The Devils & Demons MEGAPACK ®: 25 Modern and Classic Tales

by Mack Reynolds

  “And may I ask you,” inquired the prince, with a touch of sarcasm in his voice, “what this theory of yours may be?”

  “I will give you,” said the duke, ignoring the sneer, and stretching himself back in his chair, as he sent a ring of smoke curling daintily toward the ceiling,—“I will give you with great pleasure the result of my reflection about the matter. You are both far more clever men than I am, and you can draw your own conclusions.

  “It is my belief that the things—the tangible things—we create, or rather cause to appear, when sitting with what is now called, for want of a better name, a materializing medium, come from within ourselves, and are portions of ourselves.

  “We produce them, in the first instance, generally with fingers linked; but afterwards, when our nervous organizations are more harmonized to them, they come to us of themselves, and even against our wills.

  “It is my belief that these are what we term our passions and our emotions, to whose existence the electric fluid and nervous ecstasy we cause to circulate and induce by sitting with hands linked merely gives a tangible and corporeal expression.

  “And after all, why should not this be so? Why, as a matter of fact, is there anything extraordinary or improbable in the suggestion? We all know that grief, joy, remorse, and many other passions and emotions, can kill us as surely and in many instances as quickly as an assassin’s dagger; and it is a well-known scientific fact, that there are certain nerves in the hand between certain fingers which have a distinct and direct rapport with the brain, and by which the mind can be controlled.

  “Since this is the case, why is it that under certain given conditions, such as sitting with hands linked—that thus sitting, and while the electric fluid, drawn out by the contact of our hands, forms a powerful medium between the inner and the outward being—why is it, I say, that these strong emotions I have mentioned should not take advantage of this strange river flowing to and fro between the conceptional and the visual to float before us for a time, and give us an opportunity of seeing and touching them who influence our every action in life?

  “Nay, I will go further, and insist that my theory has a right to at least be admitted to serious discussion and investigation, for the greatest men since the death of Christ have founded their whole theory of life upon the unseen, the purely conceptional. ‘Faith is the evidence of things unseen,’ as the abbé here knows well; and how terribly material have been the sacrifices made for this splendid conception! Why, then, should not a man like Loyola, for instance, have been able to really see with his earthly eyes, under certain given conditions of nervous excitement, what he was ready to sacrifice his very material body, nerves, blood, and sinews, to pay due homage to? The media through which these great conceptional realities may become tangible and corporealized should, to my mind, be thoroughly tested and examined through the lens of science before we can reject as absurd the possibility of their being so materialized.

  “Bref, it is my belief that I can shake hands with my emotions; that Regret or Remorse, for instance, can become tangible and pinch my ears, and slap me on the back, just as surely as they can and do keep people awake at night by agitating their nervous system, or in other words, by mentally pinching their ears.”

  “That is certainly a very fantastic idea, Octave,” said the abbé, smiling. “But if you have seen any of your emotions, what do they look like? I should like to see my hasty temper sitting beside me for a minute: I should take advantage of his being materialized to pay him back in his own coin, and give him a good thrashing.”

  “It is difficult,” said the duke gravely, “to recognize one’s emotions when brought actually face to face with them, as it were, although they have been living in us all our lives,—turning our hair grey or pulling it out,—making us stout or lean, upright or bent over. Moreover, our minor emotions, except when the medium is remarkably powerful, often outwardly express themselves to us in some unrecognizable form, sometimes as perfumes and flowers, often as mere luminous bodies. I have reason, however, to believe that I have recognized that most complex of emotions—my conscience.”

  “I should have thought he’d have been too sleepy to move out,” laughed the abbé.

  “That just shows how wrongly one man judges another,” said Octave lazily, without earnestness, but with a certain something in his tone that betokened he was dealing with realities. “You very probably think that I am not much troubled with a conscience, whereas the fact is that my conscience, with a strong dash of remorse in it, is a very keen one. Many years ago a certain episode changed the whole color and current of my life inwardly and to myself, although, of course, outwardly I was much the same. Now this episode of which I speak aroused what I am pleased to call my conscience”—bowing to the abbé—”to a most extraordinary degree; and since that catastrophe, which changed the whole tenor of my life, I have never taken part in a séance of spiritualism without seeing a female figure with a face like that of the heroine of my episode, dressed in a queer strange robe, woven of every possible color save white, who shudders and trembles as she passes before me, holding in her arms large sheets of glass, through which dim Bohemian -glass colors pass flickering every moment.”

  “What a very disagreeable thing to see this weather!” said the abbé; “everything shuddering and shaking.”

  “Have you ever discovered why she goes about like the wife of a glazier?” asked the prince,

  “For a long time I could not make out what they could be, these large panes of glass, with variegated colors passing through them, but now I think I know.”

  “Well?”

  “They are dreams waiting to be fitted in.”

  CHAPTER IV

  “Bravo!” cried the abbé; “that is really a good idea! If I only had the pen of Charles Nodier, what a charming feuilleton I could write about all this!”

  Pomerantseff laid his hand affectionately on the duke’s shoulder. “Mon cher ami,” he said, with a grave smile, “believe me, you are wholly at fault in your speculations. Girod here, of course (naturally enough, since he has never been willing enough to attend an ordinary séance of spiritualism), thinks we are both madmen, and that the whole thing is folly; but you and I, who have been to very many extraordinary séances, and have seen very many marvelous manifestations, know that it is not folly. Take the word of a man who has had greater experience in the matter than yourself, and who is himself a most powerful materializing medium, as you know: the theory you have just enunciated is utterly false.”

  “Prove that it is false.”

  “I cannot prove it, but wait and see.”

  “Nay; I have given it all up now. I will not meddle with spiritualism again. It unhinged my nerves and destroyed my peace of mind while I was investigating it.”

  The prince shrugged his shoulders.

  “Prince, leave him alone,” said the abbé, smiling; “his theory is a great deal more sensible than yours; and if I could bring myself to believe that at your stances any real phenomenon does take place (which of course no sane person can), I should be rather inclined to accept Octave’s interpretation of the matter.

  “Let us follow it out a little further, for the mere sake of talking nonsense. ‘Qui vit sans folie n’est pas si sage qu’il croit!’ Doubtless the dominant passion of a man would be the most likely to appear—that is to say, would be the most tangible?”

  “That,” replied the duke, “would depend upon circumstances. If the phenomenon should take place while the man is alone, doubtless it would be so; but if while at a séance, attended by many people, the apparition would be the product of the master-passions of all: and thus it is that many of the visions which appear at stances, when the sitters are not harmonized, are often most remarkable and unrecognizable anomalies.”

  “I thought I understood from Madame de Girardin that certain spirits always appeare
d.”

  “Pooh, pooh! Madame de Girardin never went deep enough into the matter. The most ravishing vision I ever saw was when I fancied I saw Love.”

  “What? Love! An emanation from yourself?”

  The duke sighed.

  “Ah! that is what proved to me that what I saw could not be Love. That sentiment has been too long dormant in me to awaken to a corporeal expression.”

  “What made you think it was Love?” asked Pomerantseff.

  “It was a white dove, with something, I cannot express in words, that was human about it. I felt ineffably happy while it was with me.”

  “Your theory is false, I tell you!” said the Russian; “what you saw probably was Love.”

  “Then it would have been God!” cried the abbé.

  “Why?”

  “I believe with Novalis that ‘Love is the highest reality,’” replied Girod; and then, breaking forth into a laugh, he sang, pirouetting on his heel—

  “La prospérité s’en vole,

  Le pouvoir tombe et s’enfuit;

  Un peu d’amour qui console

  Vaut mieux et fait moins de bruit.”

  “Don’t quote Hugo to me about love, abbé, I beg of you, for he knew nothing about it, any more than he understood a word of English, although he coolly wrote a whole volume of criticism on Shakespeare.”[1]

  “Where is the soul when the body is asleep?” asked the Muscovy prince.

  “No, duke!” cried the abbé, laughing, and not heeding Pomerantseff’s pregnant question; “what you saw was not Love, but it might all the same have been an emanation from yourself—a master-passion. I daresay it was the corporeal embodiment of your love of pigeon-shooting.”

  “Perhaps,” laughed the duke.

  “I tell you what, mon ami,” said Pomerantseff, rising, as he saw the abbé making preparations to depart, “I am glad that my appetite, corporealized and separated from my discretion, is not in your wine-cellar—your Johannisberg would suffer!”

  “Prince, you must drive me home,” said the abbé. “I cannot get into a draughty cab at this hour of the night.”

  “Très volontiers. Good-night, duke. Remember to-morrow morning at half-past nine at the Gare de Lyon,” said the prince.

  “Remember to-morrow night at half-past ten at Madame de Langeac’s!” bawled the abbé; and so they left.

  The priest hurried down the cold staircase and into the prince’s brougham.

  “What a pity,” exclaimed the abbé, when they were once fairly started, “that a man with the brains of De Frontignan should give himself up to such wild ideas and dreams!”

  “You are very complimentary,” rejoined the other, smiling gravely; “for you know that, so far as believing in spirits is concerned, I am as bad, if not worse, than he is.”

  “Ah, but you are jesting.”

  “On my honour as a gentleman, I am not jesting. See here,”—as he spoke Pomerantseff seized the abbé’s hand,—”you heard me tell the duke just now that I believed he had seen the spirit of Love. Well, the sermon you preached the day before yesterday, which all Paris is talking about, and in which you endeavored to prove the personality of the devil to be a fact, was more true than perhaps you believed when you preached it. Why should not Frontignan have seen the spirit of Love, when I know and have seen the devil?”

  “Mon ami, you are insane!” cried Girod. “Why, the devil does not exist!”

  “I tell you I have seen him—the god of all evil, the prince of desolation!” cried the other, in an excited voice; “and what is more, I will show him to you!”

  “Show the devil to me!” exclaimed the abbé, half terrified, half amused. “Why, you are out of your mind!”

  The prince laid his other hand upon the arm of the abbé, who could feel he was trembling with excitement.

  “You know my address,” he said, in a quick, passionate voice. “When you feel—as I tell you you will surely feel—desirous of investigating this further, send for me, and I promise, on my honour as a gentleman, to show you the devil, so that you cannot doubt. I will do this only on one condition.”

  The abbé felt almost faint, for apart from the wildness of the words thus abruptly and unexpectedly addressed to him, the hand of the prince, which lay upon his own, as if to keep him still, seemed to be pouring fire and madness into him.

  He tried to withdraw it, but the other grasped the fingers tight.

  “On one condition,” repeated Pomerantseff, in a lower tone.

  “What condition?” murmured the poor abbé.

  “That you trust yourself entirely to me until we reach the place of meeting.”

  “Prince, let go my hand! You arc hurting me! I will promise to do as you say when I want to go to your infernal meeting, which will be never.”

  He wrenched his hand away, pulled down the carriage -window, and let the cold night air in.

  “Pomerantseff, you are a madman: you are really dangerous. Why the devil did you grasp my hand in that way?—my arm is numb.”

  The prince laughed.

  “It is only electricity. I was determined, since you doubted the existence of the devil, to make you promise to come and sec him.”

  “I never promised!” exclaimed the abbé. “I only promised to trust myself to you if the horrible desire should ever seize me to investigate your mad words further. But you need not be afraid of that. God forbid I should indulge in such folly!”

  The prince smiled.

  “God has nothing to do with this,” he remarked simply. “You will come.”

  The carriage had turned up the street in which the abbé lived, and they were within but a few doors of his house.

  “My dear prince,” said Girod earnestly, “let me say a few words to you at parting. You know that I am not a bigot, so that your words—which many might think blasphemous—I care nothing about; but remember we are in the Paris of the nineteenth century, not in the Paris of Cazotte, and that we are eminently practical nowadays. Had you asked me to go with you to see some curious atrocity, no matter how horrible, I might, were it interesting, have accepted; but when you invite me to go with you to see the devil, you really must excuse me: it is too absurd.”

  “Very well,” replied Prince Pomerantseff, “of course I know you will come; but think the matter over well. Remember, I promise to show the devil to you so that you can never doubt of his personality again. This is not one of the wonders of electro-biology, but simply a fact: the devil exists, and you shall see him. Good-night.”

  CHAPTER V

  Girod, as he turned into his porte cochère and made his way upstairs, was more struck than perhaps he confessed even to himself, by the quiet tone of certainty and assurance in which the prince uttered these words; and on reaching his apartment he sat down by the blazing fire, lighted a cigarette, and began calmly considering in all its bearings what he could hardly bring himself to believe to be other than a most remarkable and extraordinary case of mania and mental derangement.

  In the first place, was the prince deceived himself, or merely endeavoring to deceive others? The latter theory he at once rejected. Not only the character and breeding of the man, but his nervous earnestness about this matter, rendered such a supposition impossible.

  Then he himself was deceived: and yet, how improbable! Girod could remember nothing in what he knew or had heard of the prince that could lead him to suppose his brain was of the kind charlatans and pseudo-magicians can successfully bewitch.

  On the contrary, although native of a country in which the grossest superstitions are rife, he himself had led such an active healthy life, partly in Russia, partly in France, and partly in England, that his brain could hardly be suspected of derangement; for an intimate and practical acquaintance with most of the fences in “the Shires,” a
nd all the leading statesmen of Europe, can hardly be considered compatible with a morbid disposition and superstitious nature.

  No; the abbé was forced to confess to himself on reflection that the man who deceived Pomerantseff must have been of no ordinary ability. That he had been deceived was of course beyond all question, but it was certainly most marvelous. In practical matters, the abbé was even forced to confess to himself he would unhesitatingly take the prince’s advice sooner than trust to his own private judgment; and yet here was this model of keen, healthy wisdom gravely inviting him to meet the devil face to face, and not only this, but assuring him, moreover, that it should be no unintelligible freak of electro-biology, but as a simple fact.

  Girod smoked thirty cigarettes without coming to any satisfactory solution of the enigma.

  What if, after all, he, the Abbé Girod, for once should abandon the line of conduct he had laid down for himself, and to satisfy his curiosity, and perhaps with the chance of restoring to its proper equilibrium a most valuable and comprehensive mind, overlook his determination never to endanger his peace of mind by meddling with the affairs of spiritualists?

  He could picture to himself the whole thing. They would doubtless be in a darkened room; an apparition clothed in red, and adorned with the traditional horns, would duly make its appearance, and there would of course very likely be no apparent evidence of fraud. That the farce would be cleverly played the abbé did not doubt for a moment. Even supposing some portion of the absurd theory enunciated by Frontignan to be true, and some strange thing, begotten of electric fluid and overwrought imagination, were to make its appearance, that could hardly be considered by a sane man as being equivalent to an interview with the devil.