In one of the walls was the low,narrow door of a closet,containing some of the oldest and rarest of the books.It was a very thick door,with a projecting frame,and it had been the fancy of some ancestor to cross it with shallow shelves,filled with book-backs only.The harmless trick may be excused by the fact that the titles on the sham backs were either humorously original,or those of books lost beyond hope of recovery.I had a great liking for the masked door.
To complete the illusion of it,some inventive workman apparently had shoved in,on the top of one of the rows,a part of a volume thin enough to lie between it and the bottom of the next shelf:
he had cut away diagonally a considerable portion,and fixed the remnant with one of its open corners projecting beyond the book-backs.The binding of the mutilated volume was limp vellum,and one could open the corner far enough to see that it was manuscript upon parchment.
Happening,as I sat reading,to raise my eyes from the page,my glance fell upon this door,and at once I saw that the book described,if book it may be called,was gone.Angrier than any worth I knew in it justified,I rang the bell,and the butler appeared.When I asked him if he knew what had befallen it,he turned pale,and assured me he did not.I could less easily doubt his word than my own eyes,for he had been all his life in the family,and a more faithful servant never lived.He left on me the impression,nevertheless,that he could have said something more.
In the afternoon I was again reading in the library,and coming to a point which demanded reflection,I lowered the book and let my eyes go wandering.The same moment I saw the back of a slender old man,in a long,dark coat,shiny as from much wear,in the act of disappearing through the masked door into the closet beyond.Idarted across the room,found the door shut,pulled it open,looked into the closet,which had no other issue,and,seeing nobody,concluded,not without uneasiness,that I had had a recurrence of my former illusion,and sat down again to my reading.
Naturally,however,I could not help feeling a little nervous,and presently glancing up to assure myself that I was indeed alone,started again to my feet,and ran to the masked door--for there was the mutilated volume in its place!I laid hold of it and pulled:it was firmly fixed as usual!
I was now utterly bewildered.I rang the bell;the butler came;I told him all I had seen,and he told me all he knew.
He had hoped,he said,that the old gentleman was going to be forgotten;it was well no one but myself had seen him.He had heard a good deal about him when first he served in the house,but by degrees he had ceased to be mentioned,and he had been very careful not to allude to him.
"The place was haunted by an old gentleman,was it?"I said.
He answered that at one time everybody believed it,but the fact that I had never heard of it seemed to imply that the thing had come to an end and was forgotten.
I questioned him as to what he had seen of the old gentleman.
He had never seen him,he said,although he had been in the house from the day my father was eight years old.My grandfather would never hear a word on the matter,declaring that whoever alluded to it should be dismissed without a moment's warning:it was nothing but a pretext of the maids,he said,for running into the arms of the men!but old Sir Ralph believed in nothing he could not see or lay hold of.Not one of the maids ever said she had seen the apparition,but a footman had left the place because of it.
An ancient woman in the village had told him a legend concerning a Mr.Raven,long time librarian to "that Sir Upward whose portrait hangs there among the books."Sir Upward was a great reader,she said--not of such books only as were wholesome for men to read,but of strange,forbidden,and evil books;and in so doing,Mr.Raven,who was probably the devil himself,encouraged him.Suddenly they both disappeared,and Sir Upward was never after seen or heard of,but Mr.Raven continued to show himself at uncertain intervals in the library.There were some who believed he was not dead;but both he and the old woman held it easier to believe that a dead man might revisit the world he had left,than that one who went on living for hundreds of years should be a man at all.
He had never heard that Mr.Raven meddled with anything in the house,but he might perhaps consider himself privileged in regard to the books.How the old woman had learned so much about him he could not tell;but the description she gave of him corresponded exactly with the figure I had just seen.
"I hope it was but a friendly call on the part of the old gentleman!"he concluded,with a troubled smile.
I told him I had no objection to any number of visits from Mr.Raven,but it would be well he should keep to his resolution of saying nothing about him to the servants.Then I asked him if he had ever seen the mutilated volume out of its place;he answered that he never had,and had always thought it a fixture.With that he went to it,and gave it a pull:it seemed immovable.
