Can Such Things Be?

nt of Joel

se who have them not — I sometimes think that I should be less unhappy if they had been denied me, for then the contrast between my outer and my inner life would not be contin

e was passionately attached with what I now know to have been a jealous and exacting devotion. The family home was a few miles from Nashville, T

the next afternoon. Something prevented his accomplishing the business in hand, so he returned on the same night, arriving just before the dawn. In his testimony before the coroner he explained that having no latchkey and not caring to disturb the sleeping servants, he had, with no clearly defined intention, gone round to the rear of the house. As he turned an angle of the building, he heard a sound as of a door gently closed, and saw in the darkness, indistinctly, the figure o

d excepting those terrible finger-marks upon the dead woman’s throat — dea

him a fitful interest; one might have called it an apprehension. At any small surprise of the senses he would start visibly and sometimes turn pale, then relapse into a melancholy apathy deeper than before. I suppose he was what is called a “nervous wreck.” As to me, I was

ness of a summer night; our footfalls and the ceaseless song of the katydids were the only sound aloof. Black shadows of bordering trees lay athwart the road, which, in the short reaches between, gle

d! what

othing,”

id, pointing along the

re. Come, father, let u

ently at his sleeve, but he had forgotten my existence. Presently he began to retire backward, step by step, never for an instant removing his eyes from what he saw, or thought he saw. I turned half round to follow, but stood i

ious premonition of evil who can say, and in obedience to an impulse that she was never able to name, had lit a lamp. When I turned to look for my fath

ment of Ca

tless, will go further and inquire, “Who was he?” In this writing I supply the only answer that I am able to make — Caspar Grattan. Surely, that should be enough. The name has served my small need for more than twenty years of a life of unknown l

pausing and looking curiously into my face, said to his companion, “That man looks like 767.” Something in the number seemed fami

y, peals of joyless laughter, the clang of iron doors. So I say a name, even if self-bestowed, i

is is only a record of broken and apparently unrelated memories, some of them as distinct and sequent as brilliant beads upon a thread, others rem

came. There are twenty years of footprints fairly distinct, the impressions of bleeding feet.

iended, mela

of Me — how admirable, h

fering with episodes of sin — I see nothing clearly; it comes out of

that may be memories and may be dreams. I know only that my first consciousness was of maturity in body and mind — a consciousness accepted without surprise or conjecture. I merely found myself walking in a forest, half-clad, footsore, unutterably w

fe that is now to end — a life of wandering, always and everywhere haunted by an overmastering sense of cri

d and distrusted. We had, it sometimes seems, one child, a youth of brilliant parts and promise.

the following afternoon. But I returned before daybreak and went to the rear of the house, purposing to enter by a door with which I had secretly so tampered that it would seem to lock, yet not actually fasten. As I approached it, I heard it ge

ang up the stairs to the door of my wife’s chamber. It was closed, but having tampered with its lock also, I easily entered and d

errified by my entrance has evade

her, cowering in a corner of the room. Instantly my hands were at her throat, stifling a shriek, my knees were upon h

and over I lay the plan, I suffer the confirmation, I redress the wrong. Then all is blank; and afterward the rains beat against the grimy window-panes, or the snows fall upon my scan

m of white garments; then the figure of a woman confronts me in the road — my murdered wife! There is death in the face; there are marks upon the throat. The eyes are fixed on mine with an infinite gravity which is not

more to tell: the incident ends where

tion. My penance, constant in degree, is mutable in kind: one of its variants is tranquillity. After all, it is only a life-sen

, the peace tha

Late Julia Hetman, Thro

er part of the house. But these were familiar conditions; they had never before distressed me. Nevertheless, the strange terror grew so insupportable that conquering my reluctance to move I sat up and lit the lamp at my bedside. Contrary to my expectation this gave me no relief; the light seemed rather an added danger, for I reflected that it would shine

and silent, unable to shriek, forgetful to pray. In this pitiable state I must

h and inconsistent with my previous dread of the light, but what would you have? Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated. We know this well, we who have passed into the Realm of Terror, who skulk in eternal dusk among the scenes of our former lives, invisible even to ourselves and one another, yet hiding forlorn in lonely places; yearning

t in our speech is meaningless in yours. We must communicate with you through a stammering intelligence in that small fraction of our language that you yourselves can speak. You think that we are of another world. No, we have knowledge of no wo

urning. Its footfalls as it remounted the stairs were rapid, heavy and loud; they shook the house. I fled to an angle of the wall and crouched upon the floor. I tried to pray. I tried to call the name of my dear husband. Then I heard the door thrown open. The

new light falls upon any page of that; in memory is written all of it that we can read. Here are no heights of truth overlooking the confused landscape of that dubitable domain. We stil

sleep. I had lingered long near the dwelling where I had been so cruelly changed to what I am, as we do while any that we love or hate remain. Vainly I had sought some method of manifestation, some way to make my continued existence and my great love and poignant pit

or about the moonlit lawn. For, although the sun is lost to us forever, the moon, full-orbed or slender, remai

near! Their faces were toward me, the eyes of the elder man fixed upon mine. He saw me — at last, at last, he saw me! In the consciousness of that, my terror fled as a cruel dream. The death-spell was broken: Love had conquered Law! Mad with exultation I shouted — I MUST have shouted, “He

a hunted animal. He backed away from me, as I advanced, and at last t

able to impart a sense of my presence. Soon he, too, mus