Bones and I

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

There is no exorciser from without who can help us. Alas! that we can so seldom help ourselves. The strength of Hercules could not preserve the hero from his ghastly fate. Our ghost is no more to be got rid of by main force than was Dejanira’s fatal tunic, clinging, blistering, wrapping its wearer all the closer, that he tore away the smarting flesh by handfuls. Friends will advise us to make the best of it, and no doubt their counsel is excellent though gratuitous, wanting indeed nothing but the supplementary information, how we are to make the best of that which is confessedly at its worst. Enemies opine that we are weak fools, and deserve to be vanquished for our want of courage—an argument that would hold equally good with every combatant overpowered by superior strength; and all the time the ghost that haunted us sits aloft, laughing our helplessness to scorn, cold, pitiless, inexorable, and always

“Betwixt us and the sun.”

If we cannot get rid of him, he will sap our intellects and shorten our lives; but there is a spell which even this evil spirit has not power to withstand, and it is to be found in an inscription less imitated perhaps than admired by the “monks of old.”

“Laborare est orare,” so runs the charm. Work and worship, and a stern resolve to ignore his presence, will eventually cause this devil to “come out of the man.” Not, be sure, till he has torn and rent him cruelly—not till he has driven him abroad to wander night and day amongst the tombs, seeking rest, poor fevered wretch, and finding none, because of his tormentor—not till, in utter helplessness and sheer despair, stunned, humbled, and broken-hearted, the demoniac has crept feebly to the Master’s feet, will he find himself delivered from his enemy, weary, sore, and wasted, but “clothed, and in his right mind.”

Amongst the many ghost stories I have read there is one of which I only remember that it turned upon the inexplicable presence of a window too much in the front of a man’s house. This individual had lately taken a farm, and with it a weird, long-uninhabited dwelling in which he came to reside. His first care, naturally enough, was to inspect the building he occupied, and he found, we will say, two rooms on the second floor, each with two windows. The rooms were close together, and the walls of not more than average thickness. It was some days ere he made rather a startling discovery. Returning from the land towards his own door, and lifting the eyes of proprietorship on his home, he counted on the second story five windows in front instead of four! The man winked and stared and wondered. Knowing he was not drunk, he thought he must be dreaming, and counted them over again—still with the same result. Entering his house, he ran up-stairs forthwith, and made a strict investigation of the second floor. There were the two rooms, and there were the four windows as usual. Day after day he went through the same process, till by degrees his wonder diminished, his apprehensions vanished; his daily labour tired him so that he could have slept sound in a graveyard, and by the time his harvest was got in, the subject never so much as entered his head.

Now this is the way to treat the haunted chamber in our own brain. Fasten its door; if necessary, brick up its window. Deprive it of air and light. Ignore it altogether. When you walk along the passage never turn your head in its direction, no, not even though the dearest hope of your heart lies dead and cold within; but if duty bids you, do not shrink from entering—walk in boldly! Confront the ghost, and show it that you have ceased to tremble in its presence. Time after time the false proportions, once so ghastly and gigantic, will grow less and less—some day the spectre will vanish altogether. Mind, I do not promise you another inmate. While you live the tenement will probably remain bare and uninhabited; but at the worst an empty room is surely better than a bad lodger! It is difficult, you will say, thus to ignore that of which both head and heart are full. So it is. Very difficult, very wearisome, very painful, yet not impossible! Make free use of the spell. Work, work, till your brain is so overwrought it cannot think, your body so tired it must rest or die. Pray humbly, confidingly, sadly, like the publican, while your eyes can hardly keep open, your hands droop helpless by your side, and your sleep shall be sound, holy, unhaunted, so that with to-morrow’s light you may rise to the unremitting task once more.

Do not hope you are to gain the victory in a day. It may take months. It may take years. Inch by inch, and step by step, the battle must be fought. Over and over again you will be worsted and give ground, but do not therefore yield. Resolve never to be driven back quite so far as you have advanced. Imperceptibly, the foe becomes weaker, while you are gaining strength. The time will come at last, when you can look back on the struggle with a half-pitying wonder that he could ever have made so good a fight. Do not then forget to be grateful for the aid you prayed so earnestly might be granted at your need; and remember also, for your comfort, that the harder won the victory, the less likely it is you will ever have to wage such cruel battle again.

“Would it not be wiser,” observed Bones quietly, “never to begin the conflict? Not to take possession of the haunted house at all?”

There is a pseudo-philosophy about some of his remarks that provokes me intensely.

“Would it not be wiser,” I repeated, in high disdain, “to sit on the beach than put out to sea, to walk afoot than ride on horseback, to loll on velvet cushions in the gallery, than go down under shield into the lists, and strike for life, honour, and renown? No. It would not be wiser. True wisdom comes by experience. He who shrinks from contact with his fellow-men—who fears to take his share of their burdens, their sorrows, their sufferings, is but a poor fool at best. He may be learned in the learning of the schools, but he is a dunce in all that relates to ‘the proper study of mankind’; he is ignorant of human nature, its sorrows, its passions, its feelings, its hidden vein of gold, lying under a thick crust of selfishness and deceit; above all, he knows nothing of his inmost heart, nothing of the fierce, warlike joy in which a bold spirit crushes and tramples out its own rebellion—nothing of that worshipper’s lofty courage who