Tales of the Wonder Club Volume II Part 36

Now, being winter time, there was a blazing fire in the room, and my father, who was at this time laid up with the gout, would draw himself up to it and smoke his yard of clay. He was absent from the parlour when we entered, but we found his chair ready placed for him.

"Good heavens! Molly, what's this?" cried Claribel, in alarm, as she touched the mantelpiece over the fireplace. "Can it be? No; yes, it _is_--_the waxen image molten away_! Who can have done it? Oh, wretched being that I am! Go, and at once, to the house of John, and inquire after his health."

I was preparing to execute her commission, and was just upon setting out alone to John's house, which was not far from our own, when one of the neighbours, a woman--one of the most notorious gossips of the place, whose sole delight was to be the first to deliver bad news--met me at the door as I was just going out.

"Oh, Molly my dear, have you heard the sad news? Lack-a-day! who'd have thought it? Oh, lauk-a-daisy-me! poor Claribel! how she will take on about it to be sure!"

"Speak out, woman!" cried Claribel, from the parlour, for she had heard every word through the open door. "Speak out. What has happened?"

"Oh Lord! my dear, that poor young man John Archer, as you appears to have been so fond of well, my dear, he's gone--yes, _dead_, struck down by a sudden fever, they say--in the very spring-time of his youth; it's hardly a quarter of an hour since, so I thought I'd come at once to tell you."

This communication, partly interrupted by sobs and partly by want of breath, for the bearer of the sad news had set off as fast as her legs could carry her, in order to be the first to communicate it, had a terrible effect on the nervous system of my poor friend Claribel.

Forgetting her usual self-composure in her extreme anguish, she gave utterance to a shriek so piercing and doleful, that it seemed to shake the very house to its foundations, and sank back into the nearest chair in a swoon. The scream brought my father to the door to inquire what was the matter, while the good neighbour--for in spite of her mania for delivering bad news, she was still a woman at heart--bustled about to procure restoratives and to sprinkle water on my poor friend's face until she recovered.

The news we had heard was only too true, for, sad to relate, poor John Archer, who up to that very morning had been the picture of robust health, suddenly fell the victim of a violent fever that carried him off within a few hours. The doctors were at a loss to account for the disease, as there was no fever at that time in the neighbourhood. It was an isolated case. During his delirium he was heard to give vent to certain incoherent ravings, frequently calling out, "The waxen image!

the waxen image!" He was heard to couple the names of De Chevron and Madge Mandrake together, but the bystanders, his parents, understood nothing of his meaning.

There remains little more to relate. It appears that my father when left alone in the house had been prying into every nook and corner of it for his snuff-box, which he had lost, until he stumbled upon the little waxen image in the glazed cupboard, of the history of which he knew nothing, but which he instantly recognised as intended for a likeness of John Archer, imagining that either myself or Claribel had been amusing ourselves with endeavouring to represent the lineaments of our common friend in wax, and thinking it very good and clever, he thought it would make a pretty chimney ornament, and accordingly placed it on the mantelpiece when the fire was yet low. Afterwards, he had heaped on fuel, being very cold that day, and shortly afterwards had been called away by a neighbour on business. In the meantime the fire had blazed up and so heated the room that before he returned to the parlour there was nothing left of the effigy of John Archer but a shapeless heap of wax.

On recovering from the swoon my poor friend reproached herself in the severest terms with not having foreseen such a contingency, adding that she alone had been the cause of John's death, as she ought to have locked the cupboard and taken away the key. I strove to reason with her and comfort her, but she was deaf to all consolation. The sad event of John's death had cast a gloom over us all. As for Claribel, poor soul, it was a shock from which she never recovered. She drooped and pined away from that hour, and outlived young Archer but one month. Peace be to their ashes!

On concluding her affecting narrative, our worthy hostess thrust a corner of her ap.r.o.n into her eye in order to staunch a rising tear called into existence by tender recollections of her poor deceased friend and her unfortunate lover, but she was soon cut short in the indulgence of her grief by the boisterous applause that simultaneously ensued from all the members of the club. This was the cheering and clapping of hands before alluded to that had attracted the attention of our artist while painting from the fair Helen in the opposite room, and which, as our reader will recollect, was the signal for the young portrait painter to commence his Italian story of "The Three Pauls."

"And so that rascal De Chevron cheated the gallows after all," broke in Mr. Oldstone, during the pause that succeeded the tumultuous cheering that greeted the relation of Dame Hearty.

"But what became of Madge Mandrake? You have not told us that. She didn't escape scot-free, surely?"

"Well, you see, sir, the law had no actual hold on her," replied the hostess; "but I have every reason to believe that she died hard. She was discovered dead one day on the floor of her hovel, in her day clothes, her eyes fixed and starting from her head, her features distorted, and her fingers extended like claws, as if grasping the floor. Some thought she had died in a fit, but, whatever the cause of her death, it is certain she must have suffered great agony, and I cannot look upon the mode of her death otherwise than as a judgment for her many sins. She had never been known to enter a church within the memory of man, and though she had led a notoriously bad life, it seems that the parish could not deny her a Christian burial, and she was interred in the old churchyard yonder with all due ceremony, but report said at the time that she had frequently been seen since by those who happened to be pa.s.sing through the churchyard late at night or thereabouts, and that should a thunderstorm burst over the head of the benighted traveller, as he wended his weary steps past this abode of the dead, a shadowy form with a steeple-crowned hat and astride on a broomstick might be seen riding through the murky air, and behind her a black tom cat with a pair of flame-coloured eyes. Yells and groans, mingled with demoniacal laughter, were said to have been heard, as if proceeding from beneath the ground by those who happened to pa.s.s through the churchyard close to her grave after nightfall. Owls, bats, carrion crows, and other obscene birds would be found perched on the head of her grave, and, scared at the footsteps of a stranger, would fly screeching away.

"At least, this is what the country folk would say; but never having seen nor heard any of these things myself, gentlemen, I cannot vouch for their authenticity, yet there are few folks in the village to this day but would not put themselves much out of the way in order to avoid pa.s.sing through that same churchyard on a stormy night."

"In fact," remarked Mr. Crucible, "there is every reason to believe that the old lady was d----"

A storm had for some time past been gathering overhead, and just then a terrific clap of thunder prevented the conclusion of Mr. Crucible's sentence from being audible.

"Lauk-a-daisy-me! what a peal!" exclaimed Dame Hearty. "It was enough to shake the house down. I'm terrible frightened of thunder. It makes me feel alloverish like."

"I shouldn't wonder," suggested Mr. Blackdeed, "if old Madge on her broomstick should be riding overhead. Just go out and see, Dame Hearty, will you?"

"Not I, sir, not for the world," quoth our hostess. "And pray don't talk of that horrible person in such weather, or I shall go off in a fit.

Already I begin to fancy I see her before me, with her nose and chin meeting like a lobster's claws, with hardly room enough between them for a decent-sized hazel nut.

"How I can call to mind, too, her grizzly beard, like a well-used scrubbing brush, that left you in doubt as to whether she really could belong to our s.e.x! Then her beetle brows overhanging her sockets like a dragoon's moustache, and all but concealing her small deeply-sunk and viperish eyes, which gleamed with envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness."

"There, did you see that flas.h.!.+" exclaimed Dr. Bleedem. "Just wait a moment; here it comes."

A second tremendous crash resounded, causing the window panes to revibrate and the whole house to rock to its foundations.

"Lord have mercy upon us!" cried the hostess in extreme terror.

"That is a judgment sent on you by old Madge for speaking ill of her,"

said Professor Cyanite.

"Oh! hold your tongue, naughty man, do," said our hostess, half playfully, half in terror. "Here comes the rain in torrents. How it pours! Well, gentlemen, if you'll excuse me, I've got to attend to the house."

"Certainly," cried several members at once, "and many thanks for your very interesting story."

Our hostess curtseyed, said they were very welcome, and left the room.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] A better simile would be "as if charged with electricity," or "like sparks emitted from an electric machine," as this case, which is founded on fact, and which, together with other similar phenomena, is probably of electric origin. (_Vide_ Mrs. CROW'S "Nightside of Nature.") Yet we must bear in mind that we are speaking at a time before electricity created that furor in the world that succeeded the discoveries of Benjamin Franklin, and that it is only an unsophisticated country landlady who is speaking, whose science goes no further than the making of an apple pudding, roasting a leg of mutton, or frying a beefsteak.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER V.

IN WHICH OCCURS MR. PARNa.s.sUS' BALLAD--THE CHIEFTAIN'S DESTINY.

"Wretched weather, eh?" remarked Mr. Oldstone. "We shall have to call for lights soon. Here, Cyanite, a game of chess, what do you say? A story from whom ever loses."

"Thank you," replied the Professor, "but I have a letter to write which is of some importance."

"Come now, Crucible, have at _you_," quoth Oldstone.

"I have not played for years," replied Crucible, "and as I have no story wherewith to pay the penalty and am consequently out of practice and sure to lose and----"

"What do you say, Blackdeed?" asked Oldstone.

"Well, to say the truth," answered the chemist, "I find myself much in the same position as my friend Mr. Crucible, for were I to lose, an event which amounts to a dead certainty, I am perfectly sure I should not be able to pay the forfeit, even if I were to be imprisoned for it."

"Perhaps you'll oblige me, Hardcase," said the antiquary.

"Another time, thank you, Oldstone," replied the lawyer; "but the fact is that I've promised Bleedem a game of cards."

"Well really, gentlemen, I don't know what has come over you all," said Mr. Oldstone. "Perhaps Mr. Parna.s.sus will oblige me, as n.o.body else will."

"Well, I never piqued myself upon being much of a chess-player," replied Parna.s.sus, "but as the other gentlemen have refused, and I have nothing particular to do, I don't mind doing you a favour, and if I lose and don't happen to recollect a story, well I must owe it you."

"Agreed," said Oldstone. "Draw your chair to the table and set the board."