A SHORT STORY.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16712, 30 January 1926, Page 8

A SHORT STORY.

SECOND SELF.

(By William Freeman.)

Perry from the window of his consulting room, saw Tallent coming, and stopped, astonished and pitying, Tallent and lie were friends. They had spent a summer holiday together in Normandy; Christmas had brought them together again at Lady Newfleld's place in Surrey, and when they had last parted, TanenL had been in possession of all that any man of thirtylive has any right to demand of Fate. Tallent's engagement lo Kathleen \eWlield had been only . few days old then, lie adored her, and made ho secret of his adoration. Kathleen was very lovely. Perry, with his. Parley Street reputation, came; into contact with many, beautiful- women. But Kathleen's beauty was in a class by itself.

Now Tallent had the face and the gait of a man bowed under something more than sickness or' lassitude; an utter fatigue of the spirit as well as .ic body. IHifefcHi ' Perry was standing .with his back to the fire when Tallent entered. He muttered some sort of a greeting shook hands, dropped into a chair, and incontinently lurched sideways in a dead faint.

'So-rry to have made a fool of myself," he muttered when he came to. ''Something in my head seemed to snap—'l'raid I've given you a bad lime?"

"Might have been worse," said Perry, soothingly. 'Drink some more of this, and don't try to talk 100 'soon. There's no hurry.;" "I'm going to tell you the whole story," said Tallent presently. "Prom the. lime when I found myself in love Willi Kathleen I was tormented by the conviction that I wasn't the sort of man to appeal to her, or, alternatively, that she'd permanently care for. She's the practical, clear-headed type, and I've a double dose of the artistic temperament. 1 was convinced that if any sort of emergency arose J should fumble the business, and exhibit myself as a coward or an inadequate failure. "Then Providence —or Chance if you prefer the word—brought me into contact with Ras Din-. He was a lean, coffee-coloured Asiatic, and he used to stand on Saturday nights at the corner of Waterloo Road and the New Cut. Me didn't profess to tell fortunes —the police wouldn't have let him do that, in any case—but he 'read characters, males and females,' and gave advice, at threepence and sixpence a time. It was a wretched evening, with a line drizzle falling. }. "'Business bad?' I asked, for though it wasn't yet seven, he was in the act of clearing off. "He nodded, l.was standing under a street lamp, and 1 was suddenly aware that he way studying me with a queer, detached intensity.

" 'You shall be my last customer,' he said. There was no one near enough to overhear. 'I will tell yon your trouble. It is Fear. Fear is your Companion always—fear of failure. . , Open your eyes very wide—so, And now give mo your hands, palm upwards, both of them. There is a woman In the background, of course. You are a man who would struggle against your terrors, but they will be too much for you, unless you are given a second self, a stronger self which will come io your rescue when there is need. . . .

I could create for you that self. " 'Listen I Give mo five pounds and I will send thai heiji. If after it lias served you, you are satisfied, you shall send " 1P '' |V e pounds more, and thai help shall be at your service so long

as I live. Here' —he gave mc a sodden scrap of paper—'is where I, lodge.' "I gave him the Ave pounds. .. Yes, I know it sounds as'if I had succumbed Lo a particularly clumsy confidence trick, but on the spur of the moment I gave it to him. He gripped my hands for a moment longer in his own skinny paws, and then released them, muttered 'Good-night! and moved away And I haven't seen him since.

"I nearly Ras Din when, a week or so later, I went down with you-to the Manor; but I hadn't the courage. Do you remember the day after you came back to town? The weather was extraordinary warm and fine, and there was a full moon, too. It was the moon that decided Kathleen and me to make an expedition to Engieton Woods. The woods arc about twenty miles from the Manor, and we borrowed her ladyship's two-seater, Kathleen driving. We were going to pull up at Wagon Hill, which juts up. like a threatening brown list, above the pines and birches, and climb to see the view.

"We started as dusk was falling and carried out the programme without a hitch until we'd passed through the outskirts of the wood, when the car broke down, and refused to be restarted. Neither of us knew-'enough about it to put the matter right, and at the end of an hour's tinkering, we were both in a state of exhaustion and irritation.

"I determined to walk through the wood into Englcton village, leaving Kathleen in the car—she was dog tired and bothered'with shoes that didn't lit well —and come back with someone from the hotel garage there. "The track was easy to follow —a wide, grey ribbon, with a ragged fringe of shadow on cither side. I walked quickly, preoccupied with thoughts of Kathleen, until presently I came to the Black Copse. "The Copse is a compact clump of foliage, divided only by a straggling footpath, and the shadows, after the open wood, arc so dense that you have to feel your way forward, even in the daytime. And that's just what I was doing when I first became conscious of my second self.

"Can you imagine, Dick, the darkness thinning, and in that paler space, on the right and to the rear, your own duplicate standing? "I stopped dead, staring. It moved away a little, and smiled. And that smile showed me—differences. The face was squarer, stronger, more brutalized, on an altogether different intellectual plane. An expert, efficient caveman, without fear, without doubt in his own capacity. I —l haled him, Dick, instantly and irrevocably. "He made little noises. Tho cracking of a twig, the swish of a fir-branch as lie pushed it aside, quickened breath when I hurried. But I hung on until I got as far as the road. And then, Dick, 1 turned back, with the hotel garage less than two hundred yards away, because my second self ordered me to turn back. He made me understand tiiat tho car could be repaired, with his help, and that he would leave when the Job was finished, and not before.

"I found Kathleen half asleep. She exclaimed,'How quick you have been ! Has anything happened?' And the shadowy self at my side grinned as I spoke. " 'But you've brought no one with you?'

"I realized then that she could not see him —that, as I expected, only I could do that. "'No; ]. think 1 have discovered what's wrong with the car.' "She looked al me dubiously. 'Of course, if you're sure '■

"In ten minutes I'd put the car right. He whispered instructions in my car as

I bent over it. I knew exactly what to do —did it. It seemed incredible that 1 hadn't known ,I'rom the first. Then Second Self disappeared. "Kathleen roused herself as I climbed in and started the engine. 'We'll go straight back to the Manor, won't we'." she said, and shivered. •Never mind to-night about the view and the moon. I'm horribly cold.' She dragged up the rug about the pair of us. 'And you, poor boy, are colder still.' "We began tho return journey. It's queer how little I can recall of it. But 1 don't think we spoke a dozen sentences. Presently we were back in the high road again, with the street lights and the traffic, and after that came the di'Jvo up the hill to the Manor, and to the big house with its cheerful bustle.''

"And when did the second self in tervene a second limeV" asked Perry

"We'll, the second time was at Dar ford, one of those self-centred, selfopinionated little places that sets tho social note for about ten miles round. Kathleen happend to .be paying a call there, and 1 went with her There didn't happen to he a ear available, and we went most of the way by tram "The tramlines end at the foot of a steep hill Five roads meet at'tho spot. We reached the crest of the hill, and something went wrong with ttie brakes. We found ourselves tearing down.the slope at about thirty miles an hour, with tiic p ros P ect oi leaving the rails at any moment. A woman lost her nerve and began screaming and struggling and others followed- " But Kathleen is not the screaming sort. She sat stiff and white, staring straight in front of her. When I first caught sight of the second self he was easing towards the sliding doors at the driver's? end of the car. lie jerked m} sleeve as he passed, and 1 found myself following. We stepped out on to the platform. The driver didn't notice cither of us; he was leaning back paralysed with fear, his eyes wide open and unseeing

"I ignored him. I was aware of second self issuing insructions, and again 1 obeyed. The car steadied, slackened speed, and finally came to a standstill within a foot of a char-a-banc full of yelping trippers. Mechanically I went back to my seat and closed the sliding doors behind mc.

"The general theory was that tlie emergency brakes had applied themselves by some sort of natural miracle. I didn't contradict it. I'd become obsessed with fear. Of him, Dick, the second self, the strong, capable, mockinug parody of my real self. I hated him. That was the queerest, most horrible part about it. Twice he'd come to the rescue. Perhaps it was because ho was so openly triumphantly contemptuous: perhaps, too, becauso I feit in the end he'd subordinate my real self, the self that, as 1 knew now, Kathleen really cared for." "You thought, of course, of appealing to Has lUn?" ■

"Naturally. But he's disappeared from his pitch in the New Cut, and no one knows where lie's gone. And I'd lost the paper with his address on it. I couldn't even remember the name of Hie si reel." "When did you last see Kathleen?" "Three days ago. She thinks I've had some sort of breakdown. She's worried badly." Perry, who had been pacing tho room, came to an abrupt halt. "There's a special reason that brings you here to-night, of course. What is it?" "This, Dick. To-morrow I've promised lo go wiili her to a big scientific exhibition al Kensington. -And last night I'd n dream, an intolerably visible dream, Iha I something would happen, and that he'd be there again."

"Then," said Perry levelly, • "our party will consist of four. For I shall •come too. Meanwhile, when did you last have a meal?"

"I've forgotten. I —l've been feeding rather sketchily lately." "I thought as much." Perry rang the bell. "Consider yourself in the light of a resident patient for the next twenty-four hours'."

The hall was crowded. Tallent and Perry and Kathleen Newfleld, after drifting from exhibit to exhibit, found seats at last in one of the small halls opening out of the main building. There was to be a lecture there on the "Evolution of the Cinema." The three had entered to escape the crowds rather than from any deep interest in the subject.

The lights were extinguished, and that faint thrill which comes with sadden darkness gripped the audience. The Iqcturer was a fluent, youngish man, conscientiously doing his best to evade every word that had a scientific ring. Perry, for the twentieth time, found himself studying Tallcnt's face, athwart which a bar of light fell when ever the curtains parted to admit a late comer. It was the face of a man keyed up to a tension of agony.

The little room grew very close. Perry found himself waiting with increasing impatience for the moment when the lecture would end.

Suddenly the lecturer's fluency was Interrupted. He broke off in the middle of a sentence. A wavering tongue of yellow flame leapt out from the apparatus lie was exhibiting. A woman on the left of Perry screamed. The flame leapt higher. There was a shriek and a blind fight for safety. Perry became separated from the other two in the first rush. He saw Tallent catch up the girl in his arms and with head bent to shield her from the flames and smoke, steer his way towards the door. He saw him reach it, lurch, recover himself, and stumbling again on the very threshhold, disappear. When Perry himself by a succession' of miracles, emerged, cba'tles's and bruised, it was to learn that the girl was uninjured, that Tallent had been taken to the local hospital with a dislocated ankle and lesser injuries, and that Kathleen had followed him there. Perry followed in turn.

In the Ion 1 *?, green-cnamelJed ward he found Tallent, elaborately bandaged and with little more than his eyes visible. .Miss Ncwficld, the nurse told Perry, had just left. They wouldn't let her stay any longer. Tallent broke tho, silence. "Dick, he's gone!" "Gone?" "I'm free! Didn't you see' him? But, of course, you wouldn't. Ho was the only one who died. He'd just time to drag the pair of us out of the inferno, and then " "1 understand,'' said Perry slowly. "Yes, you're free." His thoughts leapt to a. threeUqa paragraph he had seen in the evening paper he had bought on his way to the hospital: "Tragic. Death from Exposure of Indian Fortune-teller.'' it ran, and alluded to a once profitable pitch at the corner of lite Waterloo Road and the New Cut.