night,—sometimes arriving by another than the nine-o’clock train,—I
was not surprised when I saw a figure lean over the wall for an
instant within about twenty feet of me, pause a moment, and then
cross over to the side on which I was. Seeing that he stopped, I
spoke aloud these words, and none other, thinking of none other:
“Hallo, Dan, is that you?”—for, though I could discover the figure
and recognize its movements, there was too great a shade thrown over
the wall to enable me to distinguish even the lineaments of a face so
familiar to me as were those of my friend. To my appeal there was no
reply, and then in an instant the impression came upon me that if it
really was my friend, he was making an essay upon my nerves. So up to
this moment I never had a thought apart from him. I did not notice
the conduct of the dogs, or even think of them, for if I had done
so, _I never would have inquired if it was “Dan;”_ for they would
have been away from me at the first footfall after he had passed
the vicinity of the low bridge down in the hollow of the hill; or,
having not done that, they would have been at the wall the moment
his face looked over it. Nor did I observe that they kept unusually
close to me. I did not even think that, if it was not him, it was
extraordinary that the dogs did not, without more ado, make their
assault; for as a vigilance committee they were extremely zealous in
the discharge of their duty, and woe betide the trespasser upon those
limits after dark if they once got scent of him! That sedate and
usually almost apathetic Jack was equal to a cherubim with a flaming
sword; and as to Jack the fighter, his mind was strictly judicial
with regard to trespass. It was not till afterward, when the climax
of this abrupt and singular apparition was reached, that my attention
was directed to the behavior of my two companions. While I stood
perfectly motionless, waiting for some recognition of my appeal, the
figure advanced slowly in a direct line from the wall, leaving the
shadow, and stopped before me, and not twenty feet away from me. I
saw at once that it was somebody I had never seen before. When in
the light, without even a weed to obstruct my vision, as soon as he
stopped, I called again: “Speak, or I will fire!” I am not naturally
of a blood-letting disposition, but somehow or other that threat came
from me without any power or will of my mind to arrest it. It was
an unmeaning and perhaps a cowardly speech, for he was alone, while
I was armed with two powerful dogs, either one of whom would have
vanquished him, had I but said the word. Nor had I a pistol to carry
out, had I been so rash as to intend it, my foolish demonstration.
It was at this period I observed especially the behavior of the
dogs. Up to this time they had been quiescent, lying upon the grass
in the full enjoyment of its freshness; but now they both got up,
and I felt on each side of me the pressure of their bodies. They
were evidently frightened, and, by the casual glance I gave them,
induced to do so by the sensation of their touch, I saw that they
were looking with every symptom of terror at the figure that stood so
near us without a motion. And the figure. It never once turned its
head directly toward me, but seemed to fix its look eastward over
where the pine-trees broke the clear horizon on the murder-hill.
This inert pose was preserved but for a moment; for, as quick as
the flash of gunpowder, it wheeled as upon a pivot, and, making one
movement, as of a man commencing to step out toward the wall, was
gone! To my vision it never crossed the space between where it had
stood and the outline of the shade thrown by the trees upon the
ground. One step after turning was all I saw, and then it vanished.
Can I describe this figure you will ask; and my reply is that I can,
but not exactly in such a way as to satisfy the chief’s business-like
interrogatory. Before I go any farther, I must say that, as I had
nothing to do in getting up this apparition, I do not see how any
one can poke fun at me simply because I was there to see it. A man
sees a star fall; he has no agency in the eccentric transaction, and
is he to be ridiculed because there happens to be a tack loose in
the celestial carpet whose dropping out he witnesses and tells of,
and happens not to be astronomer enough to explain? Here was a moral
and physical tack loose somewhere and somehow, and I had struck my
vision on its point. What I saw I relate exactly as it happened, and
nothing more, though I may be induced to meet the usual objections
to the possibility of its occurrence, in a later portion of this
narrative. I could, if I felt so inclined, stop my recital and talk
by the folio about this affair; but it was a very different matter at
the moment when that something, which would not reply to me, stood
in the night light, clear and distinct as a marble statue, and cast
one glance over toward the hill that held among its gray rocks a
stain that would last there forever. But I half promised to describe
this figure, this appearance, this apparition, and a few words will
answer. It looked like painted air to begin with. An artist, sitting
by my side and following my ideas, might render it to the life or
death; but he would have to blend his matter-of-fact pencil with the
vague vehicles of spiritualistic imagination. In the first place,
there was no elaborate toilet; indeed I could not make out the
fashion of the garment, taking it for granted that it was draped in
the usual costume, being too absorbed by the complex and somewhat
agitated train of thought which, commencing with the assumption
that it was my friend, and which was suddenly relinquished, leaving
me exposed to the rapid transitions of intellectual deductions so
singularly called into action and so totally at variance with my
habitual mental or nervous equanimity. I felt as a drowning man might
feel who, admitting the fact that the water has got the master of
him, lets that primary incident take care of itself, and looks only
to some object by whose aid he may relieve himself from the desperate
catastrophe. I was occupied more in the effort to recognize a human
being in the figure that was before me than in making a tailor’s
analysis of his apparel. One thing was evident,—he looked dark-gray
from head to foot. Body he had, and legs, and arms, and a head; but
the face I could not distinctly see, as he turned it from me; but
there was an outline such as can be traced in shadows thrown by a dim
lamp upon a rough-plastered wall,—and that is all I can say about
it. Of course it is unsatisfactory, but I had no means or time for a
fuller diagnosis.
XI.
THE TESTS.
The effect left upon me when I found myself alone was not exactly
that of alarm, but rather a determination to test, if it might be
possible, this appearance or delusion, or whatever it might be; and,
instantly turning from the spot, I walked back to the house. The
presence of persons in the room, the light, the furniture itself,
had an influence to calm whatever of perturbation I was sensible of
from the strange interview through which I had so rapidly passed.
I debated now in my mind with regard to the test I should apply.
Was it a ghost? That was in part the question, but not the entire
inquiry; for I could not come all at once to the conclusion that it
was an undoubted visitant from the dead man’s realm. While pondering
over these doubts, an adventure of my youth came vividly back to my
recollection, and seemed to offer itself as a means by which I should
judge of my present experience; and, thinking it may amuse my reader,
I see no reason why I should not add it to my narrative.
A goodly number of years ago, I was a student at a college in the
State of Maryland, not far from the town of Gettysburg. From the
plateau of the mountain, at the base of which the college was
situated, I have been told, the smoke as it actually poured from the
guns, not after it floated miles away, was seen during the progress
of the great and inexplicable battle that has made the town one of
historic importance.
Upon a certain occasion, it being a holiday, I went over to the
neighboring village of ——, intending to have a free-and-easy time
with smuggled cigars,—smoking being a virtue unrecognized by the
dignitaries of the college, and forbidden under heavy pains and
penalties within the sacred and unfumigated precincts. I had other
objects, perhaps, justifiable to youth, and unnecessary to dilate
upon now. At all events, I was away from college, and away I
remained until the advancing evening warned me that I had somewhat
of a walk before I could get back. There were two ways by which I
could return,—one by the common county road, and a shorter but more
difficult route by a narrow path leading partially over and along the
mountain ridge. I chose the latter. So I bade adieu to the village
and its barber, who was our contraband chief in the cigar smuggle,
and at whose house I had enjoyed a comfortable but uncollegiate
dinner, and with whose pretty daughter (all girls are pretty to
college boys) I had taken a precious lesson in flirtation, almost
engaging myself to marry her after I had graduated and seen my way
clearly to parental acquiescence. Poor barber’s daughter! I wonder
how many other lads made innocent love to her and vaguely hinted
similar magnificent proposals? But away I went up the mountain, under
the trees, in and out with the path, by the rocks, by the torrent,
and ere I had advanced a mile, the moon (did you ever see a Middle
States’ moon?) had stolen into the skies. The wind rose gently with
the moon, as if it would make soft music for her, and the clouds
accompanied her in muslin toilets; and so with the moon and the wind
and the misty clouds I pursued my walk, smoking the last cigar of
that blissful holiday.
My path led by the church, belonging to the college, half way up the
mountain, and afterward by the old graveyard, walled in,—a crumbling
and a neglected wall, over which you could step easily into the
silent city. Arrived at this graveyard, I stopped and looked down
upon the college. The lights were gleaming there; and, upon the fatal
theory that a pleasure enjoyed under ban is sweeter than pleasure
permitted, I resolved to finish my cigar before I made the final
descent. But where could I smoke so near the college and be free from
detection? Lingering on the path I might be detected and reported,
and that would be fatal. In the graveyard? Who ever ventured there
except the dead and the mourners, or a law-breaker? The very place I
thought; and so I crossed over the shattered wall, and, selecting
an entablature that was a sort of mortuary dining table supported
by four brick legs, I stretched myself and fell into that luxurious
enjoyment which only a true smoker can realize,—and of that class I
was then, and am now.
The moon, by this time, was nearly above me, and so bright that a
woman could have threaded her needle by its wonderful effulgence. I
had not been many seconds on the table-like slab, before I heard a
sound that somewhat startled me; but, after a moment’s reflection,
I concluded it was the wind moaning round the old church that was
at the upper end of the cemetery. Quieting myself with this belief,
I pulled away at my cigar, now nearly at its last gasp, when I
heard a repetition of the sound; but this time it seemed to proceed
directly from underneath the slab! The affair was getting peculiar,
and my nervous system was undergoing that singular process so well
expressed by the phrase goose-fleshy; for if the sound did come
from under the slab it could not be the wind, for it was not like
anything the wind could do with such materials. But while I debated
the question, the utterance struck upon my ear again, and this time
it was an unmistakable groan, as if human or inhuman lips had given
it expression. The goose-flesh arrangement continued to develop
itself, but not to such an enormous wrinkle as to prevent my peeping
over the side of the stone to see if I could catch a sight of the
groan or the groaner. I feel convinced, though I did not test it,
that the extraordinary phenomena so often alluded to by novelists
did occur, and that my hair did stand on end, when I saw directly
under me, out in the moonlight, a battered, withered leg covered by
a dingy, mould-soiled piece of cloth, with a boot attached, but such
a boot that no human ingenuity of St. Crispinism could repair. The
boot looked like the skeleton of a boot, as the pantaloons looked
like a skeleton of pantaloons. They were to all intent and purposes
supernatural fractures. While I looked, the groaning was repeated,
and simultaneously another leg, another piece of mould-stained
cloth, another tattered boot was thrown out of the deep shadow and
softly placed crosswise over the other, following the example of
knight-errantry sculpture. I had stretched myself, supported by
my hands, to the edge of the slab, and could see distinctly these
movements and appearances; and my mind was so completely divided
between the physical results and the naturally suggestive idea of the
supernatural, as to leave me in a medium state of amused courage and
inherent superstition.
But it was necessary for me to act, and so, without further
hesitation, I supported my body on my arms reversed, and made a
long leg of it, stretching myself entirely free, of course, from a
contact with the mouldy-looking arrangement that protruded into the
moonlight. Having established my position at a proper distance of
observation, I at first hesitated whether to go away or not,—a vague
and not unnatural fear suggesting the idea of flight; a positive but
artificial conviction determining me to remain and see the matter
out. One of the greatest and best lessons, and for which there should
be a professorship established in every college in the country, is
the lesson of self-command. Make it at the commencement of your life
a speciality, and it will serve you in after years as a guardian of
your honor, and sometimes of your life itself. It makes you well
behaved, careful of the feelings of others, tolerant and independent,
and is the safeguard of a woman’s virtue and the potent spear by
which truth may be distinguished from error. By a strong effort I
reached the point of self-command, and so my legs were as firmly
fixed to the spot, as those limbs of mystery peeping out from the
entablature of the tomb. My next act was to catch hold of the feet
and pull at them,—pull the whole affair into the light and determine
what it was. When I had drawn this moaning body forth, I lifted it
by a vigorous effort, and stood it against the tomb. The head fell
backward and the moon shone full upon the face. The face was swollen
with a livid kind of puffiness, and the eyes closed fast. I placed my
hand upon the forehead and felt the moisture, clammy and revolting.
The hands fell heavily by the sides, and a tremor ran over and
shook the figure as if with palsy, and groans and moans came quick,
and as they came I shook the thing by its shoulders; but there was
no awakening as yet of the closed orbs and apparently dead brain. I
worried myself no longer, but drew the loathsome figure away from the
grave-stone and commenced an advance toward the broken wall. It moved
heavily, but at last we reached the boundary, and with difficulty
got over it. The mass was passive; I was very positive. I went down
the mountain, passed the college, and, reaching a cottage, I rapped
upon the door. A woman opened it, and, giving my ghost a push, he
staggered or fell into her arms, or upon the floor, I know not which,
and this dingy spectre was no more nor less than the hard-drinking
husband of one of the college outside servants. Here, then, was the
test case which came back to me, with all its vivid incidents and
extraordinary suggestions, to help me out of my present dilemma? In
the adventure of my youth there was at first a large supply of the
ghostly element, and, had I fled the investigation, perhaps nothing
would have disabused my mind of its supernatural character. The
man would in all probability have been left until early morning in
undisturbed possession of his unique apartment, and, when restored to
his senses, would have been the very last to initiate a revelation.
It would have been a confession fraught with serious consequences,—in
the first place with regard to his situation under the college,—and
it would not have contributed largely to his domestic felicity.
To peach on me would have been to implicate himself, and, as
drunkenness is morally a worse crime than the smoking of a cigar,
he would have been the first to have suffered decapitation. It was
my self-possession alone that turned one of the most reliable ghost
incidents into a tale of beastly absurdity. If I was so near seeing
a ghost’s legs on that night, which turned out to be no ghost’s legs
at all, why might there not be some chance of my visitor on the brow
of the hill to-night turning out to be some vagrant more wildly drunk
than the drunken college-phantom?
XII.
TESTS.
I again left the house, having tarried there not over ten minutes,
resolved to revisit the locality where the puzzle had presented
itself. After calling the dogs,—for I wished them to be with me to
make the test complete, and also to observe their conduct,—I searched
in every likely place to find out if my friend had not returned;
for I still had a vague suspicion running in my head, that after
all he might possibly have succeeded in some unaccountable way, in
enveloping me in the maze of a ghostly manifestation. But I searched
for him in vain; and, to settle all doubt relative to his agency in
the affair, I will state that he did not return home that night until
ten o’clock or after, driving by the road leading through Jamaica
Plain.
I then went down the garden road, and stood upon the very spot I had
previously occupied. As I said before, I wished to see how the dogs
would act should the figure make its appearance; and even before I
reached my former position I was struck by the reluctant manner in
which they followed me,—but I managed to get them on, and so there we
three were; but where was that eccentric fourth?
He was not there. Some people will say I had been controlled by the
solemn influences of the night and the ghastly associations blended
with the scene and all its gloomy neighborhood, and consequently
was in a very fit condition to receive a demonstration and accept
it as supernatural; but I will at all times maintain that when I
first went down that garden walk that night, and saw the form that
I took to be that of my friend, I was, as I have previously most
minutely and accurately explained, not in that spiritualistic,
sympathetic condition. But on the second visit I confess that I was
in a better temperament to receive the influences of night and scene
and associations, and to which you may add the incident which gives
such a weird aspect to my narrative. In the first, my condition was
natural and eminently composed, and yet I had the vision; in the
second, with all my nerves stretched in expectancy, I saw nothing.
Now, how was that? I stood still as a living man can stand, and fixed
my eyes upon the wall where the figure had first appeared; but all
was moveless and silent. The old wall and the shadows looked as they
did before. I turned quick as thought, and tried to surprise any
faint glimpse of anything that might have come to the spot where the
apparition had stopped in the interval of my withdrawn attention;
but there was nothing but the short grass backed by the dark wood
where the deeds of blood had been perpetrated. I even looked to see
if anything was lying down to avoid my scrutiny, walked over to the
spot, and then in a straight line to the wall, supposing it was
possible I might find some trace of a presence. I found nothing.
I was therefore satisfied as far as this test was carried; but still
I was not content. A strange desire, which I possibly did not attempt
to check, had taken possession of me to carry my investigation
farther; but it was a wild, and, all things considered, a fearful
experiment; at least I so viewed it when it was first suggested to
my mind. It must be understood that I only submitted even to the
contemplation of this ultimate and extraordinary test after I had
determined that what I had seen was not a visual delusion or in fact
a human being. A sense of profound conviction seized me and impelled
me to admit that something had occurred to my experience beyond my
ability to reconcile by the ordinary rules of explanation. In fine, I
for the first time during the progress of these transactions suddenly
connected the mystery with the murders. I had given common sense and
resolute examination a fair chance to account for that abrupt whirl,
that sudden vanishing, that terror of the dogs, their failure to
recognize their master, or to attack the stranger,—either of which
they would have done under ordinary circumstances,—and now I had no
power to resist the conclusion that was so powerfully forced upon
me. I pretend to no peculiar bravery, though not entirely destitute
of that quality, shared with man by the rat-terrier and the rat
himself, having enough of it for all the needs and purposes of a
very good-natured and non-aggressive man; and the chief feature of
my courage is, my not having a fear of myself; that is, I am not
backward in entertaining myself with proposals to undertake matters
which, to some other men, of abler judgment, might appear a little
too venturesome; and here I was about to attempt a task that possibly
only an animal should engage in, knowing nothing of human mysteries,
or a pauper, for a reward; and even the pauper I think would have
debated longer than I did whether he would not rather steal the
recompense, or starve a little longer. It was no less a thing than to
visit the spot off in those gloomy woods where the body of the girl
was found lying among the rocks.
This fancy was of a twofold character. One was, that since I was in
for testing, I would go over there and test my nerves; the other
was an idea that, since I had been launched into the regions of the
marvellous, possibly it might be made manifest to me there in those
deep seclusions, on that spot,—a revelation that would lift the veil
of mystery that enshrouded the fate of the two unfortunates, and also
unravel the difficult maze in which I had been involved. Perhaps
I would see that figure there,—that figure a parent, or relative
of the girl, who had come to me that night, impressing me to the
interview. I could not but think of the spiritualistic theory of the
sympathies between the living and the dead,—the theory indeed of all
Christian, and, for that matter, of all heathen sects, and there, and
nowhere else, I might have revealed to me the name of the man who had
done those hideous acts. Surely, I was in a singular predicament. I
had either seen a ghost, or I had not, and I felt unwilling to let
things remain in the condition of unsettled doubt, not caring for the
rest of my life to be the prosy relator of a ghost story, which my
listener could accuse me of having left unsettled and unfinished for
the want of nerve to examine to its climax. Determined upon putting
my duplex test into execution, I returned to the house to inform my
friends that I was going out for a stroll,—not an unusual thing with
me,—and to make some little arrangement that I thought personally
needful in case of untoward accidents; for, independent of the
peculiar intention I was about to fulfil, there were reasons why I
should not go unprepared for physical contingencies.
The whole country, it will be remembered, was in a very disorganized
state,—many people thrown out of employment, and others returned from
scenes of strife and bloodshed, with an education habituated to deeds
of violence. So I armed myself with a companion charged to the lips
with a counteracting but defensive species of explosive violence,—a
thing that could speak seven times, and always with effect if the
delivery was good.
On the theory of testing my nerves, in connection with the ghost
theory, I at once resolved to dispense with the dogs, for their
presence would have been companionship and a reliance apart from
my individuality. My pistol was not taken for the ghosts, but for
ghost-makers. Now that I reflect upon it all in my cooler moments,
I must frankly admit that, after what had happened, this trip had
something of the fearful in it, which my placid reader will not have
the heart to deny, and nothing would induce me to repeat it, unless
there were motives of a higher grade than those which ruled me then.
It was, in fact, an enterprise totally at variance with common sense
and common personal convenience and comfort. It was now about nine
o’clock. No change had occurred in the shape of the night,—that is,
no clouds had culminated in the skies, and yet no moon had been
conjured up by astronomy, or by lovers’ incantations. It was a lonely
walk down the hill, over the very spot where my silent visitor had so
lately stood to look at these very woods,—that very spot to which my
steps were now directed. Darker it was down in the valley, with the
hill to my back and the great mass of foliage apparently near enough
for me to touch; but on I went, giving no time for reconsideration,
on to the fence which I crossed, and then I was one of the black
things in the intense gloom of the forest.