III
James G. Ward was forty years of age, a successful business
man, and very unhappy. For forty years he had vainly tried to
solve a problem that was really himself and that with
increasing years became more and more a woeful affliction. In
himself he was two men, and, chronologically speaking, these
men were several thousand years or so apart. He had studied the
question of dual personality probably more profoundly than any
half dozen of the leading specialists in that intricate and
mysterious psychological field. In himself he was a different
case from any that had been recorded. Even the most fanciful
flights of the fiction-writers had not quite hit upon him. He
was not a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, nor was he like the
unfortunate young man in Kipling's "Greatest Story in the
World." His two personalities were so mixed that they were
practically aware of themselves and of each other all the time.
His other self he had located as a savage and a barbarian
living under the primitive conditions of several thousand years
before. But which self was he, and which was the other, he
could never tell. For he was both selves, and both selves all
the time. Very rarely indeed did it happen that one self did
not know what the other was doing. Another thing was that he
had no visions nor memories of the past in which that early
self had lived. That early self lived in the present; but while
it lived in the present, it was under the compulsion to live
the way of life that must have been in that distant past.
In his childhood he had been a problem to his father and
mother, and to the family doctors, though never had they come
within a thousand miles of hitting upon the clue to his
erratic, conduct. Thus, they could not understand his excessive
somnolence in the forenoon, nor his excessive activity at
night. When they found him wandering along the hallways at
night, or climbing over giddy roofs, or running in the hills,
they decided he was a somnambulist. In reality he was wide-eyed
awake and merely under the nightroaming compulsion of his early
self. Questioned by an obtuse medico, he once told the truth
and suffered the ignominy of having the revelation
contemptuously labeled and dismissed as "dreams."
The point was, that as twilight and evening came on he became
wakeful. The four walls of a room were an irk and a restraint.
He heard a thousand voices whispering to him through the
darkness. The night called to him, for he was, for that period
of the twenty-four hours, essentially a night-prowler. But
nobody understood, and never again did he attempt to explain.
They classified him as a sleep-walker and took precautions
accordingly--precautions that very often were futile. As his
childhood advanced, he grew more cunning, so that the major
portion of all his nights were spent in the open at realizing
his other self. As a result, he slept in the forenoons. Morning
studies and schools were impossible, and it was discovered that
only in the afternoons, under private teachers, could he be
taught anything. Thus was his modern self educated and
developed.
But a problem, as a child, he ever remained. He was known as a
little demon, of insensate cruelty and viciousness. The family
medicos privately adjudged him a mental monstrosity and
degenerate. Such few boy companions as he had, hailed him as a
wonder, though they were all afraid of him. He could outclimb,
outswim, outrun, outdevil any of them; while none dared fight
with him. He was too terribly strong, madly furious.
When nine years of age he ran away to the hills, where he
flourished, night-prowling, for seven weeks before he was
discovered and brought home. The marvel was how he had managed
to subsist and keep in condition during that time. They did not
know, and he never told them, of the rabbits he had killed, of
the quail, young and old, he had captured and devoured, of the
farmers' chicken-roosts he had raided, nor of the cave-lair he
had made and carpeted with dry leaves and grasses and in which
he had slept in warmth and comfort through the forenoons of
many days.
At college he was notorious for his sleepiness and stupidity
during the morning lectures and for his brilliance in the
afternoon. By collateral reading and by borrowing the notebook
of his fellow students he managed to scrape through the
detestable morning courses, while his afternoon courses were
triumphs. In football he proved a giant and a terror, and, in
almost every form of track athletics, save for strange
Berserker rages that were sometimes displayed, he could be
depended upon to win. But his fellows were afraid to box with
him, and he signalized his last wrestling bout by sinking his
teeth into the shoulder of his opponent.
After college, his father, in despair, sent him among the
cow-punchers of a Wyoming ranch. Three months later the doughty
cowmen confessed he was too much for them and telegraphed his
father to come and take the wild man away. Also, when the
father arrived to take him away, the cowmen allowed that they
would vastly prefer chumming with howling cannibals, gibbering
lunatics, cavorting gorillas, grizzly bears, and man-eating
tigers than with this particular Young college product with
hair parted in the middle.
There was one exception to the lack of memory of the life of
his early self, and that was language. By some quirk of
atavism, a certain portion of that early self's language had
come down to him as a racial memory. In moments of happiness,
exaltation, or battle, he was prone to burst out in wild
barbaric songs or chants. It was by this means that he located
in time and space that strayed half of him who should have been
dead and dust for thousands of years. He sang, once, and
deliberately, several of the ancient chants in the presence of
Professor Wertz, who gave courses in old Saxon and who was a
philogist of repute and passion. At the first one, the
professor pricked up his ears and demanded to know what mongrel
tongue or hog-German it was. When the second chant was
rendered, the professor was highly excited. James Ward then
concluded the performance by giving a song that always
irresistibly rushed to his lips when he was engaged in fierce
struggling or fighting. Then it was that Professor Wertz
proclaimed it no hog-German, but early German, or early Teuton,
of a date that must far precede anything that had ever been
discovered and handed down by the scholars. So early was it
that it was beyond him; yet it was filled with haunting
reminiscences of word-forms he knew and which his trained
intuition told him were true and real. He demanded the source
of the songs, and asked to borrow the precious book that
contained them. Also, he demanded to know why young Ward had
always posed as being profoundly ignorant of the German
language. And Ward could neither explain his ignorance nor lend
the book. Whereupon, after pleadings and entreaties that
extended through weeks, Professor Wert took a dislike to the
young man, believed him a liar, and classified him as a man of
monstrous selfishness for not giving him a glimpse of this
wonderful screed that was older than the oldest any philologist
had ever known or dreamed.
But little good did it do this much-mixed young man to know
that half of him was late American and the other half early
Teuton. Nevertheless, the late American in him was no weakling,
and he (if he were a he and had a shred of existence outside of
these two) compelled an adjustment or compromise between his
one self that was a nightprowling savage that kept his other
self sleepy of mornings, and that other self that was cultured
and refined and that wanted to be normal and live and love and
prosecute business like other people. The afternoons and early
evenings he gave to the one, the nights to the other; the
forenoons and parts of the nights were devoted to sleep for the
twain. But in the mornings he slept in bed like a civilized
man. In the night time he slept like a wild animal, as he had
slept Dave Slotter stepped on him in the woods.
Persuading his father to advance the capital, he went into
business and keen and successful business he made of it,
devoting his afternoons whole-souled to it, while his partner
devoted the mornings. The early evenings he spent socially,
but, as the hour grew to nine or ten, an irresistible
restlessness overcame him and he disappeared from the haunts of
men until the next afternoon. Friends and acquaintances thought
that he spent much of his time in sport. And they were right,
though they never would have dreamed of the nature of the
sport, even if they had seen him running coyotes in
night-chases over the hills of Mill Valley. Neither were the
schooner captains believed when they reported seeing, on cold
winter mornings, a man swimming in the tide-rips of Raccoon
Straits or in the swift currents between Goat island and Angel
Island miles from shore.
In the bungalow at Mill Valley he lived alone, save for Lee
Sing, the Chinese cook and factotum, who knew much about the
strangeness of his master, who was paid well for saying
nothing, and who never did say anything. After the satisfaction
of his nights, a morning's sleep, and a breakfast of Lee
Sing's, James Ward crossed the bay to San Francisco on a midday
ferryboat and went to the club and on to his office, as normal
and conventional a man of business as could be found in the
city. But as the evening lengthened, the night called to him.
There came a quickening of all his perceptions and a
restlessness. His hearing was suddenly acute; the myriad
night-noises told him a luring and familiar story; and, if
alone, he would begin to pace up and down the narrow room like
any caged animal from the wild.
Once, he ventured to fall in love. He never permitted himself
that diversion again. He was afraid. And for many a day the
young lady, scared at least out of a portion of her young
ladyhood, bore on her arms and shoulders and wrists divers
black-and-blue bruises--tokens of caresses which he had
bestowed in all fond gentleness but too late at night. There
was the mistake. Had he ventured love-making in the afternoon,
all would have been well, for it would have been as the quiet
gentleman that he would have made love--but at night it was the
uncouth, wife-stealing savage of the dark German forests. Out
of his wisdom, he decided that afternoon love-making could be
prosecuted successfully; but out of the same wisdom he was
convinced that marriage as would prove a ghastly failure. He
found it appalling to imagine being married and encountering
his wife after dark.
So he had eschewed all love-making, regulated his dual life,
cleaned up a million in business, fought shy of match-making
mamas and bright-eyed and eager young ladies of various ages,
met Lilian Gersdale and made it a rigid observance never to see
her later than eight o'clock in the evening, run of nights
after his coyotes, and slept in forest lairs--and through it
all had kept his secret safe save Lee Sing . . . and now, Dave
Slotter. It was the latter's discovery of both his selves that
frightened him. In spite of the counter fright he had given the
burglar, the latter might talk. And even if he did not, sooner
or later he would be found out by some one else.
Thus it was that James Ward made a fresh and heroic effort to
control the Teutonic barbarian that was half of him. So well
did he make it a point to see Lilian in the afternoons, that
the time came when she accepted him for better or worse, and
when he prayed privily and fervently that it was not for worse.
During this period no prize-fighter ever trained more harshly
and faithfully for a contest than he trained to subdue the wild
savage in him. Among other things, he strove to exhaust himself
during the day, so that sleep would render him deaf to the call
of the night. He took a vacation from the office and went on
long hunting trips, following the deer through the most
inaccessible and rugged country he could find--and always in
the daytime. Night found him indoors and tired. At home he
installed a score of exercise machines, and where other men
might go through a particular movement ten times, he went
hundreds. Also, as a compromise, he built a sleeping porch on
the second story. Here he at least breathed the blessed night
air. Double screens prevented him from escaping into the woods,
and each night Lee Sing locked him in and each morning let him
out.
The time came, in the month of August, when he engaged
additional servants to assist Lee Sing and dared a house party
in his Mill Valley bungalow. Lilian, her mother and brother,
and half a dozen mutual friends, were the guests. For two days
and nights all went well. And on the third night, playing
bridge till eleven o'clock, he had reason to be proud of
himself. His restlessness fully hid, but as luck would have it,
Lilian Gersdale was his opponent on his right. She was a frail
delicate flower of a woman, and in his night-mood her very
frailty incensed him. Not that he loved her less, but that he
felt almost irresistibly impelled to reach out and paw and maul
her. Especially was this true when she was engaged in playing a
winning hand against him.
He had one of the deer-hounds brought in and, when it seemed he
must fly to pieces with the tension, a caressing hand laid on
the animal brought him relief. These contacts with the hairy
coat gave him instant easement and enabled him to play out the
evening. Nor did anyone guess the while terrible struggle their
host was making, the while he laughed so carelessly and played
so keenly and deliberately.
When they separated for the night, he saw to it that he parted
from Lilian in the presence or the others. Once on his sleeping
porch and safely locked in, he doubled and tripled and even
quadrupled his exercises until, exhausted, he lay down on the
couch to woo sleep and to ponder two problems that especially
troubled him. One was this matter of exercise. It was a
paradox. The more he exercised in this excessive fashion, the
stronger he became. While it was true that he thus quite tired
out his night-running Teutonic self, it seemed that he was
merely setting back the fatal day when his strength would be
too much for him and overpower him, and then it would be a
strength more terrible than he had yet known. The other problem
was that of his marriage and of the stratagems he must employ
in order to avoid his wife after dark. And thus, fruitlessly
pondering, he fell asleep.
Now, where the huge grizzly bear came from that night was long
a mystery, while the people of the Springs Brothers' Circus,
showing at Sausalito, searched long and vainly for "Big Ben,
the Biggest Grizzly in Captivity." But Big Ben escaped, and,
out of the mazes of half a thousand bungalows and country
estates, selected the grounds of James J. Ward for visitation.
The self first Mr. Ward knew was when he found him on his feet,
quivering and tense, a surge of battle in his breast and on his
lips the old war-chant. From without came a wild baying and
bellowing of the hounds. And sharp as a knife-thrust through
the pandemonium came the agony of a stricken dog--his dog, he
knew.
Not stopping for slippers, pajama-clad, he burst through the
door Lee Sing had so carefully locked, and sped down the stairs
and out into the night. As his naked feet struck the graveled
driveway, he stopped abruptly, reached under the steps to a
hiding-place he knew well, and pulled forth a huge knotty
club--his old companion on many a mad night adventure on the
hills. The frantic hullabaloo of the dogs was coming nearer,
and, swinging the club, he sprang straight into the thickets to
meet it.
The aroused household assembled on the wide veranda. Somebody
turned on the electric lights, but they could see nothing but
one another's frightened faces. Beyond the brightly illuminated
driveway the trees formed a wall of impenetrable blackness. Yet
somewhere in that blackness a terrible struggle was going on.
There was an infernal outcry of animals, a great snarling and
growling, the sound of blows being struck and a smashing and
crashing of underbrush by heavy bodies.
The tide of battle swept out from among the trees and upon the
driveway just beneath the onlookers. Then they saw. Mrs.
Gersdale cried out and clung fainting to her son. Lilian,
clutching the railing so spasmodically that a bruising hurt was
left in her finger-ends for days, gazed horror-stricken at a
yellow-haired, wild-eyed giant whom she recognized as the man
who was to be her husband. He was swinging a great club, and
fighting furiously and calmly with a shaggy monster that was
bigger than any bear she had ever seen. One rip of the beast's
claws had dragged away Ward's pajama-coat and streaked his
flesh with blood.
While most of Lilian Gersdale's fright was for the man beloved,
there was a large portion of it due to the man himself. Never
had she dreamed so formidable and magnificent a savage lurked
under the starched shirt and conventional garb of her
betrothed. And never had she had any conception of how a man
battled. Such a battle was certainly not modern; nor was she
there beholding a modern man, though she did not know it. For
this was not Mr. James J. Ward, the San Francisco business man,
but one, unnamed and unknown, a crude, rude savage creature
who, by some freak of chance, lived again after thrice a
thousand years.
The hounds, ever maintaining their mad uproar, circled about
the fight, or dashed in and out, distracting the bear. When the
animal turned to meet such flanking assaults, the man leaped in
and the club came down. Angered afresh by every such blow, the
bear would rush, and the man, leaping and skipping, avoiding
the dogs, went backwards or circled to one side or the other.
Whereupon the dogs, taking advantage of the opening, would
again spring in and draw the animal's wrath to them.
The end came suddenly. Whirling, the grizzly caught a hound
with a wide sweeping cuff that sent the brute, its ribs caved
in and its back broken, hurtling twenty feet. Then the human
brute went mad. A foaming rage flecked the lips that parted
with a wild inarticulate cry, as it sprang in, swung the club
mightily in both hands, and brought it down full on the head of
the uprearing grizzly. Not even the skull of a grizzly could
withstand the crushing force of such a blow, and the animal
went down to meet the worrying of the hounds. And through their
scurrying leaped the man, squarely upon the body, where, in the
white electric light, resting on his club, he chanted a triumph
in an unknown tongue--a song so ancient that Professor Wertz
would have given ten years of his life for it.
His guests rushed to possess him and acclaim him, but James
Ward, suddenly looking out of the eyes of the early Teuton, saw
the fair frail Twentieth Century girl he loved, and felt
something snap in his brain. He staggered weakly toward her,
dropped the club, and nearly fell. Something had gone wrong
with him. Inside his brain was an intolerable agony. It seemed
as if the soul of him were flying asunder. Following the
excited gaze of the others, he glanced back and saw the carcass
of the bear. The sight filled him with fear. He uttered a cry
and would have fled, had they not restrained him and led him
into the bungalow.
. . . . . .
James J. Ward is still at the head of the firm of Ward, Knowles
& Co. But he no longer lives in the country; nor does he run of
nights after the coyotes under the moon. The early Teuton in
him died the night of the Mill Valley fight with the bear.
James J. Ward is now wholly James J. Ward, and he shares no
part of his being with any vagabond anachronism from the
younger world. And so wholly is James J. Ward modern, that he
knows in all its bitter fullness the curse of civilized fear.
He is now afraid of the dark, and night in the forest is to him
a thing of abysmal terror. His city house is of the spick and
span order, and he evinces a great interest in burglarproof
devices. His home is a tangle of electric wires, and after
bed-time a guest can scarcely breathe without setting off an
alarm. Also, he had invented a combination keyless door-lock
that travelers may carry in their vest pockets and apply
immediately and successfully under all circumstances. But his
wife does not deem him a coward. She knows better. And, like
any hero, he is content to rest on his laurels. His bravery is
never questioned by those friends who are aware of the Mill
Valley episode.
