|
All the Year Round (Christmas Number, 1865)
I have always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among persons of
superior intelligence and culture, as to imparting their own psychological
experiences when those have been of a strange sort. Almost all men are
afraid that what they could relate in such wise would find no parallel or
response in a listener's internal life, and might be suspected or laughed
at. A truthful traveller who should have seen some extraordinary creature in
the likeness of a sea-serpent, would have no fear of mentioning it; but the
same traveller having had some singular presentiment, impulse, vagary of
thought, vision (so-called), dream, or other remarkable mental impression,
would hesitate considerably before he would own to it. To this reticence I
attribute much of the obscurity in which such subjects are involved. We do
not habitually communicate our experiences of these subjective things, as we
do our experiences of objective creation. The consequence is, that the
general stock of experience in this regard appears exceptional, and really
is so, in respect of being miserably imperfect.
In what I am going to relate I have no intention of setting up, opposing, or
supporting, any theory whatever. I know the history of the Bookseller of
Berlin, I have studied the case of the wife of a late Astronomer Royal as
related by Sir David Brewster, and I have followed the minutest details of a
much more remarkable case of Spectral Illusion occurring within my private
circle of friends. It may be necessary to state as to this last that the
sufferer (a lady) was in no degree, however distant, related to me. A
mistaken assumption on that head, might suggest an explanation of a part of
my own case - but only a part - which would be wholly without foundation. It
cannot be referred to my inheritance of any developed peculiarity, nor had I
ever before any at all similar experience, nor have I ever had any at all
similar experience since.
It does not signify how many years ago, or how few, a certain Murder was
committed in England, which attracted great attention. We hear more than
enough of Murderers as they rise in succession to their atrocious eminence,
and I would bury the memory of this particular brute, if I could, as his
body was buried, in Newgate Jail. I purposely abstain from giving any direct
clue to the criminal's individuality.
When the murder was first discovered, no suspicion fell - or I ought rather
to say, for I cannot be too precise in my facts, it was nowhere publicly
hinted that any suspicion fell - on the man who was afterwards brought to
trial. As no reference was at that time made to him in the newspapers, it is
obviously impossible that any description of him can at that time have been
given in the newspapers. It is essential that this fact be remembered.
Unfolding at breakfast my morning paper, containing the account of that
first discovery, I found it to be deeply interesting, and I read it with
close attention. I read it twice, if not three times. The discovery had been
made in a bedroom, and, when I laid down the paper, I was aware of a flash -
rush - flow - I do not know what to call it - no word I can find is
satisfactorily descriptive - in which I seemed to see that bedroom passing
through my room, like a picture impossibly painted on a running river.
Though almost instantaneous in its passing, it was perfectly clear; so clear
that I distinctly, and with a sense of relief, observed the absence of the
dead body from the bed.
It was in no romantic place that I had this curious sensation, but in
chambers in Piccadilly, very near to the corner of Saint James's Street. It
was entirely new to me. I was in my easy-chair at the moment, and the
sensation was accompanied with a peculiar shiver which started the chair
from its position. (But it is to be noted that the chair ran easily on
castors.) I went to one of the windows (there are two in the room, and the
room is on the second floor) to refresh my eyes with the moving objects down
in Piccadilly. It was a bright autumn morning, and the street was sparkling
and cheerful. The wind was high. As I looked out, it brought down from the
Park a quantity of fallen leaves, which a gust took, and whirled into a
spiral pillar. As the pillar fell and the leaves dispersed, I saw two men on
the opposite side of the way, going from West to East. They were one behind
the other. The foremost man often looked back over his shoulder. The second
man followed him, at a distance of some thirty paces, with his right hand
menacingly raised. First, the singularity and steadiness of this threatening
gesture in so public a thoroughfare, attracted my attention; and next, the
more remarkable circumstance that nobody heeded it. Both men threaded their
way among the other passengers, with a smoothness hardly consistent even
with the action of walking on a pavement, and no single creature that I
could see, gave them place, touched them, or looked after them. In passing
before my windows, they both stared up at me. I saw their two faces very
distinctly, and I knew that I could recognize them anywhere. Not that I had
consciously noticed anything very remarkable in either face, except that the
man who went first had an unusually lowering appearance, and that the face
of the man who followed him was of the colour of impure wax.
I am a bachelor, and my valet and his wife constitute my whole
establishment. My occupation is in a certain Branch Bank, and I wish that my
duties as head of a Department were as light as they are popularly supposed
to be. They kept me in town that autumn, when I stood in need of a change. I
was not ill, but I was not well. My reader is to make the most that can be
reasonably made of my feeling jaded, having a depressing sense upon me of a
monotonous life, and being 'slightly dyspeptic'. I am assured by my renowned
doctor that my real state of health at that time justifies no stronger
description, and I quote his own from his written answer to my request for
it.
As the circumstances of the Murder, gradually unravelling, took stronger and
stronger possession of the public mind, I kept them away from mine, by
knowing as little about them as was possible in the midst of the universal
excitement. But I knew that a verdict of Wilful Murder had been found
against the suspected Murderer, and that he had been committed to Newgate
for trial. I also knew that his trial had been postponed over one Sessions
of the Central Criminal Court, on the ground of general prejudice and want
of time for the preparation of the defence. I may further have known, but I
believe I did not, when, or about when, the Sessions to which his trial
stood postponed would come on.
My sitting-room, bedroom, and dressing-room, are all on one floor. With the
last, there is no communication but through the bedroom. True, there is a
door in it, once communicating with the staircase; but a part of the fitting
of my bath has been - and had then been for some years - fixed across it. At
the same period, and as a part of the same arrangement, the door had been
nailed up and canvassed over.
I was standing in my bedroom late one night, giving some directions to my
servant before he went to bed. My face was towards the only available door
of communication with the dressing-room, and it was closed. My servant's
back was towards that door. While I was speaking to him I saw it open, and a
man look in, who very earnestly and mysteriously beckoned to me. That man
was the man who had gone second of the two along Piccadilly, and whose face
was of the colour of impure wax.
The figure, having beckoned, drew back and closed the door. With no longer
pause than was made by my crossing the bedroom, I opened the dressing-room
door, and looked in. I had a lighted candle already in my hand. I felt no
inward expectation of seeing the figure in the dressing-room, and I did not
see it there.
Conscious that my servant stood amazed, I turned round to him, and said:
'Derrick, could you believe that in my cool senses I fancied I saw a----' As
I there laid my hand upon his breast, with a sudden start he trembled
violently, and said, 'O Lord yes sir! A dead man beckoning!'
Now, I do not believe that this John Derrick, my trusty and attached servant
for more than twenty years, had any impression whatever of having seen any
such figure, until I touched him. The change in him was so startling when I
touched him, that I fully believe he derived his impression in some occult
manner from me at that instant.
I bade John Derrick bring some brandy, and I gave him a dram, and was glad
to take one myself. Of what had proceeded that night's phenomenon, I told
him not a single word. Reflecting on it, I was absolutely certain that I had
never seen that face before, except on the one occasion in Piccadilly.
Comparing its expression when beckoning at the door, with its expression
when it had stared up at me as I stood at my window, I came to the
conclusion that on the first occasion it had sought to fasten itself upon my
memory, and that on the second occasion it had made sure of being
immediately remembered.
I was not very comfortable that night, though I felt a certainty, difficult
to explain, that the figure would not return. At daylight, I fell into a
heavy sleep, from which I was awakened by John Derrick's coming to my
bedside with a paper in his hand.
This paper, it appeared, had been the subject of an altercation at the door
between its bearer and my servant. It was a summons to me to serve upon a
Jury at the forthcoming Sessions of the Central Criminal Court at the Old
Bailey. I had never before been summoned on such a Jury, as John Derrick
well knew. He believed - I am not certain at this hour whether with reason
or otherwise - that that class of Jurors were customarily chosen on a lower
qualification than mine, and he had at first refused to accept the summons.
The man who served it had taken the matter very coolly. He had said that my
attendance or nonattendance was nothing to him; there the summons was; and I
should deal with it at my own peril, and not at his.
For a day or two I was undecided whether to respond to this call, or take no
notice of it. I was not conscious of the slightest mysterious bias,
influence, or attraction, one way or other. Of that I am as strictly sure as
of every other statement that I make here. Ultimately I decided, as a break
in the monotony of my life, that I would go.
The appointed morning was a raw morning in the month of November. There was
a dense brown fog in Piccadilly, and it became positively black and in the
last degree oppressive East of Temple Bar. I found the passages and
staircases of the Court House flaringly lighted with gas, and the Court
itself similarly illuminated. I think that until I was conducted by officers
into the Old Court and saw its crowded state, I did not know that the
Murderer was to be tried that day. I think that until I was so helped into
the Old Court with considerable difficulty, I did not know into which of the
two Courts sitting, my summons would take me. But this must not be received
as a positive assertion, for I am not completely satisfied in my mind on
either point.
I took my seat in the place appropriated to Jurors in waiting, and I looked
about the Court as well as I could through the cloud of fog and breath that
was heavy in it. I noticed the black vapour hanging like a murky curtain
outside the great windows, and I noticed the stifled sound of wheels on the
straw or tan that was littered in the street; also, the hum of the people
gathered there, which a shrill whistle, or a louder song or hail than the
rest, occasionally pierced. Soon afterwards the Judges, two in number,
entered and took their seats. The buzz in the Court was awfully hushed. The
direction was given to put the Murderer to the bar. He appeared there. And
in that same instant I recognized in him, the first of the two men who had
gone down Piccadilly.
If my name had been called then, I doubt if I could have answered to it
audibly. But it was called about sixth or eighth in the panel, and I was by
that time able to say 'Here!' Now, observe. As I stepped into the box, the
prisoner, who had been looking on attentively but with no sign of concern,
became violently agitated, and beckoned to his attorney. The prisoner's wish
to challenge me was so manifest, that it occasioned a pause, during which
the attorney, with his hand upon the dock, whispered with his client, and
shook his head. I afterwards had it from that gentleman, that the prisoner's
first affrighted words to him were, 'At all hazards challenge that man!'
But, that as he would give no reason for it, and admitted that he had not
even known my name until he heard it called and I appeared, it was not done.
Both on the ground already explained, that I wish to avoid reviving the
unwholesome memory of that Murderer, and also because a detailed account of
his long trial is by no means indispensable to my narrative, I shall confine
myself closely to such incidents in the ten days and nights during which we,
the Jury, were kept together, as directly bear on my own curious personal
experience. It is in that, and not in the Murderer, that I seek to interest
my reader. It is to that, and not to a page of the Newgate Calendar, that I
beg attention.
I was chosen Foreman of the Jury. On the second morning of the trial, after
evidence had been taken for two hours (I heard the church clocks strike),
happening to cast my eyes over my brother-jurymen, I found an inexplicable
difficulty in counting them. I counted them several times, yet always with
the same difficulty. In short, I made them one too many.
I touched the brother-juryman whose place was next to me, and I whispered to
him, 'Oblige me by counting us.' He looked surprised by the request, but
turned his head and counted. 'Why,' says he, suddenly, 'We are Thirt----;
but no, it's not possible. No. We are twelve.'
According to my counting that day, we were always right in detail, but in
the gross we were always one too many. There was no appearance - no figure -
to account for it; but I had now an inward foreshadowing of the figure that
was surely coming.
The Jury were housed at the London Tavern. We all slept in one large room on
separate tables, and we were constantly in the charge and under the eye of
the officer sworn to hold us in safe-keeping. I see no reason for
suppressing the real name of that officer. He was intelligent, highly
polite, and obliging, and (I was glad to hear) much respected in the City.
He had an agreeable presence, good eyes, enviable black whiskers, and a fine
sonorous voice. His name was Mr Harker.
When we turned into our twelve beds at night, Mr Harker's bed was drawn
across the door. On the night of the second day, not being disposed to lie
down, and seeing Mr Harker sitting on his bed, I went and sat beside him,
and offered him a pinch of snuff. As Mr Harker's hand touched mine in taking
it from my box, a peculiar shiver crossed him, and he said: 'Who is this!'
Following Mr Harker's eyes and looking along the room, I saw again the
figure I expected - the second of the two men who had gone down Piccadilly.
I rose, and advanced a few steps; then stopped, and looked round at Mr
Harker. He was quite unconcerned, laughed, and said in a pleasant way, 'I
thought for a moment we had a thirteenth juryman, without a bed. But I see
it is the moonlight.'
Making no revelation to Mr Harker, but inviting him to take a walk with me
to the end of the room, I watched what the figure did. It stood for a few
moments by the bedside of each of my eleven brother-jurymen, close to the
pillow. It always went to the right-hand side of the bed, and always passed
out crossing the foot of the next bed. It seemed from the action of the
head, merely to look down pensively at each recumbent figure. It took no
notice of me, or of my bed, which was that nearest to Mr Harker's. It seemed
to go out where the moonlight came in, through a high window, as by an
a๋rial flight of stairs.
Next morning at breakfast, it appeared that everybody present had dreamed of
the murdered man last night, except myself and Mr Harker.
I now felt as convinced that the second man who had gone down Piccadilly was
the murdered man (so to speak), as if it had been borne into my
comprehension by his immediate testimony. But even this took place, and in a
manner for which I was not at all prepared.
On the fifth day of the trial, when the case for the prosecution was drawing
to a close, a miniature of the murdered man, missing from his bedroom upon
the discovery of the deed, and afterwards found in a hiding-place where the
Murderer had been seen digging, was put in evidence. Having been identified
by the witness under examination, it was handed up to the Bench, and thence
handed down to be inspected by the Jury. As an officer in a black gown was
making his way with it across to me, the figure of the second man who had
gone down Piccadilly, impetuously started from the crowd, caught the
miniature from the officer, and gave it to me with its own hands, at the
same time saying in a low and hollow tone - before I saw the miniature,
which was in a locket - 'I was younger then, and my face was not then
drained of blood.' It also came between me and the brother-juryman to whom I
would have given the miniature, and between him and the brother-juryman to
whom he would have given it, and so passed it on through the whole of our
number, and back into my possession. Not one of them, however, detected
this.
At table, and generally when we were shut up together in Mr Harker's
custody, we had from the first naturally discussed the day's proceedings a
good deal. On that fifth day, the case for the prosecution being closed, and
we having that side of the question in a completed shape before us, our
discussion was more animated and serious. Among our number was a vestryman -
the densest idiot I have ever seen at large - who met the plainest evidence
with the most preposterous objections, and who was sided with by two flabby
parochial parasites; all the three empanelled from a district so delivered
over to Fever that they ought to have been upon their own trial, for five
hundred Murders. When these mischievous blockheads were at their loudest,
which was towards midnight while some of us were already preparing for bed,
I again saw the murdered man. He stood grimly behind them, beckoning to me.
On my going towards them and striking into the conversation, he immediately
retired. This was the beginning of a separate series of appearances,
confined to that 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 theorize 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 vestry-man 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 reread. Nine of us had not
the smallest doubt about those passages, neither, I believe, had any one in
Court; the dunder-headed triumvirate however, 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 grey 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.'
|
