The Undiscovered Country. William Dean Howells
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grossest outrage and contumely from a man whom—whom— But, Egeria," he broke off, "tell me how you knew I was troubled. Did you hear angry talking?"
"No, I didn't hear anything. Who was the man, father?"
"Did you notice anything in my manner?"
"No, I saw nothing unusual."
"Then how did you know? Try to think, Egeria," said her father eagerly. " Try to trace the processes of your intuition. This may be a very important clue, leading to the most significant results. How could you suspect, having heard nothing, and in this darkened room having seen nothing, strange in my manner, — how could you divine that something had occurred to trouble me? How did you know it?"
"Oh, I suppose I knew it because I love you so, father. There was nothing strange in that. Oh, father, you promised me that you wouldn't speak of those things again, just yet. They wear my life out." He had drawn his chair, in his excitement, close to her couch, and sat leaning intently over her. She put her arm round his neck, and gently pulled his face down on her pillow for a moment. "Poor father! What was it vexed you?"
Boynton freed himself, instantly reverting with his first vehemence to the outrage he had suffered. "It was that young man,— that Ford, who was here the other night.
He has gone, after heaping every insult upon me,—after telling me to my face that it was he who seized your hand in the dark seance, and produced by a trick the effect of the luminous spirit hand which turned on the gas. He dared to call me an impostor, to taunt me with forcing you to take part in my deceptions,—and this after the fullest and freest and frankest statement from me of the principle upon which I proceed in these experiments. And he ended by threatening me — yes, by threatening me with public exposure if I gave another stance in this city. The insolent scoundrel! If I had been a younger man, I should have replied in the only fitting manner. As it was, I treated his threats with contempt. I answered him taunt for taunt, and I defied him to do his worst. I a quack, — the shameless swindler! To take part in a mystery whose conditions bound him to good faith, and to defeat all its results by his miserable trickery!" Boynton started up and crossed the room. Suddenly he broke out, " Egeria, I don't believe him! I don't believe it was he who hurt you! I don't believe that he produced that effect of a luminous hand! I believe that in both cases supernatural agencies were at work; they must have been; and a man capable of wishing to defeat our experiments would be quite capable of claiming to have done so. He is a heartless liar, and so I will tell him in any public place. He forbid me to give another seance in Boston! He forced me to quit this city in defeat and ignominy! I would perish first!"
" Oh, I wish we could go away! Oh, I wish we could go home t" moaned the girl, when the doctor's furious tirade had ended.
"Egeria!"
"Yes, father," said the girl, desperately; " I hate this wandering life; I'm afraid of these strange people, with their talk and their tricks and their dupes, and your part with them."
"Egeria! This to your father? Do you join that scoundrel in his insult to me? Do you wish to add a crueler sting to the pain I have suffered,—you who know how unselfish my motives are? Do you deny the power—the strange power—which you have yourself repeatedly exercised, and which you have not been able to analyze!"
"No, no, father," said the girl fondly, rising from where she lay, and going quickly to the chair into which her father had sunk, "I don't deny it, and I don't doubt you.
How could I doubt you?" She sat down upon his knee, and drew his head against her breast. " But let's go away! Let us go back to the country, and think it all over again, and try to see more clearly what it is, and—and—pray about it!" She had dropped to her knees upon the floor, and held his hands beseechingly between her own. "Why shouldn't we go home?"
"Home! home!" repeated her father.
"We have no home, Egeria! We might go back to that hole where I have stifled all my life; but we should starve there. My practice had dwindled to nothing before we left; you know that. Their miserable bigotry could not tolerate my opinions. No, Egeria, we must make the world our home hereafter. We must be content to associate our names with the establishment of—of a supreme principle, and find our consolation where all the benefactors of mankind have found it,—in the grave." Boynton paused, as if he had too deeply wrought upon his own sensibilities; but he resumed with fresh animation: "But why look upon the dark side of things, Egeria? Surely you are better with me here than in that old house, where they would have taught you to distrust and despise me? You cannot regret having decided in my favor between your grandfather and me? If you do "—
"Oh no, father! Never! You are all the world to me; I know how good you are, and I shall never doubt your truth, whatever happens. But go—let us go away from here —from this town, where we've had nothing but trouble, where I'm sure there's some great trouble coming to us yet."
"Do you think so, Egeria?" asked her father with interest. "What makes you think so? What is the character, the purport of your prescience?"
"It's no prescience! It's nothing. It's only fear. Everything goes from me."
"That is very curious!" mused Boynton. "Could it be something in the local electric conditions?"
"Oh, father, father!" moaned the girl in despair.
"Well, well, my child! What is it then?"
"You have quarreled with this—this Mr. Ford?"
"Yes, Egeria; I told you."
"And he has threatened you, if you stayed —threatened to do something—I don't know —against us?"
"I suppose he means to vilify me in the public prints."
"Oh, then, don't provoke him, father,— don't provoke him. Let us go away."
"Why, Egeria, are you afraid for your father?"
"I'm afraid for myself," answered the girl, cowering nearer to her father. "He will come to see us, and I shall fail, and he will ruin you!"
"Egeria," said Dr. Boynton, "this is very interesting. I remember that on the day he came here—the day of the seance—you seemed to be similarly affected by his sphere, his presence. Can you analyze your feeling sufficiently, my child, to tell me why he should affect you in this way!"
"No," said Egeria.
"Do you remember any one else who has affected you as he has?"
"No, no one else."
"Very curious!" mused Dr. Boynton, with a pleased air of scientific inquiry. "Very curious indeed! It opens up a wholly new field of investigation. All these things seem to proceed by a sort of indirection. We may be further from the result we were seeking than I supposed; but we may be upon the point of determining the nature of the chief obstacle in our way, and therefore—therefore— Um! Very strange, very strange!
Egeria, I have felt myself, ever since we came to Boston, something singularly antagonistic in the conditions."
"Oh, then, you'll go away, won't you, father,—you'll go away at once?" pleaded the girl.
"I am not sure," answered Dr. Boynton, in the same musing tone as before, "what our duty is in the premises. Suppose, Egeria," he continued with spirit,—" suppose that this antagonistic influence were confined to a single person in a population of two hundred and fifty thousand souls; would it not be a striking proof of the vastness of the resistance already overcome by spiritistic science, and at the same time an—a—a— indication of responsibility in the matter which we ought not to shun?"
"I don't understand you, father," said Egeria, fearfully.
"I mean," replied her father, "that it may be our duty to sink all personal feeling in this matter, and bend every energy to the conviction, the conversion, of the person who thus antagonizes us."
The girl stood aghast, and for a moment did not reply, but glanced at her father's heated face and shining eyes in a sort of terror. Some instinct, perhaps, flashed upon her a fear against