coming to such a villain as myself at all. It's no use for me to wish
good to you, or to bless you; for such as me has no blessings to give.'
I told him that I had but done my duty, and urged him to proceed to the
matter which weighed upon his mind. He then spoke nearly as follows:
'I came in drunk on Friday night last, and got to my bed here; I don't
remember how. Sometime in the night it seemed to me I wakened, and
feeling unasy in myself, I got up out of the bed. I wanted the fresh
air; but I would not make a noise to open the window, for fear I'd waken
the crathurs. It was very dark and throublesome to find the door; but
at last I did get it, and I groped my way out, and went down as asy as I
could. I felt quite sober, and I counted the steps one after another, as
I was going down, that I might not stumble at the bottom.
'When I came to the first landing-place--God be about us always!--the
floor of it sunk under me, and I went down--down--down, till the senses
almost left me. I do not know how long I was falling, but it seemed to
me a great while. When I came rightly to myself at last, I was sitting
near the top of a great table; and I could not see the end of it, if it
had any, it was so far off. And there was men beyond reckoning, sitting
down all along by it, at each side, as far as I could see at all. I
did not know at first was it in the open air; but there was a close
smothering feel in it that was not natural. And there was a kind of
light that my eyesight never saw before, red and unsteady; and I did not
see for a long time where it was coming from, until I looked straight
up, and then I seen that it came from great balls of blood-coloured
fire that were rolling high over head with a sort of rushing, trembling
sound, and I perceived that they shone on the ribs of a great roof of
rock that was arched overhead instead of the sky. When I seen this,
scarce knowing what I did, I got up, and I said, "I have no right to
be here; I must go." And the man that was sitting at my left hand only
smiled, and said, "Sit down again; you can NEVER leave this place." And
his voice was weaker than any child's voice I ever heerd; and when he
was done speaking he smiled again.
'Then I spoke out very loud and bold, and I said, "In the name of God,
let me out of this bad place." And there was a great man that I did not
see before, sitting at the end of the table that I was near; and he was
taller than twelve men, and his face was very proud and terrible to look
at. And he stood up and stretched out his hand before him; and when he
stood up, all that was there, great and small, bowed down with a sighing
sound, and a dread came on my heart, and he looked at me, and I could
not speak. I felt I was his own, to do what he liked with, for I knew at
once who he was; and he said, "If you promise to return, you may depart
for a season;" and the voice he spoke with was terrible and mournful,
and the echoes of it went rolling and swelling down the endless cave,
and mixing with the trembling of the fire overhead; so that when he
sat down there was a sound after him, all through the place, like
the roaring of a furnace, and I said, with all the strength I had, "I
promise to come back--in God's name let me go!"
'And with that I lost the sight and the hearing of all that was there,
and when my senses came to me again, I was sitting in the bed with the
blood all over me, and you and the rest praying around the room.'
Here he paused and wiped away the chill drops of horror which hung upon
his forehead.
I remained silent for some moments. The vision which he had just
described struck my imagination not a little, for this was long
before Vathek and the 'Hall of Eblis' had delighted the world; and the
description which he gave had, as I received it, all the attractions of
novelty beside the impressiveness which always belongs to the narration
of an EYE-WITNESS, whether in the body or in the spirit, of the scenes
which he describes. There was something, too, in the stern horror
with which the man related these things, and in the incongruity of his
description, with the vulgarly received notions of the great place of
punishment, and of its presiding spirit, which struck my mind with awe,
almost with fear. At length he said, with an expression of horrible,
imploring earnestness, which I shall never forget--'Well, sir, is
there any hope; is there any chance at all? or, is my soul pledged and
promised away for ever? is it gone out of my power? must I go back to
the place?'
In answering him, I had no easy task to perform; for however clear
might be my internal conviction of the groundlessness of his tears,
and however strong my scepticism respecting the reality of what he had
described, I nevertheless felt that his impression to the contrary, and
his humility and terror resulting from it, might be made available as
no mean engines in the work of his conversion from prodigacy, and of his
restoration to decent habits, and to religious feeling.
I therefore told him that he was to regard his dream rather in the light
of a warning than in that of a prophecy; that our salvation depended not
upon the word or deed of a moment, but upon the habits of a life; that,
in fine, if he at once discarded his idle companions and evil habits,
and firmly adhered to a sober, industrious, and religious course of
life, the powers of darkness might claim his soul in vain, for that
there were higher and firmer pledges than human tongue could utter,
which promised salvation to him who should repent and lead a new life.
I left him much comforted, and with a promise to return upon the next
day. I did so, and found him much more cheerful and without any remains
of the dogged sullenness which I suppose had arisen from his despair.
His promises of amendment were given in that tone of deliberate
earnestness, which belongs to deep and solemn determination; and it was
with no small delight that I observed, after repeated visits, that his
good resolutions, so far from failing, did but gather strength by time;
and when I saw that man shake off the idle and debauched companions,
whose society had for years formed alike his amusement and his ruin, and
revive his long discarded habits of industry and sobriety, I said within
myself, there is something more in all this than the operation of an
idle dream.
One day, sometime after his perfect restoration to health, I was
surprised on ascending the stairs, for the purpose of visiting this
man, to find him busily employed in nailing down some planks upon the
landing-place, through which, at the commencement of his mysterious
vision, it seemed to him that he had sunk. I perceived at once that he
was strengthening the floor with a view to securing himself against such
a catastrophe, and could scarcely forbear a smile as I bid 'God bless
his work.'
He perceived my thoughts, I suppose, for he immediately said:
'I can never pass over that floor without trembling. I'd leave this
house if I could, but I can't find another lodging in the town so cheap,
and I'll not take a better till I've paid off all my debts, please God;
but I could not be asy in my mind till I made it as safe as I could.
You'll hardly believe me, your honour, that while I'm working, maybe a
mile away, my heart is in a flutter the whole way back, with the bare
thoughts of the two little steps I have to walk upon this bit of a
floor. So it's no wonder, sir, I'd thry to make it sound and firm with
any idle timber I have.'
I applauded his resolution to pay off his debts, and the steadiness with
which he perused his plans of conscientious economy, and passed on.
Many months elapsed, and still there appeared no alteration in his
resolutions of amendment. He was a good workman, and with his better
habits he recovered his former extensive and profitable employment.
Everything seemed to promise comfort and respectability. I have little
more to add, and that shall be told quickly. I had one evening met Pat
Connell, as he returned from his work, and as usual, after a mutual, and
on his side respectful salutation, I spoke a few words of encouragement
and approval. I left him industrious, active, healthy--when next I saw
him, not three days after, he was a corpse.
The circumstances which marked the event of his death were somewhat
strange--I might say fearful. The unfortunate man had accidentally met
an early friend just returned, after a long absence, and in a moment of
excitement, forgetting everything in the warmth of his joy, he yielded
to his urgent invitation to accompany him into a public-house, which lay
close by the spot where the encounter had taken place. Connell, however,
previously to entering the room, had announced his determination to take
nothing more than the strictest temperance would warrant.
But oh! who can describe the inveterate tenacity with which a drunkard's
habits cling to him through life? He may repent--he may reform--he may
look with actual abhorrence upon his past profligacy; but amid all this
reformation and compunction, who can tell the moment in which the
base and ruinous propensity may not recur, triumphing over resolution,
remorse, shame, everything, and prostrating its victim once more in all
that is destructive and revolting in that fatal vice?
The wretched man left the place in a state of utter intoxication. He was
brought home nearly insensible, and placed in his bed, where he lay in
the deep calm lethargy of drunkenness. The younger part of the family
retired to rest much after their usual hour; but the poor wife remained
up sitting by the fire, too much grieved and shocked at the occurrence
of what she had so little expected, to settle to rest; fatigue, however,
at length overcame her, and she sank gradually into an uneasy slumber.
She could not tell how long she had remained in this state, when she
awakened, and immediately on opening her eyes, she perceived by the
faint red light of the smouldering turf embers, two persons, one of whom
she recognised as her husband, noiselessly gliding out of the room.
'Pat, darling, where are you going?' said she. There was no answer--the
door closed after them; but in a moment she was startled and terrified
by a loud and heavy crash, as if some ponderous body had been hurled
down the stair. Much alarmed, she started up, and going to the head of
the staircase, she called repeatedly upon her husband, but in vain. She
returned to the room, and with the assistance of her daughter, whom I
had occasion to mention before, she succeeded in finding and lighting a
candle, with which she hurried again to the head of the staircase.
At the bottom lay what seemed to be a bundle of clothes, heaped
together, motionless, lifeless--it was her husband. In going down the
stair, for what purpose can never now be known, he had fallen helplessly
and violently to the bottom, and coming head foremost, the spine at
the neck had been dislocated by the shock, and instant death must have
ensued. The body lay upon that landing-place to which his dream had
referred. It is scarcely worth endeavouring to clear up a single point
in a narrative where all is mystery; yet I could not help suspecting
that the second figure which had been seen in the room by Connell's wife
on the night of his death, might have been no other than his own shadow.
I suggested this solution of the difficulty; but she told me that the
unknown person had been considerably in advance of the other, and on
reaching the door, had turned back as if to communicate something to his
companion. It was then a mystery.
Was the dream verified?--whither had the disembodied spirit sped?--who
can say? We know not. But I left the house of death that day in a state
of horror which I could not describe. It seemed to me that I was scarce
awake. I heard and saw everything as if under the spell of a night-mare.
The coincidence was terrible.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Purcell Papers, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu