“These blessed ones engage very largely in conversation. Other occupations I found difficult to trace. Raymond attended a sort of reception on the very highest plane. It was a special privilege. Perhaps a compliment to Sir Oliver. He met the truth of revealed religion, so to speak, personally. It was a wonderful moment. Sir Oliver suppresses the more solemn details. Lady Burrows intends to write to him. She is anxious for particulars. But I will not dilate,” said Sir Eliphaz. “I will not dilate.”
“And you believe this _stuff_?” said the doctor in tones of the deepest disgust.
Sir Eliphaz waved himself upon the questioner.
“So far as poor earthly expressions can body forth spiritual things,” he hedged.
He regarded his colleagues with an eye of florid defiance. Both Mr. Farr and Mr. Dad had slightly shamefaced expressions, and Mr. Dad’s ears were red.
Mr. Dad cleared his throat. “I’m sure there’s something in it—anyhow,” said Mr. Dad hoarsely, doing his best in support.
“If I was born with a hare lip,” said the doctor, “would _that_ be put right? Do congenital idiots get sublimated? What becomes of a dog one has shot for hydrophobia?”
“To all of such questions,” said Sir Eliphaz serenely, “the answer is—_we don’t know_. Why should we?”
Mr. Huss seemed lost in meditation. His pale and sunken face and crumpled pose contrasted strongly with the bristling intellectual rectitude and mounting choler of Dr. Elihu Barrack.
“No, Sir Eliphaz,” said Mr. Huss, and sighed.
“What a poor phantom of a world these people conjure up! What a mockery of loss and love! The very mothers and lovers who mourn their dead will not believe their foolish stories. Restoration! It is a crowning indignity. It makes me think of nothing in the world but my dear boy’s body, broken and crumpled, and some creature, half fool and half impostor, sitting upon it, getting between it and me, and talking cheap rubbish over it about planes of being and astral bodies....
“After all, you teach me, Sir Eliphaz, that life, for all its grossness and pain and horror, is not so bad as it might be—if such things as this were true. But it needs no sifting of the evidence to know they are untrue. No sane man believes this stuff for ten minutes together. It is impossible to believe it....”