Cecilia de Noël | Page 8

of a tremble, and she shook so I said, 'La! Hann, for goodness' sake do carry that candle straight, or you will grease the carpet shameful;' and come to the pink room I says, 'Open the door.' 'La!' says she, 'what if we was to see the ghost?' 'Hold your silly nonsense this minute,' I says, 'and open the door,' which she do, but stand right back for to let me go first, when, true as ever I am standing here, my lady, I see something white go by like a flash, and struck me cold in the face, and blew the candle out, and then come the fearfullest noise, which thunderclaps is nothing to it. Hann began a-screaming, and we ran as fast as ever we could till we come to the pantry, where Mr. Castleman and the footman was. I thought I should ha' died: died I thought I should. My face was as white as that antimacassar."
"How could you see your face, Mrs. Mallet?" somewhat peevishly objected Lady Atherley.
But Mrs. Mallet with great dignity retorted--
"Which I looked down my nose, and it were like a corpse's."
"Very alarming," said Atherley, "but easily explained. Directly you opened the door there was, of course, a draught from the open window. That draught blew the candle out and knocked something over, probably a screen."
"La' bless you, Sir George, it was more like paving-stones than screens a-falling."
And indeed Mrs. Mallet was so far right, that when, to settle the weighty question once for all, we adjourned in a body to the pink bedroom, we discovered that nothing less than the ceiling, or at least a portion of it, had fallen, and was lying in a heap of broken plaster upon the floor. However, the moral, as Atherley hastened to observe, was the same.
"You see, Mrs. Mallet, this was what made the noise."
Mrs. Mallet made no reply, but it was evident she neither saw nor intended to see anything of the kind; and Atherley wisely substituted bribery for reasoning. But even with this he made little way till accidentally he mentioned the name of Mrs. de No?l, when, as if it had been a name to conjure by, Mrs. Mallet showed signs of softening.
"Yes, think of Mrs. de No?l, Mrs. Mallet; what will she say if you leave her cousin to starve?"
"I should not wish such a thing to happen for a moment," said Mrs. Mallet, as if this had been no figure of speech but the actual alternative, "not to any relation of Mrs. de No?l."
And shortly after the debate ended with a cheerful "Well, Mrs. Mallet, you will give us another trial," from Atherley.
"There," he exclaimed, as we all three returned to the morning-room--"there is as splendid an example of the manufacture of a bogie as you are ever likely to meet with. All the spiritual phenomena are produced much in the same way. Work yourself up into a great state of terror and excitement, in the first place; in the next, procure one companion, if not more, as credulous and excitable as yourself; go at a late hour and with a dim light to a place where you have been told you will see something supernatural; steadfastly and determinedly look out for it, and--you will have your reward. These are precisely the lines on which a spiritual séance is conducted, only instead of plaster, which is not always so obliging as to fall in the nick of time, you have a paid medium who supplies the material for your fancy to work upon. Mrs. Mallet, you see, has discovered all this for herself--that woman is a born genius. Just think what she might have been and seen if she had lived in a sphere where neither cooking nor any other rational occupation interfered with her pursuit of the supernatural. Mrs. Molyneux would be nowhere beside her."
"I suppose she really does intend to stay," said Lady Atherley.
"Of course she does. I always told you my powers of persuasion were irresistible."
"But how annoying about the ceiling," said Lady Atherley. "Over the new carpet, too! What can make the plaster fall in this way?"
"It is the quality of the climate," said Atherley. "It is horribly destructive. If you would read the batch of letters now on my writing-table from tenant-farmers you would see what I mean: barns, roofs, gates, everything is falling to pieces and must immediately be repaired--at the landlord's expense, of course."
"We must send for a plasterer," said Lady Atherley, "and then the doctor. Perhaps you would have time to go round his way, George."
"No, I have no time to go anywhere but to Northside farm. Hunt has been waiting nearly half an hour for me, as it is. Lindy, would you like to come with me?"
"No, thank you, George; I