I TOOK a large room, far up
Broadway, in a huge old building whose upper stories had been wholly
unoccupied for years, until I came. The place had long been given up to dust
and cobwebs, to solitude and silence. I seemed groping among the tombs and
invading the privacy of the dead, that first night I climbed up to my
quarters. For the first time in my life a superstitious dread came over me;
and as I turned a dark angle of the stairway and an invisible cobweb swung
its lazy woof in my face and clung there, I shuddered as one who had
encountered a phantom.
I
was glad enough when I reached my room and locked out the mould and the
darkness. A cheery fire was burning in the grate, and I sat down before it
with a comforting sense of relief. For two hours I sat there, thinking of
bygone times; recalling old scenes, and summoning half-forgotten faces out of
the mists of the past; listening, in fancy, to voices that long ago grew
silent for all time, and to once familiar songs that nobody sings now. And as
my reverie softened down to a sadder and sadder pathos, the shrieking of the
winds outside softened to a wail, the angry beating of the rain against the
panes diminished to a tranquil patter, and one by one the noises in the
street subsided, until the hurrying footsteps of the last belated straggler
died away in the distance and left no sound behind.
The
fire had burned low. A sense of loneliness crept over me. I arose and
undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily what I had to
do, as if I were environed by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it would be
fatal to break. I covered up in bed, and lay listening to the rain and wind
and the faint creaking of distant shutters, till they lulled me to sleep.
I
slept profoundly, but how long I do not know. All at once I found myself
awake, and filled with a shuddering expectancy. All was still. All but my own
heart -- I could hear it beat. Presently the bedclothes began to slip away
slowly toward the foot of the bed, as if some one were pulling them! I could not
stir; I could not speak. Still the blankets slipped deliberately away, till
my breast was uncovered. Then with a great effort I seized them and drew them
over my head. I waited, listened, waited. Once more that steady pull began,
and once more I lay torpid a century of dragging seconds till my breast was
naked again. At last I roused my energies and snatched the covers back to
their place and held them with a strong grip. I waited. By and by I felt a
faint tug, and took a fresh grip. The tug strengthened to a steady strain --
it grew stronger and stronger. My hold parted, and for the third time the
blankets slid away. I groaned. An answering groan came from the foot of the
bed! Beaded drops of sweat stood upon my forehead. I was more dead than
alive. Presently I heard a heavy footstep in my room -- the step of an
elephant, it seemed to me -- it was not like anything human. But it was
moving FROM me -- there was relief in that. I heard it approach the door --
pass out without moving bolt or lock -- and wander away among the dismal
corridors, straining the floors and joists till they creaked again as it
passed -- and then silence reigned once more.
When
my excitement had calmed, I said to myself , "This is a dream -- simply
a hideous dream." And so I lay thinking it over until I convinced myself
that it WAS a dream, and then a comforting laugh relaxed my lips and I was
happy again. I got up and struck a light; and when I found that the locks and
bolts were just as I had left them, another soothing laugh welled in my heart
and rippled from my lips. I took my pipe and lit it, and was just sitting
down before the fire, when -- down went the pipe out of my nerveless fingers,
the blood forsook my cheeks, and my placid breathing was cut short with a
gasp! In the ashes on the hearth, side by side with my own bare footprint,
was another, so vast that in comparison mine was but an infant's'! Then I had
HAD a visitor, and the elephant tread was explained.
I
put out the light and returned to bed, palsied with fear. I lay a long time,
peering into the darkness , and listening. Then I heard a grating noise
overhead, like the dragging of a heavy body across the floor; then the
throwing down of the body, and the shaking of my windows in response to the
concussion. In distant parts of the building I heard the muffled slamming of
doors. I heard, at intervals , stealthy footsteps creeping in and out among
the corridors, and up and down the stairs. Sometimes these noises approached
my door, hesitated, and went away again. I heard the clanking of chains
faintly, in remote passages, and listened while the clanking grew nearer --
while it wearily climbed the stairways, marking each move by the loose
surplus of chain that fell with an accented rattle upon each succeeding step
as the goblin that bore it advanced. I heard muttered sentences; half-uttered
screams that seemed smothered violently; and the swish of invisible garments,
the rush of invisible wings. Then I became conscious that my chamber was
invaded -- that I was not alone. I heard sighs and breathings about my bed,
and mysterious whisperings. Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light
appeared on the ceiling directly over my head, clung and glowed there a
moment, and then dropped -- two of them upon my face and one upon the pillow.
They spattered, liquidly, and felt warm. Intuition told me they had turned to
gouts of blood as they fell -- I needed no light to satisfy myself of that.
Then I saw pallid faces, dimly luminous, and white uplifted hands, floating
bodiless in the air -- floating a moment and then disappearing. The
whispering ceased, and the voices and the sounds, and a solemn stillness
followed. I waited and listened. I felt that I must have light or die. I was
weak with fear. I slowly raised myself toward a sitting posture, and my face
came in contact with a clammy hand! All strength went from me ap- parently,
and I fell back like a stricken invalid. Then I heard the rustle of a garment
-- it seemed to pass to the door and go out.
When
everything was still once more, I crept out of bed, sick and feeble, and lit
the gas with a hand that trembled as if it were aged with a hundred years.
The light brought some little cheer to my spirits. I sat down and fell into a
dreamy contemplation of that great footprint in the ashes. By and by its
outlines began to waver and grow dim. I glanced up and the broad gas flame
was slowly wilting away. In the same moment I heard that elephantine tread
again. I noted its approach, nearer and nearer, along the musty halls, and
dimmer and dimmer the light waned. The tread reached my very door and paused
-- the light had dwindled to a sickly blue, and all things about me lay in a
spectral twilight. The door did not open, and yet I felt a faint gust of air
fan my cheek, and presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence before
me. I watched it with fascinated eyes. A pale glow stole over the Thing;
gradually its cloudy folds took shape -- an arm appeared, then legs, then a
body, and last a great sad face looked out of the vapor. Stripped of its
filmy housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff Giant loomed
above me!
All
my misery vanished -- for a child might know that no harm could come with
that benignant countenance. My cheerful spirits returned at once, and in sympathy
with them the gas flamed up brightly again. Never a lonely outcast was so
glad to welcome company as I was to greet the friendly giant. I said:
"Why,
is it nobody but you? Do you know, I have been scared to death for the last
two or three hours? I am most honestly glad to see you. I wish I had a chair
-- Here, here, don't try to sit down in that thing!
But
it was too late. He was in it before I could stop him, and down he went -- I
never saw a chair shivered so in my life.
"Stop,
stop, You'll ruin ev--"
Too
late again. There was another crash, and another chair was resolved into its
original elements.
"Confound
it, haven't you got any judgment at all? Do you want to ruin all the
furniture on the place? Here, here, you petrified fool--"
But
it was no use. Before I could arrest him he had sat down on the bed, and it
was a melancholy ruin.
"Now
what sort of a way is that to do? First you come lumbering about the place
bringing a legion of vagabond goblins along with you to worry me to death,
and then when I overlook an indelicacy of costume which would not be
tolerated anywhere by cultivated people except in a respectable theater, and
not even there if the nudity were of YOUR sex, you repay me by wrecking all
the furniture you can find to sit down on. And why will you? You damage
yourself as much as you do me. You have broken off the end of your spinal
column, and littered up the floor with chips of your hams till the place
looks like a marble yard. You ought to be ashamed of yourself -- you are big
enough to know better."
"Well,
I will not break any more furniture. But what am I to do? I have not had a
chance to sit down for a century." And the tears came into his eyes.
"Poor
devil," I said, "I should not have been so harsh with you. And you
are an orphan, too, no doubt. But sit down on the floor here -- nothing else
can stand your weight -- and besides, we cannot be sociable with you away up
there above me; I want you down where I can perch on this high counting-house
stool and gossip with you face to face."
So
he sat down on the floor, and lit a pipe which I gave him, threw one of my
red blankets over his shoulders, inverted my sitz-bath on his head, helmet
fashion, and made himself picturesque and comfortable. Then he crossed his
ankles, while I renewed the fire, and exposed the flat, honey-combed bottoms
of his prodigious feet to the grateful warmth.
"What
is the matter with the bottom of your feet and the back of your legs, that
they are gouged up so?"
"Infernal
chillblains -- I caught them clear up to the back of my head, roosting out
there under Newell's farm. But I love the place; I love it as one loves his
old home. There is no peace for me like the peace I feel when I am
there."
We
talked along for half an hour, and then I noticed that he looked tired, and
spoke of it. "Tired?" he said. "Well, I should think so. And
now I will tell you all about it, since you have treated me so well. I am the
spirit of the Petrified Man that lies across the street there in the Museum.
I am the ghost of the Cardiff Giant. I can have no rest, no peace, till they
have given that poor body burial again. Now what was the most natural thing
for me to do, to make men satisfy this wish? Terrify them into it! -- haunt
the place where the body lay! So I haunted the museum night after night. I
even got other spirits to help me. But it did no good, for nobody ever came
to the museum at midnight. Then it occurred to me to come over the way and
haunt this place a little. I felt that if I ever got a hearing I must
succeed, for I had the most efficient company that perdition could furnish.
Night after night we have shivered around through these mildewed halls,
dragging chains, groaning, whispering, tramping up and down stairs, till, to
tell you the truth, I am almost worn out. But when I saw a light in your room
to-night I roused my energies again and went at it with a deal of the old
freshness. But I am tired out -- entirely fagged out. Give me, I beseech you,
give me some hope!"
I
lit off my perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed:
"This
transcends everything -- everything that ever did occur! Why you poor
blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing -- you have
been haunting a PLASTER CAST of yourself -- the real Cardiff Giant is in
Albany!
[Footnote
by Twain: A fact. The original fraud was ingeniously and fraudfully
duplicated, and exhibited in New York as the "only genuine" Cardiff
Giant (to the unspeakable disgust of the owners of the real colossus) at the
very same time that the latter was drawing crowds at a museum in Albany.]
Confound
it, don't you know your own remains?"
I
never saw such an eloquent look of shame, of pitiable humiliation, overspread
a countenance before.
The
Petrified Man rose slowly to his feet, and said:
"Honestly,
IS that true?"
"As
true as I am sitting here."
He
took the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the mantel, then stood irresolute
a moment (unconsciously, from old habit, thrusting his hands where his pantaloons
pockets should have been, and meditatively dropping his chin on his breast),
and finally said:
"Well
-- I NEVER felt so absurd before. The Petrified Man has sold everybody else,
and now the mean fraud has ended by selling its own ghost! My son, if there
is any charity left in your heart for a poor friendless phantom like me,
don't let this get out. Think how YOU would feel if you had made such an ass
of yourself."
I
heard his, stately tramp die away, step by step down the stairs and out into
the deserted street, and felt sorry that he was gone, poor fellow -- and
sorrier still that he had carried off my red blanket and my bath tub.
--THE END--
|
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
A Ghost Story by Mark Twain
Posted by
Lynda Wood
at
10:00 PM
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment