The 7th Ghost Story

by Frank Belknap Long

  “Lassy me! Flo! what is the matter?” cried the sympathising lady, with a scrutinising glance levelled at the gentleman.

  It might as well have lighted on a feather bed.—His air of imperturbable unconsciousness defied examination; and as he would not, and Flora could not expound, that injured individual was compelled to pocket up her wrongs. Others of the household soon dropped in, and clustered round the board dedicated to the most sociable of meals; the urn was paraded “hissing hot,” and the cups which “cheer, but not inebriate,” steamed redolent of hyson and pekoe; muffins and marmalade, newspapers and Finnon haddies, left little room for observation on the character of Charles’s warlike “turn-out.” At length a look from Caroline, followed by a smile that nearly ripened to a titter, caused him to turn abruptly and address his neighbour. It was Miss Simpkinson, who, deeply engaged in sipping her tea and turning over her album, seemed, like a female Chrononotonthologos, “immersed in cogibundity of cogitation.” An interrogatory on the subject of her studies drew from her the confession that she was at that moment employed in putting the finishing touches to a poem inspired by the romantic shades of Bolsover. The entreaties of the company were of course urgent. Mr Peters, “who liked verses,” was especially persevering, and Sappho at length compliant. After a preparatory hem! and a glance at the mirror to ascertain that her look was sufficiently sentimental, the poetess began:

  “There is a calm, a holy feeling,

  Vulgar minds can never know,

  O’er the bosom softly stealing—

  “Chasten’d grief, delicious woe!

  Oh! how sweet at eve regaining

  Yon lone tower’s sequester’d shade—

  Sadly mute and uncomplaining—”

  Yow!—yeough!—yeough!—yow!—yow! yelled a hapless sufferer from beneath the table.—It was an unlucky hour for quadrupeds; and if “every dog will have his day,” he could not have selected a more unpropitious one than this. Mrs Ogleton, too, had a pet,—a favourite pug,—whose squab figure, black muzzle, and tortuosity of tail, that curled like a head of celery in a salad-bowl, bespoke his Dutch extraction. Yow! yow! yow! continued the brute,—a chorus in which Flo instantly joined. Sooth to say, pug had more reason to express his dissatisfaction than was given him by the muse of Simpkinson; the other only barked for company. Scarcely had the poetess got through her first stanza, when Tom Ingoldsby, in the enthusiasm of the moment, became so lost in the material world, that, in his abstraction, he unwarily laid his hand on the cock of the urn. Quivering with emotion, he gave it such an unlucky twist, that the full stream of its scalding contents descended on the gingerbread hide of the unlucky Cupid.—The confusion was complete;—the whole economy of the table disarranged;—the company broke up most admired disorder;—and “Vulgar minds will never know” anything more of Miss Simpkinson’s ode till they peruse it in some forthcoming Annual.

  Seaforth profited by the confusion to take the delinquent who had caused this “stramash” by the arm, and to lead him to the lawn, where he had a word or two for his private ear. The conference between the young gentlemen was neither brief in its duration nor unimportant in its result. The subject was what the lawyers call tripartite, embracing the information that Charles Seaforth was over head and ears in love with Tom Ingoldsby’s sister; secondly, that the lady had referred him to “papa” for his sanction; thirdly and lastly, his nightly visitations, and consequent bereavement. At the two first items Tom smiled auspiciously; at the last he burst out into an absolute “guffaw.”

  “Steal your breeches!—Miss Bailey over again, by Jove,” shouted Ingoldsby. “But a gentleman, you say,—and Sir Giles too.—I am not sure, Charles, whether I ought not to call you out for aspersing the honour of the family.”

  “Laugh as you will, Tom,—be as incredulous as you please. One fact is incontestible,—the breeches are gone! Look here—I am reduced to my regimentals, and if these go, tomorrow I must borrow of you!”

  Rochefoucault says, there is something in the misfortunes of our very best friends that does not displease us—assuredly we can, most of us, laugh at their petty inconveniences, till called upon to supply them. Tom composed his features on the instant, and replied with more gravity, as well as with an expletive, which, if my Lord Mayor had been within hearing, might have cost him five shillings.

  “There is something very queer in this, after all. The clothes, you say, have positively disappeared. Somebody is playing you a trick, and, ten to one, your servant has a hand in it. By the way, I heard something yesterday of his kicking up a bobbery in the kitchen, and seeing a ghost, or something of that kind, himself. Depend upon it, Barney is in the plot.”

  It now struck the lieutenant at once, that the usually buoyant spirits of his attendant had of late been materially sobered down, his loquacity obviously circumscribed, and that he, the said lieutenant, had actually rung his bell several times that very morning before he could procure his attendance. Mr Maguire was forthwith summoned, and underwent a close examination. The “bobbery” was easily-explained. Mr Oliver Dobbs hinted his disapprobation of a flirtation carrying on between the gentleman from Minster and the lady from the Rue St Honoré. Mademoiselle had boxed Mr Maguire’s ears, and Mr Maguire had pulled Mademoiselle upon his knee, and the lady had not cried Mon Dieu! And Mr Oliver Dobbs said it was very wrong; and Mrs Botherby said it was “scandalous,” and what ought not to be done in any moral kitchen; and Mr Maguire had got hold of the Honourable Augustus Sucklethumbkin’s powder-flask, and had put large pinches of the best double Dartford into Mr Dobbs’s tobacco-box;—and Mr Dobbs’s pipe had exploded, and set fire to Mrs Botherby’s Sunday cap;—and Mr Maguire had put it out with the slop-basin, “barring the wig”;—and then they were all so “cantankerous,” that Barney had gone to take a walk in the garden; and then—then Mr Barney had seen a ghost!

  “A what? you blockhead!” asked Tom Ingoldsby.

  “Sure then, and it’s meself will tell your honour the rights of it,” said the ghost-seer. “Meself and Miss Pauline, sir, or Miss Pauline and meself, for the ladies comes first anyhow, we got tired of the hobstroppylous skrimmaging among the ould servants, that didn’t know a joke when they seen one: and we went out to look at the comet,—that’s the rory-bory-alehouse, they calls him in this country,—and we walked upon the lawn—and divil of any alehouse there was there at all; and Miss Pauline said it was because of the shrubbery maybe, and why wouldn’t we see it better beyonst the trees?—and so we went to the trees, but sorrow a comet did meself see there, barring a big ghost instead of it.”

  “A ghost? And what sort of a ghost, Barney?”

  “Och, then, divil a lie I’ll tell your honour. A tall ould gentleman he was, all in white, with a shovel on the shoulder of him, and a big torch in his fist,—though what he wanted with that it’s meself can’t tell, for his eyes were like gig-lamps, let alone the moon and the comet, which wasn’t there at all,—and ‘Barney,’ says he to me,—’cause why he knew me,—‘Barney,’ says he, ‘what is it you’re doing with the colleen there, Barney?’—Divil a word did I say. Miss Pauline screeched, and cried murther in French, and ran off with herself; and of course meself was in a mighty hurry after the lady, and had no time to stop palavering with him any way; so I dispersed at once, and the ghost vanished in a flame of fire!”

  Mr Maguire’s account was received with avowed incredulity by both gentlemen; but Barney stuck to his text with unflinching pertinacity. A reference to Mademoiselle was suggested, but abandoned, as neither party had a taste for delicate investigations.

  “I’ll tell you what, Seaforth,” said Ingoldsby, after Barney had received his dismissal, “that there is a trick here, is evident; and Barney’s vision may possibly be a part of it. Whether he is most knave or fool, you best know. At all events, I will sit up with you tonight and see if I can convert my ancestor into a visiting acquaintance. Meanwhile your finger on your lip!”

&n
bsp; “’Twas now the very witching time of night,

  When churchyards yawn, and graves give up their dead.”

  Gladly would I grace my tale with decent horror, and therefore I do beseech the “gentle reader” to believe, that if all the succedanea to this mysterious narrative are not in strict keeping, he will ascribe it only to the disgraceful innovations of modern degeneracy upon the sober and dignified habits of our ancestors. I can introduce him, it is true, into an old and high-roofed chamber, its walls covered on three sides with black oak wainscotting, adorned with carvings of fruit and flowers long anterior to those of Grinling Gibbons; the fourth side is clothed with a curious remnant of dingy tapestry, once elucidatory of some Scriptural history, but of which not even Mrs Botherby could determine. Mr Simpkinson, who had examined it carefully, inclined to believe the principal figure to be either Bathsheba, or Daniel in the lions’ den; while Tom Ingoldsby decided in favour of the King of Bashan. All, however, was conjecture, tradition being silent on the subject.—A lofty arched portal led into, and a little arched portal led out of, this apartment; they were opposite each other, and each possessed the security of massy bolts on its interior. The bedstead, too, was not one of yesterday, but manifestly coeval with days ere Seddons was, and, when a good four-post “article” was deemed worthy of being a royal bequest. The bed itself, with all the appurtenances of palliasse, mattresses, etc., was of far later date, and looked most incongruously comfortable; the casements, too, with their little diamond-shaped panes and iron binding, had given way to the modern heterodoxy of the sash-window. Nor was this all that conspired to ruin the costume, and render the room a meet haunt for such “mixed spirits” only as could condescend to don at the same time an Elizabethan doublet and Bond Street inexpressibles.

  With their green morocco slippers on a modern fender in front of a disgracefully modern grate, sat two young gentlemen, clad in “shawl pattern” dressing gowns and black silk stocks, much at variance with the high cane-backed chairs which supported them. A bunch of abomination, called a cigar, reeked in the left-hand corner of the mouth of one, and in the right-hand corner of the mouth of the other;—an arrangement happily adapted for the escape of the noxious fumes up the chimney, without that unmerciful “funking” each other, which a less scientific disposition of the weed would have induced. A small pembroke table filled up the intervening space between them, sustaining at each extremity, an elbow and a glass of toddy;—thus in “lonely pensive contemplation” were the two worthies occupied, when the “iron tongue of midnight had tolled twelve.”

  “Ghost-time’s come!” said Ingoldsby, taking from his waistcoat pocket a watch like a gold half-crown, and consulting it as though he suspected the turret-clock over the stables of mendacity.

  “Hush!” said Charles; “did I not hear a footstep?”

  There was a pause—there was a footstep—it sounded distinctly—it reached the door—it hesitated, stopped, and Tom darted across the room, threw open the door, and became aware of Mrs Botherby toddling to her chamber, at the other end of the gallery, after dosing one of the housemaids with an approved, julep from the Countess of Kent’s “Choice Manual.”

  “Good night, sir!” said Mrs Botherby.

  “Go to the devil!” said the disappointed ghost-hunter.

  An hour—two—rolled on, and still no spectral visitation; nor did aught intervene to make night hideous; and when the turret-clock sounded at length the hour of three, Ingoldsby, whose patience and grog were alike exhausted, sprang from his chair, saying,—

  “This is all infernal nonsense, my good fellow. Deuce of any ghost shall we see tonight; it’s long past the canonical hour. I’m off to bed; and as to your breeches, I’ll insure them for the next twenty-four hours at least, at the price of the buckram.”

  “Certainly.—Oh! thankee;—to be sure!” stammered Charles, rousing himself from a reverie, which had degenerated into an absolute snooze.

  “Good-night, my boy! Bolt the door behind me; and defy the Pope, the Devil and the Pretender!—”

  Seaforth followed his friend’s advice, and the next morning came down to breakfast dressed in the habiliments of the preceding day. The charm was broken, the demon defeated; the light greys with the red stripe down the seams were yet in rerum naturâ, and adorned the person of their lawful proprietor.

  Tom felicitated himself and his partner of the watch on the result of their vigilance; but there is a rustic adage, which warns us against self-gratulation before we are quite “out of the wood.”—Seaforth was yet within its verge.

  * * * *

  A rap at Tom Ingoldsby’s door the following morning startled him as he was shaving—he cut his chin.

  “Come in, and be damned to you!” said the martyr, pressing his thumb on the scarified epidermis. —The door opened, and exhibited Mr Barney Maguire.

  “Well, Barney, what is it?” quoth the sufferer, adopting the vernacular of his visitant.

  “The master, sir—”

  “Well, what does he want?”

  “The loanst of a breeches, plase your honour.”

  “Why, you don’t mean to tell me— By Heaven, this is too good!” shouted Tom, bursting into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. “Why, Barney, you don’t mean to say the ghost has got them again!”

  Mr Maguire did not respond to the young squire’s risibility; the cast of his countenance was decidedly serious.

  “Faith, then, it’s gone they are, sure enough! Hasn’t meself been looking over the bed, and under the bed, and in the bed, for the matter of that, and divil a ha’p’orth of breeches is there to the fore at all—I’m bothered entirely!”

  “Hark’ee! Mr Barney,” said Tom, incautiously removing his thumb, and letting a crimson stream “incarnadine the multitudinous” lather that plastered his throat,—“this may be all very well with your master, but you don’t humbug me, sir—tell me instantly what have you done with the clothes?”

  This abrupt transition from “lively to severe” certainly took Maguire by surprise, and he seemed for an instant as much disconcerted as it is possible to disconcert an Irish gentleman’s gentleman.

  “Me? is it meself, then, that’s the ghost to your honour’s thinking?” said he, after a moment’s pause, and with a slight shade of indignation in his tones: “is it I would stale the master’s things?—and what would I do with them?”

  “That you best know—what your purpose is I can’t guess, for I don’t think you mean to ‘stale’ them, as you call it; but that you are concerned in their disappearance, I am satisfied. Confound this blood!—give me a towel, Barney.”

  Maguire acquitted himself of the commission. “As I’ve a sowl, your honour,” said he solemnly, “little it is meself knows of the matter: and after what I seen—”

  “What you’ve seen! Why, what have you seen?—Barney, I don’t want to enquire into your flirtations; but don’t suppose you can palm off your saucer eyes and gig-lamps upon me!”

  “Then, as sure as your honour’s standing there I saw him: and why wouldn’t I, when Miss Pauline was to the fore as well as meself, and—”

  “Get along with your nonsense, leave the room, sir!”

  “But the master?” said Barney imploringly; “and without a breeches?—sure he’ll be catching cowld!—”

  “Take that, rascal!” replied Ingoldsby, throwing a pair of pantaloons at, rather than to, him: “but don’t suppose, sir, you shall carry on your tricks here with impunity; recollect there is such a thing as a tread-mill, and that my father is a county magistrate.”

  Barney’s eye flashed fire,—he stood erect, and was about to speak; but, mastering himself, not without an effort, he took up the garment, and left the room as perpendicular as a Quaker.

  * * * *

  “Ingoldsby;” said Charles Seaforth, after breakfast, “this is now past a joke; today is the last of my stay; for, notwithstandi
ng the ties which detain me, common decency obliges me to visit home after so long an absence. I shall come to an immediate explanation with your father on the subject nearest my heart, and depart while I have a change of dress left. On his answer will my return depend! In the meantime tell me candidly,—I ask it in all seriousness and as a friend,—am I not a dupe to your well-known propensity to hoaxing? have you not a hand in—”

  “No, by heaven I Seaforth; I see what you mean: on my honour, I am as much mystified as yourself: and if your servant—”

  “Not he—if there be a trick, he at least is not privy to it.”

  “If there be a trick? Why, Charles, do you think—”

  “I know not what to think, Tom. As surely as you are a living man, so surely did that spectral anatomy visit my room again last night, grin in my face, and walk away with my trousers, nor was I able to spring from my bed, or break the chain which seemed to bind me to my pillow.”

  “Seaforth!” said Ingoldsby, after a short pause, “I will— But hush! here are the girls and my father.— I will carry off the females, and leave you a clear field with the governor: carry your point with him, and we will talk about your breeches afterwards.”

  Tom’s diversion was successful; he carried off the ladies en masse to look at a remarkable specimen of the class Dodecandria Monogynia,—which they could not find—while Seaforth marched boldly up to the encounter, and carried “the governor’s” outworks by a coup de main. I shall not stop to describe the progress of the attack: suffice it that it was as successful as could have been wished, and that Seaforth was referred back again to the lady. The happy lover was off at a tangent; the botanical party was soon overtaken; and the arm of Caroline, whom a vain endeavour to spell out the Linnæan name of a daffy-down-dilly had detained a little in the rear of the others, was soon firmly locked in his own.