The Phantom Coach by Amelia B. Edwards. The circumstances I am about to
relate to you have truth to recommend them. They happen to myself, and
my recollection of them is vivid as if they had taken place only yesterday,
twenty years ago. However, have gone by since that night. During those
twenty years I have told the story to but one other person. I tell
it now with a reluctance which I find it difficult to overcome. All I
entreat meanwhile, is that you will abstain from forcing your own conclusions upon me.
I want nothing explained away. I desire no arguments. My mind on
this subject is quite made up, and having the testimony of my own senses
to rely upon, I prefer to abide by it. Well, it was
just twenty years ago, and within a day or two of the end of
the grouse season I had been out all day with my gun and had had
no sport to speak of. The wind was due east the month December.
The place a bleak, wide moor in the far north of England, and
I had lost my way. It was not a pleasant place in which to
lose one's way. With the first feathery flakes of a coming snow storm,
just fluttering down upon the heather, and the leaden evening closing in all around.
I shaded my eyes with my hand and stared anxiously into the gathering darkness,
where the purple moorland melted into a range of low hills, some ten
or twelve miles distant. Not the faintest smoke wreath, not the tiniest cultivated
patch or fence or sheep track, met my eyes in any direction. There
was nothing for it but to move on and take my chance of finding what
shelter I could by the way. So I shouldered my gun again and pushed
wearily forward, for I had been on foot since an hour after daybreak,
and had eaten nothing since breakfast. Meanwhile, the snow began to come down
with ominous steadiness, and the wind fell. After this, the cold became
more intense, and the night came rapidly up. As for me, my
prospects darkened with the darkening sky, and my heart grew heavy as I thought
how my young wife was already watching for me through the window of our little
inn parlor, and thought of all the suffering in store for her throughout this
weary night. We had been married four months, and, having spent out
autumn in the Highlands, were now lodging in a remote little village situated just
on the verge of the great English Moorlands. We were very much in love
and of course very happy. This morning when we parted. She had implored
me to return before dusk, and I had promised her that I would.
What would I not have given to have kept my word? Even now,
weary as I was, I felt that with a supper, an hour's rest,
and a guide I might still get back to her before midnight, if
only guide and shelter could be found. And all this time the snow fell
and the night thickened. I stopped and shouted every now and then, but
my shout seemed only to make the silence deeper. Then a vague sense of
uneasiness came upon me, and I began to remember stories of travelers who had
walked on and on in the falling snow until wearied out they were fain to
lie down and sleep their lives away. Would it be possible, i asked
myself, to keep on thus through all the long dark night. Would there
not come a time when my limbs must fail, and my resolution give way,
when I too must sleep the sleep of death. Death, I shuddered,
How hard to die just now, when life lay all so bright before
me? How hard for my darling, whose whole loving heart but that thought
was not to be borne? To banish it? I shouted again, and
again they echo followed. Then a wavering speck of light came suddenly out of
the dark, shifting, disappearing, growing momentarily nearer and brighter. Running towards
it at full speed, I found myself, to my great joy, face
to face with an old man and a lantern. Thank God, was the
exclamation that burst involuntarily from my lips. Blinking and frowning, he lifted his
lantern and peered into my face. What for, growled he sulkily, Well
for you, I began to fear, I should be lost in the snow.
And then folks do get cast away hereabouts for a time to time.
And what's to hinder you from being cast away? Likewise? If the Lord
so minded, if the Lord is so minded, that you and I shall
be lost together, my friend, we must submit, I replied. But
I don't mean to be lost without you. How far am I now from
Dwelding, a good twenty mile more or less in the nearest village. The
nearest village is Wike, and that's twelve miles to the other side. Where
do you live then, out yonder, said he, with a vague jerk
of the lantern. You're going home, I presume maybe I am. Then
I'm going with you. The old man shook his head and rubbed his nose
reflectively with the handle of the lantern. It ain't no use, growled he.
He don't let you in, not he. We'll see about that,
I replied briskly. Who is he the master? Who is the master?
That's not to you? Was the unceremonious reply. Well, well you lead
the way and I'll engage that the Master shall give me shelter and a supper
tonight. Eh, you can try him, muttered my reluctant guide, and
still shaking his head, he hobbled gnome like away through the falling snow.
A large mass loomed up presently out of the darkness, and a huge dog
rushed out, barking furiously. Is this the house? I asked? Ay,
it's the house down bay, and he fumbled in his pocket for the
key. I drew up close behind him, prepared to lose no chance of
entrance, and saw in the little circle of light shed by the lantern that
the door was heavily studded with iron nails, like the door of a prison.
In another minute he had turned the key, and I had pushed past
him into the house. Once inside, I looked around with curiosity and found
myself in a great rafted hall which served apparently a variety of uses. One
end was piled to the roof with corn like a barn. The other was
stored with four sacks, agricultural implements, casks, and all kinds of miscellaneous
lumber, while from the beams overhead hung rows of hams, flitches, and
bunches of dried herbs for winter use. In the center of the floor stood
some huge object, gauntly dressed in a dingy wrapping doth and reaching halfway to
the rafters. Lifting a corner of this cloth, I saw, to my
surprise a telescope of very considerable size, mounted on a rude movable platform with
four small wheels. The tube was made of painted wood, bound round with
bands of metal, rudely fashioned thus speculum. So far as I could estimate
its size in the dim light, measured at least fifteen inches in diameter.
While I was yet examining the instrument and asking myself whether it was not the
work of some self taught optician, a bell rang sharply. That's for you,
said my guide with a malicious grin yonders his room. He pointed to
a low black door at the opposite side of the hall. I crossed over,
wrapped somewhat loudly, and went in without waiting for an invitation. A
huge, white haired old man rose from a table covered with books and papers
and confronted me sternly. Who are you? Said he? How came you
here? What do you want? James Murray, barrister at law, on
foot across the moor, meat, drink and sleep. He bent his bushy
brows into a portentous frown. Mine is not a house of entertainment, he
said, haughtily, Jacob, how dare you admit this stranger? I didn't
admit him, grumbled the old man. He followed me over the mirror and
shouldered his way in before me. I'm no match for six foot two,
and pray, sir by, what right have you forced an entrance? Into
my house, the same by which I should have clung to your boat if
I were drowning the right of self preservation, self preservation. There's an inch
of snow on the ground already, I replied briefly, and it would be
deep enough to cover my body before daybreak. He strode to the window,
pulled aside a heavy black curtain, and looked out. It is true,
he said, you can stay, if you choose, till morning. Jacob
served the supper with this, He waved me to a seat, resumed his
own, and became at once absorbed in the studies from which I had disturbed
him. I placed my gun in a corner, drew a chair to the
hearth, and examined my quarters at leisure. Smaller and less incongruous in its
arrangements than the hall, this room contained, nevertheless, much to awaken my
curiosity. The floor was carpetless, The whitewashed walls were in parts scrawled over
with strange diagrams, and in others covered with shelves crowded with philosophical instruments,
the uses of many of which were unknown to me. On one side of
the fireplace stood a bookcase filled with dingy folios. On the other a small
organ fantastically decorate rated with painted carvings of medieval saints and devils. Through the
half open door of a cupboard at the furtherer end of the room, I
saw a long array of geological specimens, surgical preparations, crucibles, retorts,
and jars of chemicals. While on the mantelshelf beside me, amid a number
of small objects, stood a model of the solar system, a small galvanic
battery, and a microscope. Every chair had its burden, Every corner was
heaped high with books. The very floor was littered over with maps, casts,
papers, tracings, and learned lumber of all conceivable kinds. I stared
about me with an amazement, increased by every fresh object upon which my eyes
chanced to rest. So stranger room I had never seen, yet seemed it
stranger still to find such a room and a lone farmhouse amid those wild and
solitary moor's. Over and over again, I looked from my host to his
surroundings, and from his surroundings back to my host, asking myself who and
what he could be. His head was singularly fine, but it was more
the head of a poet than of a philosopher, brought in the temples,
prominent over the eyes, and clothed with a rough profusion of perfectly white hair,
had all the ideality and much of the ruggedness that characterizes the head of
Louis van Beethoven. There were the same deep lines about the mouth, and
the same stern furrows in the brow. There was the same concentration of expression.
While I was yet observing him, the door opened, and Jacob brought
in the supper. His master then closed his book, rose, and with
more courtesy of manner than he had yet shown, invited me to the table.
A dish of ham and eggs, a loaf of brown bread, and
a bottle of admirable sherry were placed before me. I have but the homeliest
farmhouse fair to offer you, sir, said my entertainer. Your appetite,
I trust, will make up for the deficiencies of our larder. I had
already fallen upon the viands, and now protested, with the enthusiasm of a
starving sportsman, that I had never eaten anything so delicious. He bowed stiffly
and sat down to his own supper, which consisted primitively of a jug of
milk and a basin of porridge. We ate in silence, and when we
had done, Jacob removed the tray. I then drew my chair back to
the fireside. My host, somewhat to my surprise, did the same,
and, turning abruptly towards me, said, Sir, I have lived here
in strict retirement for three and twenty years. During that time I have not
seen as many strange faces, and I have not read a single newspaper the
first stranger who has crossed my threshold for more than four years. Will you
favor me with a few words of information respecting that outer world from which I
have parted company? So long pray interrogate me, I replied, I am
heartily at your service. He bent his head in acknowledgement, leaned forward,
with his elbows resting on his knees and his chin supported in the palms of
his hands, stared fixedly into the fire, and proceeded to question me.
His inquiries related chiefly to scientific matters, with the later progress of which,
as applied to the practical purposes of life. He was almost wholly unacquainted.
No student of science myself, I replied, as well as my slight information
permitted. But the task was far from easy, and I was much relieved
when passing from interrogation to discussion, he began pouring forth his own conclusions upon
the facts which I had been attempting to place before him. He talked,
and I listened, spellbound. He talked till I believe he almost forgot my
presence and only thought aloud, I had never heard anything like it. Then
I have never heard anything like it since. Familiar with all systems of all
philosophies, subtle in analysis, bold in generalization, he poured forth his thoughts
in an uninterrupted stream, and, still leaning forward in the same moody attitude,
with his eyes fixed upon the fire, wandered from topic to topic,
from speculation to speculation, like an inspired dreamer, from practical science to mental
philosophy, from electricity in the wire to electricity in the nerve, from watts
to Mesmer, from Mesmer to Reichenbach, from Reichenbach to Swedenborg, Spinoza,
Condolac, Descartes, Berkeley, Aristotle, Plato, and the Mesi and mystics
of the East were transitions which, however bewildering in their variety and scope seemed
easy and harmonious upon his lips, as sequences in music. By and by
I forget now by what link of conjecture or illustration he passed on to that
field which lies beyond the boundary line or even conjectural philosophy, and reaches no
man knows whither. He spoke of the soul, in its aspirations, of
the spirit, and its powers of second sight, of prophecy, of those
phenomena which, under the names of ghosts, specters, and supernatural appearances,
have been denied by the skeptics and attested by the credulous of all ages.
The world, he said, grows hourly more and more skeptical of all that
lies beyond its own narrow radius. And our men of science fostered the fatal
tendency. They condemn as fable, all that resists experiments, they reject as
false, all that cannot be brought to the test of the laboratory or the
dissecting room. Against what superstition have they waged so long in obstinate o war
as against the belief and apparitions? And yet what superstition has maintained its hold
upon the minds of men so long and so firmly show me any fact in
physics, in history, an archaeology, which is supported by testimony so wide
and so various, attested by all races of men, in all ages and
in all climates, by the soberest sages of antiquity, by the rudest savage
of today, by the Christian, the pagan, the pantheist, the materialist.
This phenomenon is treated as a nursery tale by the philosophers of our century.
Circumstantial evidence weighs with them as a feather in the balance. The comparison
of causes with effects, however valuable in physical science, is put aside as
worthless and unreliable. The evidence of competent witnesses, however conclusive, in a
court of justice, counts for nothing. He who pauses before he pronounces is
condemned as a trifler. He who believes is a dreamer or a fool.
He spoke with bitterness, and having said thus, relapsed for some minutes into
silence. Presently he raised his head from his hands and added, with an
altered voice and manner, I sir, paused, investigated, believed, and
was not ashamed to state my convictions to the world. I too, was
branded as a visionary, held up to ridicule by my contemporaries, and hooted
from that field of science in which I had labored with honor during all the
best years of my life. These things happened just three and twenty years ago.
Since then, I have lived as you see me living now, and
the world has forgotten in me, as I have forgotten the world. You
have my history. It is a very sad one, I murmured, scarcely
knowing what to answer. It is a very common one, he replied.
I have only suffered for the truth, as many a better and wiser man
has suffered before me. He rose, as if desirous of ending the conversation,
and went over to the window. It has ceased snowing, he observed,
as he dropped the curtain and came back to the fireside. Ceased,
I exclaimed, starting eagerly to my feet. Oh, if it were only
possible, But no, it is hopeless. Even if I could find my
way across the moor, I could not walk twenty miles. Tonight walked twenty
miles. Tonight, repeated my host, What are you thinking of of my
wife? I replied, impatiently of my young wife, who does not know
that I have lost my way, and who is at this moment breaking her
heart with suspense and terror. Where is she at Dwolding? Twenty miles away?
At Dwolding, he echoed thoughtfully, Yes, the distance, it is
true, is twenty miles. But are you so very anxious to save the
next six or eight hours, so very very anxious that I would give ten
guineas at this moment for a guide and a horse. Your wish can be
gratified at a less costly rate, said he, smiling. The night mail
from the North, which changes horses at Dwolding, passes within five miles of
this spot, and will be due at a certain crossroad in about an hour
and a quarter. If Jacob were to go with you across the moor and
put you into the old coach road, you could find your way, I
suppose to where it joins the new one easily. Gladly, he smiled again,
rang the bell, gave the old servant his directions, and, taking
a bottle of whiskey and wine glass from the cupboard in which he kept his
chemical said, the snow lies deep and it will be difficult walking tonight on
the moor. A glass of us caabah before you start. I would have
declined the spirit, but he pressed it on me and I drank it.
It went down my throat like liquid flame, and almost took my breath away.
It is strong, he said, but it will help to keep out
the cold. And now you have no moments to spare good night. I
thanked him for his hospitality, and would have shaken hands, but that he
had turned away before I could finish my sentence. In another minute, I
had traversed the hall, Jacob had locked the outer door behind me, and
we were out on the wide white moor. Although the wind had fallen,
it was still bitterly cold. Not a star glimmered in the black vault overhead.
Not a sound save the rapid crunching of the snow beneath our feet,
disturbed the heavy stillness of the night. Jacob, not too well pleased with
his mission, shambled on before in sullen silence, his lantern in his hand
and his shadow at his feet. I followed with my gun over my shoulder,
as little inclined for conversation as himself. My thoughts were full of my
late host, his voice yet rang in my ears. His eloquence yet held
my imagination captive. I remember to this day with surprise, how my overexcited
brain retained whole sentences and parts of sentences, troops of brilliant images, and
fragments of splendid reasoning in the very words in which he had uttered them.
Musing thus over what I had heard, and striving to recall a lost link
here and there, I strode on at the heel of my guide, absorbed
and unobservant, presently at the end, as it seemed to me, of
only a few minutes. He came to a sudden halt and said, yon,
Girot, keep the stone fence to your right hand, and you can't
fail of the way. This, then, is the old coach road.
I tiss, the old coach road. And how far do I go?
Before I reached the crossroads? Nigh upon three mile? I pulled out my
purse, and he became more communicative. The road's affair road enough, said
he for foot passengers, but twas over steep and narrow for the northern traffic.
You'll mind where the parpit's broken away. Close again the signpost. It's
never been mended. Since the accident? What accident? Eh? The nightmail
pitched right over into the valley below, a good fifty feet and more,
just at the worst biddle road in the whole county. Horrible were many lives
lost? All four were found dead, and to other two died next morning.
How long is it since this happened just nine year? Near the signpost?
You say, I will bear it in mine. Good night, good
night, Sit and thankee. Jacob pocketed his half crown, made a faint
pretense of touching his hat, and trudged back by the way he had come.
I watched the fight of his lantern till it quite disappeared, and then
turned to pursue my way alone. This was no longer matter of the slightest
difficulty, for despite the dead darkness overhead, the line of stone fence showed
distinctly enough against the pale gleam of the snow. How silent it seemed,
now, with only my footsteps to listen to, How silent and how solitary.
A strange, disagreeable sense of loneliness stole over me. I walked faster,
I hummed a fragment of a tune. I cast up enormous sums in
my head and accumulated them at compound interest. I did best, in short,
to forget the startling speculations to which I had but just been listening,
and to some extent I succeeded. Meanwhile, the night air seemed to become
colder and colder, and though I walked fast, I found it impossible to
keep myself warm. My feet were like ice. I lost sensation in my
hands and grasped my gun mechanically. I even breathed with difficulty, as though
instead of traversing a quiet north country highway, I were scaling the uppermost heights
of some gigantic alp. This last symptom became presently so distressing that I was
forced to stop for a few minutes and lean against the stone fence. As
I did so, I chanced to look back up the road, and there,
to my infinite relief, I saw a distant point of light, like
the gleam of an approaching lantern. I at first concluded that Jacob had retraced
his steps and followed me. But even as the conjecture presented itself, a
second light flashed into sight, a light evidently parallel with the first and approaching
at the same rate of motion. It needed no second thought to show me
that these must be the carriage lamps of some private vehicle. Though it seemed
strange that any private vehicle should take a road professedly disused and dangerous. There
could be no doubt, however, of the fact, for the lamps grew
larger and brighter every moment, and I even fancied I could already see the
dark outline of the carriage between them. It was coming up very fast and
quite noiselessly, the snow being nearly a foot deep under the wheels, and
now the body of the vehicle became distinctly visible behind the lamps. It looked
strangely lofty. A sudden suspicion flashed upon me. Was it possible that I
had passed the crossroads in the dark without observing the signpost? And could this
be the very coach which I had come to meet? No need to ask
myself that question a second time, for here it came round the bend of
the road, guard and driver, one outside passenger, and four steaming grays,
all wrapped in a soft haze of light, through which the lamps blazed
out like a pair of fiery meteors. I jumped forward, waved my hat
and shouted. The mail came down at full speed and passed me. For
a moment, I feared that I had not been seen or heard, But
it was only for a moment. The coachman pulled up the guard, muffled
to the eyes and capes and comforters, and apparently sound asleep in the rumble.
Neither answered my hail, nor made the slightest effort to dismount. The
outside passenger did not even turn his head. I opened the door for myself
and looked in. There were but three travelers inside, so I stepped in,
shut the door, slipped into the vacant corner, and congratulated myself of
my good fortune. The atmosphere of the coach seemed, if possible, colder
than that of the outer air, and was pervaded by a singularly damp and
disagreeable smell. I looked round at my fellow passengers. They were all three
men, and all silent. They did not seem to be asleep, but
each leaned back in his corner of the vehicle, as if absorbed in his
own reflections. I attempted to open a conversation, how intensely cold. It
is tonight, I said, addressing my opposite neighbor. He lifted his head,
looked at me, but made no reply. The winter, I added,
seems to have begun in earnest. Although the corner in which he sat
was so dim that I could distinguish none of his features. Very clearly,
I saw that his eyes were still turned full upon me, and yet he
answered never a word. At any other time I should have felt and perhaps
expressed some annoyance, but at the moment I felt too ill to do either.
The icy coldness of the night air had struck a chill to my very
marrow, and the strange smell inside the coach was affecting me with an intolerable
nausea. I shivered from head to foot, and, turning to my left
hand neighbor, asked if he had any objection to an open window. He
neither spoke nor stirred. I repeated the question somewhat more loudly, but with
the same result. Then I lost my patience and let the sash down.
As I did so, the leather strap broke in my hand, and I
observed that the glass was covered with a thick coat of mildew, the accumulation
apparently of years. My attention being thus drawn to the condition of the coach,
I examined it more narrowly, and saw, by the uncertain light of
the outer lamps that it was in the last state of dilapidation. Every part
of it was not only out of repair, but in a condition of decay.
The sashes splintered at a touch, The leather fittings were crusted over with
mold and literally rotting from the woodwork. The floor was almost breaking away beneath
my feet. The whole machine, in short, was foul with damp,
and had evidently been dragged from some outhouse in which it had been moldering away
for years to do another day or two of duty on the road. I
turned to the third passenger, whom I had not yet addressed, and hazarded
one more remark. This coach, I said, is in deplorable condition.
The regular mail, I suppose is under repair. He moved his head slowly
and looked me in the face, without speaking a word. I shall never
forget that look while I live. I turned cold at heart under it.
I turned cold at heart even now when I recall it. His eyes glowed
with a fiery, unnatural luster. His face was livid as the face of
a corpse. His bloodless lips were drawn back, as if in the agony
of death, and showed the gleaming teeth between the words that I was about
to utter died upon my lips in a strange horror, A dreadful horror came
upon me. My sight had by this time become used to the gloom of
the coach, and I could see with tolerable distinctness. I turned to my
opposite neighbor. He too was looking at me, with the same startling pallor
in his face and the same stony glitter in his eyes. I passed my
hand across my brow. I turned to the passenger on the seat beside my
own, and saw, Oh Heaven, how shall I described what I saw?
I saw that he was no living man, that none of them were
living men like myself. A pale phosphorescent light, the light of putrefaction,
played upon their awful faces, upon their hair, dank with the dews of
the grave, upon their clothes, earth stained and dropping to pieces, Upon
their hands, which were as the hands of corpses long buried. Only their
eyes, their terrible eyes were living, and those eyes were all turned menacingly
upon me. A shriek of terror, a wild, unintelligent will cry for
help and mercy burst from my lips as I flung myself against the door and
strove in vain to open it. In that single instant, brief and vivid,
as a landscape beheld in the flash of summer lightning, I saw the
moon shining down through a rift of stormy cloud, the ghastly signpost rearing its
warning finger by the wayside, the broken parapet, the plunging horses, the
black gulf below. Then the coach reeled like a ship at sea. Then
came a mighty crash, a sense of crushing pain, and then darkness.
It seemed as if years had gone by when I awoke one morning from a
deep sleep and found my wife watching by my bedside. I will pass over
the scene that ensued and give you, in half a dozen words, the
tale, she told me, with tears of thanksgiving. I had fallen over
a precipice close against the junction of the old coach road and the new,
and had only been saved from certain death by lighting upon a deep snow drift
that accumulated at the foot of the rock beneath in this snow drift, I
was discovered at daybreak by a couple of shepherds, who carried me to the
nearest shelter and brought a surgeon to my aid. The surgeon found me in
a state of raving delirium, with a broken arm and a compound fracture of
the skull. The letters in my pocketbook showed my name and address. My
wife was summoned to nurse me, and thanks to youth and a fine constitution,
I came out of danger at last. The place of my fall,
I need scarcely say, was precisely that at which a frightful accident had happened
to the North Mail nine years before. I never told my wife the fearful
events which I have just related to you. I told the surgeon who attended
me, but he treated the whole adventure as a mere dream born of the
fever in my brain. We discussed the question over and over again until we
found that we could discuss it with temper no longer, and then we dropped
it. Others may form what conclusions they please. I know that twenty years
ago I was the fourth inside passenger in that Phantom coach. End of the
Phantom Coach,