do it. I don't
say there's more than a chance, but there 's that There's a bare chance.
That's better than giving up. I 've heard of such things being done. I 've
read of them. Try it, for God's sake I Don't give up."
At any previous moment of his life the suggestion that he could, by
mere will power, move the mind of a person a thousand miles away, so
as to reverse a deliberate decision, would have appeared to Lansing as
wholly preposterous as no doubt it does to any who read these lines.
But a man, however logical he may be on land, will grasp at a straw
when drowning, as if it were a log. Pinney had no need to use
arguments or adjurations to induce Lansing to adopt his suggestion.
The man before him was in no mood to balance probabilities against
improbabilities. It was enough that the project offered a chance of
success, albeit infinitesimal; for on the other hand there was nothing
but an intolerable despair, and a fate that truly seemed more than flesh
and blood could bear.
Lansing had sprung to his feet while Pinney was speaking. "I 'm going
to try it, and may God Almighty help me!" he cried, in a terrible voice.
"Amen!" echoed Pinney.
Lansing sank into his chair again, and sat leaning slightly forward, in a
rigid attitude. The expression of his eyes at once became fixed. His
features grew tense, and the muscles of his face stood out. As if to
steady the mental strain by a physical one, he had taken from the table a
horseshoe which had lain there, and held it in a convulsive grip.
Pinney had made this extraordinary suggestion in the hope of diverting
Lansing's mind for a moment from his terrible situation, and with not
so much faith even as he feigned that it would be of any practical avail.
But now, as he looked upon the ghastly face before him, and realized
the tremendous concentration of purpose, the agony of will, which it
expressed, he was impressed that it would not be marvelous if some
marvel should be the issue. Certainly, if the will really had any such
power as Lansing was trying to exert, as so many theorists maintained,
there could never arise circumstances better calculated than these to
call forth a supreme assertion of the faculty. He went out of the room
on tiptoe, and left his friend alone to fight this strange and terrible
battle with the powers of the air for the honor of his wife and his own.
There was little enough need of any preliminary effort on Lansing's
part to fix his thoughts upon Mary. It was only requisite that to the
intensity of the mental vision, with which he had before imagined her,
should be added the activity of the will, turning the former mood of
despair into one of resistance. He knew in what room of their house the
wedding party must now be gathered, and was able to represent to
himself the scene there as vividly as if he had been present. He saw the
relatives assembled; he saw Mr. Davenport, the minister, and, facing
him, the bridal couple, in the only spot where they could well stand,
before the fireplace. But from all the others, from the guests, from the
minister, from the bridegroom, he turned his thoughts, to fix them on
the bride alone. He saw her as if through the small end of an immensely
long telescope, distinctly, but at an immeasurable distance. On this face
his mental gaze was riveted, as by conclusive efforts his will strove to
reach and move hers against the thing that she was doing. Although his
former experiments in mental phenomena had in a measure familiarized
him with the mode of addressing his powers to such an undertaking as
this, yet the present effort was on a scale so much vaster that his will
for a time seemed appalled, and refused to go out from him, as a bird
put forth from a ship at sea returns again and again before daring to
essay the distant flight to land. He felt that he was gaining nothing. He
was as one who beats the air. It was all he could do to struggle against
the influences that tended to deflect and dissipate his thoughts. Again
and again a conviction of the uselessness of the attempt, of the madness
of imagining that a mere man could send a wish, like a voice, across a
continent, laid its paralyzing touch upon his will, and nothing but a
sense of the black horror which failure meant enabled him to throw it
off. If he but once admitted the idea of failing, all was lost. He
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