Fantasy literature; Short stories; Supernatural -- Fiction
You will remember that Socrates considers every soul of us to be at
least three persons. He says, in a fine figure, that we are two horses
and 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 his
eyes dark; he is a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and the
follower of true glory; he needs no touch of the whip, but is guided
by word and admonition only. The other is a crooked lumbering animal,
put together anyhow; he has a short thick neck; he is flat-faced and
of a dark colour, with grey eyes of blood-red complexion; the mate of
insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip and
spur." I need not go on to examine with the philosopher the acts of
this pair under the whip and spur of love, because I am not going to
talk about love. For my present purpose I shall suggest another
dichotomy. I will liken the soul itself of man to a house, divided
according to the modern fashion into three flats or apartments. Of
these the second floor is occupied by the landlord, who wishes to be
quiet, and is not, it seems, afraid of fire; the ground-floor by a
business 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 at
Dieppe, Harrogate, or one of the German spas. He is a pleasant-faced
man, as I see him, neatly dressed, brushed, anointed, polished at the
extremities--for his boots vie with his hair in this particular. If he
has 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 one
occasionally to a nephew. That youth, at any rate, likes the cheerful
sound. He is rather fond, too, of monopolising the front of the fire
in company, and thinks more of what he is going to eat, some time
before he eats it, than a man should. But really I can't accuse him of
anything worse than such little weaknesses. The first floor is
occupied by a person of whom very little is known, who goes out
chiefly at night and is hardly ever seen during the day. Tradesmen,
and the crossing-sweeper at the corner, have caught a glimpse on rare
occasions of a white face at the window, the startled face of a queer
creature, who blinks and wrings at his nails with his teeth; who
peers at you, jerks and grins; who seems uncertain what to do; who
sometimes shoots out his hands as if he would drive them through the
glass: altogether a mischancy, unaccountable apparition, probably mad.
Nobody knows how long he has been here; for the landlord found him in
possession when he bought the lease, and the ground-floor, who was
here also, fancies that they came together, but can't be sure. There
he is, anyhow, and without an open scandal one doesn't like to give
him notice. A curious thing about the man is that neither landlord nor
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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