"Nightmare," the stranger continued, firmly. "The curious thing about it
was that I never exactly knew the subject of his nightmare, and a more
curious thing yet was Melford himself never knew it, when I woke him up.
He said he couldn't make out anything but a kind of scraping in a
door-lock. His theory was that in his childhood it had been a much
completer thing, but that the circumstances had broken down in a sort of
decadence, and now there was nothing left of it but that scraping in the
door-lock, like somebody trying to turn a misfit key. I used to throw
things at his door, and once I tried a cold-water douche from the
pitcher, when he was very hard to waken; but that was rather brutal, and
after a while I used to let him roar himself awake; he would always do
it, if I trusted to nature; and before our junior year was out I got so
that I could sleep through, pretty calmly; I would just say to myself
when he fetched me to the surface with a yell, 'That's Melford
dreaming,' and doze off sweetly."
"Jove!" Rulledge said, "I don't see how you could stand it."
"There's everything in habit, Rulledge," Minver put in. "Perhaps our
friend only dreamt that he heard a dream."
"That's quite possible," the stranger owned, politely. "But the case is
superficially as I state it. However, it was all past, long ago, when I
recognized Melford in the smoking-room that night: it must have been ten
or a dozen years. I was wearing a full beard then, and so was he; we
wore as much beard as we could in those days. I had been through the
war since college, and he had been in California, most of the time, and,
as he told me, he had been up north, in Alaska, just after we bought it,
and hurt his eyes--had snow-blindness--and he wore spectacles. In fact,
I had to do most of the recognizing, but after we found out who we were
we were rather comfortable; and I liked him better than I remembered to
have liked him in our college days. I don't suppose there was ever much
harm in him; it was only my grudge about his nightmare. We talked along
and smoked along for about an hour, and I could hear the porter outside,
making up the berths, and the train rumbled away towards Framingham, and
then towards Worcester, and I began to be sleepy, and to think I would
go to bed myself; and just then the door of the smoking-room opened, and
a young girl put in her face a moment, and said: 'Oh, I beg your pardon.
I thought it was the stateroom,' and then she shut the door, and I
realized that she looked like a girl I used to know."
The stranger stopped, and I fancied from a note in his voice that this
girl was perhaps like an early love. We silently waited for him to
resume how and when he would. He sighed, and after an appreciable
interval he began again. "It is curious how things are related to one
another. My wife had never seen her, and yet, somehow, this girl that
looked like the one I mean brought my mind back to my wife with a quick
turn, after I had forgotten her in my talk with Melford for the time
being. I thought how lonely she was in that little house of ours in
Cambridge, on rather an outlying street, and I knew she was thinking of
me, and hating to have me away on Christmas Eve, which isn't such a
lively time after you're grown up and begin to look back on a good many
other Christmas Eves, when you were a child yourself; in fact, I don't
know a dismaler night in the whole year. I stepped out on the platform
before I began to turn in, for a mouthful of the night air, and I found
it was spitting snow--a regular Christmas Eve of the true pattern; and I
didn't believe, from the business feel of those hard little pellets,
that it was going to stop in a hurry, and I thought if we got into New
York on time we should be lucky. The snow made me think of a night when
my wife was sure there were burglars in the house; and in fact I heard
their tramping on the stairs myself--thump, thump, thump, and then a
stop, and then down again. Of course it was the slide and thud of the
snow from the roof of the main part of the house to the roof of the
kitchen, which was in an L, a story lower, but it was as good an
imitation of burglars as I want to hear at one o'clock in the morning;
and the recollection of it made me more anxious about my wife, not
because I believed she was in danger, but because I knew how frightened
she must be.
"When I went back into the car, that girl passed me on the way to her
stateroom, and I concluded that she was the only woman on board, and her
friends had taken the stateroom for her, so that she needn't feel
strange. I usually go to bed in a sleeper as I do in my own house, but
that night I somehow couldn't. I got to thinking of accidents, and I
thought how disagreeable it would be to turn out into the snow in my
nighty. I ended by turning in with my clothes on, all except my coat;
and, in spite of the red-hot stoves, I wasn't any too warm. I had a
berth in the middle of the car, and just as I was parting my curtains to
lie down, old Melford came to take the lower berth opposite. It made me
laugh a little, and I was glad of the relief. 'Why, hello, Melford,'
said I. 'This is like the old Holworthy times.' 'Yes, isn't it?' said
he, and then I asked something that I had kept myself from asking all
through our talk in the smoking-room, because I knew he was rather
sensitive about it, or used to be. 'Do you ever have that regulation
nightmare of yours nowadays, Melford? He gave a laugh, and said: 'I
haven't had it, I suppose, once in ten years. What made you think of
it?' I said: 'Oh, I don't know. It just came into my mind. Well,
good-night, old fellow. I hope you'll rest well,' and suddenly I began
to feel light-hearted again, and I went to sleep as gayly as ever I did
in my life."
The stranger paused again, and Wanhope said: "Those swift transitions of
mood are very interesting. Of course they occur in that remote region of
the mind where all incidents and sensations are of one quality, and
things of the most opposite character unite in a common origin. No one
that I remember has attempted to trace such effects to their causes, and
then back again from their causes, which would be much more important."
"Yes, I dare say," Minver put in. "But if they all amount to the same
thing in the end, what difference would it make?"
"It would perhaps establish the identity of good and evil," Wanhope
suggested.
"Oh, the sinners are convinced of that already," Minver said, while
Rulledge glanced quickly from one to the other.
The stranger looked rather dazed, and Rulledge said: "Well, I don't
suppose that was the conclusion of the whole matter?"
"Oh no," the stranger answered, "that was only the beginning of the
conclusion. I didn't go to sleep at once, though I felt so much at
peace. In fact, Melford beat me, and I could hear him far in advance,
steaming and whistling away, in a style that I recalled as
characteristic, over a space of intervening years that I hadn't
definitely summed up yet. It made me think of a night near Narragansett
Bay, where two friends of mine and I had had a mighty good dinner at a
sort of wild club-house, and had hurried into our bunks, each one so as
to get the start of the others, for the fellows that were left behind
knew they had no chance of sleep after the first began to get in his
work. I laughed, and I suppose I must have gone to sleep almost
simultaneously, for I don't recollect anything afterwards till I was
wakened by a kind of muffled bellow, that I remembered only too well. It
was the unfailing sign of Melford's nightmare.
"I was ready to swear, and I was ashamed for the fellow who had no more
self-control than that: when a fellow snores, or has a nightmare, you
always think first off that he needn't have had it if he had tried. As
usual, I knew Melford didn't know what his nightmare was about, and that
made me madder still, to have him bellowing into the air like that, with
no particular aim. All at once there came a piercing scream from the
stateroom, and then I knew that the girl there had heard Melford and
been scared out of a year's growth."
The stranger made a little break, and Wanhope asked, "Could you make out
what she screamed, or was it quite inarticulate?"
"It was plain enough, and it gave me a clew, somehow, to what Melford's
nightmare was about. She was calling out, 'Help! help! help! Burglars!'
till I thought she would raise the roof of the car."
"And did she wake anybody?" Rulledge inquired.
"That was the strange part of it. Not a soul stirred, and after the
first burst the girl seemed to quiet down again and yield the floor to
Melford, who kept bellowing steadily away. I was so furious that I
reached out across the aisle to shake him, but the attempt was too much
for me. I lost my balance and fell out of my berth onto the floor. You
may imagine the state of mind I was in. I gathered myself up and pulled
Melford's curtains open and was just going to fall on him tooth and
nail, when I was nearly taken off my feet again by an apparition: well,
it looked like an apparition, but it was a tall fellow in his
nighty--for it was twenty years before pajamas--and he had a small dark
lantern in his hand, such as we used to carry in those days so as to
read in our berths when we couldn't sleep. He was gritting his teeth,
and growling between them: 'Out o' this! Out o' this! I'm going to shoot
to kill, you blasted thieves!' I could see by the strange look in his
eyes that he was sleep-walking, and I didn't wait to see if he had a
pistol. I popped in behind the curtains, and found myself on top of
another fellow, for I had popped into the wrong berth in my confusion.
The man started up and yelled: 'Oh, don't kill me! There's my watch on
the stand, and all the money in the house is in my pantaloons pocket.
The silver's in the sideboard down-stairs, and it's plated, anyway.'
Then I understood what his complaint was, and I rolled onto the floor
again. By that time every man in the car was out of his berth, too,
except Melford, who was devoting himself strictly to business; and every
man was grabbing some other, and shouting, 'Police!' or 'Burglars!' or
'Help!' or 'Murder!' just as the fancy took him."
"Most extraordinary!" Wanhope commented as the stranger paused for
breath.
In the intensity of our interest, we had crowded close upon him, except
Minver, who sat with his head thrown back, and that cynical cast in his
eye which always exasperated Rulledge; and Halson, who stood smiling
proudly, as if the stranger's story did him as his sponsor credit
personally.
"Yes," the stranger owned, "but I don't know that there wasn't something
more extraordinary still. From time to time the girl in the stateroom
kept piping up, with a shriek for help. She had got past the burglar
stage, but she wanted to be saved, anyhow, from some danger which she
didn't specify. It went through me that it was very strange nobody
called the porter, and I set up a shout of 'Porter!' on my own account.
I decided that if there were burglars the porter was the man to put them
out, and that if there were no burglars the porter could relieve our
groundless fears. Sure enough, he came rushing in, as soon as I called
for him, from the little corner by the smoking-room where he was
blacking boots between dozes. He was wide enough awake, if having his
eyes open meant that, and he had a shoe on one hand and a shoe-brush in
the other. But he merely joined in the general up-roar and shouted for
the police."
"Excuse me," Wanhope interposed. "I wish to be clear as to the facts.
You had reasoned it out that the porter could quiet the tumult?"
"Never reasoned anything out so clearly in my life."
"But what was your theory of the situation? That your friend, Mr.
Melford, had a nightmare in which he was dreaming of burglars?"
"I hadn't a doubt of it."
"And that by a species of dream-transference the nightmare was
communicated to the young lady in the stateroom?"
"Well--yes."
"And that her call for help and her cry of burglars acted as a sort of
hypnotic suggestion with the other sleepers, and they began to be
afflicted with the same nightmare?"
"I don't know that I ever put it to myself so distinctly, but it appears
to me now that I must have reached some such conclusion."
"That is very interesting, very interesting indeed. I beg your pardon.
Please go on," Wanhope courteously entreated.
"I don't remember just where I was," the stranger faltered.
Rulledge returned with an accuracy which obliged us all: "'The porter
merely joined in the general uproar and shouted for the police.'"
"Oh yes," the stranger assented. "Then I didn't know what to do, for a
minute. The porter was a pretty thick-headed darky, but he was
lion-hearted; and his idea was to lay hold of a burglar wherever he
could find him. There were plenty of burglars in the aisle there, or
people that were afraid of burglars, and they seemed to think the porter
had a good idea. They had hold of one another already, and now began to
pull up and down the aisles in a way that reminded me of the
old-fashioned mesmeric lecturers, when they told their subjects that
they were this or that, and set them to acting the part. I remembered
how once when the mesmerist gave out that they were at a horse--race,
and his subjects all got astride of their chairs, and galloped up and
down the hall like a lot of little boys on laths. I thought of that now,
and although it was rather a serious business, for I didn't know what
minute they would come to blows, I couldn't help laughing. The sight was
weird enough. Every one looked like a somnambulist as he pulled and
hauled. The young lady in the stateroom was doing her full share. She
was screaming, 'Won't somebody let me out?' and hammering on the door. I
guess it was her screaming and hammering that brought the conductor at
last, or maybe he just came round in the course of nature to take up the
tickets. It was before the time when they took the tickets at the gate,
and you used to stick them into a little slot at the side of your berth,
and the conductor came along and took them in the night, somewhere
between Worcester and Springfield, I should say."
"I remember," Rulledge assented, but very carefully, so as not to
interrupt the flow of the narrative. "Used to wake up everybody in the
car."
"Exactly," the stranger said. "But this time they were all wide awake to
receive him, or fast asleep, and dreaming their roles. He came along
with the wire of his lantern over his arm, the way the old-time
conductors did, and calling out, 'Tickets!' just as if it was broad day,
and he believed every man was trying to beat his way to New York. The
oddest thing about it was that the sleep-walkers all stopped their
pulling and hauling a moment, and each man reached down to the little
slot alongside of his berth and handed over his ticket. Then they took
hold and began pulling and hauling again. I suppose the conductor asked
what the matter was; but I couldn't hear him, and I couldn't make out
exactly what he did say. But the passengers understood, and they all
shouted 'Burglars!' and that girl in the stateroom gave a shriek that
you could have heard from one end of the train to the other, and
hammered on the door, and wanted to be let out.
"It seemed to take the conductor by surprise, and he faced towards the
stateroom and let the lantern slip off his arm, and it dropped onto the
floor and went out; I remember thinking what a good thing it didn't set
the car on fire. But there in the dark--for the car lamps went out at
the same time with the lantern--I could hear those fellows pulling and
hauling up and down the aisle and scuffling over the floor, and through
all Melford bellowing away, like an orchestral accompaniment to a combat
in Wagner opera, but getting quieter and quieter till his bellow died
away altogether. At the same time the row in the aisle of the car
stopped, and there was perfect silence, and I could hear the snow
rattling against my window. Then I went off into a sound sleep, and
never woke till we got into New York."
The stranger seemed to have reached the end of his story, or at least to
have exhausted the interest it had for him, and he smoked on, holding
his knee between his hands and looking thoughtfully into the fire.
He had left us rather breathless, or, better said, blank, and each
looked at the other for some initiative; then we united in looking at
Wanhope; that is, Rulledge and I did. Minver rose and stretched himself
with what I must describe as a sardonic yawn; Halson had stolen away
before the end, as one to whom the end was known. Wanhope seemed by no
means averse to the inquiry delegated to him, but only to be formulating
its terms. At last he said:
"I don't remember hearing of any case of this kind before.
Thought-transference is a sufficiently ascertained phenomenon--the
insistence of a conscious mind upon a certain fact until it penetrates
the unconscious mind of another and is adopted as its own. But in the
dream state the mind seems passive, and becomes the prey of this or that
self-suggestion, without the power of imparting it to another dreaming
mind. Yet here we have positive proof of such an effect. It appears that
the victim of a particularly terrific nightmare was able to share its
horrors--or rather unable _not_ to share them--with a whole sleeping-car
full of people whose brains helplessly took up the same theme, and
dreamed it, as we may say, to the same conclusions. I said proof, but of
course we can't accept a single instance as establishing a scientific
certainty. I don't question the veracity of Mr.--"
"Newton," the stranger suggested.
"Newton's experience," Wanhope continued, "but we must wait for a good
many cases of the kind before we can accept what I may call
metaphantasmia as being equally established with thought-transference.
If we could it would throw light upon a whole series of most curious
phenomena, as, for instance, the privity of a person dreamed about to
the incident created by the dreamer."
"That would be rather dreadful, wouldn't it?" I ventured. "We do dream
such scandalous, such compromising things about people."
"All that," Wanhope gently insisted, "could have nothing to do with the
fact. That alone is to be considered in an inquiry of the kind. One is
never obliged to tell one's dreams. I wonder"--he turned to the
stranger, who sat absently staring into the fire--"if you happened to
speak to your friend about his nightmare in the morning, and whether he
was by any chance aware of the participation of the others in it?"
"I certainly spoke to him pretty plainly when we got into New York."
"And what did he say?"
"He said he had never slept better in his life, and he couldn't remember
having a trace of nightmare. He said he heard _me_ groaning at one time,
but I stopped just as he woke, and so he didn't rouse me as he thought
of doing. It was at Hartford, and he went to sleep again, and slept
through without a break."
"And what was your conclusion from that?" Wanhope asked.
"That he was lying, I should say," Rulledge replied for the stranger.
Wanhope still waited, and the stranger said, "I suppose one conclusion
might be that I had dreamed the whole thing myself."
"Then you wish me to infer," the psychologist pursued, "that the entire
incident was a figment of your sleeping brain? That there was no sort of
sleeping thought-transference, no metaphantasmia, no--Excuse me. Do you
remember verifying your impression of being between Worcester and
Springfield when the affair occurred, by looking at your watch, for
instance?"
The stranger suddenly pulled out his watch at the word. "Good Heavens!"
he called out. "It's twenty minutes of eleven, and I have to take the
eleven-o'clock train to Boston. I must bid you good-evening, gentlemen.
I've just time to get it if I can catch a cab. Good-night, good-night. I
hope if you come to Boston--eh--Good-night! Sometimes," he called over
his shoulder, "I've thought it might have been that girl in the
stateroom that started the dreaming."
He had wrung our hands one after another, and now he ran out of the
room.
Rulledge said, in appeal to Wanhope: "I don't see how his being the
dreamer invalidates the case, if his dreams affected the others."
"Well," Wanhope answered, thoughtfully, "that depends."
"And what do you think of its being the girl in the stateroom?"
"That would be very interesting."
V