"It really cannot be called a ghost-story," remarked Miss Lebas, "it was
only an uncomfortable kind of coincidence, and I never think of it
without a shudder. But I know there is not any reason at all why it
should make any of _you_ shudder; so don't be disappointed.
"It was the Long Vacation before last," said the Girton girl, "and I went
on a reading-party to Bantry Bay, with Wyndham and Toole of Somerville,
and Clare of Lady Margaret's. Leighton coached us."
"Dear me! With all these young men, my dear?" asked the maiden aunt.
"They were all women of my year, except Miss Leighton of Newnham, who was
our coach," answered the Girton girl composedly.
"Dear me! I beg your pardon for interrupting you," said the maiden aunt.
"Well, term-time was drawing near, and Bantry Bay was getting pretty
cold, when I received an invitation from Lady Garryowen to stay with them
at Dundellan on my way south. They were two very dear, old, hospitable
Irish ladies, the last of their race, Lady Garryowen and her sister, Miss
Patty. They were _so_ hospitable that, though I did not know it,
Dundellan was quite full when I reached it, overflowing with young
people. The house has nothing very remarkable about it: a grey, plain
building, with remains of the chateau about it, and a high park wall. In
the garden wall there is a small round tower, just like those in the
precinct wall at St. Andrews. The ground floor is not used. On the
first floor there is a furnished chamber with a deep round niche, almost
a separate room, like that in Queen Mary's apartments in Holy Rood. The
first floor has long been fitted up as a bedroom and dressing-room, but
it had not been occupied, and a curious old spinning-wheel in the corner
(which has nothing to do with my story, if you can call it a story), must
have been unused since '98, at least. I reached Dublin late--our train
should have arrived at half-past six--it was ten before we toiled into
the station. The Dundellan carriage was waiting for me, and, after an
hour's drive, I reached the house. The dear old ladies had sat up for
me, and I went to bed as soon as possible, in a very comfortable room. I
fell asleep at once, and did not waken till broad daylight, between seven
and eight, when, as my eyes wandered about, I saw, by the pictures on the
wall, and the names on the books beside my bed, that Miss Patty must have
given up her own room to me. I was quite sorry and, as I dressed,
determined to get her to let me change into any den rather than accept
this sacrifice. I went downstairs, and found breakfast ready, but
neither Lady Garryowen nor Miss Patty. Looking out of the window into
the garden, I heard, for the only time in my life, the wild Irish _keen_
over the dead, and saw the old nurse wailing and wringing her hands and
hurrying to the house. As soon as she entered she told me, with a burst
of grief, and in language I shall not try to imitate, that Miss Patty was
dead.
"When I arrived the house was so full that there was literally no room
for me. But 'Dundellan was never beaten yet,' the old ladies had said.
There was still the room in the tower. But this room had such an evil
reputation for being 'haunted' that the servants could hardly be got to
go near it, at least after dark, and the dear old ladies never dreamed of
sending any of their guests to pass a bad night in a place with a bad
name. Miss Patty, who had the courage of a Bayard, did not think twice.
She went herself to sleep in the haunted tower, and left her room to me.
And when the old nurse went to call her in the morning, she could not
waken Miss Patty. She was dead. Heart-disease, they called it. Of
course," added the Girton girl, "as I said, it was only a coincidence.
But the Irish servants could not be persuaded that Miss Patty had not
seen whatever the thing was that they believed to be in the garden tower.
I don't know what it was. You see the context was dreadfully vague, a
mere fragment."
There was a little silence after the Girton girl's story.
"I never heard before in my life," said the maiden aunt, at last, "of any
host or hostess who took the haunted room themselves, when the house
happened to be full. They always send the stranger within their gates to
it, and then pretend to be vastly surprised when he does not have a good
night. I had several bad nights myself once. In Ireland too."
"Tell us all about it, Judy," said her brother, the squire.
"No," murmured the maiden aunt. "You would only laugh at me. There was
no ghost. I didn't hear anything. I didn't see anything. I didn't even
_smell_ anything, as they do in that horrid book, 'The Haunted Hotel.'"
"Then why had you such bad nights?"
"Oh, I _felt_" said the maiden aunt, with a little shudder.
"What did _you feel_, Aunt Judy?"
"I _know_ you will laugh," said the maiden aunt, abruptly entering on her
nervous narrative. "I felt all the time _as if somebody was looking
through the window_. Now, you know, there _couldn't_ be anybody. It was
in an Irish country house where I had just arrived, and my room was on
the second floor. The window was old-fashioned and narrow, with a deep
recess. As soon as I went to bed, my dears, I _felt_ that some one was
looking through the window, and meant to come in. I got up, and bolted
the window, though I knew it was impossible for anybody to climb up
there, and I drew the curtains, but I could not fall asleep. If ever I
began to dose, I would waken with a start, and turn and look in the
direction of the window. I did not sleep all night, and next night,
though I was dreadfully tired, it was just the same thing. So I had to
take my hostess into my confidence, though it was extremely disagreeable,
my dears, to seem so foolish. I only told her that I thought the air, or
something, must disagree with me, for I could not sleep. Then, as some
one was leaving the house that day, she implored me to try another room,
where I slept beautifully, and afterwards had a very pleasant visit. But,
the day I went away, my hostess asked me if I had been kept awake by
anything in particular, for instance, by a feeling that some one was
trying to come in at the window. Well, I admitted that I _had_ a nervous
feeling of that sort, and she said that she was very sorry, and that
every one who lay in the room had exactly the same sensation. She
supposed they must all have heard the history of the room, in childhood,
and forgotten that they had heard it, and then been consciously reminded
of it by reflex action. It seems, my dears, that that is the new
scientific way of explaining all these things, presentiments and dreams
and wraiths, and all that sort of thing. We have seen them before, and
remember them without being aware of it. So I said I'd never heard the
history of the room; but she said I _must_ have, and so must all the
people who felt as if some one was coming in by the window. And I said
that it was rather a curious thing they should _all_ forget they knew it,
and _all_ be reminded of it without being aware of it, and that, if she
did not mind, I'd like to be reminded of it again. So she said that
these objections had all been replied to (just as clergymen always say in
sermons), and then she told me the history of the room. It only came to
this, that, three generations before, the family butler (whom every one
had always thought a most steady, respectable man), dressed himself up
like a ghost, or like his notion of a ghost, and got a ladder, and came
in by the window to steal the diamonds of the lady of the house, and he
frightened her to death, poor woman! That was all. But, ever since,
people who sleep in the room don't sleep, so to speak, and keep thinking
that some one is coming in by the casement. That's all; and I told you
it was not an interesting story, but perhaps you will find more interest
in the scientific explanation of all these things."
The story of the maiden aunt, so far as it recounted her own experience,
did not contain anything to which the judicial faculties of the mind
refused assent. Probably the Bachelor of Arts felt that something a good
deal more unusual was wanted, for he instantly started, without being
asked, on the following narrative:--
"I also was staying," said the Bachelor of Arts, "at the home of my
friends, the aristocracy in Scotland. The name of the house, and the
precise rank in the peerage of my illustrious host, it is not necessary
for me to give. All, however, who know those more than feudal and
baronial halls, are aware that the front of the castle looks forth on a
somewhat narrow drive, bordered by black and funereal pines. On the
night of my arrival at the castle, although I went late to bed, I did not
feel at all sleepy. Something, perhaps, in the mountain air, or in the
vicissitudes of baccarat, may have banished slumber. I had been in luck,
and a pile of sovereigns and notes lay, in agreeable confusion, on my
dressing-table. My feverish blood declined to be tranquillized, and at
last I drew up the blind, threw open the latticed window, and looked out
on the drive and the pine-wood. The faint and silvery blue of dawn was
just wakening in the sky, and a setting moon hung, with a peculiarly
ominous and wasted appearance, above the crests of the forest. But
conceive my astonishment when I beheld, on the drive, and right under my
window, a large and well-appointed hearse, with two white horses, with
plumes complete, and attended by mutes, whose black staffs were tipped
with silver that glittered pallid in the dawn.
I exhausted my ingenuity in conjectures as to the presence of this
remarkable vehicle with the white horses, so unusual, though, when one
thinks of it, so appropriate to the chariot of Death. Could some belated
visitor have arrived in a hearse, like the lady in Miss Ferrier's novel?
Could one of the domestics have expired, and was it the intention of my
host to have the body thus honourably removed without casting a gloom
over his guests?
Wild as these hypotheses appeared, I could think of nothing better, and
was just about to leave the window, and retire to bed, when the driver of
the strange carriage, who had hitherto sat motionless, turned, and looked
me full in the face. Never shall I forget the appearance of this man,
whose sallow countenance, close-shaven dark chin, and small, black
moustache, combined with I know not what of martial in his air, struck
into me a certain indefinable alarm. No sooner had he caught my eye,
than he gathered up his reins, just raised his whip, and started the
mortuary vehicle at a walk down the road. I followed it with my eyes
till a bend in the avenue hid it from my sight. So wrapt up was my
spirit in the exercise of the single sense of vision that it was not till
the hearse became lost to view that I noticed the entire absence of sound
which accompanied its departure. Neither had the bridles and trappings
of the white horses jingled as the animals shook their heads, nor had the
wheels of the hearse crashed upon the gravel of the avenue. I was
compelled by all these circumstances to believe that what I had looked
upon was not of this world, and, with a beating heart, I sought refuge in
sleep.
"Next morning, feeling far from refreshed, I arrived among the latest at
a breakfast which was a desultory and movable feast. Almost all the men
had gone forth to hill, forest, or river, in pursuit of the furred,
finned, or feathered denizens of the wilds--"
"You speak," interrupted the schoolboy, "like a printed book! I like to
hear you speak like that. Drive on, old man! Drive on your hearse!"
The Bachelor of Arts "drove on," without noticing this interruption. "I
tried to 'lead up' to the hearse," he said, "in conversation with the
young ladies of the castle. I endeavoured to assume the languid and
preoccupied air of the guest who, in ghost-stories, has had a bad night
with the family spectre. I drew the conversation to the topic of
apparitions, and even to warnings of death. I knew that every family
worthy of the name has its omen: the Oxenhams a white bird, another house
a brass band, whose airy music is poured forth by invisible performers,
and so on. Of course I expected some one to cry, 'Oh, _we've_ got a
hearse with white horses,' for that is the kind of heirloom an ancient
house regards with complacent pride. But nobody offered any remarks on
the local omen, and even when I drew near the topic of _hearses_, one of
the girls, my cousin, merely quoted, 'Speak not like a death's-head, good
Doll' (my name is Adolphus), and asked me to play at lawn-tennis.
In the evening, in the smoking-room, it was no better, nobody had ever
heard of an omen in this particular castle. Nay, when I told my story,
for it came to that at last, they only laughed at me, and said I must
have dreamed it. Of course I expected to be wakened in the night by some
awful apparition, but nothing disturbed me. I never slept better, and
hearses were the last things I thought of during the remainder of my
visit. Months passed, and I had almost forgotten the vision, or dream,
for I began to feel apprehensive that, after all, it _was_ a dream. So
costly and elaborate an apparition as a hearse with white horses and
plumes complete, could never have been got up, regardless of expense, for
one occasion only, and to frighten one undergraduate, yet it was certain
that the hearse was not 'the old family coach.' My entertainers had
undeniably never heard of it in their lives before. Even tradition at
the castle said nothing of a spectral hearse, though the house was
credited with a white lady deprived of her hands, and a luminous boy.
Here the Bachelor of Arts paused, and a shower of chaff began.
"Is that really all?" asked the Girton girl.
"Why, this is the third ghost-story to-night without any ghost in it!"
"I don't remember saying that it _was_ a ghost-story," replied the
Bachelor of Arts; "but I thought a little anecdote of a mere 'warning'
might not be unwelcome."
"But where does the warning come in?" asked the schoolboy.
"That's just what I was arriving at," replied the narrator, "when I was
interrupted with as little ceremony as if I had been Mr. Gladstone in the
middle of a most important speech. I was going to say that, in the
Easter Vacation after my visit to the castle, I went over to Paris with a
friend, a fellow of my college. We drove to the Hotel d'Alsace (I
believe there is no hotel of that name; if there is, I beg the spirited
proprietor's pardon, and assure him that nothing personal is intended).
We marched upstairs with our bags and baggage, and jolly high stairs they
were. When we had removed the soil of travel from our persons, my friend
called out to me, 'I say, Jones, why shouldn't we go down by the lift.'
{256} 'All right,' said I, and my friend walked to the door of the
mechanical apparatus, opened it, and got in. I followed him, when the
porter whose business it is to 'personally conduct' the inmates of the
hotel, entered also, and was closing the door.
"His eyes met mine, and I knew him in a moment. I had seen him once
before. His sallow face, black, closely shaven chin, furtive glance, and
military bearing, were the face and the glance and bearing of the driver
of that awful hearse!
"In a moment--more swiftly than I can tell you--I pushed past the man,
threw open the door, and just managed, by a violent effort, to drag my
friend on to the landing. Then the lift rose with a sudden impulse, fell
again, and rushed, with frightful velocity, to the basement of the hotel,
whence we heard an appalling crash, followed by groans. We rushed
downstairs, and the horrible spectacle of destruction that met our eyes I
shall never forget. The unhappy porter was expiring in agony; but the
warning had saved my life and my friend's."
"_I was that friend_," said I--the collector of these anecdotes; "and so
far I can testify to the truth of Jones's story."
At this moment, however, the gong for dressing sounded, and we went to
our several apartments, after this emotional specimen of "Evenings at
Home."