When I Was Dead - Vincent O'Sullivan

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And I was dead by Vincent O'Sullivan.

And yet my heart will not confess he owes the malady that doth my life peseach, all's

well that ends well.

That was the worst of Ravenel Hall.

The passages were long and gloomy.

The rooms were musty and dull.

Even the pictures were somber in their subjects' dire.

On an autumn evening, when the winds soared and ailed through the trees in the park, and

the dead leaves whistled and shattered while the rain clamoured at the windows, small wonder

that folks would gentle nerves want a string in their wits.

An acute nervous system is a grievous burden on the deck of a yacht under sunlit skies.

Had Ravenel the change of nerves was prone to clash and jangle a funeral march.

Nerves must be pampered in a tea-drinking community, and the ghost that your grandfather,

with a skinful of port, could face and never tremble, sets you in your sobriety, sweating

and shivering, or becoming scared, poor ghost, of your bulged eyes and dropping jaw.

He quenches expectation by not appearing at all.

So I am left to conclude that it was tea which made my acquaintance afraid to stay at

Ravenel.

Even Wilveron gave over, and as he is in the guards and a polo player, his nerves ought

to be strong enough.

On the night before he went, I was explained to him my theory that if you place some drops

of human blood near you and then concentrate your thoughts, you will, after a while, see

before you a man or a woman who will stay with you during the long hours of the night,

and even meet you at unexpected places during the day.

I was explaining this theory, I repeat, when he interrupted me with words, senseless enough,

which sent me fencing and perying strangers on my guard.

I say, Alastair, my dear chap, he began.

You ought to get out of this place and go up to town and knock about a bit.

You really ought, you know.

Yes, I replied.

And get poisoned at the hotels by bad food, and at the clubs by bad talk, I suppose.

No thank you.

And let me say that your care for my health elevates me.

Well, you can do as you like, he said, wrapping with his feet on the floor.

I'm hanging if I stay here after tomorrow, I'll be staring mad if I do.

He was my last visitor.

Some weeks after his departure I was sitting in the library with my drops of blood by me.

I had got my theory nearly perfect by this time, but there was one difficulty.

The figure which I had ever before me was the figure of an old woman, with her hair

divided in the middle.

And her hair fell to her shoulders, white on one side black on the other.

She is a very complete old woman, but alas, she was eyeless.

And when I tried to construct the eyes she would shrivel and rot in my sight.

But tonight I was thinking, thinking.

As I had never thought before, and the eyes were just creeping into the head.

When I heard the terrible crash outside as if some heavy substance had fallen.

Of a sudden, the door was flung open and two maidservants entered, they glanced at the

rug under my chair, and at that they turned a sick white, cried on God and huddled out.

How dare you enter the library in this manner?

I demanded sternly.

No answer came back from them, so I started in pursuit.

I found all the servants in the house gathered in a knot at the end of the passage.

Mrs. Pebble, I said smartly to the housekeeper.

I want those two women discharged tomorrow.

It's an outrage.

You ought to be more careful.

But she was not attending to me.

Her face was distorted with terror.

Ah dear, ah dear!

She went.

We had better all go to the library together.

Says she to the others.

Am I master of my own house, Mrs. Pebble?

I inquired, bringing my knuckles down with a bang on the table.

None of them seemed to see or hear me.

I might as well have been shrieking in the desert.

I followed them down the passage and forbade them to enter the library.

But they trooped past me and stood with a clutter around the hearth rug.

And three or four of them began dragging and lifting, as if they were lifting a helpless

body and stumbled with their imaginary berthin over to a sofa.

Old Psalms, the butler stood near.

Poor young gentleman.

He said with a sob, I've known him since he was a baby, and to think of him being dead

like this and so young too, I crossed the room.

What's all this, Psalms?

I cried, shaking him roughly by the shoulders.

I'm not dead.

Here.

Here.

As he did not stir, I got a little scared.

Psalms, old friend, I called.

Don't you know me?

Don't you know the little boy you used to play with?

Say, I'm not dead, Psalms, please, Psalms!

He stooped down and kissed the sofa.

I think one of the men ought to ride over to the village for the doctor, Mr. Psalms, said

Mrs. Pebble, and he shuffled out to give the order.

Now this doctor was an ignorant dog.

One of my had been forced to exclude from the house because he went about proclaiming

his belief in a saving God.

At the same time that he proclaimed himself a man of science, he, I was resolved, should

never cross my threshold, and I followed Mrs. Pebble through the house, screaming out

prohibition.

But I did not catch even a groan from her.

Not a knot of the head, nor a cast of the eye, to show that she had heard.

I met the doctor at the door of the library.

Well, I sneered, throwing my hand in his face.

Have you come to teach me some new prayers?

He brushed by me as if he had not felt the blow and knelt down by the sofa.

Rupshur of a vessel on the brain, I think.

He said to Psalms and Mrs. Pebble after a short moment.

He has been dead some hours, poor fellow.

You'd better telegraph for his sister, and I will send up the undertaker to arrange the

body.

You liar!

I yelled.

You whining liar!

How have you the insolence to tell my servants that I am dead when you see me here face to

face?

He was far in the passage, with Psalms and Mrs. Pebble's at his heels, air I had ended,

and not one of the three turned around.

All that night I sat in the library, strangely enough I had no wish to sleep, nor during

the time that followed had any craving to eat, and the morning the men came.

And although I ordered them out, they proceeded to minister about something I could not see.

So all day I stayed in the library or wandered about the house, and at night the men came

again bringing with them a coffin.

Then in my humor, thinking it a shame that so fine a coffin should be empty, I lay the

night in it and slept a soft dreamless sleep.

The soft asleep I had ever slept.

And when the men came the next day I rested still.

And the undertaker shaved me, a strange valet, on the evening after that I was coming downstairs

when I noted some luggage in the hall, and so learned that my sister had arrived.

I had not seen this woman since her marriage, and I loathed her more than I loathed any

creature in this ill-organized world.

She was very beautiful, I think, tall and dark, and straight as a ramrod, as she had an

unruly passion for sandal interests.

I suppose the reason I disliked her so intensely was that she had a habit of making one aware

of her presence when she was several yards off.

At half past nine o'clock my sister came down to the library in a very charming rap, and

I soon found that she was insensible to my presence as the others.

I trembled with rage to see her kneel down by the coffin, my coffin, but when she bent

over the kiss to pillow I threw away control.

A knife which had been used to cut string was lying upon the table.

I seized it and drove it into her neck.

She fled from the room screaming.

Come, come, she cried, her voice quivering with anguish.

The corpse is bleeding from the nose.

Then I cursed her.

On the evening of the third day there was a heavy fall of snow.

At eleven o'clock I observed that the house was filled with blacks and mutes and folk

of the country who came for the obsequious.

I went into the library and sat still and waited.

Soon came the men, and they closed the lid of the coffin and bore it out on their shoulders.

And yet I sat, feeling rather sadly that something of mine had been taken away.

I could not quite think what.

For half an hour perhaps, dreaming, dreaming, and then I glided to the hall door.

It was no trace left of the funeral.

But after a while I sighted a black thread winding slowly across the white plane.

I'm not dead!

I moaned, and rubbed my face in the pure snow and tossed it on my neck and hair.

Sweet God, I'm not dead!

The end of, when I was dead.