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.