And yet, on my
word of honour, though every friend I ever had in the world should deny
it, I am the same. Memory stretches back clear and sound to my
childhood. I can see myself with extraordinary lucidity, how I think,
my motives and all that; and in spite of these voices that I seem to
hear, and this peculiar kind of longing to break away, as it were, just
to press on—it is I,—I myself, that am speaking to you now out of
this—this mask.’

Herbert glanced reflectively at his companion. ‘You mustn’t let me tire
you,’ he said; ‘but even on our theory it would not necessarily follow
that you yourself would be much affected. It’s true this fellow
Sabathier really was something of a personality. He had a rather
unusual itch for life, for trying on and on to squeeze something out of
experience that isn’t there; and he seemed never to weary of a
magnificent attempt to find in his fellow-creatures, especially in the
women he met, what even—if they have it—they cannot give. The little
book I wanted to show you is partly autobiographical and really does
manage to set the fellow on his feet. Even there he does absolutely
take one’s imagination. I shall never forget the thrill of picking him
up in the Charing Cross Road. You see, I had known the queer old
tombstone for years. He’s enormously vivid—quite beyond my feebleness
to describe, with a kind of French verve and rapture. Unluckily we
can’t get nearer than two years to his death. I shouldn’t mind guessing
some last devastating dream swept over him, held him the breath of an
instant too long beneath the wave, and he caved in. We know he killed
himself; and perhaps lived to regret it ever after. ‘After all, what is this precious dying we talk so much about?’ Herbert
continued after a while, his eyes restlessly wandering from shelf to
shelf. ‘You remember our talk in the churchyard? We all know that the
body fades quick enough when its occupant is gone. Supposing even in
the sleep of the living it lies very feebly guarded. And supposing in
that state some infernally potent thing outside it, wandering
disembodied, just happens on it—like some hungry sexton beetle on the
carcase of a mouse. Supposing—I know it’s the most outrageous
theorising—but supposing all these years of sun and dark, Sabathier’s
emanation, or whatever you like to call it, horribly restless, by some
fatality longing on and on just for life, or even for the face, the
voice, of some “impossible she” whom he couldn’t get in this muddled
world, simply loathing all else; supposing he has been lingering in
ambush down beside those poor old dusty bones that had poured out for
him such marrowy hospitality—oh, I know it; the dead do. And then, by a
chance, one quiet autumn evening, a veritable godsend of a little Miss
Muffet comes wandering down under the shade of his immortal cypresses,
half asleep, fagged out, depressed in mind and body, perhaps: imagine
yourself in his place, and he in yours!’ Herbert stood up in his
eagerness, his sleek hair shining. ‘The one clinching chance of a
century! Wouldn’t you have made a fight for it? Wouldn’t you have
risked the raid? I can just conceive it—the amazing struggle in that
darkness within a darkness; like some dazed alien bee bursting through
the sentinels of a hive; one mad impetuous clutch at victory; then the
appalling stirring on the other side; the groping back to a house
dismantled, rearranged, not, mind you, disorganised or
disintegrated....’ He broke off with a smile, as if of apology for his
long, fantastic harangue. Lawford sat listening, his eyes fixed on Herbert’s colourless face. There was not a sound else, it seemed, than that slightly drawling
scrupulous voice poking its way amid a maze of enticing, baffling
thoughts. Herbert turned away with a shrug. ‘It’s tempting stuff,’ he
said, choosing another cigarette. ‘But anyhow, the poor beggar failed.’

‘Failed?’

‘Why, surely; if he had succeeded I should not now be talking to a mere
imperfect simulacrum, to the outward illusion of a passing likeness to
the man, but to Sabathier himself!’ His eyes moved slowly round and
dwelt for a moment with a dark, quiet scrutiny on his visitor. ‘You say a passing likeness; do you _mean_ that?’

Herbert smiled indulgently. ‘If one _can_ mean what is purely a
speculation. I am only trying to look at the thing dispassionately, you
see. We are so much the slaves of mere repetition. Here is life—yours
and mine—a kind of plenum in vacuo_. It is only when we begin to play
the eavesdropper; when something goes askew; when one of the sentries
on the frontier of the unexpected shouts a hoarse “Qui vive?”_—it is
only then we begin to question; to prick our aldermen and pinch the
calves of our kings. Why, who is there can answer to anybody’s but his
own satisfaction just that one fundamental question—Are we the
prisoners, the slaves, the inheritors, the creatures, or the creators
of our bodies? Fallen angels or horrific dust? As for identity or
likeness or personality, we have only our neighbours’ nod for them, and
just a fading memory. No, the old fairy tales knew better; and
witchcraft’s witchcraft to the end of the chapter. Honestly, and just
of course on that one theory, Lawford, I can’t help thinking that
Sabathier’s raid only just so far succeeded as to leave his impression
in the wax. It doesn’t, of course, follow that it will necessarily end
there. It might—it may be even now just gradually fading away. It may,
you know, need driving out—with whips and scorpions. It might, perhaps,
work in.’

Lawford sat cold and still. ‘It’s no good, no good,’ he said, ‘I don’t
understand; I can’t follow you. I was always stupid, always bigoted and
cocksure. These things have never seemed anything but old women’s tales
to me. And now I must pay for it. And this Nicholas Sabathier; you say
he was a blackguard?’

‘Well,’ said Herbert with a faint smile, ‘that depends on your
definition of the word. He wasn’t a flunkey, a fool, or a prig, if
that’s what you mean. He wasn’t perhaps on Mrs Grundy’s visiting list. He wasn’t exactly gregarious. And yet in a sense that kind of
temperament is so rare that Sappho, Nelson, and Shelley shared it. To
the stodgy, suety world of course it’s little else than sheer
moonshine, midsummer madness. Naturally, in its own charming and stodgy
way the world kept flickering cold water in his direction. Naturally it
hissed.... I shall find the book. You shall have the book; oh yes.’

‘There’s only one more question,’ said Lawford in a dull, slow voice,
stooping and covering his face with his hands. ‘I know it’s impossible
for you to realise—but to me time seems like that water there, to be
heaping up about me. I wait, just as one waits when the conductor of an
orchestra lifts his hand and in a moment the whole surge of brass and
wood, cymbal and drum will crash out—and sweep me under. I can’t tell
you Herbert, how it all is, with just these groping stirrings of that
mole in my mind’s dark.