Three Ghost Stories
baseless assertions), had secretly but most pressingly invited
thirty-five neighbouring princes and princesses to a ball and supper:
with a special stipulation that they were “not to be fetched till
twelve.” This wandering of the antelope’s fancy, led to the surprising
arrival at Miss Griffin’s door, in divers equipages and under various
escorts, of a great company in full dress, who were deposited on the top
step in a flush of high expectancy, and who were dismissed in tears. At
the beginning of the double knocks attendant on these ceremonies, the
antelope had retired to a back attic, and bolted herself in; and at every
new arrival, Miss Griffin had gone so much more and more distracted, that
at last she had been seen to tear her front. Ultimate capitulation on
the part of the offender, had been followed by solitude in the
linen-closet, bread and water and a lecture to all, of vindictive length,
in which Miss Griffin had used expressions: Firstly, “I believe you all
of you knew of it;” Secondly, “Every one of you is as wicked as another;”
Thirdly, “A pack of little wretches.”
Under these circumstances, we were walking drearily along; and I
especially, with my Moosulmaun responsibilities heavy on me, was in a
very low state of mind; when a strange man accosted Miss Griffin, and,
after walking on at her side for a little while and talking with her,
looked at me. Supposing him to be a minion of the law, and that my hour
was come, I instantly ran away, with the general purpose of making for
Egypt.
The whole Seraglio cried out, when they saw me making off as fast as my
legs would carry me (I had an impression that the first turning on the
left, and round by the public-house, would be the shortest way to the
Pyramids), Miss Griffin screamed after me, the faithless Vizier ran after
me, and the boy at the turnpike dodged me into a corner, like a sheep,
and cut me off. Nobody scolded me when I was taken and brought back;
Miss Griffin only said, with a stunning gentleness, This was very
curious! Why had I run away when the gentleman looked at me?
If I had had any breath to answer with, I dare say I should have made no
answer; having no breath, I certainly made none. Miss Griffin and the
strange man took me between them, and walked me back to the palace in a
sort of state; but not at all (as I couldn’t help feeling, with
astonishment) in culprit state.
When we got there, we went into a room by ourselves, and Miss Griffin
called in to her assistance, Mesrour, chief of the dusky guards of the
Hareem. Mesrour, on being whispered to, began to shed tears. “Bless
you, my precious!” said that officer, turning to me; “your Pa’s took
bitter bad!”
I asked, with a fluttered heart, “Is he very ill?”
“Lord temper the wind to you, my lamb!” said the good Mesrour, kneeling
down, that I might have a comforting shoulder for my head to rest on,
“your Pa’s dead!”
Haroun Alraschid took to flight at the words; the Seraglio vanished; from
that moment, I never again saw one of the eight of the fairest of the
daughters of men.
I was taken home, and there was Debt at home as well as Death, and we had
a sale there. My own little bed was so superciliously looked upon by a
Power unknown to me, hazily called “The Trade,” that a brass
coal-scuttle, a roasting-jack, and a birdcage, were obliged to be put
into it to make a Lot of it, and then it went for a song. So I heard
mentioned, and I wondered what song, and thought what a dismal song it
must have been to sing!
Then, I was sent to a great, cold, bare, school of big boys; where
everything to eat and wear was thick and clumpy, without being enough;
where everybody, large and small, was cruel; where the boys knew all
about the sale, before I got there, and asked me what I had fetched, and
who had bought me, and hooted at me, “Going, going, gone!” I never
whispered in that wretched place that I had been Haroun, or had had a
Seraglio: for, I knew that if I mentioned my reverses, I should be so
worried, that I should have to drown myself in the muddy pond near the
playground, which looked like the beer.
Ah me, ah me! No other ghost has haunted the boy’s room, my friends,
since I have occupied it, than the ghost of my own childhood, the ghost
of my own innocence, the ghost of my own airy belief. Many a time have I
pursued the phantom: never with this man’s stride of mine to come up with
it, never with these man’s hands of mine to touch it, never more to this
man’s heart of mine to hold it in its purity. And here you see me
working out, as cheerfully and thankfully as I may, my doom of shaving in
the glass a constant change of customers, and of lying down and rising up
with the skeleton allotted to me for my mortal companion.
THE TRIAL FOR MURDER. {303}
I HAVE always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among persons of
superior intelligence and culture, as to imparting their own
psychological experiences when those have been of a strange sort. Almost
all men are afraid that what they could relate in such wise would find no
parallel or response in a listener’s internal life, and might be
suspected or laughed at. A truthful traveller, who should have seen some
extraordinary creature in the likeness of a sea-serpent, would have no
fear of mentioning it; but the same traveller, having had some singular
presentiment, impulse, vagary of thought, vision (so-called), dream, or
other remarkable mental impression, would hesitate considerably before he
would own to it. To this reticence I attribute much of the obscurity in
which such subjects are involved. We do not habitually communicate our
experiences of these subjective things as we do our experiences of
objective creation. The consequence is, that the general stock of
experience in this regard appears exceptional, and really is so, in
respect of being miserably imperfect.
In what I am going to relate, I have no intention of setting up,
opposing, or supporting, any theory whatever. I know the history of the
Bookseller of Berlin, I have studied the case of the wife of a late
Astronomer Royal as related by Sir David Brewster, and I have followed
the minutest details of a much more remarkable case of Spectral Illusion
occurring within my private circle of friends. It may be necessary to
state as to this last, that the sufferer (a lady) was in no degree,
however distant, related to me. A mistaken assumption on that head might
suggest an explanation of a part of my own case,—but only a part,—which
would be wholly without foundation. It cannot be referred to my
inheritance of any developed peculiarity, nor had I ever before any at
all similar experience, nor have I ever had any at all similar experience
since.
It does not signify how many years ago, or how few, a certain murder was
committed in England, which attracted great attention. We hear more than
enough of murderers as they rise in succession to their atrocious
eminence, and I would bury the memory of this particular brute, if I
could, as his body was buried, in Newgate Jail. I purposely abstain from
giving any direct clue to the criminal’s individuality.
When the murder was first discovered, no suspicion fell—or I ought rather
to say, for I cannot be too precise in my facts, it was nowhere publicly
hinted that any suspicion fell—on the man who was afterwards brought to
trial. As no reference was at that time made to him in the newspapers,
it is obviously impossible that any description of him can at that time
have been given in the newspapers. It is essential that this fact be
remembered.
Unfolding at breakfast my morning paper, containing the account of that
first discovery, I found it to be deeply interesting, and I read it with
close attention. I read it twice, if not three times. The discovery had
been made in a bedroom, and, when I laid down the paper, I was aware of a
flash—rush—flow—I do not know what to call it,—no word I can find is
satisfactorily descriptive,—in which I seemed to see that bedroom passing
through my room, like a picture impossibly painted on a running river.
Though almost instantaneous in its passing, it was perfectly clear; so
clear that I distinctly, and with a sense of relief, observed the absence
of the dead body from the bed.
It was in no romantic place that I had this curious sensation, but in
chambers in Piccadilly, very near to the corner of St. James’s Street.
It was entirely new to me. I was in my easy-chair at the moment, and the
sensation was accompanied with a peculiar shiver which started the chair
from its position. (But it is to be noted that the chair ran easily on
castors.) I went to one of the windows (there are two in the room, and
the room is on the second floor) to refresh my eyes with the moving
objects down in Piccadilly. It was a bright autumn morning, and the
street was sparkling and cheerful. The wind was high. As I looked out,
it brought down from the Park a quantity of fallen leaves, which a gust
took, and whirled into a spiral pillar. As the pillar fell and the
leaves dispersed, I saw two men on the opposite side of the way, going
from West to East. They were one behind the other. The foremost man
often looked back over his shoulder. The second man followed him, at a
distance of some thirty paces, with his right hand menacingly raised.
First, the singularity and steadiness of this threatening gesture in so
public a thoroughfare attracted my attention; and next, the more
remarkable circumstance that nobody heeded it. Both men threaded their
way among the other passengers with a smoothness hardly consistent even
with the action of walking on a pavement; and no single creature, that I
could see, gave them place, touched them, or looked after them. In
passing before my windows, they both stared up at me. I saw their two
faces very distinctly, and I knew that I could recognise them anywhere.
Not that I had consciously noticed anything very remarkable in either
face, except that the man who went first had an unusually lowering
appearance, and that the face of the man who followed him was of the
colour of impure wax.
I am a bachelor, and my valet and his wife constitute my whole
establishment. My occupation is in a certain Branch Bank, and I wish
that my duties as head of a Department were as light as they are
popularly supposed to be. They kept me in town that autumn, when I stood
in need of change. I was not ill, but I was not well. My reader is to
make the most that can be reasonably made of my feeling jaded, having a
depressing sense upon me of a monotonous life, and being “slightly
dyspeptic.” I am assured by my renowned doctor that my real state of
health at that time justifies no stronger description, and I quote his
own from his written answer to my request for it.
As the circumstances of the murder, gradually unravelling, took stronger
and stronger possession of the public mind, I kept them away from mine by
knowing as little about them as was possible in the midst of the
universal excitement. But I knew that a verdict of Wilful Murder had
been found against the suspected murderer, and that he had been committed
to Newgate for trial. I also knew that his trial had been postponed over
one Sessions of the Central Criminal Court, on the ground of general
prejudice and want of time for the preparation of the defence. I may
further have known, but I believe I did not, when, or about when, the
Sessions to which his trial stood postponed would come on.
My sitting-room, bedroom, and dressing-room, are all on one floor. With
the last there is no communication but through the bedroom. True, there
is a door in it, once communicating with the staircase; but a part of the
fitting of my bath has been—and had then been for some years—fixed across