hear nothing,” she said defiantly, yet without confidence in her voice.
“Besides, the thing’s still disconnected. It _can’t_ ring--look!” She
pointed to the hanging receiver motionless against the wall. “You’re
white as a ghost, though,” she added, coming quickly forward. Her friend
moved suddenly to the instrument and picked up the receiver. “It’s
someone for me,” she said, with terror in her eyes. “It’s someone who
wants to talk to me! Oh, hark! hark how it rings!” Her voice shook. She
placed the little disc to her ear and waited while her friend stood by
and stared in amazement, uncertain what to do. _She_ had heard no
ringing!
“You, Harry!” whispered the wife into the telephone, with brief
intervals of silence for the replies. “_You?_ But how in the world so
soon?--Yes, I can just hear, but very faintly. Miles and miles away your
voice sounds--What?--A wonderful journey? And sooner than you
expected!--_Not_ in Paris? Where, then?--Oh! my darling boy--No, I don’t
quite hear; I can’t catch it--I don’t understand.... The pain of the sea
is nothing--is _what_?... You know nothing of _what_ ...?”
The cousin came boldly up. She took her arm. “But, child, there’s no one
there, bless you! You’re dreaming--you’re in fever or something----”
“Hush! For God’s sake, hush!” She held up a hand. In her face and eyes
was an expression indescribable--fear, love, bewilderment. Her body
swayed a little, leaning against the wall. “Hush! I hear him still; but,
oh! miles and miles away--He says--he’s been trying for hours to find
me. First he tried my brain direct, and then--then--oh! he says he may
not get back again to me--only he can’t understand, can’t explain
_why_--the cold, the awful cold, keeps his lips from---- Oh!”
She screamed aloud as she flung the receiver down and dropped in a heap
upon the floor. “I don’t understand--it’s death, death!” ...
And the collision in the Channel that night, as they learned in due
course, occurred a few minutes after one o’clock; while Harry himself,
who remained unconscious for several hours after the boat picked him up,
could only remember that his last desire as the wave caught him was an
intense wish to communicate with his wife and tell her what had
happened.... The next thing he knew was opening his eyes in a Dieppe
hotel.
And the other curious detail was furnished by the man who came to repair
the telephone next day. At the Exchange, he declared, the wire, from
midnight till nearly three in the morning, had emitted sparks and
flashes of light no one had been able to account for in any usual
manner.
“Queer!” said the man to himself, after tinkering and tapping for ten
minutes, “but there’s nothing wrong with it at _this_ end. It’s the
subscriber, most likely. It usually is!”
XX
THE WHISPERERS
To be too impressionable is as much a source of weakness as to be
hyper-sensitive: so many messages come flooding in upon one another that
confusion is the result; the mind chokes, imagination grows congested.
Jones, as an imaginative writing man, was well aware of this, yet could
not always prevent it; for if he dulled his mind to one impression, he
ran the risk of blunting it to all. To guard his main idea, and picket
its safe conduct through the seethe of additions that instantly flocked
to join it, was a psychological puzzle that sometimes overtaxed his
powers of critical selection. He prepared for it, however. An editor
would ask him for a story--“about five thousand words, you know”; and
Jones would answer, “I’ll send it you with pleasure--when it comes.” He
knew his difficulty too well to promise more. Ideas were never lacking,
but their length of treatment belonged to machinery he could not coerce.
They were alive; they refused to come to heel to suit mere editors.
Midway in a tale that started crystal clear and definite in its
original germ, would pour a flood of new impressions that either
smothered the first conception, or developed it beyond recognition.
Often a short story exfoliated in this bursting way beyond his power to
stop it. He began one, never knowing where it would lead him. It was
ever an adventure. Like Jack the Giant Killer’s beanstalk it grew
secretly in the night, fed by everything he read, saw, felt, or heard.
Jones was too impressionable; he received too many impressions, and too
easily.
For this reason, when working at a definite, short idea, he preferred an
empty room, without pictures, furniture, books, or anything suggestive,
and with a skylight that shut out scenery--just ink, blank paper, and
the clear picture in his mind. His own interior, unstimulated by the
geysers of external life, he made some pretence of regulating; though
even under these favourable conditions the matter was not too easy, so
prolifically does a sensitive mind engender.
His experience in the empty room of the carpenter’s house was a curious
case in point--in the little Jura village where his cousin lived to
educate his children. “We’re all in a pension above the Post Office
here,” the cousin wrote, “but just now the house is full, and besides is
rather noisy. I’ve taken an attic room for you at the carpenter’s near
the forest. Some things of mine have been stored there all the winter,
but I moved the cases out this morning. There’s a bed, writing-table,
wash-handstand, sofa, and a skylight window--otherwise empty, as I know
you prefer it. You can have your meals with us,” etc. And this just
suited Jones, who had six weeks’ work on hand for which he needed empty
solitude. His “idea” was slight and very tender; accretions would easily
smother clear presentment; its treatment must be delicate, simple,
unconfused.
The room really was an attic, but large, wide, high. He heard the wind
rush past the skylight when he went to bed. When the cupboard was open
he heard the wind there too, washing the outer walls and tiles. From his
pillow he saw a patch of stars peep down upon him. Jones knew the
mountains and the woods were close, but he could not see them. Better
still, he could not smell them. And he went to bed dead tired, full of
his theme for work next morning. He saw it to the end. He could almost
have promised five thousand words. With the dawn he would be up and “at
it,” for he usually woke very early, his mind surcharged, as though
subconsciousness had matured the material in sleep. Cold bath, a cup of
tea, and then--his writing-table; and the quicker he could reach the
writing-table the richer was the content of imaginative thought. What
had puzzled him the night before was invariably cleared up in the
morning. Only illness could interfere with the process and routine of
it.
But this time it was otherwise. He woke, and instantly realised, with a
shock of surprise and disappointment, that his mind was--groping. It was
groping for his little lost idea. There was nothing physically wrong
with him; he felt rested, fresh, clear-headed; but his brain was
searching, searching, moreover, in a crowd. Trying to seize hold of the
train it had relinquished several hours ago, it caught at an evasive,
empty shell. The idea had utterly changed; or rather it seemed smothered
by a host of new impressions that came pouring in upon it--new modes of
treatment, points of view, in fact development. In the light of these
extensions and novel aspects, his original idea had altered beyond
recognition. The germ had marvellously exfoliated, so that a whole
volume could alone express it. An army of fresh suggestions clamoured
for expression. His subconsciousness had grown thick with life; it
surged--active, crowded, tumultuous.
And the darkness puzzled him. He remembered the absence of accustomed
windows, but it was only when the candle-light brought close the face of
his watch, with two o’clock upon it, that he heard the sound of confused
whispering in the corners of the room, and realised with a little twinge
of fear that those who whispered had just been standing beside his very
bed. The room was full.
Though the candle-light proclaimed it empty--bare walls, bare floor,
five pieces of unimaginative furniture, and fifty stars peeping through
the skylight--it was undeniably thronged with living people whose minds
had called him out of heavy sleep. The whispers, of course, died off
into the wind that swept the roof and skylight; but the Whisperers
remained. They had been trying to get at him; waking suddenly, he had
caught them in the very act.... And all had brought new interpretations
with them; his thought had fundamentally altered; the original idea was
snowed under; new images brimmed his mind, and his brain was working as
it worked under the high pressure of creative moments.
Jones sat up, trembling a little, and stared about him into the empty
room that yet was densely packed with these invisible Whisperers. And he
realised this astonishing thing--that he was the object of their
deliberate assault, and that scores of other minds, deep, powerful, very
active minds, were thundering and beating upon the doors of his
imagination. The onset of them was terrific and bewildering, the attack
of aggressive ideas obliterating his original story beneath a flood of
new suggestions. Inspiration had become suddenly torrential, yet so vast
as to be unwieldy, incoherent, useless. It was like the tempest of
images that fever brings. His first conception seemed no longer
“delicate,” but petty. It had turned unreal and tiny, compared with this
enormous choice of treatment extension, development, that now
overwhelmed his throbbing brain.
Fear caught vividly at him, as he searched the empty attic-room in vain
for explanation. There was absolutely nothing to produce this tempest of
new impressions. People seemed talking to him all together, jumbled
somewhat, but insistently. It was obsession, rather than inspiration;
and so bitingly, dreadfully real.
“Who are you all?” his mind whispered to blank walls and vacant corners.
Back from the shouting floor and ceiling came the chorus of images that
stormed and clamoured for expression. Jones lay still and listened; he
let them come. There was nothing else to do. He lay fearful, negative,
receptive. It was all too big for him to manage, set to some scale of
high achievement that submerged his own small powers. It came, too, in a
series of impressions, all separate, yet all somehow interwoven.
In vain he tried to sort them out and sift them. As well sort out waves
upon an agitated sea. They were too self-assertive for direction or
control. Like wild animals, hungry, thirsty, ravening, they rushed from
every side and fastened on his mind.
Yet he perceived them in a certain sequence.
For, first, the unfurnished attic-chamber was full of human passion, of
love and hate, revenge and wicked cunning, of jealousy, courage,
cowardice, of every vital human emotion ever longed for, enjoyed, or
frustrated, all clamouring for--expression.
Flaming across and through these, incongruously threaded in and out, ran
next a yearning softness of incredible beauty that sighed in the empty
spaces of his heart, pleading for impossible fulfilment....
And, after these, carrying both one and other upon their surface, huge
questions flashed and dived and thundered in a patterned, wild
entanglement, calling to be unravelled and made straight. Moreover, with
every set came a new suggested treatment of the little clear idea he had
taken to bed with him five hours before.
Jones adopted each in turn. Imagination writhed and twisted beneath the
stress of all these potential modes of expression he must choose
between. His small idea exfoliated into many volumes, work enough to
fill a dozen lives. It was most gorgeously exhilarating, though so
hopelessly unmanageable. He felt like many minds in one....
Then came another chain of impressions, violent, yet steady owing to
their depth; the voices, questions, pleadings turned to pictures; and he
saw, struggling through the deeps of him, enormous quantities of people,
passing along like rivers, massed, herded, swayed here and there by some
outstanding figure of command who directed them like flowing water. They
shrieked, and fought, and battled, then sank out of sight, huddled and
destroyed in--blood....
And their places were taken instantly by white crowds with shining
eyes, and yearning in their faces, who climbed precipitous heights
towards some Radiance that kept ever out of sight, like sunrise behind
mountains that clouds then swallow.... The pelt and thunder of images
was destructive in its torrent; his little, first idea was drowned and
wrecked.... Jones sank back exhausted, utterly dismayed. He gave up all
attempt to make selection.
The driving storm swept through him, on and on, now waxing, now waning,
but never growing less, and apparently endless as the sky. It rushed in
circles, like the turning of a giant wheel. All the activities that
human minds have ever battled with since thought began came booming,
crashing, straining for expression against the imaginative stuff whereof
his mind was built. The walls began to yield and settle. It was like the
chaos that madness brings. He did not struggle against it; he let it
come, lying open and receptive, pliant and plastic to every detail of
the vast invasion. And the only time he attempted a complete obedience,
reaching out for the pencil and notebook that lay beside his bed, he
desisted instantly again, sinking back upon his pillows with a kind of
frightened laughter. For the tempest seemed then to knock him down and
bruise his very brain. Inextricable confusion caught him. He might as
well have tried to make notes of the entire Alexandrian Library in half
an hour....
Then, most singular of all, as he felt the sleep of exhaustion fall upon
his tired nerves, he heard that deep, prodigious sound. All that had
preceded, it gathered marvellously in, mothering it with a sweetness
that seemed to his imagination like some harmonious, geometrical skein
including all the activities men’s minds have ever known. Faintly he
realised it only, discerned from infinitely far away. Into the streams
of apparent contradiction that warred so strenuously about him, it
seemed to bring some hint of unifying, harmonious explanation.... And,
here and there, as sleep buried him, he imagined that chords lay
threaded along strings of cadences, breaking sometimes even into
melody--music that rose everywhere from life and wove Thought into a
homogeneous Whole....
“Sleep well?” his cousin inquired, when he appeared very late next day
for _déjeuner_. “Think you’ll be able to work in that room all right?”
“I slept, yes, thanks,” said Jones. “No doubt I shall work there right
enough--when I’m rested. By the bye,” he asked presently, “what has the
attic been used for lately? What’s been in it, I mean?”
“Books, only books,” was the reply. “I’ve stored my ‘library’ there for
months, without a chance of using it. I move about so much, you see.
Five hundred books were taken out just before you came. I often think,”
he added lightly, “that when books are unopened like that for long, the
minds that wrote them must get restless and----”
“What sort of books were they?” Jones interrupted.
“Fiction, poetry, philosophy, history, religion, music. I’ve got two
hundred books on music alone.”
XXI
VIOLENCE
“But what seems so odd to me, so horribly pathetic, is that such people
don’t resist,” said Leidall, suddenly entering the conversation. The
intensity of his tone startled everybody; it was so passionate, yet with
a beseeching touch that made the women feel uncomfortable a little. “As
a rule, I’m told, they submit willingly, almost as though----”
He hesitated, grew confused, and dropped his glance to the floor; and a
smartly dressed woman eager to be heard, seized the opening. “Oh, come
now,” she laughed; “one always hears of a man being _put_ into a strait
waistcoat. I’m sure he doesn’t slip it on as if he were going to a
dance!” And she looked flippantly at Leidall, whose casual manners she
resented. “People are _put_ under restraint. It’s not in human nature to
accept it--healthy human nature, that is?” But for some reason no one
took her question up. “That is so, I believe, yes,” a polite voice
murmured, while the group at tea in the Dover Street Club turned with
one accord to Leidall as to one whose interesting sentence still
remained unfinished. He had hardly spoken before, and a silent man is
ever credited with wisdom.
“As though--you were just saying, Mr. Leidall?” a quiet little man in a
dark corner helped him.
“As though, I meant, a man in that condition of mind is not insane--all
through,” Leidall continued stammeringly; “but that some wise portion of
him watches the proceeding with gratitude, and welcomes the protection
against himself. It seems awfully pathetic. Still,” again hesitating and
fumbling in his speech--“er--it seems queer to me that he should yield
quietly to enforced restraint--the waistcoat, handcuffs, and the rest.”
He looked round hurriedly, half suspiciously, at the faces in the
circle, then dropped his eyes again to the floor. He sighed, leaning
back in his chair. “I cannot understand it,” he added, as no one spoke,
but in a very low voice, and almost to himself. “One would expect them
to struggle furiously.”
Someone had mentioned that remarkable book, _The Mind that Found
Itself_, and the conversation had slipped into this serious vein. The
women did not like it. What kept it alive was the fact that the silent
Leidall, with his handsome, melancholy face, had suddenly wakened into
speech, and that the little man opposite to him, half invisible in his
dark corner, was assistant to one of London’s great hypnotic doctors,
who could, an’ he would, tell interesting and terrible things. No one
cared to ask the direct question, but all hoped for revelations,
possibly about people they actually knew. It was a very ordinary
tea-party indeed. And this little man now spoke, though hardly in the
desired vein. He addressed his remarks to Leidall across the
disappointed lady.
“I think, probably, your explanation _is_ the true one,” he said gently,
“for madness in its commoner forms is merely want of proportion; the
mind gets out of right and proper relations with its environment. The
majority of madmen are mad on one thing only, while the rest of them is
as sane as myself--or you.”
The words fell into the silence. Leidall bowed his agreement, saying no
actual word. The ladies fidgeted. Someone made a jocular remark to the
effect that most of the world was mad anyhow, and the conversation
shifted with relief into a lighter vein--the scandal in the family of a
politician. Everybody talked at once. Cigarettes were lit. The corner
soon became excited and even uproarious. The tea-party was a great
success, and the offended lady no longer ignored, led all the
skirmishes--towards herself. She was in her element. Only Leidall and
the little invisible man in the corner took small part in it; and
presently, seizing the opportunity when some new arrivals joined the
group, Leidall rose to say his adieux, and slipped away, his departure
scarcely noticed. Dr. Hancock followed him a minute later. The two men
met in the hall; Leidall already had his hat and coat on. “I’m going
West, Mr. Leidall. If that’s your way too, and you feel inclined for the
walk, we might go together.” Leidall turned with a start. His glance
took in the other with avidity--a keenly-searching, hungry glance. He
hesitated for an imperceptible moment, then made a movement towards him,
half inviting, while a curious shadow dropped across his face and
vanished. It was both pathetic and terrible. The lips trembled. He
seemed to say, “God bless you; _do_ come with me!” But no words were
audible.
“It’s a pleasant evening for a walk,” added Dr. Hancock gently; “clean
and dry under foot for a change. I’ll get my hat and join you in a
second.” And there was a hint, the merest flavour, of authority in his
voice.
That touch of authority was his mistake. Instantly Leidall’s hesitation
passed. “I’m sorry,” he said abruptly, “but I’m afraid I must take a
taxi. I have an appointment at the Club and I’m late already.” “Oh, I
see,” the other replied, with a kindly smile; “then I mustn’t keep you.
But if you ever have a free evening, won’t you look me up, or come and
dine? You’ll find my telephone number in the book. I should like to
talk with you about--those things we mentioned at tea.” Leidall thanked
him politely and went out. The memory of the little man’s kindly
sympathy and understanding eyes went with him.
“Who was that man?” someone asked, the moment Leidall had left the
tea-table. “Surely he’s not the Leidall who wrote that awful book some
years ago?”
“Yes--the _Gulf of Darkness_. Did you read it?”
They discussed it and its author for five minutes, deciding by a large
majority that it was the book of a madman. Silent, rude men like that
always had a screw loose somewhere, they agreed. Silence was invariably
morbid.
“And did you notice Dr. Hancock? He never took his eyes off him. That’s
why _he_ followed him out like that. I wonder if _he_ thought anything!”
“I know Hancock well,” said the lady of the wounded vanity. “I’ll ask
him and find out.” They chattered on, somebody mentioned a _risqué_
play, the talk switched into other fields, and in due course the
tea-party came to an end.
And Leidall, meanwhile, made his way towards the Park on foot, for he
had not taken a taxi after all. The suggestion of the other man,
perhaps, had worked upon him. He was very open to suggestion. With hands
deep in his overcoat pockets, and head sunk forward between his
shoulders, he walked briskly, entering the Park at one of the smaller
gates. He made his way across the wet turf, avoiding the paths and
people. The February sky was shining in the west; beautiful clouds
floated over the houses; they looked like the shore-line of some radiant
strand his childhood once had known. He sighed; thought dived and
searched within; self-analysis, that old, implacable demon, lifted its
voice; introspection took the reins again as usual. There seemed a
strain upon the mind he could not dispel. Thought circled poignantly. He
knew it was unhealthy, morbid, a sign of these many years of difficulty
and stress that had marked him so deeply, but for the life of him he
could not escape from the hideous spell that held him. The same old
thoughts bored their way into his mind like burning wires, tracing the
same unanswerable questions. From this torture, waking or sleeping,
there was no escape. Had a companion been with him it might have been
different. If, for instance, Dr. Hancock----
He was angry with himself for having refused--furious; it was that vile,
false pride his long loneliness had fostered. The man was sympathetic to
him, friendly, marvellously understanding; he could have talked freely
with him, and found relief. His intuition had picked out the little
doctor as a man in ten thousand. Why had he so curtly declined his
gentle invitation? Dr. Hancock _knew_; he guessed his awful secret. But
how? In what had he betrayed himself?
The weary self-questioning began again, till he sighed and groaned from
sheer exhaustion. He _must_ find people, companionship, someone to talk
to. The Club--it crossed his tortured mind for a second--was impossible;
there was a conspiracy among the members against him. He had left his
usual haunts everywhere for the same reason--his restaurants, where he
had his lonely meals; his music hall, where he tried sometimes to forget
himself; his favourite walks, where the very policemen knew and eyed
him. And, coming to the bridge across the Serpentine just then, he
paused and leaned over the edge, watching a bubble rise to the surface.
“I suppose there _are_ fish in the Serpentine?” he said to a man a few
feet away.