The foregoing narrative has been submitted to me by the writer, who was
well acquainted with the late Mr. Molesworth. In my opinion it conveys a
correct impression of that gentleman's temperament and character: and I
can testify that in the details of his psychical adventures on the valley
road leading to St. A--'s Church it adheres strictly to the account given
me by Mr. Molesworth himself shortly after the accident on the M----
viaduct, and repeated by him several times with insistence during the
illness which terminated mortally some four months later. The manner in
which the narrative is presented may be open to criticism: but of this, as
one who has for some years eschewed the reading of fiction, I am not a
fair judge. It adds, at any rate, nothing in the way of 'sensation' to the
story as Mr. Molesworth told it: and of its improbability I should be the
last to complain, who am to add, of my own positive observation, some
evidence which will make it appear yet more startling, if not wholly
incredible.
The accident was actually witnessed by two men, cattle-jobbers, who were
driving down the valley road in a light cart or 'trap,' and were within
two hundred yards of the viaduct when they saw the train crash through the
parapet over the second span (counting from the west), and strike and
plunge down the slope. In their evidence at the inquest, and again at the
Board of Trade inquiry, these men agree that it took them from five to
eight minutes only to alight, run down and across the valley (fording the
stream on their way), and scramble up to the scene of the disaster: and
they further agree that one of the first sad objects on which their eyes
fell was the dead body of Sir John Crang with Mr. Molesworth, alive but
sadly injured and bleeding, stretched across it. Apparently they had
managed to crawl from the wreck of the carriage before Sir John succumbed,
or Mr. Molesworth had managed to drag his companion out--whether dead or
alive cannot be told--before himself fainting from loss of blood.
The toll of the disaster, as is generally known, amounted to twelve killed
and seventeen more or less seriously injured. Help having been summoned
from M---- Station, the injured--or as many of them as could be removed--
were conveyed in an ambulance train to Plymouth. Among them was Mr.
Molesworth, whose apparent injuries were a broken hip, a laceration of the
thigh, and an ugly, jagged scalp-wound. Of all these he made, in time, a
fair recovery: but what brought him under my care was the nervous shock
from which his brain, even while his body healed, never made any promising
attempt to rally. For some time after the surgeon had pronounced him
cured he lingered on, a visibly dying man, and died in the end of utter
nervous collapse.
Yet even within a few days of the end his brain kept an astonishing
clearness: and to me, as well as to the friends who visited him in
hospital and afterwards in his Plymouth lodgings--for he never returned
home again, being unable to face another railway journey--he would
maintain, and with astonishing vigour and lucidity of description, that he
had actually in very truth travelled down the valley in company with Sir
John Crang, and seen with his own eyes everything related in the foregoing
paper. Now, as a record of what did undeniably pass through the brain of
a cultivated man in some catastrophic moments, I found these recollections
of his exceedingly interesting. As no evidence is harder to collect, so
almost none can be of higher importance, than that of man's sensations at
the exact moment when he passes, naturally or violently, out of this
present life into whatever may be beyond. Partly because Mr. Molesworth's
story, which he persisted in, had this scientific value; partly in the
hope of diverting his mind from the lethargy into which I perceived it to
be sinking; I once begged him to write the whole story down. To this,
however, he was unequal. His will betrayed him as soon as he took pen and
paper.
The entire veracity of his recollection he none the less affirmed again
and again, and with something like passion, although aware that his
friends were but humouring him while they listened and made pretence to
believe. The strong card--if I may so term it--in his evidence was
undoubtedly Sir John Crang's cigar-case. It was found in Mr. Molesworth's
breast-pocket when they undressed him at the hospital, and how it came
there I confess I cannot explain. It may be that it had dropped on the
grass from Sir John's pocket, and that Mr. Molesworth, under the
hallucination which undoubtedly possessed him, picked it up, and pocketed
it before the two cattle-drovers found him. It is an unlikely hypothesis,
but I cannot suggest a likelier.
A fortnight before his death he sent for a lawyer and made his will, the
sanity of which no one can challenge. At the end he directed that his
body should be interred in the parish churchyard of St. A--, 'as close as
may be to the cross by the church porch.' As a last challenge to
scepticism this surely was defiant enough.
It was my duty to attend the funeral. The coffin, conveyed by train to
M---- Station, was there transferred to a hearse, and the procession
followed the valley road. I forget at what point it began to be impressed
upon me, who had never travelled the road before, that Mr. Molesworth's
'recollections' of it had been so exact that they compelled a choice
between the impossibility of accepting his story and the impossibility of
doubting the assurance of so entirely honourable a man that he had never
travelled the road in his life. At first I tried to believe that his
recollections of it--detailed as they were--might one by one have been
suggested by the view from the viaduct. But, honestly, I was soon obliged
to give this up: and when we arrived at the creek's head and the small
churchyard beside it, I confessed myself confounded. Point by point, and
at every point, the actual scene reproduced Mr. Molesworth's description.
I prefer to make no comment on my last discovery. After the funeral,
being curious to satisfy myself in every particular, I walked across the
track to the inn--The Saracen's Head--which again answered Mr.
Molesworth's description to the last detail. The house was kept by a
widow and her daughter: and the girl--an extremely good-looking young
person--made me welcome. I concluded she must be the original of Mr.
Molesworth's illusion--perhaps the strangest of all his illusions--and
took occasion to ask her (I confess not without a touch of trepidation) if
she remembered the day of the accident. She answered that she remembered
it well. I asked if she remembered any visitor, or visitors, coming to
the inn on that day. She answered, None: but that now I happened to speak
of it, somebody must have come that day while she was absent on an errand
to the Vicarage (which lies some way along the shore to the westward): for
on returning she found a fishing-rod and creel on the settle of the
inn-kitchen.
The creel had a luggage-label tied to it, and on the label was written
'Sir W. Moyle.' She had written to Sir Warwick about it more than a
month ago, but had not heard from him in answer. [It turned out that Sir
Warwick had left England, three days after the accident, on a yachting
excursion to Norway.]
"And a cigar-case?" I asked. "You don't remember seeing a cigar-case?"
She shook her head, evidently puzzled. "I know nothing about a
cigar-case," she said. "But you shall see the rod and fishing-basket."
She ran at once and fetched them. Now that rod and that creel (and the
fly-book within it) have since been restored to Sir Warwick Moyle. He had
left them in care of the station-master at M----, whence they had been
missing since the day of the accident. It was suspected that they had
been stolen, in the confusion that day prevailing at the little station,
by some ganger on the relief-train.
The girl, I am convinced, was honest, and had no notion how they found
their way to the kitchen of The Saracen's Head: nor--to be equally
honest--have I.