When I Was Dead by Vincent O'Sullivan
That was the worst of Ravennaught Hall.
The passages were long and gloomy, the rooms were musty and dull, even the pictures were
sombre and their subjects dire.
On an autumn evening, when the wind sound and ailed through the trees in the park, and
the dead leaves whistled and chattered, while the rain clamoured at the windows, small wonder
that folks with gentle nerves went astraying in their wits.
An acute nervous system is a grievous berthen on the deck of a yacht under sunlit skies.
At Ravennault, the chain 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 skin full 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'm left to conclude that it was tea which made my acquaintance afraid to stay at Ravennault.
Even Wilvan 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 explaining 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 woman who will stay with you during 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 parrying strangers on my guard.
I say, Alistair, 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 to, you know.
Yes, I replied, and get poisoned at the hotel's bad food and at the clubs by bad talk, I suppose.
No thank you.
And let me say, your care for my health enervates me.
Well, you can do as you like, says he, wrapping his feet on the floor.
I'm hanged 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 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'd thought never before, and the eyes were just
creeping into my head when I heard a terrible crash outside, as if some heavy substance
had fallen.
Of a sudden the door was flung open, and two maid servants entered.
They glanced at the rug under my chair, and at that they turned a sick white, cried of
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.
No, 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, she said to
the others.
Am I master of my own house, Mrs Pebble, I enquired, bringing my knuckles down with a
bang on the table.
None of them seemed to see me or hear me, I might as well have been shrieking in a desert.
I followed them down the passage, and forbade them to enter the library.
But they trooped past me and stood with a clutter round the hearth rug.
Then three or four of them began dragging and lifting as if they were lifting a helpless
body and stumbled with their imaginary berth and over to a sofa.
Old Soames 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, Soames?
I cried, shaking him roughly by the shoulders.
I'm not dead, I'm here, here.
As he did not stir, I got a little scared.
Soames, 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.
Soames, please, Soames.
He stooped down and kissed the sofa.
I think one of the men ought to ride over to the village for the doctor, Mr Soames,
said Mrs Pebble, and he shuffled out to give the order.
Now this doctor was an ignorant dog whom I'd been forced to exclude from the house because
he went about proclaiming his belief in a saving God at the same time as 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
nod of the head nor a cast of the eye to show that she'd 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'd not felt the blow, and knelt down by the sofa.
Rupture of a vessel on the brain, I think, he said to Soames and Mrs Pebble after a short
moment.
He's been dead for some hours, poor fellow.
You'd better telegraph for his sister, and I will send up to 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?
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.
In 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, and wandered about the house, and at night the men came
again bringing with them a coffin.
Then in my humour, thinking it shame that so fine a coffin should be empty, I lay the
night in it and slept a soft dreamless sleep.
The softest sleep I have 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 -organised world.
She was very beautiful I think, tall and dark, and straight as a ramrod, and she had an unruly
passion for scandal and dress.
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 wrap, and
I soon found that she was as 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 to kiss the pillow, I threw away control.
A knife that 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.
About eleven o 'clock I observed that the house was filled with blacks and mutes and folks
of the county.
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.
There was no trace left of the funeral, but after a while I sighted a black thread winding
slowly across the white plain.
I'm not dead, I moaned, and rubbed my face with pure snow and tossed it on my neck and hair.
Sweet God, I am not dead.
