I.

The incident was of a dignity which the supernatural has by no means

always had, and which has been more than ever lacking in it since the

manifestations of professional spiritualism began to vulgarize it. Hewson

appreciated this as soon as he realized that he had been confronted with

an apparition. He had been very little agitated at the moment, and it was

not till later, when the conflict between sense and reason concerning the

fact itself arose, that he was aware of any perturbation. Even then,

amidst the tumult of his whirling emotions he had a sort of central calm,

in which he noted the particulars of the occurrence with distinctness and

precision. He had always supposed that if anything of the sort happened

to him he would be greatly frightened, but he had not been at all

frightened, so far as he could make out. His hair had not risen, or his

cheek felt a chill; his heart had not lost or gained a beat in its

pulsation; and his prime conclusion was that if the Mysteries had chosen

him an agent in approaching the material world they had not made a

mistake. This becomes grotesque in being put into words, but the words do

not misrepresent, except by their inevitable excess, the mind in which

Hewson rose, and flung open his shutters to let in the dawn upon the

scene of the apparition, which he now perceived must have been, as it

were, self-lighted. The robins were yelling from the trees and the

sparrows bickering under them; catbirds were calling from the thickets of

syringa, and in the nearest woods a hermit-thrush was ringing its crystal

bells. The clear day was penetrating the east with the subtle light which

precedes the sun, and a summer sweetness rose cool from the garden below,

gray with dew.

In the solitude of the hour there was an intimation of privity to the

event which had taken place, an implication of the unity of the natural

and the supernatural, strangely different from that robust gayety of the

plain day which later seemed to disown the affair, and leave the burden

of proof altogether to the human witness. By this time Hewson had already

set about to putting it in such phrases as should carry conviction to the

hearer, and yet should convey to him no suspicion of the pride which

Hewson felt in the incident as a sort of tribute to himself. He

dramatized the scene at breakfast when he should describe it in plain,

matter-of-fact terms, and hold every one spellbound, as he or she leaned

forward over the table to listen, while he related the fact with studied

unconcern for his own part in it, but with a serious regard for the

integrity of the fact itself, which he had no wish to exaggerate as to

its immediate meaning or remoter implications. It did not yet occur to

him that it had none; they were simply to be matters of future

observation in a second ordeal; for the first emotion which the incident

imparted was the feeling that it would happen again, and in this return

would interpret itself. Hewson was so strongly persuaded of something of

the kind, that after standing for an indefinite period at the window in

his pajamas, he got hardily back into bed, and waited for the repetition.

He was agreeably aware of waiting without a tremor, and rather eagerly

than otherwise; then he began to feel drowsy, and this at first flattered

him, as a proof of his strange courage in circumstances which would have

rendered sleep impossible to most men; but in another moment he started

from it. If he slept every one would say he had dreamt the whole thing;

and he could never himself be quite sure that he had not.

He got up, and began to dress, thinking all the time, in a dim way, how

very long it would be till breakfast, and wondering what he should do

till then with his appetite and his apparition. It was now only a little

after four o’clock of the June morning, and nobody would be down till

after eight; most people at that very movable feast, which St. John had

in the English fashion, did not show themselves before nine. It was

impossible to get a book and read for five hours; he would be dropping

with hunger if he walked so long. Yet he must not sleep; and he must do

something to keep from sleeping. He remembered a little interloping

hotel, which had lately forced its way into precincts sacred to cottage

life, and had impudently called itself the St. Johnswort Inn, after St.

John’s place, by a name which he prided himself on having poetically

invented from his own and that of a prevalent wild flower. Upon the

chance of getting an early cup of coffee at this hotel, Hewson finished

dressing, and crept down stairs to let himself out of the house.

He not only found the door locked, as he had expected, but the key taken

out; and after some misgiving he decided to lift one of the long library

windows, from which he could get into the garden, closing the window

after him, and so make his escape. No one was stirring outside the house

any more than within; he knocked down a trellis by which a clematis was

trying to climb over the window he emerged from, and found his way out of

the grounds without alarming any one. He was not so successful at the

hotel, where a lank boy, sweeping the long piazzas, recognized one of the

St. Johnswort guests in the figure approaching the steps, and apparently

had his worst fears roused for Hewson’s sanity when Hewson called to him

and wondered if he could get a cup of coffee at that hour; he openly

owned it was an unnatural hour, and he had a fine inward sense that it

was supernatural. The boy dropped his broom without a word, and vanished

through the office door, reappearing after a blank interval to pick up

his broom and say, “I guess so,” as he began sweeping again. It was well,

for one reason that he did not state his belief too confidently, Hewson

thought; but after another interval of unknown length a rude, sad girl

came to tell him his coffee was waiting for him. He followed her back

into the still dishevelled dining room, and sat down at a long table to a

cup of lukewarm drink that in color and quality recalled terrible

mornings of Atlantic travel when he haplessly rose and descended to the

dining-saloon of the steamer, and had a marine version of British coffee

brought him by an alien table-steward.

He remembered the pock-marked nose of one alien steward, and how he had

questioned whether he should give the fellow six-pence or a shilling,

seeing that apart from this tribute he should have to fee his own steward

for the voyage; at the same time his fancy played with the question

whether that uncouth, melancholy waitress had found a moment to wash her

face before hurrying to fetch his coffee. He amused himself by

contrasting her sloven dejection with the brisk neatness of the service

at St. Johnswort; but through all he never lost the awe, the sense of

responsibility which he bore to the vision vouchsafed him, doubtless for

some reason and to some end that it behooved him to divine.

He found a yesterday’s paper in the office of the hotel, and read it till

he began to drowse over it, when he pulled himself up with a sharp jerk.

He discovered that it was now six o’clock, and he thought if he could

walk about for an hour he might return to St. Johnswort, and worry

through the remaining hour till breakfast somehow. He was still framing

in his thoughts some sort of statement concerning the apparition which he

should make when the largest number of guests had got together at the

table, with a fine question whether he should take them between the

cantaloupe and the broiled chicken, or wait till they had come to the

corn griddle-cakes, which St. John’s cook served of a filigree perfection

in homage to the good old American breakfast ideal. There would be more

women, if he waited, and he should need the sympathy and countenance of

women; his story would be wanting in something of its supreme effect

without the electrical response of their keener nerves.