Men, Women, and Ghosts Part 13

2. That nothing ever yet put her to sleep but a merciful Providence.

3. A great respect for Job.

4. That the notion commonly and conscientiously received by very excellent people, that wakeful nights can and should be spent in prayer, religious meditation, and general spiritual growth, is all they know about it. Hours of the extremest bodily and mental exhaustion, when every nerve is quivering as if laid bare, and the surface of the brain burning and whirling to agony, with the reins of control let loose on every rebellious and every senseless thought, are not the times most likely to be chosen for the purest communion with G.o.d. To be sure. King David "remembered Him upon his bed, and meditated upon Him in the night-watches." Keturah does not undertake to contradict Scripture, but she has come to the conclusion that David was either a _very_ good man, or he didn't lie awake very often.

But, over and above all, _haec fabula docet_:

5. That people who can sleep when they want to should keep Thanksgiving every day in the year.

The Day of My Death[1]

[Footnote 1: The characters in this narrative are fict.i.tious. The incidents the author does not profess to have witnessed. But they are given as related by eye-witnesses whose testimony would command a verdict from any honest jury. The author, however, draws no conclusions and suggests none.]

Alison was sitting on a bandbox. She had generally been sitting on a bandbox for three weeks,--or on a bushel-basket, or a cupboard shelf, or a pile of old newspapers, or the baby's bath-tub. On one occasion it was the baby himself. She mistook him for the rag-bag.

If ever we had to move again,--which all the beneficence of the Penates forbid!--my wife should be locked into the parlor, and a cargo of Irishwomen turned loose about the premises to "attend to things." What it is that women find to do with themselves in this world I have never yet discovered. They are always "attending to things." Whatever that may mean, I have long ago received it as the only solution at my command of their superfluous wear and tear, and worry and flurry, and tears and nerves and headaches. A fellow may suggest Jane, and obtrude Bridget, and hire Peggy, and run in debt for Mehetable, and offer to take the baby on 'Change with him, but has he by a feather's weight lightened Madam's mysterious burden? My dear sir, don't presume to expect it. She has just as much to do as she ever had. In fact, she has a little more.

"Strange, you don't appreciate it! Follow her about one day, and see for yourself!"

What I started to say, however, was that I thought it over often,--I mean about that invoice of Irishwomen,--coming home from the office at night, while we were moving out of Artichoke Street into Nemo's Avenue.

It is not pleasant to find one's wife always sitting on a bandbox. I have seen her crawl to her feet when she heard me coming, and hold on by a chair, and try her poor little best to look as if she could stand twenty-four hours longer; she so disliked that I should find a "used-up looking house" under any circ.u.mstances. But I believe that was worse than the bandbox.

On this particular night she was too tired even to crawl. I found her all in a heap in the corner, two dusters and a wash-cloth in one blue-veined hand, and a broom in the other; an old corn-colored silk handkerchief knotted over her hair,--her hair is black, and the effect was good,--and her little brown calico ap.r.o.n-string literally tied to the baby, who was shrieking at the end of his tether because he could just not reach the kitten and throw her into the fire. On Alison's lap, between a pile of s.h.i.+rts and two piles of magazines, lay a freshly opened letter. I noticed that she put it into her pocket before she dropped her dusters and stood up to lift her face for my kiss. She forgot about the ap.r.o.n-strings, and the baby tipped up the wrong way, and hung dangling in mid-air.

After we had taken tea,--that is to say, after we had drawn around the ironing-board put on two chairs in the front entry, made the cocoa in a tin dipper, stirred it with a fork, and cut the bread with a jack-knife,--after the baby was fairly off to bed in a champagne-basket, and Tip disposed of, his mother only knew where, we coaxed a consumptive fire into the parlor grate, and sat down before it in the carpetless, pictureless, curtainless, blank, bare, soapy room.

"Thank fortune, this is the last night of it!" I growled, putting my booted feet against the wall, (my slippers had gone over to the avenue in a water-pail that morning,) and tipping my chair back drearily,--my wife "_so_ objects" to the habit!

Allis made no reply, but sat looking thoughtfully, and with a slightly perplexed and displeased air, into the sizzling wet wood that snapped and flared and smoked and hissed and blackened, and did everything but burn.

"I really don't know what to do about it," she broke silence at last.

"I'm inclined to think there's nothing better to do than to look at it."

"No; not the fire. O, I forgot--I haven't shown it to you."

She drew from her pocket the letter which I had noticed in the afternoon, and laid it upon my knee. With my hands in my pockets--the room was too cold to take them out--I read:--

Dear Cousin Alison:--

"I have been so lonely since mother died, that my health, never of the strongest, as you know, has suffered seriously. My physician tells me that something is wrong with the periphrastic action, if you know what that is," [I suppose Miss Fellows meant the peristaltic action,] "and prophesies something dreadful, (I've forgotten whether it was to be in the head, or the heart, or the stomach,) if I cannot have change of air and scene this winter. I should dearly love to spend some time with you in your new home, (I fancy it will be drier than the old one,) if convenient to you. If inconvenient, don't hesitate to say so, of course. I hope to hear from you soon.

"In haste, your aff. cousin,

"Gertrude Fellows.

"P.S.--I shall of course insist upon being a boarder if I come.

"G.F."

"Hum-m. Insipid sort of letter."

"Exactly. That's Gertrude. No more flavor than a frozen pear. If she had one distinguis.h.i.+ng peculiarity, good or bad, I believe I should like her better. But I'm sorry for the woman."

"Sorry enough to stand a winter of her?"

"If we hadn't just been through this moving! A new house and all,--n.o.body knows how the flues are yet, or whether we can heat a spare room. She hasn't had a home, though, since Cousin Dorothy died. But I was thinking about you, you see."

"O, she can't hurt me. She won't want the library, I suppose; nor my slippers, and the small bootjack. Let her come."

My wife sighed a small sigh of relief out from the depths of her hospitable heart, and the little matter was settled and dismissed as lightly as are most little matters out of which grow the great ones.

I had just begun to dream that night that Gertrude Fellows, in the shape of a large wilted pear, had walked in and sat down on a dessert plate, when Allis gave me a little pinch and woke me.

"My dear, Gertrude has _one_ peculiarity. I never thought of it till this minute."

"Confound Gertrude's peculiarities! I want to go to sleep. Well, let's have it."

"Why, you see, she took up with some Spiritualistic notions after her mother's death; thought she held communications with her, and all that, Aunt Solomon says."

"Stuff and nonsense!"

"Of course. But, Fred, dear, I'm inclined to think she _must_ have made her sewing-table walk into the front entry; and Aunt Solomon says the spirits rapped out the whole of Cousin Dorothy's history on the mantel-piece, behind those blue china vases,--you must have noticed them at the funeral,--and not a human hand within six feet."

"Alison Hotchkiss!" I said, waking thoroughly, and sitting up in bed to emphasize the opinion, "when I hear a spirit rap on _my_ mantel-piece, and see _my_ tables walk about the front entry, I'll believe that,--not before!"

"O, I know it! I'm not a Spiritualist, I'm sure, and nothing would tempt me to be. But still that sort of reasoning has a flaw in it, hasn't it, dear? The King of Siam, you know--"

I had heard of the King of Siam before, and I politely informed my wife that I did not care to hear of him again. Spiritualism was a system of refined jugglery. Just another phase of the same thing which brings the doves out of Mr. Hermann's empty hat. It might be entertaining if it had not become such an abominable imposition. There would always be nervous women and hypochondriac men enough for its dupes. I thanked Heaven that I was neither, and went to sleep.

Our new house was light and dry; the flues worked well, and the spare chamber heated admirably. The baby exchanged the champagne-basket for his dainty pink-curtained crib; Tip began to recover from the perpetual cold with which three weeks' sitting in draughts, and tumbling into water-pails, and playing in the sink, had sweetened his temper; Allis forsook her bandboxes for the crimson easy-chair (very becoming, that chair), or tripped about on her own rested feet; we returned to table-cloths, civilized life, and a fork apiece.

In short, nothing at all worth mentioning happened, till that one night,--I think it was our first Sunday,--when Allis waked me at twelve o'clock with the announcement that some one was knocking at the door.

Supposing it to be Bridget with the baby,--croup, probably, or a fit,--I unlocked and unlatched it promptly. No one was there, however; and telling my wife, in no very gentle tone, if I remember correctly, that it would be a convenience, on such cold nights, if she could keep her dreams to herself, I shut the door distinctly and returned to my own.

In the morning I observed a little white circle about each of Allis's blue eyes, and after some urging she confessed to me that her sleep had been much broken by a singular disturbance in the room. I might laugh at her if I chose, and she had not meant to tell me, but somebody had rapped in that room all night long.

"On the door?"

"On the door, on the mantel, on the foot of the bed, on the head-board,--Fred, right on the head-board! I listened till I grew cold listening, but it rapped and it rapped, and by and by it was morning, and it stopped."

"Rats!" said I.

"Then rats have knuckles," said she.