Three John Silence Stories - Algernon Blackwood
Three John Silence Stories
ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
To M.L.W. The Original of John Silence
and
My Companion in Many Adventures
Contents
Case I: A Psychical Invasion
Case II: Ancient Sorceries
Case III: The Nemesis of Fire
CASE I: A PSYCHICAL INVASION
I
"And what is it makes you think I could be of use in this particular
case?" asked Dr. John Silence, looking across somewhat sceptically at
the Swedish lady in the chair facing him.
"Your sympathetic heart and your knowledge of occultism--"
"Oh, please--that dreadful word!" he interrupted, holding up a finger
with a gesture of impatience.
"Well, then," she laughed, "your wonderful clairvoyant gift and your
trained psychic knowledge of the processes by which a personality may be
disintegrated and destroyed--these strange studies you've been
experimenting with all these years--"
"If it's only a case of multiple personality I must really cry off,"
interrupted the doctor again hastily, a bored expression in his eyes.
"It's not that; now, please, be serious, for I want your help," she
said; "and if I choose my words poorly you must be patient with my
ignorance. The case I know will interest you, and no one else could deal
with it so well. In fact, no ordinary professional man could deal with
it at all, for I know of no treatment nor medicine that can restore a
lost sense of humour!"
"You begin to interest me with your 'case,'" he replied, and made
himself comfortable to listen.
Mrs. Sivendson drew a sigh of contentment as she watched him go to the
tube and heard him tell the servant he was not to be disturbed.
"I believe you have read my thoughts already," she said; "your intuitive
knowledge of what goes on in other people's minds is positively
uncanny."
Her friend shook his head and smiled as he drew his chair up to a
convenient position and prepared to listen attentively to what she had
to say. He closed his eyes, as he always did when he wished to absorb
the real meaning of a recital that might be inadequately expressed, for
by this method he found it easier to set himself in tune with the living
thoughts that lay behind the broken words.
By his friends John Silence was regarded as an eccentric, because he was
rich by accident, and by choice--a doctor. That a man of independent
means should devote his time to doctoring, chiefly doctoring folk who
could not pay, passed their comprehension entirely. The native nobility
of a soul whose first desire was to help those who could not help
themselves, puzzled them. After that, it irritated them, and, greatly to
his own satisfaction, they left him to his own devices.
Dr. Silence was a free-lance, though, among doctors, having neither
consulting-room, bookkeeper, nor professional manner. He took no fees,
being at heart a genuine philanthropist, yet at the same time did no
harm to his fellow-practitioners, because he only accepted
unremunerative cases, and cases that interested him for some very
special reason. He argued that the rich could pay, and the very poor
could avail themselves of organised charity, but that a very large class
of ill-paid, self-respecting workers, often followers of the arts, could
not afford the price of a week's comforts merely to be told to travel.
And it was these he desired to help: cases often requiring special and
patient study--things no doctor can give for a guinea, and that no one
would dream of expecting him to give.
But there was another side to his personality and practice, and one with
which we are now more directly concerned; for the cases that especially
appealed to him were of no ordinary kind, but rather of that intangible,
elusive, and difficult nature best described as psychical afflictions;
and, though he would have been the last person himself to approve of the
title, it was beyond question that he was known more or less generally
as the "Psychic Doctor."
In order to grapple with cases of this peculiar kind, he had submitted
himself to a long and severe training, at once physical, mental, and
spiritual. What precisely this training had been, or where undergone, no
one seemed to know,--for he never spoke of it, as, indeed, he betrayed
no single other characteristic of the charlatan,--but the fact that it
had involved a total disappearance from the world for five years, and
that after he returned and began his singular practice no one ever
dreamed of applying to him the so easily acquired epithet of quack,
spoke much for the seriousness of his strange quest and also for the
genuineness of his attainments.
For the modern psychical researcher he felt the calm tolerance of the
"man who knows." There was a trace of pity in his voice--contempt he
never showed--when he spoke of their methods.
"This classification of results is uninspired work at best," he said
once to me, when I had been his confidential assistant for some years.
"It leads nowhere, and after a hundred years will lead nowhere. It is
playing with the wrong end of a rather dangerous toy. Far better, it
would be, to examine the causes, and then the results would so easily
slip into place and explain themselves. For the sources are accessible,
and open to all who have the courage to lead the life that alone makes
practical investigation safe and possible."
And towards the question of clairvoyance, too, his attitude was
significantly sane, for he knew how extremely rare the genuine power
was, and that what is commonly called clairvoyance is nothing more than
a keen power of visualising.
"It connotes a slightly increased sensibility, nothing more," he would
say. "The true clairvoyant deplores his power, recognising that it adds
a new horror to life, and is in the nature of an affliction. And you
will find this always to be the real test."
Thus it was that John Silence, this singularly developed doctor, was
able to select his cases with a clear knowledge of the difference
between mere hysterical delusion and the kind of psychical affliction
that claimed his special powers. It was never necessary for him to
resort to the cheap mysteries of divination; for, as I have heard him
observe, after the solution of some peculiarly intricate problem--
"Systems of divination, from geomancy down to reading by tea-leaves, are
merely so many methods of obscuring the outer vision, in order that the
inner vision may become open. Once the method is mastered, no system is
necessary at all."
And the words were significant of the methods of this remarkable man,
the keynote of whose power lay, perhaps, more than anything else, in the
knowledge, first, that thought can act at a distance, and, secondly,
that thought is dynamic and can accomplish material results.
"Learn how to _think_," he would have expressed it, "and you have
learned to tap power at its source."
To look at--he was now past forty--he was sparely built, with speaking
brown eyes in which shone the light of knowledge and self-confidence,
while at the same time they made one think of that wondrous gentleness
seen most often in the eyes of animals. A close beard concealed the
mouth without disguising the grim determination of lips and jaw, and the
face somehow conveyed an impression of transparency, almost of light, so
delicately were the features refined away. On the fine forehead was that
indefinable touch of peace that comes from identifying the mind with
what is permanent in the soul, and letting the impermanent slip by
without power to wound or distress; while, from his manner,--so gentle,
quiet, sympathetic,--few could have guessed the strength of purpose that
burned within like a great flame.
"I think I should describe it as a psychical case," continued the
Swedish lady, obviously trying to explain herself very intelligently,
"and just the kind you like. I mean a case where the cause is hidden
deep down in some spiritual distress, and--"
"But the symptoms first, please, my dear Svenska," he interrupted, with
a strangely compelling seriousness of manner, "and your deductions
afterwards."
She turned round sharply on the edge of her chair and looked him in the
face, lowering her voice to prevent her emotion betraying itself too
obviously.
"In my opinion there's only one symptom," she half whispered, as though
telling something disagreeable--"fear--simply fear."
"Physical fear?"
"I think not; though how can I say? I think it's a horror in the
psychical region. It's no ordinary delusion; the man is quite sane; but
he lives in mortal terror of something--"
"I don't know what you mean by his 'psychical region,'" said the doctor,
with a smile; "though I suppose you wish me to understand that his
spiritual, and not his mental, processes are affected. Anyhow, try and
tell me briefly and pointedly what you know about the man, his symptoms,
his need for help, my peculiar help, that is, and all that seems vital
in the case. I promise to listen devotedly."
"I am trying," she continued earnestly, "but must do so in my own words
and trust to your intelligence to disentangle as I go along. He is a
young author, and lives in a tiny house off Putney Heath somewhere. He
writes humorous stories--quite a genre of his own: Pender--you must have
heard the name--Felix Pender? Oh, the man had a great gift, and married
on the strength of it; his future seemed assured. I say 'had,' for quite
suddenly his talent utterly failed him. Worse, it became transformed
into its opposite. He can no longer write a line in the old way that was
bringing him success--"
Dr. Silence opened his eyes for a second and looked at her.
"He still writes, then? The force has not gone?" he asked briefly, and
then closed his eyes again to listen.
"He works like a fury," she went on, "but produces nothing"--she
hesitated a moment--"nothing that he can use or sell. His earnings have
practically ceased, and he makes a precarious living by book-reviewing
and odd jobs--very odd, some of them. Yet, I am certain his talent has
not really deserted him finally, but is merely--"
Again Mrs. Sivendson hesitated for the appropriate word.
"In abeyance," he suggested, without opening his eyes.
"Obliterated," she went on, after a moment to weigh the word, "merely
obliterated by something else--"
"By some one else?"
"I wish I knew. All I can say is that he is haunted, and temporarily his
sense of humour is shrouded--gone--replaced by something dreadful that
writes other things. Unless something competent is done, he will simply
starve to death. Yet he is afraid to go to a doctor for fear of being
pronounced insane; and, anyhow, a man can hardly ask a doctor to take a
guinea to restore a vanished sense of humour, can he?"
"Has he tried any one at all--?"
"Not doctors yet. He tried some clergymen and religious people; but they
know so little and have so little intelligent sympathy. And most of them
are so busy balancing on their own little pedestals--"
John Silence stopped her tirade with a gesture.
"And how is it that you know so much about him?" he asked gently.
"I know Mrs. Pender well--I knew her before she married him--"
"And is she a cause, perhaps?"
"Not in the least. She is devoted; a woman very well educated, though
without being really intelligent, and with so little sense of humour
herself that she always laughs at the wrong places. But she has nothing
to do with the cause of his distress; and, indeed, has chiefly guessed
it from observing him, rather than from what little he has told her. And
he, you know, is a really lovable fellow, hard-working,
patient--altogether worth saving."
Dr. Silence opened his eyes and went over to ring for tea. He did not
know very much more about the case of the humorist than when he first
sat down to listen; but he realised that no amount of words from his
Swedish friend would help to reveal the real facts. A personal interview
with the author himself could alone do that.
"All humorists are worth saving," he said with a smile, as she poured
out tea. "We can't afford to lose a single one in these strenuous days.
I will go and see your friend at the first opportunity."
She thanked him elaborately, effusively, with many words, and he, with
much difficulty, kept the conversation thenceforward strictly to the
teapot.
And, as a result of this conversation, and a little more he had gathered
by means best known to himself and his secretary, he was whizzing in his
motor-car one afternoon a few days later up the Putney Hill to have his
first interview with Felix Pender, the humorous writer who was the
victim of some mysterious malady in his "psychical region" that had
obliterated his sense of the comic and threatened to wreck his life and
destroy his talent. And his desire to help was probably of equal
strength with his desire to know and to investigate.
The motor stopped with a deep purring sound, as though a great black
panther lay concealed within its hood, and the doctor--the "psychic
doctor," as he was sometimes called--stepped out through the gathering
fog, and walked across the tiny garden that held a blackened fir tree
and a stunted laurel shrubbery. The house was very small, and it was
some time before any one answered the bell. Then, suddenly, a light
appeared in the hall, and he saw a pretty little woman standing on the
top step begging him to come in. She was dressed in grey, and the
gaslight fell on a mass of deliberately brushed light hair. Stuffed,
dusty birds, and a shabby array of African spears, hung on the wall
behind her. A hat-rack, with a bronze plate full of very large cards,
led his eye swiftly to a dark staircase beyond. Mrs. Pender had round
eyes like a child's, and she greeted him with an effusiveness that
barely concealed her emotion, yet strove to appear naturally cordial.
Evidently she had been looking out for his arrival, and had outrun the
servant girl. She was a little breathless.
"I hope you've not been kept waiting--I think it's _most_ good of you to
come--" she began, and then stopped sharp when she saw his face in the
gaslight. There was something in Dr. Silence's look that did not
encourage mere talk. He was in earnest now, if ever man was.
"Good evening, Mrs. Pender," he said, with a quiet smile that won
confidence, yet deprecated unnecessary words, "the fog delayed me a
little. I am glad to see you."
They went into a dingy sitting-room at the back of the house, neatly
furnished but depressing. Books stood in a row upon the mantelpiece. The
fire had evidently just been lit. It smoked in great puffs into the
room.
"Mrs. Sivendson said she thought you might be able to come," ventured
the little woman again, looking up engagingly into his face and
betraying anxiety and eagerness in every gesture. "But I hardly dared to
believe it. I think it is really too good of you. My husband's case is
so peculiar that--well, you know, I am quite sure any _ordinary_ doctor
would say at once the asylum--"
"Isn't he in, then?" asked Dr. Silence gently.
"In the asylum?" she gasped. "Oh dear, no--not yet!"
"In the house, I meant," he laughed.
She gave a great sigh.
"He'll be back any minute now," she replied, obviously relieved to see
him laugh; "but the fact is, we didn't expect you so early--I mean, my
husband hardly thought you would come at all."
"I am always delighted to come--when I am really wanted, and can be of
help," he said quickly; "and, perhaps, it's all for the best that your
husband is out, for now that we are alone you can tell me something
about his difficulties. So far, you know, I have heard very little."
Her voice trembled as she thanked him, and when he came and took a chair
close beside her she actually had difficulty in finding words with which
to begin.
"In the first place," she began timidly, and then continuing with a
nervous incoherent rush of words, "he will be simply delighted that
you've really come, because he said you were the only person he would
consent to see at all--the only doctor, I mean. But, of course, he
doesn't know how frightened I am, or how much I have noticed. He
pretends with me that it's just a nervous breakdown, and I'm sure he
doesn't realise all the odd things I've noticed him doing. But the main
thing, I suppose--"
"Yes, the main thing, Mrs. Pender," he said, encouragingly, noticing her
hesitation.
"--is that he thinks we are not alone in the house. That's the chief
thing."
"Tell me more facts--just facts."
"It began last summer when I came back from Ireland; he had been here
alone for six weeks, and I thought him looking tired and queer--ragged
and scattered about the face, if you know what I mean, and his manner
worn out. He said he had been writing hard, but his inspiration had
somehow failed him, and he was dissatisfied with his work. His sense of
humour was leaving him, or changing into something else, he said. There
was something in the house, he declared, that"--she emphasised the
words--"prevented his feeling funny."
"Something in the house that prevented his feeling funny," repeated the
doctor. "Ah, now we're getting to the heart of it!"
"Yes," she resumed vaguely, "that's what he kept saying."
"And what was it he _did_ that you thought strange?" he asked
sympathetically. "Be brief, or he may be here before you finish."
"Very small things, but significant it seemed to me. He changed his
workroom from the library, as we call it, to the sitting-room. He said
all his characters became wrong and terrible in the library; they
altered, so that he felt like writing tragedies--vile, debased
tragedies, the tragedies of broken souls. But now he says the same of
the sitting-room, and he's gone back to the library."
"Ah!"
"You see, there's so little I can tell you," she went on, with
increasing speed and countless gestures. "I mean it's only very small
things he does and says that are queer. What frightens me is that he
assumes there is some one else in the house all the time--some one I
never see. He does not actually say so, but on the stairs I've seen him
standing aside to let some one pass; I've seen him open a door to let
some one in or out; and often in our bedrooms he puts chairs about as
though for some one else to sit in. Oh--oh yes, and once or twice," she
cried--"once or twice--"
She paused, and looked about her with a startled air.
"Yes?"
"Once or twice," she resumed hurriedly, as though she heard a sound that
alarmed her, "I've heard him running--coming in and out of the rooms
breathless as if something were after him--"
The door opened while she was still speaking, cutting her words off in
the middle, and a man came into the room. He was dark and clean-shaven,
sallow rather, with the eyes of imagination, and dark hair growing
scantily about the temples. He was dressed in a shabby tweed suit, and
wore an untidy flannel collar at the neck. The dominant expression of
his face was startled--hunted; an expression that might any moment leap
into the dreadful stare of terror and announce a total loss of
self-control.
The moment he saw his visitor a smile spread over his worn features, and
he advanced to shake hands.
"I hoped you would come; Mrs. Sivendson said you might be able to find
time," he said simply. His voice was thin and needy. "I am very glad to
see you, Dr. Silence. It is 'Doctor,' is it not?"
"Well, I am entitled to the description," laughed the other, "but I
rarely get it. You know, I do not practise as a regular thing; that is,
I only take cases that specially interest me, or--"
He did not finish the sentence, for the men exchanged a glance of
sympathy that rendered it unnecessary.
"I have heard of your great kindness."
"It's my hobby," said the other quickly, "and my privilege."
"I trust you will still think so when you have heard what I have to tell
you," continued the author, a little wearily. He led the way across the
hall into the little smoking-room where they could talk freely and
undisturbed.
In the smoking-room, the door shut and privacy about them, Fender's
attitude changed somewhat, and his manner became very grave. The doctor
sat opposite, where he could watch his face. Already, he saw, it looked
more haggard. Evidently it cost him much to refer to his trouble at all.
"What I have is, in my belief, a profound spiritual affliction," he
began quite bluntly, looking straight into the other's eyes.
"I saw that at once," Dr. Silence said.
"Yes, you saw that, of course; my atmosphere must convey that much to
any one with psychic perceptions. Besides which, I feel sure from all
I've heard, that you are really a soul-doctor, are you not, more than a
healer merely of the body?"
"You think of me too highly," returned the other; "though I prefer
cases, as you know, in which the spirit is disturbed first, the body
afterwards."
"I understand, yes. Well, I have experienced a curious disturbance
in--not in my physical region primarily. I mean my nerves are all right,
and my body is all right. I have no delusions exactly, but my spirit is
tortured by a calamitous fear which first came upon me in a strange
manner."
John Silence leaned forward a moment and took the speaker's hand and
held it in his own for a few brief seconds, closing his eyes as he did
so. He was not feeling his pulse, or doing any of the things that
doctors ordinarily do; he was merely absorbing into himself the main
note of the man's mental condition, so as to get completely his own
point of view, and thus be able to treat his case with true sympathy. A
very close observer might perhaps have noticed that a slight tremor ran
through his frame after he had held the hand for a few seconds.
"Tell me quite frankly, Mr. Pender," he said soothingly, releasing the
hand, and with deep attention in his manner, "tell me all the steps that
led to the beginning of this invasion. I mean tell me what the
particular drug was, and why you took it, and how it affected you--"
"Then you know it began with a drug!" cried the author, with undisguised
astonishment.
"I only know from what I observe in you, and in its effect upon myself.
You are in a surprising psychical condition. Certain portions of your
atmosphere are vibrating at a far greater rate than others. This is the
effect of a drug, but of no ordinary drug. Allow me to finish, please.
If the higher rate of vibration spreads all over, you will become, of
course, permanently cognisant of a much larger world than the one you
know normally. If, on the other hand, the rapid portion sinks back to
the usual rate, you will lose these occasional increased perceptions you
now have."
"You amaze me!" exclaimed the author; "for your words exactly describe
what I have been feeling--"
"I mention this only in passing, and to give you confidence before you
approach the account of your real affliction," continued the doctor.
"All perception, as you know, is the result of vibrations; and
clairvoyance simply means becoming sensitive to an increased scale of
vibrations. The awakening of the inner senses we hear so much about
means no more than that. Your partial clairvoyance is easily explained.
The only thing that puzzles me is how you managed to procure the drug,
for it is not easy to get in pure form, and no adulterated tincture
could have given you the terrific impetus I see you have acquired. But,
please proceed now and tell me your story in your own way."
"This _Cannabis indica_," the author went on, "came into my possession
last autumn while my wife was away. I need not explain how I got it, for
that has no importance; but it was the genuine fluid extract, and I could
not resist the temptation to make an experiment. One of its effects, as
you know, is to induce torrential laughter--"
"Yes: sometimes."
"--I am a writer of humorous tales, and I wished to increase my own
sense of laughter--to see the ludicrous from an abnormal point of view.
I wished to study it a bit, if possible, and--"
"Tell me!"
"I took an experimental dose. I starved for six hours to hasten the
effect, locked myself into this room, and gave orders not to be
disturbed. Then I swallowed the stuff and waited."
"And the effect?"
"I waited one hour, two, three, four, five hours. Nothing happened. No
laughter came, but only a great weariness instead. Nothing in the room
or in my thoughts came within a hundred miles of a humorous aspect."
"Always a most uncertain drug," interrupted the doctor. "We make very
small use of it on that account."
"At two o'clock in the morning I felt so hungry and tired that I decided
to give up the experiment and wait no longer. I drank some milk and went
upstairs to bed. I felt flat and disappointed. I fell asleep at once and
must have slept for about an hour, when I awoke suddenly with a great
noise in my ears. It was the noise of my own laughter! I was simply
shaking with merriment. At first I was bewildered and thought I had been
laughing in dreams, but a moment later I remembered the drug, and was
delighted to think that after all I had got an effect. It had been
working all along, only I had miscalculated the time. The only
unpleasant thing _then_ was an odd feeling that I had not waked
naturally, but had been wakened by some one else--deliberately. This
came to me as a certainty in the middle of my noisy laughter and
distressed me."