The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices Part 10

'I had been anatomised, but had not yet had my skeleton put together and re-hung on an iron hook, when it began to be whispered that the Bride's Chamber was haunted. It WAS haunted, and I was there.

'WE were there. She and I were there. I, in the chair upon the hearth; she, a white wreck again, trailing itself towards me on the floor. But, I was the speaker no more, and the one word that she said to me from midnight until dawn was, 'Live!'

'The youth was there, likewise. In the tree outside the window.

Coming and going in the moonlight, as the tree bent and gave. He has, ever since, been there, peeping in at me in my torment; revealing to me by s.n.a.t.c.hes, in the pale lights and slatey shadows where he comes and goes, bare-headed--a bill-hook, standing edgewise in his hair.

'In the Bride's Chamber, every night from midnight until dawn--one month in the year excepted, as I am going to tell you--he hides in the tree, and she comes towards me on the floor; always approaching; never coming nearer; always visible as if by moon- light, whether the moon s.h.i.+nes or no; always saying, from mid-night until dawn, her one word, "Live!"

'But, in the month wherein I was forced out of this life--this present month of thirty days--the Bride's Chamber is empty and quiet. Not so my old dungeon. Not so the rooms where I was restless and afraid, ten years. Both are fitfully haunted then.

At One in the morning. I am what you saw me when the clock struck that hour--One old man. At Two in the morning, I am Two old men.

At Three, I am Three. By Twelve at noon, I am Twelve old men, One for every hundred per cent. of old gain. Every one of the Twelve, with Twelve times my old power of suffering and agony. From that hour until Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men in anguish and fearful foreboding, wait for the coming of the executioner. At Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men turned off, swing invisible outside Lancaster Castle, with Twelve faces to the wall!

'When the Bride's Chamber was first haunted, it was known to me that this punishment would never cease, until I could make its nature, and my story, known to two living men together. I waited for the coming of two living men together into the Bride's Chamber, years upon years. It was infused into my knowledge (of the means I am ignorant) that if two living men, with their eyes open, could be in the Bride's Chamber at One in the morning, they would see me sitting in my chair.

'At length, the whispers that the room was spiritually troubled, brought two men to try the adventure. I was scarcely struck upon the hearth at midnight (I come there as if the Lightning blasted me into being), when I heard them ascending the stairs. Next, I saw them enter. One of them was a bold, gay, active man, in the prime of life, some five and forty years of age; the other, a dozen years younger. They brought provisions with them in a basket, and bottles. A young woman accompanied them, with wood and coals for the lighting of the fire. When she had lighted it, the bold, gay, active man accompanied her along the gallery outside the room, to see her safely down the staircase, and came back laughing.

'He locked the door, examined the chamber, put out the contents of the basket on the table before the fire--little recking of me, in my appointed station on the hearth, close to him--and filled the gla.s.ses, and ate and drank. His companion did the same, and was as cheerful and confident as he: though he was the leader. When they had supped, they laid pistols on the table, turned to the fire, and began to smoke their pipes of foreign make.

'They had travelled together, and had been much together, and had an abundance of subjects in common. In the midst of their talking and laughing, the younger man made a reference to the leader's being always ready for any adventure; that one, or any other. He replied in these words:

'"Not quite so, d.i.c.k; if I am afraid of nothing else, I am afraid of myself."

'His companion seeming to grow a little dull, asked him, in what sense? How?

'"Why, thus," he returned. "Here is a Ghost to be disproved.

Well! I cannot answer for what my fancy might do if I were alone here, or what tricks my senses might play with me if they had me to themselves. But, in company with another man, and especially with d.i.c.k, I would consent to outface all the Ghosts that were ever of in the universe."

'"I had not the vanity to suppose that I was of so much importance to-night," said the other.

'"Of so much," rejoined the leader, more seriously than he had spoken yet, "that I would, for the reason I have given, on no account have undertaken to pa.s.s the night here alone."

'It was within a few minutes of One. The head of the younger man had drooped when he made his last remark, and it drooped lower now.

'"Keep awake, d.i.c.k!" said the leader, gaily. "The small hours are the worst."

'He tried, but his head drooped again.

'"d.i.c.k!" urged the leader. "Keep awake!"

'"I can't," he indistinctly muttered. "I don't know what strange influence is stealing over me. I can't."

'His companion looked at him with a sudden horror, and I, in my different way, felt a new horror also; for, it was on the stroke of One, and I felt that the second watcher was yielding to me, and that the curse was upon me that I must send him to sleep.

'"Get up and walk, d.i.c.k!" cried the leader. "Try!"

'It was in vain to go behind the slumber's chair and shake him.

One o'clock sounded, and I was present to the elder man, and he stood transfixed before me.

'To him alone, I was obliged to relate my story, without hope of benefit. To him alone, I was an awful phantom making a quite useless confession. I foresee it will ever be the same. The two living men together will never come to release me. When I appear, the senses of one of the two will be locked in sleep; he will neither see nor hear me; my communication will ever be made to a solitary listener, and will ever be unserviceable. Woe! Woe!

Woe!'

As the Two old men, with these words, wrung their hands, it shot into Mr. Goodchild's mind that he was in the terrible situation of being virtually alone with the spectre, and that Mr. Idle's immoveability was explained by his having been charmed asleep at One o'clock. In the terror of this sudden discovery which produced an indescribable dread, he struggled so hard to get free from the four fiery threads, that he snapped them, after he had pulled them out to a great width. Being then out of bonds, he caught up Mr.

Idle from the sofa and rushed down-stairs with him.

'What are you about, Francis?' demanded Mr. Idle. 'My bedroom is not down here. What the deuce are you carrying me at all for? I can walk with a stick now. I don't want to be carried. Put me down.'

Mr. Goodchild put him down in the old hall, and looked about him wildly.

'What are you doing? Idiotically plunging at your own s.e.x, and rescuing them or peris.h.i.+ng in the attempt?' asked Mr. Idle, in a highly petulant state.

'The One old man!' cried Mr. Goodchild, distractedly,--'and the Two old men!'

Mr. Idle deigned no other reply than 'The One old woman, I think you mean,' as he began hobbling his way back up the staircase, with the a.s.sistance of its broad bal.u.s.trade.

'I a.s.sure you, Tom,' began Mr. Goodchild, attending at his side, 'that since you fell asleep--'

'Come, I like that!' said Thomas Idle, 'I haven't closed an eye!'

With the peculiar sensitiveness on the subject of the disgraceful action of going to sleep out of bed, which is the lot of all mankind, Mr. Idle persisted in this declaration. The same peculiar sensitiveness impelled Mr. Goodchild, on being taxed with the same crime, to repudiate it with honourable resentment. The settlement of the question of The One old man and The Two old men was thus presently complicated, and soon made quite impracticable. Mr. Idle said it was all Bride-cake, and fragments, newly arranged, of things seen and thought about in the day. Mr. Goodchild said how could that be, when he hadn't been asleep, and what right could Mr.

Idle have to say so, who had been asleep? Mr. Idle said he had never been asleep, and never did go to sleep, and that Mr.

Goodchild, as a general rule, was always asleep. They consequently parted for the rest of the night, at their bedroom doors, a little ruffled. Mr. Goodchild's last words were, that he had had, in that real and tangible old sitting-room of that real and tangible old Inn (he supposed Mr. Idle denied its existence?), every sensation and experience, the present record of which is now within a line or two of completion; and that he would write it out and print it every word. Mr. Idle returned that he might if he liked--and he did like, and has now done it.

CHAPTER V

Two of the many pa.s.sengers by a certain late Sunday evening train, Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild, yielded up their tickets at a little rotten platform (converted into artificial touchwood by smoke and ashes), deep in the manufacturing bosom of Yorks.h.i.+re. A mysterious bosom it appeared, upon a damp, dark, Sunday night, dashed through in the train to the music of the whirling wheels, the panting of the engine, and the part-singing of hundreds of third-cla.s.s excursionists, whose vocal efforts 'bobbed arayound'

from sacred to profane, from hymns, to our transatlantic sisters the Yankee Gal and Mairy Anne, in a remarkable way. There seemed to have been some large vocal gathering near to every lonely station on the line. No town was visible, no village was visible, no light was visible; but, a mult.i.tude got out singing, and a mult.i.tude got in singing, and the second mult.i.tude took up the hymns, and adopted our transatlantic sisters, and sang of their own egregious wickedness, and of their bobbing arayound, and of how the s.h.i.+p it was ready and the wind it was fair, and they were bayound for the sea, Mairy Anne, until they in their turn became a getting- out mult.i.tude, and were replaced by another getting-in mult.i.tude, who did the same. And at every station, the getting-in mult.i.tude, with an artistic reference to the completeness of their chorus, incessantly cried, as with one voice while scuffling into the carriages, 'We mun aa' gang toogither!'

The singing and the mult.i.tudes had trailed off as the lonely places were left and the great towns were neared, and the way had lain as silently as a train's way ever can, over the vague black streets of the great gulfs of towns, and among their branchless woods of vague black chimneys. These towns looked, in the cinderous wet, as though they had one and all been on fire and were just put out--a dreary and quenched panorama, many miles long.

Thus, Thomas and Francis got to Leeds; of which enterprising and important commercial centre it may be observed with delicacy, that you must either like it very much or not at all. Next day, the first of the Race-Week, they took train to Doncaster.

And instantly the character, both of travellers and of luggage, entirely changed, and no other business than race-business any longer existed on the face of the earth. The talk was all of horses and 'John Scott.' Guards whispered behind their hands to station-masters, of horses and John Scott. Men in cut-away coats and speckled cravats fastened with peculiar pins, and with the large bones of their legs developed under tight trousers, so that they should look as much as possible like horses' legs, paced up and down by twos at junction-stations, speaking low and moodily of horses and John Scott. The young clergyman in the black strait- waistcoat, who occupied the middle seat of the carriage, expounded in his peculiar pulpit-accent to the young and lovely Reverend Mrs.

Crinoline, who occupied the opposite middle-seat, a few pa.s.sages of rumour relative to 'Oartheth, my love, and Mithter John Eth-COTT.'

A bandy vagabond, with a head like a Dutch cheese, in a fustian stable-suit, attending on a horse-box and going about the platforms with a halter hanging round his neck like a Calais burgher of the ancient period much degenerated, was courted by the best society, by reason of what he had to hint, when not engaged in eating straw, concerning 't'ha.r.s.es and Joon Scott.' The engine-driver himself, as he applied one eye to his large stationary double-eye-gla.s.s on the engine, seemed to keep the other open, sideways, upon horses and John Scott.

Breaks and barriers at Doncaster Station to keep the crowd off; temporary wooden avenues of ingress and egress, to help the crowd on. Forty extra porters sent down for this present blessed Race- Week, and all of them making up their betting-books in the lamp- room or somewhere else, and none of them to come and touch the luggage. Travellers disgorged into an open s.p.a.ce, a howling wilderness of idle men. All work but race-work at a stand-still; all men at a stand-still. 'Ey my word! Deant ask noon o' us to help wi' t'luggage. Bock your opinion loike a mon. Coom! Dang it, coom, t'ha.r.s.es and Joon Scott!' In the midst of the idle men, all the fly horses and omnibus horses of Doncaster and parts adjacent, rampant, rearing, backing, plunging, shying--apparently the result of their hearing of nothing but their own order and John Scott.

Grand Dramatic Company from London for the Race-Week. Poses Plastiques in the Grand a.s.sembly Room up the Stable-Yard at seven and nine each evening, for the Race-Week. Grand Alliance Circus in the field beyond the bridge, for the Race-Week. Grand Exhibition of Aztec Lilliputians, important to all who want to be horrified cheap, for the Race-Week. Lodgings, grand and not grand, but all at grand prices, ranging from ten pounds to twenty, for the Grand Race-Week!

Rendered giddy enough by these things, Messieurs Idle and Goodchild repaired to the quarters they had secured beforehand, and Mr.

Goodchild looked down from the window into the surging street.

'By Heaven, Tom!' cried he, after contemplating it, 'I am in the Lunatic Asylum again, and these are all mad people under the charge of a body of designing keepers!'