THE BOARDED WINDOW
In 1830, only a few miles away from what is now the great city ofCincinnati, lay an immense and almost unbroken forest. The whole regionwas sparsely settled by people of the frontier--restless souls who nosooner had hewn fairly habitable homes out of the wilderness andattained to that degree of prosperity which to-day we should callindigence than impelled by some mysterious impulse of their nature theyabandoned all and pushed farther westward, to encounter new perils andprivations in the effort to regain the meagre comforts which they hadvoluntarily renounced. Many of them had already forsaken that region forthe remoter settlements, but among those remaining was one who had beenof those first arriving. He lived alone in a house of logs surrounded onall sides by the great forest, of whose gloom and silence he seemed apart, for no one had ever known him to smile nor speak a needless word.His simple wants were supplied by the sale or barter of skins of wildanimals in the river town, for not a thing did he grow upon the landwhich, if needful, he might have claimed by right of undisturbedpossession. There were evidences of "improvement"--a few acres of groundimmediately about the house had once been cleared of its trees, thedecayed stumps of which were half concealed by the new growth that hadbeen suffered to repair the ravage wrought by the ax. Apparently theman's zeal for agriculture had burned with a failing flame, expiring inpenitential ashes.
The little log house, with its chimney of sticks, its roof of warpingclapboards weighted with traversing poles and its "chinking" of clay,had a single door and, directly opposite, a window. The latter, however,was boarded up--nobody could remember a time when it was not. And noneknew why it was so closed; certainly not because of the occupant'sdislike of light and air, for on those rare occasions when a hunter hadpassed that lonely spot the recluse had commonly been seen sunninghimself on his doorstep if heaven had provided sunshine for his need. Ifancy there are few persons living to-day who ever knew the secret ofthat window, but I am one, as you shall see.
The man's name was said to be Murlock. He was apparently seventy yearsold, actually about fifty. Something besides years had had a hand in hisaging. His hair and long, full beard were white, his gray, lustrelesseyes sunken, his face singularly seamed with wrinkles which appeared tobelong to two intersecting systems. In figure he was tall and spare,with a stoop of the shoulders--a burden bearer. I never saw him; theseparticulars I learned from my grandfather, from whom also I got theman's story when I was a lad. He had known him when living near by inthat early day.
One day Murlock was found in his cabin, dead. It was not a time andplace for coroners and newspapers, and I suppose it was agreed that hehad died from natural causes or I should have been told, and shouldremember. I know only that with what was probably a sense of the fitnessof things the body was buried near the cabin, alongside the grave of hiswife, who had preceded him by so many years that local tradition hadretained hardly a hint of her existence. That closes the final chapterof this true story--excepting, indeed, the circumstance that many yearsafterward, in company with an equally intrepid spirit, I penetrated tothe place and ventured near enough to the ruined cabin to throw a stoneagainst it, and ran away to avoid the ghost which every well-informedboy thereabout knew haunted the spot. But there is an earlier chapter--that supplied by my grandfather.
When Murlock built his cabin and began laying sturdily about with his axto hew out a farm--the rifle, meanwhile, his means of support--he wasyoung, strong and full of hope. In that eastern country whence he camehe had married, as was the fashion, a young woman in all ways worthy ofhis honest devotion, who shared the dangers and privations of his lotwith a willing spirit and light heart. There is no known record of hername; of her charms of mind and person tradition is silent and thedoubter is at liberty to entertain his doubt; but God forbid that Ishould share it! Of their affection and happiness there is abundantassurance in every added day of the man's widowed life; for what but themagnetism of a blessed memory could have chained that venturesome spiritto a lot like that?
One day Murlock returned from gunning in a distant part of the forest tofind his wife prostrate with fever, and delirious. There was nophysician within miles, no neighbor; nor was she in a condition to beleft, to summon help. So he set about the task of nursing her back tohealth, but at the end of the third day she fell into unconsciousnessand so passed away, apparently, with never a gleam of returning reason.
From what we know of a nature like his we may venture to sketch in someof the details of the outline picture drawn by my grandfather. Whenconvinced that she was dead, Murlock had sense enough to remember thatthe dead must be prepared for burial. In performance of this sacred dutyhe blundered now and again, did certain things incorrectly, and otherswhich he did correctly were done over and over. His occasional failuresto accomplish some simple and ordinary act filled him with astonishment,like that of a drunken man who wonders at the suspension of familiarnatural laws. He was surprised, too, that he did not weep--surprised anda little ashamed; surely it is unkind not to weep for the dead."To-morrow," he said aloud, "I shall have to make the coffin and dig thegrave; and then I shall miss her, when she is no longer in sight; butnow--she is dead, of course, but it is all right--it _must_ be allright, somehow. Things cannot be so bad as they seem."
He stood over the body in the fading light, adjusting the hair andputting the finishing touches to the simple toilet, doing allmechanically, with soulless care. And still through his consciousnessran an undersense of conviction that all was right--that he should haveher again as before, and everything explained. He had had no experiencein grief; his capacity had not been enlarged by use. His heart could notcontain it all, nor his imagination rightly conceive it. He did not knowhe was so hard struck; _that_ knowledge would come later, and never go.Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which heplays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillestnotes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like theslow beating of a distant drum. Some natures it startles; some itstupefies. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all thesensibilities to a keener life; to another as the blow of a bludgeon,which in crushing benumbs. We may conceive Murlock to have been that wayaffected, for (and here we are upon surer ground than that ofconjecture) no sooner had he finished his pious work than, sinking intoa chair by the side of the table upon which the body lay, and noting howwhite the profile showed in the deepening gloom, he laid his arms uponthe table's edge, and dropped his face into them, tearless yet andunutterably weary. At that moment came in through the open window along, wailing sound like the cry of a lost child in the far deeps of thedarkening wood! But the man did not move. Again, and nearer than before,sounded that unearthly cry upon his failing sense. Perhaps it was a wildbeast; perhaps it was a dream. For Murlock was asleep.
Some hours later, as it afterward appeared, this unfaithful watcherawoke and lifting his head from his arms intently listened--he knew notwhy. There in the black darkness by the side of the dead, recalling allwithout a shock, he strained his eyes to see--he knew not what. Hissenses were all alert, his breath was suspended, his blood had stilledits tides as if to assist the silence. Who--what had waked him, andwhere was it?
Suddenly the table shook beneath his arms, and at the same moment heheard, or fancied that he heard, a light, soft step--another--sounds asof bare feet upon the floor!
He was terrified beyond the power to cry out or move. Perforce hewaited--waited there in the darkness through seeming centuries of suchdread as one may know, yet live to tell. He tried vainly to speak thedead woman's name, vainly to stretch forth his hand across the table tolearn if she were there. His throat was powerless, his arms and handswere like lead. Then occurred something most frightful. Some heavy bodyseemed hurled against the table with an impetus that pushed it againsthis breast so sharply as nearly to overthrow him, and at the sameinstant he heard and felt the fall of something upon the floor with soviolent a thump that the whole house was shaken by the impact. Ascuffling ensue
d, and a confusion of sounds impossible to describe.Murlock had risen to his feet. Fear had by excess forfeited control ofhis faculties. He flung his hands upon the table. Nothing was there!
There is a point at which terror may turn to madness; and madnessincites to action. With no definite intent, from no motive but thewayward impulse of a madman, Murlock sprang to the wall, with a littlegroping seized his loaded rifle, and without aim discharged it. By theflash which lit up the room with a vivid illumination, he saw anenormous panther dragging the dead woman toward the window, its teethfixed in her throat! Then there were darkness blacker than before, andsilence; and when he returned to consciousness the sun was high and thewood vocal with songs of birds.
The body lay near the window, where the beast had left it whenfrightened away by the flash and report of the rifle. The clothing wasderanged, the long hair in disorder, the limbs lay anyhow. From thethroat, dreadfully lacerated, had issued a pool of blood not yetentirely coagulated. The ribbon with which he had bound the wrists wasbroken; the hands were tightly clenched. Between the teeth was afragment of the animal's ear.
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce — Volume 2: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians Page 25