'How did you come here?' I asked him none too graciously. With some trouble I got to my feet, feeling weak, sat down on the stone.

  'I happened to be passing.' He looked at me with eager, almost burning curiosity.—'I say—you did topple down! Whatever was the matter?'

  'Oh, nothing. I go dizzy sometimes.' My only desire was to get away from him. I was ashamed, oh, how deeply ashamed, that he had seen me. But he would not, of course, let me go like that.

  'That dog's fond of you, isn't he? Funny. He'd never look at anyone but Jimmie when he was alive…. But, I say, what WAS the matter?'

  'The matter? With me? Why, nothing at all!'

  'Oh, but there was! I was taking a stroll—lovely afternoon and all that. I've been working on my roses all the morning. They're a fair treat, you ought to see them. So I strolled along, smoking my pipe, not thinking of anything in particular, when I saw you standing there as though you were turned into a statue, staring straight in front of you—staring like mad as though there were somebody there. Then you began to speak. I could see your lips moving. I couldn't hear what you said, of course—I didn't want to— I'm not the sort of man to spy on anybody. But you were talking as though there were somebody there. You were, really. And then quite suddenly, all in a jiffy, you throw up your hands and tumble forward on your face. I came up and you'd gone right off—you had, really. So I pulled you over here, splashed some water from that puddle on your face and gave you a drop from this flask. You're not properly round yet. You're as white as a sheet of paper.'

  'Oh, I'm all right.' How I hated him! How I wanted him to go! Well, if he wouldn't, I would. I staggered to my feet, I could just stand.

  'Thanks very much, Cheeseman,' I said. 'It was just a touch of the sun! I must be getting back.'

  'I'll come along with you.'

  'No, don't you turn back. It's such a lovely day.'

  He looked at me, grinning, his pipe clenched between his shining teeth.

  'All right. If you don't want me. But do you remember my telling you a good while ago that you knew more about Jimmie Tunstall's death than anyone else alive? And so you do! There's some mystery here. And it's about here he fell over into the sea. I'm certain of it. On his way to Bella's. And you saw him or were close by or something.'

  I turned on him.

  'You think you're clever, but you can't blackmail me, Cheeseman, as you do so many others.'

  He sprang to his feet.

  'That's a bloody, dirty lie, and you shall—'

  'Come along, Cheeseman,' I said. 'You can't put that over on me. Do you remember that you tried it once over what I told you about Brindisi, and how you failed?'

  He stared at me as though I were indeed crazy….

  'Brindisi? But you've never been to Brindisi! That was Jimmie—'

  We stood looking at one another. I picked up my hat that had fallen on to the grass. Cheeseman had to hold the dog tightly to prevent his following me.

  No, I had never been in Brindisi…. The time had come for a quiet, unsensational, common–sense examination of my situation. And behind the common–sense lurked a horror.

  That night after Eve had gone up to bed I went to my little room where I worked. It was a hot summer evening. I could hear the lovely sound of the sea through the open window. I locked the door and then I stripped. There was a long old eighteenth–century mirror hanging on the right side of the window. In this I examined myself. Was I physically changed or no? I was stouter, heavier in the chest, the belly, the thighs. My face was fuller and rounder. There was nothing in that. I had always had a tendency to stoutness. Then as I looked in the mirror I had a crazy hallucination that another naked figure was behind mine, a figure of exactly my height, heavier and stouter, the features of the face coarser and bolder, the hair thicker. And as I looked they merged and became one figure.

  I did not faint now. I was absorbed as though I were studying an abstract problem. I put on my vest and drawers and sat down to consider.

  The fact was simply this: the crime—or whatever you care to call it—committed by me—had affected my nervous system so deeply that I was the victim of a hallucination. My hallucination was that Tunstall was possessing me. Occupying me body and soul.

  It was a crazy, meaningless, monstrous obsession, but unless I could rid myself of it, I was running straight to madness.

  I sat there, the perspiration on my hands and forehead and chest. I must do something to prove to myself quite definitely, once and for ever, that this WAS an obsession—something … something … something …

  And quite suddenly, as though it were whispered into my ear, I had the solution. I had heard that very morning that Bella Scorfield and her mother had shut up their house and gone away for ten days.

  At night there would be nobody there. I had never in all my life been inside the house. I would enter it, walk upstairs and visit Bella's bedroom. If my obsession were NOT an obsession, everything in that bedroom would be strange to me. If, on the other hand, the furniture and the rest were just as I expected them, then …

  III

  As soon as the idea entered my head it became a passionate desire. Day and night now I thought of nothing else.

  I made the most careful enquiries. I discovered that it was an actual and positive fact that the house was empty. Some neighbour visited it occasionally to make sure that all was well. He kept the keys, but I would tell no one of my purpose. Tunstall had told me once—or had he?—at any rate I knew it as a certain fact—that the window by which he entered was easily opened if you pushed a penknife between the wood that separated the two panes. He had entered in that fashion—how did I know this?—often enough. The period for the execution of my plan was limited. They were to be away for ten days. Their departure interested the town, for Mrs. Scorfield, it seemed, had not left her bed for over a year until now. They had gone to London, apparently, about a will or some legacy.

  Eve, of course, noticed my new preoccupation. The relationship between us was now very peculiar. Sexually it was ardent for the first time since our marriage. She seemed to be developing a physical love for me that she had never felt before, and as she grew more affectionate I became less so. I saw several women in the town who were attractive to me. I began to think of women continually. She watched my moods with a passionate interest. I was often very unhappy and would sit brooding in my chair and not speaking. I appeared to have lost all interest, both in the shop and my writing, but my new accomplishment of drawing fascinated me. I had a queer technical facility although I had, of course, never taken lessons. I would make, almost without knowing it, indecent drawings, and then, with shuddering horror, tear them to fragments.

  When Eve realized that some preoccupation was obsessing me, she could not let me alone. She had developed now a sort of 'flirting' with me. There was a sexual impulse behind all her words. She did her best to discover my secret and one evening came very near to it.

  Looking up at me and smiling provocatively she said:

  'You must be fearfully bored, John, now that both your belles are away.'

  'My belles? I have none.'

  'Once you hadn't. I was your only love. Now there are others and oddly enough I like you the better for it.'

  It was strange to me when I looked at her how coarse and common she could sometimes be.

  'Who are my belles, then?'

  'Bella Scorfield and Leila Tunstall, of course.'

  'What nonsense! You are and always have been the only woman I've ever looked at.'

  'Nonsense! You are a regular Don Juan nowadays. Everyone is talking about it.'

  There is nothing more irritating than to be told that 'everyone' is talking!

  'What an absurdity! Everyone talking about me! They have better things to do.'

  'They are, all the same—the change in you. Why, even, they say, you look different. They ask me what I've been feeding you on. Someone the other day said that you were quite gay with women now. I'm afraid they used to think you a very dull dog indeed—and so did I sometimes. Certainly you've changed. I've got a lover now as well as a husband, but I don't want too many other women to discover that you've altered.'

  I was drinking a mild whisky and soda.

  'Perhaps it's the whisky.'

  'Nothing could be milder.' I held up the glass for her to see.

  'No, but it isn't always so mild. There's quite a whisky bill nowadays. Until recently you loathed the smell of it. Not that I mind a man drinking a little. It makes him more amiable.'

  As she had coarsened so had I. I was drawing some other self out of her that through all our years of married life I had not known existed.

  'But you must not get too fat, John. You haven't the figure to carry it.'

  'Everyone says I'm putting on weight. I'm not really.'

  'Of course you are! Look at that scarab ring that used to belong to poor Jim Tunstall. It's quite embedded in your finger. You can't pull it off.'

  I tried. She was right. The thing seemed to cling to my flesh, to be part of my body, and as I pulled at it the green markings were most vivid. The beetle, under the artificial light, seemed to be alive.

  The time had come. I dared not leave it any longer. The evening I chose was dimmed with warm, misty rain. I did not wish to be seen by anybody—in fact I must NOT be seen. The misty rain would obscure me.

  I told Eve that I was going to the cinema and I started out. It is very difficult for me to describe the mixture of fear and a kind of greedy ecstasy that was in my heart. Partly I knew that my purpose was absurd. I had never entered the house and therefore could not know what it contained. That was clear. On the other hand a wild and exaggerated excitement urged me forward. Something in me whispered that it would be wonderful to be there again. Something else in me—the strongest of these emotions on my setting out— tried to hold me back from visiting Shining Cliff again. I was now AFRAID of Shining Cliff. I had not been. A few weeks ago I would have visited it at any time of day or night without a tremor. But now I wished dreadfully NOT to go. As I approached the place I felt the damp sweat on my forehead. It may have been, of course, the thin rain which spider–webbed the air exactly as it had done on that other evening.

  I was walking fast. I was perspiring. The beat of my heart was uncomfortable. There was no doubt but that I had grown stouter, for my body was heavy under my clothes, the clothes clinging to it and yet the body staying separate and apart as it does when it is frightened. In fact I noticed a queer thing, which was that as I approached the Cliff more nearly, physical symptoms arose in my body that did not really belong to me. Any of us who have lived a long time have become accustomed to certain physical properties—a small bone aches in the left wrist; there is a little cough at times that is peculiarly ours; a toe on the right foot burns fierily in certain weathers. I was aware in myself now of new symptoms that were yet accustomed ones. Having been always spare, a teetotaller and a sparse feeder, my stomach had rarely troubled me. But now I was constantly aware of a sort of heartburn that comes from indigestion. My heart, too, sometimes made me breathless. My neck felt thick and congested. And I noticed on this especial evening that the scarab ring dug into my finger as though it bit me.

  So I stopped for breath at the very spot on the Cliff whence I had thrown Tunstall over. I was all alone to–night and I longed for company. I would have welcomed anybody, Cheeseman or another. The rain stroked my cheeks with greedy fingers. What a fool I was to pursue this fantasy! And who could say? I might be arrested by the local policeman for house–breaking and what an ignominious thing that would be! Nay—more than ignominious, dangerous. For once they began an enquiry as to why I should enter at night the Scorfield house, their enquiries would stretch further.

  My own self, as I stood in my waterproof dismally shivering on the Cliff edge, urged me to go home. Something else in me, hot, lustful, reckless, drove me forward. I went on.

  I found, to my intense relief, that I did not know the way. Then, indeed, I might have turned home, for had I not proved my case? I did not know the way. I hesitated at every turn. But as I hesitated I felt as though I were deliberately myself holding back information from myself, or as though something devilish in me was maliciously refusing to tell me what I longed to know—'I could tell you the way. Are you so idiotic as to fancy that I don't know it? I am well aware of every single step and turn, but wait … wait … I am watching to see what you will do—you poor, pitiable, frightened fool!'

  Have we not all at times noticed just such scornful bullying voices within our own breasts? At one point I did almost turn home. I had left the sea–path, crossed a little wood and come to the parting of the ways. I was sure that the little rough–stoned path to the left must be the one to take, and yet my feet seemed to drive me to the other. I had to force myself to take the path to the left.

  And then most abruptly I came upon the house. It squatted there in sulky, sodden silence. The thin misted rain blew in gusts across my eyes. Dark wet laurels crowded almost to the windows. The ragged drive halted before the steps of the pillared door. To the left was the lawn and I crossed over to this and looked up at the building's other side. How I hated that house with the long dead windows, the beat of the sea seeming to break against their hostile glass, the chimneys appearing to raise insulting ears to me against the dreary sky. No one was there. No one ever had been there. It was a house of kitchen–ghosts and cellar–phantoms!

  'Now—do you know the place?' something seemed to whisper to me. But I did not—triumphantly I did not. I could have gone down on my knees on the sopping grass and thanked my Maker.

  I was myself. I was myself, and no one else, and had never seen this beastly house before! Ah, but it would have been well for me if I had turned then and run the whole way home!

  But already, as I stood on the lawn, it was as though some other quite opposite past–consciousness was approaching my brain. I walked forwards toward one of the windows, and as I walked it seemed to me that I had crossed just here a hundred times. I was near to the window. I had pressed my nose against it. Then, like a man obeying a command, I took out my pocket–knife.

  I pushed up the lower pane and, bending my back, climbed into the room. It was dark with a sort of musty greenish darkness—or so I felt. The furniture stood about like watching spies, but I realized with a kind of reassurance, as though a friend had laid his hand on my shoulder, that I did not know WHAT THE FURNITURE WAS. There were dim pictures on the wall. Opposite me was a portrait, but I could not tell from where I was whether it were male or female. I could not tell! I could not tell!

  'Can you not?' a voice whispered to me. It was like a physical voice, thick and husky.—'Jacko, can you not?'

  I dared not move—I felt as though with one step I should advance into some horror from which I should never again escape. And so indeed it has proved. For I am now in that horror—and I shall never again escape! Oh, God! What have I done that Thou shouldst so horribly punish me? Or if my crime is so great—and even as I write these words they mock me by their foolishness. There IS no God but in the silly superstitions of man's heart….

  I did not move. I was trembling with a kind of sick disgust. I may have muttered—I cannot tell for sure—'Leave me! I am not yours…. I am my own master….'

  And then I think I heard the mocking voice—'Jacko … Jacko … Jacko!'

  I only know for sure that wretchedly I knelt down on the floor and took off my damp boots. My fingers muddled with the wet laces.

  On my stockinged feet I crept into the hall and began to climb the stairs. A clock began to strike. With agonized certainty I stayed and waited, for I KNEW that before the last stroke there would be a whirr and a grumble as of an old man coughing. I waited. It was so. I moved anxiously lest the boards of the stairs should creak.

  In the passage above I moved left. I pushed at a door (I had no doubt now as to WHICH door) and entered. I did not switch on the light. I knew exactly how the furniture was. The bed against the wall and on it a pink counterpane. Next to the bed a small table and a lamp with a silver–grey shade. A round tin box covered with an old print of Westminster Abbey that held biscuits. Above the bed two pictures, prints from Hogarth's 'Marriage.' Above the fireplace, two birds in Lalique. A wardrobe of dark mahogany. An easy cushioned chair coloured rose.

  I switched on the light. The room was as I have said. I threw off my coat and waistcoat. Then, staring at the bed, breathing fiercely, I pulled my shirt up over my head …

  Narrative 2

  I

  …The War has lasted two months now and I caused quite a stir at Leila's tea–party yesterday afternoon by what I said. Eve was there, the Parrott, Richard Thorne, Leila's meek–and–mild little brother (who is, so everyone says, the image of what I used to be!), and several pious ladies and gentlemen, the sort that Leila likes to have around her, and Mr. Birthwaite of St. Peter's, a stout, muscular clergyman, the sporting 'Play Football for Christ' clergyman, the kind that I detest.

  Well, there we all were, in Leila's little house (she has come back to Seaborne after all), something of the cottage–bungalow variety not far from the sea. There she lives with one little maid most modestly. Her brother Richard, who was in the East so long, stays with her and pays her expenses partly, I imagine.

  I think that I disliked that fellow on sight and now I positively hate him. He knows that I do and there is that sort of secret relation between us. Why do I hate him?

  Well, I've become a violent domineering kind of fellow lately and I'm proud of it. How I despise that old miserable John Talbot creeping and crawling about, afraid of his wife, afraid of his son, trying to write ridiculous feeble books that no one could possibly want, afraid of a dirty story, of companionship with rough–and– ready chaps like Cheeseman and Bob Steele. Yes—nor am I afraid of Tunstall's ghost any more. I can see that I was altogether wrong when I thought so badly of Tunstall. I can see now that he was only teasing me half the time. I hate myself—or rather my old self—for pushing him over that Cliff, and that is why I think I detest Richard, Leila's brother.

 

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