There was one warning given by Mervin which aroused impatience amounting almost to anger in Malone’s mind. He had the hereditary Irish objection to coercion and it seemed to him to be appearing once more in an insidious and particularly objectionable form.
“You are going to one of Bolsover’s family seances,” said Mervin. “They are, of course, well known among our people, though few have been actually admitted, so you may consider yourself privileged. He has clearly taken a fancy to you.”
“He thought I wrote fairly about them.”
“Well, it wasn’t much of an article, but still among the dreary, purblind nonsense that assails us it did show some traces of dignity and balance and sense of proportion.”
Malone waved a deprecating cigarette.
“Bolsover’s seances and others like them are, or course, things of no moment to the real psychic. They are like the rude foundations of a building which certainly help to sustain the edifice, but are forgotten when once you come to inhabit it. It is the higher superstructure with which we have to do. You would think that the physical phenomena were the whole subject — those and a fringe of ghosts and haunted houses — if you were to believe the cheap papers who cater for the sensationalist. Of course, these physical phenomena have a use of their own. They rivet the attention of the inquirer and encourage him to go further. Personally, having seen them all, I would not go across the road to see them again. But I would go across many roads to get high messages from the beyond.”
“Yes, I quite appreciate the distinction, looking at it from your point of view. Personally, of course, I am equally agnostic as to the messages and the phenomena.”
“Quite so. St. Paul was a good psychic. He makes the point so neatly that even his ignorant translators were unable to disguise the real occult meanings as they have succeeded in doing in so many cases.”
“Can you quote it?”
“I know my New Testament pretty well, but I am not letter-perfect. It is the passage where he says that the gift of tongues, which was an obvious sensational thing, was for the uninstructed, but that prophecies, that is real spiritual messages, were for the elect. In other words that an experienced Spiritualist has no need of phenomena.”
“I’ll look that passage up.”
“You will find it in Corinthians, I think. By the way, there must have been a pretty high average of intelligence among those old congregations if Paul’s letters could have been read aloud to them and thoroughly comprehended.”
“That is generally admitted, is it not?”
“Well, it is a concrete example of it. However, I am down a side-track. What I wanted to say to you is that you must not take Bolsover’s little spirit circus too seriously. It is honest as far as it goes, but it goes a mighty short way. It’s a disease, this phenomena hunting. I know some of our people, women mostly, who buzz around seance rooms continually, seeing the same thing over and over, sometimes real, sometimes, I fear, imitation. What better are they for that as souls or as citizens or in any other way? No, when your foot is firm on the bottom rung don’t mark time on it, but step up to the next rung and get firm upon that.”
“I quite get your point. But I’m still on the solid ground.”
“Solid!” cried Mervin. “Good Lord! But the paper goes to press to-day and I must get down to the printer. With a circulation of ten thousand or so we do things modestly, you know — not like you plutocrats of the daily press. I am practically the staff.”
“You said you had a warning.”
“Yes, yes, I wanted to give you a warning.” Mervin’s thin, eager face became intensely serious. “If you have any ingrained religious or other prejudices which may cause you to turn down this subject after you have investigated it, then don’t investigate at all — for it is dangerous.”
“What do you mean — dangerous?”
“They don’t mind honest doubt, or honest criticism, but if they are badly treated they are dangerous.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“Ah, who are they? I wonder. Guides, controls, psychic entities of some kind. Who the agents of vengeance — or I should say justice — are, is really not essential. The point is that they exist.”
“Oh, rot, Mervin!”
“Don’t be too sure of that.”
“Pernicious rot! These are the old theological bogies of the Middle Ages coming up again. I am surprised at a sensible man like you!”
Mervin smiled — he had a whimsical smile — but his eyes, looking out from under bushy yellow brows, were as serious as ever.
“You may come to change your opinion. There are some queer sides to this question. As a friend I put you wise to this one.”
“Well, put me wise, then.”
Thus encouraged, Mervin went into the matter. He rapidly sketched the career and fate of a number of men who had, in his opinion, played an unfair game with these forces, become an obstruction, and suffered for it. He spoke of judges who had given prejudiced decisions against the cause, of journalists who had worked up stunt cases for sensational purposes and to throw discredit on the movement; of others who had interviewed mediums to make game of them, or who, having started to investigate, had drawn back alarmed, and given a negative decision when their inner soul knew that the facts were true. It was a formidable list, for it was long and precise, but Malone was not to be driven.
“If you pick your cases I have no doubt one could make such a list about any subject. Mr. Jones said that Raphael was a bungler, and Mr. Jones died of angina pectoris. Therefore it is dangerous to criticize Raphael. That seems to be the argument.”
“Well, if you like to think so.”
“Take the other side. Look at Morgate. He has always been an enemy, for he is a convinced materialist. But he prospers — look at his professorship.”
“Ah, an honest doubter. Certainly. Why not?”
“And Morgan who at one time exposed mediums.”
“If they were really false he did good service.”
“And Falconer who has written so bitterly about you?”
“Ah, Falconer! Do you know anything of Falconer’s private life? No. Well, take it from me he has got his dues. He doesn’t know why. Some day these gentlemen will begin to compare notes and then it may dawn on them. But they get it.”
He went on to tell a horrible story of one who had devoted his considerable talents to picking Spiritualism to pieces, though really convinced of its truth, because his worldly ends were served thereby. The end was ghastly — too ghastly for Malone.
“Oh, cut it out, Mervin!” he cried impatiently. “I’ll say what I think, no more and no less, and I won’t be cared by you or your spooks into altering my opinions.”
“I never asked you to.”
“You got a bit near it. What you have said strikes me as pure superstition. If what you say is true you should have the police after you.”
“Yes, if we did it. But it is out of our hands. However, Malone, for what it’s worth I have given you the warning and you can now go your way. Bye-bye! You can always ring me up at the office of Dawn.”
If you want to know if a man is of the true Irish blood there is one infallible test. Put him in front of a swing-door with “Push” or “Pull” printed upon it. The Englishman will obey like a sensible man. The Irishman, with less sense but more individuality, will at once and with vehemence do the opposite. So it was with Malone. Mervin’s well-meant warning simply raised a rebellious spirit within him, and when he called for Enid to take her to the Bolsover seance he had gone back several degrees in his dawning sympathy for the subject. Challenger bade them farewell with many gibes, his beard projecting forward and his eyes closed with upraised eyebrows, as was his wont when inclined to be facetious.
“You have your powder-bag, my dear Enid. If you see a particularly good specimen of ectoplasm in the course of the evening don’t forget your father. I have a microscope, chemical reagents and everything ready. Perhaps even a small poltergeist might come
your way. Any trifle would be welcome.”
His bull’s bellow of laughter followed them into the lift.
The provision merchant’s establishment of Mr. Bolsover proved to be a euphemism for an old-fashioned grocer’s shop in the most crowded part of Hammersmith. The neighbouring church was chiming out the three-quarters as the taxi drove up, and the shop was full of people. So Enid and Malone walked up and down outside. As they were so engaged another taxi drove up and a large, untidy-looking, ungainly bearded man in a suit of Harris tweed stepped out of it. He glanced at his watch and then began to pace the pavement. Presently he noted the others and came up to them.
“May I ask if you are the journalists who are going to attend the seance? . . . I thought so. Old Bolsover is terribly busy so you were wise to wait. Bless him, he is one of God’s saints in his way.”
“You are Mr. Algernon Mailey, I presume?”
“Yes. I am the gentleman whose credulity is giving rise to considerable anxiety upon the part of my friends, as one of the rags remarked the other day.” His laugh was so infectious that the others were-bound to laugh also. Certainly, with his athletic proportions, which had run a little to seed but were still notable, and with his virile voice and strong if homely face, he gave no impression of instability.
“We are all labelled with some stigma by our opponents” said he. “I wonder what yours will be.”
“We must not sail under false colours, Mr. Mailey,” said Enid. “We are not yet among the believers.”
“Quite right. You should take your time over it. It is infinitely the most important thing in the world, so it is worth taking time over. I took many years myself. Folk can be blamed for neglecting it, but no one can be blamed for being cautious in examination. Now I am all out for it, as you are aware, because I know it is true. There is such a difference between believing and knowing. I lecture a good deal. But I never want to convert my audience. I don’t believe in sudden conversions. They are shallow, superficial things. All I want is to put the thing before the people as clearly as I can. I just tell them the truth and why we know it is the truth. Then my job is done. They can take it or leave it. If they are wise they will explore along the paths that I indicate. If they are unwise they miss their chance. I don’t want to press them or to proselytize. It’s their affair, not mine.”
“Well, that seems a reasonable view,” said Enid, who was attracted by the frank manner of their new acquaintance. They were standing now in the full flood of light cast by Bolsover’s big plate-glass window. She had a good look at him, his broad forehead, his curious grey eyes, thoughtful and yet eager, his straw-coloured beard which indicated the outline of an aggressive chin. He was solidity personified — the very opposite of the fanatic whom she had imagined. His name had been a good deal in the papers lately as a protagonist in the long battle, and she remembered that it had never been mentioned without an answering snort from her father.
“I wonder,” she said to Malone, “what would happen if Mr. Mailey were locked up in a room with Dad!”
Malone laughed. “There used to be a schoolboy question as to what would occur if an irresistible force were to strike an invincible obstacle.”
“Oh, you are the daughter of Professor Challenger,” said Mailey with interest. “He is a big figure in the scientific world. What a grand world it would be if it would only realise its own limitations.”
“I don’t quite follow you.”
“It is this scientific world which is at the bottom of much of our materialism. It has helped us in comfort — if comfort is any use to us. Otherwise it has usually been a curse to us, for it has called itself progress and given us a false impression that we are making progress, whereas we are really drifting very steadily backwards.”
“Really, I can’t quite agree with you there, Mr. Mailey,” said Malone, who was getting restive under what seemed to him dogmatic assertion. “Look at wireless. Look at the S.O.S. call at sea. Is that not a benefit to mankind?”
“Oh, it works out all right sometimes. I value my electric reading-lamp, and that is a product of science. It gives us, as I said before, comfort and occasionally safety.”
“Why, then, do you depreciate it?”
“Because it obscures the vital thing — the object of life. We were not put into this planet in order that we should go fifty miles an hour in a motor-car, or cross the Atlantic in an airship, or send messages either with or without wires. These are the mere trimmings and fringes of life. But these men of science have so riveted our attention on these fringes that we forget the central object.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“It is not how fast you go that matters, it is the object of your journey. It is not how you send a message, it is what the value of the message may be. At every stage this so-called progress may be a curse, and yet as long as we use the word we confuse it with real progress and imagine that we are doing that for which God sent us into the world.”
“Which is?”
“To prepare ourselves for the next phase of life. There is mental preparation and spiritual preparation, and we are neglecting both. To be in an old age better men and women, more unselfish, more broadminded, more genial and tolerant, that is what we are for. It is a soul factory, and it is turning out a bad article. But Hullo!” he burst into his infectious laugh. “Here I am delivering my lecture in the street. Force of habit, you see. My son says that if you press the third button of my waistcoat I automatically deliver a lecture. But here is the good Bolsover to your rescue.”
The worthy grocer had caught sight of them through the window and came bustling out, untying his white apron.
“Good evening, all! I won’t have you waiting in the cold. Besides, there’s the clock, and time’s up. It does not do to keep them waiting. Punctuality for all that’s my motto and theirs. My lads will shut up the shop. This way, and mind the sugar-barrel.”
They threaded their way amid boxes of dried fruits and piles of cheese, finally passing between two great casks which hardly left room for the grocer’s portly form. A narrow door beyond opened into the residential part of the establishment. Ascending the narrow stair, Bolsover threw open a door and the visitors found themselves in a considerable room in which a number of people were seated round a large table. There was Mrs. Bolsover herself, large, cheerful and buxom like her husband. Three daughters were all of the same pleasing type. There was an elderly woman who seemed to be some relation, and two other colourless females who were described as neighbours and Spiritualists. The only other man was a little grey-headed fellow with a pleasant face and quick, twinkling eyes, who sat at a harmonium in the corner.
“Mr. Smiley, our musician,” said Bolsover. “I don’t know what we could do without Mr. Smiley. It’s vibrations, you know. Mr. Mailey could tell you about that. Ladies, you know Mr. Mailey, our very good friend. And these are the two inquirers — Miss Challenger and Mr. Malone.” The Bolsover family all smiled genially, but the nondescript elderly person rose to her feet and surveyed them with an austere face.
“You’re very welcome here, you two strangers,” she said. “But we would say to you that we want outward reverence. We respect the shining ones and we will not have them insulted.”
“I assure you we are very earnest and fairminded,” said Malone.
“We’ve had our lesson. We haven’t forgotten the Meadows’ affair, Mr. Bolsover.”
“No, no, Mrs. Seldon. That won’t happen again. We were rather upset over that,” Bolsover added, turning to the visitors. “That man came here as our guest, and when the lights were out he poked the other sitters with his finger so as to make them think it was a spirit hand. Then he wrote the whole thing up as an exposure in the public Press, when the only fraudulent thing present had been himself.”
Malone was honestly shocked. “I can assure you we are incapable of such conduct.”
The old lady sat down, but still regarded them with a suspicious eye. Bolsover bustled about and got things re
ady.
“You sit here” Mr. Mailey. Mr. Malone, will you sit between my wife and my daughter? Where would the young lady like to sit?”“
Enid was feeling rather nervous. “I think,” said she, “that I would like to sit next to Mr. Malone.”
Bolsover chuckled and winked at his wife.
“Quite so. Most natural, I am sure.” They all settled into their places. Mr. Bolsover had switched off the electric light, but a candle burned in the middle of the table. Malone thought what a picture it would have made for a Rembrandt. Deep shadows draped it in, but the yellow light flickered upon the circle of faces — the strong, homely, heavy features of Bolsover, the solid line of his family circle, the sharp, austere countenance of Mrs. Seldon, the earnest eyes and yellow beard of Mailey, the worn, tired faces of the two Spiritualist women, and finally the firm, noble profile of the girl who sat beside him. The whole world had suddenly narrowed down to that one little group, so intensely concentrated upon its own purpose.
On the table there was scattered a curious collection of objects, which had all the same appearance of tools which had long been used. There was a battered brass speaking-trumpet, very discoloured, a tambourine, a musical-box, and a number of smaller objects. “We never know what they may want,” said Bolsover, waving his hand over them. “ If Wee One calls for a thing and it isn’t there she lets us know all about it — oh, yes, something shocking!”
“She has a temper of her own has Wee One,” remarked Mrs. Bolsover.
“Why not, the pretty dear?” said the austere lady. “I expect she has enough to try it with researchers and what-not. I often wonder she troubles to come at all.”
Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) Page 231
