"They do, and abominably bad taste I call it, unless a man has neglected to insure his life, and _then_ I doubt if a person of honour could make use of information from--from that quarter. Banshees are chiefly the spectres of attached and anxious old family nurses, women of the lower orders, and completely dest.i.tute of tact. I call a Banshee rather a curse than a boon and a blessing to men. Like most old family servants, they are apt to be presuming."

It occurred to me that the complacent spectre himself was not an unmixed delight to the inhabitants of Castle Perilous, or at least to their guests, for they never lay in the Green Chamber themselves.

"Can nothing be done," I asked sympathetically, "to alleviate the disorders which you say are so common and distressing?"

"The old system of spiritual physic," replied the spectre, "is obsolete, and the holy-water cure, in particular, has almost ceased to number any advocates, except the Rev. Dr F. G. Lee, whose books," said this candid apparition, "appear to me to indicate superst.i.tious credulity. No, I don't know that any new discoveries have been made in this branch of therapeutics. In the last generation they tried to bolt me with a bishop: like putting a ferret into a rabbit-warren, you know. Nothing came of _that_, and lately the Psychical Society attempted to ascertain my weight by an ingenious mechanism. But they prescribed nothing, and made me feel so nervous that I was rapping at large, and knocking furniture about for months. The fact is that n.o.body understands the complaint, nor can detect the cause that makes the ghost of a man who was perfectly rational in life behave like an uneducated buffoon afterwards.

The real reason, as I have tried to explain to you, is a solution of continuity between subjective thought and will on the side of the spectre, and objective expression of them--confound it--"

Here he vanished, and the sound of heavy feet was heard promenading the room, and b.a.l.l.s of incandescent light floated about irresolutely, accompanied by the appearance of a bearded man in armour. The door (which I had locked and bolted before going to bed) kept opening and shutting rapidly, so as to cause a draught, and my dog fled under the bed with a long low howl.

"I do hope," remarked the spectre, presently reappearing, "that these interruptions (only fresh ill.u.s.trations of our malady) have not frightened your dog into a fit. I have known very valuable and attached dogs expire of mere unreasoning terror on similar unfortunate occasions."

"I'm sure I don't wonder at it," I replied; "but I believe Bingo is still alive; in fact, I hear him scratching himself."

"Would you like to examine him?" asked the spectre.

"Oh, thanks, I am sure he is all right," I answered (for nothing in the world would have induced me to get out of bed while he was in the room).

"Do you object to a cigarette?"

"Not at all, not at all; but Lady Perilous, I a.s.sure you, is a very old fashioned chatelaine. However, if _you_ choose to risk it--"

I found my cigarette-case in my hand, opened it, and selected one of its contents, which I placed between my lips. As I was looking round for a match-box, the spectre courteously put his forefinger to the end of the cigarette, which lighted at once.

"Perhaps you wonder," he remarked, "why I remain at Castle Perilous, the very one of all my places which I never could bear while I was alive--as you call it?"

"I had a delicacy about asking," I answered.

"Well," he continued, "I am the family genius."

"I might have guessed _that_," I said.

He bowed and went on. "It is hereditary in our house, and I hold the position of genius till I am relieved. For example, when the family want to dig up the buried treasure under the old bridge, I thunder and lighten and cause such a storm that they desist."

"Why on earth do you do _that_?" I asked. "It seems hardly worth while to have a genius at all."

"In the interests of the family morality. The money would soon go on the turf, and on dice, drink, etc., if they excavated it; and then I work the curse, and bring off the prophecies, and so forth."

"What prophecies?"

"Oh, the rigmarole the old family seer came out with before they burned him for an unpalatable prediction at the time of the '15. He was very much vexed about it, of course, and he just prophesied any nonsense of a disagreeable nature that came into his head. You know what these crofter fellows are--ungrateful, vindictive rascals. He had been in receipt of outdoor relief for years. Well, he prophesied stuff like this: 'When the owl and the eagle meet on the same blasted rowan tree, then a la.s.sie in a white hood from the east shall make the burn of Cross-cleugh run full red,' and drivel of that insane kind. Well, you can't think what trouble that particular prophecy gave me. It had to be fulfilled, of course, for the family credit, and I brought it off as near as, I flatter myself, it could be done."

"Lady Perilous was telling me about it last night," I said, with a shudder. "It was a horrible affair,"

"Yes, no doubt, no doubt; a cruel business! But how I am to manage some of them I'm sure _I_ don't know. There's one of them in rhyme. Let me see, how does it go?

"'When Mackenzie lies in the perilous ha', The wild Red c.o.c.k on the roof shall craw, And the lady shall flee ere the day shall daw, And the land shall girn in the deed man's thraw.'

"The 'crowing of the wild Red c.o.c.k' means that the castle shall be burned down, of course (I'm beginning to know his style by this time), and the lady is to elope, and the laird--that's Lord Perilous--is to expire in the 'deed man's thraw': that is the name the old people give the Secret Room. And all this is to happen when a Mackenzie, a member of a clan with which we are at feud, sleeps in the Haunted Chamber--where we are just now. By the way, what is _your_ name?"

I don't know what made me reply, "Allan Mackenzie." It was true, but it was not politic.

"By Jove!" said the spectre, eagerly. "Here's a chance! I don't suppose a Mackenzie has slept here for those hundred years. And now, how is it to be done? Setting fire to the castle is simple"--here I remembered how he had lighted my cigarette--"but who on earth is to elope with Lady Perilous? She's fifty if she's a day, and evangelical a tout ca.s.ser! Oh no; the thing is out of the question. It really must be put off for another generation or two. There is no hurry."

I felt a good deal relieved. He was clearly a being of extraordinary powers, and might, for anything I knew, have made _me_ run away with Lady Perilous. And then, when the pangs of remorse began to tell on her ladyship, never a very lively woman at the best of times--However, the spectre seemed to have thought better of it.

"Don't you think it is rather hard on a family," I asked, "to have a family genius, and prophecies, and a curse, and--"

"And everything handsome about them," he interrupted me by exclaiming; "and you call yourself a Mackenzie of Megasky! What has become of family pride? Why, you yourselves have Gruagach of the Red Hand in the hall, and he, I can tell you, is a very different sort of spectre from _me_.

Pre-Christian, you know--one of the oldest ghosts in Ross-shire. But as to 'hard on a family,' why, n.o.blesse oblige."

"Considering that you are the family genius, you don't seem to have brought them much luck," I put in, for the house of Perilous is neither rich in gold nor very distinguished in history.

"Yes, but just think what they would have been without a family genius, if they are what they are with one! Besides, the prophecies are really responsible," he added, with the air of one who says, "I have a partner--Mr. Jorkins."

"Do you mind telling me one thing?" I asked eagerly. "What is the mystery of the Secret Chamber--I mean the room whither the heir is taken when he comes of age, and he never smiles again, nor touches a card except at baccarat?"

"Never smiles _again_!" said the spectre. "Doesn't he? Are you quite certain that he ever smiled _before_?"

This was a new way of looking at the question, and rather disconcerted me.

"I did not know the Master of Perilous before he came of age," said I; "but I have been here for a week, and watched him and Lord Perilous, and I never observed a smile wander over their lips. And yet little Tompkins" (he was the chief social buffoon of the hour) "has been in great force, and I may say that I myself have occasionally provoked a grin from the good-natured."

"That's just it," said the spectre. "The Perilouses have no sense of humour--never had. I am entirely dest.i.tute of it myself. Even in Scotland, even _here_, this family failing has been remarked--been the subject, I may say, of unfavourable comment. The Perilous of the period lost his head because he did not see the point of a conundrum of Macbeth's. We felt, some time in the fifteenth century, that this peculiarity needed to be honourably accounted for, and the family developed that story of the Secret Chamber, and the Horror in the house.

There is nothing in the chamber whatever,--neither a family idiot aged three hundred years, nor a skeleton, nor the devil, nor a wizard, nor missing t.i.tle-deeds. The affair is a mere formality to account creditably for the fact that we never see anything to laugh at--never see the joke. Some people can't see ghosts, you know" (lucky people! thought I), "and some can't see jokes."

"This is very disappointing," I said.

"I can't help it," said the spectre; "the truth often is. Did you ever hear the explanation of the haunted house in Berkeley Square?"

"Yes," said I. "The bell was heard to ring thrice with terrific vehemence, and on rushing to the fatal scene they found him beautiful in death."

"Fudge!" replied the spectre. "The lease and furniture were left to an old lady, who was not to underlet the house nor sell the things. She had a house of her own in Albemarle Street which she preferred, and so the house in Berkeley Square was never let till the lease expired. That's the whole affair. The house was empty, and political economists could conceive no reason for the waste of rent except that it was haunted. The rest was all Miss Broughton's imagination, in 'Tales for Christmas Eve.'"

He had evidently got on his hobby, and was beginning to be rather tedious. The contempt which a genuine old family ghost has for mere parvenus and impostors is not to be expressed in mere words apparently, for Mauth-hounds of prodigious size and blackness, with white birds, and other disastrous omens, now began to display themselves profusely in the Haunted Chamber. Accustomed as I had become to regard all these appearances as mere automatic symptoms, I confess that I heard with pleasure the crow of a distant c.o.c.k.

"You have enabled me to pa.s.s a most instructive evening, most agreeable, too, I am sure," I remarked to the spectre, "but you will pardon me for observing that the first c.o.c.k has gone. Don't let me make you too late for any appointment you may have about this time--anywhere."

"Oh, you still believe in that old superst.i.tion about c.o.c.k-crow, do you?"

he sneered. "'I thought you had been too well educated. 'It faded on the crowing of the c.o.c.k,' did it, indeed, and that in Denmark too,--almost within the Arctic Circle! Why, in those high lat.i.tudes, and in summer, a ghost would not have an hour to himself on these principles. Don't you remember the c.o.c.k Lord Dufferin took North with him, which crowed at sunrise, and ended by crowing without intermission and going mad, when the sun did not set at all? You must observe that any rule of that sort about c.o.c.k-crow would lead to shocking irregularities, and to an early- closing movement for spectres in summer, which would be ruinous to business--simply ruinous--and, in these days of compet.i.tion, intolerable."

This was awful, for I could see no way of getting rid of him. He might stay to breakfast, or anything.

"By the way," he asked, "who does the c.o.c.k at the Lyceum just now? It is a small but very exacting part--'Act I. scene I. c.o.c.k crows.'"

"I believe Mr. Irving has engaged a real fowl, to crow at the right moment behind the scenes," I said. "He is always very particular about these details. Quite right too. 'The c.o.c.k, by kind permission of the Aylesbury Dairy Company,' is on the bills. They have no c.o.c.k at the Francais; Mounet Sully would not hear of it."

I knew nothing about it, but if this detestable spectre was going to launch out concerning art and the drama there would be no sleep for me.