LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 75, 27 August 1874, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A LOAN FROM THE DEAD. [From Chambers’ Journal.] Concluded. At that time, there was a train which left —not Waterloo, but some station a little distance down the line ; it might have been Vauxhall, or possibly Niue Elms, I scarcely remember which—left the station at midnight. It was popularly known amongst us as the Cold-meat Train. Its passengers were dead bodies for the Woking Cemetery. The railway company, ever solicitous to accommodate the public and turn an honest penny, had, for the convenience of the camp, affixed to this train one first-class carriage. After leaving the dead bodies at Woking, the carriage was run on to Farnborough, whence you could walk to the camp, if you had not been prudent enough to order a fly to meet you. The hotel servant who ushered me to the cab got a handsome gratuity for his pains. It was my leave-taking of the world of pleasure, and I was too insolvent to be careful about little matters. The cab sped me quickly to the station ; but the clock at the hotel had been slow f as we passed under the railway arch, a premonitory shriek from the engine overhead warned me that the train was on the point of starting. I stopped the cab at the bridge, and ran quickly up a narrow flight of steps which led directly on to the end of the platform—known only to the initiated ; the train was moving on, but I had just time, despite warning shouts of guard and porters, to open the door of the last carriage and jump in. The other compartments of the carriage I noticed were lighted, but this one was dark ; that didn’t affect me, I didn’t want to read. I took out a box of wax matches, and proceeded to light a cigar. As the glow of the match lit up the interior of the carriage, I saw in the corner a long dark object, quite black, and yet with some little metallic gleam about it: it was a coffin, reared up at the further side of the carriage, a board being placed behind it, against which it leaned. As I looked steadfastly at the coffin, it appeared suddenly to glow with a faint radiance. Every nail and every plate upon it began to gleam with strange mysterious light. Bah ! it was the moon. We had just left the clouds of London behind us, and the great round moon, rising out of river-mists, cast her glorious beams right athwart us. But I turned away from her in disgust. What was the beauty of the night to me—a ruined spendthrift—the scorn and laughing-stock of the world 1 The black coffin on the other side was a more congenial companion to me. I lit another match, and read the inscription on the plate : ‘William Heathcote, died 25th May, 18 —, aged 25 years,’

The hair on his head rose in a mass : my heart ceased to beat. My own name, ray own age, and the very date of the day that was now just born ! It chimed in too, did this inscription, so mysteriously with that impulse I had felt the whole day—a turning to self-destruction, as a means of escape from all the degradations of life. I would accept the omen. I carried with me, a practice I had acquired in the East, a small American revolver, which fitted into my waistcoat pocket. It would kill at twenty paces, and would give me my mittimus easily enough. I drew it out, and placed it against my forehead ; then it struck me that the bail, after passing through my head, might pass also through the partition dividing the compartment, and strike some one in the next carriage. I turned, therefore, my back to the window, and again placed the muzzle to my forehead. Again I withdrew it. There was no hurry. The train did not stop fill it reached Woking. I could not possibly be disturbed. I wanted a signal : the whistle of the engine, as the driver sighted the red lamps of Woking, should be the signal for my departure from the world. ‘ Yes,’l said aloud, turning upon myself, as it were, in a sort of frenzy—‘ yes ! the moment the whistle sounds, William Heathcote, you shall die.’

I have said that the rising moon was shining brightly into the carriage, full upon the coffin, and upon the mysterious inscription. 1 don’t think I really believed that this coffin had any tangible existence. It might be but the product of my own fevered brain, but none the less, on that account, was it a veritable warning of my doom Looking up, however, to sec if it had indeed disappeared, I saw no longer the coffin-lid, but a white shrouded figure, a pallid, corpselike face, the eyes of which, in the moonbeams, shone upon me with a sepulchral gleam. , , . _ , , For the moment, I thought that I had indeed passed into the land of shadows; that I was a disembodied spirit, looking upon my own mortal remains; and the thought that I had ceased to be an individuality, and had become the mere shadow of a thought, struck such a chill terror and horror to my soul, that every impulse of it was lost in an eager effort to resume my individual existence

1 came to myself with afleepgasp, digging my finger-nails into ray palms. Ah, the joy

of that moment, after the torture of the struggle back to life 1 Life ragged, miserable, it might be, but still dear life, how precious it seemed ; how unfathomably deep, below the utmost wretchedness of being, was the dread abyss of non-existence 1 Shadows ! I defied them.

‘ Come forth, old mole ! ’ I shouted to my double in the coffin. He came forth. As I live, he stepped out of the coffin, seated himself opposite to me, and laid a finger on my arm, and leaned forward to speak into my car.

‘ Mercy, mercy ! ’ shrieked the figure in a voice that pierced the roar of the train then thundering over a bridge. 1 See ! ’ cried the figure, slipping a paper into my hands; ‘ keep it, keep it ; only don’t betray me.’ Whew-w went the whistle of the engine, shrieking, as it seemed, close into my ears. I turned my head for a moment: the moon had just passed into a cloud ; the figure had vanished; the coffin still stood in the corner, dark and grim. The train slackened, stopped. ‘Jem,’ said the voice—that of the guard’s, ‘ there’s a body in that middle first-class coach ; there’s some parties coming to meet it with an ’earse.’ ‘ All right, Jack,’ said another voice; ‘ they’ve come to fetch him. Bear a hand here, will you ?—0 Lord ! ’ shouted the man, as he saw me sitting in the corner. 1 Oh, I beg your pardon, sir. I hope you aren’t been annoyed, sir ?—Jack, what did you mean by putting the gent into this compartment ? ’ * I didn’t, growled Jack ; ‘he must ’a got in by hisself.’ * All right,’ I said, getting out and stretching myself on the platform. ‘ I’ll get into the next carriage. No bodies there, are there ?’ 1 D’ye call me nobody ? ’ said Pat Reilly, looking out of the window. ‘ Jump in, Billy, my bhoy? I’ve cleared out the rest of the company; ye’ll introduce a little fresh capital into the concern.’ What a contrast to the scene I had quitted was the cheerful lighted carriage, with its occupants, all brother-officers of mine, smoking, chaffing, and playing 100 on a rug stretched over their knees! Surely the whole of the previous scene had been a dream, or could it have been an incipient attack of D.T. ? not brought on by drink, indeed, for I was not given to that, but by irregular habits and stress of mind. It wasn’t till I reached my own hut at Aldershott, that I thought of the paper which the ghost had given me, and which, in my delirium, I had imagined I had thrust into my waistcoat pocket. Here was a test, at all events : if there was a real paper, bearing signs of its ghostly origin, then I was still sane, and the apparition I had witnessed was not a delusion of the brain.

In the corner of my waistcoat pocket was a crumpled piece of flimsy paper; I unfolded it, and found it a Bank of England note for a hundred pounds. Prom that hour, I was an altered man. I paid my gambling debts ; confessed all my embarrassments to my friends, who lifted me out of the mire ; never touched a card or a die ; studied for the Staff College ; passed a good examination ; went to Sandhurst, came out with high honors, and having a little influence at head-quarters, got an appointment as commissioner, to watch the operations of the American War of Secession, on General ’s staff. It was at the close of a bloody but decisive battle, or series of battles, which resulted in the retreat of the army of the South, that I visited the field-hospitals at the rear of the Federal army, in search of a friend who had been wounded during the day. The doctors and attendants were all too busy to pay any attention to my wants, and I walked down the long rows of hastily improvised couches, trying to recognise my friend.

Scraps of paper, on which the names of the patients had been hastily scrawled, were pinned to the coverings, and I started as I read on one, ‘ William Heathcote ’ —my own name. The man appeared to be sinking from exhaustion, but he brightened up when he heard the tones of a friendly voice.

I knelt down beside him, and asked if I could do anything for him.

He nodded his head. ‘You’re English ? ’ he whispered, 1 Yes, I am.’ ‘Soam I. If you should be in the neighbourhood of Bedford, and should be able to hear of an old man of the name of Heathcote, a retired draper, will you tell him his son died in a creditable way ! I was a disgrace to him, sir, when I was alive ; but when I am dead, perhaps he’ll think kindly of me again. I’ll tell you my story, sir. I was a rogue—l was, sir. I was an undertaker, but I was a collector of taxes too ; and I entered into a conspiracy to defraud the government. It came out ; but I had warning in time. I shammed dead, and got away in one of my own coffins with all the swag. They wasn’t very keen after me; I don’t know why ; but just at the last moment I thought they’d have me. A defective followed me right to Woking ; but I squared him with a hundred-pound note, and got clear away to America by the Southampton packet. It never prospered me, that money ; and I got lower and lower, till I listed as a soldier; and here I am ! I’m getting tired, sir. Don’t forget Bedford— Heathcote, retired draper,’ I passed on in wonder and astonishment; and, if I must confess, a little disappointed and disenchanted. I was no special care, then, of an over-ruling Providence, as I had fondly deemed myself. My wonderful warning and deliverance was a mere affair of chance and accident. As I passed the man’s couch again, he lay on it stiff and stark and dead. On my return to England, I made inquiry of the officials of the revenue department, and found that there really had been a fraud of the kind in question, that the collector implicated in it had died suddenly—by suicide, it was thought. As to the defalcations, the defaulter’s sureties had paid a part —one of them, his father, having been sold up in consequence—and the rest had been paid over again by the parishioners he had defrauded. So I found out the old man at Bedford. He was living with a daughter, in abject poverty, and 1 repaid to him the hundred pounds with compound interest. To him I seemed a celestial visitant. The Cold-meat Train is now a thing of the past, 1 believe. A luggage train carries belated officers back to camp ; but, to this day, I confess that I always prefer to pass Woking in the broad daylight, and that I carefully look inside the carriage before I enter it, for I desire no more Loans from the Dead.