Edgar looked at Shroyer. The quiet, dark little man could contain himself no longer. He began to laugh. Edgar joined him. Lammers, after a moment, began to chuckle.
When they had settled down, Lammers looked at Edgar and said:
“It sounds medieval, or worse, but it’s not. Modern science throws a lot of sense into what used to be thought of as nonsense. For a long time we were taught that only the tangible existed. Now we know that the most important forces in our lives are invisible—electricity, for instance, and the waves that make wireless possible.”
“Thought has always been invisible,” Shroyer put in.
“And pretty much discouraged,” Lammers said. “It isn’t supposed to be good for the average man. Gets him into trouble.
“But look here—” he turned to Edgar—“you’ve got to give your time to this thing, man. You’re as out of place in a photographer’s studio as Joseph was in Pharaoh’s prison. Bring your family up to Dayton and let me back this thing the way it should be backed. No oil wells, no lectures—just readings of this type, for enlightenment, and physical readings for those who need them. We ought to build up an organization which will take care of the sick, whether they be ill in body, mind, or spirit. Then you’ll really be doing something.”
“That’s what I’d like,” Edgar said. “It’s always been my dream. But I’ve never been able to reconcile it with the fact that in my conscious mind, as you put it, I’m uneducated.
“Shucks!” he added. “It’s worse than that. I’m ignorant!”
“I was about to explain that,” Lammers said, “but my language threw you off. I was getting too technical.
“Remember what I said about the subconscious mind being the storehouse of all our experiences and thoughts, for all our lives, here and elsewhere? Well, to the degree that these experiences and thoughts have been in the right direction, a man is civilized, cultured, humane, and so forth: his past record shines through his conscious mind and present body, making the pattern of the body and the character of the person.
“Nothing is forgotten or lost by the subconscious. Therefore, if you in one or more of your past lives, or in your studies in other dimensions and other worlds, learned this wisdom which comes through you, it is not at all to be wondered at that you still possess it. The fact that your subconscious mind is articulate—this clairvoyance—that is the strange thing. But once the subconscious is reached, it’s not surprising that it is full of wisdom. That is, providing first of all that you are allied with the forces of good. That’s where the inevitability of morality comes in. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he, Jesus said. You couldn’t use this force for evil purposes without one of two things happening—the power would be lost to you or the information would cease to be right. In one case your soul would remain uncorrupted, by retreating within itself. In the other case it would be corrupted, by partaking of your conscious venality.”
Edgar made no comment. He was smoking quietly, staring at the floor.
“Tomorrow,” Lammers went on, “we’ll take a reading on you, and ask why you were given the power and for what purpose it is to be used. After that you can make your decision.”
“I’d like to get the reading,” Edgar said, “but I think I’d better make my decision before we do that.”
He crushed his cigarette in the ash tray.
“This is something I should decide by myself, without help from the readings,” he said. “I’d always suspect them of leading me into it, if they said I should devote myself to this work exclusively, and I decided to do it because of that.
“The power was given to me without explanation. I’ve tried to discover what to do with it; it’s been hit and miss, trial and error. It was never considered from this angle—it was just an odd trait that was useful in medicine. That’s because no one ever got hold of it who thought people were anything more than what we’ve always been taught—souls born into the earth, to live a while, die, and be judged. Under that system it wouldn’t be accounted for by anything but an answer to my childhood prayers and my reading of the Bible.
“That’s what I always thought, and against this I put the idea that the devil might be tempting me to do his work by operating through me when I was conceited enough to think God had given me special power.
“But I’ve watched it for years, and I’ve studied myself as best I can; I’ve prayed, and I’ve waited to see what would come of it. I’ve been convinced for quite a while that it’s a good power or force. It hasn’t ever done evil, and it won’t let me do it. A few times when people were taking readings which shouldn’t have been taken, without my knowledge, I suspected it because I began to feel badly after each reading. I know now that when I’ve given my best and someone has been helped I wake up feeling refreshed.”
He took another cigarette and accepted a light from Shroyer.
“But what you’ve been telling me today, and what the readings have been saying, is foreign to all I’ve believed and been taught, and all I have taught others, all my life. If ever the devil was going to play a trick on me, this would be it.”
Lammers laughed and stood up.
“I know how you feel,” he said. “I remember how upset I was the first time I ran across the idea of reincarnation. It turned me wrong side out for a while. Then I began applying it to what I knew and what was obvious about people, and the first thing I knew I was making the observation that psychology and psychoanalysis had to be invented to provide the explanations of life which are inherent in the doctrine of reincarnation.”
Shroyer stood up and went to get his overcoat.
“Why can’t we remember our former lives?” he asked.
“Because we’d never learn anything if we did,” Lammers said.
“We’d carry over all our prejudices, weaknesses, strengths, likes and dislikes, and have them in active, rather than suppressed form. They would make a mess of free will on this plane. What we have been, builds our character and intellect and makes us charming or hateful; then, with free will as the active agent, we go forth with this equipment in a world that is like a succession of laboratory tests.”
He put on his topcoat and went to shake hands with Edgar.
“We’ll leave you now,” he said. “You have a lot to think over. Don’t rush yourself. If you like, wait until the reading tomorrow, then decide. Or wait longer. It’s the most important decision of your life; and it’s going to be the most important decision in a lot of other lives, too.”
They left, taking the stenographer with them. Edgar remained seated on the couch, smoking cigarettes, lighting one off the other. When it grew dark, he went into the street and walked. When he was tired, he returned to the hotel and read the New Testament.
He knew the Gospels well. In none of them was there a condemnation of astrology or of reincarnation. There was, in fact, no mention of reincarnation whatsoever. But there was no comfort in this. If reincarnation were a truth, why had not Jesus mentioned it?
What He did mention—what was mentioned throughout the Bible—was the false prophet.
Old ghosts rose up in the room, haunting him.
He read on.
Why was reincarnation not mentioned anywhere in the Bible?
It was different with astrology. People had believed in the stars in Biblical times. And there might, by simple reasoning, be something in it. Everyone knew the influence of the sun on the earth, and the sun was a star. It certainly made a pattern, so far as life on earth was concerned—it shaped everything, or at least nourished everything—and the shape had to be such as to allow the sun to give life to it. Why could not the other stars, the signs of the zodiac, for instance, influence people in subtler ways: by making them bullish, or lionish, or airy, or gay, or introspective? And if the planets were old dwelling places of the soul, why would they not influence people when they came to a point of prominence in the sky
just as a man who had once lived in Hopkinsville would be influenced by reading of it, or meeting someone from the town, or by seeing photographs of it?
It might be. Take the moon, for instance. Its influence was obvious on such things as the tides and the female cycle. Any farmer could tell you that a fence rail laid on the wane of the moon will sink into the ground, just as bacon from a hog killed on the wane of the moon will shrivel in the pan and be worthless. The fence rail has to be laid when the moon is on the increase, and the hog has to be killed at the same period.
These things were observable because the moon was so close. The other planets were farther away, and the stars were far beyond them. But their light came to the earth, and might it not influence in some way the heart, or the brain, or the emotions?
Lammers had said it was all a pattern. The body was an objectification of the soul, responding to it as a swimmer responds to the sea—sometimes fighting against it, sometimes going willingly with its current, sometimes carried helplessly in its tide. And this life was but one of many—perhaps of thousands, spent here and on the other planets of the system, and out in far-flung worlds that stretched to the horizons of the cosmos.
What drivel—running around on the planets and among the stars!
What would his friends in Selma say to that? What would his Sunday school pupils say? What would Gertrude and Hugh Lynn say?
Drivel, nonsense, quackery, fraud, hocus-pocus, monkey business—
That’s what the doctors had said about the medical diagnoses of the readings.
They were experts in their field. He was an expert in the field of the Bible. What was his opinion of the things he had heard that day?
Drivel? Nonsense? Quackery? Fraud? Hocus-pocus? Monkey business?
—
He walked through the night until he came to the river that wound its way through the city. The water shimmered in the bright radiance of the autumn sky. To watch it better he went halfway across the bridge. There, leaning against the concrete ledge, he could alternately look upward at the sky and downward at the moving stream.
The water of the spirit: on earth water was the symbol of the spirit. In the heavens the stars represented His glory. Between them was man, transfixed, pulled in both directions, and in the end usually falling back to earth.
There was a man named Saul, who was a great believer in things as they were. He persecuted the innovations of a new religious sect. Then he was smitten, on the road to Damascus, and heard the voice of God. He changed his ways, his thoughts, his life, his name. Almost singlehanded, he raised the new sect to a world religion.
There was Augustine, who studied the philosophy of the pagans and believed in it until he was forty. Then he changed his ideas and convictions and wrote the philosophy of the church which Paul had established.
Looking back at them now, it was easy to see the wisdom of their decisions, difficult to understand the darkness in which they had walked for so long. That was because Christianity had triumphed and been proved right. Suppose it had lost and been proved wrong? Where would the memory of Augustine and Paul be now?
It would be buried. Instead, the memory of the men who continued to believe in paganism was buried; Paul and Augustine had been right. History remembered them, as it remembered all men who helped humanity and civilization to march forward a little.
Who were these men? Every one of them was a person who started by disbelieving in things as they were and discovering something new. All were scoffed at in the beginning. Most of them were not appreciated until after their death. None died rich. Few were happy. They had been beheaded, broken on the rack, scourged, fed to lions, burned at the stake. Their Master had been crucified.
What was His way of life? Love your brothers, love your enemies, love God. Return evil with good; turn the other cheek; be humble. Thirst after righteousness; pray for the world; forgive your debtors and those who seek to harm you.
Once a young man asked how he might serve Him more completely, having fulfilled all the obligations of prayer and sacrifice and righteousness. The answer was to go and sell what he had, give it to the poor, and follow in His footsteps with the disciples. The young man turned away and was sad, for he had great possessions.
There is no other mention of that young man in the Gospels. Did he fail to fulfill the last test? He must have, for he was not numbered among the disciples. He was the one who was chosen and did not respond. What else was that order, but a call to join the little band of followers?
The call came to every man who sought it. Whoever asked for an opportunity to serve was given it. Many faltered. The opportunity wasn’t what they had expected. It demanded too much personal sacrifice. They fell back. They failed.
They were forgotten, nameless souls, hundreds of thousands of millions of them, swirling through eternity like the drops of water making up the river below.
He, the man on the bridge, was such a person. He had asked for service; he had been given an opportunity; he was faltering; he was falling back; he was failing.
For he had many possessions: a beloved wife, two sons, a mother and father and sisters, many devoted friends. These he would have to give up to follow a rebellious path.
Or would he? Might not they be won over? Might not they follow him? If they believed in readings for the body, could they not accept readings for the soul?
Would they not be forced to admit, as he was forced to admit—standing there above the Dayton River, looking at the stars—that what the readings had said that day, what Lammers had said that day, was logical: inescapably, unavoidably, irrevocably logical?
They might. They might not.
“Got a match, buddy?”
He turned to answer the man, surprised that he could see him so well. The stars had been fading, the sky brightening without his realizing it.
“Sure.” He fished a package from the pocket of his overcoat.
“Thanks. Gettin’ cold these mornings, eh?”
The man was a worker of some sort, on his way to the job. He wore rough clothes. Under his arm he carried a bundle wrapped in newspaper; his lunch, probably.
His face was seamed, though it was young. In the wrinkles the dirt had not been washed away; the rest of the skin was clean. He had already been to a speakeasy. The odor of alcohol cut cleanly into the air.
“Yes, I reckon it gets mighty cold up in this country.”
“Yeah.” He struck the match, cupped his hands, and sucked at the cigarette.
“Shot o’ booze feels good on a mornin’ like this. Well, thanks, buddy.”
He returned the matches and continued on his way, his hands in his trouser pockets, smoke streaming out behind him, legs hurrying.
“Feed my sheep . . .”
The river was changing. Light crept out to it from its banks. “Come to me all ye who are heavy laden . . .
“Love me. Keep my commandments . . .
“In my Father’s house are many mansions . . . I go to prepare a place for you . . . that where I am, there ye may be also.
“Feed my sheep . . .
“If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you . . .
“Feed my sheep . . .”
Now the river belonged to the world again. The shimmer was gone from its surface. It was muddy, torpid, tired. He walked over the bridge and away from it, back to the hotel.
In his room he sat at the desk and wrote a letter to Gertrude. “. . . So much has happened in the last few days that I cannot begin to tell you about it. The important thing is that I am remaining here to organize the work of the readings with Mr. Lammers. He will back it. I want you and the boys to join me as soon as you can, along with Miss Davis, if she will come. I’d like to have her take the readings, and it will be a good job for her. First of all you had better dispose of the studio, or get it rented. You see, we won’t b
e in the photographic business any more. That won’t be necessary . . .”
When it was finished he sent for coffee and breakfast. Waiting for it, sitting by the window, he remembered another October morning when he had seen the sun rise. He picked up his Bible and turned to the Psalms. There it was, the 46th:
God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.
There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God . . .
SIXTEEN
As the train approached Dayton, Hugh Lynn looked more and more apprehensively at the barren fields he was passing. They were powdered with snow; their trees were bare; the wind lashed their thin patches of dead grass.
He wiggled his feet nervously. There were holes in his shoes. He had no rubbers or galoshes. His overcoat was light, unlined. The temperature in Selma when he left was sixty. Here it must be forty below zero.
There was more than the weather to be apprehensive about. A month before, his mother, his brother, and Miss Davis had come north to join his father. They were to live in Dayton, where the readings were to be backed by Mr. Lammers, who was rich. That was all he knew. Letters had told him of an apartment on Fifth Street, of meeting interesting people, of readings that revealed “most unusual” information. But they had seldom contained any money. In Selma, where he had remained with family friends in order to finish the school term, he had become embarrassed for pocket money, and for such things as socks, ties, and a new pair of shoes. Finally, a few days before Christmas, the money for his transportation to Dayton arrived—just enough to get him there. What was the matter? What had happened to the rich Mr. Lammers?
There Is a River Page 25