Cecilia de Noël | Page 8

minute,' she says. 'Oh dear,' I says, 'and them new chintzes
will be entirely ruined with the damp. Why, what a good-for-nothing
girl you are!' I says, 'and what you thinks on half your time is more
than I can tell.' 'Whatever shall I do?' she says, 'for go along there at
this time of night all by myself I dare not,' says she. 'Well,' I says,
'rather than you should go alone, I'll go along with you,' I says, 'for stay
here by myself I would not,' I says, 'not if any one was to pay me
hundreds.' So we went down our stairs and along our passage to the
door which you go into the gallery, Hann a-clutching hold of me and

starting, which when we come into the gallery I was all 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 Noël, when, as if it had
been a name to conjure by, Mrs. Mallet showed signs of softening.
"Yes, think of Mrs. de Noël, 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 Noël."
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