REARTON dropped down in the chair I pushed forward.
“Can you give me a moment or two?” he asked.
“As many as you like,” I answered. “Just wait till I put my name to this—” and I signed the letter before me.
He watched me fold and slip it into an envelope, then he said:
“I want your opinion on certain matters.”
“Come now, Rearton,” I entreated. “Let me off if it's to be another talk on spiritualism!”
“Confound it! Why will you persist in calling my beliefs by what to me is the most offensive of names? I recognize the existence of the supernatural. Every intelligent man must.”
“Then, praise heaven, I am not intelligent.”
“I want to ask you this. How much more than you actually see would you be willing to believe?”
“A great deal less,—and even then I question not I'd be pretty well deceived. The evidences of the senses are no evidences at all. They are a cheat ninety-nine times out of a hundred. The testimony of no two witnesses ever tallied exactly, even though they stood side by side looking on the same event.”
“Come, that's a broad statement,” he objected. “Of a very general truth,” I supplemented. “And it holds good from the crucifixion down to the present day, whether the occasion was most momentous or most trivial.”
I was aware that my friend was dabbling in the occult, and if any thing I could say would throw discredit on it I was anxious it should not be left unsaid.
“Look here,” he continued, “supposing I should state to you as a fact susceptible of positive proof, that the future can be made visible to a man.”
“Oh, come!” I interposed. “Let's drop this.”
“No, I can't.” He had become suddenly grave. “I want you to promise me that if I send for you during the next week you will respond to the summons.”
“See here, Rearton,—what folly are you about to engage in?”
“My dear boy, it's not folly! If what I expect happens, I shall be able to gratify a rational desire to read the future,—my own particularly.”
“When you do,” I burst out, “I hope I'll be there to see how the thing's done!”
“That's exactly the favor I'm asking.”
We sat silently looking at each other for a moment. I felt vaguely that my friend was not the man for such experiments. He was far too likely to be the dupe of another's cunning, being sensitive almost to the verge of weakness, essentially a dreamer with all a dreamer's love of the unreal.
“What does Miss Kent say?—does she know?” I asked.
“Miss Kent is quite willing.”
“Probably she agrees with me that it's all a pack of nonsense.”
“There you're mistaken,” he said quickly.
“Faith,—supreme faith,—must be dominant in her character then. Few women would care to have the man they expect to marry forestall time in the fashion you propose.”
“Miss Kent is not the ordinary woman. Her willingness shows sublime faith in our affection.”
“Quite so,—that is if she really thinks it possible.”
“I assure you”—and his pale face flushed—“I assure you she shares my beliefs fully. Why shouldn't the future be as plain as the past?”
“Now see here, Rearton,” I said, “I'm not especially fond of argument, and if I can't swear my way through a dispute it is rather apt to languish as far as I am concerned. One thing I am sure of,—if bare one-half of your good fortune was mine I'd be amply satisfied with the present. Nothing so remote as the future would trouble me.”
Rearton, seeing that I was not inclined to discuss the question he had propounded, took his leave of me.
A day or so later I received a note from him requesting my immediate presence at his apartments. I hastened there. He opened the door himself in response to my knock and I followed him into his room. I could see he was laboring under some great excitement. His first words were evidently intended to explain matters.
“He will be here in a moment.” He spoke hurriedly and in a low voice as though he feared a listener. “The reason I sent for you is because of all my friends I think you are the least likely to be imposed on. I have the uneasy feeling that many of my investigations were not conducted with absolute fairness,—an uncomfortable sensation of having been tricked. Understand me, my faith in the great principle remains unaltered, but the methods used in its demonstration have been unworthy.”