Holding the singular relic in his hand, he sat down, and for some time looked in silence at the fire. . . .
“Shipwrecks . . . misfortunes.” He spoke in the slow, impressive voice that had thrilled many a jury. “What have they meant to those who have come and gone before us? What do they mean to us? . . . What teaches us to reconcile them with Divine justice on this earth?”
“Certainly not this motto of ours,” said I. “It dwells on the difficulty, but suggests no remedy. We are left in the dark.”
“In the dark?” he repeated. “Never,—if you take it with Virgil’s full text: Tendimus in Latium. Don’t forget that. Those men were pressing on to found Rome. Shipwrecked in body, not in mind. They never abandoned their purpose.”
“I have been wondering,” said I, inspired by his disclosure of a meaning that I had not before heard of, “whether our ancestor’s project was a mere freak of fancy, or, as Pryor contends, the dream of a great architect, and what induced him to give it up. This crystal, which he must have owned, and mislaid or buried, seems to confirm the tradition of some misfortune or illness,—perhaps a quarrel with his father. Pryor would say: ‘a lost ideal?’ ”
“Why lost?” asked my grandfather. “We lose our ideals only when we sell them, betray them for money or for fame or power. Otherwise, they are always ours.” He paused, and for a while we watched the flickering fire in silence, while boyish memories echoed in the once-familiar ring of raindrops on a tin spout just outside the window. The time to unburden my heart to my grandfather had come. But I let it pass. At length, he handed me the stone.
“What do you propose to do with it?” he enquired.
I had intended making a few more experiments in crystal-gazing, and told him so; but he objected.
“We have learned too much of crystal-gazing and hypnotism in late years,” he declared. “With Pryor’s experience as a warning, I should advise locking it up in my safe.”
To this, I made no objection. Nevertheless, the project failed, for when, on lighting a candle, he took me to the large bolt-studded safe in his outer office, the key could not be found. Whereupon, after a long and fruitless search, we gave up the plan, and I returned home, carrying the family treasure with me.
ix
I had hardly reached my room when I realized that, instead of quieting my mental turmoil, my interview with my grandfather had made matters worse. I went to bed late, but could not sleep. As I tried in the wakeful hours to weigh popularity, renown, power, in my moral scales, his broken career rose before me, now as the Quixotic failure of an impractical theorist, now as the lonely triumph of a knight errant, whose polished armor reflected star-gleams in a dark night. The restless day that followed was the last possible interval for my indecision. As its hours passed and evening approached, I sought in vain to reason away what seemed to be my over-estimate of ideal things, to consider as settled the question that I had feared to put to my grandfather. Again and again I got up from my writing-desk, pen in hand, with my unwritten letter before me. The crystal was lying on the table, where, several times, I had noticed it during the day, while its strange association with the questions uppermost in my mind came and went on my thoughts, without relieving them. Now, as my eyes fell upon it, I suddenly remembered my conversation with old Shronk, and with a breath of relief at the thought of a long walk and possible distraction in an interview with the remarkable man, I put on my overcoat and, finding an umbrella, hurried out of the house, with the stone in my pocket.
The wind had risen. The cloudy darkness was broken by glimpses of moonlight and distant flashes of sheet-lightning, as I walked rapidly over the nine miles of rough and winding road, until where the highway entered the river hills, a deserted lane led down a ravine to the old man’s cabin. There I stopped, to hold my own against the wind, which, whirling in sudden gusts, nearly blew me off my feet. The light, seen as I approached the little house below me, shone from under a rotting porch, where, after stumbling through a bed of periwinkle that obstructed the path and pulling forward a rickety gate, I reached the door. When it opened in answer to my knock, the cadaverous stooping figure of old Shronk stood before me.
x
No doubt the old man was accustomed to night calls. At any rate, he showed no surprise at mine. On the contrary, he pretended that he had expected me.
“Um-um-um,” he chuckled, nodding his emaciated head for a while without speaking, as if something, denied by somebody, had been proved to his satisfaction.
“When I wish you, then you come,” he at length said. I felt my boyish fear of the deep-set eyes, turned upon me with their peculiar, sullen glitter.
“What?” I asked. “Do you mean that you knew I was coming?”
“More, my friend: I know you bring me your wonder stone.”
With the usual fortune-teller’s knack, he must have read my face, I thought, as, entering the little room, I pulled the relic out of my pocket.
“Here it is,” said I. “You told me you would show me the wonders. But when I look in it, I see no wonders. Nothing at all.”
He took it from me and closed the door against the boisterous wind. Then, carrying it to a kerosene lamp that stood on a table in the corner, he raised, lowered, and turned it in the light.
“Are you well tonight?” he asked, looking back upon me, while the deep shadows from the lamplight upon his vellum skin seemed to transform his head into a skull.
“Well enough,” I answered. “But I feel nervous,—I’m worried. Though it has nothing to do with the stone.”
“You are wrong, my friend. It is all in the stone. There you will see what you hunt for tonight.”
He opened an inner door. Then, going to the mantel, pulled a long paper-twist out of a glass, and holding it to the lamp until it blazed, lit a candle.
“Wait here,” he ordered, as, picking up the crystal, he went with the candle into the dark inner room and closed the door.
xi
The wind was making a loud noise in the trees outside, and I felt the little house shake. But, in spite of the sounds and rumblings of thunder, I could hear him moving about behind the thin board partition. At last the door opened.
“Come here,” said Shronk, beckoning me from the threshold with several long-circling sweeps of a black cane held in his left hand. Then, as he turned back, I followed him. The whitewashed inner room, with its log walls and low rough-hewn ceiling, was lit by four candles, set upon a table, in bottles, between which, on a piece of fur, lay the crystal. Reflecting the light in all directions, it seemed to glow more brightly than ever before.
Deliberately placing his cane upon the table, where I noticed that it was twisted or carved into the form of a snake, the old man turned, and, looking fixedly at me, stepped forward. At his request, I held out my wrist. He seized it with one of his gnarled hands and, pressing the other upon my forehead, slowly brought his palm downward toward my eyes. Just as I closed them, the little room, through its two small windows, was illumined by a flash of lightning. The following clap of thunder seemed delayed for a long time, during which I felt a twitching sensation, as the old man’s knotted fingers bore upon my closed eyelids. When I opened my eyes again, the black cane was standing upright in a hole in the table-top. Shronk was pointing at the stone.
“Now look, my friend,” he said, as his forefinger approached the brightest part of the crystal, touched it, and drew back. Just then another still more brilliant flash was followed by a tremendous report that shook the whole house. I felt a quick-passing dizziness, followed by a shortness of breath, and drew back in alarm.
“Hadn’t we better wait,” I asked, “until this is over?”
“Look now,” came the answer in a loud threatening voice, “or you see nothing. It is all for you.”
I leaned forward and stared intently upon the gleaming stone. For a
moment its glitter seemed to contract into a scintillating focus, then to increase and quiver in the outlines of a Gothic castle. Slowly the picture grew, until the candles, the stone, the snake-cane, the room, expanded into a transcendent radiance of innumerable gables, turrets, and pinnacles. I saw a swirl of clouds and a waving of banners. But the blast of trumpets I heard was a terrible crash of thunder, annihilating consciousness, as the vision vanished in darkness.
xii
When I awoke I found myself lying upon a pile of straw on the floor of a barn, through the open door of which I saw a red glow, with clouds of smoke, and moving figures of men. Slowly recovering my senses, I got up with difficulty and, in spite of my dizziness, staggered out, to a freshly-fallen tree and looked about me in the rain-cooled air. At length, from one of the farmers, I learned that the red illumination, a cellar full of live embers, was all that remained of Shronk’s cabin. He told me that I had had a very narrow escape from the burning house, which had been struck by lightning, had caught fire, and from which Shronk had dragged me at the last moment. The old man had lost everything, and as he had burned himself badly, had been taken to a neighboring house and put to bed.
Postponing my plans for his help and comfort, that night I accepted the farmer’s offer to take me home, and without again seeing the singular character who had saved my life, climbed into the wagon, and we drove off.
Not until we reached the top of the hill, did I remember with dismay the stone that had brought me there. Could Shronk have rescued it from the fire? No. It was gone, buried under the embers, melted, shattered, lost. But as I looked down on the scene of desolation and thought of its motto, it seemed that, after all, evil had triumphed. Fatal facts contradicted my grandfather’s fine theory. Had I dabbled in sorcery? If so, what but misfortune had clung like a curse to the relic,—and even now rose from the smoke and fire below me? For a time I gazed upon the red glare, and never lost it until, turning the corner of the hill, I closed my eyes and sank back upon the seat. Then slowly, unexpectedly, and without effort of will, the dazzling vision seen in the cabin, again rose upon my inner sense.
In wonder, growing into ecstacy, I watched it, as several times it dimmed, to brighten again before it slowly faded away.
While we jolted onward upon the stony road, a joyful elation, as of final relief from a crushing burden, replaced my gloomy doubts. Shut off from the reality of the sights and sounds about me, I scarcely heard the driver’s voice as he talked on, of the fire; until, after trying in vain to listen to him, I fell asleep.
At last, we reached home. The morning was half gone, and, after a bath and change of clothes, I had just finished my breakfast when, following a ring of the door-bell, my friend Pryor appeared. To my pleased surprise, he seemed to have recovered his health and spirits, as, with his old smile, he grasped my hand and held it for some time.
“We have decided to prolong our visit,” said he, “and, thank Heaven! I am all right again. But how are you?” he asked after a pause, as he looked anxiously at me. “It is a curious thing, that ever since I reached Highborough this morning I have had a fancy that something has gone wrong with you.”
“So it did, or rather it didn’t,” I returned contradicting myself, as I hurriedly related my narrow escape.
“You ought to be in bed,” said he.
“On the contrary, I believe I feel better. I have had an infernal incubus on my mind for the last week, and this thing has lifted it. That letter on the table there that I have been trying to write was too much for me. Could I, or couldn’t I, sell my soul to the Devil,—or the politicians, whichever you choose to call it? The question was driving me mad; but I have seen your castle, and it has settled the matter. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
“Yet, you might have missed it. It seemed hopelessly hidden from you at first.”
“So it did,” I admitted. “It may be hypnotism. But it is none the less curious that you, of yourself, and I, thanks to old Shronk, should have seen the same thing. Both times a castle.”
“And both times with a dose of misfortune thrown in,” said Pryor. “My trances and your thunderstorm. It’s that unfortunate motto of yours.”
“No! We’re wrong there. According to my grandfather, we misread the motto and lost the point.”
“How so?” asked Pryor.
“We must go back to Virgil. The real meaning of the poet is in words the motto leaves out,—the idea of final victory. Read out the text: Tendimus in Latium.”
“You mean that they went on to Latium, in spite of the shipwreck and the misfortune.”
“Yes,—they founded Rome.”
“Splendid!” exclaimed Pryor. “I lost that in Virgil. But it reconciles the motto to the vision.”
“Exactly,” I agreed. “The castle becomes an ideal. That we hold on to, in spite of the Devil and all his angels.”
“Just as I thought it was from the first, without knowing why,” said Pryor.
“Now that the stone is gone, it is fortunate that I have seen your castle, thunderstorm included,” I continued, “or I should never have known what you were talking about. So much for hypnotism. But how wonderful, how astonishing it is, merely as a picture! Don’t you think so? Those unearthly pinnacles that pierce the clouds! If I were a painter, as you are, and saw a thing like that, I would feel that I had got hold of my ladder of fortune and only needed to climb up—up—up.”
“But the ladder is yours as well as mine.”
“Why? I am not a painter, and never could be.”
“What are you?”
I got up, seized his hand, and looked deep into his glowing eyes.
“I didn’t know, till just now,” said I. “I thought I was a politician. But I have decided that I am an architect!”
THE NORTH FERRY BRIDGE
i
When, about forty years ago, as a young doctor, I came to Bridgenorth to begin practice, I was unmarried, and my means, though sufficient to provide me with comfortable quarters, did not warrant me, as I thought, at the start in keeping a horse and carriage. Hence, I walked to my patients. This did very well for a time. But Bridgenorth in those days, before the hand of modern improvement had touched it, with its sagged and winding streets, interrupted by two ill-directed streams, with its weary detours and dead intervals, was a very exacting place for a pedestrian doctor. Bad enough in the day time, but worse at night; and, as my practice grew, my exhausting beats, among poorer patients, drawing me farther and farther into the widespread suburbs, and often protracted until the early hours of the morning, began to tell seriously upon my strength and sleep.
It was during these late and fatiguing walks, when unfamiliar shadows creep over the sleeping city and things half seen mask in exaggerated shapes before the tired mind, that I came by a series of impressions, vague, elusive, yet strangely disagreeable, from passing glimpses of a man often met upon the deserted streets. Judging from his looks and the large glazed shoulder pack, he might have been one of the then not uncommon itinerant pedlars. Always hurrying and always alone, he never appeared before midnight, and generally much later. I saw him in widely distinct parts of the city, vanishing across commons, or at street corners, sometimes entering, sometimes leaving private enclosures. But at first nothing seemed more remarkable about him than the late hours he kept, and I paid no particular attention to him, until one windy night, at the house of a patient, when I had gone down stairs to get some hot water and was about to light a candle in the kitchen, I happened to see him through one of the shutterless windows. He was standing in the bright moonlight against a background of swaying trees near the corner of a wall and had set his pack upon the ground, when, as I watched him, he partly removed the glazed cover, opened a lid, turned the bundle upside down, and jostled it against a pile of rubbish close by. After the process had continued for some time, although I s
aw nothing fall out, he stood up the pack and closed it. As he shouldered it, by means of its arm-straps, and walked out of range of the windows, I noticed, under the broad hat brim, his very pale aquiline features, protruding teeth, and a peculiar unpleasant glitter in his prominent eyes.
The incident impressed and puzzled me; but, on going upstairs, where I found the wife of my sailor patient devotedly nursing her sick husband, I concluded that the woman was too much worried at the time to be needlessly disturbed by my experience, so finished my work and went home without mentioning it.
ii
At that time my distinguished uncle, who for years had been living alone at Bridgenorth and had been instrumental in my coming there, was my only friend. He was a very handsome man, past middle age, who since his retirement from the Bench, on the death of his wife and only son, had turned his back upon public life, and in spite of his success as a legal essayist and his rare social talents, had made few friends.
But beyond all ties of blood, the sparkling wit that graced his gifted mind, the eager yet kindly manners, had won me from the first; and as he seemed to enjoy my company when he honored me with his, we often exchanged visits.
One evening, I well remember my satisfaction at the sudden advent of a thunderstorm that had detained him with me after supper, when, as we sat at the table, watching the flashes that broke the premature twilight, the subject of our talk turned, from the house in which I lodged, to the notorious Dr. Gooch, its former tenant. In his vivid and graphic style, my uncle described the singular personal appearance of the great chemist, the later events of his career, and, finally, the dramatic criminal trial that had ended in his downfall.
November Night Tales Page 3