CHAPTER III.
Here we three are seated round the open window--after dinner--familiar
as in the old happy time--and my mother is talking low, that she may not
disturb my father, who seems in thought--
Cr-cr-crrr-cr-cr! I feel it--I have it. Where! What! Where! Knock
it down; brush it off! For Heaven's sake, see to it! Crrrr-crrrrr--
there--here--in my hair--in my sleeve--in my ear--cr-cr.
I say solemnly, and on the word of a Christian, that as I sat down to
begin this chapter, being somewhat in a brown study, the pen insensibly
slipped from my hand, and leaning back in my chair, I fell to gazing in
the fire. It is the end of June, and a remarkably cold evening, even
for that time of year. And while I was so gazing I felt something
crawling just by the nape of the neck, ma'am. Instinctively and
mechanically, and still musing, I put my hand there, and drew forth
What? That what it is which perplexes me. It was a thing--a dark
thing--a much bigger thing than I had expected. And the sight took me
so by surprise that I gave my hand a violent shake, and the thing went--
where I know not. The what and the where are the knotty points in the
whole question! No sooner had it gone than I was seized with repentance
not to have examined it more closely; not to have ascertained what the
creature was. It might have been an earwig,--a very large, motherly
earwig; an earwig far gone in that way in which earwigs wish to be who
love their lords. I have a profound horror of earwigs; I firmly believe
that they do get into the ear. That is a subject on which it is useless
to argue with me upon philosophical grounds. I have a vivid
recollection of a story told me by Mrs. Primmins,--how a lady for many
years suffered under the most excruciating headaches; how, as the
tombstones say, "physicians were in vain;" how she died; and how her
head was opened, and how such a nest of earwigs, ma'am, such a nest!
Earwigs are the prolifickest things, and so fond of their offspring!
They sit on their eggs like hens, and the young, as soon as they are
born, creep under them for protection,--quite touchingly! Imagine such
an establishment domesticated at one's tympanum!
But the creature was certainly larger than an earwig. It might have
been one of that genus in the family of Forficulidce called Labidoura,--
monsters whose antennae have thirty joints! There is a species of this
creature in England--but to the great grief of naturalists, and to the
great honor of Providence, very rarely found--infinitely larger than the
common earwig, or Forfaculida auriculana. Could it have been an early
hornet? It had certainly a black head and great feelers. I have a
greater horror of hornets, if possible, than I have of earwigs. Two
hornets will kill a man, and three a carriage-horse sixteen hands high.
However, the creature was gone. Yes, but where? Where had I so rashly
thrown it? It might have got into a fold of my dressing-gown or into my
slippers, or, in short, anywhere, in the various recesses for earwigs
and hornets which a gentleman's habiliments afford. I satisfy myself at
last as far as I can, seeing that I am not alone in the room, that it is
not upon me. I look upon the carpet, the rug, the chair under the
fender. It is non inventus. I barbarously hope it is frizzing behind
that great black coal in the grate. I pluck up courage; I prudently
remove to the other end of the room. I take up my pen, I begin my
chapter,--very nicely, too, I think upon the whole. I am just getting
into my subject, when--cr-cr-er-cr-er--crawl--crawl--crawl--creep--
creep--creep. Exactly, my dear ma'am, in the same place it was before!
Oh, by the Powers! I forgot all my scientific regrets at not having
scrutinized its genus before, whether Forfaculida or Labidoura. I made
a desperate lunge with both hands,--something between thrust and cut,
ma'am. The beast is gone. Yes, but, again, where? I say that where is
a very horrible question. Having come twice, in spite of all my
precautions--and exactly on the same spot, too--it shows a confirmed
disposition to habituate itself to its quarters, to effect a parochial
settlement upon me; there is something awful and preternatural in it. I
assure you that there is not a part of me that has not gone cr-cr-cr!--
that has not crept, crawled, and forficulated ever since; and I put it
to you what sort of a chapter I can make after such a--My good little
girl, will you just take the candle and look carefully under the table?
that's a dear! Yes, my love, very black indeed, with two horns, and
inclined to be corpulent. Gentlemen and ladies who have cultivated an
acquaintance with the Phcenician language are aware that Beelzebub,
examined etymologically and entomologically, is nothing more nor less
than Baalzebub, "the Jupiter-fly," an emblem of the Destroying Attribute,
which attribute, indeed, is found in all the insect tribes more or less.
Wherefore, as--Mr. Payne Knight, in his "Inquiry into Symbolical
Languages," hath observed, the Egyptian priests shaved their whole
bodies, even to their eyebrows, lest unaware they should harbor any of
the minor Zebubs of the great Baal. If I were the least bit more
persuaded that that black cr-cr were about me still, and that the
sacrifice of my eyebrows would deprive him of shelter, by the souls of
the Ptolemies I would,--and I will too! Icing the bell, my little dear!
John, my--my cigar-box! There is not a cr in the world that can abide
the fumes of the havana! Pshaw! sir, I am not the only man who lets his
first thoughts upon cold steel end, like this chapter, in--Pff--pff--
pff!
