Nightmare Abbey | Page 3

bestows on his ticket the better; for, if he has
incurred considerable pains and expense to obtain a lucky number, and
his lucky number proves a blank, he experiences not a simple, but a
complicated disappointment; the loss of labour and money being
superadded to the disappointment of drawing a blank, which,
constituting simply and entirely the grievance of him who has chosen
his ticket at random, is, from its simplicity, the more endurable.' This
very excellent reasoning was thrown away upon Scythrop, who retired
to his tower as dismal and disconsolate as before.

The tower which Scythrop inhabited stood at the south-eastern angle of
the Abbey; and, on the southern side, the foot of the tower opened on a
terrace, which was called the garden, though nothing grew on it but ivy,
and a few amphibious weeds. The south-western tower, which was
ruinous and full of owls, might, with equal propriety, have been called
the aviary. This terrace or garden, or terrace-garden, or garden-terrace
(the reader may name it _ad libitum_), took in an oblique view of the
open sea, and fronted a long tract of level sea-coast, and a fine
monotony of fens and windmills.
The reader will judge, from what we have said, that this building was a
sort of castellated abbey; and it will, probably, occur to him to inquire
if it had been one of the strong-holds of the ancient church militant.
Whether this was the case, or how far it had been indebted to the taste
of Mr Glowry's ancestors for any transmutations from its original state,
are, unfortunately, circumstances not within the pale of our knowledge.
The north-western tower contained the apartments of Mr Glowry. The
moat at its base, and the fens beyond, comprised the whole of his
prospect. This moat surrounded the Abbey, and was in immediate
contact with the walls on every side but the south.
The north-eastern tower was appropriated to the domestics, whom Mr
Glowry always chose by one of two criterions,--a long face, or a dismal
name. His butler was Raven; his steward was Crow; his valet was
Skellet. Mr Glowry maintained that the valet was of French extraction,
and that his name was Squelette. His grooms were Mattocks and
Graves. On one occasion, being in want of a footman, he received a
letter from a person signing himself Diggory Deathshead, and lost no
time in securing this acquisition; but on Diggory's arrival, Mr Glowry
was horror-struck by the sight of a round ruddy face, and a pair of
laughing eyes. Deathshead was always grinning,--not a ghastly smile,
but the grin of a comic mask; and disturbed the echoes of the hall with
so much unhallowed laughter, that Mr Glowry gave him his discharge.
Diggory, however, had staid long enough to make conquests of all the
old gentleman's maids, and left him a flourishing colony of young
Deathsheads to join chorus with the owls, that had before been the

exclusive choristers of Nightmare Abbey.
The main body of the building was divided into rooms of state,
spacious apartments for feasting, and numerous bed-rooms for visitors,
who, however, were few and far between.
Family interests compelled Mr Glowry to receive occasional visits
from Mr and Mrs Hilary, who paid them from the same motive; and, as
the lively gentleman on these occasions found few conductors for his
exuberant gaiety, he became like a double-charged electric jar, which
often exploded in some burst of outrageous merriment to the signal
discomposure of Mr Glowry's nerves.
Another occasional visitor, much more to Mr Glowry's taste, was Mr
Flosky,[1] a very lachrymose and morbid gentleman, of some note in
the literary world, but in his own estimation of much more merit than
name. The part of his character which recommended him to Mr Glowry,
was his very fine sense of the grim and the tearful. No one could relate
a dismal story with so many minutiæ of supererogatory wretchedness.
No one could call up a _raw-head and bloody-bones_ with so many
adjuncts and circumstances of ghastliness. Mystery was his mental
element. He lived in the midst of that visionary world in which nothing
is but what is not. He dreamed with his eyes open, and saw ghosts
dancing round him at noontide. He had been in his youth an enthusiast
for liberty, and had hailed the dawn of the French Revolution as the
promise of a day that was to banish war and slavery, and every form of
vice and misery, from the face of the earth. Because all this was not
done, he deduced that nothing was done; and from this deduction,
according to his system of logic, he drew a conclusion that worse than
nothing was done; that the overthrow of the feudal fortresses of tyranny
and superstition was the greatest calamity