I tried to realize London--to
depict the Strand and Piccadilly, aglow with artificial light and
reverberating with the roll of countless traffic and the tread of
millions of feet. "I failed. The incongruity of such imaginings here--here amidst
omnipotent silence--rendered such thoughts impossible. A leaf rustled,
and its rustling sounded to my ears like the gentle closing of some
giant door. A twig fell, and I turned sharply round, convinced I should
see a pile of broken debris. I love all trees, but I love them best by
day--to me it seems that night utterly metamorphizes them--brings out in
them a subtler, darker side one would little suspect. Here, in this oak,
for instance, was an example. In the morning one sees in it nought but
quiet dignity, venerable old age, benevolence, and, by reason of the
ample protection its branches afford from the sun, charity and
philanthropy. Its leaves are bright, dainty, pretty; its trunk suggests
nothing but a cosy and soothing retreat for students and lovers. But
now--see how different! These great spreading, gnarled branches are
hands, claws--monstrous and menacing; those leaves no longer bright
remind me of a hearse's plumes; their rustling--of the rustling and
switching of a pall or winding-sheet. The trunk, black, sinuous,
towering, is assuredly no piece of timber, but something pulpy,
something intangible, something antagonistic, mystic, devilish. I turn
from it and shudder. Then my mind reverts to the elm--the elm on which
Sir Algernon hanged himself. I remember it is not more than twenty yards
from where I stand. I stare down at the soil, at the clumps of crested
dog's-tail and stray blades of succulent darnel; I force my attention on
a toadstool, whose soft and lowly head gleams sickly white in the
moonbeams. I glance from it to a sleeping close-capped dandelion, from
it to a thistle, from it again to a late bush vetch, and then,
willy-nilly, to the accursed elm. My God! What a change. It wasn't like
that when I passed it at noon. It was just an ordinary tree then, but
now, now--and what is that--that sinister bundle--suspended from one
of its curling branches? A cold sweat bursts out on me, my knees
tremble, my hair begins to rise on end. Swinging round, I am about to
rush away--blindly rush away--hither, thither, anywhere--anywhere out of
sight of that tree and of all the hideous possibilities it promises to
materialize for me. I have not taken five strides, however, before I am
pulled sharply up by the sounds of horse's hoofs--of hoofs on the hard
gravel, away in the distance. They speedily grow nearer. A horse is
galloping, galloping towards me along the broad carriage drive. Nearer,
nearer and nearer it comes! Who is it? WHAT is it? A deadly nausea
seizes me, I swerve, totter, reel, and am only prevented from falling by
the timely interference of a pine. The concussion with its leviathan
trunk clears my senses. All my faculties become wonderfully and
painfully alert. I would give my very soul if it were not so--if I could
but fall asleep or faint. The sound of the hoofs is very much nearer
now, so near indeed that I may see the man--Heaven grant it may be only
a man after all--any moment. Ah! my heart gives a great sickly jerk. Something has shot into view. There, not fifty yards from me, where the
road curves, and the break in the foliage overhead admits a great flood
of moonlight. I recognize the "thing" at once; it's not a man, it's
nothing human, it's the picture I know so well and dread so much, the
portrait of Horace Wimpole, that hangs in the main hall--and it's
mounted on a coal-black horse with wildly flying mane and foaming mouth. On and on they come, thud, thud, thud! The man is not dressed as a
rider, but is wearing the costume in the picture--i.e. that of a
macaroni! A nut! More fit for a lady's seminary than a fine, old English
mansion. "Something beside me rustles--rustles angrily, and I know, I can feel,
it is the bundle on the branch--the ghastly, groaning, creaking,
croaking caricature of Sir Algernon. The horseman comes up to me--our
eyes meet--I am looking in those of a dead--of a long since dead man--my
blood freezes. "He flashes past me--thud, thud, thud! A bend in the road, and he
vanishes from sight. But I can still hear him, still hear the mad patter
of his horse's hoofs as they bear him onward, lifeless, fleshless,
weightless, to his ancient home. God pity the souls that know no rest. "How I got back to the house I hardly know. I believe it was with my
eyes shut, and I am certain I ran all the way. "About four o'clock the following afternoon I received a cablegram from
Malta. Intuition warned me to prepare for the worst. Its contents were
unpleasantly short and pithy--'Hal drowned at two o'clock this
morning.--Dick.' "Two years passed--again an August night, hot and oppressive as before,
and again--though surely against my will, my better judgment, if you
like--I visited the wood. Horse's hoofs just the same as before. The
same galloping, the same figure, the same EYES! the same mad,
panic-stricken flight home, and, early in the succeeding afternoon, a
similar cablegram--this time from Sicily. 'Dick died at midnight. Dysentery.--Andrews.' "Jack Andrews was Dick's pal--his bosom friend. So once again the
phantom rider had brought its grisly message--played its ghoulish rôle. My brothers were both dead now, and only Beryl remained. Another year
sped by and the last night in October--a Monday--saw me, impelled by a
fascination I could not resist, once again in the wood. Up to a point
everything happened as before. As the monotonous church clock struck
twelve, from afar came the sound of hoofs. Nearer, nearer, nearer, and
then with startling abruptness the rider shot into view. And now, mixed
with the awful, indescribable terror the figure always conveyed with it,
came a feeling of intense rage and indignation. Should Beryl--Beryl whom
I loved next best to my wife--be torn from me even as Dick and Hal had
been? No! Ten thousand times no! Sooner than that I would risk anything. A sudden inspiration, coming maybe from the whispering leaves, or from
the elm, or from the mysterious flickering moonbeams, flashed through
me. Could I not intercept the figures, drive them back? By doing so
something told me Beryl might be saved. A terrible struggle at once took
place within me, and it was only after the most desperate efforts that I
at length succeeded in fighting back my terror and flung myself out into
the middle of the drive. No words of mine can describe all I went
through as I stood there anticipating the arrival of the phantoms. At
length they came, right up to me; and as, with frantic resolution, I
screwed up courage to plant myself directly in their path, and stared up
into the rider's eyes, the huge steed halted, gave one shrill neigh, and
turning round, galloped back again, disappearing whither it had
emerged. "Two days afterwards I received a letter from my brother-in-law.