The Second Class Passenger Part 40

Mr. Newman's eyes looked over his head and beyond him.

"Then," he said, and a deep note reverberated in his even voice-- "then show me the day on which Christ died!"

He continued to look past Carrick at the shadowy end of the room, still smiling his strange and uplifted smile.

Carrick moved in his chair, with a half-gesture as of irritation.

"Look here," he said. "Pull yourself together, Newman. There are limits, you know, after all."

Two days elapsed before the evening on which the attempt was to be made; Carrick, alleging difficulties and dangers with long scientific names, had refused to try it earlier. He had been unwilling to try it at all.

"I don't want to mix up a matter of clear science with your religious emotions," he had declared. "And I've got a certain amount of religion of my own, for that matter. I manage to believe in it without corroboration; what's the matter with yours, that you can't do the same?"

But it was not corroboration which Mr. Newman desired. He had not so much argued as insisted; and it had been difficult to reason with his manner of one buoyed up, exalted, inspired. He had had his way, on the sole condition that he should wait two days--"and give sanity a chance," Carrick had added.

But on the stroke of nine, on the appointed evening, he was standing within the door of Carrick's study, his hat in his hand, a white silk m.u.f.fler about his neck, instead of a collar.

"I was very careful to eat very little at dinner," were his first words.

Carrick, who had been looking forward to his arrival with nervous dread, glanced up sharply with an affectation of annoyance at an interruption.

"More fool you," he barked, in his harshest voice. Mr. Newman smiled, and laid his hat down on the table and began to unwind his m.u.f.fler.

Carrick frowned at him. "I'm rather busy to-night, Newman," he said.

That had no effect. He rose. "Besides, something has occurred to me, and--it is not safe, you know."

Mr. Newman laid his m.u.f.fler beside his hat; without it he had a curiously incomplete and undressed appearance. He turned round.

"Oh yes, it is," he contradicted mildly. "As safe as it was on Monday, at any rate!"

"Ah!" Carrick caught him up eagerly. "But that wasn't safe, either.

I hadn't thought of this then. You see, we don't understand yet how the thing applies. What is it that becomes conscious in the period you see? Is it you, in an earlier incarnation? If so, supposing I--I let go of you at a time when you were dead! What happens then? Do I get you back--or what?"

He tried to make the consideration graphic, driving it at Mr.

Newman's serenity with a knit brow and a moving forefinger.

Mr. Newman shook his head. "I don't know," he answered, unmoved by Carrick's fervor. "I can't tell you that. But--you leave me where you found me--in the hands of my G.o.d."

With the same quiet cheerfulness, he crossed to the big chair, turned it to face the wall, and sat down in it. "I'm quite ready," he said.

Carrick was still standing by the table. He was frowning heavily; the proceeding was utterly against his inclination. When Mr. Newman spoke, he sighed windily, a sigh of resignation, of defeat.

"I warned you," he said, and wiped the palms of his hands on his trousers for what he had to do.

A less honest man than Carrick, finding himself in the like predicament, might plausibly have contrived a failure. Nothing easier than to tell Mr. Newman that nerves, a mental burden, or what not, stood in the way of the adventure. Mr. Carrick got to work forthwith.

Mr. Newman, supine in his chair, knew the preliminary stages of the process well. They took longer than usual to-night; both of them were unkeyed and had to compose themselves to the affair. But at last the visible world, the wall before him, commenced to dislimn; it shifted; it became mist, writhing and tinged with faint colors, that submerged his will and his consciousness, till they sank, gathering impetus, into a void below--the vacancy of the spirit that looses its hold on the body and is rudderless. He knew the blackness which is death, the momentary throe of entering it, the shock, the sense of chill, the dumbness.

"Ah!" Carrick saw that his head fell, and ceased his labors. He stood, gaunt and perplexed, contemplating the body from which he had expelled the will, the life--the soul. It was a plump body, well clad, well fed, a carcase that had absorbed much of its world. It cost labor and the pains of innumerable toilers to clothe it, nourish it, maintain it, guard, comfort, and embellish it. And an effort of ten minutes was enough to drain it of all save the fleshly, the mere b.e.s.t.i.a.l. The habit of his mind impelled him to sneer as he stood above it, to moralise in the tune of cynicism. "Ecce h.o.m.o!" were the words he chanced upon; but the flavor of them troubled him when he remembered the goal of the journey upon which that absent spirit had departed.

"Oh, Lord!" said Carrick, in a kind of whispering panic.

He cast scared looks to and fro, as though he feared the great room should contain a spy upon him. It was empty save for him and that witless body. He put his hands together with the gesture of a child and shut his eyes tight.

"Our Father," he began, "Which art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name!"

The place was as still as a church. He recited his prayer aloud, in a quiet, careful voice that echoed faintly among the book-shelves.

He bad got as far as "Thine is the kingdom, the power"--no farther-- when Mr. Newman stirred, and he gabbled the words to an end hastily before he opened his eyes. Mr. Newman came back to consciousness with a rush; his body inflated with life, his still face woke, and his vacant eyes, meeting Carrick's and recognising him, suddenly lit with sense--and terror.

"I say!" exclaimed Carrick; "will you have some water?"

His hand groped for the gla.s.s on the mantelshelf, but he continued to look at Mr. Newman, and presently he forgot the gla.s.s. Terror was the word, the terror of a man who finds--unawaited, ambushed in his being--depths and capacities unguessed and appalling. A blank, horror-ridden face fronted his own, till Mr. Newman put his hands before his face and shuddered. "What is it?" cried Carrick. "Old chap, what's up?"

"My G.o.d!"

It was not an expletive, but a prayer, a supplication. Mr. Newman dashed the hands from his face and sprang up. Carrick caught him by the arm.

"I say," he cried. "It's rot. It's a fake--it must be! Whatever happened--it's not a sure thing. Pull yourself together, Newman. I--I may be wrong; perhaps it's all an induced--you know, an illusion. I say, look here----"

"No!"

Gently, but with decision, Mr. Newman put his friendly hand away.

"It's not an illusion," he said.

He walked away. Carrick stood staring after him, a battlefield of compunctions and a growing curiosity. Mr. Newman was wrestling with his trouble in the shadows; minutes pa.s.sed before he came again into the lamplight. His face was blenched, but something like a stricken purpose dwelt on it.

"I'll tell you," he said. Then, wildly, "Oh, man! why did you let me?

This trick of yours--it's the knowledge of good and evil; it's the forbidden fruit. Why did you let me?"

Carrick stammered futilely; there was no answer possible to give.

"I am a Christian," went on Mr. Newman, as though he appealed for justification. "By my lights I serve G.o.d. I try not to judge others.

I've not judged you, have I, Carrick? You--you don't go to church, but I make a friend of you, don't I?"

"Yes," said Carrick.

"Then--why--" cried Mr. Newman--"why, of all people, should I--oh, Carrick, I don't know how to tell you."

Let Carrick's answer be remembered when his epitaph is written.

"Then don't tell me," he said. "I don't want to hear."

Mr. Newman shook his head. He had come to a standstill at the side of the big chair. He looked old and stricken and sad.

"Ah," he said. "But listen all the same."

He remained standing while he told his tale, with eyes that sought Carrick's listening face and fell away again.