Three Ghost Stories
long room in which we were confined. Whenever a knot of my brother
jurymen laid their heads together, I saw the head of the murdered man
among theirs. Whenever their comparison of notes was going against him,
he would solemnly and irresistibly beckon to me.
It will be borne in mind that down to the production of the miniature, on
the fifth day of the trial, I had never seen the Appearance in Court.
Three changes occurred now that we entered on the case for the defence.
Two of them I will mention together, first. The figure was now in Court
continually, and it never there addressed itself to me, but always to the
person who was speaking at the time. For instance: the throat of the
murdered man had been cut straight across. In the opening speech for the
defence, it was suggested that the deceased might have cut his own
throat. At that very moment, the figure, with its throat in the dreadful
condition referred to (this it had concealed before), stood at the
speaker’s elbow, motioning across and across its windpipe, now with the
right hand, now with the left, vigorously suggesting to the speaker
himself the impossibility of such a wound having been self-inflicted by
either hand. For another instance: a witness to character, a woman,
deposed to the prisoner’s being the most amiable of mankind. The figure
at that instant stood on the floor before her, looking her full in the
face, and pointing out the prisoner’s evil countenance with an extended
arm and an outstretched finger.
The third change now to be added impressed me strongly as the most marked
and striking of all. I do not theorise upon it; I accurately state it,
and there leave it. Although the Appearance was not itself perceived by
those whom it addressed, its coming close to such persons was invariably
attended by some trepidation or disturbance on their part. It seemed to
me as if it were prevented, by laws to which I was not amenable, from
fully revealing itself to others, and yet as if it could invisibly,
dumbly, and darkly overshadow their minds. When the leading counsel for
the defence suggested that hypothesis of suicide, and the figure stood at
the learned gentleman’s elbow, frightfully sawing at its severed throat,
it is undeniable that the counsel faltered in his speech, lost for a few
seconds the thread of his ingenious discourse, wiped his forehead with
his handkerchief, and turned extremely pale. When the witness to
character was confronted by the Appearance, her eyes most certainly did
follow the direction of its pointed finger, and rest in great hesitation
and trouble upon the prisoner’s face. Two additional illustrations will
suffice. On the eighth day of the trial, after the pause which was every
day made early in the afternoon for a few minutes’ rest and refreshment,
I came back into Court with the rest of the Jury some little time before
the return of the Judges. Standing up in the box and looking about me, I
thought the figure was not there, until, chancing to raise my eyes to the
gallery, I saw it bending forward, and leaning over a very decent woman,
as if to assure itself whether the Judges had resumed their seats or not.
Immediately afterwards that woman screamed, fainted, and was carried out.
So with the venerable, sagacious, and patient Judge who conducted the
trial. When the case was over, and he settled himself and his papers to
sum up, the murdered man, entering by the Judges’ door, advanced to his
Lordship’s desk, and looked eagerly over his shoulder at the pages of his
notes which he was turning. A change came over his Lordship’s face; his
hand stopped; the peculiar shiver, that I knew so well, passed over him;
he faltered, “Excuse me, gentlemen, for a few moments. I am somewhat
oppressed by the vitiated air;” and did not recover until he had drunk a
glass of water.
Through all the monotony of six of those interminable ten days,—the same
Judges and others on the bench, the same Murderer in the dock, the same
lawyers at the table, the same tones of question and answer rising to the
roof of the court, the same scratching of the Judge’s pen, the same
ushers going in and out, the same lights kindled at the same hour when
there had been any natural light of day, the same foggy curtain outside
the great windows when it was foggy, the same rain pattering and dripping
when it was rainy, the same footmarks of turnkeys and prisoner day after
day on the same sawdust, the same keys locking and unlocking the same
heavy doors,—through all the wearisome monotony which made me feel as if
I had been Foreman of the Jury for a vast period of time, and Piccadilly
had flourished coevally with Babylon, the murdered man never lost one
trace of his distinctness in my eyes, nor was he at any moment less
distinct than anybody else. I must not omit, as a matter of fact, that I
never once saw the Appearance which I call by the name of the murdered
man look at the Murderer. Again and again I wondered, “Why does he not?”
But he never did.
Nor did he look at me, after the production of the miniature, until the
last closing minutes of the trial arrived. We retired to consider, at
seven minutes before ten at night. The idiotic vestryman and his two
parochial parasites gave us so much trouble that we twice returned into
Court to beg to have certain extracts from the Judge’s notes re-read.
Nine of us had not the smallest doubt about those passages, neither, I
believe, had any one in the Court; the dunder-headed triumvirate, having
no idea but obstruction, disputed them for that very reason. At length
we prevailed, and finally the Jury returned into Court at ten minutes
past twelve.
The murdered man at that time stood directly opposite the Jury-box, on
the other side of the Court. As I took my place, his eyes rested on me
with great attention; he seemed satisfied, and slowly shook a great gray
veil, which he carried on his arm for the first time, over his head and
whole form. As I gave in our verdict, “Guilty,” the veil collapsed, all
was gone, and his place was empty.
The Murderer, being asked by the Judge, according to usage, whether he
had anything to say before sentence of Death should be passed upon him,
indistinctly muttered something which was described in the leading
newspapers of the following day as “a few rambling, incoherent, and
half-audible words, in which he was understood to complain that he had
not had a fair trial, because the Foreman of the Jury was prepossessed
against him.” The remarkable declaration that he really made was this:
“_My Lord_, _I knew I was a doomed man_, _when the Foreman of my Jury
came into the box_. _My Lord_, _I knew he would never let me off_,
_because_, _before I was taken_, _he somehow got to my bedside in the
night_, _woke me_, _and put a rope round my neck_.”
THE SIGNAL-MAN. {312}
“HALLOA! Below there!”
When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of
his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole. One would
have thought, considering the nature of the ground, that he could not
have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but instead of looking up
to where I stood on the top of the steep cutting nearly over his head, he
turned himself about, and looked down the Line. There was something
remarkable in his manner of doing so, though I could not have said for my
life what. But I know it was remarkable enough to attract my notice,
even though his figure was foreshortened and shadowed, down in the deep
trench, and mine was high above him, so steeped in the glow of an angry
sunset, that I had shaded my eyes with my hand before I saw him at all.
“Halloa! Below!”
From looking down the Line, he turned himself about again, and, raising
his eyes, saw my figure high above him.
“Is there any path by which I can come down and speak to you?”
He looked up at me without replying, and I looked down at him without
pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle question. Just then
there came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing into
a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused me to start back,
as though it had force to draw me down. When such vapour as rose to my
height from this rapid train had passed me, and was skimming away over
the landscape, I looked down again, and saw him refurling the flag he had
shown while the train went by.
I repeated my inquiry. After a pause, during which he seemed to regard
me with fixed attention, he motioned with his rolled-up flag towards a
point on my level, some two or three hundred yards distant. I called
down to him, “All right!” and made for that point. There, by dint of
looking closely about me, I found a rough zigzag descending path notched
out, which I followed.
The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually precipitate. It was made
through a clammy stone, that became oozier and wetter as I went down.
For these reasons, I found the way long enough to give me time to recall
a singular air of reluctance or compulsion with which he had pointed out
the path.
When I came down low enough upon the zigzag descent to see him again, I
saw that he was standing between the rails on the way by which the train
had lately passed, in an attitude as if he were waiting for me to appear.
He had his left hand at his chin, and that left elbow rested on his right
hand, crossed over his breast. His attitude was one of such expectation
and watchfulness that I stopped a moment, wondering at it.
I resumed my downward way, and stepping out upon the level of the
railroad, and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark, sallow man,
with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows. His post was in as solitary
and dismal a place as ever I saw. On either side, a dripping-wet wall of
jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky; the perspective one
way only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon; the shorter
perspective in the other direction terminating in a gloomy red light, and
the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose massive architecture
there was a barbarous, depressing, and forbidding air. So little
sunlight ever found its way to this spot, that it had an earthy, deadly
smell; and so much cold wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to
me, as if I had left the natural world.
Before he stirred, I was near enough to him to have touched him. Not
even then removing his eyes from mine, he stepped back one step, and
lifted his hand.
This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it had riveted my
attention when I looked down from up yonder. A visitor was a rarity, I
should suppose; not an unwelcome rarity, I hoped? In me, he merely saw a
man who had been shut up within narrow limits all his life, and who,
being at last set free, had a newly-awakened interest in these great
works. To such purpose I spoke to him; but I am far from sure of the
terms I used; for, besides that I am not happy in opening any
conversation, there was something in the man that daunted me.
He directed a most curious look towards the red light near the tunnel’s
mouth, and looked all about it, as if something were missing from it, and
then looked at me.
That light was part of his charge? Was it not?
He answered in a low voice,—“Don’t you know it is?”
The monstrous thought came into my mind, as I perused the fixed eyes and
the saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a man. I have speculated
since, whether there may have been infection in his mind.
In my turn, I stepped back. But in making the action, I detected in his
eyes some latent fear of me. This put the monstrous thought to flight.
“You look at me,” I said, forcing a smile, “as if you had a dread of me.”
“I was doubtful,” he returned, “whether I had seen you before.”