The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices

and got up.

‘He came to an upper window on that side, whence he could see their lanterns, and them, and the loose earth in a heap which he had himself disturbed and put back, when it was last turned to the air.  It was found!  They had that minute lighted on it.  They were all bending over it.  One of them said, “The skull is fractured;” and another, “See here the bones;” and another, “See here the clothes;” and then the first struck in again, and said, “A rusty bill-hook!”

‘He became sensible, next day, that he was already put under a strict watch, and that he could go nowhere without being followed.  Before a week was out, he was taken and laid in hold.  The circumstances were gradually pieced together against him, with a desperate malignity, and an appalling ingenuity.  But, see the justice of men, and how it was extended to him!  He was further accused of having poisoned that girl in the Bride’s Chamber.  He, who had carefully and expressly avoided imperilling a hair of his head for her, and who had seen her die of her own incapacity!

‘There was doubt for which of the two murders he should be first tried; but, the real one was chosen, and he was found Guilty, and cast for death.  Bloodthirsty wretches!  They would have made him Guilty of anything, so set they were upon having his life.

‘His money could do nothing to save him, and he was hanged.  I am He, and I was hanged at Lancaster Castle with my face to the wall, a hundred years ago!’

At this terrific announcement, Mr. Goodchild tried to rise and cry out.  But, the two fiery lines extending from the old man’s eyes to his own, kept him down, and he could not utter a sound.  His sense of hearing, however, was acute, and he could hear the clock strike Two.  No sooner had he heard the clock strike Two, than he saw before him Two old men!

TWO.

The eyes of each, connected with his eyes by two films of fire: each, exactly like the other: each, addressing him at precisely one and the same instant: each, gnashing the same teeth in the same head, with the same twitched nostril above them, and the same suffused expression around it.  Two old men.  Differing in nothing, equally distinct to the sight, the copy no fainter than the original, the second as real as the first.

‘At what time,’ said the Two old men, ‘did you arrive at the door below?’

‘At Six.’

‘And there were Six old men upon the stairs!’

Mr. Goodchild having wiped the perspiration from his brow, or tried to do it, the Two old men proceeded in one voice, and in the singular number:

‘I had been anatomised, but had not yet had my skeleton put together and re-hung on an iron hook, when it began to be whispered that the Bride’s Chamber was haunted.  It was haunted, and I was there.

‘We were there.  She and I were there.  I, in the chair upon the hearth; she, a white wreck again, trailing itself towards me on the floor.  But, I was the speaker no more, and the one word that she said to me from midnight until dawn was, ‘Live!’

‘The youth was there, likewise.  In the tree outside the window.  Coming and going in the moonlight, as the tree bent and gave.  He has, ever since, been there, peeping in at me in my torment; revealing to me by snatches, in the pale lights and slatey shadows where he comes and goes, bare-headed—a bill-hook, standing edgewise in his hair.

‘In the Bride’s Chamber, every night from midnight until dawn—one month in the year excepted, as I am going to tell you—he hides in the tree, and she comes towards me on the floor; always approaching; never coming nearer; always visible as if by moon-light, whether the moon shines or no; always saying, from mid-night until dawn, her one word, “Live!”

‘But, in the month wherein I was forced out of this life—this present month of thirty days—the Bride’s Chamber is empty and quiet.  Not so my old dungeon.  Not so the rooms where I was restless and afraid, ten years.  Both are fitfully haunted then.  At One in the morning.  I am what you saw me when the clock struck that hour—One old man.  At Two in the morning, I am Two old men.  At Three, I am Three.  By Twelve at noon, I am Twelve old men, One for every hundred per cent. of old gain.  Every one of the Twelve, with Twelve times my old power of suffering and agony.  From that hour until Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men in anguish and fearful foreboding, wait for the coming of the executioner.  At Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men turned off, swing invisible outside Lancaster Castle, with Twelve faces to the wall!

‘When the Bride’s Chamber was first haunted, it was known to me that this punishment would never cease, until I could make its nature, and my story, known to two living men together.  I waited for the coming of two living men together into the Bride’s Chamber, years upon years.  It was infused into my knowledge (of the means I am ignorant) that if two living men, with their eyes open, could be in the Bride’s Chamber at One in the morning, they would see me sitting in my chair.

‘At length, the whispers that the room was spiritually troubled, brought two men to try the adventure.  I was scarcely struck upon the hearth at midnight (I come there as if the Lightning blasted me into being), when I heard them ascending the stairs.  Next, I saw them enter.  One of them was a bold, gay, active man, in the prime of life, some five and forty years of age; the other, a dozen years younger.  They brought provisions with them in a basket, and bottles.  A young woman accompanied them, with wood and coals for the lighting of the fire.  When she had lighted it, the bold, gay, active man accompanied her along the gallery outside the room, to see her safely down the staircase, and came back laughing.

‘He locked the door, examined the chamber, put out the contents of the basket on the table before the fire— little recking of me, in my appointed station on the hearth, close to him—and filled the glasses, and ate and drank.  His companion did the same, and was as cheerful and confident as he: though he was the leader.  When they had supped, they laid pistols on the table, turned to the fire, and began to smoke their pipes of foreign make.

‘They had travelled together, and had been much together, and had an abundance of subjects in common.  In the midst of their talking and laughing, the younger man made a reference to the leader’s being always ready for any adventure; that one, or any other.  He replied in these words:

‘“Not quite so, Dick; if I am afraid of nothing else, I am afraid of myself.”

‘His companion seeming to grow a little dull, asked him, in what sense?  How?

‘“Why, thus,” he returned.  “Here is a Ghost to be disproved.  Well!  I cannot answer for what my fancy might do if I were alone here, or what tricks my senses might play with me if they had me to themselves.  But, in company with another man, and especially with Dick, I would consent to outface all the Ghosts that were ever of in the universe.”

‘“I had not the vanity to suppose that I was of so much importance to-night,” said the other.

‘“Of so much,” rejoined the leader, more seriously than he had spoken yet, “that I would, for the reason I have given, on no account have undertaken to pass the night here alone.”

‘It was within a few minutes of One.  The head of the younger man had drooped when he made his last remark, and it drooped lower now.

‘“Keep awake, Dick!” said the leader, gaily.  “The small hours are the worst.”

‘He tried, but his head drooped again.

‘“Dick!” urged the leader.  “Keep awake!”

‘“I can’t,” he indistinctly muttered.  “I don’t know what strange influence is stealing over me.  I can’t.”

‘His companion looked at him with a sudden horror, and I, in my different way, felt a new horror also; for, it was on the stroke of One, and I felt that the second watcher was yielding to me, and that the curse was upon me that I must send him to sleep.

‘“Get up and walk, Dick!” cried the leader.  “Try!”

‘It was in vain to go behind the slumber’s chair and shake him.  One o’clock sounded, and I was present to the elder man, and he stood transfixed before me.

‘To him alone, I was obliged to relate my story, without hope of benefit.  To him alone, I was an awful phantom making a quite useless confession.  I foresee it will ever be the same.  The two living men together will never come to release me.  When I appear, the senses of one of the two will be locked in sleep; he will neither see nor hear me; my communication will ever be made to a solitary listener, and will ever be unserviceable.  Woe!  Woe!  Woe!’