“Sangree! Sangree, you poor afflicted creature! Do you know me? Can you
understand what it is you’re doing in your ‘Body of Desire’?”
For the first time since its appearance the creature moved. Its ears
twitched and it shifted the weight of its body on to the hind legs.
Then, lifting its head and muzzle to the sky, it opened its long jaws
and gave vent to a dismal and prolonged howling.
But, when I heard that howling rise to heaven, the breath caught and
strangled in my throat and it seemed that my heart missed a beat; for,
though the sound was entirely animal, it was at the same time entirely
human. But, more than that, it was the cry I had so often heard in the
Western States of America where the Indians still fight and hunt and
struggle--it was the cry of the Redskin!
“The Indian blood!” whispered John Silence, when I caught his arm for
support; “the ancestral cry.”
And that poignant, beseeching cry, that broken human voice, mingling
with the savage howl of the brute beast, pierced straight to my
very heart and touched there something that no music, no voice,
passionate or tender, of man, woman or child has ever stirred before
or since for one second into life. It echoed away among the fog and
the trees and lost itself somewhere out over the hidden sea. And some
part of myself--something that was far more than the mere act of
intense listening--went out with it, and for several minutes I lost
consciousness of my surroundings and felt utterly absorbed in the pain
of another stricken fellow-creature.
Again the voice of John Silence recalled me to myself.
“Hark!” he said aloud. “Hark!”
His tone galvanised me afresh. We stood listening side by side.
Far across the island, faintly sounding through the trees and
brushwood, came a similar, answering cry. Shrill, yet wonderfully
musical, shaking the heart with a singular wild sweetness that defies
description, we heard it rise and fall upon the night air.
“It’s across the lagoon,” Dr. Silence cried, but this time in full
tones that paid no tribute to caution. “It’s Joan! She’s answering him!”
Again the wonderful cry rose and fell, and that same instant the animal
lowered its head, and, muzzle to earth, set off on a swift easy canter
that took it off into the mist and out of our sight like a thing of
wind and vision.
The doctor made a quick dash to the door of Sangree’s tent, and,
following close at his heels, I peered in and caught a momentary
glimpse of the small, shrunken body lying upon the branches but half
covered by the blankets--the cage from which most of the life, and not
a little of the actual corporeal substance, had escaped into that other
form of life and energy, the body of passion and desire.
By another of those swift, incalculable processes which at this stage
of my apprenticeship I failed often to grasp, Dr. Silence reclosed the
circle about the tent and body.
“Now it cannot return till I permit it,” he said, and the next second
was off at full speed into the woods, with myself close behind him.
I had already had some experience of my companion’s ability to run
swiftly through a dense wood, and I now had the further proof of his
power almost to see in the dark. For, once we left the open space
about the tents, the trees seemed to absorb all the remaining vestiges
of light, and I understood that special sensibility that is said to
develop in the blind--the sense of obstacles.
And twice as we ran we heard the sound of that dismal howling drawing
nearer and nearer to the answering faint cry from the point of the
island whither we were going.
Then, suddenly, the trees fell away, and we emerged, hot and
breathless, upon the rocky point where the granite slabs ran bare into
the sea. It was like passing into the clearness of open day. And there,
sharply defined against sea and sky, stood the figure of a human being.
It was Joan.
I at once saw that there was something about her appearance that was
singular and unusual, but it was only when we had moved quite close
that I recognised what caused it. For while the lips wore a smile that
lit the whole face with a happiness I had never seen there before, the
eyes themselves were fixed in a steady, sightless stare as though they
were lifeless and made of glass.
I made an impulsive forward movement, but Dr. Silence instantly dragged
me back.
“No,” he cried, “don’t wake her!”
“What do you mean?” I replied aloud, struggling in his grasp.
“She’s asleep. It’s somnambulistic. The shock might injure her
permanently.”
I turned and peered closely into his face. He was absolutely calm. I
began to understand a little more, catching, I suppose, something of
his strong thinking.
“Walking in her sleep, you mean?”
He nodded. “She’s on her way to meet him. From the very beginning he
must have drawn her--irresistibly.”
“But the torn tent and the wounded flesh?”
“When she did not sleep deep enough to enter the somnambulistic trance
he missed her--he went instinctively and in all innocence to seek her
out--with the result, of course, that she woke and was terrified----”
“Then in their heart of hearts they love?” I asked finally.
John Silence smiled his inscrutable smile: “Profoundly,” he answered,
“and as simply as only primitive souls can love. If only they both come
to realise it in their normal waking states his Double will cease these
nocturnal excursions. He will be cured, and at rest.”
The words had hardly left his lips when there was a sound of rustling
branches on our left, and the very next instant the dense brushwood
parted where it was darkest and out rushed the swift form of an animal
at full gallop. The noise of feet was scarcely audible, but in that
utter stillness I heard the heavy panting breath and caught the swish
of the low bushes against its sides. It went straight towards Joan--and
as it went the girl lifted her head and turned to meet it. And the same
instant a canoe that had been creeping silently and unobserved round
the inner shore of the lagoon, emerged from the shadows and defined
itself upon the water with a figure at the middle thwart. It was
Maloney.
It was only afterwards I realised that we were invisible to him where
we stood against the dark background of trees; the figures of Joan and
the animal he saw plainly, but not Dr. Silence and myself standing just
beyond them. He stood up in the canoe and pointed with his right arm. I
saw something gleam in his hand.
“Stand aside, Joan girl, or you’ll get hit,” he shouted, his voice
ringing horribly through the deep stillness, and the same instant a
pistol-shot cracked out with a burst of flame and smoke, and the figure
of the animal, with one tremendous leap into the air, fell back in the
shadows and disappeared like a shape of night and fog. Instantly, then,
Joan opened her eyes, looked in a dazed fashion about her, and pressing
both hands against her heart, fell with a sharp cry into my arms that
were just in time to catch her.
And an answering cry sounded across the lagoon--thin, wailing, piteous.
It came from Sangree’s tent.
“Fool!” cried Dr. Silence, “you’ve wounded him!” and before we could
move or realise quite what it meant, he was in the canoe and half-way
across the lagoon.
Some kind of similar abuse came in a torrent from my lips too--though
I cannot remember the actual words--as I cursed the man for his
disobedience and tried to make the girl comfortable on the ground. But
the clergyman was more practical. He was spreading his coat over her
and dashing water on her face.
“It’s not Joan I’ve killed at any rate,” I heard him mutter as she
turned and opened her eyes and smiled faintly up in his face. “I swear
the bullet went straight.”
Joan stared at him; she was still dazed and bewildered, and still
imagined herself with the companion of her trance. The strange lucidity
of the somnambulist still hung over her brain and mind, though
outwardly she appeared troubled and confused.
“Where has he gone to? He disappeared so suddenly, crying that he was
hurt,” she asked, looking at her father as though she did not recognise
him. “And if they’ve done anything to him--they have done it to me
too--for he is more to me than----”
Her words grew vaguer and vaguer as she returned slowly to her normal
waking state, and now she stopped altogether, as though suddenly aware
that she had been surprised into telling secrets. But all the way back,
as we carried her carefully through the trees, the girl smiled and
murmured Sangree’s name and asked if he was injured, until it finally
became clear to me that the wild soul of the one had called to the
wild soul of the other and in the secret depths of their beings the
call had been heard and understood. John Silence was right. In the
abyss of her heart, too deep at first for recognition, the girl loved
him, and had loved him from the very beginning. Once her normal waking
consciousness recognised the fact they would leap together like twin
flames, and his affliction would be at an end; his intense desire would
be satisfied; he would be cured.
And in Sangree’s tent Dr. Silence and I sat up for the remainder of the
night--this wonderful and haunted night that had shown us such strange
glimpses of a new heaven and a new hell--for the Canadian tossed upon
his balsam boughs with high fever in his blood, and upon each cheek a
dark and curious contusion showed, throbbing with severe pain although
the skin was not broken and there was no outward and visible sign of
blood.
“Maloney shot straight, you see,” whispered Dr. Silence to me after the
clergyman had gone to his tent, and had put Joan to sleep beside her
mother, who, by the way, had never once awakened. “The bullet must have
passed clean through the face, for both cheeks are stained. He’ll wear
these marks all his life--smaller, but always there. They’re the most
curious scars in the world, these scars transferred by repercussion
from an injured Double. They’ll remain visible until just before his
death, and then with the withdrawal of the subtle body they will
disappear finally.”
His words mingled in my dazed mind with the sighs of the troubled
sleeper and the crying of the wind about the tent. Nothing seemed to
paralyse my powers of realisation so much as these twin stains of
mysterious significance upon the face before me.
It was odd, too, how speedily and easily the Camp resigned itself
again to sleep and quietness, as though a stage curtain had suddenly
dropped down upon the action and concealed it; and nothing contributed
so vividly to the feeling that I had been a spectator of some kind of
visionary drama as the dramatic nature of the change in the girl’s
attitude.
Yet, as a matter of fact, the change had not been so sudden and
revolutionary as appeared. Underneath, in those remoter regions
of consciousness where the emotions, unknown to their owners, do
secretly mature, and owe thence their abrupt revelation to some abrupt
psychological climax, there can be no doubt that Joan’s love for the
Canadian had been growing steadily and irresistibly all the time. It
had now rushed to the surface so that she recognised it; that was all.
And it has always seemed to me that the presence of John Silence,
so potent, so quietly efficacious, produced an effect, if one may
say so, of a psychic forcing-house, and hastened incalculably the
bringing together of these two “wild” lovers. In that sudden awakening
had occurred the very psychological climax required to reveal the
passionate emotion accumulated below. The deeper knowledge had leaped
across and transferred itself to her ordinary consciousness, and in
that shock the collision of the personalities had shaken them to the
depths and shown her the truth beyond all possibility of doubt.
“He’s sleeping quietly now,” the doctor said, interrupting my
reflections. “If you will watch alone for a bit I’ll go to Maloney’s
tent and help him to arrange his thoughts.” He smiled in anticipation
of that “arrangement.” “He’ll never quite understand how a wound on the
Double can transfer itself to the physical body, but at least I can
persuade him that the less he talks and ‘explains’ tomorrow, the sooner
the forces will run their natural course now to peace and quietness.”
He went away softly, and with the removal of his presence Sangree,
sleeping heavily, turned over and groaned with the pain of his broken
head.
And it was in the still hour just before the dawn, when all the islands
were hushed, the wind and sea still dreaming, and the stars visible
through clearing mists, that a figure crept silently over the ridge and
reached the door of the tent where I dozed beside the sufferer, before
I was aware of its presence. The flap was cautiously lifted a few
inches and in looked--Joan.
That same instant Sangree woke and sat up on his bed of branches. He
recognised her before I could say a word, and uttered a low cry. It was
pain and joy mingled, and this time all human. And the girl too was no
longer walking in her sleep, but fully aware of what she was doing. I
was only just able to prevent him springing from his blankets.
“Joan, Joan!” he cried, and in a flash she answered him, “I’m here--I’m
with you always now,” and had pushed past me into the tent and flung
herself upon his breast.
“I knew you would come to me in the end,” I heard him whisper.
“It was all too big for me to understand at first,” she murmured, “and
for a long time I was frightened----”
“But not now!” he cried louder; “you don’t feel afraid now of--of
anything that’s in me----”
“I fear nothing,” she cried, “nothing, nothing!”
I led her outside again. She looked steadily into my face with eyes
shining and her whole being transformed. In some intuitive way,
surviving probably from the somnambulism, she knew or guessed as much
as I knew.
“You must talk tomorrow with John Silence,” I said gently, leading her
towards her own tent. “He understands everything.”
I left her at the door, and as I went back softly to take up my place
of sentry again with the Canadian, I saw the first streaks of dawn
lighting up the far rim of the sea behind the distant islands.
And, as though to emphasise the eternal closeness of comedy to tragedy,
two small details rose out of the scene and impressed me so vividly
that I remember them to this very day. For in the tent where I had
just left Joan, all aquiver with her new happiness, there rose plainly
to my ears the grotesque sounds of the Bo’sun’s Mate heavily snoring,
oblivious of all things in heaven or hell; and from Maloney’s tent, so
still was the night, where I looked across and saw the lantern’s glow,
there came to me, through the trees, the monotonous rising and falling
of a human voice that was beyond question the sound of a man praying to
his God.
_Printed by_ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED _Edinburgh_
Transcriber’s Note:
Punctuation has been standardised. Hyphenation and spelling have been
retained as appears in the original publication except as follows:
Page 51
available chink and crannie _changed to_
available chink and cranny
Page 56
looking persuasivly from one _changed to_
looking persuasively from one
Page 280
yet at the same time so strangly _changed to_
yet at the same time so strangely