Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences Part 4

The marriage was to take place at noon, and the happy pair were to start by the first afternoon train for the sea-sh.o.r.e, where they were to spend a week. Mr. Kilbright hated locomotives and railroads almost as much as ever, but he had told me some time before that he intended to conquer this prejudice, if such a thing were possible.

"Being one of you, I must do as you do," he had said.

The wedding was to be a very simple one. Miss Budworth was to go from her mother's house to the church, where Mr. Kilbright was to meet her.

We insisted that he should dress at our house, where he would find better accommodations than at his lodgings; and we a.s.signed him our best guest-room, where he repaired in very good season, to array himself in his wedding suit.

It was not quite eleven o'clock when I went upstairs to see if I could be of any use to Mr. Kilbright in regard to the conclusion of his toilette. I knocked at the door, but received no answer. Waiting a few moments, I opened it and entered. On the floor, in front of a tall dressing-gla.s.s, was a suit of clothes. Not only did I see the black broadcloth suit--not laid out at length, but all in a compact heap--but I saw the shoes and stockings, the collar and cravat; everything. Near by lay a whisk broom.

The truth was plain. While giving the last touches to his wedding attire, all that was Amos Kilbright had utterly disappeared!

I stood where I had stopped, just inside the door, trembling, scarcely breathing, so stunned by the terrible sight of those clothes that I could not move, nor scarcely think. If I had seen his dead body there I should have been shocked, but to see nothing! It was awful to such an extent that my mind could not deal with it!

Presently I heard a step, and slightly turning, saw my wife close by me.

She had pa.s.sed the open door, and seeing me standing as if stricken into a statue, had entered.

It did not need that I should speak to her. Pale as a sheet she stood beside me, her hand tightly grasping my arm, and with her lips pallid with horror, she formed the words: "They have done it!"

In a few moments she pulled me gently back, and said, in quick, low tones, as if we had been in presence of the dead: "In less than an hour she will be at the church. We must not stay here."

With this she turned and stepped quickly from the room. I followed, closing the door behind me.

Swiftly moving, and without a word, my wife put on her hat and left the house. Mechanically I followed. I could speak no word of comfort to that poor girl, at this moment the happiest of expectant brides. I knew that I had not the power to even attempt to explain to her the nature of the dreadful calamity that had fallen upon her. But I could not let my wife go alone. She, indeed, must speak to Lilian, but there were other members of the family; I might do something.

To my great surprise, Mrs. Colesworthy did not turn into the street which led to the Budworths' house, but went straight on. I thought at first she was going to the church to countermand the wedding preparations. But before I could put a question to her she had gone around a corner, and was hurrying up the steps of the princ.i.p.al hotel in our town.

"Is Dr. Hildstein in?" she asked of the first person she met.

The man, gazing astonished at her pallid face, replied that he was, and immediately conducted us to a little parlor on the first floor, the door of which stood partly open. Without knocking, Mrs. Colesworthy hastily entered, I closely following. A middle-aged man suddenly arose from a small table at which he was sitting, and turning quickly toward us, made an abrupt exclamation in German.

As I have said, I do not understand German, but Mrs. Colesworthy knows the language well, and, stepping up to the man, she said (she afterward told me the meaning of the words that pa.s.sed between them): "Are you Dr.

Hildstein?"

"I am," he said, his face agitated by emotion, and his eyes sparkling, "but I can see no one, speak to no one! I go out this moment to observe the result of an important experiment!"

My wife motioned to me to close the door. "You need not go," she said, "I can tell you that your experiment has succeeded. You have dematerialized Mr. Kilbright. In one hour he was to be married to a n.o.ble, loving woman; and now all that remains where he stood is a pile of clothes!"

"Do you tell me that?" exclaimed the doctor, wildly seizing his hat.

"Stop!" cried Mrs. Colesworthy, her face glowing with excitement, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng, and her right arm extended. "Stir not one step! Do you know what you have done?"

"I have done what I had a right to do!" exclaimed the doctor, almost in a shout. "If he is gone he was nothing but a spirit. Tell me where--"

"I will tell you this!" exclaimed my wife. "He was a great deal more than a spirit. He was a man engaged to be married at twelve o'clock this day. You may think there is no law that will sweep down on you, but I tell you there is; and before the clock strikes twelve you shall know it. Do you imagine you have come upon a people who will endure the presence of an ogre? a wretch, who reduces to nothing a fellow human being, and calls it an experiment? When we tell what you have done--my husband cannot speak German, but he is a leader in this town, and he supports me in all I say--when we have told what you have done there will be no need of courts, or judges, or lawyers for you. Like a wild beast you will be hunted down; you will be trampled under foot; you will be torn to pieces! Fire, the sword, the hangman's noose, clubs, and crowbars will not be enough to satisfy the vengeance of an outraged people upon a cold-blooded wretch who came to this country solely for the purpose of perpetrating a crime more awful than anything that was ever known before! Did you ever hear of lynching? I see by your face you know what that means. You are in the midst of a people who, in ten short minutes, will be shrieking for your blood!"

The man's face changed, and he looked anxiously at me. I did not know what my wife had been saying, but I had seen by her manner that she had been threatening him, and I shook my uplifted fist.

"Now heed what I say," cried Mrs. Colesworthy, "if you do not wish to perish at the hands of an infuriated mob; to die a thousand deaths before your vile spirit leaves this world, knowing that, besides the torments you feel, and those which are to come, you will be in the power of men who will bring you back in a half-finished form to make sport at their meetings whenever they feel like it--"

Drops of perspiration stood on the doctor's face. "Stop that!" he cried, throwing up his arm. "I cannot stand that! I did not know the subject had such friends!"

"Nothing shall be stopped!" exclaimed my wife, "and everything shall happen unless you immediately sit down at that table, or wherever you do those things, and rematerialize Mr. Kilbright, just as you found him, and into the very clothes that were left lying upon the floor!"

The doctor stepped forward--his face was now pale--and addressed himself very deferentially to my wife, totally ignoring me. "If you will retire," he said, "I will try; I swear to you that I will try."

"There is not a minute to be lost," said Mrs. Colesworthy, "not one second. And, if as much as a finger-nail is missing, remember what I have told you!"

And with this we quickly left the room.

As we went down the steps of the hotel Mrs. Colesworthy looked at her watch. "It is twenty-five minutes to twelve," she said. "We must get home as fast as we can."

We hurried along, sometimes almost running. When we reached our house, Mrs. Colesworthy motioned to me to go upstairs. She had no breath left with which to speak. I ran up, and stood for a moment at the closed door of our guest-room. With my hand on the k.n.o.b, I was unable to open it. I heard a step on the stairs behind me, and I opened the door.

There stood Mr. Kilbright in his wedding clothes, with the whisk-broom in his hand.

He turned at the sound of my entrance.

"Do you know," cried the cheery voice of my wife, from just outside the door, "that we have barely fifteen minutes in which to get to the church?"

"Can that be?" cried Mr. Kilbright. "The time has flown without my knowing it. We must truly make haste!"

"Indeed we must," said Mrs. Colesworthy, and as she stepped back from the door, she whispered in my ear: "Not a look, not a tremble to let him know!"

In less than thirty seconds we were on our way to the church, in the carriage which had been ordered for the purpose.

On the church porch we found old Mr. Scott. He was dressed in his best clothes, and greeted us cordially. "In good time," he said. "I am glad to see that. It promises well." And then, looking around to see that no one was within hearing, he came nearer to us. "If I were you," he continued, "I wouldn't say nothin' to folks in general about relations.h.i.+ps, for there are people, and very good people, too, whose minds haven't got on far enough to make 'em able to understand telephones and the other new kinds of wonders."

We acknowledged the force of his remarks, and all went into the church.

Three days after the departure of Mr. and Mrs. Kilbright on their wedding tour, my wife received a letter from Dr. Hildstein, written by himself from New York, but addressed in the handwriting of Mr.

Corbridge.

"I return," he wrote, "to Germany, perfectly happy in having succeeded in my experiments; but nevermore, esteemed lady, will I dematerialize a subject who has remained long enough in this world to make friends, and I am the only man who can do this thing."

This letter greatly satisfied us. "It shows that he has some heart, after all," said Mrs. Colesworthy, "but as to that man Corbridge, I believe he would have kept poor Mr. Kilbright dancing backward and forward between this world and the other as long as a dollar could be made out of him. But there is only one way in which he can do us any harm now, and that is by materializing the first Mrs. Kilbright; but, knowing us, as he now does, I don't believe he will ever try that."

"No," said I, "I don't believe he ever will."

Should you ever meet with Mr. Amos Kilbright, you need not hesitate to entrust him with any surveying you may have on hand. Mr. Corbridge cannot dematerialize him, the German scientist will not, and there is no one else in the world who would even think of such a thing. Therefore, you need feel no fear that he may suddenly vanish from your sight, leaving nothing behind him but his clothes and the contents of his pockets; unless, indeed, he should again be so foolish as to go to swim in the ocean at a point where there is a strong ebb tide.

THE REVERSIBLE LANDSCAPE.

To look at me no one would suppose it; but it is, nevertheless, a fact that I am a member of a fire company. I am somewhat middle-aged, somewhat stout, and, at certain times of the year, somewhat stiff in the joints; and my general dress and demeanor, that of a sober business man, would not at all suggest the active and impetuous fireman of the period.

I do not belong to any paid department, but to a volunteer Hook and Ladder Company, composed of the active-bodied or active-minded male citizens of the country town where I live. I am included in the active-minded portion of the company; and in an organization like ours, which is not only intended to a.s.sist in putting out the fires of burning buildings, but to light the torch of the mind, this sort of member is very valuable. In the building which we occupy, our truck, with its hooks and ladders, stands upon the lower floor, while the large room above is used as a club and reading-room. At the beginning of the first winter of our occupancy of the building, we found that this room, which had been very pleasant in summer, was extremely uncomfortable in winter.

The long apartment had been originally intended for purposes of storage; and although we had ornamented it and fitted it up very neatly, a good deal of carpentry and some mason's work was necessary before it could be made tight and draught-proof for cold weather. But lately we had spent money very freely, and our treasury was absolutely empty. I was chairman of the committee which had charge of everything pertaining to our rooms, and I felt the responsibilities of my position. The necessary work should be begun immediately, but how could the money be raised to pay for it? Subscriptions for this and that had been made until the members were tired of that sort of thing; and the ill success of the last one showed that it would not do to try it again.