"Wasn't there a great deal more said about presentiments15 forty or fifty years ago than there is now?"
Wanhope had been lapsing17 deeper and deeper into the hollow of his chair; but he now pulled himself up, and turned quickly toward Rulledge. "What made you think of that?" he asked.
"I don't know. Why?"
"Because I was thinking of it myself." He glanced at me, and I shook my head.
"Well," Minver said, "if it will leave Acton out in the cold, I'll own that I was thinking of it, too. I was going back in my mind, for no reason that I know of, to my childhood, when I first heard of such a thing as a presentiment16, and when I was afraid of having one. I had the notion that presentiments ran in the family."
[Pg 47]"Why had you that notion?" Rulledge demanded.
"I don't know that I proposed telling," the painter said, giving himself to his pipe.
"Perhaps you didn't have it," Rulledge retaliated18.
"Perhaps," Minver assented19.
Wanhope turned from the personal aspect of the matter. "It's rather curious that we should all three have had the same thing in mind just now; or, rather, it is not very curious. Such coincidences are really very common. Something must have been said at dinner which suggested it to all of us."
"All but Acton," Minver demurred20.
"I mightn't have heard what was said," I explained. "I suppose the passing of all that sort of sub-beliefs must date from the general lapse21 of faith in personal immortality22."
"Yes, no doubt," Wanhope assented. "It is very striking how sudden the lapse was. Everyone who experienced it in himself could date it to a year, if not to a day. The agnosticism of scientific men was of course all the time undermining the fabric23 of faith, and then it fell in abruptly, reaching one believer after another as fast as the ground was taken wholly or partly from under his feet. I can remember how people [Pg 48]once disputed whether there were such beings as guardian24 spirits or not. That minor25 question was disposed of when it was decided26 that there were no spirits at all."
"Naturally," Minver said. "And the decay of the presentiment must have been hastened by the failure of so many presentiments to make good."
"The great majority of them have failed to make good, from the beginning of time," Wanhope replied.
"There are two kinds of presentiments," Rulledge suggested, with a philosophic air. "The true and the untrue."
"Like mushrooms," Minver said. "Only, the true presentiment kills, and the true mushroom nourishes. Talking of mushrooms, they have a way in Switzerland of preserving them in walnut27 oil, and they fill you with the darkest forebodings, after you've filled yourself with the mushrooms. There's some occult relation between the two. Think it out, Rulledge!"
Rulledge ignored him in turning to Wanhope. "The trouble is how to distinguish the true from the untrue presentiment."
"It would be interesting," Wanhope began, but Minver broke in upon him maliciously28.
"To know how much the dyspepsia of our predecessors29 had to with the prevalence of [Pg 49]presentimentalism? I agree with you, that a better diet has a good deal to do with the decline of the dark foreboding among us. What I can't understand is, how a gross and reckless feeder, like Rulledge here, doesn't go about like ancestral voices prophesying30 all sorts of dreadful things."
"That's rather cheap talk, even for you, Minver," Rulledge said. "Why did you think presentiments ran in your family?"
"Well, there you have me, Rulledge. That's where my theory fails. I can remember," Minver continued soberly, "the talk there used to be about them among my people. They were serious people in an unreligious way, or rather an unecclesiastical way. They were never spiritualists, but I don't think there was one of them who doubted that he should live hereafter; he might doubt that he was living here, but there was no question of the other thing. I must say it gave a dignity to their conversation which, when they met, as they were apt to do at one another's houses on Sunday nights, was not of common things. One of my uncles was a merchant, another a doctor; my father was a portrait-painter by profession, and a sign-painter by practice. I suppose that's where I got my knack31, such as it is. The merchant was an invalid32, rather, though he kept about his business, and our people merely [Pg 50]recognized him as being out of health. He was what we could call, for that day and region—the Middle West of the early fifties—a man of unusual refinement34. I suppose this was temperamental with him largely; but he had cultivated tastes, too. I remember him as a peculiarly gentle person, with a pensive35 cast of face, and the melancholy36 accomplishment37 of playing the flute38."
"I wonder why nobody plays the flute nowadays," I mused39 aloud.
"Yes, it's quite obsolete," Minver said. "They only play the flute in the orchestras now. I always look at the man who plays it and think of my uncle. He used to be very nice to me as a child; and he was very fond of my father, in a sort of filial way; my father was so much older. I can remember my young aunt; and how pretty she was as she sat at the piano, and sang and played to his fluting40. When she looked forward at the music, her curls fell into her neck; they wore curls then, grown-up women; and though I don't think curls are beautiful, my aunt's beauty would have been less without them; in fact, I can't think of her without them.
"She was delicate, too; they were really a pair of invalids41; but she had none of his melancholy. They had had several children, who died, one after another, and there was only one left at the [Pg 51]time I am speaking of. I rather wonder, now, that the thought of those poor little ghost-cousins didn't make me uncomfortable. I was a very superstitious42 boy, but I seem not to have thought of them. I played with the little girl who was left, and I liked going to my uncle's better than anywhere else. I preferred going in the daytime and in the summer-time. Then my cousin and I sat in a nook of the garden and fought violets, as we called it; hooked the wry43 necks of the flowers together and twitched44 to see which blossom would come off first. She was a sunny little thing, like her mother, and she had curls, like her. I can't express the feeling I had for my aunt; she seemed the embodiment of a world that was at once very proud and very good. I suppose she dressed fashionably, as things went then and there; and her style as well as her beauty fascinated me. I would have done anything to please her, far more than to please my cousin. With her I used to squabble, and sometimes sent her crying to her mother. Then I always ran off home, but when I sneaked45 back, or was sent for to come and play with my cousin, I was not scolded for my wickedness.
"My uncle was more prosperous than his brothers; he lived in a much better house than ours, and I used to be quite awe46-struck by its [Pg 52]magnificence. He went East, as we said, twice a year to buy goods, and he had things sent back for his house such as we never saw elsewhere; those cask-shaped seats of blue china for the verandas47, and bamboo chairs. There were cane-bottom chairs in the sitting-room48, such as we had in our best room; in the parlor49 the large pieces were of mahogany veneer50, upholstered in black hair-cloth; they held me in awe. The piano filled half the place; the windows came down to the ground, and had Venetian blinds and lace curtains.
"We all went in there after the Sunday night supper, and then the fathers and mothers were apt to begin talking of those occult things that gave me the creeps. It was after the Rochester Knockings, as they were called, had been exposed, and so had spread like an infection everywhere. It was as if people were waiting to have the fraud shown up in order to believe in it."
"That sort of thing happens," Wanhope agreed. "It's as if the seeds of the ventilated imposture51 were carried atmospherically52 into the human mind broadcast and a universal crop of self-delusion53 sprang up."
"At any rate," Minver resumed, "instead of the gift being confined to a few persons—a small sisterhood with detonating knee-joints—there were [Pg 53]rappings in every well-regulated household; all the tables tipped; people went to sleep to the soft patter of raps on the headboards of their beds; and girls who could not spell were occupied in delivering messages from Socrates, Ben Franklin and Shakespeare. Besides the physical demonstrations54, there were all sorts of psychical55 intimations from the world which we've now abolished."
"Not permanently56, perhaps," I suggested.
"Well, that remains57 to be seen," Minver said. "It was this sort of thing which my people valued above the other. Perhaps they were exclusive in their tastes, and did not care for an occultism which the crowd could share with them; though this is a conjecture5 too long after the fact to have much value. As far as I can now remember, they used to talk of the double presence of living persons, like their being where they greatly wished to be as well as where they really were; of
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