Chapter 6

They both laughed; and as Castleton would be on his way home in a few moments, Bainbridge was thoroughly pleased with my proposal. Castleton tacitly consented, and in half a minute seemed to have forgotten the episode--or, at most, gave indication of remembrance only by an apparent desire to be over-agreeable to Bainbridge. A moment later he said to me,

"My dear sir, I hastened my visit here this morning out of consideration for yourself. Last evening after you had departed, Mr. ---- called at the Loomis House to see you. I happened to meet him as, in some disappointment at having missed you, he was leaving the hotel, where he had learned that you might be gone for two days. I then offered to deliver any message that he should send to you, this morning. When he was informed that you were but ten miles away, in the country, he said that his business with you was pressing; and he asked if it would be possible for you to return to town for a few hours this morning. Then I said that I would convey to you his wishes, and that if you so desired you could be at your hotel before nine o'clock--at which hour he said he would call at the Loomis House, with the hope of meeting you."

I thanked the doctor; and after consulting Bainbridge, said I would avail myself of the offer to return at once to Bellevue. I appreciated that it would be Bainbridge and not I who would have to manage Peters. It was a disappointment to think of missing Peters' story at first-hand; but I hoped to return by the middle of the afternoon, and I knew that Bainbridge could repeat with accuracy all that the old sailor should say. I doubted whether Bainbridge could extract very much from the old man's senile intellect before my return, as the aged voyager was, both in mind and body, quite feeble, and of little endurance. Besides, when once started and warmed to his subject--and very little information could be gained till he was so started--he would no doubt be garrulous.

Doctor Castleton and I started for town at a brisk trot, the doctor having parted from Bainbridge in the best of humors. His last words, shouted back as we drove off, were, "Don't forget the calomel at nine-thirty, doctor; and add to the treatment whatever you may think best. I trust you implicitly. Send me word if you need help."

Strange man! So pleasant, and so harsh; so grand, and so ignoble; so great, and so small; so broad, and so narrow; so kind, and so unkind. As my mind ran along in this channel, I wondered how one and the same man could express the views that he had proclaimed in connection with his medical association, and yet speak of life and death as he had spoken to me on the day preceding. What did he really believe? Could the actor-temperament, displaying itself on most occasions, in connection with a display at times of his natural self, as we say, account for all his eccentricities?

As we fairly flew along the forest road, nearing our destination by a mile in each three minutes, we came to the only hill on the entire route which was considerable, both in extent and in degree of gradient. Doctor Castleton allowed the gait of his horses to slacken into a slow walk; and--ever nervous, ever active--he reached into the side pocket of his linen duster, and drew forth a small book, apparently fresh from the publisher.

"'The Mistakes of the Gods, and Other Lectures,'" he said, looking at the back of the volume, and reading its title. "Ah, 'The Gods.' The title, sir, almost tells the whole story; and so far as you and I are concerned, it is almost a waste of time for us to open the book--and a crime against themselves for ignorant men to do so."

"The author must be one of your 'holy terrors' that I hear mentioned," I said. "A Western 'bad man' no doubt. Sad! sad! is it not?"

"Oh, no, no; the author is not a cowboy--he's a perfect gentleman--as polished as I am; and there's nothing very sad in the book. It contains several lectures in the line of agnostic agitation, which were from time to time delivered by a very talented, but, as I think, mistaken man. When I say mistaken, I do not mean mistaken in the sense that our church people might apply the term to him; for our church people seem to misunderstand him, almost as greatly as he misapprehends the purposes of nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxon Christian workers. But mark my words, sir, you will soon, in England, hear of this young 'infidel' lecturer; for with his keen brain, his invincible logic, his concise and beautiful rhetoric, he will soon be recognized as the most popular living agnostic. His home is not far distant from Bellevue, and I have frequently heard him lecture. I think him the best platform orator I have ever listened to, though I have twice been charmed by the eloquence of Phillips, and a dozen times by that of Beecher. I shall not outrage your own and my own manhood by alluding to anything which the more partisan church people say of this brilliant agnostic; and I say what I do, only because in your distant home you may some day wonder just what is behind an agnostic demonstration such as he is leading up to, and which is certain to centralize the dissatisfied spirit of the country into an anti-church propaganda of no mean proportions. I am opposed to such a movement; but I believe in truth as the only durable weapon, and I love truth for truth's sake--I should refuse to enter the gateway of heaven if liars were admitted. I cannot go into the history of this man, but this much is fact: There are reasons which cause him to believe that in striking at Christianity he is performing a highly praiseworthy action. In this belief he is as sincere and as enthusiastic in his cold logical way, as is any Christian in _his_ belief. If duplicity were possible to this man--or if he could have found it consistent with his sense of right even to keep silence concerning his opinion on religious subjects--he would by this time have been Governor of Illinois; and, with his ability, there is no elective office in the country to which he might not aspire with reasonable certainty of success. He himself is aware of all this, as are all who know him. At the early age of thirty-three, before his views were generally known, he was our Attorney-General. No political party will ever again dare to nominate him for an office."

"This is all wrong," I said; "it savors of religious persecution."

"True," said Castleton, "it does; but the fact is as I state it. He would if he ran for office lose enough votes from his own party to allow his opponent to win."

"But, my dear doctor," I said, "I fail to catch your reasons for thinking this man mistaken. You surely would not have him be untrue to himself?"

"Oh, no--never that! I mean that he is intellectually mistaken in thinking that the world is still to be benefited by agnostic agitation among the masses. Voltaire had a good reason for proclaiming and teaching his views, because in France, in his day, religious infidelity was necessary to political liberty. Tom Paine had a good reason for his course, because Christianity, misrepresented at that time by mistaken or corrupt men, was arrayed on the side of the despot, and so continued up to the beginning of the French Revolution. But this man has no good excuse for a fight against church influence in the United States, now in 1877. The influence of the Christian church is now certainly exerted for good, and does not attempt to restrict the liberty of any man, or of society."

"But did you not just say that this agnostic's views would forever prevent his election to public office, here in this great free country, in the year 1877 and onward?"

"We cannot have a free country and not allow a man to vote against another, even if his vote were influenced by the cut of a candidate's trousers."

"Yes," I said; "but if the cut of a candidate's trousers influenced a man's vote, such a man would be a good object for education. Your agnostic would no doubt say that the influence of church is to be fought so long as it judges of a man's capability to do one thing well by his opinion on a totally different subject."

"You will never educate the people out of their prejudices; but I myself should vote against this man because his course shows his views to be inconsistent with statesmanship. No person desires to restrict another's individual opinions; we only combat this man's because of their effects, as he combats those of his opponents. There are as many agnostics, proportionally, that would not vote for a Presbyterian, for instance, for public office, as there are Presbyterians who, under like circumstances, would not vote for an agnostic."

"But in what way does the belief, or want of belief, of an agnostic, prevent an otherwise able man from being a statesman?" I asked.

"No doubt some of the best statesmen living are agnostics; but they are not agnostic agitators. Men who are able to digest and assimilate agnostic opinions, are able to initiate those ideas for themselves; and only men who are able to properly digest and assimilate such ideas should have them at all."

"Can you," I asked, "state an instance in which what you indicate as premature education of the masses in agnostic ideas, might lead to injury to the persons so instructed, or to society at large?"

"Yes, sir, I can. Your ignorant American--the 'cracker' element of the South, your ignorant Italian, and your ignorant Irishman are injured by taking away their religious beliefs. The first of these, when church people, dress neatly, are honorable, and have some upward-tending ambitions; whilst those of them that are infidels are reduced--men and women--to a state of ambitionless inertia and tobacco saturation--if no worse. The two latter are either under religious control, or under secret-society control. If the lower-class Irishman or Italian, unendowed with judgment to rightly use the little knowledge he already possesses--to properly interpret his own feelings or guide his own impulses--has not his church with its priestly control, he will have his secret-society with its secret executive control, its bovine fury, and its senseless pertinacity, the poison-bowl and the dagger. For my part, if a man must either seek liberty from ambush, and learn independence through treachery, or else be on his knees before a graven image, suited to his mental calibre--let us keep him on his knees till he can rise to something better than murder. Why, sir, an Irish Republican (a rarity)--an editor, once said to me that some of our Irish emigrants have hair on their teeth when they get to America; and, though I may be wrong, I never see an Italian organ-grinder without first thinking of a dagger between my ribs, and then settling down to a comfortable feeling that if the fellow's a Catholic the confessional stands between me and such a danger. The man who attempts to teach such fellows about complete liberty should be responsible for any consequent acts."

"Still, doctor," I said, "the road to universal knowledge cannot be all smooth. Ground must be broken by somebody. If there is anything in Christianity that bars the way to final freedom of mind for the whole human race, then I myself say, clear away the obstructions--the work cannot begin too soon or continue too vigorously."

"I see nothing in true Christianity but good for the human race--surely you speak only to call out my own views. If there is anything in any church policy or polity which requires reforming, let it be reformed."

"Excuse me, doctor," I said; "but I had thought you yourself an agnostic. Do you not think that if a religion will not bear the test of cold reason, it should be discarded from the lives of men?"

"No, I do not. The human mind is not comprised in intellect alone--it has its moral or emotional side, wholly apart from reason. Religion is not to be reasoned about--it is to be felt. No founder of a religion ever claimed for it a place in man's reason. Now just think for a minute. Let us leave the ignorant, and consider what the best of men are--men who have attained a mental cultivation certainly as great as will ever be possible to the masses. Take the very highest society in England and America--to what extent are its members controlled by _reason_, and to what extent by _feeling_ and by the fixed sentiments growing out of feeling? Ratiocination does not influence one of their actions in a million. There is not within my knowledge a single instance where a purely rational conception has been the basis of practice, in opposition to feeling."

"Surely," I said, "you do not mean to say that educated men are not governed in the main by reason?"

"I mean just what I say--that I do not know, in practice, a single instance in which they are so governed in opposition to feeling. Pshaw, pshaw! young man; if we are to compel the acts of practical daily life to conform with a dialectic demonstration of what is best for us--to do only what is in reason best for us--we must simply cease to live, though we do continue to breathe. Even in physics, of what use are logical demonstrations, when the premises are only a foundation more unstable than quicksand--purely provisional?

"Now if these agnostics were truthful--which they try to be; and were consistent--which they are not, they would be in a trying situation. Reason shows no advantage to a man in kissing his wife; he has no syllogistic endorsement for supporting her and the children; in fact, he has no business to have children--all the result of feeling or sentiment, all rubbish, and beneath the intellect of a man who worships Pure Reason! And if the demands of man's moral or affectional nature are a reason for such indulgences, then his aspirations to the great primal cause of the known, the unknown, and (to us here and now) unknowable wonders and mysteries of the universe without, and of ourselves within, is also justifiable in reason, and ought not by wit and eloquence to be juggled out of the ingenuous mind. The masses are governed by religion, directly and indirectly, to an extent much greater than at first thought appears. The daily life of the agnostic himself is shaped by his Christian heredity and environment. Now our Author furnishes no substitute for this intuitive demand of being. If reason can supply nothing in place of religion, why not allow those who possess religious conviction to retain so agreeable, and to others beneficial, a belief?--Now right here I can detect the voice of the agnostic agitator--this is his strongest situation, and he simply smiles when you make this opening for him. The voice says, 'Agreeable? Agreeable to burn forever in hell? Well, well, my friend--our ideas of pleasure differ.' This is sophistical twaddle. It is not the Christian that suffers from a fear of hell--it is the sinner, through his guilty conscience. Conscience, conscience; the only barrier between us and hell on earth! Christians are comforted by the thought of a loving Christ--Christians, in my experience, do not suffer."

"Why, sir," I said, "I cannot but wonder that you are not yourself a professed Christian."

"Never mind me, young man.--But here we are on the edge of town. I could, if I wanted to, preach a sermon capable of converting every heathen within sound of my voice. Once, at a camp-meeting, I did preach a sermon; and I tell you, the old people looked mighty sober, and the younger and more susceptible of my auditors covered their faces with their hands and seemed to shake with grief and contrition. But, pshaw, pshaw; people don't go to hear either witty agnostics lecture, or preachers preach, to get something for their brain-boxes to reason about. Believe me "--tapping the volume, still in his hand--"this sort of thing won't make anybody reason. After all, the question is one of swapping off Christ for an Illinois lawyer."

The EIGHTH Chapter

It lacked half an hour of nine o'clock as we drove up before the Loomis House, where I alighted, and ran up to my rooms. I had scarcely more than made a hasty toilet, when Arthur came in. After telling me who had, during my absence, called to see me, and after attending to some trifling wants which I expressed, he shuffled his feet in a style that I had learned to recognize as indicating a desire to say something not within the compass of our purely business relationship--a liberty which the precedents of our first two days of acquaintanceship in connection with later events had solidified into a vested right.

"Well, Arthur?" I said.

"I read the whole book, sir--there it is, on the table. That book just did get me. But what did become of Pym and Peters? And is it true you've found that old soc-doligin' pirate?"

I told him that Peters was found.

"Well, now!" he continued. "I'd like to see the old four-foot-eighter. But if you love me, tell me what that white curtain reachin' down from the sky was, and what made the ocean bilin' hot? What made them ante-artic niggers so 'fraid of everything white, and what was the hiryglificks on the black marble meant to say? And, most of all, who was the female that stood in the way of the boat? Say--I don't blame anybody--but if Mr. Poe knowed he didn't know these points, what did he get our mouths waterin' for? Did you find out these points yet?"

I explained to him that probably at that very moment Doctor Bainbridge was sitting on the edge of Dirk Peters' cot, drinking in the wonderful story; and that as soon as a certain gentleman had called to see me, I expected to return to Peters' house, and to remain until we knew all.

"Go slow," said Arthur, "and don't fall down on any importing points. Better take time, and catch everything. I asked Doctor Castleton last night what made that ocean bile; and he said he guessed the mouth of hell was down that way, and Satin had just opened the door to air out. That's him; if it ain't heaven it's got to be hell. But how old Peters ever lived this long with Castleton monkeyin' with him is a mighty funny thing.--But who's that?"

A rap had sounded on my door. My caller had arrived.

I did not succeed in getting back to Bainbridge and Peters so soon as I had expected. My business in the town dragged along far into the evening, and it was nine o'clock by the time I was at liberty. At ten o'clock I sent for a conveyance, and was driven to Peters' house, where I arrived just before midnight.

I found Peters sleeping soundly, and Bainbridge dozing in a chair. My entrance aroused Bainbridge. He arose, smiling, and was apparently glad to see me. I saw at a glance that he had been successful in obtaining from Peters the secrets of his antarctic voyage. "Well?" I asked.

"The information which I have gained," said Bainbridge, "even could I procure no more, would suffice to explain all those mysteries that Poe hints at as fact, and much that he seems to apprehend with that sixth sense which in the genius approaches a union of clairvoyance and prescience--mysteries of which he does not speak in language sufficiently clear for common comprehension. At all events, I am not disappointed; and more may yet be procured. There remains much of interest, in the way of _minutiæ_, which I expect to learn to-morrow. I know now what made that antarctic region more than tropical, and what the white curtain was--and is. I know how the hieroglyphics came in the caverns of black marl. That antarctic country exceeds, in the truly wonderful, anything in the world, old or new, with which I am acquainted, or of which I have heard."

"But is it true? Have you not been listening to fairy tales?--or, rather, to sailor tales?"

"When to-morrow I tell you what I have, hour after hour, with brief rests, drawn from that poor old battered hulk"--he pointed toward Peters' cot--"and when you consider what he is--then say if he is the man, or his sailor friends are the men, to invent such a story. I admit that at times during the day his mind seemed to wander slightly, and that he has the usual faculty of sea-faring men for exaggeration; so that at times I had to employ my best discrimination to enable me to separate the real from the fanciful, that I might retain the true and discard the untrue. He seems to have lived for more than a year in proximity to the South Pole, and his experiences were as marvellous as that country is strangely grand, and its people truly wonderful--Oh, no--nothing on the Gulliver order; the people are not dwarfs or giants, and they have no horses either that talk or that do not talk; no yahoos--nothing in that line. 'Wings?' Oh, no--no flying men or women, no women in gauze, either; everything quite in good taste and genteel. Just wait, now; you'll hear it all in an orderly way--which I myself did not, however. 'One-eyed?' I told you, just now, that it was all in good taste and genteel. No, no; nothing Homeric--no sheep, and no sirens. Now, I'm really tired, and you'll not succeed in starting me on a story that'll take six or eight hours to tell, even if we do not stop to discuss matters as we progress. To-morrow, as I before said, we will get from Peters all other possible facts, and no doubt we shall gather further particulars; then we will go to town. I intend to come out here every day till Peters gets better or dies--and I suppose you will not refuse to keep me company. Every evening we will meet in my rooms, or in yours, and I will recite the story in my own way. Now does that satisfy you?"

It satisfied me fully, I said; and then we spread our blankets, and made a night of it on the floor.

The next day Bainbridge spent the forenoon, for the most part, sitting on the edge of Dirk Peters' cot, listening to the old man talk, describe, explain. I walked out, and explored the immediately adjacent country, entertaining myself as best I could. At about two o'clock in the afternoon we started for town, leaving Peters much better than when two days before we had first, together, entered his humble home. We promised to see him the next day; and, in fact, one or both of us returned each day for many succeeding days. That evening Doctor Bainbridge came to my rooms, and began the recitation of Dirk Peters' story; and that, too, was continued from day to day.

And it is now time that the patient reader should also know the secrets of that far-distant antarctic region--secrets of which Poe himself died in ignorance--save as the genius, the seer, knows the wonders of heaven and earth--sees gems that lie in hidden places, and flowers that bloom obscurely, and feels the mysteries of ocean depths, and all that is so far--or near, so great--or small, that common vision sees it not.

The NINTH Chapter

There may be among my readers some who have never read "The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym," or have so long ago perused that interesting and mysterious conception, that they have forgotten even the outlines of the story. It is the purpose of the present chapter to review a few of the incidents in that narrative, a knowledge of which will add to the clearer understanding of Peters' story.

Those who are familiar with Edgar Allan Poe's admirable and entrancing narrative just mentioned, are aware that it is written in autobiographical form, the facts for the most part being furnished by Pym in the shape of journal or diary entries, which are edited by Mr. Poe. For such readers it will be but a waste of time to peruse the present chapter, brief though it is. And let me further say to any chance reader of mine who has never had opportunity to enjoy that exciting and edifying work of America's great genius of prose fiction, that he is to be envied the possession of the belated pleasure that awaits him--only a treasured memory of which delight remains to the rest of us.