THE MILLBANK GHOST.
One of the greatest charms of London has ever been the facility of
getting away from it to some adjacent rustic or pseudo-rustic spot; and
in 1666, though many people declared that the city had outgrown all
reason, and was eating up the country, a two-mile journey would carry
the Londoner from bricks and mortar to rusticity, and while the tower
of St Paul’s Cathedral was still within sight he might lie on the grass
on a wild hillside, and hear the skylark warbling in the blue arch
above him, and scent the hawthorn blowing in untrimmed hedge-rows. And
then there were the fashionable resorts—the gardens or the fields which
the town had marked as its own. Beauty and wit had their choice of such
meeting-grounds between Westminster and Barn Elms, where in the remote
solitudes along the river murder might be done in strict accordance
with etiquette, and was too seldom punished by law.
Among the rendezvous of fashion there was one retired spot less widely
known than Fox Hall or the Mulberry Garden, but which possessed a
certain repute, and was affected rather by the exclusives than by the
crowd. It was a dilapidated building of immemorial age, known as the
“haunted Abbey,” being, in fact, the refectory of a Cistercian
monastery, of which all other remains had disappeared long ago. The
Abbey had flourished in the lifetime of Sir Thomas More, and was
mentioned in some of his familiar epistles. The ruined building had
been used as a granary in the time of Charles the First; and it was
only within the last decade that it had been redeemed from that
degraded use, and had been in some measure restored and made habitable
for the occupation of an old couple, who owned the surrounding fields,
and who had a small dairy farm from which they sent fresh milk into
London every morning.
The ghostly repute of the place and the attraction of new milk, cheese
cakes, and syllabubs, had drawn a certain number of those satiated
pleasure-seekers who were ever on the alert for a new sensation, among
whom there was none more active or more noisy than Lady Sarah
Tewkesbury. She had made the haunted Abbey in a manner her own, had
invited her friends to midnight parties to watch for the ghost, and to
morning parties to eat syllabubs and dance on the grass. She had
brought a shower of gold into the lap of the miserly freeholder, and
had husband and wife completely under her thumb.
Doler, the husband, had fought in the civil war, and Mrs. Doler had
been a cook in the Fairfax household; but both had scrupulously sunk
all Cromwellian associations since his Majesty’s return, and in
boasting, as he often did boast, of having fought desperately and been
left for dead at the battle of Brentford, Mr. Doler had been careful to
suppress the fact that he was a hireling soldier of the Parliament. He
would weep for the martyred King, and tell the story of his own wounds,
until it is possible he had forgotten which side he had fought for, in
remembering his personal prowess and sufferings.
So far there had been disappointment as to the ghost. Sounds had been
heard of a most satisfying grimness, during those midnight and early
morning watchings; rappings, and scrapings, and scratching on the wall,
groanings and meanings, sighings and whisperings behind the wainscote;
but nothing spectral had been seen; and Mrs. Doler had been severely
reprimanded by her patrons and patronesses for the unwarrantable
conduct of a spectre which she professed to have seen as often as she
had fingers and toes.
It was the phantom of a nun—a woman of exceeding beauty, but white as
the linen which banded her cheek and brow. There was a dark story of
violated oaths, priestly sin, and the sleepless conscience of the dead,
who could not rest even in that dreadful grave where the sinner had
been immured alive, but must needs haunt the footsteps of the living, a
wandering shade. Some there were who disbelieved in the traditions of
that living grave, and who even went so far as to doubt the ghost; but
the spectre had an established repute of more than a century, was
firmly believed in by all the children and old women of the
neighbourhood, and had been written about by students of the unseen.
One of Lady Sarah’s parties took place at full moon, not long after the
visit to Deptford, and Lord Fareham’s barge was again employed, this
time on a nocturnal expedition up the river to the fields near the
haunted Abbey, to carry Hyacinth, her sister, De Malfort, Lord
Rochester, Sir Ralph Masaroon, Sir Denzil Warner, and a bevy of wits
and beauties—beauties who had, some of them, been carrying on the
beauty-business and trading in eyes and complexion for more than one
decade, and who loved that night season when paint might be laid on
thicker than in the glare of day.
The barge wore a much more festive aspect under her ladyship’s
management than when used by his lordship for a daylight voyage like
the trip to Deptford. Satin coverlets and tapestry curtains had been
brought from Lady Fareham’s own apartments, to be flung with studied
carelessness over benches and tabourets. Her ladyship’s singing-boys
and musicians were grouped picturesquely under a silken canopy in the
bows, and a row of lanterns hung on chains festooned from stem to
stern, pretty gew-gaws, that had no illuminating power under that
all-potent moon, but which glittered with coloured light like jewels,
and twinkled and trembled in the summer air.
A table in the stern was spread with a light collation, which gave an
excuse for the display of parcel-gilt cups, silver tankards, and
Venetian wine-flasks. A miniature fountain played perfumed waters in
the midst of this splendour; and it amused the ladies to pull off their
long gloves, dip them in the scented water, and flap them in the faces
of their beaux.
The distance was only too short, since Lady Fareham’s friends declared
the voyage was by far the pleasanter part of the entertainment. Denzil,
among others, was of this opinion, for it was his good fortune to have
secured the seat next Angela, and to be able to interest her by his
account of the buildings they passed, whose historical associations
were much better known to him than to most young men of his epoch. He
had sat at the feet of a man who scoffed at Pope and King, and hated
Episcopacy, but who revered all that was noble and excellent in
England’s past.
“Flams, mere flams!” cried Hyacinth, acknowledging the praises bestowed
on her barge; “but if you like clary wine better than skimmed milk you
had best drink a brimmer or two before you leave the barge, since ’tis
odds you’ll get nothing but syllabubs and gingerbread from Lady Sarah.”
“A substantial supper might frighten away the ghost, who doubtless
parted with sensual propensities when she died,” said De Malfort. “How
do we watch for her? In a severe silence, as if we were at church?”
“Aw would keep silence for a week o’ Sawbaths gin Aw was sure o’ seeing
a bogle,” said Lady Euphemia Dubbin, a Scotch marquess’s daughter, who
had married a wealthy cit, and made it the chief endeavour of her life
to ignore her husband and keep him at a distance.
She hated the man only a little less than his plebeian name, which she
had not succeeded in persuading him to change, because, forsooth, there
had been Dubbins in Mark Lane for many generations. All previous
Dubbins had lived over their warehouses and offices; but her ladyship
had brought Thomas Dubbin from Mark Lane to my Lord Bedford’s Piazza in
the Convent Garden, where he endured the tedium of existence in a fine
new house in which he was afraid of his fine new servants, and never
had anything to eat that he liked, his gastronomic taste being for
dishes the very names of which were intolerable to persons of quality.
This evening Mr. Dubbin had been incorrigible, and had insisted on
intruding his clumsy person upon Lady Fareham’s party, arguing with a
dull persistence that his name was on her ladyship’s billet of
invitation.
“Your name is on a great many invitations only because it is my
misfortune to be called by it,” his wife told him. “To sit on a barge
after ten o’clock at night in June—the coarsest month in summer—is to
court lumbago; and all I hope is ye’ll not be punished by a worse
attack than common.”
Mr. Dubbin had refused to be discouraged, even by this churlishness
from his lady, and appeared in attendance upon her, wearing a
magnificent birthday suit of crimson velvet and green brocade, which he
meant to present to his favourite actor at the Duke’s Theatre, after he
had exhibited himself in it half a dozen times at Whitehall, for the
benefit of the great world, and at the Mulberry Garden for the
admiration of the _bona-robas_. He was a fat, double-chinned little
man, the essence of good nature, and perfectly unconscious of being an
offence to fine people.
Although not a wit himself, Mr. Dubbin was occasionally the cause of
wit in others, if the practice of bubbling an innocent rustic or
citizen can be called wit. Rochester and Sir Ralph Masaroon, and one
Jerry Spavinger, a gentleman jockey, who was a nobody in town, but a
shining light at Newmarket, took it upon themselves to draw the
harmless citizen, and, as a preliminary to making him ridiculous,
essayed to make him drunk.
They were clustered together in a little group somewhat apart from the
rest of the company, and were attended upon by a lackey who brought a
full tankard at the first whistle on the empty one, and whom Mr.
Dubbin, after a rapid succession of brimmers, insisted on calling
“drawer.” It was very seldom that Rochester condescended to take part
in any entertainment on which the royal sun shone not, unless it were
some post-midnight marauding with Buckhurst, Sedley, and a band of wild
coursers from the purlieus of Drury Lane. He could see no pleasure in
any medium between Whitehall and Alsatia.
“If I am not fooling on the steps of the throne, let me sprawl in the
gutter with pamphleteers and orange-girls,” said this precocious
profligate. “I abhor a reputable party among your petty nobility, and
if I had not been in love with Lady Fareham off and on, ever since I
cut my second teeth, I would have no hand in such a humdrum business as
this.”
“There’s not a neater filly in the London stable than her ladyship,”
said Jerry, “and I don’t blame your taste. I was side-glassing her
yesterday in Hi’ Park, but she didn’t seem to relish the manoeuvre,
though I was wearing a Chedreux peruke that ought to strike ’em dead.”
“You don’t give your peruke a chance, Jerry, while you frame that ugly
phiz in it.”
“Why not buffle the whole company, my lord?” said Masaroon, while Mr.
Dubbin talked apart with Lady Euphemia, who had come from the other end
of the barge to warn her husband against excess in Rhenish or Burgundy.
“You are good at disguises. Why not act the ghost and frighten
everybody out of their senses?”
“Il n’y a pas de quoi, Ralph. The creatures have no sense to be robbed
of. They are second-rate fashion, which is only worked by machinery.
They imitate us as monkeys do, without knowing what they aim at. Their
women have virtuous instincts, but turn wanton rather than not be like
the maids of honour; and because we have our duels their men murder
each other for a shrugged shoulder or a casual word. No, I’ll not chalk
my face or smear myself with phosphorus to amuse such trumpery. It was
worth my pains to disguise myself as a German Nostradamus, in order to
fool the lovely Jennings and her friend Price—who won’t easily forget
their adventures as orange-girls in the heart of the city. But I have
done with all such follies.”
“You are growing old, Wilmot. The years are telling upon your spirits.”
“I was nineteen last birthday, and ’tis fit I should feel the burden of
time, and think of virtue and a rich wife.”
“Like Mrs. Mallet, for example.”
“Faith, a man might do worse than win so much beauty and wealth. But
the creature is arrogant, and calls me ‘child;’ and half the peerage is
after her. But we’ll have our jest with the city scrub, Ralph; not
because I bear him malice, but because I hate his wife. And we’ll have
our masquerading some time after midnight; if you can borrow a little
finery.”
Mr. Dubbin was released from his lady’s _sotto voce_ lecture at this
instant, and Lord Rochester continued his communication in a whisper,
the Honourable Jeremiah assenting with nods and chucklings, while
Masaroon whistled for a fresh tankard, and plied the honest merchant
with a glass which he never allowed to be empty.
The taste for masquerading was a fashion of the time, as much as
combing a periwig, or flirting a fan. While Rochester was planning a
trick upon the citizen, Lady Fareham was whispering to De Malfort under
cover of the fiddles, which were playing an Italian pazzemano, an air
beloved by Henrietta of Orleans, who danced to that music with her
royal brother-in-law, in one of the sumptuous ballets at St. Cloud.
“Why should they be disappointed of their ghost,” said Hyacinth, “when
it would be so easy for me to dress up as the nun and scare them all?
This white satin gown of mine, with a few yards of white lawn arranged
on my head and shoulders——”
“Ah, but you have not the lawn at hand to-night, or your woman to
arrange your head,” interjected De Malfort quickly. “It would be a
capital joke; but it must be for another occasion and choicer company.
The rabble you have to-night is not worth it. Besides, there is
Rochester, who is past-master in disguises, and would smoke you at a
glance. Let me arrange it some night before the end of the summer—when
there is a waning moon. It were a pity the thing were done ill.”
“Will you really plan a party for me, and let me appear to them on the
stroke of one, with my face whitened? I have as slender a shape as most
women.”
“There is no such sylph in London.”
“And I can make myself look ethereal. Will you draw the nun’s habit for
me? and I will give your picture to Lewin to copy.”
“I will do more. I will get you a real habit.”
“But there are no nuns so white as the ghost.”
“True, but you may rely upon me. The nun’s robes shall be there, the
phosphorous, the blue fire, and a selection of the choicest company to
tremble at you. Leave the whole business to my care. It will amuse me
to plan so exquisite a jest for so lovely a jester.”
He bent down to kiss her hand, till his forehead almost touched her
knee, and in the few moments that passed before he raised it, she heard
him laughing softly to himself, as if with irrepressible delight.
“What a child you are,” she said, “to be pleased with such folly!”
“What children we both are, Hyacinth! My sweet soul, let us always be
childish, and find pleasure in follies. Life is such a poor thing, that
if we had leisure to appraise its value we should have a contagion of
suicide that would number more deaths than the plague. Indeed, the
wonder is, not that any man should commit _felo de se_, but that so
many of us should take the trouble to live.”
Lady Sarah received them at the landing-stage, with an escort of fops
and fine ladies; and the festival promised to be a success. There was a
better supper, and more wine than people expected from her ladyship;
and after supper a good many of those who pretended to have come to see
the ghost, wandered off in couples to saunter along the willow-shaded
bank, while only the more earnest spirits were content to wait and
watch and listen in the great vaulted hall, with no light but the moon
which sent a flood of silver through the high Gothic window, from which
every vestige of glass had long vanished.
There were stone benches along the two side walls, and Lady Sarah’s
_prévoyance_ had secured cushions or carpets for her guests to sit
upon; and here the superstitious sat in patient weariness, Angela among
them, with Denzil still at her side, scornful of credulous folly, but
loving to be with her he adored. Lady Fareham had been tempted
out-of-doors by De Malfort to look at the moonlight on the river, and
had not returned. Rochester and his crew had also vanished directly
after supper; and for company Angela had on her left hand Mr. Dubbin,
far advanced in liquor, and trembling at every breath of summer wind
that fluttered the ivy round the ruined window, and at every shadow
that moved upon the moonlit wall. His wife was on the other side of the
hall, whispering with Lady Sarah, and both so deep in a court
scandal—in which the “K” and the “D” recurred very often—that they had
almost forgotten the purpose of that moonlight sitting.
Suddenly in the distance there sounded a long shrill wailing, as of a
soul in agony, whereupon Mr. Dubbin, after clinging wildly to Angela,
and being somewhat roughly flung aside by Denzil, collapsed altogether,
and rolled upon the ground.
“Lady Euphemia,” cried Mrs. Townshend, a young lady who had been
sitting next the obnoxious citizen, “be pleased to look after your
drunken husband. If you take the low-bred sot into company, you should
at least charge yourself with the care of his manners.”
The damsel had started to her feet, and indignantly snatched her satin
petticoat from contact with the citizen’s porpoise figure.
“I hate mixed company,” she told Angela, “and old maids who marry
tallow-chandlers. If a woman of rank marries a shopkeeper she ought
never to be allowed west of Temple Bar.”
This young lady was no believer in ghosts; but others of the company
were too scared for speech. All had risen, and were staring in the
direction whence that dismal shriek had come. A trick, perhaps, since
anybody with strong lungs—dairymaid or cowboy—could shriek. They all
wanted to _see_ something, a real manifestation of the supernatural.
The unearthly sound was repeated, and the next moment a spectral shape,
in flowing white garments, rushed through the great window, and crossed
the hall, followed by three other shapes in dark loose robes, with
hooded heads. One carried a rope, another a pickaxe, the third a trowel
and hod of mortar. They crossed the hall with flying
footsteps—shadowlike—the pale shape in distracted flight, the dark
shapes pursuing, and came to a stop close against the wall, which had
been vacated by the scared assembly, scattering as if the king of
terrors had appeared among them—yet with fascinated eyes fixed on those
fearsome figures.
“It is the nun herself!” cried Lady Sarah, apprehension and triumph
contending in her agitated spirits; for it was surely a feather in her
ladyship’s cap to have produced such a phantasmal train at her party.
“The nun and her executioners!”
The company fell back from the ghostly troop, recoiling till they were
all clustered against the opposite wall, leaving a clear space in front
of the spectres, whence they looked on, shuddering, at the tragedy of
the erring Sister’s fate, repeated in dumb show. The white-robed figure
knelt and grovelled at the feet of those hooded executioners. One
seized and bound her, with strange automatic action, unlike the
movements of living creatures, and another smote the wall with a
pickaxe that made no sound, while the third waited with his trowel and
mortar. It was a gruesome sight to those who knew the story—a gruesome,
yet an enjoyable spectacle; since, as Lady Sarah’s friends had not had
the pleasure of knowing the sinning Sister in the flesh, they watched
this ghostly representation of her suffering with as keen an interest
as they would have felt had they been privileged to see Claud Duval
swing at Tyburn.
The person most terrified by this ghostly show was the only one who had
the hardihood to tackle the performers. This was Mr. Dubbin, who sat on
the ground watching the shadowy figures, sobered by fear, and his
shrewd city senses gradually returning to a brain bemused by Burgundy.
“Look at her boots!” he cried suddenly, scrambling to his feet, and
pointing to the nun, who, in sprawling and writhing at the feet of her
executioner, had revealed more leg and foot than were consistent with
her spectral whiteness. “She wears yaller boots, as substantial as any
shoe leather among the company. I’ll swear to them yaller boots.”
A chorus of laughter followed this attack—laughter which found a
smothered echo among the ghosts. The spell was broken; disillusion
followed the exquisite thrill of fear; and all Lady Sarah’s male
visitors made a rush upon the guilty nun. The loose white robe was
stripped off, and little Jerry Spavinger, gentleman jock, famous on the
Heath, and at Doncaster, stood revealed, in his shirt and breeches, and
those light riding-boots which he rarely exchanged for a more courtly
chaussure.
The monks, hustled out of their disguise, were Rochester, Masaroon, and
Lady Sarah’s young brother, George Saddington.
“From my Lord Rochester I expect nothing but pot-house buffoonery; but
I take it vastly ill on your part, George, to join in making me a
laughing-stock,” remonstrated Lady Sarah.
“Indeed, sister, you have to thank his light-headed lordship for giving
a spirited end to your assembly. Could you conceive how preposterous
you and your friends looked sitting against the walls, mute as
stockfish, and suggesting nothing but a Quaker’s meeting, you would
make us your lowest curtsy, and thank us kindly for having helped you
out of a dilemma.”
Lady Sarah, who was too much of a woman of the world to quarrel
seriously with a Court favourite, furled the fan with which she had
been cooling her indignation, and tapped young Wilmot playfully on that
oval cheek where the beard had scarce begun to grow.
“Thou art the most incorrigible wretch of thy years in London,” she
said, “and it is impossible to help being angry with thee or to help
forgiving thee.”
The saunterers on the willow-shadowed banks came strolling in. Lady
Fareham’s cornets and fiddles sounded a March in Alceste; and the party
broke up in laughter and good temper, Mr. Dubbin being much
complimented upon his having detected Spavinger’s boots.
“I ought to know ’em,” he answered ruefully. “I lost a hundred meggs on
him Toosday se’nnight, at Windsor races; and I had time to take the
pattern of them boots while he was crawling in, a bad third.”