Читать книгу The Undiscovered Country - William Dean Howells - Страница 9

VI.

IN spite of the defiant temper in which Boynton had quitted Ford's lodging, he reached his own in extreme dejection. He found Hatch with Egeria in the parlor.

"Well, my friend," he said, wringing Hatch's hand, as he passed him on his way from the door to the sofa, "I have met with a great disappointment." Neither Hatch nor Egeria questioned him, but after an exchange of anxious glances waited silently. "It isn't that I care for the frustration of my hopes; I do care for that; but that is a small matter compared with the loss of my faith in human nature, my reliance upon the willingness of man to make sacrifices tending to—to — solve, to unravel our common riddle." He let his head fall upon his breast.

"Oh, father," pleaded Egeria tremulously, after the little dramatic pause which Boynton had let follow upon his period, "did you go to see him?"

"Yes," said her father.

"And did he—is he going to do it?"

Boynton lifted his head. "No," he said, solemnly; "he refuses." Egeria drew a long breath, and turned very pale. She seemed about to fall from her chair, which she had drawn next the corner of the sofa on which he had thrown himself. Hatch made a movement toward her, but she recovered herself, and sat strongly upright.

"He refused?" she gasped.

"My dear friend," said her father, looking toward Hatch, while he took her cold hand and gently smoothed it, "I must explain that I have had two interviews with this man, and what their nature has been. He came here this morning to boast that it was he who caught Egeria's hand in the seance that day. I drove him from the house. Afterwards, upon conversing with Egeria, I learnt that the manifestations were really genuine, and that at the moment he caught her hand she had no agency whatever in their production."

Hatch looked at Egeria. "I could have bet my soul on that!"

"On learning this," pursued Boynton, "I at once determined to challenge him to a new test, in which he should pit his influence over Egeria against mine, and the public should decide upon the result. He has just refused the challenge, peremptorily and finally, and I have branded him as a coward in the presence of Mr. Phillips."

Boynton flung his daughter's hand away. Hatch and Egeria had the effect of refraining from looking at each other. At last the young fellow said, recovering something of his wonted cheery audacity, "Well, of course it's a disappointment, doctor, but why not look at the bright side of it?"

"What bright side of it?" asked the doctor, tragically.

"Oh, it has its bright side," said Hatch, undauntedly. "It saves Miss Egeria from a good deal, and I'm glad of that, for one."

The doctor mistook the word. "Ordeal! There is no ordeal; there could have been no question about the result!"

"Not with you or me. But there's no use trying to deny it,—the public is against you, and would be glad to have her fail."

"Oh, yes, father; you know how it has always been," cried Egeria.

"The circumstances had never been propitious before; but now they were all with us. We could not have failed!" replied her father.

"Well, you might," said Hatch. " What do you think did produce the manifestations that day, doctor?"

"Do you ask that question?" demanded the doctor, in astonishment. "I answer, with an absolute certainty, such as I never reached before, the disembodied spirits of the dead!'

"I doubt it," said Hatch, quietly.

"You doubt it?" shouted Boynton, in amaze.

"Dr. Boynton, you 've told me twenty times that you wouldn't give a straw for manifestations that took place in the presence of a dozen persons. Now, what makes you pin your faith to what happened the other day?" Boynton was silent; all his reasons, so prompt and facile, seemed to have forsaken him. " There were too many people on hand that day for me. You know I'm as much interested in these things, doctor, as anybody, and I should be the last to give aid and comfort to the enemy; but I couldn't go those materializations, and the dark seance was rather too dark for me. I'll tell you what, doctor, I wish you'd go back home, and start new." Hatch planted himself directly in front of Boynton, who looked at him with astonishment and rising indignation.

"By what right do you presume to advise me?" he asked, with stately emphasis.

"Well, by no right," said Hatch easily; " or else the right that I have from the good you've always done me." The doctor waived away the sense of this with a gesture which was still stately, but no longer severe. "I only speak from my interest in you and Miss Egeria, here. I think it's wearing on her,— wearing on you both."

"Has my daughter complained to you?" demanded Boynton, with more than his former hauteur, looking round at her. She returned his look with a glance of tender reproach, and Hatch answered—

"No more than you, doctor. I'm talking of what I see. And I think you've made a wrong start. I think you've made a mistake. You oughtn't to have ever mixed yourself up with professional mediums. You were on the right track at home. Now, I say, you just go back there, and you form a disinterested circle,—people that haven't got money in it,—and you go on with your investigations there; and when you've got a sure thing of it, you come out with it. But don't you do it till then! Heh?"