Robert Hichens

“ It stares out upon me with eyes in which the dull terror deepens to hate; but it does not understand why it fears—why, in its fear, it hates. Intuition has taken the place of memory. The Change of environment has killed recollection, and has left instinct in its place.
Why did I ever sit down to write? The recalling of facts has set the seal upon my despair.
Instinct only woke in Margot when I brought her to the place the soul had known in the years when it looked out upon the world from the body of an animal. ”

“ Margot’s faint remembrance of the terrace walk, of the flower-pots, of the grass borders where the cat had often stretched itself in the sun, her eagerness to see the chamber of death, her stealthy visits to that chamber, her growing uneasiness, deepening to acute apprehension, and finally to a deadly malignity—all lead me irresistibly to one conclusion.
The animal’s soul within her no longer merely shrinks away in fear of me. It has grown sinister. It lies in ambush, full of a cold, a stealthy intention. ”

“ I wished that a wind from the mountains were beating against the window-panes, and the rain lashing the house in fury. The black calm around was horrible, unnatural. The drizzling rain was now so small that I could not even hear its patter when I strained my ears. Margot had ceased to mutter, and lay perfectly still. How I longed to be able to read the soul hidden in her sleeping body, to unravel the mystery of the mind which I had once understood so perfectly! It is so horrible that we can never open the human envelope, take out the letter, and seize with our eyes upon its every word. ”

“ It cannot be. I will be a man. I will rise up and combat it. I will take Margot away from this house that her soul remembers, in which its body so long ago was tortured and slain, and she will—she must forget.
Instinct will sleep once more. It shall be so. I will have it so. I will strew poppies over her soul. I will take her far away from here, far away, to places where she will be once more as she has been.
To-morrow we will go. To-morrow ”

“ For great changes in the human mind are terrible. As we realize them we realize the limitless possibilities of sinister deeds that lie hidden in every human being. A little child that loves a doll can become an old, crafty, secret murderer. How horrible!
And perhaps it is still more horrible to think that, while the human envelope remains totally unchanged, every word of the letter within may become altered, and a message of peace fade into a sentence of death.
Margot’s face is the same face now as it was when I married her—scarcely older, certainly not less beautiful. ”

“ If a master were kind, or gentle, or shy, they made his life as intolerable as they could. If an animal or a bird came into their power, they had no pity. I was like the rest; indeed, I think that I was worse. Cruelty is horrible. I have enough imagination to do more than know that—to feel it.
Some say that it is lack of imagination which makes men and women brutes. May it not be power of imagination? The interest of torturing is lessened, is almost lost, if we can not be the tortured as well as the torturer.
As a child I was cruel by nature, by instinct. ”

“ Do you—do you believe that a soul, if it passes on as you think, carries its memory with it, its memory of former loves and—and hates? Say that a cat’s soul goes to a woman’s body, and that the cat has been—has been—well, tortured—possibly killed, by someone—say some man, long ago, would the woman, meeting that man, remember and shrink from him? ”

“ A hideous struggle was going on within me—a struggle between love and impotent anger and despair, between the lover and the master. For I am one of the old-fashioned men who think that a husband ought to be master of his wife as well as of his house.
How could I be master of a woman I secretly feared? My knowledge of myself spurred me through acute irritation almost to the verge of madness. ”

“ The house is a house to fix itself in the memory. Nothing that had once lived here could ever come back and forget that it had been here. Not even an animal—not even an animal.
I wish I had never gone to that dinnerparty and met the Professor. There was a horror coming upon me then. He has hastened its steps. He has put my fears into shape, my vague wondering into words. Why cannot men leave life alone? Why will they catch it by the throat and wring its secrets from it? To respect reserve is one of the first instincts of the gentleman; and life is full of reserve. ”

“ I dread an animal that always avoids me silently more than an animal that actually attacks me. The thing that runs from me makes me shiver, the thing that creeps away when I come near wakes my uneasiness. At this time there rose up in me a strange feeling towards Margot. The white, fair child I had married was at moments—only at moments—horrible to me. I felt disposed to shun her. Something within cried out against her. Long ago, at the instant of our introduction, an unreasoning sensation that could only be called dread had laid hold upon me. ”

“ Margot had ceased crying now, and her face was very white and calm; it looked rigid in the faint candle-light that shone across the bed.
“Do not be angry,” she said. “We are controlled by something inside of us; there are powers in us that we cannot fight against.”
“There is nothing we cannot fight against,” I said passionately. “The doctrine of predestination is the devil’s own doctrine. It is the doctrine set up by the sinner to excuse his sin; it is the coward’s doctrine. Understand me, Margot, I love you, but I am not a weak fool. ”

“ I looked at the cat, which, as usual, was sitting before the fire.
Animals have intuitions as keen as those of a woman, keener than those of a man. They inherit an instinct of fear of those who hate them from a long line of ancestors who have suffered at the hands of cruel men. They can tell by a look, by a motion, by the tone of a voice, whether to expect from anyone kindness or malignity. ”

“ In my nature there was a certain brutality, a savagery, which I had never wholly slain, although Margot had softened me wonderfully by her softness, had brought me to gentleness by her tenderness. The boy of years ago had developed toward better things, but he was not dead in me. I felt that as I walked up and down the terrace through the night in a wild meditation. If my love could not hold Margot, my strength should. ”

“ That curious, abrupt change in Margot’s demeanour from avoidance to invitation marked the subtle, inward development of feeling, the silent passage from sensation only towards action.
Formerly she feared me. Now I must fear her.
The soul, Crouching in its cage, shows its teeth. It is compassing my destruction. ”

“ I must be alone. I must wrestle with myself, regain my courage, kill the coward in me.
I threw myself upon the mare, and rode out at a gallop towards the moors of Eskdale along the lonely country roads.
All day I rode, and all day I thought of that dark house, of that white creature awaiting my return, peering from the windows, perhaps, listening for my horse’s hoofs on the gravel, keeping still the long vigil of vengeance.
My imagination sickened, fainted, as my wearied horse stumbled along the shadowy roads. My terror was too great now to be physical. ”

“ I have read of men who lived for long spaces of time haunted by demons created by their imagination, and I have laughed at them and pitied them. Surely I am not going to join in their folly, in their madness, led to the gates of terror by my own fancies, half-confirmed, apparently, by the chance utterances of a conceited Professor—a man of fads, although a man of science. ”

“ When one human being knows another very intimately, and all the barricades that divide soul from soul have been broken down, it is difficult to set them up again without noise and dust, and the sound of thrust-in bolts, and the tap of the hammer that drives in the nails. It is difficult, but not impossible. Barricades can be raised noiselessly, soundless bolts—that keep out the soul—be pushed home. The black gauze veil that blots out the scene drops, and when it is raised—if ever—the scene is changed.
The real Margot was receding from me. ”

“ Because a creature is dumb, must its soul die when it dies? Is not the soul, perhaps—as he said—a wanderer through many bodies?
But if I did not kill a soul, as I killed a body, the day my grandmother died, where is that soul now? ”

“ Cats are as subtle and as difficult to understand as the most complex woman, and almost as full of intuitions. If they have been well treated, there is often a certain gracious, condescending suavity in their demeanour at first, even towards a total stranger; but if that stranger is ill disposed toward them, they seem instinctively to read his soul, and they are in arms directly. ”

“ I had been riding over the moors to visit a tenant-farmer who lived at some distance, and did not return until twilight. Dismounting, I let myself into the house, traversed the hall, and ascended the stairs. As I wore spurs, and the steps were of polished oak and uncarpeted, I walked noisily enough to warn anyone of my approach. I was passing the door of the room that had been my grandmother’s sitting-room, when I noticed that it stood open. The house was rather dark, and the interior was dim enough, but I could see a figure in a white dress moving about inside. ”

“ I sat down immediately. I felt too unnerved to remain standing. I was giving way utterly to an imaginative horror that seemed to threaten my reason. In vain I tried to pull myself together. My body was in a cold sweat. All mastery of my nerves seemed gone.
I do not know how long I remained there, but I was aroused by the entrance of the butler. He glanced towards me in some obvious surprise, and this astonishment of a servant acted upon me almost like a scourge. I sprang up hastily. ”

“ Even a mighty power may condescend sometimes to a very practical joke. To a thinker the world is full of apple-pie beds, and cold wet sponges fall on us from at least half the doors we push open. The soul-juggleries of the before-mentioned President are very curious, but people will not realize that soul transference from body to body is as much a plain fact as the daily rising of the sun on one half of the world and its nightly setting on the other. ”

“ To read, as a man, the menu that I ate through as a boy, the love-story that I was actor in, the tragedy that I brought about, the debt that I have never paid—how could it profit me? To keep a diary has always seemed to me merely an addition to the ills of life. ”

“ The Professor smiled dryly.
“You think so?” he said. “I sometimes doubt it.”
“And I doubt your theory of soul transference.”
“That shows me—pardon the apparent impertinence—that you have never really examined the soul question with any close attention. Do you suppose that D——— really likes being so noticeably different from other men? Depend upon it,’ he has noticed in himself what we have noticed in him. Depend upon it, he has tried to be ordinary, and found it impossible. His soul manages him as a strong nature manages a weak one, and his soul is a female, not a male. ”

“ And these intuitions might, I should fancy, be strengthened, given body, robustness, by associations—of place, for example. Cats become intensely attached to localities, to certain spots, a particular house or garden, a particular fireside, apart from the people who may be there. Possibly, if the man and the woman of whom you speak could be brought together in the very place where the torture arid death occurred, the dislike of the woman might deepen into positive hatred. It would, however, be always unreasoning hatred, I think, and even quite unaccountable to herself. ”

“ Ronald, I have never been in the North of England before, never set foot in Cumberland; yet I seem to know this terrace walk, those very flower-pots, the garden, the look of that roof, those chimneys, even the slanting way in which that great creeper climbs. ”

“ The wise child will take care to foster the ignorance of its parents. My people were pretty well off, and I was their only child; but my chief chances of future pleasure in life were centred in my grandmother, my mother’s mother. She was immensely rich, and she lived here. This room in which I am writing now was her favourite sitting-room. On that hearth, before a log fire, such as is burning at this moment, used to sit that wonderful cat of hers—that horrible cat! ”

“ Their demeanour has been patently and strongly feline. Now, I see nothing ridiculous in the assumption that such women’s bodies may contain souls—in process of development, of course—that formerly were merely cat souls, but that are now gaining humanity gradually, are working their way upwards in the scale. After all, we are not so much above the animals, and in our lapses we often become merely animals. The soul retrogrades for the moment. ”

“ Sometimes a woman’s soul goes into a man’s body; then the man acts woman, and people cry against him for effeminacy. The soul colours the body with actions, the body does not colour the soul, or not in the same degree. ”

“ Still, clever men are the first to be led astray, they say. It is the searcher who follows the wandering light. What he says can’t be true. When I have filled these pages, and read what I have written dispassionately, as one of the outside public might read, I shall have done, once for all, with the ridiculous fancies that are beginning to make my life a burden. ”