Lilith | Page 5

was manuscript upon parchment.
Happening, as I sat reading, to raise my eyes from the page, my glance fell upon this door,
and at once I saw that the book described, if book it may be called, was gone. Angrier
than any worth I knew in it justified, I rang the bell, and the butler appeared. When I
asked him if he knew what had befallen it, he turned pale, and assured me he did not. I
could less easily doubt his word than my own eyes, for he had been all his life in the
family, and a more faithful servant never lived. He left on me the impression,
nevertheless, that he could have said something more.
In the afternoon I was again reading in the library, and coming to a point which
demanded reflection, I lowered the book and let my eyes go wandering. The same
moment I saw the back of a slender old man, in a long, dark coat, shiny as from much
wear, in the act of disappearing through the masked door into the closet beyond. I darted
across the room, found the door shut, pulled it open, looked into the closet, which had no
other issue, and, seeing nobody, concluded, not without uneasiness, that I had had a
recurrence of my former illusion, and sat down again to my reading.
Naturally, however, I could not help feeling a little nervous, and presently glancing up to
assure myself that I was indeed alone, started again to my feet, and ran to the masked
door--for there was the mutilated volume in its place! I laid hold of it and pulled: it was
firmly fixed as usual!
I was now utterly bewildered. I rang the bell; the butler came; I told him all I had seen,
and he told me all he knew.
He had hoped, he said, that the old gentleman was going to be forgotten; it was well no
one but myself had seen him. He had heard a good deal about him when first he served in
the house, but by degrees he had ceased to be mentioned, and he had been very careful
not to allude to him.
"The place was haunted by an old gentleman, was it?" I said.
He answered that at one time everybody believed it, but the fact that I had never heard of
it seemed to imply that the thing had come to an end and was forgotten.
I questioned him as to what he had seen of the old gentleman.
He had never seen him, he said, although he had been in the house from the day my

father was eight years old. My grandfather would never hear a word on the matter,
declaring that whoever alluded to it should be dismissed without a moment's warning: it
was nothing but a pretext of the maids, he said, for running into the arms of the men! but
old Sir Ralph believed in nothing he could not see or lay hold of. Not one of the maids
ever said she had seen the apparition, but a footman had left the place because of it.
An ancient woman in the village had told him a legend concerning a Mr. Raven, long
time librarian to "that Sir Upward whose portrait hangs there among the books." Sir
Upward was a great reader, she said--not of such books only as were wholesome for men
to read, but of strange, forbidden, and evil books; and in so doing, Mr. Raven, who was
probably the devil himself, encouraged him. Suddenly they both disappeared, and Sir
Upward was never after seen or heard of, but Mr. Raven continued to show himself at
uncertain intervals in the library. There were some who believed he was not dead; but
both he and the old woman held it easier to believe that a dead man might revisit the
world he had left, than that one who went on living for hundreds of years should be a
man at all.
He had never heard that Mr. Raven meddled with anything in the house, but he might
perhaps consider himself privileged in regard to the books. How the old woman had
learned so much about him he could not tell; but the description she gave of him
corresponded exactly with the figure I had just seen.
"I hope it was but a friendly call on the part of the old gentleman!" he concluded, with a
troubled smile.
I told him I had no objection to any number of visits from Mr. Raven, but it would be
well he should keep to his resolution of saying nothing about him to the servants. Then I
asked him if he had ever seen the mutilated volume out of its place; he answered that he
never