The Pools of Silence. H. De Vere Stacpoole
having opened his notebook and sharpened his pencil, sat listening to the gas sizzling above his head; then he turned for a moment and glanced at the men behind him: the doctor from Vienna in a broadly braided frock-coat with satin facings, betraying himself to all men by the end of the clinical thermometer protruding from his waistcoat pocket; the two Japanese gentlemen—brown, incurious, and inscrutable—men from another world, come to look on; the republican from Liberia, and the rest. Then he turned his head, for the door on the floor of the theatre had opened, giving entrance to Thénard.
Thénard was a smallish man in a rather shabby frock-coat; his beard was scant, pointed, and gray-tinged; he had a depressed expression, the general air of a second-rate tradesman on the verge of bankruptcy; and as he entered and crossed to the estrade where the lecture table stood and the glass of water, he shouted some words vehemently and harshly to Alphonse, the theatre attendant, who, it seemed, had forgotten to place the box of coloured chalks on the table—the sacred chalks which the lecturer used for colouring his diagrams on the blackboard.
One instantly took a dislike to this shabby-looking bourgeois, with the harsh, irritable voice, but after awhile, as the lecture went on, one forgot him. It was not the profundity of the man’s knowledge, great though it was, that impressed one; or the subtlety of his reasoning or the lucidity of his expression, but his earnestness, his obvious disregard for everything earthly but Truth.
This was borne in on one by every expression of his face, every gesture of his body, every word and every tone and inflection of his voice.
This was the twelfth and last lecture of the course. It was on the “Brain Conceived as a Machine Pure and Simple.”
It was a cold and pitiless lecture, striking at the root of poetry and romance, speaking of religions, not religion, and utterly ignoring the idea which stands poised like a white-winged Victory over all other ideas—the Soul.
It was pitiless because it did these things, and it was terrible because it was spoken by Thénard, for he was just standing there, a little, oldish man, terribly convincing in his simplicity, absolutely without prejudice, as ready to acknowledge the soul and its attributes as to refuse them, standing there twiddling his horsehair watch-chain, and speaking from the profundity of his knowledge with, at his elbow, a huge army of facts, instances, and cases, not one of which did not support his logical deductions.
I wish I could print his lecture in full. I can only give some few sentences taken at haphazard from the peroration.
“The fundamental basis of all morality can be expressed by the words Left—or Right. ‘Shall I take the path to the right, when my child is being threatened with death by a pterodactyl, or shall I take the path to the left when a mastodon is threatening to put a foot on my dinner?’
“The prehistoric man asking himself that question in the dawn of time laid the foundation of the world’s morality. Do we know how he answered it? Yes—undoubtedly he saved his dinner.
“The prehistoric woman crouching in the ferns, wakened from sleep by the cries of her child on the left and the shouting of her man on the right, found herself face to face with the question, ‘Shall I court self-destruction in attempting to save It, or shall I seek safety with Him?’ Do we know how she answered that question? Undoubtedly she took the path to the left.
“The woman’s Right was the man’s Left, and she took it not from any motive of goodness but just because her child appealed to her as powerfully as his dinner appealed to the man. And which was the nobler instinct? In prehistoric times, gentlemen, they were both equally noble, for the instinct of the man was as essential to the fact that you and I are here gathered together in enlightened Paris, as the instinct of the woman.
“Right or Left? That is still the essence of morals—all the rest is embroidery. Whilst I am talking to you now, service is being held at the Madeleine, the Bourse is closed (looking at his watch), but other gaming houses are opening. The Café de Paris is filling, the Little Sisters of the Poor are visiting the sick.
“We feel keenly that some people are doing good and some people are doing evil. We wonder at the origin of it all, and the answer comes from the prehistoric forest.
“ ‘I am Determination. I can choose the Right or I can choose the Left. Whilst dwelling in the man’s heart my choice lies that way, in the woman’s heart that way.
“ ‘I am not religion, but between the man and the woman I have created an essential antagonism of motive which will be the basis of all future religions and systems of ethics. I have already dimly demarcated a line between ferocity and greed, and a thing which has yet no name, but which will in future ages be called Love.
“ ‘I am a constant quantity, but the dim plan I have traced in the plastic brain will be used by the ever-building years; spires and domes shall fret the skies, priests unroll their scrolls of papyri, infinite developments of the simple basic Right and Left laid down by me shall combine to build a Pantheon of a million shrines to a million gods—who are yet only three: the tramp of the mastodon, the cry of the child in the pterodactyl’s grip, and myself, who in future years shall be the only surviving god of the three—Determination.’
“The Pineal Gland had no known function, so Descartes declared it to be the seat of the soul. ‘There is nothing in here. Let us put something in,’ and he put in the idea of the soul. That was the old method.
“Morphology teaches us now that the Pineal Gland is the last vestige of an eye which once belonged to a reptile long extinct. That is the new method; the results are not so pretty, but they are more exact.”
“You have finished your post-graduate work, and I suppose you are about to leave Paris like the others. Have you any plans?”
The lecture was over, the audience was pouring out of the theatre, and Adams was talking to Thénard, whom he knew personally.
“Well, no,” said Adams. “None very fixed just at present. Of course I shall practise in my own country, but I can’t quite see the opening yet.”
CHAPTER II
DR. DUTHIL
Thénard, with his case-book and a bundle of papers under his arm, stood for a moment in thought. Then he suddenly raised his chin.
“How would you like to go on a big-game shooting expedition to the Congo?”
“Ask a child would it like pie,” said the American, speaking in English. Then, in French, “Immensely, monsieur. Only it is impossible.”
“Why?”
“Money.”
“Ah, that’s just it,” said Thénard. “A patient of mine, Captain Berselius, is starting on a big-game shooting expedition to the Congo. He requires a medical man to accompany him, and the salary is two thousand francs a month and all things found——”
Adams’s eyes lit up.
“Two thousand a month!”
“Yes; he is a very rich man. His wife is a patient of mine. When I was visiting her yesterday the Captain put the thing before me—in fact, gave me carte blanche to choose for him. He requires the services of a medical man—an Englishman if possible——”
“But I’m an American,” said Adams.
“It is the same thing,” replied Thénard, with a little laugh. “You are all big and strong and fond of guns and danger.”
He had taken Adams by the arm and was leading