The Tyranny of the Dark Part 3

"Oh, not at all," he genially interrupted. "I am consulted on all kinds of matters; in fact, I pa.s.s for a real doctor--out on the trail.

I carry a little medicine-case for emergencies, and I a.s.sume all the authority of the regular pract.i.tioner--on occasion. I shall be very sorry if my distaste for the t.i.tle 'professor' leads you to think me unsympathetic. I shall be very glad to a.s.sist you in any way."

"Thank you. You see, I was brought up to esteem learning, and we seldom meet one of your eminence--we are so completely out of the world here--it is a great pleasure to us--"

Footsteps just outside of the screen-door announced the return of the girl, who entered composedly, followed by a young man. Her manner was cold, her glance aloof, as she greeted Serviss.

"I'm glad you came," she said. "I was afraid you would forget us." She turned towards her escort, who had halted in the doorway. "Professor Serviss, this is the Reverend Mr. Clarke, the pastor of our church."

As Serviss shook hands with the Reverend Clarke he experienced a distinct shock of repulsion--an unaccountable feeling, for the clergyman was decidedly handsome, at first sight. But his hand was cold, his face pallid, and a bitter line, the worn pathway of a sneer, curved at one corner of his mouth. "Unwholesome, anaemic," was Serviss's inward comment as he turned away to address the girl, whose change of manner exerted a new witchery over him.

She was dressed in black for some reason, and her face seemed both sad and morose, but the graceful dignity of her strong young body was enhanced by her dark gown. Her hands, her feet, were shapely, without being dainty. "Plainly these women come of good stock, no matter what the husband and father may be," Serviss thought. He resented the clergyman's intrusive presence more and more. "Is he brought in as a safeguard?" he asked himself.

Mr. Clarke's att.i.tude was certainly forbidding. He perched in grim, expectant silence on the edge of his chair, waiting, watching. His lean face had the blue-white look of the much-shaven actor, and his manner was as portentous as that of a tragedian.

"What the devil does he mean by staring at me like that?" Serviss continued to ask himself. "Does he expect me to go off like a bomb?"

He had started a discussion of the weather or some other harmless topic, when Clarke began, in a deep voice, with the formal inflections of the parson: "Miss Lambert tells me you are from Corlear University, professor?"

Serviss groaned and threw up his hands with a comical gesture. "Well, let it go at that. I suppose it explains me to call me 'professor.'

Yes, I have a connection there--I draw a salary from the inst.i.tution."

The clergyman regarded him soberly, as did the women, without sharing his humor in the least. Evidently being a professor in a university was no light thing to a Western preacher. "She tells me you have proposed to act as her adviser--"

Again Serviss protested. "Oh, nothing so formidable as that, my dear sir. I have promised to make inquiries for her." Then, obscurely moved to create a better impression in the girl's mind, he added: "I shall be very happy, of course, to do all that is in my power to aid you, Miss Lambert, but, as I have just been saying to your mother, I can only act through my friends. n.o.body enjoys music more than I, but no one can possibly know less about it. In these days of specialization one is forced to one's own little groove in order to achieve practical results. General culture is impossible to specially trained sharps like myself."

"What _is_ your specialty, may I ask?" inquired Clarke, remotely.

"I usually answer 'bugs,' but when I wish to be quite understood I explain that I am a physiological chemist and biologist. At the present moment I am a.s.sistant in the pathological department of the Corlear Medical College."

The preacher seemed to lighten a little. "Ah! that is a n.o.ble study, a study of incalculable service to mankind. I am deeply interested in that line of thought myself--I may say _vitally_ interested, for I suffer from lung trouble. One by one the germs of disease are being discovered and their ant.i.toxins catalogued." It was evident that he was anxious to impress the women with his wonderful understanding of the scientist's work and aims.

His tone was so sententious that Serviss instantly became flippant, as an offset. "Yes, one by one we round 'em up! But don't think me unfriendly to the 'beasts.' They have their uses. I'd no sooner kill a bacterium than a song-bird. I think we care too highly for the cancerous and the consumptive. I'm not at all sure that humanity oughtn't to be hackled like weeds, and so toughen its hold on life.

Germs may be blessings in disguise."

Clarke pursued his way. "How little we know about their reactions--their secretions. You've given some attention to the X-ray and its effect on these cells, I presume?"

Serviss inwardly grinned to think what Weissmann would say at sight of his a.s.sistant sitting in solemn discussion of the germs and X-rays with a village clergyman and two reverential women. "Why, yes, I've considered it. Naturally, any new thing that bears on my specialty makes me sit up. I've even done a little experimenting with it."

"But have you considered the bearing of all these subtleties of science upon"--he hesitated--"a--upon certain--a--occult phenomena?"

Serviss eyed him non-committally. "Well, what, for instance?"

"Well, upon, say, telepathy--and--a--well, upon spiritual healing--and the like."

"I can't say that I have; I don't exactly see the connection.

Furthermore, I don't believe in these particular delusions. My work concerns the material facts of life, not the dying superst.i.tions of the race. I have no patience with any morbid theory of life."

This remark plainly produced a sensation. The preacher cast a significant glance at the mother, and the girl looked away at the lamp, a flush upon her face.

"h.e.l.lo!" exclaimed Serviss, under his breath. "Have I discovered a neat of cranks? I've been enlisted on somebody's side--I wonder whose?"

The clergyman faced him again and calmly asked: "Have you ever _investigated_ these occult phenomena?"

"Certainly not. I have no time to waste on such imaginings. My time is all taken in a study of certain definite processes in the living organism."

A light began to glow in the eyes of the young clergyman. "I suppose you cla.s.s mental healing among the delusions?"

"Most a.s.suredly I do," answered Serviss, with the remorselessness of youth.

"You would say that the mind of man cannot mend the body of another--"

"If you mean directly--in the manner of 'faith cures' and the like--I would answer certainly not, unless the disorder happens to be in itself due to a delusion. I can imagine the hypochondriac being cured by mental stimulus." He felt that he was drawing near the point at issue, and his eyes shone with glee.

The preacher set his trap. "You believe in the action of a drug--say, prussic acid--you believe it will kill?"

"Yes, and quite irrespective of the opinion of the one who takes it.

His thinking it water will not check or change its action in the slightest degree."

"But _how_ does it kill?" persisted Clarke. "What does it _do_?"

"If you mean why, at the last a.n.a.lysis, does one drug attack cells and the other nourish them, I answer, frankly, I don't know--n.o.body knows."

Clarke pursued his point. "Under the microscope, the germ of, say, teta.n.u.s is a minute bar with spore at the end like the head of a tadpole. Of what is this cell composed?"

"Probably of a jelly-like substance with excessively minute filaments, but we don't know. We are at the limit of the microscope. We trace certain processes, we even dissect certain cells, but elemental composition of plasm remains a mystery."

The preacher glowed with triumph. "Then you confess yourself baffled?

The union of matter and spirit is beyond your microscope. What do you know about a drop of water? You say it is formed of hydrogen and oxygen in such and such proportions. What _is_ hydrogen? Why do they unite?"

"I don't know," calmly replied Serviss. "We admit that any material substance remains inexplicable. The molecule lies far below the line of visibility. We only push the zone of the known a little farther into the realm of the unknown; but how does that serve your argument?"

"By demonstrating that the mind of a man is simply the mastering mystery in a world of mysteries, and that there is no known limit to what it may do. We say that at the point where life enters to differentiate the germ is beyond science--there of necessity faith is born."

"You say 'we'--are you an apostle of 'the new church'?" asked Serviss, abruptly.

The preacher visibly shrank. "I do not care to announce my growing conviction to my congregation, at present; but I find many things about the doctrine which appeal to me. Some form of spiritism is the coming religion--in my judgment. The old order changeth. The traditional theology--the very faith I preach--has become too gross, too materialistic, for this age; some sweeter and more mystic faith is to follow. Even science is prophesying new power for man, new realms for the spirit. You men of science pretend to lead, but you are laggards. You pore upon the culture of germs, but shut your eyes to the most vital of all truths. Is the life beyond the grave of less account than the habits of animalculae?"

The young scientist listened to this query with outward courtesy, but inwardly his gorge rose. "I see one gain in your new position," he answered, lightly. "Matter is no longer the dead, inorganic, 'G.o.dless thing' which the old-time theologians declared it to be. Matter, so far from being some inert lump, is permeated with life--is life itself. So far as we now know, all the visible and tangible universe is resolvable into terms of force--that is to say, chemical process.

There may be no line of demarcation between the organic and the inorganic."

"And yet with your knowledge of the inscrutable final mystery of matter you set a mark at the grave! You condemn all manifestation of the spirit, all the phenomena of spiritism, for example?"

"Condemn is not the word--we simply say the phenomena are absurd, the spirit cannot exist without the body--"

"Have you ever investigated a single form of spirit manifestation?

Have you studied the claims of those who are in touch with the spirit world?"

"No."