THE PHANTOM COACH: Collected Ghost Stories (32 page)

‘That it must certainly be a clever piece of engineering,’ replied Wolfe.

‘And that having rested long enough, we will push on and see it,’ added I, glad to cut short the thread of our host’s native eloquence.

So we paid our reckoning; took a last look at the view; and, plunging back into the woods, went on our way refreshed.

The path still continued to ascend, till we suddenly came upon a burst of daylight and found ourselves on a magnificent high road some thirty feet in breadth, with the forest and the telegraph wires on the one hand, and the precipice on the other. Massive granite posts at close intervals protected the edge of the road, and the
cantonniers
were still at work here and there, breaking and laying fresh stones, and clearing
débris
. We did not need to be informed that this was the New Pass.

Always ascending, we continued now to follow the road which at every turn commanded finer and finer views across the valley. Then by degrees the forest dwindled, and was at last left far below; and the giddy precipices to our left grew steeper, and the mountain slopes above became more and more barren, till the last Alp-roses vanished and there remained only a carpet of brown and tan moss scattered over here and there with great boulders—some freshly broken away from the heights above—others thickly coated with lichen, as if they might have been lying there for centuries.

We seemed here to have reached the highest point of the New Pass, for our road continued at this barren level for some miles. An immense panorama of peaks, snow-fields, and glaciers lay outstretched before us to the left, with an unfathomable gulf of misty valley between. The hot air simmered in the sun. The heat and silence were intense. Once, and once only, we came upon a party of travellers. They were three in number, lying at full length in the shade of a huge fragment of fallen rock, their heads comfortably pillowed on their knapsacks, and all fast asleep.

And now the grey rock began to crop out in larger masses close beside our path, encroaching nearer and nearer, till at last the splintered cliffs towered straight above our heads, and the road became a mere broad shelf, along the face of the precipice. Presently, on turning a sharp angle of rock, we saw before us a vista of road, cliff, and valley—the road now perceptibly on the decline, and vanishing about a mile ahead into the mouth of a small cavernous opening (no bigger, as it seemed from that distance, than a good-sized rabbit hole) pierced through a huge projecting spur, or buttress, of the mountain.

‘Behold the famous gallery!’ said I. ‘Mine host was right—it
is
something like the Splügen, barring the much greater altitude of the road, and the still greater width of the valley. But where is the waterfall?’

‘Well, it’s not much of a waterfall,’ said Wolfe. ‘I can just see it—a tiny thread of mist wavering down the cliff a long way on, beyond the mouth of the tunnel.’

‘Ay; I see it now—a sort of inferior Staubbach. Heavens! what power the sun has up here! At what time did Kauffmann say we should get to Schwartzenfelden?’

‘Not before seven, at the earliest—and it is now nearly four.’

‘Humph! three hours more—say three and a half. Well, that will be a pretty good first day’s pedestrianising, heat and all considered!’

Here the conversation dropped, and we plodded on again in silence.

Meanwhile the sun blazed in the heavens, and the light, struck back from white rock and whiter road, was almost blinding. And still the hot air danced and simmered before us; and a windless stillness, as of death, lay upon all the scene.

Suddenly—quite suddenly, as if he had started out of the rock—I saw a man coming towards us with rapid and eager gesticulations. He seemed to be waving us back; but I was so startled for the moment by the unexplained way in which he made his appearance, that I scarcely took in the meaning of his gestures.

‘How odd!’ I exclaimed, coming to a halt. ‘How did he get there?’

‘How did who get there?’ said Wolfe.

‘Why, that fellow yonder. Did you see where he came from?’

‘What fellow, my dear boy? I see no one but ourselves.’ And he stared vaguely round, while all the time the man between us and the gallery was waving his right arm above his head, and running on to meet us.

‘Good heavens! Egerton,’ I said impatiently, ‘where are your eyes? Here—straight before us—not a quarter of a mile off—making signs as hard as he can. Perhaps we had better wait till he comes up.’

My friend drew his race-glass from its case, adjusted it carefully, and took a long, steady look down the road. Seeing him do this, the man stood still; but kept his right hand up all the same.

‘You see him now, surely?’ said I.

‘
No
.’

I turned and looked him in the face. I could not believe my ears.

‘Upon my honour, Frank,’ he said earnestly, ‘I see only the empty road and the mouth of the tunnel beyond. Here, Kauffmann!’

Kauffmann, who was standing close by, stepped up and touched his cap.

‘Look down the road,’ said Wolfe.

The guide shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked.

‘What do you see?’

‘I see the entrance to the gallery,
mein Herr
.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘Nothing else,
mein Herr
.’

And still the man stood there in the road—even came a step or two nearer! Was I mad?

‘You still think you see some one yonder?’’ said Egerton, looking at me very seriously.

‘I
know
that I do.’

He handed me his race-glass.

‘Look through that,’ he said, ‘and tell me if you still see him.’

‘I see him more plainly than before.’

‘What is he like?’

‘Very tall—very slender—fair—quite young—not more, I should say, than fifteen or sixteen—evidently an Englishman.’

‘How is he dressed?’

‘In a grey suit—his collar open, and his throat bare. Wears a Scotch cap with a silver badge in it. He takes his cap off, and waves it! He has a whitish scar on his right temple. I can see the motion of his lips—he seems to say, “Go back—go back!” Look for yourself—you
must
see him!’

I turned to give him the glass, but he pushed it away.

‘No, no,’ he said, hoarsely. ‘It’s of no use. Go on looking. . . . What more, for God’s sake?’

I looked again—the glass all but dropped from my hand.

‘Gracious heavens!’ I exclaimed breathlessly, ‘he is gone!’

‘Gone!’

Ay, gone. Gone as suddenly as he came—gone as though he had never been! I could not believe it. I rubbed my eyes. I rubbed the glass on my sleeve. I looked, and looked again; and still, though I looked, I doubted.

At this moment, with a wild, unearthly cry, and a strange sound as of some heavy projectile cleaving the stagnant air, an eagle plunged past us upon mighty wings, and swooped down into the valley.

‘
Ein Adler! ein Adler!
’ shouted the guide, flinging up his cap and running to the brink of the precipice.

Wolfe laid his hand upon my arm, and drew a deep breath.

‘Legrice,’ he said very calmly, but with a white awestruck look in his face, ‘you described my brother Lawrence—age, height, dress, everything; even to the Scotch cap he always wore, and the silver badge my uncle Horace gave him on his birthday. He got that scar in a cricket-match at Harrowgate.’

‘Your brother Lawrence?’ I faltered.

‘Why you should be the one permitted to see him is strange,’ he went on, speaking more to himself than to me. ‘Very strange! I wish—— but there! perhaps I should not have believed my own eyes. I
must
believe yours.’

‘I will never believe that my eyes saw your brother Lawrence,’ I said resolutely.

‘We must turn back, of course,’ he went on, taking no notice of my answer. ‘Look here, Kauffmann—can we get to Schwartzenfelden tonight by the old pass, if we turn back at once?’

‘Turn back!’ I interrupted. ‘My dear Egerton, you are not serious?’

‘I was never more serious in my life,’ he said, gravely.

‘If these
Herren
wish to take the old pass,’ said the astonished guide, ‘we cannot get to Schwartzenfelden before midnight. We have already come seven miles out of the way, and the old pass is twelve miles further round.’

‘Twelve and fourteen are twenty-six,’ said I. ‘We cannot add twenty-six miles to our original thirty. It is out of the question.’

‘These
Herren
can sleep at the châlet where we halted,’ suggested the guide.

‘True—I had not thought of that,’ said Wolfe. ‘We can sleep at the châlet, and go on as soon as it is day.’

‘Turn back, sleep at the châlet, go on in the morning, and lose full half a day, with one of the finest passes in Switzerland before us, and our journey two-thirds done!’ I cried. ‘The idea is too absurd.’

‘Nothing shall induce me to go on, in defiance of a warning from the dead,’ said Wolfe hastily.

‘And nothing,’ I replied, ‘shall induce me to believe that we have received any such warning. I either saw that man, or I laboured under some kind of optical illusion. But ghosts I do not believe in.’

‘As you please. You can go on if you prefer it, and take Kauffmann with you. I know my way back.’

‘Agreed—except as regards Kauffmann. Let him take his choice.’

Kauffmann, having the matter explained to him, elected at once to go back with Egerton Wolfe.

‘If the Herr Englishman has been warned in a vision,’ he said, crossing himself devoutly, ‘it is suicide to go on. Obey the blessed spirit
, mein Herr!
’

But nothing now would have induced me to turn back, even if I had felt inclined to do so; so, agreeing to meet next day at Schwartzenfelden, my friend and I said goodbye.

‘God grant you may come to no harm, dear old fellow,’ said Wolfe, as he turned away.

‘I don’t feel like harm, I assure you,’ I replied, laughing.

And so we parted.

I stood still and watched them till they were out of sight. At the turn of the road they paused and looked back. When Wolfe waved his hand for the last time and finally disappeared, I could not repress a sudden thrill—he looked so like the figure of my illusion.

For that it was an illusion, I did not doubt for a moment. Such phenomena, though not common, are by no means unheard of. I had talked with more than one eminent physician on this very subject, and I remembered that each had spoken of cases within his own experience. Besides, there was the famous case of Nicolai, the bookseller of Berlin; not to mention many others, equally well attested. That I must have been temporarily in the condition of persons so affected, I took for granted; and yet I felt well—never better; my head cool—my mind clear—my pulse regular. Well—I would never disbelieve in hallucinations again. To that I made up my mind; but as for ghosts—pshaw! how could any sane man, above all, such a man as Egerton Wolfe, believe in ghosts?

Reasoning thus, and smiling to myself, I tightened the shoulder-straps of my knapsack, took a pull at my wine-flask, and set off towards the tunnel.

It was still half-a-mile distant; for I had stopped on first sight of the figure, before we were half across the space that lay between that dark opening and the turn of the road above. And now, plodding steadily towards it, I examined the ground at every step (especially on the side of the precipice) for any path or rocky projection of which a man could possibly have availed himself for retreat or shelter; but the smooth upright wall of solid limestone on the one hand, and the sheer, inaccessible, giddy depths on the other, made all such explanation impossible. Thrown back thus on the illusion theory, I paused once or twice, and tired to conjure up the figure before my eyes, but in vain.