took sick, and from a low fever passed into some indefinable ailment
which, because of her age, was no longer curable. Old Henry drove to
Swinnerton, the neighboring town, and procured a doctor. Some friends
called, and the immediate care of her was taken off his hands. Then
one chill spring night she died, and old Henry, in a fog of sorrow
and uncertainty, followed her body to the nearest graveyard, an
unattractive space with a few pines growing in it. Although he might
have gone to the daughter in Pemberton or sent for her, it was really
too much trouble and he was too weary and fixed. It was suggested to
him at once by one friend and another that he come to stay with them
awhile, but he did not see fit. He was so old and so fixed in his
notions and so accustomed to the exact surroundings he had known all
his days, that he could not think of leaving. He wanted to remain
near where they had put his Phœbe; and the fact that he would have to
live alone did not trouble him in the least. The living children were
notified and the care of him offered if he would leave, but he would
not.
“I kin make a shift for myself,” he continually announced to old Dr.
Morrow, who had attended his wife in this case. “I kin cook a little,
and, besides, it don’t take much more’n coffee an’ bread in the
mornin’s to satisfy me. I’ll get along now well enough. Yuh just let
me be.” And after many pleadings and proffers of advice, with supplies
of coffee and bacon and baked bread duly offered and accepted, he was
left to himself. For a while he sat idly outside his door brooding in
the spring sun. He tried to revive his interest in farming, and to keep
himself busy and free from thought by looking after the fields, which
of late had been much neglected. It was a gloomy thing to come in of
an evening, however, or in the afternoon and find no shadow of Phœbe
where everything suggested her. By degrees he put a few of her things
away. At night he sat beside his lamp and read in the papers that were
left him occasionally or in a Bible that he had neglected for years,
but he could get little solace from these things. Mostly he held his
hand over his mouth and looked at the floor as he sat and thought of
what had become of her, and how soon he himself would die. He made a
great business of making his coffee in the morning and frying himself a
little bacon at night; but his appetite was gone. The shell in which he
had been housed so long seemed vacant, and its shadows were suggestive
of immedicable griefs. So he lived quite dolefully for five long
months, and then a change began.
It was one night, after he had looked after the front and the back
door, wound the clock, blown out the light, and gone through all the
self-same motions that he had indulged in for years, that he went to
bed not so much to sleep as to think. It was a moonlight night. The
green-lichen-covered orchard just outside and to be seen from his bed
where he now lay was a silvery affair, sweetly spectral. The moon shone
through the east windows, throwing the pattern of the panes on the
wooden floor, and making the old furniture, to which he was accustomed,
stand out dimly in the room. As usual he had been thinking of Phœbe and
the years when they had been young together, and of the children who
had gone, and the poor shift he was making of his present days. The
house was coming to be in a very bad state indeed. The bed-clothes were
in disorder and not clean, for he made a wretched shift of washing. It
was a terror to him. The roof leaked, causing things, some of them, to
remain damp for weeks at a time, but he was getting into that brooding
state where he would accept anything rather than exert himself. He
preferred to pace slowly to and fro or to sit and think.
By twelve o’clock of this particular night he was asleep, however,
and by two had waked again. The moon by this time had shifted to a
position on the western side of the house, and it now shone in through
the windows of the living-room and those of the kitchen beyond. A
certain combination of furniture--a chair near a table, with his coat
on it, the half-open kitchen door casting a shadow, and the position
of a lamp near a paper--gave him an exact representation of Phœbe
leaning over the table as he had often seen her do in life. It gave
him a great start. Could it be she--or her ghost? He had scarcely ever
believed in spirits; and still---- He looked at her fixedly in the
feeble half-light, his old hair tingling oddly at the roots, and then
sat up. The figure did not move. He put his thin legs out of the bed
and sat looking at her, wondering if this could really be Phœbe. They
had talked of ghosts often in their lifetime, of apparitions and omens;
but they had never agreed that such things could be. It had never been
a part of his wife’s creed that she could have a spirit that could
return to walk the earth. Her after-world was quite a different affair,
a vague heaven, no less, from which the righteous did not trouble to
return. Yet here she was now, bending over the table in her black skirt
and gray shawl, her pale profile outlined against the moonlight.
“Phœbe,” he called, thrilling from head to toe and putting out one bony
hand, “have yuh come back?”
The figure did not stir, and he arose and walked uncertainly to the
door, looking at it fixedly the while. As he drew near, however, the
apparition resolved itself into its primal content--his old coat over
the high-backed chair, the lamp by the paper, the half-open door.
“Well,” he said to himself, his mouth open, “I thought shore I saw
her.” And he ran his hand strangely and vaguely through his hair, the
while his nervous tension relaxed. Vanished as it had, it gave him the
idea that she might return.
Another night, because of this first illusion, and because his mind
was now constantly on her and he was old, he looked out of the window
that was nearest his bed and commanded a hen-coop and pig-pen and
a part of the wagon-shed, and there, a faint mist exuding from the
damp of the ground, he thought he saw her again. It was one of those
little wisps of mist, one of those faint exhalations of the earth that
rise in a cool night after a warm day, and flicker like small white
cypresses of fog before they disappear. In life it had been a custom
of hers to cross this lot from her kitchen door to the pig-pen to
throw in any scrap that was left from her cooking, and here she was
again. He sat up and watched it strangely, doubtfully, because of his
previous experience, but inclined, because of the nervous titillation
that passed over his body, to believe that spirits really were, and
that Phœbe, who would be concerned because of his lonely state, must
be thinking about him, and hence returning. What other way would she
have? How otherwise could she express herself? It would be within the
province of her charity so to do, and like her loving interest in
him. He quivered and watched it eagerly; but, a faint breath of air
stirring, it wound away toward the fence and disappeared.
A third night, as he was actually dreaming, some ten days later, she
came to his bedside and put her hand on his head.
“Poor Henry!” she said. “It’s too bad.”
He roused out of his sleep, actually to see her, he thought, moving
from his bed-room into the one living-room, her figure a shadowy mass
of black. The weak straining of his eyes caused little points of
light to flicker about the outlines of her form. He arose, greatly
astonished, walked the floor in the cool room, convinced that Phœbe
was coming back to him. If he only thought sufficiently, if he made it
perfectly clear by his feeling that he needed her greatly, she would
come back, this kindly wife, and tell him what to do. She would perhaps
be with him much of the time, in the night, anyhow; and that would make
him less lonely, this state more endurable.
In age and with the feeble it is not such a far cry from the subtleties
of illusion to actual hallucination, and in due time this transition
was made for Henry. Night after night he waited, expecting her return.
Once in his weird mood he thought he saw a pale light moving about the
room, and another time he thought he saw her walking in the orchard
after dark. It was one morning when the details of his lonely state
were virtually unendurable that he woke with the thought that she was
not dead. How he had arrived at this conclusion it is hard to say.
His mind had gone. In its place was a fixed illusion. He and Phœbe
had had a senseless quarrel. He had reproached her for not leaving
his pipe where he was accustomed to find it, and she had left. It was
an aberrated fulfillment of her old jesting threat that if he did not
behave himself she would leave him.
“I guess I could find yuh ag’in,” he had always said. But her cackling
threat had always been:
“Yuh’ll not find me if I ever leave yuh. I guess I kin git some place
where yuh can’t find me.”
This morning when he arose he did not think to build the fire in the
customary way or to grind his coffee and cut his bread, as was his
wont, but solely to meditate as to where he should search for her and
how he should induce her to come back. Recently the one horse had been
dispensed with because he found it cumbersome and beyond his needs. He
took down his soft crush hat after he had dressed himself, a new glint
of interest and determination in his eye, and taking his black crook
cane from behind the door, where he had always placed it, started out
briskly to look for her among the nearest neighbors. His old shoes
clumped soundly in the dust as he walked, and his gray-black locks,
now grown rather long, straggled out in a dramatic fringe or halo from
under his hat. His short coat stirred busily as he walked, and his
hands and face were peaked and pale.
“Why, hello, Henry! Where’re yuh goin’ this mornin’?” inquired Farmer
Dodge, who, hauling a load of wheat to market, encountered him on the
public road. He had not seen the aged farmer in months, not since his
wife’s death, and he wondered now, seeing him looking so spry.
“Yuh ain’t seen Phœbe, have yuh?” inquired the old man, looking up
quizzically.
“Phœbe who?” inquired Farmer Dodge, not for the moment connecting the
name with Henry’s dead wife.
“Why, my wife Phœbe, o’ course. Who do yuh s’pose I mean?” He stared
up with a pathetic sharpness of glance from under his shaggy, gray
eyebrows.
“Wall, I’ll swan, Henry, yuh ain’t jokin’, are yuh?” said the solid
Dodge, a pursy man, with a smooth, hard, red face. “It can’t be your
wife yuh’re talkin’ about. She’s dead.”
“Dead! Shucks!” retorted the demented Reifsneider. “She left me early
this mornin’, while I was sleepin’. She allus got up to build the fire,
but she’s gone now. We had a little spat last night, an’ I guess that’s
the reason. But I guess I kin find her. She’s gone over to Matilda
Race’s; that’s where she’s gone.”
He started briskly up the road, leaving the amazed Dodge to stare in
wonder after him.
“Well, I’ll be switched!” he said aloud to himself. “He’s clean out’n
his head. That poor old feller’s been livin’ down there till he’s gone
outen his mind. I’ll have to notify the authorities.” And he flicked
his whip with great enthusiasm. “Geddap!” he said, and was off.
Reifsneider met no one else in this poorly populated region until he
reached the whitewashed fence of Matilda Race and her husband three
miles away. He had passed several other houses en route, but these not
being within the range of his illusion were not considered. His wife,
who had known Matilda well, must be here. He opened the picket-gate
which guarded the walk, and stamped briskly up to the door.
“Why, Mr. Reifsneider,” exclaimed old Matilda herself, a stout woman,
looking out of the door in answer to his knock, “what brings yuh here
this mornin’?”
“Is Phœbe here?” he demanded eagerly.
“Phœbe who? What Phœbe?” replied Mrs. Race, curious as to this sudden
development of energy on his part.
“Why, my Phœbe, o’ course. My wife Phœbe. Who do yuh s’pose? Ain’t she
here now?”
“Lawsy me!” exclaimed Mrs. Race, opening her mouth. “Yuh pore man! So
you’re clean out’n your mind now. Yuh come right in and sit down. I’ll
git yuh a cup o’ coffee. O’ course your wife ain’t here; but yuh come
in an’ sit down. I’ll find her fer yuh after a while. I know where she
is.”
The old farmer’s eyes softened, and he entered. He was so thin and pale
a specimen, pantalooned and patriarchal, that he aroused Mrs. Race’s
extremest sympathy as he took off his hat and laid it on his knees
quite softly and mildly.
“We had a quarrel last night, an’ she left me,” he volunteered.
“Laws! laws!” sighed Mrs. Race, there being no one present with whom
to share her astonishment as she went to her kitchen. “The pore man!
Now somebody’s just got to look after him. He can’t be allowed to run
around the country this way lookin’ for his dead wife. It’s turrible.”
She boiled him a pot of coffee and brought in some of her new-baked
bread and fresh butter. She set out some of her best jam and put a
couple of eggs to boil, lying whole-heartedly the while.
“Now yuh stay right there, Uncle Henry, till Jake comes in, an’ I’ll
send him to look for Phœbe. I think it’s more’n likely she’s over to
Swinnerton with some o’ her friends. Anyhow, we’ll find out. Now yuh
just drink this coffee an’ eat this bread. Yuh must be tired. Yuh’ve
had a long walk this mornin’.” Her idea was to take counsel with Jake,
“her man,” and perhaps have him notify the authorities.
She bustled about, meditating on the uncertainties of life, while old
Reifsneider thrummed on the rim of his hat with his pale fingers and
later ate abstractedly of what she offered. His mind was on his wife,
however, and since she was not here, or did not appear, it wandered
vaguely away to a family by the name of Murray, miles away in another
direction. He decided after a time that he would not wait for Jake Race
to hunt his wife but would seek her for himself. He must be on, and
urge her to come back.
“Well, I’ll be goin’,” he said, getting up and looking strangely about
him. “I guess she didn’t come here after all. She went over to the
Murrays’, I guess. I’ll not wait any longer, Mis’ Race. There’s a lot
to do over to the house to-day.” And out he marched in the face of her
protests taking to the dusty road again in the warm spring sun, his
cane striking the earth as he went.
It was two hours later that this pale figure of a man appeared in the
Murrays’ doorway, dusty, perspiring, eager. He had tramped all of five
miles, and it was noon. An amazed husband and wife of sixty heard his
strange query, and realized also that he was mad. They begged him to
stay to dinner, intending to notify the authorities later and see what
could be done; but though he stayed to partake of a little something,
he did not stay long, and was off again to another distant farmhouse,
his idea of many things to do and his need of Phœbe impelling him. So
it went for that day and the next and the next, the circle of his
inquiry ever widening.
The process by which a character assumes the significance of being
peculiar, his antics weird, yet harmless, in such a community is often
involute and pathetic. This day, as has been said, saw Reifsneider at
other doors, eagerly asking his unnatural question, and leaving a trail
of amazement, sympathy, and pity in his wake. Although the authorities
were informed--the county sheriff, no less--it was not deemed advisable
to take him into custody; for when those who knew old Henry, and had
for so long, reflected on the condition of the county insane asylum, a
place which, because of the poverty of the district, was of staggering
aberration and sickening environment, it was decided to let him remain
at large; for, strange to relate, it was found on investigation that
at night he returned peaceably enough to his lonesome domicile there
to discover whether his wife had returned, and to brood in loneliness
until the morning. Who would lock up a thin, eager, seeking old man
with iron-gray hair and an attitude of kindly, innocent inquiry,
particularly when he was well known for a past of only kindly servitude
and reliability? Those who had known him best rather agreed that he
should be allowed to roam at large. He could do no harm. There were
many who were willing to help him as to food, old clothes, the odds
and ends of his daily life--at least at first. His figure after a time
became not so much a commonplace as an accepted curiosity, and the
replies, “Why, no, Henry; I ain’t see her,” or “No, Henry; she ain’t
been here to-day,” more customary.
For several years thereafter then he was an odd figure in the sun
and rain, on dusty roads and muddy ones, encountered occasionally
in strange and unexpected places, pursuing his endless search.
Undernourishment, after a time, although the neighbors and those
who knew his history gladly contributed from their store, affected
his body; for he walked much and ate little. The longer he roamed
the public highway in this manner, the deeper became his strange
hallucination; and finding it harder and harder to return from his more
and more distant pilgrimages, he finally began taking a few utensils
with him from his home, making a small package of them, in order that
he might not be compelled to return. In an old tin coffee-pot of large
size he placed a small tin cup, a knife, fork, and spoon, some salt and
pepper, and to the outside of it, by a string forced through a pierced
hole, he fastened a plate, which could be released, and which was his
woodland table. It was no trouble for him to secure the little food
that he needed, and with a strange, almost religious dignity, he had no
hesitation in asking for that much. By degrees his hair became longer
and longer, his once black hat became an earthen brown, and his clothes
threadbare and dusty.
For all of three years he walked, and none knew how wide were his
perambulations, nor how he survived the storms and cold. They could not
see him, with homely rural understanding and forethought, sheltering
himself in hay-cocks, or by the sides of cattle, whose warm bodies
protected him from the cold, and whose dull understandings were not
opposed to his harmless presence. Overhanging rocks and trees kept him
at times from the rain, and a friendly hay-loft or corn-crib was not
above his humble consideration.
The involute progression of hallucination is strange. From asking at
doors and being constantly rebuffed or denied, he finally came to the
conclusion that although his Phœbe might not be in any of the houses
at the doors of which he inquired, she might nevertheless be within
the sound of his voice. And so, from patient inquiry, he began to call
sad, occasional cries, that ever and anon waked the quiet landscapes
and ragged hill regions, and set to echoing his thin “O-o-o Phœbe!
O-o-o Phœbe!” It had a pathetic, albeit insane, ring, and many a farmer
or plowboy came to know it even from afar and say, “There goes old
Reifsneider.”
Another thing that puzzled him greatly after a time and after many
hundreds of inquiries was, when he no longer had any particular
dooryard in view and no special inquiry to make, which way to go. These
cross-roads, which occasionally led in four or even six directions,
came after a time to puzzle him. But to solve this knotty problem,
which became more and more of a puzzle, there came to his aid another
hallucination. Phœbe’s spirit or some power of the air or wind or
nature would tell him. If he stood at the center of the parting of the
ways, closed his eyes, turned thrice about, and called “O-o-o Phœbe!”
twice, and then threw his cane straight before him, that would surely
indicate which way to go for Phœbe, or one of these mystic powers would
surely govern its direction and fall! In whichever direction it went,
even though, as was not infrequently the case, it took him back along
the path he had already come, or across fields, he was not so far gone
in his mind but that he gave himself ample time to search before he
called again. Also the hallucination seemed to persist that at some
time he would surely find her. There were hours when his feet were
sore, and his limbs weary, when he would stop in the heat to wipe his
seamed brow, or in the cold to beat his arms. Sometimes, after throwing
away his cane, and finding it indicating the direction from which he
had just come, he would shake his head wearily and philosophically,
as if contemplating the unbelievable or an untoward fate, and then
start briskly off. His strange figure came finally to be known in the
farthest reaches of three or four counties. Old Reifsneider was a
pathetic character. His fame was wide.
Near a little town called Watersville, in Green County, perhaps four
miles from that minor center of human activity, there was a place
or precipice locally known as the Red Cliff, a sheer wall of red
sandstone, perhaps a hundred feet high, which raised its sharp face
for half a mile or more above the fruitful corn-fields and orchards
that lay beneath, and which was surmounted by a thick grove of trees.
The slope that slowly led up to it from the opposite side was covered
by a rank growth of beech, hickory, and ash, through which threaded
a number of wagon-tracks crossing at various angles. In fair weather
it had become old Reifsneider’s habit, so inured was he by now to the
open, to make his bed in some such patch of trees as this to fry his
bacon or boil his eggs at the foot of some tree before laying himself
down for the night. Occasionally, so light and inconsequential was his
sleep, he would walk at night. More often, the moonlight or some sudden
wind stirring in the trees or a reconnoitering animal arousing him,
he would sit up and think, or pursue his quest in the moonlight or the
dark, a strange, unnatural, half wild, half savage-looking but utterly
harmless creature, calling at lonely road crossings, staring at dark
and shuttered houses, and wondering where, where Phœbe could really be.
That particular lull that comes in the systole-diastole of this
earthly ball at two o’clock in the morning invariably aroused him, and
though he might not go any farther he would sit up and contemplate the
darkness or the stars, wondering. Sometimes in the strange processes
of his mind he would fancy that he saw moving among the trees the
figure of his lost wife, and then he would get up to follow, taking his
utensils, always on a string, and his cane. If she seemed to evade him
too easily he would run, or plead, or, suddenly losing track of the
fancied figure, stand awed or disappointed, grieving for the moment
over the almost insurmountable difficulties of his search.
It was in the seventh year of these hopeless peregrinations, in the
dawn of a similar springtime to that in which his wife had died, that
he came at last one night to the vicinity of this self-same patch
that crowned the rise to the Red Cliff. His far-flung cane, used as a
divining-rod at the last cross-roads, had brought him hither. He had
walked many, many miles. It was after ten o’clock at night, and he was
very weary. Long wandering and little eating had left him but a shadow
of his former self. It was a question now not so much of physical
strength but of spiritual endurance which kept him up. He had scarcely
eaten this day, and now exhausted he set himself down in the dark to
rest and possibly to sleep.