Possessed | Page 2

and spoil her whole life?"
To which Penelope, hiding her agitation, said: "I--I am not discussing that phase of the question. I mean that if a woman is alone in the world, if she longs for the companionship of a man--the intimate companionship--"
"Ha, ha, ha!" snickered the poet. I can see his close cropped yellow beard and his red face wrinkling in merriment at this supposition.
"I hate your Greenwich Village philosophy," stormed Penelope. "You haven't the courage, the understanding to commit one big splendid sin that even the angels in heaven might approve, but you fritter away your souls and spoil your bodies in cheap little sins that are just--disgusting!"
The poet shrivelled under her scorn.
"But--one splendid sin?" he stammered. "That means a woman must go to her mate, doesn't it?"
"Without marriage? Never! I'll tell you what a woman should do--I'll tell you what I would do, just to prove that I am not conventional, I would act on the principle that there is a sacred right God has given to every woman who is born, a right that not even God Himself can take away from her, I mean the right to--"
A muffled scream interrupted her, a quick catching of the breath by a stout lady, a newcomer, who was seated on a divan, I should have judged this woman to be a rather commonplace person except that her deeply sunken eyes seemed to carry a far away expression as if she saw things that were invisible to others. Now her eyes were fixed on Penelope.
"Oh, the beautiful scarlet light!" she murmured. "There! Don't you see--moving down her arm? And another one--on her shoulder! Scarlet lights! My poor child! My poor child!"
Ordinarily we would have laughed at this, for, of course, we saw no scarlet lights, but somehow now we did not laugh. On the contrary we fell into hushed and wondering attention, and, turning to Roberta, we learned that this was Seraphine, a trance medium who had given séances for years to scientists and occult investigators, and was now assisting Dr. W----, of the American Occult Society.
"A séance! Magnificent! Let us have a séance!" whispered the poet. "Tell us, madam, can you really lift the veil of the future?"
But already Seraphine had settled back on the divan and I saw that her eyes had closed and her breathing was quieter, although her body was shaken from time to time by little tremors as if she were recovering from some great agitation. We watched her wonderingly, and presently she began to speak, at first slowly and painfully, then in her natural tone. Her message was so brief, so startling in its purport that there can be no question of any error in this record.
"Penelope will--cross the ocean," Seraphine began dreamily. "Her husband will die--very soon. There will be war--soon. She will go to the war and will have honors conferred upon her--on the battlefield. She will--she will,"--the medium's face changed startlingly to a mask of anguish and her bosom heaved. "Oh, my poor child! I see you--I see you going down to--to horror--to terror--Ah!"
She cried out in fright and stopped speaking; then, after a moment of dazed effort, she came back to reality and looked at us as before out of her sunken eyes, a plump little kindly faced woman resting against a blue pillow.
* * * * *
Now, whatever one may think of mediums, the facts are that Penelope's husband died suddenly in an automobile accident within a month of this memorable evening. And within two months the great war burst upon the world. And within a year Penelope did cross the ocean as a Red Cross Nurse, and it is a matter of record that she was decorated for valor under fire of the enemy.
This story has to do with the remainder of Seraphine's prophecy.
CHAPTER I
(January, 1919)
VOICES
Penelope moved nervously in her chair, evidently very much troubled about something as she waited in the doctor's office. Her two years in France had added a touch of mystery to her strange beauty. Her eyes were more veiled in their burning, as if she had glimpsed something that had frightened her; yet they were eyes that, even unintentionally, carried a message to men, an alluring, appealing message to men. With her red mouth, her fascinatingly unsymmetrical mouth, and her sinuous body Penelope Wells at thirty-three was the kind of woman men look at twice and remember. She was dressed in black.
When Dr. William Owen entered the front room of his Ninth Street office he greeted her with the rough kindliness that a big man in his profession, a big-hearted man, shows to a young woman whose case interests him and whose personality is attractive.
"I got your note, Mrs. Wells," he began, "and I had a letter about you from my young friend,