When I Was Dead and other stories

WHEN I WAS DEAD

"And yet my heart
Will not confess he owes the malady
That doth my life besiege."
--All's Well that Ends Well

That was the worst of Ravenel Hall. The passages were long and gloomy,
the rooms were musty and dull, even the pictures were sombre and their
subjects dire. On an autumn evening, when the wind soughed and ailed
through the trees in the park, and the dead leaves whistled and
chattered, while the rain clamoured at the windows, small wonder that
folks with gentle nerves went a-straying in their wits! An acute
nervous system is a grievous burthen on the deck of a yacht under
sunlit skies: at Ravenel the chain of nerves was prone to clash and
jangle a funeral march. Nerves must be pampered in a tea-drinking
community; and the ghost that your grandfather, with a skinful of
port, could face and never tremble, sets you, in your sobriety,
sweating and shivering; or, becoming scared (poor ghost!) of your
bulged eyes and dropping jaw, he quenches expectation by not appearing
at all. So I am left to conclude that it was tea which made my
acquaintance afraid to stay at Ravenel. Even Wilvern gave over; and as
he is in the Guards, and a polo player his nerves ought to be strong
enough. On the night before he went I was explaining to him my theory,
that if you place some drops of human blood near you, and then
concentrate your thoughts, you will after a while see before you a man
or a woman who will stay with you during long hours of the night, and
even meet you at unexpected places during the day. I was explaining
this theory, I repeat, when he interrupted me with words, senseless
enough, which sent me fencing and parrying strangers,--on my guard.

"I say, Alistair, my dear chap!" he began, "you ought to get out of
this place and go up to Town and knock about a bit--you really ought,
you know."

"Yes," I replied, "and get poisoned at the hotels by bad food and at
the clubs by bad talk, I suppose. No, thank you: and let me say that
your care for my health enervates me."

"Well, you can do as you like," says he, rapping with his feet on the
floor. "I'm hanged if I stay here after to-morrow I'll be staring mad
if I do!"

He was my last visitor. Some weeks after his departure I was sitting
in the library with my drops of blood by me. I had got my theory
nearly perfect by this time; but there was one difficulty. The figure
which I had ever before me was the figure of an old woman with her
hair divided in the middle, and her hair fell to her shoulders, white
on one side and black on the other. She as a very complete old woman;
but, alas! she was eyeless, and when I tried to construct the eyes she
would shrivel and rot in my sight. But to-night I was thinking,
thinking, as I had never thought before, and the eyes were just
creeping into the head when I heard terrible crash outside as if some
heavy substance had fallen. Of a sudden the door was flung open and
two maid-servants entered they glanced at the rug under my chair, and
at that they turned a sick white, cried on God, and huddled out.

"How dare you enter the library in this manner?" I demanded sternly.
No answer came back from them, so I started in pursuit. I found all
the servants in the house gathered in a knot at the end of the
passage.

"Mrs. Pebble," I said smartly, to the housekeeper, "I want those two
women discharged to-morrow. It's an outrage! You ought to be more
careful." But she was not attending to me. Her face was distorted with
terror.