In the Wrong Paradise, and Other Stories Page 21

  IN CASTLE PERILOUS.

  "What we suffer from most," said the spectre, when I had partly recoveredfrom my fright, "is a kind of aphasia."

  The spectre was sitting on the armchair beside my bed in the haunted roomof Castle Perilous.

  "I don't know," said I, as distinctly as the chattering of my teeth wouldpermit, "that I quite follow you. Would you mind--excuse me--handing methat flask which lies on the table near you. . . . Thanks."

  The spectre, without stirring, so arranged the a priori sensuous schemataof time and space {261} that the silver flask, which had been well out ofmy reach, was in my hand. I poured half the contents into a cup andoffered it to him.

  "No spirits," he said curtly.

  I swallowed eagerly the heady liquor, and felt a little more like myself.

  "You were complaining," I remarked, "of something like aphasia?"

  "I was," he replied. "You know what aphasia is in the human subject? Aparalysis of certain nervous centres, which prevents the patient, thoughperfectly sane, from getting at the words which he intends to use, andforces others upon him. He may wish to observe that it is a finemorning, and may discover that his idea has taken the form of anobservation about the Roman Calendar under the Emperor Justinian. Thatis aphasia, and we suffer from what, I presume, is a spiritualmodification of that disorder."

  "Yet to-night," I responded, "you are speaking like a printed book."

  "To-night," said the spectre, acknowledging the compliment with a bow,"the conditions are peculiarly favourable."

  "Not to _me_," I thought, with a sigh.

  "And I am able to manifest myself with unusual clearness."

  "Then you are not always in such form as I am privileged to find you in?"I inquired.

  "By no means," replied the spectre. "Sometimes I cannot appear worth acent. Often I am invisible to the naked eye, and even quiteindiscernible by any of the senses. Sometimes I can only rap on thetable, or send a cold wind over a visitor's face, or at most pull off hisbedclothes (like the spirit which appeared to Caligula, and is mentionedby Suetonius) and utter hollow groans."

  "That's exactly what you _did_," I said, "when you wakened me. I thoughtI should have died."

  "I can't say how distressed I am," answered the spectre. "It is just aninstance of what I was trying to explain. We don't know how we are goingto manifest ourselves."

  "Don't apologize," I replied, "for a constitutional peculiarity. To whatdo you attribute your success to night?"

  "Partly to your extremely receptive condition, partly to the whisky youtook in the smoking-room, but chiefly to the magnetic environment."

  "Then you do not suffer at all from aphasia just now?"

  "Not a touch of it at this moment, thank you; but, as a rule, we all _do_suffer horribly. This accounts for everything that you embodied spiritsfind remarkable and enigmatic in our conduct. We _mean_ something,straight enough; but our failure is in expression. Just think how oftenyou go wrong yourselves, though _your_ spirits have a brain to play on,like the musician with a piano. Now _we_ have to do as well as we canwithout any such mechanical advantage as a brain of cellular tissue"--herehe suddenly took the form of a white lady with a black sack over herhead, and disappeared in the wainscot.

  "Excuse me," he said a moment afterwards, quite in his ordinary voice, "Ihad a touch of it, I fancy. I lost the thread of my argument, and amdimly conscious of having expressed myself in some unusual and more orless incoherent fashion. I hope it was nothing at all vulgar ordistressing?"

  "Nothing out of the way in haunted houses, I assure you," I replied,"merely a white lady with a black sack over her head."

  "Oh, _that_ was it," he answered with a sigh; "I often am afflicted inthat way. Don't mind me if I turn into a luminous boy, or a very old manin chains, or a lady in a green gown and high-heeled shoes, or a headlesshorseman, or a Mauth hound, or anything of that sort. They are all quiteimperfect expressions of our nature,--symptoms, in short, of the malady Imentioned."

  "Then the appalling manifestations to which you allude are not theapparitions of the essential ghost? It is not in those forms that heappears among his friends?"

  "Certainly not," said the spectre; "and it would be very promotive ofgood feeling between men and disembodied spirits if this were moregenerally known. I myself--"

  Here he was interrupted by an attack of spirit rappings. A brisk seriesof sharp faint taps, of a kind I never heard before, resounded from allthe furniture of the room. {265} While the disturbance continued, thespectre drummed nervously with his fingers on his knee. The sounds endedas suddenly as they had begun, and he expressed his regrets. "It is athing I am subject to," he remarked; "nervous, I believe, but, to personsunaccustomed to it, alarming."

  "It _is_ rather alarming," I admitted.

  "A mere fit of sneezing," he went on; "but you are now able to judge,from the events of to-night, how extremely hard it is for us, with thebest intentions, to communicate coherently with the embodied world. Why,there is the Puddifant ghost--in Lord Puddifant's family, you know: _he_has been trying for generations to inform his descendants that thedrainage of the castle is execrable. Yet he can never come nearer whathe means than taking the form of a shadowy hearse-and-four, and drivinground and round Castle Puddifant at midnight. And old Lady Wadham'sghost, what a sufferer that woman is! She merely desires to remark thatthe family diamonds, lost many years ago, were never really taken abroadby the valet and sold. He only had time to conceal them in a secretdrawer behind the dining-room chimney-piece. Now she can get no nearerexpressing herself than producing a spirited imitation of the music ofthe bagpipes, which wails up and down the house, and frightens thepresent Sir Robert Wadham and his people nearly out of their wits. Andthat's the way with almost all of us: there is literally no connection(as a rule) between our expressions and the things we intend to express.You know how the Psychical Society make quite a study of rappings, andtry to interpret them by the alphabet? Well, these, as I told you, aremerely a nervous symptom; annoying, no doubt, but not dangerous. Theonly spectres, almost, that manage to hint what they really mean areBanshees."

  "_They_ intend to herald an approaching death?" I asked.

  "They do, and abominably bad taste I call it, unless a man has neglectedto insure his life, and _then_ I doubt if a person of honour could makeuse of information from--from that quarter. Banshees are chiefly thespectres of attached and anxious old family nurses, women of the lowerorders, and completely destitute of tact. I call a Banshee rather acurse than a boon and a blessing to men. Like most old family servants,they are apt to be presuming."

  It occurred to me that the complacent spectre himself was not an unmixeddelight to the inhabitants of Castle Perilous, or at least to theirguests, for they never lay in the Green Chamber themselves.

  "Can nothing be done," I asked sympathetically, "to alleviate thedisorders which you say are so common and distressing?"

  "The old system of spiritual physic," replied the spectre, "is obsolete,and the holy-water cure, in particular, has almost ceased to number anyadvocates, except the Rev. Dr F. G. Lee, whose books," said this candidapparition, "appear to me to indicate superstitious credulity. No, Idon't know that any new discoveries have been made in this branch oftherapeutics. In the last generation they tried to bolt me with abishop: like putting a ferret into a rabbit-warren, you know. Nothingcame of _that_, and lately the Psychical Society attempted to ascertainmy weight by an ingenious mechanism. But they prescribed nothing, andmade me feel so nervous that I was rapping at large, and knockingfurniture about for months. The fact is that nobody understands thecomplaint, nor can detect the cause that makes the ghost of a man who wasperfectly rational in life behave like an uneducated buffoon afterwards.The real reason, as I have tried to explain to you, is a solution ofcontinuity between subjective thought and will on the side of thespectre, and objective expression of them--confound it--"

  Here he vanished, and the sound of heavy fe
et was heard promenading theroom, and balls of incandescent light floated about irresolutely,accompanied by the appearance of a bearded man in armour. The door(which I had locked and bolted before going to bed) kept opening andshutting rapidly, so as to cause a draught, and my dog fled under the bedwith a long low howl.

  "I do hope," remarked the spectre, presently reappearing, "that theseinterruptions (only fresh illustrations of our malady) have notfrightened your dog into a fit. I have known very valuable and attacheddogs expire of mere unreasoning terror on similar unfortunate occasions."

  "I'm sure I don't wonder at it," I replied; "but I believe Bingo is stillalive; in fact, I hear him scratching himself."

  "Would you like to examine him?" asked the spectre.

  "Oh, thanks, I am sure he is all right," I answered (for nothing in theworld would have induced me to get out of bed while he was in the room)."Do you object to a cigarette?"

  "Not at all, not at all; but Lady Perilous, I assure you, is a very oldfashioned chatelaine. However, if _you_ choose to risk it--"

  I found my cigarette-case in my hand, opened it, and selected one of itscontents, which I placed between my lips. As I was looking round for amatch-box, the spectre courteously put his forefinger to the end of thecigarette, which lighted at once.

  "Perhaps you wonder," he remarked, "why I remain at Castle Perilous, thevery one of all my places which I never could bear while I was alive--asyou call it?"

  "I had a delicacy about asking," I answered.

  "Well," he continued, "I am the family genius."

  "I might have guessed _that_," I said.

  He bowed and went on. "It is hereditary in our house, and I hold theposition of genius till I am relieved. For example, when the family wantto dig up the buried treasure under the old bridge, I thunder and lightenand cause such a storm that they desist."

  "Why on earth do you do _that_?" I asked. "It seems hardly worth whileto have a genius at all."

  "In the interests of the family morality. The money would soon go on theturf, and on dice, drink, etc., if they excavated it; and then I work thecurse, and bring off the prophecies, and so forth."

  "What prophecies?"

  "Oh, the rigmarole the old family seer came out with before they burnedhim for an unpalatable prediction at the time of the '15. He was verymuch vexed about it, of course, and he just prophesied any nonsense of adisagreeable nature that came into his head. You know what these crofterfellows are--ungrateful, vindictive rascals. He had been in receipt ofoutdoor relief for years. Well, he prophesied stuff like this: 'When theowl and the eagle meet on the same blasted rowan tree, then a lassie in awhite hood from the east shall make the burn of Cross-cleugh run fullred,' and drivel of that insane kind. Well, you can't think what troublethat particular prophecy gave me. It had to be fulfilled, of course, forthe family credit, and I brought it off as near as, I flatter myself, itcould be done."

  "Lady Perilous was telling me about it last night," I said, with ashudder. "It was a horrible affair,"

  "Yes, no doubt, no doubt; a cruel business! But how I am to manage someof them I'm sure _I_ don't know. There's one of them in rhyme. Let mesee, how does it go?

  "'When Mackenzie lies in the perilous ha', The wild Red Cock on the roof shall craw, And the lady shall flee ere the day shall daw, And the land shall girn in the deed man's thraw.'

  "The 'crowing of the wild Red Cock' means that the castle shall be burneddown, of course (I'm beginning to know his style by this time), and thelady is to elope, and the laird--that's Lord Perilous--is to expire inthe 'deed man's thraw': that is the name the old people give the SecretRoom. And all this is to happen when a Mackenzie, a member of a clanwith which we are at feud, sleeps in the Haunted Chamber--where we arejust now. By the way, what is _your_ name?"

  I don't know what made me reply, "Allan Mackenzie." It was true, but itwas not politic.

  "By Jove!" said the spectre, eagerly. "Here's a chance! I don't supposea Mackenzie has slept here for those hundred years. And now, how is itto be done? Setting fire to the castle is simple"--here I remembered howhe had lighted my cigarette--"but who on earth is to elope with LadyPerilous? She's fifty if she's a day, and evangelical a tout casser! Ohno; the thing is out of the question. It really must be put off foranother generation or two. There is no hurry."

  I felt a good deal relieved. He was clearly a being of extraordinarypowers, and might, for anything I knew, have made _me_ run away with LadyPerilous. And then, when the pangs of remorse began to tell on herladyship, never a very lively woman at the best of times--However, thespectre seemed to have thought better of it.

  "Don't you think it is rather hard on a family," I asked, "to have afamily genius, and prophecies, and a curse, and--"

  "And everything handsome about them," he interrupted me by exclaiming;"and you call yourself a Mackenzie of Megasky! What has become of familypride? Why, you yourselves have Gruagach of the Red Hand in the hall,and he, I can tell you, is a very different sort of spectre from _me_.Pre-Christian, you know--one of the oldest ghosts in Ross-shire. But asto 'hard on a family,' why, noblesse oblige."

  "Considering that you are the family genius, you don't seem to havebrought them much luck," I put in, for the house of Perilous is neitherrich in gold nor very distinguished in history.

  "Yes, but just think what they would have been without a family genius,if they are what they are with one! Besides, the prophecies are reallyresponsible," he added, with the air of one who says, "I have apartner--Mr. Jorkins."

  "Do you mind telling me one thing?" I asked eagerly. "What is themystery of the Secret Chamber--I mean the room whither the heir is takenwhen he comes of age, and he never smiles again, nor touches a cardexcept at baccarat?"

  "Never smiles _again_!" said the spectre. "Doesn't he? Are you quitecertain that he ever smiled _before_?"

  This was a new way of looking at the question, and rather disconcertedme.

  "I did not know the Master of Perilous before he came of age," said I;"but I have been here for a week, and watched him and Lord Perilous, andI never observed a smile wander over their lips. And yet littleTompkins" (he was the chief social buffoon of the hour) "has been ingreat force, and I may say that I myself have occasionally provoked agrin from the good-natured."

  "That's just it," said the spectre. "The Perilouses have no sense ofhumour--never had. I am entirely destitute of it myself. Even inScotland, even _here_, this family failing has been remarked--been thesubject, I may say, of unfavourable comment. The Perilous of the periodlost his head because he did not see the point of a conundrum ofMacbeth's. We felt, some time in the fifteenth century, that thispeculiarity needed to be honourably accounted for, and the familydeveloped that story of the Secret Chamber, and the Horror in the house.There is nothing in the chamber whatever,--neither a family idiot agedthree hundred years, nor a skeleton, nor the devil, nor a wizard, normissing title-deeds. The affair is a mere formality to accountcreditably for the fact that we never see anything to laugh at--never seethe joke. Some people can't see ghosts, you know" (lucky people! thoughtI), "and some can't see jokes."

  "This is very disappointing," I said.

  "I can't help it," said the spectre; "the truth often is. Did you everhear the explanation of the haunted house in Berkeley Square?"

  "Yes," said I. "The bell was heard to ring thrice with terrificvehemence, and on rushing to the fatal scene they found him beautiful indeath."

  "Fudge!" replied the spectre. "The lease and furniture were left to anold lady, who was not to underlet the house nor sell the things. She hada house of her own in Albemarle Street which she preferred, and so thehouse in Berkeley Square was never let till the lease expired. That'sthe whole affair. The house was empty, and political economists couldconceive no reason for the waste of rent except that it was haunted. Therest was all Miss Broughton's imagination, in 'Tales for Christmas Eve.'"

  He had evidently got on his hobby, and was begin
ning to be rathertedious. The contempt which a genuine old family ghost has for mereparvenus and impostors is not to be expressed in mere words apparently,for Mauth-hounds of prodigious size and blackness, with white birds, andother disastrous omens, now began to display themselves profusely in theHaunted Chamber. Accustomed as I had become to regard all theseappearances as mere automatic symptoms, I confess that I heard withpleasure the crow of a distant cock.

  "You have enabled me to pass a most instructive evening, most agreeable,too, I am sure," I remarked to the spectre, "but you will pardon me forobserving that the first cock has gone. Don't let me make you too latefor any appointment you may have about this time--anywhere."

  "Oh, you still believe in that old superstition about cock-crow, do you?"he sneered. "'I thought you had been too well educated. 'It faded onthe crowing of the cock,' did it, indeed, and that in Denmark too,--almostwithin the Arctic Circle! Why, in those high latitudes, and in summer, aghost would not have an hour to himself on these principles. Don't youremember the cock Lord Dufferin took North with him, which crowed atsunrise, and ended by crowing without intermission and going mad, whenthe sun did not set at all? You must observe that any rule of that sortabout cock-crow would lead to shocking irregularities, and to an early-closing movement for spectres in summer, which would be ruinous tobusiness--simply ruinous--and, in these days of competition,intolerable."

  This was awful, for I could see no way of getting rid of him. He mightstay to breakfast, or anything.

  "By the way," he asked, "who does the Cock at the Lyceum just now? It isa small but very exacting part--'Act I. scene I. Cock crows.'"

  "I believe Mr. Irving has engaged a real fowl, to crow at the rightmoment behind the scenes," I said. "He is always very particular aboutthese details. Quite right too. 'The Cock, by kind permission of theAylesbury Dairy Company,' is on the bills. They have no Cock at theFrancais; Mounet Sully would not hear of it."

  I knew nothing about it, but if this detestable spectre was going tolaunch out concerning art and the drama there would be no sleep for me.

  "Then the glow-worm," he said--"have they a real glow-worm for theGhost's 'business' (Act I. scene 5) when he says?--

  "'Fare thee well at once, The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, And 'gins to pale his ineffectual fire.'

  Did it ever strike you how inconsistent that is? Clearly the ghostappeared in winter; don't you remember how they keep complaining of theweather?

  "'For this relief much thanks; 'tis bitter cold,'

  and

  "'The air bites shrewdly: it is very cold.'"

  "Horatio blows on his hands to warm them, at the Francais," Iinterrupted.

  "Quite right; good business," said he; "and yet they go on about the glow-worms in the neighbourhood! Most incongruous. How does Furnivall takeit? An interpolation by Middleton?"

  I don't like to be rude, but I admit that I hate being bothered aboutShakespeare, and I yawned.

  "Good night," he said snappishly, and was gone.

  Presently I heard him again, just as I was dropping into a doze.

  "You won't think, in the morning, that this was all a dream, will you?Can I do anything to impress it on your memory? Suppose I shrivel yourleft wrist with a touch of my hand? Or shall I leave 'a sable score offingers four' burned on the table? Something of that sort is usuallydone."

  "Oh, _pray_ don't take the trouble," I said. "I'm sure Lady Perilouswould not like to have the table injured, and she might not altogetherbelieve my explanation. As for myself, I'll be content with your wordfor it that you were really here. Can I bury your bones for you, oranything? Very well, as you _must_ be off, good night!"

  "No, thanks," he replied. "By the way, I've had an idea about myapparitions in disguise. Perhaps it is my 'Unconscious Self' that doesthem. You have read about the 'Unconscious Self' in the Spectator?"

  Then he really went.

  A nun in grey, who moaned and wrung her hands, remained in the room for ashort time, but was obviously quite automatic.

  I slept till the hot water was brought in the morning.