I walked back through the village with a sense of enhanced life. There was now something to which I looked forward.
I visited my new patient three times during the next week. Finding her physical condition very little improved, I decided that some electric treatment would be beneficial, and as I had a portable apparatus, I was able to give the applications in her own room. A long course of this treatment involved many visits, which were the occasion for the most enchanting talks I have ever known. I look back on these summer weeks as the happiest of my life. Day after day I drifted on a stream of delight. She was a magical companion, to me a real Pentecost. Her quicksilver sympathy, the lightning gaiety of her response, her dancing voice, and a way she had of appreciatively echoing one’s last words: I suppose it was all these qualities that made me for the first time in my life feel so delightfully articulate. There can never have been a more receptive and therefore stimulating mind. It was as though she understood my thoughts almost before I had decided to put them into words.
There seemed no limitations to her understanding and sympathy. Her supple mind rejected nothing, and her iridescent gaiety was like running water in sunshine, continually flinging off a lovely spray of laughter. How, I wondered, had she found time to read so widely, so richly, to store her astonishing verbal memory? Of herself she spoke very little in any autobiographical way. After weeks of frequent conversation I knew nothing of the events of her life, of her dead parents or of her friends; but almost from the very beginning she showed a tendency to discuss herself psychologically, to expatiate on her character, or rather, on what – to my amusement – she called her lack of character.
I suppose it was about six weeks after my first visit that our conversation took a turn which for me sounded the first faint note of disquiet.
In her usual rather unconcerned voice she said:
“It must be fun to be someone very definite and positive. You can’t think how uncomfortable it is to have no personality.”
I laughed. “Are you suggesting that you have none? I know of no one of whose personality one is more quickly and lastingly aware.”
I’m not fishing,” she said, with the slightest tinge of impatience. “I don’t mean that I’m too insignificant and colourless to make any impression on other people. I know I’m quite nice to look at; I’m not stupid, and I’ve plenty of responsiveness. I don’t know how to explain, but what I mean is that there is no real permanent essential Me. Of course, I’ve got plenty of facets, and your presence conjures up a certain
“But, if I may say so,” I broke in, “it is that very fluidity of your mind that makes it such a treat to talk to you. We were discussing Keats’s letters the other day. Do you remember where he writes: ‘The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing – to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts – not a select party’? I think—”
“No, no. I don’t mean that sort of thing at all. You entirely misunderstand me!” she interrupted, and something in her face made me realize the subject was serious to her and that the characteristic lightness of her manner hid real concern.
“I’m not worrying about my qualifications as a companion,” she continued. “You see the difficulty is that I can’t talk about myself in a serious voice. I always sound so flippant. But my flippancy is a reflex. I should like to be able to talk to you about myself really melodramatically.”
“Please do,” I urged. “I’m feeling quite serious.”
“I don’t expect I’ll be able to, but let me try,” she said. “I don’t want to be a bore, but I assure you it really is nightmarish – this sense of having no identity. You remember the very first time I saw you, I told you that I couldn’t bear to be alone?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that is because other people seem to a certain extent to hold me together – to, as it were, frame me by, I suppose, their conceptions of me. But often when I’m quite by myself I feel like – like water released from a broken bowl – something just spilling away – to be reabsorbed back into nothingness. It’s almost like a temporary dissolution – a lapsing away. Yes, lapsing is the word – lapsing back into nothingness.”
“I don’t think there is anything so very unusual about your sensations,” I said, I fear rather pompously. “I think we all of us at times feel something very like what you describe. It’s a mild sort of neurosis, and it’s in the nature of every neurosis to give the sufferer a sense of singularity.”
“I daresay,” she said, and went on as though making up her mind to take a fence. “But then, you see, I have twice had a strangely disturbing experience which has made those sensations I try to describe become a real obsession.”
“Experiences?” I echoed. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll tell you,” she said. “Don’t expect a ghost story. I should hate to raise false hopes. It will be difficult to describe these experiences, and I don’t expect you’ll believe me, but they are true. Anyhow, don’t interrupt. Just let me Ancient-Mariner you. The first time was when I was very young – scarcely grown up. Late one evening I was resting on my bed. I was very tired and consequently especially depressed by that curiously disagreeable feeling I have tried to describe – the ‘no-identity’ feeling. Like any other trouble it is apt to be worse when I am over- tired.
“It was dark and my window, against which the jasmine tapped, was on the ground floor. I slept downstairs then. Suddenly I had that sense we all know of being impelled to look in a certain direction. I turned and saw a dim face pressed against the window – peering through at me. I wasn’t exactly frightened – just rather detachedly aware that my heart was thumping. Just then the moon slipped free from a fleece of clouds, so that I could see the face quite clearly. It was my own face!”
“What?” I broke in.
“Yes, Dr Stone. Of that there was no doubt. One knows one’s own face. My face was gazing at me – very intently, very wistfully – and, as I stared, whatever it was that was outside shook its head very sadly. I hoped I was dreaming. I shut my eyes, but I couldn’t keep them shut, and when I looked up again it was still there, and now it wrung its hands, oh! so mournfully.
“As I have said, it was my own face I saw through the window, but did I – could I – myself look so miserable? I wanted to see myself, my own self – so I got out of bed. I found my knees were trembling and I swayed as I went up to my looking-glass.
“I don’t know how to make you believe what I am going to tell you. Don’t laugh. It was the most awful shock. I found I could not see myself in the glass. I stared, and stared. I shook the glass. But my reflection was not there. The pictures on the wall, the corner of the cupboard, the birdcage, all the familiar objects were reflected as usual, but I myself was not there.
“It was still outside, and now it looked as though it were trying to get in – to get back, but could not. Terror came over me, and a feeling of faintness against which I desperately struggled. Dizzily I left my room, dragged myself upstairs and went up to the Chippendale mirror in the drawing room. The wide shining sheet of glass was hopelessly empty of what I sought. What had happened to me that I had no reflection? Surely the thing must be a delusion. Was I insane? I can’t describe the state of mind in which I returned to my own room. I scarcely dared open the door. To my infinite relief the face was no longer looking through the window. I strode to the looking- glass. My reflection was there. Except that I looked strangely wan, my face was as usual.” She paused. “That was the first time it happened. Shall I tell you about the second time, or do you wish to certify me at once?”
“Go on,” I said.
“It was about three years later. I was laid up in bed with a sprained ankle. I had been in a sort of apathy all day and towards evening was assailed by that painful sense of the lack of identity that I have tried to describe. There seemed no string threading the beads of mere moods. I felt without any real opinion, emotion, or impulse, as though I were an actor thrust on to a stage without having been given a single word of his part. Just a sense of complete vacuum. Neither my mind nor my hands were engaged. I was not even consciously looking in any particular direction. Suddenly I found myself rigid and staring. There was a sofa in my room, and on it a form was lying just as I lay on my bed. The form was mine, and again my own face gazed at me – oh! so mournfully. As before, that awful sense of faintness – of ebbing away – came over me, but I just managed to remain conscious. It still lay on the sofa. The face gazed at me with an unforgettable look of sadness. It looked as though it wanted to
