Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/710

 702 perhaps cab-horses; and the hunting, I hear, is by no means what it was. The Dean, whom we then execrated is dead; the tutors have disappeared into the seclusion of fat country livings; the Master—well, everybody who knows Holy Bottle knows that the Master of Holy Bottle is unassailable by time as by all other ills of life. He still rules supreme in his ancient seat, and if need be, can vouch for and confirm the truth of my story.

My readers will perceive that the conversation which follows was not taken down verbatim—is, in fact, a mere generalisation from memory. I may have put speeches into wrong mouths, or into the mouths of interlocutors not present or non-existent. But the bearing and tone of the conversation is given truly. I have cause to remember that evening, and the talk in which I joined in Allen’s rooms was preparative to—nay, the cause which led to the experiences which follow.

It was a Saturday in the October Term, and evening was already settling down. A dull heavy mist filled the quadrangle and quite hid its opposite side. We were gathered round the blazing fire, which gave forth that throbbing vital kind of light which contrasts so forcibly and pleasantly with the deadness of winter twilight. Other light there was none, save such as twinkled from red cigar ends, or glowing pipe-bowls. Smoke within and mist without. The party of ten or a dozen young men felt, I have no doubt, that sense of snug isolation from outer discomforts which the limited radius of fire-light, especially when bounded by smoke wreaths, is apt to impress on us. Vexatious for those who would have to turn out into the cold, raw, damp night for “evening chapel.”

“A strange fellow,” said Hawkins. “He never does anything. He never boats, nor rides, nor walks—or if he does walk, it is at night. I met him the other night at twelve o’clock coming round the corner of Aureole Street, and he gave me much the same sort of impression that I fancy a ghost would do, though I never tried it. How he manages to come over the Dons I cannot think. He cuts lectures and chapels from week’s end to week’s end, and seems to be out of college at all hours of the night.”

“He is a queer fellow,” said Graham. “Why the deuce doesn’t he have his hair cut? I never saw a more barbarous figure in my life.”

“Does anybody know anybody that knows him?” asked Allen. “I never saw him speak to a soul yet. I pity the poor devil. He seems quite friendless and alone.”

“You are talking of Mauleverer, I suppose,” I said. “Yes, I may say that I know him. A neighbour of mine in the country asked me to look him up, and I did so on his first arrival.”

“Did you find him in?”

“Yes, and stayed chatting with him for some time. He is by no means a fool—though strange, as you say. He seemed to me to be a little wrong in the head. And from what I remember of my friend’s letter, there was some hint of the kind dropped in it. He spoke of Mauleverer being eccentric, having had a long illness and so forth, and said it would be a kindness to do what I could for him.”

“A little cracked, you think?” said Hawkins. “Can he talk? I bid him good night at the corner of Aureole Street when I met him, as I told you, and he did not answer a word.”

“Oh yes, he can talk, though he is a little shy and absent. He reads hard, I should think from his books. He has a very extensive library. He seems foggy, as hard readers always do. The chief thing about him that struck me, I think, was the shaking hands with him. I never felt such a cold damp hand in my life. It gives one quite a shock.”

“A fishy kind of hand,” said some one.

“The very same thing struck me,” said Wyatt, the only freshman of our company. “Mauleverer is a friend of mine. We are on quite intimate terms.”

“By Jove!” cried one.

“What sort of a fellow is he?” asked another.

“The way I became acquainted with him was this. I was up the river the other day, and, not being a swell at pulling, I managed to get an upset. This was not far from the ‘Harrow.’ I went in there to dry myself, and to get some egg-flip, which seemed necessary under the circumstances. There was a crowd in the left-hand room, and upon inquiry I found that a University man had been taken suddenly ill. I went into the left-hand room. The sick man was Mauleverer. He was in a fit—a strange kind of fit. He was perfectly stiff—he had been struck standing, they said—and was propped, not sitting, against the bench and against the wall. One arm, from the elbow, was stretched out horizontally. He was bluish-white in the face, his eyes open and glazed. You were never at the Morgue on Mount St. Bernard, were you? Well, he was very much like one of the figures there. I took hold of his out-stretched hand—why, I don’t know—and the freezing stiff fingers closed upon mine. By Jove! I didn’t get over it for days. My hand became quite dead, white in the flesh and purple in the nails, and all the sensation I had in it for a week was that of what they call pins and needles. I have seen men in fits before, but never a fit like that. He looked exactly like a corpse.”

“Catalepsy?” said Allen.

“Oh, bless you, he’s quite used to it,” said Wyatt. “I know how to manage him now, though I did not then. He came round after a time, and I saw him back to his rooms. There happened to be a dog-cart at the ‘Harrow,’ and the men who had come in it gave it up to us, and went back in my boat. Anybody else would have done as much, of course; but you can’t think how grateful the poor fellow was to me. We struck up a friendship there and then, and since that I see him almost every day.”

“He is subject to fits then?” I asked.

“Yes. Has been subject to them, he says, ever since a severe fall which he got out hunting. His spine was injured, and he lay for weeks insensible. He has had fits from that time. Cataleptic, I suppose they are—no convulsions—only a sudden swooning and stiffening of the whole body. But the strangest thing is, that he can bring on these fits whenever he pleases.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, he himself makes a distinction. He