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William Gerhardie - Resurrection

Bonzo still stood there, rather more smiling, more golden ttran ruddy, his face more transparent and frail than I had seen him before. Bonzo had not had his hair cut for some time which perhaps made it more curly and golden on the neck, covering the ruddy strands. 'Well ? ' he said in his rather gentle, diffident tones, ' You're at it again, I see.'

' Yes' I said. ' Now you believe it, don't you ? '

It suddenly occurred to me what a marvellous opportunity this was of convincing him.
'Well, yes, there's something in it,' he smiled, 'as I can perhaps attest,' Bonzo looked at me in that appealing, mildly humorous way, as when he said 'I am really touched' or ' This is really delightful'- when he made one of those small ironic comments which were not intended to be anything else but gently ironic at his own expense.

The thought carne over me : but that meant that one was visible and audible to others when thus projected. But he cut me short with his smile. ' I've come to tell you,' he said, ' a short story. It's about a man and his house. About a man who has a small house, a house hardly bigger than himself.
As he grew to love his house, he identified himself more and more with the house. If the house sustained any injury it hurt him. He was proud of his house, and vain, and anxious, and always planning to ameliorate his house from inside and from outside. He would rarely leave his house,
except at night, and he would always come back to it gladly in the morning. But the house began to show the marks of time. He spent time and money in patching it up, here steadying a wall, there repairing a flue, till the time came when he was advised that the house stood condemned.

Come a moderate storm and the house would crumble. One night, as usual, he left the house and went for a long walk along unfamiliar avenues, and when dawn came it suddenly struck him that he did not want to go back to the house.

Instead he went on and on across fields he had never seen, not stopping to look round. He felt he had given too much of himself to the house. It was no longer worth saving. He had cast off his shell, he was free. The world stretched open before him, and he went on without looking back.'

I was going to ask him how he could talk to me or even see me in my etheric body, imperceptible to the physical eye. But he wasn't there. He was gone. How and when, I hadn't noticed. He was nowhere in the flat. And at that moment there was the sound of the key in the latch, and Susan, my cook, entered.

She did not notice me at all. Whatever I did failed to arouse her attention ; she seemed to go about her work with that offended air she had when she complained that 'Lately there are nothing but complaints.' She was like a woman who, having refused to speak to you, aggravated the offence by showing that she would neither be ruffled nor change her natural demeanour in any way whatsoever.

A disconcerting unsteadiness attacked my poise, like a submarine swell playing pranks with some frail piece shipwreck. ' Steady, steady,' I called to whoever there might be about, really addressing that twin will of mine already known to me from my earlier experience, who has always taken my orders in a natural way but upon whom, as more familiar than I in this new field, I felt myself sadly dependent. There was consequently a touch of deference, a consultative tone, sometimes almost ingratiating, where formerly I only gave orders and ignored his existence. ' Sir ? ' ' Sir ! ' There
was no 'sir'ring in my outer life. I couldn't do much without consulting my unconscious agent, now a conscious partner sharing the direction of my destiny at, I should say, fifty-fifty. To him I had to entrust myself, feeling he could wish me no ill.