The Strand Magazine/The Land of the Mist/Chapter 4

IV.

IN WHICH MR. BOLSOVER GIVES AN INVITATION.

THE article by the Joint Commissioners (such was their glorious title) aroused interest and contention. It had been accompanied by a depreciating leaderette from the sub-editor, which was meant to calm the susceptibilities of his orthodox readers, as who should say: "These things have to be noticed and seem to be true, but, of course, you and I recognize who pestilential it all is." Malone found himself at once plunged into a huge correspondence for and against, which in itself was enough to show how vitally the question was in the minds of men. All the previous articles had only elicited a growl here or there from a stern stickler for conventional orthodoxy, but now his post-bag was full. Most of the letters were ridiculing the idea that psychic forces existed, and many were from writers who, whatever they might know of psychic forces, had obviously not yet learned to spell. The Spiritualists were in many cases not more pleased than the others, for Malone had—even while his account was true—exercised a journalist's privilege of laying an accent on the more humorous sides of it.

One morning in the succeeding week Mr. Malone was aware of a large presence in the small room wherein he did his work at the office. A page-boy who preceded the stout visitor had laid a card on the corner of the table, which bore the legend: "James Bolsover, Provision Merchant, High Street, Hammersmith." It was none other than the genial President of last Sunday's congregation. He wagged a paper accusingly at Malone, but his good-humoured face was wreathed in smiles.

"Well, well," said he. "I told you that the funny side would get you."

"Don't you think it a fair account?"

"Well, yes, Mr. Malone, I think you and the young woman have done your best for us. But, of course, you know nothing, and it all seems queer to you. Come to think of it, it would be a deal queerer if all the clever men who leave this earth could not among them find some way of getting a word back to us."

"But it's such a stupid word sometimes."

"Well, there are a lot of stupid people leave the world. They don't change. And then, you know, one never knows what sort of message is needed. We had a clergyman in to see Mrs. Debbs yesterday. He was broken-hearted because he had lost his daughter. Mrs. Debbs got several messages through that she was happy and that only his grief hurt her. 'That's no use,' said he. 'Anyone could say that. That's not my girl.' And then suddenly she said: But I wish to goodness you would not wear a Roman collar with a coloured shirt.' That sounded a trivial message, but the man began to cry. 'That's her,' he sobbed. 'She was always chipping me about my collars.' It's the little things that count in this life—just the homely, intimate things, Mr. Malone."

Malone shook his head.

"Anyone would remark on a coloured shirt and a clerical collar."

Mr. Bolsover laughed. "You're a hard proposition. So was I once, so I can't blame you. But I called here with a purpose. I expect you are a busy many and I know that I am, so I'll get down to the brass tacks. First, I wanted to say that all our people that have any sense are pleased with the article. Mr. Algernon Mailey wrote me that it would do good, and if he is pleased, we are all pleased."

"Mailey, the barrister?"

"Mailey, the religious reformer. That's how he will be known."

"Well, what else?"

"Only that we would help you if you and the young lady wanted to go further in the matter. NOt for publicity, mind you, but just for your own good—though we don't shrink from publicity, either. I have physical phenomena séances at my own home without a professional medium, and if you would like——"

"There's nothing I would like so much."

"Then you shall come—both of you. I don't have many outsiders. I wouldn't have one of those psychic research people inside my doors. Why should I go out of my way to be insulted by all their suspicions and their traps? They seem to think that folk have no feelings. But you have some ordinary common sense. That's all we ask."

"But I don't believe. Would that not stand in the way?"

"Not in the least. So long as you are fair-minded and don't disturb the conditions, all is well. Spirits out of the body don't like disagreeable people any more than spirits in the body do. Be gentle and civil, same as you would to any other company."

"Well, I can promise that."

"They are funny sometimes," said Mr. Bolsover, in a reminiscent vein. "It is as well to keep on the right side of them. They are not allowed to hurt humans, but we all do things we're not allowed to do, and they are very human themselves. You remember how The Times correspondent got his head cut open with the tambourine in one of the Davenport brother séances? Very wrong, of course, but it happened. NO friend ever got his head cut open. There was another case down Stepney way. A moneylender went to a séance. Some victim that he had driven to suicide got into the medium. He got the moneylender by the throat and it was a close thing for his life. But I'm off, Mr. Malone. We sit once a week, and have done for four years without a break. Eight o'clock Thursdays. Give us a day's notice and I'll get Mr. Mailey to meet you. He can answer questions better than I. Next Thursday! Very good." And Mr. Bolsover lurched out of the room.

Both Malone and Enid Challenger had, perhaps, been more shaken by their short experience than they had admitted, but both were sensible people who agreed that every possible natural cause should be exhausted—and very thoroughly exhausted—before the bounds of what is possible should be enlarged. Both of them had the utmost respect for the ponderous intellect of Challenger and were affected by his strong views, though Malone was compelled to admit in the frequent arguments in which he was plunged that the opinion of a clever man who has had no experience is really of less value than that of the man in the street who has actually been there.

These arguments, as often as not, were with Marvin, editor of the psychic paper Dawn, which dealt with every phase of the occult, from the lore of the Rosicrucians to the strange religions of the students of the Great Pyramid, or of those who uphold the Jewish origin of our blond Anglo-Saxons. Marvin was a small, eager man with a brain of a high order, which might have carried him to the most lucrative heights of his profession had he not determined to sacrifice worldly prospects in order to help what seemed to him to be a great truth. As Malone was eager for knowledge and Marvin was equally keen to impart it, the waiters at the Literary Club found it no easy matter to get them away from the corner-table in the window at which they were wont to lunch. Looking down at the long grey curve of the Embankment and the noble river with its vista of the bridges, the pair would linger over their coffee, smoking cigarettes and discussing various sides of this most gigantic and absorbing subject, which seemed already to have disclosed new horizons to the mind of Malone.

There was one warning given by Marvin 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 séances," said Marvin. "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 séances and others like them are, of course, thing 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 which 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 farther. 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 meaning, 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 séance rooms continually, seeing the same thing over and over, sometimes real, sometimes, I fear, imitation. What the better are they for that as souls or as citizens or 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 Marvin. "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 thing 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." Marvin'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, Marvin!"

"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!"

Marvin 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 Marvin 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, became 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, Marvin!" he cried, impatiently. "I'll say what I think, no more and no less, and I won't be scared 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 on 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. Marvin's well-meant warning simply raised a rebellious spirit within him, and when he called for Enid to take her to the Bolsover séance 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.