THE CASKET AND THE GHOST
Richard Travis could not sleep that night--why, he could not tell.
After he returned from Westmoreland, Mammy Charity brought him his
cocktail, and tidied up his room, and beat up the feathers in his
pillows and bed--for she believed in the old-fashioned feather-bed
and would have no other kind in the house.
The old clock in the hall--that had sat there since long before he,
himself, could remember--struck ten, and then eleven, and then, to
his disgust, even twelve.
At ten he had taken another toddy to put himself to sleep.
There is only one excuse for drunkenness, and that is sleeplessness.
If there is a hell for the intellectual it is not of fire, as for
commoner mortals, but of sleeplessness--the wild staring eyes of an
eternity of sleeplessness following an eon of that midnight mental
anguish which comes with the birth of thoughts.
But still he slept not, and so at ten he had taken another toddy--and
still another, and as he felt its life and vigor to the ends of his
fingers, he quaffed his fourth one; then he smiled and said: "And now
I don't care if I never go to sleep!"
He arose and dressed. He tried to recite one of his favorite poems,
and it angered him that his tongue seemed thick.
His head slightly reeled, but in it there galloped a thousand
beautiful dreams and there were visions of Alice, and love, and the
satisfaction of conquering and the glory of winning.
He could feel his heart-throbs at the ends of his fingers. He could
see thoughts--beautiful, grand thoughts--long before they reached
him,--stalking like armed men, helmeted and vizored, stalking forward
into his mind.
He walked out and down the long hall.
The ticking of the clock sounded to him so loud that he stopped and
cursed it.
Because, somehow, it ticked every time his heart beat; and he could
count his heart-beats in his fingers' ends, and he didn't want to
know every time his heart beat. It made him nervous.
It might stop; but it would not stop. And then, somehow, he imagined
that his heart was really out in the yard, down under the hill, and
was pumping the water--as the ram had done for years--through the
house. It was a queer fancy, and it made him angry because he could
not throw it off.
He walked down the hall, rudely snatched the clock door open, and
stopped the big pendulum. Then he laughed sillily.
The moonbeams came in at the stained glass windows, and cast red and
yellow and pale green fleckings of light on the smooth polished
floor.
He began to feel uncanny. He was no coward and he cursed himself for
it.
Things began to come to him in a moral way and mixed in with the
uncanniness of it all. He imagined he saw, off in the big square
library across the way, in the very spot he had seen them lay out his
grandfather--Maggie, and she arose suddenly from out of his
grandfather's casket and beckoned to him with--
"I love you so--I love _you_ so!"
It was so real, he walked to the spot and put his hands on the black
mohair Davenport. And the form on it, sitting bolt upright, was but
the pillow he had napped on that afternoon.
He laughed and it sounded hollow to him and echoed down the hall:
"How like her it looked!"
He walked into Harry's room and lit the lamp there. He smiled when he
glanced around the walls. There were hunting scenes and actresses in
scant clothing. Tobacco pipes of all kinds on the tables, and stumps
of ill-smelling cigarettes, and over the mantel was a crayon picture
of Death shaking the dice of life. Two old cutlasses crossed
underneath it.
On his writing desk Travis picked up and read the copy of the note
written to Helen the day before.
He smiled with elevated eyebrows. Then he laughed ironically:
"The little yellow cur--to lie down and quit--to throw her over like
that! Damn him--he has a yellow streak in him and I'll take pleasure
in pulling down the purse for him. Why, she was born for me anyway!
That kid, and in love with Helen! Not for The Gaffs would I have him
mix up with that drunken set--nor--nor, well, not for The Gaffs to
have him quit like that."
And yet it was news to him. Wrapped in his own selfish plans, he had
never bothered himself about Harry's affairs.
But he kept on saying, as if it hurt him: "The little yellow cur--and
he a Travis!" He laughed: "He's got another one, I'll bet--got her
to-night and by now is securely engaged. So much the better--for my
plans."
Again he went into the hall and walked to and fro in the dim light.
But the Davenport and the pillow instantly formed themselves again
into Maggie and the casket, and he turned in disgust to walk into his
own room.
Above his head over the doorway in the hall, on a pair of splendid
antlers--his first trophy of the chase,--rested his deer gun, a clean
piece of Damascus steel and old English walnut, imported years
before. The barrels were forty inches and choked. The small bright
hammers rested on the yellow brass caps deep sunk on steel nippers.
They shone through the hammer slit fresh and ready for use.
He felt a cold draught of air blow on him and turned in surprise to
find the hall window, which reached to the veranda floor, open; and
he could see the stars shining above the dark green foliage of the
trees on the lawn without.
At the same instant there swept over him a nervous fear, and he
reached for his deer gun instinctively. Then there arose from the
Davenport coffin a slouching unkempt form, the fine bright eyes of
which, as the last rays of the moonlight fell on them, were the eyes
of his dead cousin, Captain Tom, and it held out its hands pleadingly
to him and tenderly and with much effort said:
"_Grandfather, forgive. I've come back again._"
Travis's heart seemed to freeze tightly. He tried to breathe--he only
gasped--and the corners of his mouth tightened and refused to open.
He felt the blood rush up from around his loins, and leave him
paralyzed and weak. In sheer desperation he threw the gun to his
shoulder, and the next instant he would have fired the load into the
face of the thing with its voice of the dead, had not something burst
on his head with a staggering, overpowering blow, and despite his
efforts to stand, his knees gave way beneath him and it seemed
pleasant for him to lie prone upon the floor....
When he awakened an hour afterwards, he sat up, bewildered. His gun
lay beside him, but the window was closed securely and bolted. No
night air came in. The Davenport and pillow were there as before. His
head ached and there was a bruised place over his ear. He walked into
his own room and lit the lamp.
"I may have fallen and struck my head," he said, bewildered with the
strangeness of it all. "I may have," he repeated--"but if I didn't
see Tom Travis's ghost to-night there is no need to believe one's
senses."
He opened the door and let in two setters which fawned upon him and
licked his hand. All his nervousness vanished.
"No one knows the comfort of a dog's company," he said, "who does not
love a dog?"
Then he bathed his face and head and went to sleep.
It was after midnight when Jack Bracken led Captain Tom in and put
him to bed.
"A close shave for you, Cap'n Tom," he said--"I struck just in time.
I'll not leave you another night with the door unlocked." Then: "But
poor fellow--how can we blame him for wandering off, after all those
years, and trying to get back again to his boyhood home."