“ETERNAL RECURRENCE—‘REPETITION ETERNAL’!”
Situations in which a man finds himself are frequently—so it is said—almost identical repetitions of earlier situations in his life—but on a smaller or larger scale. And by thus repeating, manifest some mystical aspect of Life itself!
Which phenomenon might be said to be closely related to what was, meanwhile, transpiring on Bleeker’s Island.
And the demand which the Sheriff had just made upon one, “Gilbert Blake,” to remove his glass eye—and prove himself.
No mystic was the Sheriff; he had never in his life even gazed between the covers of a book on esotericism; he would not, indeed, have known the commonest term used in discussion occult. But he was conscious, at this moment, as he made his grim demand on the man in the lineman’s habiliments, that this very identical situation had occurred once before in his life—on a small, much smaller, much less important scale—yet curiously similar, almost—almost identical. And in being thus conscious of the fact, he was confronting, for the first time, the principle of the Law of Eternal Recurrence and Repetition of Everything!
Indeed, at the very moment of his demand, his mind was comparing the elements of that other situation—with the elements of this one—element by element—and marveling as he did so.
That other incident had been the occasion of the first arrest he had ever made. Years back, of course; and one week, to be exact, after 1431 voters, to all of whom his entire life had been virtually an open book, had almost unanimously decreed that he should represent them as their symbol of the Law.
And that other incident had even involved an actor!
Except that it had been a child actor.
It was odd, passing odd, the Sheriff marveled, how the elements of that affair were actually reappearing—even though on another scale—in this. And had he been a student of the occult, instead of a practical man accustomed to deal with hard practical matters, he would have attempted to utilize that amazingly homologous situation not merely to illumine this puzzling one—but to predict this one’s entire outcome!
If, that is, this were that one—but returned again. Or—was it?
He had been walking that day in the country—reflecting on the fact that though he was now a sheriff he had yet not made his first arrest—walking along a road which had been temporarily blocked by a stalled train of freight cars. And while waiting for the train to pull on, the Sheriff had seen, peeping from one of the open doors of a box car, the head of a boy of about 12 years of age. The Sheriff had always resented boys riding freight trains. He did not know why, exactly; but it was because of a trauma of his own childhood: a boy riding a fast-moving train had once spit in his face. But, quite aside from any resentment he had about boys riding freight trains—there was a boy missing from New York—a child actor—by name Chauncy Lynn—and for whom a $500 reward had been offered in all the newspapers of America. The boy had, it seems, run away from his artificial stage life to see life in the raw—as it was.
And so the Sheriff naturally had jumped up into that open and yet stalled box car. To get hold of that boy. And to question him. And had found not one—but four boys! Three very nicely dressed, with Eton collars. The other—the one he’d seen—ragged and dirty.
So he’d collared them all, and brought them all out of the car, and down onto solid ground. The while the train—with two melancholy toots of the engine whistle—had moved off. And left them all to hold inquisition at a lonely crossroads, bathed by a gentle wind from over hill and dale.
The ragged boy, however, when questioned, made queer grunting motions and pointed to his mouth and shook his head. Dumb. As even the three clean boys with Eton collars attested.
For they, they told the Sheriff frankly, and in quaint New O’leans dialect, were Berty and Wendell and Neville Evans of New Orleans, visiting an uncle in Appleburg, the next town up the railroad line. They had seen this ragged boy in the box car while the train had been stalled—had climbed fascinated into the car—then the train had suddenly moved off.
The Sheriff had been very suspicious of that ragged boy. Because the boy manifestly wasn’t deaf—as seemingly a mute should be. And besides—the other’s tatterdemalion suit looked exactly like a stage costume the Sheriff had once seen in The Two Orphans. He had felt, indeed, that it was a good 50-50 chance he might have Chauncy Lynn.
And he knew it was a 100 chance he had Chauncy, as one of the three nicely dressed boys, jostled by the ragamuffin, reached out and kicked the latter on the shin, and the ragamuffin shouted: “For two cents I’d beat the dickens out of you.”
That had been sufficient for the Sheriff!
He had promptly gotten rid of the three boys with Eton collars who might cut into the $500 which the papers had said would be wired to anybody who found Chauncy. And the recipient of which the Sheriff preferred to be the total—and why not, since the three boys with Eton collars had looked utterly blank when the Sheriff had even casually mentioned the name Lynn? Patently they could not be said to have attained the “finding” of someone they themselves didn’t even know was missing! But so as not to muddy the situation up, the Sheriff had promptly dismissed them all, giving them a stern lecture on the dangers of riding freight trains, and pointing out how, even with the train having been stalled there, they would have a long 5-mile walk to get back to Appleburg. And had then sent them promptly along the railroad. Smiling as he heard their polite New Orleansean “Thank yuh kindly, suh’s” and “We’ll suah tell owah uncle to vote for yuh, suh.”
And with the spurious mute’s collar in his fist, the Sheriff had started back the other way along the railroad. Towards Milltown.
Only—only to come upon a newspaper that had either been tossed out of some passenger-coach window—or perhaps from the caboose of a freight train going towards Appleburg—a train for which the Sheriff and his charge had had momentarily to stand aside. A big city newspaper, it was—and with—a picture of Chauncy Lynn in it! And—and not this little whelp—this little road-cat—that was in the Sheriff’s paw at all! A grinning boy who was identical in general appearance with all three of those whom the Sheriff had questioned and released—though which of the three it was the Sheriff himself could not figure—since, in retrospect, they looked like peas out of the same pod; curious, though, the way all three had been able to imitate New Orleansean, since only one could have been the child actor, and—ah, what was this?—the Sheriff had been reading the story underneath the picture!—the boy actor’s two friends—comprising a “brother-team” of “Mammy” song singers, had fled New York with him—mammy songs!—no wonder those smooth “Thank you kindly suh’s” from all three!
The Sheriff had sent this little faker promptly scuttling. As previously he had the other three. And—for good reasons.
For he expected to catch Master Chauncy Lynn—and get $500! And he saw no reason for somebody, hearing this ragamuffin’s story, to put in a claim for half for the latter.
The Sheriff had, in fact, at a friendly section-gang shanty, gotten a phone—and had called up the station agent at Appleburg—had inquired whether three boys with Eton collars had wandered into town yet by any chance—to buy buns—or milk? If they do, detain them for me on some pret—
What’s that?
Oh!
They had already been there and gone, the station agent reported. Oh, not on foot—no!—a fast freight train which had been stalled just outside of Appleburg had just gone through like a streak out of hell—and, in the door of a box car, had been three boys with Eton collars, all of whom had insolently put their fingers to their noses at the station agent.
And that had been the last the Sheriff had ever seen of all those boys—let alone Chauncy Lynn! For the latter—and his boy mammy-song singing companions—were picked up a few days later, 500 full miles away—fast-traveling comets, those kids!—by a small-town sheriff, who, quite unimpressed with the true Louisiana dialect of the one, and the mammy-songisms of the others, had thereby become richer by $500!
Thus that old—that ancient—that, to the Sheriff, almost forgotten incident.
Almost forgotten because—as the Sheriff, not being a student of Freud, could not grasp—it had been exceedingly painful to his ego. For even though it had come about due, to a considerable extent, to his accidentally finding that a captive in his hands possessed a purely spurious physical defect, it nevertheless had involved his—the Sheriff’s—having been hoodwinked by a trio of other young slickers.
But now the old incident was coming forth in brilliant relief. Allowing itself thereby to be wonderfully compared, by the Sheriff, with one being enacted on this island today.
And the one contained almost every element the other did. Except on a different—though ever consistently so—scale.
For that other had involved a reward of $500 for the capture of a human being. This one involved—when, that is, one subtracted the tip-off reward of $2500—$20,000 net—for the same. Or at least for the same, plus return of the captive to the Folsom penitentiary authorities.
That old incident had contained a child actor. This incident contained an adult actor!
That one had embraced four individuals all closely questioned as to who they were—and what they were doing where they were. This one had involved the same identical thing!
That one had presented the phenomenon of three suspects adequately clearing themselves as to the clothing they wore—and what they were doing where they were—by their own verbal explanations, unsupported by any possessions on their persons. This affair presented the same—for, as far as the Sheriff was concerned, three men had this day talked themselves into life belts or blow-up vest—into life itself.
That other incident had involved a fourth captive suddenly proven to be spurious, at least with respect to what he’d been claiming to be, by a purely accidental discovery that he did not possess the physical defect he had claimed. The mute—who had not been a mute! This affair involved the same identical element. The one-eyed man—who had no glass eye!
Element by element—all elements were present in both situations—and the Sheriff felt sudden weird emotions gripping him—he felt now that Time had suddenly looped back upon itself and that he was riding over the same curve in Time—but with spectacles which enlarged the vista. He did not know it, but Life’s so-called “Mystical Aspect” had caught him!
But as he noted the manner in which every element in the old incident was present in the present affair, he quite naturally became conscious that there was one primal aspect of both that was diametrically opposed!
For in the old incident, the individual whose identity was being sought had been eventually found to be amongst the three who had cleared themselves! While the guilty-acting, guilty-appearing individual had been proven to be—quite nothing at all.
While in this affair, the three who had cleared themselves were, indisputably, those persons they claimed to be. While the guilty-acting, guilty-appearing individual was, beyond any doubt—
And here it was that the fact came to the Sheriff that there was, between that incident and this affair, one difference so great as to nullify all the analogies between elements: For that incident had been completed by Time. While this had not yet been completed by Time—nor Tide! And, not having been completed, no man—let alone the Sheriff—could say that all this was more than a coincidental happening, possessing quite nothing within itself of that other played-out affair. And suddenly the weird emotions hitherto gripping the Sheriff fell off of him like spring rain from a venturesome duck’s back.
And, strange to relate—and therein was the real miraculousness of the whole thing!—the Sheriff’s entire ratiocinations had oscillated so rapidly back and forth between that day when he had been newly elected, and had made his first official arrest, to this day where, still a Sheriff, he sat on this island, that they had consumed, in toto, no more than the few twinkling seconds in which he had waited for the man in the silk neckerchief to reply to that grim demand:
“So pluck out yo’re glass eye, Mis-ter Blake—and prove yo’rese’f!”