Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“I didn’t say I didn’t,” said the other.

“Ah, but I can see that you don’t.… And the joke is, you know, that I am a ghost.”

He delivered this statement with widening bright eyes and an air of great triumph, smiling delightedly. But, though the third passenger, at the other side of the compartment, gave a distinct start, his chosen victim remained quite impassive.

“Oh, are you?” answered the latter. “You have discovered that, have you?”

“Discovered?”

The “ghost” seemed a shade nonplussed by this.

“Yes. I’ve been wondering, all the way from Ashford, whether you had yet discovered your unreality, or how soon you would.”

“My dear chap!”

“For you see, as it happens, it was I who created you; I imagined you; you only exist in my imagination. And if I should stop imagining you—as I do now—you would simply cease to exist.”

The ghost disappeared at once; and the man with the map turned, smiling, to the other passenger, who had already sprung to his feet and was pulling the communication cord to stop the train.

“ You , at any rate,” he said, “will now believe in ghosts!”

This individual, badly frightened, did not look at his queer companion, did not answer, but, hurriedly opening the door, as the train came to a stop, jumped down to the flint road-bed. He saw the guard running toward him with a rolled green flag in his hand.

“Look here!” he said. “I can’t ride in a compartment with ghosts!”

“Ghosts?” said the guard, peering into the compartment. His peer was a mere matter of form—the compartment was quite empty.

“Well, I’m damned!… There were two men there—and they’re both gone. They both must have been ghosts.”

He stared incredulously into the vacant compartment. The guard laughed scornfully.

“Why, that’s a mere trifle,” he said. “The whole thing is a ghost. The train, the passengers, the driver and myself—even the rails.”

So saying, he waved his rolled green flag, and the whole thing vanished. The solitary passenger found himself alone in a rolling green meadow. There was no train—there was no track. Four sheep lay under an oak tree. The sun was shining—the thrushes were singing—everything was marvelously peaceful. And he was totally and appallingly alone. If only he himself could disappear, he thought, the ending would be perfect! And, as he thought it, he vanished.…

And so, only the bowl of water was left.

Himself in retreat, in full retreat, in disorderly retreat, from a world of memories altogether too painful.

I.

It had been a tremendous week—colossal. Its reverberations around him hardly yet slept—his slightest motion or thought made a vast symphony of them, like a breeze in a forest of bells. In the first place, he had filched a volume of Poe’s tales from his mother’s bookcase, and had had in consequence a delirious night in inferno. Down, down he had gone with heavy clangs about him, coiling spouts of fire licking dryly at an iron sky, and a strange companion, of protean shape and size, walking and talking beside him. For the most part, this companion seemed to be nothing but a voice and a wing—an enormous jagged black wing, soft and drooping like a bat’s; he had noticed veins in it. As for the voice, it had been singularly gentle. If it was mysterious, that was no doubt because he himself was stupid. Certainly it had sounded placid and reasonable, exactly, in fact, like his father’s explaining a problem in mathematics; but, though he had noticed the orderly and logical structure, and felt the inevitable approach toward a vast and beautiful or terrible conclusion, the nature and meaning of the conclusion itself always escaped him. It was as if, always, he had come just too late. When, for example, he had come at last to the black wall that inclosed the infernal city, and seen the arched gate, the voice had certainly said that if he hurried he would see, through the arch, a far, low landscape of extraordinary wonder. He had hurried, but it had been in vain. He had reached the gate, and for the tiniest fraction of an instant he had even glimpsed the wide green of fields and trees, a winding blue ribbon of water, and a gleam of intense light touching to brilliance some far object. But then, before he had time to notice more than that every detail in this fairy landscape seemed to lead toward a single shining solution, a dazzling significance, suddenly the infernal rain, streaked fire and rolling smoke, had swept it away. Then the voice had seemed to become ironic. He had failed, and he felt like crying.

He had still, the next morning, felt that he might, if the opportunity offered, see that vision. It was always just round the corner, just at the head of the stairs, just over the next page. But other adventures had intervened. Prize-day, at school, had come upon him as suddenly as a thunderstorm—the ominous hushed gathering of the entire school into one large room, the tense air of expectancy, the solemn speeches, all had reduced him to a state of acute terror. There was something unintelligible and sinister about it. He had, from first to last, a peculiar physical sensation that something threatened him, and here and there, in the interminable vague speeches, a word seemed to have eyes and to stare at him. His prescience had been correct—abruptly his name had been called, he had walked unsteadily amid applause to the teacher’s desk, had received a small black pasteboard box; and then had cowered in his chair again, with the blood in his temples beating like gongs. When it was over, he had literally run away—he didn’t stop till he reached the park. There, among the tombstones (the park had once been a graveyard) and trumpet-vines, he sat on the grass and opened the box. He was dazzled. The medal was of gold, and rested on a tiny blue satin cushion. His name was engraved on it—yes, actually cut into the gold; he felt the incisions with his fingernail. It was an experience not wholly to be comprehended. He put the box down in the grass and detached himself from it, lay full length, resting his chin on his wrist, and stared first at a tombstone and then at the small gold object, as if to discover the relation between them. Humming-birds, tombstones, trumpet-vines, and a gold medal. Amazing. He unpinned the medal from its cushion, put the box in his pocket, and walked slowly homeward, carrying the small, live, gleaming thing between fingers and thumb as if it were a bee. This was an experience to be carefully concealed from mother and father. Possibly he would tell Mary and John.… Unfortunately, he met his father as he was going in the door, and was thereafter drowned, for a day, in a glory without significance. He felt ashamed, and put the medal away in a drawer, sternly forbidding Mary and John to look at it. Even so, he was horribly conscious of it—its presence there burned him unceasingly. Nothing afforded escape from it, not even sitting under the peach tree and whittling a boat.

II.

The oddest thing was the way these and other adventures of the week all seemed to unite, as if they were merely aspects of the same thing. Everywhere lurked that extraordinary hint of the enigma and its shining solution. On Tuesday morning, when it was pouring with rain, and he and Mary and John were conducting gigantic military operations in the back hall, with hundreds of paper soldiers, tents, cannon, battleships, and forts, suddenly through the tall open window, a goldfinch flew in from the rain, beat wildly against a pane of glass, darted several times to and fro above their heads, and finally, finding the open window, flashed out. It flew to the peach tree, rested there for a moment, and then over the outhouse and away. He saw it rising and falling in the rain. This was beautiful—it was like the vision in the infernal city, like the medal in the grass. He found it impossible to go on with the Battle of Gettysburg and abandoned it to Mary and John, who instantly started to quarrel. Escape was necessary, and he went into his own room, shut the door, lay on his bed, and began thinking about Caroline Lee.