CHAPTER
I - THE MORTALS IN THE HOUSE
Under
none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of the
conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance with the house
which is the subject of this Christmas piece. I saw it in the daylight, with
the sun upon it. There was no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful
or unwonted circumstance, of any kind, to heighten its effect. More than that:
I had come to it direct from a railway station: it was not more than a mile
distant from the railway station; and, as I stood outside the house, looking back
upon the way I had come, I could see the goods train running smoothly along the
embankment in the valley. I will not say that everything was utterly
commonplace, because I doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly
commonplace people- -and there my vanity steps in; but, I will take it on
myself to say that anybody might see the house as I saw it, any fine autumn
morning.
The manner of my lighting on it was this.
I was travelling towards London out of the
North, intending to stop by the way, to look at the house. My health required a
temporary residence in the country; and a friend of mine who knew that, and who
had happened to drive past the house, had written to me to suggest it as a
likely place. I had got into the train at midnight, and had fallen asleep, and
had woke up and had sat looking out of window at the brilliant Northern Lights
in the sky, and had fallen asleep again, and had woke up again to find the
night gone, with the usual discontented conviction on me that I hadn't been to
sleep at all; -- upon which question, in the first imbecility of that
condition, I am ashamed to believe that I would have done wager by battle with
the man who sat opposite me.
That opposite man had had, through the night -- as
that opposite man always has -- several legs too many, and all of them too
long. In addition to this unreasonable conduct (which was only to be expected
of him), he had had a pencil and a pocket-book, and had been perpetually
listening and taking notes. It had appeared to me that these aggravating notes
related to the jolts and bumps of the carriage, and I should have resigned
myself to his taking them, under a general supposition that he was in the civil-engineering
way of life, if he had not sat staring straight over my head whenever he
listened. He was a goggle-eyed gentleman of a perplexed aspect, and his
demeanour became unbearable.
2
It was a cold, dead morning (the sun not
being up yet), and when I had out-watched the paling light of the fires of the
iron country, and the curtain of heavy smoke that hung at once between me and
the stars and between me and the day, I turned to my fellow-traveller and said:
"I BEG your pardon, sir, but do you
observe anything particular in me"? For, really, he appeared to be taking
down, either my travelling-cap or my hair, with a minuteness that was a
liberty.
The goggle-eyed gentleman withdrew his
eyes from behind me, as if the back of the carriage were a hundred miles off,
and said, with a lofty look of compassion for my insignificance:
"In you, sir? -- B."
"B, sir?" said I, growing warm.
"I have nothing to do with you,
sir," returned the gentleman; "pray let me listen -- O."
He enunciated this vowel after a pause,
and noted it down.
At first I was alarmed, for an Express
lunatic and no communication with the guard, is a serious position. The thought
came to my relief that the gentleman might be what is popularly called a
Rapper: one of a sect for (some of) whom I have the highest respect, but whom I
don't believe in. I was going to ask him the question, when he took the bread
out of my mouth.
"You will excuse me," said the
gentleman contemptuously, "if I am too much in advance of common humanity
to trouble myself at all about it. I have passed the night -- as indeed I pass
the whole of my time now -- in spiritual intercourse."
"O!" said I, somewhat
snappishly.
"The conferences of the night
began," continued the gentleman, turning several leaves of his note-book,
"with this message: 'Evil communications corrupt good manners.'"
3
"Sound," said I; "but,
absolutely new?"
"New from spirits," returned the
gentleman.
I could only repeat my rather snappish
"O!" and ask if I might be favoured with the last communication.
"'A bird in the hand,'" said the
gentleman, reading his last entry with great solemnity, "'is worth two in
the Bosh.'"
"Truly I am of the same
opinion," said I; "but shouldn't it be Bush?"
"It came to me, Bosh," returned
the gentleman.
The gentleman then informed me that the
spirit of Socrates had delivered this special revelation in the course of the
night. "My friend, I hope you are pretty well. There are two in this
railway carriage. How do you do? There are seventeen thousand four hundred and
seventy-nine spirits here, but you cannot see them. Pythagoras is here. He is
not at liberty to mention it, but hopes you like travelling." Galileo
likewise had dropped in, with this scientific intelligence. "I am glad to
see you, AMICO. COME STA? Water will freeze when it is cold enough.
ADDIO!" In the course of the night, also, the following phenomena had
occurred. Bishop Butler had insisted on spelling his name, "Bubler,"
for which offence against orthography and good manners he had been dismissed as
out of temper. John Milton (suspected of wilful mystification) had repudiated
the authorship of Paradise Lost, and had introduced, as joint authors of that
poem, two Unknown gentlemen, respectively named Grungers and Scadgingtone. And
Prince Arthur, nephew of King John of England, had described himself as
tolerably comfortable in the seventh circle, where he was learning to paint on velvet,
under the direction of Mrs. Trimmer and Mary Queen of Scots.
If this should meet the eye of the
gentleman who favoured me with these disclosures, I trust he will excuse my
confessing that the sight of the rising sun, and the contemplation of the
magnificent Order of the vast Universe, made me impatient of them. In a word, I
was so impatient of them, that I was mightily glad to get out at the next
station, and to exchange these clouds and vapours for the free air of Heaven.
4
By that time it was a beautiful morning.
As I walked away among such leaves as had already fallen from the golden,
brown, and russet trees; and as I looked around me on the wonders of Creation,
and thought of the steady, unchanging, and harmonious laws by which they are
sustained; the gentleman's spiritual intercourse seemed to me as poor a piece
of journey-work as ever this world saw. In which heathen state of mind, I came
within view of the house, and stopped to examine it attentively.
It was a solitary house, standing in a
sadly neglected garden: a pretty even square of some two acres. It was a house
of about the time of George the Second; as stiff, as cold, as formal, and in as
bad taste, as could possibly be desired by the most loyal admirer of the whole
quartet of Georges. It was uninhabited, but had, within a year or two, been
cheaply repaired to render it habitable; I say cheaply, because the work had
been done in a surface manner, and was already decaying as to the paint and
plaster, though the colours were fresh. A lop-sided board drooped over the
garden wall, announcing that it was "to let on very reasonable terms, well
furnished." It was much too closely and heavily shadowed by trees, and, in
particular, there were six tall poplars before the front windows, which were
excessively melancholy, and the site of which had been extremely ill chosen.
It was easy to see that it was an avoided
house -- a house that was shunned by the village, to which my eye was guided by
a church spire some half a mile off -- a house that nobody would take. And the
natural inference was, that it had the reputation of being a haunted house.
No period within the four-and-twenty hours
of day and night is so solemn to me, as the early morning. In the summer-time, I
often rise very early, and repair to my room to do a day's work before
breakfast, and I am always on those occasions deeply impressed by the stillness
and solitude around me. Besides that there is something awful in the being
surrounded by familiar faces asleep -- in the knowledge that those who are
dearest to us and to whom we are dearest, are profoundly unconscious of us, in
an impassive state, anticipative of that mysterious condition to which we are
all tending -- the stopped life, the broken threads of yesterday, the deserted
seat, the closed book, the unfinished but abandoned occupation, all are images
of Death.
The tranquillity of the hour is the tranquillity of Death. The colour
and the chill have the same association. Even a certain air that familiar
household objects take upon them when they first emerge from the shadows of the
night into the morning, of being newer, and as they used to be long ago, has
its counterpart in the subsidence of the worn face of maturity or age, in
death, into the old youthful look. Moreover, I once saw the apparition of my
father, at this hour. He was alive and well, and nothing ever came of it, but I
saw him in the daylight, sitting with his back towards me, on a seat that stood
beside my bed. His head was resting on his hand, and whether he was slumbering
or grieving, I could not discern. Amazed to see him there, I sat up, moved my
position, leaned out of bed, and watched him. As he did not move, I spoke to
him more than once. As he did not move then, I became alarmed and laid my hand
upon his shoulder, as I thought -- and there was no such thing.
5
For all these reasons, and for others less
easily and briefly statable, I find the early morning to be my most ghostly
time. Any house would be more or less haunted, to me, in the early morning; and
a haunted house could scarcely address me to greater advantage than then.
I walked on into the village, with the
desertion of this house upon my mind, and I found the landlord of the little
inn, sanding his door-step. I bespoke breakfast, and broached the subject of
the house.
"Is it haunted?" I asked.
The landlord looked at me, shook his head,
and answered, "I say nothing."
"Then it IS haunted?"
"Well!" cried the landlord, in
an outburst of frankness that had the appearance of desperation --"I
wouldn't sleep in it."
"Why not?"
"If I wanted to have all the bells in
a house ring, with nobody to ring 'em; and all the doors in a house bang, with
nobody to bang 'em; and all sorts of feet treading about, with no feet there;
why, then," said the landlord, "I'd sleep in that house."
"Is anything seen there?"
The landlord looked at me again, and then,
with his former appearance of desperation, called down his stable-yard for
"Ikey!"
The call produced a high-shouldered young
fellow, with a round red face, a short crop of sandy hair, a very broad
humorous mouth, a turned-up nose, and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars,
with mother-of-pearl buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, and to be in
a fair way -- if it were not pruned -- of covering his head and overunning his
boots.
"This gentleman wants to know,"
said the landlord, "if anything's seen at the Poplars."
6
"'Ooded woman with a howl," said
Ikey, in a state of great freshness.
"Do you mean a cry?"
"I mean a bird, sir."
"A hooded woman with an owl. Dear me!
Did you ever see her?"
"I seen the howl."
"Never the woman?"
"Not so plain as the howl, but they
always keeps together."
"Has anybody ever seen the woman as
plainly as the owl?"
"Lord bless you, sir! Lots."
"Who?"
"Lord bless you, sir! Lots."
"The general-dealer opposite, for
instance, who is opening his shop?"
"Perkins? Bless you, Perkins wouldn't
go a-nigh the place. No!" observed the young man, with considerable
feeling; "he an't overwise, an't Perkins, but he an't such a fool as
THAT."
(Here, the landlord murmured his confidence
in Perkins's knowing better.)
"Who is -- or who was -- the hooded
woman with the owl? Do you know?"
"Well!" said Ikey, holding up
his cap with one hand while he scratched his head with the other, "they
say, in general, that she was murdered, and the howl he 'ooted the while."
This very concise summary of the facts was
all I could learn, except that a young man, as hearty and likely a young man as
ever I see, had been took with fits and held down in 'em, after seeing the
hooded woman. Also, that a personage, dimly described as "a hold chap, a
sort of one-eyed tramp, answering to the name of Joby, unless you challenged
him as Greenwood, and then he said, 'Why not? and even if so, mind your own business,'"
had encountered the hooded woman, a matter of five or six times. But, I was not
materially assisted by these witnesses: inasmuch as the first was in
California, and the last was, as Ikey said (and he was confirmed by the
landlord), Anywheres.
7
Now, although I regard with a hushed and
solemn fear, the mysteries, between which and this state of existence is
interposed the barrier of the great trial and change that fall on all the
things that live; and although I have not the audacity to pretend that I know
anything of them; I can no more reconcile the mere banging of doors, ringing of
bells, creaking of boards, and such-like insignificances, with the majestic
beauty and pervading analogy of all the Divine rules that I am permitted to understand,
than I had been able, a little while before, to yoke the spiritual intercourse
of my fellow- traveller to the chariot of the rising sun. Moreover, I had lived
in two haunted houses -- both abroad.
In one of these, an old Italian palace,
which bore the reputation of being very badly haunted indeed, and which had
recently been twice abandoned on that account, I lived eight months, most
tranquilly and pleasantly: notwithstanding that the house had a score of
mysterious bedrooms, which were never used, and possessed, in one large room in
which I sat reading, times out of number at all hours, and next to which I
slept, a haunted chamber of the first pretensions. I gently hinted these
considerations to the landlord. And as to this particular house having a bad
name, I reasoned with him, Why, how many things had bad names undeservedly, and
how easy it was to give bad names, and did he not think that if he and I were
persistently to whisper in the village that any weird-looking old drunken
tinker of the neighbourhood had sold himself to the Devil, he would come in
time to be suspected of that commercial venture! All this wise talk was
perfectly ineffective with the landlord, I am bound to confess, and was as dead
a failure as ever I made in my life.
To cut this part of the story short, I was
piqued about the haunted house, and was already half resolved to take it. So,
after breakfast, I got the keys from Perkins's brother-in-law (a whip and
harness maker, who keeps the Post Office, and is under submission to a most
rigorous wife of the Doubly Seceding Little Emmanuel persuasion), and went up
to the house, attended by my landlord and by Ikey.
8
Within, I found it, as I had expected,
transcendently dismal. The slowly changing shadows waved on it from the heavy
trees, were doleful in the last degree; the house was ill-placed, ill-built,
ill-planned, and ill-fitted. It was damp, it was not free from dry rot, there
was a flavour of rats in it, and it was the gloomy victim of that indescribable
decay which settles on all the work of man's hands whenever it's not turned to
man's account. The kitchens and offices were too large, and too remote from
each other. Above stairs and below, waste tracts of passage intervened between
patches of fertility represented by rooms; and there was a mouldy old well with
a green growth upon it, hiding like a murderous trap, near the bottom of the
back-stairs, under the double row of bells. One of these bells was labelled, on
a black ground in faded white letters, MASTER B. This, they told me, was the
bell that rang the most.
"Who was Master B.?" I asked.
"Is it known what he did while the owl hooted?"
"Rang the bell," said Ikey.
I was rather struck by the prompt
dexterity with which this young man pitched his fur cap at the bell, and rang
it himself. It was a loud, unpleasant bell, and made a very disagreeable sound.
The other bells were inscribed according to the names of the rooms to which
their wires were conducted: as "Picture Room," "Double
Room," "Clock Room," and the like. Following Master B.'s bell to
its source I found that young gentleman to have had but indifferent third-class
accommodation in a triangular cabin under the cock-loft, with a corner
fireplace which Master B. must have been exceedingly small if he were ever able
to warm himself at, and a corner chimney- piece like a pyramidal staircase to
the ceiling for Tom Thumb. The papering of one side of the room had dropped
down bodily, with fragments of plaster adhering to it, and almost blocked up
the door. It appeared that Master B., in his spiritual condition, always made a
point of pulling the paper down. Neither the landlord nor Ikey could suggest
why he made such a fool of himself.
9
Except that the house had an immensely
large rambling loft at top, I made no other discoveries. It was moderately well
furnished, but sparely. Some of the furniture -- say, a third -- was as old as
the house; the rest was of various periods within the last half-century. I was
referred to a corn-chandler in the market-place of the county town to treat for
the house. I went that day, and I took it for six months.
It was just the middle of October when I
moved in with my maiden sister (I venture to call her eight-and-thirty, she is so
very handsome, sensible, and engaging). We took with us, a deaf stable- man, my
bloodhound Turk, two women servants, and a young person called an Odd Girl. I
have reason to record of the attendant last enumerated, who was one of the
Saint Lawrence's Union Female Orphans, that she was a fatal mistake and a
disastrous engagement.
The year was dying early, the leaves were
falling fast, it was a raw cold day when we took possession, and the gloom of
the house was most depressing. The cook (an amiable woman, but of a weak turn
of intellect) burst into tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested that her
silver watch might be delivered over to her sister (2 Tuppintock's Gardens,
Liggs's Walk, Clapham Rise), in the event of anything happening to her from the
damp. Streaker, the housemaid, feigned cheerfulness, but was the greater
martyr. The Odd Girl, who had never been in the country, alone was pleased, and
made arrangements for sowing an acorn in the garden outside the scullery
window, and rearing an oak.
We went, before dark, through all the
natural -- as opposed to supernatural -- miseries incidental to our state.
Dispiriting reports ascended (like the smoke) from the basement in volumes, and
descended from the upper rooms. There was no rolling-pin, there was no
salamander (which failed to surprise me, for I don't know what it is), there
was nothing in the house, what there was, was broken, the last people must have
lived like pigs, what could the meaning of the landlord be? Through these distresses,
the Odd Girl was cheerful and exemplary. But within four hours after dark we
had got into a supernatural groove, and the Odd Girl had seen "Eyes,"
and was in hysterics.
10
My sister and I had agreed to keep the
haunting strictly to ourselves, and my impression was, and still is, that I had
not left Ikey, when he helped to unload the cart, alone with the women, or any
one of them, for one minute. Nevertheless, as I say, the Odd Girl had
"seen Eyes" (no other explanation could ever be drawn from her),
before nine, and by ten o'clock had had as much vinegar applied to her as would
pickle a handsome salmon.
I leave a discerning public to judge of my
feelings, when, under these untoward circumstances, at about half-past ten
o'clock Master B.'s bell began to ring in a most infuriated manner, and Turk
howled until the house resounded with his lamentations!
I hope I may never again be in a state of
mind so unchristian as the mental frame in which I lived for some weeks,
respecting the memory of Master B. Whether his bell was rung by rats, or mice,
or bats, or wind, or what other accidental vibration, or sometimes by one
cause, sometimes another, and sometimes by collusion, I don't know; but,
certain it is, that it did ring two nights out of three, until I conceived the
happy idea of twisting Master B.'s neck -- in other words, breaking his bell
short off -- and silencing that young gentleman, as to my experience and
belief, for ever.
But, by that time, the Odd Girl had
developed such improving powers of catalepsy, that she had become a shining
example of that very inconvenient disorder. She would stiffen, like a Guy
Fawkes endowed with unreason, on the most irrelevant occasions. I would address
the servants in a lucid manner, pointing out to them that I had painted Master
B.'s room and balked the paper, and taken Master B.'s bell away and balked the
ringing, and if they could suppose that that confounded boy had lived and died,
to clothe himself with no better behaviour than would most unquestionably have
brought him and the sharpest particles of a birch-broom into close acquaintance
in the present imperfect state of existence, could they also suppose a mere
poor human being, such as I was, capable by those contemptible means of counteracting
and limiting the powers of the disembodied spirits of the dead, or of any
spirits? -- I say I would become emphatic and cogent, not to say rather
complacent, in such an address, when it would all go for nothing by reason of
the Odd Girl's suddenly stiffening from the toes upward, and glaring among us
like a parochial petrifaction.
11
Streaker, the housemaid, too, had an
attribute of a most discomfiting nature. I am unable to say whether she was of
an usually lymphatic temperament, or what else was the matter with her, but
this young woman became a mere Distillery for the production of the largest and
most transparent tears I ever met with. Combined with these characteristics,
was a peculiar tenacity of hold in those specimens, so that they didn't fall,
but hung upon her face and nose. In this condition, and mildly and deplorably shaking
her head, her silence would throw me more heavily than the Admirable Crichton
could have done in a verbal disputation for a purse of money. Cook, likewise,
always covered me with confusion as with a garment, by neatly winding up the
session with the protest that the Ouse was wearing her out, and by meekly
repeating her last wishes regarding her silver watch.
As to our nightly life, the contagion of
suspicion and fear was among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky.
Hooded woman? According to the accounts, we were in a perfect Convent of hooded
women. Noises? With that contagion downstairs, I myself have sat in the dismal
parlour, listening, until I have heard so many and such strange noises, that
they would have chilled my blood if I had not warmed it by dashing out to make
discoveries. Try this in bed, in the dead of the night: try this at your own
comfortable fire-side, in the life of the night. You can fill any house with
noises, if you will, until you have a noise for every nerve in your nervous
system.
I repeat; the contagion of suspicion and
fear was among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky. The women
(their noses in a chronic state of excoriation from smelling-salts) were always
primed and loaded for a swoon, and ready to go off with hair- triggers. The two
elder detached the Odd Girl on all expeditions that were considered doubly
hazardous, and she always established the reputation of such adventures by
coming back cataleptic. If Cook or Streaker went overhead after dark, we knew
we should presently hear a bump on the ceiling; and this took place so
constantly, that it was as if a fighting man were engaged to go about the
house, administering a touch of his art which I believe is called The
Auctioneer, to every domestic he met with.
12
It was in vain to do anything. It was in
vain to be frightened, for the moment in one's own person, by a real owl, and
then to show the owl. It was in vain to discover, by striking an accidental
discord on the piano, that Turk always howled at particular notes and
combinations. It was in vain to be a Rhadamanthus with the bells, and if an
unfortunate bell rang without leave, to have it down inexorably and silence it.
It was in vain to fire up chimneys, let torches down the well, charge furiously
into suspected rooms and recesses. We changed servants, and it was no better.
The new set ran away, and a third set came, and it was no better. At last, our
comfortable housekeeping got to be so disorganised and wretched, that I one
night dejectedly said to my sister: "Patty, I begin to despair of our
getting people to go on with us here, and I think we must give this up."
My sister, who is a woman of immense
spirit, replied, "No, John, don't give it up. Don't be beaten, John. There
is another way."
"And what is that?" said I.
"John," returned my sister,
"if we are not to be driven out of this house, and that for no reason
whatever, that is apparent to you or me, we must help ourselves and take the
house wholly and solely into our own hands."
"But, the servants," said I.
"Have no servants," said my
sister, boldly.
Like most people in my grade of life, I
had never thought of the possibility of going on without those faithful
obstructions. The notion was so new to me when suggested, that I looked very
doubtful. "We know they come here to be frightened and infect one another,
and we know they are frightened and do infect one another," said my
sister.
"With the exception of Bottles,"
I observed, in a meditative tone.
13
(The deaf stable-man. I kept him in my
service, and still keep him, as a phenomenon of moroseness not to be matched in
England.)
"To be sure, John," assented my
sister; "except Bottles. And what does that go to prove? Bottles talks to
nobody, and hears nobody unless he is absolutely roared at, and what alarm has
Bottles ever given, or taken! None."
This was perfectly true; the individual in
question having retired, every night at ten o'clock, to his bed over the
coach-house, with no other company than a pitchfork and a pail of water. That
the pail of water would have been over me, and the pitchfork through me, if I
had put myself without announcement in Bottles's way after that minute, I had
deposited in my own mind as a fact worth remembering. Neither had Bottles ever
taken the least notice of any of our many uproars. An imperturbable and speechless
man, he had sat at his supper, with Streaker present in a swoon, and the Odd
Girl marble, and had only put another potato in his cheek, or profited by the
general misery to help himself to beefsteak pie.
"And so," continued my sister,
"I exempt Bottles. And considering, John, that the house is too large, and
perhaps too lonely, to be kept well in hand by Bottles, you, and me, I propose
that we cast about among our friends for a certain selected number of the most
reliable and willing -- form a Society here for three months -- wait upon
ourselves and one another -- live cheerfully and socially -- and see what
happens."
I was so charmed with my sister, that I
embraced her on the spot, and went into her plan with the greatest ardour.
We were then in the third week of
November; but, we took our measures so vigorously, and were so well seconded by
the friends in whom we confided, that there was still a week of the month
unexpired, when our party all came down together merrily, and mustered in the
haunted house.
14
I will mention, in this place, two small
changes that I made while my sister and I were yet alone. It occurring to me as
not improbable that Turk howled in the house at night, partly because he wanted
to get out of it, I stationed him in his kennel outside, but unchained; and I
seriously warned the village that any man who came in his way must not expect
to leave him without a rip in his own throat. I then casually asked Ikey if he
were a judge of a gun? On his saying, "Yes, sir, I knows a good gun when I
sees her," I begged the favour of his stepping up to the house and looking
at mine.
"SHE'S a true one, sir," said
Ikey, after inspecting a double- barrelled rifle that I bought in New York a
few years ago. "No mistake about HER, sir."
"Ikey," said I, "don't
mention it; I have seen something in this house."
"No, sir?" he whispered,
greedily opening his eyes. "'Ooded lady, sir?"
"Don't be frightened," said I.
"It was a figure rather like you."
"Lord, sir?"
"Ikey!" said I, shaking hands
with him warmly: I may say affectionately; "if there is any truth in these
ghost-stories, the greatest service I can do you, is, to fire at that figure.
And I promise you, by Heaven and earth, I will do it with this gun if I see it
again!"
The young man thanked me, and took his
leave with some little precipitation, after declining a glass of liquor. I
imparted my secret to him, because I had never quite forgotten his throwing his
cap at the bell; because I had, on another occasion, noticed something very
like a fur cap, lying not far from the bell, one night when it had burst out
ringing; and because I had remarked that we were at our ghostliest whenever he
came up in the evening to comfort the servants. Let me do Ikey no injustice. He
was afraid of the house, and believed in its being haunted; and yet he would
play false on the haunting side, so surely as he got an opportunity. The Odd
Girl's case was exactly similar. She went about the house in a state of real
terror, and yet lied monstrously and wilfully, and invented many of the alarms
she spread, and made many of the sounds we heard. I had had my eye on the two,
and I know it. It is not necessary for me, here, to account for this preposterous
state of mind; I content myself with remarking that it is familiarly known to
every intelligent man who has had fair medical, legal, or other watchful
experience; that it is as well established and as common a state of mind as any
with which observers are acquainted; and that it is one of the first elements,
above all others, rationally to be suspected in, and strictly looked for, and
separated from, any question of this kind.
15
To return to our party. The first thing we
did when we were all assembled, was, to draw lots for bedrooms. That done, and
every bedroom, and, indeed, the whole house, having been minutely examined by
the whole body, we allotted the various household duties, as if we had been on
a gipsy party, or a yachting party, or a hunting party, or were shipwrecked. I
then recounted the floating rumours concerning the hooded lady, the owl, and
Master B.: with others, still more filmy, which had floated about during our
occupation, relative to some ridiculous old ghost of the female gender who went
up and down, carrying the ghost of a round table; and also to an impalpable
Jackass, whom nobody was ever able to catch. Some of these ideas I really
believe our people below had communicated to one another in some diseased way,
without conveying them in words. We then gravely called one another to witness,
that we were not there to be deceived, or to deceive -- which we considered
pretty much the same thing -- and that, with a serious sense of responsibility,
we would be strictly true to one another, and would strictly follow out the
truth. The understanding was established, that any one who heard unusual noises
in the night, and who wished to trace them, should knock at my door; lastly,
that on Twelfth Night, the last night of holy Christmas, all our individual
experiences since that then present hour of our coming together in the haunted
house, should be brought to light for the good of all; and that we would hold
our peace on the subject till then, unless on some remarkable provocation to
break silence.
We were, in number and in character, as
follows:
First -- to get my sister and myself out
of the way -- there were we two. In the drawing of lots, my sister drew her own
room, and I drew Master B.'s. Next, there was our first cousin John Herschel,
so called after the great astronomer: than whom I suppose a better man at a
telescope does not breathe. With him, was his wife: a charming creature to whom
he had been married in the previous spring. I thought it (under the
circumstances) rather imprudent to bring her, because there is no knowing what
even a false alarm may do at such a time; but I suppose he knew his own
business best, and I must say that if she had been MY wife, I never could have
left her endearing and bright face behind.
They drew the Clock Room. Alfred
Starling, an uncommonly agreeable young fellow of eight-and-twenty for whom I
have the greatest liking, was in the Double Room; mine, usually, and designated
by that name from having a dressing-room within it, with two large and
cumbersome windows, which no wedges I was ever able to make, would keep from
shaking, in any weather, wind or no wind. Alfred is a young fellow who pretends
to be "fast" (another word for loose, as I understand the term), but
who is much too good and sensible for that nonsense, and who would have distinguished
himself before now, if his father had not unfortunately left him a small
independence of two hundred a year, on the strength of which his only
occupation in life has been to spend six. I am in hopes, however, that his
Banker may break, or that he may enter into some speculation guaranteed to pay
twenty per cent.; for, I am convinced that if he could only be ruined, his
fortune is made.
Belinda Bates, bosom friend of my sister, and a most
intellectual, amiable, and delightful girl, got the Picture Room. She has a
fine genius for poetry, combined with real business earnestness, and "goes
in" -- to use an expression of Alfred's -- for Woman's mission, Woman's
rights, Woman's wrongs, and everything that is woman's with a capital W, or is
not and ought to be, or is and ought not to be. "Most praiseworthy, my
dear, and Heaven prosper you!" I whispered to her on the first night of my
taking leave of her at the Picture-Room door, "but don't overdo it. And in
respect of the great necessity there is, my darling, for more employments being
within the reach of Woman than our civilisation has as yet assigned to her,
don't fly at the unfortunate men, even those men who are at first sight in your
way, as if they were the natural oppressors of your sex; for, trust me,
Belinda, they do sometimes spend their wages among wives and daughters,
sisters, mothers, aunts, and grandmothers; and the play is, really, not ALL
Wolf and Red Riding-Hood, but has other parts in it." However, I digress.
16
Belinda, as I have mentioned, occupied the
Picture Room. We had but three other chambers: the Corner Room, the Cupboard
Room, and the Garden Room. My old friend, Jack Governor, "slung his
hammock," as he called it, in the Corner Room. I have always regarded Jack
as the finest-looking sailor that ever sailed. He is gray now, but as handsome
as he was a quarter of a century ago -- nay, handsomer. A portly, cheery,
well-built figure of a broad-shouldered man, with a frank smile, a brilliant
dark eye, and a rich dark eyebrow. I remember those under darker hair, and they
look all the better for their silver setting. He has been wherever his Union
namesake flies, has Jack, and I have met old shipmates of his, away in the
Mediterranean and on the other side of the Atlantic, who have beamed and brightened
at the casual mention of his name, and have cried, "You know Jack
Governor? Then you know a prince of men!" That he is! And so unmistakably
a naval officer, that if you were to meet him coming out of an Esquimaux
snow-hut in seal's skin, you would be vaguely persuaded he was in full naval
uniform.
Jack once had that bright clear eye of his
on my sister; but, it fell out that he married another lady and took her to
South America, where she died. This was a dozen years ago or more. He brought
down with him to our haunted house a little cask of salt beef; for, he is
always convinced that all salt beef not of his own pickling, is mere carrion,
and invariably, when he goes to London, packs a piece in his portmanteau. He
had also volunteered to bring with him one "Nat Beaver," an old
comrade of his, captain of a merchantman. Mr. Beaver, with a thick-set wooden
face and figure, and apparently as hard as a block all over, proved to be an
intelligent man, with a world of watery experiences in him, and great practical
knowledge. At times, there was a curious nervousness about him, apparently the
lingering result of some old illness; but, it seldom lasted many minutes. He
got the Cupboard Room, and lay there next to Mr. Undery, my friend and
solicitor: who came down, in an amateur capacity, "to go through with
it," as he said, and who plays whist better than the whole Law List, from
the red cover at the beginning to the red cover at the end.
17
I never was happier in my life, and I
believe it was the universal feeling among us. Jack Governor, always a man of
wonderful resources, was Chief Cook, and made some of the best dishes I ever
ate, including unapproachable curries. My sister was pastrycook and
confectioner. Starling and I were Cook's Mate, turn and turn about, and on
special occasions the chief cook "pressed" Mr. Beaver. We had a great
deal of out-door sport and exercise, but nothing was neglected within, and
there was no ill-humour or misunderstanding among us, and our evenings were so
delightful that we had at least one good reason for being reluctant to go to
bed.
We had a few night alarms in the
beginning. On the first night, I was knocked up by Jack with a most wonderful
ship's lantern in his hand, like the gills of some monster of the deep, who
informed me that he "was going aloft to the main truck," to have the
weathercock down. It was a stormy night and I remonstrated; but Jack called my
attention to its making a sound like a cry of despair, and said somebody would
be "hailing a ghost" presently, if it wasn't done. So, up to the top
of the house, where I could hardly stand for the wind, we went, accompanied by
Mr. Beaver; and there Jack, lantern and all, with Mr. Beaver after him, swarmed
up to the top of a cupola, some two dozen feet above the chimneys, and stood
upon nothing particular, coolly knocking the weathercock off, until they both
got into such good spirits with the wind and the height, that I thought they
would never come down. Another night, they turned out again, and had a
chimney-cowl off. Another night, they cut a sobbing and gulping water-pipe
away. Another night, they found out something else. On several occasions, they
both, in the coolest manner, simultaneously dropped out of their respective
bedroom windows, hand over hand by their counterpanes, to "overhaul"
something mysterious in the garden.
The engagement among us was faithfully
kept, and nobody revealed anything. All we knew was, if any one's room were
haunted, no one looked the worse for it.
18
CHAPTER
II - THE GHOST IN MASTER B'S ROOM
When
I established myself in the triangular garret which had gained so distinguished
a reputation, my thoughts naturally turned to Master B. My speculations about
him were uneasy and manifold. Whether his Christian name was Benjamin,
Bissextile (from his having been born in Leap Year), Bartholomew, or Bill.
Whether the initial letter belonged to his family name, and that was Baxter,
Black, Brown, Barker, Buggins, Baker, or Bird. Whether he was a foundling, and
had been baptized B. Whether he was a lion-hearted boy, and B. was short for
Briton, or for Bull. Whether he could possibly have been kith and kin to an
illustrious lady who brightened my own childhood, and had come of the blood of
the brilliant Mother Bunch?
With these profitless meditations I
tormented myself much. I also carried the mysterious letter into the appearance
and pursuits of the deceased; wondering whether he dressed in Blue, wore Boots
(he couldn't have been Bald), was a boy of Brains, liked Books, was good at
Bowling, had any skill as a Boxer, even in his Buoyant Boyhood Bathed from a
Bathing-machine at Bognor, Bangor, Bournemouth, Brighton, or Broadstairs, like
a Bounding Billiard Ball?
So, from the first, I was haunted by the
letter B.
It was not long before I remarked that I
never by any hazard had a dream of Master B., or of anything belonging to him.
But, the instant I awoke from sleep, at whatever hour of the night, my thoughts
took him up, and roamed away, trying to attach his initial letter to something
that would fit it and keep it quiet.
For six nights, I had been worried this in
Master B.'s room, when I began to perceive that things were going wrong.
The first appearance that presented itself
was early in the morning when it was but just daylight and no more. I was
standing shaving at my glass, when I suddenly discovered, to my consternation
and amazement, that I was shaving -- not myself -- I am fifty -- but a boy.
Apparently Master B.!
19
I trembled and looked over my shoulder;
nothing there. I looked again in the glass, and distinctly saw the features and
expression of a boy, who was shaving, not to get rid of a beard, but to get one.
Extremely troubled in my mind, I took a few turns in the room, and went back to
the looking-glass, resolved to steady my hand and complete the operation in
which I had been disturbed. Opening my eyes, which I had shut while recovering
my firmness, I now met in the glass, looking straight at me, the eyes of a
young man of four or five and twenty. Terrified by this new ghost, I closed my
eyes, and made a strong effort to recover myself. Opening them again, I saw,
shaving his cheek in the glass, my father, who has long been dead. Nay, I even
saw my grandfather too, whom I never did see in my life.
Although naturally much affected by these
remarkable visitations, I determined to keep my secret, until the time agreed
upon for the present general disclosure. Agitated by a multitude of curious
thoughts, I retired to my room, that night, prepared to encounter some new
experience of a spectral character. Nor was my preparation needless, for,
waking from an uneasy sleep at exactly two o'clock in the morning, what were my
feelings to find that I was sharing my bed with the skeleton of Master B.!
I sprang up, and the skeleton sprang up
also. I then heard a plaintive voice saying, "Where am I? What is become
of me?" and, looking hard in that direction, perceived the ghost of Master
B.
The young spectre was dressed in an
obsolete fashion: or rather, was not so much dressed as put into a case of
inferior pepper-and- salt cloth, made horrible by means of shining buttons. I
observed that these buttons went, in a double row, over each shoulder of the
young ghost, and appeared to descend his back. He wore a frill round his neck.
His right hand (which I distinctly noticed to be inky) was laid upon his
stomach; connecting this action with some feeble pimples on his countenance,
and his general air of nausea, I concluded this ghost to be the ghost of a boy
who had habitually taken a great deal too much medicine.
20
"Where am I?" said the little
spectre, in a pathetic voice. "And why was I born in the Calomel days, and
why did I have all that Calomel given me?"
I replied, with sincere earnestness, that
upon my soul I couldn't tell him.
"Where is my little sister,"
said the ghost, "and where my angelic little wife, and where is the boy I
went to school with?"
I entreated the phantom to be comforted,
and above all things to take heart respecting the loss of the boy he went to
school with. I represented to him that probably that boy never did, within
human experience, come out well, when discovered. I urged that I myself had, in
later life, turned up several boys whom I went to school with, and none of them
had at all answered. I expressed my humble belief that that boy never did
answer. I represented that he was a mythic character, a delusion, and a snare.
I recounted how, the last time I found him, I found him at a dinner party
behind a wall of white cravat, with an inconclusive opinion on every possible
subject, and a power of silent boredom absolutely Titanic. I related how, on the
strength of our having been together at "Old Doylance's," he had
asked himself to breakfast with me (a social offence of the largest magnitude);
how, fanning my weak embers of belief in Doylance's boys, I had let him in; and
how, he had proved to be a fearful wanderer about the earth, pursuing the race
of Adam with inexplicable notions concerning the currency, and with a
proposition that the Bank of England should, on pain of being abolished,
instantly strike off and circulate, God knows how many thousand millions of
ten-and-sixpenny notes.
The ghost heard me in silence, and with a
fixed stare. "Barber!" it apostrophised me when I had finished.
"Barber?" I repeated -- for I am
not of that profession.
"Condemned," said the ghost,
"to shave a constant change of customers -- now, me -- now, a young man --
now, thyself as thou art -- now, thy father -- now, thy grandfather; condemned,
too, to lie down with a skeleton every night, and to rise with it every morning
--"
21
(I shuddered on hearing this dismal
announcement.)
"Barber! Pursue me!"
I had felt, even before the words were
uttered, that I was under a spell to pursue the phantom. I immediately did so,
and was in Master B.'s room no longer.
Most people know what long and fatiguing
night journeys had been forced upon the witches who used to confess, and who,
no doubt, told the exact truth -- particularly as they were always assisted
with leading questions, and the Torture was always ready. I asseverate that,
during my occupation of Master B.'s room, I was taken by the ghost that haunted
it, on expeditions fully as long and wild as any of those. Assuredly, I was
presented to no shabby old man with a goat's horns and tail (something between Pan
and an old clothesman), holding conventional receptions, as stupid as those of
real life and less decent; but, I came upon other things which appeared to me
to have more meaning.
Confident that I speak the truth and shall
be believed, I declare without hesitation that I followed the ghost, in the
first instance on a broom-stick, and afterwards on a rocking-horse. The very
smell of the animal's paint -- especially when I brought it out, by making him
warm -- I am ready to swear to. I followed the ghost, afterwards, in a hackney
coach; an institution with the peculiar smell of which, the present generation
is unacquainted, but to which I am again ready to swear as a combination of
stable, dog with the mange, and very old bellows. (In this, I appeal to
previous generations to confirm or refute me.) I pursued the phantom, on a
headless donkey: at least, upon a donkey who was so interested in the state of
his stomach that his head was always down there, investigating it; on ponies,
expressly born to kick up behind; on roundabouts and swings, from fairs; in the
first cab -- another forgotten institution where the fare regularly got into
bed, and was tucked up with the driver.
22
Not to trouble you with a detailed account
of all my travels in pursuit of the ghost of Master B., which were longer and
more wonderful than those of Sinbad the Sailor, I will confine myself to one
experience from which you may judge of many.
I was marvellously changed. I was myself,
yet not myself. I was conscious of something within me, which has been the same
all through my life, and which I have always recognised under all its phases
and varieties as never altering, and yet I was not the I who had gone to bed in
Master B.'s room. I had the smoothest of faces and the shortest of legs, and I
had taken another creature like myself, also with the smoothest of faces and
the shortest of legs, behind a door, and was confiding to him a proposition of
the most astounding nature.
This proposition was, that we should have
a Seraglio.
The other creature assented warmly. He had
no notion of respectability, neither had I. It was the custom of the East, it
was the way of the good Caliph Haroun Alraschid (let me have the corrupted name
again for once, it is so scented with sweet memories!), the usage was highly
laudable, and most worthy of imitation. "O, yes! Let us," said the
other creature with a jump, "have a Seraglio."
It was not because we entertained the
faintest doubts of the meritorious character of the Oriental establishment we
proposed to import, that we perceived it must be kept a secret from Miss
Griffin. It was because we knew Miss Griffin to be bereft of human sympathies,
and incapable of appreciating the greatness of the great Haroun. Mystery impenetrably
shrouded from Miss Griffin then, let us entrust it to Miss Bule.
We were ten in Miss Griffin's
establishment by Hampstead Ponds; eight ladies and two gentlemen. Miss Bule,
whom I judge to have attained the ripe age of eight or nine, took the lead in
society. I opened the subject to her in the course of the day, and proposed
that she should become the Favourite.
23
Miss Bule, after struggling with the
diffidence so natural to, and charming in, her adorable sex, expressed herself
as flattered by the idea, but wished to know how it was proposed to provide for
Miss Pipson? Miss Bule -- who was understood to have vowed towards that young
lady, a friendship, halves, and no secrets, until death, on the Church Service
and Lessons complete in two volumes with case and lock -- Miss Bule said she
could not, as the friend of Pipson, disguise from herself, or me, that Pipson
was not one of the common.
Now, Miss Pipson, having curly hair and
blue eyes (which was my idea of anything mortal and feminine that was called
Fair), I promptly replied that I regarded Miss Pipson in the light of a Fair
Circassian.
"And what then?" Miss Bule
pensively asked.
I replied that she must be inveigled by a
Merchant, brought to me veiled, and purchased as a slave.
[The other creature had already fallen
into the second male place in the State, and was set apart for Grand Vizier. He
afterwards resisted this disposal of events, but had his hair pulled until he
yielded.]
"Shall I not be jealous?" Miss
Bule inquired, casting down her eyes.
"Zobeide, no," I replied;
"you will ever be the favourite Sultana; the first place in my heart, and
on my throne, will be ever yours."
Miss Bule, upon that assurance, consented
to propound the idea to her seven beautiful companions. It occurring to me, in
the course of the same day, that we knew we could trust a grinning and good-
natured soul called Tabby, who was the serving drudge of the house, and had no
more figure than one of the beds, and upon whose face there was always more or
less black-lead, I slipped into Miss Bule's hand after supper, a little note to
that effect; dwelling on the black-lead as being in a manner deposited by the
finger of Providence, pointing Tabby out for Mesrour, the celebrated chief of
the Blacks of the Hareem.
24
There were difficulties in the formation
of the desired institution, as there are in all combinations. The other
creature showed himself of a low character, and, when defeated in aspiring to
the throne, pretended to have conscientious scruples about prostrating himself
before the Caliph; wouldn't call him Commander of the Faithful; spoke of him
slightingly and inconsistently as a mere "chap;" said he, the other
creature, "wouldn't play" -- Play! -- and was otherwise coarse and
offensive. This meanness of disposition was, however, put down by the general
indignation of an united Seraglio, and I became blessed in the smiles of eight
of the fairest of the daughters of men.
The smiles could only be bestowed when
Miss Griffin was looking another way, and only then in a very wary manner, for
there was a legend among the followers of the Prophet that she saw with a
little round ornament in the middle of the pattern on the back of her shawl.
But every day after dinner, for an hour, we were all together, and then the
Favourite and the rest of the Royal Hareem competed who should most beguile the
leisure of the Serene Haroun reposing from the cares of State -- which were generally,
as in most affairs of State, of an arithmetical character, the Commander of the
Faithful being a fearful boggler at a sum.
On these occasions, the devoted Mesrour,
chief of the Blacks of the Hareem, was always in attendance (Miss Griffin usually
ringing for that officer, at the same time, with great vehemence), but never
acquitted himself in a manner worthy of his historical reputation. In the first
place, his bringing a broom into the Divan of the Caliph, even when Haroun wore
on his shoulders the red robe of anger (Miss Pipson's pelisse), though it might
be got over for the moment, was never to be quite satisfactorily accounted for.
In the second place, his breaking out into grinning exclamations of "Lork
you pretties!" was neither Eastern nor respectful. In the third place,
when specially instructed to say "Bismillah!" he always said
"Hallelujah!" This officer, unlike his class, was too good-humoured
altogether, kept his mouth open far too wide, expressed approbation to an
incongruous extent, and even once -- it was on the occasion of the purchase of
the Fair Circassian for five hundred thousand purses of gold, and cheap, too --
embraced the Slave, the Favourite, and the Caliph, all round. (Parenthetically
let me say God bless Mesrour, and may there have been sons and daughters on
that tender bosom, softening many a hard day since!)
25
Miss Griffin was a model of propriety, and
I am at a loss to imagine what the feelings of the virtuous woman would have
been, if she had known, when she paraded us down the Hampstead Road two and
two, that she was walking with a stately step at the head of Polygamy and
Mahomedanism. I believe that a mysterious and terrible joy with which the
contemplation of Miss Griffin, in this unconscious state, inspired us, and a
grim sense prevalent among us that there was a dreadful power in our knowledge
of what Miss Griffin (who knew all things that could be learnt out of book)
didn't know, were the main- spring of the preservation of our secret. It was
wonderfully kept, but was once upon the verge of self-betrayal. The danger and
escape occurred upon a Sunday. We were all ten ranged in a conspicuous part of
the gallery at church, with Miss Griffin at our head -- as we were every Sunday
-- advertising the establishment in an unsecular sort of way -- when the
description of Solomon in his domestic glory happened to be read. The moment
that monarch was thus referred to, conscience whispered me, "Thou, too,
Haroun!" The officiating minister had a cast in his eye, and it assisted
conscience by giving him the appearance of reading personally at me. A crimson
blush, attended by a fearful perspiration, suffused my features. The Grand
Vizier became more dead than alive, and the whole Seraglio reddened as if the
sunset of Bagdad shone direct upon their lovely faces. At this portentous time
the awful Griffin rose, and balefully surveyed the children of Islam. My own
impression was, that Church and State had entered into a conspiracy with Miss
Griffin to expose us, and that we should all be put into white sheets, and
exhibited in the centre aisle. But, so Westerly -- if I may be allowed the
expression as opposite to Eastern associations -- was Miss Griffin's sense of
rectitude, that she merely suspected Apples, and we were saved.
I have called the Seraglio, united. Upon
the question, solely, whether the Commander of the Faithful durst exercise a
right of kissing in that sanctuary of the palace, were its peerless inmates
divided. Zobeide asserted a counter-right in the Favourite to scratch, and the
fair Circassian put her face, for refuge, into a green baize bag, originally
designed for books. On the other hand, a young antelope of transcendent beauty
from the fruitful plains of Camden Town (whence she had been brought, by
traders, in the half- yearly caravan that crossed the intermediate desert after
the holidays), held more liberal opinions, but stipulated for limiting the
benefit of them to that dog, and son of a dog, the Grand Vizier- -who had no
rights, and was not in question. At length, the difficulty was compromised by
the installation of a very youthful slave as Deputy. She, raised upon a stool,
officially received upon her cheeks the salutes intended by the gracious Haroun
for other Sultanas, and was privately rewarded from the coffers of the Ladies
of the Hareem.
26
And now it was, at the full height of
enjoyment of my bliss, that I became heavily troubled. I began to think of my
mother, and what she would say to my taking home at Midsummer eight of the most
beautiful of the daughters of men, but all unexpected. I thought of the number
of beds we made up at our house, of my father's income, and of the baker, and
my despondency redoubled. The Seraglio and malicious Vizier, divining the cause
of their Lord's unhappiness, did their utmost to augment it. They professed
unbounded fidelity, and declared that they would live and die with him. Reduced
to the utmost wretchedness by these protestations of attachment, I lay awake,
for hours at a time, ruminating on my frightful lot. In my despair, I think I
might have taken an early opportunity of falling on my knees before Miss
Griffin, avowing my resemblance to Solomon, and praying to be dealt with
according to the outraged laws of my country, if an unthought-of means of
escape had not opened before me.
One day, we were out walking, two and two
-- on which occasion the Vizier had his usual instructions to take note of the
boy at the turn-pike, and if he profanely gazed (which he always did) at the
beauties of the Hareem, to have him bowstrung in the course of the night -- and
it happened that our hearts were veiled in gloom. An unaccountable action on
the part of the antelope had plunged the State into disgrace. That charmer, on
the representation that the previous day was her birthday, and that vast
treasures had been sent in a hamper for its celebration (both baseless
assertions), had secretly but most pressingly invited thirty-five neighbouring
princes and princesses to a ball and supper: with a special stipulation that
they were "not to be fetched till twelve." This wandering of the
antelope's fancy, led to the surprising arrival at Miss Griffin's door, in
divers equipages and under various escorts, of a great company in full dress,
who were deposited on the top step in a flush of high expectancy, and who were
dismissed in tears. At the beginning of the double knocks attendant on these
ceremonies, the antelope had retired to a back attic, and bolted herself in;
and at every new arrival, Miss Griffin had gone so much more and more
distracted, that at last she had been seen to tear her front. Ultimate
capitulation on the part of the offender, had been followed by solitude in the
linen-closet, bread and water and a lecture to all, of vindictive length, in
which Miss Griffin had used expressions: Firstly, "I believe you all of
you knew of it;" Secondly, "Every one of you is as wicked as
another;" Thirdly, "A pack of little wretches."
27
Under these circumstances, we were walking
drearily along; and I especially, with my Moosulmaun responsibilities heavy on
me, was in a very low state of mind; when a strange man accosted Miss Griffin,
and, after walking on at her side for a little while and talking with her,
looked at me. Supposing him to be a minion of the law, and that my hour was
come, I instantly ran away, with the general purpose of making for Egypt.
The whole Seraglio cried out, when they
saw me making off as fast as my legs would carry me (I had an impression that
the first turning on the left, and round by the public-house, would be the
shortest way to the Pyramids), Miss Griffin screamed after me, the faithless
Vizier ran after me, and the boy at the turnpike dodged me into a corner, like
a sheep, and cut me off. Nobody scolded me when I was taken and brought back;
Miss Griffin only said, with a stunning gentleness, This was very curious! Why
had I run away when the gentleman looked at me?
If I had had any breath to answer with, I
dare say I should have made no answer; having no breath, I certainly made none.
Miss Griffin and the strange man took me between them, and walked me back to
the palace in a sort of state; but not at all (as I couldn't help feeling, with
astonishment) in culprit state.
When we got there, we went into a room by
ourselves, and Miss Griffin called in to her assistance, Mesrour, chief of the
dusky guards of the Hareem. Mesrour, on being whispered to, began to shed
tears. "Bless you, my precious!" said that officer, turning to me;
"your Pa's took bitter bad!"
I asked, with a fluttered heart, "Is
he very ill?"
"Lord temper the wind to you, my
lamb!" said the good Mesrour, kneeling down, that I might have a
comforting shoulder for my head to rest on, "your Pa's dead!"
28
Haroun Alraschid took to flight at the
words; the Seraglio vanished; from that moment, I never again saw one of the
eight of the fairest of the daughters of men.
I was taken home, and there was Debt at
home as well as Death, and we had a sale there. My own little bed was so
superciliously looked upon by a Power unknown to me, hazily called "The
Trade," that a brass coal-scuttle, a roasting-jack, and a birdcage, were
obliged to be put into it to make a Lot of it, and then it went for a song. So
I heard mentioned, and I wondered what song, and thought what a dismal song it
must have been to sing!
Then, I was sent to a great, cold, bare,
school of big boys; where everything to eat and wear was thick and clumpy,
without being enough; where everybody, largo and small, was cruel; where the
boys knew all about the sale, before I got there, and asked me what I had fetched,
and who had bought me, and hooted at me, "Going, going, gone!" I
never whispered in that wretched place that I had been Haroun, or had had a
Seraglio: for, I knew that if I mentioned my reverses, I should be so worried,
that I should have to drown myself in the muddy pond near the playground, which
looked like the beer.
Ah me, ah me! No other ghost has haunted
the boy's room, my friends, since I have occupied it, than the ghost of my own
childhood, the ghost of my own innocence, the ghost of my own airy belief. Many
a time have I pursued the phantom: never with this man's stride of mine to come
up with it, never with these man's hands of mine to touch it, never more to
this man's heart of mine to hold it in its purity. And here you see me working out,
as cheerfully and thankfully as I may, my doom of shaving in the glass a
constant change of customers, and of lying down and rising up with the skeleton
allotted to me for my mortal companion.
[THE END]
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