"No, never. But I know those who have seen them; and I cannot disbelieve what they say. One such story in particular is often in my mind; it was a very strange one."
"Won"t you tell it us, Mr. Featherston?"
The doctor only laughed in answer. But after we came out of church, when he was sitting with me and John on the Parade, he told it. And I only wish I had s.p.a.ce to relate it here.
He left Pumpwater in the afternoon, and Lady Whitney had the room prepared for her use at once, John moving into hers. So that I had mine to myself again, and the little bed was taken out of it.
The next day was Monday. When Lady Whitney came down in the morning the first thing she told us was, that she had not slept. All the curious symptoms of restless disturbance, of inward agitation, which we had experienced, had visited her.
"I will not give in, my dears," she said, bravely. "It may be, you know, that what I had heard against the room took all sleep out of me, though I was not conscious of it; so I shall keep to it. I must say it is a most comfortable bed."
She "kept" to the room until the Wednesday; three nights in all; getting no sleep. Then she gave in. Occasionally during the third night, when she was dropping asleep from exhaustion, she was startled up from it in sudden terror: terror of she knew not what. Just as it had been with me and with John. On the Wednesday morning she told Susannah that they must give her the back-room opposite mine, and we would abandon that front-room altogether.
"It is just as though there were a ghost in the room," she said to Susannah.
"Perhaps there is, my lady," was Susannah"s cool reply.
On the Friday evening Dr. and Mrs. Parafin came in to tea. Our visit would end on the morrow. The old doctor held John before him in the lamplight, and decided that he looked better--that the stay had done him good.
"I am sure it has," a.s.sented Lady Whitney. "Just at first I feared he was going backward: but that must have been owing to the sleepless nights."
"Sleepless nights!" echoed the doctor, in a curious tone.
"For the first three nights of our stay here, he never slept; _never slept at all_. After that----"
"Which room did he occupy?" interrupted the doctor, breathlessly. "Not the one over this?"
"Yes, it was. Why? Do you know anything against it?" questioned Lady Whitney, for she saw Dr. and Mrs. Parafin exchange glances.
"Only this: that I have heard of other people who were unable to sleep in that room," he answered.
"But what can be amiss with the room, Dr. Parafin?"
"Ah," said he, "there you go beyond me. It is, I believe, a fact, a singular fact, that there is something or other in the room which prevents people from sleeping. Friends of ours who lived in the house before Miss Gay took it, ended by shutting the room up."
"Is it haunted, sir?" I asked. "Mr. Featherston thought it might be."
He looked at me and smiled, shaking his head. Mrs. Parafin nodded hers, as much as to say _It is_.
"No one has been able to get any sleep in that room since the Calsons lived here," said Mrs. Parafin, dropping her voice.
"How very strange!" cried Lady Whitney. "One might think murder had been done in it."
Mrs. Parafin coughed significantly. "The wife died in it," she said.
"Some people thought her husband had--had--had at least hastened her death----"
"Hush, Matty!" interposed the doctor, warningly. "It was all rumour, all talk. Nothing was proved--or attempted to be."
"Perhaps there existed no proof," returned Mrs. Parafin. "And if there had--who was there to take it up? She was in her grave, poor woman, and he was left flourishing, master of himself and every one about him. Any way, Thomas, be that as it may, you cannot deny that the room has been like a haunted room since."
Dr. Parafin laughed lightly, objecting to be serious; men are more cautious than women. "I cannot deny that people find themselves unable to sleep in the room; I never heard that it was "haunted" in any other way," he added, to Lady Whitney. "But there--let us change the subject; we can neither alter the fact nor understand it."
After they left us, Lady Whitney said she should like to ask Miss Gay what her experience of the room had been. But Miss Gay had stepped out to a neighbour"s, and Susannah stayed to talk in her place. She could tell us more about it, she said, than Miss Gay.
"I warned my cousin she would do well not to take this house," began Susannah, accepting the chair to which Lady Whitney pointed. "But it is a beautiful house for letting, as you see, my lady, and that and the low rent tempted her. Besides, she did not believe the rumour about the room; she does not believe it fully yet, though it is beginning to worry her: she thinks the inability to sleep must lie in the people themselves."
"It has been an uncanny room since old Calson"s wife died in it, has it not, Susannah?" said John, as if in jest. "I suppose he did not murder her?"
"_I think he did_," whispered Susannah.
The answer sounded so ghostly that it struck us all into silence.
Susannah resumed. "n.o.body _knew_: but one or two suspected. The wife was a poor, timid, gentle creature, worshipping the very ground her husband trod on, yet always in awe of him. She lay in the room, sick, for many many months before she died. Old Sarah----"
"What was her illness?" interrupted Lady Whitney.
"My lady, that is more than I can tell you, more, I fancy, than any one could have told. Old Sarah would often say to me that she did not believe there was any great sickness, only he made it out there was, and persuaded his wife so. He could just wind her round his little finger.
The person who attended on her was one Astrea, quite a heathenish name I used to think, and a heathenish woman too; she was copper-coloured, and came with them from abroad. Sarah was in the kitchen, and there was only a man besides. I lived housekeeper at that time with an old lady on the Parade, and I looked in here from time to time to ask after the mistress. Once I was invited by Mr. Calson upstairs to see her, she lay in the room over this; the one that n.o.body can now sleep in. She looked so pitiful!--her poor, pale, patient face down deep in the pillow. Was she better, I asked; and what was it that ailed her. She thought it was not much beside weakness, she answered, and that she felt a constant nausea; and she was waiting for the warm weather: her dear husband a.s.sured her she would be better when that came."
"Was he kind to her, Susannah?"
"He seemed to be, Master Johnny; very kind and attentive indeed. He would sit by the hour together in her room, and give her her medicine, and feed her when she grew too weak to feed herself, and sit up at night with her. A doctor came to see her occasionally; it was said he could not find much the matter with her but debility, and that she seemed to be wasting away. Well, she died, my lady; died quietly in that room; and Calson ordered a grand funeral."
"So did Jonas Chuzzlewit," breathed John.
"Whispers got afloat when she was under ground--not before--that there had been something wrong about her death, that she had not come by it fairly, or by the illness either," continued Susannah. "But they were not spoken openly; under the rose, as may be said; and they died away.
Mr. Calson continued to live in the house as before; but he became soon ill. Real sickness, his was, my lady, whatever his wife"s might have been. His illness was chiefly on the nerves; he grew frightfully thin; and the setting-in of some grave inward complaint was suspected: so if he did act in any ill manner to his wife it seemed he would not reap long benefit from it. All the medical men in Pumpwater were called to him in succession; but they could not cure him. He kept growing thinner and thinner till he was like a walking shadow. At last he shut up his house and went to London for advice; and there he died, fourteen months after the death of his wife."
"How long was the house kept shut up?" asked Lady Whitney, as Susannah paused.
"About two years, my lady. All his property was willed away to the little son of his brother, who lived over in Australia. Tardy instructions came from thence to Mr. Jermy the lawyer to let the house furnished, and Mr. Jermy put it into the hands of Bone the house-agent.
A family took it, but they did not stay: then another family took it, and they did not stay. Each party went to Bone and told him that something was the matter with one of the rooms and n.o.body could sleep in it. After that, the furniture was sold off, and some people took the house by the year. They did not remain in it six months. Some other people took it then, and they stayed the year, but it was known that they shut up that room. Then the house stayed empty. My cousin, wanting a better house than the one she was in, cast many a longing eye towards it; finding it did not let, she went to Bone and asked him what the rent would be. Seventy pounds to her, he said; and she took it. Of course she had heard about the room, but she did not believe it; she thought, as Mr. Featherston said the other morning, that something must be wrong with the paper, and she had the walls sc.r.a.ped and cleaned and a fresh paper put on."
"And since then--have your lodgers found anything amiss with the room?"
questioned Lady Whitney.
"I am bound to say they have, my lady. It has been the same story with them all--not able to get to sleep in it. One gentleman, an old post-captain, after trying it a few nights, went right away from Pumpwater, swearing at the air. But the most singular experience we have had was that of two little girls. They were kept in that room for two nights, and each night they cried and screamed all night long, calling out that they were frightened. Their mother could not account for it; they were not at all timid children, she said, and such a thing had never happened with them before. Altogether, taking one thing with another, I fear, my lady, that something _is_ wrong with the room. Miss Gay sees it now: but she is not superst.i.tious, and she asks _what_ it can be."
Well, that was Susannah"s tale: and we carried it away with us on the morrow.
Sir John Whitney found his son looking all the better for his visit to Pumpwater. Temporarily he was so. Temporarily only; not materially: for John died before the year was out.
Have I heard anything of the room since, you would like to ask. Yes, a little. Some eighteen months later, I was halting at Pumpwater for a few hours with the Squire, and ran to the house to see Miss Gay. But the house was empty. A black board stood in front with big white letters on it TO BE LET. Miss Gay had moved into another house facing the Parade.
"It was of no use my trying to stay in it," she said to me, shaking her head. "I moved into the room myself, Master Johnny, after you and my Lady Whitney left, and I am free to confess that I could not sleep. I had Susannah in, and she could not sleep; and, in short, we had to go out of it again. So I shut the room up, sir, until the year had expired, and then I gave up the house. It has not been let since, and people say it is falling into decay."