I felt no inclination to add to his apparent disturbance by any remarks on what I had seen; but it struck me as remarkable, that, while he got into contortions and general restlessness, putting his hand to his brow, throwing one leg over another, closing his hands, and heaving long sighs, he never so much as thought it worth his pains to ask my opinion of the scene in the wood. It seemed as if he was so thoroughly convinced of a divine manifestation against him, that he despised any exceptional scepticism as utterly beneath his notice or attention—thoroughly engrossed, as he appeared to be, with the terrible sanction of a portent of some coming retribution. His silence in some degree distressed me, as I thought he resented my levity in commenting upon his convictions; so it was with some relief that Dr. Rogers came in and sat down at the table, apparently to wait for a call to the bedroom. A man this of ostentatious gloom,—too grave to deign to be witty, too sanctified to stoop to be cheerful, and therefore not the man I could have wished to see as the medical adviser, and perhaps the religious confidant, of my friend and his wife. A temperate man, too, by his own confession, pronounced over the top of a bottle; and he drank as if for health, while his manner of beslabbering the glass with his thick lips indicated a contempt for its confined capacity; a tumbler would have suited him better; and he waxed apparently graver when the delightful aroma of the Bordeaux grape fondled his nostrils. We got into supernaturals immediately, though how the subject was introduced I cannot remember; but Dr. Rogers was a grave and heavy advocate for divine manifestation, and Graeme's ear, circumcised to delicacy, hung upon his thick lips. I asked for instances beyond the domain of the addled brains of old women, or the excited fancies of young; and Graeme looked at me intently, without saying a word.
"I have seen hundreds die," said the doctor, "ay, strong men, the tissues of whose brain were, in comparison of those of your old women and young enthusiasts, as iron wires to pellicles of flesh. And how do they die if they are Christians, as all men ought to be? What is there in death, think you, to subvert the known laws of physiology? We might suppose, that as the spirit is about to leave the mortal frame, it will be fitful, and flit from tissue to tissue, and gleam and die away, to flare up again in some worldly image, perhaps, of the past; as where I have known it show the face of an early beloved one, long since gone, in all its first glory, to the eyes of a lover. Such are mere exceptions, from which no rule can be drawn; but they occur, and we admit them as consonant enough to natural causes. So far we all agree; but where is that consonance in all those numerous cases which have come under my own observation, where the man—a strong man even in death—is rapt into a vision set in a halo of light, and showing forth, as an assurance of divine favour, the very form and features of Him who died on the cross of Calvary? Is there anything in physiology to account for this? And then it occurs so often as almost to amount to a rule."
"I have too much respect for religion," replied I, "to throw a doubt on certain workings of the spirit in that mysterious condition when it hovers between the two worlds, and when it can hardly be said to belong to earth; but the case is entirely different where the common agencies are all working through their fitted and natural means. We can never say that any of those means are superseded—only others are substituted; and we do not understand the substitution."
"You are unfortunate," said the doctor, with a triumphant gravity. "If you admit that supernatural agencies ever have—in any stage of the world, in any place, way, or manner, or by any means—had to do with earthly things, or have to do in those days, or will have to do in any future time or place on the earth's surface, your admission closes up your mouth for ever."
"To do, in those days, on this night, not many hours agone!" cried Graeme, with rolling eyes. "Who cares for admissions of those who see, when one's own eyes are nearer the brain than are the eyes or lips of him who admits, or of him who denies?"
"Not hours ago!" said the doctor, fixing his big eyes on the face of Graeme; "and so near a birth?"
"Oh, she knows nothing," said Graeme.
"And I am supremely ignorant," said I.
"Of what?" inquired Rogers, turning his face again to Graeme, as if he would take him into his mouth.
But just as he expected an answer, a slight rap sounded from the door. Rogers himself opened it, and found that the call was for him. Graeme and I were left again together, but not to resume the former silence.