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Title: Great short stories, Volume II (of 3)
Ghost stories
Author: Various
Editor: William Patten
Release date: October 10, 2024 [eBook #74549]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: P. F. Collier
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREAT SHORT STORIES, VOLUME II (OF 3) ***
[Frontispiece: Theophile Gautier]
GREAT
SHORT STORIES
Edited by William Patten
A NEW COLLECTION
OF FAMOUS EXAMPLES
FROM THE
LITERATURES OF FRANCE,
ENGLAND AND AMERICA
VOLUME II
GHOST
STORIES
P. F. COLLIER & SON
NEW YORK
[Illustration: Title page]
COPYRIGHT, 1906
BY P. F. COLLIER & SON
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LA MORTE AMOREUSE _By Theophile Gautier_
THE RED ROOM _By H. G. Wells_
THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW _By Rudyard Kipling_
THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF _By A. T. Quiller-Couch_
THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN _By Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton_
THE DREAM-WOMAN _By Wilkie Collins_
GREEN BRANCHES _By Fiona Macleod_
A BEWITCHED SHIP _By W. Clark Russell_
THE SIGNAL-MAN _By Charles Dickens_
THE FOUR-FIFTEEN EXPRESS _By Amelia B. Edwards_
OUR LAST WALK _By Hugh Conway_
THRAWN JANET _By Robert Louis Stevenson_
A CHRISTMAS CAROL _By Charles Dickens_
THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM _By Washington Irving_
THE MYSTERIOUS SKETCH _By Erckmann-Chatrian_
MR. HIGGINBOTHAM'S CATASTROPHE _By Nathaniel Hawthorne_
THE WHITE OLD MAID _By Nathaniel Hawthorne_
WANDERING WILLIE'S TALE _By Sir Walter Scott_
LA MORTE AMOREUSE
BY THEOPHILE GAUTIER
_Theophile Gautier (born 1811, died 1872) began life as a painter,
turned to poetry and finally adopted prose forms for the expression
of his ideas. Always an enthusiastic apostle of romanticism, he
lived in an atmosphere of Oriental splendor. His style is unusually
rich and sensuous, and has exerted a considerable influence on the
present generation of writers._
LA MORTE AMOREUSE
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
Have I ever loved, you ask me, my brother? Yes, I have loved! The
story is dread and marvelous, and, for all my threescore years, I
scarce dare stir the ashes of that memory. To you I can refuse
nothing; to a heart less steeled than yours this tale could never be
told by me. For these things were so strange that I can scarce
believe they came into my own existence. Three long years was I the
puppet of a delusion of the devil. Three long years was I a parish
priest by day, while by night, in dreams (God grant they were but
dreams!), I led the life of a child of this world, of a lost soul!
For one kind glance at a woman's face was my spirit to be doomed; but
at length, with God to aid and my patron saint, it was given to me to
drive away the evil spirit that possessed me.
I lived a double life, by night and by day. All day long was I a
pure priest of the Lord, concerned only with prayer and holy things;
but no sooner did I close my eyes in sleep than I was a young knight,
a lover of women, of horses, of hounds, a drinker, a dicer, a
blasphemer, and, when I woke at dawn, meseemed that I was fallen on
sleep, and did but dream that I was a priest. For those years of
dreaming certain memories yet remain with me; memories of words and
things that will not down. Ay, though I have never left the walls of
my vicarage, he who heard me would rather take me for one that had
lived in the world and left it, to die in religion, and end in the
breast of God his tumultuous days, than for a priest grown old in a
forgotten curé, deep in a wood, and far from the things of this earth.
Yes, I have loved as never man loved, with a wild love and a
terrible, so that I marvel my heart did not burst in twain. Oh, the
nights of long ago!
From my earliest childhood had I felt the call to be a priest. This
was the end of all my studies, and, till I was twenty-four, my days
were one long training. My theological course achieved, I took the
lesser orders, and at length, at the end of Holy Week, was to be the
hour of my ordination.
I had never entered the world; my world was the college close.
Vaguely I knew that woman existed, but of woman I never thought. My
heart was wholly pure. Even my old and infirm mother I saw but twice
a year; of other worldly relations I had none.
I had no regrets and no hesitation in taking the irrevocable vow;
nay, I was full of an impatient joy. Never did a young bridegroom so
eagerly count the hours of his wedding. In my broken sleep I dreamed
of saying the Mass. To be a priest seemed to me the noblest thing in
the world, and I would have disdained the estate of poet or of king.
To be a priest! My ambition saw nothing higher.
All this I tell you that you may know how little I deserve that which
befell me; that you may know how inexplicable was the fascination by
which I was overcome.
The great day came, and I walked to church as if I were winged or
trod on air. I felt an angelic beatitude, and marveled at the gloomy
and thoughtful faces of my companions, for we were many. The night I
had passed in prayer. I was all but entranced in ecstasy. The
bishop, a venerable old man, was in my eyes like God the Father bowed
above His own eternity, and I seemed to see heaven open beyond the
arches of the minster.
You know the ceremony: the Benediction, the Communion in both kinds,
the anointing of the palms of the hands with consecrated oil, and
finally the celebration of the Holy Rite, offered up in company with
the bishop. On these things I will not linger, but oh, how true is
the word of Job, that he is foolish who maketh not a covenant with
his eyes! I chanced to raise my head and saw before me, so near that
it seemed I could touch her, though in reality she was at some
distance, and on the farther side of the railing, a young dame
royally clad, and of incomparable beauty.
It was as if scales had fallen from my eyes; and I felt like a blind
man who suddenly recovers his sight. The bishop, so splendid a
moment ago, seemed to fade; through all the church was darkness, and
the candles paled in their sconces of gold, like stars at dawn.
Against the gloom that lovely thing shone out like a heavenly
revelation, seeming herself to be the fountain of light, and to give
it rather than receive it. I cast down my eyes, vowing that I would
not raise them again; my attention was failing, and I scarce knew
what I did. The moment afterward, I opened my eyes, for through my
eyelids I saw her glittering in a bright penumbra, as when one has
stared at the sun. Ah! how beautiful she was! The greatest
painters, when they have sought in heaven for ideal beauty, and have
brought to earth the portrait of our Lady, come never near the glory
of this vision! Pen of poet, or palette of painter, can give no idea
of her. She was tall, with the carriage of a goddess; her fair hair
flowed about her brows in rivers of gold. Like a crowned queen she
stood there, with her broad white brow, and dark eyebrows; with her
eyes that had the brightness and life of the green sea, and at one
glance made or marred the destiny of a man. They were astonishingly
clear and brilliant, shooting rays like arrows, which I could
actually see winging straight for my heart. I know not if the flame
that lighted them came from heaven or hell, but from one or other
assuredly it came.
Angel or devil, or both; this woman was no child of Eve, the mother
of us all. White teeth shone in her smile, little dimples came and
went with each movement of her mouth, among the roses of her cheeks.
There was a lustre as of agate on the smooth and shining skin of her
half-clad shoulders, and chains of great pearls no whiter than her
neck fell over her breast. From time to time she lifted her head in
snake-like motion, and set the silvery ruffles of her raiment
quivering. She wore a flame-colored velvet robe, and from the ermine
lining of her sleeves her delicate hands came and went as transparent
as the fingers of the dawn. As I gazed on her, I felt within me as
it were the opening of gates that had ever been barred; I saw sudden
vistas of an unknown future; all life seemed altered, new thoughts
wakened in my heart. A horrible pain took possession of me; each
minute seemed at once a moment and an age. The ceremony went on and
on, and I was being carried far from the world, at whose gates my new
desires were beating. I said "Yes," when I wished to say "No," when
my whole soul protested against the words my tongue was uttering. A
hidden force seemed to drag them from me. This it is perhaps which
makes so many young girls walk to the altar with the firm resolve to
refuse the husband who is forced on them, and this is why not one of
them does what she intends. This is why so many poor novices take
the veil, though they are determined to tear it into shreds, rather
than pronounce the vows. None dares cause so great a scandal before
so many observers, nor thus betray such general expectation. The
will of all imposes itself on you; the gaze of all weighs upon you
like a cope of lead. And again, all is so clearly arranged in
advance, so evidently irrevocable, that the intention of refusal is
crushed, and disappears.
The expression of the unknown beauty changed as the ceremony
advanced. Tender and caressing at first, it became contemptuous and
disdainful. With an effort that might have moved a mountain, I
strove to cry out that I would never be a priest; it was in vain; my
tongue clave to the roof of my mouth; I could not refuse even by a
sign. Though wide awake, I seemed to be in one of those nightmares,
wherein for your life you can not utter the word on which your life
depends. She appeared to understand the torture which I endured, and
cast on me a glance of divine pity and divine promise. "Be mine,"
she seemed to say, "and I shall make thee happier than God and
heaven, and His angels will be jealous of thee. Tear that shroud of
death wherein thou art swathed, for I am beauty, and I am youth, and
I am life; come to me and we shall be love. What can Jehovah offer
thee in exchange for thy youth? Our life will flow like a dream in
the eternity of a kiss. Spill but the wine from that chalice, and
thou are free, and I will carry thee to the unknown isles, and thou
shalt sleep on my breast in a bed of gold beneath a canopy of silver,
for I love thee and would fain take thee from thy God, before whom so
many noble hearts pour forth the incense of their love, which dies
before it reaches the heaven where He dwells." These words I seemed
to hear singing in the sweetest of tunes, for there was a music in
her look, and the words which her eyes sent to me resounded in my
heart as if they had been whispered in my soul. I was ready to
foreswear God, and yet I went duly through each rite of the ceremony.
She cast me a second glance, so full of entreaty and despair, that I
felt more swords pierce my breast than stabbed the heart of our Lady
of Sorrows.
It was over, and I was a priest.
Then never did human face declare so keen a sorrow: the girl who sees
her betrothed fall dead at her side, the mother by the empty cradle
of her child, Eve at the gate of Paradise, the miser who seeks his
treasure and finds a stone, even they look less sorely smitten, less
inconsolable.
The blood left her fair face pale, white as marble she seemed; her
lovely arms fell powerless, her feet failed beneath her, and she
leaned against a pillar of the church. For me, I staggered to the
door, with a white, wet face, breathless, with all the weight of all
the dome upon my head. As I was crossing the threshold, a hand
seized mine, a woman's hand. I had never felt before a woman's hand
in mine. It was cold as the skin of a serpent, yet it burned me like
a brand. "Miserable man, what hast thou done?" she whispered, and
was lost in the crowd.
The old bishop paused, and gazed severely at me, who was a piteous
spectacle, now red, now pale, giddy, and faint. One of my fellows
had compassion on me, and led me home. I could not have found the
way alone. At the corner of a street, while the young priest's head
was turned, a black page, strangely clad, came up to me, and gave me,
as he passed, a little leathern case, with corners of wrought gold,
signing me to hide it. I thrust it into my sleeve, and there kept it
till I was alone in my cell. Then I opened the clasp; there were but
these words written: "Clarimonde, at the Palazzo Concini." So little
of a worldling was I, that I had never heard of Clarimonde, despite
her fame, nay, nor knew where the Palazzo Concini might be. I made a
myriad guesses, each wilder than the other; but, truth to tell, so I
did but see her again, I recked little whether Clarimonde were a
noble lady, or no better than one of the wicked.
This love, thus born in an hour, had struck root too deep for me to
dream of casting it from my heart. This woman had made me utterly
her own, a glance had been enough to change me, her will had passed
upon me; I lived not for myself, but in her and for her.
Many mad things did I, kissing my hand where hers had touched it,
repeating her name for hours: Clarimonde, Clarimonde! I had but to
close my eyes, and I saw her as distinctly as if she had been
present. Then I murmured to myself the words that beneath the church
porch she had spoken: "Miserable man, what hast thou done?" I felt
all the horror of that strait wherein I was, and the dead and
terrible aspect of the life that I had chosen was now revealed. To
be a priest! Never to love, to know youth nor sex, to turn from
beauty, to close the eyes, to crawl in the chill shade of a cloister
or a church; to see none but deathly men, to watch by the nameless
corpses of folk unknown, to wear a cassock like my own mourning for
myself, my own raiment for my coffin's pall.
Then life arose in me like a lake in flood, my blood coursed in my
veins, my youth burst forth in a moment; like the aloe, which flowers
but once in a hundred years, and breaks into blossom with a sound of
thunder!
How was I again to have sight of Clarimonde? I had no excuse for
leaving the seminary, for I knew nobody in town, and indeed was only
waiting till I should be appointed to my parish. I tried to remove
the bars of the window, but to descend without a ladder was
impossible. Then, again, I could only escape by night, when I should
be lost in the labyrinth of streets. These difficulties, which would
have been nothing to others, were enormous to a poor priest like me,
now first fallen in love, without experience, or money, or knowledge
of the world.
Ah, had I not been a priest I might have seen her every day, I might
have been her lover, her husband, I said to myself in the blindness
of my heart. In place of being swathed in a cassock I might have
worn silk and velvet, chains of gold, a sword and feather like all
the fair young knights. My locks would not be tonsured, but would
fall in perfumed curls about my neck. But one hour spent before an
altar, and some gabbled words, had cut me off from the company of the
living. With my own hand I had sealed the stone upon my tomb, and
turned the key in the lock of my prison!
I walked to the window. The sky was heavenly blue, the trees had
clothed them in the raiment of spring, all nature smiled with mockery
in her smile. The square was full of people coming and going: young
exquisites, young beauties, two by two, were walking in the direction
of the gardens. Workmen sang drinking songs as they passed; on all
sides were a life, a movement, a gaiety that did but increase my
sorrow and my solitude. A young mother, on the steps of the gate,
was playing with her child, kissing its little rosy mouth, with a
thousand of the caresses, the childlike and the divine caresses that
are the secret of mothers. Hard by the father, with folded arms
above a happy heart, smiled sweetly as he watched them. I could not
endure the sight. I shut the window, and threw myself on the bed in
a horrible jealousy and hatred, so that I gnawed my fingers and my
coverlet like a starved wild beast.
How many days I lay thus I know not, but at last, as I turned in a
spasm of rage, I saw the Abbé Sérapion curiously considering me. I
bowed my head in shame, and hid my face with my hands. "Romuald, my
friend," said he, "some strange thing hath befallen thee. Satan hath
desired to have thee, that he may sift thee like wheat; he goeth
about thee to devour thee like a raging lion. Beware and make
thyself a breastplate of prayer, a shield of the mortifying of the
flesh. Fight, and thou shalt overcome. Be not afraid with any
discouragement, for the firmest hearts and the most surely guarded
have known hours like these. Pray, fast, meditate, and the evil
spirit will pass away from thee."
Then Sérapion told me that the priest of C---- was dead, that the
bishop had appointed me to this charge, and that I must be ready by
the morrow. I nodded assent, and the Abbé departed. I opened my
missal and strove to read in it, but the lines waved confusedly, and
the volume slipped unheeded from my hands.
Next day Sérapion came for me; two mules were waiting for us at the
gate with our slender baggage, and we mounted as well as we might.
As we traversed the streets I looked for Clarimonde, in each balcony,
at every window; but it was too early, and the city was yet asleep.
When we had passed the gates, and were climbing the height, I turned
back for a last glance at the place that was the home of Clarimonde.
The shadow of a cloud lay on the city, the red roofs and the blue
were mingled in a mist, whence rose here and there white puffs of
smoke. By some strange optical effect, one house stood up, golden in
a ray of light, far above the roofs that were mingled in the mist. A
league away though it was, it seemed quite close to us--all was plain
to see, turrets, balconies, parapets, the very weathercocks.
"What is that palace we see yonder in the sunlight?" said I to
Sérapion.
He shaded his eyes with his hand, looked, and answered:
"That is the old palace which Prince Concini has given to Clarimonde
the harlot. Therein dreadful things are done."
Even at that moment, whether it were real or a vision I know not now,
methought I saw a white and slender shape come across the terrace,
glance, and disappear. It was Clarimonde!
Ah, did she know how in that hour, at the height of the rugged way
which led me from her, even at the crest of the path I should never
tread again, I was watching her, eager and restless, watching the
palace where she dwelt, and which a freak of light and shadow seemed
to bring near me, as if inviting me to enter and be lord of all?
Doubtless she knew it, so closely bound was her heart to mine; and
this it was which had urged her, in the raiment of the night, to
climb the palace terrace in the frosty dews of dawn.
The shadow slipped over the palace, and, anon, there was but a
motionless sea of roofs, marked merely by a billowy undulation of
forms. Sérapion pricked on his mule, mine also quickened, and a
winding of the road hid from me forever the city of S----, where I
was to return no more. At the end of three days' journey through
melancholy fields, we saw the weathercock of my parish church peeping
above the trees. Some winding lanes, bordered by cottages and
gardens, brought us to the building, which was of no great splendor.
A porch with a few moldings, and two or three pillars rudely carved
in sandstone, a tiled roof with counter-forts of the same stone as
the pillars--that was all. To the left was the graveyard, deep in
tall grasses, with an iron cross in the centre. The priest's house
was to the right, in the shadow of the church. Simplicity could not
be more simple, nor cleanliness less lovely. Some chickens were
pecking at a few grains of oats on the ground as we entered. The
sight of a priest's frock seemed too familiar to alarm them, and they
scarcely moved to let us pass. Then we heard a hoarse and wheezy
bark, and an old dog ran up to greet us. He was the dog of the late
priest--dim-eyed, gray, with every sign of a dog's extreme old age.
I patted him gently, and he walked along by my side with an air of
inexpressible satisfaction. An elderly woman, my predecessor's
housekeeper, came in her turn to greet us; and when she learned that
I meant to keep her in my service, to keep the dog and the chickens,
with all the furniture that her master had left her at his
death--above all, when the Abbé Sérapion paid what she asked on the
spot--her joy knew no bounds.
When I had been duly installed, Sérapion returned to the college, and
I was left alone. Unsupported, uncomforted as I was, the thought of
Clarimonde again beset me, nor could I drive her memory away for all
my efforts. One evening, as I walked among the box-lined paths of my
little garden, I fancied that I saw among the trees the form of a
woman, who followed all my movements, and whose green eyes glistened
through the leaves. Green as the sea shone her eyes, but it was no
more than a vision, for when I crossed to the other side of the alley
nothing did I find but the print of a little foot on the sand--a foot
like the foot of a child. Now the garden was girt with high walls,
and, for all my search, I could find no living thing within them. I
have never been able to explain this incident, which, after all, was
nothing to the strange adventures that were to follow.
Thus did I live for a whole year, fulfilling every duty of the
priesthood--preaching, praying, fasting, visiting the sick, denying
myself necessaries that I might give to the poor. But within me all
was dry and barren--the fountains of grace were sealed. I knew not
the happiness which goes with the consciousness of a holy mission
fulfilled. My heart was otherwhere; the words of Clarimonde dwelt on
my lips like the ballad burden a man repeats against his will. Oh,
my brother, consider this! For the lifting up of mine eyes to behold
a woman have I been harried these many years, and my life hath been
troubled forever.
I shall not hold you longer with the story of these defeats and these
victories and the fresh defeats of my soul; let me come to the
beginning of the new life.
One night there was a violent knocking at my gate. The old
housekeeper went to open it, and the appearance of a man richly clad
in an outlandish fashion, tawny of hue, armed with a long dagger,
stood before her in the light of her lantern. She was terrified, but
he soothed her, saying that he needs must see me instantly concerning
a matter of my ministry. Barbara brought him upstairs to the room
where I was about going to bed. There the man told me that his
mistress, a lady of high degree, was on the point of death, and
desired to see a priest. I answered that I was ready to follow him,
and taking with me such matters as are needful for extreme unction, I
went down hastily. At the door were two horses, black as night,
their breath rising in white clouds of vapor. The man held my
stirrup while I mounted; then he laid one hand on the pommel and
vaulted on the other horse. Gripping his beast with his knees, he
gave him his head, and we started with the speed of an arrow, my
horse keeping pace with his own. We seemed in running to devour the
way; the earth flitted gray beneath us, the black trees fled in the
darkness like an army in rout. A forest we crossed, so gloomy and so
frozen cold that I felt in all my veins a shudder of superstitious
dread. The sparks struck from the flints by our coursers' feet
followed after us like a trail of fire, and whoever saw us must have
deemed us two ghosts riding the nightmare. Will-o'-the-wisps
glittered across our path, the night birds clamored in the forest
deeps, and now and again shone out the burning eyes of wild-cats.
The manes of the horses tossed more wildly on the wind, the sweat ran
down their sides, their breath came thick and loud. But whenever
they slackened, the groom called on them with a cry like nothing that
ever came from a human throat, and again they ran their furious
course. At last the tempest of their flight reached its goal;
suddenly there stood before us a great dark mass, with shining points
of flame. Our horses' hoofs clattered louder on a drawbridge, and we
thundered through the dark depths of a vaulted entrance which gaped
between two monstrous towers. Within the castle all was
confusion--servants with burning torches ran hither and thither
through the courts; on the staircases lights rose and fell. I beheld
a medley of vast buildings, columns, arches, parapet and balcony--a
bewildering world of royal or of fairy palaces. The negro page who
had given me the tablets of Clarimonde, and whom I recognized at a
glance, helped me to alight. A seneschal in black velvet, with a
golden chain about his neck, and an ivory wand in his hand, came
forward to meet me, great tears rolling down his cheeks to his snowy
beard.
"Too late," he said; "too late, sir priest! But if thou hast not
come in time to save the soul, watch, I pray thee, with the unhappy
body of the dead."
He took me by the arm; he led me to the hall, where the corpse was
lying, and I wept as bitterly as he, deeming that the dead was
Clarimonde, the well and wildly loved. There stood a prie-dieu by
the bed; a blue flame flickering from a cup of bronze cast all about
the chamber a doubtful light, and here and there set the shadows
fluttering. In a chiseled vase on the table was one white rose
faded, a single petal clinging to the stem; the rest had fallen like
fragrant tears and lay beside the vase. A broken mask, a fan,
masquerading gear of every kind were huddled on the chairs, and
showed that death had come, unlooked for and unheralded, to that
splendid house. Not daring to cast mine eyes upon the bed, I
kneeled, and fervently began to repeat the Psalms, thanking God that
between this woman and me He had set the tomb, so that now her name
might come like a thing enskied and sainted in my prayers.
By degrees this ardor slackened, and I fell a-dreaming. This
chamber, after all, had none of the air of a chamber of death. In
place of the fetid, corpse-laden atmosphere that I was wont to
breathe in these vigils, there floated gently through the warmth a
vapor of Orient essences, a perfume of women and of love. The pale
glimmer of the lamp seemed rather the twilight of pleasure than the
yellow burning of the taper that watches by the dead. I began to
think of the rare hazard that brought me to Clarimonde in the moment
when I had lost her forever, and a sigh came from my breast. Then
meseemed that one answered with a sigh behind me, and I turned
unconsciously. 'Twas but an echo, but, as I turned, mine eyes fell
on that which they had shunned--the bed where Clarimonde lay in
state. The flowered and crimson curtains, bound up with loops of
gold, left the dead woman plain to view, lying at her length, with
hands folded on her breast. She was covered with a linen veil, very
white and glistening, the more by reason of the dark purple hangings,
and so fine was the shroud that her fair body shone through it, with
those beautiful soft waving lines, as of the swan's neck, that not
even death could harden. Fair she was as a statue of alabaster
carved by some skilled man for the tomb of a queen; fair as a young
maid asleep beneath new-fallen snow.
I could endure no longer. The air as of a bower of love, the scent
of the faded rose intoxicated me, and I strode through the chamber,
stopping at each turn to gaze at the beautiful dead beneath the
transparent shroud. Strange thoughts haunted my brain. I fancied
that she was not really gone, that it was but a device to draw me
within her castle gates, and to tell me all her love.
Nay, one moment methought I saw her foot stir beneath its white
swathings, and break the stiff lines of the shroud.
"Is she really Clarimonde?" I asked myself presently. "What proof
have I? The black page may have entered the household of some other
lady. Mad must I be thus to disquiet myself."
But the beating of my own heart answered me, "It is she! It is she!"
I drew near the bed, and looked with fresh attention at that which
thus perplexed me. Shall I confess it? The perfection of her
beauty, though shadowed and sanctified by death, troubled my heart,
and that long rest of hers was wondrous like a living woman's sleep.
I forgot that I had come there to watch by a corpse, and I dreamed
that I was a young bridegroom entering the chamber of the veiled,
half-hidden bride. Broken with sorrow, wild with joy, shuddering
with dread and desire, I stooped toward the dead and raised a corner
of the sheet. Gently I raised it, holding my breath as though I
feared to waken her. My blood coursed so vehemently that I heard it
rushing and surging through the veins of my temples. My brow was
dank with drops of sweat, as if I had lifted no film of linen, but a
weighty gravestone of marble.
There lay Clarimonde, even as I had seen her on the day of mine
ordination; even so delightful was she, and death in Clarimonde
seemed but a wilful charm. The pallor of her cheeks, her dead lips
fading rose, her long downcast eyelids, with their brown lashes,
breaking the marble of her cheek, all gave her an air of melancholy,
and of purity, of pensive patience that had an inexpressible winning
magic. Her long loose hair, the small blue flowers yet scattered
through it, pillowed her head, and veiled the splendor of her
shoulders. Her fair hands, clear and pure as the consecrated wafer,
were crossed in an attitude of holy rest and silent prayer, that
suffered not the exquisite roundness and ivory polish of her pearled
arms to prove, even in death, too triumphant a lure of men.
Long did I wait and watch her silently, and still the more I gazed,
the less I could deem that life had left forever her beautiful body.
I knew not if it were an illusion, or a reflection from the lamp, but
it was as if the blood began to flow again beneath that dead white of
her flesh, and yet she lay eternally, immovably still. I touched her
arm; it was cold, but no colder than her hand had been on the day
when it met mine beneath the church porch. I fell into my old
attitude, stooping my face above her face, while down upon her rained
the warm dew of my tears. Oh, bitterness of impotence and of
despair; oh, wild agony of that death watch!
The night crept on, and as I felt that the eternal separation drew
near, I could not deny myself the sad last delight of one kiss on the
dead lips that held all my love.
Oh, miracle! A light breath mingled with my breath, and the mouth of
Clarimonde answered to the touch of mine! Her eyes opened, and
softly shone. She sighed, she uncrossed her arms, and, folding them
about my neck in a ravished ecstasy:
"Ah, Romuald, it is thou!" she said in a voice as sweet and
languishing as the last tremblings of a lyre. "Ah, Romuald, what
makest thou here? So long have I waited for thee that I am dead.
Yet now we are betrothed, now I may see thee, and visit thee.
Farewell, Romuald, farewell! I love thee. It is all that I had to
tell thee, and I give thee again that life which thou gavest me with
thy kiss. Soon shall we meet again."
Her head sank down, but still her arms clung to me as if they would
hold me forever. A wild gust of wind burst open the window and broke
into the room. The last leaf of the white rose fluttered like a
bird's wing on the stem, and then fell and flew through the open
casement, bearing with it the soul of Clarimonde.
The lamp went out, and I fell fainting on the breast of the beautiful
corpse.
When I came to myself I was lying on my own bed in the little chamber
of the priest's house; my hand had slipped from beneath the coverlet,
the old dog was licking it. Barbara hobbled and trembled about the
room, opening and shutting drawers, and shaking powders into glasses.
The old woman gave a cry of delight when she saw me open my eyes.
The dog yelped and wagged his tail, but I was too weak to utter a
word or make the slightest movement. Later, I learned that for three
days I had lain thus, with no sign of life but a scarce perceptible
breathing. These three days do not count in my life; I know not
where my spirit went wandering all that time, whereof I keep not the
slightest memory. Barbara told me that the same bronzed man who had
come for me at night brought me back in a closed litter next morning,
and instantly went his way. So soon as I could recall my thoughts, I
reviewed each incident of that fatal night. At first I deemed that I
had been duped by art magic, but presently actual, palpable
circumstances destroyed that belief. I could not suppose that I had
been dreaming, for Barbara, no less than myself, had seen the man
with the two coal-black steeds, and she described them accurately.
Yet no one knew of any castle in the neighborhood at all like that in
which I had found Clarimonde again.
One morning Sérapion entered my room; he had come with all haste in
answer to Barbara's message about my illness. Though this declared
his affection for me, none the more did his visit give me pleasure.
There was something inquisitive and piercing to my mind in the very
glance of Sérapion, and I felt like a criminal in his presence. He
it was who first discovered my secret disquiet, and I bore him a
grudge for being so clear-sighted.
While he was asking about my health, in accents of honeyed hypocrisy,
his eyes, as yellow as a lion's, were sounding the depths of my soul.
Presently--"The famous harlot Clarimonde is dead," says he, in a
piercing tone, "dead at the close of an eight days' revel. It was a
feast of Belshazzar or of Cleopatra. Good God, what an age is ours!
The guests were served by dusky slaves who spoke no tongue known
among men, and who seemed like spirits from the pit. The livery of
the least of them might have beseemed an emperor on a coronation day.
Wild tales are told of this same Clarimonde, and all her loves have
perished miserably or by violence. They say she was a ghost, a
female vampire, but I believe she was the devil himself."
He paused, watching me, who could not master a sudden movement at the
name of Clarimonde.
"Satan's claw is long," said Sérapion, with a stern glance, "and
tombs ere now have given up their dead. Threefold should be the seal
upon the grave of Clarimonde, for this is not, men say, the first
time she hath died. God be with thee, Romuald!"
So speaking, Sérapion departed with slow steps, and I saw him no more
as at that time.
Time passed and I was well again. Nay, I deemed that the fears of
Sérapion and my own terrors were too great, till, one night, I
dreamed a dream.
Scarce had I tasted the first drops of the cup of sleep when I heard
the curtains of my bed open and the rings ring. I raised myself
suddenly on my arm and saw the shadow of a woman standing by me.
Straightway I knew her for Clarimonde.
She held in her hand a little lamp, such as are placed in tombs, and
the light touched her slim fingers to a rosy hue, that faded away in
the milk-white of her arms. She was clad with naught on but the
linen shroud that veiled her when she lay in state; the folds were
clasped about her breast, as it were in pudency, by a hand all too
small. So white she was that her shroud and her body were blended in
the pallid glow of the lamp.
Swathed thus in the fine tissue that betrayed every line of her
figure, she seemed a marble image of some lady at the bath rather
than a living woman. Dead or living, statue or woman, spirit or
flesh, her beauty was the same; only the glitter of her dull
sea-green eyes was dulled--only the mouth, so red of old, wore but a
tender tint of rose, like the white rose of her cheeks. The little
blue flowers that I had seen in her hair were sere now, and all but
bloomless; yet so winning was she, so winning that, despite the
strangeness of the adventure and her inexplicable invasion of my
chamber, I was not afraid for one moment.
She placed the lamp on the table, and sat down by my bed-foot. Then,
in those soft and silver accents which I never heard from any lips
but hers--"Long have I made thee wait for me," she said, "and thou
must have deemed that I had forgotten thee quite. But lo! I come
from far, very far--even from that land whence no traveler has
returned. There is no sunlight nor moon in the country whence I
wander, only shadow and space. There the foot finds no rest, nor the
wandering wing any way; yet here am I; behold me, for Love can
conquer Death. Ah, what sad faces and terrible eyes have I seen in
my voyaging, and in what labor hath my soul been to find my body and
to make her home therein again! How hard to lift was the stone that
they had laid on me for a covering! Lo, my hands are sorely wounded
in that toil! Kiss them, my love, and heal them." And she laid her
chill palms, on my mouth, that I kissed many times, she smiling on me
with an inexpressible sweetness of delight.
To my shame be it spoken, I had wholly forgotten the counsels of the
Abbé Sérapion, and the sacred character of my ministry. I fell
unresisting at the first attack. Nay, I did not even try to bid the
tempter avaunt, but succumbed without a struggle before the sweet
freshness of Clarimonde's fair body. Poor child! for all that is
come and gone, I can scarce believe that she was indeed a devil;
surely there was naught of the devil in her aspect. Never hath Satan
better concealed his claws and his horns!
She was crouching on the side of my bed, her heels drawn up beneath
her in an attitude of careless and provoking grace. Once and again
she would pass her little hands among my locks, and curl them, as if
to try what style best suited my face. It is worth noting that I
felt no astonishment at an adventure so marvelous--nay, as in a dream
the strangest events fail to surprise us, even so the whole encounter
seemed to me perfectly natural.
"I loved thee long before I saw thee, Romuald, my love, and I sought
for thee everywhere. Thou wert my dream, and I beheld thee in the
church at that fatal hour. 'It is he,' I whispered to myself, and
cast on thee a glance fulfilled of all the love wherewith I had
loved, and did love, and shall love thee; a glance that would have
ruined the soul of a cardinal or brought a king with all his court to
my feet.
"But thou wert not moved, and before my love thou didst place the
love of God.
"Ah, 'tis of God that I am jealous--God whom thou hast loved and
lovest more than me.
"Miserable woman that I am! Never shall I have all thy heart for
myself alone--for me, whom thou didst awaken with one kiss; for me,
Clarimonde, the dead; for me, who for thy sake have broken the
portals of the grave, and am come to offer to thee a life that hath
been taken up again for this one end to make thee happy."
So she spoke; and every word was broken in on by maddening caresses,
till my brain swam, and I feared not to console her by this awful
blasphemy, namely--_That my love of her passed my love of God!_
Then the fire of her eyes was rekindled, and they blazed as it had
been the chrysoprase stone.
"Verily thou lovest me with a love like thy love of God," she cried,
making her fair arms a girdle for my body. "Then thou shalt come
with me, and whithersoever I go wilt thou follow. Thou wilt leave
thine ugly black robes, thou wilt be of all knights the proudest and
the most envied. The acknowledged lover of Clarimonde shalt thou be,
of her who refused a Pope! Ah, happy life, oh, golden days that
shall be ours! When do we mount and ride, _mon gentilhomme_?"
"To-morrow," I cried in my madness.
"To-morrow," she answered, "I shall have time to change this robe of
mine that is somewhat scant, nor fit for voyaging. Also must I speak
with my retainers, that think me dead in good earnest, and lament me,
as well they may. Money, carriages, change of raiment, all shall be
ready for thee; at this hour to-morrow will I seek thee. Good-by,
sweetheart."
She touched my brow with her lips, the lamp faded into darkness, the
curtains closed, a sleep like lead came down on me, sleep without a
dream.
I wakened late, troubled by the memory of my dream, which at length I
made myself believe was but a vision of the night. Yet it was not
without dread that I sought rest again, praying Heaven to guard the
purity of my slumber.
Anon I fell again into a deep sleep, and my dream began again. The
curtains opened, and there stood Clarimonde, not pale in her pale
shroud, nor with the violets of death upon her cheek; but gay,
bright, splendid, in a traveling robe of green velvet with trappings
of gold, and kilted up on one side to show a satin undercoat. Her
fair, curled locks fell in great masses from under a large black
beaver hat, with strange white plumes; in her hand she held a little
riding-whip, topped with a golden whistle. With this she touched me
gently, saying:
"Awake, fair sleeper! Is it thus you prepare for your voyage? I had
thought to find you alert. Rise, quickly; we have no time to lose!"
I leaped out of bed.
"Come, dress, and let us be gone," she said, showing me a packet she
had brought. "Our horses are fretting and champing at the gate. We
should be ten leagues from here."
I arrayed myself in haste, while she instructed me, handed me the
various articles of a knight's attire, and laughed at my clumsiness.
She dressed my hair, and when all was done, gave me a little Venice
pocket-mirror in a silver frame, crying:
"What think you of yourself now? Will you take me for your valet de
chambre?"
I did not know my own face in the glass, and was no more like myself
than a statue is like the uncut stone. I was beautiful, and I was
vain of the change. The gold embroidered gallant attire made me
another man, and I marveled at the magic of a few ells of cloth,
fashioned to certain device. The character of my clothes became my
own, and in ten minutes I was sufficiently conceited.
Clarimonde watched me with a kind of maternal fondness as I walked up
and down the room, proving my new raiment as it were; then:
"Come," she cried; "enough of this child's play! Up and away, my
Romuald! We have far to go; we shall never arrive."
She took my hand and led me forth. The gates opened at her touch;
the dog did not waken as we passed.
At the gate we found the groom with three horses like those he had
led before: Tennets of Spain, the children of the wind. Swift as the
wind they sped; and the moon that had risen to light us at our going,
spun down the sky behind us like a wheel broken loose from the axle;
we seemed to see her on our right, leaping from tree to tree as she
strove to follow our course. Presently we came on a plain, where a
carriage with four horses waited for us; and the postilion drove them
to a mad gallop. My arm was round the waist of Clarimonde, her head
lay on my shoulder, her breast touched my arm. Never had I known
such delight. All that I had been was forgotten, like the months
before birth, so great was the power of the devil over my heart.
From that date mine became a double life; within me were two men that
knew each other not--the priest who dreamed that by night he was a
noble, the noble who dreamed that by night he was a priest. I could
not divide dreams from waking, nor tell where truth ended and
illusion began. Two spirals, blended but touching not, might be a
parable of my confused existence. Yet, strange as it was, I believe
I never was insane. The experience of either life dwells distinct
and separate in my memory. Only there was this inexplicable
fact--the feeling of one personality existed in both these two
different men. Of this I have never found an explanation, whether I
was for the moment the curé of the village of ----, or whether I was
Signor Romualdo, the avowed lover of Clarimonde.
Certain it is that I was, or believed myself to be, in Venice--in a
great palace on the Grand Canal, full of frescoes, statues, and rich
in two Titians of his best period--a palace fit for a king. We had
each our gondola, our liveried men, our music, our poet, for
Clarimonde loved life in the great style, and in her nature was a
touch of Cleopatra. Custom could not stale her infinite variety; to
love her was to love a score of mistresses, and you were faithless to
her with herself, so strangely she could wear the beauty of any woman
that caught your fancy. She returned my love a hundred-fold. She
scorned the gifts of young patricians and of the elders of the
Council of Ten. She refused the hand of a Foscari. Gold enough she
had, she desired only love; a young fresh love herself had wakened--a
love that found in her its first mistress and its last.
As for me, in the midst of a life of the wildest pleasure, I should
have been happy but for the nightly horror of the dream wherein I was
a curé, fasting and mortifying myself in penance for the sins of the
day. Custom made my life with her familiar, and it was rarely that I
remembered (and that never with fear) the words of the Abbé Sérapion.
For some time Clarimonde had not been herself, her health failing,
her complexion growing paler day by day. The physicians were of no
avail, and she grew cold and dead as on the wondrous night in the
nameless castle. Sadly she smiled on my distress, with the fatal
smile of those who know that their death is near. One morning I sat
on her bed, breakfasting at a small table hard by; as it chanced in
cutting a fruit I gashed my finger deeply; the blood came in purple
streams; and spurted up on Clarimonde. Her eyes brightened, her face
took on a savage joy and greed such as I had never seen. She leaped
from the bed like a cat, seized my wounded hand, and sucked the blood
with unspeakable pleasure, slowly, gently like a connoisseur tasting
some rare wine.
In her half-closed eyes the round pupil grew long in shape. Again
and again she stopped to kiss my hand, and then pressed her lips once
more on the wound, to squeeze out the red drops.
When she saw that the blood was stanched, she rose; her eyes
brilliant and humid, her face as rosy as a dawn of May, her hand warm
and moist; in short, more lovely than of old, and in perfect health.
"I shall not die! I shall not die!" she exclaimed, wild with
delight, as she embraced me. "I shall yet love thee long; for my
life is in thine, and all that is in me comes from thee. Some drops
of thy rich and noble blood, more precious than all the elixirs in
the world, have given me back my life."
This event, and the strange doubts it inspired, haunted me long.
When the night and sleep brought me back to my priest's home, I
beheld Sérapion, more anxious than ever, more careful and troubled.
He gazed on me steadfastly, and said:
"Not content with losing thy soul, thou art also desirous of ruining
thy body. Unhappy young man, in what a net hast thou fallen!"
The tone of his voice struck cold on me; but a thousand new cares
made me forget his words. Yet, one night I saw in a mirror that
Clarimonde was pouring a powder into the spiced wine-cup she mingled
after supper. I took the cup, pretending to drink, but really
casting the potion away beneath the table. Then I went to bed,
intent on watching and seeing what should come to pass. Nor did I
wait long. Clarimonde entered, cast off her night attire, and lay
down by my side. When she was assured that I slept, she uncovered my
arm, drew a golden pin from her hair, and then fell a-murmuring thus:
"One drop, one little crimson drop, one ruby on the tip of my needle!
Since thou lovest me yet, I must not die. Sleep, my god, my child,
my all; I shall not harm thee; of thy life I will but take what is
needful for mine. Alas! poor love; alas! fair purple blood that I
must drink! Ah, fair arm, so round, so white, never will I dare to
prick that pretty violet vein."
So speaking, she wept, and the tears fell hot on my arm. At length
she came to a resolve, pricked me with the needle, and sucked the
blood that flowed. But a few drops did she taste, for fear of
exhausting me, then she anointed the tiny wound, and fastened a
little bandage about my arm.
I could no longer doubt it, Sérapion had spoken sooth. Yet must I
needs love Clarimonde, and would willingly have given her all the
blood in my veins that then were rich enough. Nor was I afraid, the
woman in her was more than surety for the vampire. I could have
pricked my own arm and said, "Drink; let my love become part of thy
being with my blood." I never spoke a word of the narcotic that she
had poured out for me, never a word of the needle; we lived together
in perfect union of hearts.
It was my scruples as a priest that disquieted me. How could I touch
the Host with hands polluted in such debauches, real or dreamed of?
At night I struggled against sleep, holding mine eyelids open,
standing erect against walls; but mine eyes were filled with the sand
of sleep, and the wave carried me even where it would, down to the
siren shores.
Sérapion reproached me often. One day he came and said: "To drive
away the devil that possesses thee there is but one art; great ills
demand harsh remedies. I know where Clarimonde is buried; we must
unearth her, and the sight of the worms and the dust of death will
make thee thyself again."
So weary was I of my double life, so eager to know whether the priest
or the noble was the true man, which the dream, that I accepted his
plan, being determined to slay one or the other of the beings that
dwelt within me; ay, or to slay them both, for such a life as mine
could not endure.
The Abbé Sérapion took a lantern, a pick, a crowbar, and at midnight
we set out for the graveyard. After throwing the light of the
lantern on several tombs, we reached a stone half-hidden by tall
weeds, and covered with ivy, moss, and lichen. Thereon we read these
words graven:
ICI GIT CLARIMONDE
QUI PUT DE SON VIVANTE
LA PLUS BELLE DU MONDE
"'Tis here!" said Sérapion, who, laying down his lantern, thrust the
crowbar in a cleft of the stone, and began to raise it. Slowly it
gave place, and he set to work with the pick-ax. For me, I watched
him dark and silent as the night, while his face, when he raised it,
ran with sweat, and his laboring breath came like the death-rattle in
his throat. Methought the deed was a sacrilege, and I would fain
have seen the lightning leap from the cloud, and strike Sérapion to
ashes.
The owls of the graveyard, attracted by the light, flocked and
flapped about the lantern with their wings; their hooting sounded
wofully; the foxes barked their answer far away; a thousand evil
sounds broke from the stillness.
At length the pick of Sérapion smote the coffin-lid; the four planks
answered sullenly, as the void of nothingness replied to the touch.
Sérapion raised the coffin-lid, and there I saw Clarimonde, pale as
marble, her hands joined, the long white shroud flowing unbroken to
her feet.
On her pale mouth shone one rosy drop, and Sérapion, breaking forth
in fury, cried:
"Ah, there thou liest, devil, harlot, vampire, thou that drainest the
blood of men!"
With this he sprinkled holy water over my lady, whose fair body
straightway crumbled into earth, a dreadful mingling of dust and the
ashes of bones half-burned.
"There lies thy leman, Sir Romuald," he said; "go now and dally at
the Lido with thy beauty."
I bowed my head; within me all was ruin. Back to my poor priest's
house I went; and Romuald, the lover of Clarimonde, said farewell to
the priest, with whom so long and so strangely he had companioned.
But, next night, I saw Clarimonde.
"Wretched man that thou art," she cried, as of old under the church
porch, "what hast thou done? Why hast thou hearkened to that foolish
priest? Wert thou not happy, or what ill had I done thee that thou
must violate my tomb, and lay bare the wretchedness of the grave?
Henceforth is the link between our souls and bodies broken.
Farewell! Thou shalt desire me."
Then she fled away into air, like smoke, and I saw her no more.
Alas! it was truth she spoke; more than once have I sorrowed for
her--nay, I long for her still. Dearly purchased hath my salvation
been, and the love of God hath not been too much to replace the love
of her.
Behold, brother, all the story of my youth.
Let not thine eyes look ever upon a woman; walk always with glance
downcast; for, be ye chaste and be ye cold as ye may, one minute may
damn you to all eternity.
(_Translation by Andrew Lang._)
THE RED ROOM
BY H. G. WELLS
_Herbert George Wells (born 1866), on his graduation in 1888 from the
Royal College of Science, took up the serious side of science as a
career, publishing in 1892-93 a textbook on biology. An editorial
connection (with "The Saturday Review" in 1894-96) turned his
attention to the literary possibilities of his favorite study, and in
1895 he began a series of novels in which by an extraordinary
prescience of imagination he developed the suggestions of modern
science into marvelous embodiments of newly discovered principles and
powers which are shown to result in profound changes in both the
social and individual character of man._
THE RED ROOM
By H. G. WELLS
"I can assure you," said I, "that it will take a very tangible ghost
to frighten me." And I stood up before the fire with my glass in my
hand.
"It is your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm, and
glanced at me askance.
"Eight-and-twenty years," said I, "I have lived, and never a ghost
have I seen as yet."
The old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide
open. "Ay," she broke in, "and eight-and-twenty years you have
lived, and never seen the likes of this house, I reckon. There's a
many things to see, when one's still but eight-and-twenty." She
swayed her head slowly from side to side. "A many things to see and
sorrow for."
I half suspected these old people were trying to enhance the spectral
terrors of their house by this droning insistence. I put down my
empty glass on the table, and, looking about the room, caught a
glimpse of myself, abbreviated and broadened to an impossible
sturdiness, in the queer old mirror beside the china cupboard.
"Well," I said, "if I see anything to-night, I shall be so much the
wiser. For I come to the business with an open mind."
"It's your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm once
more.
I heard the faint sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags
in the passage outside. The door creaked on its hinges as a second
old man entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the
first. He supported himself by the help of a crutch, his eyes were
covered by a shade, and his lower lip, half averted, hung pale and
pink from his decaying yellow teeth. He made straight for an
armchair on the opposite side of the table, sat down clumsily, and
began to cough. The man with the withered hand gave the new-comer a
short glance of positive dislike; the old woman took no notice of his
arrival, but remained with her eyes fixed steadily on the fire.
"I said--it's your own choosing," said the man with the withered
hand, when the coughing had ceased for a while.
"It's my own choosing," I answered.
The man with the shade became aware of my presence for the first
time, and threw his head back for a moment, and sidewise, to see me.
I caught a momentary glimpse of his eyes, small and bright and
inflamed. Then he began to cough and splutter again.
"Why don't you drink?" said the man with the withered arm, pushing
the beer toward him. The man with the shade poured out a glassful
with a shaking hand, that splashed half as much again on the deal
table. A monstrous shadow of him crouched upon the wall, and mocked
his action as he poured and drank. I must confess I had scarcely
expected these grotesque custodians. There is, to my mind, something
inhuman in senility, something crouching and atavistic; the human
qualities seem to drop from old people insensibly day by day. The
three of them made me feel uncomfortable with their gaunt silences,
their bent carriage, their evident unfriendliness to me and to one
another. And that night, perhaps, I was in the mood for
uncomfortable impressions. I resolved to get away from their vague
foreshadowings of the evil things upstairs.
"If," said I, "you will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will
make myself comfortable there."
The old man with the cough jerked his head back so suddenly that it
startled me, and shot another glance of his red eyes at me from out
of the darkness under the shade, but no one answered me. I waited a
minute, glancing from one to the other. The old woman stared like a
dead body, glaring into the fire with lack-lustre eyes.
"If," I said, a little louder, "if you will show me to this haunted
room of yours, I will relieve you from the task of entertaining me."
"There's a candle on the slab outside the door," said the man with
the withered hand, looking at my feet as he addressed me. "But if
you go to the Red Room to-night--"
"This night of all nights!" said the old woman, softly.
"--You go alone."
"Very well," I answered, shortly, "and which way do I go?"
"You go along the passage for a bit," said he, nodding his head on
his shoulder at the door, "until you come to a spiral staircase; and
on the second landing is a door covered with green baize. Go through
that, and down the long corridor to the end, and the Red Room is on
your left up the steps."
"Have I got that right?" I said, and repeated his directions.
He corrected me in one particular.
"And you are really going?" said the man with the shade, looking at
me again for the third time with that queer, unnatural tilting of the
face.
"This night of all nights!" whispered the old woman.
"It is what I came for," I said, and moved toward the door. As I did
so, the old man with the shade rose and staggered round the table, so
as to be closer to the others and to the fire. At the door I turned
and looked at them, and saw they were all close together, dark
against the firelight, staring at me over their shoulders, with an
intent expression on their ancient faces.
"Good-night," I said, setting the door open.
"It's your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm.
I left the door wide open until the candle was well alight, and then
I shut them in, and walked down the chilly, echoing passage.
I must confess that the oddness of these three old pensioners in
whose charge her ladyship had left the castle, and the deep-toned,
old-fashioned furniture of the housekeeper's room, in which they
foregathered, had affected me curiously in spite of my effort to keep
myself at a matter-of-fact phase. They seemed to belong to another
age, an older age, an age when things spiritual were indeed to be
feared, when common sense was uncommon, an age when omens and witches
were credible, and ghosts beyond denying. Their very existence,
thought I, is spectral; the cut of their clothing, fashions born in
dead brains; the ornaments and conveniences in the room about them
even are ghostly--the thoughts of vanished men, which still haunt
rather than participate in the world of to-day. And the passage I
was in, long and shadowy, with a film of moisture glistening on the
wall, was as gaunt and cold as a thing that is dead and rigid. But
with an effort I sent such thoughts to the right-about. The long,
drafty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty, and my candle
flared and made the shadows cower and quiver. The echoes rang up and
down the spiral staircase, and a shadow came sweeping up after me,
and another fled before me into the darkness overhead. I came to the
wide landing and stopped there for a moment listening to a rustling
that I fancied I heard creeping behind me, and then, satisfied of the
absolute silence, pushed open the unwilling baize-covered door and
stood in the silent corridor.
The effect was scarcely what I expected, for the moonlight, coming in
by the great window on the grand staircase, picked out everything in
vivid black shadow or reticulated silvery illumination. Everything
seemed in its proper position; the house might have been deserted on
the yesterday instead of twelve months ago. There were candles in
the sockets of the sconces, and whatever dust had gathered on the
carpets or upon the polished flooring was distributed so evenly as to
be invisible in my candlelight. A waiting stillness was over
everything. I was about to advance, and stopped abruptly. A bronze
group stood upon the landing hidden from me by a corner of the wall;
but its shadow fell with marvelous distinctness upon the white
paneling, and gave me the impression of some one crouching to waylay
me. The thing jumped upon my attention suddenly. I stood rigid for
half a moment, perhaps. Then, with my hand in the pocket that held
the revolver, I advanced, only to discover a Ganymede and Eagle,
glistening in the moonlight. That incident for a time restored my
nerve, and a dim porcelain Chinaman on a buhl table, whose head
rocked as I passed, scarcely startled me.
The door of the Red Room and the steps up to it were in a shadowy
corner. I moved my candle from side to side in order to see clearly
the nature of the recess in which I stood, before opening the door.
Here it was, thought I, that my predecessor was found, and the memory
of that story gave me a sudden twinge of apprehension. I glanced
over my shoulder at the black Ganymede in the moonlight, and opened
the door of the Red Room rather hastily, with my face half turned to
the pallid silence of the corridor.
I entered, closed the door behind me at once, turned the key I found
in the lock within, and stood with the candle held aloft surveying
the scene of my vigil, the great Red Room of Lorraine Castle, in
which the young Duke had died; or rather in which he had begun his
dying, for he had opened the door and fallen headlong down the steps
I had just ascended. That had been the end of his vigil, of his
gallant attempt to conquer the ghostly tradition of the place, and
never, I thought, had apoplexy better served the ends of
superstition. There were other and older stories that clung to the
room, back to the half-incredible beginning of it all, the tale of a
timid wife and the tragic end that came to her husband's jest of
frightening her. And looking round that huge shadowy room with its
black window bays, its recesses and alcoves, its dusty brown-red
hangings and dark gigantic furniture, one could well understand the
legends that had sprouted in its black corners, its germinating
darknesses. My candle was a little tongue of light in the vastness
of the chamber; its rays failed to pierce to the opposite end of the
room, and left an ocean of dull red mystery and suggestion, sentinel
shadows and watching darknesses beyond its island of light. And the
stillness of desolation brooded over it all.
I must confess some impalpable quality of that ancient room disturbed
me. I tried to fight the feeling down. I resolved to make a
systematic examination of the place, and so, by leaving nothing to
the imagination, dispel the fanciful suggestions of the obscurity
before they obtained a hold upon me. After satisfying myself of the
fastening of the door, I began to walk round the room, peering round
each article of furniture, tucking up the valances of the bed and
opening its curtains wide. In one place there was a distinct echo to
my footsteps, the noises I made seemed so little that they enhanced
rather than broke the silence of the place. I pulled up the blinds
and examined the fastenings of the several windows. Attracted by the
fall of a particle of dust, I leaned forward and looked up the
blackness of the wide chimney. Then, trying to preserve my
scientific attitude of mind, I walked round and began tapping the oak
paneling for any secret opening, but I desisted before reaching the
alcove. I saw my face in a mirror--white.
There were two big mirrors in the room, each with a pair of sconces
bearing candles, and on the mantelshelf, too, were candles in china
candlesticks. All these I lit one after the other. The fire was
laid--an unexpected consideration from the old housekeeper--and I lit
it, to keep down any disposition to shiver, and when it was burning
well I stood round with my back to it and regarded the room again. I
had pulled up a chintz-covered armchair and a table to form a kind of
barricade before me. On this lay my revolver, ready to hand. My
precise examination had done me a little good, but I still found the
remoter darkness of the place and its perfect stillness too
stimulating for the imagination. The echoing of the stir and
crackling of the fire was no sort of comfort to me. The shadow in
the alcove at the end of the room began to display that undefinable
quality of a presence, that odd suggestion of a lurking living thing
that comes so easily in silence and solitude. And to reassure
myself, I walked with a candle into it and satisfied myself that
there was nothing tangible there. I stood that candle upon the floor
of the alcove and left it in that position.
By this time I was in a state of considerable nervous tension,
although to my reason there was no adequate cause for my condition.
My mind, however, was perfectly clear. I postulated quite
unreservedly that nothing supernatural could happen, and to pass the
time I began stringing some rhymes together, Ingoldsby fashion,
concerning the original legend of the place. A few I spoke aloud,
but the echoes were not pleasant. For the same reason I also
abandoned, after a time, a conversation with myself upon the
impossibility of ghosts and haunting. My mind reverted to the three
old and distorted people downstairs, and I tried to keep it upon that
topic.
The sombre reds and grays of the room troubled me; even with its
seven candles the place was merely dim. The light in the alcove
flaring in a draft, and the fire flickering, kept the shadows and
penumbra perpetually shifting and stirring in a noiseless flighty
dance. Casting about for a remedy, I recalled the wax candles I had
seen in the corridor, and, with a slight effort, carrying a candle
and leaving the door open, I walked out into the moonlight, and
presently returned with as many as ten. These I put in the various
knick-knacks of china with which the room was sparsely adorned, and
lit and placed them where the shadows had lain deepest, some on the
floor, some in the window recesses, arranging and rearranging them
until at last my seventeen candles were so placed that not an inch of
the room but had the direct light of at least one of them. It
occurred to me that when the ghost came I could warn him not to trip
over them. The room was now quite brightly illuminated. There was
something very cheering and reassuring in these little silent
streaming flames, and to notice their steady diminution of length
offered me an occupation and gave me a reassuring sense of the
passage of time.
Even with that, however, the brooding expectation of the vigil
weighed heavily enough upon me. I stood watching the minute hand of
my watch creep towards midnight.
Then something happened in the alcove. I did not see the candle go
out, I simply turned and saw that the darkness was there, as one
might start and see the unexpected presence of a stranger. The black
shadow had sprung back to its place. "By Jove," said I aloud,
recovering from my surprise, "that draft's a strong one;" and taking
the matchbox from the table, I walked across the room in a leisurely
manner to relight the corner again. My first match would not strike,
and as I succeeded with the second, something seemed to blink on the
wall before me. I turned my head involuntarily and saw that the two
candles on the little table by the fireplace were extinguished. I
rose at once to my feet.
"Odd," I said. "Did I do that myself in a flash of
absent-mindedness?"
I walked back, relit one, and as I did so I saw the candle in the
right sconce of one of the mirrors wink and go right out, and almost
immediately its companion followed it. The flames vanished as if the
wick had been suddenly nipped between a finger and thumb, leaving the
wick neither glowing nor smoking, but black. While I stood gaping
the candle at the foot of the bed went out, and the shadows seemed to
take another step toward me.
"This won't do!" said I, and first one and then another candle on the
mantelshelf followed.
"What's up?" I cried, with a queer high note getting into my voice
somehow. At that the candle on the corner of the wardrobe went out,
and the one I had relit in the alcove followed.
"Steady on!" I said, "those candles are wanted," speaking with a
half-hysterical facetiousness, and scratching away at a match the
while, "for the mantel candlesticks." My hands trembled so much that
twice I missed the rough paper of the matchbox. As the mantel
emerged from darkness again, two candles in the remoter end of the
room were eclipsed. But with the same match I also relit the larger
mirror candles, and those on the floor near the doorway, so that for
the moment I seemed to gain on the extinctions. But then in a
noiseless volley there vanished four lights at once in different
corners of the room, and I struck another match in quivering haste,
and stood hesitating whither to take it.
As I stood undecided, an invisible hand seemed to sweep out the two
candles on the table. With a cry of terror I dashed at the alcove,
then into the corner and then into the window, relighting three as
two more vanished by the fireplace, and then, perceiving a better
way, I dropped matches on the iron-bound deedbox in the corner, and
caught up the bedroom candlestick. With this I avoided the delay of
striking matches, but for all that the steady process of extinction
went on, and the shadows I feared and fought against returned, and
crept in upon me, first a step gained on this side of me, then on
that. I was now almost frantic with the horror of the coming
darkness, and my self-possession deserted me. I leaped panting from
candle to candle in a vain struggle against that remorseless advance.
I bruised myself in the thigh against the table, I sent a chair
headlong, I stumbled and fell and whisked the cloth from the table in
my fall. My candle rolled away from me and I snatched another as I
rose. Abruptly this was blown out as I swung it off the table by the
wind of my sudden movement, and immediately the two remaining candles
followed. But there was light still in the room, a red light, that
streamed across the ceiling and staved off the shadows from me. The
fire! Of course I could still thrust my candle between the bars and
relight it!
I turned to where the flames were still dancing between the glowing
coals and splashing red reflections upon the furniture; made two
steps toward the grate, and incontinently the flames dwindled and
vanished, the glow vanished, the reflections rushed together and
disappeared, and as I thrust the candle between the bars darkness
closed upon me like the shutting of an eye, wrapped about me in a
stifling embrace, sealed my vision, and crushed the last vestiges of
self-possession from my brain. And it was not only palpable
darkness, but intolerable terror. The candle fell from my hands. I
flung out my arms in a vain effort to thrust that ponderous blackness
away from me, and lifting up my voice, screamed with all my might,
once, twice, thrice. Then I think I must have staggered to my feet.
I know I thought suddenly of the moonlit corridor, and with my head
bowed and my arms over my face, made a stumbling run for the door.
But I had forgotten the exact position of the door, and I struck
myself heavily against the corner of the bed. I staggered back,
turned, and was either struck or struck myself against some other
bulky furnishing. I have a vague memory of battering myself thus to
and fro in the darkness, of a heavy blow at last upon my forehead, of
a horrible sensation of falling that lasted an age, of my last
frantic effort to keep my footing, and then I remember no more.
I opened my eyes in daylight. My head was roughly bandaged, and the
man with the withered hand was watching my face. I looked about me
trying to remember what had happened, and for a space I could not
recollect. I rolled my eyes into the corner and saw the old woman,
no longer abstracted, no longer terrible, pouring out some drops of
medicine from a little blue phial into a glass. "Where am I?" I
said. "I seem to remember you, and yet I can not remember who you
are."
They told me then, and I heard of the haunted Red Room as one who
hears a tale. "We found you at dawn," said he, "and there was blood
on your forehead and lips."
I wondered that I had ever disliked him. The three of them in the
daylight seemed commonplace old folk enough. The man with the green
shade had his head bent as one who sleeps.
It was very slowly I recovered the memory of my experience. "You
believe now," said the old man with the withered hand, "that the room
is haunted?" He spoke no longer as one who greets an intruder, but
as one who condoles with a friend.
"Yes," said I, "the room is haunted."
"And you have seen it. And we who have been here all our lives have
never set eyes upon it. Because we have never dared. Tell us, is it
truly the old earl who--"
"No," said I, "it is not."
"I told you so," said the old lady, with the glass in her hand. "It
is his poor young countess who was frightened--"
"It is not," I said. "There is neither ghost of earl nor ghost of
countess in that room; there is no ghost there at all, but worse, far
worse, something impalpable--"
"Well?" they said.
"The worst of all the things that haunt poor mortal men," said I;
"and that is, in all its nakedness--'Fear!' Fear that will not have
light nor sound, that will not bear with reason, that deafens and
darkens and overwhelms. It followed me through the corridor, it
fought against me in the room--"
I stopped abruptly. There was an interval of silence. My hand went
up to my bandages. "The candles went out one after another, and I
fled--"
Then the man with the shade lifted his face sideways to see me and
spoke.
"That is it," said he. "I knew that was it. A Power of Darkness.
To put such a curse upon a home! It lurks there always. You can
feel it even in the daytime, even of a bright summer's day, in the
hangings, in the curtains, keeping behind you however you face about.
In the dusk it creeps in the corridor and follows you, so that you
dare not turn. It is even as you say. Fear itself is in that room.
Black Fear... And there it will be ... so long as this house of sin
endures."
THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
_Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865. The grandson of
a clergyman, both on his father's and mother's side, he was educated
in England and served his apprenticeship as a writer on the
newspapers in India. No man ever tried harder to convey to his
reader the sensation and very pulse of life that he himself felt than
did Kipling in his early work, of which "The Phantom 'Rickshaw" is a
well-known example. Though he is undoubtedly one of the great
writers of short stories, we are still too near him to be able to
clearly appreciate his great talents._
THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW
By RUDYARD KIPLING
My doctor tells me that I need rest and change of air. It is not
improbable that I shall get both ere long--rest that neither the
red-coated messenger nor the midday gun can break, and change of air
far beyond that which any homeward-bound steamer can give me. In the
meantime, I am resolved to stay where I am; and, in flat defiance of
my doctor's orders, to take all the world into my confidence. You
shall learn for yourselves the precise nature of my malady; and
shall, too, judge for yourselves whether any man born of woman on
this weary earth was ever so tormented as I.
Speaking now as a condemned criminal might speak ere the drop-bolts
are drawn, my story, wild and hideously improbable as it may appear,
demands at least attention. That it will ever receive credence I
utterly disbelieve. Two months ago I should have scouted as mad or
drunk the man who had dared tell me the like. Two months ago I was
the happiest man in India. To-day, from Peshawur to the sea, there
is no one more wretched. My doctor and I are the only two who know
this. His explanation is, that my brain, digestion, and eyesight are
all slightly affected; giving rise to my frequent and persistent
"delusions." Delusions, indeed! I call him a fool; but he attends
me still with the same unwearied smile, the same bland professional
manner, the same neatly trimmed red whiskers, till I begin to suspect
that I am an ungrateful, evil-tempered invalid. But you shall judge
for yourselves.
Three years ago it was my fortune--my great misfortune--to sail from
Gravesend to Bombay, on return from long leave, with one Agnes
Keith-Wessington, wife of an officer on the Bombay side. It does not
in the least concern you to know what manner of woman she was. Be
content with the knowledge that, ere the voyage had ended, both she
and I were desperately and unreasonably in love with each other.
Heaven knows that I can make the admission now without one particle
of vanity. In matters of this sort there is always one who gives and
another who accepts. From the first day of our ill-omened
attachment, I was conscious that Agnes's passion was a stronger, a
more dominant, and--if I may use the expression--a purer sentiment
than mine. Whether she recognized the fact then, I do not know.
Afterward it was bitterly plain to both of us.
Arrived at Bombay in the spring of the year, we went our respective
ways, to meet no more for the next three or four months, when my
leave and her love took us both to Simla. There we spent the season
together; and there my fire of straw burned itself out to a pitiful
end with the closing year. I attempt no excuse. I make no apology.
Mrs. Wessington had given up much for my sake, and was prepared to
give up all. From my own lips, in August, 1882, she learned that I
was sick of her presence, tired of her company, and weary of the
sound of her voice. Ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have
wearied of me as I wearied of them; seventy-five of that number would
have promptly avenged themselves by active and obtrusive flirtation
with other men. Mrs. Wessington was the hundredth. On her neither
my openly expressed aversion nor the cutting brutalities with which I
garnished our interviews had the least effect.
"Jack, darling!" was her one eternal cuckoo cry, "I'm sure it's all a
mistake--a hideous mistake; and we'll be good friends again some day.
_Please_ forgive me, Jack dear."
I was the offender, and I knew it. That knowledge transformed my
pity into passive endurance, and, eventually, into blind hate--the
same instinct, I suppose, which prompts a man to savagely stamp on
the spider he has but half killed. And with this hate in my bosom
the season of 1882 came to an end.
Next year we met again at Simla--she with her monotonous face and
timid attempts at reconciliation, and I with loathing of her in every
fibre of my frame. Several times I could not avoid meeting her
alone; and on each occasion her words were identically the same.
Still the unreasoning wail that it was all a "mistake"; and still the
hope of eventually "making friends." I might have seen, had I cared
to look, that that hope only was keeping her alive. She grew more
wan and thin month by month. You will agree with me, at least, that
such conduct would have driven any one to despair. It was uncalled
for; childish; unwomanly. I maintain that she was much to blame.
And again, sometimes, in the black, fever-stricken night-watches, I
have begun to think that I might have been a little kinder to her.
But that really is a "delusion." I could not have continued
pretending to love her when I didn't; could I? It would have been
unfair to us both.
Last year we met again--on the same terms as before. The same weary
appeals, and the same curt answers from my lips. At least I would
make her see how wholly wrong and hopeless were her attempts at
resuming the old relationship. As the season wore on, we fell
apart--that is to say, she found it difficult to meet me, for I had
other and more absorbing interests to attend to. When I think it
over quietly in my sick-room, the season of 1884 seems a confused
nightmare wherein light and shade were fantastically intermingled--my
courtship of little Kitty Mannering; my hopes, doubts, and fears; our
long rides together; my trembling avowal of attachment; her reply;
and now and again a vision of a white face flitting by in the
'rickshaw with the black and white liveries I once watched for so
earnestly; the wave of Mrs. Wessington's gloved hand; and, when she
met me alone, which was but seldom, the irksome monotony of her
appeal. I loved Kitty Mannering; honestly, heartily loved her, and
with my love for her grew my hatred for Agnes. In August, Kitty and
I were engaged. The next day I met those accursed "magpie"
jhampanies at the back of Jakko, and, moved by some passing sentiment
of pity, stopped to tell Mrs. Wessington everything. She knew it
already.
"So I hear you're engaged, Jack dear." Then, without a moment's
pause--"I'm sure it's all a mistake--a hideous mistake. We shall be
as good friends some day, Jack, as we ever were."
My answer might have made even a man wince. It cut the dying woman
before me like the blow of a whip. "Please forgive me, Jack; I
didn't mean to make you angry; but it's true, it's true!"
And Mrs. Wessington broke down completely. I turned away and left
her to finish her journey in peace, feeling, but only for a moment or
two, that I had been an unutterably mean hound. I looked back, and
saw that she had turned her 'rickshaw with the idea, I suppose, of
overtaking me.
The scene and its surroundings were photographed on my memory. The
rain-swept sky (we were at the end of the wet weather), the sodden,
dingy pines, the muddy road, and the black powder-riven cliffs formed
a gloomy background against which the black and white liveries of the
jhampanies, the yellow-paneled 'rickshaw and Mrs. Wessington's
down-bowed golden head stood out clearly. She was holding her
handkerchief in her left hand and was leaning back exhausted against
the 'rickshaw cushions. I turned my horse up a by-path near the
Sanjoylie Reservoir and literally ran away. Once I fancied I heard a
faint call of "Jack!" This may have been imagination. I never
stopped to verify it. Ten minutes later I came across Kitty on
horseback; and, in the delight of a long ride with her, forgot all
about the interview.
A week later Mrs. Wessington died, and the inexpressible burden of
her existence was removed from my life. I went plainsward perfectly
happy. Before three months were over I had forgotten all about her,
except that at times the discovery of some of her old letters
reminded me unpleasantly of our bygone relationship. By January I
had disinterred what was left of our correspondence from among my
scattered belongings and had burned it. At the beginning of April of
this year, 1885, I was at Simla--semi-deserted Simla--once more, and
was deep in lover's talks and walks with Kitty. It was decided that
we should be married at the end of June. You will understand,
therefore, that, loving Kitty as I did, I am not saying too much when
I pronounce myself to have been, at that time, the happiest man in
India.
Fourteen delightful days passed almost before I noticed their flight.
Then, aroused to the sense of what was proper among mortals
circumstanced as we were, I pointed out to Kitty that an
engagement-ring was the outward and visible sign of her dignity as an
engaged girl; and that she must forthwith come to Hamilton's to be
measured for one. Up to that moment, I give you my word, we had
completely forgotten so trivial a matter. To Hamilton's we
accordingly went on the 15th of April, 1885. Remember that--whatever
my doctor may say to the contrary--I was then in perfect health,
enjoying a well-balanced mind and an absolutely tranquil spirit.
Kitty and I entered Hamilton's shop together, and there, regardless
of the order of affairs, I measured Kitty for the ring in the
presence of the amused assistant. The ring was a sapphire with two
diamonds. We then rode out down the slope that leads to the
Combermere Bridge and Peliti's shop.
While my waler was cautiously feeling his way over the loose shale,
and Kitty was laughing and chattering at my side--while all Simla,
that is to say as much of it as had then come from the plains, was
grouped round the reading-room and Peliti's veranda--I was aware that
some one, apparently at a vast distance, was calling me by my
Christian name. It struck me that I had heard the voice before, but
when and where I could not at once determine. In the short space it
took to cover the road between the path from Hamilton's shop and the
first plank of the Combermere Bridge I had thought over half a dozen
people who might have committed such a solecism, and had eventually
decided that it must have been some singing in my ears. Immediately
opposite Peliti's shop my eye was arrested by the sight of four
jhampanies in "magpie" livery, pulling a yellow-paneled, cheap,
bazaar 'rickshaw. In a moment my mind flew back to the previous
season and Mrs. Wessington with a sense of irritation and disgust.
Was it not enough that the woman was dead and done with, without her
black and white servitors reappearing to spoil the day's happiness?
Whoever employed them now I thought I would call upon, and ask as a
personal favor to change her jhampanies' livery. I would hire the
men myself, and, if necessary, buy their coats from off their backs.
It is impossible to say here what a flood of undesirable memories
their presence evoked.
"Kitty," I cried, "there are poor Mrs. Wessington's jhampanies turned
up again! I wonder who has them now?"
Kitty had known Mrs. Wessington slightly last season, and had always
been interested in the sickly woman.
"What? Where?" she asked. "I can't see them anywhere."
Even as she spoke, her horse, swerving from a laden mule, threw
himself directly in front of the advancing 'rickshaw. I had scarcely
time to utter a word of warning when, to my unutterable horror, horse
and rider passed through men and carriage as if they had been thin
air.
"What's the matter?" cried Kitty; "what made you call out so
foolishly, Jack? If I am engaged I don't want all creation to know
about it. There was lots of space between the mule and the veranda;
and, if you think I can't ride--There!"
Whereupon wilful Kitty set off, her dainty little head in the air, at
a hand-gallop in the direction of the band-stand; fully expecting, as
she herself afterward told me, that I should follow her. What was
the matter? Nothing indeed. Either that I was mad or drunk, or that
Simla was haunted with devils. I reined in my impatient cob, and
turned round. The 'rickshaw had turned too, and now stood
immediately facing me, near the left railing of the Combermere Bridge.
"Jack! Jack, darling!" (There was no mistake about the words this
time; they rang through my brain as if they had been shouted in my
ear.) "It's some hideous mistake, I'm sure. Please forgive me, Jack,
and let's be friends again."
The 'rickshaw-hood had fallen back, and inside, as I hope and pray
daily for the death I dread by night, sat Mrs. Keith-Wessington,
handkerchief in hand, and golden head bowed on her breast.
How long I stared motionless I do not know. Finally, I was aroused
by my syce taking the waler's bridle and asking whether I was ill.
From the horrible to the commonplace is but a step. I tumbled off my
horse and dashed, half fainting, into Peliti's for a glass of cherry
brandy. There two or three couples were gathered round the
coffee-tables discussing the gossip of the day. Their trivialities
were more comforting to me just then than the consolations of
religion could have been. I plunged into the midst of the
conversation at once; chatted, laughed, and jested with a face (when
I caught a glimpse of it in a mirror) as white and drawn as that of a
corpse. Three or four men noticed my condition; and, evidently
setting it down to the results of overmany pegs, charitably
endeavored to draw me apart from the rest of the loungers. But I
refused to be led away. I wanted the company of my kind--as a child
rushes into the midst of the dinner party after a fright in the dark.
I must have talked for about ten minutes or so, though it seemed an
eternity to me, when I heard Kitty's clear voice outside inquiring
for me. In another minute she had entered the shop, prepared to
roundly upbraid me for failing so signally in my duties. Something
in my face stopped her.
"Why, Jack," she cried, "what have you been doing? What has
happened? Are you ill?" Thus driven into a direct lie, I said that
the sun had been a little too much for me. It was close upon five
o'clock of a cloudy April afternoon, and the sun had been hidden all
day. I saw my mistake as soon as the words were out of my mouth;
attempted to recover it; blundered hopelessly and followed Kitty, in
a regal rage, out-of-doors, amid the smiles of my acquaintances. I
made some excuse (I have forgotten what) on the score of my feeling
faint; and cantered away to my hotel, leaving Kitty to finish the
ride by herself.
In my room I sat down and tried calmly to reason out the matter.
Here was I, Theobald Jack Pansay, a well-educated Bengal civilian in
the year of grace 1885, presumably sane, certainly healthy, driven in
terror from my sweetheart's side by the apparition of a woman who had
been dead and buried eight months ago. These were facts that I could
not blink. Nothing was further from my thought than any memory of
Mrs. Wessington when Kitty and I left Hamilton's shop. Nothing was
more utterly commonplace than the stretch of wall opposite Peliti's.
It was broad daylight. The road was full of people; and yet here,
look you, in defiance of every law of probability, in direct outrage
of Nature's ordinance, there had appeared to me a face from the grave.
Kitty's Arab had gone through the 'rickshaw; so that my first hope
that some woman marvelously like Mrs. Wessington had hired the
carriage and the coolies with their old livery was lost. Again and
again I went round this treadmill of thought; and again and again
gave up, baffled and in despair. The voice was as inexplicable as
the apparition. I had originally some wild notion of confiding it
all to Kitty; of begging her to marry me at once; and in her arms
defying the ghostly occupant of the 'rickshaw. "After all," I
argued, "the presence of the 'rickshaw is in itself enough to prove
the existence of a spectral illusion. One may see ghosts of men and
women, but surely never of coolies and carriages. The whole thing is
absurd. Fancy the ghost of a hill-man!"
Next morning I sent a penitent note to Kitty, imploring her to
overlook my strange conduct of the previous afternoon. My divinity
was still very wroth, and a personal apology was necessary. I
explained, with a fluency born of night-long pondering over a
falsehood, that I had been attacked with a sudden palpitation of the
heart--the result of indigestion. This eminently practical solution
had its effect; and Kitty and I rode out that afternoon with the
shadow of my first lie dividing us.
Nothing could please her save a canter round Jakko. With my nerves
still unstrung from the previous night, I feebly protested against
the notion, suggesting Observatory Hill, Jutogh, the Boileaugunge
road--anything rather than the Jakko round. Kitty was angry and a
little hurt; so I yielded from fear of provoking further
misunderstanding, and we set out together toward Chota Simla. We
walked a greater part of the way, and, according to our custom,
cantered from a mile or so below the convent to the stretch of level
road by the Sanjowlie Reservoir. The wretched horses appeared to
fly, and my heart beat quicker and quicker as we neared the crest of
the ascent. My mind had been full of Mrs. Wessington all the
afternoon; and every inch of the Jakko road bore witness to our
old-time walks and talks. The boulders were full of it; the pines
sung it aloud overhead; the rain-fed torrent giggled and chuckled
unseen over the shameful story; and the wind in my ears chanted the
iniquity aloud.
As a fitting climax, in the middle of the level men call the Lady's
Mile, the horror was awaiting me. No other 'rickshaw was in
sight--only the four black and white jhampanies, the yellow-paneled
carriage, and the golden head of a woman within--all apparently just
as I had left them eight months and one fortnight ago! For an
instant I fancied that Kitty must see what I saw--we were so
marvelously sympathetic in all things. Her next words undeceived
me--"Not a soul in sight! Come along, Jack, and I'll race you to the
reservoir buildings!" Her wiry little Arab was off like a bird, my
waler following close behind, and in this order we dashed under the
cliffs. Half a minute brought us within fifty yards of the
'rickshaw. I pulled my waler and fell back a little. The 'rickshaw
was directly in the middle of the road; and once more the Arab passed
through it, my horse following. "Jack! Jack, dear! Please forgive
me," rang with a wail in my ears, and, after an interval: "It's all a
mistake, a hideous mistake!"
I spurred my horse like a man possessed. When I turned my head at
the reservoir works, the black and white liveries were still
waiting--patiently waiting--under the gray hillside, and the wind
brought me a mocking echo of the words I had just heard. Kitty
bantered me a good deal on my silence throughout the remainder of the
ride. I had been talking up till then wildly and at random. To save
my life I could not speak naturally afterward, and from Sanjowlie to
the church wisely held my tongue.
I was to dine with the Mannerings that night, and had barely time to
canter home to dress. On the road to Elysium Hill I overheard two
men talking together in the dusk--"It's a curious thing," said one,
"how completely all trace of it disappeared. You know my wife was
insanely fond of the woman (never could see anything in her myself),
and wanted me to pick up her old 'rickshaw and coolies if they were
to be got for love or money. Morbid sort of fancy I call it; but
I've got to do what the Memsahib tells me. Would you believe that
the man she hired it from tells me that all four of the men--they
were brothers--died of cholera on the way to Hardwar, poor devils;
and the 'rickshaw has been broken up by the man himself. Told me he
never used a dead Memsahib's 'rickshaw. Spoiled his luck. Queer
notion, wasn't it? Fancy poor little Mrs. Wessington spoiling any
one's luck except her own!" I laughed aloud at this point; and my
laugh jarred on me as I uttered it. So there were ghosts of
'rickshaws after all, and ghostly employments in the other world!
How much did Mrs. Wessington give her men? What were their hours?
Where did they go?
And for visible answer to my last question I saw the infernal thing
blocking my path in the twilight. The dead travel fast, and by short
cuts unknown to ordinary coolies. I laughed aloud a second time and
checked my laughter suddenly, for I was afraid I was going mad. Mad
to a certain extent I must have been, for I recollect that I reined
in my horse at the head of the 'rickshaw, and politely wished Mrs.
Wessington "Good-evening." Her answer was one I knew only too well.
I listened to the end; and replied that I had heard it all before,
but should be delighted if she had anything further to say. Some
malignant devil stronger than I must have entered into me that
evening, for I have a dim recollection of talking the commonplaces of
the day for five minutes to the thing in front of me.
"Mad as a hatter, poor devil--or drunk. Max, try and get him to come
home."
Surely that was not Mrs. Wessington's voice! The two men had
overheard me speaking to the empty air, and had returned to look
after me. They were very kind and considerate, and from their words
evidently gathered that I was extremely drunk. I thanked them
confusedly and cantered away to my hotel, there changed, and arrived
at the Mannerings' ten minutes late. I pleaded the darkness of the
night as an excuse; was rebuked by Kitty for my unlover-like
tardiness; and sat down.
The conversation had already become general; and under cover of it I
was addressing some tender small-talk to my sweetheart when I was
aware that at the further end of the table a short, red-whiskered man
was describing, with much broidery, his encounter with a man unknown
that evening. A few sentences convinced me that he was repeating the
incident of half an hour ago. In the middle of the story he looked
round for applause, as professional story-tellers do, caught my eyes,
and straightway collapsed. There was a moment's awkward silence, and
the red-whiskered man muttered something to the effect that he had
"forgotten the rest," thereby sacrificing a reputation as a good
story-teller which he had built up for six seasons past. I blessed
him from the bottom of my heart, and--went on with my fish.
In the fulness of time that dinner came to an end; and with genuine
regret I tore myself away from Kitty--as certain as I was of my own
existence that It would be waiting for me outside the door. The
red-whiskered man, who had been introduced to me as Dr. Heatherlegh
of Simla, volunteered to bear me company as far as our roads lay
together. I accepted his offer with gratitude.
My instinct had not deceived me. It lay in readiness in the Mall,
and, in what seemed devilish mockery of our ways, with a lighted
head-lamp. The red-whiskered man went to the point at once, in a
manner that showed he had been thinking over it all dinner-time.
"I say, Pansay, what the deuce was the matter with you this evening
on the Elysium road?" The suddenness of the question wrenched an
answer from me before I was aware.
"That!" said I, pointing to It.
"That may be either D. T. or Eyes for aught I know. Now, you don't
liquor. I saw as much at dinner, so it can't be D. T. There's
nothing whatever where you're pointing, though you're sweating and
trembling with fright like a scared pony. Therefore, I conclude that
it's Eyes. And I ought to understand all about them. Come along
home with me. I'm on the Blessington lower road."
To my intense delight the 'rickshaw, instead of waiting for us, kept
about twenty yards ahead--and this, too, whether we walked, trotted,
or cantered. In the course of that long night ride I had told my
companion almost as much as I have told you here.
"Well, you've spoiled one of the best tales I've ever laid tongue
to," said he, "but I'll forgive you for the sake of what you've gone
through. Now, come home and do what I tell you; and when I've cured
you, young man, let this be a lesson to you to steer clear of women
and indigestible food till the day of your death."
The 'rickshaw kept steady in front; and my red-whiskered friend
seemed to derive great pleasure from my account of its exact
whereabout.
"Eyes, Pansay--all Eyes, Brain, and Stomach. And the greatest of
these three is Stomach. You've too much conceited brain, too little
stomach, and thoroughly unhealthy eyes. Get your stomach straight
and the rest follows. And all that's French for a liver pill. I'll
take sole medical charge of you from this hour! for you're too
interesting a phenomenon to be passed over."
By this time we were deep in the shadow of the Blessington lower road
and the 'rickshaw came to a dead stop under a pine-clad, overhanging
shale cliff. Instinctively I halted, too, giving my reason.
Heatherlegh rapped out an oath.
"Now, if you think I'm going to spend a cold night on the hillside
for the sake of a Stomach-cum-Brain-cum-Eye illusion ... Lord ha'
mercy! What's that?"
There was a muffled report, a blinding smother of dust just in front
of us, a crack, the noise of rent boughs, and about ten yards of the
cliff-side--pines, undergrowth, and all--slid down into the road
below, completely blocking it up. The uprooted trees swayed and
tottered for a moment like drunken giants in the gloom, and then fell
prone among their fellows with a thunderous crash. Our two horses
stood motionless and sweating with fear. As soon as the rattle of
falling earth and stone had subsided, my companion muttered: "Man, if
we'd gone forward we should have been ten feet deep in our graves by
now. 'There are more things in heaven and earth--' Come home,
Pansay, and thank God. I want a peg badly."
We retraced our way over the Church Ridge, and I arrived at Dr.
Heatherlegh's house shortly after midnight.
His attempts toward my cure commenced almost immediately, and for a
week I never left his sight. Many a time in the course of that week
did I bless the good fortune which had thrown me in contact with
Simla's best and kindest doctor. Day by day my spirits grew lighter
and more equable. Day by day, too, I became more and more inclined
to fall in with Heatherlegh's "spectral illusion" theory, implicating
eyes, brain, and stomach. I wrote to Kitty, telling her that a
slight sprain caused by a fall from my horse kept me indoors for a
few days; and that I should be recovered before she had time to
regret my absence.
Heatherlegh's treatment was simple to a degree. It consisted of
liver pills, cold water baths, and strong exercise, taken in the dusk
or at early dawn--for, as he sagely observed: "A man with a sprained
ankle doesn't walk a dozen miles a day, and your young woman might be
wondering if she saw you."
At the end of the week, after much examination of pupil and pulse,
and strict injunctions as to diet and pedestrianism, Heatherlegh
dismissed me as bruskly as he had taken charge of me. Here is his
parting benediction: "Man, I certify to your mental cure, and that's
as much as to say I've cured most of your bodily ailments. Now, get
your traps out of this as soon as you can; and be off to make love to
Miss Kitty."
I was endeavoring to express my thanks for his kindness. He cut me
short.
"Don't think I did this because I like you. I gather that you've
behaved like a blackguard all through. But, all the same, you're a
phenomenon, and as queer a phenomenon as you are a blackguard.
No!"--checking me a second time--"not a rupee, please. Go out and
see if you can find the eyes-brain-and-stomach business again. I'll
give you a lakh for each time you see it."
Half an hour later I was in the Mannerings' drawing-room with
Kitty--drunk with the intoxication of present happiness and the
foreknowledge that I should never more be troubled with Its hideous
presence. Strong in the sense of my new-found security, I proposed a
ride at once; and, by preference, a canter round Jakko.
Never had I felt so well, so overladen with vitality and mere animal
spirits, as I did on the afternoon of the 30th of April. Kitty was
delighted at the change in my appearance, and complimented me on it
in her delightfully frank and outspoken manner. We left the
Mannerings' house together, laughing and talking, and cantered along
the Chota Simla road as of old.
I was in haste to reach the Sanjowlie Reservoir and there make my
assurance doubly sure. The horses did their best, but seemed all too
slow to my impatient mind. Kitty was astonished at my
boisterousness. "Why, Jack!" she cried at last, "you are behaving
like a child. What are you doing?"
We were just below the convent, and from sheer wantonness I was
making my waler plunge and curvet across the road as I tickled it
with the loop of my riding-whip.
"Doing?" I answered; "nothing, dear. That's just it. If you'd been
doing nothing for a week except lie up, you'd be as riotous as I.
"'Singing and murmuring in your feastful mirth,
Joying to feel yourself alive;
Lord over Nature, Lord of the visible Earth,
Lord of the senses five.'"
My quotation was hardly out of my lips before we had rounded the
corner above the convent, and a few yards further on could see across
to Sanjowlie. In the centre of the level road stood the black and
white liveries, the yellow-paneled 'rickshaw, and Mrs.
Keith-Wessington. I pulled up, looked, rubbed my eyes, and, I
believe, must have said something. The next thing I knew was that I
was lying face downward on the road, with Kitty kneeling above me in
tears.
"Has it gone, child?" I gasped. Kitty only wept more bitterly.
"Has what gone, Jack dear? What does it all mean? There must be a
mistake somewhere, Jack. A hideous mistake." Her last words brought
me to my feet--mad--raving for the time being.
"Yes, there is a mistake somewhere," I repeated, "a hideous mistake.
Come and look at It."
I have an indistinct idea that I dragged Kitty by the wrist along the
road up to where It stood, and implored her for pity's sake to speak
to It; to tell It that we were betrothed; that neither death nor hell
could break the tie between us; and Kitty only knows how much more to
the same effect. Now and again I appealed passionately to the terror
in the 'rickshaw to bear witness to all I had said, and to release me
from a torture that was killing me. As I talked I suppose I must
have told Kitty of my old relations with Mrs. Wessington, for I saw
her listen intently with white face and blazing eyes.
"Thank you, Mr. Pansay," she said, "that's quite enough. Syce ghora
láo."
The syces, impassive as Orientals always are, had come up with the
recaptured horses; and as Kitty sprang into her saddle I caught hold
of the bridle, entreating her to hear me out and forgive. My answer
was the cut of her riding-whip across my face from mouth to eye, and
a word or two of farewell that even now I can not write down. So I
judged, and judged rightly, that Kitty knew all; and I staggered back
to the side of the 'rickshaw. My face was cut and bleeding, and the
blow of the riding-whip had raised a livid blue wheal on it. I had
no self-respect. Just then, Heatherlegh, who must have been
following Kitty and me at a distance, cantered up.
"Doctor," I said, pointing to my face, "here's Miss Mannering's
signature to my order of dismissal, and I'll thank you for that lakh
as soon as convenient."
Heatherlegh's face, even in my abject misery, moved me to laughter.
"I'll stake my professional reputation--" he began.
"Don't be a fool," I whispered. "I've lost my life's happiness and
you'd better take me home."
As I spoke the 'rickshaw was gone. Then I lost all knowledge of what
was passing. The crest of Jakko seemed to heave and roll like the
crest of a cloud and fall in upon me.
Seven days later (on the 7th of May, that is to say) I was aware that
I was lying in Heatherlegh's room as weak as a little child.
Heatherlegh was watching me intently from behind the papers on his
writing-table. His first words were not encouraging; but I was too
far spent to be much moved by them.
"Here's Miss Kitty has sent back your letters. You corresponded a
good deal, you young people. Here's a packet that looks like a ring,
and a cheerful sort of a note from Mannering Papa, which I've taken
the liberty of reading and burning. The old gentleman's not pleased
with you."
"And Kitty?" I asked dully.
"Rather more drawn than her father from what she says. By the same
token you must have been letting out any number of queer
reminiscences just before I met you. Says that a man who would have
behaved to a woman as you did to Mrs. Wessington ought to kill
himself out of sheer pity for his kind. She's a hot-headed little
virago, your mash. Will have it too that you were suffering from D.
T. when that row on the Jakko road turned up. Says she'll die before
she ever speaks to you again."
I groaned and turned over on the other side.
"Now, you've got your choice, my friend. This engagement has to be
broken off; and the Mannerings don't want to be too hard on you. Was
it broken through D. T. or epileptic fits? Sorry I can't offer you a
better exchange unless you'd prefer hereditary insanity. Say the
word and I'll tell 'em it's fits. All Simla knows about that scene
on the Ladies' Mile. Come! I'll give you five minutes to think over
it."
During those five minutes I believe that I explored thoroughly the
lowest circles of the Inferno which it is permitted man to tread on
earth. And at the same time I myself was watching myself faltering
through the dark labyrinths of doubt, misery, and utter despair. I
wondered, as Heatherlegh in his chair might have wondered, which
dreadful alternative I should adopt. Presently I heard myself
answering in a voice that I hardly recognized:
"They're confoundedly particular about morality in these parts. Give
'em fits, Heatherlegh, and my love. Now, let me sleep a bit longer."
Then my two selves joined, and it was only I (half crazed,
devil-driven I) that tossed in my bed, tracing step by step the
history of the past month.
"But I am in Simla," I kept repeating to myself. "I, Jack Pansay, am
in Simla, and there are no ghosts here. It's unreasonable of that
woman to pretend there are. Why couldn't Agnes have left me alone?
I never did her any harm. It might just as well have been me as
Agnes. Only I'd never have come back on purpose to kill her. Why
can't I be left alone--left alone and happy?"
It was high noon when I first awoke; and the sun was low in the sky
before I slept--slept as the tortured criminal sleeps on his rack,
too worn to feel further pain.
Next day I could not leave my bed. Heatherlegh told me in the
morning that he had received an answer from Mr. Mannering, and that,
thanks to his (Heatherlegh's) friendly offices, the story of my
affliction had traveled through the length and breadth of Simla,
where I was on all sides much pitied.
"And that's rather more than you deserve," he concluded, pleasantly,
"though the Lord knows you've been going through a pretty severe
mill. Never mind; we'll cure you yet, you perverse phenomenon."
I declined firmly to be cured. "You've been much too good to me
already, old man," said I; "but I don't think I need trouble you
further."
In my heart I knew that nothing Heatherlegh could do would lighten
the burden that had been laid upon me.
With that knowledge came also a sense of hopeless, impotent rebellion
against the unreasonableness of it all. There were scores of men no
better than I whose punishments had at least been reserved for
another world; and I felt that it was bitterly, cruelly unfair that I
alone should have been singled out for so hideous a fate. This mood
would in time give place to another where it seemed that the
'rickshaw and I were the only realities in a world of shadows; that
Kitty was a ghost; that Mannering, Heatherlegh, and all the other men
and women I knew were all ghosts; and the great, gray hills
themselves but vain shadows devised to torture me. From mood to mood
I tossed backward and forward for seven weary days; my body growing
daily stronger and stronger, until the bedroom looking-glass told me
that I had returned to every day life, and was as other men once
more. Curiously enough my face showed no signs of the struggle I had
gone through. It was pale indeed, but as expressionless and
commonplace as ever. I had expected some permanent
alteration--visible evidence of the disease that was eating me away.
I found nothing.
On the 15th of May I left Heatherlegh's house at eleven o'clock in
the morning; and the instinct of the bachelor drove me to the club.
There I found that every man knew my story as told by Heatherlegh,
and was, in clumsy fashion, abnormally kind and attentive.
Nevertheless, I recognized that for the rest of my natural life I
should be among but not of my fellows; and I envied very bitterly
indeed the laughing coolies on the Mall below. I lunched at the
club, and at four o'clock wandered aimlessly down the Mall in the
vague hope of meeting Kitty. Close to the band-stand the black and
white liveries joined me; and I heard Mrs. Wessington's old appeal at
my side. I had been expecting this ever since I came out; and was
only surprised at her delay. The phantom 'rickshaw and I went side
by side along the Chota Simla road in silence. Close to the bazaar,
Kitty and a man on horseback overtook and passed us. For any sign
she gave I might have been a dog in the road. She did not even pay
me the compliment of quickening her pace; though the rainy afternoon
had served for an excuse.
So Kitty and her companion, and I and my ghostly light-o'-love, crept
round Jakko in couples. The road was streaming with water; the pines
dripped like roof-pipes on the rocks below, and the air was full of
fine, driving rain. Two or three times I found myself saying to
myself almost aloud: "I'm Jack Pansay on leave at Simla--at Simla!
Everyday, ordinary Simla. I mustn't forget that--I mustn't forget
that." Then I would try to recollect some of the gossip I had heard
at the club; the prices of So-and-So's horses--anything, in fact,
that related to the workaday Anglo-Indian world I knew so well. I
even repeated the multiplication table rapidly to myself, to make
quite sure that I was not taking leave of my senses. It gave me much
comfort; and must have prevented my hearing Mrs. Wessington for a
time.
Once more I wearily climbed the convent slope and entered the level
road. Here Kitty and the man started off at a canter, and I was left
alone with Mrs. Wessington. "Agnes," said I, "will you put back your
hood and tell me what it all means?" The hood dropped noiselessly,
and I was face to face with my dead and buried mistress. She was
wearing the dress in which I had last seen her alive; carried the
same tiny handkerchief in her right hand, and the same card-case in
her left. (A woman eight months dead with a card-case!) I had to
pin myself down to the multiplication table, and to set both hands on
the stone parapet of the road, to assure myself that at least was
real.
"Agnes," I repeated, "for pity's sake tell me what it all means."
Mrs. Wessington leaned forward, with that odd, quick turn of the head
I used to know so well, and spoke.
If my story had not already so madly overleaped the bounds of all
human belief I should apologize to you now. As I know that no
one--no, not even Kitty, for whom it is written as some sort of
justification of my conduct--will believe me, I will go on. Mrs.
Wessington spoke and I walked with her from the Sanjowlie road to the
turning below the Commander-in-chief's house as I might walk by the
side of any living woman's 'rickshaw, deep in conversation. The
second and most tormenting of my moods of sickness had suddenly laid
hold upon me, and, like the prince in Tennyson's poem, "I seemed to
move amid a world of ghosts." There had been a garden-party at the
commander-in-chief's, and we two joined the crowd of homeward-bound
folk. As I saw them then it seemed that they were the
shadows--impalpable fantastic shadows--that divided for Mrs.
Wessington's 'rickshaw to pass through. What we said during the
course of that weird interview I can not--indeed, I dare not--tell.
Heatherlegh's comment would have been a short laugh and a remark that
I had been "mashing a brain-eye-and-stomach chimera." It was a
ghastly and yet in some indefinable way a marvelously dear
experience. Could it be possible, I wondered, that I was in this
life to woo a second time the woman I had killed by my own neglect
and cruelty?
I met Kitty on the homeward road--a shadow among shadows.
If I were to describe all the incidents of the next fortnight in
their order, my story would never come to an end; and your patience
would be exhausted. Morning after morning and evening after evening
the ghostly 'rickshaw and I used to wander through Simla together.
Wherever I went there the four black and white liveries followed me
and bore me company to and from my hotel. At the theatre I found
them amid the crowd of yelling jhampanies; outside the club veranda,
after a long evening of whist; at the birthday ball, waiting
patiently for my reappearance; and in broad daylight when I went
calling. Save that it cast no shadow, the 'rickshaw was in every
respect as real to look upon as one of wood and iron. More than
once, indeed, I have had to check myself from warning some
hard-riding friend against cantering over it. More than once I have
walked down the Mall deep in conversation with Mrs. Wessington to the
unspeakable amazement of the passers-by.
Before I had been out and about a week I learned that the "fit"
theory had been discarded in favor of insanity. However, I made no
change in my mode of life. I called, rode, and dined out as freely
as ever. I had a passion for the society of my kind which I had
never felt before; I hungered to be among the realities of life; and
at the same time I felt vaguely unhappy when I had been separated too
long from my ghostly companion. It would be almost impossible to
describe my varying moods from the 15th of May up to to-day.
The presence of the 'rickshaw filled me by turns with horror, blind
fear, a dim sort of pleasure, and utter despair. I dared not leave
Simla; and I knew that my stay there was killing me. I knew,
moreover, that it was my destiny to die slowly and a little every
day. My only anxiety was to get the penance over as quietly as might
be. Alternately I hungered for a sight of Kitty and watched her
outrageous flirtations with my successor--to speak more accurately,
my successors--with amused interest. She was as much out of my life
as I was out of hers. By day I wandered with Mrs. Wessington almost
content. By night I implored Heaven to let me return to the world as
I used to know it.
Above all these varying moods lay the sensation of dull, numbing
wonder that the Seen and the Unseen should mingle so strangely on
this earth to hound one poor soul to its grave.
. . . . . . . . . . .
August 27.--Heatherlegh has been indefatigable in his attendance on
me; and only yesterday told me that I ought to send in an application
for sick leave. An application to escape the company of a phantom!
A request that the government would graciously permit me to get rid
of five ghosts and an airy 'rickshaw by going to England!
Heatherlegh's proposition moved me to almost hysterical laughter. I
told him that I should await the end quietly at Simla; and I am sure
that the end is not far off. Believe me that I dread its advent more
than any word can say; and I torture myself nightly with a thousand
speculations as to the manner of my death.
Shall I die in my bed decently and as an English gentleman should
die; or, in one last walk on the Mall, will my soul be wrenched from
me to take its place forever and ever by the side of that ghastly
phantasm? Shall I return to my old lost allegiance in the next
world, or shall I meet Agnes, loathing her and bound to her side
through all eternity? Shall we two hover over the scene of our lives
till the end of Time? As the day of my death draws nearer, the
intense horror that all living flesh feels toward escaped spirits
from beyond the grave grows more and more powerful. It is an awful
thing to go down quick among the dead with scarcely one-half of your
life completed. It is a thousand times more awful to wait as I do in
your midst, for I know not what unimaginable terror. Pity me, at
least on the score of my "delusion," for I know you will never
believe what I have written here. Yet as surely as ever a man was
done to death by the Powers of Darkness I am that man.
In justice, too, pity her. For as surely as ever woman was killed by
man, I killed Mrs. Wessington. And the last portion of my punishment
is even now upon me.
THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF
BY A. T. QUILLER-COUCH ("Q.")
_"Q." is the signature of Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, born in
Cornwall in 1863. No English novelist of the present generation
upholds more evenly and consistently than he the best traditions of
the art of story-writing, both in elevation of theme and dignity of
style. His imagination attains the dramatic quality by strength and
purity rather than by eccentricity and abnormality. For these
reasons he was chosen to complete Robert Louis Stevenson's novel "St.
Ives," left unfinished on the death of the author._
THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF
By A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
"Yes, sir," said my host, the quarryman, reaching down the relics
from their hook in the wall over the chimneypiece; "they've hung here
all my time, and most of my father's. The women won't touch 'em;
they're afraid of the story. So here they'll dangle, and gather dust
and smoke, till another tenant comes and tosses 'em out o' doors for
rubbish. Whew! 'tis coarse weather, surely."
He went to the door, opened it, and stood studying the gale that beat
upon his cottage-front, straight from the Manacle Reef. The rain
drove past him into the kitchen, aslant like threads of gold silk in
the shine of the wreck-wood fire. Meanwhile, by the same firelight,
I examined the relics on my knee. The metal of each was tarnished
out of knowledge. But the trumpet was evidently an old cavalry
trumpet, and the threads of its party-colored sling, though fretted
and dusty, still hung together. Around the side-drum, beneath its
cracked brown varnish, I could hardly trace a royal coat-of-arms and
a legend running, "Per Mare Per Terram"--the motto of the marines.
Its parchment, though black and scented with wood-smoke, was limp and
mildewed; and I began to tighten up the straps--under which the
drumsticks had been loosely thrust--with the idle purpose of trying
if some music might be got out of the old drum yet.
But as I turned it on my knee, I found the drum attached to the
trumpet-sling by a curious barrel-shaped padlock, and paused to
examine this. The body of the lock was composed of half a dozen
brass rings, set accurately edge to edge; and, rubbing the brass with
my thumb, I saw that each of the six had a series of letters engraved
around it.
I knew the trick of it, I thought. Here was one of those word
padlocks, once so common; only to be opened by getting the rings to
spell a certain word, which the dealer confides to you.
My host shut and barred the door, and came back to the hearth.
"'Twas just such a wind--east by south--that brought in what you've
got between your hands. Back in the year 'nine, it was; my father
has told me the tale a score o' times. You're twisting round the
rings, I see. But you'll never guess the word. Parson Kendall, he
made the word, and he locked down a couple o' ghosts in their graves
with it; and when his time came he went to his own grave and took the
word with him."
"Whose ghosts, Matthew?"
"You want the story, I see, sir. My father could tell it better than
I can. He was a young man in the year 'nine, unmarried at the time,
and living in this very cottage, just as I be. That's how he came to
get mixed up with the tale."
He took a chair, lighted a short pipe, and went on, with his eyes
fixed on the dancing violet flames:
"Yes, he'd ha' been about thirty year old in January, eighteen 'nine.
The storm got up in the night o' the twenty-first o' that month. My
father was dressed and out long before daylight; he never was one to
bide in bed, let be that the gale by this time was pretty near
lifting the thatch over his head. Besides which, he'd fenced a small
'taty-patch that winter, down by Lowland Point, and he wanted to see
if it stood the night's work. He took the path across Gunner's
Meadow--where they buried most of the bodies afterward. The wind was
right in his teeth at the time, and once on the way (he's told me
this often) a great strip of oarweed came flying through the darkness
and fetched him a slap on the cheek like a cold hand. But he made
shift pretty well till he got to Lowland, and then had to drop upon
hands and knees and crawl, digging his fingers every now and then
into the shingle to hold on, for he declared to me that the stones,
some of them as big as a man's head, kept rolling and driving past
till it seemed the whole foreshore was moving westward under him.
The fence was gone, of course; not a stick left to show where it
stood; so that, when first he came to the place, he thought he must
have missed his bearings. My father, sir, was a very religious man;
and if he reckoned the end of the world was at hand--there in the
great wind and night, among the moving stones--you may believe he was
certain of it when he heard a gun fired, and, with the same, saw a
flame shoot up out of the darkness to windward, making a sudden
fierce light in all the place about. All he could find to think or
say was, 'The Second Coming! The Second Coming! The Bridegroom
cometh, and the wicked He will toss like a ball into a large
country'; and being already upon his knees, he just bowed his head
and 'bided, saying this over and over.
"But by'm by, between two squalls, he made bold to lift his head and
look, and then by the light--a bluish color 'twas--he saw all the
coast clear away to Manacle Point, and off the Manacles in the thick
of the weather, a sloop-of-war with topgallants housed, driving stern
foremost toward the reef. It was she, of course, that was burning
the flare. My father could see the white streak and the ports of her
quite plain as she rose to it, a little outside the breakers, and he
guessed easy enough that her captain had just managed to wear ship
and was trying to force her nose to the sea with the help of her
small bower anchor and the scrap or two of canvas that hadn't yet
been blown out of her. But while he looked, she fell off, giving her
broadside to it foot by foot, and drifting back on the breakers
around Carn Du and the Varses. The rocks lie so thick thereabout
that 'twas a toss up which she struck first; at any rate, my father
couldn't tell at the time, for just then the flare died down and went
out.
"Well, sir, he turned then in the dark and started back for Coverack
to cry the dismal tidings--though well knowing ship and crew to be
past any hope, and as he turned the wind lifted him and tossed him
forward 'like a ball,' as he'd been saying, and homeward along the
foreshore. As you know, 'tis ugly work, even by daylight, picking
your way among the stones there, and my father was prettily knocked
about at first in the dark. But by this 'twas nearer seven than six
o'clock, and the day spreading. By the time he reached North Corner,
a man could see to read print; hows'ever, he looked neither out to
sea nor toward Coverack, but headed straight for the first
cottage--the same that stands above North Corner to-day. A man named
Billy Ede lived there then, and when my father burst into the kitchen
bawling, 'Wreck! wreck!' he saw Billy Ede's wife, Ann, standing there
in her clogs with a shawl over her head, and her clothes wringing wet.
"'Save the chap!' says Billy Ede's wife, Ann. 'What d'ee mean by
crying stale fish at that rate?'
"'But 'tis a wreck, I tell 'ee.'
"'I've a-zeed 'n, too; and so has every one with an eye in his head.'
"And with that she pointed straight over my father's shoulder, and he
turned; and there, close under Dolor Point, at the end of Coverack
town, he saw another wreck washing, and the point black with people,
like emmets, running to and fro in the morning light. While he stood
staring at her, he heard a trumpet sounded on board, the notes coming
in little jerks, like a bird rising against the wind; but faintly, of
course, because of the distance and the gale blowing--though this had
dropped a little.
"'She's a transport,' said Billy Ede's wife, Ann, 'and full of
horse-soldiers, fine long men. When she struck they must ha' pitched
the horses over first to lighten the ship, for a score of dead horses
had washed in afore I left, half an hour back. An' three or four
soldiers, too--fine long corpses in white breeches and jackets of
blue and gold. I held the lantern to one. Such a straight young
man!'
"My father asked her about the trumpeting.
"'That's the queerest bit of all. She was burnin' a light when me
an' my man joined the crowd down there. All her masts had gone;
whether they carried away, or were cut away to ease her, I don't
rightly know. Her keelson was broke under her and her bottom sagged
and stove, and she had just settled down like a sitting hen--just the
leastest list to starboard; but a man could stand there easy. They
had rigged up ropes across her, from bulwark to bulwark, an' beside
these the men were mustered, holding on like grim death whenever the
sea made a clean breach over them, an' standing up like heroes as
soon as it passed. The captain an' the officers were clinging to the
rail of the quarterdeck, all in their golden uniforms, waiting for
the end as if 'twas King George they expected. There was no way to
help, for she lay right beyond cast of line, though our folk tried it
fifty times. And beside them clung a trumpeter, a whacking big man,
an' between the heavy seas he would lift his trumpet with one hand,
and blow a call; and every time he blew the men gave a cheer. There
[she says]--hark 'ee now--there he goes agen! But you won't hear no
cheering any more, for few are left to cheer, and their voices weak.
Bitter cold the wind is, and I reckon it numbs their grip o' the
ropes, for they were dropping off fast with every sea when my man
sent me home to get his breakfast. Another wreck, you say? Well,
there's no hope for the tender dears, if 'tis the Manacles. You'd
better run down and help yonder; though 'tis little help any man can
give. Not one came in alive while I was there. The tide's flowing,
an' she won't hold together another hour, they say.'
"Well, sure enough, the end was coming fast when my father got down
to the point. Six men had been cast up alive, or just breathing--a
seaman and five troopers. The seaman was the only one that had
breath to speak; and while they were carrying him into the town, the
word went round that the ship's name was the 'Despatch,' transport,
homeward-bound from Corunna, with a detachment of the Seventh
Hussars, that had been fighting out there with Sir John Moore. The
seas had rolled her further over by this time, and given her decks a
pretty sharp slope; but a dozen men still held on, seven by the ropes
near the ship's waist, a couple near the break of the poop, and three
on the quarterdeck. Of these three my father made out one to be the
skipper; close by him clung an officer in full regimentals--his name,
they heard after, was Captain Duncanfield; and last came the tall
trumpeter; and if you'll believe me, the fellow was making shift
there, at the very last, to blow 'God Save the King.' What's more,
he got to 'Send us victorious,' before an extra big sea came bursting
across and washed them off the deck--every man but one of the pair
beneath the poop--and he dropped his hold before the next wave; being
stunned, I reckon. The others went out of sight at once, but the
trumpeter--being, as I said, a powerful man as well as a tough
swimmer--rose like a duck, rode out a couple of breakers, and came in
on the crest of the third. The folks looked to see him broke like an
egg at their very feet; but when the smother cleared, there he was,
lying face downward on a ledge below them; and one of the men that
happened to have a rope round him--I forget the fellow's name, if I
ever heard it--jumped down and grabbed him by the ankle as he began
to slip back. Before the next big sea, the pair were hauled high
enough to be out of harm, and another heave brought them up to grass.
Quick work, but master trumpeter wasn't quite dead; nothing worse
than a cracked head and three staved ribs. In twenty minutes or so
they had him in bed, with the doctor to tend him.
"Now was the time--nothing being left alive upon the transport--for
my father to tell of the sloop he'd seen driving upon the Manacles.
And when he got a hearing, though the most were set upon salvage, and
believed a wreck in the hand, so to say, to be worth half a dozen
they couldn't see, a good few volunteered to start off with him and
have a look. They crossed Lowland Point; no ship to be seen on the
Manacles nor anywhere upon the sea. One or two was for calling my
father a liar. 'Wait till we come to Dean Point,' said he. Sure
enough, on the far side of Dean Point they found the sloop's mainmast
washing about with half a dozen men lashed to it, men in red jackets,
every mother's son drowned and staring; and a little further on, just
under the Dean, three or four bodies cast up on the shore, one of
them a small drummer-boy, side-drum and all; and near by part of a
ship's gig, with 'H.M.S. Primrose' cut on the stern-board. From this
point on the shore was littered thick with wreckage and dead
bodies--the most of them marines in uniform--and in Godrevy Cove, in
particular, a heap of furniture from the captain's cabin, and among
it a water-tight box, not much damaged, and full of papers, by which,
when it came to be examined, next day, the wreck was easily made out
to be the 'Primrose,' of eighteen guns, outward bound from
Portsmouth, with a fleet of transports for the Spanish war--thirty
sail, I've heard, but I've never heard what became of them. Being
handled by merchant skippers, no doubt they rode out the gale, and
reached the Tagus safe and sound. Not but what the captain of the
'Primrose'--Mein was his name--did quite right to try and club-haul
his vessel when he found himself under the land; only he never ought
to have got there, if he took proper soundings. But it's easy
talking.
"The 'Primrose,' sir, was a handsome vessel--for her size one of the
handsomest in the King's service--and newly fitted out at Plymouth
Dock. So the boys had brave pickings from her in the way of
brass-work, ship's instruments, and the like, let alone some barrels
of stores not much spoiled. They loaded themselves with as much as
they could carry, and started for home, meaning to make a second
journey before the preventive men got wind of their doings, and came
to spoil the fun. 'Hullo!' says my father, and dropped his gear, 'I
do believe there's a leg moving?' and running fore, he stooped over
the small drummer-boy that I told you about. The poor little chap
was lying there, with his face a mass of bruises, and his eyes
closed; but he had shifted one leg an inch or two, and was still
breathing. So my father pulled out a knife, and cut him free from
his drum--that was lashed on to him with a double turn of Manila
rope--and took him up and carried him along here to this very room
that we're sitting in. He lost a good deal by this; for when he went
back to fetch the bundle he'd dropped, the preventive men had got
hold of it, and were thick as thieves along the foreshore; so that
'twas only by paying one or two to look the other way that he picked
up anything worth carrying off: which you'll allow to be hard, seeing
that he was the first man to give news of the wreck.
"Well, the inquiry was held, of course, and my father gave evidence,
and for the rest they had to trust to the sloop's papers, for not a
soul was saved besides the drummer-boy, and he was raving in a fever,
brought on by the cold and the fright. And the seaman and the five
troopers gave evidence about the loss of the 'Despatch.' The tall
trumpeter, too, whose ribs were healing, came forward and kissed the
book; but somehow his head had been hurt in coming ashore, and he
talked foolish-like, and 'twas easy seen he would never be a proper
man again. The others were taken up to Plymouth, and so went their
ways; but the trumpeter stayed on in Coverack; and King George,
finding he was fit for nothing, sent him down a trifle of a pension
after a while--enough to keep him in board and lodging, with a bit of
tobacco over.
"Now the first time that this man--William Tallifer he called
himself--met with the drummer-boy, was about a fortnight after the
little chap had bettered enough to be allowed a short walk out of
doors, which he took, if you please, in full regimentals. There
never was a soldier so proud of his dress. His own suit had shrunk a
brave bit with the salt water; but into ordinary frock an' corduroys
he declared he would not get, not if he had to go naked the rest of
his life; so my father--being a good-natured man, and handy with the
needle--turned to and repaired damages with a piece or two of scarlet
cloth cut from the jacket of one of the drowned Marines. Well, the
poor little chap chanced to be standing, in this rig out, down by the
gate of Gunner's Meadow, where they had buried two score and over of
his comrades. The morning was a fine one, early in March month; and
along came the cracked trumpeter, likewise taking a stroll.
"'Hullo!' says he; 'good mornin'! And what might you be doin' here?'
"'I was a-wishin',' says the boy, 'I had a pair o' drumsticks. Our
lads were buried yonder without so much as a drum tapped or a musket
fired; and that's not Christian burial for British soldiers.'
"'Phut!' says the trumpeter, and spat on the ground; 'a parcel of
Marines!'
"The boy eyed him a second or so, and answered up: 'If I'd a tav of
turf handy, I'd bung it at your mouth, you greasy cavalryman, and
learn you to speak respectful of your betters. The Marines are the
handiest body o' men in the service.'
"The trumpeter looked down on him from the height of six-foot two,
and asked: 'Did they die well?'
"'They died very well. There was a lot of running to and fro at
first, and some of the men began to cry, and a few to strip off their
clothes. But when the ship fell off for the last time, Captain Mein
turned and said something to Major Griffiths, the commanding officer
on board, and the Major called out to me to beat to quarters. It
might have been for a wedding, he sang it out so cheerful. We'd had
word already that 'twas to be parade order; and the men fell in as
trim and decent as if they were going to church. One or two even
tried to shave at the last moment. The Major wore his medals. One
of the seamen, seeing I had work to keep the drum steady--the sling
being a bit loose for me, and the wind what you remember--lashed it
tight with a piece of rope; and that saved my life afterward, a drum
being as good as a cork until it's stove. I kept beating away until
every man was on deck; and then the Major formed them up and told
them to die like British soldiers, and the chaplain was in the middle
of a prayer when she struck. In ten minutes she was gone. That was
how they died, cavalryman.'
"'And that was very well done, drummer of the Marines. What's your
name?'
"'John Christian.'
"'Mine's William George Tallifer, trumpeter, of the Seventh Light
Dragoons--the Queen's Own. I played "God Save the King" while our
men were drowning. Captain Duncanfield told me to sound a call or
two, to put them in heart; but that matter of "God save the King" was
a notion of my own. I won't say anything to hurt the feelings of a
Marine, even if he's not much over five-foot tall; but the Queen's
Own Hussars is a tearin' fine regiment. As between horse and foot,
'tis a question o' which gets a chance. All the way from Sahagun to
Corunna 'twas we that took and gave the knocks--at Mayorga and Rueda,
and Bennyventy.'--The reason, sir, I can speak the names so pat, is
that my father learnt 'em by heart afterward from the trumpeter, who
was always talking about Mayorga and Rueda and Bennyventy.'--We made
the rear-guard, under General Paget; and drove the French every time;
and all the infantry did was to sit about in wine-shops till we
whipped 'em out, an' steal an' straggle an' play the tom-fool in
general. And when it came to a stand-up fight at Corunna, 'twas we
that had to stay seasick aboard the transports, an' watch the
infantry in the thick o' the caper. Very well they behaved,
too--specially the Fourth Regiment, an' the Forty-Second Highlanders,
an' the Dirty Half-Hundred. Oh, ay; they're decent regiments, all
three. But the Queen's Own Hussars is a tearin' fine regiment. So
you played on your drum when the ship was goin' down? Drummer John
Christian, I'll have to get you a new pair of sticks.'
"The very next day the trumpeter marched into Helston, and got a
carpenter there to turn him a pair of box-wood drumsticks for the
boy. And this was the beginning of one of the most curious
friendships you ever heard tell of. Nothing delighted the pair more
than to borrow a boat off my father and pull out to the rocks where
the 'Primrose' and the 'Despatch' had struck and sunk; and on still
days 'twas pretty to hear them out there off the Manacles, the
drummer playing his tattoo--for they always took their music with
them--and the trumpeter practising calls, and making his trumpet
speak like an angel. But if the weather turned roughish, they'd be
walking together and talking; leastwise the youngster listened while
the other discoursed about Sir John's campaign in Spain and Portugal,
telling how each little skirmish befell; and of Sir John himself, and
General Baird, and General Paget, and Colonel Vivian, his own
commanding officer, and what kind of men they were; and of the last
bloody stand-up at Corunna, and so forth, as if neither could have
enough.
"But all this had to come to an end in the late summer, for the boy,
John Christian, being now well and strong again, must go up to
Plymouth to report himself. 'Twas his own wish (for I believe King
George had forgotten all about him), but his friend wouldn't hold him
back. As for the trumpeter, my father had made an arrangement to
take him on as lodger, as soon as the boy left; and on the morning
fixed for the start, he was up at the door here by five o'clock, with
his trumpet slung by his side, and all the rest of his belongings in
a small valise. A Monday morning it was, and after breakfast he had
fixed to walk with the boy some way on the road toward Helston, where
the coach started. My father left them at breakfast together, and
went out to meat the pig, and do a few odd morning jobs of that sort.
When he came back, the boy was still at table, and the trumpeter sat
with the rings in his hands, hitched together just as they be at this
moment.
"'Look at this,' he says to my father, showing him the lock. 'I
picked it up off a starving brass-worker in Lisbon, and it is not one
of your common locks that one word of six letters will open at any
time. There's janius in this lock; for you've only to make the rings
spell any six-letter word you please and snap down the lock upon
that, and never a soul can open it--not the maker, even--until
somebody comes along that knows the word you snapped it on. Now
Johnny here's goin', and he leaves his drum behind him; for, though
he can make pretty music on it, the parchment sags in wet weather, by
reason of the sea-water getting at it; an' if he carries it to
Plymouth, they'll only condemn it and give him another. And, as for
me, I shan't have the heart to put lip to the trumpet any more when
Johnny's gone. So we've chosen a word together, and locked 'em
together upon that; and, by your leave, I'll hang 'em here together
on the hook over your fireplace. Maybe Johnny'll come back; maybe
not. Maybe, if he comes, I'll be dead an' gone, and he'll take 'em
apart an' try their music for old sake's sake. But if he never
comes, nobody can separate 'em; for nobody besides knows the word.
And if you marry and have sons, you can tell 'em that here are tied
together the souls of Johnny Christian, drummer of the Marines, and
William George Tallifer, once trumpeter of the Queen's Own Hussars.
Amen.'
"With that he hung the two instruments 'pon the hook there; and the
boy stood up and thanked my father and shook hands; and the pair went
out of the door, toward Helston.
"Somewhere on the road they took leave of one another; but nobody saw
the parting, nor heard what was said between them. About three in
the afternoon the trumpeter came walking back over the hill; and by
the time my father came home from the fishing, the cottage was tidied
up, and the tea ready, and the whole place shining like a new pin.
From that time for five years he lodged here with my father, looking
after the house and tilling the garden. And all the while he was
steadily failing; the hurt in his head spreading, in a manner, to his
limbs. My father watched the feebleness growing on him, but said
nothing. And from first to last neither spake a word about the
drummer, John Christian; nor did any letter reach them, nor word of
his doings.
"The rest of the tale you're free to believe, sir, or not, as you
please. It stands upon my father's words, and he always declared he
was ready to kiss the Book upon it, before judge and jury. He said,
too, that he never had the wit to make up such a yarn; and he defied
any one to explain about the lock, in particular, by any other tale.
But you shall judge for yourself.
"My father said that about three o'clock in the morning, April
fourteenth, of the year 'fourteen, he and William Tallifer were
sitting here, just as you and I, sir, are sitting now. My father had
put on his clothes a few minutes before, and was mending his spiller
by the light of the horn lantern, meaning to set off before daylight
to haul the trammel. The trumpeter hadn't been to bed at all.
Toward the last he mostly spent his nights (and his days, too) dozing
in the elbow-chair where you sit at this minute. He was dozing then
(my father said) with his chin dropped forward on his chest, when a
knock sounded upon the door, and the door opened, and in walked an
upright young man in scarlet regimentals.
"He had grown a brave bit, and his face the color of wood-ashes; but
it was the drummer, John Christian. Only his uniform was different
from the one he used to wear, and the figures '38' shone in brass
upon his collar.
"The drummer walked past my father as if he never saw him, and stood
by the elbow-chair and said:
"'Trumpeter, trumpeter, are you one with us?'
"And the trumpeter just lifted the lids of his eyes, and answered:
'How should I not be one with you, drummer Johnny--Johnny boy? If
you come, I count; if you march, I mark time; until the discharge
comes.'
"'The discharge has come to-night,' said the drummer; 'and the word
is Corunna no longer.' And stepping to the chimney-place, he unhooked
the drum and trumpet, and began to twist the brass rings of the lock,
spelling the word aloud, so--'C-O-R-U-N-A.' When he had fixed the
last letter, the padlock opened in his hand.
"'Did you know, trumpeter, that, when I came to Plymouth, they put me
into a line regiment?'
"'The 38th is a good regiment,' answered the old Hussar, still in his
dull voice; 'I went back with them from Sahagun to Corunna. At
Corunna they stood in General Fraser's division, on the right. They
behaved well."
"'But I'd fain see the Marines again,' says the drummer, handing him
the trumpet; 'and you, you shall call once more for the Queen's Own.
Matthew,' he says, suddenly, turning on my father--and when he
turned, my father saw for the first time that his scarlet jacket had
a round hole by the breast-bone, and that the blood was welling
there--'Matthew, we shall want your boat.'
"Then my father rose on his legs like a man in a dream, while they
two slung on, the one his drum, and t'other his trumpet. He took the
lantern and went quaking before them down to the shore, and they
breathed heavily behind him; and they stepped into his boat, and my
father pushed off.
"'Row you first for Dolor Point,' says the drummer. So my father
rowed them past the white houses of Coverack to Dolor Point, and
there, at a word, lay on his oars. And the trumpeter, William
Tallifer, put his trumpet to his mouth and sounded the reveille. The
music of it was like rivers running.
"'They will follow,' said the drummer. 'Matthew, pull you now for
the Manacles.'
"So my father pulled for the Manacles, and came to an easy close
outside Carn Du. And the drummer took his sticks and beat a tattoo,
there by the edge of the reef; and the music of it was like a rolling
chariot.
"'That will do,' says he, breaking off; 'they will follow. Pull now
for the shore under Gunner's Meadow.'
"Then my father pulled for the shore and ran his boat in under
Gunner's Meadow. And they stepped out, all three, and walked up to
the meadow. By the gate the drummer halted, and began his tattoo
again, looking out toward the darkness over the sea.
"And while the drum beat, and my father held his breath, there came
up out of the sea and the darkness a troop of many men, horse and
foot, and formed up among the graves; and others rose out of the
graves and formed up--drowned Marines with bleached faces, and pale
Hussars, riding their horses, all lean and shadowy. There was no
clatter of hoofs or accoutrements, my father said, but a soft sound
all the while like the beating of a bird's wing; and a black shadow
lay like a pool about the feet of all. The drummer stood upon a
little knoll just inside the gate, and beside him the tall trumpeter,
with hand on hip, watching them gather; and behind them both my
father, clinging to the gate. When no more came, the drummer stopped
playing, and said, 'Call the roll.'
"Then the trumpeter stepped toward the end man of the rank and
called, 'Troop Sergeant-Major Thomas Irons,' and the man answered in
a thin voice, 'Here.'
"'Troop Sergeant-Major Thomas Irons, how is it with you?'
"The man answered, 'How should it be with me? When I was young, I
betrayed a girl; and when I was grown, I betrayed a friend, and for
these I must pay. But I died as a man ought. God save the King!'
"The trumpeter called to the next man, 'Trooper Henry Buckingham,'
and the next man answered, 'Here.'
"'Trooper Henry Buckingham, how is it with you?'
"'How should it be with me? I was a drunkard, and I stole, and in
Lugo, in a wine-shop, I killed a man. But I died as a man should.
God save the King!'
"So the trumpeter went down the line; and when he had finished, the
drummer took it up, hailing the dead Marines in their order. Each
man answered to his name, and each man ended with 'God save the
King!' When all were hailed, the drummer stepped back to his mound,
and called:
"'It is well. You are content, and we are content to join you.
Wait, now, a little while.'
"With this he turned and ordered my father to pick up the lantern,
and lead the way back. As my father picked it up, he heard the ranks
of the dead men cheer and call, 'God save the King!' all together,
and saw them waver and fade back into the dark, like a breath fading
off a pane.
"But when they came back here to the kitchen, and my father set the
lantern down, it seemed they'd both forgot about him. For the
drummer turned in the lantern-light--and my father could see the
blood still welling out of the hole in his breast--and took the
trumpet-sling from around the other's neck, and locked drum and
trumpet together again, choosing the letters on the lock very
carefully. While he did this, he said:
"'The word is no more Corunna, but Bayonne. As you left out an "n"
in Corunna, so must I leave out an "n" in Bayonne.' And before
snapping the padlock, he spelt out the word slowly--'B-A-Y-O-N-E.'
After that, he used no more speech; but turned and hung the two
instruments back on the hook; and then took the trumpeter by the arm;
and the pair walked out into the darkness, glancing neither to right
nor left.
"My father was on the point of following, when he heard a sort of
sigh behind him; and there, sitting in the elbow-chair, was the very
trumpeter he had just seen walk out by the door! If my father's
heart jumped before, you may believe it jumped quicker now. But
after a bit, he went up to the man asleep in the chair and put a hand
upon him. It was the trumpeter in flesh and blood that he touched;
but though the flesh was warm, the trumpeter was dead.
"Well, sir, they buried him three days after; and at first my father
was minded to say nothing about his dream (as he thought it). But
the day after the funeral, he met Parson Kendall coming from Helston
market; and the parson called out: 'Have 'ee heard the news the coach
brought down this mornin'?' 'What news?' says my father. 'Why, that
peace is agreed upon.' 'None too soon,' says my father. 'Not soon
enough for our poor lads at Bayonne,' the parson answered.
'Bayonne!' cries my father, with a jump. 'Why, yes;' and the parson
told him all about a great sally the French had made on the night of
April 13th. 'Do you happen to know if the 38th Regiment was
engaged?' my father asked. 'Come, now,' said Parson Kendall, 'I
didn't know you was so well up in the campaign. But, as it happens,
I do know that the 38th was engaged, for 'twas they that held a
cottage and stopped the French advance.'
"Still my father held his tongue; and when, a week later, he walked
into Helston and bought a 'Mercury' off the Sherborne rider, and got
the landlord of the 'Angel' to spell out the list of killed and
wounded, sure enough, there among the killed was Drummer John
Christian, of the 38th Foot.
"After this there was nothing for a religious man but to make a clean
breast. So my father went up to Parson Kendall, and told the whole
story. The parson listened, and put a question or two, and then
asked:
"'Have you tried to open the lock since that night?'
"'I haven't dared to touch it,' says my father.
"'Then come along and try.' When the parson came to the cottage
here, he took the things off the hook and tried the lock. 'Did he
say "Bayonne?" The word has seven letters.'
"'Not if you spell it with one "n" as he did,' says my father.
"The parson spelt it out--'B-A-Y-O-N-E.' 'Whew!' says he, for the
lock had fallen open in his hand.
"He stood considering it a moment, and then he says: 'I tell you
what. I shouldn't blab this all round the parish, if I was you. You
won't get no credit for truth-telling, and a miracle's wasted on a
set of fools. But if you like, I'll shut down the lock again upon a
holy word that no one but me shall know, and neither drummer nor
trumpeter, dead or alive, shall frighten the secret out of me.'
"'I wish to heaven you would, parson,' said my father.
"The parson chose the holy word there and then, and shut the lock
back upon it, and hung the drum and trumpet back in their place. He
is gone long since, taking the word with him. And till the lock is
broken by force, nobody will ever separate those two."
THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN
BY LORD EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
_Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer, Baron Lytton (born 1803, died
1873), was an extremely accomplished and versatile man. He was a
statesman, orator, social reformer, playwright, poet, novelist (he
wrote more than fifty volumes of fiction), and short story writer.
In the latter capacity he produced a number of imaginative tales that
in their weird fantasy have been favorably compared with the work of
Edgar Allan Poe. Of these the present story is the most noted._
THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN
By LORD EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
A friend of mine, who is a man of letters and a philosopher, said to
me one day, as if between jest and earnest: "Fancy! since we last
met, I have discovered a haunted house in the midst of London."
"Really haunted?--and by what?--ghosts?"
"Well, I can't answer that question; all I know is this: six weeks
ago my wife and I were in search of a furnished apartment. Passing a
quiet street, we saw on the window of one of the houses a bill,
'Apartments, Furnished.' The situation suited us: we entered the
house--liked the rooms--engaged them by the week--and left them the
third day. No power on earth could have reconciled my wife to stay
longer; and I don't wonder at it."
"What did you see?"
"Excuse me--I have no desire to be ridiculed as a superstitious
dreamer--nor, on the other hand, could I ask you to accept on my
affirmation what you would hold to be incredible without the evidence
of your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we
saw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the
dupes of our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in
others) that drove us away, as it was an undefinable terror which
seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain
unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And
the strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed
with my wife, silly woman though she be--and allowed, after the third
night, that it was impossible to stay a fourth in that house.
Accordingly, on the fourth morning I summoned the woman who kept the
house and attended on us, and told her that the rooms did not quite
suit us, and we would not stay out our week. She said, dryly: 'I
know why; you have stayed longer than any other lodger. Few ever
stayed a second night; none before you a third. But I take it they
have been very kind to you."
"'They--who?' I asked, affecting to smile.
"'Why, they who haunt the house, whoever they are. I don't mind
them; I remember them many years ago, when I lived in this house, not
as a servant; but I know they will be the death of me some day. I
don't care--I'm old, and must die soon anyhow; and then I shall be
with them, and in this house still.' The woman spoke with so dreary
a calmness that really it was a sort of awe that prevented my
conversing with her further. I paid for my week, and too happy were
my wife and I to get off so cheaply."
"You excite my curiosity," said I; "nothing I should like better than
to sleep in a haunted house. Pray give me the address of the one
which you left so ignominiously."
My friend gave me the address; and when we parted, I walked straight
toward the house thus indicated.
It is situated on the north side of Oxford Street, in a dull but
respectable thoroughfare. I found the house shut up--no bill at the
window, and no response to my knock. As I was turning away, a
beer-boy, collecting pewter pots at the neighboring areas, said to
me, "Do you want any one at that house, sir?"
"Yes, I heard it was to be let."
"Let!--why, the woman who kept it is dead--has been dead these three
weeks, and no one can be found to stay there, though Mr. J----
offered ever so much. He offered mother, who chars for him, a pound
a week just to open and shut the windows, and she would not."
"Would not!--and why?"
"The house is haunted; and the old woman who kept it was found dead
in her bed, with her eyes wide open. They say the devil strangled
her."
"Pooh!--you speak of Mr. J----. Is he the owner of the house?"
"Yes."
"Where does he live?"
"In G---- Street, No. --."
"What is he?--in any business?"
"No, sir--nothing particular; a single gentleman."
I gave the pot-boy the gratuity earned by his liberal information,
and proceeded to Mr. J----, in G---- Street, which was close by the
street that boasted the haunted house. I was lucky enough to find
Mr. J---- at home--an elderly man, with intelligent countenance and
prepossessing manners.
I communicated my name and my business frankly. I said I heard the
house was considered to be haunted--that I had a strong desire to
examine a house with so equivocal a reputation--that I should be
greatly obliged if he would allow me to hire it, though only for a
night. I was willing to pay for that privilege whatever he might be
inclined to ask. "Sir," said Mr. J----, with great courtesy, "the
house is at your service, for as short or as long a time as you
please. Rent is out of the question--the obligation will be on my
side should you be able to discover the cause of the strange
phenomena which at present deprive it of all value. I can not let
it, for I can not even get a servant to keep it in order or answer
the door. Unluckily the house is haunted, if I may use that
expression, not only by night, but by day; though at night the
disturbances are of a more unpleasant and sometimes of a more
alarming character. The poor old woman who died in it three weeks
ago was a pauper whom I took out of a workhouse, for in her childhood
she had been known to some of my family, and had once been in such
good circumstances that she had rented that house of my uncle. She
was a woman of superior education and strong mind, and was the only
person I could ever induce to remain in the house. Indeed, since her
death, which was sudden, and the coroner's inquest, which gave it a
notoriety in the neighborhood, I have so despaired of finding any
person to take charge of the house, much more a tenant, that I would
willingly let it rent free for a year to any one who would pay its
rates and taxes."
"How long is it since the house acquired this sinister character?"
"That I can scarcely tell you, but very many years since. The old
woman I spoke of said it was haunted when she rented it between
thirty and forty years ago. The fact is, that my life has been spent
in the East Indies, and in the civil service of the Company. I
returned to England last year, on inheriting the fortune of an uncle,
among whose possessions was the house in question. I found it shut
up and uninhabited. I was told that it was haunted, that no one
would inhabit it. I smiled at what seemed to me so idle a story. I
spent some money in repairing it--added to its old-fashioned
furniture a few modern articles--advertised it, and obtained a lodger
for a year. He was a colonel on half-pay. He came in with his
family, a son and a daughter, and four or five servants: they all
left the house the next day; and, although each of them declared that
he had seen something different from that which had scared the
others, a something still was equally terrible to all. I really
could not in conscience sue, nor even blame, the colonel for breach
of agreement. Then I put in the old woman I have spoken of, and she
was empowered to let the house in apartments. I never had one lodger
who stayed more than three days. I do not tell you their stories--to
no two lodgers have there been exactly the same phenomena repeated.
It is better that you should judge for yourself than enter the house
with an imagination influenced by previous narratives; only be
prepared to see and to hear something or other, and take whatever
precautions you yourself please."
"Have you never had a curiosity yourself to pass a night in that
house?"
"Yes. I passed not a night, but three hours in broad daylight alone
in that house. My curiosity is not satisfied, but it is quenched. I
have no desire to renew the experiment. You can not complain, you
see, sir, that I am not sufficiently candid; and unless your interest
be exceedingly eager and your nerves unusually strong, I honestly
add, that I advise you not to pass a night in that house."
"My interest is exceedingly keen," said I, "and though only a coward
will boast of his nerves in situations wholly unfamiliar to him, yet
my nerves have been seasoned in such variety of danger that I have
the right to rely on them--even in a haunted house."
Mr. J---- said very little more; he took the keys of the house out of
his bureau, gave them to me--and, thanking him cordially for his
frankness, and his urbane concession to my wish, I carried off my
prize.
Impatient for the experiment, as soon as I reached home, I summoned
my confidential servant--a young man of gay spirits, fearless temper,
and as free from superstitious prejudice as any one I could think of.
"F----," said I, "you remember in Germany how disappointed we were at
not finding a ghost in that old castle, which was said to be haunted
by a headless apparition? Well, I have heard of a house in London
which, I have reason to hope, is decidedly haunted. I mean to sleep
there to-night. From what I hear, there is no doubt that something
will allow itself to be seen or to be heard--something, perhaps,
excessively horrible. Do you think, if I take you with me, I may
rely on your presence of mind, whatever may happen?"
"Oh, sir! pray trust me," answered F----, grinning with delight.
"Very well; then here are the keys of the house--this is the address.
Go now--select for me any bedroom you please; and since the house has
not been inhabited for weeks, make up a good fire--air the bed
well--see, of course, that there are candles as well as fuel. Take
with you my revolver and my dagger--so much for my weapons--arm
yourself equally well; and if we are not a match for a dozen ghosts,
we shall be but a sorry couple of Englishmen."
I was engaged for the rest of the day on business so urgent that had
not leisure to think much on the nocturnal adventure to which I had
plighted my honor. I dined alone, and very late, and while dining,
read, as is my habit. I selected one of the volumes of Macaulay's
essays. I thought to myself that I would take the book with me;
there was so much of healthfulness in the style, and practical life
in the subjects, that it would serve as an antidote against the
influences of superstitious fancy.
Accordingly, about half-past nine, I put the book into my pocket, and
strolled leisurely toward the haunted house. I took with me a
favorite dog--an exceedingly sharp, bold, and vigilant
bull-terrier--a dog fond of prowling about strange ghostly corners
and passages at night in search of rats--a dog of dogs for a ghost.
It was a summer night, but chilly, the sky somewhat gloomy and
overcast. Still there was a moon--faint and sickly, but still a
moon--and, if the clouds permitted, after midnight it would be
brighter.
I reached the house, knocked, and my servant opened with a cheerful
smile.
"All right, sir, and very comfortable."
"Oh!" said I, rather disappointed; "have you not seen nor heard
anything remarkable?"
"Well, sir, I must own I have heard something queer."
"What?--what?"
"The sound of feet pattering behind me; and once or twice small
noises like whispers close at my ear--nothing more."
"You are not at all frightened?"
"I! not a bit of it, sir;" and the man's bold look reassured me on
one point--viz.: that happen what might, he would not desert me.
We were in the hall, the street-door closed, and my attention was now
drawn to my dog. He had at first run in eagerly enough, but had
sneaked back to the door, and was scratching and whining to get out.
After patting him on the head, and encouraging him gently, the dog
seemed to reconcile himself to the situation, and followed me and
F---- through the house, but keeping close at my heels instead of
hurrying inquisitively in advance, which was his usual and normal
habit in all strange places. We first visited the subterranean
apartments, the kitchen, and other offices, and especially the
cellars, in which last there were two or three bottles of wine still
left in a bin, covered with cobwebs, and evidently, by their
appearance, undisturbed for many years. It was clear that the ghosts
were not wine-bibbers. For the rest we discovered nothing of
interest. There was a gloomy little back-yard, with very high walls.
The stones of this yard were very damp; and what with the damp, and
what with the dust and smoke-grime on the pavement, our feet left a
slight impression where we passed. And now appeared the first
strange phenomenon witnessed by myself in this strange abode. I saw,
just before me, the print of a foot suddenly form itself, as it were.
I stopped, caught hold of my servant, and pointed to it. In advance
of that footprint as suddenly dropped another. We both saw it. I
advanced quickly to the place; the footprint kept advancing before
me, a small footprint--the foot of a child: the impression was too
faint thoroughly to distinguish the shape, but it seemed to us both
that it was the print of a naked foot.
This phenomenon ceased when we arrived at the opposite wall, nor did
it repeat itself on returning. We remounted the stairs, and entered
the rooms on the ground floor, a dining-parlor, a small back-parlor,
and a still smaller third room that had been probably appropriated to
a footman--all still as death. We then visited the drawing-rooms,
which seemed fresh and new. In the front room I seated myself in an
armchair. F---- placed on the table the candlestick with which he
had lighted us. I told him to shut the door. As he turned to do so,
a chair opposite to me moved from the wall quickly and noiselessly,
and dropped itself about a yard from my own chair, immediately
fronting it.
"Why, this is better than the turning-tables," said I, with a
half-laugh; and as I laughed, my dog put back his head and howled.
F----, coming back, had not observed the movement of the chair. He
employed himself now in stilling the dog. I continued to gaze on the
chair, and fancied I saw on it a pale blue misty outline of a human
figure, but an outline so indistinct that I could only distrust my
own vision. The dog was now quiet.
"Put back that chair opposite to me," said I to F----; "put it back
to the wall."
F---- obeyed. "Was that you, sir?" said he, turning abruptly.
"I!--what?"
"Why, something struck me. I felt it sharply on the shoulder--just
here."
"No," said I. "But we have jugglers present, and though we may not
discover their tricks, we shall catch them before they frighten us."
We did not stay long in the drawing-rooms--in fact, they felt so damp
and so chilly that I was glad to get to the fire upstairs. We locked
the doors of the drawing-rooms--a precaution which, I should observe,
we had taken with all the rooms we had searched below. The bedroom
my servant had selected for me was the best on the floor--a large
one, with two windows fronting the street. The four-posted bed,
which took up no inconsiderable space, was opposite to the fire,
which burnt clear and bright; a door in the wall to the left, between
the bed and the window, communicated with the room which my servant
appropriated to himself. This last was a small room with a sofa-bed,
and had no communication with the landing-place--no other door but
that which conducted to the bedroom I was to occupy. On either side
of my fireplace was a cupboard, without locks, flush with the wall,
and covered with the same dull-brown paper. We examined these
cupboards--only hooks to suspend female dresses--nothing else; we
sounded the walls--evidently solid--the outer walls of the building.
Having finished the survey of these apartments, warmed myself a few
moments, and lighted my cigar, I then, still accompanied by F----,
went forth to complete my reconnoitre. In the landing-place there
was another door; it was closed firmly. "Sir," said my servant, in
surprise, "I unlocked this door with all the others when I first
came; it can not have got locked from the inside, for--"
Before he had finished his sentence, the door, which neither of us
then was touching, opened quietly of itself. We looked at each other
a single instant. The same thought seized both--some human agency
might be detected here. I rushed in first, my servant followed. A
small blank dreary room without furniture--a few empty boxes and
hampers in a corner--a small window--the shutters closed--not even a
fireplace--no other door but that by which we had entered--no carpet
on the floor, and the floor seemed very old, uneven, worm-eaten,
mended here and there, as was shown by the whiter patches on the
wood; but no living being, and no visible place in which a living
being could have hidden. As we stood gazing round, the door by which
we had entered closed as quietly as it had before opened: we were
imprisoned.
For the first time I felt a creep of undefinable horror. Not so my
servant. "Why, they don't think to trap us, sir; I could break that
trumpery door with a kick of my foot."
"Try first if it will open to your hand," said I, shaking off the
vague apprehension that had seized me, "while I unclose the shutters
and see what is without."
I unbarred the shutters--the window looked on the little back-yard I
have before described; there was no ledge without--nothing to break
the sheer descent of the wall. No man getting out of that window
would have found any footing till he had fallen on the stones below.
F----, meanwhile, was vainly attempting to open the door. He now
turned round to me and asked my permission to use force. And I
should here state, in justice to the servant, that, far from evincing
any superstitious terrors, his nerve, composure, and even gaiety amid
circumstances so extraordinary, compelled my admiration, and made me
congratulate myself on having secured a companion in every way fitted
to the occasion. I willingly gave him the permission he required.
But though he was a remarkably strong man, his force was as idle as
his milder efforts; the door did not even shake to his stoutest kick.
Breathless and panting, he desisted. I then tried the door myself,
equally in vain. As I ceased from the effort, again that creep of
horror came over me; but this time it was more cold and stubborn. I
felt as if some strange and ghastly exhalation were rising up from
the chinks of that rugged floor, and filling the atmosphere with a
venomous influence hostile to human life. The door now very slowly
and quietly opened as of its own accord. We precipitated ourselves
into the landing-place. We both saw a large pale light--as large as
the human figure, but shapeless and unsubstantial--move before us,
and ascend the stairs that led from the landing into the attic. I
followed the light, and my servant followed me. It entered to the
right of the landing, a small garret, of which the door stood open.
I entered in the same instant. The light then collapsed into a small
globule, exceedingly brilliant and vivid: rested a moment on a bed in
the corner, quivered, and vanished. We approached the bed and
examined it--a half-tester, such as is commonly found in attics
devoted to servants. On the drawers that stood near it we perceived
an old faded silk kerchief, with the needle still left in a rent half
repaired. The kerchief was covered with dust; probably it had
belonged to the old woman who had last died in that house, and this
might have been her sleeping-room. I had sufficient curiosity to
open the drawers: there were a few odds and ends of female dress, and
two letters tied round with a narrow ribbon of faded yellow. I took
the liberty to possess myself of the letters. We found nothing else
in the room worth noticing--nor did the light reappear; but we
distinctly heard, as we turned to go, a pattering footfall on the
floor--just before us. We went through the other attics (in all
four), the footfall still preceding us. Nothing to be seen--nothing
but the footfall heard. I had the letters in my hand: just as I was
descending the stairs I distinctly felt my wrist seized, and a faint
soft effort made to draw the letters from my clasp. I only held them
the more tightly, and the effort ceased.
We regained the bed-chamber appropriated to myself, and I then
remarked that my dog had not followed us when we had left it. He was
thrusting himself close to the fire, and trembling. I was impatient
to examine the letters; and while I read them, my servant opened a
little box in which he had deposited the weapons I had ordered him to
bring; took them out, placed them on a table close at my bed-head,
and then occupied himself in soothing the dog, who, however, seemed
to heed him very little.
The letters were short--they were dated; the dates exactly
thirty-five years ago. They were evidently from a lover to his
mistress, or a husband to some young wife. Not only the terms of
expression, but a distinct reference to a former voyage, indicated
the writer to have been a seafarer. The spelling and handwriting
were those of a man imperfectly educated, but still the language
itself was forcible. In the expressions of endearment there was a
kind of rough wild love; but here and there were dark unintelligible
hints at some secret not of love--some secret that seemed of crime.
"We ought to love each other," was one of the sentences I remember,
"for how every one else would execrate us if all was known." Again:
"Don't let any one be in the same room with you at night--you talk in
your sleep." And again: "What's done can't be undone; and I tell you
there's nothing against us unless the dead could come to life." Here
there was underlined in a better handwriting (a female's): "They do!"
At the end of the letter latest in date the same female hand had
written these words: "Lost at sea the 4th of June, the same day as--"
I put down the letters, and began to muse over their contents.
Fearing, however, that the train of thought into which I fell might
unsteady my nerves, I fully determined to keep my mind in a fit state
to cope with whatever of marvelous the advancing night might bring
forth. I roused myself--laid the letters on the table--stirred up
the fire, which was still bright and cheering, and opened my volume
of Macaulay. I read quietly enough till about half-past eleven. I
then threw myself dressed upon the bed, and told my servant he might
retire to his own room, but must keep himself awake. I bade him
leave open the door between the two rooms. Thus alone, I kept two
candles burning on the table by my bed-head. I placed my watch
beside the weapons, and calmly resumed my Macaulay. Opposite to me
the fire burned clear; and on the hearth-rug, seemingly asleep, lay
the dog. In about twenty minutes I felt an exceedingly cold air pass
by my cheek, like a sudden draft. I fancied the door to my right,
communicating with the landing-place, must have got open; but no--it
was closed. I then turned my glance to my left, and saw the flame of
the candles violently swayed as by a wind. At the same moment the
watch beside the revolver softly slid from the table--softly,
softly--no visible hand--it was gone. I sprang up, seizing the
revolver with the one hand, the dagger with the other: I was not
willing that my weapons should share the fate of the watch. Thus
armed, I looked round the floor--no sign of the watch. Three slow,
loud, distinct knocks were now heard at the bed-head; my servant
called out: "Is that you, sir?"
"No; be on your guard."
The dog now roused himself and sat on his haunches, his ears moving
quickly backward and forward. He kept his eyes fixed on me with a
look so strange that he concentred all my attention on himself.
Slowly, he rose up, all his hair bristling, and stood perfectly
rigid, and with the same wild stare. I had no time, however, to
examine the dog. Presently my servant emerged from his room; and if
ever I saw horror in the human face, it was then. I should not have
recognized him had we met in the street, so altered was every
lineament. He passed by me quickly, saying in a whisper that seemed
scarcely to come from his lips: "Run--run! it is after me!" He
gained the door to the landing, pulled it open, and rushed forth. I
followed him into the landing involuntarily, calling him to stop;
but, without heeding me, he bounded down the stairs, clinging to the
balusters, and taking several steps at a time. I heard, where I
stood, the street-door open--heard it again clap to. I was left
alone in the haunted house.
It was but for a moment that I remained undecided whether or not to
follow my servant; pride and curiosity alike forbade so dastardly a
flight. I reentered my room, closing the door after me, and
proceeded cautiously into the interior chamber. I encountered
nothing to justify my servant's terror. I again carefully examined
the walls, to see if there were any concealed door. I could find no
trace of one--not even a seam in the dull-brown paper with which the
room was hung. How, then, had the Thing, whatever it was, which had
so scared him, obtained ingress except through my own chamber?
I returned to my room, shut and locked the door that opened upon the
interior one, and stood on the hearth, expectant and prepared. I now
perceived that the dog had slunk into an angle of the wall, and was
pressing himself close against it, as if literally striving to force
his way into it. I approached the animal and spoke to it; the poor
brute was evidently beside itself with terror. It showed all its
teeth, the slaver dropping from its jaws, and would certainly have
bitten me if I had touched it. It did not seem to recognize me.
Whoever has seen at the Zoological Gardens a rabbit, fascinated by a
serpent, cowering in a corner, may form some idea of the anguish
which the dog exhibited. Finding all efforts to soothe the animal in
vain, and fearing that his bite might be as venomous in that state as
in the madness of hydrophobia, I left him alone, placed my weapons on
the table beside the fire, seated myself, and recommenced my Macaulay.
Perhaps, in order not to appear seeking credit for a courage, or
rather a coolness, which the reader may conceive I exaggerate, I may
be pardoned if I pause to indulge in one or two egotistical remarks.
As I hold presence of mind, or what is called courage, to be
precisely proportioned to familiarity with the circumstances that
lead to it, so I should say that I had been long sufficiently
familiar with all experiments that appertain to the Marvelous. I had
witnessed many very extraordinary phenomena in various parts of the
world--phenomena that would be either totally disbelieved if I stated
them, or ascribed to supernatural agencies. Now, my theory is that
the Supernatural is the Impossible, and that what is called
supernatural is only a something in the laws of nature of which we
have been hitherto ignorant. Therefore, if a ghost rise before me, I
have not the right to say, "So, then, the supernatural is possible,"
but rather, "So, then, the apparition of a ghost is, contrary to
received opinion, within the laws of nature--i.e., not supernatural."
Now, in all that I had hitherto witnessed, and indeed in all the
wonders which the amateurs of mystery in our age record as facts, a
material living agency is always required. On the Continent you will
find still magicians who assert that they can raise spirits. Assume
for the moment that they assert truly, still the living material form
of the magician is present; and he is the material agency by which,
from some constitutional peculiarities, certain strange phenomena are
represented to your natural senses.
Accept, again, as truthful, the tales of Spirit Manifestation in
America--musical or other sounds--writings on paper, produced by no
discernible hand--articles of furniture moved without apparent human
agency--or the actual sight and touch of hands, to which no bodies
seem to belong--still there must be found the Medium, or living being
with constitutional peculiarities capable of obtaining these signs.
In fine, in all such marvels, supposing even that there is no
imposture, there must be a human being like ourselves by whom, or
through whom, the effects presented to human beings are produced. It
is so with the now familiar phenomena of mesmerism or
electro-biology; the mind of the person operated on is affected
through a material living agent. Nor, supposing it true that a
mesmerized patient can respond to the will or passes of a mesmerizer
a hundred miles distant, is the response less occasioned by a
material being; it may be through a material fluid--call it Electric,
call it Odic, call it what you will--which has the power of
traversing space and passing obstacles that the material effect is
communicated from one to the other. Hence all that I had hitherto
witnessed, or expected to witness, in this strange house, I believed
to be occasioned through some agency or medium as mortal as myself;
and this idea necessarily prevented the awe with which those who
regard as supernatural things that are not within the ordinary
operations of nature might have been impressed by the adventures of
that memorable night.
As, then, it was my conjecture that all that was presented, or would
be presented, to my senses must originate in some human being gifted
by constitution with the power so to present them, and having some
motive so to do, I felt an interest in my theory which, in its way,
was rather philosophical than superstitious. And I can sincerely say
that I was in as tranquil a temper for observation as any practical
experimentalist could be in awaiting the effects of some rare, though
perhaps perilous, chemical combination. Of course, the more I kept
my mind detached from fancy, the more the temper fitted for
observation would be obtained; and I therefore riveted eye and
thought on the strong daylight sense in the page of my Macaulay.
I now became aware that something interposed between the page and the
light--the page was overshadowed: I looked up, and I saw what I shall
find it very difficult, perhaps impossible, to describe.
It was a darkness shaping itself forth from the air in very undefined
outline. I can not say it was of a human form, and yet it had more
resemblance to a human form, or rather shadow, than to anything else.
As it stood, wholly apart and distinct from the air and the light
around it, its dimensions seemed gigantic, the summit nearly touching
the ceiling. While I gazed, a feeling of intense cold seized me. An
iceberg before me could not more have chilled me; nor could the cold
of an iceberg have been more purely physical. I feel convinced that
it was not the cold caused by fear. As I continued to gaze, I
thought--but this I can not say with precision--that I distinguished
two eyes looking down on me from the height. One moment I fancied
that I distinguished them clearly, the next they seemed gone; but
still two rays of a pale-blue light frequently shot through the
darkness, as from the height on which I half believed, half doubted,
that I had encountered the eyes.
I strove to speak--my voice utterly failed me; I could only think to
myself: "Is this fear? it is not fear!" I strove to rise--in vain; I
felt as if weighed down by an irresistible force. Indeed, my
impression was that of an immense and overwhelming power opposed to
my volition--that sense of utter inadequacy to cope with a force
beyond man's, which one may feel physically in a storm at sea, in a
conflagration, or when confronting some terrible wild beast, or
rather, perhaps, the shark of the ocean, I felt morally. Opposed to
my will was another will, as far superior to its strength as storm,
fire, and shark are superior in material force to the force of man.
And now, as this impression grew on me--now came, at last,
horror--horror to a degree that no words can convey. Still I
retained pride, if not courage; and in my own mind I said: "This is
horror, but it is not fear; unless I fear I can not be harmed; my
reason rejects this thing; it is an illusion--I do not fear." With a
violent effort I succeeded at last in stretching out my hand toward
the weapon on the table: as I did so, on the arm and shoulder I
received a strange shock, and my arm fell to my side powerless. And
now, to add to my horror, the light began slowly to wane from the
candles--they were not, as it were, extinguished, but their flame
seemed very gradually withdrawn: it was the same with the fire--the
light was extracted from the fuel; in a few minutes the room was in
utter darkness. The dread that came over me, to be thus in the dark
with that dark Thing, whose power was so intensely felt, brought a
reaction of nerve. In fact, terror had reached that climax, that
either my senses must have deserted me, or I must have burst through
the spell. I did burst through it. I found voice, though the voice
was a shriek. I remembered that I broke forth with words like these:
"I do not fear, my soul does not fear;" and at the same time I found
strength to rise. Still in that profound gloom I rushed to one of
the windows--tore aside the curtain--flung open the shutters; my
first thought was--Light. And when I saw the moon high, clear, and
calm, I felt a joy that almost compensated for the previous terror.
There was the moon, there was also the light from the gas-lamps in
the deserted slumberous street. I turned to look back into the room;
the moon penetrated its shadow very palely and partially--but still
there was light. The dark Thing, whatever it might be, was
gone--except that I could yet see a dim shadow, which seemed the
shadow of that shade, against the opposite wall.
My eye now rested on the table, and from under the table (which was
without cloth or cover--an old mahogany round table) there rose a
hand, visible as far as the wrist. It was a hand, seemingly, as much
of flesh and blood as my own, but the hand of an aged person--lean,
wrinkled, small too--a woman's hand. That hand very softly closed on
the two letters that lay on the table: hand and letters both
vanished. There then came the same three loud measured knocks I had
heard at the bed-head before this extraordinary drama had commenced.
As those sounds slowly ceased, I felt the whole room vibrate
sensibly; and at the far end there rose, as from the floor, sparks or
globules like bubbles of light, many colored--green, yellow,
fire-red, azure. Up and down, to and fro, hither, thither, as tiny
Will-o'-the-Wisps, the sparks moved, slow or swift, each at its own
caprice. A chair (as in the drawing-room below) was now advanced
from the wall without apparent agency, and placed at the opposite
side of the table. Suddenly, as forth from the chair, there grew a
shape--a woman's shape. It was distinct as a shape of life--ghastly
as a shape of death. The face was that of youth, with a strange
mournful beauty; the throat and shoulders were bare, the rest of the
form in a loose robe of cloudy white. It began sleeking its long
yellow hair, which fell over its shoulders; its eyes were not turned
toward me, but to the door; it seemed listening, watching, waiting.
The shadow of the shade in the background grew darker; and again I
thought I beheld the eyes gleaming out from the summit of the
shadow--eyes fixed upon that shape.
As if from the door, though it did not open, there grew out another
shape, equally distinct, equally ghastly--a man's shape--a young
man's. It was in the dress of the last century, or rather in a
likeness of such dress (for both the male shape and the female,
though defined, were evidently unsubstantial,
impalpable--simulacra--phantasms); and there was something
incongruous, grotesque, yet fearful, in the contrast between the
elaborate finery, the courtly precision of that old-fashioned garb,
with its ruffles and lace and buckles, and the corpse-like stillness
of the flitting wearer. Just as the male shape approached the
female, the dark Shadow started from the wall, all three for a moment
wrapped in darkness. When the pale light returned, the two phantoms
were as if in the grasp of the Shadow that towered between them; and
there was a blood-stain on the breast of the female; and the phantom
male was leaning on its phantom sword, and blood seemed trickling
fast from the ruffles, from the lace; and the darkness of the
intermediate Shadow swallowed them up--they were gone. And again the
bubbles of light shot, and sailed, and undulated, growing thicker and
thicker and more wildly confused in their movements.
The closet door to the right of the fireplace now opened, and from
the aperture there came the form of an aged woman. In her hand she
held letters--the very letters over which I had seen the Hand close;
and behind her I heard a footstep. She turned round as if to listen,
and then she opened the letters and seemed to read; and over her
shoulder I saw a livid face, the face as of a man long
drowned--bloated, bleached--seaweed tangled in its dripping hair; and
at her feet lay a form as of a corpse, and beside the corpse there
cowered a child, a miserable squalid child, with famine in its cheeks
and fear in its eyes. And as I looked in the old woman's face, the
wrinkles and lines vanished, and it became a face of
youth--hard-eyed, stony, but still youth; and the Shadow darted
forth, and darkened over these phantoms as it had darkened over the
last.
Nothing now was left but the Shadow, and on that my eyes were
intently fixed, till again eyes grew out of the Shadow--malignant,
serpent eyes. And the bubbles of light again rose and fell, and in
their disordered, irregular, turbulent maze, mingled with the wan
moonlight. And now from these globules themselves, as from the shell
of an egg, monstrous things burst out; the air grew filled with them;
larvæ so bloodless and so hideous that I can in no way describe them
except to remind the reader of the swarming life which the solar
microscope brings before his eyes in a drop of water--things
transparent, supple, agile, chasing each other, devouring each
other--forms like naught ever beheld by the naked eye. As the shapes
were without symmetry, so their movements were without order. In
their very vagrancies there was no sport; they came round me and
round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over my head,
crawling over my right arm, which was outstretched in involuntary
command against all evil beings. Sometimes I felt myself touched,
but not by them; invisible hands touched me. Once I felt the clutch
as of cold soft fingers at my throat. I was still equally conscious
that if I gave way to fear I should be in bodily peril; and I
concentred all my faculties in the single focus of resisting,
stubborn will. And I turned my sight from the Shadow--above all,
from those strange serpent eyes--eyes that had now become distinctly
visible. For there, though in naught else around me, I was aware
that there was a WILL, and a will of intense, creative, working evil,
which might crush down my own.
The pale atmosphere in the room began now to redden as if in the air
of some near conflagration. The larvæ grew lurid as things that live
in fire. Again the room vibrated; again were heard the three
measured knocks; and again all things were swallowed up in the
darkness of the dark Shadow, as if out of that darkness all had come,
into that darkness all returned.
As the gloom receded, the Shadow was wholly gone. Slowly, as it had
been withdrawn, the flame grew again into the candles on the table,
again into the fuel in the grate. The whole room came once more
calmly, healthfully into sight.
The two doors were still closed, the door communicating with the
servant's room still locked. In the corner of the wall, into which
he had so convulsively niched himself, lay the dog. I called to
him--no movement; I approached--the animal was dead; his eyes
protruded; his tongue out of his mouth; the froth gathered round his
jaws. I took him in my arms; I brought him to the fire; I felt acute
grief for the loss of my poor favorite--acute self-reproach; I
accused myself of his death; I imagined he had died of fright. But
what was my surprise on finding that his neck was actually broken.
Had this been done in the dark?--must it not have been by a hand
human as mine?--must there not have been a human agency all the while
in that room? Good cause to suspect it. I can not tell. I can not
do more than state the fact fairly; the reader may draw his own
inference.
Another surprising circumstance--my watch was restored to the table
from which it had been so mysteriously withdrawn; but it had stopped
at the very moment it was so withdrawn; nor, despite all the skill of
the watchmaker, has it ever gone since--that is, it will go in a
strange erratic way for a few hours, and then come to a dead stop--it
is worthless.
Nothing more chanced for the rest of the night. Nor, indeed, had I
long to wait before the dawn broke. Nor till it was broad daylight
did I quit the haunted house. Before I did so, I revisited the
little blind room in which my servant and myself had been for a time
imprisoned. I had a strong impression--for which I could not
account--that from that room had originated the mechanism of the
phenomena--if I may use the term--which had been experienced in my
chamber. And though I entered it now in the clear day, with the sun
peering through the filmy window, I still felt, as I stood on its
floors, the creep of the horror which I had first there experienced
the night before, and which had been so aggravated by what had passed
in my own chamber. I could not, indeed, bear to stay more than half
a minute within those walls. I descended the stairs, and again I
heard the footfall before me; and when I opened the street door, I
thought I could distinguish a very low laugh. I gained my own house,
expecting to find my runaway servant there. But he had not presented
himself, nor did I hear more of him for three days, when I received a
letter from him, dated from Liverpool to this effect:
"Honored Sir--I humbly entreat your pardon, though I can scarcely
hope that you will think that I deserve it, unless--which Heaven
forbid!--you saw what I did. I feel that it will be years before I
can recover myself; and as to being fit for service, it is out of the
question. I am therefore going to my brother-in-law at Melbourne.
The ship sails to-morrow. Perhaps the long voyage may set me up. I
do nothing now but start and tremble, and fancy It is behind me. I
humbly beg you, honored sir, to order my clothes, and whatever wages
are due to me, to be sent to my mother's, at Walworth--John knows her
address."
The letter ended with additional apologies, somewhat incoherent, and
explanatory details as to effects that had been under the writer's
charge.
This flight may perhaps warrant a suspicion that the man wished to go
to Australia, and had been somehow or other fraudulently mixed up
with the events of the night. I say nothing in refutation of that
conjecture; rather, I suggest it as one that would seem to many
persons the most probable solution of improbable occurrences. My
belief in my own theory remained unshaken. I returned in the evening
to the house, to bring away in a hack cab the things I had left
there, with my poor dog's body. In this task I was not disturbed,
nor did any incident worth note befall me, except that still, on
ascending and descending the stairs, I heard the same footfall in
advance. On leaving the house, I went to Mr. J----'s. He was at
home. I returned him the keys, told him that my curiosity was
sufficiently gratified, and was about to relate quickly what had
passed, when he stopped me, and said, though with much politeness,
that he had no longer any interest in a mystery which none had ever
solved.
I determined at least to tell him of the two letters I had read, as
well as of the extraordinary manner in which they had disappeared,
and I then inquired if he thought they had been addressed to the
woman who had died in the house, and if there were anything in her
early history which could possibly confirm the dark suspicions to
which the letters gave rise. Mr. J---- seemed startled, and, after
musing a few moments, answered: "I am but little acquainted with the
woman's earlier history, except, as I before told you, that her
family were known to mine. But you revive some vague reminiscences
to her prejudice. I will make inquiries, and inform you of their
result. Still, even if we could admit the popular superstition that
a person who had been either the perpetrator or the victim of dark
crimes in life could revisit, as a restless spirit, the scene in
which those crimes had been committed, I should observe that the
house was infested by strange sights and sounds before the old woman
died--you smile--what would you say?"
"I would say this, that I am convinced, if we could get to the bottom
of these mysteries, we should find a living human agency."
"What! you believe it is all an imposture? for what object?"
"Not an imposture in the ordinary sense of the word. If suddenly I
were to sink into a deep sleep, from which you could not awake me,
but in that sleep could answer questions with an accuracy which I
could not pretend to when awake--tell you what money you had in your
pocket--nay, describe your very thoughts--it is not necessarily an
imposture, any more than it is necessarily supernatural. I should
be, unconsciously to myself, under a mesmeric influence, conveyed to
me from a distance by a human being who had acquired power over me by
previous rapport."
"But if a mesmerizer could so affect another living being, can you
suppose that a mesmerizer could also affect inanimate objects; move
chairs--open and shut doors?"
"Or impress our senses with the belief in such effects--we never
having been _en rapport_ with the person acting on us? No. What is
commonly called mesmerism could not do this; but there may be a power
akin to mesmerism and superior to it--the power that in the old days
was called Magic. That such a power may extend to all inanimate
objects of matter, I do not say; but if so, it would not be against
nature--it would only be a rare power in nature which might be given
to constitutions with certain peculiarities, and cultivated by
practise to an extraordinary degree. That such a power might extend
over the dead--that is, over certain thoughts and memories that the
dead may still retain--and compel, not that which ought properly to
be called the Soul, and which is far beyond human reach, but rather a
phantom of what has been most earth-stained on earth to make itself
apparent to our senses--is a very ancient though obsolete theory,
upon which I will hazard no opinion. But I do not conceive the power
would be supernatural. Let me illustrate what I mean from an
experiment which Paracelsus describes as not difficult, and which the
author of the 'Curiosities of Literature' cites as credible: A flower
perishes; you burn it. Whatever were the elements of that flower
while it lived are gone, dispersed, you know not whither; you can
never discover nor re-collect them. But you can, by chemistry, out
of the burned dust of that flower, raise a spectrum of the flower,
just as it seemed in life. It may be the same with the human being.
The soul has as much escaped you as the essence or elements of the
flower. Still you may make a spectrum of it. And this phantom,
though in the popular superstition it is held to be the soul of the
departed, must not be confounded with the true soul; it is but the
_eidolon_ of the dead form. Hence, like the best attested stories of
ghosts or spirits, the thing that most strikes us is the absence of
what we hold to be the soul; that is, of superior emancipated
intelligence. These apparitions come for little or no object--they
seldom speak when they do come; if they speak, they utter no ideas
above those of an ordinary person on earth. American spirit-seers
have published volumes of communications, in prose and verse, which
they assert to be given in the names of the most illustrious
dead--Shakespeare, Bacon--heaven knows whom. Those communications,
taking the best, are certainly not a whit of higher order than would
be communications from living persons of fair talent and education;
they are wondrously inferior to what Bacon, Shakespeare, and Plato
said and wrote when on earth. Nor, what is more noticeable, do they
ever contain an idea that was not on the earth before. Wonderful,
therefore, as such phenomena may be (granting them to be truthful), I
see much that philosophy may question, nothing that it is incumbent
on philosophy to deny--viz., nothing supernatural. They are but
ideas conveyed somehow or other (we have not yet discovered the
means) from one mortal brain to another. Whether, in so doing,
tables walk of their own accord, or fiendlike shapes appear in a
magic circle, or bodyless hands rise and remove material objects, or
a Thing of Darkness, such as presented itself to me, freeze our
blood--still am I persuaded that these are but agencies conveyed, as
by electric wires, to my own brain from the brain of another. In
some constitutions there is a natural chemistry, and those
constitutions may produce chemic wonders--in others a natural fluid,
call it electricity, and these may produce electric wonders. But the
wonders differ from Natural Science in this--they are alike
objectless, purposeless, puerile, frivolous. They lead on to no
grand results; and therefore the world does not heed, and true sages
have not cultivated them. But sure I am, that of all I saw or heard,
a man, human as myself, was the remote originator; and I believe
unconsciously to himself as to the exact effects produced, for this
reason: no two persons, you say, have ever told you that they
experienced exactly the same thing. Well, observe, no two persons
ever experience exactly the same dream. If this were an ordinary
imposture, the machinery would be arranged for results that would but
little vary; if it were a supernatural agency permitted by the
Almighty, it would surely be for some definite end. These phenomena
belong to neither class; my persuasion is that they originate in some
brain now far distant; that that brain had no distinct volition in
anything that occurred; that what does occur reflects but its
devious, motley, ever-shifting, half-formed thoughts; in short, that
it has been but the dreams of such a brain put into action and
invested with a semi-substance. That this brain is of immense power,
that it can set matter into movement, that it is malignant and
destructive, I believe; some material force must have killed my dog;
the same force might, for aught I know, have sufficed to kill myself,
had I been as subjugated by terror as the dog--had my intellect or my
spirit given me no countervailing resistance in my will."
"It killed your dog! that is fearful! indeed it is strange that no
animal can be induced to stay in that house; not even a cat. Rats
and mice are never found in it."
"The instincts of the brute creation detect influences deadly to
their existence. Man's reason has a sense less subtle, because it
has a resisting power more supreme. But enough; do you comprehend my
theory?"
"Yes, though imperfectly--and I accept any crotchet (pardon the
word), however odd, rather than embrace at once the notion of ghosts
and hobgoblins we imbibed in our nurseries. Still, to my unfortunate
house the evil is the same. What on earth can I do with the house?"
"I will tell you what I would do. I am convinced from my own
internal feelings that the small unfurnished room at right angles to
the door of the bedroom which I occupied forms a starting-point or
receptacle for the influences which haunt the house; and I strongly
advise you to have the walls opened, the floor removed--nay, the
whole room pulled down. I observe that it is detached from the body
of the house, built over the small back-yard, and could be removed
without injury to the rest of the building."
"And you think, if I did that--"
"You would cut off the telegraph wires. Try it. I am so persuaded
that I am right that I will pay half the expense if you will allow me
to direct the operations."
"Nay, I am well able to afford the cost; for the rest, allow me to
write to you."
About ten days after I received a letter from Mr. J----, telling me
that he had visited the house since I had seen him; that he had found
the two letters I had described, replaced in the drawer from which I
had taken them; that he had read them with misgivings like my own;
that he had instituted a cautious inquiry about the woman to whom I
rightly conjectured they had been written. It seemed that thirty-six
years ago (a year before the date of the letters) she had married,
against the wish of her relations, an American of very suspicious
character; in fact, he was generally believed to have been a pirate.
She herself was the daughter of very respectable tradespeople, and
had served in the capacity of a nursery governess before her
marriage. She had a brother, a widower, who was considered wealthy,
and who had one child of about six years old. A month after the
marriage, the body of this brother was found in the Thames, near
London Bridge; there seemed some marks of violence about his throat,
but they were not deemed sufficient to warrant the inquest in any
other verdict than that of "found drowned."
The American and his wife took charge of the little boy, the deceased
brother having by his will left his sister the guardianship of his
only child--and in event of the child's death, the sister inherited.
The child died about six months afterward--it was supposed to have
been neglected and ill-treated. The neighbors deposed to having
heard it shriek at night. The surgeon who had examined it after
death said that it was emaciated as if from want of nourishment, and
the body was covered with livid bruises. It seemed that one winter
night the child had sought to escape--crept out into the
back-yard--tried to scale the wall--fallen back exhausted, and been
found at morning on the stones in a dying state. But though there
was some evidence of cruelty, there was none of murder; and the aunt
and her husband had sought to palliate cruelty by alleging the
exceeding stubbornness and perversity of the child, who was declared
to be half-witted. Be that as it may, at the orphan's death the aunt
inherited her brother's fortune. Before the first wedded year was
out, the American quitted England abruptly, and never returned to it.
He obtained a cruising vessel, which was lost in the Atlantic two
years afterward. The widow was left in affluence; but reverses of
various kinds had befallen her: a bank broke--an investment
failed--she went into a small business and became insolvent--then she
entered into service, sinking lower and lower, from housekeeper down
to maid-of-all-work--never long retaining a place, though nothing
decided against her character was ever alleged. She was considered
sober, honest, and peculiarly quiet in her ways; still nothing
prospered with her. And so she had dropped into the workhouse, from
which Mr. J---- had taken her, to be placed in charge of the very
house which she had rented as mistress in the first year of her
wedded life.
Mr. J---- added that he had passed an hour alone in the unfurnished
room which I had urged him to destroy, and that his impressions of
dread while there were so great, though he had neither heard nor seen
anything, that he was eager to have the walls bared and the floors
removed as I had suggested. He had engaged persons for the work, and
would commence any day I would name.
The day was accordingly fixed. I repaired to the haunted house--we
went into the blind dreary room, took up the skirting, and then the
floors. Under the rafters, covered with rubbish, was found a
trap-door, quite large enough to admit a man. It was closely nailed
down, with clamps and rivets of iron. On removing these we descended
into a room below, the existence of which had never been suspected.
In this room there had been a window and a flue, but they had been
bricked over, evidently for many years. By the help of candles we
examined this place; it still retained some moldering
furniture--three chairs, an oak settle, a table--all of the fashion
of about eighty years ago. There was a chest of drawers against the
wall, in which we found, half-rotted away, old-fashioned articles of
a man's dress, such as might have been worn eighty or a hundred years
ago by a gentleman of some rank--costly steel buckles and buttons,
like those yet worn in court-dresses, a handsome court sword--in a
waistcoat which had once been rich with gold-lace, but which was now
blackened and foul with damp, we found five guineas, a few silver
coins, and an ivory ticket, probably for some place of entertainment
long since passed away. But our main discovery was in a kind of iron
safe fixed to the wall, the lock of which it cost us much trouble to
get picked.
In this safe were three shelves, and two small drawers. Ranged on
the shelves were several small bottles of crystal, hermetically
stoppered. They contained colorless volatile essences, of the nature
of which I shall only say that they were not poisonous--phosphor and
ammonia entered into some of them. There were also some very curious
glass tubes, and a small pointed rod of iron, with a large lump of
rock-crystal, and another of amber--also a loadstone of great power.
In one of the drawers we found a miniature portrait set in gold, and
retaining the freshness of its colors most remarkably, considering
the length of time it had probably been there. The portrait was that
of a man who might be somewhat advanced in middle life, perhaps
forty-seven or forty-eight.
It was a remarkable face--a most impressive face. If you could fancy
some mighty serpent transformed into man, preserving in the human
lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better idea of that
countenance than long descriptions can convey: the width and flatness
of frontal--the tapering elegance of contour disguising the strength
of the deadly jaw--the long, large, terrible eye, glittering and
green as the emerald--and withal a certain ruthless calm, as if from
the consciousness of an immense power.
Mechanically I turned round the miniature to examine the back of it,
and on the back was engraved a pentacle; in the middle of the
pentacle a ladder, and the third step of the ladder was formed by the
date 1765. Examining still more minutely, I detected a spring; this,
on being pressed, opened the back of the miniature as a lid.
Withinside the lid was engraved, "Marianna to thee--Be faithful in
life and in death to ----." Here follows a name that I will not
mention, but it was not unfamiliar to me. I had heard it spoken of
by old men in my childhood as the name borne by a dazzling charlatan
who had made a great sensation in London for a year or so, and had
fled the country on the charge of a double murder within his own
house--that of his mistress and his rival. I said nothing of this to
Mr. J----, to whom reluctantly I resigned the miniature.
We had found no difficulty in opening the first drawer within the
iron safe; we found great difficulty in opening the second: it was
not locked, but it resisted all efforts, till we inserted in the
chinks the edge of a chisel. When we had thus drawn it forth, we
found a very singular apparatus in the nicest order. Upon a small
thin book, or rather tablet, was placed a saucer of crystal; this
saucer was filled with a clear liquid--on that liquid floated a kind
of compass, with a needle shifting rapidly round; but instead of the
usual points of a compass were seven strange characters, not very
unlike those used by astrologers to denote the planets. A peculiar
but not strong nor displeasing odor came from this drawer, which was
lined with a wood that we afterward discovered to be hazel. Whatever
the cause of this odor, it produced a material effect on the nerves.
We all felt it, even the two workmen who were in the room--a
creeping, tingling sensation from the tips of the fingers to the
roots of the hair. Impatient to examine the tablet, I removed the
saucer. As I did so the needle of the compass went round and round
with exceeding swiftness, and I felt a shock that ran through my
whole frame, so that I dropped the saucer on the floor. The liquid
was spilled--the saucer was broken--the compass rolled to the end of
the room--and at that instant the walls shook to and fro, as if a
giant had swayed and rocked them.
The two workmen were so frightened that they ran up the ladder by
which we had descended from the trap-door; but seeing that nothing
more happened, they were easily induced to return.
Meanwhile I had opened the tablet: it was bound in plain red leather,
with a silver clasp; it contained but one sheet of thick vellum, and
on that sheet were inscribed, within a double pentacle, words in old
monkish Latin, which are literally to be translated thus: "On all
that it can reach within these walls--sentient or inanimate, living
or dead--as moves the needle, so work my will! Accursed be the
house, and restless be the dwellers therein."
We found no more. Mr. J---- burned the tablet and its anathema. He
razed to the foundations the part of the building containing the
secret room with the chamber over it. He had then the courage to
inhabit the house himself for a month, and a quieter,
better-conditioned house could not be found in all London.
Subsequently he let it to advantage, and his tenant has made no
complaints.
THE DREAM-WOMAN
BY WILKIE COLLINS
_William Wilkie Collins, born in London in 1824, was the son of the
painter William Collins. He was always called "Wilkie." Educated
privately, he was articled to a London tea merchant; but, publishing
a book (afterward issued as "Antonina"), he devoted himself to
letters. In 1851, he met Dickens, and wrote for "Household Words,"
and sometimes collaborated with him. His works include: "After
Dark," "The Woman in White," "No Name, "The New Magdalen," and "The
Moonstone." "The Dream-Woman," which exhibits many of his most
striking characteristics, is from "The Queen of Hearts" (1860). He
died in London in 1889._
THE DREAM-WOMAN
By WILKIE COLLINS
Some years ago there lived in the suburbs of a large seaport town on
the west coast of England a man in humble circumstances, by name
Isaac Scatchard. His means of subsistence were derived from any
employment that he could get as an ostler, and occasionally when
times went well with him, from temporary engagements in service as
stable-helper in private houses. Though a faithful, steady, and
honest man, he got on badly in his calling. His ill-luck was
proverbial among his neighbors. He was always missing good
opportunities by no fault of his own, and always living longest in
service with amiable people who were not punctual payers of wages.
"Unlucky Isaac" was his nickname in his own neighborhood, and no one
could say that he did not richly deserve it.
With far more than one man's fair share of adversity to endure, Isaac
had but one consolation to support him, and that was of the dreariest
and most negative kind. He had no wife and children to increase his
anxieties and add to the bitterness of his various failures in life.
It might have been from mere insensibility, or it might have been
from generous unwillingness to involve another in his own unlucky
destiny; but the fact undoubtedly was, that he had arrived at the
middle term of life without marrying, and, what is much more
remarkable, without once exposing himself, from eighteen to
eight-and-thirty, to the genial imputation of ever having had a
sweetheart.
When he was out of service he lived alone with his widowed mother.
Mrs. Scatchard was a woman above the average in her lowly station as
to capacity and manners. She had seen better days, as the phrase is,
but she never referred to them in the presence of curious visitors;
and, though perfectly polite to every one who approached her, never
cultivated any intimacies among her neighbors. She contrived to
provide hardly enough for her simple wants by doing rough work for
the tailors, and always managed to keep a decent home for her son to
return to whenever his ill-luck drove him out helpless into the world.
One bleak autumn, when Isaac was getting on fast toward forty, and
when he was, as usual, out of place through no fault of his own, he
set forth from his mother's cottage on a long walk inland to a
gentleman's seat, where he had heard that a stable-helper was
required.
It wanted then but two days of his birthday; and Mrs. Scatchard, with
her usual fondness, made him promise, before he started, that he
would be back in time to keep that anniversary with her, in as
festive a way as their poor means would allow. It was easy for him
to comply with this request, even supposing he slept a night each way
on the road.
He was to start from home on Monday morning, and, whether he got the
new place or not, he was to be back for his birthday dinner on
Wednesday at two o'clock.
Arriving at his destination too late on the Monday night to make
application for the stable-helper's place, he slept at the village
inn, and in good time on the Tuesday morning presented himself at the
gentleman's house to fill the vacant situation. Here again his
ill-luck pursued him as inexorably as ever. The excellent written
testimonials to his character which he was able to procure availed
him nothing; his long walk had been taken in vain: only the day
before the stable-helper's place had been given to another man.
Isaac accepted this new disappointment resignedly and as a matter of
course. Naturally slow in capacity, he had the bluntness of
sensibility and phlegmatic patience of disposition which frequently
distinguish men with sluggishly working mental powers. He thanked
the gentleman's steward with his usual quiet civility for granting
him an interview, and took his departure with no appearance of
unusual depression in his face or manner.
Before starting on his homeward walk, he made some inquiries at the
inn, and ascertained that he might save a few miles on his return by
following a new road. Furnished with full instructions, several
times repeated, as to the various turnings he was to take, he set
forth on his homeward journey, and walked on all day with only one
stoppage for bread and cheese. Just as it was getting toward dark,
the rain came on and the wind began to rise, and he found himself, to
make matters worse, in a part of the country with which he was
entirely unacquainted, though he knew himself to be some fifteen
miles from home. The first house he found to inquire at was a lonely
roadside inn, standing on the outskirts of a thick wood. Solitary as
the place looked, it was welcome to a lost man who was also hungry,
thirsty, foot-sore, and wet. The landlord was civil, and
respectable-looking, and the price he asked for a bed was reasonable
enough. Isaac therefore decided on stopping comfortably at the inn
for that night.
He was constitutionally a temperate man. His supper consisted of two
rashers of bacon, a slice of home-made bread, and a pint of ale. He
did not go to bed immediately after this moderate meal, but sat up
with the landlord, talking about his bad prospects and his long run
of ill-luck, and diverging from these topics to the subject of
horse-flesh and racing. Nothing was said either by himself, his
host, or the few laborers who strayed into the tap-room, which could,
in the slightest degree, excite the very small and very dull
imaginative faculty which Isaac Scatchard possessed.
At a little after eleven the house was closed. Isaac went round with
the landlord and held the candle while the doors and lower windows
were being secured. He noticed with surprise the strength of the
bolts and bars, and iron-sheathed shutters.
"You see we are rather lonely here," said the landlord. "We never
have had any attempts made to break in yet, but it's always as well
to be on the safe side. When nobody is sleeping here, I am the only
man in the house. My wife and daughter are timid, and the
servant-girl takes after her missuses. Another glass of ale before
you turn in? No! Well, how such a sober man as you come to be out
of a place is more than I can make out, for one. Here's where you're
to sleep. You're our only lodger to-night, and I think you'll say my
missus has done her best to make you comfortable. You're quite sure
you won't have another glass of ale? Very well. Good-night."
It was half-past eleven by the clock in the passage as they went
upstairs to the bedroom, the window of which looked on to the wood at
the back of the house.
Isaac locked the door, set his candle on the chest of drawers, and
wearily got ready for bed. The bleak autumn wind was still blowing,
and the solemn, monotonous, surging moan of it in the wood was dreary
and awful to hear through the night-silence. Isaac felt strangely
wakeful. He resolved, as he lay down in bed, to keep the candle
alight until he began to grow sleepy, for there was something
unendurably depressing in the bare idea of laying awake in the
darkness, listening to the dismal, ceaseless moaning of the wind in
the wood.
Sleep stole on him before he was aware of it. His eyes closed, and
he fell off insensibly to rest without having so much as thought of
extinguishing the candle.
The first sensation of which he was conscious after sinking into
slumber was a strange shivering that ran through him suddenly from
head to foot, and a dreadful sinking pain at the heart, such as he
had never felt before. The shivering only disturbed his slumbers;
the pain woke him instantly. In one moment he passed from a state of
sleep to a state of wakefulness--his eyes wide open--his mental
perceptions cleared on a sudden as if by a miracle.
The candle had burned down nearly to the last morsel of tallow, but
the top of the unsnuffed wick had just fallen off, and the light in
the little room was, for the moment, fair and full.
Between the foot of the bed and the closed door there stood a woman
with a knife in her hand, looking at him.
He was stricken speechless with terror, but he did not lose the
preternatural clearness of his faculties, and he never took his eyes
off the woman. She said not a word as they stared each other in the
face, but she began to move slowly toward the left-hand side of the
bed.
His eyes followed her. She was a fair, fine woman, with yellowish
flaxen hair and light-gray eyes, with a droop in the left eyelid. He
noticed those things, and fixed them on his mind before she was round
at the side of the bed. Speechless, with no expression in her face,
with no noise following her footfall, she came closer and
closer--stopped and slowly raised the knife. He laid his right arm
over his throat to save it; but, as he saw the knife coming down,
threw his hand across the bed to the right side, and jerked his body
over that way just as the knife descended on the mattress within an
inch of his shoulder.
His eyes fixed on her arm and hand as she slowly drew her knife out
of the bed; a white, well-shaped arm, with a pretty down lying
lightly over the fair skin--a delicate lady's hand; with the crowning
beauty of a pink flush under and round the finger nails.
She drew the knife out, and passed again slowly to the foot of the
bed; stopped there for a moment looking at him; then came on--still
speechless, still with no expression on the blank, beautiful face,
still with no sound following the stealthy footfalls--came on to the
right side of the bed where he now lay.
As she approached, she raised the knife again, and he drew himself
away to the left side. She struck, as before, right into the
mattress, with a deliberate, perpendicularly downward action of the
arm. This time his eyes wandered from her to the knife. It was like
the large clasp-knives which he had often seen laboring men use to
cut their bread and bacon with. Her delicate little fingers did not
conceal more than two-thirds of the handle; he noticed that it was
made of buckhorn, clean and shining the blade was, and looking like
new.
For the second time she drew the knife out, concealed it in the wide
sleeve of her gown, then stopped by the bedside, watching him. For
an instant he saw her standing in that position, then the wick of the
spent candle fell over into the socket, the flame diminished to a
little blue point, and the room grew dark.
A moment, or less, if possible, passed so, and then the wick flamed
up, smokingly, for the last time. His eyes were still looking
eagerly over the right-hand side of the bed when the final flash of
light came, but they discerned nothing. The fair woman with the
knife was gone.
The conviction that he was alone again weakened the hold of the
terror that had struck him dumb up to this time. The preternatural
sharpness which the very intensity of his panic had mysteriously
imparted to his faculties left them suddenly. His brain grew
confused--his heart beat wildly--his ears opened for the first time
since the appearance of the woman to a sense of the woful, ceaseless
moaning of the wind among the trees. With the dreadful conviction of
the reality of what he had seen still strong within him, he leaped
out of bed, and screaming, "Murder! Wake up there! wake up!" dashed
headlong through the darkness to the door.
It was fast locked, exactly as he had left it on going to bed.
His cries on starting up had alarmed the house. He heard the
terrified, confused exclamations of women; he saw the master of the
house approaching along the passage with his burning rush-candle in
one hand and his gun in the other.
"What is it?" asked the landlord, breathlessly.
Isaac could only answer in a whisper. "A woman, with a knife in her
hand," he gasped out. "In my room--a fair, yellow-haired woman; she
jobbed at me with the knife twice over."
The landlord's pale cheeks grew paler. He looked at Isaac eagerly by
the flickering light of his candle, and his face began to get red
again; his voice altered, too, as well as his complexion.
"She seems to have missed you twice," he said.
"I dodged the knife as it came down," Isaac went on, in the same
scared whisper. "It struck the bed each time."
The landlord took his candle into the bedroom immediately. In less
than a minute he came out again into the passage in a violent passion.
"The devil fly away with you and your woman with the knife! There
isn't a mark in the bedclothes anywhere. What do you mean by coming
into a man's place, and frightening his family out of their wits
about a dream?"
"I'll leave your house," said Isaac, faintly. "Better out on the
road, in rain and dark, on my road home, than back again in that
room, after what I've seen in it. Lend me a light to get my clothes
by, and tell me what I'm to pay."
"Pay!" cried the landlord, leading the way with his light sulkily
into the bedroom. "You'll find your score on the slate when you go
downstairs. I wouldn't have taken you in for all the money you've
got about you if I'd known your dreaming, screeching ways beforehand.
Look at the bed. Where's the cut of a knife in it? Look at the
window--is the lock bursted? Look at the door (which I heard you
fasten yourself)--is it broke in? A murdering woman with a knife in
my house! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!"
Isaac answered not a word. He huddled on his clothes, and they went
downstairs together.
"Nigh on twenty minutes past two!" said the landlord, as they passed
a clock. "A nice time in the morning to frighten honest people out
of their wits!"
Isaac paid his bill, and the landlord let him out at the front door,
asking, with a grin of contempt, as he undid the strong fastenings,
whether "the murdering woman got in that way?"
They parted without a word on either side. The rain had ceased, but
the night was dark, and the wind bleaker than ever. Little did the
darkness or the cold or the uncertainty about the way home matter to
Isaac. If he had been turned out into the wilderness in a
thunderstorm, it would have been a relief after what he had suffered
in the bedroom of the inn.
What was the fair woman with the knife? The creature of a dream, or
that other creature from the unknown world called among men by the
name of ghost? He could make nothing of the mystery--had made
nothing of it, even when it was midday on Wednesday, and when he
stood, at last, after many times missing his road, once more on the
doorstep of home.
His mother came out eagerly to receive him. His face told her in a
moment that something was wrong.
"I've lost the place; but that's my luck. I dreamed an ill dream
last night, mother--or maybe I saw a ghost. Take it either way, it
scared me out of my senses, and I am not my own man again yet."
"Isaac, your face frightens me. Come into the fire--come in, and
tell mother all about it."
He was as anxious to tell as she was to hear: for it had been his
hope, all the way home, that his mother, with her quicker capacity
and superior knowledge, might be able to throw some light on the
mystery which he could not clear up for himself. His memory of the
dream was still mechanically vivid, though his thoughts were entirely
confused by it.
His mother's face grew paler and paler as he went on. She never
interrupted him by so much as a single word; but when he had done,
she moved her chair close to his, put her arms around his neck, and
said to him:
"Isaac, you dreamed your ill dream on this Wednesday morning. What
time was it when you saw the fair woman with a knife in her hand?"
Isaac reflected on what the landlord had said when they had passed by
the clock on his leaving the inn; allowed as nearly as he could for
the time that must have elapsed between the unlocking of his bedroom
door and the paying of his bill just before going away, and answered:
"Somewhere about two o'clock in the morning."
His mother suddenly quitted her hold of his neck, and struck her
hands together with a gesture of despair.
"This Wednesday is your birthday, Isaac, and two o'clock in the
morning was the time when you were born."
Isaac's capacities were not quick enough to catch the infection of
his mother's superstitious dread. He was amazed, and a little
startled also, when she suddenly rose from her chair, opened her old
writing-desk, took pen, ink, and paper, and then said to him:
"Your memory is but a poor one, Isaac, and now I'm an old woman
mine's not much better. I want all about this dream of yours to be
as well known to both of us, years hence, as it is now. Tell me over
again all you told me a minute ago, when you spoke of what the woman
with the knife looked like."
Isaac obeyed, and marveled much as he saw his mother carefully set
down on paper the very words that he was saying.
"Light-gray eyes," she wrote, as they came to the descriptive part,
"with a droop in the left eyelid; flaxen hair, with a gold-yellow
streak in it; white arms, with a down upon them; little lady's hand,
with a reddish look about the finger nails; clasp-knife with a
buckhorn handle, that seemed as good as new." To these particulars
Mrs. Scatchard added the year, month, day of the week, and time in
the morning when the woman of the dream appeared to her son. She
then locked up the paper carefully in the writing-desk.
Neither on that day nor on any day after could her son induce her to
return to the matter of the dream. She obstinately kept her thoughts
about it to herself, and even refused to refer again to the paper in
her writing-desk. Ere long Isaac grew weary of attempting to make
her break her resolute silence; and time, which sooner or later wears
out all things, gradually wore out the impression produced on him by
the dream. He began by thinking of it carelessly, and he ended by
not thinking of it at all.
The result was the more easily brought about by the advent of some
important changes for the better in his prospects, which commenced
not long after his terrible night's experience at the inn. He reaped
at last the reward of his long and patient suffering under adversity
by getting an excellent place, keeping it for seven years, and
leaving it, on the death of his master, not only with an excellent
character, but also with a comfortable annuity bequeathed to him as a
reward for saving his mistress's life in a carriage accident. Thus
it happened that Isaac Scatchard returned to his old mother, seven
years after the time of the dream at the inn, with an annual sum of
money at his disposal sufficient to keep them both in ease and
independence for the rest of their lives.
The mother, whose health had been bad of late years, profited so much
by the care bestowed on her and by freedom from money anxieties, that
when Isaac's birthday came round she was able to sit up comfortably
at table and dine with him.
On that day, as the evening drew on, Mrs. Scatchard discovered that a
bottle of tonic medicine which she was accustomed to take, and in
which she had fancied that a dose or more was still left, happened to
be empty. Isaac immediately volunteered to go to the chemist's and
get it filled again. It was as rainy and bleak an autumn night as on
the memorable past occasion when he lost his way and slept at the
roadside inn.
On going into the chemist's shop he was passed hurriedly by a poorly
dressed woman coming out of it. The glimpse he had of her face
struck him, and he looked back after her as she descended the door
steps.
"You're noticing that woman?" said the chemist's apprentice behind
the counter. "It's my opinion there's something wrong with her.
She's been asking for laudanum to put to a bad tooth. Master's out
for half an hour, and I told her I wasn't allowed to sell poison to
strangers in his absence. She laughed in a queer way, and said she
would come back in half an hour. If she expects master to serve her,
I think she'll be disappointed. It's a case of suicide, sir, if ever
there was one yet."
These words added immeasurably to the sudden interest in the woman
which Isaac had felt at the first sight of her face. After he had
got the medicine-bottle filled, he looked about anxiously for her as
soon as he was out in the street. She was walking slowly up and down
on the opposite side of the road. With his heart, very much to his
own surprise, beating fast, Isaac crossed over and spoke to her.
He asked if she was in any distress. She pointed to her torn shawl,
her scanty dress, her crushed, dirty bonnet; then moved under a lamp
so as to let the light fall on her stern, pale, but still most
beautiful face.
"I look like a comfortable, happy woman, don't I?" she said, with a
bitter laugh.
She spoke with a purity of intonation which Isaac had never heard
before from other lips than ladies' lips. Her slightest action
seemed to have the easy, negligent grace of a thoroughbred woman.
Her skin, for all its poverty-stricken paleness, was as delicate as
if her life had been passed in the enjoyment of every social comfort
that wealth can purchase. Even her small, finely shaped hands,
gloveless as they were, had not lost their whiteness.
Little by little, in answer to his question, the sad story of the
woman came out. There is no need to relate it here; it is told over
and over again in police reports and paragraphs about attempted
suicides.
"My name is Rebecca Murdoch," said the woman, as she ended. "I have
ninepence left, and I thought of spending it at the chemist's over
the way in securing a passage to the other world. Whatever it is, it
can't be worse to me than this, so why should I stop here?"
Besides the natural compassion and sadness moved in his heart by what
he heard, Isaac felt within him some mysterious influence at work all
the time the woman was speaking which utterly confused his ideas and
almost deprived him of his powers of speech. All that he could say
in answer to her last reckless words was that he would prevent her
from attempting her own life, if he followed her about all night to
do it. His rough, trembling earnestness seemed to impress her.
"I won't occasion you that trouble," she answered, when he repeated
his threat. "You have given me a fancy for living by speaking kindly
to me. No need for the mockery of protestations and promises. You
may believe me without them. Come to Fuller's Meadow to-morrow at
twelve, and you will find me alive, to answer for myself-- No!--no
money. My ninepence will do to get me as good a night's lodging as I
want."
She nodded and left him. He made no attempt to follow--he felt no
suspicion that she was deceiving him.
"It's strange, but I can't help believing her," he said to himself,
and walked away, bewildered, toward home.
On entering the house his mind was still so completely absorbed by
its new subject of interest that he took no notice of what his mother
was doing when he came in with the bottle of medicine. She had
opened her old writing-desk in his absence, and was now reading a
paper attentively that lay inside it. On every birthday of Isaac's
since she had written down the particulars of his dream from his own
lips, she had been accustomed to read that same paper, and ponder
over it in private.
The next day he went to Fuller's Meadow.
He had done only right in believing her so implicitly. She was
there, punctual to a minute, to answer for herself. The last-left
faint defenses in Isaac's heart against the fascination which a word
or look from her began inscrutably to exercise over him sank down and
vanished before her forever on that memorable morning.
When a man previously insensible to the influence of woman forms an
attachment in middle life, the instances are rare indeed, let the
warning circumstances be what they may, in which he is found capable
of freeing himself from the tyranny of the new ruling passion. The
charm of being spoken to familiarly, fondly, and gratefully by a
woman whose language and manners still retained enough of their early
refinement to hint at the high social station that she had lost,
would have been a dangerous luxury to a man of Isaac's rank at the
age of twenty. But it was far more than that--it was certain ruin to
him--now that his heart was opening unworthily to a new influence at
that middle time of life when strong feelings of all kinds, once
implanted, strike root most stubbornly in a man's moral nature. A
few more stolen interviews after that first morning in Fuller's
Meadow completed his infatuation. In less than a month from the time
when he first met her, Isaac Scatchard had consented to give Rebecca
Murdoch a new interest in existence and a chance of recovering the
character she had lost by promising to make her his wife.
She had taken possession, not of his passions only, but of his
faculties as well. All the mind he had he put into her keeping. She
directed him on every point--even instructing him how to break the
news of his approaching marriage in the safest manner to his mother.
"If you tell her how you met me and who I am at first," said the
cunning woman, "she will move heaven and earth to prevent our
marriage. Say I am the sister of one of your fellow-servants--ask
her to see me before you go into any more particulars--and leave it
to me to do the rest. I mean to make her love me next best to you,
Isaac, before she knows anything of who I really am."
The motive of the deceit was sufficient to sanctify it to Isaac. The
stratagem proposed relieved him of his one great anxiety, and quieted
his uneasy conscience on the subject of his mother. Still, there was
something wanting to perfect his happiness, something that he could
not realize, something mysteriously untraceable, and yet something
that perpetually made itself felt; not when he was absent from
Rebecca Murdoch, but, strange to say, when he was actually in her
presence! She was kindness itself with him. She never made him feel
his inferior capacities and inferior manners. She showed the
sweetest anxiety to please him in the smallest trifles; but, in spite
of all these attractions, he never could feel quite at his ease with
her. At their first meeting there had mingled with his admiration,
when he looked in her face, a faint, involuntary feeling of doubt
whether that face was entirely strange to him. No after-familiarity
had the slightest effect on this inexplicable, wearisome uncertainty.
Concealing the truth as he had been directed, he announced his
marriage engagement precipitately and confusedly to his mother on the
day when he contracted it. Poor Mrs. Scatchard showed her perfect
confidence in her son by flinging her arms round his neck, and giving
him joy of having found at last, in the sister of one of his
fellow-servants, a woman to comfort and care for him after his mother
was gone. She was all eagerness to see the woman of her son's
choice, and the next day was fixed for the introduction.
It was a bright sunny morning, and the little cottage parlor was full
of light as Mrs. Scatchard, happy and expectant, dressed for the
occasion in her Sunday gown, sat waiting for her son and her future
daughter-in-law.
Punctual to the appointed time, Isaac hurriedly and nervously led his
promised wife into the room. His mother rose to receive
her--advanced a few steps smiling--looked Rebecca full in the eyes,
and suddenly stopped. Her face, which had been flushed the moment
before, turned white in an instant; her eyes lost their expression of
softness and kindness, and assumed a blank look of terror; her
outstretched hands fell to her sides, and she staggered back a few
steps with a low cry to her son.
"Isaac," she whispered, clutching him fast by the arm when he asked
alarmedly if she was taken ill, "Isaac, does that woman's face remind
you of nothing?"
Before he could answer--before he could look round to where Rebecca
stood, astonished and angered by her reception, at the lower end of
the room--his mother pointed impatiently to her writing-desk, and
gave him the key.
"Open it," she said, in a quick, breathless whisper.
"What does this mean? Why am I treated as if I had no business here?
Does your mother want to insult me?" asked Rebecca, angrily.
"Open it, and give me the paper in the left-hand drawer. Quick!
quick, for Heaven's sake!" said Mrs. Scatchard, shrinking further
back in terror.
Isaac gave her the paper. She looked it over eagerly for a moment,
then followed Rebecca, who was now turning away haughtily to leave
the room, and caught her by the shoulder--abruptly raised the long,
loose sleeve of her gown, and glanced at her hand and arm. Something
like fear began to steal over the angry expression of Rebecca's face
as she shook herself free from the old woman's grasp. "Mad!" she
said to herself, "and Isaac never told me." With these few words she
left the room.
Isaac was hastening after her when his mother turned and stopped his
further progress. It wrung his heart to see the misery and terror in
her face as she looked at him.
"Light-gray eyes," she said, in low, mournful, awe-struck tones,
pointing toward the open door; "a droop in the left eyelid; flaxen
hair, with a gold-yellow streak in it; white arms, with a down upon
them; little lady's hand, with a reddish look under the finger
nails--The Dream-Woman, Isaac, the Dream-Woman!"
That faint cleaving doubt which he had never been able to shake off
in Rebecca Murdoch's presence was fatally set at rest forever. He
had seen her face, then, before--seven years before, on his birthday,
in the bedroom of the lonely inn.
"Be warned! oh, my son, be warned! Isaac, Isaac, let her go, and do
you stop with me!"
Something darkened the parlor window as those words were said. A
sudden chill ran through him, and he glanced sidelong at the shadow.
Rebecca Murdoch had come back. She was peering in curiously at them
over the low window-blind.
"I have promised to marry, mother," he said, "and marry I must."
The tears came into his eyes as he spoke and dimmed his sight, but he
could just discern the fatal face outside moving away again from the
window.
His mother's head sank lower.
"Are you faint?" he whispered.
"Broken-hearted, Isaac."
He stooped down and kissed her. The shadow, as he did so, returned
to the window, and the fatal face peered in curiously once more.
Three weeks after that day Isaac and Rebecca were man and wife. All
that was hopelessly dogged and stubborn in the man's moral nature
seemed to have closed round his fatal passion, and to have fixed it
unassailably in his heart.
After that first interview in the cottage parlor no consideration
would induce Mrs. Scatchard to see her son's wife again, or even to
talk of her when Isaac tried hard to plead her cause after their
marriage.
This course of conduct was not in any degree occasioned by a
discovery of the degradation in which Rebecca had lived. There was
no question of that between mother and son. There was no question of
anything but the fearfully exact resemblance between the living,
breathing woman and the spectre-woman of Isaac's dream.
Rebecca, on her side, neither felt nor expressed the slightest sorrow
at the estrangement between herself and her mother-in-law. Isaac,
for the sake of peace, had never contradicted her first idea that age
and long illness had affected Mrs. Scatchard's mind. He even allowed
his wife to upbraid him for not having confessed this to her at the
time of their marriage engagement rather than risk anything by
hinting at the truth. The sacrifice of his integrity before his one
all-mastering delusion seemed but a small thing, and cost his
conscience but little after the sacrifices he had already made.
The time of waking from this delusion--the cruel and the rueful
time--was not far off. After some quiet months of married life, as
the summer was ending, and the year was getting on toward the month
of his birthday, Isaac found his wife altering toward him. She grew
sullen and contemptuous; she formed acquaintances of the most
dangerous kind in defiance of his objections, his entreaties, and his
commands; and, worst of all, she learned, erelong, after every fresh
difference with her husband, to seek the deadly self-oblivion of
drink. Little by little, after the first miserable discovery that
his wife was keeping company with drunkards, the shocking certainty
forced itself on Isaac that she had grown to be a drunkard herself.
He had been in a sadly desponding state for some time before the
occurrence of these domestic calamities. His mother's health, as he
could but too plainly discern every time he went to see her at the
cottage, was failing fast, and he upbraided himself in secret as the
cause of the bodily and mental suffering she endured. When to his
remorse on his mother's account was added the shame and misery
occasioned by the discovery of his wife's degradation, he sank under
the double trial--his face began to alter fast, and he looked what he
was, a spirit-broken man.
His mother, still struggling bravely against the illness that was
hurrying her to the grave, was the first to notice the sad alteration
in him, and the first to hear of his last worst trouble with his
wife. She could only weep bitterly on the day when he made his
humiliating confession, but on the next occasion when he went to see
her she had taken a resolution in reference to his domestic
afflictions which astonished and even alarmed him. He found her
dressed to go out, and on asking the reason received this answer:
"I am not long for this world, Isaac," she said, "and I shall not
feel easy on my death-bed unless I have done my best to the last to
make my son happy. I mean to put my own fears and my own feelings
out of the question, and to go with you to your wife, and try what I
can do to reclaim her. Give me your arm, Isaac, and let me do the
last thing I can in this world to help my son before it is too late."
He could not disobey her, and they walked together slowly toward his
miserable home.
It was only one o'clock in the afternoon when they reached the
cottage where he lived. It was their dinner-hour, and Rebecca was in
the kitchen. He was thus able to take his mother quietly into the
parlor, and then prepare his wife for the interview. She had
fortunately drunk but little at that early hour, and she was less
sullen and capricious than usual.
He returned to his mother with his mind tolerably at ease. His wife
soon followed him into the parlor, and the meeting between her and
Mrs. Scatchard passed off better than he had ventured to anticipate,
though he observed with secret apprehension that his mother,
resolutely as she controlled herself in other respects, could not
look his wife in the face when she spoke to her. It was a relief to
him, therefore, when Rebecca began to lay the cloth.
She laid the cloth, brought in the bread-tray, and cut a slice from
the loaf for her husband, then returned to the kitchen. At that
moment, Isaac, still anxiously watching his mother, was startled by
seeing the same ghastly change pass over her face which had altered
it so awfully on the morning when Rebecca and she first met. Before
he could say a word, she whispered, with a look of horror:
"Take me back--home, home again, Isaac. Come with me, and never go
back again."
He was afraid to ask for an explanation; he could only sign to her to
be silent, and help her quickly to the door. As they passed the
bread-tray on the table she stopped and pointed to it.
"Did you see what your wife cut your bread with?" she asked, in a low
whisper.
"No, mother--I was not noticing--what was it?"
"Look!"
He did look. A new clasp-knife, with a buckhorn handle, lay with the
loaf in the bread-tray. He stretched out his hand shudderingly to
possess himself of it; but, at the same time, there was a noise in
the kitchen, and his mother caught at his arm.
"The knife of the dream! Isaac, I'm faint with fear. Take me away
before she comes back."
He was hardly able to support her. The visible, tangible reality of
the knife struck him with a panic, and utterly destroyed any faint
doubts that he might have entertained up to this time in relation to
the mysterious dream-warning of nearly eight years before. By a last
desperate effort, he summoned self-possession enough to help his
mother out of the house--so quietly that the "Dream-Woman" (he
thought of her by that name now) did not hear them departing from the
kitchen.
"Don't go back, Isaac--don't go back!" implored Mrs. Scatchard, as he
turned to go away, after seeing her safely seated again in her own
room.
"I must get the knife," he answered, under his breath. His mother
tried to stop him again, but he hurried out without another word.
On his return he found that his wife had discovered their secret
departure from the house. She had been drinking, and was in a fury
of passion. The dinner in the kitchen was flung under the grate; the
cloth was off the parlor table. Where was the knife?
Unwisely, he asked for it. She was only too glad of the opportunity
of irritating him which the request afforded her. He wanted the
knife, did he? Could he give her a reason why? No! Then he should
not have it--not if he went down on his knees to ask for it. Further
recrimination elicited the fact that she had bought it a bargain, and
that she considered it her own especial property. Isaac saw the
uselessness of attempting to get the knife by fair means, and
determined to search for it, later in the day, in secret. The search
was unsuccessful. Night came on, and he left the house to walk about
the streets. He was afraid now to sleep in the same room with her.
Three weeks passed. Still sullenly enraged with him, she would not
give up the knife; and still that fear of sleeping in the same room
with her possessed him. He walked about at night, or dozed in the
parlor, or sat watching by his mother's bedside. Before the
expiration of the first week in the new month his mother died. It
wanted then but ten days of her son's birthday. She had longed to
live till that anniversary. Isaac was present at her death, and her
last words in this world were addressed to him:
"Don't go back, my son, don't go back!"
He was obliged to go back, if it were only to watch his wife.
Exasperated to the last degree by his distrust of her, she had
revengefully sought to add a sting to his grief, during the last days
of his mother's illness, by declaring that she would assert her right
to attend the funeral. In spite of all that he could do or say, she
held with wicked pertinacity to her word, and on the day appointed
for the burial forced herself--inflamed and shameless with
drink--into her husband's presence, and declared that she would walk
in the funeral procession to his mother's grave.
This last worst outrage, accompanied by all that was most insulting
in word and look, maddened him for the moment. He struck her.
The instant the blow was dealt he repented it. She crouched down,
silent, in a corner of the room, and eyed him steadily; it was a look
that cooled his hot blood and made him tremble. But there was no
time now to think of a means of making atonement. Nothing remained
but to risk the worst till the funeral was over. There was but one
way of making sure of her. He locked her in her bedroom.
When he came back some hours after, he found her sitting, very much
altered in look and bearing, by the bedside, with a bundle on her
lap. She rose and faced him quietly, and spoke with a strange
stillness in her voice, a strange repose in her eyes, a strange
composure in her manner.
"No man has ever struck me twice," she said, "and my husband shall
have no second opportunity. Set the door open and let me go. From
this day forth we see each other no more."
Before he could answer she passed him and left the room. He saw her
walk away up the street.
Would she return?
All that night he watched and waited, but no footstep came near the
house. The next night, overpowered by fatigue, he lay down in bed in
his clothes, with the door locked, the key on the table, and the
candle burning. His slumber was not disturbed. The third night, the
fourth, the fifth, the sixth passed, and nothing happened. He lay
down on the seventh, still in his clothes, still with the door
locked, the key on the table, and the candle burning, but easier in
his mind.
Easier in his mind, and in perfect health of body when he fell off to
sleep. But his rest was disturbed. He woke twice without any
sensation of uneasiness. But the third time it was that
never-to-be-forgotten shivering of the night at the lonely inn, that
dreadful sinking pain at the heart, which once more aroused him in an
instant.
His eyes opened toward the left-hand side of the bed, and there
stood--
The Dream-Woman again? No! his wife; the living reality, with the
dream-spectre's face, in the dream-spectre's attitude; the fair arm
up, the knife clasped in the delicate white hand.
He sprang upon her almost at the instant of seeing her, and yet not
quickly enough to prevent her from hiding the knife. Without a word
from him--without a cry from her--he pinioned her in a chair. With
one hand he felt up her sleeve, and there, where the Dream-Woman had
hidden the knife, his wife had hidden it--the knife with the buckhorn
handle, that looked like new.
In the despair of that fearful moment his brain was steady, his heart
was calm. He looked at her fixedly with the knife in his hand, and
said these last words:
"You have told me we should see each other no more, and you have come
back. It is now my turn to go, and to go forever. I say that we
shall see each other no more, and my word shall not be broken."
He left her, and set forth into the night. There was a bleak wind
abroad, and the smell of recent rain was in the air. The distant
church-clocks chimed the quarter as he walked rapidly beyond the last
houses in the suburb. He asked the first policeman he met what hour
that was of which the quarter past had just struck.
The man referred sleepily to his watch, and answered, "Two o'clock."
Two in the morning. What day of the month was this day that had just
begun? He reckoned it up from the date of his mother's funeral. The
fatal parallel was complete: it was his birthday!
Had he escaped the mortal peril which his dream foretold? or had he
only received a second warning?
As that ominous doubt forced itself on his mind, he stopped,
reflected, and turned back again toward the city. He was still
resolute to hold to his word, and never to let her see him more; but
there was a thought now in his mind of having her watched and
followed. The knife was in his possession; the world was before him;
but a new distrust of her--a vague, unspeakable, superstitious
dread--had come over him.
"I must know where she goes, now she thinks I have left her," he said
to himself, as he stole back wearily to the precincts of his house.
It was still dark. He had left the candle burning in the
bed-chamber; but when he looked up to the window of the room now,
there was no light in it. He crept cautiously to the house door. On
going away, he remembered to have closed it; on trying it now, he
found it open.
He waited outside, never losing sight of the house, till daylight.
Then he ventured indoors--listened, and heard nothing--looked into
kitchen, scullery, parlor, and found nothing; went up, at last, into
the bedroom--it was empty. A picklock lay on the floor, betraying
how she had gained entrance in the night, and that was the only trace
of her.
Whither had she gone? That no mortal tongue could tell him. The
darkness had covered her flight; and when the day broke no man could
say where the light found her.
Before leaving the house and the town forever, he gave instructions
to a friend and neighbor to sell his furniture for anything that it
would fetch, and apply the proceeds to employing the police to trace
her. The directions were honestly followed, and the money was all
spent, but the inquiries led to nothing. The picklock on the bedroom
floor remained the one last useless trace of the Dream-Woman.
GREEN BRANCHES
BY FIONA MACLEOD
_Fiona (which is Gaelic for Flora) Macleod was the name of one of the
most sympathetic writers in the so-called Celtic movement. With that
intensity of feeling characteristic of the Celtic people she
succeeded in expressing much of the mystic beauty of the old Gaelic
legends._
_Upon the death of William Sharp, the author and critic, in the
spring of 1906, a long-concealed secret was brought to light:--Fiona
Macleod and William Sharp were one and the same person._
GREEN BRANCHES*
*From "The Sin-Eater."
By FIONA MACLEOD
In the year that followed the death of Manus MacCodrum, James Achanna
saw nothing of his brother Gloom. He might have thought himself
alone in the world, of all his people, but for a letter that came to
him out of the west. True, he had never accepted the common opinion
that his brothers had both been drowned on that night when Anne
Gillespie left Eilanmore with Manus.
In the first place, he had nothing of that inner conviction
concerning the fate of Gloom which he had concerning that of Marcus;
in the next, had he not heard the sound of the _feadan_, which no one
that he knew played except Gloom; and, for further token, was not the
tune that which he hated above all others--the "Dance of the
Dead"--for who but Gloom would be playing that, he hating it so, and
the hour being late, and no one else on Eilanmore? It was no sure
thing that the dead had not come back; but the more he thought of it
the more Achanna believed that his sixth brother was still alive. Of
this, however, he said nothing to any one.
It was as a man set free that, at last, after long waiting and
patient trouble with the disposal of all that was left of the Achanna
heritage, he left the island. It was a gray memory for him. The
bleak moorland of it, the blight that had lain so long and so often
upon the crops, the rains that had swept the isle for gray days and
gray weeks and gray months, the sobbing of the sea by day and its
dark moan by night, its dim relinquishing sigh in the calm of dreary
ebbs, its hollow, baffling roar when the storm-shadow swept up out of
the sea--one and all oppressed him, even in memory. He had never
loved the island, even when it lay green and fragrant in the green
and white seas under white and blue skies, fresh and sweet as an Eden
of the sea.
He had ever been lonely and weary, tired of the mysterious shadow
that lay upon his folk, caring little for any of his brothers except
the eldest--long since mysteriously gone out of the ken of man--and
almost hating Gloom, who had ever borne him a grudge because of his
beauty, and because of his likeness to and reverent heed for Alison.
Moreover, ever since he had come to love Katreen Macarthur, the
daughter of Donald Macarthur who lived in Sleat of Skye, he had been
eager to live near her; the more eager as he knew that Gloom loved
the girl also, and wished for success not only for his own sake, but
so as to put a slight upon his younger brother.
So, when at last he left the island, he sailed southward gladly. He
was leaving Eilanmore; he was bound to a new home in Skye, and
perhaps he was going to his long-delayed, long dreamed-of happiness.
True, Katreen was not pledged to him; he did not even know for sure
if she loved him. He thought, hoped, dreamed, almost believed that
she did; but then there was her cousin Ian, who had long wooed her,
and to whom old Donald Macarthur had given his blessing.
Nevertheless, his heart would have been lighter than it had been for
long, but for two things. First, there was the letter. Some weeks
earlier he had received it, not recognizing the writing, because of
the few letters he had ever seen, and, moreover, as it was in a
feigned hand. With difficulty he had deciphered the manuscript,
plain printed though it was. It ran thus:
"Well, Sheumais, my brother, it is wondering if I am dead, you will
be. Maybe ay, and maybe no. But I send you this writing to let you
see that I know all you do and think of. So you are going to leave
Eilanmore without an Achanna upon it? And you will be going to Sleat
in Skye? Well, let me be telling you this thing. _Do not go_. I
see blood there. And there is this, too: neither you nor any man
shall take Katreen away from me. _You_ know that; and Ian Macarthur
knows it; and Katreen knows it; and that holds whether I am alive or
dead. I say to you: do not go. It will be better for you, and for
all. Ian Macarthur is away in the north-sea with the whaler-captain
who came to us at Eilanmore, and will not be back for three months
yet. It will be better for him not to come back. But if he comes
back he will have to reckon with the man who says that Katreen
Macarthur is his. I would rather not have two men to speak to, and
one my brother. It does not matter to you where I am. I want no
money just now. But put aside my portion for me. Have it ready for
me against the day I call for it. I will not be patient that day; so
have it ready for me. In the place that I am I am content. You will
be saying: why is my brother away in a remote place (I will say this
to you: that it is not further north than St. Kilda nor further south
than the Mull of Cantyrel), and for what reason? That is between me
and silence. But perhaps you think of Anne sometimes. Do you know
that she lies under the green grass? And of Manus MacCodrum? They
say that he swam out into the sea and was drowned; and they whisper
of the seal-blood, though the minister is wrath with them for that.
He calls it a madness. Well, I was there at that madness, and I
played to it on my _feadan_. And now, Sheumais, can you be thinking
of what the tune was that I played?
"Your brother, who waits his own day,
"GLOOM.
"Do not be forgetting this thing: _I would rather not be playing the
'Damhsa-na-Mairbh.'_ It was an ill hour for Manus when he heard the
'Dan-nan-Ron'; it was the song of his soul, that; and yours is the
'Davsa-na-Mairv.'"
This letter was ever in his mind: this, and what happened in the
gloaming when he sailed away for Skye in the herring-smack of two men
who lived at Armadale in Sleat. For, as the boat moved slowly out of
the haven, one of the men asked him if he was sure that no one was
left upon the island; for he thought he had seen a figure on the
rocks, waving a black scarf. Achanna shook his head; but just then
his companion cried that at that moment he had seen the same thing.
So the smack was put about, and when she was moving slowly through
the haven again, Achanna sculled ashore in the little coggly punt.
In vain he searched here and there, calling loudly again and again.
Both men could hardly have been mistaken, he thought. If there were
no human creature on the island, and if their eyes had not played
them false, who could it be? The wraith of Marcus, mayhap; or might
it be the old man himself (his father), risen to bid farewell to his
youngest son, or to warn him?
It was no use to wait longer, so, looking often behind him, he made
his way to the boat again, and rowed slowly out toward the smack.
_Jerk--jerk--jerk_ across the water came, low but only too loud for
him, the opening motif of the "Damhsa-na-Mairbh." A horror came upon
him, and he drove the boat through the water so that the sea splashed
over the bows. When he came on deck he cried in a hoarse voice to
the man next him to put up the helm, and let the smack swing to the
wind.
"There is no one there, Callum Campbell," he whispered.
"And who is it that will be making that strange music?"
"What music?"
"Sure it has stopped now, but I heard it clear, and so did Anndra
MacEwan. It was like the sound of a reed pipe, and the tune was an
eery one at that."
"It was the Dance of the Dead."
"And who will be playing that?" asked the man, with fear in his eyes.
"No living man."
"No living man?"
"No. I'm thinking it will be one of my brothers who was drowned
here, and by the same token that it is Gloom, for he played upon the
_feadan_. But if not, then--then--"
The two men waited in breathless silence, each trembling with
superstitious fear; but at last the elder made a sign to Achanna to
finish.
"Then--it will be the Kelpie."
"Is there--is there one of the--cave-women here?"
"It is said; and you know of old that the Kelpie sings or plays a
strange tune to wile seamen to their death."
At that moment the fantastic, jerking music came loud and clear
across the bay. There was a horrible suggestion in it, as if dead
bodies were moving along the ground with long jerks, and crying and
laughing wild. It was enough; the men, Campbell and MacEwan, would
not now have waited longer if Achanna had offered them all he had in
the world. Nor were they, or he, out of their panic haste till the
smack stood well out at sea, and not a sound could be heard from
Eilanmore.
They stood watching, silent. Out of the dusky mass that lay in the
seaward way to the north came a red gleam. It was like an eye
staring after them with blood-red glances.
"What is that, Achanna?" asked one of the men at last.
"It looks as though a fire had been lighted in the house up in the
island. The door and the window must be open. The fire must be fed
with wood, for no peats would give that flame; and there were none
lighted when I left. To my knowing, there was no wood for burning
except the wood of the shelves and the bed."
"And who would be doing that?"
"I know of that no more than you do, Callum Campbell."
No more was said, and it was a relief to all when the last glimmer of
the light was absorbed in the darkness.
At the end of the voyage Campbell and MacEwan were well pleased to be
quit of their companion; not so much because he was moody and
distraught as because they feared that a spell was upon him--a fate
in the working of which they might become involved. It needed no vow
of the one to the other for them to come to the conclusion that they
would never land on Eilanmore, or, if need be, only in broad
daylight, and never alone.
The days went well for James Achanna, where he made his home at
Ranza-beag, on Ranza Water in the Sleat of Skye. The farm was small
but good, and he hoped that with help and care he would soon have the
place as good a farm as there was in all Skye.
Donald Macarthur did not let him see much of Katreen, but the old man
was no longer opposed to him. Sheumais must wait till Ian Macarthur
came back again, which might be any day now. For sure, James Achanna
of Ranza-beag was a very different person from the youngest of the
Achanna-folk, who held by on lonely Eilanmore; moreover, the old man
could not but think with pleasure that it would be well to see
Katreen able to walk over the whole land of Ranza, from the cairn at
the north of his own Ranza-Mòr to the burn at the south of
Ranza-beag, and know it for her own.
But Achanna was ready to wait. Even before he had the secret word of
Katreen he knew from her beautiful dark eyes that she loved him. As
the weeks went by they managed to meet often, and at last Katreen
told him that she loved him too, and would have none but him; but
that they must wait till Ian came back, because of the pledge given
to him by her father. They were days of joy for him. Through many a
hot noontide hour, through many a gloaming he went as one in a dream.
Whenever he saw a birch swaying in the wind, or a wave leaping upon
Loch Liath, that was near his home, or passed a bush covered with
wild roses, or saw the moonbeams lying white on the boles of the
pines, he thought of Katreen--his fawn for grace, and so lithe and
tall, with sunbrown face and wavy, dark mass of hair, and shadowy
eyes and rowan-red lips. It is said that there is a god clothed in
shadow who goes to and fro among the human kind, putting silence
between lovers with his waving hands, and breathing a chill out of
his cold breath, and leaving a gulf of deep water flowing between
them because of the passing of his feet. That shadow never came
their way. Their love grew as a flower fed by rains and warmed by
sunlight.
When midsummer came, and there was no sign of Ian Macarthur, it was
already too late. Katreen had been won.
During the summer months it was the custom for Katreen and two of the
farm-girls to go up Maol-Ranza, to reside at the shealing of
Cnoc-an-Fhraoch: and this because of the hill-pasture for the sheep.
Cnoc-an-Fhraoch is a round, boulder-studded hill covered with
heather, which has a precipitous corrie on each side, and in front
slopes down to Lochan Fraoch, a lochlet surrounded by dark woods.
Behind the hill, or great hillock rather, lay the shealing. At each
week-end Katreen went down to Ranza-Mòr, and on every Monday morning
at sunrise returned to her heather-girt eyry. It was on one of these
visits that she endured a cruel shock. Her father told her that she
must marry some one else than Sheumais Achanna. He had heard words
about him which made a union impossible, and indeed, he hoped that
the man would leave Ranza-beag. In the end he admitted that what he
had heard was to the effect that Achanna was under a doom of some
kind, that he was involved in a blood feud; and, moreover, that he
was fey. The old man would not be explicit as to the person from
whom his information came, but hinted that he was a stranger of rank,
probably a laird of the isles. Besides this, there was word of Ian
Macarthur. He was at Thurso, in the far north, and would be in Skye
before long, and he--her father--had written to him that he might wed
Katreen as soon as was practicable.
"Do you see that lintie yonder, father?" was her response to this.
"Ay, lass, and what about the birdeen?"
"Well, when she mates with a hawk, so will I be mating with Ian
Macarthur, but not till then."
With that she turned and left the house, and went back to
Cnoc-an-Fhraoch. On the way she met Achanna.
It was that night that for the first time he swam across Lochan
Fraoch to meet Katreen.
The quickest way to reach the shealing was to row across the lochlet,
and then ascend by a sheep-path that wound through the hazel copses
at the base of the hill. Fully half an hour was thus saved, because
of the steepness of the precipitous corries to right and left. A
boat was kept for this purpose, but it was fastened to a
shore-boulder by a padlocked iron chain, the key of which was kept by
Donald Macarthur. Latterly he had refused to let this key out of his
possession. For one thing, no doubt, he believed he could thus
restrain Achanna from visiting his daughter. The young man could not
approach the shealing from either side without being seen.
But that night, soon after the moon was whitening slow in the dark,
Katreen stole down to the hazel copse and awaited the coming of her
lover. The lochan was visible from almost any point on
Cnoc-an-Fhraoch, as well as from the south side. To cross it in a
boat unseen, if any watcher were near, would be impossible, nor could
even a swimmer hope to escape notice unless in the gloom of night or,
mayhap, in the dusk. When, however, she saw, half-way across the
water, a spray of green branches slowly moving athwart the surface,
she knew that Sheumais was keeping his tryst. If, perchance, any one
else saw, he or she would never guess that those derelict rowan
branches shrouded Sheumais Achanna.
It was not till the estray had drifted close to the ledge, where, hid
among the bracken and the hazel undergrowth, she awaited him, that
Katreen descried the face of her lover, as with one hand he parted
the green sprays, and stared longingly and lovingly at the figure he
could just discern in the dim, fragrant obscurity.
And as it was this night so was it many of the nights that followed.
Katreen spent the days as in a dream. Not even the news of her
cousin Ian's return disturbed her much.
One day the inevitable meeting came. She was at Ranza-Mòr, and when
a shadow came into the dairy where she was standing she looked up,
and saw Ian before her. She thought he appeared taller and stronger
than ever, though still not so tall as Sheumais, who would appear
slim beside the Herculean Skye man. But as she looked at his close
curling black hair and thick bull-neck and the sullen eyes in his
dark wind-red face, she wondered that she had ever tolerated him at
all.
He broke the ice at once.
"Tell me, Katreen, are you glad to see me back again?"
"I am glad that you are home once more safe and sound."
"And will you make it my home for me by coming to live with me, as
I've asked you again and again?"
"No: as I've told you again and again."
He gloomed at her angrily for a few moments before he resumed.
"I will be asking you this one thing, Katreen, daughter of my
father's brother: do you love that man Achanna who lives at
Ranza-beag?"
"You may ask the wind why it is from the east or the west, but it
won't tell you. You're not the wind's master."
"If you think I will let this man take you away from me, you are
thinking a foolish thing."
"And you saying a foolisher."
"Ay?"
"Ay, sure. What could you do, Ian Mhic Ian? At the worst, you could
do no more than kill James Achanna. What then? I too would die.
You can not separate us. I would not marry you, now, though you were
the last man in the world and I the last woman."
"You're a fool, Katreen Macarthur. Your father has promised you to
me, and I tell you this: if you love Achanna you'll save his life
only by letting him go away from here. I promise you he will not be
here long."
"Ay, you promise _me_; but you will not say that thing to James
Achanna's face. You are a coward."
With a muttered oath the man turned on his heel.
"Let him beware o' me, and you, too, Katreen-mo-nighean-donn. I
swear it by my mother's grave and by St. Martin's Cross that you will
be mine by hook or by crook."
The girl smiled scornfully. Slowly she lifted a milk-pail.
"It would be a pity to waste the good milk, Ian-gorach, but if you
don't go it is I that will be emptying the pail on you, and then you
will be as white without as your heart is within."
"So you call me witless, do you? _Ian-gorach_! Well, we shall be
seeing as to that. And as for the milk, there will be more than milk
spilt because of _you_, Katreen-donn."
From that day, though neither Sheumais nor Katreen knew of it, a
watch was set upon Achanna.
It could not be long before their secret was discovered, and it was
with a savage joy overmastering his sullen rage that Ian Macarthur
knew himself the discoverer, and conceived his double vengeance. He
dreamed, gloatingly, on both the black thoughts that roamed like
ravenous beasts through the solitudes of his heart. But he did not
dream that another man was filled with hate because of Katreen's
lover, another man who had sworn to make her his own, the man who,
disguised, was known in Armadale as Donald McLean, and in the north
isles would have been hailed as Gloom Achanna.
There had been steady rain for three days, with a cold, raw wind. On
the fourth the sun shone, and set in peace. An evening of quiet
beauty followed, warm, fragrant, dusky from the absence of moon or
star, though the thin veils of mist promised to disperse as the night
grew.
There were two men that eve in the undergrowth on the south side of
the lochlet. Sheumais had come earlier than his wont. Impatient for
the dusk, he could scarce await the waning of the afterglow; surely,
he thought, he might venture. Suddenly his ears caught the sound of
cautious footsteps. Could it be old Donald, perhaps with some
inkling of the way in which his daughter saw her lover in despite of
all; or, mayhap, might it be Ian Macarthur, tracking him as a hunter
stalking a stag by the water-pools? He crouched, and waited. In a
few minutes he saw Ian carefully picking his way. The man stooped as
he descried the green branches; smiled as, with a low rustling, he
raised them from the ground.
Meanwhile yet another man watched and waited, though on the further
side of the lochan, where the hazel copses were. Gloom Achanna half
hoped, half feared the approach of Katreen. It would be sweet to see
her again, sweet to slay her lover before her eyes, brother to him
though he was. But, there was the chance that she might descry him,
and, whether recognizingly or not, warn the swimmer.
So it was that he had come there before sundown, and now lay crouched
among the bracken underneath a projecting mossy ledge close upon the
water, where it could scarce be that she or any should see him.
As the gloaming deepened a great stillness reigned. There was no
breath of wind. A scarce audible sigh prevailed among the spires of
the heather. The churring of a night-jar throbbed through the
darkness. Somewhere a corncrake called its monotonous crek-craik;
the dull, harsh sound emphasizing the utter stillness. The pinging
of the gnats hovering over and among the sedges made an incessant
murmur through the warm, sultry air.
There was a splash once as of a fish. Then, silence. Then a lower
but more continuous splash, or rather wash of water. A slow susurrus
rustled through the dark.
Where he lay among the fern Gloom Achanna slowly raised his head,
stared through the shadows and listened intently. If Katreen were
waiting there she was not near.
Noiselessly he slid into the water. When he rose it was under a
clump of green branches. These he had cut and secured three hours
before. With his left hand he swam slowly, or kept his equipoise in
the water; with his right he guided the heavy rowan bough. In his
mouth were two objects, one long and thin and dark, the other with an
occasional glitter as of a dead fish.
His motion was scarcely perceptible. None the less he was near the
middle of the loch almost as soon as another clump of green branches.
Doubtless the swimmer beneath it was confident that he was now safe
from observation.
The two clumps of green branches drew nearer. The smaller seemed a
mere estray, a spray blown down by the recent gale. But all at once
the larger clump jerked awkwardly and stopped. Simultaneously a
strange, low strain of music came from the other.
The strain ceased. The two clumps of green branches remained
motionless. Slowly, at last, the larger moved forward. It was too
dark for the swimmer to see if any one lay hid behind the smaller.
When he reached it he thrust aside the leaves.
It was as though a great salmon leaped. There was a splash, and a
narrow, dark body shot through the gloom. At the end of it something
gleamed. Then suddenly there was a savage struggle. The inanimate
green branches tore this way and that, and surged and swirled.
Gasping cries came from the leaves. Again and again the gleaming
thing leaped. At the third leap an awful scream shrilled through the
silence. The echo of it wailed thrice, with horrible distinctness,
in the corrie beyond Cnoc-an-Fhraoch. Then, after a faint splashing,
there was silence once more. One clump of green branches drifted
slowly up the lochlet. The other moved steadily toward the place
whence, a brief while before, it had stirred.
Only one thing lived in the heart of Gloom Achanna--the joy of his
exultation. He had killed his brother Sheumais. He had always hated
him because of his beauty; of late he had hated him because he had
stood between him, Gloom, and Katreen Macarthur--because he had
become her lover. They were all dead now except himself, all the
Achannas. He was "Achanna." When the day came that he would go back
to Galloway, there would be a magpie on the first birk, and a
screaming jay on the first rowan, and a croaking raven on the first
fir; ay, he would be their suffering, though they knew nothing of him
meanwhile! He would be Achanna of Achanna again. Let those who
would stand in his way beware. As for Katreen: perhaps he would take
her there, perhaps not. He smiled.
These thoughts were the wandering fires in his brain while he slowly
swam shoreward under the floating green branches, and as he
disengaged himself from them and crawled upward through the bracken.
It was at this moment that a third man entered the water from the
further shore.
Prepared as he was to come suddenly upon Katreen, Gloom was startled
when, in a place of dense shadow, a hand touched his shoulder, and
her voice whispered:
"Sheumais, Sheumais!"
The next moment she was in his arms. He could feel her heart beating
against his side.
"What was it, Sheumais? What was that awful cry?" she whispered.
For answer he put his lips to hers, and kissed her again and again.
The girl drew back. Some vague instinct warned her.
"What is it, Sheumais? Why don't you speak?"
He drew her close again.
"Pulse of my heart, it is I who love you, I who love you best of all;
it is I, Gloom Achanna!"
With a cry she struck him full in the face. He staggered, and in
that moment she freed herself.
"You _coward_!"
"Katreen, I--"
"Come no nearer. If you do, it will be the death of you!"
"The death o' me! Ah, bonnie fool that you are, and is it you that
will be the death o' me?"
"Ay, Gloom Achanna, for I have but to scream and Sheumais will be
here, an' he would kill you like a dog if he knew you did me harm."
"Ah, but if there were no Sheumais, or any man to come between me an'
my will!"
"Then there would be a woman! Ay, if you overbore me I would
strangle you with my hair, or fix my teeth in your false throat!"
"I was not for knowing you were such a wild-cat; but I'll tame you
yet, my lass! Aha, wild-cat!" And as he spoke he laughed low.
"It is a true word, Gloom of the black heart. I am a wild-cat, and,
like a wild-cat, I am not to be seized by a fox; and that you will be
finding to your cost, by the holy St. Bridget! But now, off with
you, brother of my man!"
"Your man--ha! ha!"
"Why do you laugh?"
"Sure, I am laughing at a warm, white lass like yourself having a
dead man as your lover!"
"A--dead--man?"
No answer came. The girl shook with a new fear. Slowly she drew
closer, till her breath fell warm against the face of the other. He
spoke at last:
"Ay, a dead man."
"It is a lie."
"Where would you be that you were not hearing his good-by? I'm
thinking it was loud enough!"
"It is a lie--it is a lie!"
"No, it is no lie. Sheumais is cold enough now. He's low among the
weeds by now. Ay, by now: down there in the lochan."
"_What_--you, _you devil_! Is it for killing your own brother you
would be?"
"I killed no one. He died his own way. Maybe the cramp took him.
Maybe--maybe a kelpie gripped him. I watched. I saw him beneath the
green branches. He was dead before he died. I saw it in the white
face o' him. Then he sank. He's dead. Sheumais is dead. Look
here, girl, I've always loved you. I swore the oath upon you.
You're mine. Sure, you're mine now, Katreen! It is loving you I am!
It will be a south wind for you from this day, muirnean mochree! See
here, I'll show you how I--"
"Back--back--_murderer_!"
"Be stopping that foolishness now, Katreen Macarthur! By the Book, I
am tired of it. I am loving you, and it's having you for mine I am!
And if you won't come to me like the dove to its mate, I'll come to
you like the hawk to the dove!"
With a spring he was upon her. In vain she strove to beat him back.
His arms held her as a stoat grips a rabbit.
He pulled her head back, and kissed her throat till the strangulating
breath sobbed against his ear. With a last despairing effort she
screamed the name of the dead man: "_Sheumais! Sheumais!
Sheumais!_" The man who struggled with her laughed.
"Ay, call away! The herrin' will be coming through the bracken as
soon as Sheumais comes to your call! Ah, it is mine you are now,
Katreen! He's dead and cold--an' you'd best have a living man--an'--"
She fell back, her balance lost in the sudden releasing. What did it
mean? Gloom still stood there, but as one frozen. Through the
darkness she saw, at last, that a hand gripped his shoulder; behind
him a black mass vaguely obtruded.
For some moments there was absolute silence. Then a hoarse voice
came out of the dark:
"You will be knowing now who it is, Gloom Achanna!"
The voice was that of Sheumais, who lay dead in the lochan. The
murderer shook as in a palsy. With a great effort, slowly he turned
his head. He saw a white splatch, the face of the corpse; in this
white splatch flamed two burning eyes, the eyes of the soul of the
brother whom he had slain.
He reeled, staggered as a blind man, and, free now of that awful
clasp, swayed to and fro as one drunken.
Slowly Sheumais raised an arm and pointed downward through the wood
toward the lochan. Still pointing, he moved swiftly forward.
With a cry like a beast, Gloom Achanna swung to one side, stumbled,
rose, and leaped into the darkness.
For some minutes Sheumais and Katreen stood, silent, apart, listening
to the crashing sound of his flight--the race of the murderer against
the pursuing shadow of the Grave.
A BEWITCHED SHIP
BY W. CLARK RUSSELL
_William Clark Russell, the son of Henry Russell, the composer of
"Cheer, Boys, Cheer" and other songs, was born in New York in 1844.
At the age of thirteen he entered the British merchant service and
followed the sea till twenty-one, after which he devoted himself to
story-writing. It is a common-place of criticism to say that no one
writes better sea stories than the author of the famous "Wreck of the
Grosvenor." Since 1890 he has lived at Bath, in the west of England.
The present story is taken from a volume entitled "On the Fo'k'sle
Head."_
A BEWITCHED SHIP
By W. CLARK RUSSELL
"About ten years ago," began my friend, Captain Green, "I went as
second mate of a ship named the 'Ocean King.' She'd been an old
Indiaman in her time, and had a poop and topgallant forecastle,
though alterations had knocked some of the dignity out of her. Her
channels had been changed into plates with dead-eyes above the rail,
and the eye missed the spread of the lower rigging that it naturally
sought in looking at a craft with a square stern and windows in it,
and checkered sides rounding out into curves, that made a complete
tub of the old hooker. Yet, spite of changes, the old-fashioned
grace would break through. She looked like a lady who has seen
better days, who has got to do work which servants did for her in the
times when she was well off, but who, let her set her hand to what
she will, makes you see that the breeding and the instincts are still
there, and that she's as little to be vulgarized by poverty and its
coarse struggles as she could be made a truer lady than she is by
money. Ships, like human beings, have their careers, and the close
of some of them is strange, and sometimes hard, I think.
"The 'Ocean King' had been turned into a collier, and I went second
mate of her when she was full up with coal for a South African port.
Yet, this ship, that was now carrying one of the dirtiest cargoes you
could name, barring phosphate manure, had been reckoned in her day a
fine passenger vessel, a noble Indiaman indeed--her tonnage was
something over eleven hundred--with a cuddy fitted up royally. Many
a freight of soldiers had she carried round the Cape, many an old
nabob had she conveyed--ay, and Indian potentates, who smoked out of
jeweled hookahs, and who were waited upon by crowds of black servants
in turbans and slippers. I used to moralize over her just as I would
over a tomb, when I had the watch and was alone and could let my
thoughts run loose.
"The sumptuous cabin trappings were all gone, and I seemed to smell
coal in the wind, even when my head was over the weather side, and
when the breeze that blew along came fresh across a thousand miles of
sea; but there was a good deal of the fittings left--fittings which,
I don't doubt, made the newspapers give a long account of this 'fine,
great ship' when she was launched--quite enough of them to enable a
man to reconstruct a picture of the cuddy of the 'Ocean King' as it
was in the days of her glory, when the soft oil-lamps shone bright on
the draped tables and sparkled on silver and glass; when the old
skipper, sitting with the mizzenmast behind him, would look, with his
red face and white hair, down the rows of ladies and gentlemen eating
and drinking, stewards running about, trays hanging from the deck
above, and globes full of gold-fish swinging to the roll of the
vessel as she swung stately, with her stunsails hanging out, over the
long blue swell, wrinkled by the wind. The ship is still afloat.
Where are the people she carried? The crews who have worked her?
The captains who have commanded her? There is nothing that should be
fuller of ghosts than an old ship; and I very well remember that when
I first visited the 'Victory,' at Portsmouth, and descended into her
cockpit, what I saw was not a well-preserved and cleanly length of
massive deck, but groups of wounded and bleeding and dying men
littering the dark floor, and the hatchway shadowed by groaning
figures handed below, while the smell of English, French, and Spanish
gunpowder, even down there, was so strong--phew! I could have spat
the flavor out!
"Well, the old 'Ocean King' had once upon a time been said to be
haunted. She had certainly been long enough afloat to own a hundred
stories, and she was so stanch and true that if ever a superstition
got into her there was no chance of its getting out again. I only
remember one of these yarns; it was told to me by the dockmaster, who
had been at sea for many years, was an old man, and knew the history
of all such craft as the 'Ocean King.' He said that, in '51, I think
it was, there had been a row among the crew: an Italian sailor
stabbed an Englishman, who bled to death. To avenge the Englishman's
death the rest of the crew, who were chiefly English, thrust the
Italian into the forepeak and let him lie there in darkness. When he
was asked for they reported that he had fallen overboard, and this
seems to have been believed. Whether the crew meant to starve him or
not is not certain; but, after he had been in the forepeak three or
four days, a fellow going behind the galley out of the way of the
wind to light his pipe--it being then four bells in the first
watch--came running into the forecastle, with his hair on end, and
the sweat pouring off his face, swearing he had seen the Italian's
ghost. This frightened the men prettily; some of them went down into
the forepeak, and found the Italian lying there dead, with a score of
rats upon him, which scampered off when the men dropped below.
During all the rest of the voyage his ghost was constantly seen,
sometimes at the lee wheel, sometimes astride of the flying-jibboom.
What was the end of it--I mean, whether the men confessed the murder,
and, if so, what became of them--the dockmaster said he didn't know.
But, be this as it may, I discovered shortly after we had begun our
voyage that the crew had got to hear of this story, and the chief
mate said it had been brought aboard by the carpenter, who had picked
it up from some of the dockyard laborers.
"I well recollect two uncomfortable circumstances; we sailed on a
Friday, and the able and ordinary seamen were thirteen in number, the
idlers and ourselves aft bringing up the ship's company to nineteen
souls! when, I suppose, in her prime the 'Ocean King' never left port
short of seventy or eighty seamen, not to mention stewards, cooks,
cooks' mates, butcher, butcher's mate, baker, and the rest of them.
But double topsail yards were now in; besides, I understood that the
vessel's masts had been reduced and her yards shortened, and we
carried stump fore and mizzen-topgallant masts.
"All being ready, a tug got hold of our tow-rope, and away we went
down the river and out to sea.
"I don't believe myself that any stories which had been told the men
about the ship impressed them much. Sailors are very superstitious,
but they are not to be scared till something has happened to frighten
them. Your merely telling them that there's a ghost aboard the ship
they're in won't alarm them till they've caught sight of the ghost.
But once let a man say to the others: 'There's a bloomin' sperrit in
this ship. Lay your head agin the forehatch, and you'll hear him
gnashing his teeth and rattlin' his chains,' and then let another man
go and listen, and swear, and perhaps very honestly, that he 'heerd
the noises plain,' and you'll have all hands in a funk, talking in
whispers, and going aloft in the dark nervously.
"In our ship nothing happened for some days. We were deep and slow,
and rolled along solemnly, the sea falling away from the vessel's
powerful round bows as from a rock. Pile what we could upon her,
with tacks aboard, staysails drawing, and the wind hitting her best
sailing point, we could seldom manage to get more than seven knots
out of her. One night I had the first watch. It was about two
bells. There was a nice wind, sea smooth, and a red moon crawling up
over our starboard beam. We were under all plain sail, leaning away
from the wind a trifle, and the water washed along under the bends in
lines through which the starlight ran glimmering.
"I was thinking over the five or six months' voyages which old wagons
after the pattern of this ship took in getting to India, when, seeing
a squall coming along, I sung out for hands to stand by the
main-royal and mizzen-topgallant halliards. It drove down dark, and
not knowing what was behind I ordered the main-royal to be clewed up
and furled. Two youngsters went aloft. By the time they were on the
yard the squall thinned, but I fancied there was another bearing
down, and thought it best to let the ordinary seamen roll the sail
up. On a sudden down they both trotted, hand over hand, leaving the
sail flapping in the clutch of the clew-lines.
"I roared out: 'What d'ye mean by coming down before you've furled
that sail?'
"They stood together in the main rigging, and one of them answered:
'Please, sir, there's a ghost somewhere up aloft on the
foretopsail-yard.'
"'A ghost, you fool!' I cried.
"'Yes, sir,' he answered. 'He says: "Jim, your mother wants yer." I
says: "What?" and he says: "Your mother wants yer," in the hollowest
o' voices. Dick here heard it. There's no one aloft forrard, sir.'
"I sung out to them to jump aloft again, and finding that they didn't
move I made a spring, on which they dropped like lightning on deck,
and began to beg and pray of me in the eagerest manner not to send
them aloft, as they were too frightened to hold on. Indeed, the
fellow named Jim actually began to shiver and cry when I threatened
him; so as the royal had to be furled I sent an able seaman aloft,
who, after rolling up the sail, came down and said that no voice had
called to him, and that he rather reckoned it was a bit of skylarking
on the part of the boys to get out of stowing the sail. However, I
noticed that the man was wonderfully quick over the job, and that
afterward the watch on deck stood talking in low voices in the waist.
"Jim was a fool of a youth, but Dick was a smart lad, aged about
nineteen, and good-looking, with a lively tongue, and I heard
afterward that he could spin a yarn to perfection all out of his
imagination. I called him to me, and asked him if he had really
heard a voice, and he swore he had.
"'Did it say,' said I, 'Jim, your mother wants you?'
"'Ay, sir,' he answered, with a bit of a shudder, 'as plain as you
yourself say it. It seemed to come off the foretop-gallant yard,
where I fancied I see something dark a-moving, but I was too
frightened to take particular notice.'
"Well, it was not long after this, about eleven o'clock in the
morning, that, the captain being on deck, the cook steps out of the
galley, comes walking along the poop, and going up to the skipper
touches his cap, and stands looking at him.
"'What d'ye want?' said the captain, eying him as if he took him to
be mad.
"'Didn't you call, sir?' says the cook.
"'Call!' cries the skipper. 'Certainly not.'
"The man looked stupid with surprise, and, muttering something to
himself, went forward. Ten minutes after he came up again to the
skipper, and says: 'Yes, sir!' as a man might who answers to a call.
The skipper began to swear at him, and called him a lunatic, and so
on; but the man, finding he was wrong again, grew white, and swore
that if he was on his death-bed he'd maintain that the captain had
called him twice.
"The skipper, who was a rather nervous man, turned to me, and said:
'What do you make of this, Mr. Green? I can't doubt the cook's word.
Who's calling him in my voice?'
"'Oh, it's some illusion, sir,' said I, feeling puzzled for all that.
"But the cook, with the tears actually standing in his eyes, declared
it was no illusion; he'd know the captain's voice if it was nine
miles off. And he then walked in a dazed way toward the forecastle,
singing out that whether the voice he had heard belonged to a ghost
or a Christian man, it might go on calling 'Cook!' for the next
twenty years without his taking further notice of it. This thing,
coming so soon after the call to Jim that had so greatly alarmed the
two ordinary seamen, made a great impression on the crew; and I never
regret anything more than that my position should have prevented me
from getting into their confidence, and learning their thoughts, for
there is no doubt I should have stowed away memories enough to serve
me for many a hearty laugh in after years.
"A few days rolled by without anything particular happening. One
night it came to my turn to have the first watch. It was a quiet
night, with wind enough to keep the sails still while the old ship
went drowsily rolling along her course to the African port. Suddenly
I heard a commotion forward, and fearing that some accident had
happened, I called out to know what the matter was. A voice
answered: 'Ghost or no ghost, there's somebody a-talking in the
forehold; come and listen, sir.' The silence that followed suggested
a good deal of alarm. I sang out as I approached the men, 'Perhaps
there's a stowaway below.'
"'It's no living voice,' was the reply; 'it sounds as if it comes
from a skelington.'
"I found a crowd of men standing in awed postures near the hatch, and
the most frightened of all looked to me to be the ordinary seaman
Dick, who had backed away on the other side of the hatch, and stood
looking on, leaning with his hands on his knees, and staring as if he
were fascinated. I waited a couple or three minutes, which, in a
business of this kind, seems a long time, and, hearing nothing, I was
going to ridicule the men for their nervousness, when a hollow voice
under the hatch said distinctly, 'It's a terrible thing to be a ghost
and not be able to get out.'
"I was greatly startled, and ran aft to tell the captain, who agreed
with me that there must be a stowaway in the hold, and that he had
gone mad. We both went forward, and the hatch was lifted, and we
looked on top of the coal; and I was then about to ask some of the
men to join me in a search in the forepeak, for upon my word I had no
taste single-handed for a job of that kind at such a moment, when the
voice said, 'There's no use looking, you'll never find me. I'm not
to be seen.'
"'Confound me!' cried the skipper, polishing his forehead with a
pocket-handkerchief, 'if ever I heard of such a thing. I'll tell you
what it is,' he shouted, looking into the hatch, 'dead men can't
talk, and so, as you're bound to be alive, you'd better come up out
of that, and smartly too--d'ye hear?--or you'll find this the worst
attempt at skylarking that was ever made.'
"There was a short silence, and you'd see all hands straining their
ears, for there was light enough for that, given out by a lantern one
of the men held.
"'You couldn't catch me because you couldn't see me,' said the voice
in a die-away tone, and this time it came from the direction of the
main hatch, as though it had flitted aft.
"'Well,' says the captain, 'may I be jiggered!' and without another
word he walked away on to the poop.
"I told the men to clap the hatches on again, and they did this in
double-quick time, evidently afraid that the ghost might pop up out
of the hold if they didn't mind their eye.
"All this made us very superstitious, from the captain down to the
boys. We talked it over in the cabin, and the mate was incredulous,
and disposed to ridicule me.
"'Any way,' said he, 'it's strange that this voice is only heard in
your watch. It's never favored me with any remarks. The creaking
and groaning of an old wooden ship is often like spoken words, and
what you've been hearing may be nothing but a deception of the ear.'
"'A deception in your eye,' cried the skipper. 'The timbers of an
old wooden ship may strain and creak in the Dutch language, but hang
me if they ever talked good, sensible English. However, I'm not
going to worry. For my part,' said he, with a nervous glance around
him, 'I don't believe in ghosts; whatever it is that's talking in the
hold may go on jawing, so long as he sticks to that, and don't
frighten the men with an ugly mug, nor come upon us for a man's
allowance.'
"'If it's anybody's ghost,' said I, 'it must be the Italian's, the
chap that was starved in the forepeak.'
"'I doubt that,' said the skipper. 'I didn't detect anything foreign
in what he said. To my ear it sounded more like Whitechapel than
Italiano.'
"Well, for another week we heard little more of the ghost. It's true
that one middle watch a chap I had sent aloft to loose the main-royal
had hardly stepped out of the lower rigging, after lingering in the
crosstrees to overhaul his clew-lines, when he comes rushing up to me
and cries out, 'I've been hailed from aloft, sir! a voice has just
sung out, "Tommy, jump aloft again that I may have a good look at
you!"'
"'Who's up there?' I asked him, staring into the gloom where the mast
and yards went towering.
"'There's no one up there, sir; I'll swear it. I was bound to see
him had any one been there,' he answered, evidently very much
frightened.
"It occurred to me that some one of the crew might be lying hid in
the top, and that if I could catch him I might find out who the ghost
was. So I jumped into the rigging and trotted aloft, keeping my eye
on the lee rigging, to make sure that no one descended by it. I
gained the top, but nobody was there. I mounted to the crosstrees,
but the deuce a sign of any one could I see. I came down, feeling
both foolish and scared; for you see I had heard the voice myself in
the hold; there was no question that there was a voice, belonging to
nobody knew what, knocking about the ship, and consequently it was
now impossible to help believing a man when he said he heard it.
"However, it was necessary to keep the men in heart, and this was not
to be done by captain and mates appearing scared; so I reasoned a bit
with the man, told him that there were no such things as ghosts, that
a voice was bound to come from a live person, because a spectre
couldn't possibly have lungs, those organs being of a perishable
nature, and then sent him forward, but no easier in his mind, I
suspect, than I was. Anyhow, I was glad when eight bells struck and
it was my turn to go below. But, as I have said, nothing much came
of this--at least, nothing that reached my ears. But not many nights
following the ship lay becalmed--there wasn't a breath of air, and
the sea lay smooth as polished jet. This time I had the middle watch
again. I was walking quietly up and down the poop, on the lookout
for a deeper shadow upon the sea to indicate the approach of wind,
when a man came up the ladder and said, 'There's some one a-talking
to the ship under the bows.'
"'Are you awake?' said I.
"'Heaven help me, as I stand here, sir,' exclaimed the fellow,
solemnly, 'if that there woice which talked in the hold t'other day
ain't now over the side.'
"I ran forward, and found most of the watch huddled together near the
starboard cathead. I peered over, and there was a dead silence.
"'What are you looking over that side for? I'm here!' said a thin,
faint voice, that seemed more in the air than in the sea.
"There!' exclaimed one of the seamen, in a hoarse whisper, 'that's
the third time. Whichever side we look, he's on the other.'
"'But there must be some one in the water,' said another man.
'Anybody see his houtline? cuss me if I couldn't swear I see a chap
swimmin' just now.'
"'No, no,' answered some one, gruffly, 'nothing but phosphorus, Joe,
and the right sort o' stuff, too, for if this ain't old Nick--'
"'You're a liar, Sam!' came the voice clear, and, as one could swear,
plain from over the side.
"There was a general recoil, and a sort of groan ran among the men.
"At the same moment I collared a figure standing near me, and slued
him round to bring his face fair to the starlight, clear of the
staysail. 'Come you along with me, Master Dick,' said I; and I
marched him off the forecastle, along the main deck, and up on to the
poop. 'So _you're_ the ghost, eh?' said I. 'Why, to have kept your
secret you should have given my elbow a wider berth. No wonder the
voice only makes observations in my watch. You're too lazy, I
suppose, to leave your hammock to try your wonderful power on the
mate, eh? Now see here,' said I, finding him silent, and noticing
how white his face glimmered to the stars, 'I know you're the man, so
you'd better confess. Own the truth and I'll keep your secret,
providing you belay all further tricks of the same kind; deny that
you're the ghost and I'll speak to the captain and set the men upon
you.'
"This fairly frightened him. 'Well, sir, it's true; I'm the voice,
sir; but for God's sake keep the secret, sir. The men 'ud have my
life if they found out that it was me as scared them.'
"This confession was what I needed, for though when standing pretty
close to him on the forecastle I could have sworn that it was he who
uttered the words which perplexed and awed the sailors, yet so
perfect was the deception, so fine, in short, was his skill as a
ventriloquist that, had he stoutly denied and gone on denying that he
was the 'voice,' I should have believed him and continued sharing in
the wonder and superstition of the crew. I kept his secret as I
promised; but, somehow or other, it leaked out in time that he could
deceive the ear by apparently pitching his voice among the rigging,
or under the deck, or over the side, though the discovery was not
made until the 'ghost' had for a long time ceased to trouble the
ship's company, and until the men's superstitious awe had faded
somewhat, and they had recovered their old cheerfulness. We then
sent for Dick to the cabin, where he gave us a real entertainment as
a ventriloquist, imitating all sorts of animals, and producing sounds
as of women in distress and men singing out for help, in the berths;
indeed, such was the skill that I'd often see the skipper and mate
turning startled to look in the direction whence the voices proceeded.
"He made his peace with the men by amusing them in the same way; so
that, instead of getting the rope's ending aft and the pummeling
forward which he deserved, he ended as a real and general favorite,
and one of the most amusing fellows that a man ever was shipmate
with. I used to tell him that if he chose to perform ashore, he was
sure to make plenty of money, since such ventriloquial powers as his
was the rarest thing in the world; and I'd sometimes fancy he meant
to take my advice. But whether he died or kept on going to sea I
don't know, for after he left the ship I never saw nor heard of him
again."
THE SIGNAL-MAN
BY CHARLES DICKENS
_Charles Dickens (born 1812, died 1870) has been acknowledged as the
creator of the modern novel. Says David Christie Murray, a popular
novelist: "There is not a writer of fiction at this hour, in any land
where fiction is a recognized trade or art, who is not, whether he
knows it and owns it, or no, largely influenced by Dickens."_
_"The Signal-Man" has been frequently selected by critics as an
example of Dickens's ability with the short-story form._
THE SIGNAL-MAN
By CHARLES DICKENS
"Halloa! Below there!"
When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the
door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short
pole. One would have thought, considering the nature of the ground,
that he could not have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but
instead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the steep
cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself about, and looked
down the Line. There was something remarkable in his manner of doing
so, though I could not have said for my life what. But I know it was
remarkable enough to attract my notice, even though his figure was
foreshortened and shadowed, down in the deep trench, and mine was
high above him, so steeped in the glow of an angry sunset that I had
shaded my eyes with my hand before I saw him at all.
"Halloa! Below!"
From looking down the Line, he turned himself about again, and,
raising his eyes, saw my figure high above him.
"Is there any path by which I can come down and speak to you?"
He looked up at me without replying, and I at him without pressing
him too soon with a repetition of my idle question. Just then there
came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing into a
violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused me to start back,
as though it had force to draw me down. When such vapor as rose to
my height from this rapid train had passed me, and was skimming away
over the landscape, I looked down again, and saw him refurling the
flag he had shown while the train went by.
I repeated my inquiry. After a pause, during which he seemed to
regard me with fixed attention, he motioned with his rolled-up flag
toward a point on my level, some two or three hundred yards distant.
I called down to him, "All right!" and made for that point. There,
by dint of looking closely about me, I found a rough zigzag
descending path notched out, which I followed.
The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually precipitate. It was
made through a clammy stone, that became oozier and wetter as I went
down. For these reasons, I found the way long enough to give me time
to recall a singular air of reluctance or compulsion with which he
had pointed out the path.
When I came down low enough upon the zigzag descent to see him again,
I saw that he was standing between the rails on the way by which the
train had lately passed, in an attitude as if he were waiting for me
to appear. He had his left hand at his chin, and that left elbow
rested on his right hand, crossed over his breast. His attitude was
one of such expectation and watchfulness that I stopped a moment,
wondering at it.
I resumed my downward way, and stepping out upon the level of the
railroad, and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark, sallow
man, with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows. His post was in as
solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw. On either side, a
dripping-wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of
sky; the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this
great dungeon; the shorter perspective in the other direction
terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a
black tunnel, in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous,
depressing, and forbidding air. So little sunlight ever found its
way to this spot that it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much
cold wind rushed through it that it struck chill to me, as if I had
left the natural world.
Before he stirred, I was near enough to him to have touched him. Not
even then removing his eyes from mine, he stepped back one step, and
lifted his hand.
This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it had riveted my
attention when I looked down from up yonder. A visitor was a rarity,
I should suppose; not an unwelcome rarity, I hoped? In me, he merely
saw a man who had been shut up within narrow limits all his life, and
who, being at last set free, had a newly-awakened interest in these
great works. To such purpose I spoke to him; but I am far from sure
of the terms I used; for, besides that I am not happy in opening any
conversation, there was something in the man that daunted me.
He directed a most curious look toward the red light near the
tunnel's mouth, and looked all about it, as if something were missing
from it, and then looked at me.
That light was part of his charge? Was it not?
He answered in a low voice: "Don't you know it is?"
The monstrous thought came into my mind, as I perused the fixed eyes
and the saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a man. I have
speculated since, whether there may have been infection in his mind.
In my turn, I stepped back. But in making the action, I detected in
his eyes some latent fear of me. This put the monstrous thought to
flight.
"You look at me," I said, forcing a smile, "as if you had a dread of
me."
"I was doubtful," he returned, "whether I had seen you before."
"Where?"
He pointed to the red light he had looked at.
"There?" I said.
Intently watchful of me, he replied (but without sound), "Yes."
"My good fellow, what should I do there? However, be that as it may,
I never was there, you may swear."
"I think I may," he rejoined. "Yes; I am sure I may,"
His manner cleared, like my own. He replied to my remarks with
readiness, and in well-chosen words. Had he much to do there? Yes;
that was to say, he had enough responsibility to bear; but exactness
and watchfulness were what was required of him, and of actual
work--manual labor--he had next to none. To change that signal, to
trim those lights, and to turn this iron handle now and then, was all
he had to do under that head. Regarding those many long and lonely
hours of which I seemed to make so much, he could only say that the
routine of his life had shaped itself into that form, and he had
grown used to it. He had taught himself a language down here--if
only to know by sight, and to have formed his own crude ideas of its
pronunciation, could be called learning it. He had also worked at
fractions and decimals, and tried a little algebra; but he was, and
had been as a boy, a poor hand at figures. Was it necessary for him
when on duty always to remain in that channel of damp air, and could
he never rise into the sunshine from between those high stone walls?
Why, that depended upon times and circumstances. Under some
conditions there would be less upon the Line than under others, and
the same held good as to certain hours of the day and night. In
bright weather, he did choose occasions for getting a little above
these lower shadows; but, being at all times liable to be called by
his electric bell, and at such times listening for it with redoubled
anxiety, the relief was less than I would suppose.
He took me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk for an
official book in which he had to make certain entries, a telegraphic
instrument with its dial, face, and needles, and the little bell of
which he had spoken. On my trusting that he would excuse the remark
that he had been well educated, and (I hoped I might say without
offense), perhaps educated above that station, he observed that
instances of slight incongruity in such wise would rarely be found
wanting among large bodies of men; that he had heard it was so in
workhouses, in the police force, even in that last desperate
resource, the army; and that he knew it was so, more or less, in any
great railway staff. He had been, when young (if I could believe it,
sitting in that hut--he scarcely could), a student of natural
philosophy, and had attended lectures; but he had run wild, misused
his opportunities, gone down, and never risen again. He had no
complaint to offer about that. He had made his bed, and he lay upon
it. It was far too late to make another.
All that I have here condensed he said in a quiet manner, with his
grave dark regards divided between me and the fire. He threw in the
word, "Sir," from time to time, and especially when he referred to
his youth--as though to request me to understand that he claimed to
be nothing but what I found him. He was several times interrupted by
the little bell, and had to read off messages, and send replies.
Once he had to stand without the door, and display a flag as a train
passed, and make some verbal communication to the driver. In the
discharge of his duties, I observed him to be remarkably exact and
vigilant, breaking off his discourse at a syllable, and remaining
silent until what he had to do was done.
In a word, I should have set this man down as one of the safest of
men to be employed in that capacity, but for the circumstance that
while he was speaking to me he twice broke off with a fallen color,
turned his face toward the little bell when it did not ring, opened
the door of the hut (which was kept shut to exclude the unhealthy
damp), and looked out toward the red light near the mouth of the
tunnel. On both of those occasions, he came back to the fire with
the inexplicable air upon him which I had remarked, without being
able to define, when we were so far asunder.
Said I, when I rose to leave him, "You almost make me think that I
have met with a contented man."
(I am afraid I must acknowledge that I said it to lead him on.)
"I believe I used to be so," he rejoined, in the low voice in which
he had first spoken; "but I am troubled, sir, I am troubled."
He would have recalled the words if he could. He had said them,
however, and I took them up quickly.
"With what? What is your trouble?"
"It is very difficult to impart, sir. It is very, very difficult to
speak of. If ever you make me another visit, I will try to tell you."
"But I expressly intend to make you another visit. Say, when shall
it be?"
"I go off early in the morning, and I shall be on again at ten
to-morrow night, sir."
"I will come at eleven."
He thanked me, and went out at the door with me. "I'll show my white
light, sir," he said, in his peculiar low voice, "till you have found
the way up. When you have found it, don't call out! And when you
are at the top, don't call out!"
His manner seemed to make the place strike colder to me, but I said
no more than, "Very well."
"And when you come down to-morrow night, don't call out! Let me ask
you a parting question. What made you cry, 'Halloa! Below there!'
to-night?"
"Heaven knows," said I. "I cried something to that effect--"
"Not to that effect, sir. Those were the very words. I know them
well."
"Admit those were the very words. I said them, no doubt, because I
saw you below."
"For no other reason?"
"What other reason could I possibly have?"
"You had no feeling that they were conveyed to you in any
supernatural way?"
"No."
He wished me good-night, and held up his light. I walked by the side
of the down Line of rails (with a very disagreeable sensation of a
train coming behind me) until I found the path. It was easier to
mount than to descend, and I got back to my inn without any adventure.
Punctual to my appointment, I placed my foot on the first notch of
the zigzag next night, as the distant clocks were striking eleven.
He was waiting for me at the bottom, with his white light on. "I
have not called out," I said, when we came close together; "may I
speak now?"
"By all means, sir."
"Good-night, then, and here's my hand."
"Good-night, sir, and here's mine."
With that we walked side by side to his box, entered it, closed the
door, and sat down by the fire.
"I have made up my mind, sir," he began, bending forward as soon as
we were seated, and speaking in a tone but a little above a whisper,
"that you shall not have to ask me twice what troubles me. I took
you for some one else, yesterday evening. That troubles me."
"That mistake?"
"No. That some one else."
"Who is it?"
"I don't know."
"Like me?"
"I don't know. I never saw the face. The left arm is across the
face, and the right arm is waved--violently waved. This way."
I followed his action with my eyes, and it was the action of an arm
gesticulating, with the utmost passion and vehemence:
"For God's sake, clear the way!"
"One moonlight night," said the man, "I was sitting here, when I
heard a voice cry, 'Halloa! Below there!' I started up, looked from
that door, and saw this Some one else standing by the red light near
the tunnel, waving as I just now showed you. The voice seemed hoarse
with shouting, and it cried, 'Look out! Look out!' And then again,
'Halloa! Below there! Look out!' I caught up my lamp, turned it on
red, and ran toward the figure, calling, 'What's wrong? What has
happened? Where?' It stood just outside the blackness of the
tunnel. I advanced so close upon it that I wondered at its keeping
the sleeve across its eyes. I ran right up at it, and had my hand
stretched out to pull the sleeve away, when it was gone."
"Into the tunnel?" said I.
"No. I ran on into the tunnel, five hundred yards. I stopped, and
held my lamp above my head, and saw the figures of the measured
distance, and saw the wet stains stealing down the walls and
trickling through the arch. I ran out again faster than I had run in
(for I had a mortal abhorrence of the place upon me), and I looked
all round the red light with my own red light, and I went up the iron
ladder to the gallery atop of it, and I came down again, and ran back
here. I telegraphed both ways, 'An alarm has been given. Is
anything wrong?' The answer came back, both ways, 'All well.'"
Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine, I
showed him how that this figure must be a deception of his sense of
sight; and how that figures, originating in disease of the delicate
nerves that minister to the functions of the eye, were known to have
often troubled patients, some of whom had become conscious of the
nature of their affliction, and had even proved it by experiments
upon themselves. "As to an imaginary cry," said I, "do but listen
for a moment to the wind in this unnatural valley while we speak so
low, and to the wild harp it makes of the telegraph wires."
That was all very well, he returned, after we had sat listening for a
while, and he ought to know something of the wind and the wires--he
who so often passed long winter nights there, alone and watching.
But he would beg to remark that he had not finished.
I asked his pardon, and he slowly added these words, touching my arm:
"Within six hours after the Appearance, the memorable accident on
this Line happened, and within ten hours the dead and wounded were
brought along through the tunnel over the spot where the figure had
stood."
A disagreeable shudder crept over me, but I did my best against it.
It was not to be denied, I rejoined, that this was a remarkable
coincidence, calculated deeply to impress his mind. But it was
unquestionable that remarkable coincidences did continually occur,
and they must be taken into account in dealing with such a subject.
Though to be sure I must admit, I added (for I thought I saw that he
was going to bring the objection to bear upon me), men of common
sense did not allow much for coincidences in making the ordinary
calculations of life.
He again begged to remark that he had not finished.
I again begged his pardon for being betrayed into interruptions.
"This," he said, again laying his hand upon my arm, and glancing over
his shoulder with hollow eyes, "was just a year ago. Six or seven
months passed, and I had recovered from the surprise and shock, when
one morning, as the day was breaking, I, standing at the door, looked
toward the red light, and saw the spectre again." He stopped, with a
fixed look at me.
"Did it cry out?"
"No. It was silent."
"Did it wave its arm?"
"No. It leaned against the shaft of the light, with both hands
before the face. Like this."
Once more I followed his action with my eyes. It was an action of
mourning. I have seen such an attitude in stone figures on tombs.
"Did you go up to it?"
"I came in and sat down, partly to collect my thoughts, partly
because it had turned me faint. When I went to the door again,
daylight was above me, and the ghost was gone."
"But nothing followed? Nothing came of this?"
He touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice or thrice, giving
a ghastly nod each time.
"That very day, as a train came out of the tunnel, I noticed, at a
carriage window on my side, what looked like a confusion of hands and
heads, and something waved. I saw it just in time to signal the
driver, Stop! He shut off, and put his brake on, but the train
drifted past here a hundred and fifty yards or more. I ran after it,
and, as I went along, heard terrible screams and cries. A beautiful
young lady had died instantaneously in one of the compartments, and
was brought in here, and laid down on this floor between us."
Involuntarily I pushed my chair back, as I looked from the boards at
which he pointed to himself.
"True, sir. True. Precisely as it happened, so I tell it you."
I could think of nothing to say, to any purpose, and my mouth was
very dry. The wind and the wires took up the story with a long
lamenting wail.
He resumed. "Now, sir, mark this, and judge how my mind is troubled.
The spectre came back a week ago. Ever since, it has been there, now
and again, by fits and starts."
"At the light?"
"At the Danger-light."
"What does it seem to do?"
He repeated, if possible with increased passion and vehemence, that
former gesticulation of, "For God's sake, clear the way!"
Then he went on. "I have no peace or rest for it. It calls to me,
for many minutes together, in an agonized manner, 'Below there! Look
out! Look out!' It stands waving to me. It rings my little bell--"
I caught at that.
"Did it ring your bell yesterday evening when I was here, and you
went to the door?"
"Twice."
"Why, see," said I, "how your imagination misleads you. My eyes were
on the bell, and my ears were open to the bell, and if I am a living
man, it did not ring at those times. No, nor at any other time,
except when it was rung in the natural course of physical things by
the station communicating with you."
He shook his head. "I have never made a mistake as to that yet, sir.
I have never confused the spectre's ring with the man's. The ghost's
ring is a strange vibration in the bell that it derives from nothing
else, and I have not asserted that the bell stirs to the eye. I
don't wonder that you failed to hear it. But _I_ heard it."
"And did the spectre seem to be there, when you looked out?"
"It was there."
"Both times?"
He repeated firmly: "Both times."
"Will you come to the door with me, and look for it now?"
He bit his under lip as though he were somewhat unwilling, but arose.
I opened the door, and stood on the step, while he stood in the
doorway. There was the Danger-light. There was the dismal mouth of
the tunnel. There were the high, wet stone walls of the cutting.
There were the stars above them.
"Do you see it?" I asked him, taking particular note of his face.
His eyes were prominent and strained, but not very much more so,
perhaps, than my own had been when I had directed them earnestly
toward the same spot.
"No," he answered. "It is not there."
"Agreed," said I.
We went in again, shut the door, and resumed our seats. I was
thinking how best to improve this advantage, if it might be called
one, when he took up the conversation in such a matter-of-course way,
so assuming that there could be no serious question of fact between
us, that I felt myself placed in the weakest of positions.
"By this time you will fully understand, sir," he said, "that what
troubles me so dreadfully is the question, What does the spectre
mean?"
I was not sure, I told him, that I did fully understand.
"What is its warning against?" he said, ruminating, with his eyes on
the fire, and only by times turning them on me. "What is the danger?
Where is the danger? There is danger overhanging somewhere on the
Line. Some dreadful calamity will happen. It is not to be doubted
this third time, after what has gone before. But surely this is a
cruel haunting of _me_. What can I do?"
He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops from his heated
forehead.
"If I telegraph Danger, on either side of me, or on both, I can give
no reason for it," he went on, wiping the palms of his hands. "I
should get into trouble, and do no good. They would think I was mad.
This is the way it would work--Message: 'Danger! Take care!'
Answer: 'What Danger? Where?' Message: 'Don't know. But, for God's
sake, take care!' They would displace me. What else could they do?"
His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental torture
of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an
unintelligible responsibility involving life.
"When it first stood under the Danger-light," he went on, putting his
dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands outward across
and across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress, "why not
tell me where that accident was to happen--if it must happen? Why
not tell me how it could be averted--if it could have been averted?
When on its second coming it hid its face, why not tell me, instead,
'She is going to die. Let them keep her at home'? If it came, on
those two occasions, only to show me that its warnings were true, and
so to prepare me for the third, why not warn me plainly now? And I,
Lord help me! a mere poor signal-man on this solitary station! Why
not go to somebody with credit to be believed, and power to act?"
When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man's sake, as
well as for the public safety, what I had to do for the time was to
compose his mind. Therefore, setting aside all question of reality
or unreality between us, I represented to him that whoever thoroughly
discharged his duty must do well, and that at least it was his
comfort that he understood his duty, though he did not understand
these confounding Appearances. In this effort I succeeded far better
than in the attempt to reason him out of his conviction. He became
calm; the occupations incidental to his post as the night advanced
began to make larger demands on his attention: and I left him at two
in the morning. I had offered to stay through the night, but he
would not hear of it.
That I more than once looked back at the red light as I ascended the
pathway, that I did not like the red light, and that I should have
slept but poorly if my bed had been under it, I see no reason to
conceal. Nor did I like the two sequences of the accident and the
dead girl. I see no reason to conceal that either.
But what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration how ought I to
act, having become the recipient of this disclosure? I had proved
the man to be intelligent, vigilant, painstaking, and exact; but how
long might he remain so, in his state of mind? Though in a
subordinate position, still he held a most important trust, and would
I (for instance) like to stake my own life on the chances of his
continuing to execute it with precision?
Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something
treacherous in my communicating what he had told me to his superiors
in the Company, without first being plain with himself and proposing
a middle course to him, I ultimately resolved to offer to accompany
him (otherwise keeping his secret for the present) to the wisest
medical practitioner we could hear of in those parts, and to take his
opinion. A change in his time of duty would come round next night,
he had apprised me, and he would be off an hour or two after sunrise,
and on again soon after sunset. I had appointed to return
accordingly.
Next evening was a lovely evening, and I walked out early to enjoy
it. The sun was not yet quite down when I traversed the field-path
near the top of the deep cutting. I would extend my walk for an
hour, I said to myself, half an hour on and half an hour back, and it
would then be time to go to my signal-man's box.
Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and mechanically
looked down, from the point from which I had first seen him. I can
not describe the thrill that seized upon me, when, close at the mouth
of the tunnel, I saw the appearance of a man, with his left sleeve
across his eyes, passionately waving his right arm.
The nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment, for in a
moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed, and that
there was a little group of other men, standing at a short distance,
to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made. The
Danger-light was not yet lighted. Against its shaft, a little low
hut, entirely new to me, had been made of some wooden supports and
tarpaulin. It looked no bigger than a bed.
With an irresistible sense that something was wrong--with a flashing
self-reproachful fear that fatal mischief had come of my leaving the
man there, and causing no one to be sent to overlook or correct what
he did--I descended the notched path with all the speed I could make.
"What is the matter?" I asked the men.
"Signal-man killed this morning, sir."
"Not the man belonging to that box?"
"Yes, sir."
"Not the man I know?"
"You will recognize him, sir, if you knew him," said the man who
spoke for the others, solemnly uncovering his own head, and raising
an end of the tarpaulin, "for his face is quite composed."
"Oh, how did this happen, how did this happen?" I asked, turning from
one to another as the hut closed in again.
"He was cut down by an engine, sir. No man in England knew his work
better. But somehow he was not clear of the outer rail. It was just
at broad day. He had struck the light, and had the lamp in his hand.
As the engine came out of the tunnel, his back was toward her, and
she cut him down. That man drove her, and was showing how it
happened. Show the gentleman, Tom."
The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back to his former
place at the mouth of the tunnel.
"Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir," he said, "I saw him at
the end, like as if I saw him down a perspective-glass. There was no
time to check speed, and I knew him to be very careful. As he didn't
seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were running
down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call."
"What did you say?"
"I said, 'Below there! Look out! Look out! For God's sake, clear
the way!'"
I started.
"Ah! it was a dreadful time, sir. I never left off calling to him.
I put this arm before my eyes not to see, and I waved this arm to the
last; but it was no use."
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its curious
circumstances more than on any other, I may, in closing it, point out
the coincidence that the warning of the engine-driver included, not
only the words which the unfortunate signal-man had repeated to me as
haunting him, but also the words which I myself--not he--had
attached, and that only in my own mind, to the gesticulation he
imitated.
THE FOUR-FIFTEEN EXPRESS
BY AMELIA B. EDWARDS
_Amelia Blandford Edwards, the daughter of an English officer, was
born in London in 1831 and died in 1892. Though principally known to
fame as an Egyptologist of note, she began publishing novels in 1864,
among them being "Debenham's Vow," "Miss Carew, and Other Tales" and
"Lord Brackenbury." "The Four-Fifteen Express" was published at the
height of her popularity as a writer of fiction. Miss Edwards
lectured in the United States in 1889-90._
THE FOUR-FIFTEEN EXPRESS
By AMELIA B. EDWARDS
The events which I am about to relate took place between nine and ten
years ago. Sebastopol had fallen in the early spring, the peace of
Paris had been concluded since March, our commercial relations with
the Russian Empire were but recently renewed; and I, returning home
after my first northward journey since the war, was well pleased with
the prospect of spending the month of December under the hospitable
and thoroughly English roof of my excellent friend, Jonathan Jelf,
Esq., of Dumbleton Manor, Clayborough, East Anglia. Traveling in the
interests of the well-known firm in which it is my lot to be a junior
partner, I had been called upon to visit not only the capitals of
Russia and Poland, but had found it also necessary to pass some weeks
among the trading ports of the Baltic; whence it came that the year
was already far spent before I again set foot on English soil, and
that, instead of shooting pheasants with him, as I had hoped, in
October, I came to be my friend's guest during the more genial
Christmas-tide.
My voyage over, and a few days given up to business in Liverpool and
London, I hastened down to Clayborough with all the delight of a
schoolboy whose holidays are at hand. My way lay by the Great East
Anglian line as far as Clayborough station, where I was to be met by
one of the Dumbleton carriages and conveyed across the remaining nine
miles of country. It was a foggy afternoon, singularly warm for the
4th of December, and I had arranged to leave London by the 4:15
express. The early darkness of winter had already closed in; the
lamps were lighted in the carriages; a clinging damp dimmed the
windows, adhered to the door-handles, and pervaded all the
atmosphere; while the gas-jets at the neighboring book-stand diffused
a luminous haze that only served to make the gloom of the terminus
more visible. Having arrived some seven minutes before the starting
of the train, and, by the connivance of the guard, taken sole
possession of an empty compartment, I lighted my traveling-lamp, made
myself particularly snug, and settled down to the undisturbed
enjoyment of a book and a cigar. Great, therefore, was my
disappointment when, at the last moment, a gentleman came hurrying
along the platform, glanced into my carriage, opened the locked door
with a private key, and stepped in.
It struck me at the first glance that I had seen him before--a tall,
spare man, thin-lipped, light-eyed, with an ungraceful stoop in the
shoulders, and scant gray hair worn somewhat long upon the collar.
He carried a light waterproof coat, an umbrella, and a large brown
japanned deed-box, which last he placed under the seat. This done,
he felt carefully in his breast-pocket, as if to make certain of the
safety of his purse or pocketbook, laid his umbrella in the netting
overhead, spread the waterproof across his knees, and exchanged his
hat for a traveling-cap of some Scotch material. By this time the
train was moving out of the station and into the faint gray of the
wintry twilight beyond.
I now recognized my companion. I recognized him from the moment when
he removed his hat and uncovered the lofty, furrowed, and somewhat
narrow brow beneath. I had met him, as I distinctly remembered, some
three years before, at the very house for which, in all probability,
he was now bound, like myself. His name was Dwerrihouse; he was a
lawyer by profession, and, if I was not greatly mistaken, was first
cousin to the wife of my host. I knew also that he was a man
eminently "well-to-do," both as regarded his professional and private
means. The Jelfs entertained him with that sort of observant
courtesy which falls to the lot of the rich relation, the children
made much of him, and the old butler, albeit somewhat surly "to the
general," treated him with deference. I thought, observing him by
the vague mixture of lamplight and twilight, that Mrs. Jelf's cousin
looked all the worse for the three years' wear and tear which had
gone over his head since our last meeting. He was very pale, and had
a restless light in his eye that I did not remember to have observed
before. The anxious lines, too, about his mouth were deepened, and
there was a cavernous, hollow look about his cheeks and temples which
seemed to speak of sickness or sorrow. He had glanced at me as he
came in, but without any gleam of recognition in his face. Now he
glanced again, as I fancied, somewhat doubtfully. When he did so for
the third or fourth time I ventured to address him.
"Mr. John Dwerrihouse, I think?"
"That is my name," he replied.
"I had the pleasure of meeting you at Dumbleton about three years
ago."
Mr. Dwerrihouse bowed.
"I thought I knew your face," he said; "but your name, I regret to
say--"
"Langford--William Langford. I have known Jonathan Jelf since we
were boys together at Merchant Taylor's, and I generally spend a few
weeks at Dumbleton in the shooting season. I suppose we are bound
for the same destination?"
"Not if you are on your way to the manor," he replied. "I am
traveling upon business--rather troublesome business too--while you,
doubtless, have only pleasure in view."
"Just so. I am in the habit of looking forward to this visit as to
the brightest three weeks in all the year."
"It is a pleasant house," said Mr. Dwerrihouse.
"The pleasantest I know."
"And Jelf is thoroughly hospitable."
"The best and kindest fellow in the world!"
"They have invited me to spend Christmas week with them," pursued Mr.
Dwerrihouse, after a moment's pause.
"And you are coming?"
"I can not tell. It must depend on the issue of this business which
I have in hand. You have heard perhaps that we are about to
construct a branch line from Blackwater to Stockbridge."
I explained that I had been for some months away from England, and
had therefore heard nothing of the contemplated improvement.
Mr. Dwerrihouse smiled complacently.
"It will be an improvement," he said, "a great improvement.
Stockbridge is a flourishing town, and needs but a more direct
railway communication with the metropolis to become an important
centre of commerce. This branch was my own idea. I brought the
project before the board, and have myself superintended the execution
of it up to the present time."
"You are an East Anglian director, I presume?"
"My interest in the company," replied Mr. Dwerrihouse, "is threefold.
I am a director, I am a considerable shareholder, and, as head of the
firm of Dwerrihouse, Dwerrihouse & Craik, I am the company's
principal solicitor."
Loquacious, self-important, full of his pet project, and apparently
unable to talk on any other subject, Mr. Dwerrihouse then went on to
tell of the opposition he had encountered and the obstacles he had
overcome in the cause of the Stockbridge branch. I was entertained
with a multitude of local details and local grievances. The rapacity
of one squire, the impracticability of another, the indignation of
the rector whose glebe was threatened, the culpable indifference of
the Stockbridge townspeople, who could not be brought to see that
their most vital interests hinged upon a junction with the Great East
Anglian line; the spite of the local newspaper, and the unheard-of
difficulties attending the Common question, were each and all laid
before me with a circumstantiality that possessed the deepest
interest for my excellent fellow-traveler, but none whatever for
myself. From these, to my despair, he went on to more intricate
matters: to the approximate expenses of construction per mile; to the
estimates sent in by different contractors; to the probable traffic
returns of the new line; to the provisional clauses of the new act as
enumerated in Schedule D of the company's last half-yearly report;
and so on and on and on, till my head ached and my attention flagged
and my eyes kept closing in spite of every effort that I made to keep
them open. At length I was roused by these words:
"Seventy-five thousand pounds, cash down."
"Seventy-five thousand pounds, cash down," I repeated, in the
liveliest tone I could assume. "That is a heavy sum."
"A heavy sum to carry here," replied Mr. Dwerrihouse, pointing
significantly to his breast-pocket, "but a mere fraction of what we
shall ultimately have to pay."
"You do not mean to say that you have seventy-five thousand pounds at
this moment upon your person?" I exclaimed.
"My good sir, have I not been telling you so for the last half-hour?"
said Mr. Dwerrihouse, testily. "That money has to be paid over at
half-past eight o'clock this evening, at the office of Sir Thomas's
solicitors, on completion of the deed of sale."
"But how will you get across by night from Blackwater to Stockbridge
with seventy-five thousand pounds in your pock it?"
"To Stockbridge!" echoed the lawyer. "I find I have made myself very
imperfectly understood. I thought I had explained how this sum only
carries us as far as Mallingford--the first stage, as it were, of our
journey--and how our route from Blackwater to Mallingford lies
entirely through Sir Thomas Liddell's property."
"I beg your pardon," I stammered. "I fear my thoughts were
wandering. So you only go as far as Mallingford to-night?"
"Precisely. I shall get a conveyance from the 'Blackwater Arms.'
And you?"
"Oh, Jelf sends a trap to meet me at Clayborough! Can I be the
bearer of any message from you?"
"You may say, if you please, Mr. Langford, that I wished I could have
been your companion all the way, and that I will come over, if
possible, before Christmas."
"Nothing more?"
Mr. Dwerrihouse smiled grimly. "Well," he said, "you may tell my
cousin that she need not burn the hall down in my honor this time,
and that I shall be obliged if she will order the blue-room chimney
to be swept before I arrive."
"That sounds tragic. Had you a conflagration on the occasion of your
last visit to Dumbleton?"
"Something like it. There had been no fire lighted in my bedroom
since the spring, the flue was foul, and the rooks had built in it;
so when I went up to dress for dinner I found the room full of smoke
and the chimney on fire. Are we already at Blackwater?"
The train had gradually come to a pause while Mr. Dwerrihouse was
speaking, and, on putting my head out of the window, I could see the
station some few hundred yards ahead. There was another train before
us blocking the way, and the guard was making use of the delay to
collect the Blackwater tickets. I had scarcely ascertained our
position when the ruddy-faced official appeared at our carriage door.
"Tickets, sir!" said he.
"I am for Clayborough," I replied, holding out the tiny pink card.
He took it, glanced at it by the light of his little lantern, gave it
back, looked, as I fancied, somewhat sharply at my fellow-traveler,
and disappeared.
"He did not ask for yours," I said, with some surprise.
"They never do," replied Mr. Dwerrihouse; "they all know me, and of
course I travel free."
"Blackwater! Blackwater!" cried the porter, running along the
platform beside us as we glided into the station.
Mr. Dwerrihouse pulled out his deed-box, put his traveling-cap in his
pocket, resumed his hat, took down his umbrella, and prepared to be
gone.
"Many thanks, Mr. Langford, for your society," he said, with
old-fashioned courtesy. "I wish you a good-evening."
"Good-evening," I replied, putting out my hand.
But he either did not see it or did not choose to see it, and,
slightly lifting his hat, stepped out upon the platform. Having done
this, he moved slowly away and mingled with the departing crowd.
Leaning forward to watch him out of sight, I trod upon something
which proved to be a cigar-case. It had fallen, no doubt, from the
pocket of his waterproof coat, and was made of dark morocco leather,
with a silver monogram upon the side. I sprang out of the carriage
just as the guard came up to lock me in.
"Is there one minute to spare?" I asked, eagerly. "The gentleman who
traveled down with me from town has dropped his cigar-case; he is not
yet out of the station."
"Just a minute and a half, sir," replied the guard. "You must be
quick."
I dashed along the platform as fast as my feet could carry me. It
was a large station, and Mr. Dwerrihouse had by this time got more
than half-way to the farther end.
I, however, saw him distinctly, moving slowly with the stream. Then,
as I drew nearer, I saw that he had met some friend, that they were
talking as they walked, that they presently fell back somewhat from
the crowd and stood aside in earnest conversation. I made straight
for the spot where they were waiting. There was a vivid gas-jet just
above their heads, and the light fell full upon their faces. I saw
both distinctly--the face of Mr. Dwerrihouse and the face of his
companion. Running, breathless, eager as I was, getting in the way
of porters and passengers, and fearful every instant lest I should
see the train going on without me, I yet observed that the new-comer
was considerably younger and shorter than the director, that he was
sandy-haired, mustachioed, small-featured, and dressed in a close-cut
suit of Scotch tweed. I was now within a few yards of them. I ran
against a stout gentleman, I was nearly knocked down by a
luggage-truck, I stumbled over a carpet-bag; I gained the spot just
as the driver's whistle warned me to return.
To my utter stupefaction, they were no longer there. I had seen them
but two seconds before--and they were gone! I stood still; I looked
to right and left; I saw no sign of them in any direction. It was as
if the platform had gaped and swallowed them.
"There were two gentlemen standing here a moment ago," I said to a
porter at my elbow; "which way can they have gone?"
"I saw no gentlemen, sir," replied the man.
The whistle shrilled out again. The guard, far up the platform, held
up his arm, and shouted to me to "come on!"
"If you're going on by this train, sir," said the porter, "you must
run for it."
I did run for it, just gained the carriage as the train began to
move, was shoved in by the guard, and left, breathless and
bewildered, with Mr. Dwerrihouse's cigar-case still in my hand.
It was the strangest disappearance in the world; it was like a
transformation trick in a pantomime. They were there one
moment--palpably there, talking, with the gaslight full upon their
faces--and the next moment they were gone. There was no door near,
no window, no staircase; it was a mere slip of barren platform,
tapestried with big advertisements. Could anything be more
mysterious?
It was not worth thinking about, and yet, for my life, I could not
help pondering upon it--pondering, wondering, conjecturing, turning
it over and over in my mind, and beating my brains for a solution of
the enigma. I thought of it all the way from Blackwater to
Clayborough. I thought of it all the way from Clayborough to
Dumbleton, as I rattled along the smooth highway in a trim dog-cart,
drawn by a splendid black mare and driven by the silentest and
dapperest of East Anglian grooms.
We did the nine miles in something less than an hour, and pulled up
before the lodge gates just as the church clock was striking
half-past seven. A couple of minutes more, and the warm glow of the
lighted hall was flooding out upon the gravel, a hearty grasp was on
my hand, and a clear jovial voice was bidding me "welcome to
Dumbleton."
"And now, my dear fellow," said my host, when the first greeting was
over, "you have no time to spare. We dine at eight, and there are
people coming to meet you, so you must just get the dressing business
over as quickly as may be. By the way, you will meet some
acquaintances; the Biddulphs are coming, and Prendergast (Prendergast
of the Skirmishers) is staying in the house. Adieu! Mrs. Jelf will
be expecting you in the drawing-room."
I was ushered to my room--not the blue room, of which Mr. Dwerrihouse
had made disagreeable experience, but a pretty little bachelor's
chamber, hung with a delicate chintz and made cheerful by a blazing
fire. I unlocked my portmanteau. I tried to be expeditious, but the
memory of my railway adventure haunted me. I could not get free of
it; I could not shake it off. It impeded me, it worried me, it
tripped me up, it caused me to mislay my studs, to mistie my cravat,
to wrench the buttons off my gloves. Worst of all, it made me so
late that the party had all assembled before I reached the
drawing-room. I had scarcely paid my respects to Mrs. Jelf when
dinner was announced, and we paired off, some eight or ten couples
strong, into the dining-room.
I am not going to describe either the guests or the dinner. All
provincial parties bear the strictest family resemblance, and I am
not aware that an East Anglian banquet offers any exception to the
rule. There was the usual country baronet and his wife; there were
the usual country parsons and their wives; there was the sempiternal
turkey and haunch of venison. _Vanitas vanitatum_. There is nothing
new under the sun.
I was placed about midway down the table. I had taken one rector's
wife down to dinner, and I had another at my left hand. They talked
across me, and their talk was about babies; it was dreadfully dull.
At length there came a pause. The entrées had just been removed, and
the turkey had come upon the scene. The conversation had all along
been of the languidest, but at this moment it happened to have
stagnated altogether. Jelf was carving the turkey; Mrs. Jelf looked
as if she was trying to think of something to say; everybody else was
silent. Moved by an unlucky impulse, I thought I would relate my
adventure.
"By the way, Jelf," I began, "I came down part of the way to-day with
a friend of yours."
"Indeed!" said the master of the feast, slicing scientifically into
the breast of the turkey. "With whom, pray?"
"With one who bade me tell you that he should, if possible, pay you a
visit before Christmas."
"I can not think who that could be," said my friend, smiling.
"It must be Major Thorp," suggested Mrs. Jelf. I shook my head.
"It was not Major Thorp," I replied; "it was a near relation of your
own, Mrs. Jelf."
"Then I am more puzzled than ever," replied my hostess. "Pray tell
me who it was."
"It was no less a person than your cousin, Mr. John Dwerrihouse."
Jonathan Jelf laid down his knife and fork. Mrs. Jelf looked at me
in a strange, startled way, and said never a word.
"And he desired me to tell you, my dear madam, that you need not take
the trouble to burn the hall down in his honor this time, but only to
have the chimney of the blue room swept before his arrival."
Before I had reached the end of my sentence I became aware of
something ominous in the faces of the guests. I felt I had said
something which I had better have left unsaid, and that for some
unexplained reason my words had evoked a general consternation. I
sat confounded, not daring to utter another syllable, and for at
least two whole minutes there was dead silence round the table. Then
Captain Prendergast came to the rescue.
"You have been abroad for some months, have you not, Mr. Langford?"
he said, with the desperation of one who flings himself into the
breach. "I heard you had been to Russia. Surely you have something
to tell us of the state and temper of the country after the war?"
I was heartily grateful to the gallant Skirmisher for this diversion
in my favor. I answered him, I fear, somewhat lamely; but he kept
the conversation up, and presently one or two others joined in, and
so the difficulty, whatever it might have been, was bridged
over--bridged over, but not repaired. A something, an awkwardness, a
visible constraint remained. The guests hitherto had been simply
dull, but now they were evidently uncomfortable and embarrassed.
The dessert had scarcely been placed upon the table when the ladies
left the room. I seized the opportunity to select a vacant chair
next Captain Prendergast.
"In Heaven's name," I whispered, "what was the matter just now? What
had I said?"
"You mentioned the name of John Dwerrihouse."
"What of that? I had seen him not two hours before."
"It is a most astounding circumstance that you should have seen him,"
said Captain Prendergast. "Are you sure it was he?"
"As sure as of my own identity. We were talking all the way between
London and Blackwater. But why does that surprise you?"
"Because," replied Captain Prendergast, dropping his voice to the
lowest whisper--"_because John Dwerrihouse absconded three months ago
with seventy-five thousand pounds of the company's money, and has
never been heard of since._"
John Dwerrihouse had absconded three months ago--and I had seen him
only a few hours back! John Dwerrihouse had embezzled seventy-five
thousand pounds of the company's money, yet told me that he carried
that sum upon his person! Were ever facts so strangely incongruous,
so difficult to reconcile? How should he have ventured again into
the light of day? How dared he show himself along the line? Above
all, what had he been doing throughout those mysterious three months
of disappearance?
Perplexing questions these--questions which at once suggested
themselves to the minds of all concerned, but which admitted of no
easy solution. I could find no reply to them. Captain Prendergast
had not even a suggestion to offer. Jonathan Jelf, who seized the
first opportunity of drawing me aside and learning all that I had to
tell, was more amazed and bewildered than either of us. He came to
my room that night, when all the guests were gone, and we talked the
thing over from every point of view; without, it must be confessed,
arriving at any kind of conclusion.
"I do not ask you," he said, "whether you can have mistaken your man.
That is impossible."
"As impossible as that I should mistake some stranger for yourself."
"It is not a question of looks or voice, but of facts. That he
should have alluded to the fire in the blue room is proof enough of
John Dwerrihouse's identity. How did he look?"
"Older, I thought; considerably older, paler, and more anxious."
"He has had enough to make him look anxious, anyhow," said my friend,
gloomily, "be he innocent or guilty."
"I am inclined to believe that he is innocent," I replied. "He
showed no embarrassment when I addressed him, and no uneasiness when
the guard came round. His conversation was open to a fault. I might
almost say that he talked too freely of the business which he had in
hand."
"That again is strange, for I know no one more reticent on such
subjects. He actually told you that he had the seventy-five thousand
pounds in his pocket?"
"He did."
"Humph! My wife has an idea about it, and she may be right--"
"What idea?"
"Well, she fancies--women are so clever, you know, at putting
themselves inside people's motives--she fancies that he was tempted,
that he did actually take the money, and that he has been concealing
himself these three months in some wild part of the country,
struggling possibly with his conscience all the time, and daring
neither to abscond with his booty nor to come back and restore it."
"But now that he has come back?"
"That is the point. She conceives that he has probably thrown
himself upon the company's mercy, made restitution of the money, and,
being forgiven, is permitted to carry the business through as if
nothing whatever had happened."
"The last," I replied, "is an impossible case. Mrs. Jelf thinks like
a generous and delicate-minded woman, but not in the least like a
board of railway directors. They would never carry forgiveness so
far."
"I fear not; and yet it is the only conjecture that bears a semblance
of likelihood. However, we can run over to Clayborough to-morrow and
see if anything is to be learned. By the way, Prendergast tells me
you picked up his cigar-case."
"I did so, and here it is."
Jelf took the cigar-case, examined it by the light of the lamp, and
said at once that it was beyond doubt Mr. Dwerrihouse's property, and
that he remembered to have seen him use it.
"Here, too, is his monogram on the side," he added--"a big J
transfixing a capital D. He used to carry the same on his
note-paper."
"It offers, at all events, a proof that I was not dreaming."
"Ay, but it is time you were asleep and dreaming now. I am ashamed
to have kept you up so long. Good-night."
"Good-night, and remember that I am more than ready to go with you to
Clayborough, or Blackwater, or London, or anywhere, if I can be of
the least service."
"Thanks! I know you mean it, old friend, and it may be that I shall
put you to the test. Once more, good-night."
So we parted for that night, and met again in the breakfast-room at
half-past eight next morning. It was a hurried, silent,
uncomfortable meal; none of us had slept well, and all were thinking
of the same subject. Mrs. Jelf had evidently been crying, Jelf was
impatient to be off, and both Captain Prendergast and myself felt
ourselves to be in the painful position of outsiders who are
involuntarily brought into a domestic trouble. Within twenty minutes
after we had left the breakfast-table the dog-cart was brought round,
and my friend and I were on the road to Clayborough.
"Tell you what it is, Langford," he said, as we sped along between
the wintry hedges, "I do not much fancy to bring up Dwerrihouse's
name at Clayborough. All the officials know that he is my wife's
relation, and the subject just now is hardly a pleasant one. If you
don't much mind, we will take the 11:10 to Blackwater. It's an
important station, and we shall stand a far better chance of picking
up information there than at Clayborough."
So we took the 11:10, which happened to be an express, and, arriving
at Blackwater about a quarter before twelve, proceeded at once to
prosecute our inquiry.
We began by asking for the station-master, a big, blunt,
business-like person, who at once averred that he knew Mr. John
Dwerrihouse perfectly well, and that there was no director on the
line whom he had seen and spoken to so frequently.
"He used to be down here two or three times a week about three months
ago," said he, "when the new line was first set afoot; but since
then, you know, gentlemen--"
He paused significantly.
Jelf flushed scarlet.
"Yes, yes," he said, hurriedly; "we know all about that. The point
now to be ascertained is whether anything has been seen or heard of
him lately."
"Not to my knowledge," replied the station-master.
"He is not known to have been down the line any time yesterday, for
instance?"
The station-master shook his head.
"The East Anglian, sir," said he, "is about the last place where he
would dare to show himself. Why, there isn't a station-master, there
isn't a guard, there isn't a porter, who doesn't know Mr. Dwerrihouse
by sight as well as he knows his own face in the looking-glass, or
who wouldn't telegraph for the police as soon as he had set eyes on
him at any point along the line. Bless you, sir! there's been a
standing order out against him ever since the 25th of September last."
"And yet," pursued my friend, "a gentleman who traveled down
yesterday from London to Clayborough by the afternoon express
testifies that he saw Mr. Dwerrihouse in the train, and that Mr.
Dwerrihouse alighted at Blackwater station."
"Quite impossible, sir," replied the station-master, promptly.
"Why impossible?"
"Because there is no station along the line where he is so well known
or where he would run so great a risk. It would be just running his
head into the lion's mouth; he would have been mad to come nigh
Blackwater station; and if he had come he would have been arrested
before he left the platform."
"Can you tell me who took the Blackwater tickets of that train?"
"I can, sir. It was the guard, Benjamin Somers."
"And where can I find him?"
"You can find him, sir, by staying here, if you please, till one
o'clock. He will be coming through with the up express from
Crampton, which stays at Blackwater for ten minutes."
We waited for the up express, beguiling the time as best we could by
strolling along the Blackwater road till we came almost to the
outskirts of the town, from which the station was distant nearly a
couple of miles. By one o'clock we were back again upon the platform
and waiting for the train. It came punctually, and I at once
recognized the ruddy-faced guard who had gone down with my train the
evening before.
"The gentlemen want to ask you something about Mr. Dwerrihouse,
Somers," said the station-master, by way of introduction.
The guard flashed a keen glance from my face to Jelf's and back again
to mine.
"Mr. John Dwerrihouse, the late director?" said he, interrogatively.
"The same," replied my friend. "Should you know him if you saw him?"
"Anywhere, sir."
"Do you know if he was in the 4:15 express yesterday afternoon?"
"He was not, sir."
"How can you answer so positively?"
"Because I looked into every carriage and saw every face in that
train, and I could take my oath that Mr. Dwerrihouse was not in it.
This gentleman was," he added, turning sharply upon me. "I don't
know that I ever saw him before in my life, but I remember his face
perfectly. You nearly missed taking your seat in time at this
station, sir, and you got out at Clayborough."
"Quite true, guard," I replied; "but do you not also remember the
face of the gentleman who traveled down in the same carriage with me
as far as here?"
"It was my impression, sir, that you traveled down alone," said
Somers, with a look of some surprise.
"By no means. I had a fellow-traveler as far as Blackwater, and it
was in trying to restore him the cigar-case which he had dropped in
the carriage that I so nearly let you go on without me."
"I remember your saying something about a cigar-case, certainly,"
replied the guard; "but--"
"You asked for my ticket just before we entered the station."
"I did, sir."
"Then you must have seen him. He sat in the corner next the very
door to which you came."
"No, indeed; I saw no one."
I looked at Jelf. I began to think the guard was in the
ex-director's confidence, and paid for his silence.
"If I had seen another traveler I should have asked for his ticket,"
added Somers. "Did you see me ask for his ticket, sir?"
"I observed that you did not ask for it, but he explained that by
saying--" I hesitated. I feared I might be telling too much, and so
broke off abruptly.
The guard and the station-master exchanged glances. The former
looked impatiently at his watch.
"I am obliged to go on in four minutes more, sir," he said.
"One last question, then." interposed Jelf, with a sort of
desperation. "If this gentleman's fellow-traveler had been Mr. John
Dwerrihouse, and he had been sitting in the corner next the door by
which you took the tickets, could you have failed to see and
recognize him?"
"No, sir; it would have been quite impossible."
"And you are certain you did not see him?"
"As I said before, sir, I could take my oath I did not see him. And
if it wasn't that I don't like to contradict a gentleman, I would say
I could also take my oath that this gentleman was quite alone in the
carriage the whole way from London to Clayborough. Why, sir," he
added, dropping his voice so as to be inaudible to the
station-master, who had been called away to speak to some person
close by, "you expressly asked me to give you a compartment to
yourself, and I did so. I locked you in, and you were so good as to
give me something for myself."
"Yes; but Mr. Dwerrihouse had a key of his own."
"I never saw him, sir; I saw no one in that compartment but yourself.
Beg pardon, sir; my time's up."
And with this the ruddy guard touched his cap and was gone. In
another minute the heavy panting of the engine began afresh, and the
train glided slowly out of the station.
We looked at each other for some moments in silence. I was the first
to speak.
"Mr. Benjamin Somers knows more than he chooses to tell," I said.
"Humph! do you think so?"
"It must be. He could not have come to the door without seeing him;
it's impossible."
"There is one thing not impossible, my dear fellow."
"What is that?"
"That you may have fallen asleep and dreamed the whole thing."
"Could I dream of a branch line that I had never heard of? Could I
dream of a hundred and one business details that had no kind of
interest for me? Could I dream of the seventy-five thousand pounds?"
"Perhaps you might have seen or heard some vague account of the
affair while you were abroad. It might have made no impression upon
you at the time, and might have come back to you in your dreams,
recalled perhaps by the mere names of the stations on the line."
"What about the fire in the chimney of the blue room--should I have
heard of that during my journey?"
"Well, no; I admit there is a difficulty about that point."
"And what about the cigar-case?"
"Ay, by Jove! there is the cigar-case. That is a stubborn fact.
Well, it's a mysterious affair, and it will need a better detective
than myself, I fancy, to clear it up. I suppose we may as well go
home."
A week had not gone by when I received a letter from the secretary of
the East Anglian Railway Company, requesting the favor of my
attendance at a special board meeting not then many days distant. No
reasons were alleged and no apologies offered for this demand upon my
time, but they had heard, it was clear, of my inquiries anent the
missing director, and had a mind to put me through some sort of
official examination upon the subject. Being still a guest at
Dumbleton Hall, I had to go up to London for the purpose, and
Jonathan Jelf accompanied me. I found the direction of the Great
East Anglian line represented by a party of some twelve or fourteen
gentlemen seated in solemn conclave round a huge green baize table,
in a gloomy boardroom adjoining the London terminus.
Being courteously received by the chairman (who at once began by
saying that certain statements of mine respecting Mr. John
Dwerrihouse had come to the knowledge of the direction, and that they
in consequence desired to confer with me on those points), we were
placed at the table, and the inquiry proceeded in due form.
I was first asked if I knew Mr. John Dwerrihouse, how long I had been
acquainted with him, and whether I could identify him at sight. I
was then asked when I had seen him last. To which I replied: "On the
4th of this present month, December, 1856." Then came the inquiry of
where I had seen him on that fourth day of December; to which I
replied that I met him in a first-class compartment of the 4:15 down
express, that he got in just as the train was leaving the London
terminus, and that he alighted at Blackwater station. The chairman
then inquired whether I had held any communication with my
fellow-traveler; whereupon I related, as nearly as I could remember
it, the whole bulk and substance of Mr. John Dwerrihouse's diffuse
information respecting the new branch line.
To all this the board listened with profound attention, while the
chairman presided and the secretary took notes. I then produced the
cigar-case. It was passed from hand to hand, and recognized by all.
There was not a man present who did not remember that plain
cigar-case with its silver monogram, or to whom it seemed anything
less than entirely corroborative of my evidence. When at length I
had told all that I had to tell, the chairman whispered something to
the secretary; the secretary touched a silver hand-bell, and the
guard, Benjamin Somers, was ushered into the room. He was then
examined as carefully as myself. He declared that he knew Mr. John
Dwerrihouse perfectly well, that he could not be mistaken in him,
that he remembered going down with the 4:15 express on the afternoon
in question, that he remembered me, and that, there being one or two
empty first-class compartments on that especial afternoon, he had, in
compliance with my request, placed me in a carriage by myself. He
was positive that I remained alone in that compartment all the way
from London to Clayborough. He was ready to take his oath that Mr.
Dwerrihouse was neither in that carriage with me, nor in any
compartment of that train. He remembered distinctly to have examined
my ticket at Blackwater; was certain that there was no one else at
that time in the carriage; could not have failed to observe a second
person, if there had been one; had that second person been Mr. John
Dwerrihouse should have quietly double-locked the door of the
carriage and have at once given information to the Blackwater
station-master. So clear, so decisive, so ready, was Somers with
this testimony, that the board looked fairly puzzled.
"You hear this person's statement, Mr. Langford," said the chairman.
"It contradicts yours in every particular. What have you to say in
reply?"
"I can only repeat what I said before. I am quite as positive of the
truth of my own assertions as Mr. Somers can be of the truth of his."
"You say that Mr. Dwerrihouse alighted at Blackwater, and that he was
in possession of a private key. Are you sure that he had not
alighted by means of that key before the guard came round for the
tickets?"
"I am quite positive that he did not leave the carriage till the
train had fairly entered the station, and the other Blackwater
passengers alighted. I even saw that he was met there by a friend."
"Indeed! Did you see that person distinctly?"
"Quite distinctly."
"Can you describe his appearance?"
"I think so. He was short and very slight, sandy-haired, with a
bushy mustache and beard, and he wore a closely fitting suit of gray
tweed, His age I should take to be about thirty-eight or forty."
"Did Mr. Dwerrihouse leave the station in this person's company?"
"I can not tell. I saw them walking together down the platform, and
then I saw them standing aside under a gas-jet, talking earnestly.
After that I lost sight of them quite suddenly, and just then my
train went on, and I with it."
The chairman and secretary conferred together in an undertone. The
directors whispered to one another. One or two looked suspiciously
at the guard. I could see that my evidence remained unshaken, and
that, like myself, they suspected some complicity between the guard
and the defaulter.
"How far did you conduct that 4:15 express on the day in question,
Somers?" asked the chairman.
"All through, sir," replied the guard, "from London to Crampton."
"How was it that you were not relieved at Clayborough? I thought
there was always a change of guards at Clayborough."
"There used to be, sir, till the new regulations came in force last
midsummer, since when the guards in charge of express trains go the
whole way through."
The chairman turned to the secretary.
"I think it would be as well," he said, "if we had the day-book to
refer to upon this point."
Again the secretary touched the silver hand-bell, and desired the
porter in attendance to summon Mr. Raikes. From a word or two
dropped by another of the directors I gathered that Mr. Raikes was
one of the under-secretaries.
He came, a small, slight, sandy-haired, keen-eyed man, with an eager,
nervous manner, and a forest of light beard and mustache. He just
showed himself at the door of the board-room, and, being requested to
bring a certain day-book from a certain shelf in a certain room,
bowed and vanished.
He was there such a moment, and the surprise of seeing him was so
great and sudden, that it was not till the door had closed upon him
that I found voice to speak. He was no sooner gone, however, than I
sprang to my feet.
"That person," I said, "is the same who met Mr. Dwerrihouse upon the
platform at Blackwater!"
There was a general movement of surprise. The chairman looked grave
and somewhat agitated.
"Take care, Mr. Langford," he said; "take care what you say."
"I am as positive of his identity as of my own."
"Do you consider the consequences of your words? Do you consider
that you are bringing a charge of the gravest character against one
of the company's servants?"
"I am willing to be put upon my oath, if necessary. The man who came
to that door a minute since is the same whom I saw talking with Mr.
Dwerrihouse on the Blackwater platform. Were he twenty times the
company's servant, I could say neither more nor less."
The chairman turned again to the guard.
"Did you see Mr. Raikes in the train or on the platform?" he asked.
Somers shook his head.
"I am confident Mr. Raikes was not in the train," he said, "and I
certainly did not see him on the platform."
The chairman turned next to the secretary.
"Mr. Raikes is in your office, Mr. Hunter," he said. "Can you
remember if he was absent on the 4th instant?"
"I do not think he was," replied the secretary, "but I am not
prepared to speak positively. I have been away most afternoons
myself lately, and Mr. Raikes might easily have absented himself if
he had been disposed."
At this moment the under-secretary returned with the day-book under
his arm.
"Be pleased to refer, Mr. Raikes," said the chairman, "to the entries
of the 4th instant, and see what Benjamin Somers's duties were on
that day."
Mr. Raikes threw open the cumbrous volume, and ran a practised eye
and finger down some three or four successive columns of entries.
Stopping suddenly at the foot of a page, he then read aloud that
Benjamin Somers had on that day conducted the 4:15 express from
London to Crampton.
The chairman leaned forward in his seat, looked the under-secretary
full in the face, and said, quite sharply and suddenly:
"And where were you, Mr. Raikes, on the same afternoon?"
"_I_, sir?"
"You, Mr. Raikes. Where were you on the afternoon and evening of the
4th of the present month?"
"Here, sir, in Mr. Hunter's office. Where else should I be?"
There was a dash of trepidation in the under-secretary's voice as he
said this, but his look of surprise was natural enough.
"We have some reason for believing, Mr. Raikes, that you were absent
that afternoon without leave. Was this the case?"
"Certainly not, sir. I have not had a day's holiday since September.
Mr. Hunter will bear me out in this."
Mr. Hunter repeated what he had previously said on the subject, but
added that the clerks in the adjoining office would be certain to
know. Whereupon the senior clerk, a grave, middle-aged person in
green glasses, was summoned and interrogated.
His testimony cleared the under-secretary at once. He declared that
Mr. Raikes had in no instance, to his knowledge, been absent during
office hours since his return from his annual holiday in September.
I was confounded. The chairman turned to me with a smile, in which a
shade of covert annoyance was scarcely apparent.
"You hear, Mr. Langford?" he said.
"I hear, sir; but my conviction remains unshaken."
"I fear, Mr. Langford, that your convictions are very insufficiently
based," replied the chairman, with a doubtful cough. "I fear that
you 'dream dreams,' and mistake them for actual occurrences. It is a
dangerous habit of mind, and might lead to dangerous results. Mr.
Raikes here would have found himself in an unpleasant position had he
not proved so satisfactory an alibi."
I was about to reply, but he gave me no time.
"I think, gentlemen," he went on to say, addressing the board, "that
we should be wasting time to push this inquiry further. Mr.
Langford's evidence would seem to be of an equal value throughout.
The testimony of Benjamin Somers disproves his first statement, and
the testimony of the last witness disproves his second. I think we
may conclude that Mr. Langford fell asleep in the train on the
occasion of his journey to Clayborough, and dreamed an unusually
vivid and circumstantial dream, of which, however, we have now heard
quite enough."
There are few things more annoying than to find one's positive
convictions met with incredulity. I could not help feeling
impatience at the turn that affairs had taken. I was not proof
against the civil sarcasm of the chairman's manner. Most intolerable
of all, however, was the quiet smile lurking about the corners of
Benjamin Somers's mouth, and the half-triumphant, half-malicious
gleam in the eyes of the under-secretary. The man was evidently
puzzled and somewhat alarmed. His looks seemed furtively to
interrogate me. Who was I? What did I want? Why had I come there
to do him an ill turn with his employers? What was it to me whether
or no he was absent without leave?
Seeing all this, and perhaps more irritated by it than the thing
deserved, I begged leave to detain the attention of the board for a
moment longer. Jelf plucked me impatiently by the sleeve.
"Better let the thing drop," he whispered. "The chairman's right
enough; you dreamed it, and the less said now the better."
I was not to be silenced, however, in this fashion. I had yet
something to say, and I would say it. It was to this effect: that
dreams were not usually productive of tangible results, and that I
requested to know in what way the chairman conceived I had evolved
from my dream so substantial and well-made a delusion as the
cigar-case which I had had the honor to place before him at the
commencement of our interview.
"The cigar-case, I admit, Mr. Langford," the chairman replied, "is a
very strong point in your evidence. It is your only strong point,
however, and there is just a possibility that we may all be misled by
a mere accidental resemblance. Will you permit me to see the case
again?"
"It is unlikely," I said, as I handed it to him, "that any other
should bear precisely this monogram, and yet be in all other
particulars exactly similar."
The chairman examined it for a moment in silence, and then passed it
to Mr. Hunter. Mr. Hunter turned it over and over, and shook his
head.
"This is no mere resemblance," he said. "It is John Dwerrihouse's
cigar-case to a certainty. I remember it perfectly; I have seen it a
hundred times."
"I believe I may say the same," added the chairman; "yet how account
for the way in which Mr. Langford asserts that it came into his
possession?"
"I can only repeat," I replied, "that I found it on the floor of the
carriage after Mr. Dwerrihouse had alighted. It was in leaning out
to look after him that I trod upon it, and it was in running after
him for the purpose of restoring it that I saw, or believed I saw,
Mr. Raikes standing aside with him in earnest conversation."
Again I felt Jonathan Jelf plucking at my sleeve.
"Look at Raikes," he whispered; "look at Raikes!"
I turned to where the under-secretary had been standing a moment
before, and saw him, white as death, with lips trembling and livid,
stealing toward the door.
To conceive a sudden, strange, and indefinite suspicion, to fling
myself in his way, to take him by the shoulders as if he were a
child, and turn his craven face, perforce, toward the board, were
with me the work of an instant.
"Look at him!" I exclaimed. "Look at his face! I ask no better
witness to the truth of my words."
The chairman's brow darkened.
"Mr. Raikes," he said, sternly, "if you know anything you had better
speak."
Vainly trying to wrench himself from my grasp, the under-secretary
stammered out an incoherent denial.
"Let me go," he said. "I know nothing--you have no right to detain
me--let me go!"
"Did you, or did you not, meet Mr. John Dwerrihouse at Blackwater
station? The charge brought against you is either true or false. If
true, you will do well to throw yourself upon the mercy of the board
and make full confession of all that you know."
The under-secretary wrung his hands in an agony of helpless terror.
"I was away!" he cried. "I was two hundred miles away at the time!
I know nothing about it--I have nothing to confess--I am innocent--I
call God to witness I am innocent!"
"Two hundred miles away!" echoed the chairman. "What do you mean?"
"I was in Devonshire. I had three weeks' leave of absence--I appeal
to Mr. Hunter--Mr. Hunter knows I had three weeks' leave of absence!
I was in Devonshire all the time; I can prove I was in Devonshire!"
Seeing him so abject, so incoherent, so wild with apprehension, the
directors began to whisper gravely among themselves, while one got
quietly up and called the porter to guard the door.
"What has your being in Devonshire to do with the matter?" said the
chairman. "When were you in Devonshire?"
"Mr. Raikes took his leave in September," said the secretary, "about
the time when Mr. Dwerrihouse disappeared."
"I never even heard that he had disappeared till I came back!"
"That must remain to be proved," said the chairman. "I shall at once
put this matter in the hands of the police. In the meanwhile, Mr.
Raikes, being myself a magistrate and used to deal with these cases,
I advise you to offer no resistance, but to confess while confession
may yet do you service. As for your accomplice--"
The frightened wretch fell upon his knees.
"I had no accomplice!" he cried. "Only have mercy upon me--only
spare my life, and I will confess all! I didn't mean to harm him! I
didn't mean to hurt a hair of his head! Only have mercy upon me, and
let me go!"
The chairman rose in his place, pale and agitated. "Good heavens!"
he exclaimed, "what horrible mystery is this? What does it mean?"
"As sure as there is a God in heaven," said Jonathan Jelf, "it means
that murder has been done."
"No! no! no!" shrieked Raikes, still upon his knees, and cowering
like a beaten hound. "Not murder! No jury that ever sat could bring
it in murder. I thought I had only stunned him--I never meant to do
more than stun him! Manslaughter--manslaughter--not murder!"
Overcome by the horror of this unexpected revelation, the chairman
covered his face with his hand and for a moment or two remained
silent.
"Miserable man," he said at length, "you have betrayed yourself."
"You bade me confess! You urged me to throw myself upon the mercy of
the board!"
"You have confessed to a crime which no one suspected you of having
committed," replied the chairman, "and which this board has no power
either to punish or forgive. All that I can do for you is to advise
you to submit to the law, to plead guilty, and to conceal nothing.
When did you do this deed?"
The guilty man rose to his feet, and leaned heavily against the
table. His answer came reluctantly, like the speech of one dreaming.
"On the 22d of September."
On the 22d of September! I looked in Jonathan Jelf's face, and he in
mine. I felt my own paling with a strange sense of wonder and dread.
I saw his blanch suddenly, even to the lips.
"Merciful heaven!" he whispered. "_What was it, then, that you saw
in the train?_"
What was it that I saw in the train? That question remains
unanswered to this day. I have never been able to reply to it. I
only know that it bore the living likeness of the murdered man, whose
body had then been lying some ten weeks under a rough pile of
branches and brambles and rotting leaves, at the bottom of a deserted
chalk-pit about half-way between Blackwater and Mallingford. I know
that it spoke and moved and looked as that man spoke and moved and
looked in life; that I heard, or seemed to hear, things related which
I could never otherwise have learned; that I was guided, as it were,
by that vision on the platform to the identification of the murderer;
and that, a passive instrument myself, I was destined, by means of
these mysterious teachings, to bring about the ends of justice. For
these things I have never been able to account.
As for that matter of the cigar-case, it proved, on inquiry, that the
carriage in which I traveled down that afternoon to Clayborough had
not been in use for several weeks, and was, in point of fact, the
same in which poor John Dwerrihouse had performed his last journey.
The case had doubtless been dropped by him, and had lain unnoticed
till I found it.
Upon the details of the murder I have no need to dwell. Those who
desire more ample particulars may find them, and the written
confession of Augustus Raikes, in the files of the "Times" for 1856.
Enough that the under-secretary, knowing the history of the new line,
and following the negotiation step by step through all its stages,
determined to waylay Mr. Dwerrihouse, rob him of the seventy-five
thousand pounds, and escape to America with his booty.
In order to effect these ends he obtained leave of absence a few days
before the time appointed for the payment of the money, secured his
passage across the Atlantic in a steamer advertised to start on the
23d, provided himself with a heavily loaded "life-preserver," and
went down to Blackwater to await the arrival of his victim. How he
met him on the platform with a pretended message from the board, how
he offered to conduct him by a short cut across the fields to
Mallingford, how, having brought him to a lonely place, he struck him
down with the life-preserver, and so killed him, and how, finding
what he had done, he dragged the body to the verge of an
out-of-the-way chalk-pit, and there flung it in and piled it over
with branches and brambles, are facts still fresh in the memories of
those who, like the connoisseurs in De Quincey's famous essay, regard
murder as a fine art. Strangely enough, the murderer, having done
his work, was afraid to leave the country. He declared that he had
not intended to take the director's life, but only to stun and rob
him; and that, finding the blow had killed, he dared not fly for fear
of drawing down suspicion upon his own head. As a mere robber he
would have been safe in the States, but as a murderer he would
inevitably have been pursued and given up to justice. So he
forfeited his passage, returned to the office as usual at the end of
his leave, and locked up his ill-gotten thousands till a more
convenient opportunity. In the meanwhile he had the satisfaction of
finding that Mr. Dwerrihouse was universally believed to have
absconded with the money, no one knew how or whither.
Whether he meant murder or not, however, Mr. Augustus Raikes paid the
full penalty of his crime, and was hanged at the Old Bailey in the
second week in January, 1857. Those who desire to make his further
acquaintance may see him any day (admirably done in wax) in the
Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's exhibition, in Baker Street.
He is there to be found in the midst of a select society of ladies
and gentlemen of atrocious memory, dressed in the close-cut tweed
suit which he wore on the evening of the murder, and holding in his
hand the identical life-preserver with which he committed it.
OUR LAST WALK
BY HUGH CONWAY
_Frederick John Fargus (born 1847, died 7885), writing under the
pen-name of Hugh Conway, lived to enjoy but one year of literary fame
as the author of "Called Back," a melodramatic novelette of
strikingly clever conception and powerful narrative style. The
qualities which distinguish this book are to be found in his other
stories, a number of which, including the present selection, were
published in the year preceding and that following his untimely
death._
OUR LAST WALK
By HUGH CONWAY
If I wished to tell a love tale, I should begin this with the
sweetest memories of my life, and relate when and where Walter Linton
and I first met; should describe my pride and happiness when I knew
that he wished me to become his wife. The love we bore each other
through life--ay, even after life--may be made manifest as I write
these lines, but it is not because I loved him I have this tale to
tell. Other women have loved as I love, and have mourned as I mourn:
my life, so far as the joy and grief of it go, is but the life of
thousands.
Had Walter Linton, when first he asked me for the heart which was
already his own, been but a poor, struggling man, I should have given
him all as freely as I did then. If need had been, I could have
waited patiently for years, or until fortune smiled upon him.
Feeling this, I had no false sentiment as to sharing the worldly good
that was his, although I was a penniless girl and brought nothing in
my hands. Of course, kind friends around wondered why Walter did not
choose a wife who would bring him wealth as well as love. Ah, no one
could have given him more love than I could give him; that was all he
wanted or asked for. He was twenty-three, and his own master; I was
twenty, and utterly alone in this world. So we were married--just
six weeks after that happy spring day on which he told me I was
dearest to him.
Our home--a dear gray old house, full of pleasant corners--was
Draycot Hall, Somersetshire, not far from the Mendip Hills. Walter
had recently inherited the house and the estates of Draycot, and when
we took possession of our kingdom, which was almost as new to Walter
as it was to me, life seemed to hold all that could be desired.
Walter's income was sufficient for the life of a quiet country
gentleman--a life to which he settled down, and appeared to find
every wish gratified in that happy existence. Shooting, fishing, and
hunting gave him plenty of amusement, and the land, part of which he
farmed himself, brought occupation and interest enough to make him
feel that his life was not altogether an idle or useless one.
Then, to make our happiness complete, the children came--a girl, then
one, two, three bonny boys. How merry and busy the old house grew
with them, the sturdy rogues! How proud Walter was of them!
We were not very rich people. Compared to that of some of our county
neighbors, our income was insignificant. Draycot Hall, although not
such an imposing pile as the name might suggest, was by no means a
small house; and, like all rambling old places, cost a good deal of
money to keep up. Even when we began life together we found, at the
end of the year, that our expenditure and income nearly tallied, and
as expenses increased with an increasing family, we felt that a few
hundreds added to our revenue would be a very welcome addition. But
in spite of this our lot was too happy for us to think of grumbling.
We sat one summer's evening on the lawn. The air was cooled by late
fallen rain, and sweet with fragrance rising from the freshened
flowers--for days were long and petals not yet closed. Our latest
given child slept on my knee; and, as we watched the sun sink slowly
down behind the Mendip Hills, my husband said:
"Helena, how shall we manage to start all these boys in life?"
I laughed at such a distant obligation. We were still young, and it
seemed that so many years must pass before the baby on my knee would
want a starting hand. I kissed the child's little white fingers.
"Why, Walter," I said, "you are looking a long, long way into the
future."
"Yes, my girl; but days happy as ours pass very quickly. It will not
seem so long before we shall be obliged to think about it. What
shall we do then? We save no money even now, you know. By-and-by we
must send these babies to school; after that they will want money to
help them on in professions. How are we to do all this? Our income
won't increase."
"We must try and economize," I answered, impressed by the really
serious view he took.
"But how? As it is, we can scarcely make both ends meet. I am
afraid I am selfish in living as I do. I have serious thought of
going into some business and trying to make a fortune."
I begged, beseeched him to dismiss the wild idea. Were we not happy
enough with all we now possessed? Why change our mode of life, which
was so peaceful and sweet? Besides, in my heart of hearts I doubted
if my good, easy-going Walter was quite fitted for a commercial
career. He kissed me as I pleaded eloquently for a continuation of
our present happiness, and for a time the subject dropped.
Yet I could see, from remarks he now and again made, that the thought
lingered in his mind, and I began to fear lest, some day, he might
put it into practical shape, when the anxieties attendant on
money-making or money-losing might be ours.
It was some months after our conversation that old Reuben Dyke, a
well-known character in the village of Draycot, came to the Hall. He
wanted to see the master on important business, he said. This old
Reuben was the greatest gossip of the place--the ale-house
oracle--meddler in every one's business, and unsolicited
adviser-in-general to the little world around him. He was a great
authority among the villagers, many of whom would have backed his
opinion against the united wisdom of a Daniel and a Solomon. His
talk and broad Somerset accent always amused us, and, it may be,
insured him a better reception than his virtues merited.
To-day he entered the room with an indescribable look of mystery and
secrecy on his shrewd old face. He carefully closed the door after
him and bade us a respectful good-day. Then, drawing quite close to
us, he spoke in guarded whispers.
"I be jest come, zur, to tell 'ee as ther' have a-bin a chap a
staayin' at the Blue Boar vor the last two or dree daays. Mebby,
zur, as you've a zeed un about--a darkish, picket-noased zort of a
chap."
"Yes, I saw him," answered Walter. "What about him?"
"Now, look here, zur. None o' we couldn't at vust miake out what a
wer' up to. He yent one o' them outrides, you zee. He werdn't
lookin' aater shopkippers. He were a ferretin' about aater land. Zo
we up and ax'd un what a farm a wer' aater, or if a did want to buy
any land hereabouts? He laughed and zed, zes he, 'We be gwain to
make a raailroad right up droo theese yer valley.' Zes I, 'I hoap my
head won't yache till we do get a raailwaay on Mendip, vor that is a
devilish poor country.' 'True,' zes he; 'but there be a lot o' coal
jest under--along Havyat Green and Upper Langford.' Zes I, 'Zo I've
a-heerd;' and then I zeed in a minute which waay the cat wer'
jumpin'. He werdn't gwain to make nar a raailwaay; he wanted to zenk
a coal-pit, and get howld o' zome land under false pretenses. Zo, if
I wer' you, zur, and if I wer' Mr. Llewellyn, I should jest keep my
eyes open; vor I shouldn't wonder if, one o' thease here daays, he
won't be along and offer 'ee a hundred and fifty a yacre vor some o'
your poorest land. But my advice to you, zur, is--doan't 'ee zell
it--not vor double the money."
After this important communication, Reuben bowed himself out;
retiring probably to the kitchen, in order that he might regale
himself with meat and drink and our servants with the latest village
gossip. Walter and I sat digesting his news.
"I wonder if there can be any truth in it," said Walter. "I'll go
down to-morrow and see that fellow at the inn, and ask him pointblank
about it."
But on the morrow the fellow at the inn was there no longer. He had
departed and left no address. The landlord only knew him as plain
Mr. Smith. We never saw or heard of him again--whatever his errand
may have been, it was not revealed to us; but, nevertheless, old
Reuben's conjecture as to the object of his sojourn at the Blue Boar
quite unsettled Walter's mind. The thought that untold wealth might
be lying under our very feet was always present to it, and at last he
resolved to employ experts who were competent to give an opinion on
the matter, and settle our hopes and doubts.
So, very soon, we were visited by Captain Thomas Davies, of
Aberfellteg, and Captain Davies Thomas, of Cwmtygwyn, two gentlemen
whose strangely accented English, redundant with such words as
"Inteet" and "Inteet to coodness," was a source of great amusement
and enjoyment to each of us. They inspected, diagnosed,
experimented, and then reported. My poor dear love! shall I ever
forget your excitement, your joy, as we perused together that glowing
joint production? What wealth you dreamed of and counted up! Not, I
know, that you wished for riches for your own sake--it was for the
sake of wife and children that the desire of acquiring a large
fortune obtained such a hold on you. Ah me! how certain, how clear
and straightforward it all seemed! Had not the mining captains
calculated, with an accuracy that seemed infallible, every ton of
coal that lay hidden beneath our green fields? Did not their figures
prove beyond dispute the profit each ton raised must bring? After
every contingency had been guarded against, what read like Aladdin's
wealth lay waiting for us to stoop down, take, and enjoy. Why should
we not do so?
Then other gentlemen came to our quiet home--legal
gentlemen--gentlemen who were called financiers--gentlemen learned,
very learned, it seemed to me, in acreages, crops, and soils. Old
safes were unlocked, old plans and musty deeds extracted from their
recesses. I heard the word "Mortgage" frequently; and Walter told me
he had resolved to share his promised wealth with no one. He would
work the projected mines solely on his own account; but, in order to
begin operations, money was needful; so he had arranged with the two
financial gentlemen, Messrs. Leach and Vincent, of Bristol, that such
sums of money as were necessary should be advanced to him upon the
security of his estate. And these gentlemen applauded Walter's
courageous resolution, and everything went so pleasantly.
Then the digging began!
Oh, how I hated it! From the very first I hated it! Not only did it
spoil one of our prettiest fields--the one where the children
gathered earliest cowslips--but it brought strange faces and rough
forms to the quiet, sleepy little village. Men and women of a very
different type to that of laborers round about. Slatternly untidy
women and strong, surly men who knew not the traditions of the land.
Men who were supposed to beat their wives once a week, and who, we
knew, played havoc with our neighbors' costly preserves. Men who
worked hard--very hard--and insisted upon that work being highly paid
for--who spent so large a proportion of those hard-earned wages in
drink, that the landlords of the opposition village inns actually
shook hands in their unexpected prosperity; whilst our kind, old,
easy-going rector fairly cried at the way in which his new and
unwelcome parishioners were demoralizing the old ones, and old Reuben
Dyke seemed to look almost patronizingly upon us, as two deserving
young people helped to fortune by his great sagacity and wisdom.
So it went on, month after month; yet I saw no signs of the advent of
that promised wealth. So far as I could understand it, the seam of
coal hit upon by those clever captains was a failure. It broke, or
dipped, or something else; so the continuation had to be sought
elsewhere. Thereupon Captains Thomas Davies and Davies Thomas came
over again, inspected again, and reported so cheerfully that Walter's
face lost that look of anxiety which I had lately seen upon it, and
he pushed on the work more briskly than before.
Then they told me the right seam had been found--Walter was radiant.
Out of the first money gained he would send Thomas Davies and Davies
Thomas a hundred pounds apiece, as an extra recognition due to their
skill and good counsel. Larger sums than before were furnished by
our financial friends, who came to the Hall once or twice, and were,
I thought, very rude and familiar in their manner. Machinery and
engines were erected, more men engaged, and in time great black heaps
began to accumulate, and grimy black faces met me at every turn. Our
peaceful and beautiful home was so changed that I began almost to
loathe what had once been the dearest spot on earth to me, and to
long for change of air and scene.
Money seemed always being paid away--large sums that frightened me.
But was I not only a woman, who knew nothing of business?
Yet all these grievances were nothing to the grief I felt at seeing
the change in my darling's face. Every week I noticed an alteration.
Gradually a cloud of care seemed settling down on his once gay
nature, and I knew his mind was anxious and ill at ease. He grew
thinner; his dark hair showed signs of premature grayness; his sleep
was often restless and unfreshing. Though now, as he ever had been,
kind and gentle to me, at times with others he was moody, silent, and
evidently worried. All the brightness of youth appeared to be
leaving him, so much so that my heart ached to see him, and I felt I
could bear it no longer. I would learn the worst he had to tell me,
claiming my right as a true wife to share trouble as well as joy with
my husband.
The confidence I was resolved to claim came unasked for. One evening
Walter returned home and threw himself into a chair, apparently
utterly broken down. He covered his eyes with his hands and sobbed
bitterly.
I knelt at his side and my arms were round him. Then he told me
all--I need not give the details. The bare truth was this: After all
the money spent, the coal raised was of such a poor quality that
every ton sold was sold at a loss. And more money than I had ever
imagined had been expended. Of course he had been cheated--I knew he
was being cheated the moment I saw the faces of the men who had lent
him the money he wanted; but there was no help for it now. Messrs.
Leach and Vincent claimed, for advances, costs and interest, the
enormous sum of close upon ten thousand pounds. Walter had just come
from Bristol, where these men carried on business, and after a stormy
interview with them, had been informed that unless the amount was
paid by Saturday, house, lands, and everything would be at once
advertised for sale--and to-day was Wednesday!
I knew nothing of law; but, even to my ignorance, this sudden demand
and swift procedure seemed unusual.
"But can they do it?" I asked.
"Yes, I am afraid they can. Months ago, when they made me a large
advance, they gave me notice to pay the mortgage off. It was a mere
matter of form, they said; but now they will act upon it. They are
thorough-going rogues, and I believe have some scheme in their heads
by which they fancy it possible to get absolute possession of the
whole estate."
"But, Walter dear, the estate must be worth thousands more than that
amount."
"Oh yes, I can get the money easily enough. But not in three days.
It will cut me to the heart even to see it all advertised, although
doubtless the sale may be stopped."
"Why not go to that nice old gentleman, Mr. Mainwaring?" I suggested.
"You always call him your family solicitor. He will help you, I am
sure."
"That is just what I intend doing. I shall go to London to-morrow,
and show him exactly how I stand, and beg as a great favor that I may
have the money at once. When I return I will give orders for all the
men to be discharged and the machinery sold. There shall be an end
of it before it makes an end of me."
I was almost hysterical with joy as I heard his last words.
"Oh, my love!" I cried. "It will all come right with us yet. We are
after all only half ruined. We can let the Hall and go abroad for
several years. Don't trouble about it any more. If you could only
know how happy I am to think I shall have you back once again, all to
myself as of old, you would be happy too. We will live in some quiet
French or Swiss town, and be everything to one another again."
So I talked to him and comforted him, until he grew more composed,
and, kissing me, owned that life was still worth having, even if
shorn of half its wealth.
That night I slept more happily than I had slept for months.
The morning's post brought a letter from Leach and Vincent. It was
couched in legal terms, and stated that unless the amount due was
paid in notes or gold by Saturday at noon, they would take the
threatened steps. Walter at once despatched a telegram, saying the
money would be paid, and requesting that the necessary release might
be prepared in order to avoid any delay. Then he started for London,
in quest of ten thousand pounds.
I had little fear as to the result of his expedition. I can read
faces; and long ago I had read in Mr. Mainwaring's face the kindness
of his disposition. I knew he was rich, and that his clients were
also rich men; moreover, he had a high opinion of Walter, and held
him in what might almost be termed affection. When he congratulated
me upon my marriage, he told me, in unmistakable words, what he
thought of my husband. So I was not surprised when, on the Friday
evening, Walter returned with a semblance of the old joyous smile on
his face; and, after locking a pocketful of bank-notes in the safe,
sat down by me, and for the rest of the evening built airy castles,
or rather cottages, full of peacefulness and love.
When I awoke next morn, my heart was light; trouble, it seemed, had
been, but passed away so swiftly that its traces scarce remained. I
threw the window open, and the fresh, sweet air of spring brought
gladness on its wings. The honeysuckle, old and great, that clothed
the wall beneath my window, just gave signs of breaking into blossom;
leaning out, I plucked some sprays and pinned them in my dress. A
thrush sung from a bush below; my heart kept echoing his notes of
love and joy. What cared I for the money, or its loss? Should I not
have my own love back again, and watch his face regain its old bright
look of health and happiness? Passed by his side, and with our
children round, would not my life be pleasant in some quaint old town
of France? And we would live so carefully, and save money as years
went on, until some day might bring us to the dear old Hall again.
Unhappy?--no! few moments in my life had happier been than these.
And Walter was cheerful. He would soon be out of the clutches of his
obliging friends. The shock was over. He had told me what had been
gnawing at his heart for so long; he was now looking his troubles
fairly in the face, and, as usually happens, found them not so
terrible in aspect as he had imagined. He buttoned his bank-notes in
his breast-pocket and started for the railway station. He felt
better and stronger to-day, and, as the morning was so beautifully
fine, was tempted to walk the five miles, instead of driving, as he
usually did.
We were early risers, so he had plenty of time, and I thought the
walk would do him good. Perhaps it was the feeling of newly restored
confidence--perfect and true--which now existed between us that made
his farewell to me that morning even more affectionate than it was
wont to be--made him insist upon having all the children brought
down, and taking many a kiss from those little rosy pursed-up
lips--made him pause when he reached the furthest point to which my
eyes could follow him, and turning, waft me one more farewell.
I should have walked with him, at any rate, part of the way; but
household duties had to be attended to; so, after watching his tall
figure disappear at the turning of the drive, I reentered the house,
hoping that the day would pass quickly, and hasten the evening which
would bring him back again.
Months and months ago I had promised a friend, who sighed in far-away
lands for English fields again, to make, this spring, a little
collection of dried ferns and send it to her. The anxiety of the
last few months had driven the promise from my mind, but as, this
morning, I pictured our own projected emigration, my thoughts turned
to my distant friend, and my broken promise came back to me. I
determined that on the first opportunity I would make amends for my
neglect.
Ferns, many of them scarce ones, grew plentifully in our pleasant
country; but on the road that Walter must take on his way to the
station they flourished in unusual abundance. I could obtain many
varieties close at hand, but some few grew further off; so I asked
Walter, if he should chance to meet with any specimens of these
particular sorts, to pick a frond or two, which he could place
between the leaves of the book he carried. I wanted, especially, a
specimen of the Northern Shield Fern, which even here is not very
common, growing as it does in little patches, sometimes miles apart.
He laughed at my idle request, but promised to attend to it.
The day wore on, and the sun got low. It was time to send the
dog-cart to meet the train. Long, long before the time had elapsed
in which, by any chance, it could return, I was waiting at the window
to welcome Walter home again. I waited and waited, until so many
weary minutes crawled away that I was fain to conclude he had been
detained in Bristol until the next and last train.
I nursed my disappointment, and killed the time as best I could. The
hour when I might surely expect him came and passed. The train must
be late. I opened the window, and waited and listened for the sound
of his coming.
At last I heard the ring of the horse's hoofs, and saw the
approaching dog-cart dimly by the light of the stars. I ran to the
door, eager to greet my husband; but as the horse drew up on the
gravel, I could see only one figure in the dog-cart--that of James,
our groom. He told me that his master had come by neither train, so,
after waiting, he had driven back alone.
I turned away, very miserable and sad at heart, but, strange to say,
felt no fear of evil. Business had, of course, detained him. It
seemed unkind not to have let me know in some way, but perhaps he
could find no means of doing so. There was not the slightest chance
of his returning to-night, the distance being far too great for
driving. I must wait until to-morrow.
It was only when I went to bed--alone, for almost the first time
since we were married--that fear fell upon me, and fancy brought
horrid ideas to my mind--that the possibility of evil having befallen
my husband came to me. The large sum of money he carried, the lonely
road, the black-faced colliers about the neighborhood--all combined
to fill me with a nameless dread--a terror which I could scarcely put
into thoughts, much less into words. Yet I strove with my fears,
trying to strangle each one as it was born.
"I shall see him to-morrow. To-morrow I shall see him," I repeated
over and over again; and as that morning at last dawned, I fell into
a restless sleep.
But morning brought him not; noon brought him not--neither letter nor
message. So my heart died within me; and taking a maid with me, I
started for Bristol by the afternoon train. It was Sunday; the
streets of the large town looked dreary and deserted as we passed
through them. Knowing Mr. Leach's private address, we drove straight
to his house. After some delay I was shown into a room.
By and by Mr. Leach entered, with his fat forefinger closed in a book
of sermons, which, I felt instinctively, he had been engaged in
reading for the benefit of his young vultures. His smooth face was
full of gentle astonishment that any one should wish to confer with
him on business matters on that particular evening in the week. As I
looked at him and read through his mask of hypocrisy, I knew that the
man was a rogue and capable of committing any crime. When he saw who
his visitor was, his astonished look changed to one of annoyance. He
closed his book entirely, laying it on the table with the edifying
title turned toward me.
It seems childish to mention such trivial incidents; but during that
terrible time every word, every detail, seems graven upon my memory
in deep lines that will never be effaced.
"I have called, Mr. Leach--" I began.
"My dear Mrs. Linton, I know why you have called. But I am sorry to
be obliged to say that your errand is useless--utterly useless. Mr.
Linton made a promise he has not kept. He can not blame us for the
steps we have taken."
"A promise not kept?" I echoed.
"Certainly not. He undertook to pay us a large sum of money
yesterday. He has not been near us--I conclude he fa ill," he added,
with an approach to a sneer.
I sunk back in the wildest grief. Then all my fears of the night,
all my forebodings of the day, were true! I knew that never--never
again should I look on Walter's face. He had been murdered--but by
whom?
Mr. Leach endeavored, after the manner of his kind, to comfort me.
He placed his fat hand in a soothing way upon my arm. This action
restored my senses to me.
"My husband left me only yesterday morning with the money you claim
in his pocket. I know it for certain. He was going straight to you.
Where is he? Tell me?"
Mr. Leach gave a start of surprise, but said nothing. I waited for
his answer.
"Where is he?" I reiterated. "Tell me!"
Mr. Leach placed his finger-tips together, and looked at me with an
expression almost like placid amusement.
"Mrs. Linton," he said slowly, "I am a man of business, and have seen
strange things in my time, so you mustn't be offended if I ask you a
question. Mr. Linton had the money ready for us, you say. In what
form was it?"
"In notes, sir," I replied. "He told me you declined taking anything
else."
"Yes, yes--except gold. So we did. We are bound to be careful.
Now, Mrs. Linton--mind, I mean no offense--do you know that your
husband was much embarrassed?"
"I know he could pay all just debts--and unjust ones, too," I
answered, with rising indignation.
"Yes, of course. All just and unjust debts. All unjust debts--very
good. Now, do you think it possible--ten thousand is a lot of
money--do you think it possible that Mr. Linton may have--well, in
plain English, decamped with it?"
I heard no more. My face was flaming. I rose and, without another
word, left the room. I was in the cab before Mr. Leach had recovered
from his surprise, and in another minute was sobbing my poor heart
out on the shoulder of my maid--a faithful, good girl who loved me.
I can not tell you of the next few days. The uncertainty of
everything, yet, to me, the utter hopelessness. The dread of what
any moment might make known to me. The searchers searching and
hoping to find--what? For I knew that the success of their quest
could only bring me the dead body of my darling--murdered, perhaps,
for the sake of the money he carried. Yet hardest of all to bear was
the knowledge that the sorrow manifested by those around me was only
assumed out of respect to me; that no one believed Walter to be dead;
that the wicked, cruel slander which had framed itself in Mr. Leach's
mind had entered into the minds of others. I could read the thought
in the faces of all who came near me during those days. I knew that
the paid seekers performed their task with a smile on their
lips--that the word went around among them that, in order to be
successful, the search should be, not for a dead, but for a living
man, to find whom it was needful to look further away. How was it I
did not go mad?
I cared nothing when some one told me that the property, house, and
all were advertised for sale in a few weeks' time. I thought of
nothing, saw nothing but the cold, still face of the one I loved. I
wished for nothing now but to see his name cleared from the stain
thrown upon it--a stain he would have heeded more than death; this
done, I wished to die--that was all. The wild thought which had at
first entered my head, that the men to whom he owed the money had
taken it and made away with him, was at last dispelled; for proof was
positive that Walter had not gone to Bristol on that fatal morning.
The passengers from the station were too few, and Walter too well
known not to have been noticed. Indeed, no ticket for the class by
which he would certainly have traveled had been issued that day. No
one had met him that morning, and he had disappeared without leaving
a trace; for people told me that every inch of the country near had
been scoured. But I knew they deceived me, and that the wicked
thought was in every heart, although no one dared to speak it in
words to me who knew him and loved him.
Mr. Mainwaring, whom I had almost forgotten in my grief, came down in
the course of a few days. Unfit as I was for business, I was
compelled to see him. The kind old man was in great distress and
anxiety, but he was very good to me. He started when he saw that I
had already put on mourning.
"It is dreadful," he said, with tears in his eyes, and taking both my
hands in his. "Not that I care for the money so much--although, of
course, I must make up any deficiency myself, having been guilty of
such irregularity. It is dreadful to think that I, who tried to help
Walter, must now strip his wife and children of their last shilling.
I trusted him so that I let him have my client's money simply on his
note-of-hand, bearing, of course, all responsibility myself. It was
most irregular; but he was so urgent, and I wanted to help him. Poor
girl! I will do what I can for you, but I am afraid it can be but
little."
I begged him not to think of us, and thanked him again and again for
his great kindness.
"I would, if only in my own interests, pay the money again and stop
the sale; but no one has the power to mortgage the property to me.
We do not even know that Walter is dead. It can not, can not be
true, what every one seems to hint at?" he added, almost shamefacedly.
I burst into a flood of tears and almost fell at his feet.
"Not you, Mr. Mainwaring! Not you!" I sobbed out. "You, who knew
him, and knew that dishonor was not in him! Let me think that one,
at least, believes in my dead love. Would to God, for my sake, it
were as people think, so that I might some day see him again."
The kind old friend raised me.
"No," he said; "I don't believe it. I have known him from a boy, and
I knew his father before him. They lie who say Walter Linton could
have done such a thing. But it is all very, very dreadful."
Mr. Mainwaring slept at Draycot Hall that night, but I could not
bring myself to spend the evening in his company. We could but think
or speak of one subject, and I felt I had no right to inflict my
grief upon him. I should be better alone. I watched the children
sink to sleep, and for some hours sat by their little white beds
listening to their regular breathing. Then I kissed them all gently
and very quickly, lest my hot tears, falling on their upturned faces,
should awake them; and, near midnight, retired to what with me would
wrongly be called rest. I locked the door of my room, undressed
myself, and sat in my dressing-gown over the fire, for the night
being damp and cold, my good maid had kindled a fire for me.
And there I sat, not seeking rest. I knew that sleep and I must be
strangers for hours; that not until my strength was quite worn out
would sad thoughts cease and change to sadder dreams; not till at
last, from sheer fatigue they fell, would weary eyelids curtain
tearful eyes. And so I sat, till slowly died the fire, and morning
air stole chilly through the room--thinking of all the joy and
sweetness of life so lately promised, all it gave me now. It seemed
so hard to lose the one I loved--lost, as it were, in darkest night,
with none to say where he had wandered.
"Oh!" I cried, "if I could see you once and say farewell, although
your words came but from dying lips! I should not grieve so much,
and for the sake of children dear to both might live, and even not go
mad."
The wind had risen with the night, and gusts now and again bore heavy
rain that beat against my window; whilst the tall trees round moaned
as the gale went tearing through their boughs. The world seemed full
of dismal sounds and grief, and I the saddest in the world. At last
sleep conquered sorrow, so I threw myself down on the bed and slept.
How long it was I slept I can not tell, for all the while I seemed
awake and seeing fearful sights. Cruel voices whispered words that
stabbed my heart, so that in dreams I longed for wakefulness. Then I
awoke and heard the wind and rain, louder and fiercer, whilst the
room looked strange as morning dawned in cheerless gray, and crept in
through the half turned blind.
I felt dazed. For a moment I could scarcely realize where I was, or
quite recall what had happened. I even turned, from force of habit,
to see if Walter, who should be by my side, was also awake. Then, as
I saw the vacant pillow by mine, all came back to me--came back with
such a reflux of sorrow that, in my despair, I threw out my arms, and
sobbing bitterly, called on the one who could not hear me. My right
hand lay as it had fallen, outside the coverlid, and, in a minute, I
almost shrieked with horror and alarm; for I felt another hand seek
it, touch it; and I experienced the sensation of fingers closing
round my own. Hastily I tore my hand away from that clasp--if what
held without restraining, made itself distinctly felt without
offering resistance, can be called a clasp--and sprang from the bed.
Courageous as I am by nature, I trembled like a leaf, and had it been
dark when that unknown hand sought mine, my horror must have vented
itself in screams. But the room was nearly light; so in a few
moments I conquered that overpowering fright and looked around for
the intruder. I peered into every nook in which one might possibly
hide, but detected no one. The door was as firmly locked as I left
it. I was alone, for no one could have entered either by door or
window. Then I sat down and reasoned with myself on my folly. It
was fancy from a mind upset and overwrought with grief. It was the
lingering impression left by one of those dreams--those dreadful
dreams which sleep had brought me! It was a pure delusion, a
creation of my own, and I wondered if, as I feared at times, I was
going out of my senses. Although I was able to persuade myself that
this reasoning was correct, I dared not return to my bed, but,
sitting once more in my chair, longed for broad daylight.
My thoughts soon wandered away from my recent fright, and took that
path which they always followed. My arm dropped to my side, and my
fingers relaxed themselves. And then, once more I felt that hand
creep to mine, take it, and hold it. Again I felt the unmistakable
sensation of fingers that closed round mine. I felt that there was
no hand in mine that my hand could clasp in return, but the sensation
of a palm against my palm--fingers twining my fingers--was
indisputable. The sensation of pressure was there--faintly, it is
true, but it was there. It was no fancy, no dream, this time.
Whether mortal or not, a hand, or the semblance of a hand, was
holding mine. Again the horror overcame me--again I strove to tear
my hand away from this invisible clasp. My blood curdled as I found
the result of my efforts failed on this second occasion--found that
the fingers which fastened on my own could not be shaken off, do what
I would. As I moved my hand, even so the hand that held it moved
with it. If I clinched my own, I could yet feel the strange pressure
of those unseen fingers. If I grasped my right hand in my left,
there was still the sensation of another hand between my own. Do
what I would, move how I would, that clasp, or phantom of a clasp,
was ever on my hand. Yet I struggled with fear until the awful
thought flashed through my brain that this was the aura, the
forerunner of paralysis or epilepsy. Then I could bear it no longer.
Whether that grasp was the result of bodily or mental ailment, I
could bear it no longer--I felt my mind was going. I rushed to the
door, tore it open, and my screams rang through the house. Remember,
I was but a woman, and alone.
As the sound of hurrying feet drew near, that hand or hand-clasp
lying on my own quitted it. Then, as the strange sensation ceased,
did I hear a mournful sound, like a sigh, or was it only the wind
outside? Did the phantom fingers draw themselves away from mine
soothingly, even, it seemed, reluctantly, or was that fancy too? As
the servants with frightened looks drew near me, could that wild and
joyful thought that flashed through my brain be more than the thought
of a madwoman? What could it mean?
Except for this I was myself again. I had been frightened, I told
all who came to me--frightened by dreams, by shadows, by solitude,
and my own thoughts. No one wondered at it; what flesh and blood
could stand, unmoved, the anxiety I had borne during the last week?
I was over-wrought and suffering from sleeplessness, so Mr.
Mainwaring insisted upon giving me an opiate. I swallowed it
reluctantly, and my maid sat with me, until, in due time, dull sleep
told of the potency and efficacy of the drug which I had been made to
take.
This artificial sleep lasted without a break until late in the
afternoon. Then I awoke refreshed, and in full possession of my
senses. I arose and prayed, as I had never prayed before, that my
hand might again feel that unseen touch which had nearly driven me
mad in the night. "Will it come again? O, let it come again!" was
the constant cry of my heart; and I longed ardently for the night,
which, perhaps, might bring that hand seeking my own again. For
incredible as it seems, I knew, when those fingers last left mine,
that love had in part conquered death--that Walter had been with me.
Now I feared nothing. Why should I fear? He had loved me living--he
loved me now. Whether he came to me in body or in spirit, should he
not be welcome? Oh, that he might come again!
And he came again. Mr. Mainwaring, who would not leave Draycot that
day on account of the apparently strange state of my health, that
evening insisted upon my taking a turn in the garden. I obeyed him,
although every plant, every blossom around, seemed breathing sadness.
I was too tired to walk for longer than a few minutes, but sat on my
favorite seat, and watched the sun sink behind the hills. Even then
and there--in broad daylight--I felt his hand seek my own, and my
heart leaped with joy. I shunned or strove to avoid it no longer. I
let my hand lie still, and again I felt the touch, or the spirit of
the touch, of the one I loved. So naturally those fingers closed
round mine; so familiar seemed that clasp to me, that could I have
forgotten the last week, I might have closed my eyes, and, lying
there with my hand in his, have thought I had only to open them to
happiness once more. If I could but forget!
Even if I had not known in whose hand mine was resting, the caress
those fingers gave me would have told me. I wondered why I feared
and repulsed them at first. If only I could sometimes sit as I sat
then, and know and feel that Walter was beside me, I thought that
life might even be happy. So I turned my head toward him, and said,
softly--so softly:
"Dearest love, you will come often and often, will you not? You will
be always with me; then I shall not be unhappy."
He answered not, but I felt a change in the clasp of his hand, and I
pondered as to what its meaning could be. Then I fancied that
faintly, very faintly, that touch was endeavoring to make me
understand something which my grosser earthly faculties failed to
grasp--to direct, to lead me somewhere for some purpose. For it left
me and came again, left and came again, till at last I learned its
meaning.
Then and there I rose. "I come, my love," I said. And once more
Walter Linton and his wife walked, as they had walked many a time
before, hand-in-hand down the broad garden path; past the rustic
lodge, covered with rosebuds and woodbine; through the gateway; out
into the high road. I feared nothing: the hand of the one I loved
was in mine, and guiding me whither he chose; moreover it was yet
daylight, and I was not dreaming.
I even knew that Mr. Mainwaring followed us as we walked down the
path. I saw him come to my side and look at me with wonder. I
wanted no one to be near my husband and myself, so I waved him back
imperiously. "Follow if you like," I said, "but do not speak to us."
Perhaps he thought I was mad, perhaps that I was walking in my sleep,
and, if so, feared to awake me. Any way, he followed us silently,
and that was all I knew or cared about him, or about anything else.
For were not my love and I walking, once more, hand-in-hand, and it
was not in a dream?
Along and along the road, each side of which is beautiful with its
green banks and hedges, and every inch of which we know, even keeping
to that side we always choose because the flowers grow thickest
there. How fresh and green everything looks this evening! The
swallows are flying here and there. Every blade of grass is washed
clean from dust by the heavy rain of the morning. No. I am not
dreaming. I am walking with my husband. A nightingale breaks Into
song near us, as we walk. We stop--who could help stopping to
listen? Now its melody ceases, and Walter leads me on. It is like
in the old days when we were first wed; before we thought or wished
for more wealth. Those days when all the country round was fresh and
new to me. Never did the wild-flowers, I think, look gayer than they
look this evening, although they are closing fast. I would stop, my
darling, and gather a bunch for the children; but they have so many
flowers at home, and I fear to loose your hand for a moment.
Besides, you wish to lead me further yet; we have somewhere to go to
this evening. I forget whither it was you told me, Walter. Is it to
the lily-pond, to see if we can find any snow-white cups floating,
buoyed up by the broad green leaves? Is it to climb the hill that
lies in front of us, and see the very last of the glorious sun; to
catch the crimson sparkle of its rays on the distant windows of our
dear home? That sun which will rise to-morrow, and waken us both so
early--for you will never leave me again, Walter--promise me, my
darling--I have been so unhappy. Is it further yet? To the ruins of
the gray old abbey where the poet's ivy grows so freely? Shall we
wait there, as once before, and see the full moon shine through the
rose of the east windows? Shall we wander arm-in-arm through the dim
glades, laughing at the foolish monks who chose to live and die
there, knowing not love, nor the sweetness of life when two share its
joys and troubles? But our troubles are over now, are they not,
dearest? No matter, lead me whither you will: I care not--you are
with me, your hand is in mine, and I am happy. But wherever we go,
we will walk back by moonlight, and then creep up quietly and kiss
the children just once before we go to bed. To-morrow we will wake
and love again. No, I am not dreaming. But why do you not speak to
me and tell me where you have been--why you left me so long? Oh, how
I have wept and waited for you! Dearest, you will never leave me
again?
This is the spot you wished to lead me to--the place where the ferns
grow? Ah, you remembered what I wanted. Are there any of that sort
up there? Let us go and see, although the day is flying fast.
Through the hazel bushes--deep, deep into the underwood--on and
on--up and up--brambles and stones! I did not know it was so steep
here. Hold my hand firmer and help me. More bushes, more
undergrowth; and how the twilight fades! My darling, we shall find
no ferns to-night. May we not go back and come again to-morrow? Yet
on, and on! Love, where you lead I follow and fear not! Is not your
hand in mine, and you will never leave me again! Still on! My
darling, you have brought me to the very edge of a rock! Don't leave
me here! Don't draw your hand from mine! Stay one minute--one
moment longer! I can not see you; it is dark and cold! I can not
feel you, and the world seems filling again with grief. Come back!
Come back! Walter! Walter!
They told me I dreamed it--that I walked in my sleep. Clever and
learned men said so, and I am only a woman, neither clever nor
learned. Mr. Mainwaring, who had with great difficulty followed
us--for I say "us," in spite of all that wisdom can urge--found me
lying lifeless at the brink of the rocky depth to which Walter had
led me, and where he had left me. Down below me lay something that
I, thank God, never saw. They bore it home and told me it was all
that was left of Walter Linton, my husband. But I knew better, for
had he not that evening walked hand-in-hand with me for miles? They
told me, also, that he had fallen from the top of the rock--that it
was not a great height, but high enough for the fall to kill him
instantaneously--that most likely he was led to that fatal place,
seeking some rare plant; as a root and withered leaves were clenched
in his hand--that the notes he had placed in his pocket when he left
his home were still there--that Draycot was still mine and his
children's. But they believe me not when I tell them that my love,
my husband, through the power of the love he bore me, could come from
the dead--could take my hand In his and lead me with him, on and on,
till he showed me where and how he died--till he saved those he loved
from utter ruin and a life of penury--till, more than all, he cleared
his own dear memory from stain and dishonor. Yet these things were!
THRAWN JANET
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
_Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850. He
was graduated at Cambridge and studied law, which he abandoned for
literature. In 1889 he settled in Samoa, where he died in 1894. He
is the author of numerous essays, a delightful volume of poems called
"A Child's Garden of Verses," and many stories. Stevenson's books
include: "Treasure Island"; "Kidnapped" and its sequel, "David
Balfour"; "The Black Arrow"; "Prince Otto"; "The Silverado
Squatters"; "New Arabian Nights"; "Island Nights' Entertainments";
"The Master of Ballantrae"; "An Inland Voyage"; "Travels with a
Donkey," and "The Ebb-Tide."_
_"Thrawn Janet" appeared in "The Merry Men and Other Tales."_
THRAWN JANET
By ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
The Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the moorland parish
of Balweary, in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man,
dreadful to his hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life,
without relative or servant or any human company, in the small and
lonely manse under the Hanging Shaw. In spite of the iron composure
of his features, his eye was wild, scared, and uncertain; and when he
dwelt, in private admonitions, on the future of the impenitent, it
seemed as if his eye pierced through the storms of time to the
terrors of eternity. Many young persons, coming to prepare
themselves against the season of the Holy Communion, were dreadfully
affected by his talk. He had a sermon on 1st Peter, v. and 8th, "The
devil as a roaring lion," on the Sunday after every seventeenth of
August, and he was accustomed to surpass himself upon that text both
by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing
in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits, and the old
looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of
those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood
by the water of Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw
overhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish
hilltops rising toward the sky, had begun, at a very early period of
Mr. Soulis's ministry, to be avoided in the dusk hours by all who
valued themselves upon their prudence; and guidmen sitting at the
clachan alehouse shook their heads together at the thought of passing
late by that uncanny neighborhood. There was one spot, to be more
particular, which was regarded with especial awe. The manse stood
between the high road and the water of Dule, with a gable to each;
its back was toward the kirktown of Balweary, nearly half a mile
away; in front of it, a bare garden, hedged with thorn, occupied the
land between the river and the road. The house was two stories high,
with two large rooms on each. It opened not directly on the garden,
but on a causewayed path, or passage, giving on the road on the one
hand, and closed on the other by the tall willows and elders that
bordered on the stream. And it was this strip of causeway that
enjoyed among the young parishioners of Balweary so infamous a
reputation. The minister walked there often after dark, sometimes
groaning aloud in the instancy of his unspoken prayers; and when he
was from home, and the manse door was locked, the more daring
schoolboys ventured, with beating hearts, to "follow my leader"
across that legendary spot.
This atmosphere of terror, surrounding, as it did, a man of God of
spotless character and orthodoxy, was a common cause of wonder and
subject of inquiry among the few strangers who were led by chance or
business into that unknown, outlying country. But many even of the
people of the parish were ignorant of the strange events which had
marked the first year of Mr. Soulis's ministrations; and among those
who were better informed, some were naturally reticent, and others
shy of that particular topic. Now and again, only, one of the older
folk would warm into courage over his third tumbler, and recount the
cause of the minister's strange looks and solitary life.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Fifty years syne, when Mr. Soulis cam' first into Ba'weary, he was
still a young man--a callant, the folk said--fu' o' book learnin' and
grand at the exposition, but, as was natural in sae young a man, wi'
nae leevin' experience in religion. The younger sort were greatly
taken wi' his gifts and his gab; but auld, concerned, serious men and
women were moved even to prayer for the young man, whom they took to
be a self-deceiver, and the parish that was like to be sae
ill-supplied. It was before the days o' the moderates--weary fa'
them; but ill things are like guid--they baith come bit by bit, a
pickle at a time; and there were folk even then that said the Lord
had left the college professors to their ain devices, an' the lads
that went to study wi' them wad hae done mair and better sittin' in a
peat-bog, like their forebears of the persecution, wi' a Bible under
their oxter and a speerit o' prayer in their heart. There was nae
doubt, onyway, but that Mr. Soulis had been ower lang at the college.
He was careful and troubled for mony things besides the ae thing
needful. He had a feck o' books wi' him--mair than had ever been
seen before in a' that presbytery; and a sair wark the carrier had
wi' them, for they were a' like to have smoored in the Deil's Hag
between this and Kilmackerlie. They were books o' divinity, to be
sure, or so they ca'd them; but the serious were o' opinion there was
little service for sae mony, when the hail o' God's Word would gang
in the neuk of a plaid. Then he wad sit half the day and half the
nicht forbye, which was scant decent--writin', nae less; and first,
they were feared he wad read his sermons; and syne it proved he was
writin' a book himsel', which way surely no fittin' for ane of his
years an' sma' experience.
Onyway it behooved him to get an auld, decent wife to keep the manse
for him an' see to his bit denners; and he was recommended to an auld
limmer--Janet M'Clour, they ca'd her--and sae far left to himsel' as
to be ower persuaded. There was mony advised him to the contrar, for
Janet was mair than suspeckit by the best folk in Ba'weary. Lang or
that, she had had a wean to a dragoon; she hadnae come forrit for
maybe thretty year; and bairns had seen her mumblin' to hersel' up on
Key's Loan in the gloamin', whilk was an unco time an' place for a
God-fearin' woman. Howsoever, it was the laird himsel' that had
first tauld the minister o' Janet; and in thae days he wad have gane
a far gate to pleesure the laird. When folk tauld him that Janet was
sib to the deil, it was a' superstition by his way of it; an' when
they cast up the Bible to him an' the witch of Endor, he wad threep
it doun their thrapples that thir days were a' gane by, and the deil
was mercifully restrained.
Weel, when it got about the clachan that Janet M'Clour was to be
servant at the manse, the folk were fair mad wi' her an' him
thegether; and some o' the guidwives had nae better to dae than get
round her door cheeks and chairge her wi' a' that was ken't again
her, frae the sodger's bairn to John Tamson's twa kye. She was nae
great speaker; folk usually let her gang her ain gate, an' she let
them gang theirs, wi' neither Fair-guid-een nor Fair-guid-day; but
when she buckled to she had a tongue to deave the miller. Up she
got, an' there wasnae an auld story in Ba'weary but she gart somebody
lowp for it that day; they couldnae say ae thing but she could say
twa to it; till, at the hinder end, the guidwives up and claught haud
of her, and clawed the coats aff her back, and pu'd her doun the
clachan to the water o' Dule, to see if she were a witch or no, soum
or droun. The carline skirled till ye could hear her at the Hangin'
Shaw, and she focht like ten; there was mony a guidwife bure the mark
of her neist day, an' mony a lang day after; and just in the hettest
o' the collteshangie, wha suld come up (for his sins) but the new
minister.
"Women," said he (and he had a grand voice), "I charge you in the
Lord's name to let her go."
Janet ran to him--she was fair wud wi' terror--an' clang to him an'
prayed him, for Christ's sake, save her frae the cummers; an' they,
for their pairt, tauld him a' that was ken't, and maybe mair.
"Woman," says he to Janet, "is this true?"
"As the Lord sees me," says she, "as the Lord made me, no a word o't.
Forbye the bairn," says she, "I've been a decent woman a' my days."
"Will you," says Mr. Soulis, "in the name of God, and before me, His
unworthy minister, renounce the devil and his works?"
Weel, it wad appear that when he askit that, she gave a girn that
fairly frichtit them that saw her, an' they could hear her teeth play
dirl thegether in her chafts; but there was naething for it but the
ae way or the ither; an' Janet lifted up her hand and renounced the
deil before them a'.
"And now," said Mr. Soulis to the guidwives, "home with ye, one and
all, and pray to God for His forgiveness."
And he gied Janet his arm, though she had little on her but a sark,
and took her up the clachan to her ain door like a leddy of the land;
an' her scrieghin' and laughin' as was a scandal to be heard.
There were mony grave folk lang ower their prayers that nicht; but
when the morn cam' there was sic a fear fell upon a' Ba'weary that
the bairns hid theirsels, and even the men-folk stood and keekit frae
their doors. For there was Janet comin' doun the clachan--her or her
likeness, nane could tell--wi' her neck thrawn, and her heid on ae
side, like a body that has been hangit, and a girn on her face like
an unstreakit corp. By an' by they got used wi' it, and even speered
at her to ken what was wrang; but frae that day forth she couldnae
speak like a Christian woman, but slavered and played click wi' her
teeth like a pair o' shears; and frae that day forth the name o' God
cam' never on her lips. Whiles she wad try to say it, but it
michtnae be. Them that kenned best said least; but they never gied
that Thing the name o' Janet M'Clour; for the auld Janet, by their
way o't, was in muckle hell that day. But the minister was neither
to haud nor to bind; he preached about naething but the folk's
cruelty that had gi'en her a stroke of the palsy; he skelpt the
bairns that meddled her; and he had her up to the manse that same
nicht and dwalled there a' his lane wi' her under the Hangin' Shaw.
Weel, time gaed by: and the idler sort commenced to think mair
lichtly o' that black business. The minister was weel thocht o'; he
was aye late at the writing, folk wad see his can'le doun by the Dule
water after twal' at e'en; and he seemed pleased wi' himsel' and
upsitten as at first, though a' body could see that he was dwining.
As for Janet she cam' an' she gaed; if she didnae speak muckle afore,
it was reason she should speak less then; she meddled naebody; but
she was an eldritch thing to see, an' nane wad hae mistrysted wi' her
for Ba'weary glebe.
About the end o' July there cam' a spell o' weather, the like o't
never was in that countryside; it was lown an' het an' heartless; the
herds couldnae win up the Black Hill, the bairns were ower weariet to
play; an' yet it was gousty too, wi' claps o' het wund that rumm'led
in the glens, and bits o' shouers that sleekened naething. We aye
thocht it but to thun'er on the morn; but the morn cam', and the
morn's morning, and it was aye the same uncanny weather, sair on
folks and bestial. Of a' that were the waur, nane suffered like Mr.
Soulis; he could neither sleep nor eat, he tauld his elders; an' when
he wasnae writin' at his weary book, he wad be stravaguin' ower a'
the countryside like a man possessed, when a' body else was blythe to
keep caller ben the house.
Abune Hangin' Shaw, in the bield o' the Black Hill, there's a bit
inclosed grund wi' an iron yett; and it seems, in the auld days, that
was the kirkyaird o' Ba'weary, and consecrated by the Papists before
the blessed licht shone upon the kingdom. It was a great howff o'
Mr. Soulis's, onyway; there he would sit an' consider his sermons;
and indeed it's a bieldy bit. Weel, as he cam' ower the wast end o'
the Black Hill, ae day, he saw first twa, an' syne fower, an' syne
seeven corbie craws fleein' round an' round abune the auld kirkyaird.
They flew laigh and heavy, an' squawked to ither as they gaed; and it
was clear to Mr. Soulis that something had put them frae their
ordinar. He wasnae easy fleyed, an' gaed straucht up to the wa's;
an' what suld he find there but a man, or the appearance of a man,
sittin' in the inside upon a grave. He was of a great stature, an'
black as hell, and his e'en were singular to see. Mr. Soulis had
heard tell o' black men, mony's the time; but there was something
unco about this black man that daunted him. Het as he was, he took a
kind o' cauld grue in the marrow o' his banes; but up he spak for a'
that; an' says he: "My friend, are you a stranger in this place?"
The black man answered never a word; he got upon his feet, an' begude
to hirsle to the wa' on the far side; but he aye lookit at the
minister; an' the minister stood an' lookit back; till a' in a
meenute the black man was ower the wa' an' rinnin' for the bield o'
the trees. Mr. Soulis, he hardly kenned why, ran after him; but he
was sair forjaskit wi' his walk an' the het, unhalesome weather; and
rin as he likit, he got nae mair than a glisk o' the black man amang
the birks, till he won doun to the foot o' the hillside, an' there he
saw him ance mair, gaun, hap, step, an' lowp, ower Dule water to the
manse.
Mr. Soulis wasnae weel pleased that this fearsome gangrel suld mak'
sae free wi' Ba'weary manse; an' he ran the harder, an', wet shoon,
ower the burn, an' up the walk; but the deil a black man was there to
see. He stepped out upon the road, but there was naebody there; he
gaed a' ower the gairden, but na, nae black man. At the hinder end,
and a bit feared as was but natural, he lifted the hasp and into the
manse; and there was Janet M'Clour before his een, wi' her thrawn
craig, and nane sae pleased to see him. And he aye minded sinsyne,
when first he set his een upon her, he had the same cauld and deidly
grue.
"Janet," says he, "have you seen a black man?"
"A black man?" quo' she. "Save us a'! Ye're no wise, minister.
There's nae black man in a' Ba'weary."
But she didnae speak plain, ye maun understand; but yam-yammered,
like a powney wi' the bit in its moo.
"Weel," says he, "Janet, if there was nae black man, I have spoken
with the Accuser of the Brethren."
And he sat down like ane wi' a fever, an' his teeth chittered in his
heid.
"Hoots," says she, "think shame to yoursel', minister;" an' gied him
a drap brandy that she keept aye by her.
Syne Mr. Soulis gaed into his study amang a' his books. It's a lang,
laigh, mirk chalmer, perishin' cauld in winter, an' no very dry even
in the tap o' the simmer, for the manse stands near the burn. Sae
doun he sat, and thocht of a' that had come an' gane since he was in
Ba'weary, an' his hame, an' the days when he was a bairn an' ran
daffin' on the braes; and that black man aye ran in his heid like the
owercome of a sang. Aye the mair he thocht, the mair he thocht o'
the black man. He tried the prayer, an' the words wouldnae come to
him; an' he tried, they say, to write at his book, but he couldnae
mak' nae mair o' that. There was whiles he thocht the black man was
at his oxter, an' the swat stood upon him cauld as well-water; and
there was other whiles, when he cam' to himsel' like a christened
bairn and minded naething.
The upshot was that he gaed to the window an' stood glowrin' at Dule
water. The trees are unco thick, an' the water lies deep an' black
under the manse; an' there was Janet washin' the cla'es wi' her coats
kilted. She had her back to the minister, an' he, for his pairt,
hardly kenned what he was lookin' at. Syne she turned round, an'
shawed her face; Mr. Soulis had the same cauld grue as twice that day
afore, an' it was borne in upon him what folk said, that Janet was
deid lang syne, an' this was a bogle in her clay cauld flesh. He
drew back a pickle and he scanned her narrowly. She was
tramp-trampin' in the cla'es, croonin' to hersel'; and eh! Gude guide
us, but it was a fearsome face. Whiles she sang louder, but there
was nae man born o' woman that could tell the words o' her sang; an'
whiles she lookit side-lang doun, but there was naething there for
her to look at. There gaed a scunner through the flesh upon his
banes; and that was Heeven's advertisement. But Mr. Soulis just
blamed himsel', he said, to think sae ill of a puir, auld afflicted
wife that hadnae a freend forby himsel'; and he put up a bit prayer
for him and her, an' drank a little caller water--for his heart rose
again the meat--an' gaed up to his naked bed in the gloaming.
That was a nicht that has never been forgotten in Ba'weary, the nicht
o' the seeventeenth of August, seeventeen hun'er' and twal'. It had
been het afore, as I hae said, but that nicht it was hetter than
ever. The sun gaed doun amang unco-lookin' clouds; it fell as mirk
as the pit; no a star, no a breath o' wund; ye couldnae see your han'
afore your face, and even the auld folk cuist the covers frae their
beds and lay pechin' for their breath. Wi' a' that he had upon his
mind, it was gey and unlikely Mr. Soulis wad get muckle sleep. He
lay an' he tummled; the gude, caller bed that he got into brunt his
very banes; whiles he slept, and whiles he waukened; whiles he heard
the time o' nicht, and whiles a tyke yowlin' up the muir, as if
somebody was deid; whiles he thocht he heard bogles claverin' in his
lug, an' whiles he saw spunkies in the room. He behooved, he judged,
to be sick; an' sick he was--little he jaloosed the sickness.
At the hinder end, he got a clearness in his mind, sat up in his sark
on the bedside, and fell thinkin' ance mair o' the black man an'
Janet. He couldnae weel tell how--maybe it was the cauld to his
feet--but it cam' in upon him wi' a spate that there was some
connection between thir twa, an' that either or baith o' them were
bogles. And just at that moment, in Janet's room, which was neist to
his, there cam' a stramp o' feet as if men were wars'lin', an' then a
loud bang; an' then a wund gaed reishling round the fower quarters of
the house; an' then a' was aince mair as seelent as the grave.
Mr. Soulis was feared for neither man nor deevil. He got his tinder
box, an' lighted a can'le, an' made three steps o't ower to Janet's
door. It was on the hasp, an' he pushed it open, an' keeked bauldly
in. It was a big room, as big as the minister's ain, an' plenished
wi' grand, auld, solid gear, for he had naething else. There was a
fower-posted bed wi' auld tapestry; and a braw cabinet of aik, that
was fu' o' the minister's divinity books, an' put there to be out o'
the gate; an' a wheen duds o' Janet's lying here and there about the
floor. But nae Janet could Mr. Soulis see; nor ony sign of a
contention. In he gaed (an' there's few that wad ha'e followed him)
an' lookit a' round, an' listened. But there was naethin' to be
heard, neither inside the manse nor in a' Ba'weary parish, an'
naethin' to be seen but the muckle shadows turnin' round the can'le.
An' then a' at aince, the minister's heart played dunt an' stood
stock-still; an' a cauld wund blew amang the hairs o' his heid.
Whaten a weary sicht was that for the puir man's een! For there was
Janet hangin' frae a nail beside the auld aik cabinet: her heid aye
lay on her shoother, her een were steeked, the tongue projekit frae
her mouth, and her heels were twa feet clear abune the floor.
"God forgive us all!" thocht Mr. Soulis; "poor Janet's dead."
He cam' a step nearer to the corp; an' then his heart fair whammled
in his inside. For by what cantrip it wad ill-beseem a man to judge,
she was hingin' frae a single nail an' by a single wursted thread for
darnin' hose.
It's an awfu' thing to be your lane at nicht wi' siccan prodigies o'
darkness; but Mr. Soulis was strong in the Lord. He turned an' gaed
his ways oot o' that room, and lockit the door ahint him; and step by
step, doon the stairs, as heavy as leed; and set doon the can'le on
the table at the stairfoot. He couldnae pray, he couldnae think, he
was dreepin' wi' caul' swat, an' naething could he hear but the
dunt-dunt-duntin' o' his ain heart. He micht maybe have stood there
an hour, or maybe twa, he minded sae little; when a' o' a sudden he
heard a laigh, uncanny steer upstairs; a foot gaed to an' fro in the
cha'mer whaur the corp was hingin'; syne the door was opened, though
he minded weel that he had lockit it; an' syne there was a step upon
the landin', an' it seemed to him as if the corp was lookin' ower the
rail and doun upon him whaur he stood.
He took up the can'le again (for he couldnae want the licht) and, as
saftly as ever he could, gaed straucht out o' the manse an' to the
far end o' the causeway. It was aye pit-mirk; the flame o' the
can'le, when he set it on the grund, brunt steedy and clear as in a
room; naething moved, but the Dule water seepin' and sabbin' doon the
glen, an' yon unhaly footstep that cam' ploddin' doun the stairs
inside the manse. He kenned the foot ower weel, for it was Janet's;
and at ilka step that cam' a wee thing nearer, the cauld got deeper
in his vitals. He commended his soul to Him that made an' keepit
him; "and O Lord," said he, "give me strength this night to war
against the powers of evil."
By this time the foot was comin' through the passage for the door; he
could hear a hand skirt alang the wa', as if the fearsome thing was
feelin' for its way. The saughs tossed an' maned thegether, a lang
sigh cam' ower the hills, the flame o' the can'le was blawn aboot;
an' there stood the corp of Thrawn Janet, wi' her grogram goun an'
her black mutch, wi' the heid aye upon the shouther, an' the girn
still upon the face o't--leevin', ye wad hae said--deid, as Mr.
Soulis weel kenned--upon the threshold o' the manse.
It's a strange thing that the saul of man should be that thirled into
his perishable body; but the minister saw that, an' his heart didnae
break.
She didnae stand there lang; she began to move again an' cam' slowly
toward Mr. Soulis whaur he stood under the saughs. A' the life o'
his body, a' the strength o' his speerit, were glowerin' frae his
een. It seemed she was gaun to speak, but wanted words, an' made a
sign wi' the left hand. There cam' a clap o' wund, like a cat's
fuff; oot gaed the can'le, the saughs skrieghed like folk; an' Mr.
Soulis kenned that, live or die, this was the end o't.
"Witch, beldame, devil!" he cried, "I charge you, by the power of
God, begone--if you be dead, to the grave--if you be damned, to hell."
An' at that moment the Lord's ain hand out o' the Heevens struck the
Horror whaur it stood; the auld, deid, desecrated corp o' the
witch-wife, sae lang keepit frae the grave and hirsled round by
deils, lowed up like a brunstane spunk and fell in ashes to the
grund; the thunder followed, peal on dirling peal, the rairing rain
upon the back o' that; and Mr. Soulis lowped through the garden
hedge, and ran, wi' skelloch upon skelloch, for the clachan.
That same mornin', John Christie saw the Black Man pass the Muckle
Cairn as it was chappin' six; before eicht, he gaed by the
change-house at Knockdow; an' no lang after, Sandy M'Lellan saw him
gaun linkin' doun the braes frae Kilmackerlie. There's little doubt
but it was him that dwalled sae lang in Janet's body; but he was awa'
at last; and sinsyne the deil has never fashed us in Ba'weary.
But it was a sair dispensation for the minister; lang, lang he lay
ravin' in his bed; and frae that hour to this, he was the man ye ken
the day.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
BY CHARLES DICKENS
_Charles Dickens was a stanch friend not only of the child but of all
humanity. No writer, perhaps, has succeeded in portraying so
strikingly the humorous and pathetic in human character. Much of
Dickens's reputation for ability in this direction is due to his
success with the particular story given herewith. The man or woman
who does not know Scrooge, the Ghost that scared him half to death,
and what this story stands for, has still something to learn, both of
literature and of life._
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
By CHARLES DICKENS
STAVE ONE
_Marley's Ghost_
Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about
that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the
clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and
Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put
his hand to. Old Marley was dead as a doornail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what
there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been
inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of
ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the
simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the
Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat,
emphatically, that Marley was dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be
otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many
years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his
sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole
mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad
event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day
of the funeral, and solemnized it with an undoubted bargain.
The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started
from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be
distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I
am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's
Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more
remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon
his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged
gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot--say Saint
Paul's Churchyard for instance--literally to astonish his son's weak
mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years
afterward, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm
was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the
business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he
answered to both names: it was all the same to him.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a
squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old
sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck
out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an
oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his
pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes
red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.
A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry
chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he
iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at
Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth
could warm, nor wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was
bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose,
no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know
where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet,
could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They
often "came down" handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks,
"My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No
beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what
it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired
the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men's
dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug
their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their
tails as though they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye,
dark master!"
But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge
his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy
to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to
Scrooge.
Once upon a time--of all the good days in the year, on Christmas
Eve--old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak,
biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the
court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their
breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm
them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite
dark already: it had not been light all day: and candles were flaring
in the windows of the neighboring offices, like ruddy smears upon the
palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and
keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the
narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy
cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have
thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open, that he might keep his
eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of
tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the
clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal.
But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his
own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the
master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part.
Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm
himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong
imagination, he failed.
"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice.
It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly
that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.
"Bah!" said Scrooge, "humbug!"
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost,
this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was
ruddy and handsome! his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew. "You don't mean
that, I am sure."
"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right have you to be
merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough."
"Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What right have you to be
dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough."
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said
"Bah!" again; and followed it up with "Humbug!"
"Don't be cross, uncle," said the nephew.
"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I live in such a
world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas!
What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without
money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour
richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em
through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I
could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes
about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his
own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He
should!"
"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.
"Nephew!" returned the uncle sternly, "keep Christmas in your own
way, and let me keep it in mine."
"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you don't keep it."
"Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much good may it do
you! Much good it has ever done you!"
"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which
I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew; "Christmas
among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas
time, when it has come round--apart from the veneration due to its
sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from
that--as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time:
the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men
and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely,
and to think of people below them as if they really were
fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures
bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never
put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it _has_
done me good, and _will_ do me good; and I say, God bless it!"
The clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded: becoming immediately
sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the
last frail spark forever.
"Let me hear another sound from _you_," said Scrooge, "and you'll
keep your Christmas by losing your situation. You're quite a
powerful speaker, sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder
you don't go into Parliament."
"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow."
Scrooge said that he would see him--yes, indeed he did. He went the
whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in
that extremity first.
"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"
"Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.
"Because I fell in love."
"Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if that were the only
one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas.
"Good-afternoon!"
"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why
give it as a reason for not coming now?"
"Good-afternoon," said Scrooge.
"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why can not we be
friends?"
"Good-afternoon," said Scrooge.
"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have
never had any quarrel to which I have been a party. But I have made
the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humor to
the last. So a Merry Christmas, uncle!"
"Good-afternoon!" said Scrooge.
"And a Happy New Year!"
"Good-afternoon!" said Scrooge.
His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He
stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on
the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he
returned them cordially.
"There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge, who overheard him; "my
clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking
about a merry Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam."
This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other
people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now
stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge's office. They had books and
papers in their hands, and bowed to him.
"Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of the gentlemen,
referring to his list. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr.
Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?"
"Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years," Scrooge replied. "He
died seven years ago, this very night."
"We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving
partner," said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.
It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the
ominous word "liberality," Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and
handed the credentials back.
"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the
gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that
we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who
suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of
common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common
comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in
operation?"
"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they
were not."
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigor, then?" said
Scrooge.
"Both very busy, sir."
"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had
occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge. "I'm
very glad to hear it."
"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of
mind or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us
are endeavoring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink,
and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of
all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What
shall I put you down for?"
"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.
"You wish to be anonymous?"
"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you ask me what I
wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at
Christmas, and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to
support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and
those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and
decrease the surplus population. Besides--excuse me--I don't know
that."
"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.
"It's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's enough for a man to
understand his own business, and not to interfere with other
people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the
gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labors with an improved
opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual
with him.
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so that people ran about
with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in
carriages and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a
church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slyly down at Scrooge
out of a gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the
hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterward
as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The
cold became intense. In the main street at the corner of the court,
some laborers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great
fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were
gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze
in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowings
sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness
of the shops, where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp
heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed.
Poulterers' and grocers' trades became a splendid joke: a glorious
pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such
dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord
Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to
his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's
household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five
shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in
the streets, stirred up to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his
lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.
Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the
good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch
of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then
indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant
young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed
by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a
Christmas carol: but at the first sound of
"God bless you, merry gentleman!
May nothing you dismay!"
Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action that the singer
fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more
congenial frost.
At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With
an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted
the fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed
his candle out, and put on his hat.
"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.
"If quite convenient, sir."
"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to
stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be
bound?"
The clerk smiled faintly.
"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a
day's wages for no work."
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of
December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. "But
I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next
morning!"
The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a
growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the
long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he
boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of
a lane of boys, twenty times, in honor of its being Christmas Eve,
and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at
blindman's buff.
Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern;
and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the
evening with his banker's-book, went home to bed. He lived in
chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were
a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard,
where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help
fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at
hide-and-seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out
again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in
it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The
yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was
fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the
black old gateway of the house that it seemed as if the Genius of the
Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.
Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the
knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a
fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole
residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is
called fancy about him as any man in the City of London, even
including--which is a bold word--the corporation, aldermen, and
livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed
one thought on Marley, since his last mention of his seven-years'
dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if
he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of
the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate
process of change: not a knocker, but Marley's face.
Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other
objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad
lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked
at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up
on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by
breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were
perfectly motionless. That, and its livid color, made it horrible;
but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its
control, rather than a part of its own expression.
As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.
To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious
of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy,
would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had
relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.
He _did_ pause, with a moment's irresolution, before he shut the
door; and he _did_ look cautiously behind it first, as if he
half-expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail
sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the
door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on; so he said
"Pooh, pooh!" and closed it with a bang.
The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room
above, and every cask in the wine-merchant's cellars below, appeared
to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man
to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across
the hall, and up the stairs: slowly, too, trimming his candle as he
went.
You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old
flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I
mean to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken
it broadwise, with the splinter-bar toward the wall, and the door
toward the balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of width
for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge
thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom.
Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn't have lighted the
entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with
Scrooge's dip.
Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that: darkness is cheap, and
Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked
through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough
recollection of the face to desire to do that.
Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they should be. Nobody
under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate;
spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had
a cold in his head) upon the Bob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in
the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a
suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old
fireguard, old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs,
and a poker.
Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in;
double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured
against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown
and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take
his gruel.
It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He
was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could
extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel.
The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago,
and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate
the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaohs' daughters,
Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on
clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off
to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures, to attract his thoughts;
and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient
Prophet's rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had
been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its
surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would
have been a copy of old Marley's head on every one.
"Humbug!" said Scrooge; and walked across the room.
After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in
the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell,
that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose now
forgotten with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It
was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread,
that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so
softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang
out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.
This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an
hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were
succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person
were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant's
cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted
houses were described as dragging chains.
The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the
noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs;
then coming straight toward his door.
"It's humbug still!" said Scrooge. "I won't believe it."
His color changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through
the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its
coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried "I know him!
Marley's Ghost!" and fell again.
The same face; the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual
waistcoat, tights, and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling,
like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head.
The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and
wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it
closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy
purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge,
observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two
buttons on his coat behind.
Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had
never believed it until now.
No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom
through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt
the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very
texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which
wrapper he had not observed before: he was still incredulous, and
fought against his senses.
"How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. "What do you want
with me?"
"Much!"--Marley's voice, no doubt about it.
"Who are you?"
"Ask me who I _was_."
"Who _were_ you, then?" said Scrooge, raising his voice. "You're
particular--for a shade." He was going to say "_to_ a shade," but
substituted this, as more appropriate.
"In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley."
"Can you--can you sit down?" asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.
"I can."
"Do it, then."
Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know whether a ghost so
transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and
felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the
necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the Ghost sat down on
the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.
"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.
"I don't," said Scrooge.
"What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your
senses?"
"I don't know," said Scrooge.
"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight
disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested
bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an
underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you,
whatever you are!"
Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel,
in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried
to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping
down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in
his bones.
To sit, staring at those fixed, glazed eyes, in silence for a moment,
would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was
something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an
infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself,
but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly
motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as
by the hot vapor from an oven.
"You see this toothpick?" said Scrooge, returning quickly to the
charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were
only for a second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.
"I do," replied the Ghost.
"You are not looking at it," said Scrooge.
"But I see it," said the Ghost, "notwithstanding."
"Well!" returned Scrooge. "I have but to swallow this, and be for
the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins all of my
creation. Humbug, I tell you--humbug!"
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with
such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his
chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater
was his horror, when, the phantom taking off the bandage round its
head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped
down upon its breast!
Scrooge fell upon his knees and clasped his hands before his face.
"Mercy!" he said. "Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?"
"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do you believe in me
or not?"
"I do," said Scrooge. "I must. But why do spirits walk the earth,
and why do they come to me?"
"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit
within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far
and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned
to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world--oh,
woe is me!--and witness what it can not share, but might have shared
on earth, and turned to happiness!"
Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain, and wrung its
shadowy hands.
"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?"
"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it
link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will,
and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to _you_"
Scrooge trembled more and more.
"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the
strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy, and as long as
this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have labored on it, since. It
is a ponderous chain!"
Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding
himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but
he could see nothing.
"Jacob," he said imploringly. "Old Jacob Marley, tell me more.
Speak comfort to me, Jacob."
"I have none to give," the Ghost replied. "It comes from other
regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to
other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little
more, is all permitted to me. I can not rest, I can not stay, I can
not linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our
counting-house--mark me!--in life my spirit never roved beyond the
narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie
before me!"
It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put
his hands in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had
said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off
his knees.
"You must have been very slow about it, Jacob," Scrooge observed, in
a business-like manner, though with humility and deference.
"Slow!" the Ghost repeated.
"Seven years dead," mused Scrooge. "And traveling all the time!"
"The whole time," said the Ghost. "No rest, no peace. Incessant
torture of remorse."
"You travel fast?" said Scrooge.
"On the wings of the wind," replied the Ghost.
"You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,"
said Scrooge.
The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain
so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would
have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.
"Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the phantom, "not to
know, that ages of incessant labor, by immortal creatures, for this
earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is
susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit
working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find
its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to
know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's
opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!"
"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered
Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing his hands again. "Mankind was
my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy,
forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings
of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my
business!"
It held up its chain at arm's-length, as if that were the cause of
all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said, "I suffer most.
Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned
down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise
Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light
would have conducted _me_!"
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this
rate, and began to quake exceedingly.
"Hear me!" cried the Ghost. "My time is nearly gone."
"I will," said Scrooge. "But don't be hard upon me! Don't be
flowery, Jacob! Pray!"
"How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I
may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day."
It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the
perspiration from his brow.
"That is no light part of my penance," pursued the Ghost. "I am here
to-night to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping
my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer."
"You were always a good friend to me," said Scrooge. "Thank'ee!"
"You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by Three Spirits."
Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost's had done.
"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?" he demanded, in a
faltering voice.
"It is."
"I--I think I'd rather not," said Scrooge.
"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you can not hope to shun the
path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls one."
"Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?" hinted
Scrooge.
"Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third
upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to
vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake,
you remember what has passed between us!"
When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the
table, and bound it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this, by
the smart sound its teeth made, when the jaws were brought together
by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his
supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its
chain wound over and about its arm.
The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took
the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached
it it was wide open. It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did.
When they were within two paces of each other, Marley's Ghost held up
its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.
Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising
of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air;
incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly
sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a
moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak,
dark night.
Scrooge followed to the window, desperate in his curiosity. He
looked out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in
restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore
chains like Marley's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty
governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been
personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite
familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous
iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable
to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a
doorstep. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to
interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever.
Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he
could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and
the night became as it had been when he walked home.
Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost
had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own
hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say "Humbug!" but
stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had
undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the
Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the
lateness of the hour, much in need of repose, went straight to bed,
without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.
STAVE TWO
_The First of the Three Spirits_
When Scrooge awoke, it was so dark that, looking out of bed, he could
scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of
his chamber. He was endeavoring to pierce the darkness with his
ferret eyes, when the chimes of a neighboring church struck the four
quarters. So he listened for the hour.
To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from six to seven,
and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped.
Twelve! It was past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong.
An icicle must have got into the works. Twelve!
He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this most
preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve; and stopped.
"Why, it isn't possible," said Scrooge, "that I can have slept
through a whole day and far into another night. It isn't possible
that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon!"
The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and groped
his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the
sleeve of his dressing-gown before he could see anything; and could
see very little then. All he could make out was that it was still
very foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people
running to and fro, and making a great stir, as there unquestionably
would have been if night had beaten off bright day, and taken
possession of the world. This was a great relief, because "three
days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer
Scrooge or his order," and so forth, would have become a mere United
States security if there were no days to count by.
Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it
over and over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he
thought, the more perplexed he was; and the more he endeavored not to
think, the more he thought. Marley's Ghost bothered him exceedingly.
Every time he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it
was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring
released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be
worked all through, "Was it a dream or not?"
Scrooge lay in this state until the chimes had gone three-quarters
more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned him
of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie awake
until the hour was passed; and, considering that he could no more go
to sleep than go to Heaven, this was perhaps the wisest resolution in
his power.
The quarter was so long that he was more than once convinced he must
have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length
it broke upon his listening ear.
"Ding, dong!"
"A quarter past," said Scrooge, counting.
"Ding, dong!"
"Half-past!" said Scrooge.
"Ding, dong!"
"A quarter to it," said Scrooge.
"Ding, dong!"
"The hour itself," said Scrooge, triumphantly, "and nothing else!"
He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep,
dull, hollow, melancholy One. Light flashed up in the room upon the
instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.
The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. Not
the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to
which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn
aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found
himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as
close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at
your elbow.
It was a strange figure--like a child: yet not so like a child as
like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave
him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being
diminished to a child's proportions. Its hair, which hung about its
neck and down its back, was white as if with age; and yet the face
had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin.
The arms were very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its
hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately
formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the
purest white; and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the
sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly
in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem,
had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing
about it was, that from the crown of its head there sprang a bright
clear jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was
doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a great
extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.
Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing
steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For as its belt sparkled
and glittered now in one part and now in another, and what was light
one instant, at another time was dark, so the figure itself
fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a thing with one arm, now
with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a
head, now a head without a body: of which dissolving parts, no
outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away.
And in the very wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct
and clear as ever.
"Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?" asked
Scrooge.
"I am!"
The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if instead of
being so close beside him, it were at a distance.
"Who, and what are you?" Scrooge demanded.
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."
"Long past?" inquired Scrooge: observant of its dwarfish stature.
"No. Your Past."
Perhaps, Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if anybody could
have asked him; but he had a special desire to see the Spirit in his
cap; and begged him to be covered.
"What!" exclaimed the Ghost, "would you so soon put out, with worldly
hands, the light I give? Is it not enough that you are one of those
whose passions made this cap, and force me through whole trains of
years to wear it low upon my brow?"
Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend, or any
knowledge of having wilfully "bonneted" the Spirit at any period of
his life. He then made bold to inquire what business brought him
there.
"Your welfare!" said the Ghost.
Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not help thinking
that a night of unbroken rest would have been more conducive to that
end. The Spirit must have heard him thinking, for it said
immediately:
"Your reclamation, then. Take heed!"
It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently by the
arm.
"Rise! and walk with me!"
It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the weather and
the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes; that the bed was
warm, and the thermometer a long way below freezing; that he was clad
but lightly in his slippers, dressing-gown, and night-cap; and that
he had a cold upon him at that time. The grasp, though gentle as a
woman's hand, was not to be resisted. He rose: but finding that the
Spirit made toward the window, clasped its robe in supplication.
"I am a mortal," Scrooge remonstrated, "and liable to fall."
"_Bear_ but a touch of my hand _there_," said the Spirit, laying it
upon his heart, "and you shall be upheld in more than this!"
As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood
upon an open country road, with fields on either hand. The city had
entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it was to be seen. The darkness
and the mist had vanished with it, for it was a clear, cold, winter
day, with snow upon the ground.
"Good Heaven!" said Scrooge, clasping his hands together, as he
looked about him. "I was bred in this place. I was a boy here!"
The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had
been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man's
sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odors floating in
the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts and hopes, and
joys, and cares long, long forgotten!
"Your lip is trembling," said the Ghost. "And what is that upon your
cheek?"
Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice, that it was
a pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead him where he would.
"You recollect the way?" inquired the Spirit.
"Remember it!" cried Scrooge with fervor--"I could walk it blindfold."
"Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!" observed the Ghost.
"Let us go on."
They walked along the road: Scrooge recognizing every gate, and post,
and tree; until a little market town appeared in the distance, with
its bridge, its church, and winding river. Some shaggy ponies now
were seen trotting toward them with boys upon their backs, who called
to other boys in country gigs and carts, driven by farmers. All
these boys were in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until
the broad fields were so full of merry music that the crisp air
laughed to hear it.
"These are but shadows of the things that have been," said the Ghost.
"They have no consciousness of us."
The jocund travelers came on; and as they came, Scrooge knew and
named them every one. Why was he rejoiced beyond all bounds to see
them! Why did his cold eye glisten, and his heart leap up as they
went past! Why was he filled with gladness when he heard them give
each other Merry Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads and
by-ways, for their several homes! What was merry Christmas to
Scrooge? Out upon merry Christmas! What good had it ever done to
him?
"The school is not quite deserted," said the Ghost. "A solitary
child, neglected by his friends, is left there still."
Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.
They left the highroad, by a well-remembered lane, and soon
approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little weathercock
surmounted cupola, on the roof, and a bell hanging in it. It was a
large house, but one of broken fortunes; for the spacious offices
were little used, their walls were damp and mossy, their windows
broken, and their gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the
stables; and the coach-houses and sheds were overrun with grass. Nor
was it more retentive of its ancient state, within; for entering the
dreary hall, and glancing through the open doors of many rooms, they
found them poorly furnished, cold, and vast. There was an earthy
savor in the air, a chilly bareness in the place, which associated
itself somehow with too much getting up by candle-light, and not too
much to eat.
They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door at the
back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed a long,
bare, melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms
and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble
fire; and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor
forgotten self as he had used to be.
Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from the
mice behind the paneling, not a drip from the half-thawed water-spout
in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless boughs of one
despondent poplar, not the idle swinging of an empty storehouse door,
no, not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge
with softening influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears.
The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his younger self,
intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man, in foreign garments:
wonderfully real and distinct to look at: stood outside the window,
with an axe stuck in his belt, and leading an ass laden with wood by
the bridle.
"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. "It's dear old
honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know! One Christmas time, when yonder
solitary child was left here all alone, he _did_ come, for the first
time, just like that. Poor boy! And Valentine," said Scrooge, "and
his wild brother, Orson; there they go! And what's his name, who was
put down in his drawers, asleep, at the Gate of Damascus; don't you
see him! And the Sultan's Groom turned upside down by the Genii;
there he is upon his head! Serve him right. I'm glad of it. What
business had he to be married to the Princess!"
To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature on such
subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between laughing and crying;
and to see his heightened and excited face; would have been a
surprise to his business friends in the City, indeed.
"There's the Parrot!" cried Scrooge. "Green body and yellow tail,
with a thing like a lettuce growing out of the top of his head; there
he is! Poor Robin Crusoe, he called him, when he came home again
after sailing round the island. 'Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you
been, Robin Crusoe?' The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn't.
It was the Parrot, you know. There goes Friday, running for his life
to the little creek! Halloa! Hoop! Halloo!"
Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his usual
character, he said, in pity for his former self, "Poor boy!" and
cried again.
"I wish," Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his pocket, and
looking about him, after drying his eyes with his cuff: "but it's too
late now."
"What is the matter?" asked the Spirit.
"Nothing," said Scrooge. "Nothing. There was a boy singing a
Christmas Carol at my door last night. I should like to have given
him something: that's all."
The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand: saying as it did
so, "Let us see another Christmas!"
Scrooge's former self grew larger at the words, and the room became a
little darker and more dirty. The panels shrank, the windows
cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and the naked
laths were shown instead; but how all this was brought about Scrooge
knew no more than you do. He only knew that it was quite correct;
that everything had happened so; that there he was, alone again, when
all the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays.
He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly.
Scrooge looked at the Ghost, and with a mournful shaking of his head
glanced anxiously toward the door.
It opened; and a little girl, much younger than the boy, came darting
in, and putting her arms about his neck, and often kissing him,
addressed him as her "Dear, dear brother."
"I have come to bring you home, dear brother!" said the child,
clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh. "To bring you
home, home, home!"
"Home, little Fan?" returned the boy.
"Yes!" said the child, brimful of glee. "Home, for good and all.
Home, forever and ever. Father is so much kinder than he used to be
that home's like Heaven! He spoke so gently to me one dear night
when I was going to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him once more
if you might come home; and he said Yes, you should; and sent me in a
coach to bring you. And you're to be a man!" said the child, opening
her eyes, "and are never to come back here; but first we're to be
together all the Christmas long, and have the merriest time in all
the world."
"You are quite a woman, little Fan!" exclaimed the boy. She clapped
her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his head; but being too
little, laughed again, and stood on tiptoe to embrace him. Then she
began to drag him, in her childish eagerness, toward the door; and
he, nothing loth to go, accompanied her.
A terrible voice in the hall cried, "Bring down Master Scrooge's box,
there!" and in the hall appeared the schoolmaster himself, who glared
on Master Scrooge with a ferocious condescension, and threw him into
a dreadful state of mind by shaking hands with him. He then conveyed
him and his sister into the veriest old well of a shivering
best-parlor that ever was seen, where the maps upon the wall, and the
celestial and terrestrial globes in the windows, were waxy with cold.
Here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine, and a block of
curiously heavy cake, and administered instalments of those dainties
to the young people; at the same time sending out a meagre servant to
offer a glass of "something" to the postboy, who answered that he
thanked the gentleman, but if it was the same tap as he had tasted
before, he had rather not. Master Scrooge's trunk being by this time
tied on to the top of the chaise, the children bade the schoolmaster
good-by right willingly; and getting into it, drove gaily down the
garden-sweep, the quick wheels dashing the hoar-frost and snow from
off the dark leaves of the evergreens like spray.
"Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered," said
the Ghost. "But she had a large heart!"
"So she had," cried Scrooge. "You're right. I'll not gainsay it,
Spirit. God forbid!"
"She died a woman," said the Ghost, "and had, as I think, children."
"One child," Scrooge returned.
"True," said the Ghost. "Your nephew!"
Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered briefly, "Yes."
Although they had but that moment left the school behind them, they
were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy
passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy carts and coaches
battled for the way, and all the strife and tumult of a real city
were. It was made plain enough, by the dressing of the shops, that
here too it was Christmas time again; but it was evening, and the
streets were lighted up.
The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked Scrooge if
he knew it.
"Know it!" said Scrooge. "I was apprenticed here!"
They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh wig, sitting
behind such a high desk, that if he had been two inches taller he
must have knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge cried in
great excitement:
"Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart; it's Fezziwig alive again!"
Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the clock, which
pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his hands; adjusted his
capacious waistcoat; laughed all over himself, from his shoes to his
organ of benevolence; and called out in a comfortable, oily, rich,
fat, jovial voice:
"Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!"
Scrooge's former self, now grown a young man, came briskly in,
accompanied by his fellow-'prentice.
"Dick Wilkins, to be sure!" said Scrooge to the Ghost. "Bless me,
yes. There he is. He was very much attached to me, was Dick. Poor
Dick! Dear, dear!"
"Yo ho, my boys!" said Fezziwig. "No more work to-night. Christmas
Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let's have the shutters up," cried
old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, "before a man can say
Jack Robinson!"
You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it! They charged
into the street with the shutters--one, two, three--had 'em up in
their places--four, five, six--barred 'em and pinned 'em--seven,
eight, nine--and came back before you could have got to twelve,
panting like racehorses.
"Hilli-ho!" cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk with
wonderful agility. "Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room
here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer!"
Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn't have cleared away, or
couldn't have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on. It was
done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were
dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was swept and
watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and
the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ballroom
as you would desire to see upon a winter's night.
In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk,
and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In
came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three
Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers
whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and women
employed in the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin,
the baker. In came the cook, with her brother's particular friend,
the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of
not having board enough from his master; trying to hide himself
behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved to have had
her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all came, one after
another; some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly,
some pushing, some pulling; in they all came, anyhow and everyhow.
Away they all went, twenty couple at once, hands half round and back
again the other way; down the middle and up again; round and round in
various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple always
turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting off again, as
soon as they got there; all top couples at last, and not a bottom one
to help them. When this result was brought about, old Fezziwig,
clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, "Well done!" and the
fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially
provided for that purpose. But scorning rest upon his reappearance,
he instantly began again, though there were no dancers yet, as if the
other fiddler had been carried home, exhausted, on a shutter; and he
were a bran-new man resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish.
There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and
there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of
Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there
were mince-pies, and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the
evening came after the Roast and Boiled when the fiddler (an artful
dog, mind! The sort of man who knew his business better than you or
I could have told it him!) struck up "Sir Roger de Coverley." Then
old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, too;
with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and
twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled with;
people who would dance, and had no notion of walking.
But if they had been twice as many: ah, four times: old Fezziwig
would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to
_her_, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term.
If that's not high praise, tell me higher, and I'll use it. A
positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig's calves. They shone
in every part of the dance like moons. You couldn't have predicted,
at any given time, what would become of 'em next. And when old
Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance; advance
and retire, hold hands with your partner; bow and courtesy;
cork-screw; thread-the-needle, and back again to your place; Fezziwig
"cut"--cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink with his legs, and
came upon his feet again without a stagger.
When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. Mr. and
Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side the door, and
shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out,
wished him or her a Merry Christmas. When everybody had retired but
the two 'prentices, they did the same to them; and thus the cheerful
voices died away, and the lads were left to their beds; which were
under a counter in the back-shop.
During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a man out of
his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former
self. He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed
everything, and underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until
now, when the bright faces of his former self and Dick were turned
from them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became conscious that it
was looking full upon him, while the light upon its head burned very
clear.
"A small matter," said the Ghost, "to make these silly folks so full
of gratitude."
"Small!" echoed Scrooge.
The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were
pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig: and when he had done
so, said:
"Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal
money: three or four, perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this
praise?"
"It isn't that," said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking
unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. "It isn't that,
Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our
service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his
power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant
that it is impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The
happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."
He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.
"What is the matter?" asked the Ghost.
"Nothing particular," said Scrooge.
"Something, I think?" the Ghost insisted.
"No," said Scrooge, "no. I should like to be able to say a word or
two to my clerk just now! That's all."
His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the
wish; and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by side in the open
air.
"My time grows short," observed the Spirit. "Quick!"
This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one whom he could see,
but it produced an immediate effect. For again Scrooge saw himself.
He was older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had not the
harsh and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the
signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless
motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and
where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.
He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a
mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the
light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.
"It matters little," she said, softly. "To you, very little.
Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in
time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to
grieve."
"What Idol has displaced you?" he rejoined.
"A golden one."
"This is the even-handed dealing of the world!" he said. "There is
nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it
professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!"
"You fear the world too much," she answered, gently. "All your other
hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its
sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by
one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?"
"What then?" he retorted. "Even if I have grown so much wiser, what
then? I am not changed toward you."
She shook her head.
"Am I?"
"Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and
content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly
fortune by our patient industry. You _are_ changed. When it was
made, you were another man."
"I was a boy," he said impatiently.
"Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are," she
returned. "I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in
heart, is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how
keenly I have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I
_have_ thought of it, and can release you."
"Have I ever sought release?"
"In words? No. Never."
"In what, then?"
"In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of
life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love
of any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between
us," said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him,
"tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!"
He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in spite of
himself. But he said with a struggle, "You think not."
"I would gladly think otherwise if I could," she answered, "Heaven
knows! When _I_ have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong
and irresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-morrow,
yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless
girl--you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by
Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your
one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance
and regret would surely follow? I do; and I release you. With a
full heart, for the love of him you once were."
He was about to speak; but with her head turned from him, she resumed.
"You may--the memory of what is past half makes me hope you
will--have pain in this. A very, very brief time, and you will
dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an unprofitable dream,
from which it happened well that you awoke. May you be happy in the
life you have chosen!"
She left him, and they parted.
"Spirit!" said Scrooge, "show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do
you delight to torture me?"
"One shadow more!" exclaimed the Ghost.
"No more!" cried Scrooge. "No more. I don't wish to see it. Show
me no more!"
But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms, and forced
him to observe what happened next.
They were in another scene and place; a room not very large or
handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter fire sat a
beautiful young girl, so like the last that Scrooge believed it was
the same, until he saw her, now a comely matron, sitting opposite her
daughter. The noise in this room was perfectly tumultuous, for there
were more children there than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind
could count; and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were
not forty children conducting themselves like one, but every child
was conducting itself like forty. The consequences were uproarious
beyond belief; but no one seemed to care; on the contrary, the mother
and daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed it very much; and the
latter, soon beginning to mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the
young brigands most ruthlessly. What would I not have given to be
one of them! Though I never could have been so rude, no, no! I
wouldn't for the wealth of all the world have crushed that braided
hair, and torn it down; and for the precious little shoe, I wouldn't
have plucked it off, God bless my soul! to save my life. As to
measuring her waist in sport, as they did, bold young brood, I
couldn't have done it; I should have expected my arm to have grown
round it for a punishment, and never come straight again. And yet I
should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have
questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have looked upon
the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have
let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond
price: in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the
lightest license of a child, and yet been man enough to know its
value.
But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush immediately
ensued that she with laughing face and plundered dress was borne
toward it the centre of a flushed and boisterous group, just in time
to greet the father, who came home attended by a man laden with
Christmas toys and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling,
and the onslaught that was made on the defenseless porter! The
scaling him with chairs for ladders to dive into his pockets, despoil
him of brown-paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him
round the neck, pommel his back, and kick his legs in irrepressible
affection! The shouts of wonder and delight with which the
development of every package was received! The terrible announcement
that the baby had been taken in the act of putting a doll's
frying-pan into his mouth, and was more than suspected of having
swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden platter! The
immense relief of finding this a false alarm! The joy, and
gratitude, and ecstasy! They are all indescribable alike. It is
enough that by degrees the children and their emotions got out of the
parlor and by one stair at a time, up to the top of the house; where
they went to bed, and so subsided.
And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever, when the master
of the house, having his daughter leaning fondly on him, sat down
with her and her mother at his own fireside; and when he thought that
such another creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise,
might have called him father, and been a spring-time in the haggard
winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed.
"Belle," said the husband, turning to his wife with a smile, "I saw
an old friend of yours this afternoon."
"Who was it?"
"Guess!"
"How can I? Tut, don't I know?" she added in the same breath,
laughing as he laughed. "Mr. Scrooge."
"Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window; and as it was not
shut up, and he had a candle inside, I could scarcely help seeing
him. His partner lies upon the point of death, I hear; and there he
sat alone. Quite alone in the world, I do believe."
"Spirit!" said Scrooge in a broken voice, "remove me from this place."
"I told you these were shadows of the things that have been," said
the Ghost. "That they are what they are, do not blame me!"
"Remove me!" Scrooge exclaimed, "I can not bear it!"
He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a
face, in which in some strange way there were fragments of all the
faces it had shown him, wrestled with it.
"Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!"
In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which the Ghost
with no visible resistance on its own part was undisturbed by any
effort of its adversary, Scrooge observed that its light was burning
high and bright; and dimly connecting that with its influence over
him, he seized the extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed
it down upon its head.
The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher covered its
whole form; but though Scrooge pressed it down with all his force, he
could not hide the light, which streamed from under it, in an
unbroken flood upon the ground.
He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistible
drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own bedroom. He gave the
cap a parting squeeze, in which his hand relaxed; and had barely time
to reel to bed, before he sank into a heavy sleep.
STAVE THREE
_The Second of the Three Spirits_
Awakening in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore and sitting up
in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had no occasion to be
told that the bell was again upon the stroke of One. He felt that he
was restored to consciousness in the right nick of time, for the
especial purpose of holding a conference with the second messenger
despatched to him through Jacob Marley's intervention. But, finding
that he turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of
his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put them every one
aside with his own hands, and lying down again, established a sharp
look-out all round the bed. For he wished to challenge the Spirit on
the moment of its appearance, and did not wish to be taken by
surprise and made nervous.
Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being
acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the
time-of-day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure
by observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to
manslaughter; between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a
tolerably wide and comprehensive range of subjects. Without
venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don't mind calling
on you to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange
appearances, and that nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros would
have astonished him very much.
Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means
prepared for nothing; and, consequently, when the Bell struck One,
and no shape appeared, he was taken with a violent fit of trembling.
Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour went by, yet nothing
came. All this time he lay upon his bed, the very core and centre of
a blaze of ruddy light, which streamed upon it when the clock
proclaimed the hour; and which, being only light, was more alarming
than a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it meant,
or would be at; and was sometimes apprehensive that he might be at
that very moment an interesting case of spontaneous combustion,
without having the consolation of knowing it. At last, however, he
began to think--as you or I would have thought at first; for it is
always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have
been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too--at last,
I say, he began to think that the source and secret of this ghostly
light might be in the adjoining room, from whence, on further tracing
it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking full possession of his
mind, he got up softly and shuffled in his slippers to the door.
The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him
by his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed.
It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had
undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so
hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove, from every
part of which bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of
holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many
little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went
roaring up the chimney as that dull petrifaction of a hearth had
never known in Scrooge's time, or Marley's, or for many and many a
winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of
throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of
meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies,
plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked
apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and
seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their
delicious steam. In easy state upon this couch, there sat a jolly
Giant, glorious to see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike
Plenty's horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge,
as he came peeping round the door.
"Come in!" exclaimed the Ghost. "Come in! and know me better, man!"
Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He
was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and though the Spirit's eyes
were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Spirit. "Look upon
me!"
Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple deep-green
robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so
loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if
disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet,
observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare;
and on its head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath set
here and there with shining icicles. Its dark-brown curls were long
and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand,
its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanor, and its joyful air.
Girdled round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in
it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.
"You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed the Spirit.
"Never," Scrooge made answer to it.
"Have never walked forth with the younger members of my family;
meaning (for I am very young) my elder brothers born in these later
years?" pursued the Phantom.
"I don't think I have," said Scrooge. "I am afraid I have not. Have
you had many brothers, Spirit?"
"More than eighteen hundred," said the Ghost.
"A tremendous family to provide for!" muttered Scrooge.
The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.
"Spirit," said Scrooge submissively, "conduct me where you will. I
went forth last night on compulsion, and I learned a lesson which is
working now. To-night, if you have aught to teach me, let me profit
by it."
"Touch my robe!"
Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.
Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry,
brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and
punch, all vanished instantly. So did the room, the fire, the ruddy
glow, the hour of night, and they stood in the City streets on
Christmas morning, where (for the weather was severe) the people made
a rough but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the
snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops
of their houses: whence it was mad delight to the boys to see it come
plumping down into the road below, and splitting into artificial
little snowstorms.
The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker,
contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and
with the dirtier snow upon the ground; which last deposit had been
plowed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons;
furrows that crossed and recrossed each other hundreds of times where
the great streets branched off, and made intricate channels, hard to
trace, in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy,
and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half
thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended in a shower of
sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had, by one
consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear hearts'
content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town,
and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest
summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavored to diffuse
in vain.
For the people who were shoveling away on the housetops were jovial
and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, and
now and then exchanging a facetious snowball--better-natured missile
far than many a wordy jest--laughing heartily if it went right and
not less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers' shops were still
half open, and the fruiterers were radiant in their glory. There
were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the
waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling
out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy,
brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of
their growth like Spanish Friars; and winking from their shelves in
wanton slyness at the girls as they went by and glanced demurely at
the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high
in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the
shopkeepers' benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that
people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles
of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient
walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle-deep through
withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy,
setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great
compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and
beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner.
The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in
a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared
to know that there was something going on; and, to a fish, went
gasping round and round their little world in slow and passionless
excitement.
The Grocers'! oh the Grocers'! nearly closed, with perhaps two
shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was
not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry
sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or
that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or
even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to
the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the
almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and
straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked
and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel
faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist
and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from
their highly decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and
in its Christmas dress: but the customers were all so hurried and so
eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against
each other at the door, clashing their wicker baskets wildly, and
left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch
them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes in the best humor
possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh
that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind
might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and
for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose.
But soon the steeples called good people all to church and chapel,
and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best
clothes, and with their gayest faces. And at the same time there
emerged from scores of by-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings,
innumerable people, carrying their dinners to the bakers' shops. The
sight of these poor revelers appeared to interest the Spirit very
much, for he stood with Scrooge beside him in a baker's doorway, and
taking off the covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on
their dinners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of
torch, for once or twice when there were angry words between some
dinner-carriers who had jostled with each other, he shed a few drops
of water on them from it, and their good humor was restored directly.
For they said it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so
it was! God love it, so it was!
In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and yet there
was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners and the progress of
their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker's oven;
where the pavement smoked as if its stones were cooking too.
"Is there a peculiar flavor in what you sprinkle from your torch?"
asked Scrooge.
"There is. My own."
"Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?" asked Scrooge.
"To any kindly given. To a poor one most."
"Why to a poor one most?" asked Scrooge.
"Because it needs it most."
"Spirit," said Scrooge, after a moment's thought, "I wonder you, of
all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp
these people's opportunities of innocent enjoyment."
"I!" cried the Spirit.
"You would deprive them of their means of dinner every seventh day,
often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all," said
Scrooge. "Wouldn't you?"
"I!" cried the Spirit.
"You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day!" said Scrooge.
"And it comes to the same thing."
"_I_ seek!" exclaimed the Spirit.
"Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at
least in that of your family," said Scrooge.
"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit, "who
lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride,
ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are
as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never
lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."
Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on, invisible, as they
had been before, into the suburbs of the town. It was a remarkable
quality of the Ghost (which Scrooge had observed at the baker's),
that notwithstanding his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself
to any place with ease; and that he stood beneath a low roof quite as
gracefully and like a supernatural creature as it was possible he
could have done in any lofty hall.
And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in showing off
this power of his, or else it was his own kind, generous, hearty
nature, and his sympathy with all poor men, that led him straight to
Scrooge's clerk's; for there he went, and took Scrooge with him,
holding to his robe; and on the threshold of the door the Spirit
smiled, and stopped to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the
sprinklings of his torch. Think of that! Bob had but fifteen "Bob"
a week himself; he pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen copies of his
Christian name; and yet the Ghost of Christmas Present blessed his
four-roomed house!
Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out but poorly
in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and
make a goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the cloth, assisted by
Belinda Cratchit, second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons;
while Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of
potatoes, and getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar
(Bob's private property, conferred upon his son and heir in honor of
the day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly
attired, and yearned to show his linen in the fashionable Parks. And
now two smaller Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming
that outside the baker's they had smelled the goose, and known it for
their own; and basking in luxurious thoughts of sage-and-onion, these
young Cratchits danced about the table, and exalted Master Peter
Cratchit to the skies, while he (not proud, although his collars
nearly choked him) blew the fire, until the slow potatoes, bubbling
up, knocked loudly at the saucepan-lid to be let out and peeled.
"What has ever got your precious father, then?" said Mrs. Cratchit.
"And your brother, Tiny Tim! And Martha warn't as late last
Christmas Day by half-an-hour!"
"Here's Martha, mother!" said a girl, appearing as she spoke.
"Here's Martha, mother!" cried the two young Cratchits. "Hurrah!
There's _such_ a goose, Martha!"
"Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!" said Mrs.
Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off her shawl and
bonnet for her with officious zeal.
"We'd a deal of work to finish up last night," replied the girl, "and
had to clear away this morning, mother!"
"Well! Never mind so long as you are come," said Mrs. Cratchit.
"Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm, Lord bless
ye!"
"No, no! There's father coming," cried the two young Cratchits, who
were everywhere at once. "Hide, Martha, hide!"
So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at
least three feet of comforter, exclusive of the fringe, hanging down
before him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, to look
seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he
bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame!
"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking round.
"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.
"Not coming!" said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high spirits;
for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church, and had
come home rampant. "Not coming upon Christmas Day!"
Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke;
so she came out prematurely from behind the closet door, and ran into
his arms, while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore
him off into the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding singing
in the copper.
"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had
rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his
heart's content.
"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he gets
thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest
things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the
people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might
be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame
beggars walk and blind men see."
Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more
when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.
His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny
Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and
sister to his stool before the fire; and while Bob, turning up his
cuffs--as if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more
shabby--compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and
stirred it round and round and put it on the hob to simmer; Master
Peter, and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the
goose, with which they soon returned in high procession.
Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest
of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a
matter of course--and in truth it was something very like it in that
house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little
saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with
incredible vigor; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha
dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner
at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not
forgetting themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed
spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before
their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes were set on, and
grace was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs.
Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared to
plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the long expected
gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all round
the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits,
beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried
Hurrah!
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever
was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavor, size and
cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by the
apple sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the
whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight
(surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate
it all at last! Yet every one had had enough, and the younger
Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage-and-onion to the
eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs.
Cratchit left the room alone--too nervous to bear witness--to take
the pudding up and bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in
turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the
back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose--a
supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts
of horrors were supposed.
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A
smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an
eating-house and a pastry-cook's next door to each other, with a
laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a
minute Mrs. Cratchit entered--flushed, but smiling proudly--with the
pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in
half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas
holly stuck into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he
regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since
their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her
mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of
flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or
thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would
have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to
hint at such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth
swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted,
and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table,
and a shovelful of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit
family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle,
meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbows stood the family
display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden
goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks,
while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then
Bob proposed:
"A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"
Which all the family reechoed.
"God bless us, every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
He sat very close to his father's side upon his little stool. Bob
held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and
wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken
from him.
"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before,
"tell me if Tiny Tim will live."
"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor
chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved.
If these shadows remain unaltered by the future, the child will die."
"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared."
"If these shadows remain unaltered by the future, none other of my
race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here. What then? If he be
like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus
population."
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and
was overcome with penitence and grief.
"Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear
that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and
Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall
die? It may be that in the sight of Heaven you are more worthless
and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh
God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life
among his hungry brothers in the dust!"
Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and trembling cast his eyes
upon the ground. But he raised them speedily, on hearing his own
name.
"Mr. Scrooge!" said Bob; "I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of
the Feast!"
"The Founder of the Feast indeed!" cried Mrs. Cratchit, reddening.
"I wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast
upon, and I hope he'd have a good appetite for it."
"My dear," said Bob, "the children! Christmas Day."
"It should be Christmas Day, I am sure," said she, "on which one
drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as
Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better than
you do, poor fellow!"
"My dear," was Bob's mild answer, "Christmas Day."
"I'll drink his health for your sake and the Day's," said Mrs.
Cratchit, "not for his. Long life to him! A Merry Christmas and a
Happy New Year! He'll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt!"
The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of their
proceedings which had no heartiness in it. Tiny Tim drank it last of
all, but he didn't care twopence for it. Scrooge was the Ogre of the
family. The mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the party,
which was not dispelled for fully five minutes.
After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than before,
from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done with. Bob
Cratchit told them how he had a situation in his eye for Master
Peter, which would bring in, if obtained, fully five-and-sixpence
weekly. The two young Cratchits laughed tremendously at the idea of
Peter's being a man of business; and Peter himself looked
thoughtfully at the fire from between his collars, as if he were
deliberating what particular investments he should favor when he came
into the receipt of that bewildering income. Martha, who was a poor
apprentice at a milliner's, then told them what kind of work she had
to do, and how many hours she worked at a stretch, and how she meant
to lie abed to-morrow morning for a good long rest; to-morrow being a
holiday she passed at home. Also how she had seen a countess and a
lord some days before, and how the lord "was much about as tall as
Peter"; at which Peter pulled up his collars so high that you
couldn't have seen his head if you had been there. All this time the
chestnuts and the jug went round and round; and by and by they had a
song, about a lost child traveling in the snow, from Tiny Tim, who
had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed.
There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome
family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being
waterproof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known,
and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker's. But, they were
happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the
time; and when they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright
sprinklings of the Spirit's torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye
upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last.
By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty heavily; and as
Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the
roaring fires in kitchens, parlors, and all sorts of rooms, was
wonderful. Here the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for
a cozy dinner, with hot plates baking through and through before the
fire, and deep red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold and
darkness. There all the children of the house were running out into
the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles,
aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again, were shadows on
the window-blind of guests assembling; and there a group of handsome
girls, all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at once, tripped
lightly off to some near neighbor's house; where, woe upon the single
man who saw them enter--artful witches: well they knew it--in a glow!
But if you had judged from the numbers of people on their way to
friendly gatherings, you might have thought that no one was at home
to give them welcome when they got there, instead of every house
expecting company, and piling up its fires half-chimney high.
Blessings on it, how the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of
breast, and opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring,
with a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything
within its reach! The very lamplighter, who ran on before dotting
the dusky street with specks of light, and who was dressed to spend
the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the Spirit passed:
though little kenned the lamplighter that he had any company but
Christmas!
And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood upon a
bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast
about, as though it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread
itself wheresoever it listed, or would have done so, but for the
frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and
coarse, rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a
streak of fiery red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant,
like a sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in
the thick gloom of darkest night.
"What place is this?" asked Scrooge.
"A place where Miners live, who labor in the bowels of the earth,"
returned the Spirit. "But they know me. See!"
A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced
toward it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a
cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and
woman, with their children and their children's children, and another
generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire.
The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the
wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song; it had
been a very old song when he was a boy; and from time to time they
all joined in the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the
old man got quite blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his
vigor sank again.
The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and
passing on above the moor, sped whither? Not to sea? To sea. To
Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a
frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by
the thundering of water, as it rolled, and roared, and raged among
the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the
earth.
Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from
shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through,
there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of seaweed clung to
its base, and storm-birds--born of the wind one might suppose, as
seaweed of the water--rose and fell about it, like the waves they
skimmed.
But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that
through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of
brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the
rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Christmas
in their can of grog; and one of them: the elder, too, with his face
all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an
old ship might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in
itself.
Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea--on,
on--until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they
lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the
lookout in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly
figures in their several stations; but every man among them hummed a
Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath
to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes
belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or
bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in
the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had
remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they
delighted to remember him.
It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the moaning of
the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through
the lonely darkness over an unknown abyss, whose depths were secrets
as profound as Death: it was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus
engaged, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to
Scrooge to recognize it as his own nephew's and to find himself in a
bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling by his
side, and looking at that same nephew with approving affability.
"Ha, ha!" laughed Scrooge's nephew. "Ha, ha, ha!"
If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more
blest in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew, all I can say is, I should
like to know him too. Introduce him to me, and I'll cultivate his
acquaintance.
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while
there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the
world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humor. When
Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way: holding his sides, rolling his
head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions:
Scrooge's niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their
assembled friends being not a bit behindhand, roared out, lustily.
"Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!"
"He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!" cried Scrooge's
nephew. "He believed it too!"
"More shame for him, Fred!" said Scrooge's niece, indignantly. Bless
those women; they never do anything by halves. They are always in
earnest.
She was very pretty; exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled,
surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that seemed
made to be kissed--as no doubt it was; all kinds of good little dots
about her chin, that melted into one another when she laughed; and
the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's head.
Altogether she was what you would have called provoking, you know;
but satisfactory, too. Oh, perfectly satisfactory!
"He's a comical old fellow," said Scrooge's nephew, "that's the
truth; and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offenses
carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him."
"I'm sure he is very rich, Fred," hinted Scrooge's niece. "At least
you always tell _me_ so."
"What of that, my dear!" said Scrooge's nephew. "His wealth is of no
use to him. He don't do any good with it. He don't make himself
comfortable with it. He hasn't the satisfaction of thinking--ha, ha,
ha!--that he is ever going to benefit Us with it."
"I have no patience with him," observed Scrooge's niece. Scrooge's
niece's sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed the same opinion.
"Oh, I have!" said Scrooge's nephew. "I am sorry for him; I couldn't
be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims?
Himself, always. Here, he takes it into his head to dislike us, and
he won't come and dine with us. What's the consequence? He don't
lose much of a dinner."
"Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner," interrupted Scrooge's
niece. Everybody else said the same, and they must be allowed to
have been competent judges, because they had just had dinner; and,
with the dessert upon the table, were clustered round the fire, by
lamplight.
"Well! I'm very glad to hear it," said Scrooge's nephew, "because I
haven't any great faith in these young housekeepers. What do you
say, Topper?"
Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge's niece's sisters,
for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast, who had no
right to express an opinion on the subject. Whereat Scrooge's
niece's sister--the plump one with the lace tucker: not the one with
the roses--blushed.
"Do go on, Fred," said Scrooge's niece, clapping her hands. "He
never finishes what he begins to say. He is such a ridiculous
fellow!"
Scrooge's nephew reveled in another laugh, and as it was impossible
to keep the infection off; though the plump sister tried hard to do
it with aromatic vinegar; his example was unanimously followed.
"I was only going to say," said Scrooge's nephew, "that the
consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making merry with
us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, which could
do him no harm. I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can
find in his own thoughts, either in his moldy old office, or his
dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year,
whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas
till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it--I defy him--if
he finds me going there, in good temper, year after year, and saying,
'Uncle Scrooge, how are you?' If it only puts him in the vein to
leave his poor clerk fifty pounds, _that's_ something; and I think I
shook him yesterday."
It was their turn to laugh now at the notion of his shaking Scrooge.
But being thoroughly good-natured, and not much caring what they
laughed at, so that they laughed at any rate, he encouraged them in
their merriment, and passed the bottle joyously.
After tea, they had some music. For they were a musical family, and
knew what they were about, when they sang a Glee or Catch, I can
assure you: especially Topper, who could growl away in the bass like
a good one, and never swell the large veins in his forehead, or get
red in the face over it. Scrooge's niece played well upon the harp;
and played among other tunes a simple little air (a mere nothing: you
might learn to whistle it in two minutes), which had been familiar to
the child who fetched Scrooge from the boarding-school, as he had
been reminded by the Ghost of Christmas Past. When this strain of
music sounded, all the things that Ghost had shown him came upon his
mind; he softened more and more; and thought that if he could have
listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the
kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his own hands, without
resorting to the sexton's spade that buried Jacob Marley.
But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After a while
they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and
never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child
himself. Stop! There was first a game at blind-man's buff. Of
course there was. And I no more believe Topper was really blind than
I believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a
done thing between him and Scrooge's nephew: and that the Ghost of
Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after that plump sister
in the lace tucker was an outrage on the credulity of human nature.
Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping up
against the piano, smothering himself among the curtains, wherever
she went, there went he. He always knew where the plump sister was.
He wouldn't catch anybody else. If you had fallen up against him, as
some of them did, and stood there; he would have made a feint of
endeavoring to seize you, which would have been an affront to your
understanding; and would instantly have sidled off in the direction
of the plump sister. She often cried out that it wasn't fair; and it
really was not. But when at last he caught her; when, in spite of
all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got
her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his conduct was
the most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his
pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and further
to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her
finger, and a certain chain about her neck; was vile, monstrous! No
doubt she told him her opinion of it, when, another blind man being
in office, they were so very confidential together, behind the
curtains.
Scrooge's niece was not one of the blind-man's buff party, but was
made comfortable with a large chair and a footstool, in a snug
corner, where the Ghost and Scrooge were close behind her. But she
joined in the forfeits, and loved her love to admiration with all the
letters of the alphabet. Likewise at the game of How, When, and
Where, she was very great, and to the secret joy of Scrooge's nephew,
beat her sisters hollow: though they were sharp girls too, as Topper
could have told you. There might have been twenty people there,
young and old, but they all played, and so did Scrooge; for, wholly
forgetting in the interest he had in what was going on, that his
voice made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with his
guess quite loud, and very often guessed quite right, too; for the
sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to cut in the eye,
was not sharper than Scrooge: blunt as he took it in his head to be.
The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood, and looked
upon him with such favor that he begged like a boy to be allowed to
stay until the guests departed. But this the Spirit said could not
be done.
"Here is a new game," said Scrooge. "One half-hour, Spirit, only
one!"
It is a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge's nephew had to think
of something, and the rest must find out what; he only answering to
their questions yes or no, as the case was. The brisk fire of
questioning to which he was exposed elicited from him that he was
thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a
savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and
talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the streets,
and wasn't made a show of, and wasn't led by anybody, and didn't live
in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a
horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a
pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that was put to
him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so
inexpressibly tickled that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and
stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried
out:
"I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!"
"What is it?" cried Fred.
"It's your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!"
Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment,
though some objected that the reply to "Is it a bear?" ought to have
been "Yes"; inasmuch as an answer in the negative was sufficient to
have diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had
ever had any tendency that way.
"He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure," said Fred, "and it
would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of
mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, 'Uncle
Scrooge!'"
"Well! Uncle Scrooge!" they cried.
"A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he
is!" said Scrooge's nephew. "He wouldn't take it from me, but may he
have it, nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!"
Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart that
he would have pledged the unconscious company in return, and thanked
them in an inaudible speech, if the Ghost had given him time. But
the whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by
his nephew; and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels.
Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but
always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and they
were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by
struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by
poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in
misery's every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority
had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his
blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts.
It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge had his
doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared to be
condensed into the space of time they passed together. It was
strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward
form, the Ghost grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this
change, but never spoke of it until they left a children's Twelfth
Night party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an
open place, he noticed that its hair was gray.
"Are spirits' lives so short?" asked Scrooge.
"My life upon this globe is very brief," replied the Ghost. "It ends
to-night."
"To-night!" cried Scrooge.
"To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near."
The chimes were ringing the three-quarters past eleven at that moment.
"Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," said Scrooge,
looking intently at the Spirit's robe, "but I see something strange,
and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a
foot or a claw!"
"It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was the
Spirit's sorrowful reply. "Look here."
From the foldings of its robe it brought two children; wretched,
abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet,
and clung upon the outside of its garment.
"Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish;
but, prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should
have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest
tints, a stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and
twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have
sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no
degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the
mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and
dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this
way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked
themselves rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.
"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they
cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance.
This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but
most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which
is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit,
stretching out its hand toward the City. "Slander those who tell it
ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And
bide the end!"
"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.
"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last
time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"
The bell struck twelve.
Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last
stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob
Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and
hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, toward him.
STAVE FOUR
_The Last of the Spirits_
The phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When it came near
him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through
which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head,
its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one
outstretched hand. But for this it would have been difficult to
detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness
by which it was surrounded.
He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and
that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew
no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.
"I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?" said
Scrooge.
The Spirit answered not, but pointed downward with its hand.
"You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not
happened, but will happen in the time before us," Scrooge pursued.
"Is that so, Spirit?"
The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its
folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only
answer he received.
Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge feared
the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him, and he
found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it. The
Spirit paused a moment, as if observing his condition, and giving him
time to recover.
But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague
uncertain horror, to know that behind the dusky shroud there were
ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched
his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one
great heap of black.
"Ghost of the Future!" he exclaimed, "I fear you more than any
Spectre I have seen. But, as I know your purpose is to do me good,
and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am
prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will
you not speak to me?"
It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.
"Lead on!" said Scrooge. "Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it
is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!"
The Phantom moved away as it had come toward him. Scrooge followed
in the shadow of its dress, which bore him up, he thought, and
carried him along.
They scarcely seemed to enter the City; for the City rather seemed to
spring up about them, and encompass them of its own act. But there
they were, in the heart of it; on 'Change, among the merchants; who
hurried up and down, and chinked the money in their pockets, and
conversed in groups, and looked at their watches, and trifled
thoughtfully with their great gold seals; and so forth, as Scrooge
had seen them often.
The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men. Observing
that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge advanced to listen to
their talk.
"No," said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, "I don't know much
about it, either way. I only know he's dead."
"When did he die?" inquired another.
"Last night, I believe."
"Why, what was the matter with him?" asked a third, taking a vast
quantity of snuff out of a very large snuffbox. "I thought he'd
never die."
"God knows," said the first, with a yawn.
"What has he done with his money?" asked a red-faced gentleman with a
pendulous excrescence on the end of his nose, that shook like the
gills of a turkey-cock.
"I haven't heard," said the man with the large chin, yawning again.
"Left it to his Company, perhaps. He hasn't left it to me. That's
all I know."
This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.
"It's likely to be a very cheap funeral," said the same speaker; "for
upon my life I don't know of anybody to go to it. Suppose we make up
a party and volunteer?"
"I don't mind going if a lunch is provided," observed the gentleman
with the excrescence on his nose. "But I must be fed, if I make one."
Another laugh.
"Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all," said the
first speaker, "for I never wear black gloves, and I never eat lunch.
But I'll offer to go, if anybody else will. When I come to think of
it, I'm not at all sure that I wasn't his most particular friend; for
we used to stop and speak whenever we met. By-by!"
Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other groups.
Scrooge knew the men, and looked toward the Spirit for an explanation.
The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed to two
persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking that the
explanation might lie here.
He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of business: very
wealthy, and of great importance. He had made a point always of
standing well in their esteem: in a business point of view, that is;
strictly in a business point of view.
"How are you?" said one.
"How are you?" returned the other.
"Well!" said the first. "Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?"
"So I am told," returned the second. "Cold, isn't it?"
"Seasonable for Christmas time. You're not a skater, I suppose?"
"No. No. Something else to think of. Good-morning!"
Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and
their parting.
Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit should
attach importance to conversations apparently so trivial; but feeling
assured that they must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to
consider what it was likely to be. They could scarcely be supposed
to have any bearing on the death of Jacob, his old partner, for that
was Past, and this Ghost's province was the Future. Nor could he
think of any one immediately connected with himself to whom he could
apply them. But nothing doubting that to whomsoever they applied
they had some latent moral for his own improvement, he resolved to
treasure up every word he heard, and everything he saw; and
especially to observe the shadow of himself when it appeared. For he
had an expectation that the conduct of his future self would give him
the clue he missed, and would render the solution of these riddles
easy.
He looked about in that very place for his own image; but another man
stood in his accustomed corner, and though the clock pointed to his
usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of himself
among the multitudes that poured in through the Porch. It gave him
little surprise, however; for he had been revolving in his mind a
change of life, and thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions
carried out in this.
Quiet and dark beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched
hand. When he roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied
from the turn of the hand, and its situation in reference to himself,
that the Unseen Eyes were looking at him keenly. It made him
shudder, and feel very cold.
They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town,
where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognized its
situation, and its bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow; the
shops and houses wretched; the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod,
ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their
offenses of smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets;
and the whole quarter reeked with crime; with filth, and misery.
Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling
shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones,
and greasy offal, were bought. Upon the floor within, were piled up
heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights,
and refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would like to
scrutinize were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses
of corrupted fat, and sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the
wares he dealt in, by a charcoal-stove, made of old bricks, was a
gray-haired rascal, nearly seventy years of age; who had screened
himself from the cold air without by a frowsy curtaining of
miscellaneous tatters hung upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all
the luxury of calm retirement.
Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this man, just as a
woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely
entered, when another woman, similarly laden, came in too; and she
was closely followed by a man in faded black, who was no less
startled by the sight of them than they had been upon the recognition
of each other. After a short period of blank astonishment, in which
the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three burst into
a laugh.
"Let the charwoman alone to be the first!" cried she who had entered
first. "Let the laundress alone to be the second; and let the
undertaker's man alone to be the third. Look here, old Joe, here's a
chance! If we haven't all three met here without meaning it!"
"You couldn't have met in a better place," said old Joe, removing his
pipe from his mouth. "Come into the parlor. You were made free of
it long ago, you know; and the other two an't strangers. Stop till I
shut the door of the shop. Ah! How it skreeks! There an't such a
rusty bit of metal in the place as its own hinges, I believe; and I'm
sure there's no such old bones here as mine. Ha, ha! We're all
suitable to our calling, we're well matched. Come into the parlor.
Come into the parlor."
The parlor was the space behind the screen of rags. The old man
raked the fire together with an old stair-rod, and having trimmed his
smoky lamp (for it was night) with the stem of his pipe, put it in
his mouth again.
While he did this, the woman who had already spoken threw her bundle
on the floor, and sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool; crossing
her elbows on her knees, and looking with a bold defiance at the
other two.
"What odds then! What odds, Mrs. Dilber?" said the woman. "Every
person has a right to take care of themselves. _He_ always did!"
"That's true, indeed!" said the laundress. "No man more so."
"Why, then, don't stand staring as if you was afraid, woman; who's
the wiser? We're not going to pick holes in each other's coats, I
suppose?"
"No, indeed!" said Mrs. Dilber and the man together. "We should hope
not."
"Very well, then!" cried the woman. "That's enough. Who's the worse
for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose."
"No, indeed," said Mrs. Dilber, laughing.
"If he wanted to keep 'em after he was dead, a wicked old screw,"
pursued the woman, "why wasn't he natural in his lifetime? If he had
been, he'd have had somebody to look after him when he was struck
with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by
himself."
"It's the truest word that ever was spoke," said Mrs. Dilber. "It's
a judgment on him."
"I wish it was a little heavier one," replied the woman; "and it
should have been, you may depend upon it, if I could have laid my
hands on anything else. Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know
the value of it. Speak out plain. I'm not afraid to be the first,
nor afraid for them to see it. We knew pretty well that we were
helping ourselves, before we met here, I believe. It's no sin. Open
the bundle, Joe."
But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this; and the man
in faded black, mounting the breach first, produced his plunder. It
was not extensive. A seal or two, a pencil-case, a pair of
sleeve-buttons, and a brooch of no great value, were all. They were
severally examined and appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he
was disposed to give for each upon the wall, and added them up into a
total when he found there was nothing more to come.
"That's your account," said Joe, "and I wouldn't give another
sixpence if I was to be boiled for not doing it. Who's next?"
Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel,
two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a few
boots. Her account was stated on the wall in the same manner.
"I always give too much to ladies. It's a weakness of mine, and
that's the way I ruin myself," said old Joe. "That's your account.
If you asked me for another penny, and made it an open question, I'd
repent of being so liberal and knock off half-a-crown."
"And now undo my bundle, Joe," said the first woman.
Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening it,
and having unfastened a great many knots, dragged out a large and
heavy roll of some dark stuff.
"What do you call this?" said Joe. "Bed-curtains!"
"Ah!" returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward on her crossed
arms. "Bed-curtains!"
"You don't mean to say you took 'em down, rings and all, with him
lying there?" said Joe.
"Yes, I do," replied the woman. "Why not?"
"You were born to make your fortune," said Joe, "and you'll certainly
do it."
"I certainly shan't hold my hand when I can get anything in it by
reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as He was, I promise you,
Joe," returned the woman coolly. "Don't drop that oil upon the
blankets, now."
"His blankets?" asked Joe.
"Whose else's do you think?" replied the woman. "He isn't likely to
take cold without 'em, I dare say."
"I hope he didn't die of anything catching, eh?" said old Joe,
stopping in his work, and looking up.
"Don't you be afraid of that," returned the woman. "I an't so fond
of his company that I'd loiter about him for such things, if he did.
Ah! you may look through that shirt till your eyes ache; but you
won't find a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It's the best he
had, and a fine one too. They'd have wasted it, if it hadn't been
for me."
"What do you call wasting of it?" asked old Joe.
"Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure," replied the woman
with a laugh. "Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off
again. If calico an't good enough for such a purpose, it isn't good
enough for anything. It's quite as becoming to the body. He can't
look uglier than he did in that one."
Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat grouped
about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by the old man's
lamp, he viewed them with a detestation and disgust which could
hardly have been greater, though they had been obscene demons,
marketing the corpse itself.
"Ha, ha!" laughed the same woman, when old Joe, producing a flannel
bag with money in it, told out their several gains upon the ground.
"This is the end of it, you see! He frightened every one away from
him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!"
"Spirit!" said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. "I see, I see.
The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that
way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is this!"
He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he almost
touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which, beneath a ragged
sheet, there lay a something covered up, which, though it was dumb,
announced itself in awful language.
The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy,
though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse,
anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light, rising in
the outer air, fell straight upon the bed; and on it, plundered and
bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man.
Scrooge glanced toward the Phantom. Its steady hand was pointed to
the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest
raising of it, the motion of a finger upon Scrooge's part, would have
disclosed the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to
do, and longed to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the veil
than to dismiss the spectre at his side.
Oh, cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and
dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is
thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honored head, thou
canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature
odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when
released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the
hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender;
and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good
deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!
No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge's ears, and yet he heard
them when he looked upon the bed. He thought, if this man could be
raised up now, what would be his foremost thoughts? Avarice, hard
dealing, griping cares? They have brought him to a rich end, truly!
He lay in the dark, empty house, with not a man, a woman, or a child
to say that he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of
one kind word I will be kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door,
and there was a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearthstone. What
they wanted in the room of death, and why they were so restless and
disturbed, Scrooge did not dare to think.
"Spirit!" he said, "this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall
not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!"
Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head.
"I understand you," Scrooge returned, "and I would do it, if I could.
But I have not the power, Spirit. I have not the power."
Again it seemed to look upon him.
"If there is any person in the town who feels emotion caused by this
man's death," said Scrooge, quite agonized, "show that person to me,
Spirit, I beseech you!"
The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, like a
wing; and withdrawing it, revealed a room by daylight, where a mother
and her children were.
She was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness; for she
walked up and down the room; started at every sound; looked out from
the window; glanced at the clock; tried, but in vain, to work with
her needle; and could hardly bear the voices of the children in their
play.
At length the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried to the
door, and met her husband; a man whose face was careworn and
depressed, though he was young. There was a remarkable expression in
it now; a kind of serious delight of which he felt ashamed, and which
he struggled to repress.
He sat down to the dinner that had been hoarding for him by the fire;
and when she asked him faintly what news (which was not until after a
long silence), he appeared embarrassed how to answer.
"Is it good," she said, "or bad?"--to help him.
"Bad," he answered.
"We are quite ruined?"
"No. There is hope yet, Caroline."
"If _he_ relents," she said, amazed, "there is! Nothing is past
hope, if such a miracle has happened."
"He is past relenting," said her husband. "He is dead."
She was a mild and patient creature if her face spoke truth; but she
was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so, with clasped
hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry; but
the first was the emotion of her heart.
"What the half-drunken woman whom I told you of last night, said to
me, when I tried to see him and obtain a week's delay; and what I
thought was a mere excuse to avoid me; turns out to have been quite
true. He was not only very ill, but dying, then."
"To whom will our debt be transferred?"
"I don't know. But before that time we shall be ready with the
money; and even though we were not, it would be bad fortune indeed to
find so merciless a creditor in his successor. We may sleep to-night
with light hearts, Caroline!"
Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter. The
children's faces, hushed, and clustered round to hear what they so
little understood, were brighter; and it was a happier house for this
man's death! The only emotion that the Ghost could show him, caused
by the event, was one of pleasure.
"Let me see some tenderness connected with a death," said Scrooge;
"or that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just now, will be
forever present to me."
The Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar to his feet;
and as they went along, Scrooge looked here and there to find
himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. They entered poor Bob
Cratchit's house; the dwelling he had visited before; and found the
mother and the children seated round the fire.
Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as still as
statues in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter, who had a book
before him. The mother and her daughters were engaged in sewing.
But surely they were very quiet!
"'And He took a child, and set him in the midst of them.'"
Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not dreamed them. The
boy must have read them out, as he and the Spirit crossed the
threshold. Why did he not go on? The mother laid her work upon the
table, and put her hand up to her face.
"The color hurts my eyes," she said.
The color? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!
"They're better now again," said Cratchit's wife. "It makes them
weak by candlelight; and I wouldn't show weak eyes to your father
when he comes home, for the world. It must be near his time."
"Past it rather," Peter answered, shutting up his book. "But I think
he's walked a little slower than he used, these few last evenings,
mother."
They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a steady
cheerful voice, that only faltered once:
"I have known him walk with--I have known him walk with Tiny Tim upon
his shoulder, very fast indeed."
"And so have I," cried Peter. "Often."
"And so have I," exclaimed another. So had all.
"But he was very light to carry," she resumed, intent upon her work,
"and his father loved him so, that it was no trouble--no trouble.
And there is your father at the door!"
She hurried out to meet him; and little Bob in his comforter--he had
need of it, poor fellow--came in. His tea was ready for him on the
hob, and they all tried who should help him to it most. Then the two
young Cratchits got upon his knees and laid, each child a little
cheek, against his face, as if they said, "Don't mind it, father.
Don't be grieved!"
Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly to all the
family. He looked at the work upon the table, and praised the
industry and speed of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls. They would be
done long before Sunday he said.
"Sunday? You went to-day, then, Robert?" said his wife.
"Yes, my dear," returned Bob. "I wish you could have gone. It would
have done you good to see how green a place it is. But you'll see it
often. I promised him that I would walk there on a Sunday. My
little, little child!" cried Bob. "My little child!"
He broke down all at once. He couldn't help it. If he could have
helped it, he and his child would have been further apart perhaps
than they were.
He left the room, and went upstairs into the room above, which was
lighted cheerfully, and hung with Christmas. There was a chair set
close beside the child, and there were signs of some one having been
there, lately. Poor Bob sat down in it, and when he had thought a
little and composed himself, he kissed the little face. He was
reconciled to what had happened, and went down again quite happy.
They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls and mother working
still. Bob told them of the extraordinary kindness of Mr. Scrooge's
nephew, whom he had scarcely seen but once, and who, meeting him in
the street that day, and seeing that he looked a little--"just a
little down you know," said Bob, inquired what had happened to
distress him. "On which," said Bob, "for he is the
pleasantest-spoken gentleman you ever heard, I told him. 'I am
heartily sorry for it, Mr. Cratchit,' he said, 'and heartily sorry
for your good wife.' By the by, how he ever knew that, I don't know."
"Knew what, my dear?"
"Why, that you were a good wife," replied Bob.
"Everybody knows that!" said Peter.
"Very well observed, my boy!" cried Bob. "I hope they do. 'Heartily
sorry,' he said, 'for your good wife. If I can be of service to you
in any way,' he said, giving me his card, 'that's where I live. Pray
come to me.' Now, it wasn't," cried Bob, "for the sake of anything
he might be able to do for us, so much as for his kind way, that this
was quite delightful. It really seemed as if he had known our Tiny
Tim, and felt with us."
"I'm sure he's a good soul!" said Mrs. Cratchit.
"You would be surer of it, my dear," returned Bob, "if you saw and
spoke to him. I shouldn't be at all surprised, mark what I say, if
he got Peter a better situation."
"Only hear that, Peter," said Mrs. Cratchit.
"And then," cried one of the girls, "Peter will be keeping company
with some one, and setting up for himself."
"Get along with you!" retorted Peter, grinning.
"It's just as likely as not," said Bob, "one of these days; though
there's plenty of time for that, my dear. But however and whenever
we part from one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget poor
Tiny Tim--shall we--or this first parting that there was among us?"
"Never, father!" cried they all.
"And I know," said Bob, "I know, my dears, that when we recollect how
patient and how mild he was; although he was a little, little child;
we shall not quarrel easily among ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim
in doing it."
"No, never, father!" they all cried again.
"I am very happy," said little Bob, "I am very happy!"
Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the two young
Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself shook hands. Spirit of
Tiny Tim, thy childish essence was from God!
"Spectre," said Scrooge, "something informs me that our parting
moment is at hand. I know it, but I know not how. Tell me what man
that was whom we saw lying dead?"
The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him, as before--though at
a different time, he thought: indeed, there seemed no order in these
latter visions, save that they were in the Future--into the resorts
of business men, but showed him not himself. Indeed, the Spirit did
not stay for anything, but went straight on, as to the end just now
desired, until besought by Scrooge to tarry for a moment.
"This court," said Scrooge, "through which we hurry now, is where my
place of occupation is, and has been for a length of time. I see the
house. Let me behold what I shall be, in days to come!"
The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere.
"The house is yonder," Scrooge exclaimed. "Why do you point away?"
The inexorable finger underwent no change.
Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and looked in. It was
an office still, but not his. The furniture was not the same, and
the figure in the chair was not himself. The Phantom pointed as
before.
He joined it once again, and wondering why and whither he had gone,
accompanied it until they reached an iron gate. He paused to look
round before entering.
A churchyard. Here, then, the wretched man whose name he had now to
learn, lay underneath the ground. It was a worthy place. Walled in
by houses; overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation's
death, not life; choked up with too much burying; fat with repleted
appetite. A worthy place!
The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to One. He
advanced toward it trembling. The Phantom was exactly as it had
been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape.
"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point," said
Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the
things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?"
Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.
"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered
in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed
from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!"
The Spirit was immovable as ever.
Scrooge crept toward it, trembling as he went; and following the
finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name,
"Ebenezer Scrooge."
"Am _I_ that man who lay upon the bed?" he cried, upon his knees.
The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.
"No, Spirit! Oh, no, no!"
The finger still was there.
"Spirit!" he cried, tight clutching at its robe, "hear me! I am not
the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this
intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope!"
For the first time the hand appeared to shake.
"Good Spirit," he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it:
"Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet
may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!"
The kind hand trembled.
"I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of
all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons
that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this
stone!"
In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free itself,
but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it. The Spirit,
stronger yet, repulsed him.
Holding up his hand in one last prayer to have his fate reversed, he
saw an alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress. It shrank,
collapsed, and dwindled down into a bed-post.
STAVE FIVE
_The End of It_
Yes! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was
his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own,
to make amends in!
"I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!" Scrooge
repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. "The Spirits of all Three
shall strive within me. Oh, Jacob Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas
Time be praised for this! I say it on my knees, old Jacob, on my
knees!"
He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions, that his
broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing
violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet with
tears.
"They are not torn down," cried Scrooge, folding one of his
bed-curtains in his arms, "they are not torn down, rings and all.
They are here: I am here: the shadows of the things that would have
been may be dispelled. They will be. I know they will!"
His hands were busy with his garments all this time: turning them
inside out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying
them, making them parties to every kind of extravagance.
"I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the
same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his
stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I
am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A Merry
Christmas to everybody! A Happy New Year to all the world. Hallo
here! Whoop! Hallo!"
He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing there:
perfectly winded.
"There's the saucepan that the gruel was in!" cried Scrooge, starting
off again, and frisking round the fireplace. "There's the door, by
which the Ghost of Jacob Marley entered! There's the corner where
the Ghost of Christmas Present sat! There's the window where I saw
the wandering Spirits! It's all right, it's all true, it all
happened. Ha, ha, ha!"
Really, for a man who had been out of practise for so many years, it
was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a
long, long line of brilliant laughs!
"I don't know what day of the month it is!" said Scrooge. "I don't
know how long I've been among the Spirits. I don't know anything.
I'm quite a baby. Never mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby.
Hallo! Whoop! Hallo here!"
He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the
lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang, hammer, ding, dong,
bell. Bell, dong, ding, hammer, clang, clash! Oh, glorious,
glorious!
Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog,
no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the
blood to dance to; golden sunlight; heavenly sky; sweet fresh air;
merry bells. Oh, glorious. Glorious!
"What's to-day?" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday
clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.
"Eh?" returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.
"What's to-day, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge.
"To-day!" replied the boy. "Why, CHRISTMAS DAY."
"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I haven't missed it.
The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they
like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine
fellow!"
"Hallo!" returned the boy.
"Do you know the Poulterer's, in the next street but one, at the
corner?" Scrooge inquired.
"I should hope I did," replied the lad.
"An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge. "A remarkable boy! Do you know
whether they've sold the prize turkey that was hanging up there? Not
the little prize turkey: the big one?"
"What, the one as big as me?" returned the boy.
"What a delightful boy!" said Scrooge. "It's a pleasure to talk to
him. Yes, my buck!"
"It's hanging there now," replied the boy.
"Is it?" said Scrooge. "Go and buy it."
"Walk-_er_!" exclaimed the boy.
"No, no," said Scrooge, "I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell
'em to bring it here, that I may give them the direction where to
take it. Come back with the man, and I'll give you a shilling. Come
back with him in less than five minutes, and I'll give you
half-a-crown!"
The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady hand at a
trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.
"I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's!" whispered Scrooge, rubbing his
hands, and splitting with a laugh. "He shan't know who sends it.
It's twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke
as sending it to Bob's will be!"
The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady one, but
write it he did, somehow, and went downstairs to open the street
door, ready for the coming of the poulterer's man. As he stood
there, waiting his arrival, the knocker caught his eye.
"I shall love it, as long as I live!" cried Scrooge, patting it with
his hand. "I scarcely ever looked at it before. What an honest
expression it has in its face! It's a wonderful knocker!--Here's the
Turkey. Hallo! Whoop! How are you! Merry Christmas!"
It _was_ a Turkey! He could never have stood upon his legs, that
bird. He would have snapped 'em short off in a minute, like sticks
of sealing-wax.
"Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden Town," said Scrooge.
"You must have a cab."
The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with which he
paid for the turkey, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab,
and the chuckle with which he recompensed the boy, were only to be
exceeded by the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his
chair again, and chuckled till he cried.
Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to shake very
much; and shaving requires attention, even when you don't dance while
you are at it. But if he had cut the end of his nose off, he would
have put a piece of sticking-plaster over it, and been quite
satisfied.
He dressed himself "all in his best," and at last got out into the
streets. The people were by this time pouring forth, as he had seen
them with the Ghost of Christmas Present; and walking with his hands
behind him, Scrooge regarded every one with a delighted smile. He
looked so irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four
good-humored fellows said: "Good-morning, sir! A Merry Christmas to
you!" And Scrooge said often afterward, that of all the blithe
sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears.
He had not gone far, when coming on toward him he beheld the portly
gentleman who had walked into his counting-house the day before and
said: "Scrooge and Marley's, I believe?" It sent a pang across his
heart to think how this old gentleman would look upon him when they
met; but he knew what path lay straight before him, and he took it.
"My dear sir," said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and taking the old
gentleman by both his hands. "How do you do? I hope you succeeded
yesterday. It was very kind of you. A Merry Christmas to you, sir!"
"Mr. Scrooge?"
"Yes," said Scrooge. "That is my name, and I fear it may not be
pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon. And will you have the
goodness"--here Scrooge whispered in his ear.
"Lord bless me!" cried the gentleman, as if his breath were gone.
"My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?"
"If you please," said Scrooge. "Not a farthing less. A great many
back-payments are included in it, I assure you. Will you do me that
favor?"
"My dear sir," said the other, shaking hands with him. "I don't know
what to say to such munifi--"
"Don't say anything, please," retorted Scrooge. "Come and see me.
Will you come and see me?"
"I will!" cried the old gentleman. And it was clear he meant to do
it.
"Thank'ee," said Scrooge. "I am much obliged to you. I thank you
fifty times. Bless you!"
He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the
people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and
questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and
up to the windows; and found that everything could yield him
pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk--that anything--could
give him so much happiness. In the afternoon, he turned his steps
toward his nephew's house.
He passed the door a dozen times, before he had the courage to go up
and knock. But he made a dash, and did it:
"Is your master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge to the girl. Nice
girl! Very.
"Yes, sir."
"Where is he, my love?" said Scrooge.
"He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I'll show you
upstairs, if you please."
"Thank'ee. He knows me," said Scrooge, with his hand already on the
dining-room lock. "I'll go in here, my dear."
He turned it gently, and sidled his face in, round the door. They
were looking at the table (which was spread out in great array); for
these young housekeepers are always nervous on such points, and like
to see that everything is right.
"Fred!" said Scrooge.
Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started! Scrooge had
forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting in the corner with the
footstool, or he wouldn't have done it, on any account.
"Why, bless my soul!" cried Fred, "who's that?"
"It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let
me in, Fred?"
Let him in! It is a mercy he didn't shake his arm off. He was at
home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked
just the same. So did Topper when _he_ came. So did the plump
sister, when _she_ came. So did every one when _they_ came.
Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful
happiness!
But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early there.
If he could only be there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late!
That was the thing he had set his heart upon.
And he did it; yes he did! The clock struck nine. No Bob. A
quarter past. No Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and a half
behind his time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, that he might
see him come into the Tank.
His hat was off, before he opened the door; his comforter too. He
was on his stool in a jiffy; driving away with his pen, as if he were
trying to overtake nine o'clock.
"Hallo!" growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice as near as he could
feign it. "What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?"
"I am very sorry, sir," said Bob. "I am behind my time."
"You are?" repeated Scrooge. "Yes. I think you are. Step this way,
sir, if you please."
"It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob, appearing from the Tank.
"It shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir."
"Now, I'll tell you what, my friend," said Scrooge, "I am not going
to stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore," he
continued, leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the
waistcoat that he staggered back into the Tank again: "and therefore
I am about to raise your salary!"
Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a
momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it; holding him; and
calling to the people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat.
"A Merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge, with an earnestness that
could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. "A merrier
Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a
year! I'll raise your salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling
family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a
Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy
another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!"
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely
more; and to Tiny Tim, who did _not_ die, he was a second father. He
became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the
good old City knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough in
the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in
him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise
enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at
which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset;
and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it
quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as
have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and
that was quite enough for him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total
Abstinence Principle, ever afterward; and it was always said of him,
that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed
the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so,
as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!
THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM
BY WASHINGTON IRVING
_"A torch-bearer in the great procession of English prose writers,"
Irving's style is based on a close study of Addison and the
"Spectator" models._
_"The Sketch-Book," from which this story is taken, has been often
pronounced the best book that came from his pen._
THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM
By WASHINGTON IRVING
A TRAVELER'S TALE*
* The erudite reader, well versed in good-for-nothing lore, will
perceive that the above Tale must have been suggested to the old
Swiss by a little French anecdote of a circumstance said to have
taken place at Paris.
"He that supper for is dight,
He lyes full cold, I trow, this night!
Yestreen to chamber I him led,
This night Gray-steel has made his bed!"
--_Sir Eger, Sir Grahame_ and _Sir Gray-steel_
On the summit of one of the heights of the Odenwald, a wild and
romantic tract of Upper Germany that lies not far from the confluence
of the Maine and the Rhine, there stood, many, many years since, the
Castle of the Baron Von Landshort. It is now quite fallen to decay,
and almost buried among beech trees and dark firs; above which,
however, its old watch-tower may still be seen struggling, like the
former possessor I have mentioned, to carry a high head, and look
down upon a neighboring country.
The Baron was a dry branch of the great family of Katzenellenbogen,*
and inherited the relics of the property and all the pride of his
ancestors. Though the warlike disposition of his predecessors had
much impaired the family possessions, yet the Baron still endeavored
to keep up some show of former state. The times were peaceable, and
the German nobles, in general, had abandoned their inconvenient old
castles, perched like eagles' nests among the mountains, and had
built more convenient residences in the valleys; still the Baron
remained proudly drawn up in his little fortress, cherishing with
hereditary inveteracy all the old family feuds; so that he was on ill
terms with some of his nearest neighbors, on account of disputes that
had happened between their great-great-grandfathers.
* _I.e., Cat's Elbow_--the name of a family of those parts, very
powerful in former times. The appellation, we are told, was given in
compliment to a peerless dame of the family, celebrated for a fine
arm.
The Baron had but one child, a daughter; but Nature, when she grants
but one child, always compensates by making it a prodigy; and so it
was with the daughter of the Baron. All the nurses, gossips, and
country cousins, assured her father that she had not her equal for
beauty in all Germany; and who should know better than they? She
had, moreover, been brought up with great care, under the
superintendence of two maiden aunts, who had spent some years of
their early life at one of the little German courts, and were skilled
in all the branches of knowledge necessary to the education of a fine
lady. Under their instructions, she became a miracle of
accomplishments. By the time she was eighteen she could embroider to
admiration, and had worked whole histories of the saints in tapestry
with such strength of expression in their countenances that they
looked like so many souls in purgatory. She could read without great
difficulty, and had spelled her way through several church legends,
and almost all the chivalric wonders of the Heldenbuch. She had even
made considerable proficiency in writing, could sign her own name
without missing a letter, and so legibly that her aunts could read it
without spectacles. She excelled in making little good-for-nothing
lady-like knickknacks of all kinds; was versed in the most abstruse
dancing of the day; played a number of airs on the harp and guitar;
and knew all the tender ballads of the Minnie-lieders by heart.
Her aunts, too, having been great flirts and coquettes in their
younger days, were admirably calculated to be vigilant guardians and
strict censors of the conduct of their niece; for there is no duenna
so rigidly prudent, and inexorably decorous, as a superannuated
coquette. She was rarely suffered out of their sight; never went
beyond the domains of the castle, unless well attended, or, rather,
well watched; had continual lectures read to her about strict decorum
and implicit obedience; and, as to the men--pah! she was taught to
hold them at such distance and distrust that, unless properly
authorized, she would not have cast a glance upon the handsomest
cavalier in the world--no, not if he were even dying at her feet.
The good effects of this system were wonderfully apparent. The young
lady was a pattern of docility and correctness. While others were
wasting their sweetness in the glare of the world, and liable to be
plucked and thrown aside by every hand, she was coyly blooming into
fresh and lovely womanhood under the protection of those immaculate
spinsters, like a rose-bud blushing forth among guardian thorns. Her
aunts looked upon her with pride and exultation, and vaunted that
though all the other young ladies in the world might go astray, yet,
thank Heaven, nothing of the kind could happen to the heiress of
Katzenellenbogen.
But however scantily the Baron Von Landshort might be provided with
children, his household was by no means a small one, for Providence
had enriched him with abundance of poor relations. They, one and
all, possessed the affectionate disposition common to humble
relatives; were wonderfully attached to the Baron, and took every
possible occasion to come in swarms and enliven the castle. All
family festivals were commemorated by these good people at the
Baron's expense; and when they were filled with good cheer, they
would declare that there was nothing on earth so delightful as these
family meetings, these jubilees of the heart.
The Baron, though a small man, had a large soul, and it swelled with
satisfaction at the consciousness of being the greatest man in the
little world about him. He loved to tell long stories about the
stark old warriors whose portraits looked grimly down from the walls
around, and he found no listeners equal to those who fed at his
expense. He was much given to the marvelous, and a firm believer in
all those supernatural tales with which every mountain and valley in
Germany abounds. The faith of his guests even exceeded his own: they
listened to every tale of wonder with open eyes and mouth, and never
failed to be astonished, even though repeated for the hundredth time.
Thus lived the Baron Von Landshort, the oracle of his table, the
absolute monarch of his little territory, and happy, above all
things, in the persuasion that he was the wisest man of the age.
At the time of which my story treats there was a great family
gathering at the castle, on an affair of the utmost importance: it
was to receive the destined bridegroom of the Baron's daughter. A
negotiation had been carried on between the father and an old
nobleman of Bavaria, to unite the dignity of their houses by the
marriage of their children. The preliminaries had been conducted
with proper punctilio. The young people were betrothed without
seeing each other, and the time was appointed for the marriage
ceremony. The young Count Von Altenburg had been recalled from the
army for the purpose, and was actually on his way to the Baron's to
receive his bride. Missives had even been received from him, from
Wurtzburg, where he was accidentally detained, mentioning the day and
hour when he might be expected to arrive.
The castle was in a tumult of preparation to give him a suitable
welcome. The fair bride had been decked out with uncommon care. The
two aunts had superintended her toilet, and quarreled the whole
morning about every article of her dress. The young lady had taken
advantage of their contest to follow the bent of her own taste; and
fortunately it was a good one. She looked as lovely as youthful
bridegroom could desire; and the flutter of expectation heightened
the lustre of her charms.
The suffusions that mantled her face and neck, the gentle heaving of
the bosom, the eye now and then lost in reverie, all betrayed the
soft tumult that was going on in her little heart. The aunts were
continually hovering around her; for maiden aunts are apt to take
great interest in affairs of this nature: they were giving her a
world of staid counsel how to deport herself, what to say, and in
what manner to receive the expected lover.
The Baron was no less busied in preparations. He had, in truth,
nothing exactly to do; but he was naturally a fuming, bustling little
man, and could not remain passive when all the world was in a hurry.
He worried from top to bottom of the castle, with an air of infinite
anxiety; he continually called the servants from their work to exhort
them to be diligent, and buzzed about every hall and chamber, as
idly, restless, and importunate as a bluebottle fly of a warm
summer's day.
In the meantime, the fatted calf had been killed; the forests had
rung with the clamor of the huntsmen; the kitchen was crowded with
good cheer; the cellars had yielded up whole oceans of _Rhein-wein_
and _Ferne-wein_, and even the great Heidelberg Tun had been laid
under contribution. Everything was ready to receive the
distinguished guest with _Saus and Braus_ in the true spirit of
German hospitality--but the guest delayed to make his appearance.
Hour rolled after hour. The sun that had poured his downward rays
upon the rich forests of the Odenwald, now just gleamed along the
summits of the mountains. The Baron mounted the highest tower, and
strained his eyes in hopes of catching a distant sight of the Count
and his attendants. Once he thought he beheld them; the sound of
horns came floating from the valley, prolonged by the mountain
echoes: a number of horsemen were seen far below, slowly advancing
along the road; but when they had nearly reached the foot of the
mountain they suddenly struck off in a different direction. The last
ray of sunshine departed--the boats began to flit by in the
twilight--the road grew dimmer and dimmer to the view; and nothing
appeared stirring in it but now and then a peasant lagging homeward
from his labor.
While the old castle of Landshort was in this state of perplexity, a
very interesting scene was transacting in a different part of the
Odenwald.
The young Count Von Altenburg was tranquilly pursuing his route in
that sober jog-trot way in which a man travels toward matrimony when
his friends have taken all the trouble and uncertainty of courtship
off his hands, and a bride is waiting for him, as certainly as a
dinner, at the end of his journey. He had encountered at Wurtzburg a
youthful companion in arms, with whom he had seen some service on the
frontiers: Herman Von Starkenfaust, one of the stoutest hands and
worthiest hearts of German chivalry, who was now returning from the
army. His father's castle was not far distant from the old fortress
of Landshort, although a hereditary feud rendered the families
hostile and strangers to each other.
In the warm-hearted moment of recognition, the young friends related
all their past adventures and fortunes, and the Count gave the whole
history of his intended nuptials with a young lady whom he had never
seen, but of whose charms he had received the most enrapturing
descriptions.
As the route of the friends lay in the same direction, they agreed to
perform the rest of their journey together; and, that they might do
it more leisurely, set off from Wurtzburg at an early hour, the Count
having given directions for his retinue to follow and overtake him.
They beguiled their wayfaring with recollections of their military
scenes and adventures; but the Count was apt to be a little tedious,
now and then, about the reputed charms of his bride, and the felicity
that awaited him.
In this way they had entered among the mountains of the Odenwald, and
were traversing one of its most lonely and thickly wooded passes. It
is well known that the forests of Germany have always been as much
infested with robbers as its castles by spectres; and, at this time,
the former were particularly numerous, from the hordes of disbanded
soldiers wandering about the country. It will not appear
extraordinary, therefore, that the cavaliers were attacked by a gang
of these stragglers in the midst of the forest. They defended
themselves with bravery, but were nearly overpowered when the Count's
retinue arrived to their assistance. At sight of them the robbers
fled, but not until the Count had received a mortal wound. He was
slowly and carefully conveyed back to the city of Wurtzburg, and a
friar summoned from a neighboring convent, who was famous for his
skill in administering to both soul and body. But half of his skill
was superfluous; the moments of the unfortunate Count were numbered.
With his dying breath he entreated his friend to repair instantly to
the castle of Landshort, and explain the fatal cause of his not
keeping his appointment with his bride. Though not the most ardent
of lovers, he was one of the most punctilious of men, and appeared
earnestly solicitous that this mission should be speedily and
courteously executed. "Unless this is done," said he, "I shall not
sleep quietly in my grave!" He repeated these last words with
peculiar solemnity. A request, at a moment so impressive, admitted
no hesitation. Starkenfaust endeavored to soothe him to calmness;
promised faithfully to execute his wish, and gave him his hand in
solemn pledge. The dying man pressed it in acknowledgment, but soon
lapsed into delirium--raved about his bride--his engagements--his
plighted word; ordered his horse, that he might ride to the castle of
Landshort, and expired in the fancied act of vaulting into the saddle.
Starkenfaust bestowed a sigh and a soldier's tear on the untimely
fate of his comrade; and then pondered on the awkward mission he had
undertaken. His heart was heavy, and his head perplexed; for he was
to present himself an unbidden guest among hostile people, and to
damp their festivity with tidings fatal to their hopes. Still there
were certain whisperings of curiosity in his bosom to see this
far-famed beauty of Katzenellenbogen so cautiously shut up from the
world; for he was a passionate admirer of the sex, and there was a
dash of eccentricity and enterprise in his character that made him
fond of all singular adventure.
Previous to his departure, he made all due arrangements with the holy
fraternity of the convent for the funeral solemnities of his friend,
who was to be buried in the cathedral of Wurtzburg, near some of his
illustrious relatives; and the mourning retinue of the Count took
charge of his remains.
It is now high time that we should return to the ancient family of
Katzenellenbogen, who were impatient for their guest, and still more
for their dinner; and to the worthy little Baron, whom we left airing
himself on the watch-tower.
Night closed in, but still no guest arrived. The Baron descended
from the tower in despair. The banquet, which had been delayed from
hour to hour, could no longer be postponed. The meats were already
overdone, the cook in an agony, and the whole household had the look
of a garrison that had been reduced by famine. The Baron was obliged
reluctantly to give orders for the feast without the presence of the
guest. All were seated at table, and just on the point of
commencing, when the sound of a horn from without the gate gave
notice of the approach of a stranger. Another long blast filled the
old courts of the castle with its echoes, and was answered by the
warder from the walls. The Baron hastened to receive his future
son-in-law.
The drawbridge had been let down, and the stranger was before the
gate. He was a tall gallant cavalier, mounted on a black steed. His
countenance was pale, but he had a beaming, romantic eye, and an air
of stately melancholy. The Baron was a little mortified that he
should have come in this simple, solitary style. His dignity for a
moment was ruffled, and he felt disposed to consider it a want of
proper respect for the important occasion, and the important family
with which he was to be connected. He pacified himself, however,
with the conclusion that it must have been youthful impatience which
had induced him thus to spur on sooner than his attendants.
"I am sorry," said the stranger, "to break in upon you thus
unseasonably--"
Here the Baron interrupted him with a world of compliments and
greetings; for, to tell the truth, he prided himself upon his
courtesy and his eloquence. The stranger attempted, once or twice,
to stem the torrent of words, but in vain; so he bowed his head and
suffered it to flow on. By the time the Baron had come to a pause
they had reached the inner court of the castle; and the stranger was
again about to speak, when he was once more interrupted by the
appearance of the female part of the family, leading forth the
shrinking and blushing bride. He gazed on her for a moment as one
entranced; it seemed as if his whole soul beamed forth in the gaze,
and rested upon that lovely form. One of the maiden aunts whispered
something in her ear; she made an effort to speak; her moist blue eye
was timidly raised, gave a shy glance of inquiry on the stranger, and
was cast again to the ground. The words died away; but there was a
sweet smile playing about her lips, and a soft dimpling of the cheek,
that showed her glance had not been unsatisfactory. It was
impossible for a girl of the fond age of eighteen, highly predisposed
for love and matrimony, not to be pleased with so gallant a cavalier.
The late hour at which the guest had arrived left no time for parley.
The Baron was peremptory, and deferred all particular conversation
until the morning, and led the way to the untasted banquet.
It was served up in the great hall of the castle. Around the walls
hung the hard-favored portraits of the heroes of the house of
Katzenellenbogen, and the trophies which they had gained in the field
and in the chase. Hacked corselets, splintered jousting spears, and
tattered banners, were mingled with the spoils of sylvan warfare: the
jaws of the wolf, and the tusks of the boar, grinned horribly among
crossbows and battle-axes, and a huge pair of antlers branched
immediately over the head of the youthful bridegroom.
The cavalier took but little notice of the company or the
entertainment. He scarcely tasted the banquet, but seemed absorbed
in admiration of his bride. He conversed in a low tone, that could
not be overheard--for the language of love is never loud; but where
is the female ear so dull that it can not catch the softest whisper
of the lover? There was a mingled tenderness and gravity in his
manner that appeared to have a powerful effect upon the young lady.
Her color came and went, as she listened with deep attention. Now
and then she made some blushing reply, and when his eye was turned
away she would steal a sidelong glance at his romantic countenance,
and heave a gentle sigh of tender happiness. It was evident that the
young couple were completely enamored. The aunts, who were deeply
versed in the mysteries of the heart, declared that they had fallen
in love with each other at first sight.
The feast went on merrily, or at least noisily, for the guests were
all blessed with those keen appetites that attend upon light purses
and mountain air. The Baron told his best and longest stories, and
never had he told them so well, or with such great effect. If there
was anything marvelous, his auditors were lost in astonishment; and
if anything facetious, they were sure to laugh exactly in the right
place. The Baron, it is true, like most great men, was too dignified
to utter any joke but a dull one: it was always enforced, however, by
a bumper of excellent Hoch-heimer; and even a dull joke, at one's own
table, served up with jolly old wine, is irresistible. Many good
things were said by poorer and keener wits that would not bear
repeating, except on similar occasions; many sly speeches whispered
in ladies' ears that almost convulsed them with suppressed laughter;
and a song or two roared out by a poor, but merry and broad-faced
cousin of the Baron, that absolutely made the maiden aunts hold up
their fans.
Amid all this revelry, the stranger-guest maintained a most singular
and unseasonable gravity. His countenance assumed a deeper cast of
dejection as the evening advanced, and, strange as it may appear,
even the Baron's jokes seemed only to render him the more melancholy.
At times he was lost in thought, and at times there was a perturbed
and restless wandering of the eye that bespoke a mind but ill at
ease. His conversation with the bride became more and more earnest
and mysterious. Lowering clouds began to steal over the fair
serenity of her brow, and tremors to run through her tender frame.
All this could not escape the notice of the company. Their gaiety
was chilled by the unaccountable gloom of the bridegroom; their
spirits were infected; whispers and glances were interchanged,
accompanied by shrugs and dubious shakes of the head. The song and
the laugh grew less and less frequent: there were dreary pauses in
the conversation, which were at length succeeded by wild tales, and
supernatural legends. One dismal story produced another still more
dismal, and the Baron nearly frightened some of the ladies into
hysterics with the history of the goblin horseman that carried away
the fair Leonora--a dreadful, but true story, which has since been
put into excellent verse, and is read and believed by all the world.
The bridegroom listened to this tale with profound attention. He
kept his eyes steadily fixed on the Baron, and, as the story drew to
a close, began gradually to rise from his seat, growing taller and
taller, until, in the Baron's entranced eye, he seemed almost to
tower into a giant. The moment the tale was finished, he heaved a
deep sigh, and took a solemn farewell of the company. They were all
amazement. The Baron was perfectly thunderstruck.
"What! going to leave the castle at midnight? Why, everything was
prepared for his reception; a chamber was ready for him if he wished
to retire."
The stranger shook his head mournfully and mysteriously: "I must lay
my head in a different chamber to-night!"
There was something in this reply, and the tone in which it was
uttered, that made the Baron's heart misgive him; but he rallied his
forces, and repeated his hospitable entreaties. The stranger shook
his head silently, but positively, at every offer; and, waving his
farewell to the company, stalked slowly out of the hall. The maiden
aunts were absolutely petrified--the bride hung her head, and a tear
stole to her eye.
The Baron followed the stranger to the great court of the castle,
where the black charger stood pawing the earth and snorting with
impatience. When they had reached the portal, whose deep archway was
dimly lighted by a cresset, the stranger paused, and addressed the
Baron in a hollow tone of voice, which the vaulted roof rendered
still more sepulchral. "Now that we are alone," said he, "I will
impart to you the reason of my going. I have a solemn, an
indispensable engagement--"
"Why," said the Baron, "can not you send some one in your place?"
"It admits of no substitute--I must attend it in person--I must away
to Wurtzburg cathedral--"
"Ay," said the Baron, plucking up spirit, "but not until
to-morrow--to-morrow you shall take your bride there."
"No! no!" replied the stranger, with tenfold solemnity, "my
engagement is with no bride--the worms! the worms expect me! I am a
dead man--I have been slain by robbers--my body lies at Wurtzburg--at
midnight I am to be buried--the grave is waiting for me--I must keep
my appointment!"
He sprang on his black charger, dashed over the drawbridge, and the
clattering of his horse's hoofs was lost in the whistling of the
night-blast.
The Baron returned to the hall in the utmost consternation, and
related what had passed. Two ladies fainted outright; others
sickened at the idea of having banqueted with a spectre. It was the
opinion of some that this might be the wild huntsman famous in German
legend. Some talked of mountain sprites, of wood-demons, and of
other supernatural beings, with which the good people of Germany have
been so grievously harassed since time immemorial. One of the poor
relations ventured to suggest that it might be some sportive evasion
of the young cavalier, and that the very gloominess of the caprice
seemed to accord with so melancholy a personage. This, however, drew
on him the indignation of the whole company, and especially of the
Baron, who looked upon him as little better than an infidel; so that
he was fain to abjure his heresy as speedily as possible, and come
into the faith of the true believers.
But, whatever may have been the doubts entertained, they were
completely put to an end by the arrival, next day, of regular
missives confirming the intelligence of the young Count's murder, and
his interment in Wurtzburg cathedral.
The dismay at the castle may well be imagined. The Baron shut
himself up in his chamber. The guests who had come to rejoice with
him could not think of abandoning him in his distress. They wandered
about the courts, or collected in groups in the hall, shaking their
heads and shrugging their shoulders at the troubles of so good a man;
and sat longer than ever at table, and ate and drank more stoutly
than ever, by way of keeping up their spirits. But the situation of
the widowed bride was the most pitiable. To have lost a husband
before she had even embraced him--and such a husband! if the very
spectre could be so gracious and noble, what must have been the
living man? She filled the house with lamentations.
On the night of the second day of her widowhood, she had retired to
her chamber, accompanied by one of her aunts, who insisted on
sleeping with her. The aunt, who was one of the best tellers of
ghost stories in all Germany, had just been recounting one of her
longest, and had fallen asleep in the very midst of it. The chamber
was remote, and overlooked a small garden. The niece lay pensively
gazing at the beams of the rising moon, as they trembled on the
leaves of an aspen tree before the lattice. The castle clock had
just tolled midnight, when a soft strain of music stole up from the
garden. She rose hastily from her bed and stepped lightly to the
window. A tall figure stood among the shadows of the trees. As it
raised its head, a beam of moonlight fell upon the countenance.
Heaven and earth! she beheld the Spectre Bridegroom! A loud shriek
at that moment burst upon her ear, and her aunt, who had been
awakened by the music, and had followed her silently to the window,
fell into her arms. When she looked again, the spectre had
disappeared.
Of the two females, the aunt now required the most soothing, for she
was perfectly beside herself with terror. As to the young lady,
there was something, even in the spectre of her lover, that seemed
endearing. There was still the semblance of manly beauty; and though
the shadow of a man is but little calculated to satisfy the
affections of a love-sick girl, yet, where the substance is not to be
had, even that is consoling. The aunt declared she would never sleep
in that chamber again; the niece, for once, was refractory, and
declared as strongly that she would sleep in no other in the castle:
the consequence was that she had to sleep in it alone; but she drew a
promise from her aunt not to relate the story of the spectre, lest
she should be denied the only melancholy pleasure left her on
earth--that of inhabiting the chamber over which the guardian shade
of her lover kept its nightly vigils.
How long the good old lady would have observed this promise is
uncertain, for she dearly loved to talk of the marvelous, and there
is a triumph in being the first to tell a frightful story; it is,
however, still quoted in the neighborhood, as a memorable instance of
female secrecy, that she kept it to herself for a whole week; when
she was suddenly absolved from all further restraint by intelligence
brought to the breakfast-table one morning that the young lady was
not to be found. Her room was empty--the bed had not been slept
in--the window was open--and the bird had flown!
The astonishment and concern with which the intelligence was received
can only be imagined by those who have witnessed the agitation which
the mishaps of a great man cause among his friends. Even the poor
relations paused for a moment from the indefatigable labors of the
trencher; when the aunt, who had at first been struck speechless,
wrung her hands and shrieked out, "The goblin! the goblin! She's
carried away by the goblin!"
In a few words she related the fearful scene of the garden, and
concluded that the spectre must have carried off his bride. Two of
the domestics corroborated the opinion, for they had heard the
clattering of a horse's hoofs down the mountain about midnight, and
had no doubt that it was the spectre on his black charger, bearing
her away to the tomb. All present were struck with the direful
probability; for events of the kind are extremely common in Germany,
as many well-authenticated histories bear witness.
What a lamentable situation was that of the poor Baron! What a
heartrending dilemma for a fond father, and a member of the great
family of Katzenellenbogen! His only daughter had either been rapt
away to the grave, or he was to have some wood-demon for a
son-in-law, and, perchance, a troop of goblin grandchildren. As
usual, he was completely bewildered, and all the castle in an uproar.
The men were ordered to take horse and scour every road and path and
glen of the Odenwald. The Baron himself had just drawn on his
jack-boots, girded on his sword, and was about to mount his steed to
sally forth on the doubtful quest, when he was brought to a pause by
a new apparition. A lady was seen approaching the castle, mounted on
a palfrey attended by a cavalier on horseback. She galloped up to
the gate, sprang from her horse, and falling at the Baron's feet,
embraced his knees. It was his lost daughter, and her companion--the
Spectre Bridegroom! The Baron was astounded. He looked at his
daughter, then at the spectre, and almost doubted the evidence of his
senses. The latter, too, was wonderfully improved in his appearance,
since his visit to the world of spirits. His dress was splendid, and
set off a noble figure of manly symmetry. He was no longer pale and
melancholy. His fine countenance was flushed with the glow of youth,
and joy rioted in his large dark eye.
The mystery was soon cleared up. The cavalier (for, in truth, as you
must have known all the while, he was no goblin) announced himself as
Sir Herman Von Starkenfaust. He related his adventure with the young
Count. He told how he had hastened to the castle to deliver the
unwelcome tidings, but that the eloquence of the Baron had
interrupted him in every attempt to tell his tale. How the sight of
the bride had completely captivated him, and that to pass a few hours
near her he had tacitly suffered the mistake to continue. How he had
been sorely perplexed in what way to make a decent retreat, until the
Baron's goblin stories had suggested his eccentric exit. How,
fearing the feudal hostility of the family, he had repeated his
visits by stealth--had haunted the garden beneath the young lady's
window--had wooed--had won--had borne away in triumph--and, in a
word, had wedded the fair.
Under any other circumstances the Baron would have been inflexible,
for he was tenacious of paternal authority and devoutly obstinate in
all family feuds; but he loved his daughter; he had lamented her as
lost; he rejoiced to find her still alive; and, though her husband
was of a hostile house, yet, thank Heaven, he was not a goblin.
There was something, it must be acknowledged, that did not exactly
accord with his notions of strict veracity, in the joke the knight
had passed upon him of his being a dead man; but several old friends
present, who had served in the wars, assured him that every stratagem
was excusable in love, and that the cavalier was entitled to especial
privilege, having lately served as a trooper.
Matters, therefore, were happily arranged. The Baron pardoned the
young couple on the spot. The revels at the castle were resumed.
The poor relations overwhelmed this new member of the family with
loving-kindness; he was so gallant, so generous--and so rich. The
aunts, it is true, were somewhat scandalized that their system of
strict seclusion, and passive obedience, should be so badly
exemplified, but attributed it all to their negligence in not having
the windows grated. One of them was particularly mortified at having
her marvelous story marred, and that the only spectre she had ever
seen should turn out a counterfeit; but the niece seemed perfectly
happy at having found him substantial flesh and blood--and so the
story ends.
THE MYSTERIOUS SKETCH
BY ERCKMANN--CHATRIAN
_Emile Erckmann (born 1822, died 1899) and Alexandre Chatrian (born
1826, died 1890), natives of Alsace-Lorraine, formed a literary
partnership in 1847 and wrote many charming novels and plays which
attained a great vogue. These, appearing under the signature of
Erckmann-Chatrian, were supposed to be the productions of a single
writer until 1863, when the collaboration was announced. It is said
that their first stories were rejected by all the newspapers of
Paris._
_"The Mysterious Sketch" is from "Les Contes Fantastiques."_
THE MYSTERIOUS SKETCH
By ERCKMANN--CHATRIAN
I
Opposite the chapel of Saint Sebalt in Nuremberg, at the corner of
Trabaus Street, there stands a little tavern, tall and narrow, with a
toothed gable and dusty windows, whose roof is surmounted by a
plaster Virgin. It was there that I spent the unhappiest days of my
life. I had gone to Nuremberg to study the old German masters; but
in default of ready money, I had to paint portraits--and such
portraits! Fat old women with their cats on their laps, big-wigged
aldermen, burgomasters in three-cornered hats--all horribly bright
with ochre and vermilion. From portraits I descended to sketches,
and from sketches to silhouettes.
Nothing is more annoying than to have your landlord come to you every
day with pinched lips, shrill voice, and impudent manner to say:
"Well, sir, how soon are you going to pay me? Do you know how much
your bill is? No; that doesn't worry you! You eat, drink, and sleep
calmly enough. God feeds the sparrows. Your bill now amounts to two
hundred florins and ten kreutzers--it is not worth talking about."
Those who have not heard any one talk in this way can form no idea of
it; love of art, imagination, and the sacred enthusiasm for the
beautiful are blasted by the breath of such an attack. You become
awkward and timid; all your energy evaporates, as well as your
feeling of personal dignity, and you bow respectfully at a distance
to the burgomaster Schneegans.
One night, not having a sou, as usual, and threatened with
imprisonment by this worthy Mister Rap, I determined to make him a
bankrupt by cutting my throat. Seated on my narrow bed, opposite the
window, in this agreeable mood, I gave myself up to a thousand
philosophical reflections, more or less comforting.
"What is man?" I asked myself. "An omnivorous animal; his jaws,
provided with canines, incisors, and molars, prove it. The canines
are made to tear meat; the incisors to bite fruits; and the molars to
masticate, grind and triturate animal and vegetable substances that
are pleasant to smell and to taste. But when he has nothing to
masticate, this being is an absurdity in Nature, a superfluity, a
fifth wheel to the coach."
Such were my reflections. I dared not open my razor for fear that
the invincible force of my logic would inspire me with the courage to
make an end of it all. After having argued so finely, I blew out my
candle, postponing the sequel till the morrow.
That abominable Rap had completely stupefied me. I could do nothing
but silhouettes, and my sole desire was to have some money to rid
myself of his odious presence. But on this night a singular change
came over my mind. I awoke about one o'clock--I lit my lamp, and,
enveloping myself in my gray gabardine, I drew upon the paper a rapid
sketch after the Dutch school--something strange and bizarre, which
had not the slightest resemblance to my ordinary conceptions.
Imagine a dreary courtyard enclosed by high dilapidated walls. These
walls are furnished with hooks, seven or eight feet from the ground.
You see, at a glance, that it is a butchery.
On the left, there extends a lattice structure; you perceive through
it a quartered beef suspended from the roof by enormous pulleys.
Great pools of blood run over the flagstones and unite in a ditch
full of refuse.
The light falls from above, between the chimneys where the
weathercocks stand out from a bit of the sky the size of your hand,
and the roofs of the neighboring houses throw bold shadows from story
to story.
At the back of this place is a shed, beneath the shed a pile of wood,
and upon the pile of wood some ladders, a few bundles of straw, some
coils of rope, a chicken-coop, and an old dilapidated rabbit-hutch.
How did these heterogeneous details suggest themselves to my
imagination? I don't know; I had no reminiscences, and yet every
stroke of the pencil seemed the result of observation, and strange
because it was all so true. Nothing was lacking.
But on the right, one corner of the sketch remained a blank. I did
not know what to put there.... Something suddenly seemed to writhe
there, to move! Then I saw a foot, the sole of a foot.
Notwithstanding this improbable position, I followed my inspiration
without reference to my own criticism. This foot was joined to a
leg--over this leg, stretched out with effort, there soon floated the
skirt of a dress. In short, there appeared by degrees, an old woman,
pale, disheveled, and wasted, thrown down at the side of a well, and
struggling to free herself from a hand that clutched at her throat.
It was a murder scene that I was drawing. The pencil fell from my
hand.
This woman, in the boldest attitude, with her thighs bent on the curb
of the well, her face contracted by terror, and her two hands
grasping the murderer's arm, frightened me. I could not look at her.
But the man--he, the person to whom that arm belonged--I could not
see him. It was impossible for me to finish the sketch.
"I am tired," I said, my forehead dripping with perspiration; "there
is only this figure to do; I will finish it to-morrow. It will be
easy then."
And I went to bed again, thoroughly frightened by my vision.
The next morning, I got up very early. I was dressing in order to
resume my interrupted work, when two little knocks were heard on my
door.
"Come in!"
The door opened. An old man, tall, thin, and dressed in black,
appeared on the threshold. This man's face, his eyes set close
together and his large nose like the beak of an eagle, surmounted by
a high bony forehead, had something severe about it. He bowed to me
gravely.
"Mister Christian Vénius, the painter?" said he.
"That is my name, sir."
He bowed again, adding:
"The Baron Frederick Van Spreckdal."
The appearance of the rich amateur, Van Spreckdal, judge of the
criminal court, in my poor lodging, greatly disturbed me. I could
not help throwing a stealthy glance at my old worm-eaten furniture,
my damp hangings and my dusty floor. I felt humiliated by such
dilapidation; but Van Spreckdal did not seem to take any account of
these details; and sitting down at my little table:
"Mister Vénius," he resumed, "I come--" But at this instant his
glance fell upon the unfinished sketch--he did not finish his phrase.
I was sitting on the edge of my little bed; and the sudden attention
that this personage bestowed upon one of my productions made my heart
beat with an indefinable apprehension.
At the end of a minute, Van Spreckdal lifted his head:
"Are you the author of that sketch?" he asked me with an intent look.
"Yes, sir."
"What is the price of it?"
"I never sell my sketches. It is the plan for a picture."
"Ah!" said he, picking up the paper with the tips of his long yellow
fingers.
He took a lens from his waistcoat pocket and began to study the
design in silence.
The sun was now shining obliquely into the garret. Van Spreckdal
never said a word; the hook of his immense nose increased, his heavy
eyebrows contracted, and his long pointed chin took a turn upward,
making a thousand little wrinkles in his long, thin cheeks. The
silence was so profound that I could distinctly hear the plaintive
buzzing of a fly that had been caught in a spider's web.
"And the dimensions of this picture, Mister Vénius," he said without
looking at me.
"Three feet by four."
"The price?"
"Fifty ducats."
Van Spreckdal laid the sketch on the table, and drew from his pocket
a large purse of green silk shaped like a pear; he drew the rings of
it--
"Fifty ducats," said he, "here they are."
I was simply dazzled.
The Baron rose and bowed to me, and I heard his big ivory-headed cane
resounding on each step until he reached the bottom of the stairs.
Then, recovering from my stupor, I suddenly remembered that I had not
thanked him, and I flew down the five flights like lightning; but
when I reached the bottom, I looked to the right and left; the street
was deserted.
"Well!" I said, "this is strange."
And I went upstairs again all out of breath.
II
The surprising way in which Van Spreckdal had appeared to me threw me
into a deep wonderment. "Yesterday," I said to myself, as I
contemplated the pile of ducats glittering in the sun, "yesterday I
formed the wicked intention of cutting my throat, all for the want of
a few miserable florins, and now to-day Fortune has showered them
from the clouds. Indeed it was fortunate that I did not open my
razor; and, if the same temptation ever comes to me again, I will
take care to wait until the morrow."
After making these judicious reflections, I sat down to finish the
sketch; four strokes of the pencil and it would be finished. But
here an incomprehensible difficulty awaited me. It was impossible
for me to make those four sweeps of the pencil; I had lost the thread
of my inspiration, and the mysterious personage no longer stood out
in my brain. I tried in vain to evoke him, to sketch him, and to
recover him; he no longer accorded with the surroundings than with a
figure by Raphael in a Teniers inn-kitchen. I broke out into a
profuse perspiration.
At this moment, Rap opened the door without knocking, according to
his praiseworthy custom. His eyes fell upon my pile of ducats and in
a shrill voice he cried:
"Eh! eh! so I catch you. Will you still persist in telling me, Mr.
Painter, that you have no money?"
And his hooked fingers advanced with that nervous trembling that the
sight of gold always produces in a miser.
For a few seconds I was stupefied.
The memory of all the indignities that this individual had inflicted
upon me, his covetous look, and his impudent smile exasperated me.
With a single bound, I caught hold of him, and pushed him out of the
room, slamming the door in his face.
This was done with the crack and rapidity of a spring snuff-box.
But from outside the old usurer screamed like an eagle:
"My money, you thief, my money!"
The lodgers come out of their rooms, asking:
"What is the matter? What has happened?"
I opened the door suddenly and quickly gave Mister Rap a kick in the
spine that sent him rolling down more than twenty steps.
"That's what's the matter!" I cried, quite beside myself. Then I
shut the door and bolted it, while bursts of laughter from the
neighbors greeted Mister Rap in the passage.
I was satisfied with myself; I rubbed my hands together. This
adventure had put new life into me; I resumed my work, and was about
to finish the sketch when I heard an unusual noise.
Butts of muskets were grounded on the pavement. I looked out of my
window and saw three soldiers in full uniform with grounded arms in
front of my door.
I said to myself in my terror: "Can it be that that scoundrel of a
Rap has had any bones broken?"
And here is the strange peculiarity of the human mind: I, who the
night before had wanted to cut my own throat, shook from head to
foot, thinking that I might well be hanged if Rap were dead.
The stairway was filled with confused noises. It was an ascending
flood of heavy footsteps, clanking arms, and short syllables.
Suddenly somebody tried to open my door. It was shut.
Then there was a general clamor.
"In the name of the law--open!"
I arose, trembling and weak in the knees.
"Open!" the same voice repeated.
I thought to escape over the roofs; but I had hardly put my head out
of the little snuff-box window, when I drew back, seized with
vertigo. I saw in a flash all the windows below with their shining
panes, their flower-pots, their birdcages, and their gratings.
Lower, the balcony; still lower, the street lamp; still lower again,
the sign of the "Red Cask" framed in iron-work; and, finally, three
glittering bayonets, only awaiting my fall to run me through the body
from the sole of my foot to the crown of my head. On the roof of the
opposite house a tortoise-shell cat was crouching behind a chimney,
watching a band of sparrows fighting and scolding in the gutter.
One can not imagine to what clearness, intensity, and rapidity the
human eye acquires when stimulated by fear.
At the third summons I heard:
"Open, or we shall force it!"
Seeing that flight was impossible, I staggered to the door and drew
the bolt.
Two hands immediately fell upon my collar. A dumpy, little man,
smelling of wine, said:
"I arrest you!"
He wore a bottle-green redingote, buttoned to the chin, and a
stovepipe hat. He had large brown whiskers, rings on every finger,
and was named Passauf.
He was the chief of police.
Five bull-dogs with flat caps, noses like pistols, and lower jaws
turning upward, observed me from outside.
"What do you want?" I asked Passauf.
"Come downstairs," he cried roughly, as he gave a sign to one of his
men to seize me.
This man took hold of me, more dead than alive, while several other
men turned my room upside down.
I went downstairs supported by the arms like a person in the last
stages of consumption--with hair disheveled and stumbling at every
step.
They thrust me into a cab between two strong fellows, who charitably
let me see the ends of their clubs, held to their wrists by a leather
string--and then the carriage started off.
I heard behind us the feet of all the urchins of the town.
"What have I done?" I asked one of my keepers.
He looked at the other with a strange smile and said:
"Hans--he asks what he has done!"
That smile froze my blood.
Soon a deep shadow enveloped the carriage; the horses' hoofs
resounded under an archway. We were entering the Raspelhaus. Of
this place one might say:
"Dans cet antre,
Je vois fort bien comme l'on entre,
Et ne vois point comme on en sort."
All is not rose-colored in this world; from the claws of Rap I fell
into a dungeon, from which very few poor devils have a chance to
escape.
Large dark courtyards and rows of windows like a hospital, and
furnished with gratings; not a sprig of verdure, not a festoon of
ivy, not even a weathercock in perspective--such was my new lodging.
It was enough to make one tear his hair out by the roots.
The police officers, accompanied by the jailer, took me temporarily
to a lock-up.
The jailer, if I remember rightly, was named Kasper Schlüssel; with
his gray, woolen cap, his pipe between his teeth, and his bunch of
keys at his belt, he reminded me of the Owl-God of the Caribs. He
had the same golden yellow eyes, that see in the dark, a nose like a
comma, and a neck that was sunk between the shoulders.
Schlüssel shut me up as calmly as one locks up his socks in a
cupboard, while thinking of something else. As for me, I stood for
more than ten minutes with my hands behind my back and my head bowed.
At the end of that time I made the following reflection: "When
falling, Rap cried out, 'I am assassinated,' but he did not say by
whom. I will say it was my neighbor, the old merchant with the
spectacles: he will be hanged in my place."
This idea comforted my heart, and I drew a long breath. Then I
looked about my prison. It seemed to have been newly whitewashed,
and the walls were bare of designs, except in one corner, where a
gallows had been crudely sketched by my predecessor. The light was
admitted through a bull's-eye about nine or ten feet from the floor;
the furniture consisted of a bundle of straw and a tub.
I sat down upon the straw with my hands around my knees in deep
despondency. It was with great difficulty that I could think
clearly; but suddenly imagining that Rap, before dying, had denounced
me, my legs began to tingle, and I jumped up coughing, as if the
hempen cord were already tightening around my neck.
At the same moment, I heard Schlüssel walking down the corridor; he
opened the lock-up, and told me to follow him. He was still
accompanied by the two officers, so I fell into step resolutely.
We walked down long galleries, lighted at intervals by small windows
from within. Behind a grating I saw the famous Jic-Jack, who was
going to be executed on the morrow. He had on a straitjacket and
sang out in a raucous voice:
"_Je suis le roi de ces montagnes._"
Seeing me, he called out:
"Eh! comrade! I'll keep a place for you at my right."
The two police officers and the Owl-God looked at each other and
smiled, while I felt the goose-flesh creep down the whole length of
my back.
III
Schlüssel shoved me into a large and very dreary hall, with benches
arranged in a semicircle. The appearance of this deserted hall, with
its two high grated windows, and its Christ carved in old brown oak
with His arms extended and His head sorrowfully inclined upon His
shoulder, inspired me with I do not know what kind of religious fear
that accorded with my actual situation.
All my ideas of false accusation disappeared, and my lips tremblingly
murmured a prayer.
I had not prayed for a long time; but misfortune always brings us to
thoughts of submission. Man is so little in himself!
Opposite me, on an elevated seat, two men were sitting, with their
backs to the light, and consequently their faces were in shadow.
However, I recognized Van Spreckdal by his acquiline profile,
illuminated by an oblique reflection from the window. The other
person was fat, he had round, chubby cheeks and short hands, and he
wore a robe, like Van Spreckdal.
Below was the clerk of the court, Conrad; he was writing at a low
table and was tickling the tip of his ear with the feather-end of his
pen. When I entered, he stopped to look at me curiously.
They made me sit down, and Van Spreckdal, raising his voice, said to
me:
"Christian Vénius, where did you get this sketch?"
He showed me the nocturnal sketch which was then in his possession.
It was handed to me. After having examined it, I replied:
"I am the author of it."
A long silence followed; the clerk of the court, Conrad, wrote down
my reply. I heard his pen scratch over the paper, and I thought:
"Why did they ask me that question? That has nothing to do with the
kick I gave Rap in the back."
"You are the author of it?" asked Van Spreckdal. "What is the
subject?"
"It is a subject of pure fancy."
"You have not copied the details from some spot?"
"No, sir; I imagined it all."
"Accused Christian," said the judge in a severe tone, "I ask you to
reflect. Do not lie."
"I have spoken the truth."
"Write that down, clerk," said Van Spreckdal.
The pen scratched again.
"And this woman," continued the judge--"this woman who is being
murdered at the side of the well--did you imagine her also?"
"Certainly."
"You have never seen her?"
"Never."
Van Spreckdal rose indignantly; then, sitting down again, he seemed
to consult his companion in a low voice.
These two dark profiles silhouetted against the brightness of the
window, and the three men standing behind me, the silence in the
hall--everything made me shiver.
"What do you want with me? What have I done?" I murmured.
Suddenly Van Spreckdal said to my guardians:
"You can take the prisoner back to the carriage; we will go to
Metzerstrasse."
Then, addressing me:
"Christian Vénius," he cried, "you are in a deplorable situation.
Collect your thoughts and remember that if the law of men is
inflexible, there still remains for you the mercy of God. This you
can merit by confessing your crime."
These words stunned me like a blow from a hammer. I fell back with
extended arms, crying:
"Ah! what a terrible dream!"
And I fainted.
When I regained consciousness, the carriage was rolling slowly down
the street; another one preceded us. The two officers were always
with me. One of them on the way offered a pinch of snuff to his
companion; mechanically I reached out my hand toward the snuff-box,
but he withdrew it quickly.
My cheeks reddened with shame, and I turned away my head to conceal
my emotion.
"If you look outside," said the man with the snuff-box, "we shall be
obliged to put handcuffs on you."
"May the devil strangle you, you infernal scoundrel!" I said to
myself. And as the carriage now stopped, one of them got out, while
the other held me by the collar; then, seeing that his comrade was
ready to receive me, he pushed me rudely to him.
These infinite precautions to hold possession of my person boded no
good; but I was far from predicting the seriousness of the accusation
that hung over my head until an alarming circumstance opened my eyes
and threw me into despair.
They pushed me along a low alley, the pavement of which was unequal
and broken; along the wall there ran a yellowish ooze, exhaling a
fetid odor. I walked down this dark place with the two men behind
me. A little further there appeared the chiaroscuro of an interior
courtyard.
I grew more and more terror-stricken as I advanced. It was no
natural feeling: it was a poignant anxiety, outside of nature--like
the nightmare. I recoiled instinctively at each step.
"Go on!" cried one of the policemen, laying his hand on my shoulder;
"go on!"
But what was my astonishment when, at the end of the passage, I saw
the courtyard that I had drawn the night before, with its walls
furnished with hooks, its rubbish-heap of old iron, its
chicken-coops, and its rabbit-hutch. Not a dormer window, high or
low, not a broken pane, not the slightest detail had been omitted.
I was thunderstruck by this strange revelation.
Near the well were the two judges, Van Spreckdal and Richter. At
their feet lay the old woman extended on her back, her long, thin,
gray hair, her blue face, her eyes wide open, and her tongue between
her teeth.
It was a horrible spectacle!
"Well," said Van Spreckdal, with solemn accents, "what have you to
say?"
I did not reply.
"Do you remember having thrown this woman, Theresa Becker, into this
well, after having strangled her to rob her of her money."
"No," I cried, "no! I do not know this woman; I never saw her
before. May God help me!"
"That will do," he replied in a dry voice. And without saying
another word he went out with his companion.
The officers now believed they had best put handcuffs on me. They
took me back to the Raspelhaus, in a state of profound stupidity. I
did not know what to think; my conscience itself troubled me; I even
asked myself if I really had murdered the old woman!
In the eyes of the officers I was condemned.
I will not tell you of my emotions that night in the Raspelhaus,
when, seated on my straw bed with the window opposite me and the
gallows in perspective, I heard the watchmen cry in the silence of
the night: "Sleep, people of Nuremberg; the Lord watches over you.
One o'clock! Two o'clock! Three o'clock!"
Every one may form his own idea of such a night. There is a fine
saying that it is better to be hanged innocent than guilty. For the
soul, yes; but for the body, it makes no difference; on the contrary,
it kicks, it curses its lot, it tries to escape, knowing well enough
that its rôle ends with the rope. Add to this, that it repents not
having sufficiently enjoyed life and at having listened to the soul
when it preached abstinence.
"Ah! if I had only known!" it cried, "you would not have led me about
by a string with your big words, your beautiful phrases, and your
magnificent sentences! You would not have allured me with your fine
promises. I should have had many happy moments that are now lost
forever. Everything is over! You said to me: 'Control your
passions.' Very well! I did control them. Here I am now! they are
going to hang me, and you--later they will speak of you as a sublime
soul, a stoical soul, a martyr to the errors of Justice. They will
never think about me!"
Such were the sad reflections of my poor body.
Day broke; at first, dull and undecided, it threw an uncertain light
on my bull's-eye window with its cross-bars; then it blazed against
the wall at the back. Outside the street became lively. This was a
market-day; it was Friday. I heard the vegetable wagons pass and
also the country people with their baskets. Some chickens cackled in
their coops in passing and some butter sellers chattered together.
The market opposite opened, and they began to arrange the stalls.
Finally, it was broad daylight and the vast murmur of the increasing
crowd, housekeepers who assembled with baskets on their arms, coming
and going, discussing and marketing, told me that it was eight
o'clock.
With the light, my heart gained a little courage. Some of my black
thoughts disappeared. I desired to see what was going on outside.
Other prisoners before me had managed to climb up to the bull's-eye;
they had dug some holes in the wall to mount more easily. I climbed
in my turn, and, when seated in the oval edge of the window, with my
legs bent and my head bowed, I could see the crowd, and all the life
and movement. Tears ran freely down my cheeks. I thought no longer
of suicide--I experienced a need to live and breathe, which was
really extraordinary.
"Ah!" I said, "to live what happiness! Let them harness me to a
wheelbarrow--let them put a ball and chain around my leg--nothing
matters if I may only live!"
The old market, with its roof shaped like an extinguisher, supported
on heavy pillars, made a superb picture: old women seated before
their panniers of vegetables, their cages of poultry and their
baskets of eggs; behind them the Jews, dealers in old clothes, their
faces the color of old boxwood; butchers with bare arms, cutting up
meat on their stalls; countrymen, with large hats on the backs of
their heads, calm and grave with their hands behind their backs and
resting on their sticks of hollywood, and tranquilly smoking their
pipes. Then the tumult and noise of the crowd--those screaming,
shrill, grave, high, and short words--those expressive
gestures--those sudden attitudes that show from a distance the
progress of a discussion and depict so well the character of the
individual--in short, all this captivated my mind, and
notwithstanding my sad condition, I felt happy to be still of the
world.
Now, while I looked about in this manner, a man--a butcher--passed,
inclining forward and carrying an enormous quarter of beef on his
shoulders; his arms were bare, his elbows were raised upward and his
head was bent under them. His long hair, like that of Salvator's
Sicambrian, hid his face from me; and yet, at the first glance, I
trembled.
"It is he!" I said.
All the blood in my body rushed to my heart. I got down from the
window trembling to the ends of my fingers, feeling my cheeks quiver,
and the pallor spread over my face, stammering in a choked voice:
"It is he! he is there--there--and I, I have to die to expiate his
crime. Oh, God! what shall I do? What shall I do?"
A sudden idea, an inspiration from Heaven, flashed across my mind. I
put my hand in the pocket of my coat--my box of crayons was there!
Then rushing to the wall, I began to trace the scene of the murder
with superhuman energy. No uncertainty, no hesitation! I knew the
man! I had seen him! He was there before me!
At ten o'clock the jailer came to my cell. His owl-like
impassibility gave place to admiration.
"Is it possible?" he cried, standing at the threshold.
"Go, bring me my judges," I said to him, pursuing my work with an
increasing exultation.
Schlüssel answered:
"They are waiting for you in the trial-room."
"I wish to make a revelation," I cried, as I put the finishing
touches to the mysterious personage.
He lived; he was frightful to see. His full-faced figure,
foreshortened upon the wall, stood out from the white background with
an astonishing vitality.
The jailer went away.
A few minutes afterward the two judges appeared. They were
stupefied. I, trembling, with extended hand, said to them:
"There is the murderer!"
After a few moments of silence, Van Spreckdal asked me:
"What is his name?"
"I don't know; but he is at this moment in the market; he is cutting
up meat in the third stall to the left as you enter from Trabaus
Street."
"What do you think?" said he, leaning toward his colleague.
"Send for the man," he replied in a grave tone.
Several officers retained in the corridor obeyed this order. The
judges stood, examining the sketch. As for me, I had dropped on my
bed of straw, my head between my knees, perfectly exhausted.
Soon steps were heard echoing under the archway. Those who have
never awaited the hour of deliverance and counted the minutes, which
seem like centuries--those who have never experienced the sharp
emotions of outrage, terror, hope, and doubt--can have no conception
of the inward chills that I experienced at that moment. I should
have distinguished the step of the murderer, walking between the
guards, among a thousand others. They approached. The judges
themselves seemed moved. I raised up my head, my heart feeling as if
an iron hand had clutched it, and I fixed my eyes upon the closed
door. It opened. The man entered. His cheeks were red and swollen,
the muscles in his large contracted jaws twitched as far as his ears,
and his little restless eyes, yellow like a wolf's, gleamed beneath
his heavy yellowish red eyebrows.
Van Spreckdal showed him the sketch in silence.
Then that murderous man, with the large shoulders, having looked,
grew pale--then, giving a roar which thrilled us all with terror, he
waved his enormous arms, and jumped backward to overthrow the guards.
There was a terrible struggle in the corridor; you could hear nothing
but the panting breathing of the butcher, his muttered imprecations,
and the short words and the shuffling feet of the guard, upon the
flagstones.
This lasted only about a minute.
Finally the assassin reentered, with his head hanging down, his eyes
bloodshot, and his hands fastened behind his back. He looked again
at the picture of the murder; he seemed to reflect, and then, in a
low voice, as if talking to himself:
"Who could have seen me," he said, "at midnight?"
I was saved!
. . . . . . . . . .
Many years have passed since that terrible adventure. Thank Heaven!
I make silhouettes no longer, nor portraits of burgomasters. Through
hard work and perseverance, I have conquered my place in the world,
and I earn my living honorably by painting works of art--the sole
end, in my opinion, to which a true artist should aspire. But the
memory of that nocturnal sketch has always remained in my mind.
Sometimes, in the midst of work, the thought of it recurs. Then I
lay down my palette and dream for hours.
How could a crime committed by a man that I did not know--at a place
that I had never seen--have been reproduced by my pencil, in all its
smallest details?
Was it chance? No! And moreover, what is chance but the effect of a
cause of which we are ignorant?
Was Schiller right when he said: "The immortal soul does not
participate in the weaknesses of matter; during the sleep of the
body, it spreads its radiant wings and travels, God knows where!
What it then does, no one can say, but inspiration sometimes betrays
the secret of its nocturnal wanderings."
Who knows? Nature is more audacious in her realities than man in his
most fantastic imaginings.
MR. HIGGINBOTHAM'S CATASTROPHE
BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
_Here is a story, one of the "Twice-Told Tales," the subject of which
might well have been selected for treatment by Poe. In his hands,
how different the result would have been; how much more physical and
poignant, how much less spiritual and charming!_
_The real difference in the two writers is not so much a conflict of
artistic methods as it is a difference of moral make-up. Hawthorne,
the son of a Salem sea captain, was descended from the grimmest
Puritans; Poe was the son of an actor._
MR. HIGGINBOTHAM'S CATASTROPHE
By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
A young fellow, a tobacco-pedler by trade, was on his way from
Morristown, where he had dealt largely with the Deacon of the Shaker
settlement, to the village of Parker's Falls, on Salmon River. He
had a neat little cart, painted green, with a box of cigars depicted
on each side-panel, and an Indian chief, holding a pipe and a golden
tobacco-stalk, on the rear. The pedler drove a smart little mare,
and was a young man of excellent character, keen at a bargain, but
none the worse liked by the Yankees; who, as I have heard them say,
would rather be shaved with a sharp razor than a dull one.
Especially was he beloved by the pretty girls along the Connecticut,
whose favor he used to court by presents of the best smoking tobacco
in his stock; knowing well that the country lasses of New England are
generally great performers on pipes. Moreover, as will be seen in
the course of my story, the pedler was inquisitive, and something of
a tattler, always itching to hear the news, and anxious to tell it
again.
After an early breakfast at Morristown, the tobacco-pedler, whose
name was Dominicus Pike, had traveled seven miles through a solitary
piece of woods, without speaking a word to anybody but himself and
his little gray mare. It being nearly seven o'clock, he was as eager
to hold a morning gossip as a city shopkeeper to read the morning
paper. An opportunity seemed at hand, when, after lighting a cigar
with a sun-glass, he looked up and perceived a man coming over the
brow of the hill, at the foot of which the pedler had stopped his
green cart. Dominicus watched him as he descended, and noticed that
he carried a bundle over his shoulder on the end of a stick, and
traveled with a weary, yet determined pace. He did not look as if he
had started in the freshness of the morning, but had footed it all
night, and meant to do the same all day.
"Good-morning, mister," said Dominicus, when within speaking
distance. "You go a pretty good jog. What's the latest news at
Parker's Falls?"
The man pulled the broad brim of a gray hat over his eyes, and
answered, rather sullenly, that he did not come from Parker's Falls,
which, as being the limit of his own day's journey, the pedler had
naturally mentioned in his inquiry.
"Well, then," rejoined Dominicus Pike, "let's have the latest news
where you did come from. I'm not particular about Parker's Falls.
Any place will answer."
Being thus importuned, the traveler--who was as ill-looking a fellow
as one would desire to meet, in a solitary piece of woods--appeared
to hesitate a little, as if he was either searching his memory for
news or weighing the expediency of telling it. At last, mounting on
the step of the cart, he whispered in the ear of Dominicus, though he
might have shouted aloud and no other mortal would have heard him.
"I do remember one little trifle of news," said he. "Old Mr.
Higginbotham, of Kimballton, was murdered in his orchard, at eight
o'clock last night, by an Irishman and a nigger. They strung him up
to the branch of a St. Michael's pear-tree, where nobody would find
him till the morning."
As soon as this horrible intelligence was communicated the stranger
betook himself to his journey again, with more speed than ever, not
even turning his head when Dominicus invited him to smoke a Spanish
cigar and relate all the particulars. The pedler whistled to his
mare and went up the hill, pondering on the doleful fate of Mr.
Higginbotham, whom he had known in the way of trade, having sold him
many a bunch of long nines, and a great deal of pigtail, lady's
twist, and fig tobacco. He was rather astonished at the rapidity
with which the news had spread. Kimballton was nearly sixty miles
distant in a straight line; the murder had been perpetrated only at
eight o'clock the preceding night; yet Dominicus had heard of it at
seven in the morning, when, in all probability, poor Mr.
Higginbotham'a own family had but just discovered his corpse, hanging
on the St. Michael's pear-tree. The stranger on foot must have worn
seven-league boots, to travel at such a rate.
"Ill news flies fast, they say," thought Dominicus Pike; "but this
beats railroads. The fellow ought to be hired to go express with the
President's Message."
The difficulty was solved by supposing that the narrator had made a
mistake of one day in the date of the occurrence; so that our friend
did not hesitate to introduce the story at every tavern and country
store along the road, expending a whole bunch of Spanish wrappers
among at least twenty horrified audiences. He found himself
invariably the first bearer of the intelligence, and was so pestered
with questions that he could not avoid filling up the outline, till
it became quite a respectable narrative. He met with one piece of
corroborative evidence. Mr. Higginbotham was a trader; and a former
clerk of his, to whom Dominicus related the facts, testified that the
old gentleman was accustomed to return home through the orchard,
about nightfall, with the money and valuable papers of the store in
his pocket. The clerk manifested but little grief at Mr.
Higginbotham's catastrophe, hinting, what the pedler had discovered
in his own dealings with him, that he was a crusty old fellow, as
close as a vise. His property would descend to a pretty niece who
was now keeping school in Kimballton.
What with telling the news for the public good, and driving bargains
for his own, Dominicus was so much delayed on the road that he chose
to put up at a tavern, about five miles short of Parker's Falls.
After supper, lighting one of his prime cigars, he seated himself in
the barroom, and went through the story of the murder, which had
grown so fast that it took him a half hour to tell. There were as
many as twenty people in the room, nineteen of whom received it all
for gospel. But the twentieth was an elderly farmer, who had arrived
on horseback a short time before, and was now seated in a corner
smoking his pipe. When the story was concluded, he rose up very
deliberately, brought his chair right in front of Dominicus, and
stared him full in the face, puffing out the vilest tobacco smoke the
pedler had ever smelled.
"Will you make affidavit," demanded he in the tone of a country
justice taking an examination, "that old Squire Higginbotham of
Kimballton was murdered in his orchard the night before last, and
found hanging on his great pear-tree yesterday morning?"
"I tell the story as I heard it, mister," answered Dominicus,
dropping his half-burned cigar; "I don't say that I saw the thing
done. So I can't take my oath that he was murdered exactly in that
way."
"But I can take mine," said the farmer, "that if Squire Higginbotham
was murdered night before last, I drank a glass of bitters with his
ghost this morning. Being a neighbor of mine, he called me into his
store, as I was riding by, and treated me, and then asked me to do a
little business for him on the road. He didn't seem to know any more
about his own murder than I did."
"Why, then, it can't be a fact!" exclaimed Dominicus Pike.
"I guess he'd have mentioned it, if it was," said the old farmer; and
he removed his chair back to the corner, leaving Dominicus quite down
in the mouth.
Here was a sad resurrection of old Mr. Higginbotham! The pedler had
no heart to mingle in the conversation any more, but comforted
himself with a glass of gin and water, and went to bed, where, all
night long, he dreamed of hanging on the St. Michael's pear-tree. To
avoid the old farmer (whom he so detested that his suspension would
have pleased him better than Mr. Higginbotham's), Dominicus rose in
the gray of the morning, put the little mare into the green cart, and
trotted swiftly away toward Parker's Falls. The fresh breeze, the
dewy road, and the pleasant summer dawn revived his spirits, and
might have encouraged him to repeat the old story had there been
anybody awake to hear it. But he met neither ox-team, light wagon,
chaise, horseman, nor foot-traveler, till, just as he crossed Salmon
River, a man came trudging down to the bridge with a bundle over his
shoulder, on the end of a stick.
"Good morning, mister," said the pedler, reining in his mare. "If
you come from Kimballton or that neighborhood maybe you can tell me
the real fact about this affair of old Mr. Higginbotham. Was the old
fellow actually murdered, two or three nights ago, by an Irishman and
a nigger?"
Dominicus had spoken in too great a hurry to observe, at first, that
the stranger himself had a deep tinge of negro blood. On hearing
this sudden question, the Ethiopian appeared to change his skin, its
yellow hue becoming a ghastly white, while, shaking and stammering,
he thus replied:
"No! no! There was no colored man! It was an Irishman that hanged
him last night, at eight o'clock. I came away at seven! His folks
can't have looked for him in the orchard yet."
Scarcely had the yellow man spoken, when he interrupted himself, and,
though he seemed weary enough before, continued his journey at a pace
which would have kept the pedler's mare on a smart trot. Dominicus
stared after him in great perplexity. If the murder had not been
committed till Tuesday night, who was the prophet that had foretold
it, in all its circumstances, on Tuesday morning? If Mr.
Higginbotham's corpse were not yet discovered by his own family, how
came the mulatto, at above thirty miles' distance, to know that he
was hanging in the orchard, especially as he had left Kimballton
before the unfortunate man was hanged at all? These ambiguous
circumstances, with the stranger's surprise and terror, made
Dominicus think of raising a hue and cry after him, as an accomplice
in the murder; since a murder, it seemed, had really been perpetrated.
"But let the poor devil go," thought the pedler. "I don't want his
black blood on my head; and hanging the nigger wouldn't unhang Mr.
Higginbotham. Unhang the old gentleman! It's a sin, I know; but I
should hate to have him come to life a second time, and give me the
lie!"
With these meditations, Dominicus Pike drove into the street of
Parker's Falls, which, as everybody knows, is as thriving a village
as three cotton factories and a slitting mill can make it. The
machinery was not in motion, and but a few of the shop doors
unbarred, when he alighted in the stable-yard of the tavern, and made
it his first business to order the mare four quarts of oats. His
second duty, of course, was to impart Mr. Higginbotham's catastrophe
to the hostler. He deemed it advisable, however, not to be too
positive as to the date of the direful fact, and also to be uncertain
whether it were perpetrated by an Irishman and a mulatto, or by the
son of Erin alone. Neither did he profess to relate it on his own
authority, nor that of any one person; but mentioned it as a report
generally diffused.
The story ran through the town like fire among girdled trees, and
became so much the universal talk that nobody could tell whence it
had originated. Mr. Higginbotham was as well known at Parker's Falls
as any citizen of the place, being part owner of the slitting mill,
and a considerable stockholder in the cotton factories. The
inhabitants felt their own prosperity interested in his fate. Such
was the excitement that the "Parker's Falls Gazette" anticipated its
regular day of publication, and came out with half a form of blank
paper and a column of double pica emphasized with capitals, and
headed "HORRID MURDER OF MR. HIGGINBOTHAM!" Among other dreadful
details, the printed account described the mark of the cord round the
dead man's neck, and stated the number of thousand dollars of which
he had been robbed; there was much pathos also about the affliction
of his niece, who had gone from one fainting fit to another, ever
since her uncle was found hanging on the St. Michael's pear-tree with
his pockets inside out. The village poet likewise commemorated the
young lady's grief in seventeen stanzas of a ballad. The selectmen
held a meeting, and, in consideration of Mr. Higginbotham's claims on
the town, determined to issue handbills, offering a reward of five
hundred dollars for the apprehension of his murderers, and the
recovery of the stolen property.
Meanwhile, the whole population of Parker's Falls, consisting of
shopkeepers, mistresses of boarding-houses, factory girls, mill men,
and schoolboys, rushed into the street, and kept up such a terrible
loquacity as more than compensated for the silence of the
cotton-machines which refrained from their usual din, out of respect
to the deceased. Had Mr. Higginbotham cared about posthumous renown,
his untimely ghost would have exulted in this tumult. Our friend
Dominicus, in his vanity of heart, forgot his intended precautions,
and, mounting on the town pump, announced himself as the bearer of
the authentic intelligence which had caused so wonderful a sensation.
He immediately became the great man of the moment, and had just begun
a new edition of the narrative, with a voice like a field preacher,
when the mail stage drove into the village street. It had traveled
all night, and must have shifted horses at Kimballton at three in the
morning.
"Now we shall hear all the particulars," shouted the crowd.
The coach rumbled up to the piazza of the tavern, followed by a
thousand people; for if any man had been minding his own business
till then, he now left it at sixes and sevens, to hear the news. The
pedler, foremost in the race, discovered two passengers, both of whom
had been startled from a comfortable nap to find themselves in the
centre of a mob. Every man assailing them with separate questions,
all propounded at once, the couple were struck speechless, though one
was a lawyer and the other a young lady.
"Mr. Higginbotham! Mr. Higginbotham! Tell us the particulars about
old Mr. Higginbotham!" bawled the mob. "What is the coroner's
verdict? Are the murderers apprehended? Is Mr. Higginbotham's niece
come out of her fainting fits? Mr. Higginbotham! Mr. Higginbotham!!"
The coachman said not a word, except to swear awfully at the hostler
for not bringing him a fresh team of horses. The lawyer inside had
generally his wits about him, even when asleep; the first thing he
did, after learning the cause of the excitement, was to produce a
large red pocketbook. Meantime, Dominicus Pike, being an extremely
polite young man, and also suspecting that a female tongue would tell
the story as glibly as a lawyer's, had handed the lady out of the
coach. She was a fine, smart girl, now wide-awake and bright as a
button, and had such a sweet, pretty mouth that Dominicus would
almost as lief have heard a love tale from it as a tale of murder.
"Gentlemen and ladies," said the lawyer, to the shopkeepers, the mill
men, and the factory girls, "I can assure you that some unaccountable
mistake, or, more probably, a wilful falsehood, maliciously contrived
to injure Mr. Higginbotham's credit, has excited this singular
uproar. We passed through Kimballton at three o'clock this morning,
and most certainly should have been informed of the murder had any
been perpetrated. But I have proof, nearly as strong as Mr.
Higginbotham's own oral testimony, in the negative. Here is a note,
relating to a suit of his in the Connecticut courts, which was
delivered me from that gentleman himself. I find it dated at ten
o'clock last evening."
So saying, the lawyer exhibited the date and signature of the note,
which irrefragably proved, either that this perverse Mr. Higginbotham
was alive when he wrote it, or--as some deemed the more probable case
of two doubtful ones--that he was so absorbed in worldly business as
to continue to transact it, even after his death. But unexpected
evidence was forthcoming. The young lady, after listening to the
pedler's explanation, merely seized a moment to smooth her gown and
put her curls in order, and then appeared at the tavern-door, making
a modest signal to be heard.
"Good people," said she, "I am Mr. Higginbotham's niece."
A wondering murmur passed through the crowd, on beholding her so rosy
and bright; that same unhappy niece whom they had supposed, on the
authority of the "Parker's Falls Gazette," to be lying at death's
door in a fainting fit. But some shrewd fellows had doubted, all
along, whether a young lady would be quite so desperate at the
hanging of a rich old uncle.
"You see," continued Miss Higginbotham, with a smile, "that this
strange story is quite unfounded, as to myself; and I believe I may
affirm it to be equally so in regard to my dear uncle Higginbotham.
He has the kindness to give me a home in his house, though I
contribute to my own support by teaching a school. I left Kimballton
this morning to spend the vacation of commencement week with a
friend, about five miles from Parker's Falls. My generous uncle,
when he heard me on the stairs, called me to his bedside, and gave me
two dollars and fifty cents, to pay my stage fare, and another dollar
for my extra expenses. He then laid his pocketbook under his pillow,
shook hands with me, and advised me to take some biscuit in my bag,
instead of breakfasting on the road. I feel confident, therefore,
that I left my beloved relative alive, and trust that I shall find
him so on my return."
The young lady courtesied at the close of her speech, which was so
sensible and well-worded, and delivered with such grace and
propriety, that everybody thought her fit to be Preceptress of the
best Academy in the State. But a stranger would have supposed that
Mr. Higginbotham was an object of abhorrence at Parker's Falls, and
that a thanksgiving had been proclaimed for his murder, so excessive
was the wrath of the inhabitants on learning their mistake. The mill
men resolved to bestow public honors on Dominicus Pike, only
hesitating whether to tar and feather him, ride him on a rail, or
refresh him with an ablution at the town-pump on the top of which he
had declared himself the bearer of the news. The selectmen, by
advice of the lawyer, spoke of prosecuting him for a misdemeanor, in
circulating unfounded reports, to the great disturbance of the peace
of the commonwealth. Nothing saved Dominicus, either from mob law or
a court of justice, but an eloquent appeal made by the young lady in
his behalf. Addressing a few words of heartfelt gratitude to his
benefactress, he mounted the green cart and rode out of town, under a
discharge of artillery from the schoolboys, who found plenty of
ammunition in the neighboring clay-pits and mud-holes. As he turned
his head, to exchange a farewell glance with Mr. Higginbotham's
niece, a ball, of the consistence of hasty-pudding, hit him slap in
the mouth, giving him a most grim aspect. His whole person was so
bespattered with the like filthy missiles, that he had almost a mind
to ride back and supplicate for the threatened ablution at the
town-pump; for, though not meant in kindness, it would now have been
a deed of charity.
However, the sun shone bright on poor Dominicus, and the mud, an
emblem of all stains of undeserved opprobrium, was easily brushed off
when dry. Being a funny rogue, his heart soon cheered up; nor could
he refrain from a hearty laugh at the uproar which his story had
excited. The hand-bills of the selectmen would cause the commitment
of all the vagabonds in the State; the paragraph in the "Parker's
Falls Gazette" would be reprinted from Maine to Florida, and perhaps
form an item in the London newspapers; and many a miser would tremble
for his money-bags and life, on learning the catastrophe of Mr.
Higginbotham. The pedler meditated with much fervor on the charms of
the young schoolmistress, and swore that Daniel Webster never spoke
nor looked so like an angel as Miss Higginbotham, while defending him
from the wrathful populace at Parker's Falls.
Dominicus was now on the Kimballton Turnpike, having all along
determined to visit that place, though business had drawn him out of
the most direct road from Morristown. As he approached the scene of
the supposed murder, he continued to revolve the circumstances in his
mind, and was astonished at the aspect which the whole case assumed.
Had nothing occurred to corroborate the story of the first traveler,
it might now have been considered as a hoax; but the yellow man was
evidently acquainted either with the report or the fact; and there
was a mystery in his dismayed and guilty look on being abruptly
questioned. When, to this singular combination of incidents, it was
added that the rumor tallied exactly with Mr. Higginbotham's
character and habits of life; and that he had an orchard, and a St.
Michael's pear-tree, near which he always passed at nightfall; the
circumstantial evidence appeared so strong that Dominicus doubted
whether the autograph produced by the lawyer, or even the niece's
direct testimony, ought to be equivalent. Making cautious inquiries
along the road, the pedler further learned that Mr. Higginbotham had
in his service an Irishman of doubtful character, whom he had hired
without a recommendation, on the score of economy.
"May I be hanged myself," exclaimed Dominicus Pike aloud, on reaching
the top of a lonely hill, "if I'll believe old Higginbotham is
unhanged till I see him with my own eyes and hear it from his own
mouth? And as he's a real shaver, I'll have the minister or some
other responsible man for an endorser."
It was growing dusk when he reached the toll-house on Kimballton
Turnpike, about a quarter of a mile from the village of this name.
His little mare was fast bringing him up with a man on horseback, who
trotted through the gate a few rods in advance of him, nodded to the
toll-gatherer, and kept on toward the village. Dominicus was
acquainted with the toll-man, and while making change the usual
remarks on the weather passed between them.
"I suppose," said the pedler, throwing back his whip-lash, to bring
it down like a feather on the mare's flank, "you have not seen
anything of old Mr. Higginbotham within a day or two?"
"Yes," answered the toll-gatherer. "He passed the gate just before
you drove up, and yonder he rides now, if you can see him through the
dusk. He's been to Woodfield this afternoon, attending a sheriff's
sale there. The old man generally shakes hands and has a little chat
with me; but to-night he nodded--as if to say, 'Charge my toll'--and
jogged on; for wherever he goes, he must always be home at eight
o'clock."
"So they tell me," said Dominicus.
"I never saw a man look so yellow and thin as the squire does,"
continued the toll-gatherer. "Says I to myself, to-night, 'He's more
like a ghost or an old mummy than good flesh and blood.'"
The pedler strained his eyes through the twilight, and could just
discern the horseman, now far ahead on the village road. He seemed
to recognize the rear of Mr. Higginbotham; but through the evening
shadows, and amid the dust from the horse's feet, the figure appeared
dim and unsubstantial; as if the shape of the mysterious old man were
faintly molded of darkness and gray light. Dominicus shivered.
"Mr. Higginbotham has come back from the other world, by way of the
Kimballton Turnpike," thought he.
He shook the reins and rode forward, keeping about the same distance
in the rear of the gray old shadow, till the latter was concealed by
a bend of the road. On reaching this point, the pedler no longer saw
the man on horseback, but found himself at the head of the village
street, not far from a number of stores and two taverns, clustered
round the meeting-house steeple. On his left was a stone wall and a
gate, the boundary of a wood-lot, beyond which lay an orchard,
further still a mowing field, and last of all a house. These were
the premises of Mr. Higginbotham, whose dwelling stood beside the old
highway, but had been left in the background by the Kimballton
Turnpike. Dominicus knew the place; and the little mare stopped
short by instinct; for he was not conscious of tightening the reins.
"For the soul of me, I can not get by this gate!" said he, trembling.
"I never shall be my own again, till I see whether Mr. Higginbotham
is hanging on the St. Michael's pear-tree!"
He leaped from the cart, gave the rein a turn around the gate-post,
and ran along the green path of the wood-lot, as if Old Nick were
chasing behind. Just then the village clock tolled eight, and as
each deep stroke fell, Dominicus gave a fresh bound and flew faster
than before, till, dim in the solitary centre of the orchard, he saw
the fated pear-tree. One great branch stretched from the old
contorted trunk across the path, and threw the darkest shadow on that
one spot. But something seemed to struggle beneath the branch!
The pedler had never pretended to more courage than befits a man of
peaceable occupation, nor could he account for his valor on this
awful emergency. Certain it is, however, that he rushed forward,
prostrated a sturdy Irishman with the butt-end of his whip, and
found--not indeed hanging on the St. Michael's pear-tree, but
trembling beneath it, with a halter round his neck--the old identical
Mr. Higginbotham!
"Mr. Higginbotham," said Dominicus, tremulously, "you're an honest
man, and I'll take your word for it. Have you been hanged or not?"
If the riddle be not already guessed, a few words will explain the
simple machinery by which this "coming event" was made to "cast its
shadow before." Three men had plotted the robbery and murder of Mr.
Higginbotham; two of them, successively, lost courage and fled, each
delaying the crime one night by their disappearance; the third was in
the act of perpetration, when a champion, blindly obeying the call of
fate, like the heroes of old romance, appeared in the person of
Dominicus Pike.
It only remains to say that Mr. Higginbotham took the pedler into
high favor, sanctioned his addresses to the pretty schoolmistress,
and settled his whole property on their children, allowing themselves
the interest. In due time, the old gentleman capped the climax of
his favors by dying a Christian death, in bed, since which melancholy
event Dominicus Pike has removed from Kimballton, and established a
large tobacco manufactory in my native village.
THE WHITE OLD MAID
BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
_This is an admirable example of Hawthorne's point of view and style.
Starting with an aim to leave one strong impression on the mind of
the reader, instead of the remembrance of a number of related facts,
the author not only omits everything that would detract from the
unity and strength of this impression, but creates only such scenes
and situations as will intensify the effect._
THE WHITE OLD MAID
By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The moonbeams came through two deep and narrow windows and showed a
spacious chamber richly furnished in an antique fashion. From one
lattice the shadow of the diamond panes was thrown upon the floor;
the ghostly light through the other swept upon a bed, falling between
the heavy silken curtains and illuminating the face of a young man.
But how quietly the slumberer lay! how pale his features! And how
like a shroud the sheet was wound about his frame! Yes, it was a
corpse in its burial clothes.
Suddenly the fixed features seemed to move with dark emotion.
Strange fantasy! It was but the shadow of the fringed curtain waving
between the dead face and the moonlight as the door of the chamber
opened and a girl stole softly to the bedside. Was there delusion in
the moonbeams, or did her gesture and her eye betray a gleam of
triumph as she bent over the pale corpse, pale as itself, and pressed
her living lips to the cold ones of the dead? As she drew back from
that long kiss her features writhed as if a proud heart were fighting
with its anguish. Again it seemed that the features of the corpse
had moved responsive to her own. Still an illusion. The silken
curtains had waved a second time between the dead face and the
moonlight as another fair young girl unclosed the door and glided
ghostlike to the bedside. There the two maidens stood, both
beautiful, with the pale beauty of the dead between them. But she
who had first entered was proud and stately, and the other a soft and
fragile thing.
"Away!" cried the lofty one. "Thou hadst him living; the dead is
mine."
"Thine!" returned the other, shuddering. "Well hast thou spoken; the
dead is thine."
The proud girl started and stared into her face with a ghastly look,
but a wild and mournful expression passed across the features of the
gentle one, and, weak and helpless, she sank down on the bed, her
head pillowed beside that of the corpse and her hair mingling with
his dark locks. A creature of hope and joy, the first draft of
sorrow had bewildered her.
"Edith!" cried her rival.
Edith groaned as with a sudden compression of the heart, and removing
her cheek from the dead youth's pillow, she stood upright, fearfully
encountering the eyes of the lofty girl.
"Wilt thou betray me?" said the latter, calmly.
"Till the dead bid me speak I will be silent," answered Edith.
"Leave us alone together. Go and live many years, and then return
and tell me of thy life. He too will be here. Then, if thou tellest
of sufferings more than death, we will both forgive thee."
"And what shall be the token?" asked the proud girl, as if her heart
acknowledged a meaning in these wild words.
"This lock of hair," said Edith, lifting one of the dark clustering
curls that lay heavily on the dead man's brow.
The two maidens joined their hands over the bosom of the corpse and
appointed a day and hour far, far in time to come for their next
meeting in that chamber. The statelier girl gave one deep look at
the motionless countenance and departed, yet turned again and
trembled ere she closed the door, almost believing that her dead
lover frowned upon her. And Edith, too! Was not her white form
fading into the moonlight? Scorning her own weakness, she went forth
and perceived that a negro slave was waiting in the passage with a
waxlight, which he held between her face and his own and regarded
her, as she thought, with an ugly expression of merriment. Lifting
his torch on high, the slave lighted her down the staircase and undid
the portal of the mansion. The young clergyman of the town had just
ascended the steps, and, bowing to the lady, passed in without a word.
Years--many years--rolled on. The world seemed new again, so much
older was it grown since the night when those pale girls had clasped
their hands across the bosom of the corpse. In the interval a lonely
woman had passed from youth to extreme age, and was known by all the
town as the "Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet." A taint of insanity had
affected her whole life, but so quiet, sad, and gentle, so utterly
free from violence, that she was suffered to pursue her harmless
fantasies unmolested by the world with whose business or pleasures
she had naught to do. She dwelt alone, and never came into the
daylight except to follow funerals. Whenever a corpse was borne
along the street, in sunshine, rain, or snow, whether a pompous train
of the rich and proud thronged after it, or few and humble were the
mourners, behind them came the lonely woman in a long white garment
which the people called her shroud. She took no place among the
kindred or the friends, but stood at the door to hear the funeral
prayer, and walked in the rear of the procession as one whose earthly
charge it was to haunt the house of mourning and be the shadow of
affliction and see that the dead were duly buried. So long had this
been her custom that the inhabitants of the town deemed her a part of
every funeral, as much as the coffin-pall or the very corpse itself,
and augured ill of the sinner's destiny unless the Old Maid in the
Winding-Sheet came gliding like a ghost behind. Once, it is said,
she affrighted a bridal-party with her pale presence, appearing
suddenly in the illuminated hall just as the priest was uniting a
false maid to a wealthy man before her lover had been dead a year.
Evil was the omen to that marriage. Sometimes she stole forth by
moonlight and visited the graves of venerable integrity and wedded
love and virgin innocence, and every spot where the ashes of a kind
and faithful heart were moldering. Over the hillocks of those
favored dead would she stretch out her arms with a gesture as if she
were scattering seeds, and many believed that she brought them from
the garden of Paradise, for the graves which she had visited were
green beneath the snow and covered with sweet flowers from April to
November. Her blessing was better than a holy verse upon the
tombstone. Thus wore away her long, sad, peaceful, and fantastic
life till few were so old as she, and the people of later generations
wondered how the dead had ever been buried or mourners had endured
their grief without the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet. Still years
went on, and still she followed funerals and was not yet summoned to
her own festival of death.
One afternoon the great street of the town was all alive with
business and bustle, though the sun now gilded only the upper half of
the church-spire, having left the house-tops and loftiest trees in
shadow. The scene was cheerful and animated in spite of the sombre
shade between the high brick buildings. Here were pompous merchants
in white wigs and laced velvet, the bronzed faces of sea-captains,
the foreign garb and air of Spanish Creoles, and the disdainful port
of natives of Old England, all contrasted with the rough aspect of
one or two back-settlers negotiating sales of timber from forests
where ax had never sounded. Sometimes a lady passed, swelling
roundly forth in an embroidered petticoat, balancing her steps in
high-heeled shoes and courtesying with lofty grace to the punctilious
obeisances of the gentlemen. The life of the town seemed to have its
very centre not far from an old mansion that stood somewhat back from
the pavement, surrounded by neglected grass, with a strange air of
loneliness rather deepened than dispelled by the throng so near it.
Its site would have been suitably occupied by a magnificent Exchange
or a brick block lettered all over with various signs, or the large
house itself might have made a noble tavern with the "King's Arms"
swinging before it and guests in every chamber, instead of the
present solitude. But, owing to some dispute about the right of
inheritance, the mansion had been long without a tenant, decaying
from year to year and throwing the stately gloom of its shadow over
the busiest part of the town.
Such was the scene, and such the time, when a figure unlike any that
have been described was observed at a distance down the street.
"I spy a strange sail yonder," remarked a Liverpool captain--"that
woman in the long white garment."
The sailor seemed much struck by the object, as were several others
who at the same moment caught a glimpse of the figure that had
attracted his notice. Almost immediately the various topics of
conversation gave place to speculations in an undertone on this
unwonted occurrence.
"Can there be a funeral so late this afternoon?" inquired some.
They looked for the signs of death at every door--the sexton, the
hearse, the assemblage of black-clad relatives, all that makes up the
woful pomp of funerals. They raised their eyes, also, to the
sun-gilded spire of the church, and wondered that no clang proceeded
from its bell, which had always tolled till now when this figure
appeared in the light of day. But none had heard that a corpse was
to be borne to its home that afternoon, nor was there any token of a
funeral except the apparition of the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.
"What may this portend?" asked each man of his neighbor.
All smiled as they put the question, yet with a certain trouble in
their eyes, as if pestilence, or some other wide calamity, were
prognosticated by the untimely intrusion among the living of one
whose presence had always been associated with death and woe. What a
comet is to the earth was that sad woman to the town. Still she
moved on, while the hum of surprise was hushed at her approach, and
the proud and the humble stood aside that her white garment might not
wave against them. It was a long, loose robe of spotless purity.
Its wearer appeared very old, pale, emaciated, and feeble, yet glided
onward without the unsteady pace of extreme age. At one point of her
course a little rosy boy burst forth from a door and ran with open
arms toward the ghostly woman, seeming to expect a kiss from her
bloodless lips. She made a slight pause, fixing her eye upon him
with an expression of no earthly sweetness, so that the child
shivered and stood awestruck rather than affrighted while the Old
Maid passed on. Perhaps her garment might have been polluted even by
an infant's touch; perhaps her kiss would have been death to the
sweet boy within the year.
"She is but a shadow," whispered the superstitious. "The child put
forth his arms and could not grasp her robe."
The wonder was increased when the Old Maid passed beneath the porch
of the deserted mansion, ascended the moss-covered steps, lifted the
iron knocker and gave three raps. The people could only conjecture
that some old remembrance, troubling her bewildered brain, had
impelled the poor woman hither to visit the friends of her youth--all
gone from their home long since, and forever, unless their ghosts
still haunted it, fit company for the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.
An elderly man approached the steps, and, reverently uncovering his
gray locks, essayed to explain the matter.
"None, madam," said he, "have dwelt in this house these fifteen years
agone--no, not since the death of old Colonel Fenwicke, whose funeral
you may remember to have followed. His heirs, being ill-agreed among
themselves, have let the mansion-house go to ruin."
The Old Maid looked slowly round with a slight gesture of one hand
and a finger of the other upon her lip, appearing more shadow-like
than ever in the obscurity of the porch. But again she lifted the
hammer, and gave, this time, a single rap. Could it be that a
footstep was now heard coming down the staircase of the old mansion
which all conceived to have been so long untenanted? Slowly, feebly,
yet heavily, like the pace of an aged and infirm person, the step
approached, more distinct on every downward stair, till it reached
the portal. The bar fell on the inside; the door was opened. One
upward glance toward the church-spire, whence the sunshine had just
faded, was the last that the people saw of the Old Maid in the
Winding-Sheet.
"Who undid the door?" asked many.
This question, owing to the depth of shadow beneath the porch, no one
could satisfactorily answer. Two or three aged men, while protesting
against an inference which might be drawn, affirmed that the person
within was a negro, and bore a singular resemblance to Old Cæsar,
formerly a slave in the house, but freed by death some thirty years
before.
"Her summons has waked up a servant of the old family," said one,
half seriously.
"Let us wait here," replied another; "more guests will knock at the
door anon. But the gate of the graveyard should be thrown open."
Twilight had overspread the town before the crowd began to separate
or the comments on this incident were exhausted. One after another
was wending his way homeward, when a coach--no common spectacle in
those days--drove slowly into the street. It was an old-fashioned
equipage, hanging close to the ground, with arms on the panels, a
footman behind, and a grave, corpulent coachman seated high in front,
the whole giving an idea of solemn state and dignity. There was
something awful in the heavy rumbling of the wheels.
The coach rolled down the street, till, coming to the gateway of the
deserted mansion, it drew up, and the footman sprang to the ground.
"Whose grand coach is this?" asked a very inquisitive body.
The footman made no reply, but ascended the steps of the old house,
gave three taps with the iron hammer, and returned to open the coach
door. An old man possessed of the heraldic lore so common in that
day examined the shield of arms on the panel.
"Azure, a lion's head erased, between three flowers-de-luce," said
he, then whispered the name of the family to whom these bearings
belonged. The last inheritor of its honors was recently dead, after
a long residence amid the splendor of the British court, where his
birth and wealth had given him no mean station. "He left no child,"
continued the herald, "and these arms, being in a lozenge, betoken
that the coach appertains to his widow."
Further disclosures, perhaps, might have been made had not the
speaker been suddenly struck dumb by the stern eye of an ancient lady
who thrust forth her head from the coach preparing to descend. As
she emerged, the people saw that her dress was magnificent, and her
figure dignified in spite of age and infirmity--a stately ruin, but
with a look at once of pride and wretchedness. Her strong and rigid
features had an awe about them unlike that of the white Old Maid, but
as of something evil. She passed up the steps, leaning on a
gold-headed cane. The door swung open as she ascended, and the light
of a torch glittered on the embroidery of her dress and gleamed on
the pillars of the porch. After a momentary pause, a glance backward
and then a desperate effort, she went in.
The decipherer of the coat-of-arms had ventured up the lower step,
and, shrinking back immediately, pale and tremulous, affirmed that
the torch was held by the very image of Old Cæsar.
"But such a hideous grin," added he, "was never seen on the face of
mortal man, black or white. It will haunt me till my dying day."
Meantime, the coach had wheeled round with a prodigious clatter on
the pavement and rumbled up the street, disappearing in the twilight,
while the ear still tracked its course. Scarcely was it gone when
the people began to question whether the coach and attendants, the
ancient lady, the spectre of Old Cæsar and the Old Maid herself were
not all a strangely combined delusion with some dark purport in its
mystery. The whole town was astir, so that, instead of dispersing,
the crowd continually increased, and stood gazing up at the windows
of the mansion, now silvered by the brightening moon. The elders,
glad to indulge the narrative propensity of age, told of the
long-faded splendor of. the family, the entertainments they had
given and the guests, the greatest of the land, and even titled and
noble ones from abroad, who had passed beneath that portal. These
graphic reminiscences seemed to call up the ghosts of those to whom
they referred. So strong was the impression on some of the more
imaginative hearers that two or three were seized with trembling fits
at one and the same moment, protesting that they had distinctly heard
three other raps of the iron knocker.
"Impossible!" exclaimed others. "See! The moon shines beneath the
porch, and shows every part of it except in the narrow shade of that
pillar. There is no one there."
"Did not the door open?" whispered one of these fanciful persons.
"Didst thou see it too?" said his companion, in a startled tone.
But the general sentiment was opposed to the idea that a third
visitant had made application at the door of the deserted house. A
few, however, adhered to this new marvel, and even declared that a
red gleam like that of a torch had shone through the great front
window, as if the negro were lighting a guest up the staircase. This
too was pronounced a mere fantasy.
But at once the whole multitude started, and each man beheld his own
terror painted in the faces of all the rest.
"What an awful thing is this!" cried they.
A shriek, too fearfully distinct for doubt, had been heard within the
mansion, breaking forth suddenly and succeeded by a deep stillness,
as if a heart had burst in giving it utterance. The people knew not
whether to fly from the very sight of the house or to rush trembling
in and search out the strange mystery. Amid their confusion and
affright they were somewhat reassured by the appearance of their
clergyman, a venerable patriarch, and equally a saint, who had taught
them and their fathers the way to heaven for more than the space of
an ordinary lifetime. He was a reverend figure with long white hair
upon his shoulders, a white beard upon his breast, and a back so bent
over his staff that he seemed to be looking downward continually, as
if to choose a proper grave for his weary frame. It was some time
before the good old man, being deaf and of impaired intellect, could
be made to comprehend such portions of the affair as were
comprehensible at all. But when possessed of the facts, his energies
assumed unexpected vigor.
"Verily," said the old gentleman, "it will b$ fitting that I enter
the mansion-house of the worthy Colonel Fenwicke; lest any harm
should have befallen that true Christian woman whom ye call the 'Old
Maid in the Winding-Sheet.'"
Behold, then, the venerable clergyman ascending the steps of the
mansion with a torch-bearer behind him. It was the elderly man who
had spoken to the Old Maid, and the same who had afterward explained
the shield of arms and recognized the features of the negro. Like
their predecessors, they gave three raps with the iron hammer.
"Old Cæsar cometh not," observed the priest. "Well, I wot he no
longer doth service in this mansion."
"Assuredly, then, it was something worse in Old Cæsar's likeness,"
said the other adventurer.
"Be it as God wills," answered the clergyman. "See! my strength,
though it be much decayed, hath sufficed to, open this heavy door.
Let us enter and pass up the staircase."
Here occurred a singular exemplification of the dreamy state of a
very old man's mind. As they ascended the wide flight of stairs the
aged clergyman appeared to move with caution, occasionally standing
aside, and oftener bending his head, as it were in salutation, thus
practising all the gestures of one who makes his way through a
throng. Reaching the head of the staircase, he looked around with
sad and solemn benignity, laid aside his staff, bared his hoary
locks, and was evidently on the point of commencing a prayer.
"Reverend sir," said his attendant, who conceived this a very
suitable prelude to their further search, "would it not be well that
the people join with us in prayer?"
"Well-a-day!" cried the old clergyman, staring strangely around him.
"Art thou here with me, and none other? Verily, past times were
present to me, and I deemed that I was to make a funeral prayer, as
many a time heretofore, from the head of this staircase. Of a truth,
I saw the shades of many that are gone. Yea, I have prayed at their
burials, one after another, and the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet
hath seen them to their graves."
Being now more thoroughly awake to their present purpose, he took his
staff and struck forcibly on the floor, till there came an echo from
each deserted chamber, but no menial to answer their summons. They,
therefore, walked along the passage, and again paused, opposite to
the great front window, through which was seen the crowd in the
shadow and partial moonlight of the street beneath. On the right
hand was the open door of a chamber, and a closed one on their left.
The clergyman pointed his cane to the carved oak panel of the latter.
"Within that chamber," observed he, "a whole lifetime since, did I
sit by the deathbed of a goodly young man who, being now at the last
gasp--" Apparently, there was some powerful excitement in the ideas
which had now flashed across his mind. He snatched the torch from
his companion's hand, and threw open the door with such sudden
violence that the flame was extinguished, leaving them no other light
than the moonbeams which fell through two windows into the spacious
chamber. It was sufficient to discover all that could be known. In
a high-backed oaken armchair, upright, with her hands clasped across
her breast and her head thrown back, sat the Old Maid in the
Winding-Sheet. The stately dame had fallen on her knees with her
forehead on the holy knees of the Old Maid, one hand upon the floor
and the other pressed convulsively against her heart. It clutched a
lock of hair--once sable, now discolored with a greenish mold.
As the priest and layman advanced into the chamber the Old Maid's
features assumed such a semblance of shifting expression that they
trusted to hear the whole mystery explained by a single word. But it
was only the shadow of a tattered curtain waving between the dead
face and the moonlight.
"Both dead!" said the venerable man. "Then who shall divulge the
secret? Methinks it glimmers to and fro in my mind like the light
and shadow across the Old Maid's face. And now 'tis gone!"
WANDERING WILLIE'S TALE
BY SIR WAITER SCOTT
_Sir Walter Scott, born in Edinburgh in 1771 and died at "Abbotsford"
in 1832, published the first of his Waverley Novels ("Waverley") in
1814. "Redgauntlet," in which "Wandering Willie's Tale" occurs,
appeared in 1824. Wandering Willie, who tells the tale, is Willie
Steenson, a blind fiddler devoted to the Redgauntlet family. Many
critics consider this the finest story in the English language.
Andrew Lang, who calls it "immortal," describes ft as "that perfect
model of a 'conte' in whose narrow range humor, poetry, the
grotesque, the terrible are combined as in no other work of man."_
WANDERING WILLIE'S TALE
By SIR WALTER SCOTT
Ye maun have heard of Sir Robert Redgauntlet of that Ilk, who lived
in these parts before the dear years. The country will lang mind
him; and our fathers used to draw breath thick if ever they heard him
named. He was out wi' the Hielandmen in Montrose's time; and again
he was in the hills wi' Glencairn in the saxteen hundred and
fifty-twa; and sae when King Charles the Second came in, wha was in
sic favor as the Laird of Redgauntlet? He was knighted at Lonon
court, wi' the King's ain sword; and being a red-hot prelatist, he
came down here, rampauging like a lion, with commissions of
lieutenancy (and of lunacy, for what I ken), to put down a' the Whigs
and Covenanters in the country. Wild wark they made of it; for the
Whigs were as dour as the Cavaliers were fierce, and it was which
should first tire the other. Redgauntlet was aye for the strong
hand; and his name is kenn'd as wide in the country as Claverhouse's
or Tam Dalyell's. Glen, nor dargle, nor mountain, nor cave could
hide the puir Hill-folk when Redgauntlet was out with bugle and
bloodhound after them, as if they had been sae mony deer. And troth
when they fand them, they didna mak muckle mair ceremony than a
Hielandman wi' a roebuck. It was just, "Will ye tak the test?" If
not, "Make ready--present--fire!" and there lay the recusant.
Far and wide was Sir Robert hated and feared. Men thought he had a
direct compact with Satan; that he was proof against steel, and that
bullets happed aff his buff-coat like hailstanes from a hearth; that
he had a mear that would turn a hare on the side of Carrifra
Gauns--and muckle to the same purpose, of whilk mair anon. The best
blessing they wared on him was, "Deil scowp wi' Redgauntlet!" He
wasna a bad maister to his ain folk though, and was weel aneugh liked
by his tenants; and as for the lackies and troopers that raid out wi'
him to the persecutions, as the Whigs ca'd those killing times, they
wad hae drunken themsells blind to his health at ony time.
Now you are to ken that my gudesire lived on Redgauntlet's grund;
they ca' the place Primrose Knowe. We had lived on the grund, and
under the Redgauntlets, since the riding days, and lang before. It
was a pleasant bit; and I think the air is callerer and fresher there
than onywhere else in the country. It's a' deserted now; and I sat
on the broken door-cheek three days since, and was glad I couldna see
the plight the place was in; but that's a' wide o' the mark. There
dwelt my gudesire, Steenie Steenson, a rambling, rattling chiel he
had been in his young days, and could play weel on the pipes; he was
famous at "Hoopers and Girders," a' Cumberland couldna touch him at
"Jockie Lattin," and he had the finest finger for the backlilt
between Berwick and Carlisle. The like o' Steenie wasna the sort
that they made Whigs o'. And so he became a Tory, as they ca' it,
which we now ca' Jacobites, just out of a kind of needcessity, that
he might belang to some side or other. He had nae ill-will to the
Whig bodies, and liked little to see the blude rin, though being
obliged to follow Sir Robert in hunting and hosting, watching and
warding, he saw muckle mischief, and maybe did some, that he couldna
avoid.
Now Steenie was a kind of favorite with his master, and kenn'd a' the
folks about the castle, and was often sent for to play the pipes when
they were at their merriment. Auld Dougal MacCallum, the butler,
that had followed Sir Robert through gude and ill, thick and thin,
pool and stream, was specially fond of the pipes, and aye gae my
gudesire his gude word wi' the laird; for Dougal could turn his
master round his finger.
Weel, round came the Revolution, and it had like to have broken the
hearts baith of Dougal and his master. But the change was not
a'thegither sae great as they feared, and other folk thought for.
The Whigs made an unco crawing what they wad do with their auld
enemies, and in special wi' Sir Robert Redgauntlet. But there were
ower mony great folks dipped in the same doings to mak a spick span
new warld. So Parliament passed it a' ower easy; and Sir Robert,
bating that he was held to hunting foxes instead of Covenanters,
remained just the man he was. His revel was as loud, and his hall as
weel lighted, as ever it had been, though maybe he lacked the fines
of the Nonconformists, that used to come to stock his larder and
cellar; for it is certain he began to be keener about the rents than
his tenants used to find him before, and they behoved to be prompt to
the rent-day, or else the laird wasna pleased. And he was sic an
awsome body that naebody cared to anger him; for the oaths he swore,
and the rage that he used to get into, and the looks that he put on,
made men sometimes think him a devil incarnate.
Weel, my gudesire was nae manager--no that he was a very great
misguider--but he hadna the saving gift, and he got twa terms' rent
in arrear. He got the first brash at Whitsunday put ower wi' fair
word and piping; but when Martinmas came, there was a summons from
the grund-officer to come wi' the rent on a day preceese, or else
Steenie behoved to flit. Sair wark he had to get the siller; but he
was weel-freended, and at last he got the haill scraped thegither--a
thousand merks; the maist of it was from a neighbor they ca'd Laurie
Lapraik--a sly tod. Laurie had walth o' gear--could hunt wi' the
hound and rin wi' the hare--and be Whig or Tory, saunt or sinner, as
the wind stood. He was a professor in this Revolution warld; but he
liked an orra sough of this warld, and a tune on the pipes weel
aneugh at a bytime; and abune a' he thought he had gude security for
the siller he lent my gudesire ower the stocking at Primrose Knowe.
Away trots my gudesire to Redgauntlet Castle, wi' a heavy purse and a
light heart, glad to be out of the laird's danger. Weel, the first
thing he learned at the castle was that Sir Robert had fretted
himsell into a fit of the gout, because he did not appear before
twelve o'clock. It wasna a'thegither for sake of the money, Dougal
thought; but because he didna like to part wi' my gudesire aff the
grund. Dougal was glad to see Steenie, and brought him into the
great oak parlor, and there sat the laird his leesome lane, excepting
that he had beside him a great ill-favored jackanape, that was a
special pet of his--a cankered beast it was, and mony an ill-natured
trick it played; ill to please it was, and easily angered--ran about
the haill castle, chattering and yowling, and pinching and biting
folk, especially before ill weather, or disturbances in the state.
Sir Robert ca'd it Major Weir, after the warlock that was burnt;* and
few folk liked either the name or the conditions of the
creature--they thought there was something in it by ordinar--and my
gudesire was not just easy in mind when the door shut on him, and he
saw himself in the room wi' naebody but the laird, Dougal MacCallum,
and the major, a thing that hadna chanced to him before.
* A celebrated wizard, executed (1670) at Edinburgh for sorcery and
other crimes.
Sir Robert sat, or, I should say, lay, in a great armed chair, wi'
his grand velvet gown, and his feet on a cradle; for he had baith
gout and gravel, and his face looked as gash and ghastly as Satan's.
Major Weir sat opposite to him, in a red laced coat, and the laird's
wig on his head; and aye as Sir Robert girned wi' pain, the jackanape
girned too, like a sheep's-head between a pair of tangs--an
ill-faured, fearsome couple they were. The laird's buff-coat was
hung on a pin behind him, and his broadsword and his pistols within
reach; for he keepit up the auld fashion of having the weapons ready,
and a horse saddled day and night, just as he used to do when he was
able to loup on horseback, and away after ony of the Hill-folk he
could get speerings of. Some said it was for fear of the Whigs
taking vengeance, but I judge it was just his auld custom--he wasna
gien to fear onything. The rental-book, wi' its black cover and
brass clasps, was lying beside him; and a book of sculduggery sangs
was put betwixt the leaves, to keep it open at the place where it
bore evidence against the goodman of Primrose Knowe, as behind the
hand with his mails and duties. Sir Robert gave my gudesire a look
as if he would have withered his heart in his bosom. Ye maun ken he
had a way of bending his brows that men saw the visible mark of a
horseshoe in his forehead, deep-dinted, as if it had been stamped
there.
"Are ye come light-handed, ye son of a toom whistle?" said Sir
Robert. "Zounds! if you are--"
My gudesire, with as gude a countenance as he could put on, made a
leg, and placed the bag of money on the table wi' a dash, like a man
that does something clever. The laird drew it to him hastily. "Is
it all here, Steenie, man?"
"Your honor will find it right," said my gudesire.
"Here, Dougal," said the laird, "gie Steenie a tass of brandy
downstairs, till I count the siller and write the receipt."
But they werena weel out of the room when Sir Robert gied a yelloch
that garr'd the castle rock. Back ran Dougal--in flew the
livery-men--yell on yell gied the laird, ilk ane mair awfu' than the
ither. My gudesire knew not whether to stand or flee, but he
ventured back into the parlor, where a' was gaun
hirdie-girdie--naebody to say "come in" or "gae out." Terribly the
laird roared for cauld water to his feet, and wine to cool his
throat; and "Hell, hell, hell, and its flames," was aye the word in
his mouth. They brought him water, and when they plunged his swoln
feet into the tub, he cried out it was burning; and folk say that it
did bubble and sparkle like a seething caldron. He flung the cup at
Dougal's head, and said he had given him blood instead of burgundy;
and, sure aneugh, the lass washed clotted blood aff the carpet the
neist day. The jackanape they ca'd Major Weir, it jibbered and cried
as if it was mocking its master. My gudesire's head was like to
turn: he forgot baith siller and receipt, and downstairs he banged;
but as he ran, the shrieks came faint and fainter; there was a
deep-drawn shivering groan, and word gaed through the castle that the
laird was dead.
Weel, away came my gudesire wi' his finger in his mouth, and his best
hope was that Dougal had seen the moneybag, and heard the laird speak
of writing the receipt. The young laird, now Sir John, came from
Edinburgh to see things put to rights. Sir John and his father never
gree'd weel. Sir John had been bred an advocate, and afterward sat
in the last Scots Parliament and voted for the Union, having gotten,
it was thought, a rug of the compensations; if his father could have
come out of his grave he would have brained him for it on his awn
hearthstane. Some thought it was easier counting with the auld rough
knight than the fair-spoken young ane--but mair of that anon.
Dougal MacCallum, poor body, neither grat nor graned, but gaed about
the house looking like a corpse, but directing, as was his duty, a'
the order of the grand funeral. Now, Dougal looked aye waur and waur
when night was coming, and was aye the last to gang to his bed, whilk
was in a little round just opposite the chamber of dais, whilk his
master occupied while he was living, and where he now lay in state,
as they ca'd it, weel-a-day! The night before the funeral, Dougal
could keep his awn counsel nae langer: he came doun with his proud
spirit, and fairly asked auld Hutcheon to sit in his room with him
for an hour. When they were in the round, Dougal took ae tass of
brandy to himsell and gave another to Hutcheon, and wished him all
health and lang life, and said that, for himsell, he wasna lang for
this world; for that, every night since Sir Robert's death, his
silver call had sounded from the state chamber, just as it used to do
at nights in his lifetime, to call Dougal to help to turn him in his
bed. Dougal said that, being alone with the dead on that floor of
the tower (for naebody cared to wake Sir Robert Redgauntlet like
another corpse), he had never daured to answer the call, but that now
his conscience checked him for neglecting his duty; for, "though
death breaks service," said MacCallum, "it shall never break my
service to Sir Robert; and I will answer his next whistle, so be you
will stand by me, Hutcheon."
Hutcheon had nae will to work, but he had stood by Dougal in battle
and broil, and he wad not fail him at this pinch; so down the carles
sat ower a stoup of brandy, and Hutcheon, who was something of a
clerk, would have read a chapter of the Bible; but Dougal would hear
naething but a blaud of Davie Lindsay, whilk was the waur preparation.
When midnight came, and the house was quiet as the grave, sure aneugh
the silver whistle sounded as sharp and shrill as if Sir Robert was
blowing it, and up gat the twa auld serving-men and tottered into the
room where the dead man lay. Hutcheon saw aneugh at the first
glance; for there were torches in the room, which showed him the foul
fiend in his ain shape, sitting on the laird's coffin! Ower he
couped as if he had been dead. He could not tell how lang he lay in
a trance at the door, but when he gathered himsell he cried on his
neighbor, and getting nae answer, raised the house, when Dougal was
found lying dead within twa steps of the bed where his master's
coffin was placed. As for the whistle, it was gaen anes and aye; but
mony a time was it heard at the top of the house on the bartizan, and
amang the auld chimneys and turrets, where the howlets have their
nests. Sir John hushed the matter up, and the funeral passed over
without mair bogle-wark.
But when a' was ower, and the laird was beginning to settle his
affairs, every tenant was called up for his arrears, and my gudesire
for the full sum that stood him in the rental-book. Weel, away he
trots to the castle, to tell his story, and there he is introduced to
Sir John, sitting in his father's chair, in deep mourning, with
weepers and hanging cravat, and a small walking rapier by his side,
instead of the auld broadsword that had a hundredweight of steel
about it, what with blade, chape, and basket-hilt. I have heard
their communing so often tauld ower, that I almost think I was there
mysell, though I couldna be born at the time. (In fact, Alan, my
companion mimicked, with a good deal of humor, the flattering,
conciliating tone of the tenant's address, and the hypocritical
melancholy of the laird's reply. His grandfather, he said, had,
while he spoke, his eye fixed on the rental-book, as if it were a
mastiff-dog that he was afraid would spring up and bite him.)
"I wuss ye joy, sir, of the head seat, and the white loaf, and the
braid lairdship. Your father was a kind man to friends and
followers; muckle grace to you, Sir John, to fill his shoon--his
boots, I suld say, for he seldom wore shoon, unless it were muils
when he had the gout."
"Ay, Steenie," quoth the laird, sighing deeply, and putting his
napkin to his een, "his was a sudden call, and he will be missed in
the country; no time to set his house in order: weel prepared
Godward, no doubt, which is the root of the matter, but left us
behind a tangled hesp to wind, Steenie. Hem! hem! We maun go to
business, Steenie; much to do, and little time to do it in."
Here he opened the fatal volume. I have heard of a thing they call
Doomsday Book--I am clear it has been a rental of back-ganging
tenants.
"Stephen," said Sir John, still in the same soft, sleekit tone of
voice--"Stephen Stevenson, or Steenson, ye are down here for a year's
rent behind the hand, due at last term."
Stephen. "Please your honor, Sir John, I paid it to your father."
Sir John. "Ye took a receipt then, doubtless, Stephen, and can
produce it?"
Stephen. "Indeed I hadna time, an it like your honor; for nae sooner
had I set doun the siller, and just as his honor Sir Robert, that's
gaen, drew it till him to count it, and write out the receipt, he was
ta'en wi' the pains that removed him."
"That was unlucky," said Sir John, after a pause. "But ye maybe paid
it in the presence of somebody. I want but a talis qualis evidence,
Stephen. I would go ower strictly to work with no poor man."
Stephen. "Troth, Sir John, there was naebody in the room but Dougal
MacCallum, the butler. But, as your honor kens, he has e'en followed
his auld master."
"Very unlucky again, Stephen," said Sir John, without altering his
voice a single note. "The man to whom ye paid the money is dead; and
the man who witnessed the payment is dead too; and the siller, which
should have been to the fore, is neither seen nor heard tell of in
the repositories. How am I to believe a' this?"
Stephen. "I dinna ken, your honor; but there is a bit memorandum
note of the very coins--for, God help me! I had to borrow out of
twenty purses--and I am sure that ilka man there set down will take
his grit oath for what purpose I borrowed the money."
Sir John. "I have little doubt ye borrowed the money, Steenie. It
is the payment to my father that I want to have some proof of."
Stephen. "The siller maun be about the house, Sir John. And since
your honor never got it, and his honor that was canna have ta'en it
wi' him, maybe some of the family may have seen it."
Sir John. "We will examine the servants, Stephen; that is but
reasonable."
But lackey and lass, and page and groom, all denied stoutly that they
had ever seen such a bag of money as my gudesire described. What was
waur, he had unluckily not mentioned to any living soul of them his
purpose of paying his rent. Ae quean had noticed something under his
arm, but she took it for the pipes.
Sir John Redgauntlet ordered the servants out of the room, and then
said to my gudesire: "Now, Steenie, ye see you have fair play; and,
as I have little doubt ye ken better where to find the siller than
any other body, I beg, in fair terms, and for your own sake, that you
will end this fasherie; for, Stephen, ye maun pay or flit."
"The Lord forgie your opinion," said Stephen, driven almost to his
wit's-end--"I am an honest man."
"So am I, Stephen," said his honor; "and so are all the folks in the
house, I hope. But if there be a knave among us, it must be he that
tells the story he can not prove." He paused, and then added, mair
sternly: "If I understand your trick, sir, you want to take advantage
of some malicious reports concerning things in this family, and
particularly respecting my father's sudden death, thereby to cheat me
out of the money, and perhaps take away my character, by insinuating
that I have received the rent I am demanding. Where do you suppose
this money to be? I insist upon knowing."
My gudesire saw everything look sae muckle against him that he grew
nearly desperate; however, he shifted from one foot to another,
looked to every corner of the room, and made no answer.
"Speak out, sirrah," said the laird, assuming a look of his
father's--a very particular ane, which he had when he was angry: it
seemed as if the wrinkles of his frown made that selfsame fearful
shape of a horse's shoe in the middle of his brow--"speak out, sir!
I will know your thoughts. Do you suppose that I have this money?"
"Far be it frae me to say so," said Stephen.
"Do you charge any of my people with having taken it?"
"I wad be laith to charge them that may be innocent," said my
gudesire; "and if there be any one that is guilty, I have nae proof."
"Somewhere the money must be, if there is a word of truth in your
story," said Sir John; "I ask where you think it is, and demand a
correct answer?"
"In hell, if you will have my thoughts of it," said my gudesire,
driven to extremity--"in hell! with your father, his jackanape, and
his silver whistle."
Down the stairs he ran, for the parlor was nae place for him after
such a word, and he heard the laird swearing blood and wounds behind
him, as fast as ever did Sir Robert, and roaring for the bailie and
the baron-officer.
Away rode my gudesire to his chief creditor, him they ca'd Laurie
Lapraik, to try if he could make onything out of him; but when he
tauld his story, he got but the warst word in his wame--thief,
beggar, and dyvour were the safest terms; and to the boot of these
hard terms, Laurie brought up the auld story of his dipping his hand
in the blood of God's saunts, just as if a tenant could have helped
riding with the laird, and that a laird like Sir Robert Redgauntlet.
My gudesire was by this time far beyond the bounds of patience, and
while he and Laurie were at deil speed the liars, he was wanchancie
aneugh to abuse Lapraik's doctrine as weel as the man, and said
things that garr'd folks' flesh grue that heard them; he wasna just
himsell, and he had lived wi' a wild set in his day.
At last they parted, and my gudesire was to ride hame through the
wood of Pitmurkie, that is a' fou of black firs, as they say. I ken
the wood, but the firs may be black or white for what I can tell. At
the entry of the wood there is a wild common, and on the edge of the
common a little lonely change-house, that was keepit then by a
hostler-wife--they suld hae ca'd her Tibbie Faw--and there puir
Steenie cried for a mutchkin of brandy, for he had had no refreshment
the haill day. Tibbie was earnest wi' him to take a bite o' meat,
but he couldna think o't, nor would he take his foot out of the
stirrup, and took off the brandy wholly at twa drafts, and named a
toast at each--the first was, the memory of Sir Robert Redgauntlet,
and might he never lie quiet in his grave till he had righted his
poor bond-tenant; and the second was, a health to Man's Enemy, if he
would but get him back the pock of siller, or tell him what came o't,
for he saw the haill world was like to regard him as a thief and a
cheat, and he took that waur than even the ruin of his house and
hauld.
On he rode, little caring where. It was a dark night turned, and the
trees made it yet darker, and he let the beast take its ain road
through the wood; when, all of a sudden, from tired and wearied that
it was before, the nag began to spring, and flee, and stend, that my
gudesire could hardly keep the saddle; upon the whilk, a horseman,
suddenly riding up beside him, said, "That's a mettle beast of yours,
freend; will you sell him?" So saying, he touched the horse's neck
with his riding-wand, and it fell into its auld heigh-ho of a
stumbling trot. "But his spunk's soon out of him, I think,"
continued the stranger, "and that is like mony a man's courage, that
thinks he wad do great things till he come to the proof."
My gudesire scarce listened to this, but spurred his horse, with
"Gude e'en to you, freend."
But it's like the stranger was ane that doesna lightly yield his
point; for, ride as Steenie liked, he was aye beside him at the
salfsame pace. At last my gudesire, Steenie Steenson, grew half
angry and, to say the truth, half feared.
"What is it that ye want with me, freend?" he said. "If ye be a
robber, I have nae money; if ye be a leal man, wanting company, I
have nae heart to mirth or speaking; and if ye want to ken the road,
I scarce ken it mysell."
"If you will tell me your grief," said the stranger, "I am one that,
though I have been sair misca'd in the world, am the only hand for
helping my freends."
So my gudesire, to ease his ain heart, mair than from any hope of
help, told him the story from beginning to end.
"It's a hard pinch," said the stranger; "but I think I can help you."
"If you could lend the money, sir, and take a lang day--I ken nae
other help on earth," said my gudesire.
"But there may be some under the earth," said the stranger. "Come,
I'll be frank wi' you; I could lend you the money on bond, but you
would maybe scruple my terms. Now, I can tell you that your auld
laird is disturbed in his grave by your curses, and the wailing of
your family, and if ye daur venture to go to see him, he will give
you the receipt."
My gudesire's hair stood on end at this proposal, but he thought his
companion might be some humorsome chield that was trying to frighten
him, and might end with lending him the money. Besides, he was bauld
wi' brandy, and desperate wi' distress; and he said he had courage to
go to the gate of hell, and a step farther, for that receipt.
The stranger laughed.
Weel, they rode on through the thickest of the wood, when, all of a
sudden, the horse stopped at the door of a great house; and, but that
he knew the place was ten miles off, my gudesire would have thought
he was at Redgauntlet Castle. They rode into the outer courtyard,
through the muckle faulding yetts, and aneath the auld portcullis;
and the whole front of the house was lighted, and there were pipes
and fiddles, and as much dancing and deray within as used to be in
Sir Robert's house at Pace and Yule, and such high seasons. They lap
off, and my gudesire, as seemed to him, fastened his horse to the
very ring he had tied him to that morning, when he gaed to wait on
the young Sir John.
"God!" said my gudesire, "if Sir Robert's death be but a dream!"
He knocked at the ha' door just as he was wont, and his auld
acquaintance, Dougal MacCallum, just after his wont, too, came to
open the door, and said, "Piper Steenie, are ye there, lad? Sir
Robert has been crying for you."
My gudesire was like a man in a dream; he looked for the stranger,
but he was gane for the time. At last he just tried to say, "Ha!
Dougal Driveower, are ye living? I thought ye had been dead."
"Never fash yoursell wi' me," said Dougal, "but look to yoursell; and
see ye tak naething frae onybody here, neither meat, drink, or
siller, except just the receipt that is your ain."
So saying, he led the way out through halls and trances that were
weel kenn'd to my gudesire, and into the auld oak parlor; and there
was as much singing of profane sangs, and birling of red wine, and
speaking blasphemy and sculduddry, as had ever been in Redgauntlet
Castle when it was at the blythest.
But, Lord take us in keeping! what a set of ghastly revelers they
were that sat round that table! My gudesire kenn'd mony that had
long before gane to their place, for often had he piped to the most
part in the hall of Redgauntlet. There was the fierce Middleton, and
the dissolute Rothes, and the crafty Lauderdale; and Dalyell, with
his bald head and a beard to his girdle; and Earlshall, with
Cameron's blude on his hand; and wild Bonshaw, that tied blessed Mr.
Cargill's limbs till the blude sprung; and Dumbarton Douglas, the
twice-turned traitor baith to country and king. There was the Bluidy
Advocate MacKenyie, who, for his worldly wit and wisdom, had been to
the rest as a god. And there was Claverhouse, as beautiful as when
he lived, with his long dark, curled locks, streaming down over his
laced buff-coat, and his left hand always on his right spule-blade,
to hide the wound that the silver bullet had made. He sat apart from
them all, and looked at them with a melancholy, haughty countenance;
while the rest hallooed, and sung, and laughed, that the room rang.
But their smiles were fearfully contorted from time to time; and
their laughter passed into such wild sounds as made my gudesire's
very nails grow blue, and chilled the marrow in his banes.
They that waited at the table were just the wicked serving-men and
troopers that had done their work and cruel bidding on earth. There
was the Lang Lad of the Nethertown, that helped to take Argyle; and
the bishop's summoner, that they called the Deil's Rattle-bag; and
the wicked guardsmen, in their laced coats; and the savage Highland
Amorites, that shed blood like water; and mony a proud serving-man,
haughty of heart and bloody of hand, cringing to the rich, and making
them wickeder than they would be; grinding the poor to powder, when
the rich had broken them to fragments. And mony, mony mair were
coming and ganging, a' as busy in their vocation as if they had been
alive.
Sir Robert Redgauntlet, in the midst of a' this fearful riot, cried,
wi' a voice like thunder, on Steenie Piper to come to the board-head
where he was sitting, his legs stretched out before him, and swathed
up with flannel, with his holster pistols aside him, while the great
broadsword rested against his chair, just as my gudesire had seen him
the last time upon earth--the very cushion for the jackanape was
close to him, but the creature itsell was not there; it wasna its
hour, it's likely; for he heard them say as he came forward, "Is not
the major come yet?" And another answered, "The jackanape will be
here betimes the morn." And when my gudesire came forward, Sir
Robert, or his ghaist, or the deevil in his likeness, said, "Weel,
piper, hae ye settled wi' my son for the year's rent?"
With much ado my father gat breath to say that Sir John would not
settle without his honor's receipt.
"Ye shall hae that for a tune of the pipes, Steenie," said the
appearance of Sir Robert. "Play us up, 'Weel noddled, Luckie.'"
Now this was a tune my gudesire learned frae a warlock, that heard it
when they were worshiping Satan at their meetings, and my gudesire
had sometimes played it at the ranting suppers in Redgauntlet Castle,
but never very willingly; and now he grew cauld at the very name of
it, and said, for excuse, he hadna his pipes wi' him.
"MacCallum, ye limb of Beelzebub," said the fearfu' Sir Robert,
"bring Steenie the pipes that I am keeping for him!"
MacCallum brought a pair of pipes might have served the piper of
Donald of the Isles. But he gave my gudesire a nudge as he offered
them; and looking secretly and closely, Steenie saw that the chanter
was of steel, and heated to a white heat; so he had fair warning not
to trust his fingers with it. So he excused himself again, and said
he was faint and frightened, and had not wind enough to fill the bag.
"Then ye maun eat and drink, Steenie," said the figure; "for we do
little else here; and it's ill speaking between a fou man and a
fasting."
Now these were the very words that the bloody Earl of Douglas said to
keep the king's messenger in hand, while he cut the head off
MacLellan of Bombie, at the Threave Castle, and that put Steenie mair
and mair on his guard. So he spoke up like a man, and said he came
neither to eat, or drink, or make minstrelsy, but simply for his
ain--to ken what was come o' the money he had paid, and to get a
discharge for it; and he was so stout-hearted by this time, that he
charged Sir Robert for conscience' sake (he had no power to say the
holy name), and as he hoped for peace and rest, to spread no snares
for him, but just to give him his ain.
The appearance gnashed its teeth and laughed, but it took from a
large pocket-book the receipt, and handed it to Steenie. "There is
your receipt, ye pitiful cur; and for the money, my dog-whelp of a
son may go look for it in the Cat's Cradle."
My gudesire uttered mony thanks, and was about to retire when Sir
Robert roared aloud: "Stop though, thou sack-doudling son of a whore!
I am not done with thee. _Here_ we do nothing for nothing; and you
must return on this very day twelvemonth to pay your master the
homage that you owe me for my protection."
My father's tongue was loosed of a suddenty, and he said aloud: "I
refer mysell to God's pleasure, and not to yours."
He had no sooner uttered the word than all was dark around him, and
he sunk on the earth with such a sudden shock that he lost both
breath and sense.
How lang Steenie lay there, he could not tell; but when he came to
himsell, he was lying in the auld kirkyard of Redgauntlet parochine,
just at the door of the family aisle, and the scutcheon of the auld
knight, Sir Robert, hanging over his head. There was a deep morning
fog on grass and gravestane around him, and his horse was feeding
quietly beside the minister's twa cows. Steenie would have thought
the whole was a dream, but he had the receipt in his hand, fairly
written and signed by the auld laird; only the last letters of his
name were a little disorderly, written like one seized with sudden
pain.
Sorely troubled in his mind, he left that dreary place, rode through
the mist to Redgauntlet Castle, and with much ado he got speech of
the laird.
"Well, you dyvour bankrupt," was the first word, "have you brought me
my rent?"
"No," answered my gudesire, "I have not; but I have brought your
honor Sir Robert's receipt for it."
"How, sirrah? Sir Robert's receipt! You told me he had not given
you one."
"Will your honor please to see if that bit line is right?"
Sir John looked at every line, and at every letter, with much
attention, and at last at the date, which my gudesire had not
observed--"'From my appointed place,'" he read, "'this twenty-fifth
of November.' What! That is yesterday! Villain, thou must have
gone to Hell for this!"
"I got it from your honor's father; whether he be in Heaven or Hell,
I know not," said Steenie.
"I will delate you for a warlock to the privy council!" said Sir
John. "I will send you to your master, the devil, with the help of a
tar-barrel and a torch!"
"I intend to delate mysell to the presbytery," said Steenie, "and
tell them all I have seen last night, whilk are things fitter for
them to judge of than a borrel man like me."
Sir John paused, composed himsell, and desired to hear the full
history; and my gudesire told it him from point to point, as I have
told it you--word for word, neither more nor less.
Sir John was silent again for a long time, and at last he said, very
composedly: "Steenie, this story of yours concerns the honor of many
a noble family besides mine; and if it be a leasing-making, to keep
yourself out of my danger, the least you can expect is to have a
red-hot iron driven through your tongue, and that will be as bad as
scauding your fingers with a red-hot chanter. But yet it may be
true, Steenie; and if the money cast up, I shall not know what to
think of it. But where shall we find the Cat's Cradle? There are
cats enough about the old house, but I think they kitten without the
ceremony of bed or cradle."
"We were best ask Hutcheon," said my gudesire; "he kens a' the odd
corners about as weel as--another serving-man that is now gane, and
that I wad not like to name."
Aweel, Hutcheon, when he was asked, told them that a ruinous turret,
lang disused, next to the clock-house, only accessible by a ladder,
for the opening was on the outside, and far above the battlements,
was called of old the Cat's Cradle.
"There will I go immediately," said Sir John; and he took (with what
purpose, Heaven kens) one of his father's pistols from the
hall-table, where they had lain since the night he died, and hastened
to the battlements.
It was a dangerous place to climb, for the ladder was auld and frail,
and wanted ane or twa rounds. However, up got Sir John, and entered
at the turret door, where his body stopped the only little light that
was in the bit turret. Something flees at him wi' a vengeance, maist
dang him back ower; bang gaed the knight's pistol, and Hutcheon, that
held the ladder, and my gudesire that stood beside him, hears a loud
skelloch. A minute after, Sir John flings the body of the jackanape
down to them, and cries that the siller is fund, and that they should
come up and help him. And there was the bag of siller sure aneugh,
and mony orra things besides that had been missing for mony a day.
And Sir John, when he had riped the turret weel, led my gudesire into
the dining-parlor, and took him by the hand, and spoke kindly to him,
and said he was sorry he should have doubted his word, and that he
would hereafter be a good master to him, to make amends.
"And now, Steenie," said Sir John, "although this vision of yours
tends, on the whole, to my father's credit, as an honest man, that he
should, even after his death, desire to see justice done to a poor
man like you, yet you are sensible that ill-dispositioned men might
make bad constructions upon it, concerning his soul's health. So, I
think, we had better lay the haill dirdum on that ill-deedie
creature, Major Weir, and say naething about your dream in the wood
of Pitmurkie, You had taken ower muckle brandy to be very certain
about onything; and, Steenie, this receipt (his hand shook while he
held it out), it's but a queer kind of document, and we will do best,
I think, to put it quietly in the fire."
"Od, but for as queer as it is, it's a' the voucher I have for my
rent," said my gudesire, who was afraid, it may be, of losing the
benefit of Sir Robert's discharge.
"I will bear the contents to your credit in the rental-book, and give
you a discharge under my own hand," said Sir John, "and that on the
spot. And, Steenie, if you can hold your tongue about this matter,
you shall sit, from this term downward, at an easier rent."
"Mony thanks to your honor," said Steenie, who saw easily in what
corner the wind was; "doubtless I will be conformable to all your
honor's commands; only I would willingly speak wi' some powerful
minister on the subject, for I do not like the sort of summons of
appointment whilk your honor's father--"
"Do not call the phantom my father!" said Sir John, interrupting him.
"Weel, then, the thing that was so like him," said my gudesire; "he
spoke of my coming back to him this time twelvemonth, and it's a
weight on my conscience."
"Aweel, then," said Sir John, "if you be so much distressed in mind,
you speak to our minister of the parish; he is a douce man, regards
the honor of our family, and the mair that he may look for some
patronage from me."
Wi' that my gudesire readily agreed that the receipt should be
burned, and the laird threw it into the chimney with his ain hand.
Burn it would not for them, though; but away it flew up the lum, wi'
a lang train of sparks at its tail, and a hissing noise like a squib.
My gudesire gaed down to the manse, and the minister, when he had
heard the story, said it was his real opinion that, though my
gudesire had gaen very far in tampering with dangerous matters, yet,
as he had refused the devil's arles (for such was the offer of meat
and drink), and had refused to do homage by piping at his bidding, he
hoped, that if he held a circumspect walk hereafter, Satan could take
little advantage by what was come and gane. And, indeed, my
gudesire, of his ain accord, lang foreswore baith the pipes and the
brandy; it was not even till the year was out, and the fatal day
passed, that he would so much as take the fiddle, or drink usquebaugh
or tippenny.
Sir John made up his story about the jackanape as he liked himsell;
and some believe till this day there was no more in the matter than
the filching nature of the brute. Indeed, ye'll no hinder some to
threap that it was nane o' the Auld Enemy that Dougal and Hutcheon
saw in the laird's room, but only that wanchancie creature, the
major, capering on the coffin; and that, as to the blawing on the
laird's whistle that was heard after he was dead, the filthy brute
could do that as weel as the laird himsell, if no better. But Heaven
kens the truth, whilk first came out by the minister's wife, after
Sir John and her ain gudeman were baith in the molds. And then, my
gudesire, wha was failed in his limbs, but not in his judgment or
memory--at least nothing to speak of--was obliged to tell the real
narrative to his freends for the credit of his good name. He might
else have been charged for a warlock.
The shades of evening were growing thicker around us as my conductor
finished his long narrative with this moral: "Ye see, birkie, it is
nae chancy thing to tak a stranger traveler for a guide when ye are
in an uncouth land."
"I should not have made that inference," said I. "Your grandfather's
adventure was fortunate for himself, whom it saved from ruin and
distress; and fortunate for his landlord also, whom it prevented from
committing a gross act of injustice."
"Ay, but they had baith to sup the sauce o't sooner or later," said
Wandering Willie. "What was fristed wasna forgiven. Sir John died
before he was much over threescore; and it was just like of a
moment's illness. And for my gudesire, though he departed in fulness
of years, yet there was my father, a yauld man of forty-five, fell
down betwixt the stilts of his pleugh, and raise never again, and
left nae bairn but me, a puir sightless, fatherless, motherless
creature, could neither work nor want. Things gaed weel aneugh at
first; for Sir Redwald Redgauntlet, the only son of Sir John, and the
oye of auld Sir Robert, and, wae's me! the last of the honorable
house, took the farm off our hands, and brought me into his household
to have care of me. He liked music, and I had the best teachers
baith England and Scotland could gie me. Mony a merry year was I wi'
him; but wae's me! he gaed out with other pretty men in the
Forty-five--I'll say nae mair about it. My head never settled weel
since I lost him; and if I say another word about it, deil a bar will
I have the heart to play the night. Look out, my gentle chap," he
resumed, in a different tone, "ye should see the lights in Brokenburn
Glen by this time."
END OF VOLUME TWO
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