The 3rd Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories

THE CASE OF MR. LUCRAFT by Sir Walter Besant and James Rice

I have often told the story of the only remarkable thing which has happened to me in the course of a longish life. No one has ever believed me; I wish, therefore, to leave behind me a truthful record, in which everything shall be set down, as near as I can remember it, just as it happened. I am sure I need not add a single fact. The more I consider the story, the more I realise to myself my wonderful escape and the frightful consequences which a providential accident averted from my head, the more reason I feel to be grateful and humble.

I have read of nothing similar to my own case. I have consulted books on apparitions, witchcraft, and the power of the devil as manifested in authentic history, but I have found absolutely nothing that can in any way compare with my own case. If there be any successor to Mr. Grumbelow, possessed of his unholy powers, endowed with his fiendish and diabolical iniquity of selfishness, this plain and simple narrative may serve as a warning to young men situated as I was in the year 1823. Except as a moral example, indeed, I see no use in telling the story at all.

I have never been a rich man, but I was once very poor, and it is of this period that I have to write.

As for my parentage, that matters nothing, enough that it was quite obscure. My mother died when I was still a boy; and my father, who was not a man to be proud of as a father, had long before run away from her and disappeared. He was a sailor by profession, and I have heard it rumoured he possessed a wife in every port, besides a few who lived, like my mother, inland; so that he would vary the surroundings when he wished. All properly married in church too, and honest women, every one of them. What became of him I never knew, nor did I ever inquire.

I went through a pretty fair number of adventures before I settled down to my first serious profession. I was travelling companion and drudge to an itinerant tinker, who treated me as kindly as could be expected when he was sober. When he was drunk he used to throw the pots and pans at my head. Then I became cabin-boy, but only for a single voyage, on board a collier. The ship belonged to a philanthropist, who was too much occupied with the wrongs of the niggers to think about the rights of his own sailors; so his ships, insured far above their real value, were sent to sea to sink or swim as it might please Providence. I suppose no cabin-boy ever had so many kicks and cuffs in a single voyage as I had. However, my ship carried me safely from South Shields to the port of London. There I ran away, and I heard afterwards that on her return voyage the Spanking Sally foundered with all hands. In the minds of those who knew the captain and his crew, there were doubtless, as in mine, grave fears as to their ultimate destination. After that I became steward in an Atlantic packet for a couple of years; then clerk to a bogus auctioneer in New York; cashier to a store; all sorts of things, but nothing long. Then I came back to England, and not knowing what to do with myself, joined a strolling company of actors in the general utility line. It was not exactly promotion, but I liked the life; I liked the work; I liked the applause; I liked wandering about from town to town; I even liked, being young and a fool, the precarious nature of the salary. Heaven knows mine was small enough; but we were a cheery company, and one or two members subsequently rose to distinction. If we had known any history, which we did not, we might have remembered that Molière himself was once a stroller through France. Some people think it philosophical to reflect, when they are hard up, how many great men have been hard up too. It would have brought no comfort to me. Practically I felt little inconvenience from poverty, save in the matter of boots. We went share and share alike, most of us, and there was always plenty to eat even for my naturally gigantic appetite. Juliet, a delicate eater, always used to reckon me as equal to four.

Juliet was the manager’s daughter—Juliet Kerrans, acting as Miss Juliet Alvanley. She was eighteen and I was twenty-three, an inflammable and romantic time of life. We were thrown a good deal together too, not only off the stage but on it. I was put into parts to play up to her. I was Romeo when she played her namesake, a part sustained by her mother till even she herself was bound to own that she was too fat to play it any longer; she was Lady Teazle and I was Charles Surface; she was Rosalind and I Orlando; she was Angelina and I Sir Harry Wildair. We were a pair, and looked well in love scenes. Looking back dispassionately on our performances, I suppose they must have been as bad as stage-acting could well be. At least, we had no training, and nothing but a few fixed rules to guide us; these, of course, quite stagey and conventional. Juliet had been on the stage all her life, and did not want in assurance; I, however, was nervous and uncertain. Then we were badly mounted and badly dressed; we were ambitious, we ranted, and we tore a passion to rags. But we had one or two good points—we were young and lively. Juliet had the most charming of faces and the most delicious figure—mind you, in the year 1823, girls had a chance of showing their figures without putting on a page’s costume. Then she had a soft, sweet voice, and pretty little coquettish ways, which came natural to her, and broke through all the clumsy stage artificialities. She drew full houses; wherever we performed, the men, especially young officers, used to come after her. They wrote her notes, they lay in wait for her, they sent her flowers; but what with old Kerrans and myself, to say nothing of the other members of the company, they might as well have tried to get at the Peri in Paradise. I drew pretty well too. I was—a man of seventy and more may say so—I was a good-looking young fellow; you would hardly believe what quantities of letters and billets-doux came to me. I had dozens, but Juliet found them and tore them all up. There they were; the note on rose-coloured note-paper with violet ink, beginning with “Handsomest and noblest of men,” and ending with “Your fair unknown, Araminta.” There was the letter from the middle-aged widow with a taste for the drama and an income; and there was the vilely spelled note from the foolish little milliner who had fallen in love with the Romeo of a barn. Perhaps ladies are more sensible now. At all events, their letters were thrown away upon me, because I was in love, head over ears, with Juliet.

Juliet handed over her notes to her father, who found out their writers, and made them take boxes and bespeak plays. So that all Juliet’s lovers got was the privilege of paying more than other people, for the girl was as good as she was pretty—a rarer combination of qualities on the stage fifty years ago than now. She was tall and, in those days, slender. Later on she took after her mother; but who would have thought that so graceful a girl would ever arrive at fourteen stone? Her eyes and hair were black—eyes that never lost their lustre; and hair which, though it turned grey in later years, was then like a silken net, when it was let down, to catch the hearts of lovers. Of course she knew that she was pretty; what pretty woman does not? And of course, too, she did not know and would not understand the power of her own beauty; what pretty woman does? And because it was the very worst thing she could do for herself, she fell in love with me.

Her father knew it and meant to stop it from the beginning: but he was not a man to do things in a hurry, and so we went on in a fool’s paradise, enjoying the stolen kisses, and talking of when we should be married. One night—I was Romeo—I was so carried away with passion that I acted for once naturally and unconventionally. There was a full house; the performance was so out of the common that it took away the breath of the people, and they even forgot to applaud.

Unluckily old Kerrans was in the front, looking on. Of course he saw that it was not play-acting at all, but reality, between us, and made up his mind what to do at once.

The next day was Saturday. When I went into the treasury I found the good old fellow with a red face, and a little hesitation of manner.

“Look here,” he said, handing me the money, “you are a good young fellow, Lucraft, and a likely actor. There’s merit in you. But I can’t have you spoiling my Juliet for the stage. So I’m going to put her up without you. After a bit I dare say I shall find another Romeo. You get away to London and find another engagement—there’s a week’s pay in advance—and when Juliet is married, or when you get rich, or when anything happens to make things different, why, you see, we shall all be glad to see you back. You needn’t say good-bye to Juliet, because I’ve had it out with her this morning. A tough job it was too. Good-bye, my boy, and good luck to you.”

Good luck! Had he known the kind of luck that was coming to me!

I took my dismissal though with a heavy heart, and that afternoon climbed outside the night-coach to London.

I spent the first fortnight trying to get an engagement.

There were only two or three theatres then in London, and in them there was not even room for a super.

I tried the Greenwich and the Richmond theatres, but in vain. Then I tried the country managers, but either no answer came or a refusal. All this time the little money that I had was melting away. I held my lodgings from week to week, paid in advance. And one morning, after paying the rent, I found myself without a penny.

I had one or two things which I could pawn—a watch, a waistcoat, a few odds and ends in the way of a wardrobe, and a few books—on the proceeds of them I lived for a whole week; and then, one morning, after spending twopence in the purchase of a penny loaf and a saveloy for breakfast, I was penniless, and also without the means of procuring another penny at all, because I had nothing left to pawn.

Many a young fellow has found himself in a similar predicament, but I doubt whether any one ever became so desperately hungry as I did on that day. I recollect that, having rashly eaten up my sausage at eight, I felt a sinking towards twelve; it was aggravated by the savoury smell of roast meat which steamed from the cookshops and dining-rooms as I walked along the streets. Towards one o’clock I gazed with malignant envy on the happy clerks who could go in and order platefuls of the roast and boiled which smoked in the windows, and threw a perfume more delicious than the sweetest strains of music into the streets where I lingered and looked. About two I observed the diners come out again, walking more slowly, but with an upright and satisfied air, while I—the sinking had been succeeded by a dull gnawing pain—was slowly doubling up. At half-past two I felt as if I could bear it no longer. I had been walking about, trying different offices for a clerkship. I might as well have asked for a partnership. But I could walk no more. I leaned against a post—it was in Bucklersbury—opposite a dining-room, where hares, fowls, and turkeys were piled in the window among a boundless prodigality and wealth of carrots, turnips, and cauliflowers, till my senses swam at the contemplation. I longed for a cauldron in which to put the whole contents of the shop front, and eat them at one Gargantuan repast. My appetite, already alluded to, was hereditary; one of the few things I can remember of my mother was a constant complaint that my father used to eat her out of house and home. To be sure, from other scraps of information handed down by tradition, I have reason to believe that the word eating was used as a figure of speech—the part for the whole—and included drinking. I was good at both, and as a trencherman I had been unsurpassed, as I said above, in the company, the dear old company among whom I had so often eaten beefsteak and fried onions with Juliet. The door of the restaurant opened now and then to let a hungry man enter or a full man go out, and I caught voices from within, stifled voices, as those sent up a pipe, calling for roast beef with plenty of brown—good heavens! plenty of brown; roast mutton, underdone—I love my mutton underdone; boiled beef with suet pudding and fat—I always took a great deal of pudding and fat with my boiled beef; roast veal and bacon with stuffing—a dish for the gods; calves’ head for two—I could have eaten calves’ head for a dozen; with orders pointing to things beyond my hungry imagination—hunger limits the boundaries of fancy—puddings, fish, soup, cheese, and such delicacies. Alas! I wanted the solids. I felt myself growing feebler; I became more and more doubled up; I had thoughts of entering this paradise of the hungry, and, after eating till I could eat no longer, calmly laying down my knife and fork and informing the waiter that I had no money. There was a farce in which I had once played where the comic actor sent for the landlord, after a hearty meal, and asked him what he would do in case a stranger, after ordering and eating his dinner, should declare his inability to pay. “Do, sir?” cried the host; “I should kick him across the street.” “Landlord,” said the low comedian, and it always told—“Landlord,” he used to rise up slowly as he spoke, and solemnly draw aside his coat-tails, turning his face in the direction of the street-door—“landlord, I’ll trouble you.” I used to play the landlord.

It struck half-past three; the dead gnawing of hunger was followed by a sharp pain, irritating and much more unpleasant. The crowd of those who entered had been followed by the crowd of those who came out, and the heaven of hungry men was nearly empty again. I gazed still upon the turkeys and the hares, but with a lack-lustre eye, for I was nearly fainting.

Presently there came down the street an elderly gentleman, bearing before him, like a Lord Mayor in a French tale, his enormous abdomen: he had white hair, white eyebrows, white whiskers, and a purple face. He walked very slowly, as if the exertion might prove apoplectic, and leaned upon a thick stick. As he passed the shop he looked in at the window and wagged his head. At that moment I groaned involuntarily. He turned round and surveyed me. I suppose I presented a strange appearance, leaning against the post, with stooping figure and tightly-buttoned coat. He had big projecting eyes flushed with red veins that gave him a wolfish expression.

“Young man,” he said, not benignantly at all, but severely, “you look ill. Have you been drinking?”

I shook my head.

“I am only hungry,” I said; telling the truth because I was too far gone to hide it. “I am only hungry; that is all that’s the matter with me.”

He planted his stick on the ground, supporting both his hands upon the gold head, and wagged his head again from side to side with a grunting sound in his throat like the sawing of bones.

Grunt! “Here’s a pretty fellow for you!” Grunt: “Hungry, and he looks miserable.” Grunt! “Hungry, and he groans.” Grunt! “Hungry—the most enviable position a man can be in—and he dares to repine at his lot.” Grunt! “What are the lower classes coming to next, I wonder? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Aren’t you a model of everything that is ungrateful and”—grunt!—“and flying in the face of Providence? He lives in a land of victuals. London is a gigantic caravan, full of the most splendid things which it only wants an appetite to eat; and he’s got that, and he laments!”

“What is the use if you have no money?”

Grunt! “Is it a small appetite, as a rule, or is it a large appetite?”

“Large,” I replied. “It is an awkward thing for a poor beggar like me to have such a devil of a twist. I was born with it. Very awkward just now.”

“Come with me, young man,” he grunted. “Go before me. Don’t talk, because that may interfere with the further growth of your appetite. Walk slowly and keep your mouth shut.”

He came behind me, walking with his chuckle and grunt. “So. What a fine young fellow it is!” Grunt! “What room for the development of the Alderman’s Arch! What a backbone for the support of a stomach. What shoulders for a dinner-table, and what legs to put under it! Heavens! what a diner might be made of this boy if he only had money.” Grunt! “Youth and appetite—health and hunger—and all thrown away upon a pauper! What a thing, what a thing! This way, young man.”

Turning down a court leading out of Bucklersbury, he guided me to a door, a little black portal, at which he stopped; then stooping to a keyhole of smaller size than was generally used in those days, he seemed to me to blow into it with his mouth; this was absurd, of course, but it seemed so to me. The door opened. He led the way into a passage, which, when the door shut behind us, as it did of its own accord, was pitch dark. We went up some stairs, and on the first landing the old gentleman, who was wheezing and puffing tremendously, opened another door, and led me into a room. It was a large room, resplendent with the light of at least forty wax candles. The centre was occupied by a large dining-table laid for a single person. Outside it was broad daylight, for it was not yet four o’clock.

“Sit down, young man, sit down,” puffed my host. “Oh, dear! oh, dear! Sit down, do. I wish I was as hungry as you.”

I sat down in the nearest chair, and looked round the room. The first thing I remarked was that I could not see the door by which we had been admitted. The room was octagonal, and on every side stood some heavy piece of furniture; a table with glass, a case of bookshelves, a sofa, but no door. My head began to go round as I continued my observations. There was no window either, nor was there any fireplace. Then I felt a sudden giddiness, and I suppose I fell backwards on my chair. It was partly the faintness of hunger, but partly it was the strange room, and that old man glaring at me with his great wolfish eyes.

When I recovered I was lying on a sofa, and soft cold fingers were bathing my head, and pressing a perfumed handkerchief to my lips. I opened my eyes suddenly and sat up completely recovered. At the foot of the sofa stood my entertainer.

“Easy with him, Boule-de-neige; make him rest for a moment. Perhaps we have been too much for him.”

I turned to see who Boule-de-neige was. He was a Negro of the blackest type, as ancient and withered as some old ourang of the tropical woods; his cheeks hung in folds, and his skin seemed too much for his attenuated body; his wool was white, and his gums were toothless; and his nose so flattened with age as to be almost invisible, looking at him as I was looking, in profile. His hands were as soft as any woman’s, but icy cold; and his eyes were red and fiery.

“Boule-de-neige, what do you think of him?”

“Him berry fine young man, massa: him beautiful young man; got lubly abbatite develoffed, I think; him last long time, much longer time dan last oder young man. Cluck! Him poor trash, dat young man; dam poor trash; use up and go to de debbil in a month. Cluck! Dis young man got lubly stumjack, strong as bull. Cluck-cluck! How much you tink him eat to-night?”

“We shall see, Boule-de-neige. We will try him with dinner first, and then pronounce on his performances. Young men do not always come up to their professions. But he looks well, and perhaps, Boule-de-neige—perhaps—Ah!” He nodded with a deep sigh.

“What time massa dine himself?”

“I don’t know,” the old gentleman answered, with another heavy sigh. “Perhaps not till nine o’clock; perhaps not, then. Vanish, Boule-de-neige, and serve.”

There was evidently something in my host’s mind by the way he sighed. Did Boule-de-neige go through the floor? Did the table sink when he disappeared, and come up loaded with dishes? It seemed so.

I sprang from the couch. The sight and smell of the food brought back my raging hunger.

“Let me eat!” I cried.

“You shall. One moment first—only a single moment. Young man, tell me again and explicitly the nature and extent of your appetite. Be truthful, O be truthful! Our little tongues should never lie for mutton-chop or apple-pie. You know the hymn.”

“I’ve got a devil of an appetite. What is there to lie about?”

“My dear young friend, there are many kinds of appetites. Yours may be fierce at first and promise great things, and then end in a miserably small performance. I have known such. Is it a lasting appetite, now? Is it steady through a long dinner? Is it regular in its recurrence?”

“You shall see something of my performance,” I laughed, insensate wretch. “You shall see. I never had a long dinner in my life. It is steady through a good many pounds of steak, and as regular as a clock.”

“That is always something. Steak is as healthy a test as I know. Is it, secondly, an appetite that recovers itself quickly? That is very important. Is it a day-by-day or an hour-by-hour appetite? Is it good at all times of the day?”

“Alas, I wish it were not!”

“Hush, young man; do not blaspheme! Tell me, if you eat your fill now—it is half-past four—when do you think you might be ready again?” His eyes glistened like a couple of great rubies in the candlelight, and his hands trembled.

“I should say about eight. But I might do something light at seven, I dare say. Just now I feel as if I could eat a mountain.”

“He feels as if he could eat a mountain! Wonderful are the gifts of Providence! My dear young friend, I am very thankful—deeply thankful—that I met you. Sit down, and let me take the covers off for you; I long to see you eat. This is a blessed day, a truly blessed day! I will wait upon you myself. No one else. Boule-de-neige, vanish!”

I was too hungry to wonder what he meant, and sat down. He began to help me, talking as he went on: “Plover’s eggs—he has eaten the whole six! Turtle soup—gently, my young friend, gently. Ah, impetuous youth! More? Stay—green fat. Humour, humour your appetite; don’t drive it; calipash and calipee. It’s really sinful to eat so fast. He takes all down without tasting it. No—no more.” He put the soup aside, and took the cover off another dish. “Salmon—with cucumber. Lobster-sauce—bless me, it’s like a dream of fairyland! Fillet of sole—a beautiful dream to see him; he’s a Julius Caesar the Conqueror. Croquet de volaille—gone like a cloud from the sky. Don’t wolf the food, my friend; taste it. Ris de veau—smiles of the dear little innocent, confiding calf—a little more bread with it? Mauviettes en caisse, larks in baskets—sweet, rapturous, singing larks, toothsome cockyolly larks. He eats them up, bones and all. Pause, my dear sir, and drink something. Here are champagne, hock, and sauterne; never touch sherry, it’s a made-up wine, even the best of it. Come, a little champagne.”

“I generally take draught-beer, sir,” I replied modestly; “but, if you please, a little fizz will be acceptable.”

I drank three glasses in rapid succession, and found them good. He meanwhile nodded and winked with an ever-increasing delight which I failed to understand.

“Now, my Nero, my Paris of Troy, my Judas Maccabaeus”—he mixed up his names, but it mattered nothing—“here is saddle of mutton, with potatoes, cauliflower, currant-jelly. More champagne? It’s worth sums of money to see him. Curry? More champagne? Curry of chicken? Cabob curry of chicken, young Alexander the Great? Plenty of rice? Ho, ho, ho! Plenty of rice, he said; why, he is a Goliath—a Goliath of Gath, this young man!

He really grew so purple that I thought he would have a fit of some kind. But the flattery pleased me all the same. “Quail or bécassine—snipe, that is? He takes both, like Pompey. More champagne? Jelly, my Heliogabalus, my modern Caracalla, apricot-jelly? Cabinet pudding? He has two helpings of the pudding. King Solomon in all his glory never—More champagne? A little hock to finish with? He takes his hock in a tumbler, this young Samson. Cheese—Brie—and celery. A glass of port with the cheese. He takes that in a tumbler too, like Og, King of Bashan.”

I was really overwhelmed with the splendour of the dinner, the classical and biblical flattery, and the extraordinary gratification which my really enormous hunger caused this remarkable old gentleman. He clapped his hands; he nodded his head; he slapped his legs; he winked and grinned; he smacked his lips; he evinced every sign of the most unbounded delight. When I had quite finished eating, he gave me a bottle of claret, and watched me while I rapidly disposed of it. Then he produced from a sideboard, where I certainly had not seen it a moment before, a small cup of strong black coffee with a tiny glass of liqueur. As for my own part, I hope I have made it clear that I dined extremely well; in fact, I had never even dreamed of such a dinner in my life. It was not only that I was half-starved, but that the things were so good.

“How do you feel now?” my host asked, a shade of anxiety crossing his brow.

There was still the strange look in my host’s eyes, a sort of passionate and eager longing.

“I am very well, thank you, sir, and more grateful than I can tell you.”

“Hang the gratitude! Tell me if you feel any sense of repletion? Does the blood seem mounting in the head? Are you quite free from giddiness? No thickness in the speech? It’s wonderful, it’s providential, my finding you. Such a windfall; and just when I most wanted it. Our blessings truly come when we least expect them.”

This was strange language, but the whole proceedings were so strange that I hardly noticed it. Besides, I was extremely comfortable after my dinner, and disposed to rest.

“Now,” he went on, “while you are digesting—by the way, the digestion is, I trust, unimpaired by drink or excess? Quite so; and what I expected in so good and so gifted a young man. Like an ostrich as you say. Ho, ho! ha, ha! like an ostrich! It is, indeed, too much. Tell me, now, something, gently and dispassionately, so as not to injure your digestion, about your history.”

I told him all. While I related my simple story he interrupted now and then with some fresh question on the growth, the endurance, the regularity of my appetite, to which I gave satisfactory answers. It seemed to me that he took no kind of interest in what I told him, and was chiefly anxious about my appetite. When I had quite finished he went to the table—I noticed then that all traces of the dinner had disappeared—and laid out a document, by which he placed a pen. Then he drew a chair, sat down in front of me, and assumed a serious air.

“Come,” he said, “to business.”

I had not the smallest notion what the business was, but I bowed and waited. Perhaps he was going to offer me a clerkship. Visions of a large salary, to suit my expansive appetite, came across my brain.

“In your case,” he began, “the possession of so great an appetite must be attended with serious inconveniences. You have no money; in a few hours you will be hungry again; you will endure great pain and suffering, greater than is felt by men less largely endowed with the greatest blessing—I mean with appetite.”

“Yes,” I said, “it is a great trouble to me, this twist of mine, especially when I am hard up.”

He almost jumped out of his chair.

“Why, there,” he cried, “what is the use of words? We are agreed already. Nothing could be more fortunate. Let us have no more beating about the bush. Young man, I will rid you of this nuisance; I will buy your appetite off you.”

I only stared. Was the old gentleman mad?

“It is a strange offer, I know,” he went on, “a strange offer and you have probably never heard a more remarkable one. But it is genuine. I will buy your appetite off you.”

“Buy my—buy my appetite?”

“Nothing easier. Read this.”

He gave me the paper which he had laid on the table, prepared in readiness, I suppose, for me. It was as follows:

Then followed a place for the signature and one for the witnesses.

“You see,” he went on, “I ask no unpleasant condition. I give you a free life, coupled with the simple condition of ordinary care. Do you agree?”

“I hardly know; it is so sudden.”

“Come, come”—he spoke with a harshness quite new—“come, let us have no nonsense. Do you agree?”

I read it over again.

“Give me a little time,” I said. “Let me reflect till tomorrow.”

“Reflect!” his face flushed purple, and his bloodshot eyes literally glared. “Reflect! What the devil does the boy want to reflect about? Has he got a penny, a friend, or a chance in the whole world? I will give you five minutes—come.” He rose up and stood before me. As I looked in his face a curious dismay came over my eyes; he seemed to recede before me; he disappeared altogether. When I heard him speak again his voice sounded far, far off, but thin and clear, as if it came through some long tube. “Luke Lucraft,” it said, “see yourself.”

Yes; I saw myself, and though outside of what I saw, I felt the same emotions as if I had had the actual performer in the scenes I witnessed.

I was starving, and with feelings of bitter shame I begged for money of the passers-by. A woman gave me a shilling, and I hurried away to buy something to eat.

I was sleeping among the stalks, straw, and vegetable refuse of Covent Garden Market. I awoke hungry and miserable. I begged again, and got nothing. Then—then—then I stole. I was not detected, and I stole again. The second time I was not detected. There came the third time when I was seen and apprehended. The misery and shame of the hour when I stood before the magistrate, in that horrible vision of a possible future, I cannot even yet forget. With this a constant sense of unsatisfied and craving hunger; a feeling as if hunger was the greatest evil in the whole world; a longing to get rid of it. Last scene of all, I was lying dead, starved to death with hunger and cold, in a miserable, bare, and naked garret. By what black art did the old man delude my senses? It was a lie, and he knew it. I should have got some honest work, if only to wheel bricks or carry loads.

“There is your future, young man”—there came up from the distance the voice of the tempter—“a gloomy prospect; a miserable life, a wretched ending. Now look at the other side.”

The scene changed. I saw myself, in another guise. My hunger had vanished; I felt it no more.

I was well dressed, cheerful, and light-hearted. I was dancing in a room full of pretty girls; I was singing and playing; I was wandering among the woods and flowers; I was reading on a sofa; I was lying in the sunshine; I was looking at pictures; I was at the theatre; I was riding in the Park; I was following the hounds; I was making love to Juliet.

The pictures changed as fast as my fancy wandered from one thing to another. In all I was the same—free from me downward and earthly pressure of want and hunger, relieved from anxiety, with plenty of money, and full of all sweet and innocent fancies.

Lies again. But by what power could this necromancer so cheat and gull my brain?

“Very different scenes these, my dear young friend,” he said in a winning voice, “are they not? Now,” he went on, and his voice was quite close to me, “you have had your five minutes.”

The cloud passed from my eyes. I was sitting again in the octagonal room, the old man before me, watch in hand, as if he was counting the seconds.

“Five minutes and a quarter,” he growled. “Now choose.”

“I have chosen,” I replied. “I accept your offer.”

The influence of the things I had seen was too strong on me. I could neither reason nor reflect.

“I accept your offer.”

“Why, that’s brave,” he said, with a gigantic sigh of relief. “That’s what I expected of you. Boule-de-neige—Boule-de-neige!”

He clapped his hands.

Instantly the horrible old Negro appeared behind his master’s chair, as if he had sprung up from the ground. I believe he had. He looked more like a devil than ever, grinning from ear to ear, and his two eyes glowing in the candlelight like two great coals. The light fell, too, upon the seams and wrinkles of his face, bringing them out like the hills and valleys in a raised map. Strange as it all was to me, this ancient servitor produced the strangest effect upon me of anything.

“Boule-de-neige is witness for us,” said the old gentleman. “Boule-de-neige, this young gentleman, Mr. Luke Lucraft, is about to sign a little deed, to which, as a matter of form, we require your signature too as witness.”

“Cluck!” said the Negro. “Dis young gegleman berry lucky—him berry lucky. What time massa take him dinner?”

“When do you think you shall be fairly hungry again?” he asked me. “Now, no boastings—no false pretence and pride—because it will be the worse for you. Answer truthfully. It is now six.”

“I should say that at nine I should certainly be able to take some supper, and at ten I shall certainly be hungry again. You see I have taken such an immense dinner.”

“Good.” He turned to Boule-de-neige. “You see the young man is modest and promises fairly. I shall have supper—a plentiful supper—at ten punctually. Mr. Lucraft will now sign.”

I advanced to the table and took up the pen, but there was no ink.

“Cluck!” said the infernal Negro, with another grin—“cluck! Massa wait lilly bit.”

He took my left hand in his soft and cold paw. I felt a sharp prick at my wrist.

“You will dip the pen,” said the old gentleman, “in the blood. It is a mere form.”

“Cluck!” said Boule-de-neige.

“A mere form, because we have no ink handy.”

“Cluck-cluck!”

I signed my name as desired, and, following the directions of the old gentleman, placed my finger on the red wafer at the margin saying, “I declare this my act and deed.”

Then I gave the pen to Boule-de-neige. He signed after me, in a firm flowing hand, “Boule-de-neige.” As I looked, the letters seemed somehow to shape themselves into “Beelzebub.” I looked at him with a kind of terror. The creature grinned in my face as if he divined my thought, and gave utterance to one of his hideous “clucks.”

Then I began to feel the same faintness which I had at first experienced. It mounted upwards from my feet slowly, so that I heard the old gentleman’s voice, though I saw nothing. It grew gradually fainter.

“Supper at ten, Boule-de-neige,” he was saying; “I feel myself getting hungry already. What shall I do with myself till ten o’clock? I am certainly getting hungry. I think I can have it served at half-past nine. O, blessed day! O, thankful blessed day! Boule-de-neige, it must be supper for three—for four—for five. I shall have champagne—the Perrier Jouet—the curaçao punch afterwards. Curaçao punch—I haven’t tasted it for three months and more. O, what a blessed—blessed—blessed——”

I heard no more because my senses failed me altogether, and his voice died away in my ears.

When I came to myself I was leaning against the post in Bucklersbury, where I had met the old man.

A whiff of cooked meat from the restaurant, which caught me as I opened my eyes, produced a singular feeling of disgust. “Pah,” I muttered, “roast mutton!” and moved from the spot. My hunger was gone, that was quite certain. I felt a quietness about those regions, wherever they may be, which belong to appetite; I was almost dreamy in the repose which followed a morning so stormy. I walked quietly away homewards in a kind of daze, trying to make out something of what had happened. The first thing I found I could not remember was the name of the old gentleman. When that came back to me and under what circumstances I will tell you as we get along. Bit by bit I recalled the whole events of the afternoon, one after the other. I saw the old man, with his purple face and bloodshot eyes and white hair; I saw the wrinkled and seamed old Negro; I saw the octagonal room without doors or windows; the splendid dinner; the host watching my every gesture; I remembered everything except the name of the man to whom I had sold—my appetite.

It was so strange that I laughed when I thought of it. I must have been drunk: he gave me a good dinner and I took too much wine; but, then, how was it that I remembered clearly every, even the smallest, detail?

On the bed in the one room which constituted my lodgings I found a letter. It was from a firm of lawyers, dated that evening at half-past six—half an hour after I signed the paper—stating that they were empowered by a client, whose name was not mentioned, to give me the sum of £30 monthly, to begin from that day, and to be paid to me personally. How did they get their instructions then? And it was all true!

I was too tired with the day’s adventures to think any more; and, though it was only nine o’clock, I went to bed and fell fast asleep. In an hour I awoke again, with a choking sensation, as if I was eating too much. I knew instantly what was going on, and by a kind of prophetic insight. The old man was taking his supper, and taking more than was good—for me. I sprang from the bed, gasping for breath. Presently, as I gathered, he began to drink too much as well. My brain went round and round. I laughed, sang, and danced; and soon after, with a heavy fall, I rolled senseless on the carpet, and remembered nothing more.

It was early in the morning when I awoke, still lying on the floor. I had a splitting headache. I had fallen against some corner of the furniture and blackened one eye. I had broken two chairs somehow or other. I was cold, ill, and shaken. I got into bed, and tried to remember what had happened. Clearly I must have made a drunken beast of myself over the dinner, and reeled home with my head full of fancies and dreams; perhaps the dinner itself was a dream and a hallucination too; if so, the pangs of hunger would soon recommence. But they did not. Then I fell asleep, and did not awake again until the sun was high and the clock striking ten. How ill and wretched I felt as I dressed! My hand shook, my eyes were red, my face swollen. Surely I must have been intoxicated. I had been, up to that day at least, a temperate man, partly, no doubt, from the very wholesome reason which keeps so many of us sober—the necessity of poverty; but of course I had not arrived at four and twenty years and seen so much of the world without recognising the signs of too much drink. I had them, every one; and, as most men know too well, they are all summed up in the simple expression, “hot coppers.” Alas! I was destined to become only too familiar with the accursed symptoms. Involuntarily, when I had dressed, I put my hands in my pockets; there was money, gold—sovereigns—my pocket was full of them. I counted them in a stupor. Forty-nine, and one rolled into the corner—fifty; it was part of the sum for which I had sold my appetite; and on the table lay the letter from Messrs. Crackett Charges, inviting me to draw thirty pounds a month. Then it was all true!

I sat down, and, with my throbbing temples and, feverish pulse, tried to make it out. Everything became plain except the name of the purchaser—Mr.—Mr.—I remembered Boule-de-neige, the house, the room, and the dinner, but not the name of that arch-deceiver, the whole of whose villainy I was far from realising yet; and until it was told me later on I never did remember the name.

It was strange. Men are said to have sold their souls to the devil for money, bartering away an eternity of happiness for a few years of pleasure; but as for me, I had exchanged, as it seemed at first sight, nothing but the inconvenience of a healthy appetite with nothing to eat for the means of living comfortably without it. There could be no sin in such a transaction; it was on a different level altogether from the bargain made by Faust. And there were the broad, the benevolent facts, so to speak—my pocket full of sovereigns; and the letter instructing me to call at an office for thirty pounds monthly.

Benevolent facts I thought them. You shall see. No sin could be laid to my door for the transaction. You shall judge. No harm could follow so simple a piece of business. You shall read. On my way out I met the landlady, who gave me notice to quit at the end of the week.

“I thought you were a quiet and a sober young man,” she said. “Ah, never will I trust to good looks again. Me and the lodgers kept awake till two in the morning with your singing and dancing, let alone banging the floor with the chairs. Not an hour after your week’s up, if you was to pray on your knees, shall you stay. And next door threatening the police; and me a quiet woman for twenty years.”

My heart sank again. But, after all, perhaps it was I myself, not the good old gentleman, my kind patron and benefactor, at all, who was the cause of this disturbance. It was undoubtedly true that I had drunk a great quantity of wine. I begged her pardon humbly, and passed out.

It was now eleven o’clock, but I felt no desire for breakfast. That was an experience quite novel to me. Still, I went to a coffee-house, according to habit, and ordered some tea and a rasher. When they came I discovered, with a horrid foreboding of worse misfortune, that my taste was gone. Except that one thing was solid and the other liquid, I distinguished nothing. Nor did my sense of smell assist me; as I found later, my nose was affected agreeably or disagreeably, but I had no other use for it. Gunpowder, sulphuretted hydrogen gas, and tobacco offended my nose. So did certain smells belonging to cookery. On the other hand, certain flowers, tea, and claret pleased me, but I was unable to distinguish between them. Not only could I not taste things, but I had no gratification in eating them. I ate and drank mechanically, because I knew that the body must be kept going on something.

All this knowledge, however, and more, came by degrees. After making a forced breakfast I bent my steps to the lawyers’, who had an office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

The letter was received by a conceited young clerk in shiny black habiliments, and a self-satisfied manner.

“Ha,” he said, “I thought you would soon come round to us after the letter. Sign that. You haven’t been long. None of them are.”

It was a receipt, and I was on the point of asking if it was to be signed in blood, when he settled the question by giving me ink.

“There, Luke Lucraft, across the eightpenny stamp. I’m not allowed to answer any questions you may put, Mr. Lucraft, nor to ask you any; so take your money, and good morning to you. I suppose, like the rest of them, you don’t know the name of your benefactor, and would like to—yes; but you needn’t ask me; and I’ve orders not to admit you to see either Mr. Charges or Mr. Crackett. They’d trouble enough with the last but one. He broke into their office once, drunk, and laid about him with the ruler.”

I burst into a cold dew of terror.

“However, Mr. Lucraft, I hope you will be more fortunate than your predecessors.”

“Where are they? Who are they?”

“I do not know where they are, not for a certainty,” he replied with a grin. “But we may guess. Dead and buried they are, all of them. Gone to kingdom come; all died of the same thing, too. Delicious Trimmings killed them. Poor old gentleman! He’s too good for this world, as everybody knows, and the more he’s taken in the more he’s deceived. Anyhow, he’s very unlucky in his pensioners. He did say when the last went off that he would have no more; he wept over it, and declared that his bounty was always abused; but there never was such a benevolent old chap. I only wish he’d take a fancy to me.”

“What did you say is his name, by the way?”

The clerk looked at me with a ginning wink.

“If you don’t know, I am sure I do not,” he said. “Here is the cheque, Mr. Lucraft, and I hope you will continue to come here and draw it a good deal longer than the other chaps. But there’s a blight on the pensioners. Lord, what a healthy chap Tom Kirby—he was a Monmouth man—looked when he first came for his cheques! As strong as a bull and as fresh as a lark.”

“A good appetite had he?”

“No; couldn’t eat anything after a bit; said he fancied nothing. He pined away and died in a galloping consumption before the third month was due. Nobody ever saw him drinking, but he was drunk every night like the rest. Perhaps it’s only coincidence. Better luck to you, Mr. Lucraft.”

The conversation did not reassure me, and I determined to go over to Bucklersbury at once and see my patron. I found the post against which I was leaning when he accosted me; there was no doubt about that, for the hares and cauliflowers were still in the shop-window, only they looked disgusting to me this morning. I found the street into which he had led me, and then—then—it was the most extraordinary thing, I could not find the door by which we entered. Not only was there no door, but there seemed no place where such a door as I remembered could exist in this little winding narrow street. I went up and down twice. I looked at all the windows. I asked a policeman if he had ever seen an old gentleman about the street such as I described, or such a Negro as Boule-de-neige; but he could give me no information. Only as I prowled slowly along the pavement I heard distinctly—it gave me a nervous shock that I could not account for—the infernal “Cluck-cluck!” of the Negro with the cold soft hands, the wrinkled skin, and the fiery eyes. He was chuckling at me from some hiding-place of his own, where he was safe. He had done me no harm that I knew of, but I hated him at that moment.

I was by this time not at all elated at my good fortune. I even craved to have back again what I had sold. I felt heavy at heart, and had a presentiment of fresh trouble before me. I thought of the fate of those unknown and unfortunate predecessors, all dead in consequence of drink, evil courses, and D.T. Heavens! Was I too to die miserably with delirium tremens, after I had sold my taste, and could only tell brandy from water, like the cask which might hold either, by the smell?

At half-past one, the luncheon time for all who have appetites, the sense of being gorged came upon me again, but this time without the giddiness. I went to a cigar divan in the Strand, and fell sound asleep. When I awoke at six the oppression had passed away. And now I began to realise something of the consequences of my act; I say something, because worse, far worse, remained behind. I was doomed, I saw clearly, to be the victim of the old man’s gluttony. He would eat, and I should suffer. Already, as I guessed from the clerk’s statements, he had killed three strong men before me. I was to be the fourth. I went again to Bucklersbury, and sought in every house for something that might give me a due. I loitered in the quiet City streets in the hope of finding my tormentor, and forcing him to give me back my bond. There was no due, and I did not meet him. But I felt him. He began dinner, as nearly as I could fed, about seven o’clock; he took his meal with deliberation, judging from the gradual nature of my sensations; but he took an amazing quantity, and by eight o’clock the weight upon me was so great that I could scarcely breathe. How I cursed my folly! How I impotently writhed under the burden I had wantonly laid upon myself! And then he began to drink. The fiend, the scoundrel! I felt the fumes mount to my head; there was no exhilaration, no forgetfulness of misery; none of the pleasant graduation of excitement, hope, and confidence, through which men are accustomed to pass before arriving at the final stage, the complete oblivion, of intoxication. I felt myself getting gradually but hopelessly drunk. I struggled against the feeling, but in vain; the houses went round and round with me; my speech, when I tried to speak, became thick; the flags of the pavement flew up and struck me violently on the forehead, and I became unconscious of what happened afterwards.

In the morning I found myself lying on a stone bench in a small whitewashed room. My brows were throbbing and my throat was parched, and in my brain was ringing, I do not know why, the infernal “Cluck-cluck!” of the Negro with derisive iteration. I had not long to meditate; the door opened, and a constable appeared. “Now then,” he said roughly, “if you can stand upright by this time, come along.”

It was clear enough to me now what had happened: I was in custody, in a police-cell, and I was going before the magistrate.

I dream of that ignominy still, though forty years have passed since I was placed in the dock and asked what I had to say for myself. “Drunk and disorderly.” There was nothing to say, I gave a false name, paid my fine, and was allowed to go away. Then I went to my lodgings, and tried to face the position.

It was clear that the demon to whom I had sold myself was incapable of the slightest consideration towards me. He would eat and drink as much as he felt disposed to do, careless of any consequences that might befall me. It was equally evident that he intended to make the most of his bargain, to eat enormously every day, and to drink himself drunk every night. And I was powerless. Meantime it was becoming evident that the consequences to me would be as serious as if I were myself guilty of these excesses. One drop of comfort alone remained: my appetite would fail, and my tormentor would be punished where he would feel it most. I lay down and waited till luncheon time; no sense of repletion came over me; it was clear, therefore, that he was already suffering a vicarious punishment, so to speak, for yesterday’s debauch. In the afternoon I crept out, fearful at every step of meeting some one who had seen my shame in the morning, and took in my regular allowance of food—it was horrible to think that the night’s excesses made no difference whatever in my capacity for food, which now remained at a steady quantity. In fact I was a human engine which at stated times required water and fuel. In the evening I returned early, in order to avoid a repetition of last night’s disgrace, and locked myself in.

At seven dinner began again; at eight I was gorged and choking; at nine I was drunk. I thought the best course would be for me to hide myself altogether. I took a little roadside cottage north of Islington, put in some furniture, and retired there to live entirely by myself. In the calmness of despair I doomed my life to solitude. Within the walls of one place at least I was secure. And here, night after night, I awaited with trembling the attacks of gluttony, surfeit and drunkenness; for my master had no pity.

As for my meals, I bought them ready prepared. They consisted almost wholly of bread and cold mutton. You may judge of the absolutely tasteless condition to which I was reduced, when I write calmly and truthfully that cold mutton was as agreeable to me as any other form of food. I found, after repeated trials, that mutton forms the best fuel—it is better than either beef or pork—and keeps the human engine at work for the longest time. So I had mutton. As I discovered also that bulk was necessary, and that only a certain amount of animal food was wanted, I used to have cold potatoes always ready. I stoked twice a day, at eleven in the morning and about five in the afternoon. Thus fortified, I got through the miserable hours as best I could.

I look back now on that period as one of unmitigated misery and despair. I was daily growing more bloated, fatter, and flabbier in the cheeks. My hands trembled in the morning. I seemed to be losing the power of connected thought. My very lips were thickening.

I hope I can make it clear what was the effect of my bargain on myself—I mean without reference to the sufferings inflicted on me by my tyrant. People, however, never can know, unless they happen to be like myself, which is unlikely, how great a part eating and drinking take in the conduct of life. Between the rest of the world and me there was a great gulf fixed. They could enjoy, I could not; they could celebrate every joyful event with something additional to eat; they could make a little festival of every day; they could give to happiness an outward and tangible form. Alas, not only was I debarred from this, but I was cut off even from joy itself; for, if you look at it steadily, you will find that most of human joy or suffering is connected with the senses. I had bartered away a good half of mine, and the rest seemed in mourning for the loss of their fellows. As for my pale and colourless life, it was as monotonous as the clock. If I neglected to stoke, the usual feebleness would follow. There was no gracious looking forward to a pleasant dinner; no trembling anticipations in hope and fear of what might be preparing; no cheerful contemplation of the joint while the carver sharpens his knife; no discussions of flavour and richness; no modestly-hazarded conclusions as to more currants; no rolling of the wine-glass in the fingers to the light, and smacking of lips over the first sip—all these things were lost to me. Reader, if haply this memoir ever sees a posthumous light, think what would happen to yourself if eating and drinking, those perennial joys of humanity, which last from the infantine pap to the senile Revelenta Arabica, were taken away.

All things tasted alike, as I have said, and cold mutton formed my staple dish. As I could only distinguish between beer, wine, coffee, and tea by the look, I drank water. If I ventured, which was seldom, to take my dinner in a restaurant I would choose my pièce de résistance by the look, by some fancied grace in the shape, but not by taste or smell. The brown of roast beef might attract me one day and repel me the next. I was pleased with the comeliness of a game-pie, or tickled by some inexplicable external charm of a beefsteak-pudding. But three quarters of my life were gone, and with them all my happiness.

If you have no appetite for eating, you can enjoy nothing in the whole world. That is an axiom. I could not taste, therefore my eye ceased to feel delight in pleasant sights, and my ear in pleasant sounds. It was not with me as in the case of a blind man, that an abnormal development of some other sense ensued; quite the contrary. In selling one, I seem to have sold them all. For, as I discovered, man is one and inseparable; you cannot split him up; and when my arch-deceiver bought my appetite, he bought me out and out. A wine-merchant might as well pretend to sell the bouquet of claret and preserve the body; or a painter the colour of his picture and preserve the drawing; or a sculptor the grace of his group and keep the marble. The thing was simple, and all was lost.

The time lasted for about four months. On the first of each month I went to receive my pay—the wages of sin—from the clerk, who surveyed me critically, but said nothing till the morning of the fourth month. Then, while he handed me my money, he whispered confidentially across the table:

“Look here, old fellow, you know; you’re going it, worse than poor Tom Kirby. Why don’t you stop it? What is the good of a feller’s drinking himself to death? The old gentleman was here yesterday, asking me how you looked, and if you continued steady. Pull up, old man, and knock it off.”

I took the money in my trembling hands and slunk away abashed. When I got home again, I am not ashamed to say that I cried like a child.

Delirium tremens! That would begin soon, and then the end would not be far off. It was too awful. Think of my position. I was but four-and-twenty. Not only was I deprived of the pleasure—mind you, a very real pleasure—of eating and drinking; was the most temperate man in the world, though that was no great credit to myself, considering; and yet I bore in my face and my appearance, and felt in my very brain, all the marks and signs of confirmed drunkenness and the hopelessness of it. That hardened old voluptuary, that demon of gluttony, that secret murderer, would have no pity. He must have felt by the falling-off of the splendid appetite which he was doing his utmost to ruin, that things were getting worse, and he was resolved—I had suspected this for some time—to kill me off by drinking me to death.

I believe I should have been dead in another week, but for a blessed respite, due, I afterwards discovered, to my demon being laid up with so violent a sore throat that he could not even swallow. What was my joy at being able to go to bed sober, to wake without a headache, to feel my bad symptoms slowly disappearing, to recover my nerves! For a whole fortnight I was happy—so happy that I even believed the improvement would last and that the old man was penitent. One day, after fourteen days of veritable earthly paradise, I was walking along the Strand—for I was no longer afraid of venturing out—and met my old manager, Juliet’s father. He greeted me with a warmth that was quite touching under all the circumstances.

“My dear boy, I have been longing to know your whereabout. Come and tell me all about it. Have you dined? Let us have some dinner together.”

I excused myself, and asked after Juliet.

“Juliet is but so-so. Ah do you know, Lucraft, sometimes I think that I did wrong to part you. And yet, you know, you had no money. Make some, my boy, and come back to us.”

This was hearty. I forgot my troubles and my state of bondage and everything, except Juliet.

“I—I—I have money,” I said. “I have come into a little money unexpectedly.”

“Have you?” he replied, clasping me by the hand. “Then come down and see Juliet. Or—stay; no. The day after tomorrow is Juliet’s ben. We are playing at Richmond. We have one of your own parts—you shall be Sir Harry Wildair. I will alter the bills. You are sure to come?”

“Sure to come,” I said with animation. “Capital! I know every line in the part. Tell Juliet that an old friend will act with her.”

We made a few new arrangements and parted. I bought a copy of the play at Lacy’s, and studied the part over again.

Next day I drove to Richmond, and found my Juliet in an impatience that went to my heart. She had grown thin and pale; I, on the other hand, fat and red-faced, though a fortnight’s respite had done wonders to restore me.

“I don’t think you are looking so well as you used,” said the dear girl. “Mr. Mould”—Mr. Mould was the dresser—“says that you look as if you had been drinking.”

I laughed, but felt a little uneasy.

We rang up at seven.

I began with all my former fire and vigour, because I was acting again with Juliet. The old life came back to me; I forgot my troubles; I was really happy, and I believe I acted well. At all events, the house applauded. Between the first and second act a sudden terror seized me. I felt that the old man was eating again. That passed off, because he ate very little. But then he began to drink, and to drink fast.

It was no use fighting against it. I believe the villain must have been drinking raw brandy, because I was drunk in five minutes. I staggered and reeled about on the stage, I laughed wildly and sang foolishly, and then I tumbled down in a heap and could not get up again. The last thing I remember is the angry roar of poor old Kerrans, beside himself with passion, telling the carpenters to carry that drunken beast away and throw him into the road. I heard afterwards that they were obliged to drop the curtain, and that the éclat of poor Juliet’s benefit was entirely spoiled. As for myself, the carpenters carried me out to the middle of Richmond Green, where they were going to leave me, only one of them had compassion, and wheeled me to his own house in a barrow.

I was quite crushed by this blow. For the first time I felt tempted to commit suicide and end it all. To be sure I ought to have foreseen this, and all the other dreadful things. Directly my master, my owner, got able to swallow, though he could not eat, he could drink, and ordered the most fiery liquor he could procure, with a view to kill me off and begin with another victim.

But Providence ruled otherwise.

One evening, a few days after my disgrace at the Richmond Theatre, I was sitting in my lonely cottage, expectant of the usual drunken bout, when I felt a curious agitation within me, an internal struggle, as if through all my veins a tempestuous wave was surging and rushing. I lay down.

“This is some new devilry of the old man,” I said to myself. “Let him do his worst; at least, I must try to bear it with resignation.” I began to speculate on my inevitable and approaching end, and to wonder curiously what proportion of the sin of all this drunkenness would be laid to my charge.

To my astonishment nothing more followed. The tumult of my system gradually subsided, and I fell asleep.

In the morning I awoke late, and missed the usual headache. I had, therefore, I was surprised to find, actually not been drunk the night before. I rose with my customary depression, and was astonished to discover that my nerves were steadier and spirits higher than I had known for a long time.

I mechanically went to the cupboard and pulled out my cold mutton and potatoes. Who can picture my joy when I found that I could taste the meat again, and that it was nasty? I hardly believed my senses; in fact, I had lost them for so long that it was difficult to understand that they had come back to me. I tried the potatoes. Heavens, what a horrible thing to a well-regulated palate is a cold boiled potato!

At first, as I said, I could not believe that I had recovered my taste; then, as the truth forced itself upon me, and I found that I could not only taste, but was actually hungry, I jumped and danced, and was beside myself with joy. Think of a convict suddenly released, and declared guiltless of the charges brought against him. Think of a prisoner on the very ladder of the gallows-tree, with the rope round his neck, reprieved and pardoned. Think of one doomed to death by his physician receiving the assurance that it was all a mistake, and that he would gather up long years of life as in a sheaf. And think that such joy as these would feel, I felt—and more!

I went to the nearest coffee-shop and ordered bacon, eggs, and tea, offering up a short grace with every plate as it came. And then, because I felt sure that my old tormentor must be dead, I repaired to my lawyer’s, and saw the clerk.

“Ah,” he said, “the poor old man’s gone at last! Went out like the snuff of a candle. His illness was only twenty-four hours. Well, he’s gone to heaven, if ever man did.”

“What did he die of—too much eating and drinking?”

“Mr. Lucraft,” said the clerk severely, “this is not the tone for you to adopt towards that distinguished man, your benefactor. He died, sir—being a man of moral, temperate, and even abstemious life, though of full habit—of apoplexy.”

“Oh!” I said, careless what the clerk said, but glad to be quite sure that the diabolical old villain was really dead. I suppose never was such joy over repentance of any sinner as mine over the death of that murdering glutton, for whom no words of hatred were too strong.

“I think you’ve got to see our senior partner,” said the clerk. “Step this way.”

He led me to a room where I found a grave and elderly gentleman sitting at a table.

“Mr. Lucraft?” he said. “I was expecting you. I saw your late patron’s Negro this morning. He told me that you would call.”

I stared, but said nothing.

“I have a communication to make to you, on the part of our departed friend, Mr. Ebenezer Grumbelow. It is dated a few weeks since, and is to the effect that a sum of money which I hold was to be placed in your hands in case of death. This, it appears, he anticipated, for some reason or other.”

“Ebenezer Grumbelow.” That was the name which had so long escaped my memory—“Ebenezer Grumbelow.”

I said nothing, but stared with all my eyes.

“My poor friend,” the lawyer went on, “after remarking that unless you change your unfortunate habits you will come to no good, gave me this money himself—here is the cheque—so that it will not appear in his last will and testament.”

I took it in silence.

“Well, sir,”—he looked at me in some surprise—“have you no observation to make, or remark to offer, on this generosity?”

“None,” I said.

“I do not know,” he continued; “I do not know—your signature here, if you please—what reason Mr. Grumbelow had in taking you up, or what claim you possessed upon his consideration; but I think, sir, I do think, that some expression, some sense of regret, is due.”

I buttoned up the cheque in my pocket.

“Mr. Grumbelow was a philanthropist, I believe, sir?”

“He was. As a philanthropist, as a supporter of charities, as a public donor of great amount, Mr. Grumbelow’s name stands in the front. So much we all know.”

“A religious man, too?”

“Surely, surely; one of our most deeply religious men. A man who was not ashamed of his saintly profession.”

“Cluck-cluck!”

It was the familiar face of Boule-de-neige at the door.

“You know, I suppose,” said the lawyer, “Mr. Grumbelow’s body-servant, a truly Christian Negro?”

“Was there,” I asked, “any clause in Mr. Grumbelow’s letter—any conditions attached to this gift?”

“None whatever. It is a free gift. Stay, there is a postscript which I ought to have read to you. You will perhaps understand it. In it Mr. Grumbelow says that as to the services rendered by him to you, and by you to him, it will be best for your own sake to keep them secret.”

I bowed.

“I may now tell you, Mr. Lucraft, without at all wishing to break any confidence that may have existed between you and the deceased, that a friend of Mr. Grumbelow’s—no other, indeed, than the Rev. Jabez Jumbles, a name doubtless known to you—intends to write the biography of this distinguished and religious man, as an example to the young. Any help you can afford to so desirable an end will be gratefully received. Particularly, Mr. Lucraft, any communication on the subject of his continual help given to young men, who regularly disappointed him and died of drink.”

I bowed again and retired.

Did any one ever hear of such a wicked old man?

Outside the office I was joined by the Negro.

“What have you got to say to me, detestable wretch?” I cried, shaking my fist in his withered old face.

“Cluck-cluck! Massa not angry with poor old Boule-de-neige. How young massa? Young massa pretty well? How de lubly abbadide of de young gegleman? How his strong srumjack? Cluck-cluck?”

He kept at a safe distance from me. I think I should have killed him if I had ever clutched him by the throat.

“Ole massa him always ask, ‘How dat young debble? Go and see, Boule-de-neige.’ I go to young massa’s cottage daraway, and come back. ‘Him berry dam bad, sir.’ I say; ‘him going to de debble berry fast, just like dem oders. De folk all say he drink too much for his berry fine constitution.’ Cluck-cluck! Ole massa he only say ebbery night, ‘Bring de brandy, Boule-de-neige; let’s finish him.’ Cluck-cluck!”

Here was a Christian Negro for you!

“Tell me, what did your master die of?”

“Apple perplexity, massa.”

“Ah! what else? Come, Boule-de-neige, I know a good deal; tell me more.”

“Massa’s time up,” he whispered, coming close to me. “Time quite up, and him berry much ’fraid. Massa Lucraft want servant? Boule-de-neige berry good servant. Cook lubly dinner; make massa rich, like Massa Grumbelow.”

“I’d rather hire the devil!” I exclaimed.

“Cluck-cluck-cluck!” grinned the creature; and really he looked at the moment as much like the devil as one could wish. “Cluck! dat massa can do if massa like.”

I rushed away, too much excited by the recovery of my freedom to regard what he said.

I was free! What next?

Mr. Kerrans next. I found Him in that state of mind which becomes the heavy father outraged in his best and tenderest feelings. I had to give him a good deal of brandy-and-water; but I succeeded at length in winning him to my way of thinking, and he gave me an interview with Juliet.

The dear girl forgave me.

I have only to add that, a month after our union, I told my wife the whole story.

She asked if I took her for a fool.

Since then I have told it to a great many persons, not one of whom ever believed it, except one old lady perhaps; a dear old lady in many respects, only she believes in Joanna Southcott as well as in my story, and mixes up the prophetess with my old murderer. And to the day of her death Juliet never allowed me the key of the spirit-case. There was no telling, she said, when a man might break out again.