What was this new and strange knowledge? How had it come? I had simply remembered that Willis had told Jones that the Doctor could tell what another man was thinking, and I had known that Willis had spoken the words to ME!
Then I was Jones. No wonder I could not get rid of him, for he had my mind in his body. One mind in two bodies? How could that be? But I remember that the Captain warned me against attributing to mind extension or divisibility or any property of matter. I am a double--perhaps more. Who knows but that the relation of mind with mind is the relation of unity? It must be so. I can see that I am Jones. No wonder that I felt tired when he was weary; no wonder that I knew he wore gray in the night; no wonder that I knew he was not dead.
Yes, the broken gun was mine; I have been a Confederate spy. I am Jones Berwick and I am Berwick Jones.
XXXVIII
IDENTITY
"Which, is the side that I must go withal?
I am with both: each army hath a hand;
And, in their rage, I having hold of both,
They whirl asunder, and dismember me."
--SHAKESPEARE.
I had been in the battle of Manassas, fighting in the ranks of blue soldiers--yes, I remember the charge and the defeat and the rout. How vividly I now remember the words--strange I thought them then--of Dr. Khayme. He had said that it might be a spy's duty to desert even, in order to accomplish his designs.
Had this suggestion been made before the fact? I am again in a mist. But what matter? I had not deserted in reality; I had only pretended to desert. Yet I think it strange that I cannot remember what Jones Berwick felt when deciding to act the deserter. Had he found pretended desertion necessary?
Yes, undoubtedly; unless he had passed himself off as a deserter he could not have been received into the Yankee army, and I now knew that I was once in that army.