Chapter 2

I will mention, in this place, two small changes that I made while my
sister and I were yet alone. It occurring to me as not improbable that
Turk howled in the house at night, partly because he wanted to get out of
it, I stationed him in his kennel outside, but unchained; and I seriously
warned the village that any man who came in his way must not expect to
leave him without a rip in his own throat. I then casually asked Ikey if
he were a judge of a gun? On his saying, “Yes, sir, I knows a good gun
when I sees her,” I begged the favour of his stepping up to the house and
looking at mine.

“_She’s_ a true one, sir,” said Ikey, after inspecting a double-barrelled
rifle that I bought in New York a few years ago. “No mistake about
_her_, sir.”

“Ikey,” said I, “don’t mention it; I have seen something in this house.”

“No, sir?” he whispered, greedily opening his eyes. “’Ooded lady, sir?”

“Don’t be frightened,” said I. “It was a figure rather like you.”

“Lord, sir?”

“Ikey!” said I, shaking hands with him warmly: I may say affectionately;
“if there is any truth in these ghost-stories, the greatest service I can
do you, is, to fire at that figure. And I promise you, by Heaven and
earth, I will do it with this gun if I see it again!”

The young man thanked me, and took his leave with some little
precipitation, after declining a glass of liquor. I imparted my secret
to him, because I had never quite forgotten his throwing his cap at the
bell; because I had, on another occasion, noticed something very like a
fur cap, lying not far from the bell, one night when it had burst out
ringing; and because I had remarked that we were at our ghostliest
whenever he came up in the evening to comfort the servants. Let me do
Ikey no injustice. He was afraid of the house, and believed in its being
haunted; and yet he would play false on the haunting side, so surely as
he got an opportunity. The Odd Girl’s case was exactly similar. She
went about the house in a state of real terror, and yet lied monstrously
and wilfully, and invented many of the alarms she spread, and made many
of the sounds we heard. I had had my eye on the two, and I know it. It
is not necessary for me, here, to account for this preposterous state of
mind; I content myself with remarking that it is familiarly known to
every intelligent man who has had fair medical, legal, or other watchful
experience; that it is as well established and as common a state of mind
as any with which observers are acquainted; and that it is one of the
first elements, above all others, rationally to be suspected in, and
strictly looked for, and separated from, any question of this kind.

To return to our party. The first thing we did when we were all
assembled, was, to draw lots for bedrooms. That done, and every bedroom,
and, indeed, the whole house, having been minutely examined by the whole
body, we allotted the various household duties, as if we had been on a
gipsy party, or a yachting party, or a hunting party, or were
shipwrecked. I then recounted the floating rumours concerning the hooded
lady, the owl, and Master B.: with others, still more filmy, which had
floated about during our occupation, relative to some ridiculous old
ghost of the female gender who went up and down, carrying the ghost of a
round table; and also to an impalpable Jackass, whom nobody was ever able
to catch. Some of these ideas I really believe our people below had
communicated to one another in some diseased way, without conveying them
in words. We then gravely called one another to witness, that we were
not there to be deceived, or to deceive—which we considered pretty much
the same thing—and that, with a serious sense of responsibility, we would
be strictly true to one another, and would strictly follow out the truth.
The understanding was established, that any one who heard unusual noises
in the night, and who wished to trace them, should knock at my door;
lastly, that on Twelfth Night, the last night of holy Christmas, all our
individual experiences since that then present hour of our coming
together in the haunted house, should be brought to light for the good of
all; and that we would hold our peace on the subject till then, unless on
some remarkable provocation to break silence.

We were, in number and in character, as follows:

First—to get my sister and myself out of the way—there were we two. In
the drawing of lots, my sister drew her own room, and I drew Master B.’s.
Next, there was our first cousin John Herschel, so called after the great
astronomer: than whom I suppose a better man at a telescope does not
breathe. With him, was his wife: a charming creature to whom he had been
married in the previous spring. I thought it (under the circumstances)
rather imprudent to bring her, because there is no knowing what even a
false alarm may do at such a time; but I suppose he knew his own business
best, and I must say that if she had been _my_ wife, I never could have
left her endearing and bright face behind. They drew the Clock Room.
Alfred Starling, an uncommonly agreeable young fellow of eight-and-twenty
for whom I have the greatest liking, was in the Double Room; mine,
usually, and designated by that name from having a dressing-room within
it, with two large and cumbersome windows, which no wedges _I_ was ever
able to make, would keep from shaking, in any weather, wind or no wind.
Alfred is a young fellow who pretends to be “fast” (another word for
loose, as I understand the term), but who is much too good and sensible
for that nonsense, and who would have distinguished himself before now,
if his father had not unfortunately left him a small independence of two
hundred a year, on the strength of which his only occupation in life has
been to spend six. I am in hopes, however, that his Banker may break, or
that he may enter into some speculation guaranteed to pay twenty per
cent.; for, I am convinced that if he could only be ruined, his fortune
is made. Belinda Bates, bosom friend of my sister, and a most
intellectual, amiable, and delightful girl, got the Picture Room. She
has a fine genius for poetry, combined with real business earnestness,
and “goes in”—to use an expression of Alfred’s—for Woman’s mission,
Woman’s rights, Woman’s wrongs, and everything that is woman’s with a
capital W, or is not and ought to be, or is and ought not to be. “Most
praiseworthy, my dear, and Heaven prosper you!” I whispered to her on the
first night of my taking leave of her at the Picture-Room door, “but
don’t overdo it. And in respect of the great necessity there is, my
darling, for more employments being within the reach of Woman than our
civilisation has as yet assigned to her, don’t fly at the unfortunate
men, even those men who are at first sight in your way, as if they were
the natural oppressors of your sex; for, trust me, Belinda, they do
sometimes spend their wages among wives and daughters, sisters, mothers,
aunts, and grandmothers; and the play is, really, not _all_ Wolf and Red
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
animal’s paint—especially when I brought it out, by making him warm—I am
ready to swear to. I followed the ghost, afterwards, in a hackney coach;
an institution with the peculiar smell of which, the present generation
is unacquainted, but to which I am again ready to swear as a combination
of stable, dog with the mange, and very old bellows. (In this, I appeal
to previous generations to confirm or refute me.) I pursued the phantom,
on a headless donkey: at least, upon a donkey who was so interested in
the state of his stomach that his head was always down there,
investigating it; on ponies, expressly born to kick up behind; on
roundabouts and swings, from fairs; in the first cab—another forgotten
institution where the fare regularly got into bed, and was tucked up with
the driver.

Not to trouble you with a detailed account of all my travels in pursuit
of the ghost of Master B., which were longer and more wonderful than
those of Sinbad the Sailor, I will confine myself to one experience from
which you may judge of many.

I was marvellously changed. I was myself, yet not myself. I was
conscious of something within me, which has been the same all through my
life, and which I have always recognised under all its phases and
varieties as never altering, and yet I was not the I who had gone to bed
in Master B.’s room. I had the smoothest of faces and the shortest of
legs, and I had taken another creature like myself, also with the
smoothest of faces and the shortest of legs, behind a door, and was
confiding to him a proposition of the most astounding nature.

This proposition was, that we should have a Seraglio.

The other creature assented warmly. He had no notion of respectability,
neither had I. It was the custom of the East, it was the way of the good
Caliph Haroun Alraschid (let me have the corrupted name again for once,
it is so scented with sweet memories!), the usage was highly laudable,
and most worthy of imitation. “O, yes! Let us,” said the other creature
with a jump, “have a Seraglio.”

It was not because we entertained the faintest doubts of the meritorious
character of the Oriental establishment we proposed to import, that we
perceived it must be kept a secret from Miss Griffin. It was because we
knew Miss Griffin to be bereft of human sympathies, and incapable of
appreciating the greatness of the great Haroun. Mystery impenetrably
shrouded from Miss Griffin then, let us entrust it to Miss Bule.

We were ten in Miss Griffin’s establishment by Hampstead Ponds; eight
ladies and two gentlemen. Miss Bule, whom I judge to have attained the
ripe age of eight or nine, took the lead in society. I opened the
subject to her in the course of the day, and proposed that she should
become the Favourite.

Miss Bule, after struggling with the diffidence so natural to, and
charming in, her adorable sex, expressed herself as flattered by the
idea, but wished to know how it was proposed to provide for Miss Pipson?
Miss Bule—who was understood to have vowed towards that young lady, a
friendship, halves, and no secrets, until death, on the Church Service
and Lessons complete in two volumes with case and lock—Miss Bule said she
could not, as the friend of Pipson, disguise from herself, or me, that
Pipson was not one of the common.

Now, Miss Pipson, having curly hair and blue eyes (which was my idea of
anything mortal and feminine that was called Fair), I promptly replied
that I regarded Miss Pipson in the light of a Fair Circassian.

“And what then?” Miss Bule pensively asked.

I replied that she must be inveigled by a Merchant, brought to me veiled,
and purchased as a slave.

[The other creature had already fallen into the second male place in the
State, and was set apart for Grand Vizier. He afterwards resisted this
disposal of events, but had his hair pulled until he yielded.]

“Shall I not be jealous?” Miss Bule inquired, casting down her eyes.

“Zobeide, no,” I replied; “you will ever be the favourite Sultana; the
first place in my heart, and on my throne, will be ever yours.”

Miss Bule, upon that assurance, consented to propound the idea to her
seven beautiful companions. It occurring to me, in the course of the
same day, that we knew we could trust a grinning and good-natured soul
called Tabby, who was the serving drudge of the house, and had no more
figure than one of the beds, and upon whose face there was always more or
less black-lead, I slipped into Miss Bule’s hand after supper, a little
note to that effect; dwelling on the black-lead as being in a manner
deposited by the finger of Providence, pointing Tabby out for Mesrour,
the celebrated chief of the Blacks of the Hareem.

There were difficulties in the formation of the desired institution, as
there are in all combinations. The other creature showed himself of a
low character, and, when defeated in aspiring to the throne, pretended to
have conscientious scruples about prostrating himself before the Caliph;
wouldn’t call him Commander of the Faithful; spoke of him slightingly and
inconsistently as a mere “chap;” said he, the other creature, “wouldn’t
play”—Play!—and was otherwise coarse and offensive. This meanness of
disposition was, however, put down by the general indignation of an
united Seraglio, and I became blessed in the smiles of eight of the
fairest of the daughters of men.

The smiles could only be bestowed when Miss Griffin was looking another
way, and only then in a very wary manner, for there was a legend among
the followers of the Prophet that she saw with a little round ornament in
the middle of the pattern on the back of her shawl. But every day after
dinner, for an hour, we were all together, and then the Favourite and the
rest of the Royal Hareem competed who should most beguile the leisure of
the Serene Haroun reposing from the cares of State—which were generally,
as in most affairs of State, of an arithmetical character, the Commander
of the Faithful being a fearful boggler at a sum.

On these occasions, the devoted Mesrour, chief of the Blacks of the
Hareem, was always in attendance (Miss Griffin usually ringing for that
officer, at the same time, with great vehemence), but never acquitted
himself in a manner worthy of his historical reputation. In the first
place, his bringing a broom into the Divan of the Caliph, even when
Haroun wore on his shoulders the red robe of anger (Miss Pipson’s
pelisse), though it might be got over for the moment, was never to be
quite satisfactorily accounted for. In the second place, his breaking
out into grinning exclamations of “Lork you pretties!” was neither
Eastern nor respectful. In the third place, when specially instructed to
say “Bismillah!” he always said “Hallelujah!” This officer, unlike his
class, was too good-humoured altogether, kept his mouth open far too
wide, expressed approbation to an incongruous extent, and even once—it
was on the occasion of the purchase of the Fair Circassian for five
hundred thousand purses of gold, and cheap, too—embraced the Slave, the
Favourite, and the Caliph, all round. (Parenthetically let me say God
bless Mesrour, and may there have been sons and daughters on that tender
bosom, softening many a hard day since!)

Miss Griffin was a model of propriety, and I am at a loss to imagine what
the feelings of the virtuous woman would have been, if she had known,
when she paraded us down the Hampstead Road two and two, that she was
walking with a stately step at the head of Polygamy and Mahomedanism. I
believe that a mysterious and terrible joy with which the contemplation
of Miss Griffin, in this unconscious state, inspired us, and a grim sense
prevalent among us that there was a dreadful power in our knowledge of
what Miss Griffin (who knew all things that could be learnt out of book)
didn’t know, were the main-spring of the preservation of our secret. It
was wonderfully kept, but was once upon the verge of self-betrayal. The
danger and escape occurred upon a Sunday. We were all ten ranged in a
conspicuous part of the gallery at church, with Miss Griffin at our
head—as we were every Sunday—advertising the establishment in an
unsecular sort of way—when the description of Solomon in his domestic
glory happened to be read. The moment that monarch was thus referred to,
conscience whispered me, “Thou, too, Haroun!” The officiating minister
had a cast in his eye, and it assisted conscience by giving him the
appearance of reading personally at me. A crimson blush, attended by a
fearful perspiration, suffused my features. The Grand Vizier became more
dead than alive, and the whole Seraglio reddened as if the sunset of
Bagdad shone direct upon their lovely faces. At this portentous time the
awful Griffin rose, and balefully surveyed the children of Islam. My own
impression was, that Church and State had entered into a conspiracy with
Miss Griffin to expose us, and that we should all be put into white
sheets, and exhibited in the centre aisle. But, so Westerly—if I may be
allowed the expression as opposite to Eastern associations—was Miss
Griffin’s sense of rectitude, that she merely suspected Apples, and we
were saved.