Chapter VIII
The second stage
"It was with me,
and the malice which before was torpid under a sullen exterior was not active. It was
perfectly unchanged in every other respect. This new energy was apparent in its activity
and its looks, and soon in other ways.
"For a time, you
will understand, the change was shown only in an increased vivacity, and an air of menace,
as if it were always brooding over some atrocious plan. Its eyes, as before, were never
off me."
"Is it here
now?" I asked.
"No," he
replied, "it has been absent exactly a fortnight and a day -- fifteen days. It has
sometimes been away as long as nearly two months, once for three. Its absence always
exceeds a fortnight, although it may be but by a single day. Fifteen days having past
since I saw it last, it may return now at any moment."
"Is its
return," I asked, "accompanied by any peculiar manifestation?"
"Nothing --
no," he said. "It is simply with me again. On lifting my eyes from a book, or
turning my head, I see it, as usual, looking at me, and then it remains, as before for its
appointed time. I have never told so much and so minutely before to anyone."
I perceived that he was
agitated, and looking like death, and he repeatedly applied his handkerchief to his
forehead; I suggested that he might be tired, and told him that I would call, with
pleasure, in the morning, but he said:
"No, if you don't
mind hearing it all now. I have got so far, and I should prefer making one effort of it.
When I spoke to Dr. Harley I had nothing like so much to tell. You are a philosophic
physician. You give spirit its proper rank. If this thing is real --"
He paused looking at me
with agitated inquiry.
"We can discuss it
by-and-by, and very fully. I will give you all I think," I answered after an
interval.
"Well -- very
well. If it is anything real, I say, it is prevailing, little by little, and drawing me
more interiorly into hell. Optic nerves, he talked of. Ah! well -- there are other nerves
of communication. May G-d Almighty help me! You shall hear.
"Its power of
action, I tell you, had increased. Its malice became, in a way, aggressive. About two
years ago, some questions that were pending between me and the bishop having been settled,
I went down to my parish in Warwickshire, anxious to find occupation in my profession. I
was not prepared for what happened, although I have since thought I might have apprehended
something like it. The reason of my saying so is this --"
He was beginning to
speak with a great deal more effort and reluctance, and sighed often, and seemed at times
nearly overcome. But at this time his manner was not agitated. It was more like that of a
sinking patient, who has given himself up.
"Yes, but I will
first tell you about Kenlis, my parish.
"It was with me
when I left this place for Dawlbridge. It was my silent travelling companion, and it
remained with me at the vicarage. When I entered on the discharge of my duties, another
change took place. The thing exhibited an atrocious determination to thwart me. It was
with me in the church -- in the reading-desk -- in the pulpit -- within the communion
rails. At last it reached this extremity, that while I was reading to the congregation it
would spring upon the book and squat there, so that I was unable to see the page. This
happened more than once.
"I left Dawlbridge
for a time. I placed myself in Dr. Harley's hands. I did everything he told me. He gave my
case a great deal of thought. It interested him, I think. He seemed successful. For nearly
three months I was perfectly free from a return. I began to think I was safe. With his
full assent I returned to Dawlbridge.
"I traveled in a
chaise. I was in good spirits. I was more -- I was happy and grateful. I was returning, as
I thought, delivered from a dreadful hallucination, to the scene of duties which I longed
to enter upon. It was a beautiful sunny evening, everything looked serene and cheerful,
and I was delighted. I remember looking out of the window to see the spire of my church at
Kenlis among the trees, at the point where one has the earliest view of it. It is exactly
where the little stream that bounds the parish passes under the road by a culvert, and
where it emerges at the road-side, a stone with an old inscription is placed. As we passed
this point, I drew my head in and sat down, and in the corner of the chaise was the
monkey.
"For a moment I
felt faint, and then quite wild with despair and horror. I called to the driver, and got
out, and sat down at the road-side, and prayed to G-d silently for mercy. A despairing
resignation supervened. My companion was with me as I re-entered the vicarage. The same
persecution followed. After a short struggle I submitted, and soon I left the place.
"I told you,"
he said, "that the beast has before this become in certain ways aggressive. I will
explain a little. It seemed to be actuated by intense and increasing fury whenever I said
my prayers, or even meditated prayer. It amounted at last to a dreadful interruption. You
will ask, how could a silent immaterial phantom effect that? It was thus, whenever I
meditated praying. It was always before me, and nearer and nearer.
"It used to spring
on a table, on the back of a chair, on the chimney-piece, and slowly to swing itself from
side to side, looking at me all the time. There is in its motion an indefinable power to
dissipate thought, and to contract one's attention to that monotony, till the ideas
shrink, as it were, to a point, and at last to nothing -- and unless I had started up and
shook off the catalepsy I have felt as if my mind were on the point of losing itself.
There are other ways," he sighed heavily; "thus, for instance, while I pray with
my eyes closed it comes closer and closer, and I see it. I know it is not to be accounted
for physically, but I do actually see it, though my lids are closed, and so it rocks my
mind, as it were, and overpowers me, and I am obliged to rise from my knees. If you had
ever yourself known this, you would be acquainted with desperation."
Chapter IX
The third stage
"I see, Dr.
Hesselius, that you don't lose one word of my statement. I need not ask you to listen
specially to what I am now going to tell you. They talk of the optic nerves, and of
spectral illusions, as if the organ of sight was the only point assailable by the
influences that have fastened upon me -- I know better. For two years in my direful case
that limitation prevailed. But as food is taken in softly at the lips, and then brought
under the teeth, as the tip of the little finger caught in a mill crank will draw in the
hand, and the arm, and the whole body, so the miserable mortal who has been once caught
firmly by the end of the finest fibre of his nerve is drawn in and in, by the enormous
machinery of hell, until he is as I am. Yes, Doctor, as I am, for a while I talk
to you, and implore relief, I feel that my prayer is for the impossible, and my pleading
with the inexorable."
I endeavoured to calm
his visibly increasing agitation, and told him that he must not despair.
While we talked the
night overtaken us. The filmy moonlight was wide over the scene which the window
commanded, and I said:
"Perhaps you would
prefer having candles. This light, you know, is odd. I should wish you, as much as
possible, under your usual conditions while I make my diagnosis, shall I call it --
otherwise I don't care."
"All lights are
the same to me," he said, "except when I read or write, I care not if night were
perpetual. I am going to tell you what happened about a year ago. The thing began to speak
to me."
"Speak! How do you
mean -- speak as a man does, do you mean?"
"Yes; speak in
words and consecutive sentences, with perfect coherence and articulation; but there is a
peculiarity. It is not like the tone of a human voice. It is not by my ears it reaches me
-- it comes like a singing through my head.
"This faculty, the
power of speaking to me, will be my undoing. It won't let me pray, it interrupts me with
dreadful blasphemies. I dare not go on, I could not. Oh! Doctor, can the skill, and
thought, and prayers of man avail me nothing!"
"You must promise
me, my dear sir, not to trouble yourself with unnecessarily exciting thoughts; confine
yourself strictly to the narrative of facts; and recollect, above all, that even
if the thing that infests you be, you seem to suppose a reality with an actual independent
life and will, yet it can have no power to hurt you, unless it be given from above: its
access to your senses depends mainly upon your physical condition -- this is, under G-d,
your comfort and reliance: we are all alike environed. It is only that in your case, the 'paries,'
the veil of the flesh, the screen, is a little out of repair, and sights and sounds
are transmitted. We must enter on a new course, sir -- be encouraged. I'll give tonight to
the careful consideration of the whole case."
"You are very
good, sir; you think it worth trying, you don't give me quite up; but sir, you don't know,
it is gaining such an influence over me: it orders me about, it is such a tyrant, and I'm
growing so helpless. May G-d deliver me!"
"It orders you
about -- of course you mean by speech?"
"Yes, yes; it is
always urging me to crimes, to injure others or myself. You see, Doctor, the situation is
urgent, it is indeed. When I was in Shropshire a few weeks ago" (Mr. Jennings was
speaking rapidly and trembling now, holding my arm with one hand and looking in my face),
"I went out one day with a party of friends for a walk. My persecutor, I tell you,
was with me at the time. I lagged behind the rest; the country near the Dee, you know, is
beautiful. Our path happened to lie near a coal mine, and at the verge of the wood is a
perpendicular shaft, they say, a hundred and fifty feet deep. My niece had remained behind
with me -- she knows, of course, nothing of the nature of my sufferings. She knew,
however, that I had been ill, and was low, and she remained to prevent my being quite
alone. As we loitered slowly on together, the brute that accompanied me was urging me to
throw myself down the shaft. I tell you now -- oh, sir, think of it! -- the one
consideration that saved me from that hideous death was the fear lest the shock of
witnessing the occurrence should be too much for the poor girl. I asked her to go on and
walk with her friends, saying that I could go no further. She made excuses, and the more I
urged her the firmer she became. She looked doubtful and frightened. I suppose there was
something in my looks or manner that alarmed her, but she would not go, and that literally
saved me. You had no idea, sir, that a living man could be made so abject a slave of
Satan," he said, with a ghastly groan and a shudder.
There was a pause here,
and I said, "You were preserved nevertheless. It was the act of G-d. You are
in His hands and in the power of no other being: be therefore confident for the
future."
