Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Dec 1916)

MOTION PICTURE CLASSIC recognition — that seemed to urge him to admit all others of the shadow company. So potent had been this astral self during the past year that Drummond had taken up the serious study of psychic phenomena and had become one of its most rabid disciples. He believed also in the reincarnation of man and the eventual merging of the many lives. Dreaming there on his voyage, he thought much of his pet theory — to the effect that if a soul in the astral world is in love with a reincarnated being, the astral soul can be summoned and will appear only before the vision of the one reincarnated. He believed, further, that this love must transcend the earthly, that the faint walls of flesh must be abolished, before the spirit’s clean blue flame might merge. Somehow, it was a comfort to Philip Drummond — this ghostly belief. The flesh had ever deluded him — left him with a gall taste in his mouth. Something within him cried incessantly for something forever beyond him — he hungered for the unknown. Haddon Towers was a fine old baronial estate. Gray, and ivied, and ancient with a royal antiquity, it loomed darkly among its trees. Its dim corridors and turreted rooms had echoed with the travails of England’s finest blood, and sheltered their deaths at last. Love had moved serenely down its halls — and Passion, too — hate and murder, and deeds too dim for speech ; and thru it all the bloodstrain had persisted — proud, overbearing, essentially English. Drummond felt the thrill of ancestral pride as he was motored along its winding, elm-sheltered drive. Here, here was where he belonged ; where he had alivays belonged. This was his home ; the home of his people. His heart was here, and his British spirit. He wondered vaguely why he had ever affiliated himself with America— its newness — its lack of dreams — its glitter of nouveau riche. He wondered more than all how he had ever come to marry Clara. He thought suddenly how out of place she would seem here. Why, she would be like some cheap and flashy gem in an exquisite, antique setting. His life, he felt, was a hocus-pocus of painful inconsistencies— if not incongruities. He wanted the things of the spirit — the soul, the flowers of the mind, the essence of man that is a separate thing from the body. And he was living with a woman to whom the body was religion — a kiss, life’s consummation — and flirtation her code and creed. He shuddered. Lord Drummond was on his death bed. Philip saw plainly that his hours were numbered. And he felt swiftly, poignantly regretful. He had not given the aged noble a thought in years, yet it came over him now that here, in this feeble body, was housed the one kindred spirit on earth. They had drawn their being from the same elemental strain — the blood of the kingly Drummonds ran thru their veins. They acknowledged a common ancestry. Their spirits would go, at last, to the same forebears. The Baron was almost beyond the powers of speech. Life was even then giving his hand into the ready hold of death. But he made a superhuman effort when Philip came to his bedside. “You are — the last of the Drummonds,’’ he gasped jerkily; “my title and all that I — die — -possessed of — go to you. But, Philip — Philip — there is another bequest — the wraith — of Haddon Towers. In the east wing, Philip. She — the wraith — was a direct ancestor — Dorothy Drummond — she — loved her cousin Philip. Her father favored Sir Berton Gregory — she — she and her cousin Philip were — murdered. I give her into your charge — poor, restless shade — the wraith — of Haddon — Towers — I — ah !” The room in the east wing was kept tightly closed. None of the servants would enter it, and it was in complete disuse. Here, the day after Lord Drummond was interred among his forefathers, Philip went to await the problematical appearance of the wraith of Haddon Towers. Now that he had this opportunity to really sound his theories, he was doubtful. It seemed too vastly incredible a thing — too potent with unguessable realms — too mystery-fraught. Yet he knew, somehow, that if this restless one from out the spirit lands should come to him, a great want within him would be filled. Always he had hungered for a substanceless, nameless something. Lately, he had come to believe that his answer did not lie in this world, but the next. The room in the east wing was paneled in misty gray, and touched by the dim fingers of dust. Faded tapestries, all but patternless, half shrouded stained windows. A harp, palpably rusted and pathetically voiceless, stood in one corner. Near-bv was a tall, closed escritoire. There were a few chairs in the room, and a table — that was all. Yet Philip felt, as he entered, that this room was inhabited. There was about it the indefinable, inexplicable sense of a presence. It seemed to him as if, centuries ago, a woman had dwelt in here, wearing a vague perfume, and touching the harp to golden melody — and it seemed as if, the centuries thru, the perfume clung to the wistful air — and the last note of the harp trembled and moaned. Philip dropped into a chair, facing the harp. His eyes stared straight ahead of him. Then, suddenly, he gasped and leaned forward convulsively. A woman had taken her place by the harp — a woman garbed in whitest white, with dusky, unbound hair and a face that seemed to lay itself against Philip’s naked heart. She touched the rusted strings and a melody throbbed into the air— a melody that Philip, listening, knew was not of earth. A melody that passed profoundly the sensory ear and smote upon the soul — a melody that pleaded for the annihilation of the cumbering flesh. Philip’s dry lips moved, and, curiously enough, the warm blood ran thru his veins again. A sob racked him. This — this was his answer — the solving of his endless riddle — the touch divine on the raw wound of his life — this melody from the courts of Christ — this woman — a woman, still beyond the confines of the flesh. “Who — ’’ he breathed ; “tell me — ” The music stopped and the woman came near to him. “Dont you know me, my beloved?” she breathed ; “can it be that you do not know me?” “Ah, tell me ” breathed Philip again ; “forgive me my blindness — help me to know.” “I have waited so long, Philip, my beloved. I have hoped you might know me, even with your eyes.” “Yes, even with my eyes. Remember that, whoever you may be, they are earthly eyes — they — they see not!” Something ineffably sad touched the wraithly lips. “They see not ,” she asserted mournfully. “Ah, Philip — Philip — my spirit’s love — my earth’s mate — I have watched you thru cycles of endless time — sobbing over you even in Heaven — sobbing — and groveling at the feet of God — for you — for your unseeing eyes — your heedless ears — your tongue of man — for all the crass, blind errors of your stumbling flesh. “And now, after all your incarna-' tions — all your brief deaths — now, at last, you have come to a want of me. You have not known it for want of me, but it has been that — urging you — calling you ” Philip nodded, tensely. “Tell me why,” he said eagerly, “why I have been born again ; why I have lived these other lives and you have stayed among the dead. Is this not strange?” ( Forty -four )