"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
knew by his heavenly countenance he was come to speak comfort and healing
to my heart.
With humbleness and gratitude, I drank in his sage and holy discourse. I
need not follow the gracious and delightful exposition of God's revealed
will and character with which he cheered and confirmed my faltering
spirit. A solemn joy, a peace and trust, streamed on my heart. The wreck
and desolation there, lost their bleak and ghastly character, like ruins
illuminated by the mellow beams of a solemn summer sunset.
In this conversation, I told him what I had never revealed to any one
before--the absolute terror, in all its stupendous and maddening
amplitude, with which I regarded our ill-omened lodger, and my agonised
anxiety to rid my house of him. My companion answered me--
"I know the person of whom you speak--he designs no good for you or any
other. He, too, knows me, and I have intimated to him that he must now
leave you, and visit you no more. Be firm and bold, trusting in God,
through his Son, like a good soldier, and you will win the victory from a
greater and even worse than he--the _unseen_ enemy of mankind. You need
not see or speak with your evil tenant any more. Call to him from your
hall, in the name of the Most Holy, to leave you bodily, with all that
appertains to him, this evening. He knows that he must go, and will obey
you. But leave the house as soon as may be yourself; you will scarce have
peace in it. Your own remembrances will trouble you and _other minds have
established associations within its walls and chambers too_."
These words sounded mysteriously in my ears.
Let me say here, before I bring my reminiscences to a close, a word or
two about the house in which these detested scenes occurred, and which I
did not long continue to inhabit. What I afterwards learned of it, seemed
to supply in part a dim explanation of these words.
In a country village there is no difficulty in accounting for the
tenacity with which the sinister character of a haunted tenement cleaves
to it. Thin neighbourhoods are favourable to scandal; and in such
localities the reputation of a house, like that of a woman, once blown
upon, never quite recovers. In huge London, however, it is quite another
matter; and, therefore, it was with some surprise that, five years after
I had vacated the house in which the occurrences I have described took
place, I learned that a respectable family who had taken it were obliged
to give it up, on account of annoyances, for which they could not
account, and all proceeding from the apartments formerly occupied by our
"lodger." Among the sounds described were footsteps restlessly
traversing the floor of that room, accompanied by the peculiar tapping
of the crutch.
I was so anxious about this occurrence, that I contrived to have strict
inquiries made into the matter. The result, however, added little to what
I had at first learned--except, indeed, that our old friend, the cat,
bore a part in the transaction as I suspected; for the servant, who had
been placed to sleep in the room, complained that something bounded on
and off, and ran to-and-fro along the foot of the bed, in the dark. The
same servant, while in the room, in the broad daylight, had heard the
sound of walking, and even the rustling of clothes near him, as of people
passing and repassing; and, although he had never seen anything, he yet
became so terrified that he would not remain in the house, and
ultimately, in a short time, left his situation.
These sounds, attention having been called to them, were now incessantly
observed--the measured walking up and down the room, the opening and
closing of the door, and the teazing tap of the crutch--all these sounds
were continually repeated, until at last, worn out, frightened, and
worried, its occupants resolved on abandoning the house.
About four years since, having had occasion to visit the capital, I
resolved on a ramble by Old Brompton, just to see if the house were still
inhabited. I searched for it, however, in vain, and at length, with
difficulty, ascertained its site, upon which now stood two small,
staring, bran-new brick houses, with each a gay enclosure of flowers.
Every trace of our old mansion, and, let us hope, of our "mysterious
lodger," had entirely vanished.
Let me, however, return to my narrative where I left it.
Discoursing upon heavenly matters, my good and gracious friend
accompanied me even within the outer gate of my own house. I asked him to
come in and rest himself, but he would not; and before he turned to
depart, he lifted up his hand, and blessed me and my household.
Having done this, he went away. My eyes followed him till he disappeared,
and I turned to the house. My darling wife was standing at the window of
the parlour. There was a seraphic smile on her face--pale, pure, and
beautiful as death. She was gazing with an humble, heavenly earnestness
on us. The parting blessing of the stranger shed a sweet and hallowed
influence on my heart. I went into the parlour, to my darling: childless
she was now; I had now need to be a tender companion to her.
She raised her arms in a sort of transport, with the same smile of
gratitude and purity, and, throwing them round my neck, she said--
"I have seen him--it is he--the man that came with you to the door, and
blessed us as he went away--is the same I saw in my dream--the same who
took little baby in his arms, and said he would take care of him, and
give him safely to me again."
More than a quarter of a century has glided away since then; other
children have been given us by the good God--children who have been, from
infancy to maturity, a pride and blessing to us. Sorrows and reverses,
too, have occasionally visited us; yet, on the whole, we have been
greatly blessed; prosperity has long since ended all the cares of the
_res angusta domi_, and expanded our power of doing good to our
fellow-creatures. God has given it; and God, we trust, directs its
dispensation. In our children, and--would you think it?--our
_grand_-children, too, the same beneficent God has given us objects that
elicit and return all the delightful affections, and exchange the sweet
converse that makes home and family dearer than aught else, save that
blessed home where the Christian family shall meet at last.
The dear companion of my early love and sorrows still lives, blessed be
Heaven! The evening tints of life have fallen upon her; but the dear
remembrance of a first love, that never grew cold, makes her beauty
changeless for me. As for your humble servant, he is considerably her
senior, and looks it: time has stolen away his raven locks, and given
him a _chevelure_ of snow instead. But, as I said before, I and my wife
love, and, I believe, _admire_ one another more than ever; and I have
often seen our elder children smile archly at one another, when they
thought we did not observe them, thinking, no doubt, how like a pair of
lovers we two were.