The next day, the last of the visiting patients to whom my forenoons
were devoted had just quitted me, when I was summoned in haste to attend
the steward of a Sir Philip Derval not residing at his family seat,
which was about five miles from L----. It was rarely indeed that persons
so far from the town, when of no higher rank than this applicant, asked
my services.
But it was my principle to go wherever I was summoned; my profession
was not gain, it was healing, to which gain was the incident, not
the essential. This case the messenger reported as urgent. I went on
horseback, and rode fast; but swiftly as I cantered through the village
that skirted the approach to Sir Philip Derval’s park, the evident care
bestowed on the accommodation of the cottagers forcibly struck me. I
felt that I was on the lands of a rich, intelligent, and beneficent
proprietor. Entering the park, and passing before the manor-house, the
contrast between the neglect and the decay of the absentee’s stately
Hall and the smiling homes of his villagers was disconsolately mournful.
An imposing pile, built apparently by Vanbrugh, with decorated
pilasters, pompous portico, and grand perron (or double flight of stairs
to the entrance), enriched with urns and statues, but discoloured,
mildewed, chipped, half-hidden with unpruned creepers and ivy. Most of
the windows were closed with shutters, decaying for want of paint; in
some of the casements the panes were broken; the peacock perched on the
shattered balustrade, that fenced a garden overgrown with weeds. The
sun glared hotly on the place, and made its ruinous condition still more
painfully apparent. I was glad when a winding in the park-road shut
the house from my sight. Suddenly I emerged through a copse of ancient
yew-trees, and before me there gleamed, in abrupt whiteness, a building
evidently designed for the family mausoleum, classical in its outline,
with the blind iron door niched into stone walls of massive thickness,
and surrounded by a funereal garden of roses and evergreens, fenced with
an iron rail, party-gilt.
The suddenness with which this House of the Dead came upon me heightened
almost into pain, if not into awe, the dismal impression which the
aspect of the deserted home in its neighbourhood had made. I spurred my
horse, and soon arrived at the door of my patient, who lived in a fair
brick house at the other extremity of the park.
I found my patient, a man somewhat advanced in years, but of a robust
conformation, in bed: he had been seized with a fit, which was supposed
to be apoplectic, a few hours before; but was already sensible, and out
of immediate danger. After I had prescribed a few simple remedies, I
took aside the patient’s wife, and went with her to the parlour below
stairs, to make some inquiry about her husband’s ordinary regimen and
habits of life. These seemed sufficiently regular; I could discover no
apparent cause for the attack, which presented symptoms not familiar to
my experience. “Has your husband ever had such fits before?”
“Never!”
“Had he experienced any sudden emotion? Had he heard any unexpected
news; or had anything happened to put him out?”
The woman looked much disturbed at these inquiries. I pressed them more
urgently. At last she burst into tears, and clasping my hand, said, “Oh,
doctor, I ought to tell you--I sent for you on purpose--yet I fear you
will not believe me: my good man has seen a ghost!”
“A ghost!” said I, repressing a smile. “Well, tell me all, that I may
prevent the ghost coming again.”
The woman’s story was prolix. Its substance was this. Her husband,
habitually an early riser, had left his bed that morning still earlier
than usual, to give directions about some cattle that were to be sent
for sale to a neighbouring fair. An hour afterwards he had been found by
a shepherd, near the mausoleum, apparently lifeless. On being removed to
his own house, he had recovered speech, and bidding all except his wife
leave the room, he then told her that on walking across the park towards
the cattle-sheds, he had seen what appeared to him at first a pale light
by the iron door of the mausoleum. On approaching nearer, this light
changed into the distinct and visible form of his master, Sir Philip
Derval, who was then abroad,--supposed to be in the East, where he had
resided for many years. The impression on the steward’s mind was so
strong, that he called out, “Oh, Sir Philip!” when looking still
more intently, he perceived that the face was that of a corpse. As he
continued to gaze, the apparition seemed gradually to recede, as
if vanishing into the sepulchre itself. He knew no more; he became
unconscious. It was the excess of the poor woman’s alarm, on hearing
this strange tale, that made her resolve to send for me instead of the
parish apothecary. She fancied so astounding a cause for her husband’s
seizure could only be properly dealt with by some medical man reputed
to have more than ordinary learning; and the steward himself objected to
the apothecary in the immediate neighbourhood, as more likely to annoy
him by gossip than a physician from a comparative distance.
I took care not to lose the confidence of the good wife by parading too
quickly my disbelief in the phantom her husband declared that he had
seen; but as the story itself seemed at once to decide the nature of the
fit to be epileptic, I began to tell her of similar delusions which, in
my experience, had occurred to those subjected to epilepsy, and
finally soothed her into the conviction that the apparition was clearly
reducible to natural causes. Afterwards, I led her on to talk about
Sir Philip Derval, less from any curiosity I felt about the absent
proprietor than from a desire to re-familiarize her own mind to his
image as a living man. The steward had been in the service of Sir
Philip’s father, and had known Sir Philip himself from a child. He was
warmly attached to his master, whom the old woman described as a man of
rare benevolence and great eccentricity, which last she imputed to his
studious habits. He had succeeded to the title and estates as a minor.
For the first few years after attaining his majority, he had mixed much
in the world. When at Derval Court his house had been filled with gay
companions, and was the scene of lavish hospitality; but the estate
was not in proportion to the grandeur of the mansion, still less to the
expenditure of the owner. He had become greatly embarrassed; and some
love disappointment (so it was rumoured) occurring simultaneously with
his pecuniary difficulties, he had suddenly changed his way of life,
shut himself up from his old friends, lived in seclusion, taking to
books and scientific pursuits, and as the old woman said vaguely and
expressively, “to odd ways.” He had gradually by an economy that,
towards himself, was penurious, but which did not preclude much
judicious generosity to others, cleared off his debts; and, once more
rich, he had suddenly quitted the country, and taken to a life of
travel. He was now about forty-eight years old, and had been eighteen
years abroad. He wrote frequently to his steward, giving him minute and
thoughtful instructions in regard to the employment, comforts, and homes
of the peasantry, but peremptorily ordering him to spend no money on the
grounds and mansion, stating as a reason why the latter might be allowed
to fall into decay, his intention to pull it down whenever he returned
to England.
I stayed some time longer than my engagements well warranted at my
patient’s house, not leaving till the sufferer, after a quiet sleep, had
removed from his bed to his armchair, taken food, and seemed perfectly
recovered from his attack.
Riding homeward, I mused on the difference that education makes, even
pathologically, between man and man. Here was a brawny inhabitant of
rural fields, leading the healthiest of lives, not conscious of the
faculty we call imagination, stricken down almost to Death’s door by
his fright at an optical illusion, explicable, if examined, by the same
simple causes which had impressed me the night before with a moment’s
belief in a sound and a spectre,--me who, thanks to sublime education,
went so quietly to sleep a few minutes after, convinced that no phantom,
the ghostliest that ear ever heard or eye ever saw, can be anything else
but a nervous phenomenon.