Three Ghost Stories
Riding-Hood, but has other parts in it.” However, I digress.
Belinda, as I have mentioned, occupied the Picture Room. We had but
three other chambers: the Corner Room, the Cupboard Room, and the Garden
Room. My old friend, Jack Governor, “slung his hammock,” as he called
it, in the Corner Room. I have always regarded Jack as the
finest-looking sailor that ever sailed. He is gray now, but as handsome
as he was a quarter of a century ago—nay, handsomer. A portly, cheery,
well-built figure of a broad-shouldered man, with a frank smile, a
brilliant dark eye, and a rich dark eyebrow. I remember those under
darker hair, and they look all the better for their silver setting. He
has been wherever his Union namesake flies, has Jack, and I have met old
shipmates of his, away in the Mediterranean and on the other side of the
Atlantic, who have beamed and brightened at the casual mention of his
name, and have cried, “You know Jack Governor? Then you know a prince of
men!” That he is! And so unmistakably a naval officer, that if you were
to meet him coming out of an Esquimaux snow-hut in seal’s skin, you would
be vaguely persuaded he was in full naval uniform.
Jack once had that bright clear eye of his on my sister; but, it fell out
that he married another lady and took her to South America, where she
died. This was a dozen years ago or more. He brought down with him to
our haunted house a little cask of salt beef; for, he is always convinced
that all salt beef not of his own pickling, is mere carrion, and
invariably, when he goes to London, packs a piece in his portmanteau. He
had also volunteered to bring with him one “Nat Beaver,” an old comrade
of his, captain of a merchantman. Mr. Beaver, with a thick-set wooden
face and figure, and apparently as hard as a block all over, proved to be
an intelligent man, with a world of watery experiences in him, and great
practical knowledge. At times, there was a curious nervousness about
him, apparently the lingering result of some old illness; but, it seldom
lasted many minutes. He got the Cupboard Room, and lay there next to Mr.
Undery, my friend and solicitor: who came down, in an amateur capacity,
“to go through with it,” as he said, and who plays whist better than the
whole Law List, from the red cover at the beginning to the red cover at
the end.
I never was happier in my life, and I believe it was the universal
feeling among us. Jack Governor, always a man of wonderful resources,
was Chief Cook, and made some of the best dishes I ever ate, including
unapproachable curries. My sister was pastrycook and confectioner.
Starling and I were Cook’s Mate, turn and turn about, and on special
occasions the chief cook “pressed” Mr. Beaver. We had a great deal of
out-door sport and exercise, but nothing was neglected within, and there
was no ill-humour or misunderstanding among us, and our evenings were so
delightful that we had at least one good reason for being reluctant to go
to bed.
We had a few night alarms in the beginning. On the first night, I was
knocked up by Jack with a most wonderful ship’s lantern in his hand, like
the gills of some monster of the deep, who informed me that he “was going
aloft to the main truck,” to have the weathercock down. It was a stormy
night and I remonstrated; but Jack called my attention to its making a
sound like a cry of despair, and said somebody would be “hailing a ghost”
presently, if it wasn’t done. So, up to the top of the house, where I
could hardly stand for the wind, we went, accompanied by Mr. Beaver; and
there Jack, lantern and all, with Mr. Beaver after him, swarmed up to the
top of a cupola, some two dozen feet above the chimneys, and stood upon
nothing particular, coolly knocking the weathercock off, until they both
got into such good spirits with the wind and the height, that I thought
they would never come down. Another night, they turned out again, and
had a chimney-cowl off. Another night, they cut a sobbing and gulping
water-pipe away. Another night, they found out something else. On
several occasions, they both, in the coolest manner, simultaneously
dropped out of their respective bedroom windows, hand over hand by their
counterpanes, to “overhaul” something mysterious in the garden.
The engagement among us was faithfully kept, and nobody revealed
anything. All we knew was, if any one’s room were haunted, no one looked
the worse for it.
THE GHOST IN MASTER B.’S ROOM.
WHEN I established myself in the triangular garret which had gained so
distinguished a reputation, my thoughts naturally turned to Master B. My
speculations about him were uneasy and manifold. Whether his Christian
name was Benjamin, Bissextile (from his having been born in Leap Year),
Bartholomew, or Bill. Whether the initial letter belonged to his family
name, and that was Baxter, Black, Brown, Barker, Buggins, Baker, or Bird.
Whether he was a foundling, and had been baptized B. Whether he was a
lion-hearted boy, and B. was short for Briton, or for Bull. Whether he
could possibly have been kith and kin to an illustrious lady who
brightened my own childhood, and had come of the blood of the brilliant
Mother Bunch?
With these profitless meditations I tormented myself much. I also
carried the mysterious letter into the appearance and pursuits of the
deceased; wondering whether he dressed in Blue, wore Boots (he couldn’t
have been Bald), was a boy of Brains, liked Books, was good at Bowling,
had any skill as a Boxer, even in his Buoyant Boyhood Bathed from a
Bathing-machine at Bognor, Bangor, Bournemouth, Brighton, or Broadstairs,
like a Bounding Billiard Ball?
So, from the first, I was haunted by the letter B.
It was not long before I remarked that I never by any hazard had a dream
of Master B., or of anything belonging to him. But, the instant I awoke
from sleep, at whatever hour of the night, my thoughts took him up, and
roamed away, trying to attach his initial letter to something that would
fit it and keep it quiet.
For six nights, I had been worried thus in Master B.’s room, when I began
to perceive that things were going wrong.
The first appearance that presented itself was early in the morning when
it was but just daylight and no more. I was standing shaving at my
glass, when I suddenly discovered, to my consternation and amazement,
that I was shaving—not myself—I am fifty—but a boy. Apparently Master
B.!
I trembled and looked over my shoulder; nothing there. I looked again in
the glass, and distinctly saw the features and expression of a boy, who
was shaving, not to get rid of a beard, but to get one. Extremely
troubled in my mind, I took a few turns in the room, and went back to the
looking-glass, resolved to steady my hand and complete the operation in
which I had been disturbed. Opening my eyes, which I had shut while
recovering my firmness, I now met in the glass, looking straight at me,
the eyes of a young man of four or five and twenty. Terrified by this
new ghost, I closed my eyes, and made a strong effort to recover myself.
Opening them again, I saw, shaving his cheek in the glass, my father, who
has long been dead. Nay, I even saw my grandfather too, whom I never did
see in my life.
Although naturally much affected by these remarkable visitations, I
determined to keep my secret, until the time agreed upon for the present
general disclosure. Agitated by a multitude of curious thoughts, I
retired to my room, that night, prepared to encounter some new experience
of a spectral character. Nor was my preparation needless, for, waking
from an uneasy sleep at exactly two o’clock in the morning, what were my
feelings to find that I was sharing my bed with the skeleton of Master
B.!
I sprang up, and the skeleton sprang up also. I then heard a plaintive
voice saying, “Where am I? What is become of me?” and, looking hard in
that direction, perceived the ghost of Master B.
The young spectre was dressed in an obsolete fashion: or rather, was not
so much dressed as put into a case of inferior pepper-and-salt cloth,
made horrible by means of shining buttons. I observed that these buttons
went, in a double row, over each shoulder of the young ghost, and
appeared to descend his back. He wore a frill round his neck. His right
hand (which I distinctly noticed to be inky) was laid upon his stomach;
connecting this action with some feeble pimples on his countenance, and
his general air of nausea, I concluded this ghost to be the ghost of a
boy who had habitually taken a great deal too much medicine.
“Where am I?” said the little spectre, in a pathetic voice. “And why was
I born in the Calomel days, and why did I have all that Calomel given
me?”
I replied, with sincere earnestness, that upon my soul I couldn’t tell
him.
“Where is my little sister,” said the ghost, “and where my angelic little
wife, and where is the boy I went to school with?”
I entreated the phantom to be comforted, and above all things to take
heart respecting the loss of the boy he went to school with. I
represented to him that probably that boy never did, within human
experience, come out well, when discovered. I urged that I myself had,
in later life, turned up several boys whom I went to school with, and
none of them had at all answered. I expressed my humble belief that that
boy never did answer. I represented that he was a mythic character, a
delusion, and a snare. I recounted how, the last time I found him, I
found him at a dinner party behind a wall of white cravat, with an
inconclusive opinion on every possible subject, and a power of silent
boredom absolutely Titanic. I related how, on the strength of our having
been together at “Old Doylance’s,” he had asked himself to breakfast with
me (a social offence of the largest magnitude); how, fanning my weak
embers of belief in Doylance’s boys, I had let him in; and how, he had
proved to be a fearful wanderer about the earth, pursuing the race of
Adam with inexplicable notions concerning the currency, and with a
proposition that the Bank of England should, on pain of being abolished,
instantly strike off and circulate, God knows how many thousand millions
of ten-and-sixpenny notes.
The ghost heard me in silence, and with a fixed stare. “Barber!” it
apostrophised me when I had finished.
“Barber?” I repeated—for I am not of that profession.
“Condemned,” said the ghost, “to shave a constant change of
customers—now, me—now, a young man—now, thyself as thou art—now, thy
father—now, thy grandfather; condemned, too, to lie down with a skeleton
every night, and to rise with it every morning—”
(I shuddered on hearing this dismal announcement.)
“Barber! Pursue me!”
I had felt, even before the words were uttered, that I was under a spell
to pursue the phantom. I immediately did so, and was in Master B.’s room
no longer.
Most people know what long and fatiguing night journeys had been forced
upon the witches who used to confess, and who, no doubt, told the exact
truth—particularly as they were always assisted with leading questions,
and the Torture was always ready. I asseverate that, during my
occupation of Master B.’s room, I was taken by the ghost that haunted it,
on expeditions fully as long and wild as any of those. Assuredly, I was
presented to no shabby old man with a goat’s horns and tail (something
between Pan and an old clothesman), holding conventional receptions, as
stupid as those of real life and less decent; but, I came upon other
things which appeared to me to have more meaning.
Confident that I speak the truth and shall be believed, I declare without
hesitation that I followed the ghost, in the first instance on a
broom-stick, and afterwards on a rocking-horse. The very smell of the