"If my example please you," said Markham, kindly, "you will make me happy by profiting by it. Oh! you shall yet live long to convince the world that the human heart never can be so deadened to all good feelings as to be beyond redemption!"
"I do not think I shall live to an old age, sir," observed Smithers, sinking his voice to a mysterious whisper: "I have already had one warning!"
"One warning!" repeated Richard, surprised at this strange announcement.
"Yes, Mr. Markham. One night I was lying in bed;—the candle was flickering in the fire-place;—I happened to turn my eyes towards that puppet which hangs in the loft where I used to sleep until within the last few days,—and I saw another face looking over its shoulder at me."
"Another face!" ejaculated Markham: "what do you mean?"
"I mean, sir, that Harriet Wilmot's countenance appeared above the shoulder of the figure!" answered Smithers, with a shudder.
"My good friend," said Markham, "your imagination was disordered at the moment. The days of spectres and apparitions are gone by. The Almighty does not address himself to man by means of terrors which nurses use to frighten children. I will show you, by a simple process of reasoning, that it is impossible to see a ghost—even if such a thing should exist. You do not see with the eye precisely in the way in which you may imagine. Strictly speaking, the eye does not see at all. The effect is this: substantial objects are reflected in the retina of the eye as in a mirror; and the impression is conveyed from the retina into the brain, where it assumes a proper and suitable shape in the imagination or conception. But in order that objects should so strike the retina of the eye, they must be substantial: they must have length, breadth, and thickness;—they must displace so much air as to leave the void filled up by their own forms. Now, even if the spirits of the departed be allowed to revisit this earth, no mortal eye can see them, because they are unsubstantial, and they cannot be reflected in the retina of the eye. I have only entered into this explanation to convince you that an unsettled mind or a disordered imagination—arising from either moral or physical causes—can alone conjure up phantoms."
"Well, sir, we will not talk any more upon this subject, if you please," said Smithers. "I understand what you say; and I thank you for your goodness in explaining the matter to me. I now wish to ask you whether you would rather that I should communicate all I have told you to Katherine; or whether you will yourself?"
"My good friend," said Richard, "you acted so noble a part towards her mother that this duty will better become you. Katherine will thank you for your goodness towards her parent—especially as that goodness arose from no interested motives; and you will rejoice in the grateful outpourings of the heart of that orphan whom you reared, and to whom you gave a home. To-morrow you and your son can visit her: the day after to-morrow, in the evening, I wish both of you—yourself and your son—to call upon me."
Smithers promised to obey our hero's desires in all respects, and then took his leave,—wondering how any human being could possess such influence over the heart, to humanize and reclaim it, as Richard Markham.