The Tyranny of the Dark

by Hamlin Garland

"No—I'd rather you'd all talk. Perhaps they will let me take part in the demonstration to-night. They promised to do so, you remember."

Weissman recounted some of the experiences Zöllner had enjoyed in Germany shortly after the Fox sisters became so celebrated in America. "Crookes and Wallace and several others went into the whole question at that time—the world rang with the controversy. But the clamor passed, the phenomena passed. It is like an epidemic, it comes and it goes, and in the end is humanity the wiser? No."

"Yes, it is," broke in Clarke. "We are just that much more certain of the indestructible life of the soul—every wave of this spirit-sea leaves a deposit of fact on the beach of time, makes death that much less dreadful. We make gains each decade. Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, Alfred Russel Wallace, Lombroso have all been convinced of the reality of these phenomena. Surely such men must influence the thought of their time. Experimental psychology is on the right road—"

Morton was suffering with the girl, whose hand was beginning to tremble beneath his palm. She no longer replied to his questions, but that she was still awake he knew, for he could hear her sighing deeply, so deeply that the sound troubled him almost as if she were weeping. His impulse was to rise and turn on the light and give over this trial, which could only end in humiliating her. "Her temerity is a part of her malady," he argued. "It has arisen through years of misconceived petting and nursing on the part of her mother. Up to this moment her performances have always been in the presence of friends and relatives, or for the consolation of those eager to believe, and therefore easily deluded. Every sitter has conspired to practically force her into an elaborate series of deceptions, each deceit being built upon and made necessary by the other. It is pitiful, but she now believes in herself—that is pathetically certain. Otherwise she would not have yielded herself so completely into the hands of an inexorable investigator like Weissmann. She must take the consequences," he ended, with grim closing of the lips. "We must be cruel in order to be kind. This night may be her salvation."

Weissmann was replying to Mrs. Lambert. "I do not care for a return of my dead, madam; what I wish your daughter to do is quite simple. I would like her to move a particle of matter from A to B, without a known push or a pull—that is to say, by a power not known to science—as Zöllner claimed Slade was able to do for him."

"She can do it," cried Clarke. "She can move a chair from A to B without bringing to bear any of the known forces. She can suspend the law of gravity. She can make a closed piano play, and she can read sealed letters in an ebony box tightly closed and locked."

"You claim too much, my friend," replied Weissmann, ironically. "We shall be satisfied with much less. If she will change one one-hundredth part of a grain from one scale to another, under my conditions, I will be satisfied. The most wonderful phenomena taking place in the dark have no value to me."

Mrs. Lambert interposed. "Please don't argue—it prevents the coming of the spirits."

Both men felt rebuked and the group again settled into silence. Suddenly, Kate began to laugh, "Isn't it childish? Really, Morton, if our friends could see us sitting around here in the dark, as we are now, they would roar. Why should it all be so silly, Mr. Clarke?"

"It is not silly if we take the right view. We must sit together in order to get into harmony. We further these conditions by sitting in subdued light with fingers touching. Song adds still more to this concert of thought. Nothing is really silly or prosaic—all depends upon the minds of those—"