It was August when my next definite adventure occurred. I use the word definite as I had had several other experiences, but of too brief and uncertain a nature to enable me to draw any precise conclusions.
Once, as I had been walking along one of the passages, I had heard the noise of something clanking, and had been put to instant flight by the sound of heavy footsteps echoing suddenly in my rear, and again—but this isn’t really worth recording; let me proceed with that night in August.
Well, I slept in a room at the end of a corridor, my nearest neighbour, Miss Dovecot our governess, occupying a chamber some dozen yards away. I do not think I need describe any article of furniture the room contained; every piece was strictly modern, and had been brought with us from a newly furnished house in Sevenoaks. The fireplace and cupboard are, however, deserving of comment; the former was one of those old-fashioned ingles Burns delights in describing, and which are now so seldom to be seen; an inn at Dundry, near Bristol, containing, I believe, the finest specimen in the kingdom; whilst the latter, which I always kept securely locked at night, was of such far-reaching dimensions that it might well be termed in modern phraseology a linen room.
On the night in question, I had gone to bed at my usual time—eight—and I had speedily fallen to sleep, as I was in the habit of doing; but my slumber was by no means normal.
I was tortured with a series of disturbing dreams, from which I awoke with a start to hear some clock outside sonorously strike twelve. As an additional proof of my wakefulness, I might add (pardon my explicitness) I was sensibly affected by a constant irritation of the skin, due, I believe, to a disordered state of the liver, which in itself was a sufficient preventive to further sleep.
It must have been half-past twelve when I heard, to my intense horror, the cupboard door—which I distinctly recollect locking—slowly, very slowly, open.
My first impulse was to make a precipitate rush for the door, but, alas! I soon became aware that I was powerless to act; a kind of catalepsy, coming on suddenly, held my body as in a vice, whilst my senses, on the other hand, had grown abnormally acute.
In this odious condition I was now compelled to listen to the Thing—whatever it might be—slowly crossing the floor in the direction of my bed.
The climax at length came, and my cup of horrors overflowed, when, with an abruptness that was quite unexpected (in spite of the direst apprehension), the Thing leaped on the bed, and I discovered it to be an enormous CAT.
I can unhesitatingly add the epithet—Black—for the room, which a moment before was shrouded in darkness, had now become a blaze of light, enabling me to perceive the colour as well as the outline with the most unpleasant perspicuity.