The Land of Mist Chapter 4 - Which Describes Some Strange Doings in Hammersmith

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CHAPTER IV. The Arthur Conan Doyle Library, which describes some strange doings in Hammersmith.
The article by the Joint Commissioners, such was their glorious title, aroused interest and contention. It had been accompanied by a depreciating literate from the sub-editor, which was meant to calm the susceptibilities of his orthodox readers.
BAKER STREET. But of course, you and I recognize how pestilential it all is. Malone found himself at once plunged into a huge correspondence for and against, which in itself was enough to show how vitally the question was in the minds of men.
All the previous articles had only elicited a growl here or there from a high-bound Catholic or from an iron-clad Evangelical, but now his post-bag was full. Most of them were ridiculing the idea that psychic forces existed, and many were from writers who, whatever they might know of psychic forces, had obviously not yet learned to spell.
The spiritualists were in many cases not more pleased than the others, for Malone had, even while his account was true, exercised a journalist's privilege of laying an accent on the more humorous sides of it.
One morning in this succeeding week, Mr. Malone was aware of a large presence in the small room wherein he did his work at the office. A pageboy, who preceded the stout visitor, had laid a card on the corner of the table which bore the legend, James Bolsover, Provision Merchant, High Street, Hammersmith. It was none other than the genial president of last Sunday's congregation. He wagged a paper accusingly at Malone, but his good-humored face was wreathed in smiles. Well, well, said he, I told you that the funny side would get you. Don't you think it a fair account? Well, yes, Mr. Malone, I think you and the young woman have done your best for us. But of course you know nothing, and it all seems queer to you. Come to think of it, it would be a dill queerer if all the clever men who leave this earth could not among them find some way of getting a word back to us. But it's such a stupid word sometimes.
Well, there are a lot of stupid people leave the world. They don't change. And then, you know, one never knows what sort of messages need it. We had a clergyman in to see Mrs. Debs yesterday. He was broken-hearted because he had lost his daughter. Mrs. Debs got several messages through that she was happy, and that only his grief hurt her. That's no use, said he. Anyone could say that. That's not my girl. And then suddenly she said, But I wish to goodness you would not wear a Roman collar with a coloured shirt. That sounded a trivial message, but the man began to cry. That's her! he sobbed. She was always chippin me about my collars. It's the little things that count in this life, just the homely, intimate things, Mr. Malone. Malone shook his head. Anyone would remark on a coloured shirt and a clerical collar.
Mr. Bolsover laughed. You're a hard proposition. So was I once. So I can't blame you. But I called here with a purpose. I expect you are a busy man, and I know that I am. So I'll get down to the brass tacks. First, I wanted to say that all our people that have any sense are pleased with the article. Mr. Algernon mainly wrote me that it would do good. And if he is pleased, we are all pleased. Mainly the barrister, mainly the religious reformer. That's how he will be known. Well, what else? Only that we would help you if you and the young lady wanted to go further in the matter. Not for publicity, mind you, but just for your own good, though we don't shrink from publicity either. I have physical phenomena, and I have seances at my own home, without a professional medium, and if you would like. There's nothing I would like so much. Then you shall come, both of you. I don't have many outsiders. I wouldn't have one of those psychic research people inside my doors. Why should I go out of my way to be insulted by all their suspicions and their traps? They seem to think that folk have no feelings. But you have some ordinary common sense. That's all we ask.
But I don't believe. Would that not stand in the way?
Not in the least. So long as you're fair-minded and don't disturb the conditions, all is well. Spirits out to the body don't like disagreeable people any more than spirits in the body do. Be gentle and civil, same as you would to any other company.
Well, I can promise that. They are a funny some times, said Mr. Bolsover in reminiscent vain. It is as well to keep on the right side of them. They are not allowed to hurt humans, but we all do things we're not allowed to do, and they are a very human themselves. You remember how the Times correspondent got his head cut open with the tambourine in one of the Davenport brothers' seances? Very wrong, of course, but it happened. No friend ever got his head cut open. There was another case down Stepney Way. A moneylender went to a seance. Some victim that he had driven to suicide got into the medium. He got the moneylender by the throat, and it was a close thing for his life. But time off, Mr. Malone. We sit once a week and have done for four years without a break. Eight o'clock Thursdays. Give us a day's notice and I'll get Mr. Mailey to meet you. He can answer questions better than I. Next Thursday, very good. And Mr. Bolsover lurched out of the room. Both Malone and Enid Challenger had, perhaps, been more shaken by their short experience than they had admitted. But both were sensible people who agreed that every possible natural cause should be exhausted, and very thoroughly exhausted, before the bounds of what is possible should be enlarged. Both of them had the utmost respect for the ponderous, intellect of Challenger, and were affected by his strong views, though Malone was compelled to admit in the frequent arguments in which he was plunged that the opinion of a clever man who has had no experience is really of less value than that of the man in the street who has actually been there. These arguments, as often as not, were with Mervyn, editor of the psychic paper Dawn, which dealt with every phase of the occult, from the lore of the Rosicrucians to the strange regions of the students of the Great Pyramid, or of those who uphold the Jewish origin of our blond Anglo-Saxons. Mervyn was a small, eager man with a brain of a high order, which might have carried him to the most lucrative heights of his profession, had he not determined to sacrifice worldly prospects in order to help what seemed to him to be a great truth. As Malone was eager for knowledge and Mervyn was equally keen to impart it, the waiters at the literary club found it no easy matter to get them away from the corner table in the window at which they were wont to lunch. Looking down at the long gray curve of the embankment and the noble river with its vista of bridges, the pair would linger over their coffee, smoking cigarettes and discussing various sides of this most gigantic and absorbing subject, which seemed already to have disclosed new horizons to the mind of Malone. There was one warning given by Mervyn, which aroused impatience, amounting almost to anger, in Malone's mind. He had the hereditary Irish objection to coercion, and it seemed to him to be appearing once more in an insidious and particularly objectionable form. You're going to one of Bolsover's family seances, said Mervyn. They are, of course, well known among our people, though few have been actually admitted, so you may consider yourself privileged. He has clearly taken a fancy to you. He thought I wrote fairly about them. Well, it wasn't much of an article, but still among the dreary, purblind nonsense that assails us, it did show some traces of dignity and balance and sense of proportion. Malone waved a deprecating cigarette. Bolsover seances and others like them are, of course, things of no moment to the real psychic. They are like the root foundations of a building, which certainly help to sustain the edifice, but are forgotten when once you come to inhabit it. It is the higher superstructure with which we have to do.