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