Under the weight and press of it a great crack had appeared
in the concrete with which it is faced, and there was danger of the
dam being carried away. If that happened the whole lake would have
been suddenly released and no end of damage might have been done. It
was therefore necessary to draw off the water as fast as possible to
relieve the pressure and repair the crack. This was done by means of
big siphons. For two days we had them working, but the crack seemed
to extend right to the foundations of the dam, and before it could be
repaired all the water in the lake would have to be drawn off. I was
just leaving for town, when the foreman came up to the house to tell me
that they had found something there. In the ooze and mud at the base
of the dam, twenty-five feet below water-level, they had come upon the
body of a young girl.”

He gripped the arms of his chair tight. Little did he know that I was
horribly aware of what he was going to tell me next. “About a month before my cousin Ernest’s death,” he said, “a mysterious
affair happened in the village. A girl named Ellen Davenport had
disappeared. She came up one afternoon to the house with a note,
and was never seen again, dead or alive. Her disappearance was now
explained. A chain of beads round the neck and various fragments of
clothing established, beyond any doubt, the identity of what they had
found at the bottom of the lake. I waited for the inquest, telegraphing
to Sybil that business had detained me, and then returned to town, not
intending to tell her what that business was, for our marriage was
close at hand and it was not a topic one would choose. She was very
superstitious, you know, and I thought that it would shock her. That
she would feel it to be unlucky and ill-omened. So I said nothing to
her. “Sybil had extraordinary mediumistic powers. She did not often exercise
them and she never would give a séance to any one she did not know
extremely well, for she believed that people brought with them the
spiritual influences with which they were surrounded, and that there
was the possibility of very evil intelligences being set free. But she
had sat several times with me, and I had witnessed some very remarkable
manifestations. Her procedure was to put herself, by abstraction of
her mind, into a state of trance, and spirits of the dead who were
connected with the sitters could then communicate through her. On
one occasion my mother, whom she had never seen, and who died many
years ago, spoke through her and told me certain facts which Sybil
could not have known, and which I did not know. But an old friend of
my mother’s, still alive, told me that they were correct. They were
of an exceedingly private nature. Sybil also, so she told me, could
produce materialisations, but up till now I had never seen any. A
remarkable thing about her mediumship was that she would sometimes
regain consciousness from her trance while still these communications
were being made, and she knew what was going on. She could hear herself
speak and be mentally aware of what she was saying. On the occasion,
for instance, of which I have told you, when my mother spoke to me she
was in this state. The same thing occurred at the sitting of which I
shall now speak. “That night, on my return to London, she and I dined alone. I felt a
very strong desire, for which I could not account, that she should
hold a sitting--just herself and me--and she consented. We sat in her
room, with a shaded lamp, but there was sufficient illumination for me
to see her quite distinctly, for her face was towards the light. There
was a small table in front of us covered with a dark cloth. She sat
close to it, in a high chair, composed herself, and almost immediately
went into trance. Her head fell forward and by her slow breathing and
her absolute immobility I knew she was unconscious. For a long time
we sat there in silence, and I began to think that we should get no
manifestations at all, and that the sitting, as sometimes was the case,
would be a failure; but then I saw that something was happening.”

His hands, with which he gripped the arms of his chair, were trembling. Twice he tried to speak, but it was not till the third attempt that he
mastered himself. “There was forming a mist above the table,” he said. “It was slightly
luminous and it spread upwards, pillar-shaped, in height between
two and three feet. Then I saw that below the outlying skeins of it
something was materialising. It moulded itself into human shape, rising
waist-high from the table, and presently shoulders and arms and neck
and head were visible, and features began to outline themselves. For
some time it remained vague and fluid, swaying backwards and forwards a
little; then very quickly it solidified, and there, close in front of
me, was the half-figure of a young girl. The eyes were still closed,
but now they opened. Round her neck was a chain of beads just such as I
had seen laid by the body that had been found in the lake. And then I
spoke to her, asking her who she was, though I already knew. “Her answer was no more than a whisper, but quite distinct. “‘Ellen Davenport,’ she said. “A disordered terror seized me. Yet perhaps this little white figure,
with its wide-gazing eyes, was some hallucination, something that had
no objective existence at all. All day the thought of the poor kiddie
whose remains I had seen taken out of the ooze at the bottom of the
lake had been vivid in my mind, and I tried to think that what I saw
was no more than some strange projection of my thought. And yet I
felt it was not so; it was independent of myself. And why was it made
manifest, and on what errand had it come? I had pressed Sybil to give
me this séance, and God knows what I would have given not to have done
so! For one thing I was thankful, namely, that she was in unconscious
trance. Perhaps the phantom would fade again before she came out of it. “And then I heard a stir of movement from the chair where she sat, and,
turning, I saw that she had raised her head. Her eyes were open and on
her face such a mask of terror as I have never known human being could
wear. Recognition was there, too; I saw that Sybil knew who the phantom
was. “The figure that palely gleamed above the table turned its head towards
her, and once more the white lips opened. “‘Yes, I am Ellen Davenport,’ she said. “The whisper grew louder. “‘You might have saved me,’ she said, ‘or you might have tried to save
me; but you watched me struggling till I sank.’

“And then the apparition vanished. It did not die away; it was there
clear and distinct one moment, at the next it was gone. Sybil and I
were sitting alone in her room with the low-burning lamp, and the
silence sang in my ears. “I got up and turned on the switch that kindled the electric lights,
and knew that something within me had grown cold and that something
had snapped. She still sat where she was, not looking at me at all,
but blankly in front of her.