AUNT DINAH IS IN THE HORRORS, AND DOCTOR DRAKE PUTS HIS NIGHTCAP IN HIS
POCKET.
“I wish to say good-bye to you very kindly,” said Aunt Dinah, quite
sadly and gently, and somehow not like herself, “and—and I’ve tried to
keep up; I know it must happen, and I’m sure it is for the best, but⸺”
“I hope and expect, my dear Dinah,” interposed Miss Letty, sharply—she
was pulling on her worsted “wrists”—“to see you in the enjoyment of many
years of your accustomed health and spirits, and I have no doubt,
humanly speaking, that I shall.”
Miss Letty was quiet and peremptory, but also a little excited. And the
doctor, for want of something better to do, cleared his voice, in a
grand abstraction, and wound up his watch slowly, and held it to his
ear, nobody knew exactly why.
“You won’t believe me, but I know it, and so will you—too late;
to-morrow night at twelve o’clock I shall be dead. I’ve tried to keep
up—I have; I’ve tried it; but oh! Ho, ho, hoo, ooh,” and poor Aunt Dinah
quite broke down, and cried and hooted hysterically.
Dr. Drake had now before him an intelligible case, and took the command
accordingly with decision. Up went the window; cold water was there, and
spirit of hartshorn. And when she had a little recovered, the doctor,
who was a good-natured fellow, said—
“Now, Miss Perfect, Ma’am, it won’t do, I tell you; it’s only right; you
may want some assistance; and if, as an old friend, you’ll allow me to
return and remain here for the night, a sofa, or an armchair, anything,
I’ll be most happy, I do assure you.”
But Aunt Dinah, with many thanks, said, “No,” peremptorily, and wilful
man or woman, who will contend with?
So, like the awful banquet in Macbeth, Miss Dinah Perfect’s tea-party
broke down and up, and the guests, somewhat scared, got into their
walking wrappers, rather silently, and their entertainer remained behind
unstrung and melancholic.
But William Maubray, who came down to assist in the rummage for cloaks
and umbrellas, asked leave, in his blunt modest way, to accompany Miss
Letty and her brother, the doctor, to Saxton.
Now there seemed something real and grisly in Aunt Dinah’s terror, which
a little infected William Maubray; and the little party marched in
silence along the frost-hardened road, white in moonlight, with the bare
switch-like shadows of the trees across it, on their way to the pretty
old town of Saxton.
At last the doctor said—
“She won’t miss you, do you think?”
“She told me she’d like to be quiet for half an hour, and I should be so
much obliged if you could tell me, whether you really, that is, _still_
think that she ought to have a medical man in attendance to-night.”
“Why, you know what hysteria is. Well, she is in a highly hysterical
state. She’s a woman who resists; it would be safer, you see, if she
gave way and cried a bit now and then, when nature prompts, but she
won’t, except under awful high pressure, and then it might be serious;
those things sometimes run off into fits.”
And so the doctor lectured William upon his aunt’s nerves, until they
had arrived at the door of his snug house in the High Street.
Here they shook hands; but William Maubray, who was unhappy about Aunt
Dinah, after Miss Letty had mounted to her chamber, very urgently
entreated the doctor to return and see how it might end.
With a bottle of valerian, his slippers, and a nightcap in his pocket,
Doctor Drake did consent to return, and be smuggled into Gilroyd Hall.
“I don’t know what to make of that spirit-rapping quite,” said the
doctor, as side by side they approached the Hall. “There’s a quantity of
books published on it—very unaccountable if half what they say is true.
I suppose you’ve read it all. You read a lot, Miss Perfect tells me.”
“I’ve read very little about it, except in the papers. She fancies she
has had a message, telling her she is to die sometime to-morrow. I can’t
believe there’s really anything more than self-deception; but is there
not a danger?”
“How?” asked the doctor.
“I mean, being so nervous as you suppose, and quite convinced that she
is to die at a particular time; might not her own mind—you know Lord
Lyttelton died in consequence of such a persuasion.”
William paused, Doctor Drake lowered, between his fingers, the cigar he
was smoking, and they came to a halt, with a little wheel to the left,
and the doctor, with his head aside, blowing the smoke up in a thin
stream, looked with a thoughtful scrutiny up at the clear bright moon;
perhaps a not unsuitable source of inspiration upon their crazy theme.
“I forget _which_ Lord Lyttelton that was,” said the doctor, wisely.
“Isn’t it _Lyttelton_, you say? But the thing is quite possible. There’s
a spirit you know she’s always talking about. She calls him Henbane.
Egad, Sir, I was devilish near laughing at tea when she named him so
suddenly that time; I’d have been up a tree if I had, you know. You did
not see what she was at, but I did. That Henbane’s her gospel, egad, and
she thinks it was he who told her—d’ye see? Come along. She’ll be
wondering where you are.”
So on they went towards Gilroyd Hall, whose outline, black and sharp,
against the luminous sky, was relieved at one point by the dull glow of
candle-light through the red curtains of what William Maubray knew to be
Aunt Dinah’s bed-chamber window.
“She is in her room, I think—there’s light in her window,” said William.
The doctor nodded, chucking his cigar stump far away, for he knew Aunt
Dinah’s antipathy to tobacco, and they were now on the door-step. He was
thinking, if the case were to end tragically, what a capital paper he
would make of it, beside the interesting letter he would send to the
editor of the _Spatula_.
“Winnie’s bin a callin’ over the stairs for you, Master Willie. Missis
wants ye to her room,” said Tom, who awaited them on the door-steps.
“I’ll sit by the fire in the study,” whispered the doctor. “I don’t mind
sitting up a night now and then. Give me a cloak or something. There’s a
sofa, and I’ll do very well.”
The principle of life was strong in Aunt Dinah, and three hours later
that active-minded lady was lying wide awake on her bed, with a variety
of topics, not all consisting with the assumed shortness of her hours,
drifting in succession through her head. The last idea that struck her
was the most congruous, and up she jumped, made a wild toilet, whose
sole principle was warmth, tied a faded silk handkerchief over her
nightcap, across her ears, and with her long white flannel dressing-gown
about her, and a taper in her hand, issued, like the apparition of the
Bleeding Nun, upon the gallery, and tapped sharply on William Maubray’s
door.
“William, William!” she called as she tapped, and from within William
answered drowsily to the summons.
“Wait a moment,” said the lady, and
“In glided Margaret’s grimly ghost,
And stood at William’s feet.”
“We _must_ have a _séance_, my dear boy; I’m going to wake up old
Winnie. It certainly has a connexion with your arrival; but anything
like the cracking, knocking, and creaking of _everything_, I’ve never
yet heard. I have no doubt—so sure as you sit there”—(William was
sitting up in his bed with glazed eyes, and senses only half
awake)—“that your poor dear mother is here to-night. We’re _sure_ of
Henbane; and—just get your clothes on—I’m going for Winnie, and we meet
in the study, mind, in five minutes.”
And Aunt Dinah, having lighted William’s candle, disappeared, leaving
him with a fund of cheerful ideas to make his yawning and bewildered
toilet.
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