After the fourth reading of the book, however, I suddenly understood the fundamental relationship between matter and energy. Oh, I muttered aloud — for I am ashamed to say that I am beginning to talk to myself sometimes, but only in the night when the house is altogether silent, except for creaking beams and crying wind — oh, but this is fascinating, this is exciting. The essence of matter is transmutable into energy. I can see that.
The comprehension came to me suddenly only night before last, and immediately I felt myself possessed by a strange soft peace. Mind and body relaxed and fell into sleep. When I wakened it was late morning, and the sun was streaming across the room. I rose quickly, and as I have said, the day was busy with small affairs. Mrs. Matt stayed too long, and night fell before I had finished the plans I had made for the day. For I have learned that if my life is to have meaning as a whole, now that Gerald and I are apart and Rennie is a man, then each day must have its individual order, so that when night falls I can say that I have done what I planned for the day, and the sum total of days makes a year and years make a life.
Well, then, I was tired last night, and mildly discontented with myself because I had not completed the day. I did not open the book but went immediately to sleep. When I woke at quarter past two, as I have said, my mind was clear and I was eager to read again in the light of fresh comprehension. I had only opened the book when I knew that I was not alone. I was not frightened, only filled with involuntary wonder. For I looked up and I saw Gerald, standing just inside the closed door. He was sad and thin and much older. He had a short beard, his hair was cropped very short, and he wore Chinese clothes, not the robes of a gentleman but a uniform of the sort that students used to wear, made of dark stuff and the jacket buttoned to the throat. I could not see his form clearly, but his face was very clear. He smiled at me, his grave dark eyes suddenly bright. I think he put out his hand to me, but of this I am not sure for I leaped from my bed and I cried out to him.
“Gerald, Gerald, oh darling—”
I was stopped by a frightful agony in his face, but only for one instant. Then I ran to hold him in my arms, but he was gone. I stood where I had seen him stand. There was no one here and the floor was cold beneath my bare feet. I crept back into bed shivering and afraid. I have seen Gerald. I have no doubt of it. And I have seen him as he is now. It could not be a dream nor a trick of memory, else I would have seen him as he had been when we parted, his face as it looked when he stood on the dock at Shanghai, when we gazed at each other until the river mists crept between us and my ship sailed out to sea.
“I feel as though my very flesh was torn from yours,” he had written me.
Now he was bearded, his hair was cut short, he wore the uniform he had always hated, even when his students put it on proudly. A prisoner’s uniform, he had called it, lacking style and grace and always dingy blue or muddy grey. I had never seen him as I saw him now. Therefore it was no dream. I have seen matter transmuted into energy in his shape and form.
It was impossible to sleep after that. I dressed and went downstairs and walked about the house until the pale dawn gleamed behind the mountains. I do not know what a vision means. Does it signify life or death? I have no way of knowing. And why was his last look an agony? How shall I ever know?
…I am surprised that I am not in the least frightened because I have seen Gerald. I am overcome with sadness but not with fear. I cannot be afraid of Gerald in whatever form he comes to me, but I remember the stories I have always laughed at, the tales of dead people who appear to their loved ones, the ghosts and spirits in whom I have never believed. I still do not believe. I say to myself that there is some trick of sight and subconscious which betrays my common sense. Then I find myself leading to conversation on the subject of distant persons who suddenly appear before those who think of them, although I tell no one that I have seen Gerald. Mrs. Matt, for example, believes everything I doubt. She declares that she has seen three times the face of her mother, who lived and died in Ireland.
“Three times have I seen the blessed woman,” she said today, “and each time was after she was dead.”
I begged her to tell me what she saw.
“I saw my mother on her knees, a-prayin’,” Mrs. Matt said solemnly. She was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of stone black tea while I finished my luncheon sandwich. “On her knees she was, her hand uplifted-like, and her hair streamin’ down her back. She was cryin’ while she prayed and she wore her old black dress but with no apron. Except on a Sunday she had always her apron on, and so I know it was a Sunday I saw her. Later I had the word that it was the very Sunday my father died, and I knew she saw him goin’ down to hell. It was what he deserved but it was hard on her, bless her, and she cried.”
“And the second time, Mrs. Matt?”
“The second time was when I had made up my mind to leave Matt. Yes, my dear,” she said nodding her head at me. “I did so make up my mind. He’d had one of them jealous fits of his.” She leaned close to me, her eyes on the kitchen door. Outside Matt was chopping wood.
“He wasn’t the father of my first child,” she whispered, “and he’s never let me forget. Suspicious he is of every man — he’s been my torment, that he has, these forty years.”
I brushed aside the familiar complaint.
“And the third time, Mrs. Matt?”
She looked blank. “There was only the one time, dearie, and Matt married me before the blessed baby was born.”
“The third time you saw your mother—”
“Ah yes, that! Well, the third time was on a bright Easter mornin’. I’d had a grand fight with Matt the night before and I was in no mood for church. To church I would not go and so I put on my old clothes and scrubbed the kitchen floor. Matt yelled at me to get up and come to church with him and the children — six of them we had by then, all small, and it was against the seventh that I’d fought him in the night. But I wouldn’t go and he marched off, leaving me on my knees in a swirl of soap and water. When the house was quiet-like, I got up and put away my rag and pail and I washed myself and put on a clean nightygown and laid myself in a clean bed to sleep back my strength. It was then I saw my mother for the last time in resurrection. She was in white, like an angel, but her hair was down her back in a little grey pigtail as she always had it for the night. And she said to me, ‘Poor soul, ye’re only a woman, and ye must tak’ it as best ye can.’
“‘True, Mother mine,’ I said, and went off to sleep like a babe and when I woke, Matt was back and he’d fed the children and himself and I got up restored.”
A foolish story, and Mrs. Matt is an ignorant and sometimes mischievous old woman but she believes what she saw.
In the afternoon I went to the small library in our nearest town and surprised our prim spinster librarian by finding half a dozen books on dreams and visions. I am half ashamed of wanting to read them, for I am accustomed to my own skeptic views and I have no faith in second sight. It is Einstein who unsettles me. If a strong stout log of wood, a length of pure matter, can be transmuted into energy before my eyes, into ash and flame and heat, cannot a living body, a brilliant mind, a deep and spiritual soul, be transmuted into its own likeness but a different stuff? What impels me now is not the old wives’ tales and the ghosts of the dead, for these my doubts are as valid as ever they have been. No, I am impelled by the infinite possibilities suggested to me by a gnarled little scientist whom I must respect because the world respects him. I have embarked upon a quest. I go in search of the one I love. Is Gerald living or is he dead?