beneath the table. It was an unlucky hour for quadrupeds; and if "every
dog will have his day," he could not have selected a more unpropitious
one than this. Mrs. Ogleton, too, had a pet--a favorite pug--whose squab
figure, black muzzle, and tortuosity of tail, that curled like a head of
celery in a salad-bowl, bespoke his Dutch extraction. Yow! yow! yow!
continued the brute--a chorus in which Flo instantly joined. Sooth to
say, pug had more reason to express his dissatisfaction than was given
him by the muse of Simpkinson; the other only barked for company.
Scarcely had the poetess got through her first stanza, when Tom
Ingoldsby, in the enthusiasm of the moment, became so lost in the
material world, that, in his abstraction, he unwarily laid his hand on
the cock of the urn. Quivering with emotion, he gave it such an unlucky
twist, that the full stream of its scalding contents descended on the
gingerbread hide of the unlucky Cupid. The confusion was complete; the
whole economy of the table disarranged--the company broke up in most
admired disorder--and "vulgar minds will never know" anything more of
Miss Simpkinson's ode till they peruse it in some forthcoming Annual.
Seaforth profited by the confusion to take the delinquent who had caused
this "stramash" by the arm, and to lead him to the lawn, where he had a
word or two for his private ear. The conference between the young
gentlemen was neither brief in its duration nor unimportant in its
result. The subject was what the lawyers call tripartite, embracing the
information that Charles Seaforth was over head and ears in love with
Tom Ingoldsby's sister; secondly, that the lady had referred him to
"papa" for his sanction; thirdly, and lastly, his nightly visitations
and consequent bereavement. At the two first times Tom smiled
suspiciously--at the last he burst out into an absolute "guffaw."
"Steal your breeches! Miss Bailey over again, by Jove," shouted
Ingoldsby. "But a gentleman, you say--and Sir Giles, too. I am not sure,
Charles, whether I ought not to call you out for aspersing the honor of
the family."
"Laugh as you will, Tom--be as incredulous as you please. One fact is
incontestable--the breeches are gone! Look here--I am reduced to my
regimentals; and if these go, to-morrow I must borrow of you!"
Rochefoucault says, there is something in the misfortunes of our very
best friends that does not displease us; assuredly we can, most of us,
laugh at their petty inconveniences, till called upon to supply them.
Tom composed his features on the instant, and replied with more gravity,
as well as with an expletive, which, if my Lord Mayor had been within
hearing might have cost him five shillings.
"There is something very queer in this, after all. The clothes, you say,
have positively disappeared. Somebody is playing you a trick; and, ten
to one, your servant had a hand in it. By the way, I heard something
yesterday of his kicking up a bobbery in the kitchen, and seeing a
ghost, or something of that kind, himself. Depend upon it, Barney is in
the plot."
It now struck the lieutenant at once, that the usually buoyant spirits
of his attendant had of late been materially sobered down, his loquacity
obviously circumscribed, and that he, the said lieutenant, had actually
rung his bell three several times that very morning before he could
procure his attendance. Mr. Maguire was forthwith summoned, and
underwent a close examination. The "bobbery" was easily explained. Mr.
Oliver Dobbs had hinted his disapprobation of a flirtation carrying on
between the gentleman from Munster and the lady from the Rue St. Honore.
Mademoiselle had boxed Mr. Maguire's ears, and Mr. Maguire had pulled
Mademoiselle upon his knee, and the lady had _not_ cried _Mon Dieu_! And
Mr. Oliver Dobbs said it was very wrong; and Mrs. Botherby said it was
"scandalous," and what ought not to be done in any moral kitchen; and
Mr. Maguire had got hold of the Honorable Augustus Sucklethumbkin's
powder-flask, and had put large pinches of the best Double Dartford into
Mr. Dobbs's tobacco-box; and Mr. Dobbs's pipe had exploded, and set fire
to Mrs. Botherby's Sunday cap; and Mr. Maguire had put it out with the
slop-basin, "barring the wig"; and then they were all so "cantankerous,"
that Barney had gone to take a walk in the garden; and then--then Mr.
Barney had seen a ghost.
"A what? you blockhead!" asked Tom Ingoldsby.
"Sure then, and it's meself will tell your honor the rights of it," said
the ghost-seer. "Meself and Miss Pauline, sir--or Miss Pauline and
meself, for the ladies comes first anyhow--we got tired of the
hobstroppylous scrimmaging among the ould servants, that didn't know a
joke when they seen one: and we went out to look at the comet--that's
the rorybory-alehouse, they calls him in this country--and we walked
upon the lawn--and divil of any alehouse there was there at all; and
Miss Pauline said it was bekase of the shrubbery maybe, and why wouldn't
we see it better beyonst the tree? and so we went to the trees, but
sorrow a comet did meself see there, barring a big ghost instead of it."
"A ghost? And what sort of a ghost, Barney?"
"Och, then, divil a lie I'll tell your honor. A tall ould gentleman he
was, all in white, with a shovel on the shoulder of him, and a big torch
in his fist--though what he wanted with that it's meself can't tell, for
his eyes were like gig-lamps, let alone the moon and the comet, which
wasn't there at all--and 'Barney,' says he to me--'cause why he knew
me--'Barney,' says he, 'what is it you're doing with the _colleen_
there, Barney?'--Divil a word did I say. Miss Pauline screeched, and
cried murther in French, and ran off with herself; and of course meself
was in a mighty hurry after the lady, and had no time to stop palavering
with him any way: so I dispersed at once, and the ghost vanished in a
flame of fire!"
Mr. Maguire's account was received with avowed incredulity by both
gentlemen; but Barney stuck to his text with unflinching pertinacity. A
reference to Mademoiselle was suggested, but abandoned, as neither party
had a taste for delicate investigations.
"I'll tell you what, Seaforth," said Ingoldsby, after Barney had
received his dismissal, "that there is a trick here, is evident; and
Barney's vision may possibly be a part of it. Whether he is most knave
or fool, you best know. At all events, I will sit up with you to-night,
and see if I can convert my ancestor into a visiting acquaintance.
Meanwhile your finger on your lip!"
* * * * *
'Twas now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and graves give up their dead.
Gladly would I grace my tale with decent horror, and therefore I do
beseech the "gentle reader" to believe, that if all the _succedanea_ to
this mysterious narrative are not in strict keeping, he will ascribe it
only to the disgraceful innovations of modern degeneracy upon the sober
and dignified habits of our ancestors. I can introduce him, it is true,
into an old and high-roofed chamber, its walls covered in three sides
with black oak wainscoting, adorned with carvings of fruit and flowers
long anterior to those of Grinling Gibbons; the fourth side is clothed
with a curious remnant of dingy tapestry, once elucidatory of some
Scriptural history, but of _which_ not even Mrs. Botherby could
determine. Mr. Simpkinson, who had examined it carefully, inclined to
believe the principal figure to be either Bathsheba, or Daniel in the
lions' den; while Tom Ingoldsby decided in favor of the king of Bashan.
All, however, was conjecture, tradition being silent on the subject. A
lofty arched portal led into, and a little arched portal led out of,
this apartment; they were opposite each other, and each possessed the
security of massy bolts on its interior. The bedstead, too, was not one
of yesterday, but manifestly coeval with days ere Seddons was, and when
a good four-post "article" was deemed worthy of being a royal bequest.
The bed itself, with all the appurtenances of palliasse, mattresses,
etc., was of far later date, and looked most incongruously comfortable;
the casements, too, with their little diamond-shaped panes and iron
binding, had given way to the modern heterodoxy of the sash-window. Nor
was this all that conspired to ruin the costume, and render the room a
meet haunt for such "mixed spirits" only as could condescend to don at
the same time an Elizabethan doublet and Bond Street inexpressibles.
With their green morocco slippers on a modern fender, in front of a
disgracefully modern grate, sat two young gentlemen, clad in "shawl
pattern" dressing-gowns and black silk stocks, much at variance with
the high cane-backed chairs which supported them. A bunch of
abomination, called a cigar, reeked in the left-hand corner of the mouth
of one, and in the right-hand corner of the mouth of the other--an
arrangement happily adapted for the escape of the noxious fumes up the
chimney, without that unmerciful "funking" each other, which a less
scientific disposition of the weed would have induced. A small pembroke
table filled up the intervening space between them, sustaining, at each
extremity, an elbow and a glass of toddy--thus in "lonely pensive
contemplation" were the two worthies occupied, when the "iron tongue of
midnight had tolled twelve."
"Ghost-time's come!" said Ingoldsby, taking from his waistcoat pocket a
watch like a gold half-crown, and consulting it as though he suspected
the turret-clock over the stables of mendacity.
"Hush!" said Charles; "did I not hear a footstep?"
There was a pause--there _was_ a footstep--it sounded distinctly--it
reached the door it hesitated, stopped, and--passed on.
Tom darted across the room, threw open the door, and became aware of
Mrs. Botherby toddling to her chamber, at the other end of the gallery,
after dosing one of the housemaids with an approved julep from the
Countess of Kent's "Choice Manual."
"Good-night, sir!" said Mrs. Botherby.
"Go to the d----l!" said the disappointed ghost-hunter.
An hour--two--rolled on, and still no spectral visitation; nor did aught
intervene to make night hideous; and when the turret-clock sounded at
length the hour of three, Ingoldsby, whose patience and grog were alike
exhausted, sprang from his chair, saying:
"This is all infernal nonsense, my good fellow. Deuce of any ghost shall
we see to-night; it's long past the canonical hour. I'm off to bed; and
as to your breeches, I'll insure them for the next twenty-four hours at
least, at the price of the buckram."
"Certainly.--Oh! thank'ee--to be sure!" stammered Charles, rousing
himself from a reverie, which had degenerated into an absolute snooze.
"Good-night, my boy! Bolt the door behind me; and defy the Pope, the
Devil, and the Pretender!"
Seaforth followed his friend's advice, and the next morning came down to
breakfast dressed in the habiliments of the preceding day. The charm was
broken, the demon defeated; the light greys with the red stripe down the
seams were yet _in rerum natura_, and adorned the person of their lawful
proprietor.
Tom felicitated himself and his partner of the watch on the result of
their vigilance; but there is a rustic adage, which warns us against
self-gratulation before we are quite "out of the wood."--Seaforth was
yet within its verge.
* * * * *
A rap at Tom Ingoldsby's door the following morning startled him as he
was shaving--he cut his chin.
"Come in, and be d----d to you!" said the martyr, pressing his thumb on
the scarified epidermis. The door opened, and exhibited Mr. Barney
Maguire.
"Well, Barney, what is it?" quoth the sufferer, adopting the vernacular
of his visitant.
"The master, sir----"
"Well, what does he want?"
"The loanst of a breeches, plase your honor."
"Why, you don't mean to tell me--By Heaven, this is too good!" shouted
Tom, bursting into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. "Why, Barney, you
don't mean to say the ghost has got them again?"
Mr. Maguire did not respond to the young squire's risibility; the cast
of his countenance was decidedly serious.
"Faith, then, it's gone they are sure enough! Hasn't meself been looking
over the bed, and under the bed, and _in_ the bed, for the matter of
that, and divil a ha'p'orth of breeches is there to the fore at
all:--I'm bothered entirely!"
"Hark'ee! Mr. Barney," said Tom, incautiously removing his thumb, and
letting a crimson stream "incarnadine the multitudinous" lather that
plastered his throat--"this may be all very well with your master, but
you don't humbug _me_, sir:--Tell me instantly what have you done with
the clothes?"
This abrupt transition from "lively to severe" certainly took Maguire by
surprise, and he seemed for an instant as much disconcerted as it is
possible to disconcert an Irish gentleman's gentleman.
"Me? is it meself, then, that's the ghost to your honor's thinking?"
said he after a moment's pause, and with a slight shade of indignation
in his tones; "is it I would stale the master's things--and what would I
do with them?"
"That you best know: what your purpose is I can't guess, for I don't
think you mean to 'stale' them, as you call it; but that you are
concerned in their disappearance, I am satisfied. Confound this
blood!--give me a towel, Barney."
Maguire acquitted himself of the commission. "As I've a sowl, your
honor," said he, solemnly, "little it is meself knows of the matter: and
after what I seen----"
"What you've seen! Why, what _have_ you seen?--Barney, I don't want to
inquire into your flirtations; but don't suppose you can palm off your
saucer eyes and gig-lamps upon me!"
"Then, as sure as your honor's standing there, I saw him: and why
wouldn't I, when Miss _Pauline_ was to the fore as well as meself,
and----"
"Get along with your nonsense--leave the room, sir!"
"But the master?" said Barney, imploringly; "and without a
breeches?--sure he'll be catching cowld----!"
"Take that, rascal!" replied Ingoldsby, throwing a pair of pantaloons
at, rather than to, him: "but don't suppose, sir, you shall carry on
your tricks here with impunity; recollect there is such a thing as a
treadmill, and that my father is a county magistrate."
Barney's eye flashed fire--he stood erect, and was about to speak; but,
mastering himself, not without an effort, he took up the garment, and
left the room as perpendicular as a Quaker.
* * * * *
"Ingoldsby," said Charles Seaforth, after breakfast, "this is now past a
joke; to-day is the last of my stay; for, notwithstanding the ties which
detain me, common decency obliges me to visit home after so long an
absence. I shall come to an immediate explanation with your father on
the subject nearest my heart, and depart while I have a change of dress
left. On his answer will my return depend! In the meantime tell me
candidly--I ask it in all seriousness, and as a friend--am I not a dupe
to your well-known propensity to hoaxing? have you not a hand in----"
"No, by heaven, Seaforth; I see what you mean: on my honor, I am as much
mystified as yourself; and if your servant----"
"Not he:--If there be a trick, he at least is not privy to it."
"If there _be_ a trick? why, Charles, do you, think----"
"I know not _what_ to think, Tom. As surely as you are a living man, so
surely did that spectral anatomy visit my room again last night, grin in
my face, and walk away with my trousers; nor was I able to spring from
my bed, or break the chain which seemed to bind me to my pillow."
"Seaforth!" said Ingoldsby, after a short pause, "I will--But hush! here
are the girls and my father. I will carry off the females, and leave you
a clear field with the governor: carry your point with him, and we will
talk about your breeches afterwards."
Tom's diversion was successful; he carried off the ladies _en masse_ to
look at a remarkable specimen of the class _Dodecandria
Monogynia_--which they could not find--while Seaforth marched boldly up
to the encounter, and carried "the governor's" outworks by a _coup de
main_. I shall not stop to describe the progress of the attack; suffice
it that it was as successful as could have been wished, and that
Seaforth was referred back again to the lady. The happy lover was off at
a tangent; the botanical party was soon overtaken; and the arm of
Caroline, whom a vain endeavor to spell out the Linnaean name of a
daffy-down-dilly had detained a little in the rear of the others, was
soon firmly locked in his own.
What was the world to them,
Its noise, its nonsense and its "breeches" all?
Seaforth was in the seventh heaven; he retired to his room that night as
happy as if no such thing as a goblin had ever been heard of, and
personal chattels were as well fenced in by law as real property. Not so
Tom Ingoldsby: the mystery--for mystery there evidently was--had not
only piqued his curiosity, but ruffled his temper. The watch of the
previous night had been unsuccessful, probably because it was
undisguised. To-night he would "ensconce himself"--not indeed "behind
the arras"--for the little that remained was, as we have seen, nailed to
the wall--but in a small closet which opened from one corner of the
room, and by leaving the door ajar, would give to its occupant a view of
all that might pass in the apartment. Here did the young ghost-hunter
take up a position, with a good stout sapling under his arm, a full
half-hour before Seaforth retired for the night. Not even his friend did
he let into his confidence, fully determined that if his plan did not
succeed, the failure should be attributed to himself alone.
At the usual hour of separation for the night, Tom saw, from his
concealment, the lieutenant enter his room, and after taking a few turns
in it, with an expression so joyous as to betoken that his thoughts were
mainly occupied by his approaching happiness, proceed slowly to disrobe
himself. The coat, the waistcoat, the black silk stock, were gradually
discarded; the green morocco slippers were kicked off, and then--ay, and
then--his countenance grew grave; it seemed to occur to him all at once
that this was his last stake--nay, that the very breeches he had on were
not his own--that to-morrow morning was his last, and that if he lost
_them_--A glance showed that his mind was made up; he replaced the
single button he had just subducted, and threw himself upon the bed in a
state of transition--half chrysalis, half grub.
Wearily did Tom Ingoldsby watch the sleeper by the flickering light of
the night-lamp, till the clock striking one, induced him to increase the
narrow opening which he had left for the purpose of observation. The
motion, slight as it was, seemed to attract Charles's attention; for he
raised himself suddenly to a sitting posture, listened for a moment, and
then stood upright upon the floor. Ingoldsby was on the point of
discovering himself, when, the light flashing full upon his friend's
countenance, he perceived that, though his eyes were open, "their sense
was shut"--that he was yet under the influence of sleep. Seaforth
advanced slowly to the toilet, lit his candle at the lamp that stood on
it, then, going back to the bed's foot, appeared to search eagerly for
something which he could not find. For a few moments he seemed restless
and uneasy, walking round the apartment and examining the chairs, till,
coming fully in front of a large swing-glass that flanked the
dressing-table, he paused as if contemplating his figure in it. He now
returned towards the bed; put on his slippers, and, with cautious and
stealthy steps, proceeded towards the little arched doorway that opened
on the private staircase.
As he drew the bolt, Tom Ingoldsby emerged from his hiding-place; but
the sleep-walker heard him not; he proceeded softly downstairs, followed
at a due distance by his friend; opened the door which led out upon the
gardens; and stood at once among the thickest of the shrubs, which there
clustered round the base of a corner turret, and screened the postern
from common observation. At this moment Ingoldsby had nearly spoiled all
by making a false step: the sound attracted Seaforth's attention--he
paused and turned; and, as the full moon shed her light directly upon
his pale and troubled features, Tom marked, almost with dismay, the
fixed and rayless appearance of his eyes:
There was no speculation in those orbs
That he did glare withal.
The perfect stillness preserved by his follower seemed to reassure him;
he turned aside, and from the midst of a thickest laurustinus drew forth
a gardener's spade, shouldering which he proceeded with great rapidity
into the midst of the shrubbery. Arrived at a certain point where the
earth seemed to have been recently disturbed, he set himself heartily
to the task of digging, till, having thrown up several shovelfuls of
mould, he stopped, flung down his tool, and very composedly began to
disencumber himself of his pantaloons.
Up to this moment Tom had watched him with a wary eye; he now advanced
cautiously, and, as his friend was busily engaged in disentangling
himself from his garment, made himself master of the spade. Seaforth,
meanwhile, had accomplished his purpose: he stood for a moment with
His streamers waving in the wind,
occupied in carefully rolling up the small-clothes into as compact a
form as possible, and all heedless of the breath of heaven, which might
certainly be supposed at such a moment, and in such a plight, to "visit
his frame too roughly."
He was in the act of stooping low to deposit the pantaloons in the grave
which he had been digging for them, when Tom Ingoldsby came close behind
him, and with the flat side of the spade----
* * * * *
The shock was effectual; never again was Lieutenant Seaforth known to
act the part of a somnambulist. One by one, his breeches--his
trousers--his pantaloons--his silk-net tights--his patent cords--his
showy greys with the broad red stripe of the Bombay Fencibles were
brought to light--rescued from the grave in which they had been buried,
like the strata of a Christmas pie; and after having been well aired by
Mrs. Botherby, became once again effective.
The family, the ladies especially, laughed; the Peterses laughed; the
Simpkinsons laughed;--Barney Maguire cried "Botheration!" and _Ma'mselle
Pauline_, "_Mon Dieu!_"
Charles Seaforth, unable to face the quizzing which awaited him on all
sides, started off two hours earlier than he had proposed:--he soon
returned, however; and having, at his father-in-law's request, given up
the occupation of Rajah-hunting and shooting Nabobs, led his blushing
bride to the altar.
Mr. Simpkinson from Bath did not attend the ceremony, being engaged at
the Grand Junction meeting of _Scavans_, then, congregating from all
parts of the known world in the city of Dublin. His essay, demonstrating
that the globe is a great custard, whipped into coagulation by
whirlwinds and cooked by electricity--a little too much baked in the
Isle of Portland, and a thought underdone about the Bog of Allen--was
highly spoken of, and narrowly escaped obtaining a Bridgewater prize.
Miss Simpkinson and her sister acted as brides-maids on the occasion;
the former wrote an _epithalamium_, and the latter cried "Lassy me!" at
the clergyman's wig. Some years have since rolled on; the union has been
crowned with two or three tidy little off-shoots from the family tree,
of whom Master Neddy is "grandpapa's darling," and Mary Anne mamma's
particular "Sock." I shall only add, that Mr. and Mrs. Seaforth are
living together quite as happily as two good-hearted, good-tempered
bodies, very fond of each other, can possibly do; and that, since the
day of his marriage, Charles has shown no disposition to jump out of
bed, or ramble out of doors o' nights--though from his entire devotion
to every wish and whim of his young wife, Tom insinuates that the fair
Caroline does still occasionally take advantage of it so far as to "slip
on the breeches."
IN THE BARN
BY BURGES JOHNSON
From the _Century Magazine_, June, 1920. By permission of the Century
Company and Burges Johnson.
In the Barn
BY BURGES JOHNSON
The moment we had entered the barn, I regretted the rash good nature
which prompted me to consent to the plans of those vivacious young
students. Miss Anstell and Miss Royce and one or two others, often
leaders in student mischief, I suspect, were the first to enter, and
they amused themselves by hiding in the darkness and greeting the rest
of our party as we entered with sundry shrieks and moans such as are
commonly attributed to ghosts. My wife and I brought up the rear,
carrying the two farm lanterns. She had selected the place after an
amused consideration of the question, and I confess I hardly approved
her judgment. But she is native to this part of the country, and she had
assured us that there were some vague traditions hanging about the
building that made it most suitable for our purposes.