Free THE SUPERNATURAL OMNIBUS by Montague Summers Page B

full of character as of terror--therefore the creature of my fancy, or the invention of my poor stomach? Was it, in short, subjective (to borrow the technical slang of the day) and not the palpable aggression and intrusion of an external agent? That, good friend, as we will both admit, by no means follows. The evil spirit, who enthralled my senses in the shape of that portrait, may have been just as near me, just as energetic, just as malignant, though I saw him not. What means the whole moral code of revealed religion regarding the due keeping of our own bodies, soberness, temperance, etc.? here is an obvious connexion between the material and the invisible; the healthy tone of the system, and its unimpaired energy, may, for aught we can tell, guard us against influences which would otherwise render life itself terrific. The mesmerist and the electro-biologist will fail upon an average with nine patients out of ten--so may the evil spirit. Special conditions of the corporeal system are indispensable to the production of certain spiritual phenomena. The operation succeeds sometimes--sometimes fails--that is all.
    I found afterwards that my would-be sceptical companion had his troubles too. But of these I knew nothing yet. One night, for a wonder, I was sleeping soundly, when I was roused by a step on the lobby outside my room, followed by the loud clang of what turned out to be a large brass candlestick, flung with all his force by poor Tom Ludlow over the banisters, and rattling with a rebound down the second flight of stairs; and almost concurrently with this, Tom burst open my door, and bounced into my room backwards, in a state of extraordinary agitation.
    I had jumped out of bed and clutched him by the arm before I had any distinct idea of my own whereabouts. There we were--in our shirts--standing before the open door--staring through the great old banister opposite, at the lobby window, through which the sickly light of a clouded moon was gleaming.
    "What's the matter, Tom? What's the matter with you? What the devil's the matter with you, Tom?" I demanded, shaking him with nervous impatience.
    He took a long breath before he answered me, and then it was not very coherently.
    "It's nothing, nothing at all--did I speak?--what did I say?--where's the candle, Richard? It's dark; I--I had a candle!"
    "Yes, dark enough," I said; "but what's the matter?--what is it?--why don't you speak, Tom?--have you lost your wits?--what is the matter?"
    "The matter?--oh, it is all over. It must have been a dream--nothing at all but a dream--don't you think so? It could not be anything more than a dream."
    "Of course," said I, feeling uncommonly nervous, "it was a dream."
    "I thought," he said, "there was a man in my room, and--and I jumped out of bed; and--and--where's the candle?"
    "In your room, most likely," I said, "shall I go and bring it?"
    "No; stay here--don't go; it's no matter--don't, I tell you; it was all a dream. Bolt the door, Dick; I'll stay here with you--I feel nervous. So, Dick, like a good fellow, light your candle and open the window--I am in a shocking state."
    I did as he asked me, and robing himself like Granuaile in one of my blankets, he seated himself close beside my bed.
    Everybody knows how contagious is fear of all sorts, but more especially that particular kind of fear under which poor Tom was at that moment labouring. I would not have heard, nor I believe would he have recapitulated, just at that moment, for half the world, the details of the hideous vision which had so unmanned him.
    "Don't mind telling me anything about your nonsensical dream, Tom," said I, affecting contempt, really in a panic; "let us talk about something else; but it is quite plain that this dirty old house disagrees with us both, and hang me if I stay here any longer, to be pestered with indigestion and--and--bad nights, so we may as well look out for lodgings--don't you think so?--at once."
    Tom agreed, and, after an interval,