Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Roundabout PapersYou do not believe me; for why should I deceive you? Icame but to propose a matter of business to you. I toldyou I could give you the clue to the mystery of the TwoChildren in Black, whom you met at Baden, and youcame to see me. If I told you you would not believe, me.What for try and convinz you? Ha hey?” And he shookhis hand once, twice, thrice, at me, and glared at meout of his eye in a peculiar way.Of what happened now I protest I cannot give an accurateaccount. It seemed to me that there shot a flamefrom his eye into my brain, whilst behind his glass eyethere was a green illumination as if a candle had beenlit in it. It seemed to me that from his long fingers twoquivering flames issued, sputtering, as it were, whichpenetrated me, and forced me back into one of thechairs—the broken one—out of which I had much difficultyin scrambling, when the strange glamour wasended. It seemed, to me that, when I was so fixed, sotransfixed in the broken chair, the man floated up tothe ceiling, crossed his legs, folded his arms as if he waslying on a sofa, and grinned down at me. When I cameto myself he was down from the ceiling, and, taking meout of the broken cane-bottomed chair, kindly enough—”Bah!” said he, “it is the smell of my medicine. It oftengives the vertigo. I thought you would have had a littlefit. Come into the open air.” And we went down thesteps, and into Shepherd’s Inn, where the setting sunwas just shining on the statue of Shepherd; the laundresseswere traipsing about; the porters were leaningagainst the railings; and the clerks were playing atmarbles, to my inexpressible consolation.“You said you were going to dine at the ‘Gray’s-innCoffee-house,’” he said. I was. I often dine there. Thereis excellent wine at the “Gray’s-inn Coffee-house;” but Ideclare I never said so. I was not astonished at his remark;no more astonished than if I was in a dream.Perhaps I was in a dream. Is life a dream? Are dreamsfacts? Is sleeping being really awake? I don’t know. Itell you I am puzzled. I have read “The Woman in White,”“The Strange Story”—not to mention that story“Stranger than Fiction” in the Cornhill Magazine—thatstory for which three credible witnesses are ready to214