Gothic Tales Read Online

31

The text has been emended to ‘It seemed’ (p. 299 1. 26), although both printed versions read ‘I seemed’. Spellings which were inconsistent and misleading have been modernized: sat (for sate), Madam (Madame), staunch (stanch), spurted (spirted), befall and befell (befal and befel). When spellings vary between stories, these have been left, with one exception: ‘grey’ and ‘gray’ appear frequently and vary between tales and within a tale, and ‘grey’ has been imposed throughout. Other textual changes and inconsistencies are discussed in the Notes.

Since the pieces come from several sources, minor stylistic details have been housestyled to: single quotation marks, no stop after titles (e.g. Mr, Mrs, St), ‘iz’ spellings (e.g. recognize), spaced en-dashes (and em-dashes for 2em-dashes) and no comma in a series before the conjunction.

Disappearances

I am not in the habit of seeing the Household Words regularly; but a friend, who lately sent me some of the back numbers, recommended me to read ‘all the papers relating to the Detective and Protective Police’,1 which I accordingly did – not as the generality of readers have done, as they appeared week by week, or with pauses between, but consecutively, as a popular history of the Metropolitan Police; and, as I suppose it may also be considered, a history of the police force in every large town in England. When I had ended these papers, I did not feel disposed to read any others at that time, but preferred falling into a train of reverie and recollection.

First of all I remembered, with a smile, the unexpected manner in which a relation of mine was discovered by an acquaintance, who had mislaid or forgotten Mr B.’s address. Now my dear cousin, Mr B., charming as he is in many points, has the little peculiarity of liking to change his lodgings once every three months on an average, which occasions some bewilderment to his country friends, who have no sooner learnt the 19, Belle Vue Road, Hampstead, than they have to take pains to forget that address, and to remember the 27½, Upper Brown Street, Camberwell; and so on, till I would rather learn a page of Walker's Pronouncing Dictionary,2 than try to remember the variety of directions which I have had to put on my letters to Mr B. during the last three years. Last summer it pleased him to remove to a beautiful village not ten miles out of London, where there is a railway station. Thither his friend sought him. (I do not now speak of the following scent there had been through three or four different lodgings, where Mr B. had been residing, before his country friend ascertained that he was now lodging at R—.) He spent the morning in making inquiries as to Mr B.’s whereabouts in the village; but many gentlemen were lodging there for the summer, and neither butcher nor baker could inform him where Mr B. was staying; his letters were unknown at the post-office, which was accounted for by the circumstance of their always being directed to his office in town. At last the country friend sauntered back to the railway-office, and while he waited for the train he made inquiry, as a last resource, of the book-keeper at the station. ‘No, sir, I cannot tell you where Mr B.