The Telegram and the Vigil

I could scarcely believe it, but the little yellow missive, which had just been handed to me by the Western Union messenger boy, left no room for doubt. It was short and convincing:

“ Come to Peoria at once. James Braddock dead of heart failure.

Corbin & His. Attorneys. ”

I should explain here that Uncle Jim, my mother’s brother, was my only living near relative. Having lost both father and mother in the Iroquois Theatre Fire at the age of twelve years, I should have been forced to abandon my plans for a high school and commercial education but for his noble generosity. In his home town he was believed to be comfortably well off, but I had learned not long since that it had meant a considerable sacrifice for him to furnish the fifteen hundred dollars a year to put me through high school and business college, and I was glad when the time came for me to find employment, and thus become independent of his bounty.

My position as bookkeeper for a commission firm in South Water Street, while not particularly remunerative, at least provided a comfortable living, and [33] I was happy in it—until the message of his death came.

I took the telegram to my employer, obtained a week’s leave-of-absence, and was soon on the way to the Union Depot.

All the way to Peoria I thought about Uncle Jim. He was not old—only forty-five—and when I had last seen him he had seemed particularly hale and hearty. This sudden loss of my nearest and dearest friend was, therefore, almost unbelievable. I carried a leaden weight in my heart, and it seemed that the lump in my throat would choke me.

Uncle Jim had lived on a three-hundred-and-twenty acre farm near Peoria. Being a bachelor, he had employed a housekeeper. The farm work was looked after by a family named Severs—man, wife and two sons—who lived in the tenant house, perhaps a thousand feet to the rear of the owner’s residence, in convenient proximity to the barn, silos and other farm buildings.

As I have said, my uncle’s neighbors believed him to be comfortably well off, but I knew the place was mortgaged to the limit, so that the income from the fertile acres was practically absorbed by overhead expenses and interest.

Had my uncle been a business man in the true sense of the term, no doubt he could have been wealthy. But he was a scientist and dreamer, inclined to let the farm run itself while he devoted his time to study and research. His hobby was psychic phenomena. His thirst for more facts regarding the human mind was insatiable. In the pursuit of his favorite study, he had attended seances in this country and abroad with the leading spiritualists of the world.

He was a member of the London Society for Psychical Research, as well as the American Society, and corresponded regularly with noted scientists, psychologists and spiritualists. As an authority on psychic phenomena, he had contributed articles to the leading scientific publications from time to time, and was the author of a dozen well-known books on the subject.

Thus, grief-filled though I was, my mind kept presenting to me memory after memory of Uncle Jim’s scientific attainments and scholarly life, while the rumbling car wheels left the miles behind; and the thought that such a man had been lost to me and to the world was almost unbearable.

I arrived in Peoria shortly before midnight, and was glad to find Joe Severs, son of my uncle’s tenant, waiting for me with a flivver. After a five-mile ride in inky darkness over a rough road, we came to the farm.

I was greeted at the door by the housekeeper, Mrs. Rhodes, and one of two men, nearby neighbors, who had kindly volunteered to “set up” with the corpse. The woman’s eyes were red with weeping, and her tears flowed afresh as she led me to the room where my uncle’s body lay in a gray casket.

A dim kerosene lamp burned in one corner of the room, and after the silent watcher had greeted me with a handclasp and a sad shake of the head, I walked up to view the remains of my dearest friend on earth.

As I looked down on that noble, kindly face, the old lump, which had for a time subsided, came back in my throat. I expected tears, heartrending sobs, but they did not come. I seemed dazed—bewildered.

Suddenly, and apparently against my own reason, I heard myself saying aloud, “He is not dead—only sleeping.”

When the watchers looked at me in amazement I repeated, “Uncle Jim is not dead ! He is only sleeping.”

Mrs. Rhodes looked compassionately at me, and by a meaning glance at the others said as plainly as if she had spoken, “His mind is affected.”

She and Mr. Newberry, the neighbor whom I had first met, gently led me from the room. I was, myself dumfounded at the words I had uttered, nor could I find a reason for them.

My uncle was undoubtedly dead, at least as far as this physical world was concerned. There was nothing about the appearance of the pale, rigid corpse to indicate life, and he had, without doubt, been pronounced dead by a physician. Why, then, had I made this unusual, uncalled for—in fact, ridiculous—statement? I did not know. I [34] concluded that I must have been crazed with grief—beside myself for the moment.

I had announced my intention to keep watch with Mr. Newberry and the other neighbor, Mr. Glitch, but was finally prevailed upon to go to my room, on the ground that my nerves were overwrought and I must have rest. It was decided, therefore, that the housekeeper, who had scarcely slept a wink the night before, and I should retire, while the two neighbors alternately kept two-hour watches, one sitting up while the other slept on a davenport near the fireplace.

Mrs. Rhodes conducted me to my room. I quickly undressed, blew out the kerosene light and got into bed. It was some time before I could compose myself for sleep, and I remember that just as I was dozing off I seemed to hear my name pronounced as if someone were calling me from a great distance: