R. Lafferty - The 7th Ghost Story Megapack

“Certainly.—Oh! thankee;—to be sure!” stammered Charles, rousing himself from a reverie, which had degenerated into an absolute snooze.

“Good-night, my boy! Bolt the door behind me; and defy the Pope, the Devil and the Pretender!—”

Seaforth followed his friend’s advice, and the next morning came down to breakfast dressed in the habiliments of the preceding day. The charm was broken, the demon defeated; the light greys with the red stripe down the seams were yet in rerum naturâ , and adorned the person of their lawful proprietor.

Tom felicitated himself and his partner of the watch on the result of their vigilance; but there is a rustic adage, which warns us against self-gratulation before we are quite “out of the wood.”—Seaforth was yet within its verge.

A rap at Tom Ingoldsby’s door the following morning startled him as he was shaving—he cut his chin.

“Come in, and be damned to you!” said the martyr, pressing his thumb on the scarified epidermis. —The door opened, and exhibited Mr Barney Maguire.

“Well, Barney, what is it?” quoth the sufferer, adopting the vernacular of his visitant.

“The master, sir—”

“Well, what does he want?”

“The loanst of a breeches, plase your honour.”

“Why, you don’t mean to tell me— By Heaven, this is too good!” shouted Tom, bursting into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. “Why, Barney, you don’t mean to say the ghost has got them again!”

Mr Maguire did not respond to the young squire’s risibility; the cast of his countenance was decidedly serious.

“Faith, then, it’s gone they are, sure enough! Hasn’t meself been looking over the bed, and under the bed, and in the bed, for the matter of that, and divil a ha’p’orth of breeches is there to the fore at all—I’m bothered entirely!”

“Hark’ee! Mr Barney,” said Tom, incautiously removing his thumb, and letting a crimson stream “incarnadine the multitudinous” lather that plastered his throat,—“this may be all very well with your master, but you don’t humbug me , sir—tell me instantly what have you done with the clothes?”

This abrupt transition from “lively to severe” certainly took Maguire by surprise, and he seemed for an instant as much disconcerted as it is possible to disconcert an Irish gentleman’s gentleman.

“Me? is it meself, then, that’s the ghost to your honour’s thinking?” said he, after a moment’s pause, and with a slight shade of indignation in his tones: “is it I would stale the master’s things?—and what would I do with them?”

“That you best know—what your purpose is I can’t guess, for I don’t think you mean to ‘stale’ them, as you call it; but that you are concerned in their disappearance, I am satisfied. Confound this blood!—give me a towel, Barney.”

Maguire acquitted himself of the commission. “As I’ve a sowl, your honour,” said he solemnly, “little it is meself knows of the matter: and after what I seen—”

“What you’ve seen! Why, what have you seen?—Barney, I don’t want to enquire into your flirtations; but don’t suppose you can palm off your saucer eyes and gig-lamps upon me!”

“Then, as sure as your honour’s standing there I saw him: and why wouldn’t I, when Miss Pauline was to the fore as well as meself, and—”

“Get along with your nonsense, leave the room, sir!”

“But the master?” said Barney imploringly; “and without a breeches?—sure he’ll be catching cowld!—”

“Take that, rascal!” replied Ingoldsby, throwing a pair of pantaloons at, rather than to, him: “but don’t suppose, sir, you shall carry on your tricks here with impunity; recollect there is such a thing as a tread-mill, and that my father is a county magistrate.”

Barney’s eye flashed fire,—he stood erect, and was about to speak; but, mastering himself, not without an effort, he took up the garment, and left the room as perpendicular as a Quaker.

“Ingoldsby;” said Charles Seaforth, after breakfast, “this is now past a joke; today is the last of my stay; for, notwithstanding the ties which detain me, common decency obliges me to visit home after so long an absence. I shall come to an immediate explanation with your father on the subject nearest my heart, and depart while I have a change of dress left. On his answer will my return depend! In the meantime tell me candidly,—I ask it in all seriousness and as a friend,—am I not a dupe to your well-known propensity to hoaxing? have you not a hand in—”

“No, by heaven I Seaforth; I see what you mean: on my honour, I am as much mystified as yourself: and if your servant—”

“Not he—if there be a trick, he at least is not privy to it.”

“If there be a trick? Why, Charles, do you think—”

“I know not what to think, Tom. As surely as you are a living man, so surely did that spectral anatomy visit my room again last night, grin in my face, and walk away with my trousers, nor was I able to spring from my bed, or break the chain which seemed to bind me to my pillow.”

“Seaforth!” said Ingoldsby, after a short pause, “I will— But hush! here are the girls and my father.— I will carry off the females, and leave you a clear field with the governor: carry your point with him, and we will talk about your breeches afterwards.”

Tom’s diversion was successful; he carried off the ladies en masse to look at a remarkable specimen of the class Dodecandria Monogynia ,—which they could not find—while Seaforth marched boldly up to the encounter, and carried “the governor’s” outworks by a coup de main . I shall not stop to describe the progress of the attack: suffice it that it was as successful as could have been wished, and that Seaforth was referred back again to the lady. The happy lover was off at a tangent; the botanical party was soon overtaken; and the arm of Caroline, whom a vain endeavour to spell out the Linnæan name of a daffy-down-dilly had detained a little in the rear of the others, was soon firmly locked in his own.

Seaforth was in the seventh heaven; he retired to his room that night as happy as if no such thing as a goblin had ever been heard of, and personal chattels were as well fenced in by law as real property. Not so Tom Ingoldsby: the mystery,—for mystery there evidently was,—had not only piqued his curiosity, but ruffled his temper. The watch of the previous night had been unsuccessful, probably because it was undisguised. Tonight he would “ensconce himself,”—not indeed “behind the arras,”—for the little that remained was, as we have seen, nailed to the wall,—but in a small closet which opened from one corner of the room, and, by leaving the door ajar, would give to its occupant a view of all that might pass in the apartment. Here did the young ghost-hunter take up a position with a good stout sapling under his arm, a full half-hour before Seaforth retired for the night. Not even his friend did he let into his confidence, fully determined that if his plan did not succeed, the failure should be attributed to himself alone.

At the usual hour of separation for the night, Tom saw, from his concealment, the lieutenant enter his room, and after taking a few turns in it, with an expression so joyous as to betoken that his thoughts were mainly occupied by his approaching happiness, proceed slowly to disrobe himself. The coat, the waistcoat, the black silk stock, were gradually discarded. The green morocco slippers were kicked off, and then—ay, and then—his countenance grew grave; it seemed to occur to him all at once that this was his last stake,—nay, that very breeches he had on were not his own,—that tomorrow morning was his last, and that if he lost them — A glance showed that his mind was made up: he replaced the single button he had just subducted, and threw himself upon the bed in a state of transition—half chrysalis, half grub.