CHAPTER XXI.
The next day, the last of the visiting patients to whom my forenoons were
devoted had just quitted me, when I was summoned in haste to attend the
steward of a Sir Philip Derval not residing at his family seat, which was
about five miles from L----. It was rarely indeed that persons so far
from the town, when of no higher rank than this applicant, asked my
services.
But it was my principle to go wherever I was summoned; my profession was
not gain, it was healing, to which gain was the incident, not the
essential. This case the messenger reported as urgent. I went on
horseback, and rode fast; but swiftly as I cantered through the village
that skirted the approach to Sir Philip Derval's park, the evident care
bestowed on the accommodation of the cottagers forcibly struck me. I felt
that I was on the lands of a rich, intelligent, and beneficent proprietor.
Entering the park, and passing before the manor-house, the contrast
between the neglect and the decay of the absentee's stately Hall and the
smiling homes of his villagers was disconsolately mournful.
An imposing pile, built apparently by Vanbrugh, with decorated pilasters,
pompous portico, and grand perron (or double flight of stairs to the
entrance), enriched with urns and statues, but discoloured, mildewed,
chipped, half-hidden with unpruned creepers and ivy. Most of the windows
were closed with shutters, decaying for want of paint; in some of the
casements the panes were broken; the peacock perched on the shattered
balustrade, that fenced a garden overgrown with weeds. The sun glared
hotly on the place, and made its ruinous condition still more painfully
apparent. I was glad when a winding in the park-road shut the house from
my sight. Suddenly I emerged through a copse of ancient yew-trees, and
before me there gleamed, in abrupt whiteness, a building evidently
designed for the family mausoleum, classical in its outline, with the
blind iron door niched into stone walls of massive thickness, and
surrounded by a funereal garden of roses and evergreens, fenced with an
iron rail, party-gilt.
The suddenness with which this House of the Dead came upon me heightened
almost into pain, if not into awe, the dismal impression which the aspect
of the deserted home in its neighbourhood had made. I spurred my horse,
and soon arrived at the door of my patient, who lived in a fair brick
house at the other extremity of the park.
I found my patient, a man somewhat advanced in years, but of a robust
conformation, in bed: he had been seized with a fit, which was supposed to
be apoplectic, a few hours before; but was already sensible, and out of
immediate danger. After I had prescribed a few simple remedies, I took
aside the patient's wife, and went with her to the parlour below stairs,
to make some inquiry about her husband's ordinary regimen and habits of
life. These seemed sufficiently regular; I could discover no apparent
cause for the attack, which presented symptoms not familiar to my
experience. "Has your husband ever had such fits before?"
"Never!"
"Had he experienced any sudden emotion? Had he heard any unexpected news;
or had anything happened to put him out?"
The woman looked much disturbed at these inquiries. I pressed them more
urgently. At last she burst into tears, and clasping my hand, said, "Oh,
doctor, I ought to tell you--I sent for you on purpose--yet I fear you
will not believe me: my good man has seen a ghost!"
"A ghost!" said I, repressing a smile. "Well, tell me all, that I may
prevent the ghost coming again."
The woman's story was prolix. Its substance was this Her husband,
habitually an early riser, had left his bed that morning still earlier
than usual, to give directions about some cattle that were to be sent for
sale to a neighbouring fair. An hour afterwards he had been found by a
shepherd, near the mausoleum, apparently lifeless. On being removed to
his own house, he had recovered speech, and bidding all except his wife
leave the room, he then told her that on walking across the park towards
the cattle-sheds, he had seen what appeared to him at first a pale light
by the iron door of the mausoleum. On approaching nearer, this light
changed into the distinct and visible form of his master, Sir Philip
Derval, who was then abroad,--supposed to be in the East, where he had
resided for many years. The impression on the steward's mind was so
strong, that he called out, "Oh, Sir Philip!" when looking still more
intently, he perceived that the face was that of a corpse. As he
continued to gaze, the apparition seemed gradually to recede, as if
vanishing into the sepulchre itself. He knew no more; he became
unconscious. It was the excess of the poor woman's alarm, on hearing
this strange tale, that made her resolve to send for me instead of the
parish apothecary. She fancied so astounding a cause for her husband's
seizure could only be properly dealt with by some medical man reputed to
have more than ordinary learning; and the steward himself objected to the
apothecary in the immediate neighbourhood, as more likely to annoy him by
gossip than a physician from a comparative distance.
I took care not to lose the confidence of the good wife by parading too
quickly my disbelief in the phantom her husband declared that he ad seen;
but as the story itself seemed at once to decide the nature of the fit to
be epileptic, I began to tell her of similar delusions which, in my
experience, had occurred to those subjected to epilepsy, and finally
soothed her into the conviction that the apparition was clearly reducible
to natural causes. Afterwards, I led her on to talk about Sir Philip
Derval, less from any curiosity I felt about the absent proprietor than
from a desire to re-familiarize her own mind to his image as a living man.
The steward had been in the service of Sir Philip's father, and had known
Sir Philip himself from a child. He was warmly attached to his master,
whom the old woman described as a man of rare benevolence and great
eccentricity, which last she imputed to his studious habits. He had
succeeded to the title and estates as a minor. For the first few years
after attaining his majority, be had mixed much in the world. When at
Derval Court his house had been filled with gay companions, and was the
scene of lavish hospitality; but the estate was not in proportion to the
grandeur of the mansion, still less to the expenditure of the owner. He
had become greatly embarrassed; and some love disappointment (so it was
rumoured) occurring simultaneously with his pecuniary difficulties, he had
suddenly changed his way of life, shut himself up from his old friends,
lived in seclusion, taking to books and scientific pursuits, and as the
old woman said vaguely and expressively, "to odd ways." He had
gradually by an economy that, towards himself, was penurious, but which
did not preclude much judicious generosity to others, cleared off his
debts; and, once more rich, he had suddenly quitted the country, and
taken to a life of travel. He was now about forty-eight years old, and
had been eighteen years abroad. He wrote frequently to his steward,
giving him minute and thoughtful instructions in regard to the employment,
comforts, and homes of the peasantry, but peremptorily ordering him to
spend no money on the grounds and mansion, stating as a reason why the
latter might be allowed to fall into decay, his intention to pull it down
whenever he returned to England.
I stayed some time longer than my engagements well warranted at my
patient's house, not leaving till the sufferer, after a quiet sleep, had
removed from his bed to his armchair, taken food, and seemed perfectly
recovered from his attack.
Riding homeward, I mused on the difference that education makes, even
pathologically, between man and man. Here was a brawny inhabitant of
rural fields, leading the healthiest of lives, not conscious of the
faculty we call imagination, stricken down almost to Death's door by his
fright at an optical illusion, explicable, if examined, by the same simple
causes which had impressed me the night before with a moment's belief in a
sound and a spectre,--me who, thanks to sublime education, went so quietly
to sleep a few minutes after, convinced hat no phantom, the ghostliest
that ear ever heard or eye ever saw, can be anything else but a nervous
phenomenon.
