By exertions which I still groan to think of, I got down from my stone chair, and—oh, vertigo!—reached the ladder that is fixed on the inside of our tower. It is not a descent I recommend to anyone, amid the rigours of a winter night. But at last, weary and trembling, I stood on firm ground again.
And before I went to my bed, I crept once more up to the room of the Hall Don who now, I foresaw, would be compelled to retire, and removed the bottle. For Asmodeus was a self-confident little devil and he may return. And when he does, I have the bottle, and I know the magic word; Asmodeus would be the ideal collaborator on my next book—University Administration as a Preparation for Hell.
Conversations with the Little Table
Massey College is troubled with ghosts, much as lesser fabrics are troubled with mice; the most resolute determination is powerless to keep them away. Until this year, however, I have congratulated myself that they have kept clear of the part of the College that is reserved for the private quarters of myself and my family. Only once, many years ago, did a ghost tap at my bedroom door, and when I answered he quickly led me into the College proper. But of course a time had to come when I would find a ghost in the Lodgings. Anyone could have foreseen it.
It has always been my desire to keep my private life and my college life apart. If the ghost that visited me in the Master’s Lodging had been a personal spectre, I would not trouble you about the matter now. But he had an undoubted relationship with the College as a whole; indeed it might be said that he was, at least in origin, a source of pride to the College. Two apparently unconnected happenings brought him here. The first was the publication, during the year past, of Colonel Stacey’s book A Very Double Life, about some aspects of the personal character of the late William Lyon Mackenzie King; it was a significant book, deservedly successful with the public, and I recall with what pleasure we toasted it, and its author, at High Table, where we always celebrate the achievements of members of our community. The other fact was that one of my daughters moved to Hamilton, and bought a house there.
How could two such unrelated happenings work together to produce a result in Massey College? Those of you who have had experience of the occult world know that there is no chance assembly of facts that may not rouse an echo in the world of spirits. It happened like this: another of my daughters, who lives in Ottawa, wanted to send her sister a gift for her new home; she brought it to Toronto and left it with my wife and myself to be collected by the Hamilton daughter at some convenient time. It was a charming gift, a small table of the kind that antique dealers call an “occasional table,” an antique of attested Canadian craftsmanship. It was as a piece of Canadiana that its quality as a gift was raised above the commonplace; in every other respect it was just a nice little table.
“Where did it come from?” I asked my daughter.
“Oh, it has what the antique dealer called provenance,” she replied; “it came from the house of an Ottawa lady named Mrs. Patteson, who was quite well known in her time as a collector of unusual things, and unusual people.”
The name meant nothing to me. We put the table in a room in our basement, to wait until it was picked up. And for a number of reasons, that was not speedily.
This was in the early autumn, and until November the table remained where it had been put. It was on the night of November the first—All Souls’ Eve, as you will immediately have recognized—that I heard an unusual sound just after I had gone to bed; unusual because it was faint, but persistent. Loud sounds are not unknown in this neighbourhood during the night. Sounds attaining to the state of uproar may be heard, as students from the neighbouring colleges and residences rage through the streets, uttering cries which mount to the level of the Primal Scream. But this sound suggested a low but persistent tapping, as though someone were knocking; not the kind of knocking that one associates with academic communities—the tireless knocking of reputations and institutions—but a light hammering. I strove to ignore it, but at last I rose and put on slippers and dressing-gown, and set out in search.
It was clear as soon as I left my bedroom that the sound was inside my own house, and my ear directed me to the cellar, to the door of a room not much used, where the Ottawa table was stored. I opened the door slowly, and to my astonishment the room was suffused with a soft light—a mauve light—strongest in an open space in which stood the Little Table, and—wondrous in the telling—the Little Table seemed to be dancing a jig.
Far be it from me to pretend that I am a man of unusual courage, but in my own house I suffer no nonsense from anything, animate or inanimate. I put my hand on the Table and forced it to stand still. But when I took my hand away something happened that shattered my self-possession: the table moved toward me and began to rub itself against me in a manner that suggested a dog, but a dog with a more than doglike intelligence. The table was fondling me.
I am sure that many of you are acquainted with the book on Canadian furniture written by the great expert on that subject, Scott Symons; in it he asserts that Canadian furniture, at its finest, has a sensuous quality that can be, in certain instances, positively erotic. He says—and I have no reason to doubt his word—that on one occasion, during a meal, a dining table caressed his knee. Ghosts I can cope with, but erotic furniture destroys my self-possession; I rushed out of the room and upstairs, where my wife was still reading.
“You are pale,” said she; “you look as if you have seen a ghost.”
“Not this time,” I replied; “it’s that table downstairs. It tried to get fresh with me. I think I need a drink.”
An ordinary woman might have laughed, or offered to get the drink, or perhaps some aspirin. But my wife is not an ordinary woman. She rose at once, tucked the book she was reading under her arm, and led the way back to the mysterious chamber.
The mauve light flickered eerily, and as we went in the table’s movement—it was like dancing—became almost frantic. My wife drew two chairs up to it, one on each side, and nodded to me to sit down. Then, to my astonishment, she placed her hands on the top of the table, with the fingers spread wide, and again nodded to me to do the same, with the ends of my fingers touching hers.
The response of the table was extraordinary. If ever a table might be said to give a sigh of relief, that was what it did. It became quiet, and almost soft under our hands; it seemed to be waiting.
“What’s up?” I whispered.
My wife said nothing, but nodded to her book, which she had placed on the floor. I saw that it was Colonel Stacey’s book, A Very Double Life.
“This must be the Little Table,” said she.
It is a commonplace to say that women have extraordinary powers of intuition. As soon as she had spoken I understood the connection. Because, as those of you know who have read it, that book describes how the late Prime Minister, and his lifelong friend and associate in spiritualism, Mrs. Patteson, used to spend long, rapt hours with a Little Table, by means of which they communicated with the spirits of the dead. Little Table; Mrs. Patteson; at last I understood.
The Little Table! The table dignified, or perhaps I should say hallowed, by all those conversations Mr. King recorded in his diary, and Professor Stacey had made known to us. I felt myself uplifted, to be thus involved with—and indeed snuggled up to by—an object so rich in association. The psychic history of Canada is scant, and here I was, so to speak, getting in on the ground floor! I felt myself unworthy. I felt that I should at once telephone to Professor Stacey, or to Maurice Careless, and ask them to come at once for—well, for what? I didn’t know what the Little Table had, so to speak, on its mind.
I know the proceeding for getting answers from tables when they are in a communicative mood. I spoke.
“The usual thing, I presume?” I said. “One rap for yes; two for no, and otherwise raps in series indicating the letters of the alphabet. Is that what you have in mind?”
Firmly, and it seemed to me joyously, the Little Table knocked once. That is to say it gave a quick tap w
ith one tiny hoof upon the floor. It had said Yes.
“Are you there, Mrs. Patteson?” I said.
Two taps, in rather a pettish mood.
“Then who are you?” said I.
The table burst into a gunfire of tapping that startled me. “Just a minute,” I said; “not quite so fast.” Again the table rattled out its message. I am not at my best when confronted with problems involving figures. There seemed to be a great many taps. “Did you say Z?” I asked. “No, no,” my wife whispered; “it was twenty-one taps. What is twenty-one? How many letters are there in the alphabet?” “Twenty-eight, of course,” I hissed. “Would you mind repeating?”
The Little Table gave two vicious little kicks, one to each side. My wife took it on the ankle, I on the shin. Then it rattled away in its telegraphic style, like one of those old-fashioned Morse instruments one heard clicking in the railway stations of an earlier day.
It was hopeless. “Will you wait a moment,” said I. “I want to make a helpful little chart.”
It used to be said that cobblers’ children were always barefoot; by some kindred freak of Fate authors’ houses are always barren of pencils and paper. But at last I found what I wanted, and laboriously wrote out the alphabet, which—try as I might—proved to have only twenty-six letters, and to each letter I assigned a number. I didn’t quite dare to lay this handy device on the Little Table; I feared it might scorn the simplicity of my mind. So I put it beside me on the floor. “Now fire away,” I said; “who is speaking, please?”
Spiteful little beast that it was, the table now tapped with tedious, insulting slowness. But at least it was possible to follow its message. Twenty-three taps.
“V,” said my wife. “No, no; it was X,” said I.
Again those spiteful kicks. I should explain that the Little Table had what furniture experts call “ball-and-claw feet,” and it hurt. Then it tapped again, even more slowly.
This time we got it right. “W,” we exclaimed in concert. The table tapped once.
“A,” said I.
“No, it means yes,” said my wife. “It was W.”
Next time, twelve slow taps. L. Then thirteen taps. M. Then eleven taps. K.
“W L M K,” said I. “Doesn’t mean a thing.”
I still bear the marks of the ferocious attack of the ball-and-claw feet. But I have mentioned that women have extraordinary intuition. “William Lyon Mackenzie King,” said my wife, in a low, reverential tone; “it must be Mr. King himself.”
We rose and bowed to the Little Table, and it tipped its stout little person in ceremonious acknowledgement.
When I am not on duty as Master of this College I allow myself to use certain slang expressions that were current in my youth. “Now we’re cooking with gas,” I said. And the Little Table rapped once. Yes.
What should I say? Once, in my youth, I met Mr. King. He was old and near to death: I was young and impressionable, and I still remember the penetration of his glance, which seemed to be looking right through me, and weighing my possible value to the Liberal Party. He did not speak. I said—I remember the phrase perfectly, because it seemed to me to be particularly apt, under the circumstances—I said, “How do you do, Sir?” Now I said it again, taking up the conversation from the point where it had been dropped all those many years ago.
The Little Table tapped briskly, now. Nine: pause; one, thirteen: pause; twenty-two, five, eighteen, twenty-five; pause: twenty-three, five, twelve, and twelve again. “He said, ‘I am very well,’ ” I whispered to my wife. “I know,” said she: “I was counting.”
I shall not give you all the detail of the conversation that followed. The counting was hard work, not merely because Mr. King was a somewhat impetuous rapper, but because he was, to my surprise, an impressionistic speller. So I shall merely tell you what was said shorn of all the psychic trappings.
“Am I to infer that you are among the Blessed?” said I.
The answer, now I reflect on it, was ambiguous. “I am among friends,” said WLMK.
“Liberals?” I asked.
“Naturally,” came the reply.
“Ask him about Sir Wilfrid Laurier,” my wife prompted.
“Is Sir Wilfrid with you?”
One rap. “Yes.”
“Happy, I trust?”
Here the Little Table seemed to lose control of itself. It tapped very rapidly, in a singular rhythm; eight-one, eight-one, eight-one. Which, as you have immediately grasped, is Ha, Ha, Ha! Then some very rapid tapping which, so far as I could follow it, said something about somebody’s nose being out of joint. Then the laughing signal again. I was about to ask if Sir Wilfrid had suffered some posthumous damage to his nose, and how, and why, but I saw my wife frowning and shaking her head. So I dropped the subject of Sir Wilfrid.
What next? Extraordinary as it may seem, I could not think of a thing to say to the spirit of Mr. King. My wife saw that I was at a loss. “Try him about his dog,” said she.
“Dog?” said I, not understanding.
“Pat,” said she; “his dear doggie, his greatest friend.”
I have never cared much for dogs. But I know that dog-lovers are susceptible to flattery on the subject of their pets, and I felt that I had put my foot in it about Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and must recover lost ground. “How’s Pat?” I asked.
The table seemed to brighten up. It did some frisky tapping.
Two-fifteen-twenty-three: twenty-three-fifteen-twenty-three. Bow-wow. Obviously it was Pat himself talking, so I feigned great benevolence and patted the table with the faux bonhomie I adopt toward other people’s dogs. The table responded by rapping twenty-three, fifteen, fifteen again, and six. Woof. And, so far as I was concerned, that was enough from Pat.
I thought of people in the Other World from whom I might like to have a message. Vincent Massey, of course! Often, since his death, I have wished I could have the benefit of his advice. “How is Mr. Massey?” I asked. The table tapped sulkily for a few seconds.
“Don’t know and don’t care,” was the message.
I remembered what I should have thought of earlier. Mr. King and Mr. Massey had not seen eye to eye.
“Still scrapping,” I whispered to my wife. But the Little Table overheard me, and tapped some very rapid comment which caught me off my guard, so that I was only able to transcribe the words “opinionated,” “insubordinate” and “elitist.” But whether they referred to Mr. Massey or to me, I cannot say.
This was discouraging. I saw no reason why I should sit in this College and listen to Mr. King being nasty about its Founder. But what was there to say? He seemed to be so touchy. Then I had what I supposed was a happy inspiration. I noticed the copy of A Very Double Life that my wife had placed on the floor beside her.
“Have you read Colonel Stacey’s book?” I asked.
There was a significant pause. Then a single rap. Yes.
“It’s selling very well,” I said, glad to be on an ample and chatty theme at last. “You must be pleased.”
It seemed to me that the temperature in the room dropped suddenly. “Oh, you think that, do you?” rapped the Little Table, with unusual deliberation. I was overcome by one of my terrible failures of tact. I am generally pretty good at tact, but as it is an acquired faculty with me, and not an inherent trait, I sometimes put my foot in it, when talking to difficult people. “I suppose you are glad to be an object of so much interest,” I said.
The Little Table rapped and rapped and rapped. “I should have thought that my career offered enough of interest to the people of the country to which I devoted the whole of my career comma and my not inconsiderable talents,” it said, “without a discussion of my youthful work among fallen women. Poor comma unhappy creatures dash ‘soiled doves’ was the term I always applied to them when I thought about them dash I went among them with but one thought in mind. I sought comma by talking to them seriously and sympathetically about the principles of Liberalism comma to win them from a life of shame to useful politi
cal activity. But so far as I could discover, not one of them ever went to the polls to cast the vote which was her democratic birth-right. I should have thought that in the present enthusiasm for Women’s Liberation dash a cause very dear to my heart, as it was near to the heart of the noble woman who was the inspiration of all that was best in me dash I allude, needless to say, to my dear Mother—” And here there was a pause, which, as an old aficionado of political meetings I knew was meant for applause, so I applauded loudly; after I had made my hands very red, the Little Table resumed. “I should have thought, I say, that my name would be mentioned as one of the earliest enthusiasts for the Women’s Cause semi-colon that I should be mentioned with Henrik Ibsen comma with Bernard Shaw comma with the sainted Christabel Pankhurst and the never sufficiently to be lauded Nellie McClung. But it was not to be. No comma it has been suggested that my interest in women was of a carnal origin. And all because Jack Pickersgill hadn’t the common gumption to destroy those damned diaries. Now you listen to me, young man—” and the Little Table rapped on and on. I was so stunned to be addressed as “young man” that I forgot to count, and I observed that my wife was becoming drowsy under the spell of Mr. King’s platform style and the tediousness of all that rapped-out punctuation. At last, after something like half an hour of telegraphed eloquence, the Little Table was still.
“Sorry about that,” said I. “But I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about it. Shall I arrange an encounter with the author of the book? Would you like to rap with Colonel Stacey?”
Two decisive raps. No. And that was all. Worn out with our night listening to the mighty dead, my wife and I crept upstairs, to seek much needed repose.
I wanted to go back the next night, but my wife disagreed. “He’ll make another speech,” said she. “Besides, I think it’s unlucky to quarrel with spirits. Leave the wretched table alone, and I’ll get it out of the house as soon as I can.” And there, for some time, the matter rested.