tto,
your forefathers-in-law--by many masters. Are you fond of peasants?
My tenantry are delightful creatures, and there is not one of them who
remembers the bringing of the news of the Battle of Waterloo. When a
new Duchess is brought to Tankerton, the oldest elm in the park must
be felled. That is one of many strange old customs. As she is driven
through the village, the children of the tenantry must strew the road
with daisies. The bridal chamber must be lighted with as many candles as
years have elapsed since the creation of the Dukedom. If you came into
it, there would be"--and the youth, closing his eyes, made a rapid
calculation--"exactly three hundred and eighty-eight candles. On the eve
of the death of a Duke of Dorset, two black owls come and perch on the
battlements. They remain there through the night, hooting. At dawn
they fly away, none knows whither. On the eve of the death of any other
Tanville-Tankerton, comes (no matter what be the time of year) a cuckoo.
It stays for an hour, cooing, then flies away, none knows whither.
Whenever this portent occurs, my steward telegraphs to me, that I, as
head of the family, be not unsteeled against the shock of a bereavement,
and that my authority be sooner given for the unsealing and garnishing
of the family-vault. Not every forefather of mine rests quiet beneath
his escutcheoned marble. There are they who revisit, in their wrath or
their remorse, the places wherein erst they suffered or wrought evil.
There is one who, every Halloween, flits into the dining-hall, and
hovers before the portrait which Hans Holbein made of him, and flings
his diaphanous grey form against the canvas, hoping, maybe, to catch
from it the fiery flesh-tints and the solid limbs that were his, and so
to be re-incarnate. He flies against the painting, only to find himself
t'other side of the wall it hangs on. There are five ghosts permanently
residing in the right wing of the house, two in the left, and eleven in
the park. But all are quite noiseless and quite harmless. My servants,
when they meet them in the corridors or on the stairs, stand aside to
let them pass, thus paying them the respect due to guests of mine; but
not even the rawest housemaid ever screams or flees at sight of them. I,
their host, often waylay them and try to commune with them; but always
they glide past me. And how gracefully they glide, these ghosts! It is a
pleasure to watch them. It is a lesson in deportment. May they