“I was forgetting to tell you about my adventure,” I said, hoping to give her a change of thought and thereby stop her croaking. “It was really exciting.” I then described my experience at the unlisted rooming-house and the deaconess home.
“How comforting it is to know that the spirits of our loved ones are always hovering around us, guarding us from harm!” she commented solemnly. “After such a direct manifestation—What!” she cried, interrupting herself as she realized the significance of my smile. “Do you mean to say that you don’t believe your mother could come to warn you?”
“I know nothing about would or could, but I don’t believe she did. What you call a direct manifestation seems to me merely a vestigial faculty inherited from our remote ancestors—who, not yet having developed the orderly, conscious mind, existed by means of powers akin to instinct of animals. It may not be very flattering to think of one’s ancestors as the missing link, but I prefer it to the suspicion that the spirit of my mother has nothing better to do than to chase around after me.”
For a few minutes there was a profound silence. Then Alice began to snap and unsnap the fastening of her glove while I continued to polish my shoes.
“Well,” my friend began with a sigh, “of course every one has a right to their own opinion. I don’t believe in the missing-link theory. What’s more, I do believe in a hereafter and that I shall be able to come back and help the people I love.”
“Don’t forget the parable of Lazarus and Dives,” I cautioned her, as I stored the bottle of shoe-polish on the shelf of my tiny wardrobe. “In that parable it is made very plain that as the brothers of Dives had not heeded the teachings of Moses and the prophets they would pay no attention to Lazarus risen from the dead. My plans for the next world do not include any time or thought devoted to the interest of my friends.”
Alice dragged her chair nearer to mine and looked eagerly into my face.
“Tell me,” she asked breathlessly. “What do you plan to do? What is the very first thing you plan to do when you step behind the curtain of now?”
“Get Mr. Shakespeare and Lord Bacon in a corner and make the old codgers tell me who really did write the plays.”
Unable to keep my face straight a moment longer I hurried across the hall and turned on the water in the bathtub. Returning to the room a few minutes later it was evident from the prim set of Alice’s lips that she had decided to overlook my levity. What had come over the girl?—I wondered. Why had she suddenly become such a killjoy?