CHAPTER VIII.
THE FAMILIAR SPIRIT.
Now there was a skeleton in the cupboard of General Napoleon Smith. Nodistinguished family can be respectable without at least one such. Butthat of the new field-marshal was particularly dark and disgraceful.
Very obediently Janet Sheepshanks vanished from the sick-room, andpresently returned with an oblong parcel, which she handed to the heroof battles.
"Thank you," he said; "are you sure that the children are out?"
"They are sailing paper boats on the mill-dam," said Janet, going tothe window to look.
Hugh John sighed a sigh. He wished he could sail boats on themill-dam.
"I hope every boat will go down the mill lade, and get mashed in thewheel," he said pleasantly.
"For shame, Master Hugh!" replied Janet Sheepshanks, shaking her headat him, but conscious that he was exactly expressing her own mind, ifshe had been lying sick a-bed and had been compelled to listen to someother housekeeper jingling keys that once were hers, ransacking hersacredest repositories, and keeping in order the menials of the house.
Hugh John proceeded cautiously to unwrap his family skeleton.Presently from the folds of tissue paper a very aged and battered"Sambo" emerged. Now a "Sambo" is a black woolly-haired negro doll ofthe fashion of many years ago. This specimen was dressed in simple andairy fashion in a single red shell jacket. As to the rest, he was bareand black from head to foot. Janet called him "that horrid object";but, nevertheless, he was precious in the eyes of Hugh John, andtherefore in hers.
Though twelve years of age, he still liked to carry on dark and covertintercourse with his ancient "Sambo." In public, indeed, he preached,in season and out of season, against the folly and wickedness ofdolls. No one but a lassie or a "lassie-boy" would do such a thing. Helaughed at Priscilla for cleaning up her doll's kitchen once a week,and for organising afternoon tea-parties for her quiet harem. Butsecretly he would have liked very well to see Sambo sit at thatbounteous board.
Nevertheless, he instructed Toady Lion every day with doctrine andreproof that it was "only for girls" to have dolls. And knowing wellthat none of his common repositories were so remote and sacred aslong to escape Priscilla's unsleeping eye, or the more stormy thoughfitful curiosity of Sir Toady Lion, Hugh John had been compelled totake his ancient nurse and ever faithful friend Janet into hisconfidence. So Sambo dwelt in the housekeeper's pantry and had twodistinct odours. One side of him smelt of paraffin, and the other ofsoft soap, which, to a skilled detective, might have revealed thesecret of his dark abode.
But let us not do our hero an injustice.
It was not exactly as a doll that General Smith considered Sambo. Byno means so, indeed. Sometimes he was a distinguished general who cameto take orders from his chief, sometimes an awkward private who neededto be drilled, and then knocked spinning across the floor forinattention to orders. For, be it remembered, it was the custom in thearmy of Field-Marshal-General Smith for the Commander-in-Chief todrill the recruits with his own voice, and in the by no meansimprobable event of their proving stupid, to knock them endwise withhis own august hand.
But it was as Familiar Spirit, and in the pursuit of occultdivination, that General Napoleon most frequently resorted to Sambo.He had read all he could find in legend and history concerning thatgruesomely attractive goblin, clothed all in red, which the wickedLord Soulis kept in an oaken chest in a castle not so far from his ownfather's house of Windy Standard.
And Hugh John saw no reason why Sambo should not be the very one.Spirits do not die. It is a known fact that they are fond of theirformer haunts. What, then, could be clearer? Sambo was evidently LordSoulis' Red Imp risen from the dead. Was Sambo not black? The devilwas black. Did Sambo not wear a red coat? Was not the demon of theoaken chest attired in flaming scarlet, when all cautiously he liftedthe lid at midnight and looked wickedly out upon his master?
Yet the General was conscious that Sambo Soulis was a distinctdisappointment in the part of familiar spirit. He would sit silent,with his head hanging idiotically on one side, when he was asked toreveal the deepest secrets of the future, instead of toeing the lineand doing it. Nor was it recorded in the chronicles of Soulis that theoriginal demon of the chest had had his nose "bashed flat" by hismaster, as Hugh John vigorously expressed the damaged appearance ofhis own familiar.
Worse than all, Hugh John had tried to keep Sambo in his rabbit-box.But not only did he utterly fail to put his "fearful head, crownedwith a red night-cap" over the edge of the hutch at the propertime--as, had he been of respectable parentage, he would not havefailed to do, but, in addition, he developed in his close quarters ananimal odour so pungent and unprofitable that Janet Sheepshanksrefused to admit him into the store-cupboard till he had beenthoroughly fumigated and disinfected. So for a whole week Sambo Soulisswung ignominiously by the neck from the clothes line, and Hugh Johnwent about in fear of the questioning of the children or of theconfiscation by his father of his well-beloved but somewhatunsatisfactory familiar spirit.
It was in order to consult him on a critical point of doctrine andpractice that Hugh John had now sent for Sambo Soulis.
He propped him up before him against a pillow, on which he sat bentforward at an acute angle from the hips, as if ready to pounce uponhis master and rend him to pieces so soon as the catechism should beover.
"Look here," said General-Field-Marshal Smith to the oracle,"supposing the governor tells me to split on Nipper Donnan, thebutcher boy, will it be dasht-mean if I do?"
Sambo Soulis, being disturbed by the delicacy of the question orperhaps by the wriggling of Hugh John upon his pillow, only lurcheddrivellingly forward.
"Sit up and answer," cried his master, "or else I'll hike you out ofthat pretty quick, for a silly old owl!"
And with his least bandaged hand he gave Sambo a sound cuff on theside of his venerable battered head, before propping him up at a newangle with his chin on his knees.
"Now speak up, Soulis," said General Smith; "I ask you would it bedasht-mean?"
The oracle was understood to joggle his chin and goggle his eyes. Hecertainly did the latter.
"I thought so," said Soulis' master, as is usual in such cases,interpreting the reply oracular according to his liking. "But lookhere, how are we to get back Donald unless we split? Would it not beall right to split just to get Donald back?"
Sambo Soulis waggled his head again. This time his master looked alittle more serious.
"I suppose you are right," he said pensively, "but if it would bedasht-mean to split, we must just try to get him back ourselves--thatis, if the beasts have not cut his throat, as they said they would."