Here we three are seated round the open window--after dinner--familiar
as in the old happy time--and my mother is talking low that she may
not disturb my father, who seems in thought.----
Cr-cr-crrr-cr-cr! I feel it--I have it.--Where! What! Where!
Knock it down--brush it off! For Heaven's sake, see to
it!--Crrrr-crrrrr--there--here--in my hair--in my sleeve--in my
ear.--Cr-cr.
I say solemnly, and on the word of a Christian, that, as I sate down
to begin this chapter, being somewhat in a brown study, the pen
insensibly slipt from my hand, and, leaning back in my chair, I fell
to gazing into the fire. It is the end of June, and a remarkably cold
evening--even for that time of year. And while I was so gazing, I felt
something crawling, just by the nape of the neck, ma'am. Instinctively
and mechanically, and still musing, I put my hand there, and drew
forth--What? That _what_ it is which perplexes me. It was a thing--a
dark thing--a much bigger thing than I had expected. And the sight
took me so by surprise that I gave my hand a violent shake, and the
thing went--where I know not. The what and the where are the knotty
points in the whole question! No sooner had it gone than I was seized
with repentance not to have examined it more closely--not to have
ascertained what the creature was. It might have been an earwig--a
very large motherly earwig--an earwig far gone in that way in which
earwigs wish to be who love their lords. I have a profound horror of
earwigs--I firmly believe that they do get into the ear. That is a
subject on which it is useless to argue with me upon philosophical
grounds. I have a vivid recollection of a story told me by Mrs
Primmins--How a lady for many years suffered under the most
excruciating headaches; how, as the tombstones say, "physicians were
in vain;" how she died; how her head was opened, and how such a nest
of earwigs--ma'am--such a nest!--Earwigs are the prolifickest things,
and so fond of their offspring! They sit on their eggs like hens--and
the young, as soon as they are born, creep under them for
protection--quite touchingly! Imagine such an establishment
domesticated at one's tympanum!
But the creature was certainly larger than an earwig. It might have
been one of that genus in the family of _Forficulidae_, called
_Labidoura_--monsters whose antennae have thirty joints! There is a
species of this creature in England, but, to the great grief of
naturalists, and to the great honour of Providence, very rarely
found, infinitely larger than the common earwig or _Forficulida
auriculana_. Could it have been an early hornet? It had certainly a
black head, and great feelers. I have a greater horror of hornets,
if possible, than I have of earwigs. Two hornets will kill a man,
and three a carriage-horse sixteen hands high. However, the
creature was gone.--Yes, but where? Where had I so rashly thrown
it? It might have got into a fold of my dressing-gown--or into my
slippers--or, in short, any where, in the various recesses for
earwigs and hornets which a gentleman's habiliments afford. I
satisfy myself at last, as far as I can, seeing that I am not alone
in the room--that it is not upon me. I look upon the carpet--the
rug--the chair--under the fender. It is _non inventus_. I
barbarously hope it is frizzing behind that great black coal in the
grate. I pluck up courage--I prudently remove, to the other end of
the room. I take up my pen--I begin my chapter--very nicely, too, I
think upon the whole. I am just getting into my subject,
when--cr-cr-cr-cr-cr-crawl--crawl--crawl--creep--creep--creep.
Exactly, my dear ma'am, in the same place it was before! Oh, by the
Powers! I forgot all my scientific regrets at not having
scrutinised its genus before, whether _Forficulida_ or _Labidoura_.
I made a desperate lunge with both hands, something between thrust
and cut, ma'am. The beast is gone. Yes, but again where? I say that
that where is a very horrible question. Having come twice, in spite
of all my precautions--and exactly on the same spot, too--it shows
a confirmed disposition to habituate itself to its quarters--to
effect a parochial settlement upon me; there is something awful and
preternatural in it. I assure you that there is not a part of me
that has not gone cr-cr-cr!--that has not crept, crawled, and
forficulated ever since; and I just put it to you what sort of a
chapter I can make after such a----My good little girl, will you
just take the candle, and look carefully under the table?--that's a
dear! Yes, my love, very black indeed, with two horns, and inclined
to be corpulent. Gentlemen and ladies who have cultivated an
acquaintance with the Phoenician language, are aware that Belzebub,
examined etymologically and entomologically, is nothing more nor
less than Baal-zebub--"the Jupiter-Fly"--an emblem of the
Destroying Attribute, which attribute, indeed, is found in all the
insect tribes, more or less. Wherefore, as Mr Payne Knight, in his
_Inquiry into Symbolical Languages_, hath observed--the Egyptian
priests shaved their whole bodies, even to their eyebrows, lest
unaware they should harbour any of the minor Zebubs of the great
Baal. If I were the least bit more persuaded that that black cr-cr
were about me still, and that the sacrifice of my eyebrows would
deprive him of shelter, by the souls of the Ptolemies! I
would,--and I will, too. Ring the bell, my little dear!
John,--my--my cigar-box! There is not a cr in the world that can
abide the fumes of the Havannah! Pshaw, sir, I am not the only man
who lets his first thoughts upon cold steel end, like this chapter,
in--Pff--pff--pff--!