The Man Who Lost Himself

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

They must have thought him mad.

The hot shame of the idea was a better stimulant than brandy. He walked on. He was no longer thinking of the woman he had just left. He was thinking of himself.

He had been false to himself.

The greatest possession any man can have in the world is himself. Some men let that priceless property depreciate, some improve it, it is given to few men to tamper with it after the fashion of Jones.

He saw this now, and just as though a pit had opened before him he drew back. He must stop this double life at once and become his own self in reality; failing to do that he would meet madness. He recognised this. No man’s brain could stand what he had been going through for long; had he been left to himself he might have adapted his mind gradually to the perpetual shifting from Jones to Rochester and vice versa. The woman had brought things to a crisis. The horror that had now suddenly fallen on him, the horror of the return of that awful feeling of negation, the horror of losing himself, cast all other considerations from his mind.

He must stop this business at once.

He would go away, return straight to America.

That was easy to be done—but would that save him? Would that free him from this horrible clinging personality that he had so lightly cast around himself?

Nothing is stranger than mind. From the depth of his mind came the whisper, “No.” Intuition told him that were he to go to Timbuctoo, Rochester would cling to him, that he would wake up from sleep fancying himself Rochester and then that feeling would return. What he required was the recognition by other people that he was himself, Jones, that the whole of this business was a deception, a stage play in real life. Their abuse, their threats would not matter. Their blows would be welcome, so he thought. Anything that would hit him back firmly into his real position in the scheme of things and save him from the dread of some day losing himself.

After a while the exercise and night air calmed his mind. He had come to the great decision. A decision immutable now, since it had to do with the very core of his being. He would tell her everything. To-morrow morning he would confess all. Her fascination upon him had loosened its hold, the terror had done that. He no longer loved her. Had he ever loved her? That was an open question, or in other words, a question no man could answer. He only knew now that he did not crave for her regard, only for her recognition of himself as Jones.