The House of Strange Stories, as I prefer to call it (though it is not
known by that name in the county), seems the very place for a ghost. Yet,
though so many peoples have dwelt upon its site and in its chambers,
though the ancient Elizabethan oak, and all the queer tables and chairs
that a dozen generations have bequeathed, might well be tenanted by
ancestral spirits, and disturbed by rappings, it is a curious fact that
there is _not_ a ghost in the House of Strange Stories. On my earliest
visit to this mansion, I was disturbed, I own, by a not unpleasing
expectancy. There _must_, one argued, be a shadowy lady in green in the
bedroom, or, just as one was falling asleep, the spectre of a Jesuit
would creep out of the priest's hole, where he was starved to death in
the "spacious times of great Elizabeth," and would search for a morsel of
bread. The priest was usually starved out, sentinels being placed in all
the rooms and passages, till at last hunger and want of air would drive
the wretched man to give himself up, for the sake of change of
wretchedness. Then perhaps he was hanged, or he "died in our hands," as
one of Elizabeth's officers euphemistically put it, when the Jesuit was
tortured to death in the Tower. No "House of Seven Gables" across the
Atlantic can have quite such memories as these, yet, oddly enough, I do
not know of more than one ghost of a Jesuit in all England. _He_
appeared to a learned doctor in a library, and the learned doctor
described the phantom, not long ago, in the Athenaeum.
"Does the priest of your 'priest-hole' walk?" I asked the squire one
winter evening in the House of Strange Stories.
Darkness had come to the rescue of the pheasants about four in the
afternoon, and all of us, men and women, were sitting at afternoon tea in
the firelit study, drowsily watching the flicker of the flame on the
black panelling. The characters will introduce themselves, as they take
part in the conversation.
"No," said the squire, "even the priest does not walk. Somehow very few
of the Jesuits have left ghosts in country houses. They are just the
customers you would expect to 'walk,' but they don't."
There is, to be sure, one priestly ghost-story, which you may or may not
know, and I tell it here, though I don't believe it, just as I heard it
from the Bishop of Dunchester himself. According to this most affable
and distinguished prelate, now no more, he once arrived in a large
country house shortly before dinner-time; he was led to his chamber, he
dressed, and went downstairs. Not knowing the plan of the house, he
found his way into the library, a chamber lined with the books of many
studious generations. Here the learned bishop remained for a few
minutes, when the gong sounded for dinner, and a domestic, entering the
apartment showed the prelate the way to the drawing-room, where the other
guests were now assembled. The bishop, when the company appeared
complete, and was beginning to manoeuvre towards the dining-room,
addressed his host (whom we shall call Lord Birkenhead), and observed
that the ecclesiastic had not yet appeared.
"What ecclesiastic?" asked his lordship.
"The priest," replied the bishop, "whom I met in the library."
Upon this Lord Birkenhead's countenance changed somewhat, and, with a
casual remark, he put the question by. After dinner, when the ladies had
left the men to their wine, Lord Birkenhead showed some curiosity as to
"the ecclesiastic," and learned that he had seemed somewhat shy and
stiff, yet had the air of a man just about to enter into conversation.
"At that moment," said the bishop, "I was summoned to the drawing-room,
and did not at first notice that my friend the priest had not followed
me. He had an interesting and careworn face," added the bishop.
"You have certainly seen the family ghost," said Lord Birkenhead; "he
only haunts the library, where, as you may imagine, his retirement is but
seldom disturbed." And, indeed, the habits of the great, in England, are
not studious, as a rule.
"Then I must return, Lord Birkenhead, to your library," said the bishop,
"and that without delay, for this appears to be a matter in which the
services of one of the higher clergy, however unworthy, may prove of
incalculable benefit."
"If I could only hope," answered Lord Birkenhead (who was a Catholic)
with a deep sigh, "that his reverence would recognize Anglican orders!"
The bishop was now, as may be fancied, on his mettle, and without further
parley, retired to the library. The rest of the men awaited his return,
and beguiled the moments of expectation with princely havannas.
In about half an hour the bishop reappeared, and a close observer might
have detected a shade of paleness on his apostolic features, yet his face
was radiant like that of a good man who has performed a good action.
Being implored to relieve the anxiety of the company, the worthy prelate
spoke as follows:
"On entering the library, which was illuminated by a single lamp, I found
myself alone. I drew a chair to the fire, and, taking up a volume of M.
Renan's which chanced to be lying on the table, I composed myself to
detect the sophistries of this brilliant but unprincipled writer. Thus,
by an effort of will, I distracted myself from that state of 'expectant
attention' to which modern science attributes such phantoms and spectral
appearances as can neither be explained away by a morbid condition of the
liver, nor as caused by the common rat (Mus rattus). I should observe by
the way," said the learned bishop, interrupting his own narrative, "that
scepticism will in vain attempt to account, by the latter cause, namely
rats, for the spectres, Lemures, simulacra, and haunted houses of the
ancient Greeks and Romans. With these supernatural phenomena, as they
prevailed in Athens and Rome, we are well acquainted, not only from the
Mostellaria of Plautus, but from the numerous ghost-stories of Pliny,
Plutarch, the Philopseudes of Lucian, and similar sources. But it will
at once be perceived, and admitted even by candid men of science, that
these spiritual phenomena of the classical period cannot plausibly, nor
even possibly, be attributed to the agency of rats, when we recall the
fact that the rat was an animal unknown to the ancients. As the learned
M. Selys Longch observes in his Etudes de Micromammalogie (Paris, 1839,
p. 59), 'the origin of the rat is obscure, the one thing certain is that
the vermin was unknown to the ancients, and that it arrived in Europe,
introduced, perhaps, by the Crusaders, after the Middle Ages.' I think,"
added the prelate, looking round, not without satisfaction, "that I have
completely disposed of the rat hypothesis, as far, at least, as the
ghosts of classical tradition are concerned."
"Your reasoning, bishop," replied Lord Birkenhead, "is worthy of your
reputation; but pray pardon the curiosity which entreats you to return
from the simulacra of the past to the ghost of the present."
"I had not long been occupied with M. Renan," said the bishop, thus
adjured, "when I became aware of the presence of another person in the
room. I think my eyes had strayed from the volume, as I turned a page,
to the table, on which I perceived the brown strong hand of a young man.
Looking up, I beheld my friend the priest, who was indeed a man of some
twenty-seven years of age, with a frank and open, though somewhat
careworn, aspect. I at once rose, and asked if I could be of service to
him in anything, and I trust I did not betray any wounding suspicion that
he was other than a man of flesh and blood.
"'You can, indeed, my lord, relieve me of a great burden,' said the young
man, and it was apparent enough that he _did_ acknowledge the validity of
Anglican orders. 'Will you kindly take from the shelf that volume of
Cicero "De Officiis," he said, pointing to a copy of an Elzevir variorum
edition,--not the small duodecimo Elzevir,--'remove the paper you will
find there, and burn it in the fire on the hearth.'
"'Certainly I will do as you say, but will you reward me by explaining
the reason of your request?'
"'In me,' said the appearance, 'you behold Francis Wilton, priest. I was
born in 1657, and, after adventures and an education with which I need
not trouble you, found myself here as chaplain to the family of the Lord
Birkenhead of the period. It chanced one day that I heard in confession,
from the lips of Lady Birkenhead, a tale so strange, moving, and, but for
the sacred circumstances of the revelation, so incredible, that my soul
had no rest for thinking thereon. At last, neglecting my vow, and
fearful that I might become forgetful of any portion of so marvellous a
narrative, I took up my pen and committed the confession to the security
of manuscript. Litera scripta manet. Scarcely had I finished my unholy
task when the sound of a distant horn told me that the hunt (to which
pleasure I was passionately given) approached the demesne. I thrust the
written confession into that volume of Cicero, hurried to the stable,
saddled my horse with my own hands, and rode in the direction whence I
heard the music of the hounds. On my way a locked gate barred my
progress. I put Rupert at it, he took off badly, fell, and my spirit
passed away in the fall. But not to the place of repose did my sinful
spirit wing its flight. I found myself here in the library, where,
naturally, scarcely any one ever comes except the maids. When I would
implore them to destroy the unholy document that binds me to earth, they
merely scream; nor have I found any scion of the house, nor any guest,
except your lordship, of more intrepid resolution or more charitable
mood. And now, I trust, you will release me.'
"I rose (for I had seated myself during his narrative), my heart was
stirred with pity; I took down the Cicero, and lit on a sheet of yellow
paper covered with faded manuscript, which, of course, I did not read. I
turned to the hearth, tossed on the fire the sere old paper, which blazed
at once, and then, hearing the words pax vobiscum, I looked round. But I
was alone. After a few minutes, devoted to private ejaculations, I
returned to the dining-room; and that is all my story. Your maids need
no longer dread the ghost of the library. He is released."
"Will any one take any more wine?" asked Lord Birkenhead, in tones of
deep emotion. "No? Then suppose we join the ladies."
"Well," said one of the ladies, the Girton girl, when the squire had
finished the prelate's narrative, "_I_ don't call that much of a story.
What was Lady Birkenhead's confession about? That's what one really
wants to know."
"The bishop could not possibly have read the paper," said the Bachelor of
Arts, one of the guests; "not as a gentleman, nor a bishop."
"I wish _I_ had had the chance," said the Girton girl.
"Perhaps the confession was in Latin," said the Bachelor of Arts.
The Girton girl disdained to reply to this unworthy sneer.
"I have often observed," she said in a reflective voice, "that the most
authentic and best attested bogies don't come to very much. They appear
in a desultory manner, without any context, so to speak, and, like other
difficulties, require a context to clear up their meaning."
These efforts of the Girton girl to apply the methods of philology to
spectres, were received in silence. The women did not understand them,
though they had a strong personal opinion about their learned author.
"The only ghost _I_ ever came across, or, rather, came within measurable
distance of, never appeared at all so far as one knew."
"Miss Lebas has a story," said the squire, "Won't she tell us her story?"