Lore of Proserpine

  LORE OF PROSERPINE

  THE WINDOWS

  You will remember that Socrates considers every soul of us to be atleast three persons. He says, in a fine figure, that we are two horsesand a charioteer. "The right-hand horse is upright and cleanly made;he has a lofty neck and an aquiline nose; his colour is white and hiseyes dark; he is a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and thefollower of true glory; he needs no touch of the whip, but is guidedby word and admonition only. The other is a crooked lumbering animal,put together anyhow; he has a short thick neck; he is flat-faced andof a dark colour, with grey eyes of blood-red complexion; the mate ofinsolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip andspur." I need not go on to examine with the philosopher the acts ofthis pair under the whip and spur of love, because I am not going totalk about love. For my present purpose I shall suggest anotherdichotomy. I will liken the soul itself of man to a house, dividedaccording to the modern fashion into three flats or apartments. Ofthese the second floor is occupied by the landlord, who wishes to bequiet, and is not, it seems, afraid of fire; the ground-floor by abusiness man who would like to marry, but doubts if he can afford it,goes to the city every day, looks in at his club of an afternoon,dines out a good deal, and spends at least a month of the year atDieppe, Harrogate, or one of the German spas. He is a pleasant-facedman, as I see him, neatly dressed, brushed, anointed, polished at theextremities--for his boots vie with his hair in this particular. If hehas a fault it is that of jingling half-crowns in his trouser-pocket;but he works hard for them, pays his rent with them, and gives oneoccasionally to a nephew. That youth, at any rate, likes the cheerfulsound. He is rather fond, too, of monopolising the front of the firein company, and thinks more of what he is going to eat, some timebefore he eats it, than a man should. But really I can't accuse him ofanything worse than such little weaknesses. The first floor isoccupied by a person of whom very little is known, who goes outchiefly at night and is hardly ever seen during the day. Tradesmen,and the crossing-sweeper at the corner, have caught a glimpse on rareoccasions of a white face at the window, the startled face of a queercreature, who blinks and wrings at his nails with his teeth; whopeers at you, jerks and grins; who seems uncertain what to do; whosometimes shoots out his hands as if he would drive them through theglass: altogether a mischancy, unaccountable apparition, probably mad.Nobody knows how long he has been here; for the landlord found him inpossession when he bought the lease, and the ground-floor, who washere also, fancies that they came together, but can't be sure. Therehe is, anyhow, and without an open scandal one doesn't like to givehim notice. A curious thing about the man is that neither landlord norground-floor will admit acquaintance with him to each other, although,if the truth were known, each of them knows something--for each ofthem has been through his door; and I will answer for one of them, atleast, that he has accompanied the Undesirable upon more than onemidnight excursion, and has enjoyed himself enormously. If you couldget either of these two alone in a confidential mood you might learnsome curious particulars of their coy neighbour; and not the leastcurious would be the effect of his changing the glass of the firstfloor windows. It seems that he had that done directly he got into hisrooms, saying that it was impossible to see out of such windows, andthat a man must have light. Where he got his glass from, by whom itwas fitted, I can't tell you, but the effect of it is mostextraordinary. The only summary account I feel able to give of it atthe moment is that it transforms the world upon which it opens. Youlook out upon a new earth, literally that. The trees are not trees atall, but slim grey persons, young men, young women, who stand therequivering with life, like a row of Caryatides--on duty, but tiptoe fora flight, as Keats says. You see life, as it were, rippling up theirlimbs; for though they appear to be clothed, their clothing is of sothin a texture, and clings so closely that they might as well not beclothed at all. They are eyed, they see intensely; they look at eachother so closely that you know what they would be doing. You can seethem love each other as you watch. As for the people in the street,the real men and real women, as we say, I hardly know how to tell youwhat they look like through the first floor's windows. They arechanged of everything but one thing. They occupy the places, fill thestanding-room of our neighbours and friends; there is a somethingabout them all by which you recognise them--a trick of the hand, amotion of the body, a set of the head (God knows what it is, howlittle and how much); but for all that--a new creature! A thing likenothing that lives by bread! Now just look at that policeman at thecorner, for instance; not only is he stark naked--everybody is likethat--but he's perfectly different from the sturdy, good-humoured,red-faced, puzzled man you and I know. He is thin, woefully thin, andhis ears are long and perpetually twitching. He pricks them up at theleast thing; or lays them suddenly back, and we see them trembling.His eyes look all ways and sometimes nothing but the white is to beseen. He has a tail, too, long and leathery, which is always curlingabout to get hold of something. Now it will be the lamp-post, now thesquare railings, now one of those breathing trees; but mostly it isone of his own legs. Yet if you consider him carefully you will agreewith me that his tail is a more expressive remnant of the man you havealways seen there than any other part of him. You may say, and truly,that it is the only recognisable thing left. What do you think of hisfeet and hands? They startled me at first; they are so long andnarrow, so bony and pointed, covered with fine short hair which shineslike satin. That way he has of arching his feet and driving his toesinto the pavement delights me. And see, too, that his hands areundistinguishable from feet: they are just as long and satiny. He isfond of smoothing his face with them; he brings them both up to hisears and works them forward like slow fans. Transformation indeed. Idefy you to recognise him for the same man--except for a faintreminiscence about his tail.

  But all's of a piece. The crossing-sweeper now has shaggy legs whichend in hoofs. His way of looking at young people is veryunpleasant;--and one had always thought him such a kindly old man. Thebutcher's boy--what a torso!--is walking with his arm round the waistof the young lady in Number seven. These are lovers, you see; but it'smostly on her side. He tilts up her chin and gives her a kiss beforehe goes; and she stands looking after him with shining eyes, hopingthat he will turn round before he gets to the corner. But he doesn't.

  Wait, now, wait, wait--who is this lovely, straining, beating creaturedarting here and there about the square, bruising herself, poorbeautiful thing, against the railings? A sylph, a caught fairy?Surely, surely, I know somebody--is it?--It can't be. That carewornlady? God in Heaven, is it she? Enough! Show me no more. I will showyou no more, my dear sir, if it agitates you; but I confess that Ihave come to regard it as one of the most interesting spectacles inLondon. The mere information--to say nothing of the amusement--which Ihave derived from it would fill a volume; but if it did, I may add, Imyself should undoubtedly fill a cell in Holloway. I will thereforespare you what I know about the Doctor's wife, and what happens toLieutenant-Colonel Storter when I see him through these windows--Icould never have believed it unless I had seen it. These things arenot done, I know; but observed in this medium they seem quiteordinary. Lastly--for I can't go through the catalogue--I will speakof the air as I see it from here. My dear sir, the air is alive,thronged with life. Spirits, forms, lovely immaterial diaphanousshapes, are weaving endless patterns over the face of the day. Theyshine like salmon at a weir, or they darken the sky as redwings in theautumn fields; they circle, shrieking as they flash, like swallows atevening; they battle and wrangle together; or they join hands andwhirl about the square in an endless chain. Of their beauty, theirgrace of form and movement, of the shifting filmy colour, hue blendingin hue, of their swiftness, their glancing eyes, their exuberant joyor grief I cannot now speak. Beside them one man may well seem rat,and another goat. Beside them, indeed, you look for nothing else. Andif I go on to hint that the owner of these windows is of them, thoughimprisoned in my house; that he does at times join them in theirstreaming flights beyond the housetops,
and does at times carry withhim his half-bewildered, half-shocked and wholly delighted fellowlodgers, I have come to the end of my tether and your credulity, and,for the time at least, have flowered myself to death. The figure is asgood as Plato's though my Pegasus will never stable in his stall.

  * * * * *

  We may believe ourselves to be two persons, at least, in one, and Ifancy that one at least of them is a constant. So far as my own pairis concerned, either one of them has never grown up at all, or he wasborn whole and in a flash, as the fairies are. Such as he was, at anyrate, when I was ten years old, such he is now when I am heavily morethan ten; and the other of us, very conscious of the flight of timeand of other things with it, is free to confess that he has littlemore hold of his fellow with all this authority behind him than he hadwhen we commenced partnership. He has some, and thinks himself lucky,since the bond between the pair is of such a nature as to involve areal partnership--a partnership full of perplexity to the workingmember of it, the ordinary forensic creature of senses, passions,ambitions, and self-indulgences, the eating, sleeping, vainglorious,assertive male of common experience--and it is not to be denied thatit has been fruitful, nor again that by some freak of fate or fortunethe house has kept a decent front to the world at large. It is stillsolvent, still favourably regarded by the police. It is not, it neverwill be, a mere cage of demons; its walls have not been fretted totransparency; no passing eye can detect revelry behind its decentstucco; no passing ear thrill to cries out of the dark. No, no.Troubles we may have; but we keep up appearances. The heart knowethits own bitterness, and if it be a wise one, keepeth it to itself. Iam not going to be so foolish as to deny divergences of opinion, evenof practice, between the pair in me; but I flatter myself that I havenot allowed them to become a common nuisance, a cause of scandal, astumbling-block, a rock of offence, or anything of that kind. Uneasytenant, wayward partner as my recondite may be, he has had arelationship with my forensic which at times has touched cordiality.Influential he has not been, for his colleague has always had theupper hand and been in the public eye. He may have instigated tomischief, but has not often been allowed to complete his purpose. If Iam a respectable person it is not his fault. He seeks no man'srespect. If he has occasionally lent himself to moral ends, it hasbeen without enthusiasm, for he has no morals of his own, and neverdid have any. On the other hand, he is by nature too indifferent totemporal circumstances to go about to corrupt his partner. His maindesire has ever been to be let alone. Anything which tended to tightenthe bonds which held him to his co-tenant would have been a thing toavoid. He desires liberty, and nothing less will content him. This hewill only have by inaction, by mewing his sempiternal youth in hiscage and on his perch.

  But the tie uniting the pair of us is of such a nature that neithercan be uninfluenced by the other. It is just that you should hear bothsides of the case. My forensic, eating and arguing self has bullied myother into hypocrisy over and over again. He has starved him, deprivedhim of his holidays, ignored him, ridiculed him, snubbed himmercilessly. This is severe treatment, you'll allow, and it's worseeven than it seems. For the unconscionable fellow, owing to thiscoheirship which he pretends to disesteem, has been made privy toexperiences which must not only have been extraordinary to so plainand humdrum a person, but which have been, as I happen to know, ofgreat importance to him, and which--to put the thing at itshighest--have lifted him, dull dog as he is, into regions where thevery dogs have wings. Out upon it! But he has been in and out with hisvictim over leagues of space where not one man in ten thousand hasbeen privileged to fare. He has been familiar all his life withscenes, with folk, with deeds undreamed of by thirty-nine andthree-quarters out of forty millions of people, and by thatquarter-million only known as nursery tales. Not only so, but he hasbeen awakened to the significance of common things, having at hand aninterpreter, and been enabled to be precise where Wordsworth wasvague. He has known Zeus in the thunder, in the lightning beheld theshaking of the dread AEgis. In the river source he has seen thebreasted nymph; he has seen the Oreads stream over the bare hillside.There are men who see these things and don't believe them, others whobelieve but don't see. He has both seen and believed. The painted,figured universe has for him a new shape; whispering winds and fallingrain speak plainly to his understanding. He has seen trees as menwalking. His helot has unlocked the world behind appearance and madehim free of the Spirits of Natural Fact who abide there. If he is notthe debtor of his comrade--and he protests the debt--he should be. Butthe rascal laps it all up, as a cat porridge, without so much as a wagof the tail for Thank-you. Such are the exorbitant overlords in mortalmen, who pass for reputable persons, with a chief seat at feasts.

  Such things, you may say, read incredibly, but, _mutatis mutandis_, Ibelieve them to be common, though unrecorded, experience. I deprecatein advance questions designed to test the accuracy of my eyesight orthe ingenuous habit of my pen. I have already declared that thewindows of my first-floor lodger are of such properties that theyshow you, in Xenophon's phrase, [Greek: ta onta te os onta, kai ta meonta os ouk onta]. Now consider it from his side. If I were to tellthe owner of those windows that I saw the policeman at the corner, ahelmeted, blue-tunicked, chin-scratching, ponderous man, some six footin his boots, how would he take it? Would he not mock me? What, thatrat? Ridiculous! And what on earth could I reply? I tell you, thewhole affair is one of windows, or, sometimes, of personally-conductedtravel; and who is Guide and who Guided, is one of those nicequestions in psychology which perhaps we are not yet ready to handle.Of the many speculations as to the nature of the subliminal Self Ihave never found one to be that he may be a fairy prisoner,occasionally on parole. But I think that not at all unlikely. May notmetempsychosis be a scourge of two worlds? If the soul of my grandammight fitly inhabit a bird, might not a Fairy ruefully inhabit theperson of my grandam? If Fairy Godmothers, perchance, were FairyGrandmothers! I have some evidence to place before the reader whichmay induce him to consider this hypothesis. Who can doubt, at least,that Shelley's was not a case where the not-human was a prisoner inthe human? Who can doubt that of Blake's? And what was the result,forensically? Shelley was treated as a scoundrel and Blake as amadman. Shelley, it was said, broke the moral law, and Blaketranscended common sense; but the first, I reply, was in the guidanceof a being to whom the laws of this world and the accidents of itmeant nothing at all; and to the second a wisdom stood revealed whichto human eyes was foolishness. Windows! In either case there was amartyrdom, and human exasperation appeased by much broken glass. Letus not, however, condemn the wreckers of windows. Who is to judge eventhem? Who is to say even of their harsh and cruel reprisals that theywere not excusable? May not they too have been ridden by some wildspirit within them, which goaded them to their beastly work? But ifthe acceptance of the doctrine of multiple personality is going toinvolve me in the reconsideration of criminal jurisprudence, I mustclose this essay.

  I will close it with the sentence of another philosopher who hasconsidered deeply of these questions. "It is to be observed," he says,"that the laws of human conduct are precisely made for the conduct ofthis world of Men, in which we live, breed, and pay rent. They do notaffect the Kingdom of the Dogs, nor that of the Fishes; by a parity ofreasoning they need not be supposed to obtain in the Kingdom ofHeaven, in which the schoolmen discovered the citizens dwelling innine spheres, apart from the blessed immigrants, whose privileges didnot extend so near to the Heart of the Presence. How many realms theremay be between mankind's and that ultimate object of pure desirecannot at present be known, but it may be affirmed with confidencethat any denizen of any one of them, brought into relation with humanbeings, would act, and reasonably act, in ways which to men might seemharsh and unconscionable, without sanction or convenience. Such abeing might murder one of the ratepayers of London, compound a felony,or enter into a conspiracy to depose the King himself, and, beingdetected, very properly be put under restraint, or visited withchastisement, either deterrent or vin
dictive, or both. But the trueinference from the premises would be that although duress orbanishment from the kingdom might be essential, yet punishment,so-called, ought not to be visited upon the offender. For he or shecould not be _nostri juris_, and that which were abominable to usmight well be reasonable to him or her, and indeed a fulfilment of thelaw of his being. Punishment, therefore, could not be exemplary, sincethe person punished exemplified nothing to Mankind; and if vindictive,then would be shocking, since that which is vindicated, in the mindof the victim either did not exist, or ought not. The Ancient Greekwho withheld from the sacrifice to Showery Zeus because a thunder-boltdestroyed his hayrick, or the Egyptian who manumitted his slavesbecause a God took the life of his eldest son, was neither a pious,nor a reasonable person."

  There is much debatable matter in this considered opinion.