The Return of Peter Grimm by David Belasco (good romance books to read TXT) 📖

was shocked at the conversion (or perversion) of my old neighbour, McPherson, to a cult which, for want of a better word, I must designate as "Spiritualism."

He told me of a compact he had made with my dear friend and parishioner, Peter Grimm, to the effect that whichever of them should first leave this mortal life was to return and make known his presence to the other. I told McPherson to his face that I regarded such a compact as being even more sacrilegious than senseless. My good wife echoed my sentiments. McPherson, who has not the admirable control over his temper so needful to a medical man, chose to become angry at my outspoken opinion and said several cruelly unjust things concerning my own behaviour toward the late Peter Grimm.

I shall not stoop to denying or even repeating what he said; far less to justify myself. Yet I should like to mention, in passing, that his coarse gibe concerning my fawning on a rich man is the most unjust of all his abominable assertions.

I was in the habit of bringing cases of need before Peter Grimm's notice, it is true. And he responded right generously to every such appeal. I enlisted his financial aid for the local poor, for the Church Building Fund, for missions (home and foreign), and for the other worthy and needy cases.

But for myself or for my family I have never asked for one penny, either from Peter Grimm or from any other man. And as the gifts I have begged were in my Master's name and solely for my Master's service, I do not consider I have demeaned myself. Be that my sole defence. I am content with it.

The public, of late years, has looked askance at the attitude of clergymen toward the wealthier members of their congregation. And, in ninety-nine instances out of a hundred, with absolutely no cause. The Church is in need. The poor are in dire distress. Missions languish for the few paltry thousands that would carry the Word triumphant throughout the earth.

Who is to supply these needs? Who but the clergyman? Out of his own scanty salary? That hardly supports him and his. Yet, in proportion, he gives from it as never did a multimillionaire. To whom can he turn for financial help in carrying out his Master's work? To the Rich Man. And, in many cases, the day is past when he can do so without first winning the personal liking of that same rich man. Yes, and often by flattering him and smiling approvingly at his vulgar humour or soothing his equally vulgar rages.

Shame that the deathless Church of God should have been brought to such a pass!

Yes, and tenfold shame to those that sneer at the clergyman who sacrifices and tortures all that is sensitive and sacred in himself, in the effort to wheedle from the wealthy boor the money to save God's poor and God's souls! Is it pleasant for him to fawn and to be patronised? Others do it, I know. But for _themselves_. The clergyman must do it in his Master's name and for no personal gain.

Let the rector refuse to lower himself thus--What happens? The rich man goes to a church where flattery and subservience are more plentiful. The stiff-necked rector seeks in vain for funds. For lack of money his church runs down. It cannot keep up its charities and its other work.

Who is to blame? The rector, of course. Let us get an up-to-date man in his place. And the clergyman who refused to cringe finds himself not only without a church but with a record that bars him from getting another one. I do not say this state of affairs is universal. But I _do_ say, from bitter experience, that it is far too prevalent. Forgive my digression. I will get back to my statement with all speed.

I have told of the "compact" between Peter Grimm and Andrew McPherson. Mr. Grimm died. Kathrien had promised him to marry his nephew, Frederik. She did not love him. She did love James Hartmann. She has admitted both those facts to me.

As the time for the wedding drew near, she was more and more loath to carry out her promise. McPherson attributes that distaste to the spiritual promptings of Peter Grimm. Can any normal woman (who has been forced to marry one man while loving another) see the remotest hint of the Supernatural in it? No!

Willem, a boy of epileptic tendencies--as McPherson himself admits--had taken his benefactor's death terribly to heart, and had brooded over it day and night. Is there any reason to doubt that in such an unbalanced nature, this brooding, coupled by fever, should have produced a delirium in which he believed he heard Peter Grimm speaking to him?

He also believed, Kathrien tells me, that he heard the circus parade pass the house ten days after it had left town. Is one belief entitled to greater credence than the other? Or did the ghost of a circus parade meander through our Main street at night, accompanied by a Spook brass band? Each idea is quite as probable as the other.

And, from the boy's own statement, Peter Grimm said to him nothing original or even betokening a mind more developed than a child's. Willem knew Kathrien was going to marry Frederik. He knew she did not want to and that he himself disliked and feared Frederik. What more likely than that he should imagine he heard Peter forbid the match?

What more likely, in his own fevered unhappiness, than that he should think Peter Grimm said "I am very unhappy"? Would a man of Peter Grimm's strength and shrewdness come back to earth and tell the child nothing of greater importance than Willem says he told? And, if he could make Willem understand such phrases as "I am very unhappy" and "Kathrien must not marry Frederik," could he not have made the boy understand anything else?

As to Frederik Grimm:--Frederik, we know, was nervous and overwrought. His uncle's death had been a shock--if not a grief. He had the added worry of knowing Kathrien did not really love him. He was in constant fear lest Anne Marie, on hearing of Peter's death, might communicate with her mother and lest the secret of his own relations with the poor girl be exposed. This suspense added to his nervousness.

The sight of her picture and the reading of her pathetic letter stirred his conscience. He forced himself to destroy both bits of evidence. And the action strongly brought before his nerve-racked senses the thought of what honourable old Peter Grimm would have said of such conduct. So strongly, in fact, that in the dark he fancied he saw Grimm's eyes glaring at him. The phenomenon is by no means uncommon and has been explained by scientists upon perfectly natural grounds.

As to Willem's sudden remembrance of half-forgotten facts concerning his own childhood, there is no parent living who cannot cite instances of newly awakened memory, in his or her own child, that are quite as remarkable. The seeing of his mother's photograph brought before Willem the recollection of scenes in which she had played a part; scenes that had been crowded from his mind by later events.

Frederik had just spoken harshly to him. And that recalled harsh words Frederik had spoken to the woman in the picture. And thus, quite simply, his memory supplied the one needful link. What is remarkable in all the foregoing? In fact, Shakespeare's Horatio says:

"There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave, to tell us
this!"

So much for Dr. McPherson's efforts to surround a series of normal occurrences with a halo of the Supernatural! Now, let me add a word on my own account, and I am done.

The Dead do not return to the scene of their toil and pain and tears. Would a freed convict sneak back to his prison house or the ex-galley slave to his oar? The convalescent does not crawl into the contagion ward again of his free choice. Nor, I believe, would the Lord permit the return of the Dead; even to bear a warning to those left behind.

Glance at the sixteenth chapter of St. Luke for confirmation of my belief;--at the parable of the "certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day"; and who, in torment, after death, called to Abraham to send Lazarus from Heaven to visit the Tortured One's five brethren:

"_That he may testify unto men, lest they also come into this place of torment._

"_Abraham said to him: 'They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them.'_

"_And he said: 'Nay, Father Abraham, but if one went unto them from the dead they would repent.'_

"_And he said unto him: 'If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded through one rise from the dead.'_"

No, the whole idea is preposterous. It is far outside of God's justice and infinitely farther beyond His boundless mercy.

"He giveth His Beloved _sleep_";--not weary, hopeless wanderings upon the face of the earth.

Peter Grimm did not return. And this is the only comment I care to make upon Andrew McPherson's amazing theory.


CHAPTER XVIII


DR. McPHERSON'S STATEMENT

DR. JAMES HYSLOP.

_My Dear Sir:_--After reading the account which I am mailing to you under separate cover, will you kindly forward it to the American Branch of the Society of Psychical Research? As you will observe, it is a verbatim report of a "seance."

For your personal information, I beg to make the following supplementary statement.

At the residence of Peter Grimm,--I should say the _late_ Peter Grimm--(the well-known horticulturist of Grimm Manor, N. Y.) certain phenomena occurred this evening which would clearly indicate the Return of Peter Grimm, ten days after his decease. At my first free moment after the manifestation, I jotted down in shorthand the exact dialogue, etc., which I have since transcribed into the enclosed report.

While Peter Grimm was invisible to all, three people were present besides myself; including the "recipient," a child of eight, who had been ill, but was almost normal at the time.

No spelling out of signals nor automatic writing was employed, but word of mouth.

I made a compact with Peter Grimm while he was in the flesh that whichever one of us should go first was to return and give the other some sign. And I propose, by the enclosed report, to show positive proof that Peter Grimm kept his compact and that I assisted in the carrying out of his instructions.

Let me introduce myself and briefly recount the circumstances which led up to the seance, as well as my own state of mind concerning manifestations:

I am a practising physician in the town of Grimm Manor, a suburb of New York City, settled at the time of the Dutch occupation of Manhattan, and named after the family, the Grimms, which first owned the farm that is now the town site.

I have always been greatly interested in Spiritualism. I have read nearly all that has been written on this subject and have known, personally, most all the so-called mediums. I have attended seances in this country and abroad and have by turns been convinced that they were genuine or frauds.

Up to the time when the events which I am about to narrate began to occur, I had been unable to come to a definite decision, as far as my