MERRY SPOOKY CHRISTMAS (25 Weird & Supernatural Tales in One Edition). Томас ХардиЧитать онлайн книгу.
the upper servants. They were comfortably furnished, and he and his large family appeared to be very well lodged. Besides the wife, there were three sons, with their wives and children, and two nieces; and in a part of the offices, where I saw a light, I was told there were labourers and women servants, for it was a valuable estate, with a fine forest, and the sons acted as gardes chasse.
"'Is there much game in the forest?' I asked.
"'A great deal of all sorts,' they answered.
"'Then I suppose during the season the family live here?'
"'Never,' they replied. 'None of the family ever reside here.'
"'Indeed!' I said; how is that? It seems a very fine place.'
"'Superb,' answered the wife of the custodian; 'but the castle is haunted.'
"She said this with a simple gravity that made me laugh; upon which they all stared at me with the most edifying amazement.
"'I beg your pardon,' I said; 'but you know, perhaps, in great cities, such as I usually inhabit, there are no ghosts.'
"'Indeed!' said they. 'No ghosts!'
"'At least,' I said, 'I never heard of any; and we don't believe in such things.'
"They looked at each other with surprise, but said nothing; not appearing to have any desire to convince me. 'But do you mean to say,' said I, 'that that is the reason the family don't live here, and that the castle is abandoned on that account?'
"'Yes,' they replied, 'that is the reason nobody has resided here for many years.'
"'But how can you live here then?'
"'We are never troubled in this part of the building,' said she. 'We hear noises, but we are used to that.'
"'Well, if there is a ghost, I hope I shall see it,' said I.
"'God forbid!' said the woman, crossing herself. 'But we shall guard against that; your seigneurie will sleep not far from this, where you will be quite safe.'
"'Oh! but,' said I, 'I am quite serious, if there is a ghost, I should particularly like to see him, and I should be much obliged to you to put me in the apartments he most frequents.'
"They opposed this proposition earnestly, and begged me not to think of if; besides, they said if any thing was to happen to my lord, how should they answer for it; but as I insisted, the women went to call the members of the family who were lighting fires and preparing beds in some rooms on the same floor as they occupied themselves. When they came they were as earnest against the indulgence of my wishes as the women had been. Still I insisted.
"'Are you afraid,' I said, 'to go yourselves in the haunted chambers?'
"'No,' they answered. 'We are the custodians of the castle and have to keep the rooms clean and well aired lest the furniture be spoiled—my lord talks always of removing it, but it has never been removed yet—but we would not sleep up there for all the world.'
"'Then it is the upper floors that are haunted?'
"'Yes, especially the long room, no one could pass a night there; the last that did is in a lunatic asylum now at Warsaw,' said the custodian.
"'What happened to him?'
"'I don't know,' said the man; 'he was never able to tell.'
"'Who was he?' I asked.
"'He was a lawyer. My lord did business with him; and one day he was speaking of this place, and saying that it was a pity he was not at liberty to pull it down and sell the materials; but he cannot, because it is family property and goes with the title; and the lawyer said he wished it was his, and that no ghost should keep him out of it. My lord said that it was easy for any one to say that who knew nothing about it, and that he must suppose the family had not abandoned such a fine place without good reasons. But the lawyer said it was some trick, and that it was coiners, or robbers, who had got a footing in the castle, and contrived to frighten people away that they might keep it to themselves; so my lord said if he could prove that he should be very much obliged to him, and more than that, he would give him a great sum—I don't know how much. So the lawyer said, he would; and my lord wrote to me that he was coming to inspect the property, and I was to let him do any thing he liked.
"'Well, he came, and with him his son, a fine young man and a soldier. They asked me all sorts of questions, and went over the castle and examined every part of it. From what they said, I could see that they thought the ghost was all nonsense, and that I and my family were in collusion with the robbers or coiners. However, I did not care for that, my lord knew that the castle had been haunted before I was born.
"'I had prepared rooms on this floor for them—the same I am preparing for your lordship, and they slept there, keeping the keys of the upper rooms to themselves, so I did not interfere with them. But one morning, very early, we were awakened by some one knocking at our bedroom door, and when we opened it, we saw Mr. Thaddeus—that was the lawyer's son—standing there half-drest and as pale as a ghost; and he said his father was very ill and he begged us to go to him; to our surprise he led us up stairs to the haunted chamber, and there we found the poor gentleman speechless, and we thought they had gone up there early and that he had had a stroke. But it was not so; Mr. Thaddeus said, that after we were all in bed, they had gone up there to pass the night. I know they thought that there was no ghost but us, and that's why they would not let us know their intention. They laid down upon some sofas, wrapt up in their fur cloaks, and resolved to keep awake, and they did so for some time, but at last the young man was overcome by drowsiness, he struggled against it, but could not conquer it, and the last thing he recollects was his father shaking him and saying 'Thaddeus, Thaddeus, for God's sake keep awake!' But he could not, and he knew no more till he woke and saw that day was breaking, and found his father sitting in a corner of the room speechless, and looking like a corpse; and there he was when we went up. The young man thought he'd been taken ill or had a stroke, as we supposed at first; but when we found they had passed the night in the haunted chambers, we had no doubt what had happened—he had seen some terrible sight and so lost his senses.'
"'He lost his senses, I should say, from terror when his son fell asleep,' said I, 'and he felt himself alone. He could have been a man of no nerve. At all events, what you tell me raises my curiosity. Will you take me up stairs and shew me those rooms?'
"'Willingly,' said the man, and fetching a bunch of keys and a light, and calling one of his sons to follow him with another, he led the way up the great staircase to a suite of apartments on the first floor. The rooms were lofty and large, and the man said the furniture was very handsome, but old. Being all covered with canvas cases, I could not judge of it. 'Which is the long room?' I said.
"Upon which he led me into a long narrow room that might rather have been called a gallery. There were sofas along each side, something like a dais at the upper end; and several large pictures hanging on the walls.
"I had with me a bull dog, of a very fine breed, that had been given me in England by Lord F. She had followed me up stairs—indeed, she followed me every where—and I watched her narrowly as she went smelling about, but there were no indications of her perceiving any thing extraordinary. Beyond this gallery there was only a small octagon room, with a door that led out upon another staircase. When I had examined it all thoroughly, I returned to the long room and told the man, as that was the place especially frequented by the ghost, I should feel much obliged if he would allow me to pass the night there. I could take upon myself to say that Count X., would have no objection.
"'It is not that,' replied the man; 'but the danger to your lordship,' and he conjured me not to insist on such a perilous experiment.
"When he found I was resolved, he gave way, but on condition that I signed a paper, stating that in spite of his representations I had determined to sleep in the long room.
"I confess, the more anxious these people seemed to prevent my sleeping there, the more curious I was; not that I believed in the ghost the least in the world. I thought that the lawyer had been right in his conjecture, but that he hadn't nerve enough to investigate whatever he saw or heard; and that they