The vampire nemesis and other weird stories of the China coast Page 5

  " You believe, then," I asked breathlessly, " that it is a potential or possibly actual force ?"

  " Years hence," Armstrong replied, " the laws of hypnotism, for like every natural force it is subject to fixed laws, will be rescued from empiricism and tabulated as are to-day those of gravity and heat. I concede," he added slowly, " that as yet we know but little of them. All we see now are results, and the cause is hidden in mystery."

  " Do you think then that it is possible for one will to subjugate another? "

  Armstrong smiled deprecatingly.

  " Subjugate is hardly the word," he said at length. " That is a vulgar error that the stronger will dominates the weaker, and compels it to do its bidding as one dictates to a child."

  " What is it then ? " I inquired.

  " The thing is to have the power of projecting your own will into other persons and of making it supersede their own. Mind, you do not overcome it, you only supersede it—shoulder it aside. Thus what we call a strong-minded man may find his will-power superseded by a man of comparatively weak intellect, who has the power of detaching his own will from himself and of projecting it into another individual. It is a pure fallacy that it is merely a question of the relative strength of will."

  " I am afraid," I hazarded, unwilling to be duped a second time by idle shibboleths, " I do not follow you. Will you explain ? "

  Armstrong, seeing my evident interest, warmed to his favourite topic.

  " We know," he said in his didactic way, " that certain nerves do not pass beyond the great nervecentres or ganglia, and are but remotely connected with the brain. The muscles are worked entirely from the ganglia—such, for instance, as the one that causes the descent of the diaphragm—and they perform their functions unremittingly without the slightest effort of volition on our part. Yet the reflex action of these great bunches of nerve fibre can, by a conscious effort, be brought under the sway of the will, and their power over the muscles be for the time suspended. We can hold our breath, or stop the blinking of an eyelid, examples of purely reflex actions, by the exercise of our wills. Conversely, movements that we dreamed were entirely under the control of our volitions, such as the motion of a hand or foot, can be taken from the dominion of the will and be governed by the reflex action of the ganglia, as when a gun is fired in the vicinity of a nervous person he starts involuntarily, though perhaps but a moment before he had schooled himself to withstand the shock."

  His pipe, during this long speech, had gone out; mine, in the absorption of what he said, was equally cold. Now we both relit and smoked for awhile in silence.

  "That," I mused, "belongs almost as much to my branch of science as yours."

  " It is possible," Armstrong continued, unheeding, " that in this manner all the movements of the newly-born infant are purely reflex, that the sensations travel no farther than the ganglia or the cerebellum at most, and are there translated into action without the will-power having any hand whatsoever in their control. Later, the cerebrum may take command of certain movements and direct when a message shall be sent along the nerves ordering the muscles to act; but even then we have seen that certain actions still remain under the peculiar control of the ganglia, and it requires a special exercise of will to wrest from them their power and alter for the moment their course."

  " Yes! yes I" I interrupted impatiently, for I thought he was straying wide of the subject about which I was so eager to learn more; " but how does that affect hypnotism ? "

  " The obvious inference, my dear Keith, would seem that the hypnotist, by some telepathic disturbance set up in the mind of the subject, interposes his own will between the volitions and the nerve-centres, cutting the lines of communication, until every movement, however intricate, is, so far as the will of the subject is concerned, as much a reflex action as was that of breathing or digestion. And now, as the telegraphist who has cut a telegraph wire can affix to the severed end his own instrument and send what message he will to its destination, while the messages from the station at the other end can no longer pass through, the hypnotist gains entire control of the wires leading to the muscles, and can transmit to them what order he pleases and be obeyed! He has thus the complete mastery of the human machine, while the brain of the subject, thinking and willing as coherently as ever, finds its messages along the nerves intercepted and lost before they can be translated into motion. What else is somnambulism ? "

  Armstrong looked at me defiantly, as if challenging contradiction, but I nodded my head in approval and let him go on.

  "Another will, the dream will, is interposed between the sleeper's mind and his body, and he performs deeds that in his waking moments would be utterly beyond him. A somnambulist in his sleep can walk in safety across a plank spanning a yawning abyss which in the daytime he would be unable to contemplate without a shudder. And why ? Because his movements are beyond the control of the volitions, and, reel as the brain may, the steps remain firm and steady."

  " So," I said, impressed and startled by this new phase of the subject, "you hold that it is not a matter of will opposed to will ? "

  Armstrong made a gesture of impatience.

  " I emphatically deny that the hypnotist conquers or overcomes the will of the subject. He simply sets it aside, and interposes his own volitions between it and the movements of the body it should control. While, as I have said, the brain goes on thinking and willing, it is as surely restrained from influencing the actions of the muscles as if the knife of the surgeon had severed the spinal cord immmediately below the medulla oblongata."

  " Have you found during your investigations," I questioned again, " that the subject is easier to hypnotise after each successive operation ? "

  " Decidedly! " he answered promptly. " Though perhaps it is largely a matter of temperament. Some will go under the influence easily at the first attempt; with others, it requires frequent and repeated efforts before the hypnotic state can be easily induced. In all, I believe, it becomes easier after each operation, until the hypnotist can put that particular subject off by merely willing it."

  " And what are the limits of distance at which the force can act ? "

  " As far as thought itself I There are no limits. When we discover the limit to which we can project our thoughts, we shall probably have found the limit at which will-force is effective. You can think as easily of objects five yards away as of the mountains in the moon, or the nebulous patches that astronomers tell us are star-clusters in the outermost limits of space! "

  " Have you ever known, Armstrong," something suddenly prompted me to ask, " this power to have been used for a wrong purpose ? "

  " I have never had personal experience of it," he answered, " but I have heard of cases where the hypnotist has made his subject commit crime against his will, though he was conscious of what he did."

  He was looking at me curiously, his suspicions, perhaps, aroused by my intense interest.

  •' It is a fascinating subject," I answered evasively.

  " It is a fascinating subject," he responded. " Think of the boundless fields for research lying ready to the hand of science which she is blindly ignoring. When a biologist discovers some new microbe half the scientific world goes crazy with delight, and the other half watches its proceedings with breathless concern; yet here are these virgin fields inviting the explorer, and only a few pioneers to venture on the task. How petty do such paltry researches into matter appear when compared with this one that strikes at the very root of Being and the matter of the soul! "

  I bade good-night to Armstrong and walked home

  to our little house in Road, pondering deeply

  on many things, and uppermost in my thoughts was ever this hitherto neglected branch of mental science, whose manifestations I had years before spurned from me as spurious. Thus, I thought bitterly, did the quacks that hover in their shoals round everything sensational deter the earnest from research and throw them off the scent more effectively than Armstrong had, in his scathing irony, a
ccused the causeless ban of science of doing. Yet my own earlier eagerness to investigate as deeply as I might had to a great extent evaporated.

  Something had cooled my ardour, something I could neither name nor locate.

  VII.

  As I swung along through the silent street I felt a vague, indefinable dread creeping over me, a sudden terror of the unknown. People of nervous temperament have told us they have felt that sensation, and described it as a vague premonition of impending disaster. At times I felt my mind about to grasp the elusive thought and shape it into words. I would stop abruptly in my walk trying to find what it was I feared; but, however, ere I could seize it, it would slip away again— the nameless dread would vanish, and I would walk on, for the moment reassured, only to feel the same eerie sensation of awe gripping at my heart again. Twice I glanced apprehensively over my shoulder and smiled at my folly.

  When I gained the house Ethel was sitting up

  for me, and I left my fears at the door as I crossed

  the threshold and stood in her bright company;

  but her quick eyes noted the pallor on my face.

  " Why," she cried, " Harry, what is the matter ?"

  " Matter?" I echoed. " Nothing that I know of."

  " My dear boy, you look as if you had seen a

  ghost." She crossed the room and sat herself on my

  knee, twining an arm lovingly round my neck. "Or as if," she crooned playfully, "you had been chased by my dressmaker with a long bill! "

  "Which means," I said, smiling, for with her arm encircling me, I could find no room for fear in a heart so full of love, "which means, my dear Ethel, that you have your eye on a 'lovely new hat' at Hall and Holtz or somewhere, and mean me to augment that bill."

  " No, dear, it is not a hat this time."

  "Not a hat!" said I, trying to recollect my repertoire of feminine adornments. " Let me see; is it, then, one of those thing-um-bobs ? What do you call them—fichus ? "

  " Nor is it a fichu," replied Ethel very gravely. " I want you, Harry, dear, to give up this black spot on the mosquito-bar business."

  " My dear Ethel, what a curious request! "

  " Nevertheless, I am quite serious. Oh, Harry, I cannot bear the ghastly look in your wide eyes when you are lying there in that dreadful sleep. I cannot close an eye myself, but sit watching and watching until you stir again, half afraid all the time you might not be able to bring yourself back again."

  I drew her face down to mine and kissed her.

  " Besides," she continued, tenderly stroking my hair, "it is worrying you. You have not been looking yourself of late. See, sir," she cried, slipping off my knee and planting her little hands on my shoulders, " you are looking quite pale now, and those horrid lines"—she traced them lovingly with her finger—"are growing deeper and deeper every day."

  I drew her back again to my knee.

  " Do you know, Ethel, I was about to decide myself upon giving it up. This settles it. At least, I shall give up all personal experiments, and such investigations as I carry out shall be the researches of a mere outsider."

  " Oh, I am so glad !" she said, clapping her hands with glee. " And now, sir, I have a secret to confide to you," and with a blush she placed her lips to my ear, and shyly whispered to me of a coming event that makes the husband wish that he could peer for a moment into futurity and be reassured. This was on a Tuesday evening; on Thursday evening, the weather being fine, I determined to dispense with a rickshaw and walk down from the office. I abandoned my usual route along the Bund and Broadway and chose Szechuen Road, albeit a litttle longer.

  As I neared the Soochow Creek a sudden, agonising pang shot through one of my teeth. It was one of those sudden twinges that make one catch one's breath, and it returned again and again with maddening persistency, until I felt half-wild with the pain. The tooth, too, was a sound one; at least, I had never noticed any cavity in it. I walked hurriedly down the street, trying in my haste to dull the pain; and, as I went, a brass plate, with a name and the words " Surgeon-dentist," on the opposite side of the street caught my eye.

  Instantly the desire seized me to have the troublesome tooth out, decayed or not. Without a moment's hesitation, I crossed the road. I can remember experiencing no surprise at reading the name "A. Rawdon " on the plate as I passed in, though he had never before attended me in his professional capacity. It seemed quite natural, too, that the maddening ache should vanish as suddenly as it had come, as I crossed the threshold. Still, I walked on and pushed open the door of the surgery.

  Arnold Rawdon was leaning over the back of his operating chair as I entered, his face white and drawn, as I had seen it on that first evening, but with a look of expectancy in his eyes that changed to triumph, as he saw me walk straight to the chair and sink into it.

  " Ah, you have come! " he muttered. Then, in his more professional tones, " H'm, let me see!" pulling my mouth open and peering in with that brutal inquisitiveness that is the special privilege of dentists. " Yes, it will have to come out. Rather firm set, too! Will you have gas ? "

  " I detest gas ! " I murmured feebly.

  " I thought so!" with an odd smile playing about the corners of his mouth. " Well, we will try something else."

  While he was still speaking I felt a change coming over myself; I felt that peculiar feeling of double consciousness that I was myself, yet not myself.

  Rawdon meanwhile had turned to a cabinet on which stood a bottle and two glasses in readiness, and filled one of them nearly to the brim.

  " Try this," he said, coming toward me. " I don't know if you are a connoisseur, but I think you will find this good stuff."

  He had held the glass under my nose; it was brandy, neat brandy. I have been all my life a strict teetotaller, and the reeking odour of the spirits filled me with unutterable loathing and disgust. Nevertheless, I seized the glass eagerly, and, putting it to my lips, drained the contents at one long draught.

  " So," Rawdon said mockingly, " that is better."

  He turned casually away, taking up a paper and humming a light ditty to himself as he ran his eyes down the columns; and I sat there in the chair, perfectly rigid, unable to move a muscle, while every fibre of my being was crying out to me to get up and flee. My eyes were fixed on his form—he had his back partly towards me—as I strove to gather my strength for one supreme effort, only to find it futile. Again and again I thus attempted to rise, but always in vain.

  After some time had elapsed he let fall the paper and turned again to the bottle on the cabinet, filling my glass this time half-full.

  " Now," he cried, as he placed the glass in my hand, "we will have a toast. We will drink to dear Mrs. Keith."

  He turned and poured out a few spoonfuls into the other glass.

  " Look ! I, too, intend to honour the toast. Are you ready ? Well, then, ' To dear Mrs. Keith, and long may she be happy in her wedded life!'"

  " ' To dear Mrs. Keith !'" I echoed obediently,

  " ' and ' " The rest of the sentence was lost.

  I was swallowing with avidity the scalding liquid in my glass.

  Rawdon watched me with malignant satisfaction gleaming in every repulsive feature, then turned away again to a couch, and, with his arm hanging limply over the side, seemed to be dozing off.

  As I sat there, a second and more insidious change began to creep over me. The feeling of double consciousness was becoming less distinct. The predominant alien will, to which my own personality had succumbed, appeared to be deserting the captured citadel. My thoughts, that had hitherto been so agonisingly clear, were becoming blurred and dim, until my head fell forward in stupor and partial oblivion. I took no note of the time as I crouched there in that chair, while a little marble clock ticked off the seconds and added them to the irrevocable past. I only know that it was dark when I again stirred to some faint knowledge of my surroundings.

  I have a dim recollection of someone, it must have been Rawdon, ushering me ceremoniously out of the h
ouse. He hailed a passing rickshaw, into which, with his sympathetic help, I clambered. He gave my address to the coolie, and, as we clattered off, stood bowing and smiling his farewells at the gate. And as the rickshaw sped through the night, jolting down North Szechuen Road with my head hanging helplessly over the side, keeping time to every jar and jolt, I realised dimly that I was hopelessly, sottishly inebriated. Drunk as the dipsomaniac who, having eluded the vigilance of his watchers, has stolen undetected into a wellstocked wine cellar—and with the tooth untouched! VIII.

  We reached the house at last, and the coolie lowered the shafts to the ground. I half-stepped, half-rolled out on to the pavement. Dropping a handful of coins on the flags, I staggered up to the door, clinging to the rails, grabbing desperately at every slender means of support.

  It was much beyond my usual time for returning, and Ethel must have been looking out for me, for as I stumbled up to the door, it opened ere I could touch it, and I almost fell across the threshold.

  Ethel's first expression was one of surprise—

  " Why, Harry, where's your hat ? "

  It was the first intimation I had of having lost it. I mumbled something in reply about having left it somewhere, as I leaned up against the hatstand, striving, with that pitiful gravity a drunken man assumes, to appear sober.

  My poor wife thought at first that I was feigning, and evidently admired my powers of mimicry. But as I stumbled into the dining - room and sprawled in a chair, her face, even to my blunted perceptions, showed traces of impatience.

  " Come, Harry," she said, " enough of this. Dinner has been waiting ever so long."