Part 45 (2/2)
As the old man talked with the light of prophecy in his gaunt face, the young man's imagination took wing into the future, that mighty and alluring void, black as night, yet teeming with transcendent, potential unborn men and women, and his brain grew numb with the effort and his heart humble with the moments' prophetic glance. Ay, it was true! He in his turn would seem a child of the foolish past--a fond old man to the wise future. His complacence was lost. His faith in his authorities violently shaken. He recalled a line from Whitman: ”Beyond every victory there are other battles to be fought, other victories to be won.” And his eyes grew dim and his thought filled with reverence for those seers of the future, and with awe of the inscrutable and ever-beckoning and ever-retiring mystery of life.
His chief resumed: ”No, we pretend to larger knowledge of living organisms; but how will our text-books be regarded by the teachers of the future? Will they not read us and smile over us as curious mixtures of truth and error--valuable as showing the state of science in our day? Do you dream of solving the mystery of life? Of bridging the chasm between the crystal and the non-nucleated cell? I do not. As I sat alone last night unable to sleep, my eyes ran over the backs of the books on my shelves--they were all there, all the great ones, Laplace, Spinoza, Descartes, Goethe, Spencer, Hegel, Kant, Darwin, all the wonder-workers. How masterful each had been in his time. How complacent of praise; how critical of the past! But here now they all stood gathering dust, and I thought: so will the unborn philosophers of the next century fold me up and put me away beside the other mouldy ones--curious but no longer useful. My book will be but an empty sh.e.l.l on the reef of human history. Of such cruelty are the makers of scientific advance.”
Morton was profoundly moved by the note of pathos, of disillusionment in the old man's voice. ”Would you have me believe that these men we doubt to-day are forerunners of the future?”
”I feel so. The materialists have had their day. Some subtler expression of matter is about to be given to the world, not as Kant gave it, but through experiment, and to men like Myers and Sir William Crookes may come great honor some day.”
”You would not have us weaken in our method?”
Weissmann's manner changed. He resumed his most peremptory tone. ”By no means. We must not relax our vigilant scrutiny of fact one atom's weight, but we must keep our minds open to new messages--no matter how repulsive the source.”
Morton sat for a moment in deep study, then said: ”If I fail to stop the public announcement of Miss Lambert's powers, if Clarke's challenge is issued in spite of my protest, I shall ask the privilege of heading the committee in order to be present and s.h.i.+eld her. If it comes to this, will you join me and support me?”
”With pleasure.”
”But suppose the president and our board object?”
”What right have they to object? So long as I do not neglect my duties they will not dare to object.”
”They will be scandalized. Two of us going into an investigation of this sort will seem to involve the whole school, and they may insist on our keeping out of it, so long as we are connected with the inst.i.tution. If they ask for our resignation, the public will side with us, but all other inst.i.tutions, and probably the bulk of our colleagues, will go against us. I hesitate, therefore, to ask you to take up this work. It is not a matter of bread and b.u.t.ter to me. I can resign, and I am thinking this is my best plan. At the same time I hope, for Miss Lambert's sake, that the public test will not be made.”
Weissmann's s.h.a.ggy old head lifted like that of a musing lion. ”What is this opposition to me? I too can resign. What my colleagues say will not matter if I feel that I am advancing the cause of science.
Their flames will scorch, but I have a thick skin. Besides, I am old, with only a few more years to work, and if I felt I could better serve the world by going into this investigation than by remaining in the one in which I now am, I would gladly do it. I will not utterly starve.”
”Not while I am able to share a crust,” quickly exclaimed Serviss. ”If they ask for your resignation, give it and come with me. Together we will found an inst.i.tute for the study of the supra-normal. What do you say?”
Weissmann's eyes glowed with the quenchless zeal of the experimentalist. ”My dear boy, I would resign now for that purpose; but I hope it will not be necessary, for your sake.”
They shook hands like two adventurers setting out on their joint exploration of a distant and difficult country; but this moment of exaltation was followed in Serviss's mind by a sense of having in some way dedicated Viola to the advancement of science rather than to the security of the fireside and to the joys of wife and mother.
XVIII
LAMBERT INTERVENES
Upon his return to his desk Serviss was delighted to find a telegram from Lambert, stating the time of his arrival, and asking for a meeting. There was a note of decision, almost command, in the wording of the despatch, which denoted that the miner had taken his warning to heart and was prepared for prompt and authoritative action.
The time of the train being near, Serviss closed the lid of his desk and took a car for the station--immensely relieved of responsibility, yet worn and troubled by a mult.i.tude of confused and confusing speculations. All the way to the depot, and while he stood waiting outside the gates, he pondered on the surprising change in Weissmann's thought, and also upon the momentous covenant between them. More than ever before he felt the burden and the mystery of organic life. Around him flowed an endless stream of humankind, rus.h.i.+ng, spreading--each drop in the flood an immortal soul (according to the spiritist), attended by invisible guardians, watching, upholding, warning--”and the whole earth swarms with a billion other similar creatures with the same needs, the same destiny; for, after all, the difference between a Zulu and a Greek is not much greater than that between a purple-green humming-bird and a canary; and to think that this wave of man appearing to-day on the staid old earth, like the swarms of innumerable insects of June, is but one of a million other waves of a million other years. To consider, furthermore, that all those who have lived and died are still sentient! What a staggering, monstrous conception! Nor is this all. According to the monist conception there is no line at which we can say here the animal stops and the soul of man begins, so that ants and apes are claimants for immortality. If the individual man persists after death, why not his faithful collie?
No, this theory will not do. It is far less disturbing to think of all these hurrying bipeds as momentary nodes of force--minute eddies on the boundless stream of ether.”
The gates opened and another river of travellers, presumably from the great plains of the Middle West, poured forth, quite undistinguishable in general appearance from those which had preceded them; and, dropping his speculation, Morton peered among these faces, not quite sure that he would know Lambert if he saw him. As a matter of fact, he would have missed him had not the miner laid a hand upon his arm, saying, quaintly: ”Howdy, professor, howdy! What's the state of the precinct?”
He was quite conventional in all outward signs, save for his red-brown complexion and the excessive newness of his hand-bag. ”How are all the folks?” he went on to ask, with a keen glance.
”They were quite well when I saw them, but they need you. You're not an hour too soon.”
”Is it as bad as that?” he exclaimed, anxiously. ”What is it all about?”
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