Authors: Sheridan Le Fanu
"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 God 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 dosed, 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."
"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 had 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 God, 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 to-night 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 God 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 God. You are in His hands and in the power of no other
being: be therefore confident for the future."
I made him have candles lighted, and saw the room looking cheery and
inhabited before I left him. I told him that he must regard his illness
strictly as one dependent on physical, though
subtle
physical causes.
I told him that he had evidence of God's care and love in the
deliverance which he had just described, and that I had perceived with
pain that he seemed to regard its peculiar features as indicating that
he had been delivered over to spiritual reprobation. Than such a
conclusion nothing could be, I insisted, less warranted; and not only
so, but more contrary to facts, as disclosed in his mysterious
deliverance from that murderous influence during his Shropshire
excursion. First, his niece had been retained by his side without his
intending to keep her near him; and, secondly, there had been infused
into his mind an irresistible repugnance to execute the dreadful
suggestion in her presence.
As I reasoned this point with him, Mr. Jennings wept. He seemed
comforted. One promise I exacted, which was that should the monkey at
any time return, I should be sent for immediately; and, repeating my
assurance that I would give neither time nor thought to any other
subject until I had thoroughly investigated his case, and that to-morrow
he should hear the result, I took my leave.
Before getting into the carriage I told the servant that his master was
far from well, and that he should make a point of frequently looking
into his room. My own arrangements I made with a view to being quite
secure from interruption.
I merely called at my lodgings, and with a travelling-desk and carpet-bag,
set off in a hackney carriage for an inn about two miles out of town,
called "The Horns," a very quiet and comfortable house, with good thick
walls. And there I resolved, without the possibility of intrusion
or distraction, to devote some hours of the night, in my comfortable
sitting-room, to Mr. Jennings' case, and so much of the morning as it
might require.
(There occurs here a careful note of Dr. Hesselius' opinion upon the
case, and of the habits, dietary, and medicines which he prescribed. It
is curious—some persons would say mystical. But, on the whole, I doubt
whether it would sufficiently interest a reader of the kind I am likely
to meet with, to warrant its being here reprinted. The whole letter was
plainly written at the inn where he had hid himself for the occasion.
The next letter is dated from his town lodgings.)
I left town for the inn where I slept last night at half-past nine, and
did not arrive at my room in town until one o'clock this afternoon. I
found a letter in Mr. Jennings' hand upon my table. It had not come by
post, and, on inquiry, I learned that Mr. Jennings' servant had brought
it, and on learning that I was not to return until to-day, and that no
one could tell him my address, he seemed very uncomfortable, and said
his orders from his master were that that he was not to return without
an answer.
I opened the letter and read:
DEAR DR. HESSELIUS.—It is here. You had not been an hour gone when
it returned. It is speaking. It knows all that has happened. It
knows everything—it knows you, and is frantic and atrocious. It
reviles. I send you this. It knows every word I have written—I
write. This I promised, and I therefore write, but I fear very
confused, very incoherently. I am so interrupted, disturbed.
Ever yours, sincerely yours,
Robert Lynder Jennings.
"When did this come?" I asked.
"About eleven last night: the man was here again, and has been here
three times to-day. The last time is about an hour since."
Thus answered, and with the notes I had made upon his case in my pocket,
I was in a few minutes driving towards Richmond, to see Mr. Jennings.
I by no means, as you perceive, despaired of Mr. Jennings' case. He had
himself remembered and applied, though quite in a mistaken way, the
principle which I lay down in my Metaphysical Medicine, and which
governs all such cases. I was about to apply it in earnest. I was
profoundly interested, and very anxious to see and examine him while the
"enemy" was actually present.
I drove up to the sombre house, and ran up the steps, and knocked. The
door, in a little time, was opened by a tall woman in black silk. She
looked ill, and as if she had been crying. She curtseyed, and heard my
question, but she did not answer. She turned her face away, extending
her hand towards two men who were coming down-stairs; and thus having,
as it were, tacitly made me over to them, she passed through a side-door
hastily and shut it.
The man who was nearest the hall, I at once accosted, but being now
close to him, I was shocked to see that both his hands were covered with
blood.
I drew back a little, and the man, passing downstairs, merely said in a
low tone, "Here's the servant, sir."
The servant had stopped on the stairs, confounded and dumb at seeing me.
He was rubbing his hands in a handkerchief, and it was steeped in blood.
"Jones, what is it? what has happened?" I asked, while a sickening
suspicion overpowered me.
The man asked me to come up to the lobby. I was beside him in a moment,
and, frowning and pallid, with contracted eyes, he told me the horror
which I already half guessed.
His master had made away with himself.
I went upstairs with him to the room—what I saw there I won't tell you.
He had cut his throat with his razor. It was a frightful gash. The two
men had laid him on the bed, and composed his limbs. It had happened, as
the immense pool of blood on the floor declared, at some distance
between the bed and the window. There was carpet round his bed, and a
carpet under his dressing-table, but none on the rest of the floor, for
the man said he did not like a carpet on his bedroom. In this sombre and
now terrible room, one of the great elms that darkened the house was
slowly moving the shadow of one of its great boughs upon this dreadful
floor.
I beckoned to the servant, and we went downstairs together. I turned off
the hall into an old-fashioned panelled room, and there standing, I
heard all the servant had to tell. It was not a great deal.
"I concluded, sir, from your words, and looks, sir, as you left last
night, that you thought my master was seriously ill. I thought it might
be that you were afraid of a fit, or something. So I attended very close
to your directions. He sat up late, till past three o'clock. He was not
writing or reading. He was talking a great deal to himself, but that was
nothing unusual. At about that hour I assisted him to undress, and left
him in his slippers and dressing-gown. I went back softly in about
half-an-hour. He was in his bed, quite undressed, and a pair of candles
lighted on the table beside his bed. He was leaning on his elbow, and
looking out at the other side of the bed when I came in. I asked him if
he wanted anything, and he said No.
"I don't know whether it was what you said to me, sir, or something a
little unusual about him, but I was uneasy, uncommon uneasy about him
last night.
"In another half hour, or it might be a little more, I went up again. I
did not hear him talking as before. I opened the door a little. The
candles were both out, which was not usual. I had a bedroom candle, and
I let the light in, a little bit, looking softly round. I saw him
sitting in that chair beside the dressing-table with his clothes on
again. He turned round and looked at me. I thought it strange he should
get up and dress, and put out the candles to sit in the dark, that way.
But I only asked him again if I could do anything for him. He said, No,
rather sharp, I thought. I asked him if I might light the candles, and
he said, 'Do as you like, Jones.' So I lighted them, and I lingered
about the room, and he said, 'Tell me truth, Jones; why did you come
again—you did not hear anyone cursing?' 'No, sir,' I said, wondering
what he could mean.