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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Argosy All-Story Weekly, 27 November 1920
with "Beyond The Violet"
THERE were four of us in the lounge of the club. There was Carnick, the broker, a man who dealt with material values, stocks and bonds and such things. There was Abbington the banker, whose interests in life were pretty much along the same line as those of his friend. Then there was Vance, M.D., B.S., and some other things, I believe, the neurologist, who having served his time in a base hospital on the other side as a part of the Medical Corps, A.E.F., had come back and resumed the practise he had laid down at such time as the call of his citizen's duty sent him a volunteer, heart and soul, into the army life.
The fourth member of our group was myself, who dabbled somewhat with typewriter and pen.
Carnick and Abbington were reading; the former a current magazine, the latter an evening paper, and I was simply lounging back in a deep chair, and smoking when Vance strolled up.
"Gentlemen," he said, smiling. We all knew him—a slender, dapper, almost effeminate sort of chap, unless one happened to catch his eyes, as cold and steady a blue as the chilled steel of a surgeon's knife.
Carnick glanced up. "Hello, Vance," he mumbled.
Abbington nodded.
I returned the doctor's smile.
He took up a paper and found himself a chair, respecting the mood of the others. And I continued to enjoy my cigar.
All at once Carnick cast his magazine aside. "Rot!" he snorted. "Bosh! What's got into people inside the last few months is more than I can understand! Two years ago you couldn't have got that sort of stuff into a standard magazine."
Vance lifted his eyes over the edge of his paper, and Carnick saw he had gained his attention. "I suppose you'd call it a sort of universal hysteria, wouldn't you, Vance? I believe that state is characterized by the belief on the part of the one afflicted that he sees and hears nonexistent things."
Vance's customary smile twitched at his lips. He glanced from the broker to the paper again. "I presume you refer to the prevalence of articles dealing with the possibility of a future life and its demonstration?" he suggested.
Carnick nodded. "Yes. They're getting to be an epidemic. Some publication runs one, and the others all follow like sheep. What I can't comprehend, however, is the effect the thing seems to have had not only on the popular mind, but on some of those we have been in the habit of considering the world's biggest men. They've fallen for it, and they've fallen for it strong."
Abbington laid down his paper. I sat holding my cigar in my hand. Carnick had pushed himself up in his chair and was regarding Vance with a sort of impersonal frown.
For a time the physician made no answer, and then: "He is a rather bold man, I fancy, Carnick, who undertakes to say what does or does not lie beyond the border line."
Carnick took it with no evidence of any full understanding. "Border line?" he repeated. "Just what do you mean by border line?"
"The limit," said Vance slowly, "of the sensory perception of mankind, meaning thereby the individuals inhabiting a world bounded by a minimum and a maximum perceptive zone —violet for the sense of sight, or for hearing the most rapid vibratory rate which can be consciously denominated sound."
Abbington nodded. "That's a pretty comprehensive definition, too, I imagine," he said.
Carnick somewhat widened his eyes. "You think there is something—beyond?" he asked.
Vance smiled again. "It's presumable, isn't it, at least? We've proven the X-ray as regards light already. Man senses what lies within his limitations. Sticking to the sense of sight—presupposing that our eyes turned merely sidewise—we would be conscious of only length and breadth, and thickness for us would not exist.
Carnick grinned. "As it is we have three dimensions; do you mean to insinuate that there may be a fourth?"
"I'm not a metaphysician," said Vance. "But a questioning of the possibility of a stage beyond mere corporeal existence is a blow at the very foundations of religion, is it not?"
"I never went in for religion," Carnick said quickly, and added: "Of course I suppose 1 recognize some causal reason back of what we call life. But beyond that, I've sever given the matter much thought."
"Exactly." Vance smiled again. I noted a slight contraction of the corners of his lids. "You recognize something, Carnick, and you don't know what it is. Thus far we've spoken of sensory perception, yet a man—some men—may perceive something without exactly sensing its absolute nature. It comes down then to a question of what life is. A moment ago I spoke of a vibratory rate, and it is not too far a cry to assume that life, like all other force, is in itself a ratio of vibration. If that is correct, then life is a harmony in the midst of a universal scale, and man may perceive certain things beyond the scope of his senses, in very much the same way that the string of a violin may be set into vibration by the sounding of a sympathetic chord.
"I think that may be the explanation for the universal racial belief in the possibility of a future life—a sort of sympathetic perception of a truth. Take the violin again for instance, and tune it without lifting the bridge. What then would happen if after the tuning were finished the bridge were raised?"
Carnick frowned again. "I suppose," he said after a moment, "that the result would be to raise the pitch."
"Precisely." Vance nodded. "For the rest you must accept my statement that certain things may at times have the same effect on the human brain and nerves."
Abbington sat forward. "Raising the pitch, you mean?"
"Yes."
"So that—one can see—beyond the violet?"
"Why, yes—that's a very good way to put it," said Vance.
Carnick eyed the physician in a shrewd way he had at times and brought the matter to an issue: "See here, do you know of any concrete example?"
Vance met him directly. "Coming to a show-down, eh, Carnick? Well, as a matter of fact, I do know of one such instance. It was the most interesting demonstration of what I think we may best call sensory hyperesthesia, I have ever encountered."
"He could see—beyond?"
"Yes. At least I am convinced that is the explanation. Something happened to his optic nerves or center, which actually raised his visual perceptibility an octave, if we may still employ a musical parallel, with the result that his sight was shifted up on the scale."
Carnick puffed out his lips. He glanced at Abbington and me, and then leaned back in his chair. "All right, doctor," he said, "tell the story, but spare me your technical terms. If I get you, this chap saw things that, in so far as those around him were concerned, weren't there."
"He saw things 'beyond the violet,' as Abbington puts it," Vance returned. "As a matter of fact, violet was the only mundane color as we know it, of which he retained any perception. In his scheme of things after I came to know him, violet was his minimum rate of vibration, and in so much corresponded to our red."
He tossed his paper aside, produced and lighted a cigar. "You've all heard of shell shock cases, or read of them," he resumed. "And I'll merely say that the condition in so far as we men who observed them were able to determine, was with all respect to Carnick's restriction on my use of medical parlance, a hyperesthesia or excessive irritability of the brain and nerves. The victims of the complaint were subject to various mental and physical aberrations, with certain forms of hallucination—though mainly of a subjective nature, meaning thereby that their imaginary ills and experiences were largely if not wholly centered about themselves—their immediate condition and future welfare, that is.
"As you know, I was connected during my medical service on the other side with a convalescent base. That's how Edward Stinson came to us. The history that came with him indicated very clearly that in the opinion of those who had observed him, he was mentally deranged. I do not mean violent—there had been no manifestations of that nature at any time, but there was something about htm decidedly strange. And in addition he was blind."
"Hold on," Carnick interrupted.
Vance shook his head and smiled. "Blind in the ordinary sense, I mean. I'm not mussing up my facts, my friend. The man had to be cared for like any other blind man. You want to remember that, Carnick. He couldn't see a thing that went on around him, because violet was the minimum of his sight perception, and the last link that bound him to the color scheme of the every-day world.
"He had been an infantry Looie with the Twelfth Field. You know that outfit did some very heavy work, and, well—Stinson didn't know exactly what happened to him after he was advancing under fire with his men, and had a sudden sensation of going up in the air, until he woke up in an evacuation hospital back of the line and an entirely different world. He told me the whole thing himself. The trouble seemed to be with his eyes or the mechanism of his sight.
"At first he told me he thought he had surely died, except that he could not harmonize that idea with the fact that he was able to hear all that went on around him distinctly, to sense ordinary odors, to taste the food that was given to him, and was exquisitely sensitive to any ministering touch.
"But so far as his sight was concerned, Edward Stinson came back to a world of ghosts."
"Good God!" Abbington exclaimed a bit thickly; "do you mean he saw—things like that?"
"Exactly." Vance inclined his head. "He had a slight wound when he was picked up—a shell gutter across one thigh, which was debrided and promptly healed, and save for that he didn't show a scratch. They diagnosed his case as 'shell shock' partly because of his subsequent condition and partly because they learned that he had been bowled over by a shell burst, during the attack by the Twelfth on an enemy position in which he had taken part. They sent him to a base and kept him there till his leg healed, and waited for his other symptoms to clear up. But they didn't. There weren't any, as a matter of fact, except the one I've mentioned, and that stuck. They transferred him to us, with an addendum to the diagnosis to the effect that he was suffering from visual hallucinations, which was natural enough, even though it undershot the truth."
"What was the truth?" Carnick asked all of a sudden.
Vance looked him in the eye. "I think I've pretty clearly indicated that by my remark that Stinson woke up in a world of ghosts," he said slowly. "It depends on how one looks at it, of course."
"You mean—he saw—"
"The living dead," said Vance. "He described it to me as I've said. It was rather weird. He likened his condition to that of a man viewing the movements of a number of mute actors through the medium of a violet tinted glass. He was normal in every way except for that one thing in so far as his conversation went—as shown by every known test we applied. He was a man of more than average education. He could understand after a time the effect he was having on everybody else. He had hard work holding himself together right at the first; in getting along in the borderland existence which had suddenly become his.
"You see it was hard for him to realize what had happened—that he was still corporeally alive in so far as his creature needs were involved, and yet perfectly capable of perceiving the stage of existence those of his fellow men, who had died. It was a sort of No Man's Land in which he found himself—a place peopled with souls which had been violently torn out of their bodies, or had slipped out of them after a due course of dissolution. He saw men die— actually saw something leave their bodies. Day after day and night after night he saw that thing happen in the wards. He saw the life, if you wish to call it that, steal forth from them and pass him. What is it the orientals say—that they hear their souls bidding their bodies farewell? Well —Stinson saw that happen, and after a time he came to realize that it was only the bodies of those men that had died, and that the men themselves were still alive—that they had simply shaken off the body which was no longer essential to their continued life.
"That, however, was later, when he had gained a better appreciation of his condition. The first time he saw it happen, it upset him, and he called the nurse on duty and told her that something was coming out of another man's body. That man died, and the nurse was terribly impressed. She was on edge. There were times when the corps in the hospitals were overworked as a matter of course. She reported the matter and the result was that Stinson was pretty closely watched. That's how the 'visual hallucinations' got tacked onto his diagnosis before he came to us.
"I've told you he was intelligent, however, and by the time I first saw him he had accepted his condition, and it had made a most remarkable change in the man himself. You see, he had come, by then, regardless of the opinion of others, or the questions they had asked him after they got an inkling of what they believed he thought he was seeing, to consider the whole thing as a visual demonstration—an irrefutable proof of a definite existence on the other side of the grave. The thing had lifted him out of the depression one would have naturally expected, into a state of something like a spiritual exaltation. He was a man with his feet on the earth and his head in the skies—wholly convinced of the truth of what he was seeing."
"So is the man with hallucinations—the victim of a monomania," said Carnick. "They're absolutely convinced of the truth of their convictions—dead sure they're right!"
Vance's eyes twinkled.
"Meaning that you want proof," he said.
Carnick chuckled. "Well, yes. I'm from Missouri. Outside the fact of your observation, which I'm not doubting, and the man's own say-so, which I'm willing to admit as genuine in so far as his own belief, where does it get you, any more than the statement of these writers in the magazines that so and so received a message from some one who has passed on, through a medium or one of these automatic writers who claim to set down what simply flows off their pencil or pen?"
Abbington nodded. "Carnick's right," he seconded his friend. "Listing Stinson's alleged ability as a very interesting matter from your viewpoint, doctor, how are you going to nail it down?"
I looked at Vance to see how he was taking their questions.
He was smiling again. "I think the proof lies in the fact that Stinson fell in love before he came to us," he returned.
"Fell in love?" Carnick started. "With a ghost—a soul—a spirit?"
Vance shook his head. "Not at first. Lieutenant Stinson fell in love with the sound of a voice, the touch of a hand, a pair of violet eyes—or let us say their color. Hold on—" as the broker would have interrupted. "I've been laying for you, Carnick. I've held out this part of my story for the last. Now let us review briefly Stinson's case. He could hear, feel, taste, touch, smell, anything in normal fashion. He could see violet as the one remaining elementary color in the everyday scale—and Allison Towne, United States Army nurse, had violet eyes. More than that, she was on duty at the base to which Stinson was sent first,"
Abbington dragged his chair a little closer. The movement seemed to say he intended missing no word. Carnick pursed out his lips again.
Vance went on: "Stinson was under her charge. Day after day he saw those spots of violet bending above him—came to associate the voice behind them with the woman whose eyes he knew they were, because he asked her if that was their color—came to associate their presence with her touch—the fragrance of her feminine presence. And remember that those twin pools of living light were the binding links which in those days, when he was trying to adjust himself to the change that had come upon him, seemed to hold the man to earth. She talked with him at times, told him her name, and some other trivial details, sympathized with him, and he confided to her a great deal about himself and the experience he was undergoing, after the first edge of the thing had worn off. Particularly was that true after his so-called hallucinations had become general knowledge.
"Then came the influenza epidemic—the second big break out—and the girl was taken sick. One night, lying in his bed, Stinson saw her pass.
"The next morning he asked about her, and learned that she had died, and the hour of her death. The information merely confirmed his fears, because be had felt that the form he had seen drifting wraithlike past him was her spiritual entity suddenly freed from her body—and now, although he had never been able to see more than the color of her eyes while she was physically living, he knew absolutely—had a full and vivid perception of how she appeared, and described her to the nurse he had questioned with a clearness that moved the woman to tears.
"That settled the thing for Stinson. He missed the girl immensely; but, as be said to me, he came out of the experience with the settled knowledge that no matter what might have happened to her body, Allison Towne was as much as ever alive, and that he loved her—so that you see, Carnick, in the end the boy was literally in love with a shade as you suggested. It was rather odd."
"Odd, yes," Carnick assented. "But what does it prove?"
"Nothing," Vance said. "It merely lays the foundation for what followed, brings out the point that Stinson never saw the girl while she was physically alive, and gained his entire picture of her only after the change which we denominate death, but which be came to feel assured was merely a change and nothing worse. But wait.
"I told you I watched his case for weeks. We got to be pretty good friends in those days. I think I convinced him of my interest, and we used to take short walks about the grounds in the evenings. He liked to get out then, because of the peculiar violet quality m the twilight. He was always seeking for something of a violet color, with very much the same avidity that the average child will seize on anything that is red. During the time he was in our institution, I made several attempts to tune him down as it were, but with no success. In the end he was sent home unimproved, and I lost track of him completely, until the other day, when he walked into my office with his vision normally restored."
"Normally—he could see things the same as before?" said Carnick.
"Even as you and I," said Vance, and smiled.
"What happened?" Abbington asked.
"Heaven only knows," Vance said, "though of course, we may assume that whatever process lifted his vision to a temporarily higher scale of perceptivity, and maintained it there through a period of months, was by some means removed."
"Something let down the bridge," Carnick suggested, harking back to the doctor's first comparison anent the violin.
Vance nodded. "Yes. Stinson told me what happened, of course. When he left us, they put him aboard a transport and brought him across. The trip was uneventful, until the steamer docked. He was slated for a hospital on this side and was loaded with some of the others into an ambulance, because, of his condition, though he was a 'sitting' case.
"Something went wrong after they started for the hospital, and the ambulance motor caught fire. Quick work got the passengers out—and just about that time the machine blew up.
"Stinson wasn't hurt a bit, but all the same be fainted, or lost consciousness at the instant of the explosion. When he came to he was in a hospital again, and a nurse was bending over his bed. He looked up into Allison Towne's face —or that's what he thought at first. One can imagine that he was pretty well shaken both by the face into which he was looking and the fact that he had regained his normal sight.
"He tried to speak. 'You—you! Miss Towne!'
"For a moment he says he couldn't for the life of him determine whether he had finally died and the girl was really Allison herself, or was alive and had dreamed everything that went before that moment. But he hadn't been injured, and although his brain was whirling, he came up quickly. He hitched himself up on an elbow, and kept on staring into the face of the nurse. And he found it wide-eyed, rather startled, as it might be by his sudden recognition.
"'You are Miss Towne, aren't you?' he asked, because the girl beside him was as like to the spirit, soul, wraith, or whatever you like to call it, of Allison Towne as two peas from the same pod.
"She nodded. 'Yes, I am Miss Towne,' she said. 'But how do you know? I don't think I've ever seen you.'
"Stinson let himself back on the pillow. You must remember that Allison Towne had told him a bit about herself.
"'You were born in Paterson?' he said in a sudden flash of comprehension.
"She assented.
"'You had a sister? Her name was Allison?' said Stinson.
"She nodded again.
"Then Stinson knew the truth. 'You're very much like her in appearance, aren't you?' he said.
"'Why, yes.' The girl had grown a trifle pale. 'Allison and I looked a great deal alike, except that I'm a bit younger. But—'
"'Wait,' Stinson interrupted. 'I know what you're going to say, Miss Towne, because—I knew your sister. She was very good to me. She told me about you. Your name is Arline. I've—Miss Towne, I've been through a most remarkable experience, and I've come back out of it to find—you.'
"Then he told her exactly what had occurred. 'That's why it startled me so,' he said at the last, 'when I looked up just now and saw your face. It is like hers— like the face of the woman I never really saw, until after, as men say, she had died. It—it was as though I had suddenly waked up and found that I had been caught in the toils of some nightmare, and you had wakened me again to life. For a moment it baffled me, and then I remembered she had told me she had a sister, who was also a nurse.'
"'I know,' said the girl. 'Allison wrote me about you. She—she believed you saw what you said. She said she wouldn't be afraid of death if it came to her after talking to you, because—she felt sure that what had happened to you was proof of a—a future life. I—I think she loved you, Lieutenant Stinson. I—I think that's why you saw her after she had passed. I think she let you see her true self.'"
Vance smiled again as he came to the end of his story. "There, Carnick," he said, "is your proof. Stinson recognized the younger girl by her likeness to the sister he had known but had never been able to see in her physical life."
Carnick sat frowning. "I don't know," he said at last.
"None of us know—really." Once more Vance smiled.
"That wasn't the end of it, was it?" Abbington asked.
Vance laughed. "Hardly. You see Stinson had been living for months in a world of ghosts. The explosion of the ambulance did something to undo the work of the shell burst, of course. And the first thing he saw when he came back to the world he had formerly known, was Arline Towne's face. The other day when he came to my office, he brought me—this." He reached into an inner pocket and produced an envelope of heavy texture, handing it to the banker.
Abbington thrust his fingers inside it and drew out a—wedding invitation. He read it: "Arline Towne—to—Lieutenant Edward Stinson," and gave it back.
Vance took it. "Render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar's," he said.
"Meaning?" Abbington grumbled.
"Meaning," said Vance, "that man, as man, lives within the limitations of his sensory perceptions, and that Arline Towne is a charming girl. I had luncheon with her and Stinson the other day."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.