FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   >>  
rning, coming down to breakfast braced to grapple with fresh adversity, we were surprised to find our garrulous friend of the previous day--he was late in making his appearance--strangely silent and (apparently) pre-occupied. Having polished off our porridge, we ran out to feed the rabbits, explaining to them that a beast of a tutor would prevent their enjoying so much of our society as formerly. On returning to the house at the fated hour appointed for study, we were thunderstruck to see the station-cart disappearing down the drive, freighted with our new acquaintance. Aunt Eliza was brutally uncommunicative; but she was overheard to remark casually that she thought the man must be a lunatic. In this theory we were only too ready to concur, dismissing thereafter the whole matter from our minds. Some weeks later it happened that Uncle Thomas, while paying us a flying visit, produced from his pocket a copy of the latest weekly, _Psyche: a Journal of the Unseen_; and proceeded laboriously to rid himself of much incomprehensible humour, apparently at our expense. We bore it patiently, with the forced grin demanded by convention, anxious to get at the source of inspiration, which it presently appeared lay in a paragraph circumstantially describing our modest and humdrum habitation. 'Case III.,' it began. 'The following particulars were communicated by a young member of the Society, of undoubted probity and earnestness, and are a chronicle of actual and recent experience.' A fairly accurate description of the house followed, with details that were unmistakable; but to this there succeeded a flood of meaningless drivel about apparitions, nightly visitants, and the like, writ in a manner betokening a disordered mind, coupled with a feeble imagination. The fellow was not even original. All the old material was there--the storm at night, the haunted chamber, the white lady, the murder re-enacted, and so on--already worn threadbare in many a Christmas Number. No one was able to make head or tail of the stuff, or of its connexion with our quiet mansion; and yet Edward, who had always suspected the fellow, persisted in maintaining that our tutor of a brief span was, somehow or other, at the bottom of it. [Illustration] A FALLING OUT HAROLD told me the main facts of this episode some time later,--in bits and with reluctance. It was not a recollection he cared to talk about. The crude blank misery of a moment is apt
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   >>  



Top keywords:

apparently

 

fellow

 

nightly

 
apparitions
 
visitants
 

disordered

 
imagination
 

feeble

 

original

 

coupled


manner
 

betokening

 

material

 

description

 

communicated

 
particulars
 

member

 

undoubted

 

Society

 
modest

describing

 
humdrum
 

habitation

 

probity

 

earnestness

 

details

 

unmistakable

 
succeeded
 

meaningless

 

accurate


chronicle

 

actual

 

recent

 

fairly

 

experience

 

drivel

 

HAROLD

 

FALLING

 

Illustration

 

maintaining


bottom

 

episode

 

misery

 

moment

 

reluctance

 

recollection

 
persisted
 

suspected

 

threadbare

 

circumstantially