The Return of Peter Grimm Part 36

"No," retorted Kathrien. "But I'm going to find out for myself. I am going to find out where Anne Marie is before I marry you. And I am going to learn the truth from her. Willem may be right or wrong in what he thinks he remembers. But _I_ am going to find out, past all doubt, what Anne Marie was to you. And, if what I think is true----"

"It is true," interposed McPherson. "It is true, Kathrien. I believe we got that message direct."

"Andrew is right, Katje," prompted the Dead Man. "Believe him."

"Yes!" cried Kathrien, as if in reply. "It is true. I believe Oom Peter was in this room to-night!"

"What?" blurted Frederik. "_You_ saw him, too?"

His unguarded query was lost in Mrs. Batholommey's gasp of:

"Oh, Kathrien, that's quite impossible. It was only a coincidence that----"

"I don't care what any one else may think," rushed on Kathrien, swept along upon the wave of a strange exultation that bore her far out of her wonted timid self. "People have the right to think for themselves. I believe Oom Peter has been here, to-night!"

"I _am_ here, Katje," breathed the Dead Man.

"I believe he is here, _now_!" declared Kathrien, her eyes aglow, and her face flushed. "He is here. Oh, Oom Peter!" she cried, her arms stretched wide in appeal, her face alight, her voice rising like that of a prophetess of old. "Oom Peter, if you can hear me now, give me back my promise! Give it back to me--_or I'll take it back_!"

"I did give it back to you, dear," answered Peter Grimm happily. "But, oh, what a time I've had putting it across!"

CHAPTER XVII

MR. BATHOLOMMEY TESTIFIES

_To Whom It May Concern:_

I am Henry Batholommey, rector of the Protestant Episcopal church at Grimm Manor, New York State. My neighbour, Andrew McPherson, M.D., has asked me to substantiate, so far as lies in my power, certain statements in a paper he is preparing for the Society of Psychical Research, concerning certain recent happenings in the house of my former paris.h.i.+oner, the late Peter Grimm of this place.

I refuse.

I understand, also, that in telling the story broadcast, as he has done, he has made free use of my name and that of my wife, as witnesses to these happenings. Wherefore, I am daily in receipt of fully a dozen letters of enquiry. Reporters, so-called scientists, mystics with long hair and unclean nails, and cranks and practical jokers of every sort and description have taken to calling at the rectory, at inconvenient hours, to cross-question me.

For example: one disreputable man, reeking of cheap liquor, came to me yesterday with the information that the story of Peter Grimm's return had converted him and that (with some slight temporary financial a.s.sistance from me) he was prepared to renounce liquor and mend his ways. He looked like a penitent. He talked like a penitent. But he most a.s.suredly did not _smell_ like a penitent. And I sent him about his business.

This was but one of many irritating interruptions upon my parish work to which Dr. McPherson's use of my name has subjected me.

In view of all this, I deem it advisable to save myself from further annoyance and to stop the rumour that a minister of the Gospel has turned Spiritualist, by issuing the following brief statement:

Dr. McPherson is desirous that my wife and myself endorse his belief that the occurrences at the home of the late Peter Grimm were of a supernatural nature.

We shall do no such thing.

For the single reason that neither Mrs. Batholommey nor myself, after mature reflection and dispa.s.sionate discussion, can find one atom of the Supernatural in any of the events that transpired there. Perhaps I can best make clear my point of view by rehearsing the case and my own very small connection therewith.

The fact that Dr. McPherson is of a different denomination from myself in no way biases my feelings in this case. I am an Episcopalian. And I am of liberal views toward those who are not;--with the possible exception of Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, and members of a few other denominations outside the direct Apostolic Succession. Yet I confess I 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 paris.h.i.+oner, 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 pa.s.sing, that his coa.r.s.e gibe concerning my fawning on a rich man is the most unjust of all his abominable a.s.sertions.

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 att.i.tude 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 G.o.d should have been brought to such a pa.s.s!

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 G.o.d's poor and G.o.d'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 pa.s.s the house ten days after it had left town. Is one belief ent.i.tled 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 bra.s.s 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.