I
'Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth,
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.'
"'How often,' says Father Adam, 'from the steep of echoing hill or thicket18, have we heard celestial voices to the midnight air, sole, or responsive to each other's notes, singing!' After the Act of Disobedience, when the erring19 pair from Eden took their solitary20 way, and went forth21 to toil22 and trouble on common earth—though the Glorious Ones no longer were visible, you cannot say they were gone. It was not that the Bright Ones were absent, but that the dim eyes of rebel man no longer could see them. In your chamber23 hangs a picture of one whom you never knew, but whom you have long held in tenderest regard, and who was painted for you by a friend of mine, the Knight24 of Plympton. She communes with you. She smiles on you. When your spirits are low, her bright eyes shine on you and cheer you. Her innocent sweet smile is a caress25 to you. She never fails to soothe26 you with her speechless prattle27. You love her. She is alive with you. As you extinguish your candle and turn to sleep, though your eyes see her not, is she not there still smiling? As you lie in the night awake, and thinking of your duties, and the morrow's inevitable28 toil oppressing the busy, weary, wakeful brain as with a remorse29, the crackling fire flashes up for a moment in the grate, and she is there, your little Beauteous Maiden30, smiling with her sweet eyes! When moon is down, when fire is out, when curtains are drawn31, when lids are closed, is she not there, the little Beautiful One, though invisible, present and smiling still? Friend, the Unseen Ones are round about us. Does it not seem as if the time were drawing near when it shall be given to men to behold32 them?"
The print of which my friend spoke33, and which, indeed, hangs in my room, though he has never been there, is that charming little winter piece of Sir Joshua, representing the little Lady Caroline Montague, afterwards Duchess of Buccleuch. She is represented as standing34 in the midst of a winter landscape, wrapped in muff and cloak; and she looks out of her picture with a smile so exquisite that a Herod could not see her without being charmed.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. PINTO," I said to the person with whom I was conversing35. (I wonder, by the way, that I was not surprised at his knowing how fond I am of this print.) "You spoke of the Knight of Plympton. Sir Joshua died 1792: and you say he was your dear friend?"
As I spoke I chanced to look at Mr. Pinto; and then it suddenly struck me: Gracious powers! Perhaps you ARE a hundred years old, now I think of it. You look more than a hundred. Yes, you may be a thousand years old for what I know. Your teeth are false. One eye is evidently false. Can I say that the other is not? If a man's age may be calculated by the rings round his eyes, this man may be as old as Methuselah. He has no beard. He wears a large curly glossy36 brown wig37, and his eyebrows38 are painted a deep olive- green. It was odd to hear this man, this walking mummy, talking sentiment, in these queer old chambers39 in Shepherd's Inn.
Pinto passed a yellow bandanna40 handkerchief over his awful white teeth, and kept his glass eye steadily41 fixed42 on me. "Sir Joshua's friend?" said he (you perceive, eluding43 my direct question). "Is not everyone that knows his pictures Reynolds's friend? Suppose I tell you that I have been in his painting room scores of times, and that his sister The has made me tea, and his sister Toffy has made coffee for me? You will only say I am an old ombog." (Mr. Pinto, I remarked, spoke all languages with an accent equally foreign.) "Suppose I tell you that I knew Mr. Sam Johnson, and did not like him? that I was at that very ball at Madame Cornelis', which you have mentioned in one of your little—what do you call them?—bah! my memory begins to fail me—in one of your little Whirligig Papers? Suppose I tell you that Sir Joshua has been here, in this very room?"
"Have you, then, had these apartments for—more—than—seventy years?" I asked.
"They look as if they had not been swept for that time—don't they?
Hey? I did not say that I had them for seventy years, but that Sir
Joshua has visited me here."
"When?" I asked, eying the man sternly, for I began to think he was an impostor.
He answered me with a glance still more stern: "Sir Joshua Reynolds was here this very morning, with Angelica Kaufmann and Mr. Oliver Goldschmidt. He is still very much attached to Angelica, who still does not care for him. Because he is dead (and I was in the fourth mourning coach at his funeral) is that any reason why he should not come back to earth again? My good sir, you are laughing at me. He has sat many a time on that very chair which you are now occupying. There are several spirits in the room now, whom you cannot see. Excuse me." Here he turned round as if he was addressing somebody, and began rapidly speaking a language unknown to me. "It is Arabic," he said; "a bad patois45, I own. I learned it in Barbary, when I was a prisoner among the Moors46. In anno 1609, bin47 ick aldus ghekledt gheghaen. Ha! you doubt me: look at me well. At least I am like—"
Perhaps some of my readers remember a paper of which the figure of a man carrying a barrel formed the initial letter, and which I copied from an old spoon now in my possession. As I looked at Mr. Pinto I do declare he looked so like the figure on that old piece of plate that I started and felt very uneasy. "Ha!" said he, laughing through his false teeth (I declare they were false—I could see utterly48 toothless gums working up and down behind the pink coral), "you see I wore a beard den17; I am shafed now; perhaps you tink I am A SPOON. Ha, ha!" And as he laughed he gave a cough which I thought would have coughed his teeth out, his glass eye out, his wig off, his very head off; but he stopped this convulsion by stumping49 across the room and seizing a little bottle of bright pink medicine, which, being opened, spread a singular acrid51 aromatic52 odor through the apartment; and I thought I saw—but of this I cannot take an affirmation—a light green and violet flame flickering53 round the neck of the vial as he opened it. By the way, from the peculiar54 stumping noise which he made in crossing the bare-boarded apartment, I knew at once that my strange entertainer had a wooden leg. Over the dust which lay quite thick on the boards, you could see the mark of one foot very neat and pretty, and then a round O, which was naturally the impression made by the wooden stump50. I own I had a queer thrill as I saw that mark, and felt a secret comfort that it was not CLOVEN.
In this desolate55 apartment in which Mr. Pinto had invited me to see him, there were three chairs, one bottomless, a little table on which you might put a breakfast tray, and not a single other article of furniture. In the next room, the door of which was open, I could see a magnificent gilt56 dressing44 case, with some splendid diamond and ruby57 shirt studs lying by it, and a chest of drawers, and a cupboard apparently58 full of clothes.
Remembering him in Baden-Baden in great magnificence I wondered at his present denuded59 state. "You have a house elsewhere, Mr. Pinto?" I said.
"Many," says he. "I have apartments in many cities. I lock dem up, and do not carry mosh logish."
I then remembered that his apartment at Baden, where I first met him, was bare, and had no bed in it.
"There is, then, a sleeping room beyond?"
"This is the sleeping room." (He pronounces it DIS. Can this, by the way, give any clew to the nationality of this singular man?)
"If you sleep on these two old chairs you have a rickety couch; if on the floor, a dusty one."
"Suppose I sleep up dere?" said this strange man, and he actually pointed60 up to the ceiling. I thought him mad or what he himself called "an ombog." "I know. You do not believe me; for why should I deceive you? I came but to propose a matter of business to you. I told you I could give you the clew to the mystery of the Two Children in Black, whom you met at Baden, and you came to see me. If I told you you would not believe me. What for try and convinz you? Ha hey?" And he shook his hand once, twice, thrice, at me, and glared at me out of his eye in a peculiar way.
Of what happened now I protest I cannot give an accurate account. It seemed to me that there shot a flame from his eye into my brain, while behind his GLASS eye there was a green illumination as if a candle had been lit in it. It seemed to me that from his long fingers two quivering flames issued, sputtering61, as it were, which penetrated62 me, and forced me back into one of the chairs—the broken one—out of which I had much difficulty in scrambling63, when the strange glamour64 was ended. It seemed to me that, when I was so fixed, so transfixed in the broken chair, the man floated up to the ceiling, crossed his legs, folded his arms as if he was lying on a sofa, and grinned down at me. When I came to myself he was down from the ceiling, and, taking me out of the broken cane-bottomed chair, kindly65 enough—"Bah!" said he, "it is the smell of my medicine. It often gives the vertigo66. I thought you would have had a little fit. Come into the open air." And we went down the steps, and into Shepherd's Inn, where the setting sun was just shining on the statue of Shepherd; the laundresses were traipsing about; the porters were leaning against the railings; and the clerks were playing at marbles, to my inexpressible consolation67.
"You said you were going to dine at the 'Gray's-Inn Coffee-House,'" he said. I was. I often dine there. There is excellent wine at the "Gray's-Inn Coffee-House"; but I declare I NEVER SAID so. I was not astonished at his remark; no more astonished than if I was in a dream. Perhaps I WAS in a dream. Is life a dream? Are dreams facts? Is sleeping being really awake? I don't know. I tell you I am puzzled. I have read "The Woman in White," "The Strange Story"—not to mention that story "Stranger than Fiction" in the Cornhill Magazine—that story for which THREE credible68 witnesses are ready to vouch69. I have had messages from the dead; and not only from the dead, but from people who never existed at all. I own I am in a state of much bewilderment: but, if you please, will proceed with my simple, my artless story.
Well, then. We passed from Shepherd's Inn into Holborn, and looked for a while at Woodgate's bric-a-brac shop, which I never can pass without delaying at the windows—indeed, if I were going to be hung, I would beg the cart to stop, and let me have one look more at that delightful9 omnium gatherum. And passing Woodgate's, we come to Gale70's little shop, "No. 47," which is also a favorite haunt of mine.
Mr. Gale happened to be at his door, and as we exchanged salutations, "Mr. Pinto," I said, "will you like to see a real curiosity in this curiosity shop? Step into Mr. Gale's little back room."
In that little back parlor71 there are Chinese gongs; there are old Saxe and Sevres plates; there is Furstenberg, Carl Theodor, Worcester, Amstel, Nankin and other jimcrockery. And in the corner what do you think there is? There is an actual GUILLOTINE. If you doubt me, go and see—Gale, High Holborn, No. 47. It is a slim instrument, much slighter than those which they make now;—some nine feet high, narrow, a pretty piece of upholstery enough. There is the hook over which the rope used to play which unloosened the dreadful ax above; and look! dropped into the orifice where the head used to go—there is THE AX itself, all rusty72, with A GREAT NOTCH73 IN THE BLADE.
As Pinto looked at it—Mr. Gale was not in the room, I recollect74; happening to have been just called out by a customer who offered him three pound fourteen and sixpence for a blue Shepherd in pate75 tendre,—Mr. Pinto gave a little start, and seemed crispe for a moment. Then he looked steadily toward one of those great porcelain76 stools which you see in gardens—and—it seemed to me—I tell you I won't take my affidavit—I may have been maddened by the six glasses I took of that pink elixir—I may have been sleep- walking: perhaps am as I write now—I may have been under the influence of that astounding77 MEDIUM into whose hands I had fallen— but I vow78 I heard Pinto say, with rather a ghastly grin at the porcelain stool,
Dou canst not say I did it."
(He pronounced it, by the way, I DIT it, by which I KNOW that Pinto was a German.)
I heard Pinto say those very words, and sitting on the porcelain stool I saw, dimly at first, then with an awful distinctness—a ghost—an EIDOLON—a form—A HEADLESS MAN seated with his head in his lap, which wore an expression of piteous surprise.
At this minute, Mr. Gale entered from the front shop to show a customer some Delft plates; and he did not see—but WE DID—the figure rise up from the porcelain stool, shake its head, which it held in its hand, and which kept its eyes fixed sadly on us, and disappear behind the guillotine.
"Come to the 'Gray's-Inn Coffee-House,'" Pinto said, "and I will tell you how the notch came to the ax." And we walked down Holborn at about thirty-seven minutes past six o'clock.
If there is anything in the above statement which astonishes the reader, I promise him that in the next chapter of this little story he will be astonished still more.
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1
absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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Vogue
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| n.时髦，时尚；adj.流行的 | |
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extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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satire
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| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
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parody
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| n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文 | |
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skit
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| n.滑稽短剧；一群 | |
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sensational
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| adj.使人感动的，非常好的，轰动的，耸人听闻的 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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10
delightfully
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| 大喜，欣然 | |
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immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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bard
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| n.吟游诗人 | |
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orbs
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| abbr.off-reservation boarding school 在校寄宿学校n.球，天体，圆形物( orb的名词复数 ) | |
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celestial
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| adj.天体的；天上的 | |
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discourses
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| 论文( discourse的名词复数 )； 演说； 讲道； 话语 | |
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hovered
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| 鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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thicket
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| n.灌木丛，树林 | |
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erring
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| 做错事的，错误的 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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knight
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| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
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caress
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| vt./n.爱抚，抚摸 | |
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soothe
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| v.安慰；使平静；使减轻；缓和；奉承 | |
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prattle
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| n.闲谈；v.（小孩般）天真无邪地说话；发出连续而无意义的声音 | |
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28
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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32
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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conversing
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| v.交谈，谈话( converse的现在分词 ) | |
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glossy
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| adj.平滑的；有光泽的 | |
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wig
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| n.假发 | |
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eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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bandanna
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| n.大手帕 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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eluding
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| v.（尤指机敏地）避开( elude的现在分词 )；逃避；躲避；使达不到 | |
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dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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patois
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| n.方言；混合语 | |
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moors
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| v.停泊，系泊（船只）( moor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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bin
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| n.箱柜；vt.放入箱内；[计算机] DOS文件名:二进制目标文件 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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stumping
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| 僵直地行走，跺步行走( stump的现在分词 )； 把（某人）难住； 使为难； （选举前）在某一地区作政治性巡回演说 | |
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stump
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| n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走 | |
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acrid
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| adj.辛辣的，尖刻的，刻薄的 | |
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aromatic
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| adj.芳香的，有香味的 | |
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flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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ruby
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| n.红宝石，红宝石色 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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denuded
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| adj.[医]变光的，裸露的v.使赤裸( denude的过去式和过去分词 )；剥光覆盖物 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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sputtering
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| n.反应溅射法；飞溅；阴极真空喷镀；喷射v.唾沫飞溅( sputter的现在分词 )；发劈啪声；喷出；飞溅出 | |
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penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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scrambling
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的现在分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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glamour
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| n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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vertigo
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| n.眩晕 | |
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consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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credible
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| adj.可信任的，可靠的 | |
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vouch
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| v.担保；断定；n.被担保者 | |
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gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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notch
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| n.(V字形)槽口，缺口，等级 | |
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74
recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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75
pate
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| n.头顶；光顶 | |
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76
porcelain
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| n.瓷；adj.瓷的，瓷制的 | |
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77
astounding
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| adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词) | |
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78
vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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79
gory
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| adj.流血的；残酷的 | |
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