Before thy stinging frown;
Wo for the trusting heart!
Wo for the laurel crown!’
Shelter Island. Mary Gardiner.
A VERITABLE GHOST STORY.
‘There are more things in heaven and earth
Than are dreamed of in our philosophy.’
Some forty years since, an elderly English gentleman, who had been successful in his pursuit after wealth in the British metropolis, determined upon purchasing an estate in the country, upon which he might retire and enjoy the residue of life in unostentatious ease and quiet. He was a man of elegant tastes and fond of antiquarian pursuits. This latter predilection induced him, in his various summer journeyings in England, to select from among those old inns or taverns which are invariably to be met with in every ancient borough or market-town, the most respectable one, as the place at which he would put up; and when ‘mine host’ gave token of being a gentleman, his companionship would generally be requested, through a card by the waiter, bearing the compliments of the guest, with a hope that it might be convenient for the landlord to favor him with his company over a bottle of wine. This was the almost invariable plan adopted, when he was unaccompanied with his ‘better half.’ It will readily be conceived that in these tête-à-tête gossipings, a great fund of anecdote and legendary tales had been gleaned, which were made subservient to the entertainment of friends when assembled around the social board. It is from this fund of gossip to which I have so often listened, that I propose to select one which, owing to my close relationship to the stout gentleman, has been to me a source of no little interest, even as a ‘thrice-told tale.’ The incident occurred at the time when he was in search of the estate to which I have alluded in the commencement of this sketch.
It was late in the evening, in the spring of the year, when he arrived at the destined stopping-place for the night, which if I remember rightly was the ancient borough of St. Albans. Here he selected an inn according to his usual taste; an old rambling disjointed patch-work piece of architecture, the gradual accumulation of many preceding generations, where might be seen rude carvings of grinning nondescript monsters supporting the projecting stories as they each hung over the side-walk; large and small casement windows, with square mullions and gothic arches, and many a gabled roof fronting on the street, where at their junction the continuous gutters projected in the form of long pipes, which in rainy weather discharged cataracts of water, deluging the unfortunate pedestrian who should unwittingly prefer the side-walk to the rough paved road. In the centre of this pile of buildings was the gate-way, large enough to admit coaches with outside passengers; and under its ample, shadowy shelter would be found the entrance to the building itself. On one side was the door to the tap-room, used by post-boys, servants, and the like class, while on the opposite side the glazed door led to the coffee-room and the more respectable apartments. Here Boniface would present himself whenever a carriage drove up, to give a hearty welcome to his guests. The interior, in accordance with the outside, was composed of low, spacious rooms, wainscoated in oaken pannels, blackened with age, but brightly polished by continued rubbings. The furniture was of a past century; the floors worm-eaten but of scrupulous cleanliness, their centres covered with modern or perchance Turkish carpets. The mullioned windows with their appropriate leaden-lozenged casements, glazed with glass of various shades of green, were ornamented with curtains, not hung for show but intended to be used nightly.
Into one of these rooms our elderly gentleman was ceremoniously shown by the obsequious waiter; and here, after the hearty meal was ended and the newspaper run through, the evening was spent, as the reader will perhaps anticipate, in company with ‘mine host.’ It was spring, as I have before said; cold and cheerless without, but within a bright blazing fire, and a table upon which sparkled generous wine, ‘that maketh glad the heart of man,’ gave earnest of comfortable quarters. You may fancy the stout gentleman and his companion honest Boniface, no shadow, each seated in arm chairs of creditable proportions, whiling away the evening hour with many a tale; a fragment of one of which we will now just touch upon.