J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4
by
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Part 2 out of 3
great uneasiness. Nevertheless, we were so very fond of one another,
and in our humble way enjoyed so many blessings, that we were as
entirely happy as any pair can be without the holy influence of
religious sympathy.
But the even flow of prosperity which had for so long gladdened my little
household was not destined to last for ever. It was ordained that I
should experience the bitter truth of more than one of the wise man's
proverbs, and first, especially, of that which declares that "he that
hateth suretyship is sure." I found myself involved (as how many have
been before) by a "d--d good-natured friend," for more than two hundred
pounds. This agreeable intelligence was conveyed to me in an attorney's
letter, which, to obviate unpleasant measures, considerately advised my
paying the entire amount within just one week of the date of his pleasant
epistle. Had I been called upon within that time to produce the Pitt
diamond, or to make title to the Buckingham estates, the demand would
have been just as easily complied with.
I have no wish to bore my reader further with this little worry--a very
serious one to me, however--and it will be enough to mention, that the
kindness of a friend extricated me from the clutches of the law by a
timely advance, which, however, I was bound to replace within two years.
To enable me to fulfill this engagement, my wife and I, after repeated
consultations, resolved upon the course which resulted in the odd and
unpleasant consequences which form the subject of this narrative.
We resolved to advertise for a lodger, with or without board, &c.; and by
resolutely submitting, for a single year, to the economy we had
prescribed for ourselves, as well as to the annoyance of a stranger's
intrusion, we calculated that at the end of that term we should have
liquidated our debt.
Accordingly, without losing time, we composed an advertisement in the
most tempting phraseology we could devise, consistently with that
economic laconism which the cost per line in the columns of the _Times_
newspaper imposes upon the rhetoric of the advertising public.
Somehow we were unlucky; for although we repeated our public notification
three times in the course of a fortnight, we had but two applications.
The one was from a clergyman in ill health--a man of great ability and
zealous piety, whom we both knew by reputation, and who has since been
called to his rest. My good little wife was very anxious that we should
close with his offer, which was very considerably under what we had fixed
upon; and I have no doubt that she was influenced by the hope that his
talents and zeal might exert a happy influence upon my stubborn and
unbelieving heart. For my part, his religious character displeased me. I
did not wish my children's heads to be filled with mythic dogmas--for so
I judged the doctrines of our holy faith--and instinctively wished him
away. I therefore declined his offer; and I have often since thought not
quite so graciously as I ought to have done. The other offer--if so it
can be called--was so very inadequate that we could not entertain it.
I was now beginning to grow seriously uneasy--our little project, so far
from bringing in the gains on which we had calculated, had put me
considerably out of pocket; for, independently of the cost of the
advertisement I have mentioned, there were sundry little expenses
involved in preparing for the meet reception of our expected inmate,
which, under ordinary circumstances, we should not have dreamed of.
Matters were in this posture, when an occurrence took place which
immediately revived my flagging hopes.
As we had no superfluity of servants, our children were early obliged to
acquire habits of independence; and my little girl, then just nine years
of age, was frequently consigned with no other care than that of her own
good sense, to the companionship of a little band of playmates, pretty
similarly circumstanced, with whom it was her wont to play. Having one
fine summer afternoon gone out as usual with these little companions, she
did not return quite so soon as we had expected her; when she did so, she
was out of breath, and excited.
"Oh, papa," she said, "I have seen such a nice old, kind gentleman, and
he told me to tell you that he has a particular friend who wants a
lodging in a quiet place, and that he thinks your house would suit him
exactly, and ever so much more; and, look here, he gave me this."
She opened her hand, and shewed me a sovereign.
"Well, this does look promisingly," I said, my wife and I having first
exchanged a smiling glance.
"And what kind of gentleman was he, dear?" inquired she. "Was he well
dressed--whom was he like?"
"He was not like any one that I know," she answered; "but he had very
nice new clothes on, and he was one of the fattest men I ever saw; and
I am sure he is sick, for he looks very pale, and he had a crutch
beside him."
"Dear me, how strange!" exclaimed my wife; though, in truth there was
nothing very wonderful in the matter. "Go on, child," I said; "let us
hear it all out."
"Well, papa, he had such an immense yellow waistcoat!--I never did see
such a waistcoat," she resumed; "and he was sitting or leaning, I can't
say which, against the bank of the green lane; I suppose to rest himself,
for he seems very weak, poor gentleman!"
"And how did you happen to speak to him?" asked my wife.
"When we were passing by, none of us saw him at all but I suppose he
heard them talking to me, and saying my name; for he said,
'Fanny--little Fanny--so, that's your name--come here child, I have a
question to ask you.'"
"And so you went to him?" I said.
"Yes," she continued, "he beckoned to me, and I did go over to him, but
not very near, for I was greatly afraid of him at first."
"Afraid! dear, and why afraid?" asked I.
"I was afraid, because he looked very old, very frightful, and as if he
would hurt me."
"What was there so old and frightful about him?" I asked.
She paused and reflected a little, and then said--
"His face was very large and pale, and it was looking upwards: it seemed
very angry, I thought, but maybe it was angry from pain; and sometimes
one side of it used to twitch and tremble for a minute, and then to grow
quite still again; and all the time he was speaking to me, he never
looked at me once, but always kept his face and eyes turned upwards; but
his voice was very soft, and he called me little Fanny, and gave me this
pound to buy toys with; so I was not so frightened in a little time, and
then he sent a long message to you, papa, and told me if I forgot it he
would beat me; but I knew he was only joking, so that did not frighten
me either."
"And what was the message, my girl?" I asked, patting her pretty head
with my hand.
"Now, let me remember it all," she said, reflectively; "for he told it to
me twice. He asked me if there was a good bedroom at the top of the
house, standing by itself--and you know there is, so I told him so; it
was exactly the kind of room that he described. And then he said that his
friend would pay two hundred pounds a-year for that bedroom, his board
and attendance; and he told me to ask you, and have your answer when he
should next meet me."
"Two hundred pounds!" ejaculated my poor little wife; "why that is nearly
twice as much as we expected."
"But did he say that his friend was sick, or very old; or that he had any
servant to be supported also?" I asked.
"Oh! no; he told me that he was quite able to take care of himself, and
that he had, I think he called it, an asthma, but nothing else the
matter; and that he would give no trouble at all, and that any friend who
came to see him, he would see, not in the house, but only in the garden."
"In the garden!" I echoed, laughing in spite of myself.
"Yes, indeed he said so; and he told me to say that he would pay one
hundred pounds when he came here, and the next hundred in six months, and
so on," continued she.
"Oh, ho! half-yearly in advance--better and better," said I.
"And he bid me say, too, if you should ask about his character, that he
is just as good as the master of the house himself," she added; "and when
he said that, he laughed a little."
"Why, if he gives us a hundred pounds in advance," I answered, turning to
my wife, "we are safe enough; for he will not find half that value in
plate and jewels in the entire household, if he is disposed to rob us. So
I see no reason against closing with the offer, should it be seriously
meant--do you, dear?"
"Quite the contrary, love," said she. "I think it most desirable--indeed,
most _providential_."
"Providential! my dear little bigot!" I repeated, with a smile. "Well, be
it so. I call it _lucky_ merely; but, perhaps, you are happier in your
faith, than I in my philosophy. Yes, you are _grateful_ for the chance
that I only rejoice at. You receive it as a proof of a divine and tender
love--I as an accident. Delusions are often more elevating than truth."
And so saying, I kissed away the saddened cloud that for a moment
overcast her face.
"Papa, he bid me be sure to have an answer for him when we meet again,"
resumed the child. "What shall I say to him when he asks me?"
"Say that we agree to his proposal, my dear--or stay," I said, addressing
my wife, "may it not be prudent to reduce what the child says to writing,
and accept the offer so? This will prevent misunderstanding, as she may
possibly have made some mistake."
My wife agreed, and I wrote a brief note, stating that I was willing to
receive an inmate upon the terms recounted by little Fanny, and which I
distinctly specified, so that no mistake could possibly arise owing to
the vagueness of what lawyers term a parole agreement. This important
memorandum I placed in the hands of my little girl, who was to deliver
it whenever the old gentleman in the yellow waistcoat should chance to
meet her. And all these arrangements completed, I awaited the issue of
the affair with as much patience as I could affect. Meanwhile, my wife
and I talked it over incessantly; and she, good little soul, almost wore
herself to death in settling and unsettling the furniture and
decorations of our expected inmate's apartments. Days passed away--days
of hopes deferred, tedious and anxious. We were beginning to despond
again, when one morning our little girl ran into the breakfast-parlour,
more excited even than she had been before, and fresh from a new
interview with the gentleman in the yellow waistcoat. She had
encountered him suddenly, pretty nearly where she had met him before,
and the result was, that he had read the little note I have mentioned,
and desired the child to inform me that his friend, _Mr. Smith_, would
take possession of the apartments I proposed setting, on the terms
agreed between us, that very evening.
"This evening!" exclaimed my wife and I simultaneously--_I_ full of the
idea of making a first instalment on the day following; _she_, of the
hundred-and-one preparations which still remained to be completed.
"And so Smith is his name! Well, that does not tell us much," said I;
"but where did you meet your friend on this occasion, and how long is
it since?"
"Near the corner of the wall-flower lane (so we indicated one which
abounded in these fragrant plants); he was leaning with his back against
the old tree you cut my name on, and his crutch was under his arm."
"But how long ago?" I urged.
"Only this moment; I ran home as fast as I could," she replied.
"Why, you little blockhead, you should have told me that at first," I
cried, snatching up my hat, and darting away in pursuit of the yellow
waistcoat, whose acquaintance I not unnaturally coveted, inasmuch as a
man who, for the first time, admits a stranger into his house, on the
footing of permanent residence, desires generally to know a little more
about him than that his name is Smith.
The place indicated was only, as we say, a step away; and as yellow
waistcoat was fat, and used a crutch, I calculated on easily overtaking
him. I was, however, disappointed; crutch, waistcoat, and all had
disappeared. I climbed to the top of the wall, and from this commanding
point of view made a sweeping observation--but in vain. I returned
home, cursing my ill-luck, the child's dulness, and the fat old
fellow's activity.
I need hardly say that Mr. Smith, in all his aspects, moral, social,
physical, and monetary, formed a fruitful and interesting topic of
speculation during dinner. How many phantom Smiths, short and long, stout
and lean, ill-tempered and well-tempered--rich, respectable, or highly
dangerous merchants, spies, forgers, nabobs, swindlers, danced before us,
in the endless mazes of fanciful conjecture, during that anxious
_tete-a-tete_, which was probably to be interrupted by the arrival of the
gentleman himself.
My wife and I puzzled over the problem as people would over the possible
_denouement_ of a French novel; and at last, by mutual consent, we came
to the conclusion that Smith could, and would turn out to be no other
than the good-natured valetudinarian in the yellow waistcoat himself, a
humorist, as was evident enough, and a millionaire, as we unhesitatingly
pronounced, who had no immediate relatives, and as I hoped, and my wife
"was certain," taken a decided fancy to our little Fanny; I patted the
child's head with something akin to pride, as I thought of the
magnificent, though remote possibilities, in store for her.
Meanwhile, hour after hour stole away. It was a beautiful autumn evening,
and the amber lustre of the declining sun fell softly upon the yews and
flowers, and gave an air, half melancholy, half cheerful, to the dark-red
brick piers surmounted with their cracked and grass-grown stone urns, and
furnished with the light foliage of untended creeping plants. Down the
short broad walk leading to this sombre entrance, my eye constantly
wandered; but no impatient rattle on the latch, no battering at the gate,
indicated the presence of a visited, and the lazy bell hung dumbly among
the honey-suckles.
"When will he come? Yellow waistcoat promised _this evening_! It has
been evening a good hour and a half, and yet he is not here. When will
he come? It will soon be dark--the evening will have passed--will he
come at all?"
Such were the uneasy speculations which began to trouble us. Redder and
duskier grew the light of the setting sun, till it saddened into the
mists of night. Twilight came, and then darkness, and still no arrival,
no summons at the gate. I would not admit even to my wife the excess of
my own impatience. I could, however, stand it no longer; so I took my hat
and walked to the gate, where I stood by the side of the public road,
watching every vehicle and person that approached, in a fever of
expectation. Even these, however, began to fail me, and the road grew
comparatively quiet and deserted. Having kept guard like a sentinel for
more than half an hour, I returned in no very good humour, with the
punctuality of an expected inmate--ordered the servant to draw the
curtains and secure the hall-door; and so my wife and I sate down to our
disconsolate cup of tea. It must have been about ten o'clock, and we were
both sitting silently--she working, I looking moodily into a paper--and
neither of us any longer entertaining a hope that anything but
disappointment would come of the matter, when a sudden tapping, very loud
and sustained, upon the window pane, startled us both in an instant from
our reveries.
I am not sure whether I mentioned before that the sitting-room we
occupied was upon the ground-floor, and the sward came close under the
window. I drew the curtains, and opened the shutters with a revived hope;
and looking out, saw a very tall thin figure, a good deal wrapped up,
standing about a yard before me, and motioning with head and hand
impatiently towards the hall-door. Though the night was clear, there was
no moon, and therefore I could see no more than the black outline, like
that of an _ombre chinoise_ figure, signing to me with mop and moe. In a
moment I was at the hall-door, candle in hand; the stranger stept in--his
long fingers clutched in the handle of a valise, and a bag which trailed
upon the ground behind him.
The light fell full upon him. He wore a long, ill-made, black surtout,
buttoned across, and which wrinkled and bagged about his lank figure; his
hat was none of the best, and rather broad in the brim; a sort of white
woollen muffler enveloped the lower part of his face; a pair of prominent
green goggles, fenced round with leather, completely concealed his eyes;
and nothing of the genuine man, but a little bit of yellow forehead, and
a small transverse segment of equally yellow cheek and nose, encountered
the curious gaze of your humble servant.
"You are--I suppose"--I began; for I really was a little doubtful
about my man.
"Mr. Smith--the same; be good enough to show me to my bedchamber,"
interrupted the stranger, brusquely, and in a tone which, spite of the
muffler that enveloped his mouth, was sharp and grating enough.
"Ha!--Mr. Smith--so I supposed. I hope you may find everything as
comfortable as we desire to make it--"
I was about making a speech, but was cut short by a slight bow, and a
decisive gesture of the hand in the direction of the staircase. It was
plain that the stranger hated ceremony.
Together, accordingly, we mounted the staircase; he still pulling his
luggage after him, and striding lightly up without articulating a word;
and on reaching his bedroom, he immediately removed his hat, showing a
sinister, black scratch-wig underneath, and then began unrolling the
mighty woolen wrapping of his mouth and chin.
"Come," thought I, "we _shall_ see something of your face after all."
This something, however, proved to be very little; for under his muffler
was a loose cravat, which stood up in front of his chin and upon his
mouth, he wore a respirator--an instrument which I had never seen before,
and of the use of which I was wholly ignorant.
There was something so excessively odd in the effect of this piece of
unknown mechanism upon his mouth, surmounted by the huge goggles which
encased his eyes, that I believe I should have laughed outright, were
it not for a certain unpleasant and peculiar impressiveness in the
_tout ensemble_ of the narrow-chested, long-limbed, and cadaverous
figure in black. As it was, we stood looking at one another in silence
for several seconds.
"Thank you, sir," at last he said, abruptly. "I shan't want anything
whatever to-night; if you can only spare me this candle."
I assented; and, becoming more communicative, he added--
"I am, though an invalid, an independent sort of fellow enough. I am a
bit of a philosopher; I am my own servant, and, I hope, my own master,
too. I rely upon myself in matters of the body and of the mind. I place
valets and priests in the same category--fellows who live by our
laziness, intellectual or corporeal. I am a Voltaire, without his
luxuries--a Robinson Crusoe, without his Bible--an anchorite, without a
superstition--in short, my indulgence is asceticism, and my faith
infidelity. Therefore, I shan't disturb your servants much with my bell,
nor yourselves with my psalmody. You have got a rational lodger, who
knows how to attend upon himself."
During this singular address he was drawing off his ill-fitting black
gloves, and when he had done so, a bank-note, which had been slipped
underneath for safety, remained in his hand.
"Punctuality, sir, is one of my poor pleasures," he said; "will you allow
me to enjoy it now? To-morrow you may acknowledge this; I should not rest
were you to decline it."
He extended his bony and discoloured fingers, and placed the note in my
hand. Oh, Fortune and Plutus! It was a L100 bank-note.
"Pray, not one word, my dear sir," he continued, unbending still further;
"it is simply done pursuant to agreement. We shall know one another
better, I hope, in a little time; you will find me always equally
punctual. At present pray give yourself no further trouble; I require
nothing more. Good night."
I returned the valediction, closed his door, and groped my way down the
stairs. It was not until I had nearly reached the hall, that I
recollected that I had omitted to ask our new inmate at what hour he
would desire to be called in the morning, and so I groped my way back
again. As I reached the lobby on which his chamber opened, I perceived a
long line of light issuing from the partially-opened door, within which
stood Mr. Smith, the same odd figure I had just left; while along the
boards was creeping towards him across the lobby, a great, big-headed,
buff-coloured cat. I had never seen this ugly animal before; and it had
reached the threshold of his door, arching its back, and rubbing itself
on the post, before either appeared conscious of my approach, when, with
an angry growl, it sprang into the stranger's room.
"What do you want?" he demanded, sharply, standing in the doorway.
I explained my errand.
"I shall call myself," was his sole reply; and he shut the door with a
crash that indicated no very pleasurable emotions.
I cared very little about my lodger's temper. The stealthy rustle of his
bank-note in my waistcoat pocket was music enough to sweeten the harshest
tones of his voice, and to keep alive a cheerful good humour in my heart;
and although there was, indisputably, something queer about him, I was,
on the whole, very well pleased with my bargain.
The next day our new inmate did not ring his bell until noon. As soon
as he had had some breakfast, of which he very sparingly partook, he
told the servant that, for the future, he desired that a certain
quantity of milk and bread might be left outside his door; and this
being done, he would dispense with regular meals. He desired, too,
that, on my return, I should be acquainted that he wished to see me in
his own room at about nine o'clock; and, meanwhile, he directed that he
should be left undisturbed. I found my little wife full of astonishment
at Mr. Smith's strange frugality and seclusion, and very curious to
learn the object of the interview he had desired with me. At nine
o'clock I repaired to his room.
I found him in precisely the costume in which I had left him--the same
green goggles--the same muffling of the mouth, except that being now no
more than a broadly-folded black silk handkerchief, very loose, and
covering even the lower part of the nose, it was obviously intended for
the sole purpose of concealment. It was plain I was not to see more of
his features than he had chosen to disclose at our first interview. The
effect was as if the lower part of his face had some hideous wound or
sore. He closed the door with his own hand on my entrance, nodded
slightly, and took his seat. I expected him to begin, but he was so long
silent that I was at last constrained to address him.
I said, for want of something more to the purpose, that I hoped he had
not been tormented by the strange cat the night before.
"What cat?" he asked, abruptly; "what the plague do you mean?"
"Why, I certainly did see a cat go into your room last night," I resumed.
"Hey, and what if you did--though I fancy you dreamed it--I'm not afraid
of a cat; are you?" he interrupted, tartly.
At this moment there came a low growling mew from the closet which opened
from the room in which we sat.
"Talk of the devil," said I, pointing towards the closet. My companion,
without any exact change of expression, looked, I thought, somehow
still more sinister and lowering; and I felt for a moment a sort of
superstitious misgiving, which made the rest of the sentence die away
on my lips.
Perhaps Mr. Smith perceived this, for he said, in a tone calculated to
reassure me--
"Well, sir, I think I am bound to tell you that I like my apartments very
well; they suit me, and I shall probably be your tenant for much longer
than at first you anticipated."
I expressed my gratification.
He then began to talk, something in the strain in which he had spoken of
his own peculiarities of habit and thinking upon the previous evening. He
disposed of all classes and denominations of superstition with an easy
sarcastic slang, which for me was so captivating, that I soon lost all
reserve, and found myself listening and suggesting by turns--acquiescent
and pleased--sometimes hazarding dissent; but whenever I did, foiled and
floored by a few pointed satirical sentences, whose sophistry, for such I
must now believe it, confounded me with a rapidity which, were it not for
the admiration with which he had insensibly inspired me, would have
piqued and irritated my vanity not a little.
While this was going on, from time to time the mewing and growling of a
cat within the closet became more and more audible. At last these sounds
became so loud, accompanied by scratching at the door, that I paused in
the midst of a sentence, and observed--
"There certainly is a cat shut up in the closet?"
"Is there?" he ejaculated, in a surprised tone; "nay, I do not hear it."
He rose abruptly and approached the door; his back was towards me, but I
observed he raised the goggles which usually covered his eyes, and looked
steadfastly at the closet door. The angry sounds all died away into a
low, protracted growl, which again subsided into silence. He continued in
the same attitude for some moments, and then returned.
"I do not hear it," he said, as he resumed his place, and taking a book
from his capacious pocket, asked me if I had seen it before? I never had,
and this surprised me, for I had flattered myself that I knew, at least
by name, every work published in England during the last fifty years in
favour of that philosophy in which we both delighted. The book, moreover,
was an odd one, as both its title and table of contents demonstrated.
While we were discoursing upon these subjects, I became more and more
distinctly conscious of a new class of sounds proceeding from the same
closet. I plainly heard a measured and heavy tread, accompanied by the
tapping of some hard and heavy substance like the end of a staff, pass up
and down the floor--first, as it seemed, stealthily, and then more and
more unconcealedly. I began to feel very uncomfortable and suspicious. As
the noise proceeded, and became more and more unequivocal, Mr. Smith
abruptly rose, opened the closet door, just enough to admit his own
lath-like person, and steal within the threshold for some seconds. What
he did I could not see--I felt conscious he had an associate concealed
there; and though my eyes remained fixed on the book, I could not avoid
listening for some audible words, or signal of caution. I heard, however,
nothing of the kind. Mr. Smith turned back--walked a step or two towards
me, and said--
"I fancied I heard a sound from that closet, but there is
nothing--nothing--nothing whatever; bring the candle, let us both look."
I obeyed with some little trepidation, for I fully anticipated that I
should detect the intruder, of whose presence my own ears had given me,
for nearly half an hour, the most unequivocal proofs. We entered the
closet together; it contained but a few chairs and a small spider table.
At the far end of the room there was a sort of grey woollen cloth upon
the floor, and a bundle of something underneath it. I looked jealously at
it, and half thought I could trace the outline of a human figure; but, if
so, it was perfectly motionless.
"Some of my poor wardrobe," he muttered, as he pointed his lean finger in
the direction. "It did not sound like a cat, did it--hey--did it?" he
muttered; and without attending to my answer, he went about the
apartment, clapping his hands, and crying, "Hish--hish--hish!"
The game, however, whatever it was, did not start. As I entered I had
seen, however, a large crutch reposing against the wall in the corner
opposite to the door. This was the only article in the room, except that
I have mentioned, with which I was not familiar. With the exception of
our two selves, there was not a living creature to be seen there; no
shadow but ours upon the bare walls; no feet but our own upon the
comfortless floor.
I had never before felt so strange and unpleasant a sensation.
"There is nothing unusual in the room but that crutch," I said.
"What crutch, you dolt? I see no crutch," he ejaculated, in a tone of
sudden but suppressed fury.
"Why, _that_ crutch," I answered (for somehow I neither felt nor resented
his rudeness), turning and pointing to the spot where I had seen it. It
was gone!--it was neither there nor anywhere else. It must have been an
illusion--rather an odd one, to be sure. And yet I could at this moment,
with a safe conscience, _swear_ that I never saw an object more
distinctly than I had seen it but a second before.
My companion was muttering fast to himself as we withdrew; his presence
rather scared than reassured me; and I felt something almost amounting to
horror, as, holding the candle above his cadaverous and sable figure, he
stood at his threshold, while I descended the stairs, and said, in a sort
of whisper--
"Why, but that I am, like yourself, a philosopher, I should say that your
house is--is--a--ha! ha! ha!--HAUNTED!"
"You look very pale, my love," said my wife, as I entered the
drawing-room, where she had been long awaiting my return. "Nothing
unpleasant has happened?"
"Nothing, nothing, I assure you. Pale!--_do_ I look pale?" I answered.
"We are excellent friends, I assure you. So far from having had the
smallest disagreement, there is every prospect of our agreeing but too
well, as you will say; for I find that he holds all my opinions upon
speculative subjects. We have had a great deal of conversation this
evening, I assure you; and I never met, I think, so scholarlike and
able a man."
"I am sorry for it, dearest," she said, sadly. "The greater his talents,
if such be his opinions, the more dangerous a companion is he."
We turned, however, to more cheerful topics, and it was late before we
retired to rest. I believe it was pride--perhaps only vanity--but, at all
events, some obstructive and stubborn instinct of my nature, which I
could not overcome--that prevented my telling my wife the odd occurrences
which had disturbed my visit to our guest. I was unable or ashamed to
confess that so slight a matter had disturbed me; and, above all, that
any accident could possibly have clouded, even for a moment, the frosty
clearness of my pure and lofty scepticism with the shadows of
superstition.
Almost every day seemed to develop some new eccentricity of our strange
guest. His dietary consisted, without any variety or relief, of the
monotonous bread and milk with which he started; his bed had not been
made for nearly a week; nobody had been admitted into his room since my
visit, just described; and he never ventured down stairs, or out of
doors, until after nightfall, when he used sometimes to glide swiftly
round our little enclosed shrubbery, and at others stand quite
motionless, composed, as if in an attitude of deep attention. After
employing about an hour in this way, he would return, and steal up stairs
to his room, when he would shut himself up, and not be seen again until
the next night--or, it might be, the night after that--when, perhaps, he
would repeat his odd excursion.
Strange as his habits were, their eccentricity was all upon the side
least troublesome to us. He required literally no attendance; and as to
his occasional night ramble, even _it_ caused not the slightest
disturbance of our routine hour for securing the house and locking up the
hall-door for the night, inasmuch as he had invariably retired before
that hour arrived.
All this stimulated curiosity, and, in no small degree, that of my wife,
who, notwithstanding her vigilance and her anxiety to see our strange
inmate, had been hitherto foiled by a series of cross accidents. We were
sitting together somewhere about ten o'clock at night, when there came a
tap at the room-door. We had just been discussing the unaccountable
Smith; and I felt a sheepish consciousness that he might be himself at
the door, and have possibly even overheard our speculation--some of them
anything but complimentary, respecting himself.
"Come in," cried, I, with an effort; and the tall form of our lodger
glided into the room. My wife was positively frightened, and stood
looking at him, as he advanced, with a stare of manifest apprehension,
and even recoiled mechanically, and caught my hand.
Sensitiveness, however, was not his fault: he made a kind of stiff nod as
I mumbled an introduction; and seating himself unasked, began at once to
chat in that odd, off-hand, and sneering style, in which he excelled, and
which had, as he wielded it, a sort of fascination of which I can pretend
to convey no idea.
My wife's alarm subsided, and although she still manifestly felt some
sort of misgiving about our visitor, she yet listened to his
conversation, and, spite of herself, soon began to enjoy it. He stayed
for nearly half an hour. But although he glanced at a great variety of
topics, he did not approach the subject of religion. As soon as he was
gone, my wife delivered judgment upon him in form. She admitted he was
agreeable; but then he was such an unnatural, awful-looking object: there
was, besides, something indescribably frightful, she thought, in his
manner--the very tone of his voice was strange and hateful; and, on the
whole, she felt unutterably relieved at his departure.
A few days after, on my return, I found my poor little wife agitated and
dispirited. Mr. Smith had paid her a visit, and brought with him a book,
which he stated he had been reading, and which contained some references
to the Bible which he begged of her to explain in that profounder and
less obvious sense in which they had been cited. This she had endeavoured
to do; and affecting to be much gratified by her satisfactory exposition,
he had requested her to reconcile some discrepancies which he said had
often troubled him when reading the Scriptures. Some of them were quite
new to my good little wife; they startled and even horrified her. He
pursued this theme, still pretending only to seek for information to
quiet his own doubts, while in reality he was sowing in her mind the
seeds of the first perturbations that had ever troubled the sources of
her peace. He had been with her, she thought, no more than a quarter of
an hour; but he had contrived to leave her abundant topics on which to
ruminate for days. I found her shocked and horrified at the doubts which
this potent Magus had summoned from the pit--doubts which she knew not
how to combat, and from the torment of which she could not escape.
"He has made me very miserable with his deceitful questions. I never
thought of them before; and, merciful Heaven! I cannot answer them! What
am I to do? My serenity is gone; I shall never be happy again."
In truth, she was so very miserable, and, as it seemed to me, so
disproportionately excited, that, inconsistent in me as the task would
have been, I would gladly have explained away her difficulties, and
restored to her mind its wonted confidence and serenity, had I possessed
sufficient knowledge for the purpose. I really pitied her, and heartily
wished Mr. Smith, for the nonce, at the devil.
I observed after this that my wife's spirits appeared permanently
affected. There was a constantly-recurring anxiety, and I thought
something was lying still more heavily at her heart than the
uncertainties inspired by our lodger.
One evening, as we two were sitting together, after a long silence, she
suddenly laid her hand upon my arm, and said--
"Oh, Richard, my darling! would to God you could pray for me!"
There was something so agitated, and even terrified, in her manner,
that I was absolutely startled. I urged her to disclose whatever preyed
upon her mind.
"You can't sympathise with me--you can't help me--you can scarcely
compassionate me in my misery! Oh, dearest Richard! Some evil influence
has been gaining upon my heart, dulling and destroying my convictions,
killing all my holy affections, and--and absolutely transforming me. I
look inward upon myself with amazement, with terror--with--oh, God!--with
actual despair!"
Saying this, she threw herself on her knees, and wept an agonised flood
of tears, with her head reposing in my lap.
Poor little thing, my heart bled for her! But what could I do or say?
All I could suggest was what I really thought, that she was
unwell--hysterical--and needed to take better care of her precious self;
that her change of feeling was fancied, not real; and that a few days
would restore her to her old health and former spirits and serenity.
"And sometimes," she resumed, after I had ended a consolatory discussion,
which it was but too manifest had fallen unprofitably upon her ear, "such
dreadful, impious thoughts come into my mind, whether I choose it or not;
they come, and stay, and return, strive as I may; and I can't pray
against them. They are forced upon me with the strength of an independent
will; and oh!--horrible--frightful--they blaspheme the character of God
himself. They upbraid the Almighty upon his throne, and I can't pray
against them; there is something in me now that resists prayer."
There was such a real and fearful anguish in the agitation of my gentle
companion, that it shook my very soul within me, even while I was
affecting to make light of her confessions. I had never before witnessed
a struggle at all like this, and I was awe-struck at the spectacle.
At length she became comparatively calm. I did gradually succeed, though
very imperfectly, in reassuring her. She strove hard against her
depression, and recovered a little of her wonted cheerfulness.
After a while, however, the cloud returned. She grew sad and earnest,
though no longer excited; and entreated, or rather implored, of me to
grant her one special favour, and this was, to avoid the society of
our lodger.
"I never," she said, "could understand till now the instinctive dread
with which poor Margaret, in _Faust_, shrinks from the hateful presence
of Mephistopheles. I now feel it in myself. The dislike and suspicion I
first felt for that man--Smith, or whatever else he may call himself--has
grown into literal detestation and terror. I hate him--I am afraid of
him--I never knew what anguish of mind was until he entered our doors;
and would to God--would to God he were gone."
I reasoned with her--kissed her--laughed at her; but could not dissipate,
in the least degree, the intense and preternatural horror with which she
had grown to regard the poor philosophic invalid, who was probably, at
that moment, poring over some metaphysical book in his solitary
bedchamber.
The circumstance I am about to mention will give you some notion of the
extreme to which these excited feelings had worked upon her nerves. I was
that night suddenly awakened by a piercing scream--I started upright in
the bed, and saw my wife standing at the bedside, white as ashes with
terror. It was some seconds, so startled was I, before I could find words
to ask her the cause of her affright. She caught my wrist in her icy
grasp, and climbed, trembling violently, into bed. Notwithstanding my
repeated entreaties, she continued for a long time stupified and dumb. At
length, however, she told me, that having lain awake for a long time, she
felt, on a sudden, that she could pray, and lighting the candle, she had
stolen from beside me, and kneeled down for the purpose. She had,
however, scarcely assumed the attitude of prayer, when somebody, she
said, clutched her arm violently near the wrist, and she heard, at the
same instant, some blasphemous menace, the import of which escaped her
the moment it was spoken, muttered close in her ear. This terrifying
interruption was the cause of the scream which had awakened me; and the
condition in which she continued during the remainder of the night
confirmed me more than ever in the conviction, that she was suffering
under some morbid action of the nervous system.
After this event, which _I_ had no hesitation in attributing to fancy,
she became literally afraid to pray, and her misery and despondency
increased proportionately.
It was shortly after this that an unusual pressure of business called me
into town one evening after office hours. I had left my dear little wife
tolerably well, and little Fanny was to be her companion until I
returned. She and her little companion occupied the same room in which we
sat on the memorable evening which witnessed the arrival of our eccentric
guest. Though usually a lively child, it most provokingly happened upon
this night that Fanny was heavy and drowsy to excess. Her mamma would
have sent her to bed, but that she now literally feared to be left alone;
although, however, she could not so far overcome her horror of solitude
as to do this, she yet would not persist in combating the poor child's
sleepiness.
Accordingly, little Fanny was soon locked in a sound sleep, while her
mamma quietly pursued her work beside her. They had been perhaps some
ten minutes thus circumstanced, when my wife heard the window softly
raised from without--a bony hand parted the curtains, and Mr. Smith
leaned into the room.
She was so utterly overpowered at sight of this apparition, that even had
it, as she expected, climbed into the room, she told me she could not
have uttered a sound, or stirred from the spot where she sate transfixed
and petrified.
"Ha, ha!" he said gently, "I hope you'll excuse this, I must admit, very
odd intrusion; but I knew I should find you here, and could not resist
the opportunity of raising the window just for a moment, to look in upon
a little family picture, and say a word to yourself. I understand that
you are troubled, because for some cause you cannot say your
prayers--because what you call your 'faith' is, so to speak, dead and
gone, and also because what _you_ consider bad thoughts are constantly
recurring to your mind. Now, all that is very silly. If it is really
impossible for you to believe and to pray, what are you to infer from
that? It is perfectly plain your Christian system can't be a true
one--faith and _prayer_ it everywhere represents as the conditions of
grace, acceptance, and salvation; and yet your Creator will not _permit_
you either to believe or pray. The Christian system is, forsooth, a
_free_ gift, and yet he who formed _you_ and _it_, makes it absolutely
impossible for you to accept it. _Is_ it, I ask you, from your own
experience--is it a free gift? And if your own experience, in which you
can't be mistaken, gives its pretensions the lie, why, in the name of
common sense, will you persist in believing it? I say it is downright
blasphemy to think it has emanated from the Good Spirit--assuming that
there is one. It tells you that you must be tormented hereafter in a way
only to be made intelligible by the image of eternal fires--pretty
strong, we must all allow--unless you comply with certain conditions,
which it pretends are so easy that it is a positive pleasure to embrace
and perform them; and yet, for the life of you, you can't--physically
_can't_--do either. Is this truth and mercy?--or is it swindling and
cruelty? Is it the part of the Redeemer, or that of the tyrant, deceiver,
and tormentor?"
Up to that moment, my wife had sate breathless and motionless, listening,
in the catalepsy of nightmare, to a sort of echo of the vile and impious
reasoning which had haunted her for so long. At the last words of the
sentence his voice became harsh and thrilling; and his whole manner
bespoke a sort of crouching and terrific hatred, the like of which she
could not have conceived.
Whatever may have been the cause, she was on a sudden disenchanted. She
started to her feet; and, freezing with horror though she was, in a
shrill cry of agony commanded him, in the name of God, to depart from
her. His whole frame seemed to darken; he drew back silently; the
curtains dropped into their places, the window was let down again as
stealthily as it had just been raised; and my wife found herself alone in
the chamber with our little child, who had been startled from her sleep
by her mother's cry of anguish, and with the fearful words, "tempter,"
"destroyer," "devil," still ringing in her ears, was weeping bitterly,
and holding her terrified mother's hand.
There is nothing, I believe, more infectious than that species of
nervousness which shows itself in superstitious fears. I began--although
I could not bring myself to admit anything the least like it--to partake
insensibly, but strongly of the peculiar feelings with which my wife, and
indeed my whole household, already regarded the lodger up stairs. The
fact was, beside, that the state of my poor wife's mind began to make me
seriously uneasy; and, although I was fully sensible of the pecuniary and
other advantages attendant upon his stay, they were yet far from
outweighing the constant gloom and frequent misery in which the
protracted sojourn was involving my once cheerful house. I resolved,
therefore, at whatever monetary sacrifice, to put an end to these
commotions; and, after several debates with my wife, in which the subject
was, as usual, turned in all its possible and impossible bearings, we
agreed that, deducting a fair proportion for his five weeks' sojourn, I
should return the remainder of his L100, and request immediate possession
of his apartments. Like a man suddenly relieved of an insufferable load,
and breathing freely once more, I instantly prepared to carry into effect
the result of our deliberations.
In pursuance of this resolution, I waited upon Mr. Smith. This time my
call was made in the morning, somewhere about nine o'clock. He
received me at his door, standing as usual in the stealthy opening
which barely admitted his lank person. There he stood, fully equipped
with goggles and respirator, and swathed, rather than dressed, in his
puckered black garments.
As he did not seem disposed to invite me into his apartment, although
I had announced my visit as one of business, I was obliged to open my
errand where I stood; and after a great deal of fumbling and
muttering, I contrived to place before him distinctly the resolution
to which I had come.
"But I can't think of taking back any portion of the sum I have paid
you," said he, with a cool, dry emphasis.
"Your reluctance to do so, Mr. Smith, is most handsome, and I assure you,
appreciated," I replied. "It is very generous; but, at the same time, it
is quite impossible for me to accept what I have no right to take, and I
must beg of you not to mention that part of the subject again."
"And why should _I_ take it?" demanded Mr. Smith.
"Because you have paid this hundred pounds for six months, and you are
leaving me with nearly five months of the term still unexpired," I
replied. "I expect to receive fair play myself, and always give it."
"But who on earth said that I was going away so soon?" pursued Mr. Smith,
in the same dry, sarcastic key. "_I_ have not said so--because I really
don't intend it; I mean to stay here to the last day of the six months
for which I have paid you. I have no notion of vacating my hired
lodgings, simply because you say, _go_. I shan't quarrel with you--I
never quarrel with anybody. I'm as much your friend as ever; but, without
the least wish to disoblige, I can't do this, positively I cannot. Is
there anything else?"
I had not anticipated in the least the difficulty which thus
encountered and upset our plans. I had so set my heart upon effecting
the immediate retirement of our inauspicious inmate, that the
disappointment literally stunned me for a moment. I, however, returned
to the charge: I urged, and prayed, and almost besought him to give up
his apartments, and to leave us. I offered to repay every farthing of
the sum he had paid me--reserving nothing on account of the time he had
already been with us. I suggested all the disadvantages of the house. I
shifted my ground, and told him that my wife wanted the rooms; I
pressed his gallantry--his good nature--his economy; in short, I
assailed him upon every point--but in vain, he did not even take the
trouble of repeating what he had said before--he neither relented, nor
showed the least irritation, but simply said--
"I can't do this; here I am, and here I stay until the half-year has
expired. You wanted a lodger, and you have got one--the quietest, least
troublesome, least expensive person you could have; and though your
house, servants, and furniture are none of the best, I don't care for
that. I pursue my own poor business and enjoyments here entirely to my
satisfaction."
Having thus spoken, he gave me a sort of nod, and closed the door.
So, instead of getting rid of him the next day, as we had hoped, we had
nearly five months more of his company in expectancy; I hated, and my
wife dreaded the prospect. She was literally miserable and panic-struck
at her disappointment--and grew so nervous and wretched that I made up my
mind to look out for lodgings for her and the children (subversive of all
our schemes of retrenchment as such a step would be), and surrendering
the house absolutely to Mr. Smith and the servants during the remainder
of his term.
Circumstances, however, occurred to prevent our putting this plan in
execution. My wife, meanwhile, was, if possible, more depressed and
nervous every day. The servants seemed to sympathise in the dread and
gloom which involved ourselves; the very children grew timid and
spiritless, without knowing why--and the entire house was pervaded with
an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear. A poorhouse or a dungeon would
have been cheerful, compared with a dwelling haunted unceasingly with
unearthly suspicions and alarms. I would have made any sacrifice short of
ruin, to emancipate our household from the odious mental and moral
thraldom which was invisibly established over us--overcasting us with
strange anxieties and an undefined terror.
About this time my wife had a dream which troubled her much, although
she could not explain its supposed significance satisfactorily by any
of the ordinary rules of interpretation in such matters. The vision was
as follows.
She dreamed that we were busily employed in carrying out our scheme of
removal, and that I came into the parlour where she was making some
arrangements, and, with rather an agitated manner, told her that the
carriage had come for the children. She thought she went out to the hall,
in consequence, holding little Fanny by one hand, and the boy--or, as we
still called him, "baby,"--by the other, and feeling, as she did so, an
unaccountable gloom, almost amounting to terror, steal over her. The
children, too, seemed, she thought, frightened, and disposed to cry.
So close to the hall-door as to exclude the light, stood some kind of
vehicle, of which she could see nothing but that its door was wide open,
and the interior involved in total darkness. The children, she thought,
shrunk back in great trepidation, and she addressed herself to induce
them, by persuasion, to enter, telling them that they were only "going to
their new home." So, in a while, little Fanny approached it; but, at the
same instant, some person came swiftly up from behind, and, raising the
little boy in his hands, said fiercely, "No, the baby first"; and placed
him in the carriage. This person was our lodger, Mr. Smith, and was gone
as soon as seen. My wife, even in her dream, could not act or speak; but
as the child was lifted into the carriage-door, a man, whose face was
full of beautiful tenderness and compassion, leaned forward from the
carriage and received the little child, which, stretching his arms to the
stranger, looked back with a strange smile upon his mother.
"He is safe with me, and I will deliver him to you when you come."
These words the man spoke, looking upon her, as he received him, and
immediately the carriage-door shut, and the noise of its closing wakened
my wife from her nightmare.
This dream troubled her very much, and even haunted my mind unpleasantly
too. We agreed, however, not to speak of it to anybody, not to divulge
any of our misgivings respecting the stranger. We were anxious that
neither the children nor the servants should catch the contagion of those
fears which had seized upon my poor little wife, and, if truth were
spoken, upon myself in some degree also. But this precaution was, I
believe, needless, for, as I said before, everybody under the same roof
with Mr. Smith was, to a certain extent, affected with the same nervous
gloom and apprehension.
And now commences a melancholy chapter in my life. My poor little Fanny
was attacked with a cough which soon grew very violent, and after a time
degenerated into a sharp attack of inflammation. We were seriously
alarmed for her life, and nothing that care and medicine could effect
was spared to save it. Her mother was indefatigable, and scarcely left
her night or day; and, indeed, for some time, we all but despaired of
her recovery.
One night, when she was at the worst, her poor mother, who had sat for
many a melancholy hour listening, by her bedside, to those plaintive
incoherences of delirium and moanings of fever, which have harrowed so
many a fond heart, gained gradually from her very despair the courage
which she had so long wanted, and knelt down at the side of her sick
darling's bed to pray for her deliverance.
With clasped hands, in an agony of supplication, she prayed that God
would, in his mercy, spare her little child--that, justly as she herself
deserved the sorest chastisement his hand could inflict, he would yet
deal patiently and tenderly with her in this one thing. She poured out
her sorrows before the mercy-seat--she opened her heart, and declared her
only hope to be in his pity; without which, she felt that her darling
would only leave the bed where she was lying for her grave.
Exactly as she came to this part of her supplication, the child, who had
grown, as it seemed, more and more restless, and moaned and muttered with
increasing pain and irritation, on a sudden started upright in her bed,
and, in a thrilling voice, cried--
"No! no!--the baby first."
The mysterious sentence which had secretly tormented her for so long,
thus piercingly uttered by this delirious, and, perhaps, dying child,
with what seemed a preternatural earnestness and strength, arrested her
devotions, and froze her with a feeling akin to terror.
"Hush, hush, my darling!" said the poor mother, almost wildly, as she
clasped the attenuated frame of the sick child in her arms; "hush, my
darling; don't cry out so loudly--there--there--my own love."
The child did not appear to see or hear her, but sate up still with
feverish cheeks, and bright unsteady eyes, while her dry lips were
muttering inaudible words.
"Lie down, my sweet child--lie down, for your own mother," she said;
"if you tire yourself, you can't grow well, and your poor mother will
lose you."
At these words, the child suddenly cried out again, in precisely the same
loud, strong voice--"No! no! the baby first, the baby first"--and
immediately afterwards lay down, and fell, for the first time since her
illness into a tranquil sleep.
My good little wife sate, crying bitterly by her bedside. The child was
better--_that_ was, indeed, delightful. But then there was an omen in the
words, thus echoed from her dream, which she dared not trust herself to
interpret, and which yet had seized, with a grasp of iron, upon every
fibre of her brain.
"Oh, Richard," she cried, as she threw her arms about my neck, "I am
terrified at this horrible menace from the unseen world. Oh! poor,
darling little baby, I shall lose you--I am sure I shall lose you.
Comfort me, darling, and say he is not to die."
And so I did; and tasked all my powers of argument and persuasion to
convince her how unsubstantial was the ground of her anxiety. The little
boy was perfectly well, and, even were he to die before his sister that
event might not occur for seventy years to come. I could not, however,
conceal from myself that there was something odd and unpleasant in the
coincidence; and my poor wife had grown so nervous and excitable, that a
much less ominous conjecture would have sufficed to alarm her.
Meanwhile, the unaccountable terror which our lodger's presence inspired
continued to increase. One of our maids gave us warning, solely from her
dread of our queer inmate, and the strange accessories which haunted him.
She said--and this was corroborated by her fellow-servant--that Mr. Smith
seemed to have constantly a companion in his room; that although they
never heard them speak, they continually and distinctly heard the tread
of two persons walking up and down the room together, and described
accurately the peculiar sound of a stick or crutch tapping upon the
floor, which my own ears had heard. They also had seen the large,
ill-conditioned cat I have mentioned, frequently steal in and out of the
stranger's room; and observed that when our little girl was in greatest
danger, the hateful animal was constantly writhing, fawning, and crawling
about the door of the sick room after nightfall. They were thoroughly
persuaded that this ill-omened beast was the foul fiend himself, and I
confess I could not--sceptic as I was--bring myself absolutely to the
belief that he was nothing more than a "harmless, necessary cat." These
and similar reports--implicitly believed as they palpably were by those
who made them--were certainly little calculated to allay the perturbation
and alarm with which our household was filled.
The evenings had by this time shortened very much, and darkness often
overtook us before we sate down to our early tea. It happened just at
this period of which I have been speaking, after my little girl had begun
decidedly to mend, that I was sitting in our dining-parlour, with my
little boy fast asleep upon my knees, and thinking of I know not what, my
wife having gone up stairs, as usual, to sit in the room with little
Fanny. As I thus sate in what was to me, in effect, total solitude,
darkness unperceived stole on us.
On a sudden, as I sate, with my elbow leaning upon the table, and my
other arm round the sleeping child, I felt, as I thought, a cold
current of air faintly blowing upon my forehead. I raised my head, and
saw, as nearly as I could calculate, at the far end of the table on
which my arm rested, two large green eyes confronting me. I could see
no more, but instantly concluded they were those of the abominable cat.
Yielding to an impulse of horror and abhorrence, I caught a water-croft
that was close to my hand, and threw it full at it with all my force. I
must have missed my object, for the shining eyes continued fixed for a
second, and then glided still nearer to me, and then a little nearer
still. The noise of the glass smashed with so much force upon the table
called in the servant, who happened to be passing. She had a candle in
her hand, and, perhaps, the light alarmed the odious beast, for as she
came in it was gone.
I had had an undefined idea that its approach was somehow connected with
a designed injury of some sort to the sleeping child. I could not be
mistaken as to the fact that I had plainly seen the two broad, glaring,
green eyes. Where the cursed animal had gone I had not observed: it
might, indeed, easily have run out at the door as the servant opened it,
but neither of us had seen it do so; and we were every one of us in such
a state of nervous excitement, that even this incident was something in
the catalogue of our ambiguous experiences.
It was a great happiness to see our darling little Fanny every day
mending, and now quite out of danger: this was cheering and delightful.
It was also something to know that more than two months of our lodger's
term of occupation had already expired; and to realise, as we now could
do, by anticipation, the unspeakable relief of his departure.
My wife strove hard to turn our dear child's recovery to good account for
me; but the impressions of fear soon depart, and those of religious
gratitude must be preceded by religious faith. All as yet was but as seed
strewn upon the rock.
Little Fanny, though recovering rapidly, was still very weak, and her
mother usually passed a considerable part of every evening in her
bedroom--for the child was sometimes uneasy and restless at night. It
happened at this period that, sitting as usual at Fanny's bedside, she
witnessed an occurrence which agitated her not a little.
The child had been, as it seems, growing sleepy, and was lying
listlessly, with eyes half open, apparently taking no note of what was
passing. Suddenly, however, with an expression of the wildest terror, she
drew up her limbs, and cowered in the bed's head, gazing at some object;
which, judging from the motion of her eyes, must have been slowly
advancing from the end of the room next the door.
The child made a low shuddering cry, as she grasped her mother's hand,
and, with features white and tense with terror, slowly following with her
eyes the noiseless course of some unseen spectre, shrinking more and more
fearfully backward every moment.
"What is it? Where? What is it that frightens you, my darling?" asked the
poor mother, who, thrilled with horror, looked in vain for the apparition
which seemed to have all but bereft the child of reason.
"Stay with me--save me--keep it away--look, look at it--making signs to
me--don't let it hurt me--it is angry--Oh! mamma, save me, save me!"
The child said this, all the time clinging to her with both her hands, in
an ecstasy of panic.
"There--there, my darling," said my poor wife, "don't be afraid; there's
nothing but me--your own mamma--and little baby in the room; nothing, my
darling; nothing indeed."
"Mamma, mamma, don't move; don't go near him"; the child continued
wildly. "It's only his back now; don't make him turn again; he's untying
his handkerchief. Oh! baby, baby; he'll _kill_ baby! and he's lifting up
those green things from his eyes; don't you see him doing it? Mamma,
mamma, why does he come here? Oh, mamma, poor baby--poor little baby!"
She was looking with a terrified gaze at the little boy's bed, which lay
directly opposite to her own, and in which he was sleeping calmly.
"Hush, hush, my darling child," said my wife, with difficulty
restraining an hysterical burst of tears; "for God's sake don't speak so
wildly, my own precious love--there, there--don't be frightened--there,
darling, there."
"Oh! poor baby--poor little darling baby," the child continued as before;
"will no one save him--tell that wicked man to go away--oh--there--why,
mamma--don't--oh, sure you won't let him--don't--don't--he'll take the
child's life--will you let him lie down that way on the bed--save poor
little baby--oh, baby, baby, waken--his head is on your face."
As she said this she raised her voice to a cry of despairing terror which
made the whole room ring again.
This cry, or rather yell, reached my ears as I sate reading in the
parlour by myself, and fearing I knew not what, I rushed to the
apartment; before I reached it, the sound had subsided into low but
violent sobbing; and, just as I arrived at the threshold I heard, close
at my feet, a fierce protracted growl, and something rubbing along the
surbase. I was in the dark, but, with a feeling of mingled terror and
fury, I stamped and struck at the abhorred brute with my feet, but in
vain. The next moment I was in the room, and heard little Fanny, through
her sobs, cry--
"Oh, poor baby is killed--that wicked man has killed him--he uncovered
his face, and put it on him, and lay upon the bed and killed poor baby. I
knew he came to kill him. Ah, papa, papa, why did you not come up before
he went?--he is gone, he went away as soon as he killed our poor little
darling baby."
I could not conceal my agitation, quite, and I said to my wife--
"Has he, Smith, been here?"
"No."
"What is it, then?"
"The child has seen _some_ one."
"Seen whom? Who? Who has been here?"
"I did not see it; but--but I am sure the child saw--that is, _thought_
she saw _him_;--the person you have named. Oh, God, in mercy deliver us!
What shall I do--what shall I do!"
Thus saying, the dear little woman burst into tears, and crying, as if
her heart would break, sobbed out an entreaty that I would look at baby;
adding, that she herself had not courage to see whether her darling was
sleeping or dead.
"Dead!" I exclaimed. "Tut, tut, my darling; you must not give way to such
morbid fancies--he is very well, I see him breathing;" and so saying, I
went over to the bed where our little boy was lying. He was slumbering;
though it seemed to me very heavily, and his cheeks were flushed.
"Sleeping tranquilly, my darling--tranquilly, and deeply; and with a
warm colour in his cheeks," I said, rearranging the coverlet, and
retiring to my wife, who sate almost breathless whilst I was looking at
our little boy.
"Thank God--thank God," she said quietly; and she wept again; and rising,
came to his bedside.
"Yes, yes--alive; thank God; but it seems to me he is breathing very
short, and with difficulty, and he looks--_does_ he not look hot and
feverish? Yes, he _is_ very hot; feel his little hand--feel his neck;
merciful heaven! he is burning."
It was, indeed, very true, that his skin was unnaturally dry and hot; his
little pulse, too, was going at a fearful rate.
"I do think," said I--resolved to conceal the extent of my own
apprehensions--"I do think that he is just a _little_ feverish; but he
has often been much more so; and will, I dare say, in the morning, be
perfectly well again. I dare say, but for little Fanny's _dream_, we
should not have observed it at all."
"Oh, my darling, my darling, my darling!" sobbed the poor little woman,
leaning over the bed, with her hands locked together, and looking the
very picture of despair. "Oh, my darling, what has happened to you? I put
you into your bed, looking so well and beautiful, this evening, and here
you are, stricken with sickness, my own little love. Oh, you will
not--you cannot, leave your poor mother!"
It was quite plain that she despaired of the child from the moment we had
ascertained that it was unwell. As it happened, her presentiment was but
too truly prophetic. The apothecary said the child's ailment was
"suppressed small-pox"; the physician pronounced it "typhus." The only
certainty about it was the issue--the child died.
To me few things appear so beautiful as a very young child in its
shroud. The little innocent face looks so sublimely simple and confiding
amongst the cold terrors of death--crimeless, and fearless, that little
mortal has passed alone under the shadow, and explored the mystery of
dissolution. There is death in its sublimest and purest image--no
hatred, no hypocrisy, no suspicion, no care for the morrow ever darkened
that little face; death has come lovingly upon it; there is nothing
cruel, or harsh, in his victory. The yearnings of love, indeed, cannot
be stifled; for the prattle, and smiles, and all the little world of
thoughts that were so delightful, are gone for ever. Awe, too, will
overcast us in its presence--for we are looking on death; but we do not
fear for the little, lonely voyager--for the child has gone, simple and
trusting, into the presence of its all-wise Father; and of such, we
know, is the kingdom of heaven.
And so we parted from poor little baby. I and his poor old nurse
drove in a mourning carriage, in which lay the little coffin, early
in the morning, to the churchyard of ----. Sore, indeed, was my
heart, as I followed that little coffin to the grave! Another burial
had just concluded as we entered the churchyard, and the mourners
stood in clusters round the grave, into which the sexton was now
shovelling the mould.
As I stood, with head uncovered, listening to the sublime and touching
service which our ritual prescribes, I found that a gentleman had drawn
near also, and was standing at my elbow. I did not turn to look at him
until the earth had closed over my darling boy; I then walked a little
way apart, that I might be alone, and drying my eyes, sat down upon a
tombstone, to let the confusion of my mind subside.
While I was thus lost in a sorrowful reverie, the gentleman who had stood
near me at the grave was once more at my side. The face of the stranger,
though I could not call it handsome, was very remarkable; its expression
was the purest and noblest I could conceive, and it was made very
beautiful by a look of such compassion as I never saw before.
"Why do you sorrow as one without hope?" he said, gently.
"I _have_ no hope," I answered.
"Nay, I think you have," he answered again; "and I am sure you will soon
have more. That little child for which you grieve, has escaped the
dangers and miseries of life; its body has perished; but he will receive
in the end the crown of life. God has given him an early victory."
I know not what it was in him that rebuked my sullen pride, and humbled
and saddened me, as I listened to this man. He was dressed in deep
mourning, and looked more serene, noble, and sweet than any I had ever
seen. He was young, too, as I have said, and his voice very clear and
harmonious. He talked to me for a long time, and I listened to him with
involuntary reverence. At last, however, he left me, saying he had often
seen me walking into town, about the same hour that he used to go that
way, and that if he saw me again he would walk with me, and so we might
reason of these things together.
It was late when I returned to my home, now a house of mourning.
PART II
Our home was one of sorrow and of fear. The child's death had stricken us
with terror no less than grief. Referring it, as we both tacitly did, to
the mysterious and fiendish agency of the abhorred being whom, in an evil
hour, we had admitted into our house, we both viewed him with a degree
and species of fear for which I can find no name.
I felt that some further calamity was impending. I could not hope that we
were to be delivered from the presence of the malignant agent who
haunted, rather than inhabited our home, without some additional proofs
alike of his malice and his power.
My poor wife's presentiments were still more terrible and overpowering,
though not more defined, than my own. She was never tranquil while our
little girl was out of her sight; always dreading and expecting some new
revelation of the evil influence which, as we were indeed both persuaded,
had bereft our darling little boy of life. Against an hostility so
unearthly and intangible there was no guarding, and the sense of
helplessness intensified the misery of our situation. Tormented with
doubts of the very basis of her religion, and recoiling from the ordeal
of prayer with the strange horror with which the victim of hydrophobia
repels the pure water, she no longer found the consolation which, had
sorrow reached her in any other shape, she would have drawn from the
healing influence of religion. We were both of us unhappy, dismayed,
DEMON-STRICKEN.
Meanwhile, our lodger's habits continued precisely the same. If, indeed,
the sounds which came from his apartments were to be trusted, he and his
agents were more on the alert than ever. I can convey to you, good
reader, no notion, even the faintest, of the dreadful sensation always
more or less present to my mind, and sometimes with a reality which
thrilled me almost to frenzy--the apprehension that I had admitted into
my house the incarnate spirit of the dead or damned, to torment me and
my family.
It was some nights after the burial of our dear little baby; we had not
gone to bed until late, and I had slept, I suppose, some hours, when I
was awakened by my wife, who clung to me with the energy of terror. She
said nothing, but grasped and shook me with more than her natural
strength. She had crept close to me, and was cowering with her head under
the bedclothes.
The room was perfectly dark, as usual, for we burned no night-light; but
from the side of the bed next her proceeded a voice as of one sitting
there with his head within a foot of the curtains--and, merciful heavens!
it was the voice of our lodger.
He was discoursing of the death of our baby, and inveighing, in the old
mocking tone of hate and suppressed fury, against the justice, mercy, and
goodness of God. He did this with a terrible plausibility of sophistry,
and with a resolute emphasis and precision, which seemed to imply, "I
have got something to tell you, and, whether you like it or like it not,
I _will_ say out my say."
To pretend that I felt anger at his intrusion, or emotion of any sort,
save the one sense of palsied terror, would be to depart from the truth.
I lay, cold and breathless, as if frozen to death--unable to move, unable
to utter a cry--with the voice of that demon pouring, in the dark, his
undisguised blasphemies and temptations close into my ears. At last the
dreadful voice ceased--whether the speaker went or stayed I could not
tell--the silence, which he might be improving for the purpose of some
hellish strategem, was to me more tremendous even than his speech.
We both lay awake, not daring to move or speak, scarcely even breathing,
but clasping one another fast, until at length the welcome light of day
streamed into the room through the opening door, as the servant came in
to call us. I need not say that our nocturnal visitant had left us.
The magnanimous reader will, perhaps, pronounce that I ought to have
pulled on my boots and inexpressibles with all available despatch, run to
my lodger's bedroom, and kicked him forthwith downstairs, and the entire
way moreover out to the public road, as some compensation for the
scandalous affront put upon me and my wife by his impertinent visit. Now,
at that time, I had no scruples against what are termed the laws of
honour, was by no means deficient in "pluck," and gifted, moreover, with
a somewhat excitable temper. Yet, I will honestly avow that, so far from
courting a collision with the dreaded stranger, I would have recoiled at
his very sight, and given my eyes to avoid him, such was the ascendancy
which he had acquired over me, as well as everybody else in my household,
in his own quiet, irresistible, hellish way.
The shuddering antipathy which our guest inspired did not rob his
infernal homily of its effect. It was not a new or strange thing which
he presented to our minds. There was an awful subtlety in the train of
his suggestions. All that he had said had floated through my own mind
before, without order, indeed, or shew of logic. From my own rebellious
heart the same evil thoughts had risen, like pale apparitions hovering
and lost in the fumes of a necromancer's cauldron. His was like the
summing up of all this--a reflection of my own feelings and fancies--but
reduced to an awful order and definiteness, and clothed with a
sophistical form of argument. The effect of it was powerful. It revived
and exaggerated these bad emotions--it methodised and justified
them--and gave to impulses and impressions, vague and desultory before,
something of the compactness of a system.
My misfortune, therefore, did not soften, it exasperated me. I regarded
the Great Disposer of events as a persecutor of the human race, who took
delight in their miseries. I asked why my innocent child had been smitten
down into the grave?--and why my darling wife, whose first object, I
knew, had ever been to serve and glorify her Maker, should have been thus
tortured and desolated by the cruelest calamity which the malignity of a
demon could have devised? I railed and blasphemed, and even in my agony
defied God with the impotent rage and desperation of a devil, in his
everlasting torment.
In my bitterness, I could not forbear speaking these impenitent
repetitions of the language of our nightly visitant, even in the presence
of my wife. She heard me with agony, almost with terror. I pitied and
loved her too much not to respect even her weaknesses--for so I
characterised her humble submission to the chastisements of heaven. But
even while I spared her reverential sensitiveness, the spectacle of her
patience but enhanced my own gloomy and impenitent rage.
I was walking into town in this evil mood, when I was overtaken by the
gentleman whom I had spoken with in the churchyard on the morning when my
little boy was buried. I call him _gentleman_, but I could not say _what_
was his rank--I never thought about it; there was a grace, a purity, a
compassion, and a grandeur of intellect in his countenance, in his
language, in his mien, that was beautiful and kinglike. I felt, in his
company, a delightful awe, and an humbleness more gratifying than any
elation of earthly pride.
He divined my state of feeling, but he said nothing harsh. He did not
rebuke, but he reasoned with me--and oh! how mighty was that
reasoning--without formality--without effort--as the flower grows and
blossoms. Its process was in harmony with the successions of
nature--gentle, spontaneous, irresistible.
At last he left me. I was grieved at his departure--I was
wonder-stricken. His discourse had made me cry tears at once sweet and
bitter; it had sounded depths I knew not of, and my heart was disquieted
within me. Yet my trouble was happier than the resentful and defiant calm
that had reigned within me before.
When I came home, I told my wife of my having met the same good, wise man
I had first seen by the grave of my child. I recounted to her his
discourse, and, as I brought it again to mind, my tears flowed afresh,
and I was happy while I wept.
I now see that the calamity which bore at first such evil fruit, was good
for me. It fixed my mind, however rebelliously, upon God, and it stirred
up all the passions of my heart. Levity, inattention, and
self-complacency are obstacles harder to be overcome than the violence of
evil passions--the transition from hate is easier than from indifference,
to love. A mighty change was making on my mind.
I need not particularise the occasions upon which I again met my
friend, for so I knew him to be, nor detail the train of reasoning and
feeling which in such interviews he followed out; it is enough to say,
that he assiduously cultivated the good seed he had sown, and that his
benignant teachings took deep root, and flourished in my soul,
heretofore so barren.
One evening, having enjoyed on the morning of the same day another of
those delightful and convincing conversations, I was returning on foot
homeward; and as darkness had nearly closed, and the night threatened
cold and fog, the footpaths were nearly deserted.
As I walked on, deeply absorbed in the discourse I had heard on the same
morning, a person overtook me, and continued to walk, without much
increasing the interval between us, a little in advance of me. There came
upon me, at the same moment, an indefinable sinking of the heart, a
strange and unaccountable fear. The pleasing topics of my meditations
melted away, and gave place to a sense of danger, all the more unpleasant
that it was vague and objectless. I looked up. What was that which moved
before me? I stared--I faltered; my heart fluttered as if it would choke
me, and then stood still. It was the peculiar and unmistakeable form of
our lodger.
Exactly as I looked at him, he turned his head, and looked at me over his
shoulder. His face was muffled as usual. I cannot have seen its features
with any completeness, yet I felt that his look was one of fury. The next
instant he was at my side; and my heart quailed within me--my limbs all
but refused their office; yet the very emotions of terror, which might
have overcome me, acted as a stimulus, and I quickened my pace.
"Hey! what a pious person! So I suppose you have learned at last that
'evil communications corrupt good manners'; and you are absolutely afraid
of the old infidel, the old blasphemer, hey?"
I made him no answer; I was indeed too much agitated to speak.
"You'll make a good Christian, no doubt," he continued; "the independent
man, who thinks for himself, reasons his way to his principles, and
sticks fast to them, is sure to be true to whatever system he embraces.
You have been so consistent a philosopher, that I am sure you will make a
steady Christian. You're not the man to be led by the nose by a
sophistical mumbler. _You_ could never be made the prey of a grasping
proselytism; _you_ are not the sport of every whiff of doctrine, nor the
facile slave of whatever superstition is last buzzed in your ear. No, no:
you've got a masculine intellect, and think for yourself, hey?"
I was incapable of answering him. I quickened my pace to escape from his
detested persecution; but he was close beside me still.
We walked on together thus for a time, during which I heard him muttering
fast to himself, like a man under fierce and malignant excitement. We
reached, at length, the gateway of my dwelling; and I turned the
latch-key in the wicket, and entered the enclosure. As we stood together
within, he turned full upon me, and confronting me with an aspect whose
character I felt rather than saw, he said--
"And so you mean to be a Christian, after all! Now just reflect how very
absurdly you are choosing. Leave the Bible to that class of fanatics who
may hope to be saved under its system, and, in the name of common sense,
study the Koran, or some less ascetic tome. Don't be gulled by a
plausible slave, who wants nothing more than to multiply _professors_ of
his theory. Why don't you _read_ the Bible, you miserable, puling
poltroon, before you hug it as a treasure? Why don't you read it, and
learn out of the mouth of the founder of Christianity, that there is one
sin for which there is _no_ forgiveness--blasphemy against the Holy
Ghost, hey?--and that sin I myself have heard you commit by the hour--in
my presence--in my room. I have heard you commit it in our free
discussions a dozen times. The Bible seals against you the lips of mercy.
If _it_ be true, you are this moment as irrevocably damned as if you had
died with those blasphemies on your lips."
Having thus spoken, he glided into the house. I followed slowly.
His words rang in my ears--I was stunned. What he had said I feared might
be true. Giant despair felled me to the earth. He had recalled, and
lighted up with a glare from the pit, remembrances with which I knew not
how to cope. It was true I had spoken with daring impiety of subjects
whose sacredness I now began to appreciate. With trembling hands I opened
the Bible. I read and re-read the mysterious doom recorded by the
Redeemer himself against blasphemers of the Holy Ghost--monsters set
apart from the human race, and damned and dead, even while they live and
walk upon the earth. I groaned--I wept. Henceforward the Bible, I
thought, must be to me a dreadful record of despair. I dared not read it.
I will not weary you with all my mental agonies. My dear little wife did
something toward relieving my mind, but it was reserved for the friend,
to whose heavenly society I owed so much, to tranquillise it once more.
He talked this time to me longer, and even more earnestly than before. I
soon encountered him again. He expounded to me the ways of Providence,
and showed me how needful sorrow was for every servant of God. How mercy
was disguised in tribulation, and our best happiness came to us, like our
children, in tears and wailing. He showed me that trials were sent to
call us up, with a voice of preternatural power, from the mortal apathy
of sin and the world. And then, again, in our new and better state, to
prove our patience and our faith--
"The more trouble befalls you, the nearer is God to you. He visits you in
sorrow--and sorrow, as well as joy, is a sign of his presence. If, then,
other griefs overtake you, remember this--be patient, be faithful; and
bless the name of God."
I returned home comforted and happy, although I felt assured that some
further and sadder trial was before me.
Still our household was overcast by the same insurmountable dread of our
tenant. The same strange habits characterised him, and the same
unaccountable sounds disquieted us--an atmosphere of death and malice
hovered about his door, and we all hated and feared to pass it.
Let me now tell, as well and briefly as I may, the dreadful circumstances
of my last great trial. One morning, my wife being about her household
affairs, and I on the point of starting for town, I went into the parlour
for some letters which I was to take with me. I cannot easily describe my
consternation when, on entering the room, I saw our lodger seated near
the window, with our darling little girl upon his knee.
His back was toward the door, but I could plainly perceive that the
respirator had been removed from his mouth, and that the odious green
goggles were raised. He was sitting, as it seemed, absolutely without
motion, and his face was advanced close to that of the child.
I stood looking at this group in a state of stupor for some seconds. He
was, I suppose, conscious of my presence, for although he did not turn
his head, or otherwise take any note of my arrival, he readjusted the
muffler which usually covered his mouth, and lowered the clumsy
spectacles to their proper place.
The child was sitting upon his knee as motionless as he himself, with a
countenance white and rigid as that of a corpse, and from which every
trace of meaning, except some vague character of terror, had fled, and
staring with a fixed and dilated gaze into his face.
As it seemed, she did not perceive my presence. Her eyes were transfixed
and fascinated. She did not even seem to me to breathe. Horror and
anguish at last overcame my stupefaction.
"What--what is it?" I cried; "what ails my child, my darling child?"
"I'd be glad to know, myself," he replied, coolly; "it is certainly
something very queer."
"What is it, darling?" I repeated, frantically, addressing the child.
"What is it?" he reiterated. "Why it's pretty plain, I should suppose,
that the child is ill."
"Oh merciful God!" I cried, half furious, half terrified--"You have
injured her--you have terrified her. Give me my child--give her to me."
These words I absolutely shouted, and stamped upon the floor in my horrid
excitement.
"Pooh, pooh!" he said, with a sort of ugly sneer; "the child is
nervous--you'll make her more so--be quiet and she'll probably find her
tongue presently. I have had her on my knee some minutes, but the sweet
bird could not tell what ails her."
"Let the child go," I shouted in a voice of thunder; "let her go, I
say--let her go."
He took the passive, death-like child, and placed her standing by the
window, and rising, he simply said--
"As soon as you grow cool, you are welcome to ask me what questions you
like. The child is plainly ill. I should not wonder if she had seen
something that frightened her."
Having thus spoken, he passed from the room. I felt as if I spoke, saw,
and walked in a horrid dream. I seized the darling child in my arms, and
bore her away to her mother.
"What is it--for mercy's sake what is the matter?" she cried, growing in
an instant as pale as the poor child herself.
"I found that--that _demon_--in the parlour with the child on his lap,
staring in her face. She is manifestly terrified."
"Oh! gracious God! she is lost--she is killed," cried the poor
mother, frantically looking into the white, apathetic, meaningless
face of the child.
"Fanny, darling Fanny, tell us if you are ill," I cried, pressing the
little girl in terror to my heart.
"Tell your own mother, my darling," echoed my poor little wife. "Oh!
darling, darling child, speak to your poor mother."
It was all in vain. Still the same dilated, imploring gaze--the same pale
face--wild and dumb. We brought her to the open window--we gave her cold
water to drink--we sprinkled it in her face. We sent for the apothecary,
who lived hard by, and he arrived in a few moments, with a parcel of
tranquillising medicines. These, however, were equally unavailing.
Hour after hour passed away. The darling child looked upon us as if she
would have given the world to speak to us, or to weep, but she uttered no
sound. Now and then she drew a long breath as though preparing to say
something, but still she was mute. She often put her hand to her throat,
as if there was some pain or obstruction there.
I never can, while I live, lose one line of that mournful and terrible
portrait--the face of my stricken child. As hour after hour passed away,
without bringing the smallest change or amendment, we grew both alarmed,
and at length absolutely terrified for her safety.
We called in a physician toward night, and told him that we had reason to
suspect that the child had somehow been frightened, and that in no other
way could we at all account for the extraordinary condition in which he
found her.
This was a man, I may as well observe, though I do not name him, of the
highest eminence in his profession, and one in whose skill, from past
personal experience, I had the best possible reasons for implicitly
confiding.
He asked a multiplicity of questions, the answers to which seemed to
baffle his attempts to arrive at a satisfactory diagnosis. There was
something undoubtedly anomalous in the case, and I saw plainly that there
were features in it which puzzled and perplexed him not a little.
At length, however, he wrote his prescription, and promised to return at
nine o'clock. I remember there was something to be rubbed along her
spine, and some medicines beside.
But these remedies were as entirely unavailing as the others. In a state
of dismay and distraction we watched by the bed in which, in accordance
with the physician's direction, we had placed her. The absolute
changelessness of her condition filled us with despair. The day which had
elapsed had not witnessed even a transitory variation in the dreadful
character of her seizure. Any change, even a change for the worse, would
have been better than this sluggish, hopeless monotony of suffering.
At the appointed hour the physician returned. He appeared disappointed,
almost shocked, at the failure of his prescriptions. On feeling her pulse
he declared that she must have a little wine. There had been a wonderful
prostration of all the vital powers since he had seen her before. He
evidently thought the case a strange and precarious one.
She was made to swallow the wine, and her pulse rallied for a time, but
soon subsided again. I and the physician were standing by the fire,
talking in whispers of the darling child's symptoms, and likelihood of
recovery, when we were arrested in our conversation by a cry of anguish
from the poor mother, who had never left the bedside of her little child,
and this cry broke into bitter and convulsive weeping.
The poor little child had, on a sudden, stretched down her little hands
and feet, and died. There is no mistaking the features of death: the
filmy eye and dropt jaw once seen, are recognised whenever we meet them
again. Yet, spite of our belief, we cling to hope; and the distracted
mother called on the physician, in accents which might have moved a
statue, to say that her darling was not dead, not quite dead--that
something might still be done--that it could not be all over. Silently
he satisfied himself that no throb of life still fluttered in that
little frame.
"It is, indeed, all over," he said, in tones scarce above a whisper; and
pressing my hand kindly, he said, "comfort your poor wife"; and so, after
a momentary pause, he left the room.
This blow had smitten me with stunning suddenness. I looked at the dead
child, and from her to her poor mother. Grief and pity were both
swallowed up in transports of fury and detestation with which the
presence in my house of the wretch who had wrought all this destruction
and misery filled my soul. My heart swelled with ungovernable rage; for a
moment my habitual fear of him was neutralised by the vehemence of these
passions. I seized a candle in silence, and mounted the stairs. The sight
of the accursed cat, flitting across the lobby, and the loneliness of the
hour, made me hesitate for an instant. I had, however, gone so far, that
shame sustained me. Overcoming a momentary thrill of dismay, and
determined to repel and defy the influence that had so long awed me, I
knocked sharply at the door, and, almost at the same instant, pushed it
open, and entered our lodger's chamber.
He had had no candle in the room, and it was lighted only by the
"darkness visible" that entered through the window. The candle which I
held very imperfectly illuminated the large apartment; but I saw his
spectral form floating, rather than walking, back and forward in front of
the windows.
At sight of him, though I hated him more than ever, my instinctive fear
returned. He confronted me, and drew nearer and nearer, without speaking.
There was something indefinably fearful in the silent attraction which
seemed to be drawing him to me. I could not help recoiling, little by
little, as he came toward me, and with an effort I said--
"You know why I have come: the child--she's dead!"
"Dead--ha!--_dead_--is she?" he said, in his odious, mocking tone.
"Yes--dead!" I cried, with an excitement which chilled my very marrow
with horror; "and _you_ have killed her, as you killed my other."
"How?--I killed her!--eh?--ha, ha!" he said, still edging nearer
and nearer.
"Yes; I say you!" I shouted, trembling in every joint, but
possessed by that unaccountable infatuation which has made men
invoke, spite of themselves, their own destruction, and which I was
powerless to resist--"deny it as you may, it is you who killed
her--wretch!--FIEND!--no wonder she could not stand the breath and
glare of HELL!"
"And you are one of those who believe that not a sparrow falls to the
ground without your Creator's consent," he said, with icy sarcasm; "and
this is a specimen of Christian resignation--hey? You charge his act upon
a poor fellow like me, simply that you may cheat the devil, and rave and
rebel against the decrees of heaven, under pretence of abusing me. The
breath and flare of hell!--eh? You mean that I removed this and these
(touching the covering of his mouth and eyes successively) as I _shall_
do now again, and show you there's no great harm in that."
There was a tone of menace in his concluding words not to be mistaken.
"Murderer and liar from the beginning, as you are, I defy you!" I
shouted, in a frenzy of hate and horror, stamping furiously on the floor.
As I said this, it seemed to me that he darkened and dilated before my
eyes. My senses, thoughts, consciousness, grew horribly confused, as if
some powerful, extraneous will, were seizing upon the functions of my
brain. Whether I were to be mastered by death, or madness, or possession,
I knew not; but hideous destruction of some sort was impending: all hung
upon the moment, and I cried aloud, in my agony, an adjuration in the
name of the three persons of the Trinity, that he should not torment me.
Stunned, bewildered, like a man recovered from a drunken fall, I stood,
freezing and breathless, in the same spot, looking into the room, which
wore, in my eyes, a strange, unearthly character. Mr. Smith was cowering
darkly in the window, and, after a silence, spoke to me in a croaking,
sulky tone, which was, however, unusually submissive.
"Don't it strike you as an odd procedure to break into a gentleman's
apartment at such an hour, for the purpose of railing at him in the
coarsest language? If you have any charge to make against me, do so; I
invite inquiry and defy your worst. If you think you can bring home to me
the smallest share of blame in this unlucky matter, call the coroner, and
let his inquest examine and cross-examine me, and sift the matter--if,
indeed, there is anything to _be_ sifted--to the bottom. Meanwhile, go
you about your business, and leave me to mine. But I see how the wind
sits; you want to get rid of me, and so you make the place odious to me.
But it won't do; and if you take to making criminal charges against me,
you had better look to yourself; for two can play at that game."
There was a suppressed whine in all this, which strangely contrasted with
the cool and threatening tone of his previous conversation.
Without answering a word I hurried from the room, and scarcely felt
secure, even when once more in the melancholy chamber, where my poor wife
was weeping.
Miserable, horrible was the night that followed. The loss of our child
was a calamity which we had not dared to think of. It had come, and with
a suddenness enough to bereave me of reason. It seemed all unreal, all
fantastic. It needed an effort to convince me, minute after minute, that
the dreadful truth was so; and the old accustomed feeling that she was
still alive, still running from room to room, and the expectation that I
should hear her step and her voice, and see her entering at the door,
would return. But still the sense of dismay, of having received some
stunning, irreparable blow, remained behind; and then came the horrible
effort, like that with which one rouses himself from a haunted sleep, the
question, "What disaster is this that has befallen?"--answered, alas! but
too easily, too terribly! Amidst all this was perpetually rising before
my fancy the obscure, dilated figure of our lodger, as he had confronted
me in his malign power that night. I dismissed the image with a shudder
as often as it recurred; and even now, at this distance of time, I have
felt more than I could well describe in the mere effort to fix my
recollection upon its hated traits, while writing the passages I have
just concluded.
This hateful scene I did not recount to my poor wife. Its horrors were
too fresh upon me. I had not courage to trust myself with the agitating
narrative; and so I sate beside her, with her hand locked in mine: I had
no comfort to offer but the dear love I bore her.
At last, like a child, she cried herself to sleep--the dull, heavy
slumber of worn-out grief. As for me, the agitation of my soul was too
fearful and profound for repose. My eye accidentally rested on the holy
volume, which lay upon the table open, as I had left it in the morning;
and the first words which met my eye were these--"For our light
affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more
exceeding and eternal weight of glory." This blessed sentence riveted my
attention, and shed a stream of solemn joy upon my heart; and so the
greater part of that mournful night, I continued to draw comfort and
heavenly wisdom from the same inspired source.
Next day brought the odious incident, the visit of the undertaker--the
carpentery, upholstery, and millinery of death. Why has not civilisation
abolished these repulsive and shocking formalities? What has the poor
corpse to do with frills, and pillows, and napkins, and all the equipage
in which it rides on its last journey? There is no intrusion so jarring
to the decent grief of surviving affection, no conceivable mummery more
derisive of mortality.
In the room which we had been so long used to call "the nursery," now
desolate and mute, the unclosed coffin lay, with our darling shrouded in
it. Before we went to our rest at night we visited it. In the morning the
lid was to close over that sweet face, and I was to see the child laid by
her little brother. We looked upon the well-known and loved features,
purified in the sublime serenity of death, for a long time, whispering to
one another, among our sobs, how sweet and beautiful we thought she
looked; and at length, weeping bitterly, we tore ourselves away.
We talked and wept for many hours, and at last, in sheer exhaustion,
dropt asleep. My little wife awaked me, and said--
"I think they have come--the--the undertakers."
It was still dark, so I could not consult my watch; but they were to have
arrived early, and as it was winter, and the nights long, the hour of
their visit might well have arrived.
"What, darling, is your reason for thinking so?" I asked.
"I am sure I have heard them for some time in the nursery," she answered.
"Oh! dear, dear little Fanny! Don't allow them to close the coffin until
I have seen my darling once more."
I got up, and threw some clothes hastily about me. I opened the door and
listened. A sound like a muffled knocking reached me from the nursery.
"Yes, my darling!" I said, "I think they have come. I will go and desire
them to wait until you have seen her again."
And, so saying, I hastened from the room.
Our bedchamber lay at the end of a short corridor, opening from the
lobby, at the head of the stairs, and the nursery was situated nearly at
the end of a corresponding passage, which opened from the same lobby at
the opposite side As I hurried along I distinctly heard the same sounds.
The light of dawn had not yet appeared, but there was a strong moonlight
shining through the windows. I thought the morning could hardly be so far
advanced as we had at first supposed; but still, strangely as it now
seems to me, suspecting nothing amiss, I walked on in noiseless,
slippered feet, to the nursery-door. It stood half open; some one had
unquestionably visited it since we had been there. I stepped forward, and
entered. At the threshold horror arrested my advance.
The coffin was placed upon tressles at the further extremity of the
chamber, with the foot of it nearly towards the door, and a large window
at the side of it admitted the cold lustre of the moon full upon the
apparatus of mortality, and the objects immediately about it.
At the foot of the coffin stood the ungainly form of our lodger. He
seemed to be intently watching the face of the corpse, and was stooped a
little, while with his hands he tapped sharply, from time to time at the
sides of the coffin, like one who designs to awaken a slumberer. Perched
upon the body of the child, and nuzzling among the grave-clothes, with a
strange kind of ecstasy, was the detested brute, the cat I have so often
mentioned.
The group thus revealed, I looked upon but for one instant; in the next I
shouted, in absolute terror--
"In God's name! what are you doing?"
Our lodger shuffled away abruptly, as if disconcerted; but the
ill-favoured cat, whisking round, stood like a demon sentinel upon the
corpse, growling and hissing, with arched back and glaring eyes.
The lodger, turning abruptly toward me, motioned me to one side.
Mechanically I obeyed his gesture, and he hurried hastily from the room.
Sick and dizzy, I returned to my own chamber. I confess I had not nerve
to combat the infernal brute, which still held possession of the room,
and so I left it undisturbed.
This incident I did not tell to my wife until some time afterwards; and I
mention it here because it was, and is, in my mind associated with a
painful circumstance which very soon afterwards came to light.
That morning I witnessed the burial of my darling child. Sore and
desolate was my heart; but with infinite gratitude to the great
controller of all events, I recognised in it a change which nothing but
the spirit of all good can effect. The love and fear of God had grown
strong within me--in humbleness I bowed to his awful will--with a sincere
trust I relied upon the goodness, the wisdom, and the mercy of him who
had sent this great affliction. But a further incident connected with
this very calamity was to test this trust and patience to the uttermost.
It was still early when I returned, having completed the last sad office.
My wife, as I afterwards learned, still lay weeping upon her bed. But
somebody awaited my return in the hall, and opened the door, anticipating
my knock. This person was our lodger.
I was too much appalled by the sudden presentation of this abhorred
spectre even to retreat, as my instinct would have directed, through the
open door.
"I have been expecting your return," he said, "with the design of saying
something which it might have profited you to learn, but now I apprehend
it is too late. What a pity you are so violent and impatient; you would
not have heard me, in all probability, this morning. You cannot think
how cross-grained and intemperate you have grown since you became a
saint--but that is your affair, not mine. You have buried your little
daughter this morning. It requires a good deal of that new attribute of
yours, _faith_, which judges all things by a rule of contraries, and can
never see anything but kindness in the worst afflictions which malignity
could devise, to discover benignity and mercy in the torturing calamity
which has just punished you and your wife for _nothing_! But I fancy
that it will be harder still when I tell you what I more than
suspect--ha, ha. It would be really ridiculous, if it were not
heart-rending; that your little girl has been actually buried _alive_;
do you comprehend me?--alive. For, upon my life, I fancy she was not
dead as she lay in her coffin."
I knew the wretch was exulting in the fresh anguish he had just
inflicted. I know not how it was, but any announcement of _disaster_ from
his lips, seemed to me to be necessarily true. Half-stifled with the
dreadful emotions he had raised, palpitating between hope and terror, I
rushed frantically back again, the way I had just come, running as fast
as my speed could carry me, toward the, alas! distant burial-ground where
my darling lay.
I stopped a cab slowly returning to town, at the corner of the lane,
sprang into it, directed the man to drive to the church of ----, and
promised him anything and everything for despatch. The man seemed amazed;
doubtful, perhaps, whether he carried a maniac or a malefactor. Still he
took his chance for the promised reward, and galloped his horse, while I,
tortured with suspense, yelled my frantic incentives to further speed.
At last, in a space immeasurably short, but which to me was protracted
almost beyond endurance, we reached the spot. I halloed to the sexton,
who was now employed upon another grave, to follow me. I myself seized a
mattock, and in obedience to my incoherent and agonised commands, he
worked as he had never worked before. The crumbling mould flew swiftly to
the upper soil--deeper and deeper, every moment, grew the narrow
grave--at last I sobbed, "Thank God--thank God," as I saw the face of the
coffin emerge; a few seconds more and it lay upon the sward beside me,
and we both, with the edges of our spades, ripped up the lid.
_There_ was the corpse--but not the tranquil statue I had seen it last.
Its knees were both raised, and one of its little hands drawn up and
clenched near its throat, as if in a feeble but agonised struggle to
force up the superincumbent mass. The eyes, that I had last seen closed,
were now open, and the face no longer serenely pale, but livid and
distorted.
I had time to see all in an instant; the whole scene reeled and darkened
before me, and I swooned away.
When I came to myself, I found that I had been removed to the
vestry-room. The open coffin was in the aisle of the church, surrounded
by a curious crowd. A medical gentleman had examined the body carefully,
and had pronounced life totally extinct. The trepidation and horror I
experienced were indescribable. I felt like the murderer of my own child.
Desperate as I was of any chance of its life, I dispatched messengers for
no less than three of the most eminent physicians then practising in
London. All concurred--the child was now as dead as any other, the oldest
tenant of the churchyard.
Notwithstanding which, I would not permit the body to be reinterred for
several days, until the symptoms of decay became unequivocal, and the
most fantastic imagination could no longer cherish a doubt. This,
however, I mention only parenthetically, as I hasten to the conclusion of
my narrative. The circumstance which I have last described found its way
to the public, and caused no small sensation at the time.
I drove part of the way home, and then discharged the cab, and walked the
remainder. On my way, with an emotion of ecstasy I cannot describe, I met
the good being to whom I owed so much. I ran to meet him, and felt as if
I could throw myself at his feet, and kiss the very ground before him. I
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