Twelve Stories and a Dream (21 page)

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—had arisen,
had arisen 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 an evil
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 had lost 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.

But how they had come into that world he could not tell, nor where the
bodies they had lost might be, whether they still raved about the earth,
or whether they were closed forever in death against return. That they
were the spirits of the dead neither he nor I believe. But Doctor Wilson
Paget thinks they are the rational souls of men who are lost in madness
on the earth.

At last Mr. Bessel chanced upon a place where a little crowd of such
disembodied silent creatures was gathered, and thrusting through them
he saw below a brightly-lit room, and four or five quiet gentlemen and a
woman, a stoutish woman dressed in black bombazine and sitting awkwardly
in a chair with her head thrown back. He knew her from her portraits to
be Mrs. Bullock, the medium. And he perceived that tracts and structures
in her brain glowed and stirred as he had seen the pineal eye in the
brain of Mr. Vincey glow. The light was very fitful; sometimes it was a
broad illumination, and sometimes merely a faint twilight spot, and it
shifted slowly about her brain. She kept on talking and writing with one
hand. And Mr. Bessel saw that the crowding shadows of men about him,
and a great multitude of the shadow spirits of that shadowland, were all
striving and thrusting to touch the lighted regions of her brain. As one
gained her brain or another was thrust away, her voice and the writing
of her hand changed. So that what she said was disorderly and confused
for the most part; now a fragment of one soul's message, and now a
fragment of another's, and now she babbled the insane fancies of the
spirits of vain desire. Then Mr. Bessel understood that she spoke
for the spirit that had touch of her, and he began to struggle very
furiously towards her. But he was on the outside of the crowd and at
that time he could not reach her, and at last, growing anxious, he went
away to find what had happened meanwhile to his body. For a long time
he went to and fro seeking it in vain and fearing that it must have been
killed, and then he found it at the bottom of the shaft in Baker Street,
writhing furiously and cursing with pain. Its leg and an arm and two
ribs had been broken by its fall. Moreover, the evil spirit was angry
because his time had been so short and because of the painmaking violent
movements and casting his body about.

And at that Mr. Bessel returned with redoubled earnestness to the room
where the seance was going on, and so soon as he had thrust himself
within sight of the place he saw one of the men who stood about the
medium looking at his watch as if he meant that the seance should
presently end. At that a great number of the shadows who had been
striving turned away with gestures of despair. But the thought that the
seance was almost over only made Mr. Bessel the more earnest, and he
struggled so stoutly with his will against the others that presently he
gained the woman's brain. It chanced that just at that moment it glowed
very brightly, and in that instant she wrote the message that Doctor
Wilson Paget preserved. And then the other shadows and the cloud of evil
spirits about him had thrust Mr. Bessel away from her, and for all the
rest of the seance he could regain her no more.

So he went back and watched through the long hours at the bottom of
the shaft where the evil spirit lay in the stolen body it had maimed,
writhing and cursing, and weeping and groaning, and learning the lesson
of pain. And towards dawn the thing he had waited for happened, the
brain glowed brightly and the evil spirit came out, and Mr. Bessel
entered the body he had feared he should never enter again. As he did
so, the silence—the brooding silence—ended; he heard the tumult of
traffic and the voices of people overhead, and that strange world that
is the shadow of our world—the dark and silent shadows of ineffectual
desire and the shadows of lost men—vanished clean away.

He lay there for the space of about three hours before he was found. And
in spite of the pain and suffering of his wounds, and of the dim damp
place in which he lay; in spite of the tears—wrung from him by his
physical distress—his heart was full of gladness to know that he was
nevertheless back once more in the kindly world of men.

"You can't be TOO careful WHO you marry," said Mr. Brisher, and pulled
thoughtfully with a fat-wristed hand at the lank moustache that hides
his want of chin.

"That's why—" I ventured.

"Yes," said Mr. Brisher, with a solemn light in his bleary, blue-grey
eyes, moving his head expressively and breathing alcohol INTIMATELY at
me. "There's lots as 'ave 'ad a try at me—many as I could name in this
town—but none 'ave done it—none."

I surveyed the flushed countenance, the equatorial expansion, the
masterly carelessness of his attire, and heaved a sigh to think that
by reason of the unworthiness of women he must needs be the last of his
race.

"I was a smart young chap when I was younger," said Mr. Brisher. "I 'ad
my work cut out. But I was very careful—very. And I got through..."

He leant over the taproom table and thought visibly on the subject of my
trustworthiness. I was relieved at last by his confidence.

"I was engaged once," he said at last, with a reminiscent eye on the
shuv-a'penny board.

"So near as that?"

He looked at me. "So near as that. Fact is—" He looked about him,
brought his face close to mine, lowered his voice, and fenced off an
unsympathetic world with a grimy hand. "If she ain't dead or married to
some one else or anything—I'm engaged still. Now." He confirmed this
statement with nods and facial contortions. "STILL," he said, ending the
pantomime, and broke into a reckless smile at my surprise. "ME!"

"Run away," he explained further, with coruscating eyebrows. "Come 'ome.

"That ain't all.

"You'd 'ardly believe it," he said, "but I found a treasure. Found a
regular treasure."

I fancied this was irony, and did not, perhaps, greet it with proper
surprise. "Yes," he said, "I found a treasure. And come 'ome. I tell you
I could surprise you with things that has happened to me." And for some
time he was content to repeat that he had found a treasure—and left it.

I made no vulgar clamour for a story, but I became attentive to Mr.
Brisher's bodily needs, and presently I led him back to the deserted
lady.

"She was a nice girl," he said—a little sadly, I thought. "AND
respectable."

He raised his eyebrows and tightened his mouth to express extreme
respectability—beyond the likes of us elderly men.

"It was a long way from 'ere. Essex, in fact. Near Colchester. It was
when I was up in London—in the buildin' trade. I was a smart young
chap then, I can tell you. Slim. 'Ad best clo'es 's good as anybody.
'At—SILK 'at, mind you." Mr. Brisher's hand shot above his head towards
the infinite to indicate it silk hat of the highest. "Umbrella—nice
umbrella with a 'orn 'andle. Savin's. Very careful I was...."

He was pensive for a little while, thinking, as we must all come to
think sooner or later, of the vanished brightness of youth. But he
refrained, as one may do in taprooms, from the obvious moral.

"I got to know 'er through a chap what was engaged to 'er sister. She
was stopping in London for a bit with an aunt that 'ad a 'am an' beef
shop. This aunt was very particular—they was all very particular
people, all 'er people was—and wouldn't let 'er sister go out with this
feller except 'er other sister, MY girl that is, went with them. So 'e
brought me into it, sort of to ease the crowding. We used to go walks in
Battersea Park of a Sunday afternoon. Me in my topper, and 'im in 'is;
and the girl's—well—stylish. There wasn't many in Battersea Park 'ad
the larf of us. She wasn't what you'd call pretty, but a nicer girl I
never met.
I
liked 'er from the start, and, well—though I say it who
shouldn't—she liked me. You know 'ow it is, I dessay?"

I pretended I did.

"And when this chap married 'er sister—'im and me was great
friends—what must 'e do but arst me down to Colchester, close by where
She lived. Naturally I was introjuced to 'er people, and well, very
soon, her and me was engaged."

He repeated "engaged."

"She lived at 'ome with 'er father and mother, quite the lady, in a very
nice little 'ouse with a garden—and remarkable respectable people they
was. Rich you might call 'em a'most. They owned their own 'ouse—got
it out of the Building Society, and cheap because the chap who had it
before was a burglar and in prison—and they 'ad a bit of free'old land,
and some cottages and money 'nvested—all nice and tight: they was what
you'd call snug and warm. I tell you, I was On. Furniture too. Why! They
'ad a pianner. Jane—'er name was Jane—used to play it Sundays, and
very nice she played too. There wasn't 'ardly a 'im toon in the book she
COULDN'T play...