LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1244, 2 March 1878, Page 3

LITERATURE.

IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT. A GHOST BTOKY. By Edmund Yates. [From the World.'] It was at Bagenall Horton’s chambers in the Adclphi, in the dining room, large but cosy, with its walls empanelled in dark oak, its heavy tapestry curtains and portiere, its almost black portrait of some celebrity of bygone times- whose very name was now forgotten—over the mantelpiece, sculptured alternately with wreaths and torches and prominent goats’ heads, environing the huge open fireplace, on which lay the ship-logs roaring so merrily. This dining room, with its adjoining bedroom, were the only inhabited at artments in the upper story of the old house, and they were inhabited only when Bagenall Horton gave there one of Ins famous dinner parties, for invitation to which all social and gastronomic London was eager. Underneath them was the public office, in which some twenty clerks were all day long busily engaged; and the private glazed closets where Bagenall Horton and bis partner received special customers and transacted business with shippers from Portugal Spain, and Madeira; and still lower down, penetrating far away, sub miring the fore-shore in front and reaching almost to tue Strand in the rear, were the huge cellars, where, in tier on tier of enormous casks, lay stored the priceless wine in which Horton and Company were proud to deal. For Bagenall Horton was a winemerchant now, and never thought of disguising the fact. He blazoned it forth on the shining brass plate on his outer door, on his billheads and note paper, on the admit ably horsed vans and carts which were always permeating the town. He had been all sorts of things—a lieutenant in an In ran cavalry regiment, a digger in the early days of UHifomiau gold discover/, a ligM coto<?-

dian of a strolling company at thirty shillings a week ; but having gone through two fo times, and encountered various viexs-i----tildes, when he came into thp third at the death of his old godfather the famous phy si ianof Queen Anne street, he put it into wine, settled down to business, and was doing a thriving trade. Who were there that night with faces all aglow in the reflection of the shaded lamp swinging over the round table, which turned noiselessly on a piv- 1, for the easier circulation of the viands and fettles ? The number of convives was always limited to eight an ‘octave’ Bagei all called it, as a kind of professional joke. There was the boat himself, fair-bearded, bright-eyed, and, though with middle age hovering o’er him, without a line of silver in the lorg hair, which he from time to time tossed off his forehead, and with a cheery laugh and a fund of animal spirits which all his ex perience had failed to tame. There was his partner, George May, as deep a drinker as Hon Gaultier’s hero, aud with as hard a head,—who was as well known in the British army as the Commander in-Ohief himself, - who went round to the various depots and messes in the interests of the firm, told the most highly flavoured stories wi h an unmoved face, aud drank every body under the table with agreeable pertinacity. There was Tommy Tnpman, an elderly Silonus, with short stubbly', gray hair and a mottled face, buffoon in ordinary to the H use of Borton and Company, the recipient of all the practical jokes, the butt for all the offensive remarks, the block scored aud notched in a thousand places with the razors of Aldershot wit and shorncliffe scorn, hut always smiling and goodtempered and thirsty. There were two young army men, presidents of their respective messes it was understood, who sat on either side of George May, with whom they exchanged many sotto-voce remarks. They did not enter into the general conversation, but paid great attention to the wiue, holding it up to the light and dulypassing each glass under rheir noses before tasting is. There was Horace Quiddit, the barrister, the most wonderful maa of his day, whose clerk nev»-r saw him after seven p.m,, who dined out every evening, danced out every night, kept the members of the Gridiron Club in convulsions at h s professional stories until four in the morning, and turned up at the r Td Bailey as fresh as paint as the burglar’s benefactor or the murderer’s most trusted advocate, with all the fa ta of his brief in his hea', and an abnormal amount of per suaaive eloquence at the tip of his tongue ; and seated by the host was a pale, gray, gentlemanly-lo'king man, whose name n > one seemed to know, who had spoken very little, and who looked on at the proceedings with a somewhat dazed and absent air.

1 here was not much variety in thes* Adelphi dinners, though their excellence was indisputable; ‘something British ’ was what Horton professed to give, and he gave it We had disposed of the steaming pea soup the firm and flaky codfish, the succulent rump steaks, the savoury omelettes, and the ample contents of the marrow bones, and were bringing out the flavour of the wine with the crisp biscuits or palate cleansing olives, to which the dessert was strictly limited. It was a wild night; we could hear the wind rorring up from the river, and blowing in fi ful casts round the house, making the old window frames rattle, and causing the crane which hung immeiliat-ly outside to croak and moan in the dismallest manner. ‘ That’s a most infernally unpleasant noise,’ said Horace Quiddit, looking reproachfully over his shoulder towards the window, * Makes you think of some of your clients, Horace,’ said Tommy Tnpman, with a fat chuc'le ; ‘rascals who ought to bo swinging in chains on Hounslow Heath.’ ‘Listen to this Wandering Jew among jorums, this Methusalah am ng magnums ’ said Horace ‘He has lived so long, he forgets that hanging in hains is no longer in fashion, as in the days of his early manhood a hundred years a g * Don’t think I should like to sleep here,’ said one of the army-men ; ‘denced uncomfortable kind of place with that row going on all nigh*.’ ‘ 0, Horton doesn’t sleep here,’ said George May, with a laugh. ‘He only uses this as a dining-place, and when we are all gone will slope quietly off to his chambers in the Albany.' ‘la there no one left here, then?’ asked the oth«r army man. ‘ D yes,’ replied George May ; ‘ the porter, an old army pensioner, and his wife. They have got very g >od rooms in the basement, and he is a very good watchdog.’ ‘Not much fear of a burglary here, unless it were a put up job, I should think,’ said Horace Quiddit. ‘ I suppose you send all your cash every night to the bankers’, and the casks and hogsheads cannot be looked upon as portable property.’ ‘lt was not a burglary I was thinking of,’ said the militaire who had first spoken; ‘ quite another kind of visitor. I should think, for instance, that that old party ’ pointing to the portrait over the m-mte'-piece— ‘ would come down out of his frarno and would go about looki g for his lost title-deeds or his murdered son, or something of that kind. ’ ‘What!’ cried Horace Quiddit, with a laugh ; ‘do you believe in ghosts V The word had bren scarcely uttered when Bagenall Horton, who was engaged in con versation with his next neighbour, turned swiftly round with a frown on his face and with his hand held up with a warning ges ture.

‘Change the subject, please,’ said he quickly ; and in a 1 w tone, * It is one which does not suit us all here.’

‘ Pooh, nonsense* Hagen all,’ said Tommy Tupmau, who had taken more than even his accustomed quantity of claret; ‘it is just the subject for such a night as this : make ourselves devilish creepy and uncora'ortable, don’t you know, and funk one another with ghost stories; and then turn out amongst the gas and cabs, and get all right again before g ung to bed ’ ‘Don’t be an idiot, Tommy,’said George May, following up his principal’s lead. ‘lf one wants to be frightered, one has only to look at you ; the spectacle of such a dissi pated old man would be horrible enough for any one, much more horrible than the raw head-and-bloody bones nonsense of the nursery tales. Besides, no one has ever seen a ghost ’ ‘ 1 heg your pardon*~ it was the pale gray man sitting next to Horton who spoke— ‘ 1 have* ‘ Now you have'done it,’ said Horton, in a vexed tone. But no one heeded him. All eyes were turned upon the last speaker. We had scarcely noticed him before, but now found him to be a man of clear-cut aristocratic features and singularly pallid colourless cheeks. As ho continued speaking, the light from time to time blazed up in his deep gray eyes, the ordinary expression of which was cold and hard - the eyes of a man who had seen a sight which had remained inde’iby impressed on them and on his memory. Though his hair and his heavy m ustache w re iron-gray, he was apparently not more than forty years of ago ; his figure, though spare, was well kni 1- ., and his hands with long tapering Ungers, thin almost to transparency. ‘ Don’t he vexed on my account, Horton,’ he said with a grave smile. ‘ 1 anticipated when I returned to England that i sh aid bo questioned on this subject; and though my own impressions are fixed and never to be shaken, I am fully prepared for any amount of incredulity.’ 1 Do you mean to say that yon. have really seen a gbost V asked H vraco Auiddit. •Locke devilish like one himself,’ whispered one of the army-men to the other, edging a, littl,o farther away from the stranger ‘Tell us all about it, wor\’t you?’ said Tommy Tupman, whose eyes were starting out of his head, and who had taken the opportunity of the general astonishment to secure a backhander. ‘ I have no objection to r.late nrjj experience,’ replied the stranger aujetiy T’Vand I don’t-’' "c * i ’ fa wntinvtidf)