The Intoxicated Ghost Part 17

For some days nothing unusual happened, so far as Carroll knew. He watched Alice closely, and he plunged into all the literature on the subject of hypnotism upon which he could lay hands. He was not sure that at the end of a week's hard reading he was much clearer than at the beginning, although he had at least acc.u.mulated a fine a.s.sortment of terms in the nomenclature of animal magnetism. He cautiously questioned Abby, and learned that for some time Alice had been subject to what the old servant called "notional spells when she were n't herself." His friend the specialist was greatly interested in all that Dr. Carroll could tell him about the case.

"It is evidently a subliminal self coming to the surface," he p.r.o.nounced. "I've seen cases somewhat similar, but only one where the patient was not hypnotized by somebody else."

"But what can I do about it?" George demanded. "I don't want any subliminal selves floating about. I want the girl I know."

"Build up her general health," the other advised. "You say she's run down and used up with taking care of her grandmother. Get her rested.

That's the only thing I can say. She is n't really ill, is she?"

"G.o.d knows what you call it," was Carroll's response. "She can't be called well when she goes off the way she did the other day. I tell you it was frightful, simply frightful!"

The days went on, and once more George had the uncanny experience of a chat with Jenny. Alice had been looking over some of her grandmother's belongings, and when he called, came down to him with a necklace of rhinestones dangling and sliding through her fingers.

"See," she accosted him, in the buoyant manner he remembered only too vividly, "is n't this gay? I should wear it, only I'm in her clothes, and she won't wear anything but poky black."

Carroll tried to steady his nerves against the sudden shock.

"Of course you wear black, Alice," he said; "it is only six months since your grandmother died."

She made him a merry, mocking grimace.

"Now don't pretend you don't know I'm Jenny," she retorted. "I saw you knew me the minute you heard me speak. Alice! Pooh! She'd have come into the room this way."

She darted to the door and turned back, to advance with her face pulled down and her eyelids dropped.

"How do you do, dear?" she greeted him, with a burlesque of Alice's manner so droll that he laughed in spite of himself.

Jenny herself burst into a shout of merriment and whirled about in a pirouette, swinging the sparkling chain around her head.

"Is n't it fun?" she exclaimed, pausing before him with her head on one side; "she can't even look at a bright thing half a minute but off she goes, and here I am. Before I go this time, I'm going to stick up every shiny thing I can find where she'll see it."

Carroll had a sickening sensation, as if the girl he loved had gone mad before his very eyes; yet so completely did she appear like a stranger that the feeling faded as soon as it arose. This was certainly no Alice that he knew. He could not speak to her as his friend and betrothed, although it was equally impossible to address her as a stranger. He was too completely baffled and confused to be able to determine on any line of action, and she stood smiling at him as if she were entirely conscious of what was pa.s.sing in his troubled brain.

"Did you know I cut up her letter?" Jenny demanded, with a smile apparently called up by the remembrance.

"Yes," he answered, exactly as if the question had been put by a third person.

"It was an awfully foolish letter," the girl went on. "I won't have her writing like that to you. You've got to belong to me."

He had neither the time nor the coolness to realize his emotions, but he accepted for the moment the a.s.sumption of the individuality of Jenny.

"You are nothing to me," he said. "I am engaged to Alice."

"Oh, that's all right. I know that. I know all about her; lots more than you do. But I tell you, you'd a great deal better take me. I'm just as much the girl you're engaged to as she is."

He looked at her darkly and with trouble in his eyes.

"Where is Alice?" he asked.

"Oh, she's all right. She's somewhere. Asleep, I think likely. I don't want to talk about her. I never liked her."

"Talk about yourself, then. Where are you when Alice is here?"

"Oh, that's stupid. I'd rather talk about what we'll do when we are married. Shall we go abroad right off?"

"It will be time enough to talk about that when there's any prospect of our being married."

"You would n't kiss me the other day," Jenny said, looping the necklace about his throat and bending forward so that her face was close to his.

A feeling of anger so strong that it was almost brutal came over him. He tore the necklace out of her hands and threw it across the room. Then, as on the previous occasion, he caught the girl by the wrists.

"Go away!" he commanded. "Let Alice come back!"

"Oh, you hurt me!" she cried. "I can't bear to be hurt! Let me go!"

He tightened his grasp.

"If you don't go, I'll really hurt. I won't have you fooling with Alice like this."

Her glance wavered on his; then the eyelids drooped; and he loosened his hold with the consciousness that Alice had come back.

"Why, George," she said, in her natural voice; "I did n't know you were here."

He took her in his arms with a feeling as near to the hysterical as he was capable of, and then instantly devoted himself to dissipating the anxiety which his obvious agitation aroused in her.

As time went on, the appearances of Jenny became more frequent. The fact that this secondary personality had once been in control of the body which it shared with Alice seemed to make its reappearance more easy.

Alice evidently became more susceptible to whatever conditions produced this strange possession. It was clear to Carroll that each time the elfish Jenny succeeded in gaining possession of consciousness,--for so he put it to himself, entirely realizing what a confusing paradox the phrase implied,--she became stronger and better able to a.s.sert herself.

He grew more and more disturbed, but he was also more and more completely baffled. Sometimes the matter presented itself to his professional mind as a medical case of absorbing interest; sometimes it appealed to him as a freak of gigantic irony on the part of fate; and yet again he was swept away by love or by pa.s.sionate pity and sorrow for Alice. He felt that, all unconscious of her peril,--for she knew nothing of her mysterious double,--she was being robbed of her very personality.

Most curious of all was his feeling toward Jenny, who had come in his mind to represent an individual as tangible, as human, and as self-existent as Alice herself. He never allowed himself to encourage her presence, despite the fact that natural curiosity and professional interest might well make him eager to study her peculiarities. He insisted always upon her speedy departure from the body into which she had intruded herself--or so he doggedly insisted with himself--like an evil spirit. He had soon learned that her fear of physical pain was excessive; that, like the child that she often seemed, she could be managed best by dread of punishment; and he for a considerable time had been able to frighten her away by threats of hurting her. As the days went on, however, she began to laugh at his menaces, and he was obliged to resort to trifling physical force. The strong grasp on the wrists had sufficed at first, but it had to be increased as Jenny apparently decided that he would not dare to carry out his threats, and one day he found himself twisting the girl's arm backward in a determined effort to drive off this persistent ghoul-like presence. The idea of injuring Alice came over him so sickeningly that, had not his betrothed at that instant recovered her normal state, he felt that he must have abandoned the field. As it was, he was so unmanned that he could only plead a suddenly remembered professional engagement and get out of the house with the utmost possible speed.

There were other moods which were perhaps even worse. Now and again he was conscious of a strong attraction toward this laughing girl who defied him, looking at him with the eyes of Alice, but br.i.m.m.i.n.g them with merriment; who tempted him with Alice's lips, yet ripened them with warm blood and pouted them so bewitchingly; who walked toward him with the form of his betrothed, but swayed that body with a grace and an allurement of which Alice knew nothing. He felt in his nostrils a quiver of desire, and shame and self-scorn came in its wake. Not only did he feel that he had been false to Alice, but by a painful and disconcerting paradox he felt that he was offering to her a degrading insult in being moved by what at least was her body, as he might have been moved by the sensual attractiveness of a light woman. Jenny was at once so distinct, so far removed from Alice, and yet so identified with her, that his emotions confounded themselves in baffling confusion. It was not only that he could not think logically about the matter, but he seemed also to have lost the directing influence of instinctive feeling.

Jenny represented nothing ethical, nothing spiritual, not even anything moral. He was filled with disgust at himself for being moved by her, yet humanly his masculine nature could not but respond to her spell; and the impossibility of either separating this from his love for Alice or reconciling it with the respect he had for her left him in a state of mental confusion as painful as it seemed hopeless.

He became so troubled that it was inevitable Alice should notice his uneasiness, and he was not in the least surprised when one evening she said to him:--

"George, what is the matter? Are you worrying about me?"

He had prepared himself over and over to answer such a question, but now he only hesitated and stumbled.

"Why--what makes you think anything is the matter?"

"I know there is; and I'm sure it's my fainting-spells."

She had come to speak of her seizures by this term, and George had accepted it, secretly glad that she had no idea worse than that of loss of consciousness.

"Why, of course I am troubled, so long as you are not well, but--"

"You don't like to tell me what is the matter," she went on calmly, but with an earnestness which showed she had thought long on the matter. "I dare say I should n't be any better for knowing, and I can trust you; but I know you are worrying, and it troubles me."