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By
Ambrose Bierce
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Many years ago, on my way from Hongkong to New York, I
passed a week in San Francisco. A long time had gone
by since I had been in that city, during which my
ventures in the Orient had prospered beyond my hope; I
was rich and could afford to revisit my own country
to renew my friendship with such of the companions
of my youth as still lived and remembered me with the old
affection.
Chief of these, I hoped, was Mohun
Dampier, an old schoolmate with whom I had held a
desultory correspondence which had long ceased, as is the
way of
correspondence between men. You may have observed that
the indisposition to
write a merely social letter is in the ratio of the
square of the distance
between you and your correspondent. It is a law.
I remembered Dampier as a handsome, strong
young fellow of scholarly tastes,
with an aversion to work and a marked indifference to
many of the things that
the world cares for, including wealth, of which, however,
he had inherited
enough to put him beyond the reach of want. In his
family, one of the oldest and
most aristocratic in the country, it was, I think, a
matter of pride that no
member of it had ever been in trade nor politics, nor
suffered any kind of
distinction. Mohan was a trifle sentimental, and had in
him a singular element of superstition, which led
him to the study of all manner of occult subjects,
although his sane mental health safeguarded him against
fantastic and perilous faiths. He made daring
incursions into the realm of the unreal
without renouncing his residence in the partly
surveyed and charted region of what we are pleased
to call certitude.
The night of my visit to him was stormy. The Californian
winter was on, and the
incessant rain splashed in the deserted streets, or,
lifted by irregular gusts
of wind, was hurled against the houses with incredible
fury. With no small
difficulty my cabman found the right place, away out
toward the ocean beach, in a sparsely populated
suburb. The dwelling, a rather ugly one, apparently,
stood in the center of its grounds, which as nearly
as I could make out in the gloom were destitute of
either flowers or grass. Three or four trees, writhing
and
moaning in the torment of the tempest, appeared to be
trying to escape from
their dismal environment and take the chance of finding a
better one out at sea.
The house was a two-story brick structure with a tower, a
story higher, at one corner. In a window of that was
the only visible light. Something in the
appearance of the place made me shudder, a performance
that may have been assisted by a rill of rainwater
down my back as I cuttled to cover in the
doorway.
In answer to my note apprising him of my wish to call,
Dampier had written,
'Don't ring - open the door and come up.' I did so.
The staircase was
dimly
lighted by a single gas-jet at the top of the second
flight. I managed to reach
the landing without disaster and entered by an open door
into the lighted square
room of the tower. Dampier came forward in gown and
slippers to receive me, giving me the greeting that
I wished, and if I had held a thought that it might
more fitly have been accorded me at the front door the
first look at him
dispelled any sense of his inhospitality.
He was not the same. Hardly past middle age, he had gone
gray and had acquired a pronounced stoop. His figure
was thin and angular, his face deeply lined, his
complexion dead-white, without a touch of color. His
eyes, unnaturally large,
glowed with a fire that was almost uncanny.
He seated me, proffered a cigar, and with grave and
obvious sincerity assured me
of the pleasure that it gave him to meet me. Some
unimportant conversation
followed, but all the while I was dominated by a
melancholy sense of the great change in him. This he
must have perceived, for he suddenly said with a
bright enough smile, 'You are disappointed in me -
non sum qualis eram.'
I hardly knew what to reply, but managed to say: 'Why,
really, I don't know:
your Latin is about the same.'
He brightened again. 'No,' he said, 'being a dead
language, it grows in
appropriateness. But please have the patience to wait:
where I am going there is perhaps a better tongue.
Will you care to have a message in it?'
The smile faded as he spoke, and as he concluded he was
looking into my eyes
with a gravity that distressed me. Yet I would not
surrender myself to his mood,
nor permit him to see how deeply his prescience of death
affected me.
'I fancy that it will be long,' I said, 'before human
speech will cease to serve
our need; and then the need, with its possibilities of
service, will have
passed.'
He made no reply, and I too was silent, for the talk had
taken a dispiriting
turn, yet I knew not how to give it a more agreeable
character. Suddenly, in a
pause of the storm, when the dead silence was almost
startling by contrast with
the previous uproar, I heard a gentle tapping, which
appeared to come from the wall behind my chair. The
sound was such as might have been made by a
human hand, not as upon a door by one asking
admittance, but rather, I thought, as an agreed
signal, an assurance of someone's presence in an
adjoining room; most of us, I fancy, have had more
experience of such communications than we should
care to relate. I glanced at Dampier. If possibly
there was something of amusement in the look he did
not observe it. He appeared to have forgotten my
presence, and was staring at the wall behind me with
an expression in his eyes that I am unable to name,
although my memory of it is as vivid to-day as was my
sense of it then. The situation was embarrassing! ;
I rose to take my leave. At this he seemed to
recover himself.
'Please be seated,' he said; 'it is nothing - no one is
there.'
But the tapping was repeated, and with the same gentle,
slow insistence as
before.
'Pardon me,' I said, 'it is late. May I call tomorrow?'
He smiled - a little mechanically, I thought. 'It is very
delicate of you,' said
he, 'but quite needless. Really, this is the only room in
the tower, and no one
is there. At least -' He left the sentence incomplete,
rose, and threw up a
window, the only opening in the wall from which the sound
seemed to come. 'See.'
Not clearly knowing what else to do I followed him to the
window and looked out. A street-lamp some little
distance away gave enough light through the murk
of the rain that was again falling in torrents to
make it entirely plain that 'no
one was there.' In truth there was nothing but the sheer
blank wall of the
tower.
Dampier closed the window and signing me to my seat
resumed his own.
The incident was not in itself particularly mysterious;
any one of a dozen
explanations was possible (though none has occured to
me), yet it impressed me
strangely, the more, perhaps, from my friend's effort to
reassure me, which
seemed to dignify it with a certain significance and
importance. He had proved that no one was there, but
in that fact lay all the interest; and he proffered
no explanation. His silence was irritating and made me
resentful.
'My good friend,' I said, somewhat ironically, I fear, 'I
am not disposed to
question your right to harbor as many spooks as you find
agreeable to your taste and consistent with your
notions of companionship; that is no business of
mine. But being just a plain man of affairs, mostly
of this world, I find spooks
needless to my peace and comfort. I am going to my hotel,
where my fellow-guests are still in the flesh.'
It was not a very civil speech, but he manifested no
feeling about it. 'Kindly
remain', he said. 'I am grateful for your presence here.
What you have heard
to-night I believe myself to have heard twice before. Now
I know it was no
illusion. That is much to me - more than you know. Have a
fresh cigar and a good
stock of patience while I tell you the story.'
The rain was now falling more steadily, with a low,
monotonous susurration,
interrupted at long intervals by the sudden slashing of
the boughs of the trees
as the wind rose and failed. The night was well advanced,
but both sympathy and
curiosity held me a willing listener to my friend's
monologue, which I did not
interrupt by a single word from beginning to end.
'Ten years ago,' he said, 'I occupied a ground-floor
apartment in one of a row
of houses, all alike, away at the other end of the town,
on what we call Rincon
Hill. This had been the best quarter of San Francisco,
but had fallen into
neglect and decay, partly because the primitive character
of its domestic
architecture no longer suited the maturing tastes of our
wealthy citizens,
partly because certain public improvements had made a
wreck of it. The row of dwellings in one of which I
lived stood a little way back from the street,
each having a miniature garden, separated from its
neighbors by low iron fences and bisected with
mathematical precision by a box-bordered gravel walk from
gate to door.
'One morning as I was leaving my lodging I observed a
young girl entering the
adjoining garden on the left. It was a warm day in June,
and she was lightly
gowned in white. From her shoulders hung a broad straw
hat profusely decorated with flowers and wonderfully
beribboned in the fashion of the time. My
attention was not long held by the exquisite
simplicity of her costume, for no one could look at
her face and think of anything earthly. Do not fear; I
shall not profane it by description; it was
beautiful exceedingly. All that I had ever seen or
dreamed of loveliness was in that matchless living
picture by the hand of the Divine Artist. So deeply
did it move me that, without a thought of the
impropriety of the act, I unconsciously bared my head, as
a devout Catholic or
well-bred Protestant uncovers before an image of the
Blessed Virgin. The maiden
showed no displeasure; she merely turned her glorious
dark eyes upon me with a
look that made me catch my breath, and withou! t other
recognition of my act
passed into the house. For a moment I stood motionless,
hat in hand, painfully
conscious of my rudeness, yet so dominated by the emotion
inspired by that vision of incomparable beauty that
my penitence was less poignant than it should have
been. Then I went my way, leaving my heart behind. In the
natural course of things I should probably have
remained away until nightfall, but by the middle of
the afternoon I was back in the little garden, affecting
an interest in the
few foolish flowers that I had never before observed. My
hope was vain; she did
not appear.
'To a night of unrest succeeded a day of
expectation and disappointment, but on
the day after, as I wandered aimlessly about the
neighborhood, I met her. Of
course I did not repeat my folly of uncovering, nor
venture by even so much as too long a look to
manifest an interest in her; yet my heart was
beating
audibly. I trembled and consciously colored as she turned
her big black eyes
upon me with a look of obvious recognition entirely
devoid of boldness or
coquetry.
'I will not weary you with particulars; many times
afterward I met the maiden,
yet never either addressed her or sought to fix her
attention. Nor did I take
any action toward making her acquaintance. Perhaps my
forbearance, requiring so supreme an effort of
self-denial, will not be entirely clear to you. That I
was heels over head in love is true, but who can
overcome his habit of thought, or reconstruct his
character?
'I was what some foolish persons are pleased to call, and
others, more foolish,
are pleased to be called - an aristocrat; and despite her
beauty, her charms and
graces, the girl was not of my class. I had learned her
name - which it is
needless to speak - and something of her family. She was
an orphan, a dependent
niece of the impossible elderly fat woman in whose
lodging-house she lived. My
income was small and I lacked the talent for marrying; it
is perhaps a gift. An
alliance with that family would condemn me to its manner
of life, part me from
my books and studies, and in a social sense reduce me to
the ranks. It is easy
to deprecate such considerations as these and I have not
retained myself for the
defense. Let judgment be entered against me, but in
strict justice all my
ancestors for generations should be made co-defendants
and I be permitted to
plead in mitigation of punishment the imperious mandate
of heredity. To a
mésalliance of that kind every globule of! my ancestral
blood spoke in
opposition. In brief, my tastes, habits, instinct, with
whatever of reason my
love had left me - all fought against it. Moreover, I was
an irreclaimable
sentimentalist, and found a suble charm in an impersonal
and spiritual relation
which acquaintance might vulgarize and marriage would
certainly dispel. No
woman, I argued, is what this lovely creature seems. Love
is a delicious dream; why should I bring about my
own awakening?
'The course dictated by all this sense and sentiment was
obvious. Honor, pride,
prudence, preservation of my ideals - all commanded me to
go away, but for that
I was too weak. The utmost that I could do by a mighty
effort of will was to
cease meeting the girl, and that I did. I even avoided
the chance encounters of
the garden, leaving my lodging only when I knew that she
had gone to her music
lessons, and returing after nightfall. Yet all the while
I was as one in a
trance, indulging the most fascinating fancies and
ordering my entire
intellectual life in accordance with my dream. Ah, my
friend, as one whose
actions have a traceable relation to reason, you cannot
know the fool's paradise in which I lived.
'One evening the devil put it into my head to be an
unspeakable idiot. By
apparently careless and purposeless questioning I learned
from my gossipy
landlady that the young woman's bedroom adjoined my own,
a partywall between. Yielding to a sudden and coarse
impulse I gently rapped on the wall. There was no
response, naturally, but I was in no mood to accept a
rebuke. A madness was upon me and I repeated the
folly, the offense, but again ineffectually, and
I had the decency to desist.
'An hour later, while absorbed in some of my infernal
studies, I heard, or
thought I heard, my signal answered. Flinging down my
books I sprang to the wall and as steadily as my
beating heart would permit gave three slow taps upon
it. This time the response was distinct,
unmistakable: one, two, three - an exact
repetition of my signal. That was all I could elicit, but
it was enough - too
much.
'The next evening, and for many evenings afterward, that
folly went on, I always
having "the last word". During the whole period
I was deliriously happy, but
with the perversity of my nature I persevered in my
resolution not to see her. Then, as I should have
expected, I got no further answers. "She is
disgusted," I
said to myself, "with what she thinks my timididty
in making no more definite
advances"; and I resolved to seek her and make her
acquaintance and - what? I
did not know, nor do I now know, what might have come of
it. I know only that I
passed days and days trying to meet her, and all in vain;
she was invisible as
well as inaudible. I haunted the streets where we had
met, but she did not come.
From my window I watched the garden in front of her
house, but she passed
neither in nor out. I fell into the deepest dejection,
believing that she had
gone away , yet took no steps to resolve my doubt by
inquiry of my landlady, to
whom, indeed, I had taken an unconque! rable aversion
from her having once
spoken of the girl with less of reverence than I thought
befitting.
'There came a fateful night. Worn out with emotion,
irresolution and
despondency, I had retired early and fallen into such
sleep as was still
possible to me. In the middle of the night
something--some malign power bent
upon the wrecking of my peace forever--caused me to open
my eyes and sit up, wide awake and listening
intently for I knew not what. Then I thought I heard
a faint tapping on the wall--the mere ghost of the
familiar signal. In a few
moments it was repeated: one, two, three--no louder than
before, but addressing a sense alert and strained to
receive it. I was about to reply when the
Adversary of Peace again intervened in my affairs with a
rascally suggestion of
retaliation. She had long and cruelly ignored me; now I
would ignore her.
Incredible fatuity--may God forgive it! All the rest of
the night I lay awake,
fortifying my obstinacy with shameless justifications
and--listening.
'Late the next morning, as I was leaving the house, I met
my landlady, entering.
' "Good morning, Mr. Dampier," she said.
"Have you heard the news?"
'I replied in words that I had heard no news; in manner,
that I did not care to
hear any. The manner escaped her observation.
' "About the sick young lady next door," she
babbled on. "What! you did not
know? Why, she has been ill for weeks. And now--"
'I almost sprang upon her. "And now," I cried,
"now what?'
' "She is dead."
'That is not the whole story. In the middle of the night,
as I learned later,
the patient, awakening from a long stupor after a week of
delirium, had asked --
it was her last utterance -- that her bed be moved to the
opposite side of the
room. Those in attendance had thought the request a
vagary of her delirium, but
had complied. And there the poor passing soul had exerted
its failing will to
restore a broken connection -- a golden thread of
sentiment between its
innocence and a monstrous baseness owing a blind, brutal
allegiance to the Law of Self.
'What reparation could I make? Are there masses that can
be said for the repose of souls that are abroad such
nights as this -- spirits "blown about by
the viewless winds" -- coming in the storm and
darkness with signs and portents,
hints of memory and presages of doom?
'This is the third visitation. On the first occasion I
was too skeptical to do
more than verify by natural methods the character of the
incident; on the
second, I responded to the signal after it had been
several times repeated, but
without result. To-night's recurrence completes the
'fatal triad' expounded by
Parapelius Necromantius. There is no more to tell.'
When Dampier had finished his story I could think of
nothing relevant that I
cared to say, and to question him would have been a
hideous impertinence. I rose
and bade him good night in a way to convey to him a sense
of my sympathy, which he silently acknowledged by a
pressure of the hand. That night, alone with
his sorrow and remorse, he passed into the Unknown.
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