"Yes, somehow I do. Why? I haven't the slightest notion. I can give
myself all sorts of reasons for laughing it to scorn. My common sense
utterly rejects it. Of course the shape of the hand means something,
is more or less an index of character. But the idea that my past and
future are neatly mapped out on my palms--" I shrugged my shoulders.
"You don't like that idea?" asked Laider in his gentle, rather academic
voice.
"I only say it's a grotesque idea."
"Yet you do believe in it?"
"I've a grotesque belief in it, yes."
"Are you sure your reason for calling this idea 'grotesque' isn't
merely that you dislike it?"
"Well," I said, with the thrilling hope that he was a companion in
absurdity, "doesn't it seem grotesque to you?"
"It seems strange."
"You believe in it?"
"Oh, absolutely."
"Hurrah!"
He smiled at my pleasure, and I, at the risk of reentanglement in
metaphysics, claimed him as standing shoulder to shoulder with me
against "A Melbourne Man." This claim he gently disputed.
"You may think me very prosaic," he said, "but I can't believe without
evidence."
"Well, I'm equally prosaic and equally at a disadvantage: I can't take
my own belief as evidence, and I've no other evidence to go on."
He asked me if I had ever made a study of palmistry. I said I had read
one of Desbarolles's books years ago, and one of Heron-Allen's. But,
he asked, had I tried to test them by the lines on my own hands or on
the hands of my friends? I confessed that my actual practice in
palmistry had been of a merely passive kind--the prompt extension of my
palm to any one who would be so good as to "read" it and truckle for a
few minutes to my egoism. (I hoped Laider might do this.)
"Then I almost wonder," he said, with his sad smile, "that you haven't
lost your belief, after all the nonsense you must have heard. There
are so many young girls who go in for palmistry. I am sure all the
five foolish virgins were 'awfully keen on it' and used to say, 'You
can be led, but not driven,' and, 'You are likely to have a serious
illness between the ages of forty and forty-five,' and, 'You are by
nature rather lazy, but can be very energetic by fits and starts.' And
most of the professionals, I'm told, are as silly as the young girls."
For the honor of the profession, I named three practitioners whom I had
found really good at reading character. He asked whether any of them
had been right about past events. I confessed that, as a matter of
fact, all three of them had been right in the main. This seemed to
amuse him. He asked whether any of them had predicted anything which
had since come true. I confessed that all three had predicted that I
should do several things which I had since done rather unexpectedly.
He asked if I didn't accept this as, at any rate, a scrap of evidence.
I said I could only regard it as a fluke--a rather remarkable fluke.
The superiority of his sad smile was beginning to get on my nerves. I
wanted him to see that he was as absurd as I.
"Suppose," I said--"suppose, for the sake of argument, that you and I
are nothing but helpless automata created to do just this and that, and
to have just that and this done to us. Suppose, in fact, we HAVEN'T
any free will whatsoever. Is it likely or conceivable that the Power
which fashioned us would take the trouble to jot down in cipher on our
hands just what was in store for us?"
Laider did not answer this question; he did but annoyingly ask me
another.
"You believe in free will?"
"Yes, of course. I'll be hanged if I'm an automaton."
"And you believe in free will just as in palmistry--without any reason?"
"Oh, no. Everything points to our having free will."
"Everything? What, for instance?"
This rather cornered me. I dodged out, as lightly as I could, by
saying:
"I suppose YOU would say it's written in my hand that I should be a
believer in free will."
"Ah, I've no doubt it is."
I held out my palms. But, to my great disappointment, he looked
quickly away from them. He had ceased to smile. There was agitation
in his voice as he explained that he never looked at people's hands
now. "Never now--never again." He shook his head as though to beat
off some memory.
I was much embarrassed by my indiscretion. I hastened to tide over the
awkward moment by saying that if _I_ could read hands I wouldn't, for
fear of the awful things I might see there.
"Awful things, yes," he whispered, nodding at the fire.
"Not," I said in self-defense, "that there's anything very awful, so
far as I know, to be read in MY hands."
He turned his gaze from the fire to me.
"You aren't a murderer, for example?"
"Oh, no," I replied, with a nervous laugh.
"_I_ am."
This was a more than awkward, it was a painful, moment for me; and I am
afraid I must have started or winced, for he instantly begged my pardon.
"I don't know," he exclaimed, "why I said it. I'm usually a very
reticent man. But sometimes--" He pressed his brow. "What you must
think of me!"