













THE PARASITE

A Story


BY

A. CONAN DOYLE


AUTHOR OF "THE REFUGEES" "MICAH CLARKE" ETC.




1894




THE PARASITE

I

March 24.  The spring is fairly with us now.  Outside my laboratory
window the great chestnut-tree is all covered with the big, glutinous,
gummy buds, some of which have already begun to break into little green
shuttlecocks.  As you walk down the lanes you are conscious of the
rich, silent forces of nature working all around you.  The wet earth
smells fruitful and luscious.  Green shoots are peeping out everywhere.
The twigs are stiff with their sap; and the moist, heavy English air is
laden with a faintly resinous perfume.  Buds in the hedges, lambs
beneath them--everywhere the work of reproduction going forward!

I can see it without, and I can feel it within.  We also have our
spring when the little arterioles dilate, the lymph flows in a brisker
stream, the glands work harder, winnowing and straining.  Every year
nature readjusts the whole machine.  I can feel the ferment in my blood
at this very moment, and as the cool sunshine pours through my window I
could dance about in it like a gnat.  So I should, only that Charles
Sadler would rush upstairs to know what was the matter.  Besides, I
must remember that I am Professor Gilroy.  An old professor may afford
to be natural, but when fortune has given one of the first chairs in
the university to a man of four-and-thirty he must try and act the part
consistently.

What a fellow Wilson is!  If I could only throw the same enthusiasm
into physiology that he does into psychology, I should become a Claude
Bernard at the least.  His whole life and soul and energy work to one
end.  He drops to sleep collating his results of the past day, and he
wakes to plan his researches for the coming one.  And yet, outside the
narrow circle who follow his proceedings, he gets so little credit for
it.  Physiology is a recognized science.  If I add even a brick to the
edifice, every one sees and applauds it.  But Wilson is trying to dig
the foundations for a science of the future.  His work is underground
and does not show.  Yet he goes on uncomplainingly, corresponding with
a hundred semi-maniacs in the hope of finding one reliable witness,
sifting a hundred lies on the chance of gaining one little speck of
truth, collating old books, devouring new ones, experimenting,
lecturing, trying to light up in others the fiery interest which is
consuming him.  I am filled with wonder and admiration when I think of
him, and yet, when he asks me to associate myself with his researches,
I am compelled to tell him that, in their present state, they offer
little attraction to a man who is devoted to exact science.  If he
could show me something positive and objective, I might then be tempted
to approach the question from its physiological side.  So long as half
his subjects are tainted with charlatanerie and the other half with
hysteria we physiologists must content ourselves with the body and
leave the mind to our descendants.

No doubt I am a materialist.  Agatha says that I am a rank one.  I tell
her that is an excellent reason for shortening our engagement, since I
am in such urgent need of her spirituality.  And yet I may claim to be
a curious example of the effect of education upon temperament, for by
nature I am, unless I deceive myself, a highly psychic man.  I was a
nervous, sensitive boy, a dreamer, a somnambulist, full of impressions
and intuitions.  My black hair, my dark eyes, my thin, olive face, my
tapering fingers, are all characteristic of my real temperament, and
cause experts like Wilson to claim me as their own.  But my brain is
soaked with exact knowledge.  I have trained myself to deal only with
fact and with proof.  Surmise and fancy have no place in my scheme of
thought.  Show me what I can see with my microscope, cut with my
scalpel, weigh in my balance, and I will devote a lifetime to its
investigation.  But when you ask me to study feelings, impressions,
suggestions, you ask me to do what is distasteful and even
demoralizing.  A departure from pure reason affects me like an evil
smell or a musical discord.

Which is a very sufficient reason why I am a little loath to go to
Professor Wilson's tonight.  Still I feel that I could hardly get out
of the invitation without positive rudeness; and, now that Mrs. Marden
and Agatha are going, of course I would not if I could.  But I had
rather meet them anywhere else.  I know that Wilson would draw me into
this nebulous semi-science of his if he could.  In his enthusiasm he is
perfectly impervious to hints or remonstrances.  Nothing short of a
positive quarrel will make him realize my aversion to the whole
business.  I have no doubt that he has some new mesmerist or
clairvoyant or medium or trickster of some sort whom he is going to
exhibit to us, for even his entertainments bear upon his hobby.  Well,
it will be a treat for Agatha, at any rate.  She is interested in it,
as woman usually is in whatever is vague and mystical and indefinite.

10.50 P. M.  This diary-keeping of mine is, I fancy, the outcome of
that scientific habit of mind about which I wrote this morning.  I like
to register impressions while they are fresh.  Once a day at least I
endeavor to define my own mental position.  It is a useful piece of
self-analysis, and has, I fancy, a steadying effect upon the character.
Frankly, I must confess that my own needs what stiffening I can give
it.  I fear that, after all, much of my neurotic temperament survives,
and that I am far from that cool, calm precision which characterizes
Murdoch or Pratt-Haldane.  Otherwise, why should the tomfoolery which I
have witnessed this evening have set my nerves thrilling so that even
now I am all unstrung?  My only comfort is that neither Wilson nor Miss
Penclosa nor even Agatha could have possibly known my weakness.

And what in the world was there to excite me? Nothing, or so little
that it will seem ludicrous when I set it down.

The Mardens got to Wilson's before me.  In fact, I was one of the last
to arrive and found the room crowded.  I had hardly time to say a word
to Mrs. Marden and to Agatha, who was looking charming in white and
pink, with glittering wheat-ears in her hair, when Wilson came
twitching at my sleeve.

"You want something positive, Gilroy," said he, drawing me apart into a
corner.  "My dear fellow, I have a phenomenon--a phenomenon!"

I should have been more impressed had I not heard the same before.  His
sanguine spirit turns every fire-fly into a star.

"No possible question about the bona fides this time," said he, in
answer, perhaps, to some little gleam of amusement in my eyes.  "My
wife has known her for many years.  They both come from Trinidad, you
know.  Miss Penclosa has only been in England a month or two, and knows
no one outside the university circle, but I assure you that the things
she has told us suffice in themselves to establish clairvoyance upon an
absolutely scientific basis.  There is nothing like her, amateur or
professional.  Come and be introduced!"

I like none of these mystery-mongers, but the amateur least of all.
With the paid performer you may pounce upon him and expose him the
instant that you have seen through his trick.  He is there to deceive
you, and you are there to find him out.  But what are you to do with
the friend of your host's wife?  Are you to turn on a light suddenly
and expose her slapping a surreptitious banjo?  Or are you to hurl
cochineal over her evening frock when she steals round with her
phosphorus bottle and her supernatural platitude?  There would be a
scene, and you would be looked upon as a brute.  So you have your
choice of being that or a dupe.  I was in no very good humor as I
followed Wilson to the lady.

Any one less like my idea of a West Indian could not be imagined.  She
was a small, frail creature, well over forty, I should say, with a
pale, peaky face, and hair of a very light shade of chestnut.  Her
presence was insignificant and her manner retiring.  In any group of
ten women she would have been the last whom one would have picked out.
Her eyes were perhaps her most remarkable, and also, I am compelled to
say, her least pleasant, feature.  They were gray in color,--gray with
a shade of green,--and their expression struck me as being decidedly
furtive.  I wonder if furtive is the word, or should I have said
fierce?  On second thoughts, feline would have expressed it better.  A
crutch leaning against the wall told me what was painfully evident when
she rose: that one of her legs was crippled.

So I was introduced to Miss Penclosa, and it did not escape me that as
my name was mentioned she glanced across at Agatha.  Wilson had
evidently been talking.  And presently, no doubt, thought I, she will
inform me by occult means that I am engaged to a young lady with
wheat-ears in her hair.  I wondered how much more Wilson had been
telling her about me.

"Professor Gilroy is a terrible sceptic," said he; "I hope, Miss
Penclosa, that you will be able to convert him."

She looked keenly up at me.

"Professor Gilroy is quite right to be sceptical if he has not seen any
thing convincing," said she.  "I should have thought," she added, "that
you would yourself have been an excellent subject."

"For what, may I ask?" said I.

"Well, for mesmerism, for example."

"My experience has been that mesmerists go for their subjects to those
who are mentally unsound.  All their results are vitiated, as it seems
to me, by the fact that they are dealing with abnormal organisms."

"Which of these ladies would you say possessed a normal organism?" she
asked.  "I should like you to select the one who seems to you to have
the best balanced mind.  Should we say the girl in pink and
white?--Miss Agatha Marden, I think the name is."

"Yes, I should attach weight to any results from her."

"I have never tried how far she is impressionable.  Of course some
people respond much more rapidly than others.  May I ask how far your
scepticism extends?  I suppose that you admit the mesmeric sleep and
the power of suggestion."

"I admit nothing, Miss Penclosa."

"Dear me, I thought science had got further than that.  Of course I
know nothing about the scientific side of it.  I only know what I can
do.  You see the girl in red, for example, over near the Japanese jar.
I shall will that she come across to us."

She bent forward as she spoke and dropped her fan upon the floor.  The
girl whisked round and came straight toward us, with an enquiring look
upon her face, as if some one had called her.

"What do you think of that, Gil