“Here, I mean, a long sojourn would lead to deterioration, to
degeneration. The place is utterly unsoftened by human influences, by
any humanising associations of history, good or bad. This landscape has
never awakened into life; it’s still dreaming in its primitive sleep.”
“In time,” I put in, “you mean a man living here might become brutal?”
“The passions would run wild, selfishness become supreme, the instincts
coarsen and turn savage probably.”
“But----”
“In other places just as wild, parts of Italy for instance, where there
are other moderating influences, it could not happen. The character
might grow wild, savage too in a sense, but with a human wildness one
could understand and deal with. But here, in a hard place like this, it
might be otherwise.” He spoke slowly, weighing his words carefully.
I looked at him with many questions in my eyes, and a precautionary cry
to Sangree to stay in the fore part of the boat, out of earshot.
“First of all there would come callousness to pain, and indifference
to the rights of others. Then the soul would turn savage, not from
passionate human causes, or with enthusiasm, but by deadening down into
a kind of cold, primitive, emotionless savagery--by turning, like the
landscape, soulless.”
“And a man with strong desires, you say, might change?”
“Without being aware of it, yes; he might turn savage, his instincts
and desires turn animal. And if”--he lowered his voice and turned for
a moment towards the bows, and then continued in his most weighty
manner--“owing to delicate health or other predisposing causes, his
Double--you know what I mean, of course--his etheric Body of Desire, or
astral body, as some term it--that part in which the emotions, passions
and desires reside--if this, I say, were for some constitutional reason
loosely joined to his physical organism, there might well take place an
occasional projection----”
Sangree came aft with a sudden rush, his face aflame, but whether with
wind or sun, or with what he had heard, I cannot say. In my surprise
I let the tiller slip and the cutter gave a great plunge as she came
sharply into the wind and flung us all together in a heap on the
bottom. Sangree said nothing, but while he scrambled up and made the
jib sheet fast my companion found a moment to add to his unfinished
sentence the words, too low for any ear but mine--
“Entirely unknown to himself, however.”
We righted the boat and laughed, and then Sangree produced the map
and explained exactly where we were. Far away on the horizon, across
an open stretch of water, lay a blue cluster of islands with our
crescent-shaped home among them and the safe anchorage of the lagoon.
An hour with this wind would get us there comfortably, and while Dr.
Silence and Sangree fell into conversation, I sat and pondered over the
strange suggestions that had just been put into my mind concerning
the “Double,” and the possible form it might assume when dissociated
temporarily from the physical body.
The whole way home these two chatted, and John Silence was as gentle
and sympathetic as a woman. I did not hear much of their talk, for the
wind grew occasionally to the force of a hurricane and the sails and
tiller absorbed my attention; but I could see that Sangree was pleased
and happy, and was pouring out intimate revelations to his companion in
the way that most people did--when John Silence wished them to do so.
But it was quite suddenly, while I sat all intent upon wind and sails,
that the true meaning of Sangree’s remark about the animal flared up in
me with its full import. For his admission that he knew it was in pain
and starved was in reality nothing more or less than a revelation of
his deeper self. It was in the nature of a confession. He was speaking
of something that he knew positively, something that was beyond
question or argument, something that had to do directly with himself.
“Poor starved beast” he had called it in words that had “come out of
their own accord,” and there had not been the slightest evidence of any
desire to conceal or explain away. He had spoken instinctively--from
his heart, and as though about his own self.
And half an hour before sunset we raced through the narrow opening of
the lagoon and saw the smoke of the dinner-fire blowing here and there
among the trees, and the figures of Joan and the Bo’sun’s Mate running
down to meet us at the landing-stage.
V
Everything changed from the moment John Silence set foot on that
island; it was like the effect produced by calling in some big doctor,
some great arbiter of life and death, for consultation. The sense of
gravity increased a hundredfold. Even inanimate objects took upon
themselves a subtle alteration, for the setting of the adventure--this
deserted bit of sea with its hundreds of uninhabited islands--somehow
turned sombre. An element that was mysterious, and in a sense
disheartening, crept unbidden into the severity of grey rock and dark
pine forest and took the sparkle from the sunshine and the sea.
I, at least, was keenly aware of the change, for my whole being
shifted, as it were, a degree higher, becoming keyed up and alert.
The figures from the background of the stage moved forward a little
into the light--nearer to the inevitable action. In a word this man’s
arrival intensified the whole affair.
And, looking back down the years to the time when all this happened,
it is clear to me that he had a pretty sharp idea of the meaning of it
from the very beginning. How much he knew beforehand by his strange
divining powers, it is impossible to say, but from the moment he came
upon the scene and caught within himself the note of what was going on
amongst us, he undoubtedly held the true solution of the puzzle and had
no need to ask questions. And this certitude it was that set him in
such an atmosphere of power and made us all look to him instinctively;
for he took no tentative steps, made no false moves, and while the rest
of us floundered he moved straight to the climax. He was indeed a true
diviner of souls.
I can now read into his behaviour a good deal that puzzled me at the
time, for though I had dimly guessed the solution, I had no idea how
he would deal with it. And the conversations I can reproduce almost
verbatim, for, according to my invariable habit, I kept full notes of
all he said.
To Mrs. Maloney, foolish and dazed; to Joan, alarmed, yet plucky;
and to the clergyman, moved by his daughter’s distress below his
usual shallow emotions, he gave the best possible treatment in the
best possible way, yet all so easily and simply as to make it appear
naturally spontaneous. For he dominated the Bo’sun’s Mate, taking the
measure of her ignorance with infinite patience; he keyed up Joan,
stirring her courage and interest to the highest point for her own
safety; and the Reverend Timothy he soothed and comforted, while
obtaining his implicit obedience, by taking him into his confidence,
and leading him gradually to a comprehension of the issue that was
bound to follow.
And Sangree--here his wisdom was most wisely calculated--he neglected
outwardly because inwardly he was the object of his unceasing and most
concentrated attention. Under the guise of apparent indifference his
mind kept the Canadian under constant observation.
There was a restless feeling in the Camp that evening and none of us
lingered round the fire after supper as usual. Sangree and I busied
ourselves with patching up the torn tent for our guest and with finding
heavy stones to hold the ropes, for Dr. Silence insisted on having it
pitched on the highest point of the island ridge, just where it was
most rocky and there was no earth for pegs. The place, moreover, was
midway between the men’s and women’s tents, and, of course, commanded
the most comprehensive view of the Camp.
“So that if your dog comes,” he said simply, “I may be able to catch
him as he passes across.”
The wind had gone down with the sun and an unusual warmth lay over the
island that made sleep heavy, and in the morning we assembled at a
late breakfast, rubbing our eyes and yawning. The cool north wind had
given way to the warm southern air that sometimes came up with haze and
moisture across the Baltic, bringing with it the relaxing sensations
that produced enervation and listlessness.
And this may have been the reason why at first I failed to notice that
anything unusual was about, and why I was less alert than normally; for
it was not till after breakfast that the silence of our little party
struck me and I discovered that Joan had not yet put in an appearance.
And then, in a flash, the last heaviness of sleep vanished and I saw
that Maloney was white and troubled and his wife could not hold a plate
without trembling.
A desire to ask questions was stopped in me by a swift glance from
Dr. Silence, and I suddenly understood in some vague way that they
were waiting till Sangree should have gone. How this idea came to me I
cannot determine, but the soundness of the intuition was soon proved,
for the moment he moved off to his tent, Maloney looked up at me and
began to speak in a low voice.
“You slept through it all,” he half whispered.
“Through what?” I asked, suddenly thrilled with the knowledge that
something dreadful had happened.
“We didn’t wake you for fear of getting the whole Camp up,” he went on,
meaning, by the Camp, I supposed, Sangree. “It was just before dawn
when the screams woke me.”
“The dog again?” I asked, with a curious sinking of the heart.
“Got right into the tent,” he went on, speaking passionately but very
low, “and woke my wife by scrambling all over her. Then she realised
that Joan was struggling beside her. And, by God! the beast had torn
her arm; scratched all down the arm she was, and bleeding.”
“Joan injured?” I gasped.
“Merely scratched--this time,” put in John Silence, speaking for the
first time; “suffering more from shock and fright than actual wounds.”
“Isn’t it a mercy the doctor was here,” said Mrs. Maloney, looking as
if she would never know calmness again. “I think we should both have
been killed.”
“It has been a most merciful escape,” Maloney said, his pulpit
voice struggling with his emotion. “But, of course, we cannot risk
another--we must strike Camp and get away at once----”
“Only poor Mr. Sangree must not know what has happened. He is so
attached to Joan and would be so terribly upset,” added the Bo’sun’s
Mate distractedly, looking all about in her terror.
“It is perhaps advisable that Mr. Sangree should not know what has
occurred,” Dr. Silence said with quiet authority, “but I think, for the
safety of all concerned, it will be better not to leave the island just
now.” He spoke with great decision and Maloney looked up and followed
his words closely.
“If you will agree to stay here a few days longer, I have no doubt
we can put an end to the attentions of your strange visitor, and
incidentally have the opportunity of observing a most singular and
interesting phenomenon----”
“What!” gasped Mrs. Maloney, “a phenomenon?--you mean that you know
what it is?”
“I am quite certain I know what it is,” he replied very low, for we
heard the footsteps of Sangree approaching, “though I am not so certain
yet as to the best means of dealing with it. But in any case it is not
wise to leave precipitately----”
“Oh, Timothy, does he think it’s a devil----?” cried the Bo’sun’s Mate
in a voice that even the Canadian must have heard.
“In my opinion,” continued John Silence, looking across at me and the
clergyman, “it is a case of modern lycanthropy with other complications
that may----” He left the sentence unfinished, for Mrs. Maloney got up
with a jump and fled to her tent fearful she might hear a worse thing,
and at that moment Sangree turned the corner of the stockade and came
into view.
“There are footmarks all round the mouth of my tent,” he said with
excitement. “The animal has been here again in the night. Dr. Silence,
you really must come and see them for yourself. They’re as plain on the
moss as tracks in snow.”
But later in the day, while Sangree went off in the canoe to fish
the pools near the larger islands, and Joan still lay, bandaged and
resting, in her tent, Dr. Silence called me and the tutor and proposed
a walk to the granite slabs at the far end. Mrs. Maloney sat on
a stump near her daughter, and busied herself energetically with
alternate nursing and painting.
“We’ll leave you in charge,” the doctor said with a smile that was
meant to be encouraging, “and when you want us for lunch, or anything,
the megaphone will always bring us back in time.”
For, though the very air was charged with strange emotions, every one
talked quietly and naturally as with a definite desire to counteract
unnecessary excitement.
“I’ll keep watch,” said the plucky Bo’sun’s Mate, “and meanwhile I find
comfort in my work.” She was busy with the sketch she had begun on the
day after our arrival. “For even a tree,” she added proudly, pointing
to her little easel, “is a symbol of the divine, and the thought makes
me feel safer.” We glanced for a moment at a daub which was more like
the symptom of a disease than a symbol of the divine--and then took the
path round the lagoon.
At the far end we made a little fire and lay round it in the shadow of
a big boulder. Maloney stopped his humming suddenly and turned to his
companion.
“And what do you make of it all?” he asked abruptly.
“In the first place,” replied John Silence, making himself comfortable
against the rock, “it is of human origin, this animal; it is undoubted
lycanthropy.”
His words had the effect precisely of a bombshell. Maloney listened as
though he had been struck.
“You puzzle me utterly,” he said, sitting up closer and staring at him.
“Perhaps,” replied the other, “but if you’ll listen to me for a few
moments you may be less puzzled at the end--or more. It depends how
much you know. Let me go further and say that you have underestimated,
or miscalculated, the effect of this primitive wild life upon all of
you.”
“In what way?” asked the clergyman, bristling a trifle.
“It is strong medicine for any town-dweller, and for some of you it has
been too strong. One of you has gone wild.” He uttered these last words
with great emphasis.
“Gone savage,” he added, looking from one to the other.
Neither of us found anything to reply.
“To say that the brute has awakened in a man is not a mere metaphor
always,” he went on presently.
“Of course not!”
“But, in the sense I mean, may have a very literal and terrible
significance,” pursued Dr. Silence. “Ancient instincts that no one
dreamed of, least of all their possessor, may leap forth----”
“Atavism can hardly explain a roaming animal with teeth and claws and
sanguinary instincts,” interrupted Maloney with impatience.
“The term is of your own choice,” continued the doctor equably, “not
mine, and it is a good example of a word that indicates a result while
it conceals the process; but the explanation of this beast that haunts
your island and attacks your daughter is of far deeper significance
than mere atavistic tendencies, or throwing back to animal origin,
which I suppose is the thought in your mind.”
“You spoke just now of lycanthropy,” said Maloney, looking bewildered
and anxious to keep to plain facts evidently, “I think I have come
across the word, but really--really--it can have no actual significance
to-day, can it? These superstitions of mediæval times can hardly----”
He looked round at me with his jolly red face, and the expression of
astonishment and dismay on it would have made me shout with laughter at
any other time. Laughter, however, was never farther from my mind than
at this moment when I listened to Dr. Silence as he carefully suggested
to the clergyman the very explanation that had gradually been forcing
itself upon my own mind.
“However mediæval ideas may have exaggerated the idea is not of much
importance to us now,” he said quietly, “when we are face to face with
a modern example of what, I take it, has always been a profound fact.
For the moment let us leave the name of any one in particular out of
the matter and consider certain possibilities.”
We all agreed with that at any rate. There was no need to speak of
Sangree, or of any one else, until we knew a little more.
“The fundamental fact in this most curious case,” he went on, “is that
the ‘Double’ of a man----”
“You mean the astral body? I’ve heard of that, of course,” broke in
Maloney with a snort of triumph.
“No doubt,” said the other, smiling, “no doubt you have;--that this
Double, or fluidic body of a man, as I was saying, has the power under
certain conditions of projecting itself and becoming visible to others.
Certain training will accomplish this, and certain drugs likewise;
illnesses, too, that ravage the body may produce temporarily the result
that death produces permanently, and let loose this counterpart of a
human being and render it visible to the sight of others.
“Every one, of course, knows this more or less to-day; but it is not so
generally known, and probably believed by none who have not witnessed
it, that this fluidic body can, under certain conditions, assume other
forms than human, and that such other forms may be determined by the
dominating thought and wish of the owner. For this Double, or astral
body as you call it, is really the seat of the passions, emotions and
desires in the psychical economy. It is the Passion Body; and, in
projecting itself, it can often assume a form that gives expression to
the overmastering desire that moulds it; for it is composed of such
tenuous matter that it lends itself readily to the moulding by thought
and wish.”
“I follow you perfectly,” said Maloney, looking as if he would much
rather be chopping firewood elsewhere and singing.
“And there are some persons so constituted,” the doctor went on with
increasing seriousness, “that the fluid body in them is but loosely
associated with the physical, persons of poor health as a rule, yet
often of strong desires and passions; and in these persons it is easy
for the Double to dissociate itself during deep sleep from their
system, and, driven forth by some consuming desire, to assume an animal
form and seek the fulfilment of that desire.”
There, in broad daylight, I saw Maloney deliberately creep closer to
the fire and heap the wood on. We gathered in to the heat, and to each
other, and listened to Dr. Silence’s voice as it mingled with the swish
and whirr of the wind about us, and the falling of the little waves.
“For instance, to take a concrete example,” he resumed; “suppose some
young man, with the delicate constitution I have spoken of, forms an
overpowering attachment to a young woman, yet perceives that it is not
welcomed, and is man enough to repress its outward manifestations.
In such a case, supposing his Double be easily projected, the very
repression of his love in the daytime would add to the intense force of
his desire when released in deep sleep from the control of his will,
and his fluidic body might issue forth in monstrous or animal shape and
become actually visible to others. And, if his devotion were dog-like
in its fidelity, yet concealing the fires of a fierce passion beneath,
it might well assume the form of a creature that seemed to be half dog,
half wolf----”
“A werewolf, you mean?” cried Maloney, pale to the lips as he listened.
John Silence held up a restraining hand. “A werewolf,” he said, “is a
true psychical fact of profound significance, however absurdly it may
have been exaggerated by the imaginations of a superstitious peasantry
in the days of unenlightenment, for a werewolf is nothing but the
savage, and possibly sanguinary, instincts of a passionate man scouring
the world in his fluidic body, his passion body, his body of desire. As
in the case at hand, he may not know it----”
“It is not necessarily deliberate, then?” Maloney put in quickly, with
relief.
“----It is hardly ever deliberate. It is the desires released in sleep
from the control of the will finding a vent. In all savage races it has
been recognised and dreaded, this phenomenon styled ‘Wehr Wolf,’ but
to-day it is rare. And it is becoming rarer still, for the world grows
tame and civilised, emotions have become refined, desires lukewarm, and
few men have savagery enough left in them to generate impulses of such
intense force, and certainly not to project them in animal form.”
“By Gad!” exclaimed the clergyman breathlessly, and with increasing
excitement, “then I feel I must tell you--what has been given to me in
confidence--that Sangree has in him an admixture of savage blood--of
Red Indian ancestry----”
“Let us stick to our supposition of a man as described,” the doctor
stopped him calmly, “and let us imagine that he has in him this
admixture of savage blood; and further, that he is wholly unaware of
his dreadful physical and psychical infirmity; and that he suddenly
finds himself leading the primitive life together with the object of
his desires; with the result that the strain of the untamed wild-man in
his blood----”
“Red Indian, for instance,” from Maloney.
“Red Indian, perfectly,” agreed the doctor; “the result, I say, that
this savage strain in him is awakened and leaps into passionate life.
What then?”
He looked hard at Timothy Maloney, and the clergyman looked hard at him.
“The wild life such as you lead it here on this island, for instance,
might quickly awaken his savage instincts--his buried instincts--and
with profoundly disquieting results.”
“You mean his Subtle Body, as you call it, might issue forth
automatically in deep sleep and seek the object of its desire?” I said,
coming to Maloney’s aid, who was finding it more and more difficult to
get words.
“Precisely;--yet the desire of the man remaining utterly
unmalefic--pure and wholesome in every sense----”
“Ah!” I heard the clergyman gasp.
“The lover’s desire for union run wild, run savage, tearing its way out
in primitive, untamed fashion, I mean,” continued the doctor, striving
to make himself clear to a mind bounded by conventional thought and
knowledge; “for the desire to possess, remember, may easily become
importunate, and, embodied in this animal form of the Subtle Body which
acts as its vehicle, may go forth to tear in pieces all that obstructs,
to reach to the very heart of the loved object and seize it. _Au fond_,
it is nothing more than the aspiration for union, as I said--the
splendid and perfectly clean desire to absorb utterly into itself----”
He paused a moment and looked into Maloney’s eyes.
“To bathe in the very heart’s blood of the one desired,” he added with
grave emphasis.
The fire spurted and crackled and made me start, but Maloney found
relief in a genuine shudder, and I saw him turn his head and look about
him from the sea to the trees. The wind dropped just at that moment and
the doctor’s words rang sharply through the stillness.
“Then it might even kill?” stammered the clergyman presently in a
hushed voice, and with a little forced laugh by way of protest that
sounded quite ghastly.
“In the last resort it might kill,” repeated Dr. Silence. Then, after
another pause, during which he was clearly debating how much or how
little it was wise to give to his audience, he continued: “And if the
Double does not succeed in getting back to its physical body, that
physical body would wake an imbecile--an idiot--or perhaps never wake
at all.”
Maloney sat up and found his tongue.
“You mean that if this fluid animal thing, or whatever it is, should be
prevented getting back, the man might never wake again?” he asked, with
shaking voice.
“He might be dead,” replied the other calmly. The tremor of a positive
sensation shivered in the air about us.
“Then isn’t that the best way to cure the fool--the brute----?”
thundered the clergyman, half rising to his feet.
“Certainly it would be an easy and undiscoverable form of murder,” was
the stern reply, spoken as calmly as though it were a remark about the
weather.
Maloney collapsed visibly, and I gathered the wood over the fire and
coaxed up a blaze.
“The greater part of the man’s life--of his vital forces--goes out with
this Double,” Dr. Silence resumed, after a moment’s consideration, “and
a considerable portion of the actual material of his physical body. So
the physical body that remains behind is depleted, not only of force,
but of matter. You would see it small, shrunken, dropped together, just
like the body of a materialising medium at a séance. Moreover, any mark
or injury inflicted upon this Double will be found exactly reproduced
by the phenomenon of repercussion upon the shrunken physical body lying
in its trance----”
“An injury inflicted upon the one you say would be reproduced also on
the other?” repeated Maloney, his excitement growing again.
“Undoubtedly,” replied the other quietly; “for there exists all
the time a continuous connection between the physical body and the
Double--a connection of matter, though of exceedingly attenuated,
possibly of etheric, matter. The wound _travels_, so to speak, from one
to the other, and if this connection were broken the result would be
death.”
“Death,” repeated Maloney to himself, “death!” He looked anxiously at
our faces, his thoughts evidently beginning to clear.
“And this solidity?” he asked presently, after a general pause; “this
tearing of tents and flesh; this howling, and the marks of paws? You
mean that the Double----?”
“Has sufficient material drawn from the depleted body to produce
physical results? Certainly!” the doctor took him up. “Although to
explain at this moment such problems as the passage of matter through
matter would be as difficult as to explain how the thought of a mother
can actually break the bones of the child unborn.”
Dr. Silence pointed out to sea, and Maloney, looking wildly about
him, turned with a violent start. I saw a canoe, with Sangree in the
stern-seat, slowly coming into view round the farther point. His hat
was off, and his tanned face for the first time appeared to me--to us
all, I think--as though it were the face of some one else. He looked
like a wild man. Then he stood up in the canoe to make a cast with the
rod, and he looked for all the world like an Indian. I recalled the
expression of his face as I had seen it once or twice, notably on that
occasion of the evening prayer, and an involuntary shudder ran down my
spine.
At that very instant he turned and saw us where we lay, and his face
broke into a smile, so that his teeth showed white in the sun. He
looked in his element, and exceedingly attractive. He called out
something about his fish, and soon after passed out of sight into the
lagoon.
For a time none of us said a word.
“And the cure?” ventured Maloney at length.
“Is not to quench this savage force,” replied Dr. Silence, “but to
steer it better, and to provide other outlets. This is the solution
of all these problems of accumulated force, for this force is the raw
material of usefulness, and should be increased and cherished, not
by separating it from the body by death, but by raising it to higher
channels. The best and quickest cure of all,” he went on, speaking very
gently and with a hand upon the clergyman’s arm, “is to lead it towards
its object, provided that object is not unalterably hostile--to let it
find rest where----”
He stopped abruptly, and the eyes of the two men met in a single glance
of comprehension.
“Joan?” Maloney exclaimed, under his breath.
“Joan!” replied John Silence.
* * * * *
We all went to bed early. The day had been unusually warm, and after
sunset a curious hush descended on the island. Nothing was audible but
that faint, ghostly singing which is inseparable from a pine-wood even
on the stillest day--a low, searching sound, as though the wind had
hair and trailed it o’er the world.
With the sudden cooling of the atmosphere a sea fog began to form. It
appeared in isolated patches over the water, and then these patches
slid together and a white wall advanced upon us. Not a breath of air
stirred; the firs stood like flat metal outlines; the sea became as
oil. The whole scene lay as though held motionless by some huge weight
in the air; and the flames from our fire--the largest we had ever
made--rose upwards, straight as a church steeple.
As I followed the rest of our party tent-wards, having kicked the
embers of the fire into safety, the advance guard of the fog was
creeping slowly among the trees, like white arms feeling their way.
Mingled with the smoke was the odour of moss and soil and bark, and
the peculiar flavour of the Baltic, half salt, half brackish, like the
smell of an estuary at low water.
It is difficult to say why it seemed to me that this deep stillness
masked an intense activity; perhaps in every mood lies the suggestion
of its opposite, so that I became aware of the contrast of furious
energy, for it was like moving through the deep pause before a
thunderstorm, and I trod gently lest by breaking a twig or moving
a stone I might set the whole scene into some sort of tumultuous
movement. Actually, no doubt, it was nothing more than a result of
overstrung nerves.
There was no more question of undressing and going to bed than there
was of undressing and going to bathe. Some sense in me was alert and
expectant. I sat in my tent and waited. And at the end of half an hour
or so my waiting was justified, for the canvas suddenly shivered,
and some one tripped over the ropes that held it to the earth. John
Silence came in.
The effect of his quiet entry was singular and prophetic: it was just
as though the energy lying behind all this stillness had pressed
forward to the edge of action. This, no doubt, was merely the
quickening of my own mind, and had no other justification; for the
presence of John Silence always suggested the near possibility of
vigorous action, and, as a matter of fact, he came in with nothing more
than a nod and a significant gesture.
He sat down on a corner of my ground-sheet, and I pushed the blanket
over so that he could cover his legs. He drew the flap of the tent
after him and settled down, but hardly had he done so when the canvas
shook a second time, and in blundered Maloney.
“Sitting in the dark?” he said self-consciously, pushing his head
inside, and hanging up his lantern on the ridge-pole nail. “I just
looked in for a smoke. I suppose----”
He glanced round, caught the eye of Dr. Silence, and stopped. He
put his pipe back into his pocket and began to hum softly--that
under-breath humming of a nondescript melody I knew so well and had
come to hate.
Dr. Silence leaned forward, opened the lantern and blew the light out.
“Speak low,” he said, “and don’t strike matches. Listen for sounds
and movements about the Camp, and be ready to follow me at a moment’s
notice.” There was light enough to distinguish our faces easily, and I
saw Maloney glance again hurriedly at both of us.
“Is the Camp asleep?” the doctor asked presently, whispering.
“Sangree is,” replied the clergyman, in a voice equally low. “I can’t
answer for the women; I think they’re sitting up.”
“That’s for the best.” And then he added: “I wish the fog would thin a
bit and let the moon through; later--we may want it.”
“It is lifting now, I think,” Maloney whispered back. “It’s over the
tops of the trees already.”
I cannot say what it was in this commonplace exchange of remarks
that thrilled. Probably Maloney’s swift acquiescence in the doctor’s
mood had something to do with it; for his quick obedience certainly
impressed me a good deal. But, even without that slight evidence,
it was clear that each recognised the gravity of the occasion, and
understood that sleep was impossible and sentry duty was the order of
the night.
“Report to me,” repeated John Silence once again, “the least sound, and
do nothing precipitately.”
He shifted across to the mouth of the tent and raised the flap,
fastening it against the pole so that he could see out. Maloney stopped
humming and began to force the breath through his teeth with a kind
of faint hissing, treating us to a medley of church hymns and popular
songs of the day.
Then the tent trembled as though some one had touched it.
“That’s the wind rising,” whispered the clergyman, and pulled the flap
open as far as it would go. A waft of cold damp air entered and made us
shiver, and with it came a sound of the sea as the first wave washed
its way softly along the shores.
“It’s got round to the north,” he added, and following his voice came
a long-drawn whisper that rose from the whole island as the trees sent
forth a sighing response. “The fog’ll move a bit now. I can make out a
lane across the sea already.”
“Hush!” said Dr. Silence, for Maloney’s voice had risen above a
whisper, and we settled down again to another long period of watching
and waiting, broken only by the occasional rubbing of shoulders against
the canvas as we shifted our positions, and the increasing noise of
waves on the outer coast-line of the island. And over all whirred the
murmur of wind sweeping the tops of the trees like a great harp, and
the faint tapping on the tent as drops fell from the branches with a
sharp pinging sound.
We had sat for something over an hour in this way, and Maloney and I
were finding it increasingly hard to keep awake, when suddenly Dr.
Silence rose to his feet and peered out. The next minute he was gone.
Relieved of the dominating presence, the clergyman thrust his face
close into mine. “I don’t much care for this waiting game,” he
whispered, “but Silence wouldn’t hear of my sitting up with the others;
he said it would prevent anything happening if I did.”
“He knows,” I answered shortly.
“No doubt in the world about that,” he whispered back; “it’s this
‘Double’ business, as he calls it, or else it’s obsession as the Bible
describes it. But it’s bad, whichever it is, and I’ve got my Winchester
outside ready cocked, and I brought this too.” He shoved a pocket Bible
under my nose. At one time in his life it had been his inseparable
companion.
“One’s useless and the other’s dangerous,” I replied under my breath,
conscious of a keen desire to laugh, and leaving him to choose. “Safety
lies in following our leader----”
“I’m not thinking of myself,” he interrupted sharply; “only, if
anything happens to Joan to-night I’m going to shoot first--and pray
afterwards!”
Maloney put the book back into his hip-pocket, and peered out of the
doorway. “What is he up to now, in the devil’s name, I wonder!” he
added; “going round Sangree’s tent and making gestures. How weird he
looks disappearing in and out of the fog.”
“Just trust him and wait,” I said quickly, for the doctor was already
on his way back. “Remember, he has the knowledge, and knows what he’s
about. I’ve been with him through worse cases than this.”
Maloney moved back as Dr. Silence darkened the doorway and stooped to
enter.
“His sleep is very deep,” he whispered, seating himself by the door
again. “He’s in a cataleptic condition, and the Double may be released
any minute now. But I’ve taken steps to imprison it in the tent, and it
can’t get out till I permit it. Be on the watch for signs of movement.”
Then he looked hard at Maloney. “But no violence, or shooting,
remember, Mr. Maloney, unless you want a murder on your hands. Anything
done to the Double acts by repercussion upon the physical body. You had
better take out the cartridges at once.”
His voice was stern. The clergyman went out, and I heard him emptying
the magazine of his rifle. When he returned he sat nearer the door than
before, and from that moment until we left the tent he never once took
his eyes from the figure of Dr. Silence, silhouetted there against sky
and canvas.
And, meanwhile, the wind came steadily over the sea and opened the mist
into lanes and clearings, driving it about like a living thing.
It must have been well after midnight when a low booming sound drew my
attention; but at first the sense of hearing was so strained that it
was impossible exactly to locate it, and I imagined it was the thunder
of big guns far out at sea carried to us by the rising wind. Then
Maloney, catching hold of my arm and leaning forward, somehow brought
the true relation, and I realised the next second that it was only a
few feet away.
“Sangree’s tent,” he exclaimed in a loud and startled whisper.
I craned my head round the corner, but at first the effect of the
fog was so confusing that every patch of white driving about before
the wind looked like a moving tent and it was some seconds before I
discovered the one patch that held steady. Then I saw that it was
shaking all over, and the sides, flapping as much as the tightness of
the ropes allowed, were the cause of the booming sound we had heard.
Something alive was tearing frantically about inside, banging against
the stretched canvas in a way that made me think of a great moth
dashing against the walls and ceiling of a room. The tent bulged and
rocked.
“It’s trying to get out, by Jupiter!” muttered the clergyman, rising to
his feet and turning to the side where the unloaded rifle lay. I sprang
up too, hardly knowing what purpose was in my mind, but anxious to be
prepared for anything. John Silence, however, was before us both, and
his figure slipped past and blocked the doorway of the tent. And there
was some quality in his voice next minute when he began to speak that
brought our minds instantly to a state of calm obedience.
“First--the women’s tent,” he said low, looking sharply at Maloney,
“and if I need your help, I’ll call.”
The clergyman needed no second bidding. He dived past me and was out
in a moment. He was labouring evidently under intense excitement. I
watched him picking his way silently over the slippery ground, giving
the moving tent a wide berth, and presently disappearing among the
floating shapes of fog.
Dr. Silence turned to me. “You heard those footsteps about half an hour
ago?” he asked significantly.
“I heard nothing.”
“They were extraordinarily soft--almost the soundless tread of a wild
creature. But now, follow me closely,” he added, “for we must waste
no time if I am to save this poor man from his affliction and lead
his werewolf Double to its rest. And, unless I am much mistaken”--he
peered at me through the darkness, whispering with the utmost
distinctness--“Joan and Sangree are absolutely made for one another.
And I think she knows it too--just as well as he does.”
My head swam a little as I listened, but at the same time something
cleared in my brain and I saw that he was right. Yet it was all so
weird and incredible, so remote from the commonplace facts of life
as commonplace people know them; and more than once it flashed upon
me that the whole scene--people, words, tents, and all the rest of
it--were delusions created by the intense excitement of my own mind
somehow, and that suddenly the sea-fog would clear off and the world
become normal again.
The cold air from the sea stung our cheeks sharply as we left the close
atmosphere of the little crowded tent. The sighing of the trees, the
waves breaking below on the rocks, and the lines and patches of mist
driving about us seemed to create the momentary illusion that the whole
island had broken loose and was floating out to sea like a mighty raft.
The doctor moved just ahead of me, quickly and silently; he was making
straight for the Canadian’s tent where the sides still boomed and shook
as the creature of sinister life raced and tore about impatiently
within. A little distance from the door he paused and held up a hand to
stop me. We were, perhaps, a dozen feet away.
“Before I release it, you shall see for yourself,” he said, “that the
reality of the werewolf is beyond all question. The matter of which
it is composed is, of course, exceedingly attenuated, but you are
partially clairvoyant--and even if it is not dense enough for normal
sight you will see something.”
He added a little more I could not catch. The fact was that the
curiously strong vibrating atmosphere surrounding his person somewhat
confused my senses. It was the result, of course, of his intense
concentration of mind and forces, and pervaded the entire Camp and all
the persons in it. And as I watched the canvas shake and heard it boom
and flap I heartily welcomed it. For it was also protective.
At the back of Sangree’s tent stood a thin group of pine trees, but
in front and at the sides the ground was comparatively clear. The
flap was wide open and any ordinary animal would have been out and
away without the least trouble. Dr. Silence led me up to within a few
feet, evidently careful not to advance beyond a certain limit, and then
stooped down and signalled to me to do the same. And looking over his
shoulder I saw the interior lit faintly by the spectral light reflected
from the fog, and the dim blot upon the balsam boughs and blankets
signifying Sangree; while over him, and round him, and up and down him,
flew the dark mass of “something” on four legs, with pointed muzzle and
sharp ears plainly visible against the tent sides, and the occasional
gleam of fiery eyes and white fangs.
I held my breath and kept utterly still, inwardly and outwardly,
for fear, I suppose, that the creature would become conscious of my
presence; but the distress I felt went far deeper than the mere sense
of personal safety, or the fact of watching something so incredibly
active and real. I became keenly aware of the dreadful psychic calamity
it involved. The realisation that Sangree lay confined in that narrow
space with this species of monstrous projection of himself--that he was
wrapped there in the cataleptic sleep, all unconscious that this thing
was masquerading with his own life and energies--added a distressing
touch of horror to the scene. In all the cases of John Silence--and
they were many and often terrible--no other psychic affliction has
ever, before or since, impressed me so convincingly with the pathetic
impermanence of the human personality, with its fluid nature, and with
the alarming possibilities of its transformations.
“Come,” he whispered, after we had watched for some minutes the frantic
efforts to escape from the circle of thought and will that held it
prisoner, “come a little farther away while I release it.”
We moved back a dozen yards or so. It was like a scene in some
impossible play, or in some ghastly and oppressive nightmare from which
I should presently awake to find the blankets all heaped up upon my
chest.
By some method undoubtedly mental, but which, in my confusion and
excitement, I failed to understand, the doctor accomplished his
purpose, and the next minute I heard him say sharply under his breath,
“It’s out! Now, watch!”
At this very moment a sudden gust from the sea blew aside the mist, so
that a lane opened to the sky, and the moon, ghastly and unnatural as
the effect of stage limelight, dropped down in a momentary gleam upon
the door of Sangree’s tent, and I perceived that something had moved
forward from the interior darkness and stood clearly defined upon the
threshold. And, at the same moment, the tent ceased its shuddering and
held still.
There, in the doorway, stood an animal, with neck and muzzle thrust
forward, its head poking into the night, its whole body poised in that
attitude of intense rigidity that precedes the spring into freedom,
the running leap of attack. It seemed to be about the size of a calf,
leaner than a mastiff, yet more squat than a wolf, and I can swear that
I saw the fur ridged sharply upon its back. Then its upper lip slowly
lifted, and I saw the whiteness of its teeth.
Surely no human being ever stared as hard as I did in those next few
minutes. Yet, the harder I stared the clearer appeared the amazing and
monstrous apparition. For, after all, it was Sangree--and yet it was
not Sangree. It was the head and face of an animal, and yet it was the
face of Sangree: the face of a wild dog, a wolf, and yet his face. The
eyes were sharper, narrower, more fiery, yet they were his eyes--his
eyes run wild; the teeth were longer, whiter, more pointed--yet they
were his teeth, his teeth grown cruel; the expression was flaming,
terrible, exultant--yet it was his expression carried to the border of
savagery--his expression as I had already surprised it more than once,
only dominant now, fully released from human constraint, with the mad
yearning of a hungry and importunate soul. It was the soul of Sangree,
the long suppressed, deeply loving Sangree, expressed in its single and
intense desire--pure utterly and utterly wonderful.
Yet, at the same time, came the feeling that it was all an illusion.
I suddenly remembered the extraordinary changes the human face can
undergo in circular insanity, when it changes from melancholia to
elation; and I recalled the effect of hascheesh, which shows the human
countenance in the form of the bird or animal to which in character
it most approximates; and for a moment I attributed this mingling of
Sangree’s face with a wolf to some kind of similar delusion of the
senses. I was mad, deluded, dreaming! The excitement of the day, and
this dim light of stars and bewildering mist combined to trick me. I
had been amazingly imposed upon by some false wizardry of the senses.
It was all absurd and fantastic; it would pass.
And then, sounding across this sea of mental confusion like a bell
through a fog, came the voice of John Silence bringing me back to a
consciousness of the reality of it all--
“Sangree--in his Double!”
And when I looked again more calmly, I plainly saw that it was indeed
the face of the Canadian, but his face turned animal, yet mingled with
the brute expression a curiously pathetic look like the soul seen
sometimes in the yearning eyes of a dog,--the face of an animal shot
with vivid streaks of the human.