I knew no more until six weeks afterward, when I had been nursed back to
life by your own saintly wife in your own beautiful home. All of that
you know, but what you do not know is this—which, however, has no bearing
upon the subject of your psychological researches—at least not upon that
branch of them in which, with a delicacy and consideration all your own,
you have asked for less assistance than I think I have given you:
One moonlight night several years afterward I was passing through Union
square. The hour was late and the square deserted. Certain memories of
the past naturally came into my mind as I came to the spot where I had
once witnessed that fateful assignation, and with that unaccountable
perversity which prompts us to dwell upon thoughts of the most painful
character I seated myself upon one of the benches to indulge them. A man
entered the square and came along the walk toward me. His hands were
clasped behind him, his head was bowed; he seemed to observe nothing. As
he approached the shadow in which I sat I recognized him as the man whom
I had seen meet Julia Margovan years before at that spot. But he was
terribly altered—gray, worn and haggard. Dissipation and vice were in
evidence in every look; illness was no less apparent. His clothing was
in disorder, his hair fell across his forehead in a derangement which was
at once uncanny and picturesque. He looked fitter for restraint than
liberty—the restraint of a hospital.
With no defined purpose I rose and confronted him. He raised his head
and looked me full in the face. I have no words to describe the ghastly
change that came over his own; it was a look of unspeakable terror—he
thought himself eye to eye with a ghost. But he was a courageous man.
“Damn you, John Stevens!” he cried, and lifting his trembling arm he
dashed his fist feebly at my face and fell headlong upon the gravel as I
walked away.
Somebody found him there, stone-dead. Nothing more is known of him, not
even his name. To know of a man that he is dead should be enough.
THE HAUNTED VALLEY
I
HOW TREES ARE FELLED IN CHINA
A HALF-MILE north from Jo. Dunfer’s, on the road from Hutton’s to Mexican
Hill, the highway dips into a sunless ravine which opens out on either
hand in a half-confidential manner, as if it had a secret to impart at
some more convenient season. I never used to ride through it without
looking first to the one side and then to the other, to see if the time
had arrived for the revelation. If I saw nothing—and I never did see
anything—there was no feeling of disappointment, for I knew the
disclosure was merely withheld temporarily for some good reason which I
had no right to question. That I should one day be taken into full
confidence I no more doubted than I doubted the existence of Jo. Dunfer
himself, through whose premises the ravine ran.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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