to wait before the dawn broke. Not till it was broad daylight did I quit
the haunted house. Before I did so, I revisited the little blind room in
which my servant and myself had been for a time imprisoned. I had a
strong impression--for which I could not account--that from that room
had originated the mechanism of the phenomena--if I may use the
term--which had been experienced in my chamber. And though I entered it
now in the clear day, with the sun peering through the filmy window, I
still felt, as I stood on its floor, the creep of the horror which I had
first there experienced the night before, and which had been so
aggravated by what had passed in my own chamber. I could not, indeed,
bear to stay more than half a minute within those walls. I descended the
stairs, and again I heard the footfall before me; and when I opened the
street door, I thought I could distinguish a very low laugh. I gained my
own home, expecting to find my runaway servant there. But he had not
presented himself; nor did I hear more of him for three days, when I
received a letter from him, dated from Liverpool, to this effect:--
"HONOURED SIR,--I humbly entreat your pardon, though I
can scarcely hope that you will think I deserve it,
unless--which Heaven forbid!--you saw what I did. I feel that
it will be years before I can recover myself; and as to being
fit for service, it is out of the question. I am therefore
going to my brother-in-law at Melbourne. The ship sails
to-morrow. Perhaps the long voyage may set me up. I do nothing
now but start and tremble, and fancy It is behind me. I humbly
beg you, honoured sir, to order my clothes, and whatever wages
are due to me, to be sent to my mother's, at Walworth--John
knows her address."
The letter ended with additional apologies, somewhat incoherent, and
explanatory details as to effects that had been under the writer's
charge.
This flight may perhaps warrant a suspicion that the man wished to go to
Australia, and had been somehow or other fraudulently mixed up with the
events of the night. I say nothing in refutation of that conjecture;
rather, I suggest it as one that would seem to many persons the most
probable solution of improbable occurrences. My own theory remained
unshaken. I returned in the evening to the house, to bring away in a
hack cab the things I had left there, with my poor dog's body. In this
task I was not disturbed, nor did any incident worth note befall me,
except that still, on ascending, and descending the stairs I heard the
same footfall in advance. On leaving the house, I went to Mr J----'s. He
was at home. I returned him the keys, told him that my curiosity was
sufficiently gratified, and was about to relate quickly what had passed,
when he stopped me, and said, though with much politeness, that he had
no longer any interest in a mystery which none had ever solved.
I determined at least to tell him of the two letters I had read, as well
as of the extraordinary manner in which they had disappeared, and I then
inquired if he thought they had been addressed to the woman who had died
in the house, and if there were anything in her early history which
could possibly confirm the dark suspicions to which the letters gave
rise. Mr J---- seemed startled, and, after musing a few moments,
answered, "I know but little of the woman's earlier history, except, as
I before told you, that her family were known to mine. But you revive
some vague reminiscences to her prejudice. I will make inquiries, and
inform you of their result. Still, even if we could admit the popular
superstition that a person who had been either the perpetrator or the
victim of dark crimes in life could revisit, as a restless spirit, the
scene in which those crimes had been committed, I should observe that
the house was infested by strange sights and sounds before the old woman
died--you smile--what would you say?"
"I would say this, that I am convinced, if we could get to the bottom of
these mysteries, we should find a living human agency."
"What! you believe it is all an imposture? For what object?"
"Not an imposture in the ordinary sense of the word. If suddenly I were
to sink into a deep sleep, from which you could not awake me, but in
that sleep could answer questions with an accuracy which I could not
pretend to when awake--tell you what money you had in your pocket--nay,
describe your very thoughts--it is not necessarily an imposture, any
more than it is necessarily supernatural. I should be, unconsciously to
myself, under a mesmeric influence, conveyed to me from a distance by a
human being who had acquired power over me by previous _rapport_."
"Granting mesmerism, so far carried, to be a fact, you are right. And
you would infer from this that a mesmeriser might produce the
extraordinary effects you and others have witnessed over inanimate
objects--fill the air with sights and sounds?"
"Or impress our senses with the belief in them--we never having been _en
rapport_ with the person acting on us? No. What is commonly called
mesmerism could not do this; but there may be a power akin to mesmerism,
and superior to it--the power that in the old days was called Magic.
That such a power may extend to all inanimate objects of matter, I do
not say; but if so, it would not be against nature, only a rare power in
nature which might be given to constitutions with certain peculiarities,
and cultivated by practice to an extraordinary degree. That such a power
might extend over the dead--that is, over certain thoughts and memories
that the dead may still retain--and compel, not that which ought
properly to be called the _soul_, and which is far beyond human reach,
but rather a phantom of what has been most earth-stained on earth, to
make itself apparent to our senses--is a very ancient though obsolete
theory, upon which I will hazard no opinion. But I do not conceive the
power would be supernatural.
"Let me illustrate what I mean from an experiment which Paracelsus
describes as not difficult, and which the author of the _Curiosities of
Literature_ cites as credible: A flower perishes; you burn it. Whatever
were the elements of that flower while it lived are gone, dispersed, you
know not whither; you can never discover nor re-collect them. But you
can, by chemistry, out of the burnt dust of that flower, raise a
spectrum of the flower, just as it seemed in life. It may be the same
with the human being. The soul has so much escaped you as the essence or
elements of the flower. Still you may make a spectrum of it. And this
phantom, though in the popular superstition it is held to be the soul of
the departed, must not be confounded with the true soul; it is but the
eidolon of the dead form.
"Hence, like the best-attested stories of ghosts or spirits, the thing
that most strikes us is the absence of what we hold to be soul--that is,
of superior emancipated intelligence. They come for little or no
object--they seldom speak, if they do come; they utter no ideas above
that of an ordinary person on earth. These American spirit-seers have
published volumes of communications in prose and verse, which they
assert to be given in the names of the most illustrious
dead--Shakespeare, Bacon--heaven knows whom. Those communications,
taking the best, are certainly not a whit of higher order than would be
communications from living persons of fair talent and education; they
are wondrously inferior to what Bacon, Shakespeare, and Plato said and
wrote when on earth.
"Nor, what is more notable, do they ever contain an idea that was not on
the earth before. Wonderful, therefore, as such phenomena may be
(granting them to be truthful), I see much that philosophy may question,
nothing that it is incumbent on philosophy to deny--viz. nothing
supernatural. They are but ideas conveyed somehow or other (we have not
yet discovered the means) from one mortal brain to another. Whether, in
so doing, tables walk of their own accord, or fiend-like shapes appear
in a magic circle, or bodyless hands rise and remove material objects,
or a Thing of Darkness, such as presented itself to me, freeze our
blood--still am I persuaded that these are but agencies conveyed, as by
electric wires, to my own brain from the brain of another. In some
constitutions there is a natural chemistry, and those may produce
chemic wonders--in others a natural fluid, call it electricity, and
these produce electric wonders. But they differ in this from Normal
Science--they are alike objectless, purposeless, puerile, frivolous.
They lead on to no grand results; and therefore the world does not heed,
and true sages have not cultivated them. But sure I am, that of all I
saw or heard, a man, human as myself, was the remote originator; and I
believe unconsciously to himself as to the exact effects produced, for
this reason: no two persons, you say, have ever told you that they
experienced exactly the same thing. Well, observe, no two persons ever
experience exactly the same dream. If this were an ordinary imposture,
the machinery would be arranged for results that would but little vary;
if it were a supernatural agency permitted by the Almighty, it would
surely be for some definite end.
"These phenomena belong to neither class; my persuasion is, that they
originate in some brain now far distant; that that brain had no distinct
volition in anything that occurred; that what does occur reflects but
its devious, motley, ever-shifting, half-formed thoughts; in short, that
it has been but the dreams of such a brain put into action and invested
with a semisubstance. That this brain is of immense power, that it can
set matter into movement, that it is malignant and destructive, I
believe: some material force must have killed my dog; it might, for
aught I know, have sufficed to kill myself, had I been as subjugated by
terror as the dog--had my intellect or my spirit given me no
countervailing resistance in my will."
"It killed your dog! that is fearful! indeed, it is strange that no
animal can be induced to stay in that house; not even a cat. Rats and
mice are never found in it."
"The instincts of the brute creation detect influences deadly to their
existence. Man's reason has a sense less subtle, because it has a
resisting power more supreme. But enough; do you comprehend my theory?"
"Yes, though imperfectly--and I accept any crotchet (pardon the word),
however odd, rather than embrace at once the notion of ghosts and
hobgoblins we imbibed in our nurseries. Still, to my unfortunate house
the evil is the same. What on earth can I do with the house?"
"I will tell you what I would do. I am convinced from my own internal
feelings that the small unfurnished room at right angles to the door of
the bedroom which I occupied, forms a starting-point or receptacle for
the influences which haunt the house; and I strongly advise you to have
the walls opened, the floor removed--nay, the whole room pulled down. I
observe that it is detached from the body of the house, built over the
small back-yard, and could be removed without injury to the rest of the
building."
"And you think, if I did that----"
"You would cut off the telegraph wires. Try it. I am so persuaded that I
am right, that I will pay half the expense if you will allow me to
direct the operations."
"Nay, I am well able to afford the cost; for the rest, allow me to write
to you."
About ten days afterwards I received a letter from Mr J----, telling me
that he had visited the house since I had seen him; that he had found
the two letters I had described, replaced in the drawer from which I had
taken them; that he had read them with misgivings like my own; that he
had instituted a cautious inquiry about the woman to whom I rightly
conjectured they had been written. It seemed that thirty-six years ago
(a year before the date of the letters), she had married against the
wish of her relatives, an American of very suspicious character; in
fact, he was generally believed to have been a pirate. She herself was
the daughter of very respectable tradespeople, and had served in the
capacity of a nursery governess before her marriage. She had a brother,
a widower, who was considered wealthy, and who had one child of about
six years old. A month after the marriage, the body of this brother was
found in the Thames, near London Bridge; there seemed some marks of
violence about his throat, but they were not deemed sufficient to
warrant the inquest in any other verdict than that of "found drowned."
The American and his wife took charge of the little boy, the deceased
brother having by his will left his sister the guardian of his only
child--and in the event of the child's death, the sister inherited. The
child died about six months afterwards--it was supposed to have been
neglected and ill-treated. The neighbours deposed to have heard it
shriek at night. The surgeon who had examined it after death, said that
it was emaciated as if from want of nourishment, and the body was
covered with livid bruises. It seemed that one winter night the child
had sought to escape--crept out into the back-yard--tried to scale the
wall--fallen back exhausted, and been found at morning on the stones in
a dying state. But though there was some evidence of cruelty, there was
none of murder; and the aunt and her husband had sought to palliate
cruelty by alleging the exceeding stubbornness and perversity of the
child, who was declared to be half-witted. Be that as it may, at the
orphan's death the aunt inherited her brother's fortune.
Before the first wedded year was out, the American quitted England
abruptly, and never returned to it. He obtained a cruising vessel, which
was lost in the Atlantic two years afterwards. The widow was left in
affluence; but reverses of various kinds had befallen her: a bank
broke--an investment failed--she went into a small business and became
insolvent--then she entered into service, sinking lower and lower, from
housekeeper down to maid-of-all-work--never long retaining a place,
though nothing peculiar against her character was ever alleged. She was
considered sober, honest, and peculiarly quiet in her ways; still
nothing prospered with her. And so she had dropped into the workhouse,
from which Mr J---- had taken her, to be placed in charge of the very
house which she had rented as mistress in the first year of her wedded
life.
Mr J---- added that he had passed an hour alone in the unfurnished room
which I had urged him to destroy, and that his impressions of dread
while there were so great, though he had neither heard nor seen
anything, that he was eager to have the walls bared and the floors
removed as I had suggested. He had engaged persons for the work, and
would commence any day I would name.
The day was accordingly fixed. I repaired to the haunted house--we went
into the blind dreary room, took up the skirting, and then the floors.
Under the rafters, covered with rubbish, was found a trap-door, quite
large enough to admit a man. It was closely nailed down, with clamps and
rivets of iron. On removing these we descended into a room below, the
existence of which had never been suspected. In this room there had been
a window and a flue, but they had been bricked over, evidently for many
years. By the help of candles we examined this place; it still retained
some mouldering furniture--three chairs, an oak settle, a table--all of
the fashion of about eighty years ago. There was a chest of drawers
against the wall, in which we found, half-rotted away, old-fashioned
articles of a man's dress, such as might have been worn eighty or a
hundred years ago by a gentleman of some rank--costly steel buckles and
buttons, like those yet worn in court dresses--a handsome court
sword--in a waistcoat which had once been rich with gold lace, but which
was now blackened and foul with damp, we found five guineas, a few
silver coins, and an ivory ticket, probably for some place of
entertainment long since passed away. But our main discovery was in a
kind of iron safe fixed to the wall, the lock of which it cost us much
trouble to get picked.
In this safe were three shelves and two small drawers. Ranged on the
shelves were several small bottles of crystal, hermetically stopped.
They contained colourless volatile essences, of what nature I shall say
no more than that they were not poisons--phosphor and ammonia entered
into some of them. There were also some very curious glass tubes, and a
small pointed rod of iron, with a large lump of rock-crystal, and
another of amber--also a loadstone of great power.
In one of the drawers we found a miniature portrait set in gold, and
retaining the freshness of its colours most remarkably, considering the
length of time it had probably been there. The portrait was that of a
man who might be somewhat advanced in middle life, perhaps forty-seven
or forty-eight.
It was a most peculiar face--a most impressive face. If you could fancy
some mighty serpent transformed into man, preserving in the human
lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better idea of that
countenance than long descriptions can convey: the width and flatness of
frontal--the tapering elegance of contour disguising the strength of the
deadly jaw--the long, large, terrible eye, glittering and green as the
emerald--and withal a certain ruthless calm, as if from the
consciousness of an immense power. The strange thing was this--the
instant I saw the miniature I recognised a startling likeness to one of
the rarest portraits in the world--the portrait of a man of a rank only
below that of royalty, who in his own day had made a considerable noise.
History says little or nothing of him; but search the correspondence of
his contemporaries, and you find reference to his wild daring, his bold
profligacy, his restless spirit, his taste for the occult sciences.
While still in the meridian of life he died and was buried, so say the
chronicles, in a foreign land. He died in time to escape the grasp of
the law, for he was accused of crimes which would have given him to the
headsman.
After his death, the portraits of him, which had been numerous, for he
had been a munificent encourager of art, were bought up and
destroyed--it was supposed by his heirs, who might have been glad could
they have razed his very name from their splendid line. He had enjoyed a
vast wealth; a large portion of this was believed to have been embezzled
by a favourite astrologer or soothsayer--at all events, it had
unaccountably vanished at the time of his death. One portrait alone of
him was supposed to have escaped the general destruction; I had seen it
in the house of a collector some months before. It had made on me a
wonderful impression, as it does on all who behold it--a face never to
be forgotten; and there was that face in the miniature that lay within
my hand. True, that in the miniature the man was a few years older than
in the portrait I had seen, or than the original was even at the time of
his death. But a few years!--why, between the date in which flourished
that direful noble and the date in which the miniature was evidently
painted, there was an interval of more than two centuries. While I was
thus gazing, silent and wondering, Mr J---- said:
"But is it possible? I have known this man."
"How--where?" I cried.
"In India. He was high in the confidence of the Rajah of ----, and
wellnigh drew him into a revolt which would have lost the Rajah his
dominions. The man was a Frenchman--his name de V----, clever, bold,
lawless. We insisted on his dismissal and banishment: it must be the
same man--no two faces like his--yet this miniature seems nearly a
hundred years old."
Mechanically I turned round the miniature to examine the back of it, and
on the back was engraved a pentacle; in the middle of the pentacle a
ladder, and the third step of the ladder was formed by the date 1765.
Examining still more minutely, I detected a spring; this, on being
pressed, opened the back of the miniature as a lid. Withinside the lid
was engraved "Mariana to thee--Be faithful in life and in death to
----." Here follows a name that I will not mention, but it was not
unfamiliar to me. I had heard it spoken of by old men in my childhood as
the name borne by a dazzling charlatan, who had made a great sensation
in London for a year or so, and had fled the country on the charge of a
double murder within his own house--that of his mistress and his rival.
I said nothing of this to Mr J----, to whom reluctantly I resigned the
miniature.
We had found no difficulty in opening the first drawer within the iron
safe; we found great difficulty in opening the second: it was not
locked, but it resisted all efforts till we inserted in the chinks the
edge of a chisel. When we had thus drawn it forth, we found a very
singular apparatus in the nicest order. Upon a small thin book, or
rather tablet, was placed a saucer of crystal; this saucer was filled
with a clear liquid--on that liquid floated a kind of compass, with a
needle shifting rapidly round, but instead of the usual points of a
compass were seven strange characters, not very unlike those used by
astrologers to denote the planets. A very peculiar, but not strong nor
displeasing odour, came from this drawer, which was lined with a wood
that we afterwards discovered to be hazel. Whatever the cause of this
odour, it produced a material effect on the nerves. We all felt it, even
the two workmen who were in the room--a creeping tingling sensation from
the tips of the fingers to the roots of the hair. Impatient to examine
the tablet, I removed the saucer. As I did so the needle of the compass
went round and round with exceeding swiftness, and I felt a shock that
ran through my whole frame, so that I dropped the saucer on the floor.
The liquid was spilt--the saucer was broken--the compass rolled to the
end of the room--and at that instant the walls shook to and fro, as if a
giant had swayed and rocked them.
The two workmen were so frightened that they ran up the ladder by which
we had descended from the trap-door; but seeing that nothing more
happened, they were easily induced to return.
Meanwhile I had opened the tablet: it was bound in a plain red leather,
with a silver clasp; it contained but one sheet of thick vellum, and on
that sheet were inscribed, within a double pentacle, words in old
monkish Latin, which are literally to be translated thus:--"On all that
it can reach within these walls--sentient or inanimate, living or
dead--as moves the needle, so work my will! Accursed be the house, and
restless be the dwellers therein."
We found no more. Mr J---- burnt the tablet and its anathema. He razed
to the foundations the part of the building containing the secret room
with the chamber over it. He had then the courage to inhabit the house
himself for a month, and a quieter, better-conditioned house could not
be found in all London. Subsequently he let it to advantage, and his
tenant has made no complaints.
But my story is not yet done. A few days after Mr J---- had removed into
the house, I paid him a visit. We were standing by the open window and
conversing. A van containing some articles of furniture which he was
moving from his former house was at the door. I had just urged on him my
theory that all those phenomena regarded as supermundane had emanated
from a human brain; adducing the charm, or rather curse, we had found
and destroyed in support of my philosophy. Mr J---- was observing in
reply, "That even if mesmerism, or whatever analogous power it might be
called, could really thus work in the absence of the operator, and
produce effects so extraordinary, still could those effects continue
when the operator himself was dead? and if the spell had been wrought,
and, indeed, the room walled up, more than seventy years ago, the
probability was, that the operator had long since departed this life";
Mr J----, I say, was thus answering, when I caught hold of his arm and
pointed to the street below.
A well-dressed man had crossed from the opposite side, and was accosting
the carrier in charge of the van. His face, as he stood, was exactly
fronting our window. It was the face of the miniature we had discovered;
it was the face of the portrait of the noble three centuries ago.