"I don't doubt that you both saw the writing," answered Mr. MacGlue, with a composure that surprised me.
"Can you account for it?" I asked.
"Well," said the impenetrable doctor, "if I set my wits at work, I believe I might account for it to the satisfaction of some people. For example, I might give you what they call the rational explanation, to begin with. I might say that you are, to my certain knowledge, in a highly excited nervous condition; and that, when you saw the apparition (as you call it), you simply saw nothing but your own strong impression of an absent woman, who (as I greatly fear) has got on the weak or amatory side of you. I mean no offense, Mr. Germaine--"
"I take no offense, doctor. But excuse me for speaking plainly--the rational explanation is thrown away on me."
"I'll readily excuse you," answered Mr. MacGlue; "the rather that I'm entirely of your opinion. I don't believe in the rational explanation myself." This was surprising, to say the least of it. "What _do_ you believe in?" I inquired. Mr. MacGlue declined to let me hurry him.
"Wait a little," he said. "There's the _ir_rational explanation to try next. Maybe it will fit itself to the present state of your mind better than the other. We will say this time that you have really seen the ghost (or double) of a living person. Very good. If you can suppose a disembodied spirit to appear in earthly clothing--of silk or merino, as the case may be--it's no great stretch to suppose, next, that this same spirit is capable of holding a mortal pencil, and of writing mortal words in a mortal sketching-book. And if the ghost vanishes (which your ghost did), it seems supernaturally appropriate that the writing should follow the example and vanish too. And the reason of the vanishment may be (if you want a reason), either that the ghost does not like letting a stranger like me into its secrets, or that vanishing is a settled habit of ghosts and of everything associated with them, or that this ghost has changed its mind in the course of three hours (being the ghost of a woman, I am sure that's not wonderful), and doesn't care to see you 'when the full moon shines on Saint Anthony's Well.' There's the _ir_rational explanation for you. And, speaking for myself, I'm bound to add that I don't set a pin's value on _that_ explanation either." Mr. MacGlue's sublime indifference to both sides of the question began to irritate me.
"In plain words, doctor," I said, "you don't think the circumstances that I have mentioned to you worthy of serious investigation?"
"I don't think serious investigation capable of dealing with the circumstances," answered the doctor. "Put it in that way, and you put it right. Just look round you. Here we three persons are alive and hearty at this snug table. If (which God forbid!) good Mistress Germaine or yourself were to fall down dead in another moment, I, doctor as I am, could no more explain what first principle of life and movement had been suddenly extinguished in you than the dog there sleeping on the hearth-rug. If I am content to sit down ignorant in the face of such an impenetrable mystery as this--presented to me, day after day, every time I see a living creature come into the world or go out of it--why may I not sit down content in the face of your lady in the summer-house, and say she's altogether beyond my fathoming, and there is an end of her?" At those words my mother joined in the conversation for the first time.
"Ah, sir," she said, "if you could only persuade my son to take your sensible view, how happy I should be! Would you believe it?--he positively means (if he can find the place) to go to Saint Anthony's Well!" Even this revelation entirely failed to surprise Mr. MacGlue.
"Ay, ay. He means to keep his appointment with the ghost, does he? Well, I can be of some service to him if he sticks to his resolution. I can tell him of another man who kept a written appointment with a ghost, and what came of it." This was a startling announcement. Did he really mean what he said?
"Are you in jest or in earnest?" I asked.
"I never joke, sir," said Mr. MacGlue. "No sick person really believes in a doctor who jokes. I defy you to show me a man at the head of our profession who has ever been discovered in high spirits (in medical hours) by his nearest and dearest friend. You may have wondered, I dare say, at seeing me take your strange narrative as coolly as I do. It comes naturally, sir. Yours is not the first story of a ghost and a pencil that I have heard."
"Do you mean to tell me," I said, "that you know of another man who has seen what I have seen?"