Part 25

‘My worst presentiments about that table are being verified, papa,’ said Julia; ‘not for nothing was that intimation of the cloven foot on my shoulder.’

‘Nonsense,’ said I. ‘Let us go into Mrs. Brown’s, and have an ice-cream.’

The spirit of Democritus was stronger on me now. By a curious coincidence, it strengthened with the strength of the sunlight.

‘But is it not miraculous,’ said Anna, ‘how a bug should come out of a table?’

‘Not at all, my daughter. It is a very common thing for bugs to come out of wood. You yourself must have seen them coming out of the ends of the billets on the hearth.’

‘Ah, but that wood is almost fresh from the woodland. But the table is at least a hundred years old.’

‘What of that?’ said I, gaily. ‘Have not live toads been found in the hearts of dead rocks, as old as creation?’

‘Say what you will, papa, I feel it is spirits,’ said Julia. ‘Do, do now, my dear papa, have that haunted table removed from the house.’

‘Nonsense,’ said I.

By another curious coincidence, the more they felt frightened, the more I felt brave.

Evening came.

‘This ticking,’ said my wife; ‘do you think that another bug will come of this continued ticking?’

Curiously enough, that had not occurred to me before. I had not thought of there being twins of bugs. But now, who knew; there might be even triplets.

I resolved to take precautions, and, if there was to be a second bug, infallibly secure it. During the evening, the ticking was again heard. About ten o’clock I clapped a tumbler over the spot, as near as I could judge of it by my ear. Then we all retired, and locking the door of the cedar-parlour, I put the key in my pocket.

In the morning, nothing was to be seen, but the ticking was heard. The trepidation of my daughters returned. They wanted to call in the neighbours. But to this my wife was vigorously opposed. We should be the laughing-stock of the whole town. So it was agreed that nothing should be disclosed. Biddy received strict charges; and, to make sure, was not allowed that week to go to confession, lest she should tell the priest.

I stayed home all that day; every hour or two bending over the table, both eye and ear. Toward night, I thought the ticking grew more distinct, and seemed divided from my ear by a thinner and thinner partition of the wood. I thought, too, that I perceived a faint heaving up, or bulging of the wood, in the place where I had placed the tumbler. To put an end to the suspense, my wife proposed taking a knife and cutting into the wood there; but I had a less impatient plan; namely, that she and I should sit up with the table that night, as, from present symptoms, the bug would probably make its appearance before morning. For myself, I was curious to see the first advent of the thing--the first dazzle of the chick as it chipped the shell.

The idea struck my wife not unfavourably. She insisted that both Julia and Anna should be of the party, in order that the evidence of their senses should disabuse their minds of all nursery nonsense. For that spirits should tick, and that spirits should take unto themselves the form of bugs, was, to my wife, the most foolish of all foolish imaginations. True, she could not account for the thing; but she had all confidence that it could be, and would yet be, somehow explained, and that to her entire satisfaction. Without knowing it herself, my wife was a female Democritus. For my part, my present feelings were of a mixed sort. In a strange and not unpleasing way, I gently oscillated between Democritus and Cotton Mather. But to my wife and daughters I assumed to be pure Democritus--a jeerer at all tea-table spirits whatever.

So, laying in a good supply of candles and crackers, all four of us sat up with the table, and at the same time sat round it. For a while my wife and I carried on an animated conversation. But my daughters were silent. Then my wife and I would have had a rubber of whist, but my daughters could not be prevailed upon to join. So we played whist with two dummies literally; my wife won the rubber and, fatigued with victory, put away the cards.

Half-past eleven o’clock. No sign of the bug. The candles began to burn dim. My wife was just in the act of snuffing them, when a sudden, violent, hollow, resounding, rumbling, thumping was heard.

Julia and Anna sprang to their feet.

‘All well!’ cried a voice from the street. It was the watchman, first ringing down his club on the pavement, and then following it up with this highly satisfactory verbal announcement.

‘All well! Do you hear that, my girls?’ said I, gaily.

Indeed it was astonishing how brave as Bruce I felt in company with three women, and two of them half frightened out of their wits.

I rose for my pipe, and took a philosophic smoke.

Democritus forever, thought I.

In profound silence, I sat smoking, when lo!--pop! pop! pop!--right under the table, a terrible popping.

This time we all four sprang up, and my pipe was broken.

‘Good heavens! what’s that?’

‘Spirits! spirits!’ cried Julia.

‘Oh, oh, oh!’ cried Anna.

‘Shame!’ said my wife, ‘it’s that new bottled cider, in the cellar, going off. I told Biddy to wire the bottles to-day.’

I shall here transcribe from memoranda, kept during part of the night.

‘One o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking continues. Wife getting sleepy.

‘Two o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking intermittent. Wife fast asleep.

‘Three o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking pretty steady. Julia and Anna getting sleepy.

‘Four o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking regular, but not spirited. Wife, Julia, and Anna, all fast asleep in their chairs.

‘Five o’clock. No sign of the bug. Ticking faint. Myself feeling drowsy. The rest still asleep.’

So far the journal.

--Rap! rap! rap!

A terrific, portentous rapping against a door.

Startled from our dreams, we started to our feet.

Rap! rap! rap!

Julia and Anna shrieked.

I cowered in the corner.

‘You fools!’ cried my wife, ‘it’s the baker with the bread.’

Six o’clock.

She went to throw back the shutters, but ere it was done, a cry came from Julia. There, half in and half out its crack, there wriggled the bug, flashing in the room’s general dimness, like a fiery opal.

Had this bug had a tiny sword by its side--a Damascus sword--and a tiny necklace round its neck--a diamond necklace--and a tiny gun in its claw--brass gun--and a tiny manuscript in its mouth--a Chaldee manuscript--Julia and Anna could not have stood more charmed.

In truth, it was a beautiful bug--a Jew jeweller’s bug--a bug like a sparkle of a glorious sunset.

Julia and Anna had never dreamed of such a bug. To them, bug had been a word synonymous with hideousness. But this was a seraphical bug; or rather, all it had of the bug was the B, for it was beautiful as a butterfly.

Julia and Anna gazed and gazed. They were no more alarmed. They were delighted.

‘But how got this strange, pretty creature into the table?’ cried Julia.

‘Spirits can get anywhere,’ replied Anna.

‘Pshaw!’ said my wife.

‘Do you hear any more ticking?’ said I.

They all applied their ears, but heard nothing.

‘Well, then, wife and daughters, now that it is all over, this very morning I will go and make inquiries about it.’

‘Oh do, papa,’ cried Julia, ‘do go and consult Madame Pazzi, the conjuress.’

‘Better go and consult Professor Johnson, the naturalist,’ said my wife.

‘Bravo, Mrs. Democritus!’ said I. ‘Professor Johnson is the man.’

By good fortune I found the professor in. Informing him briefly of the incident, he manifested a cool, collected sort of interest, and gravely accompanied me home. The table was produced, the two openings pointed out, the bug displayed, and the details of the affair set forth; my wife and daughters being present.

‘And now, Professor,’ said I, ‘what do you think of it?’

Putting on his spectacles, the learned professor looked hard at the table, and gently scraped with his penknife into the holes, but said nothing.

‘Is it not an unusual thing, this?’ anxiously asked Anna.

‘Very unusual, Miss.’

At which Julia and Anna exchanged significant glances.

‘But is it not wonderful, very wonderful?’ demanded Julia.

‘Very wonderful, Miss.’

My daughters exchanged still more significant glances, and Julia, emboldened, again spoke.

‘And must you not admit, sir, that it is the work of--of--of sp----?’

‘Spirits? No,’ was the crusty rejoinder.

‘My daughters,’ said I, mildly, ‘you should remember that this is not Madame Pazzi, the conjuress, you put your questions to, but the eminent naturalist, Professor Johnson. And now, Professor,’ I added, ‘be pleased to explain. Enlighten our ignorance.’

Without repeating all the learned gentleman said--for, indeed, though lucid, he was a little prosy--let the following summary of his explication suffice.

The incident was not wholly without example. The wood of the table was apple-tree, a sort of tree much fancied by various insects. The bugs had come from eggs laid inside the bark of the living tree in the orchard. By careful examination of the position of the hole from which the last bug had emerged, in relation to the cortical layers of the slab, and then allowing for the inch and a half along the grain, ere the bug had eaten its way entirely out, and then computing the whole number of cortical layers in the slab, with a reasonable conjecture for the number cut off from the outside, it appeared that the egg must have been laid in the tree some ninety years, more or less, before the tree could have been felled. But between the felling of the tree and the present time, how long might that be? It was a very old-fashioned table. Allow eighty years for the age of the table, which would make one hundred and fifty years that the bug had lain in the egg. Such, at least, was Professor Johnson’s computation.

‘Now, Julia,’ said I, ‘after that scientific statement of the case (though, I confess, I don’t exactly understand it) where are your spirits? It is very wonderful as it is, but where are your spirits?’

‘Where, indeed?’ said my wife.

‘Why, now, she did not _really_ associate this purely natural phenomenon with any crude, spiritual hypothesis, did she?’ observed the learned professor, with a slight sneer.

‘Say what you will,’ said Julia, holding up, in the covered tumbler, the glorious, lustrous, flashing, live opal, ‘say what you will, if this beauteous creature be not a spirit, it yet teaches a spiritual lesson. For if, after one hundred and fifty years’ entombment, a mere insect comes forth at last into light, itself an effulgence, shall there be no glorified resurrection for the spirit of man? Spirits! spirits!’ she exclaimed, with rapture, ‘I still believe in them with delight, when before I but thought of them with terror.’

The mysterious insect did not long enjoy its radiant life; it expired the next day. But my girls have preserved it. Embalmed in a silver vinaigrette, it lies on the little apple-tree table in the pier of the cedar-parlour.

And whatever lady doubts this story, my daughters will be happy to show her both the bug and the table, and point out to her, in the repaired slab of the latter, the two sealing-wax drops designating the exact place of the two holes made by the two bugs, something in the same way in which are marked the spots where the cannon balls struck Brattle Street church.

UNDER THE ROSE

(_Being an extract from an old MS. entitled ‘Travels in Persia (Iran) by a servant of My Lord the Ambassador.’_)

... These roses of divers hues, red, yellow, pink, and white, the black slave, a clean-limbed adolescent, and comely for all his flat nose; he, before offering them to My Lord to refresh him with their colour and scent, did, at the Azem’s bidding, drop them into a delicate vase of amber; and so cunningly, withal, that they fell as of themselves into the attitude of young damsels leaning over the balustrade of a dome and gazing downward; so that the vase itself was all but hidden from view, at least, much of the upper part thereof, where I noted that certain _relievos_ were, though truly I could get but a peep thereof at that time.

On the next day but one repairing to the same villa where the Azem made abode for that month, and there waiting to convey a reply to a missive from My Lord; I saw by chance on a marble buffet the same vase then empty; and going up to it, curiously observed the _relievos_, before hidden by the flowers. They were of a mystical type, methought, something like certain pictures in the great Dutch Bible in a library at Oxon, setting forth the enigmas of the Song of the Wise Man, to wit, King Solomon. I hardly knew what to make of them; and so would as lief have seen the roses in their stead. Yet for the grace of it, if not the import, whatever that might be, was I pleased with a round device of sculpture on one side, about the bigness of My Lord’s seal to a parchment, showing the figure of an angel with a spade under arm like a gardener, and bearing roses in a pot; and a like angel-figure, clad like a cellarer, and with a wine-jar on his shoulder; and these two angels, side by side, pacing toward a meagre wight, very doleful and Job-like, squatted hard by a sepulchre, as meditating thereon; and all done very lively in small.

But the thing that meseems was most strange was the amber wherein this device and sundry other inventions were cut; for in parts it held marvellously congealed within its substance certain little relics of perished insects, as of the members of flies on frozen syrup or marmalade. Never had I seen the like thereof before; and My Lord, to whom that night I spoke of it, as he was drinking his posset, about the time of his retiring, he instructed me that that sort of amber was of the rarest, and esteemed exceeding precious, and spoke of a famous piece in the Great Duke’s museum at Florence; and much wished that the Azem had given him that vase in place of the jewelled scimetar you wot of. ‘And Geoffry,’ quoth My Lord somewhat eagerly, ‘didst thou note that the vessel was of one whole piece or in two parts, the bowl part and the standard?’ But verily I could not answer to purpose here, for I did in no wise handle the vase; and I doubt had the jealousy of the attendants permitted it; so that, were there any junction of two or more parts, right deftly was the same hidden by the craft of the artificer.

It befell that at the next coming together of My Lord and the Azem, which was about that stale affair of the two factors at Aleppo; My Lord after that business, and when their black drink, coffee, had been offered us in little cups of filigree, fine as My Lady’s Flanders lace, and great jasmine-stemmed pipes, two yards long, likewise, as is their ceremonious custom; My Lord, I say, holding the amber mouthpiece before him, shaped somewhat like a lemon, and of a wondrous clear tint much the same, and of a diameter not behind, for among these people the higher the rank or the longer the purse, the greater the costly mouthpiece, the same being but gently pressed against the lips at the orifice of the inhaled vapour; My Lord, I say, holding this fair oval of clear amber before him, turned, through the interpreter, the discourse to considerations of the occult nature of that substance whereof it was fashioned; declaring, among other items, his incredulity touching the strange allegement that amber was sometimes found with bees glued up therein as in their own crystallised honey, or, if not bees, then fleas and flies. With the wondrous sedate courtesy of all the grandees in these parts, the Azem with his silvery spade-beard, sitting cross-legged on the green silken cushions; he, though never understanding a word of My Lord’s English, yet very gravely and attentively, as before, heard him out; him, My Lord, first, I mean, leaning over toward him, his hand to his ear, for, certes, he was somewhat deaf, being in years; leaning over toward him, I say, and thereafter relaxing and falling back somewhat on the cushions, and so giving another sort of heed to the interpreter; who, having delivered his burden, the Azem did nothing but give a little clap with his hands, and, as it were one of the painted manikins in the great clock at Strasbourg, a pretty little page issued from a sort of draped closet near by; to whom his master made a sign; whereat the page brought to My Lord the aforesaid amber vase, empty, and put it into his two hands; who made as if surprised; and after scrutinising it, and turning it round and round, and discovering the imbedded relics, affected great admiration at being so promptly and in that tacit manner confuted in his misbelief; and much did he laud the beauty of the vase as well; insomuch that the interpreter, a precise clerk in his careful vocation, verily he seemed as sore put to it to render My Lord.

But if herein, and all along, My Lord’s purpose was so to work on the Azem as that he, seeing his great pleasure in the vase, might be drawn to make a gift of it; I say, if this were My Lord’s intent, it prospered not to the fulfilment, forasmuch as it was now the Azem’s turn to say how much he likewise, he himself, esteemed the vase, declaring that at such rate did he prize it, he would not barter it, no, not for a certain villa he spake of, though mightily he coveted the same. For besides the beauty of the vessel and the rare sculpture on it, and its being incomparably the biggest piece of amber known in those parts; besides all this, it was the very vase, he avouched--and with a kind of ardour strange to note in one so much upon his turbaned dignity--the very vase, in sooth, that being on a bridal festival filled with roses in the palace of the old Shaz Gold-beak at Shiraz, had tempted their great poet, one Lugar-Lips, to a closer inspection, when tenderly dividing the flowers one from another, and noting the little anatomies congealed in the amber, he was prompted to the inditing of certain verses; for which cause the vase thenceforth forever was inestimable. To which extravagance My Lord listened with his wonted civility, nay, and with a special graciousness, but for all that a bit sadly too, meseemed, and would now again have swerved the discourse; but the Azem was beforehand, and bade the page bring him something from a silver-bound chest near by in an alcove. It was a vellum book, about the bigness of a prayer-book for church-going, but very rich with jewelled clasps, and writ by some famous scribe in the fair Persian text, and illuminated withal like unto the great Popish parchment folios I have seen. And this book, surely of great cost, the Azem with his own hands right nobly did present to My Lord, putting his finger on a certain page whereon were traced those verses aforesaid.

But, shortly after, some sherbet and sweetmeats being served, and the Azem’s own mules being at the garden gate, and, the more to honour us, with gorgeous new trappings; our train withdrew in the same state as when we entered, that is, the one great captain-soldier leading, with a mighty truncheon in his hand, and his troop making a lane through which we proceeded to the saddles, they the while salaaming and paying extreme obeisance to My Lord, which, indeed, was but their bounden duty, for he was an Englishman and my noble master.

Now a Greek renegado, one long dwelling in Persia, a scholar, and at whiles employed by My Lord, he being expert in divers tongues of both continents, and learned in the chirography of the Persian and Arabic; this polyglot infidel--the more shame to him for turning his back on his Saviour--he being at the embassy one day, which was I know not what kind of strange holiday with these folk; My Lord for his recreation, and by way of challenge, being a little merry, as was his wont sometimes for a brief space after dinner; he commanded the Greek to put those verses into English rhyme if he could, and on the instant, or as soon soever as might be. Upon which the Greek said: ‘My Lord, I will try; but I pray thee give me wine’--glancing at the table where remained certain nickel flasks of the choice vintages both of Persia and Cyprus; ‘Yes, wine, My Lord,’ he repeated. ‘Now,’ demanded my master severely. ‘Bethink thee, now, My Lord,’ quoth he, saluting; ‘this same Lugar-Lip’s verses being all grapes, or veritably saturated with the ripe juice thereof, there is no properly rendering them without a cup or two of the same; and, behold, My Lord, I am sober.’

My master, after a moment seeming to debate in his mind whether this proceeded from a strange familiar impudence in the varlet, or from an honest superstition however silly, for he delivered himself very soberly and discreetly, commanded wine to be served him; when the renegado, quaffing like a good fellow his cup or two, which were indeed five, for I took the tally; he, I say, quaffing at whiles, and all the time holding the vellum book in one hand--and, sooth, but one hand he had, the other having been smitten off by a scimetar, whether in honourable fray, or by the executioner, I know not; he, ever and anon scanning the page, humming and hooing to himself and swaying his body, like the dervishes hereabouts, at last after this mighty ado, sang--he scarce said it--the interpreted verses; which were these:--

‘Specks, tiny specks, in this translucent amber, Your leave, bride-roses, may one pry and see? How odd! a dainty little skeleton-chamber; And--odder yet--sealed walls but windows be! Death’s open secret.--Well, we are; And here comes the jolly angel with the jar!’

Wherein, in the ultimate verse, Lugar-Lips did particularise, doubtless, one of the twain in the _relievo_ of the little medallion on one side of the vase, of which cunning piece I have in the foregoing made account.

‘And is that all?’ said My Lord, composedly, but scarce cheerfully, when the renegado had made an end; ‘and is that all? And call you that a crushing from the grape? the black grape, I wis’; there checking himself, as a wise man will do, catching himself tripping in an indiscreet sincerity; which to cover, peradventure, he, suddenly rising, retired to his chamber, and though commanding his visage somewhat, yet in pace and figure showing the spirit within sadly distraught; forsooth, the last Michaelmas, his birthday, he was threescore and three years old, and in privy fear, as I knew who long was near him, of a certain sudden malady whereof his father and grandfather before him had died about that age. But for my part I always esteemed it a mighty weakness in so great a man to let the ribald wit of a vain ballader, and he a heathen, make heavy his heart. For me who am but a small one, I was in secret pleased with the lax pleasantry of this Lugar-Lips, but in such sort as one is tickled with the profane capering of a mountebank at Bartholomew’s Fair by Thames. Howbeit, had I been, God knows, of equal reverend years with my master, and subject by probable inheritance to the like sudden malady, peradventure I myself in that case might have waxed sorrowful, doubting whether the grape was not indeed the black grape, as he phrased it, wherefrom that vain balladry had been distilled.

But now no more hereof, nor of the amber vase, which like unto some little man in great place hath been made overmuch of, as the judicious reader hereof may opine.

THE MARQUIS DE GRANDVIN