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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ghost, by William. D. O'Connor
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Ghost
+
+Author: William. D. O'Connor
+
+Illustrator: Thomas Nast
+
+Release Date: October 5, 2008 [EBook #26779]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GHOST ***
+
+
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+
+Produced by David Clarke, Mary Meehan and the Online
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+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/title.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h1>The Ghost.</h1>
+
+<h2>BY WM. D. O'CONNOR.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>WITH TWO ILLUSTRATIONS BY THOS. NAST.</h3>
+
+
+
+<h3>NEW YORK:<br />
+G. P. PUTNAM &amp; SON, 661 BROADWAY.<br />
+LONDON: SAMPSON LOW &amp; CO.<br />
+1867.</h3>
+
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The New York Printing Company</span>,<br />
+<i>81, 83, and 85 Centre Street</i>,<br />
+<span class="smcap">New York.</span></h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/frontis.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2>The Ghost.</h2>
+
+<h3>A CHRISTMAS STORY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>At the West End of Boston is a quarter of some fifty streets, more or
+less, commonly known as Beacon Hill.</p>
+
+<p>It is a rich and respectable quarter, sacred to the abodes of Our First
+Citizens. The very houses have become sentient of its prevailing
+character of riches and respectability; and, when the twilight deepens
+on the place, or at high noon, if your vision is gifted, you may see
+them as long rows of Our First Giants, with very corpulent or very broad
+fronts, with solid-set feet of sidewalk ending in square-toed curbstone,
+with an air about them as if they had thrust their hard hands into their
+wealthy pockets forever, with a character of arctic reserve, and portly
+dignity, and a well-dressed, full-fed, self-satisfied, opulent, stony,
+repellant aspect to each, which says plainly: "I belong to a rich
+family, of the very highest respectability."</p>
+
+<p>History, having much to say of Beacon Hill generally, has, on the
+present occasion, something to say particularly of a certain street
+which bends over the eminence, sloping steeply down to its base. It is
+an old street&mdash;quaint, quiet, and somewhat picturesque. It was young
+once, though&mdash;having been born before the Revolution, and was then given
+to the city by its father, Mr. Middlecott, who died without heirs, and
+did this much for posterity. Posterity has not been grateful to Mr.
+Middlecott. The street bore his name till he was dust, and then got the
+more aristocratic epithet of Bowdoin. Posterity has paid him by effacing
+what would have been his noblest epitaph. We may expect, after this, to
+see Faneuil Hall robbed of its name, and called Smith Hall! Republics
+are proverbially ungrateful. What safer claim to public remembrance has
+the old Huguenot, Peter Faneuil, than the old Englishman, Mr.
+Middlecott? Ghosts, it is said, have risen from the grave to reveal
+wrongs done them by the living; but it needs no ghost from the grave to
+prove the proverb about republics.</p>
+
+<p>Bowdoin street only differs from its kindred, in a certain shady, grave,
+old-fogy, fossil aspect, just touched with a pensive solemnity, as if it
+thought to itself, "I'm getting old but I'm highly respectable; that's a
+comfort." It has, moreover, a dejected, injured air, as if it brooded
+solemnly on the wrong done to it by taking away its original name, and
+calling it Bowdoin; but as if, being a very conservative street, it was
+resolved to keep a cautious silence on the subject, lest the Union
+should go to pieces. Sometimes it wears a profound and mysterious look,
+as if it could tell something if it had a mind to, but thought it best
+not. Something of the ghost of its father&mdash;it was the only child he ever
+had!&mdash;walking there all the night, pausing at the corners to look up at
+the signs, which bear a strange name, and wringing his ghostly hands in
+lamentation at the wrong done his memory! Rumor told it in a whisper,
+many years ago. Perhaps it was believed by a few of the oldest
+inhabitants of the city; but the highly respectable quarter never heard
+of it; and, if it had, would not have been bribed to believe it, by any
+sum. Some one had said that some very old person had seen a phantom
+there. Nobody knew who some one was. Nobody knew who the very old person
+was. Nobody knew who had seen it; nor when; nor how. The very rumor was
+spectral.</p>
+
+<p>All this was many years ago. Since then it has been reported that a
+ghost was seen there one bitter Christmas eve, two or three years back.
+The twilight was already in the street; but the evening lamps were not
+yet lighted in the windows, and the roofs and chimney-tops were still
+distinct in the last clear light of the dropping day. It was light
+enough, however, for one to read, easily, from the opposite sidewalk,
+"Dr. C. Renton," in black letters, on the silver plate of a door, not
+far from the gothic portal of the Swedenborgian church. Near this door
+stood a misty figure, whose sad, spectral eyes floated on vacancy, and
+whose long, shadowy white hair, lifted like an airy weft in the
+streaming wind. That was the ghost! It stood near the door a long time,
+without any other than a shuddering motion, as though it felt the
+searching blast, which swept furiously from the north up the declivity
+of the street, rattling the shutters in its headlong passage. Once or
+twice, when a passer-by, muffled warmly from the bitter air, hurried
+past, the phantom shrank closer to the wall, till he was gone. Its
+vague, mournful face seemed to watch for some one. The twilight
+darkened, gradually; but it did not flit away. Patiently it kept its
+piteous look fixed in one direction&mdash;watching&mdash;watching; and, while the
+howling wind swept frantically through the chill air, it still seemed to
+shudder in the piercing cold.</p>
+
+<p>A light suddenly kindled in an opposite window. As if touched by a gleam
+from the lamp, or as if by some subtle interior illumination, the
+spectre became faintly luminous, and a thin smile seemed to quiver over
+its features. At the same moment, a strong, energetic figure&mdash;Dr.
+Renton, himself&mdash;came in sight, striding down the slope of the pavement
+to his own door, his over-coat thrown back, as if the icy air were a
+tropical warmth to him, his hat set on the back of his head, and the
+loose ends of a 'kerchief about his throat, streaming in the nor'wester.
+The wind set up a howl the moment he came in sight, and swept upon him;
+and a curious agitation began on the part of the phantom. It glided
+rapidly to and fro, and moved in circles, and then, with the same swift,
+silent motion, sailed toward him, as if blown thither by the gale. Its
+long, thin arms, with something like a pale flame spiring from the tips
+of the slender fingers, were stretched out, as in greeting, while the
+wan smile played over its face; and when he rushed by, unheedingly, it
+made a futile effort to grasp the swinging arms with which he appeared
+to buffet back the buffeting gale. Then it glided on by his side,
+looking earnestly into his countenance, and moving its pallid lips with
+agonized rapidity, as if it said: "Look at me&mdash;speak to me&mdash;speak to
+me&mdash;see me!" But he kept his course with unconscious eyes, and a vexed
+frown on his bold, white forehead, betokening an irritated mind. The
+light that had shone in the figure of the phantom, darkened slowly, till
+the form was only a pale shadow. The wind had suddenly lulled, and no
+longer lifted its white hair. It still glided on with him, its head
+drooping on its breast, and its long arms hanging by its side; but when
+he reached the door, it suddenly sprang before him, gazing fixedly into
+his eyes, while a convulsive motion flashed over its grief-worn
+features, as if it had shrieked out a word. He had his foot on the step
+at the moment. With a start, he put his gloved hand to his forehead,
+while the vexed look went out quickly on his face. The ghost watched him
+breathlessly. But the irritated expression came back to his countenance
+more resolutely than before, and he began to fumble in his pocket for a
+latch-key, muttering petulantly, "What the devil is the matter with me
+now!" It seemed to him that a voice had cried, clearly, yet as from
+afar, "Charles Renton!"&mdash;his own name. He had heard it in his startled
+mind; but, then, he knew he was in a highly wrought state of nervous
+excitement, and his medical science, with that knowledge for a basis,
+could have reared a formidable fortress of explanation against any
+phenomenon, were it even more wonderful than this.</p>
+
+<p>He entered the house; kicked the door to; pulled off his over-coat;
+wrenched off his outer 'kerchief; slammed them on a branch of the
+clothes-tree; banged his hat on top of them; wheeled about; pushed in
+the door of his library; strode in, and, leaving the door ajar, threw
+himself into an easy chair, and sat there in the fire-reddened dusk,
+with his white brows knit, and his arms tightly locked on his breast.
+The ghost had followed him, sadly, and now stood motionless in a corner
+of the room, its spectral hands crossed on its bosom, and its white
+locks drooping down.</p>
+
+<p>It was evident Dr. Renton was in a bad humor. The very library caught
+contagion from him, and became grouty and sombre. The furniture was
+grim, and sullen, and sulky; it made ugly shadows on the carpet and on
+the wall, in allopathic quantity; it took the red gleams from the fire
+on its polished surfaces, in hom[oe]opathic globules, and got no good
+from them. The fire itself peered out sulkily from the black bars of the
+grate, and seemed resolved not to burn the fresh deposit of black coals
+at the top, but to take this as a good time to remember that those coals
+had been bought in the summer at five dollars a ton&mdash;under price, mind
+you&mdash;when poor people, who cannot buy at advantage, but must get their
+firing in the winter, would then have given nine or ten dollars for
+them. And so (glowered the fire), I am determined to think of that
+outrage, and not to light them, but to go out myself, directly! And the
+fire got into such a spasm of glowing indignation over the injury, that
+it lit a whole tier of black coals with a series of little explosions,
+before it could cool down, and sent a crimson gleam over the moody
+figure of its owner in the easy chair, and over the solemn furniture,
+and into the shadowy corner filled by the ghost.</p>
+
+<p>The spectre did not move when Dr. Renton arose and lit the chandelier.
+It stood there, still and gray, in the flood of mellow light. The
+curtains were drawn, and the twilight without had deepened into
+darkness. The fire was now burning in despite of itself, fanned by the
+wintry gusts, which found their way down the chimney. Dr. Renton stood
+with his back to it, his hands behind him, his bold white forehead
+shaded by a careless lock of black hair, and knit sternly; and the same
+frown in his handsome, open, searching dark eyes. Tall and strong, with
+an erect port, and broad, firm shoulders, high, resolute features, a
+commanding figure garbed in aristocratic black, and not yet verging into
+the proportions of obesity&mdash;take him for all in all, a very fine and
+favorable specimen of the solid men of Boston. And seen in contrast (oh!
+could he but have known it!) with the attenuated figure of the poor, dim
+ghost!</p>
+
+<p>Hark! a very light foot on the stairs&mdash;a rich rustle of silks.
+Everything still again&mdash;Dr. Renton looking fixedly, with great
+sternness, at the half-open door, from whence a faint, delicious perfume
+floats into the library. Somebody there, for certain. Somebody peeping
+in with very bright, arch eyes. Dr. Renton knew it, and prepared to
+maintain his ill-humor against the invader. His face became triply armed
+with severity for the encounter. That's Netty, I know, he thought. His
+daughter. So it was. In she bounded. Bright little Netty! Gay little
+Netty! A dear and sweet little creature, to be sure, with a delicate and
+pleasant beauty of face and figure, it needed no costly silks to grace
+or heighten. There she stood. Not a word from her merry lips, but a
+smile which stole over all the solitary grimness of the library, and
+made everything better, and brighter, and fairer, in a minute. It
+floated down into the cavernous humor of Dr. Renton, and the gloom began
+to lighten directly&mdash;though he would not own it, nor relax a single
+feature. But the wan ghost in the corner lifted its head to look at her,
+and slowly brightened as to something worthy a spirit's love, and a dim
+phantom's smiles. Now then, Dr. Renton! the lines are drawn, and the foe
+is coming. Be martial, sir, as when you stand in the ranks of the cadets
+on training-days! Steady, and stand the charge! So he did. He kept an
+inflexible front as she glided toward him, softly, slowly, with her
+bright eyes smiling into his, and doing dreadful execution. Then she put
+her white arms around his neck, laid her dear, fair head on his breast,
+and peered up archly into his stern visage. Spite of himself, he could
+not keep the fixed lines on his face from breaking confusedly into a
+faint smile. Somehow or other, his hands came from behind him, and
+rested on her head. There! That's all. Dr. Renton surrendered at
+discretion! One of the solid men of Boston was taken after a desperate
+struggle&mdash;internal, of course&mdash;for he kissed her, and said, "Dear little
+Netty!" And so she was.</p>
+
+<p>The phantom watched her with a smile, and wavered and brightened as if
+about to glide to her; but it grew still, and remained.</p>
+
+<p>"Pa in the sulks to-night?" she asked, in the most winning, playful,
+silvery voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Pa's a fool," he answered in his deep chest-tones, with a vexed good
+humor; "and you know it."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with pa? What makes him be a great bear? Papa-sy,
+dear," she continued, stroking his face with her little hands, and
+patting him, very much as Beauty might have patted the Beast after she
+fell in love with him&mdash;or, as if he were a great baby. In fact, he began
+to look then as if he were.</p>
+
+<p>"Matter? Oh! everything's the matter, little Netty. The world goes round
+too fast. My boots pinch. Somebody stole my umbrella last year. And I've
+got a headache." He concluded this fanciful abstract of his grievances
+by putting his arms around her, and kissing her again. Then he sat down
+in the easy-chair, and took her fondly on his knee.</p>
+
+<p>"Pa's got a headache! It is t-o-o bad, so it is," she continued in the
+same soothing, winning way, caressing his bold, white brow with her tiny
+hands. "It's a horrid shame, so it is! P-o-o-r pa. Where does it ache,
+papa-sy, dear? In the forehead? Cerebrum or cerebellum, papa-sy? Occiput
+or sinciput, deary?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bah! you little quiz," he replied, laughing and pinching her cheek,
+"none of your nonsense! And what are you dressed up in this way for,
+to-night? Silks, and laces, and essences, and what not! Where are you
+going, fairy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Going out with mother for the evening, Dr. Renton," she replied
+briskly; "Mrs. Larrabee's party, papa-sy. Christmas eve, you know. And
+what are you going to give me for a present, to-morrow, pa-sy?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow will tell, little Netty."</p>
+
+<p>"Good! And what are you going to give me, so that I can make <i>my</i>
+presents, Beary?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ugh!" but he growled it in fun, and had a pocket-book out from his
+breast-pocket directly after. Fives&mdash;tens&mdash;twenties&mdash;fifties&mdash;all crisp,
+and nice, and new bank-notes.</p>
+
+<p>"Will that be enough, Netty?" He held up a twenty. The smiling face
+nodded assent, and the bright eyes twinkled.</p>
+
+<p>"No, it won't. But <i>that</i> will," he continued, giving her a fifty.</p>
+
+<p>"Fifty dollars, Globe Bank, Boston!" exclaimed Netty, making great eyes
+at him. "But we must take all we can get, pa-sy; mustn't we? It's too
+much, though. Thank you all the same, pa-sy, nevertheless." And she
+kissed him, and put the bill in a little bit of a portemonnaie with a
+gay laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Well done, I declare!" he said, smilingly. "But you're going to the
+party?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty soon, pa."</p>
+
+<p>He made no answer; but sat smiling at her. The phantom watched them,
+silently.</p>
+
+<p>"What made pa so cross and grim, to-night? Tell Netty&mdash;do," she pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! because;&mdash;everything went wrong with me, to-day. There." And he
+looked as sulky, at that moment, as he ever did in his life.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, pa-sy; that won't do. I want the particulars," continued Netty,
+shaking her head, smilingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Particulars! Well, then, Miss Nathalie Renton," he began, with mock
+gravity, "your professional father is losing some of his oldest
+patients. Everybody is in ruinous good health; and the grass is growing
+in the graveyards."</p>
+
+<p>"In the winter-time, papa?&mdash;smart grass!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I want practice," he went on, getting into soliloquy; "or
+patients, either. A rich man who took to the profession simply for the
+love of it, can't complain on that score. But to have an interloping
+she-doctor take a family I've attended ten years, out of my hands, and
+to hear the hodge-podge gabble about physiological laws, and woman's
+rights, and no taxation without representation, they learn from
+her&mdash;well, it's too bad!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all, pa-sy? Seems to me, <i>I'd</i> like to vote, too," was Netty's
+piquant rejoinder.</p>
+
+<p>"Hoh! I'll warrant," growled her father. "Hope you'll vote the Whig
+ticket, Netty, when you get your rights."</p>
+
+<p>"Will the Union be dissolved, then, pa-sy&mdash;when the Whigs are beaten?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bah! you little plague," he growled, with a laugh. "But, then, you
+women don't know anything about politics. So, there. As I was saying,
+everything went wrong with me to-day. I've been speculating in railroad
+stock, and singed my fingers. Then, old Tom Hollis outbid me, to-day, at
+Leonard's on a rare medical work I had set my eyes upon having. Confound
+him! Then, again, two of my houses are tenantless, and there are folks
+in two others that won't pay their rent, and I can't get them out. Out
+they'll go, though, or I'll know why. And, to crown all&mdash;um-m. And I
+wish the devil had him! as he will."</p>
+
+<p>"Had who, Beary-papa?"</p>
+
+<p>"Him. I'll tell you. The street floor of one of my houses in Hanover
+street lets for an oyster-room. They keep a bar there, and sell liquor.
+Last night they had a grand row&mdash;a drunken fight, and one man was
+stabbed, it's thought fatally."</p>
+
+<p>"O, father!" Netty's bright eyes dilated with horror.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I hope he won't die. At any rate, there's likely to be a stir
+about the matter, and my name will be called into question, then, as I'm
+the landlord. And folks will make a handle of it, and there'll be the
+deuce to pay, generally."</p>
+
+<p>He got back the stern, vexed frown, to his face, with the anticipation,
+and beat the carpet with his foot. The ghost still watched from the
+angle of the room, and seemed to darken, while its features looked
+troubled.</p>
+
+<p>"But, father," said Netty, a little tremulously, "I wouldn't let my
+houses to such people. It's not right; is it? Why, it's horrid to think
+of men getting drunk, and killing each other!"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Renton rubbed his hair into disorder, with vexation, and then
+subsided into solemnity.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it's not exactly right, Netty; but I can't help it. As I said
+before, I wish the devil had that bar-keeper. I ought to have ordered
+him out long ago, and then this wouldn't have happened. I've increased
+his rent twice, hoping to get rid of him so; but he pays without a
+murmur; and what am I to do? You see, he was an occupant when the
+building came into my hands, and I let him stay. He pays me a good,
+round rent; and, apart from his cursed traffic, he's a good tenant. What
+can I do? It's a good thing for him, and it's a good thing for me,
+pecuniarily. Confound him. Here's a nice rumpus brewing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear pa, I'm afraid it's not a good thing for you," said Netty,
+caressing him, and smoothing his tumbled hair. "Nor for him either. I
+wouldn't mind the rent he pays you. I'd order him out. It's bad money.
+There's blood on it."</p>
+
+<p>She had grown pale, and her voice quivered. The phantom glided over to
+them, and laid its spectral hand upon her forehead. The shadowy eyes
+looked from under the misty hair into the doctor's face, and the pale
+lips moved as if speaking the words heard only in the silence of his
+heart&mdash;"hear her, hear her!"</p>
+
+<p>"I must think of it," resumed Dr. Renton, coldly. "I'm resolved, at all
+events, to warn him that if anything of this kind occurs again, he must
+quit at once. I dislike to lose a profitable tenant; for no other
+business would bring me the sum his does. Hang it, everybody does the
+best he can with his property&mdash;why shouldn't I?"</p>
+
+<p>The ghost, standing near them, drooped its head again on its breast, and
+crossed its arms. Netty was silent. Dr. Renton continued, petulantly:</p>
+
+<p>"A precious set of people I manage to get into my premises. There's a
+woman hires a couple of rooms for a dwelling, overhead, in that same
+building, and for three months I haven't got a cent from her. I know
+these people's tricks. Her month's notice expires to-morrow, and out she
+goes."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor creature!" sighed Netty.</p>
+
+<p>He knit his brow, and beat the carpet with his foot, in vexation.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps she can't pay you, pa," trembled the sweet, silvery voice. "You
+wouldn't turn her out in this cold winter, when she can't pay you&mdash;would
+you, pa?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't she get another house, and swindle some one else?" he
+replied, testily; "there's plenty of rooms to let."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps she can't find one, pa," answered Netty.</p>
+
+<p>"Humbug!" retorted her father; "I know better."</p>
+
+<p>"Pa, dear, if I were you, I'd turn out that rumseller, and let the poor
+woman stay a little longer; just a little, pa."</p>
+
+<p>"Shan't do it. Hah! that would be scattering money out of both pockets.
+Shan't do it. Out she shall go; and as for him&mdash;well, he'd better turn
+over a new leaf. There, let us leave the subject, darling. It vexes me.
+How did we contrive to get into this train. Bah!"</p>
+
+<p>He drew her closer to him, and kissed her forehead. She sat quietly,
+with her head on his shoulder, thinking very gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel queerly to-day, little Netty," he began, after a short pause.
+"My nerves are all high-strung with the turn matters have taken."</p>
+
+<p>"How is it, papa? The headache?" she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Y-e-s&mdash;n-o&mdash;not exactly; I don't know," he said dubiously; then, in an
+absent way, "it was that letter set me to think of him all day, I
+suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, pa, I declare," cried Netty, starting up, "if I didn't forget all
+about it, and I came down expressly to give it to you! Where is it? Oh!
+here it is."</p>
+
+<p>She drew from her pocket an old letter, faded to a pale yellow, and gave
+it to him. The ghost started suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, bless my soul! it's the very letter! Where did you get that,
+Nathalie?" asked Dr. Renton.</p>
+
+<p>"I found it on the stairs after dinner, pa."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I do remember taking it up with me; I must have dropped it," he
+answered, musingly, gazing at the superscription. The ghost was gazing
+at it, too, with startled interest.</p>
+
+<p>"What beautiful writing it is, pa," murmured the young girl. "Who wrote
+it to you? It looks yellow enough to have been written a long time
+since."</p>
+
+<p>"Fifteen years ago, Netty. When you were a baby. And the hand that wrote
+it has been cold for all that time."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with a solemn sadness, as if memory lingered with the heart of
+fifteen years ago, on an old grave. The dim figure by his side had bowed
+its head, and all was still.</p>
+
+<p>"It is strange," he resumed, speaking vacantly and slowly, "I have not
+thought of him for so long a time, and to-day&mdash;especially this
+evening&mdash;I have felt as if he were constantly near me. It is a singular
+feeling."</p>
+
+<p>He put his left hand to his forehead, and mused&mdash;his right clasped his
+daughter's shoulder. The phantom slowly raised its head, and gazed at
+him with a look of unutterable tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>"Who was he, father?" she asked with a hushed voice.</p>
+
+<p>"A young man&mdash;an author&mdash;a poet. He had been my dearest friend, when we
+were boys; and, though I lost sight of him for years&mdash;he led an erratic
+life&mdash;we were friends when he died. Poor, poor fellow! Well, he is at
+peace."</p>
+
+<p>The stern voice had saddened, and was almost tremulous. The spectral
+form was still.</p>
+
+<p>"How did he die, father?"</p>
+
+<p>"A long story, darling," he replied gravely, "and a sad one. He was very
+poor and proud. He was a genius&mdash;that is, a person without an atom of
+practical talent. His parents died, the last, his mother, when he was
+near manhood. I was in college then. Thrown upon the world, he picked up
+a scanty subsistence with his pen, for a time. I could have got him a
+place in the counting-house, but he would not take it; in fact, he
+wasn't fit for it. You can't harness Pegasus to the cart, you know.
+Besides, he despised mercantile life&mdash;without reason, of course; but he
+was always notional. His love of literature was one of the rocks he
+foundered on. He wasn't successful; his best compositions were too
+delicate&mdash;fanciful&mdash;to please the popular taste; and then he was full of
+the radical and fanatical notions which infected so many people at that
+time in New England, and infect them now, for that matter; and his
+sublimated, impracticable ideas and principles, which he kept till his
+dying day, and which, I confess, alienated me from him, always staved
+off his chances of success. Consequently, he never rose above the
+drudgery of some employment on newspapers. Then he was terribly
+passionate, not without cause, I allow; but it wasn't wise. What I mean
+is this: if he saw, or if he fancied he saw, any wrong or injury done to
+any one, it was enough to throw him into a frenzy; he would get black in
+the face and absolutely shriek out his denunciations of the wrongdoer. I
+do believe he would have visited his own brother with the most unsparing
+invective, if that brother had laid a harming finger on a street-beggar,
+or a colored man, or a poor person of any kind. I don't blame the
+feeling; though with a man like him, it was very apt to be a false or
+mistaken one; but, at any rate, its exhibition wasn't sensible. Well, as
+I was saying, he buffeted about in this world a long time, poorly paid,
+fed, and clad; taking more care of other people than he did of himself.
+Then mental suffering, physical exposure, and want killed him."</p>
+
+<p>The stern voice had grown softer than a child's. The same look of
+unutterable tenderness brooded on the mournful face of the phantom by
+his side; but its thin, shining hand was laid upon his head, and its
+countenance had undergone a change. The form was still undefined; but
+the features had become distinct. They were those of a young man,
+beautiful and wan, and marked with great suffering.</p>
+
+<p>A pause had fallen on the conversation, in which the father and daughter
+heard the solemn sighing of the wintry wind around the dwelling. The
+silence seemed scarcely broken by the voice of the young girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear father, this was very sad. Did you say he died of want?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of want, my child, of hunger and cold. I don't doubt it. He had
+wandered about, as I gather, houseless for a couple of days and nights.
+It was in December, too. Some one found him, on a rainy night, lying in
+the street, drenched and burning with fever, and had him taken to the
+hospital. It appears that he had always cherished a strange affection
+for me, though I had grown away from him; and in his wild ravings he
+constantly mentioned my name, and they sent for me. That was our first
+meeting after two years. I found him in the hospital&mdash;dying. Heaven can
+witness that I felt all my old love for him return then, but he was
+delirious, and never recognized me. And, Nathalie, his hair&mdash;it had been
+coal-black, and he wore it very long, he wouldn't let them cut it
+either; and as they knew no skill could save him, they let him have his
+way&mdash;his hair was then as white as snow! God alone knows what that brain
+must have suffered to blanch hair which had been as black as the wing of
+a raven!"</p>
+
+<p>He covered his eyes with his hand, and sat silently. The fingers of the
+phantom still shone dimly on his head, and its white locks drooped above
+him, like a weft of light.</p>
+
+<p>"What was his name, father?" asked the pitying girl.</p>
+
+<p>"George Feval. The very name sounds like fever. He died on Christmas
+eve, fifteen years ago this night. It was on his death-bed, while his
+mind was tossing on a sea of delirious fancies, that he wrote me this
+long letter&mdash;for to the last, I was uppermost in his thoughts. It is a
+wild, incoherent thing, of course&mdash;a strange mixture of sense and
+madness. But I have kept it as a memorial of him. I have not looked at
+it for years; but this morning I found it among my papers, and somehow
+it has been in my mind all day."</p>
+
+<p>He slowly unfolded the faded sheets, and sadly gazed at the writing. His
+daughter had risen from her half-recumbent posture, and now bent her
+graceful head over the leaves. The phantom covered its face with its
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"What a beautiful manuscript it is, father!" she exclaimed. "The writing
+is faultless."</p>
+
+<p>"It is, indeed," he replied. "Would he had written his life as fairly!"</p>
+
+<p>"Read it, father," said Nathalie.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;but I'll read you a detached passage here and there," he answered,
+after a pause. "The rest you may read yourself some time, if you wish.
+It is painful to me. Here's the beginning:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>'My Dear Charles Renton:&mdash;Adieu, and adieu. It is Christmas eve, and I
+am going home. I am soon to exhale from my flesh, like the spirit of a
+broken flower. Exultemus forever!'</i></p></div>
+
+<p>"It is very wild. His mind was in a fever-craze. Here is a passage that
+seems to refer to his own experience of life:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>'Your friendship was dear to me. I give you true love. Stocks and
+returns. You are rich, but I did not wish to be your bounty's pauper.
+Could I beg? I had my work to do for the world, but oh! the world has no
+place for souls that can only love and suffer. How many miles to
+Babylon? Threescore and ten. Not so far&mdash;not near so far! Ask
+starvelings&mdash;they know. I wanted to do the world good and the world has
+killed me, Charles.'</i>"</p></div>
+
+<p>"It frightens me," said Nathalie, as he paused.</p>
+
+<p>"We will read no more," he replied sombrely. "It belongs to the
+psychology of madness. To me, who knew him, there are gleams of sense in
+it, and passages where the delirium of the language is only a
+transparent veil on the meaning. All the remainder is devoted to what he
+thought important advice to me. But it's all wild and vague. Poor&mdash;poor
+George!"</p>
+
+<p>The phantom still hid its face in its hands, as the doctor slowly turned
+over the pages of the letter. Nathalie, bending over the leaves, laid
+her finger on the last, and asked&mdash;"What are those closing sentences,
+father? Read them."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! that is what he called his 'last counsel' to me. It's as wild as
+the rest&mdash;tinctured with the prevailing ideas of his career. First he
+says, '<i>Farewell&mdash;farewell</i>;' then he bids me take his '<i>counsel into
+memory on Christmas day</i>;' then, after enumerating all the wretched
+classes he can think of in the country, he says. '<i>These are your
+sisters and your brothers&mdash;love them all</i>.' Here he says, '<i>O friend,
+strong in wealth for so much good, take my last counsel. In the name of
+the Saviour, I charge you be true and tender to mankind.</i>' He goes on to
+bid me '<i>live and labor for the fallen, the neglected, the suffering,
+and the poor</i>;' and finally ends by advising me to help upset any, or
+all, institutions, laws, and so forth, that bear hardly on the fag-ends
+of society; and tells me that what he calls 'a service to humanity' is
+worth more to the doer than a service to anything else, or than anything
+we can gain from the world. Ah, well! poor George."</p>
+
+<p>"But isn't all that true, father?" said Netty; "it seems so."</p>
+
+<p>"H'm," he murmured through his closed lips. Then, with a vague smile,
+folding up the letter, meanwhile, he said, "Wild words, Netty, wild
+words. I've no objection to charity, judiciously given; but poor
+George's notions are not mine. Every man for himself, is a good general
+rule. Every man for humanity, as George has it, and in his acceptation
+of the principle, would send us all to the alms-house pretty soon. The
+greatest good of the greatest number&mdash;that's my rule of action. There
+are plenty of good institutions for the distressed, and I'm willing to
+help support 'em, and do. But as for making a martyr of one's self, or
+tilting against the necessary evils of society, or turning
+philanthropist at large, or any quixotism of that sort, I don't believe
+in it. We didn't make the world, and we can't mend it. Poor George.
+Well&mdash;he's at rest. The world wasn't the place for him."</p>
+
+<p>They grew silent. The spectre glided slowly to the wall, and stood as if
+it were thinking what, with Dr. Renton's rule of action, was to become
+of the greatest good of the smallest number. Nathalie sat on her
+father's knee, thinking only of George Feval, and of his having been
+starved and grieved to death.</p>
+
+<p>"Father," said Nathalie, softly, "I felt, while you were reading the
+letter, as if he were near us. Didn't you? The room was so light and
+still, and the wind sighed so."</p>
+
+<p>"Netty, dear, I've felt that all day, I believe," he replied. "Hark!
+there is the door-bell. Off goes the spirit-world, and here comes the
+actual. Confound it! Some one to see me, I'll warrant, and I'm not in
+the mood."</p>
+
+<p>He got into a fret at once. Netty was not the Netty of an hour ago, or
+she would have coaxed him out of it. But she did not notice it now in
+her abstraction. She had risen at the tinkle of the bell, and seated
+herself in a chair. Presently a nose, with a great pimple on the end of
+it, appeared at the edge of the door, and a weak, piping voice said,
+reckless of the proper tense, "there was a woman wanted to see you,
+sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is it, James?&mdash;no matter, show her in."</p>
+
+<p>He got up with the vexed scowl on his face, and walked the room. In a
+minute the library door opened again, and a pale, thin, rigid,
+frozen-looking little woman, scantily clad, the weather being
+considered, entered, and dropped a curt, awkward bow to Dr. Renton.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Mrs. Miller. Good evening, ma'am. Sit down," he said, with a cold,
+constrained civility.</p>
+
+<p>The little woman faintly said, "Good evening, Dr. Renton," and sat down
+stiffly, with her hands crossed before her, in the chair nearest the
+wall. This was the obdurate tenant, who had paid no rent for three
+months, and had a notice to quit, expiring to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>"Cold evening, ma'am," remarked Dr. Renton, in his hard way.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, it is," was the cowed, awkward answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you sit near the fire, ma'am," said Netty, gently; "you look
+cold."</p>
+
+<p>"No, miss, thank you. I'm not cold," was the faint reply. She was cold,
+though, as well she might be with her poor, thin shawl, and open bonnet,
+in such a bitter night as it was outside. And there was a rigid, sharp,
+suffering look in her pinched features that betokened she might have
+been hungry, too.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor people don't mind the cold weather, miss," she said, with a weak
+smile, her voice getting a little stronger. "They have to bear it, and
+they get used to it."</p>
+
+<p>She had not evidently borne it long enough to effect the point of
+indifference. Netty looked at her with a tender pity. Dr. Renton thought
+to himself&mdash;Hoh!&mdash;blazoning her poverty&mdash;manufacturing sympathy
+already&mdash;the old trick&mdash;and steeled himself against any attacks of that
+kind, looking jealously, meanwhile, at Netty.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mrs. Miller," he said, "what is it this evening? I suppose you've
+brought me my rent."</p>
+
+<p>The little woman grew paler, and her voice seemed to fail on her
+quivering lips. Netty cast a quick, beseeching look at her father.</p>
+
+<p>"Nathalie, please to leave the room." We'll have no nonsense carried on
+here, he thought, triumphantly, as Netty rose, and obeyed the stern,
+decisive order, leaving the door ajar behind her.</p>
+
+<p>He seated himself in his chair, and resolutely put his right leg up to
+rest on his left knee. He did not look at his tenant's face, determined
+that her piteous expressions (got up for the occasion, of course) should
+be wasted on him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mrs. Miller," he said again.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Renton," she began, faintly gathering her voice as she proceeded,
+"I have come to see you about the rent. I am very sorry, sir, to have
+made you wait, but we have been unfortunate."</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry, ma'am," he replied, knowing what was coming; "but your
+misfortunes are not my affair. We all have misfortunes, ma'am. But we
+must pay our debts, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I expected to have got money from my husband before this, sir," she
+resumed, "and I wrote to him. I got a letter from him to-day, sir, and
+it said that he sent me fifty dollars a month ago, in a letter; and it
+appears that the post-office is to blame, or somebody, for I never got
+it. It was nearly three months' wages, sir, and it is very hard to lose
+it. If it hadn't been for that, your rent would have been paid long ago,
+sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't believe a word of <i>that</i> story," thought Dr. Renton,
+sententiously.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought, sir," she continued, emboldened by his silence, "that if you
+would be willing to wait a little longer, we would manage to pay you
+soon, and not let it occur again. It has been a hard winter with us,
+sir; firing is high, and provisions, and everything; and we're only poor
+people, you know, and it's difficult to get along."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>"My husband was unfortunate, sir, in not being able to get employment
+here," she resumed; "his being out of work, in the autumn, threw us all
+back, and we've got nothing to depend on but his earnings. The family
+that he's in now, sir, don't give him very good pay&mdash;only twenty dollars
+a month, and his board&mdash;but it was the best chance he could get, and it
+was either go to Baltimore with them, or stay at home and starve, and so
+he went, sir. It's been a hard time with us, and one of the children is
+sick, now, with a fever, and we don't hardly know how to make out a
+living. And so, sir, I have come here this evening, leaving the children
+alone, to ask you if you wouldn't be kind enough to wait a little
+longer, and we'll hope to make it right with you in the end."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Miller," said Dr. Renton, with stern composure, "I have no wish to
+question the truth of any statement you may make; but I must tell you
+plainly, that I can't afford to let my houses for nothing. I told you a
+month ago, that if you couldn't pay me my rent, you must vacate the
+premises. You know very well that there are plenty of tenants who are
+able and willing to pay when the money comes due. You <i>know</i> that."</p>
+
+<p>He paused as he said this, and, glancing at her, saw her pale lips
+falter. It shook the cruelty of his purpose a little, and he had a vague
+feeling that he was doing wrong. Not without a proud struggle, during
+which no word was spoken, could he beat it down. Meanwhile, the phantom
+had advanced a pace toward the centre of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"That is the state of the matter, ma'am," he resumed, coldly. "People
+who will not pay me my rent must not live in my tenements. You must move
+out. I have no more to say."</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Renton," she said faintly, "I have a sick child&mdash;how can I move
+now? Oh! sir, it's Christmas eve&mdash;don't be hard with us!"</p>
+
+<p>Instead of touching him, this speech irritated him beyond measure.
+Passing all considerations of her difficult position involved in her
+piteous statement, his anger flashed at once on her implication that he
+was unjust and unkind. So violent was his excitement that it whirled
+away the words that rushed to his lips, and only fanned the fury that
+sparkled from the whiteness of his face in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Be patient with us, sir," she continued; "we are poor, but we mean to
+pay you; and we can't move now in this cold weather; please, don't be
+hard with us, sir."</p>
+
+<p>The fury now burst out on his face in a red and angry glow, and the
+words came.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, attend to me!" He rose to his feet. "I will not hear any more from
+you. I know nothing of your poverty, nor of the condition of your
+family. All I know is that you owe me three months' rent, and that you
+can't or won't pay me. I say, therefore, leave the premises to people
+who can and will. You have had your legal notice; quit my house
+to-morrow; if you don't, your furniture shall be put in the street. Mark
+me&mdash;to-morrow!"</p>
+
+<p>The phantom had rushed into the centre of the room. Standing, face to
+face with him&mdash;dilating&mdash;blackening&mdash;its whole form shuddering with a
+fury to which his own was tame&mdash;the semblance of a shriek upon its
+flashing lips, and on its writhing features, and an unearthly anger
+streaming from its bright and terrible eyes&mdash;it seemed to throw down,
+with its tossing arms, mountains of hate and malediction on the head of
+him whose words had smitten poverty and suffering, and whose heavy hand
+was breaking up the barriers of a home.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Renton sank again into his chair. His tenant&mdash;not a woman!&mdash;not a
+sister in humanity!&mdash;but only his tenant; she sat crushed and frightened
+by the wall. He knew it vaguely. Conscience was battling in his heart
+with the stubborn devils that had entered there. The phantom stood
+before him, like a dark cloud in the image of a man. But its darkness
+was lightening slowly, and its ghostly anger had passed away.</p>
+
+<p>The poor woman, paler than before, had sat mute and trembling, with all
+her hopes ruined. Yet her desperation forbade her to abandon the chances
+of his mercy, and she now said:</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Renton, you surely don't mean what you have told me. Won't you bear
+with me a little longer, and we will yet make it all right with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have given you my answer," he returned, coldly; "I have no more to
+add. I never take back anything I say&mdash;never!"</p>
+
+<p>It was true. He never did&mdash;never! She half rose from her seat as if to
+go; but weak and sickened with the bitter result of her visit, she sunk
+down again with her head bowed. There was a pause. Then, solemnly
+gliding across the lighted room, the phantom stole to her side with a
+glory of compassion on its wasted features. Tenderly, as a son to a
+mother, it bent over her; its spectral hands of light rested upon her in
+caressing and benediction; its shadowy fall of hair, once blanched by
+the anguish of living and loving, floated on her throbbing brow; and
+resignation and comfort not of this world, sank upon her spirit, and
+consciousness grew dim within her, and care and sorrow seemed to die.</p>
+
+<p>He who had been so cruel and so hard, sat silent in black gloom. The
+stern and sullen mood from which had dropped but one fierce flash of
+anger, still hung above the heat of his mind, like a dark rack of
+thunder-cloud. It would have burst anew into a fury of rebuke, had he
+but known his daughter was listening at the door, while the colloquy
+went on. It might have flamed violently, had his tenant made any further
+attempt to change his purpose. She had not. She had left the room
+meekly, with the same curt, awkward bow that marked her entrance. He
+recalled her manner very indistinctly; for a feeling, like a mist, began
+to gather in his mind, and make the occurrences of moments before
+uncertain.</p>
+
+<p>Alone, now, he was yet oppressed with a sensation that something was
+near him. Was it a spiritual instinct? for the phantom stood by his
+side. It stood silently, with one hand raised above his head, from which
+a pale flame seemed to flow downward to his brain; its other hand
+pointed movelessly to the open letter on the table beside him.</p>
+
+<p>He took the sheets from the table, thinking, at the moment, only of
+George Feval; but the first line on which his eye rested was, "In the
+name of the Saviour, I charge you, be true and tender to mankind!" and
+the words touched him like a low voice from the grave. Their penetrant
+reproach pierced the hardness of his heart. He tossed the letter back on
+the table. The very manner of the act accused him of an insult to the
+dead. In a moment he took up the faded sheets more reverently, but only
+to lay them down again.</p>
+
+<p>He had not been well that day, and he now felt worse than before. The
+pain in his head had given place to a strange sense of dilation, and
+there was a silent, confused riot in his fevered brain, which seemed to
+him like the incipience of insanity. Striving to divert his mind from
+what had passed, by reflection on other themes, he could not hold his
+thoughts; they came teeming but dim, and slipped and fell away; and only
+the one circumstance of his recent cruelty, mixed with remembrance of
+George Feval, recurred and clung with vivid persistence. This tortured
+him. Sitting there, with arms tightly interlocked, he resolved to wrench
+his mind down by sheer will upon other things; and a savage pleasure at
+what at once seemed success, took possession of him. In this mood, he
+heard soft footsteps and the rustle of festal garments on the stairs,
+and had a fierce complacency in being able to clearly apprehend that it
+was his wife and daughter going out to the party. In a moment, he heard
+the controlled and even voice of Mrs. Renton&mdash;a serene and polished lady
+with whom he had lived for years in cold and civil alienation, both
+seeing as little of each other as possible. With a scowl of will upon
+his brow, he received her image distinctly into his mind, even to the
+minutia of the dress and ornaments he knew she wore, and felt an
+absolutely savage exultation in his ability to retain it. Then came the
+sound of the closing of the hall door and the rattle of receding wheels,
+and somehow it was Nathalie and not his wife that he was holding so
+grimly in his thought, and with her, salient and vivid as before, the
+tormenting remembrance of his tenant, connected with the memory of
+George Feval. Springing to his feet, he walked the room.</p>
+
+<p>He had thrown himself on a sofa, still striving to be rid of his
+remorseful visitations, when the library door opened, and the inside man
+appeared, with his hand held bashfully over his nose. It flashed on him
+at once, that his tenant's husband was the servant of a family like this
+fellow; and, irritated that the whole matter should be thus broadly
+forced upon him in another way, he harshly asked him what he wanted. The
+man only came in to say that Mrs. Renton and the young lady had gone out
+for the evening, but that tea was laid for him in the dining-room. He
+did not want any tea, and if anybody called, he was not at home. With
+this charge, the man left the room, closing the door behind him.</p>
+
+<p>If he could but sleep a little! Rising from the sofa, he turned the
+lights of the chandelier low, and screened the fire. The room was still.
+The ghost stood, faintly radiant, in a remote corner. Dr. Renton lay
+down again, but not to repose. Things he had forgotten of his dead
+friend, now started up again in remembrance, fresh from the grave of
+many years; and not one of them but linked itself by some mysterious
+bond to something connected with his tenant, and became an accusation.</p>
+
+<p>He had lain thus for more than an hour, feeling more and more unmanned
+by illness, and his mental excitement fast becoming intolerable, when he
+heard a low strain of music, from the Swedenborgian chapel, hard by. Its
+first impression was one of solemnity and rest, and its first sense, in
+his mind, was of relief. Perhaps it was the music of an evening meeting;
+or it might be that the organist and choir had met for practice.
+Whatever its purpose, it breathed through his heated fancy like a cool
+and fragrant wind. It was vague and sweet and wandering at first,
+straying on into a strain more mysterious and melancholy, but very
+shadowy and subdued, and evoking the innocent and tender moods of early
+youth before worldliness had hardened around his heart. Gradually, as he
+listened to it, the fires in his brain were allayed, and all yielded to
+a sense of coolness and repose. He seemed to sink from trance to trance
+of utter rest, and yet was dimly aware that either something in his own
+condition, or some supernatural accession of tone, was changing the
+music from its proper quality to a harmony more infinite and awful. It
+was still low and indeterminate and sweet, but had unaccountably and
+strangely swelled into a gentle and sombre dirge, incommunicably
+mournful, and filled with a dark significance that touched him in his
+depth of rest with a secret tremor and awe. As he listened, rapt and
+vaguely wondering, the sense of his tranced sinking seemed to come to an
+end, and with the feeling of one who had been descending for many hours,
+and at length lay motionless at the bottom of a deep, dark chasm, he
+heard the music fail and cease.</p>
+
+<p>A pause, and then it rose again, blended with the solemn voices of the
+choir, sublimed and dilated now, reaching him as though from weird night
+gulfs of the upper air, and charged with an overmastering pathos as of
+the lamentations of angels. In the dimness and silence, in the aroused
+and exalted condition of his being, the strains seemed unearthly in
+their immense and desolate grandeur of sorrow, and their mournful and
+dark significance was now for him. Working within him the impression of
+vast, innumerable, fleeing shadows, thick-crowding memories of all the
+ways and deeds of an existence fallen from its early dreams and aims,
+poured across the midnight of his soul, and under the streaming
+melancholy of the dirge, his life showed like some monstrous treason. It
+did not terrify or madden him; he listened to it rapt utterly as in some
+deadening ether of dream; yet feeling to his inmost core all its
+powerful grief and accusation, and quietly aghast at the sinister
+consciousness it gave him. Still it swelled, gathering and sounding on
+into yet mightier pathos, till all at once it darkened and spread wide
+in wild despair, and aspiring again into a pealing agony of
+supplication, quivered and died away in a low and funereal sigh.</p>
+
+<p>The tears streamed suddenly upon his face; his soul lightened and turned
+dark within him; and as one faints away, so consciousness swooned, and
+he fell suddenly down a precipice of sleep. The music rose again, a
+pensive and holy chant, and sounded on to its close, unaffected by the
+action of his brain, for he slept and heard it no more. He lay
+tranquilly, hardly seeming to breathe, in motionless repose. The room
+was dim and silent, and the furniture took uncouth shapes around him.
+The red glow upon the ceiling, from the screened fire, showed the misty
+figure of the phantom kneeling by his side. All light had gone from the
+spectral form. It knelt beside him, mutely, as in prayer. Once it gazed
+at his quiet face with a mournful tenderness, and its shadowy hands
+caressed his forehead. Then it resumed its former attitude, and the slow
+hours crept by.</p>
+
+<p>At last it rose and glided to the table, on which lay the open letter.
+It seemed to try to lift the sheets with its misty hands&mdash;but vainly.
+Next it essayed the lifting of a pen which lay there&mdash;but failed. It was
+a piteous sight, to see its idle efforts on these shapes of grosser
+matter, which appeared now to have to it but the existence of illusions.
+Wandering about the shadowy room, it wrung its phantom hands as in
+despair.</p>
+
+<p>Presently it grew still. Then it passed quickly to his side, and stood
+before him. He slept calmly. It placed one ghostly hand above his
+forehead, and, with the other pointed to the open letter. In this
+attitude its shape grew momentarily more distinct. It began to kindle
+into brightness. The pale flame again flowed from its hand, streaming
+downward to his brain. A look of trouble darkened the sleeping face.
+Stronger&mdash;stronger; brighter&mdash;brighter; until, at last, it stood before
+him, a glorious shape of light, with an awful look of commanding love in
+its shining features&mdash;and the sleeper sprang to his feet with a cry!</p>
+
+<p>The phantom had vanished. He saw nothing. His first impression was, not
+that he had dreamed, but that, awaking in the familiar room, he had seen
+the spirit of his dead friend, bright and awful by his side, and that it
+had gone! In the flash of that quick change, from sleeping to waking, he
+had detected, he thought, the unearthly being that, he now felt, watched
+him from behind the air, and it had vanished! The library was the same
+as in the moment of that supernatural revealing; the open letter lay
+upon the table still; only <i>that</i> was gone which had made these common
+aspects terrible. Then, all the hard, strong skepticism of his nature,
+which had been driven backward by the shock of his first conviction,
+recoiled, and rushed within him, violently struggling for its former
+vantage ground; till, at length, it achieved the foothold for a doubt.
+Could he have dreamed? The ghost, invisible, still watched him. Yes&mdash;a
+dream&mdash;only a dream; but, how vivid&mdash;how strange! With a slow thrill
+creeping through his veins&mdash;the blood curdling at his heart&mdash;a cold
+sweat starting on his forehead, he stared through the dimness of the
+room. All was vacancy.</p>
+
+<p>With a strong shudder, he strode forward, and turned up the flames of
+the chandelier. A flood of garish light filled the apartment. In a
+moment, remembering the letter to which the phantom of his dream had
+pointed, he turned and took it from the table. The last page lay upward,
+and every word of the solemn counsel at the end seemed to dilate on the
+paper, and all its mighty meaning rushed upon his soul. Trembling in his
+own despite, he laid it down and moved away. A physician, he remembered
+that he was in a state of violent nervous excitement, and thought that
+when he grew calmer its effects would pass from him. But the hand that
+had touched him had gone down deeper than the physician, and reached
+what God had made.</p>
+
+<p>He strove in vain. The very room, in its light and silence, and the
+lurking sentiment of something watching him, became terrible. He could
+not endure it. The devils in his heart, grown pusillanimous, cowered
+beneath the flashing strokes of his aroused and terrible conscience. He
+could not endure it. He must go out. He will walk the streets. It is not
+late&mdash;it is but ten o'clock. He will go.</p>
+
+<p>The air of his dream still hung heavily about him. He was in the
+street&mdash;he hardly remembered how he had got there, or when; but there he
+was, wrapped up from the searching cold, thinking, with a quiet horror
+in his mind, of the darkened room he had left behind, and haunted by the
+sense that something was groping about there in the darkness, searching
+for him. The night was still and cold. The full moon was in the zenith.
+Its icy splendor lay on the bare streets, and on the walls of the
+dwellings. The lighted oblong squares of curtained windows, here and
+there, seemed dim and waxen in the frigid glory. The familiar aspect of
+the quarter had passed away, leaving behind only a corpse-like
+neighborhood, whose huge, dead features, staring rigidly through the
+thin, white shroud of moonlight that covered all, left no breath upon
+the stainless skies. Through the vast silence of the night he passed
+along; the very sound of his footfalls was remote to his muffled sense.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually, as he reached the first corner, he had an uneasy feeling that
+a thing&mdash;a formless, unimaginable thing&mdash;was dogging him. He had thought
+of going down to his club-room; but he now shrank from entering, with
+this thing near him, the lighted rooms where his set were busy with
+cards and billiards, over their liquors and cigars, and where the heated
+air was full of their idle faces and careless chatter, lest some one
+should bawl out that he was pale, and ask him what was the matter, and
+he should answer, tremblingly, that something was following him, and was
+near him then! He must get rid of it first; he must walk quickly, and
+baffle its pursuit by turning sharp corners, and plunging into devious
+streets and crooked lanes, and so lose it!</p>
+
+<p>It was difficult to reach through memory to the crazy chaos of his mind
+on that night, and recall the route he took while haunted by this
+feeling; but he afterward remembered that, without any other purpose
+than to baffle his imaginary pursuer, he traversed at a rapid pace a
+large portion of the moonlit city; always (he knew not why) avoiding the
+more populous thoroughfares, and choosing unfrequented and tortuous
+byways, but never ridding himself of that horrible confusion of mind in
+which the faces of his dead friend and the pale woman were strangely
+blended, nor of the fancy that he was followed. Once, as he passed the
+hospital where Feval died, a faint hint seemed to flash and vanish from
+the clouds of his lunacy, and almost identify the dogging goblin with
+the figure of his dream; but the conception instantly mixed with a
+disconnected remembrance that this was Christmas eve, and then slipped
+from him, and was lost. He did not pause there, but strode on. But just
+there, what had been frightful became hideous. For at once he was
+possessed with the conviction that the thing that lurked at a distance
+behind him, was quickening its movement, and coming up to seize him. The
+dreadful fancy stung him like a goad, and, with a start, he accelerated
+his flight, horribly conscious that what he feared was slinking along in
+the shadow, close to the dark bulks of the houses, resolutely pursuing,
+and bent on overtaking him. Faster! His footfalls rang hollowly and loud
+on the moonlit pavement, and in contrast with their rapid thuds he felt
+it as something peculiarly terrible that the furtive thing behind, slunk
+after him with soundless feet. Faster, faster! Traversing only the most
+unfrequented streets, and at that late hour of a cold winter night, he
+met no one, and with a terrifying consciousness that his pursuer was
+gaining on him, he desperately strode on. He did not dare to look
+behind, dreading less what he might see, than the momentary loss of
+speed the action might occasion. Faster, faster, faster! And all at once
+he knew that the dogging thing had dropped its stealthy pace and was
+racing up to him. With a bound he broke into a run, seeing, hearing,
+heeding nothing, aware only that the other was silently louping on his
+track two steps to his one; and with that frantic apprehension upon him,
+he gained the next street, flung himself around the corner with his back
+to the wall, and his arms convulsively drawn up for a grapple; and felt
+something rush whirring past his flank, striking him on the shoulder as
+it went by, with a buffet that made a shock break through his frame.
+That shock restored him to his senses. His delusion was suddenly
+shattered. The goblin was gone. He was free.</p>
+
+<p>He stood panting, like one just roused from some terrible dream, wiping
+the reeking perspiration from his forehead and thinking confusedly and
+wearily what a fool he had been. He felt he had wandered a long distance
+from his house, but had no distinct perception of his whereabouts. He
+only knew he was in some thinly-peopled street, whose familiar aspect
+seemed lost to him in the magical disguise the superb moonlight had
+thrown over all. Suddenly a film seemed to drop from his eyes, as they
+became riveted on a lighted window, on the opposite side of the way. He
+started, and a secret terror crept over him, vaguely mixed with the
+memory of the shock he had felt as he turned the last corner, and his
+distinct, awful feeling that something invisible had passed him. At the
+same instant he felt, and thrilled to feel, a touch, as of a light
+finger, on his cheek. He was in Hanover street. Before him was the
+house&mdash;the oyster-room staring at him through the lighted transparencies
+of its two windows, like two square eyes, below; and his tenant's light
+in a chamber above! The added shock which this discovery gave to the
+heaving of his heart, made him gasp for breath. Could it be? Did he
+still dream? While he stood panting and staring at the building, the
+city clocks began to strike. Eleven o'clock; it was ten when he came
+away; how he must have driven! His thoughts caught up the word.
+Driven&mdash;by what? Driven from his house in horror, through street and
+lane, over half the city&mdash;driven&mdash;hunted in terror, and smitten by a
+shock here! Driven&mdash;driven! He could not rid his mind of the word, nor
+of the meaning it suggested. The pavements about him began to ring and
+echo with the tramp of many feet, and the cold, brittle air was shivered
+with the noisy voices that had roared and bawled applause and laughter
+at the National Theatre all the evening, and were now singing and
+howling homeward. Groups of rude men, and ruder boys, their breaths
+steaming in the icy air, began to tramp by, jostling him as they passed,
+till he was forced to draw back to the wall, and give them the sidewalk.
+Dazed and giddy, in cold fear, and with the returning sense of something
+near him, he stood and watched the groups that pushed and tumbled in
+through the entrance of the oyster-room, whistling and chattering as
+they went, and banging the door behind them. He noticed that some came
+out presently, banging the door harder, and went, smoking and shouting,
+down the street. Still they poured in and out, while the street was
+startled with their stimulated riot, and the bar-room within echoed
+their trampling feet and hoarse voices. Then, as his glance wandered
+upward to his tenant's window, he thought of the sick child, mixing this
+hideous discord in the dreams of fever. The word brought up the name and
+the thought of his dead friend. "In the name of the Saviour, I charge
+you be true and tender to mankind!" The memory of these words seemed to
+ring clearly, as if a voice had spoken them, above the roar that
+suddenly rose in his mind. In that moment he felt himself a wretched and
+most guilty man. He felt that his cruel words had entered that humble
+home, to make desperate poverty more desperate, to sicken sickness, and
+to sadden sorrow. Before him was the dram-shop, let and licensed to
+nourish the worst and most brutal appetites and instincts of human
+natures, at the sacrifice of all their highest and holiest tendencies.
+The throng of tipplers and drunkards was swarming through its hopeless
+door, to gulp the fiery liquor whose fumes give all shames, vices,
+miseries, and crimes, a lawless strength and life, and change the man
+into the pig or tiger. Murder was done, or nearly done, within those
+walls last night. Within those walls no good was ever done; but, daily,
+unmitigated evil, whose results were reaching on to torture unborn
+generations. He had consented to it all! He could not falter, or
+equivocate, or evade, or excuse. His dead friend's words rang in his
+conscience like the trump of the judgment angel. He was conquered.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly, the resolve to instantly go in up-rose within him, and with it a
+change came upon his spirit, and the natural world, sadder than before,
+but sweeter, seemed to come back to him. A great feeling of relief
+flowed upon his mind. Pale and trembling still, he crossed the street
+with a quick, unsteady step, entered a yard at the side of the house,
+and, brushing by a host of white, rattling spectres of frozen clothes,
+which dangled from lines in the inclosure, mounted some wooden steps,
+and rang the bell. In a minute he heard footsteps within, and saw the
+gleam of a lamp. His heart palpitated violently as he heard the lock
+turning, lest the answerer of his summons might be his tenant. The door
+opened, and, to his relief, he stood before a rather decent-looking
+Irishman, bending forward in his stocking feet, with one boot and a lamp
+in his hand. The man stared at him from a wild head of tumbled red hair,
+with a half smile round his loose open mouth, and said, "Begorra!" This
+was a second floor tenant.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Renton was relieved at the sight of him; but he rather failed in an
+attempt at his rent-day suavity of manner, when he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening, Mr. Flanagan. Do you think I can see Mrs. Miller
+to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's up <i>there</i>, docther, anyway." Mr. Flanagan made a sudden start
+for the stairs, with the boot and lamp at arm's length before him, and
+stopped as suddenly. "Yull go up?&mdash;or wud she come down to ye?" There
+was as much anxious indecision in Mr. Flanagan's general aspect, pending
+the reply, as if he had to answer the question himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go up, Mr. Flanagan," returned Dr. Renton, stepping in, after a
+pause, and shutting the door. "But I'm afraid she's in bed."</p>
+
+<p>"Naw&mdash;she's not, sur." Mr. Flanagan made another feint with the boot and
+lamp at the stairs, but stopped again in curious bewilderment, and
+rubbed his head. Then, with another inspiration, and speaking with such
+velocity that his words ran into each other, pell-mell, he continued:
+"Th' small girl's sick, sur. Begorra, I wor just pullin' on th' boots
+tuh gaw for the docther, in th' nixt streth, an' summons him to her
+relehf, for it's bad she is. A'id betther be goan." Another start, and a
+movement to put on the boot instantly, baffled by his getting the lamp
+into the leg of it, and involving himself in difficulties in trying to
+get it out again without dropping either, and stopped finally by Dr.
+Renton.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't go, Mr. Flanagan. I'll see to the child. Don't go."</p>
+
+<p>He stepped slowly up the stairs, followed by the bewildered Flanagan.
+All this time Dr. Renton was listening to the racket from the bar-room.
+Clinking of glasses, rattling of dishes, trampling of feet, oaths and
+laughter, and a confused din of coarse voices, mingling with boisterous
+calls for oysters and drink, came, hardly deadened by the partition
+walls, from the haunt below, and echoed through the corridors. Loud
+enough within&mdash;louder in the street without, where the oysters and drink
+were reeling and roaring off to brutal dreams. People trying to sleep
+here; a sick child up stairs. Listen! "<i>Two</i> stew! <i>One</i> roast! <i>Four</i>
+ale! Hurry 'em up! <i>Three</i> stew! <i>In</i> number six! <i>One</i> fancy&mdash;<i>two</i>
+roast! <i>One</i> sling! Three brandy&mdash;<i>hot</i>! <i>Two</i> stew! <i>One</i> whisk'
+<i>skin</i>! Hurry 'em up! <i>What</i> yeh <i>'bout</i>! <i>Three</i> brand' punch&mdash;<i>hot</i>!
+<i>Four</i> stew! <i>What</i>-ye-e-h 'BOUT! <i>Two</i> gin-cock-t'il! <i>One</i> stew!
+Hu-r-r-y 'em up!" Clashing, rattling, cursing, swearing, laughing,
+shouting, trampling, stumbling, driving, slamming, of doors. "Hu-r-ry
+'em UP."</p>
+
+<p>"Flanagan," said Dr. Renton, stopping at the first landing, "do you have
+this noise every night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Naise? Hoo! Divil a night, docther, but I'm wehked out ov me bed wid
+'em, Sundays an' all. Sure didn't they murdher wan of 'em, out an' out,
+last night!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is the man dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dead? Troth he is. An' cowld."</p>
+
+<p>"H'm"&mdash;through his compressed lips. "Flanagan, you needn't come up. I
+know the door. Just hold the light for me here. There, that'll do. Thank
+you." He whispered the last words from the top of the second flight.</p>
+
+<p>"Are ye there, docther?" Flanagan anxious to the last, and trying to
+peer up at him with the lamp-light in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. That'll do. Thank you!" in the same whisper. Before he could tap
+at the door, then darkening in the receding light, it opened suddenly,
+and a big Irish woman bounced out, and then whisked in again, calling to
+some one in an inner room: "Here he is, Mrs. Mill'r," and then bounced
+out again, with a "Walk royt in, if <i>you</i> plaze; here's the choild"&mdash;and
+whisked in again, with a "Sure an' Jehms was quick;" never once looking
+at him, and utterly unconscious of the presence of her landlord. He had
+hardly stepped into the room and taken off his hat, when Mrs. Miller
+came from the inner chamber with a lamp in her hand. How she started!
+With her pale face grown suddenly paler, and her hand on her bosom, she
+could only exclaim: "Why, it's Dr. Renton!" and stand, still and dumb,
+gazing with a frightened look at his face, whiter than her own.
+Whereupon Mrs. Flanagan came bolting out again, with wild eyes and a
+sort of stupefied horror in her good, coarse, Irish features; and then,
+with some uncouth ejaculation, ran back, and was heard to tumble over
+something within, and tumble something else over in her fall, and gather
+herself up with a subdued howl, and subside.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Miller," began Dr. Renton, in a low, husky voice, glancing at her
+frightened face, "I hope you'll be composed. I spoke to you very harshly
+and rudely to-night; but I really was not myself&mdash;I was in anger&mdash;and I
+ask your pardon. Please to overlook it all, and&mdash;but I will speak of
+this presently; now&mdash;I am a physician; will you let me look now at your
+sick child?"</p>
+
+<p>He spoke hurriedly, but with evident sincerity. For a moment her lips
+faltered; then a slow flush came up, with a quick change of expression
+on her thin, worn face, and, reddening to painful scarlet, died away in
+a deeper pallor.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Renton," she said, hastily, "I have no ill-feeling for you, sir,
+and I know you were hurt and vexed&mdash;and I know you have tried to make it
+up to me again, sir&mdash;secretly. I know who it was, now; but I can't take
+it, sir. You must take it back. You know it was you sent it, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Miller," he replied, puzzled beyond measure, "I don't understand
+you. What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't deny it, sir. Please not to," she said imploringly, the tears
+starting to her eyes. "I am very grateful&mdash;indeed I am. But I can't
+accept it. Do take it again."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Miller," he replied, in a hasty voice, "what do you mean? I have
+sent you nothing&mdash;nothing at all. I have, therefore, nothing to receive
+again."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him fixedly, evidently impressed by the fervor of his
+denial.</p>
+
+<p>"You sent me nothing to-night, sir?" she asked, doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing at any time&mdash;nothing," he answered, firmly.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been folly to have disbelieved the truthful look of his
+wondering face, and she turned away in amazement and confusion. There
+was a long pause.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope, Mrs. Miller, you will not refuse any assistance I can render to
+your child," he said, at length.</p>
+
+<p>She started, and replied, tremblingly and confusedly, "No, sir; we shall
+be grateful to you, if you can save her"&mdash;and went quickly, with a
+strange abstraction on her white face, into the inner room. He followed
+her at once, and, hardly glancing at Mrs. Flanagan, who sat there in
+stupefaction, with her apron over her head and face, he laid his hat on
+a table, went to the bedside of the little girl, and felt her head and
+pulse. He soon satisfied himself that the little sufferer was in no
+danger, under proper remedies, and now dashed down a prescription on a
+leaf from his pocket-book. Mrs. Flanagan, who had come out from the
+retirement of her apron, to stare stupidly at him during the
+examination, suddenly bobbed up on her legs, with enlightened alacrity,
+when he asked if there was any one that could go out to the
+apothecary's, and said, "sure I wull!" He had a little trouble to make
+her understand that the prescription, which she took by the corner,
+holding it away from her, as if it were going to explode presently, and
+staring at it upside down&mdash;was to be left&mdash;"<i>left</i>, mind you, Mrs.
+Flanagan&mdash;with the apothecary&mdash;Mr. Flint&mdash;at the nearest corner&mdash;and he
+will give you some things, which you are to bring here." But she had
+shuffled off at last with a confident, "yis, sur&mdash;aw, I knoo," her head
+nodding satisfied assent, and her big thumb covering the note on the
+margin, "charge to Dr. C. Renton, Bowdoin street," (which <i>I</i> know,
+could not keep it from the eyes of the angels!) and he sat down to await
+her return.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Miller," he said, kindly, "don't be alarmed about your child. She
+is doing well; and, after you have given her the medicine Mrs. Flanagan
+will bring, you'll find her much better, to-morrow. She must be kept
+cool and quiet, you know, and she'll be all right soon."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Dr. Renton, I am very grateful," was the tremulous reply; "and we
+will follow all directions, sir. It is hard to keep her quiet, sir; we
+keep as still as we can, and the other children are very still; but the
+street is very noisy all the daytime and evening, sir, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know it, Mrs. Miller. And I'm afraid those people down-stairs disturb
+you somewhat."</p>
+
+<p>"They make some stir in the evening, sir; and it's rather loud in the
+street sometimes, at night. The folks on the lower floors are troubled a
+good deal, they say."</p>
+
+<p>Well they may be. Listen to the bawling outside, now, cold as it is.
+Hark! A hoarse group on the opposite sidewalk beginning a song. "Ro-o-l
+on, sil-ver mo-o-n"&mdash;. The silver moon ceases to roll in a sudden
+explosion of yells and laughter, sending up broken fragments of curses,
+ribald jeers, whoopings, and cat-calls, high into the night air.
+"Ga-l-a-ng! Hi-hi! What ye-e-h <i>'bout</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"This is outrageous, Mrs. Miller. Where's the watchman?"</p>
+
+<p>She smiled faintly. "He takes one of them off occasionally, sir; but
+he's afraid; they beat him sometimes." A long pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't your room rather cold, Mrs. Miller?" He glanced at the black
+stove, dimly seen in the outer room. "It is necessary to keep the rooms
+cool just now, but this air seems to me cold."</p>
+
+<p>Receiving no answer, he looked at her, and saw the sad truth in her
+averted face.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," he said quickly, flushing to the roots of his hair.
+"I might have known, after what you said to me this evening."</p>
+
+<p>"We had a little fire here to-day, sir," she said, struggling with the
+pride and shame of poverty; "but we have been out of firing for two or
+three days, and we owe the wharfman something now. The two boys picked
+up a few chips; but the poor children find it hard to get them, sir.
+Times are very hard with us, sir; indeed they are. We'd have got along
+better, if my husband's money had come, and your rent would have been
+paid&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind the rent!&mdash;don't speak of that!" he broke in, with his face
+all aglow. "Mrs. Miller, I haven't done right by you&mdash;I know it. Be
+frank with me. Are you in want of&mdash;have you&mdash;need of&mdash;food?"</p>
+
+<p>No need of answer to that faintly stammered question. The thin, rigid
+face was covered from his sight by the worn, wan hands, and all the
+pride and shame of poverty, and all the frigid truth of cold, hunger,
+anxiety, and sickened sorrow they had concealed, had given way at last
+in a rush of tears. He could not speak. With a smitten heart, he knew it
+all now. Ah! Dr. Renton, you know these people's tricks? you know their
+lying blazon of poverty, to gather sympathy?</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Miller"&mdash;she had ceased weeping, and as he spoke, she looked at
+him, with the tear-stains still on her agitated face, half ashamed that
+he had seen her&mdash;"Mrs. Miller, I am sorry. This shall be remedied. Don't
+tell me it shan't! Don't! I say it shall! Mrs. Miller, I'm&mdash;I'm ashamed
+of myself. I am, indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"I am very grateful, sir, I'm sure," said she; "but we don't like to
+take charity though we need help; but we can get along now, sir&mdash;for, I
+suppose I must keep it, as you say you didn't send it, and use it for
+the children's sake, and thank God for his good mercy&mdash;since I don't
+know, and never shall, where it came from, now."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Miller," he said quickly, "you spoke in this way before; and I
+don't know what you refer to. What do you mean by&mdash;<i>it</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I forgot sir: it puzzles me so. You see, sir, I was sitting here
+after I got home from your house, thinking what I should do, when Mrs.
+Flanagan came up-stairs with a letter for me, that she said a strange
+man left at the door for Mrs. Miller; and Mrs. Flanagan couldn't
+describe him well, or understandingly; and it had no direction at all,
+only the man inquired who was the landlord, and if Mrs. Miller had a
+sick child, and then said the letter was for me; and there was no
+writing inside the letter, but there was fifty dollars. That's all, sir.
+It gave me a great shock, sir; and I couldn't think who sent it, only
+when you came to-night, I thought it was you; but you said it wasn't,
+and I never shall know who it was, now. It seems as if the hand of God
+was in it, sir, for it came when everything was darkest, and I was in
+despair."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Mrs. Miller," he slowly answered, "this is very mysterious. The
+man inquired if I was the owner of the house&mdash;oh! no&mdash;he only inquired
+who was&mdash;but then he knew I was the&mdash;oh! bother! I'm getting nowhere.
+Let's see. Why, it must be some one you know, or that knows your
+circumstances."</p>
+
+<p>"But there's no one knows them but yourself; and I told you," she
+replied; "no one else but the people in the house. It must have been
+some rich person, for the letter was a gilt-edge sheet, and there was
+perfume in it, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Strange," he murmured. "Well, I give it up. All is, I advise you to
+keep it, and I'm very glad some one did his duty by you in your hour of
+need, though I'm sorry it was not myself. Here's Mrs. Flanagan."</p>
+
+<p>There was a good deal done, and a great burden lifted off an humble
+heart&mdash;nay, two! before Dr. Renton thought of going home. There was a
+patient gained, likely to do Dr. Renton more good than any patient he
+had lost. There was a kettle singing on the stove, and blowing off a
+happier steam than any engine ever blew on that railroad, whose
+unmarketable stock had singed Dr. Renton's fingers. There was a yellow
+gleam flickering from the blazing fire on the sober binding of a good
+old Book upon a shelf with others, a rarer medical work than ever
+slipped at auction from Dr. Renton's hands, since it kept the sacred
+lore of Him who healed the sick, and fed the hungry, and comforted the
+poor, and who was also the Physician of souls.</p>
+
+<p>And there were other offices performed, of lesser range than these,
+before he rose to go. There were cooling mixtures blended for the sick
+child; medicines arranged; directions given; and all the items of her
+tendance orderly foreseen, and put in pigeon-holes of When and How, for
+service.</p>
+
+<p>At last he rose to go. "And now, Mrs. Miller," he said, "I'll come here
+at ten in the morning, and see to our patient. She'll be nicely by that
+time. And&mdash;(listen to those brutes in the street!&mdash;twelve o'clock,
+too&mdash;ah! there's the bell),&mdash;as I was saying, my offence to you being
+occasioned by your debt to me, I feel my receipt for your debt should
+commence my reparation to you; and I'll bring it to-morrow. Mrs. Miller
+you don't quite come at me&mdash;what I mean is&mdash;you owe me, under a notice
+to quit, three months' rent. Consider that paid in full. I never will
+take a cent of it from you&mdash;not a copper. And I take back the notice.
+Stay in my house as long as you like; the longer the better. But, up to
+this date, your rent's paid. There. I hope you'll have as happy a
+Christmas as circumstances will allow, and I mean you shall."</p>
+
+<p>A flush of astonishment&mdash;of indefinable emotion, overspread her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Renton, stop, sir!" He was moving to the door. "Please, sir, <i>do</i>
+hear me! You are very good&mdash;but I can't allow you to&mdash;Dr. Renton, we are
+able to pay you the rent, and we <i>will</i>, and we <i>must</i>&mdash;here&mdash;now. Oh!
+sir, my gratefulness will never fail to you&mdash;but here&mdash;here&mdash;be fair
+with me, sir, and <i>do</i> take it!"</p>
+
+<p>She had hurried to a chest of drawers, and came back with the letter
+which she had rustled apart with eager, trembling hands, and now,
+unfolding the single bank-note it had contained, she thrust it into his
+fingers as they closed.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, Mrs. Miller"&mdash;she had drawn back with her arms locked on her
+bosom, and he stepped forward&mdash;"no, no. This shan't be. Come, come, you
+must take it back. Good heavens!" he spoke low, but his eyes blazed in
+the red glow which broke out on his face, and the crisp note in his
+extended hand shook violently at her&mdash;"Sooner than take this money from
+you, I would perish in the street! What! Do you think I will rob you of
+the gift sent you by some one who had a human heart for the distresses I
+was aggravating? Sooner than&mdash;here, take it! O my God! what's this?"</p>
+
+<p>The red glow on his face went out, with this exclamation, in a pallor
+like marble, and he jerked back the note to his starting eyes; Globe
+Bank&mdash;Boston&mdash;Fifty Dollars. For a minute he gazed at the motionless
+bill in his hand. Then, with his hueless lips compressed, he seized the
+blank letter from his astonished tenant, and looked at it, turning it
+over and over. Grained letter-paper&mdash;gilt-edged&mdash;with a favorite perfume
+in it. Where's Mrs. Flanagan? Outside the door, sitting on the top of
+the stairs, with her apron over her head, crying. Mrs. Flanagan! Here!
+In she tumbled, her big feet kicking her skirts before her, and her eyes
+and face as red as a beet.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Flanagan, what kind of a looking man gave you this letter at the
+door to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"A-w, Docther Rinton, dawn't ax me!&mdash;Bother, an' all, an' sure an' I
+cudn't see him wud his fur-r hat, an' he a-ll boondled oop wud his co-at
+oop on his e-ars, an' his big han'kershuf smotherin' thuh mouth uv him,
+an' sorra a bit uv him tuh be looked at, sehvin' thuh poomple on thuh
+ind uv his naws."</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>what</i> on the end of his nose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thuh poomple, sur."</p>
+
+<p>"What does she mean, Mrs. Miller?" said the puzzled questioner, turning
+to his tenant.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, sir, indeed," was the reply; "she said that to me, and I
+couldn't understand her."</p>
+
+<p>"It's thuh poomple, docther. Dawn't ye knoo? Thuh big, flehmin poomple
+oop there." She indicated the locality, by flattening the rude tip of
+her own nose with her broad forefinger.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! the pimple! I have it." So he had. Netty, Netty!</p>
+
+<p>He said nothing, but sat down in a chair, with his bold, white brow
+knitted, and the warm tears in his dark eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You know who sent it, sir, don't you?" asked his wondering tenant,
+catching the meaning of all this.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Miller, I do. But I cannot tell you. Take it, now, and use it. It
+is doubly yours. There. Thank you."</p>
+
+<p>She had taken it with an emotion in her face that gave a quicker motion
+to his throbbing heart. He rose to his feet, hat in hand, and turned
+away. The noise of a passing group of roysterers in the street without,
+came strangely loud into the silence of that room.</p>
+
+<p>"Good night, Mrs. Miller. I'll be here in the morning. Good night."</p>
+
+<p>"Good night, sir. God bless you, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>He turned around quickly. The warm tears in his dark eyes had flowed on
+his face, which was pale; and his firm lip quivered.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope He will, Mrs. Miller&mdash;I hope He will. It should have been said
+oftener."</p>
+
+<p>He was on the outer threshold. Mrs. Flanagan had, somehow, got there
+before him, with a lamp, and he followed her down through the dancing
+shadows, with blurred eyes. On the lower landing he stopped to hear the
+jar of some noisy wrangle, thick with oaths, from the bar-room. He
+listened for a moment, and then turned to the staring stupor of Mrs.
+Flanagan's rugged visage.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, they're at ut, docther, wud a wull," she said, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Mrs. Flanagan, you'll stay up with Mrs. Miller to-night, won't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dade an' I wull, sur."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right. Do. And make her try and sleep, for she must be tired.
+Keep up a fire&mdash;not too warm, you understand. There'll be wood and coal
+coming to-morrow, and she'll pay you back."</p>
+
+<p>"A-w, docther, dawn't noo!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well. And&mdash;look here; have you got anything to eat in the house?
+Yes; well; take it up-stairs. Wake up those two boys, and give them
+something to eat. Don't let Mrs. Miller stop you. Make her eat
+something. Tell her I said she must. And, first of all, get your bonnet,
+and go to that apothecary's&mdash;Flint's&mdash;for a bottle of port wine, for
+Mrs. Miller. Hold on. There's the order." (He had a leaf out of his
+pocket-book in a minute, and wrote it down.) "Go with this, the first
+thing. Ring Flint's bell, and he'll wake up. And here's something for
+your own Christmas dinner, to-morrow." Out of the roll of bills, he drew
+one of the tens&mdash;Globe Bank&mdash;Boston&mdash;and gave it to Mrs. Flanagan.</p>
+
+<p>"A-w, dawn't noo, docther."</p>
+
+<p>"Bother! It's for yourself, mind. Take it. There. And now unlock the
+door. That's it. Good night, Mrs. Flanagan."</p>
+
+<p>"An' meh thuh Hawly Vurgin hape blessn's on ye, Docther Rinton, wud a-ll
+thuh compliments uv thuh sehzin, for yur thuh&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He lost the end of Mrs. Flanagan's parting benedictions in the moonlit
+street. He did not pause till he was at the door of the oyster-room. He
+paused then, to make way for a tipsy company of four, who reeled
+out&mdash;the gaslight from the bar-room on the edges of their sodden,
+distorted faces&mdash;giving three shouts and a yell, as they slammed the
+door behind them.</p>
+
+<p>He pushed after a party that was just entering. They went at once for
+drink to the upper end of the room, where a rowdy crew, with cigars in
+their mouths, and liquor in their hands, stood before the bar, in a
+knotty wrangle concerning some one who was killed. Where is the keeper?
+Oh! there he is, mixing hot brandy punch for two. Here, you, sir, go up
+quietly, and tell Mr. Rollins Dr. Renton wants to see him. The waiter
+came back presently to say Mr. Rollins would be right along. Twenty-five
+minutes past twelve. Oyster trade nearly over. Gaudy-curtained booths on
+the left all empty but two. Oyster-openers and waiters&mdash;three of them in
+all&mdash;nearly done for the night, and two of them sparring and scuffling
+behind a pile of oysters on the trough, with the colored print of the
+great prize fight between Tom Hyer and Yankee Sullivan, in a veneered
+frame above them on the wall. Blower up from the fire opposite the bar,
+and stewpans and griddles empty and idle on the bench beside it, among
+the unwashed bowls and dishes. Oyster trade nearly over. Bar still busy.</p>
+
+<p>Here comes Rollins in his shirt sleeves, with an apron on. Thick-set,
+muscular man&mdash;frizzled head, low forehead, sharp, black eyes, flabby
+face, with a false, greasy smile on it now, oiling over a curious,
+stealthy expression of mingled surprise and inquiry, as he sees his
+landlord here at this unusual hour.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in here, Mr. Rollins; I want to speak to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. Jim" (to the waiter), "go and tend bar." They sat down in one
+of the booths, and lowered the curtain. Dr. Renton, at one side of the
+table within, looking at Rollins, sitting leaning on his folded arms, at
+the other side.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Rollins, I am told the man who was stabbed here last night is dead.
+Is that so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he is, Dr. Renton. Died this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Rollins, this is a serious matter; what are you going to do about
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can't help it, sir. Who's a-goin' to touch <i>me</i>? Called in a watchman.
+Whole mess of 'em had cut. Who knows 'em? Nobody knows 'em. Man that was
+stuck never see the fellers as stuck him in all his life till then.
+Didn't know which one of 'em did it. Didn't know nothing. Don't now, an'
+never will, 'nless he meets 'em in hell. That's all. Feller's dead, an'
+who's a-goin' to touch <i>me</i>? Can't do it. Ca-n-'t do it."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Rollins," said Dr. Renton, thoroughly disgusted with this man's
+brutal indifference, "your lease expires in three days."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it does. Hope to make a renewal with you, Dr. Renton. Trade's
+good here. Shouldn't mind more rent on, if you insist&mdash;hope you
+won't&mdash;if it's anything in reason. Promise sollum, I shan't have no more
+fightin' in here. Couldn't help this. Accidents <i>will</i> happen, yo'
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Rollins, the case is this: if you didn't sell liquor here, you'd
+have no murder done in your place&mdash;murder, sir. That man was murdered.
+It's your fault, and it's mine, too. I ought not to have let you the
+place for your business. It <i>is</i> a cursed traffic, and you and I ought
+to have found it out long ago. <i>I</i> have. I hope <i>you</i> will. Now, I
+advise you, as a friend, to give up selling rum for the future: you see
+what it comes to&mdash;don't you? At any rate, I will not be responsible for
+the outrages that are perpetrated in my building any more&mdash;I will not
+have liquor sold here. I refuse to renew your lease. In three days you
+must move."</p>
+
+<p>"Dr Renton, you hurt my feelin's. Now, how would you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Rollins, I have spoken to you as a friend, and you have no cause
+for pain. You must quit these premises when your lease expires. I'm
+sorry I can't make you go before that. Make no appeals to me, if you
+please. I am fixed. Now, sir, good-night."</p>
+
+<p>The curtain was pulled up, and Rollins rolled over to his beloved bar,
+soothing his lacerated feelings by swearing like a pirate, while Dr.
+Renton strode to the door, and went into the street, homeward.</p>
+
+<p>He walked fast through the magical moonlight, with a strange feeling of
+sternness, and tenderness, and weariness, in his mind. In this mood, the
+sensation of spiritual and physical fatigue gaming on him, but a quiet
+moonlight in all his reveries, he reached his house. He was just putting
+his latch-key in the door, when it was opened by James, who stared at
+him for a second, and then dropped his eyes, and put his hand before his
+nose. Dr. Renton compressed his lips on an involuntary smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! James, you're up late. It's near one."</p>
+
+<p>"I sat up for Mrs. Renton and the young lady, sir. They're just come,
+and gone up stairs."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, James. Take your lamp and come in here. I've got something
+to say to you." The man followed him into the library at once, with some
+wonder on his sleepy face.</p>
+
+<p>"First, put some coal on that fire, and light the chandelier. I shall
+not go up stairs to-night." The man obeyed. "Now, James, sit down in
+that chair." He did so, beginning to look frightened at Dr. Renton's
+grave manner.</p>
+
+<p>"James"&mdash;a long pause&mdash;"I want you to tell me the truth. Where did you
+go to-night? Come, I have found you out. Speak."</p>
+
+<p>The man turned as white as a sheet, and looked wretched with the whites
+of his bulging eyes, and the great pimple on his nose awfully distinct
+in the livid hue of his features. He was a rather slavish fellow, and
+thought he was going to lose his situation. Please not to blame him, for
+he, too, was one of the poor.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Dr. Renton, excuse me, sir; I didn't mean doing any harm."</p>
+
+<p>"James, my daughter gave you an undirected letter this evening; you
+carried it to one of my houses in Hanover street. Is that true?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ye-yes, sir. I couldn't help it. I only did what she told me, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"James, if my daughter told you to set fire to this house, what would
+you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't do it, sir," he stammered, after some hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't? James, if my daughter ever tells you to set fire to this
+house, do it, sir! Do it. At once. Do whatever she tells you. Promptly.
+And I'll back you."</p>
+
+<p>The man stared wildly at him, as he received this astonishing command.
+Dr. Renton was perfectly grave, and had spoken slowly and seriously. The
+man was at his wits' end.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll do it James&mdash;will you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ye-yes, sir, certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right. James, you're a good fellow. James, you've got a
+family&mdash;a wife and children&mdash;hav'n't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, I have; living in the country, sir. In Chelsea, over the
+ferry. For cheapness, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"For cheapness, eh? Hard times, James? How is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty hard, sir. Close, but toler'ble comfortable. Rub and go, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Rub and go. Ve-r-y well. Rub and go. James, I'm going to raise your
+wages&mdash;to-morrow. Generally, because you're a good servant. Principally,
+because you carried that letter to-night, when my daughter asked you. I
+shan't forget it. To-morrow, mind. And if I can do anything for you,
+James, at any time, just tell me. That's all. Now, you'd better go to
+bed. And a happy Christmas to you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Much obliged to you, sir. Same to you and many of 'em. Good-night,
+sir." And with Dr. Renton's "good-night" he stole up to bed, thoroughly
+happy, and determined to obey Miss Renton's future instructions to the
+letter. The shower of golden light which had been raining for the last
+two hours, had fallen, even on him. It would fall all day to-morrow in
+many places, and the day after, and for long years to come. Would that
+it could broaden and increase to a general deluge, and submerge the
+world!</p>
+
+<p>Now the whole house was still, and its master was weary. He sat there,
+quietly musing, feeling the sweet and tranquil presence near him. Now
+the fire was screened, the lights were out, save one dim glimmer, and he
+had lain down on the couch with the letter in his hand, and slept the
+dreamless sleep of a child.</p>
+
+<p>He slept until the gray dawn of Christmas day stole into the room, and
+showed him the figure of his friend, a shape of glorious light, standing
+by his side, and gazing at him with large and tender eyes! He had no
+fear. All was deep, serene, and happy with the happiness of heaven.
+Looking up into that beautiful, wan face&mdash;so tranquil&mdash;so radiant;
+watching, with a child-like awe, the star-fire in those shadowy eyes;
+smiling faintly, with a great, unutterable love thrilling slowly through
+his frame, in answer to the smile of light that shone upon the phantom
+countenance; so he passed a space of time which seemed a calm eternity,
+till, at last, the communion of spirit with spirit&mdash;of mortal love with
+love immortal&mdash;was perfected, and the shining hands were laid on his
+forehead, as with a touch of air. Then the phantom smiled, and, as its
+shining hands were withdrawn, the thought of his daughter mingled in the
+vision. She was bending over him! The dawn&mdash;the room, were the same. But
+the ghost of Feval had gone out from earth, away to its own land!</p>
+
+<p>"Father, dear father! Your eyes were open, and they did not look at me.
+There is a light on your face, and your features are changed! What is
+it&mdash;what have you seen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, darling: here&mdash;kneel by me, for a little while, and be still. I
+have seen the dead."</p>
+
+<p>She knelt by him, burying her awe-struck face in his bosom, and clung to
+him with all the fervor of her soul. He clasped her to his breast, and
+for minutes all was still.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear child&mdash;good and dear child!"</p>
+
+<p>The voice was tremulous and low. She lifted her fair, bright
+countenance, now convulsed with a secret trouble, and dimmed with
+streaming tears, to his, and gazed on him. His eyes were shining; but
+his pallid cheeks, like hers, were wet with tears. How still the room
+was! How like a thought of solemn tenderness, the pale gray dawn! The
+world was far away, and his soul still wandered in the peaceful awe of
+his dream. The world was coming back to him&mdash;but oh! how changed!&mdash;in
+the trouble of his daughter's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Darling, what is it? Why are you here? Why are you weeping? Dear child,
+the friend of my better days&mdash;of the boyhood when I had noble aims, and
+life was beautiful before me&mdash;he has been here! I have seen him. He has
+been with me&mdash;oh! for a good I cannot tell!"</p>
+
+<p>"Father, dear father!"&mdash;he had risen, and sat upon the couch, but she
+still knelt before him, weeping, and clasped his hands in hers&mdash;"I
+thought of you and of this letter, all the time. All last night till I
+slept, and then I dreamed you were tearing it to pieces, and trampling
+on it. I awoke, and lay thinking of you, and of &mdash;&mdash;. And I thought I
+heard you come down-stairs, and I came here to find you. But you were
+lying here so quietly, with your eyes open, and so strange a light on
+your face. And I knew&mdash;I knew you were dreaming of him, and that you saw
+him, for the letter lay beside you. O father! forgive me, but do hear
+me! In the name of this day&mdash;it's Christmas day, father&mdash;in the name of
+the time when we must both die&mdash;in the name of that time, father, hear
+me! That poor woman last night&mdash;O father! forgive me, but don't tear
+that letter in pieces and trample it under foot! You know what I
+mean&mdash;you know&mdash;you know. Don't tear it, and tread it under foot!"</p>
+
+<p>She clung to him, sobbing violently, her face buried in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, hush! It's all well&mdash;it's all well. Here, sit by me. So. I
+have"&mdash;his voice failed him, and he paused. But sitting by him&mdash;clinging
+to him&mdash;her face hidden in his bosom&mdash;she heard the strong beating of
+his disenchanted heart!</p>
+
+<p>"My child, I know your meaning. I will not tear the letter to pieces and
+trample it under foot. God forgive me my life's slight to those words.
+But I learned their value last night, in the house where your blank
+letter had entered before me."</p>
+
+<p>She started, and looked into his face steadfastly, while a bright
+scarlet shot into her own.</p>
+
+<p>"I know all, Netty&mdash;all. Your secret was well kept, but it is yours and
+mine now. It was well done, darling&mdash;well done. Oh! I have been through
+strange mysteries of thought and life since that starving woman sat
+here! Well&mdash;thank God!"</p>
+
+<p>"Father, what have you done?" The flush had failed, but a glad color
+still brightened her face, while the tears stood trembling in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"All that you wished yesterday," he answered. "And all that you ever
+could have wished, henceforth I will do."</p>
+
+<p>"O father!"&mdash;She stopped. The bright scarlet shot again into her face,
+but with an April shower of tears, and the rainbow of a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to me, Netty, and I will tell you, and only you, what I have
+done." Then, while she mutely listened, sitting by his side, and the
+dawn of Christmas broadened into Christmas-day, he told her all.</p>
+
+<p>And when he had told all, and emotion was stilled, they sat together in
+silence for a time, she with her innocent head drooped upon his
+shoulder, and her eyes closed, lost in tender and mystic reveries; and
+he musing with a contrite heart. Till at last, the stir of daily life
+began to waken in the quiet dwelling, and without, from steeples in the
+frosty air, there was a sound of bells.</p>
+
+<p>They rose silently, and stood, clinging to each other, side by side.</p>
+
+<p>"Love, we must part," he said, gravely and tenderly. "Read me, before we
+go, the closing lines of George Feval's letter. In the spirit of this
+let me strive to live. Let it be for me the lesson of the day. Let it
+also be the lesson of my life."</p>
+
+<p>Her face was pale and lit with exaltation as she took the letter from
+his hand. There was a pause&mdash;and then upon the thrilling and tender
+silver of her voice, the words arose like solemn music:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Farewell&mdash;farewell! But, oh! take my counsel into memory on Christmas
+Day, and forever. Once again, the ancient prophecy of peace and
+good-will shines on a world of wars and wrongs and woes. Its soft ray
+shines into the darkness of a land wherein swarm slaves, poor laborers,
+social pariahs, weeping women, homeless exiles, hunted fugitives,
+despised aliens, drunkards, convicts, wicked children, and Magdalens
+unredeemed. These are but the ghastliest figures in that sad army of
+humanity which advances, by a dreadful road, to the Golden Age of the
+poets' dream. These are your sisters and your brothers. Love them all.
+Beware of wronging one of them by word or deed. O friend! strong in
+wealth for so much good&mdash;take my last counsel. In the name of the
+Saviour, I charge you, be true and tender to mankind! Come out from
+Babylon into manhood, and live and labor for the fallen, the neglected,
+the suffering, and the poor. Lover of arts, customs, laws, institutions,
+and forms of society, love these things only as they help mankind! With
+stern love, overturn them, or help to overturn them, when they become
+cruel to a single&mdash;the humblest&mdash;human being. In the world's scale,
+social position, influence, public power, the applause of majorities,
+heaps of funded gold, services rendered to creeds, codes, sects,
+parties, or federations&mdash;they weigh weight; but in God's
+scale&mdash;remember!&mdash;on the day of hope, remember!&mdash;your least service to
+Humanity, outweighs them all!</i>"</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ghost, by William. D. O'Connor
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ghost, by William. D. O'Connor
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Ghost
+
+Author: William. D. O'Connor
+
+Illustrator: Thomas Nast
+
+Release Date: October 5, 2008 [EBook #26779]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GHOST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Clarke, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                     The Ghost.
+
+                                 BY WM. D. O'CONNOR.
+
+
+                        WITH TWO ILLUSTRATIONS BY THOS. NAST.
+
+
+NEW YORK:
+G. P. PUTNAM & SON, 661 BROADWAY.
+LONDON: SAMPSON LOW & CO.
+1867.
+
+THE NEW YORK PRINTING COMPANY,
+_81, 83, and 85 Centre Street_,
+NEW YORK.
+
+
+
+
+The Ghost.
+
+A CHRISTMAS STORY.
+
+
+At the West End of Boston is a quarter of some fifty streets, more or
+less, commonly known as Beacon Hill.
+
+It is a rich and respectable quarter, sacred to the abodes of Our First
+Citizens. The very houses have become sentient of its prevailing
+character of riches and respectability; and, when the twilight deepens
+on the place, or at high noon, if your vision is gifted, you may see
+them as long rows of Our First Giants, with very corpulent or very broad
+fronts, with solid-set feet of sidewalk ending in square-toed curbstone,
+with an air about them as if they had thrust their hard hands into their
+wealthy pockets forever, with a character of arctic reserve, and portly
+dignity, and a well-dressed, full-fed, self-satisfied, opulent, stony,
+repellant aspect to each, which says plainly: "I belong to a rich
+family, of the very highest respectability."
+
+History, having much to say of Beacon Hill generally, has, on the
+present occasion, something to say particularly of a certain street
+which bends over the eminence, sloping steeply down to its base. It is
+an old street--quaint, quiet, and somewhat picturesque. It was young
+once, though--having been born before the Revolution, and was then given
+to the city by its father, Mr. Middlecott, who died without heirs, and
+did this much for posterity. Posterity has not been grateful to Mr.
+Middlecott. The street bore his name till he was dust, and then got the
+more aristocratic epithet of Bowdoin. Posterity has paid him by effacing
+what would have been his noblest epitaph. We may expect, after this, to
+see Faneuil Hall robbed of its name, and called Smith Hall! Republics
+are proverbially ungrateful. What safer claim to public remembrance has
+the old Huguenot, Peter Faneuil, than the old Englishman, Mr.
+Middlecott? Ghosts, it is said, have risen from the grave to reveal
+wrongs done them by the living; but it needs no ghost from the grave to
+prove the proverb about republics.
+
+Bowdoin street only differs from its kindred, in a certain shady, grave,
+old-fogy, fossil aspect, just touched with a pensive solemnity, as if it
+thought to itself, "I'm getting old but I'm highly respectable; that's a
+comfort." It has, moreover, a dejected, injured air, as if it brooded
+solemnly on the wrong done to it by taking away its original name, and
+calling it Bowdoin; but as if, being a very conservative street, it was
+resolved to keep a cautious silence on the subject, lest the Union
+should go to pieces. Sometimes it wears a profound and mysterious look,
+as if it could tell something if it had a mind to, but thought it best
+not. Something of the ghost of its father--it was the only child he ever
+had!--walking there all the night, pausing at the corners to look up at
+the signs, which bear a strange name, and wringing his ghostly hands in
+lamentation at the wrong done his memory! Rumor told it in a whisper,
+many years ago. Perhaps it was believed by a few of the oldest
+inhabitants of the city; but the highly respectable quarter never heard
+of it; and, if it had, would not have been bribed to believe it, by any
+sum. Some one had said that some very old person had seen a phantom
+there. Nobody knew who some one was. Nobody knew who the very old person
+was. Nobody knew who had seen it; nor when; nor how. The very rumor was
+spectral.
+
+All this was many years ago. Since then it has been reported that a
+ghost was seen there one bitter Christmas eve, two or three years back.
+The twilight was already in the street; but the evening lamps were not
+yet lighted in the windows, and the roofs and chimney-tops were still
+distinct in the last clear light of the dropping day. It was light
+enough, however, for one to read, easily, from the opposite sidewalk,
+"Dr. C. Renton," in black letters, on the silver plate of a door, not
+far from the gothic portal of the Swedenborgian church. Near this door
+stood a misty figure, whose sad, spectral eyes floated on vacancy, and
+whose long, shadowy white hair, lifted like an airy weft in the
+streaming wind. That was the ghost! It stood near the door a long time,
+without any other than a shuddering motion, as though it felt the
+searching blast, which swept furiously from the north up the declivity
+of the street, rattling the shutters in its headlong passage. Once or
+twice, when a passer-by, muffled warmly from the bitter air, hurried
+past, the phantom shrank closer to the wall, till he was gone. Its
+vague, mournful face seemed to watch for some one. The twilight
+darkened, gradually; but it did not flit away. Patiently it kept its
+piteous look fixed in one direction--watching--watching; and, while the
+howling wind swept frantically through the chill air, it still seemed to
+shudder in the piercing cold.
+
+A light suddenly kindled in an opposite window. As if touched by a gleam
+from the lamp, or as if by some subtle interior illumination, the
+spectre became faintly luminous, and a thin smile seemed to quiver over
+its features. At the same moment, a strong, energetic figure--Dr.
+Renton, himself--came in sight, striding down the slope of the pavement
+to his own door, his over-coat thrown back, as if the icy air were a
+tropical warmth to him, his hat set on the back of his head, and the
+loose ends of a 'kerchief about his throat, streaming in the nor'wester.
+The wind set up a howl the moment he came in sight, and swept upon him;
+and a curious agitation began on the part of the phantom. It glided
+rapidly to and fro, and moved in circles, and then, with the same swift,
+silent motion, sailed toward him, as if blown thither by the gale. Its
+long, thin arms, with something like a pale flame spiring from the tips
+of the slender fingers, were stretched out, as in greeting, while the
+wan smile played over its face; and when he rushed by, unheedingly, it
+made a futile effort to grasp the swinging arms with which he appeared
+to buffet back the buffeting gale. Then it glided on by his side,
+looking earnestly into his countenance, and moving its pallid lips with
+agonized rapidity, as if it said: "Look at me--speak to me--speak to
+me--see me!" But he kept his course with unconscious eyes, and a vexed
+frown on his bold, white forehead, betokening an irritated mind. The
+light that had shone in the figure of the phantom, darkened slowly, till
+the form was only a pale shadow. The wind had suddenly lulled, and no
+longer lifted its white hair. It still glided on with him, its head
+drooping on its breast, and its long arms hanging by its side; but when
+he reached the door, it suddenly sprang before him, gazing fixedly into
+his eyes, while a convulsive motion flashed over its grief-worn
+features, as if it had shrieked out a word. He had his foot on the step
+at the moment. With a start, he put his gloved hand to his forehead,
+while the vexed look went out quickly on his face. The ghost watched him
+breathlessly. But the irritated expression came back to his countenance
+more resolutely than before, and he began to fumble in his pocket for a
+latch-key, muttering petulantly, "What the devil is the matter with me
+now!" It seemed to him that a voice had cried, clearly, yet as from
+afar, "Charles Renton!"--his own name. He had heard it in his startled
+mind; but, then, he knew he was in a highly wrought state of nervous
+excitement, and his medical science, with that knowledge for a basis,
+could have reared a formidable fortress of explanation against any
+phenomenon, were it even more wonderful than this.
+
+He entered the house; kicked the door to; pulled off his over-coat;
+wrenched off his outer 'kerchief; slammed them on a branch of the
+clothes-tree; banged his hat on top of them; wheeled about; pushed in
+the door of his library; strode in, and, leaving the door ajar, threw
+himself into an easy chair, and sat there in the fire-reddened dusk,
+with his white brows knit, and his arms tightly locked on his breast.
+The ghost had followed him, sadly, and now stood motionless in a corner
+of the room, its spectral hands crossed on its bosom, and its white
+locks drooping down.
+
+It was evident Dr. Renton was in a bad humor. The very library caught
+contagion from him, and became grouty and sombre. The furniture was
+grim, and sullen, and sulky; it made ugly shadows on the carpet and on
+the wall, in allopathic quantity; it took the red gleams from the fire
+on its polished surfaces, in hom[oe]opathic globules, and got no good
+from them. The fire itself peered out sulkily from the black bars of the
+grate, and seemed resolved not to burn the fresh deposit of black coals
+at the top, but to take this as a good time to remember that those coals
+had been bought in the summer at five dollars a ton--under price, mind
+you--when poor people, who cannot buy at advantage, but must get their
+firing in the winter, would then have given nine or ten dollars for
+them. And so (glowered the fire), I am determined to think of that
+outrage, and not to light them, but to go out myself, directly! And the
+fire got into such a spasm of glowing indignation over the injury, that
+it lit a whole tier of black coals with a series of little explosions,
+before it could cool down, and sent a crimson gleam over the moody
+figure of its owner in the easy chair, and over the solemn furniture,
+and into the shadowy corner filled by the ghost.
+
+The spectre did not move when Dr. Renton arose and lit the chandelier.
+It stood there, still and gray, in the flood of mellow light. The
+curtains were drawn, and the twilight without had deepened into
+darkness. The fire was now burning in despite of itself, fanned by the
+wintry gusts, which found their way down the chimney. Dr. Renton stood
+with his back to it, his hands behind him, his bold white forehead
+shaded by a careless lock of black hair, and knit sternly; and the same
+frown in his handsome, open, searching dark eyes. Tall and strong, with
+an erect port, and broad, firm shoulders, high, resolute features, a
+commanding figure garbed in aristocratic black, and not yet verging into
+the proportions of obesity--take him for all in all, a very fine and
+favorable specimen of the solid men of Boston. And seen in contrast (oh!
+could he but have known it!) with the attenuated figure of the poor, dim
+ghost!
+
+Hark! a very light foot on the stairs--a rich rustle of silks.
+Everything still again--Dr. Renton looking fixedly, with great
+sternness, at the half-open door, from whence a faint, delicious perfume
+floats into the library. Somebody there, for certain. Somebody peeping
+in with very bright, arch eyes. Dr. Renton knew it, and prepared to
+maintain his ill-humor against the invader. His face became triply armed
+with severity for the encounter. That's Netty, I know, he thought. His
+daughter. So it was. In she bounded. Bright little Netty! Gay little
+Netty! A dear and sweet little creature, to be sure, with a delicate and
+pleasant beauty of face and figure, it needed no costly silks to grace
+or heighten. There she stood. Not a word from her merry lips, but a
+smile which stole over all the solitary grimness of the library, and
+made everything better, and brighter, and fairer, in a minute. It
+floated down into the cavernous humor of Dr. Renton, and the gloom began
+to lighten directly--though he would not own it, nor relax a single
+feature. But the wan ghost in the corner lifted its head to look at her,
+and slowly brightened as to something worthy a spirit's love, and a dim
+phantom's smiles. Now then, Dr. Renton! the lines are drawn, and the foe
+is coming. Be martial, sir, as when you stand in the ranks of the cadets
+on training-days! Steady, and stand the charge! So he did. He kept an
+inflexible front as she glided toward him, softly, slowly, with her
+bright eyes smiling into his, and doing dreadful execution. Then she put
+her white arms around his neck, laid her dear, fair head on his breast,
+and peered up archly into his stern visage. Spite of himself, he could
+not keep the fixed lines on his face from breaking confusedly into a
+faint smile. Somehow or other, his hands came from behind him, and
+rested on her head. There! That's all. Dr. Renton surrendered at
+discretion! One of the solid men of Boston was taken after a desperate
+struggle--internal, of course--for he kissed her, and said, "Dear little
+Netty!" And so she was.
+
+The phantom watched her with a smile, and wavered and brightened as if
+about to glide to her; but it grew still, and remained.
+
+"Pa in the sulks to-night?" she asked, in the most winning, playful,
+silvery voice.
+
+"Pa's a fool," he answered in his deep chest-tones, with a vexed good
+humor; "and you know it."
+
+"What's the matter with pa? What makes him be a great bear? Papa-sy,
+dear," she continued, stroking his face with her little hands, and
+patting him, very much as Beauty might have patted the Beast after she
+fell in love with him--or, as if he were a great baby. In fact, he began
+to look then as if he were.
+
+"Matter? Oh! everything's the matter, little Netty. The world goes round
+too fast. My boots pinch. Somebody stole my umbrella last year. And I've
+got a headache." He concluded this fanciful abstract of his grievances
+by putting his arms around her, and kissing her again. Then he sat down
+in the easy-chair, and took her fondly on his knee.
+
+"Pa's got a headache! It is t-o-o bad, so it is," she continued in the
+same soothing, winning way, caressing his bold, white brow with her tiny
+hands. "It's a horrid shame, so it is! P-o-o-r pa. Where does it ache,
+papa-sy, dear? In the forehead? Cerebrum or cerebellum, papa-sy? Occiput
+or sinciput, deary?"
+
+"Bah! you little quiz," he replied, laughing and pinching her cheek,
+"none of your nonsense! And what are you dressed up in this way for,
+to-night? Silks, and laces, and essences, and what not! Where are you
+going, fairy?"
+
+"Going out with mother for the evening, Dr. Renton," she replied
+briskly; "Mrs. Larrabee's party, papa-sy. Christmas eve, you know. And
+what are you going to give me for a present, to-morrow, pa-sy?"
+
+"To-morrow will tell, little Netty."
+
+"Good! And what are you going to give me, so that I can make _my_
+presents, Beary?"
+
+"Ugh!" but he growled it in fun, and had a pocket-book out from his
+breast-pocket directly after. Fives--tens--twenties--fifties--all crisp,
+and nice, and new bank-notes.
+
+"Will that be enough, Netty?" He held up a twenty. The smiling face
+nodded assent, and the bright eyes twinkled.
+
+"No, it won't. But _that_ will," he continued, giving her a fifty.
+
+"Fifty dollars, Globe Bank, Boston!" exclaimed Netty, making great eyes
+at him. "But we must take all we can get, pa-sy; mustn't we? It's too
+much, though. Thank you all the same, pa-sy, nevertheless." And she
+kissed him, and put the bill in a little bit of a portemonnaie with a
+gay laugh.
+
+"Well done, I declare!" he said, smilingly. "But you're going to the
+party?"
+
+"Pretty soon, pa."
+
+He made no answer; but sat smiling at her. The phantom watched them,
+silently.
+
+"What made pa so cross and grim, to-night? Tell Netty--do," she pleaded.
+
+"Oh! because;--everything went wrong with me, to-day. There." And he
+looked as sulky, at that moment, as he ever did in his life.
+
+"No, no, pa-sy; that won't do. I want the particulars," continued Netty,
+shaking her head, smilingly.
+
+"Particulars! Well, then, Miss Nathalie Renton," he began, with mock
+gravity, "your professional father is losing some of his oldest
+patients. Everybody is in ruinous good health; and the grass is growing
+in the graveyards."
+
+"In the winter-time, papa?--smart grass!"
+
+"Not that I want practice," he went on, getting into soliloquy; "or
+patients, either. A rich man who took to the profession simply for the
+love of it, can't complain on that score. But to have an interloping
+she-doctor take a family I've attended ten years, out of my hands, and
+to hear the hodge-podge gabble about physiological laws, and woman's
+rights, and no taxation without representation, they learn from
+her--well, it's too bad!"
+
+"Is that all, pa-sy? Seems to me, _I'd_ like to vote, too," was Netty's
+piquant rejoinder.
+
+"Hoh! I'll warrant," growled her father. "Hope you'll vote the Whig
+ticket, Netty, when you get your rights."
+
+"Will the Union be dissolved, then, pa-sy--when the Whigs are beaten?"
+
+"Bah! you little plague," he growled, with a laugh. "But, then, you
+women don't know anything about politics. So, there. As I was saying,
+everything went wrong with me to-day. I've been speculating in railroad
+stock, and singed my fingers. Then, old Tom Hollis outbid me, to-day, at
+Leonard's on a rare medical work I had set my eyes upon having. Confound
+him! Then, again, two of my houses are tenantless, and there are folks
+in two others that won't pay their rent, and I can't get them out. Out
+they'll go, though, or I'll know why. And, to crown all--um-m. And I
+wish the devil had him! as he will."
+
+"Had who, Beary-papa?"
+
+"Him. I'll tell you. The street floor of one of my houses in Hanover
+street lets for an oyster-room. They keep a bar there, and sell liquor.
+Last night they had a grand row--a drunken fight, and one man was
+stabbed, it's thought fatally."
+
+"O, father!" Netty's bright eyes dilated with horror.
+
+"Yes. I hope he won't die. At any rate, there's likely to be a stir
+about the matter, and my name will be called into question, then, as I'm
+the landlord. And folks will make a handle of it, and there'll be the
+deuce to pay, generally."
+
+He got back the stern, vexed frown, to his face, with the anticipation,
+and beat the carpet with his foot. The ghost still watched from the
+angle of the room, and seemed to darken, while its features looked
+troubled.
+
+"But, father," said Netty, a little tremulously, "I wouldn't let my
+houses to such people. It's not right; is it? Why, it's horrid to think
+of men getting drunk, and killing each other!"
+
+Dr. Renton rubbed his hair into disorder, with vexation, and then
+subsided into solemnity.
+
+"I know it's not exactly right, Netty; but I can't help it. As I said
+before, I wish the devil had that bar-keeper. I ought to have ordered
+him out long ago, and then this wouldn't have happened. I've increased
+his rent twice, hoping to get rid of him so; but he pays without a
+murmur; and what am I to do? You see, he was an occupant when the
+building came into my hands, and I let him stay. He pays me a good,
+round rent; and, apart from his cursed traffic, he's a good tenant. What
+can I do? It's a good thing for him, and it's a good thing for me,
+pecuniarily. Confound him. Here's a nice rumpus brewing!"
+
+"Dear pa, I'm afraid it's not a good thing for you," said Netty,
+caressing him, and smoothing his tumbled hair. "Nor for him either. I
+wouldn't mind the rent he pays you. I'd order him out. It's bad money.
+There's blood on it."
+
+She had grown pale, and her voice quivered. The phantom glided over to
+them, and laid its spectral hand upon her forehead. The shadowy eyes
+looked from under the misty hair into the doctor's face, and the pale
+lips moved as if speaking the words heard only in the silence of his
+heart--"hear her, hear her!"
+
+"I must think of it," resumed Dr. Renton, coldly. "I'm resolved, at all
+events, to warn him that if anything of this kind occurs again, he must
+quit at once. I dislike to lose a profitable tenant; for no other
+business would bring me the sum his does. Hang it, everybody does the
+best he can with his property--why shouldn't I?"
+
+The ghost, standing near them, drooped its head again on its breast, and
+crossed its arms. Netty was silent. Dr. Renton continued, petulantly:
+
+"A precious set of people I manage to get into my premises. There's a
+woman hires a couple of rooms for a dwelling, overhead, in that same
+building, and for three months I haven't got a cent from her. I know
+these people's tricks. Her month's notice expires to-morrow, and out she
+goes."
+
+"Poor creature!" sighed Netty.
+
+He knit his brow, and beat the carpet with his foot, in vexation.
+
+"Perhaps she can't pay you, pa," trembled the sweet, silvery voice. "You
+wouldn't turn her out in this cold winter, when she can't pay you--would
+you, pa?"
+
+"Why don't she get another house, and swindle some one else?" he
+replied, testily; "there's plenty of rooms to let."
+
+"Perhaps she can't find one, pa," answered Netty.
+
+"Humbug!" retorted her father; "I know better."
+
+"Pa, dear, if I were you, I'd turn out that rumseller, and let the poor
+woman stay a little longer; just a little, pa."
+
+"Shan't do it. Hah! that would be scattering money out of both pockets.
+Shan't do it. Out she shall go; and as for him--well, he'd better turn
+over a new leaf. There, let us leave the subject, darling. It vexes me.
+How did we contrive to get into this train. Bah!"
+
+He drew her closer to him, and kissed her forehead. She sat quietly,
+with her head on his shoulder, thinking very gravely.
+
+"I feel queerly to-day, little Netty," he began, after a short pause.
+"My nerves are all high-strung with the turn matters have taken."
+
+"How is it, papa? The headache?" she answered.
+
+"Y-e-s--n-o--not exactly; I don't know," he said dubiously; then, in an
+absent way, "it was that letter set me to think of him all day, I
+suppose."
+
+"Why, pa, I declare," cried Netty, starting up, "if I didn't forget all
+about it, and I came down expressly to give it to you! Where is it? Oh!
+here it is."
+
+She drew from her pocket an old letter, faded to a pale yellow, and gave
+it to him. The ghost started suddenly.
+
+"Why, bless my soul! it's the very letter! Where did you get that,
+Nathalie?" asked Dr. Renton.
+
+"I found it on the stairs after dinner, pa."
+
+"Yes, I do remember taking it up with me; I must have dropped it," he
+answered, musingly, gazing at the superscription. The ghost was gazing
+at it, too, with startled interest.
+
+"What beautiful writing it is, pa," murmured the young girl. "Who wrote
+it to you? It looks yellow enough to have been written a long time
+since."
+
+"Fifteen years ago, Netty. When you were a baby. And the hand that wrote
+it has been cold for all that time."
+
+He spoke with a solemn sadness, as if memory lingered with the heart of
+fifteen years ago, on an old grave. The dim figure by his side had bowed
+its head, and all was still.
+
+"It is strange," he resumed, speaking vacantly and slowly, "I have not
+thought of him for so long a time, and to-day--especially this
+evening--I have felt as if he were constantly near me. It is a singular
+feeling."
+
+He put his left hand to his forehead, and mused--his right clasped his
+daughter's shoulder. The phantom slowly raised its head, and gazed at
+him with a look of unutterable tenderness.
+
+"Who was he, father?" she asked with a hushed voice.
+
+"A young man--an author--a poet. He had been my dearest friend, when we
+were boys; and, though I lost sight of him for years--he led an erratic
+life--we were friends when he died. Poor, poor fellow! Well, he is at
+peace."
+
+The stern voice had saddened, and was almost tremulous. The spectral
+form was still.
+
+"How did he die, father?"
+
+"A long story, darling," he replied gravely, "and a sad one. He was very
+poor and proud. He was a genius--that is, a person without an atom of
+practical talent. His parents died, the last, his mother, when he was
+near manhood. I was in college then. Thrown upon the world, he picked up
+a scanty subsistence with his pen, for a time. I could have got him a
+place in the counting-house, but he would not take it; in fact, he
+wasn't fit for it. You can't harness Pegasus to the cart, you know.
+Besides, he despised mercantile life--without reason, of course; but he
+was always notional. His love of literature was one of the rocks he
+foundered on. He wasn't successful; his best compositions were too
+delicate--fanciful--to please the popular taste; and then he was full of
+the radical and fanatical notions which infected so many people at that
+time in New England, and infect them now, for that matter; and his
+sublimated, impracticable ideas and principles, which he kept till his
+dying day, and which, I confess, alienated me from him, always staved
+off his chances of success. Consequently, he never rose above the
+drudgery of some employment on newspapers. Then he was terribly
+passionate, not without cause, I allow; but it wasn't wise. What I mean
+is this: if he saw, or if he fancied he saw, any wrong or injury done to
+any one, it was enough to throw him into a frenzy; he would get black in
+the face and absolutely shriek out his denunciations of the wrongdoer. I
+do believe he would have visited his own brother with the most unsparing
+invective, if that brother had laid a harming finger on a street-beggar,
+or a colored man, or a poor person of any kind. I don't blame the
+feeling; though with a man like him, it was very apt to be a false or
+mistaken one; but, at any rate, its exhibition wasn't sensible. Well, as
+I was saying, he buffeted about in this world a long time, poorly paid,
+fed, and clad; taking more care of other people than he did of himself.
+Then mental suffering, physical exposure, and want killed him."
+
+The stern voice had grown softer than a child's. The same look of
+unutterable tenderness brooded on the mournful face of the phantom by
+his side; but its thin, shining hand was laid upon his head, and its
+countenance had undergone a change. The form was still undefined; but
+the features had become distinct. They were those of a young man,
+beautiful and wan, and marked with great suffering.
+
+A pause had fallen on the conversation, in which the father and daughter
+heard the solemn sighing of the wintry wind around the dwelling. The
+silence seemed scarcely broken by the voice of the young girl.
+
+"Dear father, this was very sad. Did you say he died of want?"
+
+"Of want, my child, of hunger and cold. I don't doubt it. He had
+wandered about, as I gather, houseless for a couple of days and nights.
+It was in December, too. Some one found him, on a rainy night, lying in
+the street, drenched and burning with fever, and had him taken to the
+hospital. It appears that he had always cherished a strange affection
+for me, though I had grown away from him; and in his wild ravings he
+constantly mentioned my name, and they sent for me. That was our first
+meeting after two years. I found him in the hospital--dying. Heaven can
+witness that I felt all my old love for him return then, but he was
+delirious, and never recognized me. And, Nathalie, his hair--it had been
+coal-black, and he wore it very long, he wouldn't let them cut it
+either; and as they knew no skill could save him, they let him have his
+way--his hair was then as white as snow! God alone knows what that brain
+must have suffered to blanch hair which had been as black as the wing of
+a raven!"
+
+He covered his eyes with his hand, and sat silently. The fingers of the
+phantom still shone dimly on his head, and its white locks drooped above
+him, like a weft of light.
+
+"What was his name, father?" asked the pitying girl.
+
+"George Feval. The very name sounds like fever. He died on Christmas
+eve, fifteen years ago this night. It was on his death-bed, while his
+mind was tossing on a sea of delirious fancies, that he wrote me this
+long letter--for to the last, I was uppermost in his thoughts. It is a
+wild, incoherent thing, of course--a strange mixture of sense and
+madness. But I have kept it as a memorial of him. I have not looked at
+it for years; but this morning I found it among my papers, and somehow
+it has been in my mind all day."
+
+He slowly unfolded the faded sheets, and sadly gazed at the writing. His
+daughter had risen from her half-recumbent posture, and now bent her
+graceful head over the leaves. The phantom covered its face with its
+hands.
+
+"What a beautiful manuscript it is, father!" she exclaimed. "The writing
+is faultless."
+
+"It is, indeed," he replied. "Would he had written his life as fairly!"
+
+"Read it, father," said Nathalie.
+
+"No--but I'll read you a detached passage here and there," he answered,
+after a pause. "The rest you may read yourself some time, if you wish.
+It is painful to me. Here's the beginning:
+
+"_'My Dear Charles Renton:--Adieu, and adieu. It is Christmas eve, and I
+am going home. I am soon to exhale from my flesh, like the spirit of a
+broken flower. Exultemus forever!'_
+
+"It is very wild. His mind was in a fever-craze. Here is a passage that
+seems to refer to his own experience of life:
+
+"_'Your friendship was dear to me. I give you true love. Stocks and
+returns. You are rich, but I did not wish to be your bounty's pauper.
+Could I beg? I had my work to do for the world, but oh! the world has no
+place for souls that can only love and suffer. How many miles to
+Babylon? Threescore and ten. Not so far--not near so far! Ask
+starvelings--they know. I wanted to do the world good and the world has
+killed me, Charles.'_"
+
+"It frightens me," said Nathalie, as he paused.
+
+"We will read no more," he replied sombrely. "It belongs to the
+psychology of madness. To me, who knew him, there are gleams of sense in
+it, and passages where the delirium of the language is only a
+transparent veil on the meaning. All the remainder is devoted to what he
+thought important advice to me. But it's all wild and vague. Poor--poor
+George!"
+
+The phantom still hid its face in its hands, as the doctor slowly turned
+over the pages of the letter. Nathalie, bending over the leaves, laid
+her finger on the last, and asked--"What are those closing sentences,
+father? Read them."
+
+"Oh! that is what he called his 'last counsel' to me. It's as wild as
+the rest--tinctured with the prevailing ideas of his career. First he
+says, '_Farewell--farewell_;' then he bids me take his '_counsel into
+memory on Christmas day_;' then, after enumerating all the wretched
+classes he can think of in the country, he says. '_These are your
+sisters and your brothers--love them all_.' Here he says, '_O friend,
+strong in wealth for so much good, take my last counsel. In the name of
+the Saviour, I charge you be true and tender to mankind._' He goes on to
+bid me '_live and labor for the fallen, the neglected, the suffering,
+and the poor_;' and finally ends by advising me to help upset any, or
+all, institutions, laws, and so forth, that bear hardly on the fag-ends
+of society; and tells me that what he calls 'a service to humanity' is
+worth more to the doer than a service to anything else, or than anything
+we can gain from the world. Ah, well! poor George."
+
+"But isn't all that true, father?" said Netty; "it seems so."
+
+"H'm," he murmured through his closed lips. Then, with a vague smile,
+folding up the letter, meanwhile, he said, "Wild words, Netty, wild
+words. I've no objection to charity, judiciously given; but poor
+George's notions are not mine. Every man for himself, is a good general
+rule. Every man for humanity, as George has it, and in his acceptation
+of the principle, would send us all to the alms-house pretty soon. The
+greatest good of the greatest number--that's my rule of action. There
+are plenty of good institutions for the distressed, and I'm willing to
+help support 'em, and do. But as for making a martyr of one's self, or
+tilting against the necessary evils of society, or turning
+philanthropist at large, or any quixotism of that sort, I don't believe
+in it. We didn't make the world, and we can't mend it. Poor George.
+Well--he's at rest. The world wasn't the place for him."
+
+They grew silent. The spectre glided slowly to the wall, and stood as if
+it were thinking what, with Dr. Renton's rule of action, was to become
+of the greatest good of the smallest number. Nathalie sat on her
+father's knee, thinking only of George Feval, and of his having been
+starved and grieved to death.
+
+"Father," said Nathalie, softly, "I felt, while you were reading the
+letter, as if he were near us. Didn't you? The room was so light and
+still, and the wind sighed so."
+
+"Netty, dear, I've felt that all day, I believe," he replied. "Hark!
+there is the door-bell. Off goes the spirit-world, and here comes the
+actual. Confound it! Some one to see me, I'll warrant, and I'm not in
+the mood."
+
+He got into a fret at once. Netty was not the Netty of an hour ago, or
+she would have coaxed him out of it. But she did not notice it now in
+her abstraction. She had risen at the tinkle of the bell, and seated
+herself in a chair. Presently a nose, with a great pimple on the end of
+it, appeared at the edge of the door, and a weak, piping voice said,
+reckless of the proper tense, "there was a woman wanted to see you,
+sir."
+
+"Who is it, James?--no matter, show her in."
+
+He got up with the vexed scowl on his face, and walked the room. In a
+minute the library door opened again, and a pale, thin, rigid,
+frozen-looking little woman, scantily clad, the weather being
+considered, entered, and dropped a curt, awkward bow to Dr. Renton.
+
+"Oh! Mrs. Miller. Good evening, ma'am. Sit down," he said, with a cold,
+constrained civility.
+
+The little woman faintly said, "Good evening, Dr. Renton," and sat down
+stiffly, with her hands crossed before her, in the chair nearest the
+wall. This was the obdurate tenant, who had paid no rent for three
+months, and had a notice to quit, expiring to-morrow.
+
+"Cold evening, ma'am," remarked Dr. Renton, in his hard way.
+
+"Yes, sir, it is," was the cowed, awkward answer.
+
+"Won't you sit near the fire, ma'am," said Netty, gently; "you look
+cold."
+
+"No, miss, thank you. I'm not cold," was the faint reply. She was cold,
+though, as well she might be with her poor, thin shawl, and open bonnet,
+in such a bitter night as it was outside. And there was a rigid, sharp,
+suffering look in her pinched features that betokened she might have
+been hungry, too.
+
+"Poor people don't mind the cold weather, miss," she said, with a weak
+smile, her voice getting a little stronger. "They have to bear it, and
+they get used to it."
+
+She had not evidently borne it long enough to effect the point of
+indifference. Netty looked at her with a tender pity. Dr. Renton thought
+to himself--Hoh!--blazoning her poverty--manufacturing sympathy
+already--the old trick--and steeled himself against any attacks of that
+kind, looking jealously, meanwhile, at Netty.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Miller," he said, "what is it this evening? I suppose you've
+brought me my rent."
+
+The little woman grew paler, and her voice seemed to fail on her
+quivering lips. Netty cast a quick, beseeching look at her father.
+
+"Nathalie, please to leave the room." We'll have no nonsense carried on
+here, he thought, triumphantly, as Netty rose, and obeyed the stern,
+decisive order, leaving the door ajar behind her.
+
+He seated himself in his chair, and resolutely put his right leg up to
+rest on his left knee. He did not look at his tenant's face, determined
+that her piteous expressions (got up for the occasion, of course) should
+be wasted on him.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Miller," he said again.
+
+"Dr. Renton," she began, faintly gathering her voice as she proceeded,
+"I have come to see you about the rent. I am very sorry, sir, to have
+made you wait, but we have been unfortunate."
+
+"Sorry, ma'am," he replied, knowing what was coming; "but your
+misfortunes are not my affair. We all have misfortunes, ma'am. But we
+must pay our debts, you know."
+
+"I expected to have got money from my husband before this, sir," she
+resumed, "and I wrote to him. I got a letter from him to-day, sir, and
+it said that he sent me fifty dollars a month ago, in a letter; and it
+appears that the post-office is to blame, or somebody, for I never got
+it. It was nearly three months' wages, sir, and it is very hard to lose
+it. If it hadn't been for that, your rent would have been paid long ago,
+sir."
+
+"Don't believe a word of _that_ story," thought Dr. Renton,
+sententiously.
+
+"I thought, sir," she continued, emboldened by his silence, "that if you
+would be willing to wait a little longer, we would manage to pay you
+soon, and not let it occur again. It has been a hard winter with us,
+sir; firing is high, and provisions, and everything; and we're only poor
+people, you know, and it's difficult to get along."
+
+The doctor made no reply.
+
+"My husband was unfortunate, sir, in not being able to get employment
+here," she resumed; "his being out of work, in the autumn, threw us all
+back, and we've got nothing to depend on but his earnings. The family
+that he's in now, sir, don't give him very good pay--only twenty dollars
+a month, and his board--but it was the best chance he could get, and it
+was either go to Baltimore with them, or stay at home and starve, and so
+he went, sir. It's been a hard time with us, and one of the children is
+sick, now, with a fever, and we don't hardly know how to make out a
+living. And so, sir, I have come here this evening, leaving the children
+alone, to ask you if you wouldn't be kind enough to wait a little
+longer, and we'll hope to make it right with you in the end."
+
+"Mrs. Miller," said Dr. Renton, with stern composure, "I have no wish to
+question the truth of any statement you may make; but I must tell you
+plainly, that I can't afford to let my houses for nothing. I told you a
+month ago, that if you couldn't pay me my rent, you must vacate the
+premises. You know very well that there are plenty of tenants who are
+able and willing to pay when the money comes due. You _know_ that."
+
+He paused as he said this, and, glancing at her, saw her pale lips
+falter. It shook the cruelty of his purpose a little, and he had a vague
+feeling that he was doing wrong. Not without a proud struggle, during
+which no word was spoken, could he beat it down. Meanwhile, the phantom
+had advanced a pace toward the centre of the room.
+
+"That is the state of the matter, ma'am," he resumed, coldly. "People
+who will not pay me my rent must not live in my tenements. You must move
+out. I have no more to say."
+
+"Dr. Renton," she said faintly, "I have a sick child--how can I move
+now? Oh! sir, it's Christmas eve--don't be hard with us!"
+
+Instead of touching him, this speech irritated him beyond measure.
+Passing all considerations of her difficult position involved in her
+piteous statement, his anger flashed at once on her implication that he
+was unjust and unkind. So violent was his excitement that it whirled
+away the words that rushed to his lips, and only fanned the fury that
+sparkled from the whiteness of his face in his eyes.
+
+"Be patient with us, sir," she continued; "we are poor, but we mean to
+pay you; and we can't move now in this cold weather; please, don't be
+hard with us, sir."
+
+The fury now burst out on his face in a red and angry glow, and the
+words came.
+
+"Now, attend to me!" He rose to his feet. "I will not hear any more from
+you. I know nothing of your poverty, nor of the condition of your
+family. All I know is that you owe me three months' rent, and that you
+can't or won't pay me. I say, therefore, leave the premises to people
+who can and will. You have had your legal notice; quit my house
+to-morrow; if you don't, your furniture shall be put in the street. Mark
+me--to-morrow!"
+
+The phantom had rushed into the centre of the room. Standing, face to
+face with him--dilating--blackening--its whole form shuddering with a
+fury to which his own was tame--the semblance of a shriek upon its
+flashing lips, and on its writhing features, and an unearthly anger
+streaming from its bright and terrible eyes--it seemed to throw down,
+with its tossing arms, mountains of hate and malediction on the head of
+him whose words had smitten poverty and suffering, and whose heavy hand
+was breaking up the barriers of a home.
+
+Dr. Renton sank again into his chair. His tenant--not a woman!--not a
+sister in humanity!--but only his tenant; she sat crushed and frightened
+by the wall. He knew it vaguely. Conscience was battling in his heart
+with the stubborn devils that had entered there. The phantom stood
+before him, like a dark cloud in the image of a man. But its darkness
+was lightening slowly, and its ghostly anger had passed away.
+
+The poor woman, paler than before, had sat mute and trembling, with all
+her hopes ruined. Yet her desperation forbade her to abandon the chances
+of his mercy, and she now said:
+
+"Dr. Renton, you surely don't mean what you have told me. Won't you bear
+with me a little longer, and we will yet make it all right with you?"
+
+"I have given you my answer," he returned, coldly; "I have no more to
+add. I never take back anything I say--never!"
+
+It was true. He never did--never! She half rose from her seat as if to
+go; but weak and sickened with the bitter result of her visit, she sunk
+down again with her head bowed. There was a pause. Then, solemnly
+gliding across the lighted room, the phantom stole to her side with a
+glory of compassion on its wasted features. Tenderly, as a son to a
+mother, it bent over her; its spectral hands of light rested upon her in
+caressing and benediction; its shadowy fall of hair, once blanched by
+the anguish of living and loving, floated on her throbbing brow; and
+resignation and comfort not of this world, sank upon her spirit, and
+consciousness grew dim within her, and care and sorrow seemed to die.
+
+He who had been so cruel and so hard, sat silent in black gloom. The
+stern and sullen mood from which had dropped but one fierce flash of
+anger, still hung above the heat of his mind, like a dark rack of
+thunder-cloud. It would have burst anew into a fury of rebuke, had he
+but known his daughter was listening at the door, while the colloquy
+went on. It might have flamed violently, had his tenant made any further
+attempt to change his purpose. She had not. She had left the room
+meekly, with the same curt, awkward bow that marked her entrance. He
+recalled her manner very indistinctly; for a feeling, like a mist, began
+to gather in his mind, and make the occurrences of moments before
+uncertain.
+
+Alone, now, he was yet oppressed with a sensation that something was
+near him. Was it a spiritual instinct? for the phantom stood by his
+side. It stood silently, with one hand raised above his head, from which
+a pale flame seemed to flow downward to his brain; its other hand
+pointed movelessly to the open letter on the table beside him.
+
+He took the sheets from the table, thinking, at the moment, only of
+George Feval; but the first line on which his eye rested was, "In the
+name of the Saviour, I charge you, be true and tender to mankind!" and
+the words touched him like a low voice from the grave. Their penetrant
+reproach pierced the hardness of his heart. He tossed the letter back on
+the table. The very manner of the act accused him of an insult to the
+dead. In a moment he took up the faded sheets more reverently, but only
+to lay them down again.
+
+He had not been well that day, and he now felt worse than before. The
+pain in his head had given place to a strange sense of dilation, and
+there was a silent, confused riot in his fevered brain, which seemed to
+him like the incipience of insanity. Striving to divert his mind from
+what had passed, by reflection on other themes, he could not hold his
+thoughts; they came teeming but dim, and slipped and fell away; and only
+the one circumstance of his recent cruelty, mixed with remembrance of
+George Feval, recurred and clung with vivid persistence. This tortured
+him. Sitting there, with arms tightly interlocked, he resolved to wrench
+his mind down by sheer will upon other things; and a savage pleasure at
+what at once seemed success, took possession of him. In this mood, he
+heard soft footsteps and the rustle of festal garments on the stairs,
+and had a fierce complacency in being able to clearly apprehend that it
+was his wife and daughter going out to the party. In a moment, he heard
+the controlled and even voice of Mrs. Renton--a serene and polished lady
+with whom he had lived for years in cold and civil alienation, both
+seeing as little of each other as possible. With a scowl of will upon
+his brow, he received her image distinctly into his mind, even to the
+minutia of the dress and ornaments he knew she wore, and felt an
+absolutely savage exultation in his ability to retain it. Then came the
+sound of the closing of the hall door and the rattle of receding wheels,
+and somehow it was Nathalie and not his wife that he was holding so
+grimly in his thought, and with her, salient and vivid as before, the
+tormenting remembrance of his tenant, connected with the memory of
+George Feval. Springing to his feet, he walked the room.
+
+He had thrown himself on a sofa, still striving to be rid of his
+remorseful visitations, when the library door opened, and the inside man
+appeared, with his hand held bashfully over his nose. It flashed on him
+at once, that his tenant's husband was the servant of a family like this
+fellow; and, irritated that the whole matter should be thus broadly
+forced upon him in another way, he harshly asked him what he wanted. The
+man only came in to say that Mrs. Renton and the young lady had gone out
+for the evening, but that tea was laid for him in the dining-room. He
+did not want any tea, and if anybody called, he was not at home. With
+this charge, the man left the room, closing the door behind him.
+
+If he could but sleep a little! Rising from the sofa, he turned the
+lights of the chandelier low, and screened the fire. The room was still.
+The ghost stood, faintly radiant, in a remote corner. Dr. Renton lay
+down again, but not to repose. Things he had forgotten of his dead
+friend, now started up again in remembrance, fresh from the grave of
+many years; and not one of them but linked itself by some mysterious
+bond to something connected with his tenant, and became an accusation.
+
+He had lain thus for more than an hour, feeling more and more unmanned
+by illness, and his mental excitement fast becoming intolerable, when he
+heard a low strain of music, from the Swedenborgian chapel, hard by. Its
+first impression was one of solemnity and rest, and its first sense, in
+his mind, was of relief. Perhaps it was the music of an evening meeting;
+or it might be that the organist and choir had met for practice.
+Whatever its purpose, it breathed through his heated fancy like a cool
+and fragrant wind. It was vague and sweet and wandering at first,
+straying on into a strain more mysterious and melancholy, but very
+shadowy and subdued, and evoking the innocent and tender moods of early
+youth before worldliness had hardened around his heart. Gradually, as he
+listened to it, the fires in his brain were allayed, and all yielded to
+a sense of coolness and repose. He seemed to sink from trance to trance
+of utter rest, and yet was dimly aware that either something in his own
+condition, or some supernatural accession of tone, was changing the
+music from its proper quality to a harmony more infinite and awful. It
+was still low and indeterminate and sweet, but had unaccountably and
+strangely swelled into a gentle and sombre dirge, incommunicably
+mournful, and filled with a dark significance that touched him in his
+depth of rest with a secret tremor and awe. As he listened, rapt and
+vaguely wondering, the sense of his tranced sinking seemed to come to an
+end, and with the feeling of one who had been descending for many hours,
+and at length lay motionless at the bottom of a deep, dark chasm, he
+heard the music fail and cease.
+
+A pause, and then it rose again, blended with the solemn voices of the
+choir, sublimed and dilated now, reaching him as though from weird night
+gulfs of the upper air, and charged with an overmastering pathos as of
+the lamentations of angels. In the dimness and silence, in the aroused
+and exalted condition of his being, the strains seemed unearthly in
+their immense and desolate grandeur of sorrow, and their mournful and
+dark significance was now for him. Working within him the impression of
+vast, innumerable, fleeing shadows, thick-crowding memories of all the
+ways and deeds of an existence fallen from its early dreams and aims,
+poured across the midnight of his soul, and under the streaming
+melancholy of the dirge, his life showed like some monstrous treason. It
+did not terrify or madden him; he listened to it rapt utterly as in some
+deadening ether of dream; yet feeling to his inmost core all its
+powerful grief and accusation, and quietly aghast at the sinister
+consciousness it gave him. Still it swelled, gathering and sounding on
+into yet mightier pathos, till all at once it darkened and spread wide
+in wild despair, and aspiring again into a pealing agony of
+supplication, quivered and died away in a low and funereal sigh.
+
+The tears streamed suddenly upon his face; his soul lightened and turned
+dark within him; and as one faints away, so consciousness swooned, and
+he fell suddenly down a precipice of sleep. The music rose again, a
+pensive and holy chant, and sounded on to its close, unaffected by the
+action of his brain, for he slept and heard it no more. He lay
+tranquilly, hardly seeming to breathe, in motionless repose. The room
+was dim and silent, and the furniture took uncouth shapes around him.
+The red glow upon the ceiling, from the screened fire, showed the misty
+figure of the phantom kneeling by his side. All light had gone from the
+spectral form. It knelt beside him, mutely, as in prayer. Once it gazed
+at his quiet face with a mournful tenderness, and its shadowy hands
+caressed his forehead. Then it resumed its former attitude, and the slow
+hours crept by.
+
+At last it rose and glided to the table, on which lay the open letter.
+It seemed to try to lift the sheets with its misty hands--but vainly.
+Next it essayed the lifting of a pen which lay there--but failed. It was
+a piteous sight, to see its idle efforts on these shapes of grosser
+matter, which appeared now to have to it but the existence of illusions.
+Wandering about the shadowy room, it wrung its phantom hands as in
+despair.
+
+Presently it grew still. Then it passed quickly to his side, and stood
+before him. He slept calmly. It placed one ghostly hand above his
+forehead, and, with the other pointed to the open letter. In this
+attitude its shape grew momentarily more distinct. It began to kindle
+into brightness. The pale flame again flowed from its hand, streaming
+downward to his brain. A look of trouble darkened the sleeping face.
+Stronger--stronger; brighter--brighter; until, at last, it stood before
+him, a glorious shape of light, with an awful look of commanding love in
+its shining features--and the sleeper sprang to his feet with a cry!
+
+The phantom had vanished. He saw nothing. His first impression was, not
+that he had dreamed, but that, awaking in the familiar room, he had seen
+the spirit of his dead friend, bright and awful by his side, and that it
+had gone! In the flash of that quick change, from sleeping to waking, he
+had detected, he thought, the unearthly being that, he now felt, watched
+him from behind the air, and it had vanished! The library was the same
+as in the moment of that supernatural revealing; the open letter lay
+upon the table still; only _that_ was gone which had made these common
+aspects terrible. Then, all the hard, strong skepticism of his nature,
+which had been driven backward by the shock of his first conviction,
+recoiled, and rushed within him, violently struggling for its former
+vantage ground; till, at length, it achieved the foothold for a doubt.
+Could he have dreamed? The ghost, invisible, still watched him. Yes--a
+dream--only a dream; but, how vivid--how strange! With a slow thrill
+creeping through his veins--the blood curdling at his heart--a cold
+sweat starting on his forehead, he stared through the dimness of the
+room. All was vacancy.
+
+With a strong shudder, he strode forward, and turned up the flames of
+the chandelier. A flood of garish light filled the apartment. In a
+moment, remembering the letter to which the phantom of his dream had
+pointed, he turned and took it from the table. The last page lay upward,
+and every word of the solemn counsel at the end seemed to dilate on the
+paper, and all its mighty meaning rushed upon his soul. Trembling in his
+own despite, he laid it down and moved away. A physician, he remembered
+that he was in a state of violent nervous excitement, and thought that
+when he grew calmer its effects would pass from him. But the hand that
+had touched him had gone down deeper than the physician, and reached
+what God had made.
+
+He strove in vain. The very room, in its light and silence, and the
+lurking sentiment of something watching him, became terrible. He could
+not endure it. The devils in his heart, grown pusillanimous, cowered
+beneath the flashing strokes of his aroused and terrible conscience. He
+could not endure it. He must go out. He will walk the streets. It is not
+late--it is but ten o'clock. He will go.
+
+The air of his dream still hung heavily about him. He was in the
+street--he hardly remembered how he had got there, or when; but there he
+was, wrapped up from the searching cold, thinking, with a quiet horror
+in his mind, of the darkened room he had left behind, and haunted by the
+sense that something was groping about there in the darkness, searching
+for him. The night was still and cold. The full moon was in the zenith.
+Its icy splendor lay on the bare streets, and on the walls of the
+dwellings. The lighted oblong squares of curtained windows, here and
+there, seemed dim and waxen in the frigid glory. The familiar aspect of
+the quarter had passed away, leaving behind only a corpse-like
+neighborhood, whose huge, dead features, staring rigidly through the
+thin, white shroud of moonlight that covered all, left no breath upon
+the stainless skies. Through the vast silence of the night he passed
+along; the very sound of his footfalls was remote to his muffled sense.
+
+Gradually, as he reached the first corner, he had an uneasy feeling that
+a thing--a formless, unimaginable thing--was dogging him. He had thought
+of going down to his club-room; but he now shrank from entering, with
+this thing near him, the lighted rooms where his set were busy with
+cards and billiards, over their liquors and cigars, and where the heated
+air was full of their idle faces and careless chatter, lest some one
+should bawl out that he was pale, and ask him what was the matter, and
+he should answer, tremblingly, that something was following him, and was
+near him then! He must get rid of it first; he must walk quickly, and
+baffle its pursuit by turning sharp corners, and plunging into devious
+streets and crooked lanes, and so lose it!
+
+It was difficult to reach through memory to the crazy chaos of his mind
+on that night, and recall the route he took while haunted by this
+feeling; but he afterward remembered that, without any other purpose
+than to baffle his imaginary pursuer, he traversed at a rapid pace a
+large portion of the moonlit city; always (he knew not why) avoiding the
+more populous thoroughfares, and choosing unfrequented and tortuous
+byways, but never ridding himself of that horrible confusion of mind in
+which the faces of his dead friend and the pale woman were strangely
+blended, nor of the fancy that he was followed. Once, as he passed the
+hospital where Feval died, a faint hint seemed to flash and vanish from
+the clouds of his lunacy, and almost identify the dogging goblin with
+the figure of his dream; but the conception instantly mixed with a
+disconnected remembrance that this was Christmas eve, and then slipped
+from him, and was lost. He did not pause there, but strode on. But just
+there, what had been frightful became hideous. For at once he was
+possessed with the conviction that the thing that lurked at a distance
+behind him, was quickening its movement, and coming up to seize him. The
+dreadful fancy stung him like a goad, and, with a start, he accelerated
+his flight, horribly conscious that what he feared was slinking along in
+the shadow, close to the dark bulks of the houses, resolutely pursuing,
+and bent on overtaking him. Faster! His footfalls rang hollowly and loud
+on the moonlit pavement, and in contrast with their rapid thuds he felt
+it as something peculiarly terrible that the furtive thing behind, slunk
+after him with soundless feet. Faster, faster! Traversing only the most
+unfrequented streets, and at that late hour of a cold winter night, he
+met no one, and with a terrifying consciousness that his pursuer was
+gaining on him, he desperately strode on. He did not dare to look
+behind, dreading less what he might see, than the momentary loss of
+speed the action might occasion. Faster, faster, faster! And all at once
+he knew that the dogging thing had dropped its stealthy pace and was
+racing up to him. With a bound he broke into a run, seeing, hearing,
+heeding nothing, aware only that the other was silently louping on his
+track two steps to his one; and with that frantic apprehension upon him,
+he gained the next street, flung himself around the corner with his back
+to the wall, and his arms convulsively drawn up for a grapple; and felt
+something rush whirring past his flank, striking him on the shoulder as
+it went by, with a buffet that made a shock break through his frame.
+That shock restored him to his senses. His delusion was suddenly
+shattered. The goblin was gone. He was free.
+
+He stood panting, like one just roused from some terrible dream, wiping
+the reeking perspiration from his forehead and thinking confusedly and
+wearily what a fool he had been. He felt he had wandered a long distance
+from his house, but had no distinct perception of his whereabouts. He
+only knew he was in some thinly-peopled street, whose familiar aspect
+seemed lost to him in the magical disguise the superb moonlight had
+thrown over all. Suddenly a film seemed to drop from his eyes, as they
+became riveted on a lighted window, on the opposite side of the way. He
+started, and a secret terror crept over him, vaguely mixed with the
+memory of the shock he had felt as he turned the last corner, and his
+distinct, awful feeling that something invisible had passed him. At the
+same instant he felt, and thrilled to feel, a touch, as of a light
+finger, on his cheek. He was in Hanover street. Before him was the
+house--the oyster-room staring at him through the lighted transparencies
+of its two windows, like two square eyes, below; and his tenant's light
+in a chamber above! The added shock which this discovery gave to the
+heaving of his heart, made him gasp for breath. Could it be? Did he
+still dream? While he stood panting and staring at the building, the
+city clocks began to strike. Eleven o'clock; it was ten when he came
+away; how he must have driven! His thoughts caught up the word.
+Driven--by what? Driven from his house in horror, through street and
+lane, over half the city--driven--hunted in terror, and smitten by a
+shock here! Driven--driven! He could not rid his mind of the word, nor
+of the meaning it suggested. The pavements about him began to ring and
+echo with the tramp of many feet, and the cold, brittle air was shivered
+with the noisy voices that had roared and bawled applause and laughter
+at the National Theatre all the evening, and were now singing and
+howling homeward. Groups of rude men, and ruder boys, their breaths
+steaming in the icy air, began to tramp by, jostling him as they passed,
+till he was forced to draw back to the wall, and give them the sidewalk.
+Dazed and giddy, in cold fear, and with the returning sense of something
+near him, he stood and watched the groups that pushed and tumbled in
+through the entrance of the oyster-room, whistling and chattering as
+they went, and banging the door behind them. He noticed that some came
+out presently, banging the door harder, and went, smoking and shouting,
+down the street. Still they poured in and out, while the street was
+startled with their stimulated riot, and the bar-room within echoed
+their trampling feet and hoarse voices. Then, as his glance wandered
+upward to his tenant's window, he thought of the sick child, mixing this
+hideous discord in the dreams of fever. The word brought up the name and
+the thought of his dead friend. "In the name of the Saviour, I charge
+you be true and tender to mankind!" The memory of these words seemed to
+ring clearly, as if a voice had spoken them, above the roar that
+suddenly rose in his mind. In that moment he felt himself a wretched and
+most guilty man. He felt that his cruel words had entered that humble
+home, to make desperate poverty more desperate, to sicken sickness, and
+to sadden sorrow. Before him was the dram-shop, let and licensed to
+nourish the worst and most brutal appetites and instincts of human
+natures, at the sacrifice of all their highest and holiest tendencies.
+The throng of tipplers and drunkards was swarming through its hopeless
+door, to gulp the fiery liquor whose fumes give all shames, vices,
+miseries, and crimes, a lawless strength and life, and change the man
+into the pig or tiger. Murder was done, or nearly done, within those
+walls last night. Within those walls no good was ever done; but, daily,
+unmitigated evil, whose results were reaching on to torture unborn
+generations. He had consented to it all! He could not falter, or
+equivocate, or evade, or excuse. His dead friend's words rang in his
+conscience like the trump of the judgment angel. He was conquered.
+
+Slowly, the resolve to instantly go in up-rose within him, and with it a
+change came upon his spirit, and the natural world, sadder than before,
+but sweeter, seemed to come back to him. A great feeling of relief
+flowed upon his mind. Pale and trembling still, he crossed the street
+with a quick, unsteady step, entered a yard at the side of the house,
+and, brushing by a host of white, rattling spectres of frozen clothes,
+which dangled from lines in the inclosure, mounted some wooden steps,
+and rang the bell. In a minute he heard footsteps within, and saw the
+gleam of a lamp. His heart palpitated violently as he heard the lock
+turning, lest the answerer of his summons might be his tenant. The door
+opened, and, to his relief, he stood before a rather decent-looking
+Irishman, bending forward in his stocking feet, with one boot and a lamp
+in his hand. The man stared at him from a wild head of tumbled red hair,
+with a half smile round his loose open mouth, and said, "Begorra!" This
+was a second floor tenant.
+
+Dr. Renton was relieved at the sight of him; but he rather failed in an
+attempt at his rent-day suavity of manner, when he said:
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Flanagan. Do you think I can see Mrs. Miller
+to-night?"
+
+"She's up _there_, docther, anyway." Mr. Flanagan made a sudden start
+for the stairs, with the boot and lamp at arm's length before him, and
+stopped as suddenly. "Yull go up?--or wud she come down to ye?" There
+was as much anxious indecision in Mr. Flanagan's general aspect, pending
+the reply, as if he had to answer the question himself.
+
+"I'll go up, Mr. Flanagan," returned Dr. Renton, stepping in, after a
+pause, and shutting the door. "But I'm afraid she's in bed."
+
+"Naw--she's not, sur." Mr. Flanagan made another feint with the boot and
+lamp at the stairs, but stopped again in curious bewilderment, and
+rubbed his head. Then, with another inspiration, and speaking with such
+velocity that his words ran into each other, pell-mell, he continued:
+"Th' small girl's sick, sur. Begorra, I wor just pullin' on th' boots
+tuh gaw for the docther, in th' nixt streth, an' summons him to her
+relehf, for it's bad she is. A'id betther be goan." Another start, and a
+movement to put on the boot instantly, baffled by his getting the lamp
+into the leg of it, and involving himself in difficulties in trying to
+get it out again without dropping either, and stopped finally by Dr.
+Renton.
+
+"You needn't go, Mr. Flanagan. I'll see to the child. Don't go."
+
+He stepped slowly up the stairs, followed by the bewildered Flanagan.
+All this time Dr. Renton was listening to the racket from the bar-room.
+Clinking of glasses, rattling of dishes, trampling of feet, oaths and
+laughter, and a confused din of coarse voices, mingling with boisterous
+calls for oysters and drink, came, hardly deadened by the partition
+walls, from the haunt below, and echoed through the corridors. Loud
+enough within--louder in the street without, where the oysters and drink
+were reeling and roaring off to brutal dreams. People trying to sleep
+here; a sick child up stairs. Listen! "_Two_ stew! _One_ roast! _Four_
+ale! Hurry 'em up! _Three_ stew! _In_ number six! _One_ fancy--_two_
+roast! _One_ sling! Three brandy--_hot_! _Two_ stew! _One_ whisk'
+_skin_! Hurry 'em up! _What_ yeh _'bout_! _Three_ brand' punch--_hot_!
+_Four_ stew! _What_-ye-e-h 'BOUT! _Two_ gin-cock-t'il! _One_ stew!
+Hu-r-r-y 'em up!" Clashing, rattling, cursing, swearing, laughing,
+shouting, trampling, stumbling, driving, slamming, of doors. "Hu-r-ry
+'em UP."
+
+"Flanagan," said Dr. Renton, stopping at the first landing, "do you have
+this noise every night?"
+
+"Naise? Hoo! Divil a night, docther, but I'm wehked out ov me bed wid
+'em, Sundays an' all. Sure didn't they murdher wan of 'em, out an' out,
+last night!"
+
+"Is the man dead?"
+
+"Dead? Troth he is. An' cowld."
+
+"H'm"--through his compressed lips. "Flanagan, you needn't come up. I
+know the door. Just hold the light for me here. There, that'll do. Thank
+you." He whispered the last words from the top of the second flight.
+
+"Are ye there, docther?" Flanagan anxious to the last, and trying to
+peer up at him with the lamp-light in his eyes.
+
+"Yes. That'll do. Thank you!" in the same whisper. Before he could tap
+at the door, then darkening in the receding light, it opened suddenly,
+and a big Irish woman bounced out, and then whisked in again, calling to
+some one in an inner room: "Here he is, Mrs. Mill'r," and then bounced
+out again, with a "Walk royt in, if _you_ plaze; here's the choild"--and
+whisked in again, with a "Sure an' Jehms was quick;" never once looking
+at him, and utterly unconscious of the presence of her landlord. He had
+hardly stepped into the room and taken off his hat, when Mrs. Miller
+came from the inner chamber with a lamp in her hand. How she started!
+With her pale face grown suddenly paler, and her hand on her bosom, she
+could only exclaim: "Why, it's Dr. Renton!" and stand, still and dumb,
+gazing with a frightened look at his face, whiter than her own.
+Whereupon Mrs. Flanagan came bolting out again, with wild eyes and a
+sort of stupefied horror in her good, coarse, Irish features; and then,
+with some uncouth ejaculation, ran back, and was heard to tumble over
+something within, and tumble something else over in her fall, and gather
+herself up with a subdued howl, and subside.
+
+"Mrs. Miller," began Dr. Renton, in a low, husky voice, glancing at her
+frightened face, "I hope you'll be composed. I spoke to you very harshly
+and rudely to-night; but I really was not myself--I was in anger--and I
+ask your pardon. Please to overlook it all, and--but I will speak of
+this presently; now--I am a physician; will you let me look now at your
+sick child?"
+
+He spoke hurriedly, but with evident sincerity. For a moment her lips
+faltered; then a slow flush came up, with a quick change of expression
+on her thin, worn face, and, reddening to painful scarlet, died away in
+a deeper pallor.
+
+"Dr. Renton," she said, hastily, "I have no ill-feeling for you, sir,
+and I know you were hurt and vexed--and I know you have tried to make it
+up to me again, sir--secretly. I know who it was, now; but I can't take
+it, sir. You must take it back. You know it was you sent it, sir?"
+
+"Mrs. Miller," he replied, puzzled beyond measure, "I don't understand
+you. What do you mean?"
+
+"Don't deny it, sir. Please not to," she said imploringly, the tears
+starting to her eyes. "I am very grateful--indeed I am. But I can't
+accept it. Do take it again."
+
+"Mrs. Miller," he replied, in a hasty voice, "what do you mean? I have
+sent you nothing--nothing at all. I have, therefore, nothing to receive
+again."
+
+She looked at him fixedly, evidently impressed by the fervor of his
+denial.
+
+"You sent me nothing to-night, sir?" she asked, doubtfully.
+
+"Nothing at any time--nothing," he answered, firmly.
+
+It would have been folly to have disbelieved the truthful look of his
+wondering face, and she turned away in amazement and confusion. There
+was a long pause.
+
+"I hope, Mrs. Miller, you will not refuse any assistance I can render to
+your child," he said, at length.
+
+She started, and replied, tremblingly and confusedly, "No, sir; we shall
+be grateful to you, if you can save her"--and went quickly, with a
+strange abstraction on her white face, into the inner room. He followed
+her at once, and, hardly glancing at Mrs. Flanagan, who sat there in
+stupefaction, with her apron over her head and face, he laid his hat on
+a table, went to the bedside of the little girl, and felt her head and
+pulse. He soon satisfied himself that the little sufferer was in no
+danger, under proper remedies, and now dashed down a prescription on a
+leaf from his pocket-book. Mrs. Flanagan, who had come out from the
+retirement of her apron, to stare stupidly at him during the
+examination, suddenly bobbed up on her legs, with enlightened alacrity,
+when he asked if there was any one that could go out to the
+apothecary's, and said, "sure I wull!" He had a little trouble to make
+her understand that the prescription, which she took by the corner,
+holding it away from her, as if it were going to explode presently, and
+staring at it upside down--was to be left--"_left_, mind you, Mrs.
+Flanagan--with the apothecary--Mr. Flint--at the nearest corner--and he
+will give you some things, which you are to bring here." But she had
+shuffled off at last with a confident, "yis, sur--aw, I knoo," her head
+nodding satisfied assent, and her big thumb covering the note on the
+margin, "charge to Dr. C. Renton, Bowdoin street," (which _I_ know,
+could not keep it from the eyes of the angels!) and he sat down to await
+her return.
+
+"Mrs. Miller," he said, kindly, "don't be alarmed about your child. She
+is doing well; and, after you have given her the medicine Mrs. Flanagan
+will bring, you'll find her much better, to-morrow. She must be kept
+cool and quiet, you know, and she'll be all right soon."
+
+"Oh! Dr. Renton, I am very grateful," was the tremulous reply; "and we
+will follow all directions, sir. It is hard to keep her quiet, sir; we
+keep as still as we can, and the other children are very still; but the
+street is very noisy all the daytime and evening, sir, and--"
+
+"I know it, Mrs. Miller. And I'm afraid those people down-stairs disturb
+you somewhat."
+
+"They make some stir in the evening, sir; and it's rather loud in the
+street sometimes, at night. The folks on the lower floors are troubled a
+good deal, they say."
+
+Well they may be. Listen to the bawling outside, now, cold as it is.
+Hark! A hoarse group on the opposite sidewalk beginning a song. "Ro-o-l
+on, sil-ver mo-o-n"--. The silver moon ceases to roll in a sudden
+explosion of yells and laughter, sending up broken fragments of curses,
+ribald jeers, whoopings, and cat-calls, high into the night air.
+"Ga-l-a-ng! Hi-hi! What ye-e-h _'bout_!"
+
+"This is outrageous, Mrs. Miller. Where's the watchman?"
+
+She smiled faintly. "He takes one of them off occasionally, sir; but
+he's afraid; they beat him sometimes." A long pause.
+
+"Isn't your room rather cold, Mrs. Miller?" He glanced at the black
+stove, dimly seen in the outer room. "It is necessary to keep the rooms
+cool just now, but this air seems to me cold."
+
+Receiving no answer, he looked at her, and saw the sad truth in her
+averted face.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said quickly, flushing to the roots of his hair.
+"I might have known, after what you said to me this evening."
+
+"We had a little fire here to-day, sir," she said, struggling with the
+pride and shame of poverty; "but we have been out of firing for two or
+three days, and we owe the wharfman something now. The two boys picked
+up a few chips; but the poor children find it hard to get them, sir.
+Times are very hard with us, sir; indeed they are. We'd have got along
+better, if my husband's money had come, and your rent would have been
+paid--"
+
+"Never mind the rent!--don't speak of that!" he broke in, with his face
+all aglow. "Mrs. Miller, I haven't done right by you--I know it. Be
+frank with me. Are you in want of--have you--need of--food?"
+
+No need of answer to that faintly stammered question. The thin, rigid
+face was covered from his sight by the worn, wan hands, and all the
+pride and shame of poverty, and all the frigid truth of cold, hunger,
+anxiety, and sickened sorrow they had concealed, had given way at last
+in a rush of tears. He could not speak. With a smitten heart, he knew it
+all now. Ah! Dr. Renton, you know these people's tricks? you know their
+lying blazon of poverty, to gather sympathy?
+
+"Mrs. Miller"--she had ceased weeping, and as he spoke, she looked at
+him, with the tear-stains still on her agitated face, half ashamed that
+he had seen her--"Mrs. Miller, I am sorry. This shall be remedied. Don't
+tell me it shan't! Don't! I say it shall! Mrs. Miller, I'm--I'm ashamed
+of myself. I am, indeed."
+
+"I am very grateful, sir, I'm sure," said she; "but we don't like to
+take charity though we need help; but we can get along now, sir--for, I
+suppose I must keep it, as you say you didn't send it, and use it for
+the children's sake, and thank God for his good mercy--since I don't
+know, and never shall, where it came from, now."
+
+"Mrs. Miller," he said quickly, "you spoke in this way before; and I
+don't know what you refer to. What do you mean by--_it_?"
+
+"Oh! I forgot sir: it puzzles me so. You see, sir, I was sitting here
+after I got home from your house, thinking what I should do, when Mrs.
+Flanagan came up-stairs with a letter for me, that she said a strange
+man left at the door for Mrs. Miller; and Mrs. Flanagan couldn't
+describe him well, or understandingly; and it had no direction at all,
+only the man inquired who was the landlord, and if Mrs. Miller had a
+sick child, and then said the letter was for me; and there was no
+writing inside the letter, but there was fifty dollars. That's all, sir.
+It gave me a great shock, sir; and I couldn't think who sent it, only
+when you came to-night, I thought it was you; but you said it wasn't,
+and I never shall know who it was, now. It seems as if the hand of God
+was in it, sir, for it came when everything was darkest, and I was in
+despair."
+
+"Why, Mrs. Miller," he slowly answered, "this is very mysterious. The
+man inquired if I was the owner of the house--oh! no--he only inquired
+who was--but then he knew I was the--oh! bother! I'm getting nowhere.
+Let's see. Why, it must be some one you know, or that knows your
+circumstances."
+
+"But there's no one knows them but yourself; and I told you," she
+replied; "no one else but the people in the house. It must have been
+some rich person, for the letter was a gilt-edge sheet, and there was
+perfume in it, sir."
+
+"Strange," he murmured. "Well, I give it up. All is, I advise you to
+keep it, and I'm very glad some one did his duty by you in your hour of
+need, though I'm sorry it was not myself. Here's Mrs. Flanagan."
+
+There was a good deal done, and a great burden lifted off an humble
+heart--nay, two! before Dr. Renton thought of going home. There was a
+patient gained, likely to do Dr. Renton more good than any patient he
+had lost. There was a kettle singing on the stove, and blowing off a
+happier steam than any engine ever blew on that railroad, whose
+unmarketable stock had singed Dr. Renton's fingers. There was a yellow
+gleam flickering from the blazing fire on the sober binding of a good
+old Book upon a shelf with others, a rarer medical work than ever
+slipped at auction from Dr. Renton's hands, since it kept the sacred
+lore of Him who healed the sick, and fed the hungry, and comforted the
+poor, and who was also the Physician of souls.
+
+And there were other offices performed, of lesser range than these,
+before he rose to go. There were cooling mixtures blended for the sick
+child; medicines arranged; directions given; and all the items of her
+tendance orderly foreseen, and put in pigeon-holes of When and How, for
+service.
+
+At last he rose to go. "And now, Mrs. Miller," he said, "I'll come here
+at ten in the morning, and see to our patient. She'll be nicely by that
+time. And--(listen to those brutes in the street!--twelve o'clock,
+too--ah! there's the bell),--as I was saying, my offence to you being
+occasioned by your debt to me, I feel my receipt for your debt should
+commence my reparation to you; and I'll bring it to-morrow. Mrs. Miller
+you don't quite come at me--what I mean is--you owe me, under a notice
+to quit, three months' rent. Consider that paid in full. I never will
+take a cent of it from you--not a copper. And I take back the notice.
+Stay in my house as long as you like; the longer the better. But, up to
+this date, your rent's paid. There. I hope you'll have as happy a
+Christmas as circumstances will allow, and I mean you shall."
+
+A flush of astonishment--of indefinable emotion, overspread her face.
+
+"Dr. Renton, stop, sir!" He was moving to the door. "Please, sir, _do_
+hear me! You are very good--but I can't allow you to--Dr. Renton, we are
+able to pay you the rent, and we _will_, and we _must_--here--now. Oh!
+sir, my gratefulness will never fail to you--but here--here--be fair
+with me, sir, and _do_ take it!"
+
+She had hurried to a chest of drawers, and came back with the letter
+which she had rustled apart with eager, trembling hands, and now,
+unfolding the single bank-note it had contained, she thrust it into his
+fingers as they closed.
+
+"Here, Mrs. Miller"--she had drawn back with her arms locked on her
+bosom, and he stepped forward--"no, no. This shan't be. Come, come, you
+must take it back. Good heavens!" he spoke low, but his eyes blazed in
+the red glow which broke out on his face, and the crisp note in his
+extended hand shook violently at her--"Sooner than take this money from
+you, I would perish in the street! What! Do you think I will rob you of
+the gift sent you by some one who had a human heart for the distresses I
+was aggravating? Sooner than--here, take it! O my God! what's this?"
+
+The red glow on his face went out, with this exclamation, in a pallor
+like marble, and he jerked back the note to his starting eyes; Globe
+Bank--Boston--Fifty Dollars. For a minute he gazed at the motionless
+bill in his hand. Then, with his hueless lips compressed, he seized the
+blank letter from his astonished tenant, and looked at it, turning it
+over and over. Grained letter-paper--gilt-edged--with a favorite perfume
+in it. Where's Mrs. Flanagan? Outside the door, sitting on the top of
+the stairs, with her apron over her head, crying. Mrs. Flanagan! Here!
+In she tumbled, her big feet kicking her skirts before her, and her eyes
+and face as red as a beet.
+
+"Mrs. Flanagan, what kind of a looking man gave you this letter at the
+door to-night?"
+
+"A-w, Docther Rinton, dawn't ax me!--Bother, an' all, an' sure an' I
+cudn't see him wud his fur-r hat, an' he a-ll boondled oop wud his co-at
+oop on his e-ars, an' his big han'kershuf smotherin' thuh mouth uv him,
+an' sorra a bit uv him tuh be looked at, sehvin' thuh poomple on thuh
+ind uv his naws."
+
+"The _what_ on the end of his nose?"
+
+"Thuh poomple, sur."
+
+"What does she mean, Mrs. Miller?" said the puzzled questioner, turning
+to his tenant.
+
+"I don't know, sir, indeed," was the reply; "she said that to me, and I
+couldn't understand her."
+
+"It's thuh poomple, docther. Dawn't ye knoo? Thuh big, flehmin poomple
+oop there." She indicated the locality, by flattening the rude tip of
+her own nose with her broad forefinger.
+
+"Oh! the pimple! I have it." So he had. Netty, Netty!
+
+He said nothing, but sat down in a chair, with his bold, white brow
+knitted, and the warm tears in his dark eyes.
+
+"You know who sent it, sir, don't you?" asked his wondering tenant,
+catching the meaning of all this.
+
+"Mrs. Miller, I do. But I cannot tell you. Take it, now, and use it. It
+is doubly yours. There. Thank you."
+
+She had taken it with an emotion in her face that gave a quicker motion
+to his throbbing heart. He rose to his feet, hat in hand, and turned
+away. The noise of a passing group of roysterers in the street without,
+came strangely loud into the silence of that room.
+
+"Good night, Mrs. Miller. I'll be here in the morning. Good night."
+
+"Good night, sir. God bless you, sir!"
+
+He turned around quickly. The warm tears in his dark eyes had flowed on
+his face, which was pale; and his firm lip quivered.
+
+"I hope He will, Mrs. Miller--I hope He will. It should have been said
+oftener."
+
+He was on the outer threshold. Mrs. Flanagan had, somehow, got there
+before him, with a lamp, and he followed her down through the dancing
+shadows, with blurred eyes. On the lower landing he stopped to hear the
+jar of some noisy wrangle, thick with oaths, from the bar-room. He
+listened for a moment, and then turned to the staring stupor of Mrs.
+Flanagan's rugged visage.
+
+"Sure, they're at ut, docther, wud a wull," she said, smiling.
+
+"Yes. Mrs. Flanagan, you'll stay up with Mrs. Miller to-night, won't
+you?"
+
+"Dade an' I wull, sur."
+
+"That's right. Do. And make her try and sleep, for she must be tired.
+Keep up a fire--not too warm, you understand. There'll be wood and coal
+coming to-morrow, and she'll pay you back."
+
+"A-w, docther, dawn't noo!"
+
+"Well, well. And--look here; have you got anything to eat in the house?
+Yes; well; take it up-stairs. Wake up those two boys, and give them
+something to eat. Don't let Mrs. Miller stop you. Make her eat
+something. Tell her I said she must. And, first of all, get your bonnet,
+and go to that apothecary's--Flint's--for a bottle of port wine, for
+Mrs. Miller. Hold on. There's the order." (He had a leaf out of his
+pocket-book in a minute, and wrote it down.) "Go with this, the first
+thing. Ring Flint's bell, and he'll wake up. And here's something for
+your own Christmas dinner, to-morrow." Out of the roll of bills, he drew
+one of the tens--Globe Bank--Boston--and gave it to Mrs. Flanagan.
+
+"A-w, dawn't noo, docther."
+
+"Bother! It's for yourself, mind. Take it. There. And now unlock the
+door. That's it. Good night, Mrs. Flanagan."
+
+"An' meh thuh Hawly Vurgin hape blessn's on ye, Docther Rinton, wud a-ll
+thuh compliments uv thuh sehzin, for yur thuh--"
+
+He lost the end of Mrs. Flanagan's parting benedictions in the moonlit
+street. He did not pause till he was at the door of the oyster-room. He
+paused then, to make way for a tipsy company of four, who reeled
+out--the gaslight from the bar-room on the edges of their sodden,
+distorted faces--giving three shouts and a yell, as they slammed the
+door behind them.
+
+He pushed after a party that was just entering. They went at once for
+drink to the upper end of the room, where a rowdy crew, with cigars in
+their mouths, and liquor in their hands, stood before the bar, in a
+knotty wrangle concerning some one who was killed. Where is the keeper?
+Oh! there he is, mixing hot brandy punch for two. Here, you, sir, go up
+quietly, and tell Mr. Rollins Dr. Renton wants to see him. The waiter
+came back presently to say Mr. Rollins would be right along. Twenty-five
+minutes past twelve. Oyster trade nearly over. Gaudy-curtained booths on
+the left all empty but two. Oyster-openers and waiters--three of them in
+all--nearly done for the night, and two of them sparring and scuffling
+behind a pile of oysters on the trough, with the colored print of the
+great prize fight between Tom Hyer and Yankee Sullivan, in a veneered
+frame above them on the wall. Blower up from the fire opposite the bar,
+and stewpans and griddles empty and idle on the bench beside it, among
+the unwashed bowls and dishes. Oyster trade nearly over. Bar still busy.
+
+Here comes Rollins in his shirt sleeves, with an apron on. Thick-set,
+muscular man--frizzled head, low forehead, sharp, black eyes, flabby
+face, with a false, greasy smile on it now, oiling over a curious,
+stealthy expression of mingled surprise and inquiry, as he sees his
+landlord here at this unusual hour.
+
+"Come in here, Mr. Rollins; I want to speak to you."
+
+"Yes, sir. Jim" (to the waiter), "go and tend bar." They sat down in one
+of the booths, and lowered the curtain. Dr. Renton, at one side of the
+table within, looking at Rollins, sitting leaning on his folded arms, at
+the other side.
+
+"Mr. Rollins, I am told the man who was stabbed here last night is dead.
+Is that so?"
+
+"Well, he is, Dr. Renton. Died this afternoon."
+
+"Mr. Rollins, this is a serious matter; what are you going to do about
+it?"
+
+"Can't help it, sir. Who's a-goin' to touch _me_? Called in a watchman.
+Whole mess of 'em had cut. Who knows 'em? Nobody knows 'em. Man that was
+stuck never see the fellers as stuck him in all his life till then.
+Didn't know which one of 'em did it. Didn't know nothing. Don't now, an'
+never will, 'nless he meets 'em in hell. That's all. Feller's dead, an'
+who's a-goin' to touch _me_? Can't do it. Ca-n-'t do it."
+
+"Mr. Rollins," said Dr. Renton, thoroughly disgusted with this man's
+brutal indifference, "your lease expires in three days."
+
+"Well, it does. Hope to make a renewal with you, Dr. Renton. Trade's
+good here. Shouldn't mind more rent on, if you insist--hope you
+won't--if it's anything in reason. Promise sollum, I shan't have no more
+fightin' in here. Couldn't help this. Accidents _will_ happen, yo'
+know."
+
+"Mr. Rollins, the case is this: if you didn't sell liquor here, you'd
+have no murder done in your place--murder, sir. That man was murdered.
+It's your fault, and it's mine, too. I ought not to have let you the
+place for your business. It _is_ a cursed traffic, and you and I ought
+to have found it out long ago. _I_ have. I hope _you_ will. Now, I
+advise you, as a friend, to give up selling rum for the future: you see
+what it comes to--don't you? At any rate, I will not be responsible for
+the outrages that are perpetrated in my building any more--I will not
+have liquor sold here. I refuse to renew your lease. In three days you
+must move."
+
+"Dr Renton, you hurt my feelin's. Now, how would you--"
+
+"Mr. Rollins, I have spoken to you as a friend, and you have no cause
+for pain. You must quit these premises when your lease expires. I'm
+sorry I can't make you go before that. Make no appeals to me, if you
+please. I am fixed. Now, sir, good-night."
+
+The curtain was pulled up, and Rollins rolled over to his beloved bar,
+soothing his lacerated feelings by swearing like a pirate, while Dr.
+Renton strode to the door, and went into the street, homeward.
+
+He walked fast through the magical moonlight, with a strange feeling of
+sternness, and tenderness, and weariness, in his mind. In this mood, the
+sensation of spiritual and physical fatigue gaming on him, but a quiet
+moonlight in all his reveries, he reached his house. He was just putting
+his latch-key in the door, when it was opened by James, who stared at
+him for a second, and then dropped his eyes, and put his hand before his
+nose. Dr. Renton compressed his lips on an involuntary smile.
+
+"Ah! James, you're up late. It's near one."
+
+"I sat up for Mrs. Renton and the young lady, sir. They're just come,
+and gone up stairs."
+
+"All right, James. Take your lamp and come in here. I've got something
+to say to you." The man followed him into the library at once, with some
+wonder on his sleepy face.
+
+"First, put some coal on that fire, and light the chandelier. I shall
+not go up stairs to-night." The man obeyed. "Now, James, sit down in
+that chair." He did so, beginning to look frightened at Dr. Renton's
+grave manner.
+
+"James"--a long pause--"I want you to tell me the truth. Where did you
+go to-night? Come, I have found you out. Speak."
+
+The man turned as white as a sheet, and looked wretched with the whites
+of his bulging eyes, and the great pimple on his nose awfully distinct
+in the livid hue of his features. He was a rather slavish fellow, and
+thought he was going to lose his situation. Please not to blame him, for
+he, too, was one of the poor.
+
+"Oh! Dr. Renton, excuse me, sir; I didn't mean doing any harm."
+
+"James, my daughter gave you an undirected letter this evening; you
+carried it to one of my houses in Hanover street. Is that true?"
+
+"Ye-yes, sir. I couldn't help it. I only did what she told me, sir."
+
+"James, if my daughter told you to set fire to this house, what would
+you do?"
+
+"I wouldn't do it, sir," he stammered, after some hesitation.
+
+"You wouldn't? James, if my daughter ever tells you to set fire to this
+house, do it, sir! Do it. At once. Do whatever she tells you. Promptly.
+And I'll back you."
+
+The man stared wildly at him, as he received this astonishing command.
+Dr. Renton was perfectly grave, and had spoken slowly and seriously. The
+man was at his wits' end.
+
+"You'll do it James--will you?"
+
+"Ye-yes, sir, certainly."
+
+"That's right. James, you're a good fellow. James, you've got a
+family--a wife and children--hav'n't you?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I have; living in the country, sir. In Chelsea, over the
+ferry. For cheapness, sir."
+
+"For cheapness, eh? Hard times, James? How is it?"
+
+"Pretty hard, sir. Close, but toler'ble comfortable. Rub and go, sir."
+
+"Rub and go. Ve-r-y well. Rub and go. James, I'm going to raise your
+wages--to-morrow. Generally, because you're a good servant. Principally,
+because you carried that letter to-night, when my daughter asked you. I
+shan't forget it. To-morrow, mind. And if I can do anything for you,
+James, at any time, just tell me. That's all. Now, you'd better go to
+bed. And a happy Christmas to you!"
+
+"Much obliged to you, sir. Same to you and many of 'em. Good-night,
+sir." And with Dr. Renton's "good-night" he stole up to bed, thoroughly
+happy, and determined to obey Miss Renton's future instructions to the
+letter. The shower of golden light which had been raining for the last
+two hours, had fallen, even on him. It would fall all day to-morrow in
+many places, and the day after, and for long years to come. Would that
+it could broaden and increase to a general deluge, and submerge the
+world!
+
+Now the whole house was still, and its master was weary. He sat there,
+quietly musing, feeling the sweet and tranquil presence near him. Now
+the fire was screened, the lights were out, save one dim glimmer, and he
+had lain down on the couch with the letter in his hand, and slept the
+dreamless sleep of a child.
+
+He slept until the gray dawn of Christmas day stole into the room, and
+showed him the figure of his friend, a shape of glorious light, standing
+by his side, and gazing at him with large and tender eyes! He had no
+fear. All was deep, serene, and happy with the happiness of heaven.
+Looking up into that beautiful, wan face--so tranquil--so radiant;
+watching, with a child-like awe, the star-fire in those shadowy eyes;
+smiling faintly, with a great, unutterable love thrilling slowly through
+his frame, in answer to the smile of light that shone upon the phantom
+countenance; so he passed a space of time which seemed a calm eternity,
+till, at last, the communion of spirit with spirit--of mortal love with
+love immortal--was perfected, and the shining hands were laid on his
+forehead, as with a touch of air. Then the phantom smiled, and, as its
+shining hands were withdrawn, the thought of his daughter mingled in the
+vision. She was bending over him! The dawn--the room, were the same. But
+the ghost of Feval had gone out from earth, away to its own land!
+
+"Father, dear father! Your eyes were open, and they did not look at me.
+There is a light on your face, and your features are changed! What is
+it--what have you seen?"
+
+"Hush, darling: here--kneel by me, for a little while, and be still. I
+have seen the dead."
+
+She knelt by him, burying her awe-struck face in his bosom, and clung to
+him with all the fervor of her soul. He clasped her to his breast, and
+for minutes all was still.
+
+"Dear child--good and dear child!"
+
+The voice was tremulous and low. She lifted her fair, bright
+countenance, now convulsed with a secret trouble, and dimmed with
+streaming tears, to his, and gazed on him. His eyes were shining; but
+his pallid cheeks, like hers, were wet with tears. How still the room
+was! How like a thought of solemn tenderness, the pale gray dawn! The
+world was far away, and his soul still wandered in the peaceful awe of
+his dream. The world was coming back to him--but oh! how changed!--in
+the trouble of his daughter's face.
+
+"Darling, what is it? Why are you here? Why are you weeping? Dear child,
+the friend of my better days--of the boyhood when I had noble aims, and
+life was beautiful before me--he has been here! I have seen him. He has
+been with me--oh! for a good I cannot tell!"
+
+"Father, dear father!"--he had risen, and sat upon the couch, but she
+still knelt before him, weeping, and clasped his hands in hers--"I
+thought of you and of this letter, all the time. All last night till I
+slept, and then I dreamed you were tearing it to pieces, and trampling
+on it. I awoke, and lay thinking of you, and of ----. And I thought I
+heard you come down-stairs, and I came here to find you. But you were
+lying here so quietly, with your eyes open, and so strange a light on
+your face. And I knew--I knew you were dreaming of him, and that you saw
+him, for the letter lay beside you. O father! forgive me, but do hear
+me! In the name of this day--it's Christmas day, father--in the name of
+the time when we must both die--in the name of that time, father, hear
+me! That poor woman last night--O father! forgive me, but don't tear
+that letter in pieces and trample it under foot! You know what I
+mean--you know--you know. Don't tear it, and tread it under foot!"
+
+She clung to him, sobbing violently, her face buried in his hands.
+
+"Hush, hush! It's all well--it's all well. Here, sit by me. So. I
+have"--his voice failed him, and he paused. But sitting by him--clinging
+to him--her face hidden in his bosom--she heard the strong beating of
+his disenchanted heart!
+
+"My child, I know your meaning. I will not tear the letter to pieces and
+trample it under foot. God forgive me my life's slight to those words.
+But I learned their value last night, in the house where your blank
+letter had entered before me."
+
+She started, and looked into his face steadfastly, while a bright
+scarlet shot into her own.
+
+"I know all, Netty--all. Your secret was well kept, but it is yours and
+mine now. It was well done, darling--well done. Oh! I have been through
+strange mysteries of thought and life since that starving woman sat
+here! Well--thank God!"
+
+"Father, what have you done?" The flush had failed, but a glad color
+still brightened her face, while the tears stood trembling in her eyes.
+
+"All that you wished yesterday," he answered. "And all that you ever
+could have wished, henceforth I will do."
+
+"O father!"--She stopped. The bright scarlet shot again into her face,
+but with an April shower of tears, and the rainbow of a smile.
+
+"Listen to me, Netty, and I will tell you, and only you, what I have
+done." Then, while she mutely listened, sitting by his side, and the
+dawn of Christmas broadened into Christmas-day, he told her all.
+
+And when he had told all, and emotion was stilled, they sat together in
+silence for a time, she with her innocent head drooped upon his
+shoulder, and her eyes closed, lost in tender and mystic reveries; and
+he musing with a contrite heart. Till at last, the stir of daily life
+began to waken in the quiet dwelling, and without, from steeples in the
+frosty air, there was a sound of bells.
+
+They rose silently, and stood, clinging to each other, side by side.
+
+"Love, we must part," he said, gravely and tenderly. "Read me, before we
+go, the closing lines of George Feval's letter. In the spirit of this
+let me strive to live. Let it be for me the lesson of the day. Let it
+also be the lesson of my life."
+
+Her face was pale and lit with exaltation as she took the letter from
+his hand. There was a pause--and then upon the thrilling and tender
+silver of her voice, the words arose like solemn music:
+
+"_Farewell--farewell! But, oh! take my counsel into memory on Christmas
+Day, and forever. Once again, the ancient prophecy of peace and
+good-will shines on a world of wars and wrongs and woes. Its soft ray
+shines into the darkness of a land wherein swarm slaves, poor laborers,
+social pariahs, weeping women, homeless exiles, hunted fugitives,
+despised aliens, drunkards, convicts, wicked children, and Magdalens
+unredeemed. These are but the ghastliest figures in that sad army of
+humanity which advances, by a dreadful road, to the Golden Age of the
+poets' dream. These are your sisters and your brothers. Love them all.
+Beware of wronging one of them by word or deed. O friend! strong in
+wealth for so much good--take my last counsel. In the name of the
+Saviour, I charge you, be true and tender to mankind! Come out from
+Babylon into manhood, and live and labor for the fallen, the neglected,
+the suffering, and the poor. Lover of arts, customs, laws, institutions,
+and forms of society, love these things only as they help mankind! With
+stern love, overturn them, or help to overturn them, when they become
+cruel to a single--the humblest--human being. In the world's scale,
+social position, influence, public power, the applause of majorities,
+heaps of funded gold, services rendered to creeds, codes, sects,
+parties, or federations--they weigh weight; but in God's
+scale--remember!--on the day of hope, remember!--your least service to
+Humanity, outweighs them all!_"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ghost, by William. D. O'Connor
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