Various - Stories of Mystery

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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
scepticism 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 instantly to go in uprose 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 enclosure, 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 month, 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, fur 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 lamplight 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 Irishwoman 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."

"O 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 sha'n't! Don't! I say it shall! Mrs. Miller, I'm--I'm
ashamed of myself. I am indeed."

"I am very grateful, sir, I'm sure," said she; "but we don't like to
take charity, though we need help; but we can get along now, sir; for
I suppose I must keep it, as you say you didn't send it, and use it
for the children's sake, and thank God for his good mercy,--since I
don't know, and never shall, where it came from, now."

"Mrs. Miller," he said quickly, "you spoke in this way before; and I
don't know what you refer to. What do you mean by--_it_?"

"Oh! I forgot, sir: it puzzles me so. You see, sir, I was sitting here
after I got home from your house, thinking what I should do, when Mrs.
Flanagan came up stairs with a letter for me, that she said a strange
man left at the door for Mrs. Miller; and Mrs. Flanagan couldn't
describe him well, or understandingly; and it had no direction at all,
only the man inquired who was the landlord, and if Mrs. Miller had a
sick child, and then said the letter was for me; and there was no writing
inside the letter, but there was fifty dollars. That's all, sir. It gave
me a great shock, sir; and I couldn't think who sent it, only when you
came to-night, I thought it was you; but you said it wasn't, and I never
shall know who it was, now. It seems as if the hand of God was in it,
sir, for it came when everything was darkest and I was in despair."

"Why, Mrs. Miller," he slowly answered, "this is very mysterious. The
man inquired if I was the owner of the house--oh! no--he only inquired
who was--but then he knew I was the--oh! bother! I'm getting nowhere.
Let's see. Why, it must be some one you know, or that knows your
circumstances."

"But there's no one knows them but yourself; and I told you," she
replied; "no one else but the people in the house. It must have been
some rich person, for the letter was a gilt-edge sheet, and there was
perfume in it, sir."

"Strange," he murmured. "Well, I give it up. All is, I advise you to
keep it, and I'm very glad some one did his duty by you in your hour
of need, though I'm sorry it was not myself. Here's Mrs. Flanagan."

There was a good deal done, and a great burden lifted off an humble
heart--nay, two!--before Dr. Renton thought of going home. There was
a patient gained, likely to do Dr. Renton more good than any patient
he had lost. There was a kettle singing on the stove, and blowing off
a happier steam than any engine ever blew on that railroad whose
unmarketable stock had singed Dr. Renton's fingers. There was a yellow
gleam flickering from the blazing fire on the sober binding of a good
old Book upon a shelf with others, a rarer medical work than ever
slipped at auction from Dr. Renton's hands, since it kept the sacred
lore of Him who healed the sick, and fed the hungry, and comforted the
poor, and who was also the Physician of souls.

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