I was as sane that night as I had ever been in my life. I am quite sure
of this, though I had had a merry time enough earlier in the evening
with my friends in the old pavilion (that time-honored retreat of my
ancestors), whose desolation I had thought to dissipate with a little
harmless revelry. Wine does not disturb my reason--the little wine I
drank under that unwholesome roof--nor am I a man given to sudden
excitements or untoward impulses.
Yet this thing happened to me.
It was after leaving the pavilion. My companions had all ridden away and
I was standing on the lawn beyond my library windows, recalling my
pleasure with them and gazing somewhat idly, I own, at that bare portion
of the old wall where the tree fell a year ago (the place where the moon
strikes with such a glitter when it rides high, as it did that night),
when--believe it or not, it is all one to me--I became conscious of a
sudden mental dread, inexplicable and alarming, which, seizing me after
an hour of unmixed pleasure and gaiety, took such a firm grip upon my
imagination that I fain would have turned my back upon the night and its
influences, only my eyes would not leave that open space of wall where I
now saw pass--not the shadow, but the veritable body of a large, black,
hungry-looking dog, which, while I looked, turned into the open gateway
connecting with the pavilion and disappeared.
With it went the oppression which held me spell-bound. The ice melted
from my blood; I could move my limbs, and again control my thoughts and
exercise my will.
Forcing a laugh, I whistled to that dog. The lights with which the
banquet had been illuminated were out, and every servant had left the
place; but the tables had not been entirely cleared, and I could well
understand what had drawn this strange animal thither. I whistled then,
and whistled peremptorily; but no dog answered my call. Angry, for the
rules are strict at my stables in regard to wandering brutes, I strode
toward the pavilion. Entering the great gap in the wall where a gate had
once hung, I surveyed the dismal interior before me, with feelings I
could not but consider odd in a strong man like myself. Though the wine
was scarcely dry in the glass which an hour before I had raised in this
very spot amid cheers and laughter, I found it a difficult matter to
reenter there now, in the dead of night, alone and without light.
For this building, harmless as it had always seemed, had been, in a way,
cursed. For no reason that he ever gave, my father had doomed this
ancient adjunct to our home to perpetual solitude and decay. By his will
he had forbidden it to be destroyed--a wish respected by my guardians
and afterward by myself--and though there was nothing to hinder its
being cared for and in a manner used, the dismal influence which had
pervaded the place ever since his death had, under the sensations I have
mentioned, deepened into horror and an unspeakable repugnance.
Yet never having had any reason to believe myself a coward, I took
boldly enough the few steps necessary to carry me inside its dismal
precincts; and meeting with nothing but darkness and silence, began to
whistle again for the dog I had certainly seen enter here.
But no dog appeared.
Hastening out, I took my way toward the stables. As I did so I glanced
back, and again my eyes fell on that place in the wall gleaming white in
the moonlight. Again I felt the chill, the horror! Again my eyes
remained glued to this one spot; and again I beheld the passing of that
dog, running with jaws extended and head held low--fearsome, uncanny,
supernaturally horrible; a thing to flee from, if one could only flee
instead of standing stock-still on the sward, gazing with eyes that
seemed starting from their sockets till it had plunged through that gap
in the wall and again disappeared.
The occult and the imaginary have never appealed to me, and the moment I
felt myself a man again, I hurried on to the stables to call up my man
Jared.
But half-way there I paused, struck by an odd remembrance. This father
of mine, Philo Ocumpaugh, had died, or so his old servants had said,
under peculiar circumstances. I had forgotten them till now--such
stories make poor headway with me--but if I was not mistaken, the facts
were these:
He had been ailing long, and his nurses had got used to the sight of his
gaunt, white figure sitting propped up, but speechless, in the great bed
opposite the stretch of blank wall in the corner bedroom, where a
picture of his first wife, the wife of his youth, had once hung, but
which, for some years now, had been removed to where there were fewer
shadows and more sunlight. He had never been a talkative man, and in all
the five years of my own memory of him, I had never heard him raise his
voice except in command, or when the duties of hospitality required it.
Now, with the shadow of death upon him, he was absolutely speechless,
and his nurses were obliged to guess at his wishes by the movement of
his hands or the direction of his eyes. Yet he was not morose, and
sometimes was seen to struggle with the guards holding his tongue, as
though he would fain have loosed himself from their inexorable control.
Yet he never succeeded in doing so, and the nurses sat by and saw no
difference in him, till suddenly the candle, posed on a table near by,
flickered and went out, leaving only moonlight in the room. It was
moonlight so brilliant that the place seemed brighter than before,
though the beams were all concentrated on one spot, a blank space in the
middle of the wall upon which those two dim orbs in the bed were fixed
in an expectancy none there understood, for none knew that the summons
had come, and that for him the angel of death was at that moment
standing in the room.
Yet as moonlight is not the natural light for a sick man's bedside, one
amongst them had risen for another candle, when something--I had never
stopped to hear them say what--made him pause and look back, when he saw
distinctly outlined upon the white wall-space I have mentioned, the
figure--the unimaginable figure of a dog, large, fierce and
hungry-looking, which dashed by and--was gone. Simultaneously a cry came
from the bed, the first words for months--"Aline!"--the name of his
girl-wife, dead and gone for years. All sprang; some to chase the dog,
one to aid and comfort the sick man. But no dog was there, nor did he
need comfort more. He had died with that cry on his lips, and as they
gazed at his face, sunk low now in his pillow as if he had started up
and fallen back, a dead weight, they felt the terror of the moment grow
upon them till they, too, were speechless. For the aged features were
drawn into lines of unspeakable anguish and horror.
But as the night passed and morning came, all these lines smoothed out,
and when they buried him, those who had known him well talked of the
beautiful serenity which illumined the face which, since their first
remembrance of him, had carried the secret of a profound and unbroken
melancholy. Of the dog, nothing was said, even in whispers, till time
had hallowed that grave, and the little children about, grown to be men
and women. Then the garrulity of age had its way.
This story, and the images it called up, came like a shock as I halted
there, and instead of going on to the stables, I turned my steps toward
the house, where I summoned from his bed a certain old servant who had
lived longer in the family than myself.
Bidding him bring a lantern, I waited for him on the porch, and when he
came, I told him what I had seen. Instantly I knew that it was no new
story to him. He turned very pale and set down the lantern, which was
shaking very visibly in his hand.
"Did you look up?" he asked; "when you were in the pavilion, I mean?"
"No; why should I? The dog was on the ground. Besides--"
"Let us go down to the pavilion," he whispered. "I want to see for
myself if--if--"
"If what, Jared?"
He turned his eyes on me, but did not answer. Stooping, I lifted the
lantern and put it in his hand. He was quaking like a leaf, but there
was a determination in his face far beyond the ordinary. What made him
quake--he who knew of this dog only by hearsay--and what, in spite of
this fear, gave him such resolution? I followed in his wake to see what
it was.
The moon still shone clear upon the lawn, and it was with a certain
renewal of my former apprehensions that I approached the spot on the
wall where I had seen what I was satisfied not to see again. But though
I glanced that way--what man could have avoided it?--I perceived nothing
but the bare paint, and we went on and passed in without a word, Jared
leading the way.
But once on the threshold of the pavilion itself, it was for him to show
the coward. Turning, he made me a gesture; one I did not understand; and
seeing that I did not understand it, he said, after a fearful look
around:
"Do not mind the dog; that was but an appearance. Lift your eyes to the
ceiling--over there--at the extreme end toward the south--do you
see--_what_ do you see?"
"Nothing," I replied, amazed at what struck me as utter folly.
"Nothing?" he repeated in a relieved voice, as he lifted up his lantern.
"Ah!" came in a sort of muttered shriek from his lips, as he pointed up,
here and there, along the farther ceiling, over which the light now
played freely and fully. "What is that spot, and that spot, and that?
They were not there to-day. I was in here before the banquet, and _I_
would have seen. What is it? Master, what is it? They call it--"
"Well, well, what do they call it?" I asked impatiently.
"Blood! Do you not see that it is blood? What else is red and shiny and
shows in such great drops--"
"Nonsense!" I vociferated, taking the lantern in my own hand. "Blood on
the ceiling of my old pavilion? Where could it come from? There was no
quarrel, no fight; only hilarity--"
"Where did the dog come from?" he whispered.
I dropped my arm, staring at him in mingled anger and a certain
half-understood sympathy.
"You think these stains--" I began.
"Are as unreal as the dog? Yes, master."
Feeling as if I were in a dream, I tossed up the lantern again. The
drops were still there, but no longer single or scattered. From side to
side, the ceiling at this one end of the building oozed with the thick
red moisture to which he had given so dreadful a name.
Stepping back for fear the stains would resolve themselves into rain and
drop upon my forehead, I stared at Jared, who had now retreated toward
the door.
"What makes you think it blood?" I demanded.
"Because some have smelt and tasted it. We have never talked about it,
but this is not an uncommon occurrence. To-morrow all these stains will
be gone. They come when the dog circles the wall. Whence, no one knows.
It is our mystery. All the old servants have heard of it more than once.
The new ones have never been told. Nor would I have told you if you had
not seen the dog. It was a matter of honor with us."
I looked at him, saw that he believed every word he said, threw another
glance at the ceiling, and led the way out. When we had reached the
house again, I said:
"You are acquainted with the tradition underlying these appearances, as
you call them. What is it?"
He could not tell me. He knew no more than he had already stated--gossip
and old wives' tales. But later, a certain manuscript came into my
possession through my lawyer, which I will append to this.
It was written by my unhappy father, some little time before his last
illness, and given into the charge of the legal representative of our
family, with the express injunction that its seal was to remain intact
if for twenty years the apparition which had haunted him did not present
itself to the eyes of any of his children. But if within that time his
experience should repeat itself in theirs, this document was to be
handed over to the occupant of Homewood. Nineteen out of the twenty
years had elapsed, without the dog being seen or the ceiling of the
pavilion dropping blood. But not the twentieth; hence, the document was
mine.
You can easily conceive with what feelings I opened it. It was headed
with this simple line: