Part 7 (2/2)

_Symptoms_

”But there are certain people I simply cannot stand. A dreariness and sense of death come over me when I meet them--I really find it difficult to breathe when they are in the room, as if they had pumped all the air out of it. Wouldn't it be dreadful to produce that effect on people! But they never seem to be aware of it. I remember once meeting a famous Bore; I really must tell you about it, it shows the unbelievable obtuseness of such people.”

I told this and another story or two with great gusto, and talked on of my experiences and sensations, till suddenly I noticed, in the appearance of my charming neighbour, something--a slightly glazed look in her eyes, a just perceptible irregularity in her breathing--which turned that occasion for me into a kind of Nightmare.

_Shadowed_

I sometimes feel a little uneasy about that imagined self of mine--the Me of my daydreams--who leads a melodramatic life of his own, quite unrelated to my real existence. So one day I shadowed him down the street. He loitered along for a while, and then stood at a shop-window and dressed himself out in a gaudy tie and yellow waistcoat. Then he bought a great sponge and two stuffed birds and took them to lodgings, where he led for a while a shady existence. Next he moved to a big house in Mayfair, and gave grand dinner-parties, with splendid service and costly wines. His amorous adventures in this region I pa.s.s over. He soon sold his house and horses, gave up his motors, dismissed his retinue of servants, and went--saving two young ladies from being run over on the way--to live a life of heroic self-sacrifice among the poor.

I was beginning to feel encouraged about him, when in pa.s.sing a fishmonger's, he pointed at a great salmon and said, ”I caught that fish.”

_The Incredible_

”Yes, but they were rather afraid of you.”

”Afraid of _me_?”

”Yes, so one of them told me afterwards.”

I was fairly jiggered. If my personality can inspire fear or respect the world must be a simpler place than I had thought it.

Afraid of a shadow, a poor make-believe like me? Are children more absurdly terrified by a candle in a hollow turnip? Was Bedlam at full moon ever scared by anything half so silly?

_Terror_

A pause suddenly fell on our conversation--one of those uncomfortable lapses when we sit with fixed smiles, searching our minds for some remark with which to fill up the unseasonable silence. It was only a moment--”But suppose,” I said to myself with horrible curiosity, ”suppose none of us had found a word to say, and we had gone on sitting in silence?”

It is the dread of Something happening, Something unknown and awful, that makes us do anything to keep the flicker of talk from dying out. So travellers at night in an unknown forest keep their fires ablaze, in fear of Wild Beasts lurking ready in the darkness to leap upon them.

_Pathos_

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