Christmas Classics: Charles Dickens Collection (With Original Illustrations). Charles Dickens

I received was a few formal lines from my uncle’s lawyer, telling me that my illegible scrawls had come to the hands of the persons for whom they were designed; but that no further notice could be taken of my communications. I was put into the possession of my property to the last penny, but it seems to me that I must have shaken it away either at dice or bagatelle, or ninepins or billiards. And I remember that I never made a stroke at the latter game without hitting my adversary with the cue in the chest, knocking down the marker, sending the balls scudding through the windows, disarranging the scores, and cutting holes in the cloth, for which I had to pay innumerable guineas to the proprietor of the rooms.

      I remember one day going into a jeweller’s shop in Regent street to purchase a watch-key. I had only a silver one now, my gold repeater had been shaken away in some unaccountable manner. It was winter-time, and I wore an overcoat with long loose sleeves. While the shopkeeper was adjusting a key to my watch, my ague fit came upon me with demoniacal ferocity, and, to my horror and dismay, in catching hold of the counter to save myself, I tilted a trayful of diamond rings over. Some fell on the floor; but some, horror and anguish! fell into the sleeves of my overcoat. I shook so that I seemed to have shaken diamond rings into my hands, my pockets, my very boots. By some uncontrollable impulse I attempted flight, but was seized at the very shop door, and carried, shaking, to the police station.

      I was taken before a magistrate, and committed, still shaking, in a van, to gaol. I shook for some time in a whitewashed cell, when I was brought up, shaking, to the Central Criminal Court, and placed, shaking, on my trial for an attempted robbery of fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of property. The evidence was clear against me. My counsel tried to plead something about “kleptomania,” but in vain. My uncle Bonsor, who had come expressly up from Dover, spoke strongly against my character. I was found guilty; yes, I, the most innocent and unfortunate young man breathing, and sentenced to seven years’ transportation! I can recal the awful scene vividly to memory now. The jury in a body were shaking their heads at me. So was the judge, so was my uncle Bonsor, so were the spectators in the gallery; and I was holding on by the spikes on the ledge of the dock, shaking from right to left like ten thousand million aspen-leaves. My skull was splitting, my brain was bursting, when——

      I woke.

      I was lying in a very uncomfortable position in a first-class carriage of the Dover mail train; everything in the carriage was shaking; the oil was surging to and fro in the lamp;” my companions were swaying to and fro, and the sticks and umbrellas were rattling in the network above. The train was “at speed,” and my frightful dream was simply due to the violent and unusual oscillation of the train. Then, sitting up, and rubbing my eyes, immensely relieved, but holding on by the compartments near me (so violently did the carriages shake from side to side), I began to remember what I had dreamed or heard of others’ dreams before; while at sea, or while somebody was knocking loudly at the door; and of the odd connexions between unusual sound and motion on the thoughts of our innermost souls. And again with odd distinctness I remember that at one period of my distempered vision, namely, when I was attested and examined as a recruit, I had remained perfectly still and steady. This temporary freedom from ague I was fain to ascribe to the customary two or three minutes’ stoppage of the train at Tunbridge Wells. But, thank Heaven, all this was but a dream!

      “Enough to shake one’s head off!” exclaimed the testy old lady opposite, alluding to the oscillation of the train, as the guard appeared at the window with a shout of “Do-vor,!”

      “Well, mum, it have bin a shaking most unusual all the way down,” replied that functionary. “Thought we should have bin off the line, more than once. Screws will be looked to tomorrow morning. ‘Night, sir!” this was to me: I knew the man well. “Merry Christmas and a happy new year! You’ll be wanting a fly to Snargatestone Villa, won’t you, sir? Now, por-ter!”

      I did want that fly, and I had it. I paid the driver liberally, and did not scatter his money over the pavement. Mr. Jakes insisted upon my having something hot in the dining-room the moment I arrived. The weather was so “woundy cold’ he said. I joined the merry party up-stairs, and was received by my Tilly with open arms, and by my uncle Bonsor with an open waistcoat. I partook in cheerful moderation of the snapdragon festivities of Christmas-eve. We all dined together on Christmas day, and I helped the soup and carved a turkey, beautifully; and on the morrow, Boxing day, was complimented by my uncle’s lawyer on my remarkably neat calligraphy, as displayed in the signatures to the necessary legal documents. On the twenty-seventh of December, eighteen forty-six, I was married to my darling Tilly, and was going to live happy ever afterwards, when——

      I woke again

      —really did wake in bed in this Haunted House—and found that I had been very much shaken on the railway coming down, and that there was no marriage, no Tilly, no Mary Seaton, no Van Plank, no anything but myself and the Ghost of the Ague, and the two inner windows of the Double Room rattling like the ghosts of two departed watchmen who wanted spiritual assistance to carry me to the dead and gone old Watch-house.

The Ghost in the Picture Room

       Table of Contents

      Adelaide Anne Proctor

      Belinda, with a modest self-possession quite her own, promptly answered for this Spectre in a low, clear voice:

      The lights extinguished; by the hearth I leant, Half weary with a listless discontent.

      The flickering giant shadows, gathering near.

      Closed round me with a dim and silent fear; All dull, all dark; save when the leaping flame, Glancing, lit up The Picture’s ancient frame.

      Above the hearth it hung. Perhaps the night, My foolish tremors, or the gleaming light, Lent Power to that Portrait dark and quaint— A Portrait such as Rembrandt loved to paint— The likeness of a Nun. I seemed to trace A world of sorrow in the patient face, In the thin hands folded across her breast— Its own and the room’s shadow hid the rest.

      I gazed and dreamed, and the dull embers stirred, Till an old legend that I once had heard Came back to me; linked to the mystic gloom Of the dark Picture in the ghostly room.

      In the far South, where clustering vines are hung; Where first the old chivalric lays were sung; Where earliest smiled that gracious child of France, Angel and Knight and Fairy, called Romance, I stood one day. The warm blue June was spread Upon the earth; blue summer overhead, Without a cloud to fleck its radiant glare, Without a breath to stir its sultry air.

      All still, all silent, save the sobbing rush Of rippling waves, that lapsed in silver hush Upon the beach; where, glittering towards the strand, The purple Mediterranean kissed the land.

      All still, all peaceful; when a convent chime Broke on the midday silence for a time, Then trembling into quiet, seemed to cease, In deeper silence and more utter peace.

      So as I turned to gaze, where gleaming white, Half hid by shadowy trees from passers’ sight, The convent lay, one who had dwelt for long In that fair home of ancient tale and song, Who knew the story of each cave and hill, And every haunting fancy lingering still Within the land, spake thus to me, and told The convent’s treasured legend, quaint and old:

      Long years ago, a dense and flowering wood, Still more concealed where the white convent stood, Borne on its perfumed wings the title came: “Our Lady of the Hawthorns” is its name.

      Then did that bell, which still rings out today Bid all the country rise, or eat, or pray.

      Before that convent shrine, the haughty knight Passed the lone vigil of his perilous fight; For humbler cottage strife, or village brawl, The abbess listened, prayed, and settled all.

      Young hearts that came, weighed down by love or wrong, Left her kind presence comforted and strong.

      Each passing pilgrim, and each beggar’s right Was food, and rest, and shelter for the night.

      But, more than this, the nuns could well impart The deepest mysteries of the healing art; Their store of herbs and simples