THE SPIRIT UNFOLDS A HORRID TALE.
"IF ever a man had a right to swoon away, Hopkins," continued the
spirit, his voice dropping to a whisper, "I was that man, and I presume
I should have done so but for the everlasting spirit of compromise in my
breast. The proper thing to do under the circumstances was manifestly to
flop down on the carpet insensate, just as you did when I announced
myself to you; and I assure you I had greater reason for so doing than
you had, for my visitor had absolutely no limitations whatsoever in the
line of the horrible. He was an affront to every sense, and not, like
myself, trying only to the ear. To the sense of sight was he most
horrible, and I would have given anything I possessed to be able to
remove my eyes from his dreadful personality, with the long bony claws
where you and I have fingers; with tight-drawn cheeks so transparent
that through them could be seen his hideous jaws; with eyes which stared
even when the lids closed over them; and, worst of all, his throbbing
brain was visible as it worked inside his skull; and so bloodless of
aspect was he withal, that the mind instinctively likened him to a
fasting vampire."
"Excuse me!" groaned Hopkins, throwing himself down on the couch and
burying his face in the pillow. "This is awful. I've crossed the ocean
eight times, Sallie, and until now I have never known sea-sickness, but
this--this vampire of yours is mightier than Neptune; just hand me the
whiskey."
"I'm sorry it affects you that way, Hopkins," said the spirit, "and I'd
gladly give you the whiskey if I could, but you know how circumscribed
my abilities are. I haven't any hand to hand it with."
"Never mind," said Hopkins, the colour returning to his cheeks, "I feel
better now. It was only a sudden turn I had; only, my friend, go slow on
the horrible, will you?"
"I wish I could," replied the spirit sadly, "but the cause of truth
requires that I tell you precisely what happened, omitting no single
detail of the sickening totality. Perhaps, before I proceed, you had
better take a dozen grains of quinine, and have the whiskey within
reach."
"That is a good suggestion," said Hopkins, rising and gulping down the
pills, and grasping the neck of the square-cut bottle containing the
treasured fluid, with his trembling hand. "Go ahead," he said, as he
resumed his recumbent position on the couch.
"To the olfactories," resumed the spirit, "the visitant was stifling. A
gross of sulphur matches let off all at once would be a weak imitation
of the atmospheric condition of this room after he had been here two
minutes, and yet I did not dare to turn from him to open the window. My
only weapon of defence was my eye, under the tense gaze of which he
seemed uneasy, and I was fearful of what might happen were I to permit
it to waver for one instant. His colour was simply deadly. I should
describe it best, perhaps, as of a pallid green in which there was a
suggestion of yellow that heightened the general effect to the point
where it became ghastly."
Here Hopkins' eyelids fluttered, and the bottle was raised to his lips.
When the draught had been taken the bottle dropped from his nerveless
fingers to the floor, and shivered into countless slivers of brown
crystal.
"Jove!" ejaculated the spirit. "That was very unfortunate, Hop--"
"No matter," interrupted Hopkins, "it was empty. Go on. Did this private
view you and the Nile-green apparition were having of each other last
for ever?"
"No," returned the spirit, "it did not. It probably lasted less than a
minute, although it seemed a century. I tried half a dozen times to
speak, but my words were frozen on my lips."
"Why didn't you break them off and throw them at him?" suggested
Toppleton, hysterical to the point of flippancy.
"Because I did not possess the genius of the Yankee who is inventive
where the Briton is only enduring," retorted the spirit, somewhat
disgusted at Toppleton's airy treatment of his awful situation. "Finally
my visitor spoke, and for an instant I wished he hadn't, his voice was
so abominably harsh, so jangling to every nerve in my body, however
callous."
"'You don't appear to be glad to see me,' he said.
"'Well, to tell you the truth,' I replied, 'I am not. I am not a
collector of optical delusions, nor am I a lover of the horrible and
mysterious.'
"'But I am your friend,' remonstrated my visitor.
"'I should dislike to be judged by my friends, if that is so,' I
returned, throwing as much withering contempt into my glance as I
possibly could. 'I think,' I resumed, 'if I were to be seen walking down
Piccadilly with you, I should be cut by every self-respecting
acquaintance I have.'
"'You are an ungrateful wretch,' said the intruder. 'Here I have
travelled myriads of miles to help you, and the minute I put in an
appearance you cast worse slurs upon me than you would if I were your
worst enemy.'
"'I do not wish to be ungrateful,' I answered coolly, 'but you must
admit that it is difficult for a purely mortal being like myself to
receive a supernatural being like yourself with any degree of
cordiality.'
"'Granted,' returned the spectre with a grin, which was more terrifying
to me than anything I had yet seen, 'but when I tell you that I have
come to befriend you--'
"'I don't call it friendly to scare a man to death; I don't call it
friendly to steal invisibly into a man's office and choke him nearly to
suffocation. It seems to me you might use some other style of cologne to
advantage when you go calling on your friends, and if I had cheeks
through which my whole molar system was visible to the outside world,
I'd grow whiskers.'"
"My admiration for you has increased eighty-seven per cent.," put in
Toppleton, "that is, it has if all you say you said to the spook is
true."
"I'd swear to it," returned the spirit, the tone of his voice showing
the gratification he felt at Toppleton's words. "I talked up to him all
the time, though I was quaking inwardly from the start. He noticed it
too, for he said practically what you have just remarked.
"'You command my highest admiration,' were his words. 'If you were as
spunky as this all the time, you would not need my assistance, but you
are not, and so I have come. _You must not compromise that case._'
"Here the deadly green thing rose from the chair and approached me,"
continued the spirit, "and as he approached my terror increased, so it
is no wonder that, when he got so near that I could feel his wretched
soul-chilling breath upon my cheek, his luminous body towering above me
as a giant towers over a dwarf, and repeated the words, '_you must not
compromise that case_,' I should shrink back into a heap at the side of
my desk, and reply, 'Certainly _not_.'"
"'You have a splendid fighting chance,' he added, 'but it will be a
bitter fight,--a fight, the winning of which will make you famous, but
which you, by yourself, with all the law in Christendom on your side,
could no more win than you could batter down the Tower of London with
balls of putty.'
"'Then,' said I, 'I _must_ compromise.'
"'No,' returned my visitor, 'for I am here to win the case for you.'
"'You will never be retained,' I retorted. 'You are a degree too foggy
to be acceptable either to my client or to myself.'
"'I do not ask to be retained; but you must provide me with the means to
appear in court. _You must leave your body and let me put it on._'"
"That must have been a staggerer," said Hopkins. "Were you fool enough
to give it to him without getting a receipt?"
"I was not fool enough to yield without persuasion," rejoined the spirit
sadly, "but when he brought all the infernal power at his command into
play to lure me on, I weakened, and when I weaken I am done for.
Toppleton, that messenger of Satan promised me everything that was dear
to my soul. The temptation of Faust was nowhere alongside of that which
was placed before me as mine if I but chose to take it, and no price was
asked save that one little privilege of being permitted to do the
things which should make me rich, powerful and happy in the guise which
I was to put off that the apparition might put it on. From my boyhood
days I had wished to be rich and powerful, and from the hour in which I
reached man's estate had I been in love, but hopelessly, since she I
loved was ambitious, and would not consent to be mine until I had made
my mark.
"'Alone,' said my visitor, 'you will never make your name illustrious.
With my help you may--and consider what it means. Refuse my offer, and
you will lead the dull, monotonous life of him who knows no success, to
whose ears the plaudits of the world shall never come; you will live
alone and uncared for, for she whom you love cannot become the wife of a
failure. Accept my offer, and in a month you are famous, in a year you
are rich, in an instant you are happy, for the heart you yearn toward
will beat responsive to your own.'
"'But your motive!' I cried. 'Why should you do all this for me who know
you not, and without a price?'
"'My reason,' returned that perjured instrument of malign fate, 'is my
weakness. I love the world. I love the sensation of living. I love to
hear the praises of man ringing in my ears. I am a lover of earth and
earthly ways, with no hope of tasting the joys of earth save in your
acquiescence. I am the soul of one departed. I have put off against my
will the mortal habitation in which I dwelt for many happy years. I have
solved the rebus of existence and have put on omniscience. All things I
can accomplish once I have the means. I ask you for them, with little
hope that you will grant my request, however, because you are the
embodiment of all that is uncertain. Had you lived among the Olympian
gods, they would have made you the Deity of Indecision; but before
refusing my offer remember this, you have now the grand opportunity of
life, such an opportunity as has never been offered to any mortal being
since the time of Shakespeare--'
"'Did Shakespeare have this opportunity?' I asked eagerly.
"'My son,' returned the apparition, with a meaning look, 'do not seek to
know too much about the mystery of William Shakespeare. You know whence
he sprang, how he lived and what he achieved; let my unguarded words of
a moment since be the seed of suggestion which planted in the soil of
your brain may sprout and blossom forth into the flowers of certain
knowledge. It is not for me to let a mortal like you into the confidence
of the Fates; suffice it that _I_ offer you immortality and present
happiness. Think it over: I will return to-morrow.'
"Before I could reply," continued the spirit, "he had vanished. The
light of my lamp returned of its own volition, and but for the odour of
sulphur which still clung to the hangings of the room I should have
supposed that I had been dreaming.
"Utterly wearied by the excitement of my strange experience, I threw
myself down upon my couch, and fell into a deep sleep from which I did
not awake for sixteen hours, in consequence of which a whole day was
practically gone out of my life.
"Darkness was closing in upon me as I opened my eyes, and as it grew
more dense I could see taking shape in the chair by my table my visitor
of the night before, more pallid and sulphurous than ever.
"'Well?' he said, as I opened my eyes.
"'No!' I answered shortly, 'I am not well. I might be much better if
you'd confine yourself to the cemetery to which you belong.'
"'Reparteedious as ever!' he retorted.
"'I don't know the word,' I replied; 'it belongs to neither a dead nor a
live language.'
"'But it's a good word, nevertheless,' observed the ghost quietly,' and
I advise you to think of it whenever you are inclined to indulge in
stupid repartee. It may help you in your career,--but I have come for an
answer to my proposition.'"
"He was right about reparteedious," said Hopkins, interrupting the
spirit's story; "that's a good word, and unless you have it copyrighted
I think I'll open the doors of my vocabulary and admit it to the charmed
circle of my verbiage."
"No, I have no copyright on it," replied the spirit, gazing at Hopkins
with as sad an expression as could possibly be assumed, considering the
imperturbability of Aunt Sallie's countenance. "You may have it for your
vocabulary, Hopkins, but if you will take a little well-meant advice you
had better be very careful about your word collection. Your frequent and
flippant interruptions of my sad story lead me to fear that you are
overworking your vocabulary, which is a very dangerous thing for a young
man of your age and intelligence to do.
"But to resume my tale," continued the spirit, after waiting a moment
for Hopkins to reply to his suggestion, which Hopkins seemed not to
hear, so busy was he looking for his memorandum book on his table,--a
table so littered up with papers and silver paraphernalia for writing
that no portion of its polished surface was visible. "I told my
unwelcome guest that I had no answer to give him; that, as I was not a
believer in the supernatural, I did not intend to waste my time in
parleying with a figment of my brain.
"'You are cautious enough to have been a policeman,' he said in response
to this. 'But caution in this instance is a vice.'
"'Caution is not a vice when a spirit of your evil aspect enters one's
office in the dead of night, and asks for the loan of one's body,' I
answered. 'I should be more justified in lending my diamond-stud to a
sneak thief to wear to a lawn-tennis party at the Duke of Devonshire's,
than in acquiescing in your scheme.'
"'Then you do not care to become a great man, to assure yourself of a
fortune beyond your wildest dreams, to put yourself in such a position
that she whom you love will be unable to resist your proposal of
marriage?'
"'I am not untruthful enough to make any such pretence as that,' I
answered. 'I do want to be everything you say, to have everything that
you promise, but if I know the young woman upon whom my affections are
lavishing themselves, she would object strenuously to my making a
bargain with a transparent offshoot of the infernal regions like
yourself. How do I know that, after I am married and have settled down
to a life of honourable ease, you will not come along and insist upon an
invitation to dinner; or obtrude yourself into the home circle at times
when it will be extremely inconvenient to receive you? What guarantee
have I that, when I have suddenly developed from my present obscurity
into the promised distinction, you will not appear to some of my rivals
and let them into the secret of my success; and, more important still,
how do I know that after Miss Hicksworthy-Johnstone has become my wife
you will not go to her and destroy my happiness by revealing to her the
true state of affairs?'
"'I can only give you my word that I will be faithful,' returned my
visitor.
"'Well, if your word is no better than reparteedious, it is not the kind
of word upon which I should place any reliance whatsoever,' I retorted;
'so you may as well take yourself off; I am not lending myself these
days.'"
"That was very well said," observed Toppleton, "only I wish you had had
witnesses. Your sudden development of back-bone under the circumstance
was so extraordinarily extraordinary that it is almost beyond credence.
Did the fiend depart as you spoke those words?"
"No," returned the exiled spirit, "he did not. He began operations,
deceiving me grossly. He rose from the rocking-chair and said he fancied
it was time for him to be off. When he got to the door he turned and
kissed his right collection of claws to me, and asked if there was any
place in the neighbourhood where he could get a drink. Well, of course,
unpleasant as he was to look at, he had injured me in no respect, and
save for my instinctive suspicions I had no real reason for believing
that he was actuated by any but the best of motives. So I replied that
the best place I knew of for him to get a drink was right here in this
room, and that if he would wait a second I would join him in a glass. He
hesitated an instant, and then said that seeing it was I who asked him,
he thought he would; so I got out my little stone jug and poured out two
rather stiff doses of brandy. Now it had been my habit to take my liquid
refreshment undiluted, and taking my glass in hand I held it aloft and
observed, 'Here's to you.'
"My visitor placed his claws on my arm.
"'You do not mean to say,' he said, 'that you take this fiery stuff
without water?'
"'That is my custom,' I answered. 'I think it a positive wrong to spoil
good brandy with the rather inferior brand of water we get here in
London, nor do I deem it proper to take so pure a fluid as water and
destroy its innocence by introducing this liquid into it.'
"'As you please,' was my visitor's response. 'I was foolish enough to do
that myself when I was fortunate enough to have a physique. In fact it
was just that thing that finally laid me by the heels. But let me have a
little water with mine please.'
"I laid my glass down beside his on the table, and, taking the pitcher,
left the room for an instant to fill it at the water-cooler."
"That was a fine thing to do," said Toppleton. "Your idiocy cropped out
then in great shape. How did you know he wouldn't rob you?"
"I wish he had robbed me and gone about his business," returned the
spirit. "If that was all he did, I'd have been all right to this day. I
was gone about two minutes, and when I returned he was standing by the
window, whistling the most obnoxious tune I ever heard. What it was I
don't know, but it gave me a chill. As I entered the room he stopped
whistling and turned to greet me, took the pitcher from my hand, filled
his glass to the brim with water and quaffed its contents. I drank my
dose raw. As the brandy coursed down my throat into my stomach I fairly
groaned with pain, it burned me so.
"'What the devil have you been doing with that brandy?' I cried, turning
upon my visitor.
"'Swallowing it; why?' he asked innocently. 'You meant that I should
drink it, didn't you?'
"'You can't put me off that way,' I groaned in my agony; for if I had
swallowed a hot coal I could not have suffered more, that infernal stuff
scorched me so. 'You have drugged my brandy.'
"'Have I?' he asked, with a menacing gesture and a frown that wrinkled
up his hideous forehead, until his brains, still visible through the
transparent flesh and bone, were reduced to a spongy mass no bigger than
a walnut--"
"He was concentrating his mind, I suppose?" suggested Hopkins.
"It looked that way," said the spirit, "and it was an awful sight.
"'Have I?' he repeated, and then he added, 'well, if I have, it is only
to save you from yourself, for by this means alone can you ever fulfil
your destiny.'
"As these words issued forth from his white lips, I became unconscious.
How long I remained so, I do not know; but when I came to once more, I
was as I am now--a spirit having no visible shape; while seated in my
chair, writing with my pen and in perfect imitation of my chirography, I
saw what had been my body now occupied by another."