Bender put down his cigar, clasped his hands, laid them on the table, and closed his eyes. In a minute his whole face seemed transfigured. A certain sensual expression it had worn was displaced by one of rapt and tender interest. The lids of the eyes hung loosely over the uprolled balls. He looked five years younger. He sighed several times heavily, moved his lips and throat as if laboring to speak, and then seemed absorbed as if witnessing unspeakable things. He remained thus four or five minutes, and then put out his hands and placed them on one of Peek’s.
“Ah! this is a good hand,” said the young seer; “I like the feel of it. I wish his would speak as well of him.”
“Of whom do you mean?”
“Of this one whose hands are on yours. Ah! he is weak and you are strong. He knows the right, but he will not do the right. He knows there is a heaven, and yet he walks hellward.”
“Can we not save him?” asked Peek.
“No. His own bitter experiences must be his tutor.”
“Why will he try to deceive,” asked Peek;—“to deceive sometimes even in these manifestations of his wonderful gift?”
“You see it is the very condition of that gift that he should be impressible to influences whether good or bad. He takes his color from the society which encamps around him. Sometimes, as now, the good ones come, and then so bitterly he bewails his faults! Sometimes the bad get full possession of him, and he is what they will,—a drunkard, a liar, a thief, a scoffer. Yes! I have known him to scoff at these great facts which make spirit existence to him a certainty.”
“Can I help him in any way? Will money aid him to throw off the bad influences?”
“No. Poor as he is, he has too much money. He doesn’t know the true uses of it. He must learn them through suffering. Leave him to the discipline of the earth-life. You know what that is. How much you have passed through! How sad, and yet how brave and cheerful you have been! It all comes to me as I press the palm of your hand. Ah! you have sought her so long and earnestly! And you cannot find her! And you think she is faithful to you still!”