The Brightener Part 27

"_She_ asks me to take your hand and hers. Then she will talk to you through me," Miss Reardon explained. As she spoke, she drew up a small chair in front of the sofa, leaned forward, took Robert's right hand in hers, and held out the left, as if grasping another hand--a hand unseen.

As the medium did this, with thin elbows resting on thin knees, she closed her eyes. A look of _blankness_ came over her face like a mist. I can't describe it in any other way. Presently her chin dropped slightly.

She seemed to sleep.

Neither Robert nor I had uttered a word since we entered the room. We waited tensely.

Just what I expected to happen I hardly know, for I had no experience of "manifestations" or seances. But what did happen surprised me so that I started, and just contrived to suppress a gasp.

A voice. It did not sound like Miss Reardon's voice, with its rather pleasant American accent. It was a creamy English voice, young and full-noted. "_June!_" I whispered under my breath, where I sat across the length of the room from the sofa. I glanced at Robert. There was surprise on his face, and some other emotion deep as his heart. But it was not joy.

"Dearest, have you forgotten me so soon?" the voice asked. "Speak to me!

It's I, your June."

It was a wrench for Robert to speak, I know. There was the pull of self-consciousness in the opposite direction--distaste for conversation with the Invisible while alien eyes watched, alien ears listened. And then, to reply as if to June, was virtually to admit that he believed in her presence, that all doubt of the medium was erased from his mind. But after a second's pause he obeyed the command.

"No," he said, "I've not forgotten and I never can forget."

"Yet you are engaged to marry this Joyce Arnold!" mourned the voice that was like June's.

I almost jumped out of my chair at the sound of Joyce's name. It was another proof that the medium was genuine.

Robert's tone as he answered was more convinced than before I thought.

And the youth had died out of his eyes. They looked old.

"Do you want me to live all my life alone, now that I've lost you, June?" he asked.

"Darling, you are not alone!" answered the voice. "I'm always with you.

I love you so much that I've chosen to stay near you, and be earth bound, rather than lead my own life on the plane where I might be. I thought you would want me here. I thought that some day, if I tried long enough, you would feel my touch, you would see my face. After a while I hoped I was succeeding. I looked at you from the eyes of my portrait in your study. Now and then it seemed as if you _knew_. But then that girl interfered. Oh, Robert, in giving up my progression from plane to plane till you could join me, has the sacrifice been all in vain?"

The voice wrung my heart. It shook as with a gust of fears. Its pleading sent little stabs of ice through my veins. So what must Robert have felt?

"No, no! The sacrifice isn't in vain!" he cried. "I didn't know, I didn't understand that those on the other side came back to us, and cared for us in the same way they cared on earth. I am yours now and always, June, of course. Order my life as you will."

"Ah, my dear one, I thank you!" The voice rose high in happiness. "I felt you wouldn't fail me if I could only _reach_ you, and at last my prayer is answered. Nothing can separate us now through eternity if you love me. You won't marry that girl?"

"Not if it is against your wish, June. It must be that you see things more clearly, where you are, than I can see them. If you tell me to break my word to Joyce Arnold, I must--I will do so."

"I tell you this, my dearest," said the voice. "If you do _not_ break with her, you and I are lost to each other for ever. When I chose to be earth bound I staked everything on my belief in your love. Without it in _full_, I shall drift--drift, through the years, through ages, I know not how long, in expiation. Besides, I am not _dead_, I am more alive than I was in what you call life. You are my husband, beloved, as much as you ever were. Think what I suffer seeing another woman in your arms!

My capacity for suffering is increased a thousandfold--as is my capacity for joy. If you make her your wife----"

"I will not!" Robert choked. "I promise you that. Never shall you suffer through me if I can help it."

"Darling!" breathed the voice. "My husband! How happy you make me. This is our true _marriage_--the marriage of spirits. Oh, do not let the barrier rise between us again. Put Joyce Arnold out of your heart as well as your life, and talk to me every day in future. Will you do that?"

"How can I to talk to you every day?" he asked.

"As we are talking now. Through a medium. This one will not always be near you. But there will be somebody. I've often tried to get word through to you. I never could, because you wouldn't _believe_. Now you believe, and we need not be parted again. You know the way to _open the door_. It is never shut. It stands ajar. Remember!"

"I will remember," Robert echoed. And his voice was sad as the sound of the sea on a lonely sh.o.r.e at night. There was no warm happiness for him in the opening of a door between two worlds. The loss of Joyce was more to him than the gain of this spirit-wife who claimed him from far off as all her own. It seemed to me that a released soul should have read the truth in his unveiled heart. But perhaps it did read--and did not care.

The voice was talking on.

"I am repaid for everything now," it said. "My sacrifice is no sacrifice. For to-day I must say good-bye. Power is leaving me. I have felt too much. I must rest, and regain vitality--for to-morrow.

_To-morrow_, Robert, my Robert! By that time we can talk with no restraint, for you will have parted with Joyce Arnold. After to-day you will never see her again?"

"No. After to-day I will never see her again, voluntarily, as that is your wish."

"Good! What time to-morrow will you talk with me?"

"At any time you name."

"At this same hour, then, in this same room."

"So be it. If the medium consents."

"I shall make her consent. And you and I will agree upon someone else to bring us together, when she must go elsewhere, as I can see through her mind that she soon must. Good-bye, dearest husband, for twenty-four long hours. Yet it isn't really good-bye, for I am seldom far from you. Now that you _know_, you will feel me near. I----"

The voice seemed to fade. The last words were a faint whisper. The new sentence died as it began. The medium's eyelids quivered. Her flat breast rose and fell. The "influence" was gone!

CHAPTER V

THE BARGAIN

That night was one of the worst in my life. I was so fond of Robert Lorillard, and I'd grown to love Joyce Arnold so well that the breaking of their love idyll hurt as if it had been my own.

Never shall I forget the hour when we three talked together at my flat after that seance at the Savoy, or the look on those two faces as Robert and Joyce agreed to part! Even I had acquiesced at first in that decision--but only while I was still half stunned by the shock of the great surprise, and thrilled by the seeming miracle. At sight of the two I loved quietly giving each other up, making sacrifice of their hearts on a cold altar, I had a revulsion of feeling.

I jumped up, and broke out desperately.

"I don't believe it's true! Something _tells_ me it isn't! Don't spoil your lives without making sure."

"How can we be surer than we are?" Robert asked. "You recognized June's voice."

"I _thought_ then that I did," I amended. "I was excited. Now, I don't trust my own impression."

"But the perfume of La France roses? Even if the woman could have found out other things, how should she know about a small detail like June's favourite flower? How could she have the perfume already in her room when we came--as if she were sure of our coming there--which of course she couldn't have been," Robert argued.

"I don't _see_ how she could have been sure," I had to grant him. "I don't see through any of it. But they're so deadly clever, these people--the fraudulent ones, I mean. They couldn't impress the public as they do if they weren't up to every trick. All I say is, _wait_. Don't decide irrevocably yet. The way the voice talked didn't seem to me a bit like June. Only the tones were like hers; and they might have been imitated by anybody who'd known her, or who'd been coached by someone."

"Dear Princess, you're so anxious for our happiness that I fear you're thinking of impossible things. Who could have an object in parting Joyce and me? I can think of no one. Still less could this stranger from America have a motive, even if she lied, and really knew who I was before she spoke to us at the Savoy."

"I admit it does sound just as impossible as you say!" I agreed, forlornly. "But things that _sound_ impossible may be possible. And we must find out. In justice to Joyce and yourself--even in justice to June's spirit, which I _can't_ think would be so selfish--we must find out!"

"What would you suggest?" Joyce asked rather timidly. But there was a faint colour in her cheeks, like a spark in the ashes of hope.