BEYOND THE
WALL
Many years
ago, on my way from Hong Kong to New York, I passed a week in San Francisco. A
long time had gone by since I had been in that city, during which my ventures
in the Orient had prospered beyond my hope; I was rich and could afford to
revisit my own country to renew my friendship with such of the companions of my
youth as still lived and remembered me with the old affection. Chief of these,
I hoped, was Mohun Dampier, an old schoolmate with whom I had held a desultory
correspondence which had long ceased, as is the way of correspondence between
men. You may have observed that the indisposition to write a merely social
letter is in the ratio of the square of the distance between you and your
correspondent. It is a law.
I
remembered Dampier as a handsome, strong young fellow of scholarly tastes, with
an aversion to work and a marked indifference to many of the things that the
world cares for, including wealth, of which, however, he had inherited enough
to put him beyond the reach of want. In his family, one of the oldest and most
aristocratic in the country, it was, I think, a matter of pride that no member
of it had ever been in trade nor politics, nor suffered any kind of
distinction. Mohan was a trifle sentimental, and had in him a singular element
of superstition, which led him to the study of all manner of occult subjects,
although his sane mental health safeguarded him against fantastic and perilous
faiths. He made daring incursions into the realm of the unreal without
renouncing his residence in the partly surveyed and charted region of what we
are pleased to call certitude.
The night
of my visit to him was stormy. The Californian winter was on, and the incessant
rain splashed in the deserted streets, or, lifted by irregular gusts of wind,
was hurled against the houses with incredible fury. With no small difficulty my
cabman found the right place, away out toward the ocean beach, in a sparsely
populated suburb. The dwelling, a rather ugly one, apparently, stood in the
centre of its grounds, which as nearly as I could make out in the gloom were
destitute of either flowers or grass. Three or four trees, writhing and moaning
in the torment of the tempest, appeared to be trying to escape from their
dismal environment and take the chance of finding a better one out at sea. The
house was a two-story brick structure with a tower, a story higher, at one
corner. In a window of that was the only visible light. Something in the
appearance of the place made me shudder, a performance that may have been
assisted by a rill of rainwater down my back as I scuttled to cover in the
doorway.
In answer
to my note apprising him of my wish to call, Dampier had written, 'Don't ring -
open the door and come up.' I did so. The staircase was dimly lighted by a
single gas-jet at the top of the second flight. I managed to reach the landing
without disaster and entered by an open door into the lighted square room of
the tower. Dampier came forward in gown and slippers to receive me, giving me
the greeting that I wished, and if I had held a thought that it might more
fitly have been accorded me at the front door the first look at him dispelled
any sense of his inhospitality.
He was not
the same. Hardly past middle age, he had gone grey and had acquired a
pronounced stoop. His figure was thin and angular, his face deeply lined, his
complexion dead-white, without a touch of colour. His eyes, unnaturally large,
glowed with a fire that was almost uncanny.
He seated
me, proffered a cigar, and with grave and obvious sincerity assured me of the
pleasure that it gave him to meet me. Some unimportant conversation followed,
but all the while I was dominated by a melancholy sense of the great change in
him. This he must have perceived, for he suddenly said with a bright enough
smile, 'You are disappointed in me - /non sum qualis eram./'
I hardly
knew what to reply, but managed to say: 'Why, really, I don't know: your Latin
is about the same.'
He
brightened again. 'No,' he said, 'being a dead language, it grows in appropriateness.
But please have the patience to wait: where I am going there is perhaps a
better tongue. Will you care to have a message in it?'
The smile
faded as he spoke, and as he concluded he was looking into my eyes with a
gravity that distressed me. Yet I would not surrender myself to his mood, nor
permit him to see how deeply his prescience of death affected me.
'I fancy
that it will be long,' I said, 'before human speech will cease to serve our
need; and then the need, with its possibilities of service, will have passed.'
He made no
reply, and I too was silent, for the talk had taken a dispiriting turn, yet I
knew not how to give it a more agreeable character. Suddenly, in a pause of the
storm, when the dead silence was almost startling by contrast with the previous
uproar, I heard a gentle tapping, which appeared to come from the wall behind
my chair. The sound was such as might have been made by a human hand, not as
upon a door by one asking admittance, but rather, I thought, as an agreed
signal, an assurance of someone's presence in an adjoining room; most of us, I
fancy, have had more experience of such communications than we should care to
relate. I glanced at Dampier. If possibly there was something of amusement in
the look he did not observe it. He appeared to have forgotten my presence, and
was staring at the wall behind me with an expression in his eyes that I am
unable to name, although my memory of it is as vivid to-day as was my sense of
it then. The situation was embarrassing! ; I rose to take my leave. At this he
seemed to recover himself.
'Please be
seated,' he said; 'it is nothing - no one is there.'
But the
tapping was repeated, and with the same gentle, slow insistence as before.
'Pardon
me,' I said, 'it is late. May I call tomorrow?'
He smiled
- a little mechanically, I thought. 'It is very delicate of you,' said he, 'but
quite needless. Really, this is the only room in the tower, and no one is
there. At least -' He left the sentence incomplete, rose, and threw up a
window, the only opening in the wall from which the sound seemed to come.
'See.'
Not
clearly knowing what else to do I followed him to the window and looked out. A
street-lamp some little distance away gave enough light through the murk of the
rain that was again falling in torrents to make it entirely plain that 'no one
was there.' In truth there was nothing but the sheer blank wall of the tower.
Dampier
closed the window and signing me to my seat resumed his own.
The
incident was not in itself particularly mysterious; any one of a dozen
explanations was possible (though none has occurred to me), yet it impressed me
strangely, the more, perhaps, from my friend's effort to reassure me, which
seemed to dignify it with a certain significance and importance. He had proved
that no one was there, but in that fact lay all the interest; and he proffered
no explanation. His silence was irritating and made me resentful.
'My good
friend,' I said, somewhat ironically, I fear, 'I am not disposed to question
your right to harbour as many spooks as you find agreeable to your taste and
consistent with your notions of companionship; that is no business of mine. But
being just a plain man of affairs, mostly of this world, I find spooks needless
to my peace and comfort. I am going to my hotel, where my fellow-guests are
still in the flesh.'
It was not
a very civil speech, but he manifested no feeling about it. 'Kindly remain', he
said. 'I am grateful for your presence here. What you have heard to-night I
believe myself to have heard twice before. Now I /know/ it was no illusion.
That is much to me - more than you know. Have a fresh cigar and a good stock of
patience while I tell you the story.'
The rain
was now falling more steadily, with a low, monotonous susurration, interrupted
at long intervals by the sudden slashing of the boughs of the trees as the wind
rose and failed. The night was well advanced, but both sympathy and curiosity
held me a willing listener to my friend's monologue, which I did not interrupt
by a single word from beginning to end.
'Ten years
ago,' he said, 'I occupied a ground-floor apartment in one of a row of houses,
all alike, away at the other end of the town, on what we call Rincon Hill. This
had been the best quarter of San Francisco, but had fallen into neglect and
decay, partly because the primitive character of its domestic architecture no
longer suited the maturing tastes of our wealthy citizens, partly because
certain public improvements had made a wreck of it. The row of dwellings in one
of which I lived stood a little way back from the street, each having a
miniature garden, separated from its neighbours by low iron fences and bisected
with mathematical precision by a box-bordered gravel walk from gate to door.
'One
morning as I was leaving my lodging I observed a young girl entering the
adjoining garden on the left. It was a warm day in June, and she was lightly
gowned in white. From her shoulders hung a broad straw hat profusely decorated
with flowers and wonderfully beribboned in the fashion of the time. My attention
was not long held by the exquisite simplicity of her costume, for no one could
look at her face and think of anything earthly. Do not fear; I shall not
profane it by description; it was beautiful exceedingly. All that I had ever
seen or dreamed of loveliness was in that matchless living picture by the hand
of the Divine Artist. So deeply did it move me that, without a thought of the
impropriety of the act, I unconsciously bared my head, as a devout Catholic or
well-bred Protestant uncovers before an image of the Blessed Virgin. The maiden
showed no displeasure; she merely turned her glorious dark eyes upon me with a
look that made me catch my breath, and without other recognition of my act
passed into the house. For a moment I stood motionless, hat in hand, painfully
conscious of my rudeness, yet so dominated by the emotion inspired by that
vision of incomparable beauty that my penitence was less poignant than it
should have been. Then I went my way, leaving my heart behind. In the natural
course of things I should probably have remained away until nightfall, but by
the middle of the afternoon I was back in the little garden, affecting an
interest in the few foolish flowers that I had never before observed. My hope
was vain; she did not appear.
'To a
night of unrest succeeded a day of expectation and disappointment, but on the
day after, as I wandered aimlessly about the neighbourhood, I met her. Of
course I did not repeat my folly of uncovering, nor venture by even so much as
too long a look to manifest an interest in her; yet my heart was beating
audibly. I trembled and consciously coloured as she turned her big black eyes
upon me with a look of obvious recognition entirely devoid of boldness or
coquetry.
'I will
not weary you with particulars; many times afterward I met the maiden, yet
never either addressed her or sought to fix her attention. Nor did I take any
action toward making her acquaintance. Perhaps my forbearance, requiring so
supreme an effort of self-denial, will not be entirely clear to you. That I was
heels over head in love is true, but who can overcome his habit of thought, or
reconstruct his character?
'I was
what some foolish persons are pleased to call, and others, more foolish, are
pleased to be called - an aristocrat; and despite her beauty, her charms and
graces, the girl was not of my class. I had learned her name - which it is
needless to speak - and something of her family. She was an orphan, a dependent
niece of the impossible elderly fat woman in whose lodging-house she lived. My
income was small and I lacked the talent for marrying; it is perhaps a gift. An
alliance with that family would condemn me to its manner of life, part me from
my books and studies, and in a social sense reduce me to the ranks. It is easy
to deprecate such considerations as these and I have not retained myself for
the defence. Let judgement be entered against me, but in strict justice all my
ancestors for generations should be made co-defendants and I be permitted to
plead in mitigation of punishment the imperious mandate of heredity. To a
mésalliance of that kind every globule of my ancestral blood spoke in
opposition. In brief, my tastes, habits, instinct, with whatever of reason my
love had left me - all fought against it. Moreover, I was an irreclaimable sentimentalist,
and found a subtle charm in an impersonal and spiritual relation which
acquaintance might vulgarise and marriage would certainly dispel. No woman, I
argued, is what this lovely creature seems. Love is a delicious dream; why
should I bring about my own awakening?
'The
course dictated by all this sense and sentiment was obvious. Honour, pride,
prudence, preservation of my ideals - all commanded me to go away, but for that
I was too weak. The utmost that I could do by a mighty effort of will was to
cease meeting the girl, and that I did. I even avoided the chance encounters of
the garden, leaving my lodging only when I knew that she had gone to her music
lessons, and returning after nightfall. Yet all the while I was as one in a
trance, indulging the most fascinating fancies and ordering my entire
intellectual life in accordance with my dream. Ah, my friend, as one whose
actions have a traceable relation to reason, you cannot know the fool's
paradise in which I lived.
'One
evening the devil put it into my head to be an unspeakable idiot. By apparently
careless and purposeless questioning I learned from my gossipy landlady that
the young woman's bedroom adjoined my own, a partywall between. Yielding to a
sudden and coarse impulse I gently rapped on the wall. There was no response,
naturally, but I was in no mood to accept a rebuke. A madness was upon me and I
repeated the folly, the offence, but again ineffectually, and I had the decency
to desist.
'An hour
later, while absorbed in some of my infernal studies, I heard, or thought I
heard, my signal answered. Flinging down my books I sprang to the wall and as
steadily as my beating heart would permit gave three slow taps upon it. This
time the response was distinct, unmistakable: one, two, three - an exact
repetition of my signal. That was all I could elicit, but it was enough - too
much.
'The next
evening, and for many evenings afterward, that folly went on, I always having
"the last word". During the whole period I was deliriously happy, but
with the perversity of my nature I persevered in my resolution not to see her.
Then, as I should have expected, I got no further answers. "She is
disgusted," I said to myself, "with what she thinks my timidity in
making no more definite advances"; and I resolved to seek her and make her
acquaintance and - what? I did not know, nor do I now know, what might have
come of it. I know only that I passed days and days trying to meet her, and all
in vain; she was invisible as well as inaudible. I haunted the streets where we
had met, but she did not come. From my window I watched the garden in front of
her house, but she passed neither in nor out. I fell into the deepest
dejection, believing that she had gone away , yet took no steps to resolve my
doubt by inquiry of my landlady, to whom, indeed, I had taken an unconquerable
aversion from her having once spoken of the girl with less of reverence than I
thought befitting.
'There
came a fateful night. Worn out with emotion, irresolution and despondency, I
had retired early and fallen into such sleep as was still possible to me. In
the middle of the night something - some malign power bent upon the wrecking of
my peace forever - caused me to open my eyes and sit up, wide awake and
listening intently for I knew not what. Then I thought I heard a faint tapping
on the wall - the mere ghost of the familiar signal. In a few moments it was
repeated: one, two, three - no louder than before, but addressing a sense alert
and strained to receive it. I was about to reply when the Adversary of Peace
again intervened in my affairs with a rascally suggestion of retaliation. She
had long and cruelly ignored me; now I would ignore her. Incredible fatuity -
may God forgive it! All the rest of the night I lay awake, fortifying my
obstinacy with shameless justifications and - listening.
'Late the
next morning, as I was leaving the house, I met my landlady, entering.
'
"Good morning, Mr. Dampier," she said. "Have you heard the
news?"
'I replied
in words that I had heard no news; in manner, that I did not care to hear any.
The manner escaped her observation.
'
"About the sick young lady next door," she babbled on. "What!
you did not know? Why, she has been ill for weeks. And now - "
'I almost
sprang upon her. "And now," I cried, "now what?'
'
"She is dead."
'That is
not the whole story. In the middle of the night, as I learned later, the
patient, awakening from a long stupor after a week of delirium, had asked - it
was her last utterance - that her bed be moved to the opposite side of the
room. Those in attendance had thought the request a vagary of her delirium, but
had complied. And there the poor passing soul had exerted its failing will to
restore a broken connection - a golden thread of sentiment between its
innocence and a monstrous baseness owing a blind, brutal allegiance to the Law
of Self.
'What
reparation could I make? Are there masses that can be said for the repose of
souls that are abroad such nights as this - spirits "blown about by the
viewless winds" - coming in the storm and darkness with signs and
portents, hints of memory and presages of doom?
'This is
the third visitation. On the first occasion I was too sceptical to do more than
verify by natural methods the character of the incident; on the second, I
responded to the signal after it had been several times repeated, but without
result. To-night's recurrence completes the 'fatal triad' expounded by
Parapelius Necromantius. There is no more to tell.'
When
Dampier had finished his story I could think of nothing relevant that I cared
to say, and to question him would have been a hideous impertinence. I rose and
bade him good night in a way to convey to him a sense of my sympathy, which he
silently acknowledged by a pressure of the hand. That night, alone with his
sorrow and remorse, he passed into the Unknown.
