Beyond The Wall

Many years ago, on my way from Hongkong to New York, I passed a week in San Francisco. A long I had been in that city, during which my ventures in the Orient had prospered beyond my hope; I afford to revisit my own country to renew my friendship with such of the companions of my youth remembered me with the old affection. Chief of these, I hoped, was Mohun Dampier, an old schoo held a desultory correspondence which had long ceased, as is the way of correspondence betwee observed that theindisposition to write a merely social letter is in the ratio of the square of the dis your correspondent. It is a law.

I remembered Dampier as a handsome, strong young fellow of scholarly tastes, with an aversion indifference to many of the things that the world cares for, including wealth, of which, however, h to put him beyond the reach of want. In his family, one of the oldest and most aristocratic in the c matter of pride that no member of it had ever been in trade nor politics, nor suffered any kind of trifle sentimental, and had in him a singular element of superstition, which led him to the study o of occult subjects, although his sane mental health safeguarded him against fantastic and perilou incursions into the realm of the unreal without renouncing his residence in the partly surveyed an we are pleased to call certitude.

The night of my visit to him was stormy. The Californian winter was on, and the incessant rain spl streets, or, lifted by irregular gusts of wind, was hurled against the houses with incredible fury. Wi cabman found the right place, away out toward the ocean beach, in a sparsely populated suburb. ugly one, apparently, stood in the center of its grounds, which as nearly as I could make out in th were destitute of either flowers or grass. Three or four trees, writhing and moaning in the tormen appeared to be trying to escape from their dismal environment and take the chance of finding a b The house was a two-story brick structure with a tower, a story higher, at one corner. In a window visible light. Something in the appearance of the place made me shudder, a performance that ma 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 did so. The staircase was dimly lighted by a single gas-jet at the top of the second flight. I manag without disaster and entered by an open door into the lighted square room of the tower. Dampier and slippers to receive me, giving me the greeting that I wished, and if I had held a thought that 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 gray and had acquired a pronounced thin and angular, his face deeply lined, his complexion dead-white, without a touch of color. His e 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 meet me. Some unimportant conversation followed, but all the while I was dominated by amelanc change in him. This he must have perceived, for he suddenly said with a bright enough smile, 'Yo - non sum qualis eram.'

I hardly knew what to reply, but managed to say: 'Why, really, I don't know: your Latin is about th

He brightened again. 'No,' he said, 'being a dead language, it grows in appropriateness. But pleas 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 tha would not surrender myself to his mood, nor permit him to see how deeply hisprescience of death

'I fancy that it will be long,' I said, 'before human speech will cease to serve our need; and then th 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 agreeable character. Suddenly, in a pause of the storm, when the dead silence was almost startlin previous uproar, I heard a gentle tapping, which appeared to come from the wall behind my chair might have been made by a human hand, not as upon a door by one asking admittance, but rath agreed signal, an assurance of someone's presence in an adjoining room; most of us, I fancy, hav of such communications than we should care to relate. I glanced at Dampier. If possibly there was amusement in the look he did not observe it. He appeared to have forgotten my presence, and w behind me with an expression in his eyes that I am unable to name, although my memory of it is my sense of it then. The situation was embarrassing! I rose to take my leave. At this he seemed t '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 room in the tower, and no one is there. At least -' He left the sentence incomplete, rose, and threw 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 so gave enough light through the murk of the rain that was again falling in torrents to make it entire 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 possib occurred to me, yet it impressed me strangely, the more, perhaps, from my friend's effort to reas to dignify it with a certain significance and importance. He had proved that no one was there, but 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 ha you find agreeable to your taste and consistent with your notions of companionship; that is no bu being just a plain man of affairs, mostly of this world, I find spooks needless to my peace and com 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 presence here. What you have heard to-night I believe myself to have heard twice before. Now I k That is much to me - more than you know. Have a fresh cigar and a good stock of patience while

The rain was now falling more steadily, with a low, monotonous susurration, interrupted at long in slashing of the boughs of the trees as the wind rose and failed. The night was well advanced, but curiosity held me a willing listener to my friend's monologue, which I did not interrupt by a single

end.

'Ten years ago,' he said, 'I occupied a ground-floor apartment in one of a row of houses, all alike, the town, on what we call Rincon Hill. This had been the best quarter of San Francisco, but had fa decay, partly because the primitive character of its domestic architecture no longer suited the ma wealthy citizens, partly because certain public improvements had made a wreck of it. The row of which I lived stood a little way back from the street, each having a miniature garden, separated fr iron fences and bisected with mathematical precision by a box-bordered gravel walk from gate to

'One morning as I was leaving my lodging I observed a young girl entering the adjoining garden o day in June, and she was lightly gowned in white. From her shoulders hung a broad straw hat prof flowers and wonderfully beribboned in the fashion of the time. My attention was not long held by of her costume, for no one could look at her face and think of anything earthly. Do not fear; I shal description; it was beautiful exceedingly. All that I had ever seen or dreamed of loveliness was in picture by the hand of the Divine Artist. So deeply did it move me that, without a thought of the i unconsciously bared my head, as a devout Catholic or well-bred Protestant uncovers before an im Virgin. The maiden showed no displeasure; she merely turned her glorious dark eyes upon me wit catch my breath, and without other recognition of my act passed into the house. For a moment I hand, painfully conscious of my rudeness, yet so dominated by the emotion inspired by that visio beauty that my penitence was lesspoignant than it should have been. Then I went my way, leavin the natural course of things I should probably have remained away until nightfall, but by the midd back in the little garden, affecting an interest in the few foolish flowers that I had never before ob vain; she did not appear.

'To a night of unrest succeeded a day of expectation and disappointment, but on the day after, as about the neighborhood, I met her. Of course I did not repeat my folly of uncovering, nor venture long a look to manifest an interest in her; yet my heart was beating audibly. I trembled and consc turned her big black eyes upon me with a look of obvious recognition entirely devoid of boldness

'I will not weary you with particulars; many times afterward I met the maiden, yet never either ad fix her attention. Nor did I take any action toward making her acquaintance. Perhaps my forbeara supreme an effort of self-denial, will not be entirely clear to you. That I was heels over head in lov 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 c and despite her beauty, her charms and graces, the girl was not of my class. I had learned her na to speak - and something of her family. She was an orphan, a dependent niece of the impossible e whose lodging-house she lived. My income was small and I lacked the talent for marrying; it is pe with that family would condemn me to its manner of life, part me from my books and studies, and reduce me to the ranks. It is easy to deprecate such considerations as these and I have not retain defense. Let judgment be entered against me, but in strict justice all my ancestors for generation defendants and I be permitted to plead in mitigation of punishment the imperious mandate of he of that kind every globule of my ancestral blood spoke in opposition. In brief, my tastes, habits, in reason my love had left me - all fought against it. Moreover, I was an irreclaimable sentimentalist a subtle charm in an impersonal and spiritual relation which acquaintance might vulgarize and m dispel. No woman, I argued, is what this lovely creature seems. Love is a delicious dream; why sh own awakening?

'The course dictated by all this sense and sentiment was obvious. Honor, pride, prudence, preserv commanded me to go away, but for that I was too weak. The utmost that I could do by a mighty e

meeting the girl, and that I did. I even avoided the chance encounters of the garden, leaving my knew that she had gone to her music lessons, and returing after nightfall. Yet all the while I was a indulging the most fascinating fancies and ordering my entire intellectual life in accordance with friend, as one whose actions have a traceable relation to reason, you cannot know the fool's para

'One evening the devil put it into my head to be an unspeakable idiot. By apparently careless and questioning I learned from my gossipy landlady that the young woman's bedroom adjoined my ow Yielding to a sudden and coarse impulse I gently rapped on the wall. There was no response, natu mood to accept a rebuke. A madness was upon me and I repeated the folly, the offense, but agai the decency to desist.

'An hour later, while absorbed in some of my infernal studies, I heard, or thought I heard, my sign down my books I sprang to the wall and as steadily as my beating heart would permit gave three time the response was distinct, unmistakable: one, two, three - an exact repetition of my signal. T but it was enough - too much.

'The next evening, and for many evenings afterward, that folly went on, I always having "the last period I was deliriously happy, but with the perversity of my nature I persevered in my resolution I should have expected, I got no further answers. "She is disgusted," I said to myself, "with what s making no more definite advances"; and I resolved to seek her and make her acquaintance and nor do I now know, what might have come of it. I know only that I passed days and days trying to vain; she was invisible as well as inaudible. I haunted the streets where we had met, but she did n window I watched the garden in front of her house, but she passed neither in nor out. I fell into th believing that she had gone away , yet took no steps to resolve my doubt by inquiry of my landla had taken an unconquerable aversion from her having once spoken of the girl with less of reveren befitting.

'There came a fateful night. Worn out with emotion, irresolution and despondency, I had retired e sleep as was still possible to me. In the middle of the night something--some malignpower bent u peace forever--caused me to open my eyes and sit up, wide awake and listening intently for I kne thought I heard a faint tapping on the wall--the mere ghost of the familiar signal. In a few momen two, three--no louder than before, but addressing a sense alert and strained to receive it. I was ab the Adversary of Peace again intervened in my affairs with a rascally suggestion of retaliation. Sh ignored me; now I would ignore her. Incredible fatuity--may God forgive it! All the rest of the nigh 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 manne observation. ' "About the sick young lady next door," she babbled on. "What! you did not know? Why, she has 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 f week of delirium, had asked -- it was her last utterance -- that her bed be moved to the opposite in attendance had thought the request a vagary of her delirium, but had complied. And there the exerted its failing will to restore a broken connection -- a golden thread of sentiment between its 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 this -- spirits "blown about by the viewless winds" -- coming in the storm and darkness with signs memory and presages of doom?

'This is the third visitation. On the first occasion I was too skeptical to do more than verify by natu character of the incident; on the second, I responded to the signal after it had been several times result. To-night's recurrence completes the 'fatal triad' expounded byParapelius Necromantius. Th

When Dampier had finished his story I could think of nothing relevant that I cared to say, and to q been a hideous impertinence. I rose and bade him good night in a way to convey to him a sense o he silently acknowledged by a pressure of the hand. That night, alone with his sorrow and remors Unknown.