'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 Not only so, but he had withdrawn himself almost altogether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.
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