To Be Read At Dusk | Page 8

a very unusual expression in his face.
'Wilhelm,' said he, 'I am not afraid or ashamed to tell you what I might be afraid or
ashamed to tell another man. You come from a sensible country, where mysterious things
are inquired into and are not settled to have been weighed and measured - or to have been
unweighable and unmeasurable - or in either case to have been completely disposed of,
for all time - ever so many years ago. I have just now seen the phantom of my brother.'
I confess (said the German courier) that it gave me a little tingling of the blood to hear it.
'I have just now seen,' Mr. James repeated, looking full at me, that I might see how
collected he was, 'the phantom of my brother John. I was sitting up in bed, unable to
sleep, when it came into my room, in a white dress, and regarding me earnestly, passed
up to the end of the room, glanced at some papers on my writing-desk, turned, and, still
looking earnestly at me as it passed the bed, went out at the door. Now, I am not in the
least mad, and am not in the least disposed to invest that phantom with any external
existence out of myself. I think it is a warning to me that I am ill; and I think I had better
be bled.'
I got out of bed directly (said the German courier) and began to get on my clothes,
begging him not to be alarmed, and telling him that I would go myself to the doctor. I
was just ready, when we heard a loud knocking and ringing at the street door. My room
being an attic at the back, and Mr. James's being the second-floor room in the front, we
went down to his room, and put up the window, to see what was the matter.
'Is that Mr. James?' said a man below, falling back to the opposite side of the way to look
up.
'It is,' said Mr. James, 'and you are my brother's man, Robert.'
'Yes, Sir. I am sorry to say, Sir, that Mr. John is ill. He is very bad, Sir. It is even feared
that he may be lying at the point of death. He wants to see you, Sir. I have a chaise here.
Pray come to him. Pray lose no time.'
Mr. James and I looked at one another. 'Wilhelm,' said he, 'this is strange. I wish you to
come with me!' I helped him to dress, partly there and partly in the chaise; and no grass
grew under the horses' iron shoes between Poland Street and the Forest.
Now, mind! (said the German courier) I went with Mr. James into his brother's room, and

I saw and heard myself what follows.
His brother lay upon his bed, at the upper end of a long bed- chamber. His old
housekeeper was there, and others were there: I think three others were there, if not four,
and they had been with him since early in the afternoon. He was in white, like the figure -
necessarily so, because he had his night-dress on. He looked like the figure - necessarily
so, because he looked earnestly at his brother when he saw him come into the room.
But, when his brother reached the bed-side, he slowly raised himself in bed, and looking
full upon him, said these words:
'JAMES, YOU HAVE SEEN ME BEFORE, TO-NIGHT - AND YOU KNOW IT!'
And so died!
I waited, when the German courier ceased, to hear something said of this strange story.
The silence was unbroken. I looked round, and the five couriers were gone: so noiselessly
that the ghostly mountain might have absorbed them into its eternal snows. By this time, I
was by no means in a mood to sit alone in that awful scene, with the chill air coming
solemnly upon me - or, if I may tell the truth, to sit alone anywhere. So I went back into
the convent- parlour, and, finding the American gentleman still disposed to relate the
biography of the Honourable Ananias Dodger, heard it all out.

End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of To Be Read At Dusk, by Charles Dickens

To Be Read At Dusk by Charles Dickens
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