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Page 48
Whether poor Mr. Timothy Jabbers felt relieved by having unburdened
himself of his confession, I cannot state; but after he found that I
paid some attention to his messages, he gradually ceased to express
himself through turnips and cold keys; the rappings grew less violent
and frequent, and finally ceased altogether. Shortly after that Miss
Fellows went home.
Garth and I talked matters over the day after she left. He had brought
his "thinking" to a close, whittled his opinions to a point, and was
quite ready to stick them into their places for my benefit, and leave
them there, as George Garth left all his opinions, immovable as the
everlasting hills.
"How much had she to do with it now,--the Fellows?"
"Precisely what she said she had, no more. She was a medium, but not a
juggler."
"No trickery about the affair, then?"
"No trickery could have sent that turnip into my soup-plate, or that
candlestick walking into the air. There _is_ a great deal of trickery
mixed with such phenomena. The next case you come across may be a
regular cheat; but you will find it out,--you'll find it out. You've had
three months to find this out, and you couldn't. Whatever may be the
explanation of the mystery, the man who can witness what you and I have
witnessed, and pronounce it the trick of that incapable, washed-out
woman, is either a liar or a fool.
"You understand yourself and your wife, and you've tested your servants
faithfully; so we're somewhat narrowed in our conclusions."
"Well, then, what's the matter?"
I was, I confess, a little startled by the vehemence with which my
friend brought his clerical fist down upon the table, and exclaimed:--
"The Devil?"
"Dear me, Garth, don't swear; you in search of a pulpit just at this
time, too!"
"I tell you I never spoke more solemnly. I cannot, in the face of facts,
ascribe all these phenomena to human agency. Something that comes we
know not whence, and goes we know not whither, is at work there in the
dark. I am driven to grant to it an extra-human power. Yet when that
flabby Miss Fellows, in the trance state, undertakes to bring me
messages from my dead wife, and when she attempts to recall the most
tender memories of our life together, I cannot,"--he paused and turned
his face a little away,--"it would be pleasant to think I had a word
from Mary, but I cannot think she is there. I don't believe good spirits
concern themselves with this thing. It has in its fair developments too
much nonsense and too much positive sin; read a few numbers of the
'Banner,' or attend a convention or two, if you want to be convinced of
that. If they 're not good spirits they're bad ones, that's all. I've
dipped into the subject in various ways since I have been here;
consulted the mediums, talked with the prophets; I'm convinced that
there is no dependence to be placed on the thing. You never learn
anything from it that it is worth while to learn; above all, you never
can trust its _prophecies_. It is evil,--_evil_ at the root; and except
by physicians and scientific men it had better be let alone. They may
yet throw light on it; you and I cannot. I propose for myself to drop it
henceforth. In fact, it looks too much toward putting one's self on
terms of intimacy with the Prince of the Powers of the Air to please
me."
"You're rather positive, considering the difficulty of the subject," I
said.
The truth is, and it may be about time to own to it, that the three
months' siege against the mystery, which I had held so pertinaciously
that winter, had driven me to broad terms of capitulation. I assented to
most of my friend's conclusions, but where he stopped I began a race for
further light. I understood then, for the first time, the peculiar charm
which I had often seen work so fatally with dabblers in Spiritualism.
The fascination of the thing was upon me. I ransacked the papers for
advertisements of mediums. I went from city to city at their mysterious
calls. I held _s�ances_ in my parlor, and frightened my wife with
messages--some of them ghastly enough--from her dead relatives, I ran
the usual gauntlet of strange seers in strange places, who told me my
name, the names of all my friends, dead or alive, my secret aspirations
and peculiar characteristics, my past history and future prospects.
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