I PAY BOB MILLET A VISIT.
I was naturally curious when I arrived home to see if the cat was
there. It was. It did not meet me at the street door, but it lay on
the spot on which I had left it a few hours previously. Of course this
distressed me, but I did not betray my uneasiness to my wife. I had at
least cause for thankfulness in the silent announcement made by the
apparition that it was not its intention to accompany me to every
place I visited.
We had our supper and went to bed; and it was an additional comfort to
me when I found that it did not follow us to our bedroom.
It was not likely, after such an exciting day, that I should pass a
good night. My rest was greatly disturbed; and at about three o'clock
I was wide awake. My wife was sleeping soundly. I rose quietly, thrust
my feet in my slippers, and went downstairs to the dining-room. There
lay the cat with its eyes wide open.
"You infernal creature," I cried, holding the candle so that its light
fell upon the specter, "what are you here for? What do you want me to
do? Why do you not go back to your grave and leave me in peace?"
I asked these questions slowly, and paused between each, with an
insane notion that an answer might be given to them. No answer was
vouchsafed, and I recognized the folly of my expectation. The
peculiarity of the apparition was that its eyes never seemed to be
closed, as the eyes of other cats are when they are in repose. It
appeared to be ever on the watch, but what it was watching for was a
sealed mystery to me. In a moment of exasperation I raised my hand
against it threateningly; it did not move. I went no further than
this, feeling that it would be cowardly to strike at a shadow. I
returned to my bedroom, and after tossing about for an hour fell into
a disturbed sleep.
Bob lived at Canonbury, and had given me directions to take a North
London train, his station being about half a mile from his lodgings.
All the day the cat had remained in the dining-room, but when I was
leaving the house on my visit to Bob, it rose and followed me.
"Do you intend to favor me with your company?" I asked. "Very well,
come along."
And come along it did, to the train I took, got into the carriage with
me, and emerged from it at the Canonbury station, where I found Bob
waiting for me on the platform.
"I have brought another visitor with me, Bob," I said, "but I can
assure you it has accompanied me without any invitation."
"Is it here, then?" he asked, following the direction of my eyes.
"Yes, Bob, it is here." And as we walked to the old-fashioned house in
which he rented one room at the top, I remarked, "Is it not singular
that it did not come to the theater with me last night, and that it
should accompany me now upon this friendly visit to you?" Bob nodded.
"I am beginning to have theories about it," I continued, "and one is,
that something will occur to-night in connection with the haunted
house in Lamb's Terrace."
"Do not get too many fancies into your head, old fellow," said Bob.
"I will not get more than I can help, but ideas come without any
active prompting or wish of my own; I am like a man who is being
driven, or led."
Bob's one room was by no means uncomfortable; it served at once for
his living and bedroom, but the bed he occupied being a folding bed,
and the washstand he used being inclosed, it did not present the
appearance of a bedroom. There were shelves on the walls containing a
large number of books; four or five of these were on the table.
"Now, sir or madam," said I to the cat, "what do you think of Bob's
residence, and what can we do to make you comfortable?"
The cat glided to the hearthrug and stretched itself upon it; I
wrested my attention from the unpleasant object.
"I am very well off here," said Bob; "the landlady cooks my meals for
me, and allows me to have them downstairs. I am at the top of the
house, and there is a fine view from the roof; I often smoke for an
hour there. You see that door in the corner; it is a closet, with a
fixed flight of steps leading to the roof; in case of fire I should be
safe. Sit in the armchair, Ned, and let us reason out things. I have
been thinking a great deal about you to-day, and talking about you,
too."
"That was scarcely right, Bob."
"Don't be afraid; you were not mentioned by name, and the gentleman I
conversed with is blind. That is the reason, very likely, why he
believes in what he does not see."
"A friend of yours?"
"A dear friend; a poor gentleman who has suffered, and who bears his
sufferings with a resignation which can only spring from faith. I told
you yesterday that I had been married and that I lost my wife. The
gentleman I speak of is the son of my dead wife's sister, who is
herself a widow. My wife's family were gentlefolk, who had fallen from
affluence, not exactly into poverty, but into very poor circumstances.
Ronald Elsdale--the name of my nephew--is a tutor; he was not born
blind; the affliction came upon him gradually, and was accelerated by
over study in his boyish days. Four years ago he could see, and when
blindness came upon him he was fortunately armed, and able to obtain a
fair living for himself and his widowed mother by tutoring. He is an
accomplished musician, and frequently obtains remunerative engagements
to play. He speaks modern languages fluently, is well up in the
sciences, has read deeply, and is altogether as noble and sweet a
gentleman as moves upon the earth."
Bob spoke with enthusiasm, and it was easy to perceive that he had a
sincere love for Mr. Ronald Elsdale.
"In every way so accomplished and admirable," I said, "and with such a
misfortune hanging over him, he needs a wife to look after him."
"His mother does that," Bob replied, "with tender devotion, and Ronald
will never marry unless--but thereby hangs a tale, as Shakspere says.
He is not the only man who cherishes delusions."
"Ah! he has delusions. I hope they are more agreeable than mine. How
is it, Bob, that you have had time for so much talk to-day with your
nephew?"
"This is Thursday, and Mr. Gascoigne closes his office on Thursdays at
two o'clock, so I have had a few hours at my disposal, which have been
partly employed in talking with Ronald and partly in studying your
case."
"Explain."
"I have been looking up apparitions," said Bob, pointing to the books
upon the table.
I did not trouble myself to examine them; it did not seem to me that
the books would be of much service in my case; the facts themselves
were sufficiently strong and stern, and I mentally scouted the idea
that printed matter would enable me to get rid of the apparition that
haunted me.
"It is clear to me," I said, "that you think I am laboring under some
hallucination, and that I see the specter, now lying on the hearthrug,
with my mental and not my actual vision. Very well, Bob; a difference
of opinion will not alter the facts."
"The awkward part of it is," said Bob, "that all evidence is against
you."
I nodded toward the books on the table, and said, "All such evidence
as that."
"Yes, but you must not forget that cleverer heads than ours have
occupied years of their lives in sifting these matters to the bottom."
"In trying to sift them, Bob."
"Well, in trying to sift them; but they give reasons for the
conclusions they arrive at which it would be difficult, if not
impossible, for men like ourselves to argue away."
"There are two strong witnesses on my side," I remarked; "one is
myself, the other is my wife. Bear in mind that we both saw the
apparition of the girl; there was no collusion between us beforehand,
and if, in our fright, our imaginations were already prepared to
conjure up a phantom of the air, it is hardly possible that that
phantom should, without previous concert, assume exactly the same form
and shape; nor was there any after conspiracy between us as to the
manner in which this phantom was to be dressed. Now, my wife has
described to me the dress of the girl, the shreds of a cap sticking to
her hair, the frock of faded pink, the carpet slippers, the black
stockings, and I recognize the faithfulness of these details, which
presented themselves to me exactly as they did to her. Granted that
one mind may be laboring under a delusion, it is hardly possible that
two minds can simultaneously be thus imposed upon. Answer that, Bob."
"Sympathy," he replied.
"The word I used yesterday evening, when I was imagining what the
doctors would say upon my case; it is an easy way to get out of it,
but it does not satisfy me. I suppose you have come across some
curious cases in looking up apparitions?"
"Some very curious cases. Here is one in which a door, not only locked
but bolted, plays a part. A great Scotch physician relates how a
person of high rank complains to him that he is in the habit of being
visited by a hideous old woman at six o'clock every evening; that she
rushes upon him with a crutch in her hand, and strikes him a blow so
severe that he falls down in a swoon. The gentleman informs the
physician that on the previous evening, at a quarter to six o'clock,
he carefully locked and double bolted the door of the room, and that
then he sat down in his chair and waited. Exactly as the clock strikes
six the door flies wide open--as the door in Lamb's Terrace did,
Ned--and the old woman rushes in and deals him a harder blow than she
was in the habit of doing, and down he falls insensible. 'How many
times has this occurred?' asks the physician. 'Several times,' is the
reply. 'On any one of these occasions,' says the physician, 'have you
had a companion with you?' 'No,' the gentleman replies, 'I have been
quite alone.' The physician then inquires at what hour the gentleman
dines, and he answers, five o'clock, and the physician proposes that
they shall dine the next day in the room in which the old woman makes
her appearance. The gentleman gladly consents; they dine together as
agreed upon, and the physician--who is an agreeable talker--succeeds
apparently in making his host forget all about the apparition.
Suddenly, the clock on the mantelpiece is heard striking six. 'Here
she is, here she is!' cries the gentleman, and a moment afterward
falls down in a fit."
"Very curious," I said, "and how does the wise physician account for
the delusion?"
"By the gentleman having a tendency to apoplexy."
"There is, generally," I observed, "a weak spot or two in this kind of
story. Does it say in the account that the door was locked and bolted
when the gentleman and the physician dined together, and that the door
flew open upon the appearance of the old lady?"
"No, it does not say that."
"The omission of the precaution to lock the door," I said, "is fatal,
for the absence of that visible and material manifestation deprives
the physician of the one strong argument he could have brought
forward. Had the door been locked and bolted, and had the old woman
appeared without its flying open, the physician could have said to the
gentleman, 'You see, the door remains fastened, as we fastened it
before we sat down to dinner; you imagined that it flew open, and
there it remains shut, a clear proof that the old woman and her crutch
is but a fevered fancy.' That would have disposed of this gentleman at
once."
"Quite so," said Bob.
"You will, I suppose, admit that if the locked door had opened in the
physician's presence, it would have been a sign that some spiritual
power had been exercised for which he could not so readily have
accounted?"
"Yes, I should admit that."
"Admit, then, that as my wife and I--two witnesses, each uninfluenced
by the other--saw the locked door in Lamb's Terrace fly open, that
_that_ is an evidence of the exercise of a spiritual power."
Bob laughed a little awkwardly. "You have made me give evidence
against myself," he said.
Here there came a knock at the door, and Bob calling "Come in," the
landlady of the house made her appearance.
"Mr. Elsdale is downstairs," she said, "and was coming up, when I told
him you had a friend with you, and he sent me to ask whether he would
be intruding."
Bob looked at me inquiringly.
"Not so far as I am concerned," I said; "I should very much like to
make your nephew's acquaintance."
"Ask Mr. Elsdale to come up," said Bob; and the landlady departed.
"I have more than a passing fancy to see your nephew," I said; "you
tell me he has delusions; what he says in our discussion, which I
don't propose to drop when he joins us, may be of interest."
As I spoke Ronald Elsdale entered the room.
"My nephew, Ronald Elsdale," said Bob, introducing us. "My old friend,
Mr. Emery."
As we shook hands my attention was diverted to an incident which,
insignificant as it might appear, struck me as very singular; the
skeleton cat had risen from the hearthrug and was now standing at
Ronald Elsdale's feet, looking up into his face.