'I shall not be ashamed of you. Never be afraid of that. Only, if you will come with us to-morrow, don't allow yourself to be buoyed up by delusions. Be prepared to face the facts--as my sister should do.'
'It's no delusion that my James is alive. Whether he's your brother, or whether he isn't, I know that he's alive.'
As the day went on I grew more sure of it. When they had gone, and I was alone again with the children while they played, I sat there feeling that if it wasn't for my stupidity I could soon find out what James wanted. He wanted something; that I knew. What it was, I couldn't think. I couldn't hear his voice, as I had done before, but I knew that he was trying all the time to get something into my head, which, if I wasn't so silly, I should understand. I'd a sort of feeling that he wanted to tell me where he was; to get me to come to him; to get him out of trouble. That he was in trouble of some sort I was sure.
He used to talk to me about what he called 'telepathy.' I remember the word, because he wrote it down and made me learn it. It was one of those strange ideas he was always getting hold of. I always believed that, when he chose, he was a regular old-fashioned magician--like you read of in the Bible. Some of the things he did--and a great many more that he wanted to do--were against nature. When I hinted that that was what I felt, he'd look at me in that queer way of his, and say that magic was knowledge, and knowledge was magic; and that you'd only got to know everything to do everything. It was the same with this 'telepathy.' According to him you can make yourself understood by a person who's thousands of miles away--if you've only got the knack of it. He declared that when he was away from me, sometimes, if he was just in the right frame of mind, he could tell what I was doing and saying, and even thinking. There was something in what he said. When he'd been away for weeks together, when he came back he'd tell me what I'd been doing at a certain time on a certain day--even my very words!--but principally at night when I was alone. When I was praying for him he always knew. Dozens of times has he shown me the words--written down on a sheet of paper, date and hour and all!--which I had used in my prayers, when I was asking God to tell me where he was, and send him home to me. It did make me feel so ashamed; because he had such a way about him when he was showing you a thing like that.
But while he could understand me I couldn't him, though over and over again I've known that there was something he wanted to say to me, and that he was trying to say it. And, as he told me to, I've put down on paper the time the feeling came over me. And when he returned he'd show me his piece of paper; sure enough, when he was trying to speak to me was the very time I felt he was.
'Persevere,' he'd say. 'You and I'll get into telepathic communication yet before we've done; and when we do we'll show this ancient and highly civilised nation a thing or two. There's more to be got out of Egyptian tombs than mummies.'
What he meant I couldn't say. He was always talking in a way that was beyond me altogether. But I knew that he had some scheme in his head.
Now the feeling I have been talking about was on me again; that he was trying to say something he wanted me to understand. It was that feeling made me so sure he wasn't dead; though what he wanted to say I couldn't imagine. I knew that it was only my silliness which prevented me from finding out, and that made me so mad. I might be doing the very thing he didn't want me to; and I wouldn't do anything he didn't want me to do for all the world. I would have given something to have just been sensible enough to understand, but if you're not sensible always you can't be now and then. Though I have heard tell of how even idiots have an occasional gleam of good, sound, sterling sense.
Idiot or no idiot--and I know I'm not far off even at the best of times--how I did wish that I could have had one gleam just then!