The relation of so improbable a story as the following is to be justified only by its truth. The hero is a New York lawyer, sufficiently well known to render the mention of his name, were it allowable to give it, an ample guarantee for the entire trustworthiness of any statement he might make; and it is perhaps to be regretted that his invincible—albeit natural—dislike of publicity prevents the production of evidence which would at least establish the fact that his own belief in the appearances by which he was visited is complete and sincere.
Mr. Vantine, although a handsome and intellectual-looking man, is by no means a person whose appearance would in any way single him out as likely to be the hero of marvellous adventures. He is neither especially imaginative nor credulous. He is simply a clear-headed and shrewd business man, such as are nourished in the atmosphere of New York, of all places in the wide world, perhaps, the one least likely to nourish fancy or belief in the unseen. To see him going steadily about his affairs down town, it is hardly probable that any observer, however keen, would look on him as the probable object of remarkable hallucinations, or of experiences so far from the ordinary course of human life, as sure to be classed as such by ninety-nine men out of a hundred.
Yet John Vantine, of whom most of his acquaintances would have said that he was a commonplace man of business, lived for years a double life, into which he did not venture to initiate even his wife, with whom he lived on terms of the warmest sympathy and closest confidence.
It was on the morning of his wedding-day that certain impressions, which in a vague shape had for years haunted him, first took form so definite that he could not but think of them as something having a tangibility of their own, different though it was from that of the ordinary things which surround common human life. He was married at the home of his bride, a pretty village in western Massachusetts. There being no hotel of even decent comfort in the place, Vantine had passed the night at the inn of a town half a dozen miles away, whence he drove over in the dewy June morning to the scene of his marriage.
As he passed along between the fields starred with daisies, reflecting in blissful mood upon the beauty of the day and the happiness it brought to him, his horse came suddenly and without warning to a standstill. John instinctively gathered up the reins to start the animal, when to his unspeakable amazement he perceived a man in an Eastern dress of great splendor standing beside the open carriage. His robes were of the richest stuffs, while jewels sparkled from every part of his attire. He was standing apparently upon a small rug, a circumstance which at the moment impressed Vantine more than his mysterious presence. The stranger saluted the young man with the most profound obeisances, and it was only after repeated genuflections that he spoke. When he did address Vantine, it was in a language of which the latter did not even know the name, although in some astonishing way he still comprehended what was said.
“Great Master,” the stranger greeted him, “will you receive an embassy to congratulate you on your nuptials?”
Of course I cannot pretend here or elsewhere to give the exact words in which my friend was addressed. It was some years before he confided the story to me, and although I have endeavored to set the words down exactly as he gave them, it must be borne in mind that he made no attempt at literal verbal accuracy.
That a young man who had been nourished amid the hard commonplaces of New York life should be astounded by an address of this sort was only natural. That Vantine did not lose his head altogether was probably due to certain vague and premonitory experiences which he never defined very clearly, alluding to them as “passing fancies,” “nebulous impressions,” and by other phrases too general to convey exact meaning to my mind. On the present occasion, however, beyond a rather prolonged silence before he answered his interlocutor, he seems to have behaved much as might a man stopped on the street by an ordinary acquaintance. When he spoke, he simply and laconically answered “Yes;” and, as he did so, he swept with his eye the wide horizon which the nature of the country laid open to him, perceiving nowhere sign of anything unusual.
Scarcely, however, had the monosyllable left his lips when he saw upon the woodside an enormous oriental rug cover the greensward, and instantly upon it stood a numerous company, dressed in the most splendid robes, saluting, and uttering stately but most enthusiastic congratulations. In this, as in all other instances in which my friend has seen figures, the lower portions have appeared first.
John sat in dignified and very probably half-stupefied silence during this extraordinary scene, and suddenly, without warning, the whole pageant vanished into the limbo from which it had come. He was once more alone upon a country road, in the bright sunshine of a June forenoon. It was his wedding morning, and, the vision or whatever it might properly be called having vanished, there was obviously nothing to do but to drive on and be married,—a course of action which he carried out to the letter.