Never was hold upon earthly treasure more reluctantly relinquished than was my hope of possessing Velma. Surely, death could not erect so absolute a barrier. There must be a way--some loophole of communication--some chance for a disembodied man to contend with his corporeal rival for a woman’s love.
Slowly, very slowly, dawned the light of a plan. So feeble was the glimmer that it would scarcely have comforted one in less desperate straits, but to me it appeared to offer a possible hope. I set about methodically, with infinite patience, evolving it into something tangible, even though I had but the most indefinite idea of what the outcome might be.
The first suggestion came when Louis had so far recovered that but little trace of the fever remained. One afternoon, as he lay sleeping, the mail-distributor handed a letter to the nurse who happened to be standing beside his cot. She glanced at it, then tucked it under his pillow.
The letter was from Velma, and I was hungry for the contents. I did not then know that I could have read it easily, sealed though it was. In a frenzy of impatience, I exclaimed:
“Wake up, confound it, and read your letter!”
With a start, he opened his eyes. He looked around with a bewildered expression.
“Under your pillow!” I fumed. “Look under your pillow!”
In a dazed manner, he put his hand under the pillow and drew forth the letter.
A few hours later, I heard him commenting on the experience to the nurse.
“Something seemed to wake me up,” he said, “and I had a peculiar impulse to feel under the pillow. It was just as if I knew I would find the letter there.”
The circumstances seemed as remarkable to me as it did to him. It might be coincidence, but I determined to make a further test.
A series of experiments convinced me that I could, to a very slight degree, impress my thoughts and will upon Louis, especially when he was tired or on the borderland of sleep. Occasionally I was able to control the direction of his thoughts as he wrote home to Velma.
On one occasion, he was describing for her a funny little French woman who visited the hospital with a basket that always was filled with cigarettes and candy.
“_Last time_” [he wrote], “_she brought with her a boy whom she called...._”
He paused, with pencil upraised, trying to recall the name.
A moment later, he looked down at the page and stared with astonishment. The words, “_She called him Maurice_,” had been added below the unfinished line.
“I must be going daffy,” he muttered. “I’d swear I didn’t write that.”
Behind him, I stood rubbing my hands in triumph. It was my first successful effort to guide the pencil while his thoughts strayed elsewhere.
Another time, he wrote to Velma:
“_I’ve a strange feeling, lately, that dear old Dick is near. Sometimes, as I wake up, I seem to remember vaguely having seen him in my dreams. It’s as if his features were just fading from view._”
He paused here so long that I made another attempt to take advantage of his abstraction.
By an effort of the will that it is difficult to explain, I guided his hand into the formation of the words:
“_With a jugful of kisses for Winkie, as ever her...._”
Just then, Louis looked down.
“Good God!” he exclaimed, as if he had seen a ghost.
_IV._
“Winkie” was a pet name I had given Velma when we were children together.
Louis always maintained there was no sense in it, and refused to adopt it, though I frequently called her by the name in later years. And of his own volition, Louis would never have mentioned anything so convivial as a jugful of kisses.
So, through the weary months before he was invalided home, I worked. When he left France at the debarkation point, he still walked on crutches, but with the promise of regaining the unassisted use of his leg before very long. Throughout the voyage, I hovered near him, sharing his impatience, his longing for the one we both held dearest.
Over the exquisite pain of the reunion--at which I was present, yet _not_ present--I shall pass briefly. More beautiful than ever, more appealing with her vivid, deep coloring, Velma in the flesh was a vision that stirred my longing into an intense flame.
Louis limped painfully down the gangplank. When they met, she rested her head silently on his shoulder for a moment, then--her eyes brimming with tears--assisted him, with the tender solicitude of a mother, to the machine she had in waiting.
Two months later they were married. I felt the pain of this less deeply than I would have done had it not been essential to my designs.
Whatever vague hope I may have had, however, of vicariously enjoying the delights of love were disappointed. I could not have explained why--I only knew that something barred me from intruding upon the sacred intimacies of their life, as if a defensive wall were interposed. It was baffling, but a very present fact, against which I found it useless to rebel. I have since learned--but no matter. * * *
This had no bearing on my purpose, which hinged upon the ability I was acquiring of influencing Louis’ thoughts and actions--of taking partial control of his faculties.
The occupation into which he drifted, restricted in choice as he was by the stiffened leg, helped me materially. Often, after an interminable shift at the bank, he would plod home at night with brain so weary and benumbed that it was a simple matter to impress my will upon him. Each successful attempt, too, made the next one easier.
The inevitable consequence was that in time Velma should notice his aberrations and betray concern.
“Why did you say to me, when you came in last night, ‘There’s a blue Billy-goat on the stairs--I wish they’d drive him out’?” she demanded one morning.
He looked down shamefacedly at the tablecloth.
“I don’t know what made me say it. I seemed to _want_ to say it, and that was the only way to get it off my mind. I thought you’d take it as a joke.” He shifted his shoulders, as if trying to dislodge an unpleasant burden.
“And was that what made you wear a necktie to bed?” she asked, ironically.
He nodded an affirmative. “I knew it was idiotic--but the idea kept running in my mind. It seemed as if the only way I could go to sleep was to give in to it. I don’t have these freaks unless I’m very tired.”
She said nothing more at the time, but that evening she broached the subject of his looking for an opening in some less sedentary occupation--a subject to which she thereafter constantly recurred.
Then came a development that surprised and excited me with its possibilities.
Exhausted, drained to the last drop of his nerve-force, Louis was returning late one night from the bank, following the usual month-end overtime grind. As he walked from the car-line, I hovered over him, subduing his personality, forcing it under control, with the effort of will I had gradually learned to direct upon him. The process can only be explained in a crude way: It was as if I contended with him, sometimes successfully, for possession of the steering-wheel of the human car that he drove.
Velma was waiting when we arrived. As Louis’ feet sounded on the threshold of their apartment, she opened the door, caught his hands, and drew him inside.
At the action, I felt inexplicably thrilled. It was as if some marvelous change had come over me. And then, as I met her gaze, I knew what that change was.
I held her hands in real flesh-and-blood contact. I was looking at her with Louis’ sight!
_V._
The shock of it cost me what I had gained. Shaken from my poise, I felt the personality I had subdued regain its sway.
The next moment, Louis was staring at Velma in bewilderment. Her eyes were filled with alarm.
“You--you _frightened_ me!” she gasped, withdrawing her hands, which I had all but crushed. “Louis, dear--don’t _ever_ look at me again like that!”
I can imagine the devouring intensity of gaze that had blazed forth from the features in that brief moment when they were mine.
From this time, my plans quickly took form. Two modes of action presented themselves. The first and more alluring, however, I was forced to abandon. It was none other than the wild dream of acquiring exclusive possession of Louis’ body--of forcing him down, out, and into the secondary place I had occupied.
Despite the progress I had made, this proved inexpressibly difficult. For one thing, there seemed an affinity between Louis’ body and his personality, which forced me out when he was moderately rested. This bond I might have weakened, but there were other factors.
One was the growing conviction on his part that something was radically wrong. With a faculty I had discovered of putting myself _en rapport_ with him and reading his thoughts, I knew that at times he feared that he was going insane.
I once had the experience of accompanying him to an alienist and there, like the proverbial fly on the wall, overhearing learned scientific names applied to my efforts. The alienist spoke of “dual personality,” “amnesia,” and “the subconscious mind,” while I laughed in my (shall I say?) ghostly sleeve.