Part 12 (1/2)

Could one of the domestics have expired, and was it the intention of my host to have the body thus honourably removed without casting a gloom over his guests?

Wild as these hypotheses appeared, I could think of nothing better, and was just about to leave the window, and retire to bed, when the driver of the strange carriage, who had hitherto sat motionless, turned, and looked me full in the face. Never shall I forget the appearance of this man, whose sallow countenance, close-shaven dark chin, and small, black moustache, combined with I know not what of martial in his air, struck into me a certain indefinable alarm. No sooner had he caught my eye, than he gathered up his reins, just raised his whip, and started the mortuary vehicle at a walk down the road. I followed it with my eyes till a bend in the avenue hid it from my sight. So wrapt up was my spirit in the exercise of the single sense of vision that it was not till the hea.r.s.e became lost to view that I noticed the entire absence of sound which accompanied its departure. Neither had the bridles and trappings of the white horses jingled as the animals shook their heads, nor had the wheels of the hea.r.s.e crashed upon the gravel of the avenue. I was compelled by all these circ.u.mstances to believe that what I had looked upon was not of this world, and, with a beating heart, I sought refuge in sleep.

”Next morning, feeling far from refreshed, I arrived among the latest at a breakfast which was a desultory and movable feast. Almost all the men had gone forth to hill, forest, or river, in pursuit of the furred, finned, or feathered denizens of the wilds--”

”You speak,” interrupted the schoolboy, ”like a printed book! I like to hear you speak like that. Drive on, old man! Drive on your hea.r.s.e!”

The Bachelor of Arts ”drove on,” without noticing this interruption. ”I tried to 'lead up' to the hea.r.s.e,” he said, ”in conversation with the young ladies of the castle. I endeavoured to a.s.sume the languid and preoccupied air of the guest who, in ghost-stories, has had a bad night with the family spectre. I drew the conversation to the topic of apparitions, and even to warnings of death. I knew that every family worthy of the name has its omen: the Oxenhams a white bird, another house a bra.s.s band, whose airy music is poured forth by invisible performers, and so on. Of course I expected some one to cry, 'Oh, _we've_ got a hea.r.s.e with white horses,' for that is the kind of heirloom an ancient house regards with complacent pride. But n.o.body offered any remarks on the local omen, and even when I drew near the topic of _hea.r.s.es_, one of the girls, my cousin, merely quoted, 'Speak not like a death's-head, good Doll' (my name is Adolphus), and asked me to play at lawn-tennis.

In the evening, in the smoking-room, it was no better, n.o.body had ever heard of an omen in this particular castle. Nay, when I told my story, for it came to that at last, they only laughed at me, and said I must have dreamed it. Of course I expected to be wakened in the night by some awful apparition, but nothing disturbed me. I never slept better, and hea.r.s.es were the last things I thought of during the remainder of my visit. Months pa.s.sed, and I had almost forgotten the vision, or dream, for I began to feel apprehensive that, after all, it _was_ a dream. So costly and elaborate an apparition as a hea.r.s.e with white horses and plumes complete, could never have been got up, regardless of expense, for one occasion only, and to frighten one undergraduate, yet it was certain that the hea.r.s.e was not 'the old family coach.' My entertainers had undeniably never heard of it in their lives before. Even tradition at the castle said nothing of a spectral hea.r.s.e, though the house was credited with a white lady deprived of her hands, and a luminous boy.

Here the Bachelor of Arts paused, and a shower of chaff began.

”Is that really all?” asked the Girton girl.

”Why, this is the third ghost-story to-night without any ghost in it!”

”I don't remember saying that it _was_ a ghost-story,” replied the Bachelor of Arts; ”but I thought a little anecdote of a mere 'warning'

might not be unwelcome.”

”But where does the warning come in?” asked the schoolboy.

”That's just what I was arriving at,” replied the narrator, ”when I was interrupted with as little ceremony as if I had been Mr. Gladstone in the middle of a most important speech. I was going to say that, in the Easter Vacation after my visit to the castle, I went over to Paris with a friend, a fellow of my college. We drove to the Hotel d'Alsace (I believe there is no hotel of that name; if there is, I beg the spirited proprietor's pardon, and a.s.sure him that nothing personal is intended).

We marched upstairs with our bags and baggage, and jolly high stairs they were. When we had removed the soil of travel from our persons, my friend called out to me, 'I say, Jones, why shouldn't we go down by the lift.'

{256} 'All right,' said I, and my friend walked to the door of the mechanical apparatus, opened it, and got in. I followed him, when the porter whose business it is to 'personally conduct' the inmates of the hotel, entered also, and was closing the door.

”His eyes met mine, and I knew him in a moment. I had seen him once before. His sallow face, black, closely shaven chin, furtive glance, and military bearing, were the face and the glance and bearing of the driver of that awful hea.r.s.e!

”In a moment--more swiftly than I can tell you--I pushed past the man, threw open the door, and just managed, by a violent effort, to drag my friend on to the landing. Then the lift rose with a sudden impulse, fell again, and rushed, with frightful velocity, to the bas.e.m.e.nt of the hotel, whence we heard an appalling crash, followed by groans. We rushed downstairs, and the horrible spectacle of destruction that met our eyes I shall never forget. The unhappy porter was expiring in agony; but the warning had saved my life and my friend's.”

”_I was that friend_,” said I--the collector of these anecdotes; ”and so far I can testify to the truth of Jones's story.”

At this moment, however, the gong for dressing sounded, and we went to our several apartments, after this emotional specimen of ”Evenings at Home.”

IN CASTLE PERILOUS.

”What we suffer from most,” said the spectre, when I had partly recovered from my fright, ”is a kind of aphasia.”

The spectre was sitting on the armchair beside my bed in the haunted room of Castle Perilous.

”I don't know,” said I, as distinctly as the chattering of my teeth would permit, ”that I quite follow you. Would you mind--excuse me--handing me that flask which lies on the table near you. . . . Thanks.”

The spectre, without stirring, so arranged the a priori sensuous schemata of time and s.p.a.ce {261} that the silver flask, which had been well out of my reach, was in my hand. I poured half the contents into a cup and offered it to him.

”No spirits,” he said curtly.

I swallowed eagerly the heady liquor, and felt a little more like myself.