"For my own part I find in some of these abnormal or supernormal facts
the strongest suggestions in favor of a superior consciousness being
possible. I doubt whether we shall ever understand some of them without
using the very letter of Fechner's conception of a great reservoir in
which the memories of earth's inhabitants are pooled and preserved, and
from which, when the threshold lowers or the valve opens, information
ordinarily shut out leaks into the mind of exceptional individuals among
us."
--WILLIAM JAMES, _A Pluralistic Universe_
And it was some hours later, while the ship made for the open sea, that
he told Dr. Stahl casually of the new arrangement and saw the change come
so suddenly across his face. Stahl stood back from the compass-box
whereon they leaned, and putting a hand upon his companion's shoulder,
looked a moment into his eyes. With surprise O'Malley noted that the pose
of cynical disbelief was gone; in its place was sympathy, interest,
kindness. The words he spoke came from his heart.
"Is that true?" he asked, as though the news disturbed him.
"Of course. Why not? Is there anything wrong?" He felt uneasy. The
doctor's manner confirmed the sense that he had done a rash thing.
Instantly the barrier between the two crumbled and he lost the first
feeling of resentment that his friends should be analyzed. The men thus
came together in unhindered sincerity.
"Only," said the doctor thoughtfully, half gravely, "that--I may have
done you a wrong, placed you, that is, in a position of--" he hesitated
an instant,--"of difficulty. It was I who suggested the change."
O'Malley stared at him.
"I don't understand you quite."
"It is this," continued the other, still holding him with his eyes. He
said it deliberately. "I have known you for some time, formed-er--an
opinion of your type of mind and being--a very rare and curious one,
interesting me deeply--"
"I wasn't aware you'd had me under the microscope," O'Malley laughed, but
restlessly.
"Though you felt it and resented it--justly, I may say--to the point of
sometimes avoiding me--"
"As doctor, scientist," put in O'Malley, while the other, ignoring the
interruption, continued in German:--
"I always had the secret hope, as 'doctor and scientist,' let us put it
then, that I might one day see you in circumstances that should bring
out certain latent characteristics I thought I divined in you. I wished
to observe you--your psychical being--under the stress of certain
temptations, favorable to these characteristics. Our brief voyages
together, though they have so kindly ripened our acquaintance into
friendship"--he put his hand again on the other's shoulder smiling,
while O'Malley replied with a little nod of agreement--"have, of course,
never provided the opportunity I refer to--"
"Ah--!"
"Until now!" the doctor added. "Until now."
Puzzled and interested the Irishman waited for him to go on, but the
man of science, who was now a ship's doctor, hesitated. He found it
difficult, apparently, to say what was in his thoughts.
"You refer, of course, though I hardly follow you quite--to our big
friends?" O'Malley helped him.
The adjective slipped out before he was aware of it. His companion's
expression admitted the accuracy of the remark. "You also see them--big,
then?" he said, quickly taking him up. He was not cross-questioning;
out of keen sympathetic interest he asked it.
"Sometimes, yes," the Irishman answered, more astonished. "Sometimes
only--"
"Exactly. Bigger than they really are; as though at times they gave
out--emanated--something that extended their appearance. Is that it?"
O'Malley, his confidence wholly won, more surprised, too, than he quite
understood, seized Stahl by the arm and drew him toward the rails. They
leaned over, watching the sea. A passenger, pacing the decks before
dinner, passed close behind them.
"But, doctor," he said in a hushed tone as soon as the steps had died
away, "you are saying things that I thought were half in my imagination
only, not true in the ordinary sense quite--your sense, I mean?"
For some moments the doctor made no reply. In his eyes a curious
steady gaze replaced the usual twinkle. When at length he spoke it was
evidently following a train of thought of his own, playing round a
subject he seemed half ashamed of and yet desired to state with direct
language.
"A being akin to yourself," he said in low tones, "only developed,
enormously developed; a Master in your own peculiar region, and a man
whose influence acting upon you at close quarters could not fail to
arouse the latent mind-storms"--he chose the word hesitatingly, as
though seeking for a better he could not find on the moment,--"always
brewing in you just below the horizon."
He turned and watched his companion's face keenly. O'Malley was too
impressed to feel annoyance.
"Well--?" he asked, feeling the adventure closing round him with quite a
new sense of reality. "Well?" he repeated louder. "Please go on. I'm not
offended, only uncommonly interested. You leave me in a fog, so far. I
think you owe me more than hints."
"I do," said the other simply. "About that man is a singular quality
too rare for language to have yet coined its precise description:
something that is essentially"--they had lapsed into German now, and he
used the German word--"_unheimlich_."
The Irishman started. He recognized this for truth. At the same time
the old resentment stirred a little in him, creeping into his reply.
"You have studied him closely then--had him, too, under the microscope?
In this short time?"
This time the answer did not surprise him, however.
"My friend," he heard, while the other turned from him and gazed out over
the misty sea, "I have not been a ship's doctor--always. I am one now
only because the leisure and quiet give me the opportunity to finish
certain work, recording work. For years I was in the H----"--he mentioned
the German equivalent for the Salpêtrière--"years of research and
investigation into the astonishing vagaries of the human mind and
spirit--with certain results, followed later privately, that it is now my
work to record. And among many cases that might well seem--er--beyond
either credence or explanation,"--he hesitated again slightly--"I came
across one, one in a million, let us admit, that an entire section of my
work deals with under the generic term of _Urmenschen_."
"Primitive men," O'Malley snapped him up, translating. Through his
growing bewilderment ran also a growing uneasiness shot strangely
with delight. Intuitively he divined what was coming.
"Beings," the doctor corrected him, "not men. The prefix _Ur-_, moreover,
I use in a deeper sense than is usually attached to it as in _Urwald_,
_Urwelt_, and the like. An _Urmensch_ in the world today must suggest a
survival of an almost incredible kind--a kind, too, utterly inadmissible
and inexplicable to the materialist perhaps--"
"Paganistic?" interrupted the other sharply, joy and fright rising over
him.
"Older, older by far," was the rejoinder, given with a curious hush and a
lowering of the voice.
The suggestion rushed into full possession of O'Malley's mind. There rose
in him something that claimed for his companions the sea, the wind, the
stars--tumultuous and terrific. But he said nothing. The conception,
blown into him thus for the first time at full strength, took all his
life into its keeping. No energy was left over for mere words. The
doctor, he was aware, was looking at him, the passion of discovery and
belief in his eyes. His manner kindled. It was the hidden Stahl emerging.
"... a type, let me put it," he went on in a voice whose very steadiness
thrilled his listener afresh, "that in its strongest development would
experience in the world today the loneliness of a complete and absolute
exile. A return to humanity, you see, of some unexpended power of
mythological values...."
"Doctor...!"
The shudder passed through him and away almost as soon as it came. Again
the sea grew splendid, the thunder of the waves held voices calling, and
the foam framed shapes and faces, wildly seductive, though fugitive as
dreams. The words he had heard moved him profoundly. He remembered how
the presence of the stranger had turned the world alive.
He knew what was coming, too, and gave the lead direct, while yet
half afraid to ask the question.
"So my friend--this big 'Russian'--?"
"I have known before, yes, and carefully studied."