XIII
THE LITTLE GRAY DRESS

 

AFTER Mrs. K. had finished reading the communications of March 23d, I showed her a few of the many messages we had received from the professor. She told us she had known him somewhat, and I was eager to learn whether the character and atmosphere of the real professor and the purported one agreed. Our professor was of a speech that would have been a little pompous except for its quizzical humor. Always he addressed me as "my dear sir," and always, it seemed, he was as much amused by his formality as was I. Joan and I had not known the professor when he lived here.

 

"It suggests him," Mrs. K. announced, after I had read an example or two of the professor's way of putting things; but she added that her acquaintance with the professor had not been intimate.

"Here is something," I said, "that came as long ago as February, 1917. I am sure the professor, when he was living, never carried on in such fashion."

 

For several days prior to receipt of this particular communication, Stephen had been saying he thought the time was coming when, under the conditions of direct mental communication, Joan would be able to see him. He said she would remember nothing about the experience afterward, but at the time she would be able to tell something of what she saw, not much, perhaps, because words would be lacking.

 

On the February evening in question, Joan interrupted the communication to say, "Well, I can see now."

 

I sat silent, awaiting developments, and finally she went on, at one moment addressing the communicator, and at others half-soliloquizing:

 

"There is a man sitting on the arm of my chair, and I can see right through him. I don't know him, but he is nice. He has twinkly eyes. Oh, is it the professor? Well, I don't think you ought to sit on the arm of my chair. You say there are no conventions? Why not? Well, you don't need to laugh so hard. His laugh is beautiful. The professor says it is permissible for him to sit on the side of my chair. There are several persons standing around the professor. Stephen is not here. He is busy. They all look about the same age, except when they make pictures for me." (What Joan seems to have meant by "they make pictures for me" is interesting; I shall quote Stephen on this matter later.)

 

Then the professor himself broke in, saying to me: "I am hugging your wife. Perfectly permissible, my dear sir!"

 

Now if Joan and I had tried to imagine the professor as he was in this life, a by-play such as I have related would never have entered our minds. The professor was a man of dignified learning. Yet, said Mrs. K., "I can imagine him saying just that sort of droll thing."

 

And then Joan adjusted a handkerchief to her eyes. She wears a blindfold during mental communication to protect her sight from the light of the room. I touched Joan's wrist.

 

The first word that came was "Fern." It was spelled out, then pronounced several times. The next words were: "A girl at Fern." There was nothing more concerning "Fern" until near the close of the second period of the afternoon's communication.

 

I should state here that during Mrs. K.'s visit with us there were four separate periods of communication, two on the afternoon of March 29th, one on the evening of the same day, and one on the following morning.

 

Near the close of the afternoon's second period these words came: "Fern Hill."

 

A copy of my notes on the messages of March 29th and 30th was forwarded Mrs. K. after she reached home, with the request that she comment definitely on whatever evidential matter the communications contained. Acting on her usual impulse to avoid a supernormal explanation when a normal one will answer, Mrs. K. writes of "Fern Hill" thus:

 

"As a girl I attended a boarding-school called Fern Hill. It has been out of existence for years. But I have been the subject of occasional biographical sketches, and in some of them Fern Hill is mentioned."

 

Again and again possible subconscious knowledge on Joan's part! And yet the given individual reads but little of the many biographical facts printed concerning this person or that. Joan has no recollection of ever having read anything biographical of Mrs. K.; no memory of her conscious mind is stirred by the words "Fern Hill."

 

Nor has Joan recollection of ever having known the facts contained in the following message, delivered to Mrs. K., not by Stephen or the professor, but by one other who comes to Joan and me frequently: "You were a bit of a lass when you went to another house; not your father's. Your mother came here where

 

I am, and your father, too. You went away—a bit lass. They were your own people, but not your father or mother."

 

Mrs. K. writes: "On the death of my mother, at my birth, I was taken into the family of an aunt, with whom I lived until I was seventeen or eighteen years old. My father died when I was a child."

 

The possibility that Joan possessed subconscious knowledge of these facts is surely most remote. And the same comment may be made on the following:

 

Some one came who spoke the name "Dick." A personality thus named often comes to Joan and me, and so I answered by saying, "Hello, Dick!" But the communicator replied, "Not your Dick," and then continued with the appearance of addressing Mrs. K., saying: "Royce. Hodgson." (Both names were spelled out, Hodgson being spelled incorrectly—" Hodgeson.") "I only wanted to tell you that after all our discussions Royce and I have come to the same conclusions at last. We don't fight any more; not that we weren't always good friends." There was a pause. Then he who seemed to desire to be known as Hodgson uttered two words: "Brown coat."

 

Mrs. K., much amused, said that she did, indeed, remember Dr. Hodgson's brown coat.

 

She added: "I do not know of any particular relationship between the late Professor Royce of Harvard and Doctor Hodgson, although, of course, it is reasonable to suppose that they knew each other, and they may easily have differed as to their deductions on psychic phenomena. But that brown coat! Doctor Hodgson disapproved greatly of the somberness of men's evening dress. In order to protest against the convention he had a dress-suit made out of a brown broadcloth. It caused him to be rather conspicuous and greatly amused people. But he was dogged about it, and for a long time insisted on wearing the brown coat out to dinner."

 

Here was a fact known to people of one city, but too trivial to be generally known. If anything has been written about Doctor Hodgson's brown coat, it is practically certain that Joan never heard of it. Indeed, we knew only from Mrs. K. who Richard Hodgson was; one of her letters had mentioned him as a pioneer psychical investigator.

 

It should be said that not all the messages received on March 29th and 30th had meaning. For instance, the word "suit-case" was insisted on. It was as though an object was being shown Joan. Attempting to identify it, she said: "A suit-case. Most peculiar suit-case. Inside the suit-case? I can't see. I am sorry."

 

Now, the suit-case meant nothing to Mrs. K., nor does it mean anything to Joan and me.

 

But, on the other hand, consider the episode of the picture. Joan, speaking in what seemed to be her own character, said: "You go into a hall. Then there's a curved stairway. Then a— which?… A picture. Well, that is what I call a curved staircase. Spiral? All right. Is it your picture?"

 

The K. home, Mrs. K. says, has a curving stairway. I do not feel, though, that any considerable degree of evidence is thereby offered, because, in the first place, the stairway details of the communication are rather indefinite; in the second place, any house might have a curving staircase. This last could be said of the "picture," too (after all, it is not surprising that there was a portrait of Mr. K. in his own home), except for the fact that a subsequent message described the man pictured.

 

The foregoing mention of the "picture" occurred in the first period of communication. In the course of the second period, Joan said, apparently addressing Mr. K.: "You don't look like a business man; you look like a professional man. You know, you look not unlike my father. Yes, father wore a Vandyke, too. In the picture? I see. On the landing."

 

Now, as a matter of fact, a picture of Mr. K. did hang on the landing of Mrs. K.'s home. And though during the years immediately before his death Mr. K. did not wear a beard, at the time the portrait on the landing was made he did—a Vandyke. Further, after I had signaled Joan that the period of communication was over, and read my notes to her, she brought her father's picture. Mrs. K. was impressed by the resemblance between her husband and Joan's father. She writes:

 

"The photograph which Joan showed me strongly suggests Mr. K. as he looked before he shaved off his beard. There is the same broad brow. Except that the face is a little shorter than my husband's, and perhaps rounder, the likeness is obvious."

 

The statement that Mr. K. looked like a professional man is also interesting. This remark, Mrs. K. told us, had been made during Mr. K.'s lifetime by many persons.

 

Another engaging bit of evidence was the "Washington" incident. It struck me as most interesting, because it exemplified so clearly how the subconscious mind of the receiving station can cloud a fact, and yet later so clear it that its evidential character is with difficulty gainsaid.

 

During the evening of March 29th the name "Washington" was spelled out incorrectly, in this fashion: "W-a-s-h-i-n-g-e-t­o-n." Then came the numbers "four, five"; and then they came again, only in the order "five, four." That was all at the time. Toward the close of the evening's communication Joan spoke as follows: "Four, five; five, four. I can't tell which goes first. Washington."

 

To me, and, when I read Joan my notes, to her also, "Washington" and the combination of numbers were an enigma. On the morning of March 30th Mrs. K. and I were alone together for a while. We discussed the communications of the day before, and finally she said: ",There is something I would like to tell you."

 

"Better not," I answered. "If anything has come that isn't altogether clear, give it a chance to straighten itself out in to­day's communication."

 

And so Mrs. K. said nothing.

 

And the very first word Joan spoke after I touched her wrist that morning was "Potomac." She followed it with "four, five," and then started to change the numbers to "five, four." But Mrs. K. said: "Five-four is right."

 

After communication had been brought to a close, Mrs. K. told us that twenty years ago she and Mr. K. lived at 54 Potomac Street. The possibility of Joan ever having read or been told that Mrs. K. had lived, years ago, at such and such a number on such and such a street, is so remote that it scarcely exists.

 

One more test was offered to Mrs. K.—in the course of the second period of the communication of the afternoon of March 29th. It was preceded by the following, purporting to be addressed by Mr. K. to his wife:

 

"There is much work for you. There is quantity you must bring as your gift. When you understand you will be content. You can work for me—still in partnership. You cannot want to do other than fulfil your possibilities of service. You see there is not only yourself to think of; there is your relation to the whole. The relationship between the individual and the body social is very close."

 

A bit more came in this vein. Then suddenly Mr. K. broke off to say: "I wish you would wear your gray dress. Couldn't you?"

 

Mrs. K. smiled. "It is worn out " she said. "You could get another one," Mr. K. urged.

 

Concerning this brief conversation, Mrs. K. writes: "The reference to the gray dress is, I think, in the plaster-cast class of evidence, or possibly even one better. Before I was married I had a little cheap gray flannel dress which Mr. K. liked very much. He liked it so much that he wanted me to wear it when I was married! You can imagine how a girl, with visions of white satin, replied to the suggestion."

 

Surely the "gray dress" possesses a certain evidential value, despite the fact that other women have had gray dresses which have been admired by their husbands. But Mrs. K. continues: