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William Gerhardie - Resurrection

In the entrance of the room set aside for champagne and refreshments, I ran into my friend Max Fisher who, though he never drank, exuded a constant exhilaration distilled by his unaided high spirits. The pressure from within was so great and the jet of wit so high and powerful that one understood why Max Fisher needed no recourse to alcohol, and one rather feared to think what might happen to him if he did have recourse to it.

' What are you doing here ! ' I cried.

' I happen to know one of the footmen,' he countered.

Few intellectuals or artists love the great world; but they contrive now and then to put in an appearance so that they may feel themselves rustics by inclination rather than necessity; and when they meet there they like to suggest each other as out of place. This invariably takes the polite forrn
of doubting the compatibility of trivial surroundings with a nature profound and reflective. I hinted this doubt, and he replied :
' Damn it all, man ! do you suppose I am interested in the spirit to the total exclusion of the flesh ? ' And at once this reminded me.

' Tell me, where were you to-day between six and seven ? '

He knitted his brows. 'I was down at the sea-shore at Hastings. Why ? '

' What sort of ceilings have you in your house ? Any beams-broad brown beams ? '

' Yes, there are thick oak beams on the ceiling in the lounge. Why ?'

'Across a white ceiling ? '

' Yes. Why ?'

' 'Was there anyone in the house between six and seven ? '

' My wife was in the lounge, typing.'

'Typing ? '

' Yes, why does it surprise you ? Come out with it, old man ! Don't look so portentous.'

' That proves it to me.'

' Proves what?'

' That proves it, I think.' And I told him my strange experience.

He wearied of it before I had finished. ' Cut that out, laddie,' he said. 'Cut it out.' 

Max Fisher had a selected range of interests. In conversation with him you had to avoid touching on so many aversions of his that few subjects remained for discussion. His whole passion and interest in life expressed itself in crooning over a landscape, a view of a village, a tree. I was disappointed that he should not show any more interest in an experience which, to say the least, was singular enough to engage any mortal's attention.

The incurious apes that they are,I thought bitterly. They nourish a vague hope that the Bible, though otherwise exploded, may be right about immortality. But when one of their number alights by hazard on the very mechanism by which their resurrection is to be achieved, they won't even stop to listen to him.