My grandfather had learnt enough of the language to know that the
sign promised good liquor. “This is the house for me,” said he,
stopping short before the door.
The sudden appearance of a dashing dragoon was an event in an old
inn, frequented only by the peaceful sons of traffic. A rich
burgher of Antwerp, a stately ample man, in a broad Flemish hat,
and who was the great man and great patron of the establishment,
sat smoking a clean long pipe on one side of the door; a fat
little distiller of Geneva from Schiedam, sat smoking on the
other, and the bottle-nosed host stood in the door, and the
comely hostess, in crimped cap, beside him; and the hostess’
daughter, a plump Flanders lass, with long gold pendants in her
ears, was at a side window.
“Humph!” said the rich burgher of Antwerp, with a sulky glance at
the stranger.
“Der duyvel!” said the fat little distiller of Schiedam.
The landlord saw with the quick glance of a publican that the new
guest was not at all, at all, to the taste of the old ones; and
to tell the truth, he did not himself like my grandfather’s saucy
eye.
He shook his head—“Not a garret in the house but was full.”
“Not a garret!” echoed the landlady.
“Not a garret!” echoed the daughter.
The burgher of Antwerp and the little distiller of Schiedam
continued to smoke their pipes sullenly, eyed the enemy askance
from under their broad hats, but said nothing.
My grandfather was not a man to be browbeaten. He threw the reins
on his horse’s neck, cocked his hat on one side, stuck one arm
akimbo, slapped his broad thigh with the other hand—
“Faith and troth!” said he, “but I’ll sleep in this house this
very night!”
My grandfather had on a tight pair of buckskins—the slap went to
the landlady’s heart.
He followed up the vow by jumping off his horse, and making his
way past the staring Mynheers into the public room. May be you’ve
been in the barroom of an old Flemish inn—faith, but a handsome
chamber it was as you’d wish to see; with a brick floor, a great
fire-place, with the whole Bible history in glazed tiles; and
then the mantel-piece, pitching itself head foremost out of the
wall, with a whole regiment of cracked tea-pots and earthen jugs
paraded on it; not to mention half a dozen great Delft platters
hung about the room by way of pictures; and the little bar in one
corner, and the bouncing bar-maid inside of it with a red calico
cap and yellow ear-drops.
My grandfather snapped his fingers over his head, as he cast an
eye round the room: “Faith, this is the very house I’ve been
looking after,” said he.
There was some farther show of resistance on the part of the
garrison, but my grandfather was an old soldier, and an Irishman
to boot, and not easily repulsed, especially after he had got
into the fortress. So he blarney’d the landlord, kissed the
landlord’s wife, tickled the landlord’s daughter, chucked the
bar-maid under the chin; and it was agreed on all hands that it
would be a thousand pities, and a burning shame into the bargain,
to turn such a bold dragoon into the streets. So they laid their
heads together, that is to say, my grandfather and the landlady,
and it was at length agreed to accommodate him with an old
chamber that had for some time been shut up.
“Some say it’s haunted!” whispered the landlord’s daughter, “but
you’re a bold dragoon, and I dare say you don’t fear ghosts.”
“The divil a bit!” said my grandfather, pinching her plump cheek;
“but if I should be troubled by ghosts, I’ve been to the Red Sea
in my time, and have a pleasant way of laying them, my darling!”
And then he whispered something to the girl which made her laugh,
and give him a good-humored box on the ear. In short, there was
nobody knew better how to make his way among the petticoats than
my grandfather.
In a little while, as was his usual way, he took complete
possession of the house: swaggering all over it;—into the stable
to look after his horse; into the kitchen to look after his
supper. He had something to say or do with every one; smoked with
the Dutchmen; drank with the Germans; slapped the men on the
shoulders, tickled the women under the ribs:-never since the days
of Ally Croaker had such a rattling blade been seen. The landlord
stared at him with astonishment; the landlord’s daughter hung her
head and giggled whenever he came near; and as he turned his back
and swaggered along, his tight jacket setting off his broad
shoulders and plump buckskins, and his long sword trailing by his
side, the maids whispered to one another—“What a proper man!”
At supper my grandfather took command of the table d’hôte as
though he had been at home; helped everybody, not forgetting
himself; talked with every one, whether he understood their
language or not; and made his way into the intimacy of the rich
burgher of Antwerp, who had never been known to be sociable with
any one during his life. In fact, he revolutionized the whole
establishment, and gave it such a rouse, that the very house
reeled with it. He outsat every one at table excepting the little
fat distiller of Schiedam, who had sat soaking for a long time
before he broke forth; but when he did, he was a very devil
incarnate. He took a violent affection for my grandfather; so
they sat drinking, and smoking, and telling stories, and singing
Dutch and Irish songs, without understanding a word each other
said, until the little Hollander was fairly swampt with his own
gin and water, and carried off to bed, whooping and hiccuping,
and trolling the burthen of a Low Dutch love song.
Well, gentlemen, my grandfather was shown to his quarters, up a
huge Staircase composed of loads of hewn timber; and through long
rigmarole passages, hung with blackened paintings of fruit, and
fish, and game, and country frollics, and huge kitchens, and
portly burgomasters, such as you see about old-fashioned Flemish
inns, till at length he arrived at his room.
An old-times chamber it was, sure enough, and crowded with all
kinds of trumpery. It looked like an infirmary for decayed and
superannuated furniture; where everything diseased and disabled
was sent to nurse, or to be forgotten. Or rather, it might have
been taken for a general congress of old legitimate moveables,
where every kind and country had a representative. No two chairs
were alike: such high backs and low backs, and leather bottoms
and worsted bottoms, and straw bottoms, and no bottoms; and
cracked marble tables with curiously carved legs, holding balls
in their claws, as though they were going to play at ninepins.
My grandfather made a bow to the motley assemblage as he entered,
and having undressed himself, placed his light in the fire-place,
asking pardon of the tongs, which seemed to be making love to the
shovel in the chimney corner, and whispering soft nonsense in its
ear.
The rest of the guests were by this time sound asleep; for your
Mynheers are huge sleepers. The house maids, one by one, crept up
yawning to their attics, and not a female head in the inn was
laid on a pillow that night without dreaming of the Bold Dragoon.
My grandfather, for his part, got into bed, and drew over him one
of those great bags of down, under which they smother a man in
the Low Countries; and there he lay, melting between, two feather
beds, like an anchovy sandwich between two slices of toast and
butter. He was a warm-complexioned man, and this smothering
played the very deuce with him. So, sure enough, in a little
while it seemed as if a legion of imps were twitching at him and
all the blood in his veins was in fever heat.
He lay still, however, until all the house was quiet, excepting
the snoring of the Mynheers from the different chambers; who
answered one another in all kinds of tones and cadences, like so
many bull-frogs in a swamp. The quieter the house became, the
more unquiet became my grandfather. He waxed warmer and warmer,
until at length the bed became too hot to hold him.
“May be the maid had warmed it too much?” said the curious
gentleman, inquiringly.
“I rather think the contrary,” replied the Irishman. “But be that
as it may, it grew too hot for my grandfather.”
“Faith there’s no standing this any longer,” says he; so he
jumped out of bed and went strolling about the house.
“What for?” said the inquisitive gentleman.
“Why, to cool himself to be sure,” replied the other, “or perhaps
to find a more comfortable bed—or perhaps—but no matter what he
went for—he never mentioned; and there’s no use in taking up our
time in conjecturing.”
Well, my grandfather had been for some time absent from his room,
and was returning, perfectly cool, when just as he reached the
door he heard a strange noise within. He paused and listened. It
seemed as if some one was trying to hum a tune in defiance of the
asthma. He recollected the report of the room’s being haunted;
but he was no believer in ghosts. So he pushed the door gently
ajar, and peeped in.
Egad, gentlemen, there was a gambol carrying on within enough to
have astonished St. Anthony.
By the light of the fire he saw a pale weazen-faced fellow in a
long Flannel gown and a tall white night-cap with a tassel to it,
who sat by the fire, with a bellows under his arm by way of
bagpipe, from which he forced the asthmatical music that had
bothered my grandfather. As he played, too, he kept twitching
about with a thousand queer contortions; nodding his head and
bobbing about his tasselled night-cap.
My grandfather thought this very odd, and mighty presumptuous,
and was about to demand what business he had to play his wind
instruments in another gentleman’s quarters, when a new cause of
astonishment met his eye. From the opposite side of the room a
long-backed, bandy-legged chair, covered with leather, and
studded all over in a coxcomical fashion with little brass nails,
got suddenly into motion; thrust out first a claw foot, then a
crooked arm, and at length, making a leg, slided gracefully up to
an easy chair, of tarnished brocade, with a hole in its bottom,
and led it gallantly out in a ghostly minuet about the floor.
The musician now played fiercer and fiercer, and bobbed his head
and His nightcap about like mad. By degrees the dancing mania
seemed to seize upon all the other pieces of furniture. The
antique, long-bodied chairs paired off in couples and led down a
country dance; a three-legged stool danced a hornpipe, though
horribly puzzled by its supernumerary leg; while the amorous
tongs seized the shovel round the waist, and whirled it about the
room in a German waltz. In short, all the moveables got in
motion, capering about; pirouetting, hands across, right and
left, like so many devils, all except a great clothes-press,
which kept curtseying and curtseying, like a dowager, in one
corner, in exquisite time to the music;—being either too
corpulent to dance, or perhaps at a loss for a partner.
My grandfather concluded the latter to be the reason; so, being,
like a true Irishman, devoted to the sex, and at all times ready
for a frolic, he bounced into the room, calling to the musician
to strike up “Paddy O’Rafferty,” capered up to the clothes-press
and seized upon two handles to lead her out:—When, whizz!—the
whole revel was at an end. The chairs, tables, tongs, and shovel
slunk in an instant as quietly into their places as if nothing
had happened; and the musician vanished up the chimney, leaving
the bellows behind him in his hurry. My grandfather found himself
seated in the middle of the floor, with the clothes-press
sprawling before him, and the two handles jerked off and in his
hands.
“Then after all, this was a mere dream!” said the inquisitive
gentleman.
“The divil a bit of a dream!” replied the Irishman: “there never
was a truer fact in this world. Faith, I should have liked to see
any man tell my grandfather it was a dream.”
Well, gentlemen, as the clothes-press was a mighty heavy body,
and my grandfather likewise, particularly in rear, you may easily
suppose two such heavy bodies coming to the ground would make a
bit of a noise. Faith, the old mansion shook as though it had
mistaken it for an earthquake. The whole garrison was alarmed.
The landlord, who slept just below, hurried up with a candle to
inquire the cause, but with all his haste his daughter had
hurried to the scene of uproar before him. The landlord was
followed by the landlady, who was followed by the bouncing
bar-maid, who was followed by the simpering chambermaids all
holding together, as well as they could, such garments as they
had first lain hands on; but all in a terrible hurry to see what
the devil was to pay in the chamber of the bold dragoon.
My grandfather related the marvellous scene he had witnessed, and
the prostrate clothes-press, and the broken handles, bore
testimony to the fact. There was no contesting such evidence;
particularly with a lad of my grandfather’s complexion, who
seemed able to make good every word either with sword or
shillelah. So the landlord scratched his head and looked silly,
as he was apt to do when puzzled. The landlady scratched—no, she
did not scratch her head,—but she knit her brow, and did not seem
half pleased with the explanation. But the landlady’s daughter
corroborated it by recollecting that the last person who had
dwelt in that chamber was a famous juggler who had died of St.
Vitus’s dance, and no doubt had infected all the furniture.
This set all things to rights, particularly when the chambermaids
declared that they had all witnessed strange carryings on in that
room;—and as they declared this “upon their honors,” there could
not remain a doubt upon the subject.
“And did your grandfather go to bed again in that room?” said the
inquisitive gentleman.
“That’s more than I can tell. Where he passed the rest of the
night was a secret he never disclosed. In fact, though he had
seen much service, he was but indifferently acquainted with
geography, and apt to make blunders in his travels about inns at
night, that it would have puzzled him sadly to account for in the
morning.”
“Was he ever apt to walk in his sleep?” said the knowing old
gentleman.
“Never that I heard of.”