In the Wrong Paradise, and Other Stories

For a moment my unhappy middle-class association made me suppose that the elderly ecclesiastic was my “old Guv’nor,” – my father, the late Duke. But an instant’s reflection proved to me that her Grace meant “tutor” by governor. I am ashamed to say that I now entered into the spirit of the scene, shook the holy man warmly by the hand, and quoted a convenient passage from Horace.

He appeared to fall into the trap, and began to speak of old recollections of my boyhood.

Stately liveried menials now, greatly to my surprise, brought in tea. I was just declining tea (for I expected dinner in a few minutes), when a voice (a sweet low voice) whispered —

“Take some!”

I took some, providentially, as it turned out. Again, I was declining tea-cake, when I could have sworn I heard the same voice (so low that it seemed like the admonition of a passing spirit) say —

“Take some!”

I took some, for I was exceedingly hungry; and then the conversation lapsed, began again vaguely, and lapsed again.

We all know that wretched quarter of an hour, or half hour, which unpunctual guests make us pass in famine and fatigue while they keep dinner waiting. Upon my word, we waited till half-past eleven before dinner was announced. But for the tea, I must have perished; for, like the butler in Sir George Dasent’s novel, “I likes my meals regular.”

The Duchess had obviously forgotten all about dinner. There was a spinning-wheel in the room, and she sat and span like an elderly Fate. When dinner was announced at last, I began to fear it would never end. The menu covered both sides of the card. The Duchess ate little, and “hardly anything was drunk.” At last the ladies left us, about one in the morning. I saw my chance, and began judiciously to “draw” the chaplain. It appeared that the Duchess did not always dine at half-past eleven. The feast was a movable one, from eight o’clock onwards. The Duchess and the establishment had got into these habits during the old Duke’s time. A very strange man the old Duke; rarely got up till eight in the evening, often prolonged breakfast till next day.

“But I need not tell you all this, Percy, my old pupil,” said the chaplain; and he winked as a clergyman ought not to wink.

“My dear sir,” cried I, encouraged by this performance, “for Heaven’s sake tell me what all this means? In this so-called nineteenth century, in our boasted age of progress, what does the Duchess mean by her invitation to me, and by her conduct at large? Indeed, why is she at large?”

The chaplain drew closer to me. “Did ye ever hear of a duchess in a madhouse?” said he; and I owned that I never had met with such an incident in my reading (unless there is one in Webster’s plays, somewhere).

“Well, then, who is to make a beginning?” asked the priest. “The Duchess has not a relation in the world but Miss Birkenhead, the only daughter of a son of the last Duke but one. The late Duke was a dreadful man, and he turned the poor Duchess’s head with the life he led her. The drowning of her only son in the Jingo finished the business. She has got that story about” – (here he touched the decanter of sherry: I nodded) – “she has got that story into her head, and she believes her son is alive; otherwise she is as sane and unimaginative as – as – as Mr. Chaplin,” said he, with a flash of inspiration. “Happily you are an honest man, or you seem like one, and won’t take advantage of her delusion.”

This was all I could get out of the chaplain; indeed, there was no more to be got. I went to bed, but not to sleep. Next day, and many other days, I spent wrestling in argument with the Duchess. I brought her my certificate of baptism, my testamurs in Smalls and Greats, an old passport, a bill of Poole’s, anything I could think of to prove my identity. She was obdurate, and only said – “If you are not Percy, how do you know my secret?” I had in the meantime to alter the intended course of my novel – “The Baronet’s Wife.” The Baronet was made to become a reformed character. But in all those days at the lonely Towers, and in the intervals of arguing with the poor Duchess, I could not but meet Gwyneth Birkenhead. We met, not as cousins, for Miss Birkenhead had only too clearly appreciated the situation from the moment she first met me. The old seneschal, too, was in the secret; I don’t know what the rest of the menials thought. They were accustomed to the Duchess. But if Gwyneth and I did not meet as cousins, we met as light-hearted young people, in a queer situation, and in a strange, dismal old house.

We could not in the selfsame mansion dwell
Without some stir of heart, some malady;
We could not sit at meals but feel how well
It soothed each to be the other by.

Indeed I could not sit at meals without being gratefully reminded of Gwyneth’s advice about “taking some” on the night of my first arrival at the Towers.

These queer happy times ended.

One day a party of archæologists came to visit the Towers. They were members of a “Society for Badgering the Proprietors of Old Houses,” and they had been lunching at Upton-on-the-Wold. After luncheon they invaded the Towers, personally conducted by Mr. Bulkin, a very learned historian. Bulkin had nearly plucked me in Modern History, and when I heard his voice afar off I arose and fled swiftly. Unluckily the Duchess chanced, by an unprecedented accident, to be in the library, a room which the family never used, and which was, therefore, exhibited to curious strangers. Into this library Bulkin precipitated himself, followed by his admirers, and began to lecture on the family portraits. Beginning with the Crusaders (painted by Lorenzo Credi) he soon got down to modern times. He took no notice of the Duchess, whom he believed to be a housekeeper; but, posting himself between the unfortunate lady and the door, gave a full account of the career of the late Duke. This was more than the Duchess (who knew all about the subject of the lecture) could stand; but Mr. Bulkin, referring her to his own Appendices, finished his address, and offered the Duchess half-a-crown as he led his troop to other victories. From this accident the Duchess never recovered. Her spirits, at no time high, sank to zero, and she soon passed peacefully away. She left a will in which her personal property (about £40,000 a year) was bequeathed to Gwyneth, “as my beloved son, Percy, has enough for his needs,” the revenues of the dukedom of Stalybridge being about £300,000 per annum before the agricultural depression. She might well have thought I needed no more. Of course I put in no claim for these estates, messuages, farms, mines, and so forth, nor for my hereditary ducal pension of £15,000. But Gwyneth and I are not uncomfortably provided for, and I no longer contribute paragraphs of gossip to the Pimlico Postboy, nor yet do I vaticinate in the columns of the Tipster. Perhaps I ought to have fled from the Towers the morning after my arrival. And I declare that I would have fled but for Gwyneth and “Love, that is a great Master.”

THE HOUSE OF STRANGE STORIES

The House of Strange Stories, as I prefer to call it (though it is not known by that name in the county), seems the very place for a ghost. Yet, though so many peoples have dwelt upon its site and in its chambers, though the ancient Elizabethan oak, and all the queer tables and chairs that a dozen generations have bequeathed, might well be tenanted by ancestral spirits, and disturbed by rappings, it is a curious fact that there is not a ghost in the House of Strange Stories. On my earliest visit to this mansion, I was disturbed, I own, by a not unpleasing expectancy. There must, one argued, be a shadowy lady in green in the bedroom, or, just as one was falling asleep, the spectre of a Jesuit would creep out of the priest’s hole, where he was starved to death in the “spacious times of great Elizabeth,” and would search for a morsel of bread. The priest was usually starved out, sentinels being placed in all the rooms and passages, till at last hunger and want of air would drive the wretched man to give himself up, for the sake of change of wretchedness. Then perhaps he was hanged, or he “died in our hands,” as one of Elizabeth’s officers euphemistically put it, when the Jesuit was tortured to death in the Tower. No “House of Seven Gables” across the Atlantic can have quite such memories as these, yet, oddly enough, I do not know of more than one ghost of a Jesuit in all England. He appeared to a learned doctor in a library, and the learned doctor described the phantom, not long ago, in the Athenæum.

“Does the priest of your ‘priest-hole’ walk?” I asked the squire one winter evening in the House of Strange Stories.

Darkness had come to the rescue of the pheasants about four in the afternoon, and all of us, men and women, were sitting at afternoon tea in the firelit study, drowsily watching the flicker of the flame on the black panelling. The characters will introduce themselves, as they take part in the conversation.

“No,” said the squire, “even the priest does not walk. Somehow very few of the Jesuits have left ghosts in country houses. They are just the customers you would expect to ‘walk,’ but they don’t.”

There is, to be sure, one priestly ghost-story, which you may or may not know, and I tell it here, though I don’t believe it, just as I heard it from the Bishop of Dunchester himself. According to this most affable and distinguished prelate, now no more, he once arrived in a large country house shortly before dinner-time; he was led to his chamber, he dressed, and went downstairs. Not knowing the plan of the house, he found his way into the library, a chamber lined with the books of many studious generations. Here the learned bishop remained for a few minutes, when the gong sounded for dinner, and a domestic, entering the apartment showed the prelate the way to the drawing-room, where the other guests were now assembled. The bishop, when the company appeared complete, and was beginning to manœuvre towards the dining-room, addressed his host (whom we shall call Lord Birkenhead), and observed that the ecclesiastic had not yet appeared.

“What ecclesiastic?” asked his lordship.

“The priest,” replied the bishop, “whom I met in the library.”

Upon this Lord Birkenhead’s countenance changed somewhat, and, with a casual remark, he put the question by. After dinner, when the ladies had left the men to their wine, Lord Birkenhead showed some curiosity as to “the ecclesiastic,” and learned that he had seemed somewhat shy and stiff, yet had the air of a man just about to enter into conversation.

“At that moment,” said the bishop, “I was summoned to the drawing-room, and did not at first notice that my friend the priest had not followed me. He had an interesting and careworn face,” added the bishop.

“You have certainly seen the family ghost,” said Lord Birkenhead; “he only haunts the library, where, as you may imagine, his retirement is but seldom disturbed.” And, indeed, the habits of the great, in England, are not studious, as a rule.

“Then I must return, Lord Birkenhead, to your library,” said the bishop, “and that without delay, for this appears to be a matter in which the services of one of the higher clergy, however unworthy, may prove of incalculable benefit.”

“If I could only hope,” answered Lord Birkenhead (who was a Catholic) with a deep sigh, “that his reverence would recognize Anglican orders!”

The bishop was now, as may be fancied, on his mettle, and without further parley, retired to the library. The rest of the men awaited his return, and beguiled the moments of expectation with princely havannas.

In about half an hour the bishop reappeared, and a close observer might have detected a shade of paleness on his apostolic features, yet his face was radiant like that of a good man who has performed a good action. Being implored to relieve the anxiety of the company, the worthy prelate spoke as follows:

“On entering the library, which was illuminated by a single lamp, I found myself alone. I drew a chair to the fire, and, taking up a volume of M. Renan’s which chanced to be lying on the table, I composed myself to detect the sophistries of this brilliant but unprincipled writer. Thus, by an effort of will, I distracted myself from that state of ‘expectant attention’ to which modern science attributes such phantoms and spectral appearances as can neither be explained away by a morbid condition of the liver, nor as caused by the common rat (Mus rattus). I should observe by the way,” said the learned bishop, interrupting his own narrative, “that scepticism will in vain attempt to account, by the latter cause, namely rats, for the spectres, Lemures, simulacra, and haunted houses of the ancient Greeks and Romans. With these supernatural phenomena, as they prevailed in Athens and Rome, we are well acquainted, not only from the Mostellaria of Plautus, but from the numerous ghost-stories of Pliny, Plutarch, the Philopseudes of Lucian, and similar sources. But it will at once be perceived, and admitted even by candid men of science, that these spiritual phenomena of the classical period cannot plausibly, nor even possibly, be attributed to the agency of rats, when we recall the fact that the rat was an animal unknown to the ancients. As the learned M. Sélys Longch observes in his Études de Micromammalogie (Paris, 1839, p. 59), ‘the origin of the rat is obscure, the one thing certain is that the vermin was unknown to the ancients, and that it arrived in Europe, introduced, perhaps, by the Crusaders, after the Middle Ages.’ I think,” added the prelate, looking round, not without satisfaction, “that I have completely disposed of the rat hypothesis, as far, at least, as the ghosts of classical tradition are concerned.”

“Your reasoning, bishop,” replied Lord Birkenhead, “is worthy of your reputation; but pray pardon the curiosity which entreats you to return from the simulacra of the past to the ghost of the present.”

“I had not long been occupied with M. Renan,” said the bishop, thus adjured, “when I became aware of the presence of another person in the room. I think my eyes had strayed from the volume, as I turned a page, to the table, on which I perceived the brown strong hand of a young man. Looking up, I beheld my friend the priest, who was indeed a man of some twenty-seven years of age, with a frank and open, though somewhat careworn, aspect. I at once rose, and asked if I could be of service to him in anything, and I trust I did not betray any wounding suspicion that he was other than a man of flesh and blood.

“‘You can, indeed, my lord, relieve me of a great burden,’ said the young man, and it was apparent enough that he did acknowledge the validity of Anglican orders. ‘Will you kindly take from the shelf that volume of Cicero “De Officiis,” he said, pointing to a copy of an Elzevir variorum edition, – not the small duodecimo Elzevir, – ‘remove the paper you will find there, and burn it in the fire on the hearth.’

“‘Certainly I will do as you say, but will you reward me by explaining the reason of your request?’

“‘In me,’ said the appearance, ‘you behold Francis Wilton, priest. I was born in 1657, and, after adventures and an education with which I need not trouble you, found myself here as chaplain to the family of the Lord Birkenhead of the period. It chanced one day that I heard in confession, from the lips of Lady Birkenhead, a tale so strange, moving, and, but for the sacred circumstances of the revelation, so incredible, that my soul had no rest for thinking thereon. At last, neglecting my vow, and fearful that I might become forgetful of any portion of so marvellous a narrative, I took up my pen and committed the confession to the security of manuscript. Litera scripta manet. Scarcely had I finished my unholy task when the sound of a distant horn told me that the hunt (to which pleasure I was passionately given) approached the demesne. I thrust the written confession into that volume of Cicero, hurried to the stable, saddled my horse with my own hands, and rode in the direction whence I heard the music of the hounds. On my way a locked gate barred my progress. I put Rupert at it, he took off badly, fell, and my spirit passed away in the fall. But not to the place of repose did my sinful spirit wing its flight. I found myself here in the library, where, naturally, scarcely any one ever comes except the maids. When I would implore them to destroy the unholy document that binds me to earth, they merely scream; nor have I found any scion of the house, nor any guest, except your lordship, of more intrepid resolution or more charitable mood. And now, I trust, you will release me.’

“I rose (for I had seated myself during his narrative), my heart was stirred with pity; I took down the Cicero, and lit on a sheet of yellow paper covered with faded manuscript, which, of course, I did not read. I turned to the hearth, tossed on the fire the sere old paper, which blazed at once, and then, hearing the words pax vobiscum, I looked round. But I was alone. After a few minutes, devoted to private ejaculations, I returned to the dining-room; and that is all my story. Your maids need no longer dread the ghost of the library. He is released.”

“Will any one take any more wine?” asked Lord Birkenhead, in tones of deep emotion. “No? Then suppose we join the ladies.”

“Well,” said one of the ladies, the Girton girl, when the squire had finished the prelate’s narrative, “I don’t call that much of a story. What was Lady Birkenhead’s confession about? That’s what one really wants to know.”

“The bishop could not possibly have read the paper,” said the Bachelor of Arts, one of the guests; “not as a gentleman, nor a bishop.”

“I wish I had had the chance,” said the Girton girl.

“Perhaps the confession was in Latin,” said the Bachelor of Arts.

The Girton girl disdained to reply to this unworthy sneer.

“I have often observed,” she said in a reflective voice, “that the most authentic and best attested bogies don’t come to very much. They appear in a desultory manner, without any context, so to speak, and, like other difficulties, require a context to clear up their meaning.”

These efforts of the Girton girl to apply the methods of philology to spectres, were received in silence. The women did not understand them, though they had a strong personal opinion about their learned author.

“The only ghost I ever came across, or, rather, came within measurable distance of, never appeared at all so far as one knew.”