"Well, the condition is that every suitor for my daughter"s hand must spend a night alone in that house; and if he survives and is ready to persevere with his wooing, he must return a year later with his bride and spend the night of his marriage there."
"And very handy," said John, "for there"s a wedding-cake shop at the corner."
The King sighed again.
"Unhappily, none survive. One hundred and fifty-five have undertaken the adventure, and not a man of them but has either lost his wits or run for it."
"Well," said John, "I"ve been afraid of a great many men--"
"That"s a poor confession for a soldier," put in the King.
"--when they all happened to come at me together. But I"ve never yet met the ghost that could frighten me; and if your Majesty will give me the latch-key I"ll try my luck this very night."
It could not be done in this free-and-easy way; but at eight o"clock, after John had visited the Palace and taken an oath in the Princess"s presence (which was his first sight of her), he was driven down to the house beside the Lord Chamberlain, who admitted him to the black front hall, and, slamming the door upon him, scuttled out of the porch as quickly as possible and into his brougham.
John struck a match, and as he did so heard the carriage roll away.
The walls were bare, and the floor and great staircase ahead of him carpetless. As the match flickered out he caught a glimpse of a pair of feet moving up the stairs; that was all--only feet.
"I"ll catch up with the calves on the landing, maybe," said he; and, striking another match, he followed them up.
The feet turned aside on the landing and led him into a room on the right. He paused on the threshold, drew a candle from his pocket, lit it, and stared about him. The room was of great size, bare and dusty, with crimson hangings, gilt panels, and one huge gilt chandelier, from which and from the ceiling and cornice long cobwebs trailed down like creeping plants. Beneath the chandelier a dark smear ran along the boards. The feet crossed it towards the fireplace; and as they did so, John saw them stained with blood. They reached the fire-place and vanished.
Scarcely had this happened, before the end of the room opposite the window began to glow with an unearthly light. John, whose poverty had taught him to be economical, promptly blew out his candle. A moment later two men entered, bearing a coffin between them. They rested it upon the floor and, seating themselves upon it, began to cast dice.
"Your soul!" "My soul!" they kept saying in hollow tones, according as they won or lost. At length one of them--a tall man in a powdered wig, with a face extraordinarily pale--flung a hand to his brow, rose and staggered from the room. The other sat waiting and twirling his black moustache, with an evil smile. John, who by this time had found a seat in a far corner, thought him the most poisonous-looking villain he had ever seen; but as the minutes pa.s.sed and nothing happened, he turned his back to the light and pulled out a penny-dreadful. His literary taste was shocking, and when it came to romance he liked the incidents to follow one another with great rapidity.
He was interrupted by a blood-curdling groan, and the first ruffian broke into the room, dragging by its grey locks the body of an old man.
A young girl followed, weeping and protesting, with dishevelled hair, and behind her entered a priest with a brazier full of glowing charcoal.
The girl cast herself forward on the old man"s body, but the two scoundrels dragged her from it by force. "The money!" demanded the dark one; and she drew from her bosom a small key and cast it at his feet.
"My promise!" demanded the other, and seized her by the wrist as the priest stepped forward. "Quick! over this coffin--man and wife!"
She wrenched her hand away and thrust him backward. The priest retreated to the brazier and drew out a red-hot iron.
John thought it about time to interfere.
"I beg your pardon," said he, stepping forward; "but I suppose you really _are_ ghosts?"
"We are unhallowed souls," answered the dark man impressively, "who return to blight the living with the spectacle of our awful crimes."
"Meaning me?" asked John.
"Ay, sir; and to destroy you to-night if you contract not, upon your soul, to return with your bride and meet us here a twelvemonth hence."
"H"m!" said John to himself, "they are three to one; and, after all, it"s what I came for. I suppose," he added aloud, "some form of doc.u.ment is usual in these cases?"
The dark man drew out pen and parchment.
"Hold forth your hand," he commanded; and as John held it out, thinking he meant to shake it over the bargain, the fellow drove the pen into his wrist until the blood spurted. "Now sign!"
"Sign!" said the other villain.
"Sign!" said the lady.
"Oh, very well, miss. If you"re in the swindle too, my mind is easier,"
said John, and signed his name with a flourish. "But a bargain is a bargain, and what security have I for your part in it?"
"Our signature!" said the priest terribly, at the same moment pressing his branding-iron into John"s ankle. A smell of burnt cork arose as John stooped and clapped his hand over the scorched stocking. When he looked up again his visitors had vanished; and a moment later the strange light, too, died away.
But the coffin remained for evidence that he had not been dreaming.
John lit a candle and examined it.
"Just the thing for me," he exclaimed, finding it to be a mere sh.e.l.l of pine-boards, loosely nailed together and painted black. "I was beginning to shiver." He knocked the coffin to pieces, crammed them into the fireplace, and very soon had a grand fire blazing, before which he sat and finished his penny-dreadful, and so dropped off into a sound sleep.
The Lord Chamberlain arrived early in the morning, and, finding him stretched there, at first broke into lamentations over the fate of yet another personable young man; but soon changed his tune when John sat up, and, rubbing his eyes, demanded to be told the time.
"But are you really alive? We must drive back and tell his Majesty at once!"
"Stay a moment," said John. "There"s a brother of mine, a lawyer, in the city. He will be arriving at his office about this time, and you must drive me there; for I have a doc.u.ment here of a sort, and must have it stamped, to be on the safe side."
So into the city he was driven beside the Lord Chamberlain, and there had his leg stamped and filed for reference; and, having purchased another, was conveyed to the Palace, where the King received him with open arms.
He was now a favoured guest at Court, and had frequent opportunities of seeing and conversing with the Princess, with whom he soon fell deeply in love. But as the months pa.s.sed and the time drew near for their marriage, he grew silent and thoughtful, for he feared to expose her, even in his company, to the sights he had witnessed in the haunted house.
He thought and thought, until one fine afternoon he snapped his fingers suddenly, and after that went about whistling. A fortnight before the day fixed for the wedding he drove into the city again--but this time to the office of his other brother, the merchant.
"I want," he said, "a loan of a thousand pounds."
"Nothing easier," said his brother. "Here are eight hundred and fifty.
Of the remainder I shall keep fifty as interest for the first year at five per cent., and the odd hundred should purchase a premium of insurance for two thousand pounds, which I will retain as security against accidents."
This seemed not only fair but brotherly. John pocketed his eight hundred and fifty pounds, shook his creditor affectionately by the hand, and hurried westward.
The marriage was celebrated with great pomp; and in the evening the King, who had been shedding tears at intervals throughout the ceremonies, accompanied his daughter to the haunted house. The Princess was pale. John, on the contrary, who sat facing her father in the state-coach, smiled with a cheerfulness which, under the circ.u.mstances, seemed a trifle ill-bred. The wedding-guests followed in twenty-four chariots. Their cards of invitation had said "Two to five-thirty p.m.,"
and it was now eight o"clock; but they could not resist the temptation to see the last of "the poor dear thing," as they agreed to call the bride.
The King sat silent during the drive; he was preparing his farewell speech, which he meant to deliver in the porch. But arriving and perceiving a crowd about it, and also, to his vast astonishment, a red baize carpet on the perron, and a butler bowing in the doorway with two footmen behind him, he coughed down his exordium, and led his daughter into the hall amid showers of rice and confetti. The bridegroom followed; and so did the wedding-guests, since no one opposed them.
The hall and staircase were decorated with palms and pot-plants, flags and emblems of Illyria; and in the great drawing-room--which they entered while John persuaded the King to a seat--they found many rows of morocco-covered chairs, a miniature stage with a drop representing the play-scene in _Hamlet_, a row of footlights, a boudoir-grand piano, and a man seated at the keyboard whom they recognised as a performer in much demand at suburban dances.
The company had scarcely seated itself, before a strange light began to illuminate that end of the room at which the stage stood, and immediately the curtain rose to the overture of M. Offenbach"s _Orphee aux Enfers_, the pianist continuing with great spirit until a round of applause greeted the entrance of the two spectral performers.
Its effect upon them was in the highest degree disconcerting. They set down the coffin, and, after a brief and hurried conference in an undertone, the black-mustachioed ghost advanced to the footlights, singled out John from the audience, and with a terrific scowl demanded to know the reason of this extraordinary gathering.
"Come, come, my dear sir," answered John, "our contract, if you will study it, allows me to invite whom I choose; it merely insists that my bride and I must be present, as you see we are. Pray go on with your part, and a.s.sure yourself it is no use to try the high horse with me."
The dark ghost looked at his partner, who shuffled uneasily.
"I told you," said he, "we should have trouble with this fellow.
I had a presentiment of it when he came to spend the night here without bringing a bull-dog. That frightening of the bull-dog out of his wits has always been our most effective bit of business."