FullReads

“I shouldn’t have thought you knew anything about eating, uncle,” said Janet.

“The less a man eats, the more he likes to have it good, Janet. In short,–there can be no harm in saying it now,–Laetitia was so far from being like the name of her baptism,–and most names are so good that they are worth thinking about; no children are named after bad ideas,–Laetitia was so far unlike hers as to be stingy–an abominable fault. But, I repeat, the notion of such a fact was far from me then. And now for my story.

“The first of November was a very lovely day, quite one of the ‘halcyon days’ of ‘St. Martin’s summer.’ I was sitting in a little arbour I had just discovered, with a book in my hand,–not reading, however, but day-dreaming,–when, lifting my eyes from the ground, I was startled to see, through a thin shrub in front of the arbour, what seemed the form of an old lady seated, apparently reading from a book on her knee. The sight instantly recalled the old lady of Russell Square. I started to my feet, and then, clear of the intervening bush, saw only a great stone such as abounded on the moors in the neighbourhood, with a lump of quartz set on the top of it. Some childish taste had put it there for an ornament. Smiling at my own folly, I sat down again, and reopened my book. After reading for a while, I glanced up again, and once more started to my feet, overcome by the fancy that there verily sat the old lady reading. You will say it indicated an excited condition of the brain. Possibly; but I was, as far as I can recall, quite collected and reasonable. I was almost vexed this second time, and sat down once more to my book. Still, every time I looked up, I was startled afresh. I doubt, however, if the trifle is worth mentioning, or has any significance even in relation to what followed.

“After dinner I strolled out by myself, leaving father and son over their claret. I did not drink wine; and from the lawn I could see the windows of the library, whither Laetitia commonly retired from the dinner-table. It was a very lovely soft night. There was no moon, but the stars looked wider awake than usual. Dew was falling, but the grass was not yet wet, and I wandered about on it for half an hour. The stillness was somehow strange. It had a wonderful feeling in it as if something were expected–as if the quietness were the mould in which some event or other was about to be cast.

“Even then I was a reader of certain sorts of recondite lore. Suddenly I remembered that this was the eve of All Souls. This was the night on which the dead came out of their graves to visit their old homes. ‘Poor dead!’ I thought with myself; ‘have you any place to call a home now? If you have, surely you will not wander back here, where all that you called home has either vanished or given itself to others, to be their home now and yours no more! What an awful doom the old fancy has allotted you! To dwell in your graves all the year, and creep out, this one night, to enter at the midnight door, left open for welcome! A poor welcome truly!–just an open door, a clean-swept floor, and a fire to warm your rain-sodden limbs! The household asleep, and the house-place swarming with the ghosts of ancient times,–the miser, the spendthrift, the profligate, the coquette,–for the good ghosts sleep, and are troubled with no waking like yours! Not one man, sleepless like yourselves, to question you, and be answered after the fashion of the old nursery rhyme–

“‘What makes your eyes so holed?’
‘I’ve lain so long among the mould.’
‘What makes your feet so broad?’
‘I’ve walked more than ever I rode!’