"It's the Devil," he said very solemnly. I am afraid that I was rude
enough to laugh. He took no notice, but sat with the same tense,
miserable air, staring over my head.
"Right," said I. "Then it is the Devil. It's a new complaint, so it's as
well I did not bring a doctor. How does it affect you?" He made the old
impotent clutch at the air with his left hand. I had the sense to become
grave at once. Clearly this was some mental affection, some
hallucination born of physical pain.
Then he began to talk in a low voice, very rapidly, with his head bent
forward like a hunted animal's. I am not going to set down what he told
me in his own words, for they were incoherent often, and there was much
repetition. But I am going to write the gist of the odd story which took
my sleep away on that autumn night, with such explanations and additions
as I think needful. The fire died down, the wind arose, the hour grew
late, and still he went on in his mumbling recitative. I forgot to
smoke, forgot my comfort,--everything but the odd figure of my friend
and his inconceivable romance. And the night before I had been in
cheerful Glenaicill!
* * * * * * *
He had returned to the House of More, he said, in the latter part of
May, and shortly after he fell ill. It was a trifling
sickness--influenza or something--but he had never quite recovered. The
rainy weather of June depressed him, and the extreme heat of July made
him listless and weary. A kind of insistent sleepiness hung over him,
and he suffered much from nightmare. Towards the end of July his former
health returned; but he was haunted with a curious oppression. He seemed
to himself to have lost the art of being alone. There was a perpetual
sound in his left ear, a kind of moving and rustling at his left side,
which never left him by night or day. In addition he had become the prey
of nerves and an insensate dread of the unknown.
Ladlaw, as I have explained, was a commonplace man, with fair talents, a
mediocre culture, honest instincts, and the beliefs and incredulities of
his class. On abstract grounds I should have declared him an unlikely
man to be the victim of a hallucination. He had a kind of dull,
bourgeois rationalism, which used to find reasons for all things in
heaven and earth. At first he controlled his dread with proverbs. He
told himself it was the sequel of his illness, or the light-headedness
of summer heat on the moors. But it soon outgrew his comfort. It became
a living second presence, an _alter ego_ which dogged his footsteps. He
became acutely afraid of it. He dared not be alone for a moment, and
clung to Sybil's company despairingly. She went off for a week's visit
in the beginning of August, and be endured for seven days the tortures
of the lost. His malady advanced upon him with swift steps. The presence
became more real daily. In the early dawning, in the twilight, and in
the first hours of the morning it seemed at times to take a visible
bodily form. A kind of amorphous featureless shadow would run from his
side into the darkness, and he would sit palsied with terror. Sometimes
in lonely places his footsteps sounded double, and something would brush
elbows with him. Human society alone exorcised it. With Sybil at his
side he was happy; but as soon as she left him the thing came slinking
back from the unknown to watch by him. Company might have saved him,
but joined to his affliction was a crazy dread of his fellows. He would
not leave his moorland home, but must bear his burden alone among the
wild streams and mosses of that dismal place.
The Twelfth came, and he shot wretchedly, for his nerve had gone to
pieces. He stood exhaustion badly, and became a dweller about the doors.
But with this bodily inertness came an extraordinary intellectual
revival. He read widely in a blundering way, and he speculated
unceasingly. It was characteristic of the man that, as soon as he left
the paths of the prosaic, he should seek his supernatural in a very
concrete form. He assumed that he was haunted by the Devil--the visible,
personal Devil in whom our fathers believed. He waited hourly for the
shape at his side to speak, but no words came. The Accuser of the
Brethren in all but tangible form was his ever-present companion. He
felt, he declared, the spirit of old evil entering subtly into his
blood. He sold his soul many times over, and yet there was no
possibility of resistance. It was a Visitation more undeserved than
Job's, and a thousandfold more awful.
For a week or more he was tortured with a kind of religious mania. When
a man of a healthy, secular mind finds himself adrift on the terrible
ocean of religious troubles, he is peculiarly helpless, for he has not
the most rudimentary knowledge of the winds and tides. It was useless to
call up his old carelessness; he had suddenly dropped into a new world
where old proverbs did not apply. And all the while, mind you, there was
the shrieking terror of it--an intellect all alive to the torture and
the most unceasing physical fear. For a little he was on the near edge
of idiocy.
Then by accident it took a new form. While sitting with Sybil one day in
the library, he began listlessly to turn over the leaves of an old book.
He read a few pages, and found the hint of a story like his own. It was
some French life of Justinian, one of the unscholarly productions of
last century, made up of stories from Procopius and tags of Roman law.
Here was his own case written down in black and white; and the man had
been a king of kings! This was a new comfort, and for a little--strange
though it may seem--he took a sort of pride in his affliction. He
worshipped the great emperor and read every scrap he could find on him,
not excepting the Pandects and the Digest. He sent for the bust in the
dining-room, paying a fabulous price. Then he settled himself to study
his imperial prototype, and the study became an idolatry. As I have
said, Ladlaw was a man of ordinary talents and certainly of meagre
imaginative power. And yet from the lies of the 'Secret History' and the
crudities of German legalists he had constructed a marvellous portrait
of a man. Sitting there in the half-lit room, he drew the picture,--the
quiet, cold king with his inheritance of Dacian mysticism, holding the
great world in fee, giving it law and religion, fighting its wars,
building its churches, and yet all the while intent upon his own private
work of making his peace with his soul. The churchman and warrior whom
all the world worshipped, and yet one going through life with his lip
quivering, the Watcher by the Threshold ever at his left side. Sometimes
at night in the great Brazen Palace, warders heard the emperor walking
in the dark corridors, alone and yet not alone; for once, when a servant
entered with a lamp, he saw his master with a face as of another world,
and something beside him which had no face or shape, but which he knew
to be that hoary Evil which is older than the stars. Crazy nonsense! I
had to rub my eyes to assure myself that I was not sleeping. No! There
was my friend with his suffering face, and it was the library of More.
And then he spoke of Theodora--actress, harlot, _dévote_, empress. For
him the lady was but another part of the uttermost horror, a form of the
shapeless thing at his side. I felt myself falling under the
fascination. I have no nerves and little imagination, but in a flash I
seemed to realise something of that awful featureless face, crouching
ever at a man's hand, till darkness and loneliness comes and it rises to
its mastery. I shivered as I looked at the man in the chair before me.
Those dull eyes of his were looking upon things I could not see, and I
saw their terror. I realised that it was grim earnest for him. Nonsense
or no, some devilish fancy had usurped the place of sanity, and he was
being slowly broken upon the wheel. And then, when his left hand
twitched, I almost cried out. I had thought it comic before; now it
seemed the last proof of tragedy.
He stopped, and I got up with loose knees and went to the window. Better
the black night than the intangible horror within. I flung up the sash
and looked out across the moor. There was no light, nothing but an inky
darkness and the uncanny rustle of elder-bushes. The sound chilled me,
and I closed the window.
"The land is the old Manann," Ladlaw was saying. "We are beyond the pale
here. Do you hear the wind?"
I forced myself back into sanity and looked at my watch. It was nearly
one o'clock.
"What ghastly idiots we are!" I said. "I am off to bed."
Ladlaw looked at me helplessly. "For God's sake don't leave me alone!"
he moaned. "Get Sybil."
We went together back to the hall, while he kept the same feverish grip
on my arm. Some one was sleeping in a chair by the hall-fire, and to my
distress I recognised my hostess. The poor child must have been sadly
wearied. She came forward with her anxious face.
"I'm afraid Bob has kept you very late, Henry," she said. "I hope you
will sleep well. Breakfast at nine, you know." And then I left them.
Over my bed there was a little picture, a reproduction of some Italian
work of Christ and the Demoniac. Some impulse made me hold my candle up
to it. The madman's face was torn with passion and suffering, and his
eye had the pained furtive look which I had come to know. And by his
left side there was a dim shape crouching.
I got into bed hastily, but not to sleep. I felt that my reason must be
going. I had been pitchforked from our clear and cheerful modern life
into the mists of old superstition. Old tragic stories of my Calvinist
upbringing returned to haunt me. The man dwelt in by a devil was no new
fancy; but I believed that Science had docketed and analysed and
explained the Devil out of the world. I remembered my dabblings in the
occult before I settled down to law--the story of Donisarius, the monk
of Padua, the unholy legend of the Face of Proserpina, the tales of
_succubi_ and _incubi_, the Leannain Sith and the Hidden Presence. But
here was something stranger still. I had stumbled upon that very
possession which fifteen hundred years ago had made the monks of New
Rome tremble and cross themselves. Some devilish occult force, lingering
through the ages, had come to life after a long sleep. God knows what
earthly connection there was between the splendid Emperor of the World
and my prosaic friend, or between the glittering shores of the Bosphorus
and this moorland parish! But the land was the old Manann! The spirit
may have lingered in the earth and air, a deadly legacy from Pict and
Roman. I had felt the uncanniness of the place; I had augured ill of it
from the first. And then in sheer disgust I rose and splashed my face
with cold water.
I lay down again, laughing miserably at my credulity. That I, the sober
and rational, should believe in this crazy fable, was too palpably
absurd. I would steel my mind resolutely against such harebrained
theories. It was a mere bodily ailment,--liver out of order, weak heart,
bad circulation, or something of that sort. At the worst it might be
some affection of the brain to be treated by a specialist. I vowed to
myself that next morning the best doctor in Edinburgh should be brought
to More.
The worst of it was that my duty compelled me to stand my ground. I
foresaw the few remaining weeks of my holiday blighted. I should be tied
to this moorland prison, a sort of keeper and nurse in one, tormented by
silly fancies. It was a charming prospect, and the thought of Glenaicill
and the woodcock made me bitter against Ladlaw. But there was no way out
of it. I might do Ladlaw good, and I could not have Sybil worn to death
by his vagaries.
My ill-nature comforted me, and I forgot the horror of the thing in its
vexation. After that, I think I fell asleep and dozed uneasily till
morning. When I awoke I was in a better frame of mind. The early sun had
worked wonders with the moorland. The low hills stood out fresh-coloured
and clear against the pale October sky, the elders sparkled with frost,
the raw film of morn was rising from the little loch in tiny clouds. It
was a cold rousing day, and I dressed in good spirits and went down to
breakfast.
I found Ladlaw looking ruddy and well, very different from the broken
man I remembered of the night before. We were alone, for Sybil was
breakfasting in bed. I remarked on his ravenous appetite, and he smiled
cheerily. He made two jokes during the meal, he laughed often, and I
began to forget the events of the previous day. It seemed to me that I
might still flee from More with a clear conscience. He had forgotten
about his illness. When I touched distantly upon the matter he showed a
blank face.
It might be that the affection had passed: on the other hand, it might
return to him at the darkening--I had no means to decide. His manner was
still a trifle _distrait_ and peculiar, and I did not like the dulness
in his eye. At any rate, I should spend the day in his company, and the
evening would decide the question.
I proposed shooting, which he promptly vetoed. He was no good at
walking, he said, and the birds were wild. This seriously limited the
possible occupations. Fishing there was none, and hill-climbing was out
of the question. He proposed a game at billiards, and I pointed to the
glory of the morning. It would have been sacrilege to waste such
sunshine in knocking balls about. Finally we agreed to drive somewhere
and have lunch, and he ordered the dog-cart.
In spite of all forebodings I enjoyed the day. We drove in the opposite
direction from the woodland parts, right away across the moor to the
coal-country beyond. We lunched at the little mining town of Borrowmuir,
in a small and noisy public-house. The roads made bad going, the country
was far from pretty, and yet the drive did not bore me. Ladlaw talked
incessantly, talked as I had never heard man talk before. There was
something indescribable in all he said,--a different point of view, a
lost groove of thought, a kind of innocence and archaic shrewdness in
one. I can only give you a hint of it by saying that it was like the
mind of an early ancestor placed suddenly among modern surroundings. It
was wise with a remote wisdom, and silly (now and then) with a quite
antique and distant silliness.
I will give you instances of both. He provided me with a theory of
certain early fortifications, which must be true, which commends itself
to the mind with overwhelming conviction, and yet which is so out of the
way of common speculation that no man could have guessed it. I do not
propose to set down the details, for I am working at it on my own
account. Again, he told me the story of an old marriage custom, which
till recently survived in this district,--told it with full
circumstantial detail and constant allusions to other customs which he
could not possibly have known of. Now for the other side. He explained
why well-water is in winter warmer than a running stream, and this was
his explanation. At the Antipodes our winter is summer; consequently the
water of a well which comes through from the other side of the earth
must be warm in winter and cold in summer, since in our summer it is
winter there. You perceive what this is. It is no mere silliness, but a
genuine effort of an early mind which had just grasped the fact of the
Antipodes, to use it in explanation.
Gradually I was forced to the belief that it was not Ladlaw who was
talking to me, but something speaking through him, something at once
wiser and simpler. My old fear of the Devil began to depart. This
spirit, this exhalation, whatever it was, was ingenuous in its way, at
least in its daylight aspect. For a moment I had an idea that it was a
real reflex of Byzantine thought, and that by cross-examining I might
make marvellous discoveries. The ardour of the scholar began to rise in
me, and I asked a question about that much-debated point, the legal
status of the _apocrisiarii_. To my vexation he gave no response.
Clearly the intelligence of this familiar had its limits.
It was about three in the afternoon, and we had gone half of our
homeward journey, when signs of the old terror began to appear. I was
driving, and Ladlaw sat on my left. I noticed him growing nervous and
silent shivering at the flick of the whip, and turning half-way round
towards me. Then he asked me to change places, and I had the unpleasant
work of driving from the wrong side. After that I do not think he spoke
once till we arrived at More, but sat huddled together with the
driving-rug almost up to his chin--an eccentric figure of a man.
I foresaw another such night as the last, and I confess my heart sank. I
had no stomach for more mysteries, and somehow with the approach of
twilight the confidence of the day departed. The thing appeared in
darker colours, and I could have found it in my mind to turn coward.
Sybil alone deterred me. I could not bear to think of her alone with
this demented being. I remembered her shy timidity, her innocence. It
was monstrous that the poor thing should be called on thus to fight
alone with phantoms. So I braced myself for another evening.
When we came to the House it was almost sunset. Ladlaw got out very
carefully on the right side, and for a second stood by the horse. The
sun was making our shadows long, and as I stood beyond him, it seemed
for a moment that his shadow was double. It may have been mere fancy,
for I had not time to look twice. He was standing, as I have said, with
his left side next the horse. Suddenly the harmless elderly cob fell
into a very panic of fright, reared upright, and all but succeeded in
killing its master. I was in time to pluck Ladlaw from under its feet,
but the beast had become perfectly unmanageable, and we left a groom
struggling to quiet it.
In the hall the butler gave me a telegram. It was from my clerk,
summoning me back at once to an important consultation.