The Stream of Consciousness
Written by interest of Echo.
"Let me tell you a story, Henry."
They stood in front of the fireplace; two men, though one of them was young and one was very old. The old man was bearded, thin, pale, with hands where the veins showed and the fingers had become misshapen with age. He was smoking a pipe, but very badly, and the young man was tensed and poised to catch it if it fell from his lips. He talked around it with lisps and slurs.
The young man was really little more than a boy, perhaps eighteen, with curious eyes, intelligent eyebrows, a serious face that showed deep concentration as he listened to the old man and kept his eye on the pipe at the same time, as he stepped away from the fire when a spark flew toward his trouser leg, as he wondered what his mother would make for dinner and whether or not the old man would refuse to eat it again, as he thought of his book, far away in his room upstairs, which he wouldn't have a chance to read to-day. He turned his face to look at the old man.
"You remember that once I was a sea captain."
"Yes, Mr. Walton."
The old man was wearing his epaulets on his shoulders and his old sea-coat. The young man looked at him and thought of oceans and the smell of salt. One could not look at him and forget that he was once a sea captain. In the cuffs of his sea-coat, there were traces of seaweed and ocean storms and battles that stained the decks of the ship with blood. In the gold of his epaulets there was the sound of seabirds calling, and of waves crashing, and starfish hiding among the tassels.
The young man thought of these things, and between his other thoughts, he wondered that the old man had reminded him. Then it occurred to him that old men forget; that he would forget and the old man would forget; and he paused to take his glass of wine from the mantelpiece and drink from it.
"Did I ever tell you that I went to the North Pole? I went in between the ice floes and the snow. Have I told you that?"
"No, Mr. Walton."
Yes, he had. The young man turned his eyes to the smoking pipe, which was now hanging precariously from the old man's lips and might fall any moment. It was better to let old men have their recollections. Perhaps they were lonely, because they forget and their friends forget and their wives forget; and then their friends and wives die and they are all there is. Then, they must recollect in order to remember, and reminiscence often so that they do not forget the way the words go together in their minds. The young man believed he understood this, despite his presumption in believing anything, and he said 'No, Mr. Walton' in a soft, encouraging voice, so that the old man would go on.
The old man glanced at him curiously, as though he knew very well what the young man thought, which perhaps he did. Old men forget, but old men know many things, and in the inquisitive tilt of the young man's eyebrows or the encouragement in his voice, perhaps he knew that he was being humoured. It was benevolent humouring, certainly, and he would not object to it, but he knew of it. He did not wish to be underestimated. He knew he was old, and that the epaulets on his shoulders were fraying, and that his sea-coat smelled so of salt that few of the children would dare to listen to him to begin with. The young man, who might have been his grandson but was more likely his sister's grandson, was a braver boy, and a boy who would enjoy the strong smell of the salt almost more than he would enjoy any words he heard. The old man thought of the salt smell and pondered to himself whether it was a better thing to live on than whatever it was his niece would make for dinner. He did not intend to hurt her feelings when he refused to eat, but he had grown too used to salt beef and biscuits, and beautifully prepared, rich dinners gave him indigestion. He could have simply explained this to her, but it counted as indiscreet for him, a subject which should hardly be spoken of but to one's very trusted family physician. His family physician must have died, he thought, and glanced back into the fire.
"Did I tell you about the man I found? I don't believe I did. Did I tell you about him? He was a very fine man, but he was dying of cold and hunger and exhaustion when I found him in the ice floes."
"You haven't told me about him, Mr. Walton. Who was he?"
The old man pushed the pipe back into his mouth with one of his crippled hands, very carefully. He was not used to having his hands misshapen. Not long ago he had been a sea captain, and needed his hands, for climbing rigging and sometimes doing work with his crew--for he had been a midshipman before he was an officer, and an officer before he was a captain, though he had been a captain before he was a midshipman, once, a long time ago, on his first voyage, and then, for many years, sworn off the sea and promised never to look at it, before he found that denying the sea when he loved it was to build a life on lies; then returned to it and at once felt peaceful again--his hands had been important to him, and now he could only push things around with his crumpled fingers. He saw a spark from the fire leap out and flutter in the air for a moment before it went out. Very politely, the young man asked if he might be pardoned for a moment while he poked the fire, and then did so without hearing the answer. The old man did not bother giving one, at any rate.
He was questioning whether it was worth finishing this story. The young man was growing bored, he thought. He wanted to see his pretty cousin and admire her dress and her curls, and this was right for a young man to do. Young men were not meant to be kept in quiet rooms listening to the tales of old men. But he had begun, that was it, he had begun; and he liked this story. It was his oldest story.
The young man rose from the hearth, and looked at the old man's pipe, noted that it was no longer dangling out so far, noted that the old man was no longer looking at him, but away, out the window, and wondered if the story was to be forgotten. In consequence, he mused, was he to be dismissed? Would he be allowed to leave, and go back up to his room where his book was waiting on the bed, centred neatly on the folded-down part of the white bedspread? He always liked things to be neat, and in the morning he had placed the book there, parallel with the edge of the coverlet.
But no, no, the old man was sighing, turning, shifting, pushing at his pipe again with those fingers that were pressed in on each other and paralysed, forever to be drawn in on themselves, as though the old man had been making hand shadows on the wall with his fingers when they were suddenly frozen for eternity by a vengeful spirit. The young man smiled privately at this strange thought, and coughed softly, raising his eyebrows again and taking the stem of his glass between his fingers, said,--
"Mr. Walton?"
"Yes?"
"You were telling me about the man you rescued in the North Pole."
"Yes. Yes, he was a nobleman. He told me so himself, but you will learn, Henry, that a man can tell that by himself, by another man's stature and his manner; so I did. He was dying when I found him, but I made him well again."
The old man put pride into his voice when he spoke, signifying that it was truly he who had brought his nobleman back to life; he who had done everything; he to whom the thanks were due. Perhaps, the young man thought, he had every right to this pride. Though he was not the same now, though he was old and broken and crumpled, once, perhaps, he had been a fine man, too, and strong, and tall, and fully able to save another man's life on his own, with nothing more than the talents he had when he was young.
In part unintentionally, the young man was interested in the old man's story. He even felt some pride in his thoughts, for the old man, who was perhaps his grandfather, perhaps his granduncle, had saved a man, and this was something to be proud of. The young man smiled less privately but also less condescendingly, and nodded his head politely.
"And when you made him well again, Mr. Walton?"
"He told me his story. He told me that he was chasing a monster, that he had been, from Italy to the tip of the world, the Pole."
"A monster?"
"An evil creature that he created, thinking his work admirable. He believed he was doing a thing which, while perhaps not strictly good, was certainly not evil. Be careful you do not do anything like that, Henry."
The young man laughed in his mind, handsomely and carelessly. Though he was interested, still he found it an amusing idea that he might someday create something evil while believing it good. He wanted to become a doctor; would go to medical school in a few years; and doctors, he thought, did good that couldn't be evil. They cured men, and if by chance he cured a man who lived to become a tyrant and take over the world--he would not have created the man, and the fault would not rest with him who cured the man; it would be on the man who had chosen to become evil. It was a different matter.
At any rate, he did not want to create anything at all, in truth. He wanted to live a quiet life as a doctor and someday retire to a house in the country where there were many trees, and build houses in them for his children, because when he was a child, there were no trees on his father's land and houses could not be built in air, whereas his closest friend, John, had uncountable trees and always talked of how wonderful it was. The young man was not jealous of his friend, but he wished to give his children trees.
Still, he laughed in his mind and wondered at the old man who reprimanded him for something he would never do. At the same time, he wondered what kind of monster the old man's nobleman had created; and then again, at the same time, felt a wave of pity for the man, who had nearly died from his creation, who from the old man's voice had been tortured and yet was still able to show that he was a nobleman. How horrible it would be to chase something until one died, and never reach it! To put one's entire life towards finding something evil, because one was responsible for it!
And all this the young man thought, and he was not even certain that the old man was telling him the truth. He let out a soft sigh and sipped from his wine glass, still watching the old man from his curious eyes, wanting to know what was next to come and unsure of whether or not to prompt again, wanting to leave and find his book, wanting to hear the story and know he could laugh it off as a--a 'yarn', that was what seamen called their stories--a 'yarn', wanting to know that it was true.
The old man stood silently and smoked his pipe for several long moments, and then said, in a quiet voice that the young man had to put his head forward to hear,--
"He made a monster, and he followed it; I found him and I saved him; I loved him as one loves that which one saves; and then he died, and his monster returned to see him dead. That is all."
"Mr. Walton, I--"
"That is all! There might be more, but it is mine! Never make evil, Henry, or it will kill you!"
The old man had shouted. His pipe had fallen from his lips and the young man was kneeling on the hearth before him, holding it. Though he was listening, he was watching; he had seen it fall, and he had caught it as he had been tensed to do from the moment they began speaking. The young man was shaken, and his wine glass was broken, and the red wine seeped into the beautiful rug which his father had brought home from Turkey several years ago, telling his family stories of huge, loud markets full of colour and talk, of dealers who tried to cheat the customers and dealers who gave things away when they took a fancy to the face of the customer, of temples and incense and men calling out into the hot, coloured air their items for sale and their good prices, all in a thousand different voices and tongues, until a man struggled to find what it was he wanted and not buy everything in sight, because everything in sight was wonderful, strange, or beautiful; into this rug, the red wine seeped and promised to leave a stain. The young man felt a fluttering in his chest from his surprise, where his heart was racing because he had dropped his glass in order to catch the old man's pipe.
The old man was standing and looking down, his face half angry, half deeply pitying, for of course the young man was failing to understand. Evil killed men, as it had killed his fine nobleman and taken him away, when the old man wanted to learn more of him and be his friend. It is a terrible thing to lose a friend, but it is a worse thing to lose someone who might have been a friend, for one will never know, now, the beautiful things about him and the things which would have interested one, made one laugh, made one weep, made him a friend. The old man trembled and his eyes, which were confused because they didn't know whether they were meant to crinkle in a furious glare or to close over tears, filled with concern over the thing which was most present.
"Thank you, Henry. Might I have my pipe?"
"Yes, Mr. Walton. A moment--"
The young man got to his feet and gave the old man his pipe, refilling it with the tobacco offered him and then relighting it. There was glass in his knees, he felt, hurting very presently and bothering him, making him want to writhe and pull it out convulsively--but he could not, for he was putting together the pipe for the old man, and it would have been childish. He would see to it in a moment. He would ring for one of the servants. In the twilight of the room, where the fire was sizzling because some of the wine had spilt in it, he made out the old man's expression, and saw that he was sorry for shouting.
The young man put out his hand and rested it for a moment on the old man's arm, though he knew this to be impolite and improper of him, trying to give a sort of comfort that came from understanding, though perhaps the old man did not believe he could understand. He smiled shyly, and said,--
"It is all right, Mr. Walton. Would you like me to--"
"Master Henry," said Poole, appearing at the door, "dinner is served in the large dining room."
"Oh, thank you. I wonder--might you ask Michaels to come in and clean up here? I dropped my glass by mistake."
"Certainly, sir."
The young man turned back to the old man, smiling again. The arrival of dinnertime made things much easier, because now they would go into a large room where there were many other people, and need not talk to each other or try to sort out a polite new conversation from this outburst of a moment ago. Now that it was dinnertime, the old man might engage himself with Lucy and not speak to the young man again; perhaps, truly, not again until he left, when he would say goodbye formally and that would be all. Somehow, however, the young man did not think it would be that way, but that did not particularly matter. What mattered was that the awkwardness now could be over, if they went in to dinner.
They did.
All throughout the meal, though, the young man found himself thinking of the old man, of being told not to make evil believing that it was good or at least not evil, of being told that evil would kill its maker; and he thought of the old man's eyes when he spoke of his nobleman; and all throughout dinner, the glass in his knees pricked the young man like guilt.
~~~
Edward Hyde stood in the middle of Henry Jekyll's laboratory, feeling the cold of the place, for it was never warmed, Dr. Jekyll being a man who didn't mind the cold. He didn't mind the cold either. He was Out. He was free. He was evil, and he was free, and he was evil; and Dr. Jekyll was a foolish, foolish man, and he was Out.
And he remembered a warning someone had given Dr. Jekyll years and years ago, and he stood in the middle of the room and he laughed until his head spun.
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