Christmas gold, p.789
Christmas Gold, page 789
My surprise was not small when I perceived that the umbrella had changed its position during the conversation at the bar. I had left it with the convex side towards the fire, and consequently the handle in the opposite direction. Now, the handle was towards the fire, and the convex surface of gingham towards the door. As no one had entered the room, this movement was perfectly astounding, yet I did not utter a single ejaculation. I snatched up the umbrella, boldly tucked it under my arm, and stalked through the bar, bidding a hasty farewell to the landlord, and making the utterly frivolous remark that I did not think I should miss the train. If all the ghosts of all the Hamlets had stood in visible shape before me, I would rather have walked through them, than have committed myself to a word, look, or gesture, that could have compromised me in the eyes of the landlord and his gruff acquaintance. As it was, the initial letters C. C. carved on the handle, confirmed my belief that the umbrella had been the property of the ill-starred Catherine Crackenbridge.
The umbrella, I may observe—though of gingham—was of no common order. Its ivory handle was extremely massive, and richly adorned with that elaborate tracery, which seems to betoken an Oriental origin. The initial letters to which I have referred had not been scratched on with the first sharp instrument that came to hand, but had been elegantly carved.
Hence it was no wonder, that when I called on my old friend Jack Slingsby, to whose residence I proceeded as soon as I quitted the train, he exclaimed, in his usual elegant style:
"Why, old boy, that's a stunning gingham you've got there. Well, that is an out-and-outer!"
"Yes, it is rather a good one," I answered, with despicable indifference; and I put it in the corner near the door, and hung my hat upon it, in conformity with an old habit of mine. Being of a careless disposition, I lost many an umbrella in early youth. To prevent the recurrence of such accidents, I now adopt the expedient of using my umbrella as a hat-peg, whenever I make a visit. I cannot easily forget my hat, nor can I take my hat without handling my umbrella.
"Well, but you don't mean to tell me," pursued Jack, " that you bought that article with your own money? A purchase of that kind is not like my old friend Yorick Zachary Yorke."
"No; I did not purchase it—it—it came from India," I replied, devoutly hoping, with the little conscience that was left me, that I had not told an absolute falsehood; for, indeed, it might have come from India in the first instance for anything I knew to the contrary.
The intelligence I had to communicate was of a pleasant kind, and Jack proved its exhilarating effect by ordering oysters for two, and a liberal supply of stout. When this supper, with the addition of a tumbler or so of grog, had been disposed of, I rose to depart.
"Why, old fellow," said the hospitable Jack, "where have you put your hat and your umbrella? Bless my soul, here they are! Well, now, I would have sworn in any witness-box that you put the umbrella in the corner near the door, and then clapped your hat on the handle, and now—lo and behold!—here's the hat on the floor in the corner next the fireplace, and the umbrella, with the point inside the hat, and the handle against the wall! "
The little incident in the parlour of the Jolly Navigators had too well prepared me for such freaks on the part of my umbrella, to allow me to be taken aback. " It is just as I put it, Jack," I said, with heedless effrontery. " You put a little too much brandy in your tumbler, and that, coming directly after the stout——"
Jack was fully as sober as I was, and as for the brandy-and-water, it had been offensively weak.
"I suppose you are right, old fellow," interrupted Jack, with a sceptical expression of countenance. "As the umbrella is a little damp, it was kind of you to save my carpet, by using your hat as a basin."
Simpering out some inanity about a friend's interests being as dear to me as my own, I got out of the house as well as I could. That I had not succeeded in obliterating from Jack's mind the remembrance of the change of corners, was afterwards made evident enough. Though he never saw the umbrella again, he never met me without some question as to its whereabout, or some reference to the odd occurrence of that evening.
I had been so much occupied hitherto in wearing a mask before other persons, that I really had not had time enough to feel all the supernatural horror which the possession of the umbrella should have inspired. Here was an article placed in my hand, by a mysterious female figure, that had vanished like a ghost, and that figure exactly corresponded to the description of a ghost current in the immediate neighbourhood! These circumstances began to impress themselves more forcibly on my mind, when, on reaching home, I found myself alone in my bachelor sitting-room. The umbrella, which rested against my chair, appeared to me in the light of an unpleasant acquaintance, whom one cannot conveniently bow out, and whom one will not press to stop. What should I do with the umbrella? I did not wish to sit up with it all night, still less was I inclined to take it into my bedroom. I looked reflectively at the umbrella until I almost fancied it looked at me in return.
At last I bethought me of a little room on the floor over my bed-chamber, which was occasionally used for the deposit of lumber. Thither would I at once take my umbrella, and then re-descend to the sleeping apartment. How cautiously I carried it! I felt morbidly afraid of waking the servants, who slept in the chamber adjoining the lumber-room. I opened the door with a minimum of noise, that only a burglar ought to attain. I could almost fancy I was breaking into my own house.
Lumber, insignificant by day, is ghastly at night, when illuminated by a single candle, and seen by a single spectator. The common household articles, cast aside as unavailable for immediate use, and huddled together in a fashion totally at variance with their original purpose, have a corpse-like appearance, and the shadows they cast are portentous. A cobweb floating about in their vicinity is an uncomfortable phenomenon, and the lonely spectator shrinks instinctively from anything like contact with that almost intangible substance, which seems to be compounded of feathers, gossamer, and nothing, and goes by the name of "fluff."
I delicately placed the umbrella against a hamper, richly embroidered with cobwebs, and crept down to my bedroom: not without overhearing the whispering voices of the servants, who had no doubt remarked the unwonted sound of footsteps.
My dreams were disagreeable enough. The umbrella seemed to stand before me as a huge many-armed bat, the gingham forming the texture of the wings, and a little claw being visible at each of the corners. Then the bat would assume the shape of a human skeleton, still many-armed, like some hideous Indian deity: with this difference, that the arms were not in a vertical circle, but were ranged around the neck, like the spokes of a horizontal wheel. And by a strange movement the knob had quitted its place, and stationed itself on the point, where it became a skull, and hattered its jaws, as if in unseemly mirth.
I was far from gratified next morning, when the servant, besides coffee and toast, brought in the umbrella, with the words, "I think you left this in the lumber-room?" I dryly answered "Yes," but I felt that my answer gave no satisfaction. Though the girl talked of "leaving the umbrella," she must have known very well that I put it in the lumber-room on purpose.
"You found the umbrella leaning against the hamper?" I asked.
"No, it was against the large trunk on the opposite side," replied the girl.
"Of course," I said. And never did that very common expression seem less fitted to the context of a dialogue.
An umbrella which has been lent by a ghost, which will be dreamed about under the most unpleasant aspect, and which, without the aid of human hands, will shift from one corner of a room to another, is not a desirable possession. Many were my efforts to get rid of my gingham treasure, but they were all in vain. I left it at the house of friend after friend, and frequently took away with me a silk umbrella in its stead, but it was invariably sent back. I have gone into some of the lowest streets in London, have made some trifling purchase of a marine store-seller who was obviously a receiver of stolen goods—I have placed the umbrella against his counter, and have hurried away at my quickest pace; but the light of honesty has flashed at once into the abode of roguery and crime. A ragged boy or girl has run frantically after me, with my umbrella. I have gone to umbrella-makers, and have offered to sell or exchange the remarkable specimen of their art, which I carried in my hand. But never was the master of the shop at home when I called, and never had he left any person authorised to effect an exchange or a purchase. I could always find some one in charge, with full authority to sell any number of umbrellas; but I could never find anybody entrusted with power to buy one, or take one in exchange.
It struck me at last, that I would take it to the nearest pawnbroker, and offer it as a pledge for a sum too small to be refused. I had never until then visited an establishment of the sort, and I felt nervous as I approached the door—more nervous when a friend, who seemed almost to rise out of the pavement, suddenly shook me by the hand, and asked me where I was going? When I had quitted him, he stopped and looked after me, so that I was not able to dash boldly into the shop, but lingered at neighbouring windows, contemplatingobjects wholly devoid of interest. How long I looked at some pigs' pettitoes in one shop, and at some blacking-bottles in another, I cannot conjecture. At last, assuming that I was wholly unobserved, I entered the temple of interested benevolence.
"Well, sir," said the young man at the counter, with an air more patronising than is assumed by the generality of tradesmen towards their customers; "what can we do for you?"
" I merely come to——" thus I began, when I perceived that my umbrella was not under my arm. I rushed out of the shop leaving my sentence unfinished, and met my friend returning from his expedition. Though he merely made some common-place remark, I could see by his manner that he had distinctly perceived my egress, and, chancing to look back towards the shop, I could see the young man's face protruding from the doorway, watching me with evident suspicion. My situation was miserable. Before me stood an old friend of the family, a warm opulent dreadfully respectable man, eyeing me with diminished respect; behind me was an utter stranger, conjecturing that I was a thief.
When I got home my umbrella was in the stand in the passage. Perhaps I had left it there. I cannot positively say whether I did or not, but something told me that it would be useless to make any other attempt to deposit it as a pledge.
As the end of another February approached, a happy thought occurred to me. Why should I not, on the anniversary of the day that had enriched me with the umbrella, take a turn in Swampy Field and restore it to the rightful owner? Though the umbrella had been placed in my hand on the 29th of February, a day which occurs only once in four years, I could regard the 1st of March as a very fair anniversary. There is this in common between the 29th of February in leap-year and the 1st of March in other years,—that they both follow the 28th of February. And there was no reason to suppose that a spirit, habituated to regard the essence of things, would regard a chronological arrangement merely made to adapt the calendar to mortal purposes.
I left London by railway, and on the evening of the 1st of March I was in Swampy Field with my umbrella up. There was not a cloud in the sky, and so bright was the moon that the country could be seen as by daylight. Nevertheless, I walked up and down the field with my umbrella, at full spread. No object appeared, save a group of boys, who took advantage of the bright moonlight to extend their hours of play, and who noticed me as a ridiculous figure. An umbrella held up at noon under a broiling sun, answers the purpose of a parasol, and brings no contempt on him who holds it; but a man who walks up and down a field by moonlight beneath a perfectly cloudless sky, with an outspread umbrella in his hand, is guilty of an absurdity that no one is bound to tolerate. The derision of the boys I endured with the fortitude of one who knows that he is in the wrong, and who justly merits whatever befals him. When their verbal sallies were followed by missiles of mud and stone I retreated, without the slightest feeling of anger against my small persecutors. Had I been in their place, I should have thrown missiles also.
Months and months passed away. Every night I had dreamed of the skeleton and the bat, and the dreams had lost their terror. I believe that if I had lain from night till morning, without a visit from the familiar spectre, I should have felt my rest incomplete. As for the umbrella, I had so often put it in one corner and found it in another, that I looked at its locomotion as a matter of course; and if I had chanced to find it in the place where I had left it, my sensations would have been like those of a man whose watch has unaccountably stopped.
One evening, as my eye glanced at the advertising columns of the newspaper, it stopped at the following mysterious announcement. I beg to state, before quoting it, that on the previous day the umbrella had come back to me in a very remarkable manner. I had left it at a shop to have it newly covered with silk in the place of gingham. It had come home (as it appeared to me of its own accord), and had brought a man with it who waited in the passage to be paid the price of this alteration, and who declined to quit the premises without receiving such price. On being offered the umbrella instead, he replied, " Blow the umbrella; I've umbrellas enough that I cant get rid of, I wants my money." (From the words I have italicised, might it not almost seem as if this uncultivated person had also encountered the spectre? I merely throw out the suggestion, without insisting on it.)
"On the 29th of February, C. C. will call on Y. Z. Y., and claim the deposit."
This was the advertisement on which my eye fell.
Now, it is not every one that can own a property in the initials Y. Z. Y. Indeed, I am inclined to believe that I, Yorick Zachary Yorke, am their sole legitimate owner.
How great is the power of habit! Three years before, my mind had been so occupied with the extra day of the bissextile, that I had even tried to make a 29th of February of my own, by giving a new figure to the 1st of March. Now, on the contrary, I was slow in recalling to mind the connexion between the umbrella and the date of its acquisition; and I believe a quarter of an hour elapsed before I recognised in C. C., the initials of the ill-starred Miss Catherine Crackenbridge.
The whole horror of four years ago was forced back upon me. My agony reached its crisis, when, looking at the date of the paper, I shrieked aloud—"The 29th of February is today!" Frantically I rushed into the passage, took the umbrella from its stand, and placed it on the table before me. My eyes were fixed upon it so firmly that every other object faded, and my arms were not only folded, but firmly pressed together, that I might be fully aware of the strength of my own resolution.
How long I sat in this state I know not, but after a while I began to feel that I was not alone, though I could not perceive a companion. And there was a strange inconsistency in the appearance of the room. The looking-glass was over the chimney-piece, and the various articles of furniture were in their places, but the carpet seemed made of wet grass, and the walls were transparent, affording a view of a flat country, in the last light of evening. I could hear the sound of rain, and could feel the drops. In defiance of all the laws of possibility, I was in two places at once—in my room in London, and on Swampy Field. A heavy weight rested on my arm, a cold breath was on my cheek, and close beside me was a pale face that moved its lips, as if speaking with the greatest earnestness; but it gave no sound.
When the face had melted away, and the weight was removed from my arm, and the carpet was free from wet grass, and the walls had ceased to be transparent, the umbrella was gone!
I am not aware whether any so-called philosophical explanation of these astonishing experiences may be attempted. I believe I have related them (on the whole) with great accuracy. If I have at all enlarged on any trifling detail, or if any deduction should be claimed by the determined sceptic, on the score of harmless stout, or of brandy-and-water which I have myself described as (I quote the exact words) "offensively weak," or on the score of a rather confused memory, or a slight habit of absence of mind, or an indigestive disposition (inherited on the father's side) to doze after dinner, there will still remain this extraordinary circumstance to be accounted for by ordinary laws—that I never could get rid of the umbrella (gingham) during the whole interval between bissextile and bissextile, and that I unaccountably and inexplicably lost the umbrella (silk) on the 29th of February, the very day when it came home from being newly covered, and brought with it the extraordinary man I have described.
Chapter IV.
His Black Bag
Table of Contents
Charles Allston Collins
I
Creel was a ducal house—a palace almost—in the north of Scotland, and I don't believe that anywhere in the north or the south, the east or the west, a pleasanter place could be found to stay at, or a pleasanter host and hostess than the Duke and Duchess of Greta. I had known the duchess long before her marriage, and as to her husband, we got on well from the very first day of my stay at Creel, when I had the good fortune to land a salmon in a style the duke highly approved of; an achievement which I followed up by tying a fly with which he himself killed first and last five large salmon, and a dozen grilse, before it came to pieces. Every year I went to stay at Creel, making one of a great society, the castle being big enough to hold a small world within its walls.
The first day of my arrival at Creel on the occasion of which I am writing, I found myself seated between old Lady Salteith, who is very deaf, and an uncommonly stupid master of fox-hounds, whose voice nobody would ever care to hear unless when it was raised in a melodious tally-ho or uttering words of encouragement to a despondent hound. Exactly opposite to where I sat was the beautiful Miss Crawcour. Of this young lady I had heard a great deal, though I had never before found myself in her company. She was placed next to the man of all others for whom I have, I think, the least liking. This was Lord Sneyd, the best match, pecuniarily, and the worst, I should imagine, in every other way, that England had to show. At a glance, I saw what was going on. Miss Crawcour was a near relation of the duchess, and the duchess was one of the most inveterate match-makers that ever lived. She was at this time about five or six and thirty, good-looking, and good-natured to an excess, but she had this quality of match-making developed in her nature to an extent that was almost inconceivable, and certainly premature.
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