There must have been many days of things while all this was happening—and once, I say, they danced under the moonlight in the fairy rings that stud the meadows near Smeeth—but at last it all came to an end. She led him into a great cavernous place, lit by ‘a red nightlight sort of thing,’ where there were coffers piled on coffers, and cups and golden boxes, and a great heap of what certainly seemed to all Mr Skelmersdale’s senses—coined gold. There were little gnomes amidst this wealth, who saluted her at her coming, and stood aside. And suddenly she turned on him there with brightly shining eyes.
‘And now,’ she said, ‘you have been kind to staywith me so long, and it is time I let you go. You must go back to your Millie. You must go back to your Millie, and here—just as I promised you—they will give you gold.’
‘She choked like,’ said Mr Skelmersdale. ‘At that, I had a sort of feeling——’ (he touched his breastbone) ‘as though I was fainting here. I felt pale, you know, and shivering, and even then—I hadn’t a thing to say.
He paused. ‘Yes,’ I said.
The scene was beyond his describing. But I know that she kissed him good-bye.
‘And you said nothing?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I stood like a stuffed calf. She just looked back once, you know, and stood smiling like and crying—I could see the shine of her eyes—and then she was gone, and there was all these little fellows bustling about me, stuffing my ’ands and my pockets and the back of my collar and everywhere with gold.’
And then it was, when the Fairy Lady had vanished, that Mr Skelmersdale really understood and knew. He suddenly began plucking out the gold they were thrusting upon him, and shouting out at them to prevent their giving him more. ‘“I don’twantyer gold,” I said. “I ’aven’t done yet. I’m not going. I want to speak to that Fairy Lady again.” I started off to go after her and they held me back. Yes, stuck their little ’ands against my middle and shoved me back. They kept giving me more and more gold until it was running all down my trouser legs and dropping out of my ’ands. “I don’twantyer gold,” I says to them, “I want just to speak to the Fairy Lady again.”’
‘And did you?’
‘It came to a tussle.’
‘Before you saw her?’
‘I didn’t see her. When I got out from them she wasn’t anywhere to be seen.’
So he ran in search of her out of this red-lit cave, down a long grotto, seeking her, and thence he came out in a great and desolate place athwart which a swarm of will-o’-the-wisps were flying to and fro. And about him elves were dancing in derision, and the little gnomes came out of the cave after him, carrying gold in handfuls and casting it after him, shouting, ‘Fairy love and fairy gold! Fairy love and fairy gold!’
And when he heard these words, came a great fear that it was all over, and he lifted up his voice and called to her by her name, and suddenly set himself to run down the slope from the mouth of the cavern, through a place of thorns and briers, calling after her very loudly and often. The elves danced about him unheeded, pinching and pricking him, and the will-o’-the-wisps circled round him and dashed into his face, and the gnomes pursued him shouting and pelting him with fairy gold. As he ran with all this strange rout about him and distracting him, suddenly he was knee-deep in a swamp, and suddenly he was amidst thick twisted roots, and he caught his foot in one and stumbled and fell....
He fell and he rolled over, and in that instant he found himself sprawling upon Aldington Knoll, all lonely under the stars.
He sat up sharply at once, he says, and found he was very stiff and cold, and his clothes were damp with dew. The first pallor of dawn and a chilly wind were coming up together. He could have believed the whole thing a strangely vivid dream until he thrust his hand into his side pocket and found it stuffed with ashes. Then he knew for certain it was fairy gold they had given him. He could feel all their pinches and pricks still, though there was never a bruise upon him. And in that manner, and so suddenly, Mr Skelmersdale came out of Fairyland back into this world of men. Even then hefancied the thing was but the matter of a night until he returned to the shop at Aldington Corner and discovered amidst their astonishment that he had been away three weeks.
‘Lor! the trouble I ’ad!’ said Mr Skelmersdale.
‘How?’
‘Explaining. I suppose you’ve never had anything like that to explain.’
‘Never,’ I said, and he expatiated for a time on the behaviour of this person and that. One name he avoided for a space.
‘And Millie?’ said I at last.
‘I didn’t seem to care a bit for seeing Millie,’ he said.
‘I expect she seemed changed?’
‘Every one was changed. Changed for good. Every one seemed big, you know, and coarse. And their voices seemed loud. Why, the sun, when it rose in the morning, fair hit me in the eye!’
‘And Millie?’
‘I didn’t want to see Millie.’
‘And when you did?’
‘I came up against her Sunday, coming out of church. “Where you been?” she said, and I saw there was a row.Ididn’t care if there was. I seemed to forget about her even while she was there a-talking to me. She was just nothing. I couldn’t make out whatever I ’ad seen in ’er ever, or what there could ’ave been. Sometimes when she wasn’t about, I did get back a little, but never when she was there. Then it was always the other came up and blotted her out.... Any’ow, it didn’t break her heart.’
‘Married?’ I asked.
‘Married ’er cousin,’ said Mr Skelmersdale, and reflected on the pattern of the tablecloth for a space.
When he spoke again it was clear that his former sweetheart had clean vanished from his mind, and thatthe talk had brought back the Fairy Lady triumphant in his heart. He talked of her—soon he was letting out the oddest things, queer love secrets it would be treachery to repeat. I think, indeed, that was the queerest thing in the whole affair, to hear that neat little grocer man after his story was done, with a glass of whisky beside him and a cigar between his fingers, witnessing, with sorrow still, though now, indeed, with a time blunted anguish, of the inappeasable hunger of the heart that presently came upon him. ‘I couldn’t eat,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t sleep. I made mistakes in orders and got mixed with change. There she was day and night, drawing me and drawing me. Oh, I wanted her. Lord! how I wanted her! I was up there, most evenings I was up there on the Knoll, often even when it rained. I used to walk over the Knoll and round it and round it, calling for them to let me in. Shouting. Near blubbering I was at times. Daft I was and miserable. I kept on saying it was all a mistake. And every Sunday afternoon I went up there, wet and fine, though I knew as well as you do it wasn’t no good by day. And I’ve tried to go to sleep there.’
He stopped abruptly and decided to drink some whisky.
‘I’ve tried to go to sleep there,’ he said, and I could swear his lips trembled. ‘I’ve tried to go to sleep there often and often. And, you know, I couldn’t, sir—never. I’ve thought if I could go to sleep there, there might be something.... But I’ve sat up there and laid up there, and I couldn’t—not for thinking and longing. It’s the longing.... I’ve tried——’
He blew, drank up the rest of his whisky spasmodically, stood up suddenly and buttoned his jacket, staring closely and critically at the cheap oleographs beside the mantel meanwhile. The little black notebook in which he recorded the orders of his daily roundprojected stiffly from his breast pocket. When all the buttons were quite done, he patted his chest and turned on me suddenly. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I must be going.’
There was something in his eyes and manner that was too difficult for him to express in words. ‘One gets talking,’ he said at last at the door, and smiled wanly, and so vanished from my eyes. And that is the tale of Mr Skelmersdale in Fairyland just as he told it to me.
The scene amidst which Clayton told his last story comes back very vividly to my mind. There he sat, for the greater part of the time, in the corner of the authentic settle by the spacious open fire, and Sanderson sat beside him smoking the Broseley clay that bore his name. There was Evans, and that marvel among actors, Wish, who is also a modest man. We had all come down to the Mermaid Club that Saturday morning, except Clayton, who had slept there overnight—which indeed gave him the opening of his story. We had golfed until golfing was invisible; we had dined, and we were in that mood of tranquil kindliness when men will suffer a story. When Clayton began to tell one, we naturally supposed he was lying. It may be that indeed he was lying—of that the reader will speedily be able to judge as well as I. He began, it is true, with an air of matter-of-fact anecdote, but that we thought was only the incurable artifice of the man.
‘I say!’ he remarked, after a long consideration of the upward rain of sparks from the log that Sanderson had thumped, ‘you know I was alone here last night?’
‘Except for the domestics,’ said Wish.
‘Who sleep in the other wing,’ said Clayton. ‘Yes. Well——’ He pulled at his cigar for some little time as though he still hesitated about his confidence. Then he said, quite quietly, ‘I caught a ghost!’
‘Caught a ghost, did you?’ said Sanderson. ‘Where is it?’
And Evans, who admires Clayton immensely and has been four weeks in America, shouted, ‘Caughta ghost, did you, Clayton? I’m glad of it! Tell us all about it right now.’
Clayton said he would in a minute, and asked him to shut the door.
He looked apologetically at me. ‘There’s no eavesdropping, of course, but we don’t want to upset our very excellent service with any rumours of ghosts in the place. There’s too much shadow and oak panelling to trifle with that. And this, you know, wasn’t a regular ghost. I don’t think it will come again—ever.’
‘You mean to say you didn’t keep it?’ said Sanderson.
‘I hadn’t the heart to,’ said Clayton.
And Sanderson said he was surprised.
We laughed, and Clayton looked aggrieved. ‘I know,’ he said, with a flicker of a smile, ‘but the fact is it reallywasa ghost, and I’m as sure of it as I am that I am talking to you now. I’m not joking. I mean what I say.’
Sanderson drew deeply at his pipe, with one reddish eye on Clayton, and then emitted a thin jet of smoke more eloquent than many words.
Clayton ignored the comment. ‘It is the strangest thing that has ever happened in my life. You know I never believed in ghosts or anything of the sort, before, ever; and then, you know, I bag one in a corner; and the whole business is in my hands.’
He meditated still more profoundly and produced and began to pierce a second cigar with a curious little stabber he affected.
‘You talked to it?’ asked Wish.
‘For the space, probably, of an hour.’
‘Chatty?’ I said, joining the party of the sceptics.
‘The poor devil was in trouble,’ said Clayton, bowedover his cigar-end and with the very faintest note of reproof.
‘Sobbing?’ some one asked.
Clayton heaved a realistic sigh at the memory. ‘Good Lord!’ he said; ‘yes.’ And then, ‘Poor fellow! yes.’
‘Where did you strike it?’ asked Evans, in his best American accent.
‘I never realised,’ said Clayton, ignoring him, ‘the poor sort of thing a ghost might be,’ and he hung us up again for a time, while he sought for matches in his pocket and lit and warmed to his cigar.
‘I took an advantage,’ he reflected at last.
We were none of us in a hurry. ‘A character,’ he said, ‘remains just the same character for all that it’s been disembodied. That’s a thing we too often forget. People with a certain strength or fixity of purpose may have ghosts of a certain strength and fixity of purpose—most haunting ghosts, you know, must be as one-idea’d as monomaniacs and as obstinate as mules to come back again and again. This poor creature wasn’t.’ He suddenly looked up rather queerly, and his eye went round the room. ‘I say it,’ he said, ‘in all kindliness, but that is the plain truth of the case. Even at the first glance he struck me as weak.’
He punctuated with the help of his cigar.
‘I came upon him, you know, in the long passage. His back was towards me and I saw him first. Right off I knew him for a ghost. He was transparent and whitish; clean through his chest I could see the glimmer of the little window at the end. And not only his physique but his attitude struck me as being weak. He looked, you know, as though he didn’t know in the slightest whatever he meant to do. One hand was on the panelling and the other fluttered to his mouth. Like—so!’
‘What sort of physique?’ said Sanderson.
‘Lean. You know that sort of young man’s neck that has two great flutings down the back, here and here—so! And a little, meanish head with scrubby hair and rather bad ears. Shoulders bad, narrower than the hips; turndown collar, ready-made short jacket, trousers baggy and a little frayed at the heels. That’s how he took me. I came very quietly up the staircase. I did not carry a light, you know—the candles are on the landing table and there is that lamp—and I was in my list slippers, and I saw him as I came up. I stopped dead at that—taking him in. I wasn’t a bit afraid. I think that in most of these affairs one is never nearly so afraid or excited as one imagines one would be. I was surprised and interested. I thought, “Good Lord! Here’s a ghost at last! And I haven’t believed for a moment in ghosts during the last five-and-twenty years.”’
‘Um,’ said Wish.
‘I suppose I wasn’t on the landing a moment before he found out I was there. He turned on me sharply, and I saw the face of an immature young man, a weak nose, a scrubby little moustache, a feeble chin. So for an instant we stood—he looking over his shoulder at me—and regarded one another. Then he seemed to remember his high calling. He turned round, drew himself up, projected his face, raised his arms, spread his hands in approved ghost fashion—came towards me. As he did so his little jaw dropped, and he emitted a faint, drawn-out “Boo.” No, it wasn’t—not a bit dreadful. I’d dined. I’d had a bottle of champagne, and being all alone, perhaps two or three—perhaps even four or five—whiskies, so I was as solid as rocks and no more frightened than if I’d been assailed by a frog. “Boo!” I said. “Nonsense. You don’t belong tothisplace. What are you doing here?”
‘I could see him wince. “Boo-oo,” he said.
‘“Boo—be hanged! Are you a member?” I said: and just to show I didn’t care a pin for him I stepped through a corner of him and made to light my candle. “Are you a member?” I repeated, looking at him sideways.
‘He moved a little so as to stand clear of me, and his bearing became crestfallen. “No,” he said, in answer to the persistent interrogation of my eye; “I’m not a member—I’m a ghost.”
‘“Well, that doesn’t give you the run of the Mermaid Club. Is there any one you want to see, or anything of that sort?” And doing it as steadily as possible for fear that he should mistake the carelessness of whisky for the distraction of fear, I got my candle alight. I turned on him, holding it. “What are you doing here?” I said.
‘He had dropped his hands and stopped his booing, and there he stood, abashed and awkward, the ghost of a weak, silly, aimless young man. “I’m haunting,” he said.
‘“You haven’t any business to,” I said in a quiet voice.
‘“I’m a ghost,” he said, as if in defence.
‘“That may be, but you haven’t any business to haunt here. This is a respectable private club; people often stop here with nursemaids and children, and, going about in the careless way you do, some poor little mite could easily come upon you and be scared out of her wits. I suppose you didn’t think of that?”
‘“No sir,” he said, “I didn’t.”
‘“You should have done. You haven’t any claim on the place, have you? Weren’t murdered here, or anything of that sort?”
‘“None, sir; but I thought as it was old and oak-panelled——”
‘“That’snoexcuse.” I regarded him firmly. “Yourcoming here is a mistake,” I said, in a tone of friendly superiority. I feigned to see if I had my matches, and then looked up at him frankly. “If I were you I wouldn’t wait for cock-crow—I’d vanish right away.”
‘He looked embarrassed. “The factis, sir——” he began.
‘“I’d vanish,” I said, driving it home.
‘“The fact is, sir, that—somehow—I can’t.”
‘“Youcan’t?”
‘“No, sir. There’s something I’ve forgotten. I’ve been hanging about here since midnight last night, hiding in the cupboards of the empty bedrooms and things like that. I’m flurried. I’ve never come haunting before, and it seems to put me out.”
‘“Put you out?”
‘“Yes, sir. I’ve tried to do it several times, and it doesn’t come off. There’s some little thing has slipped me, and I can’t get back.”
‘That, you know, rather bowled me over. He looked at me in such an abject way that for the life of me I couldn’t keep up quite the high, hectoring vein I had adopted. “That’s queer,” I said, and as I spoke I fancied I heard some one moving about down below. “Come into my room and tell me more about it,” I said. “I didn’t, of course, understand this,” and I tried to take him by the arm. But, of course, you might as well have tried to take hold of a puff of smoke! I had forgotten my number, I think; anyhow, I remember going into several bedrooms—it was lucky I was the only soul in that wing—until I saw my traps. “Here we are,” I said, and sat down in the arm-chair; “sit down and tell me all about it. It seems to me you have got yourself into a jolly awkward position, old chap.”
‘Well, he said he wouldn’t sit down; he’d prefer to flit up and down the room if it was all the same to me. And so he did, and in a little while we were deep in along and serious talk. And presently, you know, something of those whiskies and sodas evaporated out of me, and I began to realise just a little what a thundering rum and weird business it was that I was in. There he was, semi-transparent—the proper conventional phantom, and noiseless except for his ghost of a voice—flitting to and fro in that nice, clean, chintz-hung old bedroom. You could see the gleam of the copper candlesticks through him, and the lights on the brass fender, and the corners of the framed engravings on the wall, and there he was telling me all about this wretched little life of his that had recently ended on earth. He hadn’t a particularly honest face, you know, but being transparent, of course, he couldn’t avoid telling the truth.’
‘Eh?’ said Wish, suddenly sitting up in his chair.
‘What?’ said Clayton.
‘Being transparent—couldn’t avoid telling the truth—I don’t see it,’ said Wish.
‘Idon’t see it,’ said Clayton, with inimitable assurance. ‘But itisso, I can assure you nevertheless. I don’t believe he got once a nail’s breadth off the Bible truth. He told me how he had been killed—he went down into a London basement with a candle to look for a leakage of gas—and described himself as a senior English master in a London private school when that release occurred.’
‘Poor wretch!’ said I.
‘That’s what I thought, and the more he talked the more I thought it. There he was, purposeless in life and purposeless out of it. He talked of his father and mother and his schoolmaster, and all who had ever been anything to him in the world, meanly. He had been too sensitive, too nervous; none of them had ever valued him properly or understood him, he said. He had never had a real friend in the world, I think; he had never had a success. He had shirked games andfailed examinations. “It’s like that with some people,” he said; “whenever I got into the examination-room or anywhere everything seemed to go.” Engaged to be married of course—to another over-sensitive person, I suppose—when the indiscretion with the gas escape ended his affairs. “And where are you now?” I asked. “Not in——?”
‘He wasn’t clear on that point at all. The impression he gave me was of a sort of vague, intermediate state, a special reserve for souls too non-existent for anything so positive as either sin or virtue.Idon’t know. He was much too egotistical and unobservant to give me any clear idea of the kind of place, kind of country, there is on the Other Side of Things. Wherever he was he seems to have fallen in with a set of kindred spirits: ghosts of weak Cockney young men, who were on a footing of Christian names, and among these there was certainly a lot of talk about “going haunting” and things like that. Yes—going haunting! They seemed to think “haunting” a tremendous adventure, and most of them funked it all the time. And so primed, you know, he had come.’
‘But really!’ said Wish to the fire.
‘These are the impressions he gave me, anyhow,’ said Clayton modestly. ‘I may, of course, have been in a rather uncritical state, but that was the sort of background he gave to himself. He kept flitting up and down, with his thin voice going—talking, talking about his wretched self, and never a word of clear, firm statement from first to last. He was thinner and sillier and more pointless than if he had been real and alive. Only then, you know, he would not have been in my bedroom here—if hehadbeen alive. I should have kicked him out.’
‘Of course,’ said Evans, ‘therearepoor mortals like that.’
‘And there’s just as much chance of their having ghosts as the rest of us,’ I admitted.
‘What gave a sort of point to him, you know, was the fact that he did seem within limits to have found himself out. The mess he had made of haunting had depressed him terribly. He had been told it would be a “lark”; he had come expecting it to be a “lark,” and here it was, nothing but another failure added to his record! He proclaimed himself an utter out-and-out failure. He said, and I can quite believe it, that he had never tried to do anything all his life that he hadn’t made a perfect mess of—and through all the wastes of eternity he never would. If he had had sympathy, perhaps—— He paused at that, and stood regarding me. He remarked that, strange as it might seem to me, nobody, not any one, ever, had given him the amount of sympathy I was doing now. I could see what he wanted straight away, and I determined to head him off at once. I may be a brute, you know, but being the Only Real Friend, the recipient of the confidences of one of these egotistical weaklings, ghost or body, is beyond my physical endurance. I got up briskly. “Don’t you brood on these things too much,” I said. “The thing you’ve got to do is to get out of this—get out of this sharp. You pull yourself together andtry.” “I can’t,” he said. “You try,” I said, and try he did.’
‘Try!’ said Sanderson. ‘How?’
‘Passes,’ said Clayton.
‘Passes?’
‘Complicated series of gestures and passes with the hands. That’s how he had come in and that’s how he had to get out again. Lord! what a business I had!’
‘But how couldanyseries of passes——’ I began.
‘My dear man,’ said Clayton, turning on me and putting a great emphasis on certain words, ‘you wanteverythingclear.Idon’t knowhow. All I know is thatyoudo—thathedid, anyhow, at least. After a fearful time, you know, he got his passes right and suddenly disappeared.’
‘Did you,’ said Sanderson, slowly, ‘observe the passes?’
‘Yes,’ said Clayton, and seemed to think. ‘It was tremendously queer,’ he said. ‘There we were, I and this thin vague ghost, in that silent room, in this silent, empty inn, in this silent little Friday-night town. Not a sound except our voices and a faint panting he made when he swung. There was the bedroom candle, and one candle on the dressing-table alight, that was all—sometimes one or other would flare up into a tall, lean, astonished flame for a space. And queer things happened. “I can’t,” he said; “I shall never——!” And suddenly he sat down on a little chair at the foot of the bed and began to sob and sob. Lord! what a harrowing, whimpering thing he seemed!
‘“You pull yourself together,” I said, and tried to pat him on the back, and ... my confounded hand went through him! By that time, you know, I wasn’t nearly so—massive as I had been on the landing. I got the queerness of it full. I remember snatching back my hand out of him, as it were, with a little thrill, and walking over to the dressing-table. “You pull yourself together,” I said to him, “and try.” And in order to encourage and help him I began to try as well.’
‘What!’ said Sanderson, ‘the passes?’
‘Yes, the passes.’
‘But——’ I said, moved by an idea that eluded me for a space.
‘This is interesting,’ said Sanderson, with his finger in his pipe-bowl. ‘You mean to say this ghost of yours gave away——’
‘Did his level best to give away the whole confounded barrier?Yes.’
‘He didn’t,’ said Wish; ‘he couldn’t. Or you’d have gone there too.’
‘That’s precisely it,’ I said, finding my elusive idea put into words for me.
‘Thatisprecisely it,’ said Clayton, with thoughtful eyes upon the fire.
For just a little while there was silence.
‘And at last he did it?’ said Sanderson.
‘At last he did it. I had to keep him up to it hard, but he did it at last—rather suddenly. He despaired, we had a scene, and then he got up abruptly and asked me to go through the whole performance, slowly, so that he might see. “I believe,” he said, “if I couldseeI should spot what was wrong at once.” And he did. “Iknow,” he said. “What do you know?” said I. “Iknow,” he repeated. Then he said, peevishly, “Ican’tdo it if you look at me—I reallycan’t; it’s been that, partly, all along. I’m such a nervous fellow that you put me out.” Well, we had a bit of an argument. Naturally I wanted to see; but he was as obstinate as a mule, and suddenly I had come over as tired as a dog—he tired me out. “All right,” I said, “Iwon’t look at you,” and turned towards the mirror, on the wardrobe, by the bed.
‘He started off very fast. I tried to follow him by looking in the looking-glass, to see just what it was had hung. Round went his arms and hands, so, and so, and so, and then with a rush came to the last gesture of all—you stand erect and open out your arms—and so, don’t you know, he stood. And then he didn’t! He didn’t! He wasn’t! I wheeled round from the looking-glass to him. There was nothing! I was alone with the flaring candles and a staggering mind. What had happened? Had anything happened? Had I been dreaming?... And then, with an absurd note of finality about it, the clock upon the landingdiscovered the moment was ripe for strikingone. So!—Ping! And I was as grave and sober as a judge, with all my champagne and whisky gone into the vast serene. Feeling queer, you know—confoundedlyqueer! Queer! Good Lord!’
He regarded his cigar-ash for a moment. ‘That’s all that happened,’ he said.
‘And then you went to bed?’ asked Evans.
‘What else was there to do?’
I looked Wish in the eye. We wanted to scoff, and there was something, something perhaps in Clayton’s voice and manner, that hampered our desire.
‘And about these passes?’ said Sanderson.
‘I believe I could do them now.’
‘Oh!’ said Sanderson, and produced a pen-knife and set himself to grub the dottel out of the bowl of his clay.
‘Why don’t you do them now?’ said Sanderson, shutting his pen-knife with a click.
‘That’s what I’m going to do,’ said Clayton.
‘They won’t work,’ said Evans.
‘If they do——’ I suggested.
‘You know, I’d rather you didn’t,’ said Wish, stretching out his legs.
‘Why?’ asked Evans.
‘I’d rather he didn’t,’ said Wish.
‘But he hasn’t got ’em right,’ said Sanderson, plugging too much tobacco into his pipe.
‘All the same, I’d rather he didn’t,’ said Wish.
We argued with Wish. He said that for Clayton to go through those gestures was like mocking a serious matter. ‘But you don’t believe——?’ I said. Wish glanced at Clayton, who was staring into the fire, weighing something in his mind. ‘I do—more than half, anyhow, I do,’ said Wish.
‘Clayton,’ said I, ‘you’re too good a liar for us.Most of it was all right. But that disappearance ... happened to be convincing. Tell us, it’s a tale of cock and bull.’
He stood up without heeding me, took the middle of the hearthrug, and faced me. For a moment he regarded his feet thoughtfully, and then for all the rest of the time his eyes were on the opposite wall, with an intent expression. He raised his two hands slowly to the level of his eyes and so began....
Now, Sanderson is a Freemason, a member of the lodge of the Four Kings, which devotes itself so ably to the study and elucidation of all the mysteries of Masonry past and present, and among the students of this lodge Sanderson is by no means the least. He followed Clayton’s motions with a singular interest in his reddish eye. ‘That’s not bad,’ he said, when it was done. ‘You really do, you know, put things together, Clayton, in a most amazing fashion. But there’s one little detail out.’
‘I know,’ said Clayton. ‘I believe I could tell you which.’
‘Well?’
‘This,’ said Clayton, and did a queer little twist and writhing and thrust of the hands.
‘Yes.’
‘That, you know, was whathecouldn’t get right,’ said Clayton. ‘But how doyou——?’
‘Most of this business, and particularly how you invented it, I don’t understand at all,’ said Sanderson, ‘but just that phase—I do.’ He reflected. ‘These happen to be a series of gestures—connected with a certain branch of esoteric Masonry—— Probably you know. Or else——How?’ He reflected still further. ‘I do not see I can do any harm in telling you just the proper twist. After all, if you know, you know; if you don’t, you don’t.’
‘I know nothing,’ said Clayton, ‘except what the poor devil let out last night.’
‘Well, anyhow,’ said Sanderson, and placed his churchwarden very carefully upon the shelf over the fireplace. Then very rapidly he gesticulated with his hands.
‘So?’ said Clayton, repeating.
‘So,’ said Sanderson, and took his pipe in hand again.
‘Ah,now,’ said Clayton, ‘I can do the whole thing—right.’
He stood up before the waning fire and smiled at us all. But I think there was just a little hesitation in his smile. ‘If I begin——’ he said.
‘I wouldn’t begin,’ said Wish.
‘It’s all right!’ said Evans. ‘Matter is indestructible. You don’t think any jiggery-pokery of this sort is going to snatch Clayton into the world of shades. Not it! You may try, Clayton, so far as I’m concerned, until your arms drop off at the wrists.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ said Wish, and stood up and put his arm on Clayton’s shoulder. ‘You’ve made me half believe in that story somehow, and I don’t want to see the thing done.’
‘Goodness!’ said I, ‘here’s Wish frightened!’
‘I am,’ said Wish, with real or admirably feigned intensity. ‘I believe that if he goes through these motions right he’llgo.’
‘He’ll not do anything of the sort,’ I cried. ‘There’s only one way out of this world for men, and Clayton is thirty years from that. Besides.... And such a ghost! Do you think——?’
Wish interrupted me by moving. He walked out from among our chairs and stopped beside the table and stood there. ‘Clayton,’ he said, ‘you’re a fool.’
Clayton, with a humorous light in his eyes, smiled back at him. ‘Wish,’ he said, ‘is right and all you othersare wrong. I shall go. I shall get to the end of these passes, and as the last swish whistles through the air, Presto!—this hearthrug will be vacant, the room will be blank amazement, and a respectably dressed gentleman of fifteen stone will plump into the world of shades. I’m certain. So will you be. I decline to argue further. Let the thing be tried.’
‘No,’ said Wish, and made a step and ceased, and Clayton raised his hands once more to repeat the spirit’s passing.
By that time, you know, we were all in a state of tension—largely because of the behaviour of Wish. We sat all of us with our eyes on Clayton—I, at least, with a sort of tight, stiff feeling about me as though from the back of my skull to the middle of my thighs my body had been changed to steel. And there, with a gravity that was imperturbably serene, Clayton bowed and swayed and waved his hands and arms before us. As he drew towards the end one piled up, one tingled in one’s teeth. The last gesture, I have said, was to swing the arms out wide open, with the face held up. And when at last he swung out to this closing gesture I ceased even to breathe. It was ridiculous, of course, but you know that ghost-story feeling. It was after dinner, in a queer, old shadowy house. Would he, after all——?
There he stood for one stupendous moment, with his arms open and his upturned face, assured and bright, in the glare of the hanging lamp. We hung through that moment as if it were an age, and then came from all of us something that was half a sigh of infinite relief and half a reassuring ‘No!’ For visibly—he wasn’t going. It was all nonsense. He had told an idle story, and carried it almost to conviction, that was all!... And then in that moment the face of Clayton changed.
It changed, It changed as a lit house changes whenits lights are suddenly extinguished. His eyes were suddenly eyes that were fixed, his smile was frozen on his lips, and he stood there still. He stood there, very gently swaying.
That moment, too, was an age. And then, you know, chairs were scraping, things were falling, and we were all moving. His knees seemed to give, and he fell forward, and Evans rose and caught him in his arms....
It stunned us all. For a minute I suppose no one said a coherent thing. We believed it, yet could not believe it.... I came out of a muddled stupefaction to find myself kneeling beside him, and his vest and shirt were torn open, and Sanderson’s hand lay on his heart....
Well—the simple fact before us could very well wait our convenience; there was no hurry for us to comprehend. It lay there for an hour; it lies athwart my memory, black and amazing still, to this day. Clayton had, indeed, passed into the world that lies so near to and so far from our own, and he had gone thither by the only road that mortal man may take. But whether he did indeed pass there by that poor ghost’s incantation, or whether he was stricken suddenly by apoplexy in the midst of an idle tale—as the coroner’s jury would have us believe—is no matter for my judging; it is just one of those inexplicable riddles that must remain unsolved until the final solution of all things shall come. All I certainly know is that, in the very moment, in the very instant, of concluding those passes, he changed, and staggered, and fell down before us—dead!
Mr Bessel was the senior partner in the firm of Bessel, Hart, and Brown, of St Paul’s Churchyard, and for many years he was well known among those interested in psychical research as a liberal-minded and conscientious investigator. He was an unmarried man, and instead of living in the suburbs, after the fashion of his class, he occupied rooms in the Albany, near Piccadilly. He was particularly interested in the questions of thought transference and of apparitions of the living, and in November, 1896, he commenced a series of experiments in conjunction with Mr Vincey, of Staple Inn, in order to test the alleged possibility of projecting an apparition of oneself by force of will through space.
Their experiments were conducted in the following manner: At a pre-arranged hour Mr Bessel shut himself in one of his rooms in the Albany and Mr Vincey in his sitting-room in Staple Inn, and each then fixed his mind as resolutely as possible on the other. Mr Bessel had acquired the art of self-hypnotism, and, so far as he could, he attempted first to hypnotise himself and then to project himself as a ‘phantom of the living’ across the intervening space of nearly two miles into Mr Vincey’s apartment. On several evenings this was tried without any satisfactory result, but on the fifth or sixth occasion Mr Vincey did actually see or imagine he saw an apparition of Mr Bessel standing in his room. He states that the appearance, although brief, was veryvivid and real. He noticed that Mr Bessel’s face was white and his expression anxious, and, moreover, that his hair was disordered. For a moment Mr Vincey, in spite of his state of expectation, was too surprised to speak or move, and in that moment it seemed to him as though the figure glanced over its shoulder and incontinently vanished.
It had been arranged that an attempt should be made to photograph any phantasm seen, but Mr Vincey had not the instant presence of mind to snap the camera that lay ready on the table beside him, and when he did so he was too late. Greatly elated, however, even by this partial success, he made a note of the exact time, and at once took a cab to the Albany to inform Mr Bessel of this result.
He was surprised to find Mr Bessel’s outer door standing open to the night, and the inner apartments lit and in an extraordinary disorder. An empty champagne magnum lay smashed upon the floor; its neck had been broken off against the inkpot on the bureau and lay beside it. An octagonal occasional table, which carried a bronze statuette and a number of choice books, had been rudely overturned, and down the primrose paper of the wall inky fingers had been drawn, as it seemed for the mere pleasure of defilement. One of the delicate chintz curtains had been violently torn from its rings and thrust upon the fire, so that the smell of its smouldering filled the room. Indeed the whole place was disarranged in the strangest fashion. For a few minutes Mr Vincey, who had entered sure of finding Mr Bessel in his easy chair awaiting him, could scarcely believe his eyes, and stood staring helplessly at these unanticipated things.
Then, full of a vague sense of calamity, he sought the porter at the entrance lodge. ‘Where is Mr Bessel?’ he asked. ‘Do you know that all the furniture is brokenin Mr Bessel’s room?’ The porter said nothing, but, obeying his gestures, came at once to Mr Bessel’s apartment to see the state of affairs. ‘This settles it,’ he said, surveying the lunatic confusion. ‘I didn’t know of this. Mr Bessel’s gone off. He’s mad!’
He then proceeded to tell Mr Vincey that about half an hour previously, that is to say, at about the time of Mr Bessel’s apparition in Mr Vincey’s rooms, the missing gentleman had rushed out of the gates of the Albany into Vigo Street, hatless and with disordered hair, and had vanished into the direction of Bond Street. ‘And as he went past me,’ said the porter, ‘he laughed—a sort of gasping laugh, with his mouth open and his eyes glaring—I tell you, sir, he fair scared me!—like this.’
According to his imitation it was anything but a pleasant laugh. ‘He waved his hand, with all his fingers crooked and clawing—like that. And he said, in a sort of fierce whisper, “Life!” Just that one word, “Life!”’
‘Dear me,’ said Mr Vincey. ‘Tut, tut,’ and ‘Dear me!’ He could think of nothing else to say. He was naturally very much surprised. He turned from the room to the porter and from the porter to the room in the gravest perplexity. Beyond his suggestion that probably Mr Bessel would come back presently and explain what had happened, their conversation was unable to proceed. ‘It might be a sudden toothache,’ said the porter, ‘a very sudden and violent toothache, jumping on him suddenly-like and driving him wild. I’ve broken things myself before now in such a case....’ He thought. ‘If it was, why should he say ‘life’ to me as he went past?’
Mr Vincey did not know. Mr Bessel did not return, and at last Mr Vincey, having done some more helplessstaring, and having addressed a note of brief inquiry and left it in a conspicuous position on the bureau, returned in a very perplexed frame of mind to his own premises in Staple Inn. This affair had given him a shock. He was at a loss to account for Mr Bessel’s conduct on any sane hypothesis. He tried to read, but he could not do so; he went for a short walk, and was so preoccupied that he narrowly escaped a cab at the top of Chancery Lane; and at last—a full hour before his usual time—he went to bed. For a considerable time he could not sleep because of his memory of the silent confusion of Mr Bessel’s apartment, and when at length he did attain an uneasy slumber it was at once disturbed by a very vivid and distressing dream of Mr Bessel.
He saw Mr Bessel gesticulating wildly, and with his face white and contorted. And, inexplicably mingled with his appearance, suggested perhaps by his gestures, was an intense fear, an urgency to act. He even believes that he heard the voice of his fellow experimenter calling distressfully to him, though at the time he considered this to be an illusion. The vivid impression remained though Mr Vincey awoke. For a space he lay awake and trembling in the darkness, possessed with that vague, unaccountable terror of unknown possibilities that comes out of dreams upon even the bravest men. But at last he roused himself, and turned over and went to sleep again, only for the dream to return with enhanced vividness.
He awoke with such a strong conviction that Mr Bessel was in overwhelming distress and need of help that sleep was no longer possible. He was persuaded that his friend had rushed out to some dire calamity. For a time he lay reasoning vainly against this belief, but at last he gave way to it. He arose, against all reason, lit his gas and dressed, and set out through thedeserted streets—deserted, save for a noiseless policeman or so and the early news carts—towards Vigo Street to inquire if Mr Bessel had returned.
But he never got there. As he was going down Long Acre some unaccountable impulse turned him aside out of that street towards Covent Garden, which was just waking to its nocturnal activities. He saw the market in front of him—a queer effect of glowing yellow lights and busy black figures. He became aware of a shouting, and perceived a figure turn the corner by the hotel and run swiftly towards him. He knew at once that it was Mr Bessel. But it was Mr Bessel transfigured. He was hatless and dishevelled, his collar was torn open, he grasped a bone-handled walking-cane near the ferrule end, and his mouth was pulled awry. And he ran, with agile strides, very rapidly. Their encounter was the affair of an instant. ‘Bessel!’ cried Vincey.
The running man gave no sign of recognition either of Mr Vincey or of his own name. Instead, he cut at his friend savagely with the stick, hitting him in the face within an inch of the eye. Mr Vincey, stunned and astonished, staggered back, lost his footing, and fell heavily on the pavement. It seemed to him that Mr Bessel leapt over him as he fell. When he looked again Mr Bessel had vanished, and a policeman and a number of garden porters and salesmen were rushing past towards Long Acre in hot pursuit.
With the assistance of several passers-by—for the whole street was speedily alive with running people—Mr Vincey struggled to his feet. He at once became the centre of a crowd greedy to see his injury. A multitude of voices competed to reassure him of his safety, and then to tell him of the behaviour of the madman, as they regarded Mr Bessel. He had suddenly appeared in the middle of the market screaming ‘Life! Life!’ striking right and left with a blood-stainedwalking-stick, and dancing and shouting with laughter at each successful blow. A lad and two women had broken heads, and he had smashed a man’s wrist; a little child had been knocked insensible, and for a time he had driven every one before him, so furious and resolute had his behaviour been. Then he made a raid upon a coffee stall, hurled its paraffin flare through the window of the post office, and fled laughing, after stunning the foremost of the two policemen who had the pluck to charge him.
Mr Vincey’s first impulse was naturally to join in the pursuit of his friend, in order if possible to save him from the violence of the indignant people. But his action was slow, the blow had half stunned him, and while this was still no more than a resolution came the news, shouted through the crowd, that Mr Bessel had eluded his pursuers. At first Mr Vincey could scarcely credit this, but the universality of the report, and presently the dignified return of two futile policemen, convinced him. After some aimless inquiries he returned towards Staple Inn, padding a handkerchief to a now very painful nose.
He was angry and astonished and perplexed. It appeared to him indisputable that Mr Bessel must have gone violently mad in the midst of his experiment in thought transference, but why that should make him appear with a sad white face in Mr Vincey’s dreams seemed a problem beyond solution. He racked his brains in vain to explain this. It seemed to him at last that not simply Mr Bessel, but the order of things must be insane. But he could think of nothing to do. He shut himself carefully into his room, lit his fire—it was a gas fire with asbestos bricks—and, fearing fresh dreams if he went to bed, remained bathing his injured face, or holding up books in a vain attempt to read until dawn. Throughout that vigil he had a curiouspersuasion that Mr Bessel was endeavouring to speak to him, but he would not let himself attend to any such belief.
About dawn, his physical fatigue asserted itself, and he went to bed and slept at last in spite of dreaming. He rose late, unrested and anxious and in considerable facial pain. The morning papers had no news of Mr Bessel’s aberration—it had come too late for them. Mr Vincey’s perplexities, to which the fever of his bruise added fresh irritation, became at last intolerable, and, after a fruitless visit to the Albany, he went down to St Paul’s Churchyard to Mr Hart, Mr Bessel’s partner, and so far as Mr Vincey knew, his nearest friend.
He was surprised to learn that Mr Hart, although he knew nothing of the outbreak, had also been disturbed by a vision, the very vision that Mr Vincey had seen—Mr Bessel, white and dishevelled, pleading earnestly by his gestures for help. That was his impression of the import of his signs. ‘I was just going to look him up in the Albany when you arrived,’ said Mr Hart. ‘I was so sure of something being wrong with him.’
As the outcome of their consultation the two gentlemen decided to inquire at Scotland Yard for news of their missing friend. ‘He is bound to be laid by the heels,’ said Mr Hart. ‘He can’t go on at that pace for long.’ But the police authorities had not laid Mr Bessel by the heels. They confirmed Mr Vincey’s overnight experiences and added fresh circumstances, some of an even graver character than those he knew—a list of smashed glass along the upper half of Tottenham Court Road, an attack upon a policeman in Hampstead Road, and an atrocious assault upon a woman. All these outrages were committed between half-past twelve and a quarter to two in the morning, and between those hours—and, indeed, from the very moment of Mr Bessel’s first rush from his rooms at half-past nine inthe evening—they could trace the deepening violence of his fantastic career. For the last hour, at least from before one, that is, until a quarter to two, he had run amuck through London, eluding with amazing agility every effort to stop or capture him.
But after a quarter to two he had vanished. Up to that hour witnesses were multitudinous. Dozens of people had seen him, fled from him or pursued him, and then things suddenly came to an end. At a quarter to two he had been seen running down the Euston Road towards Baker Street, flourishing a can of burning colza oil and jerking splashes of flame therefrom at the windows of the houses he passed. But none of the policemen on Euston Road beyond the Waxwork Exhibition, nor any of those in the side streets down which he must have passed had he left the Euston Road, had seen anything of him. Abruptly he disappeared. Nothing of his subsequent doings came to light, in spite of the keenest inquiry.
Here was a fresh astonishment for Mr Vincey. He had found considerable comfort in Mr Hart’s conviction, ‘He is bound to be laid by the heels before long,’ and in that assurance he had been able to suspend his mental perplexities. But any fresh development seemed destined to add new impossibilities to a pile already heaped beyond the powers of his acceptance. He found himself doubting whether his memory might not have played him some grotesque trick, debating whether any of these things could possibly have happened; and in the afternoon he hunted up Mr Hart again to share the intolerable weight on his mind. He found Mr Hart engaged with a well-known private detective, but as that gentleman accomplished nothing in this case, we need not enlarge upon his proceedings.
All that day Mr Bessel’s whereabouts eluded an unceasingly active inquiry, and all that night. And allthat day there was a persuasion in the back of Mr Vincey’s mind that Mr Bessel sought his attention, and all through the night Mr Bessel with a tear-stained face of anguish pursued him through his dreams. And whenever he saw Mr Bessel in his dreams he also saw a number of other faces, vague but malignant, that seemed to be pursuing Mr Bessel.
It was on the following day, Sunday, that Mr Vincey recalled certain remarkable stories of Mrs Bullock, the medium, who was then attracting attention for the first time in London. He determined to consult her. She was staying at the house of that well-known inquirer, Dr Wilson Paget, and Mr Vincey, although he had never met that gentleman before, repaired to him forthwith with the intention of invoking her help. But scarcely had he mentioned the name of Bessel when Doctor Paget interrupted him. ‘Last night—just at the end,’ he said, ‘we had a communication.’
He left the room, and returned with a slate on which were certain words written in a handwriting, shaky indeed, but indisputably the handwriting of Mr Bessel!
‘How did you get this?’ said Mr Vincey. ‘Do you mean?’——
‘We got it last night,’ said Doctor Paget. With numerous interruptions from Mr Vincey, he proceeded to explain how the writing had been obtained. It appears that in herséances, Mrs Bullock passes into a condition of trance, her eyes rolling up in a strange way under her eyelids, and her body becoming rigid. She then begins to talk very rapidly, usually in voices other than her own. At the same time one or both of her hands may become active, and if slates and pencils are provided they will then write messages simultaneously with and quite independently of the flow of words from her mouth. By many she is considered an even moreremarkable medium than the celebrated Mrs Piper. It was one of these messages, the one written by her left hand, that Mr Vincey now had before him. It consisted of eight words written disconnectedly ‘George Bessel ... trial excavn... Baker Street ... help ... starvation.’ Curiously enough, neither Doctor Paget nor the two other inquirers who were present had heard of the disappearance of Mr Bessel—the news of it appeared only in the evening papers of Saturday—and they had put the message aside with many others of a vague and enigmatical sort that Mrs Bullock has from time to time delivered.
When Doctor Paget heard Mr Vincey’s story, he gave himself at once with great energy to the pursuit of this clue to the discovery of Mr Bessel. It would serve no useful purpose here to describe the inquiries of Mr Vincey and himself; suffice it that the clue was a genuine one, and that Mr Bessel was actually discovered by its aid.
He was found at the bottom of a detached shaft which had been sunk and abandoned at the commencement of the work for the new electric railway near Baker Street Station. His arm and leg and two ribs were broken. The shaft is protected by a hoarding nearly 20 ft. high, and over this, incredible as it seems, Mr Bessel, a stout, middle-aged gentleman, must have scrambled in order to fall down the shaft. He was saturated in colza oil, and the smashed tin lay beside him, but luckily the flame had been extinguished by his fall. And his madness had passed from him altogether. But he was, of course, terribly enfeebled, and at the sight of his rescuers he gave way to hysterical weeping.
In view of the deplorable state of his flat, he was taken to the house of Dr Hatton in Upper Baker Street. Here he was subjected to a sedative treatment, and anything that might recall the violent crisis throughwhich he had passed was carefully avoided. But on the second day he volunteered a statement.
Since that occasion Mr Bessel has several times repeated this statement—to myself among other people—varying the details as the narrator of real experiences always does, but never by any chance contradicting himself in any particular. And the statement he makes is in substance as follows.
In order to understand it clearly it is necessary to go back to his experiments with Mr Vincey before his remarkable attack. Mr Bessel’s first attempts at self-projection, in his experiments with Mr Vincey, were, as the reader will remember, unsuccessful. But through all of them he was concentrating all his power and will upon getting out of the body—‘willing it with all my might,’ he says. At last, almost against expectation, came success. And Mr Bessel asserts that he, being alive, did actually, by an effort of will, leave his body and pass into some place or state outside this world.
The release was, he asserts, instantaneous. ‘At one moment I was seated in my chair, with my eyes tightly shut, my hands gripping the arms of the chair, doing all I could to concentrate my mind on Vincey, and then I perceived myself outside my body—saw my body near me, but certainly not containing me, with the hands relaxing and the head drooping forward on the breast.’
Nothing shakes him in his assurance of that release. He describes in a quiet, matter-of-fact way the new sensation he experienced. He felt he had become impalpable—so much he had expected, but he had not expected to find himself enormously large. So, however, it would seem he became. ‘I was a great cloud—if I may express it that way—anchored to my body. It appeared to me, at first, as if I had discovered a greater self of which the conscious being in my brain was only a little part. I saw the Albany and Piccadilly andRegent Street and all the rooms and places in the houses, very minute and very bright and distinct, spread out below me like a little city seen from a balloon. Every now and then vague shapes like drifting wreaths of smoke made the vision a little indistinct, but at first I paid little heed to them. The thing that astonished me most, and which astonishes me still, is that I saw quite distinctly the insides of the houses as well as the streets, saw little people dining and talking in the private houses, men and women dining, playing billiards, and drinking in restaurants and hotels, and several places of entertainment crammed with people. It was like watching the affairs of a glass hive.’
Such were Mr Bessel’s exact words as I took them down when he told me the story. Quite forgetful of Mr Vincey, he remained for a space observing these things. Impelled by curiosity, he says, he stooped down and with the shadowy arm he found himself possessed of attempted to touch a man walking along Vigo Street. But he could not do so, though his finger seemed to pass through the man. Something prevented his doing this, but what it was he finds it hard to describe. He compares the obstacle to a sheet of glass.
‘I felt as a kitten may feel,’ he said, ‘when it goes for the first time to pat its reflection in a mirror.’ Again and again, on the occasion when I heard him tell this story, Mr Bessel returned to that comparison of the sheet of glass. Yet it was not altogether a precise comparison, because, as the reader will speedily see, there were interruptions of this generally impermeable resistance, means of getting through the barrier to the material world again. But, naturally, there is a very great difficulty in expressing these unprecedented impressions in the language of everyday experience.
A thing that impressed him instantly, and which weighed upon him throughout all this experience, wasthe stillness of this place—he was in a world without sound.
At first Mr Bessel’s mental state was an unemotional wonder. His thought chiefly concerned itself with where he might be. He was out of the body—out of his material body, at any rate—but that was not all. He believes, and I for one believe also, that he was somewhere out of space, as we understand it, altogether. By a strenuous effort of will he had passed out of his body into a world beyond this world, a world undreamt of, yet lying so close to it and so strangely situated with regard to it that all things on this earth are clearly visible both from without and from within in this other world about us. For a long time, as it seemed to him, this realisation occupied his mind to the exclusion of all other matters, and then he recalled the engagement with Mr Vincey, to which this astonishing experience was, after all, but a prelude.
He turned his mind to locomotion in this new body in which he found himself. For a time he was unable to shift himself from his attachment to his earthly carcass. For a time this new strange cloud body of his simply swayed, contracted, expanded, coiled, and writhed with his efforts to free himself, and then quite suddenly the link that bound him snapped. For a moment everything was hidden by what appeared to be whirling spheres of dark vapour, and then through a momentary gap he saw his drooping body collapse limply, saw his lifeless head drop sideways, and found he was driving along like a huge cloud in a strange place of shadowy clouds that had the luminous intricacy of London spread like a model below.
But now he was aware that the fluctuating vapour about him was something more than vapour, and the temerarious excitement of his first essay was shot with fear. For he perceived, at first indistinctly,and then suddenly very clearly, that he was surrounded byfaces! that each roll and coil of the seeming cloud-stuff was a face. And such faces! Faces of thin shadow, faces of gaseous tenuity. Faces like those faces that glare with intolerable strangeness upon the sleeper in the evil hours of his dreams. Evil, greedy eyes that were full of a covetous curiosity, faces with knit brows and snarling, smiling lips; their vague hands clutched at Mr Bessel as he passed, and the rest of their bodies was but an elusive streak of trailing darkness. Never a word they said, never a sound from the mouths that seemed to gibber. All about him they pressed in that dreamy silence, passing freely through the dim mistiness that was his body, gathering ever more numerously about him. And the shadowy Mr Bessel, now suddenly fear-stricken, drove through the silent, active multitude of eyes and clutching hands.
So inhuman were these faces, so malignant their staring eyes, and shadowy, clawing gestures, that it did not occur to Mr Bessel to attempt intercourse with these drifting creatures. Idiot phantoms, they seemed, children of vain desire, beings unborn and forbidden the boon of being, whose only expressions and gestures told of the envy and craving for life that was their one link with existence.
It says much for his resolution that, amidst the swarming cloud of these noiseless spirits of evil, he could still think of Mr Vincey. He made a violent effort of will and found himself, he knew not how, stooping towards Staple Inn, saw Vincey sitting attentive and alert in his arm-chair by the fire.
And clustering also about him, as they clustered ever about all that lives and breathes, was another multitude of these vain voiceless shadows, longing, desiring, seeking some loophole into life.
For a space Mr Bessel sought ineffectually to attracthis friend’s attention. He tried to get in front of his eyes, to move the objects in his room, to touch him. But Mr Vincey remained unaffected, ignorant of the being that was so close to his own. The strange something that Mr Bessel has compared to a sheet of glass separated them impermeably.
And at last Mr Bessel did a desperate thing. I have told how that in some strange way he could see not only the outside of a man as we see him, but within. He extended his shadowy hand and thrust his vague black fingers, as it seemed, through the heedless brain.
Then, suddenly, Mr Vincey started like a man who recalls his attention from wandering thoughts, and it seemed to Mr Bessel that a little dark-red body situated in the middle of Mr Vincey’s brain swelled and glowed as he did so. Since that experience he has been shown anatomical figures of the brain, and he knows now that this is that useless structure, as doctors call it, the pineal eye. For, strange as it will seem to many, we have, deep in our brains—where it cannot possibly see any earthly light—an eye! At the time this, with the rest of the internal anatomy of the brain, was quite new to him. At the sight of its changed appearance, however, he thrust forth his finger, and, rather fearful still of the consequences, touched this little spot. And instantly Mr Vincey started, and Mr Bessel knew that he was seen.
And at that instant it came to Mr Bessel that evil had happened to his body, and behold! a great wind blew through all that world of shadows and tore him away. So strong was this persuasion that he thought no more of Mr Vincey, but turned about forthwith, and all the countless faces drove back with him like leaves before a gale. But he returned too late. In an instant he saw the body that he had left inert and collapsed—lying, indeed, like the body of a man just dead—hadarisen by virtue of some strength and will beyond his own. It stood with staring eyes, stretching its limbs in dubious fashion.
For a moment he watched it in wild dismay, and then he stooped towards it. But the pane of glass had closed against him again, and he was foiled. He beat himself passionately against this, and all about him the spirits of evil grinned and pointed and mocked. He gave way to furious anger. He compares himself to a bird that has fluttered heedlessly into a room and is beating at the window-pane that holds it back from freedom.
And behold! the little body that had once been his was now dancing with delight. He saw it shouting, though he could not hear its shouts; he saw the violence of its movements grow. He watched it fling his cherished furniture about in the mad delight of existence, rend his books apart, smash bottles, drink heedlessly from the jagged fragments, leap and smite in a passionate acceptance of living. He watched these actions in paralysed astonishment. Then once more he hurled himself against the impassable barrier, and then, with all that crew of mocking ghosts about him, hurried back in dire confusion to Vincey to tell him of the outrage that had come upon him.
But the brain of Vincey was now closed against apparitions, and the disembodied Mr Bessel pursued him in vain as he hurried out into Holborn to call a cab. Foiled and terror-stricken, Mr Bessel swept back again, to find his desecrated body whooping in a glorious frenzy down the Burlington Arcade....
And now the attentive reader begins to understand Mr Bessel’s interpretation of the first part of this strange story. The being whose frantic rush through London had inflicted so much injury and disaster had indeed Mr Bessel’s body, but it was not Mr Bessel. It was anevil spirit out of that strange world beyond existence, into which Mr Bessel had so rashly ventured. For twenty hours it held possession of him, and for all those twenty hours the dispossessed spirit-body of Mr Bessel was going to and fro in that unheard-of middle world of shadows seeking help in vain.
He spent many hours beating at the minds of Mr Vincey and of his friend Mr Hart. Each, as we know, he roused by his efforts. But the language that might convey his situation to these helpers across the gulf he did not know; his feeble fingers groped vainly and powerlessly in their brains. Once, indeed, as we have already told, he was able to turn Mr Vincey aside from his path so that he encountered the stolen body in its career, but he could not make him understand the thing that had happened: he was unable to draw any help from that encounter....
All through those hours the persuasion was overwhelming in Mr Bessel’s mind that presently his body would be killed by its furious tenant, and he would have to remain in this shadow-land for evermore. So that those long hours were a growing agony of fear. And ever as he hurried to and fro in his ineffectual excitement innumerable spirits of that world about him mobbed him and confused his mind. And ever an envious applauding multitude poured after their successful fellow as he went upon his glorious career.
For that, it would seem, must be the life of these bodiless things of this world that is the shadow of our world. Ever they watch, coveting a way into a mortal body, in order that they may descend, as furies and frenzies, as violent lusts and mad, strange impulses, rejoicing in the body they have won. For Mr Bessel was not the only human soul in that place. Witness the fact that he met first one, and afterwards several shadows of men, men like himself, it seemed, who hadlost their bodies even it may be as he had lost his, and wandered, despairingly, in that lost world that is neither life nor death. They could not speak because that world is silent, yet he knew them for men because of their dim human bodies, and because of the sadness of their faces.