A Diagnosis Of Death

Ambrose Bierce

'I AM not so superstitious as some of your phy- sicians--men of science,
as you are pleased to be called,' said Hawver, replying to an accusation
that had not been made. 'Some of you--only a few, I confess--believe in
the immortality of the soul, and in apparitions which you have not the
honesty to call ghosts. I go no further than a conviction that the
living are sometimes seen where they are not, but have been--where they
have lived so long, per- haps so intensely, as to have left their
impress on everything about them. I know, indeed, that one's environment
may be so affected by one's personality as to yield, long afterward, an
image of one's self to the eyes of another. Doubtless the impressing
personality has to be the right kind of personality as the perceiving
eyes have to be the right kind of eyes--mine, for example.'
'Yes, the right kind of eyes, conveying sensa- tions to the wrong
kind of brains,' said Dr. Frayley, smiling.
'Thank you; one likes to have an expectation gratified; that is
about the reply that I supposed you would have the civility to make.'
'Pardon me. But you say that you know. That is a good deal to say,
don't you think? Perhaps you will not mind the trouble of saying how you
learned.'
'You will call it an hallucination,' Hawver said, 'but that does not
matter.' And he told the story.
'Last summer I went, as you know, to pass the hot weather term in
the town of Meridian. The rela- tive at whose house I had intended to
stay was ill, so I sought other quarters. After some difficulty I suc-
ceeded in renting a vacant dwelling that had been occupied by an
eccentric doctor of the name of Mannering, who had gone away years
before, no one knew where, not even his agent. He had built the house
himself and had lived in it with an old servant for about ten years. His
practice, never very extensive, had after a few years been given up en-
tirely. Not only so, but he had withdrawn himself almost altogether from
social life and become a recluse. I was told by the village doctor,
about the only person with whom he held any relations, that during his
retirement he had devoted himself to a single line of study, the result
of which he had expounded in a book that did not commend itself to the
approval of his professional brethren, who, in- deed, considered him not
entirely sane. I have not seen the book and cannot now recall the title
of it, but I am told that it expounded a rather startling theory. He
held that it was possible in the case of many a person in good health to
forecast his death with precision, several months in advance of the
event. The limit, I think, was eighteen months. There were local tales
of his having exerted his powers of prog- nosis, or perhaps you would
say diagnosis; and it was said that in every instance the person whose
friends he had warned had died suddenly at the appointed time, and from
no assignable cause. All this, however, has nothing to do with what I
have to tell; I thought it might amuse a physician.
'The house was furnished, just as he had lived in it. It was a
rather gloomy dwelling for one who was neither a recluse nor a student,
and I think it gave something of its character to me--perhaps some of
its former occupant's character; for always I felt in it a certain
melancholy that was not in my natural disposition, nor, I think, due to
loneliness. I had no servants that slept in the house, but I have always
been, as you know, rather fond of my own society, being much addicted to
reading, though little to study. Whatever was the cause, the effect was
dejec- tion and a sense of impending evil; this was espe- cially so in
Dr. Mannering's study, although that room was the lightest and most airy
in the house. The doctor's life-size portrait in oil hung in that room,
and seemed completely to dominate it. There was nothing unusual in the
picture; the man was evidently rather good looking, about fifty years
old, with iron-grey hair, a smooth-shaven face and dark, serious eyes.
Something in the picture always drew and held my attention. The man's
appearance became familiar to me, and rather "haunted" me.
'One evening I was passing through this room to my bedroom, with a
lamp--there is no gas in Me- ridian. I stopped as usual before the
portrait, which seemed in the lamplight to have a new expression, not
easily named, but distinctly uncanny. It inter- ested but did not
disturb me. I moved the lamp from one side to the other and observed the
effects of the altered light. While so engaged I felt an impulse to turn
round. As I did so I saw a man moving across the room directly toward
me! As soon as he came near enough for the lamplight to illuminate the
face I saw that it was Dr. Mannering himself; it was as if the portrait
were walking!
'"I beg your pardon," I said, somewhat coldly, "but if you knocked I
did not hear."
'He passed me, within an arm's length, lifted his right forefinger,
as in warning, and without a word went on out of the room, though I
observed his exit no more than I had observed his entrance.
'Of course, I need not tell you that this was what you will call a
hallucination and I call an appari- tion. That room had only two doors,
of which one was locked; the other led into a bedroom, from which there
was no exit. My feeling on realizing this is not an important part of
the incident.
'Doubtless this seems to you a very commonplace "ghost story"--one
constructed on the regular lines laid down by the old masters of the
art. If that were so I should not have related it, even if it were true.
The man was not dead; I met him to-day in Union Street. He passed me in
a crowd.'
Hawver had finished his story and both men were silent. Dr. Frayley
absently drummed on the table with his fingers.
'Did he say anything to-day?' he asked--'any- thing from which you
inferred that he was not dead?'
Hawver stared and did not reply.
'Perhaps,' continued Frayley,' he made a sign, a gesture--lifted a
finger, as in warning. It's a trick he had--a habit when saying
something serious-- announcing the result of a diagnosis, for example.'
'Yes, he did--just as his apparition had done. But, good God! did
you ever know him?'
Hawver was apparently growing nervous.
'I knew him. I have read his book, as will every physician some day.
It is one of the most striking and important of the century's
contributions to medi- cal science. Yes, I knew him; I attended him in
an illness three years ago. He died.'
Hawver sprang from his chair, manifestly dis- turbed. He strode
forward and back across the room; then approached his friend, and in a
voice not altogether steady, said: 'Doctor, have you any- thing to say
to me--as a physician? '
'No, Hawver; you are the healthiest man I ever knew. As a friend I
advise you to go to your room. You play the violin like an angel. Play
it; play some- thing light and lively. Get this cursed bad business off
your mind.'
The next day Hawver was found dead in his room, the violin at his
neck, the bow upon the string, his music open before him at Chopin's
Funeral March.