The Canterville Ghost | Page 6

all the windows
and doors in the old house shook and rattled. In fact, it was just such
weather as he loved. His plan of action was this. He was to make his
way quietly to Washington Otis's room, gibber at him from the foot of
the bed, and stab himself three times in the throat to the sound of low
music. He bore Washington a special grudge, being quite aware that it
was he who was in the habit of removing the famous Canterville
blood-stain by means of Pinkerton's Paragon Detergent. Having
reduced the reckless and foolhardy youth to a condition of abject terror,
he was then to proceed to the room occupied by the United States
Minister and his wife, and there to place a clammy hand on Mrs. Otis's
forehead, while he hissed into her trembling husband's ear the awful
secrets of the charnel-house. With regard to little Virginia, he had not
quite made up his mind. She had never insulted him in any way, and
was pretty and gentle. A few hollow groans from the wardrobe, he
thought, would be more than sufficient, or, if that failed to wake her, he
might grabble at the counterpane with palsy-twitching fingers. As for
the twins, he was quite determined to teach them a lesson. The first
thing to be done was, of course, to sit upon their chests, so as to
produce the stifling sensation of nightmare. Then, as their beds were
quite close to each other, to stand between them in the form of a green,
icy-cold corpse, till they became paralyzed with fear, and finally, to
throw off the winding-sheet, and crawl round the room, with white,
bleached bones and one rolling eyeball, in the character of "Dumb
Daniel, or the Suicide's Skeleton," a rôle in which he had on more than
one occasion produced a great effect, and which he considered quite
equal to his famous part of "Martin the Maniac, or the Masked
Mystery."

At half-past ten he heard the family going to bed. For some time he was
disturbed by wild shrieks of laughter from the twins, who, with the
light-hearted gaiety of schoolboys, were evidently amusing themselves
before they retired to rest, but at a quarter-past eleven all was still, and,
as midnight sounded, he sallied forth. The owl beat against the
window-panes, the raven croaked from the old yew-tree, and the wind
wandered moaning round the house like a lost soul; but the Otis family
slept unconscious of their doom, and high above the rain and storm he
could hear the steady snoring of the Minister for the United States. He
stepped stealthily out of the wainscoting, with an evil smile on his cruel,
wrinkled mouth, and the moon hid her face in a cloud as he stole past
the great oriel window, where his own arms and those of his murdered
wife were blazoned in azure and gold. On and on he glided, like an evil
shadow, the very darkness seeming to loathe him as he passed. Once he
thought he heard something call, and stopped; but it was only the
baying of a dog from the Red Farm, and he went on, muttering strange
sixteenth-century curses, and ever and anon brandishing the rusty
dagger in the midnight air. Finally he reached the corner of the passage
that led to luckless Washington's room. For a moment he paused there,
the wind blowing his long grey locks about his head, and twisting into
grotesque and fantastic folds the nameless horror of the dead man's
shroud. Then the clock struck the quarter, and he felt the time was
come. He chuckled to himself, and turned the corner; but no sooner had
he done so than, with a piteous wail of terror, he fell back, and hid his
blanched face in his long, bony hands. Right in front of him was
standing a horrible spectre, motionless as a carven image, and
monstrous as a madman's dream! Its head was bald and burnished; its
face round, and fat, and white; and hideous laughter seemed to have
writhed its features into an eternal grin. From the eyes streamed rays of
scarlet light, the mouth was a wide well of fire, and a hideous garment,
like to his own, swathed with its silent snows the Titan form. On its
breast was a placard with strange writing in antique characters, some
scroll of shame it seemed, some record of wild sins, some awful
calendar of crime, and, with its right hand, it bore aloft a falchion of
gleaming steel.
[Illustration: "ITS HEAD WAS BALD AND BURNISHED"]

Never having seen a ghost before, he naturally was terribly frightened,
and, after a second hasty glance at the awful phantom, he fled back to
his room, tripping up in his long winding-sheet