Within about three paces of me he stopped, and passed his hand two or
three times through the black and white masses of his hair. He had the
air of trying to rouse himself from a mood of painful preoccupation. At
length he spoke in a faint, unaccented tone, like a voice heard far off.
"I want your sympathy," said he.
"Have we met before?" I asked, rather taken aback. "I really don't
remember--but I believe I've been half asleep, and am hardly awake yet."
He shook his head slowly, his black eyes curiously perusing my face.
"You have chosen an ill place to sleep in," he remarked after a pause.
"Many a year have I sought repose there--in vain."
"Indeed? Well, I came here quite by accident, and judging by the aspect
of the place, I shouldn't have supposed it would have been often
visited."
"You are right, few come hither now; but as many as do so are liable to
meet with me."
I looked more narrowly at my queer companion, and all at once the
thought struck me, the man is mad! Yes, it must be so. How otherwise
could the strangeness of his appearance, behaviour, and conversation be
accounted for? He did not look dangerous, probably he was incapable of
doing harm, and therefore permitted to wander about as he liked. In the
moral atmosphere of these ruins he was sensible of somewhat congenial
to his own forlornness, and hence haunted them rather than any
more cheerful spot. Certainly, this was an appropriate haunt for a
madman--for one whose mind had fallen into that ugliest chaos which was
once beauty and order. But I liked the spectacle of mental even less
than that of material decay; and though the poor gentleman had asked me
for my sympathy, I scarcely knew how to give it to him.
By I know not what faculty of divination, he appeared to suspect what
was passing in my mind.
"I am not mad," he said quietly, but with a tremor of the finely-cut
though irresolute lips. "I am not mad, I have passed beyond insanity.
Let me sit down here and talk to you. Nay--do not rise! Recline as you
were doing, and close your eyes if you will; I need only your ears."
While speaking thus he passed behind me, and apparently seated himself
at the foot of the oak-tree, outside of my range of vision. But no
sooner was he out of plain sight, than I was seized with an odd fantasy
that he had actually vanished into thin air, and that were I to look
round, I should not find him. His voice only was left, and even that now
seemed unearthly. Was it a human voice? and not rather the rustling of
leaves and the gurgling of water, translated by my feverish imagination
into weird speech?
"You were dreaming," resumed the voice; "what dreams had you of the
wheel?"
"What dreams had I of the wheel?" I repeated, leaning back on the mound,
and clasping my hands across my eyes. Here was another instance of my
new friend's insight. How had he known that the wheel was in my thoughts
at all! Yet it was true that I had given rein to all sorts of fanciful
speculations concerning it, and was now, moreover, quite in the mood
to give them utterance. And what better auditor could I desire than a
madman, whom the wildest extravagance could not disconcert, nor the most
palpable absurdities annoy? The opportunity was too fair to lose.
"What dreamt I of the wheel?" I exclaimed again: "I dreamt it was the
mighty Wheel of Fortune, who, weary of trundling it about the world, had
left it here amidst the sedge and spray of the waterfall. Henceforth,
therefore, there shall be no more ups and downs in life, but mankind
shall move for ever across one level plain, unchecked by darkness and
uncheered by light!"
"Would you have it thus?"
"Oh no--not I! Come back, fair goddess! come back and wrest thy wheel
from amidst those clinging vines and brambles--the arms wherewith
reluctant nature strives to hold it back! Bring it forth once again
upon the dusty road, and turn it as you go, lest our sluggish hearts
forget to beat, and we cease to draw the very breath of life, and our
souls, torpid and uninspired, grovel earthwards, nor dream of climbing
higher than themselves! Bring forth thy wheel, and turn it for ever even
as the world turns; for thy fickleness is the life of our lives!"
"Methinks the wheel of misfortune were its truer title; for it turns
ever between a fool above and a corpse beneath; and the laugh of madness
sounds before, and behind is a track of blood!"
"Nay, name it how you will; since all of human joy and grief, and life
and death, have clustered round its course, as the moss and the vines
cluster about it now. See how Nature seeks to make the awful symbol of
destiny into a plaything for her own beautiful idleness! How fearlessly
the light and shadow rest upon it! Yet it is bloodstained. Those rank
ferns bend and peer in quest of some lurking horror? What is it? I feel
its influence upon me."
"Aye, you feel it!" murmured my unseen companion, tremulously; "and how
could you help but feel it? Do not the tragedies of human life instil
their essence into the things we call inanimate? You have shuddered when
handling the rack and the Iron Virgin of the Inquisition, and felt faint
at the sight of the guillotine and the gallows. You were awed by an
evil influence breathed from the actual wood and iron--not by the mere
knowledge of ghastly scenes in which they had borne a part."
"How came the influence there?" I asked, humouring his grotesque theory.
"That which has existed in an atmosphere of revenge, hatred, and
despair, becomes at last impregnated with a malignant intelligence
derived from them; an intelligence both devilish in itself and able to
endow you with its own deformity. And if you hold not aloof from it, you
shall surely be destroyed--in soul, if not in body likewise!"
"But do we feel this influence unless aware beforehand that it is
there?"
"Fix your thought constantly upon yonder wheel," was the reply, "and
mark if it does not answer you."
Still with my hands clasped across my eyes, I concentrated my mind
as directed, and presently felt my veins crawl with a slow chill of
dismay--a chill which deprived me of control over my faculties, while
awakening them to unnatural activity. That the wheel had a conscious
personality, instinct with evil, seemed no longer open to doubt. Now the
plash and gurgle of the water changed to the stealthy drip of blood;
and I shrank from the breeze that moved my hair as from a pestilential
breath. Was I going mad too? My will seemed to falter; a tremor which I
could not repress passed through me from head to foot.
"Aye, you feel it," murmured the voice again. "You are answered!"
By a determined effort I regained command of myself. Perhaps it was none
too soon. Nothing is easier than to indulge this morbid vein, and few
indulgences, I believe, are more perilous. With my change of mood came a
change of tone; I cast aside the hysteric style, and adopted one more
brusque and matter-of-fact, to which the reaction from sentimentality
may have added a touch of asperity.
"Come, come!" I said. "We are overdoing this folly. I know well enough
what place this is; Mr. Poyntz began to tell me about it this afternoon.
An amusing story--all about the Laughing Mill, and the fellow who was
drowned, and the nymph of the pearl-shell necklace. You see, I know what
I am talking about! But the tale broke off in the middle; perhaps you
can finish it?"
"It is you who must finish it!" returned the other. "But I want your
sympathy; so let me tell my part."
"Do so," said I, "by all means. When I know you better, I shall be
better able to sympathise with you. As to my finishing the story, I
think I'm more likely to succeed as a listener than as a narrator;
however, if it must be so, I'll give it the best ending I can. And I do
sympathise with you already," I added, after a pause, in a less flippant
tone. "I am a man, and I believe in human brotherhood."
My eccentric companion made no rejoinder, though I fancied he gave a
sigh. Presently he began to speak in the same evenly-pitched, far-away
voice that he had used throughout. The effect was rather as of a weary
reader reading from a book than as of one who talks spontaneously,
there was no hesitation, no rise and fall, no fire, no faltering. Yet
the recital moved me more deeply than if it had been delivered with
impassioned eloquence. Through the sad colourless medium I seemed to
behold the direct movement of events, and almost to take part in them.
Moreover, as the narrator proceeded, the notion more than once possessed
me that his words reached my ears from some inward source--that I was
merely thinking the things I seemed to hear. His tone was so attuned
to the desolateness of the surroundings, as to appear like the mystic
interpretation of their significance, such as might result from intense
brooding over them. Indeed, taking into consideration all that I had
seen, heard, and fancied that day, I almost believe I could have fallen
asleep and dreamed just such a story as he told me. Certainly no dream
could have been stranger than the things he told.