Kitabı oxu: «The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft», səhifə 4
5.
The probability that Curwen was on guard and attempting unusual things, as suggested by the odd shaft of light, precipitated at last the action so carefully devised by the band of serious citizens.According to the Smith diary a company of about 100 men met at 10 p.m.on Friday, April 12th, 1771, in the great room of Thurston’s Tavern at the Sign of the Golden Lion on Weybosset Point across the Bridge.Of the guiding group of prominent men in addition to the leader John Brown there were present Dr.Bowen, with his case of surgical instruments, President Manning without the great periwig (the largest in the Colonies) for which he was noted, Governor Hopkins, wrapped in his dark cloak and accompanied by his seafaring brother Esek, whom he had initiated at the last moment with the permission of the rest, John Carter, Capt.Mathewson, and Capt.Whipple, who was to lead the actual raiding party.These chiefs conferred apart in a rear chamber, after which Capt.Whipple emerged to the great room and gave the gathered seamen their last oaths and instructions.Eleazar Smith was with the leaders as they sat in the rear apartment awaiting the arrival of Ezra Weeden, whose duty was to keep track of Curwen and report the departure of his coach for the farm.
About 10:30 a heavy rumble was heard on the Great Bridge, followed by the sound of a coach in the street outside; and at that hour there was no need of waiting for Weeden in order to know that the doomed man had set out for his last night of unhallowed wizardry.A moment later, as the receding coach clattered faintly over the Muddy Dock Bridge, Weeden appeared; and the raiders fell silently into military order in the street, shouldering the firelocks, fowling-pieces, or whaling harpoons which they had with them.Weeden and Smith were with the party, and of the deliberating citizens there were present for active service Capt.Whipple, the leader, Capt.Esek Hopkins, John Carter, President Manning, Capt.Mathewson, and Dr.Bowen; together with Moses Brown, who had come up at the eleventh hour though absent from the preliminary session in the tavern.All these freemen and their hundred sailors began the long march without delay, grim and a trifle apprehensive as they left the Muddy Dock behind and mounted the gentle rise of Broad Street toward the Pawtuxet Road.Just beyond Elder Snow’s church some of the men turned back to take a parting look at Providence lying outspread under the early spring stars.Steeples and gables rose dark and shapely, and salt breezes swept up gently from the cove north of the Bridge.Vega was climbing above the great hill across the water, whose crest of trees was broken by the roof-line of the unfinished College edifice.At the foot of that hill, and along the narrow mounting lanes of its side, the old town dreamed; Old Providence, for whose safety and sanity so monstrous and colossal a blasphemy was about to be wiped out.
An hour and a quarter later the raiders arrived, as previously agreed, at the Fenner farmhouse; where they heard a final report on their intended victim.He had reached his farm over half an hour before, and the strange light had soon afterward shot once into the sky, but there were no lights in any visible windows.This was always the case of late.Even as this news was given another great glare arose toward the south, and the party realised that they had indeed come close to the scene of awesome and unnatural wonders.Capt.Whipple now ordered his force to separate into three divisions; one of twenty men under Eleazar Smith to strike across to the shore and guard the landing-place against possible reinforcements for Curwen until summoned by a messenger for desperate service, a second of twenty men under Capt.Esek Hopkins to steal down into the river valley behind the Curwen farm and demolish with axes or gunpowder the oaken door in the high, steep bank, and the third to close in on the house and adjacent buildings themselves.Of this division one third was to be led by Capt.Mathewson to the cryptical stone edifice with high narrow windows, another third to follow Capt.Whipple himself to the main farmhouse, and the remaining third to preserve a circle around the whole group of buildings until summoned by a final emergency signal.
The river party would break down the hillside door at the sound of a single whistle-blast, then waiting and capturing anything which might issue from the regions within.At the sound of two whistle-blasts it would advance through the aperture to oppose the enemy or join the rest of the raiding contingent.The party at the stone building would accept these respective signals in an analogous manner; forcing an entrance at the first, and at the second descending whatever passage into the ground might be discovered, and joining the general or focal warfare expected to take place within the caverns.A third or emergency signal of three blasts would summon the immediate reserve from its general guard duty; its twenty men dividing equally and entering the unknown depths through both farmhouse and stone building.Capt.Whipple’s belief in the existence of catacombs was absolute, and he took no alternative into consideration when making his plans.He had with him a whistle of great power and shrillness, and did not fear any upsetting or misunderstanding of signals.The final reserve at the landing, of course, was nearly out of the whistle’s range; hence would require a special messenger if needed for help.Moses Brown and John Carter went with Capt.Hopkins to the river-bank, while President Manning was detailed with Capt.Mathewson to the stone building.Dr.Bowen, with Ezra Weeden, remained in Capt.Whipple’s party which was to storm the farmhouse itself.The attack was to begin as soon as a messenger from Capt.Hopkins had joined Capt.Whipple to notify him of the river party’s readiness.The leader would then deliver the loud single blast, and the various advance parties would commence their simultaneous attack on three points.Shortly before 1 a.m.the three divisions left the Fenner farmhouse; one to guard the landing, another to seek the river valley and the hillside door, and the third to subdivide and attend to the actual buildings of the Curwen farm.
Eleazar Smith, who accompanied the shore-guarding party, records in his diary an uneventful march and a long wait on the bluff by the bay; broken once by what seemed to be the distant sound of the signal whistle and again by a peculiar muffled blend of roaring and crying and a powder blast which seemed to come from the same direction.Later on one man thought he caught some distant gunshots, and still later Smith himself felt the throb of titanic and thunderous words resounding in upper air.It was just before dawn that a single haggard messenger with wild eyes and a hideous unknown odour about his clothing appeared and told the detachment to disperse quietly to their homes and never again think or speak of the night’s doings or of him who had been Joseph Curwen.Something about the bearing of the messenger carried a conviction which his mere words could never have conveyed; for though he was a seaman well known to many of them, there was something obscurely lost or gained in his soul which set him for evermore apart.It was the same later on when they met other old companions who had gone into that zone of horror.Most of them had lost or gained something imponderable and indescribable.They had seen or heard or felt something which was not for human creatures, and could not forget it.From them there was never any gossip, for to even the commonest of mortal instincts there are terrible boundaries.And from that single messenger the party at the shore caught a nameless awe which almost sealed their own lips.Very few are the rumours which ever came from any of them, and Eleazar Smith’s diary is the only written record which has survived from that whole expedition which set forth from the Sign of the Golden Lion under the stars.
Charles Ward, however, discovered another vague sidelight in some Fenner correspondence which he found in New London, where he knew another branch of the family had lived.It seems that the Fenners, from whose house the doomed farm was distantly visible, had watched the departing columns of raiders; and had heard very clearly the angry barking of the Curwen dogs, followed by the first shrill blast which precipitated the attack.This blast had been followed by a repetition of the great shaft of light from the stone building, and in another moment, after a quick sounding of the second signal ordering a general invasion, there had come a subdued prattle of musketry followed by a horrible roaring cry which the correspondent Luke Fenner had represented in his epistle by the characters “Waaaahrrrrr—R’waaahrrr”.This cry, however, had possessed a quality which no mere writing could convey, and the correspondent mentions that his mother fainted completely at the sound.It was later repeated less loudly, and further but more muffled evidences of gunfire ensued; together with a loud explosion of powder from the direction of the river.About an hour afterward all the dogs began to bark frightfully, and there were vague ground rumblings so marked that the candlesticks tottered on the mantelpiece.A strong smell of sulphur was noted; and Luke Fenner’s father declared that he heard the third or emergency whistle signal, though the others failed to detect it.Muffled musketry sounded again, followed by a deep scream less piercing but even more horrible than those which had preceded it; a kind of throaty, nastily plastic cough or gurgle whose quality as a scream must have come more from its continuity and psychological import than from its actual acoustic value.
Then the flaming thing burst into sight at a point where the Curwen farm ought to lie, and the human cries of desperate and frightened men were heard.Muskets flashed and cracked, and the flaming thing fell to the ground.A second flaming thing appeared, and a shriek of human origin was plainly distinguished.Fenner wrote that he could even gather a few words belched in frenzy: “Almighty, protect thy lamb!” Then there were more shots, and the second flaming thing fell.After that came silence for about three-quarters of an hour; at the end of which time little Arthur Fenner, Luke’s brother, exclaimed that he saw ‘a red fog’ going up to the stars from the accursed farm in the distance.No one but the child can testify to this, but Luke admits the significant coincidence implied by the panic of almost convulsive fright which at the same moment arched the backs and stiffened the fur of the three cats then within the room.
Five minutes later a chill wind blew up, and the air became suffused with such an intolerable stench that only the strong freshness of the sea could have prevented its being noticed by the shore party or by any wakeful souls in Pawtuxet village.This stench was nothing which any of the Fenners had ever encountered before, and produced a kind of clutching, amorphous fear beyond that of the tomb or the charnel-house.Close upon it came the awful voice which no hapless hearer will ever be able to forget.It thundered out of the sky like a doom, and windows rattled as its echoes died away.It was deep and musical; powerful as a bass organ, but evil as the forbidden books of the Arabs.What it said no man can tell, for it spoke in an unknown tongue, but this is the writing Luke Fenner set down to portray the daemoniac intonations: “DEESMEES–JESHET–BONE DOSEFE DUVEMA–ENITEMOSS”.Not till the year 1919 did any soul link this crude transcript with anything else in mortal knowledge, but Charles Ward paled as he recognised what Mirandola had denounced in shudders as the ultimate horror among black magic’s incantations.
An unmistakably human shout or deep chorused scream seemed to answer this malign wonder from the Curwen farm, after which the unknown stench grew complex with an added odour equally intolerable.A wailing distinctly different from the scream now burst out, and was protracted ululantly in rising and falling paroxysms.At times it became almost articulate, though no auditor could trace any definite words; and at one point it seemed to verge toward the confines of diabolic and hysterical laughter.Then a yell of utter, ultimate fright and stark madness wrenched from scores of human throats—a yell which came strong and clear despite the depth from which it must have burst; after which darkness and silence ruled all things.Spirals of acrid smoke ascended to blot out the stars, though no flames appeared and no buildings were observed to be gone or injured on the following day.
Toward dawn two frightened messengers with monstrous and unplaceable odours saturating their clothing knocked at the Fenner door and requested a keg of rum, for which they paid very well indeed.One of them told the family that the affair of Joseph Curwen was over, and that the events of the night were not to be mentioned again.Arrogant as the order seemed, the aspect of him who gave it took away all resentment and lent it a fearsome authority; so that only these furtive letters of Luke Fenner, which he urged his Connecticut relative to destroy, remain to tell what was seen and heard.The non-compliance of that relative, whereby the letters were saved after all, has alone kept the matter from a merciful oblivion.Charles Ward had one detail to add as a result of a long canvass of Pawtuxet residents for ancestral traditions.Old Charles Slocum of that village said that there was known to his grandfather a queer rumour concerning a charred, distorted body found in the fields a week after the death of Joseph Curwen was announced.What kept the talk alive was the notion that this body, so far as could be seen in its burnt and twisted condition, was neither thoroughly human nor wholly allied to any animal which Pawtuxet folk had ever seen or read about.
6.
Not one man who participated in that terrible raid could ever be induced to say a word concerning it, and every fragment of the vague data which survives comes from those outside the final fighting party.There is something frightful in the care with which these actual raiders destroyed each scrap which bore the least allusion to the matter.Eight sailors had been killed, but although their bodies were not produced their families were satisfied with the statement that a clash with customs officers had occurred.The same statement also covered the numerous cases of wounds, all of which were extensively bandaged and treated only by Dr.Jabez Bowen, who had accompanied the party.Hardest to explain was the nameless odour clinging to all the raiders, a thing which was discussed for weeks.Of the citizen leaders, Capt.Whipple and Moses Brown were most severely hurt, and letters of their wives testify the bewilderment which their reticence and close guarding of their bandages produced.Psychologically every participant was aged, sobered, and shaken.It is fortunate that they were all strong men of action and simple, orthodox religionists, for with more subtle introspectiveness and mental complexity they would have fared ill indeed.President Manning was the most disturbed; but even he outgrew the darkest shadow, and smothered memories in prayers.Every man of those leaders had a stirring part to play in later years, and it is perhaps fortunate that this is so.Little more than a twelvemonth afterward Capt.Whipple led the mob who burnt the revenue ship Gaspee, and in this bold act we may trace one step in the blotting out of unwholesome images.
There was delivered to the widow of Joseph Curwen a sealed leaden coffin of curious design, obviously found ready on the spot when needed, in which she was told her husband’s body lay.He had, it was explained, been killed in a customs battle about which it was not politic to give details.More than this no tongue ever uttered of Joseph Curwen’s end, and Charles Ward had only a single hint wherewith to construct a theory.This hint was the merest thread—a shaky underscoring of a passage in Jedediah Orne’s confiscated letter to Curwen, as partly copied in Ezra Weeden’s handwriting.The copy was found in the possession of Smith’s descendants; and we are left to decide whether Weeden gave it to his companion after the end, as a mute clue to the abnormality which had occurred, or whether, as is more probable, Smith had it before, and added the underscoring himself from what he had managed to extract from his friend by shrewd guessing and adroit cross-questioning.The underlined passage is merely this:
“I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use.Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you.”
In the light of this passage, and reflecting on what last unmentionable allies a beaten man might try to summon in his direst extremity, Charles Ward may well have wondered whether any citizen of Providence killed Joseph Curwen.
The deliberate effacement of every memory of the dead man from Providence life and annals was vastly aided by the influence of the raiding leaders.They had not at first meant to be so thorough, and had allowed the widow and her father and child to remain in ignorance of the true conditions; but Capt.Tillinghast was an astute man, and soon uncovered enough rumours to whet his horror and cause him to demand that his daughter and granddaughter change their name, burn the library and all remaining papers, and chisel the inscription from the slate slab above Joseph Curwen’s grave.He knew Capt.Whipple well, and probably extracted more hints from that bluff mariner than anyone else ever gained respecting the end of the accused sorcerer.
From that time on the obliteration of Curwen’s memory became increasingly rigid, extending at last by common consent even to the town records and files of the Gazette.It can be compared in spirit only to the hush that lay on Oscar Wilde’s name for a decade after his disgrace, and in extent only to the fate of that sinful King of Runazar in Lord Dunsany’s tale, whom the Gods decided must not only cease to be, but must cease ever to have been.
Mrs.Tillinghast, as the widow became known after 1772, sold the house in Olney Court and resided with her father in Power’s Lane till her death in 1817.The farm at Pawtuxet, shunned by every living soul, remained to moulder through the years; and seemed to decay with unaccountable rapidity.By 1780 only the stone and brickwork were standing, and by 1800 even these had fallen to shapeless heaps.None ventured to pierce the tangled shrubbery on the river-bank behind which the hillside door may have lain, nor did any try to frame a definite image of the scenes amidst which Joseph Curwen departed from the horrors he had wrought.
Only robust old Capt.Whipple was heard by alert listeners to mutter once in a while to himself, “Pox on that ———, but he had no business to laugh while he screamed.’Twas as though the damn’d ——— had some’at up his sleeve.For half a crown I’d burn his ——— house.”
1.
Charles Ward, as we have seen, first learned in 1918 of his descent from Joseph Curwen.That he at once took an intense interest in everything pertaining to the bygone mystery is not to be wondered at; for every vague rumour that he had heard of Curwen now became something vital to himself, in whom flowed Curwen’s blood.No spirited and imaginative genealogist could have done otherwise than begin forthwith an avid and systematic collection of Curwen data.
In his first delvings there was not the slightest attempt at secrecy; so that even Dr.Lyman hesitates to date the youth’s madness from any period before the close of 1919.He talked freely with his family—though his mother was not particularly pleased to own an ancestor like Curwen—and with the officials of the various museums and libraries he visited.In applying to private families for records thought to be in their possession he made no concealment of his object, and shared the somewhat amused scepticism with which the accounts of the old diarists and letter-writers were regarded.He often expressed a keen wonder as to what really had taken place a century and a half before at that Pawtuxet farmhouse whose site he vainly tried to find, and what Joseph Curwen really had been.
When he came across the Smith diary and archives and encountered the letter from Jedediah Orne he decided to visit Salem and look up Curwen’s early activities and connexions there, which he did during the Easter vacation of 1919.At the Essex Institute, which was well known to him from former sojourns in the glamorous old town of crumbling Puritan gables and clustered gambrel roofs, he was very kindly received, and unearthed there a considerable amount of Curwen data.He found that his ancestor was born in Salem-Village, now Danvers, seven miles from town, on the eighteenth of February (O.S.) 1662–3; and that he had run away to sea at the age of fifteen, not appearing again for nine years, when he returned with the speech, dress, and manners of a native Englishman and settled in Salem proper.At that time he had little to do with his family, but spent most of his hours with the curious books he had brought from Europe, and the strange chemicals which came for him on ships from England, France, and Holland.Certain trips of his into the country were the objects of much local inquisitiveness, and were whisperingly associated with vague rumours of fires on the hills at night.
Curwen’s only close friends had been one Edward Hutchinson of Salem-Village and one Simon Orne of Salem.With these men he was often seen in conference about the Common, and visits among them were by no means infrequent.Hutchinson had a house well out toward the woods, and it was not altogether liked by sensitive people because of the sounds heard there at night.He was said to entertain strange visitors, and the lights seen from his windows were not always of the same colour.The knowledge he displayed concerning long-dead persons and long-forgotten events was considered distinctly unwholesome, and he disappeared about the time the witchcraft panic began, never to be heard from again.At that time Joseph Curwen also departed, but his settlement in Providence was soon learned of.Simon Orne lived in Salem until 1720, when his failure to grow visibly old began to excite attention.He thereafter disappeared, though thirty years later his precise counterpart and self-styled son turned up to claim his property.The claim was allowed on the strength of documents in Simon Orne’s known hand, and Jedediah Orne continued to dwell in Salem till 1771, when certain letters from Providence citizens to the Rev.Thomas Barnard and others brought about his quiet removal to parts unknown.
Certain documents by and about all of these strange characters were available at the Essex Institute, the Court House, and the Registry of Deeds, and included both harmless commonplaces such as land titles and bills of sale, and furtive fragments of a more provocative nature.There were four or five unmistakable allusions to them on the witchcraft trial records; as when one Hepzibah Lawson swore on July 10, 1692, at the Court of Oyer and Terminer under Judge Hathorne, that ‘fortie Witches and the Blacke Man were wont to meete in the Woodes behind Mr.Hutchinson’s house’, and one Amity How declared at a session of August 8th before Judge Gedney that ‘Mr.G.B.(Rev.George Burroughs) on that Nighte putt ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O., Deliverance W., Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B.’ Then there was a catalogue of Hutchinson’s uncanny library as found after his disappearance, and an unfinished manuscript in his handwriting, couched in a cipher none could read.Ward had a photostatic copy of this manuscript made, and began to work casually on the cipher as soon as it was delivered to him.After the following August his labours on the cipher became intense and feverish, and there is reason to believe from his speech and conduct that he hit upon the key before October or November.He never stated, though, whether or not he had succeeded.
But of the greatest immediate interest was the Orne material.It took Ward only a short time to prove from identity of penmanship a thing he had already considered established from the text of the letter to Curwen; namely, that Simon Orne and his supposed son were one and the same person.As Orne had said to his correspondent, it was hardly safe to live too long in Salem, hence he resorted to a thirty-year sojourn abroad, and did not return to claim his lands except as a representative of a new generation.Orne had apparently been careful to destroy most of his correspondence, but the citizens who took action in 1771 found and preserved a few letters and papers which excited their wonder.There were cryptic formulae and diagrams in his and other hands which Ward now either copied with care or had photographed, and one extremely mysterious letter in a chirography that the searcher recognised from items in the Registry of Deeds as positively Joseph Curwen’s.
This Curwen letter, though undated as to the year, was evidently not the one in answer to which Orne had written the confiscated missive; and from internal evidence Ward placed it not much later than 1750.It may not be amiss to give the text in full, as a sample of the style of one whose history was so dark and terrible.The recipient is addressed as “Simon”, but a line (whether drawn by Curwen or Orne Ward could not tell) is run through the word.
Prouidence, I.May (Ut.vulgo)
Brother:—
My honour’d Antient ffriende, due Respects and earnest Wishes to Him whom we serve for yr eternall Power.I am just come upon That which you ought to knowe, concern’g the Matter of the Laste Extremitie and what to doe regard’g yt.I am not dispos’d to followe you in go’g Away on acct.of my Yeares, for Prouidence hath not ye Sharpeness of ye Bay in hunt’g oute uncommon Things and bringinge to Tryall.I am ty’d up in Shippes and Goodes, and cou’d not doe as you did, besides the Whiche my ffarme at Patuxet hath under it What you Knowe, that wou’d not waite for my com’g Backe as an Other.
But I am not unreadie for harde ffortunes, as I haue tolde you, and haue longe work’d upon ye Way of get’g Backe after ye Laste.I laste Night strucke on ye Wordes that bringe up YOGGE-SOTHOTHE, and sawe for ye firste Time that fface spoke of by Ibn Schacabao in ye ——.And IT said, that ye III Psalme in ye Liber-Damnatus holdes ye Clauicle.With Sunne in V House, Saturne in Trine, drawe ye Pentagram of Fire, and saye ye ninth Uerse thrice.This Uerse repeate eache Roodemas and Hallow’s Eue; and ye Thing will breede in ye Outside Spheres.
And of ye Seede of Olde shal One be borne who shal looke Backe, tho’ know’g not what he seekes.
Yett will this availe Nothing if there be no Heir, and if the Saltes, or the Way to make the Saltes, bee not Readie for his Hande; and here I will owne, I have not taken needed Stepps nor founde Much.Ye Process is plaguy harde to come neare; and it uses up such a Store of Specimens, I am harde putte to it to get Enough, notwithstand’g the Sailors I have from ye Indies.Ye People aboute are become curious, but I can stande them off.Ye Gentry are worse than the Populace, be’g more Circumstantiall in their Accts.and more believ’d in what they tell.That Parson and Mr.Merritt have talk’d some, I am fearfull, but no Thing soe far is Dangerous.Ye Chymical substances are easie of get’g, there be’g II.goode Chymists in Towne, Dr.Bowen and Sam: Carew.I am foll’g oute what Borellus saith, and haue Helpe in Abdool Al-Hazred his VII.Booke.Whatever I gette, you shal haue.And in ye meane while, do not neglect to make use of ye Wordes I haue here giuen.I haue them Righte, but if you Desire to see HIM, imploy the Writings on ye Piece of —— that I am putt’g in this Packet.Saye ye Uerses every Roodmas and Hallow’s Eue; and if yr Line runn out not, one shall bee in yeares to come that shal looke backe and use what Saltes or Stuff for Saltes you shal leaue him.Job XIV.XIV.
I rejoice you are again at Salem, and hope I may see you not longe hence.I have a goode Stallion, and am think’g of get’g a Coach, there be’g one (Mr.Merritt’s) in Prouidence already, tho’ ye Roades are bad.If you are dispos’d to Travel, doe not pass me bye.From Boston take ye Post Rd.thro’ Dedham, Wrentham, and Attleborough, goode Taverns be’g at all these Townes.Stop at Mr.Bolcom’s in Wrentham, where ye Beddes are finer than Mr.Hatch’s, but eate at ye other House for their Cooke is better.Turne into Prou.by Patucket ffalls, and ye Rd.past Mr.Sayles’s Tavern.My House opp.Mr.Epenetus Olney’s Tavern off ye Towne Street, Ist on ye N.side of Olney’s Court.Distance from Boston Stone abt.XLIV Miles.
Sir, I am yr olde and true ffriend and Servt.in Almousin-Metraton.
Josephus C.
To Mr.Simon Orne,
William’s-Lane, in Salem.
This letter, oddly enough, was what first gave Ward the exact location of Curwen’s Providence home; for none of the records encountered up to that time had been at all specific.The discovery was doubly striking because it indicated as the newer Curwen house built in 1761 on the site of the old, a dilapidated building still standing in Olney Court and well known to Ward in his antiquarian rambles over Stampers’ Hill.The place was indeed only a few squares from his own home on the great hill’s higher ground, and was now the abode of a negro family much esteemed for occasional washing, housecleaning, and furnace-tending services.To find, in distant Salem, such sudden proof of the significance of this familiar rookery in his own family history, was a highly impressive thing to Ward; and he resolved to explore the place immediately upon his return.The more mystical phases of the letter, which he took to be some extravagant kind of symbolism, frankly baffled him; though he noted with a thrill of curiosity that the Biblical passage referred to—Job 14, 14—was the familiar verse, “If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.”
