 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Green Tea by Joseph Sheridan Lafannou, read by Chris Turtle. Part 2 7. The Journey, First Stage When the omnibus drove on, and I was alone upon the road, I looked carefully round to ascertain whether the monkey had followed me. To my indescribable relief, I saw it nowhere. I can't describe easily what a shock I had received, and my sense of genuine gratitude on finding myself as I supposed quite rid of it. I had got out a little before we reached this house, two or three hundred steps. A brick wall runs along the footpath, and inside the wall is a hedge of yule or some dark garden evergreen of that kind, and within that again the row of fine trees, which you may have remarked as you came. The brick wall is about as high as my shoulder, and happening to raise my eyes I saw the monkey with that stooping gate on all fours, walking or creeping close beside me on top of the wall. I stopped, looking at it with a feeling of loathing and horror. As I stopped so did it. It sat up on the wall with its long hands on its knees, looking at me. There was not light enough to see it much more than an outline, nor was it dark enough to bring the peculiar light of its eyes into strong relief. I still saw, however, that red, foggy light plainly enough. It did not show its teeth, nor exhibit any sign of irritation, but seemed jaded and sulk-y, and was observing me steadily. I drew back into the middle of the road. It was an unconscious recoil, and there I stood, still looking at it. It did not move. With an instinctive determination to try something, anything, I turned about and walked briskly towards town with a scant slurk all the time, watching the movements of the beast. It crept swiftly along the wall at exactly my pace. Where the wall ends near the end of the road it came down, and with a wiry spring or two brought itself close to my feet, and continued to keep up with me as I quickened my pace. It was at my left side, so close to my leg that I felt every moment as if I should tread upon it. The road was quite deserted and silent, and it was darker every moment. I stopped, dismayed and bewildered, turning as I did so the other way, I mean towards this house, away from which I had been walking. When I stood still, the monkey drew back to a distance of, I suppose, about five or six yards, and remained stationary, watching me. I had been more agitated than I have said. I had read, of course, as everyone has, something about spectral illusions as you physicians term the phenomena of such cases. I considered my situation and looked my misfortune in the face. These affections I had read are sometimes transitory and sometimes obstinate. I had read of cases in which the appearance at first harmless, had, step by step, degenerated into something direful and insupportable, and ended by wearing its victim out. Still, as I stood there, but for my bestial companion, quite alone, I tried to comfort myself by repeating again and again the assurance, the thing is purely disease, a well-known physical affection, as distinct as smallpox or neuralgia. Doctors are all agreed on that. Philosophy demonstrates it. I must not be a fool. I've been sitting up too late, and I daresay my digestion is quite wrong, and with God's help I shall be all right, and this is but a symptom of nervous dyspepsia. Did I believe all this? Not one word of it. No more than any other miserable being ever did who is once seized and riveted in the satanic captivity. Against my convictions, I might say my knowledge, I was simply bullying myself into a false courage. I now walked homeward. I had only a few hundred yards to go. I had forced myself into a sort of resignation, but I had not got over the sickening shock and the flurry of the first certainty of my misfortune. I made up my mind to pass the night at home. The brute moved close beside me, and I fancied there was some sort of anxious drawing towards the house, which one sees in tired horses or dogs sometimes as they come towards home. I was afraid to go into town. I was afraid of anyone seeing and recognising me. I was conscious of an irrepressible agitation in my manner. Also, I was afraid of any violent change in my habits, such as going to a place of amusement or walking from home in order to fatigue myself. At the whole door it waited till I mounted the steps, and when the door was opened entered with me. I drank no tea that night. I got cigars and some brandy and water. My idea was that I should act upon my material system, and by living for a while and sensation apart from thought, send myself forcibly, as it were, into a new groove. I came up here to this drawing-room. I sat just there. The monkey then got up on a small table and then stood there. It looked dazed and languid, an irrepressible uneasiness as to its movements kept my eyes always upon it. Its eyes were half closed, but I could see them glow. It was looking steadily at me. In all situations, at all hours, it is awake and looking at me. That never changes. I shall not continue in detail my narrative of this particular night. I shall describe rather the phenomena of the first year, which never varied, essentially. I shall describe the monkey as it appeared in daylight. In the dark, as you shall presently hear, there are peculiarities. It is a small monkey, perfectly black. It has only one peculiarity, a character of malignity, unfathomable malignity. During the first year, it looked sullen and sick, but this character of intense malice and vigilance was always underlying that surly linger. During all that time, it acted as if on a plan of giving me as little trouble as consistent with watching me. Its eyes were never off me. I have never lost sight of it, except in my sleep, light or dark, day or night, since it came here, excepting when it withdraws for some weeks to time, unaccountably. In total dark it is as visible as in daylight. I do not mean merely its eyes. It is as visible distinctly in a halo that resembles a glow of red embers and which accompanies it in all its movements. When it leaves me for a time, it is always at night in the dark and in the same way. It grows at first uneasy and then furious, and then advances towards me, grinning and shaking, its paws clenched, and at the same time there comes the appearance of fire in the grate. I never have any fire. I can't sleep in the room where there is any. It draws nearer and nearer to the chimney, quivering, it seems, with rage, and when it furiously rises to the highest pitch, it springs into the grate and up the chimney, and I see it no more. When first this happened, I thought I was released. I was now a new man, a day passed, a night, and no return, a blessed week, a week, another week. I was always on my knees, Dr. Heselius, always thanking God and praying. A whole month passed of liberty, but on a sudden it was with me again. 8. The Second Stage It was with me, and the malice which before was torpid under a sullen exterior was now active. It was perfectly unchanged in every other respect. This new energy was apparent in its activity and its looks, and soon in other ways. For a time you will understand, the change was shown only in an increased vivacity and an air of menace as if it was always brooding over some atrocious plan. Its eyes as before were never off me. Is it here now? I asked. No, he replied. It has been absent exactly a fortnight and a day, fifteen days. It has sometimes been away so long as nearly two months, once for three. Its absence always exceeds a fortnight, although it may be by but a single day. Fifteen days having passed since I saw it last, it may return now at any moment. Is its return, I asked, accompanied by any particular manifestation? Nothing, no, he said. It is simply with me again. On lifting my eyes from a book or turning my head, I see it as usual, looking at me, and then it remains as before for its appointed time. I have never told so much and so minutely before to any one. I perceive that he was agitated and looking like death, and he repeatedly applied his handkerchief to his forehead. I suggested that he might be tired and told that I would call with pleasure in the morning. But he said, No, if you don't mind hearing it all now. I have got so far and I should prefer making one effort of it. When I spoke to Dr. Harley I had nothing like so much to tell. You are a philosophic physician. You give spirit its proper rank. If this thing is real, he paused, looking at me with agitated inquiry. We can discuss it by and by and very fully. I will give you all I think, I answered after an interval. Well, very well. If it is anything real, I say, it is prevailing little by little, undrawing me more interiorly into hell. Optic nerves, he talked of. Well, there are other nerves of communication. May God Almighty help me. You shall hear. Its power of action, I tell you, had increased. Its malice became, in a way, aggressive. About two years ago some questions was impending between me and the bishop having been settled. I went down to my parish in Warwickshire, anxious to find occupation in my profession. I was not prepared for what happened, although I have since thought I might have apprehended something like it. The reason of my saying so is this. He was beginning to speak with a great deal more effint and reluctance, and sighed often, and it seemed at times nearly overcome. But at this time his manner was not agitated. It was more like that of a sinking patient who has given himself up. Yes, but I will first tell you about Kenlis, my parish. It was with me when I left this place for Dallbridge. It was my silent travelling companion, and it remained with me at the vicarage. When I entered on the discharge of my duties, another change took place. The thing exhibited an atrocious determination to thwart me. It was with me in the church, in the reading desk, in the pulpits, within the communion rails. At last it reached this extremity that while I was reading to the congregation it would spring upon the open book and squat there so that I was unable to see the page. This happened more than once. I left Dallbridge for a time. I placed myself in Dr. Harley's hands. I did everything he told me. He gave my case a great deal of thought. It interested him, I think. He seemed successful. For nearly three months I was perfectly free from a return. I began to think I was safe. With his full ascent I returned to Dallbridge. I travelled in a chaise. I was in good spirits. I was more. I was happy and grateful. I was returning, as I thought, delivered from a dreadful hallucination to the scene of duties which I longed to enter upon. It was a beautiful sunny evening. Everything looked serene and cheerful, and I was delighted. I remember looking out of the window to see the spire of my church at Kenlis among the trees, at the point where one has the earliest view of it. It is exactly where the stream that bounds the parish passes under the road by a culvert, and where it emerges at the roadside a stone with an old inscription is placed. As we passed this point I drew my head in and sat down, and in the corner of the chaise was the monkey. For a moment I felt faint. I then quite wild with despair and horror. I called to the driver and got out and sat down at the roadside, and prayed to God silently for mercy. A despairing resignation supervened. My companion was with me as I re-entered the vicarage. The same persecution followed. After a short struggle I submitted, and soon I left the place. I told you, he said, that the beast has before this become in certain ways aggressive. I will explain a little. It seemed to be actuated by intense and increasing fury whenever I said my prayers, or even meditated prayer. It amounted at last to a dreadful interruption. You will ask how could a silent and material phantom effect that? It was thus, whenever I meditated praying, it was always before me, and nearer and nearer. It used to spring on a table, on the back of a chair, on the chimney-piece, and slowly to swing itself from side to side, looking at me all the time. There is in its motion an indefinable power to dissipate thought, and to contract one's attention to that medotally, till the ideas shrink as it were to a point, and at last to nothing. And unless I have started up and shaken off the catalepsy, I have felt as if my mind were on the point of losing itself. There are other ways, he sighed heavily. Thus, for instance, while I pray with my eyes closed, it comes closer and closer, and I see it. I know it is not to be accounted for physically, but I do actually see it, though my lids are closed, and so it rocks my mind as it were, and overpowers me, and I am obliged to rise from my knees. If you had yourself ever known this, you would be acquainted with desperation. I see, Dr. Heselius, that you don't lose one word of my statement. I need not ask you to listen specifically to what I am now going to tell you. They talk of the optic nerves and of spectral illusions as if the organ of sight was the only point assailable by the influences that have fastened upon me. I know better. For two years in my direful case that limitation prevailed. But as food is taken in softly at the lips and then brought under the teeth, as the tip of the little finger caught in a mill crank will draw in the hand and the arm and the whole body, so the miserable mortal who has been once caught firmly by the end of the finest fibre of his nerve is drawn in and in by the enormous machinery of hell until he is as I am. Yes, Dr. as I am, for while I talk to you and implore relief I feel that my prayer is for the impossible and my pleading with the inexorable. I endeavoured to calm his visibly increasing agitation and told him that he must not despair. While we talked the night had overtaken us. The filmy moonlight was wide over the scene which the window commanded, and I said, perhaps you would prefer having candles. The light, you know, is odd. I should wish you as much as possible under your usual conditions while I make my diagnosis, shall I call it. Otherwise I don't care. All lights are the same to me, he said, except when I read or write I care not if night were perpetual. I am going to tell you what happened about a year ago. The thing began to speak to me. Speak? How do you mean speak as a man does, do you mean? Yes, speak in words and consecutive sentences with perfect coherence and articulation, but there is a peculiarity. It is not like the tone of a human voice. It is not by my ears it reaches me. It comes like a singing through my head. This faculty, the power of speaking to me, will be my undoing. It won't let me pray. It interrupts me with dreadful blasphemies. Dare not go on. I could not. Oh, doctor, can the skill and thought and prayers of man avail me nothing? You must promise me, my dear sir, not to trouble yourself with unnecessarily exciting thoughts. Find yourself strictly to the narrative of facts, and recollect above all that even if the thing that infests you be as you seem to suppose, a reality with an actual independent life and will, yet it can have no power to hurt you unless it be given from above. Its access to your senses depends mainly upon your physical condition, that is, under God, your comfort and reliance. We are all alike and vironed. It is only that in your case, the parries, the veil of the flesh, the screen is a little out of repair, and sights and sounds are transmitted. We must enter on a new course, sir. Be encouraged. I'll give tonight to the careful consideration of the whole case. You are very good, sir. You think it's worth trying. You don't give me quite up. But, sir, you don't know. It is gaining such an influence over me. It orders me about. It is such a tyrant, and I'm growing so helpless. May God deliver me. It orders you about? Of course, you mean by speech. Yes, yes. It is always urging me to crimes, to injure others or myself. You see, doctor, the situation is urgent. It is indeed. When I was in Chropshire, a few weeks ago, Mr Jennings was speaking rapidly and trembling now, holding my arm with one hand and looking in my face. I went out one day with a party of friends for a walk. My persecutor, I tell you, was with me at the time. I lagged behind the rest. The country near the D, you know, is beautiful. A path happened to lie near a coal mine, and at the verge of the word is a perpendicular shaft. They say a hundred and fifty feet deep. My niece had remained behind with me. She knows, of course, nothing of the nature of my sufferings. She knew, however, that I had been ill and was low, and she remained to prevent me being quite alone. As we loitered slowly on together, the brute that accompanied me was urging me to throw myself down the shaft. I tell you now, but, sir, think of it, the one consideration that saved me from that hideous death was the fear less the shock of witnessing the occurrence should be too much for the poor girl. I asked her to go on and take a walk with her friends, saying that I could go on no farther. She made excuses, and the more I urged her the firmer she became. She looked doubtful and frightened. I suppose there was something in my looks or manner that alarmed her, but she would not go, and that literally saved me. You had no idea, sir, that a living man could be made so abject a slave of Satan, he said, with a ghastly groan and a shudder. There was a pause here, and I said, You are preserved nevertheless. It was the act of God. You are in his hands and in the power of no other being. Be therefore confident for the future. 10. Home I made him have candles lighted and saw the room looking cheery and inhabited before I left him. I told him that he must regard his illness strictly as one dependent on physical, though subtle, physical causes. I told him that he had evidence of God's care and love in the deliverance which he had just described, and that I had perceived with pain that he seemed to regard its peculiar features as indicating that he had been delivered over to spiritual reprobation. Then such a conclusion nothing could be, I insisted, less warranted, and not only so but more contrary to facts, as disclosed in his mysterious deliverance from that murderous influence during his rupture excursion. First his niece had been retained by his side without his intending to keep her near him, and secondly there had been infused into his mind an irresistible repugnance to execute the dreadful suggestion in her presence. As I reasoned this point with him, Mr. Jennings wept. He seemed comforted. One promise I exacted, which was that should the monkey at any time return I should be sent for immediately, and repeating my assurance that I would give neither time nor thought to any other subject until I had thoroughly investigated his case, and that tomorrow he should hear the result, I took my leave. Before getting into the carriage I told the servant that his master was far from well, and that he should make a point of frequently looking into his room. My own arrangements I made with the view to being quite secure from interruption. I merely called at my lodgings, and with a travelling desk and carpet bag set off in a hackney carriage for an inn about two miles out of town called the Horns, a very quiet and comfortable house with good thick walls. And there I resolved, without the possibility of intrusion or distraction, to devote some hours of the night in my comfortable sitting-room to Mr. Jennings's case, and so much of the morning as it might require. There occurs here a careful note of Dr. Heselius's opinion upon the case, and of the habits, diet, and medicines which he prescribed. It is curious, some persons would say mystical, but on the whole I doubt whether it would sufficiently interest a reader of the kind I am likely to meet with to warrant its being here reprinted. The whole letter was plainly written at the inn where he had hid himself for the occasion. The letter is dated from his town lodgings. I left town for the inn where I slept last night at half-past nine, and did not arrive at my room in town until one o'clock this afternoon. I found a letter in Mr. Jennings' hand upon my table. It had not come by post, and on inquiry I learnt that Mr. Jennings' servant had brought it, and on learning that I was not to return until to-day, and that no one could tell him my address, he seemed very uncomfortable, and said that his orders from his master were that he was not to return without an answer. I opened the letter and read. Dear Dr. Heselius, it is here. You had not been an hour gone when it returned. It is speaking. It knows all that has happened. It knows everything. It knows you and is frantic and atrocious. It reviles. I send you this. It knows every word I have written. I write. This I promised, and I therefore write. But I fear very confusedly, very incoherently. I am so interrupted, disturbed. Ever yours, sincerely yours, Robert Linder Jennings. When did this come, I asked. About eleven last night. The man was here again, and has been here three times to-day. The last time was about an hour since. Thus answered, and with the notes I had made upon his case in my pocket, I was in a few minutes driving towards Richmond to see Mr. Jennings. I by no means, as you perceive, despaired of Mr. Jennings' case. He had himself remembered and applied, though quite in a mistaken way, the principle which I lay down in my metaphysical medicine, and which governs all such cases. I was about to apply it in earnest. I was profoundly interested and very anxious to see and examine him while the enemy was actually present. I drove up to the somber house and ran up the steps and knocked. The door in a little time was opened by a tall woman in black silk. She looked ill, as if she had been crying. She curtsied and heard my question, but she did not answer. She turned her face away, extending her hand towards two men who were coming downstairs, and thus having, as it were, tacitly made me over to them. She passed through a side door hastily and shut it. The man who was nearest the hall I at once accosted, but being now close to him, I was shocked to see that both his hands were covered with blood. I drew back a little, and the man passing downstairs merely said in a low tone, here is the servant, sir. The servant had stopped on the stairs, confounded and dumb at seeing me. He was rubbing his hands in a handkerchief, and it was steeped in blood. Jones, what is it? What has happened? I asked, while a sickening suspicion overpowered me. The man asked me to come up to the lobby. I was beside him in a moment, and frowning and pallid with contracted eyes, he told me the horror which I already half-guessed. His master had made away with himself. I went upstairs with him to the room. What I saw there, I won't tell you. He had cut his throat with his razor. It was a frightful gash. The two men had laid him on the bed and composed his limbs. It had happened as the immense pool of blood on the floor declared at some distance between the bed and the window. There was carpet round his bed, and a carpet under his dressing-table, but none on the rest of the room, for the man said he did not like a carpet in his bedroom. In this somber and now terrible room, one of the great elms that darkened the house was slowly moving the shadow of one of its great bowers upon this dreadful floor. I beckoned to the servant, and we went downstairs together. I turned off the hall into an old-fashioned panelled room, and standing there I heard all the servant had to tell. It was not a great deal. I concluded, sir, from your words and looks, sir, as you left last night, that you thought my master seriously ill. I thought it might be that you were afraid of a fit or something, so I attended very close to your directions. He sat up late till past three o'clock. He was not writing or reading. He was talking a great deal to himself, but that was nothing unusual. At about half the hour I assisted him to undress, and left him in his slippers and dressing-cow. I went back softly in about half an hour. He was in his bed, quite undressed, and a pair of candles lighted on the table beside his bed. He was leaning on his elbow and looking out at the other side of the bed when I came in. I asked him if he wanted anything, and he said no. I don't know whether it was what you said to me, sir, or something a little unusual about him, but I was uneasy, uncommon uneasy about him last night. In another half-hour, or it might have been a little more, I went up again. I did not hear him talking as before. I opened the door a little. The candles were both out, which was not usual. I had a bedroom candle, and I let the light in a little bit, looking softly round. I saw him sitting in that chair beside the dressing-table, with his clothes on again. He turned round and looked at me. I thought it was strange. You should get up and dress. I put out the candles to sit in the dark that way, but I only asked him again if I could do anything for him. He said no, rather sharp, I thought. I asked if I might light the candles, and he said, Do as you like, Jones. So I lighted them, and I lingered about the room, and he said, Tell me the truth, Jones. Why did you come again? Did you not hear anyone cursing? No, sir, I said, wondering what you could mean. No, said he after me. Of course no. And I said to him, Wouldn't it be well, sir, if you went to bed? It's just five o'clock. And he said nothing but, Very likely. Good night, Jones. So I went, sir, but in less than an hour I came again. The door was fast, and he heard me, and called as I thought from the bed, to know what I wanted, and he desired me not to disturb him again. I lay down and slept for a little. It must have been between six and seven when I went up again. The door was still fast, and he made no answer, so I did not like to disturb him, and thinking he was asleep, I left him till nine. It was his custom to ring when he wished me to come, and I had no particular hour for calling him. I tapped very gently, and getting no answer, I stayed away a good while, supposing he was getting some rest then. It was not till eleven o'clock I grew really uncomfortable about him, for at the latest he was never that I could remember later than half past ten. I got no answer. I knocked and called, but still no answer. So not being able to force the door, I called Thomas from the stables, and together we forced it, and found him in a shocking way you saw. Jones had no more to tell. Poor Mr. Jennings was very gentle, and very kind. All his people were fond of him. I could see that the servant was very much moved. So, dejected and agitated, I passed from that terrible house, at its dark canopy of alms, and I hope I shall never see it more. While I write to you, I feel like a man who has been half-waked from a frightful and monotonous dream. My memory rejects the picture with incredulity and horror. Yet I know it is true. It is the story of the process of a poison. A poison which excites the reciprocal action of spirit and nerve and paralyzes the tissue that separates these cognate functions of the senses, the external and the interior. Thus we find strange bedfellows, and the mortal and immortal prematurely make acquaintance. Conclusion. A word for those who suffer. My dear Van Lu, you have suffered from an affliction similar to that which I have just described. You twice complained of a return of it. Who under God cured you? Your humble servant, Martin Heselius? Let me rather adopt the more emphasized piety of a certain good old French surgeon of three hundred years ago. I treated, and God cured you. Come, my friend, you are not to be hippish. Let me tell you a fact. I have met with and treated, as my book shows, fifty-seven cases of this kind of vision which I term indifferently sublimated, precocious, and interior. There is another class of afflictions which are truly termed, though commonly confounded with those which I describe, spectral illusions. These latter I look upon as being no less simply curable than a cold in the head or a trifling dyspepsia. It is those which rank in the first category that test our promptitude of thought. Fifty-seven such cases have I encountered, neither more nor less, and in how many of these have I failed? In no one single instance. There is no one affliction of mortality more easily and certainly reducible with the little patience and irrational confidence in the physician. With these simple conditions I look upon the cure as absolutely certain. You are to remember that I had not even commenced to treat Mr. Jennings's case. I have not any doubt that I should have cured him perfectly in eighteen months, or possibly it might have extended to two years. Some cases are very rapidly curable, others extremely tedious. Every intelligent physician who will give thought and diligence to the task will affect a cure. You know my tract on the cardinal functions of the brain. I, there, by the evidence of innumerable facts, prove, as I think, the high probability of a circulation, arterial and venous in its mechanism through the nerves. Of this system, thus considered, the brain is the heart. The fluid, which is propagated hence through one class of nerves, returns in an altered state through another. And the nature of that fluid is spiritual, though not a material, any more than, as I before remarked, light or electricity or so. By various abuses, among which the habitual use of such agents as green tea is one, this fluid may be affected as to its quality, but it is more frequently disturbed as to equilibrium. This fluid, being that which we have in common with spirits, a congestion found upon the masses of brain or nerve connected with the interior sense, forms a surface unduly exposed, on which disembodied spirits may operate communication, is thus more or less effectively established. Between this brain circulation and the heart circulation, there is an intimate sympathy. The seat or rather the instrument of exterior vision is the eye. The seat of interior vision is the nervous tissue and brain, immediately about and above the eyebrow. Remember how effectively I dissipated your pictures by the simple application of iced odour cologne. Few cases, however, can be treated exactly alike with anything like rapid success. Cold acts powerfully as a repellent of the nervous fluid. Long enough continued it will even produce that permanent insensibility which we call numbness on a little longer, muscular as well as sensational paralysis. If not, I repeat, the slightest doubt that I should have first dimmed and ultimately sealed that inner eye which Mr. Jennings had inadvertently opened. The same senses are opened in delirium-tremends and entirely shut up again when the overaction of the cerebral heart and the prodigious nervous congestions that attend it are terminated by a decided change in the state of the body. It is by acting steadily upon the body by a simple process that this result is produced, and inevitably produced, I have never yet failed. Poor Mr. Jennings made away with himself, but that catastrophe was the result of a totally different malady which, as it were, projected itself upon that disease which was established. His case was in the distinctive manner a complication, and the complaint under which he really succumbed was hereditary suicidal mania. Poor Mr. Jennings, I cannot call a patient of mine, for I had not even begun to treat his case, and he had not yet given me, I am convinced, his full and unreserved confidence. If the patient does not array himself on the side of the disease, his cure is certain. Whatever hour you woke, there was a door shunting. From room to room they went hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure a ghostly couple. Here we left it, she said, and he added, oh, but here too, it's upstairs, she murmured, and in the garden he whispered, quietly they said, oh, we shall wake them. But it wasn't that you woke us, oh no, they're looking for it, they're drawing the curtain, one might say, and so read on a page or two. Now they found it, one would be certain, stopping the pencil in the margin. And then tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the door standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content, and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. What did I come in here for? What did I want to find? My hands were empty, perhaps it's upstairs then. The apples were in the loft, and so down again, the garden still is ever only the book had slipped into the grass. But they had found it in the drawing room, not the one that could ever see them. The windowpane's reflected apples, reflected roses, all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling, what? My hands were empty, the shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet, from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. Safe, safe, safe, the pulse of the house beat softly, the treasure buried the room, the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure? A moment later the light had faded out in the garden then, but the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface, the beam I sought always burnt behind the glass. Death was the glass, death was between us, coming to the woman first hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows, the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went north, went east, saw the stars turned in the southern sky, saw the house founder dropped beneath the downs. Safe, safe, safe, the pulse of the house beat gladly, the treasure yours. The wind roars up the avenue, trees stoop and bend this way and that, moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain, but the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still, wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seeks their joy. Here we slept, she says, and he adds, kisses without number, waking in the morning, silver between the trees, upstairs in the garden. When summer came, in winter snow time, the doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart. Nearer they come, cease at the doorway, the wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass, our eyes darken, we hear no steps beside us. We see no lady spread her ghostly cloak, his hands shielded with the lantern, look he breathes, sound asleep, love upon their lips. Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us long they look in deeply, long they pause, the wind drives straightly, the flame stoop slightly, wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall and meeting, stain the faces bent, the faces pondering, the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy. Safe, safe, safe, the heart of the house beats proudly, long years he sighs, again you found me, here she murmurs, sleeping in the garden, reading, laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure, stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes, safe, safe, safe, the pulse of the house beats wildly, waking I cry, oh is this your buried treasure, the light in the heart. End of A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf, read by Howard Dratch. The Haunted Orchard by Richard Legaliin. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Jessica Snyder, July 2007. The Haunted Orchard by Richard Legaliin. Spring was once more in the world. As she sang to herself in the far away hoodlands, her voice reached even the ears of the city, with a query with the long winter. Daffodils flowered at the entrances to the subway, furniture removing vans blocked the side streets, children clustered like blossoms on the doorsteps, the open cars were running, and the cry of the cash-claw man was once more heard in the land. Yes, it was the spring, and the city dreamed wistfully of lilacs and the dewy piping of birds in gnarled old apple trees, of dogwood lighting up with sudden silver the thickening woods, of water plants unfolding their glossy scrolls in pools of morning freshness. On Sunday mornings the outbound trains were thronged with eager pilgrims, hastening out of the city to behold once more the ancient marvel of the spring. And on Sunday evenings the railway term and I were a flower with banners of blossom from rifled woodland and orchard carried in the hands of the returning pilgrims, whose eyes still shone with the spring magic, in whose ears still sang the fairy music. And as I beheld these signs of the vernal equinox, I knew that I too must follow the music, forsake a while the beautiful siren we call the city, and in the green silences meet once more my sweet heart. Solitude. As the train drew out of the Grand Central I hummed to myself, I'm a neater, sweeter maiden in a greener, cleaner land. And so I said goodbye to the city and went forth with beating heart to meet the spring. I had been told of an almost forgotten corner on the south coast of Connecticut, where the spring and I could live in an infilate loneliness, a place uninhabited saved by birds and blossoms, woods and thick grass, and an occasional silent farmer, and pervaded by the breath and shimmer of the sound. Nor had rumour lied, for when the train set me down at my destination, I stepped out into the most wonderful green hush. A leafy sabbath silence through which the very train as it went farther on its way seemed to steal as noiselessly as possible for fear of breaking the spell. After a winter in the town to be dropped thus suddenly into the intense quiet of the countryside makes an almost ghostly impression upon one, as of an enchanted silence, a silence that listens and watches but never speaks finger on lip. There is a spectral quality about everything upon which the eye falls, the woods like great green clouds, the wayside flowers, the still farmhouses half lost in orchard bloom, all seem to exist in a dream. Everything is so still, everything so supernaturally green. Nothing moves or talks except the gentle susuris of the spring wind swaying the young buds high up in the quiet sky, or bird now and again, or a little brook singing softly to itself among the crowding rushes. Though from the houses one notes here and there there are evidently human inhabitants of this green silence none are to be seen. I have often wondered where the country folk hide themselves as I have walked hour after hour past farm and craft and lonely dooryards and never caught sight of a human face. If you should want to ask the way a farmer is as shy as a squirrel and if you knock at a farmhouse door all is as silent as a rabbit warren. As I walked along in the enchanted stillness I came at length to a quaint old farmhouse, old colonial in its architecture, emboured in white lilacs and surrounded by an orchard of ancient apple trees which cast a rich shade on the deep spring grass. The orchard had the impressiveness of those old religious groves dedicated to the strange worship of sylvan gods, gods to be found now only in horus or catalysts and in the hearts of young poets to whom the beautiful antique Latin is still dear. The old house seemed already the abode of solitude. As I lifted the latch of the white gate and walked across the forgotten grass and up onto the veranda already festooned with wisteria and looked into the window I saw solitude sitting by an old piano on which no composer later than Bach had ever been played. In other words, the house was empty. And going round to the back where old barns and stables leaned together as if falling asleep I found a broken pane and so climbed in and walked through the echoing rooms. The house was very lonely. Evidently no one had lived in it for a long time. Yet it was all ready for some occupant for whom it seemed to be waiting. Quaint old four-poster bedsteads stood in three rooms, dimity curtains and spotless linen, old oak chests and mahogany presses, and opening drawers in Chippendale sideboards. I came upon beautiful frail old silver and exquisite china that set me thinking of a beautiful grandmother of mine made out of old lace and laughing wrinkles and mischievous old blue eyes. There was one little room that particularly interested me. A tiny bedroom all white and at the window the red roses were already in bud. But what caught my eye with peculiar sympathy was a small bookcase in which were some twenty or thirty volumes wearing the same forgotten expression, forgotten and yet cared for, which lay like a kind of memorial charm upon everything in the old house. Yes, everything seemed forgotten and yet everything curiously, even religiously, remembered. I took out book after book from the shelves once or twice flowers fell out from the pages and I caught sight of a delicate handwriting here and there and frail markings. It was evidently the little intimate library of a young girl. What surprised me most was to find that quite half the books were in French, French poets and French romancers, a charming, very rare edition of Bonsard, a beautifully printed edition of Alfred de Macet, and a copy of Theophile Gauthier's Mademoiselle de Mopin. How did these exotic books come to be there alone in a deserted New England farmhouse? This question was to be answered later in a strange way. Meanwhile, I had fallen in love with this sad old silent place and as I closed the white gate and was once more on the road, I looked about for someone who could tell me whether or not this house of ghosts might be rented for the summer by a comparatively living man. I was referred to a fine old New England farmhouse shining white through the trees a quarter of a mile away. There I met an ancient couple, a typical New England farmer and his wife, the old man, lean, chin bearded with keen gray eyes flickering occasionally with a shrewd humor. The old lady with a kindly old face of the withered apple type and ruddy. They were evidently prosperous people, but their minds, for some reason I could not at the moment divine, seemed to be divided between their New England desire to drive a hard bargain and their disinclination to let the house at all. Over and over again they spoke of the loneliness of the place. They feared I would find it very lonely. No one had lived in it for a long time and so on. It seemed to me that afterwards I understood their curious hesitation, but at the moment only regarded it as a part of the circuitous New England method of bargaining. At all events the rent I offered finally overcame their disinclination whatever its cause, and so I came into possession for four months of that silent old house with the white lilacs and the drowsy barns and the old piano and the strange orchard. And as the summer came on and the year changed its name from May to June, I used to lie under the apple trees in the afternoons, dreamily reading some old book and through half-sleepy eyelids watching the silken shimmer of the sound. I had lived in the old house for about a month, when one afternoon a strange thing happened to me. I remember the date well. It was the afternoon of Tuesday, June 13th. I was reading, or rather dipping here and there, in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. As I read I remember that a little unripe apple with a petal or two of blossom still clinging to it fell upon the old yellow page. Then I suppose I must have fallen into a dream, though it seemed to me that both my eyes and my ears were wide open. For I suddenly became aware of a beautiful young voice singing very softly somewhere among the leaves. The singing was very frail, almost imperceptible, as though it came out of the air. It came and went fitfully like the elusive fragrance of sweetbriar, as though a girl was walking to and fro, dreamily humming to herself in the still afternoon. Yet there was no one to be seen. The orchard had never seemed more lonely. And another fact that struck me as strange was that the words that floated to me out of the aerial music were French, half sad, half gay snatches of some long-dead singer of old France. I looked about for the origin of the sweet sounds, but in vain. Could it be the birds that were singing in French in this strange orchard? Presently the voice seemed to come quite close to me, so near that it might have been the voice of a dryad singing to me out of the tree against which I was leaning. And this time I distinctly caught the words of the sad little song. Jean de Rosignol, Jean de Tois, qui avait croqué Tu allais croirer, moi je l'ai à plus près. But, though the voice was at my shoulder, I could see no one. And then the singing stopped with what sounded like a sob. And a moment or two later I seemed to hear a sound of sobbing far down the orchard. Then there followed silence, and I was left to ponder on the strange occurrence. Naturally I decided that it was just a daydream between sleeping and waking over the pages of an old book. Yet when, next day and the day after, the invisible singer was in the orchard again, I could not be satisfied with such mere matter of fact explanation. Ar la clave fantana went the voice to and fro through the thick orchard boughs. Monde allon pour m'éner, j'ai tout héros et beaux comme que je t'aime, Jean. It was certainly uncanny to hear that voice going to and fro the orchard. There somewhere amid the bright sun dazzled boughs, yet not a human creature to be seen. Not another house even, within half a mile. The most materialistic mind could hardly but conclude that here was something, quote, not dreamed of in our philosophy, end quote. It seemed to me that the only reasonable explanation was the entirely irrational one, that my orchard was haunted. Haunted by some beautiful young spirit was some sorrow of lost joy that would not let her sleep quietly in her grave. And next day I had a curious confirmation of my theory. Once more I was lying under my favourite apple-tree, half reading and half watching the sound, lulled into a dream by the whore of insects and the spices called up from the earth by the hot sun. As I bent over the page, I suddenly had the startling impression that someone was leaning over my shoulder and reading with me, and that a girl's long hair was falling over me down onto the page. The book was the consul that I had found in the little bedroom. I turned, but again there was nothing there. Yet this time I knew that I had not been dreaming and I cried out, poor child, tell me of your grief that I may help your sorrowing heart to rest. But of course there was no answer. Yet that night I dreamed a strange dream. I thought I was in the orchard again in the afternoon and once again heard the strange singing. But this time as I looked up the singer was no longer invisible. Coming toward me was a young girl with wonderful blue eyes filled with tears and gold hair that fell to her waist. She wore a straight white robe that might have been a shroud or a bridal dress. She appeared not to see me, though she came directly to the tree where I was sitting. And there she knelt and buried her face in the grass and sobbed as if her heart would break. Her long hair fell over her like a mantle and in my dream I stroked it pityingly and murmured words of comfort for a sorrow I did not understand. Then I woke suddenly, as one does from dreams. The moon was shining brightly into the room. Rising from my bed I looked out into the orchard. It was almost as bright as day. I could plainly see the tree of which I had been dreaming and then a fantastic notion possessed me. Slipping on my clothes I went out into one of the old barns and found a spade. Then I went to the tree where I had seen the girl weeping in my dream and dug down at its foot. I had dug little more than a foot when my spade struck upon some hard substance and in a few more moments I had uncovered and exhumed a small box which, on examination, proved to be one of those pretty old-fashioned Chippendale work boxes used by our grandmothers to keep their thimbles and needles in, their reels of cotton and skeins of silk. After smoothing down the little grave in which I had found it, I carried the box into the house and under the lamp-light examined its contents. Then at once I understood why that sad young spirit went to and fro the orchard singing those little French songs. For the treasure-trove I had found under the apple-tree the buried treasure of an unquiet, suffering soul proved to be a number of love letters written mostly in French in a very picturesque hand letters too written but some five or six years before. Perhaps I should not have read them, yet I read them with such reverence for the beautiful impassioned love that animated them and literally made them quote, smell sweet and blossom in the dust, that I felt I had the sanction of the dead to make myself the confidant of their story. Among the letters were little songs, two of which I had heard the strange young voice singing in the orchard, and of course there were many withered flowers in such like-remembrances of bygone raptured. Not that night could I make out all the story. Though it was not difficult to define its essential tragedy, and later on a gossip in the neighbourhood and a headstone in the churchyard told me the rest. The unquiet young soul that had sung so wistfully to and fro the orchard was my landlord's daughter. She was the only child of her parents, a beautiful, willful girl, exotically unlike those from whom she was sprung and among whom she lived with a disdainful air of exile. She was, as a child, a little creature of fairy fancies, and as she grew up it was plain to her father and mother that she had come from another world than theirs. To them she seemed like a child in an old fairy-tale strangely found on his hearth by some shepherd as he returns from the field at evening. A little fairy-girl swaddled in fine linen and doured with a mysterious bag of gold. Soon she developed delicate spiritual needs to which her simple parents were strangers. From long truancies in the woods she would come home laden with mysterious flowers. And soon she came to ask for books and pictures and music of which the poor souls that had given her birth had never heard. Finally she had her way and went to study at a certain fashionable college, and there the brief romance of her life began. There she met a romantic young Frenchman who had read Gonsard to her and written her those picturesque letters that she had found in the old mahogany work-box. And after a while the young Frenchman had gone back to France and the letters had ceased. Month by month went by and at length one day as she sat wistful at the window looking out at the foolish sunlit road a message came. He was dead. That headstone in the village churchyard tells the rest. She was very young to die. Scarcely nineteen years and the dead who have died young with all their hopes and dreams still like unfolded buds within their hearts do not rest so quietly in the grave as those who have gone through the long day from morning until evening and are only too glad to sleep. End of The Haunted Orchard by Richard Legalien. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Clarica. Letter to Sura by Pliny the Younger. Our leisure furnishes me with the opportunity of learning from you and you with that of instructing me. Accordingly I particularly wish to know whether you think there exists such things as phantoms possessing an appearance peculiar to themselves and a certain supernatural power that mere empty delusions receive a shape from our fears. For my part I am led to believe in their existence especially by what I hear happen to courteous Rufus. While still in humble circumstances and obscure he was a hanger-on in the suite of the Governor of Africa. While pacing the colonnade one afternoon there appeared to him a female form of superhuman size and beauty. She had formed the terrified man that she was Africa and had come to foretell future events for that he would go to Rome, would fill offices of state there and would even return to that same province with the highest powers and die in it. All which things were fulfilled. Moreover as he touched at Carthage and was disembarking from his ship the same form is said to have presented itself to him on the shore. It is certain that being seized with illness and auguring the future from the past and misfortune from his previous prosperity he himself abandoned all hope of life though none of those about him disbared. Is not the following story again still more appalling and not less marvellous? I will relate it as it was received by me. There was at Athens a mansion spacious and commodious but of evil repute and dangerous to health. In the dead of night there was a noise as of iron and if you listened more closely a clanking of chains was heard first of all from a distance and afterwards hard by. Presently a specter used to appear an ancient man sinking with emaciation and squalor with a long beard and bristly hair wearing shackles on his legs and fetters on his hands and shaking them. Hence the inmates by reason of their fears passed miserable and horrible nights in sleeplessness. This want of sleep was followed by disease and their terrors increasing by death for in the daytime as well though the apparition had departed yet a reminiscence of it flitted before their eyes and their dread outlived its cause. The mansion was accordingly deserted and condemned to solitude was entirely abandoned to the dreadful ghost. However it was advertised on the chance of someone ignorant of the fearful curse attached to it being willing to buy or rent it. Athena Doris, the philosopher came to Athens and read the advertisement. When he had been informed of the terms which were so low as to appear suspicious he made inquiries and learned the whole of the particulars. Yet nonetheless on that account nay all the more readily did he rent the house. As evening began to draw on he ordered a sofa to be set for himself in the front part of the house and called for his notebooks, writing implements, and a light. The whole of his servants he dismissed to the interior apartments and for himself applied his soul, eyes, and hands to composition. That his mind might not, from want of occupation picture to itself the phantoms of which he had heard or any empty terrors. At the commencement there was the universal silence of night. Soon the shaking of irons and the clanking of chains was heard yet he never raised his eyes nor slackened his pen but hardened his soul and dead in his ears by its help. The noise grew and approached. Now it seemed to be heard at the door and next inside the door. He looked round, beheld and recognized the figure he had been told of. It was standing and signalling to him with its finger as though inviting him. He, in reply, made a sign with his hand that it should wait a moment and applied himself afresh to his tablets and pen. Upon this the figure kept rattling its chains over his head as he wrote. On looking round again he saw it making the same signal as before and without delay took up a light and followed it. It moved with a slow step as though oppressed by its chains and, after turning into the courtyard of the house vanished suddenly and left his company. On being thus left to himself he marked the spot with some grass and leaves which he plucked. Next day he applied to the magistrates and urged them to have the spot in question dug up. There were found there some bones attached to and intermingled with fetters. The body to which they had belonged, rotted away by time and soil, had abandoned them thus naked and corroded to the chains. They were collected and interred at the public expense and the house was ever afterwards free from the spirit which had obtained due sepulcher. The above story I believe is the strength of those who affirm it. What follows I am myself in a position to affirm to others. I have a freedman who is not without some knowledge of letters. A younger brother of his was sleeping with him in the same bed. The latter dreamed he saw some one sitting on the couch who approached a pair of scissors to his head and even cut the hair from the crown of it. When day dawned he was found to be cropped round the crown and his locks were discovered lying about. A very short time afterwards a fresh occurrence of the same kind confirmed the truth of the former one. A lad of mine was sleeping in company with several others in the page's apartment. There came through the windows so he tells the story two figures in white tunics who cut his hair as he lay and departed the way they came. In his case too daylight exhibited him shorn and his locks scattered around. Nothing remarkable followed except perhaps this that I was not brought under accusation as I should have been if Domitian in whose reign these events happened had lived longer for in his desk was found an information against me which had been presented by Keras from which circumstance it may be conjectured in as much as it is the custom of accused persons to let their hair grow that the cutting off of my slaves hair was a sign of the danger which threatened me being averted. I beg then that you will apply your great learning to this subject. The matter is one which deserves long and deep consideration on your part nor am I for my part undeserving of having the fruits of your wisdom imparted to me. You may even argue on both sides as your way is provided you argue more forcibly on one side than the other so as not to dismiss me in suspense and anxiety when the very cause of my consulting you has been to have my doubts put an end to. End of Letter to Sura by Pliny the Younger This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Mystery of the Sammy Detached by E. Nesbitt recorded by Adrian Pretzelis He was waiting for her. He had been waiting an hour and a half in a dusty suburban lane with a row of big elms on one side and some eligible building sites on the other and far away to the south west the twinkling yellow lights of the Crystal Palace. It was not quite like a country lane for it had a pavement and lamp posts but it was not a bad place for a meeting all the same and farther up toward the cemetery it was really quite rural and almost pretty especially in Twilight. But Twilight had long deepened into the night and still he waited. He loved her and he was engaged to be married to her with the complete disapproval of every reasonable person who had been consulted and this half clandestine meeting was tonight to take the place of the grudgingly sanctioned weekly interview because a certain rich uncle was visiting at her house and her mother was not the woman to acknowledge to a moneyed uncle who might go off any day a match so deeply ineligible as hers with him. So he waited for her and the chill of an unusually severe May evening entered into his bones. The policeman passed him with a surly response to his good night the bicyclists went by him like grey ghosts with foghorns and it was nearly ten o'clock and she had not come. He shrugged his shoulders and turned toward his lodgings his road led him by her house desirable, commodious, semi-detached and he walked slowly as he neared it she might even now be coming out but she was not there was no sign of movement about the house no sign of life, no lights even in the windows and her people were not early people he paused by the gate wondering then he noticed that the front door was open wide open and the street lamp shone a little way into the dark hall there was something about all this that did not please him that scared him a little indeed the house had a gloomy and deserted air it was obviously impossible that it harboured a rich uncle the old man must have left early in which case he walked up the path of patent glazed tiles and listened no sign of life he passed into the hall there was no light anywhere where was everybody and why was the front door open there was no one in the drawing room and the dining room in the study nine feet by seven were equally blank everybody was out evidently but the unpleasant sense that he was perhaps not the first casual visitor to walk through that open door impelled him to look through the house before he went away and close it after him so he went upstairs and at the door of the first bedroom he came to he struck a wax match as he had done in the sitting rooms even as he did so he felt that he was not alone and he was prepared to see something but for what he saw he was not prepared for what he saw lay on the bed in a white loose gown and it was his sweetheart and its throat was cut from ear to ear he doesn't know what happened then or how he got downstairs and into the street but he got out somehow and the policeman found him in a fit under the lamp post at the corner of the street he couldn't speak when they picked him up and he passed the night in the police cells because the policeman had seen plenty of drunken men before but never one in a fit the next morning he was better though still very white and shaky but the tale he told the magistrate was convincing and they sent a couple of customals with him to her house there was no crowd about it as he fancied there would be and the blinds were not down as he stood dazed in front of the front door it opened and she came out he held onto the door post for support she's alright you see said the constable who had found him under the lamp I told you you was drunk but you would know best when he was alone with her he told her not all for that would not bear telling but how he had come into the commodious semi-detached and how he had found the door open and the lights out and that he had been into that long back room facing the stairs and had seen something in even trying to hint at which he turned sick and broke down and had to have brandy given him but my dearest she said I dare say the house was dark for we were all at the crystal palace with my uncle and no doubt the door was open for the maids will run out if they're left but you could not have been in that room because I locked it when I came away and the key was in my pocket I dressed in a hurry and left all my odds and ends lying about I know he said I saw a green scarf on a chair and some long brown gloves and a lot of hairpins and ribbons and a prayer book and a lace handkerchief on the dressing table why? I even noticed the almanac on the mantelpiece 21 October at least it couldn't be that because this is May and yet it was your almanac is at 21 October isn't it? no of course it isn't she said smiling rather anxiously but all the other things were just as you say you must have had a dream or a vision or something he was a very ordinary commonplace city young man and he didn't believe in visions but he never rested day or night till he got his sweetheart and her mother away from that commodious semi-detached and settled them in a quiet distant suburb in the course of the removal he incidentally married her and the mother went on living with them his nerves must have been a good bit shaken because he was very queer for a long time and was always inquiring if anyone had taken the desirable semi-detached and when an old stockbroker with a family took it he went the length of calling on the old gentleman and imploring him by all that he held dear not to live in that fatal house why? said the stockbroker not unnaturally and then he got so vague and confused trying to tell why and trying not to tell why that the stockbroker showed him out and thanked his God that he was not such a fool as to allow a lunatic to stand in the way of his taking that remarkably cheap and desirable semi-detached residence now the curious and quite inexplicable part of this story is that when she came down to breakfast on the morning of the 22nd of October she found him looking like death with the morning paper in his hand he caught hers he couldn't speak and pointed to the paper and there she read that on the night of the 21st a young lady the stockbroker's daughter had been found with her throat cut from ear to ear on the bed in the long back bedroom facing the stairs of that desirable semi-detached end of The Mystery of the Semi-Detached by E. Nesbitt this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information and to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Signalman by Charles Dickens read by Howard Tratch Hello below there when he heard a voice thus calling to him he was standing at the door of his box with a flag in his hand thrilled round its short pole one would have thought considering the nature of the ground that he could not have doubted from what quarter of the voice came but instead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the steep cutting nearly over his head he turned himself about there was something remarkable in his manner of doing so though I could not have said for my life what but I know it was remarkable enough to attract my notice even though his figure was foreshortened and shadowed down in the deep trench and mine was high above him so steeped in the glow of an angry sunset that I had shaded my eyes with my hand before I saw him at all Hello below down the line he turned himself about again and raising his eyes saw my figure high above him is there any path by which I can come down and speak to you he looked up at me without replying and I looked down at him without pressing him too soon with the repetition of my idle question just then there came a vague vibration in the earth and air quickly changing into a violent pulsation and an oncoming rush that caused me to start back as though it had forced to draw me down when such vapor as rose to my height from the rapid train had passed me and was skimming away over the landscape I looked down again and saw him refurling the flag he had shown while the train went by I repeated my inquiry after a pause during which he seemed to regard me with fixed attention he motioned with his rolled up flag towards a point on my level 300 yards distant I called him alright and made for that point there by then to looking closely about me I found a rough zigzag descending path notched out which I followed the cutting was extremely deep and unusually precipitate it was made through a clammy stone that became oozier and wetter as I went down for these reasons I found the way long enough to give me time to recall a singular error of reluctance or compulsion with which he had pointed out the path when I came down low enough upon the zigzag descent to see him again I saw that he was standing between the rails on the way by which the train had daily passed and an attitude as if he were waiting for me to appear he had his left hand at his chin and that left elbow rested on his right hand on his breast his attitude was one of such expectation and watchfulness that I stopped a moment wondering at it I resumed my downward way and stepping out upon the level of the railroad and drawing near to him saw that he was a dark salo man with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows his post when it was in as solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw inside a dripping wet wall of jagged stone excluding all view but a strip of sky the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon the shorter perspective in the other direction terminating in a gloomy red light and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous depressing and forbidding air so little sunlight ever found in this spot that it had an earthy deadly smell and so much cold wind rushed through it that it struck chills in me as if I had left the natural world before he stirred I was near enough to him to have touched him not even then removing his eyes from mine he stepped back one step and lifted his hand this was a lonesome post to occupy I said I had riveted my attention when I looked down from beyond her a visitor was a rarity I should suppose not an unwelcome rarity I hoped in me he merely saw a man who had been shut up within narrow limits all his life and who being at last set free had a newly awakened interest in these great works to such purpose I spoke to him but I am far from sure what I used for besides that I am not happy in opening any conversation there was something in the man that daunted me he directed a most curious look towards the red light near the tunnels mouth and looked all about as if something were missing from it and then looked at me that light was part of his charge was it not he answered in a low voice don't you know it is a saturn eyed face that this was a spirit not a man I have speculated sense whether there may have been infection in his mind in my turn I stepped back but in making the action I detected in his eyes some latent fear of me this put the monstrous thought to flight you look at me I said forcing a smile as if you had a dread of me I was doubtful he returned whether I had seen you before he pointed to the red light he had looked at there I said intently watchful of me he replied but without sound yes my good fellow what should I do there however be that as it may I never was there you may swear I think I may he rejoined yes I am sure I may his manner cleared like my own he replied to my remarks with readiness and in well chosen words had he much to do there yes that was to say he had enough responsibility to bear but exactness and watchfulness was what was required of him and of actual work manual labor he had next to none to change that signal to trim those lights and to turn this iron handle now and then was all he had to do under that head regarding those many long and lonely hours of which I seem to make so much he could only say that the routine of his life shaped itself into that form and he had grown used to it he had taught himself a language down here if only to know it by sight and to have formed his own crude ideas of its pronunciation could be called learning it he had also worked at fractions and decimals and tried a little algebra but he was and had been as a boy a poor hand at figures was it necessary for him when on duty always to remain in that channel of damp air and could he never rise into the sunshine between those high stone walls why that depended upon times and circumstances under some conditions that would be less upon the line than under others and the same held good as to certain hours of the day and night in bright weather he did choose occasions for getting a little above these lower shadows but being at all times liable to be called by his electric bell and at such times listening for it with redoubled anxiety the relief was less than I would suppose he took me into his box where there was a fire a desk for an official book in which he had to make certain entries a telegraphic instrument with its dial face and needles and the little bell of which he had spoken on my trusting that he would excuse the remark that he had been well educated and I hope to might say without offense perhaps educated above that station he observed that instances of slight incongruity and such wise would rarely be found wanting among large bodies of men that he had heard it was so in work houses and the police force even in that last desperate resource the army and that he knew it was so more or less in any great railway staff he had been when young to believe it sitting in that hut he scarcely could a student of natural philosophy and had attended lectures but he had run wild misused his opportunities gone down and never risen again he had no complaint to offer about that he had made his bed and he lay upon it it was far too late to make another all that I have here condensed he said in a quiet manner with his grave dark regards divided between me and the he threw in the word serve from time to time and especially when he referred to his youth as though to request me to understand that he claimed to be nothing but what I found him he was several times interrupted by the little bell and had to read off messages and send replies once he had to stand without the door and display a flag as a train passed and make some verbal communication to the driver in the discharge of his duties I served him to be remarkably exact and vigilant breaking off his discourse at a syllable and remaining silent until what he had to do was done in the word I should have set this man down as one of the safest of men to be employed in that capacity but for the circumstance that while he was speaking to me he twice broke off with a fallen color turned his face toward the little bell when it did not ring opened the door of his hut which wrapped shut to exclude the unhealthy damp and looked out towards the red light near the mouth of the tunnel on both of those occasions he came back to the fire with the inexplicable air upon him which I had remarked without being able to define when we were so far asunder said I when I rose to leave him you almost make me think that I have met with a contented man I'm afraid I must acknowledge that I said it to lead him on to leave I used to be so he rejoined in the low voice in which he had first spoken but I am troubled sir I am troubled he would have recalled the words if he could he had said them however and I took them up quickly with what what is your trouble it is very difficult to impart sir it is very very difficult to speak of if ever you make me another visit I will try to tell you but I expressly intend to make you another visit say when shall it be I go off early in the morning and I shall be on again at ten tomorrow night sir I will come at eleven he thanked me and went out at the door with me I'll show my white light sir he said in his peculiar low voice till you have found the way up when you have found it don't call out and when you were at the top don't call out his manner seemed to make the place strike colder to me but I said no more than very well and when you come down tomorrow night don't call out let me ask you a parting question what made you cry hello below there tonight heaven knows said I cried something to that effect not to that effect sir those were the very words I know them well I admit those were the very words I said them no doubt because I saw you below for no other reason what other reason could I possibly have you had no feeling that they were made to you in any supernatural way no he wished me good night held up his light I walked by the side of the down line of rails with a very disagreeable sensation of a train coming behind me until I found the path it was easier to mount than to descend and I got back to my end without any adventure punctual to my appointment I placed my foot on the first notch of the zigzag next night as the distant clocks were striking 11 he was waiting for me at the bottom with his white light on I have not called out I said when we came close together may I speak now by all means sir good night then and here's my hand good night sir and here's mine with that we walked side by side do his box entered it closed the door and sat down by the fire I have made up my mind sir he began bending forward as soon as we were seated and speaking in a tone but a little above a whisper that you shall not have to ask me twice what troubles me I took you for someone else yesterday evening that troubles me that mistake no that someone else who is it I don't know like me I don't know I never saw the face the left arm is across the face and the right arm is waved violently waved this way I followed his action with my eyes and it was the action of an arm gesticulating with the utmost passion and vehemence for God's sake clear the way one moonlight night said the man I was sitting here when I heard a vice cry hello below there I started up looked from that door and saw this someone else standing by the red light near the tunnel waving as I just now showed you the voice seemed horse with shouting in a cry look out look out and then again hello there look out I caught up my lamp turned it on red and ran towards the figure calling what's wrong what has happened where it stood just outside the blackness of the tunnel I advanced so close upon it that I wondered at its keeping the sleeve across its eyes I ran right up at it and had my hand stretched out to pull the sleeve away when it was gone into the tunnel said I know I ran on into the tunnel 500 yards I stopped and held my lamp above my head and saw the figures of the measured distance and saw the wet stain stealing down the walls and trickling through the arch I ran out again faster than I had run in for I had a mortal of the place upon me and I looked all around the red light with my own red light and I went up the iron ladder to the Galeria top of it and I came down again ran back here I telegraphed both ways and alarm has been given as anything wrong the answer came back both ways all well resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine I showed him how that this figure must be a deception of his sense of sight and how that figure is originating in disease the delicate nerves that minister the functions of the eye were known to have often troubled patients some of whom had become unconscious of the nature of their affliction and had even proved it by experiments upon themselves as to an imaginary cry said I do but listen for a moment to the wind in this unnatural valley while we speak so low and to the wild harp it makes of the telegraph wires that was all very well he returned after we had sat listening for a while and he ought to know something of the wind and the wires he who so often passed long winter nights there alone and watching but he would beg to remark that he had not finished I asked his pardon and he slowly added these words touching my arm within six hours after the appearance the memorable accident on this line happened and within ten hours the dead and wounded were brought along through the tunnel over the spot where the figure had stood a disagreeable shutter crept over me but I did my best against it it was not to be denied I rejoined this was a remarkable coincidence calculated deeply to impress his mind but it was unquestionable that remarkable coincidences did continually occur and they must be taken into account when dealing with such a subject though to be sure I must admit I added for I thought I saw that he was going to bring the objection to bear upon me men of common sense did not allow much for coincidences in making the ordinary calculations of life he again begged to remark that he had not finished I again begged his pardon for being betrayed into interruptions this he said again laying his hand upon my arm and glancing over his shoulder with yellow eyes was just a year ago six or seven months passed and I recovered from the surprise and shock when one morning as the day was breaking I standing at the door looked toward the red light of the specter again he stopped with a fixed look at me did it cry out no it was silent did it wave its arm no it leaned against the shaft of the light with both hands before its face like this once more I followed his action with my eyes it was an action of mourning I have seen such an attitude in stone figures on tombs did you go up to it I came in and sat down partly to collect my thoughts partly because it had turned to me faint when I went to the door again daylight was above and the ghost was gone but nothing followed nothing came of this he touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice with thrice giving a ghastly nod each time that very day as the train came out of the tunnel I noticed at a carriage window on my side what looked like a confusion of hands and heads and something waved I saw it just in time to signal the driver stop he shut off and put his brake on but the train drifted past here 150 yards or more I ran after it and as I went along heard terrible screams and cries a beautiful young lady had died instantaneously in one of the compartments and was brought to here and laid down on this floor between us and voluntarily I pushed my chair back as I looked from the boards at which he pointed to himself true sir true precisely as it happened so I tell it you I could think of nothing to say to any purpose and my mouth was very dry the wind and the wires took up the story with a long lamenting wail he resumed now sir mark this and judge how my mind is troubled the specter came back a week ago ever since it has been there now and again by fits and starts at the light at the danger light what does it seem to do he repeated if possible with increased passion and vehemence that former gesticulation of for God's sakes clear the way then he went on I have no peace or rest from it it calls to me for many minutes together in an agonized manner below there look out look out it stands waving to me it rings my little bell I caught it that did it ring your bell yesterday evening when I was here and you went to the door twice wife C said I how your imagination misleads you my eyes were on the bell and my ears were open to the bell and if I had my living man it did not ring at those times no nor at any other time except when it was wrong in the natural course of physical things by the station communicating with you he shook his head I have never made a mistake as to that yet sir I have never confused the specter's ring man's the ghost's ring is a strange vibration in the bell that it derives from nothing else and I have not asserted that the bell stirs to the eye I don't wonder that you failed to hear it but I heard it and did the specter seem to be there when you looked out it was there both times he repeated firmly both times will you come to the door with me and look for it now he bit his underlip as though he were somewhat unwilling but arose I opened the door and stood on the step while he stood in the doorway there was the danger light there was the dismal mouth of the tunnel there were the high wet stone walls of the cutting there were the stars above them do you see it I asked him taking particular note of his face his eyes were prominent and strained but not very much more so perhaps than my own had been when I had directed them earnestly toward the same spot no he answered it is not there agreed said I we went in again shut the door and resumed our seats I was thinking how best to improve this advantage if it might be called one when he took up the conversation in such matter of course way so assuming that there could be no serious question of fact between us that I felt myself placed in the weakest of positions by this time he will fully understand sir he said that what troubles me so dreadfully is the question what does the specter mean I was not sure I told him that I did fully understand what is its warning against he said ruminating with his eyes on the fire only by times turning them on me what is the danger where is the danger there is danger overhanging somewhere on this line some dreadful calamity will happen it is not to be doubted this third time after what is gone before but surely this is a cruel haunting of me what can I do he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped the drops from his heated forehead if I telegraphed danger on either side of me or on both I can give no reason for it he went on wiping the palms of his hands I should to get into trouble and do no good they would think I was mad this is the way it would work message danger take care answer what danger where message don't know but for God's sake take care they would displace me what else could they do his pain of mind was most pitiable to see it was the mental torture of a conscientious man oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible responsibility involving life when it first stood under the danger lady went on putting his dark hair back on his head and drawing his hands outward across and across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress why not tell me where that accident was to happen if it must happen why not tell me how it could be averted if it could have been averted when on its second coming it hit its face why not tell me instead she's going to die let them keep her at home if it came on those two occasions only to show me that its warnings were true and so to prepare me for the world why not warn me plainly now and I Lord help me a mere poor signalman on this solitary station why not go to somebody with credit to be believed and power to act when I saw him in this state I saw that for the poor man's sake as well as for the public safety what I had to do for the time was to compose his mind therefore setting aside all question of reality or unreality between us I represented to him that whoever thoroughly discharged his duty must do well and that at least it was his comfort that he understood his duty though he did not understand these confounding appearances in this effort I succeeded far better than in the attempt to reason him out of his conviction he became calm the occupations incidental to his post as the night advanced began to make larger demands on his attention and I left him at two in the morning I had offered to stay through the night but he would not hear of it that I more than once looked back at the red light as I ascended the pathway that I did not like the red light and that I should have slept but poorly if my bed had been under it I see no reason to conceal nor did I like the two sequences of the accident and the dead girl I see no reason to conceal that either but what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration how ought I to act having become the recipient of this disclosure I had proved the man to be intelligent vigilant, painstaking and exact but how long might he remain so in his state of mind though in a subordinate position still he held the most important trust and would I for instance like to stake my own life on the chances he was continuing to execute it with precision unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something treacherous in my communicating what he had told me to his superiors in the company without first being plain with himself and proposing a middle course to him I ultimately resolved to offer to accompany him otherwise keeping a secret for the present to the wisest medical practitioner we could hear of in those parts and to take his opinion a change in his time of duty would come round next night he had apprised me and he would be off an hour to do after sunrise and on again soon after sunset I had appointed to return accordingly next evening was a lovely evening and I walked out early to enjoy it the sun was not yet quite down when I traversed the field path near the top of the deep cutting I would extend my walk for an hour I said to myself half an hour on and half an hour back and it would then be time to enter my signalman's box before pursuing my stroll I stepped to the brink and mechanically looked down from the point from which I had first seen him I could not describe the thrill that seized upon me when close at the mouth of the tunnel I saw the appearance of a man with his left sleeve across his eyes passionately waving his right arm the nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment for in a moment I saw that this appearance had been indeed and that there was a little group of other men standing at a short distance to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made the danger-like was not yet lighted against its shaft a little low hut entirely new to me had been made of some wooden supports and tarpaulin it looked no bigger than a bed with an irresistible sense that something was wrong with a flashing self-reproachful fear that I had come of my leaving the man there and causing no one to be sent to overlook or correct what he did I descended the notched path with all the speed I could make what's the matter I asked the man signalman killed this morning sir not the man belonging to that box yes sir not the man I know you will recognize him sir if you knew him said the man who spoke for the others solemnly uncovering his own head and raising the end of the tarpaulin for his face is quite composed well how did this happen how did this happen I asked turning from one to another as the hut closed in again he was cut down by an engine sir no man in England knew his work better but somehow he was not clear of the outer rail it was just at broad day he had struck the light and had the lamp in his hand as the engine came out of the tunnel his back was towards her and she cut him down that man drove her and was showing how it happened show the gentleman Tom the man who wore rough dark dress stepped back to his former place at the mouth of the tunnel coming around the curve in the tunnel sir he said I saw him at the end like as if I saw him down a perspective glass there was no time to check speed and I knew I'd be very careful as he didn't seem to take heat of the whistle I shut it off when we were running down upon him as loud as I could call what did you say I said below there look out look out for God's sake clear the way I started ah it was a dreadful time sir I never left off calling to him I put this arm before my eyes not to see and I waved this arm to the last but it was no use without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its curious circumstances more than on any other I may in closing it point out the coincidence that the warning of the engine driver included not only the words which the unfortunate signalman had repeated to me as haunting him but also the words which I myself not he had attached and that only in my own mind to the gesticulation he had imitated end of story the signalman by Charles Dickens read for LibriVox.org by Howard Dratch