I was startled and terrified—not only by what I saw, but by the
circumstances under which I saw it. Repeatedly during our ascent of the
hill my eyes, I thought, had traversed the whole reach of that sidewalk,
from street to street. How could they have been insensible to this
dreadful object now so conspicuous in the white moonlight?
As my dazed faculties cleared I observed that the body was in evening
dress; the overcoat thrown wide open revealed the dress-coat, the white
tie, the broad expanse of shirt front pierced by the sword. And—horrible
revelation!—the face, except for its pallor, was that of my companion!
It was to the minutest detail of dress and feature Dr. Dorrimore himself.
Bewildered and horrified, I turned to look for the living man. He was
nowhere visible, and with an added terror I retired from the place, down
the hill in the direction whence I had come. I had taken but a few
strides when a strong grasp upon my shoulder arrested me. I came near
crying out with terror: the dead man, the sword still fixed in his
breast, stood beside me! Pulling out the sword with his disengaged hand,
he flung it from him, the moonlight glinting upon the jewels of its hilt
and the unsullied steel of its blade. It fell with a clang upon the
sidewalk ahead and—vanished! The man, swarthy as before, relaxed his
grasp upon my shoulder and looked at me with the same cynical regard that
I had observed on first meeting him. The dead have not that look—it
partly restored me, and turning my head backward, I saw the smooth white
expanse of sidewalk, unbroken from street to street.
“What is all this nonsense, you devil?” I demanded, fiercely enough,
though weak and trembling in every limb.
“It is what some are pleased to call jugglery,” he answered, with a
light, hard laugh.
He turned down Dupont street and I saw him no more until we met in the
Auburn ravine.
III
On the day after my second meeting with Dr. Dorrimore I did not see him:
the clerk in the Putnam House explained that a slight illness confined
him to his rooms. That afternoon at the railway station I was surprised
and made happy by the unexpected arrival of Miss Margaret Corray and her
mother, from Oakland.
This is not a love story. I am no storyteller, and love as it is cannot
be portrayed in a literature dominated and enthralled by the debasing
tyranny which “sentences letters” in the name of the Young Girl. Under
the Young Girl’s blighting reign—or rather under the rule of those false
Ministers of the Censure who have appointed themselves to the custody of
her welfare—love
veils her sacred fires,
And, unaware, Morality expires,
famished upon the sifted meal and distilled water of a prudish
purveyance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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