At a Winter's Fire Read online

  THE VANISHING HOUSE

  "My grandfather," said the banjo, "drank 'dog's-nose,' my father drank'dog's-nose,' and I drink 'dog's-nose.' If that ain't heredity, there'sno virtue in the board schools."

  "Ah!" said the piccolo, "you're always a-boasting of your science. Andso, I suppose, your son'll drink 'dog's-nose,' too?"

  "No," retorted the banjo, with a rumbling laugh, like wind in thebung-hole of an empty cask; "for I ain't got none. The family ends withme; which is a pity, for I'm a full-stop to be proud on."

  He was an enormous, tun-bellied person--a mere mound of expressionlessflesh, whose size alone was an investment that paid a perpetual dividendof laughter. When, as with the rest of his company, his face wasblackened, it looked like a specimen coal on a pedestal in a museum.

  There was Christmas company in the Good Intent, and the sanded tap-room,with its trestle tables and sprigs of holly stuck under sooty beamsreeked with smoke and the steam of hot gin and water.

  "How much could you put down of a night, Jack?" said a little grinningman by the door.

  "Why," said the banjo, "enough to lay the dustiest ghost as ever walked."

  "Could you, now?" said the little man.

  "Ah!" said the banjo, chuckling. "There's nothing like settin' one speritto lay another; and there I could give you proof number two of heredity."

  "What! Don't you go for to say you ever see'd a ghost!"

  "Haven't I? What are you whisperin' about, you blushful chap there by thewinder?"

  "I was only remarking sir, 'twere snawin' like the devil."

  "_Is_ it? Then the devil has been misjudged these eighteen hundred andninety odd years."

  "But _did_ you ever see a ghost?" said the little grinning man, pursuinghis subject.

  "No, I didn't, sir," mimicked the banjo, "saving in coffee grounds. Butmy grandfather in _his_ cups see'd one; which brings us to number threein the matter of heredity."

  "Give us the story, Jack," said the "bones," whose agued shins wereextemporizing a rattle on their own account before the fire.

  "Well, I don't mind," said the fat man. "It's seasonable; and I'mseasonable, like the blessed plum-pudden, I am; and the more burnt brandyyou set about me, the richer and headier I'll go down."

  "You'd be a jolly old pudden to digest," said the piccolo.

  "You blow your aggrawation into your pipe and sealing-wax the stops,"said his friend.

  He drew critically at his "churchwarden" a moment or so, leaned forward,emptied his glass into his capacious receptacles, and, giving hisstomach a shift, as if to accommodate it to its new burden, proceeded asfollows:--

  "Music and malt is my nat'ral inheritance. My grandfather blew his'dog's-nose,' and drank his clarinet like a artist and my father--"

  "What did you say your grandfather did?" asked the piccolo.

  "He played the clarinet."

  "You said he blew his 'dog's-nose.'"

  "Don't be a ass, Fred!" said the banjo, aggrieved. "How the blazes coulda man blow his dog's nose, unless he muzzled it with a handkercher, andthen twisted its tail? He played the clarinet, I say; and my fatherplayed the musical glasses, which was a form of harmony pertiklerlygenial to him. Amongst us we've piped out a good long century--ah! wehave, for all I look sich a babby bursting on sops and spoon meat."

  "What!" said the little man by the door. "You don't include them cockthatses in your expeerunce?"

  "My grandfather wore 'em, sir. He wore a play-actin' coat, too, andbuckles to his shoes, when he'd got any; and he and a friend or two madea permanency of 'waits' (only they called 'em according to the season),and got their profit goin' from house to house, principally in thecountry, and discoursin' music at the low rate of whatever they could getfor it."

  "Ain't you comin' to the ghost, Jack?" said the little man hungrily.

  "All in course, sir. Well, gentlemen, it was hard times pretty often withmy grandfather and his friends, as you may suppose; and never so muchas when they had to trudge it across country, with the nor'-easterbuzzin' in their teeth and the snow piled on their cockt hats like lemonsponge on entry dishes. The rewards, I've heard him say--for he lived tobe ninety, nevertheless--was poor compensation for the drifts, and theinflienza, and the broken chilblains; but now and again they'd get a fairskinful of liquor from a jolly squire, as 'd set 'em up like boggartsmended wi' new broomsticks."

  "Ho-haw!" broke in a hurdle-maker in a corner; and then, regretting thepublicity of his merriment, put his fingers bashfully to his stubblelips.

  "Now," said the banjo, "it's of a pertikler night and a pertikler skinfulthat I'm a-going to tell you; and that night fell dark, and that skinfulwere took a hundred years ago this December, as I'm a Jack-pudden!"

  He paused a moment for effect, before he went on:--

  "They were down in the sou'-west country, which they little knew; andwere anighing Winchester city, or should 'a' been. But they got muzzed onthe ungodly downs, and before they guessed, they was off the track. Mygood hat! there they was, as lost in the snow as three nutshellsa-sinkin' into a hasty pudden. Well, they wandered round; prettyconfident at first, but getting madder and madder as every sense of theirbearings slipped from them. And the bitter cold took their vitals, so asthey saw nothing but a great winding sheet stretched abroad for to wraptheir dead carcasses in.

  "At last my grandfather he stopt and pulled hisself together with anawful face, and says he: 'We're Christmas pie for the carrying-on crowsif we don't prove ourselves human. Let's fetch out our pipes and blow ourtrouble into 'em.' So they stood together, like as if they was before ahouse, and they played 'Kate of Aberdare' mighty dismal and flat, fortheir fingers froze to the keys.

  "Now, I tell you, they hadn't climbed over the first stave, when therecome a skirl of wind and spindrift of snow as almost took them off oftheir feet; and, on the going down of it, Jem Sloke, as played thehautboy, dropped the reed from his mouth, and called out, 'Sakes alive!if we fools ain't been standin' outside a gentleman's gate all the time,and not knowin' it!'

  "You might 'a' knocked the three of 'em down wi' a barley straw, as theystared and stared, and then fell into a low, enjoyin' laugh. For they wasstandin' not six fut from a tall iron gate in a stone wall, and behindthese was a great house showin' out dim, with the winders all lighted up.

  "'Lord!' chuckled my grandfather, 'to think o' the tricks o' thisvagarious country! But, as we're here, we'll go on and give 'em a tasteof our quality.'

  "They put new heart into the next movement, as you may guess; and theyhadn't fair started on it, when the door of the house swung open, anddown the shaft of light that shot out as far as the gate there come asmiling young gal, with a tray of glasses in her hands.

  "Now she come to the bars; and she took and put a glass through, notsayin' nothin', but invitin' some one to drink with a silent laugh.

  "Did any one take that glass? Of course he did, you'll be thinkin'; andyou'll be thinkin' wrong. Not a man of the three moved. They was strucklike as stone, and their lips was gone the colour of sloe berries. Not aman took the glass. For why? The moment the gal presented it, each sawthe face of a thing lookin' out of the winder over the porch, and theface was hidjus beyond words, and the shadder of it, with the lightbehind, stretched out and reached to the gal, and made her hidjus, too.

  "At last my grandfather give a groan and put out his hand; and, as he didit, the face went, and the gal was beautiful to see agen.

  "'Death and the devil!' said he. 'It's one or both, either way; and Iprefer 'em hot to cold!'

  "He drank off half the glass, smacked his lips, and stood staring amoment.

  "'Dear, dear!' said the gal, in a voice like falling water, 'you've drunkblood, sir!'

  "My grandfather gave a yell, slapped the rest of the liquor in the facesof his friends, and threw the cup agen the bars. It broke with a noiselike thunder, and at that he up'd with his hands and fell full lengthinto the snow."

  There was a pause. The little man by the door was twisting nervously in
his chair.

  "He came to--of course, he came to?" said he at length.

  "He come to," said the banjo solemnly, "in the bitter break of dawn; thatis, he come to as much of hisself as he ever was after. He give asquiggle and lifted his head; and there was he and his friends a-lyin' onthe snow of the high downs."

  "And the house and the gal?"

  "Narry a sign of either, sir, but just the sky and the white stretch; andone other thing."

  "And what was that?"

  "A stain of red sunk in where the cup had spilt."

  There was a second pause, and the banjo blew into the bowl of his pipe.

  "They cleared out of that neighbourhood double quick, you'll bet," saidhe. "But my grandfather was never the same man agen. His face tookpurple, while his friends' only remained splashed with red, same as birthmarks; and, I tell you, if he ever ventur'd upon 'Kate of Aberdare,' hischeeks swelled up to the reed of his clarinet, like as a blue plum on astalk. And forty year after, he died of what they call solution of bloodto the brain."

  "And you can't have better proof than that," said the little man.

  "That's what _I_ say," said the banjo. "Next player, gentlemen, please."