dark within him; and as one faints away, so consciousness swooned, and
he fell suddenly down a precipice of sleep. The music rose again, a
pensive and holy chant, and sounded on to its close, unaffected by the
action of his brain, for he slept and heard it no more. He lay
tranquilly, hardly seeming to breathe, in motionless repose. The room
was dim and silent, and the furniture took uncouth shapes around him.
The red glow upon the ceiling, from the screened fire, showed the misty
figure of the phantom kneeling by his side. All light had gone from the
spectral form. It knelt beside him, mutely, as in prayer. Once it gazed
at his quiet face with a mournful tenderness, and its shadowy hands
caressed his forehead. Then it resumed its former attitude, and the slow
hours crept by.
At last it rose and glided to the table, on which lay the open letter.
It seemed to try to lift the sheets with its misty hands--but vainly.
Next it essayed the lifting of a pen which lay there--but failed. It was
a piteous sight, to see its idle efforts on these shapes of grosser
matter, which appeared now to have to it but the existence of illusions.
Wandering about the shadowy room, it wrung its phantom hands as in
despair.
Presently it grew still. Then it passed quickly to his side, and stood
before him. He slept calmly. It placed one ghostly hand above his
forehead, and, with the other pointed to the open letter. In this
attitude its shape grew momentarily more distinct. It began to kindle
into brightness. The pale flame again flowed from its hand, streaming
downward to his brain. A look of trouble darkened the sleeping face.
Stronger--stronger; brighter--brighter; until, at last, it stood before
him, a glorious shape of light, with an awful look of commanding love in
its shining features--and the sleeper sprang to his feet with a cry!
The phantom had vanished. He saw nothing. His first impression was, not
that he had dreamed, but that, awaking in the familiar room, he had seen
the spirit of his dead friend, bright and awful by his side, and that it
had gone! In the flash of that quick change, from sleeping to waking, he
had detected, he thought, the unearthly being that, he now felt, watched
him from behind the air, and it had vanished! The library was the same
as in the moment of that supernatural revealing; the open letter lay
upon the table still; only _that_ was gone which had made these common
aspects terrible. Then, all the hard, strong skepticism of his nature,
which had been driven backward by the shock of his first conviction,
recoiled, and rushed within him, violently struggling for its former
vantage ground; till, at length, it achieved the foothold for a doubt.
Could he have dreamed? The ghost, invisible, still watched him. Yes--a
dream--only a dream; but, how vivid--how strange! With a slow thrill
creeping through his veins--the blood curdling at his heart--a cold
sweat starting on his forehead, he stared through the dimness of the
room. All was vacancy.
With a strong shudder, he strode forward, and turned up the flames of
the chandelier. A flood of garish light filled the apartment. In a
moment, remembering the letter to which the phantom of his dream had
pointed, he turned and took it from the table. The last page lay upward,
and every word of the solemn counsel at the end seemed to dilate on the
paper, and all its mighty meaning rushed upon his soul. Trembling in his
own despite, he laid it down and moved away. A physician, he remembered
that he was in a state of violent nervous excitement, and thought that
when he grew calmer its effects would pass from him. But the hand that
had touched him had gone down deeper than the physician, and reached
what God had made.
He strove in vain. The very room, in its light and silence, and the
lurking sentiment of something watching him, became terrible. He could
not endure it. The devils in his heart, grown pusillanimous, cowered
beneath the flashing strokes of his aroused and terrible conscience. He
could not endure it. He must go out. He will walk the streets. It is not
late--it is but ten o'clock. He will go.
The air of his dream still hung heavily about him. He was in the
street--he hardly remembered how he had got there, or when; but there he
was, wrapped up from the searching cold, thinking, with a quiet horror
in his mind, of the darkened room he had left behind, and haunted by the
sense that something was groping about there in the darkness, searching
for him. The night was still and cold. The full moon was in the zenith.
Its icy splendor lay on the bare streets, and on the walls of the
dwellings. The lighted oblong squares of curtained windows, here and
there, seemed dim and waxen in the frigid glory. The familiar aspect of
the quarter had passed away, leaving behind only a corpse-like
neighborhood, whose huge, dead features, staring rigidly through the
thin, white shroud of moonlight that covered all, left no breath upon
the stainless skies. Through the vast silence of the night he passed
along; the very sound of his footfalls was remote to his muffled sense.
Gradually, as he reached the first corner, he had an uneasy feeling that
a thing--a formless, unimaginable thing--was dogging him. He had thought
of going down to his club-room; but he now shrank from entering, with
this thing near him, the lighted rooms where his set were busy with
cards and billiards, over their liquors and cigars, and where the heated
air was full of their idle faces and careless chatter, lest some one
should bawl out that he was pale, and ask him what was the matter, and
he should answer, tremblingly, that something was following him, and was
near him then! He must get rid of it first; he must walk quickly, and
baffle its pursuit by turning sharp corners, and plunging into devious
streets and crooked lanes, and so lose it!
It was difficult to reach through memory to the crazy chaos of his mind
on that night, and recall the route he took while haunted by this
feeling; but he afterward remembered that, without any other purpose
than to baffle his imaginary pursuer, he traversed at a rapid pace a
large portion of the moonlit city; always (he knew not why) avoiding the
more populous thoroughfares, and choosing unfrequented and tortuous
byways, but never ridding himself of that horrible confusion of mind in
which the faces of his dead friend and the pale woman were strangely
blended, nor of the fancy that he was followed. Once, as he passed the
hospital where Feval died, a faint hint seemed to flash and vanish from
the clouds of his lunacy, and almost identify the dogging goblin with
the figure of his dream; but the conception instantly mixed with a
disconnected remembrance that this was Christmas eve, and then slipped
from him, and was lost. He did not pause there, but strode on. But just
there, what had been frightful became hideous. For at once he was
possessed with the conviction that the thing that lurked at a distance
behind him, was quickening its movement, and coming up to seize him. The
dreadful fancy stung him like a goad, and, with a start, he accelerated
his flight, horribly conscious that what he feared was slinking along in
the shadow, close to the dark bulks of the houses, resolutely pursuing,
and bent on overtaking him. Faster! His footfalls rang hollowly and loud
on the moonlit pavement, and in contrast with their rapid thuds he felt
it as something peculiarly terrible that the furtive thing behind, slunk
after him with soundless feet. Faster, faster! Traversing only the most
unfrequented streets, and at that late hour of a cold winter night, he
met no one, and with a terrifying consciousness that his pursuer was
gaining on him, he desperately strode on. He did not dare to look
behind, dreading less what he might see, than the momentary loss of
speed the action might occasion. Faster, faster, faster! And all at once
he knew that the dogging thing had dropped its stealthy pace and was
racing up to him. With a bound he broke into a run, seeing, hearing,
heeding nothing, aware only that the other was silently louping on his
track two steps to his one; and with that frantic apprehension upon him,
he gained the next street, flung himself around the corner with his back
to the wall, and his arms convulsively drawn up for a grapple; and felt
something rush whirring past his flank, striking him on the shoulder as
it went by, with a buffet that made a shock break through his frame.
That shock restored him to his senses. His delusion was suddenly
shattered. The goblin was gone. He was free.
He stood panting, like one just roused from some terrible dream, wiping
the reeking perspiration from his forehead and thinking confusedly and
wearily what a fool he had been. He felt he had wandered a long distance
from his house, but had no distinct perception of his whereabouts. He
only knew he was in some thinly-peopled street, whose familiar aspect
seemed lost to him in the magical disguise the superb moonlight had
thrown over all. Suddenly a film seemed to drop from his eyes, as they
became riveted on a lighted window, on the opposite side of the way. He
started, and a secret terror crept over him, vaguely mixed with the
memory of the shock he had felt as he turned the last corner, and his
distinct, awful feeling that something invisible had passed him. At the
same instant he felt, and thrilled to feel, a touch, as of a light
finger, on his cheek. He was in Hanover street. Before him was the
house--the oyster-room staring at him through the lighted transparencies
of its two windows, like two square eyes, below; and his tenant's light
in a chamber above! The added shock which this discovery gave to the
heaving of his heart, made him gasp for breath. Could it be? Did he
still dream? While he stood panting and staring at the building, the
city clocks began to strike. Eleven o'clock; it was ten when he came
away; how he must have driven! His thoughts caught up the word.
Driven--by what? Driven from his house in horror, through street and
lane, over half the city--driven--hunted in terror, and smitten by a
shock here! Driven--driven! He could not rid his mind of the word, nor
of the meaning it suggested. The pavements about him began to ring and
echo with the tramp of many feet, and the cold, brittle air was shivered
with the noisy voices that had roared and bawled applause and laughter
at the National Theatre all the evening, and were now singing and
howling homeward. Groups of rude men, and ruder boys, their breaths
steaming in the icy air, began to tramp by, jostling him as they passed,
till he was forced to draw back to the wall, and give them the sidewalk.
Dazed and giddy, in cold fear, and with the returning sense of something
near him, he stood and watched the groups that pushed and tumbled in
through the entrance of the oyster-room, whistling and chattering as
they went, and banging the door behind them. He noticed that some came
out presently, banging the door harder, and went, smoking and shouting,
down the street. Still they poured in and out, while the street was
startled with their stimulated riot, and the bar-room within echoed
their trampling feet and hoarse voices. Then, as his glance wandered
upward to his tenant's window, he thought of the sick child, mixing this
hideous discord in the dreams of fever. The word brought up the name and
the thought of his dead friend. "In the name of the Saviour, I charge
you be true and tender to mankind!" The memory of these words seemed to
ring clearly, as if a voice had spoken them, above the roar that
suddenly rose in his mind. In that moment he felt himself a wretched and
most guilty man. He felt that his cruel words had entered that humble
home, to make desperate poverty more desperate, to sicken sickness, and
to sadden sorrow. Before him was the dram-shop, let and licensed to
nourish the worst and most brutal appetites and instincts of human
natures, at the sacrifice of all their highest and holiest tendencies.
The throng of tipplers and drunkards was swarming through its hopeless
door, to gulp the fiery liquor whose fumes give all shames, vices,
miseries, and crimes, a lawless strength and life, and change the man
into the pig or tiger. Murder was done, or nearly done, within those
walls last night. Within those walls no good was ever done; but, daily,
unmitigated evil, whose results were reaching on to torture unborn
generations. He had consented to it all! He could not falter, or
equivocate, or evade, or excuse. His dead friend's words rang in his
conscience like the trump of the judgment angel. He was conquered.
Slowly, the resolve to instantly go in up-rose within him, and with it a
change came upon his spirit, and the natural world, sadder than before,
but sweeter, seemed to come back to him. A great feeling of relief
flowed upon his mind. Pale and trembling still, he crossed the street
with a quick, unsteady step, entered a yard at the side of the house,
and, brushing by a host of white, rattling spectres of frozen clothes,
which dangled from lines in the inclosure, mounted some wooden steps,
and rang the bell. In a minute he heard footsteps within, and saw the
gleam of a lamp. His heart palpitated violently as he heard the lock
turning, lest the answerer of his summons might be his tenant. The door
opened, and, to his relief, he stood before a rather decent-looking
Irishman, bending forward in his stocking feet, with one boot and a lamp
in his hand. The man stared at him from a wild head of tumbled red hair,
with a half smile round his loose open mouth, and said, "Begorra!" This
was a second floor tenant.
Dr. Renton was relieved at the sight of him; but he rather failed in an
attempt at his rent-day suavity of manner, when he said:
"Good evening, Mr. Flanagan. Do you think I can see Mrs. Miller
to-night?"
"She's up _there_, docther, anyway." Mr. Flanagan made a sudden start
for the stairs, with the boot and lamp at arm's length before him, and
stopped as suddenly. "Yull go up?--or wud she come down to ye?" There
was as much anxious indecision in Mr. Flanagan's general aspect, pending
the reply, as if he had to answer the question himself.
"I'll go up, Mr. Flanagan," returned Dr. Renton, stepping in, after a
pause, and shutting the door. "But I'm afraid she's in bed."
"Naw--she's not, sur." Mr. Flanagan made another feint with the boot and
lamp at the stairs, but stopped again in curious bewilderment, and
rubbed his head. Then, with another inspiration, and speaking with such
velocity that his words ran into each other, pell-mell, he continued:
"Th' small girl's sick, sur. Begorra, I wor just pullin' on th' boots
tuh gaw for the docther, in th' nixt streth, an' summons him to her
relehf, for it's bad she is. A'id betther be goan." Another start, and a
movement to put on the boot instantly, baffled by his getting the lamp
into the leg of it, and involving himself in difficulties in trying to
get it out again without dropping either, and stopped finally by Dr.
Renton.
"You needn't go, Mr. Flanagan. I'll see to the child. Don't go."
He stepped slowly up the stairs, followed by the bewildered Flanagan.
All this time Dr. Renton was listening to the racket from the bar-room.
Clinking of glasses, rattling of dishes, trampling of feet, oaths and
laughter, and a confused din of coarse voices, mingling with boisterous
calls for oysters and drink, came, hardly deadened by the partition
walls, from the haunt below, and echoed through the corridors. Loud
enough within--louder in the street without, where the oysters and drink
were reeling and roaring off to brutal dreams. People trying to sleep
here; a sick child up stairs. Listen! "_Two_ stew! _One_ roast! _Four_
ale! Hurry 'em up! _Three_ stew! _In_ number six! _One_ fancy--_two_
roast! _One_ sling! Three brandy--_hot_! _Two_ stew! _One_ whisk'
_skin_! Hurry 'em up! _What_ yeh _'bout_! _Three_ brand' punch--_hot_!
_Four_ stew! _What_-ye-e-h 'BOUT! _Two_ gin-cock-t'il! _One_ stew!
Hu-r-r-y 'em up!" Clashing, rattling, cursing, swearing, laughing,
shouting, trampling, stumbling, driving, slamming, of doors. "Hu-r-ry
'em UP."
"Flanagan," said Dr. Renton, stopping at the first landing, "do you have
this noise every night?"
"Naise? Hoo! Divil a night, docther, but I'm wehked out ov me bed wid
'em, Sundays an' all. Sure didn't they murdher wan of 'em, out an' out,
last night!"
"Is the man dead?"
"Dead? Troth he is. An' cowld."
"H'm"--through his compressed lips. "Flanagan, you needn't come up. I
know the door. Just hold the light for me here. There, that'll do. Thank
you." He whispered the last words from the top of the second flight.
"Are ye there, docther?" Flanagan anxious to the last, and trying to
peer up at him with the lamp-light in his eyes.
"Yes. That'll do. Thank you!" in the same whisper. Before he could tap
at the door, then darkening in the receding light, it opened suddenly,
and a big Irish woman bounced out, and then whisked in again, calling to
some one in an inner room: "Here he is, Mrs. Mill'r," and then bounced
out again, with a "Walk royt in, if _you_ plaze; here's the choild"--and
whisked in again, with a "Sure an' Jehms was quick;" never once looking
at him, and utterly unconscious of the presence of her landlord. He had
hardly stepped into the room and taken off his hat, when Mrs. Miller
came from the inner chamber with a lamp in her hand. How she started!
With her pale face grown suddenly paler, and her hand on her bosom, she
could only exclaim: "Why, it's Dr. Renton!" and stand, still and dumb,
gazing with a frightened look at his face, whiter than her own.
Whereupon Mrs. Flanagan came bolting out again, with wild eyes and a
sort of stupefied horror in her good, coarse, Irish features; and then,
with some uncouth ejaculation, ran back, and was heard to tumble over
something within, and tumble something else over in her fall, and gather
herself up with a subdued howl, and subside.
"Mrs. Miller," began Dr. Renton, in a low, husky voice, glancing at her
frightened face, "I hope you'll be composed. I spoke to you very harshly
and rudely to-night; but I really was not myself--I was in anger--and I
ask your pardon. Please to overlook it all, and--but I will speak of
this presently; now--I am a physician; will you let me look now at your
sick child?"
He spoke hurriedly, but with evident sincerity. For a moment her lips
faltered; then a slow flush came up, with a quick change of expression
on her thin, worn face, and, reddening to painful scarlet, died away in
a deeper pallor.
"Dr. Renton," she said, hastily, "I have no ill-feeling for you, sir,
and I know you were hurt and vexed--and I know you have tried to make it
up to me again, sir--secretly. I know who it was, now; but I can't take
it, sir. You must take it back. You know it was you sent it, sir?"
"Mrs. Miller," he replied, puzzled beyond measure, "I don't understand
you. What do you mean?"
"Don't deny it, sir. Please not to," she said imploringly, the tears
starting to her eyes. "I am very grateful--indeed I am. But I can't
accept it. Do take it again."
"Mrs. Miller," he replied, in a hasty voice, "what do you mean? I have
sent you nothing--nothing at all. I have, therefore, nothing to receive
again."
She looked at him fixedly, evidently impressed by the fervor of his
denial.
"You sent me nothing to-night, sir?" she asked, doubtfully.
"Nothing at any time--nothing," he answered, firmly.
It would have been folly to have disbelieved the truthful look of his
wondering face, and she turned away in amazement and confusion. There
was a long pause.
"I hope, Mrs. Miller, you will not refuse any assistance I can render to
your child," he said, at length.
She started, and replied, tremblingly and confusedly, "No, sir; we shall
be grateful to you, if you can save her"--and went quickly, with a
strange abstraction on her white face, into the inner room. He followed
her at once, and, hardly glancing at Mrs. Flanagan, who sat there in
stupefaction, with her apron over her head and face, he laid his hat on
a table, went to the bedside of the little girl, and felt her head and
pulse. He soon satisfied himself that the little sufferer was in no
danger, under proper remedies, and now dashed down a prescription on a
leaf from his pocket-book. Mrs. Flanagan, who had come out from the
retirement of her apron, to stare stupidly at him during the
examination, suddenly bobbed up on her legs, with enlightened alacrity,
when he asked if there was any one that could go out to the
apothecary's, and said, "sure I wull!" He had a little trouble to make
her understand that the prescription, which she took by the corner,
holding it away from her, as if it were going to explode presently, and
staring at it upside down--was to be left--"_left_, mind you, Mrs.
Flanagan--with the apothecary--Mr. Flint--at the nearest corner--and he
will give you some things, which you are to bring here." But she had
shuffled off at last with a confident, "yis, sur--aw, I knoo," her head
nodding satisfied assent, and her big thumb covering the note on the
margin, "charge to Dr. C. Renton, Bowdoin street," (which _I_ know,
could not keep it from the eyes of the angels!) and he sat down to await
her return.
"Mrs. Miller," he said, kindly, "don't be alarmed about your child. She
is doing well; and, after you have given her the medicine Mrs. Flanagan
will bring, you'll find her much better, to-morrow. She must be kept
cool and quiet, you know, and she'll be all right soon."
"Oh! Dr. Renton, I am very grateful," was the tremulous reply; "and we
will follow all directions, sir. It is hard to keep her quiet, sir; we
keep as still as we can, and the other children are very still; but the
street is very noisy all the daytime and evening, sir, and--"
"I know it, Mrs. Miller. And I'm afraid those people down-stairs disturb
you somewhat."
"They make some stir in the evening, sir; and it's rather loud in the
street sometimes, at night. The folks on the lower floors are troubled a
good deal, they say."
Well they may be. Listen to the bawling outside, now, cold as it is.
Hark! A hoarse group on the opposite sidewalk beginning a song. "Ro-o-l
on, sil-ver mo-o-n"--. The silver moon ceases to roll in a sudden
explosion of yells and laughter, sending up broken fragments of curses,
ribald jeers, whoopings, and cat-calls, high into the night air.
"Ga-l-a-ng! Hi-hi! What ye-e-h _'bout_!"
"This is outrageous, Mrs. Miller. Where's the watchman?"
She smiled faintly. "He takes one of them off occasionally, sir; but
he's afraid; they beat him sometimes." A long pause.
"Isn't your room rather cold, Mrs. Miller?" He glanced at the black
stove, dimly seen in the outer room. "It is necessary to keep the rooms
cool just now, but this air seems to me cold."
Receiving no answer, he looked at her, and saw the sad truth in her
averted face.
"I beg your pardon," he said quickly, flushing to the roots of his hair.
"I might have known, after what you said to me this evening."
"We had a little fire here to-day, sir," she said, struggling with the
pride and shame of poverty; "but we have been out of firing for two or
three days, and we owe the wharfman something now. The two boys picked
up a few chips; but the poor children find it hard to get them, sir.
Times are very hard with us, sir; indeed they are. We'd have got along
better, if my husband's money had come, and your rent would have been
paid--"
"Never mind the rent!--don't speak of that!" he broke in, with his face
all aglow. "Mrs. Miller, I haven't done right by you--I know it. Be
frank with me. Are you in want of--have you--need of--food?"
No need of answer to that faintly stammered question. The thin, rigid
face was covered from his sight by the worn, wan hands, and all the
pride and shame of poverty, and all the frigid truth of cold, hunger,
anxiety, and sickened sorrow they had concealed, had given way at last
in a rush of tears. He could not speak. With a smitten heart, he knew it
all now. Ah! Dr. Renton, you know these people's tricks? you know their
lying blazon of poverty, to gather sympathy?
"Mrs. Miller"--she had ceased weeping, and as he spoke, she looked at
him, with the tear-stains still on her agitated face, half ashamed that
he had seen her--"Mrs. Miller, I am sorry. This shall be remedied. Don't
tell me it shan't! Don't! I say it shall! Mrs. Miller, I'm--I'm ashamed
of myself. I am, indeed."