Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated)

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

  “Henbane!” cried the doctor briskly, having no other exclamation ready and reassured by these evidences of timidity in the spectre, he exclaimed, “Hey, by Jove! what the plague!” and for some seconds he did not know distinctly where he was.

  “Merciful goodness! Doctor Drake, why will you try to frighten people in this manner? Do you want to kill me, Sir?”

  “I? Ho! Ha, ha! Ma’am,” replied the learned gentleman, incoherently.

  “What are you doing here, Sir? I think you’re mad!” exclaimed Aunt Dinah, fiercely.

  The doctor cleared his voice, and addressed himself to explain, and before his first period was reached, William and old Winnie, woefully sleepy, had arrived.

  Luckily the person who approaches such oracles as “Henbane,” it is well known, must do so with a peaceful and charitable soul. So Miss Perfect was appeasable, and apologies being made and accepted, she thus opened her mind to the doctor —

  “I don’t complain, Doctor Drake — William, light the candles over the chimneypiece — although you terrified me a great deal more than in my circumstances I ought to have been capable of.”

  The candles were now lighted, and shone cheerfully upon the short, fat figure, and ruddy, roguish face of Doctor Drake, and as he was taking one of his huge pinches of snuff, she added —

  “And I won’t deny that I did fancy for a moment you might be a spirit-form, and possibly that of Henbane.”

  William Maubray, who was looking at the doctor, as Miss Perfect reverently lowered her voice at these words, exploded into something so like a laugh, though he tried to pass it off for a cough, that his aunt looked sharply on him in silence for a moment.

  “And I’m blowed but I was a bit frightened too, Ma’am, when I saw you at the door there,” said the doctor.

  “Well, let us try,” said Miss Perfect. “Come, we are four; let us try who are present — what spirits, and seek to communicate. You don’t object, Dr. Drake?”

  “I? Ho! oh! dear no. I should not desire better — aw-haw — instruction, Ma’am,” answered the doctor.

  I am afraid he was near saying “fun.”

  “Winnie, place the table as usual. There, yes. Now let us arrange ourselves.”

  The doctor sat down, still blinking, and with a great yawn inquired —

  “Do we waw — haw — wa — w — want any particular information?”

  “Let us first try whether they will communicate. We always want information,” said Miss Perfect. “William, sit you there; Winnie, there. I’ll take pencil and paper and record.”

  All being prepared, fingers extended, company intent, Aunt Dinah propounded the first question —

  “Is there any spirit present?”

  There was a long wait and no rejoinder.

  “Didn’t you hear something?” inquired the doctor. William shook his head.

  “I thought I felt it,” persisted the doctor. ‘‘What do you say, Ma’am?” addressing himself to Winnie, who looked, after her wont, towards her mistress for help.

  “Did you feel anything?” demanded Miss Perfect, sharply.

  “Nothing but a little wind like on the back of my head, as I think,” replied Winnie, driven to the wall.

  “Wind on her head! That’s odd,” said Miss Perfect, looking in the air as if she possessed the porcine gift of seeing it, “very odd!” she continued, with her small hand expanded in the air. “Not a breath stirring, and Winnie has no more imagination than that sofa pillow. You never fancy anything, Winnie?”

  “Do I, Ma’am?” inquired Winnie Dobbs, mildly. “Well, do you, I say? No, you don’t; of course you don’t. You know you don’t as well as I do.”

  “Well, I did think so, sure, Ma’am,” answered Winnie.

  “Pity we can’t get an answer,” remarked the doctor, and at the same moment William felt the pressure of a large foot in a slipper — under the table. It had the air of an intentional squeeze, and he looked innocently at the doctor, who was, however, so entirely unconscious, that it must have been an accident.

  “I say it is a pity, Mr. Maubray, isn’t it? for we might hear something that might interest Miss Perfect very much, possibly, I say?”

  “I don’t know; I can’t say. I’ve never heard any thing,” answered William, who would have liked to kick the table up to the ceiling and go off to bed.

  “Suppose Ma’am, we try again,” inquired Doctor Drake.

  “Certainly,” replied Aunt Dinah; “we must have patience.”

  “Will you ask, Ma’am, please, again if there’s a spirit in the room?” solicited the doctor; and the question being put, there came an upward heave of the table.

  “Well!” exclaimed the doctor, looking at Winnie, “did you feel that?”

  “Tilt, Ma’am,” said Winnie, who knew the intelligence would be welcome.

  “What do you say?” inquired Miss Perfect triumphantly of William.

  “Doctor Drake was changing his position just at the moment, and I perceived no other motion in the table — nothing but the little push he gave it,” answered William.

  “Oh, pooh! yes, of course, there was that,” said the doctor a little crossly; “but I meant a sort of a start — a crack like, in the leaf of the table.”

  “I felt nothing of the kind,” said William Maubray.

  The doctor looked disgusted, and leaning back took a large pinch of snuff. There was a silence. Aunt Dinah’s lips were closed with a thoughtful frown as she looked down upon the top of the table.

  “It is very strange. I certainly never witnessed in this house more unequivocal evidences — preliminary evidences, of course — of spiritual activity.”

  “I think, Ma’am, I have read,” said the doctor, with his hands in his pockets, “I think, somewhere, that if anyone of the manipulators happens to be an unbeliever— “

  “An unbeliever in the manifestations, of course the spirits won’t communicate,” interrupted Miss Perfect, volubly laying down the law. “Winnie is a believer as much as I. We all know that. Nephew, how are you? Do you believe? You shake your head. Speak out Yes or no?”

  “Well, I don’t,” said he, a little sheepishly.

  “You don’t? And, not believing, you sit here with your fingers on the table, keeping Doctor Drake out of his — his— “

  She could not say bed, and the doctor relieved her by saying, “Oh, as to me, Ma’am, I’m only too happy; but you know it’s a pity, all the same.”

  “Very true, doctor. Much obliged. We shall set it to rights. My dear William, you might have told us at starting; but we’ll commence again. Sit by the fire, William; and I trust in a little time you may be convinced.”

  CHAPTER VII.

  THE FAMILIAR SPEAKS.

  SO the excommunicated William, with his feet upon the fender, leaning upon his elbow in the great chair, made himself comfortable by the fire, and heard his aunt propound the questions, and the answers by the previously appointed manifestations, duly noted down.

  “Is there a spirit present?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are there more than one?”

  “No.”

  “Is it a male or female spirit?” No answer.

  “Is it Henbane?”

  “Yes” (emphatically).

  William was surprised. All was now going smoothly, and he could not for a moment suspect a gentleman of Dr. Drake’s respectability of participating in a trick. But there was monotony in the matter of a quieting kind, and William grew too drowsy to keep his eyes long open.

  “Did you give Miss Dinah Perfect a message on Monday last?”

  “Yes.” —

  “Did it concern her death?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is her death to take place at the time then appointed?”

  Here the table made a positive jump, and in spite of a grasp made at it by the doctor’s fingers, it fell flat on the floor, and it must have been a very violent impulse, for Dr. Drake’s slipper was off, and he, very red, no doubt from his eff
ort to prevent the wilful fall of the table. “Very extraordinary!” exclaimed he, standing up.

  “Most wonderful!” said my aunt.

  Good old fat Winnie sat with her fingers raised in the air, looking at the prostrate table with placid astonishment “That’s a tilt,” said the doctor, “that means no — a very emphatic tilt.”

  “I think it was a jump” said my aunt, sadly.

  “No, Ma’am, no — a tilt, a tilt, I’ll take my oath. Besides a jump has no meaning,” urged he with energy.

  “Pardon me: when a question is received with marked impatience a jump is no unfrequent consequence.”

  “Oh, ho!” groaned the doctor reflectively. “Then it counts for nothing.”

  “Nothing,” said Miss Perfect in a low tone. “Winnie, get the table up again.”

  “Suppose, Ma’am, to avoid mistakes,” said the doctor, after reflection, “suppose we put it upon it to express itself in language. Just ask it what about Miss Dinah Perfect’s death.”

  “I’ve no objection,” said Miss Perfect; and in the terms prescribed by Dr. Drake the momentous question was put.

  Hereupon the spelling commenced —

  “A-D-J-O-U-R-N-E-D.”

  “Postponed, put off, Ma’am!” said the doctor, expounding eagerly.

  “I know; good Heaven! I understand,” answered Aunt Dinah faintly.

  “Give her some water. Here, Ma’am,” said he, presenting a glass of water at her pale lips. She sipped a little.

  “Now we’ll ask, Ma’am, please, for how long?” suggested the doctor.

  And this question likewise having been propounded the table proceeded once more to spell —

  “S-I-N-E D-I-E.”

  ‘It ends with die? said my poor aunt, faintly.

  “Sine die, Ma’am. It means indefinitely, Ma’am; your death is postponed without a day named — for ever, Ma’am! It’s all over; and I’m very happy it has ended so. What a marvellous thing, Ma’am — give her some more water, please — those manifestations are. I hope, Ma’am, your mind is quite relieved — perfectly, Ma’am.” Miss Dinah Perfect was taken with a violent shivering, in which her very teeth chattered. Then she cried, and then she laughed; and finally Doctor Drake administered some of his ammonia and valerian, and she became, at last, composed.

  With audible thanksgivings old Winnie accompanied her mistress up stairs to her room, where Aunt Dinah herself, who, notwithstanding her necromancy, was a well-intending, pious Churchwoman, descended to her knees at her bedside, and poured forth her gratitude for the reprieve, and then in a loud and distinct voice read to old Winnie Dobbs the twentieth chapter of the Second Book of Kings, in which we read how the good king Hezekiah obtained by prayer ten years more of the light of life. Then old Winnie persuaded her to have a glass of very hot port wine-negus, which agreed with her so well that she quickly fell asleep; and never did poor lady need repose more, or drink deeper and more tranquil draughts of that Lethe.

  William Maubray was now wide awake, and he and the doctor, being a little chilly, sat before the study fire.

  “It’s jolly, isn’t it?” exclaimed William for the seventh time. “But isn’t it all very odd, Sir, and very unaccountable — I — I think?”

  “Very, very odd, to be sure,” said the doctor, poking the corner of a lump of coal— “very, no doubt.”

  “I wish I had been awake. I should like to see one of those things — those séances. I had no idea there really was anything so coherent.”

  “Very lucky for her,” replied the doctor, with a sly little wink to William.

  William looked inquiringly at the doctor, who smiled on the poker’s end, and pushed the embers gently with it.

  “You don’t believe in it, Sir — do you?” inquired William, puzzled.

  “I? Well, I don’t know exactly what to say, you know. I put my foot in it on Sunday last, when I told her I did not believe a bit of it; nor more I did. Egad, you never saw a woman so angry, when I called it all bosh. You’d better not vex her that way, my boy — d’ye see? She lent me one of those wonderful queer books from America — very odd they are — and I read it to please her. So, you see, that’s how we stand; very good friends again.”

  “And you are convinced it’s true?” urged William, who, like other young men who sit up late, and read wild books, and drink strong coffee, was, under the rose, addicted to the supernatural.

  “Why, you see, as Shakespeare says, there are more bubbles between heaven and earth than are dreamt of by the philosophers,” observed the doctor with a little paraphrase. “I wish to live at peace with my neighbours; and I’d advise you to think over this subject, old fellow, and not to tease the old lady up stairs about it — that’s all.”

  “I wish he’d speak out, and tell me what happened tonight, and tell me his real opinion,” thought William Maubray. “I’ve read in some old medical book,” he continued aloud, “that the vital electricity escapes and diffuses itself at the fingertips.”

  “Oh, to be sure! All sorts of theories. The hand’s a very mysterious organ. The hand of glory, you may be certain, was not altogether a story. The electric light has been seen at the fingertips in consumptive cases in the dark; and a patient convulsed, or in a state of extreme nervous exhaustion, will clench the hand so as to prevent the escape of this influence at the fingerpoints, and then joining hands, in love, you know, or friendship — and in fact it is, Sir, a very mysterious organ; and I’m prepared to believe a great deal that’s curious about its occult powers. Your aunt told you about the toad she saw climb over her coverlet one night, and turn into a hand and grasp her wrist.”

  “No,” said William.

  “Egad, she’s ready to swear to it. Last winter she was so frightened, she was not fit to stand for a week after. She reads too much of those books. Egad, Sir, she’ll turn her head, and that will be the end of it. However, we’ve pulled her through this, and I hope she’ll give it up, true or false. You see, there’s no good in it; and if she goes on, sooner or later she’ll frighten herself out of her wits.”

  “But that toad was a very curious idea,” said William. “What does she make of it? Does she think it was a fancy only, or a real thing?”

  “Pooh! A spirit of course. She calls it the key-spirit that unlocks the spirit-world, you see; and from the time it touches you, you are in rapport with the invisible world, and subject, as she says she is, to their visitations, you see — ha, ha, ha!”

  William laughed too.

  “Last winter?” he said. “She never told me.”

  “Pooh! All fancies,” observed the doctor. “Better she should not talk of them. Those American people are all going mad. She’ll get touched in the upper story if she does not mind.”

  CHAPTER VIII.

  WILLIAM MAUBRAY’S VISION.

  AFTER some more talk of this kind, they parted, and William Maubray, as he lay down again in his bed, wondered whether the doctor, whom he had heard described as a shrewd man, believed in the revelations at which he had assisted; or, was it possible — could he have been accessory to — Oh, no, it could not be!

  The student, as I have said, had a sort of liking for the supernatural, and although now and then he had experienced a qualm in his solitary college chamber at dead of night, when, as he read a well-authenticated horror, the old press creaked suddenly, or the door of the inner-room swung slowly open of itself, it yet was “a pleasing terror” that thrilled him; and now as he lay this night awake, with a patch of moonlight spread askance on the floor — for Aunt Dinah insisted on a curfew, and he, “preferring the light that heaven sheds” to no lamp at all, left the window-shutter a little open, and for a while allowed his eyes to wander over the oldfashioned and faded furniture of the apartment, and his fancy to wander among those dreams of superstition with which he rather liked to try has courage.

  He conned over his aunt’s story of the toad, recounted to him by Doctor Drake, and which he had never heard before, until the nodding shadow of t
he sprig of jessamine on the floor took the shape of the sprawling reptile, and seemed to swagger clumsily towards his bed, and every noise in the curtains suggested its slimy clamberings.

  Youth, fatigue, pure country air, in a little while overpowered these whimsies, and William Maubray fell into a deep sleep.

  I am now going to relate a very extraordinary incident; but upon my honour the narrative is true. William Maubray dreamed that he was in the room in which he actually lay; that he was in bed, and that the moonlight entered the room, just as he had seen it before going to sleep. He thought that he heard a heavy tread travel se the room over his head; he heard the same slow and ponderous step descend the narrow back stair, that was separated from him only by the wall at the back of his bed. He knew intuitively that the person thus approaching came in quest of him, and he lay expecting, in a state of unaccountable terror. The handle of his door turned, and it seemed that his intending visitor paused, having opened the door about a hand’s breadth, and William knew that he had only suspended, not abandoned his purpose, be it what it might. Then the door swung slowly open, and in the deep shadow, a figure of gigantic stature entered, paused beside his bed, and seized his wrist with a tremendous gripe.

  For a time, unable to stir, he remained passive under its pressure. Then with a horrified struggle he awoke. There was no figure visible, but his wrist was actually compressed in a cold grasp, and, with a ghastly ejaculation, he sprang from his bed, and was released.

  He had no means of lighting a candle; he had nothing for it but to bounce to the window, fling curtains and shutters wide, and admit the full flood of moonlight, which revealed the contents of the room, and showed that no figure but his own was there. But there were the marks of the grasp that had held him still visible. He secured his door, and made search, in a state of horror, but was convinced. There was no visible intruder in the chamber.