A Book of Ghosts: 23
Author: Various authors
Date: 1868-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Ghost Stories; Supernatural Fiction; Weird Fiction; Horror
Description: A collection of thirteen stories of the uncanny and the macabre by various anonymous authors, compiled by ECM.
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less

A BOOK OF GHOSTS
– 23 –

THINGS THAT GO BUMP
IN THE NIGHT

MobileRead Edition
2021

A collection of thirteen stories of the uncanny and the macabre by various authors, compiled by ECM.

Contents were originally published 1869 ~ 1931. This book is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less.

CONTENTS:

- The Shadow Of A Shade
–1869
by Tom Hood
(1835–1874)

- The Secret of the Stradivarius
–1881
by Hugh Conway
(Frederick John Fargus)
(1847–1885)

- The Old House in Vauxhall Walk
–1882
by Charlotte Riddell
(1832–1906)

- The Body-Snatcher
–1884
by R. L. Stevenson
(1850–1894)

- Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook
–1895
by M. R. James
(1862–1936)

- The Bargain of Rupert Orange
–1896
by Vincent O’Sullivan
(1872–1940)

- The Messenger
–1897
by Robert W. Chambers
(1865–1933)

- The Haunted Orchard
–1912
by Richard Le Gallienne
(1866–1947)

- The Doomed Man
–1899
by Dick Donovan
(James Muddock)
(1843–1934)

- In Letters of Fire
–1908
by Gaston Leroux
(1868–1927)

- The Gateway of the Monster
–1913
by William Hope Hodgson
(1877–1915)

- The Terror by Night
–1915
by Lewis Lister
(?–?)

- The Children of the Night
–1931
by Robert E. Howard
(1906–1936)

THE SHADOW OF A SHADE

Tom Hood

1869

My sister Lettie has lived with me ever since I had a home of my own. She was my little housekeeper before I married. Now she is my wife’s constant companion, and the “darling auntie” of my children, who go to her for comfort, advice, and aid in all their little troubles and perplexities.

But, though she has a comfortable home, and loving hearts around her, she wears a grave, melancholy look on her face, which puzzles acquaintances and grieves friends.

A disappointment! Yes, the old story of a lost lover is the reason for Lettie’s looks. She has had good offers often; but since she lost the first love of her heart she has never indulged in the happy dream of loving and being loved.

George Mason was a cousin of my wife’s — a sailor by profession. He and Lettie met one another at our wedding, and fell in love at first sight. George’s father had seen service before him on the great mysterious sea, and had been especially known as a good Arctic sailor, having shared in more than one expedition in search of the North Pole and the North-West Passage.

It was not a matter of surprise to me, therefore, when George volunteered to go out in the Pioneer, which was being fitted out for a cruise in search of Franklin and his missing expedition. There was a fascination about such an undertaking that I felt I could not have resisted had I been in his place. Of course, Lettie did not like the idea at all, but he silenced her by telling her that men who volunteered for Arctic search were never lost sight of, and that he should not make as much advance in his profession in a dozen years as he would in the year or so of this expedition. I cannot say that Lettie, even after this, was quite satisfied with the notion of his going, but, at all events, she did not argue against it any longer. But the grave look, which is now habitual with her, but was a rare thing in her young and happy days, passed over her face sometimes when she thought no one was looking.

My younger brother, Harry, was at this time an academy student. He was only a beginner then. Now he is pretty well known in the art world, and his pictures command fair prices. Like all beginners in art, he was full of fancies and theories. He would have been a pre-Raphaelite, only pre-Raphaelism had not been invented then. His peculiar craze was for what he styled the Venetian School. Now, it chanced that George had a fine Italian-looking head, and Harry persuaded him to sit to him for his portrait. It was a fair likeness, but a very moderate work of art. The background was so very dark, and George’s naval costume so very deep in colour, that the face came out too white and staring. It was a three-quarter picture; but only one hand showed in it, leaning on the hilt of a sword. As George said, he looked much more like the commander of a Venetian galley than a modern mate.

However, the picture pleased Lettie, who did not care much about art provided the resemblance was good. So the picture was duly framed — in a tremendously heavy frame, of Harry’s ordering — and hung up in the dining-room.

And now the time for George’s departure was growing nearer. The Pioneer was nearly ready to sail, and her crew only waited orders. The officers grew acquainted with each other before sailing, which was an advantage. George took up very warmly with the surgeon, Vincent Grieve, and, with my permission, brought him to dinner once or twice.

“Poor chap, he has no friends nearer than the Highlands, and it’s precious lonely work.”

“Bring him by all means, George! You know that any friends of yours will be welcome here.”

So Vincent Grieve came. I am bound to say I was not favourably impressed by him, and almost wished I had not consented to his coming. He was a tall, pale, fair young man, with a hard Scotch face and a cold, grey eye. There was something in his expression, too, that was unpleasant — something cruel or crafty, or both.

I considered that it was very bad taste for him to pay such marked attention to Lettie, coming, as he did, as the friend of her fiancé. He kept by her constantly and anticipated George in all the little attentions which a lover delights to pay. I think George was a little put out about it, though he said nothing, attributing his friend’s offence to lack of breeding.

Lettie did not like it at all. She knew that she was not to have George with her much longer, and she was anxious to have him to herself as much as possible. But as Grieve was her lover’s friend she bore the infliction with the best possible patience.

The surgeon did not seem to perceive in the least that he was interfering where he had no business. He was quite self-possessed and happy, with one exception. The portrait of George seemed to annoy him. He had uttered a little impatient exclamation when he first saw it which drew my attention to him; and I noticed that he tried to avoid looking at it. At last, when dinner came, he was told to sit exactly facing the picture. He hesitated for an instant and then sat down, but almost immediately rose again.

“It’s very childish and that sort of thing,” he stammered, “but I cannot sit opposite that picture.”

“It is not high art,” I said, “and may irritate a critical eye.”

“I know nothing about art,” he answered, “but it is one of those unpleasant pictures whose eyes follow you about the room. I have an inherited horror of such pictures. My mother married against her father’s will, and when I was born she was so ill she was hardly expected to live. When she was sufficiently recovered to speak without delirious rambling she implored them to remove a picture of my grandfather that hung in the room, and which she vowed made threatening faces at her. It’s superstitious, but constitutional — I have a horror of such paintings!”

I believe George thought this was a ruse of his friend’s to get a seat next to Lettie; but I felt sure it was not, for I had seen the alarmed expression of his face.

At night, when George and his friend were leaving, I took an opportunity to ask the former, half in a joke, if he should bring the surgeon to see us again. George made a very hearty assertion to the contrary, adding that he was pleasant enough company among men at an inn, or on board ship, but not where ladies were concerned.

But the mischief was done. Vincent Grieve took advantage of the introduction and did not wait to be invited again. He called the next day, and nearly every day after. He was a more frequent visitor than George now, for George was obliged to attend to his duties, and they kept him on board the Pioneer pretty constantly, whereas the surgeon, having seen to the supply of drugs, etc., was pretty well at liberty. Lettie avoided him as much as possible, but he generally brought, or professed to bring, some little message from George to her, so that he had an excuse for asking to see her.

On the occasion of his last visit — the day before the Pioneer sailed — Lettie came to me in great distress. The young cub had actually the audacity to tell her he loved her. He knew, he said, about her engagement to George, but that did not prevent another man from loving her too. A man could no more help falling in love than he could help taking a fever. Lettie stood upon her dignity and rebuked him severely; but he told her he could see no harm in telling her of his passion, though he knew it was a hopeless one.

“A thousand things may happen,” he said at last, “to bring your engagement with George Mason to an end. Then perhaps you will not forget that another loves you!”

I was very angry, and was forthwith going to give him my opinion on his conduct, when Lettie told me he was gone, that she had bade him go and had forbidden him the house. She only told me in order to protect herself, for she did not intend to say anything to George, for fear it should lead to a duel or some other violence.

That was the last we saw of Vincent Grieve before the Pioneer sailed.

George came the same evening, and was with us till daybreak, when he had to tear himself away and join his ship.

After shaking hands with him at the door, in the cold, grey, drizzly dawn, I turned back into the dining-room, where poor Lettie was sobbing on the sofa.

I could not help starting when I looked at George’s portrait, which hung above her. The strange light of daybreak could hardly account for the extraordinary pallor of the face. I went close to it and looked hard at it. I saw that it was covered with moisture, and imagined that that possibly made it look so pale. As for the moisture, I supposed poor Lettie had been kissing the beloved’s portrait, and that the moisture was caused by her tears.

It was not till a long time after, when I was jestingly telling Harry how his picture had been caressed, that I learnt the error of my conjecture. Lettie assured me most solemnly that I was mistaken in supposing she had kissed it.

“It was the varnish blooming, I expect,” said Harry. And thus the subject was dismissed, for I said no more, though I knew well enough, in spite of my not being an artist, that the bloom of varnish was quite another sort of thing.

The Pioneer sailed. We received — or, rather, Lettie received — two letters from George, which he had taken the opportunity of sending by homeward-bound whalers. In the second he said it was hardly likely he should have an opportunity of sending another, as they were sailing into high latitudes — into the solitary sea, to which none but expedition ships ever penetrated. They were all in high spirits, he said, for they had encountered very little ice and hoped to find clear water further north than usual. Moreover, he added, Grieve had held a sinecure so far, for there had not been a single case of illness on board.

Then came a long silence, and a year crept away very slowly for poor Lettie. Once we heard of the expedition from the papers. They were reported as pushing on and progressing favourably by a wandering tribe of Esquimaux with whom the captain of a Russian vessel fell in. They had laid the ship up for the winter, and were taking the boats on sledges, and believed they had met with traces of the lost crews that seemed to show they were on the right track.

The winter passed again, and spring came. It was a balmy, bright spring such as we get occasionally, even in this changeable and uncertain climate of ours.

One evening we were sitting in the dining-room with the window open, for, although we had long given up fires, the room was so oppressively warm that we were glad of the breath of the cool evening breeze.

Lettie was working. Poor child, though she never murmured, she was evidently pining at George’s long absence. Harry was leaning out of the window, studying the evening effect on the fruit blossom, which was wonderfully early and plentiful, the season was so mild. I was sitting at the table, near the lamp, reading the paper.

Suddenly there swept into the room a chill. It was not a gust of cold wind, for the curtain by the open window did not swerve in the least. But the deathly cold pervaded the room — came, and was gone in an instant. Lettie shuddered, as I did, with the intense icy feeling.

She looked up. “How curiously cold it has got all in a minute,” she said.

“We are having a taste of poor George’s Polar weather,” I said with a smile.

At the same moment I instinctively glanced towards his portrait. What I saw struck me dumb. A rush of blood, at fever heat, dispelled the numbing influence of the chill breath that had seemed to freeze me.

I have said the lamp was lighted; but it was only that I might read with comfort, for the violet twilight was still so full of sunset that the room was not dark. But as I looked at the picture I saw it had undergone a strange change. I saw it as plainly as possible. It was no delusion, coined for the eye by the brain.

I saw, in the place of George’s head, a grinning skull! I stared at it hard; but it was no trick of fancy. I could see the hollow orbits, the gleaming teeth, the fleshless cheekbones — it was the head of death!

Without saying a word, I rose from my chair and walked straight up to the painting. As I drew nearer a sort of mist seemed to pass before it; and as I stood close to it, I saw only the face of George. The spectral skull had vanished.

“Poor George!” I said unconsciously.

Lettie looked up. The tone of my voice had alarmed her, the expression of my face did not reassure her.

“What do you mean? Have you heard anything? Oh, Robert, in mercy tell me!”

She got up and came over to me and, laying her hands on my arm, looked up into my face imploringly.

“No, my dear; how should I hear? Only I could not help thinking of the privation and discomfort he must have gone through. I was reminded of it by the cold—”

“Cold!” said Harry, who had left the window by this time. “Cold! what on earth are you talking about? Cold, such an evening as this! You must have had a touch of ague, I should think.”

“Both Lettie and I felt it bitterly cold a minute or two ago. Did not you feel it?”

“Not a bit; and as I was three parts out of the window I ought to have felt it if anyone did.”

It was curious, but that strange chill had been felt only in the room. It was not the night wind, but some supernatural breath connected with the dread apparition I had seen. It was, indeed, the chill of polar winter — the icy shadow of the frozen North.

“What is the day of the month, Harry?” I asked.

“Today — the 23rd, I think,” he answered; then added, taking up the newspaper I had been reading: “Yes, here you are. Tuesday, February the 23rd, if the Daily News tells truth, which I suppose it does. Newspapers can afford to tell the truth about dates, whatever they may do about art.” Harry had been rather roughly handled by the critic of a morning paper for one of his pictures a few days before, and he was a little angry with journalism generally.

Presently Lettie left the room, and I told Harry what I had felt and seen, and told him to take note of the date, for I feared that some mischance had befallen George.

“I’ll put it down in my pocket-book, Bob. But you and Lettie must have had a touch of the cold shivers, and your stomach or fancy misled you — they’re the same thing, you know. Besides, as regards the picture, there’s nothing in that! There is a skull there, of course. As Tennyson says:

Any face, however full,

Padded round with flesh and fat,

Is but modelled on a skull.

The skull’s there — just as in every good figure-subject the nude is there under the costumes. You fancy that is a mere coat of paint. Nothing of the kind! Art lives, sir! That is just as much a real head as yours is with all the muscles and bones, just the same. That’s what makes the difference between art and rubbish.”

This was a favourite theory of Harry’s, who had not yet developed from the dreamer into the worker. As I did not care to argue with him, I allowed the subject to drop after we had written down the date in our pocket-books. Lettie sent down word presently that she did not feel well and had gone to bed. My wife came down presently and asked what had happened. She had been up with the children and had gone in to see what was the matter with Lettie.

“I think it was very imprudent to sit with the window open, dear. I know the evenings are warm, but the night air strikes cold at times — at any rate, Lettie seems to have caught a violent cold, for she is shivering very much. I am afraid she has got a chill from the open windows.”

I did not say anything to her then, except that both Lettie and I had felt a sudden coldness; for I did not care to enter into an explanation again, for I could see Harry was inclined to laugh at me for being so superstitious.

At night, however, in our own room, I told my wife what had occurred, and what my apprehensions were. She was so upset and alarmed that I almost repented having done so.

The next morning Lettie was better again, and as we did not either of us refer to the events of the preceding night the circumstance appeared to be forgotten by us all.

But from that day I was ever inwardly dreading the arrival of bad news. And at last it came, as I expected.

One morning, just as I was coming downstairs to breakfast, there came a knock at the door, and Harry made his appearance. It was a very early visit from him, for he generally used to spend his mornings at the studio, and drop in on his way home at night.

He was looking pale and agitated.

“Lettie’s not down, is she, yet?” he asked; and then, before I could answer, added another question: “What newspaper do you take?” “The Daily News,” I answered. “Why?” “She’s not down?” “No.”

“Thank God! Look here!”

He took a paper from his pocket and gave it to me, pointing out a short paragraph at the bottom of one of the columns.

I knew what was coming the moment he spoke about Lettie.

The paragraph was headed, “Fatal Accident to one of the Officers of the Pioneer Expedition Ship”. It stated that news had been received at the Admiralty stating that the expedition had failed to find the missing crews, but had come upon some traces of them. Want of stores and necessaries had compelled them to turn back without following those traces up; but the commander was anxious, as soon as the ship could be refitted, to go out and take up the trail where he left it. An unfortunate accident had deprived him of one of his most promising officers, Lieutenant Mason, who was precipitated from an iceberg and killed while out shooting with the surgeon. He was beloved by all, and his death had flung a gloom over the gallant little troop of explorers.

“It’s not in the News today, thank goodness, Bob,” said Harry, who had been searching that paper while I was reading the one he brought — “but you must keep a sharp look-out for some days and not let Lettie see it when it appears, as it is certain to do sooner or later.”

Then we both of us looked at each other with tears in our eyes. “Poor George! — poor Lettie!” we sighed softly.

“But she must be told at some time or other?” I said despairingly.

“I suppose so,” said Harry; “but it would kill her to come on it suddenly like this. Where’s your wife?”

She was with the children, but I sent up for her and told her the ill-tidings.

She had a hard struggle to conceal her emotion, for Lettie’s sake. But the tears would flow in spite of her efforts.

“How shall I ever find courage to tell her?” she asked.

“Hush!” said Harry, suddenly grasping her arm and looking towards the door.

I turned. There stood Lettie, with her face pale as death, with her lips apart, and with a blind look about her eyes. She had come in without our hearing her. We never learnt how much of the story she had overheard; but it was enough to tell her the worst. We all sprang towards her; but she only waved us away, turned round, and went upstairs again without saying a word. My wife hastened up after her and found her on her knees by the bed, insensible.

The doctor was sent for, and restoratives were promptly administered. She came to herself again, but lay dangerously ill for some weeks from the shock.

It was about a month after she was well enough to come downstairs again that I saw in the paper an announcement of the arrival of the Pioneer. The news had no interest for any of us now, so I said nothing about it. The mere mention of the vessel’s name would have caused the poor girl pain.

One afternoon shortly after this, as I was writing a letter, there came a loud knock at the front door. I looked up from my writing and listened; for the voice which enquired if I was in sounded strange, but yet not altogether unfamiliar. As I looked up, puzzling whose it could be, my eye rested accidentally upon poor George’s portrait. Was I dreaming or awake?

I have told you that the one hand was resting on a sword. I could see now distinctly that the forefinger was raised, as if in warning. I looked at it hard, to assure myself it was no fancy, and then I perceived, standing out bright and distinct on the pale face, two large drops, as if of blood.

I walked up to it, expecting the appearance to vanish, as the skull had done. It did not vanish; but the uplifted finger resolved itself into a little white moth which had settled on the canvas. The red drops were fluid, and certainly not blood, though I was at a loss for the time to account for them.

The moth seemed to be in a torpid state, so I took it off the picture and placed it under an inverted wine-glass on the mantelpiece. All this took less time to do than to describe. As I turned from the mantelpiece the servant brought in a card, saying the gentleman was waiting in the hall to know if I would see him.

On the card was the name of “Vincent Grieve, of the exploring vessel Pioneer”.

“Thank Heaven, Lettie is out,” thought I; and then added aloud to the servant, “Show him in here; and Jane, if your mistress and Miss Lettie come in before the gentleman goes, tell them I have someone with me on business and do not wish to be disturbed.”

I went to the door to meet Grieve. As he crossed the threshold, and before he could have seen the portrait, he stopped, shuddered and turned white, even to his thin lips.

“Cover that picture before I come in,” he said hurriedly, in a low voice. “You remember the effect it had upon me. Now, with the memory of poor Mason, it would be worse than ever.”

I could understand his feelings better now than at first; for I had come to look on the picture with some awe myself. So I took the cloth off a little round table that stood under the window and hung it over the portrait.

When I had done so Grieve came in. He was greatly altered. He was thinner and paler than ever; hollow-eyed and hollow-cheeked. He had acquired a strange stoop, too, and his eyes had lost the crafty look for a look of terror, like that of a hunted beast. I noticed that he kept glancing sideways every instant, as if unconsciously. It looked as if he heard someone behind him.

I had never liked the man; but now I felt an insurmountable repugnance to him — so great a repugnance that, when I came to think of it, I felt pleased that the incident of covering the picture at his request had led to my not shaking hands with him.

I felt that I could not speak otherwise than coldly to him; indeed, I had to speak with painful plainness.

I told him that, of course, I was glad to see him back, but that I could not ask him to continue to visit us. I should be glad to hear the particulars of poor George’s death, but that I could not let him see my sister, and hinted, as delicately as I could, at the impropriety of which he had been guilty when he last visited.

He took it all very quietly, only giving a long, weary sigh when I told him I must beg him not to repeat his visit. He looked so weak and ill that I was obliged to ask him to take a glass of offer which he seemed to accept with great pleasure.

I got out the sherry and biscuits and placed them on the table between us, and he took a glass and drank it off greedily.

It was not without some difficulty that I could get him to tell me of George’s death. He related, with evident reluctance, how they had gone out to shoot a white bear which they had seen on an iceberg stranded along the shore. The top of the berg was ridged like the roof of a house, sloping down on one side to the edge of a tremendous overhanging precipice. They had scrambled along the ridge in order to get nearer the game, when George incautiously ventured on the sloping side.

“I called out to him”, said Grieve, “and begged him to come back, but too late. The surface was as smooth and slippery as glass. He tried to turn back, but slipped and fell. And then began a horrible scene. Slowly, slowly, but with ever-increasing motion, he began to slide down towards the edge. There was nothing to grasp at — no irregularity or projection on the smooth face of the ice. I tore off my coat, and hastily attaching it to the stock of my gun, pushed the latter towards him; but it did not reach far enough. Before I could lengthen it, by tying my cravat to it, he had slid yet further away, and more quickly. I shouted in agony; but there was no one within hearing. He, too, saw his fate was sealed; and he could only tell me to bring his last farewell to you, and — and to her!” — Here Grieve’s voice broke — “and it was all over! He clung to the edge of the precipice instinctively for one second, and was gone!”

Just as Grieve uttered the last word, his jaw fell; his eyeballs seemed ready to start from his head; he sprang to his feet, pointed at something behind me, and then flinging up his arms, fell, with a scream, as if he had been shot. He was seized with an epileptic fit.

I instinctively looked behind me as I hurried to raise him from the floor. The cloth had fallen from the picture, where the face of George, made paler than ever by the gouts of red, looked sternly down.

I rang the bell. Luckily, Harry had come in; and, when the servant told him what was the matter, he came in and assisted me in restoring Grieve to consciousness. Of course, I covered the painting up again.

When he was quite himself again, Grieve told me he was subject to fits occasionally.

He seemed very anxious to learn if he had said or done anything extraordinary while he was in the fit, and appeared reassured when I said he had not. He apologized for the trouble he had given, and said as soon as he was strong enough he would take his leave. He was leaning on the mantelpiece as he said this. The little white moth caught his eye.

“So you have had someone else from the Pioneer here before me?” he said, nervously.

I answered in the negative, asking what made him think so.

“Why, this little white moth is never found in such southern latitudes. It is one of the last signs of life northward. Where did you get it?”

“I caught it here, in this room,” I answered.

“That is very strange. I never heard of such a thing before. We shall hear of showers of blood soon, I should not wonder.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Oh, these little fellows emit little drops of a red-looking fluid at certain seasons, and sometimes so plentifully that the superstitious think it is a shower of blood. I have seen the snow quite stained in places. Take care of it, it is a rarity in the south.”

I noticed, after he left, which he did almost immediately, that there was a drop of red fluid on the marble under the wine-glass. The bloodstain on the picture was accounted for; but how came the moth here?

And there was another strange thing about the man, which I had scarcely been able to assure myself of in the room, where there were cross-lights, but about which there was no possible mistake, when I saw him walking away up the street.

“Harry, here — quick!” I called to my brother, who at once came to the window. “You’re an artist, tell me, is there anything strange about that man?”

“No; nothing that I can see,” said Harry, but then suddenly, in an altered tone, added, “Yes, there is. By Jove, he has a double shadow!”

That was the explanation of his sidelong glances, of the habitual stoop. There was a something always at his side, which none could see, but which cast a shadow.

He turned, presently, and saw us at the window. Instantly, he crossed the road to the shady side of the street. I told Harry all that had passed, and we agreed that it would be as well not to say a word to Lettie.

Two days later, when I returned from a visit to Harry’s studio, I found the whole house in confusion.

I learnt from Lettie that while my wife was upstairs, Grieve had called, had not waited for the servant to announce him, but had walked straight into the dining-room, where Lettie was sitting. She noticed that he avoided looking at the picture, and, to make sure of not seeing it, had seated himself on the sofa just beneath it. He had then, in spite of Lettie’s angry remonstrances, renewed his offer of love, strengthening it finally by assuring her that poor George with his dying breath had implored him to seek her, and watch over her, and marry her.

“I was so indignant I hardly knew how to answer him,” said Lettie. “When, suddenly, just as he uttered the last words, there came a twang like the breaking of a guitar — and — I hardly know how to describe it — but the portrait had fallen, and the corner of the heavy frame had struck him on the head, cutting it open, and rendering him insensible.”

They had carried him upstairs, by the direction of the doctor, for whom my wife at once sent on hearing what had occurred. He was laid on the couch in my dressing-room, where I went to see him. I intended to reproach him for coming to the house, despite my prohibition, but I found him delirious. The doctor said it was a queer case; for, though the blow was a severe one, it was hardly enough to account for the symptoms of brain-fever. When he learnt that Grieve had but just returned in the Pioneer from the North, he said it was possible that the privation and hardship had told on his constitution and sown the seeds of the malady.

We sent for a nurse, who was to sit up with him, by the doctor’s directions.

The rest of my story is soon told. In the middle of the night I was roused by a loud scream. I slipped on my clothes, and rushed out to find the nurse, with Lettie in her arms, in a faint. We carried her into her room, and then the nurse explained the mystery to us.

It appears that about midnight Grieve sat up in bed, and began to talk. And he said such terrible things that the nurse became alarmed. Nor was she much reassured when she became aware that the light of her single candle flung what seemed to be two shadows of the sick man on the wall.

Terrified beyond measure, she had crept into Lettie’s room, and confided her fears to her; and Lettie, who was a courageous and kindly girl, dressed herself, and said she would sit with her. She, too, saw the double shadow — but what she heard was far more terrible.

Grieve was sitting up in bed, gazing at the unseen figure to which the shadow belonged. In a voice that trembled with emotion, he begged the haunting spirit to leave him, and prayed its forgiveness.

“You know the crime was not premeditated. It was a sudden temptation of the devil that made me strike the blow, and fling you over the precipice. It was the devil tempting me with the recollection of her exquisite face — of the tender love that might have been mine, but for you. But she will not listen to me. See, she turns away from me, as if she knew I was your murderer, George Mason!”

It was Lettie who repeated in a horrified whisper this awful confession.

I could see it all now! As I was about to tell Lettie of the many strange things I had concealed from her, the nurse, who had gone to see her patient, came running back in alarm.

Vincent Grieve had disappeared. He had risen in his delirious terror, had opened the window, and leaped out. Two days later his body was found in the river.

A curtain hangs now before poor George’s portrait, though it is no longer connected with any supernatural marvels; and never, since the night of Vincent Grieve’s death, have we seen aught of that most mysterious haunting presence — the Shadow of a Shade.

THE SECRET OF THE STRADIVARIUS

Hugh Conway

1881

My friend Luigi is reckoned one of the finest violin. players of the day. His wonderful skill has made him famous, and he is well known and honoured for his talent in every capital in Europe.

If in these pages I call him by another name than the one he has made famous, it is solely on account of a promise he exacted from me, in case I should ever feel tempted to make the following strange experiences, we shared together, public property. I am afraid, nevertheless, that too many will readily identify the man himself with the portrait I am obliged to draw.

Luigi — leaving his professional greatness out of the question — would have been a noticeable man in any company, a man that people would look at and ask not only, “Who is he?” but “What has he done in the world?” knowing that men of his stamp are seldom sent upon this scene to live an ordinary everyday life. In person he was very tall, standing over six feet. His figure was graceful, and might even be called slight, but had breadth of shoulder enough to tell it was the figure of a strong man; a face with a pale but clear complexion; dark deep-set eyes, with a sort of far-away expression in them; black hair, worn long, after the manner of geniuses of his kind; a high but rugged forehead; a well shaped nose; a drooping moustache; a hand whose long and delicate fingers seemed constructed for their particular mission — violin-playing. Picture all these, and if you enjoy the acquaintance of the musical world, or even if you have been in the habit of attending concerts where stars of the first magnitude condescend to shine, I fear, in spite of my promise of concealing his name, you will too easily recognize my friend.

Luigi’s manner in ordinary life was very quiet, gentlemanly, and reposed. He was, in his dreamy sort of way, highly courteous and polite to strangers. Although, when alone with me or other friends he loved, he had plenty to say for himself — and his broken English was pleasant to listen to — in general company he spoke but little. But let his left hand close round the neck of a fiddle, let his right hand grasp the bow, and one knew directly for what purpose Luigi came into the world. Then the man lived and revelled, as it were, in a life of his own making. The notes his craft drew forth were like bracing air to him; he seemed actually to respire the music, and his dreamy eyes awoke and shone with fire. He did that rare thing — rare indeed, but lacking which no performer can rise to fame — threw his whole soul into his playing. His manner, his very attitude as he commenced, was a complete study. Drawing himself up to every inch of his height, he placed the violin — nestling it, I may say — under his chin, and then taking a long breath of what appeared to be anticipatory pleasure, swept his magician’s wand over the sleeping strings, and waking them with the charmed touch, wove his wonderful spell of music. The moment the horsehair came in contact with the gut, the listener knew he was in the presence of a master.

Luigi had come to London for the season, having, after much negotiation and persuasion, accepted an engagement at a long series of some of the best, if cheapest and most popular, concerts held in London. It was his first visit to England: he had ever disliked the country, and believed very little in the national love for good music, or in the power of appreciating it when heard. He disliked, also, the trumpeting with which the promoters of the concerts heralded his appearance. Although his fame was great already throughout the Continent, he dreaded the effect of playing to an unsympathetic audience. His fears were, however, groundless. Whether the people liked and understood his music and style of playing or not, they at least appeared to do so; and the newspapers, one and all, unable to do things by halves, went into raptures over him. They compared him with Paganini, Ole Bull, and other bygone masters, and their comparisons were very flattering. Altogether, Luigi was a great success.

I met him on two occasions at the houses of some friends of mine, who are in the habit of spending much time, trouble, and some money on that strange sport, lion-hunting. His concerts were held, I think, on two evenings in every week; so he had time at his disposal, and was somewhat sought after. We were introduced, and I took a liking to the quiet, gentlemanly celebrity, who, different from many others whose names are in the mouths of men, gave himself no airs, nor vaunted, by words or manner, the “aristocracy of talent”. I could make shift to converse with him fairly enough in his own soft language; so that upon my meeting him the second time, he expressed his pleasure at again encountering me. A few days afterwards we met by chance in the street, and I was able to extricate him from some little difficulty, into which his imperfect knowledge of English and of English ways had betrayed him. Then our acquaintance ripened, until it became friendship; and even at this day I reckon him amongst the friends I hold the dearest.

I saw a great deal of Luigi during his stay in London. We made pleasant little excursions together to objects of interest he wished to visit. We spent many evenings together — nights I should rather say, for the small hours had sounded when we parted, leaving the room dim with the smoke from my cigars and his own cigarettes. Like many of his countrymen, he smoked simply whenever he could get the chance; and when alone with me, I believe the only cessation to his consumption of tobacco was when he took his beloved fiddle in his hand and played for his own pleasure and my delight.

He was a charming companion — indeed what man who had seen such varied life as he had, could be otherwise when drawn out by the confidence that friendship gives? and I soon found that under the external calmness of the man lay a nature full of poetry, and not free from excitement. I was also much amused to find a vivid vein of superstition and belief in the supernatural running through his character; and I believe it was only my merriment on making the discovery that hindered him from expatiating upon some ghostly experiences he had gone through himself, instead of darkly hinting at what he could reveal. It was in vain I apologized for my ill-timed mirth, and with a grave face tried to tempt him. He only said: “You, like the rest of your cold-blooded, money-making race, are sceptical, my friend. I will tell you nothing. You would not believe; you would laugh at me — and ridicule is death to me.”

Another thing he was very tenacious about — showing his skill when invited out. He invariably declined, seeming quite puzzled by the polite hints some of his entertainers threw out.

“Why can they not come and hear me in public?” he asked me. “Or can it be that they only ask me to their houses for my talents, not for my society?”

I told him I was afraid their motives were rather mixed; so he said quietly—

“Then I shall not go out again. When I do not play in public to earn my living, I play for myself alone.”

He kept his resolve as well as he could — declining all of his many invitations, save those to a few houses where he knew he was valued, as he wished to be, for himself.

But when I was alone with him! when I visited him at his rooms! then he was not chary in showing his skill; and although I blush to say so, at times I had violin-playing ad nauseam. A surfeit of sweets — a satiety of music. I often wonder if it has ever been any man’s lot to hear such performances as I did in those days when I lay, grown careless of the good the gods would send me, at full length on Luigi’s sofa; and the master of the magic bow expounded themes in a manner which would have brought the house down. Till then I little dreamt of what, in skilful hands, the instrument could do. How true genius could bid it laugh, sob, command, entreat — sink into a wail of pathetic pleading, or soar to a song of scorn and triumph! what power to express every emotion of the heart lay in those few inches of cunningly curved wood! Now I could understand why Luigi could play so much for his own enjoyment; and at times it seemed to me that his execution was even more wonderful, his expression more thrilling, when I alone formed his audience, than when a vast assembly was before him, ready, as the last impassioned notes sank into silence, to break into a storm of rapturous applause.

Luigi was a connoisseur in fiddles, and owned several pet instruments by the most renowned makers. Sometimes of an evening he would bring out his whole stock, look them carefully over, play a little on each, and point out to me the difference in the tone. Then he would wax eloquent on the peculiar charms or gifts the master’s hand had bestowed on each, and was indignant that I was so obtuse as not to detect, at once, the exquisite gradations of the graceful curves. After a short time the names of Amati, Ruggieri, Guarnerius, Klotz, Stainer, & Co. grew quite familiar to me; and as I went through the streets I would peep into the pawnbrokers’ and other windows with fiddles in them, hoping to pick up a treasure for a few shillings. Two or three I did buy, but my friend laughed so heartily at my purchases I gave up the pursuit.

He told me he had for a long while been looking for a genuine old Stradivarius, but, as yet, had not succeeded in finding the one he wanted. He had been offered many, purporting to have come originally from the great maker’s hands, but probably they were all pretenders, as he was not suited yet.

One evening when I visited Luigi I found him with all his musical treasures arrayed around him. He was putting them in order, he said. I must amuse myself as best I could until he had finished. I turned idly from one case to another, wondering how any experience could determine the build of any particular violin, all of which, to my untutored eyes, appeared alike. Presently I opened one case which was closed, and drew the fiddle it held from its snug, red-lined bed. I did not remember having seen this one before, so took it in my hand to examine it — holding it, after the manner of connoisseurs, edgeways before my eyes to note the curves and shape of it. It was evidently old — my little knowledge told me that; and as, even though protected by the case, dust lay upon it, I could see it had not been used for a long, long time. Moreover, all the strings were broken. Curiously, each one was severed at exactly the same point — just below the bridge — as if someone had passed a sharp knife across, and with one movement cut all four.

Holding the ill-used instrument towards Luigi, I said, “This one seems particularly to want your attention. Is it a valuable one?”

Luigi, who was engrossed by the delicate operation of shifting the sounding-post of one of his pet weapons, some infinitesimal part of an inch to the left or to the right, turned as I spoke, still holding his ends of string in each hand. As soon as he saw the violin I had taken up, he let fall the one he held between his knees, and, to my great surprise, said hastily—

“Put it down — put it down, my friend. I beseech you not to handle that violin.”

Rather annoyed at the testy way in which my usually amiable friend spoke, I laid it down, saying, “Is it so precious, then, that you are afraid of my clumsy hands damaging it?”

“Ah, it is not that,” answered Luigi, “it is something altogether different. I did not know my man had brought that fiddle in. I never intended it should have left Italy.”

“It looks an old one. Who is it by?”

“That is a real old Stradivarius; the acme of mortal skill; the one thing human hands have made in this world perfect — perfect as a flower, perfect as the sea. A Stradivarius is the only thing that cannot be altered — cannot be improved upon.”

“Why do you never use it?”

“I cannot tell you — you would not believe me. There is a something about that fiddle I cannot explain. I believe it to be the finest in the world. It may be even that Manfredi played upon it to Boccherini’s ’cello. It may be Kruger led with it when the mighty applause rang through the Kärntnerthor, shaking it from floor to floor to roof-tree, but which he, the grand deaf genius, Beethoven, could not even hear. Who can tell what hands have used it? and yet, alas! I dare not play upon it again.”

Rendered very curious by Luigi’s enigmatical words and excited manner, I ventured to take the violin in my hands again, and examined it with interest. I looked carefully at the belly and back, noting the beautiful red but translucent varnish known alone to Stradivarius, with which the latter was coated. I peeped through the f f’s, to ascertain if any maker’s name appeared inside. If one had ever been there it was completely obliterated by a dark stain, covering the greater portion of the inside of the back. Luigi offered no remonstrance as I took the fiddle for the second time, but sat silent, watching me with apparent interest.

And now a strange thing occurred to me — let who can explain it. After holding that fiddle a few minutes, I felt a wish — an impulse — growing stronger and stronger each moment, till it became almost irresistible, to play upon it. It was not a musician’s natural itching to try a fine old violin, as I am no musician, although fond of listening to music, and at times venturing to criticize; neither have I learnt nor attempted to learn the art of performing on any instrument, from the Jew’s-harp to the organ. And yet, I say, as my fingers were round the neck — as soft as silk it was — of that old violin, not only did I feel a positive yearning to pass the bow across it, but somehow I was filled with the conviction, odd as it was that all at once I was possessed of the power of bringing rare music forth. So strong, so intense was this feeling, that, heedless of the ridicule I should expose myself to from my companion — heedless, indeed, of his presence — I cuddled the fiddle under my chin, and took up one of the several bows lying on the table. My left fingers fell instinctively into their proper position on the strings, or rather where the strings should have been; and then I remembered the ruined state they were in, and with all my new-born skill, knew that no miraculous inspiration, even if it produced a fiddler. could bring forth music from wood alone. Yet the impulse was on me stronger than ever; and absurd as it may seem, I turned to Luigi with the request on my lips that he would re-string the useless instrument.

Luigi had been watching me attentively; no doubt he had studied every motion, every vagary of mine since I commenced handling the fiddle again. Seeing me turn towards him, he sprang from his seat, and before I could speak, snatched the fiddle from my hands, replacing it at once in its case; then closing the cover, he heaved a deep sigh of relief. I had no time to entreat, remonstrate, or resist; but as he took the fiddle from me, all wish to distinguish myself in a line that was not my own left me, and I almost laughed aloud at the folly and presumption of which I had been mentally guilty. Yet it was strange — very strange.

“Ah,” said Luigi, as he placed the fiddle out of sight under the table, “so you felt it also, my friend?”

“Felt what?”

“The — I don’t know what to call it — the power, the sorcery of it.”

“I felt — don’t laugh at me — had the strings been there, I who never played a fiddle in my life, could have drawn exquisite music from that one. What does it mean?”

Luigi returned no answer to my inquiry, but said, as if thinking aloud—

“So it was no dream of mine. He, the cool, collected Englishman — he felt it also. He could not resist the impulse. It was no dream — no creation of my fancy; would he see it, I wonder?”

“See what?” I asked, curious to know what his wandering sentences meant.

“I cannot tell you. You would not believe me.”

“But what do you mean by the sorcery of the fiddle?”

“Did I say sorcery? — Well, I know no other word that can describe it. Although I tell you I believe that fiddle is the finest in the world, I have only played upon it twice; and the second time I drew my knife across the strings, that I might never again be tempted to play upon it without due consideration.”

“What is its history, then? Where did you get it?” I asked, by this time thinking my friend was suffering from some eccentricity that genius occasionally exhibits.

“It was sent me originally from London. When I found out its secret, I begged my agent in England to ascertain its history. After some trouble, he traced it to a house, where, for many years, it had lain unnoticed in a garret. That house had once been a lodging-house; so doubtless the fiddle had belonged to someone who had sojourned there for a time. I could learn no more about it, save what it told me in its music.”

I saw Luigi was far away from any wish to jest, so paused before I asked him the meaning of his last sentence. He anticipated me, and said—

“You wonder at my words. Did you notice nothing else strange about it?”

“Only a dark stain inside: as if wine had been spilt into it.”

“Ah!” cried Luigi, excitedly, “that is it! that is the secret — the meaning of the power it holds. If it were not for the varnish that fiddle would be stained outside and inside. That stain is from a man’s heart’s blood, and that fiddle can tell you why he died.”

“I do not understand you.”

“I do not expect you to — or believe me — why should you? What have you, an unimaginative Anglo-Saxon, to do with marvels? How, in the centre of a great, cruel, material city, with the ceaseless sound of traffic outside our windows should you expect anything supernatural? It may be I only dreamt it. Perhaps you would not see it. And yet, one night when I feel strong enough, we will take the fiddle from its case, and I will play it to you — I who have not laid a finger on it for five years until tonight. And then, if its music moves you as it moved me, I dreamt no dream. If not, I will say it was a dream, and I may at last be able to use this masterpiece of Stradivarius.”

I begged him to name an early day for the curious performance, but he would make no promise; so we parted for the night.

A month passed by: Luigi’s London engagement terminated, and he was now going to win fresh laurels at Berlin. I had seen him two or three times every week, but he had never referred to the conversation which had taken place upon the night I drew the strange violin from its case, nor I had he offered to redeem his promise on that occasion. I had ceased to think about it, or indeed only remembered it as a jest, laughing at the idea of a superstitious man not being able to play on any particular fiddle. Two days before he left England he wrote me asking me to dine with him that night; adding, “I think I may keep my promise of playing upon the Stradivarius.”

We dined at a well-known restaurant, and about ten o’clock went to Luigi’s rooms to finish the night. The first thing I saw, upon entering, was the fiddle-case lying on the table — Luigi’s favourite bow and several coils of strings beside it. We sat down and talked on various topics for about an hour, and then I said—

“I see you have made preparations for the performance. When do you intend to begin?”

Luigi drew a deep breath. “My friend,” he said, “you will not blame me if my playing agitates you; and remember, when I once commence I must continue to the end. It is no pleasure to me — it is rather deadly pain. But I am curious, and would satisfy my doubts.”

He was so much in earnest that I checked the laugh his solemn manner called up, and merely nodded acquiescence. He then rose, and saying, “We must not be interrupted,” called his servant, and after giving him the necessary instructions locked the door, placing the key in his pocket. He then opened the mysterious case, and with tender hands drew forth the violin. His nimble fingers soon detached the severed strings, knotted on the new ones, and in the course of about a quarter of an hour the instrument was ready, and tuned to his satisfaction. I felt, as I watched him, I should like to take the violin in my hands once more, to see if the strange desire I had before experienced would again come over me — but hardly liked to ask him to permit me to do so. And now all was ready — Luigi’s critical ear satisfied with the sound of the strings, and he seemed about to strike his favourite attitude. Yet I noticed his pale face was paler than usual, and the hand poising the bow seemed tremulous; and as I looked at him, a sympathetic feeling of fear — a dread of something, I knew not what — crept over me. It seemed too absurd, however, to be disturbed by an excitable Italian playing a violin in a room with all the appliances of modern every day life around me; so I laughed away the feeling, placed myself in my favourite attitude for listening to the master’s performances — at full length on the sofa — and was prepared to give my undivided attention to the music.

And yet, for a while Luigi did not commence, although he saw I had resigned myself to my fate. He had placed the violin under his chin; his left-hand fingers were on the strings, but for some minutes he contented himself with beating a sort of time, or rhythmical measure, with the bow. One would have said he was endeavouring to recall something he had heard once, and only imperfectly remembered.

“What theme are you going to play to me?” I asked.

On hearing my voice he looked at me vacantly, and only upon my repeating the question did he seem aware of my presence. Then with an effort he said, ceasing not to beat time the while—

“Ah, that I do not know. I am no longer my own master; I cannot choose. Let me beg of you not to interrupt me again, my friend.”

I said no more, but watched him with anxious eyes. The left-hand fingers slipped, slid, and danced in dumb show up and down the strings, the bow forever beating time. A sort of shiver passed over him; then, drawing himself up, he swept the bow across the strings, and the fiddle, silent for so many years, found tongue at last.

A weird strain, commanding the listener’s attention at once — a strain I knew I had never heard before. So curious the opening bars sounded, that, had I dared, I should have said several well-established rules of harmony were outraged. And yet, in spite of its peculiarity, I knew that he who created that music was a master in the art. It was not Wagner, I was sure, although somewhat of his remarkable power of expression, and of moving the mind without the aid of melody, was present. The first thirty bars, or so, appeared to me to be of the nature of an overture, heralding the performance to follow. In snatches of mystic music the violin spoke of joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure, love and hate, hope and fear; and as my own thoughts responded to the varied emotions, I lay and wondered who could have written the music, affecting me so; and thought how fortunate the unknown composer was to have such an exponent of his ideas as Luigi. Yet, as I looked at the latter, it struck me his style of playing tonight was different from usual. Faultless though the execution was — marvellous as were the strains those facile fingers drew forth — the whole manner of the man seemed to be mechanical, utterly at variance with the fire and dash that ever characterized his performances. The skill was there, but, for once, the soul was wanting. With the exception of his hands and arms, he stood so still he might have been a statue. He played as one in a trance, and his eyes with a fixed look were ever directed towards the end of the apartment. Swifter and swifter his arm flew backwards and forwards — more strange, eccentric, and weird the music became — stronger in its expression, plainer in its eloquence, more thrilling in its intensity, and ever exercising its powerful spell on the hearer. At last, with a sort of impulse, I turned my eyes from the player and looked in the direction he looked. Suddenly the music changed. There was no lack of melody now. A soft, soothing, haunting measure began — a sort of dreamy far-away tune; and as its gentle cadences fell on my ear, hitherto kept in a state of irritating, if not unpleasing, expectation, my thoughts began to wander to old and half-forgotten scenes — distant events came to my mind — recollections of vanished faces, once familiar, flocked around me — all things seemed growing misty and indistinct, and I felt as one sinking into sleep — the sort of sleep that one can almost realize and enjoy.

It was not to be, however. A few harsh notes from the fiddle, sounding like a warning or admonition, recalled me to wakefulness; and as my straying thoughts collected themselves, that lulling song began again.

And yet, if fully awake and conscious, where was I? The scene was entirely changed; and although I knew I was still lying where I had at first placed myself — although I could hear within a few feet of me the unceasing melody of Luigi’s violin — I was now looking into a strange apartment, even as one looks into the representation of a room on the stage; and I knew I was dreaming no dream. It could be none; for, as I gazed, I felt a feeling of utter astonishment — and that feeling is always absent from a dream, however marvellous its features may be. Yet, lying there, and in as full possession of my faculties as I am at the moment of writing these words, I saw, opened as it were before me, a strange room, and one I could in no way connect with any chamber I was in the habit of entering. It appeared to be a large, lofty apartment and if I was looking at a vision, neither the room I nor its belongings presented any appearance of unreality. The latter, indeed, gave the idea of wealth and comfort. The furniture was after the fashion of the early part of this century. The chairs were covered with costly old brocade; and a short, square pianoforte — then the highest type of the maker’s art — stood open against one wall. And as, with the sound of the violin ever near me, I noted these things and waited for what was to come, I knew — although I did not attempt it — I was utterly powerless to turn my eyes from the phantom scene before me, even to ascertain whether it could be that Luigi saw the things I saw.

Another change in the wonder-working music. A long rippling legato passage, sweeping into a tender, passionate, pleading strain — the eloquent notes speaking of joy and fear mingled. As my heart followed and understood the inspiration of the musician, I whispered to myself, “This is love.” As if in answer to my thoughts, the door of the phantom room opened, and two figures entered — a lady and a gentleman. Both wore the dresses of that period to which I have assigned the date of the furniture, and both were young. Like the objects around them, there was nothing in their appearance ghostlike or supernatural. Their limbs looked as firm and round as my own. It was some little time before I could take my eyes from the girl. She was supremely beautiful — tall and fair, with a delicate, refined face; and the robe she wore plainly showed the exquisite proportions of her figure. Her companion was handsome, and his features wore an expression of melancholy pride. I noticed he carried under his left arm a violin, and something told me he was a Frenchman. With great courtesy he led the girl to a seat, and, as if in obedience to a request of hers, commenced playing the instrument. Still the same sweet strain fell on my ears; but a stranger thing than any I had yet noticed was that, as he played, the sound seemed to come from his violin, and Luigi’s was dumb. And as he played, the girl looked up at him with admiring eyes. He ceased at last, and Luigi’s fiddle immediately resumed the melody, without a moment’s break. Then I saw the phantom place the violin and bow in the girl’s hands, instructing her how to hold them; and I knew that during the lesson, his voice as well as his eyes made avowal of his passionate love. I saw his fingers linger on hers as he placed them on the strings; I saw the blush deepen upon her cheek, the lashes droop over her downcast eyes, and then I saw him lean over and press his lips to the fair white hand holding the bow; whilst the music near me, sinking almost to silence, and tremulous as if a man’s future lay on those vibrating strings, told me he sought his fate at her lips. He threw himself at her feet, and I saw the girl bend over him, and placing her arms around his neck, kiss his forehead, whilst high and loud rose the song of sweet triumph from those impassioned chords, doubtful of her love no longer.

Again the strain changed — a song of love no longer: a few notes of warning, melting into a strain that foretold and spoke of sorrow. Again I saw the door of the apartment open, and, with a hasty step, another man entered. He, too, was young and powerfully built, with an intensely English face. Yet I could trace in his harder features a resemblance, such as a brother might bear, to the girl before me. As he entered, the lovers sprang to their feet; then, covering her face with her hands, the girl sank upon a chair, whilst her companion faced the new-comer with an air as haughty as his own, and words of scorning, of contempt, of shaming, of defiance, were hurled from man to man. True, I heard them not — all the phantasmagoria came before me in dumb show; but the varied tones of the violin told me all that passed between the two men as truly as though their voices smote upon my ear; and, as the wild music culminated in a fierce crescendo of thrilling power, the two men grappled in their rage, and the girl sprang to her feet and ran wildly to the door. For a moment all grew misty, and the phantom actors of my vision were hidden from my sight. When they re-appeared, I saw the young Frenchman quitting the room, with blood trickling down his pale cheek, and as, with a look of undying hate on his face, he closed the door behind him, the room and all faded from my sight.

But no pause in the music; still those weird notes weaving the mystic spell that chained me. Leaving me no time to reflect on what I had seen, but enforcing my attention to the drama acted before me, the fiery crescendo sank in a dull sullen theme, almost colourless when compared with the foregoing numbers; then, as with dissolving views where one scene grows through another that fades, I began to realize that I looked into another room — one very different from the first. It was evidently, from the slanting roof and small window, an attic, and its contents spoke of poverty. A bedstead with threadbare hangings occupied one corner, and in the centre, at a square table littered with sheets of music, sat the young Frenchman. His brow was contracted, and the wound yet fresh on his cheek. He was writing, and through the medium of the music I knew the purport of his epistle as well as if I had looked over his shoulder. It was a challenge — a challenge, he stated, his late antagonist dare not decline, as the writer was of even more noble family than the man who had insulted him. Having written the letter, he rose and paced the small room, deep in thought. As his steps went backwards and forwards across the limited space — as his thoughts grew black with hate as he remembered the insult he had suffered, or grew bright with love as he pictured the fair girl who pledged herself to him — so truthfully did the delicate gradations of the music harmonize with them, that I could feel every emotion stirring his heart, at times almost identifying myself with him — making his joy, his sorrow, mine. After what seemed to be hours, he took up the violin that lay on the table near him, and commenced playing. As before, I say, the sound came from him, whether Luigi’s hands produced it or not; and as he played, the music, at first, fierce, stern, and harsh gradually toned down until it became dreamy and lulling — until at last he threw himself on his poor bed, and Luigi’s violin resumed the strain — the soft, soothing measure I have before mentioned, telling of placid sleep.

Another change — hard, sharp, staccato passages. I was now looking — it might be from a window — on a wide expanse of smooth green turf. As before, the scene was so real, so material, that I might have stepped out on the sward. There was nothing in the locality I could identify. A wall and some palings, I remember, were on the left hand; a belt of trees on the right. As I looked, I saw figures at some little distance. Two men in their shirt-sleeves were engaged in a deadly duel. They were not so far away but I could distinguish their features plainly; and I knew they were the two men I had seen grapple in the room. As their flashing blades, slender as serpents, twined in and out; as they thrust and parried, advanced and retreated — the mysterious music entered fully into the fray, accompanying every stroke, till, as the arm of one of the combatants sank to his side, helpless — pierced by his antagonist’s blade — it swelled to a strain of exultation. It was the Englishman who was wounded; and as the sword dropped from his grasp, his opponent with difficulty checked the impulse urging him to drive his weapon through his unguarded breast; then, seeing he was quite unable to renew the combat, bowed with cold politeness, sheathed his sword, and turned away, leaving the wounded man to the care of his second. As the Frenchman vanished from my sight among the trees at the right hand, the scene grew blurred and faded — only the spell of the music continued ever.

The dismal measure and the dismal garret once more. As I look at the poverty-stricken room, the music, eloquent as before, in some hidden manner makes me aware that months have passed since I last looked at it. The young Frenchman is present. Indeed, I begin now to understand that no scene can come beneath my eyes unless he be an actor in it. It is his life, his love, the violin in its own marvellous tongue relates. I wait with interest now. I have no time to wonder at or speculate on what I have seen: no time to endeavour to explain the phantom scenes and actors the song of the Stradivarius has brought before me. I feel no fear — curiosity and excitement only. Luigi’s presence I have forgotten, so intent am I upon the drama played before me.

The young man, I notice, is handsome as ever, but paler, thinner, and careworn. What is the music saying now in that strange speech I can interpret so readily? Poverty and hopelessness, loss of love, and with that loss the wish to rise to fame.

He is writing; but the paper before him this time is a score — the score of a work he once thought would hand his name down to future times. Well I know, as I watch him, that music will never be given to the world. I know it is night; and to kill his bitter thoughts he is sitting down and working without interest at his uncompleted score. As I watch him, grieving at his grief, weird and dreamy and unearthly sounds Luigi’s violin — bar after bar of the music monotonous and sad. Then of a sudden it wakes to fresh life with a sort of expression of keen surprise; and the young man raises his head from the work that interests him no more, and the door of his poor dwelling opens. A few bars of that haunting melody, that had caused me to whisper “this is love,” merge into a strain of plaintive hopelessness, and the fair girl enters. She is closely veiled, and enveloped in a long dark cloak, and as she raises the veil from her face and looks at him with sad and wistful eyes, the man’s heart responds to the impassioned strings and vibrates with love, hopeless though it be. For I know that ere two days are past she will wed another, and the man knows it, and, crushing down his love, curses her in his heart for her faithlessness. He stands helpless in his surprise at seeing her for a moment after her entry, and then, with a grand air of calm politeness, handing her to one of the crazy chairs that furnished his poor room, waits, with a cold face, to learn the object of her visit. Then the woman — or the music — pleads in pathetic strains for the pardon and forgiveness — pleads the pressure put upon her by friends — pleads her utter helplessness in their hands — yet tells him, even with the wedding-ring waiting to encircle her finger, that he alone, the exiled, poverty-stricken Frenchman, owns the love her heart can give. And as the tears fall from her eyes, the man waves his arm round the squalid room, and showing with that gesture his utter poverty and hopelessness, commends, with a bitter sneer, the course she has taken, or been compelled to take, and asks how he could expect the daughter of a noble English family to share such a home and such a lot as his. I see the girl hesitate, falter, and tremble, and as she rises, the man with a calm air and forced composure opens the door. Weeping bitterly she leaves him; and as he closes the rickety door upon her, a wail of music, more mournful than words can describe, lingers in the air, bringing the tears to my eyes, and the man kneels down and kisses the very boards on which her feet had rested.

With the mirthless smile upon his face he sits down thinking, thinking; and the music, playing ever, gives me his thoughts. As I read them I shudder, knowing how every fresh departure tends ever and only to the same end — what has he to do with life any longer? — he the last descendant of a noble French family, his sovereign an exile, his lands and possessions confiscated or squandered, and now he lies starving, or soon to be starving, in a London attic. Even the fame he once hoped to win as a musician is far off; and if ever to be won, is it worth struggling for? The past, to him, is full of agonizing recollections of relatives and friends whose blood has slaked the guillotine’s thirst. The present is misery. The future, now that the dream of love he had dared for a while to dream, is dispelled, hopeless — what, indeed, has he to do with life any longer? If he knows now how to live, at least he knows how to die.

Ever with the same dreary thoughts in his mind, I see him take the bulky score, the result of months, it may be years, of labour, and deliberately tear sheet after sheet to pieces, until the floor is littered with the fragments. And as his action tells me he renounces hope, love, and fame, I know I am fated to see an awful sight, but am powerless to move my eyes from the scene. For yet the melancholy notes sound; and I know until Luigi’s hands are still, I am fettered by the spell the music weaves. I am watching the man, or the phantom, with concentrated interest. The last page of the score falls in tatters to the ground, and seated still in the chair he had placed for the girl, he stretches out his hand, seeking for something amongst the papers on the table. Well I know the object he seeks — a small knife, with an elaborately chased silver handle — a relic, doubtless, of former riches. Tomorrow even that would have been sold to provide the bare necessities of the life he ceases to care for. He opens it, passes his fingers across the keen edge, and removing his coat, turns up his shirt-sleeve to the shoulder, and deliberately severs a large vein or artery in his arm. Oh, that maddening music! — encouraging, tempting, even applauding his crime of self destruction! I see, and sicken at the sight, the first red rush of blood from his white arm; and then, drip, drip, drip, follow the large quick-falling drops. So real, so horrible is the vision, that I can even note the crimson pool forming amid the tattered paper covering the floor. Will the fatal music never end? Minutes are hours as I watch the face grow whiter and whiter as the man sits bleeding to death. Now, whilst I long to faint and lose the dreadful sight, he rises, and with tottering steps walks across the room and takes up the violin. With the life-blood streaming from his left arm, once more, and for the last time, he makes the instrument speak; and again, I say, the music comes from him and not from Luigi. As he plays, even whilst I wait for what must follow, I know that such rare music was never heard on earth as the strain I listen to — fancying the while I can see the eager wings of Death hovering around the player. What can I compare it to? A poet would term it the death-song of the swan. It is the death-song of a genius — one whom the world never knew: whose own rash act has extinguished the sacred flame. Strong and wild and wonderful rises the music, for a while. Now it sinks lower, lower, and lower. Now it is so soft I can scarcely hear it; it is ebbing to silence, even as the heart’s-blood is ebbing to death. The face grows ghastly; the head sinks upon the breast; the eyes flicker like the dying flame of a candle; the violin drops from the reddened hand, and the man falls sideways from his chair to the ground, even as Luigi’s violin completes the bar his fall had broken off in the middle; and as its sums up the tragedy in one long-sustained passage of hopeless grief, I see the bloodless, white face of the man, now dead, or soon to be dead, lying on the ruddy floor; whilst the left arm, motionless now, rests as it had fallen, across the violin those nerveless fingers had at last been fain to drop.

The music stopped — the spell was ended. So powerfully was I wrought upon by the last vision I had seen, that the moment my limbs resumed their freedom, I rushed forward and fell fainting on the very spot it seemed to me the man had died. When I recovered consciousness, I found Luigi bending over me, and sponging my face with cold water. He was pale and agitated, and seemed scarcely able to stand from physical exhaustion. I rose, and with a shudder looked towards that part of the room where the phantasmagoria had appeared. Nothing was there to move me now. The familiar wallpaper, the pictures I had so often scanned, alone met my eye. As I gazed round, Luigi, in a whisper, asked—

“You saw it all, then, as I did?”

“I saw it all: could it have been a dream?”

He shook his head. “If so, three times have I dreamed it, and each time alike in every detail. The first time, I said, ‘It must be a dream’; the second time, ‘It may be fancy.’ But what can I say now, when another sees it also?”

I could give him no answer — I could offer no explanation — only, I asked—

“Why did you not cease playing, and spare me that last sight?”

“I could not. It was your impulse to play on that violin, when first you saw it, led me to think its strange power would act on another besides myself, and induced me to go through it all once more. But it will tell its story to no one else.”

I turned inquiringly, and seeing on the carpet a mass of small splinters of wood, mixed with tangled strings and pegs, knew what he meant. This, then, was the end of the masterpiece of Stradivarius.

“And you mean to say you had no power to cease when once you began? — were compelled to play through the whole tragedy?”

“I had no power to stop. Some force irresistible compelled me. I was but an instrument; and absurd as it seems, I believe that you, with no knowledge of the art, would have played just as I did.”

“But the music?” I asked. “The wonderful music?”

“That to me,” replied Luigi, “is the strangest thing of all. Neither you nor I can recall a single bar of it. Even those two or three melodies, which, as we heard them, we thought would haunt us, have vanished.”

And it was so. Try how I would, I could fashion no tune at all like them.

“It bears out what I told you,” said Luigi, in conclusion. “I was simply an instrument. Indeed it seemed the whole time not I, but another was playing. But here is an end of it.”

Then, late as the hour was, we kindled a small fire, and consumed every atom of the violin, which held, in some mysterious, inexplicable way, the story of man’s love and death.

We parted at last. Luigi left England as arranged, and has not yet revisited it.

Is there any sequel to my incredible story? None that will throw any light upon it, or enable me — as, indeed, I have little hope — to win the reader’s belief. Only, some time afterwards, I saw in the house of a man — known by name at least to all who are familiar with the titles of the great ones of the land — the portrait of a lady. It was that of his mother, who had died a few years after her marriage; and if the painters skill had not erred, it was also the portrait of the phantom-woman I had seen twice that night in the visions the weird music brought before me. Every feature was so stamped upon my memory, I could not be mistaken. And yet I did not trouble to inquire into her private history. Even if I could have learnt it, it could tell me no more than I knew already. The history of her love and its tragic ending — doubtless a sealed page in her life — had been fully displayed to me as I lay in Luigi’s room listening to the varying strains of the haunted Stradivarius.

THE OLD HOUSE IN VAUXHALL WALK

Charlotte Riddell

1882

I

Houseless — homeless — hopeless!”

Many a one who had before him trodden that same street must have uttered the same words — the weary, the desolate, the hungry, the forsaken, the waifs and strays of struggling humanity that are always coming and going, cold, starving and miserable, over the pavements of Lambeth Parish; but it is open to question whether they were ever previously spoken with a more thorough conviction of their truth, or with a feeling of keener self-pity, than by the young man who hurried along Vauxhall Walk one rainy winter’s night, with no overcoat on his shoulders and no hat on his head.

A strange sentence for one-and-twenty to give expression to — and it was stranger still to come from the lips of a person who looked like and who was a gentleman. He did not appear either to have sunk very far down in the good graces of Fortune. There was no sign or token which would have induced a passer-by to imagine he had been worsted after a long fight with calamity. His boots were not worn down at the heels or broken at the toes, as many, many boots were which dragged and shuffled and scraped along the pavement. His clothes were good and fashionably cut, and innocent of the rents and patches and tatters that slunk wretchedly by, crouched in doorways, and held out a hand mutely appealing for charity. His face was not pinched with famine or lined with wicked wrinkles, or brutalised by drink and debauchery, and yet he said and thought he was hopeless, and almost in his young despair spoke the words aloud.

It was a bad night to be about with such a feeling in one’s heart. The rain was cold, pitiless and increasing. A damp, keen wind blew down the cross streets leading from the river. The fumes of the gas works seemed to fall with the rain. The roadway was muddy; the pavement greasy; the lamps burned dimly; and that dreary district of London looked its very gloomiest and worst.

Certainly not an evening to be abroad without a home to go to, or a sixpence in one’s pocket, yet this was the position of the young gentleman who, without a hat, strode along Vauxhall Walk, the rain beating on his unprotected head.

Upon the houses, so large and good — once inhabited by well-to-do citizens, now let out for the most part in floors to weekly tenants — he looked enviously. He would have given much to have had a room, or even part of one. He had been walking for a long time, ever since dark in fact, and dark falls soon in December. He was tired and cold and hungry, and he saw no prospect save of pacing the streets all night.

As he passed one of the lamps, the light falling on his face revealed handsome young features, a mobile, sensitive mouth, and that particular formation of the eyebrows — not a frown exactly, but a certain draw of the brows — often considered to bespeak genius, but which more surely accompanies an impulsive organisation easily pleased, easily depressed, capable of suffering very keenly or of enjoying fully. In his short life he had not enjoyed much, and he had suffered a good deal. That night, when he walked bareheaded through the rain, affairs had come to a crisis. So far as he in his despair felt able to see or reason, the best thing he could do was to die. The world did not want him; he would be better out of it.

The door of one of the houses stood open, and he could see in the dimly lighted hall some few articles of furniture waiting to be removed. A van stood beside the curb, and two men were lifting a table into it as he, for a second, paused.

“Ah,” he thought, “even those poor people have some place to go to, some shelter provided, while I have not a roof to cover my head, or a shilling to get a night’s lodging.” And he went on fast,, as if memory were spurring him, so fast that a man running after had some trouble to overtake him.

“Master Graham! Master Graham!” this man exclaimed, breathlessly; and, thus addressed, the young fellow stopped as if he had been shot.

“Who are you that know me?” he asked, facing round.

“I’m William; don’t you remember William, Master Graham? And, Lord’s sake, sir, what are you doing out a night like this without your hat?”

“I forgot it,” was the answer; “and I did not care to go back and fetch it.”

“Then why don’t you buy another, sir? You’ll catch your death of cold; and besides, you’ll excuse me, sir, but it does look odd.”

“I know that,” said Master Graham grimly; “but I haven’t a halfpenny in the world.”

“Have you and the master, then—” began the man, but there he hesitated and stopped.

“Had a quarrel? Yes, and one that will last us our lives,” finished the other, with a bitter laugh.

“And where are you going now?”

“Going! Nowhere, except to seek out the softest paving stone, or the shelter of an arch.”

“You are joking, sir.”

“I don’t feel much in a mood for jesting either.”

“Will you come back with me, Master Graham? We are just at the last of our moving, but there is a spark of fire still in the grate, and it would be better talking out of this rain. Will you come, sir?”

“Come! Of course I will come,” said the young fellow, and, turning, they retraced their steps to the house he had looked into as he passed along.

An old, old house, with long, wide hall, stairs low, easy of ascent, with deep cornices to the ceilings, and oak floorings, and mahogany doors, which still spoke mutely of the wealth and stability of the original owner, who lived before the Tradescants and Ashmoles were thought of, and had been sleeping far longer than they, in St. Mary’s churchyard, hard by the archbishop’s palace.

“Step upstairs, sir,” entreated the departing tenant; “it’s cold down here, with the door standing wide.”

“Had you the whole house, then, William?” asked Graham Coulton, in some surprise.

“The whole of it, and right sorry I, for one, am to leave it; but nothing else would serve my wife. This room, sir,” and with a little conscious pride, William, doing the honours of his late residence, asked his guest into a spacious apartment occupying the full width of the house on the first floor.

Tired though he was, the young man could not repress an exclamation of astonishment.

“Why, we have nothing so large as this at home, William,” he said.

“It’s a fine house,” answered William, raking the embers together as he spoke and throwing some wood upon them; “but, like many a good family, it has come down in the world.”

There were four windows in the room, shuttered close; they had deep, low seats, suggestive of pleasant days gone by; when, well-curtained and well-cushioned, they formed snug retreats for the children, and sometimes for adults also; there was no furniture left, unless an oaken settle beside the hearth, and a large mirror let into the panelling at the opposite end of the apartment, with a black marble console table beneath it, could be so considered; but the very absence of chairs and tables enabled the magnificent proportions of the chamber to be seen to full advantage, and there was nothing to distract the attention from the ornamented ceiling, the panelled walls, the old-world chimney-piece so quaintly carved, and the fireplace lined with tiles, each one of which contained a picture of some scriptural or allegorical subject.

“Had you been staying on here, William,” said Coulton, flinging himself wearily on the settle, “I’d have asked you to let me stop where I am for the night.”

“If you can make shift, sir, there is nothing as I am aware of to prevent you stopping,” answered the man, fanning the wood into a flame. “I shan’t take the key back to the landlord till tomorrow, and this would be better for you than the cold streets at any rate.”

“Do you really mean what you say?” asked the other eagerly. “I should be thankful to lie here; I feel dead beat.”

“Then stay, Master Graham, and welcome. I’ll fetch a basket of coals I was going to put in the van, and make up a good fire, so that you can warm yourself. Then I must run round to the other house for a minute or two, but it’s not far, and I’ll be back as soon as ever I can.”

“Thank you, William; you were always good to me,” said the young man gratefully. “This is delightful,” and he stretched his numbed hands over the blazing wood, and looked round the room with a satisfied smile.

“I did not expect to get into such quarters,” he remarked, as his friend in need reappeared, carrying a half-bushel basket full of coals, with which he proceeded to make up a roaring fire. “I am sure the last thing I could have imagined was meeting with anyone I knew in Vauxhall Walk.”

“Where were you coming from, Master Graham?” asked William curiously.

“From old Melfield’s. I was at his school once, you know, and he has now retired, and is living upon the proceeds of years of robbery in Kennington Oval. I thought, perhaps he would lend me a pound, or offer me a night’s lodging, or even a glass of wine; but, oh dear, no. He took the moral tone, and observed he could have nothing to say to a son who defied his father’s authority. He gave me plenty of advice, but nothing else, and showed me out into the rain with a bland courtesy, for which I could have struck him.”

William muttered something under his breath which was not a blessing, and added aloud: “You are better here, sir, I think, at any rate. I’ll be back in less than half an hour.”

Left to himself, young Coulton took off his coat, and shifting the settle a little, hung it over the end to dry. With his handkerchief he rubbed some of the wet out of his hair; then, perfectly exhausted, he lay down before the fire and, pillowing his head on his arm, fell fast asleep.

He was awakened nearly an hour afterwards by the sound of someone gently stirring the fire and moving quietly about the room. Starting into a sitting posture, he looked around him, bewildered for a moment, and then, recognising his humble friend, said laughingly:

“I had lost myself; I could not imagine where I was.”

“I am sorry to see you here, sir,” was the reply; “but still this is better than being out of doors. It has come on a nasty night. I brought a rug round with me that, perhaps, you would wrap yourself in.”

“I wish, at the same time, you had brought me something to eat,” said the young man, laughing.

“Are you hungry, then, sir?” asked William, in a tone of concern.

“Yes; I have had nothing to eat since breakfast. The governor and I commenced rowing the minute we sat down to luncheon, and I rose and left the table. But hunger does not signify; I am dry and warm, and can forget the other matter in sleep.”

“And it’s too late now to buy anything,” soliloquised the man; “the shops are all shut long ago. Do you think, sir,” he added, brightening, “you could manage some bread and cheese?”

“Do I think — I should call it a perfect feast,” answered Graham Coulton. “But never mind about food tonight, William; you have had trouble enough, and to spare, already.”

William’s only answer was to dart to the door and run downstairs. Presently he reappeared, carrying in one hand bread and cheese wrapped up in paper, and in the other a pewter measure full of beer.

“It’s the best I could do, sir,” he said apologetically. “I had to beg this from the landlady.”

“Here’s to her good health!” exclaimed the young fellow gaily, taking a long pull at the tankard. “That tastes better than champagne in my father’s house.”

“Won’t he be uneasy about you?” ventured William, who, having by this time emptied the coals, was now seated on the inverted basket, looking wistfully at the relish with which the son of the former master was eating his bread and cheese.

“No,” was the decided answer. “When he hears it pouring cats and dogs he will only hope I am out in the deluge, and say a good drenching will cool my pride.”

“I do not think you are right there,” remarked the man.

“But I am sure I am. My father always hated me, as he hated my mother.”

“Begging your pardon, sir; he was over-fond of your mother.”

“If you had heard what he said about her today, you might find reason to alter your opinion. He told me I resembled her in mind as well as body; that I was a coward, a simpleton, and a hypocrite.”

“He did not mean it, sir.”

“He did, every word. He does think I am a coward, because I — I—” And the young fellow broke into a passion of hysterical tears.

“I don’t half like leaving you here alone,” said William, glancing round the room with a quick trouble in his eyes; “but I have no place fit to ask you to stop, and I am forced to go myself, because I am night watchman, and must be on at twelve o’clock.”

“I shall be right enough,” was the answer. “Only I mustn’t talk any more of my father. Tell me about yourself, William. How did you manage to get such a big house, and why are you leaving it?”

“The landlord put me in charge, sir; and it was my wife’s fancy not to like it.”

“Why did she not like it?”

“She felt desolate alone with the children at night,” answered William, turning away his head; then added, next minute: “Now, sir, if you think I can do no more for you, I had best be off. Time’s getting on. I’ll look round tomorrow morning.”

“Good-night,” said the young fellow, stretching out his hand, which the other took as freely and frankly as it was offered. “What should I have done this evening if I had not chanced to meet you?”

“I don’t think there is much chance in the world, Master Graham,” was the quiet answer. “I do hope you will rest well, and not be the worse for your wetting.”

“No fear of that,” was the rejoinder, and the next minute the young man found himself all alone in the Old House in Vauxhall Walk.

II

Lying on the settle, with the fire burnt out, and the room in total darkness, Graham Coulton dreamed a curious dream. He thought he awoke from deep slumber to find a log smouldering away upon the hearth, and the mirror at the end of the apartment reflecting fitful gleams of light. He could not understand how it came to pass that, far away as he was from the glass, he was able to see everything in it; but he resigned himself to the difficulty without astonishment, as people generally do in dreams.

Neither did he feel surprised when he beheld the outline of a female figure seated beside the fire, engaged in picking something out of her lap and dropping it with a despairing gesture.

He heard the mellow sound of gold, and knew she was lifting and dropping sovereigns, he turned a little so as to see the person engaged in such a singular and meaningless manner, and found that, where there had been no chair on the previous night, there was a chair now, on which was seated an old, wrinkled hag, her clothes poor and ragged, a mob cap barely covering her scant white hair, her cheeks sunken, her nose hooked, her fingers more like talons than aught else as they dived down into the heap of gold, portions of which they lifted but to scatter mournfully.

“Oh! my lost life,” she moaned, in a voice of the bitterest anguish. “Oh! my lost life — for one day, for one hour of it again!”

Out of the darkness — out of the corner of the room where the shadows lay deepest — out from the gloom abiding near the door — out from the dreary night, with their sodden feet and wet dripping from their heads, came the old men and the young children, the worn women and the weary hearts, whose misery that gold might have relieved, but whose wretchedness it mocked.

Round that miser, who once sat gloating as she now sat lamenting, they crowded — all those pale, sad shapes — the aged of days, the infant of hours, the sobbing outcast, honest poverty, repentant vice; but one low cry proceeded from those pale lips — a cry for help she might have given, but which she withheld.

They closed about her, all together, as they had done singly in life; they prayed, they sobbed, they entreated; with haggard eyes the figure regarded the poor she had repulsed, the children against whose cry she had closed her ears, the old people she had suffered to starve and die for want of what would have been the merest trifle to her; then, with a terrible scream, she raised her lean arms above her head, and sank down — down — the gold scattering as it fell out of her lap, and rolling along the floor, till its gleam was lost in the outer darkness beyond.

Then Graham Coulton awoke in good earnest, with the perspiration oozing from every pore, with a fear and an agony upon him such as he had never before felt in all his existence, and with the sound of the heart-rending cry — “Oh! my lost life” — still ringing in his ears.

Mingled with all, too, there seemed to have been some lesson for him which he had forgotten, that, try as he would, eluded his memory, and which, in the very act of waking, glided away.

He lay for a little thinking about all this, and then, still heavy with sleep, retraced his way into dreamland once more.

It was natural, perhaps, that, mingling with the strange fantasies which follow in the train of night and darkness, the former vision should recur, and the young man ere long found himself toiling through scene after scene wherein the figure of the woman he had seen seated beside a dying fire held principal place.

He saw her walking slowly across the floor munching a dry crust — she who could have purchased all the luxuries wealth can command; on the hearth, contemplating her, stood a man of commanding presence, dressed in the fashion of long ago. In his eyes there was a dark look of anger, on his lips a curling smile of disgust, and somehow, even in his sleep, the dreamer understood it was the ancestor to the descendant he beheld — that the house put to mean uses in which he lay had never so far descended from its high estate, as the woman possessed of so pitiful a soul, contaminated with the most despicable and insidious vice poor humanity knows, for all other vices seem to have connection with the flesh, but the greed of the miser eats into the very soul.

Filthy of person, repulsive to look at, hard of heart as she was, he yet beheld another phantom, which, coming into the room, met her almost on the threshold, taking her by the hand, and pleading, as it seemed, for assistance. He could not hear all that passed, but a word now and then fell upon his ear. Some talk of former days; some mention of a fair young mother — an appeal, as it seemed, to a time when they were tiny brother and sister, and the accursed greed for gold had not divided them. All in vain; the hag only answered him as she had answered the children, and the young girls, and the old people in his former vision. Her heart was as invulnerable to natural affection as it had proved to human sympathy. He begged, as it appeared, for aid to avert some bitter misfortune or terrible disgrace, and adamant might have been found more yielding to his prayer. Then the figure standing on the hearth changed to an angel, which folded its wings mournfully over its face, and the man, with bowed head, slowly left the room.

Even as he did so the scene changed again; it was night once more, and the miser wended her way upstairs. From below, Graham Coulton fancied he watched her toiling wearily from step to step. She had aged strangely since the previous scenes. She moved with difficulty; it seemed the greatest exertion for her to creep from step to step, her skinny hand traversing the balusters with slow and painful deliberateness. Fascinated, the young man’s eyes followed the progress of that feeble, decrepit woman. She was solitary in a desolate house, with a deeper blackness than the darkness of night waiting to engulf her.

It seemed to Graham Coulton that after that he lay for a time in a still, dreamless sleep, upon awaking from which he found himself entering a chamber as sordid and unclean in its appointments as the woman of his previous vision had been in her person. The poorest labourer’s wife would have gathered more comforts around her than that room contained. A four-poster bedstead without hangings of any kind — a blind drawn up awry — an old carpet covered with dust, and dirt on the floor — a rickety washstand with all the paint worn off it — an ancient mahogany dressing-table, and a cracked glass spotted all over — were all the objects he could at first discern, looking at the room through that dim light which oftentimes obtains in dreams.

By degrees, however, he perceived the outline of someone lying huddled on the bed. Drawing nearer, he found it was that of the person whose dreadful presence seemed to pervade the house. What a terrible sight she looked, with her thin white locks scattered over the pillow, with what were mere remnants of blankets gathered about her shoulders, with her claw-like fingers clutching the clothes, as though even in sleep she was guarding her gold!

An awful and a repulsive spectacle, but not with half the terror in it of that which followed. Even as the young man looked he heard stealthy footsteps on the stairs. Then he saw first one man and then his fellow steal cautiously into the room. Another second, and the pair stood beside the bed, murder in their eyes.

Graham Coulton tried to shout — tried to move, but the deterrent power which exists in dreams only tied his tongue and paralysed his limbs. He could but hear and look, and what he heard and saw was this: aroused suddenly from sleep, the woman started, only to receive a blow from one of the ruffians, whose fellow followed his lead by plunging a knife into her breast.

Then, with a gurgling scream, she fell back on the bed, and at the same moment, with a cry, Graham Coulton again awoke, to thank heaven it was but an illusion.

III

“I hope you slept well, sir.” It was William, who, coming into the hall with the sunlight of a fine bright morning streaming after him, asked this question: “Had you a good night’s rest?”

Graham Coulton laughed, and answered: “Why, faith, I was somewhat in the case of Paddy, ‘who could not slape for dhraming.’ I slept well enough, I suppose, but whether it was in consequence of the row with my dad, or the hard bed, or the cheese — most likely the bread and cheese so late at night — I dreamt all the night long, the most extraordinary dreams. Some old woman kept cropping up, and I saw her murdered.”

“You don’t say that, sir?” said William nervously.

“I do, indeed,” was the reply. “However, that is all gone and past. I have been down in the kitchen and had a good wash, and I am as fresh as a daisy, and as hungry as a hunter; and, oh, William, can you get me any breakfast?”

“Certainly, Master Graham. I have brought round a kettle, and I will make the water boil immediately. I suppose, sir” — this tentatively — “you’ll be going home today?”

“Home!” repeated the young man. “Decidedly not. I’ll never go home again till I return with some medal hung to my coat, or a leg or arm cut off. I’ve thought it all out, William. I’ll go and enlist. There’s a talk of war; and, living or dead, my father shall have reason to retract his opinion about my being a coward.”

“I am sure the admiral never thought you anything of the sort, sir,” said William. “Why, you have the pluck of ten!”

“Not before him,” answered the young fellow sadly.

“You’ll do nothing rash, Master Graham; you won’t go ’listing, or aught of that sort, in your anger?”

“If I do not, what is to become of me?” asked the other. “I cannot dig — to beg I am ashamed. Why, but for you, I should not have had a roof over my head last night.”

“Not much of a roof, I am afraid, sir.”

“Not much of a roof!” repeated the young man. “Why, who could desire a better? What a capital room this is,” he went on, looking around the apartment, where William was now kindling a fire; “one might dine twenty people here easily!”

“If you think so well of the place, Master Graham, you might stay here for a while, till you have made up your mind what you are going to do. The landlord won’t make any objection, I am very sure.”

“Oh! nonsense; he would want a long rent for a house like this.”

“I dare say; if he could get it,” was William’s significant answer.

“What do you mean? Won’t the place let?”

“No, sir. I did not tell you last night, but there was a murder done here, and people are shy of the house ever since.”

“A murder! What sort of a murder? Who was murdered?”

“A woman, Master Graham — the landlord’s sister; she lived here all alone, and was supposed to have money. Whether she had or not, she was found dead from a stab in her breast, and if there ever was any money, it must have been taken at the same time, for none ever was found in the house from that day to this.”

“Was that the reason your wife would not stop here?” asked the young man, leaning against the mantelshelf, and looking thoughtfully down on William.

“Yes, sir. She could not stand it any longer; she got that thin and nervous no one would have believed it possible; she never saw anything, but she said she heard footsteps and voices, and then when she walked through the hall, or up the staircase, someone always seemed to be following her. We put the children to sleep in that big room you had last night, and they declared they often saw an old woman sitting by the hearth. Nothing ever came my way,” finished William, with a laugh; “I was always ready to go to sleep the minute my head touched the pillow.”

“Were not the murderers discovered?” asked Graham Coulton.

“No, sir; the landlord, Miss Tynan’s brother, had always lain under the suspicion of it — quite wrongfully, I am very sure — but he will never clear himself now. It was known he came and asked her for help a day or two before the murder, and it was also known he was able within a week or two to weather whatever trouble had been harassing him. Then, you see, the money was never found; and, altogether, people scarce knew what to think.”

“Humph!” ejaculated Graham Coulton, and he took a few turns up and down the apartment. “Could I go and see this landlord?”

“Surely, sir, if you had a hat,” answered William, with such a serious decorum that the young man burst out laughing.

“That is an obstacle, certainly,” he remarked, “and I must make a note do instead. I have a pencil in my pocket, so here goes.”

Within half an hour from the dispatch of that note William was back again with a sovereign; the landlord’s compliments, and he would be much obliged if Mr. Coulton could “step round”.

“You’ll do nothing rash, sir,” entreated William.

“Why, man,” answered the young fellow, “one may as well be picked off by a ghost as a bullet. What is there to be afraid of?”

William only shook his head. He did not think his young master was made of the stuff likely to remain alone in a haunted house and solve the mystery it assuredly contained by dint of his own unassisted endeavours. And yet when Graham Coulton came out of the landlord’s house he looked more bright and gay than usual, and walked up the Lambeth road to the place where William awaited his return, humming an air as he paced along.

“We have settled the matter,” he said. “And now if the dad wants his son for Christmas, it will trouble him to find him.”

“Don’t say that, Master Graham, don’t,” entreated the man, with a shiver; “maybe after all it would have been better if you had never happened to chance upon Vauxhall Walk.”

“Don’t croak, William,” answered the young man; “if it was not the best day’s work I ever did for myself I’m a Dutchman.”

During the whole of that forenoon and afternoon, Graham Coulton searched diligently for the missing treasure Mr. Tynan assured him had never been discovered. Youth is confident and self-opinionated, and this fresh explorer felt satisfied that, though others had failed, he would be successful. On the second floor he found one door locked, but he did not pay much attention to that at the moment, as he believed if there was anything concealed it was more likely to be found in the lower than the upper part of the house. Late into the evening he pursued his researches in the kitchen and cellars and old-fashioned cupboards, of which the basement had an abundance.

It was nearly eleven, when, engaged in poking about amongst the empty bins of a wine cellar as large as a family vault, he suddenly felt a rush of cold air at his back. Moving, his candle was instantly extinguished, and in the very moment of being left in darkness he saw, standing in the doorway, a woman, resembling her who had haunted his dreams overnight.

He rushed with outstretched hands to seize her, but clutched only air. He relit his candle, and closely examined the basement, shutting off communication with the ground floor ere doing so. All in vain. Not a trace could he find of living creature — not a window was open — not a door unbolted.

“It is very odd,” he thought, as, after securely fastening the door at the top of the staircase, he searched the whole upper portion of the house, with the exception of the one room mentioned.

“I must get the key of that tomorrow,” he decided, standing gloomily with his back to the fire and his eyes wandering about the drawing-room, where he had once again taken up his abode.

Even as the thought passed through his mind, he saw standing in the open doorway a woman with white dishevelled hair, clad in mean garments, ragged and dirty. She lifted her hand and shook it at him with a menacing gesture, and then, just as he was darting towards her, a wonderful thing occurred.

From behind the great mirror there glided a second female figure, at the sight of which the first turned and fled, uttering piercing shrieks as the other followed her from storey to storey.

Almost sick with terror, Graham Coulton watched the dreadful pair as they fled upstairs past the locked room to the top of the house.

It was a few minutes before he recovered his self-possession. When he did so, and searched the upper apartments, he found them totally empty.

That night, ere lying down before the fire, he carefully locked and bolted the drawing-room door; before he did more he drew the heavy settle in front of it, so that if the lock were forced no entrance could be effected without considerable noise.

For some time he lay awake, then dropped into a deep sleep, from which he was awakened suddenly by a noise as if of something scuffling stealthily behind the wainscot. He raised himself on his elbow and listened, and, to his consternation, beheld seated at the opposite side of the hearth the same woman he had seen before in his dreams, lamenting over her gold.

The fire was not quite out, and at that moment shot up a last tongue of flame. By the light, transient as it was, he saw that the figure pressed a ghostly finger to its lips, and by the turn of its head and the attitude of its body seemed to be listening.

He listened also — indeed, he was too much frightened to do aught else; more and more distinct grew the sounds which had aroused him, a stealthy rustling coming nearer and nearer — up and up it seemed, behind the wainscot.

“It is rats,” thought the young man, though, indeed, his teeth were almost chattering in his head with fear. But then in a moment he saw what disabused him of that idea — the gleam of a candle or lamp through a crack in the panelling. He tried to rise, he strove to shout — all in vain; and, sinking down, remembered nothing more till he awoke to find the grey light of an early morning stealing through one of the shutters he had left partially unclosed.

For hours after his breakfast, which he scarcely touched, long after William had left him at midday, Graham Coulton, having in the morning made a long and close survey of the house, sat thinking before the fire, then, apparently having made up his mind, he put on the hat he had bought, and went out.

When he returned the evening shadows were darkening down, but the pavements were full of people going marketing, for it was Christmas Eve, and all who had money to spend seemed bent on shopping.

It was terribly dreary inside the old house that night. Through the deserted rooms Graham could feel that ghostly semblance was wandering mournfully. When he turned his back he knew she was flitting from the mirror to the fire, from the fire to the mirror; but he was not afraid of her now — he was far more afraid of another matter he had taken in hand that day.

The horror of the silent house grew and grew upon him. He could hear the beating of his own heart in the dead quietude which reigned from garret to cellar.

At last William came; but the young man said nothing to him of what was in his mind. He talked to him cheerfully and hopefully enough — wondered where his father would think he had got to, and hoped Mr. Tynan might send him some Christmas pudding. Then the man said it was time for him to go, and, when Mr. Coulton went downstairs to the hall door, remarked the key was not in it.

“No,” was the answer, “I took it out today, to oil it.”

“It wanted oiling,” agreed William, “for it worked terribly stiff.” Having uttered which truism he departed.

Very slowly the young man retraced his way to the drawing-room, where he only paused to lock the door on the outside; then taking off his boots he went up to the top of the house, where, entering the front attic, he waited patiently in darkness and in silence.

It was a long time, or at least it seemed long to him, before he heard the same sound which had aroused him on the previous night — a stealthy rustling — then a rush of cold air — then cautious footsteps — then the quiet opening of a door below.

It did not take as long in action as it has required to tell. In a moment the young man was out on the landing and had closed a portion of the panelling on the wall which stood open; noiselessly he crept back to the attic window, unlatched it, and sprung a rattle, the sound of which echoed far and near through the deserted streets, then rushing down the stairs, he encountered a man who, darting past him, made for the landing above; but perceiving the way of escape closed, fled down again, to find Graham struggling desperately with his fellow.

“Give him the knife — come along,” he said savagely; and next instant Graham felt something like a hot iron through his shoulder, and then heard a thud, as one of the men, tripping in his rapid flight, fell from the top of the stairs to the bottom.

At the same moment there came a crash, as if the house was falling, and faint, sick, and bleeding, young Coulton lay insensible on the threshold of the room where Miss Tynan had been murdered.

When he recovered he was in the dining-room, and a doctor was examining his wound. Near the door a policeman stiffly kept guard. The hall was full of people; all the misery and vagabondism the streets contain at that hour was crowding in to see what had happened.

Through the midst two men were being conveyed to the station-house; one, with his head dreadfully injured, on a stretcher, the other handcuffed, uttering frightful imprecations as he went.

After a time the house was cleared of the rabble, the police took possession of it, and Mr. Tynan was sent for.

“What was that dreadful noise?” asked Graham feebly, now seated on the floor, with his back resting against the wall.

“I do not know. Was there a noise?” said Mr. Tynan, humouring his fancy, as he thought.

“Yes, in the drawing-room, I think; the key is in my pocket.”

Still humouring the wounded lad, Mr. Tynan took the key and ran upstairs.

When he unlocked the door, what a sight met his eyes! The mirror had fallen — it was lying all over the floor shivered into a thousand pieces; the console table had been borne down by its weight, and the marble slab was shattered as well. But this was not what chained his attention. Hundreds, thousands of gold pieces were scattered about, and an aperture behind the glass contained boxes filled with securities and deeds and bonds, the possession of which had cost his sister her life.

•   •   •

“Well, Graham, and what do you want?” asked Admiral Coulton that evening as his eldest born appeared before him, looking somewhat pale but otherwise unchanged.

“I want nothing,” was the answer, “but to ask your forgiveness. William has told me all the story I never knew before; and, if you let me, I will try to make it up to you for the trouble you have had. I am provided for,” went on the young fellow, with a nervous laugh; “I have made my fortune since I left you, and another man’s fortune as well.”

“I think you are out of your senses,” said the Admiral shortly.

“No, sir, I have found them,” was the answer; “and I mean to strive and make a better thing of my life than I should ever have done had I not gone to the Old House in Vauxhall Walk.”

“Vauxhall Walk! What is the lad talking about?”

“I will tell you, sir, if I may sit down,” was Graham Coulton’s answer, and then he told his story.

THE BODY-SNATCHER

Robert Louis Stevenson

1884

Every night in the year, four of us sat in the small parlour of the George at Debenham — the undertaker, and the landlord, and Fettes, and myself. Sometimes there would be more; but blow high, blow low, come rain or snow or frost, we four would be each planted in his own particular armchair. Fettes was an old drunken Scotsman, a man of education obviously, and a man of some property, since he lived in idleness. He had come to Debenham years ago, while still young, and by a mere continuance of living had grown to be an adopted townsman. His blue camlet cloak was a local antiquity, like the church-spire. His place in the parlour at the George, his absence from church, his old, crapulous, disreputable vices, were all things of course in Debenham. He had some vague Radical opinions and some fleeting infidelities, which he would now and again set forth and emphasize with tottering slaps upon the table. He drank rum — five glasses regularly every evening; and for the greater portion of his nightly visit to the George sat, with his glass in his right hand, in a state of melancholy alcoholic saturation. We called him the Doctor, for he was supposed to have some special knowledge of medicine, and had been known upon a pinch, to set a fracture or reduce a dislocation; but, beyond these slight particulars, we had no knowledge of his character and antecedents.

One dark winter night — it had struck nine some time before the landlord joined us — there was a sick man in the George, a great neighbouring proprietor suddenly struck down with apoplexy on his way to Parliament; and the great man’s still greater London doctor had been telegraphed to his bedside. It was the first time that such a thing had happened in Debenham, for the railway was but newly open, and we were all proportionately moved by the occurrence.

“He’s come,” said the landlord, after he had filled and lighted his pipe.

“He?” said I. “Who? — not the doctor?” “Himself,” replied our host. “What is his name?” “Dr Macfarlane,” said the landlord.

Fettes was far through his third tumbler, stupidly fuddled, now nodding over, now staring mazily around him; but at the last word he seemed to awaken, and repeated the name “Macfarlane” twice, quietly enough the first time, but with sudden emotion at the second.

“Yes,” said the landlord, “that’s his name, Doctor Wolfe Macfarlane.”

Fettes became instantly sober: his eyes awoke, his voice became clear, loud, and steady, his language forcible and earnest. We were all startled by the transformation, as if a man had risen from the dead.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I am afraid I have not been paying much attention to your talk. Who is this Wolfe Macfarlane?” And then, when he had heard the landlord out, “It cannot be, it cannot be,” he added; “and yet I would like well to see him face to face.”

“Do you know him, Doctor?” asked the undertaker, with a gasp.

“God forbid!” was the reply. “And yet the name is a strange one; it were too much to fancy two. Tell me, landlord, is he old?”

“Well,” said the host, “he’s not a young man, to be sure, and his hair is white; but he looks younger than you.”

“He is older, though; years older. But,” with a slap upon the table, “it’s the rum you see in my face — rum and sin. This man, perhaps, may have an easy conscience and a good digestion. Conscience! Hear me speak. You would think I was some good, old, decent Christian, would you not? But no, not I; I never canted. Voltaire might have canted if he’d stood in my shoes; but the brains” — with a rattling fillip on his bald head — “the brains were clear and active, and I saw and made no deductions”.

“If you know this doctor,” I ventured to remark, after a somewhat awful pause, “I should gather that you do not share the landlord’s good opinion.”

Fettes paid no regard to me.

“Yes,” he said, with sudden decision, “I must see him face to face.”

There was another pause, and then a door was closed rather sharply on the first floor, and a step was heard upon the stair.

“That’s the doctor,” cried the landlord. “Look sharp, and you can catch him.”

It was but two steps from the small parlour to the door of the old George inn; the wide oak staircase landed almost in the street; there was room for a Turkey rug and nothing more between the threshold and the last round of the descent; but this little space was every evening brilliantly lit up, not only by the light upon the stair and the great signal-lamp below the sign, but by the warm radiance of the bar-room window. The George thus brightly advertised itself to passers-by in the cold street. Fettes walked steadily to the spot, and we, who were hanging behind, beheld the two men meet, as one of them had phrased it, face to face. Dr Macfarlane was alert and vigorous. His white hair set off his pale and placid, although energetic, countenance. He was richly dressed in the finest of broadcloth and the whitest of linen, with a great gold watch chain, and studs and spectacles of the same precious material. He wore a broad-folded tie, white and speckled with lilac, and he carried on his arm a comfortable driving-coat of fur. There was no doubt but he became his years, breathing as he did, of wealth and consideration; and it was a surprising contrast to see our parlour sot — bald, dirty, pimpled, and robed in his old camlet cloak — confront him at the bottom of the stairs.

“Macfarlane!” he said somewhat loudly, more like a herald than a friend.

The great doctor pulled up short on the fourth step, as though the familiarity of the address surprised and somewhat shocked his dignity. “Toddy Macfarlane!” repeated Fettes.

The London man almost staggered. He stared for the swiftest of seconds at the man before him, glanced behind him with a sort of scare, and then in a startled whisper, “Fettes!” he said, “you!”

“Aye,” said the other, “me! Did you think I was dead too? We are not so easy shut of our acquaintance.”

“Hush, hush!” exclaimed the doctor. “Hush, hush! this meeting is so unexpected — I can see you are unmanned. I hardly knew you, I confess, at first; but I am overjoyed — overjoyed to have this opportunity. For the present it must be how-d’ye-do and goodbye in one, for my fly is waiting, and I must not fail the train; but you shall — let me see — yes — you shall give me your address, and you can count on early news of me. We must do something for you, Fettes. I fear you are out at elbows; but we must see to that for auld lang syne, as once we sang at suppers.”

“Money!” cried Fettes; “money from you! The money that I had from you is lying where I cast it in the rain.”

Dr Macfarlane had talked himself into some measure of superiority and confidence, but the uncommon energy of this refusal cast him back into his first confusion.

A horrible, ugly look came and went across his almost venerable countenance. “My dear fellow,” he said, “be it as you please; my last thought is to offend you. I would intrude on none. I will leave you my address, however—”

“I do not wish it — I do not wish to know the roof that shelters you,” interrupted the other. “I heard your name; I feared it might be you; I wished to know if, after all, there were a God; I know now that there is none. Begone!”

He still stood in the middle of the rug, between the stair and the doorway; and the great London physician, in order to escape, would be forced to step to one side. It was plain that he hesitated before the thought of this humiliation. White as he was, there was a dangerous glitter in his spectacles; but while he still paused uncertain, he became aware that the driver of his fly was peering in from the street at this unusual scene and caught a glimpse at the same time of our little body from the parlour, huddled by the corner of the bar. The presence of so many witnesses decided him at once to flee. He crouched together, brushing on the wainscot, and made a dart like a serpent, striking for the door. But his tribulation was not yet entirely at an end, for even as he was passing Fettes clutched him by the arm and these words came in a whisper, and yet painfully distinct, “Have you seen it again?”

The great rich London doctor cried out aloud with a sharp, throttling cry; he dashed his questioner across the open space, and, with his hands over his head, fled out of the door like a detected thief. Before it had occurred to one of us to make a movement, the fly was already rattling toward the station. The scene was over like a dream, but the dream had left proofs and traces of its passage. Next day the servant found the find gold spectacles broken on the threshold, and that very night we were all standing breathless by the bar-room window, and Fettes at our side, sober, pale, and resolute in look.

“God protect us, Mr. Fettes!” said the landlord, coming first into possession of his customary senses. “What in the universe is all this? These are strange things you have been saying.”

Fettes turned toward us; he looked us each in succession in the face. “See if you can hold your tongues,” said he. “That man Macfarlane is not safe to cross; those that have done so already have repented it too late.”

And then, without so much as finishing his third glass, far less waiting for the other two, he bade us goodbye and went forth, under the lamp of the hotel, into the black night.

We three turned to our places in the parlour, with the big red fire and four clear candles; and as we recapitulated what had passed the first chill of our surprise soon changed into a glow of curiosity. We sat late; it was the latest session I have known in the old George. Each man, before we parted, had his theory that he was bound to prove; and none of us had any nearer business in this world than to track out the past of our condemned companion, and surprise the secret that he shared with the great London doctor. It is no great boast, but I believe I was a better hand at worming out a story than either of my fellows at the George; and perhaps there is now no other man alive who could narrate to you the following foul and unnatural events.

In his young days Fettes studied medicine in the schools of Edinburgh. He had talent of a kind, the talent that picks up swiftly what it hears and readily retails it for its own. He worked little at home; but he was civil, attentive, and intelligent in the presence of his masters. They soon picked him out as a lad who listened closely and remembered well; nay, strange as it seemed to me when I first heard it, he was in those days well favoured, and pleased by his exterior. There was, at that period, a certain extramural teacher of anatomy, whom I shall here designate by the letter K. His name was subsequently too well known. The man who bore it skulked through the streets of Edinburgh in disguise, while the mob that applauded at the execution of Burke called loudly for the blood of his employer. But Mr. K. was then at the top of his vogue; he enjoyed a popularity due partly to his own talent and address, partly to the incapacity of his rival, the university professor. The students, at least, swore by his name, and Fettes believed himself, and was believed by others, to have laid the foundations of success when he had acquired the favour of this meteorically famous man. Mr. K. was a bon vivant as well as an accomplished teacher; he liked a sly allusion no less than a careful preparation. In both capacities Fettes enjoyed and deserved his notice, and by the second year of his attendance he held the half-regular position of second demonstrator or sub-assistant in his class.

In this capacity, the charge of the theatre and lecture-room devolved in particular upon his shoulders. He had to answer for the cleanliness of the premises and the conduct of the other students, and it was a part of his duty to supply, receive, and divide the various subjects. It was with a view to this last — at that time very delicate — affair that he was lodged by Mr. K. in the same wynd, and at last in the same building, with the dissecting-rooms. Here, after a night of turbulent pleasures, his hand still tottering, his sight still misty and confused, he would be called out of bed in the black hours before the winter dawn by the unclean and desperate interlopers who supplied the table. He would open the door to these men, since infamous throughout the land. He would help them with their tragic burthen, pay them their sordid price, and remain alone, when they were gone, with the unfriendly relics of humanity. From such a scene he would return to snatch another hour or two of slumber, to repair the abuses of the night, and refresh himself for the labours of the day.

Few lads could have been more insensible to the impressions of a life thus passed among the ensigns of mortality. His mind was closed against all general considerations. He was incapable of interest in the fate and fortunes of another, the slave of his own desires and low ambitions. Cold, light, and selfish in the last resort, he had that modicum of prudence, miscalled morality, which keeps a man from inconvenient drunkenness or punishable theft. He coveted, besides, a measure of consideration from his masters and his fellow-pupils, and he had no desire to fail conspicuously in the external parts of life. Thus he made it his pleasure to gain some distinction in his studies, and day after day rendered unimpeachable eye-service to his employer, Mr. K. For his day of work he indemnified himself by nights of roaring, blackguardly enjoyment; and when that balance had been struck, the organ that he called his conscience declared itself content.

The supply of subjects was a continual trouble to him as well as to his master. In that large and busy class, the raw material of the anatomists kept perpetually running out; and the business thus rendered necessary was not only unpleasant in itself, but threatened dangerous consequences to all who were concerned. It was the policy of Mr. K. to ask no questions in his dealings with the trade. “They bring the boy, and we pay the price,” he used to say, dwelling on the alliteration — quid pro quo. And, again, and somewhat profanely, “Ask no questions,” he would tell his assistants, “for conscience’ sake.” There was no understanding that the subjects were provided by the crime of murder. Had that idea been broached to him in words, he would have recoiled in horror; but the lightness of his speech upon so grave a matter was, in itself, an offence against good manners, and a temptation to the men with whom he dealt. Fettes, for instance, had often remarked to himself upon the singular freshness of the bodies. He had been struck again and again by the hangdog, abominable looks of the ruffians who came to him before the dawn; and, putting things together clearly in his private thoughts, he perhaps attributed a meaning too immoral and too categorical to the unguarded counsels of his master. He understood his duty, in short, to have three branches: to take what was brought to pay the price, and to avert the eye from any evidence of crime.

One November morning this policy of silence was put sharply to the test. He had been awake all night with a racking toothache — pacing his room like a caged beast or throwing himself in fury on his bed — and had fallen at last into that profound, uneasy slumber that so often follows on a night of pain, when he was awakened by the third or fourth angry repetition of the concerted signal. There was a thin, bright moonshine: it was bitter cold, windy, and frosty; the town had not yet awakened, but an indefinable stir already preluded the noise and business of the day. The ghouls had come later than usual, and they seemed more than usually eager to be gone. Fettes, sick with sleep, lighted them upstairs. He heard their grumbling Irish voices through a dream; and as they stripped the sack from their sad merchandise he leaned dozing, with his shoulder propped against the wall; he had to shake himself to find the men their money. As he did so his eyes lighted on the dead face. He started; he took two steps nearer, with the candle raised.

“God Almighty!” he cried. “That is Jane Galbraith!”

The men answered nothing, but they shuffled nearer the door.

“I know her, I tell you,” he continued. “She was alive and hearty yesterday. It’s impossible she can be dead; it’s impossible you should have got this body fairly.”

“Sure, sir, you’re mistaken entirely,” said one of the men.

But the other looked Fettes darkly in the eyes, and demanded the money on the spot.

It was impossible to misconceive the threat or to exaggerate the danger. The lad’s heart failed him. He stammered some excuses, counted out the sum, and saw his hateful visitors depart. No sooner were they gone than he hastened to confirm his doubts. By a dozen unquestionable marks he identified the girl he had jested with the day before. He saw, with horror, marks upon her body that might well betoken violence. A panic seized him, and he took refuge in his room. There he reflected at length over the discovery that he had made; considered soberly the bearing of Mr K.’s instructions and the danger to himself of interference in so serious a business, and at last, in sore perplexity, determined to wait for the advice of his immediate superior, the class assistant.

This was a young doctor, Wolfe Macfarlane, a high favourite among all the reckless students, clever, dissipated, and unscrupulous to the last degree. He had travelled and studied abroad. His manners were agreeable and a little forward. He was an authority on the stage, skilful on the ice or the links with skate or golf-club; he dressed with nice audacity, and, to put the finishing touch upon his glory, he kept a gig and a strong trotting-horse. With Fettes he was on terms of intimacy; indeed their relative positions called for some community of life; and when subjects were scarce the pair would drive far into the country in Macfarlane’s gig, visit and desecrate some lonely graveyard, and return before dawn with their booty to the door of the dissecting-room.

On that particular morning Macfarlane arrived somewhat earlier than his wont. Fettes heard him, and met him on the stairs, told him his story, and showed him the cause of his alarm. Macfarlane examined the marks on her body.

“Yes”, he said with a nod, “it looks fishy.”

“Well, what should I do?” asked Fettes.

“Do?” repeated the other. “Do you want to do anything? Least said soonest mended, I should say.”

“Someone else might recognize her,” objected Fettes. “She was as well known as the Castle Rock.”

“We’ll hope not,” said Macfarlane, “and if anybody does — well, you didn’t, don’t you see, and there’s an end. The fact is, this has been going on too long. Stir up the mud, and you’ll get K. into the most unholy trouble; you’ll be in a shocking box yourself. So will I, if you come to that. I should like to know how any one of us would look, or what the devil we should have to say for ourselves, in any Christian witness-box. For me, you know there’s one thing certain — that, practically speaking, all our subjects have been murdered.”

“Macfarlane!” cried Fettes.

“Come now!” sneered the other. “As if you hadn’t suspected it yourself!”

“Suspecting is one thing—”

“And proof another. Yes, I know; and I’m as sorry as you are this should have come here,” tapping the body with his cane. “The next best thing for me is not to recognize it; and,” he added coolly, “I don’t. You may, if you please. I don’t dictate, but I think a man of the world would do as I do; and I may add, I fancy that is what K. would look for at our hands. The question is, Why did he choose us two for his assistants? And I answer, because he didn’t want old wives.”

This was the tone of all others to affect the mind of a lad like Fettes. He agreed to imitate Macfarlane. The body of the unfortunate girl was duly dissected, and no one remarked or appeared to recognize her.

One afternoon, when his day’s work was over, Fettes dropped into a popular tavern and found Macfarlane sitting with a stranger. This was a small man, very pale and dark, with coal-black eyes. The cut of his features gave a promise of intellect and refinement which was but feebly realized in his manners, for he proved, upon a nearer acquaintance, coarse, vulgar, and stupid. He exercised, however, a very remarkable control over Macfarlane; issued orders like the Great Bashaw; became inflamed at the least discussion or delay, and commented rudely on the servility with which he was obeyed. This most offensive person took a fancy to Fettes on the spot, plied him with drinks, and honoured him with unusual confidences on his past career. If a tenth part of what he confessed were true, he was a very loathsome rogue; and the lad’s vanity was tickled by the attention of so experienced a man.

“I’m a pretty bad fellow myself,” the stranger remarked, “but Macfarlane is the boy — Toddy Macfarlane I call him. Toddy, order your friend another glass.” Or it might be, “Toddy, you jump up and shut the door.” “Toddy hates me,” he said again. “Oh, yes, Toddy, you do!”

“Don’t you call me that confounded name,” growled Macfarlane.

“Hear him! Did you ever see the lads play knife? He would like to do that all over my body,” remarked the stranger.

“We medicals have a better way than that,” said Fettes. “When we dislike a dead friend of ours, we dissect him.”

Macfarlane looked up sharply, as though this jest was scarcely to his mind.

The afternoon passed. Gray, for that was the stranger’s name, invited Fettes to join them at dinner, ordered a feast so sumptuous that the tavern was thrown in commotion, and when all was done commanded Macfarlane to settle the bill. It was late before they separated; the man Gray was incapably drunk. Macfarlane, sobered by his fury, chewed the cud of the money he had been forced to squander and the slights he had been obliged to swallow. Fettes, with various liquors singing in his head, returned home with devious footsteps and a mind entirely in abeyance. Next day Macfarlane was absent from the class, and Fettes smiled to himself as he imagined him still squiring the intolerable Gray from tavern to tavern. As soon as the hour of liberty had struck he posted from place to place in quest of his last night’s companions. He could find them, however, nowhere; so returned early to his rooms, went early to bed, and slept the sleep of the just.

At four in the morning he was awakened by the well-known signal. Descending to the door, he was filled with astonishment to find Macfarlane with his gig, and in the gig one of those long and ghastly packages with which he was so well acquainted.

“What?” he cried. “Have you been out alone? How did you manage?”

But Macfarlane silenced him roughly, bidding him turn to business. When they had got the body upstairs and laid it on the table, Macfarlane made at first as if he were going away. Then he paused and seemed to hesitate; and then, “You had better look at the face,” said he, in tones of some constraint. “You had better,” he repeated, as Fettes only stared at him in wonder.

“But where, and how, and when did you come by it?” cried the other.

“Look at the face,” was the only answer.

Fettes was staggered; strange doubts assailed him. He looked from the young doctor to the body, and then back again. At last, with a start, he did as he was bidden. He had almost expected the sight that met his eyes, and yet the shock was cruel. To see, fixed in the rigidity of death and naked on that coarse layer of sack-cloth, the man whom he had left well-clad and full of meat and sin upon the threshold of a tavern, awoke, even in the thoughtless Fettes, some of the terrors of the conscience. It was a eras tibi which re-echoed in his soul, that two whom he had known should have come to lie upon these icy tables. Yet these were only secondary thoughts. His first concern regarded Wolfe. Unprepared for a challenge so momentous, he knew not how to look his comrade in the face. He durst not meet his eye, and he had neither words nor voice at his command.

It was Macfarlane himself who made the first advance. He came up quietly behind and laid his hand gently but firmly on the other’s shoulder.

“Richardson,” said he, “may have the head.”

Now Richardson was a student who had long been anxious for that portion of the human subject to dissect. There was no answer, and the murderer resumed: “Talking of business, you must pay me; your accounts, you see, must tally.”

Fettes found a voice, the ghost of his own: “Pay you!” he cried, “Pay you for that?”

“Why, yes, of course you must. By all means and on every possible account, you must,” returned the other. “I dare not give it for nothing, you dare not take it for nothing; it would compromise us both. This is another case like Jane Galbraith’s. The more things are wrong the more we must act as if all were right. Where does old K. keep his money?”

“There,” answered Fettes hoarsely, pointing to a cupboard in the corner.

“Give me the key, then,” said the other, calmly, holding out his hand.

There was an instant’s hesitation, and the die was cast. Macfarlane could not suppress a nervous twitch, the infinitesimal mark of an immense relief, as he felt the key between his fingers. He opened the cupboard, brought out pen and ink and a paper-book that stood in one compartment, and separated from the funds in a drawer a sum suitable to the occasion.

“Now, look here,” he said, “there is the payment made — first proof of your good faith: first step to your security. You have now to clinch it by a second. Enter the payment in your book, and then you for your part may defy the devil.”

The next few seconds were for Fettes an agony of thought; but in balancing his terrors it was the most immediate that triumphed. Any future difficulty seemed almost welcome if he could avoid a present quarrel with Macfarlane. He set down the candle which he had been carrying all the time, and with a steady hand entered the date, the nature, and the amount of the transaction.

“And now,” said Macfarlane, “it’s only fair that you should pocket the lucre. I’ve had my share already. By-the-by, when a man of the world falls into a bit of luck, has a few shillings extra in his pocket — I’m ashamed to speak of it, but there’s a rule of conduct in the case. No treating, no purchase of expensive class-books, no squaring of old debts; borrow, don’t lend.”

“Macfarlane,” began Fettes, still somewhat hoarsely, “I have put my neck in a halter to oblige you.”

“To oblige me?” cried Wolfe. “Oh, come! You did, as near as I can see the matter, what you downright had to do in self-defence. Suppose I got into trouble, where would you be? This second little matter flows clearly from the first. Mr. Gray is the continuation of Miss Galbraith. You can’t begin and then stop. If you begin, you must keep on beginning; that’s the truth. No rest for the wicked.”

A horrible sense of blackness and the treachery of fate seized hold upon the soul of the unhappy student.

“My God!” he cried, “but what have I done? and when did I begin? To be made a class assistant — in the name of reason, where’s the harm in that? Service wanted the position; Service might have got it. Would he have been where / am now?”

“My dear fellow,” said Macfarlane, “what a boy you are! What harm has come to you? What harm can come to you if you hold your tongue? Why, man, do you know what this life is? There are two squads of us — the lions and the lambs. If you’re a lamb, you’ll come to lie upon these tables like Gray or Jane Galbraith; if you’re a lion, you’ll live and drive a horse like me, like K., like all the world with any wit or courage. You’re Staggered at the first. But look at K.! My dear fellow, you’re clever, you have pluck. I like you, and K. likes you.

“You were born to lead the hunt; and I tell you, on my honour and my experience of life, three days from now you’ll laugh at all these scarecrows like a high-school boy at a farce.”

And with that Macfarlane took his departure and drove off up the wynd in his gig to get under cover before daylight. Fettes was thus left alone with his regrets. He saw the miserable peril in which he stood involved. He saw, with inexpressible dismay, that there was no limit to his weakness, and that, from concession to concession, he had fallen from the arbiter of Macfarlane’s destiny to his paid and helpless accomplice. He would have given the world to have been a little braver at the time, but it did not occur to him that he might still be brave. The secret of Jane Galbraith and the cursed entry in the day-book closed his mouth.

Hours passed; the class began to arrive; the members of the unhappy Gray were dealt out to one and to another, and received without remark. Richardson was made happy with the head; and before the hour of freedom rang Fettes trembled with exultation to perceive how far they had already gone toward safety.

For two days he continued to watch, with increasing joy, the dreadful process of disguise.

On the third day Macfarlane made his appearance. He had been ill, he said; but he made up for lost time by the energy with which he directed the students. To Richardson in particular he extended the most valuable assistance and advice, and that student, encouraged by the praise of the demonstrator, burned high with ambitious hopes, and saw the medal already in his grasp.

Before the week was out Macfarlane’s prophecy had been fulfilled. Fettes had outlived his terrors and had forgotten his baseness. He began to plume himself upon his courage, and had so arranged the story in his mind that he could look back on these events with an unhealthy pride. Of his accomplice he saw but little. They met, of course, in the business of the class; they received their orders together from Mr K. At times they had a word or two in private, and

Macfarlane was from first to last particularly kind and jovial. But it was plain that he avoided any reference to their common secret; and even when Fettes whispered to him that he had cast in his lot with the lions and forsworn the lambs, he only signed to him smilingly to hold his peace.

At length an occasion arose which threw the pair once more into a closer union. Mr K. was again short of subjects; pupils were eager, and it was a part of this teacher’s pretensions to be always well supplied. At the same time there came the news of a burial in the rustic graveyard of Glencorse. Time has little changed the place in question. It stood then, as now, upon a crossroad, out of call of human habitations, and buried fathom deep in the foliage of six cedar trees. The cries of the sheep upon the neighbouring hills, the streamlets upon either hand, one loudly singing among pebbles, the other dripping furtively from pond to pond, the stir of the wind in mountainous old flowering chestnuts, and once in seven days the voice of the bell and the old tunes of the precentor, were the only sounds that disturbed the silence around the rural church. The Resurrection Man — to use a byname of the period — was not to be deterred by any of the sanctities of customary piety. It was part of his trade to despise and desecrate the scrolls and trumpets of old tombs, the paths worn by the feet of worshippers and mourners, and the offerings and the inscriptions of bereaved affection. To rustic neighbourhoods, where love is more than commonly tenacious, and where some bonds of blood or fellowship unite the entire society of a parish, the body-snatcher, far from being repelled by natural respect, was attracted by the ease and safety of the task. To bodies that had been laid in earth, in joyful expectation of a far different awakening, there came that hasty, lamp-lit, terror-haunted resurrection of the spade and mattock. The coffin was forced, the cerements torn, and the melancholy relics, clad in sackcloth, after being rattled for hours on moonless byways, were at length exposed to uttermost indignities before a class of gaping boys.

Somewhat as two vultures may swoop upon a dying lamb, Fettes and Macfarlane were to be let loose upon a grave in that green and quiet resting-place. The wife of a farmer, a woman who had lived for sixty years, and been known for nothing but good butter and a godly conversation, was to be rooted from her grave at midnight and carried, dead and naked, to that far-away city that she had always honoured with her Sunday best; the place beside her family was to be empty till the crack of doom; her innocent and almost venerable members to be exposed to that last curiosity of the anatomist.

Late one afternoon the pair set forth, well wrapped in cloaks and furnished with a formidable bottle. It rained without remission — a cold, dense, lashing rain. Now and again there blew a puff of wind, but these sheets of falling water kept it down. Bottle and all, it was a sad and silent drive as far as Penicuik, where they were to spend the evening. They stopped once, to hide their implements in a thick bush not far from the churchyard, and once again at the Fisher’s Tryst, to have a toast before the kitchen fire and vary their nips of whisky with a glass of ale. When they reached their journey’s end the gig was housed, the horse was fed and comforted, and the two young doctors in a private room sat down to the best dinner and the best wine the house afforded. The lights, the fire, the beating rain upon the window, the cold, incongruous work that lay before them, added zest to their enjoyment of the meal. With every glass their cordiality increased Soon Macfarlane handed a little pile of gold to his companion.

“A compliment,” he said. “Between friends these little damned accommodations ought to fly like pipe-lights.”

Fettes pocketed the money, and applauded the sentiment to the echo. “You are a philosopher,” he cried. “I was an ass till I knew you.

You and K. — between you, by the Lord Harry! but you’ll make a man of me.”

“Of course we shall,” applauded Macfarlane. “A man? I tell you, it required a man to back me up the other morning. There are some big, brawling, forty-year-old cowards who would have turned sick at the look of the damned thing; but not you — you kept your head. I watched you.”

“Well, and why not?” Fettes thus vaunted himself. “It was no affair of mine. There was nothing to gain on the one side but disturbance, and on the other I could count on your gratitude, don’t you see?” And he slapped his pocket till the gold pieces rang.

Macfarlane somehow felt a certain touch of alarm at these unpleasant words. He may have regretted that he had taught his young companion so successfully, but he had no time to interfere, for the other noisily continued in this boastful strain:

“The great thing is not to be afraid. Now, between you and me, I don’t want to hang — that’s practical; but for all cant, Macfarlane, I was born with a contempt. Hell, God, Devil, right, wrong, sin, crime, and all the old gallery of curiosities — they may frighten boys, but men of the world, like you and me, despise them. Here’s to the memory of Gray!”

It was by this time growing somewhat late. The gig, according to order, was brought round to the door with both lamps brightly shining, and the young men had to pay their bill and take the road. They announced that they were bound for Peebles, and drove in that direction till they were clear of the last houses of the town; then, extinguishing the lamps, returned upon their course, and followed a byroad toward Glencorse. There was no sound but that of their own passage, and the incessant, strident pouring of the rain. It was pitch dark; here and there a white gate or a white stone in the wall guided them for a short space across the night; but for the most part it was at a foot pace, and almost groping, that they picked their way through that resonant blackness to their solemn and isolated destination. In the sunken woods that traverse the neighbourhood of the burying-ground the last glimmer failed them, and it became necessary to kindle a match and re-light one of the lanterns of the gig. Thus, under the dripping trees, and environed by huge and moving shadows, they reached the scene of their unhallowed labours.

They were both experienced in such affairs, and powerful with the spade; and they had scarce been twenty minutes at their task before they were rewarded by a dull rattle on the coffin lid. At the same moment Macfarlane, having hurt his hand upon a stone, flung it carelessly above his head. The grave, in which they now stood almost to the shoulders, was close to the edge of the plateau of the graveyard; and the gig lamp had been propped, the better to illuminate their labours, against a tree, and on the immediate verge of the steep bank descending to the stream. Chance had taken a sure aim with the stone. Then came a clang of broken glass; night fell upon them; sounds alternately dull and ringing announced the bounding of the lantern down the bank, and its occasional collision with the trees. A stone or two, which it had dislodged in its descent, rattled behind it into the profundities of the glen; and then silence, like night, resumed its sway; and they might bend their hearing to its utmost pitch, but naught was to be heard except the rain, now marching to the wind, now steadily falling over miles of open country.

They were so nearly at an end of their abhorred task that they judged it wisest to complete it in the dark. The coffin was exhumed and broken open; the body inserted in the dripping sack and carried between them to the gig; one mounted to keep it in its place, and the other, taking the horse by the mouth, groped along by wall and bush until they reached the wider road by the Fisher’s Tryst. Here was a faint, diffused radiancy, which they hailed like daylight; by that they pushed the horse to a good pace and began to rattle along merrily in the direction of the town.

They had both been wetted to the skin during their operations, and now, as the gig jumped among the deep ruts, the thing that stood propped between them fell now upon one and now upon the other. At every repetition of the horrid contact each instinctively repelled it with greater haste; and the process, natural although it was, began to tell upon the nerves of the companions. Macfarlane made some ill-favoured jest about the farmer’s wife, but it came hollowly from his lips, and was allowed to drop in silence. Still their unnatural burthen bumped from side to side; and now the head would be laid, as if in confidence, upon their shoulders, and now the drenching sackcloth would flap icily about their faces. A creeping chill began to possess the soul of Fettes. He peered at the bundle, and it seemed somehow larger than at first. All over the countryside, and from every degree of distance, the farm dogs accompanied their passage with tragic ululations; and it grew and grew upon his mind that some unnatural miracle had been accomplished, that some nameless change had befallen the dead body, and that it was in fear of their unholy burden that the dogs were howling.

“For God’s sake,” said he, making a great effort to arrive at speech, “for God’s sake, let’s have a light!”

Seemingly Macfarlane was affected in the same direction; for though he made no reply, he stopped the horse, passed the reins to his companion, got down, and proceeded to kindle the remaining lamp. They had by that time got no further than the crossroad down to Auchendinny. The rain still poured as though the deluge were returning, and it was no easy matter to make a light in such a world of wet and darkness. When at last the flickering blue flame had been transferred to the wick and began to expand and clarify, and shed a wide circle of misty brightness round the gig, it became possible for the two young men to see each other and the thing they had along with them. The rain had moulded the rough sacking to the outlines of the body underneath; the head was distinct from the trunk, the shoulders plainly modelled; something at once spectral and human riveted their eyes upon the ghastly comrade of their drive.

For some time Macfarlane stood motionless, holding up the lamp. A nameless dread was swathed, like a wet sheet, about the body, and tightened the white skin upon the face of Fettes; a fear that was meaningless, a horror of what could not be, kept mounting to his brain. Another beat of the watch, and he had spoken. But his comrade forestalled him.

“That is not a woman,” said Macfarlane, in a hushed voice.

“It was a woman when we put her in,” whispered Fettes.

“Hold that lamp,” said the other. “I must see her face.”

And as Fettes took the lamp his companion untied the fastenings of the sack and drew down the cover from the head. The light fell very clear upon the dark, well-moulded features and smooth-shaven cheeks of a too familiar countenance, often beheld in dreams of both of these young men. A wild yell rang up into the night; each leaped from his own side into the roadway; the lamp fell, broke, and was extinguished; and the horse, terrified by this unusual commotion, bounded and went off toward Edinburgh at a gallop, bearing along with it, sole occupant of the gig, the body of the dead and long-dissected Gray.

CANON ALBERIC’S SCRAPBOOK

M. R. James

1895

St. Bertrand de Comminges is a decayed town on the spurs of the Pyrenees, not very far from Toulouse, and still nearer to Bagnères-deLuchon. It was the site of a bishopric until the Revolution, and has a cathedral which is visited by a certain number of tourists. In the spring of 1883 an Englishman arrived at this old-world place — I can hardly dignify it with the name of city, for there are not a thousand inhabitants. He was a Cambridge man, who had come specially from Toulouse to see St. Bertrand’s Church, and had left two friends, who were less keen archaeologists than himself, in their hotel at Toulouse, under promise to join him on the following morning. Half an hour at the church would satisfy them, and all three could then pursue their journey in the direction of Auch. But our Englishman had come early on the day in question, and proposed to himself to fill a notebook and to use several dozens of plates in the process of describing and photographing every corner of the wonderful church that dominates the little hill of Comminges. In order to carry out this design satisfactorily, it was necessary to monopolise the verger of the church for the day. The verger or sacristan (I prefer the latter appellation, inaccurate as it may be) was accordingly sent for by the somewhat brusque lady who keeps the inn of the Chapeau Rouge; and when he came, the Englishman found him an unexpectedly interesting object of study. It was not in the personal appearance of the little, dry, wizened old man that the interest lay, for he was precisely like dozens of other church-guardians in France, but in a curious furtive or rather hunted and oppressed air which he had. He was perpetually half glancing behind him; the muscles of his back and shoulders seemed to be hunched in a continual nervous contraction, as if he were expecting every moment to find himself in the clutch of an enemy. The Englishman hardly knew whether to put him down as a man haunted by a fixed delusion, or as one oppressed by a guilty conscience, or as an unbearably henpecked husband. The probabilities, when reckoned up, certainly pointed to the last idea; but, still, the impression conveyed was that of a more formidable persecutor even than a termagant wife.

However, the Englishman (let us call him Dennistoun) was soon too deep in his notebook and too busy with his camera to give more than an occasional glance to the sacristan. Whenever he did look at him, he found him at no great distance, either huddling himself back against the wall or crouching in one of the gorgeous stalls. Dennistoun became rather fidgety after a time. Mingled suspicions that he was keeping the old man from his déjeuner, that he was regarded as likely to make away with St. Bertrand’s ivory crozier, or with the dusty stuffed crocodile that hangs over the font, began to torment him.

“Won’t you go home?” he said at last; “I’m quite well able to finish my notes alone; you can lock me in if you like. I shall want at least two hours more here, and it must be cold for you, isn’t it?”

“Good heavens!” said the little man, whom the suggestion seemed to throw into a state of unaccountable terror, “such a thing cannot be thought of for a moment. Leave monsieur alone in the church? No, no; two hours, three hours, all will be the same to me. I have breakfasted, I am not at all cold, with many thanks to monsieur.”

“Very well, my little man,” quoth Dennistoun to himself: “you have been warned, and you must take the consequences.”

Before the expiration of the two hours, the stalls, the enormous dilapidated organ, the choir-screen of Bishop John de Mauléon, the remnants of glass and tapestry, and the objects in the treasure-chamber had been well and truly examined; the sacristan still keeping at Dennistoun’s heels, and every now and then whipping round as if he had been stung, when one or other of the strange noises that trouble a large empty building fell on his ear. Curious noises they were, sometimes.

“Once,” Dennistoun said to me, “I could have sworn I heard a thin metallic voice laughing high up in the tower. I darted an inquiring glance at my sacristan. He was white to the lips. ‘It is he — that is — it is no one; the door is locked,’ was all he said, and we looked at each other for a full minute.”

Another little incident puzzled Dennistoun a good deal. He was examining a large dark picture that hangs behind the altar, one of a series illustrating the miracles of St. Bertrand. The composition of the picture is well-nigh indecipherable, but there is a Latin legend below, which runs thus:

Qualiter S. Bertrandus liberavit hominem quem diabolus diu volebat strangulare.
(How St. Bertrand delivered a man whom the Devil long sought to strangle.)

Dennistoun was turning to the sacristan with a smile and a jocular remark of some sort on his lips, but he was confounded to see the old man on his knees, gazing at the picture with the eye of a suppliant in agony, his hands tightly clasped, and a rain of tears on his cheeks. Dennistoun naturally pretended to have noticed nothing, but the question would not go away from him, “Why should a daub of this kind affect anyone so strongly?” He seemed to himself to be getting some sort of clue to the reason of the strange look that had been puzzling him all the day: the man must be a monomaniac; but what was his monomania?

It was nearly five o’clock; the short day was drawing in, and the church began to fill with shadows, while the curious noises — the muffled footfalls and distant talking voices that had been perceptible all day — seemed, no doubt because of the fading light and the consequently quickened sense of hearing, to become more frequent and insistent.

The sacristan began for the first time to show signs of hurry and impatience. He heaved a sigh of relief when camera and notebook were finally packed up and stowed away, and hurriedly beckoned Dennistoun to the western door of the church, under the tower. It was time to ring the Angelus. A few pulls at the reluctant rope, and the great bell Bertrande, high in the tower, began to speak, and swung her voice up among the pines and down to the valleys, loud with mountain-streams, calling the dwellers on those lonely hills to remember and repeat the salutation of the angel to her whom he called Blessed among women. With that a profound quiet seemed to fall for the first time that day upon the little town, and Dennistoun and the sacristan went out of the church.

On the doorstep they fell into conversation.

“Monsieur seemed to interest himself in the old choir-books in the sacristy.”

“Undoubtedly. I was going to ask you if there were a library in the town.”

“No, monsieur; perhaps there used to be one belonging to the Chapter, but it is now such a small place—” Here came a strange pause of irresolution, as it seemed; then, with a sort of plunge, he went on: “But if monsieur is amateur des vieux livres [lover of old books], I have at home something that might interest him. It is not a hundred yards.”

At once all Dennistoun’s cherished dreams of finding priceless manuscripts in untrodden corners of France flashed up, to die down again the next moment. It was probably a stupid missal of Plantin’s printing, about 1580. Where was the likelihood that a place so near Toulouse would not have been ransacked long ago by collectors? However, it would be foolish not to go; he would reproach himself forever after if he refused. So they set off. On the way the curious irresolution and sudden determination of the sacristan recurred to Dennistoun, and he wondered in a shamefaced way whether he was being decoyed into some purlieu to be made away with as a supposed rich Englishman. He contrived, therefore, to begin talking with his guide, and to drag in, in a rather clumsy fashion, the fact that he expected two friends to join him early the next morning. To his surprise, the announcement seemed to relieve the sacristan at once of some of the anxiety that oppressed him.

“That is well,” he said quite brightly — “that is very well. Monsieur will travel in company with his friends: they will be always near him. It is a good thing to travel thus in company — sometimes.”

The last word appeared to be added as an afterthought and to bring with it a relapse into gloom for the poor little man.

They were soon at the house, which was one rather larger than its neighbours, stone-built, with a shield carved over the door, the shield of Alberic de Mauléon, a collateral descendant, Dennistoun tells me, of Bishop John de Mauléon. This Alberic was a Canon of Comminges from 1680 to 1701. The upper windows of the mansion were boarded up, and the whole place bore, as does the rest of Comminges, the aspect of decaying age.

Arrived on his doorstep, the sacristan paused a moment.

“Perhaps,” he said, “perhaps, after all, monsieur has not the time?”

“Not at all — lots of time — nothing to do till tomorrow. Let us see what it is you have got.”

The door was opened at this point, and a face looked out, a face far younger than the sacristan’s, but bearing something of the same distressing look: only here it seemed to be the mark, not so much of fear for personal safety as of acute anxiety on behalf of another. Plainly the owner of the face was the sacristan’s daughter; and, but for the expression I have described, she was a handsome girl enough. She brightened up considerably on seeing her father accompanied by an able-bodied stranger. A few remarks passed between father and daughter of which Dennistoun only caught these words, said by the sacristan: “He was laughing in the church,” words which were answered only by a look of terror from the girl.

But in another minute they were in the sitting-room of the house, a small, high chamber with a stone floor, full of moving shadows cast by a wood-fire that flickered on a great hearth. Something of the character of an oratory was imparted to it by a tall crucifix, which reached almost to the ceiling on one side; the figure was painted of the natural colours, the cross was black. Under this stood a chest of some age and solidity, and when a lamp had been brought, and chairs set, the sacristan went to this chest, and produced therefrom, with growing excitement and nervousness, as Dennistoun thought, a large book, wrapped in a white cloth, on which cloth a cross was rudely embroidered in red thread. Even before the wrapping had been removed, Dennistoun began to be interested by the size and shape of the volume. “Too large for a missal,” he thought, “and not the shape of an antiphoner; perhaps it may be something good, after all.” The next moment the book was open, and Dennistoun felt that he had at last lit upon something better than good. Before him lay a large folio, bound, perhaps, late in the seventeenth century, with the arms of Canon Alberic de Mauléon stamped in gold on the sides. There may have been a hundred and fifty leaves of paper in the book, and on almost every one of them was fastened a leaf from an illuminated manuscript. Such a collection Dennistoun had hardly dreamed of in his wildest moments. Here were ten leaves from a copy of Genesis, illustrated with pictures, which could not be later than A.D. 700. Further on was a complete set of pictures from a Psalter, of English execution, of the very finest kind that the thirteenth century could produce; and, perhaps best of all, there were twenty leaves of uncial writing in Latin, which, as a few words seen here and there told him at once, must belong to some very early unknown patristic treatise. Could it possibly be a fragment of the copy of Papias “On the Words of Our Lord”, which was known to have existed as late as the twelfth century at Nimes? (We now know that these leaves did contain a considerable fragment of that work, if not of that actual copy of it.) In any case, his mind was made up; that book must return to Cambridge with him, even if he had to draw the whole of his balance from the bank and stay at St. Bertrand till the money came. He glanced up at the sacristan to see if his face yielded any hint that the book was for sale. The sacristan was pale, and his lips were working.

“If monsieur will turn on to the end,” he said.

So monsieur turned on, meeting new treasures at every rise of a leaf; and at the end of the book he came upon two sheets of paper, of much more recent date than anything he had seen yet, which puzzled him considerably. They must be contemporary, he decided, with the unprincipled Canon Alberic, who had doubtless plundered the Chapter library of St. Bertrand to form this priceless scrapbook. On the first of the paper sheets was a plan, carefully drawn and instantly recognizable by a person who knew the ground, of the south aisle and cloisters of St. Bertrand’s. There were curious signs looking like planetary symbols, and a few Hebrew words in the corners; and in the north-west angle of the cloister was a cross drawn in gold paint. Below the plan were some lines of writing in Latin, which ran thus:

Responsa 12mi Dec. 1694. Interrogatum est: Inveniamne? Responsum est: Invenies. Fiamne dives? Fies. Vivamne invidendus? Vives. Moriarne in lecto meo? Ita.
(Answers of the 12th of December, 1694. It was asked: Shall I find it? Answer: Thou shalt. Shall I become rich? Thou wilt. Shall I live an object of envy? Thou wilt. Shall I die in my bed? Thou wilt.)

“A good specimen of the treasure-hunter’s record — quite reminds one of Mr. Minor-Canon Quatremain in Old St. Paul’s,” was Dennistoun’s comment, and he turned the leaf.

What he then saw impressed him, as he has often told me, more than he could have conceived any drawing or picture capable of impressing him. And, though the drawing he saw is no longer in existence, there is a photograph of it (which I possess) which fully bears out that statement. The picture in question was a sepia drawing at the end of the seventeenth century, representing, one would say at first sight, a Biblical scene; for the architecture (the picture represented an interior) and the figures had that semi-classical flavour about them which the artists of two hundred years ago thought appropriate to illustrations of the Bible. On the right was a king on his throne, the throne elevated on twelve steps, a canopy overhead, soldiers on either side — evidently King Solomon. He was bending forward with outstretched sceptre, in attitude of command; his face expressed horror and disgust, yet there was in it also the mark of imperious command and confident power. The left half of the picture was the strangest, however. The interest plainly centred there.

On the pavement before the throne were grouped four soldiers, surrounding a crouching figure which must be described in a moment. A fifth soldier lay dead on the pavement, his neck distorted, and his eyeballs starting from his head. The four surrounding guards were looking at the King. In their faces, the sentiment of horror was intensified; they seemed, in fact, only restrained from flight by their implicit trust in their master. All this terror was plainly excited by the being that crouched in their midst.

I entirely despair of conveying by any words the impression which this figure makes upon anyone who looks at it. I recollect once showing the photograph of the drawing to a lecturer on morphology — a person of, I was going to say, abnormally sane and unimaginative habits of mind. He absolutely refused to be alone for the rest of that evening, and he told me afterwards that for many nights he had not dared to put out his light before going to sleep. However, the main traits of the figure I can at least indicate.

At first you saw only a mass of coarse, matted black hair; presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearful thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with long, coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black pupils, and were fixed upon the throned King with a look of beast-like hate. Imagine one of the awful bird-catching spiders of South America translated into human form, and endowed with intelligence just less than human, and you will have some faint conception of the terror inspired by the appalling effigy. One remark is universally made by those to whom I have shown the picture: “It was drawn from the life.”

As soon as the first shock of his irresistible fright had subsided, Dennistoun stole a look at his hosts. The sacristan’s hands were pressed upon his eyes; his daughter, looking up at the cross on the wall, was telling her beads feverishly.

At last the question was asked: “Is this book for sale?”

There was the same hesitation, the same plunge of determination that he had noticed before, and then came the welcome answer: “If monsieur pleases.”

“How much do you ask for it?”

“I will take two hundred and fifty francs.”

This was confounding. Even a collector’s conscience is sometimes stirred, and Dennistoun’s conscience was tenderer than a collector’s.

“My good man!” he said again and again, “your book is worth far more than two hundred and fifty francs. I assure you — far more.”

But the answer did not vary: “I will take two hundred and fifty francs — not more.”

There was really no possibility of refusing such a chance. The money was paid, the receipt signed, a glass of wine drunk over the transaction, and then the sacristan seemed to become a new man. He stood upright, he ceased to throw those suspicious glances behind him, he actually laughed or tried to laugh. Dennistoun rose to go.

“I shall have the honour of accompanying monsieur to his hotel?” said the sacristan.

“Oh, no, thanks! it isn’t a hundred yards. I know the way perfectly, and there is a moon.”

The offer was pressed three or four times and refused as often.

“Then, monsieur will summon me if — if he finds occasion; he will keep the middle of the road, the sides are so rough.”

“Certainly, certainly,” said Dennistoun, who was impatient to examine his prize by himself; and he stepped out into the passage with his book under his arm.

Here he was met by the daughter; she, it appeared, was anxious to do a little business on her own account; perhaps, like Gehazi, to “take somewhat” from the foreigner whom her father had spared.

“A silver crucifix and chain for the neck; monsieur would perhaps be good enough to accept it?”

Well, really, Dennistoun hadn’t much use for these things. What did mademoiselle want for it?

“Nothing — nothing in the world. Monsieur is more than welcome to it.”

The tone in which this and much more was said was unmistakably genuine, so that Dennistoun was reduced to profuse thanks, and submitted to have the chain put round his neck. It really seemed as if he had rendered the father and daughter some service which they hardly knew how to repay. As he set off with his book they stood at the door looking after him, and they were still looking when he waved them a last good night from the steps of the Chapeau Rouge.

•   •   •

Dinner was over, and Dennistoun was in his bedroom, shut up alone with his acquisition. The landlady had manifested a particular interest in him since he had told her that he had paid a visit to the sacristan and bought an old book from him. He thought, too, that he had heard a hurried dialogue between her and the said sacristan in the passage outside the salle à manger; some words to the effect that “Pierre and Bertrand would be sleeping in the house” had closed the conversation.

All this time a growing feeling of discomfort had been creeping over him — nervous reaction, perhaps, after the delight of his discovery. Whatever it was, it resulted in a conviction that there was someone behind him, and that he was far more comfortable with his back to the wall. All this, of course, weighed light in the balance as against the obvious value of the collection he had acquired. And now, as I said, he was alone in his bedroom, taking stock of Canon Alberic’s treasures, in which every moment revealed something more charming.

“Bless Canon Alberic!” said Dennistoun, who had an inveterate habit of talking to himself. “I wonder where he is now? Dear me! I wish that landlady would learn to laugh in a more cheering manner; it makes one feel as if there was someone dead in the house. Half a pipe more, did you say? I think perhaps you are right. I wonder what that crucifix is that the young woman insisted on giving me? Last century, I suppose. Yes, probably. It is rather a nuisance of a thing to have round one’s neck — just too heavy. Most likely her father has been wearing it for years. I think I might give it a clean up before I put it away.”

He had taken the crucifix off, and laid it on the table, when his attention was caught by an object lying on the red cloth just by his left elbow. Two or three ideas of what it might be flitted through his brain with their own incalculable quickness.

“A pen-wiper? No, no such thing in the house. A rat? No, too black. A large spider? I trust to goodness not — no. Good God! a hand — like the hand in that picture!”

In another infinitesimal flash he had taken it in. Pale, dusky skin, covering nothing but bones and tendons of appalling strength; coarse black hairs, longer than ever grew on a human hand; nails rising from the ends of the fingers and curving sharply down and forward, grey, horny, and wrinkled.

He flew out of his chair with deadly, inconceivable terror clutching at his heart. The shape, whose left hand rested on the table, was rising to a standing posture behind his seat, its right hand crooked above his scalp. There was black and tattered drapery about it; the coarse hair covered it as in the drawing. The lower jaw was thin — what can I call it? — shallow, like a beast’s; teeth showed behind the black lips; there was no nose; the eyes, of a fiery yellow, against which the pupils showed black and intense, and the exulting hate and thirst to destroy life which shone there, were the most horrifying features in the whole vision. There was intelligence of a kind in them — intelligence beyond that of a beast, below that of a man.

The feelings which this horror stirred in Dennistoun were the intensest physical fear and the most profound mental loathing. What did he do? What could he do? He has never been quite certain what words he said, but he knows that he spoke, that he grasped blindly at the silver crucifix, that he was conscious of a movement towards him on the part of the demon, and that he screamed with the voice of an animal in hideous pain.

Pierre and Bertrand, the two sturdy little serving-men, who rushed in, saw nothing, but felt themselves thrust aside by something that passed out between them, and found Dennistoun in a swoon. They sat up with him that night, and his two friends were at St. Bertrand by nine o’clock next morning. He himself, though still shaken and nervous, was almost himself by that time, and his story found credence with them, though not until they had seen the drawing and talked with the sacristan.

Almost at dawn the little man had come to the inn on some pretence, and had listened with the deepest interest to the story retailed by the landlady. He showed no surprise.

“It is he — it is he! I have seen him myself,” was his only comment; and to all questionings but one reply was vouchsafed: “Deux fois je l’ai vu: mille fois je l’ai senti.” [“Two times I have seen it; a thousand times I have felt it.”] He would tell them nothing of the provenance of the book, nor any details of his experiences. “I shall soon sleep, and my rest will be sweet. Why should you trouble me?” he said.

(He died that summer; his daughter married, and settled at St. Papoul. She never understood the circumstances of her father’s “obsession”.)

We shall never know what he or Canon Alberic de Mauléon suffered. At the back of that fateful drawing were some lines of writing which may be supposed to throw light on the situation:

Contradictio Salomonis cum demonio nocturno.
Albericus de Mauléone delineavit.
V. Deus in adiutorium. Ps. Qui habitat.
Sancte Bertrande, demoniorum effugator, intercede pro me miserrimo.
Primum uidi nocte 12mi Dec. 1694: uidebo mox ultimum. Peccaui et passus sum, plura adhuc passurus. Dec. 29, 1701.

I.e., The Dispute of Solomon with a demon of the night. Drawn by Alberic de Mauléon. Versicle. O Lord, make haste to help me. Psalm. Whoso dwelleth (xci.).

Saint Bertrand, who puttest devils to flight, pray for me most unhappy. I saw it first on the night of Dec. 12, 1694: soon I shall see it for the last time. I have sinned and suffered, and have more to suffer yet.
Dec. 29, 1701.

The “Gallia Christiana” gives the date of the Canon’s death as December 31, 1701, “in bed, of a sudden seizure”. Details of this kind are not common in the great work of the Sammarthani.

I have never quite understood what was Dennistoun’s view of the events I have narrated. He quoted to me once a text from Ecclesiasticus: “Some spirits there be that are created for vengeance, and in their fury lay on sore strokes.” On another occasion he said: “Isaiah was a very sensible man; doesn’t he say something about night monsters living in the ruins of Babylon? These things are rather beyond us at present.”

Another confidence of his impressed me rather, and I sympathized with it. We had been, last year, to Comminges, to see Canon Alberic’s tomb. It is a great marble erection with an effigy of the Canon in a large wig and soutane, and an elaborate eulogy of his learning below. I saw Dennistoun talking for some time with the Vicar of St. Bertrand’s, and as we drove away he said to me: “I hope it isn’t wrong: you know I am a Presbyterian — but I — I believe there will be ‘saying of Mass and singing of dirges’ for Alberic de Mauléon’s rest.” Then he added, with a touch of the Northern British in his tone, “I had no notion they came so dear.”

•   •   •

The book is in the Wentworth Collection at Cambridge. The drawing was photographed and then burnt by Dennistoun on the day when he left Comminges on the occasion of his first visit.

THE BARGAIN OF RUPERT ORANGE

Vincent O’Sullivan

1896

The marvel is, that the memory of Rupert Orange, whose name was a signal for chatter amongst people both in Europe and America not many years ago, has now almost died out. Even in New York where he was born, and where the facts of his secret and mysterious life were most discussed, he is quite forgotten. At times, indeed, some old lady will whisper to you at dinner, that a certain young man reminds her of Rupert Orange, only he is not so handsome; but she is one of those who keep the mere incidents of their past much more brightly polished than the important things of their present. The men who worshipped him, who copied his clothes, his walk, his mode of pronouncing words, and his manner of saying things, stare vaguely when he is mentioned. And the other day at a well-known club I was having some general talk with a man whose black hair is shot with white, when he exclaimed somewhat suddenly: “How little one hears about Rupert Orange now!” and then added: “I wonder what became of him?” As to the first part of this speech I kept my mouth resolutely shut; for how could I deny his saying, since I had lately seen a weed-covered grave with the early moss growing into the letters on the headstone? As to the second part, it is now my business to set forth the answer to that: and I think when the fire begins to blaze it will lighten certain recollections which have become dark. Of course, there are numberless people who never heard the story of Rupert Orange; but there are also crowds of men and women who followed his brilliant life with intense interest, while his shameful death will be in many a one’s remembrance.

The knowledge of this case I got over a year ago; and I would have written then, had my hands been free. But there has recently died at Vienna the Countess de Volnay, whose notorious connection with Orange was at one time the subject of every man’s bruit. Her I met two years since in Paris, where she was living like a work-woman. I learned that she had sold her house, and her goods she had given to the poor. She was still a remarkable woman, though her great beauty had faded, and despite a restless, terrified manner, which gave one the monstrous idea that she always felt the devil looking over her shoulder. Her hair was white as paper, and yet she was far from the age when women cease to grin in ballrooms. A great fear seemed to have sprung to her face and been paralysed there: a fear which could be detected in her shaking voice. It was from her that I learned certain primary facts of this narration; and she cried to me not to publish them till I heard of her death — as a man on the gallows sometimes asks the hangman not to adjust the noose too tight round his neck. I am altogether sure that what Orange himself told her, he never told anyone else. I wish I had her running tongue instead of my slow pen, and then I would not be writing slovenly and clumsily, doubtless, for the relation; vainly, I am afraid, for the moral.

Now Rupert Orange lived with his aunt in New York till he was twenty-four years old, and when she died, leaving her entire estate to him, a furious contest arose over the will. Principal in the contest was Mrs. Annice, the wife of a discarded nephew; and she prosecuted the cause with the pertinacity and virulence which we often find in women of thirty. So good a pursuivant did she prove, that she and her husband leaped suddenly from indigence to great wealth for the Court declared that the old lady had died lunatic; that she had been unduly influenced; and, that consequently her testament was void. But this decision, which raised them up, brought Rupert to the ground. There is no worse fall than the fall of a man from opulence to poverty; and Rupert, after his luxurious rearing, had to undergo this fall. Yet he had the vigour and confidence of the young. His little verses and sonnets had been praised when he was an amateur; now he undertook to make his pen a breadwinner — with the direst results. At first, nothing would do him but the great magazines; and from these, week after week, he received back his really clever articles, accompanied by cold refusals. Then for months he hung about the offices of every outcast paper, waiting for the editor. When at length the editor did come, he generally told Rupert that he had promised all his outlying work to some bar-room acquaintance. So push by push he was brought to his knees; and finally he dared not walk out till nightfall, for fear some of those who knew him in prosperity might witness his destitution.

One night early in December, about six o’clock, he left the mean flat-house on the west side of the city in which he occupied one room, and started (as they say in New York) “up town.” The snow had frozen in lumps, and the gas lamps gleamed warmly on it for the man who had not seen a fire in months. When he reached Fifty-ninth Street, he turned east and skirted Central Park till he came to the Fifth Avenue. And here a sudden fancy seized him to walk this street, which shame and pride had kept him off since his downfall. He had not proceeded far, when he was stopped by an old man.

“Can you tell me, sir,” says the old man, politely, “if this street runs on further than Central Park?”

“Oh, yes,” answered Rupert, scraping at his throat; for he had not spoken to a soul for five days, and the phlegm had gathered. “It goes up a considerable distance from here.”

“You’ll forgive me asking you,” went on the ancient. “I am only passing through the city, and I want to find out all I can.”

“You’re quite welcome,” said Orange, “That,” he added, pointing, “is St. Luke’s Hospital.”

They spoke a few more sentences, then as the stranger turned “down-town,” Rupert fell in with his walk. He did this partly because he was craving for fellowship; partly, too, from that feeling which certain men have — men who have never done anything for themselves in this world, and never will do anything — that distant relations, and even total strangers, are apt at any moment to fling fortunes into their hands. As they proceeded along the avenue, Orange turned to survey his companion. A shrewd wind was blowing, and it tossed the old gentleman’s long beard over his shoulder, and ruffled the white hair under his soft hat. His clothes were plain, even shabby; and he had an odd trick of planting his feet on the ground without bending his knees, as though his legs were broomsticks. Orange thought, bitterly enough! how short a time had passed since the days when he would have taken poison as an alternative to walking down the Fifth Avenue with such an associate. Now, they were equal: or indeed the old man was the better off of the two: for if he wore impossible broad-toed boots, Orange had to stamp his feet to keep the cold from striking through his worn-out shoes. What cared he for the criticism of the smart, well-fed “Society” now, when numbers of that far greater society, of which he was one, were starving in garrets! As he thought these things a late afternoon reception began to pour out its crowds, and a young man and a girl, who had known Rupert in the days of his prosperity, came forth and glared with contempt at the two mean passengers. Not a muscle in Rupert’s face quivered he even afforded those two the tribute of a sneer.

When the pair of walkers reached Thirty-fourth Street they switched into Broadway. A silence had fallen between them, and it was in silence they paraded the thoroughfare. Here all was garish light and glare: carriages darted to and fro, restaurants were thronged, theatres ablaze, women smiling: everything told of a great city starting a night of pleasure. Besides the love of pleasure which was his main characteristic, Orange was distinctly gregarious; and the sight of all this joy, which he had once revelled in himself, struck like a knife into his hungry, lonely heart. At that moment he thought he would give his very soul to get some money.

“All these people seem happy,” says the old man, suddenly.

“Yes,” replied Orange. “They are happy enough!”

The old man caught the reply, and noticed the sour twang in it. He looked up quickly and saw that Rupert’s eyes watered

“Why, man,” he exclaimed, “I believe you’re crying! or perhaps you’re cold! Come in here, come right in to the Hoffman House!” he went on, tugging at Rupert’s coat.

Rupert hesitated. The sensitiveness of one who had never taken a favour which he could not repay, held him back. But the desire for warmth and sympathy prevailed, so he entered. The usual crowd of loafers was about the bar, and those who composed it looked scoffingly at Orange’s shiny overcoat and time-eaten trousers. Believe me, the man in rags is not half so pitiable as the poor creature who tries to maintain the appearance of a gentleman: the man who inks seams by night which grow all white by day; who keeps his fingers close pressed to his palm lest the rents in his glove be seen; who walks with his arm across his breast for fear his coat should fly open and proclaim its lack of buttons. Even the waiters looked disparagingly at Orange; and a waiter’s jibes, or any flunkey’s, are, perhaps, the sorest of all. But the old man, without noticing, sat down at a table and ordered a bottle of champagne. When the wine was brought, the two sat together some time in a muse. Then, of a sudden, the greybeard broke out.

“Wealth!” he cried, staring into Rupert’s eyes, “wealth is the only thing worth striving for in this world! Your tub-philosophers may laugh at it, but they only laugh to keep away from themselves a cankering envy and desire which would be more bitter than their present lack. Let any man whom you call a genius arrive at this hotel tonight, and let a millionaire arrive at the same moment, and I’ll bet you the millionaire gets the attention every time! A millionaire travels round the earth, and he gets respect everywhere he goes — why? Because he buys it. That’s the way to get respect in the nineteenth century — buy it! Do the fine works of art which are sold each year go to the pauper student who worships them? No, sir, they go to the man who has the money, and who shells out the biggest price. I repeat, my young friend, that what’s there” (and he slapped his pocket) “is what counts in the struggle of life.”

“I agree with you,” answered Orange, “that money counts for a great deal.”

“A great deal!” repeated the other, scornfully, being now, perhaps somewhat warmed with wine. “A great deal what have you to offer instead? Religion? Ministers are the parasites of rich men. Art? Go into the studio of any friend of yours tomorrow, and see whom he’ll speak to first — you, or the man with a cheque in his hand. Why, if a poor man had the brains of Shakespeare, or our Emerson, and was mud-splashed by the carriage wheels of a wealthy woman, the only answer to his protests would be a policeman’s ‘move on!’”

“I know it! I know it!” cried Orange, in anguish. “I know it fifty times better than you do! I tell you I would sell my whole life now, for one year’s perfect enjoyment of riches.”

“Not one year,” said the greybeard, leaning over the table and speaking so intensely that Rupert could hardly follow him. His old face had become ghastly and looked livid in contrast to the white hair. “Not one year, my boy, but five years! Think, only think, of the gloriousness of it all! This evening a despised pauper, tomorrow a rich man! Take courage, make up your mind to yield your life at the end of five years, and in return I will promise you, pledge you, that tomorrow morning you shall be in as sound a financial position as any man in New York.”

Now it is strange that this outrageous proposal, made in the bar-room of an hotel situate in one of the most prosaic cities in the world, did not strike Rupert Orange as at all preposterous.

Probably on account of his mystical, dreaming mind, he never took thought to doubt the speaker’s sincereness, but at once fell to balancing the advantages and drawbacks of the scheme.

Five years before his young eyes they stretched out like fifty years. It did not occur to him (it rarely occurs to any young man) to hark back to the five preceding years and note how few and swift were the strides which brought him over them to this very day he was living. Five years! They lay before him all silver with sunshine, as he looked out from his present want and darkness. This was his point of view; and let us never forget this point of view when we arc passing judgment on him. No doubt, if the matter had been placed before a man of wealth, he would have denied it even momentary consideration: but the smell of cooking is only disgusting to one who has dined; it is the vagrant who sniffs eagerly the air of the kitchen through the iron grating on the street. For Rupert, at this moment, money meant all the world. He was a man who hated to face the bitter things of life: and money included release from insolent creditors, from snubs and flouts, from a small, cold, dark room, and, chief of all! release from that horror which he saw drawing nearer and nearer: the gaol.

“There is one more word to be said,” observed the old man, smoothly. “Leaving aside the contingency of your starving to death — which, by the way, I think very likely — there is a chance of your being run over by a cart when you leave this hotel. There is an even chance of your contracting some disease during the winter. How would you like to die in a pauper hospital, where the nurses sing as they close a dead man’s eyes? Now, what I propose is, that you shall be free from any physical pain for five years.”

“If I should accept,” said Orange, swirling the wine round in his glass till it creamed and foamed, “I’d desire some slight ills to take the very sweetness out of life.” Probably he meant, for fear that when his time came he should hate to die.

He thought again. He was like to a man who arrives suddenly at a mountain village on the feast of the Blessed Sacrament, and loitering in the street with his eyes enchanted by the tawdry decorations and festoons of the houses, forgets to look beyond at the awful mountain standing against the sky, with menacing thunder clouds about its breast. Before Orange’s mind a gay and tempting pageant defiled. He thought of the travels he would be able to make, of luxurious palaces, of exquisite banquets, of priceless wines, of laughing, rapturous women. He thought, too, for he was far from being a merely sensuous man, of the first editions he could buy, of the rare gems, of dainty bindings. Sweetest of all were the thoughts, that he would be at his ease to do the best work that it was in him to do, and that he would be powerful enough to wreak his vengeance on his enemies very slowly, inch by inch. With that, like the crack of a rifle shot, came the thought of Mrs. Annice.

He sprang to his feet. “Listen!” he cried, in such a voice that the idlers at the bar turned round for a moment; but observing that no row was in progress to divert them, they fell once more to their drinking. “Listen!” cried Rupert Orange again, gripping the side of the table with one hand and pointing a shaking finger at the old man. “There is one woman alive in this city tonight who has brought me to the degradation which you witness now. She flung me to the ground, she covered me with dust, she crushed me beneath her merciless heel! Give her to me that I may lower her pride! let me see her as abject and despised as the poorest trull that walks the streets, and I swear by God Most High to make the bargain!”

The old man grasped Rupert’s cold hand, and pressed it between his own feverishly hot palms. “It is an unusual taste,” he murmured, glancing into Rupert’s eyes, and smiling faintly.

II

Orange started “up town” with a song in his heart. Curiously enough, he had not the slightest doubt about the genuineness of the contract, nor had he the least sorrow for what he had done. It mattered little about snubs and side looks tonight: tomorrow men and women would joyfully begin pawing him and fawning. So happy was he, his blood danced through his veins so merrily, that he ran for three or four blocks; and once he laughed a loud laugh, which caused a policeman to menace him with a club. But this only brought him more merriment; tomorrow, if he liked, he could laugh from Central Park to Madison Square without molestation.

When he reached the mean flat-house on the west side, there was, as usual, no light in the entrance, and he saw a postman groping among the bells.

“Say, young feller!” began the postman, “do you know if anyone by the name of Orange is kickin’ around this blamed house?”

“I am he,” said Rupert Orange, and held out his hand for the letter.

“Yes, you are!” answered the postman, derisively. “Now then, come off the roof and show us the bell.”

Rupert indicated the place, and, as soon as the postman had dropped the letter, he whipped out his key, and to the postman’s surprise unlocked the box and put the letter in his pocket.

“Well! you see my business is to deliver letters, not to give them away,” said the postman, making an official distinction. “When you said you was the man, how was I to know you wasn’t givin’ me a steer?”

“Oh, that’s all right!” replied Rupert. “Good night, my friend.”

He went upstairs to his freezing little room, and sat down to think. He would not open the letter yet: his mind was too crowded to admit any new emotion. So for two hours he remain dreaming brilliant and fantastic dreams. Then he tore open the envelope. He was so poor that the gas had been turned off from his room, but by the light of a match he read a communication from Messrs. Daroll and Kettel, the lawyers, setting forth that a distant relative of his had recently died in a town in one of the Southern States, and had left him a fortune of nearly a million dollars. But Rupert knew that this million dollars was only nominal, that money would remain with him as long as he could call life his own.

The charwoman who came into his room next morning, found him asleep in the chair, with the letter open on his knee, and a smile lighting his face. But he was only a pauper, in arrears for his rent, so she struck him smartly between the shoulders with her broom.

“I believe I’ve been asleep,” said Rupert, starting and rubbing his eyes. The woman looked at him sourly, thinking that he would have to take his next sleep in one of the parks. She began to sweep the dust in his direction till he coughed violently.

“You have been very good to me since I’ve been here, Mrs. Spill,” Rupert continued; and, I think, without irony: he had not much idea of irony. He took from his pocket the last five-dollar bill he had in the world and gave it to her. “Please take that for your trouble.”

The woman stared at him, as she would have stared had he cut his throat before her eyes. But Orange clapped on his hat and rushed out. He had not even the five cents necessary to travel down-town in a horse-car, so he walked the distance to the office of Messrs. Daroll and Kettel, in Pine Street. He approached a fat clerk (who, decked as he was with doubtful jewellery, looked as if he were honouring the office by being in it at all), and asked if Mr. Kettel was within. Now it is something worthy of note, that I have often called on men occupied with difficult texts; or painting pictures; or writing novels; and each one had been able to let go his work at once: while, on the other hand, it is your part to await the pleasure of a clerk, till he has finished his enthralling occupation. True to his breed, the fat man kept Rupert standing before him for about three minutes, till he had elaborately finished a copy of a bill of details; and then looking up, and seeing only a shabby fellow, he asked sharply —

“Eh? What do you say?”

Rupert repeated his question.

“Yes, I guess he’s in, but this is his busy day. You just sit right down there, young man, and he’ll see you when he gets good and ready.”

The hard knocks which Rupert had received in his contest with the world had taken out of him the self-assertion that goes with wealth: so he sat for half an hour, knowing well, meanwhile, that his clothes were a cause for laughter to the underbred and badly trained clerks. At length he somewhat timidly went over to the desk again.

“Perhaps if you would be kind enough to take my name into Mr. Kettel—”

“Oh, look here, you make me tired!” exclaimed the fat clerk, irritably. “Didn’t I tell you that he was busy? Now, I don’t want to see you monkeying round this desk any more! If you don’t want to wait, why the walking’s pretty good! — This young man says he wants to see you,” he added, as Mr. Kettel came out of his private room.

“Well, sir, what do you want today?” asked Mr. Kettel, with that most offensive tone and air which sonic misguided men imagine will impress the spectator as a manner for the man of great affairs. “You had better call round some other time; we’re not able to attend—” he was going on, when he happened to look narrowly into Rupert’s face, and his manner changed in a second. “Why, my dear boy, how are you! it’s so long since I’ve seen you, that I didn’t know you at first. And, how you’ve changed!” he went on, and could not help a glance at Rupert’s shabby dress; for he was quite ignoble. Then this remark seeming of questionable taste even to him, he cried heartily: “But come into my private room, and we can have a good long chat!” And in he went, with Rupert at his heels, leaving the fat clerk at gaze.

In a week Rupert was once more dawdling about clubs, and attending those social functions which go to make up what is called “a Season.” Above all, he was listening to an appalling variety of apologetic lies. To the average man who said “We didn’t know when on earth you were coming back from Europe, my dear fellow; how did you like it over there?” he could answer with a grave face; but the women were different. One particular afternoon he was at a reception, when he heard a lady near him remark in clear accents to her friend: “You can’t think how we missed that dear Mr. Orange while he was away in Africa!” and this struck Rupert as so grotesque that he apparently laughed. Amid this social intercourse, however, he avoided sedulously a meeting with Mrs. Annice; he had decided not to see her for a while. Indeed, it was not till an evening late in February, after dinner, that he took a cab to her house near Washington Square. He found her at home, and had not waited a minute before she came into the room. She was a tall woman, and wonderfully handsome by gaslight; but she had that tiresome habit, which many women have, of talking intensely — in italics, as it were: a habit found generally in women ill brought up — women without control of their feelings, or command of the expression of them.

“My dear, dear Rupert, how glad I am to see you,” she exclaimed, throwing a white fluffy cloak off her bare shoulders, and holding out both hands as she glided towards him. “It is so long, that I really thought we were never going to see you again. But I am so glad. And how very fortunate that legacy was for you — just when I suppose you were working fearfully hard. I was quite delighted when I heard of it, and my husband too. He would have been so pleased to have seen you, but he is dining out tonight.”

There was a tone of too much hypocrisy about all this, and Rupert made full allowance for it. He chatted in his easy way about his good fortune, and recited some details.

“I suppose there is not the slightest possibility of a flaw in the will?” says Mrs. Annice, regarding him keenly. The lines round her mouth hind become hard, but she kept on smiling: she had some traits like Macbeth’s wife.

Orange laughed his bright, merry laugh which so few could resist. “Oh no, I think it’s all right this time!” he said, and looked at her steadfastly with his fine eyes.

Mrs. Annice suddenly flushed, and then shuddered. Her heart began to throb, her head to whirl. What was the matter with her? What was this cursed sensation which was mastering her? She, with her self-poise, her deliberateness, her calculation, was, in the flash of an eye, brought to feel towards this man, whom but a moment ago she had hated more than anyone in the world, as she had never felt towards man before. It was not love, this wretched thralldom, it was not even admiration; it was a wild desire to abnegate herself, annihilate herself, in this man’s personality; to become his bond-woman, the slave of his controlling will. She drove the nails into her palms, and crushed her lips between her teeth, as she rose to her feet and made one desperate try for victory.

“I was just going to the opera when you came in, Rupert,” she said; “won’t you come in my box?” — and her voice had so changed, there was such a note of tenderness and desire in it, that it seemed as if she had exposed her soul. But even in her disorganised state she was conscious that there would be a certain distinction in appearing at the opera with the re-edified Rupert Orange.

Rupert murmured something about the opera being such a bore, and at that moment the footman announced the carriage.

“Won’t you come?” asked Mrs. Annice, standing with her white hand resting on the back of a chair.

“I think not,” answered Rupert, with a smile.

She dismissed the carriage. As soon as the servant had gone she tried to make some trivial remark, and, half turning, looked at Orange, who rose. For an instant those two stood gazing into each other’s eyes with God knows what hell in their hearts, and then, with a little cry, that was half a sob, she flung her arms about his neck, and pressed her kisses on his lips.

III

Yesterday afternoon I took from amongst my books a novel of Rupert Orange, and as I turned over the leaves, I fell to pondering how difficult it is to obtain any of his works today, while but a few years ago all the world was reading them; and to lose myself in amaze at our former rapturous and enthusiastic admiration of his literary art, his wit, his pathos. For in truth his art is a very tawdry art to my present liking; his wit is rather stale, his pathos a little vulgar. And the charm has likewise gone out of his poetry: even his “Chaunt of the Storm-Witch,” which we were used to think so melodious and sonorous, now fails to please. To explain the precise effect which his poetry has upon me now, I am forced to resort to a somewhat unhappy figure; I am forced to say that his poetry has an effect on me like sifted ashes! I cannot in the least explain this figure; and if it fails to convey any idea to the reader, I am afraid the failure must be set down to my clumsy writing. And yet what praise we all bestowed on these works of Rupert Orange! How eagerly we watched for them to appear; how we prized them; with what zeal we studied the newspapers for details of his interesting and successful life!

A particular account of that brilliant and successful life it would ill become me to chronicle, even if I were so minded: it was with no purpose of relating his social and literary triumphs, his continual victories during five years in the two fields he had chosen to conquer, that I started to write. But in dwelling on his life, we must not forget to take account of these triumphs. They were very rare, very proud, very precious triumphs, both in Europe and in the United States; triumphs that few men ever enjoy; triumphs which were potent enough to deaden the pallid thought of the curious limits of his life, except on three sombre occasions.

It was on the first night of a new opera at Covent Garden. Orange was in a box with a notable company, and was on the point of leaning over to whisper something amusing to the beautiful Countess of Heston, when of a sudden he shot white, and the smile left his face as if he had received a blow. On the stage a chorus had commenced in a very low tone of passionate entreaty by degrees it swelled louder and louder, till it burst forth into a tremendous agonised prayer for pity and pardon. As Orange listened, such a dreary sense of the littleness of life, such an awful fear of death, sang through his brain, that he grew sick, and shivered in a cold sweat.

“Why, I’m afraid Mr. Orange is ill!” exclaimed the Countess.

“No, no” muttered Orange, groping for his hat. “Only a little faint; want some air! — I tell you I want some air!” he broke out in a voice that was like a frightened cry, as he fumbled with the door of the box.

A certain man with a kind heart followed him into the foyer.

“Can I do anything for you, old chap?”

“Yes; in the name of God leave me alone!” replied Orange; and he said it in such a tone, and with a face so frightfully contorted, that those standing about fell back feeling queer, and the questioner returned to the box very gravely, and thought on his soul for the rest of the evening.

But Orange rushed out, and he hailed a hansom, and he drove till the cabman refused to drive any more; and then he walked and it was not till he found himself on Putney Heath in his evening dress, at half-past twelve the next day, that the devil left him.

About two years after this occurrence he was wandering one Sunday evening in Chelsea, and hearing a church bell ring for the usual service, he decided to enter. As he sat waiting a little girl of four or five, with her mother, came in and sat by him and Rupert talked to the child in his quaint, winning way, and so won her, that when the service began she continued to cling to his hand. After a while the sermon commenced, and the preacher, taking fur his text the words “And he died,” from the fifth chapter of Genesis, tried to set forth the suddenness and unwelcomeness of death, even to the long-lived patriarchs, and its increased suddenness and unwelcomeness to most of us. The sermon I suppose, was dull and commonplace enough, but if the speaker had verily seen into the mind of one of his listeners, the effect could not have been more disastrous. Orange waited till the torture became unbearable, till he could actually fed the horrid, stifling weight of earth pressing him down in his coffin, and keeping him there for ages and ages: then with a heavy groan he started up, and rushed forth with such vehemence, that he knocked down and trampled on the little girl, in his haste to get out of sight of the white faces of people scared at his face, and the child’s sad cry was borne to him out in the dark street.

The third occasion on which this sense of despair and loss oppressed him, was at a time when he was near a rugged coast. One stormy day he rode to a certain promontory, and came suddenly in sight of the great sea. As he stood watching a lonely gull, that strained, and swooped, and dipped in the surge, while the rain drizzled, and the wind whined through the long grass, the futility of his life stung him, and he hid his face in his horse’s mane and wept.

But sorest of all was the thought that he might really have won a certain fame, an easy fortune, without taking on his back the fardel which, as the months went by, became so heavy. He knew that he had done some work which would have surely gained him distinction, had he but waited. Why did you not have patience? his outraged spirit and maimed life seemed to moan; a little more patience!

I must not let you think, however, that he was unhappy. In every detail the promise of the old man was punctiliously carried out. The very maladies which Orange had desired, were twisted to his advantage. Thus, when he was laid up with a sprained ankle at an hotel at Aix-les-Bains, he formed his notorious connection with Gabrielle de Volnay. It was when he was kept for a day in the house by a cold that he wrote his little comedy, Her Ladyship’s Dinner — a comedy which, at one time, we were all so forward to praise. And on the night upon which his cab was overturned in the Sixth Avenue, New York, and he was badly cut about the head, did he not recognise in the drunken prostitute who cursed him, the erstwhile brilliant Mrs. Annice? Did he not forget his pain in the exquisite knowledge that her curses were of no avail, and flout her jeeringly, brutally? Nay! when an epidemic disease broke out in a certain part of the Riviera, and the foreign population presently fled, he used his immunity from death to hold his ground and tend the sick, and so gave cause to the newspapers to proclaim the courage and devotion of Mr. Orange. And all these fortunate incidents were suddenly brought to completeness by one singular event.

It was on a winter morning, about three o’clock, that he found himself in the district of Kilburn, and noticed a crimson stain on the sky. More from indolence than from anything else he went towards the fire; but when he came in sight of it, he was startled by a somewhat strange thing. For there at a window high up in the blazing house, stood a woman with a baby in her arms, who had clearly been left to a hideous fate on account of the fierceness of the flames. With an abrupt gesture Orange flung off his cloak.

“Where can I find the chief?” he asked a man standing near, “because I’m going up?”

The fellow turned, and seeing Rupert in his evening suit, laughed derisively.

“I say Bill!” he sings out to his mate, “this ’ere bloke says as how he’s goin’ up!” and the other’s scoffing reply struck Rupert’s ears as he pushed through the crowd.

By a letter which he carried with him, or some such authority, Orange gained his request; and the next thing that the people saw was a ladder rigged, and the figure of a man ascending through clouds of smoke. Higher and higher he went, while the flames licked and sizzled around him and seared his flesh: higher and higher till he had almost reached the window, and a wild cheer burst from the crowd for such a deed of heroism. But at that moment a long tongue of flame leaped into the sky, the building tottered and then crashed down, and Orange was safely caught by some strong arms, while the woman and child met death within the ruins. Of course this affair was noised abroad the next day; for some weeks Orange, with his hand in a sling, was a picturesque figure in several London drawing-rooms.

Now, which one of us shall say that Orange, with the tested knowledge of his exemption from death, and strong in that knowledge, deliberately did this heroic act to improve his fame, to exalt his honour? I have stated before that we must be cautious in passing judgment on him, and I must again insist on this caution. As for myself, I should be sorry to think that there is no beautiful, merciful Spirit to note an unselfish impulse, which took no thought of glory or advertisement, and count it to the man for honesty.

But the time ran, and the years sped, until was come the last month of that fifth year, which meant the end of years for Orange. When in the days of his happiness and strength, he had dwelt on this time at all, he had planned to seek out, on the last day of the year, some mountain crag in Switzerland, and there meet death, coming in the train of the rising sun, with calm and steady eyes. Alas! now to his anguish he felt a desire, which was stronger than his will, tearing at his heart to visit once more the scene of his hardships, to look again on the place where his bargain was concluded. I make certain, from a letter of his which I have seen, that in taking passage for New York, Rupert had no idea of turning aside his doom. The Cambria, on which he sailed, was due to arrive at New York a full week before the end of the year; but she encountered baffling winds and seas, and it was not till the evening of the thirty-first of December that she sighted the light on Fire Island.

As the steamer went at speed towards Sandy Hook, Orange stood alone on the deck, watching the smoke from her funnel rolling seaward of a sudden he saw rise out of the cloud, the presentment, grim and menacing, of God the Father.

IV

As the Cambria moved up towards the city, on the morning of New Year’s Day, a certain frenzy which was half insane, and a fierce loathing of familiar sights — Castle Garden, the spire of Trinity Church — took hold of Orange. He passionately cursed himself for not staying in Europe; he cursed the hour he was born; he cursed, above all! the hour in which he had made that fatal bargain. As soon as the vessel was made fast to the dock, he hastened ashore; and leaving his servant to look after his luggage, he sprang into a hack, and directed the driver to go “up town.”

“Where to, boss?” inquired the man, looking at him curiously.

“The Hoffman House,” replied Orange, before he thought. Then he cursed himself again, but he did not change the order.

I have said that the driver looked at Orange curiously; and in truth he was a strange sight. All the dignity of his demeanour was gone his eyes were bloodshot, and his complexion a dirty yellow: he was unshorn, his tie was loose, and his collar open. His terror grew as he passed along the well-known streets: he screamed out hateful, obscene things, rolling about in the vehicle, while foam came from his mouth; and as he arrived at the hotel, in his distraction he drove his hand through the window glass, which cut him into the bone.

“An accident,” he panted hoarsely to the porter who opened the door: “a slight accident! God damn you!” he yelled, “can’t you see it was an accident?” and he went up the hall to the office, leaving behind him a trail of blood. The clerk at the desk, seeing his disorder, was on the point of refusing him a room; but when Orange wrote his name in the visitor’s book, he smirked, and ordered the best set of apartments in the house to be made ready. To these apartments Orange retired, and sat all day in a sort of dull horror. For a sudden death he had in a measure prepared himself: he had made his bargain, he had bought his freedom from the cares which are the burthen of all men, and he knew that he must pay the debt: but for some uncertain, treacherous calamity he had not prepared. He was not fool enough to dream that the one to whom the debt was owed would relent: but before his creditor’s method of exacting payment he was at a stand. He thought and thought, rubbing his face in his hands, till his head was near bursting: in a sudden spasm he fell off the chair to the floor; and that night he was lying stricken by typhoid fever.

And for weeks he lay with a fiery forehead and blazing eyes, finding the lightest covering too heavy and ice too hot. Even when the known disease seemed to have been subdued, certain strange complications arose which puzzled the physicians amongst these a painful vomiting which racked the man’s frame and left an exhaustion akin to death, and a curious loathly decay of the flesh. This last was so venomous an evil, that one of the nurses having touched the sick man in her ministrations, and neglected to immediately purify herself, within a few hours incontinently deceased. After a while, to assist these enemies of Orange, there came pneumonia. It would seem as though he were experiencing all the maladies from which he had been free during the past five years; for besides his corporal ills he had become lunatic, and he was raving. Those who tended him, used as they were to outrageous scenes, shuddered and held each other’s hands when they heard him shriek his curses, and realised his abject fear of death. At times, too, they would hear him weeping softly, and whispering the broken little prayers he had learned in childhood: praying God to save him in this dark hour from the wiles of the devil.

At length, one evening towards the end of March, the mental clearness of Orange somewhat revived, and he felt himself compelled to get up and put on his clothes. The nurse, thinking that the patient was resting quietly, and fearing the shine of the lamp might distress him, had turned it low and gone away for a little: so it was without interruption, although reeling from giddiness, and scorched with fever, that Rupert groped about till he found some garments, and his evening suit. Clad in these, and throwing a cloak over his shoulders, he went downstairs. Those whom he met, that recognised him, looked at him wonderingly and with a vague dread; but he appeared to have his understanding as well as they, and so he passed through the hall without being stopped; and going into the bar, he called for brandy. The bartender, to whom he was known, exclaimed in astonishment; but he got no reply from Orange, who, pouring himself out a large quantity of the fiery liquor found it colder than the coldest iced water in his burning frame. When he had taken the brandy, he went into the street. It was a bleak seasonable night, and a bitter frost-rain was falling: but Orange went through it, as if the bitter weather was a not unwelcome coolness, although he shuddered in an ague-fit. As he stood on the corner of Twenty-third Street, his cloak thrown open, the sleet sowing down on his shirt, and the slush which covered his ankles soaking through his thin shoes, a member of his club came by and spoke to him.

“Why, good God! Orange, you don’t mean to say you’re out on a night like this! You must be much better — eh?” he broke off, for Orange had given him a grey look, with eyes in which there was no speculation; and the man hurried away scared and rather aghast. “These poet chaps are always queer fishes,” he muttered uneasily, as he turned into the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

Of the events of terror and horror which happened on that awful night, when a human soul was paying the price of an astonishing violation of the order of the universe, no man shall ever tell. Blurred, hideous, and enormous visions of dives, of hells where the worst scum of the town consorted, of a man who spat on him, of a woman who struck him across the face with her umbrella, calling him the foulest of names — visions such as these, and more hateful than these, presented themselves to Orange, when he found himself, at three o’clock in the morning, standing under a lamppost in that strange district of New York called “The Village.”

The rain had given way to a steady fall of snow: and as he stood there, a squalid harlot, an outcast amongst outcasts, approached, and solicited him in the usual manner.

“Come along — do!” she said, shivering: “We can get a drink at my place.”

Receiving no answer, she peered into his face, and gave a cry of loathing and fear.

“Oh, look here!” she said, roughly, coughing down her disgust: “You’ve been drinking too much, and you’ve got a load. Come ahead with me and you can have a good sleep.”

At that word Orange turned, and gazed at her with a vacant, dreary, silly smile. He raised his hand, and when she shrank away — “Are you afraid of me?” he said, not coarsely, but quietly, even gently, like a man talking in his sleep. Then they went on together, till they came to a dilapidated house close by the river. They entered, and turned into a dirty room lit by a flaring jet of gas.

“Now, dear; let’s have some money,” says the woman, “and I’ll get you a nice drink.”

Still no answer from Orange: only that same vacant smile, which was beginning to be horrible.

“Give me some money: do you hear!” cried the woman, stridently. Then she seized him, and went through his pockets in an accustomed style, and found three cents.

“What the hell do you mean by coming here with only this!” bellowed the woman, holding out the mean coins to Orange. She struck him; but she was very frightened, and went to the stairs.

“Say! Tom — Tommy,” she called; “you’d better come down and put this loafer out!”

A great hulking man came down the stairs, and gazed for an instant at Rupert — standing under the gas-jet, with the woman plucking the studs from his shirt. For an instant the man stood, feeling sick and in a sweat; and then, by a great effort, he approached Orange, and seized him by the collar.

“Here, out you go!” he said. “We don’t want none of your sort around here!” The man dragged Orange to the street door, and gave the wretch such a powerful shove, that he fell on the pavement, and rolled into the gutter.

And later in the morning, one who passed by the way found him there: dead before the squalid harlot’s door.

THE MESSENGER

Robert W. Chambers

1897

Little grey messenger,

Robed like painted Death,

Your robe is dust.

Whom do you seek

Among lilies and closed buds

At dusk?

Among lilies and closed buds

At dusk,

Whom do you seek,

Little grey messenger,

Robed in the awful panoply

Of painted Death?

— R. W. C.

THE MESSENGER

All-wise,

Hast thou seen all there is to see with thy two eyes?

Dost thou know all there is to know, and so,

Omniscient,

Darest thou still to say thy brother lies?

— R. W. C.

“The bullet entered here,” said Max Fortin, and he placed his middle finger over a smooth hole exactly in the center of the forehead.

I sat down upon a mound of dry seaweed and unslung my fowling piece.

The little chemist cautiously felt the edges of the shot-hole, first with his middle finger, then with his thumb.

“Let me see the skull again,” said I.

Max Fortin picked it up from the sod.

“It’s like all the others,” he observed. I nodded, without offering to take it from him. After a moment he thoughtfully replaced it upon the grass at my feet.

“It’s like all the others,” he repeated, wiping his glasses on his handkerchief. “I thought you might care to see one of the skulls, so I brought this over from the gravel pit. The men from Bannelec are digging yet. They ought to stop.”

“How many skulls are there altogether?” I inquired.

“They found thirty-eight skulls; there are thirty-nine noted in the list. They lie piled up in the gravel pit on the edge of Le Bihan’s wheat field. The men are at work yet. Le Bihan is going to stop them.”

“Let’s go over,” said I; and I picked up my gun and started across the cliffs, Fortin on one side, Môme on the other.

“Who has the list?” I asked, lighting my pipe. “You say there is a list?”

“The list was found rolled up in a brass cylinder,” said the little chemist. He added: “You should not smoke here. You know that if a single spark drifted into the wheat—”

“Ah, but I have a cover to my pipe,” said I, smiling.

Fortin watched me as I closed the pepper-box arrangement over the glowing bowl of the pipe. Then he continued:

“The list was made out on thick yellow paper; the brass tube has preserved it. It is as fresh today as it was in 1760. You shall see it.”

“Is that the date?”

“The list is dated ‘April, 1760.’ The Brigadier Durand has it. It is not written in French.”

“Not written in French!” I exclaimed.

“No,” replied Fortin solemnly, “it is written in Breton.”

“But,” I protested, “the Breton language was never written or printed in 1760.”

“Except by priests,” said the chemist.

“I have heard of but one priest who ever wrote the Breton language,” I began.

Fortin stole a glance at my face.

“You mean — the Black Priest?” he asked.

I nodded.

Fortin opened his mouth to speak again, hesitated, and finally shut his teeth obstinately over the wheat stem that he was chewing.

“And the Black Priest?” I suggested encouragingly. But I knew it was useless; for it is easier to move the stars from their courses than to make an obstinate Breton talk. We walked on for a minute or two in silence.

“Where is the Brigadier Durand?” I asked, motioning Môme to come out of the wheat, which he was trampling as though it were heather. As I spoke we came in sight of the farther edge of the wheat field and the dark, wet mass of cliffs beyond.

“Durand is down there — you can see him; he stands just behind the Mayor of St. Gildas.”

“I see,” said I; and we struck straight down, following a sun-baked cattle path across the heather.

When we reached the edge of the wheat field, Le Bihan, the Mayor of St. Gildas, called to me, and I tucked my gun under my arm and skirted the wheat to where he stood.

“Thirty-eight skulls,” he said in his thin, high-pitched voice; “there is but one more, and I am opposed to further search. I suppose Fortin told you?”

I shook hands with him, and returned the salute of the Brigadier Durand.

“I am opposed to further search,” repeated Le Bihan, nervously picking at the mass of silver buttons which covered the front of his velvet and broadcloth jacket like a breastplate of scale armour.

Durand pursed up his lips, twisted his tremendous moustache, and hooked his thumbs in his sabre belt.

“As for me,” he said, “I am in favour of further search.”

“Further search for what — for the thirty-ninth skull?” I asked.

Le Bihan nodded. Durand frowned at the sunlit sea, rocking like a bowl of molten gold from the cliffs to the horizon. I followed his eyes. On the dark glistening cliffs, silhouetted against the glare of the sea, sat a cormorant, black, motionless, its horrible head raised toward heaven.

“Where is that list, Durand?” I asked.

The gendarme rummaged in his despatch pouch and produced a brass cylinder about a foot long. Very gravely he unscrewed the head and dumped out a scroll of thick yellow paper closely covered with writing on both sides. At a nod from Le Bihan he handed me the scroll. But I could make nothing of the coarse writing, now faded to a dull brown.

“Come, come, Le Bihan,” I said impatiently, “translate it, won’t you? You and Max Fortin make a lot of mystery out of nothing, it seems.”

Le Bihan went to the edge of the pit where the three Bannelec men were digging, gave an order or two in Breton, and turned to me.

As I came to the edge of the pit the Bannelec men were removing a square piece of sailcloth from what appeared to be a pile of cobblestones.

“Look!” said Le Bihan shrilly. I looked. The pile below was a heap of skulls. After a moment I clambered down the gravel sides of the pit and walked over to the men of Bannelec. They saluted me gravely, leaning on their picks and shovels, and wiping their sweating faces with sunburned hands.

“How many?” said I in Breton.

“Thirty-eight,” they replied.

I glanced around. Beyond the heap of skulls lay two piles of human bones. Beside these was a mound of broken, rusted bits of iron and steel. Looking closer, I saw that this mound was composed of rusty bayonets, sabre blades, scythe blades, with here and there a tarnished buckle attached to a bit of leather hard as iron.

I picked up a couple of buttons and a belt plate. The buttons bore the royal arms of England; the belt plate was emblazoned with the English arms, and also with the number “27.”

“I have heard my grandfather speak of the terrible English regiment, the 27th Foot, which landed and stormed the fort up there,” said one of the Bannelec men.

“Oh!” said I; “then these are the bones of English soldiers?”

“Yes,” said the men of Bannelec.

Le Bihan was calling to me from the edge of the pit above, and I handed the belt plate and buttons to the men and climbed the side of the excavation.

“Well,” said I, trying to prevent Môme from leaping up and licking my face as I emerged from the pit, “I suppose you know what these bones are. What are you going to do with them?”

“There was a man,” said Le Bihan angrily, “an Englishman, who passed here in a dog-cart on his way to Quimper about an hour ago, and what do you suppose he wished to do?”

“Buy the relics?” I asked, smiling.

“Exactly — the pig!” piped the mayor of St. Gildas. “Jean Marie Tregunc, who found the bones, was standing there where Max Fortin stands, and do you know what he answered? He spat upon the ground, and said: ‘Pig of an Englishman, do you take me for a desecrator of graves?’”

I knew Tregunc, a sober, blue-eyed Breton, who lived from one year’s end to the other without being able to afford a single bit of meat for a meal.

“How much did the Englishman offer Tregunc?” I asked.

“Two hundred francs for the skulls alone.”

I thought of the relic hunters and the relic buyers on the battlefields of our civil war.

“Seventeen hundred and sixty is long ago,” I said.

“Respect for the dead can never die,” said Fortin.

“And the English soldiers came here to kill your fathers and burn your homes,” I continued.

“They were murderers and thieves, but — they are dead,” said Tregunc, coming up from the beach below, his long sea rake balanced on his dripping jersey.

“How much do you earn every year, Jean Marie?” I asked, turning to shake hands with him.

“Two hundred and twenty francs, monsieur.”

“Forty-five dollars a year,” I said. “Bah! you are worth more, Jean. Will you take care of my garden for me? My wife wished me to ask you. I think it would be worth one hundred francs a month to you and to me. Come on, Le Bihan — come along, Fortin — and you, Durand. I want somebody to translate that list into French for me.”

Tregunc stood gazing at me, his blue eyes dilated.

“You may begin at once,” I said, smiling, “if the salary suits you?”

“It suits,” said Tregunc, fumbling for his pipe in a silly way that annoyed Le Bihan.

“Then go and begin your work,” cried the mayor impatiently; and Tregunc started across the moors toward St. Gildas, taking off his velvet-ribboned cap to me and gripping his sea rake very hard.

“You offer him more than my salary,” said the mayor, after a moment’s contemplation of his silver buttons.

“Pooh!” said I, “what do you do for your salary except play dominoes with Max Fortin at the Groix Inn?”

Le Bihan turned red, but Durand rattled his sabre and winked at Max Fortin, and I slipped my arm through the arm of the sulky magistrate, laughing.

“There’s a shady spot under the cliff,” I said; “come on, Le Bihan, and read me what is in the scroll.”

In a few moments we reached the shadow of the cliff, and I threw myself upon the turf, chin on hand, to listen.

The gendarme, Durand, also sat down, twisting his moustache into needle-like points. Fortin leaned against the cliff, polishing his glasses and examining us with vague, near-sighted eyes; and Le Bihan, the mayor, planted himself in our midst, rolling up the scroll and tucking it under his arm.

“First of all,” he began in a shrill voice, “I am going to light my pipe, and while lighting it I shall tell you what I have heard about the attack on the fort yonder. My father told me; his father told him.”

He jerked his head in the direction of the ruined fort, a small, square stone structure on the sea cliff, now nothing but crumbling walls. Then he slowly produced a tobacco pouch, a bit of flint and tinder, and a long-stemmed pipe fitted with a microscopical bowl of baked clay. To fill such a pipe requires ten minutes’ close attention. To smoke it to a finish takes but four puffs. It is very Breton, this Breton pipe. It is the crystallization of everything Breton.

“Go on,” said I, lighting a cigarette.

“The fort,” said the mayor, “was built by Louis XIV, and was dismantled twice by the English. Louis XV restored it in 1739. In 1760 it was carried by assault by the English. They came across from the island of Groix — three shiploads — and they stormed the fort and sacked St. Julien yonder, and they started to burn St. Gildas — you can see the marks of their bullets on my house yet; but the men of Bannelec and the men of Lorient fell upon them with pike and scythe and blunderbuss, and those who did not run away lie there below in the gravel pit now — thirty-eight of them.”

“And the thirty-ninth skull?” I asked, finishing my cigarette.

The mayor had succeeded in filling his pipe, and now he began to put his tobacco pouch away.

“The thirty-ninth skull,” he mumbled, holding the pipe-stem between his defective teeth — “the thirty-ninth skull is no business of mine. I have told the Bannelec men to cease digging.”

“But what is — whose is the missing skull?” I persisted curiously.

The mayor was busy trying to strike a spark to his tinder. Presently he set it aglow, applied it to his pipe, took the prescribed four puffs, knocked the ashes out of the bowl, and gravely replaced the pipe in his pocket.

“The missing skull?” he asked.

“Yes,” said I impatiently.

The mayor slowly unrolled the scroll and began to read, translating from the Breton into French. And this is what he read:

“On the Cliffs of St. Gildas,
“April 13, 1760

“On this day, by order of the Count of Soisic, general in chief of the Breton forces now lying in Kerselec Forest, the bodies of thirty-eight English soldiers of the 27th, 50th, and 72d regiments of Foot were buried in this spot, together with their arms and equipments.”

The mayor paused and glanced at me reflectively.

“Go on, Le Bihan,” I said.

“With them,” continued the mayor, turning the scroll and reading on the other side, “was buried the body of that vile traitor who betrayed the fort to the English. The manner of his death was as follows: By order of the most noble Count of Soisic, the traitor was first branded upon the forehead with the brand of an arrowhead. The iron burned through the flesh, and was pressed heavily so that the brand should even burn into the bone of the skull. The traitor was then led out and bidden to kneel. He admitted having guided the English from the island of Groix. Although a priest and a Frenchman, he had violated his priestly office to aid him in discovering the password to the fort. This password he extorted during confession from a young Breton girl who was in the habit of rowing across from the island of Groix to visit her husband in the fort. When the fort fell, this young girl, crazed by the death of her husband, sought the Count of Soisic and told how the priest had forced her to confess to him all she knew about the fort. The priest was arrested at St. Gildas as he was about to cross the river to Lorient. When arrested he cursed the girl, Marie Trevec—”

“What!” I exclaimed, “Marie Trevec!”

“Marie Trevec,” repeated Le Bihan; “the priest cursed Marie Trevec, and all her family and descendants. He was shot as he knelt, having a mask of leather over his face, because the Bretons who composed the squad of execution refused to fire at a priest unless his face was concealed. The priest was l’Abbé Sorgue, commonly known as the Black Priest on account of his dark face and swarthy eyebrows. He was buried with a stake through his heart.”

Le Bihan paused, hesitated, looked at me, and handed the manuscript back to Durand. The gendarme took it and slipped it into the brass cylinder.

“So,” said I, “the thirty-ninth skull is the skull of the Black Priest.”

“Yes,” said Fortin. “I hope they won’t find it.”

“I have forbidden them to proceed,” said the mayor querulously. “You heard me, Max Fortin.”

I rose and picked up my gun. Môme came and pushed his head into my hand.

“That’s a fine dog,” observed Durand, also rising.

“Why don’t you wish to find his skull?” I asked Le Bihan. “It would be curious to see whether the arrow brand really burned into the bone.”

“There is something in that scroll that I didn’t read to you,” said the mayor grimly. “Do you wish to know what it is?”

“Of course,” I replied in surprise.

“Give me the scroll again, Durand,” he said; then he read from the bottom:

“I, l’Abbé Sorgue, forced to write the above by my executioners, have written it in my own blood; and with it I leave my curse. My curse on St. Gildas, on Marie Trevec, and on her descendants. I will come back to St. Gildas when my remains are disturbed. Woe to that Englishman whom my branded skull shall touch!”

“What rot!” I said. “Do you believe it was really written in his own blood?”

“I am going to test it,” said Fortin, “at the request of Monsieur le Maire. I am not anxious for the job, however.”

“See,” said Le Bihan, holding out the scroll to me, “it is signed, ‘l’Abbé Sorgue.’”

I glanced curiously over the paper.

“It must be the Black Priest,” I said. “He was the only man who wrote in the Breton language. This is a wonderfully interesting discovery, for now, at last, the mystery of the Black Priest’s disappearance is cleared up. You will, of course, send this scroll to Paris, Le Bihan?”

“No,” said the mayor obstinately, “it shall be buried in the pit below where the rest of the Black Priest lies.”

I looked at him and recognized that argument would be useless. But still I said, “It will be a loss to history, Monsieur Le Bihan.”

“All the worse for history, then,” said the enlightened Mayor of St. Gildas.

We had sauntered back to the gravel pit while speaking. The men of Bannelec were carrying the bones of the English soldiers toward the St. Gildas cemetery, on the cliffs to the east, where already a knot of white-coiffed women stood in attitudes of prayer; and I saw the sombre robe of a priest among the crosses of the little graveyard.

“They were thieves and assassins; they are dead now,” muttered Max Fortin.

“Respect the dead,” repeated the Mayor of St. Gildas, looking after the Bannelec men.

“It was written in that scroll that Marie Trevec, of Groix Island, was cursed by the priest — she and her descendants,” I said, touching Le Bihan on the arm. “There was a Marie Trevec who married an Yves Trevec of St. Gildas—”

“It is the same,” said Le Bihan, looking at me obliquely.

“Oh!” said I; “then they were ancestors of my wife.”

“Do you fear the curse?” asked Le Bihan.

“What?” I laughed.

“There was the case of the Purple Emperor,” said Max Fortin timidly.

Startled for a moment, I faced him, then shrugged my shoulders and kicked at a smooth bit of rock which lay near the edge of the pit, almost embedded in gravel.

“Do you suppose the Purple Emperor drank himself crazy because he was descended from Marie Trevec?” I asked contemptuously.

“Of course not,” said Max Fortin hastily.

“Of course not,” piped the mayor. “I only — Hello! what’s that you’re kicking?”

“What?” said I, glancing down, at the same time involuntarily giving another kick. The smooth bit of rock dislodged itself and rolled out of the loosened gravel at my feet.

“The thirty-ninth skull!” I exclaimed. “By jingo, its the noddle of the Black Priest! See! there is the arrowhead branded on the front!”

The mayor stepped back. Max Fortin also retreated. There was a pause, during which I looked at them, and they looked anywhere but at me.

“I don’t like it,” said the mayor at last, in a husky, high voice. “I don’t like it! The scroll says he will come back to St. Gildas when his remains are disturbed. I — I don’t like it, Monsieur Darrel—”

“Bosh!” said I; “the poor wicked devil is where he can’t get out. For Heaven’s sake, Le Bihan, what is this stuff you are talking in the year of grace 1896?”

The mayor gave me a look.

“And he says ‘Englishman.’ You are an Englishman, Monsieur Darrel,” he announced.

“You know better. You know I’m an American.”

“It’s all the same,” said the Mayor of St. Gildas, obstinately.

“No, it isn’t!” I answered, much exasperated, and deliberately pushed the skull till it rolled into the bottom of the gravel pit below.

“Cover it up,” said I; “bury the scroll with it too, if you insist, but I think you ought to send it to Paris. Don’t look so gloomy, Fortin, unless you believe in werewolves and ghosts. Hey! what the — what the devil’s the matter with you, anyway? What are you staring at, Le Bihan?”

“Come, come,” muttered the mayor in a low, tremulous voice, “it’s time we got out of this. Did you see? Did you see, Fortin?”

“I saw,” whispered Max Fortin, pallid with fright.

The two men were almost running across the sunny pasture now, and I hastened after them, demanding to know what was the matter.

“Matter!” chattered the mayor, gasping with exasperation and terror. “The skull is rolling uphill again!” and he burst into a terrified gallop. Max Fortin followed close behind.

I watched them stampeding across the pasture, then turned toward the gravel pit, mystified, incredulous. The skull was lying on the edge of the pit, exactly where it had been before I pushed it over the edge. For a second I stared at it; a singular chilly feeling crept up my spinal column, and I turned and walked away, sweat starting from the root of every hair on my head. Before I had gone twenty paces the absurdity of the whole thing struck me. I halted, hot with shame and annoyance, and retraced my steps.

There lay the skull.

“I rolled a stone down instead of the skull,” I muttered to myself. Then with the butt of my gun I pushed the skull over the edge of the pit and watched it roll to the bottom; and as it struck the bottom of the pit, Môme, my dog, suddenly whipped his tail between his legs, whimpered, and made off across the moor.

“Môme!” I shouted, angry and astonished; but the dog only fled the faster, and I ceased calling from sheer surprise.

“What the mischief is the matter with that dog!” I thought. He had never before played me such a trick.

Mechanically I glanced into the pit, but I could not see the skull. I looked down. The skull lay at my feet again, touching them.

“Good heavens!” I stammered, and struck at it blindly with my gunstock. The ghastly thing flew into the air, whirling over and over, and rolled again down the sides of the pit to the bottom. Breathlessly I stared at it, then, confused and scarcely comprehending, I stepped back from the pit, still facing it, one, ten, twenty paces, my eyes almost starting from my head, as though I expected to see the thing roll up from the bottom of the pit under my very gaze. At last I turned my back to the pit and strode out across the gorse-covered moorland toward my home. As I reached the road that winds from St. Gildas to St. Julien I gave one hasty glance at the pit over my shoulder. The sun shone hot on the sod about the excavation. There was something white and bare and round on the turf at the edge of the pit. It might have been a stone; there were plenty of them lying about.

II

When I entered my garden I saw Môme sprawling on the stone doorstep. He eyed me sideways and flopped his tail.

“Are you not mortified, you idiot dog?” I said, looking about the upper windows for Lys.

Môme rolled over on his back and raised one deprecating forepaw, as though to ward off calamity.

“Don’t act as though I was in the habit of beating you to death,” I said, disgusted. I had never in my life raised whip to the brute. “But you are a fool dog,” I continued. “No, you needn’t come to be babied and wept over; Lys can do that, if she insists, but I am ashamed of you, and you can go to the devil.”

Môme slunk off into the house, and I followed, mounting directly to my wife’s boudoir. It was empty.

“Where has she gone?” I said, looking hard at Môme, who had followed me. “Oh! I see you don’t know. Don’t pretend you do. Come off that lounge! Do you think Lys wants tan-coloured hairs all over her lounge?”

I rang the bell for Catherine and ’Fine, but they didn’t know where “madame” had gone; so I went into my room, bathed, exchanged my somewhat grimy shooting clothes for a suit of warm, soft knickerbockers, and, after lingering some extra moments over my toilet — for I was particular, now that I had married Lys — I went down to the garden and took a chair out under the fig-trees.

“Where can she be?” I wondered. Môme came sneaking out to be comforted, and I forgave him for Lys’s sake, whereupon he frisked.

“You bounding cur,” said I, “now what on earth started you off across the moor? If you do it again I’ll push you along with a charge of dust shot.”

As yet I had scarcely dared think about the ghastly hallucination of which I had been a victim, but now I faced it squarely, flushing a little with mortification at the thought of my hasty retreat from the gravel pit.

“To think,” I said aloud, “that those old woman’s tales of Max Fortin and Le Bihan should have actually made me see what didn’t exist at all! I lost my nerve like a schoolboy in a dark bedroom.” For I knew now that I had mistaken a round stone for a skull each time, and had pushed a couple of big pebbles into the pit instead of the skull itself.

“By jingo!” said I, “I’m nervous; my liver must be in a devil of a condition if I see such things when I’m awake! Lys will know what to give me.”

I felt mortified and irritated and sulky, and thought disgustedly of Le Bihan and Max Fortin.

But after a while I ceased speculating, dismissed the mayor, the chemist, and the skull from my mind, and smoked pensively, watching the sun low dipping in the western ocean. As the twilight fell for a moment over ocean and moorland, a wistful, restless happiness filled my heart, the happiness that all men know — all men who have loved.

Slowly the purple mist crept out over the sea; the cliffs darkened; the forest was shrouded.

Suddenly the sky above burned with the afterglow, and the world was alight again.

Cloud after cloud caught the rose dye; the cliffs were tinted with it; moor and pasture, heather and forest burned and pulsated with the gentle flush. I saw the gulls turning and tossing above the sand bar, their snowy wings tipped with pink; I saw the sea swallows sheering the surface of the still river, stained to its placid depths with warm reflections of the clouds. The twitter of drowsy hedge birds broke out in the stillness; a salmon rolled its shining side above tide-water.

The interminable monotone of the ocean intensified the silence. I sat motionless, holding my breath as one who listens to the first low rumour of an organ. All at once the pure whistle of a nightingale cut the silence, and the first moonbeam silvered the wastes of mist-hung waters.

I raised my head.

Lys stood before me in the garden.

When we had kissed each other, we linked arms and moved up and down the gravel walks, watching the moonbeams sparkle on the sand bar as the tide ebbed and ebbed. The broad beds of white pinks about us were a-tremble with hovering white moths; the October roses hung all abloom, perfuming the salt wind.

“Sweetheart,” I said, “where is Yvonne? Has she promised to spend Christmas with us?”

“Yes, Dick; she drove me down from Plougat this afternoon. She sent her love to you. I am not jealous. What did you shoot?”

“A hare and four partridges. They are in the gun room. I told Catherine not to touch them until you had seen them.”

Now I suppose I knew that Lys could not be particularly enthusiastic over game or guns; but she pretended she was, and always scornfully denied that it was for my sake and not for the pure love of sport. So she dragged me off to inspect the rather meagre game bag, and she paid me pretty compliments and gave a little cry of delight and pity as I lifted the enormous hare out of the sack by his ears.

“He’ll eat no more of our lettuce,” I said, attempting to justify the assassination.

“Unhappy little bunny — and what a beauty! O Dick, you are a splendid shot, are you not?”

I evaded the question and hauled out a partridge.

“Poor little dead things!” said Lys in a whisper; “it seems a pity — doesn’t it, Dick? But then you are so clever—”

“We’ll have them broiled,” I said guardedly; “tell Catherine.”

Catherine came in to take away the game, and presently ’Fine Lelocard, Lys’s maid, announced dinner, and Lys tripped away to her boudoir.

I stood an instant contemplating her blissfully, thinking, “My boy, you’re the happiest fellow in the world — you’re in love with your wife!”

I walked into the dining room, beamed at the plates, walked out again; met Tregunc in the hallway, beamed on him; glanced into the kitchen, beamed at Catherine, and went upstairs, still beaming.

Before I could knock at Lys’s door it opened, and Lys came hastily out. When she saw me she gave a little cry of relief, and nestled close to my breast.

“There is something peering in at my window,” she said.

“What!” I cried angrily.

“A man, I think, disguised as a priest, and he has a mask on. He must have climbed up by the bay tree.”

I was down the stairs and out of doors in no time. The moonlit garden was absolutely deserted. Tregunc came up, and together we searched the hedge and shrubbery around the house and out to the road.

“Jean Marie,” said I at length, “loose my bulldog — he knows you — and take your supper on the porch where you can watch. My wife says the fellow is disguised as a priest, and wears a mask.”

Tregunc showed his white teeth in a smile. “He will not care to venture in here again, I think, Monsieur Darrel.”

I went back and found Lys seated quietly at the table.

“The soup is ready, dear,” she said. “Don’t worry; it was only some foolish lout from Bannelec. No one in St. Gildas or St. Julien would do such a thing.”

I was too much exasperated to reply at first, but Lys treated it as a stupid joke, and after a while I began to look at it in that light.

Lys told me about Yvonne, and reminded me of my promise to have Herbert Stuart down to meet her.

“You wicked diplomat!” I protested. “Herbert is in Paris, and hard at work for the Salon.”

“Don’t you think he might spare a week to flirt with the prettiest girl in Finistère?” inquired Lys innocently.

“Prettiest girl! Not much!” I said.

“Who is, then?” urged Lys.

I laughed a trifle sheepishly.

“I suppose you mean me, Dick,” said Lys, colouring up.

“Now I bore you, don’t I?”

“Bore me? Ah, no, Dick.”

After coffee and cigarettes were served I spoke about Tregunc, and Lys approved.

“Poor Jean! he will be glad, won’t he? What a dear fellow you are!”

“Nonsense,” said I; “we need a gardener; you said so yourself, Lys.”

But Lys leaned over and kissed me, and then bent down and hugged Môme, who whistled through his nose in sentimental appreciation.

“I am a very happy woman,” said Lys.

“Môme was a very bad dog today,” I observed.

“Poor Môme!” said Lys, smiling.

When dinner was over and Môme lay snoring before the blaze — for the October nights are often chilly in Finistère — Lys curled up in the chimney corner with her embroidery, and gave me a swift glance from under her drooping lashes.

“You look like a schoolgirl, Lys,” I said teasingly. “I don’t believe you are sixteen yet.”

She pushed back her heavy burnished hair thoughtfully. Her wrist was as white as surf foam.

“Have we been married four years? I don’t believe it,” I said.

She gave me another swift glance and touched the embroidery on her knee, smiling faintly.

“I see,” said I, also smiling at the embroidered garment. “Do you think it will fit?”

“Fit?” repeated Lys. Then she laughed.

“And,” I persisted, “are you perfectly sure that you — er — we shall need it?”

“Perfectly,” said Lys. A delicate colour touched her cheeks and neck. She held up the little garment, all fluffy with misty lace and wrought with quaint embroidery.

“It is very gorgeous,” said I; “don’t use your eyes too much, dearest. May I smoke a pipe?”

“Of course,” she said, selecting a skein of pale blue silk.

For a while I sat and smoked in silence, watching her slender fingers among the tinted silks and thread of gold.

Presently she spoke: “What did you say your crest is, Dick?”

“My crest? Oh, something or other rampant on a something or other—”

“Dick!”

“Dearest?”

“Don’t be flippant.”

“But I really forget. It’s an ordinary crest; everybody in New York has them. No family should be without ’em.”

“You are disagreeable, Dick. Send Josephine upstairs for my album.”

“Are you going to put that crest on the — the — whatever it is?”

“I am; and my own crest, too.”

I thought of the Purple Emperor and wondered a little.

“You didn’t know I had one, did you?” she smiled.

“What is it?” I replied evasively.

“You shall see. Ring for Josephine.”

I rang, and, when ’Fine appeared, Lys gave her some orders in a low voice, and Josephine trotted away, bobbing her white-coiffed head with a “Bien, madame!”

After a few minutes she returned, bearing a tattered, musty volume, from which the gold and blue had mostly disappeared.

I took the book in my hands and examined the ancient emblazoned covers.

“Lilies!” I exclaimed.

“Fleur-de-lis,” said my wife demurely.

“Oh!” said I, astonished, and opened the book.

“You have never before seen this book?” asked Lys, with a touch of malice in her eyes.

“You know I haven’t. Hello! what’s this? Oho! So there should be a de before Trevec? Lys de Trevec? Then why in the world did the Purple Emperor—”

“Dick!” cried Lys.

“All right,” said I. “Shall I read about the Sieur de Trevec who rode to Saladin’s tent alone to seek for medicine for St. Louis? or shall I read about — what is it? Oh, here it is, all down in black and white — about the Marquis de Trevec who drowned himself before Alva’s eyes rather than surrender the banner of the fleur-de-lis to Spain? It’s all written here. But, dear, how about that soldier named Trevec who was killed in the old fort on the cliff yonder?”

“He dropped the de, and the Trevecs since then have been Republicans,” said Lys — “all except me.”

“That’s quite right,” said I; “it is time that we Republicans should agree upon some feudal system. My dear, I drink to the king!” and I raised my wine-glass and looked at Lys.

“To the king,” said Lys, flushing. She smoothed out the tiny garment on her knees; she touched the glass with her lips; her eyes were very sweet. I drained the glass to the king.

After a silence I said: “I will tell the king stories. His Majesty shall be amused.”

“His Majesty,” repeated Lys softly.

“Or hers,” I laughed. “Who knows?”

“Who knows?” murmured Lys, with a gentle sigh.

“I know some stories about Jack the Giant-Killer,” I announced. “Do you, Lys?”

“I? No, not about a giant-killer, but I know all about the werewolf, and Jeanne-la-Flamme, and the Man in Purple Tatters, and — O dear me! I know lots more.”

“You are very wise,” said I. “I shall teach his Majesty English.”

“And I Breton,” cried Lys jealously.

“I shall bring playthings to the king,” said I — “big green lizards from the gorse, little grey mullets to swim in glass globes, baby rabbits from the forest of Kerselec—”

“And I,” said Lys, “will bring the first primrose, the first branch of aubepine, the first jonquil, to the king — my king.”

“Our king,” said I; and there was peace in Finistère.

I lay back, idly turning the leaves of the curious old volume.

“I am looking,” said I, “for the crest.”

“The crest, dear? It is a priest’s head with an arrow-shaped mark on the forehead, on a field—”

I sat up and stared at my wife.

“Dick, whatever is the matter?” she smiled. “The story is there in that book. Do you care to read it? No? Shall I tell it to you? Well, then: It happened in the third crusade. There was a monk whom men called the Black Priest. He turned apostate, and sold himself to the enemies of Christ. A Sieur de Trevec burst into the Saracen camp, at the head of only one hundred lances, and carried the Black Priest away out of the very midst of their army.”

“So that is how you come by the crest,” I said quietly; but I thought of the branded skull in the gravel pit, and wondered.

“Yes,” said Lys. “The Sieur de Trevec cut the Black Priest’s head off, but first he branded him with an arrow mark on the forehead. The book says it was a pious action, and the Sieur de Trevec got great merit by it. But I think it was cruel, the branding,” she sighed.

“Did you ever hear of any other Black Priest?”

“Yes. There was one in the last century, here in St. Gildas. He cast a white shadow in the sun. He wrote in the Breton language. Chronicles, too, I believe. I never saw them. His name was the same as that of the old chronicler, and of the other priest, Jacques Sorgue. Some said he was a lineal descendant of the traitor. Of course the first Black Priest was bad enough for anything. But if he did have a child, it need not have been the ancestor of the last Jacques Sorgue. They say this one was a holy man. They say he was so good he was not allowed to die, but was caught up to heaven one day,” added Lys, with believing eyes.

I smiled.

“But he disappeared,” persisted Lys.

“I’m afraid his journey was in another direction,” I said jestingly, and thoughtlessly told her the story of the morning. I had utterly forgotten the masked man at her window, but before I finished I remembered him fast enough, and realized what I had done as I saw her face whiten.

“Lys,” I urged tenderly, “that was only some clumsy clown’s trick. You said so yourself. You are not superstitious, my dear?”

Her eyes were on mine. She slowly drew the little gold cross from her bosom and kissed it. But her lips trembled as they pressed the symbol of faith.

III

About nine o’clock the next morning I walked into the Groix Inn and sat down at the long discoloured oaken table, nodding good-day to Marianne Bruyère, who in turn bobbed her white coiffe at me.

“My clever Bannelec maid,” said I, “what is good for a stirrup-cup at the Groix Inn?”

“Schist?” she inquired in Breton.

“With a dash of red wine, then,” I replied.

She brought the delicious Quimperlé cider, and I poured a little Bordeaux into it. Marianne watched me with laughing black eyes.

“What makes your cheeks so red, Marianne?” I asked. “Has Jean Marie been here?”

“We are to be married, Monsieur Darrel,” she laughed.

“Ah! Since when has Jean Marie Tregunc lost his head?”

“His head? Oh, Monsieur Darrel — his heart, you mean!”

“So I do,” said I. “Jean Marie is a practical fellow.”

“It is all due to your kindness—” began the girl, but I raised my hand and held up the glass.

“It’s due to himself. To your happiness, Marianne;” and I took a hearty draft of the schist. “Now,” said I, “tell me where I can find Le Bihan and Max Fortin.”

“Monsieur Le Bihan and Monsieur Fortin are above in the broad room. I believe they are examining the Red Admiral’s effects.”

“To send them to Paris? Oh, I know. May I go up, Marianne?”

“And God go with you,” smiled the girl.

When I knocked at the door of the broad room above little Max Fortin opened it. Dust covered his spectacles and nose; his hat, with the tiny velvet ribbons fluttering, was all awry.

“Come in, Monsieur Darrel,” he said; “the mayor and I are packing up the effects of the Purple Emperor and of the poor Red Admiral.”

“The collections?” I asked, entering the room. “You must be very careful in packing those butterfly cases; the slightest jar might break wings and antennae, you know.”

Le Bihan shook hands with me and pointed to the great pile of boxes.

“They’re all cork lined,” he said, “but Fortin and I are putting felt around each box. The Entomological Society of Paris pays the freight.”

The combined collections of the Red Admiral and the Purple Emperor made a magnificent display.

I lifted and inspected case after case set with gorgeous butterflies and moths, each specimen carefully labelled with the name in Latin. There were cases filled with crimson tiger moths all aflame with colour; cases devoted to the common yellow butterflies; symphonies in orange and pale yellow; cases of soft grey and dun-coloured sphinx moths; and cases of garish nettle-bred butterflies of the numerous family of Vanessa.

All alone in a great case by itself was pinned the purple emperor, the Apatura Iris, that fatal specimen that had given the Purple Emperor his name and quietus.

I remembered the butterfly, and stood looking at it with bent eyebrows.

Le Bihan glanced up from the floor where he was nailing down the lid of a box full of cases.

“It is settled, then,” said he, “that madame, your wife, gives the Purple Emperor’s entire collection to the city of Paris?”

I nodded.

“Without accepting anything for it?”

“It is a gift,” I said.

“Including the purple emperor there in the case? That butterfly is worth a great deal of money,” persisted Le Bihan.

“You don’t suppose that we would wish to sell that specimen, do you?” I answered a trifle sharply.

“If I were you I should destroy it,” said the mayor in his high-pitched voice.

“That would be nonsense,” said I — “like your burying the brass cylinder and scroll yesterday.”

“It was not nonsense,” said Le Bihan doggedly, “and I should prefer not to discuss the subject of the scroll.”

I looked at Max Fortin, who immediately avoided my eyes.

“You are a pair of superstitious old women,” said I, digging my hands into my pockets; “you swallow every nursery tale that is invented.”

“What of it?” said Le Bihan sulkily; “there’s more truth than lies in most of ’em.”

“Oh!” I sneered, “does the Mayor of St. Gildas and St. Julien believe in the Loup-garou?” [werewolf]

“No, not in the Loup-garou.”

“In what, then — Jeanne-la-Flamme?”

“That,” said Le Bihan with conviction, “is history.”

“The devil it is!” said I; “and perhaps, monsieur the mayor, your faith in giants is unimpaired?”

“There were giants — everybody knows it,” growled Max Fortin.

“And you a chemist!” I observed scornfully.

“Listen, Monsieur Darrel,” squeaked Le Bihan; “you know yourself that the Purple Emperor was a scientific man. Now suppose I should tell you that he always refused to include in his collection a Death’s Messenger?”

“A what?” I exclaimed.

“You know what I mean — that moth that flies by night; some call it the Death’s Head, but in St. Gildas we call it ‘Death’s Messenger.’”

“Oh!” said I, “you mean that big sphinx moth that is commonly known as the ‘death’s-head moth.’ Why the mischief should the people here call it death’s messenger?”

“For hundreds of years it has been known as death’s messenger in St. Gildas,” said Max Fortin. “Even Froissart speaks of it in his commentaries on Jacques Sorgue’s Chronicles. The book is in your library.”

“Sorgue? And who was Jacques Sorgue? I never read his book.”

“Jacques Sorgue was the son of some unfrocked priest — I forget. It was during the crusades.”

“Good Heavens!” I burst out, “I’ve been hearing of nothing but crusades and priests and death and sorcery ever since I kicked that skull into the gravel pit, and I am tired of it, I tell you frankly. One would think we lived in the dark ages. Do you know what year of our Lord it is, Le Bihan?”

“Eighteen hundred and ninety-six,” replied the mayor.

“And yet you two hulking men are afraid of a death’s-head moth.”

“I don’t care to have one fly into the window,” said Max Fortin; “it means evil to the house and the people in it.”

“God alone knows why he marked one of his creatures with a yellow death’s head on the back,” observed Le Bihan piously, “but I take it that he meant it as a warning; and I propose to profit by it,” he added triumphantly.

“See here, Le Bihan,” I said; “by a stretch of imagination one can make out a skull on the thorax of a certain big sphinx moth. What of it?”

“It is a bad thing to touch,” said the mayor, wagging his head.

“It squeaks when handled,” added Max Fortin.

“Some creatures squeak all the time,” I observed, looking hard at Le Bihan.

“Pigs,” added the mayor.

“Yes, and asses,” I replied. “Listen, Le Bihan: do you mean to tell me that you saw that skull roll uphill yesterday?”

The mayor shut his mouth tightly and picked up his hammer.

“Don’t be obstinate,” I said; “I asked you a question.”

“And I refuse to answer,” snapped Le Bihan. “Fortin saw what I saw; let him talk about it.”

I looked searchingly at the little chemist.

“I don’t say that I saw it actually roll up out of the pit, all by itself,” said Fortin with a shiver, “but — but then, how did it come up out of the pit, if it didn’t roll up all by itself?”

“It didn’t come up at all; that was a yellow cobblestone that you mistook for the skull again,” I replied. “You were nervous, Max.”

“A — a very curious cobblestone, Monsieur Darrel,” said Fortin.

“I also was a victim to the same hallucination,” I continued, “and I regret to say that I took the trouble to roll two innocent cobblestones into the gravel pit, imagining each time that it was the skull I was rolling.”

“It was,” observed Le Bihan with a morose shrug.

“It just shows,” said I, ignoring the mayor’s remark, “how easy it is to fix up a train of coincidences so that the result seems to savour of the supernatural. Now, last night my wife imagined that she saw a priest in a mask peer in at her window—”

Fortin and Le Bihan scrambled hastily from their knees, dropping hammer and nails.

“W-h-a-t — what’s that?” demanded the mayor.

I repeated what I had said. Max Fortin turned livid.

“My God!” muttered Le Bihan, “the Black Priest is in St. Gildas!”

“D-don’t you — you know the old prophecy?” stammered Fortin; “Froissart quotes it from Jacques Sorgue:

‘When the Black Priest rises from the dead,

St. Gildas folk shall shriek in bed;

When the Black Priest rises from his grave,

May the good God St. Gildas save!’”

“Aristide Le Bihan,” I said angrily, “and you, Max Fortin, I’ve got enough of this nonsense! Some foolish lout from Bannelec has been in St. Gildas playing tricks to frighten old fools like you. If you have nothing better to talk about than nursery legends I’ll wait until you come to your senses. Good-morning.” And I walked out, more disturbed than I cared to acknowledge to myself.

The day had become misty and overcast. Heavy, wet clouds hung in the east. I heard the surf thundering against the cliffs, and the grey gulls squealed as they tossed and turned high in the sky. The tide was creeping across the river sands, higher, higher, and I saw the seaweed floating on the beach, and the lançons springing from the foam, silvery thread-like flashes in the gloom. Curlew were flying up the river in twos and threes; the timid sea swallows skimmed across the moors toward some quiet, lonely pool, safe from the coming tempest. In every hedge field birds were gathering, huddling together, twittering restlessly.

When I reached the cliffs I sat down, resting my chin on my clenched hands. Already a vast curtain of rain, sweeping across the ocean miles away, hid the island of Groix. To the east, behind the white semaphore on the hills, black clouds crowded up over the horizon. After a little the thunder boomed, dull, distant, and slender skeins of lightning unraveled across the crest of the coming storm. Under the cliff at my feet the surf rushed foaming over the shore, and the lançons jumped and skipped and quivered until they seemed to be but the reflections of the meshed lightning.

I turned to the east. It was raining over Groix, it was raining at Sainte Barbe, it was raining now at the semaphore. High in the storm whirl a few gulls pitched; a nearer cloud trailed veils of rain in its wake; the sky was spattered with lightning; the thunder boomed.

As I rose to go, a cold raindrop fell upon the back of my hand, and another, and yet another on my face. I gave a last glance at the sea, where the waves were bursting into strange white shapes that seemed to fling out menacing arms toward me. Then something moved on the cliff, something black as the black rock it clutched — a filthy cormorant, craning its hideous head at the sky.

Slowly I plodded homeward across the sombre moorland, where the gorse stems glimmered with a dull metallic green, and the heather, no longer violet and purple, hung drenched and dun-coloured among the dreary rocks. The wet turf creaked under my heavy boots, the blackthorn scraped and grated against knee and elbow. Over all lay a strange light, pallid, ghastly, where the sea spray whirled across the landscape and drove into my face until it grew numb with the cold. In broad bands, rank after rank, billow on billow, the rain burst out across the endless moors, and yet there was no wind to drive it at such a pace.

Lys stood at the door as I turned into the garden, motioning me to hasten; and then for the first time I became conscious that I was soaked to the skin.

“How ever in the world did you come to stay out when such a storm threatened?” she said. “Oh, you are dripping! Go quickly and change; I have laid your warm underwear on the bed, Dick.”

I kissed my wife, and went upstairs to change my dripping clothes for something more comfortable.

When I returned to the morning room there was a driftwood fire on the hearth, and Lys sat in the chimney corner embroidering.

“Catherine tells me that the fishing fleet from Lorient is out. Do you think they are in danger, dear?” asked Lys, raising her blue eyes to mine as I entered.

“There is no wind, and there will be no sea,” said I, looking out of the window. Far across the moor I could see the black cliffs looming in the mist.

“How it rains!” murmured Lys; “come to the fire, Dick.”

I threw myself on the fur rug, my hands in my pockets, my head on Lys’s knees.

“Tell me a story,” I said. “I feel like a boy of ten.”

Lys raised a finger to her scarlet lips. I always waited for her to do that.

“Will you be very still, then?” she said.

“Still as death.”

“Death,” echoed a voice, very softly.

“Did you speak, Lys?” I asked, turning so that I could see her face.

“No; did you, Dick?”

“Who said ‘death’?” I asked, startled.

“Death,” echoed a voice, softly.

I sprang up and looked about. Lys rose too, her needles and embroidery falling to the floor. She seemed about to faint, leaning heavily on me, and I led her to the window and opened it a little way to give her air. As I did so the chain lightning split the zenith, the thunder crashed, and a sheet of rain swept into the room, driving with it something that fluttered — something that flapped, and squeaked, and beat upon the rug with soft, moist wings.

We bent over it together, Lys clinging to me, and we saw that it was a death’s-head moth drenched with rain.

The dark day passed slowly as we sat beside the fire, hand in hand, her head against my breast, speaking of sorrow and mystery and death. For Lys believed that there were things on earth that none might understand, things that must be nameless forever and ever, until God rolls up the scroll of life and all is ended. We spoke of hope and fear and faith, and the mystery of the saints; we spoke of the beginning and the end, of the shadow of sin, of omens, and of love. The moth still lay on the floor, quivering its sombre wings in the warmth of the fire, the skull and ribs clearly etched upon its neck and body.

“If it is a messenger of death to this house,” I said, “why should we fear, Lys?”

“Death should be welcome to those who love God,” murmured Lys, and she drew the cross from her breast and kissed it.

“The moth might die if I threw it out into the storm,” I said after a silence.

“Let it remain,” sighed Lys.

Late that night my wife lay sleeping, and I sat beside her bed and read in the Chronicle of Jacques Sorgue. I shaded the candle, but Lys grew restless, and finally I took the book down into the morning room, where the ashes of the fire rustled and whitened on the hearth.

The death’s-head moth lay on the rug before the fire where I had left it. At first I thought it was dead, but, when I looked closer I saw a lambent fire in its amber eyes. The straight white shadow it cast across the floor wavered as the candle flickered.

The pages of the Chronicle of Jacques Sorgue were damp and sticky; the illuminated gold and blue initials left flakes of azure and gilt where my hand brushed them.

“It is not paper at all; it is thin parchment,” I said to myself; and I held the discoloured page close to the candle flame and read, translating laboriously:

“I, Jacques Sorgue, saw all these things. And I saw the Black Mass celebrated in the chapel of St. Gildas-on-the-Cliff. And it was said by the Abbé Sorgue, my kinsman: for which deadly sin the apostate priest was seized by the most noble Marquis of Plougastel and by him condemned to be burned with hot irons, until his seared soul quit its body and fly to its master the devil. But when the Black Priest lay in the crypt of Plougastel, his master Satan came at night and set him free, and carried him across land and sea to Mahmoud, which is Soldan or Saladin. And I, Jacques Sorgue, travelling afterward by sea, beheld with my own eyes my kinsman, the Black Priest of St. Gildas, borne along in the air upon a vast black wing, which was the wing of his master Satan. And this was seen also by two men of the crew.”

I turned the page. The wings of the moth on the floor began to quiver. I read on and on, my eyes blurring under the shifting candle flame. I read of battles and of saints, and I learned how the great Soldan made his pact with Satan, and then I came to the Sieur de Trevec, and read how he seized the Black Priest in the midst of Saladin’s tents and carried him away and cut off his head, first branding him on the forehead. “And before he suffered,” said the Chronicle, “he cursed the Sieur de Trevec and his descendants, and he said he would surely return to St. Gildas. ‘For the violence you do to me, I will do violence to you. For the evil I suffer at your hands, I will work evil on you and your descendants. Woe to your children, Sieur de Trevec!’” There was a whirr, a beating of strong wings, and my candle flashed up as in a sudden breeze. A humming filled the room; the great moth darted hither and thither, beating, buzzing, on ceiling and wall. I flung down my book and stepped forward. Now it lay fluttering upon the window sill, and for a moment I had it under my hand, but the thing squeaked and I shrank back. Then suddenly it darted across the candle flame; the light flared and went out, and at the same moment a shadow moved in the darkness outside. I raised my eyes to the window. A masked face was peering in at me.

Quick as thought I whipped out my revolver and fired every cartridge, but the face advanced beyond the window, the glass melting away before it like mist, and through the smoke of my revolver I saw something creep swiftly into the room. Then I tried to cry out, but the thing was at my throat, and I fell backward among the ashes of the hearth.

•      •      •

When my eyes unclosed I was lying on the hearth, my head among the cold ashes. Slowly I got on my knees, rose painfully, and groped my way to a chair. On the floor lay my revolver, shining in the pale light of early morning. My mind clearing by degrees, I looked, shuddering, at the window. The glass was unbroken. I stooped stiffly, picked up my revolver and opened the cylinder. Every cartridge had been fired. Mechanically I closed the cylinder and placed the revolver in my pocket. The book, the Chronicles of Jacques Sorgue, lay on the table beside me, and as I started to close it I glanced at the page. It was all splashed with rain, and the lettering had run, so that the page was merely a confused blur of gold and red and black. As I stumbled toward the door I cast a fearful glance over my shoulder. The death’s-head moth crawled shivering on the rug.

IV

The sun was about three hours high. I must have slept, for I was aroused by the sudden gallop of horses under our window. People were shouting and calling in the road. I sprang up and opened the sash. Le Bihan was there, an image of helplessness, and Max Fortin stood beside him, polishing his glasses. Some gendarmes had just arrived from Quimperlé, and I could hear them around the corner of the house, stamping, and rattling their sabres and carbines, as they led their horses into my stable.

Lys sat up, murmuring half-sleepy, half-anxious questions.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I am going out to see what it means.”

“It is like the day they came to arrest you,” Lys said, giving me a troubled look. But I kissed her, and laughed at her until she smiled too. Then I flung on coat and cap and hurried down the stairs.

The first person I saw standing in the road was the Brigadier Durand.

“Hello!” said I, “have you come to arrest me again? What the devil is all this fuss about, anyway?”

“We were telegraphed for an hour ago,” said Durand briskly, “and for a sufficient reason, I think. Look there, Monsieur Darrel!”

He pointed to the ground almost under my feet.

“Good heavens!” I cried, “where did that puddle of blood come from?”

“That’s what I want to know, Monsieur Darrel. Max Fortin found it at daybreak. See, it’s splashed all over the grass, too. A trail of it leads into your garden, across the flower beds to your very window, the one that opens from the morning room. There is another trail leading from this spot across the road to the cliffs, then to the gravel pit, and thence across the moor to the forest of Kerselec. We are going to mount in a minute and search the bosquets. Will you join us? Bon Dieu! but the fellow bled like an ox. Max Fortin says it’s human blood, or I should not have believed it.”

The little chemist of Quimperlé came up at that moment, rubbing his glasses with a coloured handkerchief.

“Yes, it is human blood,” he said, “but one thing puzzles me: the corpuscles are yellow. I never saw any human blood before with yellow corpuscles. But your English Doctor Thompson asserts that he has—”

“Well, it’s human blood, anyway — isn’t it?” insisted Durand, impatiently.

“Ye-es,” admitted Max Fortin.

“Then it’s my business to trail it,” said the big gendarme, and he called his men and gave the order to mount.

“Did you hear anything last night?” asked Durand of me.

“I heard the rain. I wonder the rain did not wash away these traces.”

“They must have come after the rain ceased. See this thick splash, how it lies over and weighs down the wet grass blades. Pah!”

It was a heavy, evil-looking clot, and I stepped back from it, my throat closing in disgust.

“My theory,” said the brigadier, “is this: Some of those Biribi fishermen, probably the Icelanders, got an extra glass of cognac into their hides and quarrelled on the road. Some of them were slashed, and staggered to your house. But there is only one trail, and yet — and yet, how could all that blood come from only one person? Well, the wounded man, let us say, staggered first to your house and then back here, and he wandered off, drunk and dying, God knows where. That’s my theory.”

“A very good one,” said I calmly. “And you are going to trail him?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“At once. Will you come?”

“Not now. I’ll gallop over by-and-by. You are going to the edge of the Kerselec forest?”

“Yes; you will hear us calling. Are you coming, Max Fortin? And you, Le Bihan? Good; take the dog-cart.”

The big gendarme tramped around the corner to the stable and presently returned mounted on a strong grey horse; his sabre shone on his saddle; his pale yellow and white facings were spotless. The little crowd of white-coiffed women with their children fell back, as Durand touched spurs and clattered away followed by his two troopers. Soon after Le Bihan and Max Fortin also departed in the mayor’s dingy dog-cart.

“Are you coming?” piped Le Bihan shrilly.

“In a quarter of an hour,” I replied, and went back to the house.

When I opened the door of the morning room the death’s-head moth was beating its strong wings against the window. For a second I hesitated, then walked over and opened the sash. The creature fluttered out, whirred over the flower beds a moment, then darted across the moorland toward the sea. I called the servants together and questioned them. Josephine, Catherine, Jean Marie Tregunc, not one of them had heard the slightest disturbance during the night. Then I told Jean Marie to saddle my horse, and while I was speaking Lys came down.

“Dearest,” I began, going to her.

“You must tell me everything you know, Dick,” she interrupted, looking me earnestly in the face.

“But there is nothing to tell — only a drunken brawl, and someone wounded.”

“And you are going to ride — where, Dick?”

“Well, over to the edge of Kerselec forest. Durand and the mayor, and Max Fortin, have gone on, following a — a trail.”

“What trail?”

“Some blood.”

“Where did they find it?”

“Out in the road there.” Lys crossed herself.

“Does it come near our house?”

“Yes.”

“How near?”

“It comes up to the morning-room window,” said I, giving in.

Her hand on my arm grew heavy. “I dreamed last night—”

“So did I—” but I thought of the empty cartridges in my revolver, and stopped.

“I dreamed that you were in great danger, and I could not move hand or foot to save you; but you had your revolver, and I called out to you to fire — ”

“I did fire!” I cried excitedly.

“You — you fired?”

I took her in my arms. “My darling,” I said, “something strange has happened — something that I can not understand as yet. But, of course, there is an explanation. Last night I thought I fired at the Black Priest.”

“Ah!” gasped Lys.

“Is that what you dreamed?”

“Yes, yes, that was it! I begged you to fire — ”

“And I did.”

Her heart was beating against my breast. I held her close in silence.

“Dick,” she said at length, “perhaps you killed the — the thing.”

“If it was human I did not miss,” I answered grimly. “And it was human,” I went on, pulling myself together, ashamed of having so nearly gone to pieces. “Of course it was human! The whole affair is plain enough. Not a drunken brawl, as Durand thinks; it was a drunken lout’s practical joke, for which he has suffered. I suppose I must have filled him pretty full of bullets, and he has crawled away to die in Kerselec forest. It’s a terrible affair; I’m sorry I fired so hastily; but that idiot Le Bihan and Max Fortin have been working on my nerves till I am as hysterical as a schoolgirl,” I ended angrily.

“You fired — but the window glass was not shattered,” said Lys in a low voice.

“Well, the window was open, then. And as for the — the rest — I’ve got nervous indigestion, and a doctor will settle the Black Priest for me, Lys.”

I glanced out of the window at Tregunc waiting with my horse at the gate.

“Dearest, I think I had better go to join Durand and the others.”

“I will go too.”

“Oh, no!”

“Yes, Dick.”

“Don’t, Lys.”

“I shall suffer every moment you are away.”

“The ride is too fatiguing, and we can’t tell what unpleasant sight you may come upon. Lys, you don’t really think there is anything supernatural in this affair?”

“Dick,” she answered gently, “I am a Bretonne.” With both arms around my neck, my wife said, “Death is the gift of God. I do not fear it when we are together. But alone — oh, my husband, I should fear a God who could take you away from me!”

We kissed each other soberly, simply, like two children. Then Lys hurried away to change her gown, and I paced up and down the garden waiting for her.

She came, drawing on her slender gauntlets. I swung her into the saddle, gave a hasty order to Jean Marie, and mounted.

Now, to quail under thoughts of terror on a morning like this, with Lys in the saddle beside me, no matter what had happened or might happen, was impossible. Moreover, Môme came sneaking after us. I asked Tregunc to catch him, for I was afraid he might be brained by our horses’ hoofs if he followed, but the wily puppy dodged and bolted after Lys, who was trotting along the high-road. “Never mind,” I thought; “if he’s hit, he’ll live, for he has no brains to lose.”

Lys was waiting for me in the road beside the Shrine of Our Lady of St. Gildas when I joined her. She crossed herself, I doffed my cap, then we shook out our bridles and galloped toward the forest of Kerselec.

We said very little as we rode. I always loved to watch Lys in the saddle. Her exquisite figure and lovely face were the incarnation of youth and grace; her curling hair glistened like threaded gold.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the spoiled puppy Môme come bounding cheerfully alongside, oblivious of our horses’ heels. Our road swung close to the cliffs. A filthy cormorant rose from the black rocks and flapped heavily across our path. Lys’s horse reared, but she pulled him down, and pointed at the bird with her riding crop.

“I see,” said I; “it seems to be going our way. Curious to see a cormorant in a forest, isn’t it?”

“It is a bad sign,” said Lys. “You know the Morbihan proverb: ‘When the cormorant turns from the sea, Death laughs in the forest, and wise woodsmen build boats.’”

“I wish,” said I sincerely, “that there were fewer proverbs in Brittany.”

We were in sight of the forest now; across the gorse I could see the sparkle of gendarmes’ trappings, and the glitter of Le Bihan’s silver-buttoned jacket. The hedge was low and we took it without difficulty, and trotted across the moor to where Le Bihan and Durand stood gesticulating.

They bowed ceremoniously to Lys as we rode up.

“The trail is horrible — it is a river,” said the mayor in his squeaky voice. “Monsieur Darrel, I think perhaps madame would scarcely care to come any nearer.”

Lys drew bridle and looked at me.

“It is horrible!” said Durand, walking up beside me; “it looks as though a bleeding regiment had passed this way. The trail winds and winds about there in the thickets; we lose it at times, but we always find it again. I can’t understand how one man — no, nor twenty — could bleed like that!”

A halloo, answered by another, sounded from the depths of the forest.

“It’s my men; they are following the trail,” muttered the brigadier. “God alone knows what is at the end!”

“Shall we gallop back, Lys?” I asked.

“No; let us ride along the western edge of the woods and dismount. The sun is so hot now, and I should like to rest for a moment,” she said.

“The western forest is clear of anything disagreeable,” said Durand.

“Very well,” I answered; “call me, Le Bihan, if you find anything.”

Lys wheeled her mare, and I followed across the springy heather, Môme trotting cheerfully in the rear.

We entered the sunny woods about a quarter of a kilometer from where we left Durand. I took Lys from her horse, flung both bridles over a limb, and, giving my wife my arm, aided her to a flat mossy rock which overhung a shallow brook gurgling among the beech trees. Lys sat down and drew off her gauntlets. Môme pushed his head into her lap, received an undeserved caress, and came doubtfully toward me. I was weak enough to condone his offence, but I made him lie down at my feet, greatly to his disgust.

I rested my head on Lys’s knees, looking up at the sky through the crossed branches of the trees.

“I suppose I have killed him,” I said. “It shocks me terribly, Lys.”

“You could not have known, dear. He may have been a robber, and — if — not — Did — have you ever fired your revolver since that day four years ago, when the Red Admiral’s son tried to kill you? But I know you have not.”

“No,” said I, wondering. “It’s a fact, I have not. Why?”

“And don’t you remember that I asked you to let me load it for you the day when Yves went off, swearing to kill you and his father?”

“Yes, I do remember. Well?”

“Well, I — I took the cartridges first to St. Gildas chapel and dipped them in holy water. You must not laugh, Dick,” said Lys gently, laying her cool hands on my lips.

“Laugh, my darling!”

Overhead the October sky was pale amethyst, and the sunlight burned like orange flame through the yellow leaves of beech and oak. Gnats and midges danced and wavered overhead; a spider dropped from a twig halfway to the ground and hung suspended on the end of his gossamer thread.

“Are you sleepy, dear?” asked Lys, bending over me.

“I am — a little; I scarcely slept two hours last night,” I answered.

“You may sleep, if you wish,” said Lys, and touched my eyes caressingly.

“Is my head heavy on your knees?”

“No, Dick.”

I was already in a half doze; still I heard the brook babbling under the beeches and the humming of forest flies overhead. Presently even these were stilled.

The next thing I knew I was sitting bolt upright, my ears ringing with a scream, and I saw Lys cowering beside me, covering her white face with both hands.

As I sprang to my feet she cried again and clung to my knees. I saw my dog rush growling into a thicket, then I heard him whimper, and he came backing out, whining, ears flat, tail down. I stooped and disengaged Lys’s hand.

“Don’t go, Dick!” she cried. “O God, it’s the Black Priest!”

In a moment I had leaped across the brook and pushed my way into the thicket. It was empty. I stared about me; I scanned every tree trunk, every bush. Suddenly I saw him. He was seated on a fallen log, his head resting in his hands, his rusty black robe gathered around him. For a moment my hair stirred under my cap; sweat started on forehead and cheekbone; then I recovered my reason, and understood that the man was human and was probably wounded to death. Aye, to death; for there, at my feet, lay the wet trail of blood, over leaves and stones, down into the little hollow, across to the figure in black resting silently under the trees.

I saw that he could not escape even if he had the strength, for before him, almost at his very feet, lay a deep, shining swamp.

As I stepped forward my foot broke a twig. At the sound the figure started a little, then its head fell forward again. Its face was masked. Walking up to the man, I bade him tell where he was wounded. Durand and the others broke through the thicket at the same moment and hurried to my side.

“Who are you who hide a masked face in a priest’s robe?” said the gendarme loudly.

There was no answer.

“See — see the stiff blood all over his robe!” muttered Le Bihan to Fortin.

“He will not speak,” said I.

“He may be too badly wounded,” whispered Le Bihan.

“I saw him raise his head,” I said; “my wife saw him creep up here.”

Durand stepped forward and touched the figure.

“Speak!” he said.

“Speak!” quavered Fortin.

Durand waited a moment, then with a sudden upward movement he stripped off the mask and threw back the man’s head. We were looking into the eye sockets of a skull. Durand stood rigid; the mayor shrieked. The skeleton burst out from its rotting robes and collapsed on the ground before us. From between the staring ribs and the grinning teeth spurted a torrent of black blood, showering the shrinking grasses; then the thing shuddered, and fell over into the black ooze of the bog. Little bubbles of iridescent air appeared from the mud; the bones were slowly engulfed, and, as the last fragments sank out of sight, up from the depths and along the bank crept a creature, shiny, shivering, quivering its wings.

It was a death’s-head moth.

•      •      •      •      •      •

I wish I had time to tell you how Lys outgrew superstitions — for she never knew the truth about the affair, and she never will know, since she has promised not to read this book. I wish I might tell you about the king and his coronation, and how the coronation robe fitted. I wish that I were able to write how Yvonne and Herbert Stuart rode to a boar hunt in Quimperlé, and how the hounds raced the quarry right through the town, overturning three gendarmes, the notary, and an old woman. But I am becoming garrulous, and Lys is calling me to come and hear the king say that he is sleepy. And his Highness shall not be kept waiting.

THE KING’S CRADLE SONG

Seal with a seal of gold

The scroll of a life unrolled;

Swathe him deep in his purple stole;

Ashes of diamonds, crystalled coal,

Drops of gold in each scented fold.

Crimson wings of the Little Death,

Stir his hair with your silken breath;

Flaming wings of sins to be,

Splendid pinions of prophecy,

Smother his eyes with hues and dyes,

While the white moon spins and the winds arise,

And the stars drip through the skies.

Wave, O wings of the Little Death!

Seal his sight and stifle his breath,

Cover his breast with the gemmed shroud pressed;

From north to north, from west to west,

Wave, O wings of the Little Death!

Till the white moon reels in the cracking skies,

And the ghosts of God arise.

THE HAUNTED ORCHARD

Richard Le Gallienne

1912

Spring was once more in the world. As she sang to herself in the faraway woodlands her voice reached even the ears of the city, weary with the long winter. Daffodils flowered at the entrances to the Subway, furniture removing vans blocked the side streets, children clustered like blossoms on the doorsteps, the open cars were running, and the cry of the “cash clo’” man was once more heard in the land.

Yes, it was the spring, and the city dreamed wistfully of lilacs and the dewy piping of birds in gnarled old apple-trees, of dogwood lighting up with sudden silver the thickening woods, of water-plants unfolding their glossy scrolls in pools of morning freshness.

On Sunday mornings, the outbound trains were thronged with eager pilgrims, hastening out of the city, to behold once more the ancient marvel of the spring; and, on Sunday evenings, the railway termini were a-flower with banners of blossom from rifled woodland and orchard carried in the hands of the returning pilgrims, whose eyes still shone with the spring magic, in whose ears still sang the fairy music.

And as I beheld these signs of the vernal equinox I knew that I, too, must follow the music, forsake awhile the beautiful siren we call the city, and in the green silences meet once more my sweetheart Solitude.

As the train drew out of the Grand Central, I hummed to myself,

“I’ve a neater, sweeter maiden, in a greener, cleaner land”

and so I said good-bye to the city, and went forth with beating heart to meet the spring.

I had been told of an almost forgotten corner on the south coast of Connecticut, where the spring and I could live in an inviolate loneliness — a place uninhabited save by birds and blossoms, woods and thick grass, and an occasional silent farmer, and pervaded by the breath and shimmer of the Sound.

Nor had rumour lied, for when the train set me down at my destination I stepped out into the most wonderful green hush, a leafy Sabbath silence through which the very train, as it went farther on its way, seemed to steal as noiselessly as possible for fear of breaking the spell.

After a winter in the town, to be dropped thus suddenly into the intense quiet of the countryside makes an almost ghostly impression upon one, as of an enchanted silence, a silence that listens and watches but never speaks, finger on lip. There is a spectral quality about everything upon which the eye falls: the woods, like great green clouds, the wayside flowers, the still farmhouses half lost in orchard bloom — all seem to exist in a dream. Everything is so still, everything so supernaturally green. Nothing moves or talks, except the gentle susurrus of the spring wind swaying the young buds high up in the quiet sky, or a bird now and again, or a little brook singing softly to itself among the crowding rushes.

Though, from the houses one notes here and there, there are evidently human inhabitants of this green silence, none are to be seen. I have often wondered where the country-folk hide themselves, as I have walked hour after hour, past farm and croft and lonely dooryards, and never caught sight of a human face. If you should want to ask the way, a farmer is as shy as a squirrel, and if you knock at a farmhouse door, all is as silent as a rabbit-warren.

As I walked along in the enchanted stillness, I came at length to a quaint old farmhouse — “old Colonial” in its architecture — embowered in white lilacs, and surrounded by an orchard of ancient apple-trees which cast a rich shade on the deep spring grass. The orchard had the impressiveness of those old religious groves, dedicated to the strange worship of sylvan gods, gods to be found now only in Horace or Catullus, and in the hearts of young poets to whom the beautiful antique Latin is still dear.

The old house seemed already the abode of Solitude. As I lifted the latch of the white gate and walked across the forgotten grass, and up on to the veranda already festooned with wisteria, and looked into the window, I saw Solitude sitting by an old piano, on which no composer later than Bach had ever been played.

In other words, the house was empty; and going round to the back, where old barns and stables leaned together as if falling asleep, I found a broken pane, and so climbed in and walked through the echoing rooms. The house was very lonely. Evidently no one had lived in it for a long time. Yet it was all ready for some occupant, for whom it seemed to be waiting. Quaint old four-poster bedsteads stood in three rooms — dimity curtains and spotless linen — old oak chests and mahogany presses; and, opening drawers in Chippendale sideboards, I came upon beautiful frail old silver and exquisite china that set me thinking of a beautiful grandmother of mine, made out of old lace and laughing wrinkles and mischievous old blue eyes.

There was one little room that particularly interested me, a tiny bedroom all white, and at the window the red roses were already in bud. But what caught my eye with peculiar sympathy was a small bookcase, in which were some twenty or thirty volumes, wearing the same forgotten expression — forgotten and yet cared for — which lay like a kind of memorial charm upon everything in the old house. Yes, everything seemed forgotten and yet everything, curiously — even religiously — remembered. I took out book after book from the shelves, once or twice flowers fell out from the pages — and I caught sight of a delicate handwriting here and there and frail markings. It was evidently the little intimate library of a young girl. What surprised me most was to find that quite half the books were in French — French poets and French romancers: a charming, very rare edition of Ronsard, a beautifully printed edition of Alfred de Musset, and a copy of Théophile Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin. How did these exotic books come to be there alone in a deserted New England farmhouse?

This question was to be answered later in a strange way. Meanwhile I had fallen in love with the sad, old, silent place, and as I closed the white gate and was once more on the road, I looked about for someone who could tell me whether or not this house of ghosts might be rented for the summer by a comparatively living man.

I was referred to a fine old New England farmhouse shining white through the trees a quarter of a mile away. There I met an ancient couple, a typical New England farmer and his wife; the old man, lean, chin-bearded, with keen grey eyes flickering occasionally with a shrewd humour, the old lady with a kindly old face of the withered-apple type and ruddy. They were evidently prosperous people, but their minds — for some reason I could not at the moment divine — seemed to be divided between their New England desire to drive a hard bargain and their disinclination to let the house at all.

Over and over again they spoke of the loneliness of the place. They feared I would find it very lonely. No one had lived in it for a long time, and so on. It seemed to me that afterwards I understood their curious hesitation, but at the moment only regarded it as a part of the circuitous New England method of bargaining. At all events, the rent I offered finally overcame their disinclination, whatever its cause, and so I came into possession — for four months — of that silent old house, with the white lilacs, and the drowsy barns, and the old piano, and the strange orchard; and, as the summer came on, and the year changed its name from May to June, I used to lie under the apple-trees in the afternoons, dreamily reading some old book, and through half-sleepy eyelids watching the silken shimmer of the Sound.

I had lived in the old house for about a month, when one afternoon a strange thing happened to me. I remember the date well. It was the afternoon of Tuesday, June 13th. I was reading, or rather dipping here and there, in Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. As I read, I remember that a little unripe apple, with a petal or two of blossom still clinging to it, fell upon the old yellow page. Then I suppose I must have fallen into a dream, though it seemed to me that both my eyes and my ears were wide open, for I suddenly became aware of a beautiful young voice singing very softly somewhere among the leaves. The singing was very frail, almost imperceptible, as though it came out of the air. It came and went fitfully, like the elusive fragrance of sweetbrier — as though a girl was walking to and fro, dreamily humming to herself in the still afternoon. Yet there was no one to be seen. The orchard had never seemed more lonely. And another fact that struck me as strange was that the words that floated to me out of the aerial music were French, half sad, half gay snatches of some long-dead singer of old France, I looked about for the origin of the sweet sounds, but in vain. Could it be the birds that were singing in French in this strange orchard? Presently the voice seemed to come quite close to me, so near that it might have been the voice of a dryad singing to me out of the tree against which I was leaning. And this time I distinctly caught the words of the sad little song:

“Chante, rossignol, chante,

Toi qui as le coeur gai;

Tu as le coeur à rire,

Moi, je l’ai-t-à pleurer.”

But, though the voice was at my shoulder, I could see no one, and then the singing stopped with what sounded like a sob; and a moment or two later I seemed to hear a sound of sobbing far down the orchard. Then there followed silence, and I was left to ponder on the strange occurrence. Naturally, I decided that it was just a daydream between sleeping and waking over the pages of an old book; yet when next day and the day after the invisible singer was in the orchard again, I could not be satisfied with such mere matter-of-fact explanation.

“A la claire fontaine,”

went the voice to and fro through the thick orchard boughs,

“M’en allant promener,

J’ai trouvé l’eau si belle

Que je m’y suis baigné,

Lui y a longtemps que je t’aime,

Jamais je ne t’oubliai.”

It was certainly uncanny to hear that voice going to and fro the orchard, there somewhere amid the bright sun-dazzled boughs — yet not a human creature to be seen — not another house even within half a mile. The most materialistic mind could hardly but conclude that here was something “not dreamed of in our philosophy.” It seemed to me that the only reasonable explanation was the entirely irrational one — that my orchard was haunted: haunted by some beautiful young spirit, with some sorrow of lost joy that would not let her sleep quietly in her grave.

And next day I had a curious confirmation of my theory. Once more I was lying under my favourite apple-tree, half reading and half watching the Sound, lulled into a dream by the whir of insects and the spices called up from the earth by the hot sun. As I bent over the page, I suddenly had the startling impression that someone was leaning over my shoulder and reading with me, and that a girl’s long hair was falling over me down on to the page. The book was the Ronsard I had found in the little bedroom. I turned, but again there was nothing there. Yet this time I knew that I had not been dreaming, and I cried out:

“Poor child! tell me of your grief — that I may help your sorrowing heart to rest.”

But, of course, there was no answer; yet that night I dreamed a strange dream. I thought I was in the orchard again in the afternoon and once again heard the strange singing — but this time, as I looked up, the singer was no longer invisible. Coming toward me was a young girl with wonderful blue eyes filled with tears and gold hair that fell to her waist. She wore a straight, white robe that might have been a shroud or a bridal dress. She appeared not to see me, though she came directly to the tree where I was sitting. And there she knelt and buried her face in the grass and sobbed as if her heart would break. Her long hair fell over her like a mantle, and in my dream I stroked it pityingly and murmured words of comfort for a sorrow I did not understand…. Then I woke suddenly as one does from dreams. The moon was shining brightly into the room. Rising from my bed, I looked out into the orchard. It was almost as bright as day. I could plainly see the tree of which I had been dreaming, and then a fantastic notion possessed me. Slipping on my clothes, I went out into one of the old barns and found a spade. Then I went to the tree where I had seen the girl weeping in my dream and dug down at its foot.

I had dug little more than a foot when my spade struck upon some hard substance, and in a few more moments I had uncovered and exhumed a small box, which, on examination, proved to be one of those pretty old-fashioned Chippendale work-boxes used by our grandmothers to keep their thimbles and needles in, their reels of cotton and skeins of silk. After smoothing down the little grave in which I had found it, I carried the box into the house, and under the lamplight examined its contents.

Then at once I understood why that sad young spirit went to and fro the orchard singing those little French songs — for the treasure-trove I had found under the apple-tree, the buried treasure of an unquiet, suffering soul, proved to be a number of love-letters written mostly in French in a very picturesque hand — letters, too, written but some five or six years before. Perhaps I should not have read them — yet I read them with such reverence for the beautiful, impassioned love that animated them, and literally made them “smell sweet and blossom in the dust,” that I felt I had the sanction of the dead to make myself the confidant of their story. Among the letters were little songs, two of which I had heard the strange young voice singing in the orchard, and, of course, there were many withered flowers and such like remembrances of bygone rapture.

Not that night could I make out all the story, though it was not difficult to define its essential tragedy, and later on a gossip in the neighbourhood and a headstone in the churchyard told me the rest. The unquiet young soul that had sung so wistfully to and fro the orchard was my landlord’s daughter. She was the only child of her parents, a beautiful, willful girl, exotically unlike those from whom she was sprung and among whom she lived with a disdainful air of exile. She was, as a child, a little creature of fairy fancies, and as she grew up it was plain to her father and mother that she had come from another world than theirs. To them she seemed like a child in an old fairytale strangely found on his hearth by some shepherd as he returns from the fields at evening — a little fairy girl swaddled in fine linen, and dowered with a mysterious bag of gold.

Soon she developed delicate spiritual needs to which her simple parents were strangers. From long truancies in the woods she would come home laden with mysterious flowers, and soon she came to ask for books and pictures and music, of which the poor souls that had given her birth had never heard. Finally she had her way, and went to study at a certain fashionable college; and there the brief romance of her life began. There she met a romantic young Frenchman who had read Ronsard to her and written her those picturesque letters I had found in the old mahogany work-box. And after a while the young Frenchman had gone back to France, and the letters had ceased. Month by month went by, and at length one day, as she sat wistful at the window, looking out at the foolish sunlit road, a message came. He was dead. That headstone in the village churchyard tells the rest. She was very young to die — scarcely nineteen years; and the dead who have died young, with all their hopes and dreams still like unfolded buds within their hearts, do not rest so quietly in the grave as those who have gone through the long day from morning until evening and are only too glad to sleep.

•   •   •

Next day I took the little box to a quiet corner of the orchard, and made a little pyre of fragrant boughs — for so I interpreted the wish of that young, unquiet spirit — and the beautiful words are now safe, taken up again into the aerial spaces from which they came.

But since then the birds sing no more little French songs in my old orchard.

THE DOOMED MAN

Dick Donovan

1899

It was in the year 1847, as our family business and trade were spreading, that I opened a branch of our London house in Cuba, and placed a trusted and experienced manager in charge. Unfortunately this gentleman died in 1850 of yellow fever, and it became necessary that I should proceed at once to Cuba to look into matters, and appoint a successor to the deceased manager. A City friend recommended me to take passage in a sailing vessel called the Pride of the Ocean, belonging to a Liverpool firm, and then loading in the Liverpool docks, being chartered to proceed direct to Cuba. I thereupon applied to the owners, and engaged my passage in her. She was a full-rigged ship of about a thousand tons, and was reputed to be able to sail with a fair wind seventeen knots, being clipper built.

I arrived in Liverpool on the very day that the ship was advertised to sail. I was informed that she would leave the dock at midnight, when it would be high-water, and that two tugs would tow her beyond Holyhead. I did not reach Liverpool until the evening, and drove at once from the railway station to the vessel and got on board the ship as the dock gates were being opened. Being very tired I went straight to bed, and the next morning, as the sea was very rough, I could not get up, as I am a poor sailor, and generally ill for three or four days at the commencement of a voyage. On this occasion it was a full week before I found my sea legs and sea stomach, and one morning I took my place at the breakfast table for the first time, and was welcomed and greeted by the captain, whom I had not seen before. We were a very small party, as there were only three passengers beside myself, one being a Spanish lady who had been transacting some business in England on behalf of her husband, who was a Cuban planter.

The captain’s name was Jubal Tredegar, a native of Cornwall. He was about fifty and; had been at sea for over thirty years. He had a swarthy sunburnt face, very dark hair, and black eyes, with a full, rounded beard, but clean-shaven upper lip.

In every respect he was a typical sailor, save in one thing — he was the most melancholy seaman I have ever come across. It is proverbial of sailors that they are a rollicking, jovial set; but this man was the exception to the rule, and he at once gave me the impression that he had something, on his mind. My sympathies were in consequence of this aroused, and I mentally resolved that I would endeavour to win his confidence, in the hope that I might be of use to him.

At first, however, I found that he was inclined to be taciturn, and resent any attempt to draw him out; but I learnt from the mate that Tredegar had commanded the ship for three voyages, and was highly respected by the owners. He was a thoroughly experienced navigator, and studied his owners’ interests. There was one thing I could not fail to note; he showed a disposition to talk more to me than to any one else, and discovering that he played a good game of cribbage — a game I was particularly partial to — I got into closer touch with him, as one evening he accepted my invitation to a game, and after that we played whenever opportunity offered. But still he became neither Communicative nor talkative, and no subject I could start appeared to have any interest for him.

We were playing one night in the cuddy after supper, when I noticed that he seemed more than usually depressed, and kept examining the barometer and casting an anxious eye up through the skylight.

“What does the glass say, captain?” I asked at last.

“Well,” he answered, “I think we are going to have a blow. There is dirty weather about somewhere.”

When four bells (ten o’clock) struck we finished our game and he went into his cabin, while I mounted the companion-way to the poop, intending to smoke my usual cigar before turning in. I had run short of cigars, and the captain had promised to let me have a box of good Havanas, but not until I reached the deck did I remember that I had not a single weed in my case, so I went below again, and to the skipper’s room, intending to ask him for the cigars. Getting no response to my knock I pushed the door open and was surprised to see him seated at his table, so absorbed in gazing at the photograph of a lady that he had not heard my knock. On perceiving me, he hastily thrust the photograph into a drawer and jumped up. I noticed him pass his hands over his eyes and turn away as if ashamed, pretending to search for something on the top of a chest of drawers. I thought it was an opportunity not to be lost so I said to him:

“Pray excuse my intrusion; I knocked but you didn’t hear me. I would also take the liberty of saying I respect your emotion. A man need not be ashamed of moist eyes when he gazes on the face of some loved one who is far away. It’s human. It shows a kindly heart, an impressionable mind!”

He turned suddenly and, putting out his hand to me, said: “Thank you, thank you, Mr. Gibling! You are a good sort. A little sympathy sometimes is not a bad thing, and, hardened old shellback as I am, I suppose I’ve got a soft spot somewhere. But, excuse me, I must go on deck.”

I made known my errand, and having procured the box of cigars for me from his locker, I carried them to my cabin, and he went on deck, and when I had opened the box and taken two or three cigars out I followed him. The night was very dark. Nearly all the sails were set. There was an unpleasant, lumpy sea, and the wind was blowing in fitful gusts.

The captain ordered the watch to shorten sail, but before the order was entirely carried out a squall struck us, and the vessel heeled over tremendously and commenced to fly through the water, churning the sea around her into white, flashing, phosphorescent froth. Anyone who has ever made a voyage in a sailing ship knows the apparent, and often real, confusion that ensues when a sudden squall strikes the vessel. At such times the wind will frequently blow for a few minutes with hurricane force, and it is no unusual thing for sails to be split to ribbons — even for spars to be carried away. Given a dark night, a heavy squall, a rough sea, rent sails, and the land lubber who is unmoved must be made of very stern stuff. The rifle-like report and cracking of the long shreds of the torn sail are alarming enough to the inexperienced; but when you add to this the rattling of the ropes, the banging of blocks, the groaning of the ship’s timbers, the harsh creaking of the spars, the roar, swish and hiss of the waves, the great masses of boiling white foam that spread around, and the hoarse voices of men on deck to unseen men up above on the yardarms in the mysterious darkness, there is at once a scene which tests the nerves of the landsman to a very considerable extent.

The squall that struck the Pride of the Ocean was very heavy, and the main topsail went to ribbons. The skipper, who was a perfect seaman, issued his orders rapidly, but with judgment and a display of self-possession, while his officers ably seconded him. Three or four times he came close to me as he shifted his position on the poop, the better to make his voice heard above the howling of the wind. I did not attempt to address him, knowing full well that at such a moment he required to concentrate all his attention on his duties. Once, when he came near me, I heard him mutter — “My God, my God, have pity on me!” It may be imagined to what an extent I was affected by this utterance. Had he said, “Have pity on us,” I should at once have jumped to the conclusion that we were all in danger, but the cry for pity was for himself alone. It set me pondering, and connecting it with his usual melancholy, and the sad and distressful expression of his face, I was not only puzzled but anxious. A few minutes later, as the ship did not pay off as rapidly as she should have done, Captain Tredegar ran to the wheel to help the helmsman to jam the rudder harder over, and as he glanced at the binnacle and his features were illumined by the light from the lamp, I was perfectly startled by his ghastly pallor. To such an extent was I moved that I rushed to him and asked if he was ill. With a powerful sweep of his right arm he moved me from before him, and in tones of terror exclaimed — “There it is again! There, out there on the crest of that wave!” I peered into the darkness, but could see nothing save the phosphorescent gleam of the tumbling sea.

By this time I was quite unnerved, for a dreadful thought took possession of me. I thought that the skipper was suffering from incipient madness.

In a few minutes, having got the wheel well over, he called one of the watch aft to assist the steersman, and he himself went forward to the break of the poop, and continued to give his orders. By this time the men had got the flying ropes and flapping sails under control, and, the dark scud in the heavens driving to leeward before the hurricane blast, the moon peeped through the ragged film and threw a weird, ghostly gleam of shimmering light over the swirling waters, while the track of the squall could be followed as it drove down the heavens.

As is often the case, at the tail of the great blast was a deluge. It was as if some huge door in the sky had been opened and the waters fell out in a cataract. I hurried below, as I had no desire to be soaked to the skin, and when I reached the cuddy I found the Spanish lady passenger seated at the table, looking very scared and unhappy.

“Oh, Mr. Gibling,” she exclaimed, “is there any danger? What an awful storm!”

I assured her that all was well, and that the rain would probably bring a dead calm.

“Did you see the captain?’ she asked, still displaying great agitation.

There was something in her manner and the tone of her voice that struck me as peculiar, and I replied:

“Yes. I saw him on deck.”

“Ah, but I mean here. He has just come down and gone to his room. I spoke to him, but he would not answer me. He looked awful. I am sure there is something queer about him. His eyes seemed bulging from his head, and if he had seen a ghost he couldn’t have been whiter. He is either ill or going mad. Do go to him.”

The lady’s words did not tend to allay my own fears and suspicions, but, anxious not to add to her alarm, I said with an air of assumed indifference:

“The fact is, I suppose, he is over-anxious. Not that there is anything to fear, I am sure. We are in the squall zone, you know, but there is every prospect of making a good passage. However, I will go and talk to the captain.”

So saying, I left her, and made my way to the skipper’s state room. I knocked as usual, but again there was no response; so I pushed the door open, and found Captain Tredegar seated in his chair, his body bent over the table, and his face hidden by his arms. His cap had fallen off and was lying on the table, and I noted that his hands were opening and shutting in a spasmodic, nervous way. It was no time for ceremony. I should have been dull indeed not to recognize that the man was suffering. I therefore went to his side, and laying my hand on his shoulder said sympathetically:

“Excuse me, Captain Tredegar, but you are not well. Can I do anything for you? Do make a confidant of me. Believe me I am not actuated by mere vulgar curiosity. Pray command my services if I can be of any use.”

He lifted his head up. I had never seen before in any human face such a pronounced look of nervous horror. His eyes wandered about the room; the corners of his mouth twitched, and he sobbed like a child that had cried itself into a state of physical exhaustion. I was positively alarmed, and my first impulse was to run for assistance. As if divining my thoughts he seized my wrist in his powerful hand, and said in a broken voice:

“Pardon me, sir, you are very good. I am suffering from an attack to which I am at rare intervals subject; but I shall be all right directly. Please don’t make a scene. There is some rum there in that bottle, give me a little drop. It will set me up.” Although I was doubtful whether rum was the proper remedy in such a case, I could not resist his appealing manner, and taking the bottle from the rack I poured into a glass about a tablespoonful.

“Oh, more than that, more than that,” he cried. “Fill the glass nearly.”

Perhaps at any other time I should have argued against his request, but I let the rum run from the bottle until the tumbler was quite half-full. He clutched it with trembling hand, and poured the contents at one gulp down his throat.

“Thanks, thanks,” he said, as he recovered his breath and placed the glass on the table. “That will put new life into me. I feel better already.”

He rose, shuddered as he did so, and took his sou’wester and oilskin from a peg. He put a hand on each of my shoulders, and looking me in the face, said with an impressive earnestness:

“Mr. Gibling, I am more than obliged to you. Add to my obligation, will you, by promising not to mention to anyone that you have seen me in one of my strange moods.”

“Certainly I will,” I replied. “You may trust me. And, as I have said, if I can be of service command me.”

“Very well; someday I may put you to the test,” he answered; “good-night, and God bless you.”

He left me, and I heard him clatter up the gangway in his great boots. As I crossed towards my own cabin the Spanish lady was still sitting at the cuddy table.

“Have you been with the captain?” she asked.

“I have,” I replied.

“How is he?”

“He is all right,” I answered lightly.

She glanced about the cuddy as if to make sure no one was listening, and then, bending towards me as if inviting confidence, she said in a half whisper:

“Do you know, Mr. Gibling, when the captain came down from the deck a little while ago there was such a peculiar look in his face that I could almost have fancied he—”

She stopped suddenly in her speech, visibly shuddered, and put her pretty white fingers before her eyes. After an awkward pause I broke the silence by saying:

“Almost fancied he — what?”

“He had seen some gruesome and unnatural sight.”

I laughed, though I had an inkling of her meaning, for strangely enough a vague, phantom-like thought had been troubling me; but I could not define it, could not give it shape; now at her words it was clear enough and an uncontrollable impulse impelled me to give it utterance:

“Ghosts, you mean,” and I laughed at my own words, for the idea seemed to me utterly ridiculous. But not so to the lady. Her face assumed a graver aspect, and her eyes betrayed that whatever my views might be her mind was made up.

“What I mean is, he has seen a vision,” she remarked, with awe in her voice.

“Oh, nonsense,” I exclaimed. “Hobgoblins and bogeys belong to the period of our childhood. When we come to years of discretion we should cease to be childish.”

My remark annoyed her. She rose and curled her lip disdainfully. “I am not childish and I don’t talk nonsense,” she said, as she swept past me without so much as giving me a chance to apologize. I felt annoyed with myself for having been so tactless, but otherwise laughed mentally at what I considered the absurdity of the position.

A few minutes later I went on deck to finish my final smoke before turning in. The rain had ceased and the air was delightfully cool. The wind had gone, the sky was a mass of picturesque clouds with fantastic outlines. Here and there groups of stars were visible, and with chastened light, as if shining through gauze, the moon made a silver pathway over the face of the deep until it blended with the horizon in impenetrable blackness, which rounded off the weird scene. The captain had discarded his oilskins, which were lying on the top of a hen-coop, and he was leaning on his elbows over the taffrail, complacently smoking a cigar, and absorbed apparently in the contemplation of the phosphoric display that flashed and glistened under the ship’s counter as she fell and rose to the swell. I approached him. He straightened up, turned his back to the rail, folded his arms across his breast, and puffing at his cigar as he cast a scrutinizing eye aloft at the flapping sails, he said in a cheerful tone:

“Quite a contrast to a little while ago, isn’t it, Mr. Gibling? But it’s the sort of weather we must expect in these latitudes.”

I was struck by his changed-manner. He seemed so cheerful and light-hearted. He wasn’t the same man I had seen down in the cabin half an hour ago.

“Yes, I suppose so,” I remarked, for the sake of saying something.

“It’s not your first voyage to sea, is it?” he asked.

“No.”

“Have you been to Cuba before?”

“Oh yes.”

“Ah! Then you will know pretty well what kind of voyage it is.”

I told him that I knew fairly well what one might expect on such a voyage at that time of the year, and we continued to chat pleasantly for a little while until six bells struck (eleven o’clock). “All’s well!” came in solemn tones from the look-out man on the fo’c’stle.

“Well, I think I shall turn in,” said the captain, as he threw the stump of his cigar overboard, glanced up aloft, then at the binnacle, and calling the second officer who was on watch, and telling him to keep the ship on the same course until the morning, he moved towards the companion-way, and I followed. When we reached the saloon he put out his hand. As I took it he said “Good-night,” and immediately added in lower tones, “Don’t forget your promise.”

I turned in and tried to sleep, but for a long time tossed about, thinking of what had passed, and trying to account for the captain’s strange behaviour; but the more I thought the more I got puzzled, and I came to the conclusion there was some strange mystery about him. I saw through my port the sun beginning to redden the eastern horizon before sleep came to me. I did not waken until long after the usual breakfast hour, so I breakfasted alone.

When I went on deck I noticed the Spanish lady reclining in a deckchair. She was reading a book, and perhaps that accounted for her taking no notice of me as I bowed and said “Good-morning.”

The sun was shining brilliantly. The sky was cloudless save on the horizon, where there were woolly banks. A steady little breeze just kept the sails full, and the short, choppy waves danced and flashed in the sunlight. The captain was not on deck, and I was informed by the second mate that he had not turned out yet. Wishing to propitiate the Spanish lady passenger, I carried a camp stool to where she was sitting, and in the most fascinating manner I was capable of commanding I asked if I could sit beside her. She smiled sweetly, and accorded her gracious permission. We said some commonplace things about the weather; she descanted on the tropical beauties of Cuba, and criticized rather severely the English climate; while as for London, she spoke of it with scorn and much shrugging of shoulders.

When she paused, I embraced the opportunity to turn the trend of conversation by saying:

“I am afraid that I was a little rude to you last night.” But I hardly expected such a blunt reply as she made.

“Yes, you were exceedingly rude, and I hate rude men.”

“I hope you don’t hate me,” I cried, laughingly.

“Oh no, not quite. You’re a Londoner, you see.”

This was very severe. I confess I was hardly prepared for it, and I was tempted to say something cutting in reply, but checked myself, bowed, and merely remarked:

“Which is not my fault. Therefore pity me rather than blame me.”

“Certainly I do that,” she replied, with an amusing seriousness. “But look here; answer me this. Why should you have been rude last night when I said what I did about the captain?”

“Madame,” I said, as I laid my hand on my heart and bowed, “believe me I had no intention of being rude; but the fact is, I am a somewhat commonplace, matter-of-fact man, and I have no belief in anything that is said to be due to supernatural causes.”

“Supernatural or not supernatural,” she retorted, “there are things going on around us which certainly cannot be explained by any known laws.”

“Possibly, and yet I doubt it,” I replied, with a sceptical smile.

“Well, your obtuseness is your own affair,” she said, with a shrug of her shoulders; “but now, look here, Mr. Gibling, permit me to make a little prophecy. Captain Tredegar has something awful on his mind. He sees visions, and will ultimately go mad.”

Her words startled me. For the first time I was inclined to regard her seriously, in one respect at least; that was the ultimate madness of the skipper. That thought had haunted me, but I had tried to put it away. Even to my somewhat dulled perception it had been made evident that a man who could act as Tredegar had acted on the previous night was a victim to some obscure form of mental disease which might ultimately destroy him. Now the lady spoke with such an absence of vagueness that I asked her if she had known the captain long, and if she was acquainted with his past history.

“Indeed, no,” she exclaimed. “I never saw the man in my life until I joined the ship in Liverpool.”

“Then why do you speak with such an air of self-conviction?”

“I speak as I think. I think as I know.”

“But how do you know?”

“Well, you are stupid,” she exclaimed, with a show of exasperation. “I know, because I have a sense you don’t possess. I was born where the sun shines. I have beliefs you have not. I believe that men who do evil in this world can be haunted into madness by the disembodied spirits of those they injure. Now you may laugh and sneer as much as you like, sir, but I tell you this: when Captain Tredegar came down to the cabin last night his face clearly indicated that he had been terrified by something not human, and I saw madness written large in his eyes.”

I should be wanting in common honesty if I failed to say that this woman’s remarks put certain rambling thoughts of my own into shape, impressed me in a way that a short time previously I should have been ashamed to own to. They set me pondering, and I tried to recall every act, word, look and gesture of the captain’s, with the result that I had to admit there was something strange about him. At that moment Captain Tredegar himself came on deck. His breezy, jovial manner, and smiling bronzed face, seemed to make the conversation about him ridiculous, and tended to confound the prophet who had talked of madness.

He bowed politely to the lady, and chatted to her pleasantly. He greeted me with a cheery “Good-morning,” and expressed a hope that neither of us had been much alarmed by the squall of the previous evening. He said the passage was going to be a splendid one; one of the best he had ever made; and if, as he anticipated we should do, we picked up a good slant of wind when we had made a little more westing, we should reach Cuba several days before the time we were expected.

The mate now came on deck and he and the captain walked to the break of the poop. When he was out of earshot I turned to the lady and said;

“He doesn’t look much like a man who is given to seeing visions and is doomed to madness, does he?”

“You cannot see beneath the mask,” she replied, with another contemptuous curl of her lip; and she added somewhat mysteriously, “Wait, wait, wait,” repeating the word three times, with a rising inflection on each repetition. Then she turned to her book again, as if she wished me to understand that she would say no more. I took the hint, and making a show of stretching my limbs, I rose and began to pace up and down. The subject of the conversation between me and the lady continued to occupy my thoughts against my will, and the more I thought the more like a riddle did the captain appear to me. I was really astonished to find myself taking so much interest in him. If Captain Tredegar had been a relative of mine, my own brother, in fact, I could hardly have felt more anxious or more desirous to solve the mystery that seemed to surround him. His appearance that morning, and his appearance and behaviour of the night before, were in such violent contrast that to put it down to the merely varying moods to which we are all liable was not satisfactory enough. What puzzled me more than anything else was his behaviour during the storm. To suppose that he was a coward and lost his nerve in a passing squall was absurd on the face of it. In the very height of the storm he delivered his orders with coolness and judgment, as I could testify, but what did he mean by exclaiming: There it is again! There, out there on the crest of that wave? Then again, why the appeal to God to pity him? Having perplexed and fretted myself until I felt quite confused, I found myself unable to alter the original opinion I had formed, which was that Captain Tredegar was liable to attacks of mental aberration, and that being so he was not a fit person to have charge of a valuable vessel and her living freight.

Viewing the matter from this point, I came to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly, that it was my bounden duty as an honest man to make representations to his owners as to the skipper’s state of mind; for surely no one would say that a man liable to attacks of temporary mania was the proper person to be in charge of a ship. As I came to this decision I heard the captain call out from the break of the poop:

“Make eight bells.”

The boatswain struck the hour on the bell, and “eight bells” was roared out by the men about the decks. I was recalled to a sense of my surroundings and as the skipper passed me, he said cheerily:

“Well, Mr. Gibling. It’s time to splice the main brace, isn’t it?”

I may explain for the benefit of those who have not made a voyage to sea that it is customary in most passenger vessels for the passengers to partake of a glass of liquor of some kind at noon, eight bells. This, in nautical phraseology, is termed “splicing the main brace.” It is the most interesting period of the twenty-four hours to lands-people, because the captain and his officers having taken their sights, as it is called, they proceed to work them out, in order to discover the position of the ship; that is, her latitude and longitude, and that being done, it is marked on the chart.

As I accompanied the skipper to the cuddy, I began to think that perhaps after all I was doing him a wrong, and it would be unfair to say anything to his owners until I had received stronger proof that my suspicions were well founded. Certainly, as he sat at the table making his calculations and working out the position, he not only seemed the perfection of physical fitness, but fully endowed with keen and sound intelligence. As I noted this I came to the conclusion that it was no less my duty to suspend my judgment — than to watch closely and wait patiently.

I wish it to be distinctly understood that at this period of the voyage I was halting between two opinions. On the one hand, I considered Captain Tredegar peculiar in many respects — a man of mystery, in short — and on the other, I was painfully anxious not to do him an injustice. It will also be noted that the conclusions arrived at by the Spanish lady, who was an emotional and superstitious woman, were not in accordance with my own. For according to her views, the captain’s strange behaviour was the result of seeing visions; according to mine, he suffered from intermittent mania, which was probably traceable to a too free indulgence in rum or other potent liquors. Not that I had ever seen him the worse for drink, but he took a good deal more than was good for him, in my opinion, though it did not affect him as it would have done others who were not so case-hardened.

For the next few days our progress was not very satisfactory, owing to the light, variable winds. For a steamer it would have been almost ideal weather, but dependent as we were on the winds, it was very tantalizing. During this time the skipper continued in his bright, cheery mood, and every evening at a fixed hour we sat down in the cabin for a game of cribbage. I took to studying him very closely, and from many little signs I saw I felt pretty certain that a great deal of his light-hearted manner was assumed. Occasionally I noted a strange wild look came into his eyes, and his cheeks paled as though some deadly fear had seized him. A mere casual observer would have failed to notice these signs, but my perception had been quickened. I was ever on the alert, on the watch, and there was not much that escaped me.

A change came at last. One evening when I expected the skipper to take part in the usual game of cribbage he brusquely and rudely refused, and I saw the half-sullen, half-terrified expression in his face again. I thought it very peculiar that his mood should synchronize with a change in the weather. The barometer had been falling all day, and it was only too evident that we were going to have a dirty night. As the sun got low in the heavens, heavy banks of clouds came up, and the wind rapidly strengthened, until we had to shorten sail to such an extent that very little canvas remained set. The captain seemed extremely anxious. He walked up and down the poop in a restless, nervous way. Occasionally he stopped to gaze windward, and sometimes he muttered to himself. I resolved at last to speak to him, anxious and preoccupied as he was. So I went boldly up to him and said:

“We are evidently in for a change, don’t you think so?”

He turned upon me with a dark, lowering face, his brow knit, and his whole manner that of one straining under suppressed passion.

“Yes, I do,” he answered excitedly, “damn you. Anyway, I’m a doomed man.”

He walked rapidly away without another word, and I stood for some little time dumbfounded. Anyone who could speak in such a manner was surely mad, and I seriously considered it was my business to take counsel with my fellow passengers, if not with the officers of the ship, for a mad captain ought to be relieved of his responsible duties in the interest of every soul on board. But before I could stir away the man himself came back to me, and said in a most pathetic and appealing way that went to my heart:

“Pray pardon my rudeness, Mr. Gibling. You don’t know how I’m troubled. I am suffering dreadfully, and if you knew all you would pity rather than blame me.”

“Why not place me in possession of the information, then?” I asked. He put his hand to his eyes for a moment or two and shuddered.

“It is so dreadful, so horrible,” he muttered mysteriously, speaking rather to himself than me.

“All the more reason, then, why you should take me into your confidence,” I said.

“Yes — perhaps you are right. I will. Come to my cabin in half an hour and I will tell you the awful story.”

Further conversation was interrupted by the bursting of a squall accompanied by heavy rain, while a long swell that came up was a sure precursor of the coming gales, of which squalls were only the heralds.

I at once descended to the cabin to get out of the rain, but quite half an hour passed before the captain came down. He passed me without speaking, but called the steward and ordered some tea to be taken to his cabin. And when another half-hour had elapsed the steward brought me a message to the effect that Captain Tredegar wished to see me in his room. The weather had now become very bad and the ship was labouring heavily. I found the captain seated at his table with a small Bible open before him, but which he closed and tossed into his bunk as I entered. He looked pale, ill, and careworn. He asked me to sit down, and remarked:

“You have shown much interest in me, sir, and instinctively I feel I can place confidence in you. The time has now come for me to speak, or be dumb for evermore. I am a doomed man. My fate is sealed, and it is that fearful certainty that weighs upon me like a ton of lead.”

His words and manner seemed to me unmistakably to indicate insanity, and I could not repress a feeling of alarm. He must have guessed my thoughts, for he said quickly:

“Don’t alarm yourself, and bear with me patiently; my brain is perfectly clear, and I know what I am doing, although a stranger might be disposed to think I was labouring under a distempered imagination. But it is not so. An awful fear takes possession of me and unmans me. It paralyses my faculties and renders life a curse instead of a blessing.”

“A fear of what?” I asked.

“Of the dead,” he answered solemnly.

I looked hard at him again. That surely was not the answer of a sane man.

“What nonsense,” I said a little sharply. “What harm can the dead do to the living? I gave you credit for being stronger minded than that. It is clear to me now that you are allowing yourself to sink into a morbid, nervous condition, that must end disastrously. Why on earth should you embitter your existence by imaginary evils? Shake yourself free of morbid, gloomy forebodings; be a man, and if you are a just one you need fear nothing, not even the living, let alone the dead.”

He did not attempt to interrupt this little outburst on my part, which perhaps was hardly justified. But I could not restrain myself. I was compelled to give vent to my thoughts.

“You mean well, Mr. Gibling,” he remarked, with perfect self-possession, when I had finished speaking, “and I understand your feelings; but before condemning me, before allowing your wrath to run away with your judgment, be patient and listen to me as you promised to do. This may be the only opportunity that will ever occur for me to tell you my story.”

“Pray proceed,” I remarked; “perhaps I have been somewhat hasty; you will find, however, that I am a good listener, and under any circumstances you may count on my sympathy.”

He remained silent for some minutes, his elbows on the table, his hands clasping his face, his eyes seemingly fixed on vacancy. He started and came to himself again.

“Mr. Gibling,” he began, “I have a very strange story to tell you if you care to listen to it. Whatever your feelings are now, however sceptical you may be, I fancy your views will undergo a change by the time I have done. I repeat that I am a doomed man. My sands have nearly run out, and I must say what I have to say now or never.”

“Please go on,” I said as he paused, evidently waiting for me to speak.

“Very well,” he continued, “I’ll begin at the beginning. As you know, I am a Cornishman; I come from a race of seamen; the salt of the sea flows in my veins. What education I received was got at a school in Devonshire, where I passed nearly nine years of my life. At that school I had a chum. We were inseparable. We were more like brothers. His name was Peter Gibson. He was three or four years my senior, and was a rough, wild, boorish sort of fellow; not good at picking up the routine knowledge of a school training, but as sharp as a needle, with an insatiable thirst for stories of fighting and adventure. In this line he would read everything he got hold of, and one day he said to me; ‘Jubal, I intend to go to sea, and I’m going to be a devil; will you stick to me?’ he asked.

“‘Yes,’ I answered in a moment of boyish enthusiasm. He had great influence over me. I looked up to him as my superior, and regarded him as a leader.

“‘You swear it?’ he demanded.

“‘Yes,’ I said again.

“Whereupon he made me go down on my knees, hold both my hands up to heaven, and take a solemn oath that I would stick to him, go with him wherever he went, and do whatever he did.

“Now you must remember I was a youngster at this time, and what I did was only what a boy might be expected to do. Gibson certainly had a good deal of influence over me. He was a masterful sort of fellow, with a great, bulky, powerful frame, while his pluck won my admiration. He funked at nothing, and could lick every boy in the neighbourhood.

“We left school about the same time, and though his father, who was pretty well off, wanted to put him in business, Peter declared he would go to sea. I had been intended for a seafaring life from my cradle. The males of my family always went to sea. The result of his determination was that he and I found ourselves fellow apprentices on board a full-rigged vessel going out to the East Indies. She was a trader, and during a voyage of nearly four years we visited a great many places in the East; saw a great deal of the world, and experienced fair and foul weather from the very best to the very worst. As might have been expected, Peter picked up seamanship very rapidly, and became one of the smartest sailors on board. My regard for him and his liking for me had never altered, and when we returned to Liverpool we were as much chums as ever.

“We were only at home two months when we were transferred to another ship belonging to the same owners, and rated as A.B.’s. This voyage we sailed to Vancouver round the Horn, and from there we came down in ballast to Monte Video, and loaded up with a general cargo for home. At this time there was a civil war going on in the Argentine Republic, and of course at Monte Video we heard a great deal of talk about it. Gibson used to get very excited over the war news, and over and over again he tried to persuade me to clear out from the ship and go with him to do some fighting. He’d no sympathies with either one side or the other, and I don’t think he even knew what the row was about, but he wanted some fighting; fight was in his blood, and he was pining for what he called fun. I preferred, however, to keep a straight course, as my people before me had done. I wanted to gradually mount the ladder until I reached the top, and I knew that the quixotic expedition he proposed would have defeated my object. I therefore declined to fall in with his views. It riled him for a time, but at last he admitted that he had no right to try and persuade me against my will; but as far as he was concerned he was going. And go he did, much to my regret, I must confess. Although it went somewhat against my grain, I helped him to secretly get on shore, and some money that I had I handed over to him.

“We spent our last night together at a caie in Monte Video; and when the time came for us to part he wrung my hand, and I was cut up in a way I had never been before. After that I saw no more of him, nor did I hear anything of him for ten years, when we met again under very extraordinary circumstances.

“I was then mate of a splendid barque called the Curlew, hailing from Bristol. We had taken out a cargo of iron to Bilbao; there the ship was chartered by the Spanish Government to convey five hundred soldiers and a quantity of specie to Havana. The Curlew was an exceptionally fine vessel, with unusually good ’tween deck space, and therefore very suitable as a transport. We made a good passage to Havana, landed the troops, but were told we should have to retain the specie for a few days until some grandee or other came to receive it. He happened then to be up the country, but was expected back in the course of a week. As we had made a quicker passage than was expected, it had thrown him out in his calculations. Well, of course, it didn’t matter to us much, as our charter provided for our return to Bilbao; and, equally of course, so long as we were employed by the Spanish authorities we sailed under the Spanish flag.

“The second night after our arrival I went on shore, and in strolling through the town my attention was arrested by a sign over the door of a drinking-place. It read, ‘Old England, kept by Will Bradshaw.’ This and the sound of English voices induced me to enter, and I found the place pretty well crowded with sailor men and Spanish women of a disreputable class. I saw at once the sort of house it was, and as I did not consider it advisable for me as chief mate of a Government vessel to be seen there, I was for clearing out again when I noticed a big, brawny, powerfully-built fellow mixing drinks behind the bar. He was unmistakably an Englishman. His face was burnt brown. He had a dark, bushy beard, and looked like a man who had a large spice of the devil in him. Despite the beard the face seemed familiar to me, and when I heard him call out an order to one of his waiters, the voice left me no longer in doubt. It was the voice of Peter Gibson. So I pushed my way through the crowd to the counter, for it was not likely I could leave without renewing acquaintance with my old chum, and I asked, ‘Isn’t your name Peter Gibson?’

“‘No, it isn’t,’ he yelled. ‘I’m Will Bradshaw, the boss of this place.’ I was taken aback for a minute, for I was sure I couldn’t be mistaken. Then it flashed on me that Peter had a reason for being known as Will Bradshaw; so I pulled out a pocket-book, wrote my name on a leaf, tore it out, and handed it to him. I saw a look of surprise come into his eyes and his face change colour. Then he grasped my hand and wrung it, told an assistant to look after the place, and asking me to follow him, he led the way by a side entrance to a large garden at the back of the house, where seats were placed under the palm trees, and a few coloured lamps were hung up. Nearly every seat was occupied by men and women, and negro waiters were attending to their wants.

“Peter took me to a remote corner of the garden, where there was a sort of summerhouse on a knoll.

“‘We can have a quiet yarn here,’ he said. Then he called one of the negroes and told him to bring a bottle of wine, and that done, he began in his old masterful way to ask me questions about my career during the past ten years. I told him straight; but when I questioned him he shirked my questions, simply saying, ‘Well, I’ve had a lot of roughing, old chap, and have been in some queer corners. I drifted down here about two years since, just as the former proprietor of this shanty went off the hooks with Yellow Jack. I made a bid for the place and got it, but had to give bills for the greater part of the purchase money, and I’ve still got a lot of millstones round my neck. I’m rather sick, and think of chucking it and going on the rampage again.’

“We yarned away for two hours, when I had to go, and naturally I asked him to come and see me on board the vessel. He turned up the next day, and the day after that; and I told him as an item of news that my skipper was going into the country on the morrow for a few days to shoot with a party of friends, and that I should be in charge; and I invited him to come on board and have dinner with me in the evening, an invitation he readily accepted.

“When he turned up he had a friend with him, a Spaniard who spoke good English, and whom he introduced to me as Alonzo Gomez. He said he wanted me to know this man, as he was a good sort, and might be of use to me. He was described as a planter, but I couldn’t help thinking there was a good deal more of the loafer than the planter about him. However, he was very polite, as most Spaniards are, and as he seemed to be rather an amusing cuss, I thought I had judged him too harshly. Of course, I gave my guests a good feed, and made the steward open some champagne. During the dinner Peter asked me a lot of questions about the ship, and how much Spanish money we had on board, and where it was kept. If it had been anyone else, and at any other time, I should have resented these questions, but I felt there was no harm in answering my old schoolfellow and shipmate.

“When the dinner was over Peter said that for old acquaintance sake we must have a jorum of rum punch, and that he would make it. So I told the steward to get the necessary ingredients, and Peter set to work to concoct the liquor. I don’t remember much more after that. I didn’t come to my senses until the next morning. I found on turning out that the steward was ill, and on my going to him he told me that my friends had given him some of the punch. It had made him sick at first, and afterwards he fell into a heavy sleep from which he had not long awakened, and that he was then suffering from a frightful headache and a heavy, drowsy feeling. That was precisely my condition; but I attributed it to not having drunk wisely, but too well. The second mate, who had been on shore the previous night, undertook to do certain work I had to attend to; and having given the steward some medicine from the medicine chest, I went and turned in once more, and slept pretty well the whole day. Anyway, I did not turn to again until the following morning.

“In the course of that day, the high official who was to receive the specie came on board with an escort, and commanded the strong room in the afterpart of the cabin to be opened, and the specie brought out. I at once procured the keys from a safe in the captain’s cabin, and on going to the strong room, I was surprised and alarmed to find that the various seals put upon the door at Bilbao were broken, and they had been broken quite recently, as two or three days before I had examined them and found them all right. My alarm and confusion increased when, having got the door open, we discovered that two of the boxes, one containing Bank of Spain notes and the other gold dollars, had been burst open, and partly rifled of their contents. Altogether a sum in notes and gold equivalent to twenty thousand pounds had been stolen.

“The big-wig was in a great state, and at once sent on shore for a magistrate and a lot of military officers, and began an inquiry there and then; and I, having been in charge of the ship for some days, was practically put on trial.

“Perhaps I needn’t tell you that I felt I could at once name the thief. His name was Peter Gibson, alias Will Bradshaw. He and his Spanish chum had drugged me and the steward; of that I had no doubt then, and as all the crew had gone on shore except the boatswain and the cook, and two of the hands who were on duty at the gangway, it was easy for the rascals to carry out their nefarious scheme of getting at the specie.

“Now, I’m not talking mere words to you when I tell you that it went against my grain to denounce my old schoolfellow and shipmate, and at first I resolved that I wouldn’t. But, after all, a chap’s own interests have to be counted first, and as Gibson had been mean hound enough to drug me and carry off money under my care, I didn’t see why I should screen him. So I denounced him, and in a very short time he was under arrest. But even then he might have escaped conviction had it not been for his stupidity in keeping the bank-notes. His friend, who was also arrested, turned out to be a notorious character with a most evil reputation, and was looked upon as an expert in picking locks. The task they had set themselves of stealing the money was comparatively easy, as all the conditions were in their favour, and I fell a too easy victim to their cunning.

“Well, of course, I had to attend the trial and give evidence. The crime was considered very serious indeed, as Government property had been stolen and Government seals unlawfully broken. The offence was called a first-class one, and the penalty was death. No such sensation had been provided for Havana for many a long day. It was considered better than a bullfight.

“To make a long story short, the result of it all was that the two rascals were convicted and sentenced to be shot. The verdict cut me to the heart, and as only a short shrift was allowed the culprits, as the sentence was to be carried out in twenty-four hours, I obtained permission to visit Gibson. I found him in rather a dejected state, seated in a courtyard of the gaol which was guarded by soldiers. As soon as he saw me he seemed to go mad, reviled me in language that was of would haunt me and drive me to madness by appearing to me a pretty fiery character, then cursed me and swore that he on dark nights at sea. ‘You are a doomed man,’ he said, ‘and will come to a sudden and terrible end. I leave my curse to you.’

“I tried to reason with him, but I might as well have tried to reason with an enraged wild cat in the jungle. He did nothing but utter curses on me, and recognizing how hopeless it was to try and appease him, I withdrew, and the next morning he and his pal were shot at daybreak.

“Although I was much cut up by the way he had treated me, I did not attach any importance to either his curses or his threats. I wasn’t altogether free from superstition, what sailor is, but I quite believed that when a person was dead he was done with. I soon began to find out, however, that I was wrong, for some weeks later, when we were on our passage back to Bilbao, I had the middle watch one night, just as we got into the Bay of Biscay. It was a wild night, and we were close hauled under double reefed topsails. Suddenly out of the waves came a glowing figure. It was Gibson’s spectre. He shrieked at me, and I heard his curses again, and again he told me I was doomed.

“Since then I’ve seen him often. He has kept his word. He has haunted me, and is driving me mad and hounding me to death. Yes, I am doomed. I feel it and know it. Nothing can avert the doom.

“You know my story now. Don’t ridicule it; don’t laugh at me; for to me it’s a terribly serious business, and I feel that I shall never see the dear woman I love again.”

He ceased speaking, and I noticed the wild, scared look in his eyes which I had seen before. The perspiration was streaming down his face, he appeared to be suffering great mental agony.

I tried to soothe him, but it was no use, and he kept on repeating that he was doomed.

Now let me say here at once that I did not believe the captain had seen any real supernatural appearance. I regarded him as a highly imaginative and sensitive man. On such a man Gibson’s curses and threats would be sure to make a very deep impression. It could hardly be otherwise, seeing that the two men had practically grown up together. They had been schoolmates and shipmates, and Gibson’s violent end must have affected his once friend in no ordinary degree. Long dwelling upon the dramatic scene in the prison at Havana, the day previous to the execution, had taken such a hold on the skipper’s imagination that he had worried himself into a belief in a mere chimera of the brain. To him, no doubt, the visions were real enough, although they were nothing more than disturbed brain fancies.

Such was the theory I consoled myself with, and I determined there and then to use every possible endeavour to get the captain out of his morbid condition, and prove to him by gentle reasoning that he was simply a victim to his own gloomy fears. I was so far successful at that moment that I induced him to turn in, having first of all called the mate down and given him certain instructions; then I compounded him a simple soothing draught from ingredients in the medicine chest, and at his own request I sat by him and read certain passages in the Bible, until he fell into a sound sleep.

I was considerably exercised in my own mind as to the proper course I ought to adopt, and I was tempted at first to take the Spanish lady into my confidence, and discuss the matter with her. But this idea was put out of my head at once, for she was sitting in the cuddy, as she usually did in the evening, where she passed her time either reading or in doing needlework. She saw that I came from the captain’s cabin, and tackled me.

“How is the skipper?” she asked.

“He is a little indisposed tonight, but will be all right tomorrow, no doubt,” I answered.

“Not he,” she exclaimed. “I tell you that man’s a haunted man, and will either go mad or commit suicide.”

Remembering how dogmatically she had expressed herself on a previous occasion on the subject of supernatural visitations, I deemed it desirable not to enter into any discussion, and I also made up my mind that it would be a fatal mistake to let her know the captain’s story, so I merely said, in answer to her statement, “I hope not,” and passed to my cabin.

Now I want to repeat here, and for very obvious reasons, what were the views I held at this stage. I considered that the captain was suffering from a distressing nervous illness, the result of long pondering over an incident which could not fail to make a tremendous impression on him. But not for a moment did I entertain any belief in the supernatural. Necessarily I was exceedingly anxious, for there was no doctor on board, I had no medical knowledge myself, and we could not hope to reach our destination for another three weeks. There was every prospect then of the prognostications about a fine and rapid passage being falsified. The barometer had been steadily falling for some time, and all the indications were for bad weather. I knew that in that latitude, at that time of year, heavy storms were not uncommon, and it seemed likely that we should experience them. The anxious state of my mind kept me awake for some time, revolving all sorts of schemes, but nothing that seemed to me satisfactory. Eight bells midnight sounded, and I heard the mate come out of his room and go on deck to take the watch. I slipped out of bed, put on my dressing-gown and slippers, and stole over to the captain’s cabin. To my intense relief I found he was sleeping soundly.

As the motion of the vessel made it evident there was a heavy sea on, I went up the companion-way to see what the weather was like. It was a wild, weird night. A south-west gale was blowing and a tremendous sea running. There was no moon, but the stars shone with a superb lustre wherever the ragged, storm-driven scud allowed them to be seen. I passed a few words with the mate, and asked him what he thought of the weather.

“It’s a bad wind for us,’ he answered, “and the heavy squalls that come up every now and then prevent our setting much sail. But if I were skipper, I would crack on and let things rip. I’d drive the ship even at the risk of losing canvas.”

“Why don’t you do so, as it is?” I asked. “You’ve got charge of the deck for the next four hours, and have practically a free hand.”

“No I haven’t,” he answered. “I’ve got to obey orders, though I think sometimes, between you and me, sir, that the old man’s got a bee in his bonnet.”

“What makes you think that?” I queried, my interest in the skipper making me anxious to hear what the mate had to say.

“Well, I think it’s because he’s given to seeing the devil, or something as bad.”

I laughed, although I was serious enough; and being anxious to draw the officer out, I remarked;

“Well, I shouldn’t say it’s quite as bad as that; but he is ill, there is no doubt about it, and wants looking after.”

“I should think he does,” was the reply, given with peculiar decisiveness. Then, bending his head towards me, the better to make himself heard without raising his voice too much, for the howling of the wind made it difficult to hear sometimes, he added, “Look here, Mr. Gibling, will you give me your promise that, if I express an opinion, it won’t go any farther?”

“Yes, I think you may trust me,” I answered.

“Well, look here, sir, if you have any influence with the old man, you should persuade him to keep his room for the rest of the passage. And if he won’t, I say that in his own interest and the interest of everyone on board this craft, that he should be made to stay there.”

Never before had the mate been so outspoken to me, and it was further evidence, if I needed any, that the skipper’s condition had not escaped the observation of others; and I seriously determined to act on the suggestion, and use every effort to induce the captain to keep his room.

As a slight shift in the wind here necessitated the mate ordering the watch to trim the yards, I went below, and, feeling thoroughly exhausted, I drank a glass of whisky, and turning in, fell asleep. I must have slept between three and four hours, when I awoke with a start, for overhead was a tremendous hubbub. The tramping of heavily-booted feet, the rattling of cordage, the shaking of sails; while the ship, which was heeled over at an unusual angle, was quivering. I hastily donned my dressing-gown, and rushed on deck. A very heavy squall had struck us, and had torn the main-sail out of the bolt ropes. “All hands” had been called on deck, and what with the shrieking wind and roaring sea, and the hoarse voices of the sailors, the situation seemed alarming enough to a landsman like myself. A lurch of the ship drove me down to the lee rail against the mizzen shrouds, which I clung to for dear life. Suddenly I felt myself gripped round the waist, and a body seemed to fall at my feet. I realized in an instant that it was the captain. He had only his shirt and trousers on. His feet were bare, his head was bare. So much I was able to make out in the darkness that wasn’t altogether darkness, for a few stars still shone.

“For the love of God, for the sake of the Christ that was crucified, save me!” shrieked the unhappy man, as he crouched on his knees and linked his hands round my body.

“Don’t give way like this,” I said, feeling almost distracted myself. “Come, let me lead you down to your cabin. The mate will look after the ship. She is in good hands.”

It seemed as if the unhappy man did not understand what I had said to him, for pointing to the sea, he cried in a voice of acute terror:

“There, there, don’t you see it? There on that wave? Oh, my God, it’s awful!”

Mechanically I turned my eyes to where he pointed, and to my astonishment I saw what appeared to me to be a pale, lambent flame, shapeless and blue and nebulous. But I was conscious of thinking to myself that this was some natural phenomenon, like the well-known St Elmo’s fire. Slowly, however, even as I watched (for my eyes were riveted on that light by some strange fascination), I saw the shapeless mass grow brighter. Then for the first time it seemed to dawn upon me that I was gazing upon something unearthly. My heart leaped to my mouth at the conviction, and a cold shivering thrilled through my body. I tried to shut out the vision, but my eyes would not close; I was under some spell, against which I had no power of resistance.

As I gazed, the flame assumed shape; the shape of a human being. I distinguished a face, wan and ghastly. The eyes were lustreless and fixed, like those of a dead man. In the naked body were many wounds, and from these wounds blood spurted out in streams, and as it seemed to me made the sea around crimson.

I shuddered with horror at this dreadful sight; my knees bent under me, and I was on the point of sinking down, when I made a supreme effort and rallied. For the skipper was still clinging to me. I felt his weight, I heard his groans, but I saw nothing save that spectral figure with the gory streams pouring from its body.

Panting and breathless, a cold perspiration bursting through every pore, and with a feeling as if the scalp of my head was shrinking to nothing, I continued to gaze. The figure remained motionless, but its dull, glazed, dead eyes riveted themselves upon me and I could not endure their gaze. I felt my brain maddening with terror; driven to frenzy I made a supreme effort to lift the captain in my arms and carry him bodily down to his room. But he broke from me. He made a flying leap from the poop to the waist of the ship; then another flying leap over the rail into the dark seething waters. I heard the heavy splash his falling body made. One long, piercing shriek filled the air as he floated astern.

I remember little more. There was a cry of “Man overboard!” a wild rush of feet; a hasty cutting away of lifebuoys; hoarse voices mingling with flapping sails. How I got below I don’t know, but I found myself lying in my berth with the Spanish lady standing over me, putting eau de cologne on my temples.

“Do you feel better now?” she asked in a not unkindly way.

“Yes, thank you,” I answered, feeling confused; “but tell me, what does it mean? What has happened?”

“Why, don’t you know?” she exclaimed; “the captain has jumped overboard. I told you what would happen. He was haunted and went mad, I suppose. Anyway the poor fellow’s gone.”

“And how did I get here?” I asked, with a dreadful sinking sensation at the heart and a dazed numb feeling in the brain.

“Well, you tumbled down the companion-way and were insensible when the stewards picked you up. You fainted, I suppose, with fright, eh?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” I murmured. “It’s all a dream.”

“Now tell me and speak the truth,” she said, in a commanding tone. “Did you see anything?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“The vision of a bleeding man.”

“Ah!” she exclaimed triumphantly, “how about your scepticism now, eh?”

I had to confess that, according to my belief, I had seen the spectre of a man bleeding from several wounds; but still I thought it was nothing more than a delusion.

“But the captain was with you?”

“Yes.”

“And he saw it?”

“I have reason to think so.”

“Then were you both deluded? Anyway, poor fellow, he was deluded to his death. For he has perished.”

I could not enter into any argument. I felt too ill and distressed. I thanked her for her attention, and begged that she would leave me, as I thought I could sleep. She complied with this request, but I tossed and dreamed nightmare dreams, and dreamed and tossed for hours. It took me several days to recover from that awful shock to the nerves; indeed, I don’t think I have ever quite recovered, or that I ever shall. I need scarcely say that from the moment the poor demented captain took that flying leap into the sea nothing more was ever seen of him, and an entry of his suicide was made in the logbook, and I signed it. On our arrival at Havana an inquiry was held by the British Consul, and I was called upon to state what I knew. I confined myself to saying that the captain believed that he saw a vision occasionally. He was very greatly affected, and I presume his brain gave way. I did not attempt to speak of my own awful experience. It was not necessary. Even if I had done so how could I have hoped to be believed? And yet I had seen with my own eyes. I, a scoffer in such matters, had been convinced, and what I have written here I solemnly declare to be true. Perhaps somebody cleverer than I, and more learned than I, may be able to explain away the mystery, but for me it will remain an awful, appalling mystery until I cease to breathe. Then, perhaps — who knows? — I may be able to solve it.

IN LETTERS OF FIRE

Gaston Leroux

1908

We had been out hunting wild boar all day, when we were overtaken by a violent storm, which compelled us to seek refuge in a deep cavern. It was Makoko, our guide, who took upon himself to give utterance to the thought which haunted the minds of the four of us who had sought safety from the fury of the tempest — Mathis, Allan, Makoko and myself.

“If the gentleman who lives in yonder house, which is said to be haunted by the devil, does not grant us the shelter of his roof tonight, we shall be compelled to sleep here.”

Hardly had he uttered the words when a strange figure appeared at the entrance to the cavern.

“It is he!” exclaimed Makoko, grasping my arm.

I stared at the stranger.

He was tall, lanky, of bony frame, and melancholy aspect. Unconscious of our presence, he stood leaning on his fowling-piece at the entrance of the cavern, showing a strong aquiline nose, a thin moustache, a stern mouth, and lacklustre eyes. He was bareheaded; his hair was thin, while a few grey locks fell behind his ears. His age might have been anywhere between forty and sixty. He must have been strikingly handsome in the days when the light still shone in those time-dimmed eyes and those bitter lips could still break into a smile — but handsome in a haughty and forbidding style. A kind of terrible energy still lurked beneath his features, spectral as those of an apparition.

By his side stood a hairless dog, low on its legs, which was evidently barking at us. Yet we could hear nothing! The dog, it was plain, was dumb, and barked at us in silence!

Suddenly the man turned towards us, and said in a voice of the most exquisite politeness:

“Gentlemen, it is out of the question for you to return to La Chaux-de-Fonds tonight. Permit me to offer you my hospitality.”

Then, bending over his dog, he said:

“Stop barking, Mystère.”

The dog closed his jaws at once.

Makoko emitted a grunt. During the five hours that we had been enjoying the chase, Mathis and Makoko had told Allan and myself, who were strangers to the district, some strange and startling stories about our host, whom they represented as having had, like Faust, dealings with the Evil Spirit.

It was not without some trepidation, therefore, that we all moved out of the cavern.

“Gentlemen,” said the stranger, with a melancholy smile, “it is many a long year since my door was thrown open to visitors. I am not fond of society, but I must tell you that one night, six months ago, a youth who had lost his way came and knocked at that door and begged for shelter till the morning. I refused him his request. Next day a body was found at the bottom of the big marl-pit — a body partly devoured by wolves.”

“Why, that must have been Petit-Ledue!” cried Makoko. “So you were heartless enough to turn the poor lad away, at night and in the midst of winter! You are his murderer!”

“Truly spoken,” replied the man, simply. “It was I who killed him. And now you see, gentlemen, that the incident has rendered me hospitable.”

“Would you tell us why you drove him from your door?” growled Makoko.

“Because,” he replied, quietly, “my house brings misfortune.”

“I would rather risk meeting the powers of darkness than catching a cold in the head,” I retorted, laughing, and without further parley we set off, and in a short while had reached the door of the ancient mansion, which stood among the most desolate surroundings, on a shelf of barren rock, swept by all the winds of heaven.

The huge door, antique, iron-barred, and studded with enormous nails, revolved slowly on its hinges, and opened noiselessly. A shrunken little old dame was there to welcome us.

From the threshold we could see a large, high room, somewhat similar to the room formerly styled the retainers’ hall. It certainly constituted a part of what remained of the castle, on the ruins of which the mansion had been erected some centuries before. It was fully lighted by the fire on the enormous hearth, where a huge log was burning, and by two petrol lamps hanging by chains from the stone roof. There was no furniture except a heavy table of white wood, a large upholstered in leather, a few stools, and a rude sideboard.

We walked the length of the room. The old woman opened a door. We found ourselves at the foot of a worm-eaten staircase with sunken steps. This staircase, a spiral one, led to the second storey of the building, where the old woman showed us to our rooms.

To this day I can recall our host — were I to live a hundred years I could not forget that figure such as it appeared to me, as if framed by the fireplace — when I went into the hall where Mother Appenzel had spread our supper.

He was standing in front of my friends, on the stone hearth of that enormous fireplace. He was in evening dress — but such evening dress! It was in the pink of fashion, but a fashion long since vanished. The high collar of the coat, the broad lapels, the velvet waistcoat, the silken knee-breeches and stockings, the cravat, all seemed to possess the elegance of days gone by.

By his side lay his dog, Mystère, his massive jaws parted in a yawn — yawning, just as he bad barked, in silence.

“Has your dog been dumb for long?” I ventured to ask. “What strange accident has happened to him—”

“He has been dumb from his birth,” replied my host, after a slight pause, as if this topic of conversation did not please him.

Still, I persisted in my questions.

“Was his father dumb — or perhaps his mother?”

“His mother, and his mother’s mother,” he replied, still coldly, “and her mother also.”

“So you were the master of Mystère’s great-grandmother?”

“I was, sir. She was indeed a faithful creature, and one who loved me well. A marvellous watchdog,” added my host, displaying sudden signs of emotion which surprised me.

“And she also was dumb from her birth?”

“No, sir. No, she was not born dumb — but she became so one night when she had barked too much!”

There was a world of meaning in the tone with which he spoke these words that at the moment I did not understand.

Supper was served. During the meal the conversation did not languish. Our host inquired whether we liked our rooms.

“I have a favour to beg of you,” I ventured to say. “I should like to sleep in the haunted room!”

No sooner had I uttered the sentence than our host’s pale face became still paler.

“Who has told you that there is a haunted room in this house?” he asked, striving with difficulty to restrain an evident irritation.

Mother Appenzel, who had just entered, trembled violently.

“It was you, Mother Appenzel?”

“Pray do not scold the good woman,” I said. “My indiscreet behaviour alone must bear the blame. I was attempting to enter a room the door of which was closed, when your servant forbade me to do so. ‘Do not go into the haunted chamber,’ she said.”

“And you naturally did not do so?”

“Well, yes; I did go in.”

“Heaven protect us!” wailed Mother Appenzel, letting fall a tumbler, which broke into pieces.

“Begone!” cried her master. Then, turning to us, he added, “You are indeed full of curiosity, gentlemen!”

“Pray pardon us if we are so,” I said. “Moreover, permit me to remind you that it was you yourself who alluded to the rumours current on the mountainside. Well, it would afford me much pleasure if your generous hospitality should be the occasion of dispersing them. When I have slept in the room which enjoys so evil a reputation, and have rested there peacefully, it will no longer be said that, to use your own expression, ‘your house brings misfortune.’ ”

Our host interrupted me: “You shall not sleep in that room; it is no longer used as a bedroom. No one has slept there for fifty years past.”

“Who, then, was the last one to sleep in it?”

“I myself — and I should not advise anyone to sleep in it after me!”

“Fifty ears ago, you say! You could only be a child at the time, at an age when one is still afraid at nights—”

“Fifty years ago I was twenty-eight!”

“Am I committing an indiscretion when asking you what happened to you in that room? I have just come from visiting it, and nothing whatever happened to me. The room seems to me the most natural of rooms. I even attempted to prop up a wardrobe which seemed as if it were about to fall forward on its face.”

“You laid hands on the wardrobe!” cried the man, throwing down his table-napkin, and coming towards me with the gleam of madness in his eyes. “You actually laid hands on the wardrobe?”

“Yes,” was my quiet answer; “as I say, it seemed about to fall.”

“But it cannot fall! It will never fall! Never again will it stand upright! It is its nature to be in that position for all time to come, trembling with fear for all eternity!”

We had all risen. The man’s voice was harsh as he spoke these most mysterious words. Heavy drops of perspiration trickled down his face. Those eyes of his, which we had thought dimmed forever, flashed with fury. He was indeed awful to contemplate. He grasped my wrist and wrung it with a strength of which I would have deemed him incapable.

“You did not open it?”

“No.”

“Then you do not know what is in it? No? Well, all the better! By Heaven, I tell you, sir, it is all the better for you!”

Turning towards his dog, he shouted:

“To your kennel! When will you find your voice again, Mystère? Or are you going to die like the others — in silence?”

He had opened the door leading to a tower, and went out, driving the dog before him.

We were deeply moved at this unexpected scene. The man had disappeared in the darkness of the tower, still pursuing his dog.

“What did I tell you?” remarked Makoko, in a scarcely audible tone. “You may all please yourselves, but, as for me, I do not intend to sleep here tonight. I shall sit up here in this hail until daybreak.”

“And so shall I,” added Mathis.

Makoko, bending over us, his eyes staring out of their sockets, continued: “Do you not see that he is a madman?”

“You two fellows with your death-mask faces,” exclaimed Allan, “are not going to prevent us from enjoying ourselves. Supposing we start a game of écarté. We will ask our host to take a hand; it will divert his thoughts.”

An extraordinary fellow was Allan. His fondness for card-playing amounted to a~ mania. He pulled out a pack of cards, and had hardly done so when our host re-entered the hall. He was now comparatively calm, but no sooner had he perceived the pack of cards on the table than his features became transformed, and assumed such an expression of fear and fury that I myself was terrified.

“Cards!” he cried. “You have cards!”

Allan rose and said, pleasantly:

“We have decided not to retire for the night. We are about to have a friendly little game of écarté. Do you know the game?”

Allan stopped. He also had been struck with the fearful expression of our host’s face. His eyes were bloodshot, the sparse hairs of his moustache stood out bristling, his teeth gleamed, while his lips hissed out the words:

“Cards! Cards!”

The words escaped with difficulty from his throat, as if some invisible hands were clutching it.

“Who sent you here with cards? What do you want with me? The cards must be burnt — they must be burnt!”

Of a sudden he grasped the pack and was about to cast it into the flames, but he stopped just on the point of doing so, his trembling figures let drop the cards, and he sank into the armchair, exclaiming hoarsely:

“I am suffocating; I am suffocating!”

We rushed to his succour, but with a single effort of his bony fingers he had already torn off his collar and his cravat; and now, motionless, holding his head erect, and settling down in the huge armchair, he burst into tears.

“You are good fellows,” he said at last, in milder tones. “You shall know everything. You shall not leave this house in ignorance, taking me for a madman — for a poor, miserable, melancholy madman.

“Yes, indeed,” he continued; “yes, you shall know everything. It may be of use to you.

He rose, paced up and down, then halted in front of us, staring at us with the dimmed look that had given way to the momentary flash.

—  —  —  —

Sixty years ago I was entering upon my eighteenth year. With all the overweening presumption of youth, I was sceptical of everything. Nature had fashioned me strong and handsome. Fate had endowed me with enormous wealth. I became the most fashionable youth of my day. Paris, gentlemen, with all its pleasures, was for ten years at my feet. When I had reached the age of twenty-eight I was on the brink of ruin. There remained to me between two and three hundred thousand francs and this manor, with the land surrounding it.

Just at that time, gentlemen, I fell madly in love with an angelic creature. I could never have dreamt of the existence of such beauty and purity. The girl whom I adored was ignorant of the passionate love which was consuming me, and she remained so. Her family was one of the wealthiest in all Europe. For nothing in this world would I have had her suspect that I aspired to the honour of her hand in order to replenish my empty coffers in her dowry. So I went the way of the gambling-dens, in the vain hope of recovering my vanished millions. I lost all, and one fine evening I left Paris to come and bury myself in this old mansion, my sole refuge.

I found here an old man, Father Appenzel; his granddaughter, of whom later on I made a servant; and his grandson, a child of tender years, who grew up to manhood on the estate, and who is now my steward. I fell a prey, on the very evening of my arrival, to despair and ennui. The astounding events that followed took place that very evening.

When I went up to my room — the room which one of you has asked to be allowed to occupy tonight — I had made up my mind to take my own life. A brace of pistols lay on the chest of drawers. Suddenly as I was putting my hand on one of the pistols, my dog began to howl in the courtyard — to howl as I have never heard the wind howl, unless it be tonight.

“So,” thought I, “here is Mystère raising a death-howl. She must know that I am going to kill myself tonight.”

I toyed with the pistol, recalling of a sudden what my past life had been, and wondering for the first time what my death would be like. Suddenly my eye lighted on the titles of a few old books which stood on a shelf hanging above the chest of drawers. I was surprised to see that all of them dealt with sorcerers and matters appertaining to the powers of evil. I took up a book, The Sorcerers of the Jura, and, with the sceptical smile of the man who has defied Fate, I opened it. The first two lines, printed in red, at once caught my eye:

“He who seriously wishes to see the devil has but to summon him with his whole heart, and he will come.”

Then followed the story of an individual who, like myself, a lover in despair — like myself, a ruined man — had in all sincerity summoned to his help the Prince of Darkness, and who had been assisted by him; for, a few months later, he had once more become incredibly rich and had married his beloved. I read the story to the end.

“Well, here was a lucks’ fellow!” I exclaimed, tossing the book on to the chest of drawers. Mystère was still howling in the grounds. I parted the window-curtains, and could not help shuddering when I saw the dog’s shadow dancing in the moonlight. It really seemed as if the slut was possessed of some evil spirit, for her movements were inexplicably eccentric. She seemed to be snapping at some invisible form!

I tried to laugh over the matter, but the state of my mind, the story I had just read, the howling of the dog, her strange leaps, the sinister locality, the old room, the pistols which I myself had loaded, all had contributed to take a greater hold of my imagination than I dared confess.

Leaving the window I strolled about the room for a while. Of a sudden I saw myself in the mirror of the wardrobe. My pallor was such that I thought that I was dead. Alas, no! The man standing before the wardrobe was not dead. It was, on the contrary, a living man who, with all his heart, was summoning the King of Lost Souls.

Yes, with all my heart. I was too young to die; I wished to enjoy life for a while yet; to be rich once more; for her, for her sake, for the one who was an angel. Yes, yes, I, I myself summoned the devil!

And then, in the mirror, side by side with my form, something appeared — something superhuman — a pale object — a mist, a terrible little cloud which was soon transformed into eyes — eves of fearful loveliness. Another form was standing resplendent beside my haggard face; a mouth — a mouth which said to me, “Open!” At this I recoiled. But the mouth was still saying to me, “Open, open, if you dare!”

Then something knocked three times upon the door inside the wardrobe — the door flew open of its own accord!

—  —  —  —

Just at that instant the old man’s narrative was interrupted by three knocks on the door, which suddenly opened, and a man entered.

“Was it you who knocked like that, Guillaume?” asked our host, striving in vain to regain his composure.

“Yes, master.”

“I had given you up for tonight. You saw the notary?”

“Yes; and I did not care to keep so great a sum of money about my person.”

We gathered that Guillaume was the gentleman’s steward. He advanced to the table, took a little bag from the folds of his cloak, extracted some documents from it, and laid them on the table. Then he drew an envelope from his bag, emptied its contents on the table, and counted out twelve one-thousand-franc notes.

“There’s the purchase-money for Misery Wood.”

“Good, Guillaume,” said our host, picking up the banknotes and replacing them in the envelope. “You must be hungry. Are you going to sleep here tonight?”

“No; it is impossible. I have to call on the farmer. We have some business to transact together early in the morning. However, I do not mind having a bit of supper.”

“Go to Mother Appenzel, my good fellow; she will take good care of you,” adding, as the steward strode towards the kitchen, “Take away all those rubbishy papers.”

The man picked up the documents, while the gentleman, taking a pocketbook out from his pocket, placed the envelope containing the twelve notes into it and returned the book to his pocket.

Then, resuming his narrative, in reply to a request from Makoko, he continued:

—  —  —  —

You wish to know what the wardrobe contained? Well, I am going to tell you. There was something which I saw — something which scorched my eyes. There shone within the recess of the wardrobe, written in letters of fire, three words: “Thou shalt win!”

Yes, he continued, in a gloomy tone, The devil had, in three words, expressed, in characters of fire, in the depths of the wardrobe, the fate that awaited me. He had left behind his sign-manual, the irrefutable proof of the hideous pact into which I had entered with him on that tragic night. “Thou shalt win!” A ruined gamester, I sought to become rich, and he told me: “Thou shalt win!” In three short words he granted me the world’s wealth. “Thou shalt win!”

Next morning old Appenzel found me lying unconscious at the foot of the wardrobe. Alas! when I had recovered my senses I had forgotten nothing. I was fated never to forget what I had seen. Wherever I go, wherever I wend my steps, be it night, be it day, I read the fiery phrase, “Thou shalt win!” — on the walls of darkness, on the resplendent orb of the sun, on the earth and in the skies, within myself when I close my eyes, on your faces when I look at you!

—  —  —  —

The old man, exhausted, ceased speaking, and fell back, moaning, into the armchair.

—  —  —  —

I must tell you, he resumed, after a few moments, That my experience had had so terrifying an effect on me that I had been compelled to stay in bed, where Father Appenzel brought me a soothing potion of herbs. Addressing me, he said: “Something incredible has happened, sir. Your dog has become dumb. She barks in silence!”

“Oh, I know, I understand!” I exclaimed. “She will not recover her voice until he shall have returned!”

Father Appenzel looked at me in amazement and fright, for my hair was standing on end. In spite of myself, my gaze was straying towards the wardrobe. Father Appenzel, as alarmed and agitated as myself, went on to say:

“When I found you, sir, on the floor this morning the wardrobe was inclined as it is now, while its door was open. I closed it, but I was unable to get it to stand upright. It seems always on the point of falling forward.”

I begged old Appenzel to leave me to myself. I got out of bed, went to the wardrobe and opened its door. Conceive, I pray you, my feelings when I had done so. The sentence, that sentence written in characters of fire, was still there! It was graven in the boards at the back; it had burnt the boards with its imprint; and by day I read what I had read by night — the words: “Thou shalt win!”

I flew out of the room. I called for help. Father Appenzel returned. I said to him: “Look into the depths of that wardrobe, and tell me what you see there!”

My servant did as I bid him, and said to me: “Thou shalt win!”

I dressed myself. I fled like a madman from the accursed house, and wandered in the mountains. The mountain air did me good. When I came home in the evening I was perfectly calm; I had thought matters over; my dog might have become dumb through some perfectly natural physiological phenomenon. With regard to the sentence in the wardrobe, it had not come there of itself, and, as I had not had any previous acquaintance with that piece of furniture, it was probable that the three fatal words had been there for countless years, inscribed by someone addicted to the black art, following upon some gambling affair which was no concern of mine.

I ate my supper, and went to bed in the same room. The night passed without incident.

Next day I went to La Chaux-de-Fonds, to call on a notary. All that this adventure with the wardrobe had succeeded in doing was to imbue me with the idea of tempting fate in the shape of cards, one last time, ere putting into execution my idea about suicide. I borrowed a few one-thousand-franc notes on the security of the estate, and I took train for Paris. As I ascended the staircase of the club I recalled my nightmare, and remarked to myself ironically, for I placed no faith in the success of this supreme attempt: “We shall now see whether, if the devil helps me—” I did not finish the sentence.

The bank was being put up to auction when I entered the salon. I secured it for two hundred louis. I had not reached the middle of my deal when I had already won two hundred and fifty thousand francs! But no longer would any of the players stake against me. I was winning every game!

I was jubilant; I had never dreamt that such luck would be mine. I threw up the bank — i.e., what remained of it for me to hold. I next amused myself at throwing away chances, just to see what would happen. In spite of this I continued winning. Exclamations were heard on all sides. The players vowed I had the devil’s own luck. I collected my winnings and left.

No sooner had I reached the street when I began to think and to become alarmed. The coincidence between the scene of the wardrobe and of my extraordinary success as a banker troubled me. Of a sudden, and to my surprise, I found myself wending my Way back to the club. I was resolved to probe the matter to the bottom. My short-lived joy was disturbed by the fact that I had not lost once. So it was that I was anxious to lose just once.

When I left the club for the second time, at six o’clock in the morning, I had won, in money and on parole, no less than a couple of millions. But I had not once lost — not a single, solitary time. I felt myself becoming a raving madman. When I say that I had not lost once, I speak with regard to money, for when I played for nothing, without stakes, to see, just for the fun of the matter, I lost inexorably. But no sooner had a punter staked even as low as half a franc against me, I won his money. It mattered little, a sou or a million francs. I could no longer lose. “Thou shalt win!” Oh, that terrible curse! That curse! For a whole week did I try. I went into the worst gambling-hells. I sat down to card-tables presided over by card-sharpers; I won even from them; I won from one and all against whom I played. I did nothing but win!

So, you no longer laugh, gentlemen! You scoff no more! You see now, good sirs, that one should never be in a hurry to laugh! I told you I had seen the devil! Do you believe me now? I possessed then the certainty, the palpable proof, visible to one and all, the natural and terrestrial proof of my revolting compact with the devil. The law of probabilities no longer existed as far as I was concerned. There were not even any probabilities. There remained only the supernatural certainty of winning eternally — until the day of death. Death! I could no longer dream of it as a desire. For the first time in my life I dreaded it. The terrors of death haunted me, because of what awaited me at the end!

My uppermost thought was to redeem my soul — my wretched soul, my lost soul. I frequented the churches. I saw priests. I prostrated myself at the foot of the church steps. I beat my delirious head on the sacred flagstones! I prayed to Cod that I might lose, just as I had prayed to the devil that I might win. On leaving the holy place I was wont to hurry to some low gambling-den and stake a few louis on a card. But I continued winning for ever and ever! “Thou shalt win!”

Not for a single second did I entertain the idea of owing my happiness to those accursed millions. I offered up my heart to God as a burnt offering, I distributed the millions I had won to the poor, and I came here, gentlemen, to await the death which spurns me — the death I dread!

“You have never played since those days?” I asked.

“I have never played from that time until now.”

Allan had read my thoughts. He too was dreaming that it might be possible to rescue from his monomania the man whom we both persisted in considering insane.

“I feel sure,” he said, “that so great a sacrifice has won you pardon. Your despair has been undoubtedly sincere, and your punishment a terrible one. What more could Heaven require of you? In your place I should try—”

“You would try — what?” exclaimed the man, springing from his seat.

“I should try whether I were still doomed to win!” The man struck the table a violent blow with his clenched fist.

“And so this is all the remedy you can suggest! So that is all the narrative of a curse transcending all things earthly has inspired you with? You seek to induce an old lunatic to play, with the object of demonstrating to him that he is not insane! For I read full well in your eves what you think of me: ‘He is mad, mad, mad!’ You do not believe a single word of all I have told you. You think I am insane, young man! And you, too,” he added, addressing Allan, “You think I am insane — mad, mad, mad! I tell you that I have seen the devil! Yes, your old madman has seen the devil! And he is going to prove it to you. The cards! Where are the cards?”

Espying them on the edge of the table, he sprang on them.

“It is you who have so willed it. I had harboured a supreme hope that I should die without having again made the infernal attempt, so that when my hour had come I might imagine that Heaven had forgiven me. Here are your cards! I will not touch them. They are yours. Shuffle them — deal me which you please — ‘stack’ them as you will. I tell on that I shall win. Do you believe me now?”

Allan had quietly picked up the cards.

The man, placing his hand on his shoulder, asked, “You do not believe me?”

“We shall see,” replied Allan.

“What shall the stakes be?” I inquired.

“I do not know, gentlemen, whether you are well off or not, but I feel bound to inform you — you who have come to destroy my last hope — that you are ruined men.”

Thereupon he took out his pocketbook and laid it on the table, saying:

“I will play you five straight points at écarté for the contents of this pocketbook. This just by way of a beginning. After that, I am willing to play you as many games as you see fit, until I cast you out of doors picked clean, your friends and yourself, ruined for the rest of your lives — yes, picked bare.”

“Picked bare?” repeated Allan, who was far less moved than myself. “Do you want even our shirts?”

“Even your souls,” cried the man, “Which I intend to present to the devil in exchange for my own.”

Allan winked at me, and asked:

“Shall we say ‘Done,’ and go halves in this?”

I agreed, shuffled the pack, and handed it to my opponent.

He cut, I dealt. I turned up the knave of hearts. Our host looked at his hand and led. Clearly he ought not to have played the hand he held — three small clubs, the queen of diamonds, and the seven of spades. He took a trick with his queen, I took the four others, and, as he had led, I marked two points. I entertained not the slightest doubt that he was doing his utmost to lose.

It was his turn to deal. He turned up the king of spades. He could not restrain a shudder when he beheld that black-faced card, which, in spite of himself, gave him a trick.

He scanned his hand anxiously. It was my turn to call for cards. He refused them, evidently believing that he held a very poor hand; but my own was as bad as his, and he had a ten of hearts, which took my nine — I held the nine, eight, and seven of hearts.

He then played diamonds, to which I could not respond and two clubs higher than mine. Neither of us held a single trump. He scored a point, which, with the one secured to him by his king, gave him two. We were “evens,” either of us being in a position to end matters at once if we made three points.

The deal was mine. I turned up the eight of diamonds. This time both of us called for cards. He asked for one, and showed me the one he had discarded — the seven of diamonds. He was anxious not to hold any trumps. His wish was gratified, and he succeeded in making me score another two points, which gave me four.

In spite of ourselves, Allan and I glanced towards the pocketbook. Our thoughts ran: ‘There lies a small fortune which is shortly to be ours, one which, in all conscience, we shall not have had much trouble in winning.’

Our host dealt in his turn, and when I saw the cards he had given me I considered the matter as good as settled. This time he had not turned up a king, but the seven of clubs. I held two hearts and three trumps — the ace and king of hearts, the ace, ten and nine of clubs. I led the king, my opponent followed with the queen; I flung the ace on the table, my opponent being compelled to take it with the knave of hearts, and he then played a diamond, which I trumped. I played the ace of trumps; he took it with the queen, but I was ready for him with my last card, the ten of clubs. He had the knave of trumps! As I had led he scored two, making “Four all.” Our host smothered a curse which was hovering on his lips.

“No need for you to worry,” I remarked; “no one has won yet.”

“We are about to prove to you,” said Allan, in the midst of a deathly silence, “that you can lose just like any ordinary mortal.”

Our host groaned, “I cannot lose.”

The interest in the game was now at its height. A point on either side, and either of us would be the winner. If I turned up the king the game was ended, and I won twelve thousand francs from a man who claimed that he could not lose. I had dealt. I turned up the king — the king of hearts. I had won!

My opponent uttered a cry of joy. He bent over the card, picked it up, considered it attentively, fingered it, raised it to his eyes, and we thought that he was about to press it to his lips. He murmured:

“Great heavens, can it be? Then — then I have lost!”

“So it would seem,” I remarked.

Allan added, “You now see full well that one should not place any faith in what the devil says.”

The gentleman took his pocketbook and opened it.

“Gentlemen,” he sighed, “bless you for having won all that is in this book. Would that it contained a million! I should gladly have handed it over to you.”

With trembling hands he searched the pocketbook, emptying it of all its contents, with a look of surprise at not finding at once the twelve thousand francs he had deposited in its folds. They were not there!

The pocketbook, searched with feverish hands, lay empty on the table. There was nothing in the pocketbook! Nothing!

We sat dumbfounded at this inexplicable phenomenon — the empty pocketbook! We picked it up and fingered it. We searched it carefully, only to find it empty. Our host, livid and as one possessed, was searching himself, and begging us to search him. We searched him — we searched him, because it was beyond our power to resist his delirious will; but we found nothing — nothing!

“Hark!” exclaimed our host. “Hark, hark! Does it not seem to you tonight that the wind sounds like the voice of a dog?”

We listened, and Makoko answered, “It is true! The wind really seems to be barking — there, behind the door!”

The door was shaking strangely, and we heard a voice calling, “Open!”

I drew the bolts and opened the door. A human form rushed into the room.

“It is the steward,” I said.

“Sir, sir!” he ejaculated.

“What is it?” we all exclaimed, breathlessly, and wondering what was about to follow.

“Sir, I thought I had handed you your twelve thousand francs. Indeed, I am positive I did so. Those gentlemen doubtless saw me.”

“Yes, indeed,” from all of us.

“Well, I have just discovered them in my bag. I cannot understand how it has happened. I have returned to bring them back to you — once more. Here they are.”

The steward again pulled out the identical envelope, and a second time counted the twelve one-thousand-franc notes, adding:

“I know not what ails the mountainside tonight, but it terrifies me. I shall sleep here.”

The twelve thousand francs were now lying on the table. Our host cried: “This time we see them there, there before us! Where are the cards? Deal them. The twelve thousand in five straight points, to see, to know for certain. I tell you that I wish to know — to know.”

I dealt. My opponent called for cards; I refused them. He had five trumps. He scored two points. He dealt the cards. He turned up the king. I led. He again had five trumps. Three and two are five! He had won!

Then he howled; yes, howled like the wind which had the voice of a dog. He snatched the cards from the table and cast them into the flames. “Into the fire with the cards. Let the fire consume them!” he shrieked. Suddenly he strode towards the door. Outside a dog barked — a dog raising a death-howl.

The man reached the door, and speaking through it asked:

“Is that you, Mystère?”

To what phenomenon was it due that both wind and dog were silent simultaneously?

The man softly drew the bolts and half opened the door. No sooner was the door ajar than the infernal yelping broke out so prolonged and so lugubrious that it made us shiver to our very marrow. Our host had now flung himself upon the door with such force that we could almost think he had smashed it. Not content with having pushed back the bolts, he pressed with his knees and arms against the door, without uttering a sound. All we heard was his panting respiration.

Then, when the deathlike yelping had ceased, and both within and without silence reigned supreme, the man, turning towards us and tottering forward, said:

“He has returned! Beware!”

•   •   •

Midnight. We have gone our respective ways. Makoko and Mathis have remained below beside the dying embers. Allan has sought his bedroom, while, driven by some unkown inner force controlling me absolutely, I find myself in the haunted room. I am repeating the doings of the man whose story we had heard that night; I select the same book, open it at the same page; I go to the same window; I pull the curtain aside; I gaze upon the same moonlit landscape, for the wind has long since driven off the tempest-clouds and the fog. I only see bare rocks, shining like steel under the rays of the bright moon, and — on the desolate plateau — a weirdly dancing shadow — the shadow of Mystère, with her formidable jaws wide apart — jaws that I can see barking. Do I hear the barking? Yes; it seems to me that I hear it. I let the curtain drop. I take my candlestick from the chest of drawers. I step towards the wardrobe. I look at myself in its mirrored panel. I dream of him who wrote the words which lie concealed within. Whose face is it that I see in the mirror? It is my own! But is it possible that the face of our host on the fatal night could have been more pallid than mine is now? In all truth, my face is that of a dead man. On one side-there — there — that little cloud — that misty cloudlet in the mirror — cheek by jowl with my face — those fearful eyes — those lips! Oh, if I could but scream! I cannot. I am powerless to cry out, when suddenly I hear three knocks. And — and my hand strays of its own accord towards the door of the wardrobe — my inquisitive hand — my accursed hand.

Of a sudden my hand is gripped in the vice I know so well. I look round. I am face to face with our host, who says to me in a voice which seems to come from another world:

“Do not open it!”

•   •   •

Next morning we did not ask our host to give us the opportunity of winning back our money. We fled from his roof without even taking leave of him. Twelve thousand francs were sent that evening to our strange host through Makoko’s father, to whom we had told our adventure. He returned them to us, with the following note:

“We are quits. When we played, both the first game, which you won, and the second one, which you lost, we believed, you and I that we were staking twelve thousand francs. That must be sufficient for us. The devil has my soul, but he shall not possess my honour.”

We were not at all anxious to keep the twelve thousand francs, so we presented them to a hospital in La Chaux-de-Fonds which was in sore need of money. Following upon urgent repairs, to which our donation was applied, the hospital, one winter’s night, was so thoroughly burned to the ground that at noon of the following day nothing but ashes remained of it.

THE GATEWAY OF THE MONSTER

William Hope Hodgson

1913

In response to Carnacki’s usual card of invitation to have dinner and listen to a story, I arrived promptly at 427, Cheyne Walk, to find the three others who were always invited to these happy little times, there before me. Five minutes later, Carnacki, Arkright, Jessop, Taylor, and I were all engaged in the “pleasant occupation” of dining.

“You’ve not been long away, this time,” I remarked, as I finished my soup; forgetting momentarily Carnacki’s dislike of being asked even to skirt the borders of his story until such time as he was ready. Then he would not stint words.

“That’s all,” he replied, with brevity; and I changed the subject, remarking that I had been buying a new gun, to which piece of news he gave an intelligent nod, and a smile which I think showed a genuinely good-humoured appreciation of my intentional changing of the conversation.

Later, when dinner was finished, Carnacki snugged himself comfortably down in his big chair, along with his pipe, and began his story, with very little circumlocution:

“As Dodgson was remarking just now, I’ve only been away a short time, and for a very good reason too — I’ve only been away a short distance. The exact locality I am afraid I must not tell you; but it is less than twenty miles from here; though, except for changing a name, that won’t spoil the story. And it is a story too! One of the most extraordinary things ever I have run against.

“I received a letter a fortnight ago from a man I must call Anderson, asking for an appointment. I arranged a time, and when he came, I found that he wished me to investigate and see whether I could not clear up a long-standing and well — too well — authenticated case of what he termed ‘haunting.’ He gave me very full particulars, and, finally, as the case seemed to present something unique, I decided to take it up.

“Two days later, I drove to the house late in the afternoon. I found it a very old place, standing quite alone in its own grounds. Anderson had left a letter with the butler, I found, pleading excuses for his absence, and leaving the whole house at my disposal for my investigations. The butler evidently knew the object of my visit, and I questioned him pretty thoroughly during dinner, which I had in rather lonely state. He is an old and privileged servant, and had the history of the Grey Room exact in detail. From him I learned more particulars regarding two things that Anderson had mentioned in but a casual manner. The first was that the door of the Grey Room would be heard in the dead of night to open, and slam heavily, and this even though the butler knew it was locked, and the key on the bunch in his pantry. The second was that the bedclothes would always be found torn off the bed, and hurled in a heap into a corner.

“But it was the door slamming that chiefly bothered the old butler. Many and many a time, he told me, had he lain awake and just got shivering with fright, listening; for sometimes the door would be slammed time after time — thud! thud! thud! — so that sleep was impossible.

“From Anderson, I knew already that the room had a history extending back over a hundred and fifty years. Three people had been strangled in it — an ancestor of his and his wife and child. This is authentic, as I had taken very great pains to discover; so that you can imagine it was with a feeling I had a striking case to investigate that I went upstairs after dinner to have a look at the Grey Room.

“Peter, the old butler, was in rather a state about my going, and assured me with much solemnity that in all the twenty years of his service, no one had ever entered that room after nightfall. He begged me, in quite a fatherly way, to wait till the morning, when there would be no danger, and then he could accompany me himself.

“Of course, I smiled a little at him, and told him not to bother. I explained that I should do no more than look ’round a bit, and, perhaps, affix a few seals. He need not fear; I was used to that sort of thing. But he shook his head when I said that.

“‘There isn’t many ghosts like ours, sir,’ he assured me, with mournful pride. And, by Jove! he was right, as you will see.

“I took a couple of candles, and Peter followed with his bunch of keys. He unlocked the door; but would not come inside with me. He was evidently in a fright, and he renewed his request that I would put off my examination until daylight. Of course, I laughed at him again, and told him he could stand sentry at the door, and catch anything that came out.

“‘It never comes outside, sir,’ he said, in his funny, old, solemn manner. Somehow, he managed to make me feel as if I were going to have the ‘creeps’ right away. Anyway, it was one to him, you know.

“I left him there, and examined the room. It is a big apartment, and well furnished in the grand style, with a huge four-poster, which stands with its head to the end wall. There were two candles on the mantelpiece, and two on each of the three tables that were in the room. I lit the lot, and after that, the room felt a little less inhumanly dreary; though, mind you, it was quite fresh, and well kept in every way.

“After I had taken a good look ’round, I sealed lengths of baby ribbon across the windows, along the walls, over the pictures, and over the fireplace and the wall closets. All the time, as I worked, the butler stood just without the door, and I could not persuade him to enter; though I jested him a little, as I stretched the ribbons, and went here and there about my work. Every now and again, he would say: — ‘You’ll excuse me, I’m sure, sir; but I do wish you would come out, sir. I’m fair in a quake for you.’

“I told him he need not wait; but he was loyal enough in his way to what he considered his duty. He said he could not go away and leave me all alone there. He apologized; but made it very clear that I did not realize the danger of the room; and I could see, generally, that he was in a pretty frightened state. All the same, I had to make the room so that I should know if anything material entered it; so I asked him not to bother me, unless he really heard or saw something. He was beginning to get on my nerves, and the ‘feel’ of the room was bad enough, without making it any nastier.

“For a time further, I worked, stretching ribbons across the floor, and sealing them, so that the merest touch would have broken them, were anyone to venture into the room in the dark with the intention of playing the fool. All this had taken me far longer than I had anticipated; and, suddenly, I heard a clock strike eleven. I had taken off my coat soon after commencing work; now, however, as I had practically made an end of all that I intended to do, I walked across to the settee, and picked it up. I was in the act of getting into it, when the old butler’s voice (he had not said a word for the last hour) came sharp and frightened: — ‘Come out, sir, quick! There’s something going to happen!’ Jove! but I jumped, and then, in the same moment, one of the candles on the table to the left went out. Now whether it was the wind, or what, I do not know; but, just for a moment, I was enough startled to make a run for the door; though I am glad to say that I pulled up, before I reached it. I simply could not bunk out, with the butler standing there, after having, as it were, read him a sort of lesson on ‘bein’ brave, y’know.’ So I just turned right ’round, picked up the two candles off the mantelpiece, and walked across to the table near the bed. Well, I saw nothing. I blew out the candle that was still alight; then I went to those on the two tables, and blew them out. Then, outside of the door, the old man called again: — ‘Oh! sir, do be told! Do be told!’

“‘All right, Peter,’ I said, and by Jove, my voice was not as steady as I should have liked! I made for the door, and had a bit of work not to start running. I took some thundering long strides, as you can imagine. Near the door, I had a sudden feeling that there was a cold wind in the room. It was almost as if the window had been suddenly opened a little. I got to the door, and the old butler gave back a step, in a sort of instinctive way. ‘Collar the candles, Peter!’ I said, pretty sharply, and shoved them into his hands. I turned, and caught the handle, and slammed the door shut, with a crash. Somehow, do you know, as I did so, I thought I felt something pull back on it; but it must have been only fancy. I turned the key in the lock, and then again, double-locking the door. I felt easier then, and set-to and sealed the door. In addition, I put my card over the keyhole, and sealed it there; after which I pocketed the key, and went downstairs — with Peter; who was nervous and silent, leading the way. Poor old beggar! It had not struck me until that moment that he had been enduring a considerable strain during the last two or three hours.

“About midnight, I went to bed. My room lay at the end of the corridor upon which opens the door of the Grey Room. I counted the doors between it and mine, and found that five rooms lay between. And I am sure you can understand that I was not sorry. Then, just as I was beginning to undress, an idea came to me, and I took my candle and sealing wax, and sealed the doors of all five rooms. If any door slammed in the night, I should know just which one.

“I returned to my room, locked the door, and went to bed. I was waked suddenly from a deep sleep by a loud crash somewhere out in the passage. I sat up in bed, and listened, but heard nothing. Then I lit my candle. I was in the very act of lighting it when there came the bang of a door being violently slammed, along the corridor. I jumped out of bed, and got my revolver. I unlocked the door, and went out into the passage, holding my candle high, and keeping the pistol ready. Then a queer thing happened. I could not go a step toward the Grey Room. You all know I am not really a cowardly chap. I’ve gone into too many cases connected with ghostly things, to be accused of that; but I tell you I funked it; simply funked it, just like any blessed kid. There was something precious unholy in the air that night. I ran back into my bedroom, and shut and locked the door. Then I sat on the bed all night, and listened to the dismal thudding of a door up the corridor. The sound seemed to echo through all the house.

“Daylight came at last, and I washed and dressed. The door had not slammed for about an hour, and I was getting back my nerve again. I felt ashamed of myself; though, in some ways it was silly; for when you’re meddling with that sort of thing, your nerve is bound to go, sometimes. And you just have to sit quiet and call yourself a coward until daylight. Sometimes it is more than just cowardice, I fancy. I believe at times it is something warning you, and fighting for you. But, all the same, I always feel mean and miserable, after a time like that.

“When the day came properly, I opened my door, and, keeping my revolver handy, went quietly along the passage. I had to pass the head of the stairs, along the way, and who should I see coming up, but the old butler, carrying a cup of coffee. He had merely tucked his nightshirt into his trousers, and he had an old pair of carpet slippers on.

“‘Hullo, Peter!’ I said, feeling suddenly cheerful; for I was as glad as any lost child to have a live human being close to me. ‘Where are you off to with the refreshments?’

“The old man gave a start, and slopped some of the coffee. He stared up at me, and I could see that he looked white and done-up. He came on up the stairs, and held out the little tray to me. ‘I’m very thankful indeed, sir, to see you safe and well,’ he said. ‘I feared, one time, you might risk going into the Grey Room, sir. I’ve lain awake all night, with the sound of the Door. And when it came light, I thought I’d make you a cup of coffee. I knew you would want to look at the seals, and somehow it seems safer if there’s two, sir.’

“‘Peter,’ I said, ‘you’re a brick. This is very thoughtful of you.’ And I drank the coffee. ‘Come along,’ I told him, and handed him back the tray. ‘I’m going to have a look at what the Brutes have been up to. I simply hadn’t the pluck to in the night.’

“‘I’m very thankful, sir,’ he replied. ‘Flesh and blood can do nothing, sir, against devils; and that’s what’s in the Grey Room after dark.’

“I examined the seals on all the doors, as I went along, and found them right; but when I got to the Grey Room, the seal was broken; though the card, over the keyhole, was untouched. I ripped it off, and unlocked the door, and went in, rather cautiously, as you can imagine; but the whole room was empty of anything to frighten one, and there was heaps of light. I examined all my seals, and not a single one was disturbed. The old butler had followed me in, and, suddenly, he called out: — ‘The bedclothes, sir!’

“I ran up to the bed, and looked over; and, surely, they were lying in the corner to the left of the bed. Jove! you can imagine how queer I felt. Something had been in the room. I stared for a while, from the bed, to the clothes on the floor. I had a feeling that I did not want to touch either. Old Peter, though, did not seem to be affected that way. He went over to the bed coverings, and was going to pick them up, as, doubtless, he had done every day these twenty years back; but I stopped him. I wanted nothing touched, until I had finished my examination. This, I must have spent a full hour over, and then I let Peter straighten up the bed; after which we went out, and I locked the door; for the room was getting on my nerves.

“I had a short walk, and then breakfast; after which I felt more my own man, and so returned to the Grey Room, and, with Peter’s help, and one of the maids, I had everything taken out of the room, except the bed — even the very pictures. I examined the walls, floor and ceiling then, with probe, hammer and magnifying glass; but found nothing suspicious. And I can assure you, I began to realize, in very truth, that some incredible thing had been loose in the room during the past night. I sealed up everything again, and went out, locking and sealing the door, as before.

“After dinner, Peter and I unpacked some of my stuff, and I fixed up my camera and flashlight opposite to the door of the Grey Room, with a string from the trigger of the flashlight to the door. Then, you see, if the door were really opened, the flashlight would blare out, and there would be, possibly, a very queer picture to examine in the morning. The last thing I did, before leaving, was to uncap the lens; and after that I went off to my bedroom, and to bed; for I intended to be up at midnight; and to ensure this, I set my little alarm to call me; also I left my candle burning.

“The clock woke me at twelve, and I got up and into my dressing gown and slippers. I shoved my revolver into my right side-pocket, and opened my door. Then, I lit my darkroom lamp, and withdrew the slide, so that it would give a clear light. I carried it up the corridor, about thirty feet, and put it down on the floor, with the open side away from me, so that it would show me anything that might approach along the dark passage. Then I went back, and sat in the doorway of my room, with my revolver handy, staring up the passage toward the place where I knew my camera stood outside the door of the Grey Room.

“I should think I had watched for about an hour and a half, when, suddenly, I heard a faint noise, away up the corridor. I was immediately conscious of a queer prickling sensation about the back of my head, and my hands began to sweat a little. The following instant, the whole end of the passage flicked into sight in the abrupt glare of the flashlight. There came the succeeding darkness, and I peered nervously up the corridor, listening tensely, and trying to find what lay beyond the faint glow of my dark-lamp, which now seemed ridiculously dim by contrast with the tremendous blaze of the flash-power.… And then, as I stooped forward, staring and listening, there came the crashing thud of the door of the Grey Room. The sound seemed to fill the whole of the large corridor, and go echoing hollowly through the house. I tell you, I felt horrible — as if my bones were water. Simply beastly. Jove! how I did stare, and how I listened. And then it came again — thud, thud, thud, and then a silence that was almost worse than the noise of the door; for I kept fancying that some awful thing was stealing upon me along the corridor. And then, suddenly, my lamp was put out, and I could not see a yard before me. I realized all at once that I was doing a very silly thing, sitting there, and I jumped up. Even as I did so, I thought I heard a sound in the passage, and quite near me. I made one backward spring into my room, and slammed and locked the door. I sat on my bed, and stared at the door. I had my revolver in my hand; but it seemed an abominably useless thing. I felt that there was something the other side of that door. For some unknown reason I knew it was pressed up against the door, and it was soft. That was just what I thought. Most extraordinary thing to think.

“Presently I got hold of myself a bit, and marked out a pentacle hurriedly with chalk on the polished floor; and there I sat in it almost until dawn. And all the time, away up the corridor, the door of the Grey Room thudded at solemn and horrid intervals. It was a miserable, brutal night.

“When the day began to break, the thudding of the door came gradually to an end, and, at last, I got hold of my courage, and went along the corridor in the half light to cap the lens of my camera. I can tell you, it took some doing; but if I had not done so my photograph would have been spoilt, and I was tremendously keen to save it. I got back to my room, and then set-to and rubbed out the five-pointed star in which I had been sitting.

“Half an hour later there was a tap at my door. It was Peter with my coffee. When I had drunk it, we both went along to the Grey Room. As we went, I had a look at the seals on the other doors; but they were untouched. The seal on the door of the Grey Room was broken, as also was the string from the trigger of the flashlight; but the card over the keyhole was still there. I ripped it off, and opened the door. Nothing unusual was to be seen until we came to the bed; then I saw that, as on the previous day, the bedclothes had been torn off, and hurled into the left-hand corner, exactly where I had seen them before. I felt very queer; but I did not forget to look at all the seals, only to find that not one had been broken.

“Then I turned and looked at old Peter, and he looked at me, nodding his head.

“‘Let’s get out of here!’ I said. ‘It’s no place for any living human to enter, without proper protection.’

“We went out then, and I locked and sealed the door, again.

“After breakfast, I developed the negative; but it showed only the door of the Grey Room, half opened. Then I left the house, as I wanted to get certain matters and implements that might be necessary to life; perhaps to the spirit; for I intended to spend the coming night in the Grey Room.

“I go back in a cab, about half-past five, with my apparatus, and this, Peter and I carried up to the Grey Room, where I piled it carefully in the center of the floor. When everything was in the room, including a cat which I had brought, I locked and sealed the door, and went toward the bedroom, telling Peter I should not be down for dinner. He said, ‘Yes, sir,’ and went downstairs, thinking that I was going to turn in, which was what I wanted him to believe, as I knew he would have worried both me and himself, if he had known what I intended.

“But I merely got my camera and flashlight from my bedroom, and hurried back to the Grey Room. I locked and sealed myself in, and set to work, for I had a lot to do before it got dark.

“First, I cleared away all the ribbons across the floor; then I carried the cat — still fastened in its basket — over toward the far wall, and left it. I returned then to the center of the room, and measured out a space twenty-one feet in diameter, which I swept with a ‘broom of hyssop.’ About this, I drew a circle of chalk, taking care never to step over the circle. Beyond this I smudged, with a bunch of garlic, a broad belt right around the chalked circle, and when this was complete, I took from among my stores in the center a small jar of a certain water. I broke away the parchment, and withdrew the stopper. Then, dipping my left forefinger in the little jar, I went ’round the circle again, making upon the floor, just within the line of chalk, the Second Sign of the Saaamaaa Ritual, and joining each Sign most carefully with the left-handed crescent. I can tell you, I felt easier when this was done, and the ‘water circle’ complete. Then, I unpacked some more of the stuff that I had brought, and placed a lighted candle in the ‘valley’ of each Crescent. After that, I drew a Pentacle, so that each of the five points of the defensive star touched the chalk circle. In the five points of the star I placed five portions of the bread, each wrapped in linen, and in the five ‘vales,’ five opened jars of the water I had used to make the ‘water circle.’ And now I had my first protective barrier complete.

“Now, anyone, except you who know something of my methods of investigation, might consider all this a piece of useless and foolish superstition; but you all remember the Black Veil case, in which I believe my life was saved by a very similar form of protection, whilst Aster, who sneered at it, and would not come inside, died. I got the idea from the Sigsand MS., written, so far as I can make out, in the 14th century. At first, naturally, I imagined it was just an expression of the superstition of his time; and it was not until a year later that it occurred to me to test his ‘Defence,’ which I did, as I’ve just said, in that horrible Black Veil business. You know how that turned out. Later, I used it several times, and always I came through safe, until that Moving Fur case. It was only a partial ‘defence’ therefore, and I nearly died in the pentacle. After that I came across Professor Garder’s ‘Experiments with a Medium.’ When they surrounded the Medium with a current, in vacuum, he lost his power — almost as if it cut him off from the Immaterial. That made me think a lot; and that is how I came to make the Electric Pentacle, which is a most marvellous ‘Defence’ against certain manifestations. I used the shape of the defensive star for this protection, because I have, personally, no doubt at all but that there is some extraordinary virtue in the old magic figure. Curious thing for a Twentieth Century man to admit, is it not? But, then, as you all know, I never did, and never will, allow myself to be blinded by the little cheap laughter. I ask questions, and keep my eyes open.

“In this last case I had little doubt that I had run up against a supernatural monster, and I meant to take every possible care; for the danger is abominable.

“I turned-to now to fit the Electric Pentacle, setting it so that each of its ‘points’ and ‘vales’ coincided exactly with the ‘points’ and ‘vales’ of the drawn pentagram upon the floor. Then I connected up the battery, and the next instant the pale blue glare from the intertwining vacuum tubes shone out.

“I glanced about me then, with something of a sigh of relief, and realized suddenly that the dusk was upon me, for the window was grey and unfriendly. Then ’round at the big, empty room, over the double barrier of electric and candle light. I had an abrupt, extraordinary sense of weirdness thrust upon me — in the air, you know; as it were, a sense of something inhuman impending. The room was full of the stench of bruised garlic, a smell I hate.

“I turned now to the camera, and saw that it and the flashlight were in order. Then I tested my revolver, carefully, though I had little thought that it would be needed. Yet, to what extent materialization of an ab-natural creature is possible, given favourable conditions, no one can say; and I had no idea what horrible thing I was going to see, or feel the presence of. I might, in the end, have to fight with a materialized monster. I did not know, and could only be prepared. You see, I never forgot that three other people had been strangled in the bed close to me, and the fierce slamming of the door I had heard myself. I had no doubt that I was investigating a dangerous and ugly case.

“By this time, the night had come; though the room was very light with the burning candles; and I found myself glancing behind me, constantly, and then all ’round the room. It was nervy work waiting for that thing to come. Then, suddenly, I was aware of a little, cold wind sweeping over me, coming from behind. I gave one great nerve-thrill, and a prickly feeling went all over the back of my head. Then I hove myself ’round with a sort of stiff jerk, and stared straight against that queer wind. It seemed to come from the corner of the room to the left of the bed — the place where both times I had found the heap of tossed bedclothes. Yet, I could see nothing unusual; no opening — nothing!…

“Abruptly, I was aware that the candles were all a-flicker in that unnatural wind.… I believe I just squatted there and stared in a horribly frightened, wooden way for some minutes. I shall never be able to let you know how disgustingly horrible it was sitting in that vile, cold wind! And then, flick! flick! flick! all the candles ’round the outer barrier went out; and there was I, locked and sealed in that room, and with no light beyond the weakish blue glare of the Electric Pentacle.

“A time of abominable tenseness passed, and still that wind blew upon me; and then, suddenly, I knew that something stirred in the corner to the left of the bed. I was made conscious of it, rather by some inward, unused sense than by either sight or sound; for the pale, short-radius glare of the Pentacle gave but a very poor light for seeing by. Yet, as I stared, something began slowly to grow upon my sight — a moving shadow, a little darker than the surrounding shadows. I lost the thing amid the vagueness, and for a moment or two I glanced swiftly from side to side, with a fresh, new sense of impending danger. Then my attention was directed to the bed. All the covering’s were being drawn steadily off, with a hateful, stealthy sort of motion. I heard the slow, dragging slither of the clothes; but I could see nothing of the thing that pulled. I was aware in a funny, subconscious, introspective fashion that the ‘creep’ had come upon me; yet that I was cooler mentally than I had been for some minutes; sufficiently so to feel that my hands were sweating coldly, and to shift my revolver, half-consciously, whilst I rubbed my right hand dry upon my knee; though never, for an instant, taking my gaze or my attention from those moving clothes.

“The faint noises from the bed ceased once, and there was a most intense silence, with only the sound of the blood beating in my head. Yet, immediately afterward, I heard again the slurring of the bedclothes being dragged off the bed. In the midst of my nervous tension I remembered the camera, and reached ’round for it; but without looking away from the bed. And then, you know, all in a moment, the whole of the bed coverings were torn off with extraordinary violence, and I heard the flump they made as they were hurled into the corner.

“There was a time of absolute quietness then for perhaps a couple of minutes; and you can imagine how horrible I felt. The bedclothes had been thrown with such savageness! And, then again, the brutal unnaturalness of the thing that had just been done before me!

“Abruptly, over by the door, I heard a faint noise — a sort of crickling sound, and then a pitter or two upon the floor. A great nervous thrill swept over me, seeming to run up my spine and over the back of my head; for the seal that secured the door had just been broken. Something was there. I could not see the door; at least, I mean to say that it was impossible to say how much I actually saw, and how much my imagination supplied. I made it out, only as a continuation of the grey walls.… And then it seemed to me that something dark and indistinct moved and wavered there among the shadows.

“Abruptly, I was aware that the door was opening, and with an effort I reached again for my camera; but before I could aim it the door was slammed with a terrific crash that filled the whole room with a sort of hollow thunder. I jumped, like a frightened child. There seemed such a power behind the noise; as though a vast, wanton Force were ‘out.’ Can you understand?

“The door was not touched again; but, directly afterward, I heard the basket, in which the cat lay, creak. I tell you, I fairly pringled all along my back. I knew that I was going to learn definitely whether whatever was abroad was dangerous to Life. From the cat there rose suddenly a hideous caterwaul, that ceased abruptly; and then — too late — I snapped off the flashlight. In the great glare, I saw that the basket had been overturned, and the lid was wrenched open, with the cat lying half in, and half out upon the floor. I saw nothing else, but I was full of the knowledge that I was in the presence of some Being or Thing that had power to destroy.

“During the next two or three minutes, there was an odd, noticeable quietness in the room, and you much remember I was half-blinded, for the time, because of the flashlight; so that the whole place seemed to be pitchy dark just beyond the shine of the Pentacle. I tell you it was most horrible. I just knelt there in the star, and whirled ’round, trying to see whether anything was coming at me.

“My power of sight came gradually, and I got a little hold of myself; and abruptly I saw the thing I was looking for, close to the ‘water circle.’ It was big and indistinct, and wavered curiously, as though the shadow of a vast spider hung suspended in the air, just beyond the barrier. It passed swiftly ’round the circle, and seemed to probe ever toward me; but only to draw back with extraordinary jerky movements, as might a living person if they touched the hot bar of a grate.

“’Round and ’round it moved, and ’round and ’round I turned. Then, just opposite to one of the Vales’ in the pentacles, it seemed to pause, as though preliminary to a tremendous effort. It retired almost beyond the glow of the vacuum light, and then came straight toward me, appearing to gather form and solidity as it came. There seemed a vast, malign determination behind the movement, that must succeed. I was on my knees, and I jerked back, falling on to my left hand, and hip, in a wild endeavor to get back from the advancing thing. With my right hand I was grabbing madly for my revolver, which I had let slip. The brutal thing came with one great sweep straight over the garlic and the ‘water circle,’ almost to the vale of the pentacle. I believe I yelled. Then, just as suddenly as it had swept over, it seemed to be hurled back by some mighty, invisible force.

“It must have been some moments before I realized that I was safe; and then I got myself together in the middle of the pentacles, feeling horribly gone and shaken, and glancing ’round and ’round the barrier; but the thing had vanished. Yet, I had learnt something, for I knew now that the Grey Room was haunted by a monstrous hand.

“Suddenly, as I crouched there, I saw what had so nearly given the monster an opening through the barrier. In my movements within the pentacle I must have touched one of the jars of water; for just where the thing had made its attack the jar that guarded the ‘deep’ of the ‘vale’ had been moved to one side, and this had left one of the ‘five doorways’ unguarded. I put it back, quickly, and felt almost safe again, for I had found the cause, and the ‘defence’ was still good. And I began to hope again that I should see the morning come in. When I saw that thing so nearly succeed, I had an awful, weak, overwhelming feeling that the ‘barriers’ could never bring me safe through the night against such a Force. You can understand?

“For a long time I could not see the hand; but, presently, I thought I saw, once or twice, an odd wavering, over among the shadows near the door. A little later, as though in a sudden fit of malignant rage, the dead body of the cat was picked up, and beaten with dull, sickening blows against the solid floor. That made me feel rather queer.

“A minute afterward, the door was opened and slammed twice with tremendous force. The next instant the thing made one swift, vicious dart at me, from out of the shadows. Instinctively, I started sideways from it, and so plucked my hand from upon the Electric Pentacle, where — for a wickedly careless moment — I had placed it. The monster was hurled off from the neighbourhood of the pentacles; though — owing to my inconceivable foolishness — it had been enabled for a second time to pass the outer barriers. I can tell you, I shook for a time, with sheer funk. I moved right to the centre of the pentacles again, and knelt there, making myself as small and compact as possible.

“As I knelt, there came to me presently, a vague wonder at the two ‘accidents’ which had so nearly allowed the brute to get at me. Was I being influenced to unconscious voluntary actions that endangered me? The thought took hold of me, and I watched my every movement. Abruptly, I stretched a tired leg, and knocked over one of the jars of water. Some was spilled; but, because of my suspicious watchfulness, I had it upright and back within the vale while yet some of the water remained. Even as I did so, the vast, black, half-materialized hand beat up at me out of the shadows, and seemed to leap almost into my face; so nearly did it approach; but for the third time it was thrown back by some altogether enormous, overmastering force. Yet, apart from the dazed fright in which it left me, I had for a moment that feeling of spiritual sickness, as if some delicate, beautiful, inward grace had suffered, which is felt only upon the too near approach of the ab-human, and is more dreadful, in a strange way, than any physical pain that can be suffered. I knew by this more of the extent and closeness of the danger; and for a long time I was simply cowed by the butt-headed brutality of that Force upon my spirit. I can put it no other way.

“I knelt again in the center of the pentacles, watching myself with more fear, almost, than the monster; for I knew now that, unless I guarded myself from every sudden impulse that came to me, I might simply work my own destruction. Do you see how horrible it all was?

“I spent the rest of the night in a haze of sick fright, and so tense that I could not make a single movement naturally. I was in such fear that any desire for action that came to me might be prompted by the Influence that I knew was at work on me. And outside of the barrier that ghastly thing went ’round and ’round, grabbing and grabbing in the air at me. Twice more was the body of the dead cat molested. The second time, I heard every bone in its body scrunch and crack. And all the time the horrible wind was blowing upon me from the corner of the room to the left of the bed.

“Then, just as the first touch of dawn came into the sky, that unnatural wind ceased, in a single moment; and I could see no sign of the hand. The dawn came slowly, and presently the wan light filled all the room, and made the pale glare of the Electric Pentacle look more unearthly. Yet, it was not until the day had fully come, that I made any attempt to leave the barrier, for I did not know but that there was some method abroad, in the sudden stopping of that wind, to entice me from the pentacles.

“At last, when the dawn was strong and bright, I took one last look ’round, and ran for the door. I got it unlocked, in a nervous and clumsy fashion, then locked it hurriedly, and went to my bedroom, where I lay on the bed, and tried to steady my nerves. Peter came, presently, with the coffee, and when I had drunk it, I told him I meant to have a sleep, as I had been up all night. He took the tray, and went out quietly, and after I had locked my door I turned in properly, and at last got to sleep.

“I woke about midday, and after some lunch, went up to the Grey Room. I switched off the current from the Pentacle, which I had left on in my hurry; also, I removed the body of the cat. You can understand I did not want anyone to see the poor brute. After that, I made a very careful search of the corner where the bedclothes had been thrown. I made several holes, and probed, and found nothing. Then it occurred to me to try with my instrument under the skirting. I did so, and heard my wire ring on metal. I turned the hook end that way, and fished for the thing. At the second go, I got it. It was a small object, and I took it to the window. I found it to be a curious ring, made of some greying material. The curious thing about it was that it was made in the form of a pentagon; that is, the same shape as the inside of the magic pentacle, but without the ‘mounts,’ which form the points of the defensive star. It was free from all chasing or engraving.

“You will understand that I was excited, when I tell you that I felt sure I held in my hand the famous Luck Ring of the Anderson family; which, indeed, was of all things the one most intimately connected with the history of the haunting. This ring was handed on from father to son through generations, and always — in obedience to some ancient family tradition — each son had to promise never to wear the ring. The ring, I may say, was brought home by one of the Crusaders, under very peculiar circumstances; but the story is too long to go into here.

“It appears that young Sir Hulbert, an ancestor of Anderson’s, made a bet, in drink, you know, that he would wear the ring that night. He did so, and in the morning his wife and child were found strangled in the bed, in the very room in which I stood. Many people, it would seem, thought young Sir Hulbert was guilty of having done the thing in drunken anger; and he, in an attempt to prove his innocence, slept a second night in the room. He also was strangled. Since then, as you may imagine, no one has ever spent a night in the Grey Room, until I did so. The ring had been lost so long, that it had become almost a myth; and it was most extraordinary to stand there, with the actual thing in my hand, as you can understand.

“It was whilst I stood there, looking at the ring, that I got an idea. Supposing that it were, in a way, a doorway — You see what I mean? A sort of gap in the world-hedge. It was a queer idea, I know, and probably was not my own, but came to me from the Outside. You see, the wind had come from that part of the room where the ring lay. I thought a lot about it. Then the shape — the inside of a pentacle. It had no ‘mounts,’ and without mounts, as the Sigsand MS. has it: — ‘Thee mownts wych are thee Five Hills of safetie. To lack is to gyve pow’r to thee daemon; and surelie to fayvor the Evill Thynge.’ You see, the very shape of the ring was significant; and I determined to test it.

“I unmade the pentacle, for it must be made afresh and around the one to be protected. Then I went out and locked the door; after which I left the house, to get certain matters, for neither ‘yarbs nor fyre nor water’ must be used a second time. I returned about seven thirty, and as soon as the things I had brought had been carried up to the Grey Room, I dismissed Peter for the night, just as I had done the evening before. When he had gone downstairs, I let myself into the room, and locked and sealed the door. I went to the place in the center of the room where all the stuff had been packed, and set to work with all my speed to construct a barrier about me and the ring.

“I do not remember whether I explained it to you. But I had reasoned that, if the ring were in any way a ‘medium of admission,’ and it were enclosed with me in the Electric Pentacle, it would be, to express it loosely, insulated. Do you see? The Force, which had visible expression as a Hand, would have to stay beyond the Barrier which separates the Ab from the Normal; for the ‘gateway’ would be removed from accessibility.

“As I was saying, I worked with all my speed to get the barrier completed about me and the ring, for it was already later than I cared to be in that room ‘unprotected.’ Also, I had a feeling that there would be a vast effort made that night to regain the use of the ring. For I had the strongest conviction that the ring was a necessity to materialization. You will see whether I was right.

“I completed the barriers in about an hour, and you can imagine something of the relief I felt when I felt the pale glare of the Electric Pentacle once more all about me. From then, onward, for about two hours, I sat quietly, facing the corner from which the wind came. About eleven o’clock a queer knowledge came that something was near to me; yet nothing happened for a whole hour after that. Then, suddenly, I felt the cold, queer wind begin to blow upon me. To my astonishment, it seemed now to come from behind me, and I whipped ’round, with a hideous quake of fear. The wind met me in the face. It was blowing up from the floor close to me. I stared down, in a sickening maze of new frights. What on earth had I done now! The ring was there, close beside me, where I had put it. Suddenly, as I stared, bewildered, I was aware that there was something queer about the ring — funny shadowy movements and convolutions. I looked at them, stupidly. And then, abruptly, I knew that the wind was blowing up at me from the ring. A queer indistinct smoke became visible to me, seeming to pour upward through the ring, and mix with the moving shadows. Suddenly, I realized that I was in more than any mortal danger; for the convoluting shadows about the ring were taking shape, and the death-hand was forming within the Pentacle. My Goodness! do you realize it! I had brought the ‘gateway’ into the pentacles, and the brute was coming through — pouring into the material world, as gas might pour out from the mouth of a pipe.

“I should think that I knelt for a moment in a sort of stunned fright. Then, with a mad, awkward movement, I snatched at the ring, intending to hurl it out of the Pentacle. Yet it eluded me, as though some invisible, living thing jerked it hither and thither. At last, I gripped it; yet, in the same instant, it was torn from my grasp with incredible and brutal force. A great, black shadow covered it, and rose into the air, and came at me. I saw that it was the Hand, vast and nearly perfect in form. I gave one crazy yell, and jumped over the Pentacle and the ring of burning candles, and ran despairingly for the door. I fumbled idiotically and ineffectually with the key, and all the time I stared, with a fear that was like insanity, toward the Barriers. The hand was plunging toward me; yet, even as it had been unable to pass into the Pentacle when the ring was without, so, now that the ring was within, it had no power to pass out. The monster was chained, as surely as any beast would be, were chains riveted upon it.

“Even then, I got a flash of this knowledge; but I was too utterly shaken with fright, to reason; and the instant I managed to get the key turned, I sprang into the passage, and slammed the door with a crash. I locked it, and got to my room somehow; for I was trembling so that I could hardly stand, as you can imagine. I locked myself in, and managed to get the candle lit; then I lay down on my bed, and kept quiet for an hour or two, and so I got steadied.

“I got a little sleep, later; but woke when Peter brought my coffee. When I had drunk it I felt altogether better, and took the old man along with me whilst I had a look into the Grey Room. I opened the door, and peeped in. The candles were still burning, wan against the daylight; and behind them was the pale, glowing star of the Electric Pentacle. And there, in the middle, was the ring…the gateway of the monster, lying demure and ordinary.

“Nothing in the room was touched, and I knew that the brute had never managed to cross the Pentacles. Then I went out, and locked the door.

“After a sleep of some hours, I left the house. I returned in the afternoon in a cab. I had with me an oxy-hydrogen jet, and two cylinders, containing the gases. I carried the things into the Grey Room, and there, in the center of the Electric Pentacle, I erected the little furnace. Five minutes later the Luck Ring, once the ‘luck,’ but now the ‘bane,’ of the Anderson family, was no more than a little solid splash of hot metal.”

Carnacki felt in his pocket, and pulled out something wrapped in tissue paper. He passed it to me. I opened it, and found a small circle of greyish metal, something like lead, only harder and rather brighter.

“Well?” I asked, at length, after examining it and handing it ’round to the others. “Did that stop the haunting?”

Carnacki nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I slept three nights in the Grey Room, before I left. Old Peter nearly fainted when he knew that I meant to; but by the third night he seemed to realize that the house was just safe and ordinary. And, you know, I believe, in his heart, he hardly approved.”

Carnacki stood up and began to shake hands. “Out you go!” he said, genially. And presently we went, pondering, to our various homes.

THE TERROR BY NIGHT

Lewis Lister

1915

Maynard disencumbered himself from his fishing-creel, stabbed the butt of his rod into the turf, and settled down in the heather to fill a pipe. All round him stretched the undulating moor, purple in the late summer sunlight. To the southward, low down, a faint haze told where the sea lay. The stream at his feet sang its queer, crooning moor-song as it rambled onward, chuckling to meet a bed of pebbles somewhere out of sight, whispering mysteriously to the rushes that fringed its banks of peat, deepening to a sudden contralto as it poured over granite boulders into a scum-flecked pool below.

For a long time the man sat smoking. Occasionally he turned his head to watch with keen eyes the fretful movements of a fly hovering above the water. Then a sudden dimple in the smooth surface of the stream arrested his attention. A few concentric ripples widened, travelled towards him, and were absorbed in the current. His lips curved into a little smile and he reached for his rod. In the clear water he could see the origin of the ripples; a small trout, unconscious of his presence, was waiting in its hover for the next titbit to float downstream. Presently it rose again.

“The odds are ten to one in your favour,” said the man. “Let’s see!”

He dropped on one knee and the cast leapt out in feathery coils. Once, twice it swished; the third time it alighted like thistledown on the surface. There was a tiny splash, a laugh, and the little green-heart rod flicked a trout high over his head. It was the merest baby — half-an-ounce, perhaps — and it fell from the hook into the herbage some yards from the stream.

“Little ass!” said Maynard. “That was meant for your big brother.”

He recovered his cast and began to look for his victim. Without avail he searched the heather, and as the fateful seconds sped, at last laid down his rod and dropped on hands and knees to probe among the grass-stems.

For a while he hunted in vain, then the sunlight showed a golden sheen among some stones. Maynard gave a grunt of relief, but as his hand closed round it a tiny flutter passed through the fingerling; it gave a final gasp and was still. Knitting his brows in almost comical vexation, he hastened to restore it to the stream, holding it by the tail and striving to impart a lifelike wriggle to its limpness.

“Buck up, old thing!” he murmured encouragingly. “Oh, buck up! You’re all right, really you are!”

But the “old thing” was all wrong. In fact, it was dead. Standing in the wet shingle, Maynard regarded the speckled atom as it lay in the palm of his hand.

“A matter of seconds, my son. One instant in all eternity would have made just the difference between life and death to you. And the high gods denied it you!”

On the opposite side of the stream, set back about thirty paces from the brink, stood a granite boulder. It was as high as a man’s chest, roughly cubical in shape; but the weather and clinging moss had rounded its edges, and in places segments had crumbled away, giving foothold to clumps of fern and starry moor-flowers. On three sides the surrounding ground rose steeply, forming an irregular horseshoe mound that opened to the west. Perhaps it was the queer amphitheatrical effect of this setting that connected up some whimsical train of thought in Maynard’s brain.

“It would seem as if the gods had claimed you,” he mused, still holding the corpse. “You shall be a sacrifice — a burnt sacrifice to the God of Waste Places.”

He laughed at the conceit, half-ashamed of his own childishness, and crossing the stream by some boulders, he brushed away the earth and weed from the top of the great stone. Then he retraced his steps and gathered a handful of bleached twigs that the winter floods had left stranded along the margin of the stream. These he arranged methodically on the cleared space; on the top of the tiny pyre he placed the troutlet.

“There!” he said, and smiling gravely struck a match. A faint column of smoke curled up into the still air, and as he spoke the lower rim of the setting sun met the edge of the moor. The evening seemed suddenly to become incredibly still, even the voice of the stream ceasing to be a sound distinct. A wagtail bobbing in the shallows fled into the waste. Overhead the smoke trembled upwards, a faint stain against a cloudless sky. The stillness seemed almost acute. It was as if the moor were waiting, and holding its breath while it waited. Then the twigs upon his altar crackled, and the pale flames blazed up. The man stepped back with artistic appreciation of the effect.

“To be really impressive, there ought to be more smoke,” he continued.

Round the base of the stone were clumps of small flowers. They were crimson in colour and had thick, fleshy leaves. Hastily, he snatched a handful and piled it on the fire. The smoke darkened and rose in a thick column; there was a curious pungency in the air.

Far off the church-bell in some unseen hamlet struck the hour. The distant sound, coming from the world of men and everyday affairs, seemed to break the spell. An ousel fluttered across the stream and dabbled in a puddle among some stones. Rabbits began to show themselves and frisk with lengthened shadows in the clear spaces. Maynard looked at his watch, half-mindful of a train to be caught somewhere miles away, and then, held by the peace of running water, stretched himself against the sloping ground.

The glowing world seemed peopled by tiny folk, living out their timid, inscrutable lives around him. A water-rat, passing bright-eyed upon his lawful occasion, paused on the border of the stream to consider the stranger, and was lost to view. A stagnant pool among some reeds caught the reflection of the sunset and changed on the instant into raw gold.

Maynard plucked a grass stem and chewed it reflectively, staring out across the purple moor and lazily watching the western sky turn from glory to glory. Over his head the smoke of the sacrifice still curled and eddied upwards. Then a sudden sound sent him on to one elbow — the thud of an approaching horse’s hoofs.

“Moor ponies!” he muttered, and, rising, stood expectant beside his smoking altar.

Then he heard the sudden jingle of a bit, and presently a horse and rider climbed into view against the pure sky. A young girl, breeched, booted and spurred like a boy, drew rein, and sat looking down into the hollow.

For a moment neither spoke; then Maynard acknowledged her presence by raising his tweed hat. She gave a little nod.

“I thought it was somebody swaling — burning the heather.” She considered the embers on the stone, and then her grey eyes travelled back to the spare, tweed-clad figure beside it.

He smiled in his slow way — a rather attractive smile.

“No. I’ve just concluded some pagan rites in connection with a small trout!” He nodded gravely at the stone. “That was a burnt sacrifice.” With whimsical seriousness he told her of the trout’s demise and high destiny.

For a moment she looked doubtful; but the inflection of breeding in his voice, the wholesome, lean face and humorous eyes, reassured her. A smile hovered about the corners of her mouth.

“Oh, is that it? I wondered… ”

She gathered the reins and turned her horse’s head.

“Forgive me if I dragged you out of your way,” said Maynard, never swift to conventionality, but touched by the tired shadows in her eyes. The faint droop of her mouth, too, betrayed intense fatigue. “You look fagged. I don’t want to be a nuisance or bore you, but I wish you’d let me offer you a sandwich. I’ve some milk here, too.”

The girl looked round the ragged moor, brooding in the twilight, and half hesitated. Then she forced a wan little smile.

“I am tired, and hungry, too. Have you enough for us both?”

“Lots!” said Maynard. To himself he added: “And what’s more, my child, you’ll have a little fainting affair in a few minutes, if you don’t have a feed.”

“Come and rest for a minute,” he continued aloud.

He spoke with pleasant, impersonal kindliness, and as he turned to his satchel she slipped out of the saddle and came towards him, leading her horse.

“Drink that,” he said, holding out the cup of his flask. She drank with a wry little face, and coughed. “I put a little whisky in it,” he explained. “You needed it.”

She thanked him and sat down with the bridle linked over her arm. The colour crept back into her cheeks. Maynard produced a packet of sandwiches and a pasty.

“I’ve been mooning about the moor all the afternoon and lost myself twice,” she explained between frank mouthfuls. “I’m hopelessly late for dinner, and I’ve still got miles to go.”

“Do you know the way now?” he asked.

“Oh, yes! It won’t take me long. My family are sensible, too, and don’t fuss.” She looked at him, her long-lashed eyes a little serious. “But you — how are you going to get home? It’s getting late to be out on the moor afoot.”

Maynard laughed.

“Oh, I’m all right, thanks!” He sniffed the warm September night. “I think I shall sleep here, as a matter of fact. I’m a gipsy by instinct—

“‘Give to me the life I love,

Let the lave go by me,

Give the jolly Heaven above—’”

He broke off, arrested by her unsmiling eyes. She was silent a moment.

“People don’t as a rule sleep out — about here.” The words came jerkily, as if she were forcing a natural tone into her voice.

“No?” He was accustomed to being questioned on his unconventional mode of life, and was prepared for the usual expostulations. She looked abruptly towards him.

“Are you superstitious?”

He laughed and shook his head.

“I don’t think so. But what has that got to do with it?”

She hesitated, flushing a little.

“There is a legend — people about here say that the moor here is haunted. There is a Thing that hunts people to death!”

He laughed outright, wondering how old she was. Seventeen or eighteen, perhaps. She had said her people “didn’t fuss.” That meant she was left to herself to pick up all these old wives’ tales.

“Really! Has anyone been caught?”

She nodded, unsmiling.

“Yes; old George Toms. He was one of Dad’s tenants, a big purple-faced man, who drank a lot and never took much exercise. They found him in a ditch with his clothes all torn and covered with mud. He had been run to death; there was no wound on his body, but his heart was broken.” Her thoughts recurred to the stone against which they leant, and his quaint conceit. “You were rather rash to go offering burnt sacrifices about here, don’t you think? Dad says that stone is the remains of an old Phoenician altar, too.”

She was smiling now, but the seriousness lingered in her eyes.

“And I have probably invoked some terrible heathen deity — Ashtoreth, or Pugm, or Baal! How awful!” he added, with mock gravity.

The girl rose to her feet.

“You are laughing at me. The people about here are superstitious, and I am a Celt, too. I belong here.”

He jumped up with a quick protest.

“No, I’m not laughing at you. Please don’t think that! But it’s a little hard to believe in active evil when all around is so beautiful.” He helped her to mount and walked to the top of the mound at her stirrup. “Tell me, is there any charm or incantation, in case — ?” His eyes were twinkling, but she shook her fair head soberly.

“They say iron — cold iron — is the only thing it cannot cross. But I must go!” She held out her hand with half-shy friendliness. “Thank you for your niceness to me.” Her eyes grew suddenly wistful. “Really, though, I don’t think I should stay there if I were you. Please!”

He only laughed, however, and she moved off, shaking her impatient horse into a canter. Maynard stood looking after her till she was swallowed by the dusk and surrounding moor. Then, thoughtfully, he retraced his steps to the hollow.

•   •   •

A cloud lay across the face of the moon when Fear awoke Maynard. He rolled on to one elbow and stared round the hollow, filled with inexplicable dread. He was ordinarily a courageous man, and had no nerves to speak of; yet, as his eyes followed the line of the ridge against the sky, he experienced terror, the elementary, nauseating terror of childhood, when the skin tingles, and the heart beats at a suffocating gallop. It was very dark, but momentarily his eyes grew accustomed to it. He was conscious of a queer, pungent smell, horribly animal and corrupt.

Suddenly the utter silence broke. He heard a rattle of stones, the splash of water about him, realized that it was the brook beneath his feet, and that he, Maynard, was running for his life.

Neither then nor later did Reason assert herself. He ran without question or amazement. His brain — the part where human reasoning holds normal sway — was dominated by the purely primitive instinct of flight. And in that sudden rout of courage and self-respect one conscious thought alone remained. Whatever it was that was even then at his heels, he must not see it. At all costs it must be behind him, and, resisting the sudden terrified impulse to look over his shoulder, he unbuttoned his tweed jacket and disengaged himself from it as he ran. The faint haze that had gathered round the full moon dispersed, and he saw the moor stretching before him, grey and still, glistening with dew.

He was of frugal and temperate habits, a wiry man at the height of his physical powers, with lean flanks and a deep chest.

At Oxford they had said he was built to run for his life. He was running for it now, and he knew it.

The ground sloped upwards after a while, and he tore up the incline, breathing deep and hard; down into a shallow valley, leaping gorse bushes, crashing through whortle and meadowsweet, stumbling over peat-cuttings and the workings of forgotten tin-mines. An idiotic popular tune raced through his brain. He found himself trying to frame the words, but they broke into incoherent prayers, still to the same grotesque tune.

Then, as he breasted the flank of a boulder-strewn tor, he seemed to hear snuffling breathing behind him, and, redoubling his efforts, stepped into a rabbit hole. He was up and running again in the twinkling of an eye, limping from a twisted ankle as he ran.

He sprinted over the crest of the hill and thought he heard the sound almost abreast of him, away to the right. In the dry bed of a watercourse some stones were dislodged and fell with a rattle in the stillness of the night; he bore away to the left. A moment later there was Something nearly at his left elbow, and he smelt again the nameless, foetid reek. He doubled, and the ghastly truth flashed upon him. The Thing was playing with him! He was being hunted for sport — the sport of a horror unthinkable. The sweat ran down into his eyes.

He lost all count of time; his wrist watch was smashed on his wrist. He ran through a reeling eternity, sobbing for breath, stumbling, tripping, fighting a leaden weariness; and ever the same unreasoning terror urged him on. The moon and ragged skyline swam about him; the blood drummed deafeningly in his ears, and his eyeballs felt as if they would burst from their sockets. He had nearly bitten his swollen tongue in two falling over an unseen peat-cutting, and blood-flecked foam gathered on his lips.

God, how he ran! But he was no longer among bog and heather. He was running — shambling now — along a road. The loping pursuit of that nameless, shapeless Something sounded like an echo in his head.

He was nearing a village, but saw nothing save a red mist that swam before him like a fog. The road underfoot seemed to rise and fall in wavelike undulations. Still he ran, with sobbing gasps and limbs that swerved under his weight; at his elbow hung death unnamable, and the fear of it urged him on while every instinct of his exhausted body called out to him to fling up his hands and end it.

Out of the mist ahead rose the rough outline of a building by the roadside; it was the village smithy, half workshop, half dwelling. The road here skirted a patch of grass, and the moonlight, glistening on the dew, showed the dark circular scars of the turf where, for a generation, the smith’s peat fires had heated the great iron hoops that tyred the wheels of the wains. One of these was even then lying on the ground with the turves placed in readiness for firing in the morning, and in the throbbing darkness of Maynard’s consciousness a voice seemed to speak faintly — the voice of a girl: “There’s a Thing that hunts people to death. But iron — cold iron — it cannot cross.”

The sweat of death was already on his brow as he reeled sideways, plunging blindly across the uneven tufts of grass. His feet caught in some obstruction and he pitched forward into the sanctuary of the huge iron tyre — a spasm of cramp twisting his limbs up under him.

As he fell a great blackness rose around him, and with it the bewildered clamor of awakened dogs.

•   •   •

Dr. Stanmore came down the flagged path from the smith’s cottage, pulling on his gloves. A big car was passing slowly up the village street, and as it came abreast the smithy the doctor raised his hat.

The car stopped, and the driver, a fair-haired girl, leant sideways from her seat.

“Good-morning, Dr. Stanmore! What’s the matter here? Nothing wrong with any of Matthew’s children, is there?”

The Doctor shook his head gravely.

“No, Lady Dorothy; they’re all at school. This is no one belonging to the family — a stranger who was taken mysteriously ill last night just outside the forge, and they brought him in. It’s a most queer case, and very difficult to diagnose — that is to say, to give a diagnosis in keeping with one’s professional — er — conscience.” The girl switched off the engine, and took her hand from the brake-lever. Something in the doctor’s manner arrested her interest.

“What is the matter with him?” she queried. “What diagnosis have you made, professional or otherwise?”

“Shock, Lady Dorothy; severe exhaustion and shock, heart strained, superficial lesions, bruises, scratches, and so forth. Mentally he is in a great state of excitement and terror, lapsing into delirium at times — that is really the most serious feature. In fact, unless I can calm him I am afraid we may have some brain trouble on top of the other thing. It’s most mysterious!”

The girl nodded gravely, holding her underlip between her white teeth.

“What does he look like — in appearance, I mean? Is he young?” The shadow of a smile crossed the doctor’s eyes.

“Yes, Lady Dorothy — quite young, and very good-looking. He is a man of remarkable athletic build. He is calmer now, and I have left Matthew’s wife with him while I slip out to see a couple of other patients.”

Lady Dorothy rose from her seat and stepped down out of the car. “I think I know your patient,” she said. “In fact, I had taken the car to look for him, to ask him to lunch with us. Do you think I might see him for a minute? If it is the person I think it is I may be able to help you diagnose his illness.”

Together they walked up the path and entered the cottage. The doctor led the way upstairs and opened a door. A woman sitting by the bed rose and dropped a curtsey.

Lady Dorothy smiled a greeting to her and crossed over to the bed. There, his face grey and drawn with exhaustion, with shadows round his closed eyes, lay Maynard; one hand lying on the counterpane opened and closed convulsively, his lips moved. The physician eyed the girl interrogatively.

“Do you know him?” he asked.

She nodded, and put her firm, cool hand over the twitching fingers. “Yes,” she said. “And I warned him. Tell me, is he very ill?”

“He requires rest, careful nursing, absolute quiet—”

“All that he can have at the Manor,” said the girl softly. She met the doctor’s eyes and looked away, a faint colour tingeing her cheeks. “Will you go and telephone to father? I will take him back in the car now if he is well enough to be moved.”

“Yes, he is well enough to be moved,” said the doctor. “It is very kind of you, Lady Dorothy, and I will go and telephone at once. Will you stay with him for a little while?”

He left the room, and they heard his feet go down the narrow stairs. The cottage door opened and closed.

The two women, the old and the young, peasant and peer’s daughter, looked at each other, and there was in their glance that complete understanding which can only exist between women. “Do ’ee mind old Jarge Toms, my lady?”

Lady Dorothy nodded.

“I know, I know! And I warned him! They won’t believe, these men! They think because they are so big and strong that there is nothing that can hurt them.”

“’Twas th’ iron that saved un, my lady. ’Twas inside one of John’s new tyres as was lyin’ on the ground that us found un. Dogs barkin’ wakened us up. But it’d ha’ had un, else—” A sound downstairs sent her flying to the door. “’Tis the kettle, my lady. John’s dinner spilin’, an’ I forgettin’.”

She hurried out of the room and closed the door.

The sound of their voices seemed to have roused the occupant of the bed. His eyelids fluttered and opened; his eyes rested full on the girl’s face. For a moment there was no consciousness in their gaze; then a whimsical ghost of a smile crept about his mouth. “Go on,” he said in a weak voice. “Say it!”

“Say what?” asked Lady Dorothy. She was suddenly aware that her hand was still on his, but the twitching fingers had closed about hers in a calm, firm grasp.

“Say ‘I told you so’!”

She shook her head with a little smile.

“I told you that cold iron—”

“Cold iron saved me.” He told her of the iron hoop on the ground outside the forge. “You saved me last night.”

She disengaged her hand gently.

“I saved you last night — since you say so. But in future—” Someone was coming up the stairs. Maynard met her eyes with a long look.

“I have no fear,” he said. “I have found something better than cold iron.”

The door opened and the doctor came in. He glanced at Maynard’s face and touched his pulse.

“The case is yours, Lady Dorothy!” he said with a little bow.

THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT

Robert E. Howard

1931

There were, I remember, six of us in Conrad’s bizarrely fashioned study, with its queer relics from all over the world and its long rows of books which ranged from the Mandrake Press edition of Boccaccio to a Missale Romanum, bound in clasped oak boards and printed in Venice, 1740. Clemants and Professor Kirowan had just engaged in a somewhat testy anthropological argument: Clemants upholding the theory of a separate, distinct Alpine race, while the professor maintained that this so-called race was merely a deviation from an original Aryan stock — possibly the result of an admixture between the southern or Mediterranean races and the Nordic people.

“And how,” asked Clemants, “do you account for their brachycephalicism? The Mediterraneans were as long-headed as the Aryans: would admixture between these dolichocephalic peoples produce a broad-headed intermediate type?”

“Special conditions might bring about a change in an originally long-headed race,” snapped Kirowan. “Boaz has demonstrated, for instance, that in the case of immigrants to America, skull formations often change in one generation. And Flinders Petrie has shown that the Lombards changed from a long-headed to a round-headed race in a few centuries.”

“But what caused these changes?”

“Much is yet unknown to science,” answered Kirowan, “and we need not be dogmatic. No one knows, as yet, why people of British and Irish ancestry tend to grow unusually tall in the Darling district of Australia — Cornstalks, as they are called — or why people of such descent generally have thinner jaw-structures after a few generations in New England. The universe is full of the unexplainable.”

“And therefore the uninteresting, according to Machen,” laughed Taverel.

Conrad shook his head. “I must disagree. To me, the unknowable is most tantalizingly fascinating.”

“Which accounts, no doubt, for all the works on witchcraft and demonology I see on your shelves,” said Ketrick, with a wave of his hand toward the rows of books.

And let me speak of Ketrick. Each of the six of us was of the same breed — that is to say, a Briton or an American of British descent. By British, I include all natural inhabitants of the British Isles. We represented various strains of English and Celtic blood, but basically, these strains are the same after all. But Ketrick: to me the man always seemed strangely alien. It was in his eyes that this difference showed externally. They were a sort of amber, almost yellow, and slightly oblique. At times, when one looked at his face from certain angles, they seemed to slant like a Chinaman’s.

Others than I had noticed this feature, so unusual in a man of pure Anglo-Saxon descent. The usual myths ascribing his slanted eyes to some prenatal influence had been mooted about, and I remember Professor Hendrik Brooler once remarked that Ketrick was undoubtedly an atavism, representing a reversion of type to some dim and distant ancestor of Mongolian blood — a sort of freak reversion, since none of his family showed such traces.

But Ketrick comes of the Welsh branch of the Cetrics of Sussex, and his lineage is set down in the Book of Peers. There you may read the line of his ancestry, which extends unbroken to the days of Canute. No slightest trace of Mongoloid intermixture appears in the genealogy, and how could there have been such intermixture in old Saxon England? For Ketrick is the modern form of Cedric, and though that branch fled into Wales before the invasion of the Danes, its male heirs consistently married with English families on the border marches, and it remains a pure line of the powerful Sussex Cedrics — almost pure Saxon. As for the man himself, this defect of his eyes, if it can be called a defect, is his only abnormality, except for a slight and occasional lisping of speech. He is highly intellectual and a good companion except for a slight aloofness and a rather callous indifference which may serve to mask an extremely sensitive nature.

Referring to his remark, I said with a laugh: “Conrad pursues the obscure and mystic as some men pursue romance; his shelves throng with delightful nightmares of every variety.”

Our host nodded. “You’ll find there a number of delectable dishes — Machen, Poe, Blackwood, Maturin — look, there’s a rare feast — Horrid Mysteries, by the Marquis of Grosse — the real Eighteenth Century edition.”

Taverel scanned the shelves. “Weird fiction seems to vie with works on witchcraft, voodoo and dark magic.”

True; historians and chronicles are often dull; tale-weavers never — the masters, I mean. A voodoo sacrifice can be described in such a dull manner as to take all the real fantasy out of it, and leave it merely a sordid murder. I will admit that few writers of fiction touch the true heights of horror — most of their stuff is too concrete, given too much earthly shape and dimensions. But in such tales as Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher, Machen’s Black Seal and Lovecraft’s Call of Cthulhu — the three master horror-tales, to my mind — the reader is borne into dark and outer realms of imagination.

“But look there,” he continued, “there, sandwiched between that nightmare of Huysmans’, and Walpole’s Castle of Otranto — Von Junzt’s Nameless Cults. There’s a book to keep you awake at night!”

“I’ve read it,” said Taverel, “and I’m convinced the man is mad. His work is like the conversation of a maniac — it runs with startling clarity for awhile, then suddenly merges into vagueness and disconnected ramblings.”

Conrad shook his head. “Have you ever thought that perhaps it is his very sanity that causes him to write in that fashion? What if he dares not put on paper all he knows? What if his vague suppositions are dark and mysterious hints, keys to the puzzle, to those who know?”

“Bosh!” This from Kirowan. “Are you intimating that any of the nightmare cults referred to by Von Junzt survive to this day — if they ever existed save in the hag-ridden brain of a lunatic poet and philosopher?”

“Not he alone used hidden meanings,” answered Conrad. “If you will scan various works of certain great poets you may find double meanings. Men have stumbled onto cosmic secrets in the past and given a hint of them to the world in cryptic words. Do you remember Von Junzt’s hints of ‘a city in the waste’? What do you think of Flecker’s line:

“‘Pass not beneath! Men say there blows in stony deserts still a rose

But with no scarlet to her leaf — and from whose heart no perfume flows.’

“Men may stumble upon secret things, but Von Junzt dipped deep into forbidden mysteries. He was one of the few men, for instance, who could read the Necronomicon in the original Greek translation.”

Taverel shrugged his shoulders, and Professor Kirowan, though he snorted and puffed viciously at his pipe, made no direct reply; for he, as well as Conrad, had delved into the Latin version of the book, and had found there things not even a cold-blooded scientist could answer or refute.

“Well,” he said presently, “suppose we admit the former existence of cults revolving about such nameless and ghastly gods and entities as Cthulhu, Yog Sothoth, Tsathoggua, Gol-goroth, and the like, I can not find it in my mind to believe that survivals of such cults lurk in the dark corners of the world today.”

To our surprise Clemants answered. He was a tall, lean man, silent almost to the point of taciturnity, and his fierce struggles with poverty in his youth had lined his face beyond his years. Like many another artist, he lived a distinctly dual literary life, his swashbuckling novels furnishing him a generous income, and his editorial position on The Cloven Hoof affording him full artistic expression. The Cloven Hoof was a poetry magazine whose bizarre contents had often aroused the shocked interest of the conservative critics.

“You remember Von Junzt makes mention of a so-called Bran cult,” said Clemants, stuffing his pipe-bowl with a peculiarly villainous brand of shag tobacco. “I think I heard you and Taverel discussing it once.”

“As I gather from his hints,” snapped Kirowan, “Von Junzt includes this particular cult among those still in existence. Absurd.”

Again Clemants shook his head. “When I was a boy working my way through a certain university, I had for roommate a lad as poor and ambitious as I. If I told you his name, it would startle you. Though he came of an old Scotch line of Galloway, he was obviously of a non-Aryan type.

“This is in strictest confidence, you understand. But my roommate talked in his sleep. I began to listen and put his disjointed mumbling together. And in his mutterings I first heard of the ancient cult hinted at by Von Junzt; of the king who rules the Dark Empire, which was a revival of an older, darker empire dating back into the Stone Age; and of the great, nameless cavern where stands the Dark Man — the image of Bran Mak Morn, carved in his likeness by a master-hand while the great king yet lived, and to which each worshipper of Bran makes a pilgrimage once in his or her lifetime. Yes, that cult lives today in the descendants of Bran’s people — a silent, unknown current it flows on in the great ocean of life, waiting for the stone image of the great Bran to breathe and move with sudden life, and come from the great cavern to rebuild their lost empire.”

“And who were the people of that empire?” asked Ketrick.

“Picts,” answered Taverel, “doubtless the people known later as the wild Picts of Galloway were predominantly Celtic — a mixture of Gaelic, Cymric, aboriginal and possibly Teutonic elements. Whether they took their name from the older race or lent their own name to that race, is a matter yet to be decided. But when Von Junzt speaks of Picts, he refers specifically to the small, dark, garlic-eating peoples of Mediterranean blood who brought the Neolithic culture into Britain. The first settlers of that country, in fact, who gave rise to the tales of earth spirits and goblins.”

“I can not agree to that last statement,” said Conrad. “These legends ascribe a deformity and inhumanness of appearances to the characters. There was nothing about the Picts to excite such horror and repulsion in the Aryan peoples. I believe that the Mediterraneans were preceded by a Mongoloid type, very low in the scale of development, whence these tales—”

“Quite true,” broke in Kirowan, “but I hardly think they preceded the Picts, as you call them, into Britain. We find troll and dwarf legends all over the Continent, and I am inclined to think that both the Mediterranean and Aryan people brought these tales with them from the Continent. They must have been of extremely inhuman aspect, those early Mongoloids.”

“At least,” said Conrad, “here is a flint mallet a miner found in the Welsh hills and gave to me, which has never been fully explained. It is obviously of no ordinary Neolithic make. See how small it is, compared to most implements of that age; almost like a child’s toy; yet it is surprisingly heavy and no doubt a deadly blow could be dealt with it. I fitted the handle to it, myself, and you would be surprised to know how difficult it was to carve it into a shape and balance corresponding with the head.”

We looked at the thing. It was well made, polished somewhat like the other remnants of the Neolithic I had seen, yet as Conrad said, it was strangely different. Its small size was oddly disquieting, for it had no appearance of a toy, otherwise. It was as sinister in suggestion as an Aztec sacrificial dagger. Conrad had fashioned the oaken handle with rare skill, and in carving it to fit the head, had managed to give it the same unnatural appearance as the mallet itself had. He had even copied the workmanship of primal times, fixing the head into the cleft of the haft with rawhide.

“My word!” Taverel made a clumsy pass at an imaginary antagonist and nearly shattered a costly Shang vase. “The balance of the thing is all off-center; I’d have to readjust all my mechanics of poise and equilibrium to handle it.”

“Let me see it,” Ketrick took the thing and fumbled with it, trying to strike the secret of its proper handling. At length, somewhat irritated, he swung it up and struck a heavy blow at a shield which hung on the wall nearby. I was standing near it; I saw the hellish mallet twist in his hand like a live serpent, and his arm wrenched out of line; I heard a shout of alarmed warning — then darkness came with the impact of the mallet against my head.

•   •   •

Slowly I drifted back to consciousness. First there was dull sensation with blindness and total lack of knowledge as to where I was or what I was; then vague realization of life and being, and a hard something pressing into my ribs. Then the mists cleared and I came to myself completely.

I lay on my back half-beneath some underbrush and my head throbbed fiercely. Also my hair was caked and clotted with blood, for the scalp had been laid open. But my eyes traveled down my body and limbs, naked but for a deerskin loincloth and sandals of the same material, and found no other wound. That which pressed so uncomfortably into my ribs was my ax, on which I had fallen.

Now an abhorrent babble reached my ears and stung me into clear consciousness. The noise was faintly like language, but not such language as men are accustomed to. It sounded much like the repeated hissing of many great snakes.

I stared. I lay in a great, gloomy forest. The glade was overshadowed, so that even in the daytime it was very dark. Aye — that forest was dark, cold, silent, gigantic and utterly grisly. And I looked into the glade.

I saw a shambles. Five men lay there — at least, what had been five men. Now as I marked the abhorrent mutilations my soul sickened. And about clustered the — Things. Humans they were, of a sort, though I did not consider them so. They were short and stocky, with broad heads too large for their scrawny bodies. Their hair was snaky and stringy, their faces broad and square, with flat noses, hideously slanted eyes, a thin gash for a mouth, and pointed ears. They wore the skins of beasts, as did I, but these hides were but crudely dressed. They bore small bows and flint-tipped arrows, flint knives and cudgels. And they conversed in a speech as hideous as themselves, a hissing, reptilian speech that filled me with dread and loathing.

Oh, I hated them as I lay there; my brain flamed with white-hot fury. And now I remembered. We had hunted, we six youths of the Sword People, and wandered far into the grim forest which our people generally shunned. Weary of the chase, we had paused to rest; to me had been given the first watch, for in those days, no sleep was safe without a sentry. Now shame and revulsion shook my whole being. I had slept — I had betrayed my comrades. And now they lay gashed and mangled — butchered while they slept, by vermin who had never dared to stand before them on equal terms. I, Aryara, had betrayed my trust.

Aye — I remembered. I had slept and in the midst of a dream of the hunt, fire and sparks had exploded in my head and I had plunged into a deeper darkness where there were no dreams. And now the penalty. They who had stolen through the dense forest and smitten me senseless, had not paused to mutilate me. Thinking me dead they had hastened swiftly to their grisly work. Now perhaps they had forgotten me for a time. I had sat somewhat apart from the others, and when struck, had fallen half-under some bushes. But soon they would remember me. I would hunt no more, dance no more in the dances of hunt and love and war, see no more the wattle huts of the Sword People.

But I had no wish to escape back to my people. Should I slink back with my tale of infamy and disgrace? Should I hear the words of scorn my tribe would fling at me, see the girls point their contemptuous fingers at the youth who slept and betrayed his comrades to the knives of vermin?

Tears stung my eyes, and slow hate heaved up in my bosom, and my brain. I would never bear the sword that marked the warrior. I would never triumph over worthy foes and die gloriously beneath the arrows of the Picts or the axes of the Wolf People or the River People. I would go down to death beneath a nauseous rabble, whom the Picts had long ago driven into forest dens like rats.

And mad rage gripped me and dried my tears, giving in their stead a berserk blaze of wrath. If such reptiles were to bring about my downfall, I would make it a fall long remembered — if such beasts had memories.

Moving cautiously, I shifted until my hand was on the haft of my ax; then I called on Il-marinen and bounded up as a tiger springs. And as a tiger springs I was among my enemies and mashed a flat skull as a man crushes the head of a snake. A sudden wild clamor of fear broke from my victims and for an instant they closed round me, hacking and stabbing. A knife gashed my chest but I gave no heed. A red mist waved before my eyes, and my body and limbs moved in perfect accord with my fighting brain. Snarling, hacking and smiting, I was a tiger among reptiles. In an instant they gave way and fled, leaving me bestriding half a dozen stunted bodies. But I was not satiated.

I was close on the heels of the tallest one, whose head would perhaps come to my shoulder, and who seemed to be their chief. He fled down a sort of runway, squealing like a monstrous lizard, and when I was close at his shoulder, he dived, snake-like, into the bushes. But I was too swift for him, and I dragged him forth and butchered him in a most gory fashion.

And through the bushes I saw the trail he was striving to reach — a path winding in and out among the trees, almost too narrow to allow the traversing of it by a man of normal size. I hacked off my victim’s hideous head, and carrying it in my left hand, went up the serpent-path, with my red ax in my right.

Now as I strode swiftly along the path and blood splashed beside my feet at every step from the severed jugular of my foe, I thought of those I hunted. Aye — we held them in so little esteem, we hunted by day in the forest they haunted. What they called themselves, we never knew; for none of our tribe ever learned the accursed hissing sibilances they used as speech; but we called them Children of the Night. And night-things they were indeed, for they slunk in the depths of the dark forests, and in subterraneous dwellings, venturing forth into the hills only when their conquerors slept. It was at night that they did their foul deeds — the quick flight of a flint-tipped arrow to slay cattle, or perhaps a loitering human, the snatching of a child that had wandered from the village.

But it was for more than this we gave them their name; they were, in truth, people of night and darkness and the ancient horror-ridden shadows of bygone ages. For these creatures were very old, and they represented an outworn age. They had once overrun and possessed this land, and they had been driven into hiding and obscurity by the dark, fierce little Picts with whom we contested now, and who hated and loathed them as savagely as did we.

The Picts were different from us in general appearance, being shorter of stature and dark of hair, eyes and skin, whereas we were tall and powerful, with yellow hair and light eyes. But they were cast in the same mold, for all of that. These Children of the Night seemed not human to us, with their deformed dwarfish bodies, yellow skin and hideous faces. Aye — they were reptiles — vermin.

And my brain was like to burst with fury when I thought that it was these vermin on whom I was to glut my ax and perish. Bah! There is no glory slaying snakes or dying from their bites. All this rage and fierce disappointment turned on the objects of my hatred, and with the old red mist waving in front of me I swore by all the gods I knew, to wreak such red havoc before I died as to leave a dread memory in the minds of the survivors.

My people would not honor me, in such contempt they held the Children. But those Children that I left alive would remember me and shudder. So I swore, gripping savagely my ax, which was of bronze, set in a cleft of the oaken haft and fastened securely with rawhide.

Now I heard ahead a sibilant, abhorrent murmur, and a vile stench filtered to me through the trees, human, yet less than human. A few moments more and I emerged from the deep shadows into a wide open space. I had never before seen a village of the Children. There was a cluster of earthen domes, with low doorways sunk into the ground; squalid dwelling-places, half-above and half-below the earth. And I knew from the talk of the old warriors that these dwelling-places were connected by underground corridors, so the whole village was like an ant-bed, or a system of snake holes. And I wondered if other tunnels did not run off under the ground and emerge long distances from the villages.

Before the domes clustered a vast group of the creatures, hissing and jabbering at a great rate.

I had quickened my pace, and now as I burst from cover, I was running with the fleetness of my race. A wild clamor went up from the rabble as they saw the avenger, tall, bloodstained and blazing-eyed leap from the forest, and I cried out fiercely, flung the dripping head among them and bounded like a wounded tiger into the thick of them.

Oh, there was no escape for them now! They might have taken to their tunnels but I would have followed, even to the guts of Hell. They knew they must slay me, and they closed around, a hundred strong, to do it.

There was no wild blaze of glory in my brain as there had been against worthy foes. But the old berserk madness of my race was in my blood and the smell of blood and destruction in my nostrils.

I know not how many I slew. I only know that they thronged about me in a writhing, slashing mass, like serpents about a wolf, and I smote until the ax-edge turned and bent and the ax became no more than a bludgeon; and I smashed skulls, split heads, splintered bones, scattered blood and brains in one red sacrifice to Il-marinen, god of the Sword People.

Bleeding from half a hundred wounds, blinded by a slash across the eyes, I felt a flint knife sink deep into my groin and at the same instant a cudgel laid my scalp open. I went to my knees but reeled up again, and saw in a thick red fog a ring of leering, slant-eyed faces. I lashed out as a dying tiger strikes, and the faces broke in red ruin.

And as I sagged, overbalanced by the fury of my stroke, a taloned hand clutched my throat and a flint blade was driven into my ribs and twisted venomously. Beneath a shower of blows I went down again, but the man with the knife was beneath me, and with my left hand I found him and broke his neck before he could writhe away.

Life was waning swiftly; through the hissing and howling of the Children I could hear the voice of Il-marinen. Yet once again I rose stubbornly, through a very whirlwind of cudgels and spears. I could no longer see my foes, even in a red mist. But I could feel their blows and knew they surged about me. I braced my feet, gripped my slippery ax-haft with both hands, and calling once more on Il-marinen I heaved up the ax and struck one last terrific blow. And I must have died on my feet, for there was no sensation of falling; even as I knew, with a last thrill of savagery, that slew, even as I felt the splintering of skulls beneath my ax, darkness came with oblivion.

•   •   •

I came suddenly to myself. I was half-reclining in a big armchair and Conrad was pouring water on me. My head ached and a trickle of blood had half-dried on my face. Kirowan, Taverel and Clemants were hovering about, anxiously, while Ketrick stood just in front of me, still holding the mallet, his face schooled to a polite perturbation which his eyes did not show. And at the sight of those cursed eyes a red madness surged up in me.

“There,” Conrad was saying, “I told you he’d come out of it in a moment; just a light crack. He’s taken harder than that. All right now, aren’t you, O’Donnel?”

At that I swept them aside, and with a single low snarl of hatred launched myself at Ketrick. Taken utterly by surprise he had no opportunity to defend himself. My hands locked on his throat and we crashed together on the ruins of a divan. The others cried out in amazement and horror and sprang to separate us — or rather, to tear me from my victim, for already Ketrick’s slant eyes were beginning to start from their sockets.

“For God’s sake, O’Donnel,” exclaimed Conrad, seeking to break my grip, “what’s come over you? Ketrick didn’t mean to hit you — let go, you idiot!”

A fierce wrath almost overcame me at these men who were my friends, men of my own tribe, and I swore at them and their blindness, as they finally managed to tear my strangling fingers from Ketrick’s throat. He sat up and choked and explored the blue marks my fingers had left, while I raged and cursed, nearly defeating the combined efforts of the four to hold me.

“You fools!” I screamed. “Let me go! Let me do my duty as a tribesman! You blind fools! I care nothing for the paltry blow he dealt me — he and his dealt stronger blows than that against me, in bygone ages. You fools, he is marked with the brand of the beast — the reptile — the vermin we exterminated centuries ago! I must crush him, stamp him out, rid the clean earth of his accursed pollution!”

So I raved and struggled and Conrad gasped to Ketrick over his shoulder: “Get out, quick! He’s out of his head! His mind is unhinged! Get away from him.”

Now I look out over the ancient dreaming downs and the hills and deep forests beyond and I ponder. Somehow, that blow from that ancient accursed mallet knocked me back into another age and another life. While I was Aryara I had no cognizance of any other life. It was no dream; it was a stray bit of reality wherein I, John O’Donnel, once lived and died, and back into which I was snatched across the voids of time and space by a chance blow. Time and times are but cogwheels, unmatched, grinding on oblivious to one another. Occasionally — oh, very rarely! — the cogs fit; the pieces of the plot snap together momentarily and give men faint glimpses beyond the veil of this everyday blindness we call reality.

I am John O’Donnel and I was Aryara, who dreamed dreams of war-glory and hunt-glory and feast-glory and who died on a red heap of his victims in some lost age. But in what age and where?

The last I can answer for you. Mountains and rivers change their contours; the landscapes alter; but the downs least of all. I look out upon them now and I remember them, not only with John O’Donnel’s eyes, but with the eyes of Aryara. They are but little changed. Only the great forest has shrunk and dwindled and in many, many places vanished utterly. But here on these very downs Aryara lived and fought and loved and in yonder forest he died. Kirowan was wrong. The little, fierce, dark Picts were not the first men in the Isles. There were beings before them — aye, the Children of the Night. Legends — why, the Children were not unknown to us when we came into what is now the isle of Britain. We had encountered them before, ages before. Already we had our myths of them. But we found them in Britain. Nor had the Picts totally exterminated them.

Nor had the Picts, as so many believe, preceded us by many centuries. We drove them before us as we came, in that long drift from the East. I, Aryara, knew old men who had marched on that century-long trek; who had been borne in the arms of yellow-haired women over countless miles of forest and plain, and who as youths had walked in the vanguard of the invaders.

As to the age — that I cannot say. But I, Aryara, was surely an Aryan and my people were Aryans — members of one of the thousand unknown and unrecorded drifts that scattered yellow-haired blue-eyed tribes all over the world. The Celts were not the first to come into western Europe. I, Aryara, was of the same blood and appearance as the men who sacked Rome, but mine was a much older strain. Of the language spoke, no echo remains in the waking mind of John O’Donnel, but I knew that Aryara’s tongue was to ancient Celtic what ancient Celtic is to modern Gaelic.

Il-marinen! I remember the god I called upon, the ancient, ancient god who worked in metals — in bronze then. For Il-marinen was one of the base gods of the Aryans from whom many gods grew; and he was Wieland and Vulcan in the ages of iron. But to Aryara he was Il-marinen.

And Aryara — he was one of many tribes and many drifts. Not alone did the Sword People come or dwell in Britain. The River People were before us and the Wolf People came later. But they were Aryans like us, light-eyed and tall and blond. We fought them, for the reason that the various drifts of Aryans have always fought each other, just as the Achaeans fought the Dorians, just as the Celts and Germans cut each other’s throats; aye, just as the Hellenes and the Persians, who were once one people and of the same drift, split in two different ways on the long trek and centuries later met and flooded Greece and Asia Minor with blood.

Now understand, all this I did not know as Aryara. I, Aryara, knew nothing of all these worldwide drifts of my race. I knew only that my people were conquerors, that a century ago my ancestors had dwelt in the great plains far to the east, plains populous with fierce, yellow-haired, light-eyed people like myself; that my ancestors had come westward in a great drift; and that in that drift, when my tribesmen met tribes of other races, they trampled and destroyed them, and when they met other yellow-haired, light-eyed people, of older or newer drifts, they fought savagely and mercilessly, according to the old, illogical custom of the Aryan people. This Aryara knew, and I, John O’Donnel, who know much more and much less than I, Aryara, knew, have combined the knowledge of these separate selves and have come to conclusions that would startle many noted scientists and historians.

Yet this fact is well known: Aryans deteriorate swiftly in sedentary and peaceful lives. Their proper existence is a nomadic one; when they settle down to an agricultural existence, they pave the way for their downfall; and when they pen themselves with city walls, they seal their doom. Why, I, Aryara, remember the tales of the old men — how the Sons of the Sword, on that long drift, found villages of white-skinned yellow-haired people who had drifted into the west centuries before and had quit the wandering life to dwell among the dark, garlic-eating people and gain their sustenance from the soil. And the old men told how soft and weak they were, and how easily they fell before the bronze blades of the Sword People.

Look — is not the whole history of the Sons of Aryan laid on those lines? Look — how swiftly has Persian followed Mede; Greek, Persian; Roman, Greek; and German, Roman. Aye, and the Norseman followed the Germanic tribes when they had grown flabby from a century or so of peace and idleness, and despoiled the spoils they had taken in the southland.

But let me speak of Ketrick. Ha — the short hairs at the back of my neck bristle at the very mention of his name. A reversion to type — but not to the type of some cleanly Chinaman or Mongol of recent times. The Danes drove his ancestors into the hills of Wales; and there, in what medieval century, and in what foul way did that cursed aboriginal taint creep into the clean Saxon blood of the Celtic line, there to lie dormant so long? The Celtic Welsh never mated with the Children any more than the Picts did. But there must have been survivals — vermin lurking in those grim hills, that had outlasted their time and age. In Aryara’s day they were scarcely human. What must a thousand years of retrogression have done to the breed?

What foul shape stole into the Ketrick castle on some forgotten night, or rose out of the dusk to grip some woman of the line, straying in the hills?

The mind shrinks from such an image. But this I know: there must have been survivals of that foul, reptilian epoch when the Ketricks went into Wales. There still may be. But this changeling, this waif of darkness, this horror who bears the noble name of Ketrick, the brand of the serpent is upon him, and until he is destroyed there is no rest for me. Now that I know him for what he is, he pollutes the clean air and leaves the slime of the snake on the green earth. The sound of his lisping, hissing voice fills me with crawling horror and the sight of his slanted eyes inspires me with madness.

For I come of a royal race, and such as he is a continual insult and a threat, like a serpent underfoot. Mine is a regal race, though now it is become degraded and falls into decay by continual admixture with conquered races. The waves of alien blood have washed my hair black and my skin dark, but I still have the lordly stature and the blue eyes of a royal Aryan.

And as my ancestors — as I, Aryara, destroyed the scum that writhed beneath our heels, so shall I, John O’Donnel, exterminate the reptilian thing, the monster bred of the snaky taint that slumbered so long unguessed in clean Saxon veins, the vestigial serpent-things left to taunt the Sons of Aryan. They say the blow I received affected my mind; I know it but opened my eyes. Mine ancient enemy walks often on the moors alone, attracted, though he may not know it, by ancestral urgings. And on one of these lonely walks I shall meet him, and when I meet him, I will break his foul neck with my hands, as I, Aryara, broke the necks of foul night-things in the long, long ago.

Then they may take me and break my neck at the end of a rope if they will. I am not blind, if my friends are. And in the sight of the old Aryan god, if not in the blinded eyes of men, I will have kept faith with my tribe.