The Vision of Tom Chuff
At the edge of melancholy Catstean Moor, in the north of England, withhalf-a-dozen ancient poplar-trees with rugged and hoary stems around,one smashed across the middle by a flash of lightning thirty summersbefore, and all by their great height dwarfing the abode near whichthey stand, there squats a rude stone house, with a thick chimney, akitchen and bedroom on the ground-floor, and a loft, accessible by aladder, under the shingle roof, divided into two rooms.Its owner was a man of ill repute. Tom Chuff was his name. Ashock-headed, broad-shouldered, powerful man, though somewhat short,with lowering brows and a sullen eye. He was a poacher, and hardlymade an ostensible pretence of earning his bread by any honestindustry. He was a drunkard. He beat his wife, and led his children alife of terror and lamentation, when he was at home. It was a blessingto his frightened little family when he absented himself, as hesometimes did, for a week or more together.On the night I speak of he knocked at the door with his cudgel atabout eight o'clock. It was winter, and the night was very dark. Hadthe summons been that of a bogie from the moor, the inmates of thissmall house could hardly have heard it with greater terror.His wife unbarred the door in fear and haste. Her hunchbacked sisterstood by the hearth, staring toward the threshold. The childrencowered behind.Tom Chuff entered with his cudgel in his hand, without speaking, andthrew himself into a chair opposite the fire. He had been away two orthree days. He looked haggard, and his eyes were bloodshot. They knewhe had been drinking.Tom raked and knocked the peat fire with his stick, and thrust hisfeet close to it. He signed towards the little dresser, and nodded tohis wife, and she knew he wanted a cup, which in silence she gave him.He pulled a bottle of gin from his coat-pocket, and nearly filling theteacup, drank off the dram at a few gulps.He usually refreshed himself with two or three drams of this kindbefore beating the inmates of his house. His three little children,cowering in a corner, eyed him from under a table, as Jack did theogre in the nursery tale. His wife, Nell, standing behind a chair,which she was ready to snatch up to meet the blow of the cudgel, whichmight be levelled at her at any moment, never took her eyes off him;and hunchbacked Mary showed the whites of a large pair of eyes,similarly employed, as she stood against the oaken press, her darkface hardly distinguishable in the distance from the brown panelbehind it.Tom Chuff was at his third dram, and had not yet spoken a word sincehis entrance, and the suspense was growing dreadful, when, on asudden, he leaned back in his rude seat, the cudgel slipped from hishand, a change and a death-like pallor came over his face.For a while they all stared on; such was their fear of him, they darednot speak or move, lest it should prove to have been but a doze, andTom should wake up and proceed forthwith to gratify his temper andexercise his cudgel.In a very little time, however, things began to look so odd, that theyventured, his wife and Mary, to exchange glances full of doubt andwonder. He hung so much over the side of the chair, that if it had notbeen one of cyclopean clumsiness and weight, he would have borne it tothe floor. A leaden tint was darkening the pallor of his face. Theywere becoming alarmed, and finally braving everything his wife timidlysaid, "Tom!" and then more sharply repeated it, and finally cried theappellative loudly, and again and again, with the terrifiedaccompaniment, "He's dying--he's dying!" her voice rising to a scream,as she found that neither it nor her plucks and shakings of him by theshoulder had the slightest effect in recalling him from his torpor.And now from sheer terror of a new kind the children added theirshrilly piping to the talk and cries of their seniors; and if anythingcould have called Tom up from his lethargy, it might have been thepiercing chorus that made the rude chamber of the poacher's habitationring again. But Tom continued unmoved, deaf, and stirless.His wife sent Mary down to the village, hardly a quarter of a mileaway, to implore of the doctor, for whose family she did duty aslaundress, to come down and look at her husband, who seemed to bedying.The doctor, who was a good-natured fellow, arrived. With his hat stillon, he looked at Tom, examined him, and when he found that the emetiche had brought with him, on conjecture from Mary's description, didnot act, and that his lancet brought no blood, and that he felt apulseless wrist, he shook his head, and inwardly thought:"What the plague is the woman crying for? Could she have desired agreater blessing for her children and herself than the very thing thathas happened?"Tom, in fact, seemed quite gone. At his lips no breath wasperceptible. The doctor could discover no pulse. His hands and feetwere cold, and the chill was stealing up into his body.The doctor, after a stay of twenty minutes, had buttoned up hisgreat-coat again and pulled down his hat, and told Mrs. Chuff thatthere was no use in his remaining any longer, when, all of a sudden, alittle rill of blood began to trickle from the lancet-cut in TomChuffs temple."That's very odd," said the doctor. "Let us wait a little."I must describe now the sensations which Tom Chuff had experienced.With his elbows on his knees, and his chin upon his hands, he wasstaring into the embers, with his gin beside him, when suddenly aswimming came in his head, he lost sight of the fire, and a sound likeone stroke of a loud church bell smote his brain.Then he heard a confused humming, and the leaden weight of his headheld him backward as he sank in his chair, and consciousness quiteforsook him.When he came to himself he felt chilled, and was leaning against ahuge leafless tree. The night was moonless, and when he looked up hethought he had never seen stars so large and bright, or sky so black.The stars, too, seemed to blink down with longer intervals ofdarkness, and fiercer and more dazzling emergence, and something, hevaguely thought, of the character of silent menace and fury.He had a confused recollection of having come there, or rather ofhaving been carried along, as if on men's shoulders, with a sort ofrushing motion. But it was utterly indistinct; the imperfectrecollection simply of a sensation. He had seen or heard nothing onhis way.He looked round. There was not a sign of a living creature near. Andhe began with a sense of awe to recognise the place.The tree against which he had been leaning was one of the noble oldbeeches that surround at irregular intervals the churchyard ofShackleton, which spreads its green and wavy lap on the edge of theMoor of Catstean, at the opposite side of which stands the rudecottage in which he had just lost consciousness. It was six miles ormore across the moor to his habitation, and the black expanse laybefore him, disappearing dismally in the darkness. So that, lookingstraight before him, sky and land blended together in anundistinguishable and awful blank.There was a silence quite unnatural over the place. The distant murmurof the brook, which he knew so well, was dead; not a whisper in theleaves about him; the air, earth, everything about and above wasindescribably still; and he experienced that quaking of the heart thatseems to portend the approach of something awful. He would have setout upon his return across the moor, had he not an undefinedpresentiment that he was waylaid by something he dared not pass.The old grey church and tower of Shackleton stood like a shadow in therear. His eye had grown accustomed to the obscurity, and he could justtrace its outline. There were no comforting associations in his mindconnected with it; nothing but menace and misgiving. His earlytraining in his lawless calling was connected with this very spot.Here his father used to meet two other poachers, and bring his son,then but a boy, with him.Under the church porch, towards morning, they used to divide the gamethey had taken, and take account of the sales they had made on theprevious day, and make partition of the money, and drink their gin. Itwas here he had taken his early lessons in drinking, cursing, andlawlessness. His father's grave was hardly eight steps from the spotwhere he stood. In his present state of awful dejection, no scene onearth could have so helped to heighten his fear.There was one object close by which added to his gloom. About a yardaway, in rear of the tree, behind himself, and extending to his left,was an open grave, the mould and rubbish piled on the other side. Atthe head of this grave stood the beech-tree; its columnar stem roselike a huge monumental pillar. He knew every line and crease on itssmooth surface. The initial letters of his own name, cut in its barklong ago, had spread out and wrinkled like the grotesque capitals of afanciful engraver, and now with a sinister significance overlooked theopen grave, as if answering his mental question, "Who for is t' gravecut?"He felt still a little stunned, and there was a faint tremor in hisjoints that disinclined him to exert himself; and, further, he had avague apprehension that take what direction he might, there was dangeraround him worse than that of staying where he was.On a sudden the stars began to blink more fiercely, a faint wild lightoverspread for a minute the bleak landscape, and he saw approachingfrom the moor a figure at a kind of swinging trot, with now and then azig-zag hop or two, such as men accustomed to cross such places make,to avoid the patches of slob or quag that meet them here and there.This figure resembled his father's, and like him, whistled through hisfinger by way of signal as he approached; but the whistle sounded notnow shrilly and sharp, as in old times, but immensely far away, andseemed to sing strangely through Tom's head. From habit or from fear,in answer to the signal, Tom whistled as he used to do five-and-twentyyears ago and more, although he was already chilled with an unearthlyfear.Like his father, too, the figure held up the bag that was in his lefthand as he drew near, when it was his custom to call out to him whatwas in it. It did not reassure the watcher, you may be certain, when ashout unnaturally faint reached him, as the phantom dangled the bagin the air, and he heard with a faint distinctness the words, "TomChuff's soul!"Scarcely fifty yards away from the low churchyard fence at which Tomwas standing, there was a wider chasm in the peat, which there threwup a growth of reeds and bulrushes, among which, as the old poacherused to do on a sudden alarm, the approaching figure suddenly castitself down.From the same patch of tall reeds and rushes emerged instantaneouslywhat he at first mistook for the same figure creeping on all-fours,but what he soon perceived to be an enormous black dog with a roughcoat like a bear's, which at first sniffed about, and then startedtowards him in what seemed to be a sportive amble, bouncing this wayand that, but as it drew near it displayed a pair of fearful eyes thatglowed like live coals, and emitted from the monstrous expanse of itsjaws a terrifying growl.This beast seemed on the point of seizing him, and Tom recoiled inpanic and fell into the open grave behind him. The edge which hecaught as he tumbled gave way, and down he went, expecting almost atthe same instant to reach the bottom. But never was such a fall!Bottomless seemed the abyss! Down, down, down, with immeasurable andstill increasing speed, through utter darkness, with hair streamingstraight upward, breathless, he shot with a rush of air against him,the force of which whirled up his very arms, second after second,minute after minute, through the chasm downward he flew, the icyperspiration of horror covering his body, and suddenly, as he expectedto be dashed into annihilation, his descent was in an instant arrestedwith a tremendous shock, which, however, did not deprive him ofconsciousness even for a moment.He looked about him. The place resembled a smoke-stained cavern orcatacomb, the roof of which, except for a ribbed arch here and therefaintly visible, was lost in darkness. From several rude passages,like the galleries of a gigantic mine, which opened from this centrechamber, was very dimly emitted a dull glow as of charcoal, which wasthe only light by which he could imperfectly discern the objectsimmediately about him.What seemed like a projecting piece of the rock, at the corner of oneof these murky entrances, moved on a sudden, and proved to be a humanfigure, that beckoned to him. He approached, and saw his father. Hecould barely recognise him, he was so monstrously altered."I've been looking for you, Tom. Welcome home, lad; come along to yourplace."Tom's heart sank as he heard these words, which were spoken in ahollow and, he thought, derisive voice that made him tremble. But hecould not help accompanying the wicked spirit, who led him into aplace, in passing which he heard, as it were from within the rock,deadful cries and appeals for mercy."What is this?" said he."Never mind.""Who are they?""New-comers, like yourself, lad," answered his father apathetically."They give over that work in time, finding it is no use.""What shall I do?" said Tom, in an agony."It's all one.""But what shall I do?" reiterated Tom, quivering in every joint andnerve."Grin and bear it, I suppose.""For God's sake, if ever you cared for me, as I am your own child, letme out of this!""There's no way out.""If there's a way in there's a way out, and for Heaven's sake let meout of this."But the dreadful figure made no further answer, and glided backwardsby his shoulder to the rear; and others appeared in view, each with afaint red halo round it, staring on him with frightful eyes, images,all in hideous variety, of eternal fury or derision. He was growingmad, it seemed, under the stare of so many eyes, increasing in numberand drawing closer every moment, and at the same time myriads andmyriads of voices were calling him by his name, some far away, somenear, some from one point, some from another, some from behind, closeto his ears. These cries were increased in rapidity and multitude, andmingled with laughter, with flitting blasphemies, with broken insultsand mockeries, succeeded and obliterated by others, before he couldhalf catch their meaning.All this time, in proportion to the rapidity and urgency of thesedreadful sights and sounds, the epilepsy of terror was creeping up tohis brain, and with a long and dreadful scream he lost consciousness.When he recovered his senses, he found himself in a small stonechamber, vaulted above, and with a ponderous door. A single point oflight in the wall, with a strange brilliancy illuminated this cell.Seated opposite to him was a venerable man with a snowy beard ofimmense length; an image of awful purity and severity. He was dressedin a coarse robe, with three large keys suspensed from his girdle. Hemight have filled one's idea of an ancient porter of a city gate; suchspiritual cities, I should say, as John Bunyan loved to describe.This old man's eyes were brilliant and awful, and fixed on him as theywere, Tom Chuff felt himself helplessly in his power. At length hespoke:"The command is given to let you forth for one trial more. But if youare found again drinking with the drunken, and beating yourfellow-servants, you shall return through the door by which you came,and go out no more."With these words the old man took him by the wrist and led him throughthe first door, and then unlocking one that stood in the cavernoutside, he struck Tom Chuff sharply on the shoulder, and the doorshut behind him with a sound that boomed peal after peal of thundernear and far away, and all round and above, till it rolled offgradually into silence. It was totally dark, but there was a fanningof fresh cool air that overpowered him. He felt that he was in theupper world again.In a few minutes he began to hear voices which he knew, and first afaint point of light appeared before his eyes, and gradually he sawthe flame of the candle, and, after that, the familiar faces of hiswife and children, and he heard them faintly when they spoke to him,although he was as yet unable to answer.He also saw the doctor, like an isolated figure in the dark, and heardhim say:"There, now, you have him back. He'll do, I think."His first words, when he could speak and saw clearly all about him,and felt the blood on his neck and shirt, were:"Wife, forgie me. I'm a changed man. Send for't sir."Which last phrase means, "Send for the clergyman."When the vicar came and entered the little bedroom where the scaredpoacher, whose soul had died within him, was lying, still sick andweak, in his bed, and with a spirit that was prostrate with terror,Tom Chuff feebly beckoned the rest from the room, and, the door beingclosed, the good parson heard the strange confession, and with equalamazement the man's earnest and agitated vows of amendment, and hishelpless appeals to him for support and counsel.These, of course, were kindly met; and the visits of the rector, forsome time, were frequent.One day, when he took Tom Chuff's hand on bidding him good-bye, thesick man held it still, and said:"Ye'r vicar o' Shackleton, sir, and if I sud dee, ye'll promise me a'ething, as I a promised ye a many. I a said I'll never gie wife, norbarn, nor folk o' no sort, skelp nor sizzup more, and ye'll know o' meno more among the sipers. Nor never will Tom draw trigger, nor set asnare again, but in an honest way, and after that ye'll no make it abootless bene for me, but bein', as I say, vicar o' Shackleton, andable to do as ye list, ye'll no let them bury me within twenty goodyerd-wands measure o' the a'd beech trees that's round the churchyardof Shackleton.""I see; you would have your grave, when your time really comes, a goodway from the place where lay the grave you dreamed of.""That's jest it. I'd lie at the bottom o' a marl-pit liefer! And I'dbe laid in anither churchyard just to be shut o' my fear o' that, butthat a' my kinsfolk is buried beyond in Shackleton, and ye'll gie meyer promise, and no break yer word.""I do promise, certainly. I'm not likely to outlive you; but, if Ishould, and still be vicar of Shackleton, you shall be buriedsomewhere as near the middle of the churchyard as we can find space.""That'll do."And so content they parted.The effect of the vision upon Tom Chuff was powerful, and promised tobe lasting. With a sore effort he exchanged his life of desultoryadventure and comparative idleness for one of regular industry. Hegave up drinking; he was as kind as an originally surly nature wouldallow to his wife and family; he went to church; in fine weather theycrossed the moor to Shackleton Church; the vicar said he came there tolook at the scenery of his vision, and to fortify his good resolutionsby the reminder.Impressions upon the imagination, however, are but transitory, and abad man acting under fear is not a free agent; his real character doesnot appear. But as the images of the imagination fade, and the actionof fear abates, the essential qualities of the man reassertthemselves.So, after a time, Tom Chuff began to grow weary of his new life; hegrew lazy, and people began to say that he was catching hares, andpursuing his old contraband way of life, under the rose.He came home one hard night, with signs of the bottle in his thickspeech and violent temper. Next day he was sorry, or frightened, atall events repentant, and for a week or more something of the oldhorror returned, and he was once more on his good behaviour. But in alittle time came a relapse, and another repentance, and then a relapseagain, and gradually the return of old habits and the flooding in ofall his old way of life, with more violence and gloom, in proportionas the man was alarmed and exasperated by the remembrance of hisdespised, but terrible, warning.With the old life returned the misery of the cottage. The smiles,which had begun to appear with the unwonted sunshine, were seen nomore. Instead, returned to his poor wife's face the old pale andheartbroken look. The cottage lost its neat and cheerful air, and themelancholy of neglect was visible. Sometimes at night were overheard,by a chance passer-by, cries and sobs from that ill-omened dwelling.Tom Chuff was now often drunk, and not very often at home, except whenhe came in to sweep away his poor wife's earnings.Tom had long lost sight of the honest old parson. There was shamemixed with his degradation. He had grace enough left when he saw thethin figure of "t' sir" walking along the road to turn out of his wayand avoid meeting him. The clergyman shook his head, and sometimesgroaned, when his name was mentioned. His horror and regret were morefor the poor wife than for the relapsed sinner, for her case waspitiable indeed.Her brother, Jack Everton, coming over from Hexley, having heardstories of all this, determined to beat Tom, for his ill-treatment ofhis sister, within an inch of his life. Luckily, perhaps, for allconcerned, Tom happened to be away upon one of his long excursions,and poor Nell besought her brother, in extremity of terror, not tointerpose between them. So he took his leave and went home mutteringand sulky.Now it happened a few months later that Nelly Chuff fell sick. She hadbeen ailing, as heartbroken people do, for a good while. But now theend had come.There was a coroner's inquest when she died, for the doctor haddoubts as to whether a blow had not, at least, hastened her death.Nothing certain, however, came of the inquiry. Tom Chuff had left hishome more than two days before his wife's death. He was absent uponhis lawless business still when the coroner had held his quest.Jack Everton came over from Hexley to attend the dismal obsequies ofhis sister. He was more incensed than ever with the wicked husband,who, one way or other, had hastened Nelly's death. The inquest hadclosed early in the day. The husband had not appeared.An occasional companion--perhaps I ought to say accomplice--of Chuff'shappened to turn up. He had left him on the borders of Westmoreland,and said he would probably be home next day. But Everton affected notto believe it. Perhaps it was to Tom Chuff, he suggested, a secretsatisfaction to crown the history of his bad married life with thescandal of his absence from the funeral of his neglected and abusedwife.Everton had taken on himself the direction of the melancholypreparations. He had ordered a grave to be opened for his sisterbeside her mother's, in Shackleton churchyard, at the other side ofthe moor. For the purpose, as I have said, of marking the callousneglect of her husband, he determined that the funeral should takeplace that night. His brother Dick had accompanied him, and they andhis sister, with Mary and the children, and a couple of theneighbours, formed the humble cortege.Jack Everton said he would wait behind, on the chance of Tom Chuffcoming in time, that he might tell him what had happened, and make himcross the moor with him to meet the funeral. His real object, I think,was to inflict upon the villain the drubbing he had so long wished togive him. Anyhow, he was resolved, by crossing the moor, to reach thechurchyard in time to anticipate the arrival of the funeral, and tohave a few words with the vicar, clerk, and sexton, all old friends ofhis, for the parish of Shackleton was the place of his birth and earlyrecollections.But Tom Chuff did not appear at his house that night. In surly mood,and without a shilling in his pocket, he was making his way homeward.His bottle of gin, his last investment, half emptied, with its neckprotruding, as usual on such returns, was in his coat-pocket.His way home lay across the moor of Catstean, and the point at whichhe best knew the passage was from the churchyard of Shackleton. Hevaulted the low wall that forms its boundary, and strode across thegraves, and over many a flat, half-buried tombstone, toward the sideof the churchyard next Catstean Moor.The old church of Shackleton and its tower rose, close at his right,like a black shadow against the sky. It was a moonless night, butclear. By this time he had reached the low boundary wall, at the otherside, that overlooks the wide expanse of Catstean Moor. He stood byone of the huge old beech-trees, and leaned his back to its smoothtrunk. Had he ever seen the sky look so black, and the stars shineout and blink so vividly? There was a deathlike silence over thescene, like the hush that precedes thunder in sultry weather. Theexpanse before him was lost in utter blackness. A strange quakingunnerved his heart. It was the sky and scenery of his vision! The samehorror and misgiving. The same invincible fear of venturing from thespot where he stood. He would have prayed if he dared. His sinkingheart demanded a restorative of some sort, and he grasped the bottlein his coat-pocket. Turning to his left, as he did so, he saw thepiled-up mould of an open grave that gaped with its head close to thebase of the great tree against which he was leaning.He stood aghast. His dream was returning and slowly enveloping him.Everything he saw was weaving itself into the texture of his vision.The chill of horror stole over him.A faint whistle came shrill and clear over the moor, and he saw afigure approaching at a swinging trot, with a zig-zag course, hoppingnow here and now there, as men do over a surface where one has need tochoose their steps. Through the jungle of reeds and bulrushes in theforeground this figure advanced; and with the same unaccountableimpulse that had coerced him in his dream, he answered the whistle ofthe advancing figure.On that signal it directed its course straight toward him. It mountedthe low wall, and, standing there, looked into the graveyard."Who med answer?" challenged the new-comer from his post ofobservation."Me," answered Tom."Who are you?" repeated the man upon the wall."Tom Chuff; and who's this grave cut for?" He answered in a savagetone, to cover the secret shudder of his panic."I'll tell you that, ye villain!" answered the stranger, descendingfrom the wall, "I a' looked for you far and near, and waited long, andnow you're found at last."Not knowing what to make of the figure that advanced upon him, TomChuff recoiled, stumbled, and fell backward into the open grave. Hecaught at the sides as he fell, but without retarding his fall.An hour later, when lights came with the coffin, the corpse of TomChuff was found at the bottom of the grave. He had fallen direct uponhis head, and his neck was broken. His death must have beensimultaneous with his fall. Thus far his dream was accomplished.It was his brother-in-law who had crossed the moor and approached thechurchyard of Shackleton, exactly in the line which the image of hisfather had seemed to take in his strange vision. Fortunately for JackEverton, the sexton and clerk of Shackleton church were, unseen byhim, crossing the churchyard toward the grave of Nelly Chuff, just asTom the poacher stumbled and fell. Suspicion of direct violence wouldotherwise have inevitably attached to the exasperated brother. As itwas, the catastrophe was followed by no legal consequences.The good vicar kept his word, and the grave of Tom Chuff is stillpointed out by the old inhabitants of Shackleton pretty nearly in thecentre of the churchyard. This conscientious compliance with theentreaty of the panic-stricken man as to the place of his sepulturegave a horrible and mocking emphasis to the strange combination bywhich fate had defeated his precaution, and fixed the place of hisdeath.The story was for many a year, and we believe still is, told roundmany a cottage hearth, and though it appeals to what many would termsuperstition, it yet sounded, in the ears of a rude and simpleaudience, a thrilling, and let us hope, not altogether fruitlesshomily.
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