Ghost Short Stories

(Continued from Page 2)

​

‘Come, come, wife,’ said I, ‘you are going too far the other way, now. Neither roach powder nor whipping will cure this table. It’s a queer table, wife; there’s no blinking it.’

​

‘I’ll have it rubbed, though,’ she replied, ‘well rubbed;’ and calling Biddy, she bade her get wax and brush, and give the table a vigorous manipulation. That done, the cloth was again laid, and we sat down to our morning meal; but my daughters did not make their appearance. Julia and Anna took no breakfast that day.

​

When the cloth was removed, in a businesslike way my wife went to work with a dark-coloured cement and hermetically closed the little hole in the table.

​

My daughters looking pale, I insisted upon taking them out for a walk that morning, when the following conversation ensued.

​

‘My worst presentiments about that table are being verified, papa,’ said Julia; ‘not for nothing was that intimation of the cloven foot on my shoulder.’

​

‘Nonsense,’ said I. ‘Let us go into Mrs Brown’s, and have an ice-cream.’

​

The spirit of Democritus was stronger on me now. By a curious coincidence, it strengthened with the strength of the sunlight.

​

‘But is it not miraculous,’ said Anna, ‘how a bug should come out of a table?’

​

‘Not at all, my daughter. It is a very common thing for bugs to come out of wood. You yourself must have seen them coming out of the ends of the billets on the hearth.’

​

‘Ah, but that wood is almost fresh from the woodland. But the table is at least a hundred years old.’

​

‘What of that?’ said I, gaily. ‘Have not live toads been found in the hearts of dead rocks, as old as creation?’

​

‘Say what you will, papa, I feel it is spirits,’ said Julia. ‘Do, do now, my dear papa, have that haunted table removed from the house.’

​

‘Nonsense,’ said I.

​

By another curious coincidence, the more they felt frightened, the more I felt brave.

​

Evening came.

​

‘This ticking,’ said my wife; ‘do you think that another bug will come of this continued ticking?’

Curiously enough, that had not occurred to me before. I had not thought of there being twins of bugs. But now, who knew—there might be even triplets.

​

I resolved to take precautions and, if there was to be a second bug, infallibly secure it. During the evening, the ticking was again heard. About ten o’clock I clapped a tumbler over the spot, as near as I could judge of it by my ear. Then we all retired, and locking the door of the cedar-parlour, I put the key in my pocket.

​

In the morning, nothing was to be seen, but the ticking was heard. The trepidation of my daughters returned. They wanted to call in the neighbours. But to this my wife was vigorously opposed. We should be the laughing-stock of the whole town. So it was agreed that nothing should be disclosed. Biddy received strict charges; and, to make sure, was not allowed that week to go to confession, lest she should tell the priest.

​

I stayed home all that day, every hour or two bending over the table, both eye and ear. Towards night, I thought the ticking grew more distinct, and seemed divided from my ear by a thinner and thinner partition of the wood. I thought, too, that I perceived a faint heaving up, or bulging of the wood, in the place where I had placed the tumbler. To put an end to the suspense, my wife proposed taking a knife and cutting into the wood there; but I had a less impatient plan; namely, that she and I should sit up with the table that night, as, from present symptoms the bug would probably make its appearance before morning. For myself, I was curious to see the first advent of the thing—the first dazzle of the chick as it chipped the shell.

​

The idea struck my wife not unfavourably. She insisted that both Julia and Anna should be of the party, in order that the evidence of their senses should disabuse their minds of all nursery nonsense. For that spirits should tick, and that spirits should take unto themselves the form of bugs, was, to my wife, the most foolish of all foolish imaginations. True, she could not account for the thing; but she had all confidence that it could be, and would yet be, somehow explained, and that to her entire satisfaction. Without knowing it herself, my wife was a female Democritus. For my own part, my present feelings were of a mixed sort. In a strange and not unpleasing way, I gently oscillated between Democritus and Cotton Mather. But to my wife and daughters I assumed to be pure Democritus—a jeerer at all tea-table spirits whatever.

​

So, laying in a good supply of candles and crackers, all four of us sat up with the table, and at the same time sat round it. For a while my wife and I carried on an animated conversation. But my daughters were silent. Then my wife and I would have had a rubber of whist, but my daughters could not be prevailed upon to join. So we played whist with two dummies, literally; my wife won the rubber, and, fatigued with victory, put away the cards.

​

Half-past eleven o’clock. No sign of the bug. The candles began to burn dim. My wife was just in the act of snuffing them when a sudden, violent, hollow, resounding, rumbling thumping was heard.

Julia and Anna sprang to their feet.

​

‘All well!’ cried a voice from the street. It was the watchman, first ringing down his club on the pavement, and then following it up with this highly satisfactory verbal announcement.

​

‘All well! Do you hear that, my girls?’ said I, gaily.

​

Indeed it was astonishing how brave as Bruce I felt in company with three women, and two of them half frightened out of their wits.

​

I rose for my pipe, and took a philosophic smoke.

Democritus forever, thought I.

​

In profound silence, I sat smoking, when lo!—pop! pop! pop!—right under the table, a terrible popping.

​

This time we all four sprang up, and my pipe was broken.

​

‘Good heavens! what’s that?’

​

‘Spirits! spirits!’ cried Julia.

​

‘Oh, oh, oh!’ cried Anna.

​

‘Shame,’ said my wife, ‘it’s that new bottled cider, in the cellar, going off. I told Biddy to wire the bottles today.’

​

I shall here transcribe from memoranda kept during part of the night:

One o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking continues. Wife getting sleepy.

Two o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking intermittent. Wife fast asleep.

Three o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking pretty steady. Julia and Anna getting sleepy.

Four o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking regular, but not spirited. Wife, Julia and Anna, all fast asleep in their chairs.

Five o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking faint. Myself feeling drowsy. The rest still asleep.

So far the journal.

​

—Rap! rap! rap!

​

A terrific, portentous rapping against a door.

​

Startled from our dreams, we started to our feet.

​

Rap! rap! rap!

​

Julia and Anna shrieked.

​

I cowered in the corner.

​

‘You fools!’ cried my wife, ‘it’s the baker with the bread.’

​

Six o’clock.

​

She went to throw back the shutters, but ere it was done, a cry came from Julia. There, half in and half out its crack, there wriggled the bug, flashing in the room’s general dimness like a fiery opal.

Had this bug had a tiny sword by its side—a Damascus sword—and a tiny necklace round its neck—a diamond necklace—and a tiny gun in its claw—a brass gun—and a tiny manuscript in its mouth—a Chaldee manuscript—Julia and Anna could not have stood more charmed.

​

In truth, it was a beautiful bug—a Jew jeweller’s bug—a bug like a sparkle of a glorious sunset.

Julia and Anna had never dreamed of such a bug. To them, bug had been a word synonymous with hideousness. But this was a seraphical bug; or, rather, all it had of the bug was the B, for it was beautiful as a butterfly.

​

Julia and Anna gazed and gazed. They were no more alarmed. They were delighted.

​

‘But how got this strange, pretty creature into the table?’ cried Julia.’

​

‘Spirits can get anywhere,’ replied Anna.

​

‘Pshaw!’ said my wife.

​

‘Do you hear any more ticking?’ said I.

​

They all applied their ears, but heard nothing.

​

‘Well, then, wife and daughters, now that it is all over, this very morning I will go and make enquiries about it.’

​

‘Oh, do, papa,’ cried Julia, ‘do go and consult Madame Pazzi, the conjuress.’

​

‘Better go and consult Professor Johnson, the naturalist,’ said my wife.

​

‘Bravo, Mrs Democritus!’ said I. ‘Professor Johnson is the man.’

​

By good fortune I found the professor in. Informed briefly of the incident, he manifested a cool, collected sort of interest, and gravely accompanied me home. The table was produced, the two openings pointed out, the bug displayed, and the details of the affair set forth; my wife and daughters being present.

​

‘And now, professor,’ said I, ‘what do you think of it?’

​

Putting on his spectacles, the learned professor looked hard at the table, and gently scraped with his penknife into the holes, but said nothing.

​

‘Is it not an unusual thing, this?’ anxiously asked Anna.

​

‘Very unusual, miss.’

​

At which Julia and Anna exchanged significant glances.

​

‘But is it not wonderful, very wonderful?’ demanded Julia.

​

‘Very wonderful, miss.’

​

My daughters exchanged still more significant glances, and Julia, emboldened, again spoke.

​

‘And must you not admit, sir, that it is the work of—of—sp—?’

​

‘Spirits? No,’ was the crusty rejoinder.

​

‘My daughters,’ said I, mildly, ‘you should remember that this is not Madame Pazzi, the conjuress, you put your questions to, but the eminent naturalist, Professor Johnson. And now, professor,’ I added, ‘be pleased to explain. Enlighten our ignorance.’

​

Without repeating all that the learned gentleman said for, indeed, though lucid, he was a little prosy—let the following summary of his explication suffice.

​

The incident was not wholly without example. The wood of the table was apple-tree, a sort of tree much fancied by various insects. The bugs had come from eggs laid inside the bark of the living tree in the orchard. By careful examination of the position of the hole from which the last bug had emerged, in relation to the cortical layers of the slab, and then allowing for the inch and a half along the grain, ere the bug had eaten its way entirely out, and then computing the whole number of cortical layers in the slab, with a reasonable conjecture for the number cut off from the outside, it appeared that the egg must have been laid in the tree some ninety years, more or less, before the tree could have been felled. But between the felling of the tree and the present time, how long might that be? It was a very old-fashioned table. Allow eighty years for the age of the table, which would make one hundred and seventy years that the bug had lain in the egg. Such, at least, was Professor Johnson’s computation.

‘Now, Julia,’ said I, ‘after that scientific statement of the case (though, I confess, I don’t exactly understand it), where are your spirits? It is very wonderful as it is, but where are your spirits?’

​

‘Where, indeed?’ said my wife.

​

‘Why, now, she did not really associate this purely natural phenomenon with any crude spiritual hypothesis did she?’ observed the learned professor, with a slight sneer.

​

‘Say what you will,’ said Julia, holding up, in the covered tumbler, the glorious, lustrous, flashing live opal, ‘say what you will, if this beauteous creature be not a spirit, it yet teaches a spiritual lesson. For if, after one hundred and seventy years’ entombment, a mere insect comes forth at last into light, itself an effulgence, shall there be no glorified resurrection for the spirit of man? Spirits! spirits!’ she exclaimed, with rapture, ‘I still believe in spirits, only now I believe in them with delight, when before I but thought of them with terror.’

​

The mysterious insect did not long enjoy its radiant life; it expired the next day. But my girls have preserved it. Embalmed in a silver vinaigrette, it lies on the little apple-tree table in the pier of the cedar-parlour.

​

And whatever lady doubts this story, my daughters will be happy to show her both the bug and the table, and point out to her, in the repaired slab of the latter, the two sealing-wax drops designating the exact place of the two holes made by the two bugs, something in the same way in which are marked the spots where the cannon balls struck Brattle Street Church.

​

<Page 1