by Neil M. Gunn
“No, of course not! That’s the joke!”
“But about the Dean,” said George. “He’s a dear old boy. And so is old Blair. But, it’s just, you know, talk, and sometimes the smile sorta sticks on your face. And whatever you say about Geoff, he is never troubled with qualms in a fight. I should like to get Geoff all out on an argument.”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Joyce. “We’ll ask the Dean about second sight and that. You know, is it from on high or from on low? I must say Alick’s feat of finding Geoffrey in the dark gave me the jitters. What was it you said about it, George?”
“Whoops!” exclaimed George. A wreath of mist came at them, glowed blindingly, and vanished. “Another!”
The heather and the bog and the narrow road were swept by the headlights. Helen peered out of the window and saw the hills. It was a mysterious land, so silent, so self-contained.
“There’s Corr Inn,” said Harry. Helen turned to his side and saw the solitary light. Their knees touched, their hands. Harry caught her hand. She squeezed his swiftly and withdrew her own.
“Isn’t it weird!” Joyce exclaimed.
Helen turned to her own window and stared out. Driving at night in this country always affected her strongly. To-night there was something in it that hurt her. For it was not an objective beauty. Surely nothing had ever been devised by nature to prove more completely that beauty was an inward experience. And yet, in another sense, could anything in nature be more objective, with that added, almost terrifying suggestion of being withdrawn? Withdrawn and heedless—till the very quick of the heart shivered and the pressure behind the seeing eyes was like a pressure of tears.
She was going to have warned Joyce about not introducing the topic of second sight. It was essential that she should. Her mother had been worried enough about it. And Geoffrey would welcome it out of a feeling that he would like to make them all thoroughly ashamed of their sentimentalities—and so get some of his own back. But she could not draw her mind away to tackle the point. Moreover, she was becoming almost unbearably conscious of Harry’s near presence. And there he was, touching her—gently, as if by the swaying of the car; and there again—the back of his hand against her knee—not finding her hand. She huddled herself over against her window. The sad beauty of the young night—she wanted to bury her head, to turn blindly to him and bury her head.
“Have you gone to sleep, Helen?” called Joyce.
“Not with George at the wheel.”
“Oh, I say!” exclaimed George. “This funeral crawl. I can’t help it.”
“Don’t worry,” said Harry. “Yonder are the lights of Screesval.”
As the car drew up, Harry turned to Helen. Her face, moon-pale in the shadows, smiled to him. He caught her hand to help her out but could not speak to her. Turning to George and Joyce, he said, “By the way, don’t introduce that second sight business.”
Joyce looked at him. “Why ever not?”
Harry shrugged and turned towards the rest of the party coming from the other car.
Screesval Lodge was larger and more solidly furnished than Corbreac. Corbreac was a shooting-box, a temporary home: Screesval had a library, dark panelling, and a cellar. The walls were rich with trophies and prints, and the corridor to the billiard room was panelled with carefully matched deerskins. In Screesval footfalls were softer and noise more distant. It was a home that Mr. Blair, except for the winter months, when he went to the Madeiras, tended to occupy almost continuously.
He was a little man, with a rolling gait, a rubicund countenance, and gay charming manners in company. He knew everything that went on about the house, brought presents to his headkeeper’s children, interested himself in a choked ditch (when he could get thoroughly wet poking his walkingstick into the mud), a sick cow, or a mole trap. Anyone less like a classical student it might be difficult to imagine. But then Mr. Blair did not read a masterpiece for knowledge so much as for companionship and sustenance. He had the distinct impression of knowing Virgil personally. He had been a stockbroker.
His welcome was extremely bright. He bowed over Lady Marway’s hand. “Ah, my dear!” he said to Helen, regarding a beauty that made him sigh. He turned to Sir John. “How you bring my bachelorhood home to me, Jack!” His laughter was cunning, his eyes full of merry glances.
The Dean was quiet, gentle-mannered, pale, with a smile that lingered on his face as he listened. There was a quality about him, immediately arresting, even forceful. Only after a time did one gather that it centred in the eyes.
Mr. Blair’s second guest was Colonel Brown, a tall, strongboned man of sixty, with the intelligent practical expression that has been used to directing the evolution and organisation of an army’s mechanised units. Difficulties called out his ingenuity and a guarded sense of humour. His wife was to have been with him, but she had been caught into the social whirl of arranging for a daughter’s wedding.
Thus Lady Marway became the hostess of the evening.
At dinner all their doings, their luck and mishaps at sport, the names of mutual friends, the usual topics, were touched upon. It was not until they were going to join the ladies in the large comfortable library that Mr. Blair, who loved his food and wine, became properly aware of Geoffrey’s slight limp. “My dear fellow, you must tell us about that fall of yours. May I take your arm?”
“Not at all,” said Geoffrey. “A slight muscular stiffness that will be quite gone by to-morrow, I hope.”
“In the mist? Did I hear you say you were caught at night?”
“Yes.”
“But—wasn’t that extraordinarily dangerous? Shouldn’t you have sat down until the morning?”
“By all the rules, yes.”
“And you didn’t? You——” He bowed to the ladies. “We could not leave you more than five minutes.” When he had all his guests seated, he stood for a moment, saying, “We must hear about Mr. Smith’s adventure in the mist. I once got lost myself. But, fortunately, never in the dark. I should be grateful for a few tips. Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” said Lady Marway. “Even if—we don’t want quite to have its anxiety again.”
“Of course, you would have been anxious!” He turned to Geoffrey. “How did it happen?”
“Oh, simply enough,” said Geoffrey, warmed by the good port. “In the rigours of the chase, my stalker and I got separated. The mist was thick and then the night came down—and there I was.”
“You would be!” said Mr. Blair. “Jove, you would! And you kept going?”
Geoffrey described how he had kept going and fallen over.
“That was a narrow squeak,” said Colonel Brown.
“And after that?” asked Mr. Blair.
“Oh, I lay for a bit, until I got too uncomfortably cold. Then I set off again. I was making fair headway, when Harry’s stalker found me. We waited till the dawn.”
“Did he have to go far to find you?” asked Colonel Brown.
“Right into the heart of the forest,” said Geoffrey.
“That seems pretty miraculous, if it was dark as all that, doesn’t it?” The Colonel kept looking at Geoffrey.
“Oh, it was,” said Geoffrey, with solemn malice; “it was quite a miracle. But, as Miss Marway here will tell you, he has second sight.”
They all looked at Helen.
“That is Mr. Smith’s idea”, she explained, “of making a joke.”
Geoffrey’s released laugh rattled out. Mr. Blair and his two guests smiled, looking from Geoffrey to Helen. Obviously here was a house joke, with some amusing personalities behind it. And presently the Colonel asked Geoffrey: “Purely as a matter of curiosity—for mist is one of our bogeys—how do you think the stalker found you? What is his technique?”
“I don’t know,” said Geoffrey. “I assume he worked out the way I should be likely to come and chanced it.”
“George,” said Helen, with a smile, “what about those five shillings?”
“I object!” said George. Then he r
ushed upon an explanation of the bet.
Geoffrey kept silent, enjoying himself.
“All the same,” said Mr. Blair. “It was an extraordinary feat—however it was done. Really extraordinary.” And he asked some more questions; until at last the Dean inquired in his clear, rather low-pitched voice:
“Had you any real reason to suspect second sight?”
At once there was complete silence, for as they looked at the Dean they came under the influence of his eyes. His pale skin had a faintly ivory pallor, worn fine, like old monastery parchment, as if the inner mind had worked outward upon it.
His question was directed at Geoffrey, who knew that his hostess would rather he let the subject lie, and yet who could not resist the temptation to score over certain others of his party by exposing their superstition.
“I don’t know about real reason,” he said, with apparent hesitancy. “The trouble is you never do get any reason from the inherently superstitious type of mind. You get statements, of course. However, I may go so far as to say that certain young members of our party are disposed to believe that the stalker in question has second sight.”
The Dean smiled. “But surely not without some evidence?”
“Oh, I assure you the evidence was most striking,” said Geoffrey.
The Dean looked along the young smiling faces and settled silently on Harry.
“He is merely trying to get one back on me for having had the worst of an argument over an experience I had alone with this stalker.” Harry smiled. “The stalker’s experience was certainly very striking. But if you don’t mind, sir, I would rather not go into it again.”
After a moment’s silence, Mr. Blair said, “That seems quite the authentic attitude. You know old Farquhar—you’ve met him—with the long beard?”
Sir John nodded.
“Well, he’s remarkably interesting on the subject. I’ve been trying to check up some of his stuff, but I can only find one or two Highland books dealing with the matter. He seems genuinely moved.”
“Quite,” said Sir John. “None of them means not to be genuine. There can, however, be self-deception—and a rumour can grow. In India, we had too often to deal with what was demonstrably, and in fact, superstition to permit credulity to move us unduly.”
“I suppose you had,” said the Dean. “All the same, we cannot quite dismiss a real spiritual or mental experience merely because it arouses dubious reactions in the minds of others, can we? In science, when you discover an exception to a law, you invalidate the law. But a superstition does not in that sense invalidate a spiritual truth. The difficulty here, of course, is extremely complex. But therefore to dismiss the difficulty is surely an over-simplification.”
“I quite agree,” said Sir John. “The difficulty is one of assessing the evidence. And it would appear to be almost insuperable.”
“At any given moment a difficulty which cannot be surmounted, whether in physics or psychology, is in fact insuperable,” said the Dean quietly. “But that does not deter either scientist or psychologist. Why? Because past experience has shown us that patient investigation tends to surmount the difficulty.”
“But the only way that I know”, said Geoffrey, “of surmounting the difficulty is by testing the evidence. If all the available evidence does not make a conclusive case, then you are compelled to dismiss the truth or reality of that which the evidence was supposed to prove.”
“Granted, but only after assuming two things. First, that all the available evidence, all of it, is brought forward for test and, second, that those who assess the evidence are in fact competent to assess it.”
“Granted,” said Geoffrey.
The Dean smiled slowly as he looked at Geoffrey. “There is just one further point. All the evidence at present available may not be all the evidence available to-morrow or ultimately.”
“I am afraid”, said Geoffrey, meeting the smile, “that my interest is in physics rather than in metaphysics.”
The Dean leaned back, enjoying the thrust.
“Now let us apply that”, said Mr. Blair, with his jolliest speculative expression, “to this business of second sight. I have a feeling that in a moment we shall be in the region of intuition, when the ladies shall be able to lead our stumbling conclusions to esoteric heights.”
“I wonder why”, said Marjory, “there should be this flattering assumption on the part of man that women are not quite capable of the grave refinement of reason?”
“Oh, splendid, Marjory!” exclaimed Joyce.
Mr. Blair laughed and clapped his hands. “Bravo! But I refuse to retract. Why? Because, according to Colonel Brown, intuition is the process of reasoning in the fourth dimension.” His face became portentously solemn. “He can explain it to you. You will appreciate it. Alas, it is too deep for me.” And he wagged his rubicund face and bald head.
Marjory’s assumed innocence collapsed graciously and a warmth came into the room, so that Mr. Blair insisted on pouring out glasses of port—it did not occur to him to pour anything else—with little exaggerated mannerisms and eyetwinklings. Joyce very nearly called him a dear, funny old thing as he filled her glass to the brim.
“Gentlemen, the ladies!”
Then, setting down his glass and still standing, he pressed his palms against his sides, lifted up his chest, and asked, “Now where were we?”
“Awaiting the evidence,” said Geoffrey slily.
“Ha, you scientists,” said Mr. Blair, wagging a finger. “It’s not evidence you want of second sight: it’s the fun of knocking it into a cocked hat.”
There was a burst of laughter at this unexpected sally and Mr. Blair sat down, happy as a schoolboy to have brought ease and mirth to his guests. It was his experience that there is nothing like a “subject for discussion” to keep guests reasonably animated—the possibilities of variation in subjects and guests being, of course, infinite.
“Now would it be too much for me to ask you to assume”, he said, addressing Geoffrey politely and pointing to the coal scuttle, “that this is the cocked hat?”
“I think so,” said Geoffrey. “It’s a bit too full to hold all the rubbish.” And he laughed loudly.
“You frankly don’t believe it?” asked Colonel Brown, with his guarded humour.
“No,” replied Geoffrey. “Do you?”
“I am inclined on the whole to say yes. The evidence regarding prevision is pretty mixed, but there is evidence. It is not perhaps conclusive evidence, but still it is evidence. And mathematically once you admit dimensions beyond the third, the thing does at least appear to be feasible.”
“I see,” said Geoffrey, with the smile that implied he had heard that sort of reasoning before. “But I am inclined to be impressed only by evidence. We can say, of course, that anything is possible. That may be an inspiration to the scientist, but it is hardly anything more.”
Colonel Brown smiled and nodded. “You are quite right. But still we have got to work with the tools we have. Like you, I prefer physics to metaphysics. But the possibility of the existence of second sight in no way interferes with physics. It is an interesting speculation scientifically because of the existence of certain evidence and of our power to bring mathematics to bear upon it.”
“What form does this evidence take?” Geoffrey asked.
“Several forms. There is the evidence of what certain thinkers can do in the East; there is the evidence, never properly sifted, of second sight in the Highlands—and elsewhere; there is the recorded evidence of dreams, in which future incidents are foreseen; there is a tremendous body of miscellaneous evidence, dealt with by the Psychical Research Society and other groups or individuals. The persistence of the idea, together with these manifestations, is also something.”
“Yoga, serialism, and all that. Quite.” Geoffrey smiled sceptically. “As for the origin and persistence of the idea, any sound anthropologist can deal with it adequately and satisfactorily. Take something similar, like water-divining. It has had
for itself an almost equal persistence and belief. In fact, the Government of India recently employed one of our most famous diviners, Major Pogson, to find drinking water in certain Indian villages. He divined one hundred and twenty-four villages and was successful in locating drinking sites for one hundred and two of them. That seemed good enough working evidence. Yet under laboratory tests in Cambridge, he failed.”
“That is very interesting,” replied Colonel Brown, “but hardly analogous. For example, if we took the diviner out over Farquhar’s croft, he might divine water at a certain spot. We dig and find water. But if we dug at a dozen other spots we might also find water. We don’t know—and could not know without digging the whole place up. That the diviner is extremely skilled in finding water is obvious from his results. But that skill might come from a fine co-ordination of the senses under a good geological eye. Much as a man has a good eye for a horse or for a—well, for something equally fast—or an unusual ear for music.
“There is another kind of evidence, however, in which one single instance proves a whole belief or hypothesis to be valid. Take Ross and his mosquitoes. Ross got the belief that mosquitoes carried the malaria germ. So back he went to India and began dissecting mosquitoes. Out of hundreds of species he first of all had to find the right species. The authorities were against him. The microscopic study of bacteria was regarded as a new fad. Authoritative opinion is very often against the pioneer. It was August and the weather was stifling. Ross had dissected in the course of time about a thousand mosquitoes. The mere dissection of each mosquito took at least two hours. Imagine the colossal labour; the amount of belief necessary to carry on; and nothing but failure a thousand times over. Then one day, the sweat running into his eyes, a crack in the eye-piece of his microscope, his sight badly strained, he is just about to give up work, when he sees the incriminating dark stain, and in that moment his whole case was established and humanity became his debtor for a supremely important scientific discovery.