The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce — Volume 2: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians

by Ambrose Bierce

  A WATCHER BY THE DEAD

  I

  In an upper room of an unoccupied dwelling in the part of San Franciscoknown as North Beach lay the body of a man, under a sheet. The hour wasnear nine in the evening; the room was dimly lighted by a single candle.Although the weather was warm, the two windows, contrary to the customwhich gives the dead plenty of air, were closed and the blinds drawndown. The furniture of the room consisted of but three pieces--anarm-chair, a small reading-stand supporting the candle, and a longkitchen table, supporting the body of the man. All these, as also thecorpse, seemed to have been recently brought in, for an observer, hadthere been one, would have seen that all were free from dust, whereaseverything else in the room was pretty thickly coated with it, and therewere cobwebs in the angles of the walls.

  Under the sheet the outlines of the body could be traced, even thefeatures, these having that unnaturally sharp definition which seems tobelong to faces of the dead, but is really characteristic of those onlythat have been wasted by disease. From the silence of the room one wouldrightly have inferred that it was not in the front of the house, facinga street. It really faced nothing but a high breast of rock, the rear ofthe building being set into a hill.

  As a neighboring church clock was striking nine with an indolence whichseemed to imply such an indifference to the flight of time that onecould hardly help wondering why it took the trouble to strike at all,the single door of the room was opened and a man entered, advancingtoward the body. As he did so the door closed, apparently of its ownvolition; there was a grating, as of a key turned with difficulty, andthe snap of the lock bolt as it shot into its socket. A sound ofretiring footsteps in the passage outside ensued, and the man was to allappearance a prisoner. Advancing to the table, he stood a moment lookingdown at the body; then with a slight shrug of the shoulders walked overto one of the windows and hoisted the blind. The darkness outside wasabsolute, the panes were covered with dust, but by wiping this away hecould see that the window was fortified with strong iron bars crossingit within a few inches of the glass and imbedded in the masonry on eachside. He examined the other window. It was the same. He manifested nogreat curiosity in the matter, did not even so much as raise the sash.If he was a prisoner he was apparently a tractable one. Having completedhis examination of the room, he seated himself in the arm-chair, took abook from his pocket, drew the stand with its candle alongside and beganto read.

  The man was young--not more than thirty--dark in complexion,smooth-shaven, with brown hair. His face was thin and high-nosed, with abroad forehead and a "firmness" of the chin and jaw which is said bythose having it to denote resolution. The eyes were gray and steadfast,not moving except with definitive purpose. They were now for the greaterpart of the time fixed upon his book, but he occasionally withdrew themand turned them to the body on the table, not, apparently, from anydismal fascination which under such circumstances it might be supposedto exercise upon even a courageous person, nor with a consciousrebellion against the contrary influence which might dominate a timidone. He looked at it as if in his reading he had come upon somethingrecalling him to a sense of his surroundings. Clearly this watcher bythe dead was discharging his trust with intelligence and composure, asbecame him.

  After reading for perhaps a half-hour he seemed to come to the end of achapter and quietly laid away the book. He then rose and taking thereading-stand from the floor carried it into a corner of the room nearone of the windows, lifted the candle from it and returned to the emptyfireplace before which he had been sitting.

  A moment later he walked over to the body on the table, lifted the sheetand turned it back from the head, exposing a mass of dark hair and athin face-cloth, beneath which the features showed with even sharperdefinition than before. Shading his eyes by interposing his free handbetween them and the candle, he stood looking at his motionlesscompanion with a serious and tranquil regard. Satisfied with hisinspection, he pulled the sheet over the face again and returning to thechair, took some matches off the candlestick, put them in the sidepocket of his sack-coat and sat down. He then lifted the candle from itssocket and looked at it critically, as if calculating how long it wouldlast. It was barely two inches long; in another hour he would be indarkness. He replaced it in the candlestick and blew it out.

  II

  In a physician's office in Kearny Street three men sat about a table,drinking punch and smoking. It was late in the evening, almost midnight,indeed, and there had been no lack of punch. The gravest of the three,Dr. Helberson, was the host--it was in his rooms they sat. He was aboutthirty years of age; the others were even younger; all were physicians.

  "The superstitious awe with which the living regard the dead," said Dr.Helberson, "is hereditary and incurable. One needs no more be ashamed ofit than of the fact that he inherits, for example, an incapacity formathematics, or a tendency to lie."

  The others laughed. "Oughtn't a man to be ashamed to lie?" asked theyoungest of the three, who was in fact a medical student not yetgraduated.

  "My dear Harper, I said nothing about that. The tendency to lie is onething; lying is another."

  "But do you think," said the third man, "that this superstitiousfeeling, this fear of the dead, reasonless as we know it to be, isuniversal? I am myself not conscious of it."

  "Oh, but it is 'in your system' for all that," replied Helberson; "itneeds only the right conditions--what Shakespeare calls the 'confederateseason'--to manifest itself in some very disagreeable way that will openyour eyes. Physicians and soldiers are of course more nearly free fromit than others."

  "Physicians and soldiers!--why don't you add hangmen and headsmen? Letus have in all the assassin classes."

  "No, my dear Mancher; the juries will not let the public executionersacquire sufficient familiarity with death to be altogether unmoved byit."

  Young Harper, who had been helping himself to a fresh cigar at thesideboard, resumed his seat. "What would you consider conditions underwhich any man of woman born would become insupportably conscious of hisshare of our common weakness in this regard?" he asked, ratherverbosely.

  "Well, I should say that if a man were locked up all night with acorpse--alone--in a dark room--of a vacant house--with no bed covers topull over his head--and lived through it without going altogether mad,he might justly boast himself not of woman born, nor yet, like Macduff,a product of Caesarean section."

  "I thought you never would finish piling up conditions," said Harper,"but I know a man who is neither a physician nor a soldier who willaccept them all, for any stake you like to name."

  "Who is he?"

  "His name is Jarette--a stranger here; comes from my town in New York. Ihave no money to back him, but he will back himself with loads of it."

  "How do you know that?"

  "He would rather bet than eat. As for fear--I dare say he thinks it somecutaneous disorder, or possibly a particular kind of religious heresy."

  "What does he look like?" Helberson was evidently becoming interested.

  "Like Mancher, here--might be his twin brother."

  "I accept the challenge," said Helberson, promptly.

  "Awfully obliged to you for the compliment, I'm sure," drawled Mancher,who was growing sleepy. "Can't I get into this?"

  "Not against me," Helberson said. "I don't want _your_ money."

  "All right," said Mancher; "I'll be the corpse."

  The others laughed.

  The outcome of this crazy conversation we have seen.