“How came the influence there?” I asked, humouring his grotesque theory.
“That which has existed in an atmosphere of revenge, hatred, and despair, becomes at last impregnated with a malignant intelligence derived from them; an intelligence both devilish in itself and able to endow you with its own deformity. And if you hold not aloof from it, you shall surely be destroyed—in soul, if not in body likewise!”
“But do we feel this influence unless aware beforehand that it is there?”
“Fix your thought constantly upon yonder wheel,” was the reply, “and mark if it does not answer you.”
Still with my hands clasped across my eyes, I concentrated my mind as directed, and presently felt my veins crawl with a slow chill of dismay—a chill which deprived me of control over my faculties, while awakening them to unnatural activity. That the wheel had a conscious personality, instinct with evil, seemed no longer open to doubt. Now the plash and gurgle of the water changed to the stealthy drip of blood; and I shrank from the breeze that moved my hair as from a pestilential breath. Was I going mad too? My will seemed to falter; a tremor which I could not repress passed through me from head to foot.
“Aye, you feel it,” murmured the voice again. “You are answered!”
By a determined effort I regained command of myself. Perhaps it was none too soon. Nothing is easier than to indulge this morbid vein, and few indulgences, I believe, are more perilous. With my change of mood came a change of tone; I cast aside the hysteric style, and adopted one more brusque and matter-of-fact, to which the reaction from sentimentality may have added a touch of asperity.
“Come, come!” I said. “We are overdoing this folly. I know well enough what place this is; Mr. Poyntz began to tell me about it this afternoon. An amusing story—all about the Laughing Mill, and the fellow who was drowned, and the nymph of the pearl-shell necklace. You see, I know what I am talking about! But the tale broke off in the middle; perhaps you can finish it?”
“It is you who must finish it!” returned the other. “But I want your sympathy; so let me tell my part.”
“Do so,” said I, “by all means. When I know you better, I shall be better able to sympathise with you. As to my finishing the story, I think I’m more likely to succeed as a listener than as a narrator; however, if it must be so, I’ll give it the best ending I can. And I do sympathise with you already,” I added, after a pause, in a less flippant tone. “I am a man, and I believe in human brotherhood.”