what was his view about the concept truth chapter the face on the wall
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Blogger’s Note: I read this story in school I think eleven years back or something. Parts of this story came back to memory on and off, and like I’m generally wont to do, I’d google phrases of those, to see if I could find the story online. In this case, the phrase was “And then we looked around for Rudson-Wayte who had brought this snake to bite our bosoms, but he too had disappeared”. Before today, I never hit any good results. Which means, today I did. And I don’t know if the content on that page would last forever, or as long as I’d want it. So here it is. I don’t intend copyright violations, and will take this story off the Net if asked to do so, no issues. But I’d just like to share something I hold dear to myself. No issues? Read on then. Hope you’ll enjoy this story as much as I did.
I still tingle with mortification over an experience at Dabney’s last evening, the only satisfaction being that others tingle with me. We were talking of the supernatural — that unprofitable but endlessly alluring theme — and most of us had cited an instance, without, however, producing much effect. Among the strangers to me was a little man with an anxious white face, whom Rudson-Wayte had brought, and he watched each speaker with the closest attention, but said nothing. Then Dabney, wishing to include him in the talk, turned to him and asked if he had no experience to relate, no story that contained an inexplicable element.
He thought a moment. “Well,” he said, “not a story in the ordinary sense of the word: nothing, that is, from hearsay, like most of your examples. Truth, I always hold, is not only vastly stranger than fiction, but also vastly more interesting. I could tell you an occurrence which happened to me person ally and which oddly enough completed itself only this afternoon.”
We begged him to begin.
“A year or two ago,” he said, “I was in rooms in Great Ormond Street — an old house on the Holborn side. The bedroom walls had been distempered by a previous tenant, but the place was damp and great patches of discolouration, had broken out. One of these — as indeed often happens — was exactly like a human face; but more faithfully and startlingly than is customary? Lying in bed in the morning putting off getting up, I used to watch it and watch it, and gradually I came to think of it as real — as my fellow lodger, in fact. The odd thing was that while the patches on the walls grew larger and changed their contours, this never did. It remained identically the same.
“While there, I had a very bad attack of influenza, with complications, and all day long I had nothing to do but read or meditate, and it was then that this face began to get a firmer hold of me. It grew more and more real and remarkable. I may say that it dominated my thoughts day and night.There was a curious turn to the nose, and the slant of the forehead was unique. It was, in fact, full of individuality: the face of a man apart, a man in a thousand.
“Well, I got better, but the face still controlled me. I found myself searching the streets for one like it. Somewhere, I was convinced, the real man must exist, and him I must meet. Why, I had no notion; I only knew that he and I were in some way linked by fate. I frequented places where men congregate in large numbers — political meetings, football matches, the railway stations when the suburban trains pour forth their legions on the City in the morning and receive them again in the evening. But all in vain. I had never before realised as I then did how many different faces of man there are and how few. For all differ, and yet, classified, they belong to only as many groups as you count on your hands.
“The search became a mania with me. I neglected everything else. I stood at busy corners watching the crowd until people thought me crazy, and the police began to know me and be suspicious. Women I never glanced at: men, men, and men, all the time.”
He passed his hand wearily over his brow. “And then,” he continued, “at last I saw him. He was in a taxi driving east along Piccadilly. I turned and ran beside it for a little way and then saw an empty one coming. ‘Follow that taxi,’ I gasped, and leaped in. The driver managed to keep it in sight and it took us to Charing Cross. I rushed on to the platform and found my man with two ladies and a little girl. They were going to France by the 2.20. I hung about to try and get a word with him, but in vain. Other friends had joined theparty, and they moved to the train in a solid body.
“I hastily purchased a ticket to Folkestone, hoping that I should catch him on the boat before it sailed; but at Folkestone he got on board before me with his friends, and they disappeared into a large private saloon, several cabins thrown into one. Evidently he was a man of wealth.