The Peckster Professorship
I.
THERE was a satisfied rattle in the beads which encircled the fair neck of Mrs. Clara Souford, as she finished the note asking Professor Ernest Hargrave to pass a night at her villa, on the north shore of Massachusetts Bay.
Mrs. Souford knew that a wealthy widow, in the ripe comeliness of her thirty-third summer, is as near being independent as is permitted to any specimen of the non-voting majority of her native State; and yet she saw that it would be better to provide some little excuse before summoning to her side even so good a friend as the Professor. After long seeking, an excuse of the most unexceptionable sort had presented itself. He should be asked to repeat that paper upon the Cervical Vertebræ with which, according to the statement of the Evening Gazette, he had delighted the Friday Club, when it met at Colonel Caffrey’s, last winter. Those seven little bones upon which we balance our heads — if balanced they may properly be said to be — did not seem very promising ; but Clara knew that the distinguished Peckster Professor of Osteology could make even anatomy interesting. In these days accomplished personages are expected to show what they can do at a moment’s notice: not only may we demand a sonata from the young lady whose piano practice has given her the ability of boring the unmusical portion of her race, but we may inflict the mistiest sort of a philosopher upon the adverse majority of a fashionable drawingroom.
“ I think that the Professor can be furnished with as much of a summer audience as he ought to expect,” soliloquized Mrs. Souford, as she was sealing her note. “ Let me see. There will be my city rector in the chamber connecting with the back-stairs: I shall put him there, so that he can indulge his taste for early fishing without disturbing the rest of the house. Then there will be John Harris and the Langworth sisters : they don’t amount to much, but will fill chairs as well as if they did. Silas Pryndale will be at the boardinghouse across the harbor: I will make him sail over to us. I may think of some others, too. Cousin Kate Dudley, of course, must be here, and I had quite as lief she were absent. I don’t like her way of criticising Hargrave; besides, she has a half-envious curiosity about my relations with him. I really should n’t wonder if she objected to my plan. She is as independent in her way as I am in mine.”
The latter reflection was perfectly true. Miss Kate Dudley was ten years older than her cousin, and had not one twentieth of her worldly possessions. But she had accepted spinsterhood seriously, for better and for worse, and felt all the satisfaction that comes from a definite conception of what life has to offer us. This showed itself in a jaunty style of talk, which at times came dangerously near flippancy. She knew that her service at the seaside was that of a duenna, whose presence might temper any rude winds of censure from without ; all the more, then, might the softer zephyrs of criticism blow from within.
Copyright, 1886, by HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & Co.
Miss Kate Dudley did not fancy some of Mrs. Souford’s masculine friends. The rector, for instance, was not a satisfying personage; she considered him so illogical that he might as well have been irreligious. He held on to certain ecclesiastical formulas, and then stood hat in hand to science, to ask what was the latest meaning to be read into them. He did not remonstrate when Clara’s name headed the list of subscribers for the support of the Saturday Spencerian Lectureship, although he must have known that its views were in deadly opposition to those of the Monday Theological Lectureship, for which collections were taken up in the churches. Miss Dudley did not perceive that consistency, in this age of rapidly dissolving principles, might result in that course of impious stubbornness which one of Shakespeare’s characters finds so reprehensible.
Neither was this good lady confident that all was right about Professor Hargrave. She decided that there was something of mystery and management in his demeanor which needed clearing up. He seemed to be asking more of life than it had given him; and as it certainly had given him a surplusage of its higher privileges, it followed that he must be entertaining an unheroic yearning for some of its lower satisfactions, — probably for a proprietor’s right in the upholstery and good dinners of Mrs. Souford’s city establishment. And so when this latter lady mentioned her little project for enticing a visitor, the anticipated objection did not fail to present itself.
“ What do people want of science at the seaside ? ” cried Miss Dudley, with a decisive toss of the head. “ Our winters are already stuffy with treatises which—because nobody wants to read — everybody must be compelled to hear. Rather let us have something in sportive accord with the free life of the beach and the cat-boat. What was that good thing Tom Henderson said about the three M’s, —moonshine, music, and metaphysics ? Well, I forget the point, but the amount of it was that these were always to be drawn upon, because they were adaptive and fluid and plastic ; in short, all that Hargrave’s bones are not.”
“ If you had come to my house on the evening when the Professor gave his lecture upon the Cervical Arch, instead of running after those stupid private theatricals, you would have learned that bones are about the most plastic portion of the human mechanism,” rejoined Mrs. Souford, with some asperity. 44 Put them under pressure, and they assume abnormal shapes with a facility which is quite startling. Just compare the waist of the Venus with that of a young woman of the period, and we shall see” —
44 Now you don’t mean to tell me that your Professor was reduced to that hackneyed illustration ! ” gayly remonstrated Miss Dudley. 44 Why, it has been in all the books of useful knowledge since we went to school.”
“ My Professor, as you call him,” said Clara, 44 is neither hackneyed nor commonplace. Let me tell you that no one can hold the Peckster Professorship without some original genius. Did you happen to see what Huxley said about him the other day, at the Oxford celebration ? I cut it from the paper, and you will find it pinned to the sofa in my dressing-room. Hargrave has a manly force in him that persons who skim the surface of society may not have depth enough to recognize. He is most honored by those who seek the highest knowledge. A woman may be proud to find herself sensitive to his influence.”
“ If the influence were only reciprocal, there would be no harm in it,” observed Kate, who, as her cousin looked up, saw something darkly mirrored in her eyes which put trifling out of place. “ I cannot help remembering that he refused to join the Society for Psychical Research last winter, though you begged him to do so. Influence between man and woman ought to be a matter of give and take.”
“ Not when the connection between them is truest,” replied Mrs. Souford, “ though I will own I was disappointed when Hargrave refused my request. Mind experiments were quite the rage in the autumn, and I thought he might give a little of his leisure to them, just to see if anything satisfactory could be found out. There was no wavering about his answer, and if I am to be put down I always like to have it done decisively. He declared that he would devote nothing less than a life to such investigations, and that his life was not at his own disposal.”
“ Which meant, I suppose, that he had a sister dependent upon him, and a reputation to be very carefully nursed,” said Miss Dudley, in explanation. “ You know it would never do to come to conclusions which some scientific Dr. Grundy, LL. D., D. C. L., F. R. S., and the rest of the letters of the alphabet, would not care to indorse! These learned professors have a sense of the horrors of non-conformity which would do credit to the imagination of a bud at her coming-out party.”
“ Ernest Hargrave is not influenced by sordid motives,” replied Clara. “ He has a right, after all, to decline to enter the kingdom of the bizarre and the nebulous, where the head soon swims and strong men have lost foothold. His science is concerned with the verification of facts in this visible world, and by his masterly dealing with them he has won a fame which has reached across the ocean.”
“ Facts indeed ! ” laughed out Miss Kate. “ I know how to throw the metaphysical lasso over his professorial head, and then, as it were, to pull him in with it hand over hand. What would become of his beautiful facts in that case ? Ask him how much information about this supposed actual world those senses of his really convey ? Why, they do not even intimate its existence. Let him give any good reason for thinking that things really are as they appear to him to be ! ”
“ Oh, if you are reduced to one of your M’s,” said Mrs. Souford decidedly, “ we will give up the discussion. I have just written to the Professor, and told him all about the music and moonlight of our summer retreat, and asked him to offset these dangerous fascinations with as much exact science as he thinks may be good for us.”
And thus it came to pass that the evening mail was charged with the letter the completion of which, as we have seen, caused the happy rattle among the beads, as if in response to the movements of the heart, as its beats quickened beneath the soft Madras muslin.
Now there can be no doubt that Mrs. Souford did think of Ernest Hargrave as her Professor. And why should she not ? He was still on the sunny side of middle life, as well as on the heavenward side of medium stature: a firmly poised man; not exactly handsome, to be sure, but probably as good looking as a man can be without being conscious of it. Then there was a mystery surrounding him which might have a romantic interest. Although he had reached the highest eminence in his calling, there was an air about him as of one whose life purpose had been thwarted. It was not easy for Clara to account for this. Of course the man had no money, and there was talk of a sister somewhere in the West, who, added to the incumbrance of certain paternal debts, called for the greater part of his handsome stipend from the college. But, on the other hand, Hargrave had attained the great Peckster Professorship, with all that it implied ; and Clara, who had been brought up under the shadow of this famous endowment, knew very well what it did imply. For not only did the salary cause it to be vulgarly spoken of as “ the fattest thing in the gift of the college,” but there went with it social advantages of a value not easily overestimated. There were still above ground certain descendants of the original Peckster; and these respectable mediocrities, having control of various funds for the advancement of knowledge, and of still larger funds for their own luxurious living, held it a point of honor to make life brilliant and enjoyable for the occupant of the family Chair. So this distinguished Professorship not only represented the pinnacle of scientific reputation among men, but it was regarded as a highly satisfactory asset among women who liked the éclat of moving in exclusive circles. The Professor was always welcomed to the houses of the wealthy who wanted to show something better than their money ; indeed, no entertainment of the first class was held to be complete without his presence. European savants who visited America sought him out almost as soon as the steamer touched the wharf, and every rising Western college pestered him to accept its presidency.
Clara vainly tried to solve the puzzle of this want of self-satisfaction — of self-respect, she was sometimes tempted to think it — in one whose position before the world was so enviable. If an unassailable explanation occurred to her to-day, it seemed doubtful on the morrow, and absurd before the end of the week. At one time she suspected the trouble had some connection with the Psychical Research business, in which she had wished to interest him. For, not accepting the first rebuff, Clara had returned to the charge, and wanted to know why Hargrave’s name was not on a certain scientific committee, which, the papers said, was giving some odd moments to inquire into these melancholy hallucinations. Every one must see that the results obtained by these men, who were well known, intelligent, and honest would be perfectly satisfactory.
“ Just as satisfactory,” Hargrave had replied, “ as would be the results of an investigation into the merits of Protestantism, conducted by a committee of the Pope and cardinals. These Roman gentlemen are well known, intelligent, and honest, and, this being the case, how could they be biased by the fact that, if the verdict did not confirm certain dicta to which they are committed, humiliating results must follow ? Should these excellent ecclesiastics ever undertake such an investigation, be sure they will have the wit to insist upon conditions which will render their present conclusions inevitable ! ”
This speech was not quite intelligible to the fair patroness of the Saturday Lectureship; she could not see how science could have anything to do with the narrowness that one naturally enough credits to theology. But if she might not fathom the meaning that lay at the bottom of Hargrave’s half-scornful manner, she knew it took no pathos from his clear and impressive voice, which seemed at times to lift her beyond the power of a weak and frivolous self that was trying to assert itself. She knew that the match — if it should come to that — would be a fair one, according to contemporary measurement. She had the wealth, to be sure; but then, as Mrs. Thomas K. Souford, she was merely a well-to-do woman, who might command at their current market prices certain desirable appendages to the sad condition of widowhood. As Mrs. Ernest Hargrave, Clara would enjoy the highest consideration in scientific and literary circles, and take a recognized place when she paid her winter visit to the capital of her country. Of course such calculations were not acknowledged to have any bearing upon the question ; but when did all the motives which determine our actions present themselves to the conscious reflection ?
After all, no offer of marriage had passed the lips of the Professor, yet what is vaguely called an understanding had established itself between them. There were precious moments when Hargrave had looked into Clara’s eyes with an intense and concentrated intelligence, and both knew that their hearts vibrated in unison. At such times she received an impression of resource and power from the man which went far to deprive her of that right of self-determination which moralists assure us we may always exercise. And then there would come over her a wild fancy that the Professor might be endowed with finer senses than those he had exercised so acutely on his way to the Chair of Osteology. Could it be possible that there was within his reach a better wisdom than old Peckster imagined, when he left his money to the college ?
And now that Hargrave was to come to her, Mrs. Souford found the lawntennis and novel-reading of the seaside as little endurable as had been the sterile bustle of her city home. She doubted whether she were not more independent than any woman ought to be. If she could only put herself under guardianship. — his guardianship!
She would sit alone upon the rocks, till the vast irony of the ocean withered her life; she would sicken at its mighty striving, without aim and without rest. At such times her mind oscillated between the views of the rector and those of the Spencerian Lectureship; the choice, however, was soon made. The former needed a background of organ music and surpliced choir-boys; but the breaking surf, flinging its spray over the rocks, accorded better with a conception of one’s self as a product of evolutionary energy, — a victim of geological changes and planetary revolutions.
This was the state of mind in which Clara Souford welcomed the arrival of Professor Hargrave, on the evening when he was to give his scientific reading to her assembled guests.
II.
And now the doubtful experiment was to be made : the Professor’s paper about the Cervical Vertebræ was to be tried upon a summer audience.
The Reverend Charles Greyson, the fisherman rector, had removed his heavy boots, and petitioned for leave to appear in a pair of those worked slippers with which gentlemen of his profession are so generously provided. Now a man in any slippers was especially distasteful to Mrs. Souford, but a man in worked slippers, — well, she wished that his benefit of clergy could have taken any shape but that! Her consent, which of course had to be given, was not very gracious, and she moved the lamp behind the alabaster vase, so as to throw disagreeables into as much shade as possible.
John Harris, who had escorted Miss Langworth and her cousin to witness the regatta of the Eastern Yacht Club, deposited them on the sofa, several shades browner than when they rose that morning. Others of the company were ranged in restful attitudes about the parlor, while Hargrave sat in the stately Mayflower chair, with Clara’s favorite little table with the clawed feet whereon to rest his manuscript.
The party was completed by the arrival of that portly broker, Silas Pryndale, who, suddenly parting the curtains which had been drawn before one of the French windows, presented himself in a blue yachting shirt, with the word “Magician ” worked in red silk across the breast.
“ I won’t apologize ; you must let me come as I am!” he hurriedly exclaimed. “ You see it was all I could do to work up to my moorings. If I had stopped for a change of clothes, I should have been late.”
“ But you should apologize for breaking in upon us like a ghost,” said Miss Kate Dudley, giving her fan the Mikado flirt, expressive of comical terror. “ Why, that fiery inscription you bear is enough to frighten a neurasthenic female quite out of her weak wits. Did Pluto attach that startling ticket-ofleave before permitting you to revisit the glimpses of the moon ? ”
“ You refer to my lettering : well, it is a little too conspicuous,” acknowledged the good-natured broker. “ You see, my wife insisted that my new centre-board cat should bear that ridiculous name. Mrs. Souford happens to know all about my rescue of the deacon, and I can assure her that Susan has not yet done chaffing me about it. The last domestic joke was to mark all my shirts in this elaborate fashion, on the chance that I should not have patience to pull out the stitches.”
“ And so you rescued a deacon ! Whence ? when ? where ?” demanded Miss Dudley, in terse monosyllables.
“ The particulars would make too long a story, and your cousin knows them already,” remonstrated Silas. “ It is a sort of ghost story, too, or rather, perhaps, a tale of one of those queer psychical impressions into which ghosts vanish nowadays. Such a misty narrative would be a poor prologue to those solid realities of science about which the Professor will so kindly discourse to us.”
“ You must tell the story. I wish Professor Hargrave to hear it,” said Mrs. Souford, with decision. “ To me it is very mysterious, — a shadowy reflection of something preternatural. Of course he will give us some perfectly simple explanation of it.”
“ From which we shall of course dissent,” added Miss Kate, smartly. “ Then the Professor will dissent from our dissent; but our dissent from his views will be modest, while he, having a scientific reputation to look after, will dissent from our views with contempt. So we shall have the advantage of him both in temper and tolerance.”
“ Now I demand every particular about the deacon,” said Hargrave, smiling pleasantly. “ I will cut my paper one half, or postpone it altogether, rather than remain under such a calumny as that. I believe, however, that Mrs. Souford knows me well enough to assure her cousin that if I am unable to accept a marvelous narrative — that is, to think that the marvelous element in it is proved — I shall mingle no scorn with its rejection. The fact that my studies may lead me to discover fallacies of observation or inference where Miss Dudley might not suspect them, I cannot help. But I can help that hidebound prejudice of caste which holds so many of our college men from giving its just weight to unwelcome evidence.”
Clara felt the tide of life move more rapidly as Hargrave’s imploring glance met hers. Evidently, he did not quite relish the touch-and-go vivacities of her protectress. How should they be taken at their true value by one whose life was so withdrawn from the corrective touch of familiar feminine influence ! Well, he must have the chance of vindicating himself, if he thought it necessary; and so the story should be told. “ And be sure,” she said, addressing Pryndale, “ that you give us no once-upon-a-time business. We want all the names and dates, together with the state of the weather and the degrees Fahrenheit of the thermometer.”
“ Weather, cloudy, with good expectation of snow,” began the owner of the cat Magician ; “ thermometer, somewhere in the forties ; place, the suburban town of Medville, in which I sleep and pay taxes ; time, an afternoon in last November. Mrs. Souford, a schoolmate of my wife, was coming, as she often did, to pass a night with us. We are nearly half a mile from the station, so I drove my depot wagon to connect with the train she had promised to take. The cars reached the station soon after I did, and I experienced the disappointment of finding that our expected visitor had not come. I waited till the last passenger stepped upon the Medville platform, and then sullenly turned the horse’s head towards home. If our guest arrived by a later train, I decided that she might take the public omnibus to the house. I had a batch of letters that were waiting answers, and could spare no more time for running after her ; I would go home and stay there. But home I did not go, though when I left the station it certainly was my fixed purpose so to do. Let me mention that it is not my habit to drive for pleasure in our depot wagon, which is a heavy vehicle, with the stiff springs necessary for the transportation of baggage. Even setting aside my letters, there seemed to be every reason why I should hasten home. Yet a sudden impulse, which I knew not how to resist, prompted me, on turning into Centre Street, to drive away from my own dwelling. Now, if you follow Centre Street for about two miles, you come to Fox Lane, which leads through the woods to Bear Pond. The pond is another two miles from the turning, and half a mile further you come to Turner’s Point, which runs out into the water, and is a favorite spot for summer picnics. We are in the habit of taking the children there once or twice during the hot weather ; but, however attractive in July, it is not a pleasant place to visit on a chilly November afternoon. Fox Lane, as Mrs. Souford can tell you, is one of those rocky, rutty thoroughfares by which the farmers get to their wood-lots, and is by no means adapted to pleasure-driving. Now something riveted my attention upon Turner’s Point, and soon this singular question was flashed into my mind : 1 Suppose you were alone at the Point, and should meet with some accident that hindered locomotion, how soon might, you reasonably expect relief ? ’ I am aware that it is not wise to give up one’s brains for the lodging of a single idea, but this absurd and fanciful inquiry, once admitted, would not give up its quarters. There it clung, a vague, indefinable, persistent presence. I could not help reflecting that the chance of November visitors to the Point was exceedingly small, and that in the event supposed the arrival of aid would be very doubtful.
“ Pondering this matter, I reached Fox Lane, and, without any motive that was evident to my consciousness, I turned into it. Indeed, I may put the case more strongly by saying that all the motives I am now able to recognize were against a solitary visit to Turner’s Point. The recent rains had brought the rough stones of the byroad into unusual relief ; it was late in the day, and I greatly desired to be at home. But the impulse to go on would not leave me : I had an insane desire to stand upon the end of the Point, and there to consider my chances of attracting attention, if some accident prevented my return. And here let it be observed that my sole desire was to work out a problem, in which the interest was personal. No altruistic sentiment intruded itself ; no imagination of possible usefulness to some person in distress impelled my movement in a direction which — all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding — I found to be that of the least resistance. While I recognized the fact that nothing could be more unlikely than my getting into any situation of peril upon Turner’s Point, I found that nothing could be more persistent than the presentation of some such catastrophe. I said to myself, 1 This morbid and feverish action of the brain, which is taking me where I don’t want to go, must cease ! ’ But my order was as ineffective as one; given in a dream. The machinery of logic ground out its unanswerable demonstration of my folly ; but — what shall I call it ? — a presence, a breath soft as a zephyr, yet compulsive as a hurricane, urged me on.
44 After a goodly shaking upon the Stones I reached Bear Pond. The bars of the fence, which in summer were taken down, to allow driving to the Point, were replaced for the winter. It was still something of a walk to the picnic ground. I tied my horse, climbed the rails, and strode onward, with mingled feelings of amazement and disgust. I had not proceeded far before my ears caught faint cries, as if for assistance. I stopped and listened. Yes, there could be no doubt of it ; somebody in distress was trying to attract attention. Now you see how my story is to end, so I will hurry the conclusion. In an open cellar which had been dug at the end of Turner’s Point, I found Deacon Turner himself. He had visited the place to consider the feasibility of covering the old cellar with a sort of summer restaurant, or lunch-house, which might be leased to visitors during the following season. In order to make some measurements, he had undertaken to climb down into the cellar, cautiously thrusting fingers and toes into the crevices between the stones. He had slipped, fallen, and sprained an ankle so severely that the foot was powerless. Getting out of the trap was beyond the old man’s power ; he had lain there seven hours when I found him. The chance of a rescue without a night, and probably another day, of cold, hunger, and misery was highly improbable. The deacon had left home in the morning, with the intention of spending the night at his brother’s house in the city ; there was, therefore, no reason why his absence should excite inquiry. This visit to the Point was not premeditated; it resulted from the sudden thought of a lunch-house, on his walk to the village.
“ The Turner farm was a long quarter of a mile from the Point, and after supplying the poor man with water I hastened there for assistance. Ladders and men were necessary to effect a rescue, and it was not till long after sunset that I had the satisfaction of seeing the deacon extended upon his own comfortable bed. I promised to stop at Dr. Simpson’s office, on my way through Centre Street, — if, indeed, the perilous passage of Fox Lane, after dark, permitted me to reach that locality.
“It was raining heavily when, after several unpleasant adventures, I drew up before my own door. Susan and Mrs. Souford (who had arrived by the 5.20 train) rushed to the porch, as the wheels stopped. And then came the high-pitched inquiries: 4 Well, where have you been ? What do you mean by making us so anxious ? Tell us right off where you ’ve been ! ’ 1 Well, my dear,’ I replied hesitatingly, ‘ I have been to — to — Turner’s Point.’ And then in chorus came the rejoinder : 4 What upon earth sent you to Turner’s Point on such a night as this ?’ Now, that was a puzzling inquiry. What did send me to Turner’s Point ? Was it, indeed, anything upon earth, or something to be more properly spoken of as a little beyond it ? I could not answer the question then, nor have I been able to answer it since. One day I thought I would ask Dr. Simpson, and his reply was, 4 One of those morbid impulses which result from indigestion.’ 4 But my rescue of Deacon Turner ?’ I objected. The doctor, who is one of the vicepresidents of our County Medical Society, swayed to and fro in his deliberative way, and at length replied, ‘Well, I think it will be best to call that a coincidence.’ ”
“ I can testify that Mr. Pryndale’s story has not been magnified by repetition,” said Mrs. Souford. “ The mystery has not grown an inch since I first heard it. It is now in order for the Professor to furnish his explanation, or to tell us whether he agrees with the vice-president of that medical society that the words ‘ indigestion ’ and ‘ coincidence ’ are the Open Sesames to this lurid cavern.”
Hargrave seemed troubled : he threw a wary yet searching glance over the company, and at length replied, “ I should not dare to assert that they are not.”
“ So much for the official opinion of the Peckster Professorship ! ” announced Miss Dudley, in her smartest manner. “ Now, if quite convenient, we should like to have that of Citizen Ernest Hargrave, equal voter with John, Patrick, Peter, and several million more of the same sort. Perhaps this person may be willing to exhibit his freedom by differing with the learned Professor.”
“I will not resist your appeal,” said Hargrave, after a pause of indecision. “ I merely meant to say that such testimony as we have listened to is of value only when correlated with a great deal more testimony equally unimpeachable. Take Mr. Pryndale’s narrative as an isolated experience, and Dr. Simpson’s solution might be the best, — were it not the higher wisdom to attempt no solution at all. Taken separately, there is no experience of this kind which excludes a possible coincidence ; taken collectively in their enormous multitude, they give another presumption, a high degree of certainty. I refer to that moral certainty, which, while falling short of mathematical demonstration, establishes a conviction as strong as those upon which we act in the most important concerns of life.”
“ Our great Bishop Butler comes to the conclusion that ‘ probability is the guide of life,’ ” interposed the rector in support, “ and there is no maxim more profoundly true.”
“ And yet I don’t think you could put the bishop’s discovery into a hymn with much effect,” said Miss Kate, slyly.
“ There are parts of the service that the rubric permits either to be sung or said,” replied Greyson. “ I grant that the bishop’s sentiment could not come from the choir with much effect; it should always be said.”
“ Certainly,” acquiesced Miss Dudley; “ it is one of those clerical admissions that are perhaps as well said on the sidewalk, just outside the church door.”
” The truth is good enough to be said anywhere!” exclaimed the Professor, with suppressed feeling, “ Let us not forget that reticence, beginning in a wise prudence, easily passes into a craven timidity.”
Clara saw that Hargrave’s hand was nervously crumpling the manuscript before him. She seemed to share his consciousness of the painful throb of resolution which precedes a disclosure that is to affect our destiny.
“ I ought now to say,” he continued, “ that I know there is a force in nature which, acting under conditions imperfectly understood, is able to manifest itself in exactly such results as Mr. Pryndale has given us. I say a force in nature, for surely I repudiate the misleading dualism of nature and the supernatural. The domain of nature is large enough to cover all that exists,— outside the mighty Source whence all proceeds.”
There was nothing very startling in this avowal, and yet Mrs. Souford, whose eyes were fixed upon Hargrave, shuddered, as its possible consequences flashed upon her. What would become of a reputation, now so well rounded and entire, were this confession known to the world ? How great would be the scandal could it be said that the incumbent of the coveted Peckster Professorship held opinions which might lead him to examine seriously such delusions as spiritism, necromancy, prevision, and other uncanny survivals of our primitive savagery! Clara had heard that President Cooley took a summary method of dealing with his professors, when any little rift in their repute among the wealthy benefactors of the college made them incapable of continuing to advance its interests. A letter suggesting a resignation would be received by any subordinate who entertained the horrible heresy that uncultured spiritual mediums, of shady character and surroundings, might have stumbled upon truths which Mr. Herbert Spencer and his distinguished American expounders had not yet reached. To be sure, Clara herself entertained some highly unscientific doubts respecting the dogmatic assertions of the great physicists of her epoch. But then a woman was never expected to be logical; her company was sought, not for correct opinions, but for feminine warmth and cheerfulness. With a man the case was quite otherwise. He must have the intellectual sympathy of his fraternity ; his honor in the larger world depends upon the recognition of his claims by the guild or clan in which circumstances have placed him. So thinking, Mrs. Souford determined to shake her head imperiously, and to change the subject; it might not be too late to prevent some of the evil she apprehended. But it was too late ; there seemed to be a mysterious clog upon her freedom. Pryndale, who was naturally interested in the Professor’s views, was pressing him to impart them more fully. “ If you only would give us an experience of your own,” he suggested, “ it would impress the company as nothing I have told can possibly do. Society has a great respect for the opinions of you scientific gentlemen about these matters.”
“ Provided we do not give them upon the wrong side, as Wallace, Crookes, Zöllner, Hare, Varley, and other castaways have done,” said Hargrave. “ Perhaps I could shock your conceptions of what is possible as much as the conceptions of our ancestors were shocked by the notion of the antipodes. ‘ Just think of it,’ they said, — ‘ the idea of men living with their heads hanging downwards, and clinging to the earth like flies to a ceiling ! Away with such insane tales! Give us demonstrable facts that our learned judges can pass upon, — like the powers exerted through witchcraft, for instance.’ Yet I should not longer decline to share all that life has taught me : that fragment of my knowledge which the college pays me for proclaiming may not be the part of it most needed in this present time. I believe some of you know that I was principal of the Chipworth Academy, at North Bilberry, for ten years before my connection with the college. It is one of the oldest endowed schools in the State. Young men and young women, as well as boys and girls, were among my pupils; and no teacher ever had better opportunities for studying the problem of education, about which so much thin and shallow matter is written in these days.”
“ We know, then, in what quarter we may look for light upon a subject which so deeply concerns us,” said Clara, in a desperate attempt to switch the Professor’s talk upon some other track. “ You will combine and assimilate all that experience in a book that shall be really authoritative ; in the mean time, let us hear a few of its conclusions.”
Hargrave looked amused. “ Do you remember the story of the diplomatist ? ” he said. “ Shortly after his arrival in England, he inquired for a publisher, with a view to the immediate composition of a book upon Life in the British Isles. After he had lived a year in the country, he doubted whether he had quite mastered his subject; after a residence of ten years, he gave up in despair the plan of writing anything. My ten years of study in North Bilberry have brought me to a like modesty. Columbus made his perilous voyage only to discover an island before unknown. If my eyes have caught even the dim outline of such an island rising out of unfrequented seas, I am satisfied. The great continent that lies beyond it others must explore.
“ Every teacher has remarked the facility with which some of his pupils seize an idea, and this without appreciable connection either with habits of application or the general powers of the intellect. What I refer to is no parrotlike rendering of what has been learned by rote, but rather resembles a mental assimilation of principles and deductive reasoning from them. We sometimes encounter subtleties of observation and a reach of purely speculative thought which are only characteristic of a wellmatured mind. One of the perennial puzzles of educational science has been to account for the fact that boys whose bright replies impress the visitor to the recitation room are precisely not those who afterwards make an impression upon the world. Look for these astonishing youngsters twenty years after their schooldays are over, and you will be likely to find them filling small clerkships, or in some way dependent upon others for direction, while the dunces of the recitation room are railroad presidents, influential divines, or are holding similar positions of social leadership. Of course this is not universally true ; but it is so often true that students of education have thought it worth while to offer several elaborate explanations, none of which can be called satisfactory. For a long time I worked over this problem, as so many of my predecessors have done, but without coming any nearer to its solution. At last I thought I saw light. I found many indications — none of them amounting to proof — that my own brain-action might be set up in the heads of certain of my pupils without a whisper or a sign ; and, stranger still, that such communicated action seemed upon some occasions to be below consciousness, — that is to say, outside any thought or volition of which the presence could be recognized. I adopted the hypothesis that much of what passed for intelligence and brightness in my young people was a peculiar faculty of receiving an impression from without; and, furthermore, that the power of personal direction was lowered and absorbed by its existence.”
“ But you confess that this was only a guess,” objected Miss Dudley.
“At first, yes,” assented Hargrave. “ Guess is a shorter word than hypothesis, and expresses the fact quite as correctly. Physical science is nothing but the verification of guesses; and in exploring realms of cloud and shadow we must for a long time put up with these flickering lights. I made the guess, then, that some nervous thread might, as it were, be thrown from brain to brain, and bind them for a time into a community of life. Observation and experimental research at length satisfied me that my guess was right.”
“ And now you have only to bring the present company to the same conclusion,” said Miss Dudley, with an emphasis which seemed to touch the core of the whole matter.
“ It by no means follows that I can do so,” replied the Professor. “ I might relate certain occurrences which are unassailable by destructive criticism; but a conviction is a very complex product. We cannot impart it to others, nor, indeed, is it easy ourselves to recognize all the evidence which has gone to its formation. I could give you some startling facts, but these are only avenues to knowledge ; they are beset with many difficulties, and it requires weary personal plodding to discover whither they lead. To tell those facts to persons who have never gone through the intellectual labor necessary to accept and to use them is to cast — well, I did not mean to run upon the discourteous quotation from Scripture, so I will say that it is to be cast in the part of a mere showman or wonder-monger.”
“ Mr. Pryndale has been willing to tell his strange story, at my request.”said Clara, bracing herself to meet a crisis which she would no longer try to postpone. “ Professor Hargrave can scarcely refuse me the same favor.”
“ Certainly not, if this is indeed your wish,” rejoined the Professor. “I misread your face; I thought you would have me pass to my proper subject, — that upon which the Peckster Chair is an acknowledged authority, despite the eccentricities of any mortal who may be temporarily sitting in it. You shall have the full particulars of an occurrence which, for singularity, — though not for suggestive import, — is unparalleled in my own experience.
“I had been connected with the Academy for six years, when, one dull December evening, a letter, bearing a large official seal, called me to a service that I would gladly have avoided. The next sunrise would usher in the 15th, the great festival of the year in the town of North Bilberry. This was Founder’s Day, — the day upon which, far back in the last century, Reuben Chipworth had given himself the trouble to be born. I do not mean to say that it was celebrated with the wild Philistine energy thrown into the 4th of July ; but it was an occasion more precious to the heads and representatives of the community. Being an academic jubilee, the stately and reverend element came conspicuously to the front, and directed the rejoicings of the less instructed multitude. Now the particular year of which I am speaking happened to be a third year; and it had been solemnly established that upon every third year, in addition to the exhibition of the school and the dinner given by the trustees to themselves and to sundry invited dignitaries, a commemorative oration should he delivered in the Town Hall. It had generally happened that some gentleman upon the Board of Management was glad of the opportunity to show forth the virtues of Reuben Chipworth, as well as his own eloquence in narrating them. But my unlucky letter had come to say that the trustee who intended to give the morrow’s address had been summoned to Canada upon pressing business, and that the principal of the school was requested to take his place. It was mentioned that, as the time was short, deficiencies in the body of the address would be overlooked, provided the winding-up were embellished with ornaments worthy of the occasion. For it was desirable to hit the taste of a North Bilberry audience, which liked its rhetoric somewhat more exuberant and florid than the severe canons of metropolitan critics might admit. An appointee, dependent for his place upon the favor of a close corporation of appointors, cannot be selected as a type of that freedom and independence which are held to go with American citizenship. In my position, the request was weighted with the authority of a command, and with a heavy heart I began to look up biographical particulars about the hero whose doings I must illustrate. I sat at my desk till late into the night, endeavoring to put into some order such materials as were at hand, as well as to think out comments to accompany them. At last I came to realize that I must give up all attempt at preparation ; it was impossible in the time at my disposal. One thing only could be done : I must trust to the occasion, and launch out boldly upon the tempestuous seas of extemporaneous oratory. Suddenly I recalled my correspondent’s suggestion about the peroration. Here was something to be considered. I decided to prepare and memorize a concluding paragraph ; yes, and to embellish it with all the ornaments a North Bilberry audience could require. It was not an agreeable thing to do, but I thought it the best thing under existing circumstances. Our founder was an excellent man, and in all sincerity I could express my appreciation of his worth. The inflated sentences I might put together would merely translate my real feelings into language acceptable to my auditors. No one sees more clearly than I do now that this excuse was sophistical. Suddenly thrust into a position of peculiar hardship, it was, perhaps, pardonable to stoop a little to get out of it. It is always better to stand erect, and to take all consequences. And now, if I am to give its full significance to what I have to tell, I should repeat the closing paragraph of my address as it was then prepared. The singular sequence fixed the words so firmly in my memory that I believe I can recall most of them even at this distance of time.”
“ Alternate elocution with philosophy, and you give us a perfect programme for a summer night’s entertainment,” quoth Miss Dudley approvingly. “ But pray do not leave out the original pause and emphasis. Let it be done in action, as you would do it before the duke. Come, a passionate speech ! as Hamlet says.”
Hargrave looked anxiously towards Mrs. Souford, knowing how easily illconsidered audacities of utterance might imperil relations between them. A woman worth winning is sensitive to the smallest defect in taste. But Clara, whether wisely or foolishly, had asked for the story; and he would goad himself into giving it fully and honestly, at whatever cost. The decision was made. The Professor rose from the arms of the Mayflower chair, and repeated, not without some oratorical glow in his manner, the following sentences: —
Reuben Chipworth, the man whose life we are commemorating to-day, has been a well-spring of benefits to this ancient town. His benign countenance glimmers upon us through the mists of years, and there needs no saint’s halo to crown the head that thought so wisely in our behalf. He held firmly to the Puritan ideas, which were even then fading from the minds of men. Nature, society, religion, have been subjected to merciless scrutinies undreamt of in his simple time. The great generalization of Darwin which points to our animal ancestry, modem speculations in sociology, exhaustive and yet startling Biblical criticism, — how these have flung into new moulds that aggregation of shifting units known among men as the town of North Bilberry ! But if our founder could not transcend the narrow limits of the community into which he was born, he would soften the path to knowledge for the community with greater opportunities which he knew must be its successor. By an heroic act of self-suppression he saved the money he was tempted to spend, and flung open for all the illimitable future the doors of the Academy. Brave Reuben Chipworth! We will not picture you as a slow-footed old man leaning upon a staff, as the artist has represented you upon his canvas. For us you are touched with the morning lustre of youth, as you offer a helping hand to generations which your eyes might not see. May eloquent divines, sagacious editors, independent statesmen, and matrons as noble as those of ancient Rome continue to issue from the portals you have opened ; and may the simple certificate, ‘ He was educated at the Chipworth Academy ’ (and be sure that no limitation of sex is intended by the use of the masculine pronoun), — I say, may our simple certificate of graduation prove a passport and a letter of credit, which shall carry its bearer triumphantly throughout the world ! ”
44 Well, we never know what our friends may be capable of doing ! ” exclaimed Miss Kate Dudley. “ Who would have thought that a man whose life has been devoted to furnishing the world with what it considers real knowledge could ever have soared to such a trance-medium rhapsody as that ? ”
“ You must have felt like a bishop reading the part of Richard III., at a Shakespeare Club,” remarked the rector. 44 Pray did your North Bilberry audience follow those winged words into the empyrean ? ”
44 It never heard them.” responded the Professor gravely. “ I wrote out some such matter as you have heard, put the manuscript in my pocket, and, whenever a spare moment was to be had, tried to fix it in my memory. It was written early in the morning, after an hour or two of disturbed sleep. I studied the words while shaving, and during those fifteen minutes after breakfast which I usually devoted to the newspaper. But all too soon arrived the train bringing the trustees; and then the bustle of the annual examination began. The school-room was filled with visitors, before whom my pupils were put through their paces. At the word of command from Trustee No. I., they proceeded to rack their brains for such showy fragments of knowledge as might astonish the expectant rows of parents and guardians, who were accommodated upon settees to the right of the platform. As the principal took no part in this proceeding, I mentally employed myself in testing the grip of my memory upon that winding-up paragraph. I was startled from this occupation by the voice of Trustee No. II., who had put a question to one of the brightest of my scholars, a pale-faced lassie of fifteen. 4 Well, Sarah Jones, and what can you say about our founder, in whose honor we have met today ?’ Now the answer to this question was not to be found in any textbook, and Sarah began to blush and hesitate, as one who had been taken at a disadvantage. 4 Come, come,’ said the questioner, 4 time is precious; we are all waiting to hear what you can say about him.’ This adjuration did not lessen the embarrassment of poor Sarah, who was ready to sink with confusion. 4 Why, how is this ? ’ said Trustee No. I., hurrying to the assistance of his fellowexaminer. 4 There ought not to be a baby in this town who cannot say something about its greatest benefactor.’ The girl’s scattered wits were not brought to order by this additional turn of the screw. I saw how unfair it was to put a young person, at the most self-conscious period of life, into such a position. I was about to come to her aid with a mild remonstrance, when I observed a singular change in her expression. Sarah suddenly straightened herself to what seemed to be more than her natural height; she heaved a tired sigh, which placed her at a certain remoteness from the company, and proceeded to answer her cruel questioner by repeating verbatim the elegant conclusion I had prepared for my evening address. And more than mere words were given; they came salient with precisely the stress and swell of delivery with which I had mentally fitted them.”
44 And what did the company think of it ?” asked Clara.
44I suppose they thought it was what in professional slang would be called ‘a marked card,’ ” replied Hargrave. 44 In other words, that the child had been crammed for the display, and that the trustee — possibly in collusion with the teachers — had drawn the marked card for the glory of the school and the astonishment of the company. Such proceedings are not absolutely unknown at academic exhibitions.”
44 Of course you explained the nature of the singular occurrence ? ” said the rector.
“ How could I explain what I did not understand myself ? ” inquired Hargrave. “ No ; I saw that I should make things worse by any statement whatever. Any isolated marvel coming into collision with our previous experience will be, and ought to be, interpreted in accordance with that experience. Either I taught the girl that speech, or in some way she obtained my manuscript and learned it without my knowledge. Say what I might, no third supposition could have been admitted as possible. The case was simply one for silence.”
“ There comes in the superiority of the masculine intellect,” said Clara. “ A woman would have compromised herself by telling the truth, or, in other words, by exhibiting herself as a specimen of abject credulity or hysterical hallucination.”
“ ‘ Toute vérité n’est pas bonne à dire,” quoted Hargrave. “ ‘ Mais toutes les vérités seraient bonnes à dire si on les disait ensemble.’ Joubert’s maxim may be easily abused, yet its essential soundness is indisputable. No one is bound to give facts which must cast an utterly distorted image upon the minds of his hearers. Psychical investigations were then unheard of among those posing as the representatives of sane opinion. I had a career to make, and a sister dependent upon my exertions. Why should I oppose my feeble resistance to the momentum of contemporary science ? I must confine my activity upon those reputable lines of investigation which have since terminated in the Peckster Professorship. Then, too, it is most difficult for a man to effect a deep change in his own system of thought, no matter what weight of evidence may require him to do so. Any explanation, be it never so strained, will be clutched, if only it will serve to float us awhile longer on the stream of current belief.”
“ But what in the world did you do about that noble peroration ? ” inquired Miss Dudley. “ ‘ That aggregation of shifting units known among men as the town of North Bilberry ’ should have enjoyed their rhetoric all the more after hearing its rehearsal by proxy in the morning.”
“ Perhaps so,” said the Professor, “ but their enjoyment would have been in inverse ratio to that of their orator. There was nothing to be done but to accept the situation, and omit the climax. I believe I stumbled through some sort of address, which was painfully below the performance of Sarah Jones in the morning. To go back to that young woman. I should tell you that she was thoroughly questioned by Trustee No. II. as to where she learned that prodigious lesson about Chipworth which she recited so gracefully. 4 I never learned it; it came to me,’ was her reply. And to this view of the case she persistently adhered, despite threats and cajolery. The trustees conferred together during the intermission, and summoned old Dr. Brewster from the settees to assist in their council. The girl seemed perfectly truthful, and the good doctor could not, or would not, assert that she was conscious of uttering a falsehood. 4 We must take a charitable view of this affair,’ said he. 4 The fact is, the settees were much pleased with her exhibition, and thought it very creditable to the Academy. Now do any of you gentlemen understand physiology ? ’ Not a trustee could say that he did. And so the doctor went on to explain that the agitation of nervous matter in the brain, which is popularly called memory, was sometimes unaccompanied by consciousness. And thus it seemed probable that they had listened to a fragment of the oration upon some former Founder’s Day, which Sarah had learned as a child, without any remembrance of having done so. As analogous cases were to be found in the books, it was decided to accept this explanation, and to probe the matter no further. You see that if I had produced the remarks from my pocket, with the ink scarcely dry upon the paper, only one supposition would have been admissible : the girl must have stolen them, and lied. This was impossible, of course ; but a theory which is consonant with an established way of thinking is not to be limited by mere possibilities.”
“ This doctrine of the appropriation of the results of thought without going through the labor of thinking is both unpleasant and dangerous,” said the Rev. Mr. Grey son. “ How are we to know whether a given mind is trained or merely impressionable ; whether a man is competent to use his faculties actively, or can merely permit their use by somebody else ? Is the non-concurrence of the obstinate juryman in a righteous verdict owing to an honest conviction, or has he been unconsciously psychologized by the lawyer who has the biggest fee in his pocket ? Above all, if you admit this disturbing element in our mental action, must it necessarily come from an embodied intelligence ? Given this wave of nervous influence, by which mind can work the machinery of a body foreign to it, and how can we deny the possible action of an unseen world which the Spiritualists assert ?”
Hargrave made no reply to these pertinent questions, but busied himself in selecting certain sheets from the manuscript before him.
“ The Peckster Professorship of Osteology,” said Miss Dudley, coming smartly to the rescue, “ authorizes me to say that, being above all things scientific, it consigns other worlds than this to the limbo of chimæras. It has high respect for the multiplication table, quite an enthusiasm for the dinner table, a good-natured tolerance for the tables of the law,— though, of course, Moses did not get them where he said he did, — but for the tables of the rappers and tippers it has nothing but a sneer, born of its superior wisdom.”
It was clearly necessary for Hargrave to say something, yet there was a tinge of painful indecision in his manner as he addressed Mr. Greyson.
“ When some future benefactor of the college founds a professorship of psychology, and ties up his bequest so that no one committed to the mechanical theory of man’s nature can be put into it, science may reduce to order what is now chaotic, and your inquiries may be answered. I have told ray story, as was requested, and have nothing more to say.”
“ Revenons à nos moutons, — of course I mean to the osseous parts of them, of which Professor Hargrave may profess to know something without periling his means of livelihood, or bringing his sanity into suspicion ! ” exclaimed Miss Dudley. “ He is making selections from among his papers, and it is not too late to hear anything he is willing to read to us.”
“A good suggestion,” assented Pryndale. “ The Professor looks as if he would be as glad to get upon his beaten road again as I was to reach the macadamized surface of Centre Street, after my jolting upon Fox Lane. We will not pursue these dreary paths into the woods, where mortals so easily lose their way.”
“ Yes, and sometimes encounter the Black Man,” added the rector. “ Our forefathers often met him in such shadowy localities.”
The decision had an exhilarating effect upon Hargrave, who proceeded to the vigorous reading of his essay.
Clara breathed more easily. It is well to return to ground to which we have an undoubted title. Here it was certain that the high mental qualities of her Professor were accessible to the observation of the common sort of people one meets in society.
III.
Hargrave’s reading was so curtailed as to finish at ten o’clock, the latest hour to which sitting up was possible at the seaside. Silas Pryndale took a hasty leave, discovering that it was quite time to sail the cat Magician to her permanent anchorage across the bay. The rector, though he had been much interested, confessed to sleepiness during the concluding paragraphs ; and one by one the little circle of listeners began to take their candles from the entry table.
Mrs. Souford was one of those oldfashioned housekeepers who make it the final duty of the day to descend to that lowest floor whence rise supplies for the higher departments of the establishment. She excused herself for not joining the chamberward tendency of her guests by declaring that the back-door must have been left unlocked. Her servants had grown very careless, and she felt a current of air from the kitchen. Would Professor Hargrave bear the lamp by which he had been reading, and illumine her way to that locality ?
And it turned out not only that the door required fastening, but that a certain creamy, bubbly composition, which the cook had prepared with a view to the morrow’s flapjacks, ought to be removed to the ice-chest, lest it should sour. This receptacle being made after the box pattern, it became necessary to lift out several fragments of the day’s dinner before a place could be found for the bowl of flapjack mixture. Clara would allow no awkward masculine hands within the sacred precincts of her refrigerator ; so the Professor’s business was merely to hold the lamp, and watch the pretty fingers as they lifted the blue pottery, and rearranged the vessels of yellow earthenware upon their proper slabs of slate.
This and other household offices occupied some time, and the parlor was deserted when they returned to it. The moon was rising over the sea, and the piazza offered the attractive solitude which — if the solitude is à deux — is so full of emotional opportunities. By daylight we skim the surface of our minds, chattering for the most part below our real abilities. In the night what lies deepest in our nature more easily asserts itself; the possibilities of the imagination grow into necessities; there comes a spiritual productiveness which may make self-renunciation seem a matter of course.
The lady and her guest passed through the parlor and out upon the piazza. The nominal excuse was to draw the Fayal chairs under the awning, lest it should rain before sunrise. To be sure, the sky was cloudless, but the pretense would do, nevertheless.
The path to the beach shone out full and clear in the silver light ; the undulating sand-heaps, the rocks jutting up in their naked grandeur, no longer required the relief of foliage which the prospect lacked during the glare of noon. The hard, every - day substance of the scene had left it; the familiar objects seemed to belong to an enchanted world of illusion and phantasmagoric change.
“ It is, doubtless, all as unreal as it is beautiful,” said the Professor, as if in responsive sympathy with an unspoken thought of his companion.
“ Where, then, shall we find reality ?” said Clara. “ Surely not in those dimly discerned forces among which we have wandered this evening ? ”
“ Were they thoroughly studied,” replied Hargrave, “ it might be that they would reveal our true position as denizens of a world of certainties. The reports of these bodily senses are not wholly worthy of confidence ; they stuff our minds with prepossessions which may prevent us from possessing our rightful inheritance. The progress of our self-satisfied century has contented itself with the discovery of the laws of visible matter ; but there is matter just over the line of visibility, fine, subtle, spiritualized,— fitted, perhaps, for the apprehension of other senses than those we habitually employ. Clara Souford, the time has come when there should be truth between us, be the cost what it will. I have reason to know that I have special aptitudes of temperament for pushing investigation beyond this dull, material plane. My life-studies have armed me with the methods of scientific research, and these should have given me a poise and sobriety of judgment sufficient to prevent that disturbance of equilibrium which has wrecked so many adventurers upon these mystic deeps. Why should I not do the work of which I am most capable, — the work that will lead to results useful above all others to this generation ? There must come a reaction against the mechanical psychology which is all that modern science can at present offer us. Carried to a logical result, it kills those ideals which once stimulated our race to its noblest effort. Hence the social ferment and agitation which are surely preparing for our existing society. I would carry that critical sagacity, that faculty of right interpretation and inference, developed upon lines of physical research, among facts of higher concern than those which occupy the attention of my brother scientists. But to do this I may be called upon to sacrifice the good opinion of my fellows, my reputation for common sense, — perhaps even for common sanity. The learned societies which welcome me to their deliberations — knowing that my name will give importance to their committees of nobodies—may come to credit me with the credulous simplicity of a fool, if not with the trickery of a knave. But what matters it ? Others who have benefited their age have given a higher price for the privilege. My sister has been happily married, and no longer needs my assistance; at last my inherited debts are paid. I am what the world would call a free man. Yet not so : I look into the unsearchable depths of your eyes ; I cannot tell whether they reflect Ernest Hargrave stripped of all his comfortable appendages, or only the occupant of that stately Chair established by the Peckster of the past, and controlled by the Pecksters of the present.”
A man’s emotion, suddenly breaking out like a pent-up force in nature, may well cause a woman to shrink with nervous dread. Evidently things were not going as Clara would have had them. She must be grateful for his plainness of speech, which disclosed a possible future before it was too late for her to avoid it. That was a part of his honest, manly character. She might now thrust him back, since his position among the honored leaders of scientific thought would soon be shaken to its foundation. How she had pleased herself with fancying that high position decorated with the wealth which it was in her power to bestow! She had imagined herself seated at the head of his table, with Tyndall and Huxley as guests, and upon either side all the great ones and the fair ones of the city who had been asked to meet them. She had been caught by certain glittering facets of a character with many other sides to it. As is always the case before marriage, — else how could marriage come about ? — she had confounded a drawing-room representation of Hargrave with the totality of the man. Could she love one who was content to live out in the cold with a hobby, to be ridiculed by the ignorant — and, still worse, by the learned — as a dealer in delusions, an expert in epilepsies and other whimsical vapors ? Suddenly there flashed upon her mind certain words of the Spencerian Saturday Lectureship, an interpreter scarcely less respected than the master evolutionist himself. She did not intend to utter the sentence aloud; and yet, after naming her authority, she found herself quoting its august testimony: —
“ We have not the faintest shadow of evidence wherewith to make it probable that mind can exist except in connection with a physical body.”
Some hasty comment upon these words of wisdom seemed to rise to Hargrave’s lips; but he restrained their utterance, and paused before he said in a quiet way, —
“ There are thousands of clear-minded men who would have the right to stigmatize the dictum you quote as a foolish dogmatism, born of ignorance or of insolence. If that right is not mine, it is because I have felt the force of the antecedent objection which prevents those trained in the school of modern science from receiving evidence which contradicts what they have proclaimed as its fundamental axioms. ‘ Not the faintest shadow of evidence ! ’ Is this mighty Lectureship unaware of the fact that there is evidence which has brought conviction to hundreds of hard-headed men, to whose intelligence and honesty we trust our lives and our dearest interests ? ‘ Not the faintest shadow of evidence ! ’ Is there not something unpardonable in such a saying, when we know that such a competent weigher of evidence as the distinguished naturalist, who independently thought out the hypothesis of natural selection, has been compelled to accept the fact that mind does exist with which no physical body is connected ? And this man is only one among the skilled observers who have been brought to a belief which has flatly contradicted their previous convictions. Evidence so abundant that it ceases to be cumulative has satisfied me that brain-action may be set up by a foreign intelligence. Is that active intelligence ever external to the human bodies our senses recognize ? My own investigations do not yet warrant the assertion that it is. I only know that there is a great weight of recorded testimony which tends to that conclusion.”
Clara thought she had better say something, and so she remarked that, even granting the probability of invisible intelligences, there seemed no reason why they should impinge upon a mode of existence which did not belong to them.
“And yet we find that the perpetual intrusion of organisms on one another’s mode of life is the law upon this planet,” said the Professor. “ Every species is pushing into new areas and striving to expand its sphere of being. If we consider the temporary changes of media which science recognizes, we shall find them little less wonderful than even a change from invisible to visible. Do you remember that Mr. Spencer him self, as an illustration of the possibility of the impossible, posits the case of a water-breathing animal with no efficient limbs, whose habit it should be to climb trees ? Such a fact in nature is as clearly impossible as that sentences can be written upon slates without human agency. Yet science has come to accept the fact that the Anabas scandens performs this feat with no appreciable difficulty. The sharp division between the animal and vegetable kingdoms has already faded to an indefinite and shadowy border-land : to the riper science of the future the boundary line between two worlds may seem equally uncertain and shifting. If the competent inquirer must still regard the existence of mind which is not the product of organization as simply an hypothesis, it is nevertheless an hypothesis which carefully verified phenomena have thrust upon us.”
“ But this agrees too nearly with the primitive hypothesis of ghosts,” said Mrs. Souford ; “ and has not Mr. Spencer asserted that any primitive hypothesis must be untrue ? ”
“ The schoolboys of the last century,” replied Hargrave, “ were taught to laugh at the hypothesis of the historian Livy that certain stones fell from the heavens. They were told that the great Sir Isaac Newton and his scientific associates knew the folly of such a primitive hypothesis as that. I am old enough to have known men within whose memory the fall of aerolites, long scorned by the representatives of science, was accepted as a fact. The scholarship of our fathers knew that the relations of Herodotus could not live in the clear atmosphere of their modern intelligence; but the time came when travelers from the East would insist upon reporting facts which established his accuracy, until now we know that whenever the Father of History speaks from his own observation we have no reason to question his truthfulness. ‘ Fears of the brave and follies of the wise !’ Who can forget Dr. Johnson’s sonorous couplet? Yet he misses the real sadness of his theme ; for these fears and follies are not confined to the last scene of life, where he places them. Think of Bacon denying the Copernican system ; of Leibnitz fearing to accept the law of gravitation, lest it should overthrow religion ; of Milton, the noblest apostle of tolerance, unable to tolerate Catholics! If you would have a humbler illustration, I can bring you a copy of the journal in which the brightest editor Boston ever had denounced a certain scheme as 1 wild, preposterous, and idiotic ; ’ and this madman’s proposition was the connection of his native city with Albany by means of a railroad.”
“ Such recollections may uphold a man,” said Clara; “ but to a woman her petty social world seems so immense that it is with no joy born of emancipation from its slavery, but only with a listless consenting to circumstances, that she forces herself to leave it.”
“ There are times,” said Hargrave, “ when a man’s world seems quite as limited, and yet quite as overpowering. How little we know of it while the greatest problem it presents still awaits solution ! But remember that the limitations of our exact knowledge do not agree with the limitations of our physical organs. Were it so, we should know nothing of the world of microscopic organisms which science has opened to us. We should not know that there are musical notes which, because they represent more than forty thousand vibrations to the second, can never reach the ear, or that there are light waves that will not operate upon the eye. Should there be states in which the retinal sensibility to ethereal tremors were increased, why should there not reach us what Tennyson calls 1 a finer light in light ’ ? Much of the human brain is never used ; untaught save in one direction, it soon becomes rigid and metallic; the paths of easiest conduction to our volitional centres await discovery. The new epoch calls for its pioneers! They must accept obloquy from the age that is going out, for their work is to supply the cravings of the better age which advances upon us. Will you not be at my side while, standing upon the basis of scientific demonstration, I shall deliver the message with which I may be charged ? ”
And now Clara felt that her Professor had a motive power in that high purpose of his that must sweep her life before it. Yet she could not all at once withdraw a longing, lingering look from what might have been. It was hard that the Peckster Professorship should fall away from him before he had time to taste the comfort that ought to go with the honor he had won. She started, when she realized that it was of his comfort, not her own, that she thought.
Hargrave seemed to know what was passing in her mind. “ Do not think of what I leave,” he said ; “ remember where I go. I shall find my work in a department of knowledge at present in possession of feeble and ill-trained minds, but in which results may be obtained of the highest utility to our race. For to know what we are is far more important to our welfare than to find out what nature is. A toilsome, unwelcome labor lies before me. While there are forces of which the study may fill the greatest void in human knowledge, those forces are developed under apparently capricious conditions. Charlatanry and imposture have brought them into contempt with my associates. I think I do not underestimate the patience required to clear away this rubbish. The temptation will be to formulate a theory which must be supported beyond the measure of the evidence. How many have foundered upon that rock ! It may be that for success in this research the brain itself must develop new lines of organic structure ; and, alas ! the years are coming when it will no longer retain its plastic energy. If I see all these obstacles, what is the prize which urges me to grapple with them ? I answer, that as Darwin established the relation between humanity and the lower animal creation by an irresistible logic which has compelled the world’s assent, so it is reserved for some coming investigator to establish by methods equally exact our relationship with progressed beings worthy to inspire and to guide. Socrates, wisest of the ancients, could only affirm his δαιμων ; is it not possible for science to prove it ? Yes, I am ready to meet all the fraud and folly, all the strange vagaries of unbalanced minds, all the idle tales of the mere wonder-lover, which block the road to this great knowledge. The humiliating infatuation which has heaped these masses of fallacy in the way comes chiefly from bad observation. They will be swept aside by the methods of science, which, by keeping the head cool and the critical judgment active, enable us to apply common sense to uncommon phenomena. The path that opens before me is one that man and woman may tread together. It leads away from social popularity and the elegant decorums of fashion ; it leads towards an undiscovered order of facts and relations. Again I ask, Dare you walk by my side ? ”
There was manly dignity as well as feeling in the Professor’s voice. Clara seemed lifted to a plane where only large and disinterested action was possible. The full implication of many things Hargrave had said during their past intercourse rushed upon her. He had always spoken as a man with vital force in him should speak to the woman he loved. He had never disguised himself in the way that others who sought her favor deemed excusable. There are moments when the growth or decay of the feminine character depends upon the ability to assimilate the mental life of a superior man. Such a supreme moment had come to Clara Souford. She was sure the test could be met. Let the Peckster Professorship be left behind, if its narrow traditions were outgrown ! President Cooley might write his letter about unpleasant rumors and loss of usefulness to the college as soon as he liked. Rather tender the resignation before it was asked! To secondrate men, a first-rate man will appear to be third-rate. Was this an accepted aphorism ? She could not remember having heard it, and yet it was so true. So ran the course of things in this world, and perhaps the one thing needful was to find an escape from it. He should not venture alone upon ways which led down from the heights, when he stood so fairly among the learned of his time. If he must be misunderstood, it was necessary that one should understand him. Hand in hand they would press forward to this strangely fascinating field of super-mundane labor. A better destiny than imagination had forecast was offered her. It might be given to Hargrave to effect that amalgamation of spiritual and scientific ideas which would create a new social era. The lawless affluence of her past life must be put in circumscription and confine ; but she craved the restraint, and accepted it with awe and gratitude. Yet these thronging thoughts brought no words which did not seem below the level of what Clara would impart. Fortunately, it was not necessary that she should speak.
“ I too,” said Hargrave, as if in reply to what was unuttered, — “ I too vainly grasp at this or that expression to measure the rich contentment your silence imparts. Thank Heaven that thought is transmitted between us in such perfection as our halting human speech can never reach.”
How gently comes about the supreme understanding between man and woman ! How the sentient fibre imparts its newly awakened emotion to familiar objects ! Delicious was the advance of the incoming tide, which, after furrowing the beach with its little billows, began its musical ripple upon the stones. A charm was in the line of tremulous light which crossed the bay to the rocky island, and thence glittered off to the solitudes of the sea-horizon. They sat together in all the measureless felicity that their new relation gave.
Suddenly a vision came to Clara Souford, which she determined should take substance in the coming time.
“Would not that be splendid ?” she inquired, after confiding the project to her companion. “ Would not that be an advanced idea ?”
“ Too advanced to be realized just at present,” said the Professor, smiling. “ Cooley and his corporation would think it a woman’s whim, and would contrive some sort of strait-jacket to confine your generosity. Wait five years, at least, before you give your intention shape ; by that time we may have prepared the way for it.”
“ So be it, then,” said Clara, “ for you know what is best. In five years shall be founded the Hargrave Professorship for Independent Spiritual Research.”
J. P. Quincy.