The great Professor Challenger has been — very improperly and
imperfectly — used in fiction. A daring author placed him in
impossible and romantic situations in order to see how he would
react to them. He reacted to the extent of a libel action, an
abortive appeal for suppression, a riot in Sloane Street, two
personal assaults, and the loss of his position as lecturer upon
Physiology at the London School of Sub-Tropical Hygiene.
But he was losing something of his fire. Those huge shoulders
were a little bowed. The spade-shaped Assyrian beard showed
tasfsgles of grey amid the black, his eyes were a trifle less
aggressive, his smile less self-complacent, his voice as monstrous
as ever but less ready to roar down all opposition. Yet he was
dangerous, as all around him were painfully aware. The volcano was
not extinct, and constant rumblings threatened some new explosion.
Life had much yet to teach him, but he was There was a definite
date for the blow. She it was who, with clever craft, lured him
into every subject which would excite his combative nature and
infuriate his mind, until he lived once more in the present and not
the past. It was only when she saw him turbulent in controversy,
violent to pressmen, and generally offensive to those around him,
that she felt he was really in a fair way to recovery.
Enid Challenger was a remarkable girl and should have a
paragraph to herself. With the raven-black hair of her father, and
the blue eyes and fresh colour of her mother, she was striking, if
not beautiful, in appearance. She was quiet, but she was very
strong. From her infancy she had either to take her own part
against her father, or else to consent to be crushed and to become
a mere automaton worked by his strong fingers. She was strong
enough to hold her own in a gentle, elastic fashion, which bent to
his moods and reasserted itself when they were past. Lately she had
felt the constant pressure too oppressive and she had relieved it
by feeling out for a career of her own. She did occasional odd jobs
for the London press, and did them in such fashion that her name
was beginning to be known in Fleet Street. In finding this opening
she had been greatly helped by an old friend of her father — and
possibly of the reader — Mr. Edward Malone of the Daily
Gazette.
Malone was still the same athletic Irishman who had once won his
international cap at Rugby, but life had toned him down also, and
made him a more subdued and thoughtful man. He had put away a good
deal when last his football-boots had been packed away for good.
His muscles may have wilted and his joints stiffened, but his mind
was deeper and more active. The boy was dead and the man was born.
In person he had altered little, but his moustache was heavier, his
back a little rounded, and some lines of thought were tracing
themselves upon his brow. Post-war conditions and new world
problems had left their mark. For the rest he had made his name in
journalism and even to a small degree in literature. He was still a
bachelor, though there were some who thought that his hold on that
condition was precarious and that Miss Enid Challenger's little
white fingers could disengage it. Certainly they were very good
chums.
It was a Sunday evening in October, and the lights were just
beginning to twinkle out through the fog which had shrouded London
from early morning. Professor Challenger's flat at Victoria West
Gardens was upon the third floor, and the mist lay thick upon the
windows, while the low hum of the attenuated Sunday traffic rose up
from an invisible highway beneath, which was outlined only by
scattered patches of dull radiance. Professor Challenger sat with
his thick, bandy legs outstretched to the fire, and his hands
thrust deeply into trouser pockets. His dress had a little of the
eccentricity of genius, for he wore a loose-collared shirt, a large
knotted maroon-coloured silk tie, and a b"I've heard of him —
cerebro-spinal."
"That's the man. He is level-headed and is looked on as an
authority on psychic research, as they call the new science which
deals with these matters."
"Science, indeed!"
"Well, that is what they call it. He seems to take these people
seriously. I consult him when I want a reference, for he has the
literature at his fingers' end. 'Pioneers of the Human Race' — that
was his description."
"Pioneering them to Bedlam," growled Challenger. "And
literature! What literature have they?"
"Well, that was another surprise. Atkinson has five hundred
volumes, but complains that his psychic library is very imperfect.
You see, there is French, German, Italian, as well as our own."
"Well, thank God all the folly is not confined to poor old
England. Pestilential nonsense!"
Have you read it up at all, Father?" asked Enid.
"Read it up! I, with all my interests and no time for one-half
of them! Enid, you are too absurd."
"Sorry, Father. You spoke with such assurance, I thought you
knew something about it."
Challenger's huge head swung round and his lion's glare rested
upon his daughter.
"Do you conceive that a logical brain, a brain of the first
order, needs to read and to study before it can detect a manifest
absurdity? Am I to study mathematics in order to confute the man
who tells me that two and two are five? Must I study physics once
more and take down my Principia because some rogue or fool insists
that a table can rise in the air against the law of gravity? Does
it take five hundred volume to inform us of a thing which is proved
in every police-court when an impostor is exposed? Enid, I am
ashamed of you!"
His daughter laughed merrily.
"Well, Dad, you need not roar at me any more. I give in. In
fact, I have the same feeling that you have."
"None the less," said Malone, "some good men support them. I
don't see that you can laugh at Lodge and Crookes and the
others."
"Don't be absurd, Malone. Every great mind has its weaker side.
It is a sort of reaction against all the good sense. You come
suddenly upon a vein of positive nonsense. That is what is the
matter with these fellows. No, Enid, I haven't read their reasons,
and I don't mean to, either; some things are beyond the pale. If we
re-open all the old questions, how can we ever get ahead with the
new ones? This matter is settled by common sense, the law of
England, and by the universal assent of every sane European."
"So that's that!" said Enid.
"However," he continued, "I can admit that there are occasional
excuses for misunderstandings upon the point." He sank his voice,
and his great grey eyes looked sadly up into vacancy. " I have
known cases where the coldest intellect — even my own intellect —
might, for a moment have been shaken."
Malone scented copy.
"Yes, sir?"
Challenger hesitated. He seemed to be struggling with himself.
He wished to speak, and yet speech was painful. Then, with an
abrupt, impatient gesture, he plunged into his story:
"I never told you, Enid. It was too… too intimate. Perhaps too
absurd. I was ashamed to have been so shaken. But it shows how even
the best balanced may be caught unawares."
"Yes, sir?"
"It was after my wife's death. You knew her, Malone You can
guess what it meant to me. It was the night after the cremation…
horrible, Malone, horrible! I saw the dear little body slide down,
down… and then the glare of flame and the door clanged to." His
great body shook and he passed his big, hairy hand over his
eyes.
"I don't know why I tell you this; the talk seemed to lead up to
it. It may be a warning to you. That night — the night after the
cremation — I sat up in the hall. She was there," he nodded at
Enid. "She had fallen asleep in a chair, poor girl. You know the
house at Rotherfield, Malone. It was in the big hall. I sat by the
fireplace, the room all draped in shadow, and my mind draped In
shadow also. I should have sent her to bed, but she was lying back
in her chair and I did not wish to wake her. It may have been one
in the morning — I remember the moon shining through the
stained-glass window. I sat and I brooded. Then suddenly there came
a noise."
"Yes, sir?"
"It was low at first just a ticking. Then it grew louder and
more distinct — it was a clear rat-tat-tat. Now comes the queer
coincidence, the sort of thing out of which legends grow when
credulous folk have the shaping of them. You must know that my wife
had a peculiar way of knocking at a door. It was really a little
tune which she played with her fingers. I got into the some way so
that we could each know when the other knocked. Well, it seemed to
me — of course my mind was strained and abnormal — that the taps
shaped themselves into the well-known rhythm of her knock. I
couldn't localize it. You can think how eagerly I tried. It was
above me, somewhere on the woodwork. I lost sense of time. I
daresay it was repeated a dozen times at least."
"Oh, Dad, you never told me!"
"No, but I woke you up. I asked you to sit quiet with me for a
little."
"Yes, I remember that!"
"Well, we sat, but nothing happened. Not a sound more. Of course
it was a delusion. Some insect in the wood; the ivy on the outer
wall. My own brain furnished the rhythm. Thus do we make fools and
children of ourselves. But it gave me an insight. I saw how even a
clever man could be deceived by his own emotions."
"But how do you know, sir, that it was not your wife."
"Absurd, Malone! Absurd, I say! I tell you I saw her in the
flames. What was there left?"
"Her soul, her spirit."
Challenger shook his head sadly.
"When that dear body dissolved into its elements — when its
gases went into the air and its residue of solids sank into a grey
dust — it was the end. There was no more. She had played her part,
played it beautifully, nobly. It was done. Death ends all, Malone.
This soul talk is the Animism of savages. It is a superstition, a
myth. As a physiologist I will undertake to produce crime or virtue
by vascular control or cerebral stimulation. I will turn a Jekyll
into a Hyde by a surgical operation. Another can do it by a
psychological suggestion. Alcohol will do it. Drugs will do it.
Absurd, Malone, absurd! As the tree falls, so does it lie. There is
no next morning… night — eternal night… and long rest for the weary
worker."
"Well, it's a sad philosophy."
"Better a sad than a false one."
"Perhaps so. There is something virile and manly in facing the
worst. I would not contradict. My reason is with you."
"But my instincts are against!" cried Enid. "No, no, never can I
believe it." She threw her arms round the great bull neck. "Don't
tell me, Daddy, that you with all your complex brain and wonderful
self are a thing with no more life hereafter than a broken
clock!"
"Four buckets of water and a bagful of salts," said Challenger
as he smilingly detached his daughter's grip. "That's your daddy,
my lass, and you may as well reconcile your mind to it. Well, it's
twenty to eight. — Come back, if you can, Malone, and let me hear
your adventures among the insane."