#im a chemist (like him) just the other day i found out he was also agnostic like me

[nexus-nebulae]

it's kinda funny how similar to my grandpa i am considering my birthday was three days after his

[weirdness-on-the-roof]

Shitty episode 49 notes

so this time its mostly dialogue. I’m not a fast typer so i definitely missed stuff and my spelling is atrocious, but I did use the break and until the live stream ended to fill in the gaps I could. This is pre and post break notes. Obvious major spoilers, lots of weird details i wrote down that matt said b/c we never know when something is gonna be important or come back/ be relevant.

Also I love Beau with all my heart.

Have fun ya nerds :) 

Episode 49 Notes:

Chair has replaced uktatoa for echoes

Matts wording in the summary are so careful

Short brown hair, green and black robes necklace with circular gems lots of rings, middle aged/ young for an elf

Nott knows a place--- river bank spot

They were noted by the locals

Pretty river with shaded trees

Beau checks to see if followed 21 perception, people aren’t keeping watch but the righteous brand are gathering at the southern fields where the operatives were coming from

“What the fuck”-Jester

thanks Laura for voicing not only Jester but the entire fan base

Nott doesn’t want to leave “you can leave but i need to stay” ouch that hurt

Nott doesn’t expect them to stay

“We are a target”- Cad

“Your son????” -Jester “is it your son or are you even a goblin??”

Nott “[we don’t need to pretend we don’t keep secrets]”

Nott feels chained and not able to move forward, is ok with being open and honest so ‘we can move ahead’

Rephrase from episode one broke my heart

Nott: “Well hi, my name is Nott the brave and I’m a little goblin girl. But, once upon a time i was Veth, a young halfling woman and before that, a halfling child who grew, um, up being told that she was pretty and not brave and not coordinated and not smart and just not..

Jester line

Nott: Yea, I was. And then, ya know, time went by and i got older, i was made fun of quite a bit. I had this um, Ppl thought i was strange, b/c i collected things, i collected lots of things, they were outstanding. They were wax seals,and pieces of colored paper, and some buttons and fabric,

Beau line

Nott: All kinds

Beau line

Nott: Well they didn't think so, i had brothers and people in town who would just ridicule me

Jester: that was here

Nott: Yes, and one day i um  i was playing a game with the other boys and they dared one of their friends to give me a kiss, and the boy was very nice and he actually seemed to like it and he and i became friendly and eventually did what people do and got married and he didn't mind my strangeness and i helped him get his apothecary up and running and he was a brilliant chemist and could make acids and potions and oils and bleaches for fabric for all sorts of things and he helped me. Eventually we had a baby named luke and he was a bright boy, very smart, he learned to talk very early and walk very early. Such a smart boy and that's who you saw back there is my son.

Jester: so was he right, did you die?

Nott: I think so, I think so, uh. We had a rough winter in felderwind, there were not a lot of crops and i think some of the animals had died that winter. This river i brought you to this sort of, it's a beautiful place i used to come here with yeza and it's an important place i used to come here with yeza… the goblins would come from over there, they would raid from over there [points]... They came into town and raided more and more, they took us. They took me and my husband and my child, they held us in one of their camps. I don’t know if it was days or weeks or months. Luke, he wasn’t doing well….. We ran, we ran in the dead of night, they were fast, i've been chased a lot… i told them to run… the goblins followed me and when they found me i fought, i had a vial of acid and i threw it in the face of the one trying to catch us, they took me back to the camp. I think he died from his wounds…[I think he was a type of leader] i think he had a wife. This goblin told the woman ‘make her suffer’ and they did. They brought me to this river and they drowned me in it. I can still feel the water in my lungs and in my ears and in my nose. And then nothing. Until i woke up and saw the hands.. The skin and i looked in a puddle and i could see what they made me. They made me into everything i thought i was. Not pretty, not good, just not. I'll be honest, i've started forgetting what it was like to be halfling. Just everyday just more and more goblin…. I'm sorry i didn’t tell u and im sorry i lied and i'm sorry caleb i didnt tell u. You would have understood and you could have helped me, i dunno. I feel like you're almost there like you're almost strong enough…. Anyways that's how i got to you, and that's why i got to you and why i can't be in this town. Well i only recently started signing the letters. I don't know what he would think of me. {Missed a lot here}

{nott was in the goblin clan kinda as a slave} I would clean out the messes and clean after the meals. The one [goblin] who tortured, i would help him, maybe six months. So maybe a year, no more than a year, a year and a half? I don't know exactly.

Cad can sober up Nott and Nott lets him via lesser restoration b/c alcohol is a toxin

First time we’ve seen sober nott in a while

They’re in the valley [la joke?]

The Goldfield Tavern and Lodge

Beau to Caleb: You puked all over that apothecary so something is definitely not right

Liam is so good

They headed south towards the woods for the chat

Fjord very pointedly asks if nott is ok leaving his son. He asks twice.

Caleb won’t talk in town

Edith is staying for now and nott gave her 200 gold.

No one in town knows that Veth is alive

‘I forgot what he looked like. He forgot what i looked like.”-Nott about Luke’ we need to know the ones we love.”

Beau: Nott you drowned, and you just spent three months underwater, that's incredible. I don't know if you realized that. Its incredible.

Fjord thinks Edith and Luke should leave town. Jester offers to send them to her mum. Possibly going just more west without crossing the border.

Letter to Bryce to get them somewhere safe and closer to border in case of speedy exit of the empire.

Nott  admimatly wants to find Yeza

Jester via sending: “Hello, its jester. Two people incoming, a woman and child, take care of them please. Were sending money with them, it is important. Please help.”

Byrce, not really surprised: “Um alright. Ill do my best. Please don't send too many more.”

Liam trying to stay in character and not laughing at jokes during Bryce chat

Most of the righteous brand have gathered and are heading north east, leaving felderwind. People are trying to pick up and move on

Chat in wagon in back, hidden, Cad. 60 yd radius of warning if someone is gonna pass them

Beau to jester b/c they’re telling the truth now: “I didn’t sleep with dyren. She wasn’t my roommate. She was my teacher.” and she taught beau “how to kick as and take names bitch”

Jester trying to be helpful and fjord trying to be supportive

Caleb: “Your name is Veth?” “it was.”My name was Bren Aldrich Emendroot. Was. and um… I uh, i uh

Look at Laura

Jester: “Did you die too?”

Nott: “twinnies?”

Caleb: “I have been using you all.”

Jester, confused: How?

Caleb:I am from Rexingtrum. I attended Soltrace Academy. I was plucked by one of the cerborous assembly and was being trained to do the things that i fear were being done to [Yeza]. A lot a big plans for me that didn’t plan out- I went a little crazy and ran away, ran away. I have been on the run for long time. I was tired of starving. And I met you. I was a little less hungry for a while. I have been afraid for a long time, two of the people in that town are from the cerberus assembly. I don't think [the assembly members would recognise him] I walked passed that portrait many times. One of them is the head of the cerberus assembly. There's good teachers, it's everything they describe it to be. After going there for several months, one of the assembly  who also would teach on occasion, started interviewing me. Calling me in and asking me questions. He sorta put me in an advanced class, me and a few others. I don't want you all to be seen with me by one of them, they will use you to get to me. You met the man who trained me. His name is Trent Ikathon.

Jester: thats why you make that face all the time

Caleb: I’m not a very good person.

Jester: “I dont think out actions don’t define us all them time. Good people do bad things sometimes bad people do good things. I think you’re a good person”

Beau: “do you care about us? You’ve told us several times you’re not a very good person.”

Caleb: im worried about your husband.  I know the things that man can do.[unravels arm wrappings to show a series of small cuts going up the entirety of the right arm] He used to put crystals in… he he experimented on the three of us.

NottL what would they do? The crystals

He uhh was trying to strength us. The first time i ever saw that word was in your libraries, no explanation.

Beau: The dunamous?

Caleb: No, the first time i’ve ever seen that word was in your libraries. Haphazardly scrolled into that word. No, no everything was for the empire. We were being trained to serve the empire above all. He was mad himself, he was mad. He believed that the unwashed masses relied on their base instinct and the highest calling was to rise above the muck and control the cattlel. We were, are at war. Many of us, felt that way, feel that way.

Nott: Do you still that way?

Caleb: I don’t believe in anything, now.

Fjord: This Trent, does he know these two we saw?

Caleb: Oh yes, yes, yes. And I don’t want one more thing on my head to have you guys. Probably too late anyways.

Fjord: How powerful are these two anyways? Our normal tricks, would they fall short?

The Cerberus assembly are the most powerful mages in the empire…over 200 yrs ago a # of mages went to war in the streets of Restrum and um, it was bloody and awful and eventually came to a truce … proposed to the king at the time that they serve as an advising body to the throne.

Jester: Would they see if we were disguised? Or would they have to look for us.

Caleb: I don’t know for sure but there is a reason i didn't use something like that back there.

Fjord: So, we need to give the a very wide birth.

Nott: [why would they take yeza]

Caleb: I don’t know. It is something to do with the thing. But i don’t know why him.

[Jester reading the burned notes and meaningless stuff mostly they won’t kill Yeza]

Caleb: Was he gifted in his work? What is written about here but it does not seem like anything i ever learned about that.

[?]: It says there that they are looking for a way to achieve their ends w/o the object.  I don’t know what they need.

Beau: trent ikathon was looking at yasha....

Calev: I hope he is alive i really do but they will make his life a living hell. And the empire. They are as close to as powerful if not as powerful as the king. I used a lot of names. Caleb is just what i told you. I don’t know. Caleb, let's stick with caleb for now. Um i honestly don’t know if we can, if we are up to this. Unless they are on land, this is the might of the empire. Vestduragna is the arch mage of antiquities.. She's a historian, she has uncovered mysteries of the past. She's a history buff, she's awful probably. He is the head of the military, so if they are both here i would say he is here over seeing the military and she is overseeing what is in that bag.

Fjord makes a valid point about this might not being the only one. [dodecha]

Beacons is plural

Fjord is being cautious for once

[Caleb looks like he wants to cry about the ‘liking us’ comment]

Caleb: I uhh, ohhh jester, i'm glad you see good in me.

Beau: “Its too late now b/c we like you and are invested in your happiness and [stuff]”

Caleb: ok

Beau: dont run. You can say you don't believe in us, that's fine. Believe in us just a little bit, ok?

Caleb: I will consider it heavily.

Beau: I’m sorry for not hearing you yesterday… i heard that you were doubting me and us and our friendship

Caleb:‘i dont doubt any of you

Fjord ‘I swallow shit and make it appear in my weapons i'm down to throw down. You don't have to minimize my stuff’

Those elves two were founders of the Cerberus Assembly

Stabby stab

Fjord: You seduce one i'll seduce the other. I have a way with elves [nervous/embarassed laughter]

Its like you two have been reading tumblr - tal

Caduceus is a wild mom?- confused Beau

Shit shit shit that stuff was out of the bag and scry-able for so long

Samone is the innkeeper

‘Ruckus is a word’

War with the dominion ???

Travis being charismatic and info snatchy is such a difference from grog

‘Felderwind is not known for its excitement’ with jazz hands from matt

“I need something complicated to focus myself… preferably some sort of flower or living plant. The notion is that i'm looking for something that is a testament to the wildmother.”

Jester: “Honey!”

Cad: I’m not entirely sure what honey is made of

Beau: essence of flower and bee puke

Demi leric (female human) does not charge but accepts donation, general physician

Cricks left w/in an hour “a swift nightmare”. “Dark elf folk” “second one on the left that's burned down”

Demi leric’s house is across the street from a burned building, door partially open. Simple establishment, herb smells, chemical smells, ⅘ cots with 2 recovering crownsguard chillin. Human woman, late 20s/ early 30s, bright smile & eyes, business in the eyes,

Beau used real name    

“Taking statements”

A few strange complaints about 1/ 2 months back. Wave of nausea. All lived in a cluster, near the doctor’s office near a burned building

Attack around midnight

Detective beau?

Semi conscious guard, has burns, beau slaps a wound, ‘sup, names beau with the cobalt soul, what's your name?’ “Jeff” “good to meet you Jeff” jeff got Luke out of the flames “cricks got him and ran… life four of them.. I saw the fire they pushed me into when i tried to stop them… it was crazy, they came in quick.. I guess [they were targeting places].. Last place they lit was the apothecary…

TAL WANTS TO FIND THE CHAIR MAKER

Jester: What is the possibility that your mean people can change memories?

Caleb: Pretty good…

Tunnels--> North East side where the fields begin. Crownsguard near three sinkhole like entrances.

They didn’t dig them, something dug it for them. Something with big teeth dug it for them and they came out. This creature was 10 feet wide mouth. They collapse the tunnels when they left. They dug in the third one tunnel a bit. Each tunnel is 200-300 feet apart. The tunnel that was dug out was in the middle. Tunnel at a steep angle w/ rope hanging down. This tunnel kept gong 50ft before evening out at a steady downward incline. Looks organically carved tunnel rather than arcane. Definitely burrowed. Nothing on detect magic or undead.

‘Anything is possible in this world of magic and mystery’

Cad base chant to see if he can get vibration via thaumaturgy. Can very vaguely hear a gap at some point w/ very little detail.

Break

Gank

Rexintrum is the largest city in the empire

Worms

Fjord makes a valid point about the slowy thing being a great battle tactic

Fjord has limits on what he will poke/big red button comment

“The dragon poke sucked”

“Im here b/c i was out of options and i went looking for them.” - Cad

my detail oriented self is loving getting actual info from Cad

The magic that held the forest in place is fading away. Not the only site like cads but there hasn’t been communication

Cad family, bigggggggg, built the temple, they all left to look for answers, none came back, doesn’t know what direction they went in, didn’t ask wildmother about them and doesn’t really wanna know “have faith and not second guess”, Corin talked about trying to find some of the other temples. CORIN? ---> sister?

Jester “this is some serious shit… the empire is really fucked up. And everyone went through some horrible stuff

Nott: i promise if you stay with us you’ll also go through some horrible stuff

Jester:[too late already have].. I want nice again one day

Cad: I just want home back, I wanna know that its safe again

Nott: I want to be me again yes. Yes and i hope someday it can happen.

{what does Nott want to be called?}

“Or Vott”-Jester in response to Fjord prompting Nott v. Veth

Beau: Nott and Caleb it is. The mighty nein made of seven people. Works great.

Caleb “not the name not the group. I’m not it” {Not sure if i got the last part spot on the stream cut out before I rewatched/checked this}

“Their names are Chair, together they are chair.”

“I’m here to bring the awkward”- Tal

“What it Yeza’s destination pushing a few days forward?”- Cad w/ Divination to the Wildmother “Gordranas” via wind whispers

Yasha has heard the name, its far further north and the tribe avoided it b/c a lot of the beast folk lived that way ie others who wandered the wastes ‘men who are like bull warrior/bugbears/ other goblinoids’ some work with the crin.

The Luxum- something Caleb read about it having a negative effect on Gordraonas

Gordronas is important to the history of age of arcanum. When the gods walked the earth, both the prime deities and the betrayer gods there were areas of influence considered theirs. A # of those areas belonging to the betrayer gods happened to be in wildmount and Gordranas was the name of the center of their ‘tenuous union’ [betrayer gods] in the final years of the Clamity the b. Gods would go there to plot evil shit.

 What remains of gordonas is where the crin has established their dynasty. People in Yasha’s tribe said it was perpetual night.

Cad on how to travel 1000 miles through a war zone“We’ve got a cart, I’m completely serious.”

One of the garrisons has been lost to the Cryn. {Ash something or rather?}

Yeza- short, even for a halfling, bushy brown hair, long sideburns, big nose, not a great chin, narrow shoulders, not a looker,

IS (not referring to Yeza in the past tense ie Nott being corrected by Jester/Fjord?Beau)

They were married five years

THEY SHOULD KNOW VETH’S ACTUAL BIRTHDAY

To Jester’s message to Yeza: No response then a very faint “Hello?  I don’t know, its very dark, I have to be quiet. Thank you”

Nott being wingwoman Jester and Fjord

Jester is the best customer service person ever

Jordan and Jamenson are escorting Luke and Edith, Jeff almost kept Beau’s staff

Beau’s bo still has a bow

“I’m here to buy some pockets” “Money belts!” and the tourist necklace thingies

Secret tunnels

Fjord and Beau tag teaming it and fucking with that one guy’s pride with a few good checks

Caleb paying for a group expense

Polymorph into a honey badger (who doesn’t care)

LEVEL EIGHT

‘This won’t be a problem when I’m a president’- Sam

“Be an elk and kill all these fucking soldiers” -Travis or Fjord?

Dire honey badger? Yessssssss. Bony 6 foot honey badger, 5-6 inch claws

‘I’m gonna bless the honey badger’- Cad <3

Travis gonna kill Gil

The other side of the collapse was like 150 feet down further from where the empire stopped digging

Tunnel wides, drops off like a cliff 30-40 foot til another drop off 10ish feet later and a river that is cutting it’s way through. Crystle (quartz) stalactites from a 15’ tall ceiling

Same system as Zadash? Connecting aquifers?

“Do not send the cleric into the pit of unknown.”- Tal

Yeza and Veth never got a honeymoon and they wanted to go to Taledorie [Whitestone is great in the spring].

666

They’re going caving I guess

If Beau changes(ed) her name them all the Empire based people would have lots of names. (Bren-> Caleb ; Veth-> Nott ; Lucian-> Molly)

Also Beau and Bren are the names parents would name their kids if they wanted to have a matching letter for all their kids but the kids hate being a matched set.

Jester having the crisis of ‘I was lonely but y’all had some shit’ was really heartbreaking to watch. I hope she doesn’t stop that progression of showing more and more genuine emotion both positively and negatively.

[intothedanvers-e]

Young, Dumb, & Broke

Word Count: 1.3k

Pairing: Tom Holland x Reader

Summary: You just graduated high school and were ready to embark on your last summer of being a dumb teen and going on adventures before having to face the realities of the adult world. One day you were driving to a lake to meet some of your friends when your car broke down in the middle of nowhere. With no service and no gas stations around you wandered a little down the street and found one house where you went to ask for help. You expected to find an old couple living in the middle of nowhere, but a nice young British guy (Tom) answered the door. Due to unforeseen circumstances you spend the rest of the afternoon and most of the night together, but when it’s time to leave he says he wants to see you again. You exchange numbers with the cute British guy and embark on a long, secretive summer fling. You both lie about what you do for a living and what you were both doing in the middle of nowhere, but the moments you too bonded were all genuine. Will he find out about your plans after summer? Will you find out what he actually does for a living? Will this fling extend past summer?

Authors Note: hello everyone! first of all i know i missed an update last week, im so sorry ive hit really bad writers block with this series which i know is dumb bc im only on chapter 5 but ive been trying to get out of that funk recently which is also why this chapter is a little short. i hope you all understand :) thank you again for all the support in this series! i never thought this many people would like it <3 if you want to check out any of my other writing here’s my masterlist! if you have any feedback or comments please dont hesitate to send them my way!! yes i will keep updating this series on tuesdays! i hope i can shake this bad patch of writers block soon bc i genuinely enjoy writing this series so just bear with me and pls pls pls dont hate me. ok i love yall <3

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4

Chapter 5

You endured through your 8 hour shift without saying much to any of your co-workers. You would usually jump at any opportunity to tell your best friend about what happened to you, but to be completely honest you were still hurt about what happened the night of the bonfire. She quickly caught on that you were giving her the silent treatment and asked the manager to move her position for the day. You weren’t going to lie, it fucking sucked feeling like your best friend didn’t give a shit about you. You knew you only had about half an hour left of work at the restaurant and luckily you got to clock out before the big afternoon wave. You didn’t want to admit it to yourself but you were really excited about being able to see Tom again. The two of you had made plans for just around sunset, which gave you enough time to get home and get yourself ready and go out with him in an actually decent cute outfit.

“Table 8 got customers,” your manager said to you, snapping you out of your daydream.

You nodded and walked over to table 8. At it were two beautifully stunning women. You handed them two menus and smiled.

“Hi I’m Y/N I’ll be your server this afternoon, can I get you guys started on anything? Drinks?”

The two women gave each other a sneaky smile.

“Um we’re waiting for three of our friends they’ll be here in like 30 to 45 minutes. Can we just order drinks and like a small appetizer and then fully order when they get here?”

“Yeah that’s fine. Unfortunately, I’m clocking out in about 30 minutes so if they don’t get here by then my co-worker Brenda will take their orders.”

They looked at each other slightly disappointed.

“Okay I’ll take a Sprite. You Z?”

“I’ll take a coke. What would you recommend for the appetizer? My friend here Laura is lactose intolerant so it can’t be the mozzarella sticks unfortunately.”

“Honestly I think we have really good garlic bread. It’s handmade and comes with this amazing homemade marinara sauce.”

“I trust you Y/N, we’ll have an order of that.”

You wrote it down on your order pad and smiled.

“I’ll bring those drinks right out to you.”

You got the drinks for them and took it to them. They were both smiling and giggling before you walked to their table but stopped as soon as you got there.

“Hey Y/N are you from around here?” the one her friend called Z asked you.

“Yeah I am. Not too far from here.”

“Do you know where we can get some really good Mexican food? Not that this restaurant isn’t amazing already but a girl needs her burrito fix sometimes.”

“Yes I do actually!” you said taking out your order notepad, “I can write the address for you guys. They have the best salsas there, no joke.”

You ripped the paper and handed it to them.

“Y/N you are a lifesaver. The best waitress we’ve encountered here so far.”

You wrote your name on the paper and smiled.

“I know the owner, if you mention me and order the deluxe salsa and chips she’ll give you the salsa she usually saves for her regular customers.”

“You’re a real one,” the girl named Laura said smiling at you.

You walked back over to the registers where you heard the cooks gossiping about some people.

“Yeah they’re part of the thing that shut down all of downtown!” the main cooks said.

“Wait who?” you said sticking your head in the window that connected the kitchen and the register.

“The girls on 8. They’re actresses.”

You made a surprised face. They seemed so nice and genuine. The cook slid you a plate with garlic breads and a bowl with marinara sauce. You grabbed it and took it back to the girls.

“Here you are girls. Unfortunately, I am clocking out for the afternoon so my co-worker Brenda will be helping you from here on out.”

“Aw man! We were hoping to introduce our new friend to our friends, but I guess they’re taking longer than expected. Well it was nice to meet you Y/N, we will definitely be back here to see you again.”

“I’ll be here all summer,” you said smiling at them.

They handed you a 50-dollar bill.

“From two former waitresses who know how much doing this sucks. You are one of the good ones.”

You smiled at them and put it in your pocket.

“Thank you ladies. I hope you’re enjoying my city and I look forward to seeing you both again.”

You walked to the backroom and clocked out. You were going to leave out of the front like you always do but you didn’t want to risk seeing your “best friend” so you left out the backdoor. You got into your car and drove home with a huge smile on your face.

A few hours later you were dressed and doing your makeup. You didn’t want to overdo it so you did some natural looking makeup. You finished by 5:30, an hour before you were supposed to go get Tom. You went downstairs to make yourself busy, but came face to face with your mom bringing her luggage inside.

“There you are,” she said locking the front door.

You froze on the last step of your stairs.

“Didn’t realize you were back.”

“Came home as soon as I heard the voicemail you left me.”

“But you didn’t think to call me or text me or maybe ask what happened?”

“I came home didn’t I?”

You sighed and started climbing up the stairs again.

“Well it was taken care of so you shouldn’t have.”

“What do you mean?”

You didn’t answer and went upstairs to grab your bag and a jacket. You came back down to your mom standing at the bottom of the stairs checking all her bank statements.

“What do you mean it’s taken care of, I don’t have a charge on the card?”

You grabbed the car keys off the table next to the front door.

“I took care of it, alone. Again. I’m going out, don’t wait up for me.”

Before she could say anything you walked out the door, and took off in your car.

You arrived at Tom’s house about 30 minutes earlier than you were supposed to be there. You were going to call him but then remembered this was a dead zone in terms of phone signal. You parked your car in his driveway and went to knock on the front door. You heard footsteps, and suddenly a shirtless Tom with a towel wrapped around his waist opened the door. You’d seen him shirtless before, I mean you guys were in the pool late at night, but this time it really caught you off guard. You looked up at the ceiling and apologized.

“Shit sorry, I just uhh left my house a little earlier so I got here earlier and I was gonna call you but um- “

“Yeah no service, that’s fine. I was just getting out of the shower. Come on in.”

You walked behind him, still refusing to look at him. You were trying to hide how flustered you felt.

“Are you ok?”

You sat on the couch and looked at your feet.

“Yeah why?”

“You just haven’t looked at me,” he said laughing.

“I, uh, didn’t know if you wanted me to so.”

“I don’t mind.”

You looked at him as he stood there with a cheeky grin on his face.

“Go get ready Holland!” you said throwing a couch pillow at him.

“I’m just saying if you feel inclined to end the date early, be my guest.”

You gave him a fake shocked expression.

“You’d have to be lucky enough to get at least 4 or 5 dates before that Holland,” you said winking at him playfully.

“Oh look forward to it baby,” he said before disappearing up the stairs.

What a flirty little shit.

Taglist: @hollandlovely @greenarrowhead @justanotherfangirl2015 @oh-dear-tommy @marvelnerdxinfinity @lafayettes-baguettes-1 @hollandhugs @tiredofallthetroubles @marvel-ing-at-it-all @built4broadway @lostandafraiddepressedgirl @isisqueenoffandoms @for-my-mind @hbmoore1986 @dafnouche @justapotatonow @bellagrayson-wayne @marvelousspidey @chemiste @maryylea

[libidomechanica]

Or fascinate garb which yield delight

Or fascinate garb which yield delight. “And  when, since break it. —And maun I  still on Menie doat, and been at last did  yeeld that chance my heard a ship in sleep inwardly, no hideousness  and kneel down to the eye, to faint in the  broke and Asia, you stirrd they were you (as she has  plainly of the married next to each  was owing new hate affair” with  inconstant had not speed noticed me, 

if I said I, beat, the dove may  be ready in the true and honeysuckle.  The deserve this moment more had to  pitie my deare, in her own Polygamys to  be - that clustered “round then find,) happy rose, and did not any mortality  in the dimness of thine, of her  beauty, he felt most in the customs of grief  lies by her life hath thine eyes of shame broke foaming  furious hues, as that does not 

wrongs, when he felt this act or  toil or study on a windy  night in, martial soil for having haughtily helpe  his savage virtue only flows but to ‘kill, kill,’  like Munchs Scream Fairies” prophecy give him quite of the Jews. Since thou  thyself dost pay. She had fallen to stir with m any a light, untamed the death. A sentiment  stuck hard: she that might back against  the vacant leaves, thy dials shame! “

Who everywhere, her gay-furred  cats a palace; where burn thee familiar;  but here I plants, witness—in deserved for Pyramus,  and then fain would burst through to die! Queen rose weeps, “She is  no truer-hearted prove: then his good deal practice. At last,  that we found no less would not be my dear religion,  some pouting petty griefs infold:” but I heat the  raven and warriors by tradition.  Ben Battle was eight chemist 

mixing hers in celebration— a  moment, as eels are lit up by gas. For  was as if to close at  the empty glass will fail in an earth green,  then rising day; yet mine have that we do there was well as on  the dangerous and off they had was much  of their hue, wondering kind, which mans eye aside his  roof the Northern front, and of his  bow he is coming step, I meet well 

undress to one of stride, spread  light of ladies which lost my pretty looked at  once lived with bugs is she bought us,  again I never flowing with me! The  sheep, not a lay me no more would have just fall out you startled into  his others pickd it alone        respond;  I wont be her robe the very face, in sacks— a mode of jasper the gloom; a  spectral bride; for the meadows, and 

then grow they were might most troubled  here are not appetite, and we must own her  handsome stringent quality which insphere: make them south  but a woman, in the hour more thou will  cry “Amen” to ever drove the Ring, and kind, or  to the carpet or between the  lily, “There we learne heart that is demonstrous maid” enjoyd  them to thee, this fingers, who they gave  its welcome, O love, given, for 

its are slaves chief cities free, and  I wont. In shore, a kind Amaryllis,  without there were, in the  hung back, up like Lears, and pain,           responds unto the  gate, and then against the eye, to lingers as lofty  tower of their state; her state? Scrape in their spite of  the truth in it you in a country that  though less, that gray preeminence of beggarie.  Was already…Im 

become and now would Wisdom cut and  blossom in purpled champaign, drank the birthday  she princess short their hand, march with no mistake sequins  will pose with anglings, whateer still he slept: “ but yesterday it were street in shadow, Time; but, Oh alas,  if you know what were, if also certain of  shame which heavily from cliffs, they follies flung aside:” he  motion like your love, good name; thought it  back big-time; whether on the 

Bashaw must be old, and, as it  is, was when night the  ceremonies of saffron, dagger rich and blacks,  in passenger ee? The Incomprehend all his legs  his late; the long as straw and there is my bracelet made up  of the victory, being stony names of  mouth doth live unwood and did late show a king expects— was they be half be  done with your more designed.

[unsettlingshortstories]

Green Tea

Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)

PROLOGUE

Martin Hesselius, the German Physician

Through carefully educated in medicine and surgery, I have never practiced either. The study of each continues, nevertheless, to interest me profoundly. Neither idleness nor caprice caused my secession from the honorable calling which I had just entered. The cause was a very trifling scratch inflicted by a dissecting knife. This trifle cost me the loss of two fingers, amputated promptly, and the more painful loss of my health, for 1 have never been quite well since, and have seldom been twelve months together in the same place.

In my wanderings I became acquainted with Dr. Martin Hesselius, a wanderer like myself, like me a physician, and like me an enthusiast in his profession. Unlike me in this, that his wanderings were voluntary, and he a man, if not of fortune, as we estimate fortune in England, at least in what our forefathers used to term "easy circumstances." He was an old man when 1 first saw him; nearly five-and-thirty years my senior. In Dr. Martin Hesselius, 1 found my master. His knowledge was immense, his grasp of a case was an vintuition. He was the very man to inspire a young enthusiast, like me, with awe and delight. My admiration has stood the test of time and survived the separation of death. I am sure it was well-founded. For nearly twenty years I acted as his medical secretary. His immense collection of papers he has left in my care, to be arranged, indexed and bound. His treatment of some of these cases is curious. He writes in two distinct characters. He describes what he saw and heard as an intelligent layman might, and when in this style of narrative he had seen the patient either through his own hall-door, to the light of day, or through the gates of darkness to the caverns of the dead, he returns upon the narrative, and in the terms of his art and with all the force and originality of genius, proceeds to the work of analysis, diagnosis and illustration. Here and there a case strikes me as of a kind to amuse or horrify a lay reader with an interest quite different from the peculiar one which it may possess for an expert. With slight modifications, chiefly of language, and of course a change of names, I copy the following.

The narrator is Dr. Martin Hesselius. I find it among the voluminous notes of cases which he made during a tour in England about sixty-four years ago. It is related in series of letters to his friend Professor Van Loo of Leyden. The professor was not a physician, but a chemist, and a man who read history and metaphysics and medicine, and had, in his day, written a play. The narrative is therefore, if somewhat less valuable as a medical record, necessarily written in a manner more likely to interest an unlearned reader. These letters, from a memorandum attached, appear to have been returned on the death of the professor, in 1819, to Dr. Hesselius. They are written, some in English, some in French, but the greater part in German. I am a faithful, though I am conscious, by no means a graceful translator, and although here and there ! omit some passages, and shorten others, and disguise names, I have interpolated nothing.

CHAPTER I

Dr. Hesselius Relates How He Met the Rev. Mr. Jennings

The Rev. Mr. Jennings is tall and thin. He is middle-aged, and dresses with a natty, old-fashioned, high-church precision. He is naturally a little stately, but not at all stiff. His features, without being handsome, are well formed, and their expression extremely kind, but also shy. I met him one evening at Lady Mary Haddock's. The modesty and benevolence of his countenance are extremely prepossessing. We were but a small party, and he joined agreeably enough in the conversation, He seems to enjoy listening very much more than contributing to the talk; but what he says is always to the purpose and well said. He is a great favourite of Lady Mary's, who it seems, consults him upon many things, and thinks him the most happy and blessed person on earth. Little knows she about him. The Rev. Mr. Jennings is a bachelor, and has, they say sixty thousand pounds in the funds. He is a charitable man. He is most anxious to be actively employed in his sacred profession, and yet though always tolerably well elsewhere, when he goes down to his vicarage in Warwickshire, to engage in the actual duties of his sacred calling, his health soon fails him, and in a very strange way. So says Lady Mary.

There is no doubt that Mr. Jennings' health does break down in, generally, a sudden and mysterious way, sometimes in the very act of officiating in his old and pretty church at Kenlis. It may be his heart, it may be his brain. But so it has happened three or four times, or oftener, that after proceeding a certain way in the service, he has on a sudden stopped short, and after a silence, apparently quite unable to resume, he has fallen into solitary, inaudible prayer, his hands and his eyes uplifted, and then pale as death, and in the agitation of a strange shame and horror, descended trembling, and got into the vestry-room, leaving his congregation, without explanation, to themselves. This occurred when his curate was absent. When he goes down to Kenlis now, he always takes care to provide a clergyman to share his duty, and to supply his place on the instant should he become thus suddenly incapacitated.

When Mr. Jennings breaks down quite, and beats a retreat from the vicarage, and returns to London, where, in a dark street off Piccadilly, he inhabits a very narrow house, Lady Mary says that he is always perfectly well. I have my own opinion about that. There are degrees of course.

We shall see.

Mr. Jennings is a perfectly gentlemanlike man. People, however, remark something odd. There is an impression a little ambiguous. One thing which certainly contributes to it, people ! think don't remember; or, perhaps, distinctly remark. But I did, almost im mediately. Mr. Jennings has a way of looking sidelong upon the carpet, as if his eye followed the movements of something there. This, of course, is not always. It occurs now and then. But often enough to give a certain oddity, as I have said, to his manner, and in this glance traveling along the floor there is something both shy and anxious. A medical philosopher, as you are good enough to call me, elaborating theories by the aid of cases sought out by himself, and by him watched and scrutinized with more time at command, and consequently infinitely more minuteness than the ordinary practitioner can afford, falls insensibly into habits of observation, which accompany him everywhere, and are exercised, as some people would say, impertinently, upon every subject that presents itself with the least likelihood of rewarding inquiry. There was a promise of this kind in the slight, timid, kindly, but reserved gentleman, whom I met for the first time at this agreeable little evening gathering. I observed, of course, more than I here set down; but I reserve all that borden on the technical for a strictly scientific paper. I may remark, that when I here speak of medical science, I do so, as I hope some day to see it more generally understood, in a much more comprehensive sense than its generally material treatment would warrant. I believe the entire natural world is but the ultimate expression of that spiritual world from which, and in which alone, it has its life. I believe that the essential man is a spirit, that the spirit is an organized substance, but as different in point of material from what we ordinarily understand by matter, as light or electricity is; that the material body is, in the most literal sense, a vesture, and death consequently no interruption of the living man's existence, but simply his extrication from the natural body --a process which commences at the moment of what we term death, and the completion of which, at furthest a few days later, is the resurrection "in power." The person who weighs the consequences of these positions will probably see their practical bearing upon medical science. This is, however, by no means the proper place for displaying the proofs and discussing the consequences of this too generally unrecognized state of facts. In pursuance of my habit, I was covertly observing Mr. Jennings, with all my caution--l think he perceived it--and I saw plainly that he was as cautiously observing me. Lady Mary happening to address me by my name, as Dr. Hesselius, I saw that he glanced at me more sharply, and then became thoughtful for a few minutes.

After this, as I conversed with a gentleman at the other end of the room, I saw him look at me more steadily, and with an interest which I thought I understood. I then saw him take an opportunity of chatting with Lady Mary, and was, as one always is, perfectly aware of being the subject of a distant inquiry and answer.

This tall clergyman approached me by-and-by; and in a little time we had got into conversation.

When two people, who like reading, and know books and places, having traveled, wish to discourse, it is very strange if they can't find topics. It was not accident that brought him near me, and led him into conversation. He knew German and had read my Essays on Metaphysical Medicine which suggest more than they actually say. This courteous man, gentle, shy, plainly a man of thought and reading, who moving and talking among us, was not altogether of us, and whom I already suspected of leading a life whose trans actions and alarms were carefully concealed, with an impenetrable reserve from, not only the world, but his best beloved friends- was cautiously weighing in his own mind the idea of taking a certain step with regard to me. I penetrated his thoughts without his being aware of it, and was careful to say nothing which could betray to his sensitive vigilance my suspicions respecting his position, or my surmises about his plans respecting myself.

We chatted upon indifferent subjects for a time but at last he said:

"I was very much interested by some papers of yours, Dr. Hesselius, upon what you term Metaphysical Medicine--I read them in German, ten or twelve years ago--have they been translated?"

"No, I'm sure they have not--I should have heard. They would have asked my leave, I think."

"I asked the publishers here, a few months ago, to get the book for me in the original German; but they tell me it is out of print."

"So it is, and has been for some years; but it flatters me as an author to find that you have not forgotten my little book, although," I added, laughing, "ten or twelve years is a considerable time to have managed without it; but I suppose you have been turning the subject over again in your mind, or something has happened lately to revive your interest in it."

At this remark, accompanied by a glance of inquiry, a sudden embarrassment disturbed Mr. Jennings, analogous to that which makes a young lady blush and look foolish. He dropped his eyes, and folded his hands together uneasily, and looked oddly, and you would have said, guiltily, for a moment.

I helped him out of his awkwardness in the best way, by appearing not to observe it, and going straight on, I said: "Those revivals of interest in a subject happen to me often; one book suggests an other, and often sends me back a wild-goose chase over an interval of twenty years. But if you still care to possess a copy, I shall be only too happy to provide you; I have still got two or three by me --and if you allow me to present one I shall be very much honored."

"You are very good indeed," he said, quite at his ease again, in a moment: "I almost despaired--I don't know how to thank you.

"Pray don't say a word; the thing is really so little worth that I am only ashamed of having offered it, and if you thank me any more I shall throw it into the fire in a fit of modesty."

Mr. Jennings laughed. He inquired where I was staying in London, and after a little more conversation on a variety of subjects, he took his departure. CHAPTER II The Doctor Questions Lady Mary and She Answers

"I like your vicar so much, Lady Mary," said I, as soon as he was gone. "He has read, traveled, and thought, and having also suffered, he ought to be an accomplished companion."

"So he is, and, better still,' he is a really good man," said she. "His advice is invaluable about my schools, and all my little undertakings at Dawlbridge, and he's so painstaking, he takes so much trouble--you have no idea wherever he thinks he can be o~ use: he's so good-natured and so sensible."

"It is pleasant to hear so good an account of his neighbourly virtues. I can only testify to his being an agreeable and gentle companion, and in addition to what you have told me, I think 1 can tell you two or three things about him," said I. "Really!" "Yes, to begin with, he's unmarried." "Yes, that's right---go on."

"He has been writing, that is he was, but for two or three years perhaps, he has not gone on with his work, and the book was upon some rather abstract subject--perhaps theology."

"Well, he was writing a book, as you say; I'm not quite sure what it was about, but only that it was nothing that I cared for; very likely you are right, and he certainly did stop--yes."

"And although he only drank a little coffee here to-night, he likes tea, at least, did like it extravagantly."

"Yes, that's quite true."

"He drank green tea, a good deal, didn't he?" I pursued.

"Well, that's very odd! Green tea was a subject on which we used almost to quarrel."

"But he has quite given that up," said I. "So he has."

"And, now, one more fact. His mother or his father, did you know them?"

"Yes, both; his father is only ten years dead, and their place is near Dawlbridge. We knew them very well," she answered.

"Well, either his mother or his father--l should rather think his father, saw a ghost," said I.

"Well, you really are a conjurer, Dr. Hesselius." "Conjurer or no, haven't I said right?" I answered merrily.

"You certainly have, and it was his father: he was a silent, whimsical man, and he used to bore my father about his dreams, and at last he told him a story about a ghost he had seen and talked with, and a very odd story it was. I remember it particularly, because 1 was so afraid of him. This story was long before he died--when I was quite a child--and his ways were so silent and moping, and he used to drop in sometimes, in the dusk, when I was alone in the drawing-room, and I used to fancy there were ghosts about him." I smiled and nodded. "And now, having established my character as a conjurer, I think I must say good-night!' said I. "But how did you find it out?"

"By the planets, of course, as the gypsies do," I answered, and so, gaily we said good-night.

Next morning I sent the little book he had been inquiring after, and a note to Mr. Jennings, and on returning late that evening, I found that he had called at my lodgings, and left his card. He asked whether I was at home, and asked at what hour he would be most likely to find me. Does he intend opening his case, and consulting me "professionally," as they say? I hope so. I have already conceived a theory about him. It is supported by Lady Mary's answers to my parting questions. I should like much to ascertain from his own lips. But what can I do consistently with good breeding to invite a confession? Nothing. I rather think he meditates one. At all events, my dear Van L., I shan't make myself difficult of access; I mean to re turn his visit tomorrow. It will be only civil in return for his polite ness, to ask to see him. Perhaps something may come of it.

Whether much, little, or nothing, my dear Van L., you shall hear.

CHAPTER III

Dr. Hesselius Picks Up Something in Latin Books

Well, I have called at Blank Street.

On inquiring at the door, the servant told me that Mr. Jennings was engaged very particularly with a gentleman, a clergyman from Kenlis, his parish in the country. Intending to reserve my privilege, and to call again, I merely intimated that I should try an- other time, and had turned to go, when the servant begged my pardon, and asked me, looking at me a little more attentively than well-bred persons of his order usually do, whether I was Dr. Hesselius; and, on learning that I was, he said, "Perhaps then, sir, you would allow me to mention it to Mr. Jennings, for I am sure he wishes to see you." The servant returned in a moment, with a message from Mr. Jennings, asking me to go into his study, which was in effect his back drawing-room, promising to be with me in a very few minutes. This was really a study--almost a library. The room was lofty, with two tall slender windows, and rich dark curtains. It was much larger than I had expected, and stored with books on every side, from the floor to the ceiling. The upper carpet-- for to my tread it felt that there were two or three--was a Turkey carpet. My steps fell noiselessly. The bookcases standing out, placed the windows, particularly narrow ones, in deep recesses. The effect of the room was, although extremely comfortable, and even luxurious, decidedly gloomy, and aided by the silence, almost oppressive. Perhaps, however, I ought to have allowed something for association. My mind had connected peculiar ideas with Mr. Jennings. I stepped into this perfectly silent room, of a very silent house, with a peculiar foreboding; and its darkness, and solemn clothing of books, for except where two narrow looking-glasses were set in the wall, they were everywhere, helped this somber feeling.

While awaiting Mr. Jennings' arrival, I amused myself by looking into some of the books with which his shelves were laden. Not among these, but immediately under them, with their backs up ward, on the floor, I lighted upon a complete set of Swedenborg's "Arcana Celestia," in the original Latin, a very fine folio set, bound in the natty livery which theology affects, pure vellum, namely, gold letters, and carmine edges. There were paper markers in several of these volumes, I raised and placed them, one after the other, upon the table, and opening where these papers were placed, I read in the solemn Latin phraseology, a series of sentences indicated by a penciled line at the margin. Of these I copy here a few, translating them into English.

"When man's interior sight is opened, which is that of his spirit, then there appear the things of another life, which cannot possibly be made visible to the bodily sight."....

"By the internal sight it has been granted me to see the things that are in the other life, more clearly than I see those that are in the world. From these considerations, it is evident that external vision exists from interior vision, and this from a vision still more interior, and so on." .... "There are with every man at least two evil spirits.".... "With wicked genii there is also a fluent speech, but harsh and grating. There is also among them a speech which is not fluent, wherein the dissent of the thoughts is perceived as something secretly creeping along within it." "The evil spirits associated with man are, indeed from the hells, but when with man they are not then in hell, but are taken out thence. The place where they then are, is in the midst between heaven and hell, and is called the world of spirits--when the evil spirits who are with man, are in that world, they are not in any infernal torment, but in every thought and affection of man, and so, in all that the man himself enjoys. But when they are remitted into their hell, they return to their former state.".... "If evil spirits could perceive that they were associated with man, and yet that they were spirits separate from him, and if they could flow in into the things of his body, they would attempt by a thousand means to destroy him; for they hate man with a deadly hatred." .... "Knowing, therefore, that I was a man in the body, they were continually striving to destroy me, not as to the body only, but especially as to the soul; for to destroy any man or spirit is the very delight of the life of all who are in hell; but I have been continually protected by the Lord. Hence it appears how dangerous it is for man to be in a living consort with spirits, unless he be in the good of faith." .... "Nothing is more carefully guarded from the knowledge of associate spirits than their being thus conjoint with a man, for if they knew it they would speak to him, with the intention to destroy him." .... "The delight of hell is to do evil to man, and to hasten his eternal ruin."

A long note, written with a very sharp and fine pencil, in Mr. Jennings' neat hand, at the foot of the page, caught my eye. Expecting his criticism upon the text, I read a word or two, and stopped, for it was something quite different, and began with these words, Deus misereatur mei--"May God compassionate me." Thus warned of its private nature, I averted my eyes, and shut the book, replacing all the volumes as I had found them, except one which interested me, and in which, as men studious and solitary in their habits will do, I grew so absorbed as to take no cognisance of the outer world, nor to remember where I was. I was reading some pages which refer to "representatives" and "correspondents," in the technical language of Swedenborg, and had arrived at a passage, the substance of which is, that evil spirits, when seen by other eyes than those of their infernal associates, pre sent themselves, by "correspondence," in the shape of the beast ()fera) which represents their particular lust and life, in aspect direful and atrocious. This is a long passage, and particularises a number of those bestial forms.

CHAPTER IV

Four Eyes Were Reading the Passage

I was running the head of my pencil-case along the line as I read it, and something caused me to raise my eyes.

Directly before me was one of the mirrors I have mentioned, in which I saw reflected the tall shape of my friend, Mr. Jennings, leaning over my shoulder, and reading the page at which I was busy, and with a face so dark and wild that I should hardly have known him.

I turned and rose. He stood erect also, and with an effort laughed a little, saying: "I came in and asked you how you did, but without succeeding in awaking you from your book; so I could not restrain my curiosity, and very impertinently, I'm afraid, peeped over your shoulder. This is not your first time of looking into those pages. You have looked into Swedenborg, no doubt, long ago?"

"Oh dear, yes! I owe Swedenborg a great deal; you will discover traces of him in the little book on Metaphysical Medicine, which you were so good as to remember." Although my friend affected a gaiety of manner, there was a slight flush in his face, and I could perceive that he was inwardly much perturbed. "I'm scarcely yet qualified, I know so little of Swedenborg. I've only had them a fortnight," he answered, "and I think they are rather likely to make a solitary man nervous--that is, judging from the very little I have read---I don't say that they have made me so," he laughed; "and I'm so very much obliged for the book. I hope you got my note?"

I made all proper acknowledgments and modest disclaimers. "I never read a book that I go with, so entirely, as that of yours," he continued. "I saw at once there is more in it than is quite un folded. Do you know Dr. Harley?" he asked, rather abruptly. In passing, the editor remarks that the physician here named was one of the most eminent who had ever practiced in England.

I did, having had letters to him, and had experienced from him great courtesy and considerable assistance during my visit to England.

"I think that man one of the very greatest fools I ever met in my life," said Mr. Jennings.

This was the first time I had ever heard him say a sharp thing of anybody, and such a term applied to so high a name a little startled me.

"Really! and in what way?" I asked. "In his profession," he answered. I smiled.

"I mean this," he said: "he seems to me, one half, blind--I mean one half[ of all he looks at is dark--preternaturally bright and vivid all the rest; and the worst of it is, it seems wilful. I can't get him--I mean he won't--I've had some experience of him as a physician, but I look on him as, in that sense, no better than a paralytic mind, an intellect half dead. I'll tell you--I know I shall some time--all about it," he said, with a little agitation. "You stay some months longer in England. If I should be out of town during your stay [or a little time, would you allow me to trouble you with a letter?"

"I should be only too happy," I assured him.

"Very good of you. I am so utterly dissatisfied with Harley."

"A little leaning to the materialistic school," I said.

"A mere materialist," he corrected me; "you can't think how that sort of thing worries one who knows better. You won't tell any one--any of my friends you know--that I am hippish; now, [or instance, no one knows--not even Lady Mary--that I have seen Dr. Harley, or any other doctor.

So pray don't mention it; and, if I should have any threatening of an attack, you'll kindly let me write, or, should I be in town, have a little talk with you." I was full of conjecture, and unconsciously I found I had fixed my eyes gravely on him, for he lowered his for a moment, and he said: "1 see you think I might as well tell you now, or else you are forming a conjecture; but you may as well give it up. If you were guessing all the rest of your Iife, you will never hit on it."

He shook his head smiling, and over that wintry sunshine a black cloud suddenly came down, and he drew his breath in, through his teeth as men do in pain. "Sorry, of course, to learn that you apprehend occasion to consult any of us; but, command me when and how you like, and I need not assure you that your confidence is sacred."

He then talked of quite other things, and in a comparatively cheerful way and after a little time, I took my leave.

CHAPTER V

Dr. Hesselius is Summoned to Richmond

We parted cheerfully, but he was not cheerful, nor was I. There are certain expressions of that powerful organ of spirit--the human face--which, although I have seen them often, and possess a doctor's nerve, yet disturb me profoundly. One look of Mr. Jennings haunted me. It had seized my imagination with so dismal a power that I changed my plans for the evening, and went to the opera, feeling that I wanted a change of ideas.

I heard nothing of or from him for two or three days, when a note in his hand reached me. It was cheerful, and full of hope. He said that he had been for some little time so much better-quite well, in fact--that he was going to make a little experiment, and run down for a month or so to his parish, to try whether a little work might not quite set him up. There was in it a fervent religious expression of gratitude [or his restoration, as he now almost hoped he might call it.

A day or two later I saw Lady Mary, who repeated what his note had announced, and told me that he was actually in Warwickshire, having resumed his clerical duties at Kenlis; and she added, "I begin to think that he is really perfectly well, and that there never was anything the matter, more than nerves and fancy; we are all nervous, but I fancy there is nothing like a little hard work for that kind of weakness, and he has made up his mind to try it. I should not be surprised if he did not come back for a year." Notwithstanding all this confidence, only two days later 1 had this note, dated from his house off Piccadilly:

DEAR Sir,--I have returned disappointed. If I should feel at all able to see you, I shall write to ask you kindly to call. At present, I am too low, and, in fact, simply unable to say all I wish to say. Pray don't mention my name to my friends. I can see no one. By-and-by, please God, you shall hear from me. I mean to take a run into Shropshire, where some of my people are. God bless you! May we, on my return, meet more happily than I can now write.

About a week after this I saw Lady Mary at her own house, the last person, she said, left in town, and just on the wing for Brighton, for the London season was quite over. She told me that she had heard from Mr. Jenning's niece, Martha, in Shropshire. There was nothing to be gathered from her letter, more than that he was low and nervous. In those words, of which healthy people think so lightly, what a world of suffering is sometimes hidden! Nearly five weeks had passed without any further news of Mr. Jennings. At the end of that time I received a note from him. He wrote: "I have been in the country, and have had change of air, change of scene, change of faces, change of everything--and in everything ---but myself. I have made up my mind, so far as the most irresolute creature on earth can do it, to tell my case fully to you. If your engagements will permit, pray come to me to-day, to-morrow, or the next day; but, pray defer as little as possible. You know not how much I need help. I have a quiet house at Richmond, where I now am. Perhaps you can manage to come to dinner, or to lunch eon, or even to tea. You shall have no trouble in finding me out. The servant at Blank Street, who takes this note, will have a carriage at your door at any hour you please; and I am always to be found. You will say that I ought not to be alone. 1 have tried everything. Come and see."

I called up the servant, and decided on going out the same evening, which accordingly I did.

He would have been much better in a lodging-house, or hotel, I thought, as I drove up through a short double row of sombre elms to a very old-fashioned brick house, darkened by the foliage of these trees, which overtopped, and nearly surrounded it. It was a perverse choice, for nothing could be imagined more triste and silent. The house, I found, belonged to him. He had stayed for a day or two in town, and, finding it for some cause insupportable, had come out here, probably because being furnished and his own, he was relieved of the thought and delay of selection, by coming here.

The sun had already set, and the red reflected light of the western sky illuminated the scene with the peculiar effect with which we are all familiar. The hall seemed very dark, but, getting to the back drawing-room, whose windows command the west, I was again in the same dusky light. I sat down, looking out upon the richly-wooded landscape that glowed in the grand and melancholy light which was every moment fading. The corners of the room were already dark; all was growing dim, and the gloom was insensibly toning my mind, al ready prepared for what was sinister. I was waiting alone for his arrival, which soon took place. The door communicating with the front room opened, and the tall figure of Mr. Jennings, faintly seen in the ruddy twilight, came, with quiet stealthy steps, into the room.

We shook hands, and, taking a chair to the window, where there was still light enough to enable us to see each other's faces, he sat down beside me, and, placing his hand upon my arm, with scarcely a word of preface began his narrative.

CHAPTER VI

How Mr. Jennings Met His Companion

The faint glow of the west, the pomp of the then lonely woods of Richmond, were before us, behind and about us the darkening room, and on the stony face of the sufferer for the character of his face, though still gentle and sweet, was changed rested that dim, odd glow which seems to descend and produce, where it touches, lights, sudden though faint, which are lost, almost with out gradation, in darkness. The silence, too, was utter: not a dis tant wheel, or bark, or whistle from without; and within the de pressing stillness of an invalid bachelor's house.

I guessed well the nature, though not even vaguely the particulars of the revelations I was about to receive, from that fixed face of suffering that so oddly flushed stood out, like a portrait of Schalken's, before its background of darkness.

"It began," he said, "on the 15th of October, three years and eleven weeks ago, and two days--I keep very accurate count, for every day is torment. If I leave anywhere a chasm in my narrative tell me.

"About four years ago I began a work, which had cost me very much thought and reading. It was upon the religious metaphysics of the ancients."

"1 know," said I, "the actual religion of educated and thinking paganism, quite apart from symbolic worship? A wide and very interesting field."

"Yes, but not good for the mind--the Christian mind, I mean. Paganism is all bound together in essential unity, and, with evil sympathy, their religion involves their art, and both their manners, and the subject is a degrading fascination and the Nemesis sure. God forgive me!

"I wrote a great deal; I wrote late at night. I was always thinking on the subject, walking about, wherever I was, everywhere. It thoroughly infected me. You are to remember that all the material ideas connected with it were more or less of the beautiful, the subject itself delightfully interesting, and I, then, without a care." He sighed heavily. "I believe, that every one who sets about writing in earnest does his work, as a friend of mine phrased it, on something--tea, or coffee, or tobacco. I suppose there is a material waste that must be hourly supplied in such occupations, or that we should grow too abstracted, and the mind, as it were, pass out of the body, unless it were reminded often enough of the connection by actual sensation. At all events, I felt the want, and I supplied it. Tea was my companion-at first the ordinary black tea, made in the usual way, not too strong: but I drank a good deal, and increased its strength as I went on. I never, experienced an uncomfortable symptom from it. ! began to take a little green tea. I found the effect pleasanter, it cleared and intensified the power of thought so, I had come to take it frequently, but not stronger than one might take it for pleasure. I wrote a great deal out here, it was so quiet, and in this room. I used to sit up very late, and it became a habit with me to sip my tea--green tea--every now and then as my work proceeded. I had a little kettle on my table, that swung over a lamp, and made tea two or three times between eleven o'clock and two or three in the morning, my hours of going to bed. I used to go into town every day. I was not a monk, and, although I spent an hour or two in a library, hunting up authorities and looking out lights upon my theme, I was in no morbid state as far as I can judge. I met my friends pretty much as usual and enjoyed their society, and, on the whole, existence had never been, I think, so pleasant before.

"I had met with a man who had some odd old books, German editions in medieval Latin, and I was only too happy to be permitted access to them. This obliging person's books were in the City, a very out-of-the-way part of it. I had rather out-stayed my intended hour, and, on coming out, seeing no cab near, I was tempted to get into the omnibus which used to drive past this house. It was darker than this by the time the 'bus had reached an old house, you may have remarked, with four poplars at each side of the door, and there the last passenger but myself got out. We drove along rather faster. It was twilight now. I leaned back in my corner next the door ruminating pleasantly.

"The interior of the omnibus was nearly dark. I had observed in the corner opposite to me at the other side, and at the end next the horses, two small circular reflections, as it seemed to me of a reddish light. They were about two inches apart, and about the size of those small brass buttons that yachting men used to put upon their jackets. I began to speculate, as listless men will, upon this trifle, as it seemed. From what center did that faint but deep red light come, and from what--glass beads, buttons, toy decorations-was it reflected? We were lumbering along gently, having nearly a mile still to go. I had not solved the puzzle, and it be came in another minute more odd, for these two luminous points, with a sudden jerk, descended nearer and nearer the floor, keeping still their relative distance and horizontal position, and then, as suddenly, they rose to the level of the seat on which I was sitting and I saw them no more.

"My curiosity was now really excited, and, before I had time to think, I saw again these two dull lamps, again together near the floor; again they disappeared, and again in their old corner I saw them. "So, keeping my eyes upon them, I edged quietly up my own side, towards the end at which I still saw these tiny discs of red.

"There was very little light in the 'bus. It was nearly dark. I leaned forward to aid my endeavor to discover what these little circles really were. They shifted position a little as I did so. I began now to perceive an outline of something black, and 1 soon saw, with tolerable distinctness, the outline of a small black monkey, pushing its face forward in mimicry to meet mine; those were its eyes, and I now dimly saw its teeth grinning at me. "I drew back, not knowing whether it might not meditate a spring. 1 fancied that one of the passengers had forgot this ugly pet, and wishing to ascertain something of its temper, though not caring to trust my fingers to it, I poked my umbrella softly towards it. It remained immovable--up to it--through it. For through it, and back and forward it passed, without the slightest resistance.

"I can't, in the least, convey to you the kind of horror that I felt. When I had ascertained that the thing was an illusion, as I then supposed, there came a misgiving about myself and a terror that fascinated me in impotence to remove my gaze from the eyes of the brute for some moments. As I looked, it made a little skip back, quite into the corner, and I, in a panic, found myself at the door, having put my head out, drawing deep breaths of the outer air, and staring at the lights and tress we were passing, too glad to reassure myself of reality. "I stopped the 'bus and got out. I perceived the man look oddly at me as I paid him. I dare say there was something unusual in my looks and manner, for I had never felt so strangely before."

CHAPTER VII

The Journey: First Stage

"When the omnibus drove on, and I was alone upon the road, I looked carefully round to ascertain whether the monkey had fol lowed me. To my indescribable relief ! saw it nowhere. I can't describe easily what a shock I had received, and my sense of genuine gratitude on finding myself, as I supposed, quite rid of it.

"I had got out a little before we reached this house, two or three hundred steps. A brick wall runs along the footpath, and inside the wall is a hedge of yew, or some dark evergreen of that kind, and within that again the row of fine trees which you may have remarked as you came. "This brick wall is about as high as my shoulder, and happening to raise my eyes I saw the monkey, with that stooping gait, on all fours, walking or creeping, close beside me, on top of the wall. I stopped, looking at it with a feeling of loathing and horror. As I stopped so did it. It sat up on the wall with its long hands on its knees looking at me. There was not light enough to see it much more than in outline, nor was it dark enough to bring the peculiar light of its eyes into strong relief. I still saw, however, that red foggy light plainly enough. It did not show its teeth, nor exhibit any sign of irritation, but seemed jaded and sulky, and was observing me steadily. "I drew back into the middle of the road. It was an unconscious recoil, and there I stood, still looking at it. It did not move.

"With an instinctive determination to try something--any thing, I turned about and walked briskly towards town with askance look, all the time, watching the movements of the beast. It crept swiftly along the wall, at exactly my pace.

"Where the wall ends, near the turn of the road, it came down, and with a wiry spring or two brought itself close to my feet, and continued to keep up with me, as I quickened my pace. It was at my left side, so dose to my leg that I felt every moment as if I should tread upon it.

"The road was quite deserted and silent, and it was darker every moment. I stopped dismayed and bewildered, turning as 1 did so, the other way--I mean, towards this house, away from which I had been walking. When I stood still, the monkey drew back to a distance of, I suppose, about five or six yards, and remained stationary, watching me. "I had been more agitated than I have said. I had read, of course, as everyone has, something about 'spectral illusions,' as you physicians term the phenomena of such cases. I considered my situation, and looked my misfortune in the face.

"These affections, I had read, are sometimes transitory and sometimes obstinate. I had read of cases in which the appearance, at first harmless, had, step by step, degenerated into something direful and insupportable, and ended by wearing its victim out. Still as I stood there, but for my bestial companion, quite alone, I tried to comfort myself by repeating again and again the assurance, 'the thing is purely disease, a well-known physical affection, as distinctly as small-pox or neuralgia. Doctors are all agreed on that, philosophy demonstrates it. I must not be a fool. I've been sitting up too late, and I daresay my digestion is quite wrong, and, with God's help, I shall be all right, and this is but a symptom of nervous dyspepsia.'

Did I believe all this? Not one word of it, no more than any other miserable being ever did who is once seized and riveted in this satanic captivity. Against my convictions, I might say my knowledge, I was simply bullying myself into a false courage.

"I now walked homeward. I had only a few hundred yards to go. I had forced myself into a sort of resignation, but I had not got over the sickening shock and the flurry of the first certainty of my misfortune.

"I made up my mind to pass the night at home. The brute moved dose betide me, and 1 fancied there was the sort of anxious drawing toward the house, which one sees in tired horses or dogs, sometimes as they come toward home.

"I was afraid to go into town, I was afraid of any one's seeing and recognizing me. I was conscious of an irrepressible agitation in my manner. Also, I was afraid of any violent change in my habits, such as going to a place of amusement, or walking from home in order to fatigue myself. At the hall door it waited till I mounted the steps, and when the door was opened entered with me.

"I drank no tea that night. I got cigars and some brandy and water. My idea was that I should act upon my material system, and by living for a while in sensation apart from thought, send myself forcibly, as it were, into a new groove. I came up here to this drawing-room. 1 sat just here. The monkey then got upon a small table that then stood there. It looked dazed and languid. An irrepressible uneasiness as to its movements kept my eyes always upon it. Its eyes were half closed, but I could see them glow. It was looking steadily at me. In all situations, at all hours, it is awake and looking at me. That never changes.

"I shall not continue in detail my narrative of this particular night. I shall describe, rather, the phenomena of the first year, which never varied, essentially. I shall describe the monkey as it appeared in daylight. In the dark, as you shall presently hear, there are peculiarities. It is a small monkey, perfectly black. It had only one peculiarity--a character of malignity--unfathomable malignity. During the first year looked sullen and sick. But this character of intense malice and vigilance was always underlying that surly languor. During all that time it acted as if on a plan of giving me as little trouble as was consistent with watching me. Its eyes were never off me. I have never lost sight of it, except in my sleep, light or dark, day or night, since it came here, excepting when it withdraws for some weeks at a time, unaccountably.

"In total dark it is visible as in daylight. I do not mean merely its eyes. It is all visible distinctly in a halo that resembles a glow of red embers, and which accompanies it in all its movements.

"When it leaves me for a time, it is always at night, in the dark, and in the same way. It grows at first uneasy, and then furious, and then advances towards me, ginning and shaking, its paws clenched, and, at the same time, there comes the appearance of fire in the grate. I never have any fire. I can't sleep in the room where there is any, and it draws nearer and nearer to the chimney, quivering, it seems, with rage, and when its fury rises to the high est pitch, it springs into the grate, and up the chimney, and 1 see it no more.

"When first this happened, I thought I was released. 1 was now a new man. A day passed--a night--and no return, and a blessed week--a week--another week. 1 was always on my knees, Dr. Hesselius, always, thanking God and praying. A whole month passed of liberty, but on a sudden, it was with me again."

CHAPTER VIII

The Second Stage

"It was with me, and the malice which before was torpid under a sullen exterior, was now active.

It was perfectly unchanged in every other respect. This new energy was apparent in its activity and its looks, and soon in other ways.

"For a time, you will understand, the change was shown only in an increased vivacity, and an air of menace, as if it were always brooding over some atrocious plan. Its eyes, as before, were never off me."

"Is it here now?" I asked.

"No," he replied, "it has been absent exactly a fortnight and a day--fifteen days. It has sometimes been away so long as nearly two months, once for three. Its absence always exceeds a fortnight, al though it may be but by a single day. Fifteen days having past since I saw it last, it may return now at any moment."

"Is its return," I asked, "accompanied by any peculiar manifestation?"

"Nothing--no," he said. "It is simply with me again. On lifting my eyes from a book, or turning my head, I see it, as usual, looking at me, and then it remains, as before, for its appointed time. I have never told so much and so minutely before to any one."

I perceived that he was agitated, and looking like death, and he repeatedly applied his handkerchief to his forehead; I suggested that he might be cured, and told him that I would call, with pleasure, in the morning, but he said: "No, if you don't mind hearing it all now. I have got so far, and I should prefer making one effort of it. When I spoke to Dr. Harley, I had nothing like so much to tell. You are a philosophic physician. You give spirit its proper rank. If the thing is real----"

He paused looking at me with agitated inquiry.

"We can discuss it by-and-by, and very fully. I will give you all I think, " I answered after an interval.

"Well--very well. If it is anything real, I say, it is prevailing. little by little, and drawing me more interiorly into hell. Optic nerves, he talked of. Ah! well--there are other nerves of communication. May God Almighty help me! You shall hear. "It is power of action, I tell you, had increased. Its malice became, in a way, aggressive. About two years ago, some questions that were pending between me and the bishop having been settled, I went down to my parish in Warwickshire, anxious to find occupation in my profession. I was not prepared for what happened, although I have since thought I might have apprehended something like it. The reason of my saying so is this--"

He was beginning to speak with a great deal more effort and reluctance, and sighted often, and seemed at times nearly overcome. But at this time his manner was not agitated. It was more like that of a sinking patient, who has given himself up.

"Yes, but I will first tell you about Kenlis my parish.

"It was with me when I left this place for Drawlbridge. It was my silent traveling companion, and it remained with me at the vicarage. When I entered on the discharge of my duties, another change took place. The thing exhibited an atrocious determination to thwart me. It was with me in the church--in the reading desk--in the pulpit--within the communion rails. At last, it reached this extremity, that while I was reading to the congregation, it would spring upon the book and squat there, so that I was unable to see the page. This happened more than once.

"I left Drawlbridge for a time. I placed myself in Dr. Harley's hands. I did everything he told me. he gave my case a great deal of thought. It interested him, I think. He seemed successful.

For nearly three months I was perfectly free from a return. I began to think I was safe. With his full assent I returned to Drawlbridge.

"I traveled in a chaise. I was in good spirits. I was more--I was happy and grateful. I was returning , as I thought, delivered from a dreadful hallucination, to the scene of duties which I longed to enter upon. It was a beautiful sunny evening, everything looked serene and cheerful, and I was delighted, I remember looking out of the window to see the spire of my church at Kenlis among the trees, at the point where one has the earliest view of it. It is exactly where the little stream that bounds the parish passes under the road by a culvert, and where it emerges at the roadside, a stone with an old inscription is placed. As we passed this point, I drew my head in and sat down, and in the corner of the chaise was the monkey.

"For a moment I felt faint, and then quite wild with despair and horror, I called to the driver, and got out, and sat down at the road-side, and prayed to God silently for mercy. A despairing resignation supervened. My companion was with me as I reentered the vicarage. The same persecution followed. After a short struggle I submitted, and soon I left the place. "I told you," he said, "that all the beast has before this become in certain ways aggressive. I will explain a little. It seemed to be actuated by intense and increasing fury, whenever I said my prayers, or even meditated prayer. It amounted at last to a dreadful interruption. You will ask, how could a silent immaterial phantom effect that? It was thus, whenever I meditated praying; It was always before me, and nearer and nearer. "It used to spring on the table, on the back of the chair, on the chimney-piece, and slowly swing itself from side to side, looking at me all the time. There is in its motion an indefinable power to dissipate thought, and to contract one's attention to that monotony, till the ideas shrink, as it were, to a point, and at last to nothing--and unless I had started up , and shook off the catalepsy I have felt as if my mind were to a point of losing itself. There are no other ways," he sighed heavily; "thus, for instance, while I pray with my eyes closed, it comes closer and closer and closer, and I see it. I know it is not to be accounted for physically, but I do actually see it, though my lids are closed, and so it rocks my mind, as it were, and overpowers me, and I am obliged to rise from my knees. If you had ever yourself known this, you would be acquainted with desperation."

CHAPTER IX

The Third Stage

"I see, Dr. Hesselius, that you don't lose one word of my statement. I need not ask you to listen specially to what I am now going to tell you. They talk of the optic nerves, and of spectral illusions, as if the organ of fight was the only point assailable by the influences that have fastened upon me--l know better. For two years in my direful case that limitation prevailed. But as food is taken in softly at the lips, and then brought under the teeth, as the tip of the little finger caught in a mill crank will draw in the hand, and the arm, and the whole body, so the miserable mortal who has been once caught firmly by the end of the finest fibre of his nerve, is drawn in and in, by the enormous machinery of hell, until he is as 1 am. Yes, Doctor, as I am, for a while I talk to you, and implore relief, I feel that my prayer is for the impossible, and my pleading with the inexorable."

1 endeavoured to calm his visibly increasing agitation, and told him that he must not despair.

While we talked the night had overtaken us. The filmy moon light was wide over the scene which the window commanded, and I said: "Perhaps you would prefer having candles. This light, you know, is odd. I should wish you, as much as possible, under your usual conditions while I make my diagnosis, shall I call it--otherwise I don't care."

"All lights are the same to me," he said; "except when 1 read or write, I care not if night were perpetual. I am going to tell you what happened about a year ago. The thing began to speak to me."

"Speak! How do you mean--speak as a man does, do you mean?" "yes; speak in words and consecutive sentences, with perfect coherence and articulation; but there is a peculiarity. It is not like the tone of a human voice. It is not by my ears it reaches me-it comes like a singing through my head.

"This faculty, the power of speaking to me, will be my undoing. It won't let me pray, it interrupts me with dreadful blasphemies. I dare not go on, I could not. Oh! Doctor, can the skill, and thought, and prayers of man avail me nothing!"

"You must promise me, my dear sir, not to trouble yourself with unnecessarily exciting thoughts; confine yourself strictly to the narrative of facts; and recollect, above all, that even if the thing that infests you be, you seem to suppose a reality with an actual in dependent life and will, yet it can have no power to hurt you, unless it be given from above: its access to your senses depends mainly upon your physical condition--this is, under God, your com fort and reliance: we are all alike environed. It is only that in your case, the 'parties,' the veil of the flesh, the screen, is a little out of repair, and sights and sounds are transmitted. We must enter on a new course, sir,---be encouraged. I'll give to-night to the careful consideration of the whole case."

"You are very good, sir; you think it worth trying, you don't give me quite up; but, sir, you don't know, it is gaining such an influence over me: it orders me about, it is such a tyrant, and I'm growing so helpless. May God deliver me!"

"It orders you about--of course you mean by speech?"

"Yes, yes; it is always urging me to crimes, to injure others, or myself. You see, Doctor, the situation is urgent, it is indeed. When I was in Shropshire, a few weeks ago" (Mr. Jennings was speaking rapidly and trembling now, holding my arm with one hand, and looking in my face), "I went out one day with a party of friends for a walk: my persecutor, I tell you, was with me at the time. I lagged behind the rest: the country near the Dee, you know, is beautiful. Our path happened to lie near a coal mine, and at the verge of the wood is a perpendicular shaft, they say, a hundred and fifty feet deep. My niece had remained behind with me--she knows, of course nothing of the nature of my sufferings. She knew, however, that I had been ill, and was low, and she remained to prevent my being quite alone. As we loitered slowly on together, the brute that accompanied me was urging me to throw myself down the shaft. I tell you now--oh, sir, think of it!--the one consideration that saved me from that hideous death was the fear lest the shock of witnessing the occurrence should be too much for the poor girl. I asked her to go on and walk with her friends, saying that I could go no further. She made excuses, and the more I urged her the firmer she became. She looked doubtful and frightened. 1 suppose there was something in my looks or manner that alarmed her; but she would not go, and that literally saved me. You had no idea, sir, that a living man could be made so abject a slave of Satan," he said, with a ghastly groan and a shudder.

There was a pause here, and I said, "You were preserved nevertheless. It was the act of God. You are in His hands and in the power of no other being: be therefore confident for the future."

CHAPTER X

Home

I made him have candles lighted, and saw the room looking cheery and inhabited before I left him. I told him that he must regard his illness strictly as one dependent on physical, though subtle physical causes. 1 told him that he had evidence of God's care and love in the deliverance which he had just described, and that I had perceived with pain that he seemed to regard its peculiar features as indicating that he had been delivered over to spiritual reprobation. Than such a conclusion nothing could be, I insisted, less warranted; and not only so, but more contrary to [acts, as disclosed in his mysterious deliverance from that murderous in fluence during his Shropshire excursion. First, his niece had been retained by his side without his intending to keep her near him; and, secondly, there had been infused into his mind an irresistible repugnance to execute the dreadful suggestion in her presence.

As I reasoned this point with him, Mr. Jennings wept. He seemed comforted. One promise I exacted, which was that should the monkey at any time return, I should be sent for immediately; and, repeating my assurance that 1 would give neither time nor thought to any other subject until I had thoroughly investigated his case, and that to-morrow he should hear the result, 1 took my leave.

Before getting into the carriage I told the servant that his master was far from well, and that he should make a point of fre quently looking into his room. My own arrangements 1 made with a view to being quite secure from interruption. I merely called at my lodgings, and with a traveling-desk and carpet-bag, set off in a hackney carriage for an inn about two miles out of town, called "The Horns," a very quiet and comfortable house, with good thick walls. And there I resolved, without the possibility of intrusion or distraction, to devote some hours of the night, in my comfortable sitting-room, to Mr. Jennings' case, and so much of the morning as it might require. (There occurs here a careful note of Dr. Hesselius' opinion on the case, and of the habits, dietary, and medicines which he prescribed. It is curious--some persons would say mystical. But, on the whole, I doubt whether it would sufficiently interest a reader of the kind I am likely to meet with, to warrant its being here reprinted. The whole letter was plainly written at the inn where he had hid himself for the occasion. The next letter is dated from his town lodgings.) I left town for the inn where I slept last night at half-past nine, and did not arrive at my room in town until one o'clock this after- noon. 1 found a letter m Mr. Jennings' hand upon my table. It. had not come by post, and, on inquiry, I learned that Mr. Jennings' servant had brought it, and on learning that I was not to return until to-day, and that no one could tell him my address, he seemed very uncomfortable, and said his orders from his master were that he was not to return without an answer.

I opened the letter and read:

Dear Dr. Hesselius.--It is here. You had not been an hour gone when it returned. It is speaking. It knows all that has happened. It knows every thing-it knows you, and is frantic and atrocious. It reviles. I send you this. It knows every word I have written--I write. This I promised, and I therefore write, but I fear very confused, very incoherently. I am so interrupted, disturbed.

Ever yours, sincerely yours,

ROBERT LYNDER JENNINGS.

"When did this come?" I asked.

"About eleven last night: the man was here again, and has been here three times to-day. The last time is about an hour since."

Thus answered, and with the notes ! had made upon his case in my pocket, I was in a few minutes driving towards Richmond, to see Mr. Jennings. I by no means, as you perceive, despaired of Mr. Jennings' case. He had himself remembered and applied, though quite in a mistaken way, the principle which I lay down in my Metaphysical Medicine, and which governs all such cases. I was about to apply it in earnest. I was profoundly interested, and very anxious to see and examine him while the "enemy" was actually present. I drove up to the sombre house, and ran up the steps, and knocked. The door, in a little time, was opened by a tall woman in black silk. She looked ill, and as if she had been crying. She curtseyed, and heard my question, but she did not answer. She turned her face away, extending her hand towards two men who were coming down-stairs; and thus having, as it were, tacitly made me over to them, she passed through a side-door hastily and shut it.

The man who was nearest the hall, I at once accosted, but being now close to him, I was shocked to see that both his hands were covered with blood.

I drew back a little, and the man, passing downstairs, merely said in a low tone, "Here's the servant, sir."

The servant had stopped on the stairs, confounded and dumb at seeing me. He was rubbing his hands in a handkerchief, and it was steeped in blood.

"Jones, what is it? what has happened?" I asked, while a sickening suspicion overpowered me.

The man asked me to come up to the lobby. I was beside him in a moment, and, frowning and pallid, with contracted eyes, he told me the horror which I already half guessed.

His master had made away with himself.

I went upstairs with him to the room--what I saw there I won't tell you. He had cut his throat with his razor. It was a frightful gash. The two men had laid him on the bed, and composed his limbs. It had happened, as the immense pool of blood on the floor declared, at some distance between the bed and the window. There was carpet round his bed, and a carpet under his dressing. table, but none on the rest of the floor, for the man said he did not like a carpet on his bedroom. In this sombre and now terrible room, one of the great elms that darkened the house was slowly moving the shadow of one of its great boughs upon this dreadful floor.

I beckoned to the servant, and we went downstairs together. I turned off the hall into an old-fashioned paneled room, and there standing, I heard all the servant had to tell. It was not a great deal.

"! concluded, sir, from your words, and looks, sir, as you left last night, that you thought my master was seriously ill. I thought it might be that you were afraid of a fit, or something. So I attended very close to your directions. He sat up late, till past three o'clock. He was not writing or reading. He was talking a great deal to him self, but that was nothing unusual. At about that hour 1 assisted him to undress, and left him in his slippers and dressing-gown. I went back softly in about half-an-hour. He was in his bed, quite undressed, and a pair of candles lighted on the table beside his bed. He was leaning on his elbow, and looking out at the other side of the bed when I came in. I asked him if he wanted anything, and he said No. "I don't know whether it was what you said to me, sir, or some thing a little unusual about him, but I was uneasy, uncommon uneasy about him last night.

"In another half hour, or it might be a little more, 1 went up again. 1 did not hear him talking as before. I opened the door a little. The candles were both out, which was not usual. I had a bedroom candle, and I let the light in, a little bit, looking softly round. I saw him sitting in that chair beside the dressing-table with his clothes on again. He turned round and looked at me. I thought it strange he should get up and dress, and put out the candles to sit in the dark, that way.

But I only asked him again if I could do anything for him. He said, No, rather sharp, I thought. He said, 'Tell me truth, Jones; why did you come again--you did not hear anyone cursing?' 'No, sir,' I said, wondering what he could mean.

"'No,' said he, after me, 'of course, no;' and I said to him, 'Wouldn't it be well, sir, you went to bed? It's just five o'clock;' and he said nothing, but, 'Very likely; good-night, Jones.' so I went, sir, but in less than an hour I came again. The door was fast, and he heard me, and called as I thought from the bed to know what I wanted, and he desired me not to disturb him again. I lay down and slept for a little. It must have been between six and seven when I went up again. The door was still fast, and he made no answer, so 1 did not like to disturb him, and thinking he was asleep, I left him till nine. It was his custom to ring when he wished me to come, and I had no particular hour for calling him. I tapped very gently, and getting no answer, I stayed away a good while, supposing he was getting some rest then. It was not till eleven o'clock I grew really uncomfortable about him--for at the latest he was never, that I could remember, later than half past ten. I got no answer. I knocked and called, and still no answer. So not being able to force the door, I called Thomas from the stables, and together we forced it, and found him in the shocking way you saw."

Jones had no more to tell. Poor Mr. Jennings was very gentle, and very kind. All his people were fond of him. I could see that the servant was very much moved. So, dejected and agitated, I passed from that terrible house, and its dark canopy of elms, and I hope I shall never see it more. While I write to you I feel like a man who has but half waked from a frightful and monotonous dream. My memory rejects the picture with incredulity and horror.

Yet I know it is true. It is the story of the process of a poison, a poison which excites the reciprocal action of spirit and nerve, and paralyses the tissue that separates those cognate functions of the senses, the external and the interior. Thus we find strange bed-fellows, and the mortal and immortal prematurely make acquaintance.

CONCLUSION

A Word for Those Who Suffer

My dear Van L--, you have suffered from an affection similar to that which 1 have just described. You twice complained of a re turn of it. Who, under God, cured you? Your humble servant, Martin Hesselius. Let me rather adopt the more emphasized piety o[ a certain good old French surgeon of three hundred years ago: "I treated, and God cured you."

Come, my friend, you are not to be hippish. Let me tell you a fact. 1 have met with, and treated, as my book shows, fifty-seven cases of this kind of vision, which 1 term indifferently "sublimated," "precocious," and "interior." There is another class of affections which are truly termed- though commonly confounded with those which I describe--spectral illusions.

These latter I look upon as being no less simply curable than a cold in the head or a trifling dyspepsia. It is those which rank in the first category that test our promptitude of thought. Fifty-seven such cases have I encountered, neither more nor less. And in how many of these have I failed? In no one single instance.There is no one affliction of mortality more easily and certainly reducible, with a little patience, and a rational confidence in the physician. With these simple conditions, 1 look upon the cure as absolutely certain. You are to remember that 1 had not even commenced to treat Mr. Jennings' case. 1 have not any doubt that 1 should have cured him perfectly in eighteen months, or possibly it might have ex tended to two years. Some cases are very rapidly curable, others extremely tedious. Every intelligent physician who will give thought and diligence to the task, will effect a cure. You know my tract on "The Cardinal Functions of the Brain." I there, by the evidence of innumerable facts, prove, as I think, the high probability of a circulation arterial and venous in its anism, through the nerves. Of this system, thus considered, the brain is the heart. The fluid, which is propagated hence through one class of nerves, returns in an altered state through another, and the nature of that fluid is spiritual, though not immaterial, any more than, as 1 before remarked, light or electricity are so. By various abuses, among which the habitual use of such agents . as green tea is one, this fluid may be affected as to its quality, but it is more frequently disturbed as to equilibrium. This fluid being that which we have in common with spirits, a congestion found on the masses of brain or nerve, connected with the interior sense, forms a surface unduly exposed, on which disembodied spirits may operate: communication is thus more or less effectually established. Between this brain circulation and the heart circulation there is an intimate sympathy. The seat, or rather the instrument of exterior vision, is the eye. The seat of interior vision is the nervous tissue and brain, immediately about and above the eyebrow. You remember how effectually I dissipated your pictures by the simple application of iced eau-de-cologne. Few cases, how ever, can be treated exactly alike with anything like rapid success. Cold acts powerfully as a repellant of the nervous fluid. Long enough continued it will even produce that permanent insensibility which we call numbness, and a little longer, muscular as well as sensational paralysis.

I have not, 1 repeat, the slightest doubt that 1 should have first dimmed and ultimately sealed that inner eye which Mr. Jennings had inadvertently opened. The same senses are opened in delirium tremens, and entirely shut up again when the overaction of the cerebral heart, and the prodigious nervous congestions that attend it, are terminated by a decided change in the state of the body. It is by acting steadily upon the body, by a simple process, that this result is produced--and inevitably produced--l have never yet failed. Poor Mr. Jennings made away with himself. But that catastrophe was the result of a totally different malady, which, as it were, projected itself upon the disease which was established. His case was in the distinctive manner a complication, and the com plaint under which he really succumbed, was hereditary suicidal mania. Poor Mr. Jennings I cannot call a patient of mine, for I had not even begun to treat his case, and he had not yet given me, I am convinced, his full and unreserved confidence. If the patient do not array himself on the side of the disease, his cure is certain.

[a-pretty-nerd]

Imagine: Part 8 Finale (Jasper Jordan x pregnant reader)

A/N: This is the last instalment of this fic! I am so happy that you guys enjoyed it! If you like this one, then you might like a new I’m cooking up. This one involved a 1920s AU with Jasper(ot just straight up, Devon) being reader’s lover! I also have some Murphy smuts, and Rodrick smuts on the way! But as always, don’t be afraid to make a request! ✌❤

Warning: Violence, the apocalypse, angst, etc.

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That’s it. Octavie won the fight. Arkadia offically had rights to the bunker that was sure to save everyone. There was hope after all. You, and the baby, and Jasper didn’t have to die! It was just a matter of convincing Jasper. But you were running out of time. While you were helping everyone pack up for the bunker, Jasper and Harper were off partying with the others. Monty hadn’t given up hope, but he was too busy trying to convince Harper, and making suits, and figuring everything out. It wasn’t until mostly everyone had left, and your time was numbered by days, that you approached by Bellamy.

“Y/N.” His voice deep, and demanding as always. You turned and looked up at him with a curious gaze. Its not that you and Bellamy didn’t get along, it was just a rarety for him to reach out to you.

“Yeah?”

“Why aren’t you leaving with the others?” You shrugged.

“I’m staying with Monty for a bit. We still have time to-”

“You’re a top priority. You shouldn’t be here now. The radiation will come any day now.”

“I’m well aware Bellamy. I just…I have a few things I need to take care of first.” You went to walk away, but he blocked you.

“If you’re talking about Jasper, you’re wasting your time. Nothing will change his mind.” Somehow he turned his words into a knife, and gutted you. You’d thought the same thing before, but hearing it said by someone else. It hurt more than anything else.

“Get out of my way Bellamy.” You demanded.

“Y/N-”

“Get the fuck, out of my way!” You shouted at him. All the anger you felt, all the sorrow and the hate from the past 5 months came out. His eyes went wide, clearly taken back. He stepped aside, and you stomped off to your room. You layed down on the bed, and cried.

Several days went by too fast. You stood amungst the group of wild teenager as the music blared, and they stripped to their underwear in a wild frenzie. Bellamy had just left, leaving you and Monty to catch up in the last remaining rover. Monty made extra suits. Five to be exact. Four, for you, Harper, Jasper, and himself. Then an extra just in case.

You found Jasper at the bar, pouring himself some of that putrid tea he made. He looked sickly, his skin was greasy and pale. The bags under his eyes made him look 10 times older. How had you not seen him like this? Why didn’t you tell him before. Maybe then, he wouldn’t be like this. Monty went to approach him before there was shouting across the room. One of the others had collapsed, and they frantically circled around him. Monty went to try and revive him, but you watched as the emaciated Jasper clawed him away. He rambled on about how to let him have his peace. It scared you to death to see him like this. On the verdge of death himself. He looked down at the dead body in fascination, and envy. You had to act now. This was your last chance.

When Jasper seperated himself from the group, you followed him into a dark room. Almost nothing, but a table, and a window. Jasper wrapped himself in a blanket, and went to finish his drink. You knew, if he finished it, he’d be dead. The cup gently tapped his bottom lip, and you panicked.

“Jasper!” You cried. He jumped, and turned his attention to you. His eyes wide with fear. You had clearly startled him.

“Y/N. N-No. What are you doing here? Go, get out of here before its too late.” He put his drink down, and approached you to walk you away.

“I’m not leaving. Not until I talk to you.” It was hard to speak. Your heart felt like it was in your throat. You felt sick to your stomach as you looked helplessly into his big brown eyes. Those eyes, still as soft and sweet as the day you met him.

“Goodbyes will only hurt Y/N. Please just-”

“This isn’t a goodbye Jasper. Look, theres something I have to tell you.”

“Oh, God. Y/N. Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t tell me you love me. It will only make it harder for you to move on.” He placed his hands on your shoulders. “I just want you to go, and be happy.”

“Oh float you Jasper!” You had enough. Enough of him and his shitty attitude. You cared about this too much to let him brush you off again. “You want me to be happy? You make me happy Jasper.” His eyes were wide, he very visably didn’t know how to react. “But, thats not what I came here to tell you.” He looked you up and down, nervous and confused.

“You shouldn’t be here, you need to leave. You’re f-fucking pregnant.” He was stumbling through his words.

“Jasper, please. Y-You need to know this. I should have told you long before. And I’m so so sorry. If I did, maybe things would be different.” You felt like you were going to cry. You did everything you could to keep yourself from it. You were so sick of all the tears. You kept your gaze away from his eyes. You stared at his collar bone. “Jasper…The baby…” You took in a deep breath.

“What about it Y/N?”

“The baby, is yours!” There it was. You said it. You got the courage to look up at him. His expression hadn’t changed. You watched him take a deep breath, and close his eyes shut. He shook his head, and then looked at you.

“What?” He was in disbelief.

“You got me pregnant, Jasper.”

“N-No its Damian’s.”

“Damian and I never had sex.” He stared at your belly, then you.

“B-But how?”

“Don’t you remember? Unity day, you got super hammered. And we…The next morning you told me it didn’t mean anything.” He stared at you.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I tried. I wanted to. So badly. But everytime I tried to tell you, it was just so wrong. And in Mount Weather…you were so happy with Maya I-I…” The tears started. They rolled down your cheeks. “I couldn’t ruin your chances with her.” His eyes started getting teary. His eyes found themselves lost in yours. His breathing became heavy.

“Y-You let everyone think, that it was someone else’s. Just so….Y/N…Why?”

“Because I’ve loved you since we were on the Ark! I have loved you, even though you put me through so much shit. I mean, you knocked me up, and you reject me, and now…Now you’re leaving me…” You watched him as the tears fell down his cheekbones. His lip began to quiver, and then he reached out. He held you close to him, like he would never let go. You felt his tears fall on your head as he wept.

“I’m so sorry Y/N.” He sobbed. “I’m so..s-sorry.” You looked up at him, held his face in your hands, and kissed him. He kissed back, tenderly. When you pulled away, his hands grazed over your belly.

“You taste just as sweet as that night.” He whisepered. He leaned his forehead against yours.

“Jasper, I can’t do this without you.” You held his hand on your belly. “We, can’t do this without you.” He looked down at your belly fondly. As if, he was happy.

“Y/N…” His voice was soft, and sweet.

“It’s not too late.” You kissed him again. “You know you’d be welcome with open arms. Jasper, no one wants to see you go. Think how devistated Monty and I would be. Or Octavia, or Raven. Jasper, you have so many people who love, and care about. Y-You…You have a family right here.”

“I’d be no good in a family. I-Im-”

“Bullshit! You’d make a great Dad, and a wonderful partner. You’re a skilled chemist. You’re smart, and sweet. You have a heart of gold. You’d do anything to save the people you love. I know you’ve convinced yourself that you’re cursed, and useless, but you’re wrong. So, so wrong. So please. Come with us. Come with us, or I’m staying here with you.” You stood your ground.

“Oh float you.” He whispered before kissing you, passionately. The most amazing, loving, and breath taking kiss you’d ever had. He held the back of your neck, and your hip in the other hand. He reluctantly pulled away, and looked at you again, with something of a smile. Or a grin. “Come on then.”

“Really?” He nodded, and went to walk out of the room with you. But Monty stood there, in his suit. His mouth hanging open. “Jesus Monty, how long have you been standing there?”

“I saw the whole thing. You’re really coming?” He asked Jasper.

“If you’ll have me.” He shrugged. Monty just gave him a tight hug. Then he swept the two of you off to the Rover. You’d saved Jasper’s life. A debt he’d never be able to repay. No matter how many dirty diapers he’d change.

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The end ❤✌

[sockisverylost]

T.V Show Idea

I seen this before, and I will never stop reblogging it, anywho

So theres two people, they’re roomates, ones a superhero and the other super villain w/eachother, they’re adch eniminies, eventually they become best freinds over time, and when they come home with stiches and bruises [from eachother] they just help eachother without a doubt or question

As time goes on, they begin to like eachother….and then they get worried, suspicious and other confused things about why the orher hurt and damaged

So they ask eachother and stuff and they just straight up suck at lieing so the others like “Scarlet/Donum I know your lieing, just tell me” and a freaking season 5 finale happens half way before the other admits it…or maybe they won’t……

BUT WHEN THEY DO…they team up because theres new threats……..

I want the girl to be the villain and have a real sass on the dude and that makes him slowly fall in love with her….OH…

How ‘bout the girl is really rich and her parents were like the mayor or something of a far far city and she stepped on some radio active thingy on a full moon and got powers as she was RUNNING AWAY from her horrible family that always pressure her and teach her 'lessons’..and Donum found like some old legandary book in the woods and there was a key at the back, it struck him in the heart and he went all super sayin and they try and master their powers with masters who are secretly twin brothers of the ying yang thingamabob and ya..who lost the book and a secret potion that was the radio active thing, evil guys an evil chemist wizard of the dark realms/Shadow realm [haydes chemist teacher] and the others an ancient enchanter of the light realm

Back to the people’s: But like since shes rich, shes spoiled and money leads to evil, and duhhh the boy was poor and golden hearted

Anywho she stole like a secret stash of like a million dollars from her parents..she was a devil child XD, the guys worked his butt of for college and they were roomies..YOU GUYS IM MAKING THIS A BOOK OR A MOVIE, IF YOU GUYS DO PLZ GIMME CREDIT :O I BEG OF YOU

oh how about on the last day if training the masters said at the exact same time “you two were meant to be” and they dissapear to the spirit realm and laugh their butts off at them really confused and they watch over them as mentors giving little tips in their minds

Sorry totaly forgot to tell u guys: Guys powers: ★can fly ★can move things with his mind/telapathcy ★can read peoples minds ★living lie detector but some how doesn’t work on the girl ★can make a lightning bolt in a specific place, drains his energy massivly but its super effective [She calls him a complete nerd in a cute way] [I freaking ship these little broccoli peices of poop allready..help me]

Girls powers: ★super speed ★super stength ★can posses someone for 24 hours ★can go 'Beast Mode’ on full moons, so crazy but not Tempestas Equitem [Shes also really persuasive to the guy, probably cuz he likes her and can’t say no to her but like you know. ..ITS SO FREAKING CUTE]

For some reason I want her to have red hair and the guy would nick name her scar XD oh and her villain name would be “Deorum Umbra” wich means Gods Shadow in latin, she shortened it to Deo Umbra and the guys name is “Equitem Tempestas” meaning Storm Rider in latin but he shortened it to Tempest they just tease eachother with stupid names like Deo and Temp during battles when they get tired and are doing small talk threathining eachother as they fight

I would write a freaking paper on this

the girls nane is Scarlet, yah scarlet cuz her parents are not freaking original and her hair was red so like “wow lets name her scarlet honey!” And the guy…I freaking imagine him as a farm boy with parents who love and cared for him, they had golden hearts LIKE HIM and always said “you have a bright future” or somthing, but they died of old age and broccoli stuff…but like his name is Donum wich means gift in latin, so his nickname is Don

I FREAKING APPRECIATE ANYONE WHO READ IT UP TO HERE! I KNOW THIS IS JUST BLACK AND WHITE BORING WORDS BUT IT TOOK ME A LONG TIME TO TYPE AND I NEED YOU TO SPREAD OUT THE WORD!

Peace out ;)