"What do you think of the claims of spiritualism?"
Weissmann did not smile as Serviss had expected. He became grave. "I am not qualified to judge. Speaking generally, I would say there are many phases to be considered. There are some millions of people who believe in it--which would argue some small basis of truth to start with. On the other hand, the extraordinary credulity of these people is to be taken into account."
"You mean they are those bereaved and anxious to believe?"
"Precisely. Again, speaking generally, I find few things impossible in this world of mystery. To take an old metaphor, I would not be surprised to find a grain of wheat in all this bushel of chaff. Every genuine phenomenon in the world stands related to every other phenomenon, and I believe that the truth or falsity of the spiritualistic hypothesis can be determined in accordance with physical science. If I were young and strong like you I would devote myself to the study of this delusion. It should be studied by one like yourself--to whom death is no near presence; as for me, I have two sons and one wife dead; my judgment would be vitiated therewith. You have no dead; you would make an admirable student of these spirit-voices and signs."
Serviss, though a little awed by the old man"s unexpectedly solemn manner, ventured further. "Have you ever witnessed any of these unaccountable doings which Crookes and Zollner instance?"
"I have had them in my own chamber." The old man"s eyes twinkled.
"Once, as I was dozing on my bed, one morning early, a faint cloud, like a puff of smoke, began to form above my head. It became pendulous, reaching towards me, and out of it a hand developed and extended. I said: "It is an hallucination--very curious! I will touch it and it will vanish." I reached--I grasped the hand--_it was warm and solid!_ I leaped from my bed with a yell." He chuckled at his keenly remembered discomfiture.
"How do you account for it? It was an illusion, of course. You thought the illusion only ocular--it extended to the sense of touch."
Weissmann"s eyes gleamed speculatively. "We will let it go so. The world of sense and the world of spirit curiously intermingle--as we know."
"But these manifestations, so far as I have any knowledge, are so foolish and childish--"
"Well, so many foolish and childish persons have gone to the other world. Death is not the beginning of wisdom. I am an old man, Serviss, and already many of my loved ones are dead. I should like to believe they are still sentient, and maybe they are. I am German. The blood of Kant is in my veins." He seemed to be speaking partly to himself. "I do not dogmatize so gladly as I once did. As I do not know the essence of matter, it would be folly for me to a.s.sume to fathom the depth of spirit. The essential hopelessness of science is coming to render me humble. Spiritualism certainly is a comfortable belief. I would gladly embrace it if I could. I suspend judgment. This desire for another life may be only a survival of a more unreasoning time, something we will outgrow."
Serviss was profoundly surprised by his chief"s att.i.tude. He had expected a large, calm, and rather contemptuous reply to his question.
In place of decision he encountered a doubt, a hesitancy, which betrayed weakness. Rudolph Weissmann, great as he was, belonged to the innumerable throng of the bereaved whose judgments are clouded by pa.s.sion. He, too, was growing old, his all-embracing mind had yielded to an hallucination.
The young man"s respect for his chief did not diminish, but a feeling of sadness swept over him as he realized that another renowned and fearless investigator was nearing the end of his great usefulness, and that upon the clear blue steel of his intelligence the rust of age had begun to fall. Truly the power of his early training, his worship of Kant and his school was still vital.
Then he pondered his words. "If I were a young man like you I would investigate this thing," and recalled that no young man of science had ever devoted himself to it. "They all came to it late in life, after bereavement."
The bereaved! The whole stupendous delusion seemed to rest upon the overmastering desire of the bereaved for their beloved. The great and good men and women among the believers (he was willing to admit there were such) came to investigation weakened by sorrow, made illogical by loss. They put their sane judgment, their strength, their calm patience aside and grasped eagerly at the lying comfort extended to them. They were not merely deceived, they developed fraud by their blindness, by their hunger for consolation, and by their cra.s.s credulity. He was still young enough to have inexorable theories--to be of single-hearted loyalty to his creed. To him as a monist, the soul (as an ent.i.ty apart from the body) did not exist. Consciousness was a physical disturbance of the higher nerve centres, and thought a secretion of the brain. He acknowledged no line of demarcation between the crystal and the monera--and no chasm (of course) between man and the animals. The universe was a unit--and all its forms and forces differentiations of one substance and that substance too mysterious to be a.n.a.lyzed or named. In such a philosophy as this there could be no room for any hypothesis which even so much as squinted towards dualism, or that permitted a conception so childish as the persistence of the individuality after death.
However, he did not carry his implacable principles into the homes of his friends, and seldom permitted them to interfere with his enjoyment of wines or good dinners, the theatre or the drawing-room. This fact, from a cynical point of view, proved his faith to have been as truly of his laboratory as that of a bishop, with Spencer and Darwin and Koch and Haeckel as the founders of its articles.
He went home that night with the words of both Weissmann and Britt intermingling in his mind, strongly tempted to tell Viola"s story to his sister, and so enlist her sympathy for the poor girl.
But it happened that an engagement to dine filled Kate"s mind, and he had no time to open the subject till they were on the way, and by that time he had concluded not to involve her in his perplexity.
By a curious coincidence one of the guests at the dinner brought a hush of expectancy over the entire company by relating a series of experiences he had been privileged to share with a "psychic" some years before. He told of his mystification with a laugh in his eyes and with racy vigor of tongue, but Serviss, newly alive to the topic, could not but marvel at the intensity of interest manifested by every soul present. "Disguise it as we may," said the narrator, "this question of the life beyond the grave is chief of all our problems. It is the sovereign mystery, after all."
At this the hostess spoke: "I wish _we_ could see some of these things. You make us shudder deliciously. Can"t you sometime bring this remarkable young woman--they"re always women, aren"t they?"
"Oh no," laughingly replied the young fellow. "One of the most amusing "stunts" I ever saw was that of a man in Washington, who made a banjo play behind a curtain while holding both your hands."
"Why _do_ the spirits do such foolish things? I should think they"d be ashamed to act so "frivolous like.""
"They always talk like Indians, don"t they? It"s a pity. Why aren"t they dignified and sincere?"
The young story-teller went on. "That"s just it. The mediums are so nonchalant while causing these marvels that they fail to convince.
Why, when I was holding a slate in order that they might write upon it, I minded the scratching no more than a clock a-ticking, they had made me that careless of their hocus-pocus. A voice in my ear can"t make me start, and nothing, absolutely nothing, can now "rouse my fell of hair." You put a potato in the ashes of the hearth and it will ultimately pop into something to eat. You put a medium in a dark place and she will set your soul"s nerves a-tingle."
Under all this banter Serviss perceived the pulse of an interest which laid hold on the most secret hopes and fears of the youngest and shook the eldest with an elemental dread and longing. It was as if the flood-gates of a sea of doubt and wonder had been turned in upon a dozen minds. .h.i.therto as well kept as lawns. Questions popped like corks and answers were as vivacious as the gurgle of wine, but the topic remained indeterminate--the argument inconclusive.
On their way home, Serviss said to his sister: "Did you notice how profound the silence became when Ralph started that discussion of the occult?"
"It is always so."
"Is it, really? I hadn"t noticed it particularly."
"That"s because people are afraid to talk such things before you scientists. Why, every woman there has been to a palmist or mind-reader or something."
"You astonish me. Have you?"
"Of course! I go every little while just for fun. We all pretend that we don"t believe in it, but we do. I"m scared blue every time I go to a new one--they"re all such creepy creatures. The last one I went to was positively weird."
Serviss was severe. "Kate, I am ashamed of you. To think that you, a woman of penetration, a.s.sociating with people of rare intelligence like myself--"
"But why don"t you people of rare intelligence look into these things?
Why do you leave us poor untrained emotional creatures to suffer befoolment when you could so easily instruct us and shield us?"
"Because, while we could easily prove you befooled, you would still follow after your saw-dust idols. We prefer to save you from your _bodily_ infirmities and contagions, and so react on your minds."
She laughed. "That"s very clever of you, and very decent. Stay with your germs, rob us of our diseases, but leave us, oh, leave us our delicious _thrills_!" She became grave. "The fact is, Morton, we all have moments when we feel the presence of the dead. I do. Father and mother never seem away off in our Graceland vault; sometimes they seem to be in the room with me. It"s all a fancy, you"ll say, and very foolish, but I believe mother actually comes to help me with Georgie when he is ill. Sometimes in the deep of the night I thrill as if she touched me."
He was not unsympathetic as he said: "You never hinted at this before."
"I was afraid to do so. If mother exists somewhere, and in some etherealized form, why can"t she come back? Why couldn"t her mind act on mine and produce the sensation of her presence?"
"Perhaps it could. Only there is no proof of its ever happening."
"Now see here, Morton, so long as we are on this subject at last, I want to ask you, do you believe mother is gone--absolutely blotted out of existence?" She waited in tense silence, and as they pa.s.sed a street-lamp, and the light fell on his face, he seemed to have grown suddenly pale. "Do you believe Darwin and Spencer and Victor Hugo have gone to nothingness?"
"No, at the bottom of my heart I can"t think that, and yet theoretically I cannot conceive of the existence of any soul apart from the body. Think of it! If mother lives, so do all the billions of cannibals, negroes, Bushmen--you can"t draw a line and say "here begins the immortal souls.""
"That isn"t the question. I do not believe that father and mother and Hayward have vanished into a handful of dust, I cling to a belief in their living selves, not because the bishop and the prayer-books say so, but just because my own mind says so. I won"t surrender them, that"s all."
"And yet a faith springing from such a desire is not well based. I want to tell you about some people I met last summer. They will interest you." Thereupon he pictured his first meeting with Viola. He described the mother and Clarke. He told of his interview with Britt and of Randall"s revelations concerning Viola"s life. "And now they have convinced the girl that she should extend her sphere of influence and bring her chicanery to bear on the metropolis."
"How do you know it is chicanery?"
"Britt said--"
"I don"t care what Britt said. You found the mother sweet, and you admit the girl is charming. I"ll trust your instinct in such matters, Mort; you"ve never been one to run after frumps and minxes. She had good eyes?"
"Beautiful eyes, steady, blue-gray, wistful. She quite enchanted me at first--"
"And you"re sentimental over her still?"
"I didn"t say that I was sentimental over her at any time."
"I don"t care what you said. I can tell by your voice that she is a lost, sweet dream. What do you want me to do?"