Stories of Comedy Part 11

"I see a flock of dust--no! a cloud of sheep. Pshaw! I see the London coach coming in. There are three outsides, and the guard has flung a parcel to Mrs. Jenkins's maid."

"Distraction! Look once more, Sister Anne."

"I see a crowd,--a shutter,--a shutter with a man on it,--a beadle,--forty little boys,--Gracious goodness! what _can_ it be?" and down stairs tumbled Sister Anne, and was looking out of the parlor-window by her sister's side, when the crowd she had perceived from the garret pa.s.sed close by them.

At the head walked the beadle, slashing about at the little boys.

Two scores of these followed and surrounded

A SHUTTER carried by four men.

On the shutter lay _Frederick_! He was ghastly pale; his hair was draggled over his face; his clothes stuck tight to him on account of the wet; streams of water gurgled down the shutter-sides. But he was not dead! He turned one eye round towards the window where Mrs. Bluebeard sat, and gave her a look which she never could forget.

Sambo brought up the rear of the procession. He was quite wet through; and, if anything would have put his hair out of curl, his ducking would have done so. But, as he was not a gentleman, he was allowed to walk home on foot, and, as he pa.s.sed the widow's window, he gave her one dreadful glance with his goggling black eyes, and moved on, pointing with his hands to the shutter.

John Thomas the footman was instantly despatched to Dr. Sly's to have news of the patient. There was no shilly-shallying now. He came back in half an hour to say that Mr. Frederick flung himself into Bachelor's Acre fish-pond with Sambo, had been dragged out with difficulty, had been put to bed, and had a pint of white wine whey, and was pretty comfortable. "Thank Heaven!" said the widow, and gave John Thomas a seven-shilling piece, and sat down with a lightened heart to tea. "What a heart!" said she to Sister Anne. "And O, what a pity it is that he squints!"

Here the two captains arrived. They had not been to the Bachelor's Walk; they had remained at Major Macabaw's consulting the Schiedam. They had made up their minds what to say. "Hang the fellow! he will never have the pluck to drown himself," said Captain Blackbeard. "Let us argue on that, as we may safely."

"My sweet lady," said he, accordingly, "we have had the pond dragged. No Mr. Sly. And the fisherman who keeps the punt a.s.sures us that he has not been there all day."

"Audacious falsehood!" said the widow, her eyes flashing fire. "Go, heartless man! who dares to trifle thus with the feelings of a respectable and unprotected woman. Go, sir, you're only fit for the love of a--Dolly--Coddlins!" She p.r.o.nounced the _Coddlins_ with a withering sarcasm that struck the captain aghast; and, sailing out of the room, she left her tea untasted, and did not wish either of the military gentlemen good night.

But, gentles, an' ye know the delicate fibre of woman's heart, ye will not in very sooth believe that such events as those we have described--such tempests of pa.s.sion--fierce winds of woe--blinding lightnings of tremendous joy and tremendous grief--could pa.s.s over one frail flower and leave it all unscathed. No! Grief kills as joy doth.

Doth not the scorching sun nip the rose-bud as well as the bitter wind?

As Mrs. Sigourney sweetly sings:--

"Ah! the heart is a soft and a delicate thing; Ah! the heart is a lute with a thrilling string; A spirit that floats on a gossamer's wing!"

Such was Fatima's heart. In a word, the preceding events had a powerful effect upon her nervous system, and she was ordered much quiet and sal-volatile by her skilful medical attendant, Dr. Glauber.

To be so ardently, pa.s.sionately loved as she was, to know that Frederick had twice plunged into death from attachment to her, was to awaken in her bosom "a thrilling string," indeed! Could she witness such attachment and not be touched by it? She _was_ touched by it,--she was influenced by the virtues, by the pa.s.sion, by the misfortunes, of Frederick: but then he was so abominably ugly that she could not--she could not consent to become his bride!

She told Dr. Sly so. "I respect and esteem your nephew," said she; "but my resolve is made. I will continue faithful to that blessed saint whose monument is ever before my eyes" (she pointed to the churchyard as she spoke). "Leave this poor tortured heart in quiet. It has already suffered more than most hearts could bear. I will repose under the shadow of that tomb until I am called to rest within it,--to rest by the side of my Bluebeard!"

The ranunculuses, rhododendra, and polyanthuses, which ornamented that mausoleum, had somehow been suffered to run greatly to seed during the last few months, and it was with no slight self-accusation that she acknowledged this fact on visiting "the garden of the grave," as she called it; and she scolded the beadle soundly for neglecting his duty towards it. He promised obedience for the future, dug out all the weeds that were creeping round the family vault, and (having charge of the key) entered that awful place, and swept and dusted the melancholy contents of the tomb.

Next morning, the widow came down to breakfast looking very pale. She had pa.s.sed a bad night; she had had awful dreams; she had heard a voice call her thrice at midnight. "Pooh! my dear, it's only nervousness,"

said sceptical Sister Anne.

Here John Thomas, the footman, entered, and said the beadle was in the hall, looking in a very strange way. He had been about the house since daybreak, and insisted on seeing Mrs. Bluebeard. "Let him enter," said that lady, prepared for some great mystery. The beadle came; he was pale as death; his hair was dishevelled, and his c.o.c.ked hat out of order.

"What have you to say?" said the lady, trembling.

Before beginning, he fell down on his knees.

"Yesterday," said he, "according to your ladyship's orders, I dug up the flower-beds of the family vault, dusted the vault and the--the coffins (added he, trembling) inside. Me and John s.e.xton did it together, and polished up the plate quite beautiful."

"For Heaven's sake, don't allude to it," cried the widow, turning pale.

"Well, my lady, I locked the door, came away, and found in my hurry--for I wanted to beat two little boys what was playing at marbles on Alderman Paunch's monyment--I found, my lady, I'd forgot my cane.

"I couldn't get John s.e.xton to go back with me till this morning, and I didn't like to go alone, and so we went this morning; and what do you think I found? I found his honor's coffin turned round, and the cane broke in two. Here's the cane!"

"Ah!" screamed the widow, "take it away,--take it away!"

"Well, what does this prove," said Sister Anne, "but that somebody moved the coffin, and broke the cane?"

"Somebody! _who's somebody?_" said the beadle, staring round about him.

And all of a sudden he started back with a tremendous roar, that made the ladies scream and all the gla.s.ses on the sideboard jingle, and cried, "_That's the man!_"

He pointed to the portrait of Bluebeard, which stood over the jingling gla.s.ses on the sideboard. "That's the man I saw last night walking round the vault, as I'm a living sinner. I saw him a-walking round and round, and, when I went up to speak to him, I'm blessed if he didn't go in at the iron gate, which opened afore him like--like winking, and then in at the vault door, which I'd double-locked, my lady, and bolted inside, I'll take my oath on it!"

"Perhaps you had given him the key?" suggested Sister Anne.

"It's never been out of my pocket. Here it is," cried the beadle; "I'll have no more to do with it." And he flung down the ponderous key, amidst another scream from Widow Bluebeard.

"At what hour did you see him?" gasped she.

"At twelve o'clock, of course."

"It must have been at that very hour," said she, "I heard the voice."

"What voice?" said Anne.

"A voice that called, 'Fatima! Fatima! Fatima!' three times, as plain as ever voice did."

"It didn't speak to me," said the beadle; "it only nodded its head, and wagged its head and beard."

"W--w--was it a _bl--ue beard_?" said the widow.

"Powder-blue, ma'am, as I've a soul to save!"

Dr. Drench was of course instantly sent for. But what are the medicaments of the apothecary in a case where the grave gives up its dead? Dr. Sly arrived, and he offered ghostly--ah! too ghostly--consolation. He said he believed in them. His own grandmother had appeared to his grandfather several times before he married again.

He could not doubt that supernatural agencies were possible, even frequent.

"Suppose he were to appear to me alone," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the widow, "I should die of fright."

The doctor looked particularly arch. "The best way in these cases, my dear madam," said he, "the best way for unprotected ladies is to get a husband. I never heard of a first husband's ghost appearing to a woman and her second husband in my life. In all history there is no account of one."

"Ah! why should I be afraid of seeing my Bluebeard again?" said the widow; and the doctor retired quite pleased, for the lady was evidently thinking of a second husband.

"The captain would be a better protector for me certainly than Mr. Sly,"

thought the lady, with a sigh; "but Mr. Sly will certainly kill himself, and will the captain be a match for two ghosts? Sly will kill himself; but ah! the captain won't." And the widow thought with pangs of bitter mortification of Dolly Coddlins. How--how should these distracting circ.u.mstances be brought to an end?

She retired to rest that night not without a tremor,--to bed, but not to sleep. At midnight a voice was heard in her room, crying, "Fatima!

Fatima! Fatima!" in awful accents. The doors banged to and fro, the bells began to ring, the maids went up and down stairs skurrying and screaming, and gave warning in a body. John Thomas, as pale as death, declared that he found Bluebeard's yeomanry sword, that hung in the hall, drawn, and on the ground; and the sticking-plaster miniature in Mr. Bluebeard's bedroom was found turned topsy-turvy!

"It is some trick," said the obstinate and incredulous Sister Anne.