“I AM not so superstitious as some
of your physicians-men of science, as you are pleased to be called,” said
Hawver, replying to an accusation that had not been made. “Some of you-only
a few, I confess-believe in the immortality of the soul, and in apparitions
which you have not the honesty to call ghosts. I go no further than a conviction
that the living are sometimes seen where they are not, but have been-where
they have lived so long, perhaps so intensely, as to have
left their impress on everything
about them. I know, indeed, that one's environment may be so affected by
one's personality as to yield, long afterward, an image
of one's self to the eyes of another.
Doubtless the impressing personality has to be the right kind of personality
as the perceiving eyes have to be the right kind of
eyes-mine, for example.”
“Yes, the right kind of eyes, conveying sensations to the wrong kind of
brains,” said Dr. Frayley, smiling.
“Thank you; one likes to have an expectation gratified; that is about the
reply that I supposed you would have the civility to make.”
“Pardon me. But you say that you know. That is a good deal to say, don't
you think? Perhaps you will not mind the trouble of saying how you learned.”
“You will call it an hallucination,” Hawver said, “but that does not matter.”
And he told the story.
“Last summer I went, as you know, to pass the hot weather term in the town
of Meridian. The relative at whose house I had intended to stay was ill,
so I
sought other quarters. After some
difficulty I succeeded in renting a vacant dwelling that had been occupied
by an eccentric doctor of the name of Mannering,
who had gone away years before,
no one knew where, not even his agent. He had built the house himself and
had lived in it with an old servant for about ten
years. His practice, never very
extensive, had after a few years been given up entirely. Not only so, but
he had withdrawn himself almost altogether from social
life and become a recluse. I was
told by the village doctor, about the only person with whom he held any
relations, that during his retirement he had devoted
himself to a single line of study,
the result of which he had expounded in a book that did not commend itself
to the approval of his professional brethren, who,
indeed, considered him not entirely
sane. I have not seen the book and cannot now recall the title of it, but
I am told that it expounded a rather startling theory.
He held that it was possible in
the case of many a person in good health to forecast his death with precision,
several months in advance of the event. The limit, I
think, was eighteen months. There
were local tales of his having exerted his powers of prognosis, or perhaps
you would say diagnosis; and it was said that in
every instance the person whose
friends he had warned had died suddenly at the appointed time, and from
no assignable cause. All this, however, has nothing to
do with what I have to tell; I
thought it might amuse a physician.
“The house was furnished, just as he had lived in it. It was a rather gloomy
dwelling for one who was neither a recluse nor a student, and I think it
gave
something of its character to me-perhaps
some of its former occupant's character; for always I felt in it a certain
melancholy that was not in my natural
disposition, nor, I think, due
to loneliness. I had no servants that slept in the house, but I have always
been, as you know, rather fond of my own society, being
much addicted to reading, though
little to study. Whatever was the cause, the effect was dejection and a
sense of impending evil; this was especially so in Dr.
Mannering's study, although that
room was the lightest and most airy in the house. The doctor's life-size
portrait in oil hung in that room, and seemed completely
to dominate it. There was nothing
unusual in the picture; the man was evidently rather good looking, about
fifty years old, with iron-grey hair, a smooth-shaven
face and dark, serious eyes. Something
in the picture always drew and held my attention. The man's appearance
became familiar to me, and rather ‘haunted’ me.
“One evening I was passing through this room to my bedroom, with a lamp-there
is no gas in Meridian. I stopped as usual before the portrait, which
seemed in the lamplight to have
a new expression, not easily named, but distinctly uncanny. It interested
but did not disturb me. I moved the lamp from one side
to the other and observed the effects
of the altered light. While so engaged I felt an impulse to turn round.
As I did so I saw a man moving across the room
directly toward me! As soon as
he came near enough for the lamplight to illuminate the face I saw that
it was Dr. Mannering himself; it was as if the portrait were
walking!
“‘I beg your pardon,’ I said, somewhat coldly, ‘but if you knocked I did
not hear.’
“He passed me, within an arm's length, lifted his right forefinger, as
in warning, and without a word went on out of the room, though I observed
his exit no
more than I had observed his entrance.
“Of course, I need not tell you that this was what you will call a hallucination
and I call an apparition. That room had only two doors, of which one was
locked; the other led into a bedroom,
from which there was no exit. My feeling on realizing this is not an important
part of the incident.
“Doubtless this seems to you a very commonplace ‘ghost story’-one constructed
on the regular lines laid down by the old masters of the art. If that were
so I should not have related it,
even if it were true. The man was not dead; I met him to-day in Union Street.
He passed me in a crowd.”
Hawver had finished his story and both men were silent. Dr. Frayley absently
drummed on the table with his fingers.
“Did he say anything to-day?” he asked- “anything from which you inferred
that he was not dead?”
Hawver stared and did not reply.
“Perhaps,” continued Frayley, “he made a sign, a gesture-lifted a finger,
as in warning. It's a trick he had-a habit when saying something serious-
announcing the result of a diagnosis,
for example.”
“Yes, he did-just as his apparition had done. But, good God! did you ever
know him?”
Hawver was apparently growing nervous.
“I knew him. I have read his book, as will every physician some day. It
is one of the most striking and important of the century's contributions
to medical
science. Yes, I knew him; I attended
him in an illness three years ago. He died.”
Hawver sprang from his chair, manifestly disturbed. He strode forward and
back across the room; then approached his friend, and in a voice not altogether
steady, said: “Doctor, have you
anything to say to me-as a physician?”
“No, Hawver; you are the healthiest man I ever knew. As a friend I advise
you to go to your room. You play the violin like an angel. Play it; play
something light and lively. Get
this cursed bad business off your mind.”
The next day Hawver was found dead in his room, the violin at his neck,
the bow upon the string, his music open before him at Chopin's Funeral
March.
The End
