True Tales of the Weird. Dickinson Sidney
in the opening paragraph of this narrative occurred in the following winter, and was, in a certain sense, a sequel to the first. Business took me from my home in Boston, and during my absence my wife and daughter were invited by the lady I have already mentioned to spend a few days at her house in Brookline. Her husband was away on one of his frequent business trips, leaving with his wife her widowed sister, Mrs. Myra Hall, his daughter, a girl of eighteen, and a young German lady, Fräulein Botha, whose acquaintance the hostess had formed abroad, and who at the time was at the head of the Department of Instruction in Art at Wellesley College. All these were witnesses, with my wife, of the remarkable event which I am about to describe.
On the afternoon of the second day of my wife's visit, the child became suddenly ill, and as evening drew on exhibited rather alarming symptoms of fever. A physician was summoned who prescribed remedies, and directed that the patient should be put to bed at once. This was done, and at about ten o'clock my wife, accompanied by the ladies I have mentioned, went quietly upstairs to observe her condition before retiring for the night themselves. The upper floor was reached by a very broad staircase which branched near the top to give access to the chambers upon a wide hall, from every part of which one could look down over a railing upon the floor below – and the room in which the child lay was about half-way around this hall on the left-hand side.
The ladies entered the chamber and the hostess turned up the gas, showing the child peacefully slumbering and with forehead and hands moist with a wholesome perspiration, although her face was still somewhat flushed. As the night was a bitter cold one in mid-January, the mistress of the house suggested that some additional covering should be placed upon the bed, and produced from another room an eider-down counterpane, covered with scarlet silk, which was carefully arranged without waking the sleeper. All then left the room and started downstairs again, the hostess being the last to go out, after lowering the gas until it showed only a point of light.
They were near the bottom of the staircase when my wife suddenly cried out: "Oh, there is Minnie! She passed up the stairs by me, all in white, and has gone into the room! Oh, I know something dreadful is going to happen!" – and she rushed frantically to the upper floor, followed by the others in a body. At the half-open door of the child's room they all stopped and listened, not daring for the moment to enter, but no sound came from within. Then, mustering up courage and clinging to each others' hands, they went softly in, and the hostess turned up the gas. With one accord they looked toward the bed, and, half-blinded by the sudden glare of the gaslight, could not for a moment credit what their eyes showed them – that the sleeping child was lying under a coverlet, not of scarlet, as they had left her hardly a minute before, but of snowy white. Recovering from their astonishment, an examination revealed the cause of the phenomenon. The scarlet eider-down counterpane was in its place, but completely covered with pure white lilies on long stalks, so spread about and lying in such quantities that the surface of the bed was hidden under their blooms. By actual count there were more than two hundred of these rich and beautiful blossoms strewn upon the coverlet, representing a moderate fortune at that time of year, and probably unprocurable though all the conservatories in the city had been searched for them.
They were carefully gathered and placed about the house in vases, jugs, and every other receptacle that could be pressed into service to hold them, filling the rooms for several days with their fragrance until, like other flowers, they faded and died.
THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN
On a brilliant moonlit evening in August, 1885, a considerable party of friends and more or less intimate acquaintances of the hostess assembled at the summer cottage of Mrs. Thaxter at Appledore Island, Isles of Shoals. Included in the company were the then editor of the New York Herald, Rev. Dr. Hepworth, – also well known as a prominent divine and pulpit orator – two of the leading musicians of Boston (Julius Eichberg and Prof. John K. Paine) – of whom one occupied a chair in Harvard University, – and, among others, my wife and myself. The cottage was the charming resort which the visitor would be led to expect from the well-known refinement and artistic taste of its occupant, and its interior attractions might well have been suggested even to the casual passer-by who looked upon its wonderful flower-garden, wherein seeds of every variety had in spring been scattered broadcast and in profusion, and now, as autumn approached, had developed into a jungle of blooms of every conceivable color.
We had some music, as I remember, and after that an interesting conversation, which, in consequence of the many varied and brilliant intellects there assembled, took a wide range, coming around finally – I do not recall by what steps – to occultism, clairvoyance, and the phenomena of so-called "Spiritualism." In the course of the discussion of this topic, the editor interested us by a humorous account of some recent experiences of his own in "table-tipping" and "communications" by rappings – and incidentally remarked that he believed any assembly of persons who wished could experience similar phenomena, even though none of them possessed what it is usual to describe as "mediumistic" powers. Some one else then suggested that, as our company seemed to fulfil this condition, the present might be a favorable time to test the theory – whereupon we all proceeded to the adjoining dining-room with the view of making experiment by means of the large dinner table that stood in the middle of it.
(I may here state that although my wife had already had some abnormal experiences, only Mrs. Thaxter and I were acquainted with the fact, and even these had come to her unsought in every instance.)
Somewhat to our disappointment, the table failed to show itself susceptible to any "influence" other than the law of gravitation, but remained insensible and immovable, even though we sat about it under approved "conditions" for half an hour or so – lights lowered, and our imposed hands touching each other in order to form upon it an uninterrupted "circuit." We finally tired of this dull sport, turned up the lights, and pushing back our chairs from the table, fell into general conversation.
Hardly had we done so, when my wife suddenly exclaimed: – "How strange! Why, the wall of the room seems to have been removed, and I can see rocks and the sea, and the moonlight shining upon them!" At this interruption our talk naturally ceased abruptly, and one of us asked her to describe more in detail what was visible to her.
"It is growing stranger still," she replied. "I do not see the sea any more. I see a long, straight road, with great trees like elms here and there on the side of it, and casting dark shadows across it. There are no trees like those and no such road near here, and I cannot understand it. There is a man standing in the middle of the road, in the shadow of one of the trees. Now he is coming toward me and I can see his face in the moonlight. Why! it is John Weiss!" (naming the Liberal clergyman and writer whom most of us had known in Boston, and who had died some five or six years before) "Why, is that you? What are you doing here, and what does this mean? He smiles, but does not speak. Now he has turned and gone back into the shadow of the tree again."
After a few moments' pause: – "Now I can see something coming along the road some distance away. It is a man on horseback. He is riding slowly, and he has his head bent and a slouch hat over his eyes, so that I cannot see his face. Now John Weiss steps out of the shadow into the moonlight; the horse sees him and stops – he rears up in the air and whirls about and begins to run back in the direction from which he came. The man on his back pulls him up, lashes him with his whip, turns him around, and tries to make him go forward. The horse is terrified and backs again, trying to break away from his rider; the man strikes him again, but he will not advance.
"The man dismounts and tries to lead the horse, looking about to see what he is frightened at. I can see his face now very clearly – I should know him anywhere! John Weiss is walking toward him, but the man does not see him. The horse does, though, and plunges and struggles, but the man is strong and holds him fast. Now John Weiss is so close to the man that he must see him. Oh! Oh! he does see him, and is horribly frightened! He steps back but John Weiss does not follow – only points his hand at him. The man jumps on his horse and beats him fiercely with his whip, and the two fly back down the road and disappear in the distance. Tell me, John Weiss, what it all means? He smiles again and shakes his head – now he is gone, too; I can see nothing more."
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