"But with the morning's light came bright and cheerful faces, kindly inquiries, and renewed hospitality, and with them an abandonment of my menaced departure. During the day an opportunity presented itself of mentioning to my young host the harassing disturbances of the night, and asking for an explanation.
"'I can give none,' was his reply: 'after many years residence in the house, and ceaseless endeavors to ascertain the cause of these annoyances, you are as much au fait of their origin as myself.'
"'Is their[*sic] no motive, adequate or inadequate,' I continued, 'which can be assigned for these nightly visitations?'
"'None beyond the tradition—apparently authentic—that an ancestor of ours, a man whose character will not bear investigation, met his death, unfairly, in an old house on the site of which this is built. He was a miser, and presumed to be extremely wealthy. He lived secluded from society; his factotum and agent being an Italian valet, who was perfectly aware of the ample means of his master. On a sudden my vicious kinsman disappeared, and shortly afterward the valet. But the story runs—tradition it must still be called—that the former was robbed, brutally beaten, and finally walled up in some recess by his desperate retainer. So immured he died of actual starvation; but according to the legend, much of the miser's wealth continued hidden about the mansion which the Italian's fears prevented his carrying off, and which still remains, snug and safe, in some dusty repository, ready to reward "a fortunate speculator." I only wish,' continued he merrily, 'I could light upon the hoard! Give me a clew, dear Newburgh, and I'll buy you a troop.'
"'At any rate,' said I, 'from the mirth with which you treat it, the visitation is not unpleasant.'
"'You are in error,' said my entertainer; 'the subject is unquestionably annoying, and one which my mother and the family studiously avoid. As for your bed-room—the porch-room—I am aware that parties occupying it have occasionally heard the strangest noises on the gravel-walk immediately below them. Your hostess was most averse to those quarters being assigned you; but I thought that the room being large and lofty, and the steps to it few, you would occupy it with comfort. I am grieved that my arrangement has proved disagreeable.' And then, finishing off with a hearty laugh, in which, for the life of me I couldn't join, my host added, 'if he be walled up, I am sure you will say, Newburgh, that he's a persevering old gentleman, and makes the most laudable efforts to get out of his cell.'"
"The levity of some persons," was the major's grave aside, "how inconceivable, how indescribable!"
"My visit," continued he, "lasted about a fortnight, during the whole of which period, at intervals, the rapping was audible in different parts of the house. It appeared to me however—I watched attentively—to come with the greatest frequency from the hall. Thence it sounded as if an immense mallet, muffled in feathers or cotton, was striking heavily on the floor. The noise was generally heard between twelve and two. The blows sometimes followed each other with great rapidity; at other times more slowly and leisurely. One singularity of the visitation was this—that in whatever part of the house you might be listening, the noise seemed to come from a remote direction. If you heard the blows in the drawing-room, they appeared to be given in the library. And if you heard them in the library, they seemed to be falling in the nursery. The invisible workman was busy always at a distance. Another feature was its locomotive powers. It moved with the most extraordinary rapidity. Nothing that I could think of—mice, rats, drains, currents of air, dropping of water—would explain it. If the noise had been caused by the agency of any one of these causes, it would have been heard in the day time. It never was. Night was the season, and the only season in which the ponderous, but invisible, mallet was wielded. Nothing could exceed the kindness with which I was treated. No words can do justice to the thoughtful and delicate hospitality which I received. But I declare to you this mysterious visitation was too much for me. It was impossible to listen to it at night without depression. Perhaps my nerves were unstrung. The tone of my system might be enfeebled. The fault, I dare say, was in myself. But to lie awake, as I often did, during long hours from pain, and to hear this muffled, hollow, droning, mysterious noise passing from room to room about the house—to listen to it now above me, now below me, now quite close to my chamber door, and in a couple of seconds rising up from the very center of the hall, and to be all the while utterly unable to account for it, fevered me. I curtailed my visit; but the nursing and kindness I received are graven in my memory. Bearing all these matters in remembrance," said the major firmly; "recollecting my own strange experience, how can I discredit Mr. Ancelôt's narrative? I firmly believe it. We are surrounded by mysteries. The invisible world enshrouds us. Spirits have their regards intently fixed on us, and a very slight vail divides us. Spurn the vulgar error," said the old veteran stoutly, "that a soldier must be a scoffer. I remember the holy record, and its thrilling declaration; 'We are a spectacle unto angels and unto men.'" A pause ensued, which neither of the listeners cared to terminate. At length he spoke again. "The dews are falling. The last pleasure-boat has landed its fair freight upon the Denne. The breeze from the sea blows keenly, and warns us elderlies to think of our night-possets and our pillows. Trevor, give me your arm. Happy dog! You have no bullet in your back! May you never know the agony of existence when even to move some dozen yards is torture!"
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We should do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful, for the Useful encourages itself.—Goethe.