"You understand," said I, "that it is not out of curiosity I ask, but
in the hope that I may find some scientific explanation for the facts
with which you furnish me."
"Frankly, Professor Gilroy," said she, "I am not at all interested in
science, nor do I care whether it can or cannot classify these powers."
"But I was hoping----"
"Ah, that is quite another thing. If you make it a personal matter,"
said she, with the pleasantest of smiles, "I shall be only too happy to
tell you any thing you wish to know. Let me see; what was it you asked
me? Oh, about the further powers. Professor Wilson won't believe in
them, but they are quite true all the same. For example, it is
possible for an operator to gain complete command over his subject--
presuming that the latter is a good one. Without any previous
suggestion he may make him do whatever he likes."
"Without the subject's knowledge?"
"That depends. If the force were strongly exerted, he would know no
more about it than Miss Marden did when she came round and frightened
you so. Or, if the influence was less powerful, he might be conscious
of what he was doing, but be quite unable to prevent himself from doing
it."
"Would he have lost his own will power, then?"
"It would be over-ridden by another stronger one."
"Have you ever exercised this power yourself?"
"Several times."
"Is your own will so strong, then?"
"Well, it does not entirely depend upon that. Many have strong wills
which are not detachable from themselves. The thing is to have the
gift of projecting it into another person and superseding his own. I
find that the power varies with my own strength and health."
"Practically, you send your soul into another person's body."
"Well, you might put it that way."
"And what does your own body do?"
"It merely feels lethargic."
"Well, but is there no danger to your own health?" I asked.
"There might be a little. You have to be careful never to let your own
consciousness absolutely go; otherwise, you might experience some
difficulty in finding your way back again. You must always preserve
the connection, as it were. I am afraid I express myself very badly,
Professor Gilroy, but of course I don't know how to put these things in
a scientific way. I am just giving you my own experiences and my own
explanations."
Well, I read this over now at my leisure, and I marvel at myself! Is
this Austin Gilroy, the man who has won his way to the front by his
hard reasoning power and by his devotion to fact? Here I am gravely
retailing the gossip of a woman who tells me how her soul may be
projected from her body, and how, while she lies in a lethargy, she can
control the actions of people at a distance. Do I accept it?
Certainly not. She must prove and re-prove before I yield a point.
But if I am still a sceptic, I have at least ceased to be a scoffer.
We are to have a sitting this evening, and she is to try if she can
produce any mesmeric effect upon me. If she can, it will make an
excellent starting-point for our investigation. No one can accuse me,
at any rate, of complicity. If she cannot, we must try and find some
subject who will be like Caesar's wife. Wilson is perfectly impervious.
10 P. M. I believe that I am on the threshold of an epoch-making
investigation. To have the power of examining these phenomena from
inside--to have an organism which will respond, and at the same time a
brain which will appreciate and criticise--that is surely a unique
advantage. I am quite sure that Wilson would give five years of his
life to be as susceptible as I have proved myself to be.
There was no one present except Wilson and his wife. I was seated with
my head leaning back, and Miss Penclosa, standing in front and a little
to the left, used the same long, sweeping strokes as with Agatha. At
each of them a warm current of air seemed to strike me, and to suffuse
a thrill and glow all through me from head to foot. My eyes were fixed
upon Miss Penclosa's face, but as I gazed the features seemed to blur
and to fade away. I was conscious only of her own eyes looking down at
me, gray, deep, inscrutable. Larger they grew and larger, until they
changed suddenly into two mountain lakes toward which I seemed to be
falling with horrible rapidity. I shuddered, and as I did so some
deeper stratum of thought told me that the shudder represented the
rigor which I had observed in Agatha. An instant later I struck the
surface of the lakes, now joined into one, and down I went beneath the
water with a fulness in my head and a buzzing in my ears. Down I went,
down, down, and then with a swoop up again until I could see the light
streaming brightly through the green water. I was almost at the
surface when the word "Awake!" rang through my head, and, with a start,
I found myself back in the arm-chair, with Miss Penclosa leaning on her
crutch, and Wilson, his note book in his hand, peeping over her
shoulder. No heaviness or weariness was left behind. On the contrary,
though it is only an hour or so since the experiment, I feel so wakeful
that I am more inclined for my study than my bedroom. I see quite a
vista of interesting experiments extending before us, and am all
impatience to begin upon them.
March 27. A blank day, as Miss Penclosa goes with Wilson and his wife
to the Suttons'. Have begun Binet and Ferre's "Animal Magnetism."
What strange, deep waters these are! Results, results, results--and
the cause an absolute mystery. It is stimulating to the imagination,
but I must be on my guard against that. Let us have no inferences nor
deductions, and nothing but solid facts. I KNOW that the mesmeric
trance is true; I KNOW that mesmeric suggestion is true; I KNOW that I
am myself sensitive to this force. That is my present position. I
have a large new note-book which shall be devoted entirely to
scientific detail.
Long talk with Agatha and Mrs. Marden in the evening about our
marriage. We think that the summer vac. (the beginning of it) would
be the best time for the wedding. Why should we delay? I grudge even
those few months. Still, as Mrs. Marden says, there are a good many
things to be arranged.
March 28. Mesmerized again by Miss Penclosa. Experience much the same
as before, save that insensibility came on more quickly. See Note-book
A for temperature of room, barometric pressure, pulse, and respiration
as taken by Professor Wilson.
March 29. Mesmerized again. Details in Note-book A.
March 30. Sunday, and a blank day. I grudge any interruption of our
experiments. At present they merely embrace the physical signs which
go with slight, with complete, and with extreme insensibility.
Afterward we hope to pass on to the phenomena of suggestion and of
lucidity. Professors have demonstrated these things upon women at
Nancy and at the Salpetriere. It will be more convincing when a woman
demonstrates it upon a professor, with a second professor as a witness.
And that I should be the subject--I, the sceptic, the materialist! At
least, I have shown that my devotion to science is greater than to my
own personal consistency. The eating of our own words is the greatest
sacrifice which truth ever requires of us.
My neighbor, Charles Sadler, the handsome young demonstrator of
anatomy, came in this evening to return a volume of Virchow's
"Archives" which I had lent him. I call him young, but, as a matter of
fact, he is a year older than I am.
"I understand, Gilroy," said he, "that you are being experimented upon
by Miss Penclosa."
"Well," he went on, when I had acknowledged it, "if I were you, I
should not let it go any further. You will think me very impertinent,
no doubt, but, none the less, I feel it to be my duty to advise you to
have no more to do with her."
Of course I asked him why.
"I am so placed that I cannot enter into particulars as freely as I
could wish," said he. "Miss Penclosa is the friend of my friend, and
my position is a delicate one. I can only say this: that I have myself
been the subject of some of the woman's experiments, and that they have
left a most unpleasant impression upon my mind."
He could hardly expect me to be satisfied with that, and I tried hard
to get something more definite out of him, but without success. Is it
conceivable that he could be jealous at my having superseded him? Or
is he one of those men of science who feel personally injured when
facts run counter to their preconceived opinions? He cannot seriously
suppose that because he has some vague grievance I am, therefore, to
abandon a series of experiments which promise to be so fruitful of
results. He appeared to be annoyed at the light way in which I treated
his shadowy warnings, and we parted with some little coldness on both
sides.
March 31. Mesmerized by Miss P.