"Sedibus ut saltem placidis in morte quiescam."
—Virgil
In relating the circumstances which have led to my
confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present
position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is
an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental
vision to weigh with patience and intelligence those isolated phenomena, seen
and felt only by a psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common
experience. Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction
betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by
virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we
are made conscious of them; but the prosaic materialism of the majority
condemns as madness the flashes of super-sight which penetrate the common veil
of obvious empiricism.
My name is Jervas Dudley, and from earliest childhood I
have been a dreamer and a visionary. Wealthy beyond the necessity of a
commercial life, and temperamentally unfitted for the formal studies and social
recreations of my acquaintances, I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the
visible world; spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little-known
books, and in roaming the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral
home. I do not think that what I read in these books or saw in these fields and
groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there; but of this I must say
little, since detailed speech would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my
intellect which I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy
attendants around me. It is sufficient for me to relate events without
analysing causes.
I have said that I dwelt apart from the visible world,
but I have not said that I dwelt alone. This no human creature may do; for
lacking the fellowship of the living, he inevitably draws upon the
companionship of things that are not, or are no longer, living. Close by my
home there lies a singular wooded hollow, in whose twilight deeps I spent most
of my time; reading, thinking and dreaming. Down its moss-covered slopes my
first steps of infancy were taken, and around its grotesquely gnarled oak trees
my first fancies of boyhood were woven. Well did I come to know the presiding
dryads of those trees, and often have I watched their wild dances in the
struggling beams of waning moon—but of these things I must not now speak. I
will tell only of the lone tomb in the darkest of the hillside thickets; the
deserted tomb of the Hydes, an old and exalted family whose last direct
descendant had been laid within its black recesses many decades before my
birth.
The vault to which I refer is an ancient granite,
weathered and discoloured by the mists and dampness of generations. Excavated
back into the hillside, the structure is visible only at the entrance. The
door, a ponderous and forbidding slab of stone, hangs upon rusted iron hinges,
and is fastened ajar in a queerly sinister way by means of heavy iron chains
and padlocks, according to a gruesome fashion of half a century ago. The abode
of the race whose scions are inurned had once crowned the declivity which holds
the tomb, but had long since fallen victim to the flames which sprang up from a
disastrous stroke of lightning. Of the midnight storm which destroyed this
gloomy mansion, the older inhabitants of the region sometimes speak in hushed
and uneasy voices; alluding to what they call "divine wrath" in a
manner that in later years vaguely increased the always strong fascination
which I felt for the forest-darkened sepulchre. One man only had perished in
the fire. When the last of the Hydes was buried in this place of shade and
stillness, the sad urnful of ashes had come from a distant land; to which the
family had repaired when the mansion burned down. No one remains to lay flowers
before the granite portal, and few care to brave the depressing shadows which
seem to linger strangely about the water-worn stones.
I shall never forget the afternoon when first I stumbled
upon the half-hidden house of the dead. It was in mid-summer, when the alchemy
of Nature transmutes the sylvan landscape to one vivid and almost homogeneous
mass of green; when the senses are well-nigh intoxicated with the surging seas
of moist verdure and the subtly indefinable odours of the soil and the
vegetation. In such surroundings the mind loses its perspective; time and space
become trivial and unreal, and echoes of a forgotten prehistoric past beat
insistently upon the enthralled consciousness. All day I had been wandering
through the mystic groves of the hollow; thinking thoughts I need not discuss,
and conversing with things I need not name. In years a child of ten, I had seen
and heard many wonders unknown to the throng; and was oddly aged in certain
respects. When, upon forcing my way between two savage clumps of briers, I
suddenly encountered the entrance of the vault, I had no knowledge of what I
had discovered. The dark blocks of granite, the door so curiously ajar, and the
funereal carvings above the arch, aroused in me no associations of mournful or
terrible character. Of graves and tombs I knew and imagined much, but had on
account of my peculiar temperament been kept from all personal contact with
churchyards and cemeteries. The strange stone house on the woodland slope was
to me only a source of interest and speculation; and its cold, damp interior,
into which I vainly peered through the aperture so tantalisingly left,
contained for me no hint of death or decay. But in that instant of curiosity
was born the madly unreasoning desire which has brought me to this hell of
confinement. Spurred on by a voice which must have come from the hideous soul
of the forest, I resolved to enter the beckoning gloom in spite of the
ponderous chains which barred my passage. In the waning light of day I
alternately rattled the rusty impediments with a view to throwing wide the
stone door, and essayed to squeeze my slight form through the space already
provided; but neither plan met with success. At first curious, I was now
frantic; and when in the thickening twilight I returned to my home, I had sworn
to the hundred gods of the grove that at any cost I would some day force an
entrance to the black chilly depths that seemed calling out to me. The
physician with the iron-grey beard who comes each day to my room once told a
visitor that this decision marked the beginnings of a pitiful monomania; but I
will leave final judgement to my readers when they shall have learnt all.
The months following my discovery were spent in futile
attempts to force the complicated padlock of the slightly open vault, and in
carefully guarded inquiries regarding the nature and history of the structure.
With the traditionally receptive ears of the small boy, I learned much; though
an habitual secretiveness caused me to tell no one of my information or my
resolve. It is perhaps worth mentioning that I was not at all surprised or
terrified on learning of the nature of the vault. My rather original ideas
regarding life and death had caused me to associate the cold clay with the
breathing body in a vague fashion; and I felt that the great sinister family of
the burned-down mansion was in some way represented within the stone space I
sought to explore. Mumbled tales of the weird rites and godless revels of
bygone years in the ancient hall gave to me a new and potent interest in the
tomb, before whose door I would sit for hours at a time each day. Once I thrust
a candle within the nearly closed entrance, but could see nothing save a flight
of damp stone steps leading downward. The odour of the place repelled yet
bewitched me. I felt I had known it before, in a past remote beyond all
recollection; beyond even my tenancy of the body I now possess.
The year after I first beheld the tomb, I stumbled upon a
worm-eaten translation of Plutarch's Lives in the book-filled attic of my home.
Reading the life of Theseus, I was much impressed by that passage telling of
the great stone beneath which the boyish hero was to find his tokens of destiny
whenever he should become old enough to lift its enourmous weight. This legend
had the effect of dispelling my keenest impatience to enter the vault, for it
made me feel that the time was not yet ripe. Later, I told myself, I should
grow to a strength and ingenuity which might enable me to unfasten the heavily
chained door with ease; but until then I would do better by conforming to what
seemed the will of Fate.
Accordingly my watches by the dank portal became less persistent,
and much of my time was spent in other though equally strange pursuits. I would
sometimes rise very quietly in the night, stealing out to walk in those
churchyards and places of burial from which I had been kept by my parents. What
I did there I may not say, for I am not now sure of the reality of certain
things; but I know that on the day after such a nocturnal ramble I would often
astonish those about me with my knowledge of topics almost forgotten for many
generations. It was after a night like this that I shocked the community with a
queer conceit about the burial of the rich and celebrated Squire Brewster, a
maker of local history who was interred in 1711, and whose slate headstone,
bearing a graven skull and crossbones, was slowly crumbling to powder. In a
moment of childish imagination I vowed not only that the undertaker, Goodman
Simpson, had stolen the silver-buckled shoes, silken hose, and satin
small-clothes of the deceased before burial; but that the Squire himself, not
fully inanimate, had turned twice in his mound-covered coffin on the day of
interment.
But the idea of entering the tomb never left my thoughts;
being indeed stimulated by the unexpected genealogical discover that my own
maternal ancestry possessed at least a slight link with the supposedly extinct
family of the Hydes. Last of my paternal race, I was likewise the last of this
older and more mysterious line. I began to feel that the tomb was mine, and to
look forward with hot eagerness to the time when I might pass within that stone
door and down those slimy stone steps in the dark. I now formed the habit of
listening very intently at the slightly open portal, choosing my favourite
hours of midnight stillness for the odd vigil. By the time I came of age, I had
made a small clearing in the thicket before the mould-stained facade of the
hillside, allowing the surrounding vegetation to encircle and overhang the
space like the walls and roof of sylvan bower. This bower was my temple, the
fastened door my shrine, and here I would lie outstretched on the mossy ground,
thinking strange thoughts and dreaming of strange dreams.
The night of the first revelation was a sultry one. I
must have fallen asleep from fatigue, for it was with a distinct sense of
awakening that I heard the voices. Of those tones and accents I hesitate to
speak; of their quality I will not speak; but I may say that they presented
certain uncanny differences in vocabulary, pronunciation, and mode of
utterance. Every shade of New England dialect, from the uncouth syllables of
the Puritan colonists to the precise rhetoric of fifty years ago, seemed
represented in that shadowy colloquy, though it was only later that I noticed
the fact. At the time, indeed, my attention was distracted from this matter by
another phenomenon; a phenomenon so fleeting that I could not take oath upon
its reality. I barely fancied that as I awoke, a light had been hurriedly
extinguished within the sunken sepulchre. I do not think I was either astounded
or panic-stricken, but I know that I was greatly and permanently changed that
night. Upon returning home I went with much directness to a rotting chest in
the attic, wherein I found the key which next day unlocked with ease the
barrier I had so long stormed in vain.
It was in the soft glow of late afternoon that I first
entered the vault on the abandoned slope. A spell was upon me, and my heart
leaped with an exultation I can but ill describe. As I closed the door behind
me and descended the dripping steps by the light of my lone candle, I seemed to
know the way; and though the candle sputtered with the stifling reek of the
place, I felt singularly at home in the musty, charnel-house air. Looking about
me, I beheld many marble slabs bearing coffins, or the remains of coffins. Some
of these were sealed and intact, but others had nearly vanished, leaving the
silver handles and plates isolated amidst certain curious heaps of whitish
dust. Upon one plate I read the name of Sir Geoffrey Hyde, who had come from
Sussex in 1640 and died here a few years later. In a conspicuous alcove was one
fairly well-preserved and untenanted casket, adorned with a single name which
brought to me both a smile and a shudder. An odd impulse caused me to climb
upon the broad slab, extinguish my candle, and lie down within the vacant box.
In the grey light of dawn I staggered from the vault and
locked the chain of the door behind me. I was no longer a young man, though but
twenty-one winters had chilled my bodily frame. Early-rising villagers who
observed my homeward progress looked at me strangely, and marvelled at the
signs of ribald revelry which they saw in one whose life was known to be sober
and solitary. I did not appear before my parents till after a long and
refreshing sleep.
Henceforward I haunted the tomb each night; seeing,
hearing, and doing things I must never reveal. My speech, always susceptible to
environmental influences, was the first thing to succumb to the change; and my
suddenly acquired archaism of diction was soon remarked upon. Later a queer
boldness and recklessness came into my demeanour, till I unconsciously grew to
possess the bearing of a man of the world despite my lifelong seclusion. My
formerly silent tongue waxed voluble with the easy grace of a Chesterfield or
the godless cynicism of a Rochester. I displayed a peculiar erudition utterly
unlike the fantastic, monkish lore over which I had pored in youth; and covered
the flyleaves of my books with facile impromptu epigrams which brought up
suggestions of Gay, Prior, and the sprightliest of Augustan wits and rimesters.
One morning at breakfast I came close to disaster by declaiming in palpably
liquourish accents an effusion of eighteenth-century Bacchanalian mirth; a bit
of Georgian playfulness never recorded in a book, which ran something like this:
Come hither, my lads, with your tankards of ale,
And drink to the present before it shall fail;
Pile each on your platter a mountain of beef,
For 'tis eating and drinking that bring us relief:
So fill up your glass,
So life will soon pass;
When you're dead ye'll ne'er drink to your king or your
lass!
Anacreon had a red nose, so they say;
But what's a red nose if ye're happy and gay?
Gad split me! I'd rather be red whilst I'm here,
Than white as a lily—and dead half a year!
So Betty, my miss,
Come give me kiss;
In hell there's no innkeeper's daughter like this!
Young Harry, propp'd up just as straight as he's able,
Will soon lose his wig and slip under the table;
But fill up your goblets and pass 'em around—
Better under the table than under the ground!
So revel and chaff
As ye thirstily quaff:
Under six feet of dirt 'tis less easy to laugh!
The fiend strike me blue! I'm scarce able to walk,
And damn me if I can stand upright or talk!
Here, landlord, bid Betty to summon a chair;
I'll try home for a while, for my wife is not there!
So lend me a hand;
I'm not able to stand,
But I'm gay whilst I linger on top of the land!
About this time I conceived my present fear of fire and
thunderstorms. Previously indifferent to such things, I had now an unspeakable
horror of them; and would retire to the innermost recesses of the house
whenever the heavens threatened an electrical display. A favourite haunt of
mine during the day was the ruined cellar of the mansion that had burned down,
and in fancy I would picture the structure as it had been in its prime. On one
occasion I startled a villager by leading him confidently to a shallow
sub-cellar, of whose existence I seemed to know in spite of the fact that it
had been unseen and forgotten for many generations.
At last came that which I had long feared. My parents,
alarmed at the altered manner and appearance of their only son, commenced to
exert over my movements a kindly espionage which threatened to result in
disaster. I had told no one of my visits to the tomb, having guarded my secret
purpose with religious zeal since childhood; but now I was forced to exercise
care in threading the mazes of the wooded hollow, that I might throw off a
possible pursuer. My key to the vault I kept suspended from a cord about my
neck, its presence known only to me. I never carried out of the sepulchre any
of the things I came upon whilst within its walls.
One morning as I emerged from the damp tomb and fastened
the chain of the portal with none too steady hand, I beheld in an adjacent
thicket the dreaded face of a watcher. Surely the end was near; for my bower
was discovered, and the objective of my nocturnal journeys revealed. The man
did not accost me, so I hastened home in an effort to overhear what he might
report to my careworn father. Were my sojourns beyond the chained door about to
be proclaimed to the world? Imagine my delighted astonishment on hearing the
spy inform my parent in cautious whisper that I had spent the night in the
bower outside the tomb; my sleep-filmed eyes fixed upon the crevice where the
padlocked portal stood ajar! By what miracle had the watcher been thus deluded?
I was now convinced that a supernatural agency protected me. Made bold by this
heaven-sent circumstance, I began to resume perfect openness in going to the
vault; confident that no one could witness my entrance. For a week I tasted to
the full the joys of that charnel conviviality which I must not describe, when
the thing happened, and I was borne away to this accursed abode of sorrow and
monotony.
I should not have ventured out that night; for the taint
of thunder was in the clouds, and hellish phosphorescence rose from the rank
swamp at the bottom of the hollow. The call of the dead, too, was different.
Instead of the hillside tomb, it was the charred cellar on the crest of the
slope whose presiding daemon beckoned to me with unseen fingers. As I emerged
from an intervening grove upon the plain before the ruin, I beheld in the misty
moonlight a thing I had always vaguely expected. The mansion, gone for a
century, once more reared its stately height to the raptured vision; every
window ablaze with the splendour of many candles. Up the long drive rolled the
coaches of the Boston gentry, whilst on foot came a numerous assemblage of
powdered exquisites from the neighbouring mansions. With this throng I mingled,
though I knew I belonged with the hosts rather than the guests. Inside the hall
were music, laughter, and wine on every hand. Several faces I recognised;
though I should have known them better had they been shrivelled or eaten away
by death and decomposition. Amidst a wild and reckless throng I was the wildest
and most abandoned. Gay blasphemy poured in torrents from my lips, and in my
shocking sallies I heeded no law of God, Man, or Nature. Suddenly a peal of
thunder, resonant even above the din of the swinish revelry, clave the very
roof and laid a hush of fear upon the boisterous company. Red tongues of flame
and searing gusts of heat engulfed the house; and the roysterers, struck with
terror at the descent of a calamity which seemed to transcend the bounds of
unguided Nature, fled shrieking into the night. I alone remained, riveted to my
seat by a grovelling fear which I had never felt before. And then a second
horror took possession of my soul. Burnt alive to ashes, my body dispersed by
the four winds, I might never lie in the tomb of Hydes! Was not my coffin
prepared for me? Had I not a right to rest till eternity amongst the
descendants of Sir Geoffrey Hyde? Aye! I would claim my heritage of death, even
though my soul go seeking through the ages for another corporeal tenement to
represent it on that vacant slab in the alcove of the vault. Jervas Hyde should
never share the sad fate of Palinurus!
As the phantom of the burning house faded, I found myself
screaming and struggling madly in the arms of two men, one of whom was the spy
who had followed me to the tomb. Rain was pouring down in torrents, and upon
the southern horizon were flashes of the lightning that had so lately passed
over our heads. My father, his face lined with sorrow, stood by as I shouted my
demands to be laid within the tomb; frequently admonishing my captors to treat
me as gently as they could. A blackened circle on the floor of the ruined
cellar told of a violent stroke from the heavens; and from this spot a group of
curious villagers with lanterns were prying a small box of antique workmanship
which the thunderbolt had brought to light. Ceasing my futile and now
objectless writhing, I watched the spectators as they viewed the
treasure-trove, and was permitted to share in their discoveries. The box, whose
fastenings were broken by the stroke which had unearthed it, contained many
papers and objects of value; but I had eyes for one thing alone. It was the
porcelain miniature of a young man in a smartly curled bag-wig, and bore the
initials "J.H." The face was such that as I gazed, I might well have
been studying my mirror.
On the following day I was brought to this room with the
barred windows, but I have been kept informed of certain things through an aged
and simple-minded servitor, for whom I bore a fondness in infancy, and who like
me loves the churchyard. What I have dared relate of my experiences within the
vault has brought me only pitying smiles. My father, who visits me frequently,
declares that at no time did I pass the chained portal, and swears that the
rusted padlock had not been touched for fifty years when he examined it. He
even says that all the village knew of my journeys to the tomb, and that I was
often watched as I slept in the bower outside the grim facade, my half-open
eyes fixed on the crevice that leads to the interior. Against these assertions
I have no tangible proof to offer, since my key to the padlock was lost in the
struggle on that night of horrors. The strange things of the past which I
learnt during those nocturnal meetings with the dead he dismisses as the fruits
of my lifelong and omnivorous browsing amongst the ancient volumes of the
family library. Had it not been for my old servant Hiram, I should have by this
time become quite convinced of my madness.
But Hiram, loyal to the last, has held faith in me, and
has done that which impels me to make public at least a part of my story. A
week ago he burst open the lock which chains the door of the tomb perpetually
ajar, and descended with a lantern into the murky depths. On a slab in an
alcove he found an old but empty coffin whose tarnished plate bears the single
word "Jervas". In that coffin and in that vault they have promised me
I shall be buried.
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