Three More John Silence Stories

by Algernon Blackwood

see them for yourself. They're as plain on themoss as tracks in snow."

  But later in the day, while Sangree went off in the canoe to fish thepools 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 tothe granite slabs at the far end. Mrs. Maloney sat on a stump near herdaughter, and busied herself energetically with alternate nursing andpainting.

  "We'll leave you in charge," the doctor said with a smile that was meantto be encouraging, "and when you want us for lunch, or anything, themegaphone will always bring us back in time."

  For, though the very air was charged with strange emotions, every onetalked quietly and naturally as with a definite desire to counteractunnecessary excitement.

  "I'll keep watch," said the plucky Bo'sun's Mate, "and meanwhile I findcomfort in my work." She was busy with the sketch she had begun on theday after our arrival. "For even a tree," she added proudly, pointing toher little easel, "is a symbol of the divine, and the thought makes mefeel safer." We glanced for a moment at a daub which was more like thesymptom of a disease than a symbol of the divine--and then took the pathround the lagoon.

  At the far end we made a little fire and lay round it in the shadow of abig boulder. Maloney stopped his humming suddenly and turned to hiscompanion.

  "And what do you make of it all?" he asked abruptly.

  "In the first place," replied John Silence, making himself comfortableagainst the rock, "it is of human origin, this animal; it is undoubtedlycanthropy."

  His words had the effect precisely of a bombshell. Maloney listened asthough 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 fewmoments you may be less puzzled at the end--or more. It depends how muchyou know. Let me go further and say that you have underestimated, ormiscalculated, 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 hasbeen too strong. One of you has gone wild." He uttered these last wordswith 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 metaphoralways," he went on presently.

  "Of course not!"

  "But, in the sense I mean, may have a very literal and terriblesignificance," pursued Dr. Silence. "Ancient instincts that no onedreamed of, least of all their possessor, may leap forth--"

  "Atavism can hardly explain a roaming animal with teeth and claws andsanguinary instincts," interrupted Maloney with impatience.

  "The term is of your own choice," continued the doctor equably, "notmine, and it is a good example of a word that indicates a result whileit conceals the process; but the explanation of this beast that hauntsyour island and attacks your daughter is of far deeper significance thanmere atavistic tendencies, or throwing back to animal origin, which Isuppose is the thought in your mind."

  "You spoke just now of lycanthropy," said Maloney, looking bewilderedand anxious to keep to plain facts evidently; "I think I have comeacross the word, but really--really--it can have no actual significanceto-day, can it? These superstitions of mediaeval times can hardly--"

  He looked round at me with his jolly red face, and the expression ofastonishment and dismay on it would have made me shout with laughter atany other time. Laughter, however, was never farther from my mind thanat this moment when I listened to Dr. Silence as he carefully suggestedto the clergyman the very explanation that had gradually been forcingitself upon my own mind.

  "However mediaeval ideas may have exaggerated the idea is not of muchimportance to us now," he said quietly, "when we are face to face with amodern example of what, I take it, has always been a profound fact. Forthe moment let us leave the name of any one in particular out of thematter and consider certain possibilities."

  We all agreed with that at any rate. There was no need to speak ofSangree, or of any one else, until we knew a little more.

  "The fundamental fact in this most curious case," he went on, "is thatthe 'Double' of a man--"

  "You mean the astral body? I've heard of that, of course," broke inMaloney with a snort of triumph.

  "No doubt," said the other, smiling, "no doubt you have;--that thisDouble, or fluidic body of a man, as I was saying, has the power undercertain 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 resultthat death produces permanently, and let loose this counterpart of ahuman 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 sogenerally known, and probably believed by none who have not witnessedit, that this fluidic body can, under certain conditions, assume otherforms than human, and that such other forms may be determined by thedominating thought and wish of the owner. For this Double, or astralbody as you call it, is really the seat of the passions, emotions anddesires in the psychical economy. It is the Passion Body; and, inprojecting itself, it can often assume a form that gives expression tothe overmastering desire that moulds it; for it is composed of suchtenuous matter that it lends itself readily to the moulding by thoughtand wish."

  "I follow you perfectly," said Maloney, looking as if he would muchrather be chopping firewood elsewhere and singing.

  "And there are some persons so constituted," the doctor went on withincreasing seriousness, "that the fluid body in them is but looselyassociated with the physical, persons of poor health as a rule, yetoften of strong desires and passions; and in these persons it is easyfor the Double to dissociate itself during deep sleep from their system,and, driven forth by some consuming desire, to assume an animal form andseek the fulfilment of that desire."

  There, in broad daylight, I saw Maloney deliberately creep closer to thefire and heap the wood on. We gathered in to the heat, and to eachother, and listened to Dr. Silence's voice as it mingled with the swishand whirr of the wind about us, and the falling of the little waves.

  "For instance, to take a concrete example," he resumed; "suppose someyoung man, with the delicate constitution I have spoken of, forms anoverpowering attachment to a young woman, yet perceives that it is notwelcomed, and is man enough to repress its outward manifestations. Insuch a case, supposing his Double be easily projected, the veryrepression of his love in the daytime would add to the intense force ofhis desire when released in deep sleep from the control of his will,and his fluidic body might issue forth in monstrous or animal shape andbecome actually visible to others. And, if his devotion were dog-like inits fidelity, yet concealing the fires of a fierce passion beneath, itmight 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 atrue psychical fact of profound significance, however absurdly it mayhave been exaggerated by the imaginations of a superstitious peasantryin the days of unenlightenment, for a werewolf is nothing but thesavage, and possibly sanguinary, instincts of a passionate man scouringthe world in his fluidic body, his passion body, his body of desire. Asin the case at hand, he may not know it--"

  "It is not necessarily deliberate, then?" Maloney put in quickly, withrelief.

  "--It is hardly ever deliberate. It is the desires released in sleepfrom the control of the will finding a vent. In all savage races it hasbeen recognised and dreaded, this phenomenon styled 'Wehr Wolf,' butto-day it is rare. And it is becoming rarer still, for the world growstame and civilised, emotions have become refined, desires lukewarm, andfew men have savagery enough left in them to generate impulses of suchintense force, and certainly not to project them in animal form."r />
  "By Gad!" exclaimed the clergyman breathlessly, and with increasingexcitement, "then I feel I must tell you--what has been given to me inconfidence--that Sangree has in him an admixture of savage blood--of RedIndian ancestry--"

  "Let us stick to our supposition of a man as described," the doctorstopped him calmly, "and let us imagine that he has in him thisadmixture of savage blood; and further, that he is wholly unaware of hisdreadful physical and psychical infirmity; and that he suddenly findshimself leading the primitive life together with the object of hisdesires; with the result that the strain of the untamed wild-man in hisblood--"

  "Red Indian, for instance," from Maloney.

  "Red Indian, perfectly," agreed the doctor; "the result, I say, thatthis 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 here on this island, for instance,might quickly awaken his savage instincts--his buried instincts--andwith profoundly disquieting results."

  "You mean his Subtle Body, as you call it, might issue forthautomatically 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 toget words.

  "Precisely;--yet the desire of the man remaining utterly unmalefic--pureand wholesome in every sense--"

  "Ah!" I heard the clergyman gasp.

  "The lover's desire for union run wild, run savage, tearing its way outin primitive, untamed fashion, I mean," continued the doctor, strivingto make himself clear to a mind bounded by conventional thought andknowledge; "for the desire to possess, remember, may easily becomeimportunate, and, embodied in this animal form of the Subtle Body whichacts 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--thesplendid 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 withgrave emphasis.

  The fire spurted and crackled and made me start, but Maloney foundrelief in a genuine shudder, and I saw him turn his head and look abouthim from the sea to the trees. The wind dropped just at that moment andthe doctor's words rang sharply through the stillness.

  "Then it might even kill?" stammered the clergyman presently in a hushedvoice, and with a little forced laugh by way of protest that soundedquite ghastly.

  "In the last resort it might kill," repeated Dr. Silence. Then, afteranother pause, during which he was clearly debating how much or howlittle it was wise to give to his audience, he continued: "And if theDouble does not succeed in getting back to its physical body, thatphysical body would wake an imbecile--an idiot--or perhaps never wake atall."

  Maloney sat up and found his tongue.

  "You mean that if this fluid animal thing, or whatever it is, should beprevented getting back, the man might never wake again?" he asked, withshaking voice.

  "He might be dead," replied the other calmly. The tremor of a positivesensation shivered in the air about us.

  "Then isn't that the best way to cure the fool--the brute--?" thunderedthe clergyman, half rising to his feet.

  "Certainly it would be an easy and undiscoverable form of murder," wasthe stern reply, spoken as calmly as though it were a remark about theweather.

  Maloney collapsed visibly, and I gathered the wood over the fire andcoaxed up a blaze.

  "The greater part of the man's life--of his vital forces--goes out withthis Double," Dr. Silence resumed, after a moment's consideration, "anda considerable portion of the actual material of his physical body. Sothe physical body that remains behind is depleted, not only of force,but of matter. You would see it small, shrunken, dropped together, justlike the body of a materialising medium at a seance. Moreover, any markor injury inflicted upon this Double will be found exactly reproduced bythe phenomenon of repercussion upon the shrunken physical body lying inits trance--"

  "An injury inflicted upon the one you say would be reproduced also onthe other?" repeated Maloney, his excitement growing again.

  "Undoubtedly," replied the other quietly; "for there exists all the timea continuous connection between the physical body and the Double--aconnection of matter, though of exceedingly attenuated, possibly ofetheric, matter. The wound _travels_, so to speak, from one to theother, and if this connection were broken the result would be death."

  "Death," repeated Maloney to himself, "death!" He looked anxiously atour faces, his thoughts evidently beginning to clear.

  "And this solidity?" he asked presently, after a general pause; "thistearing of tents and flesh; this howling, and the marks of paws? Youmean that the Double--?"

  "Has sufficient material drawn from the depleted body to producephysical results? Certainly!" the doctor took him up. "Although toexplain at this moment such problems as the passage of matter throughmatter would be as difficult as to explain how the thought of a mothercan 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 thestern-seat, slowly coming into view round the farther point. His hat wasoff, and his tanned face for the first time appeared to me--to us all, Ithink--as though it were the face of some one else. He looked like awild man. Then he stood up in the canoe to make a cast with the rod, andhe looked for all the world like an Indian. I recalled the expression ofhis face as I had seen it once or twice, notably on that occasion of theevening prayer, and an involuntary shudder ran down my spine.

  At that very instant he turned and saw us where we lay, and his facebroke into a smile, so that his teeth showed white in the sun. Helooked in his element, and exceedingly attractive. He called outsomething about his fish, and soon after passed out of sight into thelagoon.

  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 steerit better, and to provide other outlets. This is the solution of allthese problems of accumulated force, for this force is the raw materialof usefulness, and should be increased and cherished, not by separatingit from the body by death, but by raising it to higher channels. Thebest and quickest cure of all," he went on, speaking very gently andwith 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 restwhere--"

  He stopped abruptly, and the eyes of the two men met in a single glanceof comprehension.

  "Joan?" Maloney exclaimed, under his breath.

  "Joan!" replied John Silence.

  * * * * *

  We all went to bed early. The day had been unusually warm, and aftersunset a curious hush descended on the island. Nothing was audible butthat faint, ghostly singing which is inseparable from a pinewood even onthe stillest day--a low, searching sound, as though the wind had hairand trailed it o'er the world.

  With the sudden cooling of the atmosphere a sea fog began to form. Itappeared in isolated patches over the water, and then these patches slidtogether 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. Thewhole scene lay as though held motionless by some huge weight in theair; and the flames from our fire--the largest we had ever made--roseupwards, straight as a church steeple.

  As I followed the rest of our party tent-wards, having kicked the embersof the fire into safety, the advance guard of the fog was creepingslowly among the trees, like white arms feeling their way. Mingled withthe smoke was the odour of moss and soil and bark, and the peculiarflavour of the Baltic, half salt, half brackish, like the smell of anestuary at low water.

  It is difficult to say why it seemed to me that this deep stillnessmasked an intense activity; per
haps in every mood lies the suggestion ofits opposite, so that I became aware of the contrast of furious energy,for it was like moving through the deep pause before a thunderstorm, andI trod gently lest by breaking a twig or moving a stone I might set thewhole 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 wasof undressing and going to bathe. Some sense in me was alert andexpectant. I sat in my tent and waited. And at the end of half an houror so my waiting was justified, for the canvas suddenly shivered, andsome one tripped over the ropes that held it to the earth. John Silencecame in.

  The effect of his quiet entry was singular and prophetic: it was just asthough the energy lying behind all this stillness had pressed forward tothe edge of action. This, no doubt, was merely the quickening of my ownmind, and had no other justification; for the presence of John Silencealways suggested the near possibility of vigorous action, and as amatter of fact, he came in with nothing more than a nod and asignificant gesture.

  He sat down on a corner of my ground-sheet, and I pushed the blanketover so that he could cover his legs. He drew the flap of the tent afterhim and settled down, but hardly had he done so when the canvas shook asecond time, and in blundered Maloney.

  "Sitting in the dark?" he said self-consciously,