Authors: Sheridan Le Fanu
"Barton, Barton,
Barton
!" cried the General, with a strange mixture of awe and vehemence. He took the candle, and held it so that it shone full upon the face. The features were fixed, stern, and white; the jaw was fallen; and the sightless eyes, still open, gazed vacantly forward toward the front of the bed. "God Almighty! he's dead," muttered the General, as he looked upon this fearful spectacle. They both continued to gaze upon it in silence for a minute or more. "And cold, too," whispered Montague, withdrawing his hand from that of the dead man.
"And see, see — may I never have life, sir," added the man, after another pause, with a shudder, "but there was something else on the bed with him. Look there — look there — see that, sir."
As the man thus spoke he pointed to a deep indenture, as if caused by a heavy pressure, near the foot of the bed.
Montague was silent.
"Come, sir, come away, for God's sake," whispered the man, drawing close up to him, and holding fast by his arm, while he glanced fearfully round; "what good can be done here now — come away, for God's sake!"
At this moment they heard the steps of more than one approaching, and Montague, hastily desiring the servant to arrest their progress, endeavoured to loose the rigid gripe with which the fingers of the dead man were clutched in the bed-clothes, and drew, as well as he was able, the awful figure into a reclining posture; then closing the curtains carefully upon it, he hastened himself to meet those persons that were approaching.
It is needless to follow the personages so slightly connected with this narrative into the events of their after-life; it is enough to say, that no clue to the solution of these mysterious occurrences was ever after discovered; and so long an interval having now passed since the event which I have just described concluded this strange history, it is scarcely to be expected that time can throw any new lights upon its dark and inexplicable outline. Until the secrets of the earth shall be no longer hidden, therefore, these transactions must remain shrouded in their original obscurity.
The only occurrence in Captain Barton's former life to which reference was ever made, as having any possible connexion with the sufferings with which his existence closed, and which he himself seemed to regard as working out a retribution for some grievous sin of his past life, was a circumstance which not for several years after his death was brought to light. The nature of this disclosure was painful to his relatives, and discreditable to his memory.
It appeared that some six years before Captain Barton's final return to Dublin, he had formed, in the town of Plymouth, a guilty attachment, the object of which was the daughter of one of the ship's crew under his command. The father had visited the frailty of his unhappy child with extreme harshness, and even brutality, and it was said that she had died heart-broken. Presuming upon Barton's implication in her guilt, this man had conducted himself toward him with marked insolence; and Barton retaliated this, and what he resented with still more exasperated bitterness — his treatment of the unfortunate girl — by a systematic exercise of those terrible and arbitrary severities which the regulations of the navy placed at the command of those who are responsible for its discipline. The man had at length made his escape, while the vessel was in port at Naples, but died, as it was said, in an hospital in that town, of the wounds inflicted in one of his recent and sanguinary punishments.
Whether these circumstances in reality bear, or not, upon the occurrences of Barton's after-life, it is, of course, impossible to say. It seems, however, more than probable that they were at least, in his own mind, closely associated with them. But however the truth may be as to the origin and motives of this mysterious persecution, there can be no doubt that, with respect to the agencies by which it was accomplished, absolute and impenetrable mystery is like to prevail until the day of doom.
The preceding narrative is given in the ipsissima verba of the good old clergyman, under whose hand it was delivered to Doctor Hesselius. Notwithstanding the occasional stiffness and redundancy of his sentences, I thought it better to reserve to myself the power of assuring the reader, that in handing to the printer the MS. of a statement so marvellous, the Editor has not altered one letter of the original text —
(Ed. Papers of Dr. Hesselius)
.
On this case Doctor Hesselius has inscribed nothing more than the words,
"Harman's Report," and a simple reference to his own extraordinary Essay
on "The Interior Sense, and the Conditions of the Opening thereof."
The reference is to Vol. I., Section 317, Note Z^{a}. The note to which
reference is thus made, simply says: "There are two accounts of the
remarkable case of the Honourable Mr. Justice Harbottle, one furnished
to me by Mrs. Trimmer, of Tunbridge Wells (June, 1805); the other at a
much later date, by Anthony Harman, Esq. I much prefer the former; in
the first place, because it is minute and detailed, and written, it
seems to me, with more caution and knowledge; and in the next, because
the letters from Dr. Hedstone, which are embodied in it, furnish matter
of the highest value to a right apprehension of the nature of the case.
It was one of the best declared cases of an opening of the interior
sense, which I have met with. It was affected too, by the phenomenon,
which occurs so frequently as to indicate a law of these eccentric
conditions; that is to say, it exhibited what I may term, the contagious
character of this sort of intrusion of the spirit-world upon the proper
domain of matter. So soon as the spirit-action has established itself in
the case of one patient, its developed energy begins to radiate, more or
less effectually, upon others. The interior vision of the child was
opened; as was, also, that of its mother, Mrs. Pyneweck; and both the
interior vision and hearing of the scullery-maid, were opened on the
same occasion. After-appearances are the result of the law explained in
Vol. II., Section 17 to 49. The common centre of association,
simultaneously recalled, unites, or
re
unites, as the case may be, for a
period measured, as we see, in Section 37. The
maximum
will extend to
days, the
minimum
is little more than a second. We see the operation
of this principle perfectly displayed, in certain cases of lunacy, of
epilepsy, of catalepsy, and of mania, of a peculiar and painful
character, though unattended by incapacity of business."
The memorandum of the case of Judge Harbottle, which was written by Mrs.
Trimmer, of Tunbridge Wells, which Doctor Hesselius thought the better
of the two, I have been unable to discover among his papers. I found in
his escritoire a note to the effect that he had lent the Report of Judge
Harbottle's case, written by Mrs. Trimmer, to Dr. F. Heyne. To that
learned and able gentleman accordingly I wrote, and received from him,
in his reply, which was full of alarms and regrets, on account of the
uncertain safety of that "valuable MS.," a line written long since by
Dr. Hesselius, which completely exonerated him, inasmuch as it
acknowledged the safe return of the papers. The narrative of Mr. Harman,
is therefore, the only one available for this collection. The late Dr.
Hesselius, in another passage of the note that I have cited, says, "As
to the facts (non-medical) of the case, the narrative of Mr. Harman
exactly tallies with that furnished by Mrs. Trimmer." The strictly
scientific view of the case would scarcely interest the popular reader;
and, possibly, for the purposes of this selection, I should, even had I
both papers to choose between, have preferred that of Mr. Harman, which
is given, in full, in the following pages.
Thirty years ago, an elderly man, to whom I paid quarterly a small
annuity charged on some property of mine, came on the quarter-day to
receive it. He was a dry, sad, quiet man, who had known better days, and
had always maintained an unexceptionable character. No better authority
could be imagined for a ghost story.
He told me one, though with a manifest reluctance; he was drawn into the
narration by his choosing to explain what I should not have remarked,
that he had called two days earlier than that week after the strict day
of payment, which he had usually allowed to elapse. His reason was a
sudden determination to change his lodgings, and the consequent
necessity of paying his rent a little before it was due.
He lodged in a dark street in Westminster, in a spacious old house, very
warm, being wainscoted from top to bottom, and furnished with no undue
abundance of windows, and those fitted with thick sashes and small
panes.
This house was, as the bills upon the windows testified, offered to be
sold or let. But no one seemed to care to look at it.
A thin matron, in rusty black silk, very taciturn, with large, steady,
alarmed eyes, that seemed to look in your face, to read what you might
have seen in the dark rooms and passages through which you had passed,
was in charge of it, with a solitary "maid-of-all-work" under her
command. My poor friend had taken lodgings in this house, on account of
their extraordinary cheapness. He had occupied them for nearly a year
without the slightest disturbance, and was the only tenant, under rent,
in the house. He had two rooms; a sitting-room and a bed-room with a
closet opening from it, in which he kept his books and papers locked up.
He had gone to his bed, having also locked the outer door. Unable to
sleep, he had lighted a candle, and after having read for a time, had
laid the book beside him. He heard the old clock at the stairhead strike
one; and very shortly after, to his alarm, he saw the closet-door, which
he thought he had locked, open stealthily, and a slight dark man,
particularly sinister, and somewhere about fifty, dressed in mourning of
a very antique fashion, such a suit as we see in Hogarth, entered the
room on tip-toe. He was followed by an elder man, stout, and blotched
with scurvy, and whose features, fixed as a corpse's, were stamped with
dreadful force with a character of sensuality and villany.
This old man wore a flowered silk dressing-gown and ruffles, and he
remarked a gold ring on his finger, and on his head a cap of velvet,
such as, in the days of perukes, gentlemen wore in undress.
This direful old man carried in his ringed and ruffled hand a coil of
rope; and these two figures crossed the floor diagonally, passing the
foot of his bed, from the closet door at the farther end of the room, at
the left, near the window, to the door opening upon the lobby, close to
the bed's head, at his right.
He did not attempt to describe his sensations as these figures passed so
near him. He merely said, that so far from sleeping in that room again,
no consideration the world could offer would induce him so much as to
enter it again alone, even in the daylight. He found both doors, that of
the closet, and that of the room opening upon the lobby, in the morning
fast locked as he had left them before going to bed.
In answer to a question of mine, he said that neither appeared
the least conscious of his presence. They did not seem to glide, but
walked as living men do, but without any sound, and he felt a vibration
on the floor as they crossed it. He so obviously suffered from speaking
about the apparitions, that I asked him no more questions.
There were in his description, however, certain coincidences so very
singular, as to induce me, by that very post, to write to a friend much
my senior, then living in a remote part of England, for the information
which I knew he could give me. He had himself more than once pointed out
that old house to my attention, and told me, though very briefly, the
strange story which I now asked him to give me in greater detail.
His answer satisfied me; and the following pages convey its substance.
Your letter (he wrote) tells me you desire some particulars about the
closing years of the life of Mr. Justice Harbottle, one of the judges of
the Court of Common Pleas. You refer, of course, to the extraordinary
occurrences that made that period of his life long after a theme for
"winter tales" and metaphysical speculation. I happen to know perhaps
more than any other man living of those mysterious particulars.
The old family mansion, when I revisited London, more than thirty years
ago, I examined for the last time. During the years that have passed
since then, I hear that improvement, with its preliminary demolitions,
has been doing wonders for the quarter of Westminster in which it stood.
If I were quite certain that the house had been taken down, I should
have no difficulty about naming the street in which it stood. As what I
have to tell, however, is not likely to improve its letting value, and
as I should not care to get into trouble, I prefer being silent on that
particular point.
How old the house was, I can't tell. People said it was built by Roger
Harbottle, a Turkey merchant, in the reign of King James I. I am not a
good opinion upon such questions; but having been in it, though in its
forlorn and deserted state, I can tell you in a general way what it was
like. It was built of dark-red brick, and the door and windows were
faced with stone that had turned yellow by time. It receded some feet
from the line of the other houses in the street; and it had a florid and
fanciful rail of iron about the broad steps that invited your ascent to
the hall-door, in which were fixed, under a file of lamps among scrolls
and twisted leaves, two immense "extinguishers," like the conical caps
of fairies, into which, in old times, the footmen used to thrust their
flambeaux when their chairs or coaches had set down their great people,
in the hall or at the steps, as the case might be. That hall is panelled
up to the ceiling, and has a large fire-place. Two or three stately old
rooms open from it at each side. The windows of these are tall, with
many small panes. Passing through the arch at the back of the hall, you
come upon the wide and heavy well-staircase. There is a back staircase
also. The mansion is large, and has not as much light, by any means, in
proportion to its extent, as modern houses enjoy. When I saw it, it had
long been untenanted, and had the gloomy reputation beside of a haunted
house. Cobwebs floated from the ceilings or spanned the corners of the
cornices, and dust lay thick over everything. The windows were stained
with the dust and rain of fifty years, and darkness had thus grown
darker.