A bluebird ! " cried Boynton. " Yes," answered the teacher ; " there were a good many yesterday, before the weather changed. Robins, too." He made her an airy bow, and Egeria looked back at her over her shoulder as they walked out into the road. " Why, the snow-plough has gone by ! " he exclaimed, with simple delight in the effect, and the teacher saw him stop and point out to Egeria the drift, massively broken, and flung on either side in moist blocks by the plough. She watched them from the school-house door- way till a turn of the road hid them from sight. Then she went within, and cast a doubtful glance at the peg where her water- proof had hung. But her face changed as her eye fell to the staunch and capacious rubber-boots standing in order below the peg. " I don't believe that girl had the sign of a rubber ! " she mused aloud, in the excess of her com- passion. ■'} 112 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. CHAPTER XI. The adventure of the day before and the exercise of their night-walk, with the good breakfast he had eaten, seemed to have brightened Boynton past recollection of all the sorrows he had known. He went forward, dis- coursing hopefully, and developing a plan he had for leaving Egeria with her grandfather, and returning to this region in order to look up the Shaker community, with which he intended to unite for the purpose of spiri- tual investigation on the true basis. For some time he did not observe that she responded more languidly and indifferently than her wont; then he asked abruptly, " WTiat is the matter, Egeria ? " " I don't know. Nothing. I am not very well." " You ought to be, in such air as this. Let me see." He caught up her wrist. " Rather a quick pulse : it may be the walking. Are you hot ? " " My feet are cold, — they're wet." He looked down at her shoes, and shook his head in a perplexed fashion. " We must stop somewhere and dry your feet." " They wouldn't let us," said Egeria, in a dull way. " We will stop at that tavern. Perhaps we can get a lift there with some one going to the station." He took her hand under his arm, and helped her on. She did not complain, nor did she show any increasing weariness. They had been passing through a long reach of wood- land that stretched away on either side of the re id, when they came to a wide, open plateau, high and bare. It looked old, and like a place where there had once been houses, though none were now in sight ; from time to time, in fact, the ruinous traces of former habitations THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 113 see. showed themselves by the wayside. A black fringe of pines and hemlocks bordered the plain where it softly rounded away to the eastward ; a vast forest of oak and chestnut formed its western boundary. At its highest point they came in sight of a house on its northern slope, a largP; square mansion of brick ; an enormous elm almost swept the ground with its boughs, on its eastern side ; before it stood an old-fashioned sign-post, and westward, almost in the edge of the forest, lay its stabling. " That must be the tavern," said Boynton, instinctively making haste towards it. As they drew near, they saw a light buggy standing at the door, and a man who seemed to unite the offices of host and ostler holding the horse by the head. He turned from smoothing the animal's nose, and called to some one within, " Come, hurry up, in there ! " A red-faced man, in the faded and mishapen clothes which American manufacture and the clothing store supply to our poor country-folks, issued from the door, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, and slouched away down the road. Then a girl, dressed in extreme fashion, of the sort that never convinces of elegance, nor ever mistakes itself for it, with her large hands cased in white gloves, came out and waited to be helped into the buggy. The thick, hard bloom on her somewhat sunken cheeks was incomparably artificial, till the dyed moustache of the man following her showed itself ; this was of a purple so bold that if his hair had been purple too, and not of a light sandy colour, it could not have looked falser. They had a little squabble, half jocose, which the man at the horse's head admired, before he lifted her to the seat. The land- lord handed him the reins. " Well, give us another call. Bob," he said. The other looked at him over his dyed mustache with- out answering, while the girl stared round with her wild black eyes, as if startled at finding herself perched so high up in the light of day. Both at the same time caught sight of Boynton and Egeria, who fell behind her father H ik 114 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. as he approached the door- way. The man leaned toward the girl and whispered something to her, at which she gave him a push and bade him stop his fooling. " Can I get a conveyance here to carry us to Vardley Village ? " asked Boynton, accosting the landlord. " I don't know," answered the man, looking doubtfully at the doctor and Egeria. He turned his back on them in the manner of some rustics who wished to show a sovereign indifference, and made a pace or two towards the door, before he half faced them again. *' Well, good-by Tommy ! " said the man in the buggy, drawing his reins, and then checking his horse. " Look here, will you ? " The landlord went back, and tae man leaned over the side of the buggy and said something in a low tone. " No ! " oried the landlord. " Eet you anything on it 1 " said the man. " Get up ! " He drove away. "■ Come in," said the landlord to the doctor, " and I'll see." Egeria shrunk from following her father, who was mechanically obeying, and murmured something about walking. " Oh, come in, come in! " said the landlord, more eagerly. " I guess I can manage for you. Come in and rest ye, any way." " Come, Egeria," said her father. The landlord was a short, stout man, with a shock of iron-gray hair, and a face of dusky red, coarse and harsh ; his blood-shot eyes wandered curiously over Egeria's fig- ure. He led the way into the parlour of the tavern, which within had an air of former dignity, as if it had not been built for its present uses. The hall was wide and the stair-case fine ; the chimney-piece and the wooden cornice of the parlour showed the nice and patient carpentry of seventy-five years ago. There was a fire in the ^eet-iron stove on the hearth, and the lady who had just driven oflf THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 115 in the buggy had left proof of a decided taste in perfumes. If Egeiia had liked she might have dressed her hair at the glass in which this person had surveyed the effect of her paint, with the public comb and brush on the table before it. There were some claret-coloured sporting prints on the wall, and some tattered, thumb-worn illustrated papers on the centre-table. "I'll tell ye what," said the landlord, who had briefly disappeared after showing them into his room, and had now returned, "I hain't got any boss in now, but I'll have one in about an hour, and then I'll set ye over to Vardley." " What will you charge?" asked the doctor. "It ain't a-goin' to cost ye much. I'd know as I'll ask ye anything. I'm goin' there, any way ; and I guess we can ride three on a seat." Boynton expressed a flowery sense of this goodness, but said that they should insist upon paying him for his trouble. Egeria had dropped into the rocking-chair beside the window, and, propping her arm on the window-sill, supported her averted face on her hand. Her head throb- bed, and the thick, foul sweetness of the air made her faint ; the glare of the sun from the snow and gathering pools beat into her heavy eyes. " Does your head ache ? "^^asked her father. " Yes," she gasped. " I'll send in some tea," said the landlord. A black man brought it ; there seemed to be no women about the house. The landlord went and came often; through her pain and lethargy, the girl had a dull sense of his vigilance. Her father found her feverish, and no better for the tea she drank. He fretted and repined at her condition, and then he grew ticed of looking at her pale face fallen against the chair back, and her closed eyes, that trembled under their lids, and now and then sent out a gush of hot tears. He went into the other room, where the landlord sat with his boots on the low, cast-iron stove, and a white-nosed i lie THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. bull-dog slept suspiciously in a corner. As the time passed, different people appeared within and without tlie tavern. A man in a blood-stained over-shirt drove a butcher's waggon to the door ; a tall man, in a silk hut, came with a tish cart painted lilack and varnished. With a blithe jingle of bells, a young fellow rattled up with a cracker wagon, and having come in for the landlord's order — the landlord did not find it necessary to take down his feet from the stove, or to disturb the angle at which his hat rested on his head, during the transaction — he danced a figure on the painted floor, and caressed the bull-dog with the toe of his boot. " Next time you put up Pete," he said, " I want to bring my brother's brindle. I want him to wear the belt a spell. Pete must be gittin' tired of it. Well, I wouldn't ever said a dog- fight could be such fun," he added, with an expression of agreeable reminiscence. " And the old-ball-room's just the place for it." He spat on the stove, and taking under his arm the empty cracker box, which he had just replaced on its shelf with a full one, he went out as he had come in, without saluting the landlord. He stopped at the open door of the parlour, and catching sight of Egeria made her a bow of burlesque devotion, and turned to in- clude the landlord in the fun with a parting wink. Egeria had not seen him ; her eyes were closed ; and her father, where he sat in the office, was looking impati- ently out of his window. The sky had begun to thicken again. " Do you think it's going to rain ? " he asked, when the cracker wagon had jingled away. " Shouldn't wonder," said the landlord. " I hope your conveyance will be here soon," pursued the doctor. " I'm anxious on my daughter's account, not to miss the train from Vardley that connects with the Portland express." " Daughter, eh ? " said the landlord, with a certain in- tonation ; but Dr. Boynton observed nothing strange in it. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 117 " How soon do you think your liorse will hn liere ? " ho asketl. " I can't tell yo," said the landlord doggedly. " You did tell me," retorted Boynton, " that it would bo here in less than an liour. You have detained us that time already, and now you«ay you don't know how much longer I must wait." " Now, look here," began the other, taking down his feet from the stove. " I wish to pay you for what accommodation we havo had. I wish to go," said the doctor, angrily. " I don't want ye should go ! " replied the other with a stupid air of secrecy. *' I've nothing to do with that," said the doctor. " I am going. Here is the money for your tea." He flung upon the cou X r the pieces of script which the school-teacher had given him. The landlord rose to his feet. " Ye can't go. I might as well have it out first as last. Ye can't go." " Can't go ? You're ridiculous ! " Boynton exclaimed. " What's the reason I can't go ? " "Well, you can go, but the girl can't, — not till tho ofF'cers comes. I mean to say," he added, at Dr. Boyn- ton's look of amaze, " that she's no more your daughter than she is mine. I d' know where you picked her up, but she's one of the girls that's escaped from the reform school, and she's goin' back there as soon as the ofl^cers gets here. , That's what's the matter. " And do you mean to say that you are going to detain us here against our will ? " " I don't know what you call it. I'm going to keep you here." He had planted his burly bulk in the door- way leading into the hall." " Stand aside," said Boynton, " or I'll take you by the throat." "I gu-ess not," returned the landlord coolly. " Pete ! " The brute in the corner had opened his whitish, cruel eyes 118 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. at the sound of angry voices. " Watch him ! '* The dog came and lay down at his master's feet, with his face turned toward Boynton. " There ! I guess you won't take anybody by the throat much ! " The man resumed his chair, which he tilted back against the counter at its former comfortable angle. % Boynton quivered with helpless indignation. " Is it possible," he exclaimed, " that an outrage like this can be perpetrated at high noon in the heart of Massachu- setts ? " " That's about the size of it," returned the landlord, with a grin of brutal exultation. " I must submit," said the doctor. " But you shall answer for this." The man was silent, and the doctor fancied that he might perhaps be relenting. He poured out a recital of the whole misadventure that had ended in their coming to his door, and appealed to him not to detain them. " My daughter has been sick, and she is now far from well. I am most anxious to pursue our journey. We have no friends in this region, and we are out of money. Let iis go, now, and I will consent to overlook this outrageous attempt upon our liberty. If we lose the train thi'^ afternoon, she may suffer very seriously from the delay and the disappointment." " She'll be all right when she gets back to the reform school," answered the landlord, as if bored by the long story. Boynton's self-command failed him. He burst into tears. " My God ! " he sobbed, " have I fallen so low as this ? — impostor, and tramp, and beggar, and now the captive, the slave, of this ruffian ! It's too much ! W^hat have I done, — what have I done ! " He hid his face in his hands, and bowed hin^self abjectly forward in the chair into which he had sunk. Some one drove up to the door, and shouted from the outside, " Hello ! " The landlord rose, and saying to his dog, " Stay there," THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 119 went out to the door, and after a brief parley came in again with two other men. Their steps sounded as if they went to the door of the parlour and looked in, while their voices sank to rapid whispers. In hie agony of anxiety, Boynton made an involuntary movement for- ward ; the dog growled and crept nearer. He was help- less ; but the steps returned to the outer door, and a voice said, " No, I don't want to see him, as long as 't ain't the girl. Somebody's made a dumn fool of you, Harris, and you've made dumn fools of us. Guess you better wait a while, next time." The landlord came sulkily back, and sat down in his chair, which he tilted against the counter as before. Boynton suffered some time to elapse before he asked, " Well, sir, do you mean to let us go ? " " Who's henderin' you ? " sullenly demanded the land- lord, without moving. " Then call away your dog." The landlord refused, out of mere brutish wantonness, to comply at once ; but he presently did so, and followed Boynton to the parlour. Then, according to Boy neon's report, ensued a series of those events of which the be- lievers in such mysteries fiercely assert the reality, and of which others as strenuously deny the occurrence. The sky darkened ; there was a noise like the straining of the branches of the elms beside the house ; but there was no wind, and the boughs were motionless. Presently this straining sound, as if the fibres were twisting and writh- ing together, was heard in the wood-work of the room. " What the hell is that ? ' cried the landlord. The room was full of it, whatever it was. Every part of the woodwork — doors, window casings, cornice, wainscot — was new voluble with a muffled detonation. " Wait ! " Boynton answered. The sound beat like rain-drops on tlie lioor, at wliicli the landlord stared, with the dog whimpering at his heels. Egeria lay white ' and still in the rocking-chair by the window. At the 120 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. sound of their voices she stirred and moaned ; then, as Boynton asserted, they saw the marble top of the centre- table lifted three times from its place ; a picture swung out from the wall, as if blown by a strong gust ; and the brush from the table was flung across the room, flying close to the dog's head ; who, with a howl, fled out-of-doors. " For God's sake man, what is it ? " gasped the landlord, seizing Boynton's arm, and cowering close to him. " I forgive you, I bless you ! " cried the other raptur- ously. " It was from your evil that this good came. It's a miracle ; it's — it's the presence of the dead." " No, no ! " protested the landlord. " I've kept a hard place ; There's been drinkin' and fancy folks ; but there hain't been no murder, — not in miy time. I can't answer for it before that ; they always tell about killin* pedlars in these old houses. Oh ! Lord have mercy ! " A flash of red light filled the room, and a rending burst of thun- der made the house shake. The electricity appeared to rise from the ground, and not to come from the clouds ; it was as sometimes happens, a sole discharge. The land- lord turned, and followed his dog out-of-doors. The negro was already there, looking up at the house. Egeria started from her chair. " Did you will it, father, — did you will it ? " she implored, at sight of Dr. Boynton's wild face. ** No ; it has come without motion of mine," he answered with a solemn joy. " I have never seen or heard any- thing like it." He looked round the room, in which an absolute silence now prevailed. The girl shuddered. "I have had a homble dream. The house seemed full of drunken men — and women — like that girl in the buggy ; and we couldn't get away, and you c( uldn't get to me, and — oh ! " She shook violently, and hurried on her hat and water-proof. " Come ! I can't breathe here." As they passed out the landlord made no motion to de- tain tliem; he even shrank a few paces aside. When THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 12:. Boynton looked back from the next turn of the road, he saw him walking to and fro before the tavern, looking up now and then at its front, and taking unconsciously the cold rain that lashed his own face as he turned east- ward again. He was in a frame of high exultation ; he shouted in talk with Egeria, who scarcely answered, as she pressed forward with her head down. The snow dissolved under the rain and flooded the road, in which they waded, plunging on and on. They came presently to a lonely country graveyard, where the soaked pines and spruces dripped upon the stones, standing white and stiffly upright where they were of recent date, and where darkened with the storms of many seasons slanting in various degrees of obliquity to a fall. Here was one of those terrible little houses in which the hearse, the bier, and the sexton's tools are kept ; Boynton tried the door, and when it yielded to his battering he called to his daughter to take shelter with him there. " No ! " she shouted back to him^ " I would rather die ! " She pushed, she knew not whither, down the road that wound into a stretch of pine forest, and he must needs follow her. At last they came to a hollow through which a brook, swollen by the snow and rain, rolled a yellow tor- rent. They stopped at the brink in despair ; there was no house in sight, but on a knoll near by the trees stood so thick that the rain-fall was broken by the densely in- terwoven boughs. The doctor led Egeria to this shelter, and placed her in the dryest spot ; he felt her shiver, and heard her teeth chatter, as the waves of cold swept over her. He left her fallen on the brown needles, and went and tried the depth of the stream with a stick ; the rain dripped from him everywhere, — from his elbows, from the rim of his silk hat, and from the point of his nose ; he looked at once wierd and grotesque. " Heh !" cried a loud voice behind him. In a covered waggon crouched the figure of a young man in manifold I 122 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. capes and wraps of drab and blue, under the sweep of a very wide-brimmed hat. He had almost driven over Boyntcn. " Try in' for water, with a hazel-rod ? Guess you'll find it most anywheres to-day." The voice was pleasant, and Boynton, looking up, con- fronted a cheery face in the waggon. " I was seeing if it was too deep to cross.,' " 'Tain't for the horses," said their driver. " Get in." He moved hospitably to one side. " You can't make me any wetter." " Thank you," said Boynton, " I have my daughter here under the pines." "Your daughter?" The young man in the waggon looked at first puzzled, and then, as he craned his neck round the side of the curtain and saw the little cowering heap which was Egeria, he looked daunoed, but he only said, " Bring her, too." Boynton gathered her into his arms, and placed her on the seat between him and the driver. " We were going to Vardley Station," he explained. " Is this the way ?" " It's one way," said the other, driving through the torrent. " But I guess you better stop with us till the rain's over. We'll be home in half a mile." " You are very good," said Boynton, looking at him. " We must push on. We must get back to the Junction in time for the Portland express." He once more gave the facts of their mischance. When he had ended, " Oh, yee," said the other ; " you are the friend that was speakin' to some of our folks at the Junction." The doctor started. " Your folks ? What are you ? " Shakers." " Egeria ! Egeria !" shouted her father. " I have found them T This gentleman is a Shaker ! He is taking us to the community ! I accei>t, sir, with great pleasure. I shall be glad to stop and see more of your people. Egeria I" THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 123 She made no answer. Her limp and sunken figure rested heavily against the young Shaker ; her head had fallen on his shoulder. • " / guess she's fainted," he said. 124 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. CHAPTER XII. I Egeria had not fainted, but she had lapsed into a tor- por from which she could not rouse herself. She could not speak or make any sign when her father drew her head away from the young man's shoulder and laid it on his own. The Shaker chirped his reeking horses into a livelier pace, and when he reached the office in the village he sprang from the waggon with more alertness than could have been imagined of him, and ran in-doors to announce his guests. Brother Humphrey and the three office sisters,^ veiy clean and very dry, with the warm smell of a stove fiie exhaling from their comfortable garments, received him with countenances in which resignation blended with the ni^tural reluctance of people within to have anything to do with people without, in such weather. " Oh, better put them in the tramps' house," said Brother Humphrey, — " there's a fire there." " Yee," consented one of the sisters, " they will do very well there." " They would slop everything up here," said another, " and we've just been over our floors, Laban." The third was silent, but she wrung her hands in ner- vous anxiety, like one who would not be selfish, and yet would like whatever advantages may come of selfishness. *' Nay," said Laban, " they're not tramps. They're the folks that Joseph and Elihu told about meetin' yesterday. ^ In placing some passages of his story among the Shakers of an easily recognizable locality, the author has avoided the study of personal traits, and he wishes explicitly to state that his Shakers are imaginary in every- thing but their truth, charity, and purity of life, and that scarcely less lov- able quaintuMS to which no realism could do perfect justice. llll! THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 125 to a tor- he could Irew her lid it on 3s into a village in could inounce s,' veiy ove file ed him ith the hing to brother very lother, n ner- idyet hness. •e the irday. easily traits, every. IS3 lov- I don't know as you'd ought to put them with the tramps. I guess the young woman's in a faint." " Oh, why didn't you say so to begin with, Laban ? " lamented that one of the sisters who had not yet spoken. " Of course she's sick, and here we've been standin' and troublin' about our clean floors, and lettin' her suffer. I don't see how I can bear it." " Oh, you'll be over it by fall, Frances," answered Laban, jocosely. Humphrey caught up a cotton umbrella, vast enough for community use, and weather-worn to a Shaker drab, and sallied out to the gate. The doctor and Laban got their benumbed burden from the waggon between them, and carried Egeria into the house, where they were met with remorseful welcome by the sisters. They dis- patched Brother Humphrey to kindle a fire in the stove of the upper chamber, reserved for guests, and into its sweet, fresh cleanliness Frances presently helped Egeria, and then helped her into bed, while the others went to make her a cup of tea. Her father, meanwhile, had taken off his wet clothes, and arrayed himself in a suit belonging to one of the brethren, a much taller and a thinner man than Boynton, who made a Shaker of novel and striking pattern in his dress. But he beheld his appearance in the glass, which meagrely ministered to the vanity of the office guests,^ with uncommon content, as a token that he had already entered upon a new and final stage of investigation ; and when his tongue had been loosed by the cup of tea brought to him in the office parlour, he regarded his surroundings with as great satisfaction. This room was carpeted, but it was like the rest of the house in its simple white walls and its plain finish of wood painted a warm brown ; there were braided rugs scattered about before the stove and the large chairs, as there were at the foot of the stair- ways, and at the bedsides in the chambers above. Dr. Boynton, stirring his tea, walked out into the low, long hall, bare but not cheerless, and traversed it to look into 126 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. I, the room on the other side ; then he returned to the parlour, and glanced at the books and pamphlets on the table, — historical and doctrinal works relating to Shaker- ism, periodicals devoted to various social and h3'gienie reforms, and controversial tracts upon points in dispute between the community and the world ; there were seve- ral weekly newspapers, and Boynton was turning over one of them with the hand that had momentarily relin- quished his teaspoon when Brother Humphrey rejoined him. * " If we could have at all helped ourselves," he began promptly, " I should consider our intrusion upon you most unwarrantable ; but we had no will in the matter." " Nay," replied the Shaker, " it's no intrusion. This is not a family house. We call it the Office, for we do our business and receive friends from the world outside here." " Do you mean that you keep a house of entertain- ment?" " Our rule forbids us to turn any one away. Of late years, the wayfaring poor l^ave increased so much that we have appointed a small house especially for them ; but we cannot put everybody there." " I thank you," said Boynton." *• " It is not a hotel," continued Humphrey, " for we make out no bills. All are welcome to what we can do ; those who can pay may pay." " I shall wish to pay, as soon as we can recover our effects," Boynton interposed. " Nay, I do not mean that," quietly rejoined the Shaker. " You are welcome, whether you pay or not." Boynton turned from these civilities. " I am glad to find myself here. I met two of your number yesterday, and had some conversation with them on a subject that vitally interests me." " Yee, I heard," said the Shaker. *• You are spiritualists. Are you the medium ? " THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 127 " My daughter is a medium — a medium of extraordinary powers, which I dare not say I have developed, but to which I have humbly ministered ; powers that within the last hour have received testimony of the most impres- sive and final nature." Brother Humphrey made no out- ward sign of any inward movement that Boynton's words might have produced, and the latter suddenly demanded, " Are you a spiritualist ?" " Yee," answered the Shaker, " we are all spiritualists," ** Then you will be interested — you will all be interested intensely — in the communication which I shall have to make to your community. I wish you to call a meeting of your people, before whom I desire to lay some facts of the most astounding character, and to whom I wish to propose myself for admission to your community, in order to the pursuance of investigations profoundly interesting to the race." He paused, full of repressed excitement ; but Brother Humphrey was not moved. "There will be a family meeting to-morrow night," he began. " To-morrow night !" cried Boynton. " Is it possible that you are so indifferent to phenomena that ought to be instantly telegraphed from Maine to California? That"— " We have heard a good deal of the doings with the -spirits in the world outside," interrupted the Shaker, in his turn, " and we know how often folks are deceived in them and in themselves. If something new and important has happened to you, I guess it'll keep for twenty-four hours." Brother Humphrey smiled quaintly, and seemed to expect his guest to take this common-sense view of the matter. "Oh, it will keep!" exclaimed the doctor. "But so would the thunder from Sinai have kept." He plunged into a vivid and rapid narration of the events of his cap- tivity and release at the tavern. When he paused, the Shaker replied with unperturbed ii 128 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. calm : " These are things to be judged of by the family. I cannot say anything about them." " Is it possible ?" demanded Boynton, in a tone of indes- cribable disappointment. He seemed hurt and puzzled. After a while he said, " I submit. Could you let me have writing materials to take to my room ? I wish to make some notes." ** Yee," said Humphrey. Boynton went to his room, which was across a passage- way from that where one of the sisters was still busy with Egeria, and he did not reappear till dinner, which was served him in the basement of the office, in a dining- room made snug with a stove-fire. As Boynton unfolded his napkin, " What are your tenets '{" he abruptly de- manded of the sister who came to wait upon him. " Tenets ?" faltered Rebecca. " Your doctrine, your religious creed." ** We have no creed," replied the sister. " Well, then, you have a life. What is your life ?" " We try to live the angelic life," said Rebecca, with some embarrassment: "to do as we would be done by; to return good for evil ; to put down selfishness in our hearts." "Good, very good! There could be no better basis. But as a society, a community, what is your central idea?" " I don't know. We neither marry nor give in marriage." ** Yes, yes ! That is what 1 thought. That was my impression. I fully approve of your system. It is the only foundation on which a community can rest. And to keep up your numbers you depend upon converts from the world ?" "Yee." " But you bring up children whom you adopt ?" "Yee." " Do they remain with you ?" " We have better luck with those who are gathered in The t^ndiscoVered country. 129 >f indes- puzzled. ne have o make ►assaofe- U busy which dining- afolded tly de- \>, with Qe by; in our basis, entral lage." s my is the And from in after middle life. The young folks — we are apt to lose them," said the Shakeress, a little sadly. " I see, I see," returned Boynton. " You cannot fight nature unassisted by experience. Life must teach them something first. They fall in love with each other ?" *' They are apt to get foolish," the sister assented. "And then they run off together. That is what hurts us. They no need to. If they would come and tell us" — Boynton shook his head. '* Impossible ! But you have the true principle. Celibacy is the only hope of com- munism — of advanced truth." He ceased to question her as abruptly as he began ; but after he had dispatched his dinner, he asked leave to borrow from the parlour a work on Shakerism which he had noticed there, and he again shut hims'^lf up in his room. That evening they heard him restlessly walking the floor. The sister who visited Egeria last had stood a moment, shading her lamp with her hand and looking down on the girl's beauty. Her yellow hair strayed loosely out over the pillow; her lips were red and her cheeks fiushed. The sister's tresses nad been shorn away as for the grave thirty years before, and herfnce had that unearthly pallor which the Shaker sisters share wi::li nuns of all orders. She stooped and kissed Egeria's hot cheek, and then went down to the office sitting-room to report her impressions to the other sisters before they slept. " It appears as if her father didn't want to go to bed," said Sister Diantha, after a moment's quiet, in w^hich the doctor's regular tread on the floor overhead made itself audible. " If he's got anything on his mind," said Sister Rebecca, " it ain't his daughter.' " Yee, Rebecca," said Sister Frances, " you're right, there. I told him 1 tliouufht she w^as j^oinij to have a fit of sick- ness, but he said it wa'n't auylhmg lout exhaustion, and t he'd see after her ; 't he was a doctor himself. To my t 130 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. knowledge lie hain't been near her since. / think she's goin' to have a fit of sickness." Brother Humphrey came in from the next room and stood by the stove. " How did you leave her, Frances ? " he asked. " Well, / think she's goin' to have a fit of sickness," re- peated Frances. " Well, I don't know's you'd have much to say agin that, would you ? " returned the brother, after a general pause. " You hain't had a good fit of sickness on hand for quite a spell." The other sisters laughed. " Set down, Humphrey," said Diantha, putting him a chair. The manner of these elderly women with Humphrey was of a truly affectionate and sisterly simplicity, to which he responded with bro- therly frankness. " 1 guess she ain't goin' to be very sick," resumed Hum- phrey, making himself easy in his chair. " Any way, we've got a doctor to prescribe for her." " What oJo you think of him, Humphrey ? " asked Re- becca. " Pretty glib," said Humphrey. " I don't know as I ever heard better language," sug- gested Frances. " Oh, his language is good enough," said Humphrey. "It's quite a convert Laban's brought us," observed Diantha. " Talk of winter Shakers ! " she continued, re- ferring to that frequent sort of convert whose Shakerism begins and ends with cold weather. " I hain't seen any one so ready to be gathered in for a long time." " Yee, too ready," said Humphrey, soberly. " That kind ain't apt to stay gathered in ; and I'm about tired havin' the family fill mouthf? io7 a month or two, and afterwards revilin's proceed out of 'em." " We must receive all, and try all," interposed Frances, gently. " Yee," sighed Humphrey. " What do you say to his story ? '* asked Diantha. ri THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 131 ink she's ooni and ances ? " 'ay agin general >n hand phrey," >f these Jtionate th bro- i Hum- y way, ed Re- ," 8Ug- •ey. served 3d, re- erism Q any kind lavin' cards nces, "I don't judge it," said the brother. " We know that spirits do communicate with men, and miracles happen every day. As to the doin's at the Ehn Tahvern, Harris might tell a different story." "I shouldn't believe any story Harris told," said Frances. Humphrey smiled. " Well, I don't know as / should, come to look at it," he admitted. " I wish that nest could be broken up," said Rebecca. " It's a cross." " Yee, it's a cross," answered Humphrey. " I most drove over a man, dead drunk, in the road yesterday, comin' down into the woods, after I passed the tahvern ; and nearly all the tramps that come now smell of rum. The off'cers don't seem to do anything." " Oh, the off'cers ! " cried Diantha. The walking had continued regularly overhead ; but now, after some hesitation, the steps approached the door, which was heard to open, and they crossed the hall to Egeria's room. From thence, after a brief interval, they descended the stairs, and Dr. Boynton, lamp in hand, en- tered the room. The sisters rose in expectation. " I find my daughter in a fever," said Boynton, with an absent air. " What medicines have you in the house ? " " We have our herbs," answered Sister Frances. " They may be the best thing," said Boynton, with the same abstraction, as if he were thinking of something else at the same time. He stood and waited amid a gen- eral silence, till Sister Frances, who had gone out, reap- peared with some neat packages of the medicinal herbs which the Shakers put up. He chose one, and asked for some water in a tin dish in which to steep it on the stove. " Let me do it for you," pleaded Sister Frances. The other sisters joined in an entreaty to be allowed to sit up with the sick girl. " No," said Boynton. " I have always taken care of her, and to-night at least I will watch with her. I couldn't r. 132 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. sleep if I went to bed, but I shall make myself easy in an arm-chair, if you'll give me one." Humphrey went to fetch the chair, and as he passed the door, on his way upstairs with it, Boynton called out to him, " Thanks ! If her fever increases," he continued to the sistere, " she will wake at eleven, and then I shall give her this. I shall need nothing more. Good-night." He went out, and Sister Frances said, with perhaps some sense of penalty in this loss of opportunity for nurs- ing the girl through the night, " I feel to say that I was hasty in judgin' on him." " Yee," said the others. " We judged him hastily." " We were too swift to blame," said Humphrey, who now returned. " Let us remember it next time." " But," added Sister Frances, " I knew she was goin' to have a tit of sickness." The sisters took each a kerosene hand-lamp, and passed up the bare, clean halls to their chambers. The brother went about trying the fastening of the windows and the locks of the outer doors. The time had been, before the time of tramps, when he never turned a key at night. In the morning Sister Frances made an early visit to Egeria's room, and found the girl and her father both awake. She was without fever now, but she lay white and still in her bed, and her father stood looking at her unhopefully. Sister Frances went down to the kitchen, where the other sisters were already busy getting Boynton's break- fast. " It's goin' to be a fit of sickness," she said. " Then she had best go to the sick-house," said Diantha. " Yee," 8 dded Rebecca, at a look of protest from Frances, " that's what it's for, and she can be better done for there. It's noisy here." She urged that it was noisy when they spoke, later, of Egeria's removal to Boynton, who owned that he could not now say that she would not be sick : it was the be- THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 133 If easy ju »'ey went ^ his way ' Thanks ' ere, "she r this. I perhaps ^or nurs- lat I was kily." rey, who goin' to d passed brother and the fore the ight. visit to er both ^ white : at her ere the break- antha. 'ances, there. ker, of could le be- lief of the office sisters that they lived in the midst of excitement. The day had broken clear, and the New England spring was showing herself in one of her moods of conscientious adherence to duty : she would perform her part with sun- shine and birds, but she breathed cold across the brilliant landscape, and she warned vegetation that it started at its own risk. The Shaker village had awakened to its round of labours and self-denials as quietly as if it had not awakened at all. Some of the elderly men, with the boys and the hired hands, were at work with the cattle in the great barns ; some were raking together the last year's decay in the garden into heaps for burning ; some were busy in the workshops. The women went about their wonted cares in-doors, and there was no sijm of in- terest in the arrival of guests at the office. Perhaps their presence had not been generally talked over in the family, but had been held in reserve for formal discussion at the meeting in the evening. The office sisters consulted with the elders in the family house opposite in reference to Egeria's removal, and the infirmary was ma'le ready for her. It was aired, the damp was driven out by a hot fire in the stove, and Sister Frances strove to set its order still more in order ; a little fluff under the bed or a spot upon the floor would have been a comfort to her ; but everything was blamelessly, hopelessly neat. It was not quite regular for her to take an interest in things outside of the office, but she had been suffered to do so much in consideration of her afflic^iion at having a fit of sickness snatched from her care, as it were, and she was allowed a controlling voice in deciding upon % e doctor's request to have a bed put up for him in the inri) , lary. Such a thing was hitherto unknown ; it was an invasion of family bounds by the woxld outside ; but it stood to reason that the girl's father had a double claim to be as near to her as possible, and after some conscientious difficulty his request was granted, . 134 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. I I While they were making ready for her, Brother EHhii came to see him at the office, and gave him a sort of con- ditional welcome. He seemed to be a person of weight in the community, and after his brief visit Boy n ton perceived that his standing was more stri/^tly probationary than be- fore. There was no want of kindness in Slihu's manner ; he made several thoughtful suggestions for the welfare and convenience of the Boyntons ; but he had shown no eagerness for the statement which the doctor wished to make to the community, nor for his ideas upon the devel- opment of spiritistic science. The statement, he said, could be made that evening, or at the next family meet- ing ; it did not matter ; there was no haste. " Spiritual- ism arose among us; our faith is based upon the fact of an uninterrupted revelation ; the very songs we sing in our meetings were communicated to us, words and music, from the other world. We have seen much perversion of spiritualism in the world outside, — much eiror, much folly, much filth. If you have new light, it will not suddenly be quenched. Rest here a while. Our first care must be for the young woman." " Yes, yes ! " assented Boynton restivel}'. The office brothers and sisters had listened to Eiihu with evident abeyance ; only Sister Frances, by looks and tones, expressed herself unchanged to Boynton. As the time drew on towards evening, and Egeria seemed to need constant watchfulness, she offered to take his place in the infirmary, and to let him know if he was needed at an; time during the meeting. This made it easy for him to go, and Sister Frances established herself in attendance upon the sick girl. She was not afterwards dislodged from her place in the infirmary. There were nurses whose duty it was to care for the sick, but Frances clung to her patient, not in defiance, but in a soft, elastic tenderness which served her as well. Dr. Boynton went to the family meeting, and remainer! profoundly attentive to the services with which the speak- THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 135 1 )ther EJihii sort of con- weight in perceived 7 than be- s manner; e welfare sliovrn no wished to the devel- >he said, "Jy meet- Spiritual- h^ fact of V(i 8 rag in "d >uusic, ^^ersion of uch folly^ suddenly must be to EJihu >oks and As the to need e in the t at an '- him to -ndance slodged ' whose to her Ferness Qainer? speaks ing was preceded. He saw the sisters seated on one side of th'^ large meeting-room, and the brothers on the other, with broad napkins half unfolded across their knees, on which they softlj' beat time, with rising and falling palms, as they sang. The sisters, young and old, all looked of the same age, witli their throats strictly hid by the collars that came up to their chins, and their close-cropped hair covered by stiff wire-framed caps of white gauze ; there was gi'eater visible disparity among the brothers, but their head^ were mostly gray though a few were still dark with youth or middle life; on either side there was a bench full of sedate children. When the singing was ended the minister read a chap- ter of the Bible, and one of the elders prayed. Then a sister began a hymn, in which all the family joined. At its close, a young girl rose and described a vision which she had seen the night before in a dream. When she sat down, the elders and eldresses came out into the vacant space between the rows of men and women, and, forming themselves into an ellipse, waved their hands up and down with a slow, rhythmic motion, and rocked back and forth on their feet. Then the others, who had risen wnth them, followed in a line round this group, with a quick, springing tread, and a like motion of the hands and arms, while they sang together the thrilling march which the others had struck up. They halted at the end of the hymn, and I'^t their arms sink slowly to their sides ; a number of them took the places of those in the midst, and the circling dance was resumed, ceasing, and then be- ginning again, till all had taken part in both centre and periphery ; the lamps quivering on the walls, and the elastic floor, laid like that of a ball-room, responding to the tread of the dancers. When they went back to their seats, one woman remained standing, and began to pro- phesy in tongues. A solemn silence followed upon her ceasing, and then Brother Elihu rose, and said briefly that a friend from the woi-ld outside had a statement to 136 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. li.i make to the family, in the belief that he had arrived at central truths relating to spiritualism. He claimed to have been operating in a certain direction, with results as striking es they w^ere unexpected. EliLu reminded them that as Shakers they had not been able to maintain a cordial sympathy with sfdritualists in the world out- side, who had too often abused to love of gain and the gratitioation of their pride and vanity the principle of spiritual communion originally revealed to Shakers. Yet they could not in reason refuse to hear the statement of this friend, who had, as it were, been providentially cast in their way, and who was apparently not unmoved by considerations of personal glory and profit, but who, from all h-^ "^aid, had the wisii to remand the science into the keepiii.. '^ Shakers, and to pursue his own investigations under ciicv auspices. Elihu spoke with neatness and point; he ad(Vd some cautionary phrases against too nasty judgment of the facts about to be offered them, and warned them to beware of self-deception and the illusions arising from love of the marvellous, whether in their own hearts or the hearts of others. Boynton could scarcely wait for him to have done. " I thank the brother," he said, in rising, " for admonish- ing us to beware of self-deception ; it is an evil which in an inquiry like this would prove fatal, — which does prove fatal wherever it mingles with religious impulse ; it poisons, it palsies, religious impulse. I have always guarded against it with anxious care, and, though some- times abused by the deceit of others, I have at least no cause to accuse nr»yself of want of vigilance concerning my own impressions. I regarded with sceptical scrutiny the first developments of spiritualism. I had been bred in the strictest sect of the Calvinists, from which I had revolted to the opposite extreme of infidelity ; I was a materialist, believing in nothing that I could not see, hear, touch, or taste. I rejected the notion of a Supi'eme Being ; I derided the hypothesis of immortality. The interest THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTKY. 137 rrived at aimed to 'h results reminded maintain >rM out- and the icipJe of rs. Yet ment of i^Jy cast )ved by »o, from nto the gations >ss and 1st too them, nd the 'her in done, onish- ich in prove e; it 'ways Jome- st no 'ning itiny bred had as a lear, rest which I had taken in mesmerism only intensified my contempt for the whole order of miracles, in all ages. I saw the effect of mind upon mind, of mind upon matter ; but I saw that it was always the effect of earthly intellect upon earthly substance. I accounted even for the won- dera performed by Christ and the Apostles by mesmerism, acting now upon the subjects of their cures and resuscita- tions, and now upon the imaginations of the spectators. "When the new phenomena were forced upon my attention by their prevalence in so many widely-separated places, under so many wideJy-differing conditions, 1 began to study them as the effect of mind upon inanimate matter. I did not suffer m;,self to suppose a spiritual origin for these phenomena, for I would not suppose spirits. I imported into this fresh field of research the strict and hard methods with which I had wrought in the old. " My wife died during the infancy of the daughter who is here with me now, the involuntary guest of your hos- pitality, and her death was attended by occurrences of a nature so tangible, so mysterious, so sacred, that J do not know how to shape them in words, but regarding which I may safely appeal to your own spiritual experience. In the moment of her passing I was aware of something, as of an incorporeal presence, a disembodied life, and in that moment I believed ! I accepted the heritage which she had bequeathed to me with her breath, and I dedi- cated the child to the study of truth under the new light I had received. " That child has been my mesmeric subject almost from her birth, and all my endea^'^ours have latterly been to her development as a medium of communication with the other world. She was naturally a child of gay and sunny temperament, loving the sports of children, and fond of simple, earthly pleasures. She showed great aptness for study, — she liked books and school; and the ordinary observer would have pronounced her a hopeless subject 138 ™EjraDISCOVEBED COUNTRY. event proved thTu^ls rTJT^^ "^ '" another S embodied spirits showedT reml?.', '™S *« «-t, d'.! and the demonstration« ih^ ^emarkabJe aihnity for Hp^o Med a^Snstl^y'f r ,t™a"d''r^''' ^heTffe'o tt^T periods of revolt by thote w'b" .* '"'"' ^''^''^d in tho'e and dearest to her.^ But i^Jh; 'T "y^«»' ^^'-^ neare t tnumphed,for she loved me J^.^ !?^ '"''"«»<=« aWs wJuch her mother seemed tTimmrf *\*«"<3er affectio^n of her own life. I ng^.,. '° 'fPaf' '» her with the ffift vain, and I have seen her T"l '" *•>'* affection^ „ bust, terrestrial tendencie oaT" ^"'"J * <=«**•"■« ""ro" cthere.,1 as those of the sp rfts t,>t \''-^".°°''^ *'■"<>«' i struggle to associate her.^ '^^ ''^'"^ '' had been my but formy^ot^l^:LtriLt"b^ *•>« ««» wen, and away completely. The eondtfr^'' -^ """«* have given were all unfavourable I wni"' T'*' ^^ch we! ved « ory of my own misfortunes Bv'Ji «?'«?, ."Pon the long of the prevailing bi-^otrv^nkr^ "® insidious operation undermined; I ifst Sy ^raS^" T^'^""' in^mew™ Peudence upon her kinLd vvl^ ' ^ "^''^ "^uced to d^ _antagonists,Vd who Sted hJ"'"' *^ bitterest o? my P«^er, my p„^^^ ^ ^'^^^ by every means in their attempting her development fr, Z ^"^^^ ^''"^ 'bem, and I prevailed, as I alwavr^i m'^'*'' "'"'""'Stances But appeal to her affect r.^Vecrme*^ "^'^ ^ «ade a fin^ a career, distasteful to us both „f "^t^.*"'-" «"'«'-ed upon first we met with great ,„.„' ? ?"''"<= exhibitors At we visited and I ^^ 'i^Sd Z ?' '"'^" Pla<^ "whifh THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 139 it if spirit ' a nature the same ^rst, dis- for hers, ^definite, -ned and o escape uaJIy re- in those nearest always 'ffection the gift tion in 5 of ro- nost as sen tny li, and given > iived 3 long 'ation B was o de- f my their and But final ipon At lich b in al- most at the outset, we encountered an influence, an en- mity, embodied in a certain individual, against which we were almost powerless. To this antagonism was added the paralyzing effect of fraud on the part of a medium who assisted at our principal stance! " I saw, upon reflection, that we could not hope to suc- ceed in the atmosphere of a mercenary, professional mediumism ; and I determined to retire again to our vil- lage, and lay once more, however painfully or slowly, the foundations of our experiment. I dreamed of forming about me a community of kindred spirits, in which our work should be done unhindered by the eelfish hope of gain, and I armed myself with patience for years of trial and discouragement. " Brother Elihu will tell you how chance brought us together in the depot at Boston, and again at Ayer Junc- tion ; and I will not detain you with the history of the seeming disasters which have ended in our presence among the only people who havj conceived of spiritism as a science, and practised it as a religion. The mistake of a train going southward, for a train going northward, made us houseless and penniless wanderers ; the cruel rapacity of a ruflftan, crowned our suflferings with a triumph sur- passing my wildest hopes." Dr. Boynton entered upon a circumstantial account of the strange occurrences at the Elm Tavern, and painted every detail with a vividness which had its eflf'ect upon his hearers. At the close, one of the sisters struck into a rapturous hymn, in which the others joined. He re- mained standing while they sang, and when their voices died away, he continued in a low and grave tone : — " What I wish now is simply to be received among you without prejudice, and to be allowed to carry out my plan with the powerful help of your sympathetic and intelli- gent sphere. I do not ask to be received out of charity : I am a physician, and I offer you my professional services at ^eed ; I have strong arms, and I am willing to work 140 TBE UNDISCOVERED COlTNTRy. here T o!l • ? *^® sacrifice of splf / *^"^^ ^^^^^ any ward, said "tL Vu ^ ?^ *^® eiders rose an^ « • friend for\ha?4 fcj:^:! *^« family Irf ' Z'^^ ^ hole: td''r T'' -'t°^ disJe^Tt'TK^-'^'^'^^^^^^ found sZ,F°^"'°» ^«)ked aC to th° •"'„*"• ''celling. .„j . lister Frances wifh l,;. j ■ '°® mfirmarv W« "nd w a %h fever. '^ *"' ^''Shter, who was^akeS] THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 141 ^^ here in Wake any continue T my in. I at once, fjfirmary, as she is •rid shall »ng for- to the tnissed." veiling. y. He ^^akeful CHAPTER XIII. Her father watched over Egeria in her sickness with the mechanical skilfulness and the mental abstraction which the office sisters had seen in his treatment of her case from the first. He was at her bedside night and day while the danger lasted ; he prepared the medicines him- self and administered them with his own hand, and he waited their effect from hour to hour, almost from moment to moment, with anxious scrutiny. At the same time a second and more inward self in him remained at immeas- urable remoteness. " I never see such doctorin* or such nursin'," said Sister Frances, in her daily report at the office ; " but it don't seem, somehow, as if he did it for her. I should say — and perhaps I should say more'n I ought if I did say it — 't he wanted her to get well, but't he didn't want her to get well on her own account ; well, not in the first vlace. And still he's just as kind and good ! Well, it's perplexin'." " I can't see," said Rebecca, carefully, " as we've got any call to judge him, as long as he does his duty by her." " That's just where it is, Rebecca," answered Frances. " It does seem as if there was somethin' better than duty in this world. I d'know as there is, nor what it is ; but it does seem as if there might be." Boynton's efforts were bent not only to Egeria's escape from danger, but to her immunity from suffering, so far as he could avert it ; and to this end he often used his mesmeric power with what appeared good effect. The rending headache yielded to the mystical passes made above her throbbing temples, or over her eyes that trem- bled with the hot pain ; or perhaps it was only the touch ^f the physician's wise fingers that soothed them, and 142 THE UNWSCOVEBED COraTKr. cat fj. '^'' 'wondered at the s^lf " '\'' ^I'S^^^^t measure the fiS' S; ? wf'^.^f o'her, intensely- " but i. • . worth waitTngfor In/"' I" "«« P««ence. Tie en?-' t-'ted of it, tfeend 1'A wirP'^''''^ ^^ ^henCtl I am sure of the result n , ^"^ ?^ ^ "'« truth wilTtp^n "Yee"""Ti"- " "'" hedTnetntf;- , TCdid^^s'pTaLV't'"? -KLl;.^'^ ""^'^"- hat question shS the str*"" ? ""'o" ^ith the familv • Jem. to the solution of wSTh I" ''^'"^ ">« great S' ~ ,n his mind, wLTeft lufh"T!"^ ^««° ""'j a n the ennH"r""^>' ^'^e one of them ^ "'''^" ^'^ pC «Pr«.g,inthemeeChot '^Cvrf t.^^^^^ "nee, when asked to speak. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 143 he said briefly that for the present he had nothing to add to his first statement ; and during the marching und sing- ing he sat quietly in a corner, opposite a sister on the women's side, whose extreme stoutness had long excused her from dancing before the Lord. In the mean time he had treated several slight cases of sickness which occurred in the family ; and he had drawn all the teeth in the head of a young sister much tormented with toothache, and long emulous of the immunity enjoyed by most of the other sisters through their full sets of artificial teeth. Ho had also, in his moments of disoccupation, and during his watches beside Egeria, made a profound study of the his- tory and doctrine of Shakerism ; and he grew into general liking with the family at large, whose knowledge of his devotion to his daughter did not search motive so jealously or fantastically as that of Sister Frances, and who thought him a marvel of vigilance and skill. April had passed, and May had worn away to its larit weeks before the girl could sit up in an easy chair, and with pillowed head look out on the landscape. Some- times, after the favourable change in her fever began, she had asked, in the mellowing afterijoons, to have her win- dow opened to let in the rich, pungent odours of the burn- ing refuse of the gardens, — the last year's withered vines and stalks, which the boys had raked into large piles, and fired in the field below the infirmary. She could hear, from where she lay, the snap and crackle of the flames ; and once, when Sister Frances returned after a moment in which she had left the sick girl alone, she found that Egeria had dragged herself across the bed to where she could see the fire, upon which she was gloating with rap- ture. Frances spoke to her ; she replaced her pillow, and after a long look at the Shakeress she I., ke into tears. The watchers with her in these early day^ of her convale- scence always found her awake at dawn, when the robins and orioles and sparrows were weaving that fabric of song 144 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. which seems to rise everywhere from the earth to the low- hovering heaven. " It's like the singin' of spirits, ain't it ? " said one of the sisters who saw the transport with which she silently listened, her large eyes wide and her lips open. " No ! " cried the girl, almost fiercely. " It's like the singing of the birds at home." " Seemed as if she hated the spirits, as yo " 7ht say," the Shakeress commented to the office sisters, it was the first time that any of them had heard Egeria mention her former home, for even in the fever her ravings had been of experiences in Boston unintelligible to them. But they had all noted the passion with which, when her recovery began, she turned to the natrra.1 world. She asked for the wild flowers, and day by day demanded if it were not yet time for the anemones, the columbines, the dog-tooth violets. If the spring lingered, or at times turned back- ward, nothing could rouse her from the dejection into which she fell, till the sun began to shine and the birds began to sing again. It was felt in the family ^o be fool- ish, or worse, but none of the Shakers coulc* ne home through field or wood without staying to ^ .k some token of the season's advance for the sick girl, who was longing so restlessly to go out and find the summer for herself. Her bed was decked with boughs of wilding bloom ; on the shelves and window sills the sylvan and campestral flowers gave their delicate colours and faint fragrances in whatever prim jug or sober vase the com- munity could spare from its service. Something, surely, must be wrong about all this ministering to a love that might be said to savour of earthly vanities, but the most anxious of the nun-like sisters could not determine upon the sin ; and while they wondered in just what sort they should deal with the elusive evil, a visiting brother from another community arrived to pronounce it no evil, but an instinct, wholesome as the harmless things themselves. Upon this one of them brought and laid at Egeria's bed- THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTUY. 145 side a rug which she had worked with the pattern of a grape-vine, and which for five year.s she had kept fear- I'llly hidden away in her closet, from compunction lor its likeness to a graven image. Egeria went out on the 20th of May, that signal date when the spring, whatever lier previous reluctances, brings up all arrears with the api)le-blossoms. The season is then no longer late or early, but is the consummate spring ; and all weather-wise hopes and fears are lost in the rich- ness with which she keeps the promise of her name. It might well have seemed to the girl's impatience as she watched the orchard trees, sometimes from her closed window and sometimes from her open door, as the day was chill or soft, that the blossoms would never come ; and even when every tip of the mossed and twisted boughs was lit with the pink glimmer of a bud, and the trees* whole round was suffused with a tender flush of colour, that the delicate petals of rose and snow would never unfold. The orioles and the bobolinks sung from the airy tops, and from the clover in the grassy alleys between the trees ; in a neighbouring field the oats were already high enough to brighten and djwken in the wind. The canes of the blackberries and raspberries in the garden were tufted with dark green, and beyond the broad leaves of the pie-plant and the neat lines of sprouting peas, the grape-vines on Elder Joseph's trellis were set thick with short, velvety leaves of pinkish-olive, when suddenly, in a warm night, the delaying buds unfolded, and in the morn- ing the apple-blossoms had come. " I am going out under them," the girl said, when she saw them, and she set a resolute face against the fond anxieties of Sister Frances. Her father came and ap- proved her wish. " It won't hurt her ; it will do her good," he said, with that somewhat propitiatory acquiescence with which he now indulged his daughter's whims. So, when the morn- ing was well warmed through, as Sister Frances said, they I 1 146 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. Spread some sad-coloured wraps on the grass m the orchard, where the mingled wind and sun could reach her through the blossoms. She walked a little tremulously, cli iging to her father's arm, but a light of perfect happiness played over her faintly flushing face as she sank upon the couch. From where she lounged she could look across the gardened intervale, declining from the street on which the hamlet was built, i>o the elms and sycamores that fringed the river-course, and beyond to other uplands, where the grey farmsteads dimly showed among the fields, and the white houses of villages clustered and sparkled in the sun. An unspeakable serenity filled the scene ; and around her the little Shaker town was a part of the wide peace. There was seldom a passer on the sandy thoroughfare, now printed with the delicate shadows of the new maple leaves, and the stillness was unbroken by any sound of human life. The Shakers and tnelr hired men were at work in the garden and the fields, but they worked quietly ; and the shops in which there was once the clinking of ham- mers on lap-stone and anvil had been hushed long ago by the cheaper industries of the world outside. At the doors of the great family houses of brick a Sha- ker sister in strict drab and deep bonnet from time to time issued or entered silently. Nothing but the cat-bird twanging in the elder-bushes, and the bobolinks climbing iu the sunlit air, to reel and slide down, gurgling and laughing, to the clover tufts from which they rose, broke upon the mellow diapason of the bees in the apple-blos- soms overhead. Where she lay, propped on her arm, with her father seated beside her, some of the brothers and sisters came out of their way from time to time, to wel- come her out-doors, and to warn her not to stay too long. Some rumour of her longing to be in the weather, and of her passion for the blossoms and the birds amongst which she was blessed at last, had penetrated the whole commu- nity, and many who did not come to speak to her looked out unseen from their windows upon her happiness, which THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 147 they might have found somewhat too earthly, in spite of the ideas lately promulgated by the visiting brother. With her blue eyes dreamily untroubled, she looked like some sylvan creature, a part of the young terrestrial life that shone and sang and bloomed around her; while flashes of light and colour momentarily repaired the waste that sickness had made in her beauty. A sense of her exquisite harmony with the great natural frame of things may have penetrated the well-defended consciousness of Elder Joseph, as he paused near her on his way home to dinner ; but if it did, it failed to grieve him. He looked indulgently down at her; by an obscure impulse he gathered some of the richest sprays from the branches at hand, and dropped them into her lap. "It seems right," he said, "to be getting well in the spring, when everything is taking a fresh start. I like to see the young woman looking so happy. " He addressed the doctor as well as Egeria, but it was she who answered. " Yes ; it wouldn't seem the same thing if it were fall. If it had been fall I should not have got well ; I should not have cared to get well. " " Nay, " replied the Shaker : " if it is for us to choose, we are to choose to get well at all times. " " I mean," said the girl, " that I could not have chosen." " You can't tell, " observed her father. " Most fevers are autumnal, and convalescents are braced up by the ap- proach of cold weather. " " Yes, " she rejoined, " but now I seem to be stronger because my getting well is part of the spring. " " Our sympathetic relations with nature are subtle and strong, " consented Boynton. " No one can tell just how much influence they have over our physical condition. " Egeria silently gazed upon the prospect. " It's sightly, isn't it ? " asked the Shaker. " I have looked at it, now, for fifty spring-times, and it is as pretty as when it was first revealed to me. " Boynton started, and repeated, " Revealed ? " 148 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. " Oh, yee, " returned the elder, " I first saw this place in a vision. It was when I was a young man, and several years before I was gathered in from the world outside. When I came here, I remembered the place and the per- sons I had seen in my vision, and I knew them all. Then I knew that it was meant, and I stayed. " " Is it possible ! " cried Boynton. " That was very ex- traordinary. Have you had other psychological experi- ences ? " " Nay, " said Brother J>jseph, briefly. " But they are common among - : ? " pursued Boynton, " Oh. yee, we have all had somt .uch intimations. Have you never read Elder Evans's account of his dealings with the supernatural ? " " No, never ! " cried Boynton, with intensifying interest. " I will lend you the book. He tells some strange things. But we do not follow up such experiences. They serve their purpose, and that is enough. We try to live the angelic life. That will bring what is good in the su- pernatural to us, and we need not go to it. " "I think you make a mistake ! " said Boynton, promptly. " These intimations are given expressly to invite pui uit. That is what miracles are for. " " Nay, " returned the Shaker. " They are no miracles, if you follow them up to see them a second time. We must beware how we make the supernatural a common- place. None of the disciples knew exactly who Christ wf! 3 till he was taken from them ; and he has only ap- peared since to one Doubter out of all the millions that have longed to believe on him. There is something in that. The other world cannot come twice to prove itself. Once is enough in miracles. " " Then you disapprove of spiritistic research ? " de- manded Boynton. " You condemn the desire to develop the dim hints of immortality which we all think we have received into certain and absolute demonstration ? " " Nay, I do not condemn any earnest striving for the truth, under proper conditions." THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 149 " I hope to find these conditions among you, " Boynton hastened to say. " We shall be happy to afford them, " said the Shaker, smoothly, " if we can agree upon what they are. But it is right to say that we consider Shakerism the end and not the means of spiritualism. " He passed on down the or- chard aisle, tlie sunlight falling upon his quaint figure through the apple-blossoms. Boynton's eyes followed him, but it was some time be- fore he spoke. " After all, " he said, as if musing aloud, " he is not one of the controlling forces of the commun- ity. " He spoke with a certain effect of arming himself against opposition. " You had better come in, now, Egeria. It won't do for you to take cold. " " Yes, ])retty soon. I don't wonder that they think they 're living an angelic life. " " Why ? " asked her father, sharply. " It 's like heaven upon earth here. " This vexed her father. " Yes, like heaven now, with the apples in bloom and the birds singing. But how much like heaven would it be with three feet of snow where you are lying ? " " Yes, let us go in. I had better not stay too long." She rose as if saddened by his words, and suffered herself to be helped back to the infirmary. " The Swedenborgians. " said her father, in reparation, " believe that in the other world winter is absorbed into the other seasons, and that the whole year is a sort of spring-time. " " Ah !" breathed the girl. " But I didn't mean spring. I should want the whole year to be summer, and I should want it to be in this world. I should like a heaven upon earth." Her father looked closely at her. *' This materialistic tendency is a trait of your convalescence. People are never so earthly as when they are recovering from a dan- gerous sickness. There is a kind of revolt from the world 150 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. whose borders they have touched, — a rebound. The senses are riotous to try their strength again." He said these things as if accounting to himself for a fact, rather than explaining her condition to Egeria. " Well, we have a right to our life here !" she cried, passionately. " Let the other world keep to itself!" He did not answer her directly, and at other times he avoided encounter with anything like opposition in her. She would not stay in-doors after she once liberated her- self. The spring came on rapidly and brought the hot weather before its time ; but she throve in the heat. Be- fore she was strong enough to walk much the Shakers appointed for her use an open buggy, garrulous and plain- tive with age, and an old horse past his usefulness at the plough, but very fit for lounging along by-roads, and skilled in cropping wayside foliage as he went. With her father beside her in his Shaker dress, while she wore a worldlier garb, which she had beguiled her convalescence in fashion- ing from materials supplied by the family dress-maker, she took the passers on the quiet roads with question and wonder. But they met few people, for they drove mostly over the grass-grown lanes that entered the forest, and the track oftener died away in the thickening vegetation than led any whither. Sometimes it arrived at a clearing deep in the woods, and accounted for itself as the way over which the teams had hauled wood in the winter, or got out logs. In other places it was a fading reminiscence of former population and led through the trees and thick undergrowth to the site of a vanished dwelling ; a few apple-trees emerged from the ranks of their sylvan brethren ; a rose or currant bush stood revealed among the blueberries or the sweet-fern ; then the raw red and white of ruined masonry showed in the grass, and suddenly a cellar yawned before their feet, or they stepped over a well-curb choked with stones. Now and then they met lurking and evasive people on the lonesome roads, who were sometimes black, and who seldom seemed part of the THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 151 ordinary New England life. If they followed up the track on which these men had shambled towards them, they might come upon a poverty-stricken dwell ing of un- painted wood, which seemed never to have had heart to be a home. If they spoke to the slattern woman in the doorway, she was nasal enough, but otherwise the effect was as if some family of poor whites from the South had been dropped down in those Northern woods, with all its native environment of lounging dogs, half starved colts, and frightened poultry. Boynton philosophized the strange conditions as well as he could in the absence of any but obvious facts con- cerning them. When he stopped for a dipper of water at the well, from which he drew it with the old-fashioned sweep, and fell into talk with the women, they were voluble, but not very intelligible. They commonly took him for a Shaker, but Egeria gave them pause in their conjectures; and when he explained that he and his daughter were merely staying with the Shakers they said, WeU, the Shakers were good folks, anyway. There was sickness in some of these forlorn places, and once it hap- pened to the doctor to be able to afford relief in the case of a suffering child. He was very tender with it, and gentle with the parents, who looked as if they would still be young if they had any encouragement, and on a second visit they asked him what he charged. When he said, " Nothing," they followed him and Egeria out to their buggy in a sort of helpless gratitude. "Well, you've done our little girl good, doctor," the woman said on the doorstep, " and we sha'n't forget it. The trouble is we don't seem to get no ways forehanded." Boynton looked about him, as he took the reins in his hand, upon two or three other weather-beaten houses. " What place is this ?" he asked. " Well," said the woman, with sober apology, while her man grinned, " I d' know's you may say it has any name. Skunk's Misery, they call it." She showed her sense of 152 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. degradation in the brutal grotesquery. " Well, call again," she said, as the doctor lifted his reins and chirruped to the old horse. " And you, too, lady," she added, nodding to Egeria. "She kept her house in good order, for such a poor place," said the girl, when they had been watched out of sight by the man and his wife, " and the little girl's bed was sweet and clean. I should think they might be happy there." " In Skunk's Misery ?" asked her father. " If the house is their own," answered Egeria, simply. " They seemed good to each other." "Oh, you will change your mind when you're quite well again. You will want to see more of the world." " I wish we had a house of our own, somewhere," said Egeria. '* I shouldn't care where. I was thinking of that. I should like to keep house. I am going to get Frances to teach me everything. " That will all come in good time," answered her father, soothingly. " And it will come with higher things. Only now get well." " What higher things ?" demanded the girl. Boynton looked at her,and answered, evasively, " Things we couldn't very well find in Skunk's Misery. Perhaps we shall go abroad. Would you like to go to Europe ?" " I would rather go home." Boynton frowned, but did not answer ; and they had escaped encounter for that time, at least. As Egeria grew stronger they gave up their drives somewhat, and took walks in the nearer woods. Oftenest their errand was to gather laurel, which was now coming richly into bloom. It filled the open spaces of the sweet clearings and wherever the woods were thin ; it hid the stumps and consoled the poor, sterile soil with the starry- profusion of its flower. One afternoon, when they had climbed to the hill-top where the Shakers of earlier times lay in their nameless graves, they looked out over the THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 153 masses of the laurel, and it was like a second blooming of the orchards. Egeria sat down on one of the fallen stones, without knowing that it covered a grave, and began put- ting her boughs of laurel into shape, choosing this and re- jecting that, while her father went about among the for- getful tombs. *' I am glad we came here," he said, returning to her, " for I should not have liked to miss seeing their grave- yard." " Their grave-yard ? " she repeated. " Yes ; this is the old Shaker burial-ground." She looked round. " I didn't know it," she sighed like one following out some tacit thought. " Well, what dif- ference would it make if they had put their names on ? They rest as well without it. And if they had put their names, who could remember who they were in fifty years from now ? " " They know one another in the other world just as well, without the record here," consented her father. " And it isn't here that we are to be remembered, at any rate." " T wish it were ! " said the girl, with passion, dropping her flowers into her lap. " I like this world, and I like to be in it. I wish we didn't have to die." " Death is the condition of our advancement," said her father. " But I would rather not advance," said Egeria. " I almost wish I had been born an animal. I should have had to die, but I should not have known it, and there would have been nothing of me to come back ! " She went on putting together her boughs of laurel, and she wore that look of being remote within her defences which a woman knows how to assume no less with her father than with her lover. She then adventurously throws out thoughts and opinions, as if they had just casually oc- curred to her, which she has perhaps reached after long, secret cogitation or sensation, or which are perhaps really what they seem. I I 154 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. " Why shouldn't you wish to come back, ages hence, and see what advance the world has made ? " rejoined her father, after a pause. " I should be afraid that I hadn't kept up with it," answered Egeria. " The spirits that come back say such silly things." " That is a childish way of looking at it," said her father with severity. " We have no more right to accuse them of silliness than we have to laugh at the foreigner who can express only the simplest things in English. The medium of thought must be so different in the two conditions of being that the wonder is that returning spirits can understand and use our dialects at all." " I don't see why they should forget their own language, if they're the same persons there that they were here," Egeria returned, stubbornly. " Yes," she cried, " I would rather be here under the ground forever than be like some of the spirits ! Oh, I should like to live always, too ; but I don't call that living. I should like to live here in this world, — on the earth." " Would you like to live always among the Shakers ? " asked her father, willing to turn the current of her thoughts. ' Thej' try all the time to make the other world of this world!" " Perhaps that's the only condition on which they find happiness in this world." " Perhaps. But I don't believe so. We were not born into the other world. The Shakers are very good, and they have been kind to us. Yes, I could be contented among them. Are you going to stay with them, father ? " " I don't know," replied Boynton. " The time hasn't come to decide, yet. I have been waiting. There is no hurry. I don't feel that we are here on charity, quite. I am able to render some equivalent." THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 155 " Yes," said Egeria, " and I am going to work as soon as they will let me. I know they would like to have us stay and join them." " That was originally my idea. I still propose to do so, if I find them useful. Everything depends" — He stopped uneasily, and glanced at Egeria, but she showed no uneasiness. X > <. ■ I III 150 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. CHAPTER XIV. While their place in the community was thus indefi- nite, they dwelt with the brothers and sisters who liad first received them in the office. Egeria helped the sisters in their work there, and they all liked to have her about them, though it was tacitly agreed that she belonged chiefly to Sister Frances, with whom she served, making the beds, wiping the dishes, and putting the rooms in order, while Diantha and Rebecca devoted themselves to the more public duties of the place. As she grew stronger she would not be kept from taking her share in the family work. Frances forbade her helping in the laundry, where one of the brothers, vague through wreaths of steam from the deep boilers, presided over a company of sisters and boys, and afterwards marshalled them in hanging out the community wash ; this, she held, involved dangers of rheumatism and relapse ; but she allowed her to find a place in the herb-house, where a score of the young Shakeresses, seated on the floor of the wide, low room, before fragrant heaps of catnip, boneset, and lobelia, sorted and cl aned these simples for the brothers in the packing-room below. " That is sort of being out-doors," said Sister Frances, with a sly allusion to the girl's well- known passion. Indeed, Egeria's chief usefulness ap- peared when the first wild berries came. Her father no longer accompanied her, for he found the heat too great a burden. The women went, five or six in a waggon, with one of the brothers, who drove, to the berry pasture, a mile or two away, and they sang their shrill hymns while passing through the pine woods, that gave out a balsamic sweetness in the sun. At the verge of a westward-sloping valley was a stretch of many hundred acres, swept by a THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 157 forest fire a few years before, and now rank with the vef'etation which the havoc had enriched. Blueberries and huckleberries, raspberries and blackberries, battened upon the ashes of the pine and oak and chestnut, and nourished round the charred stumps ; the strawberry matted the blackened ground, and ran to the border of the woods, where, among tlie thin grass, it lifted its fruit on taller sterns, and swung its clusters in the airs that drew through the alleys of the forest. Here and there were the shanties of Canadian wood-cutters, whom the Shakers had sent to save what fuel they might from the general loss, and whom, at noonday, the pickers came upon, as they sat in pairs at their doors, with a can of milk between them, dusky, furtive, and intent as animals. From the first of the strawberries to the last of the black- berries, the birds and chipmucks feasted, and only stirred in short flights when the young Shakeresses, shy as them- selves, invaded their banquet. " Why, Egery," said one of them, the first day, " you empty your basket faster than any of us, and you said you never picked before. How do you always find such full vines ? I do believe it's because they know you love to pick 'em so, and they just give you a little wink." " Yes," she answered absently, like one entranced by the rich influences of the time and scene. She drank of the vitality of the earth and air and sun, and day by day the potion showed its eftect in the serenity of her estab- lished health. " Oh, nothing in the weather hurts her',' said the girl who had surprised her secret understanding with the berries. " She keeps on with the birds and squirrels when the heat drives us off, and if it comes on to rain it runs off" her as if she was a chipmuck or a robin ; and next morning, when I'm as full of aches and pains as I can hold, she's all ready to begin again." " Yee, that's so, Elizabeth," said the others, who laughed at this. 158 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. In their way they mingled what jollity they could in their work, and were sometimes demurely freakish in the depths of their poke-bonnets and under the wide brims of their hats. Certain of the elder brethren and sisters had their repute for humour, and made their quaint jokes without a bad conscience ; while the younger played little pranks upon one another, with those gigglings and thrusts and pushes which accompany the expression of rustic drollery, and were not severely rebuked. Egeria did not take part in their jocularities; but it was another joke of the young Shakers and Shakeresses, kept children beyond their time and apt to allege children's excuses when called to account, to say, "She made us do it — she looked so ! " They all liked her, and in spite of the secular fashion of her dress, to which she still clung, they treated her as if she were one of themselves, and were always to stay with them. Whatever may have been in their hearts, nothing in their manner betrayed surprise at the complete abeyance into which her supposed supernatural gifts had fallen. Perhaps, as people used to supernaturalism, to the caprice with which the other world uses this, they could be surprised at no lapse or access of. divination, in any given case. At any rate, they all seemed content with er robust return to life and health, and if they were im- patient for proof of the great things that her father had claimed for her, none of them showed impatience. There were certain other faculties as dorm?int in her as her psychological powers. Once, as she passed through the pine woods where Laban had first found her and her father, he leaned across Sister Frances, who sat between them on the waggon-seat, and asked, " Do you know this road ? " And when they came to that kn 11 bcftiue the brook he asked again, " Do you min^^ ' place ? " He laughed when she said no. " Well, . a t much \n ader. You didn't seem to be quite in your i.^ht ser ies. This is THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 169 the place where I came across you and your father that day K At another time, when a different course brought them home by the Elm Tavern, she dimly recalled the aspect of the house and asked what it was. " It seems as if I had seen it in a dream," she said. "Must ha* had the nightmare pretty bad," returned Laban. " It's a dreadful place." " Dreadful," repeated Sister Frances. '* But it's just so when you're coming down with a fit of sickness, especially fever. Everything seems in a dream, like." Sister Frances rejoiced like a mother in the girl's health, which came back to her in no ethereal quality, but in solid evidence, in colour and elasticity of step and touch. She had known her before the fever only in that brief interval in which all her faculties were invested by the disease ; and both the spiritual and material change wrought in her by convalescence might well have appear- ed greater than they were. She had seen her lie down a frail and fearful girl, deeply shadowed, as she fancied, by the memories of a troubled past ; and she had seen her rise up and grow, in sympathy with the reviving year, into a broad, tranquil summer of womanly ripeness and strength. To the homely mind of Sister Frances she was like the young maple which Brother Joseph had found in a sombre thicket of the woods, and had set out in the abundant sunshine of the village street before the office gate, where it had thriven in a single year out of all like- ness to itself. She admired this tree, and in telling Egeria of her fancy she gave her a pin-cushion she had shaped in its image on the stem of a broken kerosene lamp : it was faithful, even to the emery bag in a red peaK, like the first colour which the maple showed at top in autumn. When the garden berries began to ripen, the two often talked long together as they sat in the cool basement of the office, sorting them with Shaker consciousness, and 160 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. i m packing for market only boxes of honest fruit. Then the elder woman tried with maternal tenderness to draw nearer the life of this daughter of her care, in the fond hope that she might always keep her, and not lose her again to the world from which she had wandered. " You seem happy here, Egeria," she would say, timor- ously feeling her way toward what had already been talked of in the family ; and then, when the girl answered that she had never been so happy before, the sister's con- science gave her a check. It did not seem right to take advantage of Egeria's happiness among them to urge her to any step to which she was not moved by conviction. " You know," she resumed, *'■ that we wouldn't like any- thing better than to have you stay among us, — you and your father both. All the family's agreed about that. But it isn't for us to prevail without you feel a call to our life. What does your father say ? " " We have never talked much about it," said Egeria. " May be he is waiting for me to get well before he makes up his mind." ** Why, you look a great deal better than he does, now !" cried Sister Frances, bluntly. " I want you should both stay with us till he gets strong again. I don't think your father's over and above strong when he's well." "Well?" echoed the girl. "Don't you think he's well ? " " Yee," answered Sister Frances, " but nervous, worried, like. I suppose he hasn't had a chance yet to wear off the excitement of the world outside. You know 3 ou've had a good fit of sickness. We all say that whatever happened before you came here, it's dropped from you like a garment." " Yes, like a garment," responded Egeria, vaguely, let- ting her busy hands fall into her lap. Frances 1 00k her by the arm. " Don't you go and be anxious, new, at what I said about your father." tHE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 161 " Oh, no 1 " said Egeria, recalling hei*self , and settling to work again, " He's as well as anybody need be. Only you're so very well that anybody, to see you, would suppose you were the well one." " I was wondering," mused the girl aloud, " if he had anything to perplex him. Sister Frances," she asked presently, " did any letter come for me while I was sick ? " " Nay. Did you expect a letter ? " " No," said Egeria, " there couldn't have been any an- swer." She blushed, and fell into a reverie so profound that Frances, working alone at the berries, knew not how to bring back the talk to the point from which it had strayed. She was not a person of much native tact, and the community life did not cherish tact among the vir- tues, counting truth much better : but now Sister Frances attempted a strategic approach. " Sometimes," she said, "the young people who are ga- thered in have hopes in the world outside that make it hard for them to conform to the true life. And we wo- men, we all know what such hopes are. I was young, and the world looked very bright to me when I was ga- thered in." " You, Sister Frances ? You gathered in ? I thought you were brought up in the family from a child." " Nay, I was gathered in — when I was twenty." " When you were twenty ? And I am nineteen." " I came to the neighbourhood on a visit, and one Sun- day I went to a Shaker meeting, and I heard something said that made me think it was the true life. I used to be troubled about religion ; but I've had peace for many years. At first it was considerable of a cross, wondering whether I'd acted for the best. He'd never said anything to me, and I d' know as he ever would. But he might have. That was what kept preying on m^ mind, when- ever I got lonesome or doubtful about my choice. But I was helped to put it away. He's been here since — with K iiilji 162 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. her. That was the most of a cross of anything. At first, he didn't know me, so I don't suppose he ever did care, much. " Had you ever," said Egeria, in a sort of scare^ " done anything that could have made him think you cared ? " " Nay. I was too proud for chat." " But even if you had done such a thing — by a mistake, or by doing something you thought was right, and then you had been afraid he might take it differently — yon would have felt safe here." " Yee, I should have felt safe." Frances waited for Egeria to speak, but the girl was again silent. " I did hope," resumed the sister, " in those young and foolish days, that he might be gathered in too. Then we could lived in sight of each other. But it wa'n't to be, and 1 don't know as 't would been for the best. Any rate, ho got married. I've heard they live out in Illinoy, and't he's made out real well. And I'm at rest, here." " Sister Frances," said Egeria, " do you think my father looks sick ? " " Well, I declare, if you ain't thinkin' of that silly talk of mine, yet ! Anybody 'd look sick alongside of you. I only meant that he was a little more peaked." " Yes," responded the girl, with a sigh, " he doesn't look well." She watched him at dinner, that day, and saw that lie had a small and fastidious appetite, though the abundance of a Shaker garden was there to tempt him. " Are you feeling well, father ? " she asked, when they went out after tea for a little stroll. " You ate hardly anything at din- ner, and this evening you didn't touch your tea." " Yes," he answered quickly, with a touch of irritation, "I am well ; very well ; perfectly well. But the hot wea- ther is trying, and — and — " " And what ? " coaxed the girl. " Have yoir been think- ing about something that worries you ? Is there any- thing on your mind i " Tti£ UNDISCOVERED' COUNTRY. 1G3 doesn't look " No, no. Nothing. Have you ever noticed it before ? What has made you notice it ? " " I don't know. Sister Frances said she thought you didn't look as well as I do. That seemed strange." " You are looking very well, Egeria. I am glad to see you looking so well. This fund of physical strength ought to contribute — There is nothing that is ne- cessarily alien in it to — I am truly glad for your sake, my dear, that you are so well." They were walking down the sloping roadside from the otiice gate toward the clump of old willows in whose midst stood the spacious stone bowl, scooped out of the solid granite by some forgotten brother in former years, and now tenderly, darkly green inside and out, with a tint of cool mould. When they reached tlie bank beside the trough, he dropped wearily on the grass, but she remained standing, with her arms sunken before her, and her fingers intertwined, watching the soft ebullition of the spring in the centre of the bowl. Either she had not been aware of his approach to the matter of their tacit avoidance or she was mdifierent to it. A smile played upon her face as the bubble continually rounded itself without bfeaking upon the surface of the water ; in the mellow light of the remaining day she looked strong and very beautiful. Her hair was darker than be- fore her fever ; her eyes had lost their look of vigilance and apprehension, and softly burned in their gaze ; the sun and wind had enriched her fair Northern complexion with a tinge of the South. An artist or a poet of those who dream backward from fable might have figured her in his fancy as the Young Ceres : she looked so sweet and pure an essence of the harvest landscape, so earthly fair and good. Her father glanced at her uneasily, " I don't like my environment, here," he broke out. " I am conscious of ad- verse influences." She slowly lifted her eyes from the fountain, and looked 1G4 THE TJNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. ill at him with gravely smiling question, as if she had not quite understood. " You asked me just now," he resumed, "whether I had been thinking about any vexatious matter. Have you seen nothing here of late to vex me ? " " No," she answered with the same question, but with- out the smile. " Nothing in the attitude of these people ? " "Their attitude?" " I have tried to believe," he said vehemently, " that it was my fancy ; but I can't be mistaken. They regard me with distrust ; they have withdrawn from me the sympa- thy upon which I was placing all my hopes of success. No, no," he added, seeing her about to speak in refutation, " I am right. I feel it, I know it." " They seem kinder to me than ever," Egeria ventured. " They are kinder to you," returned her father. " They are distinguishing between us. They wish to keep yon and to cast me out." Egeria looked incredulous. " But how could they do that ? Nothing could separate us ! " " I am glad to hear you say that," said her father, husk- ily. " There have been times of late when I thought— when I was afraid — You have seemed indifferent." — "Father!" " I know that I wronged you." He turned his face, and they were both silent, till Egeria spoke. " If what you think is true, we must go away. Where will we go ? Shall we go home ? " " No, I can't go there. It's impossible." Egeria did not reply directly, but after awhile she said, " Father, do you ever think of Mr. Hatch ? " " No. Why should I think of him ? " " He lent us money, and he expected to find us at home when he got back." " His loan could scarcely have paid the debt he was un* THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 165 lile she said, der to me. I regarded it in that light, and so did he. We had no obligation to be where he expected to find us." " No ; but if he went there, and didn't find us, it would make grandfather very anxious." " I'm not obliged to preserve your grandfather from anxiety. He hasn't known our movements since we left lioine. But I do care for Mr. Hatch. I will write him where we are. Where was he going ?" Eo'cria turned a little white. ** I — I don't know," she faltered. " I can't rer.iember. Wait ! Yes — he gave me his address, and I — I can't think what I did with it." " Perhaps you put it in your bag with the money." " Yes — 1 did. I put it in my bag. It's gone. Every- thing about that time seems so dim, so " — " It's no matter ; not the least," said her father. " He probably hasn't returned to the East. When he does, he can readily find us out." Egeria looked grieved and trou- bled, but he hurried on to say, " The great question is how to bring about the results — the important results — for which I came here. I will not be driven from conditions which I thought so favourable, without an effort. Their leading men may turn against me if they choose ; it is their peril and their loss ; but the gre^t mass of the com- munity will be with me in any collision." " Why, "/hat makes you think there is a feeling against you, fatlier, in any of them ? " " Do you remember that day in the orchard when you first went out ? Joseph and I had some words, in which he showed plainly what had been fermenting in his mind, when he intimated the subordination of spiritualism to Shakerism. I understood his drift, though at the time I said nothing. Afterward the matter dropped; but within a few days I have been made to feel very distinctly a sphere of opposition. They think, the leading men, that my utilization of their conditions will undermine their whole system. And so it will, Their system is unnatur- ally and lidiculously mistaken ; next after their spiritual- 1 m il il f" IQif THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. ism, their communism is the only thing about them that is fit to survive. Their angelic life, as they call it, is an ab- surd delusion, the dream of a sick woman." *' Oh, I hope you won't do anything to break up their life ! " cried the girl, in simple trust of his power. " They have been so good to us." " Their system may remain, for all me," returned her father. " Even in riding down the opposition to nie J shall be careful of their rights. Egeria," he said, " you must have observed that during your long convalescence I have spared you all discussion of this matter ? " " Yes," she admitted, apprehensively. **I noticed that it seemed to irritate you, — to cost you an effort of mind and of will, which I was unwilling to tax you with till you had regained your full strength. The delay has been very irksome to me. I felt that we were losing precious time — that we were being placed in a false position ; the waiting has worn upon me, as you see." He looked even haggard in the coming twilight. He had lost flesh, and two loose cords hung where his double chin had been. " The question now is whether you will be ready when I call upon you for the test which I am impatient to make." Egeria sank down upon the bank not far from him, and pulled weakly at a tuft of grass. " I was in hopes," she said sadly, " that you had given it up, father." " Given it up ! " he cried in amaze. " Why couldn't we wait ? " she asked. "Wait? Till when?" " Till we are dead. Then we shall know whether theie is any truth in it at all. It will be only a little while at the longest." " A little while ! " exclaimed the doctor indignantly. " We may live to be a hundred ! There are people in those houses yonder," — he indicated the dormitories with a wave of his hand, — "who have had everything to kill thejn in their prime ; who came here Avith the women THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 167 who were to be their wives, or who have left husband and children and home to embrace this asceticism ; who for scores of years have had the memories of those to brood upon in their withered hearts ; wo can't wait for death. We have a right to know the truth from life." They had so often talked of this deep concern as know- lodge to be acquired that prob.ably neither of them found anything grotesque or terrible in this phase of the dis- cussion. Egeria now only urged vaguely, " We have the Bible." " Yes," rejoined her father, bitterly, " the Bible ! the book with which they try to crush our hopes ! the record, permeated and saturated with spiritualism from Genesis to Revelation, by which they pretend to disprove and for- bid spiritualism ! Shall one revelation suffice for all time ? Shall we know nothing of the grand and hopeful changes which must have taken place in the world of spirits, as in this world, (^uring the last eighteen hundred years ? Are we less worthy of communion with supernal essences than those semi-barbarous Jews ? Let us beware how we refuse the light of our day, because the light of the past still shines. Shines ? Flickers ! In many it is extinct. How shall faith and hope be rekindled ? Egeria, you must not try to argue with me on this point. You must submit yourself and your power implicitly to me. Will you do so ? " " I don't know what you mean by my power. I have no power." " You have power, if you think you have. What I ask is that you will not oppose your will to mine." " I will not oppose you," she answered in a low voice. A gush of tears blinded her, and dimmed the beautiful world. " You know how I have always hated this, father —ever since I was old enough to think about it. A thing that seemed to be and seemed not to be, — it scared me ! And when it all stopped I thought you wouldn't want 16S THE UNDISCOVEKEP COUNTRY. to begin it again, me. But I will try to do whatever you ask " I can't understand your repugnance," said her father. " If this power of yours should bring you face to face with your mother" — " I never saw her, — I should not know her ; and she would not know me for the little baby she left ! " cried the girl desperately. " Besides, I can wait to go to her. And she can wait, too. I don't believe she would ever come. What good does it all do ? Oh, it's dreadful to me!" " The time has been, Egeria," rejoined her father, "when your attitude would have discouraged me. Now, it only gives me pain, I am convinced that your own opinions and ideas of the matter are of no consequence to the agen- cies operating through you. All that I ask of you is that you yield yourself passively to my influence. Will you do this?" ■ "Oh, yes, I will do all that I can. Oh, I wish I had died in the fever ! " " You talk childishly," said her father. " How do you know that death would have released you from your obli- gations to this cause ? It may be your office in the next world, as it is in this, to be the medium of commuh ca- tion between embodied and disembodied spirits." " Then I hope there won't be any other world." Her father looked angrily at her as she rose and stood beside the rustic fountain. One of the Shaker boys, un- couth in his wide straw hat and misshapen trowsers, came by with some cows from pasture, and they stopped to drink from the great stone bowl. The voices of bathers in the river half a mile away floated sad across the inter- vening space of meadow land. The air was so heavy with dew that the rumble of a distant railroad train was as clear as if near at hand in the valley which the sound of the steam-whistle seldom visited. As Egeria and her father walked back to the office the crickets thrilled along THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 109 the path. The smell of the prosperous gardens beyond tlio wall came to them, and mingled with the thick, sweet scent of the milkweed by the wayside. There was a little group before the office door. At the foot of the steps stood Humphrey, and with him Joseph anJElihu; Diantha and Rachel were seen within the dooi* way, and Frances sat on the threshold. They were talking earnestly ; at sight of the doctor and Egeria they lowered their voices, and as they drew near they ceased speaking altogether, with the consciousness of sincere peo- ple interrupted by those of whom the}'^ have been speak- ino". At the same time Sister Frances made room upon the step, and beckoned to Egeria with more than her usual fondness, — with a sort of tender reparation and de- fiance. The girl took the place, and her father remained standing with the other men. It plainly cost Elihu an effort to break the silence, but h3 said, after a moment, " Have you seen the account of the exposure of that materialization medium out in St. Louis ? " " No," said the doctor ; " but nothing of that sort sur- prises me. It is too soon yet for successful materializa- tions, and all attempts at it are mixed with imposture." " There's quite a long account," rejoined Elihu, " in yesterday's Tribune." He made a movement to take the paper out of his breast pocket. " I don't care to see it," said the doctor ab- ruptly ; " I can very well imagine it. Those things are sickening. Some wretched creature — a woman, I suppose — trying to eke out her gift by cheating, to get her bread. It rests with you Shakers to rescue this precious oppor- tunity from infamy. But you must take hold of it in no half-hearted way." " What do you mean ? " asked Elihu. " You have the conditions here of perfect success, as I heard you boast when I first saw you in the Fitchburg depot at Boston. You are released from all thought of the 170 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. ^!ili liii : ! morrow ; the spectre of want that pursues other men docs not dog your steps ; you have neither wife nor husband nor child to cling about your hearts and weaken your will to serve the truth with absolute fidelity. Your dis- cipline has rescued you from the vanity of making men wonder. There is nothing to prevent you from doveloi)- ing a pei"fect mediumship amongst you." " You imply," rejoined Elihu, with warmth, " that uo have failed of our duty in this respect. You don't sconi . to realize that our very existence is a witness to tlie truth of an open relation between the spiritual and the material worlds. As a people we had birth in the inspired visions of Ann ; the very hymn we sang yesterday was breathed through our lips by angelic authority ; the tradi- tion of prophecy has never been broken with us. We gave spiritualism to the world." " Yes, you gave spiritualism to the world," retorted Boynton, "to mock its hopes and baffle its aspirations and corrupt its life. You flung it out a flaming brand, to Ijc blown upon by cupidity and lust and ambition, till its heavenly light turned to an infernal fire, while you re- mained lapped in your secure prosperity, counting your gains ; adding acre to acre, beef to beef, sheep to sheep ; living the lives of clowns aud peasants on week days, and on the Sabbath dancing before the Lord, for the amuse- ment of the idlers who come to your church as they go to a circus." " Friend," interrupted Elihu warningly, " you are abusing our patience!" The other Shakers looked shocked and alarmed, and Egeria rose to her feet. " I mean to abuse your patience. I mean to sting you into life. I mean to make you think of your heavenly origin, and realize how unworthy you have grown. You have subordinated your spiritualism to your Shakerism"— " Spiritualism was never anything but a means to Shakerism," angrily retorted Elihu, THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 171 " I would make it the end of Shakerism. How has it profited you as a means ? " demanded Boynton. " It has made us what we are. It gave us a discipline and a rule of life, because it descended, unasked, from heaven. But your secular spiritualism which you want to have us take up, and which has continued through solicita- tion and entreaty, has given you no code of morality. It has been a vain show, makiiig men worse and not better, and tempting them to all manner of lies. And you wish us to take it up at the point to which the world has brought it ? Nay ! You wish us to subordinate the angelic life, and the good that has crowned it, to the mere dead means ? Nay ! To value the staff by which we have climbed, and not the height we have reached? Nay! prove first that in your hands it has not become a stock to conjure with, — to be cast on the ground and turned into a serpent for a wonder before Pharaoh and a confu- sion of true prophecy, — and then we will take it up agam The men's faces had grown red, and they approaclied each other angrily. " You have deceived me !" cried Boynton. " You led me to believe that among you I should find the sympathy and support which are essential to success." " We led you to believe nothing," retorted Elihu. "An accident threw you among us, after we had fully and fairly warned you that we should not receive you or any one without deliberation. We welcomed you kindly, and you have had our best." " Elihu, Elihu ! " softly pleaded Sister Frances, " it isn't for us to boast of Qur good deeds." The others silently looked from him to her. " There is no vainglory in the truth, Frances," answer- ed Elihu, severely. " We have been assailed with unjust tauntings." " And I," said Boynton, " have been provoked to a harsher frankness than I meant to use, by your indiffer- 172 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. ence to an interest infinitely more vital than any rule of life ; by a gradually increasing enmity here which I have now felt for some time, and have struggled against in vain. There has been a withdrawal of confidence from me." •' You have no right to say that," Elihu i)romptly re- torted. " The conditions I'cmain precisely the same as when you first unfolded your plans to us in family moet- ing. We dealt plainly with you then, and we know nothing more of you now than we knew within two days after your arrival here. You made certain pretensions then, and you have fulfilled none of them. Instead of that, you come after nearly three months' time, and re- quire us to lay aside our industries, and join you in a pur- suit which has proved the vainest and idlest that has ever wasted the human mind." " You have twice upbraided me, now," said Dr. Boyn- ton, " with my failure to make good my claim to your confidence. You shall not upbraid me a third time. You knew why I was waiting. You knew that it was at a cost almost like life itself that I waited, and that I count- ed every hour of delay as a drop of blood wrung from my heart. But I will delay no longer. You shall have tlie proof now — at once — this very night. Call your family together. We won't lose another moment. Egeria ! " Egeria started : the quarrel — for it had assumed tliis character — had begun so suddenly, and probably without intention or expectation on either side, though this is by no means certain ; but she must have known whither it tended. " You are right !" cried Elihu, with equal heat. " There is no time like the present. Matters hp.\ e come to sucli a pass that something must be done." " Call your family together ! ' repeated Boynton, defi- antly. " There is no need ; this is the evening for family meet- ing," the Shaker rejoined, THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 173 In fact, while they had been disputing, a group of the younger Shakers and Shakeresses had fonned about tho door of tho family house in which tho meeting was to be held, and their voices, unheeded })y tho angry disputants and their listeners, had risen on the cool twilight air. At that distance the white dresses of the young girls, froslily put on for the evening worship, showed pale through tho hrey went out, to see that the rooms were quite ready, he sprang actively to his feet again and went peer- hiff about the room with the lamp which Humphrey had left on the table. He stooped down and examined the legs of this piece of furniture. " No ! Evidently the Sha- ker conscience is against the claw-foot. Probably they regard it as but as one remove from the cloven-foot. And I don't suppose there's such a thing as a brass-mounting of any sort in the building. But really, this bare wall with the flat finish isn't so bad ; it's ex[»ressivc of the l>are walls and fiat finish of Shakerism ; an instance of what the Swedenborgians call corrcf-pondence. Look here, my dear fellow ! Here is something very original — <<^>-origi- nal — .'!> riTgs. That's a good bit of colour." He seized upon one of the braided rugs on the Hoor and partly lifted it. " Look at this !" ' Oil, let it alone," said the other, with a yawn. He looked not very well, and he glanced at his feet with the weariness that despairs of ever getting to bed with such an obstacle as boots in the way. '' But you don't understand," persisted the first, cling- ing to the rug. " This must be home-dyed. These yel- lows and reds — I was admiring your rug," he explained to Humphrey, who now reappeared. '• It's something uncommon in colour." -i;^^^Qitt■r ..ty-.f^p. 176 TITE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. li. " Yee," said the Shaker ; " we don't generally like our things HO gay. Your rooms are ready." " Ah, then wo won't detain you," said the stranger ; but he caught sight of tlie long clock at the lower end of thi- hall, into which they issued, and turned from gonio up. stairs to look closer at it, with his hand lamp. " Tliii is good ! Very good ! A genuine Marni Storrs. A family heir-loom. I fancy ?" " Nay, I don't know," said the Shaker, stopping lialf. way up the stairs ; " it came here before I did. 1 don't know who brouglit it." " You don't care for colonial bric-a-brac ? But you should. It's the only thing we can justly aspire to, thi- side of ti)0 water. You could pick up some nice things in the country. Have you a spinning-wheel ?" " Yee. But we don't use it. It's cheaper to buy our linen." "Of course. But you've no idea how much character it would give that pleasant parlour of yours." Humphrey answered neither yea nor nay. Thr other stranger, who had stalked upstairs past him, asked fioni the upper, hall " Which room is mine ? " And when Hum- phrey pointed it out, he entered and shut the door behinil him. " What singing is that ? " asked his companion, as he paused again at the open window near the top of the stairs, " It's our family meeting," answered Humphrey. " Family meeting I " repeated the stranger, briskly "Would it be possible — could you allow a secular person like myself to look in a moment ? " " Nay," said the Shaker, composedly, without voucli- safing any explanation. The stranger looked at him as if puzzled. " I couldn t go?" " Na}'-," repeated Humphrey, as before. , " But really, I've heard of people attending your meet- j ings, haven't I ? " | " Yee." THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 177 uch charat'ti'i ithout vouch- . " I con 111 nt ^ ng your moei- " Then, why can't I go ? " " This is a family meeting." " Oh ! Is this my room ? " • " Yee. Good-night," he saiu, while the stranger was still hesitating at his door- way, and turned away ; the latter then answered his good-night, and went in, and Iliuiiphrey descended t- iiis room below, where after he had put up the str? -^ers' horse, he busied himself rest- lessly in working at his accounts, till Laban raised the latch of the door. " Laban," said Humphrey, " there are tow strangers — young men — in the house, that I've just giv^... 180 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. our inquiries in a dark sdancc. For the present the hghts can remain as they are." He came round in front of his daughter, and steadily regarded her. '* Fix your eyes on mine," he said, as if addressing a stranger. She obeyed, lifting her eyes with an effect of mute tap- peal, while the corners of her mouth drooped. " When I couHft three", continued her father, " youi eyes will close. One, two, three," Her eyelids fell, and she remained as if in a (juiet sleep. Her father approached, and with a series of downward passes assumed to deepen the spell. " Now," he said, turning to the intent spectators, " wc will exhibit some well-known phenomena of this coii been that the medium's obsession by spirits is often so thorough, that mind and body alike succumb to their in- THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 181 iluence, and that the medium is thus so obscured as to be able to transmit no intelligible result. It is at this point that the mesmeric power, sterile in itself, and hitherto useless, comes to her rescue. It stays and supports her ; it enables another to reinforce her will, and she receives a distinct and ineffaceable impression from the other world, I ask you to consider but for a moment the vast conse- quences to flow from such a development. I ask you to do this, not in your behalf or mine ; for we know, by our converse with spirits, that we shall live hereafter, — that another world lies beyond this, in which wo shall abide forever. But you wlio dwell here, in the security, the sunshine, of this faith, have little conception of the doubt and darkness in which the whole Christian world is now involved. In and out of the church, it is honey-combed with scepticism. Priests in the pulpit and before the al- tar proclaim a creed which they hope it will be good for their hearers to believe, and the people envy the faith that can so confidently preach that creed ; but neither priests "or people believe. As yet, this deva.stating doubt has not made itself felt in morals ; for those who doubt wore bred in the morality of those who believed. But how shall it be witii the new generation, with the children of those who feel that it may be better to eat, drink, and make merry, for to-morrow they die forever ? Will they bi3 restrained by the morality which, ceasing to be a guest of the mind in us, remains master of the nerves ? Will they not eat, drink, and make merry at their pleasure, set fi-ee as they aj'e, or outlawed as they are, by the spirit of inquiry, by the spirit of science, which has beaten down the defences and razed the citadel of the old faith ? I shudder to contemplate the picture. In view of this cala- mitous future, I, as a spiritualist, cannot refrain from doing ; and I appeal to you, as spiritualists, to shake off this drowse of prosperity, this poppied slumber of love and peace, and buckle on the armour of action. What right have you, I ask, — what right have you Shakers to 182 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. remain simply a refu<^c for the world's lame and halt and blind ? This dream of ])erfect purity, or affcctionati; union, of heavenly life on earth, is very sweet; and I too have been fascinated by it. I too have asked myself why there should not be some provision in Protestantism, as there is in Romanism, for those who would retire from the world and dedicate themselves to humble industry, to meek communion with the skies, to brotherly love. But I tell you that this is all a delusion and a snare. On your purity rests the guilt of the world's foulness ; on your union the blame of the world's discord ; on your heavenly peace the responsibility of the world's hellish unrest. To you was first given, in this latter time, the renewed gospel of immortality, the evidence of spiritual life, the truth that mntter and spii it may converse for the salvation of mankind. What have you done with this priceless gift ? Have you cherished it, kept alight the precious jewel, to shine before the eyes of men ; or have you flung it into the world to be trampled under foot by the swinish herd of sorcerers, who will yet turn again and rend you, unless you fulfil your duty ? Every one of you here should lie- come a messenger of the truth, and rlevote himself and herself to its promulgation. Go forth into the world, though it leave your home desolate, and serve the truth ! Or, better still, break up this outworn brotherhood, this barren union in whioh you dwell, a company of aging men and women, childless, hopeless, with whom their heritage must perish, and form with me on its ruins a new Shikei- ism, — a Shakerism which shall be devoted to the develop- ment of spiritistic science : which shall — which shall "— He paused for the word, and Brother Elihu suddenly rose. " I would remind Friend Boynton," he said, " that we are waiting to witness the mesmeric phenomena which he has promised us." The brethren and sisters, who had been unawares drawn upward and forward by Boynton's eloquence, sank back into their seats, but some of the latter turned a re- THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 183 proichful glance at Eliliu, in wonder that he could have the heart to interrupt the heroic strain. Then all eyes reverted to Egeria, who in the general forgetfulness had sat with her head drooping and her person dejected in a weary lassitude. The doctor stopped, stared at Elihu, and caught his breath. He could not collect his thoughts at once, or master his overstrung nerves ; but when he regained his voice he said dryly," If you will do me the favour to look at your watch, I will show you the least of these phenomena." Brother Elihu promptly took out his watch and held it in his hand. "Egeria," said the doctor, " tell me the time by Elihu's watch." The girl lifted herself like one peering forwani, but her eyes wore still closed. " The case is shut," she answered. " That is true," Elihu declared. " I had shut it." Ho opened it. " Look now, Egeria." 8ho remained in the same posture for some time. " I can't tell," she said at last. " I can't see." The doctor smiled triumphantly. " Oh, I had forgotten to bandage your eyes. You can't see, of coui'se, unless your eyes are bandaged." He bound the handkerchief, which he had continued to draw through his hand, over her eyes. " Now look." " I can't see," repeated the girl. Boynton laughed. " Really," he said, " I must apologize for having forgotten some essential conditions of these simple phenomena. We had advanced so far l)eyond them that I didn't recur to them at once in all their de- tails. I can't of course will the subject to know what I don't know myself. If I were to guess at the time, she nmst necessarily repeat my guess." He went ([uickly to Elihu, and glanced at the watch ; then returning to his place beside Egeria's chair, with a tone of easy indiffer- ence, " Well, Egeria, what time is it ? " ^PH 184 THE UNDISCOVERED COtJNTllY. ! The girl fell back into her chair, and putting up lier hands took the bandage from her eyes, which she fixed upon her father's face in a passion of pity and despair, « Let it go, Friend Boynton," said Elihu kindly. "TIkiv is no haste. Another time will do as well." " Yee," repeated one and another of the brethren ami sisters, "another time will do as well.' " No," said Boynton, " another time will not do as well." He was strongly moved, but he made a successful ctt'ort to command his voice. " My daughter has been so liabi- tuallv under my influence that I had not thought it worth while to go through the preliminaries we use with a fresh subject. But as a great interruption has taken place during her fever, perhaps, this has become necessary. ' While he spoke, he was searching in his different pockets. He continued bitterly : " I was once the possessor of a sil- ver piece which 1 used in producing the mesmeric trance, but it would not be strange if I had parted with it in the distress which threw me upon your charity. If any of you happen to have a silver coin of any sort " — Few of these simple communists often had money about them ; and in those days of paper currency even the busi- ness men of the family knew very well that there was no silver in their pockets. If a silver coin was the indispen- sable condition of the mesmeric»slumber, apparently Boyn- ton stood on safe ground. But with a quick " Ah ! " he came upon the piece he was seeking in his pocket-book. He pressed it between his palms, keeping his eyes lixed upon his daughters. Then he put it in her open hand, and bade her look at it without winking till her eyelids fell. There was a pause, during which Boynton was about to say something to his audience, when Egeria opened her eyes and rose from her chair. " I can't, I can't ! " she cried pitifully. " I've tried, b\it indeed, indeed, 1 can't." She stood before him, wringing her hands, and longing to cast her arms about his neck ; TttE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 18;' ere was no but tl)o sternness of his reproachful face forbade her. Ho opened his lips to speak, but no sound canio from them. One of th'! brothers nearest him thought that he tottered, and half rose, with outstretched hands, to support him. Sister Frances was already at Egeria's side ; she drew her head down upon her shoulder with a motherly instinct, wliile a murmur of sympathy went through the house. Boynton repelled the friendly hand extended towards him. " Let me alone," he said ; " I can take care of my- self." He turned about, and lifting his voice bravely addressed the meeting : " We have failed, — totally and and completely failed, upon as fair a trial as I could have wished. I do not attempt to account for the result, and I cannot dispute any conclusions which you may draw from it in regard to ourselves." Elihu stood up. " Friend Boynton, we believe you are an honest man." " Yee, we do ! " was repeated from bench to bench. " I thank you," replied Boynton, in a breaking voice. " Then I can ask you to let me say that our failure is a profound mystery to me, and belies all our past experi- ence. I do ask you to believe this ; I ask you to let me say it, and to let it remain with you as my last word. For myself, I cannot lose faith in the past and keep my sanity. But somehow I see that the power has passed from us. In any case our destiny is accomplished among you. We must go out from you self-condemned. Before we go, I wish to acknowledge all your kindness, and to ask your forgiveness for such words of mine as have wronged you. Come, Egeria." The girl came forward to where her father stood, and ho took her hand and })assed it through his arm. " You mustn't leave us. Friend Boynton," said Elihu. " We wish you to stay. We wish you to stay," he repeated, at a dazed look of inquiry from the doctor, " and take all the time that you want for your investigations." IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) A /. ^ 1.0 I.I 1.25 IM 2.2 :: lis 1. 1.4 1^ 1.6 @ V] <^ /i 7. v /A Photographic Sciences Corporation 33 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 A \' dh I: I 186 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY, " Yee, that is so," assented all the voices in the room successively. Brother Humphrey alone continued silent, and he was ordinarily so undemonstrative that his tacit dissent would hardly have been noticed, but for his say- ing, before Boynton could collect himself for reply, "There ain't nothin' agin Friend Boynton but what he can clear up with a word to the elders, and I jine with ye all in askin' of him to stay." " What do you mean ? " demanded Boynton, turning fiercely upon him. " If you know anything against me, I wish you to speak out." Brother Humphrey, who could scarcely have meant to intimate any mental reservation, hastened to answer in alarm, " I ha'n't got any doubts of ye. Friend Boynton. I think just as the rest do. We'd believe you." " Believe me about what ? I insist that j'ou speak out." Humphrey looked at the faces near him for help, but there was only pity and surprise in them. " It ain't no time or place," he Ijegan. "It is the very time and the very place," retorted Boynton. " There can be no other like it. I wish you to say what you mean before the Avhole family. There is nothing in my life which I wish secretly examined into. I absolve you f lom all your scruples, and I wish, I demand ,^ 1 require, that you speak out.'' Humphrey rose with a sort of groan. " I think," he said, " as much as any on ye that there ought to be forgivin', and forgettin', and I ain't one to bear resentment for revilin's that's been passed on Shakerism here to-night. But v/hat I thought, if Friend Boynton was goin' to stay amongst us, he'd ought to have a chance to clear himself. We all know what's been flyin' about the neighbourhood here, and it ain't fair to us, and it ain't fair to him, to let it go without a word. I don't want he should feel that we're tryin' on him, but I want him to know what's said, for all I don't believe in breakin' a bruised reed." THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 187 the I'oom ued silent, t his tacit r his say- ly, "There J can clear 1 ye all in 11, turning linst me, I ; meant to answer in loynton. I peak out." help, but t ain't no ' retorted ish you to There is ined into. I demand,. :," he said, ^ivin', and >r revilin's But what J amongst I We all lood here, let it go bhat we're lid, for all " As I said before, if you have heard anything to my disadvantage, I wish you to speak out, — ] demand that you shall speak out," said Boynton. " I'm goin to speak out, now," returned Humphrey more steadily, " and it ain't for anything that Friend Har- ris said, although I think ye'd ought to know what he did say. " Who is Harris ?" asked Boynton. " He's the landlord of the Elm Tahvern." " What does he say ? " " Well," said Humphrey, with reluctance, " I think ye'd ought to know. He says you wa'n't sober that morning' at his house, and he couldn't hardly git ye out." Humph- rey turned very red, as if ashamed, and wiped his fore- head with his napkin ; Elihu and the brothers near him looked down, and a painful hush prevailed. Boynton did not deign to notice this accusation. " And what does your friend Harris say of the occurrences at- tending our departure ? " he demanded, contemptuously. " He ain't no fiiend of our'n, except in the scriptural sense," replied Humphrey, doggedly. " But he says the' wa'n't no occurrences. Just a Hash of tol'ble sharp light- nin' and that's all. The' wa'n't no raps, nor no liftin' o' table tops, accordin' to his say." " I am glad to have you so explicit," said the doctor, "and I think now I begin to understand the value of the family's generosity towards myself. Did your friend Harris say anything in aspersion to my daughter ? " " Nay," replied Humphrey. " Then she probably lemains as before in your estima- tion, and you would take her word against Harris's, highly as you value his testimony ?" " Nay, we don't value his testimony," interposed Elihu. " Your word is better than his. We believe you against him." Boynton waved scornful rejection with Ins hand. "Oh, .■ ^SSaBMMH ifMii 188 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. I spare your flatteries, sir. / know what you think of me. But you would believe my daughter V " Yee, we would," answered the whole audience. The doctor regarded them with a curling lip. " Egeria," he said quietly, " state to these people what occurred. Tell the truth." The girl was silent. " Speak ! " " Father !" she gasped, " I don't know. I nave heard say. But I was asleep and dreaming till tl at clap of thunder came." " Then you remember nothing ? " " Oh, I can just remember our going into that house, and our coming out of it. I forgot ever3'thing, — I was beginning to be crazy with the fever. But don't mind, — oh, don't mind, father ! They believe you, — they said they did. Oh, j'^ou do believe him, don't you ? " she im- plored of all those faces that swam on her tears. Boynton reeled, and again the compassionate brother started up to save him from a fall. " Don't touch me ! " he cried harshly. " Is there anything else ?" he demanded, turning to Humphrey. Eiihu rose with an air of authority. "This must stop now. It has been a painful season ; but no one here thinks that these friends have done anything wrong, or said any- thing false. We believe them and we welcome them, if they choose to stay with us. " " Yee, we do ! " The assenting voices included Hum- phrey's. " You welcome us to stay amongst you ! " cried the doc- tor, with intense disdain. " Do you think that after what has just passed here any earthly consideration could in- duce me to remain another day, another hour, under your roof ? " He had his daughter's hand in his arm, and he proudly pressed it as he spoke, drawing himself to his full height. " So much for ourselves ! As for the ex- periments in which we have so ignominiously failed, I have no personal regi'ets. It would have been a pitiful triumph at best, if we had succeeded before you, and I THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 189 Slink of one, snce. . "Egeria," t occurred. !" lave heard at clap of that house, ig, — I was n't mind, — -they said she im- lie brother ouch me ! " demanded, 3 must stop liere thinks r said any- le them, if ided Hum- ed the doc- after what a could in- under your rm, and he self to his for the ex- y failed, I n a pitiful you, and I cannot believe the principle, the truth, involved cansufter by our defeat. We are simply proved unfit means for its development, — nothing more. Were it otherwise, were I persuaded that our humiliation was destined to arrest, or more than slightly retard, the progress of this science in men's minds, then I should indeed regard this night as the blackest in my life, and should be ready to lay down that life in despair. But, no ! It is not given to any one weak instrument, mysteriously breaking in the presence of a few obscure and sordid intelligences, to obstruct the divine intention. In this ineradicable conviction, I bid you a final farew^ell. " He strode towards the door with his daughter on his arm. One of the elders said, meekly and sadly, " The meeting is dismissed, " and the brethren and sisters dis- persed to their different houses. Those of the office found themselves following Dr. Boynton thither. They appre- hensively entered after him, dreading some fresh exy' )- sion, or some show of preparation for instant departure. But the rhetoric of his spectacular adieu had sufficed him for the present. He merely said, " Egeria, go to bed. You must be quite worn out. As for me, I can't sleep, yet. I will go out for a walk Would you oblige me with a glass of water ? " he asked politely, turning to Sister Frances. When she brought it, " Thanks, " he said, and handed back the empty goblet with a bow. " Do you think you'd better walk ftir ? " tremulously asked Egeria. The touch of opposition restored him to his sense of wrong and resentment, " Go to bed, Egeria, "he said severely, " and don't any one sit up for me. I can let myself in at the side door when I wish to return. *' He started away, but the girl put herself in his ^^ th to the door. " Oh, father ! You won't go to see that man at the tavern, will you ? Tell me you won't, or I can't let you go. " rrf 190 THE UNLISCOVEllED COUNTRY. it! " Don't be ridiculous ! " cried her father. " I have no idea of going to meet that ruffian. In due time I sliall call him to account. " " Don't ye think, Friend Boynton," said Humphrey, with awkward kindliness," that you'd better try to get some rest?" In the swift evanescence and recurrence of his moods under the strong excitement, Boynton was like a drunken man. After publishing his resolution not to accept the hospitality of the Shakers for an hour more, he had walked passively to the office with them, and had bidden Egeria go to bed there, as if nothing had happened. At Hum- phrey's words, all his indignation was rekinJled. " Rest ! No, sir ! I will not try to get*some rest. After what has passed, every offer of kindness from you is a fresh offence. You, Egeria, if you can close your eyes here, you are welcome. Doubtless you can. Your apathy your total want of sympathetic response to my feelings, and my will, may enable you to do so. But still some other roof shall cover us, I want no shelter." No one sought to detain him now, and going quickly from the door he left them huddled in a blank and pur- poseless group together. " Poor thing ! " said Sister Frances, first breaking the silence, as she turned to Egeria. " Oh, poor child !" She tried to take the girl in her arms ; but with a pathetic " Don't ! " Egeria prevented her, and averted her quiver- ing face. She went out of the room and up-stairs with- out a word or sound ; but Frances creeping softly after, to listen at her door, heard her sobbing within the room. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 191 CHAPTER XVI. The hot weather, with here and there a hhizing clay in June, flamed into whole weeks of unbroken heat before the middle of July. The business streets were observably quieter, and the fashionable quarters were solitudes. At the club windows a few elderly men sat in arm-chairs, with glasses of iced Appollinaris water at their el])ows, and stared out on the Common ; some young men, with their hats on (if they perished for it), stalked spectrally from room to room behind them. The imported bonnes with their charges no longer frequented the Public Garden; it was thronged with the children and the superannuated of the poor, and with groups of tourists from the South and West, who were finding Boston what so many natives boast it in winter, the most comfortable summer resort on the coast. It was not Ford's habit to go out of town at all ; for in his hatred of the narrow and importunate conditions of the village life which he had left behind him with his earlier youth, he had become an impassioned cockney. "If you are so bitter against the country," said Phillips, who was urging an invitation to the sea-side upon him, *' why don't you try really to be of the town as Avell as in it ? Why don't you try to be one of us ? Why don't you make an eflbrt to fit in ? " "I don't like fitting in; I like elbow-room," answered Ford. " Do you suppose I should be fond of the town if I were of it ? I should have to be one of a set, and a set is a village. If I am in the town, but not of it, I have freedom and seclusion. Besides, no man of simple social traditions like mine fits into a complex society without a I I ■I l! 1 ! 192 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. losy of self-respect. He must hold aloof, or commit insin- cerities, — be a snob. I prefer to hold aloof. It isn't hard." " And you don't think you do it to make yourself inter- esting ? " inquired Phillips. " I think not," said Ford. " People would as lief be pleasant to you as not. But it ends there. They're not anxious about you," suggested the other. " I believe I understand that." Ford was sitting at his window in his deep easy-chair; and he had his cort off. "That's what galls my peasant-pride. Suppose I went with you to this lady's house " — he touched with the stem of his pipe a letter which lay open on the table pulled near him — " and visited among your friends, the nobility and gentry ; I should be reminded by a thousand things every day that I was a sham and a pretender. That kind of people always take it for granted that you feel and think with them ; and I don't. You can't keep telling them so, however. And suppose I tried to conform : I should be an amateur among professionals. They have the habit of breeding and "of elegance, as they understand it; I may have a loftier ideal, but I haven't discipline ; I can't realize my ideal ; and they do realize theirs, — poor souls ! That makes me their inferior ; that makes me hate them." "Oh," said Phillips, "you can put an ironical face on it, but I suspject what you say is really your mind." " Of course it is. At heart I am a prince in disguise ; but your friends won't know it if I sit with my coat off. That would vex me." He took up the letter from the table, and holding it at arm's length admired it. " Such a hand alone is enough ; the smallest letters half an inch high, and all of them shrugging their shoulders. I can't come up to that. If I went to this lady's house, to be like her other friends and acquaintance I should have to be just arrived from Europe, or just going; my talk should be of London and Paris and Rome, of the Saturday Review THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 193 imit insin- sn'thard." self inter- not. But suggested sittincf at 1 his cof t Suppose I 3hed with the table iends, the thousand pretender. that you jan't keep > conform : 'hey have aderstand iscipline ; theirs, — lat makes face on it, disguise ; f coat off. from the . " Such f an inch I can't ise, to be 1 have to Ik should .y Review and the Revue ties Deux Mondes, of English politics and society ; my own country should exist for me on suffer- ance through a compassionate curiosity, half repulsion ; I ought to have recently dined at Newport with poor Lord and Lady Scamperton, who are finding the climate so terrible ; and I should bo expected to speak of persons of the highest social distinctioti by their first names or the first syllables of their first names. You see> that's quite beyond me. * And do bring your fi-iend, Mr. Ford,'" he read from the letter niincingly, and laughed, "I leave it to your fertile invention to excuse me, Phillips." He kindled his pipe, and Phillips presently went away. It was part of his routine not to fix himself in any sum- mer resort, but to keep accessible to the invitations which did not fail him. He found his account in this socially, and it did not remain unsaid that he also gratified a pas- sion for economy in it ; but the people who said this con- tinued among his hosts. Late in the sunnner, or almost when the leaves began to turn, he went away to the hills for a fortnight or three weeks, providing himself with quarters in some small hotel, and making a point of return- ing to the simplicity of nature. In the performance of this rite he wore a straw hat and a flannel shirt, and he took walks in the woods with the youngest young ladies among the boarders. The intervals between his visits he spent in town, where he was very comfortable. When he went to the places that desired him, he explained that he had been in Boston trying to get Ford away. " Oh, yes ! Your odd friend," said the ladies driving him home from the station in their phaetons. Phillips must have known that they did not care either for his odd friend or for his own oddity in having him, and yet he rather prized this eccentricity in himself. The people in Ford's boarding-house went their difter- ent ways. Mrs. Perham remained latest, for Mr. Perham's health had not yet allowed his removal. He had had two i i! I I, I : 194 THE undiscovp:red country. great passions in life : making money and driving horses. i3y the time he had made his money he had a toucli of paralysis, and could no longer drive horses. This sepa- rated him much from his wife, who liked almost as well as he to ride after a good horse (as it is expressed by peo- ple who like it), and whom since she had been forced so much to books for amusement, he could not join. Slie read the newspapers to him, and she went with him to the theatres; but there they ceased to sympathize in their tastes, for she was not fond of swearing, and it was this resource which remained to Mr. Perham after tlie papers and the play. The house filled up for the summer with those people from the West and South who found the summer in Bos- ton so pleasant, and with other transients ; but many of the rooms and many of the places at the table remained vacant, and Mrs. Perham and Ford looked at each other across long distances, empty, or populated only by strange faces. At last Mr. Perham was able to bear removal ; his wife seized the occasion and hurried him away to the country That left Ford alone with the strangers, and he rather missed tlie woman's hungry curiosity, her cheer- fulness, and her indomitable patience under what a more sympathetic witness might have felt to be the hard con- ditions of her life. He clung to the town throughout July and far into August, with a growing restlessness. He did not care for the heat, and he amused himself well enough when he found time to be amused. He made a point of studying the different excursions in the harbour and beyond it ; he studied also the entertainments offered at the theatres, where the variety combinations inculcated in small audiences a morality as relaxed as their systems. On Sunday he went to the spiritualist meeting in the grove by Walden Pond. Most of the spiritualists were at a camp-meeting of their sect further up the road, and the people whom he met seemed, like himself, vaguely curious. They were nearly all country-folk : the young men had THK UNDISCOVKUKl) COUNTUY. 10.' come with their sweethearts for pleusure ; tlu'io were iiiiddle-Ji<>:ed husbands and wives wlio iiad brought tlieir chihh'en for a day in the woods beside the pretty lake. Their horses were tied to the young pines and oaks ; they sat in tlieir buggies and carryalls, wiiicli were pushed into cool and breezy spots. The scene brought back to Ford the Sunday-school picnics of his childhood, but here was a profaner flavour: scraps of newspaper that had wrapjied lunches blew about the grounds; at one place a man had swung a hannnock, and lay in it reading, in his shirt- sleeves ; on the pond was a fleet of gay row-boats, which, however, the raiU'oad company wouKl not allow to lie hired on Sunday. Ford found the keeper of the floating l)ath- houses and got a bath. When he came out the man, with American splendour, refused to take any money ; he said that they did not let the baths on Sunday, but when he saw a gentleman he liked to treat him as one. " I ho[)e you're not mistaken in my case," said Ford sadly ; and tlie bath-man laughed, and said he would chance it. Another of the people in charge complained of the dulness of th(! place. " What you want is a band. You want a danc(!- hall in the middle of the pond, here; and you want a band," They pointed out the auditorium in a hollow of the hills beyond the railroad track, where at the hour fixed for ser- vice he found the sparse company ass(,'nd>led. A scon; of listeners were scattered over the seats in the middle of the pavilion ; outside, two young fellows who had ccme by the train leaned against the colunms and smoked, with their hats on ; a j^oung girl in blue, with her lover, conspicuously occupied one of the seats under the trees that scaled the amphitheatre, worn grassless and brown by drought and the feet of many picnics ; there were cer- tain ladies in artificial teeth and long linen dusters wh(jm Ford fixed upon as spiritualists, though he had no leason to do so. A trance-speaker was announced for the Invo- cation ; he came forward, where the fiddlers sat when there was dancing, and, supporting himself by one hand 19G THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. on the muHic-stand, closed his eyes and passed into a trance of wandering rhetoric, returnin<^ to liimself in a dribble of verse which bad'^ the hearer, at the close of each stanza, "Come, then, como to Spirit- Lftiul." The address was given by another speaker, who de- claimed against the injustice of the world towards spirit- ualism and boasted of the importance of its Unfoldments. He sketched its rise and progress, and found an analogy between the " first lisping of the tinny rap at Rochester " and the advent of C/hrist, whom he described as the " in- fant Reformer in the man-ger," and again as our " humble elder brother." The people listened decently, and but ibr the young fellows with their cigars weie as respectful as most country congregations to what was much duller than most country preaching. Ford came away before the end, and climbing the side of the amphitheatre encountered Mr. Eccles, who was aloO about to go. He shook hands with Ford, and on his present inquiry said that nothing had been heard of the Boyntons since the spring. He expressed a faded interest in them. He asked Ford if he had seen the experiments in self-expansion and compres- sion of the new medium, Mrs. Sims. He viewed these ex|jeriments as the ultimation of certain moral fiuctations in the spiritual world, for if there was a steady movement either outward or inward in that world, Mrs. Sims might expand or might condense herself, but it stood to reason that she could not do both. Ford came home with a headache ; when he woke, the next morning, the long window danced round the room before it settled to its proper place. He was not in the habit of being sick, and he suffered some days with this dizziness before he saw a doctor. Then he asked advice, because the sickness interfered with his work. " Go away somewhere," said the doctor. " It's indiges- tion. Get a change of air." " Do you mean the sea-side ?" asked Ford. THE UNDTSCOVERKD COUNTRY. 197 )o reason " I don't call that a chanf,'o of air from Boston. Go to the hills." Ford reflectod a moment in disgust. He could have endured the sea-side. " Any particular direction ?" "No, Go anywhere. Go to the White Mountains, Take a tramp through them.** " I'd rather take medicine," said Ford. " Give me some medicine." " Oh, I'll give you all the medicine you want," said the doctor: and he wrote him a prescription. Ford went home, and took his medicine with the same scepticism, and tried to keep about his work. Tlie lec- tures which he had betf* attending were over long ago ; but he had found a chance to do some study with a. prac- tical chemist which '/ ■ was loth t > forego; aiiw could yon tliiiik lio wouldn't (;on)«^ y " sIm» said, liftiu}^ lior rac(3. " J)o you ilnid« now tluil lie was ('rucl i " *' VV«M|Ujnn'II(»d,"«nsw(M»'d licr fatlior. " I was to hianui." " No, you wore not to Manio," hIk^ rotortud, with Hwift rovulHion. " You Itolii^vcd you did ri;i;lit, and you nuvcr protondtMl tliat you didn't. Oh, if you could oidy luiv<' sccin each other aj^ain ! " " Yes," answered the sick inmi ; " the wish to soo liini has Ikmmi heavy on my soul ever since I came to myself." 'riu' word recalled Imm-, and slio looked fondly into lier fath(M''s face. "(), fathei", I have made you feel badly ? 1 am so sorry for ^randfatlier " — " No, my ])oor ijjirl ! I can sympathize with your feel- im: ahout him ; 1 can understand it." lie smoothed lu»r hair with his ij^entle, weak, small hand. " I can understand, and 1 can approver of your fei'linijj. lint doi\'t he troubled. Your jjfrandfather and 1 will be friends wlien wo meet. It will make little dif- ference ihrre what theories of creeds we hold. They can- not .sep.'irate us." *' \Yhy, father ! " exclaimed the girl. " What do you mean i You are not going to die ! The doctor said " — l^oyntou sn\iled in recoverinij liimself. " Wo are all mortjil. Dr. Wilson 's very hopeful about me. I am not going to die at once." He took one of her hands while she bent over him. ** I had mentioned to our good friend here," he said, indicat- ing Ford, in re(iuesting him to notify your grandfather, my special reasons for wishing to see him, and some little statement — explanation — was necessary in regard to the terms of our separation. I w^as saying that I wished they liad been ditfeient. But in the liglit of this new fact, does my part really ai>pear worse to you than it did be- 'VflLJf THE UNDISCOVKUED COUNTRY. 210 fore ? You can H[>eak freely ; I can Lear — I ought even to court — tlie trutli." Tlie ^irl tlirew lier ariiiH about liis neck. "Father! You never had one selfish thou^^dit in it. I know tliat, and I always knew it. I didn't mean to hlaine you ; I only wanted you to excuse hiui. Oh, nobody needs ex- cusin^^ hut mo ! 1 stood up before them all, and lame ! " " No, no," protested her father, ** you were true to yours(!lf. Jn the long run you could have succeeded upon no other conditions. You diur work le, "that " I was wrong," promptly admitted Boynton. " We ar« not the same, and coidd not be, to all eternity. But if you accept the hypothesis of a second life, in wliich the objects of this shall remain dear to us, you establish an in- frangible, a perpetual, continuity of endeavour. The man with whom a great idea has its inception becomes a dis- embodied spirit. By influx from the spirit world to which he goes, he becomes the partner of the man to whom his work falls here ; and that man dying enlarges the part- nership in his turn, and .so on ad injinitum. It must be in this way that civilization is advanced, that the world- reforms are accomplished." Boynton's eyes shone, and Ford listened with kindly ■neutrality. On some sides he was compelled to respect Boynton's extraordinary alertness. In many things ho was grotesquely ignorant ; he was a man of very small literature, and he had the limitations of a country-bred person in his conceptions of the world ; but his mind, in the speculations on which it habitually dwelt, had a vast and bold sweeps and his theories sprang up fully formed, under his breath, like those plants which the Japanese conjurer fans to flower in the moment after he has put the seed in the ground. He tossed his head upon the pillow impatiently. " When I think of those things," he said, " I can hardly wait for the slow process of decay to unfold the truth to me. Per- haps I approached the unseen world with too arrogant a confidence," he continued. " At any rate, I have been found unworthy, and my progress on earth has been arrest- ed for ever." Ford could not withhold the expression of the sense- less self-accusal in his heart. " I should be very sorry," he said, " if I had been the means of crossing your pur- poses." " You never were wilfully so," said Boynton. " Besides, as I told you, I have begun to have my misgivings as to my theory of you. I suspect that I may have exaggerated 224 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. my daughter's powers ; that they were of a limited nature, terminable by the lapse of time. What do you think," he asked, after a silence, as if willing to break away from these thoughts, ** of our Shaker friends ? Does their life strike you as the solution of the great difficulty?" " No," said Ford ; " it strikes me as begging the ques- tion." " Yes, so it is," assented Boynton ; " so it is, in some views. It is a life for women rather than men." An indefinable pang seized Ford. * I don't quite un- derstand you. Do you think it is a happy life for a woman ? " " There is no happy life for a woman — except as she is happy in suffering for those she loves, and in sacrificing herself to their pleasure, their pride and ambition. The advantage that the world offers her — and it does not al- ways offer that — is her choice in self-sacrifice, the Shakers prescribe it for her." Ford said nothing for a time, while the pain still rankled. Then he asked, " Don't you think the possible power of choosing is a great advantage ? I don't know that as a man I expect to be happy ; but I like to make my ventures in unhappiness. It saves me from the folly of accusing fate. If I surrendered myself to Shakerism, I should feel myself a prisoner ; I should not run the risk of wounds, but I should have no chance of escape." "A woman doesn't like to fight," replied Boynton. " Besides, there are no irrevocable vows in Shakerism. When you do not like it you leave it. It is no bad fate for a woman. For most women it would be a beneficent fate." An image of Egeria in the Shaker garb, with her soft young throat hidden to the chin, and the tight gauze cap imprisoning her beautiful hair, rose in the young man's thought, and would not pass at his willing. It was ■wjith something like the relief of waking from an odious dream a limited lat do you g to bi-eak r friends ? the great f the ques- is, in some It L. quite un- life for a )t as she is sacrificing bion. The DCS not al- le Shakers pain still le possible on't know to make the folly lakerism, n the risk pe." Boynton. lakerism. bad fate beneficent I her soft ^auze cap ng man's was wfith us dream THE UNDTSCOVEnED COUNTRY. 2'^5 *rf «rt t/ that he saw tlie girl enter the room in her usual drcss. He involuntarily rose. She had a spray of sumach in her hand, and she \n\t it lightly beside her father on the bed. The leaves were already deeply tinged with crimson. " Ah, yes," he said, taking it up and holding it before him, " I am clad you found it. I thought I saw it the last time I walked that way, but it was only partly red, then. I had intended to get it for you. After my daughter was sick here, this spring," he added, turning his eyes U[)on Ford, " she showed a singular predilection during her convalescence for wild flowers. They wouldn't come fast enough for her ; all the family were set to looking for them. Do you remember, Egeria, the day when we got you out under the apple blossoms ? What is the a])ple-tree like, now ? Some yellow leaves on it, here and there ? " " Yes, but the red apples burn like live coals among them," said Egeria. " Fruition, fruition," murmured her father, dreamily. " Not so sweet as hope. But autumn was always my favourite season, — my favourite season. I suppose the long grass is limp and the clover-heads are black in the alleys of the orchard. All those aspects of nature — The sumach is first to feel the fall. Have you seen any other red leaves, Egeria ? " " I saw a young maple in the swamp that was almost as red in places as this," said Egeria. " But they were too high to reach." "Ah," returned her father, "they will} soon be red enough everywhere." " Couldn't Miss Boynton tell me where her maple is ? '* Ford interposed. " I could get you the leaves," " Oh, no, — no," began the doctor " I do a certain amount of walking every day. If Miss Boynton will tell me where the maple is, and begin with the swamp — " 226 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY* I ih 1 1 " The swamp," said Egeiia, " is just back of the south pasture ; but I should have to look for the tree myself." " Take me with you, then," said the young man with what he tliought a great boldness. " I could do that," returned Egeria, simply. " If Fran- ces were here, 1 could go with you now. It isn't far." " I don't need any one, now, my dear " said her father. " You can put the bell here by my pillow, and I can ring." . " Well," said Egeria to Ford. " We will stop at the office, and tell them, father," she added. Frances pro- mised to listen for the bell, and stood watching at the office door, as they walked away together. *' I think you can easily bend the tree," Egeria said. ** It's verj^ slim, and I thought at first I could bend it my- self. I should hate to have you break it." " I will try not to break it," answered Ford. They crossed the meadow in desultory talk, but before they reached the edge of the swamp she abruptly halted him, and said with a soi-t of fearful resolution, "Did you know that my father was here when you came ? " She searched his face with a piercing intensity of gaze, her lips apart with eagerness and her breathing fluttered. " No," said Ford, " my coming here was purely acciden- tal." Her eyes studied his a moment longer : then she dropped them, and hurried on again as abruptly ps she had stopped. "But I always hoped I might se3 you again," he continued, " and tell you — I went to tell your father in Boston — that I never dreamt it was you I hurt there, that night. I wanted to lell him that nothing in the world — But we quarrelled — " " I know, I know," interrupted the girl. " There is the tree," she said, hastily, pointing out a young maple with reddened boughs, that stood some yards beyond the wall. " Do you think you can get to it ? Do you think you can bend it down ? " Every nerve in him thrilled with the wrench of leaving half said what h?id been so long in his heart; but he must THE UNDISf'OVEREl) COUNTRY, 227 obe> her will. " I think so," he replied, and he got over the wall. He stepped from one quaking bed of mossy decay to another, till he reached the tree. He cauglit it about the slender stem well up towards the limbs° and, bending it over, began to break them away and fling them on the ground. "Oh, no!" cried Egeria, from where she stood. "Don't!" " Don't what ? " asked Ford, turning half round, with- out releasing the tree. " You seemed to tear it so. You have enough. That branch at the top " — "Shall I break it off?" "No — no. Let it stay." " Would you like it ? " " Yes." Ford took out his knife, and slitted the brancli from the tree with a downward stroke, and drove the blade into the thick of the hand w ith whieli he held the tree. He gathered up the branches, and putting them into tlio wounded hand griped it with the other, and returned to Egeria. She started at sight of the blood. " I made you cut yourself." " I don't see how that is," answered Ford. " But I cut myself." He stood holding his hand, while the blood dropped to the ground. " I will tie it up for you," said Egeria, quelling a shud- der. " You ought to have something wet next to it. Tliat will keep it from inflaming.'" " Yes ? " said Ford. She made search for her i - ndkerchief, and drew forth the stout square of linen which the kindness of the com munity had provided for her. She shook out its tough ex- panse. "That is a Shaker handkerchief," she said. "It looks rather grandiose for the purpose," Ford re- marked, " If you will take mine " — He touched as 22$ THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. fl' I ft f» il nearly as he could the breast pocket of his coat with his elbow. She soberly obeyed his gesture, and pulled it out. " Can you tear it ? " " I needn't tear it," she answered, folding it into a nar- row strip. " I can wet this end in the water, here, and wrap the rest round it." She stooped to a little pool near the wall, and dipped the handkerchief into it ; then she laid the wet corner over the cut, which he had washed in the same pool, and folded the dry part firmly around it. Her finger-tips, soft and warm, left the sensation of their touch upon his hand. They walked rapidly away. " Better hold it up," she said, seeing that he let his arm hang at his side. " Oh," he answered, stupidly, and obeyed for a moment, and then dropped his hand again. " You're forgetting," she said. " Yes, I was," replied Ford, recollecting himself. " I was thinking that it rnust have seemed as if some savage beast had torn you." He looked at the hand on which she wore her ring, and she hid the hand in the folds of her dress, and turned her head away. Then she glanced at him, as if about to aii- swer, but she only said, " When you get home, you must wet the cloth .again." " Thanks," said Ford, " it will have to look after itseli' when it stops stinging." She looked troubled. " Does it hurl you very badly ( " " I suppose it's going through the usual formalities," " You had better show it to father — Oh ! " she cried, blushing, " I have forgotten the leaves for him." She al- most ran in retracing her steps. Ford pursued her. " Miss Boynton, let me go and get them. " No, no, I can get them. You mustn't come. I don't wish you to come." She looked over her shouldei, ^nd THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 229 t with his pulled it ttto a nar- here, and ad dipped vet corner pool, and inger-tips, I upon his L Up," she I moment, saw him standing irresolute. " Don't wait for me ; I can take them home." He lingered a moment, looking after her, and then turned and walked away. He did not go back to the infirmary, but kept on towards his own house, and arrived with a vague smile on his lips, which had shaped them ever since he left her. He scarcely realized then that she had been quick to avail nerself of a chance to be alone with him, and that when once with him she had been willing to delay their parting. A jarring sensation of al- ternate abandon and reserve was what finally remained of the interview in his nerves. If " I was ^^age beast r ring, and iurned her ut to aii- you must ifter itseli' T badly^ i " alities, " she cried, ' She al- and get I. I don't alder, «>.nd I'fl ':i I vi . i 230 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. CHAPTER XX. In the morning, when he walked up into the village, he found her coming out of the office gate. She faltered at sight of him, and glanced anxiously toward him. He had meant to stop at the office, but now he had a sense- less ^'mpulse to keep on his w&y. He hesitated, and then cros. . \ to where she stood. She had a small basket in her hand, he said that elder Joseph had given her leave to look o • his vines, and see if there were any grapes i-ipo enough yet for her father to eat. There was an in- definable intention in her manner to detain him, which he felt as inarticulately, and there was something more intangible still, — something between fearful question and utter trust of him ; something that chiefly intimated it- self in the appeal with which her eyes rested on his when she first looked up. He dropped his own eyes before the gaze which he knew to be unconscious on her part, and she said suddenly, as if recollecting herself, " Oh ! Will you show your hand to father ? How is it ? " " That's all right," answered Ford, putting it into his pocket. She began to walk towards the garden, and he walked with her. " It isn't my work hand." " Work ? " she asked. " I keep up my scribbling. I write for the papers," he explained further, at a glance of inquiry from her. " Some of the brothers and sisters write, too," she said. " The Shakers have a paper." " Yes, I have seen it," said Ford. " They write for plea- sure and from duty. I am sorry to say that my work is mostly for the pay it brings. I'm hoping to do something in another way by and by. In the meantime I write and sell my work. It's what they call pot-boiling." " I didn't know they paid for writing ! " THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 231 " They do — a little. You can starve very decently on it. " Father used to write for the paper at home, but they never paid him anything. He is slow getting well," she added, with a sad inconsequence, "and I suppose he will never be quite so strong again. But it must 'be a good sign when he has these cravings. It seems as if he couldn't wait till the grapes are ripe; the doctor says he can have all the fruit he wants. Have you ever been in this garden before?" she asked, as they entered the bounds of Brother Joseph's peculiar province. " No," replied Ford, looking round him with a pleasure for which he could not account. " But I feel as if I might have been here always." " Yes. I suppose it looks like everybody's garden. It's like our garden at home." He glanced about it with her, as they stood in the planked path together. At one side of the beds of pot-herbs, and apart from the ranks of sweet-corn, the melons, the beans, the faded peas, and the long rows of beets and carrots, was a space allotted to flowers, the simple annuals that have long been driven from our prim parterres. " Our garden ran back of the house down to the river ; but it was all neglected and run wild. There was a summer-house on the edge of the ter- race, and the floor was rotten ; the trellises for the grapes were slanting every which way." She seemed to be recalling these aspects in a fond re- verie, rather than addressing him ; but they gave him a vivid sense of her past. He saw her in this old garden b}'' the river side, before any blight had fallen upon her life. He imagined her a very happy young girl, there ; not romantic, but simple and good, and even gay. " I know that sort of a garden," he said. ** Yes," she continued, looking dreamily at Brother Joseph's flower beds, " here is prince's feather, and cox- comb, that I hated to touch when I was little, because it seemed like flesh and blood. And here is bachelor's but- 232 THE UNPISCOVERED COUNTRY. ton, and moiiming bride, and marigolds, and touch-me- not." '• I had forgotten them," said Ford. " I suppose I used ;to see them when I was a boy. But it's a long time since I was in the country." " You must be glad to get back." " No," replied Ford. " I can't honestly say that I am. I wanted to get away from it too badly for that. The country is for the pleasure of the people born in town." " I don't know what you mean." "Nothing very definite. When I began to grow up, I found the country in my way. I dare say I should have been uncomfortable anywhere. I was very uncomfort- able in the country." " I have never been much in the city," she said. " But I didn't like it." He remembered that he had helped to make the city hateful to her, though she had seemed to have forgotten it, and he said, in evasion of this recollection," " It's dif- ferent with a man. 1 had my way to make, and the city was my chance." " And didn't you ever feel homesick ?" she asked. " I used to dream about the place after I came away. I used to dream that I had gone back there to live. That was my nightmare. It always woke me up." " And did you never go back ? " " No. I have never looked upon these hills since I left them, and I never will if I can help it. I suppose it's a matter of association," he continued. " My associations of not getting on are with the country ; my associations of getting on in some sort are with the city. That is enough to account for my hating the one and liking the other." " Yes," said Egeria, " that is true." She added after a moment, " Have they ever told you what Joseph's associa- tions with this region are ? " " No. I should like to know." THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 233 " He saw it in a dream, years before ho came here. When he first visited the Vardley Shakers he recognised it, and took it for a sign that he was to stay." " That was remarkalDle," said Ford. Egeria was silent. " Do yon believe in such things, Miss Boynton ? " he asked. She turned away, as if she had not heard him, and be- gan to search the vines for ripe grapes. She went down one side of the long trellis, and he followed down the other. Between the leaves and twisting stems he caught glimpses of her yellow hair and her blue eyes. " Do you find any ? " she asked. "Any what?" " Grapes." "I hadn't looked." She sighed, '• It's about as well. There don't seem to be any." After awhile she stopped, and he saw her glance at him through the leaves. " I don't know whether I be- lieve in these things or not. Do you ? " " No." " The Shakers do. They all think they have had some sign. But I shouldn't like to know things before- hand. It wouldn't help j'^ou to bear the bad. Besides, it don't seem to leave you free, somehow. I think the gi'eat thing is to be free." " It's the first thing," " Yes ; that is what I always felt. It was slavery, even if it was true." He knew what she meant ; but he said nothing, though she waited for him to speak. " It was what I tried to say sometimes ; but I couldn't express it. And I couldn't have made him understand." With that screen of vines between them, and each other's faces im- perfectly seen through the leaves and tendrils, it was easier to be frank. " It cut us off from everybody in the world. It was what made the quan'el wi*-h grand- father." 234 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. She waited again, and now Ford said, " Yes, your father said it was that." "It made everybody suspect us. I didn't care so much for myself after 1 got away from home, where they didn't know us; but T cared for father. He suffered so from tlie things he had to bear. You can't think what they were." " I'm ashamed to think what some of them were," said Ford. She paused a moment. " You mean what you said to him in Boston ? " " Yes." " Yes, that hurt him," she said, simply. " He had been very proud of the interest you took the first time you came. He said you were the only man of science that had taken any notice of him. Afterwards — he couldn't make it out." " I don't wonder ! " cried Ford. " It was incredible. But I never came to threaten him," " He was more puzzled when you wouldn't meet him in that public s6ince. Why wouldn't you ?" " Why ? " demanded Ford, in dismay. " Yes, why ? " " I don't know that I can say." " But you had some reason. Was it because you thought you would fail ? " Ford did not answer directly. " Can you believe that I wanted to consider him in the matter ? " he asked in turn. " Yes, that is what I did believe." She drew a long breath, and hid hei-self wholly behind a thick mass of the vine. " Did you — did you get a letter from me ? " " Yes," said Ford. " I thought that I ought to write it ; I didn't know whether to do it. But I couldn't help it. I was glad you refused." THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 235 " I was fflad you wrote the letter. It wasn t always a comfort to me, though. I had no right to any thanks from you. I felt as if I had extorted it. " Extorted it ! " she repeated, with the same eager per- sistence with which she had pressed him for his reason in refusing to meet her father. " Do you mean-do you mean that you tried to make me write the letter " How could I try to make you write me a letter i demanded the young man, stupefied , , j t " I don't know. I was not sure that I understood, 1 can't tell you— now. Did you destroy it ? " "Destroy what?" "The letter." "No: I kept it." «' Oh_will you give it back to me ? "Certainly." Ford unfolded a pocket-book, and took out a worn-looking scrap of paper, which he passed through an open space in the trellis. Her hand appeared at the aperture and received it. A hesitation made it- self felt through the vines.* "Will you give it back to me, Miss Boynton ? " '„..,,, i -i a «' There's nothing to be ashamed of in it, she said, and her hand reappeared at the open space with the letter. " Thanks, " said Ford. ^ " They will think I am a long time looking for a tevsr grapes," said Egeria. . . . "They've no idea how few there are, and how long it takes to find them," answered Ford. She laughed. "Are they scarce on your side, too ? " There are no ripe bunches at all. Shall I pick single ^^" Oh, yes ; any that you can get. It's rather early for them yet." , _. . , , , . » "Is it? I thought it was about the right time. « That shows you haven't lived in the country for a good while. You've forgotten." .' SJS 'l^( Ml \m 236 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. " Yes," assented Ford, " I haven't seen fjrapes on the vines for ten years." " Haven't you been out of the city in that time ? " " Not if I could help it." ** And why can't you help it now ? " " They told me I wasn't well, and I'd better go to the mountains." He sketched in a few words his course in coming to Vardley. " I thought you looked pale, when you first came," she said. After a little while she added, " You can bear it if you're getting better, I suppose." He laughed. " Oh, it isn't so disagreeable here. I'm interested in your Shaker friends." " They think they are living the true life," said the girl. "Do you?" asked Ford. " They are very good; but I have seen good people in the world outside," she answered. " I think they are the kind that would be good anywhere. I shouldn't like having things in common with others. I should like a house of my own. And I should like a world of my own." " Yes," said Ford, laughing. " I should like the private house, too. But I don't think I could manage a whole world." *' I mean a world that is for the people that live in it. When they die, they have their own world, and they oughtn't to try to come back to ours." ^ ** Oh, decidedly, I agree with you there ! " cried the young man. She seemed not to like his light tone. " I know that I don't express it well." " It couldn't be expressed better." " I meant that I hoped any friend of mine would be too well off to be willing to come back." " Yes." They found themselves at the end of the trellis, and face to face. He dropped his grapes into the basket, L_ THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 237 Bs on the e?" fo to the oiirse in me," she bear it if re. I'm the girl. le in the ihe kind having tiouse of private a whole *^e in it. d they ed the that I be too s, and asket, where some loose berries rolled about. She looked rue- fully at the result of their joint labours. " Well !" she said and they walked out of the garden together. At the gate Ford took out his watch, and stopped with a guilty abruptness. " Miss Boynton, I am going away, — I am going to Boston, this afternoon. I " — "Going away?" " Yes, I have business in Boston. Can I do anything for your father or — for you — there ? " " No," she said, looking at him in bewilderment, "Will you come and say good-by to him ? Or perhaps you had better not," she faltered. " I am coming back this evening ! " he cried in aston- ishment. " Will you lend me this basket ? " he asked. " Why, yes. It belongs to Rebecca." " Don't tell her I borrowed it. I must go now. Good-by !" " Good-by." She stood looking after him till a turn of the road to Vardley Village hid him." • When he reached Boston he found the year had turned from summer to autumn with a distinctness which he had not noted in the country. The streets, where his nerves expected the fierce heat in which he had left them, were swept by cool inland airs. The crowds upon the pave- ment had perceptibly increased ; a tide of women, fresh from their sojourn at the seaside and in the country, was pouring down Winter Street, reanimated for shopping, and with their thoughts set upon ribbons with a vivid- ness that shone in their faces. The third week of the fall season was placarded at the Museum ; and in the Public Garden, which he crossed upon an errand to his lodging, there was a blaze of autumnal flowers in place of the summer bloom which he had left. H i.i?t here and there groups of public-school children loitermg homeward with their books. The great, toiling majority who never go out of town were there, of course : the many whose vacations and purses are short had all returned ; it would ' 238 TFIK UNDtSCOVKUlon COnXTUY. bo some woolvH v*'fc lu'foro ilio fow who can indulw tlic luxiiry of tho colounnl loaves and the pecMiliar elrnnn of still Soptt'inluM' (lays out of town would (!onie honie. Ft was the nionieiit in whicli Kord had ordinarily the most cont(Uit i!i liis (rity. lie liked to renew his taeit com- panionship witli all these nfturning exiles : tlu' uromisc of winter snupiess Itrought him almost a dom(\'- ,v>y ; the keen sparkle of the early-liylited gas in the stnM't lamps and the shop-windows was a pleasures as distiiift as it was inarticulate. But now he felt estranged amid the cheerful spectacle of the Septend)er afternowii. The country (piiet, which he used to hate, tenderly- appealed to him ; tho quaint life of the ^h.tker villag(\ of whicli he had, without knowing it, hecome a part, reclaimed him ; the cry of a jay that strutted down an over- hanging branch, to defy him as he walked along the road, after parting with Kgeria, was still in his ears ; Ids vision was full of the sunny glisten of mea«lows where the Shakers' hired men were cutting the rowan, "id of roadsides fringed with golden-rod and asters. was impatient till he could be ott' again, and he mau», ..astc back to the fruiterer's where he had left his basket with an order to fill it with grapes. He was vexed to find it standing empty in a corner. " You didn't say what kind you wanted," exclaimed the fruiterer. " Put in what you like — the best kind," said Ford. " You can judge ; they're for a sick person." " All right." The man filled the basket, and Ford went to another counter and took up a bouquet, which he added to his purchase. He bought two or three newspapers, in the cars, and read them on the way back, throwing those he was not reading over the flowers on the seat beside him, so as to hide them. He got out of the train at Vardley Station with the sense of having committed a public action. He was rescued from THE UNDISCOVKIIED COUNTRY. a.so asket into the open buggy, and mounting to a place beside her. She looked down at it, but said nothing. He took the reins from her and drove out of the village before he spoke again. " I have got some grapes for your father." She laughed and lifted the liasket at onee into her lap. " I thought you were going for something," she said, " after you were gone ; and I guessed with Sister Frances. I guessed it was grapes, and she guessed it was peaches. You thought he would be disappointed at Elder Joseph's vines." She raised the lid of the basket .'uid after a glance pushed it to again with a quick gesture, and looked gravely at him. " That is too much," she said. " I hope you don't think so ! " he pleaded. " I counted on your being pleased." " So I am pleased," she retui'ned. She opened the Vjas- ket again, and looked witliin. " You must have hated to come back to the country," she said, after a silence, " if you like the city so much." " No. For once I was willing to come back. If the country hadn't threatened to keep me, I shouldn't have hated it. I never hated the country about here. What have you been doing this afternoon ? It seems a great while." " Does it ? Yes, it does ! I sup'iose there's such a same- ness here that anything that breulis it up makes the time longer. Sister Frances says that it's so when any of them are gone. After you w^ent I came in and stayed with father. He didn't know that I had been trying to get him some grapes. You gul^g away seemed to fret him, 240 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. l«nd that made me a little anxious to — to — see if you had come." " I never thought of not coming back." " Yes, I know, Silas went down to the post-ofRce with me : but Humphrey came along in his buggy, and Silas went back with him. He couldn't wait for you, and I said I would. " Thanks. But you took too much trouble. I expected to walk up from the station." " I didn't believe you'd want to carry the basket." " Yes, I should. But what would you have done if you had had to drive home alone in the dusk ?" " Oh, I knew you would be there." The lamps were lit in the office, and the window was red with cheferful light where the doctor lay in the infirm- ary, when they drew up before the gate, and Ford helped Egeria down. Then he took the paper in which the bouquet was wrapped, and handed it to her. " There are a few flowers, too." " I thought it must be flowers," she said. " I'll put them round the grapes." " The flowers are for you," said Ford, with dogged reso- lution. Laban came across the street from the office, and took the horse by the bridle. " The sisters want you should take your tea at the office, to-night. They've got it ready for you, and they've sent word to Friend Williams not to be expectin' you." While Ford waited a few moments in the office parlour, Egeria came, and he heard her talking with Rebecca and Diantha in the sitting-room. When the latter came to tel] him that tea was ready, he perceived that his gift was already a matter of family approval. He sat down at the table, and Egeria came out of the kitchen adjoining with the polished tin tea-pot in her hand. Then he saw that the table was set for two. Her face was flushed, as if she had been near the heat ; but she sat down quietly, THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 241 saying, " He was asleep, and Frances was with him. I must run back in a minute, for I want him to have them as soon as he wakes." He knew that she meant the ^'apes. When she was handing him his cup, she half drew it back. " I didn't ask you whether you like cream and sugar both, and I've put them in." " I like it so," said Ford. She ate with more appetite than he, and was gayer than he had seen her before. A happy light was in her eyes, and when they met his this light seemed to suffuse her face. She talked, and he listened dreamily. It was very strange to a man of his solitary life. He did not remember to have seen any one pour tea. At the board- ing-house they came and asked if you would have tea or coffee, and brought it to you in a cup ; at the restaurant they set it before you in a pot, and you helped yourself, or the waiter reached over your shoulder and poured it out. Ford looked round the sincerely bare dining-room ; the windows were shut to keep out the evening chill, and the curtains were snugly drawn. The door to the kitchen was open, and he could hear Diantha moving about there ; now and then she made a littlfe rattling at the stove ; once she came in with a plate of rice-cakes, and offered to wait upon them ; but Egeria passed the plate to Ford herself, and then gave him the butter and syrup. He tried to make her one with the frightened and joyless creature whom he had first seen in Boston ; then he perceived that she had fallen silent under his silent scrutiny. " I beg your pardon," he said, " is anything the matter ?" " Oh, no !" she answered. " But I must go back to father. Will you come over and see him ?" •« Yes." He walked across the road with her under the stars, keen as points of steel in the moonless sky ; but at the gate he said, " No, I won't go in to-uight. i will cotue to see your father to-morrow." 242 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. She said " Well," as if she understood that he wished to delay being thanked. As he lingered, she faltered too, and they stood con- fronted without speaking. Then he said, "Good-night," and made an offer of offering his hand. She saw it, and stretched hers toward him ; but by this time he had let his hand fall, thinking it unnoticed. The mancEiuvre was reciprocally repeated ; by a common impulse they both broke into a low, nervous laugh and their hands met in a quick clasp. " Thank you for the flowers," die sa ' when he had got a few paces away. A little farther off, he glanced back. She seemed to be standing yet at the door; but tlie light was uncertain, and it might have been a shadow. He delayed a little, and then went back ; but she was now gone, and he saw her head reflected against the curtain within. / THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 243 le wialied fcood con- )d-night," w it, and le had let iuvre was hey botli ds met in e had got ned to be incertain, d a little, d he saw CHAPTER XXI. Ford expected that they would meet next in the mood of their parting ; but she received him with a sort of de- fensive scrutiny that puzzled him and estranged her from him. He fancied that she avoided being alone with him, and made haste to shelter herself from him in her father's ])resenee, where she sat and knitted while they talked. If he glanced at her, he found her eye leaving him with a look of anxious quest. He went away feeling that she was capricious. Other days followed when she w^as dif- ferent, and met him with eager welcome ; but then he did not think her capricious, and he forgot from time to time the inquisition that vexed him and that seemed to weary and distress her. He commonly wrote in the morning, and came in the afternoon. She sat on the threshold of the infirmary, and if her father was awake she invited him in-doors ; if her fatlier was asleep, she drew Ford off a little way into the orchard. There had been a change in Boynton. He never spoke hopefully of his condition to Ford ; but al- though he still showed a great feebleness, there were often days when he left his bed and safc up in a rocking-chair to receive his visitor. He did not remain long afoot, and he never showed any wish to go out-of-doors. Sometimes Egeria and Frances, in their zeal for his convalescence, urged him in the mild fall weather to go out for the air ; but after a glance at the landscape he said, " Yes, yes, to- morrow if it's fair. I'm hardly equal to it to-day." When Ford was not with him, or some of the more metaphysical of the Shakers, he read and mused in his chair. At first he had wished to talk of the questions that perplexed him with Egeria, but she had fondly evaded them ; later, when 244 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. she showed herself willing to afford him this resource, he had no longer the wish for it, and did not respond to her promptings. His mind must have been dwelling upon this change in himself and her, one afternoon, when Ford came in and sat down with him. " You see," he said, " how they have tricked out my room for me?" and he indicated the boughs of coloured leaves, varied with bunches of wild asters and tops of golden-rod, in which the Shakers had carried him the autumn. " There isn't healing in my leaves, as there was in the flowers which they brought Egeria this spring," he added, with a slight sigh, " but there is sympathy — sympathy." Ford left him to the pleasure he evidently found in the analogy and contrast, and Boynton presently resumed : " There is an experiment which I should have liked to try, if she had continued the same. I should have liked to see if we could not change places, and she exert upon me that influence which I once had over her. There is no telling how sanative it might be in a case like mine, in which there is a certain obscurity of origin and character. But I am convinced that it would be useless to attempt the experiment. I see now that the psychic force must have left her entirely during her sickness. Not a trace of it remains. The fact is a very interesting- one, which I should hope to investigate with important results, if I could live to do so. It may be that we ap- proach the other world only through some abnormal con- dition here in my daughter ? " " You know I only saw Miss Boyntou two or three times before I came here," said Ford. " She seems very much better." " That is the change. Her power has escaped in this return to health. I saw it, — I almost noted its flight. Day by day, after the crisis of her fever, when convales- cence began, I perceived that she grew more and more rebellious to my influence, without knowing it. If I had You have observed this remarkable change THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 245 source, he nd to her is chanifc me m and hey have le boughs isters and •ried him as there s spring," ipathy — ividently 3resently uld have I should , and she over her. case like •igin and e useless ) psychic sickness, berestinfi- Important t we ap- mal con- 3 change Dr three nis very 1 in this s Hight. )nvales- id more [f I had obeyed my intuitions, I should never have put her powers to the final test. I see now that you had nothing to do with our failure here, whatever the effect of your sphere was in Boston. Her gift, rare and wonderful as it was, was the perishable efflorescence of a nervous morbidity. I might have known this before, — perhaps I did know it, and refused to accept it as a fact. It was hard, it was impossible, to relinquish my belief in her continued powers just when I had brought them to the most favourable con- ditions for their exercise. But I don't give up my belief in what has been. I know that she once possessed the power that has been withdrawn, if ever it existed on earth. You will get out of the matter very easily by saying that it never did exist," added Boynton bitterly. " / should once have said so ; but now I say, whoever keeps it or loses it, this power has never ceased to exist. Has my daughter ever spoken to you of this matter?" he demanded abruptly. " Yes," said Ford. " It would be intolerable if she knew how gi-eat her loss was. But she never realized the preciousness of her gift while she possessed it." The colour of superiority, of censure, which tinged these words irritated the young man. " As far as I could un- derstand she seemed to dislike ghosts." " Yes, I know that. I had that to contend with in her." " It seemed to me that she had a terror of them, f\nd that your researches had cost her " — Ford stopped. " What ? " asked Boynton. " She has never complained," answered the other. " I could only conjecture " — "Oh, I can believe that she never complained 1 " cried Boynton ; and now he lay a long sj)ace silent. At last, "Yes," he groaned, with an indescribable intensity of con- trition in his tone, " I see what you mean ! I seized upon a simple, loving nature, good and sweet in its earthliness, and sacred in it, and alienated it from all its possible 246 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRV. happiness to the uses of my ambition. I have played the vampn-e t" Ford rose in alarm at the effect of his words, and essayed what reparation he could. " No," he protested. "The harm is less than you think. I don't believe tljat any one but ourselves can do us essential injury here. We may make others unhappy, but we can't destro}'^ the pos- sibility of happiness in them ; we can only do that in ourselves. Your conscience has to do with your motives ; it judges you by them, and God — if we suppose Him — will not judge you b^^ anything else. The effect of misguided actions belong to the great mass of impersonal evil." It was the second time that he had presumed to dis- tinguish between Boynton and Egeria, and he had again committed a cruel impertinence. He continued with a sort of remorseful rage to launch upon Boynton such frag- ments of consolation as came into his head ; and he hur- ried from him without knowing that his phrases about impersonal evil had already floated that buoyant spirit beyond the regrets in which he had plunged it. Still heated and ashamed, he issued from the infirmary, and, as if it were strange that she should be there, he started at sight of E that ill otives ; it im — will iiisguided svil." Bd to dis- lad again d with a uch frag- 1 ho hur- ses about tint spirit nfinnary, there, he ard trees. ibout the Y of ours, ainst the i, and he ight that \, but he tired ? " son why laughed lest," he said, looking at the substantial gray sock mounted on her needles. . " Yes ; the Shakers sell'them," she explained. " I sup- pose you have got through your work for the day." " I've got through my writing, if you call that work. It's so dull it can't be play." Again he thought he would speak of what had passed bwtvveen him and her father, but he did not. " Do you write stories ? " she asked, with her eyes on her knitting. " Oh, not so bad as that ! I do what they call social topics — perhaps because I never go into society ; and I do them with difficulty, as I deserve, for I'm only making literature a means. I understand tha^ if you want to be treated well by it you must make it an end, and be very serious and respectful with it." " Oh, yes," said the girl, as if she did not understand. " I'm serious enough," he continued, " but I don't respect my writing as it goes on. It's as good as most ; but it ought to be as good as the best." " What are social topics ? " she asked presently. " I suppose I'm treating a social topic now. I'm writ- ing about some traits of New England country life. I began it — do you care to hear ? " " Yes, I should like to hear about it if j'-ou will tell me." " It's nothing. I was telling you the other day of our start from Boston. I couldn't help noticing some things on the way ; my ten years in town had made me a sort of foreigner in the country, and I noticed the people and their way of living ; and after I got here I sent a letter to a newspaper about it. You might think that would end it ; but you don't know the economies of a hack- writer. I've taken my letter for a text, and I'm working it over into an article for a maoazine. If I were a real literary man I should turn it into a lecture afterwards, and then*expand it into a little book." Egeria knitted on in silence, as if her mind were away, or had not strength 248 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. to deal with these abstractions. " Who is that ? " askcrl Ford, MS a young Sliaker.ews with a gentle face looked out of a window of the nearest family house, and nodded in plensant salutation to Egeria. '• That is the school-teacher." " They all look alike to me, — the sisters. I don't see how you tell them apart, so far off." " Yes, they all have the same expression, — the Shaker look. But they're very ditt'crent." " Why, of course. And the Shaker look is a very good look. It's peaceful. I suppose they have their bicker- ings, though." " jSot often. They're what they seem. That's their great ambition." " It's an immense comfort. You must be quite at home among them. " Yes," said the girl. " Do you mean no ? " " They do everything they can to make me ; but they have their own world, and I don't belong to it. They feel that as well as 1 do ; but they can't help it." " Of course not. That's the nature of worlds, big and little. You can't be at home near them ; you have to be in tliem to be comfortable. I have a world in my own neighbourhood that I don't belong to. I like to abuse it ; but it's quite as good a neighbour as I deserve, and it would be civil if I made an effort to tit into it. But I suppose I was a sort of born outcast." " Does Mr. Phillips write, too ? " asked the girl. The abruptness of the transition was a little bewilder- ing ; but Ford answered, " My Phillips ? No ; he talks." " But hasn't he any business ? " " None of his own. Did he amuse you ? " " I don't think I understood him," said Egeria. " He would be charmed with your further acouaintance. He would tell j^ou that he could meet you on common ground, — that he didn't understand himself." THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 249 She left Phillips by another zigzag. " I suppose," said she, " you like the inlluence that a writer has. It must be a pleasure to feel your power over people." " Nr," said Ford, " I don't care anything about the in- fluence. It shocks me to think of people being turned this way or that way by my stutf." " Then you believe," she said, with that recurrent in- tensity, " that we can have power over others without knowing it, and even without wishing it ? " "Oh," he answered carelessly, "we all control one another in the absurdest way." " Yes." She turned quite pale, and looked away, passing her hand over her forehead as if she were giddy. Then she rose quickly, and hurried down the path to the in- firmary. The young man followed. " Did you think you heard your fathers bell ? " " I'd better see if he rang." She went into the little house, but came out directly. " No ; he's trying to sleep." " Then we must go back, so as not to disturb him." " Yes," she said, but with an accent of interrogation and reluctance. " I don't believe I ought to leave him." " We shall be near enough," he rejoined with a kind of wilfulness. " Here comes Sister Frances ; she will stay with him." " I m'ght speak to her," murmured Egeria, hesitating, as Frances came across the road. " It isn't worth while. She will find him alone, and will naturally stay till you come in." Ford glanced about him. " Which is the apple-tree they call yours ? " " The one they brought me out under the first day I was well enough ? " " Yes ; I have heard a great deal of that tree. It is famous in the community annals." " Oh, it doesn't look the least now as it did then." She led the way far up the orchard slope. But when they came to the tree, and she said, putting her hanr>() THK UM)IS<'()VEllEt) COirNTUY. ! ' I fj^lanood at tlic lull on tlio brow of which soino clR'stniit- trcM's stoixl. " VVi' could i^et a better view from tliat place," he .sujf- ^ested. "Do yon tliink so?" She climbed half np the wall that divided the orchard from a mear does thinj^s by halves," said Ford. " Where she makes a soppin«jj mea«low, she puts plenty of stones to step on ; and where you are doubtful of your footing, .she puts mo to leiul you a helping hand." Ib^ ex- tended his hand to her as he spoke, and drew her lightly to the slo}>ing bowlder on which he stood, and on which .she nnist cling to him for support. " Olv, 1 could get on well enough alone," she said, laugh- ing nervously. " You can get on better with help." " Yes." She followed liim, springing from stone to stono, staying herself now by his hand ami now by his arm, till they reached the hard, dry top, where the tangled low black- berry vines overran the bowlder heads thickly cruste«l with lichens. " I didn't suppose it was so bad," she said, shaking out her skirts. " I don't think it so very bad," he returned. " It wasn't a great way across." " No. There are some chestnuts. It must be too soon for them." " Let us see." said Ford. He advanced leisurely, and with a club knocked off some burs. Returning with them to the rock, where she had stood watching him, he ham- mered the nuts fi-om their cells. They were scarcely in the milk yet. " These trees are too old," he said. " Tho nuts ripen first on the young trees that stand apart in the tllE UNDrSCOVKUllD COUNTIlV. 251 'stniit- TiiCf'uloWH. Tlicn? aro .some in tlio ryo-ficld just Ixiyond these j)iri(^ woods, here," he said, pointin;^ to the ^Mowth on thfiir hif't. " That would he too faj'," sjje answijnMl, following' his «,'estur«? with a ^datiee. " We liad hotter j;o haek." " We can |^o haek thiit way. It's f,'()()d waikin;^." She did not answer, hut lie hid on nj^^ain.and slie toll >wed. " How still and warm it is ! " she cried, witli a luxurious surrender to the charm of tin; plac*;. Thr. Tho rod sunset batlicd it in a niisty li^ht, tlirou^li wliicli sliono tlH"* scarlet of tlie nmphjs, tlic fjfold of tl>e einjs l»y tlu; river, tho teinliM' crimson of tlie young ^rowtlis in tlie swamp lands. On the hill-side some of the farm windows had caught the sun, and blazed and flickered with minuc (ire. Along a lower sIo]k» ran a silent train, narking its course with puHs of white steam. " I can confess, now," said Ford, " that if I luuln't clindied this rock I shouldn't have known just when; we were. But here are all the landmarks. He pointed to the familiar bai'ns and family houses below. " How near we are ! " she cried, looking down. " I felt as if we w^ere miles away. These woods are not largo enough to get lost in, are they ? " " Not now. Tlu^y were, a minute ago." He sat down beside her, and thoy looked at the landscape togetlier. " It's rather sightly, as Joseph says." " We had better go down," she nuu'mured. But neither of them made a movement to go. They sat looking at the valley. " Now the tire has caught the wirulows higher up," she said. They watched the glittering panes as they darkened and kindled. The windows of the highest farm- house Hashed intensely, and then slowly blackev»ed. A light blue haze hovered over the valley. " The curtain is down," said Ford. She started to her feet and looked round. " Why the sun has set ! " " Didn't you know that ?" he asked. "No," she said, sadly. "It seemed as if '* '«ii»»dd last longer. But nothing lasts." " No, nothing lasts," he repeated. " But gc, 'ally hings last long enough. I could have stood another Jiou or two THE UNDISCOVEIIED COUNTHY. 253 it til at fanns 'y Imd misty 's, the A' n... Il-.si«|(> »Iazr(J M^ laii vvliitc of Huns(!t, howovor. And HomotitnfiH I'vn known portuuity, and it' you saw your duty in it T ou'^ht to yii'M to you. 1 did not wr.nt to luive tlu^appearance of fortii-putting, in sucli a ense, and I certainly don't covet the task of speaking- to Friend Ford. lie a[)peais to n»e a person subject to sudden gusts of anger, and there is no telling how he may take the interference." " That is so," admitt((d one of the sisters. " There ain't no ([uesticni about forth-puttin', Elihu," siiid Humphrey, with the conliality of a great relief. 'Every one'd know you (b(bi't seek such a duty. But Friend Ford'U take it aJl riglit; you'll .see. He'll look at it in the same light you do. ' Flihu rose, and took his hat and stick. "I shall pro- bably find him in his room, now, I suppose." Humphrey stood as much aghast as it was in his power to do. " Was you — you 'Aa'n't goin' to speak to him right away ?" "Yee. Why should T put it off? He cannot take it any better to-morrow or next week than he would to- night. And the trouble wouldn't grow le.ss if we waited tUl doomsday." Elihu went out; the closing of the hall door upon him was like an earthquake to those within. " I declare for it," said Laban," I 'most feel like goin* along down to Friend Ford's and waitin' outside." " Well," observed Rebecca, slighting the bold proposij tion, " Elihu, never was one to be afraid." " That is so, Rebecca," said Diantha. Humphrey said nothing. The accumulation and com- plication of evils brought upon the family by the Boyn tons had long passed his control. ; TFIK UNDISCOVKRKI) C'OUNTKY. 205 CHAPTER XXITT. pro- Elihu walked rapidly down tho moon-lightod street. When lie reached the old family -house, he groped his way up from the outer door to that of the meeting-room, in which Ford lodged, and tapped upon it with his stick. There was the sort of hesitation within which follows upon surprise and doubt ; then the sound of a chair pushed hack was heard, and Ford came to the door with a lamp in his hand ; he looked like one startled out of a deep reverie. " Anything the matter with Dr. Boynton ? " ho asked, af- ter a gradual recogniticm of Elihu. " Nay," replied the Shaker. " Friend Boynton is hotter than usual, I believe. I wish to have a little talk with you, Friend Ford. Shall I come in ? " Ford found that ho was holding tho door ajar, and block- ing the entrance. " Why, certainly," he sai you are right. She is unharmed by all that she has suttered. I have at least that comfort." Then he underwent a quick relapse. " But, wheth* I have harmed her or not, the fact remains that she had never any stipematural power, and I return through all my years of experiment and research to the old ground, — the ground which 1 once occupied, and which you have never left, — the ground of materialism. It is doubtless well to have something under the foot, if it is only a lump of life- less adamant." " I find it hard not to imagine something better than this life when I think of Miss Boynton ! " exclaimed Ford impetuously. " Very true," said the doctor, accepting the tribute with- out perceiving the passion in it ; " there has always been that suggestion of diviner goodness in her loving, self- devoted nature. But she had no more supernatural power than you or I, and the whole system of belief which I had built upon the hypothesis of its existence in her lies a heap of rubbish. And here at death's door I am with- out a sense of anything but darkness and the void beyond." A silence ensued, which Boynton broke with a startling appeal : " In the name of God, — in the name of whatever is Detter and greater than ourselves, — ^give me some hope ! Speak ! Say something, from your vantage-ground of health and strength ! Let me have some hope. I am not a coward. I am not afraid of torment. I should not be afraid of it if I had ever willed wrong to any living crea- ture, and I know that I have not. But this darkness rushing back upon me, after years of faith and surety — it's unendurable ! Give me some hope ! A word comes from you at times that does not seem of your own author- ity : speak ! Say it ! " IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1.25 t m 1110 1.8 U IIIIII.6 V] s they didn't think it worth mentioning. You know yoin* friends — I forget the name ; Boyntons ? — had passed the night before they reached the Elm Tavern in a school- house up here ; and the teacher found them there in the morning, and lent the young lady ]^,( r water-proof. They were to send it back from Vardley >'>tation ; but as they never went to Vardley Station they naturally never sent it back." " I don't believe it ! " cried Ford. * Mr. Phillips alvays told me y^i were a terrible sceptic !" said Mrs. Perham. * 1 merely had the story from the mother of the school-teachei , herself! We hap- pened to stop at her house to ask the way, and when we enquired if the Boyntons were still here she came out with this story. She's a very voluble old lady. I dare say she tells it to every one. What is your theory about it?" Ford released the wheel which he had been gripping, and, giving it a contemptuous push, turned away without a word. Mrs. Perham craned her head round to look back after him. " What a natural man ! " she said, with sincere ad- miration. " He's perfectly fascinating." She burst into a laugh. " Poor Mr. Phillips ! He looked as if he wished you had been my authority." Phillips shrugged his shoulders, and said dryly, " I hope you are satisfied, Mrs. Perham." 292 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. " Why, no, I am not," she candidly owned, with a touch of real regret in her voice. " I only meant to tease him ; but if he's in love with her, I suppose he'll take it to heart." " In love with whom ? " asked Phillips. " Sister Diantha." Phillips stared at her. " Well, with this medium, then — this Media, Ash taroth, Egeria, — / don't know what her name is," As Phillips continued to stare at her, Mrs. Perham gave a shriller laugh. " Really, you are a man, too. I shall never dare t ike. on such eas}-^ terms with you again, Mr. Phillips, — never ! I don't wonder men cfin't understand women : they don't understand their own simple sex. Of course he's in love with her, and must have been from the first." " Well, then, allow me to say, Mrs. Perham, that if you think he's in love with Miss Boynton, I don't quite see what your object was. I felt that it was an intrusion to c 3me over here, at the best." " Oh, thanks, Mr. Phillips ! " " And it appears to me that it was extraneous to repeat those stories to him." " Extraneous is good ! And you have an ally in my own conscience, Mr. Phillips. I wanted to see a natural man under the influence of a strong emotion, and I don't like it, I think. I didn't suppose he was so serious about her. But I don't believe ai.y harm's done. He won't give her up on account of what I've said ; and if he docs perhaps she ought to be given up." Phillips dealt the horse a cut of the whip, and left the talk to Mrs. Perham, as they drove away. In the first half -hour after dinner, while she sat ab- sently feeling on the porcelain -toned piano in the hotel parlour for the music of the past, two ladies who wished to see her were announced, On6 of these visitors proved to be a Shaker sister, whom Mrs. Perham recognised, and THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 293 who introduced her companion, a short, squarely built young woman, as Miss Thorn. They took seats, tho j.gli Mrs, Perham had risen and re- mained standing, and Miss Thorn said, without preamble, " I teach in the school-house in Vardley, where Dr. Boyn- ton stopped this spring. I heard from my mother this noon that a lady and gentleman had been asking the way to the Shaker Village, who seemed to know Dr. Boynton." "No, I don't know him," said Mrs. Perham. Phillips came forward, from a corner of the parlour^ " I know Dr. Boynton ; at least I saw him and Miss Boynton iii Boston once." " I thought," said Miss Thorn, " that I ought to come and tell you that my mother didn't understand about that — that waterproof." " Oh, yes," said Mrs. Perham ; " we thought it so curious." " I was sure," said Phillips, with an attempted severity, " that there was some mistake." The severity had no ap- parent effect upon Mrs. Perham, but Miss Thorn, who had been talkjLng in some sort to both, now addressed herself wholly to him : — " I was away from home when you stopped to-day. I thought you would like to know there was a misunder- standing. The waterproof was as much a gift as anything; though that wouldn't have excused them if they had thought I wanted it again. But anybody could see that Miss Boynton was stupid then with the fever, and didn't half know where she was or what she was doing. She had been walking late the night before through the snow, and they had slept on the benches before the stove." Phillips bowed, and looked at Miss Thorn, who resumed with increasing stiffness : " I never wondered at his not remembering it ; he seemed too flighty for anything. I knew they were here all summer at the Shakers'. " I don't," gaid Miss Thorn, " pass any judgment on my mother for wmmmmm 291 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. the way she looked at it ; but I'd have given anything if she hadn't spoken." The tears started to her eyes, and she bit her lip as she rose. " It didn't make any difference to us," said Diantha, who had hitherto sat a silent and inscrutable glimmer of spectacles in the depths of her Shaker bonnet. " It got hung up among our things while she was sick, and when she got well she couldn't seem to remember about it. She thought she must have brought it from the cars with her for her own." Miss Thorn waited, and then resumed stiffly, " I never suspected or blamed them the least bit. As soon as I could, I went over to the Shakers' to see about it, and told them the way I felt, and that I wanted to come to you. Diantha felt as if she would like to come with me, and I brought her. That's all." Miss Thorn rose with a personal prim- ness that by contrast almost softened the Shaker prim- ness of Diantha into ceremony. Phillips experienced the rush of an emotion which upon subsequent analysis, he knew to be of unquestion- able genuineness. '* My dear young lady," he said, " I ask you to do me the justice to believe that I never had an injurious suspicion of Miss Boynton. Her father had attempted a line of life that naturally subjected himself and her to question, but I never doubted them. I have a positive pleasure in disbelieving anything to their dis- advantage in connection with — with — your generous be- haviour to them. Did — did Mr. Ford speak of the matter to you ? Did he wish any expression from me in their behalf ? Because " — " He had no need to ask anything as far as we're con- cerned," interposed Diantha. " No," said Phillips. " I can only repeat that I was sure there was a misunderstanding, and that you've done us a favour in coming. Is there any way in which I could be of use to Dr. Boynton ? I should be most happy if I thought there was." THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 29 Miss Thorn left the reply to Diantha, who said as they went out, " There ain't anything as I know of." " Really," commented Mrs. Perham, " this is edifying. I haven't felt so put down for a loncj while. I don't see what more we could do, unless we joined with Miss Thorn and Sister Diantha in presenting Miss Boynton with a piece of plate, as a slight token of gi-atitude for her noble example in borrowing a water-proof and keeping it. She has classed the water-proof with the umbrella, as a thing not to be returned. Is that the principle ? Well, if Mr. Ford is going to marry her — " " Going to marry her ! " cried Phillips. " Why, of course. Did you think anything else ? Is marriage such an unnatural thing ? " " No. But Ford's marrying is." " That remains to be seen. If he's going to marry her, he can't believe in her too thoroughly. I've an idea that the Pythoness is insipid ; buo If Mr. Ford likes insipidity, I want him to have it. I think we ought to drive over to the Shakers', and assure him in person that we didn't mean anything. You shall do all the talking this time ; you talk so well." " Thanks," said Phillips, " I suspect I've done my last talking to Ford." '• And you won't go ? " demanded Mrs. Perham, with a laugh. " Then I must go alone, some day. Meantime, I know how to keep a secret. I hope Miss Thorn may be able to teach her mother." 2i)0 THK UNDISCOVKREP COUNTl? f. CHAPTER XXVI. Ford stood still, looking at the ground, while Phillips and Mrs. Perhani drove away. His impulse to pluck Phillips from his place, and make him pay in person for that woman's malice, was still so vividly present in his nerves that he seemed to have done it ; but when the misery of Phillips's face, intensifying as Mi-s. Perham went on from bad to worse, recurred to him, he broke into a laugh. Sister Frances came out of the office. " Friend Ed- ward," she said, •' was that wicked woman speakin' to you about Egery ? " " Yes." " Don't you believe her ! Don't you believe a word she said ! " cried the Shakeress, with hot looks of indignation . " I know just how it all happened — " " I don't wish to know. I should feel disgraced if I let you tell me. Whatever happened, this woman lied. Where is Egeria ? " " Oh ! " cried Frances. " She has gone to Harshire with Rebecca. She won't be back till mornin'." She bent on the young man a look of wistful sympathy. " Well ! " he cried, throwing up his hands desperately, as if the morrow were a time so remote that it never would come, " I must wait." *^ She'd been plannin' to go a long while," Frances apologized, " and her father seemed so well this mornin' she thought she might — " " Oh, yes, yes ! " answered Ford dejectedly. He knew that he somehow had driven her away by his behaviour of the day before, and that he had himself to blame for this delay in which he stifled, He turned about, with some THE UNDIS('OVEUED COUNTUY. 297 wild purpose of following lier to llar.shirc,an(l speaking to her there, when he heard Frances calling hirn again : — *' Friend Edward, I don't know as you know that Egery's ex pectin' friends to-morrow." " Friends ? No, what friends ? " asked Ford. " Has she gone to meet them at Harshire ? " he added, stupidly. " Well, no ; she only got the letter yesterday. 1 sup- pose her father didn t think to tell you of it. I don't know as you evei* heard her speak of the young man that come with 'em as far as the Junction that day they missed their train. He was with 'em a while in Boston, and he came from the same place they did, Down East. He's been twice to find 'em there in Maine, this summer ; but he couldn't hear any word of 'em till just now. They was children together, Egery and Friend — Well, I never could remember names." " Oh, never mind ! " exclaimed Ford, with a deathly pallor. " I know the name, — I know the man 1 " And now he turned again, and hunied beyond a second recall from the trouble in which Frances saw him gi'oping down the road like one in the dark. When he had got out of her sight, he walked a little into the wayside woods, and stumbling to the ground gave himself to the despair which had blackened round him. His first feeling was a generous regret that now he could not let his love speak the contempt in which he held the wrong he had heard done her ; this feeling came even before the sense of hope- less loss to which he abandoned himself with a lover's rashness. He meekly owned that the man whom he mar- velled now that he could ever have forgotten as a rival, was one of those in whom women confided, and were not disappointed, — who made constant friends and good hus- bands ; and questioning himself he could not be sure that her happiness would be as safe in his own keeping. He remembered with abject humiliation the last time he had met this man, and the savagery with which he had wreaked upon him the jealousy which he would not then admit tg 298 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. himself, and in which he had refused to consider even her at his prayer. The turmoil went on for hours, but always to this effect. The most that he could hope, when ho crept homeward at dusk, sore, as if bruised in body by the conflict in his mind, was that he might steal away before he saw them together. With this intent, to which he had worked with difficulty in the chaos of his dreams, he set about putting his books and other belongings to- gether, but he gave up tremulous and exhausted before the work was half done. He fell to thinking again, and this time with a sort of sullen resentment, in which he said to himself that his love had its own rights, and that he would not betray them. It had a right to be heard, at any cost ; and he began to despise his purpose of hur- rying away as mock-heroic. It was like a character in a lady's novel to leave the field to a rival whom he did not yet know to be preferred ; the high humility, in which he had thought to yield Egeria without her explicit au- thority to a man whom he judged his better, sickened him. He saw that it was for her to choose between them, and it was the part of a coward and a fool to go before she had chosen. As matters stood, he had no right to go ; she had a pre-eminent right to know from him that he loved her. He hungrily dispatched the supper he had left standing on his table, and then kindled a brush-wood fire on his hearth ; he sat down before it in his easy-chair, and stayed by the clearer mind at which he had arrived he exper- ienced a sensual comfort in the blaze. Presently he was aware of drowsing ; and then suddenly he awoke. The dawn came in at the windows ; he perceived that he had passed the night in his chair. A loud knocking continued at his door, v-rhile he gathered his scattered wits together. At length he cried, " Come in ! " and the farmer from over the way entered. " I don't suppose ye know what's happened ? " he said. " No," said Ford, " I don't, if it's anything particular/* THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 299 om over " No. Well. I thought may be ye'd like to know. The old man's dead. Died sudden this mornin'." "What? Who? What old man?" The farmer nodded his head in the direction of the village. " Dr. Boynton. I thought ye'd like to know it." " Thank you," said Ford. He rose and stood at one corner of the hearth ; the farmer, from the other, stiffly stretched his hard, knotted hand towards the ashes of the dead fire. Ford went out and walked up through the village, whose familiar aspect was all estranged, as if he himself had died, and were looking upon it from another world. At the office he found a group of Shakers listening to Boynton's physician, who, on his appearance, addressed more directly to him what he was saying of the painless death Boynton must have died in his sleep. " The first part of the night he was very restless, and several times he said that he would like to see you and talk with you ; but he would not let them send ; said he hadn't fornmlated his ideas yet." The doctor involuntarily smiled in recal- ling a turn of the phraseology so newly silent forever. " I wonder if he has formulated them now to his satisfaction." Ford made no response, and the doctor asked, " Did he speak to you yesterday of the case of an electrical girl ? " " Yes." " I inferred as much from something he said, when I saw him in the afternoon. I had lent him the magazine containing the account. He found an analogy between that case and Miss Boynton's that I had not anticipated. It seems to have put a quietus to his belief in her super- natural gifts." " Yes," Ford assented, as before. " He told me that it had depressed him to the lowest point. But when I saw him he had quite recovered his spirits." He added thoughtfully, " You can't say that a man dies because he wishes to die ; though it sometimes seems as if people could live if they would. When I 300 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. parted with Dr. Boynton he had what I might call an enthusiasm for death. It might be described in other words as a desire, amounting almost to frenzy, to know whether we live again, and a willingness to gratify that desire at the cost of not living at all." " He dwelt habitually on that question," said Ford, with difficulty. " But when I talked with him yesterday, he seemed at rest on the main point." *' Yes, I don't know but he was. Perhaps I had better say that he was impatient to verify it. He talked of no- thing else during the evening, Sister Frances tells me ; though he fell off quietly to sleep at last." - " Well," said Ford drearily, " he has verified it now." " Yes, and in the old way, — the way appointed for all living. He knows now. Did it ever occur to you, sir," added the doctor, philosophically, " what ignorance all our wisdom is compared with the knowledge of a child that has just died ? " " If it j».nows anything at all." " Oh, certainly, — if it does know." " We are sure it knows," said Elihu. They walked out together, and before the doctor mounted his buggy to drive away they stood a moment looking at the closed windows of the infirmary. " It's useless, now, to talk of causes," said the doctor. " The heart had been affected a long time " " He is dead, all the same," said Ford. " Oh, yes, he is dead," assented the doctor. " What I meant to say was that while no human foresight could have prevented the result I confess its suddenness sur- prised me. One moment he was with us, and the next " — " He wasn't," interrupted Ford, restively. ** That's all we can know : and neither he nor all th ; myriads that have gone that way can tell us anything more." " If we suppose him to be somewhere in a state of conscious being," observed the doctor, " we can suppose TKE UNDtSCOVEUED COUNTRY. 301 that reflection to be a trial to him, after a life so much devoted to the effort of working out proof of something different." " He had been a spiritualist ; and not a selfish or ignoble one," answered Ford, oppressed by the doctor's specula- tive mood, and letting his impatience appear. A voice was in his ears, repeating the things that Boynton had said. In the pauses of it, he brooded upon the chances that had thrown upon him for sympathy and comfort in his last days the man for whom he had once felt and shown such contempt. The dark irony, the broken mean- ing, afflicted him, and he lurked about, stunned and help- less, waiting till Egeria should come, and dreading to see the grief in which he had no rights. He thought of her trouble, not of his own ; it blotted even his jealousy from his mind, and left him acquiescent in whatever fate befell. The time for what he had intended to do was swept away ; he could now only wait passively for events to shape them- selves. Hatch did not come that day, and Ford took such part as Elihu assigned him in the sad business of fulfilling Boynton's wishes. These had been casually expressed from time to time to Frances, and referred to his removal to his old home, where he desired to be laid by the side of his wife. When Hatch arrived, the second morning, he assumed charge of the affair, as a family friend ; and Ford, lapsing from all active concern in it, shut himself in his own room, and waited for he knew not what. In the evening, Hatch came to see him. They had already met in the presence of the Shakers, but doubtless neither felt that they had met till now, since their parting in Boston. Hatch received awkwardly the civility which Ford awkwardly showed. He would not sit down, and he said abruptly that he had come to say that Miss Boyn- ton was going back in the morning to her home in Maine, where the funeral was to be. He added that Frances and 802 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. Elihu were going with her, on the part of the family ; and after a hesitation he said, " Wouldn't you like to att«.nil the funeral, too ? " " Has she authorized you to invite me ?" asked Fonl. " Well, no," said Hatch. " I don't suppose she wantt tl to put that much of a burden on you. It's a long wavM. ' Ford reflected a long time. " You are going, I supjKjso :" " Why, of course," said Hatch. Ford pondered again. " Under the circumstances," h' said, " I believe that I oughtn't to let my own prefen-nc*- have any weight. Miss Boynton is going with friends to her own home, and I couldn't be of any use. I propose- to do what I think would be least afflicting to her by not going." He hesitated, and } >:esently added, tentative!}, *' I believe she would prefei* it." " You ought to know best," said Hatch. " Well, I believe that I am right. Tell her that I will not try to see her before she goes ; but — but — s<3me otlnr time." He said this tentatively, also, and with an odd sort of faltering, as if somehow Hatch might advise him better. " I thank you for coming." " Well, sir," said the young fellow, standing with his feet squarely apart in the way that Ford had hated him for in Mrs. Le Koy's parlor, " you must do what jou think is best. / want to thank you, too. Dr. Bo3'nton was a good friend to me, and from all I hear you were a good friend to him, — at last. You've behaved like a mar. They all say heie that the doctor couldn't have got alon;,' without you." " They overpraise me," said Ford, helped to a melan- choly irony by Hatch's simple patronage. " No, sir," replied Hatch. " I don't think so. And j-ou must have found it pretty tough, feeling the way you did about him." " No," said Ford, " it was not so tough as it might seem. I liked him. It isn't a logical position ; he never squared THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTllV. 303 with my ideas ; but I know now that he was a singularly upright and truthful man." " That's so, every time," said Hatch, " I don't care for my consistency in the thing ; I'd rather do him justice. I've come to his own ground, and yours : I want to say that when I interfered with him there in Boston he liad a noble motive, and I had an ignoble one." " If you're not firing over my head," said Hatch, " and if I catch your meaning rightly, I'm bound to confess that the doctor had got mixed up with a pretty queer lot in the course of his researches. But he was all right him- self. I pinned my faith to him, right along. But if you mean that you're going in for anything like spiritualism, I advise you to hush it up among yourself. As far as I'm concerned, I've about come to that conclusion. And I think Miss Ejjeria's had enouj^h of it." His mention of her name in this connection was at first puzzling, and at last so oftensive to Ford that he found it harder than he had thought to say what he now said After a dry assent to Hatch's proposition, he added, " I dare say you're right. Mr. Hatch, 1 treated you shabbily when we met last. I am sorry for that, and ashamed of it. I should have behaved better, if I had understood better"— " Oh, I knew how it was, myself," Hatch interrupted. " Or I did when I came to think a it," Ford looked at him as if he did not comprehend his drift ; and Hatch continued, " It was pretty rough at the time, but I sup- pose I should have acted just so, in your place. Well, sir ! I hope we part better friends, now," he said, offering his hand. " I think that's what the old doctor would have liked. Some of his ideas were most too large a fit for this world, but he was pretty practical about others." Ford took the proffered iiand, and followed Hatch to his door, wholly baffled and unsettled. He longed to have it all out with him, but this was not possible, and he submitted as he best could. He had thought himself h 304 THE iJlf DISCOVERED COUNTRV. right in resolving not to follow Egeria home, or vex her with his presence before she ^enC; but he was not su of this now; and he spent the time intervening before her departure in an anguish of indecision. But lie let awaf t^o ''^ ^^ ^'"'' ""^^ ^" ^^' ^^^^^"°^" ^' ^^^ THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 305 CHAPTER XXVII. He did not go hack to bis old lodgini( in Boston, but sixjnt a day at a liotel till be could find otber quarters. It was intolerable to think of meeting any one be knew, and be bad sucb a borior of Mrs. Perbani's possible return ibat be asked at tbe door wbetber sbe bad come back be- fore be went in to make ready for removal. Wben tbe change was eftected, all change seemed for- ever at an end. The days went by without event ; be could not write, but be took up again bis study with the practi- ' I chemist, and pushed on with that through an unstoried month which brought him throujjh tbe bluster and chill of September to tbe mellow beart of October, A chasm divided him from all that be had been, and he tried to keep from thinking across it. But his mind was full of broken glimpses of the past ; of doubts of what be bad done ; of vague wonder if be should ever bear from her again, and how ; of crazy purposes, broken as fast as formed, of going wdicre he might look on her, if it might be only that, and know that she was still in life. There were terrible moments in which his heart was wrung with tbe possibility that bis conjecture bad been all wrong, and that sbe might be lingering in cruel amaze that he bad never made any sign to her, and puzzling over the prob- lem which his refusal to see her, or to stand with her at her father's grave, had left her. One evening when he came home, he found a flat, square package, which had arrived through tbe mail after going first to his old address. It was directed in an old- fashioned, round hand, and it yielded softly to the touch with which he fingered it before he tore it open. It proved to bold a handkerchief, which he recognised as his T 306 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. own, fragrantly washed and ironed ; and he found a little note pinned to it, and signed F. Plumb, explaining that the handkerchief had been found in his room. While he stood scow^ling at it, and trying to make out who F. Plumb was, and where he had left the handkerchief, he turned the scrap of paper over, and saw written in pencil on the back, as if the writer had wished to whisper it there, " I do not know as you heaid that Egeria is back with us. Frances." Now he knew, now he understood. All the hopes that had seemed dead sprang to life again. He caught up a paper and looked at the time-tables. The last train passing Vardley would leave in fifteen minutes. He turned the key in his door, and in two hours later he was rounding the dark point of the wooded hill that intervenes between the station and the Shaker vil- lage, where a light sparely twinkled in the windov/ of Elihu's shop. He had walked as he supposed, but his pace was more like a run from the train ; and his heart thundered in his ears as he sat and panted on Elihu's door-step, trying to gather courage to go in. At last he went in without the courage. Elihu was amazed, certainly, but hardly disquieted. He shut upon his thumb the book that he was reading, and pushed his spectacles above his forehead. " Friend Ford ! " he said. " Yes ! " answered the young man, still striving for breath, as he pressed the Shaker's hand. " I have come — I have come '' — " Yee," Elihu assented ; " sit down. We did not expect you, but the family will be glad to see you. Have you kept your health ? " " Is she well ? Is she going to stay with you ? When did she come back ? " The questions thronged upon one another faster than he could utter them, and he stopped perforce again. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 307 nd a little ning that While he 'F. Plumb he turned icil on the there, " I t with us. ^opes that me-tables. in fifteen two hours Doded hill laker vil- indov/ of i, but his his heart •n Elihu's it last he ted. He ling, and d Ford ! " ving for ive come ^i expect ave you When ipon one stopped " I suppose you mean Egeria. Yce, she is well. She came back last week, I — I — wrote to you from her place that she was coming back." Elihu coloured with a guilty conscience. " I never got your letter. I only heard two hours ago that she was with you." " She only stayed to settle up things there. I don't know as Humphrey ever told you that her grandfather left his property to her ? " " I don't know — Yes, yes, — he did." " There weren't any of her folks left there, and her father had brought her up iu such a way, late years, that she was pretty much a stranger outside of her grandfathei's house. When she got back there, she found that it was more like home to her here than anywhere else. Friend Hatch stayed a spell, to help her settle up her property, and then he had to go West again. As soon as she could she came to us." " Elihu," said Ford, who had listened with but half a sense, " I have come here to speak to her. Shall I do it ? I want you to advise me. I want you to tell me " — " Nay, I must not meddle or make in this business," said the Shaker. " You did meddle or make in it once," retorted Ford, imresentf ally but intiexibly, " and I recognised your right to do so, from your point of view; I submitted to you. We can't withdraw from each other's confidence now. I have a claim upon your advice. Besides, in all wordly knowledge that comes through acquaintance with women, I am as much a Shaker as you are. I only know that I must speak with her. If she cares anything for me, as you said she did, I must speak. But when ? Shall I go away again, and come back after a while ? Since we last talked together have you learned anything that makes you think she would be willing to spend her life among you ? If you have, I will leave her alone. She could be at peace here ; and I, — I have only brought her trouble 308 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTKV. and sorrow so far. Even if she cared for me, I would leave her to you — No, I luouldnt ! I couldn't do that ! By all that a man can be to a woman, I oughtn't to do it I But what do you say ? " Elihu had tilted his chair upon its hind-legs, and he rocked back and forth without bringing its fore-legs to the ground. " I haven't seen anything in her that would make me think she would like to stay with us. And I have heard that she intends to leave us as soon as she can tind something to do in the world outside. Frances wants she should go to friends of hers in Boston that would help her find something. They've been talking about it this afternoon, and Egeria's mind seems quite made up about going." . " Well," repeated Ford, " may I speak with her ? " " I can't answer you. I felt it a cross laid upon me to interfere against your showing your feeling for her here ; but to interfere in behalf of it is a cross which I don't have any call to take up — twice." " Can I stay here to-night ? " asked Ford. " Yee. They can give you a room at the otlice." " Do you suppose Mrs. Williams could put me up some sort of bed in my old place ? I would rather sleep there. " Oh, yee, I guess so. I will step down with you and see." " No, I'll go alone. If she can't, I'll come back to the office. Good-night." " Good-night," said Elihu, with his flicker of a smile. Ford's bed had not been taken down, and while the farmer's wife made it ready for him with fresh sheets, he kindled a roaring fire on his hearth. He sat a long time before it, turning over and over in his mind the same doubt which had tormented him when he last sat there. But he could not believe that Frances and Elihu would have let him come back if there had been any grounds I'or this fear. It had burnt in his heart to ask Elihu, and solve it; but that seemed a sort of cowardice, and he had THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 300 withheld the question. He would not know the truth now till he had put his own fate to the test, and spoken in defiance of whatever the answer might be. The next morning he perceived an undercurrent of deeply subdued excitement in such of the family as he met at the office, and a sympathy which he afterwards remembered with compassion. The brothers and sistei*s all shook hands with him, and, refraining from recognition of the suddenness of his return, said they were glad to see him back. "And that's more than we can say to some of the friends from the world outside ' " exclainuul Dian- tha, when her tuni came. Ford was touched V)y this friendliness ; a man so little used to being liked might overvalue it ; but he looked impatiently about for Frances and the sisters knew how to interpret his glance. " She's gone over to put the infirmary to rights a little," Rebecca explained. She added casually, " Egery's over there with her, I guess. She wanted to go." The sisters decently turned from the door, but they stood a little way back from the window, and looked at him there as he crossed the street. The door of the little house stood open, and Ford savv Frances within, dusting where there was no dust, and vainly rubbing the neat chairs with a cloth. The bed where Boynton had lain was dismantled : it seemed as if he might have risen to have it made for him. Ford ex pected to hear his voice, and a lump hung in his throat. When his sad eyes met those of Frances, he saw that hers were red with weeping. She gave her hand and said " Good-morning, Friend Edward. I'm real glad to 8eo you back again. We've all missed you. I was just thinkin how you and Friend Boynton seemed to have been with lis always. He went to a better place ; but where did you go ? Do you think the world outside is better ? I wish you could feel to stay with us Edward ! " " It isn't possible," said Ford, smiling sadly. " The only 310 TttE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY* point 01 which I should agree with you is that the world outside is not so good a place." " Well, that's a great deal." " It isn't enough." " Really," said Frances, " it's discouragin' to hear you and Egery go on. You say everything that's good of the Shakers, but you won't be gathered in." " I think everything that's good of you. I honour and reverence you ; I do everything but envy you. It's an- other world that calls me." " Yee," sighed the Shakeress, " that's just the way with Egery. I suppose I have been here so long that I don't see anything strange in Shakers. The other people are the ones that are strange to me. But I can see't it's dif- ferent with Egery. She's had so much queerness in her life al ready 't I guess she don't want to have much more. Was you surprised to hear't she'd got back ? " " I was very glad ; and I'm very grateful to you, Frances " — " I s'posed the handkerchief must be yours," Frances interrupted, with artful evasion. She went on to give some particulars of Boynton's funeral and of their sojourn in Egeria's old home and of her affairs. " It was real kind and good of Friend Hatch to stay as long as he did, and help her, especially as they do say he's engaged to be married out West, there." Something like a luminous concussion seemed to take place in Ford's brain, • The burden suddenly thrown from his soul left him light and giddy, and he clung for support to the door-post, while Frances prattled on : " Well, Humphrey says he's a master- hand for business, and he's sure to get along. He's been a good friend to Egery, all through, and her father before her. I guess if Friend Boynton had taken his advice, there wouldn't been so much sufferin' for her. Well, she's back with us again. But it's only till she can find something for herself in the world outside. I suppose it's THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 311 natural for her to want to be like folks. That's the way I look at it." Ford's heart throbbed. " Do you think I'm like folks. Frances ? " " Not much," replied Frances. " Do you think I could be, — for her sake ? " A flash of joy, succeeded by a red blush, went over the pale face of the Shakeress. " You'd, ©ughtn't to talk to me of such things, Edward. You know it ain't right." " I know — I know," pleaded the young man. " I know it's all wrong. But— but I knew you knew about it, and I thought — I thought " — " She's up in the orchard, by her apple-tree ! " cried Frances, with hysterical abruptness. "Don't you say another word to me ! " But after Ford left the room, she ran to the door, and watched him going up the orchard aisle. Egeria stood leaning against the tree, and looking an- other way, and she might well have been ignorant of his approach through the fallen grass, till she heard his husky voice : — " I — I have come back — I would have come before, but I didn't know you were here " — He had some in- tention of excusing himself, because in his cogitations it had occurred to him that she must have wondered why he had not come. But she only turned on him that face of intense resistance, changing to question, and then to wild appeal. " For Heaven's sake," he exclaimed, " don't look at me in that way ! What is the matter ? " "Oh, why did you come back?" she cried. "Why couldn't you have stayed away, and left me in peace ? " He stood motionless, while his hopes seemed to fall in a tangible ruin round him. He saw now how eagerly he had built them on the fears of those fantastic communists, and how fondly he had hidden from himself all the rea- sons against them. He could have laughed at the ghastly wreck, but that he was too sick at heart. He moved his 312 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. feet heavily, as if the long grass were fetters about them, and he tried to go ; but without some other word he could not. "Well," he said at last, "if you ask me, I can't tell you. I can go away again, and not molest you any more. Only, before 1 go, tell me — you've not told me yet — that you forgive me, Egeria." Her whispered name had been so often on his lips that he now spoke it aloud for the first time witinput knowing it. " Since your father is gone, I must be more hateful to you than ever. But I am going out of your way now ; try to forgive me and to tell me so ! Let me have your pardon to take with me." She broke into a low sound of weeping, while he waited for her response. " Well, I will go. It's best for me to know finally that, although you have tolerated me here, at the bottom of your heart you have always ab- horred me." " No, no ! I didn't say that." " Not in words, — no." " But if you made me say that I 'forgave you " " Make you say it ? Nothing under heaven could make you say it ! What is it you mean ? " She looked up, and ran her eye in piteous search over his face. " When you first came there, in Boston, and when you hurt me ; when we went after the leaves, and I forgot him ; when I talked with you in the garden, and blamed him ; when I went with you into the woods, and ne- glected him, almost the last day he lived — Oh, even if I couldn't, 1 ought to hate you ! Did you expect — Yes, I will, — I will never let you go, now, till you tell me whether it was true. He is gone, and I have no one to help me. I shall have to do for myself ; but whatever my life is to be, I am going to have it my own ; and it isn't mine if that is true." " If that is true ? " repeated Ford, in stupefaction. " If what is true ? " THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 31 S But the impulse which had carried her to this point failed her, apparently, and left her terrified at her own daring. She cowered at the involuntary step he made toward her, as a bird stoops for flight. " If what is true ? " he reiterated. " Tell me what you mean ! " He wondered if perhaps some rumour of his talk with Elihu had come to her, and she had wishe d to punish his presumption in trusting the Shaker's conjecture regard- ing her ; if she were resolved to wreak upon him her maidenly indignation at the community's meddling. It seemed out of keeping with her and all the circumstances ; but he could think of nothing else, and he darkly ap- proached it : " If you have heard anything here that makes you think that I have come to you in anything but the humblest, the most reverent, spirit, I beseech you not to believe it ! Has Elihu — or Frances — Is it some- thing they have said ? " " No," she said, and still shrunk away, as if he might be able to force the truth from her. " Then what is it ? Surely you won't leave me in this perplexity ? If there is anything thai- I can do or undo — " "No! Oh, go, for pity's sake!" " I can't go now," said the young man. " I won't go till you have told me what you mean. You must tell me." She cast a strange glance at him. " If you make me tell you, that would show that it was true ; and he was right when he used to say — I don't want to believe it ! Go, and let me try to think that you came here by chance, and that you stayed for his sake. Indeed, — indeed, I can get to thinking again that you never tried to influence me in that way ! " " In what way ? " he asked, but now a gleam of light, lurid enough, began to steal upon his confusion. Her al- ternate eagerness and reluctance to be with him ; her broken questions, the gestures, the looks, the tones, that had crossed with mystery the happiness he had known su THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. with her in the last weeks before her father's death, and made it at its sweetest fearful and insecure, recurred to him with new meaning, and a profound compassion quali- fied his despair, and made him gentle and patient. " Is it possible," he asked, " that you mean that old delusion of your father's about me ? And could you believe that I would try to control you agaliiGt your will — to use some unnatural power over you ? Ah ! " he cried, " I couldn't take even your forgiveness, now ; for you might think that I had extorted it ! " He looked sadly at her, but she did not speak, and he had a struggle to keep his pity of her from turning to execration of the unhappy man whose error could thus rise from his grave to cloud her soul ; but he ruled himself, — not without an ominous re- membrance of his former attempts to separate her cause from her father's, — and brokenly continued : " Well, I have deserved that, too. But I know that before he died your father came to a clearer mind about those things, and I believe that now, wherever he is, nothing could grieve him more than to know that he had left you in that hideous superstition." He looked with grave ten- derness at her hidden face. " How could you think" — and now his tone expressed his wounded self-respect as well as his sorrow for her — " that I could be so false to both of us ? " " I didn't always think," she whispered. " I — I was afraid—" " But what made you afraid that such a thing could be ? I am a brute, — I know that ; I gave you early proof of that, — but I hoped there was nothing covert in me." " You said once that people influenced others without knowing it ; and once — that night when we came from the woods — you said it was a spell that made me lose the way, and wouldn't let me blame you — " " And you really had those black doubts of me in your heart ? I thought you were suftering me here because you were good and merciful, and you were always watch- The tJNDiSCOVERED COUNTRY. 315 •1 was could proof me. ithout from J lose mg me usmg some vile to find out whether I was not magic against you." " No, no ! Not always," she protested, lifting her face. "Did I say that?" " No, you didn't say it ! Well, you had the right to hurt me in any way you could ; and I give you the satis- faction of knowing that nothing could hurt me worse than this." " Oh, I didn't mean to wound you ! Don't think that ! And I forgave you ; yes, I did forgive you ! I Tiever hated you — not even that morning there by the fountain when I thought you had hurt him. And when you said I ought, it made me wonder if what I used to say — And then I couldn't get it out of my mind ! But I never meant to tell you by a single word or look, if it killed me." " I believe you. It was something not to be spoken. I think now I can go without your pardon. It seems to me that we are quits." Once more he turned to go, but she implored, all her face red with generous remorse, " Oh, not till you've for- given me ! I never thought how it would seem to you. Indeed I never did ! " He smiled sadly. " Forgive you ? Oh, that's easy. But even if it were very hard, I could do it. I can see how it has been with you from the fii-st, and how, with what you had been taught to think of me by your father, — I don't blame him for it ; he was as helpless as you were, — you perverted my careless words and gave them a sinister meaning that I never dreamt of. But what can I do, or say, to leave you with better thoughts of me ? " "I could see that you were kind and good even when I was the most afraid," she murmured. " But after the way we had begun together, and all that you had done to us, — and said to him, — sometimes I couldn't understand why you were here, or why you stayed, and then" — " I don't wonder ! I hadn't given you cause to expect any good of me ; and if I were to tell you why I stayed, 310 THE UKt>ISCOVERED COUNTRY. as I once hoped I miglit, I couldn't make it appear an un- selfish reason. Oh, my dearest ! " he cried, " I loved you so that I couldn't have taken your love itself against your will ! Ever since I first saw you ; and all the time that I had lost you, my whole life was for you ; and when I found you again how could I help staying till you drove me from you ? Good-by, and if any thought of 3'ours has injured me, let me set it against my telling you this now." She had slov/ly averted her face; she did not shrink from him, but she did not return his good-by, and he waited in vain for her to speak. Then, " Shall I go ( " he asked in foolish anti-climax. "No"— ■ The blood rioted in his heart. " And do you still believe that of me?" " I believe — what you say," she whispered. " But why do you believe me ? Do I make you do it?" " I don't know — yes, something makes me." " Against your will 1 " " I can't tell." " Do you think it is a spell, now ? " " I don't know." " And are you afraid of it ? " "No"— " What is it, Egeria ? " he cried, and in the beseeching look which she lifted to his, their eyes tenderly met. " Oh, my darling ! Was this the spell " — The rapture choked him ; he caught her hand and drew her towards him. But at this bold action. Sister Frances, who had not ceased to watch them, threw her apron over her head. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 317 CHAPTER XXVIII. The powers of the family were heavily taxed V)y the consideration of a case witliout precedent in its annals. On the report of Sister Frances and the subsequent know- ledge of Elihu, it became necessary to act at once. Prob- ably no affair of such delicate importance had ever pre- eented itself to a society vowed to celibacy as the fact of a courtship and proposal of marriage which had taken place with ^heir privity, and with circumstances so pecu- liar that they could not wholly feel that they had with- held their approval. " What I look at, Elihu," said Frances, " is this : that we can't any of us say but what it's the best thing that can happen to Egery, so long as she ain't going to be gathered in. And what I want to know is whether we've got to turn our backs on her because she's doin' the best she can, or whether we're goin' to show out that we feel to rejoice with her." " Nay, Ave can't do that," replied Elihu, in sore embar- rassment. " There are no two ways about it but what our natural feelings do go with her, — to some extent. I'm free to confess that when Friend Ford came and told me just now I felt " — Elihu apparently found himself not so free to confess after all. He stopped abruptly, and added, " but that's neither here nor there. What we've got to do now is not to withhold our sympathy from these young people who are doing right in their order, and at the same time not to relax our opposition to the principle "Love the sinner and condemn the sin, Laban. " Nay," replied Elihu, rejecting the phraseology rather than the idea, " not exactly that." suggested 318 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. " I can't underHtanrl," interposed Rebecca, with her sex's abhorrence of an abstraction, " where and how they're ^'oin' to get married. There ain't any Shaker way of uiarryin', and I don't know what we should do with our young folks, if they got married here. I don't suppose we sliould have one of 'em left by spring." " Nay," said Elihu, " we might as well give up at once." He rocked himself vigorously to and fro ; but his harden- ing face did not lose its anxious expression. " Where luill they get married ?" asked Rebecca. " She hasn't got anywheres to go. Her own folks are all dead, at home, and she hasn't got any home." " I don't know. They can't get married here," returned Elihu. •* They can't go right off to a minister, and get married now, so soon after her father's death. And besides, she ain't ready. She hasn't got anything made up." The question of clothes agitated even these unworldly women, and they debated and deplored Egeria's unpre- pared condition, urging that she must have this, and could not do without that, till Elihu could bear it no longer. " I feel," he cried, " that it is unseemly for us to consider these things ! It identifies us practically with a state which we only tolerate as part of the earthly order. We must not have anything to do with it from this time forth." " Well, Elihu, what shall we do ?" demanded Diantha, " We might send him away, but we can't turn her out-ol- doors. Do you want he should go on courtin' her here ?" Elihu opened his lips to f3peak, but only emitted a groan. " We have got to bear our f • irt. I guess the rule against marriage ain't any stronf;er than the rule of love and charity, — so long as we don't any of us marry, ourselves." " Well, well !" cried Elihu, " settle it amongst you. Only remember, they can't marry here." He took his hat, and went into Humphrey's room, where the latter had re- mained, discreetly absorbed in his accounts; and Laban, THE UNDISCOVKUEI) COUNTRY. 319 finding himself alone with the sisters, hastenerl to follow Elihu. Their withdrawal was inspiration to Frances : — " T guess I can go down to Boston with Egery, and fix it with my sister so't she can stay and bo married from her house whenever she gets ready." When the sensation following her solution of the problem allowed her to speak, she added, " The (piestion is liow much it'll be right for us to do for her. She hasn't got a thing." The sisters justly understood this to mean their degree of complicity in decking Egeria for the unholy rite, and they entered into the question with the seriousness it merited. They began by agreeing with Elihu that the only way was to have nothing to do with the matter ; and having appeased their consiences they each make such concessions and sacrifices to the exigency as they must. Be- fore spring, when the wedding took place, the sisters had found it consistent with an enlarged sense of duty to present the bride with a great number of little gifts, of an exemp- lary usefulness, for the most part, but not wholly inexpres- sive of a desire, if not a sense, of beauty. Their conceptions of the world's fashions were too vague to allow of their con- tributing to the trousseau, and such small attempts as they made in that direction were overruled by Frances's sister, a decisive and notable lady, who, however, ordained that cer- tain of the decorative objects, as hooked rags and embroi- dered tidies, were as worthy a place in Mrs. Ford's simple house as most of the old-fashioned things that people like now-a-days. With Frances, the question whether she should or should not be present at the wedding remained a cross which she bore all winter, and which grew sorer as the day approached. When it actually came, she meekly- bowed her spirit and remained awaj". But she found compensation in the visit which she paid her sister directly afterwards, and which she spent chiefly in helping Egeria set in order the cottage Ford had taken in one of the su- burbs. He had worked hard at his writing all winter, and they had no misgivings in beginning life on his eam-t 320 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. inij.s, and on the small vsum Eijeria had inherited from her grandfather. It is now several years since their marriage, and they have never regretted their courage. They had their day of carefulness and of small things — that happy day, which all who have known it remember so fondly — but this is already past. One of those ignoble discoveries which cheniists sometimes make in their more ambitious experi- ments has turned itself to piulit, almost without his agency, and chiefly at the suggestion of his wife, whose more practical sense perceived its genei-al acceptability ; and the. sale of an ingenious combination known to all housekeepers now makes life easy to the Fords. He has given up his newspaper work, and has built himself a laboratory at the end of his garden, where the income from his invention enables him to pursue the higher chemistry, without as yet any distinct advantage to the world, but to his own content. It is observed by those who formerly knew him that marriage has greatly softened him, and Phillips professes that, robbed o.'liis former roughness, he is no longer so fascinating. Their acquaintance can scarcely be said to have been renewed since their parting in Yardley. Ford was able to see Phillips's innocence in v/hat occurred ; but they could never have l)een easy in each other's presence after that scene, though the}'^ have met on civil terms. Phillips accounts in his own way for not seeing his former friend any more. " As bric-a-brac," he explains, when ladies inquire after their extinct ac- quaintance, " Ford was perpetually attractive ; but as part of iiie world's ordinarv fiu-niture he can't interest me. When he n.arried the Pythoness, I was afraid there was too much bric-a-brac ; but really, so far as I can hear, they have neutralized each other into the vulgarest com- mon place. Do you use the Ford Fire Kindler ? He doesn't put his name to it, and that isn't exactly the dis- covery that is making his fortune. He has come to that, — making money. And imagine a Pythoness with a P t( hi v\ r( wi 81 hi T( to wl THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 321 :rom her md they heir day y, which it this is ij which 3 experi- lout his e, whose tability ; m to all He has limself a )ine from Lcniistry, orld, but brmerly im, and iiess, he ice can parting ence in easy in y have [way for brae," net ac- as part est nie. re was 1 hear, t com- ? He |he dis- o that, -vith a. prayer-book, who goes to the Episcopal church, and liopes to get her husband to go, too ! No, I don't find my Bo- hemia in their suburb." From time to time Phillips pro- poses to seek that realm in what he calls his native Eu- rope ; but he does not go, Peiliaps Mrs. Perham is there, widowed by Mr. Perham's third stroke of paralysis, and emancipated to the career of travel and culture, wliich slie has illustrated in the capitals of several Latin countries. To do her justice, she never turned the water-proof afiair to malicious account, nor failed to speak well of Ford, for whom she always claimed to feel an unrequited respect. As to Hatch, one of the first of those deep and full con- fidences between Ford and Egeria which follow engage- ment related to the man in whom Ford had feared a ri- val. E eria knew merely that Hatch had repaid with constant services some favourthat her father had been able to do him in their old home, and that he had continued faithful to Boynton when all others had dropped away from him. " I wish I had understood how it was when he came to me there in Boston," said Ford. He added simply, " I treated him very badly, because I thought he was in love with you." " Was that any reason why you should treat him badly ? " ^ked Egeria. Ford reflected. " Yes, I suppose it was. I was in love with you, too. But he's had his turn. He's left me with the feeling that perhaps " — " Perhaps what ? " '♦ Perhaps — nothing ! " Egeria divined what he did not sav. ' Ue> hasn't left me with that feeling," she said reproachfully. Since that time Hatch is no longer on the road, as he would phrase it, but has gone into business for himself at Denver, where he married last year, with duly interviewed pomp and circumstance, the daughter of one of the early settlers, a hoary patriarch of forty-three, who went to u 322 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. I I 6," Denver as remotely as 1870. He called upon the Fords when he came East on his wedding journey, and he and Ford found themselves friends. The Wester?! lady thought Egeria a little stiff, but real kind-hearted, and one of the most stylish-appearing persons she ever Hdvv. In fact, Egeria shows a decided fondne^is for dress, and after the long hunger of solitary girlhood,, she enters, with a zest which Ford cannot always share, into all the innocent pleasures of life. She likes parties and dinners and thea- tres ; since their return from Europe she has given several picnic breakfasts, where her morning costunte has been the marvel of her guests. The tradition of her life before marriage is locally very dim ; it is Supposed that she; left the stage to marry. This is not altogether reconcilable with the appearance of quaint people in broad-brims, oi in gauze caps and tight sleeved straight drab gowns, with whom she is sometimes seen in her suburb ; but as the Fords are known to go every summer to pass a month in an old house belonging to the Vardley Shakers, their visi- tors are easily accounted for. The grass has already grown long over Boynton's grave. They who keep his memory think compjissionately of his illusions, if they were wholly illusions, but they shrink with one impulse from the dusky twilight through which he hoped to surprise immortality, and Ford feels it a sacred charge to keep Egeria's life in the full sunshine of our common day. If Boynton has found the undiscovered country, he has sent no message back to chem, and they do not question his silence. They wait, and we must all wait. THE END. ■•-/>N ■ e Fords he and thought e of the In fact, fter the h a zest nnocent id thea- i several las been e before she; left >ncilable >rim,s, or ns, with it as the ^onth in eir visi- grave. of his shrink which sacred of our overed d they lust all Books Worth Reading. eETTINe ON IN THE WORLD. -)BT(- PROF. WM. MATHEWS, LL.D. Grown 8va Oloth $1.00 - - Paper 60 Cents. HOURS WITH MEN & BOOKS. -)BT(- PROF. WM. MATHEWS, LL.D. Grown 8vo. 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