Some Christmas Stories | Page 8

still
gay. If I no more come home at Christmas-time, there will be boys and
girls (thank Heaven!) while the World lasts; and they do! Yonder they
dance and play upon the branches of my Tree, God bless them, merrily,
and my heart dances and plays too!
And I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all
come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday--the longer, the
better--from the great boarding-school, where we are for ever working
at our arithmetical slates, to take, and give a rest. As to going a visiting,
where can we not go, if we will; where have we not been, when we
would; starting our fancy from our Christmas Tree!
Away into the winter prospect. There are many such upon the tree! On,
by low-lying, misty grounds, through fens and fogs, up long hills,
winding dark as caverns between thick plantations, almost shutting out
the sparkling stars; so, out on broad heights, until we stop at last, with
sudden silence, at an avenue. The gate-bell has a deep, half-awful
sound in the frosty air; the gate swings open on its hinges; and, as we
drive up to a great house, the glancing lights grow larger in the
windows, and the opposing rows of trees seem to fall solemnly back on
either side, to give us place. At intervals, all day, a frightened hare has
shot across this whitened turf; or the distant clatter of a herd of deer
trampling the hard frost, has, for the minute, crushed the silence too.
Their watchful eyes beneath the fern may be shining now, if we could
see them, like the icy dewdrops on the leaves; but they are still, and all
is still. And so, the lights growing larger, and the trees falling back
before us, and closing up again behind us, as if to forbid retreat, we
come to the house.
There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other good

comfortable things all the time, for we are telling Winter Stories--
Ghost Stories, or more shame for us--round the Christmas fire; and we
have never stirred, except to draw a little nearer to it. But, no matter for
that. We came to the house, and it is an old house, full of great
chimneys where wood is burnt on ancient dogs upon the hearth, and
grim portraits (some of them with grim legends, too) lower distrustfully
from the oaken panels of the walls. We are a middle-aged nobleman,
and we make a generous supper with our host and hostess and their
guests--it being Christmas-time, and the old house full of
company--and then we go to bed. Our room is a very old room. It is
hung with tapestry. We don't like the portrait of a cavalier in green,
over the fireplace. There are great black beams in the ceiling, and there
is a great black bedstead, supported at the foot by two great black
figures, who seem to have come off a couple of tombs in the old
baronial church in the park, for our particular accommodation. But, we
are not a superstitious nobleman, and we don't mind. Well! we dismiss
our servant, lock the door, and sit before the fire in our dressing-gown,
musing about a great many things. At length we go to bed. Well! we
can't sleep. We toss and tumble, and can't sleep. The embers on the
hearth burn fitfully and make the room look ghostly. We can't help
peeping out over the counterpane, at the two black figures and the
cavalier--that wicked- looking cavalier--in green. In the flickering light
they seem to advance and retire: which, though we are not by any
means a superstitious nobleman, is not agreeable. Well! we get
nervous-- more and more nervous. We say "This is very foolish, but we
can't stand this; we'll pretend to be ill, and knock up somebody." Well!
we are just going to do it, when the locked door opens, and there comes
in a young woman, deadly pale, and with long fair hair, who glides to
the fire, and sits down in the chair we have left there, wringing her
hands. Then, we notice that her clothes are wet. Our tongue cleaves to
the roof of our mouth, and we can't speak; but, we observe her
accurately. Her clothes are wet; her long hair is dabbled with moist
mud; she is dressed in the fashion of two hundred years ago; and she
has at her girdle a bunch of rusty keys. Well! there she sits, and we
can't even faint, we are in such a state about it. Presently she gets up,
and tries all the locks in the room with the rusty keys, which won't fit
one of them; then,