Frenzied Fiction

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"To be quite frank, I do not."

There was silence between us for a time, and then my
Friend said:

"Have you ever given it a trial?"

I paused a moment, as the idea was a novel one.

"No," I answered, "to be quite candid, I have not."

Neither of us spoke for perhaps twenty minutes after
this, when my Friend said:

"Have you anything against it?"

I thought awhile and then I said:

"Yes, I have."

My Friend remained silent for perhaps half an hour. Then
he asked:

"What?"

I meditated for some time. Then I said:

"This--it seems to me that the whole thing is done for
money. How utterly unnatural it is to call up the
dead--one's great-grandfather, let us say--and pay money
for talking to him."

"Precisely," said my Friend without a moment's pause. "I
thought so. Now suppose I could bring you into contact
with the spirit world through a medium, or through
different _medii_, without there being any question of
money, other than a merely nominal fee, the money being,
as it were, left out of count, and regarded as only, so
to speak, nominal, something given merely _pro forma_
and _ad interim_. Under these circumstances, will you
try the experiment?"

I rose and took my Friend's hand."

"My dear fellow," I said, "I not only will, but I shall."

From this conversation dated my connection with
Spiritualism, which has since opened for me a new world.

It would be out of place for me to indicate the particular
address or the particular methods employed by the agency
to which my Friend introduced me. I am anxious to avoid
anything approaching a commercial tinge in what I write.
Moreover, their advertisement can be seen along with many
others--all, I am sure, just as honourable and just as
trustworthy--in the columns of any daily newspaper. As
everybody knows, many methods are employed. The tapping
of a table, the movement of a ouija board, or the voice
of a trance medium, are only a few among the many devices
by which the spirits now enter into communication with
us. But in my own case the method used was not only
simplicity itself, but was so framed as to carry with it
the proof of its own genuineness. One had merely to speak
into the receiver of a telephone, and the voice of the
spirit was heard through the transmitter as in an ordinary
telephone conversation.

It was only natural, after the scoffing remark that I
had made, that I should begin with my great-grandfather.
Nor can I ever forget the peculiar thrill that went
through me when I was informed by the head of the agency
that a tracer was being sent out for Great-grandfather
to call him to the phone.

Great-grandfather--let me do him this justice--was prompt.
He was there in three minutes. Whatever his line of
business was in the spirit world--and I was never able
to learn it--he must have left it immediately and hurried
to the telephone. Whatever later dissatisfaction I may
have had with Great-grandfather, let me state it fairly
and honestly, he is at least a punctual man. Every time
I called he came right away without delay. Let those who
are inclined to cavil at the methods of the Spiritualists
reflect how impossible it would be to secure such
punctuality on anything but a basis of absolute honesty.

In my first conversation with Great-grandfather, I found
myself so absurdly nervous at the thought of the vast
gulf of space and time across which we were speaking that
I perhaps framed my questions somewhat too crudely.

"How are you, great-grandfather?" I asked.

His voice came back to me as distinctly as if he were in
the next room:

"I am happy, very happy. Please tell everybody that I am
_happy_."

"Great-grandfather," I said. "I will. I'll see that
everybody knows it. Where are you, great-grandfather?"

"Here," he answered, "beyond."

"Beyond what?"

"Here on the other side."

"Side of which?" I asked.

"Of the great vastness," he answered. "The other end of
the Illimitable."

"Oh, I see," I said, "that's where you are."

We were silent for some time. It is amazing how difficult
it is to find things to talk about with one's
great-grandfather. For the life of me I could think of
nothing better than:

"What sort of weather have you been having?"

"There is no weather here," said Great-grandfather. "It's
all bright and beautiful all the time."

"You mean bright sunshine?" I said.

"There is no sun here," said Great-grandfather.

"Then how do you mean--" I began.

But at this moment the head of the agency tapped me on
the shoulder to remind me that the two minutes' conversation
for which I had deposited, as a nominal fee, five dollars,
had expired. The agency was courteous enough to inform
me that for five dollars more Great-grandfather would
talk another two minutes.

But I thought it preferable to stop for the moment.

Now I do not wish to say a word against my own
great-grandfather. Yet in the conversations which followed
on successive days I found him--how shall I put it?
--unsatisfactory. He had been, when on this side--to use
the term we Spiritualists prefer--a singularly able man,
an English judge; so at least I have always been given
to understand. But somehow Great-grandfather's brain, on
the other side, seemed to have got badly damaged. My
own theory is that, living always in the bright sunshine,
he had got sunstroke. But I may wrong him. Perhaps it
was locomotor ataxy that he had. That he was very, very
happy where he was is beyond all doubt. He said so at
every conversation. But I have noticed that feeble-minded
people are often happy. He said, too, that he was glad
to be where he was; and on the whole I felt glad that he
was too. Once or twice I thought that possibly
Great-grandfather felt so happy because he had been
drinking: his voice, even across the great gulf, seemed
somehow to suggest it. But on being questioned he told
me that where he was there was no drink and no thirst,
because it was all so bright and beautiful. I asked him
if he meant that it was "bone-dry" like Kansas, or whether
the rich could still get it? But he didn't answer.

Our intercourse ended in a quarrel. No doubt it was my
fault. But it _did_ seem to me that Great-grandfather,
who had been one of the greatest English lawyers of his
day, might have handed out an opinion.

The matter came up thus: I had had an argument--it was
in the middle of last winter--with some men at my club
about the legal interpretation of the Adamson Law. The
dispute grew bitter.

"I'm right," I said, "and I'll prove it if you give me
time to consult the authorities."

"Consult your great-grandfather!" sneered one of the men.

"All right," I said, "I will."

I walked straight across the room to the telephone and
called up the agency.

"Give me my great-grandfather," I said. "I want him right
away."

He was there. Good, punctual old soul, I'll say that for
him. He was there.

"Great-grandfather," I said, "I'm in a discussion here
about the constitutionality of the Adamson Law, involving
the power of Congress under the Constitution. Now, you
remember the Constitution when they made it. Is the law
all right?"

There was silence.

"How does it stand, great-grandfather?" I said. "Will it
hold water?"

Then he spoke.

"Over here," he said, "there are no laws, no members of
Congress and no Adamsons; it's all bright and beautiful
and--"

"Great-grandfather," I said, as I hung up the receiver
in disgust, "you are a Mutt!"

I never spoke to him again. Yet I feel sorry for him,
feeble old soul, flitting about in the Illimitable, and
always so punctual to hurry to the telephone, so happy,
so feeble-witted and courteous; a better man, perhaps,
take it all in all, than he was in life; lonely, too, it
may be, out there in the Vastness. Yet I never called
him up again. He is happy. Let him stay.

Indeed, my acquaintance with the spirit world might have
ended at that point but for the good offices, once more,
of my Friend.

"You find your great-grandfather a little slow, a little
dull?" he said. "Well, then, if you want brains, power,
energy, why not call up some of the spirits of the great
men, some of the leading men, for instance, of your
great-grandfather's time?"

"You've said it!" I exclaimed. "I'll call up Napoleon
Bonaparte."

I hurried to the agency.

"Is it possible," I asked, "for me to call up the Emperor
Napoleon and talk to him?"

Possible? Certainly. It appeared that nothing was easier.
In the case of Napoleon Bonaparte the nominal fee had to
be ten dollars in place of five; but it seemed to me
that, if Great-grandfather cost five, Napoleon Bonaparte
at ten was cheapness itself.

"Will it take long to get him?" I asked anxiously.

"We'll send out a tracer for him right away," they said.

Like Great-grandfather, Napoleon was punctual. That I
will say for him. If in any way I think less of Napoleon
Bonaparte now than I did, let me at least admit that a
more punctual, obliging, willing man I never talked with.

He came in two minutes.

"He's on the line now," they said.

I took up the receiver, trembling.

"Hello!" I called. "Est-ce que c'est l'Empereur Napoleon
a qui j'ai l'honneur de parler?"

"How's that?" said Napoleon.

"Je demande si je suis en communication avec l'Empereur
Napoleon--"

"Oh," said Napoleon, "that's all right; speak English."

"What!" I said in surprise. "You know English? I always
thought you couldn't speak a word of it."

He was silent for a minute. Then he said:

"I picked it up over here. It's all right. Go right ahead."

"Well," I continued, "I've always admired you so much,
your wonderful brain and genius, that I felt I wanted to
speak to you and ask you how you are."

"Happy," said Napoleon, "very happy."

"That's good," I said. "That's fine! And how is it out
there? All bright and beautiful, eh?"

"Very beautiful," said the Emperor.

"And just where are you?" I continued. "Somewhere out in
the Unspeakable, I suppose, eh?"

"Yes," he answered, "out here beyond."

"That's good," I said. "Pretty happy, eh?"

"Very happy," said Napoleon. "Tell everybody how happy
I am."

"I know," I answered. "I'll tell them all. But just now
I've a particular thing to ask. We've got a big war on,
pretty well the whole world in it, and I thought perhaps
a few pointers from a man like you--"

But at this point the attendant touched me on the shoulder.
"Your time is up," he said.

I was about to offer to pay at once for two minutes more
when a better idea struck me. Talk with Napoleon? I'd do
better than that. I'd call a whole War Council of great
spirits, lay the war crisis before them and get the
biggest brains that the world ever produced to work on
how to win the war.

Who should I have? Let me see! Napoleon himself, of
course. I'd bring him back. And for the sea business,
the submarine problem, I'd have Nelson. George Washington,
naturally, for the American end; for politics, say, good
old Ben Franklin, the wisest old head that ever walked
on American legs, and witty too; yes, Franklin certainly,
if only for his wit to keep the council from getting
gloomy; Lincoln--honest old Abe--him certainly I must
have. Those and perhaps a few others.

I reckoned that a consultation at ten dollars apiece with
spirits of that class was cheap to the verge of the
ludicrous. Their advice ought to be worth millions--yes,
billions--to the cause.

The agency got them for me without trouble. There is no
doubt they are a punctual crowd, over there beyond in
the Unthinkable.

I gathered them all in and talked to them, all and
severally, the payment, a merely nominal matter, being
made, _pro forma_, in advance.

I have in front of me in my rough notes the result of
their advice. When properly drafted it will be, I feel
sure, one of the most important state documents produced
in the war.

In the personal sense--I have to admit it--I found them
just a trifle disappointing. Franklin, poor fellow, has
apparently lost his wit. The spirit of Lincoln seemed to
me to have none of that homely wisdom that he used to
have. And it appears that we were quite mistaken in
thinking Disraeli a brilliant man; it is clear to me now
that he was dull--just about as dull as Great-grandfather,
I should say. Washington, too, is not at all the kind of
man we thought him.

Still, these are only personal impressions. They detract
nothing from the extraordinary value of the advice given,
which seems to me to settle once and for ever any lingering
doubt about the value of communications with the Other Side.

My draft of their advice runs in part as follows:

The Spirit of Nelson, on being questioned on the submarine
problem, holds that if all the men on the submarines were
where he is everything would be bright and happy. This
seems to me an invaluable hint. There is nothing needed
now except to put them there.

The advice of the Spirit of Napoleon about the campaign
on land seemed to me, if possible, of lower value than
that of Nelson on the campaign at sea. It is hardly
conceivable that Napoleon has forgotten where the Marne
is. But it may have changed since his day. At any rate,
he says that, if ever the Russians cross the Marne, all
is over. Coming from such a master-strategist, this ought
to be attended to.

Franklin, on being asked whether the United States had
done right in going into the war, said "Yes"; asked
whether the country could with honour have stayed out,
he said "No." There is guidance here for thinking men of
all ranks.

Lincoln is very happy where he is. So, too, I was amazed
to find, is Disraeli. In fact, it was most gratifying to
learn that all of the great spirits consulted are very
happy, and want everybody to know how happy they are.
Where they are, I may say, it is all bright and beautiful.

Fear of trespassing on their time prevented me from
questioning each of them up to the full limit of the
period contracted for.

I understand that I have still to my credit at the agency
five minutes' talk with Napoleon, available at any time,
and similarly five minutes each with Franklin and
Washington, to say nothing of ten minutes' unexpired time
with Great-grandfather.

All of these opportunities I am willing to dispose of at
a reduced rate to anyone still sceptical of the reality
of the spirit world.

V. The Sorrows of a Summer Guest

Let me admit, as I start to write, that the whole thing
is my own fault. I should never have come. I knew better.
I have known better for years. I have known that it is
sheer madness to go and pay visits in other people's
houses.

Yet in a moment of insanity I have let myself in for it
and here I am. There is no hope, no outlet now till the
first of September when my visit is to terminate. Either
that or death. I do not greatly care which.

I write this, where no human eye can see me, down by the
pond--they call it the lake--at the foot of Beverly-Jones's
estate. It is six o'clock in the morning. No one is up.
For a brief hour or so there is peace. But presently Miss
Larkspur--the jolly English girl who arrived last week
--will throw open her casement window and call across
the lawn, "Hullo everybody! What a ripping morning!" And
young Poppleson will call back in a Swiss yodel from
somewhere in the shrubbery, and Beverly-Jones will appear
on the piazza with big towels round his neck and shout,
"Who's coming for an early dip?" And so the day's fun
and jollity--heaven help me--will begin again.

Presently they will all come trooping in to breakfast,
in coloured blazers and fancy blouses, laughing and
grabbing at the food with mimic rudeness and bursts of
hilarity. And to think that I might have been breakfasting
at my club with the morning paper propped against the
coffee-pot, in a silent room in the quiet of the city.

I repeat that it is my own fault that I am here.

For many years it had been a principle of my life to
visit nobody. I had long since learned that visiting only
brings misery. If I got a card or telegram that said,
"Won't you run up to the Adirondacks and spend the week-end
with us?" I sent back word: "No, not unless the Adirondacks
can run faster than I can," or words to that effect. If
the owner of a country house wrote to me: "Our man will
meet you with a trap any afternoon that you care to name,"
I answered, in spirit at least: "No, he won't, not unless
he has a bear-trap or one of those traps in which they
catch wild antelope." If any fashionable lady friend
wrote to me in the peculiar jargon that they use: "Can
you give us from July the twelfth at half-after-three
till the fourteenth at four?" I replied: "Madam, take
the whole month, take a year, but leave me in peace."

Such at least was the spirit of my answers to invitations.
In practice I used to find it sufficient to send a telegram
that read: "Crushed with work impossible to get away,"
and then stroll back into the reading-room of the club
and fall asleep again.

But my coming here was my own fault. It resulted from
one of those unhappy moments of expansiveness such as
occur, I imagine, to everybody--moments when one appears
to be something quite different from what one really is,
when one feels oneself a thorough good fellow, sociable,
merry, appreciative, and finds the people around one the
same. Such moods are known to all of us. Some people say
that it is the super-self asserting itself. Others say
it is from drinking. But let it pass. That at any rate
was the kind of mood that I was in when I met Beverly-Jones
and when he asked me here.

It was in the afternoon, at the club. As I recall it, we
were drinking cocktails and I was thinking what a bright,
genial fellow Beverly-Jones was, and how completely I
had mistaken him. For myself--I admit it--I am a brighter,
better man after drinking two cocktails than at any other
time--quicker, kindlier, more genial. And higher, morally.
I had been telling stories in that inimitable way that
one has after two cocktails. In reality, I only know four
stories, and a fifth that I don't quite remember, but in
moments of expansiveness they feel like a fund or flow.

It was under such circumstances that I sat with
Beverly-Jones. And it was in shaking hands at leaving
that he said: "I _do_ wish, old chap, that you could run
up to our summer place and give us the whole of August!"
and I answered, as I shook him warmly by the hand: "My
_dear_ fellow, I'd simply _love_ to!" "By gad, then it's
a go!" he said. "You must come up for August, and wake
us all up!"

Wake them up! Ye gods! Me wake them up!

One hour later I was repenting of my folly, and wishing,
when I thought of the two cocktails, that the prohibition
wave could be hurried up so as to leave us all high and
dry--bone-dry, silent and unsociable.

Then I clung to the hope that Beverly-Jones would forget.
But no. In due time his wife wrote to me. They were
looking forward so much, she said, to my visit; they
felt--she repeated her husband's ominous phrase--that I
should wake them all up!

What sort of alarm-clock did they take me for, anyway!

Ah, well! They know better now. It was only yesterday
afternoon that Beverly-Jones found me standing here in
the gloom of some cedar-trees beside the edge of the pond
and took me back so quietly to the house that I realized
he thought I meant to drown myself. So I did.

I could have stood it better--my coming here, I mean
--if they hadn't come down to the station in a body to
meet me in one of those long vehicles with seats down
the sides: silly-looking men in coloured blazers and
girls with no hats, all making a hullabaloo of welcome.
"We are quite a small party," Mrs. Beverly-Jones had
written. Small! Great heavens, what would they call a
large one? And even those at the station turned out to
be only half of them. There were just as many more all
lined up on the piazza of the house as we drove up, all
waving a fool welcome with tennis rackets and golf clubs.

Small party, indeed! Why, after six days there are still
some of the idiots whose names I haven't got straight!
That fool with the fluffy moustache, which is he? And
that jackass that made the salad at the picnic yesterday,
is he the brother of the woman with the guitar, or who?

But what I mean is, there is something in that sort of
noisy welcome that puts me to the bad at the start. It
always does. A group of strangers all laughing together,
and with a set of catchwords and jokes all their own,
always throws me into a fit of sadness, deeper than words.
I had thought, when Mrs. Beverly-Jones said a _small_
party, she really meant small. I had had a mental picture
of a few sad people, greeting me very quietly and gently,
and of myself, quiet, too, but cheerful--somehow lifting
them up, with no great effort, by my mere presence.

Somehow from the very first I could feel that Beverly-Jones
was disappointed in me. He said nothing. But I knew it.
On that first afternoon, between my arrival and dinner,
he took me about his place, to show it to me. I wish that
at some proper time I had learned just what it is that
you say when a man shows you about his place. I never
knew before how deficient I am in it. I am all right to
be shown an iron-and-steel plant, or a soda-water factory,
or anything really wonderful, but being shown a house
and grounds and trees, things that I have seen all my
life, leaves me absolutely silent.

"These big gates," said Beverly-Jones, "we only put up
this year."

"Oh," I said. That was all. Why shouldn't they put them
up this year? I didn't care if they'd put them up this
year or a thousand years ago.

"We had quite a struggle," he continued, "before we
finally decided on sandstone.

"You did, eh?" I said. There seemed nothing more to say;
I didn't know what sort of struggle he meant, or who
fought who; and personally sandstone or soapstone or any
other stone is all the same to me.

"This lawn," said Beverly-Jones, "we laid down the first
year we were here." I answered nothing. He looked me
right in the face as he said it and I looked straight
back at him, but I saw no reason to challenge his statement.
"The geraniums along the border," he went on, "are rather
an experiment. They're Dutch."

I looked fixedly at the geraniums but never said a word.
They were Dutch; all right, why not? They were an
experiment. Very good; let them be so. I know nothing in
particular to say about a Dutch experiment.

I could feel that Beverly-Jones grew depressed as he
showed me round. I was sorry for him, but unable to help.
I realized that there were certain sections of my education
that had been neglected. How to be shown things and make
appropriate comments seems to be an art in itself. I
don't possess it. It is not likely now, as I look at this
pond, that I ever shall.

Yet how simple a thing it seems when done by others. I
saw the difference at once the very next day, the second
day of my visit, when Beverly-Jones took round young
Poppleton, the man that I mentioned above who will
presently give a Swiss yodel from a clump of laurel bushes
to indicate that the day's fun has begun.

Poppleton I had known before slightly. I used to see him
at the club. In club surroundings he always struck me as
an ineffable young ass, loud and talkative and perpetually
breaking the silence rules. Yet I have to admit that in
his summer flannels and with a straw hat on he can do
things that I can't.

"These big gates," began Beverly-Jones as he showed
Poppleton round the place with me trailing beside them,
"we only put up this year."

Poppleton, who has a summer place of his own, looked at
the gates very critically.

"Now, do you know what _I'd_ have done with those gates,
if they were mine?" he said.

"No," said Beverly-Jones.

"I'd have set them two feet wider apart; they're too
narrow, old chap, too narrow." Poppleton shook his head
sadly at the gates.

"We had quite a struggle," said Beverly-Jones, "before
we finally decided on sandstone."

I realized that he had one and the same line of talk that
he always used. I resented it. No wonder it was easy for
him. "Great mistake," said Poppleton. "Too soft. Look at
this"--here he picked up a big stone and began pounding
at the gate-post--"see how easily it chips! Smashes right
off. Look at that, the whole corner knocks right off,
see!"

Beverly-Jones entered no protest. I began to see that
there is a sort of understanding, a kind of freemasonry,
among men who have summer places. One shows his things;
the other runs them down, and smashes them. This makes
the whole thing easy at once. Beverly-Jones showed his
lawn.

"Your turf is all wrong, old boy," said Poppleton. "Look!
it has no body to it. See, I can kick holes in it with
my heel. Look at that, and that! If I had on stronger
boots I could kick this lawn all to pieces."

"These geraniums along the border," said Beverly-Jones,
"are rather an experiment. They're Dutch."

"But my dear fellow," said Poppleton, "you've got them
set in wrongly. They ought to slope _from_ the sun you
know, never _to_ it. Wait a bit"--here he picked up a
spade that was lying where a gardener had been
working--"I'll throw a few out. Notice how easily they
come up. Ah, that fellow broke! They're apt to. There,
I won't bother to reset them, but tell your man to slope
them over from the sun. That's the idea."

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