Edited with a Preface by
3To$epf) letote Jfrencft
Stories, 1 "
"Masterpieces of Mystery" etc.
Introduction by
Borotfjp ^carborouglj
Lecturer in English, Columbia University
Author of "The Supernatural in English Literature,"
"From a Southern Porch," etc.
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PEEPAOE
THE case for the "psychic" element in literature
rests on a very old foundation; it reaches back
to the ancient masters, the men who 1 wrote the
Greek tragedies. Remorse will ever seem commonplace
alongside the furies. Ever and always the shadow of
the supernatural invites, pursues us. As the art of lit-
erature has progressed it has grown along with it
To-day there is a whole new school of writers of Ghost-
Stories, and the domain of the invisible is being invaded
by explorers in many paths. We do not believe so much
more, perhaps, that is, we do not so openly express a
belief, but art has finally and frankly claimed the super-
natural for its own. One discerning authority even goes
so far as to assert that the borders of its domain will be
greatly enlarged in the wonderful new field of the
screen.
There is no motive in a story, no image in poetry, that
can give us quite the thrill of a supernatural idea. If
we were formally charged with this we might resent
the imputation, but the evidence has persisted from the
beginning, lives on every hand, and multiplies daily.
What we have been in the habit of calling the "ma-
chinery" of the old Greek drama its supernatural ef-
fects has come finally to be an art cultivated with care
at the present hour, and has given us some wonderful
new writers. In fact, few of the best masters for a
generation now have been able to resist its persistent
VI
PREFACE
and abiding charm. Every writer of true imagination,
almost without exception, including even certain real-
ists, has given us at least one story, long or short, in
which the central motive is purely psychical in the
Greek sense of the word.
The whole subject opens up a virgin field which has
after all only begun to be tilled. Within the coming
generation we may look for great artists to devote their
whole powers to it, as Algernon Blackwood is doing
to-day. A simple underlying reason is enough to account
for it all the new field imposes simply no limit on the
imagination. In addition to all that science has taught
us, there is illimitable store of myth and legend to aid,
to draw from, to work in, to work over, as Lord Dun-
sany has shown us. It is the most significant movement
in literature at the present hour, and whether it is sup-
ported by a special background of interest as at pres-
ent in spiritism or not, the assertion is logical that it
is creating a new body of fictional literature of perma-
nent importance for the first time in the history of lit-
erature. The human comedy seems to have been ex-
ploited to its final limits; as the art of the novel, the
art of the stage, but too sadly prove to-day. We have
turned outward for new thrills to the supernatural and
we are getting them.
It only remains to be added that the present great
interest in spiritualism and allied phenomena has made
necessary the addition of certain material of a ' ' literal ' y
character which we believe will be found quite as inter-
esting by the general reader as the purely literary por-
tion of the book.
JOSEPH LEWIS FRENCH
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE Joseph Lewis French . v
INTRODUCTION Dorothy Scarborough . ix
WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG Jack London ... 1
THE RETURN Algernon Blackwood . 24
THE SECOND GENERATION . . Algernon Blackwood . ^j'31
JOSEPH A STORY .... Katherine Rickford . . 41
THE CLAVECIN BRUGES . . George Wharton Edwards 54
LIGEIA Edgar Allan Poe . . 61
THE SYLPH AND THE FATHER Elsa Barker .... 83
A GHOST Lafcadio Hearn ... 88
THE EYES OP THE PANTHER . Ambrose Bierce ... 95
PHOTOGRAPHING INVISIBLE BE-
INGS William T. Stead . .109
THE SIN-EATER Fiona Macleod . . . 126
GHOSTS IN SOLID FORM . . Gambier Bolton . . . 162
THE PHANTOM ARMIES SEEN IN
FRANCE Hereward Carrington . 188
THE PORTAL OF THE UNKNOWN . Andrew Jackson Davis . 195
THE SUPERNORMAL: EXPERI-
ENCES St. John D.Seymour . 202
NATURE-SPIRITS, OR ELEMEN-
TALS Nizida 218
A WITCH'S DEN Helena Blavatsky . . 258
SOME REMARKABLE EXPERI-
ENCES OF FAMOUS PERSONS Dr. Walter F. Prince 280
vii
INTRODUCTION
THE PSYCHIC IN LITERATURE
WAR, that relentless disturber of boundaries and
of traditions in a spiritual as well as a material
sense, has brought a tremendous revival of in-
terest in the life after death and the possibility of com-
munication between the living and the dead. As France
became nearer to millions over here because our sol-
diers lived there for a few months, as French soil will
forever be holy ground because our dead rest there, so
the far country of the soul likewise seems nearer be-
cause of those young adventurers. The conflict which
changed the map of Europe has in the minds of many
effaced the boundaries between this world and the world
beyond. Winifred Kirkland, in her book, The, New
Death, discusses the new concept of death, and the
change in our standards that it is making. "We are
used to speaking of this or that friend's philosophy of
life; the time has now come when every/ one of us who
is to live at peace with his own brain must possess also
a philosophy of death. " This New Death, she says, is
so far mainly an immense yearning receptivity, an un-
precedented humility of brain and of heart toward all
implications of survival. She believes that it is an in-
fluence which is entering the lives of the people as a
whole, not a movement of the intellectuals, nor the re-
ix
y
x INTRODUCTION
suit of psychical research propaganda, but arising from
the simple, elemental emotions of the soul, from human
i love and longing for reassurance of continued life. ^
"If a man die, shall he live again?" has been pro-
pounded ever since Job's agonized inquiry.. Now num-
bers are asking in addition, "Can we have communica-
tion with the dead?" Science, long derisive, is sympa-
thetic to the questioning, and while many believe and
many doubt, the subject is one that interests more
..people than ever before. Professor James Hyslop, Sec-
retary of the American Society for Psychical Research,
believes that the war has had great influence in arous-
ing new interest in psychical subjects and that tremen-
dous spiritual discoveries may come from it.
Literature, always a little ahead of life, or at least
in-ac 1 vance of general thinking, has in the more recent
years been acutely conscious of this new influence.
Poetry, the drama, the novel, the short story, have given
affirmative answer to the question of the soul's survival
after death. No other element has so largely entered
into the tissue of recent literature as has the supernat-
ural, which now we meet in all forms in the writings of
all lands. And no aspect of the ghostly art is more
impressive or more widely used than the introduction
of the spirit of the dead seeking to manifest itself to
the living. No thoughtful person can fail to be inter-
ested in a theme which has so affected literature as has
the ghostly, even though he may disbelieve what the
Psychical Researchers hold to be established.
Man's love for the supernatural, which is one of the
most natural things about him, was never more marked
than now. Man's imagination, ever vaster than his
THE PSYCHIC IN LITERATUKE xi
environment, overleaps the barriers of time and space
and claims all worlds as eminent domain, so that litera-
ture, which he has the power to create, as he cannot cre-
ate his material surroundings, possesses a dramatic in-
tensity and an -epic sweep unknown in actuality. JJiteEr
ature shows what humanity really is and longs to be.
Man, feeling belittled by his petty round of uninspir-
ing days, longs for a larger life. He yearns for traffic
with immortal beings that can augment his wisdom, that
can bring comfort to his soul dismayed and bewildered
by life. He reaches out for a power beyond his puny
strength. Aware how relentlessly time ticks away his lit-
tle hour, he craves companionship with the eternal
spirits. Ignorant of what lies before him in the life
to which he speeds so fast, he would take counsel of
those who know, would ask about the customs oi the
country where presently he will be a citizen. He feels
so terribly alone that he cries out like a child in the
dark for supermortal companionship.
Literature, which is both a cause and an effect of
man's interest in the supernatural as in anything else,
reflects his longings and records his cries. And when
we read the imaginings of the different generations, we
find that the spirit of the dead is represented almost
everywhere. Before poetry and fiction were recorded,
there were singers and story-tellers by the fire to give
to their listeners the thrill that comes from art. And
what thrill is comparable to that which comes from con-
tact with the supermortal? The earliest literature re-
lates the appearance of the spirits of those who have
died as coming back to comfort or to take vengeance on
the living, but always as) sentient, intelligent, and with
xii INTRODUCTION
an interest in the earth they have left. All through
the centuries the wraith has survived in literature, has
flitted pallidly across the pages of poetry, story and play,
with a sad wistfulness, a forlorn dignity.
A double relation exists between the literature and the
records of the Psychical Kesearch Society. Lacy Col-
lison-Morley, in his Greek and Roman Ghost Stories,
speaks of the similarity between ancient tales of spirits
and records of recent instances. " There are in the
Fourth Book of Gregory the Great's Dialogues a
number of stories of the passing of souls which are curi-
ously like some of those collected by the Psychical Re-
search Society/' he says. Possibly human personality
is much the same in all lands and all times.
Conversely, some of the best examples of ghostly lit-
erature have had their inspiration in the records of the
society, Henry James's The Turn of the Screw being
a notable example. Algernon Blackwood, that extraor-
dinary adapter of psychic material to fiction, makes fre-
quent mention of the Psychical Research Society, and
uses many aspects of the psychical in his fiction. In-
numerable stories, novels, plays and poems have been
written to show the nearness of the dead to the living,
and the thinness of the veil that separates the two
worlds. There is deep pathos in the concept of the long-
ing felt by the dead and living alike to speak with each
other, to rend the dividing veil, which adds a poignancy
to literature, even for readers incredulous of the pos-
sibility of such communication. There are many who
are unconvinced of the reality of the messages in Ray-
mond, for instance, yet who could fail to be touched
by the delicate art with which Barrie suggests the dead
THE PSYCHIC IN LITEEATUEE xiii
son's return in his play, The Well-Remembered
Voice ? While one may be repelled by what he feels
is fraud and trickery in some of the psychic records, it
is impossible not to be moved by such an impressive
piece of symbolism as Granville Barker 's Souls on
Fifth, where the lonely, futile spirits of the dead are
represented as hovering near the place they knew the
best, seeking piteously to win some recognition from the
living. The repulsive aspects of spirit manifestations
have been treated many times and with power, as in
Joseph Hergesheimer 's The Meeker Ritual, to give
one very recent example. The subject has interested the
minds of many writers who have dealt with it satirically
or sympathetically, or with a curious mixture of scoffing
and respect, as did Browning in Sludge, the Medium.
Even such pronounced realists as William Dean Howells
and Hamlin Garland have written novels dealing with
attempts at spirit communication.
Any subject that has won so incontestable a place in
our literature as this has, possesses a right to our
thought, whatever be our attitude of acceptance or re-
jection of its claims to actuality. No person wishes to
be ignorant of what the world is thinking with reference
to a matter so important as the spirit. Hence this vol-
ume, The Best Psychic Stories, in presenting these
studies in the occult, will have interest for a wide range
of readers, and Mr. French, the editor, has shown criti-
cal discrimination and extensive knowledge of the sub-
ject. Many who are already interested in psychic) phe-
nomena will be glad to be informed concerning recent
and startling manifestations recounted by special in-
vestigators. The sincerity of a man like W. T. Stead,
xiv INTRODUCTION
well known and respected on both sides of the Atlantic,
cannot be doubted, so that his article on Photograph-
ing Invisible Beings will have unusual weight. Here-
ward Carrington, author of various books on psychic
subjects, and considered an authority in his field, gives
in The Phantom Armies Seen in France a report of
occult phenomena widely believed in during the war.
Helena' Blavatsky, author of A Witch's Den, will
be remembered as the sensational medium who mysti-
fied experimenters in various lands a few years ago.
While most of us can be content not to touch a ghost,
we may find subject for surprise and wonder in Gam-
bier Bolton's Ghosts in Solid Form, describing spir-
its that can be weighed and put to material tests, while
Dr. Walter H. Prince, well known as a psychic investi-
gator, relates remarkable experiments of famous per-
sons, that challenge explanation on purely physical
bases. These accounts show that modern scientific in-
vestigation of spiritual manifestations can be made as
enthralling as fiction or drama. Hamlin Garland re-
marks in a recent article, The Spirit-World on Trial,
"When the medium consented to enter the laboratory
of the physicist, a new era in the study of psychic phe-
nomena began. "
Even those who refuse credence to spirit manifesta-
tions in fact, but who appreciate the art with which
they are shown in literature, should read with interest
the stories given here. The genius of Edgar Allan Poe
was never more impressive than in his studies of the
supernatural, and Ligeia has a dramatic art unsur-
passed even by Poe. The tense economy with which Am-
brose Bierce could evoke a dreadful spirit is evident
THE PSYCHIC IN LITERATURE xv
in The Eyes of the Panther, and the haunting sym-
bolism of Fiona Macleod's The Sin-Eater^ is unfor-
getable. Lafcadio Hearn, author of A Ghost, held the
belief that there was no great artist in any land, and
certainly no Anglo-Saxon writer, who had not distin-
guished himself in his use of the supernatural. ( The
subject of the soul's survival after death and its at-
tempts to reveal itself to those still in the folding flesh
is of interest to every rational person, whether as a mat-
ter of scientific concern or merely as an aspect of liter-
ary art.) And the possibilities for further use of the
psychic in literature are as alluring as they are illimit-
DOEOTHY SCARBOROUGH
New York City
March 29, 1920
Stye Pe*t $0pcfnc Stories!
THE BEST PSYCHIC
STORIES
WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG*
BY JACK LONDON
HE was a very quiet, self-possessed sort of man,
sitting a moment on top of the wall to sound
the damp darkness for warnings of the dangers
it might conceal. But the plummet of his hearing
brought nothing to him save the moaning of wind
through invisible trees and the rustling of leaves on
swaying branches. A heavy fog drifted and drove be-
fore the wind, and though he could not see this fog, the
wet of it blew upon his face, and the wall on which he
sat was wet.
Without noise he had climbed to the top of the wall
from the outside, and without noise he dropped to the
ground on the inside. From his pocket he drew an elec-
tric night-stick, but he did not use it. Dark as the
way was, he was not anxious for light. Carrying the
night-stick in his hand, his finger on the button, he
* By permission of The Century Co.
1
:! THE BEST PSYCHIC STOEIES
advanced through the darkness. The ground was vel-
vety and springy to his feet, being carpeted with dead
pine-needles and leaves and mold which evidently had
been undisturbed for years. Leaves and branches
brushed against his body, but so dark was it that he
could not avoid them. Soon he walked with his hand
stretched out gropingly before him, and more than once
the hand fetched up against the solid trunks of massive
trees. All about him he knew were these trees; he
sensed the loom of them everywhere ; and he experienced
a strange feeling of microscopic smallness in the midst
of great bulks leaning toward him to crush him. Be-
yond, he knew, was the house, and he expected to find
some trail or winding path that would lead easily to it.
Once, he found himself trapped. On every side he
groped against trees and branches, or blundered into
thickets of underbrush, until there seemed no way out.
Then he turned on his light, circumspectly, directing
its rays to the ground at his feet. Slowly and care-
fully he moved it about him, the white brightness show-
ing in sharp detail all the obstacles to his progress. He
saw an opening between huge-trunked trees, and ad-
vanced through it, putting out the light and treading on
dry footing as yet protected from the drip of the fog by
the dense foliage overhead. His sense of direction was
good, and he knew he was going toward the house.
And then the thing happened the thing unthinkable
and unexpected. His descending foot came down upon
something that was" soft and alive, and that arose with
a snort under the weight of his body. He sprang clear,
and crouched for another spring, anywhere, tense and
expectant, keyed for the onslaught of the unknown. He
WHEN THE WOELD WAS YOUNG 3
waited a moment, wondering what manner of animal
it was that had arisen from under his foot and that
now made no sound nor movement and that must be
crouching and waiting just as tensely and expectantly
as he. The strain became unbearable. Holding the
night-stick before him, he pressed the button, saw, and
screamed aloud in terror. He was prepared for any-
thing, from a frightened calf or fawn to a belligerent
lion, but he was not prepared for what he saw. In that
instant his tiny searchlight, sharp and white, had shown
him what a thousand years would not enable him to for-
get a man, huge and blond, yellow-haired and yellow-
bearded, naked except for soft-tanned moccasins and
what seemed a goat-skin about his middle. Arms and
legs were bare, as were his shoulders and most of his
chest. The skin was smooth and hairless, but browned
by sun and wind, while under it heavy muscles were
knotted like fat snakes.
Still, this alone, unexpected as it well was, was not
what had made the man scream out. What had caused
his terror was the unspeakable ferocity of the face, the
wild-animal glare of the blue eyes scarcely dazzled by
the light, the pine-needles matted and clinging in the
beard and hair, and the whole formidable body crouched
and in the act of springing at him. Practically in the
instant he saw all this, and while his scream still rang,
the thing leaped, he flung his night-stick full at it, and
threw himself to the ground. He felt its feet and shins
strike against his ribs, and he bounded up and away
while the thing itself hurled onward in a heavy crashing
fall into the underbrush.
As the noise of the fall ceased, the man stopped and
4 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
on hands and knees waited. He could hear the thing
moving about, searching for him, and he was afraid to
advertise his location by attempting further flight. He
knew that inevitably he would crackle the underbrush
and be pursued. Once he drew out his revolver, then
changed his mind. He had recovered his composure and
hoped to get away without noise. Several times he
heard the thing beating up the thickets for him, and
there were moments when it, too, remained still and lis-
tened. This gave an idea to the man. One of his
hands was resting on a chunk of dead wood. Carefully,
first feeling about him in the darkness to know that the
full swing of his arm was clear, he raised the chunk of
wood and threw it. It was not a large piece, and it went
far, landing noisily in a bush. He heard the thing
bound into the bush, and at the same time himself
crawled steadily away. And on hands and knees,
slowly and cautiously, he crawled on, till his knees were
wet on the soggy mold. When he listened he heard
naught but the moaning wind and the drip-drip of the
fog from the branches. Never abating his caution, he
stood erect and went on to the stone wall, over which
he climbed and dropped down to the road outside.
Feeling his way in a clump of bushes, he drew out
a bicycle and prepared to mount. He was in the act
of driving the gear around with his foot for the pur-
pose of getting the opposite pedal in position, when he
heard the thud of a heavy body that landed lightly and
evidently on its feet. He did not wait for more, but ran,
with hands on the handles of his bicycle, until he was
able to vault astride the saddle, catch the pedals, and
start a spurt. Behind he could hear the quick thud-
WHEN THE WOELD WAS YOUNG 5
thud of feet on the dust of the road, but he drew away
from it and lost it.
Unfortunately, he had started away from the direc-
tion of town and was heading higher up into the hills.
He knew that on this particular road there were no cross
roads. The only way back was past that terror, and
he could not steel himself to face it. At the end of half
an hour, finding himself on an ever increasing grade, he
dismounted. For still greater safety, leaving the wheel
by the roadside, he climbed through a fence into what
he decided was a hillside pasture, spread a newspaper
on the ground, and sat down.
"Gosh!" he said aloud, mopping the sweat and fog
from his face.
And 1 1 Gosh ! ' ' he said once again, while rolling a cig-
arette and as he pondered the problem of getting back.
But he made no attempt to go back. He was resolved
not to face that road in the dark, and with head bowed
on knees, he dozed, waiting for daylight.
How long afterward he did not know, he was awak-
ened by the yapping bark of a young coyote. As he
looked about and located it on the brow of the hill be-
hind him, he noted the change that had come over the
face of the night. The fog was gone; the stars and
moon were out; even the wind had died down. It had
transformed into a balmy California summer night. He
tried to doze again, but the yap of the coyote disturbed
him. Half asleep, he heard a wild and eery chant.
Looking about him, he noticed that the coyote had ceased
its noise and was running away along the crest of the
hill, and behind it, in full pursuit, no longer chanting,
ran the naked creature he had encountered in the gar-
6 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
den. It was a young coyote, and it was being overtaken
when the chase passed from view. The man trembled
as with a chill as he started to his feet, clambered over
the fence, and mounted his wheel. But it was his
chance and he knew it. The terror was no longer be-
tween him and Mill Valley.
He sped at a breakneck rate down the hill, but in the
turn at the bottom, in the deep shadows, he encountered
a chuck-hole and pitched headlong over the handle bar.
"It's sure not my night," he muttered, as he exam-
ined the broken fork of the machine.
Shouldering the useless wheel, he trudged on. In time
he came to the stone wall, and, half disbelieving his ex-
perience, he sought in the road for tracks, and found
them moccasin tracks, large ones, deep-bitten into the
dust at the toes. It was while bending over them, ex-
amining, that again he heard the eery chant. He had
seen the thing pursue the coyote, and he knew he had
no chance on a straight run. He did not attempt it,
contenting himself with hiding in the shadows on the off
side of the road.
And again he saw the thing that was like a naked
man, running swiftly and lightly and singing as it ran.
Opposite him it paused, and his heart stood still. But
instead of coming toward his hiding-place, it leaped
into the air, caught the branch of a roadside tree, and
swung swiftly upward, from limb to limb, like an ape.
It swung across the wall, and a dozen feet above the
top, into the branches of another tree, and dropped
out of sight to the ground. The man waited a few won-
dering minutes, then started on.
WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 7
II
Dave Blotter leaned belligerently against the desk that
barred the way to the private office of James Ward, sen-
ior partner of the firm of Ward, Knowles & Co. Dave
was angry. Every one in the outer office had looked him
over suspiciously, and the man who faced him was ex-
cessively suspicious.
"You just tell Mr. Ward it's important/' he urged.
"I tell you he is dictating and cannot be disturbed,"
was the answer. "Come to-morrow."
"To-morrow will be too late. You just trot along
and tell Mr. Ward it's a matter of life and death."
The secretary hesitated and Dave seized the advan-
tage.
"You just tell him I was across the bay in Mill Valley
last night, and that I want to put him wise to some-
thing."
"What name?" was the query.
"Never mind the name. He don't know me."
When Dave was shown into the private office, he was
still in the belligerent frame of mind, but when he saw
a large fair man whirl in a revolving chair from dictat-
ing to a stenographer to face him, Dave's demeanor
abruptly changed. He did not know why it changed,
and he was secretly angry with himself.
"You are Mr. Ward?" Dave asked with a fatuous-
ness that still further irritated him. He had never in-
tended it at all.
"Yes," came the answer. "And who are you?"
"Harry Bancroft," Dave lied. "You don't know
me, and my name don't matter."
8 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
"You sent in word that you were in Mill Valley last
night?''
"You live there, don't you?" Dave countered, look-
ing suspiciously at the stenographer.
"Yes. What do you mean to see me about? I am
very busy."
"I'd like to see you alone, sir."
Mr. Ward gave him a quick, penetrating look, hesi-
tated, then made up his mind.
"That will do for a few minutes, Miss Potter."
The girl arose, gathered her notes together, and passed
out. Dave looked at Mr. James Ward wonderingly, un-
til that gentleman broke his train of inchoate thought.
"Well?"
"I was over in Mill Valley last night," Dave began
confusedly.
"I've heard that before. What do you want?"
And Dave proceeded in the face of a growing convic-
tion that was unbelievable.
"I was at your house, or in the grounds, I mean."
"What were you doing there?"
"I came to break in," Dave answered in all frank-
ness. ' ' I heard you lived all alone with a Chinaman for
cook, and it looked good to me. Only I didn't break in.
Something happened that prevented. That's why I'm
here. I come to warn you. I found a wild man loose
in your grounds a regular devil. He could pull a guy
like me to pieces. He gave me the run of my life. He
don't wear any clothes to speak of, he climbs trees like
a monkey, and he runs like a deer. I saw him chasing
a coyote, and the last I saw of it, by God, he was gaining
on it."
WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 9
Dave paused and looked for the effect that would fol-
low his words. But no effect came. James Ward was
quietly curious, and that was all.
"Very remarkable, very remarkable," he murmured.
' * A wild man, you say. Why have you come to tell me ? "
"To warn you of your danger. I'm something of a
hard proposition myself, but I don't believe in killing
people . . . that is, unnecessarily. I realized that you was
in danger. I thought I'd warn you. Honest, that's
the game. Of course, if you wanted to give me anything
for my trouble, I 'd take it. That was in my mind, too.
But I don't care whether you give me anything or not.
I've warned you anyway, and done my duty."
Mr. Ward meditated and drummed on the surface of
his desk. Dave noticed that his hands were large, power-
ful, withal well-cared for despite their dark sunburn.
Also, he noted what had already caught his eye before
a tiny strip of flesh-colored courtplaster on the forehead
over one eye. And still the thought that forced itself
into his mind was unbelievable.
Mr. Ward took a wallet from his inside coat pocket,
'drew out a greenback, and passed it to Dave, who noted
as he pocketed it that it was for twenty dollars.
" Thank you," said Mr. Ward, indicating that the
interview was at an end. "I shall have the matter in-
vestigated. A wild man running loose is dangerous."
But so quiet a man was Mr. Ward, that Dave's cour-
age returned. Besides, a new theory had suggested
itself. The wild man was evidently Mr. Ward's brother,
a lunatic privately confined. Dave had heard of such
things. Perhaps Mr. Ward wanted it kept quiet. That
was why he had given him the twenty dollars.
10 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
' 'Say/' Dave began, "now I come to think of it that
wild man looked a lot like you "
That was as far as Dave got, for at that moment
he witnessed a transformation and found himself gaz-
ing into the same unspeakably ferocious blue eyes of
the night before, at the same clutching talon-like hands,
and at the same formidable bulk in the act of spring-
ing upon him. But this time Dave had no night-stick
to throw, and he was caught by the biceps of both arms
in a grip so terrific that it made him groan with pain.
He saw the large white teeth exposed, for all the world
as a dog's about to bite. Mr. Ward's beard brushed
his face as the teeth went in for the grip of his throat.
But the bite was not given. Instead, Dave felt the
other's body stiffen as with an iron restraint, and then
he was flung aside, without effort but with such force
that only the wall stopped his momentum and dropped
him gasping to the floor.
"What do you mean by coming here and trying to
blackmail me ? " Mr. Ward was snarling at him. ' ' Here,
give me back that money."
Dave passed the bill back without a word.
"I thought you came here with good intentions. I
know you now. Let me see and hear no more of you,
or I'll put you in prison where you belong. Do you
understand ? ' '
"Yes, sir," Dave gasped.
"Then go."
And Dave went, without further word, both his biceps
aching intolerably from the bruise of that tremendous
grip. As his hand rested on the door knob, he was
stopped.
WHEN THE WOELD WAS YOUNG 11
"You were lucky/' Mr. Ward was saying, and Dave
noted that his face and eyes were cruel and gloating
and proud. "You were lucky. Had I wanted, I could
have torn your muscles out of your arms and thrown
them in the waste basket there."
"Yes, sir," said Dave; and absolute conviction vi-
brated in his voice.
He opened the door and passed out. The secretary
looked at him interrogatively.
"Gosh!" was all Dave vouchsafed, and with this ut-
terance passed out of the offices and the story.
Ill
James G. Ward was forty years of age, a successful
business man, and very unhappy. For forty years he
had vainly tried to solve a problem that was really
himself and that with increasing years became more
and more a woeful affliction. In himself he was two
men, and, chronologically speaking, these men were sev-
eral thousand years or so apart. He had studied the
question of dual personality probably more profoundly
than any half dozen of the leading specialists in that in-
tricate and mysterious psychological field. In himself
he was a different case from any that had been recorded.
Even the most fanciful flights of the fiction-writers had
not quite hit upon him. He was not a Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde, nor was he like the unfortunate young man
in Kipling's Greatest Story in the World. His two
personalities were so mixed that they were practically
aware of themselves and of each other all the time.
12 THE BEST PSYCHIC STOKIES
His one self was that of a man whose rearing and
education were modern and who had lived through the
latter part of the nineteenth century and well into the
first decade of the twentieth. His other self he had lo-
cated as a savage and a barbarian living under the
primitive conditions of several thousand years before.
But which self was he, and which was the other, he
could never tell. For he was both selves, and both selves
all the time. Very rarely indeed did it happen that
one self did not know what the other was doing. An-
other thing was that he had no visions nor memories of
the past in which that early self had lived. That early
self lived in the present; but while it lived in the pres-
ent, it was under the compulsion to live the way of life
that must have been in that distant past.
In his childhood he had been a problem to his father
and mother, and to the family doctors, though never had
they come within a thousand miles of hitting upon the
clue to his erratic conduct. Thus, they could not under-
stand his excessive somnolence in the forenoon, nor his
excessive activity at night. When they found him wan-
dering along the hallways at night, or climbing over
giddy roofs, or running in the hills, they decided he was
a somnambulist. In reality he was wide-eyed awake
and merely under the night-roaming compulsion of his
early life. Questioned by an obtuse medico, he once told
the truth and suffered the ignominy of having the reve-
lation contemptuously labeled and dismissed as
' ' dreams. "
The point was, that as twilight and evening came on
he became wakeful. The four walls of a room were
an irk and a restraint. He heard a thousand voices
WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 13
whispering to him through the darkness. The night
called to him, for he was, for that period of the twenty-
four hours, essentially a night-prowler. But nobody
understood, and never again did he attempt to explain.
They classified! him as a sleep-walker and took precau-
tions accordingly precautions that very often were fu-
tile. As his childhood advanced, he grew more cun-
ning, so that the major portion of all his nights were
spent in the open at realizing his other self. As a re-
sult, he slept in the forenoons. Morning studies and
schools were impossible, and it was discovered that only
in the afternoons, under private teachers, could he
be taught anything. Thus was his modern self edu-
cated and developed.
But a problem, as a child, he ever remained. He was
known as a little demon of insensate cruelty and
viciousness. The family medicos privately adjudged
him a mental monstrosity and a degenerate. Such few
boy companions as he had, hailed him as a wonder,
though they were all afraid of him. He could outclimb,
outswim, outrun, outdevil any of them ; while none dared
fight with him. He was too terribly strong, too madly
furious.
When nine years of age he ran away to the hills, where
he flourished, night-prowling, for seven weeks before
he was discovered and brought home. The marvel was
how he had managed to subsist and keep in condition
during that time. They did not know, anol v he never,
told them, of the rabbits he had killed, of the quail,
young and old, he had captured and devoured, of the
farmers' chicken-roosts he had raided, nor of the cave-
lair he had made and carpeted with dry leaves and
14 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
grasses and in which he had slept in warmth and com-
fort through the forenoons of many days.
At college he was notorious for his sleepiness and
stupidity during the morning lectures and for his bril-
liance in the afternoon. By collateral reading and by
borrowing the notebook of his fellow students he man-
aged to scrape through the detestable morning courses,
while his afternoon courses were triumphs. In football
he proved a giant and a terror, and, in almost every
form of track athletics, save for strange Berserker rages
that were sometimes displayed, he could be depended
upon to win. But his fellows were afraid to box with
him, and he signalized his last wrestling bout by sinking
his teeth into the shoulder of his opponent.
After college, his father, in despair, sent him among
the cow-punchers of a Wyoming ranch. Three months
later the doughty cowmen confessed he was too much
for them and telegraphed his father to come and take
the wild man away. Also, when the father arrived to
take him away, the cowmen allowed that they would
vastly prefer chumming with howling cannibals, gib-
bering lunatics, cavorting gorillas, grizzly bears, and
man-eating tigers than with this particular young col-
lege product with hair parted in the middle.
There was one exception to the lack of memory of the
life of his early self, and that was language. By some
quirk of atavism, a certain portion of that early self's
language had come down to him as a racial memory.
In moments of happiness, exaltation, or battle, he was
prone to burst out in wild barbaric songs or chants. It
was by this means that he located in time and space that
strayed half of him who should have been dead and
WHEN THE WOELD WAS YOUNG 15
dust for thousands of years. He sang, once, and de-
liberately, several of the ancient chants in the presence
of Professor Wertz, who gave courses in old Saxon and
who was a philologist of repute and passion. At the
first one, the professor pricked up his ears and de-
manded to know what mongrel tongue or hog-German
it was. When the second chant was rendered, the pro-
fessor was highly excited. James Ward then concluded
the performance by giving a song that always irresis-
tibly rushed to his lips when he was engaged in fierce
struggling or fighting. Then it was that Professor
Wertz proclaimed it no hog-German, but early German,
or early Teuton, of a date that must far precede any-
thing that had ever been discovered and handed down
by the scholars. So early was it that it was beyond
him; yet it was filled with haunting reminiscences of
word-forms he knew and which his trained intuition told
him were true and real. He demanded the source of
the songs, and asked to borrow the previous book that
contained them. Also, he demanded to know why young
Ward had always posed as being profoundly ignorant
of the German language. And Ward could neither ex-
plain his ignorance nor lend the book. Whereupon,
after pleadings and entreaties that extended through
weeks, Professor Wertz took a dislike to the young man,
believed him a liar, and classified him as a man of mon-
strous selfishness for not giving him a glimpse of this
wonderful screed that was older than the oldest any
philologist had ever known or dreamed.
But little good did it do this much-mixed young man
to know that half of him was late American and the
other half early Teuton. Nevertheless, the late Ameri-
16 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
can in him was no weakling, and he (if he were a he and
had a shred of existence outside of these two) com-
pelled an adjustment or compromise between his one self
that was a night-prowling savage that kept his other self
sleepy of mornings, and that other self that was cul-
tured and refined and that wanted to be normal and
love and prosecute business like other people. The aft-
ernoons and early evenings he gave to the one, the nights
to the other ; the forenoons and parts of the nights were
devoted to sleep for the twain. But in the mornings he
slept in bed like a civilized, man. In the night time he
slept like a wild animal, as he had slept the night Dave
Slotter stepped on him in the woods.
Persuading his father to advance the capital, he went
into business, and keen and successful business he made
of it, devoting his afternoons whole-souled to it, while
his partner devoted the mornings. The early evenings
he spent socially, but, as the hour grew to nine or ten,
an irresistible restlessness overcame him and he disap-
peared from the haunts of men until the next after-
noon. Friends and acquaintances thought that he spent
much of his time in sport. And they were right, though
they never would have dreamed of the nature of the
sport, even if they had seen him running coyotes in
night-chases over the hills of Mill Valley. Neither were
the schooner captains believed when they reported see-
ing, on cold winter mornings, a man swimming in the
tide-rips of Raccoon Straits or in the swift currents
between Goat Island and Angel Island miles from
shore.
In the bungalow at Mill Valley he lived alone, save
for Lee Sing, the Chinese cook and factotum, who knew
WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 17
much about the strangeness of his master, who was paid
well for saying nothing, and who never did -say any-
thing. After the satisfaction of his nights, a morning 's
sleep, and a breakfast of Lee Sing's, James "Ward
crossed the bay to San Francisco on a midday ferryboat
and went to s the club and on to his office, as normal and
conventional a man of business as could be found in the
city. But as the evening lengthened, the night called
to him. There came a quickening of all his perceptions
and a restlessness. His hearing was suddenly acute;
the myriad night-noises told him a luring and familiar
story; and, if alone, he would begin to pace up and
down the narrow room like any caged animal from the
wild.
Once, he ventured to fall in love. He never permit-
ted himself that diversion again. He was afraid. And
for many a day the young lady, scared at least out of
a portion of her young ladyhood, bore on her arms and
shoulders and wrists divers black-and-blue bruises
tokens of caresses which he had bestowed in all fond
gentleness but too late at night. There was the mis-
take. Had he ventured love-making in the afternoon,
all would have been well, for it would have been as the
quiet gentleman that he would have made love but at
night it was the uncouth, wife-stealing savage of the
dark German forests. Out of his wisdom, he decided
that afternoon love-making could be prosecuted success-
fully; but out of the same wisdom he was convinced
that marriage would prove a ghastly failure. He found
it appalling to imagine being married and encountering
his wife after dark.
So he had eschewed all love-making, regulated his dual
18 THE BEST PSYCHIC STOEIES
life, cleaned up a million in business, fought shy of
match-making mamas and bright- and eager-eyed young
ladies of various ages, met Lilian Gersdale and made it
a rigid observance never to see her later than eight
o'clock in the evening, ran of nights after his coyotes,
and slept in forest lairs and through it all had kept his
secret save for Lee Sing . . . and now, Dave Slotter.
It was the latter 's discovery of both his selves that
frightened him. In spite of the counter fright he had
given the burglar, the latter might talk. And even if
he did not, sooner or later he would be found out by
some one else.
Thus it was that James Ward made a fresh and
heroic effort to control the Teutonic barbarian that was
half of him. So well did he make it a point to see Lilian
in the afternoons and early evenings, that the time
came when she accepted him for better or worse, and
when he prayed privily and fervently that it was not
for worse. During this period no prize-fighter ever
trained more harshly and faithfully for a contest than
he trained to subdue the wild savage in him Among
other things, he strove to exhaust himself during the
day, so that sleep would render him deaf to the call of
the night. He took a vacation from the office and went
on long hunting trips, following the deer through the
most inaccessible and rugged country he could find
and always in the daytime. Night found him indoors
and tired. At home he installed a score of exercise
machines, and where other men might go through a par-
ticular movement ten times, he went hundreds. Also,
as a compromise, he built a sleeping porch on the second
story. Here he at least breathed the blessed night air.
WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 19
Double screens prevented him from escaping into the
woods, and each night Lee Sing locked him in and each
morning let him out.
The time came, in the month of August, when he en-
gaged additional servants to assist Lee Sing and dared
a house party in his Mill Valley bungalow. Lilian, her
mother and brother, and half a dozen mutual friends,
were the guests. For two days and nights all went
well. And on the third night, playing bridge till
eleven o'clock, he had reason to be proud of himself.
His restlessness he successfully hid, but as luck would
have it, Lilian Gersdale was his opponent on his right.
She was a frail delicate flower of a woman, and in his
night-mood her very frailty incensed him. Not that he
loved her less, but that he felt almost irresistibly im-
pelled to reach out and paw and maul her. Especially
was this true when she was engaged in playing a win-
ning hand against him.
He had one of the deer-hounds brought in, and, when
it seemed he must fly to pieces with the tension, a caress-
ing hand laid on the animal brought him relief. These
contacts with the hairy coat gave him instant easement
and enabled him to play out the evening. Nor did any
one guess the terrible struggle their host was making,
the while he laughed so carelessly and played so keenly
and deliberately.
When they separated for the night, he saw to it that
he parted from Lilian in the presence of the others.
Once on his sleeping porch, and safely locked in, he
doubled and tripled and even quadrupled his exercises
until, exhausted, he lay down on the couch to woo sleep
and to ponder two problems that especially troubled
20 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
him. One was this matter of exercise. It was a para-
dox. The more he exercised in this excessive fashion,
the stronger he became. While it was true that he thus
quite tired out his night-running Teutonic self, it
seemed that he was merely setting back the fatal day
when his strength would be too much for him and over-
power him, and then it would be a strength more ter-
rible than he had yet known. The other problem was
that of his marriage and of the stratagems he must em-
ploy in order to avoid his wife after dark. And thus
fruitlessly pondering he fell asleep.
Now, where the huge grizzly bear came from that
night was long a mystery, while the people of the
Springs Brothers' Circus, showing at Sausalito, searched
long and vainly for "Big Ben, the Biggest Grizzly in
Captivity/' But Big Ben escaped, and, out of the
mazes of half a thousand bungalows and country estates,
selected the grounds of James J. "Ward for visitation.
The first Mr. Ward knew was when he found himself on
his feet, quivering and tense, a surge of battle in his
breast and on his lips the old war-chant. From without
came a wild baying and bellowing of the hounds. And
sharp as a knife-thrust through the pandemonium came
the agony of a stricken dog his dog, he knew.
Not stopping for slippers, pajama-clad, he burst
through the door Lee Sing had so carefully locked,- and
sped down the stairs and out into the night. As his
naked feet struck the graveled driveway, he stopped ab-
ruptly, reached under the steps to a hiding-place he
knew well, and pulled forth a huge knotty club his
old companion on many a mad night adventure on the
hills. The frantic hullabaloo of the dogs was coming
WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 21
nearer, and, swinging the club, he sprang straight into
the thickets to meet it.
The aroused household assembled on the wide ver-
anda. Somebody turned on the electric lights, but they
could see nothing but one another's frightened faces.
Beyond the brightly illuminated driveway the trees
formed a wall of impenetrable blackness. Yet some-
where in that blackness a terrible struggle was going
on. There was an infernal outcry of animals, a great
snarling and growling, the sound of blows being struck,
and a smashing and crashing of underbrush by heavy
bodies.
The tide of battle swept out from among the trees
and upon the driveway just beneath the onlookers.
Then they saw. Mrs. Gersdale cried out and clung
fainting to her son. Lilian, clutching the railing so
spasmodically that a bruising hurt was left in her finger-
ends for days, gazed horror-stricken at a yellow-haired,
wild-eyed giant whom she recognized as the man who
was to be her husband. He was swinging a great club,
and fighting furiously and calmly with a shaggy mon-
ster that was bigger than any bear she had ever seen.
One rip of the beast's claws had dragged away Ward's
pajama-coat and streaked his flesh with blood.
While most of Lilian Gersdale 's fright was for the
man beloved, there was a large portion of it due to the
man himself. Never had she dreamed so formidable and
magnificent a savage lurked under the starched shirt
and conventional garb of her betrothed. And never had
she had any conception of how a man battled. Such a
battle was certainly not modern; nor was she there be-
holding a modern man, though she did not know it.
22 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
For this was not Mr. James J. Ward, the San Francisco
business man, but one unnamed and unknown, a crude,
rude savage creature who, by some freak of chance, lived
again after thrice a thousand years.
The hounds, ever maintaining their mad uproar, cir-
cled about the fight, or dashed in and out, distracting
the bear. "When the animal turned to meet such flank-
ing assaults, the man leaped in and the club came down.
Angered afresh by every such blow, the bear would
rush, and the man, leaping and skipping, avoiding the
dogs, went backwards or circled to one side or the other.
Whereupon the dogs, taking advantage of the opening,
would again spring in and draw the animal's wrath to
them.
The end came suddenly. Whirling, the grizzly caught
a hound with a wide sweeping cuff that sent the brute,
its ribs caved in and its back broken, hurtling twenty
feet. Then the human brute went mad. A foaming
rage flecked the lips that parted with a wild inarticu-
late cry, as it sprang in, swung the club mightily in
both hands, and brought it down full on the head of
the uprearing grizzly. Not even the skull of a grizzly
could withstand the crushing force of such a blow, and
the animal went down to meet the worrying of the
hounds. And through their scurrying leaped the man,
squarely upon the body, where, in the white electric
light, resting on his club, he chanted a triumph in an
unknown tongue a song so ancient that Professor
Wertz would have given ten years of his life for it.
His guests rushed to possess him and acclaim him,
but James Ward, suddenly looking out of the eyes of
the early Teuton, saw the fair frail Twentieth Century
WHEN THE WOELD WAS YOUNG 23
girl he loved, and felt something snap in his brain. He
staggered weakly toward her, dropped the club, and
nearly fell. Something had gone wrong with him. In-
side his brain was an intolerable agony. It seemed as
if the soul of him were flying asunder. Following the
excited gaze of the others, he glanced back and saw the
carcass of the bear. The sight filled him with fear.
He uttered a cry and would have fled, had they not re-
strained him and led him into the bungalow.
James J. "Ward is still at the head of the firm of Ward,
Knowles & Co. But he no longer lives in the country;
nor does he run of nights after the coyotes under the
moon. The early Teuton in him died the night of the
Mill Valley fight with the bear. James J. Ward is now
wholly James J. Ward, and he shares no part of his be-
ing with any vagabond anachronism from the younger
world. And so wholly is James J. Ward modern, that
he knows in all its bitter fullness the curse of civilized
fear. He is now afraid of the dark, and night in the
forest is to him a thing of abysmal terror. His city
house is of the spick and span order, and he evinces a
great interest in burglar-proof devices. His home is a
tangle of electric wires, and after bed-time a guest can
scarcely breathe without setting off an alarm. Also, he
has invented a combination keyless door-lock that trav-
elers may carry in their vest pockets and apply imme-
diately and successfully under all circumstances. But
his wife does not deem him a coward. She knows bet-
ter. And, like any hero, he is content to rest on his
laurels. His bravery is never questioned by those of
his friends who are aware of the Mill Valley episode.
THE RETURN*
BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
IT was curious that sense of dull uneasiness that
came over him so suddenly, so stealthily at first he
scarcely noticed it, but with such marked increase
after a time that he presently got up and left the thea-
ter. His seat was on the gangway of the dress circle,
and he slipped out awkwardly in the middle of what
seemed to be the best and j oiliest song of the piece.
The full house was shaking with laughter ; so infectious
was the gaiety that even strangers turned to one another
as much as to say, "Now, isn't that funny ?"
It was curious, too, the way the feeling first got into
him at all, and in the full swing of laughter, music, light-
heartedness; for it came as a vague suggestion, "I've
forgotten something something I meant to do some-
thing of importance. What in the world was it, now?"
And he thought hard, searching vainly through his
mind; then dismissed it as the danckig caught
his attention. It came back a little later again, during
a passage of long-winded talk that bored him and set his
attention free once more, but came more strongly this
time, insisting on an answer. What could it have been
that he had overlooked, left undone, omitted to see to?
It went on nibbling at the subconscious part of him.
*From Pan's Garden, by Algernon Blackwood Permission
of the Macmillan Company.
24
THE EETUEN 25
Several times this happened, this dismissal and return,
till at last the thing declared itself more plainly and
he felt bothered, troubled, distinctly uneasy.
He was wanted somewhere. There was somewhere
else he ought to be. That describes it best, perhaps.
Some engagement of moment had entirely slipped his
memory .an engagement that involved another person,
too. But where, what, with whom? And, at length,
this vague uneasiness amounted to positive discomfort,
so that he felt unable to enjoy the piece, and left ab-
ruptly. Like a man to whom comes suddenly the hor-
rible idea that the match he lit his cigarette with and
flung into the waste-paper basket on leaving was not
really out a sort of panic distress he jumped into a
taxicab and hurried to his flat to find everything in or-
der, of course ; no smoke, no fire, no smell of burning.
But his evening was spoiled. He sat smoking in his
armchair at home, this business man of forty, practical
in mind, of character some called stolid, cursing himself
for an imaginative fool. It was now too late to go back
to the theater; the club bored him; he spent an hour
with the evening papers, dipping into books, sipping a
long cool drink, doing odds and ends about the flat.
"I'll go to bed early for a change, " he laughed, but
really all the time fighting yes, deliberately fighting
this strange attack of uneasiness that so insidiously grew
upwards, outwards from the buried depths of him that
sought so strenuously to deny it. It never occurred
to him that he was ill. He was not ill. His health was
thuncleringly good. He was as robust as a coal-heaver.
The flat was roomy, high up on the top floor, yet in
a busy part of town, so that the roar of traffic mounted
26 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
round it like a sea. Through the open windows came
the fresh night air of June. He had never noticed be-
fore how sweet the London night air could be, and that
not all the smoke and dust could smother a certain touch
of wild fragrance that tinctured it with perfume yes,
almost perfume as of the country. He swallowed a
draught of it as he stood there, staring out across the
tangled world of roofs and chimney-pots. He saw the
procession of the clouds; he saw the stars; he saw the
moonlight falling in a shower of silver spears upon the
slates and wires and steeples. And something in him
quickened something that had never stirred before.
He turned with a horrid start, for the uneasiness had
of a sudden leaped within him like an animal. There
was some one in the flat.
Instantly, with action even this slight action the
fancy vanished; but, all the same, he switched on the
electric lights 'and made a search. For it seemed to him
that some one had crept up close behind him while he
stood there watching the night some one, whose silent
presence fingered with unerring touch both this new
thing that had quickened in his heart and that sense of
original deep uneasiness. He was amazed at himself
angry indignant that he could be thus foolishly upset
over nothing, yet at the same time profoundly dis-
tressed at this vehement growth of a new thing in his
well-ordered personality. Growth? He dismissed the
word the moment it occurred to him but it had oc-
curred to him. It stayed. While he searched the
empty flat, the long passages, the gloomy bedroom at
the end, the little hall where he kept his overcoats and
golf sticks, it stayed. Growth! It was oddly disquiet-
THE RETURN 27
ing. Growth to him involved, though he neither ac-
knowledged nor recognized the truth perhaps, some kind
of undesirable changeableness, instability, unbalance.
Yet singular as it all was, he realized that the un-
easiness and the sudden appreciation of beauty that was
so new to him had both entered by the same door into
his being. When he came back to the front room he
noticed that he was perspiring. There were little drops
of moisture on his forehead. And down his spine ran
chills, little, faint quivers of cold. He was shivering.
He lit his big meerschaum pipe, and left the lights all
burning. The feeling that there was something he had
overlooked, forgotten, left undone, had vanished. What-
ever the original cause of this absurd uneasiness might
be he called it absurd on purpose because he now real-
ized in the depths of him that it was really more vital
than he cared about it was much nearer to discovery
than before. It dodged about just below the threshold
of discovery. It was as close as that. Any moment he
would know what it was ; he would remember. Yes, he
would remember. Meanwhile, he was in the right place.
No desire to go elsewhere afflicted him, as in the theater.
Here was the place, here in the flat.
And then it was with a kind of sudden burst and rush
it seemed to him the only way to phrase it memory
gave up her dead.
At first he only caught her peeping round the corner
at him, drawing aside a corner of an enormous curtain,
as it were ; striving for more complete entrance as though
the mass of it were difficult to move. But he under-
stood, he knew, he recognized. It was enough for that.
As an entrance into his being heart, mind, soul was
28 THE BEST PSYCHIC STOKIES
being attempted and the entrance because of his stolid
temperament was difficult of accomplishment, there was
effort, strain. Something in him had first to be opened
up, widened, made soft and ready as by an operation,
before full entrance could be effected. This much he
grasped though for the life of him he could not have
put it into words. Also he knew who it was that sought
an entrance. Deliberately from himself he withheld
the name. But he knew as surely as though Straughan
stood in the room and faced him with a knife saying,
"Let me in, let me in. I wish you to know I'm here.
I 'm clearing a way ! You recall our promise ? J '
He rose from his chair and went to the open window
again, the strange fear slowly passing. The cool air
fanned his cheeks. Beauty till now had scarcely ever
brushed the surface of his soul. He had never troubled
his head about it. It passed him by indifferent; and
he had ever loathed the mouthy prating of it on others'
lips. He was practical; beauty was for dreamers, for
women, for men who had means and leisure. He had
not exactly scorned it; rather it had never touched his
life, to sweeten, to cheer, to uplift. Artists for him
were like monks another sex almost useless beings
who never helped the world go round. He was for
action always, work, activity, achievement as he saw
them. He remembered Straughan vaguely Straughan,
the ever impecunious friend of his youth, always talking
of color and sound mysterious, ineffectual things. He
even forgot what they had quarreled about, if they
had quarreled at all even; or why they had gone apart
all these years ago. And certainly he had forgotten any
promise. Memory as yet only peeped at him round the
THE EETUBN 29
corner of that huge curtain tentatively, suggestively,
yet he was obliged to admit it somewhat winningly.
He was conscious of this gentle, sweet seductiveness that
now replaced his fear.
And as he stood now at the open window peering over
huge London, beauty came close and smote him between
the eyes. She came blindingly, with her train of stars
and clouds and perfumes. Night, mysterious, myriad-
eyed, and flaming across her sea of haunted shadows in-
vaded his heart and shook him with her immemorial
wonder and delight. He found no words of course to
clothe the new unwonted sensations. He only knew
that all his former dread, uneasiness, distress, and with
them this idea of growth that had seemed so repug-
nant to him were merged, swept up, and gathered
magnificently home into a wave of beauty that envel-
oped him. "See it, and understand," ran a secret
inner whisper across his mind. He saw. He under-
stood. . . .
He went back and turned the lights out. Then he
took his place again at that open window, drinking in
the night. He saw a new world; a species of intoxi-
cation held him. He sighed, as his thoughts blundered
for expression among words and sentences that knew
him not. But the delight was there, the wonder, the
mystery. He watched with heart alternately tighten-
ing and expanding the transfiguring play of moon and
shadow w over the sea of buildings. He saw the dance
of the hurrying clouds, the open patches into outer
space, the veiling and unveiling of that ancient silvery
face ; and he caught strange whispers of the hierophan-
tic, sacerdotal power that has echoed down the world
30 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
since Time began and dropped strange magic phrases
into every poet's heart, since first "God dawned on
Chaos" the Beauty of the Night.
A long time passed it may have been one hour, it
may have been three when at length he turned away
and went slowly to his bedroom. A deep peace lay over
him. Something quite new and blessed had crept into
his life and thought. He could not quite understand it
all. He only knew that it uplifted. There was no
longer the least sign of affliction or distress. Even the
inevitable reaction that set in could not destroy that.
And then as he lay in bed nearing the borderland of
sleep, suddenly and without any obvious suggestion to
bring it, he remembered another thing. He remembered
the promise. Memory got past the big curtain for an
instant and showed her face. She looked into his eyes.
It must have been a dozen years ago when Straughan
and he had made that foolish solemn promise, that who-
ever died first should show himself if possible to the
other.
He had utterly forgotten it till now. But Straughan
had not forgotten it. The letter came three weeks later
from India. That very evening Straughan had died
at nine o'clock. And he had come back in the Beauty
that he loved.
THE SECOND GENERATION*
BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
SOMETIMES, in a moment of sharp experience,
comes that vivid flash of insight that makes a plati-
tude suddenly seem , revelation its full content
is abruptly realized. ' ' Ten years is a long time, yes, ' ' he
thought, as he walked up the drive to the great Ken-
sington house where she still lived.
Ten years long enough, at any rate, for her to have
married and for her husband to have died. More than
that he had not heard, in the outlandish places where
life had cast him in the interval. He wondered whether
there had been any children. All manner of thoughts
and questions, confused a little, passed across his mind.
He was well-to-do now, though probably his entire cap-
ital did not amount to her income for a single year.
He glanced at the huge, forbidding mansion. Yet that
pride was false which had made of poverty an insuper-
able obstacle. He saw it now. He had learned values
in his long exile.
But he was still ridiculously timid. This confusion
of thought, of mental images rather, was due to a kind
of fear, since worship ever is akin to awe. He was as
nervous as a boy going up for a viva voce; and with
*From Ten-Minute Stories, published by E. P. Dutton & Co.
31
32 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
the excitement was also that unconquerable sinking
that horrid shrinking sensation that excessive shyness
brings. Why in the world had he come? Why had he
telegraphed the very day after his arrival in England?
Why had he not sent a tentative, tactful letter, feeling
his way a little?
Very slowly he walked up the drive, feeling that if a
reasonable chance of escape presented itself he would
almost take it. But all the windows stared so hard at
him that retreat was really impossible now and though
no faces were visible behind the curtains, all had seen
him, possibly she herself his heart beat absurdly at the
extravagant suggestion. Yet it was odd he felt so cer-
tain of being seen, and that someone watched him. He
reached the wide stone steps that were clean as marble,
and shrank from the mark his boots must make upon
their spotlessness. In desperation, then, before he could
change his mind, he touched the bell. But he did not
hear it ring mercifully; that irrevocable sound must
have paralyzed him altogether. If no one came to an-
swer, he might still leave a card in the letter-box and
slip away. Oh, how utterly he despised himself for
such a thought! A man of thirty with such a chicken
heart was not fit to protect a child, much less a woman.
And he recalled with a little stab of pain that the man
she married had been noted for his courage, his deter-
mined action, his inflexible firmness in various public
situations, head and shoulders above lesser men. What
presumption on his own part ever to dream . . . ! He
remembered, too, with no apparent reason in particular,
that this man had a grown-up son already, by a former
marriage.
THE SECOND GENEKATION 33
And still no one came to open that huge, contemptu-
ous door with its so menacing, so hostile air. His back
was to it, as he carelessly twirled his umbrella, but he
felt its sneering expression behind him while it looked
him up and down. It seemed to push him away. The
entire mansion focused its message through that stern
portal : Little timid men are not welcomed here.
How well he remembered the house! How often in
years gone by had he not stood and waited just like
this, trembling with delight and anticipation, yet terri-
fied lest the bell should be answered and the great door
actually swung wide ! Then, as now, he would have run,
had he dared. He was still afraid his worship was so
deep. But in all these years of exile in wild places,
farming, mining, working for the position he had at last
attained, her face and the memory of her gracious pres-
ence had been his comfort and support, his only consola-
tion, though never his actual joy. There was so little
foundation for it all, yet her smile and the words she had
spoken to him from time to time in friendly conversa-
tion had clung, inspired, kept him going for he knew
them all by heart. And more than once in foolish op-
timistic moods, he had imagined, greatly daring, that
she possibly had meant more . . .
He touched the bell a second time with the point of
his umbrella. He meant to go in, carelessly as it were,
saying as lightly as might be, "Oh, I'm back in England
again if you haven't quite forgotten my existence
I could not forego the pleasure of saying 'How-do-you-
do?' and hearing that you are well . . . .," and the
rest; then presently bow himself easily out into the
old loneliness again. But he would at least have seen
34 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
her ; he would have heard her voice, and looked into her
gentle, amber eyes; he would have touched her hand.
She might even ask him to come in another day and see
her! He had rehearsed it all a hundred times, as cer-
tain feeble temperaments do rehearse such scenes. And
he came rather well out of that rehearsal, though always
with an aching heart, the old great yearnings unful-
filled. All the way across the Atlantic he had thought
about it, though with lessening confidence as the time
drew near. The very night of his arrival in London
he wrote, then, tearing up the letter (after sleeping over
it) , he had telegraphed next morning, asking if she would
be in. He signed his surname such a very common
name, alas! but surely she would know and her reply,
" Please call 4:30," struck him as rather oddly worded.
Yet here he was.
There was a rattle of the big door knob, that aggres-
sive, hostile knob that thrust out at him insolently like
a fist of bronze. He started, angry with himself for
doing so. But the door did not open. He became sud-
denly conscious of the wilds he had lived in for so long ;
his clothes were hardly fashionable; his voice probably
had a twang in it, and he used tricks of speech that must
betray the rough life so recently left. What would she
think of him, now? He looked much older, too. And
how brusque it was to have telegraphed like that ! He
felt awkward, gauche, tongue-tied, hot and cold by
turns. The sentences, so carefully rehearsed, fled be-
yond recovery.
Good heavens the door was open ! It had been open
for some minutes. , It moved noiselessly on big hinges.
He acted automatically ; he heard himself asking if her
THE SECOND GENERATION 35
ladyship was at home, though his voice was nearly in-
audible. The next moment he was standing in the
great, dim hall, so poignantly familiar, and the remem-
bered perfume almost made him sway. He did not hear
the door close, but he knew. He was caught. The but-
ler betrayed an instant's surprise or was it over-
wrought imagination again? when he gave his name.
It seemed to him though only later did he grasp the
significance of that curious intuition that the man had
expected another caller instead. The man took his card
respectfully and disappeared. These flunkeys were so
marvellously trained. He was too long accustomed to
straight question and straight answer, but here, in the
Old Country, privacy was jealously guarded with such
careful ritual.
And almost immediately the butler returned, still ex-
pressionless, and showed him into the large drawing-
room on the ground floor that he knew so well. Tea was
on the table tea for one. He felt puzzled. "If you
will have tea first, sir, her ladyship will see you after-
wards," was what he heard. And though his breath
came thickly, he asked the question that forced itself
out. Before he knew what he was saying he asked it,
"Is she ill?" "Oh, no, her ladyship is quite well,
thank you, sir. If you will have tea first, sir, her lady-
ship will see you afterwards." The horrid formula
was repeated, word for word. He sank into an arm-
chair and mechanically poured out his own tea. What
he felt he did not exactly know. It seemed so unusual,
so utterly unexpected, so unnecessary, too. Was it a
special attention, or was it merely casual? That it
could mean anything else did not occur to him. How
36 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
was she busy, occupied not here to give him tea? He
could not understand it. It seemed such a farce having
tea alone like this it was like waiting for an audience,
it was like a doctor's or a dentist's room. He felt be-
wildered, ill at ease, cheap. . . . But after ten years in
primitive lands perhaps London usages had changed in
some extraordinary manner. He recalled his first
amazement at the motor-omnibuses, taxicabs, and elec-
tric tubes. All were new. London was otherwise than
when he left it. Piccadilly and the Marble Arch them-
selves had altered. And, with his reflection, a shade
more confidence stole in. She knew that he was there
and presently she would come in and speak with him,
explaining everything by the mere fact of her delicious
presence. He was ready for the ordeal, he would see
her and drop out again. It was worth all manner of
pain, even of mortification. He was in her house, drink-
ing her tea, sitting in a chair she used herself perhaps.
Only he would never dare to say a word or make a sign
that might betray his changeless secret. He still felt
the boyish worshipper, worshipping in dumbness from a
distance, one of a group of many others like himself.
Their dreams had faded, his had continued, that was
the difference. Memories tore and raced and poured
upon him. How sweet and gentle she had always been
to him! He used to wonder sometimes . . . Once, IIP
remembered, he had rehearsed a declaration, but whilo
rehearsing the big man had come in and captured her,
though he had only read the definite news long after by
chance in an Arizona paper.
He gulped his tea down. His heart alternately leaped
and stood still. A sort of numbness held him most of
THE SECOND GENERATION 37
that dreadful interval, and no clear thought came at all.
Every ten seconds his head turned towards the door
that rattled, seemed to move, yet never opened. But
any moment now it must open, and he would be in her
very presence, breathing the same air with her. He
would see her, charge himself with her beauty once more
to the brim, and then go out again into the wilderness
the wilderness of life without her, and not for a
mere ten years but for always. She was so utterly be-
yond his reach. He felt like a backwoodsman, he was
a backwoodsman.
For one thing only was he duly prepared, though he
thought about it little enough she would, of course,
have changed. The photograph he owned, cut from an
illustrated paper, was not true now. It might even be
a little shock perhaps. He must remember that. Ten
years cannot pass over a woman without
Before he knew it the door was open, and she was
advancing quietly towards him across the thick carpet
that deadened sound. With both hands outstretched
she came, and with the sweetest welcoming smile upon
her parted lips he had seen in any human face. Her
eyes were soft with joy. His whole heart leaped within
him; for the instant he saw her it all flashed clear as
sunlight that she knew and understood. She had al-
ways known, had always understood. Speech came
easily to him in a flood, had he needed it, but he did not
need it. It was all so adorably easy, simple, natural,
and true. He just took her hands those welcoming,
outstretched hands in both of his own, and led her to
the nearest sofa. He was not even surprised at him-
self. Inevitably, out of depths of truth, this meeting
38 THE BEST PSYCHIC STOEIES
came about. And he uttered a little foolish common-
place, because he feared the huge revulsion that his sud-
den glory brought, and loved to taste it slowly :
"So you live here still ?"
"Here, and here," she answered softly, touching his
heart, and then her own. ' ' I am attached to this house,
too, because you used to come and see me here, and be-
cause it was here I waited so long for you, and still
wait. I shall never leave it unless you change. You
see, we live together here."
He said nothing. He leaned forward to take and hold
her. The abrupt knowledge of it all somehow did not
seem abrupt it was as though he had known it always ;
and the complete disclosure did not seem disclosure
either rather as though she told him something he had
inexplicably left unrealized, yet not forgotten. He felt
absolutely master of himself, yet, in a curious sense,
outside of himself at the same time. His arms were
already open when she gently held her hands up
to prevent. He heard a faint sound outside the
door.
"But you are free," he cried, his great passion break-
ing out and flooding him, yet most oddly well controlled,
"and I"
She interrupted him in the softest, quietest whisper
he had ever heard:
* * You are not free, as I am free not yet. ' '
The sound outside came suddenly closer. It was a
step. There was a faint click on the handle of the door.
In a flash, then, came the dreadful shock that over-
whelmed him the abrupt realization of the truth that
was somehow horrible that Time, all these years, had
THE SECOND GENERATION 39
left no mark upon her and that she had not changed.
Her face was as young as when he saw her last.
With it there came cold and darkness into the great
room. He shivered with cold, but an alien, unaccount-
able cold. Some great shadow dropped upon the entire
earth, and though but a second could have passed before
the handle actually turned, and the other person en-
tered, it seemed to him like several minutes. He heard
her saying this amazing thing that was question, an-
swer, and forgiveness all in one this, at least, he divined
before the ghastly interruption came "But, George
if you had only spoken !"
With ice in his blood he heard the butler saying that
her ladyship would be " pleased" to see him if he had
finished his tea and would be "so good as to bring the
papers and documents upstairs with him." He had
just sufficient control of certain muscles to stand up-
right and murmur that he would come. He rose from
a sofa that held no one but himself. All at once he
staggered. He really did not know exactly what hap-
pened, or how he managed to stammer out the medley
of excuses and semi-explanations that battered their
way through his brain and issued somehow in definite
words from his lips. Somehow or other he accomplished
it. The sudden attack, the faintness, the collapse! . . .
He vaguely remembered afterwards with amazement
too the suavity of the butler as he suggested tele-
phoning for a doctor, and that he just managed to for-
bid it, refusing the offered glass of brandy as well,
remembered contriving to stumble into the taxicab and
give his hotel address with a final explanation that he
would call another day and "bring the papers." It
40 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
was quite clear that his telegram had been attributed to
someone else, someone "with papers" perhaps a solici-
tor or architect. His name was such an ordinary one,
there were so many Smiths. It was also clear that she
whom he had come to see and had seen, no longer lived
here in the flesh . . .
And just as he left the hall he had the vision mere
fleeting glimpse it was of a tall, slim, girlish figure on
the stairs asking if anything was wrong, and realized
vaguely through his atrocious pain that she was, of
course, the wife of the son who had inherited . . .
JOSEPH: A STORY
BY KATHERINE EICKFORD
THEY were sitting round the fire after dinner
not an ordinary fire one of those fires that has
a little room all to itself with seats at each side
of it to hold a couple of people or three.
The big dining room was paneled with oak. At the
far end was a handsome dresser that dated back for
generations. One's imagination ran riot when one pic-
tured the people who must have laid those pewter plates
on the long, narrow, solid table. Massive medieval
chests stood against the walls. Arms and parts of armor
hung against the panelling; but one noticed few of
these things, for there was no light in the room save
what the fire gave.
It was Christmas Eve. Games h#d been played. The
old had vied with the young at snatching raisins from
the burning snapdragon. The children had long since
gone to bed ; it was time their elders followed them, but
they lingered round the fire, taking turns at telling
stories. Nothing very weird had been told; no one
had felt any wish to peep over his shoulder or try to
penetrate the darkness of the far end of the room; the
omission caused a sensation of something wanting. From
each one there this thought went out, and so a sudden
41
42 THE BEST PSYCHIC STOEIES
silence fell upon the party. It was a girl who broke it
a mere child ; she wore her hair up that night for the
first time, and that seemed to give her the right to sit
up so late.
"Mr. Grady is going to tell one," she said.
All eyes were turned to a middle-aged man in a deep
armchair placed straight in front of the fire. He was
short, inclined to be fat, with a bald head and a pointed
beard like the beards that sailors wear. It was plain
that he was deeply conscious of the sudden turning of
so much strained yet forceful thought upon himself.
He was restless in his chair as people are in a room that
is overheated. He blinked his eyes as he looked round
the company. His lips twitched in a nervous manner.
One side of him seemed to be endeavoring to restrain
another side of him from a feverish desire to speak.
"It was this room that made me think of him,'* he
said thoughtfully.
There was a long silence, but it occurred to no one
to prompt him. Every one seemed to understand that
he was going to speak, or rather that something inside
him was going to speak, some force that craved expres-
sion and was using him as a medium.
The little old man's pink face grew strangely calm,
the animation that usually lit it was gone. One would
have said that the girl who had started him already
regretted the impulse, and now wanted to stop him.
She was breathing heavily, and once or twice made as
though she would speak to him, but no words came.
She must have abandoned the idea, for she fell to study-
ing the company. She examined them carefully, one
by one. ''This one," she told herself, "is so-and-so,
JOSEPH: A STORY 43
and that one there just another so-and-so/' She stared
at them, knowing that she could not turn them to her-
self with her stare. They were just bodies kept work-
ing, so to speak, by some subtle sort of sentry left be-
hind by the real selves that streamed out in pent-up
thought to the little old man in the chair in front of
the fire.
"His name was Joseph; at least they Called him
Joseph. He dreamed, you understand dreams. He
was an extraordinary lad in many ways. His mother
I knew her very well had three children in quick suc-
cession, soon after marriage; then ten years went by
and Joseph was born. Quiet and reserved he always was,
a self-contained child whose only friend was his mother.
People said things about him, you know how people
talk. Some said he was not Clara's child at all, but
that she had adopted him ; others, that her husband was
not his father, and these put her change of manner
down to a perpetual struggle to keep her husband com-
fortably in the dark. I always imagined that the boy
was in some way aware of all this gossip, for I noticed
that he took a dislike to the people who spread it most."
The little man rested his elbows on the arms of his
chair and let the tips of his fingers meet in front of
him. A smile played about his mouth. He seemed to
be searching among his reminiscences for the one that
would give the clearest portrait of Joseph.
"Well, anyway," he said at last, "the boy was odd,
there is no gainsaying the fact. I suppose he was eleven
when Clara came down here with her family for Christ-
mas. The Coningtons owned the place then Mrs. Con-
ington was Clara's sister. It was Christmas Eve, as it
44 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
is now, many years ago. We had spent a normal Christ-
mas Eve; a little happier, perhaps, than usual by rea-
son of the family re-union and because of the presence
of so many children. We had eaten and drank, laughed
and played and gone to bed.
1 'I woke in the middle of the night from sheer rest-
lessness. Clara, knowing my weakness, had given me a
fire in my room. I lit a cigarette, played with a book,
and then, purely from curiosity, opened the door and
looked down the passage. From my door I could see
the head of the staircase in the distance; the opposite
wing of the house, or the passage rather beyond the
stairs, was in darkness. The reason I saw the staircase
at all was that the window you pass coming downstairs
allowed the moon to throw an uncertain light upon it,
a weird light because of the stained glass. I was ar-
rested by the curious effect of this patch of light in so
much darkness when suddenly someone came into it,
turned, and went downstairs. It was just like a scene
in a theater ; something was about to happen that I was
going to miss. I ran as I was, barefooted, to the head
of the stairs and looked over the banister. I was ex-
cited, strung up, too strung up to feel the fright that 1
knew must be with me. I remember the sensation per-
fectly. I knew that I was afraid, yet I did not feel
fright.
"On the stairs nothing moved. The little hall down
here was lost in darkness. Looking over the banister I
was facing the stained glass window. You know how
the stairs run around three sides of the hall; well, it
occurred to me that if I went halfway down and stood
under the window I should be able to keep the top of
JOSEPH: A STOEY 45
the stairs in sight and see anything that might happen
in the hall. I crept down very cautiously and waited
under the window. First of all, I saw the suit of empty
armor just outside the door here. You know how a
thing like that, if you stare at it in a poor light, appears
to move; well, it moved sure enough, and the illusion
was enhanced by clouds being blown across the moon.
By the fire like this one can talk of these things ra-
tionally, but in the dead of night it is a different matter,
so I went down a few steps to make sure of that armor,
when suddenly something passed me on the stairs. I
did not hear it, I did not see it, I sensed it in no way,
I just knew that something had passed me on its way
upstairs. I realized that my retreat was cut off, and
with the knowledge fear came upon me.
"I had seen someone come down the stairs; that, at
any rate, was definite; now I wanted to see him again.
Any ghost is bad enough, but a ghost that one can see
is better than one that one can't. I managed to get
past the suit of armor, but then I had to feel my way
to these double doors here."
He indicated the direction of the doors by a curious
wave of his hand. He did not look toward them nor
did any of the party. Both men and women were com-
pletely absorbed in his story; they seemed to be mes-
merized by the earnestness of his manner. Only the
girl was restless; she gave an impression of impatience
with the slowness with which he came to his point. One
would have said that she was apart from her fellows, an
alien among strangers.
"So dense was the darkness that I made sure of find-
ing the first door closed, but it was not, it was wide
46 THE BEST PSYCHIC STOEIES
open, and, standing between them, I could feel that the
other was open, too. I was standing literally in the wall
of the house, and as I peered into the room, trying to
make out some familiar object, thoughts ran through
my mind of people who had been bricked up in walls
and left there to die. For a moment I caught the spirit
of the inside of a thick wall. Then suddenly I felt the
sensation I have often read about but never experienced
before: I knew there was some one in the room. You
are surprised, yes, but wait ! I knew more : I knew that
that some one was conscious of my presence. It occurred
to me that whoever it was might want to get out of the
door. I made room for him to pass. I waited for him,
made sure of him, began to feel giddy, and then a man's
voice, deep and clear:
" * There is some one there; who is it?'
"I answered mechanically, 'George Grady.'
" ' I'm Joseph.'
"A match was drawn across a matchbox, and I saw
the boy bending over a candle waiting for the wick to
catch. For a moment I thought he must be walking in
his sleep, but he turned to me quite naturally and said
in his own boyish voice:
" 'Lost anything?'
"I was amazed at the lad's complete calm. I wanted
to share my fright with some one, instead I had to hide
it from this boy. I was conscious of a curious sense of
shame. I had watched him grow, taught him, praised
him, scolded him, and yet here he was waiting for an
explanation of my presence in the dining room at that
odd hour of the night.
"Soon he repeated the question, 'Lost anything?'
JOSEPH: A STOEY 47
" 'No,' I said, and then I stammered, 'Have yon?'
" 'No/ he said with a little laugh. 'It's that room,
I can't sleep in it.'
" 'Oh,' I said. 'What's the matter with the room?'
" ' It 's the room I was killed in, ' he said quite simply.
"Of course I had heard about his dreams, but I had
had no direct experience of them; when, therefore, he
said that he had been killed in his room I took it for
granted that he had been dreaming again. I was at a
loss to know quite how to tackle him; whether to treat
the whole thing as absurd and laugh it off as such, or
whether to humor him and hear his story. I got him
upstairs to my room, sat him in a big armchair, and
poked the fire into a blaze.
" 'You've been dreaming again,' I said bluntly.
" 'Oh, no I haven't. Don't you run away with that
idea.'
' ' His whole manner was so grown up that it was quite
unthinkable to treat him as the child he really was. In
fact, it was a little uncanny, this man in a child's
frame.
" 'I was killed there,' he said again.
" 'How do you mean, killed?' I asked him.
" 'Why, killed murdered. Of course it was years
and years ago, I can't say when; still I remember the
room. I suppose it was the room that reminded me of
the incident.'
" 'Incident?' I exclaimed.
" 'What else? Being killed is only an incident in the
existence of any one. One makes a fuss about it at the
time, of course, but really when you come to think of
it . .'
48 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
" 'Tell me about it,' I said, lighting a cigarette. He
lit one too, that child, and began.
" 'You know my room is the only modern one in this
old house. Nobody knows why it is modern. The rea-
son is obvious. Of course it was made modern after
I was killed there. The funny thing is that I should
have been put there. I suppose it was. done for a pur-
pose, because I I '
"He looked at me so fixedly I knew he would catch
me if I lied.
"' What ?' I asked.
" 'Dream.'
" 'Yes,' I said, 'that is why you were put there.'
" 'I thought so, and yet of all the rooms but then,
of course, no one knew. Anyhow I did not recognize
the room until after I was in bed. I had been asleep
some time and then I woke suddenly. There is an old
wheel-back chair there the only old thing in the room.
It is standing facing the fire as it must have stood the
night I was killed. The fire was burning brightly, the
pattern of the back of the chair was thrown in shadow
across the ceiling. Now the night I was murdered the
conditions were exactly the same, so directly I saw that
pattern on the ceiling I remembered the whole thing. I
was not dreaming, don 't think it, I was not. What hap-
pened that night was this : I was lying in bed counting
the parts of the back of that chair in shadow on the
ceiling. I probably could not get to sleep, you know the
sort of thing, count up to a thousand and remember
in the morning where you got to. Well, I was counting
those pieces when suddenly they were all obliterated,
the whole back beca^p a shadow, some one was sitting
JOSEPH: A STORY 49
in the chair. Now, surely, you understand that directly
I saw the shadow of that chair on the ceiling to-night
I realized that I had not a moment to lose. At any mo-
ment that same person might come back to that same
chair and escape would be impossible. I slipped from
my bed as quickly as I could and ran downstairs.'
" 'But were you not afraid,' I asked, 'downstairs?'
" 'That she might follow me? It was a woman, you
know. No, I don't think I was. She does not belong
downstairs. Anyhow she didn't.'
"'No,' I said. 'No.'
"My voice must have been out of control, for he
caught me up at once.
" 'You don't mean to say you saw her?' he said ve-
hemently.
" 'Oh, no/
'"You felt her?'
" 'She passed me as I came downstairs,' I said.
" 'What can I have done to her that she follows me
so?' He buried his face in his hands as though search-
ing for an answer to his thought. Suddenly he looked
up and stared at me.
" 'Where had I got to? Oh yes, the murder. I can
remember how startled I was to see that shadow in the
chair startled, you know, but not really frightened.
I leaned up in bed and looked at the chair, and sure
enough a woman was sitting in it a young woman. I
watched her with a profound interest until she began
to turn in her chair, as I felt, to look at me; when she
did that I shrank back in bed. I dared not meet her
eyes. She might not have had eyes, she might not have
had a face. You know the sort of pictures that one sees
50 THE BEST PSYCHIC STOEIES
when one glances back at all one 's soul has ever thought.
" 'I got back in the bed as far as I could and peeped
over the sheets at the shadow on the ceiling. I was
tired; frightened to death; I grew weary of watching.
I must have fallen asleep, for suddenly the fire was al-
most out, the pattern of the chair barely discernible,
the shadow had gone. I raised myself with a sense of
huge relief. Yes, the chair was empty, but, just think
of it, the woman was on the floor, on her hands and
knees, crawling toward the bed.
1 ' ' I fell back stricken with terror.
" 'Very soon I felt a gentle pull at the counterpane.
I thought I was in a nightmare but too lazy or too com-
fortable to try to wake myself from it. I waited in an
agony of suspense, but nothing seemed to be happening,
in fact I had just persuaded myself that the movement
of the counterpane was fancy when a hand brushed
softly over my knee. There was no mistaking it, I could
feel the long, thin fingers. Now was the time to do
something. I tried to rouse myself, but all my efforts
were futile, I was stiff from head to foot.
" 'Although the hand was lost to me, outwardly, it
now came within my range of knowledge, if you know
what I mean. I knew that it was groping its way along
the bed feeling for some other part of me. At any mo-
ment I could have said exactly where it had got to. When
it was hovering just over my chest another hand knocked
lightly against my shoulder. I fancied it lost, and wan-
dering in search of its fellow.
" ' I was lying on my back staring at the ceiling when
the hands met; the weight of their presence brought a
feeling of oppression to my chest. I seemed to be com-
JOSEPH: A STORY 51
pletely cut off from my body; I had no sort of connec-
tion with any part of it, nothing about me would re-
spond to my will to make it move.
" 'There was no sound at all anywhere.
" ' I fell into a state of indifference, a sort of patient
indifference that can wait for an appointed time to come.
How long I waited I cannot say, but when the time
came it found me ready. I was not taken by surprise.
" 'There was a great upward rush of pent-up force
released; it was like a mighty mass of men who have
been lost in prayer rising to their feet. I can't remem-
ber clearly, but I think the woman must have got on to
my bed. I could not follow her distinctly, my whole
attention was concentrated on her hands. At the time
I felt those fingers itching for my throat.
11 'At last they moved; slowly at first, then quicker;
and then a long-drawn swish like the sound of an over-
bold wave that has broken too far up the beach and is
sweeping back to join the sea.'
"The boy was silent for a moment, then he stretched
out his hand for the cigarettes.
" 'You remember nothing else?' I asked him.
" 'No,' he said. 'The next thing I remember clearly
is deliberately breaking the nursery window because it
was raining and mother would not let me go out. ' '
There was a moment's tension, then the strain of lis-
tening passed and every one seemed to be speaking at
once. The Rector was taking the story seriously.
"Tell me, Grady," he said. "How long do you sup-
pose elapsed between the boy's murder and his breaking
the nursery window?"
But a young married woman in the first flush of her
52 THE BEST PSYCHIC STOEIES
happiness broke in between them. She ridiculed the
whole idea. Of course the boy was dreaming. She was
drawing the majority to her way of thinking when,
from the corner where the girl sat, a hollow-sounding
voice :
1 ' And the boy ? Where is he ? ' '
The tone of the girl's voice inspired horror, that fear
that does not know what it is it fears; one could see it
on every face ; on every face, that is, but the face of the
bald-headed little man ; there was no horror on his face ;
he was smiling serenely as he looked the girl straight in
the eyes.
"He's a man now," he said.
"Alive?" she cried.
"Why not?" said the little old man, rubbing his
hands together.
She tried to rise, but her frock had got caught be-
tween the chairs and pulled her to her seat again. The
man next her put out his hand to steady her, but she
dashed it away roughly. She looked round the party
for an instant for all the world like an animal at bay,
then she sprang to her feet and charged blindly. They
crowded round her to prevent her falling; at the touch
of their hands she stopped. She was out of breath as
though she had been running.
"All right," she said, pushing their hands from her.
"All right. I'll come quietly. I did it."
They caught her as she fell and laid her on the sofa
watching the color fade from her face.
The hostess, an old woman with white hair and a kind
face, approached the little old man ; for once in her life
she was roused to anger.
JOSEPH: A STOEY 53
"I can't think how you could be so stupid," she said.
"See what you have done."
"I did it for a purpose," he said.
"For a purpose?"
"I have always thought that girl was the culprit. I
have to thank you for the opportunity you have given
me of making sure."
THE CLAVECIN, BRUGES*
BY GEORGE WHARTON EDWARDS
A SILENT, grass-grown market-place, upon the
uneven stones of which the sabots of a passing
peasant clatter loudly. A group of sleepy-look-
ing soldiers in red trousers lolling about the wide portal
of the Belfry, which rears aloft against the pearly sky
All the height it has
Of ancient stone.
As the chime ceases there lingers for a space a faint
musical hum in the air; the stones seem to carry and
retain the melody ; one is loath to move for fear of losing
some part of the harmony.
I feel an indescribable impulse to climb the four hun-
dred odd steps; incomprehensible, for I detest steeple-
climbing, and have no patience with steeple-climbers.
Before I realize it, I am at the stairs. "Hold, sir!"
from behind me. "It is forbidden." In wretched
French a weazen-faced little soldier explains that repairs
are about to be made in the tower, in consequence of
which visitors are forbidden. A franc removes this mil-
itary obstacle, and I press on.
At the top of the stairs is an old Flemish woman
shelling peas, while over her shoulder peeps a tame mag-
pie. A savory odor of stewing vegetables fills the air.
* By permission of The Century Co.
54
THE CLAVECIN, BRUGES 55
"What do you wish, sir?" Many shrugs, gesticula-
tions, and sighs of objurgation, which are covered by a
shining new five-franc piece, and she produces a bunch
of keys. As the door closes upon me the magpie gives a
hoarse, gleeful squawk.
... A huge, dim room with a vaulted ceiling. Against
the wall lean ancient stone statues, noseless and dis-
figured, crowned and sceptered effigies of forgotten lords
and ladies of Flanders. High up on the wall two slitted
Gothic windows, through which the violet light of day
is streaming. I hear the gentle coo of pigeons. To the
right a low door, some vanishing steps of stone, and a
hanging hand-rope. Before I have taken a dozen steps
upward I am lost in the darkness; the steps are worn
hollow and sloping, the rope is slippery seems to have
been waxed, so smooth has it become by handling. Four
hundred steps and over; I have lost track of the num-
ber, and stumble giddily upward round and round the
slender stone shaft. I am conscious of low openings
from time to time openings to what? I do not know.
A damp smell exhales from them, and the air is cold
upon my face as I pass them. At last a dim light above.
With the next turn a blinding glare of light, a moment 's
blankness, then a vast panorama gradually dawns upon
me. Through the frame of stonework is a vast reach
of grayish green bounded by the horizon, an immense
shield embossed with silvery lines of waterways, and
studded with clustering red-tiled roofs. A rim of pale
yellow appears the sand-dunes that line the coast
and dimly beyond a grayish film, evanescent, flashing
the North Sea.
Something flies through the slit from which I am gaz-
56 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
ing, and following its flight upward, I see a long beam
crossing the gallery, whereon are perched an array of
jackdaws gazing down upon me in wonder.
I am conscious of a rhythmic movement about me
that stirs the air, a mysterious, beating, throbbing sound,
the machinery of the clock, which some one has described
as a "heart of iron beating in a breast of stone."
I lean idly in the narrow slit, gazing at the softened
landscape, the exquisite harmony of the greens, grays,
and browns, the lazily turning arms of far-off mills, re-
minders of Cuyp, Van der Velde, Teniers, shadowy,
mysterious recollections. I am conscious of uttering
aloud some commonplaces of delight. A slight and sud-
den movement behind me, a smothered cough. A little
old man in a black velvet coat stands looking up at me,
twisting" and untwisting his hands. There are ruffles at
his throat and wrists, and an amused smile spreads over
his face, which is cleanly shaven, of the color of wax,
with a tiny network of red lines over the cheek-bones, as
if the blood had been forced there by some excess of
passion and had remained. He has heard my senti-
mental ejaculation. I am conscious of the absurdity of
the situation, and move aside for him to pass. He
makes a courteous gesture with one ruffled hand.
There comes a prodigious rattling and grinding noise
from above then a jangle of bells, some half-dozen
notes in all. At the first stroke the old man closes his
eyes, throws back his head, and follows the rhythm with
his long white hands, as though playing a piano. The
sound dies away; the place becomes painfully silent;
still the regular motion of the old man's hands contin-
ues. A creepy, shivery feeling runs up and down my
THE CLAVECIN, BRUGES 57
spine; a fear of which I am ashamed seizes upon
me.
"Fine pells, sare," says the little old man, suddenly
dropping his hands, and fixing his eyes upon me. ' ' You
sail not hear such pells in your countree. But stay not
here; come wis me, and I will show you the clavecin.
You sail not see the clavecin yet? No?"
I had not, of course, and thanked him.
"You sail see Melchior, Melchior t'e Groote, t'e mag-
nif'."
As he spoke we entered a room quite filled with cu-
rious machinery, a medley of levers, wires, and rope
above; below, two large cylinders studded with shining
brass points.
He sprang among the wires with a spidery sort of
agility, caught one, pulled and hung upon it with all
his weight. There came a r-r-r-r-r-r of fans and wheels,
followed by a shower of dust ; slowly one great cylinder
began to revolve; wires and ropes reaching into the
gloom above began to twitch convulsively ; faintly came
the jangle of far-off bells. Then came a pause, then a
deafening boom that well nigh stunned me. As the
waves of sound came and went, the little old man twisted
and untwisted his hands in delight, and ejaculated,
"Melchior you haf heeard, Melchior t'e Groote t'e
bourdon. ' '
I wanted to examine the machinery, but he impatiently
seized my arm and almost dragged me away saying, "I
will skow you I will skow you. Come wis me."
From a pocket he produced a long brass key and un-
locked a door covered with red leather, disclosing an up-
leading flight of steps to which he pushed me. It gave
58 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
upon an octagon-shaped room with a curious floor of
sheet-lead. Around the wall ran a seat under the dia-
mond-paned Gothic windows. From their shape I knew
them to be the highest in the tower. I had seen them
from the square below many times, with the framework
above upon which hung row upon row of bells.
In the middle of the room was a rude sort of key-
board, with pedals below, like those of a large organ.
Fronting this construction sat a long, high-backed
bench. On the rack over the keyboard rested some
sheets of music, which, upon examination, I found to
be of parchment and written by hand. The notes were
curious in shape, consisting of squares of black and dia-
monds of red upon the lines. Across the top of the page
was written, in a straggling hand, "Van den Gheyn*
Nikolaas." I turned to the little old man with the ruf-
fles. "Van den Gheyn!" I said in surprise, pointing to
the parchment. "Why, that is the name of the most
celebrated of carillonneurs, Van den Gheyn of Louvain."
He untwisted his hands and bowed. * ' Eet ees ma name,
mynheer I am the carillonneur."
I fancied that my face showed all too plainly the in-
credulity I felt, for his darkened, and he muttered,
"You not belief, Engelsch? Ah, I skow you; then you
belief, parehap," and with astounding agility seated
himself upon the bench before the clavecin, turned up
the ruffles at his wrists, and literally threw himself upon
the keys. A sound of thunder accompanied by a vivid
flash of lightning filled the air, even as the first notes
of the bells reached my ears. Involuntarily I glancec
out of the diamond-leaded window dark clouds wer
all about us, the housetops and surrounding countr:
THE CLAVECIN, BRUGES 59
were no longer to be seen. A blinding flash of lightning
seemed to fill the room; the arms and legs of the little
old man sought the keys and pedals with inconceivable
rapidity; the music crashed about us with a deafening
din, to the accompaniment of the thunder, which seemed
to sound in unison with the boom of the bourdon. It
was grandly terrible. The face of the little old man
was turned upon me, but his eyes were closed. He
seemed to find the pedals intuitively, and at every peal
of thunder, which shook the tower to its foundations,
he would open his mouth, a toothless cavern, and shout
aloud. I could not hear the sounds for the crashing of
the bells. Finally, with a last deafening crash of iron
rods and thunderbolts, the noise of the bells gradually
died away. Instinctively I had glanced above when the
crash came, half expecting to see the roof torn off.
"I think we had better go down," I said. "This
tower has been struck by lightning several times, and I
imagine that discretion "
I don't know what more I said, for my eyes rested
upon the empty bench, and the bare rack where the
music had been. The clavecin was one mass of twisted
iron rods, tangled wires, and decayed, worm-eaten wood-
work; the little old man had disappeared. I rushed to
the red leather-covered door ; it was fast. I shook it in
a veritable terror; it would not yield. With a bound
I reached the ruined clavecin, seized one of the pedals,
and tore it away from the machine. The end was armed
with an iron point. This I inserted between the lock
and the door. I twisted the lock from the worm-eaten
wood with one turn of the wrist, the door opened, and I
almost fell down the steep steps. The second door at
60 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
the bottom was also closed. I threw my weight against
it once, twice ; it gave, and I half slipped, half ran down
the winding steps in the darkness.
Out at last into the fresh air of the lower passage!
At the noise I made in closing the ponderous door came
forth the old custode.
In my excitement I seized her by the arm, saying,
"Who was the little old man in the black velvet coat with
the ruffles? Where is he?"
She looked at me in a stupid manner. "Who is he,"
I repeated "the little old man who played the clave-
cin?"
"Little old man, sir? I don't know," said the crone.
"There has been no one in the tower to-day but your-
self."
LIGBIA
BY EDGAR ALLAN FOB
"And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the
mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great
will prevading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth
not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only
through the weakness of his feeble will. ' ' JOSEPH GLANVILL.
I CANNOT, for my soul, remember how, when, or
even precisely where, I first became acquainted with
the lady Ligeia. Long years have since elapsed,
and my memory is feeble through much suffering. Or,
perhaps, I cannot now bring these points to mind, be-
cause, in truth, the character of my beloved, her rare
learning, her singular yet placid caste of beauty, and
the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low mu-
sical language, made their way into my heart by paces
so steadily and stealthily progressive, that they have
been unnoticed and unknown. Yet I believe that I met
her first and most frequently in some large, old, decay-
ing city near the Rhine. Of her family I have surely
heard her speak. That it is of a remotely ancient date
cannot be doubted. Ligeia ! Ligeia ! Buried in studies
of a nature more than all else adapted to deaden im-
pressions of the outward worl.d, it is by that sweet word
alone by Ligeia that I bring before mine eyes in
fancy the image of her who is no more. And now, while
61
62 THE BEST PSYCHIC STOEIES
I write, a recollection flashes upon me that I have never
kniwn the paternal name of her who was my friend and
my betrothed, and who became the partner of my
studies, and finally the wife of my bosom. Was it a
playful charge on the part of my Ligeia? Or was it a
test of my strength of affection, that I should institute
no inquiries upon this point ? Or was it rather a caprice
of my own a wildly romantic offering on the shrine of
the most passionate devotion? I but indistinctly recall
the fact itself what wonder that I have utterly forgot-
ten the circumstances which originated or attended it?
And, indeed, if ever that spirit which is entitled Ro-
mance if ever she, the wan and the misty-winged Ash-
tophet of idolatrous Egypt presided, as they tell, over
marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided over
mine.
There is one dear topic, however, on which my mem-
ory fails me not. It is the person of Ligeia. In stature
she was tall, somewhat slender, and, in her latter days,
even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to portray
the majesty, the quiet ease of her demeanor, or the in-
comprehensible lightness and elasticity of her footfall.
She came and departed as a shadow. I was never
made aware of her entrance into my closed study, save
by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she placed
her marble hand upon my shoulder. In beauty of face
no maiden ever equalled her. It was the radiance of
an opium-dream an airy and spirit-lifting vision more
wildly divine than the fantasies which hovered about
the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet
her features were not of that regular mould which we
have been falsely taught to worship in the classical la-
LIGEIA 63
bors of the heathen. " There is no exquisite beauty, "
says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the
forms and genera of beauty, "without some strangeness
in the proportion/' Yet, although I saw that the fea-
tures of Ligeia were not of a classic regularity al-
though I perceived that her loveliness was indeed ex-
quisite and felt that there was much of strangeness
pervading it yet I have tried in vain to detect the
irregularity and to trace home my own perception of
"the strange. " I examined the contour of the lofty
and pale forehead; it was faultless how cold indeed
that word when applied to a majesty so divine the
skin rivalling the purest ivory; the commanding extent
and repose, the gentle prominence of the regions above
the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy, the
luxuriant and naturally-curling tresses, setting forth
the full force of the Homeric epithet, ' ' hyacinthine " ! I
looked at the delicate outlines of the nose, and nowhere
but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews had I
i beheld a similar perfection. There were the same lux-
urious smoothness of surface, the same scarcely per-
I ceptible tendency to the aquiline, the same harmoniously
I curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I regarded the
it sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all
things heavenly the magnificent turn of the short up-
Iper lip, the soft, voluptuous slumber of the under, the
dimples which sported, and the color which spoke, the
| teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy almost startling,
H every ray of the holy light which fell upon them in her
j< serene and placid, yet most exultingly radiant of all
| smiles. I scrutinized the formation of the chin, and
laere, too, I found the gentleness of breadth, the soft-
64 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
ness and the majesty, the fulness and the spirituality
of the Greek the contour which the god Apollo revealed
but in a dream, to Cleomenes, the son of the Athenian.
And then I peered into the large eyes of Ligeia.
For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique.
It might have been, too, that in these eyes of my be-
loved lay the secret to which Lord Yerulam alludes.
They were, I must believe, far larger than the ordinary
eyes of our own race. They were even fuller than the
fullest of the gazelle eyes of the tribe of the valley of
Nourjahad. Yet it was only at intervals in moments
of intense excitement that this peculiarity became more
than slightly noticeable in Ligeia. And at such mo-
ments was her beauty in my heated fancy thus it ap-
peared perhaps the beauty of beings either above or
apart from the earth the beauty of the fabulous Houri
of the Turk. The hue of the orbs was the most bril-
liant of black, and far over them hung jetty lashes of
great length. The brows, slightly irregular in outline,
had the same tint. The lt strangeness," however, which
I found in the eyes, was of a nature distinct from the
formation, or the color, or the brilliancy of the features,
and must, after all, be referred to the expression. Ah,
word of no meaning, behind whose vast latitude of mere
sound we intrench our ignorance of so much of the
spiritual! The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How
for long hours have I pondered upon it! How have I,
through the whole of a midsummer night, struggled
to fathom it! What was it that something more pro-
found than the well of Democritus which lay far
within the pupils of my beloved? What was it? I
was possessed with a passion to discover. Those eyes,
LIGEIA v 65
those large, those shining, those divine orbs they be-
came to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest
of astrologers.
There is no point, among the many incomprehensible
anomalies of the science of mind, more thrillingly excit-
ing than the fact never, I believe, noticed in the schools
that in our endeavors to recall to memory something
long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very
verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end,
to remember. And thus how frequently, in my intense
scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes, have I felt approaching the
full knowledge of their expression felt it approaching,
yet not quite be mine and so at length entirely de-
part! And (strange, oh strangest mystery of all!) I
found in the commonest objects of the universe, a circle
of analogies to that expression. I mean to say that, sub-
sequently to the period when Ligeia's beauty passed
into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived
from many existences in the material world a sentiment
such as I felt always around, within me, by her large
and luminous orbs. Yet not the more could I define
that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I
recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey
of a rapidly-growing vine, in the contemplation of a
moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running wa-
ter. I have felt it in the ocean, in the falling of a
meteor. I have felt it in the glances of unusually aged
people. And there are one or two stars in heaven, (one
especially, a star of the sixth magnitude, double and
changeable, to be found near the large star in Lyra) in
a telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made aware
of the feeling. I have been filled with it by certain
66 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
sounds from stringed instruments, and not unf requently
by passages from books. Among innumerable other in-
stances, I well remember something in a volume of Jo-
seph Glanvill, which (perhaps merely from its quaint-
ness who shall say?) never failed to inspire me with
the sentiment : ' ' And the will therein lieth, which dieth
not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its
vigor ? For God is but a great will pervading all things
by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield him
to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through
the weakness of his feeble will."
Length of years and subsequent reflection have en-
abled me to trace, indeed, some remote connection be-
tween this passage in the English moralist and a portion
of the character of Ligeia. An intensity in thought,
action, or speech was possibly, in her, a result or at least
an index of that gigantic volition which, during our
long intercourse, failed to give other and more imme-
diate evidence of its existence. Of all the women whom
I have ever known, she the outwardly calm, the ever-
placid Ligeia was the most violently a prey to the
tumultuous vultures of stern passion. And of such
passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous
expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and
appalled me, by the almost magical melody, modulation,
distinctness, and placidity of her very low voice, and by
the fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast
with her manner of utterance) of the wild words which
she habitually uttered.
I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia; it was im-
mense, such as I have never known in woman. In the
classical tongues *was she deeply proficient, and as far
LIGEIA 67
as my own acquaintance extended in regard to the mod-
ern dialects of Europe, I have never known her at fault,
Indeed upon any theme of the most admired, because
simply the most abstruse of the boasted eruditioft of the
academy, have I ever found Ligeia at fault? How sin-
gularly, how thrillingly, this one point in the nature of
my wife has forced itself, at this late period only, upon
my attention ! I said her knowledge was such as I have
never known in woman but where breathes the man
who has traversed, and successfully, all the wide areas
of moral, physical, and mathematical science? I saw
not then what I now clearly perceive, that the acquisi-
tions of Ligeia were gigantic, were astounding; yet I
was sufficiently aware of her infinite supremacy to resign
myself, with a child-like confidence, to her guidance
through the chaotic world of metaphysical investigation
at which I was most busily occupied during the earlier
years of our marriage. With how vast a triumph, with
how vivid a delight, with how much of all that is ethereal
in hope, did I feel, as she bent over me in studies but lit-
tle sought but less known that delicious vista by slow
degrees expanding before me, down whose long, gor-
geous, and all untrodden path I might at length pass
onward to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not
to be forbidden!
How poignant, then, must have been the grief with
which, after some years, I beheld my well-grounded ex-
pectations take wings to themselves and fly away ! With-
out Ligeia I was but as a child groping benighted. Her
presence, her readings alone, rendered vividly luminous
the many mysteries of the transcendentalism in which
we were immersed. Wanting the radiant luster of her
68 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
eyes, letters, lambent and golden, grew duller than Sat-
urnian lead. And now those eyes shone less and less
frequently upon the pages over which I pored. Ligeia
grew ill. The wild eyes blazed with a too, too glorious
effulgence; the pale fingers became of the transparent
waxen hue of the grave; and the blue veins upon the
lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the
tides of the most gentle emotion. I saw that she must
die and I struggled desperately in spirit with the grim
Azrael. And the struggles of the passionate wife were,
to my astonishment, even more energetic than my own.
There had been much in her stern nature to impress me
with the belief that, to her, death would have come with-
out its terrors ; but not so. Words are impotent to con-
vey any just idea of the fierceness of resistance with
which she wrestled with the Shadow. I groaned in an-
guish at the pitiable spectacle. I would have soothed,
I would have reasoned, but, in the intensity of her wild
desire for life for life but for life solace and reason
were alike the uttermost of folly. Yet not until the last
instance, amid the most convulsive writhings of her
fierce spirit, was shaken the external placidity of her
demeanor. Her voice grew more gentle grew more low
yet I would not wish to dwell upon the wild meaning
of the quietly uttered words. My brain reeled as I
hearkened, entranced, to a melody more than mortal, to
assumptions and aspirations which mortality had never
before known.
That she loved me I should not have doubted, and
I might have been easily aware that, in a bosom such as
hers, love would have reigned no ordinary passion. But
in death only was I fully impressed with the strength
LIGEIA 69
of her affection. For long hours, detaining my hand,
would she pour out before me the overflowing of* a heart
whose more than passionate devotion amounted to idol-
atry. How had I deserved to be so blessed by such con-
fessions? How had I deserved to be so cursed with the
removal of my beloved in the hour of her making them?
But upon this subject I cannot bear to dilate. Let me
say only, that in Ligeia's more than womanly abandon-
ment to a love, alas! all unmerited, all unworthily be-
stowed, I at length recognized the principle of her long-
ing, with so wildly earnest a desire, for the life which
was now fleeing so rapidly away. It is this wild long-
ing it is this eager vehemence of desire for life but
for life that I have no power to portray, no utterance
capable of expressing.
At high noon of the night in which she departed, beck-
oning me peremptorily to her side, she bade me repeat
certain verses composed by herself not many days before.
I obeyed her. They were these :
Lo ! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theater, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
.While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly;
Mere puppets they, who come and go
70 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their condor wings
Invisible Woe!
That motley drama ! oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot !
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self -same spot ;
And much of Madness, and more of Sin
And Horror, the soul of the plot !
But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes ! it writhes ! with mortal
The mimes become its food,
And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out out are the lights out all !
And over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.
LIGEIA 71
11 God!" half -shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet
and extending her arms aloft with a spasmodic move-
ment, as I made an end of these lines, "0 God ! O Divine
Father! Shall these things be undeviatingly so? Shall
this conqueror be not once conquered ? Are we not part
and parcel in Thee? Who who knoweth the mysteries
of the will with its vigor? Man doth not yield him
to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through
the weakness of his feeble will."
And now, as if exhausted with emotion, she suffered
her white arms to fall, and returned solemnly to her
bed of death. And as she breathed her last sighs, there
came mingled with them a low murmur from her lips. I
bent to them my ear, and distinguished again, the con-
cluding words of the passage in Glanvill : "Man doth not
yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only
through the weakness of his feeble will."
She died, and I, crushed into the very dust with sor-
row, could no longer endure the lonely desolation of my
dwelling in the dim and decaying city by the Rhine. I
had no lack of what the world calls wealth. Ligeia had
brought me far more, very far more than ordinarily falls
to the lot of mortals. After a few months, therefore,
of weary and aimless wandering, I purchased and put
in some repair an abbey which I shall not name in one
of the wildest and least frequented portions of fair Eng-
land. The gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building,
the almost savage aspect of the domain, the many mel-
ancholy and time-honored memories connected with both,
had much in unison with the feelings of utter abandon-
ment which had driven me into that remote and unsocial
region of the country. Yet, although the external ab-
72 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
bey with its verdant decay hanging about it suffered but
little alteration, I gave way with a child-like perversity,
and perchance with a faint hope of alleviating my sor-
rows, to a display of more than regal magnificence within.
For such follies, even in childhood, I had imbibed a
taste, and now they came back to me as if in the dotage
of grief. Alas, I feel how much even of incipient mad-
ness might have been discovered in the gorgeous and fan-
tastic draperies, in the solemn carvings of Egypt, in the
wild cornices and furniture, in the Bedlam patterns of
the carpets of tufted gold! I had become a bounden
slave in the trammels of opium, and my labors and my
orders had taken a coloring from my dreams. But these
absurdities I must not pause to detail. Let me speak
only of that one chamber, ever accursed, whither in a
moment of mental alienation, I led from the altar as my
bride as the successor of the unforgotten Ligeia the
fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Kowena Trevanion, of
Tremaine.
There is no individual portion of the architecture and
decoration of that bridal chamber which is not now visi-
bly before me. Where were the souls of the haughty fam-
ily of the bride, when, through thirst of gold, they permit-
ted to pass the threshold of an apartment so bedecked, a
maiden and a daughter so beloved? I have said that I
minutely remember the details of the chamber, yet I am
sadly forgetful on topics of deep moment ; and here there
was no system, no keeping, in the fantastic display, to
take hold upon the memory. The room lay in a high
turret of the castellated abbey, was pentagonal in shape,
and of capacious size. Occupying the whole southern
face of the pentagon was the sole window an immense
LIGEIA 73
sheet of unbroken glass from Venice a single pane, and
tinted of a leaden hue, so that the rays of either the sun
or moon passing through it fell with a ghastly luster on
the objects within. Over the upper portion of this huge
window extended the trellis- work of an aged vine which
clambered up the massy walls of the turret. The ceil-
ing, of gloomy-looking oak, was excessively lofty,
vaulted, and elaborately fretted with the wildest and
most grotesque specimens of a semi-Gothic, semi-Druid-
ical device. From out the most central recess of this
melancholy vaulting depended, by a single chain of gold
with long links, a huge censer of the same metal, Sara-
cenic in pattern, and with many perforations so con-
trived that there writhed in and out of them, as if en-
dued with a serpent vitality, a continual succession of
parti-colored fires.
Some few ottomans and golden candelabra of Eastern
figure were in various stations about ; and there was the
couch, too the bridal couch of an Indian model, and
low, and sculptured of solid ebony, with a pall-like can-
opy above. In each of the angles of the chamber stood
on end a gigantic sarcophagus of black granite, from the
tombs of the kings over against Luxor, with their aged
lids full of immemorial sculpture. But in the draping
of the apartment lay, alas ! the chief fantasy of all. The
lofty walls, gigantic in height even unproportionably
so were hung from summit to foot in vast folds with
a heavy and massive-looking tapestry tapestry of a
material which was found alike as a carpet on the floor,
as a covering for the ottomans and the ebony bed, as a
canopy for the bed, and as the gorgeous volutes of the
curtains which partially shaded the window. The ma-
74 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
terial was the richest cloth of gold. It was spotted all
over, at irregular intervals, with arabesque figures, about
a foot in diameter, and wrought upon the cloth in pat-
terns of the most jetty black. But these figures partook
of the true character of the arabesque only when re-
garded from a single point of view. By a contrivance
now common, and indeed traceable to a very remote
period of antiquity, they were made changeable in as-
pect. To one entering the room they bore the appear-
ance of simple monstrosities, but upon a farther advance
this appearance gradually departed; and, step by step
as the visitor moved his station in the chamber he saw
himself surrounded by an endless succession of the
ghastly forms which belong to the superstition of the
Norman, or arise in the guilty slumbers of the monk.
The phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened by the
artificial introduction of a strong continual current of
wind behind the draperies giving a hideous and uneasy
animation to the whole.
In halls such as these in a bridal chamber such as
this I passed, with fhe Lady of Tremaine, the unhal-
lowed hours of the first month of our marriage passed
them with but little disquietude. That my wife dreaded
the fierce moodiness of my temper, that she shunned me,
and loved me but little, I could not help perceiving ; but
it gave me rather pleasure than otherwise. I loathed
her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to man.
My memory flew back oh, with what intensity of regret !
to Ligeia, the beloved, the august, the beautiful, the
entombed. I revelled in recollections of her purity, of
her wisdom, of her lofty, her ethereal nature, of her
passionate, her idolatrous love. Now, then, did my
LIGEIA 75
spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the fires
of her own. In the excitement of my opium dreams (for
I was habitually fettered in the shackles of the drug)
I would call aloud upon her name, during the
silence of the night, or among the sheltered recesses of
the glens by day, as if, through the wild eagerness, the
solemn passion, the consuming ardor of my longing for
the departed, I could restore her to the pathway she had
abandoned ah, could it be for ever ? upon the earth.
About the commencement of the second month of the
marriage the Lady Bowena was attacked with sudden
illness, from which her recovery was slow. The fever
which consumed her rendered her nights uneasy ; and in
her perturbed state of half -slumber she spoke of sounds
and of motions in and about the chamber of the turret
which I concluded had no origin save in the distemper of
her fancy, or perhaps in the phantasmagoric influences
of the chamber itself. She became at length convales-
cent finally, well. Yet but a brief period elapsed ere
a second more violent disorder again threw her upon a
bed of suffering, and from this attack her frame, at all
times feeble, never altogether recovered. Her illnesses
were, after this epoch, of alarming character and of more
alarming recurrence, defying alike the knowledge and the
great exertions of her physicians. With the increase of
the chronic disease, which had thus, apparently, taken
too sure hold upon her constitution to be eradicated by
human means, I could not fail to observe a similar in-
crease in the nervous irritation of her temperament, and
in her excitability by trivial causes of fear. She spoke
again, and now more frequently and pertinaciously, of
the sounds of the slight sounds and of the unusual
76 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
motions among the tapestries, to which she had formerly
alluded.
One night near the closing in of September she pressed
this distressing subject with more than usual emphasis
upon my attention. She had just awakened from an
unquiet slumber, and I had been watching, with feelings
half of anxiety, half of vague terror, the workings of her
emaciated countenance. I sat by the side of her ebony
bed, upon one of the ottomans of India. She partly
arose, and spoke, in an earnest low whisper, of sounds
which she then heard, but which I could not hear, of mo-
tions which she then saw, but which I could not perceive.
The wind was rushing hurriedly behind the tapestries,
and I wished to show her (what, let me confess it, I could
not all believe) that those almost inarticulate breathings,
and those very gentle variations of the figures upon the
wall, were but the natural effects of that customary rush-
ing of the wind. But a deadly pallor overspreading
her face had proved to me that my exertions to reassure
her would be fruitless. She appeared to be fainting,
and no attendants were within call. I remembered where
was deposited a decanter of light wine which had been
ordered by her physicians, and hastened across the cham-
ber to procure it. But as I stepped beneath the light of
the censer, two circumstances of a startling nature at-
tracted my attention. I had felt that some palpable al-
though invisible object had passed lightly by my person;
and I saw that there lay upon the golden carpet, in "the
very middle of the rich luster thrown from the censer, a
shadow a faint, indefinite shadow of angelic aspect,
such as might be fancied for the shadow of a shade. But
I was wild with the excitement of an immoderate dose of
LIGEIA 77
opium, and heeded these things but little, nor spoke of
them to Rowena. Having found the wine, I recrossed
the chamber and poured out a gobletful which I held to
the lips of the fainting lady. She had now partially re-
covered, however, and took the vessel herself, while I
sank upon an ottoman near me, with my eyes fastened
upon her person. It was then that I became distinctly
aware of a gentle footfall upon the carpet and near the
couch ; and in a second after as Rowena was in the act of
raising the wine to her lips I saw, or may have dreamed
that I saw, fall within the goblet, as if from some invisi-
ble spring in the atmosphere of the room, three or four
large drops of a brilliant and ruby-colored fluid. If this
I saw not so Rowena. She swallowed the wine unhesi-
tatingly, and I forbore to speak to her of a circumstance
which must, after all, I considered, have been but the
suggestion of a vivid imagination, rendered morbidly
active by the terror of the lady, by the opium, and by
the hour.
Yet I cannot conceal it from my own perception that,
immediately subsequent to the fall of the ruby-drops,
a rapid change for the worse took place in the disorder
of my wife, so that, on the third subsequent night the
hands of her menials prepared her for the tomb, and on
the fourth I sat alone with her shrouded body in that
fantastic chamber which had received her as my bride.
Wild visions, opium-engendered, fluttered, shadow-like,
before me. I gazed with unquiet eye upon the sar-
cophagi in the angles of the room, upon the varying fig-
ures of the drapery, and upon the writhing of the parti-
colored fires in the censer overhead. My eyes then fell,
as I called to mind the circumstances of a former night,
78 THE BEST PSYCHIC STOEIES
to the spot beneath the glare of the censer where I had
seen the faint traces of the shadow. It was there, how-
ever, no longer; and breathing with greater freedom, I
turned my glances to the pallid and rigid figure upon the
bed. Then rushed upon me a thousand memories of
Ligeia and then came back upon my heart with the
turbulent violence of a flood the whole of that unutter-
able woe with which I had regarded her thus enshrouded.
The night waned ; and still, with a bosom full of bitter
thoughts of the one only and supremely beloved, I re-
mained gazing upon the body of Rowena.
It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or
later for I had taken no note of time when a sob,
low, gentle, but very distinct, startled me from my
revery. I felt that it came from the bed of ebony the
bed of death. I listened in an agony of superstitious
terror but there was no repetition of the sound. I
strained my vision to detect any motion in the corpse
but there was not the slightest perceptible. Yet I could
not have been deceived. I had heard the noise, how-
ever faint, and my soul was awakened within me. I
resolutely and perseveringly kept my attention riveted
upon the body. Many minutes elapsed before any cir-
cumstance occurred tending to throw light upon the
mystery. At length it became evident that a slight, a
very feeble and barely noticeable tinge of color had
flushed up within the cheeks, and along the sunken small
veins of the eyelids. Through a species of unutterable
horror and awe, for which the language of mortality
has no sufficiently energetic expression, I felt my heart
cease to beat, my limbs grow rigid where I sat. Yet a
sense of duty finally operated to restore my self -posses-
LIGEIA 79
sion. I could no longer doubt that we had been precipi-
tate in our preparations that Rowena still lived. It
was necessary that some immediate exertion be made,
yet the turret was altogether apart from the portion of
the abbey tenanted by the servants there were none
within call, and I had no means of summoning them to my
aid without leaving the room for many minutes and
this I could not venture to do. I therefore struggled
alone in my endeavors to call back the spirit still hover-
ing. In a short period it was certain, however, that a
relapse had taken place, the color disappeared from
both eyelid and cheek, leaving a wanness even more than
that of marble; the lips became doubly shrivelled and
pinched up in the ghastly expression of death ; a repul-
sive clamminess and coldness overspread rapidly the
surface of the body ; and all the usual rigorous stiffness
immediately supervened. I fell back with a shudder
upon the couch, from which I had been so startlingly
aroused, and again gave myself up to passionate waking
visions of Ligeia.
An hour thus elapsed, when could it be possible? I
was a second time aware of some vague sound issuing
from the region of the bed. I listened in extremity
of horror. The sound came again it was a sigh. Rush-
ing to the corpse, I saw distinctly saw a tremor upon
the lips. In a minute afterward they relaxed, disclosing
a bright line of the pearly teeth. Amazement now strug-
gled in my bosom with the profound awe which had
hitherto reigned there alone. I felt that my vision grew
dim, that my reason wandered, and it was only by a
violent effort that I at length succeeded in nerving my-
self to the task which duty thus once more had pointed
80 THE BEST PSYCHIC STOEIES
out. There was now a partial glow upon the forehead
and upon the cheek and throat, a perceptible warmth
pervaded the whole frame, there was even a slight pul-
sation at the heart. The lady lived; and with redoubled
ardor I betook myself to the task of restoration. I
chafed and bathed the temples and the hands and used
every exertion which experience and no little medical
reading could suggest. But in vain. Suddenly, the
color fled, the pulsation ceased, the lips resumed the ex-
pression of the dead, and, in an instant afterward, the
whole body took upon itself the icy chilliness, the livid
hue, the intense rigidity, the sunken outline, and all the
loathsome peculiarities of that which has been, for many
days, a tenant of the tomb.
And again I sunk into visions of Ligeia and again,
(what marvel that I shudder while I write?) again
there reached my ears a low sob from the region of the
ebony bed. But why should I minutely detail the un-
speakable horrors of that night? Why should I pause
to relate how, time after time, until near the period of
the gray dawn, this hideous drama of revivification was
repeated; how each terrific relapse was only into a
sterner and apparently more irredeemable death ; how
each agony wore the aspect of a struggle with some in-
visible foe; and how each struggle was succeeded by I
know not what of wild change in the personal appear-
ance of the corpse? Let me hurry to a conclusion.
The greater part of the fearful night had worn away,
and she who had been dead, once again stirred and
now more vigorously than hitherto, although arousing
from a dissolution more appalling in its utter hopeless-
ness than any. I had long ceased to struggle or to move,
LIGEIA 81
and remained sitting rigidly upon the ottoman, a help-
less prey to a whirl of violent emotions, of which ex-
treme awe was perhaps the least terrible, the least con-
suming. The corpse, I repeat, stirred, and now more
vigorously than before. The hues of life flushed up
with unwonted energy into the countenance, the limbs
relaxed, and, save that the eyelids were yet pressed
heavily together and that the bandages and draperies
of the grave still imparted their charnel character to
the figure, I might have dreamed that Rowena had in-
deed shaken off utterly the fetters of Death. But if
this idea was not even then altogether adopted, I could
at least doubt no longer, when arising from the bed,
tottering, with feeble steps, with closed eyes, and with
the manner of one bewildered in a dream, the thing that
was enshrouded advanced boldly and palpably into the
middle of the apartment.
I trembled not I stirred not for a crowd of un-
utterable fancies connected with the air, the stature,
the demeanor of the figure, rushing hurriedly through
my brain, had paralyzed had chilled me into stone.
I stirred not but gazed upon the apparition. There
was a mad disorder in my thoughts a tumult unap-
peasable. Could it, indeed, be the living Rowena who
confronted me? Could it indeed be Rowena at all
the fair-haired, the blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion
of Tremaine? Why, why should I doufrt it? The
bandage lay heavily about the mouth but then might
it not be the mouth of the breathing Lady of Tremaine?
And the cheeks there were the roses as in her noon of
life yes, these might indeed be the fair cheeks of the
living Lady of Tremaine. And the chin, with its dim-
82 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
pies, as in health, might it not be hers? but had she
then grown taller since her malady? What inexpressi-
ble madness seized me with that thought! One bound,
and I had reached her feet. Shrinking from my touch
she let fall from her head, unloosened, the ghastly cere-
ments which had confined it, and there streamed forth
into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber huge masses
of long and dishevelled hair; it was blacker than the
raven wings of midnight! And now slowly opened the
eyes of the figure which stood before me. "Here then,
at least/ 7 I shrieked aloud, "can I never can I never
be mistaken these are the full and the black, and the
wild eyes of my lost love of the Lady of the LADY
LlGEIA/'
THE SYLPH AND THE FATHER*
BY ELSA BARKER
PASSING yesterday along the line where the great
French army stands before its powerful oppo-
nent, and marking the spirit of courage and as-
piration which makes it seem like a long line of living
light, I saw a familiar face in the regions outside the
physical.
I paused, highly pleased at the encounter, and the
sylph for it was a sylph whom I met paused also
with a little smile of recognition.
Do you recall in my former book the story of a sylph,
Meriline, who was the companion and familiar of a
student of magic who lived in the rue de Vaugirard in
Paris ?
It was Meriline that I met above the line of light
which shows to wanderers in the astral regions where
the soldiers of la ~belle France fight and die for the same
ideal which inspired Jeanne d'Arc to drive the for-
eigner out of France.
" Where is your friend and master?" I asked the
sylph, and she pointed below to a trench which spoke
loud its determination to conquer.
*By permission of the author of War Letters of the Living
Dead Man and Mitchell Kennerley.
83
84 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
"I am here, to be still with him/' she said.
"And can you speak to him here?" I asked.
"I can always speak with him," she answered. "I
have been very useful to him and to France."
" To France?" I enquired, with growing interest.
"Oh, yes! When his commanding officer wants to
know what is being plotted over there, he often asks
my friend, and my friend asks me."
"Truly," I thought, "the French are an inspired
people, when the officers of armies ask guidance from
the realm of the invisible! But had not Jeanne her
visions ? ' '
"And how do you gain the information desired?" I
asked, drawing nearer to Meriline, who seemed more
serious than when we met some years before in Paris.
* ' Why, ' ' she answered, "I go over there and look
around me. I have learned what to look for, he has
taught me, and when I bring him news he rewards me
with more love."
"And do you love him still, as of old?"
"As of old?"
"Yes, as you did back there in Paris."
"Time must have passed slowly with you," said the
sylph, "if you call a few years ago 'as of old'."
"Are a few years, then, as nothing?"
"A few years are as nothing to me," she replied. "I
have lived a long time."
"And do you know the future of your friend?" I
asked.
A puzzled look came over the face of Meriline, and
she said, slowly:
"I used to know everything that would happen to
THE SYLPH AND THE FATHER 85
him, because I could read his will, and whatever he
willed came to pass; but since we have been out here
he seems to have lost his will."
"Lost his will!" I exclaimed, in surprise.
"Yes, lost his will; for he prays continually to a
great Being whom he loves far more than me, and he
always prays one prayer, 'Thy will be done!' It used
to be his will which was always done; but now, as I
say, he seems to have lost his will."
"Perhaps," I said, "it is true of the will as was once
said of the life, and he that loses his will shall find it. ' '
"I hope he will find it soon," she answered, "for in
the old days he was always giving me interesting things
to do, to help him achieve the purposes of his will, and
now he only sends me over there. I don't like over
there!"
"Why not?"
"Because my friend is menaced by something over
there."
"And what has his will to do with that?"
"Why, even about that, he says all day to the great
Being that he loves so much more than me, 'Thy will
be done.' "
"Do you think you could learn to say it, too?" I
asked.
' ' I say it after him sometimes ; but I don 't know what
it means. ' '
"Have you never heard of God?"
"I have heard of many gods, of Isis and Osiris and
Set, and of Horus, the son of Osiris."
"And is it to one of these that he says, 'Thy will be
done'?"
86 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
"Oh, no ! It is not to any of the gods that he used to
call upon in his magical working. This is some new god
that he has found."
"Or the oldest of all gods that he has returned to,"
I suggested. "What does he call Him?"
"Our Father who art in heaven."
"If you also should learn to say "Thy will be done'
to our Father who is in heaven," I said, "it might help
you toward the attainment of that soul you were want-
ing and waiting for, when last we met in Paris."
"How could our Father help me?"
1 ' It was He who gave souls to men, ' ' I said.
The eyes of the sylph were brilliant with something
almost human.
"And could He give a soul to me?"
"It is said that He can do anything."
"Then I will ask Him for a soul."
"But to ask Him for a soul," I said, "is not to pray
the prayer your friend prays."
"He only says "
"Yes, I know. Suppose you say it after him."
"I will, if you will tell me what it means. I like to
do what my friend does."
" 'Thy will be done/ " I said, "when addressed to
the Father in heaven, means that we give up all our
desires, whether for pleasure or love or happiness, or
anything else, and lay all those desires at His feet, sacri-
ficing all we have or hope for to Him, because we love
Him more than ourselves."
' ' That is a strange way to get what one desires, ' ' she
said.
"It is not done to get what one desires," I answered.
THE SYLPH AND THE FATHER 87
"But what is it done for?"
"For love of the Father in heaven."
"But I do not know the Father in heaven. What is
He?"
"He is the Source and the Goal of the being of your
friend. He is the One that your friend will re-become
some day, if he can forever say to Him, Thy will be
done." *
"The One he will re-become?"
"Yes, for when he blends his will with that of the
Father in heaven, the Father in heaven dwells in his
heart and the two become one."
"Then is the Father in heaven really the Self of my
friend?"
"The greatest philosopher could not have expressed
it more truly," I said.
"Then indeed do I love the Father in heaven,"
breathed the sylph, "and I will say now every day and
all day, 'Thy will be done' to Him."
1 ' Even if it separates you from your friend ? ' '
"How can it separate me from my friend, if the Fa-
ther is the Self of him?"
"I would that all angels were your equal in learning,"
I said.
But Meriline had turned from me in utter forgetful-
ness, and was saying over and over, with joy in, her up-
lifted face, "Thy will be done! Thy will be done!"
"Truly," I said to myself, as I passed along the line,
"he who worships the Father as the Self of the beloved
has already acquired a soul."
A GHOST *
BY LAPCADIO HUABN
PERHAPS the man who never wanders away from
the place of his birth may pass all his life with-
out knowing ghosts; but the nomad is mope
than likely to make their acquaintance. I refer to the
civilized nomad, whose wanderings are not prompted
by hope of gain, nor determined by pleasure, but simply
compelled by certain necessities of his being the man
whose inner secret nature is totally at variance with
the stable conditions of a society to which he belongs
only by accident. However intellectually trained, he
must always remain the slave of singular impulses
which have no rational source, and which will often
amaze him no less by their mastering power than by
their continuous savage opposition to his every material
interest. These may, perhaps, be traced back to some
ancestral habit be explained by self-evident heredi-
tary tendencies. Or perhaps they may not, in which
event the victim can only surmise himself the Imago of
some pre-existent larval aspiration the full develop-
ment of desires long dormant in a chain of more limited
lives.
Assuredly the nomadic impulses differ in every mem-
ber . of the class, take infinite variety from individual
*From Karma (Boni & Liveright).
88
A GHOST 89
sensitiveness to environment the line of least resistance
for one being that of greatest resistance for another ; no
two courses of true nomadism can ever be wholly the
same. Diversified of necessity both impulse and di-
rection, even as human nature is diversified! Never
since consciousness of time began were two beings born
who possessed exactly the same quality of voice, the
same precise degree of nervous impressibility, or, in
brief, the same combination of those viewless force-stor-
ing molecules which shape and poise themselves in senti-
ent substance. Vain, therefore, all striving to particu-
larize the curious psychology of such existences; at the
very utmost it is possible only to describe such impulses
and preceptions of nomadism as lie within the very
small range of one's own observation. And whatever
in these is strictly personal can have little interest or
value except in so far as it holds something in common
with the great general experience of restless lives. To
such experience may belong, I think, one ultimate result
of all those irrational partings, self-wrecking, sudden
isolations, abrupt severances from all attachment, which
form the history of the nomad the knowledge that a
strong silence is ever deepening and expanding about
one's life, and that in that silence there are ghosts.
II
Oh ! the first vague charm, the first sunny illusion of
some fair city, when vistas of unknown streets all seem
leading to thei realization of a hope you dare not even
whisper; when even the shadows look beautiful, and
90 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
strange facades appear to smile good omen through
light of gold! And those first winning relations with
men, while you are still a stranger, and only the bet-
ter and the brighter side of their nature is turned to
you! All is yet a delightful, luminous indefiniteness
sensation of streets and of men like some beautifully
tinted photograph slightly out of focus.
Then the slow solid sharpening of details all about
you, thrusting through illusion and dispelling it, grow-
ing keener and harder day by day through long dull
seasons; while your feet learn to remember all asperi-
ties of pavements, and your eyes all physiognomy of
buildings and of persons failures of masonry, furrowed
lines of pain. Thereafter only the aching of monotony
intolerable, and the hatred of sameness grown dismal,
and dread of the merciless, inevitable, daily and hourly
repetition of things; while those impulses o2 unrest,
which are Nature's urgings through that ancestral ex-
perience which lives in each one of us outcries of sea
and peak and sky to man ever make wilder appeal.
Strong friendships may have been formed; but there
finally comes a day when even these can give no con-
solation for the pain of monotony, and you feel that in
order to live you must decide, regardless of result, to
shake forever from your feet the familiar dust of that
place.
And, nevertheless, in the hour of departure you feel
a pang. As train or steamer bears you away from the
city and its myriad associations, the old illusive im-
pression will quiver back about you for a moment
not as if to mock the expectation of the past, but softly,
touchingly, as if pleading to you to stay; and such a
A GHOST 91
sadness, such a tenderness may come to you, as one
knows after reconciliation with a friend misapprehended
and unjustly judged. But you will never more see
those streets except in dreams.
Through sleep only they will open again before you,
steeped in the illusive vagueness of the first long-past
day, peopled only by friends outstretching to you.
Soundlessly you will tread those shadowy pavements
many times, to knock in thought, perhaps, at doors
which the dead will open to you. But with the passing
of years all becomes dim so dim that even asleep you
know 'tis only a ghost-city, with streets going to no-
where. And finally whatever *is left of it becomes con-
fused and blended with cloudy memories of other cities
one endless bewilderment of filmy architecture in
which nothing is distinctly recognizable, though the
whole gives the sensation of having been seen before,
ever so long ago.
Meantime, in the course of wanderings more or less
aimless, there has slowly grown upon you a suspicion
of being haunted so frequently does a certain hazy
presence intrude itself upon the visual memory. This,
however, appears to gain rather than to lose in definite-
ness; with each return its visibility seems to increase.
And the suspicion that you may be haunted gradually
develops into a certainty.
Ill
You are haunted whether your way lie through the
brown gloom of London winter, or the azure splendor
92 THE BEST PSYCHIC STOEIES
of an equatorial day whether your steps be tracked
in snows, or in the burning black sand of a tropic beach
whether you rest beneath the swart shade of Northern
pines, or under spidery umbrages of palm you are
haunted ever and everywhere by a certain gentle pres-
ence. There is nothing fearsome in this haunting the
gentlest face, the kindliest voice oddly familiar and
distinct, though feeble as the hum of a bee.
But it tantalizes this haunting like those sudden
surprises of sensation within us, though seemingly not
of us, which some dreamers have sought to interpret as
inherited remembrances, recollections of preexistence.
Vainly you ask yourself, " Whose voice? Whose face?"
It is neither young nor old, the Face; it has a vapory
indefmableness that leaves it a riddle; its diaphaneity
reveals no particular tint; perhaps you may not even
be quite sure whether it has a beard. But its expres-
sion is always gracious, passionless, smiling like the
smiling of unknown friends in dreams, with infinite in-
dulgence for any folly, even a dream-folly. Except in
that you cannot permanently banish it, the presence
offers no positive resistance to your will ; it accepts each
caprice with obedience ; it meets your every whim with
angelic patience. It is never critical, never makes plaint
even by a look, never proves irksome; yet you cannot
ignore it, because of a certain queer power it possesses
to make something stir and quiver in your heart like
an old vague sweet regret something buried alive
which will not die. And so often does this happen that
desire to solve the riddle becomes a pain; that you
finally find yourself making supplication to the Pres-
ence; addressing to it questions which it will never an-
A GHOST 93
swer directly, but only by a smile or by words having
no relation to the asking words enigmatic, which make
mysterious agitation in old forsaken fields of memory,
even as a wind betimes, over wide wastes of marsh, sets
all the grasses whispering about nothing. But you will
question on, untiringly, through the nights and days of
years :
4 'Who are you? What are you? What is this weird
relation that you bear to me ? All you say to me I feel
that I have heard before, but where? But when? By
what name am I to call you, since you will answer to
none that I remember? Surely you do not live; yet I
know the sleeping-places of all my dead, and yours I
do not know! Neither are you any dream for dreams
distort and change; and you, you are ever the same.
Nor are you any hallucination; for all my senses are
still vivid and strong. This only I know beyond doubt
that you are of the Past ; you belong to memory but
to the memory of what dead suns?"
Then, some day or night, unexpectedly, there comes to
you at least, with a soft swift tingling shock as of fin-
gers invisible, the knowledge that the Face is not the
memory of any one face; but a multiple image formed
of the traits of many dear faces, superimposed by re-
membrance, and interblended by affection into one
ghostly personality infinitely sympathetic, phantas-
mally beautiful a Composite of recollections ! And the
Voice is the echo of no one voice, but the echoing of
many voices, molten into a single utterance, a single
impossible tone, thin through remoteness of time, but
inexpressibly caressing.
94 THE BEST PSYCHIC STOKIES
IV
Thou most gentle Composite ! thou nameless and ex-
quisite Unreality, thrilled into semblance of being from
out the sum of all lost sympathies! thou Ghost of all
dear vanished things, with thy vain appeal of eyes that
looked for my coming, and vague faint pleading of
voices against oblivion, and thin electric touch of buried
hands must thou pass away forever with my passing,
even as the Shadow that I cast, thou Shadowing of
Souls?
I am not sure. For there comes to me this dream
that if aught in human life hold power to pass, like a
swerved sunray through interstellar spaces, into the in-
finite mystery, to send one sweet strong vibration
through immemorial Time, might not some luminous
future be peopled with such as thou? And in so far
as that which makes for us the subtlest charm of being
can lend one choral note to the Symphony of the Un-
knowable Purpose in so much might there not endure
also to greet thee, another Composite One embodying,
indeed, the comeliness of many lives, yet keeping like-
wise some visible memory of all that may have been
gracious in this thy friend?
THE EYES OF THE PANTHER*
BY AMBROSE BIERCE
I
ONE DOES NOT ALWAYS MARRY WHEN INSANE
A MAN and a woman nature had done the group-
ing sat on a rustic seat, in the late afternoon.
The man was middle-aged, slender, swarthy,
with the expression of a poet and the complexion of a
pirate a man at whom one would look again. The
woman was young, blonde, graceful, with something in
her figure and movements suggesting the word "lithe."
She was habited in a gray gown with odd brown mark-
ings in the texture. She may have been beautiful ; one
could not readily say, for her eyes denied attention to
all else. They were gray-green, long and narrow, with
an expression defying analysis. One could only know
that they were disquieting. Cleopatra may have had
such eyes.
The man and the woman talked.
"Yes," said the woman, "I love you, God knows!
But marry you, no. I cannot, will not."
"Irene, you have said that many times, yet always
have denied me a reason. I've a right to know, to un-
From "In the Midst of Life" (Boni & Liveright).
95
96 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
derstand, to feel and prove my fortitude if I have it.
Give* me a reason.",
"For loving you?"
The woman was smiling through her tears and her
pallor. That did not stir any sense of humor in the
man.
"No; there is no reason for that. A reason for not
marrying me. I've a right to know. I must know. I
will know!"
He had risen and was standing before her with
clenched hands, on his face a frown it might have
been called a scowl. He looked as if he might attempt to
learn by strangling her. She smiled no more merely
sat looking up into his face with a fixed, set regard that
was utterly without emotion or sentiment. Yet it had
something in it that tamed his resentment and made
him shiver.
"You are determined to have my reason?" she asked
in a tone that was entirely mechanical a tone that
might have been her look made audible.
"If you please if I'm not asking too much."
Apparently this lord of creation was yielding some
part of his dominion over his co-creature.
* ' Very well, you shall know : I am insane. ' '
The man started, then looked incredulous and was
conscious that he ought to be amused. But, again, the
sense of humor failed him in his need and despite his
disbelief he was profoundly disturbed by that which
he did not believe. Between our convictions and our
feelings there is no good understanding.
' * That is what the physicians would say, ' ' the woman
continued, "if they knew. I might myself prefer to
THE EYES OF THE PANTHER 97
call it a case of 'possession/ Sit down and hear 'what
I have to say. ' '
The man silently resumed his seat beside her on the
rustic beffch by the wayside. Over against them on
the eastern side of the valley the hills were already
sunset-flushed and the stillness all about was of that
peculiar quality that foretells the twilight. Something
of its mysterious and significant solemnity had imparted
itself to the man 's mood. In the spiritual, as in the ma-
terial world, are signs and presages of night. Rarely
meeting her look, and whenever he! did so conscious of
the indefinable dread with which, despite their feline
beauty, her eyes always affected him, Jenner Brading
listened in silence to the story told by Irene Marlowe.
In deference to the reader's possible prejudice against
the artless method of an unpracticed historian the au-
thor ventures to substitute his own version for hers.
II
A ROOM MAY BE TOO NARROW FOR THREE, THOUGH ONE IS
OUTSIDE
In a little log house containing a single room sparely
and rudely furnished, crouching on the floor against one
of the walls, was a woman, clasping to her breast a child.
Outside, a dense unbroken forest extended for many
miles in every direction. This was at night and the
room was black dark; no human eye could have dis-
cerned the woman and the child. Yet they were ob-
served, narrowly, vigilantly, with never even a momen-
98 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
tary slackening of attention; and that is the pivotal
fact upon which this narrative turns.
Charles Marlowe was of the class, now extinct in this
country, of woodmen pioneers men who found their
most acceptable surroundings in sylvan solitudes that
stretched along the eastern slope of the Mississippi Val-
ley, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. For
more than a hundred years these men pushed ever west-
ward, generation after generation, with rifle and ax,
reclaiming from Nature and her savage children here
and there an isolated acreage for the plow, no sooner
reclaimed than surrendered to their less venturesome
but more thrifty successors. At last they burst through
the edge of the forest into the open country and van-
ished as if they had fallen over a cliff. The woodman
pioneer is no more ; the pioneer of the plains he whose
easy task it was to subdue for occupancy two-thirds of
the country in a single generation is another and in-
ferior creation. With Charles Marlowe in the wilder-
ness, sharing the dangers, hardships and privations of
that strange unprofitable life, were his wife and child,
to whom, in the manner of his class in which the do-
mestic virtues were a religion, he was passionately at-
tached. The woman was still young enough to be
comely, new enough to the awful isolation of her lot
to be cheerful. By withholding the large capacity for
happiness which the simple satisfactions of the forest
life could not have filled, Heaven had dealt honorably
with her. In her light household tasks, her child, her
husband and her few foolish books, she found abundant
provision for her needs.
One morning in midsummer Marlowe took down his
THE EYES OF THE PANTHER 99
rifle from the wooden hooks on the wall and signified
his intention of getting game.
" We've meat enough," said the wife; "please don't
go out to-day. I dreamed last night, 0, such a dread-
ful thing! I cannot recollect it, but I'm almost sure
that it will come to pass if you go out."
It is painful to confess that Marlowe received this
solemn statement with less of gravity than was due to
the mysterious nature of the calamity foreshadowed.
In truth, he laughed.
4 'Try to remember," he said. " Maybe you dreamed
that Baby had lost the power of speech."
The conjecture was obviously suggested by the fact
that Baby, clinging to the fringe of his hunting-coat with
all her ten pudgy thumbs, was at that moment uttering
her sense of the situation in a series of exultant goo-goos
inspired by sight of her father's raccoon-skin cap.
The woman yielded: lacking the gift of humor she
could not hold out against his kindly badinage. So,
with a kiss for the mother and a kiss for the child, he
left the house and closed the door upon his happiness
forever.
At nightfall he had not returned. The woman pre-
pared supper and waited. Then she put Baby to bed
and sang softly to her until she slept. By this time the
fire on the hearth, at which she had cooked supper, had
burned out and the room was lighted by a single candle.
This she afterward placed in the open window as a sign
and welcome to the hunter if he should approach from
that side. She had thoughtfully closed and barred the
door against such wild animals as might prefer it to an
open window of the habits of beasts of prey in enter-
100 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
ing a house uninvited she was not advised, though with
true female prevision she may have considered the pos-
sibility of their entrance by way of the chimney. As
the night wore on she became not less anxious, but more
drowsy, and at last rested her arms upon the bed by
the child and her head upon the arms. The candle in
the window burned down to the socket, sputtered and
flared a moment and went out unobserved; for the
woman slept and dreamed.
In her dreams she sat beside the cradle of a second
child. The first one was dead. The father was dead.
The home in the forest was lost and the dwelling in
which she lived was unfamiliar. There were heavy
oaken doors, always closed, and outside the windows,
fastened into the thick stone walls, were iron bars, ob-
viously (so she thought) a provision against Indians.
All this she noted with an infinite self-pity, but without
surprise an emotion unknown in dreams. The child
in the cradle was invisible under its coverlet which some-
thing impelled her to remove. She did so, disclosing
the face of a wild animal! In the shock of this dread-
ful revelation the dreamer awoke, trembling in the
darkness of her cabin in the wood.
As a sense of her actual surroundings came slowly
back to her she felt for the child that was not a dream,
and assured herself by its breathing that all was well
with it; nor could she forbear to pass a hand lightly
across its face. Then, moved by some impulse for
which she probably could not have accounted, she rose
and took the sleeping babe in her arms, holding it close
against her breast. The head of the child's cot was
against the wall to which the woman now turned her
THE EYES OF THE PANTHER 101
back as she stood. Lifting her eyes she saw two bright
objects starring the darkness with a reddish-green glow.
She took them to be two coals on the hearth, but with
her returning sense of direction came the disquieting
consciousness that they were not in that quarter of the
room, moreover were too high, being nearly at the level
of the eyes of her own eyes. For these were the eyes
of a panther.
The beast was at the open window directly opposite
and not five paces away. Nothing but those terrible
eyes was visible, but in the dreadful tumult of her feel-
ings as the situation disclosed itself to her understand-
ing she somehow knew that the animal was standing on
its hinder feet, supporting itself with its paws on the
window-ledge. That signified a malign interest not
the mere gratification of an indolent curiosity. The
consciousness of the attitude was an added horror, ac-
centuating the menace of those awful eyes, in whose
steadfast fire her strength and courage were alike con-
sumed. Under their silent questioning she shuddered
and turned sick. Her knees failed her, and by degrees,
instinctively striving to avoid a sudden movement that
might bring the beast upon her, she sank to the floor,
crouched against the wall and tried to shield the babe
with her trembling body without withdrawing her gaze
from the luminous orbs that were killing her. No
thought of her 1 husband came to her in her agony no
hope nor suggestion of rescue or escape. Her capacity
for thought and feeling had narrowed to the dimensions
of a single emotion fear of the animal's spring, of the
impact of its body, the buffeting of its great arms, the
feel of its teeth in her throat, the mangling of her babe.
1C2 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
Motionless now and in absolute silence, she awaited her
doom, the moments growing to hours, to years, to ages;
and still those devilish eyes maintained their watch.
Returning to his cabin late at night with a deer on his
shoulders Charles Marlowe tried the door. It did not
yield. He knocked; there was no answer. He laid
down his deer and went around to the window. As
he turned the angle of the building he fancied he heard
a sound as of stealthy footfalls and a rustling in the
undergrowth of the forest, but they were too slight for
certainty, even to his practiced ear. Approaching the
window, and to his surprise finding it open, he threw
his leg over the sill and entered. All was darkness and
silence. He groped his way to the fireplace, struck a
match and lit a candle. Then he looked about. Cower-
ing on the floor against a wall was his wife, clasping his
child. As he sprang toward her she rose and broke into
laughter, long, loud, and mechanical, devoid of gladness
and devoid of sense the laughter that is not out of
keeping with the clanking of a chain. Hardly knowing
what he did he extended his arms. She laid the babe
in them. It was dead pressed to death in its mother 's
embrace.
Ill
THE THEORY OF THE DEFENSE
That is what occurred during a night in a forest, but
not all of it did Irene Marlowe relate to Jenner Brad-
ing ; not all of it was known to her. When she had con-
THE EYES OF THE PANTHER 103
eluded the sun was below the horizon and the long sum-
mer twilight had begun to deepen in the hollows of the
land. For some moments Brading was silent, expect-
ing the narrative to be carried forward to some definite
connection with the conversation introducing it ; but the
narrator was as silent as he, her face averted, her hands
clasping and unclasping themselves as they lay in her
lap, with a singular suggestion of an activity independ-
ent of her will.
1 'It is a sad, a terrible story/' said Brading at last,
"but I do not understand. You call Charles Marlowe
father; that I know. That he is old before his time,
broken by some great sorrow, I have seen, or thought I
saw. But, pardon me, you said that you that you "
"That I am insane/' said the girl, without a move-
ment of head or body.
"But, Irene, you say please, dear, do not look away
from me you say that the child was dead, not de-
mented."
"Yes, that one I am the second. I was born three
months after that night, my mother being mercifully
permitted to lay down her life in giving me mine. ' '
Brading was again silent; he was a trifle dazed and
could not at once think of the right thing to say. Her
face was still turned away. In his embarrassment he
reached impulsively toward the hands that lay closing
and unclosing in her lap, but something he could not
have said what restrained him. He then remembered,
vaguely, that he had never altogether cared to take her
hand.
"Is it likely," she resumed, "that a person born un-
104 THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
der such circumstances is like others is what you call
sane ? ' '
Brading did not reply; he was preoccupied with a
new thought that was taking shape in his mind what
a scientist would have called an hypothesis ; a detective,
a theory. It might throw an added light, albeit a lurid
one, upon such doubt of her sanity as her own assertion
had not dispelled.
The country was still new and, outside the villages,
sparsely populated. The professional hunter was still a
familiar figure, and among his trophies were heads and
pelts of the larger kinds of game. Tales variously cred-
ible of nocturnal meetings with savage animals in lonely
roads were sometimes current, passed through the cus-
tomary stages of growth and decay, and were forgotten.
A recent addition to these popular apocrypha, originat-
ing, apparently, by spontaneous generation in several
households, was of a panther which had frightened some
of their members by looking in at windows by night.
The yarn had caused its little ripple of excitement had
even attained to the distinction of a place in the local
newspaper; but Brading had gwen it no attention. Its
likeness to the story to which he had just listened now
impressed him as perhaps more than accidental. Was it
not possible that the one story had suggested the other
that finding congenial conditions in a morbid mind
and a fertile fancy, it had grown to the tragic tale that
he had heard?
Brading recalled certain circumstances of the girl's
history and disposition of which, with love 's incuriosity,
he had hitherto been heedless such as her solitary life
with her father, at whose house no one apparently was
THE EYES OF THE PANTHEE 105
an acceptable visitor, and her strange fear of the night
by which those who knew her best accounted for her
never being seen after dark. Surely in such a mind
imagination once kindled might burn with a lawless
flame, penetrating and enveloping the entire structure.
That she was mad, though the conviction gave him the
acutest pain, he could no longer doubt; she had only
mistaken an effect of her mental disorder for its cause,
bringing into imaginary relation with her own personal-
ity the vagaries of the local myth-makers. With some
vague intention of testing his new "theory," and no
very definite notion of how to set about it he said
gravely, but with hesitation :
' ' Irene, dear, tell me I beg you will not take offense,
but tell me "
"I have told you," she interrupted, speaking with a
passionate earnestness that he had not known her to
show, "I have already told you that we cannot marry;
is anything else worth saying ? ' '
Before he could stop her she had sprung from her
seat and without another word or look was gliding away
among the trees toward her father's house. Brading
had risen to detain her ; he stood watching her in silence
until she had vanished in the gloom. Suddenly he
started as if he had been shot, his face took on an ex-
pression of amazement and alarm: in one of the black
shadows into which she had disappeared he had caught a
quick, brief glimpse of shining eyes ! For an instant he
was dazed and irresolute ; then he dashed into the wood
after her, shouting, "Irene, Irene, look out! The pan-
ther! The panther!"
In a moment he had passed through the fringe of for-
106 THE BEST PSYCHIC STOEIES
est into open ground and saw the girl's gray skirt van-
ishing into her father 's door. No panther was visible.
IV
AN APPEAL TO THE CONSCIENCE OF 8OD
Jenner Brading, attorney-at-law, lived in a cottage at
the edge of the town. Directly behind the dwelling was
the forest. Being a bachelor, and therefore by the Dra-
conian moral code of the time and place denied the
services of the only species of domestic servant known
thereabout, the l( hired girl/' he boarded at the village
hotel where also was his office. The woodside cottage
was merely a lodging maintained at no great cost, to
be sure as an evidence of prosperity and respectability.
It would hardly do for one to whom the local newspaper
had pointed with pride as "the foremost jurist of his
time" to be "homeless," albeit he may sometimes have
suspected that the words "home" and "house" were
not strictly synonymous. Indeed, his consciousness of
the disparity and his will to harmonize it were matters
of logical inference, for it was generally reported that
soon after the cottage was built its owner had made a
futile venture in the direction of marriage had, in
truth, gone so far as to be rejected by the beautiful but
eccentric daughter of Old Man Marlowe, the recluse.
This was publicly believed because he had told it him-
self and she had riot a reversal of the usual order of
things which could hardly fail to carry conviction.
Brading 's bedroom was at the rear of the house, with
THE EYES OF THE PANTHER 107
a single window facing the forest. One night he was
awakened by a noise at that window he could hardly
have said what it was like. With a little thrill of the
nerves he sat up in bed and laid hold of the revolver
which, with a forethought most commendable in one
addicted to the habit of sleeping on the ground floor
with an open window, he had put under his pillow.
The room was in absolute darkness, but being unterrified
he knew where to direct his eyes, and there he held
them, awaiting in silence what further might occur.
He could now dimly discern the aperture a square of
lighter black. Presently there appeared at its lower
edge two gleaming eyes that burned with a malignant
luster inexpressibly terrible! Brading's heart gave a
great jump, then seemed to stand still. A chill passed
along his spine and through his hair; he felt the blood
forsake his cheeks. He could not have cried out not
to save his life; but being a man of courage he would
not, to save his life, have done so if he had been able.
Some trepidation his coward body might feel, but his
spirit was of sterner stuff. Slowly the shining eyes rose
with a steady motion that seemed an approach, and
slowly rose Brading's right hand, holding the pistol. He
fired!
Blinded by the flash and stunned by the report, Brad-
ing nevertheless heard, or fancied that he heard, the
wild high scream of the panther, so human in sound,
so devilish in suggestion. Leaping from the bed he
hastily clothed himself and pistol in hand, sprang from
the door, meeting two or three men who came running
up from the road. A brief explanation was followed by
a cautious search of the house. The grass was wet with
108 THE BEST PSYCHIC STOEIES
dew; beneath the window it had been trodden and
partly leveled for a wide space, from which a devious
trail, visible in the light of a lantern, led away into the
bushes. One of the men stumbled and fell upon his
hands, which as he rose and rubbed them together were
slippery. On examination they were seen to be red
with blood.
An encounter, unarmed, with a wounded panther
was not agreeable to their taste ; all but Brading turned
back. He, with lantern and pistol, pushed courageously
forward into the wood. Passing through a difficult un-
dergrowth he came into a small opening, and there his
courage had its reward, for there he found the body of
his victim. But it was no panther. What it was is
told, even to this day, upon a weather-worn headstone
in the village chur"hy
