XII.TESTS.
I again left the house, having tarried there not over ten minutes, resolved to revisit the locality where the puzzle had presented itself. After calling the dogs,—for I wished them to be with me to make the test complete, and also to observe their conduct,—I searched in every likely place to find out if my friend had not returned; for I still had a vague suspicion running in my head, that after all he might possibly have succeeded in some unaccountable way, in enveloping me in the maze of a ghostly manifestation. But I searched for him in vain; and, to settle all doubt relative to his agency in the affair, I will state that he did not return home that night until ten o’clock or after, driving by the road leading through Jamaica Plain.
I then went down the garden road, and stood upon the very spot I had previously occupied. As I said before, I wished to see how the dogs would act should the figure make its appearance; and even before I reached my former position I was struck by the reluctant manner in which they followed me,—but I managed to get them on, and so there we three were; but where was that eccentric fourth?
He was not there. Some people will say I had been controlled by the solemn influences of the night and the ghastly associations blended with the scene and all its gloomy neighborhood, and consequently was in a very fit condition to receive a demonstration and accept it as supernatural; but I will at all times maintain that when I first went down that garden walk that night, and saw the form that I took to be that of my friend, I was, as I have previously most minutely and accurately explained, not in that spiritualistic, sympathetic condition. But on the second visit I confess that I was in a better temperament to receive the influences of night and scene and associations, and to which you may add the incident which gives such a weird aspect to my narrative. In the first, my condition was natural and eminently composed, and yet I had the vision; in the second, with all my nerves stretched in expectancy, I saw nothing. Now, how was that? I stood still as a living man can stand, and fixed my eyes upon the wall where the figure had first appeared; but all was moveless and silent. The old wall and the shadows looked as they did before. I turned quick as thought, and tried to surprise any faint glimpse of anything that might have come to the spot where the apparition had stopped in the interval of my withdrawn attention; but there was nothing but the short grass backed by the dark wood where the deeds of blood had been perpetrated. I even looked to seeif anything was lying down to avoid my scrutiny, walked over to the spot, and then in a straight line to the wall, supposing it was possible I might find some trace of a presence. I found nothing.
I was therefore satisfied as far as this test was carried; but still I was not content. A strange desire, which I possibly did not attempt to check, had taken possession of me to carry my investigation farther; but it was a wild, and, all things considered, a fearful experiment; at least I so viewed it when it was first suggested to my mind. It must be understood that I only submitted even to the contemplation of this ultimate and extraordinary test after I had determined that what I had seen was not a visual delusion or in fact a human being. A sense of profound conviction seized me and impelled me to admit that something had occurred to my experience beyond my ability to reconcile by the ordinary rules of explanation. In fine, I for the first time during the progress of these transactions suddenly connected the mystery with the murders. I had given common sense and resolute examination a fair chance to account for that abrupt whirl, that sudden vanishing, that terror of the dogs, their failure to recognize their master, or to attack the stranger,—either of which they would have done under ordinary circumstances,—and now I had no power to resist the conclusion that was so powerfully forced upon me. I pretend to no peculiarbravery, though not entirely destitute of that quality, shared with man by the rat-terrier and the rat himself, having enough of it for all the needs and purposes of a very good-natured and non-aggressive man; and the chief feature of my courage is, my not having a fear of myself; that is, I am not backward in entertaining myself with proposals to undertake matters which, to some other men, of abler judgment, might appear a little too venturesome; and here I was about to attempt a task that possibly only an animal should engage in, knowing nothing of human mysteries, or a pauper, for a reward; and even the pauper I think would have debated longer than I did whether he would not rather steal the recompense, or starve a little longer. It was no less a thing than to visit the spot off in those gloomy woods where the body of the girl was found lying among the rocks.
This fancy was of a twofold character. One was, that since I was in for testing, I would go over there and test my nerves; the other was an idea that, since I had been launched into the regions of the marvellous, possibly it might be made manifest to me there in those deep seclusions, on that spot,—a revelation that would lift the veil of mystery that enshrouded the fate of the two unfortunates, and also unravel the difficult maze in which I had been involved. Perhaps I would see that figure there,—that figure a parent, or relative of the girl, who had come to me that night, impressingme to the interview. I could not but think of the spiritualistic theory of the sympathies between the living and the dead,—the theory indeed of all Christian, and, for that matter, of all heathen sects, and there, and nowhere else, I might have revealed to me the name of the man who had done those hideous acts. Surely, I was in a singular predicament. I had either seen a ghost, or I had not, and I felt unwilling to let things remain in the condition of unsettled doubt, not caring for the rest of my life to be the prosy relator of a ghost story, which my listener could accuse me of having left unsettled and unfinished for the want of nerve to examine to its climax. Determined upon putting my duplex test into execution, I returned to the house to inform my friends that I was going out for a stroll,—not an unusual thing with me,—and to make some little arrangement that I thought personally needful in case of untoward accidents; for, independent of the peculiar intention I was about to fulfil, there were reasons why I should not go unprepared for physical contingencies.
The whole country, it will be remembered, was in a very disorganized state,—many people thrown out of employment, and others returned from scenes of strife and bloodshed, with an education habituated to deeds of violence. So I armed myself with a companion charged to the lips with a counteracting but defensive species of explosive violence,—a thing that could speakseven times, and always with effect if the delivery was good.
On the theory of testing my nerves, in connection with the ghost theory, I at once resolved to dispense with the dogs, for their presence would have been companionship and a reliance apart from my individuality. My pistol was not taken for the ghosts, but for ghost-makers. Now that I reflect upon it all in my cooler moments, I must frankly admit that, after what had happened, this trip had something of the fearful in it, which my placid reader will not have the heart to deny, and nothing would induce me to repeat it, unless there were motives of a higher grade than those which ruled me then. It was, in fact, an enterprise totally at variance with common sense and common personal convenience and comfort. It was now about nine o’clock. No change had occurred in the shape of the night,—that is, no clouds had culminated in the skies, and yet no moon had been conjured up by astronomy, or by lovers’ incantations. It was a lonely walk down the hill, over the very spot where my silent visitor had so lately stood to look at these very woods,—that very spot to which my steps were now directed. Darker it was down in the valley, with the hill to my back and the great mass of foliage apparently near enough for me to touch; but on I went, giving no time for reconsideration, on to the fencewhich I crossed, and then I was one of the black things in the intense gloom of the forest.
Not a sound but the crackling of dead branches under my feet in the pathway,—sounds that I felt might send the notice of my approach to whatever was waiting for me by the cross and the immortelle on the murder-rock. Though the broken branches were sentinelling my advent, I kept on, with a cold shiver now and then quivering all over me, but never for a moment going deeper than the skin. Brain and heart as yet were true to their purpose of folly, that seemed like madness to me then. It did not take me long to reach the objective point of my journey. I have described the spot in another part of this narrative, and therefore will not repeat its topographical characteristics; suffice to say that it was somewhat different in sentiment than when I had looked upon it in the sunshine. Then I had seen a visitor sitting quietly and unconcerned on the ridge of the rock, looking down, with a cigar between his lips, at the spot—always a thrilling sight—where the girl had fallen; and I had seen young girls munching sandwiches around the scene, and jabbering of the massacre of one of their mates; but now, with nothing there but the night and the spirit of the event, the weird-looking trees with their limbs reaching hither and thither in such a way as to make me feel that I was beneath the domeof an iron-barred prison-room. I hold it to be utterly impossible for any man, unless he is brutalized and of a sympathetic nature no higher than a quadruped, to be alone in such a place, with such a preface as it had been my fate to meet with, and not experience an accelerated throb of his pulse. I do not say that he is necessarily bound to be frightened, but something so near akin to it that only our self-conceit prompts us to draw the line of difference.
I was there to submit myself to one test, and apply the other to what I had previously seen. The one I was already undergoing; for it may readily be believed that an immense amount of subtle pressure was placed upon me. The accumulated proofs of a lifetime, as to the existence of unearthly presences and imperfectly disproved legends of ghostly visitations and adventures, bore down upon me with the wizard night and spectral forms of trees. And when I placed myself exactly on the blood-stained spot, I looked around with the certainty of being confronted by the apparition whose existence I was there to determine. Now, thought I, is the opportunity,—this the place for a revelation. What other man will ever come again with so foolhardy a brain and give the witnesses or the victim a chance so appropriate and so melodramatic? If any one does venture upon the trial, to a scene so fresh with gory associations, from my soul I pity him, andwould blame; but this species of curiosity is not generally diffused throughout society. But I was there and awaited whatever issue might transpire. I was doubtless in a sublimated condition of rapport, as the mediumistic philosophers term it; a human instrument of a thousand strings, that the feeblest ghost might play upon with ever so withered a hand. But none came to inform or frighten me, and not a sound other than the low clicking of the wood insects broke the magic ring of silence that closed in with such profundity of pathos this terrible situation. To attempt to go away, I found required more nerve than to get there; for now I must turn my back and place myself in the traditional position in which cowardice is said to place its victims; but, with the cold creepings renewed with double energy, I turned and walked with an excited composure away from the spot, down the hill, through the gateway that opens eastward into the Dedham road, and then, with half a dozen sighs of relief, straight home.
“Can you recognize that man again?” from the chief, is always sounding in my ear. What man? Did I not go to the place where he should have met me, if he was in any way witness to that murder? Sometimes I think it was the man himself, but not in the flesh. If in the flesh, he never would have come so near the scene of his hideous mischief; if in the spirit, then he had committedsuicide, or died of the disease of terror, and was wandering in the accomplishment of a curse and an expiation. Who knows but what it may be so, and who can say it is not so, any more than I can assert it is so? Or was it the father, who, since I wrote the description above, I have heard was no longer living? If it was the father’s spirit, then I have something to say about that matter; and when I said that I could recognize the man, I meant I might be able to do so if there is a photograph of him that I could get at. Close and open your eyes quickly while looking at a person passing by your window, and you will have some idea of the view I had of the profile of this vision. I have seen in official possession, filed away among the other papers appertaining to this case, something that evinced that this dead father was taking active interest in the search after the murderer. I am not at liberty to recite the mode of that interest, nor am I called upon by any logical process to affirm that he does take an interest, or to deny that he does. I only know that there are similar circumstances connected with this phase of the subject, that a very large class of the community would attach importance to, but all involved in such a labyrinth of mystery as to defy positive recognition and the ordinary tests of evidence.
Assume as a fact that a spirit, taking to itself the form of a man, had appeared to me, there at once grows outof that admission this other question: Why should so extraordinary a circumstance, such a miracle, in fact, have been developed? For what purpose was that spirit there? Denying, as I do, that it would have been a miracle, I take up the question and attempt my reply. In the first place, I am no sectarian; least of all am I a spiritualist; and if I am anything of a creed man,—which the Lord grant I am!—I am of a church that is founded on the system of marvels, as indeed, for that matter, are all churches, Christian or Pagan. The Saviour of mankind, let me with all reverence say, is admitted to have been duplex in character,—mortal for our sympathies, divine for our worship. If he suffered death,—which some doubt he did, but only the semblance of death,—his spirit was no more existent after his execution than before it, and consequently he had power to rise from the sepulchre where they had laid him and appear to the soldiers and to the holy women. That he did appear we have the evidence of the great apostles and the contemporary legends of the Roman narrators. Indeed, it is not only asserted that he was manifest after death, but that ghosts walked the streets of Jerusalem, and when the veil of the temple was rent, the graves gave up their dead. These were the phenomena of a sublime epoch,—an epoch that in the death of a God was grander and more inexplicable than the incident of the earth’s formation, and that of the stars and skies that areover it. All events have their purposes, and I can see the purpose here that should evoke these wonders. His mission had reached the point where the spiritual manifestations must overshadow the recollections of his corporeal existence, and prove to the world, by tangible exhibition, that beyond the grave there was a life. The Scriptures teem with the legends of spirits,—of ghosts, if you like that word better,—and men of all the known wisdom of those days believed in them, because they seemed to have seen them. Why should they have been prevalent then, and not now? Who can dare answer that question, or dare deny, with proof to back the denial, that such things never did exist, or, existing, appear to human vision? As well tell me that the same vegetables did not have life then as now, the same qualities of sand and superficial soil and rocks; and indeed have not certain plants, that were for centuries lost to human cultivation, been revived? Nothing is lost, nothing changes, though we call reproduction change, and flatter ourselves that we have spoken a great philosophy. Why is the world full of ghost-stories outside of the Scriptures? Because ghost-stories have been veritable facts,—these lay ghost-stories travelling alongside of the clerical ghost-stories of the Inspired Book, and substantiating to the common appreciation of all mankind the veritableness of the Bible. Who knows but that they are the vehicles by which Supreme Wisdomconveys to the intelligence of the unwise and the unlettered, the solemn truth of a hereafter? Who so arrogant in his wisdom as to be able to rise to the proof that it may not be so? The atrocity of self-conceit is more terrible than the atrocity of ignorance; the one is an active crime, the other a passive submission. The impossible means the possible. It is a favorite dogma with the utilitarian doctors, that nothing is impossible to the genius of man. Is there anything impossible to our Creator, other than the impossibility of making a mistake? If man invents a machine which defies all the previous laws, or theories supposed to be laws because nothing had happened to prove that they were not laws, are we to reject it on that account, and because it happens to be beyond our uneducated and unprepared capacity? Is the Creator of all to be limited and only his creature unlimited? How often, in the midst of a great accident, has not some mind suggested a redress totally at variance with the rules by which the accident was produced, creating a surprise to usual circumstances, and checking the catastrophe before it could recover its equanimity and prearranged and understood mode of conduct! Cannot the Maker interpose at his pleasure such surprises? But we will be told that he never interrupts the harmonious action of his great rules. Where do we find these rules so as to enable us to say when they are infringed or deviated from? How longhave we been in possession of the habits of the beaver and the bee? and yet they were a part of his great rules and system of order. Every day science is bringing new lights to bear upon old ant-hills as well as upon old mountains, and the shadow of a fern-leaf on a rock, the ghost of a fish-bone in a strata are sufficient for a theory on the momentous and mysterious history of our own illustrious race. If scattered bones of a mammoth, when reunited by the wire-work of a naturalist, are evidences of Noah’s or Deucalion’s flood, where are we to draw the line upon circumstantial evidence and testimony in substantiation of other facts and possibilities?
There are more tangible proofs of the existence of ghosts than there are of the existence of Noah’s ark. The hush of the night, the solitude of forests, the loneliness of limitless prairies suggest, to the most unimaginative mind something more than the physical sense of desertion and isolation; and yet that is no proof that a mystic band of weird spirits are with you in those dreary hours and wanderings; but whatever is suggested proceeds from a thing that is able to suggest, and whatever the mind grapples with of the material or the immaterial exists in some form or other, intangible, but no less existent. The opponents of the theory of the existence of ghosts, and their power to appear, use one word that conveys all their logic, and that word is the contemptuous vulgarism, Bosh! And then they willadvance with weaker argument the logic of bold contradiction, as if they had just returned from a trip into the regions of the future and an examination of the powers and rules and intents of the Providence, with an exact catalogue of his attributes and short-hand notes to be written out at their leisure, of all he has done, is doing, and is going to do. Faraday could analyze vapor, but, with all his retorts and crucibles and chemicals, he never could weigh a scintilla of a human thought. Such men grasp vapor in their hand, and will tell you of what it is composed; and they tell you truly, and we, though consciously ignorant, have no foothold for a doubt. The preacher rises in his pulpit, and, from his sectarian books, and more sectarian training, interprets to you the sublimest dogmas of the Apocalypse; and woe to the member of his flock who raises an impious question against his dictatorial assertions. But if your neighbor,—near whom you have been living all your life, whose word stands pre-eminent in all matters of business, into whose care you would place your wife or your daughter, and to whose honor you would leave it to execute your last will and testament, in behalf of the loved ones,—was to tell you that he had seen a ghost, and calmly relate the incident with the proofs and the tests, you would be very likely to laugh in his face, and tell the next person you met that you were afraid neighbor so-and-so was alittle weak in the upper story, or was telling what was not true.
The elegant dictators of theory speak of the belief in the existence of ghosts as the “vulgar belief in ghosts and goblins,” and get rid of it in that summary manner. But the very fact that it is vulgar, as they term it, is a strong point against them. If we could get the Scriptures pure and exempt from mixed and muddled interpretations, free from the garbage of a host of foreign lingual transformations, and in its original “Vulgate,” we should not have the world troubled with more creeds than they can invent gods to preside over, or devils to operate in. The word vulgar is not to be used always as inclusive of the “low-born and the uneducated.” The vulgar in this country believe in the imperialism of the ballot-box; in Russia and Prussia and England, and elsewhere, of monarchies, in the divine right of kings; and demagogues in all realms, like dogmatists of all creeds, have no faith at all, but use the belief of the masses for their own purposes. With the majority of mankind exists the supreme attribute of common sense, and yet they all, more or less, believe in the existence of ghosts. The hair-splitters of theology and other ethics, for sake of discipline, would drive the old stage-coach where the people would rush the locomotive; and as in the beginning, fishermen and carpenters were the recipients of divine truths, or the media of revelations,so now, while abstract and abstruse sciences occupy the minds of the enlighteners, the plain truths of Christian doctrine are held with other beliefs, relatively necessary to our nature, in the legendary, gossiping, and enduring belief of the masses.
It will be asked, For what purpose do your ghosts appear? To accomplish what end that human intelligence cannot effect? I say, again turn back to your Bible, and you will have your questions answered.
There are other needs now that did not then exist. Society is not the same; the ordinary laws of justice, of health, of life itself, are not the same. There are a thousand more appliances now, than there were, by which human life can be destroyed or preserved,—gunpowder, steam, machinery, with their countless adjuncts of power, on one side, and chemistry, with ether, and other discoveries, on the other. And as science becomes the assistant to the conveniences of mankind, in the same ratio it becomes his slayer. Events transpire now that were not dreamed of in former days, because of the increased forces that act upon latent ideas. Sixty, fifty, forty years ago, though Death had his ample harvest, he had not the immense scythes of steamboats and railroads with which to do his work of destruction; and now and then we have isolated facts published, with all the details of authenticity, of dreams that warned a voyager from the water or a traveller fromthe cars, when afterwards it has proved that disaster befell both modes of travel. The remedy is to the need, and who can say that there have not been innumerable warnings, by visitations and dreams, of which the public never has any account, owing to the seclusion of the parties, or their natural reticence and unwillingness to have their stories made the subject of a paragraph and a sneer?
There are purposes in the Almighty wisdom which we cannot fathom, and religion herself, speaking from the misty summits of theological controversy, cries to her votaries to have faith where they cannot have comprehension; or, in other words, to believe without understanding. Do I, a ghost-seer, ask for more?
You ask, for what purpose did this ghost—if ghost it was—cross your path? I could retort, and ask why that man—if it was a man—crossed my path? But I affirm that there was a purpose, and though I did not see it then, I may see it soon. Who can tell but what this revival of that mysterious horror may not lead to renewed activity in the police department? Who knows but it may be read by the murderer, and, awakening in his breast the smouldering embers of remorse, make him do those eccentric things which lead vigilance to observe and assist in the detection of the guilty? I never would have written this narrative if that misty figure had not confronted me on that night,and perhaps it may have been his intention to excite in me the idea of writing out these transactions, and thus awakening the slumbering or pausing authorities to a more active investigation.
Why did he select me, if I was not appropriate to his purpose? And I will say now, and with all truth, that, from that time to this moment, I have been haunted with a vague urging to write this work, and give it to the public; and now that I have done so, it may so happen that I will see that thing once more coming to assure me, in some way consistent with his condition, that his intention, so far as I was concerned as an agent, is accomplished. I shall not be surprised if it should occur.