November Night Tales

by Henry Chapman Mercer

  “Where do you suppose I found it?” he said, looking at me intently, as if waiting for me to speak. As I said nothing, he continued: “You remember there was a woodchuck burrow on the hilltop that we never thought of looking into. When I went back there the other day and saw the glitter again, I kept my angle better, and managed to trace it. This thing was just inside the hole. The woodchuck had barely missed pushing it out. What do you think of it?”

  iv

  “I am not much of a mineralogist,” said I, “but it looks like a very fine specimen. Far handsomer than if ground or faceted. I suppose you will give it to some museum.”

  “Nothing of the sort,” he replied. “I had brought it up to give it to you, but I have changed my mind,—for the present, at least.”

  “Very kind, indeed, my boy. But you must keep it yourself. I never took the least interest in minerals. Why should I have it?”

  “Because it belongs to you,—or to your family. What is more, I believe it to be the treasure that you were talking about. Examine it.”

  I picked it up as it caught the afternoon light, and looking from various angles into its lucent depths, turned it slowly over, until I noticed a flat interval between two of the projections. Then, as I followed the line of polished surface, my eye caught the words of an inscription, in large deep cut letters:

  PER VARIOS CASUS

  “Why, how in the world did that get there?” I exclaimed. “It’s our family motto.”

  “I thought it was something of that sort,” said he; “but if so, all the more remarkable. I remember the words in Virgil, don’t you? The shipwreck episode; Æneas preaching to his followers about misfortunes,—varios casus,—a sermon on disaster. But my idea is that your ancestor must have had it in his possession when building the castle, and if, as you say, he lost, or buried, a treasure, here it is.”

  “He may have lost it,” said I; “but why call it a treasure? Excepting as a family relic, it would have no particular value.”

  “On the contrary,” Pryor objected, “if I am not mistaken, it is one of the scrying stones, used by the old crystal gazers in their second sight, prophecies, and warnings. Your people probably brought it with them from Wales.”

  “All very well to say so,” I contended; “but how are you going to prove it?”

  “I have proved it. I have looked into the stone and seen enough to convince me that the thing has what is now generally recognized as hypnotic influence.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I mean that I have seen a vision,—a castle,— three times at least. So beautiful that if your ancestor saw it, as I am convinced he did, no wonder it inspired him as an architect.”

  “No one has ever called him an architect but you,” said I.

  “Yet he was one, and so, you tell me, you are, or will be if you follow your bent. Besides that, you are his kinsman and ought to see more in the stone than I do.”

  I told him I didn’t mind trying, and, incited by his words, helped him move the table into the sunlight, where I sat down and, fixing my eyes steadily upon the brightest point of the relic, stared at it for a long time, in vain. I took off my coat and threw it over my head, shifted the table, tried new angles; but without success. Pryor himself tried it; but failed.

  “It won’t do here,” said he, much disappointed. “You must look by candlelight, with a piece of black cloth. Till now it has generally worked well for me,—too well, in fact, considering the headaches it brings with it; which, by the way, I find hard to get rid of.”

  He wrapped up the stone again and put it in his pocket.

  “My mother has taken a dislike to it,” he continued, “and wants me to destroy it. Now that I have told her your story, she insists on my giving it back to you, as your property. The fact is, I came up today for that purpose; but, on second thoughts if you will allow me, I will keep it for a few more experiments.”

  “Keep it as long as you please,” I consented, as we parted. “But, considering your mother and your headaches, I should say the sooner you hand it over to me the better.”

  v

  In order to make clear the following narrative, a serious difficulty, which confronted me at this time, should be well explained. It was a moral dilemma evolved from unexpected circumstances, which, rapidly growing into a crisis, had stirred me to the depths.

  At the political convention, then sitting at Eastport, the party leaders, owing to a series of embarrassing rivalries not understood till later, had suddenly offered to nominate me as Congressional candidate for the Eastern District of D——, and since the chance, in no way sought for, thus thrust upon me seemed too good to lose, I had almost decided to seize it. If I did, my reasonably certain election promised a short cut to rapid official preferment,—at the expense of nothing more serious than the abandonment of my chosen profession as architect; the loss (if it were a loss) of the few years already spent in preliminary study.

  As the smiling goddess beckoned, I saw no difficulty in locking up my draftsman’s tools and throwing my blue prints into the wastepaper-basket. But before I got through with the matter, I realized that there were obstacles on the political highroad that I had not bargained for. At college, as an outspoken idealist, I had not confined myself to literature and art, but had carried my doctrines into politics, as a preacher of reform, an opponent of race hatred, labor unions, socialism, corrupt journalism, political humbug, and so forth. But before I had been long graduated, some of my enthusiasms had been talked out of me by my friends as being impractical and Quixotic, and when, on getting my instructions from the “powers that be” at the Convention, I had found that the time had come to stop preaching what I had never had a chance to practice, I concluded to make the usual bargain in the usual way.

  The job was not altogether easy; for I found, on summing up the sacrifice, that some of my old college war-cries were nearer my heart than I had supposed. But at last I got rid of them, and when the Convention broke up, I thought I had my political ship well insured for a prosperous voyage.

  Nevertheless, I came home out of spirits, disgusted with myself. It was one thing to pretend to give up my career as an architect and laugh at my old ideals, political and artistic, in conversation with the great men, but another deliberately to sell my soul in writing. Hence the moral dilemma, which, in spite of what I called reason and common sense, oppressed and disturbed me on my return. As I had a week left in which to conclude the bargain, I put off my requisite letter of acceptance to the last moment, and took counsel with several of my acquaintances on the subject. These oracles condemned what they called my ill-timed scruples, but failed to relieve my mind; and I had got through with them all, when I thought of my artistic friend Pryor. Since my return from Eastport, I had seen or heard nothing of him. Yet, as I well knew that I could depend on his sympathy, if not his judgment, I chose one fine autumn afternoon in which to pay him a visit.

  vi

  Why I had never visited the house once belonging to my father’s family, in which the artist was spending the summer, I scarcely know. It stood in a hollow, between two close-set hills, a damp-looking stone building, so gloomy that I remember fancying, as I reached it, that if my castle-building ancestor had ever lived there, he might well have been repelled by the contrast of the place with the hilltop he loved. There were several outbuildings, and at some time in the day the sun’s rays, if they ever penetrated the trees, must have fallen upon a grape-arbor, at the lower end of the kitchen garden. There, as I came in from the rear and turned the corner of the barn, I noticed the tall, bent figure of old Michael Shronk, well known in the then superstitious neighborhood as “the powwow doctor,” at work pruning the grapevines. He was on a ladder set against the arbor and had blocked the path with a wheelbarrow. As I stepped aside to avoid the obstruction and waved my hand in greeting, I stumbled over a projecting
stone and fell headlong upon the grass. When I rose to my feet, the old man, whom I had known since boyhood, had turned upon the ladder, and without the slightest attempt at a smile, had fixed his large, sombre eyes upon me.

  “He calls you,” said he in his sepulchral voice.

  “Calls me!” I exclaimed. “Who calls me? I heard no one.”

  “It is from the dead.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Who is dead?”

  “A young man, like yourself. He died more than a hundred years ago. But his grave is under your foot.”

  I felt the subtle power of the man’s domineering manner, with the touch of threat in his voice that had always frightened me, as I looked down at the flat piece of native red slate over which I had fallen. It was evidently a gravestone, and protruded about a foot from the ground, with another smaller piece close to the barn wall beyond it. Upon the larger stone, I saw the faint outline of the initials H.M., cut on the weathered surface.

  “M for Meredith,” I remarked. “My father’s people lived here, I know. But I never heard of a graveyard.”

  “Here is no graveyard.” Again that touch of threat in old Shronk’s voice. “There are no friends for him. He lies all alone.” He paused, still keeping his extraordinary eyes upon me. “Are you alone?” he added.

  “Why, no!” I answered. “But yes,” thought I, as I walked away. “Today I seem to be alone. I feel as if I hadn’t a friend in the world.”

  vii

  At the house door, I learned that my friend Pryor was upstairs in his room and was asking for further particulars, from the little girl who let me in, when his mother, a tall, well-dressed, grey-haired old lady, whose careworn face and appealing eyes betrayed her anxiety, came downstairs. She led me into the rural dungeon, smelling of musty carpet, called the parlor, and when she had illumined the place by forcing open two pairs of shutters, we sat down.

  “Will has been talking about you, Mr. Meredith,” said she, “and I want to speak with you. He has never been very strong, you know, and now he is not well,—not at all well. Our visit here this summer has been a failure, and the sooner we get back to town, the better.”

  I was surprised and somewhat startled at the news, and still more so when she declared its cause. It was the stone, she said, which her son and I had found earlier in the summer. He had been crystal-gazing,—staring into it, at a vision that he saw, or thought he saw, “the Castle,” as he called it,—until his health had given way. The dangerous trances that followed his experiments resembled boyish attacks that she thought he had outgrown. Sometimes they lasted nearly all day, sometimes all night, and were getting worse. The doctor called it catalepsy, but could do nothing,—could not even arouse him. Neither could any one else, until, on the advice of one of the neighbors, she had sent for an old man, now at work in the garden.

  “Old Shronk,” said I; “a friend of mine. You know, they call him a ‘powwow doctor,’ if you believe in such things.”

  “I don’t care what they call him. He is my only hope, and this is the second time, thank God, he has wakened Will.”

  She had lost her influence over her boy, she said, and had begged him, in vain, to destroy the stone, which she didn’t dare do herself. On learning that it was an heirloom of my family, she had made him promise to give it to me.

  “It’s ruining his health, Mr. Meredith,” she exclaimed, weeping. “He talks of what he calls his ideal,—says he is going to paint a great picture; but he never does. In fact, he has given up his painting, and his walks do him no good. Won’t you get this dreadful stone away from him, before it is too late?”

  She stopped suddenly at a sound of footsteps in the hall, when the door opened, and the subject of our conversation entered the room.

  He had lost his high color, and in spite of the fashionable cut of his clothes, the brilliant opal-pinned scarf, and freshly brushed hair, he looked feeble and haggard.

  “You feel better, don’t you, Will?” asked his mother anxiously as he stepped slowly across the room, with a forced swell of the chest.

  “Not very much,” he replied, greeting me and grasping my hand. “I must get rid of this headache first. But it’s all rather ridiculous, don’t you think so, Meredith?”

  “Too serious for that,” was my answer; “but I hardly know what to think, except that——”

  “That I am a first class hypnotic subject, no doubt,” said he gloomily.

  “So it seems.” Then I added: “But if you had given me back the stone the other day, your mother says nothing would have happened.”

  “But, then, I should have learned nothing. I should never have been quite sure that the vision I see in the stone is something that has appeared before,—appeared to your ancestor. Call it the inspiration for his castle,—his ideal. Call it my ideal. But then——”

  He stopped and looked intently at me: “Why not yours? You are his descendant, and a would-be architect, at that. Why shouldn’t you see it better than I?” He pulled the stone out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Mother says I must stop crystal-gazing,” he added; “and as I have promised her to give you your property, here it is. You can lock it up in a safe; but mother would say ‘don’t look into it.’ Wouldn’t you, mother?”

  “I’d say, ‘throw it into the lime-kiln down yonder, when it is on fire,’ ” said the old lady.

  Her earnest face beamed with delight as I took the relic from her boy, wrapped it up, and squeezed it into my pocket.

  Under the circumstances, I realized that events had defeated the purpose of my visit. Another glance at my friend convinced me that it was no time to add my burden to his troubles, and after a short talk on other subjects, in which I found him almost too weak to listen to me, I took my leave.

  In crossing the garden, impelled by curiosity, I took the crystal out of my pocket and held it up to the light. Then, near the corner of the barn, I stopped and laid it down on the top of a barrel that stood there. Could it be possible that it had had such an effect on Pryor? After examining the inscription and turning the stone over several times, I had fixed my eyes on one of the bright spots and was staring at it, when I heard the deep voice of Shronk behind me.

  “Why will you look today, my friend, when you see nothing?”

  As I turned upon the tall, thin figure, I noticed a slightly contemptuous smile on the rigid fleshless face.

  “You are right,” I agreed; “I see nothing today, or any other day, and I have looked into it several times. Mr. Pryor, in the house there, believes in it. I don’t think I do.”

  “When you are blind, you cannot read. Allow me,” said he, grasping my pulse as he placed his hand on my shoulder. Then, pushing back my hat and resting his long, bony fingers upon my brow, he fixed his sullen black eyes upon me.

  “Yes, you are far away today,” he muttered, “but he can bring you back. There,” he continued, pointing to the marked tablet that I had fallen over, “there is his grave. There we will place your wonder stone.”

  “Not now,” said I, repelled at the singular proposal. “I must go home.” I walked along the wall, paused at the corner, and looked back.

  “But I may bring it to you some day, and you can show me the trick.”

  “Trick, my friend! When you bring me your wonder stone, you learn your tricks,—not from me!”

  viii

  My grandfather was living in Highborough at the time, and though in general he understood my political situation, I had not yet asked his advice upon the moral crisis that clouded it. He was a small, delicately-built man, of noble appearance, popular in spite of his austere manners, admired, if not imitated, for his principles,—an idealist, whose inflexible hostility to slavery years before had lost him his political career through an anti-party vote. Hence I hesitated to risk opposition by consulting him in a case so similar to hi
s own. But, as the time for my decision approached, and as the chances of help from my other friends, including Pryor, had failed, I determined to put my relative’s opinions to the test.

  On leaving my room for the purpose, late one rainy afternoon, while putting on my overcoat, I happened to see Pryor’s crystal in the corner of an open drawer. I picked it up and put it into my pocket.

  It had grown chilly when, about dusk, I reached the large white house on the north hillside, at the corner on Wood Street, where I found my grandfather in his study. He was busily arranging some legal documents piled upon the table and protruding from the pigeonholes of an open cupboard, near which he stood. A fire was flickering under the black marble mantelpiece. He pointed to a chair beside it. “Sit down there, Charlie,” said he. “It’s cold tonight.”

  Several moments passed while I waited for him to leave the cupboard. I looked about the room. Why it happened, I hardly know; yet, as my eyes wandered, in the deepening shadows, from the mantelpiece to the chandelier, and from one well-remembered engraving to another, my decision to consult him on my political crisis suddenly left me. I got up, took my crystal out of my pocket and, finding a place for it among the law books, laid it down on the table. After locking the cupboard, my grandfather, who had heard nothing of the relic as yet, lit the lamp, and then, leaning over the table, picked up the stone and examined it under the light, while I surprised him with its story. We discussed the possibilities of the case, the fate of our castle-building ancestor, the lost treasure, and details of the family tradition that I had never heard before. But above all things, the inscription interested him. The Virgilian motto, which I had often noticed on my late father’s bookplates, had never been explained to me. It hinted, said my grandfather, at calamities, hostile to human effort at all times, typified in this case by a shipwreck.