A good (old) story

Just a little bit of publicity for one of the internets oldest still existing web sites, Project Guttenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73756), and hopefully too for Grandad's blog (Link in the sidebar), which has now been taken over by his daughter Kate.  A warning though, if you read old books, don't expect them to be politically correct in todays terms!!  

I've been reading this 1923 collection of short stories and thought those of you who who like a good horror tale might like this.  Enjoy.  :-)

DERRICK’S RETURN

 

BY GOUVERNEUR MORRIS

 

From _Cosmopolitan_

 

 

Derrick dreamed that Indians had captured him and had laid him face down

in their camp fire and were slowly burning his head off. As a matter of

fact a surgeon was working out a difficult problem in the back of

Derrick’s throat, and for a little while, toward the end of the

operation, anesthesia had not been complete.

 

The operation was a success. Something that ought not to have been in

Derrick’s throat was now out of it, and an incorrect arrangement of this

and that had been corrected. The only trouble was a slight, ever so

slight bleeding which could not be stopped. The measures taken to stop

it were worse than the dream about the Indians, and, still worse, they

didn’t stop it. The thin trickle of blood kept on trickling until the

reservoirs from which it came were empty, and then the doctors--there

were a good many of them now--told the woman who sobbed and carried on

that her husband’s sufferings were all over. They told her that Derrick

was dead.

 

But Derrick wouldn’t have admitted that. Even the bleeding and the pain

of which he seemed to have died were now but vague and negligible

memories. The great thing was to get out of that body which had already

begun to decay, and making use of a new and perfectly delightful power

of locomotion, to get as far away from it as possible. He caught up with

sounds and passed them. And he discovered presently that he could move a

little more quickly than light. In a crumb of time some unerring

intuition told him that he had come to the Place to which some other

unerring intuition had directed him.

 

Among the beautiful lights and shadows and colours of that Place, he

learned fast. There were voices which answered his questions just as

fast as he could think them. And something wonderful had happened to his

memory, because it was never necessary to think the same question twice.

Knowledge came to stay. To discover how very little he had ever really

known about anything didn’t humiliate him. It was funny. It made him

laugh.

 

And now that he was able to perceive what insuperable obstacles there

must always be between the man-mob and real knowledge of any kind, he

developed a certain respect for the man-mob. It had taken them, for

instance, so many millions of years to find out that the world on which

they lived was not flat but round. The wonder was that they had made the

discovery at all. And they had succeeded in prying into certain other

secrets that they were not supposed to know--ever. As, for instance, the

immortality of the soul, and how to commit race suicide.

 

To let the man-mob discover its own immortality had been a dreadful

mistake. Everybody admitted that now. The discovery had made man take

himself seriously and caused him to evolve the erroneous doctrine that

the way to a happy immortality lay only through making his brief

mortality and that of others as miserable as possible.

 

He thought a question and received this answer, only the answer was in

terms of thought rather than in words:

 

“No, they were put on earth to be happy and to enjoy themselves. For no

other reason. But for some reason or other nobody told them, and they

got to taking themselves seriously. They were forced to invent all kinds

of sins and bad habits so that they could gain favour by resisting

them.... But with all respect to what you are now, you must perceive and

admit what a perfect ass you were up to the time of your recent, and so

called, death.”

 

He thought another question. The answer was a negative.

 

“No. They will not evolve into anything better. They have stood still

too long and got themselves into much too dreadful a mess. As a pack

they will never learn that they were meant only to be happy and to enjoy

themselves. Individuals, of course, have from time to time had this

knowledge and practised it, and will, but the others won’t let them

practise it. But don’t worry. Man will die out, and insects will step in

and succeed where he failed. Souls will continue for millions of years

to come to this place, to learn what you are learning, and be happy to

know that they have waked for ever from the wretched little nightmare

they made for themselves on earth. And since happiness is inseparable

from laughter, it will make them laugh to look back and see how

religiously they side-stepped and ducked out of everything that was

really worth while.”

 

 

II

 

In the first days of some novel, beautiful, or merely exciting

experience a man misses neither his friends nor his family. And it was a

long time, as time is reckoned here on earth, before Derrick realized

that he had parted from all his without so much as bidding any one of

them good-bye.

 

In time, of course, they would all come to the place where he now found

himself, and share with him all that delicious wealth of knowledge and

clear vision the lack of which now stood between them and happiness.

Here the knowing how to be happy seemed the mere _a b c_ of happiness.

It was the first thing you learned. You not only learned how to be

happy; but you applied your easily acquired knowledge and you actually

_were_ happy.

 

But how, the earth dweller asks, can the spirit of a man, separated from

his wife and children and from the friends he loves, and conscious of

the separation, be happy? Very easily. It was one of Derrick’s first

questions, and the answer had been perfectly satisfactory.

 

He could always go back. He had learned that almost at once. There is no

such thing as separation. If he chose to wait where he was, gathering

the sweetest and delightfulest knowledge among the lovely lights and

shadows and colours and perfumes, even as a man gathers flowers in a

beautiful garden, in the course of time all those whom he had loved so

greatly would come to him and be with him for ever. But if waiting would

make him unhappy, here where no one need be unhappy, he could always go

back. When? Now. Soon. Whenever he liked. Oh, it took a little time to

get back; but not much. If, for instance, his wife at a given moment

were about to lift her hands to her hair, and at that same moment he

made up his mind to go back to her and actually started, he would get to

her before her hands had moved more than a thousandth of an inch from

her lap.

 

How could he communicate with her? As of old, if he liked. He could be

with her. She could hear his voice, on occasions, if the actinic and

electrical conditions were just right. She might actually see him. And

of course he would be able to see her and to hear her. There was never

any trouble about that. If he wanted to be with his family _all_ the

time, until they in turn got ready to come here, there was nothing to

prevent--absolutely nothing. But had he, in his earth life, ever wanted

to be with his dear ones _all_ the time? Probably not. One of these days

he would probably run into Romeo and Juliet. Very likely he would find

them together. They were often together; but not always. Probably, like

other loving spirits, he would not wish to be with _his_ family _all_

the time. He would probably do as other spirits did--go and come, and go

and come.

 

About communicating? He would probably find that plain straight talk was

too strong for earth dwellers. It had been tried out on them often, and

usually disastrously. It was like forcing champagne and brandy on men

who had always been content with beer. Straight talk from the spirit

world often produced epilepsy among earth dwellers. It was too much for

them to have all at once. And then such a very little was enough to

content them, and he would find it far more satisfactory to furnish them

with a little--a mysterious and nicely stage-managed _little_--than with

a plain-spoken straight from the shoulder _lot_. To the wise, and he was

now beginning to be wise, a hint is sufficient. Suppose, his wife being

at her dressing table, he were to plant himself beneath and rap out a

few words in the Morse code? Let him keep on with these rappings until

she called in someone to interpret them for her.

 

He could not only comfort her about his death and reassure her as to his

general whereabouts and activities, but he could have a lot of fun with

her. There is no harm in having harmless fun with those you love. It is

the fear of fun, the suspicion with which it is regarded, more than any

one single thing, that has given the man-pack such a miserable run for

its money. By means of the Morse code, he could persuade her to buy a

ouija board. He would love that, and so would she and the children.

 

But Derrick kept putting off his return to the earth.

 

If a loving husband and father were turned loose in the finest jewellery

store in the world and told to take his pick of the diamonds and rubies

and pearls, as many as he could carry, he would not at once rush off to

tell his loved ones of the astounding privilege that had been extended

to him. He would stick to the store. He would hang about it possibly for

days taking mental stock of all its precious contents. Blurring the tops

of the glass show cases with his breath and staring till his eyes ached.

 

Derrick was in somewhat the same case. He had the impulse to rush off at

once to his family to tell them of the extraordinary wisdom and mental

equilibrium which were being lavished upon him; but he was restrained by

the very natural wish to remain where he was until the last vestiges of

earth marks had been rubbed from him.

 

He had been a very decent man as men go; but the amazing sense of purity

which now pervaded his being was new in his experience. It was not so

much a smug consciousness and conceit in personal purity as a happy

negation of all that is not directly of the spirit in its most calm and

lucid moments.

 

Here nothing soiled and nothing tired. An immense and delicious mental

activity swept one past all the earthly halting places. There was no

eating or drinking or love-making. There was no sleeping, and the mere

fact of existence among the lights and shadows and colours was more

cleansing than the most refined species of Oriental bathing.

 

Life here was mental. Burning curiosities and instantaneous

satisfactions thereof seemed at once the aim and the end of existence.

And since there can be no limit to the number and extent of the spirit’s

curiosities, it was obvious that there could be no limit to existence

itself. And Derrick together with those spirits which had passed into

the Place at the same time with his own began to have a clear

understanding of humanity.

 

Here, for instance, all that one learned about God was fact, but there

was so much to learn that heaping fact on fact, with a speed unknown on

earth--even in the heaping of falsehood upon falsehood--it would take

from now until eternity to learn all about God. And this, of course,

had to be the case. Since God is infinite, He can only be wholly

revealed to those who, by pursuing knowledge to infinity, have acquired

infinite knowledge.

 

The man-mob conception of God seemed very absurd to him. For man had

formed it in the days when he still believed the earth to be flat, and

had subsequently seen no good reason or obligation to change it. The

man-mob had never gone beyond the idea that God was a definite person to

whom certain things like praise and toadying were infinitely agreeable,

and to whom certain other things like being happy and not very serious

were as a red rag to a bull. This conception was the work of certain men

who, the moment they had conceived a God in their own narrow and

intolerant image, became themselves godlike. To men of that stamp simple

and practical discoveries in geography, mechanics, or ceramics would

have been utterly out of the question. But the greatest discovery of all

with its precise descriptions and limitations lay to their credit. And

from that time to this no very great number of men had ever taken the

trouble to gainsay them, or ever would.

 

“I never did, for one,” thought Derrick, and he recalled with a smile

the religious phases through which he had passed in his earth life. As

he remembered that he had once, for a short period of his childhood,

believed in the fiery, old-fashioned Hell of the Puritans, the smile

broadened, and he burst into joyous and musical laughter.

 

 

III

 

There was one thing that he must be prepared to face. His wife and their

three children would _look_ just as they had looked when he last saw

them, and as a matter of fact they would _be_ just what they were; but

to him, with all his new and accurate knowledge and his inconceivably

clear vision, they would seem to have changed greatly.

 

He had always considered his wife an intelligent, well-educated, even an

advanced woman, and he had considered his children, especially the

youngest, who was a girl, altogether brighter and more precocious than

his neighbour’s children. Well, along those lines he must be prepared

for shocks and disillusionment.

 

It would not be possible, for instance, to sit down with his wife to a

rational discussion of anything. She would seem like a moron to him:

superstitious, backward, ignorant, and stubborn as a mule. He would find

her erroneous beliefs and convictions hard to change. It would be the

same with the children, but in less degree. The oldest was twelve, and

his brain was still capable of a little development. He would have some

inclination to listen to his father and to believe what his father told

him. With Sammy aged ten, and Ethel, aged eight, much might be done.

 

He would begin by asking these young hopefuls to forget everything that

had been taught them, with the exception of that one startling fact,

that the world is round. He would then proceed to feed their eager young

earth minds on as many simple and helpful truths as would be good for

them, and he would show them, what was now so clear to him, how to find

happiness on earth with a minimum of labour and worry.

 

A question carelessly thought and instantly answered caused him to

return to earth sooner than he had intended. The answer to his question

had been in the nature of a hard jolt. It had to do with sin.

 

Sin, he learned, is not doing something which other people regard as

sinful, but something which you yourself know to be sinful. Lying,

theft, arson, murder, bigamy may on occasion be acts of light, charity,

and commiseration, no matter how the man-mob may execrate, judge, and

punish them. But the same things may be also the worst of crimes. And

only the individual who commits them can possibly know. That individual

doesn’t even have to know. It is what he thinks that counts; not what he

pretends to think, not what he swears in open court that he did think,

but what, without self-deception, he actually did and does think.

 

And Derrick learned that if during his brief absence from them any of

those earth persons whom he loved so dearly had sinned, committed some

act or other which they knew for themselves to be sinful, there would be

an opaque veil which neither his eyes nor theirs could pierce, nor the

words of their mouths.

 

But he was not _greatly_ worried.

 

As men count time he had been absent from the earth and from his loved

ones only for a very short time. They would still be in the depths of

mourning for him. And even if they were evilly disposed persons, which

they were not, they would hardly have had time to think of anything but

their grief and their loss.

 

 

IV

 

As he left the Place of the wonderful lights and shades and colours and

perfumes, he realized that he could not have been perfectly happy in it.

He could not have been _perfectly_ happy, because he now perceived that

by the mere act of leaving it behind he had become still happier, and

that perfect happiness could only be his when he reached “home” and

beheld his loved ones.

 

When he had been taken from his home to the hospital the buds on the

pear trees had been on the point of bursting. The pear trees would be in

full bloom now. When he had been taken away the shutters of the house

had been taken from their hinges, painted a pleasant apple green and

stood in the old carriage house to dry. They would be back on their

hinges now, vying in smartness with the two new coats of white paint

which the painters had been spreading over the low rambling house

itself. How sweet the house would look among the fresh young greens of

spring! Perhaps the peewees who came every year had already begun to

build in the veranda eaves.

 

The little river which tumbled over the old mill dam and for a mile

flowed tranquilly on with little slipping rushes through his farm, would

be very full of water now. It would be roaring and foaming among the

rocks at the foot of the dam. The elms which shaded the bridge and the

ford beside it would be at their best, before the leaves became

worm-eaten and cobwebby. Perhaps one of the cars would be in the ford to

its hubs getting washed, with one of the children sitting in the front

seat. The dark blue roadster with the special body looked especially gay

and sporty in the ford under the shadow of the elms.

 

He had no more than time to think these things before he had come to the

end of his journey.

 

Home had never looked so sweet or inviting. The garden was bounded on

the south by a little brook; and beyond this was a little hill planted

with kalmia and many species of native ferns.

 

It was on the top of this hill that he lighted, and here he paused for a

while and filled his eyes with the humble beauty of the home which his

earth mind had conceived and achieved.

 

Beyond the garden carpeted with jonquils and narcissuses between and

above graceful pyramids of pear blossoms, the house, low and rambling,

with many chimneys, gleamed in the sunlight. It was a heavenly day.

 

From the hill he could see not only the house, but to the left the

garage and beyond that the stable. It was about eleven o’clock in the

morning, and it seemed queer to him that at that hour and at that season

there should be no sign of life anywhere. Surely the gardener and his

assistant ought to be at work. He turned a puzzled and indignant glance

back upon the garden, and he observed a curious phenomenon.

 

A strip of soil in the upper left hand corner of the garden was being

turned and broken by a spade. Near by a fork was taking manure from a

wheelbarrow and spreading it over the roots of a handsome crab apple.

 

Both the spade and the fork appeared to be performing these meritorious

acts without the aid of any human agency.

 

And Derrick knew at once that McIntyre, the gardener, and Chubb, his

assistant, must, since his departure, have sinned in their own eyes, so

that they could now no longer show themselves to him, or he to them.

 

He started anxiously toward the house, but a familiar sound arrested

him.

 

The blue roadster, hitting on all its cylinders, came slowly out of the

garage and descended the hill and crossed the bridge and honked its horn

for the mill corner and sped off along the county road toward Stamford

_all by itself_.

 

There was nobody in the roadster. He could swear to that.

 

And this meant, of course, that Britton, the chauffeur, had done

something which he knew that he ought not to have done, and was for ever

separated from those who had gone beyond.

 

When Derrick reached the house he was in an exceedingly anxious state

of mind. He stepped into the entrance hall and listened. And heard no

sound. He passed rapidly through the master’s rooms downstairs and

upstairs. In the sewing room a thread and needle was mending the heel of

a silk stocking, but there did not seem to be anybody in the room.

 

He looked from the window and saw two fishing poles and a tin pail

moving eagerly toward the river. The boys, perhaps. Oh, what _could_

they have done to separate themselves from him? The window was open and

he called and shouted, but the fishing poles and the tin pail kept on

going.

 

He went downstairs, through the dining room and into the pantry.

 

His heart stood still.

 

On tiptoe on the seat of a chair stood his little girl, Ethel. Her hair

shone like spun gold. She looked like an angel. And his heart swelled

with an exquisite bliss; but before he could speak to her and make

himself known, she had reached down something from the next to the top

shelf and put it in her mouth.

 

At that instant she vanished.

 

He lingered for a while about the house and gardens, but it was no use.

He knew that. They had all sinned in some way or other, and therefore he

was indeed dead to them, and they to him.

 

Back of the stables were woods. From these woods there came a sudden

sound of barking. The sound was familiar to Derrick, and thrilled him.

 

“If I can hear Scoop,” he thought, “Scoop can hear me.” He whistled long

and shrill.

 

Not long after a little black dog came running, his stomach to the

ground, his floppy silk ears flying. With a sob, Derrick knelt and took

the little dog in his arms.

 

       *       *       *       *       *

 

“Oh, Mumsey!” called Ethel. “Do come and look at Scoopie. He’s doing all

his tricks by himself, just as if somebody was telling him to do them.”

 

The two looked from a window, and saw the little dog sit up and play

dead and roll over--all very joyously--and jump as if through circled

arms. Then they saw his tail droop and his head droop and his left hind

leg begin to scratch furiously at his ribs. He always _had_ to do that

when anyone scratched his back in a particular place.

 

       *       *       *       *       *

 

When Derrick returned to the Place of the wonderful lights and shadows

he was very unhappy and he knew that he must always be unhappy.

 

“Instead of coming to this Place,” he said to himself, “knowing what I

know now, I might just as well have gone to Hell.”

 

A voice, sardonic and on the verge of laughter, answered him.

 

“That’s just what you did.”