The Shape of Fear | Page 3

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Bogg Boggs

THE SHAPE OF FEAR

And Other Ghostly Tales

BY
ELIA WILKINSON PEATTIE

CONTENTS
THE SHAPE OF FEAR
ON THE NORTHERN ICE
THEIR DEAR LITTLE GHOST
A SPECTRAL COLLIE
THE HOUSE THAT WAS NOT
STORY OF AN OBSTINATE CORPSE
A CHILD OF THE RAIN
THE ROOM OF THE EVIL THOUGHT
STORY OF THE VANISHING PATIENT
THE PIANO NEXT DOOR
AN ASTRAL ONION
FROM THE LOOM OF THE DEAD
A GRAMMATICAL GHOST

THE SHAPE OF FEAR

TIM O'CONNOR -- who was de- scended from the O'Conors with one
N -- started life as a poet and an enthusiast. His mother had designed
him for the priesthood, and at the age of fifteen, most of his verses had
an ecclesiastical tinge, but, somehow or other, he got into the
newspaper business instead, and became a pessimistic gentleman, with
a literary style of great beauty and an income of modest proportions. He
fell in with men who talked of art for art's sake, -- though what right
they had to speak of art at all nobody knew, -- and little by little his
view of life and love became more or less pro- fane. He met a woman
who sucked his heart's blood, and he knew it and made no protest; nay,
to the great amusement of the fellows who talked of art for art's sake,
he went the length of marrying her. He could not in decency explain
that he had the tra- ditions of fine gentlemen behind him and so had to
do as he did, because his friends might not have understood. He
laughed at the days when he had thought of the priest- hood, blushed
when he ran across any of those tender and exquisite old verses he had
written in his youth, and became addicted to absinthe and other less
peculiar drinks, and to gaming a little to escape a madness of ennui.
As the years went by he avoided, with more and more scorn, that part
of the world which he denominated Philistine, and con- sorted only
with the fellows who flocked about Jim O'Malley's saloon. He was
pleased with solitude, or with these convivial wits, and with not very
much else beside. Jim O'Malley was a sort of Irish poem, set to
inspiring measure. He was, in fact, a Hibernian Mæcenas, who
knew better than to put bad whiskey before a man of talent, or tell a
trite tale in the presence of a wit. The recountal of his disquisitions on
politics and other cur- rent matters had enabled no less than three men
to acquire national reputations; and a number of wretches, having gone
the way of men who talk of art for art's sake, and dying in foreign lands,
or hospitals, or asylums, having no one else to be homesick for, had
been homesick for Jim O'Malley, and wept for the sound of his voice
and the grasp of his hearty hand.
When Tim O'Connor turned his back upon most of the things he was
born to and took up with the life which he consistently lived till the
unspeakable end, he was unable to get rid of certain peculiarities. For

example, in spite of all his debauchery, he continued to look like the
Beloved Apostle. Notwith- standing abject friendships