A WARNING AND A THEORY
But, to Hartmann's surprise, the storm did not break. Instead, Peter
Grimm sat gazing at him with impassive face,--gazing long and without a
word. And when at last Grimm spoke, the old man's voice was as
emotionless as his face.
"You love her?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," answered Hartmann, as calmly as though stating some fact in
botany.
"H'--m!" rumbled Grimm, half to himself. "_Ja vis! Ja vis!_"
Hartmann still waited for the storm. And still it did not come.
"You love her?" repeated Grimm. "Does she know?"
"No. She doesn't know. She need never know. I had not meant to say a
word to any one."
Grimm rose and came toward him. The hard face was gentle again. The
inquisitorial voice was once more kindly.
"James," said the old man, "go to the office and get your money. Then
start for Florida headquarters. Good-bye."
"Good-bye, sir," replied James, grasping the outstretched hand. "I'm
very sorry."
"I'm sorry, too, James. Good-bye!"
As Hartmann left the room, Grimm turned to Frederik, and his eyes were
full of pain.
"_That_ is settled, thank Heaven!" he announced; but there was no
jubilance in his voice. "I wish--Hello, there's old McPherson!"
Glad to divert his mind he hurried to the front door to welcome the
visitor and drew him into the room with friendly roughness.
Dr. McPherson would have borne the stamp, "Family physician of the Old
School," even had he been found in the ranks of the Matabele army. Big,
shaggy, bearded, he was of the ancient and puissant type that, under the
tidal wave of "specialism" is fast being swept towards the shores where
live the last survivors of the Great Auk, the Dinosaur, and the Spread
Eagle Orator tribes.
"Good-morning, Peter," hailed the doctor, a Scotch burr faintly rasping
his bluff voice. "Morning, Fred. I passed young Hartmann at the gate. He
looks as if he was taking a pleasure trip to his own funeral. What ails
him?"
No one answered.
"He's about the finest lad that ever I brought into the world. What's
happened to make him so----? Good-morning, Kathrien," he broke off, as
the girl, followed by Marta, came in with Grimm's long delayed
breakfast.
"Good-morning, Doctor," she answered. "Oom Peter, you forgot to send for
this. So I----"
"What's that?" roared McPherson, sniffing the air like a bull that
scents an enemy. "Coffee? Why, damn it, Peter, I forbade you to touch
coffee. It's rank poison to you. And you know it is. I told you----"
"Wouldn't you like a cup, Doctor?" asked Kathrien innocently.
"I----"
"Of course he'll take a cup," interrupted Grimm. "He'll damn it. But
he'll drink it."
"And look here!" proceeded McPherson, pointing an accusing finger at the
breakfast tray. "Waffles! Actually _waffles_! And after I told you----"
"Yes, Katje," explained Grimm, "he'll damn the waffles, too. But, if you
watch closely, you'll notice he'll eat some. Sit down, Andrew."
"I tell you," fumed the doctor, "I didn't come here to encourage you, by
my example, in wrecking your system. I came for a serious talk with you,
Peter."
Kathrien, at the hint, discreetly effaced herself. Frederik followed her
example.
"Well? well?" queried Peter in mock despair, seating himself opposite
his old crony and tyrant. "What new horrors of diet have you thought up
for my misery? Out with it. Let me know the worst."
"It isn't your body this time, Peter," was the troubled answer. "It's
something that means more. The matter's been keeping me awake all night.
Tell me:--how is every one provided for in this house?"
"Provided for?" echoed Peter in bewilderment. "How do you mean?
Everybody gets enough to eat and we are----"
"Why, you don't understand me. You're a wonderful man for making plans,
Peter. But what have you done?"
"Done?"
"If you--if you were to die--say to-morrow, or--or any other time," went
on the doctor with an effort at carelessness that sat on his rough
honesty as ill as his Sunday broadcloth adorned his rugged shoulders,
"if you--die--unexpectedly,--how would it be with the rest of them
here?"
Grimm set down his coffee cup with slow precision. And slowly he raised
his eyes to McPherson's worried gaze.
"What do you mean?" he asked with something very like awe in his tone.
"If I were to die to-morrow----"
"You won't!" declared McPherson emphatically. "You won't. So don't
worry. You're good for a long time yet. A score of years, perhaps.
You're all right, if you take decent care of yourself. Which you never
do. But we've all got to come to it, sooner or later. And it's well to
make provision. For instance, what would Kathrien's position be in this
house, in case you were taken out of it? Kathrien is a little
'prescription' of mine, you'll remember. And--I suppose your heart is
still set on her marrying Frederik, so that what is one's will be the
other's. Personally I've always thought it was rather a pity that
Frederik wasn't James and James wasn't Frederik."
"Eh?" cried Peter. "What's that?"
"It's none of my business," answered McPherson. "And it's all very well
as it stands--if she wants Frederik. But if you want to do anything for
_her_ future welfare, take my advice, and do it _now_."
"You mean," Peter said evenly, between stiffening lips, "you mean that I
could--die?"
"Every one can," replied McPherson with elephantine lightness. "And at
one time or another, every one does. It's a thing to be prepared for."
"One moment," urged Grimm, the keen little eyes piercing the other's
badly woven cloak of indifference. "You think that I----!"
"I mean nothing more nor less, Peter, than that the machinery is wearing
out. There's absolutely no cause for apprehension. Still, I thought I
had better tell you."
"But," asked Grimm with a pathetic insistence, "if there's no cause for
apprehension----?"
"Listen, Peter: when I cured you of that cold the other day--the cold
you got by tramping around like an idiot among the wet flower-beds
without rubbers--I made a discovery of--of something I can't cure."
Grimm studied his friend's unreadable face for an instant with an almost
painful intensity. Then a smile swept away the worry from his own
visage.
"Oh, Andrew, you old croaking Scotch raven," he cried. "Your
professional ways will be the death of some one yet. But the 'some one'
won't be Peter Grimm. That sick bed manner is splendid for bullying old
maids into taking their tonic. But it's wasted on a grown man. No, no,
Andrew. You can't make _me_ out an invalid. You doctors are a sorry lot.
You pour medicines of which you know little into systems of which you
know nothing. You condemn people to death as the old Inquisition would
have blushed to. Why, every day we read in the papers about some frisky
boy a hundred years old whom the doctors gave up for lost when he was
twenty-five. And," the forced gaiety in his voice merging into
aggressive resolve, "I'm going to live to see children in this old house
of mine. Katje's babies creeping about this very floor; sliding down
those bannisters over there, pulling the ears of Lad, my collie."
"Good Lord, Peter! That dog is fifteen years old _now_! Argue yourself
into miraculous longevity if you want to. But don't argue old Lad into
it. Do you expect _nothing_ will ever change in your home?"
"Perhaps," agreed Peter, with unshaken defiance. "But not before I live
to see a new line of rosy-faced, fluffy-haired little Grimms."
McPherson leaned back with a sigh of discouragement. Then, with
professional insight, he noted for the first time the gallant fight the
old man opposite him was making to keep up that obstinate gay courage
whose outward expression had so irritated the doctor. And, all at once,
McPherson ceased to become the gruff friend and assumed the rôle that
Ananias's physician probably acquired from his famous patient and which,
most assuredly, he has handed down to all his medical successors.
"I see no reason, Peter," said he with judicial ponderousness, "why you
shouldn't reach a ripe old age. You're quite likely to outlive me and a
host of younger men. Only, take better care of yourself. And,--no matter
how many probable years of life a man has before him, it does him no
harm to set his house in order. Think over that part of my advice and
forget the rest of it."
"Forget the rest of it," echoed Grimm absently. "The rest----"
McPherson hesitated; then as though overcome by a temptation too strong
for him to battle against, he blurted out half-shamefacedly:
"Peter--don't laugh at me. I want to make a strange compact with you. As
I've told you, you're quite likely to outlive me. But--will you agree
that whichever of us happens to--to go first,--shall come back and--and
let the other fellow know? Let the other fellow know; so as to settle
the Great Question once and for all?"
Grimm stared at him for a moment. Then he set the room ringing with a
laugh of whose mocking heartiness there could be no doubt.
"Oh, Andrew! Andrew!" he cried, when he could get his breath. "Still
riding your one crazy hobby! And you so sane in other ways!"
"But you'll make the compact?" begged McPherson. "You're a man of your
word,----"
"Make a compact to----? Oh, no, no, man. _No!_ I'd be ashamed to have
people know I was such a fool."
"But," urged the doctor, "no one else need know anything about it. It'll
be just between ourselves."
"No, no, dear old Andrew," laughed Grimm indulgently. "Positively _no_!
I refuse, point-blank. I'll do you any favour in reason. But I draw the
line at being dragged into any of your absurd spook tests."
"You sneer at 'spooks,' as you call them," retorted the doctor. "Most
people do. Just as people scoffed when Columbus told them there was an
America. But how many times do you think _you_ have seen a spook,
yourself?"
"A spook? I can't remember that I ever----"
"Yes, a ghost."
"A ghost," repeated Grimm with the utmost solemnity and wrinkling his
forehead as in an effort of memory. "I can't just now recall----"
"That's right! Make fun of me! But you can't tell that man is
complete--that he doesn't live more than one life;--that the soul
doesn't pass on and on. Smile if you like. Wiser men than yourself have
believed it. Why, man alive, every human being is surcharged with a
persistent personal energy. And that energy must continue forever."
"Oh, Doctor, Doctor!" exclaimed Kathrien, coming in with a fresh supply
of hot waffles. "Have you started on spooks again?"
"Yes, Katje," sighed Peter dolorously. "There can be no possible
redeeming doubt about that. He's started."
"And," laughed the girl, "I wasn't on hand to hear him. Have I missed
very much of it?"
"No," answered her uncle. "We're still in the painful early stages of
the squabble. I'll tell you what I'll do, Andrew: I'll compromise with
you. Instead of making the bargain you proposed, I'll stand aside and
let _you_ go ahead of me into the next world. Then you can come back at
your leisure and keep the spook compact. It'll be quite interesting.
Every time a knock sounds or a chair creaks or a door bangs or Lad
growls in his sleep, I'll strike an attitude and say: 'Ssh! There's
Doc!'"
"Don't guy me, old friend," urged McPherson. "I'm entirely serious. I'll
make the promise and I want _you_ to make it, too. Understand, I'm no
so-called Spiritist. I'm just a groping seeker after the Truth."
"That's what they all say," scoffed Grimm. "Seekers after the truth! And
madly eager to believe everything they hear or read _except_ the
commonsense truth. And you, a level-headed Scotchman, old enough to be
your own father, actually gulp down such tomfoolery! Next we'll have you
chasing around the streets at night, looking with a dark lantern for the
bogey man."
"Laugh at me if you like. I know I'm right. I know the dead _are_ alive.
They're here. Right here. They're all about us, watching us, suffering
with us, rejoicing with us, trying no doubt to speak the warnings and
encouragements that our world-deafened mortal ears cannot hear. I'm not
alone in the theory. Some of the greatest scientists--the wisest men of
the century--are of the same opinion."
"Dreamers," smiled Grimm indulgently. "Dreamers like yourself."
"Dreamers, eh?" The doctor caught him up vehemently. "_Dreamers?_ You
can't call Sir William Crookes, the inventor of the Crookes' Tubes, a
dreamer! No, nor Sir Oliver Lodge, the great biologist; or Curie, who
discovered radium; or Dr. Lombroso, the founder of the science of
criminology. Are Maxwell, Dr. Vesine, Richet, and our own American, Dr.
Hyslop, _dreamers_? Why, even Professor James, the mighty Harvard
psychologist, took a peep at ghosts. And, instead of laughing at
'spooks,' the big scientific men are trying to lay hold of them. I tell
you, Peter, Science is just beginning to peer through the half-open door
that a few years ago was shut tight."
"Trying to lay hold of ghosts, are they?" said Grimm. "I'd like to lay
hold of one. I'd lug it to the nearest police station. That's the place
for 'em. Just as the asylum's the place for folks who believe in 'em.
When you 'pass over,' Andrew, you'd better not come back. You won't
enjoy prowling around a world where sane people don't believe you
exist."
"Peter," reproved McPherson, "I'm sorry--very, _very_ sorry--that you
and others like you think it's smart to make a joke of something you
can't understand. Hyslop was right when he said Man will spend millions
of dollars to discover the North Pole, but not one cent to throw a ray
of light upon his immortal destiny."
"And, after the millions of times they've been exposed, you blame me for
not joining in your belief in spook mediums!"
"A lot of mediums are humbugs, I grant you. Just as there are fakers in
every profession. If there were no such thing as real money, there would
be no object in making counterfeits. And some of the mediums have proven
clearly that they are capable of real demonstrations."
"They are, hey? What's the use of mediums at all if the dead can really
come back? If my friends who have died return to earth, why don't they
walk straight up to me and say, 'Well, Peter Grimm. Here we are!' When
they do that, I shall gladly be the first man to take off my hat to them
and hold out my hand. But as long as they have to employ greasy mediums
to make their presence known, and try to prove they are with me by
knocking on tables and tipping chairs and scratching on slates, there is
only one of two things to believe: Either mediums are fakes, or else
folks all become imbecile practical jokers as soon as they die."
"Imbecile practical jokers!" repeated Kathrien, shocked.
"Yes," reiterated Peter Grimm. "That's what I said. And it's a mild way
of putting it. Would any sane man play such tricks as the spiritualists
attribute to our dead? It shatters every thought of the majesty of
death. Would a sane _live_ man walk into my house and announce his
presence to me by rapping on a wall or tipping a table or scrawling
idiotic messages on a slate or talking to me through some half-educated
'medium'? Would he----?"
"Yes, he would!" asserted the doctor. "He'd do all those things and
more, if he couldn't make you see him or hear him in any other way. As
to mediums,--why doesn't a telegram travel through the air as well as on
a wire? Your friends could come back to you in the old way if you could
but put yourself in a receptive condition. But you can't. So you must
depend on a non-professional medium,--a 'sensitive'----"
"See, Katje," interpolated Grimm, "he has names for them all. All neatly
classified like so many germs in a bottle. Well, Andrew, how many ghosts
did you see last night? He has only to shut his eyes, Katje, and along
comes the parade. Spooks! Spooks! Spooks! Nice, grisly, shivering,
spooky spooks! And now he wants me to put my house in order and settle
up my affairs and join the parade."
"Settle your affairs?" asked Kathrien puzzled.
"Oh, it's just his nonsense," Grimm hastened to assure her.
"Andrew,"--he hurried on to turn the subject from dangerous
personalities,--"you've seen a whole lot of people pass over to the
Other Side. In fact, your patients seem to have quite a habit of doing
that. Tell me: did you ever see one out of all that number come back
again? Just _one_?"
"No," answered McPherson reluctantly. "I never did, but----"
"No," cried Grimm in triumph, "and what's more, you never will. Yet
you----"
"There was not perhaps the intimate bond between doctor and patients to
bring them back to me. But in my own family, I've known of a 'return'
such as you speak of. A distant cousin of mine died in London. And at
almost that very instant, she was seen in New York."
"Rubbish!"
"Rubbish? Why? A century ago, if any one had tried to describe the
telephone, people of your sort would have grunted 'Rubbish!' But if my
voice can carry thousands of miles over the telephone, why cannot a
soul, with God-given force behind it, dart over the entire universe? Is
Thomas Edison greater than God?"
"Oh, Doctor," gasped the horrified Kathrien.
"And what's more," rushed on McPherson, unheeding, "they can't lay it
all to telepathy. In the case of a spirit message giving the contents of
a sealed letter known only to the person who has died--telepathy, eh?
Not a bit of it. Here's a case you must have heard of, Peter. An officer
on the Polar vessel _Jeannette_ sent out by a New York newspaper,
appeared one night at his wife's bedside. She was in Brooklyn. She knew
perfectly well that he was on the Polar Sea. He said to her: 'Count!'
Then she distinctly heard a ship's bell and her husband's voice saying
again, 'Count!' She had counted 'six' when his voice said: 'Six bells!
And the _Jeannette_ is lost!' The ship, it turned out later, was really
lost at the very time the woman had the vision. There! Account for
_that_ by telepathy or trickery if you can!"
"A bad dream!" was Grimm's unshaken verdict. "I have them every now and
then. 'Six bells and'--suet pudding brings me messages from the North
Pole. And I can get messages from Kingdom Come when I've had half a hot
mince pie with melted cheese on it for supper. That disposes of your
_Jeannette_ case."
"Scoff if you like. There have been more than seventeen thousand other
cases which the London Society of Psychical Research has found worth
investigating."
"Well, Andrew," asked Grimm, with a covert wink at Kathrien, "supposing,
for the sake of argument, that I _did_ want to 'come back,' how could I
manage it?"
At the question the doctor's rising irritation at the other's friendly
mockery was swept away by the zeal of prospective proselyting.
"In this way, Peter," he declared. "Let me make it clear as simply as I
can. In hypnotism our thoughts take possession of the person we
hypnotise. When our personalities enter their bodies, something goes out
of them:--a sort of Shadow Self. This 'Self' can be sent out of the
room--out of the house--even to a long distance. This 'Self' is the
force that, I firmly believe, departs from us entirely on the first or
second or third day after death. This is the force you could send back.
The astral envelope. Do I make it plain?"
"Plain? Plain as a flower in the mud on a dark night. But how do you
know _I've_ got an--'envelope'?"
"Every one has. Why, De Roche has actually photographed one, by means of
radio-photography."
Grimm lay back in his chair and shouted aloud with laughter.
"Mind you," went on McPherson, laboriously anxious to make clear his
point, "they could not see it when they were photographing it."
"No, I should imagine not. Nor the picture after it was taken. But in
other respects, I don't doubt it was a splendid likeness."
"Wait, before you try to be funny. Wait till I tell you about it. This
'envelope' or Shadow Self stood a few feet away from the sleeper. It was
invisible, of course, to the eye. It was only located by striking the
air and watching for the corresponding portion of the sleeper's body to
recoil. By pricking a certain part of the Shadow Self with a pin, the
cheek of the patient could be made to bleed. It was at that spot that
the camera was focussed for fifteen minutes! The result was----"
"A spoiled film."
"No, the profile of a head!" contradicted Dr. McPherson.
Grimm stared at him wonderingly.
"And you actually _believe_ such idiocy?" he demanded.
"It isn't a mere question of belief," declared McPherson, "but of
absolute _knowledge_. De Roche, who took the picture, is not a fraud,
but a lawyer of high standing. A room full of famous scientists saw the
picture taken."
"If they were honest, they were hypnotised."
"Perhaps you think the camera was hypnotised, too," retorted the doctor.
"Lombroso says that once under similar circumstances an unnatural
current of cold air went through the room and lowered the thermometer
several degrees. These are _facts_. Can you hypnotise a thermometer?"
"Oh, isn't that wonderful?" breathed Kathrien.
Grimm patted her shoulder gently, smiling as one might smile who sees a
dearly loved child taken in by a wonder-story. Then he turned to
McPherson, the banter in face and voice changed to mild reproof.
"No, Andrew," said he, reaching for his long meerschaum pipe and holding
its coffee-brown bowl lovingly between his thick fingers, as he
proceeded to fill it from a pouch on the mantel, "No, Andrew. I refuse
your compact. I'll have no part or parcel in it. Because it's an
impossible thing you ask of me. We don't come back. One cannot pick the
lock of Heaven's gate. It is no part of our terms with the Almighty. God
did enough for _us_ when He gave us life and gave us the strength to
work, and then gave us work to do. He owes us no explanation. I'll take
my chances on the old-fashioned Paradise--with a locked gate. No bogies
for me."
With another reassuring smile at Kathrien as she went out with the tray
of breakfast things, he lighted his pipe and repeated musingly:
"No bogies for me, I say. Who are _you_ that you should take the Kingdom
of Heaven by violence? Why," he broke out, "what ails you, man?"