“Are you immortal, Farr?” he asked abruptly.
“I hope so,” said Mr. Farr. “Unworthy though I be.”
“Exactly,” said Mr. Huss. “And so that is the way out for us. You and I, Mr. Dad from his factory, and Sir Eliphaz from his building office, are to soar. It is all arranged for us, and that is why the tragic greatness of life is to be hidden from my boys....
“Yet even so,” continued Mr. Huss, “I do not see why you should be so anxious for technical science and so hostile to the history of mankind.”
“Because it is not a true history,” said Sir Eliphaz, his hair waving about like the hair of a man electrified by fresh ideas. “Because it is a bunch of loose ends that are really not ends at all, but only beginnings that pass suddenly into the unseen. I admit that in this world nothing is rationalized, nothing is clearly just. I admit everything you say. But the reason? The reason? Because this life is only the first page of the great book we have to read. We sit here, Mr. Huss, like men in a waiting-room.... All this life is like waiting outside, in a place of some disorder, before being admitted to the wider reality, the larger sphere, where all the cruelties, all these confusions, everything—will be explained, justified—and set right.”
He paused, and then perceiving that Mr. Huss was about to speak he resumed, raising his voice slightly.
“And I do not speak without my book in these matters,” he said. “I have been greatly impressed—and, what is more, Lady Burrows has been greatly impressed, by the writings of two thoroughly scientific men, two thoroughly scientific men, Dr. Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge. Ever since she lost her younger sister early in life Lady Burrows has followed up this interest. It has been a great consolation to her. And the point is, as Sir Oliver insists in that wonderful book ‘Raymond,’ that continued existence in another world is as proven now as the atomic theory in chemistry. It is not a matter of faith, but knowledge. The partition is breached at last. We are in communication. News is coming through.... Scientific certainty....”
Sir Eliphaz cleared his throat. “We have already evidences and descriptions of the life into which we shall pass. Remember this is no idle talk, no deception by Sludges and the like; it is a great English scientific man who publishes these records; it is a great French philosopher, no less a man than that wonderful thinker—and how he thinks!—Professor Bergson, who counselled their publication. A glory of science and a glory of philosophy combine to reassure us. We walk at last upon a path of fact into that further world. We know already much. We know, for example, that those who have passed over to that higher plane have bodies still. That I found—comforting. Without that—one would feel bleak. But, the messages say, the internal organs are constituted differently. Naturally. As one would have expected. The dietary is, I gather, practically non-existent. Needless. As the outline is the same the space is, I presume, used for other purposes. Some sort of astral storage.... They do not bleed. An interesting fact. Lady Burrows’ sister is now practically bloodless. And her teeth—she had lost several, she suffered greatly with her teeth—her teeth have all been replaced—a beautiful set. Used now only for articulate speech.”
“‘Raymond’ all over again,” said the doctor.
“You have read the book!” said Sir Eliphaz.