H. De Vere Stacpoole

“ Nothing is stranger than mind. From the depth of his mind came the whisper, “No.” Intuition told him that were he to go to Timbuctoo, Rochester would cling to him, that he would wake up from sleep fancying himself Rochester and then that feeling would return. What he required was the recognition by other people that he was himself, Jones, that the whole of this business was a deception, a stage play in real life. Their abuse, their threats would not matter. ”

“ Every joke has its core, and the core of this one was most evidently the likeness between himself and Rochester.
If Rochester were a Lord and if this were his house, and if Rochester had sent him—Jones—home like a bundle of goods, then the extraordinary likeness would perhaps deceive the servants and maybe other people as well. That would be a good joke, promising all sorts of funny developments. Only it was not a joke that any man of self respect would play. But Rochester, from those vague recollections of his antics, did not seem burdened with self respect. ”

“ Jones saw that he was done; done not by Marcus Mulhausen, but by Rochester. He had tripped over a kink in Rochester’s character, just as a man trips over a kink in a carpet. Then rage came to him. The sight of the horrible scoundrel with whiskers, triumphant and gloating, roused the dog in his nature, and all the craft that lay hidden in him.
He heaved a sigh, rose brokenly, and approached the desk, and the creature behind it.
“You are a cleverer man than I am,” said he, “shake hands and call it quits.” ”

“ Northbourne is the twin image of Sandbourne-on-Sea, the same long high street, the same shops with blinds selling the same wares, the same trippers, children with spades, and invalids.
The two towns are rivals, each claiming the biggest brass band, the longest esplanade, the fewer deaths from drowning, the best drains, the most sunlight, and the swiftest trains from London. Needless to say that one of them is not speaking the truth, a fact that does not seem to disturb either of them in the least. ”

“ The most terrible things in dramatic situations are the little things that speak to one for once in their lives. The pattern of the carpet that tells you that there is no doubt of the fact that your wife has run away with all your money, and left you with seven children to look after, the form of the chair that tells you that Justice with a noose in her hand is waiting on the front door step. Jones, just now, was under the obsession of the picture of the room, whose place was above the mantelpiece. ”

“ A small bottle of Böllinger was the means, and the celebration was mostly done by Jones, for it came about that this stranger, Rochester, whilst drinking little himself, managed by some method to keep up in gaiety and in consequence of mind with the other, though every now and then he would fall away from the point, as a ship without a steersman falls away from the wind, and lapse for a moment into what an acute observer might have deemed to be the fundamental dejection of his real nature. ”

“ At a party or a public meeting in the Wheat Pit or the battlefield, women, or the recollection of a woman, form or forms one of the greatest liveners to conversation, speech, or action. Most men fight the battle of life for a woman. Jones, as he sat up and drank his morning tea, gazing the while at the vision of Teresa, Countess of Rochester, had found, almost unknown to himself, a new incentive to action. ”

“ One great thing about all this Hoover business was the fact that it had freed him from the haunting dread of those terrible sensations of duality and negation. Fighting is the finest antidote to nerve troubles and mental dreads, and he was fighting now for his liberty, for the fact stood clearly before him, that, whether the Rochester family believed him to be Rochester or believed him to be Jones, it was to their interest to hold him as a lunatic in peaceful retirement. ”

“ If Jones could have climbed up his own family tree he might have found on some distaff branch the reason of his appalling likeness to Rochester, Arthur Coningsby, Delamere, but this was a pure matter of speculation, and it did not enter the mind of Jones.
He closed the book, returned it, and walked out.
Now that his resolve was made, his fighting spirit was roused. In other words he felt the same recklessness that a man feels who is going into battle, the regardlessness of consequence which marks your true explorer. ”

“ The constable was a fresh-looking and upstanding young man; he had removed his helmet and was carrying it by the chin strap. He had no bludgeon, no revolver, yet he impressed Jones almost as much as he impressed the other.
“Officer,” said Jones. “I have called you in for the purpose of giving this man in charge for attempting—”
“Stop,” cried Voles.
Then something Oriental in his nature took charge of him. He rushed forward with arms out, as though to embrace the policeman.
“It is all a mistake,” cried he, “constable, one moment, go outside one moment, leave me with his lordship. ”

“ Of course I know I’m Jones, all the same I’ve been playing the part of Rochester so hard that times I’ve almost believed I’m him, times I’ve lost myself, and I have a feeling at the back of my mind that if I don’t get someone to believe me to be who I am, I may go dotty in earnest. It’s a feeling without reason, I know. It’s more like having a grit in the eye than anything else. ”

“ If I go away and go back to the States, I leave you before the world as the wife of a man still living who has deserted you, if I stay and go on being the Earl of Rochester, you are tied to a phantom. ”

“ Jones, giving again his address, that fantastic address which was yet real, and the names and descriptions of people he knew and who would know him.
“You see, gentlemen,” said he, “it’s just this, I have only one crave in life just now, to be myself again. Not exactly that, but to be recognized as myself. You can’t imagine what that feeling is. You needn’t tell me. I know exactly what you think, you think I’m Rochester gone crazy. I know the yarn I’ve slung you sounds crazy, but it’s the truth. The fact is I’ve felt at times that if I didn’t get someone to recognize me as myself I’d go crazy. ”

“ A typewriter could settle the latter question, and as for the signature, he possessed a sample of Rochester’s, and would have to imitate it. At the worst he could pretend he had injured his thumb—that excuse would last for some time. “There’s one big thing about the whole business,” said he to himself, “and that is the chap’s eccentricity. Why, if I’m shoved too hard, I can pretend to have lost my memory or my wits—there’s not a blessed card I haven’t either in my hand or up my sleeve, and if worst comes to worst, I can always prove my identity and tell my story.” ”

“ Seated amongst these people he felt intuitively that a viewless barrier lay between him and his pursuers, that it was the very last place a man in search of a runaway would glance at.
He was right. Whilst the char-a-banc still lingered on the chance of a last customer, the running policeman—he was walking now, appeared at the sea end of the street. He was a young man with a face like an apple, he wore a straw helmet—Northbourne serves out straw helmets for its police and straw hats for its horses on the first of June each year—and he seemed blown. ”

“ She loved Rochester.
He had to tell her the truth. Yet to tell her the truth he would have to tell her that the man she loved was dead.
Then she would want proofs.
He would have to bring up the Savoy Hotel people, fetch folk from America—disinter Rochester. Horror! He had never thought of that. What had become144 of Rochester? Up to this he had never thought once of what had become of the mortal remains of the defunct jester, nor had he cared a button—why should he?
But the woman who loved Rochester would care. And he, Jones, would become in her eyes a ghoul, a monstrosity, a horror. ”

“ The members of the Senior Conservative Club Camp had left him unimpressed, and the wild beast Voles had bequeathed to him a lively contempt for the mental powers of the man he had succeeded.
Rightly or wrongly, all Lords caught a tinge of the lurid light that shewed up Rochester’s want of vim and mental hitting power.
But he did not feel a contempt for Lords as such. He was longing to appreciate the fact that to be a Lord was to be a very great thing. Even a Lord who had let his estates run to ruin—like himself. ”

“ Standing with her back close to the door she spoke to Jones.
“If you cannot see your own conduct as others see it, who can make you? I am not referring to the disgrace of last night, though heaven knows that was bad enough, I am talking of everything, of your poor wife who loves you still, of the estate you have ruined by your lunatic conduct, of the company you keep, of the insults you have heaped on people—and now you add drink to the rest. ”

“ He was barely conscious of the incongruity of his present get-up topped by the tweed shooting cap of Hoover’s, but he was quite conscious of the fact that some alteration in dress was imperative as a means towards escape from Sandbourne-on-Sea.
He entered the shop of Towler and Simpkinson, bought a six and elevenpenny panama, put it on and had the tweed cap done up in a parcel. Then a flannel coat attracted him, a grey flannel tennis coat price fifteen shillings. It fitted him to a charm, save for the almost negligible fact that the sleeves came down nearly to his knuckles. ”

“ Cass did not floor Jones.
“She was yesterday,” said he, “but I have taken the front parlour and a bed-room this afternoon.”
“That’s true,” said a fat woman, “I saw the gentleman go in with his luggage.”
In any congregation of people you will always find a liar ready to lie for fun, or the excitement of having a part in the business on hand; failing that, a person equipped with an imagination that sees what it pleases.
This amazing statement of the fat woman almost took Jones’ breath away. But there are other people in a crowd beside liars. ”

“ The pile of letters waiting to be answered on the table in the smoking room reminded him that he had forgotten a most pressing necessity—a typist. He could sign letters all right, with a very good imitation of Rochester’s signature, but a holograph letter in the same hand was beyond him. Then a bright idea came to him, why not answer these letters with sixpenny telegrams, which he could hand in himself?
He found a sheaf of telegraph forms in the bureau, and sat down before the letters, dealing with them one by one, and as relevantly as he could. ”

“ He had acted like a mad-man—that is to say, like a man furious with anger. Anger and madness have awful similarities.
He moved slightly away from Simms.
“I reckon I’ve been a fool,” said he, “three to one is not fair play. Come, let my hands free, I won’t fight any more.”
“Certainly,” said Simms. “But let me point out that we were not fighting you in the least, only preventing you from taking a course detrimental to your health. Cavendish, will you kindly untie that absurd handkerchief?”
Cavendish obeyed, and Jones, his hands freed, rubbed his wrists. ”

“ One person would be enough, just one person to believe in what I say and I would be myself again. That’s why I want you to send to Philadelphia. The mind is a curious thing, gentlemen, the freedom of the body is nothing if the mind is not free, and my mind can never be free till another person who knows my whole story believes in what I say. ”

“ Seen the fact that the art of life is not so much to work oneself as to make other people work for one, to convert by one’s own mental energy, the bodily energy of others into products or actions. Had this Government contract come off, he would have, and to his own profit, set a thousand hammers swinging, a dozen steel mills rolling, twenty ships lading, hammers, mills and ships he had never seen, never would see. ”